Self-Care and painting amidst the "Everything"

Good tidings to you all fellow wargamers and welcome.  It's been a rough year so far for the world with everything that has been going on here in the US and globally and it's been challenging for many to cope.  So I wanted to take this post in a slightly different direction than I usually do because of what's been going on and while I could write as if nothing is going on it would not be fair for you dear reader to not acknowledge the reality of where we are as a people.  So without focusing on doom and gloom here, we go!

When I originally wrote some form of below it was during a time when the "biggest issue" was the outbreak and spread of the COVID19 virus.  Since then we have been through A LOT of other things here in the US.  It's been a really tense and stressful time for many people.  Myself being a counselor in the mental health field, have been working with folks dealing with new stressors and their own mental health pieces.  It's been challenging for many, and myself with my own mental health challenges have been figuring out how to navigate everything so that I can help those who need it.  That's partly why I've not kept up with this blog as I would have liked, but here we are in hopefully what is a moment of calm to shelter from the storm at large.

As wargamers, I would dare say that there are many of us who are struggling with some of these issues right now.  Therefore I want to help encourage you in this time and offer some insight into parts of our hobby that may not have been considered therapeutic before.  With that, I have to throw out the caveat (thanks to our litigation-happy nation) that this is not intended to diagnose/treat/provide any services to anyone who is suffering from mental health conditions.  If you suspect that you suffer from mental health concerns and need additional assistance please consult your local provider for referrals to services as available in your local area.  This article is not to be taken as mental health advice/research/treatment/etc but a source of encouragement and some considerations to be taken.

A big thing that I am going to advocate for in this time is the concept and practice of self-care.  It's a pretty common buzzword I hear a lot online that for many translates to "treat yourself" or "spend money on spa days/chocolate/whatever."  Self-care is simply making sure you take care of yourself and get the things that you need to keep going.  There is a lot of stress/anxiety/depression going around and that has an impact on interfering with self-care practices. We can easily forget at the moment when folks are faced with new challenges, old stressors, and the events continuing to take place in our world, that part of regular mental health care includes practicing self-care.

Self-care as we clinicians help clients with often incorporate things like making sure you're eating well, getting good sleep as much as possible, getting some exercises in, socializing to some degree, engaging in activities, etc.  It's about taking care of yourself in these trying times and not some sort of fantasy that society thinks you need to do.  Self-care is a personal/individual thing and while these are some suggestions for you feel free to adapt things as you need to for your routine.  I want to caution that doing self-care isn't the same as getting actual treatment or help.  This won't treat depression quite like a counseling session would, or get to the root cause of issues.  What this will do is help the foundation of "you" being at a stronger place so when those things do hit then you're hopefully in a better spot to handle them.  These things are bad enough as it is, but it's even worse when you don't feel great in general already and then it hits you.

So I've found in my experience hobbying, specifically painting, has an interesting effect on anxiety. Now I preface this with: it works for me, and I hope it helps you but if not then that doesn't mean something is wrong with you.  I've noticed that for me painting has a grounding effect on my anxiety. What I mean by it being grounding is that anxiety has a tendency to push people into this zone of "what ifs."  You know it's like you start going "what if X happens, and then what if Y happens, what if I do Z," and so on.  Grounding techniques can help bring you back down from that zone and back to your 'normal' sort of state.  You have to focus on the here and now instead of the "what ifs," so things like the colors/textures/shapes/painting can help manage some of these anxious feelings.  Personally, I found that painting plus some audio medium like a podcast has done wonders for my stress and anxiety.  It's helped bring it from some pretty high levels to something more manageable, and that's truly the goal of self-care is to make all the stuff more manageable.

Like I said it may not work for you, but if it's something you're able to do and need something to help focus on something then give it a shot.  You might find something new to help out in times of great stress you never thought of before.  It's a wild time right now with a lot of uncertainty, fear, confusion, stress, and so on so please take care of yourselves.  Do the self-care and be safe out there.  If you are reading this and you feel like you need additional help then I encourage you to go talk to someone whether it's a local counselor, crisis worker, or whatever it is you have in the area.

