Self-Care and painting amidst the "Everything"

Good tidings to you all fellow wargamers and welcome.  It's been a rough year so far for the world with everything that has been going on here in the US and globally and it's been challenging for many to cope.  So I wanted to take this post in a slightly different direction than I usually do because of what's been going on and while I could write as if nothing is going on it would not be fair for you dear reader to not acknowledge the reality of where we are as a people.  So without focusing on doom and gloom here, we go!

When I originally wrote some form of below it was during a time when the "biggest issue" was the outbreak and spread of the COVID19 virus.  Since then we have been through A LOT of other things here in the US.  It's been a really tense and stressful time for many people.  Myself being a counselor in the mental health field, have been working with folks dealing with new stressors and their own mental health pieces.  It's been challenging for many, and myself with my own mental health challenges have been figuring out how to navigate everything so that I can help those who need it.  That's partly why I've not kept up with this blog as I would have liked, but here we are in hopefully what is a moment of calm to shelter from the storm at large.

As wargamers, I would dare say that there are many of us who are struggling with some of these issues right now.  Therefore I want to help encourage you in this time and offer some insight into parts of our hobby that may not have been considered therapeutic before.  With that, I have to throw out the caveat (thanks to our litigation-happy nation) that this is not intended to diagnose/treat/provide any services to anyone who is suffering from mental health conditions.  If you suspect that you suffer from mental health concerns and need additional assistance please consult your local provider for referrals to services as available in your local area.  This article is not to be taken as mental health advice/research/treatment/etc but a source of encouragement and some considerations to be taken.

A big thing that I am going to advocate for in this time is the concept and practice of self-care.  It's a pretty common buzzword I hear a lot online that for many translates to "treat yourself" or "spend money on spa days/chocolate/whatever."  Self-care is simply making sure you take care of yourself and get the things that you need to keep going.  There is a lot of stress/anxiety/depression going around and that has an impact on interfering with self-care practices. We can easily forget at the moment when folks are faced with new challenges, old stressors, and the events continuing to take place in our world, that part of regular mental health care includes practicing self-care.

Self-care as we clinicians help clients with often incorporate things like making sure you're eating well, getting good sleep as much as possible, getting some exercises in, socializing to some degree, engaging in activities, etc.  It's about taking care of yourself in these trying times and not some sort of fantasy that society thinks you need to do.  Self-care is a personal/individual thing and while these are some suggestions for you feel free to adapt things as you need to for your routine.  I want to caution that doing self-care isn't the same as getting actual treatment or help.  This won't treat depression quite like a counseling session would, or get to the root cause of issues.  What this will do is help the foundation of "you" being at a stronger place so when those things do hit then you're hopefully in a better spot to handle them.  These things are bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when you don't feel great in general already and then it hits you.

So I've found in my experience hobbying, specifically painting, has an interesting effect on anxiety. Now I preface this with: it works for me, and I hope it helps you but if not then that doesn't mean something is wrong with you.  I've noticed that for me painting has a grounding effect on my anxiety. What I mean by it being grounding is that anxiety has a tendency to push people into this zone of "what ifs."  You know it's like you start going "what if X happens, and then what if Y happens, what if I do Z," and so on.  Grounding techniques can help bring you back down from that zone and back to your 'normal' sort of state.  You have to focus on the here and now instead of the "what ifs," so things like the colors/textures/shapes/painting can help manage some of these anxious feelings.  Personally, I found that painting plus some audio medium like a podcast has done wonders for my stress and anxiety.  It's helped bring it from some pretty high levels to something more manageable, and that's truly the goal of self-care is to make all the stuff more manageable.

Like I said it may not work for you, but if it's something you're able to do and need something to help focus on something then give it a shot.  You might find something new to help out in times of great stress you never thought of before.  It's a wild time right now with a lot of uncertainty, fear, confusion, stress, and so on so please take care of yourselves.  Do the self-care and be safe out there.  If you are reading this and you feel like you need additional help then I encourage you to go talk to someone whether it's a local counselor, crisis worker, or whatever it is you have in the area.

Well, folks, that's all I got for now.  Take care of yourselves out there, it's a crazy time and my hope is that we get through this with our health (mental and physical) intact.  Hopefully, some of this stuff helps you out, if you're already practicing it then great!  If not then I hope that it encourages you towards keeping yourself sane and floating in these times.  Next time I'll go back to the usual hobby posting and help give a break from the real world.  Until then folks stay safe out there and take care of yourselves.

