MERRY CHRISTMAS and A New Hobby Direction

Merry Christmas from Astra Chaos Wolf!

I wish the best holiday wishes to you and yours! As for me, I'm having a fine holiday, Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, must be a holdover from my childhood. Well, Astra Chaos Wolf is now about 5 months old and I have been pleasantly entertained by writing for it. It serves as a creative outlet for me, something that I needed to vent some of  my stored up imagination that has been literally hurting my head from too much backlog. Luck for me I enjoy writing. I use to not be so very good at it, it took years and years of practice. Today, I'm no pro at writing, a mere amateur, but I feel I am decent at the craft.

I am pleasantly surprised to find ACW has nearly 10,000 visits already. Which, if I understood an article I read, really means about 5,000 real people and some 5,000 bots. Heck, I'll take 5,000, I was wondering if anyone would even care about this blog because 40K blogs are a dime a dozen. I suppose this goes to prove that the 40K community is strong and hungry for content, which is always a good sign of a healthy gaming community.

And for a New year, A New Hobby Direction
After a while of battling through the local 40K tournament scene I've come to the inevitable conclusion that it is not for me, both on a personal level and a skill level. I think the biggest hang-up for me is that to stay competitive, and to get some consistent wins, you have to buy into the most competitive armies and lists. That's not for me. I try to enter local tournaments with the notion that I am going to just have fun, with an army that I enjoy, and not worry about winning. Well, that notion only carries you so far. As much as I try, certain players in the competitive environment will succeed in getting under my skin (either intentional or unintentional) no matter how many good spirits I try to harbor. I just don't have time for that crap, life is too short.

Don't get me wrong here, there is plenty I do enjoy about tournaments like good times with friends and meeting new people. But sometimes it all ends up being a dud, for various reasons, and I'd rather just play casual games with friends on my own terms where I know there will be good times no matter what. And just in case some of my club members are reading this, I won't be entirely retiring from the tournament scene, I will just be attending a lot less.

So that new hobby direction. A few friends of mine in our club (South Mississippi Gamers) are going to run a year long Armageddon War campaign. We have the core armies already in our collections, Steel Legion and Orks, so we are off to a good start. I will be writing up the missions and then we will paint any extra models and terrain as needed. I hope by the end of the year to have at least a dozen video battle reports completed and these will be posted on the South Mississippi Gamers blog and You tube page. This will be my new venture into the casual side of 40K, if you can call an ambitious year long project as casual? I think so, I'm encouraging only fluffy lists; you know, lots of stock troops as the core of the army. That's how Armageddon was fought, with millions of infantry on both sides. Do I think it will work? Yeah, it will work.

It's going to be an exciting year of 40K for me and I sincerely hope the same for all of you!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

And finally, some Christmas eye candy for all.