It's been a while... I've got a good excuse though.

Well, I realised that it'd been a while since I'd written in here and thought I'd remedy the situation. I suppose there's a couple of excuses really. Number 1: my password never works. Number 2: I've been gaming my socks off!

I never thought I'd end up playing Warhammer 40,000 but the new release of the 5th edition rules has seen me not only get 59 space marines all in one colour and semi ready to game, but also painting the latest box set "Assault on Black reach" in 3 days. The gaming has been going nicely in store, with people realising they have a local place to play and meet new players.

The release day of Assault on Black reach saw an amazing amount of people visit and use the store as a place to game and it was great to see. We had at least 10 gamers start an impromptu game of Apocalypse, as well as customers wandering in to pick up or purchase their copies of the box set. The paint supply was put under heavy strain and dice rolled all over the place. I even got to use the shop titan!

Thursday night games has been somewhat successful also, and it pleases me to see people dropping in, knowing they can get a game in after work. My vampire counts army has been somewhat neglected over the last few weeks, but I managed to trot them out against some Goblins the other day. We had to cut it short however as I needed to pick Tash up from her place of work. Looking forward to a game against Ogres this week. If that doesn't happen, I'm sure there's plenty of games I can watch in the mean time.

There's talk of a small 40k campaign using a map of werribee for territory, which will be interesting to say the least. It'll be great to see it go ahead and see how it turns out so we can plan future games with other systems and get more people involved.

October sees the release of the latest Space marine codex, (yes another one). I'll be away the first few days of the month, but there will be someone there over limited hours to fulfil your 40k needs. Check the forum or the main site for more info on that front.

Well, that's about all really for now. Just wanted to let everyone who reads this, if any one, know that Corner of the Attic is still indeed around. It's just that I've been that busy with new customers, new releases and heaps of games, that something had to give, and unfortunately it was this. Stay tuned though because I'll endeavor to write a lot more in future and give my opinion on what's going on both at the store and in gaming in general. Until then, may all your dice roll 6's, unless you're playing me and you're rolling to hit/wound/cause disarray to my army.

The Dead march forth this March 8th

This March saw the release of the 7th Edition Vampire counts. Being an avid fan of anything Vampire counts, I was looking forward to seeing what new things were coming out as I'd heard many strange rumours. The end of bloodlines as we know it was a shock to me, but looking at it now, it's no big deal because I can still make a Lahmian style list if I feel like it and I still have the girls anyway. Every vampire now has the ability to cast magic and knows invocation of nehek off by heart, (as they should have). The necromancers are just the fix it blokes whose job is to make sure the dead can still walk or hammer a bit of timber onto a leg, etc.

New models and characters have made the list interesting as well. A vampire who can barely contain his human form his lust for blood having taken over from his desire to hide his true beast. A cart filled with corpses that inspires the dead to attack first, or messes with the magic of the enemy. Zombies are the flavor of the month as well, players are going to need many boxes of these blokes to ensure they can keep raising them, and raise them they will with the new spell raise the dead used in conjuction with the Invocation of nehek.

The potential is there to have a list with at least 11 power dice to use in the magic phase also, which can be a scary proposition to face, especially as casting Necromancer spells like Invocation of nehek, Raise dead or Van Hel's Danse Macabre can be cast on a 4+ through to a 7+ and cast more than once with the same character.

One of the things I've noticed in the list is the Black coach has been downgraded. Evocation of death no longer means for each wound it causes it takes that wound on itself. It simply means that now it can roll any magic users power dice and if it rolls a 6, can then roll on a table that can give the coach the ability to fly, hate, have scythed wheels or be ethereal. Not a psychological tool used to scare opponents when you're placing it on the table when getting your models out, but somewhere, somehow it'll come in handy, just haven't found where yet.

I've been surprised by all the different people coming in to buy the Vampire Counts as well. It seems they've generated a cult following of sorts and the new models are going to create a few more converts as well. The amount of choices you have in your force has left me gasping for breath. The options are almost limitless, do I go a full magic army, a full combat army, a bit of both? The combinations of magic items, or vampiric powers as well as what magic to take to aid you in your conquest is amazing.

I spoke briefly about the new looking models before. The new skeletons have a tattered look to them, making them look more like they've been lying around half buried in a field for eons. The same with the grave guard which are now plastic. Ancient looking heroes that have come back to cause more havoc than they ever did in life. The mystery to me is why they made Ghouls in a unit however. They're supposed to wander around at the head of an army biting and tearing into all and sundry. Yet now they're in a unit. A unit that desperately needs to strike first to prevent it from being destroyed seeing as it has no armor saves. The ability to be able to raise EVERYTHING, or at least heal them, has made the entire army more flexible.

Well, I'd best stop rattling on about the Vampires. If you're able to grab a game against them to see for yourself how they've become an unstopable horde. Or even better, why not look at them as a new army for yourself?

Laurie Goodridge, Painter extraordinaire and all round nice bloke

It's taken a while but finally it's arrived online. An interview with Laurie Goodridge, painter extraordinare, who's appeared in recent White Dwarf Magazines participating in the Tandaris outbreak. And a while back a very impressive Tyranid conversion of Laurie's graced the front cover of White dwarf as well. (Still got a few copies of that issue left over...).