It's popular! Yet another Contrast paint post!

Hello, fellow wargamers and tabletop enthusiasts and I hope you are reading this under good fortunes.  It’s a little early for my bimonthly post, but as the title suggests there have been some big changes to our hobbying world with the introduction of the new Contrast paints from GW.  I managed to grab some for myself and like many others, I’ll give my opinion on them and show some stuff that I managed to get painted in a pretty rapid pace (compared to my usual that is).  So without further ado, here’s yet ANOTHER Contrast paint opinion piece!

I won’t lie, I have been hyped with these paints since I heard about them from the beginning.  I like I imagine some other collector’s out there, have a stupid amount of unpainted models.  Like an embarrassing number of them.  The kind of number where you might say I have an addiction problem.  So an advertised method was with less effort I can get tabletop quality standard pretty quick, and that certainly has my attention.  Then I started seeing what pro painters had been able to do, then the pictures of random folks online and their results, and so on and so on.  I had not only bought a hype train ticket but I upgraded to first class and have been counting the days, but despite the hype, I also have some aged wisdom and wanted to secure some of them so I can see what I can work with.

After I painted the first model here is my emotional reaction:

With the test model completed, I then started on a Malifaux crew I had that was lightly primed.  I usually prime my models black and leave it at that, but for a brief period, I did some models in grey with a zenithal white.  I have to admit, I did not like how the priming turned out because I felt that the grey had a gloss kind of texture to it while being flat in color, and the white was a satin finish.  So bear that in mind with these pictures, but I have to say that the paints did wonderfully!  In the time it would have taken me to finish the set of Witchling Stalkers I was able to knock them out, some Freikorp Specialists, the Purifying Flame, and a model from Heroforge for Pathfinder!  They did their job well and I was able to apply a single coat down and get a pretty good overall effect.  I did some minor blending with the paints on the Purifying Flame to get the flame effect and while yes it’s not a perfect transition it did get the job done in a matter of minutes.

Now I am not naïve enough to think that these paints will do everything and anything I want them to do, but damn if they didn’t perform up to par with what I had hoped they would do.  Most of the models shown, except for the Heroforge model, had some extra work done to them to finalize the appearance.  A couple of edge highlights here, some weathering pigment here, and some additional shade washes there made the models go from basic TTQ to maybe a slightly better TTQ (I’m not sure, you be the judge).  I think these paints will shine with the more organic textures than they might with armor plating, which appears to be the general consensus amongst the community, however, I’ve seen some seriously good with on armored models like Space Marines and Stormcast.  Cloth, fur, leather, skin, and so on will probably be the textures that don’t require any special attention, whereas armor might require some attention to things like excessive pooling.  Another thing of note is that they didn’t seem to be forgiving in that if you paint over where you intended to then you’ll need to either slap on some covering paint similar to your primer or touch it up with a layer paint similar to the Contrast.

I’m sure veterans and new painters alike will be able to take advantage of these paints, but I can’t help but to also think about the people in our community who don’t have the time to paint or just aren’t able to paint well.  I’ve got some friends who are colorblind or struggle with hands that shake to a degree that the prospect of basecoating>shading>highlighting>blending>etc with traditional acrylics can be somewhat daunting or challenging and in some cases off-putting.  What about the veteran with arthritis in their hands so that they can only paint for so long before it becomes excruciating?  So a paint that can help some people overcome those challenges and help those who struggle with the mechanics of fine detail painting achieve some level of TTQ that they can be proud of to bring to the table is definitely a good thing in my book.  I also think some tournament players who want to use the new or updated armies and want to use them solely for the game purpose but have to paint for the tournament will enjoy these paints as well and ideally will cut down the time to be ready for the next event.  Folks like me with a ton of models who just want them painted will probably also like these paints if it presents with an opportunity to clear the paint queue some.

Now in the span of 2 days, I am almost done with my Malifaux crew and I have to say it's been great to paint with.  Now one thing is for certain in that the undercoat does have a HUGE impact on the quality of the paint.  Like I said before these models had zenithal priming with some areas obviously not primed.  In those areas, I had to go back with acrylic layer paint and do some touch-ups and/or paint over the Contrast.  Regardless I think the overall effect has been positive and in 2 hours I knocked out 4 models that I might have taken a couple days to work on (a day is about 3 hours on average during the workweek).  So I stand by my original statement that these paints, for me, are a big time saver and will help me go through that model queue real quick.

