Hello and welcome to episode two of Agents of Sigmar, our new Warhammer battle report channel. In episode one, Pete and I played a very basic game of Age of Sigmar, featuring Bretonnians against Death (I still can’t get used to not calling them undead). Game two is largely the same. Now we’re more familiar with the rules, we thought we’d try a rematch. There are a few differences, most notably the addition of magic on the Bretonnian side, and some zombie summoning by the Death army.
This is our second video (third if you count the Terra Tiles prequel to battle two), and already, I’ve learned a few things about the life of a YouTuber, who has literally tens of viewers.
Time is the killer:
It won’t come as a surprise to most of you reading this, but freeing up time for a GeekDad project like this can be difficult. We managed to play this game just two weeks after our initial report, but editing it into something watchable has taken much longer. It’s a job that fits into the commute to work, between school drop offs, or late in the night. One of the weeks has also been school holidays, during which, it’s impossible to achieve anything, other than the gradual destruction of the house.
Let there be Light:
The thing with watching YouTube videos is that it’s easy to spot one that’s made badly, but you just accept a well made one as being normal. We had a last minute swap of location for our second video, due to significant-other work commitments. This didn’t seem like a major issue at the time, but unfortunately, my dining room is rather dingy. It’s fine for family life, but not that great for a creating a polished video spectacular.
Light is good, but sound is important too:
It’s an obvious point, but forgetting to turn on your microphone is a bad idea. This I’ve now done twice, for one turn in each video. Apologies for the ropey sound in Turn 4!
It’s tougher than it looks:
Some of the more professional battle report outlets make it seem like an effortless endeavor. After all, they’re only playing games; it’s fun and should be effortless, shouldn’t it? Fun it is, but playing for three hours solid is quite tiring, and, I guess, one of the barriers to enjoying many wargames. When you start after 9pm and play to beyond midnight, it’s inevitable energy levels will flag. This is noticeable in the later turns in the game. So Pete and I need to increase our stamina levels, or at the very least, drink some Red Bull.
It’s not just about the video:
Playing the game and creating the video is not the whole of the job. In order to keep things interesting, we need to keep up a flow of new models, scenery, and ideas. We’ve set up the more mainstream social channels, Facebook and Twitter (@agentsofsigmar), and we also have our own blog, but so far, finding time to populate those channels has been nigh on impossible.
So, all that is a long-winded way of saying, “We’re still learning.” I do hope you will bear with us as we improve things. Battle two is better than battle one, despite some issues with the later turns. Battle three will be better than two and so on.
I do have one exciting piece of news to relay, particularly if you’re interested in one of Games Workshop’s more niche games. The next Agents of Sigmar video will move away from AoS, and will instead take a look at the forthcoming re-release of the sports-with-violence classic, Blood Bowl.
In the meantime, enjoy episode two and thanks for watching!
