Tabletop Teacher

Whilst I think a Physics lab is quite possibly the best place to hold a Warhammer Club (easy access to water, clamps, power sockets, burning flames and water bottle rockets), my Head of Department is starting to grumble over the small horde of toy soldiers piling up in the classroom. He's quite right to do so. Any normal teacher would simply cut down on models. Any sane person would just get students to take their stuff home with them. I am neither normal, nor entirely sane. For evidence of this, remember that I have a Science and Engineering degree and chose to spend my time teaching instead of raking in money with an oil company. So, following Jaghatai Khan's advice, I looked for some walls to break and expand my territory. Here's a room that I've found, nestled in my boarding house. It even has easy access to a kitchen! It's a little full of furniture right now, but this is an ideal space. Whilst having a certain cave-like quality to it as...

Simply the best end of term gift I've ever received, and that includes the bottle of champagne so expensive I had to declare it for tax purposes. As I was packing up my classroom after a hard day of getting students to learn about projectile motion (we played with water bottle rockets), two students of mine walked in carrying this thing between them: It's a battlefield!! Okay, it's made of cardboard and newspaper, and the glue is still drying, but how many teachers can claim to have gotten a hand made battlefield terrain set from their students! Here's some close ups:  Looking down on those corpse-worshippers  Looking up from the dreadnought bunker  Eagle eye view of combatants  View of the Traitor's Gate Teacher pay is not great, no matter where you work. There's certainly no bonus pay for good years or good results. But you do get gems like this, which I don't think other professions do. Good to be a t...

It's been another grueling day at work, and I've only just finished (it being 11pm now). This week refuses to let up, but on the upside, I got to meet John Tickle today! As I finally give in to my wife's demands for me to go to bed, you guys get some pictures of student neophyte armies on parade. Enjoy! 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 really love what I do here, you can make a one off donation at my  PayPal , or become a true hero to table top education and make a regular donation to my  Patreon . Every Little helps!

What's often lost on some parents and educators these days, is the art of gently being mean to students. Now please don't misunderstand me... in this current climate of rabid political correctness and over-zealous moralisers, a statement like that could be taken, plastered across the media without context and have me fired within a week. Let me be perfectly clear: Do not be cruel to your students. But at times you have to stop supporting them. Over the last few months I noticed my young neophytes somewhat stalling in their progression to true neck beardom. They had the models, and had the enthusiasm, and most were even getting some good painting done. But they weren't really learning the game. Those times we did play, I was often doing all of the thinking for them. Instead of arbitrating rules disagreements, I was playing the role of DM in telling them exactly how much dice to roll and when, and what they needed to get on those dice rolls. Which is fine ...

We finally had time to put together a game using our models. I'll do a proper battle report later, but I just wanted to show some pictures from the engagement. Battle report this coming soon! 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 really love what I do here, you can make a one off donation at my  PayPal , or become a true hero to table top education and make a regular donation to my  Patreon . Every Little helps!

It's been a while since I've had a chance to talk about the school club, and what goes on in it. School has (finally) settled down after mock exams and Christmas holidays, and despite a few Physics trips I've actually managed to get back to routine. It won't last. Half term is around the corner, and then actual exam panic for the Year 11s will set in. But for now everything is running normally, which means rampaging kids and their Space Wolves. What is clear though, is the immense disparity between students' toy soldier budgets. Whereas one boy is happily putting together 'club miniatures' funded by the school (well, actually me... Patreon link below), one boy has had parents drop around £300 on him over Christmas. What is happening with him is known as the Wallet Warrior, where he will simply buy the best stuff, or in this case, the most stuff to get an advantage over his buddies. Although in 40K the points system should be good enough to keep thi...

I was in my local Games Workshop store last weekend, discussing the club shenanigans with the shop manager. For those who consider Games Workshop to be a faceless monolithic money-grubbing organisation, I suggest you pop down to your local shop more often. You'll soon discover the majority of employees are neck bearded nerds like yourself, and drop the internet cynicism that pervades the web ways. I get on well with the manager, and am fairly certain he's going to have a good time this Christmas judging by my student's Christmas Wish-lists. Even though it's only November they have written their 'Dear Santa' letters, with Santa crossed out and the manager's name in place. It's an odd time to be running the club, as greed spills over and students are picking my brains for advice on what models to buy. Whilst dreams of shiny new Space Wolves in 4+ cover under the Christmas Tree are being woven, Dark Angel's from various Starter kits remain onl...