Well, folks, that's all I got for now.  Take care of yourselves out there, it's a crazy time and my hope is that we get through this with our health (mental and physical) intact.  Hopefully, some of this stuff helps you out, if you're already practicing it then great!  If not then I hope that it encourages you towards keeping yourself sane and floating in these times.  Next time I'll go back to the usual hobby posting and help give a break from the real world.  Until then folks stay safe out there and take care of yourselves.

The Journey of a new Army - January

Good tidings folks!  We've managed to make it through the first month of 2020 and barely any issues at all (except for the whole US/Iran thing, Australian Wild Fires, threats of a plague)!  So I hope wherever you are you are doing well, safe, and following your hobby heart wherever it is leading you.  So let's get started with a wrap-up of this month's progress.

So I set out with a goal this month of trying to get to work on some Ossiarch Bonereapers.  I originally didn't intend to do GW's challenge of a "New Year, New Army" ya know because I feel like that's just marketing shenanigans.  That being said I did happen to get started on an army for Age of Sigmar and managed to get a solid 2k point list in models so why the hell not?  New year, new army! 

First hit with ink and contrast paints

Vallejo Air Metallics cover up white primer REALLY well

Yeah I know my historical stance on Age of Sigmar has been pretty rocky.  Admittedly I was one of those salty folks who hated the change from Warhammer Fantasy and vowed to have nothing to do with AoS.  Then the second edition came along and it went from this really awkward kind of game in my eyes to a game with some potential.  The armies started to divert from their historical fantasy roots and now we started seeing Little Mermaid elves, distinct chaos armies, angry ghosts, and so on.  In most fantasy games I favor the undead and so originally I wanted to get into the Nighthaunt but never really committed myself to them.  I got a half of the Soul Wars box but to be honest their awkward packaging of units (like 5 Stalkers, 4 Reapers? That won't work in matched play, wtf GW?) really turned me off from going any further.

Then came the Ossiarch Bonereapers and then my interest went from "yeah one day I'll get into it," to "I really need to get into this game."  Fast forward some time and a fortuitous event and I managed to get the following list:

• Mortisan Soulmason
• x2 Mortisan Boneshaper
• x3 units of 20 Mortrek Guard 
• Gothizzar Harvesters
• Unit of 3 Necropolis Stalkers
• The Endless Spells
• Bone Tithe Nexus

2k points of Bone Daddies!

Add in the Mortrek Shield Corp Battalion option in there and I'm hovering around 2000 points.  So my goal was to get these bone daddies assembled, primed, and started on the painted train.  Unfortunately, I was not able to make that goal this month, which while I'm a little disappointed in myself for personal reasons I did manage to pass some of the metrics.  So while I didn't get to a spot where I could have primed the army, I got them assembled and I even managed to get a game in with them!

Setup was really close and I foolishly thought "how well can the Bonereapers take an Ironjawz charge turn 1?"

I spent the first half of January cleaning and reorganizing my basement, but by the time I was done half of the month was already gone.  Weather has not been too kind and frankly, I didn't really want to airbrush about 60 Mortrek Guard when I knew the first Monday in February the weather would be warm enough to rattle can them to paintable levels.  So when I was able to get some painting in I started testing out acrylic inks and using some techniques on some Goliaths I had for Necromunda!

They can take it...sort of...not really...they need Shieldwall.

Turning out great so far, but I'll tell you after that game?  I'd rather get started on those Bonereapers.  It's not often I talk about when I game here and most of that is because I forget to take pictures and I don't want to just type about the game without some nice pictures!  I really enjoyed the game with my good friend Corey and he was a great teacher for how the game rolls.  It's got enough similarity to 40k that I could pick it up but with enough differences to have a distinct feel.  So to summarize here's what I learned and loved about the Bonereapers:

A really good game and it was violent!

• Mortrek Guard and that Shieldwall ability? Good lawl that's ridiculous staying power on top of the recursion mechanic with the Harvesters and Boneshapers
• While I like spears for their reach, having the sword option on the Mortrek and the rend that comes with it can be so nasty (especially if you can buff them up)
• Gotta protect the Harvesters in a list like this, losing one can put a strain on the frontlines that a single Boneshaper cannot keep up.
• The Crematorian legion trait is a fun one but without the recursion mechanic to keep it strong, it loses its appeal.  If you have the Harvester/Boneshaper keeping the numbers up though...kaboooom!
• The Discipline mechanic (i.e. alternative command point for this army) is really cool and useful and I think it rewards smart use.
• Gimme them bones boy

Gimme dem bones hee hee hee!

