It’s Wednesday. I’ve been doing stuff: like building the Nomad half of Operation: Icestorm (plus the recommended “add these” units to flesh it out to a full list).
Need to work up the base on the Iguana suit: Dragon Forge doesn’t make 55mm bases in that range (and, for some reason, I didn’t realize that was a 55mm base; I thought it was a 40mm when I ordered the bases because I’m an idiot).
Most of this terrain showed up in December of 2013, I think.
I’d dry fitted some of it together to get a feel for it… and left it there. It’s meant to be modular, but the idea of painting the individual pieces and then snapping them together at game-time just isn’t practical at all. On top of that, I was shorted connectors in the initial shipment: more showed up with the Wave 1 Mitigation shipment, but by that time I’d been distracted and was working on something else. When Wave 2 showed up, it renewed my motivation.
It’s actually a little disappointing: if I’d filled that Wave 3 survey out now, after having really assembled and painted this stuff, instead of before, I’d have bought a lot more. Like a lot. Like definitely enough that it’d get me in trouble with Mrs. Rushputin.
Anyway: everything’s painted and gloss varnished. I need to weather it (some stains, some rust) before another coat, but the involved part’s done.
This is the full table (same configuration from four directions):
I shot for a board configuration that was crowded and busy… but left a lot open. This is a lot more terrain than it looks like Mantic normally puts on their tables: I’ve got two mats (plus the paper one), so I think I could safely smear this across two mats and it’d still be dense enough to play with.
If I’d had more tiles, I’d have tried to get some interleaved walkways. A walkway at Level 2 going East/West and one at Level 3 going North/South immediately above it is the sort of thing I’d really like to have, but it wasn’t in the cards.
I also tried to make sure that most of the pieces would work for 40K.
These pieces are the components of the building above: I tried to keep things so they could break down into multiple pieces.
I also tried to keep the terrain practical. While I loved the idea of a cargo-crate structure up on scaffolding, it wouldn’t be very playable. So, I kept it so every square’s accessible.
I’m nuts about these towers. I’d have made more if I had more of those bare frame tiles.
I thought the Landing Pad would be impractical: the Skyshield Landing Pad kind of is. I’ve got one in tub around here someone and never use it. This is a little bit to pack away, but by keeping the little cubicle detached, it’s not that big of a problem.
I’m not dead (I think)!
NoVA was a thing that happened: I had a great time (as expected). It’s weird, though: even though I love 40K, and on paper I think I should love this version of 40K, I don’t think I like it very much right now. I won as much as I lost and most of my games were a lot of fun (even the one really, really, really unbelievably awful game would have been just as awful with any other edition or any other game, I think), but yeesh. That, plus a literal 24 hours of 40K over a weekend will make anyone want to take a breather.
That, combined with work hitting a level of busy I’d only describe as “traumatic” (seriously: it hasn’t been that bad for a month or so but it still feels that bad) has meant I haven’t time for much gaming. I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve been able to move toy soldiers around since Nova was a three-way goof-off game of Saga with John and Mike at Victory comics what feels like months ago.
On the bright side: I have not been idle on the hobby side of things, even if I’ve been too busy to blog about it.
Since NoVA, I’ve:
In fact (because I’m obsessive about tracking what hobby progress I make, I can tell you that), I’ve done more hobby stuff so far this year than I have since I’ve been tracking this stuff. By September, I’d painted more models in 2014 than the entirety of any other single year.
Now to just find time to drag out the lightbox and start with some photodumps.
And to get out and game: I think I need to make that an actual priority, effective ASAP. Like, “Sorry, I cannot do this thing you ask of me, because I need to be playing with toy soldiers.”