Monthly Archives: January 2013

Wednesday Workbench

I’d actually have skipped doing this today, since these Wolf Rats are so close to being done (another wash on the armor and drybrushing on the base) I could just as easily post some finished pictures… but I missed last week, and I really like this as a way to keep up with things here.

Anyway, they’re almost there; should be done and ready for varnish before I turn in tonight!

More Paint-Matching LIES

I should be building Dark Angels lists, but instead I’m painting Wolf Rats. Not that I’m complaining. Skaven make me happy.

Anyway: I paint my Skaven thusly:

  • GW Dark Flesh basecoat
  • GW Bronzed Flesh layer
  • GW Elf Flesh highlights
  • GW Devlan Mud wash. 

(Or, I would use GW Bronzed Flesh if it hadn’t been discontinued, like half a decade ago.  It’s cool, though: VMC’s Dark Flesh is a solid substitute that actually handles better than the GW version.  It also looks like Ungor Flesh might be a good replacement; I’m planning to check it out when I run out of the VMC stuff.)

It’s not the only one, though: the other paints are gone now, though, too.  Doombull Brown is a solid Dark Flesh substitute and Agrax Earthshade (as everyone knows by now) is different but close enough for Devlan Mud.

Kislev Flesh is supposed to fill in for Elf Flesh. And, for peopleflesh it’s actually totally delivered.  For ratflesh, though: ugh it’s totally failing me.  It’s darker than the color it’s supposed to be highlighting!  Jeez!

Good thing I still have a pot of Elf Flesh; certainly enough to get me through this job. I’m going to have to track down the VMC/VGC/P3 stand-in, though.

Wednesday Workbench

The Brood Horror remains untouched from last week; unsurprising since I’d been focused on painting Ork Boyz.

I’ve started assembling some Wolf Rats: they’ll be done as soon as I get some hot water to reshape their tails (currently unnaturally straight) and attach them.

Also, I finished varninshing the movement trays I made way back when. They went over really well at the tournament over the weekend, so I hit them with some paint.

Big Mek & Da Boyz

I wrapped these guys up just in time for the tournament last weekend. Just got around to photographing them.

Behold, the photodump!

Hammer in the New Year

Saturday, Ashley ran a “Hammer in the New Year” 40K tournament.  Three rounds, using a format Casey‘d been wanting to try for a while now.  I had a great time, didn’t do so well, but ended up scoring better than I’d have expected.

I’m super-rusty with 40K, having not really done much with 6E in general, recently, or competitively.  Furthermore, the list I brought was driven entirely by expediency.

Here’s what I ran:

HQ
Bloodthirster – Blessings of the Blood God, Warlord (Command)
Bloodthirster – Blessings of the Blood God

Elite
Flamers x4

Troops
Blood Horrors x8 – Changeling
Blood Horrors x8

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Tzeentch, Flight, Daemonic Gaze
Daemon Prince – Tzeentch, Flight, Daemonic Gaze
Daemon Prince – Tzeentch, Flight, Daemonic Gaze

Desperate Allies
Big Mek – ‘Eavy Armor, Ammo Runt, Kustom Force Field, Burna
Boyz x21 – Shootas, Stikkbombs, Big Shoota x2, Nob w/ ‘Eavy Armor, Bosspole, Power Klaw

So, two things should leap out with this list: there’s kind of a dickish amount of Flying Monstrous Creatures in there and those Ork Boyz WTF?

Obviously, I’ve been working on Orks, so that’s what I want to put on the table. The Orks I put on the table are basically all the painted Orks I have, so I can’t run (if I want to be fully painted, and I do).  So, I decided to run my Daemons and throw the Orks in as Desperate Allies. They’re little better than wasted points; forget being non-scoring, non-denying models: allied with Daemons, they’re the only thing on the table at the beginning of the game.  They basically suck up an army’s worth of shooting immediately.

