August Recap

Well, it seems somehow along the way I have adequately managed to capture my August activity with other posts (mostly):

• Painting Guild Ball Masons - Basecoat
• Painting Guild Ball Masons - Shade
• Painting Guild Ball Masons - Highlight
• Game of Kings of War

I do still need to finish up those Mason models.  I did a few of the washes/glazes I mentioned as remaining to do's in the Highlight post but still have a few things left to do.  The big one is weathering and basing, for that I needed to order some supplies that just came in (along with some extra stuff because who can order just what they "need").

A lot of this stuff is new to me, so I will try to post up my thoughts about them as I use them, although some of them were pre-planning or illusions of grandeur (ie, may not be in the immediate future).

Also this past month, Derek over at Throne of Angels mentioned in Episode 54 a game he checked out and brought home from GenCon:  Drakerys.  I was intrigued, so I did a read through of the rules which you can find here.  I will post a first impressions of the rules in next couple of days.

Other than that, as I write this the NOVA Open is coming to a close (or is over by the time I post this).  I really wish I could have swung attending this year and seeing my Virginia/Maryland/DC friends.  I hope the convention went wonderfully and that I can make it next year.

Lastly, toward the end of this month I made a grave mistake regarding my hobby-ing.  I bought Overwatch for the Xbox One and pretty much have not done any hobby stuff since.  That being said, the luster of playing in PUGs has begun to wear off and at the moment I don't have much of friends list to group up with (I'm late to the Xbox One party, having just gotten it a couple of months ago), so hopefully I should be back on track shortly (or at least more on track).  Maybe...

Well, gotta run.  Happy Labor Day.

Game of Kings of War

So I finally got my Varangur list sorted out for Kings of War and got in a game with one of the locals, David.  Below, a picture of the 2000 pts for my first game of Kings of War with my own list and only my second game of KoW:

Soooo many models

The list largely pulled from the models I already had painted (luckily).  The "sand worm" and the witch coven you may recall from a few posts ago rounded out my force serving as a Devourer and Magus Conclave (x2).  The sorcerer lord still needs to be assembled to serve as my model of choice for a lone Magus.

Here they are finally on the battlefield, right after deployment (the magus conclave off camera on left and right, and a 20 man unit of Sons of Korgaan off camera to the left):

I really want this mat

After a couple of rounds, a few things have gone right, more had gone wrong but still in it:

There is a unit of cavalry off camera left that is ruing my day

Things looking pretty good here near the end of the game, except when you look at the number of wounds (the dice behind my units) on each unit:

The two beat up units on the left side evaporated quickly

The last turn of the scenario.  Somehow the unit of Sons of Korgaan had survived (seriously they shouldn't have, waver on 16 break on 18 with 14 wounds.  Due to Gift of Korgaan, they finished off the knights that charged them and as the only unit in the center of the table (part of the scenario) it won me the game (secondary scoring didn't give David enough to overcome winning the scenario).

Yep, inspiring forced a reroll and kept those Sons of Korgaan on the table

The final score was 15 (me) to 9 (David).  The game really should have gone to him and would have had me pretty much wiped off the board, with a score that would have been about 5 (me) to 19 (David).

Anyway, I found the game fun and exciting.  David was a great opponent and really helped walk me through my first complete introduction with my own forces.  I am thoroughly impressed with how stream lined the rules are yet complete enough to tick almost all the boxes I want out of something like this.  This also led to the game being over in just under 2 hours, which is a big bonus to me.  That being said, if I was (which I am not) the type of person that only plays one game, I'm still not sure there is enough diversity to the game to keep me interested for game after game, week after week.  Especially since I have no interest in exploring diversity by purchasing, assembling and painting so many models for another army to play.

I learned a lot from this game too, in the usual way:  burned hand.  My initial positioning of my Magus Conclaves was horrendous.  My flanks collapsed badly due to poor support.  I over committed my Devourer to a target, leaving him too exposed afterwards.  And didn't do anything all game long about that pesky bow line in the back.  While I did a decent job of using units to screen, I see how I could have used them better.

Anyway, I look forward to getting another game in soon.

May Recap

Whew, May is over.  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 family birthdays in this month, my mom visiting for my daughter's birthday, birthday party for my daughter, my wife getting sick, me getting sick, having to get up at 5am for work most days to offset the time off I have to take for all the birthdays and activities.  Ugh.

All these things considered, a pretty productive month, although I still haven't put actual colors onto my Guild Ball models (but I bought the paints!  lol) or worked on the Pegasus further (yes, the wings are still not attached - it will require some green stuff and I haven't felt like pulling that out).  So what did I actually manage to accomplish...

