St Andrews Wargaming turns 3 years old!

Today, St Andrews Wargaming turns 3 years old. 

It's hard to believe its only been 3 years since I started this blog, and even harder to believe a time before I spent so much of my free time writing for it! 

Over the last 3 years, I've written around 620 posts on the blog. That equates to about one post every two days. Hard to believe that I've got that much to say on any topic, never mind 40k! Added to the almost 170 posts for Frontline Gaming, I'll say that has been a pretty productive 3 years. 

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read and comment on the blog. I hope the blog continues to grow over the coming years. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it, or anything you would like to see on the blog in the coming years, just let me know. 

The State of Things- What's to come on the blog

Hi everyone, today's posting is just a list of random musings on what I am working on at the moment and what will be coming up on the blog in the near future.

First up, this weekend I am planning to make a start on my Codex Astra Militarum review. I purchased this book on the weekend it was released and have been enjoying reading it and seeing what it will bring for my Guard. Not sure if I'll do a fully review of every section of the book, as there are a lot of options available. Each hour I spend writing the review is one less hour for hobby work. However, knowing me, I'll probably do a quick full review anyway. I am also to write up a few more Space Marine reviews for Frontline Gaming this weekend.

How to use Battle Chronicler: Part 2- Importing your own terrain

Yesterday, I took you through the process of creating your own battle report maps using Battle Chronicler. Today, I will take you through the process of importing your own terrain into the maps to make them a bit more accurate. 

Creating the PNG

In order to use your terrain images in Battle Chronicler, you must first take some photos of your terrain. The best way to do this is to take an overhead image of each terrain piece. 

The easiest way to do this is to take a photo on a black background from above (the underside of a gaming mat is perfect for this). This is not ideal in every situation, especially at games at tournaments or other gaming stores. 

For example, here are some images of terrain from a recent game I played. 

With the images in hand, you are now ready to create the PNG image. For this, I use Photoshop, so will take you through the process that I use. 

Open Photoshop and open the file with your terrain image. 

Click on the "Select and Mask..." button shown below. 

How to use Battle Chronicler: Part 1- The Basics

Want to know how I make the maps for my battle reports? Check out this tutorial and you will be able to make your own awesome maps to illustrate your battle reports.

A few people have asked recently for a tutorial on how to use Battle Chronicler, so I finally put something together while working on my recent battle reports. This was how I put together the maps for my first game at the recent North West Open tournament. 

Battle Chronicler is a great, free online program that I use for making my the maps for my battle reports on the blog. It takes a little bit of effort to use and draw the maps, but I think it is completely worthwhile and really adds to the reports. 

This first part of the tutorial will take you through the basics of creating your maps for a battle report, along with some tips that I have picked up over the years. Part 2 will show you how to input your own battlefield images to create more realistic maps of your games. Hopefully, these might encourage you to use the program yourself for your own battle reports, or simply be an interesting read to see how I go about making the maps for my own battle reports. 

You can download Battle Chronicler from their website. You can also download the components to give you some terrain images to use in your own maps from the start. 

Defining the Game

When you first open Battle Chronicler for the first time, it will ask you what kind of system you will be using your maps for. You can select either ranked square bases or round skirmish bases. Even though 40k is a round, skirmish game, I prefer to use the square ranked up representation. I think this looks neater on the maps, but you can choose whichever you wish. 

With Battle Chronicler open, go to File and select New. This box should appear:

St Andrews Wargaming- On the Move (Again!)

Haven't I just done this?!? Yes, yet again, I will be on the move. I recently got a new job down in Oxford, so will be moving further south later this month to start my new career. 

Fortunately, this is now a permanent job (at least, as permanent as possible in this day and age), so shouldn't have to move again for a while! I'm hoping to get set up with a new gaming club fairly quickly, there are plenty of games of 8th edition still to be played! 

Content may be a bit sparse until I get set up, but fortunately I have a bit of a backlog of battle reports to keep the blog going in the meantime. 

Blog Milestones- 500 Edition

This week the blog has hit two major milestones that I wanted to highlight. 

Thanks to Dave at Confession of a 40k addict for his great images once more.

First up, my 500th post was up on the blog at the weekend. At around two and a half years old, I'm surprised I've had that much to talk about! 

Secondly, yesterday the blog hit over 500,000 views. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read the blog and comment on my articles. It really is the feedback and interaction with all the great bloggers and readers out there that keeps me coming back and posting on such a regular basis. 

On a side note, I would encourage you all to keep commenting on all the great 40k blogs that you read. A simple "Great work" or "nice post" makes all the difference, especially when you are just starting out in blogging. It is great encouragement to keep young blogs going. 