On this last one, you can see near the bottom of the lab coat the primer spatter not covering the entirety of the coat.  Will it matter from 3 feet away? Nah.  However, it's something to take note.

That’s all today folks, I hope you are making progress in your projects and enjoying yourselves.  If you also picked up some of these paints feel free to share a link down below and share what you’ve been able to get done with them.  If you didn’t pick up any of the paints, feel free to share a link down below and share what you’ve been working on.  My next trial with these paints will be to see how many Crucible Guard models I can knock out before a Steamroller event on Saturday.  I’ll be back at the end of the month with my overall update on what I’ve been painting and how it ties in with NoVA.  Until then happy wargaming and happy hobbying!

Painting progress and the fight between motivation and discipline.

Good tidings to you my fellow wargamers and miniature enthusiasts and welcome back for your bi-monthly reading here at my den of ramblings.  It’s been a couple of months since we spoke but a lot of things have been going on so we have a good amount to discuss.  I hope things have been well for you all in whatever you are doing in life, and so with that let’s get to chatting.  So get a drink, sit comfortably, and relax while these slow beats soothe your soul…or let these pictures do something for you.

So last time we talked about my painting progress, some goals set out because of NoVA/other events, and saw some work being done.  I’ve been putting in some work on the projects, but I have to say these past few months have been semi-slow in terms of progress.  I’ve had some stuff going on in the real world that it made painting take a back burner and in turn caused a slow down on my overall progress.  It’s not been necessarily a bad thing that real life has taken priority, but it is what it is and as a result I don’t feel like I’ve gotten as much done in terms of model count as I had the period before.  Add in the fact that I ended up spending a lot of time assembling models and having to wait for bits and bases to roll in, time just keep plodding along and I was not making a lot of progress.  Though I had a lot of things going on, and I felt like I had excuses, there was something else in the back of my mind and heart that was inhibitive of my overall progress.

Which in turn has made me introspective when it comes to my hobby time because I certainly felt a difference in mood and outlook this period than I did before.  Before I felt like a machine, churning out models (60 some odd iirc) at a pretty intense speed from what I’m used to doing.  During this period I felt more like a grazing cow, sometimes taking a bite but otherwise just moving slowly.  When we look at this period and see I have reached about half that number, which admittedly I probably painted about half of those days, I knew something else was at work.  While I can point to a few things going on that slowed my progress down (studying for a state credentialing board, visitations with family, a friend being deployed, and house maintenance) I also recognize that there were more than a few days that I didn’t pick up the brush because I just…didn’t want to.  Like my motivation was suddenly…dried up and withered away at times.

Motivation is a funny thing like that, especially for me in this hobby and I feel like painting is in a weird spot in the hierarchy of this.  Motivation in general can be a great start to a task and is a great opportunity for growth in a particular area.  A lot of things can motivate us to begin projects or to continue past ones.  For example I can read a novel about the Horus Heresy and then I’m motivated to start working on my Thousand Sons and bring their tragic story of hubris, honor, treachery, and sadness to the table!  I can watch an episode of Game of Thrones and then I’m motivated to clean and paint up some A Song of Ice and Fire models so that I too can bring the raw fighting prowess of The Mountain to my enemies’ lines!  Motivation! Yeah!

Within the past couple of weeks I saw a meme/quote about motivation compared with discipline and in this time in my hobbying life it truly resonated with me.  You know how sometimes you see a quote and it does nothing for you until you find yourself in a new spot in life and next thing you know it’s like “ohhhh…there it is?”  That was me in this instance and I realized that instead of relying on motivation to keep me going (because that’s obviously worked before right?), I would need to start cultivating discipline to paint on the regular.  Then if you think about it, painting regularly probably requires the most discipline out of the other aspects of the hobby (for me at least).  When you assemble models there’s an end result that happens relatively quickly and there’s several rewards attached to it.  You have the model assembled and you can start playing games with it.  If you choose not to do anything else then most of the community won’t say anything because they too have unpainted models.  Painting though…painting takes some effort.

