AdeptiCon breakdown

So, I'm trying to put together a breakdown of what I need to paint for AdeptiCon.  My current count is that I need to have (roughly) the following number of painted models:

Firestorm Armada - 32 models, from dreadnaught down to fighter tokens.  About 3 ships are done, another 8 are almost done, and they actually paint quickly, if I sit down and do it.

Relic Knights - About 22 models, maximum.  I'm only planning on taking one faction, and just playing some games for fun.  They should paint quickly enough, for the most part.

The remaining 250 models is all for Warmachine and Hordes, though it is split among three (four, depending on how I count minions) different factions.  I plan on playing only one of them competitively; the others are all for pickup games in the Iron Arena.  As I said, most of the models are at some point of completion, and that 250 count actually includes about 20-30 models which are done.  I have another 30 or so that are actually almost done, with final touches and basing being the main obstacles. 

I am hoping to make a serious dent on it between now and the beginning of the year, although much of the work will concentrate on simply getting everything to the point of having some paint on it, as much as possible, even if it means that I do not actually finish anything during that time period.

AdeptiCon painting list

I've been really, really busy the last few weeks, so blogging fell by the wayside.  But, this is basically a public admission/declaration/whatever - I am putting together my army list(s) for AdeptiCon.  It looks like I need to have about 300 models painted.

That's the bad news.  The good news is that is Convergence, Minions, and Cephalyx for Warmachine/Hordes, plus Black Diamond for Relic Knights and Terrans for Firestorm Armada.  And, as another bit of good news, some of that 300 is already painted.  And, as a last bit of good news - almost all of it is assembled and primed, with most being somewhere between primed and final touchups/basing.  With any luck, and a lot of work, it's all doable.

Of course, the depressing part is that I know some people who would look at it and say "Pshaw, I can have that done before Christmas."  I try not to think about that too much.

Kings of War

The Kings of War (2nd edition) Kickstarter is done, but I jumped in with a pledge in the final few hours.  Right now, I am in for the God of War pledge, which will get me the rulebook(s), plus all the stretch goals.  Now (well, before the pledge managers goes live), I need to decide if I am going to go for one mega army or two army deals.  I am leaning toward the Abyssal mega army, simply because, thanks to some Bartertown trades, I have a small elf force in hand, and possibly an ogre force in the next couple of days. A friend is going to piggyback on my pledge, so there should be 4-6 armies between the two of us, which is more than enough to get some of the locals playing.

On a related, KS note - the Reaper CAV models are shipping, and mine are on their way.  I will probably get it before USPS updates their tracking info, which seems to be the usual case.  And I have a parts order from PP on its way.  It's like Christmas, except that they are all gifts to me.

AdeptiCon 2015!

So, if you are going, and you haven't registered - shame on you.  The full swag bags are gone, and some of the events are sold out.  That said, register and go anyway.

This year, I'm only registered for two events: Iron Arena and the Warmachine/Hordes Senior Pro Tour  I plan on playing a few other things, like some casual games of Malifaux, Relic Knights and Firestorm Armada, but the FSA tourney was at the same time as the Senior Pro Tour.

I'm also looking into playing a casual game or three of Kings of War or SAGA, but those depend on what I can get painted in time.

Real life took a bakcseat for a while

And, by "real life," I mean gaming, of course.  I just haven't had time to do much - heck, I've barely played in the JR league for the past couple of weeks, and haven't touched a brush in almost 3 weeks.  November is going to be a low hobby kind of month.   Hopefully December can make up for it.  So, what's been going on?

Mantic has a Kings of War 2nd ed Kickstarter that looks interesting.  I have a week or so to decide on it, but really, it's probably a done deal for me at this point.  Good system, nice price point, and some interesting figs?  Sure, why not.

My Reaper CAV and Bones II models will be here eventually.  No rush - I never cleared my backlog of Bones I models, and my Robotech stuff is here (though still unassembled), so CAV would be a while.

