HONK

It's a lovely Monday morning and I am a horrible goose.

A bit of an introduction to me and what this blog is supposed to be about!

I go by the internet handle of A Goose. I am 35 years old (at time of writing), and I have played miniatures games in some form or another for over 20 years.

As I suspect is most common I began with Warhammer 40,000 and through my teenage years and 20s that was more or less all I played. I have a vivid memory of standing in the local Games Workshop as a kid with my parents and desperately wanting to start collecting a Warhammer Fantasy undead army (skellingtons are cool) but the shop staff convincing them that 40k was the simpler game and so we walked out with a starter box for that instead.

I bounced around game systems (and the country) a lot over the years. The first games I wanted to take vaguely competitively were Infinity and Marvel Crisis Protocol, though technically my first tournament experience was with Wild West Exodus where I took 3rd place at the first UK Nationals! Exciting times.

Unfortunately where I have (hopefully) settled for the foreseeable future, 40k and Age of Sigmar seem to have the local gaming community in a vice grip. Those systems don't appeal to me any more for a number of reasons. Infinity is a game I much prefer to play face to face, and Marvel Crisis Protocol has also lost its appeal (partly because of the relentless pace of releases, partly because the game feels very 'solvable' at times, and partly because the MCU has also stopped being cool and become... let's say, charitably, tired).

So about a year ago I picked up some Malifaux miniatures on a whim - mostly because they looked like they'd be fun to paint. And whilst we don't have a Malifaux community where I am, I began researching the game too. There are a lot of incredible content creators out there for the game, the discords are full of chat, and the lore is great. Listening to the Breachside Broadcast as I painted up my gremlins was a ton of fun.

I have roped a couple of old friends from back in the day into the game too, though we live all over the place so I have only managed to get one game in so far. They've managed to get in two. Shocking stuff, they're twice as experienced as I am already!

This blog is intended to chart my initial thoughts as I move from painting things into trying to learn the game in earnest. Listening to people talk about gaming is great, but it is no substitute for getting in there and playing the game yourself. Unfortunately, I suspect that if I want to learn the game properly I'm going to have to get onto Vassal rather than being able to rustle up regular local games - but that's fine.

It may also be that I just wind up collecting and painting Malifaux because the miniatures are a lot of fun, but not actually playing the game that much. That's fine too. We will see!

 HONK

-A Goose

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UK Marvel Crisis Protocol Grand Tournament 2025

Image
I went to (what I learned was the first!) UK GT. Since it was nice and easy to get to and I learned about it the same week I decided to check out Marvel again it felt like fate, and I was very excited to put some physical miniatures down on a table again – something that is increasingly rare these days! To try and get some practice in I joined the ongoing TTS league and in the runup to the tournament my results were: Very narrow loss to Avengers. Match cancelled due to scheduling issues with my opponent. Match cancelled due to scheduling issues with my opponent. Match cancelled due to scheduling issues with my opponent. Then work threw me a crisis so I just dropped to get that done so I could comfortably take Friday off because… then we were into the tournament! So… not exactly perfect for practice, but I did manage to get a few casual games in here and there so I at least knew my mechanics if not how they were going to perform in a more competitive environment. Friday ...
Read more

Pathfinder Protocol: Crisis Unleashed (9th Aug 25)

Image
  Lured by the promise of incredible swag and more Crisis Protocol, I packed up my Midnight Sons and took a trip over to sunny Peterborough! This was apparently the first tournament that Rob had organised – and if I hadn’t been told that I wouldn’t have guessed. We had good communication in the weeks running up to it, the tables were great, the promised swag was top notch. Great stuff! Since the UKGT I have definitely been bitten by the tournament bug. I’ve joined a team (The Thunderbolts! We’re the good guys, probably) to take part in next year’s Team Tournament and I’ve committed to making my girl Elsa shine. In the words of Marge Simpson: So this tournament report will be followed up with some more in-depth thoughts about where I might want to try and take the roster next. Spoiler alert: I think there’s definitely some room for improvement both in my Elsa-playing and in the tools I have brought to bear. My roster was: The Immortal Hulk Elsa Bloodstone Wong Werewolf by Ni...
Read more

Magical Training

Image
In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading to Salute 2025, and as is tradition this is when I stop and reconsider what my hobby goals for the year are going to be. At the start of the year I said to myself that I was going to commit to Bayou and finish up the crews I don’t yet own. But! Malifaux is a game with more variety between factions (and even crews within factions) than any other game I’ve played. On a long enough timeline, I suspect I’m going to wind up with everything sooner or later. That is, unfortunately, how my brain works. Way back in August 2024, before I had started in the MWS at all, I noted that I thought it was weird there was so little Arcanist representation, because every time I hear people talk about Arcanists they talk about how solid they are. That has remained true ever since, both in the MWS and according to the Bag of Tools data across the UK as well. People just aren’t playing Arcanists and I don’t get it! Witness has had a few nerfs, but I still think that...
Read more