Still Around

I'm aware that I have a habit of posting fairly sporadically, but since the last time I posted here, I've run two long Warmachine campaigns, attended weddings, suffered personal injuries and been drunk. Basically, life gets in the way of some the other things we enjoy doing.

But I digress.

At the local game store, we're in the final six days of round three of the War-Torn Alliance campaign season. That's kept me pretty busy, since there's a fair bit of paperwork involved in keeping scores. The fact that I can store the PDF files for the missions and point spreads on my phone does make it a bit easier, though. Thank god.  Competition has been pretty stiff this time around,  with everyone pushing to try and reach the five game limit for each week.  After this round wraps up, I'll have about six weeks of downtime until the final round starts. In that time, I've been requested by the guys to run a Steamroller tourney, and the Colossals book release event. So in reality, there's not going to be any downtime. It's a lot of working being the Press Ganger, but damn if it isn't fun and rewarding when everyone is getting along and competing.

These events aren't the only events I'll be hosting, either. Lucky for the guys, I've got stuff planned for the whole winter, leading through until next spring. Heap and Infernal Contraption v2 are both releasing soon, so there will be demos of those two games (I can't wait for Heap!), I've just discovered that there is an "XGL" league for Grind that I'd like to run, and of course, the release of the IKRPG book soon. I'm in the process of designing a test campaign that has the potential to evolve into something truly awesome, if I can keep up with being a GM on top of everything else. I'm also hoping to have a terrain building contest soon. Lastly, I'll be running Journeyman v2 for the guys, likely in September or so.

Damn. That's a lot of stuff. I wonder if I could list this as volunteer experience on a resume....

Speaking of volunteering and helping the community, that reminds me of another event I'll be running. Yeesh.
If you read Privateer's "No Quarter" magazine, you'll likely know about Foodmachine, organized by the NJ S.O.B.s . We ran a splinter event at Forbes' Hobbies last year, and were acknowledged as the only Canadian event. Granted, we had a despicably small turn out of 6 guys. Regardless, we still managed to gather over 100lbs of food for our local Food Bank. This year, we want to try and get all the stores in the area together, and raise 1000lbs of food. Yes, a lofty goal, indeed, but I'll make it work. That said, I should start making some calls....


More later. Maybe. You know, life.

Learning....

Its been a busy couple months.

Throughout February and March, I ran a Journeyman League for our local game store, my first attempt at running an organized event. That was a helluva learning experience, for sure.

Initially, I was intending to run the league for our main group, which consisted of about seven players, including myself. I was planning on using it as motivation for our group to get their stuff painted, as our models were all seriously lacking in that department. By the time the League actually started, I had 17 players, including myself! Nearly half of that were new players. Exhilarated, we launched Into it. Problems cropped up early, though.

You see, because it was just going to be our group of experienced players from the outset, I had allowed for custom battlegroups within the allotment of 12 points. That caused some problems with the new players, and I spent a lot time doing damage control from that. Then there is the issue of trying to organize 17 people, and dealing with the inevitable clashes that will occur between 17 different personalities. These clashes ranged from minor disagreements and passive-aggressive behaviour to arguments on Facebook and threats to "take it outside," if you catch my meaning. Eventually, all of these issues were ironed out, due in no small part to my close friends and I spending a lot of time talking and negotiating with the offending parties.

Now, I realize that all of this sounds negative, but in the end, everyone came away from the League satisfied, and with a positive attitude, including myself. I received a lot of feedback from the individuals in our group, and feel that it was a fantastic learning experience that I'll keep in mind when running future events, both gaming related and otherwise.

This weekend sees the beginning of Olgunholt, the second season of Warmachine and Hordes 2012 campaign, War-Torn Alliances. Here's to an exciting and competitive season!

New Year, New Stuff

Ok, so I've been away for awhile, but that's what happens with the Christmas season. With that finally out of the way, I can get back into normal mode.

We'll start with an update:

In the middle of December, I finally heard back from Privateer Press regarding my application for Press Ganger status that I had applied for last March. I spoke with Will Hungerford briefly on the phone, (a 3 hour difference between here and Seattle), and shortly thereafter was given my status as PG. I'm quite happy about this, as now our LGS will be able to host official events, and maybe even increase the player-base for Warmachine and Hordes in our area. Better yet, the store may finally be able to get in some product. (Forbes' has had an ongoing problem with trying to obtain stock from their distributor, but that's a story for another day.)

