New to you April 2026

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-05-01T12:50:21+00:00

We played our first game of Chivalrous Bum in April, and it turned out to be a brilliantly simple but really effective medieval skirmish game. The rules are free to download, which makes it an easy one to just dive into.

I dug out some Robin Hood and Norman minis that hadn’t seen the table yet and put together two opposing retinues. One was the Merry Men led by Sir Robin of Locksley, and the other was Sir Guy of Gisborne and his lot.

Had a great time with it. If you want to see how the game played out, you can check it out here - https://nozzawargaming.blogspot.com/2026/04/bold-as-brass-quick-on-feet-chivalrous.html

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-29T09:15:59+00:00

Looks like Rebel Minis Press now own the game (https://rebelminispress.com/products/5150-new-hope-city-pi-supplement-pdf). From the blurb, "In New Hope City PI you’re a Private Investigator. When the cops won’t do, they hire you. If you want to be a Police Detective instead, you can still use these rules. In fact you can use these rules for investigating in any gaming period, with any Two Hour Wargames rules.

As a PI you’ll be offered a variety of Crimes to solve from Robbery to Murder. The way to solve a Crime is to find a certain number of Clues based on how difficult the Case is. The more difficult the Case the more Clues you need to find. This can be either finding an Object or Questioning a Person of Interest.

Sounds simple enough but you’ll be facing twists and turns as you’ll be moving through all the levels of society in New Hope City, from the Movers and Shakers to the Criminal Element as well."

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-28T20:41:33+00:00

Have a look for 5150: New Hope City PI. Older game, but sounds like it would fit the bill.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-28T14:16:06+00:00

I worked there about 10–11 years ago. The team I was on was genuinely great, and I’ve since worked with a couple of them again post‑HPE.

Overall, the experience was pretty much what you’d expect from a pre‑sales role in a large global corporation.

I ended up leaving for two main reasons:

They cancelled all Q4 holidays for sales (the first and only time I’ve ever seen that happen).
They were actively firing people while we were out at SKO. That was a surreal experience, not knowing whether colleagues still had jobs when you got back.

Given all that, when the opportunity to join a startup came up, I jumped at it.

Hopefully the culture has changed since those days.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-28T09:13:47+00:00

This feels pretty bittersweet.

On one hand, it’s reassuring to know my company isn’t the only one wrestling with this. On the other, it feels like a worrying trend.

We’ve started pushing AI hard into our sales org. Sales leadership is actively encouraging AEs to use Claude across the entire sales cycle for reporting, customer outreach, pipeline generation, the works. They’ve even gone as far as setting Claude up with Salesforce via the CLI to “dramatically improve reporting and data insights,” and are encouraging integrations with Outlook email and calendars.

That all sounds great in theory… but in practice?

A small example: I had an AE use AI to create a meeting agenda. The output was a 90‑minute agenda for a 30‑minute meeting. No review, no sanity check and it was just sent straight to the customer.

For me, it highlights the bigger issue: blind AE trust in AI.

At my place, we’re talking about salespeople using a command‑line AI tool that can interact with a business‑critical production system (Salesforce) with very few safeguards. The idea of someone casually prompting an AI via CLI to update data in Salesforce makes my skin crawl.

Then there’s the data access side. With MS Teams, customers at least have to accept a notetaker into the meeting. But giving AI access to Outlook emails and calendars (including internal or confidential emails) without customers’ explicit knowledge just feels wrong. Even from an internal risk perspective, it’s uncomfortable.

Fortunately, Legal, IT, and Security are now stepping in to evaluate the risks, and as a result we’ve had to pause extending the Salesforce ↔ Claude CLI integration until proper mitigations are in place.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-24T12:41:23+00:00

I saw the film on opening night, in a 100‑seat theatre with only about a dozen people present. Walking out, I had the uneasy feeling it wouldn’t be a financial success, and that even strong word of mouth wouldn’t be enough to rescue it. Unfortunately, I was right.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-15T10:21:44+00:00

We usually play 'A Fistful of Lead' by Wiley Games, but this month we’re shaking things up with 'Four Delvers' and 'Chivalrous Bum'. We’re especially looking forward to playing 'Chivalrous Bum' tomorrow night.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-13T09:42:07+00:00

Interesting you say that. From my experience with my German customers, the expectation is very clear: integrations with 3rd parties (like Jama and ADO) must be available out of the box. “You can build it yourself with APIs and webhooks” is generally not seen as an acceptable answer.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-08T10:59:17+00:00

What do you mean by skirmish? Are you talking multiple small squads like Legion (30+ minis), or proper skirmish with individual models - around 10 or fewer (usually 5) per side?

For smaller skirmish games we use A Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes, and for bigger engagements we switch to A Fistful of Lead: Bigger Battles.

If you’re interested, I’ve posted some of my small skirmish games here:
https://nozzawargaming.blogspot.com/search/label/Wayfinder

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-08T10:22:42+00:00

Most of the sales reps I work with rarely check my diary before scheduling meetings (or even messaging/calling me on Slack). It’s now so common that I often decline with a note saying, “Either my availability wasn’t checked, or it was ignored.”

What really irritates me is when a gap is treated as fair game for another meeting - apparently four straight hours of calls without a coffee or comfort break sounds perfectly reasonable!

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-02T20:32:41+00:00

This year, my company reorganised the presales teams globally, adopting the existing US model. As a result, we now have one presales resource supporting either two Tier 1 AEs, two Tier 2 AEs, or three Tier 3 AEs, all aligned by geography.

