Nothing on the gaming front lately

And thus, no posts.  I haven't been able to play or paint (darned real life time commitments), but I do have some time off coming up, and hope to get in at least a couple nights of playing in the next week or so.  Expect to see more posts, although the total level of informative and enlightening content (ie, none) won't be changing.

Quick progress report

Ironback spitter just needs to be sealed, and based.  Otherwise, he is done.  Sturm & Drang is finally together and on his base, and even primed.  I didn't plan on actually getting anything done today, so, on the whole, it's a plus.

I finally have a plan for the bog trogs - good thing, too.  I might need them - the tourney in July has scenarios which may use reinforcements, so I need not 50 points fully painted for the raffle, but 60.  And, another 5 or 6, depending on who I am using as a warlock.  I still have over a month, and I have 29 points of that painted (though not all based), and the blackhide wrastlers are good for another 18, when I get them done.  The bog trogs, croak hunter, and another unit of gators will see for the rest - though I may try and get hold of Wrong-Eye and a swamp horror before then too.

No pics to record my loss.

Pity, too - it was a good game.

For various and sundry reasons, it was a light crowd at the FLGS.  (Side note - I am hoping that there are a lot more people there next weekend, although a turnout as low as eight would still have me plenty happy!)  I managed to get in a game - my Pigs versus Jake's Skorne.  The order of battle, as I recall, was as follows:

Skorne
eMakeda
Molik Karn
Gladiator
Cyclops Savage
Full unit Nihilators
Full unit Swordsmen
Min unit of paingivers

Pigs
Lord Carver
2 War Hogs
Min & Max unit of Brigands
Razorback
Slaughterhousers
Full unit of bone grinders

Skorne set up first, but with no advance deployment, the little thrill of every farrow unit being advance deploy was lessened.  Both of us headed for each other at a quick pace, although the forward-placed razorback took a potshot at Molik, who was 14.diddly inches away.  No matter, as the lucky deviation dropped the AoE onto two swordsmen, killing them.

I did not take detailed (read: any) notes, but Molik zipped forward, put a god-awful amount of hurt on a war hog, and bounced back, while the nihilators came forward on the flank and started tearing into the larger unit of brigands.  The brigands nearly died to a pig, but they were avenged by the slaughterhousers, who were not far behind.  The nearly crippled war hog, thanks to Carver's feat, tore through a good chunk of the swordsmen, and the brigands took out most of the rest.  The razorback shot at things, but really did not do much after that first glorious turn.

Molik placed himself in the middle of the slaughterhousers, denying them the charge.  It turned out to be an incredibly safe move, since they barely hurt him.  He responded by unleashing a whirling blade of Nerfiness onto the slaughterhousers - they made 4 out of 5 tough rolls!  On their turn, they would stand back up, and finally finish him off.

On the other side of the table, the gladiator tried an assassination run on Carver, but the free strike from the War Hog put the stops on that idea.  It looked grim for the Skorne - at the beginning of the final turn, it was eMakeda and 2 paingivers, versus Carver, the slaughterhousers, the razorback, a war hog, and the last two remnants of the brigands - one of whom was in base with eMakeda.

Fortunately, a paingiver killed the brigand, she moved around a building, and killed Carver.  Skorne wins in a nail-biter of a finish.  It was a great game, and we both had a lot of fun. 

No pics until tomorrow

So, no pics until tomorrow most likely, but the Ironback is almost done.  Too slow, too slow - I need to finish an average of a miniature per day, and I am not accomplishing that.  I really need to pick up the pace, and much of this weekend already is filled with demands on my time.

Quick painting post

According to iBodger, my GenCon painting list is 88 models.  (It will almost certainly go up, but it will not hit more than 100 models in total.)  Thanks to some painting time last night, I am at 13.6% painted!

Now, that's cheating a bit.  Two units of gatorman posse, a boneswarm and a bull snapper is nice, but barely a start, and those are the easiest figures to paint.  I have a lot of pigs to paint - although most have at least something on them, so I am not starting from bare metal in most cases.

Still, stuff is moving along on my painting bench, so there is a feeling of progress.  I still spend too much time goofing off instead of painting when I am sitting at the bench, which does not help, but I am trying to establish painting as a frequent routine, instead of some sort of aberration. 

On an unrelated note - I am going to miss a day of gaming at the FLGS, so that I can drive several hours to go play in a tourney.  It's a little far out of the way, but I know some of the guys going, and I really ought to start getting some tourney experience.  I figure that I will probably go 0-4, but I'm okay with that.