All the Flying Monstrous Creatures were in there ’cause I wanted to see how they worked. I played in an Apocalypse game with them, and that wasn’t the best venue to see how they worked. I can totally see how they look intimidating, but I’m not convinced that they’re the best choice.  I think I’d have been better off taking the Daemon Princes without Daemonic Flight and enjoying an additional 180 points.

Also, if it’s a legitimately dick thing to do, I think the utterly poor decision to run 300 points of useless greenskins counteracts it. :)

My MVPs for the day were easily the Flamers.  I definitely need to make some more.

Anyway, each round had a different deployment, and was scored thusly:

Scoring a Kill Point: 1 point each
Capturing a Quarter Objective: 2 points each
Capturing the Center Objective: 3 points
First Blood: 1 point
Slay the Warlord: 1 point
Linebreaker: 1 point

Game Points are used to determine your Battle Points.
If you have…
…half as many Game Points as opponent or less: 0 Battle Points
…3 fewer points than opponent: 2 points
…1 or 2 fewer points than opponent: 3 points
…tied opponent in points: 5 points
…1 or 2 more points than opponent: 7 points
…3 or more points than opponent: 8 points
…double or more points than opponent: 10 points 

The person with the most Battle Points wins the game. Game Points will be used for tie-breaking purposes.

The Center Objective will be a Mysterious Objective, all the others will be normal. The Night Fighting special rule will be in effect for all rounds.

Round 1

was vs. Kevin F, someone I used to see a lot of around the gaming store back when I first started playing 40K, fell off the Earth a few years ago, and started turning up just as I fell off the Earth. I’d actually been trying to schedule a game with him, so it was nice to start the day out playing him.

It was also the closest game I had over the day.

HQ
Overlord – Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, Sempiternal Weave, Command Barge

Troops
Immortals x10 – Transmorgrification Cryptek
Immortals x10 – Transmorgrification Cryptek
Warriors x9 – Despair Cryptek, Ghost Ark
Warriors x12 – Destruction Cryptek
Warriors x9 – Storm Cryptek, Night Scythe

Fast Attack
Canoptek Scarabs x5

Heavy Support
Canoptek Spyders x3
Monolith

Stuff came in, he shot at it. He focused on trying to ground something, then vomit fire into it until it stopped twitching.  This was also the only game the Ork Boyz saw the end of Turn 2.

We only got through Turn 3.  I’m not sure why we didn’t have nearly enough time; although we weren’t playing quickly, we certainly weren’t playing slowly.

At the end of Turn 3, I’d gotten some stuff into combat and killed a few things, he’d obviously shot some things to bits. I ended up losing by a couple of points.

Round 2

was vs. Aramis, a solid dude from the old gaming club that I haven’t played often though I’ve always enjoyed playing against him.

HQ
Duke Sliscus – Warlord
Baron Sathonyx

Troops
Kabalite Warriors x20 – Splinter Cannon x2
Wyches x5 – Haywire Grenades, Venom
Wyches x5 – Haywire Grenades, Venom
Wyches x5 – Haywire Grenades, Venom

Fast Attack
Beastmasters x3 – Khymerae x5, Razorwing Flocks x4
Beastmasters x3 – Khymerae x5, Razorwing Flocks x4

Heavy Support
Ravager – Flickerfield
Ravager – Flickerfield
Ravager – Flickerfield

Fortification
Aegis Defence Line – Quad-gun

Battle Brothers
Farseer – Guide, Mindwar, Runes of Warding
Guardians x10 – Shuriken Cannon

You can imagine how overwhelming this army looked: twice the bodies I had, not counting all the vehicles… and that quad-gun did a nice job of countering my flyers.

By the end of Turn 3, I’d killed nothing and had nothing left save 8 lonely Blood Horrors hanging out, ready to get jumped on by two Beastmaster Packs. We shook hands and called it: 0 points to 24.  Ouch.

Still, I enjoyed myself, and that’s what really matters.

Round 3 

was against Joe, who’s part of a group of players that have started turning up at the store over the past six  months or so.

