A Look Back at 2011 and Plans for 2012

Blogging
Well 2011 has been a big year for this blog. From The Fang has been around for around 16 months now. I never really acknowledged the first birthday of the blog as, to be honest, I forgot. I've not exactly been consistent with my posting over the last year and a third with flurries at times and droughts at others but nethertheless I'm pretty pleased with what I've achieved here.

I often look at other blogs with 10-100 times my readership and think "how can I get to that level?", but then I remember this is a solo effort and a lot of the others have multiple writers churning out content. Now, there's nothing wrong with that and I've considered inviting other people to write on here but I'd like my blog to remain personal. This doesn't mean I'm ruling out a guest post or two in the future, but I've no plans for any at the moment.

I'm pretty pleased with the content on here and some of my earlier posts still get hits which is always nice. Speaking of earlier posts I was reading back through one I put up at the start of this year with my plans for 2011. One thing I mentioned was that I'd just bought some thunderwolves and it took me until August to get them finished! I also promised I'd be painting up some swiftclaw bikers and as well as Canis. Well Canis went on eBay a couple of months back because I couldn't see myself using him and the bikers are still sat basecoated but unused! I'd just finished reading the first Space Wolves omnibus back then and I haven't quite finished the second a year later!

I think the lesson here is I get distracted easily!

Blog Wars
Blogger tells me I've written just over 150 posts on this blog and I suspect a substantial chunk of them have been talking about Blog Wars 1, 2 or 3! The latter of which will be happening next year. Whilst I certainly can't boast about massive turnouts, what I am pleased about is the atmosphere on the day. When I first suggested a friendly tournament for bloggers there were people who didn't believe a competition, especially one with monetary prizes, could ever be truly friendly. Now, I'm happy for people to disagree, but I think the first two tournaments achieved a friendly feel if nothing else. I said in conversations with various people after BW2 that if it reached a point when the events became too competitive then I'd stop. Until that point, however, I'm fully intending to run two tournaments a year whether I get five people or fifty!

2011 with Space Wolves
As I've mentioned above I started the year with my thunderwolves and they lost their shine pretty quickly. However, in recent months I've fallen in love with them again and they made an appearance at BW2. I came to the conclusion that I'm never going to win a 40K tournament. This is down to a number of factors. Firstly, I don't think about things tactically enough. I deploy without thinking and make mistakes from then on. Now I'm not saying it's been luck when I've won games but I don't think I play the game particularly well. Therefore, I don't see any point whatsoever in taking a generic rune priest, wolf guard, hunters, speeders and long fangs list. They might be straightforward to play and devastating in the right hands but I just don't find them fun.

I still want to put together lists that are somewhat competitive but without sacrificing some of the variety that the codex offers. I guess what I'm trying to do is blame my poor performance on my reluctance to use generic net lists when it's probably more down to me than my list! There's a wealth of really fun units in the book and it'd be a shame to never try some of them out. I feel I know the Space Wolf codex pretty well now so it's time I started using other armies at tournaments.

Other Armies
I created Kabalite back in October and it's hardly been a roaring success! This is mainly down to the problem of trying to write two blogs at once. One inevitably gets neglected. People warned me of this when I started but at the time I was churning out posts pretty effectively and I was sure I'd manage to keep both up. I've not yet decided whether I'll take it down and merge the stuff onto here or not. It all depends on how much I use my DE army in 2012.

As it stands I can field three armies other than my Wolves, namely Tau, Orks and Dark Eldar. Unless I'm particularly drawn by a new codex I don't want to get any more. What I want is to be able to field at least 2,000 points of all three of these armies, fully painted. In fact, I'm going to set that as my goal for the end of the year. Not only that but I want to have some options too. Let's call it 3,000 pts for each army painted by the end of 2012. This may be somewhat optimistic since I'm moving house soon and will be spending a lot of my spare time renovating the new one but if I don't set a target I've got no chance.

