Alarums and Excursions (and other stories)

Well, thats been fun a 2026 so far. Lots of worrying things abroad in the world and nearer to home too, And it's ony the end of February.

Closer to home for me, I've been pretty stumped in getting anything at all done and any plans have been totally scuppered to date due to fairly minor (thankfully) but no less incapacitating ailments since before Christmas with the likes of a throat infection, subsequent linguring cough, closely followed by tooth ache and trigeminal nerve issues with wisdom tooth extraction and breaking the tooth next to it. 

Coupled with Dentists and Doctors that don't know their arses from Tuesday, cancelling appointments at the last minute and passing responsibilities on to other Professionals and so on. Also multiple transport issues caused by the state of the roads locally and around the country with repairs to windscreens and wheels required it's been an interesting couple of months so far. I did have a day at the end of January where seemed to be ok and before next issue arose (the fololowing day) but my wife pressganged me into some DIY which in fairness was much behind schedule along with everything else.

But, touch wood, I seem to be getting out of the morass and feeling more up to getting my nefarious plans back on track.

On that, I did have quite a few irons in the fire which I'd been planning to get into this year, including new ventures into the land of business of the model making and design variety extending to design and manufacture of furniture and storage along with general modelling and hobby activities, DIY and so on. Obviously, due to the current state of karma around me, bugger all has been done up to this week.

The first positive step has been made this week however. Now the back story... One New Years day 2025, I had a bit of a windfall, picking up the £1K Daily Win on the Postcode Lottery. Good start to last year. Hummed and hawed a bit as to where to spend this but I quickly plumped to pick up a 3D printer with associated paraphenallia. The money was suitably banked and I set about reading up on things, checking various reviews and getting my head around the differences of Resin and filament printers and capabilities.

Time passed and things carried on as usual and fairly quickly decided upon a Resin printer which would cover Hobby Printing to suitable detail but also give me options for more functional accersory outputs for my other activities for jigs and machine parts. Time passed...

Things moved on, other life changes were coming to the fore and descisions made with the relevant one here being that I'd decided to take slightly early retirement and would be looking to supplement my income come the summer of 2026. Various plans became a bit more concrete and part of this was the facility to digitally design and print models.

Now, with the end of the year looming I got my finger out and ordered my first 3D printer (along with all the paraphenalia) which would land nicely just before Christmas and would have the time to step and experiment and get to know things before I went back to work.

As you can guess, things didn't go to plan here due to picking up an infection and the subsequent trials and tribulations that followed and I didn't get to open the boxes until mid February. Now all opened, contents checked and assembled, switched on, checked again, usual test prints run and all good.

First hurdle was up beginning of the week and looked to get my first print out in anger as it were. Previously purchased STL's were duly sliced and saved to .ctb file uploaded to printer and.... nothing. Lots of investigations were carried out, change of settings, different arrangements and means of loading, compatibility issues checked, software updates etc etc and finally lockated the issue being with the resolution profile on the slicer software had to be set to an older version of the printer than the printer actually was. Go figure.

Anyhoo, re-sliced my first batch of prints and uploaded and set to print last night and in the morning my first print selection was sitting waiting for me to clean and cure.

Lastsword Miniatures Heavy Pike Command
 and Bite The Bullet Githyanki Fighter

With the first output a success, I'll plan forward for some much needed hobby time and get some modelling and painting done soon.

Looking to post up on recent hobby related activities over 2025 and plans for 2026 and will update on the Business venture further down the line once it's a bit more developed.

More anon.

Mount & Blade II; Bannerlord

Back in 2016 I posted on the up and coming PC games I was looking forward to get a hold of and play in that year. All the games were purchased sooner or later except one. Yup, you guessed it Mount & Blade II; Bannerlord.

After being in development for the last five or so years the game has finally been released recently and I quickly purchased to help with whiling away a few extra free hours suddenly available recently for some reason.

Always a fan of the Taleworlds Entertainment Mount & Blade series in 'Warband' and 'With Fire and Sword' and played through both included mod versions they hold enough interest though the graphics are now pretty basic looking. This is the first and obvious update on M&B II with the graphic input ten times better than the original.

