Half Year Recap (Games Played)

My, almost the end of May and I have yet to post anything this year.  Obviously, things have been extremely busy.  I've gotten a fair number of games in and a respectful amount of figures painted.

Games Played:
Our group managed to play through about 75% of the Western Desert campaign for Bolt Action.  I missed a game here and there but got several in before the demise.  All in all, Western Desert offered some very interesting scenario but overall I found it extremely frustrating.  Many of the scenarios placed the allies at significant numerical disadvantage.  This was somewhat by asymmetrical win conditions/scoring, however it was often not apparent you could be winning until the very end of the game so it left me with the feeling of pushing water uphill throughout the game.  To the point of frustration at times.  Anyway, a couple of random pics:

Hold the line boys!

After those of us playing threw in the towel on Western Desert, we were all a little burned out on Bolt Action.  Interest transitioned to a Old West campaign using the Dead Man's Hand system.  We just wrapped that campaign up last week.  It was a lot of fun but the game system is not particular great.  I should expand on that in the future by adding a review of it.  The final games of the campaign were pretty fun as things turned a little "weird" in the Old West.  One table had players fending of an Alien invasion, while the other table was trying to stop a T-Rex from rampaging through the town.  Anyway, couple of game shots from various points:

Oh no, Mad Dog is bout to get hanged!

Aliens vs Cowboys?

Finally rounding all this goodness out, I attended Adepticon.  And finally after many years of effort, I managed to pull my buddy John from 40k Hobby Blog along.  Derek, Mike, and many others from our weekly virtual hobby hangout.  It was a great time and John and I finally got a chance to play a game of Bolt Action.  John provided the materials, so we played at his preferred scale of 20mm (1/72) and I have to say it is a really great scale for the game.  It just really feels right for a 6x4 board, vehicles, and what not.  We even played with John employing true hidden deployment.  All in all, it was truly great to get in a game with him.  And just as great to hang out with him and everyone else.  Some pictures of our game:

A long ways to go.  Hope we don't get ambushed!

Contact with enemy armor, call in the Shermans. 

Well, just trying to get caught up.  I'll try to post up soon a Recap of all my completed painting so far.  After that, I'll need to get a few more posts out to capture some of those paint schemes/colors.  Then I'll try to get back to posting at least a monthly update.

November/December Recap

Finished up the year fairly strong with games played and a bit of a slow down on models painted, although there was a good bit of assembly.  Between November and December, I continued on in the new Bolt Action escalation league playing about 8 games.  The recent games in the league have been a bit brutal as the Allied players (myself included) faced 3 straight weeks of superior Axis forces (1.5x, 2x and 2x respectively) as we play through the scenarios in Western Desert.

Allies prepare for the Italian assault.

In addition to the Bolt Action games, I also actually got two games of Konflikt 47 in at 1000 pts.  Both were fun games.

Uh Joe, we gotta a serious problem over here.

Sadly with the chaos of the holidays in full affect, I still haven't gotten a game of Guild Ball with the new Season 4 rules.  Maybe soon.  

Painting was primarily limited to getting a Sherman and a light anti-tank gun painted for the escalation league, along with model assembly for what I had planned out for the rest of the league.  I managed a little work on Wild West Exodus attack and gun dogs, but haven't managed to wrap them up yet.  Then on the very last day of the year, to make sure I could count them in my totals with a clear conscience, I finished the last bit on my Chaffee and Greyhound Bolt Action vehicles (which was just dust, mud and varnishes).

In any case, a pretty good year for painting and playing even if it has been heavily focused on Bolt Action.  Not a such good year for my hobby budget allegedly...  More on that when I work up the nerve for my 2018 retrospective.

Bolt Action - Even More Americans

Still catching up on finished projects.  Here is more Bolt Action Americans.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought these guys, other than "cool, Americans can field 3 MMG teams!"  But, in retrospect I'm not sure I will ever use/field them.  But 9 figures painted is still something to share. 

