Who's the Boss progress report

So, last month, I said that one of my 2013 goals was to have one of every warcaster/warlock in the game, so that I can run a "Who's the Boss" style event on my own.  (One of each does not mean one of each sculpt.  I don't need more than one version of pMadrak, for example.  I may have the variant sculpts, but it's not a requirement.)

Anyway, thanks to a conversation on Facebook last night, I decided to actually take inventory of what I have, so that I can see what I still need to get.  After an hour and some of going through my collection, here is what I think I still need to pick up this year:

Cygnar
eCaine
Constance Blaize
eHaley
3Nemo
Nemo
eStryker

Cryx
eGaspy

3Gaspy

pGoreshade

Mortenebra

Scaverous

eSkarre

Venethrax

Menoth
pFeora
Harbinger
3Kreoss
Testament
Reznik
Severius - thought I had him somewhere, will have to keep looking
eSeverius
Thyra
Vindictus

Khador
eButcher
eIrusk
eSorscha
Strakhov
evlad
3Vlad
Zerkova

Ret
eVyros

Mercs
Ashlynn
Damiano
MacBain
eMagnus

Circle
Cassius
eKaya
Kromac
Krueger
eKrueger
eMorvahna

Legion
Bethayne
Kallus
eLylyth
3Lylyth
eVayl

Trollbloods
Borka
Calandra
eGrim
eGrissel

Skorne
eMakeda
3Makeda
Dominar

Minions

Rask

Midas

So, I'm more than halfway there already.  Now, of what I have, I think at least five of them are unassembled, but that is something easily fixed. And those are mostly ones that I have picked up this year.  I am also hoping to get my collection of figs inventoried, sorted, and properly stowed by the end of the year, which means (as a matter of course) that everything will get assembled, and anything that needs replacement parts will get fixed.

No painting today

Ran a Steamroller tourney today.  Took stuff along to assemble and paint, but did not get to it - spent some time reorganizing minis and putting them away properly.  I got a new KR Multicase, and it took a while to fill it. 

Plus, it was fun walking around and watching the games.  I have to get the pics off the camera, but for the first tourney at the store, 8 players was a decent turnout.  And, most importantly, everyone seemed to have fun.  Next one probably will not be at that location until March, but another will be coming.

Malifaux Rail Crew basing test, and a WIP Helljack

Quick post to prove that I am working, albeit slowly, on some of the stuff I need for Adepticon.  I'll post pics of some other stuff sometime this weekend - I have a Steamroller tourney tomorrow, so I have to get that stuff ready tonight, and then I am not sure how much painting time I will get tomorrow.  Anyway. . . .

First up, a metal gamin for Malifaux.  This was a quick color and base test, just to see if I liked it.  I think it will work.

Next, we have a WIP of a Helljack.  I like the way this is going.  It's a little on the time-intensive side, but not too bad, and I plan on doing most of my Helljacks in this manner, I think.

Obviously, I have only done the upper carapace.  The necrotite glow area is barely started, and I need to work more on the rest of the chassis, but you can get the general idea of how the jack is going to look.  I want to have him done by next weekend, so that I can move on to the rest of the jacks.

Hammer time!

I need to take pics of it, but not until tomorrow. This morning, I spent some time with a miter box and some wood.  At the end of it, I have a 2' x 2' demo board that has nice walls to stop dice from spilling out.

I plan on making more than one - I have the wood and foam to make a second one, and my current plan is to make one that has more of a Warmachine feel to it, and one that is more Hordes.  I just have to decide just what I mean by that, however.  I have about a month to get both of them done - I am doing a road trip to the other side of the state for a days worth of demos, and I thought that taking a nice board or two would help.  Plus, once they are built, I can use them for demos at the FLGS or at local cons.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery about what I should do for the boards?  I might make a dockside, a la Fire Fingers, for the Warmachine board, although that might be a little much, since I also have stuff to paint for AdeptiCon - some 70 figures, if my count is correct.  I could probably get by with less, and just not have much flexibility in my lists, but I am trying to be a little ambitious here.