Having a strole round one of the many townscapes

First Character after a few game days adventuring
Still pretty lowly equipped

The graphics are very nice and the game map is much improved and much more appealing to the eye (the original Calradia and Eastern Europe maps being graphically sparse, travelling could get quite tedious) and with a lot more going on and more information for locations of objectives and info on encounters and so on.

There's a lot going on generally but follows the same basic premises of the genre set up in M&B Warband so familiar enough ground though the controls are much more involved and with more alternatives as well.

The milieu is new as well, with Calradia gone and a new realm peopled with the same technological level as before, roughly 12th Century (ish) medieval times. The eight various factions you can choose to play (Aserai, Battania, Khuzait, Northern Empire, Southern Empire, Sturgia, Vlandia and the Western Empire) in all, follow general Medieval tropes and are recognizable from their inspirations; from Byzantines, Norman's, Viking/Scandinavian's, Rus, Mongols, Anglo-Saxon and Saracen types and so on.

The art work for the loading screens (which you see a lot of going from battle to map to town to dialogue) all give a good idea of the artistic look and feel to the game and are pretty good on the eye as well which is just as well really;

The foregoing artwork by a Turkish artist Ilker Serdar Yildiz, is very eye catching and evocative work and must of been involved in the art direction in the game build as the aesthetic is maintained throughout the game.

I'm still early on in my first game play but so far it is interesting and worthwhile play, especially if you're into RPG style games in the medieval period. The game does have a pretty steep character development curve. It takes a fair bit of grinding through early missions and hunting looters to get anywhere. The cost for failing missions is noted and can be quite prohibitive sometimes finacially, cutting off lines of trade or limiting future access to a town. There are lots of lines of character development, in social standing, finances, local and faction standings and notoriety that all play a part in developing and advancing your career, not just killing folk and taking their money as was pretty much the previous norm.

I do quite like this as it gives a decent challenge and can be quite political as well as militaristic in flavour. Lots of depth.

There are a fair number of mods available for the game already and  include the inevitable LotR make-over and I believe a GoT as well plus the usual AI tweeks and so on. I'll play the vanilla game through before having a look at these.

All in all, pretty favourable opinion so far and generally recommended for anyone into the more 'believable setting' RPG genre. An early Warblog rating of 8 out of 10 'Worth Watching' easily merited and worth the wait.

Forgotten World FireForge Kickstarter

A couple of weeks ago, I received my pledge from Fire Forge for their recent Forgotten World Kickstarter.

As you can see this was fairly chunky in it's contents, 9 boxes of plastic Human and Undead Infantry and Cavalry, some additional sprue's of choice, additional embossed shields plus resin foot and mounted character figures plus I opted in my bonus for some Deus Vult range Scandinavian, Russian and Byzantine box sets.

The original plan was to use the historical figures as a source for alternative heads and for some general conversion works for miscellaneous projects but as the Forgotten Worlds figures are pretty much heroic 32mm scale and the historical figures aren't, that idea has been knocked on the head so will be using these separately.

I've assembled a couple of the Human Infantry, with these (and the cavalry) being pretty generic fantasy humans in a sort of medium infantry apparel (looking much like the Stark GoT troops which I assume is deliberate given the 'Northern Infantry' nomenclature) and generally look the part. The figure parts do come with a lot of mold lines and all require a fair bit of cleaning up and some bits don't quite fit together without a bit of trimming but not too bothered about that. 

Their are Infantry with sword and spear options plus a command conversion sprue all of which have a few options plus additions for packs and pouches etc. plus there are Bowmen packs and the Cavalry pack which I've still to play with yet. The above examples built show the general look of the assembled figures (with the figure on the right having a replacement head from the now defunct Empire Archers set).

The Undead again are pretty generic in origin which is a good idea for this type of product really. Again, I've only assembled a couple of the infantry to see how they go together and these are generally fine but again a bit of mold line problem to be dealt with. With only 12 in the box for these, they do seem a bit pricey if paying full price for them but again are quite nice and do whats required of them.

