Blog Recommendations - The Burning Eye

Good day,

I've been very conscious recently of over selling myself and bombarding people with my hobby and review posts. I'd like to apologise if you are a bit sick of seeing me pop up all the time. I'm planning to curtail my posting a little bit as I feel i am getting under peoples skin. So with that in mind I thought what better way to fill your slightly freer time than by recommending you another blog!

Today I am going to run through why you should be reading The Burning Eye. This is a blog by my hobby comrade Nick Thrower who has been an excellent pillar of support in my painting and blog endeavours for several years now. I met blog whilst I was an active member of The Dark City, the premier Dark Eldar forum on the net. I don't post there anymore since I lost my Dark Eldar army and the blog takes up most of my online time these days. 

Nick was and is an excellent member of the forum, with great advice and always a good one liner to make you chuckle, his quotes populate many a members signature bar! But he as also been putting great effort into his blog for about 4 years now and is a steady hand at the helm. We also chat on social media and whatsapp and have traded magic cards and figure. This year I will be attending an event run by Nick (see last segment below) and I am looking forward to buying him a pint and a pie (as he lives near the heartland of great pies - Melton Mowbray). 

Enough waffle! Here are 5 reasons to visit Nick's blog :)

Terrain Tuesday

Nick has an excellent amount of terrain work on his blog. Something I am sorely lacking myself as I have little to no space to keep built terrain without it cluttering up my room further! The highlight of this aspect of The Burning Eye is Nick's ongoing modular terrain project. Below are a few pictures from his blog of individual pieces as well as pictures from his battle reports which show it in use! If you want to see more of Terrain Tuesday then click the link :)

How to Build an Army

This isn't about gluing things together, but a series of excellent articles written by Nick that really help in setting out a structure to find what you want from an army. Now this might seem obvious, but as many will know, the army you first jump because its pretty isn't what you actually enjoy playing OR the units you jump at for an army aren't what you enjoy playing. Similarly Nick gives excellent direction in how to build a cohesive force with a theme or background, something that can really boost your enjoyment of playing that army. 

Finally Nick touches on the tricky subject of actually building and painting your army. I would personally have found this section invaluable when I first got back into 40k 3-4 years ago as it really helps delineate all the aspects of this incredibly huge and ultimately important part of the hobby. If you are struggling for some structure or inspiration to your painting of a fresh (or even your first) army then this will help a lot. Linky link for all you curios ones :)

The Miniatures

Nick is more than a dab hand at painting, though I would hazard he is going to be humble about any praise. Nick has some beautiful beautiful miniatures in his collection. The pinnacle of these (thus far) are his Dark Eldar, there is some quite delicate and beautiful "scroll work" on the panels of his Dark Eldar raiders that just boggle my mind. I really couldn't fathom doing that on a single one let alone multiples! I will let the pictures do the talking here. Below are some Dark Eldar, Tau and his most recent addition the Dusk Knights, which will look stunning with their striking scheme once they are completed. No link, just head over to the blog and take a walk :)

Reviews

Nick has an excellent writing manner which confers a lot of information without being either bare bones (such as mine are) or laborious like others I have read. There is always a hint of the cheeky (and the cheesy) in his review, plus an excellent ability to view things within a wider context. I would thoroughly suggest you check out his Tau Unit Reviews as well as his ongoing review of the new Angels of Death Supplement. Though there are other dotted around his gaming realm and you should expect many more to come :)

Hero for a Day

Its difficult to overstate how pleasant a chap Nick is, he is a terribly nice and engaging member of any community he is part of and he has even been know to wear chicken hats... Not quite a patch on the fancy dress shenanigans of Mike from St Andrews Wargaming (Batman and Ghostbusters to name a couple), but it is the picture of Nick that jumps to my mind first! 

Something that really underscores this aspect of Nick is the event he is running this year that I shall be attending. It is called Hero for a Day and its a 24 hour 40k gaming marathon, but not just any simple "play 40k for a day" but a full on constructed Narrative campaign that pits two teams against each other. The work going into this is sublime, as for each battle either team could win which presents multiple different routes of narrative progression, for which Nick has written all possible endings despite known most won't be used!

The real key aspect of this event though is Nick's motivation for putting it on, The whole event is to raise awareness for the Childhood Cancer and Leukemia Group (CCLG) which does incredible work both in the care for children with cancer, but also care and information for the parents of children that are unlucky enough to suffer from cancer. Additionally the CCLG is also an active partner of academic research, providing data and funding to academia such that we can better treat the multiple types and sub-types of cancer that are out there. 

This event doesn't arise from nothing but a touching personal story regarding a friend of Nick and his young son George who is bravely battling cancer. I won't elaborate here as Nick has done so very well on his blog. Pleas follow this link to find out more about the event and the inspiration for it. 

You can also follow this link to the Virgin Just Giving Page if you wish to donate. It is for an excellent cause :)

That's all from myself and the Burning Eye today, as I said I will probably cool my posting for a while to allow people to find me interesting again ;). Remember, as always,

Peace out,

Rob