100 Days and Counting

Without letting this turn into one of those Oscar speeches where there are tears and lots of meaningless thank yous.  I wanted to talk a little more about how I got this 2nd Chapter up and running and to thank those who've helped me to rediscover the fun.

Before I decided to do this blog I had to decide whether I wanted to start the 2nd Chapter and as I went through the process of making that decision I kicked off some gaming that in all honesty was more about testing the water than it was about having fun.  Back in those first few posts I explained the process that I went through to test that water.  With hindsight I probably made it harder than I needed to as I could have slipped into running that safe option and likely reducing the benefits I've had from the path now taken.

Jeez that sounds quite cerebral when I read it back but then I suppose that reflects just how important my hobby is to me and the level of breakage it had gone through towards the end of the 1st Chapter.

So, some thank yous.

I'd like to thank John Laurie, Paul Laurie and Tom Russell specifically for giving me that "in" and gently nudging me to re-engage with my hobby.  Granted the games played back then (Battletech tabletop and RPG) are games that have fallen by the wayside now but what I was playing wasn't what was important, it was the actual playing of games with people I was comfortable to play games with.

I'd like to thank John Harper, Simon Harper and Brian Forrester for their friendship and encouragement to make DWARF my gaming venue.  Additional thanks to John and Simon for their enthusiasm in trying new games particularly RPGs.  Brian - I will get you playing a RPG one of these days!

I'd like to thank Douglas Hamilton, Ant Purdie and +Ross Hendry for their interest and high levels of enthusiasm to play games every week especially the board games and if nothing else you're each to blame for my growing collection of board games!

Finally I'd like to thank +Erik Langskaill for his unflinching resolve in making sure that his mate Dave rediscovered his hobby.  Erik more than most knows just how much I'd been missing my hobby and his involvement in getting my re-engagement with it to where it is now is not to be underestimated.

There are others I probably could thank but that's bordering on the Oscar style speech, most notably my wife for "letting" me spend money on my hobby!

So here we are, 100 days and counting.  With many more posts to come and hopefully a lot more fun to come too.

That 100th Post

100th Post but not 100th Day as there were 2 on my birthday.

So to do this properly I'll be be splitting this into a duologue on the 100th post and 100th day.

This post is more of an overall status check of how things are going in the world of A 2nd Chapter.  Tomorrow's post is a little lighter.

So how are we doing?  I refer my esteemed audience to this post here from 23rd July 2013 where I ask "What's the point?"

Talking about the hobby - Yep I've done a fair bit of that over the last 100 posts and I think I'm really only scratching the surface on a lot of the topics that I've covered and of course there are many more topics that I have yet to cover.
To turn it around though - what haven't I covered that you think needs a bit more discussion about the hobby as a whole?

Broadening my hobby - Well I'm playing games and I'm posting a fair bit about how I see my hobby developing and growing with some luck.  The key struggle here is finding more opportunities to play games, something I keep trying to move forward but so far no such luck.

Talking about hobby ideas - Less posts here than I'd like and if there was an additional objective for the blog it'd be to post more of my ideas.  The trouble here, I suspect, is that most of my thinking for the blog falls into the other 2 categories.

So overall, the blog is active and it's continuing to act as a way for me to express my thoughts on the hobby, my hobby and (if less so) my ideas.

Not Collecting or Trading

So as I've referenced in a few previous posts I have an interest in Magic: The Gathering but that interest only extends to casual play which seems to be counter intuitive when you're talking about a collectable card game...

I'm almost the perennial "starting out" player when it comes to Magic as I particularly enjoy playing core set decks with the exception of my blue/green deck that's got a lot of Zendikar block cards in it.  Not least of all is the wonderful Scute Mob which so long as you can protect it is a simple but annoying card for your opponent when you add Enchantment after Enchantment onto it!

My toe dipping into the pool of Magic is usually through buying things like Deck Builder toolkits and the odd Intro/Fat Pack although of late it's primarily been through the Deck Builder toolkits.

Another way to enjoy playing Magic without being dragged in to the world of collecting/trading of cards to build ze uber deck of uberness is to pick up Duel Decks.

There have been a fairly good variety of these over the past few years and the decks themselves are pretty good "starting out" player material.  The most recent of these is the Heroes vs Monsters Duel Deck which intro'd some of the cards from the now released Theros set.

You can compare these Duel Decks to many 2-player card games out there as they are complete out of the box with no additional cards required which for me is one of the attractions.  Of course you can buy more cards and customise the decks but that's not what we're talking about here.

The title of this post however should really be changed slightly to append "or Playing" as I've not played any Magic for a long time.  It's not really that big a deal given the other gaming I am getting in but I'm pondering some options around fixing that whilst keeping it to a casual toe dipping level of involvement in the game.