I knew it was bound to happen. I graduate college, start in
on a huge backlog of projects both game-related and no, start a rhythm of
painting, prioritizing and sorting what the hell needs to be built. I kept wondering
if I would let myself be drawn into some painting and playing that had nothing
to do with the work I most lamented not doing because of life (eg. Strange
Aeons).
So now I’m in a Warmachine campaign. I already planned a
Fall of Strange Aeons but instead I’m dragging out all the Khador I neglected
to paint in Mk i.
Campaign starts in October, and we have a meeting tomorrow night to
run out our charter, ways and means, that sort of thing. Between us we have a
ton of terrain so the pics on Sarcophagi should look pretty good around
Halloween.
So, stay tuned as I dust off my old red paint mix batches…
which are all dried out. And GW changed their color formulas… great.
The Wall of Shame or What I Could Paint for the Campaign
Since I own it Unpainted:
Warcasters:
eSorcha
Vlad
eVlad
eButcher
Strakhov
Old Witch
Jacks:
Destroyer
Devastator
Spriggen
Kodiak X2
Drago (definitely painting him)
Marauder (already converted it)
Units:
IFP
Doomreavers
Greylords
Man O War Shocktroopers
Man O War Demolition Crew
Widowmakers
Great Bears
Uhlans
Solo:
Koldun
Kovnik
Fenris
Where the frig to begin... more as I decide and progress.
In the meantime, pics of what I already have painted, Not much!
This guy is my brother from another mother. He saved me from having to write one damned thing about SWXW miniatures game. A great blog on everything related to our beloved dogfighting game... be that tactics, lists, star field building or just screwing your head on straight about what matters when playing with widdle star fighter models... she's got it where it counts, kid.
Hope everybody is well. I figured I’d offer an update. I am
in the last 3 classes of my degree on top of a busy work schedule that has me
on the road a lot over the next 3 months so don’t expect much until
this homestretch is fully covered, somewhere about June. Gotta be dad over that time too,
the most important thing.
I may stab paint at things here and there but I’m not what I
would call productive. I’ll probably play Super Dungeon Explore and Star Wars X
Wing a bit since I don’t have to produce anything for that.
On the bench for post-graduation work:
Tombstones/graveyard for Strange Aeons
Lurkers for Strange Aeons
New Strange Aeons team
Super Dungeon Explore figs
Khador. Did I mention I play Khador? I play Khador. Need to
get my wargroup finished so I can start playing that again (Grey Lords, Fenris
and something else, forget what).
Over the Summer/Fall
A crap-ton of Valhallan IG.
My lit Imperial Bastion
IG Armor & Vulture/Valkyries
More BFG: Eldar and Necron
Himalayan Threshold Team/Lurkers for Strange Aeons
Riftling Rogue: Still can't photograph her hair detail, which is missing here.
It's so funny, these SDE figs. I underestimated them. Go too big on paint style
and they start to look weird. Not enough and they look unfinished. The
trick is you have to paint exactly to the sculpt which is new to me. I can hear people argue with me now that it's true of all figs but I disagree. So many
minis I've painted, you had to paint past the sculpt to get it to sing. Or you just let the sculpt do the work with local light and you use the paint to accentuate the form. There really is a balance to observe with these damn chibis...one that is hard for me to recognize. So I painted the Rogue in a sorta cel-shade style. She is done for now since the goal is all-painted and table-top standard. I did not give her the signature eye flare reflection becuase I wanted her eyes to be sorta glowing-looking.
Given that this game was bought "for the kids" and yet we are all playing it, part of the balance is the kids will be manhandling the figs like crazy so I'm not going nuts with paint either.
Just a fast update on SDE efforts... since the kids have taken a shine to it I guess it's time to paint these guys up, so first batch is primed.
Gotta say, 100% loving the sculpts but hating the vinyl material they're cast in for clean up. I missed so many mold lines first time around that when I primed them I kicked myself in the face when I saw the flash. So, out came the razor again and... just damn.
I decided I'll paint this box with little variation from the cards, while my cousin-in-law John paints his own box up in different schemes. That will work out well, if and when we combine sets.