Delay of game

So, the JR league was delayed by a week, so as to avoid conflict with an Exigence release event in a nearby town.  Unfortunately, I could not attend the event, so I got in a game at my FLGS.  I decided on running Circle for a while, since I figure it was a good way to bone up on my power attacks and general movement shenanigans. I'm not planning on being uber-competitve, and I chose Kromac because I like the model, and I kind of wanted to paint some Tharn.

So, Kromac and some beasts don't generally do well against Saeryn, a Scythean and a Serpah, and yeah, that game was ugly.  If I had been thinking, I might have actually managed to pull it off, but I have gotten out of the habit of slamming my own models, and basically conceded the game.

I tried Kromac again today, against pSorscha, and I came close to killing her.  Mainly because she lined up a few inches behind one of her jacks, and well within the Gnarlhorns slam range.  I just could not seal the deal, and on the other players turn, he stood, popped feat, and killed my poor frozen Kromac.  Definitely a "go big, or go home," moment, and I figured that I had at least a 50/50 chance of winning.  And, if nothing else, it was fun as hell.

I have to hold on painting anything until Saturday though, since that is the official start date.  In the meantime, I am just trying to get stuff assembled and primed.  I hope to get at least 3-4 beasts done this month, and start work on Kromac and some Tharn.  Should be fun, painting something that isn't a robot, and just because.  Hell, it's fun playing games, instead of running things and teaching all the time.

Welcome back!

So, I think yesterday might have been my first actual games of anything (well, miniatures-related) in several months.  I still had to carve out the time, and my utter lack of playing made did not help my already mediocre skills.  In the end, I went 1-2 in a Who's the Boss event.

I ran Khador - so, basically a standard Winterguard death star (with only 2 rockets though, since that is all I had), Kovnik Joe, a Decimator, War Dog, pEiryss, Harlan Versh, Widowmakers and a Gun Carriage.  Oddly enough, of the 8 players, 3 wound up playing Khador - and all three had the WG deathstar/Kovnik Joe/Widowmakers core.

I did okay on first round, with eAbby popping feat and delivering a flying Decimator to Sturm & Drang.  Round 2 was bad - I faced pKreoss and 2 Archangels.  Pop & drop and 2 Archangels to the face did bad things to my army, though I did manage to take out on of the archangels before losing the game.  Axis plus feat plus charging an archangel let me claim some moral victory, before Kreoss killed him.

Round 3 was against one of the other Khador players.  He was running Behemoth and Kayazy, plus the deathstar core.  pLylyth did okay, but a timely feat from the Witch Coven prevented me from doing a lot of damage with the 4" templates from the gun carriage (I did not need to hit the kayazy, just drop it somewhere in their general direction, and I was sure to catch a couple), and he trampled Behemoth into a position where, when Versh failed to kill him (though I did cripple both arms), he shot pLylyth to death.  (I had my choice of losing via caster assassination or scenario, but I was going to lose when he started his final turn.)

Anyway, we had in excess of 125 casters, I believe, and I supplied about 115 of them.  (Other players could have supplied more, but I wanted to see how many I really had, and it was easier that as much as possible belong to me, so that, in the event of breakage, it was less of a big deal.)  We certainly plan on running it again, so I guess I have 4-5 months to get a few more casters, and to see if I can actually get some of them painted.  I'd like to have everything fully primed, and base colors on most of them, but a lot of that will depend on how busy the rest of this year winds up being.

We start up a JR league next week, and the other PG is going to run it.  So, I get to play for a change.  We can make our own battlebox, with 12 points (plus jack/beast points), but no epics or character jacks/beasts.  I need to decide on a faction and a caster in the next few days.

A total lack of motivation

I haz it.  I have some new shinies, but almost no motivation to actually do anything.  It might be because USPS lost some rules and models that I traded to get.  It could be because it's the end of summer, and things are a little crazy around here.  It could be that I just haven't played many games lately - as in, almost none since AdeptiCon, in any system.

