Welcome gentle readers to THE GREATEST WEBSITE IN THE WORLD!
Or, I hope, the foundations of a pretty decent one. Inside these hallowed (web)pages you will find an eclectic mix of board games, roleplaying games, and wargames, tutorials, homebrew rules and all sorts of arts, crafts and writing.
Wargaming-wise we’re heavily skewed on Games Workshop at the moment as that is for the most part, the resources we have! Although I am a huge fan of Warlords of Erehwon (which to my mind is everything Age of Sigmar could have been but wasn’t. *ducks*), and we’re both keen on getting more into 6mm and 10mm wargaming of various kinds.
Meet Dan & Paddy
We’re Dan & Paddy, two middle aged dads and lifelong wargamers. We started with Warhammer in 93/94 ish, we saw some Blood Bowl miniatures in Sussex Model Centre and really wanted them, but the gentleman advised us our mum and dad that it was probably too complicated and that was that for a while, until mum discovered KC’s Games a year or two later and bought us the 5th edition Warhammer starter set which can only have just dropped as most of the army books were still 4th ed. So we’ve been doing this a while!
Paddy (me) plays an eclectic mix of Chaos and Orcs/Orks in every possible system where these factions exist but has also started High Elves for The Old World, whereas Dan plays a fairly boring spread from Necrons, and Dark Eldar, to 30k Salamanders and Night Lords, as well as Skaven, Tomb Kings and Chaos Dwarfs.
Our favourite games are The Old World, Horus Heresy, Mordheim, and GorkaMorka. We’re also partial to a bit of Blood Bowl, Necromunda.
What’s This All About Then
The craic mostly, if I’m being honest. If we can make a bit of hobby money out of it that would be nice, but its not the primary reason.
In reality me and Dan create A LOT of stuff for our games, this website will help us keep of track of that, and keep it accessible for us at the gaming table, while also giving the wider gaming community the benefit of our feverish labours.
In addition to this some of our close friends are well established in their respective niches in the online wargaming scene, like Richard at Warrior Prints and James, the creator of Timeforge: Adventures Through the Vortex, so if we can plug them we will do.
There will be some affiliate links, there will be some ads (though if they get too obnoxious we will remove them) and in time there are personal projects Dan and me would like to get into production and hopefully use Tabletop Levies as a platform to market and sell those products.
But the more commercial aspect of the site is a long way away yet, you need to build up a decent amount of engagement, establish a brand name yada yada and with two kids apiece, and me studying for a degree there just isn’t time to don our monocles and twirl our mustaches as we embark on a great capitalistic endeavour.
So for the most part this is a hobby journal, and a networking tool with the wider community, please engage with us on Facebook and Instagram, and if time permits maybe we can meet up and get some games in!
What’s next for Tabletop Levies?
Well that’s a question (that I asked myself apparently). I am still trying to find time to assemble the Saturnine box, and a High Elf Battalion that I got for my 40th back in July, I have barely thought about painting any of it (although I play Word Bearers in Horus Heresy, and High Elves are white, silver and blue so it’s not like I need to think too heavily about that)
Dan and me have talked about doing a variation of the Tale of X Gamers format, this time it’s working through our pile of shame, we’ll paint up 1000pt armies, then we will select 500pts, get them painted and add them to the army when done, and select another 500pts. We could wrap that it in a narrative campaign that culminated in a HUGE pitched battle. That would be all kinds of cool.
Miscellaneous Other Projects
I’ve recently dusted off my Planetary Empires set, and would like to use that for a map-based Horus Heresy campaign which would also be awesome.
In addition to that, I’ve got some lovely model kits I want to use for a MASSIVE GorkaMorka truck, and I found a bag of left over vehicle bits at a car boot sale last year so that is a project that is burning in the back of my head.
I’ve also recently picked up some interesting board games I would like to use to write playthrough’s/tutorials and reviews, there’s a whole Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle setting I would like to get written up and made available on the website, as well as a Dark Heresy campaign, and of course my 3d Modelling and Sculpting. I have loads on my plate, and I know Dan is similar as he is working on some Wargaming rules and we both are trying to make time for epic scale wargaming, as well as numerous historical wargames.
There’s a lot.
What else?
That is mostly it, we’re definitely on the lookout for fellow gamers we can meet up and play with. We’ve both tried going to gaming clubs but getting tables is never guaranteed so we might look into hiring a hall or something in the future.
Sometimes my little boy Rory likes to join us, so if there’s a kid in some of the photos, it’s not a child labour thing, we’re not running a sweat shop where 5 years old churn out blog posts (or else!) even if it reads like it. It’s just good old fashioned Dadz & Ladz bonding!