Caught some footage of a set in Glasgow for WWZ, loaded with Philly street signage and local-ish vehicles.
Would love to know why they don't just film it all here (edit: they did film a lot here judging from the official trailer). I get interrelated budgets, proximity of flexible sets, etc. Guess they needed Europe to film both a New England -looking location and something that looks like India or Pakistan.
Still. If Philly is in the movie, shoot it here, so says the Always Sunny in Philadelphia fan who seldom sees the crews here... but I did actually see Danny DeVito near Liberty Place in a hospital gown; a place which also appears in Z.
Also, WWZ drops on my birthday so I guess that means I'll definitely be seeing it then.
NEWSFLASH: I paused the clip to figure out where the
exteriors of Philadelphia were. In the pic below you are looking due West
from the Ben Franklin bridge, the roadway on the bottom left is the foot
of that bridge. That makes the roadway 676 going down to Broad St.
THAT MEANS THE BURNING PLUME ON THE LOWER RIGHT IS MY OLD HIGHSCHOOL, ROMAN CATHOLIC HIGH!
This was my wish list for next Edition, prior to my seeing the “Leaked” 6th
Edition ruleset on Scribd: I sorta see advance deploy, deep striking and the like becoming
more strategic and less tactical, more like how it works in Apocalypse, when
staring at it from the current core rule set. I think what I have been discussing
with my buds, our wish list of changes, would be for 40K to have more “free” usable
items to really create plays. As it is, there are so many things that 40K
offers for games that are too damn risky because the detriments usually crush
what little benefit pays out if there is success. When I say risk I mean what
seems unfair risk. It is a usability issue disguised as a balance problem. Case
in point, Deep Strike. It's almost a joke. So many races are offered it and so
few can use it in characterful ways. If a race can't realistically use it
without wearing space marine armor or riding a spore into the ground then keep
it out of my differences for my points totals and give me something I can use
outside of buying yet another model that gives me the board effect I want in
Deep Strike, etc.
Then today my boy John sends me the “Leaked” 6th Edition ruleset on Scribd. I’m sure many of you have seen it already and have
decided if it is real, has merit, etc. I ate my sandwich and started reading
that vehicle damage table since, you know, that's practically part of my IG
codex.
Then I read the rest of it.
Here are some observations from a pedestrian player to his immediate friends
at all levels who play, not the homeless tourney hookers. I’m only interested in
changes that may bring faster, more conclusive and less slogging play, which
better translates to a good story, so I like the following that I see in this leaked, possibly-real document:
1.Evasion and Patch Up are interesting. More later but I want to say that first.
2.Airborne, page 47. That is basically jump troops
that never have to land and take terrain tests but still benefit from terrain.
Finally in the spirit of some models and fluff, dare I say intuitive representation?
3.Movement, assault and shooting is the turn order
now. This I liked when I heard it before but consensus was it seemed to
indicate a fan-produced fraud. Still, this seems solid design. Not sure about
authenticity either way but I think it has merit when stacked with Evasion,
revised Deep Strike, Reserves. More below.
4.Flyers have rules now as do Agile for large
creatures and Eldar Titans. Funny to see them cited in a main rulebook, pg 54
of this leaked thing. Yup, Titans, Flyers and Superheavies are all in this set
of main rules, so they are now peeled from Apocalypse and exist in the core
rules. This seems right, now that I think of it, since GW just went wild
releasing plastic flyers now and superheavy kits over the past year.
5.Wow, reserves are drastically changed, to the
tune of resource management: You have a pool of dice for all units in reserve.
You can allocate up to 3 dice to each unit and use those dice for making
reserve rolls, in effect choosing who gets better odds of showing up. Pg 137.
6.Deep Strike has changed. You can deep strike
units outside of 18" of an enemy and they just stick the landing? Win. If you
try within 18" you do the scatter roll bit. Deep striking units that
successfully land 12" away from a unit or close can trigger a Defensive
Fire action from that threatened unit. Sweet.
7.Strategems and fortifications are in this too,
which originated from City Fight and Apocalypse.
