Nexus battle

This weekend the Ascendancy Battle organised by myself and Andy at the Chimera shop finally took place after 2 weeks of effort in painting and organisation.

The battle was successes, and it all flowed well, even if the size of the battle was little ambitious for a 5 hour game.

On Saturday Julie came up to help me record events, Jock became one the Generals and Mike someone I had not met became the other General, we also had visit from SamK, Colin, RichardS, Amy and Jak from the Ascendancy Larp game to see what was happening. SamK and DaveP also helped by painting and providing some extra figures.

I had spent the previous weeks painting elves, see pictures below

and building a terrain piece called the Nexus, a couple of picture below, one at the tiered cake stage and one finished.

With help from DaveP we also created some special character figures see picture below

After the battle Me Julie, Jak and Mike went back to Andy & Heathers for a Chinese take away and a bit of quiet chat, I also sampled Heathers M&S cakes..yum.

On Sunday I woke up to type up the battle from the players, Julie had taken 4 A4 pages of notes in small handwriting for me to work from, however the 1st thing I encountered was 48 spam bots registered on our Forum, it took me over an hour to delete them, by the time I had done and recorded them 2 more had appeared.

So after I instead visited Andy in the shop to collect my figures and he was still running around making me coffee's despite his operation, he had organised yet more wargames in the shop and had 7 players all waiting for the 8th to show up, who was apparently playing WOW when they phoned to chase him.

I then when home via mothers to feed and check on her cat while she was away, typed up the battle post for the players and then crashed on the sofa.

Preparing for war

I spent this week and weekend hermit like preparing for the Ascendancy Wargame, next weekend. Through living close AndyL, and my own interest I've ended up as deputy organiser and GM, Andy tells me the battle story and background, which NPC (non playing characters) will be there, and then leaves me to work out the details under his supervision.

The Battle planning started the last day of the last LRP event with me picking up a pile (literally) of figures from DaveP, these were a assortment of High elves in various states of damage and unfinished paint jobs, I must say upon opening the box it didn't look too bad, but once I dug a little deeper I realised that a lot of paint had worn off, and a lot of figures had not only unfinished paint jobs but unfinished or broken figure conversions and many units only had 5 out 20 figures anything other than undercoated.
DaveP does a lot of excellent conversion to his figures so I chose the best 6 units and set about repairing and painting them, given the time scale they won't be receiving good paint jobs, since the exercise is quantity over quality for this battle. I'm nearly finished and very grateful for DaveP letting me have these figure to use, since starting totally from scratch would have taken 3 times as long.

One the other tasks I undertake as Andy's deputy is write ups on our forums to motivate and inform players what is happening, this being a very complex battle, I also roped in DaveP's other half, my good friend Julie to do a bit of creative writing on my behalf, she as also volunteered to help me with the actual battle, which is excellent news considering I would have needed 2 me's to keep tabs on this very large battle with lots of complex player involvement via their briefs which have kept my email inbox full all week.

My next task having found out Monday in AndyL briefs was to built a terrain feature to represent the Hive Mind Nexus, that's also built but not painted, currently it looks a like a tiered cake, not quite the effect I was looking for but I think painting will rescue it.

I'm currently typing up the play sheets, event list (a list of things that happen each turn) and character stats, but need a break since it's mind boggling getting it all to fit nicely, which I know it won't anyway since this battle has nice character in it, a man who appears to like Port from what I read called Grendal, oh and very random mega cannon anti story device thingy and fractures....oh and....help!.

Oh dear & that went quick

This weekend was the 1st Ascendancy camping event this year, and the weather forecast was not great but the actual weather turned out nice if a little cold, but we were well prepared for cold so it was not a problem.

The event itself was a kind of culmination of long running personal plot but it all went horrible wrong, and the after effect will take a bit of repairing, which will take time to play through. Overall it was a sparky 1st event, with a unexpected outcome that will be a bit of set back for the players, but you can't win them all, indeed Ascendancy is well balanced game and you never truly win or loose, since everything you do has consequences.

