Wow, I Forgot to Mention...

A few weeks ago I placed an order with an online game shop based in Eastern Canada: Meeplemart. They have a much wider selection than a lot of other Canadian stores when it comes to miniatures games and accessories. Their prices are nothing special, but are comparable to other online retailers, and I prefer buying from Canadian folks when at all possible. They do add shipping to their fees, so they're not as highly ranked by me as a shop like Starlit Citadel. However, opinions aside, here's what showed up at my door from Steve at Meeplemart!

This box contained starter sets for games I've been interested in for a while, and may or may not have actually played. First up is Dark Age: Apocalypse. I've played this game once, and it was a lot of fun. D20-based rolling-low-is-better might seem like an odd way to go, but I enjoyed it very much. So I wanted to pick up the core rule book and a few starters of my own. I wasn't able to get the Skarrd starter as it was out of stock, so I opted for The Forsaken and The Brood.

The rule book is beautifully illustrated and is really high quality. The models are all quite decent looking at first glance, but definitely beefier than most of the figures I currently have in my collection. I think all the models were single-part figures barring one. Quick and easy construction...my favorite! Multi-part models often make my head hurt, and cause me to swear.

The second couple pieces are two more starter boxes for Freebooter's Fate. As mentioned previously I supported their latest crowd-funding campaign on IndieGoGo, and received a rule book, cards and one starter box shortly before Christmas. It's not possible to play the game with only one crew however, so I opted to grab two more: the Goblin Pirates and regular Pirates.

These models are much like the Armada box set I already have. Multi-part models with square bases, but also custom base inserts. They'll likely cause me minor seizures when trying to put them together.... They're great looking figures though. A game without dice might actually even give me a better chance to win once in a while! I'm not sure at this point when I'll get around to building these figures. As one might have noticed, my backlog is pretty sizeable these days!

The final pair of items are the ones I'm most excited about: Bushido starter boxes for the Cult of Yurei and Temple of Ro-kan. I wanted to get the other three starter boxes too, just to have all the tasty models, but being realistic...this is probably a better place to start.

The starter boxes come with everything you need to truly get started: figures, bases, dice and a small rule book. However, a few months ago the game developers released a new, free update to the rules called Bushido: New Dawn, and updated cards for all the currently-available figures. I've only briefly skimmed them and they look like a nice update.

These figures are all multi-part, and will require some work to get together. More than likely these will be the first batch that I tackle, simply because I love the style and think that the historical / mythological mix of Japanese culture in the game is a great pairing.

I do apologize for the incorrectly-rotated images in this post. I edited them in Photobucket, and they show up correctly there. It doesn't seem that the orientation edits show up as intended when linking to the files. Annoying, but avoidable now that I know the Photobucket editor doesn't do what I expected.

Dreadball League Started

The first season of Dreadball started last Sunday at Trilogy Gaming Club.

Two of our three 1st round games have already been played: a Forge Fathers mirror-match and an Orx / Veer-myn dustup. A rather unique set of pairings. The Forge Fathers game was a slow moving, low scoring affair, with only three strikes being scored in the game during regulation time. We did forget about the 'steady' ability for the first few rushes, but remembered shortly after most of the guards had been knocked down. The low speed of the Forge Fathers is definitely going to require some finesse-coaching to develop a viable and adaptive game strategy.

In the other game the Orks under Coach Eisnor opted for blood, and man-oh-man did they get it! Three of the furry Veer-myn strikers left the pitch in body bags by game end. It was a very costly victory for the Veer-myn team, but a win nonetheless. Interestingly enough the Veer-myn guards tried to lay down the pain in return but had no success against the speedy little goblins jacks. One Ork guard had to be removed at the final buzzer and his body was quickly sold off for recycling.

A match between our lone human team and our second Orx team is still slated to be played before 2nd round starts. At that point the league sponsor (that'd be me) will release two MVPs and a pool of free agents into rotation.

