A break from wargaming - Temporary change of hobby to trains.

Last year I really went nuts with 40k. I started a blog which has done quite well I think. I competed in more tournaments than I've ever done before, I even went to a couple of proper big tournaments at Maelstrom Games. I even invested a fair wedge of cash into the Kingdom Death kickstarter. To top it off I played in a big game over Christmas. I think the big apocalypse game pushed me over the edge. I'm just a bit fed up with it all at the moment but I still want something to use my creative juices.

I've (possibly temporarily) restarted an even geekier hobby that I used to do. Model railways........

Space has been a restricting factor for me in the last few years so I had to have a small layout. As small as possible. After some googling and an exhaustive amount of reading the scant amount on the net about this scale I settled on T Gauge. The T stands for 3. 3 mm gauge. That is the space between the rails of the track. Its bloody small! The actual scale is 1:450, so 1 metre on the layout is almost half a kilometre in real life.

To put it into perspective, here's a train next to a space marine and a genestealer:

Just in case you don't think a train that small can work here's a (boring) video. Not only does it work it even has directional lighting!

Anyhoo. I'll probably be quite quiet on this blog for a while as I work on my toy train set. I have made a blog for that too as there certainly aren't enough T Gauge blogs at the moment. Its at http://tinyt-gaugetrains.blogspot.co.uk/

3rd place at local WoW TCG tournament :D

Today was the local Warcraft card game tournament in Northampton at Wargames Workshop (www.wargamesworkshop.com).

I've had a fair bit of apathy for 40k recently. The campaign ended at the club and lack of releases and the fear of 6th edition has kept things relatively quiet. So I've been playing card games more and haven't had anything to post about much on here. I do have some resin wraiths and a tombstalker to make for my crons but I just can't find the oomph to do it :( So today I played in my first WoWTCG tournament and had some fun but I did feel frozen all the time, they need some heating in the shop lol.

I played using my Sylvanas deck with some other bits and bobs from boosters. Annoyingly none of the things I wanted to come out did but I didn't do too badly anyway. I managed to get my pet panther out and boost it up to 10 damage, mwahaha!

I found playing against a Death knight to be an unpleasant experience. He didn't directly do much damage with allies but kept piling on diseases on to my hero and spamming bloody ghouls! The diseases were just irritating. I need more cards to kill abilities.

I also played a game against a green deck with trees and murlocs. The game went so quickly I didn't even see what the hero was. It was slaughter lol. Barry knows his stuff (and has a ton of cards to pick from lol).

It was nice to play in my first tournament and I'm quite happy with how I did considering its a new game for me. I did manage to get a medal and won a playing mat for attending. I also got various cards for attending and pre-booking. I came 3rd in the end. Yay!

After the games I managed to build an entirely monster deck from the boosters I bought. Its led by an ogre shaman and is full of a mix of ogres, murlocs, satyrs and a few trees. First game I played with it I hadn't shuffled very well and pretty much got quest cards until I died, I shuffled the deck properly and got rid of some quests and I did quite well, killing the worgen rogue I played against, played by Ian, one of the tournament organisers.

Mandalorian Mercenary Sniper Rifle - A not 40k project :O

As one of my other hobbies I occasionally dress up as a Stormtrooper from Star Wars with a bunch of other costumers to raise money for charity. My father costumes as Darth Vader with me tagging along as the stormy. Strangely it was me that got my Dad into it not the other way round.

 I'm the one in the middle front, my Dad is Vader.

Recently my Dad did a 160 mile walk dressed as Darth Vader from Ormond St. in Stoke to Great Ormond Street childrens hospital in London. He did it over 10 days, averaging about 16 miles per day. I helped by driving ahead of him for a mile then waiting for him to catch up, then de-helmet him, give him a drink etc. On the last day I walked with him in costume from Edgware to the hospital. It was a long 9 mile walk with lots of people stopping us on the way.

Anyway, getting onto what the post is actually about. My sister helped on the last day, seeing the attention we were getting and wanting a piece of the action, she decided she wanted a Mandalorian Mercenary costume. Mandalorians are quite easy and fun to do as there is a lot of flexibility in their outfits unlike Vader or stormys which have no flexibility at all. She decided on a white and red mandalorian with a rifle and pistols. My task in all this was to produce a rifle.

Knowing how my sister loves sniper rifles in FPS games like UT3, Call of duty etc. I decided to make her a sniper rifle.

I've wanted to convert a nerf gun to look more realistic for quite a while now and I finally had an excuse. I decided to work on a Nerf Longstrike, it was horrendously bright orange and blue and covered in logos and annoying paterns. I had my work cut out.

With the help of a power sander I removed all the annoying bits and flattened the surfaces. I then painted the rifle with silver primer and satin black. I then did the weathering with devlan mud on the silver bits. The weathering for the black was done by spraying a sock with silver paint and rubbing it all over to pick up the edges. I then fitted the sniper scope I bought off ebay. Luckily the nerf guns have the same size accessory rails as real guns so you can fit pretty much anything to them.

Best of all, it still works as a nerf gun! Not to be used in public without wearing a costume around a bunch of other costumers or you're likely to get the police on to you....