The bonus characters in the kickstarter are quite nice and Human and Undead forces catered for with generic 'good' General, Hero and Wizard types along with their Undead counterparts. These all assemble fairly well but the bits needed quite a bit of cleaning up where the bits came off the resin sprue and the fit is a bit loose generally and all will need a bit of green stuff to tidy up the joints. Again not a major problem and perfectly usable fantasy types. The foot undead hero is very lined from the (I assume) 3D printing process, but I'll paint up and see if this looks OK. To be confirmed here.

The only, as I see it, failure of the Kickstarter supply to date is the mounted Undead Lich. The parts really don't go together at all well with major gaps on the horse parts which will require substantial green stuff to sort and the rider does not sit on the mount at all well, even after major carving, like the rider is not meant for this horse. I'll persevere and sort the figure out as best I can but I'm sort of minded to not really try here. We'll see how I feel on this one and report back on progress if any.

The KS also included a set of fanatasy rules which on a quick flick through look OK but still to give these a thorough read to see if I'll use them or not.

All in all, a good result on a Kickstarter with lots of usable figures which I'm going to use to fill some holes on my Fantasy Campaign Northern Wars theatre so that's nice, and the Kickstarter was fulfilled within a reasonable time.

On other KS news, I also received my pledge about the same time for the re-written Chivalry & Sorcery RPG rule set (pdf copy) which I'm still wading my way throught 500 or so pages of this to get the feel of the update but looks very pretty so far.

I've also received word from Yannis of Nuclear Shrimp that my pledge for their 'Black Earth: Heavy Metal' KS is now on it's way to me and will hopefully be with me before Christmas which is nice though that one has been a long wait but the figures and vehicles are very nice so I'm looking forward to these to add to my Future Wars project.

D&D 40th Anniversary - Feeling Old?

With the realisation that it was forty years ago this year that the venerable D&D rules were released on an unsuspecting world made me stop and think.

I first picked up on the rules towards the end of the 1974 from an issue of Military Modelling which had an advert for the rules and as I was already getting into Fantasy Table Top gaming at the time and it caught my attention so I launched out and spent my pocket money on the boxed set of booklet and I was hooked.

I spent the next fourteen years or so enjoying the game that was D&D and then AD&D with my RPG gaming starting out at the old Clydesdale Wargames Club, and then moving to my own group The Lords of Entropy, where up to about 30 players at one time or another dropped in and out with a hard core of about a dozen or so regulars and was a great social event every week, often two or three times each week in one campaign or another.

In the late 80's I dropped out of RPG's and gaming in general for a while, largely due to the pressure's of a young family and career and all that entails and the lure of D&D paled.

Getting back into gaming in the late 90's D&D reared it's head again but in a much quieter model with a few short campaigns now and again but these fizzled out by the time the mid Naughties rolled around. The various guises of 2nd, 3rd and 3.5 editions never really catching the original wonder of the original and to my mind best, AD&D.

The huge plethora of material available over the years ranging from the TSR/WOTC produced official stuff to the fanzine and less professional modules, articles and so on is immense and quite mind-boggling really, and all the names that go with this plethora that still conjure up memories; Judges Guild, Trollcrusher, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Underworld Oracle, TSR and a hundred others.

The RPG genre has blossomed over the years into all sorts of games, and in fact if you can think of it, there's an RPG version of it. Going into your local game store and seeing what's on offer is often a sobering sight by it's sheer quantity.


The art work generated over the years is quite staggering too and the humble D&D was the progenitor of a huge art industry now largely feeding the games industry both electronic and table top or card based. I still think many of the early illustrations from the rule books are quite iconic and summon up all sorts of memories from those that know them.




I still have huge numbers of very fond memories of all the campaign's which latterly I DM'd more often than not in the world of Alba which ranged from the usual dungeon bashes to large continent spanning conflicts and I still have pretty much all the material generated for Alba Campaign's and indeed is the basis of my slowly ongoing solo wargames campaign over at The Lornian Chronicles.

To think that the mighty D&D has been around for 40 years does make you stop and think, and although it's fortunes have gone up and down a bit, there aren't many rule sets or games out there that are still alive and kicking after 40 years so it must have something. A quick search on the internet will easily show that the game is very much alive and with the recent re-launch and Beta test not long complete D&D should be here for a while yet and still inspiring gaming out there. Still it's been a while.