More of a tidy results in more stuff for sale, some painting....

I've had a quick sort through the RPG shelves, and the following are available for sale (and will be going on eBay on Sunday if unsold):

• Serenity the Roleplaying Game (hardback): £15
• Serenity the RPG: Out In The Black (softcover): £10
• Middle Earth Roleplaying: Empire of the Witch King (softcover, some creasing in one corner, still has original fold out map which has been unfolded precisely once): £40 ono (OOP: apparently goes for stupid money on eBay, make me a sensible offer)
• AD&D 2E Tome of Magic: £15
• AD&D 2E Book of Artefacts: £20
• AD&D 2E Forgotten Realms Adventures: £10
• AD&D Al Qadim sourcebook: £10
• WOTC The Primal Order: £20

Been stuffed on a bookshelf
unread a couple of times and
got creased, sadly. 

I've also acquired (thanks to the club's honorary American and all-round nice guy Shawn), a new magnifying daylight lamp (twin to my current one) and an airbrush compressor, as they're UK-power compatible and he is, sadly, leaving us for the Colonial shores. Now all I need to do is find the blasted airbrush!

Also nipped into a purveyor of figures and paints that do not have anything to do with wargames (it says so on their annual report, guv!) to pick up some more Contrast undercoat and a couple of colours I don't have (as sadly my preferred supplier had run out of what I needed). Pro tip - if like me you have trouble remembering which paints you own? They do actually do an app on both iOS and Android for keeping track of your collection, at least of their stuff: at the price of Contrast paints I'm quite keen to avoid duplicates, too! 

With those in hand, I did grab a bit of time over lunch to paint (this is me, don't expect Golden Demon standard!) one of the Shieldwolf minis... Some experiments with Contrast white, which I find comes out very grey - the cloak I wound up highlighting with AP White on its folds to get it to look right. Mail is Contrast Basillicum Grey, which works ok. The face is AP Barbarian Flesh overbrushed on Contrast Guiliman Flesh, as I do not like how the latter works on its own.  Hair is Contrast Skeleton Horde, her belt is AP Pure Red. The shield is AP White + AP Gloss Varnish, ready for a custom decal off the laser decal paper that should be arriving today.

 Second pro tip for lousy painters. If you're using the Citadel base coat sprays for Contrast, get a pot of the matching Citadel base paint: if you mess up with Contrast paints, you can then let it dry, brush over in the base colour where you goofed, let that dry, and try again.

More Paras....

Well, I do have four platoons of 3 sections to do by OML8, so I figure if I can get half a dozen done every couple of days, that'll stand me in good stead.

So, yesterday, I did another half dozen :D these are actually from the now-deleted Flames of War Easy Company pack, so they're mostly not in full drop kit, but they're very characterful sculpts (and I still haven't sorted my macro lens, or the lighting on my workbench).

Currently trying to figure out what the big bag of FoW metals I bought off 'American Dale' at our club a few years ago - I think they're FoW metal US Paras, but I'm not sure and I can't find a record. 

Hybrid painting US Paras...

Being relatively happy with the stuff I did the other day, and feeling in the mood to paint again, I boosted my lone paratrooper in M1942 (i.e. D-Day) uniform to a full section. Also, Per found an interesting link to someone who'd really gone the whole hog on painting WW2 with contrast paints, which has a few interesting insights but... hrm. Some of the end results are a bit off.

