This past Saturday my sister hosted a Welcome Home dinner for me. It was pretty nice. My mother and most of my siblings were there, as well as some aunts and cousins, some friends, and some other folks from church. It was nice to see everyone and meet some of the people I hadn't before, specifically my third sister's new husband. I made an attempt to connect with each person who showed up, and I hope I was able to make everyone feel that I appreciated their presence. I felt a little silly about having a party in my honor, as this particular tour overseas wasn't all that crazy for me. My jobs were pretty easy, I had a fairly regular work schedule, and there wasn't a whole lot of hardship or deprivation. The hardest part for me was dealing with the people in the unit I was transferred to just prior to the mobilization. My wife had a much rougher year than I did, having to deal with the toddler, the twin infants, and running the rest of the household while I was gone. It will be nice for me to get back to my home unit once my leave is over. I did receive a Joint Service Commendation Medal in the mail recently, from a unit I worked under for the first few months of the tour. It was supposed to be kind of a crap detail, but it turned out to be the best part of the deployment for me, and I got a shiny medal out of it.

Also on Saturday we went to a carnival being held to raise funds for a little girl in our church who has leukemia. Our oldest boy had a pretty good time. He rode on a horse for the first time. We were kind of surprised that he got on the horse without any fuss, as he has historically been pretty wary of livestock. He didn't want to pet the horse, but he was pretty happy to get in the saddle and ride around the block. He really didn't want to stop riding. Later he told my wife that he likes horses, but cows are scary.

I've seen some very nicely painted Dreadfleet ships on the internet, including these ones. I've also read some positive reviews of the game on various blogs. When it was first announced I didn't have much interest in the game, but I'm warming up to it. I've got a big backlog of stuff to get to on the hobby side of things, but stuff like Dreadfleet and Space Hulk you can just pick up and play. It would be nice to paint up my Space Hulk figures, but it's not entirely necessary. I borrowed the above photo from BloodyBeast.com, which I've linked to in the paragraph. There are plenty of additional photos there.

Tomorrow I am planning on participating in another week of D & D Encounters. I had hoped to find a miniature to represent my character, but time got away from me and I won't even have a bare metal figure in-hand, much less a painted one. There is one Reaper figure I like for my Dragonborn Warlock, but I never got around to ordering it. I'm not sure how long the current campaign will run anyway, as I think I've come in pretty close to the end of things. I'll have to think about it. I'd probably have better luck at finding a figure if I picked a more conventional class and race, but that didn't enter my mind when I rolled the character up.

And today I installed an intake kit in my car, which was much less frustrating than I thought it would be. I guess that's a good thing. I didn't even wind up with extra parts! I feel like the intake improves the performance of the car, but it might be wishful thinking on my part. Next up for my car is some new brakes and a windshield. I think I'll let a professional install the windshield, though. I also have some stuff to do on my wife's van, which ought to be fun. They don't sell a high-flow intake kits for minivans, so I just had to settle for replacing her air filter. And at some point I will get around to finding a space in the house for my hobby area and maybe even put some paint on some figures.

I've been back home in Idaho for about a week now. The adjustment to back to life at home is going fairly well. I think my oldest boy is pretty happy to have daddy back home, and the twins seem to be okay with me. I've got a few projects going, mostly trying to get some things done around the house. My car has a few things that need done, and there are plenty of things around the house that need taken care of. I replaced the kitchen faucet because it had developed a leak. I moved out of my hobby room while I was home on leave, so I am hoping to clear out a spot in the house to move back into. We are cleaning out the garage, but the temperature fluctuations isolation out there make it less than ideal as a hobby area.

On Wednesday I went to an area games store to participate in the weekly D & D Encounters event. It was all right, and I will probably try to attend regularly. They were running two tables, and I wound up at the table with the younger crowd. The GM was pretty good and a few of the other players were prepared and into the game, but there were a couple of other players who need to develop some more social skills. Perhaps I am growing up into the grumpy old man role, but if you are playing a game with other people, you ought to show up on time, have your papers/pencil/dice/snacks in order and be prepared with your next action when your turn comes around. If your girlfriend doesn't want to play, don't bring her along for the game, because it is a waste of everyone's time for the GM to tweak his scenario to fit in another player, then tweak it back in the middle when she gets up in the middle of her turn and leaves. And no one wants to wait for you to say you're going to the bathroom, only to walk past the bathroom and go outside to argue with her about the game, smoke a cigarette, buy a soda, and decide that your character is no longer named Fluffybunny, he is now Mr. Bojangles. Even the two immature teenage boys were able to name their characters something thematic, track the action, and be ready for their turn. Everyone's time is valuable, and you ought to be aware of that before wasting the time of others. The GM stopped short of inviting the player in question not to come back, but I could tell he was trying very hard to be civil. The vein in his forehead didn't stand out that much during his interactions with anyone else. The other table looked like they were having a lot of fun, perhaps because they were all over 25. One of the guys at that table was an acquaintance from my National Guard unit. I've been away from my home unit for the last year or so, but prior to that we were in the same platoon for a while. I've been shopping around for a miniature I can paint up to represent my character.

