Emily Engberts Plays Miniature War Games
In this episode of Unusual Hobbies author Emily Engberts Plays Miniature War Games.
Author Emily Engberts joins Sheena today to talk about her hobby of painting and playing miniature war games.
In this episode:
- What is miniature war gaming
- Why it’s fun
- How to get started
Listen to the podcast here
Transcript
please note this transcript has not been edited and is automatically generated meaning certain words will be incorrect.
I’m Sheena and this is unusual hobbies a short podcast series where we talk to people about hobbies that are different and unique today I’m joined by Emily Ingrid’s who is doing one of the most unique hobbies I’ve heard of and I suppose this makes me an old fart because I think this is gaining popularity if I’m not mistaken but Emily thank you for joining me today we’re talking about wargaming or miniature wargaming right miniature wargaming explain to us what this is basic idea is that you have two armies or more armies that fight against each other instead of doing it on the battlefield or on a computer screen you actually play it on a tabletop platform thing it’s very intense hobby because generally yeah so by then paint well by and then put together then paint and then you can play with them so okay so let’s take two steps backwards so this is a tabletop game and by that you mean these like a map or something on the table yeah you can either play it on a map or some people actually make their own boards they are wooden or plastic squares almost tables by themselves but they’ll have hills and trees and all sorts of other cool things on them so that’s what you play on so it’s like a miniature landscape yeah okay and then you battle with miniature creatures right so then you get these tiny figurines which you buy a symbol and paint yes okay and these miniature figurines tend to be what kind of creatures there are a lots of different brands of Duty’s and they come in a lot of different types I only play games workshop games at the moment which has a lot of different races that you can play in the fantasy or the age of Sigma Chi side it’s what you would expect from most fantasy books so you’ve got your aux your dwarfs your your elves your dark elves you’ve got chaos creatures coming from like d’void and they can agree horrible so you get all those on the fantasy side and then the science fiction you’ve got your Space Marines you’ve got your your elves but space elves and all sort of creatures that are flying around on spaceships and shooting laser guns and that kind of stuff from the other side and okay yeah basically anything you’d find in a fantasy or in a science fiction book would come on the table and can you miss them you can’t mix most of them with it between fantasy and science fiction but there are some races that are just well they’re chaos like it doesn’t matter it’s a fantasy chaos or if they’re fiction chaos there’s just creepy creatures generally okay so how do you win by defeating the other person usually but how like how does the actual game go so do you throw dice to see who hits or misses start of the game you put your armies on the table then you start moving your army forward and if you can shoot or otherwise fight someone else then you roll your dice to see if something hits or and how much damage they do and if they actually shoot sometimes you you you also have to roll the dice first to actually know if they shoot so sometimes they shoot but they don’t actually shoot anything they can misfire very frustrating okay how long an average does one of these games take depending on how many points your army is it can take anywhere from an hour to three hours something like that I think the fastest game I’ve played is an hour so I’m guessing a lot of strategy goes into building the army and deciding what you’re gonna have yeah that or this looks good that looks good I want that that looks good and this looks good it also works and is there like a limit to how many people or points or something you can have in an army usually you decide before you start playing you decide how many points the army can be worth most common with in Warhammer is either thousand points or 2,000 points something like that is basically what you play and how many figurines would that be that really depends on what army you play I have an army that is we can’t I think I’ve got 1,300 points or something like that 1,500 points it’s over 50 different models okay but I also know people who have a two thousand point army there are only eight models okay really strong models but they only have very few of them so it’s first huge ik as to what you want to play and how you play it okay yeah definitely and then there’s also the elements of luck with the dice yeah there’s a lot of dice rolling it’s even so bad that some people will throw their dice away if they keep rolling to Bali there’s a real dice superstition going on in it oh my well if you dice don’t roll very well then you keep dying or you keep not killing the other person so right and what dice are you using most of it is this excited dice okay they don’t have very many different of course you get all the pretty ones but in general you just use six sided dice so if somebody decides that this sounds like the right kind of thing for them what would you recommend that they do now I’d recommend trying to find the nearest Games Workshop or war hammer store because I think they’re rebranding most of them to war I’m stores these days but and go inside and ask the manager there what the best idea is for them they usually have starter boxes which have a couple of models but from two different armies so you can start like playing together with someone else or you can just start by a box of one army and built for yourself and then go play in a local gaming community or in the stores themselves so how did you get started with this I sort of fell into it I’ve had a couple of exes who either painted a lot or who played after a while I also sort of stopped having interest in painting them because it’s a very quiet hobby like you sit down with your pay and some music or whatever and you just start painting so it’s a very soothing quiet hobby to do that side of it and I really like that and being able to be creative which then of course bit me in yes as I was growing my army but it started out fun I’ve been painting since I think 2006 but I only played my first game last year so that that’s twelve years where I’ve only painted and never played again and now you’re hooked on the plane I love playing yeah but I also still really like the painting so I I’m very easily distracted so I only tend to do it for like a couple