I just don't feel like painting or assembling things. I am looking at changing from Convergence, and hoping that switching factions will jump-start my creative desire, and I'll start painting again.  But I know that I really won't have any chance to play until almost the end of September.

I don't know.  Maybe I should just commit to painting something, anything, for 15 minutes per day.  Maybe just getting back into the habit will help.  Probably won't hurt, right?

New shinies!

Between mail, and meeting up with friends, today I added:

Battletech Introductory set (which adds a few more minis)
Terran Dreadnaught for FSA
Longstreet and a deck of the cards for it
DBA armies - Norse Irish, Feudal English, Anglo-Danish, Norse Viking, Theban
30 Union soldiers
30 Confederate soldiers

Blighted Ale Ram mug and shirt.

Tomorrow, I think I have some more FSA models arriving, and hopefully the new FoW rules will be arriving soon.

No GenCon swag

since I did not go, but I do have some gaming goodies en route to me anyway.  Thanks to a ninja, and the nice folks at Privateer, I have the Ram mug, shirt, Ram pins and the bather model all either coming to me via mail or being picked up later this week.

I also have the new FoW rules on their way, plus some other assorted goodies (not sure what - he tossed them in as a bonus.)  They're coming with some Germans, but those are going to a friend.

I have several hundred bases coming from Litko.  Someday, someday, I will have a laser of my very own, and will simply cut a few hundred bases whenever I need them, but until then, I will have to buy them from time to time.

I need the bases because I have a copy of Longstreet coming, plus about 60 infantry.  I plan on using proxy bases and growing this slowly, since it is not a main game for our group.  That same shipment will also have five or six DBA armies.  I don't play DBA, but I paint them, and that works for me.

I have some more Firestorm Armada stuff coming - basic Terrans and Dindrenzi.  I really need to finish more of what I have before they arrive.

Thank goodness sumer is almost over.

No, I haven't posted in weeks.  I had Scout camp, then a couple days at home, and then 10 days (and better than 2000 miles) worth of road trip.  Sadly, GenCon did not figure into that at all.

But, I am back at home, summer is almost over (so the kids go back to school soon), I have plenty of plasticard on order, a cutter, a few building designs, and a bunch of credit at a game store.  September should be a nice relaxing time.

By relaxing, I mean completing designs on a dozen buildings and making at least one well-assembled copy of each, painting up a bunch of 15mm Soviets and Germans, maybe buying some 15mm ACW figs (thanks to a Gettysburg visit), and painting up several FSA fleets.  Actually, that does sound kind of relaxing. . . .

Wargaming in 6 rules

From a challenge on TMP:

1) Every figure has a stat line; at least one player must assert that a stat (cost, morale, move, etc) is grossly incorrect.

2) Each side rolls xd6, where x is the number of figures in a unit/stand.

3) Argue that the other player scooped up the dice before an accurate count could be made.

4) Argument devolves into argument over miniatures having incorrect uniforms or paint jobs.

5) If you are friends, flip a coin to determine winner and retire to friendly drinks.

6) If you are casual acquaintances or enemies, begin fistfight or verbal argument, culminating in storming off or table flip, with no rinks afterwards.



I'm pretty sure that covers most miniatures games, actually.

It may not be playable, though (if you are friends, it is) but it's probably a fairly accurate simulation.

Summer stinks

Summer is much busier than the school year, so I get little done.  I have been getting in some games, though not many, and my main Convergence list is having some real problems with the Miserable Meat Mountain, which sounds like some sort of personal problem, but really does reflect the difficulties of dealing with a bunch of 8 wound, Tough models.  The fact that my first roll of the game yesterday was triple 1s pretty much set the tone.  I conceded, just because he would have had to roll sub-average with 4 weaponmasters to not kill Syntherion, and that was without using the mauler to finish him off. 