HQ
Chaos Lord – Bike, Sigil of Corruption, Melta Bombs, Gift of Mutation, The Black Mace, Warlord
Sorcerer – Terminator Armor, Lvl 3, Spell Familiar, Burning Brand of Skalathrax

Elite
Terminators x10 – Power Axe x5, Power Maul x4, Power Fist x1

Troops
Chaos Space Marines x10 – Meltagun x2, Veterans of the Long War, Power Maul, Rhino
Chaos Cultists x20 – Autoguns
Chaos Cultists x20 – Autoguns

Fast Attack
Chaos Bikers x6 – Meltaguns x2, Power Fist x1

Heavy Support
Forgefiend – Extra Ectoplasma Cannon
Forgefiend – Extra Ectoplasma Cannon

To be honest, I went into this expecting a not-great game.  It was super-clear coming off the game with Aramis that my list was bad, Joe had what looked to be some pretty hard units, and he had a friend hanging around the table who I’d just seen kibitz my friend Bart’s 2nd Round Game into a loss (which really kind of pissed me off).  Having folks hang around to chat is cool: having to play two people at once is not cool.  Correcting people on rules is okay: reminding your bro to use such and such psychic powers is not okay.

Fortunately, the chatty cathy wasn’t too bad, so that concern proved to be unfounded, and Joe was a fun opponent. And while his tough units were tough, mine managed to hold their own, too, which never hurts.

Champion of Chaos really worked against him: his Terminators charged into my Bloodthirster… and had to challenge. Although a Bloodthirster is probably going to have a tough time with eleven Terminators, one is actually pretty manageable.  His terminators ended up spending the game tied up with one Bloodthirster or the other.  Ultimately, the second Bloodthirster bopped the Sorcerer on the head, the Terminators had a crap Morale roll, and (unsuccessfully) ran for it. That was pretty game-changing.

Where I’d been tabled in Game 2, I’d managed to do the tabling in Game 3, which was really surprising to me.

Ultimately, the surprising turn of events in the third game helped offset the rolling I got in the second.  Between that and a really great painting score (second highest) managed to put me in sixth overall.

I’d have done much better, I think, if I’d just run my regular old Daemon list. Much lighter in the FMC department but I’d have had a lot more models on the table. Plus, I wouldn’t have wasted points on the Orks. But I don’t regret it; I wanted to run the Orks, so I ran the Orks.

The format worked well, I think.  Everything (from the Secondary Objectives to Kill Points to Objectives) mattered, which is nice.  I get that KP in 5E didn’t work perfectly, but dang it: there’s got to be some drawback to running MSU, and this seemed to do an okay job of making it work. I definitely would like to see more of the format.

Again, overall, I had a great time and it really motivates me to want to get out and play some more.

So, I ran Death Frost Doom the other day…

A couple of non-local friends were in town before New Year’s Eve and were looking for some gaming, so I offered to run a one-shot.  I’d wanted to give LotFP a shot; so LotFP it was.

Wednesday Workbench

That’s 11 Ork Boyz and a Big Mek that I need to have done in time for Saturday’s 40K tournament.  Also, the Brood Horror I started on a while back that I’d like to have done in time for February’s WHFB tournament (only so I can bellyache to Ben J. about restricting Storm of Magic choices to Scrolls of Binding found in the Storm of Magic book; I won’t be able to run it).

2012 Year In Review

Year In Review

  • January saw a good amount of activity: Empire dude building. I knocked out that Fimir, who stands as probably my favorite mini of the year.
  • February, March, and April were basically spent building and (somewhat less so) painting Empire minis.  Unsurprising but, honestly, probably a little uninteresting. Pics of unpainted, unconverted minis are boring.  Sorry about that!
  • In May, I tried adapting to the new Citadel paints.  I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that this completely and totally killed any and all momentum I had for my Empire army.  They’re good paints, but something about the transition just deflated my enthusiasm balloon.More significantly, and unmentioned here, I went through tumultuous times in May: with a lot of job-related transition, uncertainty, and stress. It all worked out for the best but, yeesh.  That probably had a hand in it as well.
  • June saw the new edition of 40K!  Despite almost getting killed picking it up, I haven’t hardly done anything with it. I’ve played some desultory games with it over the past six months, but between tournament and Not Being Able To Game, I just haven’t done much with it.It was also when I started going a little bit Kickstarter crazy. More on that later.
  • July was probably the hobby high point of the year for me. For starters, I was lucky enough to make it out to Games Day!  Despite what was the worst Golden Daemon showing I’ve ever had (nothing made Final Cut), I had such a good time, and the GW staff was so above-and-beyond helpful, I hardly noticed!I overspent on Forgeworld resin (which remains unpainted).