Don't worry, this slightly egotistical post is not all you are getting today, my Space Marine codex review will continue this afternoon with the review of the mammoth Elites section of the new book. 

North West Open this weekend!

Tonight I will be heading over to Southport for the North West Open tournament, held at the awesome Wargames. This will be my first ITC tournament, so I am looking forward to trying out the changed mission styles in the tournament pack. 

If you are going to the event, be sure to pop over and say hello. Hopefully, my Deathwatch won't be embarrassing themselves on the tabletop too badly. Last time I went to Wargames, I ended up winning the tournament. Based on recent performance, I don't think that will be happening again! Maybe I can skew my win rate in favour of above 50% this weekend, stay tuned for the upcoming battle reports to see if this occurs. 

Blog Update- Upcoming Events and Posts

Hello faithful Blog readers, today I have a bit of a random post for you today as I talk about what I have coming up on the blog and where life is at the moment. 

Hobby content has been a bit sparse on the blog at the moment. Part of this is due to real life getting in the way. I am currently in the process of job hunting and trying to sort out life at the moment. My current contract in Newcastle comes to a finish at the end of August, so I have been furiously writing applications for new positions for the past few months. Some of these are starting to come to fruition and I have been on several interviews in the pasts weeks. Needless to say that preparing for these has eaten up a big chunk of my hobby time, as well as missing several club nights thanks to travelling. 

I also spent last weekend in glorious rainy Perth up in Scotland for the annual Rewind festival. This is an awesome 80s music festival that has been going on the past few years, and this was my fourth year in attendance. I love 80s music and the festival is an absolute blast. Much more relaxed than other music festivals that I have attended and a really nice atmosphere to party away the weekend. 

Fun in the Scottish sunshine!

The good news is that the next few weeks are going to be great for blogging content. This weekend, I will be attending a 40k tournament at Battle Bunker in Sunderland. This is a great new hobby and gaming store that has opened up in the area. I'm sorry to say that the store has been open for ages, but this is my first time attending an event or gaming there. It is a nice store and I would love to support it, as it gives us a nice gaming centre on the east coast that would be perfect for holding events and tournaments. I may even consider running my own event at some point in the future, if this would be of interest to anyone? 

I was hoping to take a new army to the event, but I think it will need to be my Deathwatch once more. Sadly, I just haven't had the time to practice with any of my other armies in 8th edition, but plan to rectify this very soon. I wouldn't want to take an army to a tournament that I was unfamiliar with, never mind not having played a single game with them. Constantly looking up rules and forgetting things would not be great for me or my opponent. 

I will also be attending the North West Open at Wargames in Stockport the following weekend. Again, time constraints in gaming have meant my Deathwatch will be representing once more at this event. Hopefully, you aren't getting too bored with all the Deathwatch on the blog at the moment. I promise, you will be seeing a bit more variety in the battle reports in the coming months!

Random hotplate/stirrer cake that I made recently.

On the hobby front, I am planning to get back to my Genestealer Cults when some free time opens up. I have some unused holiday days to use before the end of August, so maybe I'll be taking a week-long painting holiday next month. 

The rapid release schedule for 40k codices should also provide some nice content. I am planning on reviewing the new Space Marine codex in fairly quick order once it is released, and will be very keen to play some games with my White Scars army to test out the new book (although, rumours of Khan only being on foot is annoying me a little!). 

I will also hopefully be getting some more guest posts on the blog as well. Regular reader and commenter Chris has been in touch about an upcoming Infinity campaign, as well as some battle reports he has been writing. Be sure to check out his previous guest post "Infinite Patience", to get up to speed on the basics of Infinity before the article lands. 

I also hope to reach out to some more great bloggers for some Better Know A Blogger posts. I was hoping that I could keep this series going with one post a week, which I did manage for quite a while. Things have dried up a bit recently, so I plan to send out a host of new emails to try and get people interested. If you have your own blog and would like to be featured, drop me an email at corrm83@gmail.com and I can get it sorted. An idea that I was toying with before was contacting previous participants for a "follow up" post with some new questions. I'll need to have a dig through my older posts to see what questions the blog readers came up with and start putting things in motion! 

As you can see, a lot of things on the go for St Andrews Wargaming. A new job will probably necessitate another move, but hopefully I can find a place with more great gaming clubs to continue to bring you battle reports and more hobby goodness. 

8th Edition Updates

A very quick post today. As you are probably aware, GW are going to be posting regular updates and giving hints about 8th edition of the coming weeks. 

Rather than post each day about each new update, I am planning to gather the updates into a weekly post in order to comment on them all at once. This will give me some time to put my thoughts together and provide some more substantial content. 

