Well, that was some break!

 And just like that, over 7 years have gone by! When I last wrote on this blog it had just started a journey into a new career as a teacher, filled with enthusiasm and hope, looking forward to enjoying a mix of gaming and work. Turns out it didn't quite work like that! However 2 years of global pandemic, some mental health issues, moving house, raising a child and the reality of teaching all came together to rob me of my motivation to write about gaming with any regularity and so the month long break I promised myself before I wrote my next post turned into multiple months and then into years.

The shelves have gotten more full!

Gaming as it stands (mostly) at the moment

 This period of time has also coincided with some serious changes (in multiple stages) in my relationship with gaming. I fell away from Magic the Gathering from about 2016 through to 2021, barely maintaining my decks and paying very little attention to the sets that were released, or how my favoured format of Commander developed. Along with this the landscape of roleplaying games changed considerably with the rise of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition along with play shows such as Critical Role and TV shows such as Stranger Things making the game (and the hobby as a whole) slightly more mainstream than it had ever been. I however didnt really change along with this, and still play mostly the same games I did back in 2015. It was where and when I played that has changed, with the regularity of games dropping off and then with COVID19 rolling around in 2020, my sometimes online gaming became only online gaming. As I write this in late 2022 the vast majority of games I run (still almost exclusively a GM rather than a player... some things never change!) are still online. My players and I are scattered across the UK so it means that we can still play together despite the challenges life throws in the way.

Enjoying a spot of game planning

The Adventures in the Forgotten Realms prerelease in 2021, the set that got me back to MtG

So why now am I writing this, so long after the last piece on this blog? Well I now sit for the first time in 7 years with the motivation to write about gaming. Truth be told I have often flirted with the idea of writing again, and have had a few short lived projects that fell by the wayside, but none of them have ever quite managed to provide the same level of joy and satisfaction that this blog gave me when I wrote it regularly back in 2014-2015. There have been some changes in my life which mean I am now in a place where I have the motivation to write again and I feel like there are things I want to write about. So here it is, the first post of what I hope will be many. I have a list of content I'd like to cover over the next few weeks and months, and I have the time and the motivation to get my thoughts down too. Hopefully some people will see this and those that do will enjoy what I have to say, or at the very least it will provoke some thoughts and conversations. Over the next few posts I hope to have a mix of Magic the Gathering deck articles, RPG gameplay updates (I have just launched a new Pathfinder 1st edition game) and some things on boardgaming, something that is a big change to me over the past few years.