In summary, then, after some more experimentation - this is basically a hybrid Contrast/ordinary paint scheme, a bit tweaked from last time:

• undercoat:
• Halfords Ultra Matt Khaki Camouflage paint (note to self, need more)
• paint the Contrast paints first, because it's much easier to overpaint Contrast paints with normal acrylics if you mess up, than the other way round:
• Jump boots - Gore Grunta Fur
• M1942 kit - Aggaros Dunes
• Gloves - Nazdreg Yellow
• Now on to the normal Vallejo AP colours:
• Webbing, pouches, pack etc - Vallejo Khaki + AP Military Shader [EDIT: or Vallejo Green Grey + AP Soft Tone]
• Helmet, grenades, elbow and knee patches - Vallejo Brown Violet/Olive Drab
• Face - AP Tanned Flesh + AP Soft Tone
• Weapons, entrenching tool handles - Vallejo Chocolate Brown + Warlord Dark Gunmetal [EDIT: or CC Snakebite Leather in the previous phase]
• Shoulder patches (I still can't believe I even thought about doing these!) - AP Deep Blue, Pure Red, Matt White, a very fine brush and a magnifier

And there you have it. One was based earlier - PVA, War World Gaming Army Coarse Sand (which is brilliant stuff), then a heavy wash of Vallejo Sepia wash, and some static grass from the three pots of sweepings from Bloody Omaha :D (For drier earth, I'd have drybrushed with something like Vallejo Grey Green before the grass.)

I'm relatively proud of these, given my rubbish eyesight - normally my 15mms are very much a sketch - they pass the 2' test but I really wouldn't recommend looking at the Omaha figures too closely (fortunately, in all the times it's been shown at shows, no-one seems to!). These still aren't exhibition standard, but they're much much better than my usual. Total time for the six figures I remembered to time, about 100 mins. I would get better photos but my macro lens doesn't want to talk to my newer Canon, and the older one's battery's flat :D

Lazy US Paras in M1942 uniform

As I have noted in the past, US M1942 uniform is a sod to paint, because no-one makes the colour out-of-the-bottle, no two painters agree on how to mix it, and I'm not entirely sure everyone agrees on what colour it actually is!

With a view to a project for next year, I've had a couple more ideas... Several tests, with both Halfords ultra matt Khaki camouflage primer and Citadel's Wraith Bone, and then trying various things....

Citadel's Wraith Bone undercoat:

• AP Monster Brown (fail even when mixed with AP Strong Tone)
• Citadel Contrast Aggaros Dunes (too sandy, but...)

Halfords ultra matt Khaki undercoat:

• AP Strong Tone/Military Shader in a 50/50 mix (not brown enough)
• CC Aggaros Dunes - ahah! (thanks to Rob Avery!)

Ok. We might have something here. It's not 100% perfect, but it's really preeeeetty close.

Onwards with that then:

• Webbing, pouches, pack etc - Vallejo Grey-Green + Strong Tone
• Helmet, grenade, elbow and knee patches - Vallejo Brown Violet (now renamed Olive Drab) + Strong Tone
• Jump Boots - Vallejo Red Leather + Strong Tone, although CC Gore Grunta Fur is probably better (will try that next time!)
• Gloves - CC Nazdreg Yellow
• Face - CC Guilliman Flesh is too dark on the Halfords primer, so I over brushed with AP Barbarian Flesh and a bit of Strong Tone
• Rifle - AP Werewolf Fur + Warlord Dark Gunmetal
• Shoulder Patches - AP Deep Blue, Pure Red, Matt White and a lot of prayer

Here we are. I should point out that this is a 15mm Battlefront plastic figure from the Open Fire box (not a 28!), and it took me all my lunch break with the aid of a daylight lamp and magnifier :D I shall have a crack on a metal sculpt sometime if I can find one. I may also see if I can get a better photo with my DSLR...

GW Contrast video up

After more faffing and convincing YouTube the Trouble At T'Mill account is really me, so I can upload LONG videos....

Disclaimers of yesterday apply.

GW Contrast video (edited, and very slowly uploading :()

Just finished editing the video from yesterday, so I was hoping by the time I'm done typing this I could link it at the bottom.

Note (as I say on the video when it eventually makes it) - I'm not a great painter (my eyesight precludes any ambitions in that direction), and this isn't a demo. It's me recording my impressions of the new paints as I work my ham-fisted way through a few Dark Ages warriors from Gripping Beast. It's not by any stretch of the imagination (however warped yours may be) a tutorial on how to make them look good, merely good enough to rank up from 2' away.