On Thursday my wife had to go back in that direction to get some stuff, so we dropped back by the shop to look around. She actually seemed pretty interested in the Dreadfleet game from Games Workshop. I don't know that I will get around to picking up a copy, but I was surprised that she expressed an interest. She also mentioned that we had never played Space Hulk with each other, so maybe we will have to do that at some point. There is a comic shop that just relocated to that same retail complex, so we visited that as well. The guy there was pretty friendly, and he complimented my shoes, which is a surefire way to my heart. Most people don't notice shoes or know that Nike put out Bo Jackson commemorative editions. I may move my comic subscriptions over to that shop so I can support the local business. I will be on that side of town anyway on comic book Wednesday for D & D Encounters, so it will be pretty convenient to pick up my books every week instead of waiting for a monthly shipment.

And speaking of shoes, I saw on Nice Kicks that there is now a release date for the Nike Trainer 1.3 Mid Shield "Rivalry" Army shoes. The site says that they will only be released at very select stores (I have no idea what that means), so I may not be able to get my hands on a pair, but I am hoping I will be able to find a place that will sell them to me without a huge markup. There are other versions for the other branches of service, but I prefer the Army ones.

Bran Redmaw

I forgot to mention that pictures of this upcoming release from Forge World have popped up on the blogs. I believe the model was on showcase at the UK Games Day 2011. I pulled the picture from this post on a Space Wolves-specific blog. I think it looks like everything a Space Wolf should be, with the fur, the big hair, the big axe, and a big helping of feral rage. I may not wind up getting one, but it's pretty to look at.

I've also been eye-balling the Contemptor-pattern Dreadnoughts that Forge World has been putting out. At current conversion rates the base model, two weapon arms, and shipping comes out to just over $80, so that takes some of the steam out of the sails. Even the prices on the regular Games Workshop models have given me pause as of late. After the most recent price increase and the release of Finecast Failcast, I have pretty much just stopped buying GW models. The price increase before that one really caused me to slow down on hobby purchases, but this latest one just went too far for me personally. I know the ire over the move has already flared up and dropped to a simmer, but for me at this moment I am likely to work on what I have and hold out for good deals on second-hand stuff.

There is a miniatures gaming convention called Tactical Solutions in Spokane, Washington that I've flirted with attending every year, but it seems like I always have a military commitment on the weekend of the event. It is kind of looking like I will be home by the time it kicks off this year, so I began making tentative plans to go. Then my wife reminded me that my sister is getting married on that Saturday. Curses! It looks like I'll be spectating from afar for at least another year.

I had a couple of meetings today that will hopefully lead to getting my medical issues sorted out. The people I talked to about it last week were all hellfire and brimstone, but I am not quite ready to burn down City Hall without giving the system a chance to answer my questions. The people I talked to today are a little more level-headed and seem to have good working relationships with the medical personnel. Hopefully I can get some answers and get this sorted out. The military is a decent career path as far as pay and benefits go, but it can be mind-wrenching sometimes to sort through the many levels of administration and bureaucracy.

Just saw an ad for the video game Battlefield 3, and noticed that the guy loading the round in the tank at 0:55 pushed in the round with open fingers instead of a closed fist. That's a good way to get your glove caught and at best lose some fingers. With the way that breech comes back, you're more likely to get maimed or killed. I suppose I'm being a bit of a pedant, but after you've seen that gun jump back once, you never again want to be anywhere but plastered up against the side of the turret when the gunner squeezes the trigger.