Might go back and add some static grass to the left one to make it more interesting.

Bolt Action - More Americans

Not a lot to talk about here.  Just adding more American units to my Bolt Action.  The mortar team was painted per my previous infantry recipes.  I will capture how I did the Jeep later, with a group shot of the vehicles I've done.

Funny thing happened during this though.  I realized while I was airbrushing the Jeep I had completely forgotten to paint the actual mortar for the mortar team (I had the entire team finished, except for it).  So while I was cleaning out the airbrush, to prepare to quickly paint the mortar, I bent the crap out of the needle.  Luckily I had a spare, so I slide it in and was amazed by the difference.  It was such a night and day difference, I can't imagine how long I've been fighting the obviously (at least now it's obvious) bent needle.  Anyway, I then proceeded to very effortlessly do the best detail/precision painting I have ever done with my airbrush.  On sandbags.  *sigh*

Damn, those sandbags look good!  Note, this after a wash but before
the weathering pigments covered up most of these awesome sandbags!

August Recap

I really should have written this before the NOVA Open, everything is a bit fuzzy now.  Anyway, fairly decent month of gaming for August.  As part of running the Konflikt 47 league, I managed to play two games at the monthly point level of 500 pts.  I also showed a new player Bolt Action with a small 500 pt game.

The rest of the month was pretty much consumed with painting.  From recent posts, you can see I knocked out a Firefly Jump Infantry squad for Konflikt 47, 2 new cars for Gaslands and a few Guild Ball Mason models.  I technically achieved my goals of having Guild Ball and Konflikt painted up for the NOVA Open, but with very limited selections for both.  Still, a win is a win.

Moving on to the NOVA Open, I'll go ahead and include that in this post while it is fresh in my mind.  Returning to the NOVA Open after a multi-year absence was pretty good.  It was really good to see many familiar faces and spend time with some great people.

Thursday was a pretty slow day for me.  I was registered to play in the Konflikt 47 tournament but multiple factors convinced me to bail on it.  I spent most of the day just wondering around and catching up with people.  For my taste and interest, the vendor hall did not offer much of a distraction and I ended the convention only spending $40 on the new Warlord US Infantry box (different sculpts that, hopefully, will help me get over the hump of not wanting to paint any more infantry units).  Mostly though, I just harassed my buddy John from the 40k Hobby blog.  This included Dave Taylor and I jumping into the photo shoot for John's amazing titan that was part of the charity auction.

Shamelessly stolen photo.

Friday I was scheduled for a Falconer's flight for Guild Ball, but again I let multiple factors convince me to bail on it.  Mostly because I am not sure I completely like Guild Ball and did not want to suffer through multiple rounds of it.  Instead, John's buddy Brian left a beautiful 4x4 terrain board in the dedicated hobby area that only had basic priming done to it.  He had hoped to have it completely finished by Sunday for a game, so John and I decided to surprise him while he was downstairs playing 30k.

On the left is basically what we started with, the right is
what we got done Friday in about 6 hours.

While we did have an airbrush to paint the crashed ship, our other
"tools" were pretty limited.

Aside from the ship and the scattered structures, this was
pretty much the definition of "finger" painting.

We rounded out Friday night with Brian buying us an awesome dinner for all of our work.  Later we managed to find a secluded corner of the hotel bar and were joined by several more awesome people.

Saturday saw the arrival of my wife and kids early that morning (their Friday night flight having been cancelled).  I met them at the nearby airport and helped them get the rental car loaded up and squared away, before being dropped back off at the hotel for my first event I would actually attend:  A seminar by Vince Venturella.  I've never taken a class with Vince but turns out he does a really nice job with his classes and, much like his "Hobby Cheating" series on YouTube, focused very precisely on the seminar topic of Battle Damage.  Having taken other vehicle based weathering classes this class was a very good compliment (for me) focusing on smaller scale damage (such as space marines).  Vince does a great job with his classes and I'm glad I took this one.