And now for something completely different.

So, on one of the various forums which I frequent, a discussion has started on the old Steve Jackson game, Car Wars.  Car Wars was a great little game initially, which, over a decade and some, grew to encompass not just cars and motorcycles shooting at each other with machine guns, but trikes, buses, helicopters, airplanes, boats, hovercraft, tanks, and eventually even nuclear devices. 

Part of the discussion has been largely a complaint about how hard the old system was, with too many trick ammunition types, a near-constant use of laser-guided rockets and ramplates, and so on.  I will concede that, at a certain point (Tank Wars?  Really?) the game got a little silly, but in my experience, while rockets and ramplates were fairly common, they were not broken.  (I will also concede that both could have benefited from minor tweaks, but that is a far cry from decrying them as broken.)

Anyway, I'm happy that the game will be coming back, sometime later this year or early next, I believe.  I like a little bit of vehicular combat in my gaming rotation, and, while I am generally quite happy with Warlands,  I always enjoyed the vehicle construction process for Car Wars. parts of it were clunky and odd (like, say, tires counting against the maximum chassis weight), but, in general, it worked.

Anyway, cleaning out the basement got me thinking about it, since I found a goodly chunk of my old Car Wars stuff.  Maybe I will see about teaching my son how to play, and pushing some Micromachine cars around a map, making machine gun and laser noises.

Hoping for a productive day.

Despite the fact that the kids have the day off from school, I am hoping to have at least a semi-productive afternoon.  I plan on doing some painting, some scratch-building, taking some pics, moving more junk in the basement, and putting more things up on Bartertown. 

Adepticon is coming up - only 85 days or so, and I have a lot of stuff to paint.  On the docket for today - Revenant crew and mechanithralls, plus doing the base work for as many things as possible.  I am also trying a new paint scheme for my helljacks, and I will post a pic later tonight for criticism.

Quick pic

Finally got these guys finished and based.  The Revenant Crew are still a WIP, and my crabjacks need to be magnetized before priming, but I hope to get that done this weekend.

As if it needed to be said, yeah, I am going to be doing the yearly challenge.  It shows up on the PP forums (5 pts or 1 warcaster/lock per month), and then there is another challenge on Bartertown, where you earn points for everything finished during the year.  I'm hoping to do some non-PP figs, just to break the near-monotony of everything being from one manufacturer.

I'm back

Had to take a little break from blogging.  Took a trip to Disney World, ran the half marathon and full marathon, and spent a few days in the parks.  Painting and gaming resumes tomorrow; hope to have Blackbane's actually done by tomorrow night.

A new year, a new look for the basement

I haven't posted anything yet this year, but there is some reason for that.  (Please note that I did not call it a good reason.)  I was traveling for the first day, and I have spent some significant amounts of time in the last couple of days dismantling our previous HO layout in the basement.  You would think that a 4' x 8' table would be pretty easy to clear off and take down.

You would be wrong.  I wanted to salvage as much as possible, so I had to pry off the track (which had been both glued and nailed down), gently pack away the buildings, salvage as many trees as possible, and so forth.  Once that was done, I got to confront the reality that I had built that table to hold up to a rambunctious young child - so screws and nails were the order of the day. 

It's finally apart.  I could have saved some time by leaving all the nails and whatnot in the wood, but since the wood will get re-purposed as firewood later this spring, I really did not want to chance random Cub Scouts finding old nails when they rifle through the ashes of a campfire.

So, the table is down.  Now, I have to begin rearranging everything in the basement.  On the plus side, it will really work out better once everything is done.  On the down side, everything is a huge mess right now.

But, my Blackbanes are assembled and primed, and even well on their way toward being finished, thanks to the ridiculously easy ghost scheme I have used for them.  I do need to drill and pin them, but that's for basing, and can be done once they are actually finished.  I hope to work on them briefly at some point today, and have them finished, including basing, by Sunday night.  I'd also like to have all of my Revenant crews primed and ready to go - which might happen.