Really.

If you want to waste 30 mins listening to me burble, that's fine, but don't expect to learn much about proper figure painting from it :D

Also, you will get to see and hear the paint shaker in action, because Contrast paints need some serious agitation. Apologies for the noise, and also for the not-brilliant framing of the video, as I'm not used to filming myself paint and I need the figure closer to me than is really good for the camera view :D

Sadly, it's taking forever to upload, and I have to be up for church, so I'm going to leave it to its own devices and do that last bit in the morning....

GW Contrast paint tryout

...because all the cool kids are doing it.

Four GW Dark Ages warriors for a test piece. I've videoed the entire (well barring the non-Contrast bits) process as well, and I may edit that and put it up if it's useable and you actually want to listen to me talking to myself and pontitficating in general while painting :D The video is 38 minutes, so that's how long it took me, not counting the undercoat and the shields.

Impressions? For a painter of my standard, it's absolutely no worse, probably better and certainly quicker, than base coat plus wash or dip. Yes, there are a couple of bits I need to touch up, looking at the photos :D. It's also worth keeping a bit of paper by your palette to run your brush on as a guide for the colour it will probably dry to.

The undercoat. It's supposedly 'ultra smooth'. It's also a bit enthusiastic,  so be gentle when spraying.

Not easy to tell what the end result colour will be from the bottle.

Undercoated

And done. The shields weren't done using contrast. 

Some thoughts from Games Workshop

Yup, you heard me right. I have in the past been more than a little scathing about GW's approach to what they consider their hobby, but I had my attention drawn to something by them that I actually agree with wholeheartedly today, The full article (largely on the subject of their new Contrast paint range and 'Battle Ready' is here, but allow me to share a quote or two (emphasis mine):

Whether it’s [an award-winning] model or the first miniature that you’ve ever painted, you should be proud of your work. No hobbyist should ever feel like they’re not good enough to paint – instead, we want to celebrate the time, effort, care and attention that everybody puts into their models.

And:

 Battle Ready isn’t a bar you have to pass to be allowed into our hobby. Rather, it’s an achievable and universally recognised standard that’s meant to say YES to your army, YES to accessibility and YES to more games with more painted models. Battle Ready is about making painting a celebration rather than a chore!

OK, so they're GW and they have to give a name to the process, but essentially they're talking about base colour, wash, detail. Works for me and my ham-fisted painting[1] :D And frankly, anything which encourages more people to get more painted figures on the table, is just brilliant in my book, whoever it's from.

---

[1] All 500+ 15mm figures on the Omaha Beach game at Salute were painted by your humble and somewhat average scribe. I don't think anyone commented either way :D

No, I haven't finished tidying the workbench. It's covered in bits of computer and hard drive shipping boxes :D

WIP Realm of Battle Board 3

Short update, as I've had a busy day followed by club.

The de-flocked board dried fine, and actually doesn't appear to need re-undercoating black. A quick run out to B&Q sourced the Holy Grail of terrain undercoats - Sandtex Bitter Chocolate, as promoted by the Mighty Dux himself, Rich Clarke. (Why it's so good I'll leave for the next Colour Concepts article!).

I have some black stone-textured spray paint (also from B&Q) which I used to overspray the filler that was hiding the skulls, as well as one of the more egregiously fantasy sections of cracked stone roadway. Only drawback with this was discovering it takes 24 hours to dry hard, so I wasn't going to get to wield a brush and the Bitter Chocolate, which was a shame as the sun came out.

Never mind. Next update not for a bit as there's this tedious thing called work...

Almost forgot - placed a big order with War World Scenics for lots of suitable grass.

De-flocking a Realm Of Battle Board

[Cor, lummee. More GW in the last week than in like forever.]

A quick stint outside when I got back from cricket, and I can reveal the quickest way of getting PVA'd flock off a Realm of Battle Board involves a bucket of hot water with a touch of washing up liquid, and a couple of green washing-up/pan scrubbers. Thanks to everyone on here and Twitter for their advice.

