News from the ashes

Looks like my eyes were bigger than my mouth here.  I burned out pretty good these past couple weeks, haven't touched a die or a paintbrush since my last post.  I think the biggest part of it was the mega battle report, but I'd been on a gaming rampage for a while.  It'd be dishonest to say that Starcraft 2 had nothing to do with this, but it's not the root of the thing.  Since classes start back up on Monday, this is effectively the end of my break, and so a (depressing) list update is in order.

 
Painting
ID battleship
ID cruisers
Humans
Assemble and prime all languishing WM minis
pSorscha
Manhuntress
'jacks
WGI
other Khador

Reading
WM: Escalation
White Noise
The Maya

Other
Renew Driver's License
Clear the DVR

As you can see, absolutely no painting.  I have read a chunk of Escalation, but it's a tough slog through scenario after scenario.  While there is a narrative to pick out of it, reading through a campaign that I won't play is not the most exciting thing ever.  I also started reading Horus Rising, which is a poorly written book, but it does scratch that Space Marine itch that I've never been able to get rid of.

I'm going to break out the paints in a few minutes and see if I can't finish the frigate I started.  With a fuller than usual class load, gaming time will be slim at best, as will updates.  Hopefully not having time to paint will recharge the batteries and make me eager to get back at it again.

US Battle Report - Two Games, One Night Part Two

We had 5 people show up on Monday night for US, which meant we had a two 1 on 1 games going, which meant someone was watching.  The spectator was kairaven, who suggested we have a group game after the individual games were finished.  EV had just been violently introduced to the Bone Griffon gunline and understandably didn't want a piece of the action.  The BG player had to go, which left just kairaven, vatank, and myself.  We settled on a starter box game, knocked out some deployment zones and went at it.

Paint on a human ship

It's been a long time coming, but I finally have some non-primer paint on a Human ship.  I picked up some paint last night, notably the GW foundation yellow that was the reason I took on painting yellow in the first place.  I just did the base coat, and not the entire ship at that, but I wanted to get an idea of what my scheme will look like in reality instead of just how I imagine it.  I think it will turn out like I wanted it to.

Behold the base coated beauty.

The brown will lighten up a bit, but I want to keep it dark to contrast the lighter wood of my ID.  The yellow will brighten up as well, but the blue is about what I intend it to be.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the railing, and I want to put some squadron/fleet markings on the hull, and then there's the base to do as well, but it's a very nice feeling to make some actual progress.

I should also mention that despite my initial reluctance I've settled on Space Wolf transfers for the sails.  I found a big sheet in my box, and EV had another, that have a bunch of different wolves in roughly the same size.  I plan on using a different design for each class of ship and varying the sail striping to differentiate between squadrons.

US Battle Report - Two Games, One Night Part One

We had a good turnout at the FLGS last night with 5 US and 2 Firestorm Armada players.  I got in two games with the humans, the first an Elves vs Humans battle with vatank.  I hadn't played him 1 on 1 yet, so it was good to get a game in. 

US Battle Report - Piled with Pictures part 4

The tables swung wildly last time.  The Iron Dwarves held a solid advantage at the beginning of turn 5, but by the end of turn 7 the tables were level at best, and more likely in favor of the Shroud Mages.  With the ID battleship far from support, and facing the on-rushing Shroud fleet, things look to go poorly for the good shorties.  But the ID have ships in the rear of the Shroud fleet.  Can the ID support take out the Shroud ships before they demolish the ID battleship?  Or will the now dispersed ID be clobbered by the bricked SM?  All will be revealed in the (hopefully) thrilling conclusion to the most epic battle report I've ever written.

US Battle Report - Piled with Pictures, part 3

Last time in the super-long 750 point battle report it started to hit the fan.  While the fleets have engaged, the Shrouds are poised to slip around the SE island and put a temporary halt to the violence.  But will the Iron Dwarves let their prey escape?  Are the Shrouds moving to flank, or are their motives more sinister?  Lots, though not all, shall be revealed in this installment.