8.Weathered Bastion pg 147 sounds exactly like the bastion I built years ago but never finished. Now we have stats for it and it's
official, assuming this is all legit. Open top, troop capacity, gun ports, points cost, blah, blah, blah. At last, some fluff on the table outside a Space Marine with new style cape. And I didn't need VDR to have it.
9.To my Nid player bro John: If Evasion is
true, your Nids just became a level of faster we've both been complaining
about. Add in how Deep Strike and Reserves works with all the assorted features
and I think your army got a HUGE boost. Think
about it this way. According to these rules, you have better say in what
happens with reserves. Now, putting things in reserve may not be a last resort
but instead a strong first tactical choice… a universal one. Deep strike is way
more accurate which is great for flanking your units via Spore or whatever, you
can drop stuff right along board edges now with no fear of scattering off the
edge... that's more real estate for you to use in a game. But Evasion may help
you the most since that is army-wide and free. If it affords you even a bit
more protection, it's really good. I do believe Evasion is real, since they put
shooting before assaults now. There needs to be another layer to the
shooting/hitting dynamic just because of that alone. But with the shift in
order of assaults then shooting really may not change my IG army much, it changes Nids
a lot more; I see this simple swap of order as just making things more
decisive/conclusive: I'll get more shots off in general and that may cack units
more solidly but then and you'll close faster and kill quicker. But if all of
that is true, it favors your army most, since I still have to shoot the
same-sized army, which is now faster, where I am not as much more shooty in the
same way... over what I'm betting is a shorter amount of time.
10.Gotta tell you though, if these are the rules
for Flyers then Santa got my letter. I have waited 15 years for these rules, at
least between Forge World rules and house rules. The Vulture,
Valkyrie/Vendettas will be super fun to use, acting like strafing aircraft and
skimmers, evac'ing and acting like they are CAP's, as they should behave. It would be interesting if winged Hive Tyrants, Lords of Change and the like could act as flyers or
something.
So, the question stands, until the rulebook comes out. Will next edition be Hug Wolves and smelling people being hugged? Or will it be cat language butchery and insane Kenny Loggins five hole fatalities? I want the latter.
Sometimes a guy just has to go out and buy a machete.
Monday was that day for me. I noticed the Gerber Gator Pro at the local Dick’s Sporting Goods on Sunday while looking at shotguns and realized that of all the years I did pro landscaping and lived/played in the outdoors, I never tried one out.
Not sure what I waited for.
I went back on Monday and I brought it home, took the “lawyer edge” off of it with a bastard file and then honed it up to a real edge. I took it outside into my overgrown tree line and reduced the thickest knot of bracken down to a pile in about 20 minutes. Unreal. What a deft swipe couldn’t sever, a flip of the wrist brought the back edge saw blade to task… zip! Done.
It held its edge all afternoon, had fine balance, was solid and safe (remember to use the lanyard!)
All this and it was only $25.00 US.
Finally, it was completely therapeutic.
I highly recommend one if you have the work that warrants it.
So... I'm painting an Imperial fleet for BFG and I'm not totally sure about painting engine glow. Frankly, even on expertly painted minis, I'm undecided on the effect. I tried it on this Dauntless WIP. Thoughts?
It works as a detail on the fighter markers, which are about the size of the "the" in this sentence. Strange how I'm not feeling it on a larger model.
Let’s all give thanks for family, friends, health and also for Sarcophagi, who is a precocious 1 year old today! Chewing solid food, playing with others nicely and almost being ready to make boom-boom on the potty that is the Internet are just a few of the things this plucky youngster is up to!
As a treat, let’s all sing along with the Hill sister’s 1930's classic “Happy Birthday to You”, Warner Chappell be damned…
Anyway, here are a few pics. The siege gun is a Earthshaker
chopped up and mounted backwards. For the muzzle I used a highliter cap. The
earlier version was maybe a tad cooler but I couldn’t get it to fit into a
gunsheild so that was that.
The weapon platform slides into the bay, just like the
Earthshaker platform does. I’ll get some detail on the bits I used at some
point if anybody cares, otherwise, here she is.
I was just informed via text by my buddy Pete that he got me a copy of Space Marine for Xbox 360. And you believed thoughtful giving and complete generosity was dead, huh? Well you are wrong, so screw you, he's my friend and you can't have him.