The advantage of it being hard plastic, of course, is that you can get it thoroughly wet without causing the underlying substrate (not being MDF, say) to swell and warp, and that you can be pretty rough.

Board section is now on its face on the laundry draining board, will get any remaining moisture removed with kitchen roll tomorrow morning. and then re-sprayed black prior to undercoating.

WIP on the Citadel Realm of Battle Board

Acquired a set of these last week - all bar one are just undercoated black, so I've started off with the important bit - filing the skull pits :D

[There is a theory afoot that the Warhammer Fantasy and 40K worlds are typically a few inches of topsoil laid on top of a couple of feet, or more, of skulls - either that or there are naturally occurring open-cast skull mines. Either way, this doesn't match the geology of the Iberian Peninsula!]

Managed to unearth some lightweight filler, so these are now out in the workshop (which is fortunately warm today) to dry.

The only problem I have left is the one board that the previous owner had started work on, which has been grassed, but sadly not in the colours I want, and a bit too evenly, as I'm looking for something more sun-bleached in general.

Anyone any good tips on removing PVA-attached grass? My immediate thought is get it very wet.

Musing about copyright again

Y'know, for someone who actively dislikes both the 40K game and GW's business practices, I do have a fair few blog posts about it. "Methinks", to misquote the Bard, "he doth protest too much."

40K 7th edition is, apparently, out, to the usual collection of applause, curiosity and complaints about changes that break the system. Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that, personally, I couldn't give the proverbial rat's posterior.

However, I am concerned to note that there are people blatantly making downloads of the text (both as ePub and PDF) available online.

Now, I do have to hold my hand up here and admit that I do have 'hooky' PDFs and/or ePubs of a few sets of wargames rules, but they are in all cases either long out of print (and sitting on my eBay watch list, as often as not, for as soon as a decent second hand copy comes along), or things for which I have a legal physical copy, wanted one for the iPad and one wasn't available. You are thus, if you wish, at liberty to call me a hypocrite for what follows, but I personally am very clear where I draw the line, namely at the point where I'm not paying for something for which the publisher/author is still in a position to take money from me for. That is unquestionably theft.

Seriously, folks? It may be GW, and it may be ridiculously expensive, but it it's a brand new, in print, set of wargames rules which you can buy. Whatever you think of their business practices, and whatever your views may be of the greyer area of out-of-print and/or digital copies of print rules, this is the wrong side of that line.

Gun, foot. Nice one, GW.

Image via @kingpash on Twitter.

Remember the new White Dwarf announcement?

Ok. So here's how it works.

If you have a sub to the existing magazine, your sub is transferred to the new Warhammer Visions magazine.

Which means for your remaining subscription money, you get a monthly 200+ page picture book of figure porn (and I make no apologies for the choice of term this time out) with last month's news dotted here and there in minimal text in three languages.

If you actually want the news about Games Workshop products, you need the new White Dwarf. Which is only available in GW stores every Saturday, or as an eBook from the Black Library site, yours for circa €3, $4 or I guess about £2.50.

So to get the information that White Dwarf used to give you for your subscription, you need to spend another £100+ a year, and either have a tablet or a local GW store.

Just brilliant.

Thanks to several folk on Twitter and FB, including Erwin Blonk, for drawing my attention to this masterstroke. Oh, and they haven't yet updated the White Dwarf pages on the GW site.

Games Workshop are recruiting...

Normally, I wouldn't even bother, but...

In the light of the share price crash after their half-yearly drop in profits, this (via Morgan on the Good Gamery forum) is fascinating:

We are looking for someone to spend the next two years turning over every – and we mean every – stone to find opportunities for how we can improve the customer experience in our stores and recommend the ones that will work. We aren’t talking about incremental improvements; we want to completely re-imagine what it is like for people coming into our stores, engaging with and buying our wonderful miniatures. 