So I'm hoping to knock these Goliaths out real quick because here in the near future (couple days I would say) the weather will be ready for some Bonereapers to be primed and then my focus will go to them.  I've got a couple of ideas floating in my head for color schemes but my painting focus will be "speed at the best quality I can."  We'll see how that goes, but until next time fellow hobbyists have a great month!

Only Two Months Left!

Good afternoon folks and fellow wargamers!  Welcome back to another bi-monthly post from here at Wargamer Ramblings.  As usual, I hope things have been doing well for you all and I hope it just keeps getting better and better!  We are almost done with the 2019 year and the resolution started to paint more minis and so I want to bring you along with my journey and where I am.  Cozy on up with a warm drink and here we go!

So the past two months have been pretty brutal on my painting progress if I am being honest here.  After NoVA Open I came back absolutely drained.  I not only had the post-con drain of hobbying and gaming too much but it was just tiring on me physically.  One of those 'getting older' kind of experiences I suppose, but that's why I didn't do a post-con blog about it.  If you're curious about pictures you can go right HERE.

It was a better experience this year compared with the one in 2018, primarily because I actually signed up for stuff this go around!  I ended up attending roughly half of my events, though I wish I had gone to all of them.  Regardless of the events I missed, the ones I attended were a blast.  I have to say I think I hung around the Warhammer 30k Richmond group crowd the most.  A lot of great people from that group but also some of the best looking armies.  Something about their passion for the Horus Heresy and the stories they wove with the scenarios just really drew me in.  I only participated in one event with them, the Zone Mortalis, but I had a blast and would do it again!

After a week like that, I came back and I frankly didn't start painting again until nearly a month later!  Part of that was a dedicated time of respite from painting and trying to get as much done before the NoVA Open but real life has a nice way of making sure to exhaust you to where video games seemed to have been an easier choice.  This is true, it's a lot easier to go play video games than to do this hobby and sometimes that wins out.  I did spend a good amount of time assembling new models as I snagged some Dark Elves from Greebo games for Blood Bowl.

So when I did decide to pick the brush back up I started off with Warcry's Iron Golem warband.  I had the color scheme in mind: frost exposed skin and metallic green armor!  After looking up some tutorials I decided to give the skin a try aaaaaand...ended up with the Grimace.  Yikes.  I was disheartened but I didn't quite give up (took me a couple days to get over my own frustration) and I somehow salvaged the paint scheme to be less frost and more desert themed.  I think it kind of worked but I'll be honest I'm not in love with the scheme and given the chance to do it again I will try to avoid it.

I think that's ok though which is weird to me. It goes against how I've operated for a long where I treated all models as something more than they really have to be, which is something along the lines of "they have to be perfect because I spent all this money on them!"  I suppose for some that are true but as I've been painting more I've also come to appreciate the process of discovery.  Sometimes it works out in my favor, like those pink Yu-Jing from infinity, but sometimes it doesn't and that's fine with me.  By exploring and opening myself up to failure I ended up with some new skills (e.g. recovering from a bad scheme), experience with new techniques, and an appreciation for other color combinations I would have never explored otherwise.

So after the Iron Golems, I went and started working on the Untamed Beasts and I felt the results were more pleasing to my eye.  Not to say the Iron Golems are not contrast paint friendly, but I felt that you could pretty much do the entire Warband with nothing but contrast paints had some great results with this band.  I also appreciated the models more as I painted them, as earlier I was not a fan of the whole tribal theme.  After getting my hands on them I appreciated the sculpts and that helped the painting process go more smoothly.  I experimented with some other paints, specifically Scale 75 colors, and found that the ultra-matte effect their paints have had an undesired effect on things like cloaks but worked really well on the bone weaponry.

I started working on some Blood Angel Primaris marines but didn't finish them in time before October ended, but here are some progress pictures anyways.

Slow couple of months but I think I am picking back up.  How is your hobby progress coming along?  Let me know what you're working on regardless of the smoothness or struggle it might be and I hope you end up doing well.  We're almost done with this year and the bi-monthly progress report so it should be interesting to see how I did over the whole year.  Well until then folks take care of yourselves out there and happy gaming!