The teams are as follows:

• The Funky Fathers (Forge Fathers), Coach: Orrin
• (Orx), Coach: Brett
• The Royal Eternian Rams (Forge Fathers), Coach: Charles
• The Snake Mountain Smashers (Orx), Coach: William
• (Corporation), Coach: Cindy
• The Veer-Myn (Veer-myn), Coach: Sebastien

Our second day of league play didn't exactly go as planned. One of our registered players only recently informed me that his regular schedule requires him to work on Sundays, which I did not know ahead of time. Two of our other players have been battling winter illnesses and thus haven't been able to join us for either of our first two weeks. Sadly, that means we're not exactly roaring right out of the gate.

With only three players present on day 2, we opted to try a non-league match to see how it affected the league standings. So, coach Eisnor faced our teams off against each other.

An Orx/Forge Father battle looked to be a hard-hitting, deadly affair. And there definitely was a lot of hitting, but amazingly no deaths. In fact, not a single player was knocked out of the game for more than three turns. The poor speed value of my strikers had me worried on several occasions when I was required to dodge powerful slams from the Snake Mountain Smashers. Surprisingly, not only did my team live up to their names, on one rush ramming four opposing players off the pitch, but also proved quite handy at scoring too!

I would never have expected it, but with some lucky dice rolls (actually a LOT of lucky rolls), I was able to maintain solid possession of the ball and score enough strikes to end the game early in a 7-point landslide victory.

None of my players moved up a rank, but a few were able to garner some experience. No deaths on either side boded well for both teams. Unfortunately for the Smashers, losing early also meant that they were denied the chance to roll any income for the game. I was able to earn enough to replace the jack I lost in the first game, and also add another card to the Royal Eternian Rams' roster.

It should have an affect on the second round pairings, as my team will move up in value. That will likely result in my team receiving a challenge as opposed to issuing one. Additionally, spending most of my free cash will mean that I've no funds available to bid on an MVP for round 2.

All in all, a very interesting start on the road to the 1st Trilogy Cup!

FIrst Finished Items of 2013

With all the new stuff arriving over the past few weeks, one might think I haven't painted anything. One might be almost correct. I've been painting, I just hadn't finished anything until today. So here's what I've got to share!

First up, three more members of Alpha Flight have been added to the roster.

Diamond Lil

Marrina

Aurora

As with all the other figures I've done so far, these are all simple Heroclix conversions. For the most part it's simply paint touch-ups, a quick re-basing and some washes and/or highlights. I'm nearly done with my Alpha Flight squad; and am only planning on adding four more: Vindicator (Heather), Box, Northstar and Talisman. The last two will require some converting or searching for the appropriate models.

I also completed a few more markers and terrain bits for horror gaming, most likely Strange Aeons with this batch.

With all the cultists running around in my collection I thought that they needed some larger objects to focus their worship around. I grabbed a few of the large Cthulhu tokens from the Call of Cthulhu LCG core set and slapped a little paint on them.

They turned out quite nicely and having two of them is good. Drop one on either side of a temple entrance, or use a single one as an altar or something like that...versatility is key! Besides, it was no more work to make one as opposed to a pair.

I also added some long needed static grass to my previously completed stone obelisk. Nothing new or exciting, but I think it gives the piece a more finished feel. I still need to figure out how to properly represent glowing stuff with my painting. I'll have to do some research on that one.

The final piece of scenery is actually a two-parter: the stone crypt and chained coffin from Uncle Mike's Worldwide line of stuff for Strange Aeons. As I've mentioned previously the chained coffin is one of my favorites pieces from them. Having a second one to add to my collection makes me happy. I painted it almost identically to the first, but experimented a bit more with doing green stone on the crypt. I used some of the same colours as the Cthulhu statues but different washes and highlights to give is a more earthy feel. I'm happy with it.

And of course I can't resist combining Alpha Flight and Cthulhu-related minis together in my posts, I simply had to take a picture to commemorate the occasion! (I wish I had a little piece of grass mat to have dropped this on, but you'll get the idea.)

