2025 - Taking Names and Crushing Puss

At Hobby Henchmen we pride ourselves on both the amount of names taken and distinct lack of puss being crushed on a weekly basis - 2025 shall be no different.

This is going to be the start of a series of regular updates about what is happening behind the scenes at both the club and Hobby Henchmen as a whole. It will also serve to wet my whistle for the Standard League blog being reborn. I kept it up for around 8-10 months pretty regularly across both Solent and HH but dropped off in the most recent league. I know how unacceptable that was to you all and have read all of your love letters. It will return with gusto this year now Max is handling the narrative Crusade campaign.

2024 is easy to sum up - we started Hobby Henchmen and we smashed it, always busy and getting busier. The most fantastic thing I hear the most is how much people love the actual community we have here, with our incredibly vital WhatsApp group playing a key role in this. Yes I know I am one of the few that doesn't have it muted but the sheer volume of interaction we have on there dwarves so many others and I bloody love it.

So what can we expect from 2025 I hear you all clamouring to ask?

Boards/Terrain/Mats

We are in the final stretch of completing the 40k terrain for full UKTC standard. This has taken so long because Chris and myself fucked up the original plan for club terrain so basically have had to print 15 new sets. Various printer issues and the sheer bloody size of the things have meant this has taken longer than expected but we should have 15 full sets by our first tourney of the year - Jan 19th.

After that we will be shifting our focus to the other games played at the club - AOS, Heresy and Trench Crusade. I believe a lot of the Heresy and TC terrain will have crossovers and AoS is generally a lot less terrain heavy than 40k so it won't take us as long to get a few tables worth of each.

Craig is now our man repping AoS and Will for Heresy - we will get monthly updates from both of them as to what you want on the tables.

I would also like to start getting more Pariah Nexus mats in for 40k but that depends on the success in other areas of the club.

Tournaments & Prizes

The other part of the club we have started expanding is the regularity of tournaments being held - we currently have a 40k event every second month next year as a mixture of GT, RTT and Doubles. The first two we have done have sold out within a day due to your fantastic support as well as drawing in those from further afield. We also have one Heresy event run by Will taking place in 2025.

If we continue to sell these out we will look to increase the regularity to once a month in 2026. We will also consider adding five/six more tables to the club in the back room upstairs if the demand necessitates it - it gives everyone the opportunity to spend more time with our favourite barmaids. We could technically fit more tables in downstairs but I believe having a comfortable amount of space to move around your table is more important than cramming the maximum number of people in.

Anyone who is keen to run an event for another game system is more than welcome to do so and we will do everything we can to accommodate whether it is AoS, Magic or something I have never heard of - just speak to me or Chris and we will help get the ball rolling!

Regarding prizes - we are hoping to take a bit of a novel approach to our events this year and get a feeling for what people think. We will still have the standard prizes you would expect but would like to add some surprises in so that no one walks away empty handed but I won't reveal more than that! I am also thinking of giving away spot prizes on the day for unusual/funny/exciting things that happen e.g. First person to re-roll snake eyes into snake eyes etc etc. I would love your ideas for this.

Future Ideas

This is an area we are totally open to your input on - what would you like to see more of at the club and how would you do it?

One of the options I have been debating is adding a separate club night on for board games, card games and specialist games in general.

We obviously have a massive 40k fanbase at HH, and I am one of them, and it is something I want to spend a certain amount of time playing each week but I also want to try new games - learn them from experienced players that we have so many of at the club. This is often laborious to try and do outside of a dedicated time to do it.

This has a few issues, all surmountable, but I really want your feedback on whether you would be interested. I don't think we are currently busy enough to justify two nights every week and is more likely to just have half the number of players at each night. I know some people can do two nights but many can't. One of the options I am leaning towards is trialling a once a month night on a Thursday dedicated to specialist games/card games/board games etc and see what the takeup is - let me know your thoughts!