Droldrums in the Warp

So apparently the SS BrotherG is just kind of wafting around the warp aimlessly of late. But that's okay. This isn't called "The Long Crusade" for nothing. There are just going to be times when either your hobby momentum has hit a snag, or life just comes barging in. For me, the calm is due to PC games for the most part. I've got a glut of options for me when I get home. Couple that with the fact that I'm currently not in any sort of hobby gaming event, and the figs get to sit pretty on the shelf.

So lets talk about how to deal with the doldrums. I think the first solution to feeling aimless about your hobby is to actually find an aim. Create an achievable goal for yourself. It could be as little as "paint a test model" for a given army or faction. This can typically be done in just a few hours. Low time commitment, and you actually produce something. If it comes out well, then you can expand it further. For something like Warhammer or Kings of War, I'd suggest doing a command group. That's three models typically and can still be done in a few hours. From there it shouldn't be too hard to finish out a front rank. After that, try keeping a goal of doing another rank until the whole unit is done. This kind of approach does a couple of things. First, it keeps the scope of work fairly small and manageable. Nothing kills a goal like the feeling that its too much work. This kind of slow progress lets you work on only a few models at a time until you are comfortable with the paint scheme. Once that is done, doing a whole rank is fairly easy as no thought is required. Its sort of paint by numbers. And, within a few weeks or so (varies on how much time you have to give on a daily basis), you'll have a whole unit finished. Heck, just having the front rank done makes the unit look better on the table for play.

As I've touched on before, painting apparently is not my favorite thing to do. But something like the above makes it more attractive. Especially if I can sucker someone else into it with me. Nothing like setting up a painting challenge or group to help keep the momentum up. Keeping something like that to about three weeks sounds about right as well. Unless people are really committed, anything longer than a month is going to peter out.

I'm also a big fan of escalation leagues. Especially when it comes to a new game. But they also work great when doing a new army too. Now of course, I will admit that I'm not good at restricting my purchases when it comes to this type of thing. I once had this whole plan of painting stuff before I bought more stuff. Never happened. I ended up getting so caught up in owning the army, I purchased the whole thing before ever finishing a single model. While that is fun, it can turn a nice gradual plan into an insurmountable heap of minis and you find your interests swinging to greener pastures.

And finally, I do find that having a blog helps. Simply putting thoughts down on web page can keep the embers warm. Hopefully you'll see some movement on my undead army in the next few weeks. They are my first love when it comes to fantasy. I once had a fully painted army, but then got lured by better looking models and as such, have traded or sold most of the older stuff away. So now I have great models, but little paint. Lets see how well I can do to fix that.

Until next time.

Lazy Summer Update

Hello Gentle Readers,

Hope everyone is having a fine Summer. Mine is going okay, but not especially productive. My gaming recently has been pretty much 100% electronic. Most of it playing DDO with friends, however the occasional MechWarriorOnline game has also snuck in there. I have to admit I also bought Overwatch from Blizzard. It is a fine game, but I am a complete newb. I think I play maybe two characters right now and am slowly trying to learn the others. I played some support character this morning who had a very short ranged gun, or could charge up a longer ranged shot (like that ever hit), and could drop little drones all over the place. Ugh...that was not a fun experience. I could only kill something if a cool breeze could knock it over first.

I did expand my bolt action armies, both German and British. I bought the Heer Army expansion and a PIII. So that now gives me a PIV, a PIII, a hanomag, and a command unit to add to my German army. For the British I only picked up an MMG set. I'll work on building them possibly this weekend. Depends on how crazy things get.

I did toss out an idea to my local gaming group about trying a Kings of War escalation league of some sort. I want to use it to motivate me to paint my models, plus I enjoy playing KoW. However, the community here is basically on life support. I think there are just so many game now that the old WFB community is just fractured all over the place.

I've not done anything with my Warmachine, but am waiting for the two player boxes to come out. I might pick one up for the new rules and such and expand one of my armies. Not quite sure which way to go just yet though, or if I even should.

Oh, I did purchase a Firestorm Armada fleet. Already painted and everything...though I'll probably strip it and start over again. But honestly, Spartan games have fallen to the background of my current interest. Its a cycle, so sue me.

Okay, yes, I have also been sucked into Pokemon Go. I'm not going crazy or anything...I mean I am only level 7...but yeah...its fun.

Till next time.

Gaming Momentum

What makes a player stick with a game? And I'm not just talking about playing, as the context here contains the collection and hobby aspect of the various wargames I play. What keeps a player interested in a game/hobby where they continue to expend time and energy into it?

As you may have guessed, I'm currently having another crisis of hobby focus. The last few months I have been trying to stay focused and enthused about Planetfall. I've even invested a good chunk of change into the game again. That being said, my movement recently has completely stalled. I've got this great Relthoza army all assembled. I have a good portion of it primed and ready for painting. And yet the motivation to continue that painting has faded away.