I've got a large pile of gaming projects in mind for when I get home, but without all of my books and figures close at hand, it's hard to remember what I've got for any given project. I've been following some stuff on eBay and The Miniatures Page, but I'd hate to duplicate things I've already got or relegate even more stuff to the dusty pile in the attic. I'd like to put together a few small forces for The Lord of the Rings, which is something I've mentioned on this blog a few times over the last few years. I've actually got four or five lists written up, mostly using figures I've already got in my collection, but each army needs one or two units or heroes to complete the 500 points. I even have a good number of the Evil forces (Moria Goblins and Easterlings) painted up already. My Dwarf army is still sitting in boxes, and my Fiefdoms list exists only in my imagination aside from a Prince Imrahil I picked up on clearance at some point in the hazy past. I would really like to do a Far Harad list, but that range is all metal models in blister packs, which gets expensive in a hurry. I love the way the GW Lord of the Rings figures paint up. They are a joy to paint. I think they strike the right balance between being too simple and being overly complicated. There is detail where you need it, but not six billion skullz and bitz and details that turn into a huge time sink, like you see in the Warhammer and 40k ranges. I may sell off some of my spare figures in those lines so that I can expand into more Lord of the Rings stuff. It's a shame I didn't do that several years ago when the local Hobbytown had a metric buttload (as opposed to an Imperial buttload) of the stuff on clearance. Now I think they've just got an Attack on Weathertop boxed set that has been there long enough to pull seniority on several of the employees.

Back in the USA

I've been back in the US for about three weeks now, but I haven't made it all the way home yet. During the demobilization process I expressed a couple of my medical concerns and got pulled into a Warrior Transition Unit pending some surgery on my feet. Today I was informed that I will not be receiving the surgery as my condition has been rated by the doctor as not serious enough to prevent me from deploying again, and now I will start the process of being sent home to return to duty. I will probably wind up opting to have the surgery done on my own dime by a civilian doctor as it causes me a lot of discomfort and affects my ability to do my job. It has been a frustrating process, but I guess the upshot is that I will soon be able to return home to my wife and kids. I should not complain much more as too much whining is unprofessional, so I will close out by saying that today I am in a rather dark mood as I feel I've been strung along by a series of doctors and have been delayed in coming home to my family without anything to show for it.

The twins have been growing their first couple of teeth and have just recently become mobile. They are quite adept at finding ways to get into trouble while they explore the house. Their older brother is no stranger to mischief, either, as he usually has more energy than he knows what to do with. I am looking forward to seeing all the kids again and getting to know the twins, who are now twice the size they were when I was home on my R & R leave.

I have plenty of idea for hobby projects, but I am not sure how much time and space I will have when I get home. One of my first tasks will be to clean out the garage. I hope that will not take too long, but there is a lot of stuff. I need to do a few things to my car to make sure it's good to go. I had hoped to get out to a convention this year, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. School starts for me in January, so I need to get mentally prepared for that, especially if I am going to be taking Math courses. I would like to fit some painting into my schedule, but that always seems to go out the window. My time management skills are awful, and when you add that to all the little emergencies that pop up in a household it seems like nothing ever gets done.

Puerto Rico

The guy who lives next to me over here in the desert is a board game fanatic. He plays them, he designs them, he loves them. He works the same job I do, but on a different shift, so we don’t hang out much. He’s recruited a group of people to play a game called Puerto Rico in the evenings, when I am sleeping, but he came in the other day while I was on shift and talked me and the Lieutenant into trying it out. It’s a typical resource management game, with players trying to colonize an island, build infrastructure, grow crops, and ship those crops out for victory points or sell them for money to buy more buildings. I’m sure the website for the game offers a decent summary of gameplay, but you have to balance out all of the different actions you can take and eventually build more buildings and ship more goods than the other players. If you get out of balance with your resources, it is possible for the other players to lock you out for a turn or more based on what they choose to do when they lead a turn off. It seems like an okay game, but I haven’t quite grasped all of the rules or even all of the objectives yet. We may play again sometime soon, if he pops in again during my shift.Here's the game description from the Board Game Geek site:

The players are plantation owners in Puerto Rico in the days when ships had sails. Growing up to five different kind of crops—corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee—they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors: growing crops and storing them efficiently, developing San Juan with useful buildings, deploying their colonists to best effect, selling crops at the right time, and, most importantly, shipping their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit.

The game system lets players choose the order of the phases in each turn by allowing each player to choose a role from those remaining when it is their turn. No role can be selected twice in the same round. The player who selects the best roles to advance their position during the game will win.

Blah Blah Blah Games Workshop

There’s been a lot of talk on the web about Games Workshop’s recent doings. As is usual with enthusiasts, the talk ranges from Apocalyptic End of the Hobby fare all the way through the spectrum to This Is the Greatest Thing Evar I (heart) GW 4EVS!!!! Actually, that really only applies to the ‘all-new’ Finecast range, which is pretty much all of the metal models from the catalog pulled out of circulation and swapped out for resin castings, along with some new releases for Tomb Kings and Dark Eldar, the most-recently published army books for Warhammer Fantasy and 40k.

