State of the Maelstrom

After a long break for the holidays and a series of minor train wrecks to begin the new year, the Maelstrom is back in motion! We spent the break making adjustments to our schedule and recording times, and in general trying to make our armies and terrain look better than ever before. We want you the viewer to have the best experience possible when you visit our blog or our YouTube channel, and so we have poured a lot of effort into improving our content. Some of these improvements will take effect immediately, while others are an ongoing effort to make the Maelstrom a better experience all around. We hope you will spend the new year with us as we continue to improve our content.

Each of the guys has recently moved into a new faction, and we are working to make those armies presentable for the tabletop. I have been working on my Tau Empire forces, while also pushing forward all-new forces from the excellent new Traitor Legions book. Look for the Iron Warriors and the World Eaters to make appearances soon. Also, I’ve been cooking on an Eldar army for a couple of months now. Once the rest of my stuff is assembled, they will be featuring in our Monday progress reports fairly often. Josh has put aside his Blood Angels and is currently returning to his heart and soul faction, the Thousand Sons! He’s been assembling like mad, and currently has a squad of Rubricae on the painting table. I’m sure we will see them in battle reports soon.

His Blood Angels, meanwhile, have moved on to my younger brother, Eric. Eric is a college student and has busy weekends with the band, so he doesn’t get much free time for gaming at the moment. However, over the Christmas break he took a lot of time to work on Josh’s Blood Angels and add in a few units of his own. He’s been playing several practice games to get back into the swing of things, and will undoubtedly make his debut in our battle reports soon. Finally, Hutch has placed his Eldar to the side, returning to his first love with the new release of the Death Guard. They have already been a thorn in the side of many armies around the Maelstrom, and will feature as well at some point this year.

Back in November, we also picked up the starter fleets for Dropfleet Commander and started learning the rule set. We look forward to adding them to our game rotation soon, and hope to have some battle reports flowing throughout the year. The game has proven to be a huge success with us so far, and we’re looking forward to finishing up the fleets and getting some larger games going.

Also, keep your eye out for more Dropzone Commander. We took a break from it as we learned the new Traitor Legions book and the Dropfleet Commander core rules, but we have no intentions of remaining away for long. Soon, our tabletops will ring to the sound of the Reconquest’s battlefields once more.

Don’t be surprised to see other game systems coming in the near future as well. Our goal is to expand to encompass as much of the hobby scene as we can, and we want to play games that people enjoy watching. We’ve been looking at Warmachine, Bolt Action, X-Wing, and Flames of War, just to name a few. As our armies solidify and more time is cleared to explore these other game systems, expect to see some of them make it into the weekly rotation.

We have big plans for 2017 here at the Maelstrom, and we hope each and every one of you will continue on with us as we produce hobby-oriented content, for the beer and pretzel gamer. Look for more battle reports, hobby updates, product reviews, and tactics articles, coming soon!