Tabletop Teacher

It's 11th of November, and the 100 year Anniversary of the end of Word War 1. The tradition here in the UK is to wear poppies and lay wreathes of the flower on various memorials dotted around the country, as a way of paying respects to soldiers who gave their lives during both World Wars in particular and and solider who has lost their life in service in general. It's a sombre cultural event, and is usually about the tragedy of war and the importance of keeping peace. Paper poppy sales go on to fund veteran charities and such. Last year I "converted" two Games Workshop Models, stripping them of weapons in place of being flower holders. To this day they stand in the front of my classroom, holding their poppies up. It's important for those of us who push around plastic soldiers and entertain ourselves with stories of war and combat to remember that our table top fantasy is built on a foundation of utter catastrophe. These models are a reminder th...

About a subtle as a brick to the face that title. It's been a mad week, with Duke of Edinburgh expeditions, new reporting systems and other events kicking off, hence the total lack of posts. I have been saving this for a while, at least until the Genestealer Cults investigation is complete. I'm unlikely to finish until next week though, so enjoy this small preview of my new "Space Wolf" Great Company colour scheme. Yes, this post and the piece I did on Magnus are two of the forms of suicide on Fenris. I do like how the base green came out, and unlike many similar guides didn't need anything apart from standard Citadel paints. A proper guide is incoming! Until next time! Hopefully! If I can avoid the Sons of Russ a few days longer... Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. ...

It's been a long day (actually haven't finished yet... 8:30pm and still 3 contact hours to go), and I'm just about tired enough not to care about how embarrassed I am about this. I made a YouTube clip of a older blog article . I'm strongly considering switching to this instead of the written blog, but I appreciate I have a lot to learn about video making. I also love writing, and it would be a massive wrench to drop the written form. A happy medium between written blog and video content is probably what I'd strive for. And of course, the video content would just be the same as written. The same nerdy stuff and over thinking rules and list crafting. Well, all that is something of a pipe dream. Enjoy my dulcet tones. Or at least I'm sorry for my funny voice. Until  next time! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or...

This is half a thought I had about Magnus the Red being more of a Viking Primarch than Leman Russ. I never quite had time to research the idea, but I thought I'd share the half-finished idea with you all now for discussion. Why? Because it's blog post day, I still have 5 hours of school work to do and it's already 9pm. Enjoy the idea, and see if you can flesh it out a bit more than I have! Whilst everyone considers Leman Russ to be the quintessential Viking primarch due to his reputation fo heavy drinking and general combat demeanour (a fancy way of saying he likes to hit stuff with a sword), Magnus is actually a much better candidate to represent the Norse in 40K. You might be thinking that he much more clearly represents the Egyptians. Well, there's a difference between visual aesthetic and plot themes. Everything about Magnus hints at a far more Northerly inspiration than Ra or others in the Egyptian pantheon. In fact... he's Odin. Let...

Summer's over, and so is my free time. Apologies for not having the latest Kill Team guide up yet, but I had 3 unexpected 2 hour meetings today. However, here's a grab bag of comments that should be highlighted. I try to respond to all commenters on the blog, ad if I don't get back to you it's usually because the comment is on an older post and gets held for approval. Hey. Regarding the vertical movement. I was just wandering, since I am quite a noob, what is an advantage of having a Reiver go to higher ground? He is then usually far away from everybody else with no help and most of enemies can shoot him (sometimes with -1). Hwo to use properly higher ground like scond floor of a building? Anonymous on  Kill Team Guide: Tips for the Psychic, Shooting and Melee Phases. Thanks for commenting! The big advantage is effectively ignoring walls, and changes in height. Whereas other models would need to use up their move value going up and down, the Reiver just ...

Still insanely busy here in the last week of school, but I really had to say something about this new Knight Incantor model's hand gesture. This was revealed on Warhammer Community just recently. If you're not from the UK, showing the back of your two fingers like that is how you swear at someone. Yes, this guy is literally swearing at the enemy. Purchase of this model is now mandatory before someone with less of a sense of humour gets it changed. Go go go! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you want to support me directly, use the affiliate links below. I get a small percentage of purchases you make her, and you get cheaper ...