HobbyZone Paint Table & Paint Rack Review

Shortly after Christmas I took the plunge and ordered some products from a Polish hobby company HobbyZone. They had some great looking pieces for organizing ones painting and modelling areas, all of which were highly recommended across the internet.

After doing some measurements of my existing workspace I counted up my assorted paints, inks, brushes and tools. Armed with this information I started looking over the various painting tables and paint racks available, then placed an order for the following items:

• Paint rack (w/ 25mm slots)
• Paint rack (w/ 30mm slots)
• Large Paint Table (w/ 30mm slots)

A day or so after I placed my order I received a shipping confirmation with a tracking number. I checked the status of this package, nearly every day in fact, impatiently awaiting its arrival. Thursday night I received a parcel notice. I was able to liberate it from the clutches of a Canada Post clerk early Saturday morning.

Upon arriving home I tore open my package. My first impression was not quite as exciting and happy as I'd hoped.

The top shelf of the paint rack with 30mm slots had two cracked wings. These aren't major, but are certainly disappointing. A little bit of white glue can cover these up and it will likely never be a problem. However, this is the first thing I saw when I open my eagerly awaited package...so we're off to a rather disheartening beginning. I constructed the rack easily enough (there are no instructions for the paint racks), but my annoyance was not assuaged just yet.

The paint rack with 25mm slots was (happily) undamaged and also went together with no trouble.

So far, things are at 50/50, but I'm obviously rather annoyed. Shipping costs for these products were NOT cheap, in fact, with the shipping fees added on, my bill almost doubled. As in somewhere around $48 for the products, $40-ish for shipping. While the stuff arrived very quickly, at this point I'm not entirely happy with my investment.

On to the largest item of the three: the paint station. HobbyZone makes three different sizes of paint table, which are made of the same materials as their paint racks. I opted for the mid-sized table, which is a little bit larger than the Games Workshop Paint Station. Upon opening the box things looked pretty good, until I removed the top few items from the package.

One of the shelves in this box wasn't just cracked, but flat out busted. This is the bottom-most shelf of the paint station too, so I assume that it will be bearing weight. No other components were damaged in the box. However, even though I was extremely miffed at this point I decided to press on and see how things went. Perhaps a little white glue and some patience would win out.

Construction of the painting table went easily enough. Unlike the paint racks, the table comes with a sheet of instructions for putting it together. Two of the steps involve bending wooden components and fitting them into pre-cut slots. This was a little nerve-wracking, based on the already broken bits I'd received in the box, but I was able to get those glued in without mishap.

The broken shelf proved more difficult, and I was actually required to glue it together on two separate occasions during the process of building my table. I also felt that mounting the shelf component onto the table bottom was was not a perfect fit. The pre-cut slots were not an exact match and I needed to do a little fiddling to get it to sit down in the recess, which once again resulted in repairs being needed for my broken shelf.

After all was said and done, the table should prove serviceable enough. The broken shelf has support from underneath and the the side, so I hope it will hold up. A few extra layers of glue covered with a touch of white paint should hide the damage but it's a serious disappointment that I even have to consider doing that.

I sent some feedback of my experience to HobbyZone in the hopes that they'll improve the boxes and packing materials used to ship their products. They replied a few hours later with their apologies, and offered to send replacements for the damaged components. Since I've already constructed the table, a replacement won't be useful for that, but I may take them up on a replacement paint rack shelf. A little more robust packing would go a long way.

So how would I rate things now that everything is put together?

