Throck of War: July 2013

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

An Interview With Steve McLauchlan soon to be formerly of WWPD

Stole this from the interwebs. I didn't even
Get WWPD's permission to use it. Cause
I'm HAXXOR.

For those of you who pay no attention to the online Flames community you’ve probably never heard of Steve McLauchlan, this also means you likely don’t exist. Steve is one of the founders of WWPD.net and its News From the Front Podcast. Now, he’s moving on to greener hobbit filled pastures, taking a position with Battlefront Miniatures, makers of our beloved Flames of War. Recently, I had a chance to digitally sit down with Steve and grill him on WWPD, his future with Battlefront and all sorts of other good things.

Throck: For those folks who are new to the site it seems like WWPD has always had a special relationship with Battlefront. Jointly hosting the Overlord campaign, free stuff for product reviews and regularly cross posting your podcast are just a few of the examples of that relationship. But, it wasn’t always so. How did WWPD’s relationship with Battlefront begin? How did it grow?

Steve: A fair question! Honestly, it grew as WWPD grew. Our industry is small. It’s a total niche community, and the Battlefront employees work at Battlefront because they’re keenly interested in the product. So our community grew with them along for the ride, because at the end of the day they want to go home and play with their toys too. It soon became evident that it made sense for them to expand the relationship with WWPD!

It really started when me, Sean, and Joe posted our first podcast. It was novel, and the guys liked it. Over time, the relationship really grew as a result of Joe Krone. Smart guy, Joe. He knew that it’d cost Battlefront peanuts to send us some models for review, but that our enthusiasm was about as good of advertising as one could get. Smart investment. We were happy with the arrangement because it generated content for our site that was worth looking at!

He looks nothing like that any more.
Way less hipster now.

T. Were there any bumps along the road?

S. Definitely! But most of them resulted in Battlefront not really having a point of contact for us. It was (and to a point still is- this will be part of my new job!) difficult to just establish a steady stream of review material- especially with enough lead time to not totally miss the boat. None of their guys’ really had a dedicated mandate to do this, so it was whoever we could catch free at the moment. In recent months, a much better system was worked out. Kudos to the US warehouse guys who bore the brunt of the work there, and probably dreading getting emails from us!

More after the break!

Historicon Top Pics

H-Con is done and I'm still hungover.

But, I put my carcass into drive and cut 1200 pics from the weekend down to the top 30 or so. We've got Steve's last News From the Front podcast, army pics galore and all sorts of other bits.

Come on in and enjoy the pics.

We start with the Tale of the Suicide Chaffee's:

Round 2 of the double tournament, Ben and I face off against KV-88's, IS-2's and a horde of tiny little Russian tanks. Knowing there was know way we could take out the big boys from the front and only sporting 3 Priests for arty support I decided to go insane. Noticing that one of our opponents had to double time the IS-2 platoon command to get up to the rest of the platoon I zoom a platoon of Chaffee's around the flank, assuming that I'd loose the platoon, but knowing his was way more valuable I decided the trade was worth it.

I kill 1 and bail 2.

Next turn he kills 2 of those plucky little light tanks then I take out another of his IS-2's.

I take out a 3rd and he does the same. He's down to 1 tank and I'm down to just one and a bailed. His fearless dudes fail their morale check and run off the board. VICTORY!

More after the break

Last round!

Ok I lost 5-2 in free for all against Romanians. I didn't really feel like sitting back and drawing the tie like you can easily do. And me and my partner were both middle of the board so wet agreed on just having some fun.

I just happened to be on the short end of the fun. :)

I had a great time at the tournament. And blogging for the 5 of you that read this. I'll be posting a bit more tomorrow and then it's vacation time.

Bruce and the Battlefront crew run a great tourney and kudos to them for hosting an excellent shindig.

Round 5, loss 6-1

Blerg! Me vs. Aufklarung PDF. We rolled off to see who attacked, of course it was me.

A large line of trees shot straight across the middle of the table blocking all line of sight between us.

Just got shot all to hell.

I have to say though my opponent was a ton of fun and that's a cool list. With marders, panzer luchs etc...

Round 4, win 6-1

Not only did I get to play a great game against a great player, dude is one of my best friends as well.

Mission : counter attack

My Lehr on his Scots artillery park. He gutted two of my combat Platoons on the way in but their remnants plus a full gren platoon were able to hold on by just a thread against heavy arty, infantry and Churchill assaults.

And let's all be honest, I passed way too many Platoon morale tests than one had a right to.

In the standings I'm now 4-1 with 22 victory points.

Two fights to go.

The plot thickens!

Round 4, I'm in the top 20, but it's me playing Ben, my long time gaming partner and roommate!

Dun dun dun!

Morning table porn, day 3

Non Flames of War edition.

Quick technical note. The reception here has been super shoddy and so I'll be keeping pics to a minimum for most of the day. But I'll keep updates coming.

Now on to the porn.