of months weeks or months at a time that I paint it’s why I never really got that far with my army very quickly that’s why it took me so long but to even have enough models to be able to play yeah now started playing I really like playing it just took me a while to get there what appeals to you most about this hobby I think the quiet time and my own creativity I could put into it but also I’ve met some really cool people these days I often spend an afternoon in a week actually going through my local store and paint there so it’s also got really a social community part to it for me and as an author I just spend so much time on my own but having that social element really makes makes it fun I can absolutely see there if you’re not into going out to parties or being overtly sort of social with others I can see how something like this would be a really great way to meet people of similar interests who are also not necessarily outgoing yeah definitely yeah you’re listening to the lesbian talk show the lesbians or choke on your hub of podcast information okay cool so do you have any other interesting facts or stories that you want to share about it I play for fantasy or age of sigmar it’s called these days I actually made I’d like to say a mistake I paint my my army of play Dark Elves in fire colors so they are like everyone is like if you there’s no paint it like flames so yellow red orange like flamey models the only downside is it takes me just for to paint ten models it takes me probably eight hours and that’s just the most simple getting the skin on and getting like a couple of details in to get it really detailed by then I’m usually bored so I don’t tend to go very detailed because they can easily bored of doing the same thing over and over it’s sometimes a bit complicated on the getting everything done side and painting them people really love them so I’m like Lauren like people love them and when I actually play with them it looks really impressive but I don’t always like the the painting side of it so when I started pay playing a science fiction I actually won before 2k it’s called I actually started painting according to the normal color scheme for the army just to have something much more relaxing to paint and just know that I can look it up online if I need to know the color of like the skin of this model what what layers do I need what what layers of paint do I need to put on this I can just look it up and it’s so much faster but then I still lost doing to fire color things especially if models have wings like making really big fire wings on them look really cool but it’s so much work so where can we see pictures of your amazing models have you got them up anywhere yeah they’re on my Instagram and on my Twitter I often post them you can usually find them there what’s the addresses for those on Instagram you can find me as easily distracted media and on Twitter as M yang Bert’s okay cool so just my regular social media I don’t have a special social media account for it it’s right with my cats and my writing related things it’s all in the same place I know it branding wise it’s not the best but I can’t be bothered to have too many different things to take care of so it’s all in the same place well that’s completely understandable considering how many books you’ve written and how much writing you’ve done so let’s transition to that let’s talk about what’s what is the latest book that you’ve just published the one I just published a blooming spring love and this is the third one in the series it’s the third one in the series yes and are you gonna end it there this is just gonna be a three book series no I’ve got at least ideas for one more and then I’m having to focus on my on two of my young adult titles for a couple of weeks to get those published because those I release serial so a check two chapters a week but by then they need to get ready for publication they’ll be finished and they need to be ready for publication and after that I’m hoping to get back to this series how are you releasing the two chapters a week word platform on tapas and on Wattpad and my other one is a little G which is a science fiction book so that one is on Royal Road lots of places yes you varied obviously all over the place I am my first one second chance at Christmas is also currently being released on radish with two chapters a week but that’s a book that’s already out but is now also being published on radish because they invited me to publish on the platform a couple of weeks ago and are you seeing results from it’s not much what one it’s a Christmas title mm-hmm it’s not really the right time to really is a christmas title but i just wanted something to put it up to test everything out but i do like it because i like releasing a cereal and most of my work is even though i write a novel even when i actually sit down and write and all in one go oh right cereal chapter wise anyway so putting them up up on something like reddish or what pad or anything like that doesn’t change anything for me because it’s how I write anyway so if somebody was new to your work what should they start with if they love really cute lesbian couples start with second chance at Christmas which is just the first one in my adult lesbian romance if they like young adult books with a lot of queer people and that talk about neurodiversity start with her Elysium which is the first one in flowers and keyboards which is all about queer young adults and a lot of neurodiversity the first book has to ADHD girls who are both gamers which is how they meet and if they’re not so much into the romance but more into sci-fi I’ve also got these status online which is a sci-fi book has a lot of LGBT and neurodiverse characters in it not all of them are you’re not all aware of it of all of them in the first book but it does get clearer later on in the second book which I’m working on right now okay cool and waking people follow you online follow me on Facebook on the easily distracted media Facebook page on Twitter it’s Emmie Egberts on twitter yeah just a meme words and Instagram easily distracted media and my website also easily distracted Mediacom and there’s a link to the newsletter there fantastic thank you so much for joining us today yeah sure and for sharing you cool games miniature ball games thank you for having me dark you’ve been listening to unusual hobbies check out the links in the show notes for more information about my guests and to find our link to patreon where you can get exclusive podcasts and help us grow if you enjoyed this podcast and please rate us especially if you listen on Apple podcasts that’s all for this episode have a Hobby licious day
