I went to Utah this weekend with my wife to visit her grandmother, whose health is rapidly going downhill. It was a pretty good visit, considering the circumstances, although my brother-in-law's rabbit nearly killed me. We were supposed to stay at his house, but about two minutes after we arrived my allergies hit me hard and my throat started closing up. Apparently I can add rabbits to my long list of allergies. So we had to try finding another place to stay at three in the morning. All of the hotels were full and expensive as there was a BYU game that night. After about an hour of searching, we finally found a place that had an available room. When we got to the room, however, the lights were on, the TV was going, the bed had obviously been used in the last few hours, and towels were all over. So we had to go back to the desk to get another room. That room was unoccupied and we got a few hours of sleep before it was time to check out.

On our way out of Utah we stopped at a game store called Blakfyre Games in Orem. It looked like a pretty nice store, with lots of terrain and according to the calendar board there is gaming there almost every night. They also had an in-shop painting service that looked pretty nice, although I have no idea what the prices were like on that.

There is also a new gaming store in Boise called Empyre Games. I went in there today to check it out. The prices aren't too bad, and they carry a selection of Flames of War stuff, which is something Hobbytown doesn't have. They also have a Warhammer escalation league set up, but they play on Sundays, which means I can't sign up. Overall it's an okay-looking store, but I don't know if Boise can support three game stores. I may buy some Flames of War stuff there, though, and try that out. I've been wanting to do some historical miniatures, but I've got a few other projects in the way at the moment. I've heard people talk about Flames of War in a derogatory manner, calling it the Warhammer of Historical Games, but I think it's an okay concept and I'm sure the figures can be used with other rulesets without a lot of hassle. I'll probably at least get the rulebook and see what it's all about.

I've found myself hesitant to set up any Warhammer games with local people. I think some of it has to do with my general social anxiety. I also think I may be reluctant to run into the same situation I ran into with Heroclix. I spent a lot of time at Heroclix night being bored out of my mind because I was there for different reasons than some of the other guys. I always brought a team based on some comic team or theme, because I like the narrative that goes on in the game. I enjoy the whole spectacle of the game and being "in character" for the army or team I'm playing. I found that a lot of the guys I played against in Heroclix didn't care about the characters, they only cared about the powers and numbers on the dial working together in killer combos. I think that if that's all you care about, you might as well break the figures off their bases and call it "Number Clix." I suppose either style of play is fine, but when you mix the two, the Number-Cruncher will not find much of a challenge from the Theme Team Guy, and the Theme Team guy will not find much entertainment in the Number-Cruncher's lack of interaction in the storyline of the game. The short version of all this is that I don't want to show up with my Skaven army and play against a bunch of power-gamers. If that turns out to be the case, I suspect that I will probably spend a lot of time painting and modeling and not game very much at all.

Today I tried to speed-paint my way through a unit of Clanrat Slaves, but I burned out after they were about 60% painted. I figure I can finish up the rest of the unit over the next couple of days and still feel pretty good about myself.

My Fantasy Football teams went 4-0 this weekend, bringing me to 15-5 for the season (4-1, 4-1, 4-1, 3-2). Things are looking pretty good, although I still have a couple of teams with big holes in the RB and QB slots.