After a recent game against my buddy John and his Nids I took a moment to reflect on the fact that the Hellhound (or cousins) explode real good almost every game.
So to the point, here is my Hellhound exploding 4 years ago to some Genestealers:
And here is my Hellhound blowing up again, last Tuesday night, to some Genestealers.
Like many, my painting desk is in the basement. Like many here on the East Coast, I have built water channels outside, tried to hire an arborist to remove house-killing trees and generally pulled together with neighbors to create overlapping-fields-of-helpfulness. Among the flood watches, tornado watches, promised power outages and battery price gouging, I had to make sure the sump pump worked. I forgot about the sump pump, good ol' sucky.
Ol' Sucky who is right under my paint table and so had to be moved. Well, I went all-in on that and tried to scoot it out of the way without being careful figuring the earthquake this week didn't do anything. Yeah I sloshed projects right onto the floor.
And Ol' Sucky just stared. Friggen Irene. So the lesson here is to ignore the hurricane outside and just paint.
Stand to and prepare to be bored! Engage Eldar Poetry Slam!
I have no idea why I am painting Eldar ships. With so many other things more practical waiting to be done than space elves for a game nobody will play with me... well... it doesn't make sense.
But, I do like painting them and the gratification is pretty instant since BFG can paint up quickly and I can make starship noises in my basement for a reason, unlike the other times. Church is awkward in that way too.
So with the Shadow cruiser already done and the Eclipse plus escorts almost finished I guess I can hook up a brother with that mission when the Eldar come to the Imp's rescue vs. Chaos.
The 2011 Eldar Poetry Slam will feature appearances by Big Daddy Mensha Khaine, Adam Hicks, Sabrina Le Beauf and special guest host, Langston Hughes in a Spirit Stone
So I lost my Battlefleet Gothic game Wednesday night (12 vp’s to 7) and I lost my Memoir ’44 game Thursday night (5 medals to 3), the former being my first BFG game in about a year and the latter the start of the Normandy Campaign from the Memoir Campaign book.
The trend here is obviously about losing, not actually playing games two nights in a row, a different trend that is easily explained for the rarity it is: my whole family is on vacation without me. BFG is what it is but the Memoir loss is actually something like my 12th straight loss in a game that I’ve played regularly over the past few months.
It is easy to laugh off a Battlefleet victory that detonated like the reactor of my Carnage class cruiser, leaving only super-heated sadness and frozen chunks of hope burning up in the high atmosphere of my dreams.
But the Memoir’ loss cuts deep.
I’m so mad at the losing streak that I’ve started to ding the mechanics of the game I love, to growl about card distribution, random chance or even, God help me, the pathetic cry of the heartless gamer: I’m too stupid to play this game. Worst of all I thought, I now own every item of the game line except the breakthough map expansion. That’s a lot of loss on many levels, which equals a lot of regret, almost like realizing I didn't marry the girl of my dreams but I actually married a drag queen who carries a fast-wielding folding tanto and has both night terrors and narcolepsy. As ugly as that all is, I have to admit that it isn't working out and it isn't you baby, it's me.
So after the emotion has ebbed and the Maker’s Mark has been put away I sat and started looking at win/loss ratios, random chance and tactics to improve my game. Also, I reflected and realized that yes, my record is dismal. But many of those games I count have been teaching games and in effect I played myself through the majority of them (since many victories come down to who breaks a stalemate by making just one mistake.)
So this isn’t about making excuses about your play, your record or what the game owes me. This is about finding reasons for why my game went the way it did and what lessons the game taught me.
I’m still figuring that all out but the process is cathartic.
How do you handle losing streaks?
My Nurgle Daemonship noticed my Facebook status was changed to "single." Awkward!
Lesson One: All gamers die but projects can drag on forever
Nice to have Sarcophagi back after 9 years. I've done a few things since then and posted my projects here and there on various forums but I'm just tired of having my stuff on different websites at the same time.
At the urging of friends I decided it is time to boil it all down in one pot.
I'll start by posting up some recent stuff I'm working on, like my Valhallan IG infantry company for 40k and a small display board.
Later, I'll catch up my past projects and form a portfolio of work.