100 post celebration! Where has this fool been?!

Good evening fine folks of the hobby and wargaming community!  It has been a damn long time since I've last slapped a post up on here but that's not to say that things have been quiet for the hobby.  Quite the opposite indeed, I just found that life has made it challenging to keep up with the blog for a bit but now I have some time so I figure it is perfect to get things caught up on here.  Coincidentally this marks the 100th post of this randomly scheduled blog so hey that's something!  While I'm on the train of typing I'll talk about the game areas I've been playing a lot of, some projects I've been working on hobby-wise, and some news about games that I've been mulling about.  Let's roll the dice!

Well we made it somehow!

So last we chatted my comrades I believe it was back in June and since then I've been keeping the irons hot with the gaming.  To start I ended up joining a local Blood Bowl league which to date I've had 7 games played.  It all started when my brother came to visit and for all the years I've known him his interest in anything tabletop has been...chilly at best.  It never really clicked for him and he had some interest in the lore, old Warhammer Fantasy especially, but the gaming aspect just never took off.  So one day we sit down and I got him to try out a game of Blood Bowl and that was the spark that lit the fire up!  We played at least twice a day while he was there and he went and bought a Skaven team the following day.  Since then I've played a lot of Blood Bowl both online and off, have joined a local league, and have been working on my Orc team, Da Great Big Bepis, and so far it's been rough, to say the least.

Da Orcs take on Safari Orcs!

My Blood Bowl acumen has not been fully developed yet so my games have been challenging and for the most part, I've not seen any positive results until my Black Orc line started to get some skills (i.e. Guard).  The thing about Blood Bowl is to accept that the game is quite utter shenanigans from the start and so that has helped me avoid a large amount of Grade A American salt levels.  Despite the positive attitude, my Orcs have been taking a beating from everyone up until my last 2 games where I finally got a draw and a win!  You seasoned BB vets probably have a lot of tips and know this already, but having 4 Black Orc Blockers with no skills versus some with Guard has made such a huge difference it's like night and day.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the league and I think I've got 9 more games scheduled at the very least.  Will I do another league later on if offered?  Probably, but I cannot say it would be an Orc team as GW has been pumping out the new sets often enough.

Cage Da Ball!

In terms of games I've played this game is probably the least out of the three, but I have been playing more games of Konflikt '47 than I have lately and I have to say I am feeling the hook digging in deeper.  For those who do not know Konflikt is an alternate history set in World War 2 where a discovery of science has led to a new momentum in technological advances and has changed the face of war since.  It's not super crazy sci-fi but it's enough of a divergence that someone like me who isn't a fan of true historical wargaming can take a serious look at it and find something interesting and fun.  Mechanically it is based off of Bolt Action rules by Clockwork Goblin and produced by Warlord Games so there is a lot of compatibility between the two ranges.  One person can play a pure historical force from Bolt Action and the other can play a Konflikt Force with only a few minor adjustments here and there.  Otherwise, it lets you pair up your Shermans with American walkers (yes that is right, walkers as in mech walkers) and puts you to the test of the German genetically engineered nachtjager (vampire bat-human hybrids) and the totenkorps (nazi zombies anyone?)!  What's not to love?!

Ghosts phase right through terrain...surprise!

When I first started Bolt Action my interest in it was lukewarm at best.  I liked the activation mechanics and rules itself but the overall WW2 theme just wasn't hitting it for me.  I like my projects to have some potential for random spurts of creativity or wacky themes but Bolt Action had that "no the uniform color for the Wehrmacht WAS THIS COLOR AND NO OTHER HOW DARE YOU" vibe from the community.  If I wanted pink British, God forbid I play with anyone other than my close circle.  With Konflikt that barrier is lifted and I feel that the creative spark is back again.  With that in mind, my allegiance was gifted to me by Mike to the glorious empire of Japan!  I've played a few games with them and so far I am really liking the force as it plays in Konflikt and I've been looking at expanding my forces with more of their exoskeleton suits, Ghost squadron, and also their walkers.  I even snagged some alternate heads from Puppetswar to differentiate my dudes from traditional historical gaming! (note: I think the ones I ordered are not longer available but there are some Bushi similar ones available!)

