* 28% (99) – No.
* 23% (81) – Yes, a little.
* 21% (74) – Yes, moderately.
* 27% (96) – Yes, a lot.

Total Votes: 350

I left this poll running for quite some time, because the global situation just seems to have been getting constantly worse this year. Here in New Zealand we’re partially insulated from the sub-prime meltdown by having a simpler banking system, different legislation around mortgages and a high interest rate – which gives our Reserve Bank a fair amount of room to cut rates in an attempt to stimulate our flagging economy.

However trust me it’s still looking pretty grim on our little island in the Pacific so my hobby spending this year has been almost nil as we struggle to pay the mortgage, the other bills, and keep our two boys in daycare/school etc. It seems I’m not alone judging from the results of the poll with less than a third of you stating your hobby spending hasn’t changed at all, while the rest of the voters have reduced their spending by some amount, almost a third of you by a lot.

The game company and figure manufacturers out there must really be feeling the pinch I imagine. Particularly since prices for casting metals have been increasing at the same time. Putting your prices up while your customers are already reducing their hobby spend is a pretty bad place to be in for niche businesses. Tabletop Gaming News regularly features price increase notices from various quarters, and I wonder if we’ll start seeing indie manufacturers closing their doors. I certainly hope not since indie figures really inject a lot of life into this hobby.

Continuing with the doom and gloom, I suffer from mild depression and have noticed that periodically it effects my enjoyment of gaming. Normally I’m a pretty relaxed gamer, having fun in a game as long as it’s close thing regardless of the outcome. However I find if I’m down I seem to devolve into more a win-at-all costs power gamer with a side order of rules lawyer. I dislike gaming at all when I’m in this state of mind, simply because I don’t extract any pleasure from the game itself and usually just end up offending my opponents by being a ‘whiny little bitch’ (their words). In fact I’ve started making a conscious choice not to game when I’m feeling like this because it’s just easier on everybody.

So this next poll we’re running is to do with power gaming – are you a win-at-all-costs kinda gamer or not? Come on fess up!

As it’s been over six months since I last did any work on the Hirst Arts Cathedral, it’s probably time for an update. Particularly since I’m supposed to be finishing this project!

If you’re a regular visitor you may have noticed I haven’t got a lot of hobby work done this year for a variety of reasons and the same is true of this project unfortunately. I’ve done some minor work around the doors of the left bell tower and finished off the front-piece of the central hall as well as building the back-piece too.

I need to do some more casting of those cursed 1″ x 1/2″ flat gothic tiles to have enough pieces to build the next set of long inside and outside walls. I suspect may also be short of a few other pieces too so hopefully I can dredge up enough Ultracal 30 dust to finish casting.

I’ve given up using those gothic flats for the interior doorways and instead am using the joined gothic square pieces as I have an excess of them cast. I believe they’re meant to be used to build up the double floors needed for the left and right bell towers. However I’ll use painted balsa wood for these square floors as I’d like to make them removable so you can get figures into the towers during play.

The Cathedral is really starting to shape up and I’m considering painting some of the large pieces to keep me motivated. All I need is one big push and I’m confident I’ll be able to finish the major construction work before starting on detailing and finishing off bit and pieces like the flying buttresses etc.

Once that’s done we’ll have to play about 50 games over Mordheim to justify the effort in building this thing!

An article appeared on Tabletop Gaming News recently highlighting One Monk Miniatures’ latest release. I’ve haven’t stumbled across this company before (they seem new) but they do a nice cheap range of printable 30mm printable paper Fantasy and Sci Fi armies. There’s also a free sample PDF of 30mm Fantasy Monsters.

These figure collections seem squarely aimed at Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40k players and they look like a nice cheap way of throwing together a representation of a GW Fantasy army in a few evenings. Alas at the moment One Monk only sell an Undead Battalion, but it seems they have plans for a range of Fantasy armies, amongst other things.

Given that it takes me a few evenings to paint one GW 28mm scale figure, I’m tempted to buy a few of these PDFs print them out and break out a sharp scalpel to round out my incomplete Warhammer Vampire Counts army. Building a paper army like this is also probably a more cost effective way of trying out a new Warhammer army before committing to purchasing hundreds (or thousands) of dollars of expensive GW figures – assuming you want to try Undead at the moment!

Another good use for this kind of army would be introducing your kids to Games Workshop games without the worry of having them game with your collection of fragile, hand painted figures! I’ll be keeping an eye out for future One Monk releases.