Humble Beginnings

So, another Oldhammer blog. What is this one going to be about, who am I, and why should you care?

For those who stumbled in here on accident: What is Oldhammer? In a nutshell, it is playing one of the Warhammer tabletop battle games using out-of-print rules editions and / or the miniatures from the timeframe in which those rules were "current". For most people who do it, it means turning back the wheel of time to a period were gaming was (more) fun to them.

Though it may be the rules themselves or the sculpting style of the miniatures that tempt some, "going back" usually is not only about the games themselves, it is about the do-it-yourself spirit that was prevalent when miniature ranges never covered all the options for your army that you had by the rules, while some miniatures did not even have rules to accompany them. It is about using the miniatures you like and playing out your imagination - putting the experience, if you will, before the actual game. If you are curious, there's a pretty good guide on how to start playing Oldhammer-style at the Realm of Chaos 80s blog.

 

See, kids, this is how immortal Space Emperors looked back in the 80s. 

And now get off my lawn, you young whippersnappers!

I have been following the Oldhammer scene kind of on-and-off for the past two years, and as I find myself with more and more projects on my hands that I would classify as "Oldhammer", I thought I might as well begin to order my thoughts about this whole thing, develop some plans and goals for my hobby activity and track my progress. This is how this blog came to be. 

On the one hand, this means that Rogue Workshop is going to be a project-oriented blog; pictures of and progress logs about my forces as they are acquired and painted, maybe a battle report, that sort of thing.

On the other hand, I intend to let readers share my thoughts on doing Oldhammer, to put spotlights on the problems I will run into and to delve a bit into less directly related musings on our hobby. It is my hope that Rogue Workshop will eventually be able to act as a form of guide to this particular way of enjoying the hobby, rather than simply serving as a source for inspiration from a fellow hobbyist. To this end, my blog will probably be a bit more structured than most in order to keep an overarching narrative from idea to completed projects that build upon each other.

Talk about "forging the narrative" one more time...

This particular fellow hobbyist is in his thirties, single dad and pursuing another university degree. He has been playing Warhammer 40.000 since the tail end of Rogue Trader, dropping it and taking it back up as the rules editions came and went. Over the years, some other systems joined the fold; various historicals and Inquisitor chief among them, but 40k remained the first and one true love. Accordingly, Rogue Workshop will be focused on the 40k universe rather than the Warhammer Fantasy Battles one, not least because I only ventured into WHFB when it was in its sixth edition and do not have these piles of currently unusable miniatures crying for attention as I do for 40k.

Time and money usually are constraints for everyone; I am no exception. Hence, much as I would love to manage a post a week, I already know that this is not going to happen. Apart from life having a tendency to throw monkey wrenches into my hobby plans, I am an atrociously slow painter, so often I simply will not have any new stuff to show off. Also, finishing the individual projects means expanding my current collection and will require hounding eBay and trade threads on forums, which takes an unpredictable amount of time unless one is ready to pay the ludicrous prices on eBay's Buy-It-Now auctions. In the end, I think the blog's quality will profit more from sticking to the plan for each post than a myriad of regular updates along the lines of "Hey, didn't have much time this week, but this is what I managed to scrape together..."

That's all I can offer in terms of introduction. Maybe you'll walk with me a little way, you might even leave a comment or two - but, most importantly, I hope that you will find some of the aforementioned inspiration here and there while reading my blog.

Have fun & take care!

Allod