March - I'm a bit fuzzy, but I think I managed to get 3 games of Bolt Action in for the month for the escalation league. Smaller games, only 350 pts, but as I recall them they were very enjoyable. I also got several games of different things in at Adepticon, along with a few seminars. More on Adepticon at the end.
April - The Bolt Action escalation league jumped up 500 pts for this month and I got 3 games in. As a point sink (and out of fear my opponents would do the same) I managed to sneak a light tank into the list. Again all the games were very good, even the game when I managed to get screwed by any unit having just a single pin on it, despite the units all be veteran. I also got in a game of Company of Iron, with Mike. You can find Mike's write up here. I'm not quite sold on the game yet but I willing to give it another go or two.
May - Ah, my typical hell month because almost all the birthdays in my family are in May and that coupled with the end of the school year chaos, I only managed to get one game of Bolt Action. I also queued up a bunch of new figures to fill my list out to a 1000 pts for the June D-Day game and got some paint on my light tank and greyhound scout car.
As for Adepticon, it was a great convention as usual. As usual, I mostly played one-off participation games where the materials were provided and along with a couple of demos. This included:
- A Jetbike race using some modified Deadzone rules which turned out to be pretty fun.
- A Mecha arena pit fight game using modified Deadzone rules. This one did not turn out so great since it got dumped into someone's lap unexpectedly and he was not familiar with the modifications. I basically ended up with a Mecha that was configured in a way that couldn't damage other mechs. Afterwards I think he managed to get it sorted out for the next batch of players and kudos to him for trying to press through as best he could.
- A 3 round mini-tournament of Eden for beginners. They did a really great job of introducing new concepts every round and having plenty of people to help out (I think there were at least 3 of them for the 8-10 of us playing). The game seems a lot of fun and apparently plays out very well with more than 2 players, which is nice. I may have picked up a starter...
- Played a Shadows of Brimstone custom scenario which was really great and a lot of fun. We lost the boss fight horribly but it was still a lot of fun. The game mechanics can certainly end up stacking the odds against you though.
- Having re-read through the rules before the convention, I decided to skip out on my game of Fistful of Lead. Not that the rules are bad, but they just didn't seem that interesting. Which was why I did not back the kickstarter for their Sci-Fi ruleset.
- And then my hobby seminars. They were good but I'm strongly considering forgoing them in the future. Between the high costs, poor lighting conditions and other factors, I'm just not sure it is a good investment for me. In fact, I really wonder if it would be a better investment to just hang out in the painter's lounge working on stuff with fellow painters. We'll see.
- I've also got a great demo of SAGA and have been really itching for it since. All my other projects have taken priority though and so far I have "behaved."
Rounding all that out, in this period of 3 months, I've gone and double the number of kickstarters I backed in 2017. Of course, that was only 1 so it is not that bad. I succumbed to the Godtear kickstarter and I also had to go in on Dave Taylor's book.
Well, that sort of gets me caught up. Next I will hopefully get some pics of my bolt action guys up along with my notes on how I painted them (before I loose them). I've still got a lot on my plate to be ready for the NOVA Open though, so we'll see...