Still painting, though almost nothing has been done lately.  I do have a lot of WIP minis that are getting close.  Very few are WM (enough to stay current in the painting challenge), but I am trying to get rid of some of the Spartan Games stuff that I have picked up, and maybe knock some 15mm WWII stuff out of the way.  It may not get used as much, but it will help break up the rut and have me thinking I can actually make a dent in things.

So, about Relic Knights. . . .

In between Warmachine and IKRPG sessions, I have managed to get in a whopping one (count 'em - 1!) game of Relic Knights.  So, I don't have this huge body of experience to pull from, but the game was a lot of fun.  I am sure that we did some things wrong, and we both made some significant mistakes, but we had a lot of fun, with my Black Diamond kicking his Noh all over the board for a while, only to wind up with an end situation where I could not maneuver well enough to box him into a corner and avoid being shot to death.

True, the game is very much weighted in favor of the Knights.  So what?  I knew that buying in - it is a skirmish game, and the dashboard with the ready queue allows you to ensure that you can use your most powerful models a lot more often than some of the other ones, but I kind of like that.  Scratch that - watching One Shot obliterate some things, and then get placed right back in the queue was a lot of fun.

I need to get more of my RK put together, so we can play some more games.  And I need to finish painting my FSA fleets, since I may have some Dystopian Wars models on the way.  And I picked up a Fenris model, so I might start painting and playing my Khador again.

Competing with those desires, of course, is Warmachine Tactics.  Which is all kinds of fun. . . .

I hate clockwork angels

That's it, more or less.  They are a pain to assemble, and the fact that my current bottle of superglue is just about done did not help matters much.  I might be able to work on them tomorrow, but I don't know if I will get all three units plus Aurora actually put together.  I want to use them, badly, but I really, really, really do not like the assembly process. 

Update on the caster collection

Random update kind of worthy of its own post:

I am trying to get all the casters before the end of 2014.  Here is what I am currently missing, as near as I can determine:

Cryx
NONE

Cygnar
Darius
3Stryker

Khador
3Vlad
Strakhov

Protectorate
Severius
eSeveries
Harbinger

Retribution
eVyros

Convergence
NONE

Mercenaries
NONE

Circle
Cassius
eKaya

Legion
Bethayne
3Lylyth

Skorne
3Makeda
Rasheth

Trollbloods
Borka
Hunters Grimm

Minions
NONE

When the new casters from the next Hordes book come out, I'll update this list, but I am hoping to have cut out five or six from this one before then.  I'm pretty sure that, for the most part, I have been picking them up faster than Privateer has been releasing them, so sooner or later, I will catch up.  Then I can start going back and picking up units and jacks/beasts that I am missing.

That went as well a could be expected.

You know what happens when you don't play in a tourney for a really long time?  You don't do well, that's what.  And you know what happens when you try playing a second list that really wants certain models, which you have, but are not assembled?  You do even worse.

But you can learn from it.  I went 1-2 today with Convergence.  Syntherion did okay, Lucant less so.  I generally did fine when it came to killing things, but I lost both games on scenario, just a matter of not going for control points early and hard enough. 

You live, you learn, and right now, I am heading to the basement to do some priming.

Did you know that electricity is important?

So, yeah.  I had no power for most of this week.  My minis are kept in my basement.  The basement is not counted as living space because it is lacking windows.  So, I did diddly squat for the past few days.  I should be painting now, but it's the 4th, and I ran a 10k and mowed the lawn today, so minis will take a back seat.

There is a tourney tomorrow, and I still don't know if I am playing in it, or expected to run it.  I'll find out when I get there, I guess.

And good-bye everyone!

Just kidding.  But the beta is installing, so . . . yeah.  I'll paint later tonight, when I get tired of playing some beta goodness.

ETA - so, I got it downloaded, installed, and found out I need a better graphics card than what I have.  Looks like I have some shopping to do tomorrow, so tonight became assembly and painting instead.  More FSA stuff started, some WM moved a long a bit, and my Noh Empire for RK got some assembly time.  I may or may not have enough for a small, 2-player game of RK by Friday, but I will by this time next week.

