July Recap

By the time I post this, my daughter will be back in school so I guess summer is kind of over (of course it is still hot enough here to convince me otherwise).  It sure did not feel like a summer break/vacation and sure as hell was not long enough.

Anyway, at the beginning of July I did indeed get in a game of Guild Ball with my buddy Mike.  This time around we tried out using chess clocks to speed up the game play.  I do think it significantly helped but is definitely something to get used to.  When the first player was out of time, we decided to call the game at the end of the current turn.  As our games have been lately, it turned into pretty much a stalemate.  I managed to sneak Honour in for goal but also put Flint in a position to be beat into a bloody mess.  So the game indeed 4-2 but only thanks to extreme heroics (and luck, lots of it) of Marbles to tackle the ball away from one of the Fishermen.  Given the probabilities though, Mike really should have had a chance to go up 4-6.

Speaking of Guild Ball, I managed to finish the base colors on the 4 Masons I was painting, including the hair.  I had serious paralysis when it came to painting the hair and I'm not terribly pleased with the results but I think I will let them stand.  Now I need to move on to shading and highlighting and get them off the table.

I also finished assembling the 2 Riflemen (Battletech name).  Just as painful as the others, at least I only have a few more to do to satisfy my craving.  Of course it always seems like just a few more.

I also recently happened upon something slightly interesting.  My first year in attending Adepticon, I demoed a Robotech miniature game and was given a free miniature for trying it out.  Now as I recall, there was a bit of funny-ness that went on with all that before the Kickstarter (something about 2 versions by different people comes to mind, idk) but I believe what and who I demoed indeed up being same thing that went to Kickstarter.  So it is kind of sad and frustrating to see that model (pre-Kickstarter) in it's pre-assembled form versus what eventually was delivered:

Hmm, 8 parts vs 20+...  

Speaking of satisfying cravings, I fell further prone to Mecha fever and a extremely good deal on Amazon and picked up the Battletech Intro Box set (the 2nd one with the better sculpts) to add to the mix.  From that set, these are the ones I wanted/could tolerate:

*sigh*  Also tempted by the Armored Core and CAV Kickstarters for even more Mecha goodness.  Hmm, looks like that Armored Core Kickstarter had to change it's name, that might not be a good sign.  Anyway, I'm confident I will hold out against these temptations due to a competing weakness/priority:

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror [joy] and were suddenly silenced [very poor]."  Obi-Wan Kenobi [quix42]

 OMFG!  Must resist.  Must not give in to temptation.  Awww fuck it, I'm pre-ordering.

Anyway, back to topic(s).  Not surprising I got very little done at the beach on the family vacation.  I did manage to finish cleaning up the Blood Bowl miniatures I took with me but I'm pretty sure I did a crappy job and need to revisit them.  Also identified some minis I need to paint and acquire/paint for my Kings of War army.

Since I've been back, I have also tackled going through my boxes of shame to try to thin the herd, consolidate things together and into smaller form factors.  I was completely unsuccessful in pulling anything out to add to my trade stock (I have a hard time letting go or just figure no one would ever want some of this stuff).  But at least things are (more) organized and sorted so I can find things, for now...

Lastly, I'm sad to say for numerous reason I decided to pull the plug on attending the NOVA Open this year.  Right before our family vacation I took the last step toward accepting this fact and cancelled my hotel.  I'm really sad I wont be there and get to see at lot of old friends, participate in some really great side games that I hear are brewing and taking some really awesome seminars.  And then there is the fact that GenCon just came and went.  *cry*  Adepticon seems so far away now.