Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2011 brings all you hope, particularly if you are a follower of the great Horned One!

For me 2011 is going to be a little bit different. My focus is going to be more on the hobby side of things rather than competitive gaming. I decided this a couple of months ago and with the passage of time it still feels the right decision.

What brought me to this juncture? Well it is pretty much the continual bitching/backbiting etc that has plagued the Australasian scene over the past 12 months. In NZ, there has always been areas of the country that have bitched about comp - and it's always other people's armies, strangely enough. Some of the biggest proponent feel it's fine for them to tell others what they should have in their armies and then turn up with armies focused at the top end of the power scale. I had hoped that the introduction of hard caps might help end some of the inconsistencies but it doesn't seem that way.

In Australia there has been a "Sundering" where the "top players" have decamped and left to play Warmachine. I think the most charitable thing that can be said is that they adopted a policy of scorched earth on their exit. Now I can understand that a new edition might not be for them - and 8th DOES play differently from 7th - but it seems that a number of people (the UKers have labelled them Rage quitters) did everything they could to denigegrate the game those that continued with Fantasy wanted to play. I have no doubt that they will be back at some stage to "save" the tournament scene by delivering some bastardised form of v7.5. No thanks!

So where does that leave my hobby? Well pretty much where I'm happy for it to be. Over the past few years I have built up/bought a series of armies that very rarely see the light of day. I'm looking to get more use out of these armies.

One area of the hobby that has always interested me and one where I have had little direct exposure is to the Campaign Weekends that they have in the UK. I would love to run some of these here in New Zealand. The masters of these events are the Tempus Fugitives and I've been talking to them to see whether I can get some help/guidance in putting these in place. The type of event I'm looking at is a two day campaign where the onus is less on competitive gaming and more about the narrative. I can see this working for both Fantasy and 40k. Typically it will involve 8-16 gamers working in 2-4 teams/factions to achieve a campaign objective. As the emphasis is less on the result and more on the story, hopefully it will give gamers an incentive/opportunity to build/try that unit that never sees the light of day at a tournament.

Anyway that's my aim for 2011. I hope you all have a fantastic year.