In fact, what is currently on my kitchen table is a flames of war army that I've had for years. I have the 78th Sturmdivision army that battlefront released eons ago. Its a great infantry company that has stugs and armored rocket trucks, infantry guns, and paks. Plus, I bought extra stuff for it way back when as well. So once I finish the army, I'll be able to immediately expand it.

And yet, I have to ask myself, why am I dropping away from Planetfall, and suddenly switching gears to Flames of War? I mean, the model count is pretty close. The scale is similar. Planetfall is already built and some of it primed. But what I'm looking at is assembling a whole army, and then what? Will it get primed, and then left behind for another project?

Is it painting that is my kryptonite? I can get an army all set and ready for painting...and then the floor falls out?

I will admit, that tournaments were the main factor for me painting any of my models. I painted undead for tournaments....and my dwarfs....and my necrons....and my Germans and Italians...all to get them ready for tournaments. In fact, all of my painted armies have been for tournaments. My wood elves were my first army and they were done for a Seattle GT back in the day. The vampire counts were done because I was trying to win a local Rogue Trader event. The dwarfs and necrons were for the OFCC. And my Germans and Italians were for local events and the grand WCP FoW tournaments.

I don't play tournaments anymore. I get too stressed. I'm far too competitive for my own good. The last ones I've played in were for the OFCC, which really isn't a tournament, but pretty darn close.

Now I apparently need to find a new reason to paint. A new form of motivation. Otherwise, I'm going to end up with an entire office filled with assembled minis. :)

Warpstorms block all forms of communication....

Well obviously there were Warpstorms, otherwise, there would have been more updates. :D

I have been gaming. Just not a whole lot of miniature gaming. I've been playing quite a bit of Dungeons and Dragons Online with some college friends and our kids. The game is solid. It is free, and it is the best computer representation of D&D that I have seen. It has true 3D movement (although they have kept true flight from the game). There are super cool traps and such that can be avoided or disarmed. And it has a great class and race selection so that everyone can find something they like. It has just been fun. The built in voice over IP is a must have. It is amazing how 20 years have gone by, and yet my friends and I are still on the same wavelength. If you have never given the game a try, I whole heartily recommend it.

I've also been playing MechWarriorOnline. Battletech was my first table top wargame. I was playing it back when I was a teenager. MWO is a fairly decent sim version of the game. Plus, you can typically get in, and play a match in under 15 minutes. That may not seem important, but when you have a family, finding 15 minutes can be hard, let alone more time. So this is a great way for me to "blow stuff up" as the wife likes to call it and still be there when needed.

My 21" monitor died the other day, and the wonderful wife unit gave me the go ahead to replace it. Having Father's Day just around the corner didn't hurt. So I was able to snag a beautiful 27" ASUS monitor for a very fair price. It is lovely:

Oh this is a thing of beauty. I highly recommend one if you are into PC gaming.

As to mini gaming, I'm still on the path for doing more Planetfall. My gamer ADD though is starting to kick in. Lately thoughts of Bolt Action and Flames of War.....and lets not forget Kings of War, have been bouncing around my head. Oh what a problem to have, so many cool games! There just isn't enough time.

So what should I do next week? Perhaps some painting? I really do need to do a test model for my relthozans. Also, Warlord was nice enough to send me a 20% off coupon for June. So I may have to pick up some British weapon teams for my Bolt Action force. My Germans are fairly well covered.

Way late recap of Planetfall game

Hello Gentle Readers,

Been a crazy couple of weeks (EDIT: holy crap..its been a month!), and lets see if I can remember where we left off. So I was hip deep in Relthoza minis for Planetfall and had a game setup. Well as it played out, we did a 2 on 1 game so that my friend Robert could join in. The game basically was a Relthoza core plus a Directorate core (both only half), vs a multi helix Terran force.

I wish I had taken pics...I believe I had even mentioned in my last post that I should take pics...but as the night was a little off the hip...well I had other things on my mind. The game was a little wonky. I thought it would have been easy to simply stick to the normal Planetfall rules of turn order for this game. However, in light that Robert was a newbie, our opponent Tim suggested something off the cuff and play it more like a three player game. That had some pretty major impact to the gameplay because our side got two activations to his one, but it also meant that at the end of the turn, he got to run rampant. So pros and cons for doing it like that. But as it was really just a learning game...all was good.

All in all, things went smoothly. We didn't use the cards and didn't really play with specific terrain rules. Buildings and the like were in play, but movement restrictions and such were all pretty basic.

It has been too long for me to give a round by round recap, so I'll just try to hit upon the highlights. For me, the main highlight was my spires. For some reason Tim decided not to try to shoot them after they landed. I got pretty good rolls for my scatter and each spire hit a good spot. By not shooting the spire with his next activation, it disgorged my troops and cost him a heavy tank, and then put some serious damage to a battle tank squadron (2nd spire group).

Robert's highlight was probably his Trojan tanks doing some serious disruption with the cyber attacks. Very nice to discount shields with those and just muss things up for poor Tim. They were destroyed in the end, but saved high priority targets with their sacrifice.

