HoP Idol 2 - The revenge

 
   

As some of you will remember from last year, I took part in a Blogging contest over at the International House of Paincakes. I did pretty bloody well at it too, winning the first three rounds comfortably, because I'm utterly awesome. I was leading in the fourth round with a big bloody lead too, but real life got in the way and I had to bow out of the competition, when clearly I was going to go on and come second... wait what? Trust me I don't think anything I could have written for the final round of the competition would have topped Vons final entry, which deservedly won him the competition. Any way why am I telling you all this? Well they're running another competition this year... and... sadly real life is getting in the way yet again for me. Bugger! So I won't be entering this year either, so that should give the rest of you a chance! So if you fancy entering what are the rules of the competition? Well here are the competition rules lifted straight from their website:

1. Write an article of up to 500 words that you think clearly represents your style and viewpoint.  There are no restrictions on topic, so feel free to send us a news report, battle report, tactics article, painting/modeling tutorial, or whatevs.  All we care about is that it is about tabletop gaming/ roleplaying and that it's short enough that we can quickly read them and potentially publish them quickly.
2. Do not publish the article created for step 1 on your own blog.  All content for the HoP Idol contest is to be considered exclusive to the HoP without written permission.  We will link every article back to your blog (if you have one) every time we publish and you're welcome to link to the articles on the HoP.
3. Send your article to contest@houseofpaincakes.com .  Make sure that the subject line includes "HoP Idol entry."
4. The article may be attached as a word or text document in html format or embedded into the body of an e-mail.  You may include up to one picture in your article which must be either attached to your e-mail or otherwise embedded in your article.  
5. The deadline for submitting your article is Thursday June 7.  We will beginning announcing contestants shortly thereafter.
6. Questions can be sent to info@houseofpaincakes.com

If you want to have a look at the original article you can do so here. So if you're up for it you should enter the competition, in fact I sorta demand it of you. I need someone to go out there and stand up for the broader pantheon of wargaming, and uphold the ideals of polygamist wargaming that we all at Frontline Gamer hold so dear to our games whore hearts!!! The House of Paincakes is a really good wargaming Blog, and an even better Blogging network. It was the first Blogging network that I joined when I started my own Blog, and they've been a great help to me here at Frontline Gamer towers, offering me useful advice and support. If you have a wargaming Blog you should join their network too. Peace out!

HoP Idol week 4

Well last week I chose to drop out of the competition after quite frankly having a rough time of it personally. Which was a shame, because I'd stormed away to a lead again in the voting and had virtually twice as many votes as the second placed contestant, like I had in weeks 1 and 2. Sometimes I guess things just aren't meant to be are they? Still there are 4 people still in the running to become the first HoP Idol, and with me out of the way things seem to a hell of a lot closer between them.

This week the contestants had the choice of either writing a tactical article for whatever game they liked or writing a book report for a 'game' related novel. I'm going to say this is a weird match up of articles if I'm honest. Personally I very rarely find 'tactical' articles of any real use; after all I've been playing with toy soldiers for some 27 years now and there's very little in way of tactics others can 'teach me'. That might sound arrogant, but it is how I feel about them, they don't interest me. However, I'm aware that there are others just starting out in their wargame careers who find such articles useful. This problem I have with tactical articles was bound to be compounded, for me because the tactics articles were going to be for Games Workshops 'games, which I just don't play anymore.

On the other hand I love reading book reviews and reports, and hearing what others make of stories. Especially as many gaming based novels fall into two camps; 1) good solid stories that enhance the fluff and background and your playing experience and 2) utter dross that shows no respect to the back story of the games we all play and actually anger me and detract from the hobby. So as you can imagine I like to miss the later category. This means I'm likely to be biased in my summing up again towards those who have done book reports. I'm sure there will be others who will be thinking along the same lines as me, and indeed will be thinking the exact opposite. Reality is I'm not too sure the two options this week are fairly comparable.
Read more �

HoP Idol no more

Yes I'm afraid all the rumours are true, I am Matt War... no, only kidding! However, I have withdrawn myself from the HoP Idol competition for a number of personal reasons, that I don't really want to go into on this here blog. Suffice to say, I don't think I was able to commit to giving the competition the attention it desrves, especially as the remaining contestants will have been giving it their all, and well continuing to do any less myself would've been insulting. I think it's fair to say that now I've dropped out of the running it'll be a much 'closer' competition. Because lets be honest, I've romped to run away victories in weeks 1, 2 and 3... and not all of the votes can be from my mom! Of course I jest, most of them were from my mom.