Japan vs Italy to see who takes the secret Ragu recipe home

Finally in terms of what gaming I've been relatively active in CMON's newest addition to the scene and that is the Game of Thrones wargame, A Song of Ice and Fire.  My Kickstarter order arrived earlier this year and I've managed to get a few games in and I will say I really like this game.  It's like if you took what I liked about old Warhammer Fantasy and streamlined it so that it plays relatively quickly and brutally.  I will say it's not super in-depth as WHFB used to be but it's also not as bullshitty as some of GW games can be these days.  Some of the things I particularly enjoy are: you purchase entire units that are equal sized (certain exceptions apply) instead of units of individually priced out models of different sizes and footprints, you have a Tactics deck which you play cards from to change the course of battle, the said Tactics deck is composed of cards from your chosen house but also who is your commander, and the models are pretty solid quality that has enough detail to be exciting to look at but not too much where painting them en masse would be annoying. It seems like CMON plans on supporting the game for some time as of right now the current range has a good amount of Starks, Lannisters, Neutral (aka House Bolton right now), and are coming out with the Free Folk and Night's Watch.  Speaking of CMON support...

A quick intro game mid/late battle

One game that I wish CMON would continue to support is Dark Age.  That's right folks I don't care about the scuttlebutt on the official FB group I feel like this game has been kicked to the curb by CMON.  I feel like it was a self-fulfilling prophecy for Dark Age in that CMON must have thought to themselves "hey this game isn't making as much money as we want, so let's not do much to grow the game past the small community we have."  Then when surprise surprise, the game doesn't grow because they failed to pump life into it (not that the community hasn't tried to, it's just hard to grow a game when the suppliers of said game aren't adding much to the plate) they must have said "oh gee, this game isn't making money like we thought, time to silently kill it off."  Sure there are some on the FB group who believe that CMON is just waiting until the dust settles from A Song of Ice and Fire, but when you don't restock ANYTHING for an entire game and refuse to answer questions (or give vague "I'm not allowed to talk about that" at best) from the community?  Once it became apparent that the game was not being supported by CMON any longer (until I hear something otherwise this is the stance I hold) I went ahead and grabbed as many Skarrd as I could.  Hey even if CMON doesn't want the game to grow I still want to dig deep into the psychotic gribblies the faction has to offer.

When the Collector bug bites you hard

Aside from the various things I've got going on I've recently been picking up models and bits to get started on a nice 40k project.  I ended up painting some of the Death Guard for a Kill-Team event at NOVA Open but the curse of too many details made painting them fun but also frustrating as hell.  Trying to find a logical pattern of models to paint outside of the Dark Imperium box? Yeah, how about no.  Not saying my Death Guard are being put aside but my Death Guard are being put aside for the moment to revive my original allegiance to the sons of Sanguinius, the Blood Angels.  Regardless of their spot in the current meta (screw that noise) I am excited to try out some airbrushing techniques and get a decent sized force put together.  I'm also attempting to use nothing but Primaris models even for non-Primaris units like the Death Company and Devastators.  Until the old style armor gets made with modern scaling I am just avoiding the old stunty marines and I'll take my time converting marines.  I'm working on the final details but I think the story plan will be my usual MO: urban winter fighting.  I'm just waiting on some stuff from Pop Goes the Monkey (absolute legend) before I start working on this project.

Fun to paint but damn that's a lot of unique details for a basic marine

Tested out the Minitaire Ghost Tint method...not a success

That's not all I've been up to but that's all I've got for tonight folks!  Here's to another spurt of blogging that hopefully doesn't get crushed by the weight of real life!  Until next time happy gaming and thanks for sticking around folks!

Iron Dice and Bloody Paint

Good tidings to you my fellow gamers and welcome back to another exciting (maybe?) post by yours truly!  As usual, I hope things are going well for your all in your lives and I hope whatever progress is being made in your hobby life is going better than expected.  Today’s ramblings are a bit of a mix between your usual “this is my update lulz” dashed in with some talk about recent games I’ve had.  So let’s get on with it!

It's a good day when you have updates AND games to talk about!