And I intend to have two FSA fleets ready by the 4th.  Because spaceships are kewl.

It's Beta day!

Warmachine Tactics Beta will open up today.  I really am going to have force myself to paint for an hour each day before I play, otherwise, I will never paint any of the giant stompy robots that I have sitting on my painting desk.

(Well, I wasn't painting robots yesterday; I was painting fleets for Firestorm Armada and putting together Relic Knights figs.  And some WM stuff, although no jacks at the moment.  I have ones that I need to finish, but a few other models take priority.)

I really need a recipe box

Went down to paint on something earlier today, and I was hoping to replicate an effect that I had done for another unit many moons ago.  Turns out, I forgot how to do it, so I got to spend some time google-whacking to find the recipe and technique.  Generally, I write the recipe down, but that's not the same as keeping it around for months afterward.  Although, given the glacial speed with which I paint, sometimes it does amount to the same thing.

tl;dr - Forgot how to paint something, finally found it; I am an idiot for not keeping a box of instructions handy for quick reference.

In space, no one can hear you scream. . . .

when your dice crap out on you.  Three of us got to play a small game of Firestorm Armada last night.  We kept things small, used frigates and cruisers, and basically spent the evening pushing ships around the table, making "pew, pew, pew, kaboom!" noises.  (Well, I did that, mainly, but anyway.)

It was a learning game, and we learned a few things.  Like how nasty Dindrenzi railguns can be when three of them point directly at one of your ships, and suddenly your ship is gone.  And how Terrans really like to stay far away until they can arrange a broadside, and even then, they don't want to be too close.  And how badly Jake can roll - for once, the bad dice were not confined to me (hell, I had some great rolls!), and Jake sent several concentrated beam attacks at one of my ships to do absolutely nothing.

So, I need to decide if I am going to bolster my Terrans or add more Relthoza.  Because Dindrenzi are spoken for, as well as RSN.  In the meantime, I need to finish more asteroids, and maybe build a few planets.

Later today is Warmachine, but as EO, I may not get to play.  And tomorrow is a SR tourney, where I definitely won't get to play.  I plan on taking some models along, and getting some assembly done.  Might work on putting together some of the Relic Knights stuff this weekend as well.

Been a long time

No, I haven't forgotten about the blog.  I have been busy.  Not too busy to blog, but busy enough that I just never wanted to sit down and type random gaming thoughts.  I really need to start doing that again.

So, what has changed since the last post?  Well, Convergence has some new models. I am losing games with Lucant.  Relic Knights is finally shipping, and I have my order in hand.  Hoping to get a game or two of Firestorm Armada in tonight, and I am trying to clear out my basement.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I think so, but no one is going to build that much terrain, narf.

OKay, so it's an old reference, but I did not paint anything today.  I spent a fair amount of time at the hardware store, then made 4 table toppers, and put a coat of texture paint on them.  I also finished making the caulk rivers, all 32 feet of them.  I need to paint them still, but tomorrow, I should be able to put a second coat on the table toppers, and paint all 31 caulk river sections.  (I already did one of them tonight as a color test.)  I'm almost ready for the Vengeance release event.

On the down side, it was a full day of not working on any of my miniatures at all, and tomorrow won't be much better.  Hopefully I can get a lot knocked out over the weekend. . . . 

Back in the saddle

Thought of the title, and realized it is fairly appropriate.  I have been spending my time painting stuff for AdeptiCon lately, and most of my time has been taken up with making my WWX figs look presentable.  I am taking pics (though I am not entering the Paint for the Paint Dog contest anymore, for various reasons), but not posting anything until after the tourney.

I am under no illusions that I will win the whole thing (though I would like to go at least 2-2), but no sense spoilering my lists, and telling people that I have a [REDACTED], two [REDACTED], and some [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] in my list.

Hell, I'm painting two different lists - as in, two different factions.  I still haven't decided which one I will take - one of them will be much easier to paint than the other (fewer models), and has more influence, but the other one promises to be all kinds of fun.  I may just flip a coin next Thursday morning.