I plan on running the Journeyman League around the beginning of February, which will hopefully lead us into the campaign season for 2012. Of course, I'll be throwing in Steamroller tournaments at least once every other month, so that we can start stepping up the competition around the area.

On the painting side of things, not a whole lot has been done, again mostly due to Christmas. My buddies Magus and Damien, however, did get me the Trollbloods warpack and a unit of Scattergunners, and I bought myself Epic Grissel Bloodsong, Marshal of the Kriels. I now have about 30 point of trolls to paint. Actually, that's not true. I have painted Grissel and Madrak.

Madrak Ironhide

I think save the rest of the trolls for the Journeyman league in February though, so that I can gain some points and hopefully badges for painting.

Grissel Bloodsong

In other news, the other day, coming back from my LGS, I was carrying both mine and Magus' stuff back into my place. (Remember, I'm painting Magus' army for him, bit by bit.) Well, it seems that Magus failed to properly secure the latches on his army case, and as I neared my door, it fell open, spilling the entire contents onto the snowy walkway. Great. I had to spend 15 minutes digging about in the snow trying to find all the pieces.Luckily, most of the damage was superficial, with only a few models breaking, and even then only on joins where the glue was weaker. Morale of the story: carry cases flat.

Finally, before I head off to bed, Damien has recently convince me to think about the game Firestorm Armada.Its a cool deep space dog fight game by Spartan Games. As far as getting into games goes, it's fairly cheap, with a starter box running anywhere from $55-$60 that gives you enough to play right away. The rules, while a little contrived, aren't bad. Not sure if you want to buy into the game? That's ok! The rulebook has sheets to photocopy that are representative of three of the starter fleets. That's pretty cool in my books. 

As usually happens when starting into a new game, we've been discussing the races/fleets we most like. Damien will be playing the Terran Alliance:

And I'll be playing the Arachnid-ish Relthoza:

That's all for now.

I Hate Zelda.

Ok, so the title is patently untrue, but that's part of the problem. Since Skyward Sword came out last Sunday, I've had four days where I've had any sort of free time. The majority of said time has been spent on that game. In my four play sessions, I've accumulated 25 hours of play. Do the math. And yes, I know it's sad.

The Devil wears green.

This game is incredibly addictive to me. Given the game-play innovations that have been added to the traditional Zelda formula, this game is too much for me to put down. Add to that the fact that at 25 hours, I'm maybe only half way through the game, and will have more to do after the credits roll, you can probably figure out that my other hobbies have suffered.

Over the past few weeks, I haven't had Magus' minis, since he wanted them back for a bit. So working on my commission hasn't happened. I have managed, however, to get three, that's right, three minis of my own painted.  I've finished up Rahn and Sylys, making my first attempts at Object Source Lighting, or OSL. Overall, I'm not exactly happy with the results, but with practice, I hope to improve. I've also finished my Dawnguard Scyir.

OSL is hard.

A little bit about the Sciyr: though I like my yellow scheme, over the past week or so, I began to feel that I didn't want to take the time to paint it anymore, and was looking for a way change up my scheme a bit without alienating models from the rest of the force.My main goal to that end was that I wanted the three sub-factions to be discernible and unique from one another. Initially, I thought about more or less inverting the scheme, with grey armour and yellow clothes, but after a quick test model, I decided that was a bad idea. So after some color brain-storming, I came up with the following: The yellow stays. It might be a pain, but it looks really good. That means that the trim colours for each sub-faction would change, but the grey for clothing would stay. Rahn and his Mages and anything Houseguard, along with the Myrmidons would retain the granite. All the Dawnguard would receive purple for their capes and trim; the mage hunters would receive a dark blue. 

Purple is the answer.

I'm hopeful that this will solve my partial exhaustion with my colour scheme while still retaining the feel of a unified force. Epic Eiryss is next on the painting docket, but I think I'm going to take her of the chimney thing she drags around everywhere. For reference:

I hate that gargoyle.

