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!