Category: Maidstone Wargames Society

As expected, progress has accelerated in the hobby bingo challenge in the past two months. At the end of February, five club members had claimed a total of 14 squares on their respective boards; we’re now up to 40 squares in total with two new participants.

Stephen has held onto top spot, having now claimed 12 of the 20 squares on the board already, including being the first to complete a line (in fact he has two), giving him 160 points. Jeremy has stalled, claiming just one square in the past few weeks, although it did help him become the only other person with a full line. Tony F has slipped past him into second place, although a scattergun approach means that while he claimed five squares, he has yet to finish a line. Andy and Mark K both got onto the table with their first points, and Eric and Marcus both added at least one square to their existing totals (Eric’s Chaos horsemen shown above gained him square B3).

Square A1 (play at least four different games) is the most popular and was claimed by almost everyone as we got through more club meetings. Next most common are D4, B3 and C3 which have all been claimed four times. There are still two completely unclaimed squares – D4 (write a book report) and C5 (paint any unit).

Hobby Bingo Leaderboard 2022

You can see the full grid plus everyone’s individual progress in the Bingo Hall page at any time – this gets updated weekly, usually after WIP Wednesday.

Welcome to the first bi-monthly roundup of the club’s Hobby Bingo challenge for 2022.

Club members have taken a while to get up and running – the challenge only rewards completed tasks so I’d imagine that there are a number of partially completed projects out there which will be claiming various squares soon. So far five members have claimed one or more squares.

Jeremey took an early lead, getting to 40 points very quickly with a number of Vikings that he rapidly painted for the first meeting of the year (claiming squares B1 and C1). However, Stephen has since overhauled him, reaching 50 with his Capt Selwyn Froggit character figure that claimed square B3. Tony F is mid-table, getting to 30 points with two squares in the last week – D3 for his A Billion Suns Krakens (above), and D1 for a recent blog post on his 6mm SF village. Marcus and Eric have also claimed their first squares.

Three members have claimed square D1 (write a blog post) – this is the most of any single square, and unsurprising since the three in question are regular blog contributors anyway. Squares A4 and B3 have been claimed twice each.

Hobby Bingo Leaderboard 2022

You can see the full grid plus everyone’s individual progress in the Bingo Hall page at any time – this gets updated weekly, usually after WIP Wednesday.

We promised something new to replace the To-do lists, which have been a source of inspiration and entertainment for quite a few years, but have probably reached a natural end point.

So instead we have … Hobby Bingo. The idea isn’t new, it’s been shamelessly adapted it from the pages of White Dwarf. Their versions are very much tailored towards Games Workshop rulesets, so the tasks have been modified to make them as generic as possible and not tied to particular scales or periods, that way everyone can take part. It’s more flexible than the old To-do lists because you don’t need to commit to anything in advance – if you happen to paint something on a whim one weekend, or start a new army halfway through the year, it all counts.

Everyone gets a 5×4 Bingo Card (below), and on each square of the card is a task – some are straightforward ones like painting a unit of infantry or cavalry, or a piece of terrain. Some are a bit more involved, like converting or scratchbuilding a model. Others require you to play a game, write a blog post or take a photo or two.

We won’t be all that strict about things, it’s only meant to be a bit of fun. The definition of a ‘unit’ would depend on the scale of the figures – maybe 6-10 28mm figures, a platoon of 15mm figures or a company of 6mm figures (or vehicles). It should constitute a complete unit for whichever sets of rules they’re intended. An ‘army’ is a complete force for a game of your choice, but it should be a proper army, not just a skirmish force – again, this might be scale dependent (a 15mm Hammer’s Slammers detachment might be an army, but their 6mm equivalent would only be a unit).

Cavalry could be horse mounted (or some other beast – camels, elephants or giant lizards would all qualify), or armoured vehicles – after all, many regiments of horse converted to tank or armoured car units. Likewise, artillery could be towed guns, self-propelled howitzers, ballistae, catapults or even rocket batteries mounted on landing craft! Anything that vaguely fits the bill will qualify – in the event of disputes, you’ll be judged by a jury of your peers (ie we’ll see what the consensus is on the email list).

The rules, such as they are, can be summarised as follows…

– entries should be submitted on WIP Wednesdays, with proof – pictures or it didn’t happen. The ‘read a book’ task would include your brief book report and preferably a photo of the book cover (we’ll work out something for those of us that use Kindles…).
– each entry can only be used for one square – the exception is complete armies which can be made up of previously finished units (although they should contain at least one new unit that hasn’t been used for another square).
– each square is worth 10 points, each complete line 20 points, so a complete card is worth 380 points. If you finish all 20 squares, you can start a second card if you want to. If someone gets as far as a third card we’ll be mightily impressed!

So that’s it – once again, to your brushes, gents!