So I am crazy

I'm doing a bunch of shifts for Privateer Press at AdeptiCon this year.  Last year, I think I did a couple of shifts, but this year, I am doing more.  Yes, it cuts into my con time, yes it means I do less events, yes, it means that I may miss out on a lot.  On the other hand, I do love the game, and really enjoy watching new players pick it up and get excited about it.

As an added bonus - the fewer games I am playing, the better I feel about how few of my models would actually be done in time for AC this year.

Whoops, I stopped posting again

Yeah, yeah.  Life got in the way, and I got out of the habit.  Anyway, random thought and note for the day:

On two separate game forums, people have posted about their car or house getting broken into, and someone taking a painted army.  I am pretty sure in both cases that the armies were in cases (and one may have been a gun case).  I'm not going to talk about how to store your armies safely or any of that. 

Instead, I wanted to say a few words about the response of both communities.  In both cases, word went out to look for the armies, and then people started volunteering their spare minis, offering to loan models, buy models, and so on.  It won't replace what the players lost, but it's still a neat thing, to watch a game community come together for a fellow gamer and help make right something that went wrong.

First game of WWX, and some thoughts thereon

So, I finally got the chance to play a couple of small, $500 games of Wild West Exodus last night.  We had a couple of things we were concerned about, most notably true LOS.  Yes, WWX uses true LOS, which is a departure from many other games, which treat miniatures as occupying a cylindrical space the diameter of their base and extending a certain distance upwards.  WWX does not do that; it harks back to the "If you can see it, you can shoot it" rule.

Overall, it worked fairly well, but neither of us were being jerks about it.  In a tournament, however, I suspect that things would be very different.  And that brings me to my biggest criticism of WWX - it is not, and probably never will be, a game suited to tournament play.

That's not entirely a bad thing.  WWX "suffers" (so to speak) from the same club-level mentality that is the case for WFB and 40k.  Those games work just fine when you are playing with your friends, and you play in the same group from week to week.  But, when you move away from your local circle, and go to a convention, you can very quickly find that, because the rules (and sometimes tournament guidelines) are so "loose," there is a lot of room for interpretation.

By contrast, Warmachine has a very tight ruleset.  There is not much wiggle room, and you are pretty much assured that, whether you play in Chicago, Pittsburgh or Seattle, you are going to be playing under the same conditions and rules for terrain.

It's not a bad thing that WWX is not really a tourney game.  (Yes, they are having one at AdeptiCon.  I am playing in it, but I am expecting a lot of "Well, we can always dice to see who is right about [X]," or possibly a few full-bore, alchohol-fueled arguments.)  It's a fun game to sit down with some friends, have a few drinks, and shoot a lot of varmints full of lead.  It's fun, and I am enjoying it, but as a tournament game, it is going to be lacking.

Oh, and for the record - I lose both games.  The first one badly (very badly), the second I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with my usual stellar dice rolls.

It's a feeling of accomplishment

And not a little horror.  I'm still not done with cataloging everything, but I made more progress today.  The kids had a half day of school, so I lost some serious painting and counting time.  Here are the counts, as of a few minutes ago:

Cryx -111
Cygnar -39
Khador -36
Protectorate -18
Retribution -94
Convergence - 89
Mercenaries -57
Circle -28
Legion -22
Skorne -54
Trollbloods -74
Minions  -92

So, we're up to 714.  I think I only have a couple hundred still to go.  I'm a little unsure at this point - I'm marking and setting the tallied ones aside, so it's not that, it's simply that I have several half-filled cases, whose contents are currently a mystery.  I'll see about clearing some of that up tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to get in a few games of WWX tomorrow.  Need to start playing so that I can get a good handle on the rules between now and AdeptiCon.

Almost halfway?