Last time I talked about terrain it was how to make individual bits or movable terrain out of cardboard. However, despite the new terrain feature certainly enlivening matches, club members were still playing on the good old wooden varnish planet with curiously urban rock formations. It's miles better than the Battle of the Coke Can Forest, but we're still not done yet. My lab technician is an amazing help at school. He's ridiculously well qualified for the role, and is basically working as a tech for retirement. He's one of those old school engineers who will tend to disappear into a shed with a problem and come out of it with a bolted up solution freshly varnished and smelling of ingenuity. He scrounged up a few old cupboards and gave them to me. Sometimes I think he's watching and assessing my ability to come out of sheds with solutions. Hopefully the end product will do him proud! First step: Planning. My initial plan was to make them in...

As I wandered through the school canteen at tea time (boarding school, so teacher doesn't get off duty until all the kids go to bed), a member of Senior Leadership (educational jargon for Boss) comes up to me and gives me some good news. They want me to extend club times to Saturday mornings. As a formal activity. For a few hours. Replacing the existing Saturday activity that was open for students at that time. Which sounds bad on the surface of it, but then he says the magic words: "We'll give you some budget for it..." Gleee! Now bear in mind I've been running Saturday sessions informally ever since I've started the club. I think this is basically a ploy for more marketing ammunition for the school, but I'm not going to turn down extra money. It also means I actually have more gated time for my own hobby. And I'll be getting paid for my time too. Good work if you can get it! Details have yet to be hammered out, but it looks as though...

There are some days running the school Warhammer Club feels like a nursery with more expensive paints. The kids are larger, and are busily negotiating the jump from genuine kiddyness to adulthood, passing through several layers of immaturity on the way there. Imagine toddlers that have learned how to swear and make fart jokes. Your patience for this may vary, and I for one never grew up from this stage (leading to top quality #banter from teacher), but there are days when you simply do not have enough eyes to maintain a semblance of order. Enter The Help. This will usually be in the form of 6th Formers, or other final year students if you're in a primary school. Just like Ork Nobz, they'll generally command more respect from the students by their greater size and musculature. Rather than display oversized tusks, some will have poorly shaven stubble, adding to their Mob Rule rolls. Whilst it may be tempting to appoint a club captain with positions at the ...

This is it. The first battle report of the club! In hindsight, throwing every piece of terrain we had on the board was probably a mistake. A little overzealous on the part of the students involved, but we were all young once! The armies were the school club's Tau against the Tau Empire army which we have as a reserve for students who can't afford their own models. It was kindly donated by a friend of mine, and frankly is far better painted than anything I could make. The armies: Teacher's Tau - Run by the teacher (me) School Ta: 1 Ethereal, 4x Six man Firewarrior squads, Riptide with Heavy Burst Canon and Smart missile launcher - Run by the students The Mission Eternal War: Purge the Alien. Deployment: Vanguard Strike So good, an easy kill mission. The students won the roll off, and decided to force teacher to deploy first. The Teacher Tau ended up strung along their deployment line, eager to get all their guns on targets in the first turn. The studen...

Terrain makes for interesting games. Put it this way... every successful battle report provider, be they White Dwarf, Youtuber or blogger will have an interesting looking field to fight over. It sparks imagination, and puts you in the right frame of mind. At the beginning of my club, the battlefield was the amazing, and exotic, Varnished Wood planet, set in an ecosystem with frequent rains of sometimes corrosive chemicals. Erosion patterns somehow caused Low Gothic markings to appear, often talking about how 'Steve wos 'ere', indicating a strong Chaotic influence. There was a single structure, a tumbled down Imperial building donated by  student, but mostly what we had to play on were lab benches. In short, fairly rubbish. Games Workshop has been very helpful in this area, donating some really high quality Age of Sigmar terrain pieces, being constructed and painted as we speak. But it's not enough to keep the 4 tables we have running looking suitably aw...