In addition, I am hoping to be back to regular hobby and battle report postings in the next few weeks as my arm starts to heal properly! 

Initial Thoughts on 8th Edition Rumours

Clear some room on that Bandwagon and get me my Soapbox! As many of you will be aware, a new edition of 40k is looming closely on the horizon. Many writers and bloggers out there are sharing their opinion on the rumours that have been published so far, so I thought I would share my own thoughts on what is coming for 8th edition.

7th Edition and Me

I actually really enjoyed 40k in 7th edition. 

Don't get me wrong, 40k certainly had its problems in 7th edition with rampant overpowered formations, psychic nastiness and invisible deathstars. I don't know whether it was simply the club environments that I played in during 7th, but I rarely came into contact with too much of the "nastiness" the last edition of the game (or Innes, as he was affectionately known 😏). As such, most of my games of 40k in the recent years have been highly enjoyable and have created many interesting battle reports and articles for the blog. 

The latest edition of the game also introduced one of my favourite ways to play it- the Maelstrom of War missions. Maelstrom games really were my favourite way to play 40k for the past few years. It really shook up what had become stale Eternal war missions where the aim of the game seemed to be simply annihilating your opponent so that they could not contest end of game objectives. I hope that the new edition of the game has a similar mission type. 

Over the course of 7th edition, I started three new armies (White Scars, Deathwatch and Genestealer Cults), so I must have been enjoying it in some regards. I know many players and bloggers have soured on 7th edition and I can completely see why, but I have continued to enjoy the game a lot over the past few years. I think it has helped that I have multiple different armies. My Orks really suffered in 7th edition, but I always had my Guard, Dark Angels or White Scars to fall back on. For those players that only had one army, especially if it was amongst what is considered the lower-tier, I can see how un-fun 40k could become if you were getting stomped by much stronger armies on a weekly basis at the local gaming club. 

Equally, I am not one to be dragged kicking and screaming into each new edition. I eager anticipate each new edition of the game and am always interested to see what is likely to change. My evolution of 40k series has helped me to see how the game has developed over the years.  Based on the rumours seen so far, 8th edition appears to be a sizeable shake up of the game, more akin to the change from 2nd edition to 3rd edition, than 3rd-7th have been. 

This is an exciting time to be a 40k player. Third edition is what go me in to 40k. The dramatic changing of the overblown ruleset to something much simpler was a breath of fresh air and led to a lot of excitement in the local community. Sound familiar?

I am even more hopeful for 8th edition now that I know the team over at Frontline Gaming have been heavily involved in playtesting. Reece, Frankie and the gang really do care a lot about the game and are keen to see it grow even stronger in the future. 

Second Birthday Giveaway- List of Entrants

As many of you may be aware, I am currently running a giveaway for my second birthday on the blog. You can win a FREE starter Genestealer Cults army (you only need to pay postage). In case you missed it earlier in the week, I will also be giving away two of the old 40k card terrain as well.

The response has been great for the giveaway. Below is a list of current entrants for the competition. If you think you have entered the contest and don't see your name below, please let me know so that I can fix it.

Card Terrain Complete!

It is done! After many, many years, my collection now appears to be complete!

A couple of years ago, I showcased my old second edition card terrain that I have been collecting. In the original article, I had just obtained a couple more of the kits (that are still waiting painting and assembly!), and was only missing the old card Bastion. Now, I have the kit and my collection is complete.

St Andrews Wargaming- Two Years On

Last week, the blog turned two years old. Once again, a big thanks to everyone who takes the time to read, comment and contribute to make St Andrews Wargaming what it had become. I thought I would once again take a look at some of the interesting figures from the blog over the past year and give some of my own thoughts on how it is going. 

For those that are interested, you can check out the interesting figures from last year, along with my thoughts on blogging for my first year. 

Blog Figures

We will start off with viewing figures, because as I have said previously, I am a vain, vain man. Sorry if this seems a big egotistical for anyone, I just thought it might be of interest for those that read the blog or for those just starting with their own hobby blogs.

At the time of writing, the blog is about to hit 412,000 views. After my first year, I was sitting at around 120,000 views, so getting almost 300,000 views in a single year is mind blowing to me. 

I think a lot of this has been down to the sheer number of 40k releases that have occurred in the past year and my reviews of those releases. Codex and supplement reviews remain amongst the most popular articles on the blog and among the most popular Google searches that bring in traffic. 

A break down of the figures each month are shown below:

Looking at the graph, October 2016, December 2016 and January 2017 were amongst the most popular months for the blog. 

