NEW YEAR... NEW DIRECTION!

I'm sat here on the Saturday before New Year's Eve, watching Total Recall (the Verhoeven version, not the remake - ew.), thinking about the last year in my hobby, and the last few days....

2017 has been a good year for my hobby related activities, with me building not one, but 4 near-complete armies, due to the release of the excellent 8th Edition of Warhammer 40,000:

Craftworld Eldar

Eldar Harlequins

Exorcists Space Marines

Astra Militarum


All tied around a central idea of them working with a senior Inquisitor following the start of the Terran Crusade, to stem the tide of Chaos across the galaxy. I'll be showcasing the miniatures of each over the next few weeks, along with the back stories I've started to flesh out.

That's just a small part of the goodness - I've also got a stable, regular RPG group now which is playing Starfinder (and loving it), along with a more casual group who are playing 5th edition DnD (my holy grail of a long term Cthulhu campaign still eludes me however...)!

The not so good...

There's been a noticeable rise in the more.. negative participants in our hobby. At first they seemed to have been restricted to the more risible Facebook Groups, but recently, they've begun to show themselves in Youtube channels, blogs and other media. One such negative channel is Arch Warhammer - a Youtube content creator who has delighted in becoming alt-right in their leanings, attacking (and having their followers attack) anyone who disagrees with their anti-feminist, ant-left rants (such as attacking the Feminist 40k group for wanting equal representation of women in the miniature ranges outside of the Sisters of Battle line).  It would be easy to just ramble on and rant about this idiot, but, wanting to channel that energy to be more positive and welcoming to everyone, I've reached out to my fellow Twitter users (under the #warmongers tag) to look at how we can promote the positive, inclusive attitude that's needed in our hobby, with the aim of making it the best it can be.

Look out over the coming weeks for highlights of other blogs, channels and websites that all have a positive, proactive and inclusive attitude, along with reviews of manufacturers, sellers and all-round great hobby providers (a small taster of these can be found in the 'Friends of CGI' sidebar).

I look forward to sharing my hobby with you over the coming weeks and months - hope you're along for the ride!