So, I lost all the stuff I had been logging yesterday.  I made a plea for a new collection tracker on the PP forums, and lo, my plea was answered.  It's been a long day, and I've had a couple of drinks to unwind from several hours of counting little metal men, so I'll keep this brief.

To date, I have cataloged something like 412 miniatures, broken down (roughly) as follows:

Cryx - 42
Cygnar - 27
Khador - 29
Protectorate -10
Retribution - 10
Convergence - 86
Mercenaries - 25
Circle - 23
Legion - 18
Skorne - 12
Trollbloods - 55
Minions  - 75

Per the calculator, I currently have 56.74% of the casters (though it includes, among other things, all of the ones from the KS - which I will be getting). I have 23.51% of all the available models - but it will be considerably higher, obviously.  And, it says that 17.45% of what I have is painted - but it counts a unit of 10 as being 1 model in this case, so that number is whacked.

I'll bet that I plug in another 200 models or more tomorrow.  This is kind of interesting - I knew I had most of the casters - looks like the current count is 80, but it is still shy by at least half a dozen.

A wasted afternoon

So, I'm now looking for a new collection tracker, other than forwrdkommander. I've used it, it's not bad, except for this:

I logged out of FK on the desktop upstairs. I take the laptop to the basement, log in to forwardkommander, and begin to track everything. I mean, everything - I started with a blank slate, and began to rebuild the omnibus list.

I had some 200 or so models logged, and so I logged out on the laptop. When upstairs, started making dinner, and logged in on the desktop. And half of the models are no longer logged. So, basically, I can redo about half of what I had logged over the course of the afternoon. Except, I need to sort them out, and see which models are still logged, and which are not.* (E.g. - the last thing I logged, my units of gatormen, are still there. My convergence, which I had logged previously, is now gone.)

I have a thousand or so WM models, spread across every faction. I'm trying to build an omnibus list so I can (1) ensure that I have every warcaster/warlock for Who's the Boss events, and (2) not buy solos or other models that I have, but have forgotten about.

So, tl;dr - collection tracker wonkiness lost an hour or more's worth of work today.  Yay for wasted time, right?

Life had other plans

So I did not post anything the last couple of days.  A quick update is in order, then:

The FLGs that changed owners?  Yeah, it's going to be a nice place to play.  I did an unofficial demo day there today (advertised, but not enough people for it to be "official"), and I plan to be back there again next weekend.  I may stop by during the week, since they have used miniatures for sale. . . .and while I resisted some of the siren song, I nonetheless picked up Kromac the Ravenous and Intercessor Kreoss.  That makes me happy - and brings me a little closer to the goal of having all the casters.

Yeah, I'm still short on that, but I plan on getting a little closer this year.  I think, even with the release of Vengeance, that I can get most of them by the end of the year.  I closed it up a bit last year, but lost focus sometime mid-year, when my attention turned to Convergence.  That has settled down a little, so I can spare some attention to other, non-roboty goals.

I have been assembling my WWX guys.  I love their plastics.  Very, very nice.  I want PP to make plastics this nice, actually.  My Union goons (er, hired hands) Wave 1 are done, and I am working on my Lawmen goons, just so I can play a couple of different things.  I should get them primed in the next couple of days, and I really need to start painting them ASAP.

I haven't actually started working on the DZC figs.  I should be doing that too.  And pouring plaster - I have three major Hirst Arts projects that are about 75% poured, and really, a day or two of casting would let me get to the point where I could finish putting them together.

I've also been cleaning the basement.  I have a train layout that I really need to get cracking on.  Working on it will help with my modelling skills, as well as my carpentry.  And get a lot of crap out of the way in the basement, since it's all stuff that came off the former layout, and needs a good home.

I'm back.

Nothing tonight, but just got back from a trip to WDW, aka the Mouse House, aka The Most Expensive Place on Earth.  No gaming was involved, but an awful lot of running was.  I should be back to posting pointless pontifications pursuant to our hobby tomorrow.

