Ogres of the Moonlit Hunt – A Hobby Blog (20)

Note – this article is part of an ongoing series – previous articles can be found here.

Over the past few months, I have been increasingly excited to attend the U.S. Masters. No event has been held in the Northeast since last year’s Masters, and I even abstained from gaming with my local buddies for about ten months. The ability to engage in such a vibrant and fun community as the U.S. Masters is something I truly cherish, especially after being away from it for so long. With that in mind, I wanted to do something to make my experience (and the experiences of my opponents) a bit more special.

Back in the days of Warhammer Fantasy, a participant at the Unplugged GT once brought a custom-made book that featured photographs and backstory for each unit in his army. I thought it was incredibly cool, and made a mental note to one day copy his idea. What better time than now?

I started off by painting a cover image for the book. I used 9×12” heavyweight acrylic paper and sketched out the design in pencil.

In order to make sure it would match with my army, I actually used the same paints as I did on my miniatures. The Contrast paint in particular was fun to use on paper. As a final touch, I used a black fine-tip Sharpie to outline the images and write the text. As an aside, doing the outline was slightly nerve-wracking as there is no way to erase a mistake, unlike miniature painting where you can simply go back over a mistake. Fortunately, I didn’t make any!

Next, I went to Shutterfly and began designing the book. Thanks to this blog, I already had photographs for each unit and accompanying backstory.

I then decided to add a template at the end of the book where I could record the details from each event to which I bring the army. I also included a space for each of my opponents to leave some comments about the game or simply put their signature. My wife thinks my “tournament yearbook” is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever made and, well, she might be right… but I don’t care!

With the book ordered, I decided to take it a step further and create stickers that I could hand out to my opponents at the end of each game. For this, I went to Zazzle. I used a different image and silly line to represent a win, loss, and draw.

A few short weeks later and I had the finished products in hand. The book measures 11×9″ and the stickers measure 3×3″. I definitely spent an irresponsible amount of money on the book (the stickers weren’t too bad), but I hadn’t spent much money at all on the hobby during quarantine so it is what it is. I am really pleased with how everything turned out. Here are some photos, though I hope you get to see them in person!