Paul: How old were you when you began your painting, was it because you were already playing war games or was it the painting that attracted you and the natural progression was painting?

Laurie: I started collecting when I was 15 when a friend gave me a few miniatures. I really liked the way they looked and was completely amazed by the detail. Before long I had a few odd models from various armies that I wanted to paint and it’s escalated from there.

I took up painting pretty much straight away with some really tragic results but as I really had a desire to be as good as the best painters I stuck with it.Determined to improve, I started collecting as much material on painting miniatures as possible – White Dwarf provided much of the inspiration and I bought up back-issues from friends and cut the pictures of painted miniatures out and kept them in a folder for easy reference. I still have those pages to this day.Over the years I’ve won a few Golden Demon trophies and best painted army awards at tournaments. For the last two years I’ve had the honour of being a judge at the Australian Golden Demon painting competition.

Painting is my favourite aspect of the hobby and I put a lot of time into keeping my painting skills up. This is probably why I’m not a particularly great general, so please, ask me questions about painting- not about how to win games.

Paul: What tools would you recommend first time painters get when first starting out?

Laurie: The best advice I can give any painter is to get good quality brushes and look after them! I have brushes that I bought five years ago that are still excellent because I take care of them.

Some basic hints for brush care:

• Don’t overload the brush with paint. It will dry in the ferule (the metal cone-shaped bit) and wreck the bristles
• Wash out your brushes in clean water often while painting and change the water frequently (usually before you begin using a new colour.)
• Clean your brushes once you’ve finished painting. Use soap or even shampoo on your brushes – they are hair after all!

A good rule for brush selection is to use the biggest brush you can get away with. Large areas of a single colour can be painted very quickly using a large brush then use a smaller brush to get into the shading. Using a fine detail brush to paint a tank is obviously going to take a long time. Likewise, using a tank-brush to paint a miniature’s eyes isn’t going to work so choose the right brush for the job. Colour choice is really going to come down to the model or army you’re painting but a good selection of basic paints would be:

• Black (Chaos Black)
• White (Skull White)
• Red (Blood Red or Red Gore)
• Silver (Mithril Silver or Chainmail)
• Flesh (Elf Flesh)
• Blue (Enchanted Blue)
• Green (Dark Angels Green or Snot Green)
• Yellow (Sunburst Yellow)

These colours are all good for getting started. They are bright and clear and can be mixed together to make different shades if you want to experiment a bit.

Paul: Are there armies out there that may be easier to start with because they are easier to paint? What’s a good starting army, (from any of the games) when it comes to a beginner looking at painting up their first army?

Laurie: Choose an army you’d really like to own. Choosing an army is usually more about the fact that you like the way it looks, performs in battle, its background or some other aspect you find appealing. Some armies may appear to be easier to paint, such as Necrons for 40K or Orcs & Goblins in Fantasy but if you don’t like them - even though they are easy to paint, you might not get the same degree of enjoyment from them. So, choose an army you like then find an easy way to do a basic paintjob on them. If you can achieve a neat paintjob then the army will look great. You really don’t have to be a master painter to have an amazing looking army.

Paul: When you first started out, did you have favorite models you liked to paint? I found that because I bought the original Warhammer boxed set with Goblins and High Elves, I became good at shading and highlighting goblin green and generally liked painting the gobos.

Laurie: I began by choosing a few models that I really liked the look of. The first army I painted was a Legion of the Damned Space Marine army for a customer (I started up a miniature painting business when I was 17) The first armies I owned and painted was a Skaven horde. Overall, I do like to play with fully painted armies but I still prefer painting single miniatures to a high standard. Painting armies is tough, but hugely rewarding once you get them onto the table.

Paul: What techniques do you suggest a beginner get the hang of to help the early stages of their painting?

Laurie: The great thing about painting is that there are no rules. You can do anything you want. Try lots of different techniques, lots of brush strokes and different thicknesses of paint. The more you play with it, the more you’ll learn about how it works. While playing with paint will teach you a lot, my number one suggestion for advancing your learning would be to paint in neat blocks of colour. Neatness is essential with painting and is a good discipline. The key to neatness is slowing down – take time to get a good even cover of thin paint. Don’t rush it. Remember to always let one colour dry completely before adding the next, otherwise you’ll end up with a mess of smeared colours and fingerprints.

The psychology of dice

The psychology of dice rolling

Some of you who may have played for a while have accepted the fact that some days the dice aren’t working or get the feeling that the dice gods are about to abandon you. I too know this feeling but have worked at overcoming the defeatist attitude these feelings can cause.

A battle with dice…

It’s all about the attitude. If you’re worried about the game or the person you’re playing against, then all of a sudden you freak out because you’ve rolled double 1’s on your first magic phase, then it’s already set you off on a course of destruction. You’ll notice that once your dice have “gone bad” then the rest of your rolls tend to do the same. Apart from playing with loaded dice, what can you do?