Since the start of the New Year I’ve finally adjusted myself proper to the new work schedule, which is a normal routine one, and as a result, I’ve been able to get some regular painting in.  I’m not a fan of making hard deadlines like “in three weeks I’ll paint a whole army” because I can’t predict what will happen in life.  Instead, the approach I’ve gone with has been “try to do something each day because some progress is better than no progress.”  With that motto, I’ve got to say I’ve been able to get some progress in!  For one I am almost done with my Gates of Antares Algoryn army with only 4 vehicles and 20 troopers left before having a fully painted (i.e. until I get more models) force.  I’ve had to divert some of my attention away, however, due to more pressing events in terms of gaming and commitments.

Most of the Dust Reaper force, for more info check them out here.

If you’ve been reading this for a while you’ll probably remember that I put Warmahordes on the backburner as it was just not the game focus at the time.  Since the release of Mk3 I’ve not had a lot of incentive to go back and with the community changes PP had (i.e. getting rid of pressgangers and the implementing of CID), it felt that the focus of the game was slanted more towards tournament players.  Recently we’ve had a local resurgence of the game and the old fires have started kindling again.  We’ve had a total of 30+ players join this shindig, myself included, and we’re going with an alternative setup with the Journeyman League rules.  With this run, I’ve decided to refocus one the Warmachine side of things and I’m going with the undead forces of Cryx!

Old color scheme

New color scheme!

Since we’re not doing weeks per se but rather 4-week cycles it’s taken a lot of pressure off of me to rush and get games in like a madman.  It’s also helped me with the painting portion as I can take some time working on models instead of rushing as I have in the past.  Unfortunately, my color scheme idea has changed from my original run with Cryx and so I’ve had to strip a lot of models, but that is ok with me as it saves me some money and time assembling.  For my initial battlegroup, I decided to stick with a simple choice and picked up Bane Witch Agathia and her battlegroup in the Mk3 starter box.  We had the option of picking our own battlegroups but truthfully I didn’t care enough at the time to bother with it.  One caveat I will need to keep in mind with the league is that our lists do not change at all, so whatever I choose to take in the upcoming cycles will stick with me for the whole league.

75 pt game Asphyxious2 vs Elara2

As I said I managed to get some games in with some of the other leaguers and they’ve been great to game with.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of my matches with them, but I have some when I played against my wife (which after hearing about the league games wanted to get one in herself).  Last Saturday I was able to get a total of 5 league games in and got some decent practice with Agathia as a warcaster.  Her battlegroup consisted of a Slayer, Reaper, and Deathripper.  Considering my loadout my general starting strategy would be to put Parasite on a target, drag it out with the Reaper, and then finish it off with a Slayer.  If I was lucky to put Parasite the turn before, then if need be I could further debuff ARM with Agathia’s Dark Shroud for a nasty -5 to the stat.  Most of my games didn’t really follow through with this strategy but that was my initial plan at the very least.  If I won the roll-off I generally chose to go second so I could react to my opponents, a strategy I’m not sure

 

After 1st turn move my right side is under attack with her Myrmidon's and I'm taking a beating from Imperatus, while on my left side her infantry fall to the combined might of my Mechanithralls and spell slinging Gaspy (who sucks up those souls).

Another round of engaged combat and her jacks put many of my troops back into the ground while the Satyxis Gunslingers sneak around the side and help clear out more infantry.  Gaspy is getting ready to pop his feat down below.