    I didn’t paint or build much, but what I did do I’m super-happy with (Warpfire Throwers, the Demigryph).

  • August didn’t see much. I painted an Ork model for the heck of it and had such a good time doing it, now I’m neck-deep in a small Ork army.
  • September – Those Orks I just mentioned? It didn’t take long for me to start drowning in them.  Also, there was the NoVA Open, which was a lot of fun and will likely be even better in 2013.  Traveling for Grand Tournaments just isn’t something the cards for me, so I think it’s safe to call the NoVA the gaming highlight of the year for me.
  • October wasn’t exactly a dead month for me. I built some Orks, but this blog ran silent about it. Bare plastic might be boring, but I really don’t like letting this thing run quiet that long.
  • November saw, as expected, more Ork building. A couple of blog posts, but not much.
  • December was a dead month. No posts and, according to my tracker, no hobby. This isn’t exactly true: I’ve got 10 Boyz mid-painting on my desk, and have been slowly making progress on them since Thanksgiving… but nothing done. This is entirely because this has been an unusually crazy holiday season: a week in Texas, a second Christmas beforehand, preparation for both have left me frazzled and without productive time.
A lot of my hobby steam’s been stolen by scheduling: Mrs. Rushputin’s work schedule’s changed such that the only weekday evening we get to spend together is Tuesday… which is also the the CGL‘s gaming night at Game Parlor.  Since I like my hobby but love my wife, that’s really put a damper on my ability to get out and game.  Not being able to game’s put a damper on my motivation to paintThis year hasn’t been a dud, but it does kinda feel like it? I definitely rolled into 2012 like a motherfething juggernaut… and have definitely crawled out of it, blinking and trying to catch my breath.

Hobby Activity

Hobby’s been down overall… but not quite as hopelessly as it feels sometimes. I might not have painted much, but I’ve certainly built quite a bit.

It’s pretty tough to look at that and feel good about it. I suppose remembering that December-January was an abnormally productive time for me takes the sting out a little bit, but dang.

No unpleasant surprises here! A lot of Empire and a lot of Orks spent time in my workspace in 2012.
Grim as this chart is, it’s not surprising.  In 2012, I did a lot of building, but not much painting. I’m going to have to change that in 2013.  It’s also
Still: now’s probably the best of possible times to revisit the chart I posted in early November to put this year into perspective.

Gaming Activity

Somewhere along the way in early 2012: I fell off of logging my games. I find this interesting, because the only place I see my hobby tracker sheet get used is on Bill’s blog, and it looks to be where he gets the most use out of it. Significantly, no data means no chart.

It’s probably for the best. I really don’t think I want to confront how little I pushed my toy soldiers around this past year. I’ll have to get back on the wagon, though.

Site Activity

It should be immediately obvious to anyone at this point that the blog’s been in a bit of a slump…

Even putting aside the dead months of October and December, I’ve been less active on the blog overall.  So, if you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around!

Traffic peaked over the summer: Games Day and NoVA, I think, were responsible for most of this.

Comparatively, though, traffic’s a little down (14% overall).  I’m too lazy to check, but I expect that if I were to remove all of the YTTH drama traffic from last year, though, it’s probably more or less unchanged.  Given how little I posted this year, I’m delighted to call “more or less unchanged” a Win.

