Why did I start a Blog?

Introduction. If you're reading this and you don't know who I am, then I'll start with: Hi, My name is Daniel, I'm a 21 year old male, I like Movies, Games, Music & more. I live in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, on a life style block & I work in a blueberry orchard. I'm not famous (yet) I don't travel a lot, but I do a lot of different things in my day to day life that I enjoy talking about.

So why did I start a Blog? As I'm sure a lot of you Reading this know, I have often ranted on about how I think vlog's & blog's are silly, to a lesser extent blog's but I've still always thought the concept strange, people just write about their life/views & beliefs/discoveries they've made, and other people read it, I mean it is a weird concept right? I listen to a lot of podcasts, particularly a lot of board game podcasts, & one of the host's of my favorite podcast has a patreon for those that want to support him in everything he's doing (as he does multiple podcasts and YouTube videos too) so I support him for a small $1 a week cause I enjoy everything he puts out there and I think he's a genuinely good bloke. Once a week he updates his podcast with a "Claptrap" - which is essentially a blog post, and he just talks about life, his work as a nurse, what he's up to in the media world, and small thoughts he's had on certain topics. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the posts he makes, and almost always find myself commenting on them about what I've been doing or my thoughts on what he's talking about. Reading his posts, and commenting on them, made me think that maybe I'd enjoy having a blog of my own, so here I am now writing this, and here you are reading it, all thanks to Dan Hughes <https://www.patreon.com/danhughes>

So now you have this blog, what are you going to talk about? well, whatever I like really, I've decided to make this blog because I think I'LL enjoy it, I hope other people will enjoy reading it but I'm doing this as a project for me.

Speaking of Projects... Me, my older brother Luther & my nephew Dylan, all bought ourselves some training weapons, these are heavy duty blunt weapons that are made for sparring, Dylan bought a katana, Luther bought a gladius, and I grabbed two battle axes. Since purchasing & while waiting for them to arrive, Luther & I have been making some shields out of the tops of some old plastic Water Barrels, I have big love for creating stuff out of old unused equipment, it's more fun and exciting to look at something and go "what can I make out of that" or "How do I turn you into what I want". they turned out pretty well and are pretty hefty and will take a lot of wear, I'd like to paint an insignia on my one (the red one)but I'm not sure what, I'm tossing up between an Eagle and a Lion. The shields have been a fun project and I look forward to sparring with them a bit more.

We recorded an episode of the podcast on Monday, it was a lot of fun and it made me think about a lot of stuff I hadn't thought of in a while, I don't want to give away too much but we talked briefly about Biker Mice from Mars which I'm half convinced I'm the only one who actually remembers that show, it's older than I am and I don't remember how I came across it and watched it, but I remember a fair bit, I specifically remember one episode where one of the mice in the show kept turning into a rat...yeah it was weird.

I'm really enjoying doing the podcast, which, like this blog, we started for our own enjoyment. We definitely are more interesting some sessions rather than others but we've been getting good feedback about it. I've had a few ideas about new things to do with it and new avenues to explore, so I look forward to experimenting with them in the future.

Games. As most people know, I LOVE board games, I like video games too but board games are a big passion of mine, I own 50+ board games & including my family's games we have over 100 in the house, I love a large variety of games, but a type I don't get to play so often are campaign games. Campaign games are games where you play multiple games (anywhere from 5-20 depending on the game) and each game leads into the next generally with a story and some sort of gameplay change. I love campaign games, I played through one called Charterstone with my family, but other than that the only other I'd played is RWBY: Combat Ready, which has tiny campaigns. So I decided to change that. on Sunday me and my good friend Ben played the first mission of Star Wars: Imperial Assault, it was heaps of fun, it has an app that plays the bad guys for you and keeps track of your xp and items & it really was a moment of getting into the theme, and feeling like you're actually getting stormed by a bunch of Storm Troopers, it was heaps of fun, super thematic, and I can't wait to meet up and play the next mission. But Imperial Assault wasn't the only campaign game I got to start, Luke, Ben, Ethan.S & Myself all got to play a game of Mechs vs Minions, Mechs vs Minions is a game made by Riot Games (the makers of League of Legends, TFT, Legends of Runeterra etc) and it is extremely overproduced and has heaps of components and tiles, it is a very awesome looking game,

It's a cooperative (working together) Programming game (You place your actions down, then execute them) and just, the way everything works and comes together is so well done, I'm looking forward to getting the chance to play it again, it's one of those games that I have wanted since it came out, and it's also one I never thought I'd ever get the chance to play, you'll definitely hear more about it later on, when we get further into the campaign. Lastly on games (it's been a fun week), Riot Games (Mentioned previously) released Valorant. If you know what CS:GO is like, then this is pretty much that, but you have one life, abilities and you play a bunch of rounds, it's a First Person Shooter and it's very skill based, and you have to have a high reaction time...I am neither skilled nor do I have a high reaction time... But alas it is still good fun.

Coming up Hopefully I'll have a chance to have some proper spars with our training weapons, next week I have my first Board Game Night post-lock down (if you don't know what I mean by lock down then... yikes), it'll be Dice themed and I'm really looking forward to it. Other than though it'll just be life as normal. I have yet to decide how frequent this will be, probably fortnightly but we'll see, If you enjoyed reading this then please let me know, if not keep it to yourself cause I don't care. Until then, to quote a very famous man: "Play More Games"

(Here is picture of friend I made at work today :3)