I've only got three tournaments booked for 2012 so far. Jolly Toys in February at WHW, Open War XVII at Maelstrom in April and Blog Wars 3 in June. I'd like to avoid taking Space Wolves to any of these! I want to take my Dark Eldar to Jolly Toys. I originally said I'd be taking them to BW2 but bottled it at the last minute with the excuse that I wouldn't get them painted. I thought I'd made the right decision until the only DE player at BW2 managed to get most of his done within a few days before the tournament!!

I don't paint that fast though so I might have to consider other options. I said I didn't want to rush painting my DE just for a tournament but I may change my mind. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks. 

And finally...
At the end of the day I'm still amazed that people read my ramblings on here and even more amazed that people "follow" it!! I hope everyone has a great 2012 and who knows I might hit the 100 followers mark this year!

Blog Wars 3 - Saturday June 2nd 2012

As mentioned in previous posts I was pretty pleased with how Blog Wars 1 & 2 went so I thought it would be rude not to have a Blog Wars 3! The event will be held at Maelstrom Games on Saturday June 2nd 2012

The feedback I received from BW2 was that people liked the custom scenarios and so I'm keen to keep them for BW3 with some minor alterations. The scoring system needs a little tweaking so that the primary mission has a bit more weight than the secondary. The compulsory Special Character rule will be staying. I think it's one of the things that sets Blog Wars apart from other tournaments and I don't want to lose that. 

Feel free to disagree but I think the first two tournaments succeeded in the aim of creating a friendlier tournament atmosphere where there was still fierce competition but without the usual "issues" associated with it!

The packs will be released nice and early this time around (hopefully early next year) so that people have a lot more time to prepare. Similarly I don't see much harm in putting the tickets up for sale earlier this time so that people can plan their lives around it better. As ever I'm hoping for a decent turn out but I'm keen to keep things managable (so that I can still play mainly!) and therefore I'll be capping ticket sales at a suitable level (to be decided). Tickets will remain at the very reasonable price of £15 and there'll be the same guaranteed prizes with more depending on ticket sales.

I had toyed with the idea of making it a full weekend but decided against it for two main reasons. Firstly because I'd still like to play in it and a full weekend would probably be too much of a commitment. Secondly, I think that a friendly tournament needs to be a single day affair.

As ever I'm open to comments and criticisms. What was good about the first two tournaments? What would you like to see changed?

The most important thing is that we don't let Andy (Venerable) from Sons of Sanguinius win it again! Unfortunately, I have a conscience, which means I can't fix it so that he ends up playing a horrible list in his first game. Therefore it's down to you lot to make sure he doesn't manage it at Blog Wars 3!

Blog Wars 2 Coverage Across the Blogosphere

Being a tournament primarily aimed at bloggers, Blog Wars 2 has obviously been talked about on various different blogs and I present them here so that you can take a look for yourself and get a feel for the event. For those of you sick of hearing about the thing there'll be one more post on it and then normal service will be resumed! Anyway, here goes!

• Rogue Trader from Graham Sanders talks about his exploits with Tyranids at the tournament and also defaces the BW2 logo!
• Andy Lane from Claws and Fists has been reporting his battles with Ghazghkull and his orks here and here
• Commissar Dave (Clark) was Andy's opponent in the final game and he's talked about his exploits with his beautifully painted Praetorian (IG) army here.
• James Lamb's build up to the event can be found here and I'm sure he'll post some after action stuff soon
• Rick Miller talks about the BW2 aftermath and scooped Best Painted Special Character for his Helbrecht
• Another Tyranid entry from Chris Benstead at WeeMen (who won Best Painted Army) with him describing his first battle here 
• Finally, the winner of the tournament talks about his thoughts using Necrons and winning (sorry to spoil the surprise Ven) and I'm sure the other SoS guys won't be far behind him

Bit of a short post then but it's about the other blogs and their reports. In the next couple of days I'll talk about the plans for BW3