A Productive Weekend

The wife and I got a lot accomplished this weekend, which has been good for morale. We were able to go through most of the stuff in the house and throw out a ton of junk, find places for "keeper" items, take unneeded but servicable items to the thrift store, and move all of the furniture around to match our plan. I am still in awe of the sheer volume of what we were able to push through. The public areas of the house (living room, kitchen) are practically free of clutter, and it will probably take another day or so of work to get the computer/hobby room and the bedroom up to snuff. It's nice to finally have all of our space be usable. Once the house is all done up the way we need it, we'll able to go through the last three or four boxes in the storage shed and set that up as some sort of useful area as well.

Our dogs were pretty stressed out by all the changes, especially since we moved their kennels from the back room to the living room. Annie (the Labrador) has been even more on edge than usual, running around frenetically and being extra clingy around my wife. Buddy (the Basset Hound) peed on the floor, which is how he deals with stress. At least he did it on the floor this time, as last time he got stressed out he did his business on our bed, with most of the damage being done to my wife's pillow.

I think Herbert the rat is ill with some sort of wheezy, sneezing disease. That doesn't really bode well for her life expetancy, as sick animals don't make very good pets. Other than the wheezing, she seems to be quite full of energy and doesn't really make a nuisance of herself, so maybe she'll start feeling better after she settles into her new environment a bit more. A big plus is that she hasn't tried to bite me yet.

I want to get started on my WWII miniatures project, but it seems like the initial jump into a game or period is the most expensive part. I figure that to play the first three scenarios in my Skirmish Campaigns book I'll need an investment of about $200 for miniatures, terrain, and paints. I'll end up with a bit more infantry than I need for the scenarios, but the infantry isn't really all that expensive. That price tag will go up if I use actual plastic/resin/metal buildings instead of ordering one of the cardstock kits or paper kit downloads that are available. I think WWII may have to wait until I finish buying my Skaven army and perhaps a fair portion of my Orcs and Goblins.

I've made a few changes to my Skaven army lists, as I discovered during my games that some of the equipment on my Hero models was redundant or inneffective. There really isn't much change in the number of models I need, but the list should play a little better now. I also worked out a unit of Plague Monks as a potential substitute for the Giant in my 2250- and 3000-point lists. That way if I run into an opponent who objects to Dogs of War, I can pull out a huge unit of Frenzied Monks which are probably worse to fight than the Giant anyway.

Buddy

It's not a great picture, but the Clanrat Slaves are all finished now. Along with the Giant, my 2250-point army list is nearly filled out. All I really need now to finsih it up is one or two Night Runners. I thought I would just need one more Night Runner, but I've made a few changes to my list this week and opened up a few more points that I can use.

I made a list of several things to do tonight, but the only thing I really made any progress on was painting the unit of Clanrat Slaves that has been sitting on my desk for a couple of months. Actually getting out and playing with my miniatures has led to a new motivation for getting the paints out again. I got a lot of compliments on my fully-painted army during my two games this week, so that was a nice little thumbs-up for my ego.

I've determined that Clanrat Slaves are awesome. Each unit of 20 only costs forty points, so they make very effective meat shields and can tie up many times their point cost for a turn or two. In the game I played on Wednesday, I think the Slaves really helped me keep the points close. If the Slaves had been switched out for regular Clanrats, my opponent would have ended up with an extra two hundred points or more. As it was, he spent a couple of turns killing two units of Slaves that were only worth 80 points to him. Then there wasn't enough time to finish the job on my more expensive units.

I've also decided that Plague Monks are insanely studly, especially when equipped with extra hand weapons. I'm pretty excited for my 3000-point list, because my Monks are going to get a big boost in numbers and power. That unit will be a hard-hitting beast.

I ordered my new computer today, so that's pretty exciting. Due to my military status, I got around a 25% discount. My wife also got a nice vacuum cleaner that she's had her eye on. The deal was that I could get a new computer once the house was set up they way we've been planning. We jumped the gun a little on ordering it and I won't be able to set it up for a while due to space restrictions, but it's good motivation for finishing up the reorganization of the house.

The Old West miniatures in the case at the game store have got me thinking about new projects. The store also has some very nicely-painted Old West buildings and terrain. I'm assuming that that stuff is well out of my budget, but I know there are some decent cardstock building sets out there that I could print off and build. The minis at the store are from Artizan Designs, and there are also a lot of figures from Foundry that are very nice. Someday it would be nice to buy a couple of the Foundry Horde deals, but it's hard to justify the expenditure as Foundry models aren't the cheapest around.

I should probably head to bed now, as I have to wake up and clear my remaining junk out of the living room. Then it's off to the bedroom to find spots for all of my clothes and White Dwarf magazines that are piled up all around the floor. Once that's done we should be able to start shuffling things to make way for my big desk and computer. We'll be moving the computers and hobby stuff to the current bedroom, the bedroom will be moved to the bigger room, and the dogs and junk in that room will be moved to the living room and shed, in that order. I made the suggestion that the dogs would be fine in the storage shed, but my wife used her veto power and sent it back to Congress.