It's clear the one-man/woman stores aren't working. Certainly if ours is anything to go by, all it's doing is driving the people who want to play there to our club!

Oh, and if you're listening, GW? There's a whole pile of Historical intellectual property you're sitting on which someone I'm sure would pay a fair bit for, if you're strapped for cash. It sure isn't doing anyone any good where it is.

Games Workshop end of year half-yearly results.

Thanks to @wartrader on Twitter for pointing this out. The directors have put a brave face on it in the half-yearly report, but if I were them I think I might be a little worried.

• Annual revenue down 10% from last 6 months of 2012
• Annual profit down 30% from last 6 months of 2012

I quote:

"During the first half, the rapid transition from multi-man stores to one-man stores and the reduction of trading hours across the Group caused disruption in our retail chain. We also experienced some decline in sales through independent stockists.

"We view these as short-term issues and expect to see growth return in both channels. We continue with our store opening programme (27 stores opened, 20 closed in the period) secure in the knowledge that our one man model allows us to ensure new openings are profitable. In the future we expect to benefit from the more focussed selling operation across all channels against the background of a materially lower cost base."

And then there's the share price… since the above results and the LSE opening this morning, from sitting at mostly above 700 for a long time...

Games Workshop Group PLC

LON: GAW - Jan 16 12:44 PM GMT

550.00-173.00 (-23.93%)

White Dwarf is changing...

I don't normally bother with GW news, but this is quite a biggie....

Via Beasts of War: and I quote, come February, White Dwarf will be changing into…

White Dwarf Weekly

...[a] twenty eight page weekly paper magazine available in trade and retail and will come to around the price of a pot of paint. It will feature new releases, the usual columns and general articles....

and 

Warhammer Visions

Visions takes up the usual monthly slot and will also be in print, not digital. It’s heralded to be a nice sexy looking magazine looking at the months releases with plenty of high quality images [...] Visions should also be in news stands rather than just in-house. The cost comes in at around the same price as the current White Dwarf and is more of a ‘collectors piece’.

Before all my younger GW-playing readers wail about changes to an industry icon, I should point out that when I was your age, White Dwarf was a generic RPG magazine and one of the best sources of unofficial (A)D&D related content going (including such awesome extra classes as a variant bard, the barbarian, the houri (oh man - who remembers the houri?!)). So its already changed pretty much beyond all recognition (even if piecemeal) since then...

Pah. Kids today. Harrumph.

Ch...ch...ch....changes...

I've been back in wargaming for about three years now. It's quite interesting to look at the things that have changed in that time.

First up, from my viewpoint, the demise of Warhammer Historical (and specifically WAB) as an entry point to non-fantasy/SF wargaming, is a biggie. I've gone on enough about this and the policy decisions round it that I don't need to do so again, but if any of my newer readers want to give me more page views by catching up on my opinions, do feel free :D

GW's confessed business model - to sell figures - isn't actually that dumb, if you step back and take a look at it. Rules are a one-off purchase (unless you go with the 40K approach): if you're a full-time business, the real money is in enticing people to get their lead and plastic pile from you.

There have been a couple of attempts to replace WAB, of which the obvious three are Clash of Empires, War and Conquest, and Hail Caesar. None of them have really taken off as much, as far as I can tell, as WAB did in its heyday. I find the first too close to WAB with the serials filed off, from the couple of games I've played. I'd like to get a better look at WAC, as it's probably the closest in spirit to what WAB 3.0 could have become, and the army lists are pretty comprehensive.

Hail Caesar has the advantage that WAB had, only in spades: not only do a major games company (Warlord) back it, they actually produce figure ranges for it! My issues with it, though, are twofold: it seems to generally require rather more figures than a corresponding game of WAB, and I still find the command activation system slightly flawed.

