This was the long Goodbye

"This is the long goodbye, somebody tell me why....."

Blah blah blah. Thanks Ronan for the blog title :D

Several months ago I did a blog with a similar title, it made everyone think I was quitting until they actually read the blog. I got a lot of sighs of relief once they had read it and realised I wasn't.

This time, I am.

Like, legit.

Ish......

A good friend said to me recently that I am not active enough in my blog posts on here, and I need to drum more content into it. And in essence, he was correct.

But it got me thinking. Not just about the blog, but all of the different media outlets I use for my hobby.

And I realised, sitting down and writing a blog just is not me. I don't enjoy it and it isn't time efficient. Nor does it create the response I am looking for.

To top it off, I am in the process of reshaping and defining what An Empire Fallen is, and the way it is portrayed. I am not quite ready yet to reveal the new plans, but they are coming.

Between Facebook and youtube, along with a currently dormant Istagram that I plan to revitalise, and a website that is in the process of being built for AEF, I have decided that I just don't have time nor the need for this space as well.

<insert tears here>

Okay, so of what I can share, what can you expect going into 2018.

Facebook will continue to grow as a standard page platform. I expect little to no changes here.

Youtube will hopefully see a growth in battle reports as I free up time for more games.
I will also be introducing something called a "Paintisode", based off the old videos MrMalorian used to make back in the far ago days of WHFB. Basically, it is 45minutes to an hour or me rambling on whilst painting.......hhmmm how many headaches can I cause? lol

Instagram will be revitalised, showcasing the works I do for both myself and my commission work.

And the website, well, thats a secret to stay tuned for.

Anyways, that was a very skeleton style blog without any real flair, as I am yet again on the run with no time to beef it out......who wants meat anyways right?

Thanks to everyone over the past two years who have followed me here. The blog will remain live for the indefinate furture, and who knows, maybe one day I will pick up the long winded written rants that is me again.....or maybe I will save everyone from migraines!

See you on the other side!!!

Stay in touch:
www.facebook.com/anempirefallen
@anempirefallen

Goats, Cows and Broken Farm Fences

I suddenly came to a realisation the other day, that my Beast Herds is made up of goats, cows and horses.....I should just play FarmVille, would be much cheaper!

I haven't been able to make much progress on my Beast Herds army recently, which isn't a good thing as I have an entire army that needs to be painted and converted and based in preparation for Nicon 2016 in June, but I will get there (a LOT of sleepless nights ahead!). Truthfully, I just haven't had the time, between work and studying for my General Manager's Certificate, and business planning and meetings, it doesn't leave a lot of hobby time. To make it worse, well, I need new paintbrushes! I did manage to pick up a giant model and assemble it, now to just do the conversion work to it!

However, gaming wise is a different story, as I have managed to get a fair number of 1500pt games in with a good mate of mine, and have managed to pull off victories in a good portion of those games. Why 1500pts and not a bigger game you might ask? Well, we are preparing for two campaigns that kick off this week!

The lesser of the two campaigns, which kicks off tomorrow, is Around New Zealand in 16 Battles. This campaign was designed around encouraging people to play more games, and play against or with a variety of different armies. It's open to all New Zealanders too! Although it kicks off tomorrow, anyone can join it later on, which is great as new players come to the table.
Basically, the goal is to cross off a list every single army in 9th Age, whether you won or lost. To do so, you either have to play against that army, or play with that army. It's that simple!
You can get the player pack here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2HkCXLSe9TUdmNQV0JCZFJ0WmM
If you are interested in jumping in, register at plaguebearersnz@gmail.com . Oh, and its free!
The only catch is, you have to provide a battle report of the game as proof it was had! This can either be in a bunch of story time pictures with a description, a blog post, or a YouTube video. So long as it is open or all to view and enjoy, it works. For this, I am electing to kick off my own Channel on YouTube! Fun times ahead!