Last week when my wife fed our python, Lucy didn't eat her second rat. That's never occured before, so we now have a rat living in one of our spare aquariums. I made the unfortunate mistake of naming him today, so I'm wondering if we'll be able to feed Herbert to Lucy when her next feeding time comes around. I've just gone over and had a look at Herbert. Herbert appears to be a female. What an unfortunate name.

Which reminds me, I need to work another condition into the cleaning of the house. Perhaps if we can clear out enough space, I will be allowed to have a tortoise.

4th of July

Today was the 4th of July, so my wife and I did some pretty patriotic things. I played a game of Warhammer, she took the dogs to the dog park, and we cleaned up the living room a little. With the two of us basically living the nerdy bachelor lifestyle, stuff piles up very quickly on any flat surface in our home. We're trying to get it to the point where people can come over and visit, but it's slow going.

I played my second-ever game of Warhammer today. I had posted on the forum that I was going to be at the store with my army today, to either watch the game that was going on or play any challenger that came along. A guy from the group showed up with a Hordes of Chaos Tzeentch army and some free time, so we cleared off a table and got our armies out. I do not have any familiarity with Chaos armies, so everything was new to me. He had a lot of magic, so it was quite a change from playing against Dwarves.

I don't remember things very well in chronological order, so I'll just hit main points of the battle as I think of them. Two of his level 2 spellcasters miscast their spells and each ended up losing a caster level and a spell from their list. For an army that relies so much on magic, that was a big blow.

He had one spell that would make one of my units fight amongst themselves. Luckily, I rolled well during those combats and my rats didn't kill very many of themselves.

His army general had a flying mount with a long movement range, so a couple of my units spent key turns of the game chasing him. Then he would fly off in another direction, leaving my unit in the middle of nowhere facing away from the battle.

My Warp-Lightning Cannon was strong again, accounting for several of his soldiers and only one of my rats. If I'd been a little more courageous about shooting my own guys, I probably could have killed some more of his army.

My Rat Ogres were worthless again, getting killed as soon as they got into combat. Once again, I think my units of Slaves outlasted the big brutes. I guess it's true that the units you spend the most time painting are the ones that spend the least time on the table.

At the end of Turn 6, my opponent was in line for a pretty solid victory, but two of my units passed their rally tests and he was denied those points, so we ended in a draw. I also had several units on the table that were one or two models over half of their starting strength, so that was another couple hundred points he could have had.

Apart from the two miscasts, he outplayed me the whole way, but I had some lucky dice today and I was able to pull a draw out of my hat. I had a pretty good time because I was able to get most of my units into combat and maneuver a bit more than in the game against the Dwarves on Monday. Hopefully with some practice I'll be able to start winning some games.

EVE Online

I've been trying out a new MMO the last week or so. It's called EVE Online, and it's a spaceship MMORPG. The game's homepage is located here. So far I'm not sure how I feel about the game.

One unique thing about the game is that there is only one server. Everyone plays in the same world, rather than the multiple server system that most MMOs seem to have, where each server holds only a certain number of people before it's full. So everyone who plays EVE Online is playing together in one universe.

Another interesting feature of the game is that your ship never logs off. Even when you close the game, your ship remains in space and can be killed unless you log off while in a space station.

Every area of the game is a potential PvP zone, but in areas with a certain security rating attacking another player will cause you to be wanted by the police. I'm not sure exactly how the PvP system works, because you apparently need an extremely nice ship and some high skill levels to venture into the real PvP areas. It is entirely possible to play the entire game without fighting other players, as you can fight computer-controlled criminals and mine asteroids. There is a whole set of skills and ships that deal with the business side of the game. I'm assuming that to get the really rare minerals you have to venture out into less secure areas of space, but that is far away.

There doesn't seem to be a real "level" system like you see in standard RPGs. Instead, there is a skill point system. Basically, each piece of equipment requires that you have certain skills to use it. You can train the skills that you already have for free, but to learn an entirely new skill you have to buy the book for it and train it from the book. All skill training is free once you've got the book, but it takes a certain amount of time to train each rank of a skill. Most skills have five levels, and the time it takes to level each one increases by quite a bit. To get level one may take an hour, level two may take 5 hours, level three could take 15 hours, level four might be a day, and level five might take seven days or more. It's pretty confusing, but once you get the hang of it you can plan out the skills you need based on the equipment you want to have.

The PvE missions are not that great. They seem to be a way to make some good money and get involved in the world, but in general they seem hard to follow and not very rewarding.