Hobby Zone Paint Racks

Pros:

- Easy to assemble

- Lots of storage capacity (54 slots for 25mm dropper bottles, 40 slots for larger pots like P3 or GW)

- Each paint bottle or pot is easily visible and accessible

- Looks great on my hobby desk

Cons:

- Poorly packaged, one rack shelf arrived damaged

Hobby Zone Large Paint Table

Pros:

- Low-profile is very comfortable to work at

- Lots of additional storage space for frequently-used paints (36 slots if storing larger GW or P3 pots)

- Plenty of spaces for brushes, tools and two water cups

- White finish helps reflect ambient light without color bleed

Cons:

- Poorly packaged, one shelf arrived fully broken in two

- Curved back wall won't fit a rectangular cutting mat nicely

- White finish gets dirty quickly when painting (but can be scrubbed clean fairly easily)

- Cup holder holes are an odd size, you'll have to do some searching to find cups that will fit

- The optional wings will only be useful to some people. I'm not one of them.

Now that I've complained about everything...here's a look at my workstation with everything all set up, including the lovely new hobby lamp I got from my girl for Christmas. It does look pretty good doesn't it? When I'm not using the table, I prefer to push it back under the shelf, out of the way a little bit. Due to that I'm not able to store brushes in the rear slots, but there is still plenty of room for my pin vice, hobby knife, files and hobby clippers.

So all in all, nicely designed and highly functional products. If I have two cautions it would be these:

1. As HobbyZone is located in Poland, shipping costs to Canada (or anywhere else outside of the EU) are going to be very costly.

2. The products are shipped in small, flat cardboard packages and have no padding inside. Without bubble wrap or styrofoam to cushion the components there is a fairly high risk of damage during transit. Keep that in mind before you order.

Lawbreakers Beware!

It was a Dredd-ful weekend.

Ooh, bad pun. Sorry about that folks, but I just couldn't resist.

On my way home from a nice brunch on Saturday morning I stopped to pick up a copy of Dredd on 3D Blu-Ray. I quite enjoyed it in the theatre and was very much looking forward to a second viewing in comfort of my own home.

I also had to stop in to pick up some mail at the post office and was pleasantly surprised to find a second parcel waiting (in addition to my stuff from HobbyZone, which I'll talk more about in my next post). The box was small, but very weighty, so I headed home eager to crack it open and dive into the goodies sure to be inside.

Not certain what to expect, I split the tape and opened it up...to find bag upon bag of metal Mega-City One goodness! There was a lot of stuff jammed into that box, and it took me the better part of an hour to go through each, identify the contents and verify that they had all the bits they should. That might seem lengthy, but in the process I was marking off what was included in the Council of Judges pledge level from the Kickstarter campaign and making notes if anything was missing.

Here are the gangs packs that were inside the box:

1x Angel Gang
1x Ape Gang
1x Caligula's Retinue
1x Citi-Def (very nice figures, and early. I hadn't expected these in the first shipment.)
1x Cursed Earth Desperados
1x Fatty Stampede (which shouldn't have been included. I had swapped them for a 2nd Zombie Horde)
1x Justice Department
1x Renegade Robots
1x Sky Surfers
1x Street Gang
2x Zombie Horde (also earlier than expected...so I guess the Fatties were an unforeseen bonus)

Of the box sets that are already in production I was only missing one, that being the Holocaust Judges. I'm not sure if my memory serves correctly, but I seem to recall an update going out at one point saying that Mongoose Publishing was behind with their casting of these. Hopefully they just didn't have enough to go around this time.

For the single figures, smaller items and stretch rewards from my pledge I received:

1x Judge Anderson
1x Judge DeMarco
1x Lawmaster Bike (there should have been another, as I'd requested to swap my Pat Wagon for two bikes)
1x Walter the Robot

That's not so bad, only two things missing. Actually it ended up being three, as there should also have been a lone Kickstarter Judge Dredd figure in there as well. I've already notified Matthew over at Mongoose and am sure that they'll come in my next shipment. The communication and responsiveness from Mongoose has been really good and I think they've handled issues quickly and politely. I don't honestly think that Mongoose was prepared for the amount orders they received during their campaign and were quite likely overwhelmed by the demand.

All in all the models look pretty damned good. In most cases the figures are single-part casts (which I truly appreciate as a lazy modeller). A few do look to have a fair bit of flash to be trimmed off, but none of the casts look fault or incomplete. I've already watched the new Dredd movie once, and it's only fired me up even more to get started on some of these figures!