I started off the day playing a game with Jared and his Mk3 Legion battlegroup.  Despite the nerf to Shredders, they hit pretty hard against Cryx’s paper-thin armor (also not helped by Jared’s great dice rolling) and so I had to rely on my Reaper’s harpoon drag to pull his beasts out from position and take them down bit by bit until I could charge in for the assassination.  My next game was against Cody and his Mk2 Skorne starter battlegroup.  Cody had some great placement for his models and if he hadn’t told me he was a new player then I wouldn’t have thought he was.  Unfortunately, the dice were really against him and both of his Cyclops’ charges failed terribly leaving him wide open for the counter-attack and refocus onto his Gladiator and caster for the second win.  My third game was with Mark and his Mk3 Khador starter box, a matchup I was concerned about due to Khador’s high damage output and my terrible armor.  Unfortunately for Mark a Parasited Juggernaut combined with some lucky damage rolls (a combo-striking Slayer with triple 6’s on the damage roll for example) took his jack out before he could get some mileage out of him.  With one less jack, I was able to maneuver around more freely and eventually I was able to charge Kozlov for an assassination win.  My fourth game was against Tom and his Mercenaries Magnus battlegroup, which was a hard-fought battle.  I went with an aggressive move and ran up towards mid-field cover, popping my feat early to take advantage of the stealth it brought.  Tom just wait the feat turn out and in the following turn blasted my jacks out of cover.  He was able to take apart my battlegroup easily with his high P+S and my low ARM, so I had a desperate gamble to try and snatch victory.  I charged with Agathia and plinked his health down 3 pts, then 3 pts, then 2pts, and with dice -3 for damage I needed boxcars to pull it off.  Luck was with me because boxcars it was and just barely did I manage to secure victory!  My last game was a rematch with Cody and this time he was more prepared for my battlegroup’s shenanigans.  His charges were more successful this time around so I lost some key momentum to maneuver around for a warlock kill.  Due to losing my Deathripper and Slayer, I did not have enough activations left to take advantage of an opening to Morghul, and so in his following turn, Cody was able to secure the victory against me.  Overall 4W-1L was not a bad way to get back into WM/H, and the opponents were all great gents so truly that was the best part.

After Gaspy's feat turn I chunked her Manticore and took out Imperatus but I didn't have enough activations left to take Elara down.  She gambled on leaving melee as Elara only had 5 boxes left...

With all my free strikes missing by 1 each Elara was able to walk around my troops, got Marked for Death on Gaspy, and took him down for victory to the Retribution!  It was a good game overall.

As far as hobbying goes I am doing the bare minimum for my Cryx, not in terms of painting effort but in terms of numbers.  I still want to finish my Gates army and since I am also concurrently in an Age of Sigmar campaign I need to get my ghostly Ironjawz painted up.  So my plan is to paint what I need for the current cycle in the Journeyman League, and then paint something else up.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to balance the games out and get some overall progress done as needed.  I am also looking forward to some more games as well in the future, and hopefully, I’ll have pictures to go with the games I actually played.  That’s it, for now, gamers and I hope your dice run hot and your paint flows smooth!  Until next time, happy gaming!

Hobby progress update time!

Hello and welcome fellow wargamers!  It has been a hot minute since our last post and topic of discussion so I apologize if you’ve been waiting.  If not then that’s all right too.  I hope everyone has been doing well with their hobby path and I wish you many successes.  So let’s dig right in shall we?

A lot has happened since the last post, most of it has been pretty rough in regards to work but I’ve changed back to my old shift once again so that means more time to do hobby things on the regular!  Even though my other shift had a lot of open times with the rotating days off I find myself being able to do more if I try to get a couple hours done each night instead of binging 8 hours once a week.  So that has been exciting as of late.

The winner of the Gencon cosplay parade in my heart #tingle4life

One thing that has been pretty major is that Gencon 2017 has come and gone and this year just felt a bit lackluster.  It being the 50^th anniversary I suppose I expected some more pizazz but instead the crowds were huge (in fact they sold out of badges before the con) and the general feel of the events were more mercantile than gamer.  Still had fun but it just didn’t have the same feel as prior years, something shared by the rest of the regular crew we have.  I personally had a hard time trying to rush so much crap in that I forgot to just enjoy my time, but once I slowed down I think things started to sink in a little bit.

Still don't know what this is.

This year I think I kept my cool in terms of buying into new games completely.  I did pick up some Skarrd for Dark Age and I also tried to snag as many of the con exclusive I could.  I saw that the Privateer Press booth was looking a little sad compared to other years, though I didn’t visit it until day 2 or 3.  I didn’t pick up any Grymkin (I mean I could just Malifaux instead) but I did grab the Rolling Bones Goreshade exclusive, so there’s that.  I think the only new game I really got into was Heavy Gear Blitz.  I’ve seen some videos on Guerilla Miniature Gaming’s YouTube channel and I’ve been wanting to try out a more action type of mecha game.  So they had a deal with the started set with two factions, the Northern and Southern forces, I figured why not? 

I did get to demo CMoN’s upcoming Game of Thrones game, A Song of Ice and Fire, and I have to say I am excited about it!  It even became my first Kickstarter project I’ve ever backed.  It had a lot of those elements that get me hooked into a game, and it reminded me of what would happen if a WHFB style game were updated with modern rule philosophy.  The models look great too and while I’m usually not a fan of pre-assembled models the quality of the demo pieces changed my mind.  So I backed up the project and I look forward to when they are rolling out.