The second campaign, which kicks off this evening, is a local campaign called Tribal Warfare. It is a 1500pt campaign battled across a portion of the 9th Age World:

My Beast Herds own the Brown territories. The other territories are owned by the following; Green: Orcs & Goblins; Blue: Highborn Elves; Purple: Vermin Swarm; Yellow: Undying Dynasties

Each campaign turn lasts two weeks, and in that turn you may make up to 3 attacks on territories you are either connected to by a waterway, or by an adjacent territory that you own. You also have to play out as many defence games as you are attacked.

There are three special one use only plots that you can declare you will use at the start of a turn. The first one allows you to make an attack on any tile that you normally wouldn't be able to attack because you do not have an adjacent territory or aren't connected by a waterway. The second is like a forced truce, where once declared against a player, they may not attack you during this turn, nor you attack them. The third one allows you to in one game have an additional 10% worth of points.

Your general is also free, but must be used in every game. You start the campaign giving him one piece of mundane equipment from your list, and as the battles rage, he can get upgraded. You may purchase him a mount, but if you do, the mount's cost comes out of your 1500pts, and he must always ride that mount in every game henceforth (unless you trade him up to a more expensive mount).

For this campaign, I have decided I will post blog updates at the end of the turn, with details on my own games, where my general is at, and what's happening on the map, along with any thoughts on the campaign itself. I will probably also use some of these games to knock off armies in the Around New Zealand in 16 Battles campaign.

All in all, a busy time a head, and I cannot wait to kick these campaigns off!

Twelve Days into the Deep End! (Studio Update January 2016)

It suddenly hit me today: we are almost two weeks into the new year! How time has flown already, and so much has happened already! I'm not exactly sure where to begin...

Firstly, let's talk about the models. As many of you now know, I have just handed in my list for the Over the Top WHFB 8th Ed: The End Times 2400pt tournament over Waitangi weekend in February. I am taking the Bronze Host, which shall be led by The Glottkin himself. So, as per my usual tournament hussle, I have purchased a few more models! I picked up two boxes of Plague Drones, courtesy of Elven Glades blogger (link to his blog at the bottom of this page), and will be on Thursday picking up the Festus the Leechlord and Gutrot Spume models. Although I am trying to avoid purchasing models around 8th Ed, and focusing on 9th, these are some pretty cool miniatures that I have wanted to own for a long time, so am glad to finall get my hands on them. I also managed to build a new BSB miniature, this one on a Palaquin. The conversion took me some time, and the painting side took longer while I tried to work out what colours I wanted to use, but I am impressed with the final product. I have shown pictures in a previous blog post while it was a WIP, but here's some pics of the final product:

I also took on a new army, and this one, is purely for 9th Age! It just so happened I was scrolling along TradeMe, and discovered some Beastmen models going for cheap. And then I found more. And then more. And all of them were the models that I would need for some lists I was writing for fun for Beastmen. So I hit BUY! So now I am sitting here frantically waiting to see a courier turn up with a big box of blood hungry beasts for me to paint! So, if you don't see me around soon, I am either head down painting up more models (the backlog ever grows) or my wife has finally had enough of my hobby, and set it on fire, or just killed me instead! lol.

I also purchased (yes I know, a lot of hobby buying this month!) an airbrush and compressor as an early birthday present for myself. The catch now is, to get it set up and going so I can use it to get my army finished for OTT in February!

Outside of the hobbing, painting and gaming side of things, the community side has just started getting busy as well!

At PlagueBearers, we have finalised the player pack and rules for the first of our events this year, The Reign of Fire WHFB Campaign, and are hard at work getting our 40k campaign set up and ready to follow. We haven't yet been able to set dates, however I do not believe the WHFB campaign will start any later then the first week of February. We also havem't kicked back into club yet, which should happen soon, and are still on the hunt for a potential new premise.