The talk about the changes to the distributor agreement and the general price increase has been mostly neutral or negative. As I understand it, GW noticed that people in Australia were buying many of their miniatures from retailers in the UK, because currency fluctuations made the Australian MSRP much higher than paying for figures and shipping from the UK. Independent retailers in Australia, and more importantly, the local GW shops were seeing a lot less business, making them unprofitable, while shops in the UK were rolling in Australian money. Games Workshop made changes to their agreement, making shops sign some sort of agreement saying that they wouldn’t ship figures to certain countries. No agreement, no retail account. Games Workshop claims it’s a move to help recruitment in their local Australian shops, growing the hobby and helping the gaming community in the long run. People who were purchasing or selling the figures across the ocean see it as a ham-fisted moneygrab that restricts free trade and flies in the face of freedom. I think it could have been handled better (Games Workshop isn’t known for being tactful when it comes to legal actions), but I’m sure the company has a few accountants and economists looking over the numbers and this will probably blow over and work out in the end. Gamers in the affected countries will either buy the figures at the higher prices, quit gaming altogether, switch to a different game system from another company, or find another way around paying MSRP and wait for GW to catch onto it and snuff that, too. It probably doesn’t really affect me personally all that much, and it will probably not affect the ‘GW Hobby’ in Australia as much as the Doomsayers are predicting. It wasn’t handled well, and GW’s corporate attitude tends to default to condescending and secretive, but gamers will either pay the enforced prices or find another way around it.

The timing is a little off as well, with the annual price increase being announced at about the same time. Price increases hit about 1/3 of the line, with most of the increases coming in at 10-15% over previous levels. Some of the prices got smaller adjustments. Army books took a decent-sized jump, with the softcover books jumping up to $33 each. The hardbound books jumped up to $41.75. Most of the Lord of the Rings line jumped by quite a bit, and almost every Battleforce and Battalion took a big leap. Then it’s just a random assortment of boxed sets to fill out the remainder of the increases.

One notable thing missing from the annual price increase list is the Finecast models. They didn’t escape from it, though. They got a lot more expensive as part of the rollout of the ‘new’ line. Some of the figures got increases of up to 50%, making them more expensive than comparable Forge World models. Again, aside from a few new releases for Tomb Kings and Dark Eldar, these are the same old metal sculpts recast in resin. The casting quality from the press photos and releases has been pretty bad, with plenty of miscasts, air bubbles, broken parts, and mold lines across the line. Some of the pictures I’ve seen are pretty horrid, with entire parts missing and Space Marine figures with only half a Boltgun. Quality control appears to be uniformly terrible, and so far GW hasn’t addressed it. The much-touted midnight online release also got flubbed, with the website failing to update and offer the new models for same until several hours after midnight. I didn’t buy a lot of the character models anyway, but I did buy some of the metal figures from time to time, and it seems like there are always a couple of must-have units that aren’t available in plastic, so this change will probably affect me a bit. I hope that I can find most of the models for my lists on eBay in the old metal. Unfortunately a lot of other people have expressed the desire to do the same thing, so it may be a good time to put your metal figures up on eBay. So far I am not impressed with Finecast, and the switcherooney price increase that goes along with the change seems a bit underhanded.

Will all of this drive me away to another game? Probably not. I am too invested in the background and the figures to really go elsewhere. It really just pushes me further along a path that I’d already started down. The last two or three years of price increases have pushed just about every GW model up and over my psychological impulse purchase line. I can’t just go into the shop and buy an infantry box anymore. More often than not, it seems, I walk out empty-handed after a trip to the shop. Or if I feel really guilty about not buying something I will get a bottle of paint or a Thomas train for my son. Every year there is something, like the repackaging on many of the regiment boxes that dropped them from twenty figures to ten per box and increased the price per figure. Then the next year the ten-figure boxes got another bump in price. This year it is price increases, the great Australian trade embargo, and a poorly-executed exchange of resin for metal. Next year Games Workshop will do something else stupid that many people hate and more than likely increase prices on another group of figures. I can no longer afford to buy every shiny new thing that comes out, so I’ve been brain-storming about what to do. I took a look at my figure inventory and realized that at my theoretical painting rate I have something like a six-year backlog just in Warhammer Fantasy and 40k figures, but much of it doesn’t really fit into any list that I actually want to purchase. My plan is to focus only on the army lists that I really get jazzed about. I will work on one major project each year, and mix in one or two minor projects as well. I’ll probably start with one of my Orcs & Goblins lists, as I have most of the figures for them already, less a couple of trolls and maybe one or two odds and ends. A minor project to go along with it could be a skirmish game (maybe some Pirates or Old West figures), some terrain, or something else that’s been sitting on my shelf for a while. That system should allow me to focus my time and money on projects that are actually meaningful to me. I suppose it’s similar to The Pledge or the Frugal Gaming movement. Talking about it is all fine and good, but the proof is in the doing. Games Workshop will still be getting some of my cash, but not as much of it, and I should be getting more bang for my buck. I hope that the quality control on the Finecast line improves, as I may wind up needing a few of the figures to fill out my lists, and I’d rather not have to build a Boltgun or a cape from scratch.