Next up, the rise of Dark Ages gaming. Specifically, obviously, SAGA, which has been a flash of genius on the part of Gripping Beast and their partners since they've got figures to go with the rules. I still find it a bit beer-and-pretzels: it's a great game, but it's not exactly a simulation (Mike Hobbs and I are recording another podcast with Neil tonight: that should give him a chance to have a go at me :D). But of course, in addition to that, there's the Duxes (or perhaps, the Duces?) Britanniarum and Bellorum, which set out to do different things and both do them pretty well (you know where my preferences lie, though :D).

In WW2, we seem to have seen the steady fall of one big ruleset backed by a massive range of figures, and the rise of another in a different scale, while smart rule makers happily ride in on the availability of minis in both scales. Man at War tried to emulate the former in the Napoleonic period... the jury's kind of still out on that one: they're still going but slowly.

Then there's the (re-) rise of games at the skirmish/RPG-lite scale (I could give you a list, but I don't have all day :D) The likes of Judge Dredd, In Her Majesty's Name spring to mind.  They do sort of hark back to Mordheim/Necromunda, but they do seem to be growing in popularity as a ... if you like, form-factor... for gaming. These do seem to come as 'rules with figures' packages - brilliant if the setting and the rules work, and the figures are up to scratch.

The real biggie, though? Kickstarter. I mean, just... wow. Things are happening in the gaming world that just weren't possible before as a result. As long as people can get their heads round the concept that Kickstarter's raison d'être is advance funding and a clearer idea of the market for the vendor, and not purely loads of cool free swag RIGHT NOW for the buyer, we're in with a shout of some great things coming through it. But it's clear from a couple of notable events such as the withdrawal of the Beyond the Gates of Antares Kickstarter, that not everyone seems to 'get' how best to use it.

That said: wargames? The hobby's rockin', man, as the guitarist in a band I used to be in would say. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Of rules and miniatures

Partially revisiting my post on "the rules" from a few weeks back, and partly prompted by a comment in the Meeples and Miniatures Facebook group by Sigur Squrrl. Advance warning - this might be a bit stream of consciousness-y and rant-y :D

"[...] Wargaming is free to design and miniatures not necessarily attached to rules."

Some rules, clearly, exist to sell miniatures. The king above them all is, of course, Warhammer 40K, but if you cast your eyes around you can see countless other examples, many these days via Kickstarter, where someone's come up with a neat idea for a set of rules and a setting, and a range of miniatures to match.

The thing is, some of us are starting to get conditioned to this. We buy the rules, then we buy the figures because they're designed to work with the rules. Depending on how obscure and idiosyncratic the setting is, they may be our only choice. And then (naming no names), out comes Version 2 of the rules, or perhaps Codexes A to D, and we buy more figures, because...

Well.

We like to justify it as being because the new rules have given us new choices, and/or because the forces in Codex A are just super cool.

Is the truth perhaps actually that it's because at least in part we're happy sheep and we want to play against everyone else whe's doing the same thing? Not that this is of necessity bad: just.. y'know? Tie your figures to your rules, and the best way to sell more figures is to write more rules! (And then there's the sad knock on effect that this almost invariably results in the infamous codex creep, followed by a re-baselining of force balance in a new version of the rules, followed by new versions of the codices, both of which as previously mentioned cause more figures to be bought... Stop me if you've seen this before!)

Historical gamers have it a bit easier: our settings have a very important attribute, in that they're not anyone else's property. History is not going to get litigious (oo, good word) just because (for the sake of example) Artizan, Crusader, Warlord, Black Tree, First Corps, Foundry, West Wind, PSC, Wargames Factory and heaven knows who else all produce 28mm WW2 figures. (Even if Lucasfilm and TSR may or may not have tried to trademark "Nazi". :D) And, let's face it, this is, when it comes down to, why Warhammer Historical is no more. Because GW aren't a rules company. They admit it in as many words.