The game is quite engaging, but the learning curve is extremely high and the interface is counter-intuituve enough to make you throw your mouse across the room. It's very difficult to find out how to do anything in the game, and most information that could prove helpful is buried on the website, on a fansite, or has to be trial-and-errored until you get it right. I'm not sure if it's because the game was developed in Iceland and there is a cultural thought-process barrier there or if that difficulty was built in on purpose, but it's definitely not for the faint of heart. It's almost like tackling one of the old Avalon Hill boardgames.

I may have to put the computer away for a bit, as my poor Warhammer showing today needs to be avenged. I also have been itching a little to get back into the swing of painting minis, so we'll see if I actually pick up the brush and get some stuff finished. I saw some painted Artizan Old West figures at the game store today. They looked pretty good, and I may have to pick some of the packs up next time I'm in the shop.

Venturing Out Into the World...

I played my first game of Warhammer today. It was quite the learning experience. I was able to set up a game through the Boise Warhammer Yahoo! group and I took my Skaven army to one of the local stores to meet my opponent.

We got through five turns before his Dwarves had all but dismantled my army and I conceded the game. There were a lot of flaws in my game plan, and I still don't completely have a grasp on the turn sequence and the specific rules of my army. Hopefully with time and a few more games under my belt I'll be able to get better and move faster when it's my turn.

My National Guard unit is going through a transition right now, and as part of the changes, my job was changed from M1A1 Abrams Crewman to Cavalry Scout. So I had to spend the last couple of weeks going to a school about my new job. There are actually two branches to the Scout job, the Humvee side and the Bradley side. I did the Humvee course a few months ago, and this month I took the Bradley course. For those who are not militarily inclined, here is a Bradley:

The training was fairly typical military fare, with long hours and lot of boredom punctuated with a few fun activities. I got to play with some plastic explosive, a grenade launcher, several machine guns, and fire a bunch of rounds from the main gun of the Bradley itself. The Bradley gun is fun to fire, but it's a little different sort of fun than firing a tank. The cannon on the M1A1 makes a big boom that is hard to top as far as thrill factor.

The Bradley gun is more like a machine gun on steroids. It's fun to shoot because you can fire five rounds off in a matter of seconds and watch them all follow each other into the target. They're not huge rounds (a box of 30 probably weigh the same as one round for the Abrams, give or take 20 pounds), but they're still fun to shoot. So that's what I've been doing the last couple of weeks.

Today at work part of the dock smelled like Barbecue-flavored chips, so every time I drove past that area I got hungry. I actually got to a point where I was salivating and having hunger pangs because I needed to be eating some chips. At lunch time I ran out to my car and went to the gas station to buy some chips. It wasn't the healthiest lunch, but I needed to have some chips right then or I was going to go nuts.

The Fantasy Baseball season is going okay. I have three teams in the top 3 or so spots and one team that is slowly making it's way up from 9th place. With a couple of good weeks I could get that team into playoff contention. The Fantasy Football magazines have started coming out, so I'm pretty excited about that. Fantasy Football is fun, but I find it more difficult than Fantasy Baseball or Fantasy Basketball. I think it's because each player only gets one chance during the week to produce stats. In the other sports, a couple bad outings in a week can be balanced out by some good outings. Players have more chances to achieve what you've projected for them. In Fantasy Football, whatever your player gets on that day is what you get for the week, good or bad.

I recently discovered that there is going to be a new MMORPG coming out called Pirates of the Burning Sea, and I'm cautiously excited about it. I want to be head-over-heels exploding with joy about it, but there is the off chance that it could not be very fun for a variety of reasons. I think the thing that worries me the most is that a historically-based Pirate MMO will be limited by the geography and timeline of the real 1700s. I'm not sure how the game will be able to grow beyond its original release and still stay "in character." But I'll probably buy it and pony up my subscription fee every month until it stops being fun.

I've been jonesing for a Mountain Dew, but we don't have any soda at all in the house. At this point, I'd settle for an off-brand, barely carbonated Sprite ripoff.

I meant to write a long post about my recent activities, but other stuff got in the way. Maybe tomorrow I'll post something significant.

My little brother came over for an hour or two this afternoon before I left for work. We hung out and played some games, so that was pretty fun.

I'm thinking about quitting World of Warcraft again. Getting to level 70 was fun, but once you hit the level cap most of the play revolves around groups of players going into dungeons to get better gear than the items available in the regular game-world. I spent three hours tonight in the Looking for Group channel and didn't find anyone to go through an instance with. The same thing happened last night. I could grind for PvP gear, but that gets boring as I spend most of my time dead because I can't get the gear I need to excel because I can't find a group in the Looking for Group channel. It would be nice to have an organized group to play with, but my brother-in-law and his friends play on a different server, my sister has a baby and can't play, and my wife works a different shift than I do. So I'm considering dropping the game again, maybe until they come out with another expansion. At this point you're probably wondering if I want some cheese with my whine, so I'll end my blogging for today.