I camped as usual with Julie who brought her new tent for it first outing, and she discovered a 3 foot long rip in the built in ground sheet that had been repaired with tape of same material as the ground sheet, she asked my opinion on take it back or live with it, if it had been smaller or better repair I would have said live with, but 3 foot is ridiculous, I'm not sure how the manufacturers thought they could get away with it, so hopefully she will get a replacement of the same design, which I think is quiet a good tent having camped in mine twice now in foul windy and wet weather.

I myself brought my new costume to try, I was worried about the length of the robe, but it turned out to be fine, and I did not trip over it. I was hoping for a few picture, but failed, I forgot to take my camera out of the car and missed other peoples photos, so pic's will have to wait until the next event.

I got back late around 10.30 after dropping off Julie and having quick natter with Dave about the event and looking at Charlie her cats wounded nose.

Sun & Snow

This weekend we had a nice mixture of warm sun, hail, sleet and snow, the snow settled overnight, but had started to melt by time I was up at 7am Sunday morning and was gone by 8am except in the shadiest parts.

On Saturday night I visited my friends Ste & Deb for a meal, I was ordered to arrive before Dr Who started, but I got distracted and only just arrived in time. So when I arrived at my friends, they sat me down immediately with none of the usual chit-chat. We then watched a good but lightweight episode of Dr Who, the cute aliens making my friends son, Lewis laugh and the Dr’s new companion Catherine Tate ended up being fine, despite doom and gloom predictions by some Dr Who fans.
We then retired from the telly for a nice meal and to catch up on news since we don’t see each other that often.

Sunday was household core catch up day, but after that I went for late afternoon meal with Andy, Heather, Chris and Louise from Ascendancy plus kids.
I met Freddy for the 1st time Chris & Louise son, who not long after sitting down started pulling faces, Louise said that’s his poo face, picked him up, sniffed his bottom and said yep I’m right. At that moment Chris decided he needed to go fetch the pushchair from the car he should have fetched earlier thus volunteering Louise to change the probably highly radioactive poo covered nappy.
Chris was is usual exuberant self, I’ve never seen him not frothing with enthusiasm for something, and with slow service at the restaurant before we knew it 4 hours had flown by and it was 8pm.
Andy on the other hand was starting his revenge for the April fools day joke I had played on him by constantly dropping comments about informing all the refs and that if I miss the next event it will only make it worse, well it worked I’m now worried, very worried :S

I'm sure its purple.

Today I had a few little jobs to finish for my character Izzanbard Devlin, so 1st thing this morning I visited Clare's Beautiful Beads and Crafts in Belper following advice from Meridian Ariel. I needed a clasp, and leather thread to hang my new marble in a claw that I had purchased at TORM. Clare's is a fascinating shop which I will visit again, the shop had everything I wanted so the marble is now mounted (see picture below)



The next thing I intended was to remake my tabard in a better fabric, I had some purple wool, so set to cutting and sewing it together, and by 3pm I was done, see the photo below which shows the old (made from corduroy) and new.

This is based on a pattern provided by Julie which I simply found in my email inbox and re-used. I only made one error while assembly on the very last hem of the front panel, somehow it ended up 2" (50mm) shorter than the other 3, so I unpicked it, luckily I had left just enough spare material and sewed it back together to match the length of the others. (It was very noticeable when I took the photograph)

The new tabard is go together with the new black robe the 2 are pictured together below, (click photo for larger image) which will provide Izzanbard a slightly higher quality look. The robe is 15thC medieval in style, with slit sleeves and was made by Jackie at Cloak'd and Dagger'd, and purchased at the Larp fair. I should have made my own, but I just didn't feel confident enough to tackle the item.

Bubble gum & coffee

This is what happens when your trying unsuccessfully to diet, your mother sends you a 900g jar of jelly beans.



Very nice jelly beans with 36 different flavors including ones such as coffee, cinnamon, candy floss, bubble gum, butterscotch and dozens of different fruits from kiwi to rather nice English blackberry, I'm not sure if I've tried them all, since identifying the colours from the chart is rather difficult.

Jasmine decided she needed some new photos while I had the camera out so here's few