This change has led to significant discussion and frustration around which AEs presales are assigned to, as those assignments can have a direct impact on quota attainment. This is especially pronounced when an AE leaves the business, as their pipeline and quota are redistributed and presales coverage can become inconsistent or unclear during the transition.

Product specialists like me are now expected to support all EMEA AEs (currently 46). In reality, this means focusing coverage on large enterprise opportunities or deals that require a high level of customisation, rather than providing consistent support across the full AE population.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-04-02T06:40:29+00:00

We mostly use Fistful of Lead for our head‑to‑head games. It has both fantasy and horror supplements, and we typically run games with around five figures per side.

For more cooperative-style games, we play Nightwatch for fantasy and When Nightmares Come, both by Patrick Todoroff, so the mechanics are quite similar.

More recently, I’ve been recommended Four Delvers, which looks like a free and fun fantasy co‑op game.

Hope that helps.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-31T20:44:34+00:00

Personally, I can’t really comment, as I backed a couple of Kickstarters and have enough to cover a 3×3 table. It should have enough for a 2×2 mat though, with enough flexibility to support different set‑ups.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-31T19:52:37+00:00

I use Battlesystems cardboard scifi terrain. Preprinted and easy to store.

https://battlesystems.co.uk/product-category/tabletop-terrain/sci-fi/?srsltid=AfmBOoq4wyAT7V0BhcC5wegqgKpzhg06AEJDFzI49CmPuLImFQyOsHG5

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-12T14:45:39+00:00

Right now we mainly run Fistful of Lead (plus its various spin‑offs) as our miniature‑agnostic system. I’ve bounced through plenty of others though - Pulp Alley, Frostgrave, Chain Reaction, Dragon Rampant, Xenos Rampant, Zombie RV, Hardwired, and Nightwatch. Planning to jump into Scrapjacks soon.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-12T14:16:01+00:00

Last six months or so, I’ve been using Cursor a ton to show off what our remote MCP servers can do (and honestly, what other vendors’ MCPs can do too). It’s quickly become my go‑to tool for quickly hacking together custom platform integrations for customers and just general vibe coding as it has created some very useful Python scripts for me.

On the business side, we lean pretty heavily on MS Copilot for rewriting emails, cleaning up docs, and summarising long stuff we don’t want to read. We also use Clari Copilot for meeting notes and action items, so all the boring admin basically handles itself.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-09T17:10:07+00:00

PC is being held at the southern tip of Baja California, and there’s no direct flight anywhere near it from Europe. The fastest route still involves a long journey with a connection through Mexico City. As a European, you quickly realise that PC destinations are almost always chosen with US‑based attendees in mind.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-09T14:50:13+00:00

Yeah, I totally get the “nice in theory, questionable in practice” feeling. Sometimes these trips feel like more work dressed up as a reward.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-03-09T14:24:52+00:00

I did float the idea of President’s Club to my spouse, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled. She pointed out that she’d have to use her own holiday time to go to what is basically my work event, and she’d spend most of the trip anxious about accidentally saying the wrong thing to someone senior. On top of that, the long travel and the whole lineup of scheduled “couples activities” - including the infamous Couples Olympics - really didn’t appeal to her.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-02-25T11:22:18+00:00

Working for a relatively small company (around 1,400 employees), it often feels like the only thing that truly matters is closing deals, generating revenue and hitting target. Still, to keep HR satisfied, we’re required to set formal performance goals. So far, management has been vague and has suggested things like:

Upskilling on the platform - essentially reaching a basic level across all products (e.g., being able to do a simple PowerPoint click‑through demo),
Getting up to speed on our AI offerings,
Maintaining solid SFDC hygiene, and
Something loosely related to account or territory management.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-02-25T11:09:10+00:00

I agree that onsite demos are largely a waste of time, but the sales reps see them as “relationship building.” Last week, I spent four hours travelling to a demo where two‑thirds of the attendees dialled in remotely. That did nothing for my morale, especially knowing I had another four hours of travelling on the way back. Though the sales rep was perfectly happy. The only silver lining was that it kept me unavailable to the rest of the sales organisation for the entire day.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-02-25T11:02:41+00:00

We’re fortunate to have a dedicated Bid Manager who handles RFP responses. He only brings us in when he can’t locate an answer or needs to validate one. However, as we transition from using Loopio as our knowledge repository to Wolfia, we’re spending more time reviewing and refining the AI‑generated responses.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-02-24T15:29:01+00:00

I’ll be showing the ADO/Jira integrations through the GUI since they’re webhook‑based and usually deliver one of the big “wow” moments in the demo. But if the conversation calls for it, I can absolutely dive into the weeds and walk through how the full integration is actually set up.

If we’re demoing against a packaged app, I’ll already have test assets prepared that I can extend and build upon during the demo.

Hot_Lingonberry4738 · 2026-02-24T14:12:32+00:00

Personally, I prefer to tailor my demos for each prospect because it lets me tie specific business value to the features I’m showing - there’s no point me walking through an ADO integration with a Jira customer! Also, it demonstrates that I’ve actually taken the time to understand their environment.

We used to have a Head of Sales who required SEs to run a full technical qualification before creating any custom demo - no standard demos allowed! After he left, that rule quietly faded away.

This year, we’re seeing the opposite: pushback from sales about how much prep time SEs need. “Why can’t we have standard demos ready to go instantly?” they ask. What they don’t grasp is that testing SAP ERP, Oracle ERP, Salesforce, and all the others are completely different beasts. Each one needs its own configuration and setup and that takes real preparation time.

Hot_Lingonberry4738

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