Circles and Squares?

*Squeek*

Circles? Squares?
Let me explain further...

Circles in this case refers to circles in Google+, which this week has really helped my wargaming.

If you aren't familiar with Google+, then the easy way to describe it is as a social networking service (SNS) like Facebook. The different thing about it (and the best feature) is that it offers you much finer control of who you interact with and what you see. This is achieved through "Circles". A circle is a group of people you specify. When you post something in your "stream" you can choose who you share it with:

• The whole world ("Public")
• A specific circle of your own
• An individual
• Or all off the above!

You can also control what you see in your stream. It could be just content from people in your circles, or everything.
Let me give you an example.

• In Google+ I do a search for "Tabletop Wargaming". This pulls in all the posts related to this search and I can then look through them at my leisure. (I can also save this search so I can easily explore it later.)
• When looking through these posts, if I find content by a particular user that is really interesting, I could "add them to a circle" that I create to group people with the same interests together. E.g. I have a circle called "Wargamers". (They don't know the name of my circle)
• Now, if I post something I could post it only to the people in my "Wargamers" circle, because I know it is relevant only to them. This stops their stream being cluttered up with meaningless stuff.

Remember, you create circles so they can be about anything!
"Warhammer", "High Elves players", "Skaven", "Saturday Gaming Club Members"
Etc.

You can learn more here:
https://plus.google.com
or from this video:

Anyway, from G+ this week I got two great things...

Number 1. A great link to some very high quality FREE paper scenery that works for any fantasy setting. With my printer, some card and some glue I made my first ever paper scenery, a Tavern. Check it out! 

The printed parts, added to card and ready to assemble

The front of the tavern, with Spearmen for scale

The back of the Tavern, with Silver Helms

Now, I didn't do this very well, but I think it was fun to make and it will do the job! In total I would guess it took a couple of hours of printing, gluing to card, cutting, scoring and then gluing again.
This is a pretty big building by Warhammer standards, but I guess it has two stories and a damn big bar...
You can find the original (and very helpful) post on the excellent battlereporter blog.

Number 2.

Information on G+ about Dust Warfare, a miniatures system based on Dust Tactics, an alternative universe WWII combat game. I had never really heard too much about it, but from G+ I spent some time looking into it...

1. "Weird WW2"?
2. Allied and Axis mechs?
3. Miniatures that come already primed?
4. x2 small starter armies included in the box?

...and so my Dust Tactics core set arrived yesterday (which nets me two starter armies) and I downloaded the Dust Warfare rules. (An online purchase from Fantasy Flight games).

The box cost about 80 $US from Amazon Japan (currently around 6,500 Yen for 2 small starter armies infantry and a Mech each and the Dust Tactics rules. Details here.) I then paid 20 $US for the Dust Warfare manual (digital download, currently on a special deal (usually 39.95)

Now, don't think that for me 100$ is small change. It isn't! However for the sake of comparison you get x1 box of Clanrats and x1 Warpgrinder in Japan for the same price (6,500 Yen).

Looking forward to reading all this and cracking open the box tomorrow! (Father's Day in Japan!)

And the "Squares"? What about the squares?

Above I talked about a social network. The squares I was referring to are much more "analogue"...

Yes, I decided to get started on magnetizing all the High Elves completed to date so that I can transport them more easily, and that means lots and LOTS of 20x20mm magnetic squares! 

I'm using almost the same system as before, with the exception that I have learned my lesson and am now using flexible metal sheet in the movement tray, rather than another magnet sheet.

This makes it much easier to drop the model into the tray and line everything up (with a magnet sheet in the tray AND on the base of the model, the polarities make things shift around and hard to rank up properly - yeah, I know, basic science...)

Dead easy, dead cheap and seems to work fine!

Roll on Dust Warfare tomorrow!

:-)

*Squeek*