I genuinely wish the guys and gals at HoP all the best, that's Laby, Dethtron, Lo, GMort, SinSynn and who is that other blogger they have? I'm sure there was one more! Maybe not... only kidding Brent too.  I also genuinely wish all the contestants well in their future endeavors in the competition as well. Also, to those of you who took the time to actually read my entries (God only knows why you did) and then after I'd put you through all that torture, to actually vote for me!?!? Can I just say thanks for thinking my articles were worthy of your vote, and a big sorry for not being able to carry on in the competition. I'd just ask you all to believe me when I say that the reasons for me withdrawing from the competition are pretty good ones, and very important to me. Peace out!

HoP Idol Week 3

So we're back after a brief hiatus due to a bereavement in the family (my thoughts are with you Dethtron), for week 3 of HoP Idol. Last week we lost Inquisitor_Dunn, which was a shame, because I genuinely didn't think his article was anywhere near the weakest. This has me concerned as I don't think the voting is based on how good the articles have been, but more on the 'popularity' of the authors. I didn't enter a beauty contest but that seems to be what I've ended up in.

However, I think it's fair to say I've surpassed my own personal goal of actually not being the first contestant eliminated, so from here on out it's all gravy. Because yet again last week (week 2) I stormed to the number 1 spot with a clear advantage over the competition. So a big thank you to everyone who voted for me... I think some of the other contestants might be starting to hate me just a little bit now you know. If I stop blogging for a few weeks it's because I'm dead after they all clubbed together to take a hit out on me!
Read more �

HoP Idol: Interview with Lauby

Well this is my entry in week 3 of the HoP Idol contest. I actually found it quite fun doing an interview, and it's certainly something I might actually try out in the future. That's if anyone is willing to be interviewed by me after they read this!!!

Well this week we've been given the task of interviewing one of the current International House of Paincakes writers. I got one of the big ones... Lauby, who co-founded the International House of Paincakes with Dethtron. Sadly though for him he'd drawn me has his interviewer and I'd personally like to say thanks to him for putting up with my erratic ways of late, as I've got a lot going on in my personal life right now and he was a pleasure to interview and very understanding. I've dropped 4 pictures of Lauby's lovely painting in here as well. So here it is...

Frontline Gamer: Hello. I'm going to be honest and say I have absolutely no idea where to start this interview. I'd ask for some hints and tips but I'm getting pressed for time now so I'm going to go with the obvious question. Why the hell did you decide to start the international House of Paincakes (HoP) with Dethtron in the first place? And as a follow up question, and are you utterly mad?

Lauby: Like so many 'Good' ideas throughout, history the whole idea started in a bar while Dethtron and I were working on a special kind of drunk - expensive beer drunk. At that point in our e-live we were both struggling to get readers for our own blogs and we just couldn't get things going to the extent we wanted. Commenting on other people's blogs and exchanging links only gets you so far, and is tedious, tedious work. Obviously the solution to that was to 'join a blogging network'. But the ones that existed at the time didn't have a lot to offer us or had a bunch of bullshit requirements we didn't much care for.

Obviously, I'm talking about FTW and I'd be flat out lying if I said the 'no swearing' policy wasn't a big driver for the HoP. I don't usually bring it up directly because I never feel like admitting that fact, it's the kind of thing that will not go over well in the public given the sterling reputation, much deserved, that Ron has. But there you have it. We wanted to be able to swear. We had a lot of e-buddies who wanted the same thing and wouldn't or couldn't change to make the cut. Granted, we had other options, but it was either networks nobody really saw or things that always came off as 'after the fact' kind of ancillary projects with piss poor promotion. You know, things that wouldn't 'really' help us. So the drunken path that was clearly laid out in front of us was 'start your own'.

Utterly mad? Yeah.
Read more �

Painting Guide: Sorylian Fleet

This article first appeared as part of the HoP Idol Contest but I've since had a few people send me emails and ask me to put it up on my blog, with bigger picture files so they can take a closer look... so I hope this works or its pointless!!! By the way voting is now live in the contest and you can vote for me here. Thanks

Right I need to get this out of the way fairly rapidly before anyone gets a snide dig in and says I'm shit at painting and shouldn't be doing any painting guides... I know I'm no where near as good as many of the painting bloggers out there. I never will be so I'm not going to pretend I am. However I do have a few tricks up my sleeves and various people have asked if I'd consider doing some painting guides, but I'm doing this one for the HoP Idol contest. So against my better judgement here's my first full on painting guide, and to ease myself into this its an easy one, I'm just painting my Sorylians from Firestorm Armada. Given though that people have asked me to be specific about what I do to the mini's I'm putting a lot of detail into this painting guide and as such it's a damn hefty beast.

