The Update

After a few months of searching and offering and waiting and inspecting and signing paperwork we finally have purchased a house. We signed the papers yesterday and everything processed today, so we've started the process of moving in. We went over there today to drop some stuff off and wait for the locksmith to come and change the locks out.

As soon as we showed the neighbors from one house over came over to introduce themselves. Later another neighbor came over to talk to us. We mentioned that we were waiting on the water to be turned on, which the city couldn't do until Monday. He mentioned that he worked for the city and could turn on our water tonight after reading out meter and leaving a message at the office. So we got water a couple days early.

Now I'm really tired, so I am going to bed.

Not much to post about. The kid likes to play inside of boxes. He's popping some more teeth out in the top to go with his lower teeth.

Packing up for the move is going fairly well, but the living room is so full of boxes that it is difficult to walk through the house. It would be lame if the house fell through at the last minute and I had to move all that stuff back into the rest of the house.

I reworked my Imperial Guard lists to include the models that I like and want to paint and play with. It should still be a good army to game with; I think I hit most of my bases as far as anti-tank and anti-infantry. I'm a little short on Troop choices, though. I may have to alter the lists again to increase my Troop selections.

Packing Up

We are hoping to close on the house within the next week, so we've been packing our stuff up in boxes and staging it for loading in the truck. It is a pain, especially when you've packed ten or fifteen boxes of stuff and the room doesn't really look any different. But we're making progress. Hopefully by the end of the weekend we can have most of the small non-essential stuff ready to go. Then we just have to wait for the paperwork side of things to go through.

In between packing boxes I've been trying to work out army lists for 40k. After building my initial Imperial Guard list I felt that it didn't have enough figures to stand up against Space Marines or Orks. So I am looking for ways to increase the number of figures without sacrificing too much in the way of firepower. I've also been reading up on various tactics and builds that work, although I think playing the Math Hammer game takes away from the aspects of army-building that appeal to me most. I redid my Space Marine lists again, but I think I am going to switch them back again, as I wound up without a great variety of units. I'd like to pack a few different things into my lists rather than running (and painting) a million of the exact same thing.

The Pledge

I recently made my own version of the Pledge. It doesn't involve painting a certain number of figures; I just am not allowed to purchase any new figures until sometime in August. Hobby supplies are okay. So far I've made it. I had a close call at the hobby shop with the new GW Temple of Skulls. The sticker price on it is rather high, but the store discount is pretty good on certain items and the box containing the model is much larger than I expected. But I refrained from getting it. I did buy a couple of jars of paint and a book on building scenery. The new Land Speeder Storm transport for Space Marine Scouts and the Ironclad Dreadnought are being released soon, and I'd really like to pick up the Warhammer Fantasy Empire starter box as well as a Steam Tank. But I've made it this far fairly easily and I may extend my Pledge another month or two just to save some money.

I've got plenty of stuff to keep me busy; I may transition a bit more into buying bits here and there on eBay for conversions rather than buying new box sets all the time. Or combining the two like I did with my Assault Terminators. With the five Terminator bodies from Assault on Black Reach you can turn a five-man Assault Terminator box into a ten-man Squad with five Thunder Hammer/Storm Shields and five Lightning Claws.

Finished Reading The Last Chancers

I finished reading The Last Chancers a day or two ago. I felt that the last book in the collection was the weakest. It's probably just personal preference, as the last book took some turns that I didn't care for. I don't want to post any spoilers, but the story included more Chaos than the others. The various Chaos armies are probably my least favorite parts of the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k universes. They just don't do anything for me the way that much of the other background does. As with anything, your experience and preference may vary. I will still be building a portion of my army to reflect the Last Chancers and even have one or two characters from the last book modelled in the army, but overall I was disappointed with the way the series ended.

We may be nearing the end of the house-hunting process. As of my last house update, we were waiting on the appraiser to go in and appraise the house. He went through and found something that needed painted and a couple of pieces of siding that he wanted replaced before he would bless off on the loan. Additionally, he appraised the house at $4000 less than what we had offered on it and wouldn't go any higher.