I think I'll have to find a way to satisfactorily cut her from the piece and mount her on one the custom bases that should be coming my this week. The thing is, her cloak is modeled to the wall, so I may have to rebuild it with green stuff... and my modelling skills in that medium are... sub-par, to say the least. I may even just cut her cloak shorter. I'll see what solution feels best then. I'll keep you posted on my progress, maybe take some WIPs.

The End

I recently picked up a copy of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for Xbox 360, with the goal of playing through the series in chronological order. That means that I start MGS3: Snake Eater.

I've played every game in the series in some capacity or another, but the only two I've beat are Twin Snakes on the Gamecube (which, if you don't know, was a remake of the original MGS for Playstation), and Peace Walker on the PSP. I must say, that MGS3 is the best of the series. Of course, I'm only part way through the game and still have the rest of the series to play, but this game is GREAT. With the HD treatment, I'm hardly even aware that I'm playing a game that's almost 8 years old. The voice acting and cut scenes, while sometimes over the top are awesome. The story is fun, and Snake as one of my favourite video game characters of all time.

The End is near.

Today I reached a part of the game where you have to fight one of the main antagonist's soldiers, know only as, "The End." The End is an old man (like, over 100 years old) that only ever sleeps until it's time to fight. Then he's this agile old man that is a peerless sniper. This lead to probably one of the coolest boss battles I have ever fought. Most boss battles are the of the "run,dodge, fire, dodge, repeat" variety, but not this one. This is a game of sniper versus sniper. You must methodically comb a massive area of forest, using all the tools at Snake's disposal (including thermal goggles, a directional microphone, sniper rifle, and motion sensor, to name a few) to attempt to sneak up on the old man and hit him before he hits you. I spent close to an hour on this fight, looking for his heat signature, tracking his foot-prints, and looking for the flash of sunlight of his sniper scope, in a true test of gaming endurance.

I understand that this sort of boss fight is not for everyone. In fact, the guy who made the YouTube video above hates this fight. I, for one, found it to be an awesome departure from the standard boss fight fare of most video games. Hideo Kojima has been pushing gamers for years with the Metal Gear series, and I hope he continues to do so in the future.

...

Oh, and did you hear that Metal Gear Solid 5 was announced today?

A Work In Progress, Continued

Insanely tired... So why did I stay up 'til 3am? 'Cuz I'm an idiot, that's why. 

...

I spent about 45 minutes painting while watching T.V. tonight, which is equivalent of sitting with the brush in my hand, doing nothing. I did, however, manage to get the Scyir up to his second level colours. Tomorrow, I'll finish him off, save for the bases.

Behold! A picture!

As I'm hosting a tournament this weekend, Magus has taken his stuff home to plan lists. That means I get to paint my own stuff for a few days. Awesome. 

...

I'm off to bed.

Painting Mustard

I've been asked several times now, both in person and in certain forums, how I go about painting the my Retribution Forces. Seeing as how I have nothing better to do at 2am on a Tuesday(Wednesday?) night,  I thought I'd post it here.

First, All the yellow is done as follows, all will with Games Workshop paints:

- Over a white basecoat, paint Iyanden Darksun foundation
- Wash with Ogryn Flesh Wash
- Leaving the wash in the recesses, paint with a 2:1 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Bleached Bone
- Leaving the previous layer showing a bit, paint on a 1:1 mix of the same colours
- For highlights, I use a 1:2 mix of the same colours
- For spot/extreme highlights, I use pure Bleached Bone

Anything that's metal:

- Since painting metallics over white is @$$, I paint it with Astronomicon grey to darken it back up.
- I paint a few thin layers of Boltgun Metal
- I wash it fairly heavily with Asurmen Blue Wash
- I then reclaim most of it with more Boltgun Metal
- Another, light wash of Asurmen Blue to smoothen the transition
- Highlight the edges with Mythril Silver

All the Grey Stuff:

- Astronomicon Grey Foundation
-Badab Black Wash
- Astronomicon Grey to reclaim some spots
- Highlight with Codex Grey

The Cloaks/Capes:

- Charadon Granite Foundation
- Devlan mud wash
- Reclaim with Charadon Granite
- Highlight with varying mixes of Charadon Granite and Codex Grey

For spot colours, I tend to use either Hawk Turquoise or Ice Blue. I know purple is the complimentary colour for yellow, but I like blue better.