My guide through the dark

Happy 5th, dear Blog,…or perhaps I should call you my guide through the dark.
I’m not someone who writes often or seeks the spotlight. I tend to stay in the background, observing, reading, quietly enjoying. But at some point I realized: I owe this blog something. Without it, I would never have found my way back into the hobby.

When A Gentlemanly Sport started the blog five years ago, I was in one of the most difficult phases of my life. There are moments when everything fractures, joy, routine, the people you rely on. My hobby was one of the things swept away in that collapse. And so I missed the birth of this blog. While others witnessed the first posts, the first stories, the first sparks of adventure, I was far away,…mentally and emotionally.

Yet even from that distance, a small ember remained. A quiet light that refused to go out. A blog that kept glowing, as if whispering: “The path is still here. Return,…when you can.” Only now I understand how much that light mattered.

When strength slowly returned, the ember brightened. My mind was restless; I needed something to anchor me. So I stepped back into my hobby room, like a wanderer returning to a familiar trail after too long in the wilderness. Cautiously at first, almost hesitant. Thirty minutes, perhaps an hour. Not a triumphant restart, but a quiet re-entry. And it worked. The pressure faded, and the joy found its way back.

With that return came new knowledge: resin and filament printing, creating my own models in Blender, and immersing myself in rulebooks became a hobby of its own. I even began writing my own rulebook. One page became two, then five, and now nearly thirty. It keeps growing, page by page,… a small, unruly forest of ideas. But I am no gardener. Sometimes the whole thing becomes a tangle of branches and side paths, and I lose my sense of direction. Perhaps it’s time to find someone who can help prune this overgrown thicket into something whole.
Alongside all of this, something from my childhood returned: painting. Because a new game needs more than rules,…it needs illustrations, artwork, a visual identity. I spent hours on my iPad with Procreate, later refining the drawings in Photoshop, Illustrator, and recently Affinity. Visual creation has become a steady part of my days again.

My view on miniatures has changed too. I once chased perfection. Now I simply want figures that are ready to play and bring joy. The hobby should calm me, not burden me.

A large part of my time now goes into discovering new rulebooks. Many of them are barely known, yet full of worlds, ideas, and possibilities. The thought that someone, somewhere, built their own system from nothing fascinates me every time.

I rarely get to play. Often I test new rules during work breaks, using euro and cent coins as stand-ins for miniatures. Unremarkable, but effective, like small markers on a map guiding me through unfamiliar terrain.

This year I built a Mordheim board, and it’s almost finished, even though I’ve only played the game two or three times, and back then only with the basic rules. My friend probably didn’t want to overwhelm me with the full depth right away. Yet the universe of the game seized me instantly. I still don’t fully know the rulebook, but the world, the stories, and the sheer variety surrounding Mordheim have drawn me in completely, like a distant call rising from a ruined city, impossible to ignore.

And in the end, one thought remains:
Without this blog,…this small, persistent light, I wouldn’t be here today, sharing the story of my return to the hobby. Thanks to Eric and David, who kept writing all these years, I remained connected. Sometimes close, sometimes distant, like a fish on the line,…and eventually, the moment came: I climbed back into the hobby-boat.

And here’s the prologue of my upcoming game: