Tournament prep and general housekeeping

While I should have been learning about recent American literature this morning, I was considering what I needed to add to my bag for the tournament this weekend.  I added some smaller dice to my bag to track crew damage, as I only had 2 in the bag previously, some other small dice to mark the odd port/starboard AD reduction, a d8 for wind direction and a scatter die to mark my airship's placement and heading if it ends up on terrain, as it often does.  I found a smaller, keyring-sized tape measure that I'll stick in my bag in case my opponent comes without one, as well as a small bag of glass beads from some TCG that I'll use for activation markers.  I still need to make some wind templates, for my opponents if necessary in the immediate future, but also for my Humans in the not-so-distant future.  I also assembled a second bag of dice thinking that my friend may have been interested in the tournament, though as expected he declined, but I'll bring it along anyway just in case.  It's always better to be over-prepared than get surprised. 

Kairaven produced more goodies last night.  He had some bomb markers made up at Litko and didn't need the whole batch of 10, so I've got a pair of them now.  I'm not sure what I'll do with them, as dropping the bomb is generally a memorable event, but they could come in handy sometime.  He also gave me a ID cruiser that he had 'left over.'  This I can understand, as the cruisers come in blisters of 2, while a full squadron is 3.  I had picked up a blister a few weeks ago to use as proxies for destroyers until the actual destroyer models arrived, so I already had 2 on hand.  I'd been considering filling out that squad, but that would require making a third squadron as well.  While I might conceivably take two squadrons of 3 cruisers, I doubt I would ever field 9 of them.  Now I don't have to worry about it.  I still want to add another battleship, 2 more heavy cruisers, a pair of Belchers, and another airship (though I'll wait for the extended wing sculpt for that), and then I think I'll be pretty happy with my ID fleet.  Which leads somewhat towards...


Humans.  I've talked around this a couple times, but I'll get into it now.  I got the starter fleet box last night as well as a pack of 1"x2" metal bases to mount the frigates on.  I've been considering this for a while and finally took the plunge.  I've been pleased with the slow-growth format that EV and I have used on our respective dwarven fleets, and I'd like to spread this to the Spartan forums in general.  I've seen similar threads/events/posts on other forums and they always seem to be popular.  Then again, a lot of the forumites at the Spartan boards already have multiple fleets, so it may not work as well as I'd like.  I'm still mulling details, but I'm leaning towards a 3 month progression of starter box/500 points, 750 points, 1000 points.  That gives a nice increase each month without dragging the thing out too long.  I'd really like to go starter, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, as that progression would hit all the "milestones" of flagships, second battleships, and so forth, but that format would run through the end of the year, and I think that's just too long.  Whatever I end up going with, I think I'll put the post up in the next couple of days so the thing starts in August.  Regardless of how that works out, I'm excited to have a wind using fleet, and having 2 fleets will let me try and hook people more easily than splitting my ID fleet in half.  The split works for demo games, but not so much for 5-600 point getting-a-good-feel-for-it games.  I'm still considering paint schemes, but I'm almost settled on dark green and cream stripes for the sails with dark planking.  I need to find my box of transfers and see what kind of icons I have on hand as that could affect my scheme decision as well.  Plenty to do on multiple fronts.  Fortunately class ends in just over a week, and I'll have 2-3 weeks before the fall semester starts, so I can hopefully knock some of these projects out and maybe give my poor Khador models some love as well.