Rater than reinvent the wheel

I'll just link to a Rivet Wars unboxing.  I have mine, but I don't have time to unbox it and ogle my new shiny plastics for a couple of days.  Anyway, read this, and enjoy:

http://nogspaintingcave.blogspot.com/2014/01/when-it-rains-it-pours.html

Being snowed in. . . . .

really puts a crimp in your plans.  I left the FLGS on Saturday, and the snow was coming down fast and heavy.  By Sunday afternoon, schools around the state were being cancelled for Monday and today.  So, instead of having some decent hobby time to myself, and catching up on assembling all of my lovely WWX models, I got extra time with the kiddos, and almost as much extra time with the snowblower.

It was bad enough that, near as I can tell, there was no local mail yesterday.  This was bad, because I was expecting a package.  Fortunately, the plows finally came through, and the mail followed today, and I know have a box with my core set of Rivet Wars.  It looks very nice - I will try to blog an unboxing of it later tonight.

A change of scene

Nothing much to say today.  I started putting together my WWX guys, and working a little on some of the new Convergence stuff I had sitting around.  Played a couple of games at a FLGS that just changed owners, and the new owner sounds like he really wants our community to take off.

It's a good start to the year, gaming-wise.

Tracking is a blessing and a curse

I'm certainly old enough to remember the bad old days, when you would order something, like x-ray specs from the back of a comic, and send off the requisite $3.99 and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery.  At first, you would check every day for the package in the mail, and it would fail to arrive.  (I mean, you sent off for it on Monday, and it's Thursday already - where is it?  Wile E Coyote can get Acme stuff in all of 2 seconds, surely the USPS can do that, right?  Anyway . . .)

Eventually, you would stop checking all the time, and one day, you would come home from school, and there would be a little cardboard box on the table, with a "present" - some random piece of crap that you had ordered and forgotten about.  Yay!

Now, we have tracking.  I know where my Rivet Wars game is currently located (Ohio).  I know when it got there (Dec 31st).  Thanks to mapquest, I know that it is only a couple of hours from my house.  I don't know why it is not here yet.  And that's oddly frustrating sometimes. 

I tracked my WWX stuff via UPS.  I watched it go to within 40 miles of where I was staying, and sit there in a UPS facility for almost a week before it moved on.  That frustration galled me a bit - I knew where it was, and it just sat there, unmoving, basically waiting to be moved overnight, so that it did not get delivered early.

Anyway  - I am putting off working on things I have in hand, obsessing about stuff en route.  It will get here when it gets here, right?

WWX is finally here

I'd say more about it, but it arrived fairly late in the day, the kids are still off of school, and it was date night.  I've gone through it - figs look decent, I was missing a few things, and I am going back to drinking bourbon and watching Tonto - I mean, the Lone Ranger.

2014 post

Okay, so I don't really do the resolutions thing per se.  I do have some goals for 2014, which I may as well lay out here:

1. Post more often.  I really slacked off last year, and I do not like that.  I would love to post at least four times per week, but I am going to try and get in the habit of posting something, even if it is only a couple sentences, every day for as long as I can.   The over/under on that one is Monday, by the way.
2. Paint more.  I did not paint nearly enough in 2013.  I would like to paint 100 miniatures in 2014.  I'll have plenty of incentive, because
3. Play more games in 2014, and play them more competitively.  I plan on growing the local community, and playing more games.  When I am not demoing, I need to play to win - though I will still abide by the Wheaton rule.
4. Play different games.  In 2013, I played a few games of X-wing, a few games of Ogre, and a fair amount of Warmachine and Hordes.  In 2014, I want to play all of those games, plus Bolt Action, Malifaux, Wild West Exodus, Dropzone Commander, Rivet Wars, and Relic Knights.  Possibly some other stuff.
5. Rebuild my gaming table.  I build my first gaming table over a decade ago, and it has been moved cross-country once, and around the house a few times.  It needs to go, and a better one built.  I need to build the benchwork for my sons model railroad first though.

I may have more.  I will edit this post if I think of any.