What I Hear - Garagehammer

This podcast may well be my favourite, I am going to find it a challenge to write this blog post with out just gushing about how good the show is, you were warned! Garagehammer is a Warhammer Fantasy Battle podcast that started just prior to the release of 8th edition. I first heard of them through the Podhammer Marathon show on July 10th 2010. Hosted by David Witek & Chris Yu there is also a well run forum with a great community that I recommend.

Started by David Witek & Christopher Barnett and inspired by their love of the game and other podcasts, they declared a wish to podcast about non-tournament play and focus on the ‘noobs’. At the time they launched there were nothing like as many podcasts covering WFB as there are now, by my reckoning there were five: Podhammer, Bad Dice, Helen Hammer, The Waaagh Cast & Point Hammered. If there were/are others I don’t know of them, and of these five only Point Hammered and Bad Dice continue.
For a long time the show delivered on that plan, David and Christopher both knew the game well enough and went in to detail over a series of 101 episodes about how to build up and play under the new 8th edition rules. Added into the mix were a lot of guest appearances from their gaming group (who have gone on to become the Northern Wasteland Wargamers, or NW2 for short) and a semi regular section hosted by David’s son Harrison, the Phoenix Prince, normally him discussing his insights in to playing High Elves as an eight year old (an enjoyable and popular part of the show).

David the Dwarf on the left and Christopher the Dark Elf on the left. These were the race that they had been playing prior to starting the show and continued with for a period afterwards. Nowadays David is known for his Vampire Counts army that he has painted at an distressingly fast rate. He has used a lot of techniques, including dipping to finish off I believe about 200 Zombies now. Christopher mostly plays Chaos Dwarves after the release of Tamurkhan army list. Christopher’s painting rate has also caused some distress for the shows listeners…. The army is based upon his early 90’s figures but is now bolstered by a large Forge World contingent and a clever Skaven Plague Monk conversion that is creating Hobgoblins.

This format of show carried on for a good while, slowly including more and more of a tournament feel as the hosts became more and more involved in the community and took part in more events. This is not a complaint as I feel the two of them and their varied guests remained interesting and fun the entire time.Eventually the show expanded to include the occasional “GarageGamer” episode where they have covered Warmachine, Malifaux, Dark Age, Kings of War and more. The years of friendship between David and Christopher has led to many insightful Warhammer discussions as well as a lot of insightful moments when they’ve jumped aboard the off-topic train.
Earlier this year (Episode 51), after almost two years of co-hosting the show Christopher Barnett announced that he was going to have to leave the show as he couldn’t commit the time required to do Garagehammer justice. Since the Chris Yu who was a regular guest host has stepped into the role. Whilst I along with many people I’m sure was a little worried about Christopher leaving and what that would mean for the shows longevity. However, with five shows now under his belt ‘Yu-Tang’ is bringing a lot of vitality and fresh views to the show. He also brings knowledge about Giant heavy Greenskins and High Elves alongside being an event organiser. Exciting times for this top show, I hope for another two years at least.

What I Hear–Fandible

So unlike with the blogs where I’ve begun with what for me is one of the centres of the hobby community, I’m going to start with a podcast that is not like the rest. The Fandible Podcast is an Actual Play RPG podcast that has been going for a couple of years now.

“Fandible is a website dedicated to the role-playing culture and all the fun that comes with it.”

I found I whilst was planning my first round of the Deathwatch campaign, I wanted to hear how the 40k roleplay rules worked. So I started listening to their Dark Heresy campaign, and it was awesome. The group consists of 3-4 guys and 1-2 girls from various backgrounds who I believe are based in New York. Arvandus is most often the GM, although the other players all rotate in and run adventures in a large variety of different systems. They have played a load of different games that you can now find easily in their archives.

One off games include:

• The Laundry
• Supernatural
• Part Time Gods
• Fortune’s Fool
• & others (even ‘Tequila and Betrayal on House on Haunted Hill’)

The real highlights of the show are the longer term campaigns, a few of their stories now cover multiple adventures following the same characters. The Dresden Files RPG has provided some hilarious moments as a coloured WereEmu transforms back to human form in 19th Century New York as they battle time travelling Vampires and had a hell of a time with the Fey. Their Pulp adventures within the Hollow Earth have taken them from Amazons to Nazis, Nymphs to Pirates and with Dinosaurs along all the way.
The true powerhouse series on the podcast are the Warhammer 40k RPG games from Fantasy Flight Games. These are run by Arvandus and are quite simply fantastic. Their Dark Heresy campaign focuses on a small band of Inquisitorial Acolytes, a ranking Arbites son, an ex-hive ganger and a Tech Priest. They have now saved multiple planets at the costs of a great many lives and a good few living communities. Ratt’s fall into corruption alongside Theodorus’ ‘fall’ into Imperial thinking adds a great amount of depth alongside the stories being told themselves.

Barsher Da Barsher is one of the most amusing characters you can imagine, the Ork, wanna be boss, wanna be Mek Boy. Barsher supports his Kaptain, (another Rogue Trader so pro-xeno would be hard to find) alongside the rest of the crew in a Rogue Trader Campaign that has focused on the workings of a vessel in the 41st Millennium and the taking of contracts to build up fortunes.

Fandible handled Deathwatch in a special way, having a female player they chose to focus their campaign on the discovery of a female Marine. This led to a quite different and interesting set of adventures with a strong theme. Angela, the female player discussed the experience on the Gaming as Women blog. Black Crusade has so far had only one session, maybe there will be more, I personally am OK with more Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.

More recently Fandible have updated their site, the addition of a Youtube channel and an onsite blog/article archive is interesting. It’s going to be great to see what they make of it all, I’m with them all the way. This is on top of them reviving the 'Couple of Geeks' podcast within their own feed, an 'open chat' style show hosted by Angela & Billy a married couple from among the regular hosts. They have also begun a discussion show about RPG's in general and their experiences specificly.

I hope some of you enjoy the podcast, it can be found on iTunes as well as their own site and they are really good at updating regularly. Covering a podcast has been tougher than blogs or figures as the format is not suited to viewing. :) I hope I've done it justice. Let me know what I could do to make these more interesting. Future 'What I Hear's will be more focused on wargaming podcasts I listen to.