October saw my reviews for the new Genestealer Cults codex go up on the blog. This was a hugely popular release and saw a lot of traffic come in as people were keen to read more about this highly unusual army. December was the most popular month by far, bringing in almost 38,000 views. This is surprising, as it did not feature any codex reviews. It did feature a lot of Deathwatch hobby postings and battle reports. As a relatively new army, I guess a lot of people were looking for Deathwatch stuff. January also saw more Deathwatch posts, as well as the Fall of Cadia review. 

Two Years Old!

St Andrews Wargaming turns 2 years old today!

It is hard to believe that this all started only 2 years ago, as so much seems to have happened since then.

A big thanks to all the readers, commenters and contributors who help to make the blog what it has become. Also, a big shout out to all the friends that I have made through the blog, who I never would have met otherwise! I look forward to seeing many of you across the table in the coming year.

I would particularly like to give a big thanks to Rob (30Kplus40K) and Nick (The Burning Eye) as fellow bloggers who have been big supporters from very early on and continue to push me to make the blog even better, as well as providing inspiration with their own awesome blogs.

The next post will take a look at some of the figures and things I have found interesting over the past year. Also, don't forget about my Birthday giveaway, where you can win a Genestealer Cults army.



Introducing the new Blog Archive

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a new tab at the top of the blog page; Blog Archive.

I have been thinking about this for a while and decided to get it compiled. This new section was inspired by the recent Old Stuff Day post. While I think that the blog is fairly well organised in terms of finding reviews and battle reports, etc., there are many articles that can slip through the cracks or are more difficult to find.

Due to this, I have created a page with a list of blog posts under a number of different categories, such as Hobby Posts, Editorials and blog achievements. Hopefully, this will make it easier for people to find more random posts, or act as a nice resource for those browsing for something to read. 

Second Birthday Giveaway- Win a Genestealers Cult Force

NOTE: This competition is now closed!

St Andrews Wargaming will be turning two years old in a couple of weeks. After the success of my first Birthday Giveaway, where you could win a free Battle Demi-Company, I have decided to do a similar giveaway this year. 

After some recent purchases, I found myself with an excess of Genestealer Cults kits. As a result, I am giving you the chance to win a Genestealer Cults starter army of your very own. 

Included in the giveaway is:

• Genestealer Cults Codex
• Broodcoven (Patriarch, Magus and Primus from Deathwatch Overkill)
• 4 Aberrants (from Deathwatch Overkill)
• 16 Neophyte Hybrids (from Deathwatch Overkill)
• A box of Acolyte Hybrids
• Acolyte Iconward

Everything a growing cult needs to get started! All models are unassembled and unpainted, so are free for any scheme you wish to paint. 

Blog Hiatus

As you may have guessed from the above picture, my holiday did not go exactly as planned. I managed to break my wrist while I was snowboarding in France. My saving throws continue to suck as usual! Worse, it was my dominant hand, making things more difficult. 

As a result on this, blog posts are going to be a bit sparse for the next 6 weeks. There will be no hobby posts or battle reports for a while, while I heal. Pity, as 6 weeks off would have made a huge dent in my painting pile. 

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Ads on the Blog

As some of you may have already noticed, I have added an advert to the side bar of the blog. I have decided to trial an adsense advert on the blog to see if I can earn an extra few pennies to put towards some new models!

Hopefully, regular readers won't mind too much and it is not too intrusive.

Holiday Time!

Hello, dear Reader! Today I am embarking on holiday for a week. 

Don't fear though, the content will continue to come on St Andrews Wargaming for the following week. Please continue to read and comment as normal, but you may not get a reply to your comments as quickly as usual. Next week, you can look forward to my review of my Deathwatch army from the recent Birthday Bash tournament, as well as a review of the tournament itself, in addition to Monday's Better Know a Blogger. Also, be sure to check out the Armies on Display post, featuring some of the amazing forces that were brought to the tournament. 

This also unfortunately means that my review of the next Gathering Storm book will not be out until I return, as the book is released while I am away! I hope to write it up fairly quickly when I return though, so look out for that. 

All the best, see you in a week!

Giant Blogroll images on blogger? Here's how to fix!

For a while now, I've been having a problem with the blogroll on my site. Certain blogs (generally Wordpress ones) appear on the blogroll with a massive thumbnail image to accompany the title. While this was annoying, I hadn't really done that much about it. It was making the blog a bit unsightly. 

Even though that is an awesome Rhino, it takes up a bit much space.

Recently, Jimmy from Eye of Terror contacted me to see if I knew about it. He told me what the cause of it was, but I am a bit of a Luddite when it comes to coding or doing anything with the blog, so didn't really understand what he was trying to tell me, try as best as he did. 

I went to the Blogger help site and managed to get a simple fix that even I could follow! I thought I would share it with my fellow Bloggers so that they could fix it too.