The blog isn't dead yet, but I haven't been able to sit and write in the past two weeks. There are some posts ready to go out, and exams/school events/Duke of Edinburgh/boarding house duties have gotten in the way. Nothing much to add to that other than a little ray of sunshine that fell in my classroom earlier this week: That's a donation to the club. More details later! Until next time! (Hopefully...) Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you want to support me directly, use the affiliate links below. I get a small percentage of purchases you make her, and you get cheaper miniatures! If you really love what I do here, yo...

Brothers, sisters, and unidentifiable spawns of the warp; Rejoice! Papa Nurgle has honoured me by making my body a most blessed incubator of his latest contagion. Glory to his name, and may he find a more suitable host for the pus producing bacteria at the back of my throat. Soon. Please... No blog for a few more days, whilst my cursed body still attempts to reject this most generous gift by keeping my fever up. If you don't hear from me in a few days, assume I've ascended to daemon hood. In which case, look for my coming on dusk of the third day. Until next time? Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you want to support...

"I don't have time to die, I'm too busy!" - Goge Vandire, just before he was shot by proto-Sisters of Battle Well, I've broken my hand. And it's made me realise something. I should be happier right now, about the state of the blog and the content I'm producing. But I can see a dwindling daily view count, and I know the reasons why: Erratic blog schedule Less to zero current topics ... and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. With a new baby and a job where I am now working various degrees of 7 days a week, there was no way of maintaining the one-post a day schedule I was so proud of. It's a common excuse I hear from students about not having enough time to do their homework, but it has got to the stage where there are not enough hours in the day. My time is filled from about 8:15am to 7:00pm on a good day. If I'm on duty, then I don't finish work until 11pm. This is not an exaggeration. I am a deputy house mast...

Just a quick post to make up for a week of missing my deadlines. Turns out I was right about a certain sneak preview of a model... Here's the sneak preview: Here's the picture I put with it: Here's the model, from the newest box set for Age of Sigmar. I joked about the model being a plough. I even suggested that there was going to be a new table top farming game. GW haven't gone that far, but it's nice to see they don't take everything too seriously, and there's still space on their models for silliness! Until next time! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you want to support me directly,...

Well. I want to swear. One of the things I hold myself to on this blog is trying not to curse, swear, engage in off-colour language, or otherwise write anything that may get blocked on school firewalls. I sometimes fail in that, but only accidentally. Today, I find myself wanting to break it intentionally. My plans for this term have been derailed quite drastically. My planed Dungeons and Dragons group has been largely scuppered due to a new revamped sports program taking out whole year groups at a time. Similarly the 6th formers who I were counting on (students in their last years for the non-UK), have been excluded from the one activity slot which suits all other year groups. Right now, I have one student lined up who can actually make the planned session slot. Dungeons and Dragons can be fun with a solo player, but it's exhausting for both DM and player. And frankly, spending an hour or two one-on-one with a student talking about elves is a little t...

It's a girl! Weighing in at 3.3kg she is healthy, happy, and far easier to manage than our son was at that age. Her brother is showing all the standard jealousy that you'd expect, but he's really been coping well! And that's frankly amazing. Not only is he dealing with the stress of a new baby sister sucking up his parent's time that used to be reserved for him, he's also managed to wade through a house move and watching in fear as all his toys were sealed up into cardboard boxes. What was truly amazing was the response from you all! I was genuinely surprised when I got the congratulatory comments coming in, and it's boosted my drive to work no end! Thank you all so much for your kind words! So, new baby, and new house. Anything else new for his daddy, the Tabletop Teacher? Well I wouldn't be me if I didn't load myself up with work! First up, blog will be going back onto it's daily schedule. I'm dreading my personal stats when I d...

Well not me personally, but my wife is. So no blog for the next couple of days. Yes, this is an absolute perfect storm of moving house, new baby, and new job on top of all the other things that have happened in the last two months. But what's life without this chaos? Well, perhaps a life with more time for plastic soldiers. Okay, my wife is glaring at me now. I guess we'd better go to hospital. Until next time! Completely unrelated picture Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you want to support me directly, use the affiliate links below. I get a small percentage of purchases you make her, and you get cheaper miniatures!...