Miniature Me

My sister made a doll of me for my oldest son, so he would be able to have daddy around while the real deal is overseas. It's a fairly common thing to do, and it's generally seen as kind of a sweet memento for the kids to carry around and talk to and act as a place holder. Well, this is kind of like that, except that it's a bit more frightening than comforting. This is me, in doll form:

There's no accounting for taste, and my boy has taken a shine to it, so it all works out. The photo she chose is not that flattering, but it is pretty accurate. The uniform is from the wrong service, but my sister's husband is a Marine, so I can let that go. I think it helps my son to get to sleep at night, and after all the trouble we've had with bedtime over the last 2 1/2 years, anything that makes it easier for him to go to bed and actually go to sleep is worth its weight in gold. I also hear that Miniature Me is serving a dual purpose. Apparently he was using the doll as a makeshift gun and shooting members of the family. It's a good sign. He's got the bloodthirsty bit down; now I just need to teach him to paint and roll dice.

Really, Games Workshop?

Well, Games Workshop is rolling out yet another set of price increases. It probably doesn't rank very high on the scale of world disasters, but it just seems like a bit much. I guess it's good that I have an attic full of figures that need painted. There aren't a lot of things I "need" for my next few army lists that I don't already have, but the cost of a playable army is already more than my house payment (really most armies are close to two house payments unless you can find a good deal on second-hand figures) and that is a lot of cash. I usually make the argument that at least it's not as expensive as some hobbies, but it's getting there.

In other news, I am currently reading book 16 of the Horus Heresy, and after the last few books I am full of ideas for my miniatures. We'll see if I get around to actually doing any of it, but it's exciting to have so many ideas. I haven't touched my paintbrushes for a little while. I got hung up on painting some cloaks and lost my momentum. I would like to get back into the swing of it. I'm also trying to decide if I should do a Traitor Guard army in addition to my Orks, so my Imperial forces have more than one enemy to fight. These Traitor Guard wouldn't be all mutated or anything, they'd probably just deface the symbols on their vehicles and have a different color scheme.

Not much else to report from over here in the desert. I hope the next few months go quickly so I can be home before my kids are all grown up.

Orc Lists

A week or two ago I went through the Orcs & Goblins army book and made three lists based on what I view as the main Orc & Goblin tribes. The first list is made up of Forest Goblins and Savage Orcs. This includes the Arachnarok spider and every other Spider-riding unit in the list.

The second list is Night Goblins and Squigs. I added some Stone Trolls to this list for muscle, as I figure they can be found in the same caves the Night Goblins inhabit. I also added a couple of Spear Chukkas, which aren't specifically Night Goblin war machines, but could easily be converted and probably would be useful for cave fighting due to having a flat firing trajectory when compared to Rock Lobbas and Doom Diver Catapults. I guess that doesn't matter too much in game terms, but it makes sense when considering the 'reality' of Night Goblins battling the Dwarves and Skaven for control of the underground. My suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

The third list is a bit larger, and is what you could call a traditional Orc & Goblin list. It's got all of the standard units (Orc Boyz, Goblins, Snotlings, Boar Cavalry, Wolf Cavalry, Chariots, Trolls, and Giants) as well as the war machines that didn't make the other lists (Doom Diver Catapult, Rock Lobba, Snotling Pump Wagon). It even has an Orc Warboss on a Wyvern. I wasn't sure about this one, as it's a huge number of points to spend on a single character, but I have the model and need an excuse to paint it up, so it's in the list.

If I were able to up my painting production and paint a couple hundred models a year, this group of lists would probably take me about 2 1/2 years to finish. That's a pretty long time, but at least now I have an idea of what I actually want to paint up for each army. I'm pretty sure I have some surplus figures that I can try to sell or trade for the things I still lack. I'm planning on making additional lists for every army I'm working on.