Serendipity

First off, a confession.  I haven't painted anything since Thursday night.  We had company this weekend, so I just did not get the time.  I did, however, manage to get out yesterday and launch some model rockets, which I had to paint before flying.  Whacking a model rocket with a couple colors of spray paint is not quite the same thing as painting miniatures - though sometimes it's pretty close!

Anyway, I got to the FLGS on Saturday, hoping for a game.  Unfortunately, most of the local crowd wasn't in - in fact,  I was the only one there.  Well, shoot.  That's kind of a bummer.  But, I stuck around - I had said that I would be there, and it was good to get out of the house and talk shop with other geeks.

So, I hung around for the afternoon, and, happily enough, someone wandered in, hoping to see a game of Warmachine in action.  I did better than that - I gave him a full demo, Cygnar versus Khador.  Funnily enough, I lost, and the cossacks are gaining another convert.  I've agreed to bring in my Khador stuff for a few weeks, so that he can play and get started, while he begins to assemble his own collection of models.

Random pics

Finally got around to getting these off the camera:

The green on the boneswarm matches the green glowy that I use for my ghosts.  I wanted to have an animating mass of ectoplasm thing going on.

I can only claim three of the gators for last month - two of them (the ones with finished bases) were done months ago.

So, that puts me at six minions officially finished.  I would be depressed about it, and wondering about my self-imposed deadline, except that my second unit of gatormen is almost done - four of them are ready for sealing and basing, and the leader is actually almost done - I just want to do some touch-ups and detail work.  Well, eleven is doing okay, I guess.  The bull snapper is almost done too - which would bring me to twelve. 

I've also been working on the pigs, but, while progress can readily be seen, none of them have been finished yet.  I've tried a couple ideas for the bog trogs, but I haven't gotten anything that I like just yet.  S'ok - the tests have been stripped, and I have a couple more ideas that I want to try in the next couple of days. 

I'm still working on unloading some 40k stuff, and I am going over my collection of random lead and games, because my GenCon buy list keeps growing.  I mean, look at it:

Heavy Gear - I have the game, I have some figs, but I want to pick up the Arena game.  That's about $100, is I get the deal.

The auction and the consignment store usually runs me close to $100.

Leviathans - I want to see it before I buy it, but a pseudo-naval wargame, with airships?  Sure thing!  There goes another $100.

Dystopian Wars/Firestorm Armada - I really want to pick up some more stuff for these games.

Board games - looking at the list on boardgamegeek, I see some in there that I might want to pick up.  More $.

Heap, Iron Kingdoms RPG, Colossals, etc - whatever I can get.  The more the better.

I have a budget in mind, but the more I can sell between now and, say, the Saturday of GenCon, the better.  My gaming room will be cleaner for it, and hopefully, I can get rid of stuff that I no longer play, in exchange for stuff that I want to play.

Went dark for a few days

Still haven't taken pics.  Been busy the past few days - life in general, and trying to work on painting as much as possible in order to be Fully Pained for GenCon.  (Well, for one army, at least.  It should be noted that having my minions fully painted will still leave me about 90% unpainted. . . and GenCon will not make it better.)

I am also trying to work on terrain, and sorting out what I don't really need - I want to sell some gaming stuff either before or at GenCon.  That way, I can get more money, to buy more stuff.  Which I also won't really need, but will hopefully at least use.  My current, low-end budget still calls for something like $500 of discretionary income, which, to be blunt, may not happen.

Last quick note - trying to figure out the logistics of attending a WM tourney in July.  It's a bit of a drive, but not so bad that I cannot just make a day of it.  I hope to know in a week or so.

May finished items

I need to take pics (camera batteries need recharging after final day of preschool), but I managed to finish, sans basing, a minimum unit of gatormen, in addition to the boneswarm and the four Blackbane's raiders.

It wasn't quite as much as I hoped, but most of the other unit is close to done - I am on details (eyes, teeth, tongues, etc) on four of them.  Their leader takes a little more time, thanks to the skulls on the staff. 

My current plan is to finish them in the next day or two, then try and bust out the blackhide wrastlers.  I need to do some looking at turtles before I do anything with the spitter, but, if I sit down and actually work at it, I should have those three plus the bull snapper done in a week or so at the latest.  I need to get my bog trogs assembled, but that will have to wait - I picked most of them up in a trade, and I am missing some arms, so I need to get the replacements.

I'll squeeze in work on all three warlocks as I go, but I hope to be working on pigs full-time by the middle of the month, and I'll come back to the bog trogs when I have all the bits.

I have a plan.  It's not a cunning plan (not by a long shot), but it's a plan nonetheless.