Smile, someone will be watching

Take this example of reverse psychology for a second to see where I’m headed with this. When driving a car and approaching traffic lights that are green, most people will say to themselves, “Don’t change, I’m running late, let me get through…” or something to that effect. What happens? The lights change and you have to stop. I started thinking the opposite. The lights are green, I’m approaching them and I think, “Ok, I’d like to stop, come on change to red, come on… Dang! They’re still green." I said as I sail through the lights with a giggle, reverse psychology on the lights! I’m serious about this, I reckon it’s almost 90% accurate, and then I think that the 10% failure rate is down to not being able to convince the lights I'm being serious.

Ok he’s gone mad, but bear with him for a second…

So how does that example fit in with dice rolling and being successful in your games? How many games have you played where the dice have rolled badly and you’ve had the worst game ever as nothing ever went right? I know you’ve all had one or two of those games. Simply put, don’t concentrate on the numbers you’re after, think of another set of numbers. Instead of thinking, “I don’t want to roll double 1’s for this magic phase”, think, Ok, I need to roll 1’s to get this spell off, convince yourself that’s what you need and you’ll never ever roll them, well at least you’ll be about 90% accurate, more so if you’re particularly convincing.

The dark side of the dice

There is also a dark side to this psychology of dice. It's been dubbed "Dice calling". Basically put, it's calling the result of the dice before the person has rolled the dice. It can have the ability to crush your opponent when you're calling correctly. I've gained a reputation for calling dice. I played an empire player at my home once, it was his shooting phase, and he had all his warmachines on a hill which was in his deployment zone. I told him he'd "roll a misfire and then a 1." To which he then rolled exactly what I called, his first turn of shooting and it was all gone. My undead were free to move across the table and wipe out his troops.

I took it to the next level with an orc and goblin opponent, by this stage I was told I wasn't allowed to call dice, so I took my artillery dice, placed the misfire die to show misfire, and then because it was a rock lobber he was using, I used the scatter dice to point back at his army. His shooting turn came and I tapped on my dice, showing him without vocalising, what he was going to roll, and guess what... He rolled exactly what I had shown him on my own dice, right down to how the scatter dice faced. It can be a potent game winning device, but one that can also cause your opponent to swipe everything off the table onto the floor...

Cocked dice a journey into madness

Cocked dice... WTF!

Having run the Armageddon war games club for 4 years or so, I'd started to pick up on the personalities of the players and their "quirky" ways. There were players who would always give you different stats, players who would change their armies rules, or "believe" what they were doing was right, and then the worst of the lot, those who called "cocked" when a dice isn't laying perfectly flat on the table.

It was a phenomenon that slowly crept up on me. Some of our scenery was sitting on 5mm board and every now and again you'd get a dice leaning against it, perhaps showing more than one number. I started to notice that those dice would be scooped up quickly and the simple claim of "Cocked" with a meaningful look at the opponent and a long drawn out blink that would defy the opponent to say anything would take place and the dice would be re-rolled.

I also started to notice that the "cocked" dice were never re-rolled if the number was one that the roller was after. It gnawed at me, and one day I snapped. I led a campaign of terror against all "cocked" dice rollers, well not all of them, because sometimes, it was a legitimate claim. There even came a time when if you could put a die on top of a cocked die and it stayed there, then it wasn't cocked, if it fell off, it was cocked. To me that was the way the "cocked dice callers" tried to make their art a science. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! It's not going to happen. The only way you're going to be able to get away with a cocked dice is to not roll it into terrain, simple.

One novel way of combating cocked dice is to call the cocked die as a 7, especially if it's showing more than one number. Of course here you're going to have the cocked dice callers trying to call "Cocked, that's a 7." all the time, but they'll learn soon enough, like they did at our club, as to whether their call is going to be regarded as legitimate.

One of the last games that were played at the club was between High elves and Empire in Warhammer fantasy. There was a group of us watching as it was the only game going on at the time. About halfway through the game, a handful of dice were rolled and it was claimed that one of them was cocked. As is the custom for the "cocked dice caller", he grabbed the dice in question and went to roll them again. The Crowd errupted in cries of "Cocked! WTF" and "OMG, that was so not cocked." the perpetrator could do nothing but put the dice back down and continue on with what he'd originally rolled, which apparently wasn't to his liking. It's hard to call cocked dice on a flat table.

On my first visit to Arcanacon this year, I wandered past a table where a game of 40k was going on. I can't remember the armies battling but I was there for a dice roll. He was standing over the table, he rolled the dice into the middle, next to a tank and then calmly called cocked, so picked up a heap of dice and rolled again. I had to bite my tongue and walk away. The bloke opposite him hadn't batted an eyelid, the table had a sand texture to it and if the bloke thought it was cocked, I'm sure he had a spirit level out to see if it was indeed raised off the table. I couldn't believe that something that to me is just a way of re-rolling a result that wasn't favorable was so accepted. I know there are times when yes, the dice is indeed showing a few numbers, and when that happens I'll ask the opponent if they think it needs to be re-rolled, not just pick it up with the call of "cocked" and re-roll the dice.

What are your thoughts on cocked dice? Have you had any cocked dice nightmares at the hands of players who think winning is the be all and end all of gaming?