The list of stuff to come is still pretty lengthy, but I'll not inundate you with that. Instead I'll leave you with my first effort, and probably the most modelling work I'll have to do for a Judge Dredd figure: Harold the Undead Citi-Def trooper.

Some Good Follow-Up News

Since I made my last post I've had a few snippets of exciting news pop up. I'll start with the most recent and go backwards...

Not to long ago the Studio McVey folks posted another update on Sedition Wars. Sounds like things are finally starting to ship, which is pretty spiffy information. I'm sure it'll be a while yet before anything lands in my mailbox, but at least I know that things are starting to happen.

Yesterday, the surveys finally went out for the Blackwater Gulch campaign too. I had long since planned out what I wanted for my pledge dollars, so it didn't take me very long to fill it out. Or so I had thought would be the case. There was a brief moment of indecision when I tried to decide if I wanted more custom bases, or a copy of the rulebook...I opted for extra bases; two sets of rocky bluffs, one set of desert mesa. The rule book is available for free from Gangfight Games and is really nice; I hope they continue to keep it freely available to download. In the end I figured more product was better than a nicer version of something I already had though.

I also had to waffle a bit on which sets I wanted to pick up. The mexican bandidos and indian sets were givens, as were the widow-makers. I mean...who doesn't love a sexy cowgirl, let alone a whole group of them?! I also wanted the ranger set, because there needs to be some sense of order out there, crooked or not! Originally I had planned on getting the Secret Fist Clan box; they are really nice looking figures and I liked the idea of an Asian gang in the old west, but I ended up deciding on the Tranquility crew instead. Coupled with the add-on Not-Firefly figures from the Sedition Wars campaign I'll have a nice complete batch of figures for some Serenity role-playing or maybe some sci-fi gaming with the Flying Lead or Mutants and Death Ray Guns rules from Ganesha Games. The dockside drifter set was pretty tempting too, but in the end I had to chose five, and I wanted some other stuff available too.

Even though I do have some western paper-craft stuff (mainly the Deadfall stuff from WorldWorks Games) I also decided to get both of the scenery packs available from the campaign as well. I should be able to make some great looking places to stage my old west shootouts in the near future!

Finally, there was a parcel card waiting for me when I arrived home last night. My stuff from HobbyZone is awaiting pickup! I won't be able to make it to the post office until Saturday, but I've already cleared off my painting table in preparation for the new stuff. I'll be finishing up a few pieces of scenery and objective markers before I get that all set up, and will be sure to share pics of those, and my new workspace, with all of you come Monday.

Sadly no news yet on my Judge Dredd Miniature Game stuff. Soon I hope. I guess I'll just have to go pick up a copy of Dredd 3D to tide me over in the meantime.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Looking Forward to Lots of New Toys

This post may not be of great interest to you, but I wanted to collect all my thoughts together about several items I've ordered, pledged for or am planning to do this year. Not really a resolution list, but more of an...itemized accounting I suppose.

I supported a lot of crowd-funding efforts in 2012. Sadly the first one that I supported I've not yet seen anything from and they seem to be suffering delay upon delay: Sedition Wars. As of early this week though, it does sound like they're finally getting on track.

This was the first time I really jumped in and pledged for stretch goals or extras, and the amount of stuff I will (eventually) receive for my money was pretty astounding. While I am looking forward to the game itself, I'm also looking at using the Vanguard figures for other things, more likely as Colonial Marines for some Aliens-related gaming.

The next thing I jumped on was the now-ubiquitous DreadBall. I went way overboard throwing cash at this beastie, but on the upside I've already received a goodly amount of product, and the game is pretty fucking fun. As I've mentioned previously I'll be running a league beginning in a few weeks. I'll be expecting two more shipments of gaming goodness from Mantic throughout 2013. In fact now that I think about it, I have only actually received about one third of all the stuff that I paid for. Wow...

