Surprise. I’m back! And I’m not going to talk about buying a house this time!
House renovation, no promises.
So good news, I survived the process of buying and decorating a house. It’s not entirely done, still got a few rooms to finish off, but now I get to focus on having my own space to do what I want to do, rather than having at least 25% of my brain power devoted to other things like “dealing with the landlord” when something breaks. Or waiting for my mortgage to be approved. Or having to pack up literally everything I own.
Of course, the ultramodern wargames industry decided that me “taking a break” was the go-code to basically do a whole lot of messing around. So while I was painting and decorating, We had Spectre imploding, we had Echelon responding to the Sinocast issues in the best way, we had the release of SKULLCORE for Killwager, we had multiple Kickstarters that really kicked my wallet while it was down AND on top of that lots of people continuing to make, paint and play cool and exciting things for all of us wanting to play ultramodern games. It is truly an exciting time to be part of the hobby.
The question is, what does it mean for ChargeBlog? Well, it means I’m back and ready to paint stuff that isn’t my house. Luckily the new house’s office room has enough space for two separate desks in the same room, meaning I don’t have to try and paint in an empty quarter of the desk I use for PC gaming/work. T I’m already planning out some games I want to get to, some figures I’m raring to paint and some blog posts and other projects I want to get around to. However, one thing I strongly feel now after spending some time away (and watching a lot of creators like Solo Wargamer, Midwinter Minis, Painting Phase and MS Paints), is that although I love blog writing, the next step for the hobby is going to be in other media. Blogs have their place (sometimes static images are much easier to consume than trying to catch a frame in a video) and writing is less time intensive than editing a nicely done video. But in the end, a 10-minute YouTube video for many is easier to consume than its equivalent article.
This is why you might have been linked here by an intro video I put up on the channel. It’s over on YouTube! And also embedded above. My original plan was to just read out this blog post but I realised that I actually speak differently to how I type. It’s also a different market – the YouTube channel is basically starting from scratch, while anyone reading this probably knows who I am. It does mean most content is going to take 1.5x to do the video and articles (rather than simply reading a blog post to you). But no matter how you consume my content, I’ve got plenty of exciting stuff coming up
Speaking of stuff I’m working on, let’s do a quick run down on what is planned at the moment. First up, seeing as they are on my desk, I’m going to talk about BPRE 28mm’s expansion Phaseline, as well as covering a bit more of the gameplay o in the video series. There is even a little documentary covering the story behind BPRE and its world-building that I’ve been working on, after getting some time to chat to the team behind it.
I also want to cover what Enemy Spotted Studios has been releasing, in particular the InCountry range of both rules and figures. The Tribes releases have been some of the most interesting 3D printed figures of the last few months (beating out a certain other company with ease) while the ruleset from a look-through is very promising, which is a shame as I keep hearing whispers about them being a little bit factional when it comes to their space in the wargames industry. Personally, after looking at the models and painting some of them up, they don’t need the aggro, the products speak for themselves.
Kickstarter-wise, the Modern Miniatures Humvee Kickstarter has just finished so will be covering that once the files are out (and once I get my printer back up and dialled in), same with Miska’s releases (including the latest one that finished this month). Speaking of 3D printing, there is also the matter of the Bazi Counter-Intel guys I’ve been meaning to cover in more depth, especially after the VBSS release from Combat Octopus has given me some new ideas. A longer-term goal is also to update my most famous article with something a little more up-to-date – The Great Big Modern Wargaming Rules Comparison Complete Edition is basically out of date at this point and needs a good refresh. But the biggest plan with Ultramoderns? Well, I’m going to finally FINALLY get to work on getting some of my MDF terrain detailed and painted up seeing as I have a desk big enough to work on. This is going to be a fun project, taking full advantage of my 3D printer and learning new skills to make some buildings and other terrain that looks good on the tabletop.
In non-ultramodern planning, there are also a few projects on the go. It’s always Necromunda time, and I have just recently received the parts to make up a Badzone Enforcers group (as you can see above) as well as finishing off the Eschers I still have on the spures. I’m also really getting into the idea of playing some Star Wars skirmish games, especially with all the figures I’m getting from SkullForge. Watching the Bad Batch may have also helped stir these ideas… just a bit.
However, before all of that, I have a very long, very in-depth post coming up. There has been a chunk of research into it done, because I want to make sure the post is done right to get the information across to people. Because honestly:
We have to talk about Spectre.
See you soon when the post (and it’s video) is ready!