The siding and paint weren't a big deal as the other agent has been more than willing to fix things that need done in order to close the deal. The $4000 was kind of a big deal as it meant we would either have to offer that much less and see if the bank would accept it or come up with the $4000 on our own to make up the difference between the loan and the price. Bah!

We sent in an offer for $4000 less and waited. Yesterday the bank finally came back and accepted the lower offer, so things so far are still working out. Now we have to wait for the siding and paint to be finished so the appraiser can go back in and approve it. If that goes well we should be clear to go ahead and get the house. I hope we stay there for a while, because I don't want to go through that process again. At least at the end of this latest ordeal we came away with a nice little discount.

A Response to Lone Pilgrim

Lone Pilgrim made a pie chart and wrote a post in response to an article in White Dwarf in which Jervis Johnson discusses the motivations that people have for their hobby. It seemed like a wonderfully nerdy thing to do, so I made my own chart. My wife teased me for being such a nerd, but sometimes you've got to just be yourself no matter what other people say.

I think I've got the chart divided approximately according to my own personality. It is somewhat different from the one that was posted by Lone Pilgrim; the collecting models portion on my chart is significantly larger while the Camaraderie and Playing Games portions are much smaller.

I greatly enjoy planning, purchasing, putting together, and painting models. For me that is the main part of the hobby. Along with collecting and creating armies I enjoy the background material and coming up with forces that both make sense and include all of the models I enjoy. I have been having a great time with my plans for the Last Chancers and the Imperial Guard color scheme for my other troops, just like I enjoyed building up my Skaven army and coming up with a color scheme and force organisation for my Space Marines. I get pumped up about lists and plans and new products. I love to look at release schedules and plan out what I need next. I even enjoy sitting down and getting stuff painted or put together.

Playing games and camaraderie with other gamers are things that I anticipate and think about when planning and painting. They're sort of an end-goal for all the work and creation that goes into the hobby, but in my experience so far they have fallen short and left me disappointed. Part of it has to do with the local gamers and attitudes that come into play, and I imagine a large portion of the blame lies in my social awkwardness and the difficulty I have in putting myself out there to make friends and be a part of games. Whatever the causes, I generally find myself coming home from a game feeling let down rather than motivated and excited for the next one.

Lone Pilgrim had a couple of commenters who mostly agreed with him as well as some comments who trended more to the playing games and camaraderie end of the scale. It is interesting that the hobby is spread across such a wide spectrum. I suppose that it is really several hobbies in one. But if you think about it, many (if not most) hobbies are that way. People tend to specialize and move toward the aspects of a hobby that interest them most.

The Last Chancers

I've been reading The Last Chancers, a collection of novels and short stories set in the Warhammer 40k universe that chronicles the adventures of the 13th Penal Legion, also known as Colonel Schaeffer's Last Chancers. They are an Imperial Guard unit made up of prisoners who take on suicide missions as a "last chance" to gain a pardon for their crimes against the Emperor. Generally these pardons are given posthumously. It may not be a literary masterpiece, but it's certainly a page-turner.

It has also got me thinking about an Imperial Guard army list centered on the Last Chancers. The old Guard Codex had a special unit and accompanying miniatures for the 13th Penal Legion, but they were removed from the army for the current edition. I think that given the fairly small numbers of the Last Chancers in the novels I will have to model them as a command squad and maybe a Troops or Elite selection and then model the rest of the list as another more conventional Penal Legion or even a standard Imperial Guard unit. I will probably pick and choose characters and ideas from all of the books in order to give myself a range of things to choose in the list. In one of the stories the groups is accompanied by a Naval Officer who calls down a bombardment on some renegade Guard units. I'll add him to the list as a Master of Ordnance Regimental Advisor. One of the other books features a demolitions expert that I can fit into a Special Weapons Squad. I still haven't got it all nailed down yet (and I'm not quite finished with the book) but it is certainly generating plenty of ideas.

We are getting ever closer to closing the deal on the house. I just hope the VA appraisal goes well. If it does then we should be good to go. I've started packing some nonessential items, mostly miniatures, books, and magazines. It's amazing how much stuff you can find once you start digging around. I don't really have anything to talk about that I can recall; I'm pretty sure I had several things I wanted to post about earlier today but they have slipped my mind. Oh well.