Obviously not satisfied with those two, I ended up supporting the Reaper Miniatures campaign that was running concurrently with that of DreadBall. While much of the stuff was fantasy-themed, the amount of figures that they were offering up for the price was simply too good to pass on. There are a lot of figures I don't have an immediate use for, but are still pretty damn cool looking. Also, since I now have a massive amount of fantasy figures on the way, maybe it will give me an excuse to play some more games using the Song of Blades engine...

Sadly none of that stuff will be shipping until March at the earliest.

It seemed I was hooked on this crowd-funding bandwagon and I carried on for the ride, piling on to support the Carnevale folks on Indie-GoGo (and netting a massive amount of awesomeness). That stuff arrived in record time, less than two months after the campaign closed I had everything I'd paid for barring a few of their stretch figures. I know for a fact I'll be nowhere near finished constructing and painting all the stuff I have for this game before those few items arrive in the mailbox.

Queue up another investment into Mongoose Publishing's Judge Dredd miniatures game. This one most likely snagged my attention due to my like of the recent Dredd 3D movie. I loved that movie and have always enjoyed the JD universe, so supporting the game seemed a good plan. Unfortunately I'm one of the few folks who has yet to receive ANY of their paid-for product, so my enthusiasm has waned a lot since my investment. I do hope that my product will arrive soon and that excitement can be largely recaptured. Bring on my Dark Judges and Zombie Horde please!

Anticipating a massive backlog of figures to construct and paint (right, like I didn't already have a huge pile of those) didn't stop me from continuing down the path of insanity. I jumped in on the campaign for Freebooter's Fate next. I dig the sculpting style and thought "why not?" Besides who doesn't like pirates? I've received part of my order already here, and have supplemented it with two more starter boxes that are on their way now. The use of cards instead of dice really intrigues me, so this game could be a lot of fun. It'll be a few months before I actually have a chance to find out though...

Lastly comes Blackwater Gulch. I gave their free rules a couple of test runs in the fall and thoroughly enjoyed them. They are simple and effectively give an old-west gunfight atmosphere with minimal trouble. This campaign reached their funding goal early in December, but disappointingly they haven't been terribly effective in communicating the what's-next since then. I've prodded several times for information and have finally heard that they're building their own pledge manager (which seems unnecessary to me). So a lot like the Reaper folks, they'll be wasting their time and effort building something that doesn't really need to be built. Suffice to say I simply want to be able to fill out my survey and then move on to impatiently waiting for all my western-themed toys.

I did look at a few other campaigns that I ultimately decided not to back: AE-WWII, Studio Miniatures Deadlands, and Kingdom Death. The first two simply didn't have appealing campaigns. The prices for pledges were essentially retail price (or a minor discount) and offered very little in the way of stretch rewards. I very nearly pledge for AE anyway, but ultimately couldn't find the value in doing so. The Kingdom Death campaign was nice and they made ass-loads of cash, but I thought that the single game play video they posted up wasn't terribly interesting. As nice as the figures were, I simply felt that the game didn't look interesting...although I may certainly have been wrong.

As to actually painting and playing games, I have a bunch of things on the docket for 2013.

Most notably of those would be my Zuzzy mats. These things are great looking but I recommend no one order from Zuzzy. They're slow as hell, have shit customer service (as in they'll NEVER answer your inquiries), and I simply can't recommend a company that doesn't seem to care about their customers.

I will however be painting up my mats this year. Of the four I have I'm hoping to get a minimum of two done, and well also be working on more buildings and terrain. A lot of that terrain will be WorldWorks Games stuff. Back around Halloween they had a nice discounted sale that I took advantage of. I think I'll be doing up some city buildings, cars and things for urban themed games, and then some western & pulp themed items for the other board.

Additionally, my Stargate themed stuff is starting to take shape and I hope to get that whole pile of insanity crashed through this year. I'll be posting up several updates throughout the next while detailing my progress on that.