Well, I did get 2 different games of Guild Ball in with Mike over at Mini Mayhem.  Mike provides some nice pictures and a recap of the (partial) games here and here.  Both games dragged out a bit and subsequently called early.  Mike cites himself for the slow play but I contributed as well.  We were very rusty and also had to look up a couple rule things too, which was compounded by the new Season 2 rulebook and it's new layout/format.  I do have to say, I do like the new rulebook but it still nags me in the back of my head whether or not it could be organized better.  I suspect that there is not a great solution since you are dealing with so many disparate rules:  combat, different types of kicks, playbooks, 2 different sources of resources, etc.

We both would really like to see our games speed up too.  It would be nice to be able to either play multiple games or 2 different games in one get together.  We have decided to try implementing a chess clock, which is likely to make us more prone to tactical errors but maybe the burnt hand will teach best...

On the hobby side, I unearthed what seems like a butt load (to me) of Warriors of Chaos models that will be re-purposed for Kings of War.  It took a lot of work to get the models sorted out, repaired and modified for magnetic transport but it is pretty much done now.  If I just hadn't discovered a set of sprues for Mounted Marauders that I, of course, am compelled to assemble now.  Ok, there are few stragglers still left to repair and the heavy metal models appear to need an alternative transport solution that will somehow be compatible with the overall magnetic solution approach.

Light at the end of the tunnel

At least I don't have to paint most of these guys

Or these

Ugh that is a lot to paint, someday

More to paint, someday *sigh*

Some side notes regarding the Warriors of Chaos above.  These were all bought second hand, in two separate purchases.  What is painted, was painted by the previous owners.  That being said, even just glimpsing at the unpainted models compels me to think "who the hell signs up for this kind of madness."  Seriously.  Even thinking about assembling that many models for just one faction/game system, let alone purchasing that many models for one faction/game system.  And if a game system "requires" that many models, why at that scale!  I just hope (pray) that a viable army resides somewhere in there.

That is pretty much it.  June will see some colors on those Guild Ball models and maybe either a game or two of Frostgrave, Kings of War or Mini Mayhem (Mike's homebrew system).  I will also be attempting to index (and share - as part of public self-shaming) my started but not completed hobby projects, so that I can begin to knock those out.

And as a parting note:  FUCK PRODOS GAMES.  3 years since the AvP kickstarter and nothing but occasional excuses, smoke screens, offers to (basically) pay for your own shipping (again, IMO) or picking your shit up at some convention.  Meanwhile, they continue to sell this shit, develop and release new shit and distribute all their shit to retailers (including AvP!).  Seriously, I've been ripped off (completely ripped off) on just one kickstarter yet this Prodos/AvP is an even worse experience!  Sad since I desperately wanted some Warzone Mashima models but you (Prodos Games) are now on my manufacture shit list.  Congratulations on joining such a small, elite group.  Oh well.

January Recap

Been a little quiet on the blog, so I thought I would post a quick update recapping January.  I'm not sure a monthly recap is going to be a regular thing or not, I had actually planned to post most of this as more individual updates but never got around to it.  We will see...

On the "hobbying" front I have managed to get in a little bit of modelling every week.  No actual painting though.  Surprisingly time consuming, I did get my Malifaux and MERCS models transitioned from foam storage/transport to magnetic tray storage/transport (btw, I believe MERCS second edition comes up in Feb/Mar and includes rules to use a standard tape measure instead of the card based movement - should be interesting to see).  I also got 4 new guys for my Hadross Wrath of Kings assembled and based:  I wasn't really satisfy by (game play wise) one of the specialist from the starter set, so I wanted to either try a different specialist or add another taxi crab.

(The loner off to the side of the group was actually assembled last year)

I have also gotten 4 games of Guild Ball in over the month with Mike over at Mini Mayhem.  I continue to be impressed with the game.  So far Mike and I have only gotten 1 game in at the full team and table size (without terrain).  I'm holding off a post with more thoughts on the game until I get a few more under my belt.

I've gotten a little more connected into the Kings of War and (separate) Malifaux communities.  It has been a little hard but I think I'm starting to unravel the fractured gaming community here.  We will see.  I would really like to get out to one of the weekly Malifaux nights that has been re-established to show support but so far I just haven't been able to juggle it into the mix.  Hopefully soon.  There have been some rumblings about Frostgrave too, so I picked up the rules for that but haven't digested them yet.  It really looks like I am going to have to bite the bullet and get into Facebook though to help integrate into the gaming community down here.  *sigh*

The only other thing to note for January is I started and finished reading Caliban's War.  The second book in the Expanse series  Again, I can not believe that such frantic pacing can be maintained for the entire length of a book.  It manages to introduced some really great new characters that I hope to see again.  Hopefully this puts me far enough ahead that I can now watch the first season of the SyFy series.  For reading though, I think I am going to take a little break from this series and read something lighter, probably one of the new Star Wars books.  But then again Lois McMaster Bujold has a new book out:

This month (/next) we appear to be on course for closing and moving into a new house.  That should see the establishment of my new man cave, the return of all my tiny soldiers and my airbrush!  The harsh reality of this is that I probably wont have much actual time for hobbying for the rest of February and maybe part of March.