House Lannister wrecking the Starks like a bawss

As far as personal projects go I’ve been taking this time to assembly everything I’ve had, including some older kits.  I’ve assembled all the Heavy Gear pieces (I think it was a PVC type plastic, so that was odd), Algoryn Hazard Suits and Liberator Tanks, some Guild Ball pieces, the Dark Age Skarrd, and some 40k kits I’ve had laying around.  In the near future I’ll be cleaning the metal and resin pieces to get started on the forever long painting queue.

Me looking for Skarrd models that don't exist yet like an idiot

So that’s what’s been happening on my end, hopefully things have been better on your end and hopefully I can get back to some regular articles coming in.  Until next time gamers take care and happy gaming! 

Ah yes what a delightful surprise of a post

Good morning wargaming fans and welcome to another set of ramblings!  I hope you all have been faring well since we last spoke and so I've got some time on my hands to bring you all up to date with recent projects and happenings.  It's been a pretty busy time for a lot of folks with a certain game dropping a new edition and bringing the hype along with it.  So let's chat some!

So it's no big secret of surprise that Games Workshop has dropped 8th edition and it has been making some positive waves in the community (mostly positive)!  I for one am really excited about it, like really really excited.  It's the first time in a loooong time that I am actually excited to play a game of 40k, and that's been some time.  In fact I went out and started collecting more stuff for my Death Guard to get myself ready.  The wife and I were doing some project stuff, she painting her Retribution for Warmachine and I sat assembling 2 Helbrutes.  I'm excited that Helbrutes might actually be useful again, the marines can be manly marines, and I CAN SUMMON DAEMONS!  Aww yeah baby summoning daemons is back and I've got 20 new Plaguebearers to put together for the glory of Nurgle!

It's not just my own army that I am excited for, but others as well.  My friend Sam runs Tyranids and now it seems like they are the scary, nasty, massed horde army that they should have been.  My friend Josh over here just started Astra Militarum and I think his forces with the new changes will benefit greatly (I've heard tanks are nastiness right now).  My platonic life partner Mike has been flirting with the Necrons again (I mean have you read Reanimation Protocols? Nasty!), and Clayton right here has been painting up his Lamenters.  It's a good time overall for 40k players, and I'm excited to get into it in the near future!

Meanwhile on the Warmahordes front things have been taking a hard backseat.  I'm not sure what is going on over at Privateer Press or the community but I've just lost a lot of the appeal the game had.  Maybe I'm getting older and I want to just relax, or maybe it's Mk 3 just not living up to the hype, or the hardcore tournament mindset and WAAC mentality of the community, but I just haven't felt the spirit of Warmahordes.  I've actually been trying to sell off my Menoth army and have been selling it off piece by piece.  I'm mostly getting rid of them because a) I prefer the playstyles of my other 2 factions, b) I feel like the old soul of Menoth has been removed with Mk 3, and c) it's a pretty friggin huge collection taking up a lot of space.  I'm not quitting the game per se, but it's a low priority for me right now.

Gates of Antares hasn't changed much for me, but that new book is coming out with the pretty sweet looking Algoryn Hazard Suit teams.  Mmmmm dat team.  Mmm dat suit.

Guild Ball is still a good game I enjoy playing, but with my schedule I've not had much chance to get some games in.  I think Steamforged has been working on releasing full teams in boxes instead of the 3 basic players.  I think it's a great move and the associated cost from what I can tell are fairly reasonable too.  The Farmer's Guild is up for pre-order release on Aug 18 and I must admit I don't know much about them.  I think they synergize with putting down pumpkins and eating them, at least that's how I see it.  Also the Blacksmith Guild has been teased out as being the next one in line.  I know absolutely nothing about them other than they have a dude with a huge shield and they do a Master/Apprentice style of team work.

As far as other games go they are lurking in the shadows waiting for some kind of spark to light up the ideas and drive, but for now they slumber.  I hope you all have been enjoying whatever games have been tickling your fancy and having much success with painting/assembling!  In the meantime I've got some Death Guard to prepare for battle, take care gamers!