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.