Get the painting area right

I think its fair to say the first thing most people get wrong from the get go is their panting area. There are a few essential items I think you must have:

• Comfy chair
• Dedicated painting table / desk
• A place to store you paints within easy reach
• Ceramic tile / mixing palette (also, or instead a wet palette)
• A pot for cleaning your brushes of paint as you go (dirty water)
• A pot for watering down and mixing your paints (clean water)
• A roll of kitchen towel
• A good lamp with a daylight bulb, or if you can afford it two.
• Two jugs, one empty to pour dirty water into and one full of clean (preferably filtered) water.

I might return to a few of my tips or things I have / do when painting like airbrush and paintbrush care etc. at a later date, but for now I'll leave it at that.

The concept

Right, you have to start somewhere and my rough concept for these guys was to simply paint them predominantly red hulls with white accents. The guns engines etc were to be painted in metallic colours, but at this early stage I wasn't sure what sort of metallics, gold, brassy or a gunmetal type colours or indeed if I would use metallic paints or try None Metallic Metal (NMM) technique. However I did not want my ships to look like they were newly out of the space ship yard... no I wanted them to have a 'lived in' look so I was going to attempting a few weathering techniques, but more on those later.

Read more �

Building an Infinity army (plus how not to do it)

This article is an expansion on an article I sent into the HoP Idol contest, there I went over the 250 word limit for describing my 'Achilles Paradiso Aggression Force' army list, but I felt it was an important opportunity to give their readership a heads up on how to build an Infinity Army. I felt it was also too good an opportunity to pass up for promoting a different game to what many are used to, i.e. Infinity as opposed to 40k and HoMacine. Lets be honest creating your first Infinity army list can be quite a daunting prospect for new Infinity players, hell many veterans I know still struggle at times. The guys over at the Official Infinity Forums will almost certainly offer invaluable friendly advice as they always do, but it can't hurt to have a few quick pointers and general rules to follow when building a force:

Read more �

HoP Idol voting now open!!!

Yep that's right, voting on the International House of Paincakes Idol competition is now open, see here:

HoP Idol Week 1 Recap

Its only week 1 and there are hopefully going to be many more weeks for my good self to come. Obviously I'd love for you all to head on over to the website and vote for me, but honestly the competition was pretty darn tough and there were some really great entries. First up was my entry:

Golden Age of Gaming (Frontline Gamer)

It was a typical positive outlook article from me, almost a rallying cry if you will to other gamers out there to realise just how good we have it right now because I really think we do have it good. Hopefully those of you who have been brave enough to read my blog over the last few months will have got that from how I've enthusiastically written about my hobby and my love for all things gaming.

Second was Von, a blogger I personally have a lot of time for...

Read more �

I've joined a Union...

Well sort of, I thought initially about joining various blogging collectives but they were all too restrictive in terms of what I could and couldn't say. Sure I agree hate speech , racism, sexism and down right jackassery should be avoided at all costs because hey we're all human and being openly offensive to someone due to colour, race, gender or creed is just not on in my books... but if I want to say Storm of Magic is a great big steaming pile of poo heaped upon the dung pile that is 8th Edition Fantasy and that the fetid carcass of that systems is only good for burying the grotesquely incompetent Matt Ward in, I should be able too right? Well i guess I just did!!! Guess what I'm going to continue saying what I want to as well and the guys at the collective I've joined actually actively encourage people to speak their mind.

You see what's the point in having a blog if you can't say what you want to say in the way you want to say it? If I want to swear, I'll swear. If I wish to use colourful metaphors that involve rhino's and a lack of KY Jelly, I will and if I want to write about none Games Workshop topics I bloody well will. Trouble is most of the gaming blogging collectives take issue with how I write but more importantly what I write. However the idea of being a part of a network of bloggers is an appealing one, so in steps the International House of Paincakes to make everything hunky dorey again. If you check out their Code of Conduct I think you'll all agree that's far more conducive to my... erm... style of writing. Because, yeah at times I can be 'abrasive' and I've been known to upset people, not deliberately you understand but sometimes by speaking from my heart I can ruffle peoples feathers.

Read more �