A Q&A with CryinMo of Tabletop Alchemy
My online name is CryinMo, my IRL name is Ignatius Fischer, I’m a filmmaker, video producer and a hobby podcaster. I used to play Minecraft a lot and I’ve just returned to all the tabletop gaming hobbies I used to do 25 years ago.
What originally brought you into the hobby?
All right, let’s see … so I got into Dungeons and Dragons when I was 16. I don’t remember how I came to buy this particular book, but my first real introduction to the fantasy genre was Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first book in the original Dragonlance trilogy, and I bought it one day in a Waldenbooks in my city mall.
I think ultimately my first introduction to the fantasy genre was the Disney movie Peter Pan, which I saw when I was 5, even before Star Wars. And later on I really enjoyed the Disney movie Robin Hood. When I was 9 or 10, my parents read us kids The Hobbit, but I remember just sort of tuning out lol, it did nothing for me, really.
It was definitely picking up that first Dragonlance book that hooked me into the sword-and-sorcery arena. Soon after that I learned that one of the guys I worked with at a movie theater was running a game of D&D and I asked if I could play and that was it, I was sold on the whole D&D thing.
I spent all my cash on D&D rule books which were relatively difficult to get, there was only one store in the mall that sold them and the selection was thin. After playing D&D for a couple years, I enlisted in the Army for 2.5 years and travelled to Germany where I ran games for fellow troops.
When I returned to the US I ended up living in an apartment down the street from a full-service genuine hobby store. It was there that I learned about miniatures and other games. That’s how I got into Warhammer and painting miniatures.
I actually painted miniatures first for D&D and then for Shadowrun, which we played for a year straight, pretty fun. Then came Warhammer and 40k and Epic and Blood Bowl and all that stuff.
If you had to pick between collecting/painting and gaming, which one would you choose, and why?
I would 100% select collecting/painting over gaming. The simple fact is that even though I like and/or want to game as much as I can, I have only played probably 5 game sessions in the last 2 years, those being D&D and Frostgrave.
I love painting and collecting miniatures and I do so with the idea that I’ll use them in multiple types of games whenever I can, but the “hobby” side of gaming is always available to me and the “gaming” side of gaming occurs at a very low frequency. And even if game sessions were more prevalent, even if they were once a week or twice a month, that means there’s still a ton of time on the hobby side anyway.
Fantasy, sci-fi, or historical? What’s your preferred gaming sandbox?
Fantasy by far. That’s not to say sci-fi isn’t on my radar or that I don’t like it, I just sort of lean more toward fantasy. Like I mentioned, I played Shadowrun for a full year (I know playing something for a year is probably a low bar for most of your audience, but for me that was a significant run!), but of course there are fantasy elements in Shadowrun.
Genre-mixing usually turns me off but for whatever reason Shadowrun 1st edition just worked for me. But my first love is D&D, after that I enjoy skirmish games set in fantasy realms, especially Frostgrave, which I really like because of its production value (the book designs, writing, rule set, etc) and its miniature-agnostic approach.
I haven’t played any of the current GW rule sets even though I have a lot of their miniatures.
Historical does nothing to capture my interest or curiosity – that’s been true of my entire reading hobby from childhood to now, I’d much rather watch or read a piece of fiction than a documentary. Of course there are amazing documentaries and historical books out there and I enjoy those when I come across them! It’s just that my attention is grabbed, for whatever reason, by fiction first.
Do you prefer to make your own terrain, or buy pre-made stuff?
I make my own terrain and this is an interesting thing – I don’t hardly do any miniature conversions, but if I purchase any terrain, which is a rare occurrence, I automatically assume I’m going to convert it or build it in addition to some custom terrain.
Prefab terrain I think gets real expensive real fast and that’s what keeps me away from that, although this is all considering only the fantasy genre. I think if I were into sci-fi more, like Necromunda or Kill Team, building terrain for urban settings is probably way more time consuming than stuff I do for fantasy-based or non-urban based boards. Purchasing terrain for that would become more cost-effective.
Do you have a favourite miniature wargame that you can play through in an hour or less?
Currently Frostgrave is my favorite and I’m about to start playing Blood Bowl again after 25 years away from it. I think Blood Bowl, while not necessarily a “war-game” is the fastest miniature-based game that I own.
I think Warhammer Underworlds is supposed to be even faster, match-wise, but while I have collected figures from that game, I don’t own the rule sets for it.
I’m also about to start playing Rangers of Shadow Deep in solo format and I’m very curious to see how that goes.
What are 3 tabletop, miniature, or hobby related podcasts you enjoy?
I’m a huge fan of the Paint All The Minis Paint Ramble (as if that isn’t obvious from my own podcast lol) and I also really enjoy Dungeon Master of None.
I’m gonna cheat and call out two podcasts that I’ve just recently discovered as a tie for the third choice: Trapped Under Plastic and The Havoc Cast. I’m actually really jealous of The Havoc Cast’s format and if I had known of it before starting my own, I would definitely have been inspired by it.
Which God of Chaos would you serve, and why?
So I’m not a Warhammer lore guy, and while I know who the four chaos gods are (I think there’s four lol), I would not be able to choose among them.
To answer this question, I might like to say that I would join the House of Black and White from Game of Thrones, but to be honest, there’s probably a D&D deity that would fit my bill or life philosophy best. Again, I don’t know much about the pantheons out there, but I would like to follow the footsteps of some sort of zen master who walks at twilight under the gaze of both the moon and the sun and practices some sort of balancing with universe.
I suppose if I were a Jedi, I would definitely be a part of the Gray Side. Maybe the Light Gray Side. (I’m sure I’ve angered all the Star Wars fans out there, just chalk me up as a heathen, I’m fine with that – big grin)!
You’re being evacuated to a space colony and can only take 3 games with you. What are they?
Minecraft. Frostgrave. Blood Bowl.
Do you have an outright favourite army or faction out of all the gaming universes?
It would be practically impossible for me to choose a “favourite faction”. I really like the aesthetics of skeletons and vampires (definitely not zombies), I like elves a lot and I like magic. I like half-orcs and half-elves. Hybrids, the way of the future.
I also like orcs and goblins. And humans. It’s probably easier to select a few factions that I dislike!
I don’t care for the Tyranids (this is nothing against folks who do, these are just my things I don’t wanna paint), I don’t care for most Khorne stuff or the new Ossiarch things, and while I like Plague Marines, pretty much everything else Nurgle is too gross for to want to paint ’em, lol. I don’t even really like Space Marines when looking at the lists of what I want to paint. Although I have two sprues of (I think) some Infiltrators I am actually looking forward to painting one day as a palette cleanser between fantasy stuff.
Is there a specific miniature wargame you tend to dig out when introducing a friend to the hobby for the very first time?
To be honest, the only miniature war-game I’ve introduced to anyone so far has been Frostgrave. And I would probably use that as an intro to new players. Really, D&D can be a good game to intro people to miniatures as well.
Tell us where we can find you online, and check out what you do.
You can find me and my podcast, Tabletop Alchemy, at CryinMo.com, where people can find links to podcast apps, my Facebook and Instagram, my Youtube, etc.
Huge thanks to CryinMo for taking part! If you’re interested in doing a Q&A on the site in future, contact us.