Hobby Goal: Social Gaming

I want to get back into social gaming. At the moment I have a small circle of friends I play Fantasy against and I love them but we don't have a chance to play as often as I'd like. Plus, going to a gaming club will be good for the whole meeting new people thing.

So, my goal for the week is to examine my options, not just in terms of where to game (local GW or local club?) but what game to break myself in with.

Fantasy is my favourite game and absolutely the one I'm most confident playing but who knows how receptive any club will be to playing an “OldHammer” edition?

Then there's 40k, which frankly terrifies me. In spite of years and years of everyone telling me its the easier system to learn I just can't wrap my head around the pages and pages of special rules and exceptions and fifty seven varieties of power weapon... too much damn rules flicking. Plus, I don't really have a functional army though it wouldn't take me long to get something up and running in the Flesh Tearers line. Still, the complexity of the ruleset (I really, really do find Fantasy easier, I'm not kidding) puts me off using it get back into social gaming.

Third option, of course, is to bootstrap one of my existing Fantasy armies into an AoS-compatible state. One of the big selling points people keep pitching to me is the simplicity of the ruleset which might be a good thing considering I'm doing this mainly to meet people. If I go that route my only real thought is that I'd much prefer to play one of the factions with a Battletome as I don't want to stumble into one of those horribly embarrassing rules the “get you by” battle scrolls tended towards like comparing moustaches, pretending to converse with your models, miming riding a horse and so on.

Yeah, of the many ways in which that wasn't one of Games Workshop's finest hours that was... one of them.

That proviso doesn't limit too much as I could probably kludge together something useable for Clan Pestilens, Flesh-Eater Courts, Bonesplitterz or Sylvaneth with the minimum of fuss or additional outlay in models if I go that route.

On a more practical note for the coming week, I have to admit that even after declaring February “Dwarf Month” I haven't made overmuch progress on that front. Still, I've nearly got the Rangers done and I have my small horde of Ironbreakers and Irondrakes sat to one side of my table waiting to go through the mass production process (and, in the case of the Irondrakes, a rather nice bronze method a friend showed me). So whatever progress I can make on that front is welcome until I find a new theme for March on Wednesday.