With painting you don’t get immediate results like you do with assembling and unless you have some great skills then you sometimes risk your model looking vastly different than you intended it for it to be.  If you are a slow painter then that squad of 10 guys might take you weeks to finish and when you look at an entire army it starts to look like a yearlong project instead.  It’s very easy to get discouraged with painting, especially with the advent of social media the great miniature painters can show off their amazing work and make it seem like they woke up one morning and painted a masterpiece before their morning coffee is done.  So it takes discipline to not only keep painting despite not necessarily wanting to and to continue even though the results are not immediate and are risky.

Couple that mindset of discipline>motivation with that I am to enjoy my painting time versus making it a secondary job of churning out models, I think I was able to find my painting groove again.  Maybe not at the same speed as before, but I even felt like some of those models had lost quality due to time constraints.  So with my shift towards discipline I am also shifting towards making the models good quality instead of quick quality.  Will this mean I will hit some of my deadlines?  Probably not but I will plan accordingly so that the armies that NEED to be painted (i.e. my Zone Mortalis force) will be done by the event time, and then I’ll return back to the others as needed.

So a quick update on where the projects stand:

·         Zone Mortalis (Warhammer 30k): 

o   32 models

o   Progress/Pitfalls: Models have had their assembly finalized and their insignia from Pop Goes the Monkey came in.  Army specific paints have been acquired.

o   Current status: Ready for priming

·         Aristeia!

o   4 models

o   Fighters outside of the core box have been acquired and a team of 4 has been selected.  They have been cleaned of mold lines which that ranged from hardly present to “holy crap that’s a lot and annoying to clean.”

o   Current status: Ready for priming

·         Infinity After Dark

o   A 300 point Yu-Jing force

o   Progress/Pitfalls: I was short of some models but due to some generosity from WaaarghPug I now have enough for 300 points and then some.

o   Current status: Some models are ready for painting, the new models require assembling/cleaning/priming and so I am about 50% ready

·         Blood Bowl:

o   Dwarf Team of 18 models

o   Current status: Painting and basing are complete and pre-varnishing has been finished leaving the final matte varnish spray.

·         Warmachine:

o   Crucible Guard 75 points, 2 list format consisting of 67 models (!!!)

o   Progress/Pitfalls: Models were assembled but had to wait on MDF base inserts from Laser Craft Workshop LLC (great customer service btw) but they are ready for painting.

o   Current status: 20% of the army has been painted but basing is being reserved for a final “done with the army” phase since I plan on putting in some effort in making some dope bases.

I’m overall pleased with my progress and as much as I have been enjoying painting up the Crucible Guard I know I will have to pause the overall project to take care of the NoVA Open projects.  It’s a situation of “do I keep working on the Crucible Guard until the event,” or “do I get those NoVA units out of the way first and then go back to my other stuff afterwards?”  Not sure on the answer to that just yet but I’m sure I’ll figure it out in the near future.

As always I want to extend thanks and appreciation for my local fellow wargamers to including WaaarghPug, The Ordinary Wargamer, and Mininomicon for being sources of painting and hobbying encouragement.  Insignia for the Thousand Sons can be found here again and the bases I used for my Crucible Guard can be found here again.  I want to also thank you the reader for spending your time here on this blog and reading the article, if there are any questions or comments please leave them and I assure you I will get to them.  Thank you for stopping by and I hope your wargaming and hobbying adventures continue to prosper in whatever format you want them to be.  Until next time, happy gaming folks.

Opening up Aristeia!, Blood Bowl, and Necromunda for the very first time!

Greetings fans of the hobby and welcome back to your lovely afternoon reading time!  It’s been the start of weather changes here and that means priming and painting galore for many!  It also heralds the coming of new games and that’s what we are here today to talk about, new stuff!  Not like a GenCon haul or anything but I’ve been eyeing a couple of games lately and so I decided to not only purchase them but also go over my initial impressions of just opening the box.  I’m sure you’ve seen many of these games and their respective unboxings but this is from the viewpoint a guy who a) hasn’t seen any of those unboxings so I have no idea what’s in them and b) I’ve not done much research on the games in terms of how they are played.  So let’s get to it!

The three games I’ve been eyeing are Aristeia!, Blood Bowl, and Necromunda.  I know what these games are on a surface level and so I’m not completely clueless about these games.  I’ve never played a game of any of the three except for a brief trial on the Blood Bowl PC version.  Since I had no idea what I was doing, however, I quickly moved on. With the recent revamping done by Games Workshop with their respective games and some of the good things, I have heard about Aristeia! I decided that it is time to dive in and just grab the 2 player boxes to check things out.  The first box I opened was Aristeia!

