Busy Bee

Today is like Friday for me... I have a nice long 5 day weekend starting at COB (Close of Business), and it feels nice. I have some goals that I intend to meet and they are as follows:

1. Finish painting my remaining 16 dwarves
2. Paint my son's Chaos Lord on Juggernaught
3. Paint my son's 10 Chaos hounds
4. Create a "stonehenge" terrain piece
5. Clean up my "birdhouse" castle and paint it up

That does not seem like an insurmountable list. I think that I can accomplish this and still get in the appropriate amount of family time, eat, sleep, and still game. I also need to think about ways to "show off" what I paint and create. Not that what I do is anything great, but that was one of the goals for redesigning my blog. I wanted to be able to show people I know what I do and maybe inspire them to join in.

I live in a military town and we have a nice local gaming store called the Hobbit. Lots of room for gaming, and never any shortage of people to play with talk to, but not much in the way of painters / modelers. Any given saturday you can walk in and see games of 40K, Fantasy, Flames of War, D&D, Warmachine/Hordes, or various board games spread out on the tables. (As a side note the Hobbit bought/rented/leased out the bingo hall next door... so plenty of room.)The down side is that when it comes to 40K or Fantasy the bulk of the gamers do not mind rocking grey plastic, black/white primer or even unfinished/unassembled models.

I do not mean to sound like a gaming snob, but I put a lot of time/effort into my models. I am no pro. I am no Golden Demon winner. I can put out a product that looks decent on the table though, and that is all that matters. If you are just starting that is cool, bring what you have and lets play. However, I have seen a lot of these guys there a lot, they did not just start. They have had the time to at least start painting. I realize that there is a large portion of the gaming community that just wants to play, and that is fine, I just want more of them to pain too...

All of this to say... Here I want to be able to show case what I have, what I have done, and what I need to do in the hopes that perhaps one of my gaming peers will be inspired or motivated to pick up a brush. It does not take much talent to put out a decent product (just look at some of my models in the links for proof.) Which brings me back to the issue at hand... I need to find a better way to display my product. I used to own my own web site and I had my images displayed. Here I just have links to my .mac. Anybody have any thoughts? I guess I will keep looking...

Screen Monkey

Thanks go out to Sherpa for the cool link ==>Screen Monkey

My son and I ran a small 1000 point game last night. I played the Chaos Warriors he played my Dwarves. I wanted to show him some of the ways he could use a force like the Chaos Warriors. He is only 9 years old and does pretty well for himself when we play, but it never hurts to show him when faced with a new force. I destroyed my poor Dwarves and my son is really exited to play again, this time with his Chaos.

My son has the advantage when we switch sides I feel, and that is fine by me. My dwarves have their work cut out for them stopping the powerful horde. I still can not decide which army I really want to play for fantasy. I am only playing the dwarves because we have the Battle for Skull Pass set. I added a few more models and that is keeping me occupied for now. I am torn between the Lizardmen and the Skaven, both of which are getting updates sometime in 2009.

/sigh... We shall see.

A Fine Day

Well Christmas has come and gone and it was a good family time. My son really enjoyed his Warriors of Chaos starter army, coming in at 1037 points is not bad for a good start. I have told him that I plan on getting him a sorcerer and a shaggoth and the rest is up to him.

I got a Dremel tool for Christmas. Well, actually I got a gift card, but it turned into a Dremel quickly. I have already put it to good use and started making some more terrain. I built two 4 x 4 "tables" that I have sitting on my pool table currently. It makes a nice gaming surface. I was going to go ahead and build terrain on it but my wife talked me out of it. She wants it to double as a ping pong table, so it shall.

I guess my next project shall be creating some modular 1x1 terrain sections to go on the table. That way I can do a city fight if I want or other specialized games. I will keep it nice and green for standard Warhammer Fantasy sessions, but I have always liked the modular look too. This will give me loads of options and will only require more shelving.

Warriors of Chaos

My son does not know it yet, but is getting the Warriors of Chaos box set from me for Christmas. I let him look at all the available models and armies and that is the one he wanted to play most for Warhammer Fantasy. Normally I would not want to play Chaos or allow him to play Chaos, but I do not mind as we can just more or less avoid any of the overly "evil" elements. We are going to tackle it like a Germanic tribe. These guys are just going to be our Vikings, Goths, or Barbarians. Just some "Conan" type people trying to get by in the nasty Chaos Wastes. I think that they will be fun to paint and we will have some good games with them versus my dwarves.

I am still undecided on army I really want to play / collect so will stick with the dwarves for now. We bought the Battle for Skull Pass set and I have painted up most of the models from there. I added another box of dwarf warriors with hand weapons and shields and we shall see how the Chaos Armor does against my Dwarven Mithril. I am thinking about jumping on the Lizardmen bandwagon come February as they were one of my first ever armies. I collected them when I bought my very first Games Workshop product the Fantasy box set with Brettonia versus Lizardmen many years ago.

D&D 4e

Last night I dusted off my copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook 4th edition. I have thumbed through it on several occasions but just started actually reading it. My son wants to play with his friends when they come over on the weekends sometimes so I figure I will accomodate him and be the DM. Our local game store has a game on saturday's but if we are playing with just his friends then we can use the Warhammer table and get double duty out of it.

A while back before travel really picked up I mentioned starting up a D&D game here on my blog. I do regret not following through with that as the response was pretty good. However, that evil little thing called time put an end to that. I do wish there was a was to get involved with a game though.

I used to play on a web forum play by post style on the CORE network, I could wonder back over there I suppose...

Our Tyranid Army

My sons Tyranid Army.

Some Sample Terrain

I am trying to work the kinks out of this, but here is some samples of the terrain my son and I use.

I am still Alive

Wow. Not sure where to start. Been a while since an update.... a long while. No longer playing WoW, but I miss the people. I was kind of forced into quitting. I had some travels where reliable net was just not an option. Been out of the loop so long that I missed the Lich King release and now I really do not want to go back.

For those that worried about me... Sorry to keep you hanging. I had several trips back to back and things were a bit hectic. I just started a Face Book and will link that here when I get it all sorted out. Pressure from my wife and friends caused me to fold on my "No Facebook / MySpace" stance. I can see the logic and benefit in it, just was being one of those "I remember the old internet" stubborn geeks.

You may ask what I have been up to? Life. My son and I recently picked up a game I used to play before my Army days. Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k. I think it has been good for us to reconnect. Between the travel I was doing and my WoW addiction he kind of got left out a little. The miniatures take up a lot less of my time. I even have the Garage / Playroom tooled out for our game room. I turned our pool table into a 4 x 6 battlefield.

I will be converting this blog to my new "addiction". So if you like to still follow my ramblings feel free. If you choose to wander away for greener pastures, no harm. I apologize in advance, but I am going to clean out my blog feeder. I love you guys but would rather not be reminded of what I am missing if you follow me. I see it like a recovering alcoholic. He would be a fool to spend time in a bar... I do not want to pick up the WoW "drink" either :)