And finally, I'm eagerly awaiting my paint table and racks from HobbyZone in Poland. I already have a paint station plus from Games Workshop, which has served nicely but isn't quite what I wish it was. I'm anticipating the new items will be a large step up from it, both from a usability and organizational standpoint. Now I'm off to go check my tracking number status again...

Dreadball Update

Plans for the DreadBall league are underway. We had three people come out to play some pre-season games and sign up yesterday. We'll play another round of preliminary games next week, and then get started on the 20th for the first full 'season' of play.

Brett and Cindy played a game of Forge Fathers vs. Humans, with the humans scoring a blowout win of 7-0.  Good passing turned out to be the key to victory for Cindy.

William and I played a hard-fought game between Orx and Humans. We both scored a single-point strike on our initial rushes, and then the Orx proceeded to physically kick the snot out of my half-painted, as-of-yet-unnamed team. Ok admittedly one of the players that was out of the game was my own fault...I attempted a poorly timed stomp and paid dearly for it. However, by my last rush of the game I had two players in the sin-bin, two players out (one dead) and four players on the board

The score was sitting at 0 and the ball was lying loose deep in my zone. My lone guard and jack were both tied up, but the two remaining strikers were relatively unfettered, and upon reflection, near-perfectly placed for a scoring attempt. So I gambled.

My defensive zone striker successfully evaded, sprinting and dashing into a position to attempt picking up the ball, only just succeeding. Another action token allowed him to move further up the pitch and attempt a pass to my other striker, who had been left free and in a position to catch...doubling on the catch! He was able to move into scoring position, but I was out of tokens. I did however have a single card "Striker, Any Action." A single lucky die on my strike attempt garnered me a four-point lead!

William's goblins were unable to properly handle the ball on their final rush, despite good positioning and an attempt to score. Another victory went to me with a four-point strike on a last-gasp effort. I simply don't know how many more of those I can pull-off, but I do hope I haven't burned all my good fortune before the league even starts.

We did learn a few tasty strategic morsels during the game, but I'll be keeping them to myself for now. If they prove out during the season I'll share them afterwards. A good coach doesn't share all of his secrets before the game even starts!

After the game we also went through some of the league follow-up activities to get an idea for how it would work. One of my strikers would have garnered Man of the Match honors and gained the "Backflip" skill, and one of William's Orx guards would have gained the "Keeper" skill, which would have been really cool. I also would have been forced to decide whether to part out my dead player or pay to revive him.

I'm quite looking forward to league play, and will post up my finished team next week before we get started.

I'd also love some suggestions for what we should call our league. Please post some ideas in the comments section!

Holiday Recap / 2013 Start

Holy crap, I can't believe that it's the year 2013. What the hell happened to time? I remember being a kid and watching movies like Transformers and thinking "2005, that's so far away!" Maybe I'm just getting old(er) and starting to wondering what I've been doing with my life. Regardless, 2012 was mostly good, with some unpleasantness occasionally thrown in to mess it up. Not unlike most everyone else's I'd imagine.

Overall I can't complain too loudly. It's a New Year full of promise, just like every new day should be.

I won't be doing a full recap of the year, because well...that'll probably be boring for me and you. All the hobby stuff I did last year is available right here on the blog, so you can go through it at your leisure. I'd rather fill you in on all the stuff that's happened over my winter break! We'll just skip the parts about the exorbitant traffic ticket I got from less-than-honorable traffic cop, and my washer/dryer vomiting water all over the place shall we?

Firstly, I picked up a sizeable Sebeki army for Wargods of Aegyptus from Brett, as well as a hardcover rule book. The army will need some painting and assembly but they're pretty spiffy models. I've got a bunch of reading to do before I decide on a second army to buy. I'm leaning toward the Anubi because I like how they look. Sadly he couldn't find the action counters, so I'm trying to find a nice looking set of those somewhere. I finally have an excuse to build some kick-ass desert / Egyptian tabletop scenery!

