Podcasting: Heelan Hammer

Last summer, I was finishing up my dwarf army and listening to Podhammer so I had something to listen to as I painted and pinned and what not. As summer began, I was running out of old episodes of Podhammer and was looking for something new. I don't remember exactly how I got to Heelan Hammer, I'm pretty sure Jeff from Podhammer was talking about it, but I did find it.

Dan Heelan and Wayne Kemp are Warhammer Fantasy Battle fanatics. They live in England and I really hate them because they go to Warhammer World to play quite often. Their podcast is similar to World End's Radio in that they are pretty clean. And again, it is nice to have some podcasts that are clean and some that aren't.

Dan is a pretty tournament heavy player, where Wayne seems more hobby oriented. I think it is this difference that makes the podcast so good. To pigeon-hole these two into the roles of tournament player and hobbyist does both of them an injustice. Dan has some very well painted army, but from what I've heard, he paints really slowly and he just seems to enjoy tournaments more. Wayne seems to go to as many tournaments as Dan, but he seems like a master of conversion. He has an on-running conversion column in the independent magazine Unseen Lerker. These two have a very good rapport with one another and its one of the things that makes the podcast so enjoyable.

Another thing could be the accents, and the bits-n-bobs. I guess I should explain that. Dan has a tendency to say, "bits-n-bobs" while he is talking. I guess someone pointed it out to him as some point in the recent past and I gather that he is trying to tone down the number of times he says it, but I think it is one of the quirky little things that just words on the podcast along with the distinctive introduction of, "yo yo yo," and the now (sadly) defunct, "live from Heelanwood Studios".

I think one of the things that I like about the WHFB podcasts is the battle reports. For some reason, WHFB battle reports are so much more interesting to listen to than 40k battle reports. Its probably the intricacies that come along with WHFB that make it so much more fun to listen to. Which, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I don't like to play it. Way to complicated for my poor old brain to figure out.

Anywho, that's my review of Heelan Hammer, I hope you give them a listen.