So my initial impression was that the contents were packed in neatly but the first thing I saw was a guide to the rules, a quick How to Play, followed with some large booklet about the game in the Infinity universe.  Next came the board, some weird angular things which ended up being team organizer spaces, followed by the rest of the box contents.  The miniatures came pre-assembled and in their own space along with a couple token sheets.  Overall it was easy to find everything and it is one of the few times where putting everything back was a breeze. 

Miniature quality was also good and even though I heard it was PVC I was still overall impressed.  Only a couple minor quirks like the big panda dude’s staff was bent as was the old man’s revolver.  I felt like I could with minimal effort starting playing this game from the get-go.  Everything was user/new player friendly and neatly organized so there wasn’t a lot of fuss about trying to hunt down what I might need to start playing.

Blood Bowl was opened up next and the first thing I saw was the miniatures and with it some gaming aids I can presume.  Now I have no idea what the tokens/ruler thingy is used for so I had to dig a little bit past the plastic frames to start locating the board and rules.  The models seem pretty easy to put together, I’m not sure if that’s how the whole BB range is but the simple plug-and-play type of models means that for a new player assembly isn’t as intimidating.  If you didn’t want to paint the models up they were in bright green and blue respectively so that there would be little confusion at a glance as to who was part of which team.  Beyond the models, there was a cardboard insert that had some info for Blood Bowl as a community/hobby/game.

Beyond that insert, I found the board and the rulebook, as well as some other cardboard pieces which I guess, is for the team managers?  As well as some cards but right now I have no idea what they are meant for.  The board and rules appear high quality and the dual-sided nature of the board meant some variety for gaming.  Everything was neatly packed albeit without any organizational aids but that meant putting things back meant that I would have to figure out myself how to reorganize it.  I felt like within an hour I could have the models clipped off and start to play at the bare minimum level (i.e. unpainted).  Now for the rules themselves, I have no idea but the rulebook didn’t seem too thick so I figure as a newbie it can’t be that bad to pick up on them and play a game.

Finally, I opened up Necromunda and I was a little overwhelmed if I could be honest.  This is not a new player friendly set I can tell you that much.  I closed the box and asked my wife to take a look inside to see her reaction (she is quite a new player type gamer) and her reaction was a mix of “oh geez” and “yeah I don’t want to touch this.”  The sprues for the models was a true GW model kit and the level of details on the parts are standard quality.  This is not an easy peasy lemon squeezy kind of assembly though, it is full hobbyist level if you ask me.  I’m excited to assemble the gangers but if I was brand new to the hobby I would be a little overwhelmed.  I also see they brought back the templates much to my delight (I miss those templates!) and they included some nice looking wall terrain as well.

Past the kits, the cardboard insert was a giant assembly guide for the models if that is any indication of what kind of models these are.  Beyond that, the rest of the box was neatly assembled like Blood Bowl with a nice quality cardboard board, token sheet, rulebook, dice, and cards.  The rulebook was a big larger than the BB one and a bit thicker but a casual glance through reassured me in that a good chunk of the contents were lore-based instead of rule heavy.  Still, the quality of the game appears to be GW standard in terms of what I paid for, so I am excited to see how it plays.  As far as prep work to get playing it definitely feels like I’ll need some time before it’ll be ready to play.  With all of the options on the sprues, I get the feeling that the gangers will need some forethought in equipment and/or load-outs before putting them together.  So I think they could be ready after a day or so of assembly and planning.

I thought it was interesting that the order in which I opened the boxes is the same order I would place the games in order of new player friendliness.  Aristeia! was definitely the easiest of the three to get started but I also feel like it’s less of a wargame/hobby than a board game so there is probably that element to consider.  Blood Bowl certainly has the hobby element to it but the impression I got overall was that it is in that spot of being a board-game and a hobby and so it had elements from both sides of the coin.  Necromunda was on the other side of the spectrum and despite the board that it came with, this is definitely not a board game but part of a bigger hobby.  I’ve heard that in the first expansion book the rules provide a means to play Necromunda without a board and into the 3D, so that reinforces my opinion.

So there we have it!  I enjoyed letting myself get an initial impression from these games since I had the opportunity to open three new games where I have NO experience with them outside of acknowledging their existence.  I’m looking forward to trying these games out and putting together the models, or in Aristeia!’s case painting them, and I’m already thinking of color schemes and backstories for the gangs.  Maybe I’ll do a Slaaneshi Escher cult gang…  Anyways until next time folks enjoy yourselves in the hobby and may your dice favor your armor saves!