I also applied to become a part of the 9th Age Team. My application was accepted, and I was offered two positions to chose from. The first, was working as Armybook Support. This position didn't have a hand in the work on the army books themselves, the rules or the balancing, but was designed to work with the players to help communication regarding the books, answering questions and clarifying things where needed, and to collect data from the community. The second position, which was the one I accepted, was as Tournament Support. In this role I am to be the intermediary between The 9th Age Team and tournament organisers, help organisers with there events, and collect data based on tournaments and events. As it happens, I am the sole Tournament Support for New Zealand, and will potentially in time take on part of Australia also to help whoever takes on that region. There is a lot of other things that both of these roles also entailed, but those are the main points

If I wasn't busy enough, I have just applied this evening to join the New Zealand Hobbit League committee, that is in the process of being set up. There are four main positions available in this committee, being Hobbyists, Gamers, Painters and Organisers/Community. I am hoping to be able to fill the community role. Along with this, they are looking for a person/people, to head up and run the NZHL Merchandise team. As this sort of thing is something I have wanted to do for other hobby and non-hobby related areas of my life, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me that I would excel in.

Its a busy time of the year, and I do not see it slowing down anytime soon. What is it that they say? Grab the Rhinox by the balls and.........




My dear friend, the Elven Glades:
http://elvenglades.blogspot.co.nz/

Mirrors and Resolutions

It has come to the end of yet another year, and what a year it as been! It has been full of many ups and some lows, but a good year all round.

I decided today that I needed to put all of my Legion of Nurgle down on one table, and see how much is there. Well, as you can see from above (with many WIPs and some fixes to be done) my Legion has far grown from just an army but to a collection. And it's nowhere near finished!! There is a fair amount yet to be painted, and from a collection point of view, I plan to convert some chosen and forsaken for it, along with getting more plaguebearers too. The small additional with the Cygor (or its counterpart, cannot remember) was due to a prize I won in Auckland, and was never intentional to be apart of this, however, now I would like to add some Minotaur to this collection too, and maybe a few other Beastmen models!

High point for me this year would have had to be how WarBanner turned out. It was my second year running this WHFB event, and after the release of Age of Sigmar, I was concerned about how much attention I could draw to the tournament. Nevertheless, we hosted 16 players. It was a great event, filled with laughter and drinking, and a lot of poor dice rolls by everyone. I am really looking forward to hosting it again next year, and expanding it to cover at least one other platform.

The low point for me this year was a difficult one. At first while thinking about it, I really felt that AoS coming out and taking WHFB place as a GW game would be it. But we have all had our rage fits and dice-throwing-tantrums at GW about that, and I realised that there was one thing that bugged me more. My first tournament this year, Equinox, was a great tournament. However, food in South Auckland is not so much, and after having a questionable pie purchased at a store there on the Saturday, I was up all night sick, and missed most of Sunday's games. This was really disappointing, as I was really looking forward to the games.

Nevertheless, the past is the past, and we must look towards the future....

So what has 2016 got in store for me? Well lots!

First and foremost, we are moving to Tauranga about mid year! Time for a new scene and new adventure. What this means is I will be changing club, meeting new players, and rolling more dice! It also puts me in a more central position to other centres, making games more accessible.

As for game wise, I will really be looking at continuing to push Ninth Age as it comes out of Beta into a fully fledge game, and will hopefully be able to promote more events for it. I am also really enjoying 40k at the moment, and have just started toying around with some X-Wing (Yep, the Star Wars buzz has hit me too!). I would like to look into Maulifaux and Saga, but that is dependant on time. I am also set for at least 3 tournaments already for next year, with the plan to get to as many as time and money will allow

In regards to hobby, well there is lots to do! Firstly, I have my Legion of Nurgle I would like to have completed by the end of the year. Secondly, My Tau all need to be striped and repainted. But I also have a 300 themed Warriors of the Dark Gods army to convert and paint for The Ninth Age, and Dwarfs that need........oh look! Something shiney!
But seriously, as every hobbyist knows, there is always something to build or paint or convert, and always many new and cool ideas floating around in your head.

So that is me for the new year. I can't believe it is that time again already, I really can't.

Have a very happy New Years guys and gals, and safe travels on your holidays. Eat heaps. Drink heaps. Laugh heaps. Cry heaps. And throw lots of dice!

An Empire Fallen, over and out for the last time in 2016!