Saturday night was a Wrath of Kings narrative event I had signed up for.  It was 3 vs 3 player game, having the Hadross defending their home from a multi-faction invasion hell bent on stealing Hadross's latest genetic manipulation feat.  I played as one of the 3 Hadross players who successfully fended off werewolves, celestial animals, and mask wearing demon women.

Another shameless stolen photo.

It was a fun game on a beautiful board.  The scenario ended up being a little lopsided for the other team, even as we made adjustments on the fly to let them bring reinforcements back on.  Still though, I think everyone ended up having a good time.  Along with my 2 teammates, I walked away with WoK two player starter box.  The event reminded me of just how great of a game Wrath of Kings is,  to bad it appears CMON is letting it atrophy and die a slow death.  I wrapped up the evening talking with Todd, from the weekly hobby hangout, while he waited for his dinner and ate.

That pretty much wrapped up the NOVA Open for me.  While I did not fly back till late Monday afternoon, the conclusion of Saturday night had me back on family duty.  Sunday morning we met our close friends and their kids at the national zoo and had fun catching up.  That night, I just hung out with Alex while the girls went to the spa.

Anyway, that's it with August and with the NOVA Open behind me time to move on to:  more K47 stuff, more BA stuff, wrapping odds-n-ends up, and new projects.

July Recap

Another good month of gaming goodness.  I kicked off July with a game of Gaslands at the local tap room.  We had two tables going with incredible tables by Darren over at Broken Sword Studios.

Table 1 is simply stunning.

Table 2 is not shabby either.

Both tables played Death Race with 5 players per table (a really great turn out).  Everyone had a really great time, although I believe both games were called not long after cars finally got past the first gate.  The game bogs down a bit in death race, esp with that many players.  Plus pretty much everyone was new to the game.  A week or two later, I got in another game of Gaslands where we played the zombie scenario, again with 5 players.  Definitely a much better scenario for that many players but it does still take a while to play.  All that being said, the abstractions of the game are simply amazing.  For me, it gives just the right balance of simulation and simplification.  Not only can I not wait to play again, I can't wait to see what Mike Hutchinson does for his next game.

With the Bolt Action league having concluded, we have transitioned to open play and gearing up for a short Konflikt '47 escalation league.  Having shown up one day to work on Konflikt league rules, I got pulled into playing Bolt Action with a perspective player.  I borrowed a 1250 pt Finnish tournament list (he wanted the "full" experience) and showed him the ropes.  He was sold, so we added another to our ranks.  I also ran another person through a 500 pt Konflikt game to acquaint her with the rules and to sate her excitement for the upcoming league.

Rounding things out, I squeezed a game of Guild Ball in on the very last day of July.  I really want to love Guild Ball, but I'm just not sold.  It definitely is not a bad game, although I think it should be "quicker."  It's just that the game requires very good knowledge of your opponents models and requires/rewards excessive pre-measuring.  Still, I will continue to give it a go a bit longer and finish up painting the models I have.

That pretty much rounds out July.  I made some really good progress on painting and I will post that up soon.  I'm not sure I will make either of my painting goals for the NOVA Open but I'm not sure the two events I am painting for are even going to happen due to low registration numbers.  We'll see.  Also August sees the kick off of two new leagues:  the Konflikt '47 league I'm running and a Gaslands league.  Feast or famine.  lol

June Recap

Despite my yearly family vacation eating up two of my weekends during June, I did manage to get respectable amount of games in as well as getting a full 1000 pts painted in time for the Bolt Action D-Day game (albeit a sub-optimal 1000 pts).  I had two normal games of Bolt Action, at 1000 pts, for the month.  In addition, I was one of 5 allied players that participated in the D-Day game.  Unfortunately, we had 7 axis players show up.  The reality is that we would probably have needed 4x the numbers as the Axis team.

Beautiful beach landing area for D-Day.

The nearby town, center board.

The nearby rural area.

Via roll-off, I ended up being the top allied player coming in at 8th place.  In case you have already forgotten, there were 7 axis players...  It was not a good day for the allies.