The week before Christmas was a (mostly) good one! My first box of Dreadball stuff arrived in time to play a few games. Included in my striker box was the base game components (board, dice, tokens, cards and team sheets), one of each of the season 1 teams (Corporation, Orks/Goblins, Forge Fathers and Veer-myn), 48 clear hex bases, a set of the kickstarter acrylic tokens, Coach Renton and eight of the MVP figures.

I started cleaning up the models and overall I think the team figures are very nice. There a fair amount of moulding lines that need cleaned up, which will take a while. I've planned to paint my Corporation team first as that's the team I'll be playing in the Jan/Feb league. I'll be running the casual league at Trilogy Gaming Club and we're starting pre-season games this coming Sunday.

The package also included a list of "Stuff to come in 2013," but the Battlefoam bag I'd added to my pledge wasn't listed anywhere. It showed up on the 27th, which is the first day of postal service here after Christmas. It's not the bag I thought it was, but it's not bad. In retrospect I think I'd have rather ordered a PACK 432 with generic load out. I'll have to reserve final judgement until I test it out.

The same day as my washing machine mishap occurred, my massive box of Carnevale goodness arrived! This was the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink box from their recent IndieGoGo campaign to fund their Mograur-Rashaar monster figure. There were dozens of models in this box, along with lots of metal bases to mount them all on. I really only had time to go through the box to figure out what all was inside. It was a pretty glorious collection of stuff. Take a look...

There are so many figures here than I'm not sure where to start. Maybe I'll actually read some of the fluff from the lovely looking rulebook. Like most of my other games I'd like to get two starter boxes painted up so that I can play a few games with a friend. Of course we could play unpainted, but that just feels so wrong!

Like a lot of people doing miniature gaming, I started off with 40k. That also meant that my figure paints were from a Citadel starter set. I still have some of those paints, or have used them up and replaced them with new pots from their current line. However, with the constant price increases, changes to the pots (they don't click open anymore?), or changes to the line (where did my basic inks go?!) I've started switching.

My first new paints were Privateer Press' Formula P3. I like the consistency of the paint itself, it covers nicely, the containers seal very well and they're easy to shake without worry of them flying from my hand. A friend of mine used to be a large collector of Warmachine, but no longer plays or paints, and so has sold me his entire collection of paint, as well as some brushes, matte finish spray, superglue accelerant and grey primer.

I already had seven or eight pots of P3 paint, but only two of them are in this case. There were 47 pots in there, half of which have never been opened. I've already cleaned up and saved the very small few that were in need of it. It's much appreciated, and I can't wait to start painting again this year!

For Christmas we headed out to my parents' place. I usually bring a few games, but more often than not they don't really get played much, if at all. My dad is especially tough to convince into a game, but this year we played three full games of Ticket to Ride. I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that he loves trains, but after the second game he collected up his pieces and asked "So, are we going to play again?"

Naturally I got some great gifts for Christmas, one of which was a shiny new hobby lamp from my girl! I've been using a little desk lamp from Ikea which works well enough, but now that I have a proper lamp, I can see just how inadequate it really was. My desk is a total mess at the moment, and the Lycaon faction for Empire of the Dead is still sitting there, but now that the holidays are over I can't wait to get them finished and start on my Dreadball team. I'll take a picture of it after I get it all sorted out properly again.

Lastly I finally ordered up the Mega Paint Set from Army Painter. I also grabbed a can of plate metal spray primer and a few board games, all from www.starlitcitadel.com (top notch store by the way!). They arrived on NYE but I didn't have time to look them over until yesterday.

Having already picked up over a dozen bottles of these paints I knew what to expect. I did have to go through all the bottles and clean up a little leakage and tighten the caps when I closed them. Not very surprising given the traveling they've like done, and the leakage was minimal. Between these and my new P3 paints, I hope to not need any paint for quite a long time!

I'll save the board game talk for another day after I've actually had a chance to play them.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2013 is a good one for you all.