But yet, and perhaps bizarrely, we still do it. I'd be intrigued to know how many of the armies at Rushden Phoenix club's recent Bolt Action tournament (at which three members of our club came back with trophies - well done guys!) were made of nothing but Bolt Action figures, and how many of those players had even considered, or were perhaps even aware of, other ranges. I'm as guilty as the next guy - my Napoleon At War armies (ok, ok, I'll admit it - my several kilos of unpainted lead!) are entirely made by, you guessed it, Man At War. And I have no defence (well, except that they're cheap, they come in the right sizes, and they appeal to my OCD :) ).

Admittedly, tournament play can be different - companies can and have set restrictions on what figures you can use, and they are, like it or not, within their rights to do so. And I'm within my rights to choose whether or not to play as a result (and sometimes I do).

But...

Let's look at this the other way round, because (as Neil and Sigur Squrrl point out), just because A requires B doesn't mean B must perforce require A.

It's an obvious fallacy, but... it was quite scary hearing the reports of groups of people who were selling entire armies of 15mm Flames of War in order to play Bolt Action in 28mm, without, apparently, giving thought to the fact that the rules could, with little or no tweaking, be used with their, and their mates', existing figures.

I probably own more Battlefront lead than several of the Flames of War gamers at our club put together (six full infantry companies and most of a seventh). I own part of the contents of three Open Fire box sets. Why? Well, it sure as hell isn't to play Flames of War! I own a fair few GW LOTR figures - one's the most talkative character on this blog, and he's certainly not being used to play LOTR! :D One of my options for a general for my Palmyran army is a Hell Dorado figure.

And this sort of brings us back to the whole thing about the rules.

The very word 'rules' implies a certain degree of inflexibility. And yes, for tournament play, this is inevitable: unless you have an agreed common framework of rules, you have chaos, and you thus pretty much have to go by the book, or at best with clearly documented variations. And it's very easy to slip into the mentality that because the figures go with the rules, the rules mean you can only use the figures with the rules.

Nuts to that :D

There are some brilliant, brilliant figure sculptors, ranges and concepts out there. We're all intelligent and imaginative people. Rules are made to be broken, or at the very least, tweaked. Knock yourselves out!

GW's 'new webstore', and passion vs commerciality

There are some rumours going around on Faeit 212 among other places, that, quote (translated, I suspect, from German):

Games Workshop will launch a new Internet-Site in April 2014. The new Site will bring back Hobby content and other stuff. The Online shop will include Black Library Products and at the end of the year 2014 Forgeworld. The success of Horus Heresy moved GW to this.

Interesting.

It doesn't take much digging to delve past the froth in the comments to the source of this rumour, which is GW's recent public preliminary financial report, (in which, as an aside, the word 'wargame' once again doesn't appear :D) where it transpires that what they actually said was:

Our online shop is doing well. Sales are up to £14.4 million from £13.1 million. During the year we built a new one and will be testing it over the coming year. It is planned to be fully operational in April 2014. 

There is, however, a much more interesting quote a bit further up:

It seems so obvious that it shouldn’t need saying, but we deal in a product that sometimes allows passions to over-rule commerciality. 

Yes. Yes we do. At the very least, we're in a hobby where passions drive commerciality.

That's why I spent Saturday playing a ruleset that's not available any more, and is pretty much community supported.
That's why Rich Clarke is prepared to pretty much bet the farm on Chain of Command, and why I'm prepared to buy someone a copy.
That's why the likes of TAG go ahead and produce their Tudor range despite the Kickstarter not making it.

I love this hobby precisely because it's full of people who are passionate about their particular niche in it.

Media in favourable wargaming article shock!

The BBC have published a remarkably well-written piece on the centenary of H.G.Wells "Little Wars", surprisingly free of the usual 'ho ho, grown men playing toy soldiers' remarks.

And it only has ONE mention of Games Workshop, and I quote:

"The game is a forerunner of modern formats like the Warhammer system sold by Games Workshop."

Setting aside for the moment the number of non-GW rulesets they've disregarded here? This does rather amusingly prove my point that no matter HOW hard GW try to remove any mention of 'wargames' and 'Games Workshop' in the same sentence, and eradicate the concept from public perception, they are fundamentally doomed to failure.