In other gaming news, it turned out that the Guild Ball group on the other side of town that I had never been able to make it out to had mostly fallen apart.  In an effort to rebuild the community, the organizer moved it over to my side of town at Lucky Dice Cafe and changed the night to one that I happen to be available for (at least for the summer).  So I jumped in on that twice in June, the first time just playing a small 4v4 to shake the dust off and introduce a new guy to the game.  The second game was a full game against an experienced and returning player.  I still want to really like this game but I'm just not sure about the game length and the intimate knowledge of your opponents team that is really required.  Ok, it is not really "required" but I don't respond well when I am caught off guard by something I flat out did not know my opponents guy could do, it doesn't make for a good play experience for me and can cause an entire turn of Guild Ball to collapse.  Anyway, I'll keep trying to give it a go as long as my schedule permits.

While on vacation, I also had a chance to duck into Mrytle Beach Games, which was a nice little game store.  They had a good selection of board games and as well as your typical Magic the Gathering selection/support.  They had a smattering of Warmachine, Guild Ball and Reaper Bones miniatures as well as selection of hobby supplies.  Nice clean store and bit spacious.  I don't know the history of the place (new?) but it did seem like they were still in the process of figuring out how to utilize their space.  I think I will definitely swing by there again next year to see how it is coming along.

Lastly, right before my vacation I linked up with a local guy I had spotted on facebook that was doing incredible stuff for Gaslands.  I tied him in with some others I knew were interested, a bingo they all hit the ground running.  And I subsequently missed 2 games of Gaslands while I was on vacation!  I did eventually get a game in but technically that was in July, so more on that next month.

Bolt Action - Americans

Mentioned in previous posts, I jumped in on a Bolt Action escalation league a few months ago.  The scale (as in the number of figures) and subject matter (WW2) is not the most appealing to me but I really wanted to support some kind of miniature league at Huntsville's new gaming store, Lucky Dice Cafe.  Bolt Action was the first opportunity and I decided to roll with it.  In retrospect, I am really glad I did because it has turned out very well and has been a lot of fun.

Rolling through the first month, I left myself in a bit of bind for trying to get my painting points in for the month.  I managed to get 250 pts of veterans assembled very quickly so I could play but before I knew it I only had one week left to paint them.  So a very interesting challenge presented itself to me:  14 figures in 7 days, something I have never even come close to accomplishing.

The first batch, 14 figs in 7 days.

I'm not really the biggest fan of Warlord's miniatures, so this left me a lot of freedom to really try to push my painting speed since I was not overly concerned how good the final product looked.  I just wanted them painted.  It also forced me to really see how much "messiness" Army Painter's strong tone was could cover up.  Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the results given the time investment.  The figures above eventually had some weathering powder applied to the base to shift the color a little bit.  I also placed the weathering powder randomly to knees and elbows, as well as some other areas that "seemed" to make sense.  All in all it was pretty interesting exercise but was a bit of painful, especially since my sweet spot for batch painting to be limited to just 3 figures!  

I also tracked the actual hours for the figures above.  All said, from not primed to sealed each model came in at about 2 hours.  I was really hoping for a sub 1 hour mark.

Between the initial 250 pt mark for the league and the 1000 pt mark for the D-Day game, I really only managed to paint my Chaffee light tank and get some more guys assembled.  This caused me to not get my painting points for the league for a couple of months.

I may have over chipped it.

While I did not completely rectify the previous mistake of waiting till the last minute, I did at least realize more than week before I needed to knock out another significant batch of models.  And my Greyhound scout car.  So I didn't have 14 models to paint this time, I had 19!  Plus the Greyhound!  And only 2 weeks to do so.

Ugh, so many!

We'll skip an up close shot of the Greyhound as I am not pleased with it currently.  Like the Chaffee, it is also not completely "done."  I'll eventually post some stuff up for them when I wrap them up.