Crowdfunding

I’d done a couple of Kickstarters before (one in 2010, one in 2011) but like many 2012 was the year of crowdfunding. There’s a lot to be said on the phenomenon: but other people will probably say it more cogently and this thing’s gonna run long, so I won’t.   I’ll just touch on my experiences with it over 2012. (I’ll include IndieGoGo campaigns in my reckonings, too.)

  • Total campaigns: 27
  • Campaigns due in 2012: 17
  • Campaigns delivered in 2012: 1
  • Campaigns partially delivered in 2012: 5
  • Campaigns more than 2 months late: 5
  • Campaigns that should have been delivered in 2012 but did not: 12
  • Campaigns that are super late and pissing me off about it: 1
I haven’t actually seen a whole lot delivered from crowdfunding just yet: all of 1 campaign in 2012 has fully closed out with me.  That sounds worse than it is: I’ve got a couple that are shipping in multiple parts, and have seen results from 5 of them, which is great.
Most of them are late, but either haven’t been unreasonably so (I think we all have to expect some schedule flexibility from these), or have been good about communicating what’s going on and adjusting expectations as quickly as possible. Sedition Wars, for example, is over two months late, but they warned us about that pretty early on, so I’m perfectly content.
There only one that really stands out as goddamn unforgivably late.  When I consider the facts, it’s not surprising: there’s a lot of work for them to do and it makes sense for them to start with the small and work to the big… but it’s at six months late and looks to be at least eight. That means their estimate delivery date sucked.In terms of what sort of campaigns I pitched in on in 2012:

  • Board Games: 1
  • Gadgets: 2
  • Miniatures: 10
  • RPGs: 9
  • Video Games: 4

Goals

2012

My goals from last year started general…

  • FinishUtter failure. I don’t think I finished any significant project this year. I built a lot of stuff, but didn’t get much totally done. Boo.
  • Paint Technical Success. I painted. Not enough to feel good about how I painted, though.
  • Compete Technical Success. I played in a few tournaments and NoVA. I had a good time with all of them, but competing once a quarter, again, isn’t enough for me to fist pump about how competitive I was in 2012.

Then, I got more specific:

  • Make Significant Progress on an Empire ArmyFailure. If I’d left out “significant” I’d probably have called it a pass, but I got a couple of months in on it and then dropped it.
  • Avoid DramaSuccess. My low post-rate probably didn’t hurt, but overall I didn’t really get involved in internet screaming.  That hasn’t meant that I haven’t seen it, though.  I’m starting to have some concerns about how toxic the hobby gaming community is or isn’t.
  • Step It UpSuccess. I’m claiming this because I started using rushp.tn has a URL shortener, which I think is hella cool, but that’s it.  All of the card/sign files have been mostly untouched. I probably should get on that.
  • Dump Stuff – Success. I didn’t do as thorough a job of this as I’d have liked, but I did purge a lot of RPG books with Casey‘s help, which is a big step.  I hope to start dumping some boardgames on Craigslist in the next couple of weeks.

2013

I’m going to keep the general goals:

  • Finish
  • Paint
  • Compete

And for specific goals:

  • Game – Similar, but different from “Compete.” I need to figure out how to get out and start rolling dice around toys again.  I’m kind of a homebody who’s only really comfortable with a regular schedule for things, and losing Tuesday night’s knocked me off my stride and I need to get over it already.
  • Pace Myself – I really need to paint more than I buy.  I’ve already dropped out of a high-mini-count Kickstarter, and have vowed to just not buy any damn minis until March (with an exception for the new Dark Angels minis, and only those after I’ve worked up a list).  I’m considering tracking my mini purchases on my hobby sheet to keep me honest.
  • Historicals – My hankering to start doing something with the English Civil War’s done nothing but pick up steam all year; getting a few boxes of Pike & Shotte minis from Warlord for Christmas has only sealed it: I need to do something with it in 2013.
  • Continue Dumping Stuff – I still have too much crap. I’m on the right track: let’s stay on it.
  • Post More to CMON – I’ve posted all of one mini to CMON (with a 7.6 that I’m delighted with).  Time to do more.