'TINK TINK TINK' goes the Blacksmith's Forge in Guildball

Hello there wargaming lads and lovelies and welcome to another fun blog-isode of Wargamer Ramblings!  I hope you’re doing well in your hobby time and you are making some good progress.  Now that things are settled and calm here I’ve been making some good work on my forever growing and changing line up of models.  That’s not what we’re talking about today however, nay verily instead let’s follow-up with the next guild in Guild Ball that’s relatively new, and that are the Blacksmiths!  As usually here be the cards.

So like the Farmer’s Guild they are currently available for pre-order in a faction start box made out of the same type of plastic it appears.  You get the 6 models, a goal post, a Blacksmith ball (which looks kind of cool if you ask me), and a forge terrain piece.  Right now it looks like the MSRP is going to be sitting at $50 USD, so you can get a full team for a decent price point.  Whether or not this is how Steamforged is going to progress with all of their future teams/models I’m not sure but it certainly seems to be looking that way.  So far in the roster there are 8 model choices to be had

The current box set line-up

So let’s talk about how the team generally operates, because as I mentioned before it has a couple of elements that make this team stand out amongst the others.  First off you will notice that two model types are missing: the captain and mascot.  Neither are present, but the former will not go missing for long.  What the team has instead are two types of models, Masters and Apprentices.  Second as of now there are no Union models available for the team, so you can only play with a pure guild team (personally I love that as I tend to run pure guild teams when I play).  Back to the model types, the team has to have an even split between the two, so 3 Masters and 3 Apprentices.  Additionally when you choose your team you pick one of the Masters to be your captain.  This model gains +0/+2 Influence and their Legendary Play takes on an additional effect.  Let me go on as to why this is pretty awesome stuff.

The Guild symbol and concept art of Alloy

So in other guilds you have 2 captain models generally right?  So one could argue that because of that your overall team strategy is largely affected by this decision.  Sure you could argue that you can have all kinds of team comps out there but ultimately you still have this binary (for now) decision to make about how the team functions with this captain.  The Blacksmiths currently have a range of 4 Masters, which mean there are 4 different option points for captain.  Your strategy, limited in other ways, are not going to be wholly limited by just 1 or 2 choices, but 4!  Need a captain with some speed boost? We have you covered.  Going for a more defensive, hold the line approach? That’s a potential as well.  A captain that puts all the suckas on fire?! WE GOTCHU FAM!  Essentially it means that when you make a team you have more captain options than the other guilds and that's always a good thing.

The physical embodiment of RPG "hold all my swords"

Which leads me to my next point moving on to the Apprentice models.  Most of the Apprentices have an ability that plays off of their Master being on the team and within a certain distance.  The one exception is Ferrite and Iron, Master and Apprentice respectively, which have the inverse where Ferrite gets a bonus being near Iron.  So this relationship between the models means that you will generally want to select the pairs in order to get the most benefit from them.  Now that’s not to say that you can’t take odd pairings if you wanted to, but you would lose out on some crucial and cool abilities by doing so.  For example if you take Alloy with his Master Hearth, then when you’re in 6” you get a benefit chosen from a list (i.e. 2” melee zone, +1/+0 Kick, or Anatomical Precision).  That seems pretty integral to Alloy as a player, so without Hearth you miss out on some abilities you could use for great benefit.  Overall it seems to get the best out of your Apprentices you need to match them up with their Masters.

Upcoming releases

To be honest I am going to avoid getting into too much detail about the stats and specific characters play with the Blacksmiths because I feel like just the guild itself being the way that it is can be enough to chew on for now.  Yeah there are some pretty good interactions between models, but the guild structure itself is interesting enough for me to talk about now.  Like I said, you have some flexibility in some builds with the Masters but some restricting options with the pressure in taking matching Apprentices.  It’s like Steamforged took the core of the nature of being Blacksmith as their concept for the team: like iron the team is malleable when being forged but rigid in its ending properties. 

So that's it for now, hopefully it has been a good chat with you all.  Until next time folks take care and happy gaming. 

P.S. This article was originally written back in October and reviewed today.  As a result some things have changed with the Guild, though I'm not 100% sure what (I think new players and whatnot), so keep that in mind!  Cheers!