Most interestingly, here I am at basically the half way point of the year and I've painted up 33 Bolt Action infantry figures.  Combine that with the Menoth models I painted for Company of Iron and I'm at 43.  My total for all of last year was just 36, so that has me feeling pretty good.  That is until I  think about all the other projects in the queue...

Anyway, the paints used for these guys:

• Pants:  RMS Worn Olive (Base); No highlights
• Jacket:  RMS Faded Khaki (Base); 1:1 RMS Faded Khaki:Bronzed Highlight (Highlight)
• Webbing:  RMS Terran Khaki (Base); RMS Kahki Highlight (Highlight)
• Rifle-Steel:  1:1 RMS Pure Black:AP Gun Metal (Base); AP Shinning Silver (Highlight)
• Rifle-Stock:  RMS Blackened Brown (Base); RMS Intense Brown (Highlight)
• Skin:  
• Batch 1:  RMS Bronzed Highlight (Base)
• Batch 2:  RMS Bronzed Skin (Base)
• Helmet:  RMS Olive Green (Base); 1:1 RMS Olive Green:RMS Pale Olive
• All shading was with diluted AP Strong Tone all over the model, some wiped away on highlight areas of the pants.  A second application was done (after the first dried) in select/deeper areas.

Overall, pretty happy with how they turned out.  The highlight's on the helmets are sometimes really off and also do not transition well but I'll try to correct that on subsequent figures.  I should have been more careful in applying the Strong Tone wash.  But, they are done.  Eventually I will need to add my MMG teams and 1-2 squads to have a more robust 1000 pt list but I can at least move on to other things now and revisit this at a more relaxed pace.

March/April/May Recap

Ok, so I haven't done a good job of regular posts on the blog, let alone getting caught up on things I wanted to post or have meant to post.  On all fronts, things have just been busy but luckily that includes hobby stuff and managing to play games!

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...

January/February Recap

Ok, so I am a little behind on posting up to the blog.  Things have been pretty busy this year (already) on all fronts:  family, hobby and work.  Before we recap Jan & Feb (combined since I failed to even get a January recap up), let me remind myself about some missing blog posts I need to get up:

• Final Thoughts of 2017 Hobby Audit
• Hobby Goals for 2018
• Company of Iron Hobbying
• Bolt Action Hobbying
• Bolt Action Proxy Hobbying

Alright, with that done and spoiling a few things, let's jump to what has been keeping me so busy (on the hobby front) the past 2 months.  The main item that kept me busy during January was the Tale of Three (Four, nope Three) Gamers challenge for Company of Iron.  I posted a bit up about this challenge a few weeks ago, here and have made a few updates directly to Mike that he has posted on his blog Mini Mayhem.  I did not get my unit painted up by the Jan deadline and it has dragged through most of Feb (yes, I might not make Feb either).

This is partly due to some burn out (I pushed really hard at the end of Jan to try make my painting goal for Company of Iron) and partly due to stumbling upon a Bolt Action escalation league at our new local store, Lucky Dice Cafe.  The league had a big mega battle (2500+ pts per side) at the end of Jan to launch the league.  With the Company of Iron challenge hanging over me (along with my failure of the Jan goal) I really did not want to take on more projects.  But, I really wanted to be involved in something with the new store and to expand beyond my limited play opportunities.  Given there were already 8 people signed up for the league, I went for it.

Which meant, I need to assemble my first 250 pts by the start of the league which was only a week later and to eventually get them painted up by the end of Feb.  Both of which I did, so some great hobby progress was accomplished, although I am still behind on my other challenge. 

Anyway, to compliment the Bolt Action hobby time, I've also managed to get 4 games of BA between Jan and Feb.  Granted, the first was just a couple of turns of a partial force of Germans for the league kickoff game and the 3 other games have been at the 250 pts level for this month's league.  Still, its been good to get out a play and to see something like this going on at the new game store.  I even believe over the month of Feb we saw the league grow to 14 players.  Maybe some of those people can be converted to Konflikt 47 players...