There were two rules disputes and unfortunately this is going to happen when you have a 1.5 version on the web, and a 1.0 version in physical form. The first and most hotly contested rules dispute was concerning Forlorn Hope. By my reading, as soon as a unit gets enough disorder markers to mean that they will be removed in the end phase, that unit then earns Forlorn Hope, and all the benefits. However, they are still removed in the end phase. Tim seemed to think that the unit gets the Forlorn Hope in the end phase, and then sticks around for another whole turn. The wording between the two versions was significantly changed, but also still not crystal clear.

The second issue was the process of boarding a building. Tim seemed to think it has to be assaulted, even if there were no enemy in it. The rules seem pretty clear that an empty building can simply be moved into by infantry during the move phase. This was an odd one to have come up. Tim has been playing a while and both Robert and I are newbies. However, I am a huge rule nazi. Therefore, I do my best to know the rules as well as I can. So you had Tim's experience vs my rules nazi-ism. Seems like this one should have been easy to resolve, but it wasn't. I'm going to read the rules again and simply make sure of how it is supposed to be.

By the way, Spartan has done some bad practices in rules disputes on their forum. They will actually change the rules as written in a forum post, but then not publish it in an offical FAQ or update. I hate that. FAQs should never change rules to begin with...they are for clarification only. If you are going to make a rules change, then you need to update the actual rules. Hiding them in forum posts is super bad.

All in all though, it was a fun night, the forces of the Zenian League won the day.

Since then, I have primed a core helix for my relthozans. Also, Robert has agreed to purchase the Directorate core helix from me. So full steam ahead with the bugs. I will hopefully get some painting done this upcoming weekend and will post pics of the progress. I'm going with a brown/bronze color scheme so hopefully it will all turn out well.

Corporations and you

So looks like I'm going to throw down with some planetfall on Thursday. I've got a 2500pt Relthoza game scheduled, and I've also invited my buddy down to give the Directorate a go. I've only got a half core for it (same with my Aquans) and have only done a little bit of painting on it.

Last night though, I busted out the minis to make sure they were ready for the field. Thankfully, the Directorate doesn't actually have much to put together. I stuck the few infantry models on their bases. I really like the mix of pewter and cast infantry on those bases. They really pop.

Also, I decided to try to magnetize the turrets on the tanks. While Spartan does not cast ready made holes for the magnets, they are really nice to add a divot so that your drill bit finds the center easily. So after rummaging through my magnets, I found some nice small ones that should work. Then I found a drill bit that was just about the perfect size. I used a pin vise to do the drilling...no need for power tools. I could have probably just done it with the drill bit to be honest, but the pin vise makes things easy.

A few turns, then clear the scraps (is there a word for the material a drill displaces? you'd think there would be...) a few turns more, and viol la, a perfect hole for a magnet. A little super glue later and the first magnet is all set. By the way, those tiny rare earth magnets come in nice little columns. So what I did to make sure they all aligned correctly, was that I would take a black marker and color the end pieces of both ends of the column. That way, I knew to glue the magnet black side down into the holes for each pair. Was an easy way to keep track of which way to insert the little buggers.

All said and done, took me about 30 minutes to assemble and magnetize the Directorate core helix. Just one more reason I love Planetfall. It doesn't take long to get them ready to play. And honestly, doesn't take long to get them painted either. I'll try to remember to take pics and notes during my game on Thursday. Till next time.

Planetfall! (as sung by a squeeky voiced rocker)

A tad over a week ago (or possibly two, my sense of time is failing) I got to play Planetfall again. I really love that game. Exploding 6's for the win....cool Epic style combat....super sweet models. What's not to love? I own the two player starter...and as previously blogged, I've even painted a few models. However, that is about as far as I got. I did, over the holidays, pick up a Relthoza starter helix, because those bugs be awesome.

So I went home and build those little guys. How cute are they? I love those towers. So anyways, I then went online to start seeing what people were playing in terms of size. Apparently, 3k-4k games are the norm :o

Well I only own three half helixes...helixi? so that was a problem. So I might have gone over to evilbay and taken a look around. Fast forward several business shipping days....

* insert wild cackling laugh here of the muwhahaha variety *

* go ahead, you know you want to do it again *

I haven't actually figured out how many points this is just yet, but it should get me close to 3K at the very least. That right there, is a full core, a recon, an assault, and a heavy helix. Basically what I could find the best deals on. No complaints as it gives me lots of lovely towers to drop down. Sure, they aren't as good as they used to be, in fact, recent reading of the forums says they got a bit crushed by the nerf bat this time around, but its all good. Having never played them before, I haven't really lost anything.

Next up, I need to paint one up and see if I like my proposed color scheme. You'll just have to wait and see what I come up with. :)

Oh...I also go to go shooting this weekend. We were hitting the 100 and 200yrd range so I brought out my M39 Mosin. I really should take a picture of it...it is quite the lovely rifle. Also, it shoots really well over iron sights.

I forgot to take a pic of my 200yrd target. Shooting was going so well at 100 yards, I didn't want to waste much ammo.

The big holes are from my rifle. :)