US Battle Report - Piled with Pictures, part 2

The first installment covered turns 1 and 2, which saw a lot of maneuvering and a little bit of action.  Now in turn 3, the gaps are smaller than ever and things are about to get hot and heavy.  My ships are poised to take the center of the table.  EV is feeding me a squadron of frigates while sending the rest of his fleet on what looks like a long flanking action

US Battle Report - Piled with Pictures, part 1

EV and I got together on Wednesday morning/early afternoon to try out the proposed Bellows changes.  I thought this would be a good time to do a blow by blow report, complete with a picture for each activation.  Though it made our game much longer than it would have normally been, and will make the reporting process much longer as well, I think it will be interesting and informative.  Whether or not we do anything like this again is up for debate, and the amount of work that goes in to this report will no doubt be considered.  Long as the process will be, getting started is the only way to make it shorter, so here goes.

The new between classes list

The new list looks an awful lot like the old list.  I'm abandoning the ID spreadsheet because tech7 already created a whole program to build fleets with that trumps any crappy spreadsheet I would produce.  I probably mentioned that I finished book 12 of Wheel of Time the other day, so that's the first item crossed off the list before I even write the list.  Speaking of lists, here it is.

US Battle Report - Premiere Night

The turn-out at Game Parlor wasn't so hot tonight, just me and EV.  While it was a shame that we went to the store just to play each other, I think it's important to keep a presence going on Mondays, so chalk this one up to fighting the good fight.  Tonight was the debut for my Imperial Humans.  I must have been extra excited because a lot of pictures are blurry, so I'll do a blanket apology for that upfront.  Since it's late (Starcraft 2 is compelling), I'm going to cut right to the chase.  Lists:

A productive morning

Title says it all, I got some good stuff done this morning.  I sculpted two more frigate bases, which I wanted to get done in time for tonight so I could tell frigate squadrons apart.  I worked on the "case" for my humans, cutting actual holes for the frigates instead of just cramming them between layers.  I'm also in the process of printing out the Martyr rules to have on hand, since they'll be coming up in the near future.

I've been skewing towards terrain-heavy tables of late, so I wanted to go back the other way and have some more open tables.  With 9 islands (and one lonely rock), I have enough terrain to put out two sparseish tables worth of islands.  I only have one table cloth though, and that's EV's to boot, so I set out to Joann's to get some material for another cloth.  I'd take a picture of it, but I'll just wait until gaming tonight and get a picture of it then.  It's a light-ish blue/lighter-ish blue/white wavy pattern that I think looks a lot like a rough sea.  Since my frigate bases are very textured, which I'm going to call storm-tossed, so the wavy print is going to work out well I hope.  It's significantly lighter than EV's cloth so there'll be no getting the two mixed up.  Having the option to setup two tables could be useful tonight, and on Game Parlor nights in general, in case we have an excess of players and a deficit of table dressing.

In non-gaming news, I finally finished the latest Wheel of Time book, not quite a year after I got it.  I'll post up another list of things I hope to accomplish before the fall semester starts sometime, but that would have been the top item on the list and I can cross it off before even making the list, which is nice. 

Actual progress

Seems like it's been a while since I did any modeling or painting, so it was good to get some done this morning.  Since I started up the New Fleet Challenge on the Spartan boards to provide myself with some helpful pressure to get my new Imperial Humans done, I figured I should actually abide by the guidelines I set down, which means having pictures of progress.  Which requires actual progress.  While I did glue the frigates to their bases and prime the hulls of the larger ships, that doesn't really count as progress in my book.  With my now-open schedule and this "deadline" hanging over my head, it was time to do some work.

Belated weekend recap

Not quite a full week later I finally have time to write-up a run-down on my trip to Fredericksburg.  I chronicled my prep work already, but I left out my route planning.  I had a vague idea of where Fredericksburg is (South), but my grasp of its position was weak enough that I consulted the maps of Google for advice.  It gave me two routes, the one that I had thought to use myself (123 to 95 South), and another that I thought existed but wasn't sure of (out to Manassass, then 234 to 95 South).  The two routes looked similar enough that I went with the one that I was more familiar with, taking 123, though the alternate Manassass route would have dropped me onto 95 a couple miles further south.  This decision would come back to haunt me.

Quick hit as a tiding-over

Being in the midst of the final week of my second summer class, time for gaming (and blogging about gaming) is a rare commodity.  I'll get caught up once class is over, but in the meantime I wanted to put a teeny something up since it's been a while since last time and it'll be a while 'til next time.  The result of this desire?  A little list of 5 things that happened over the weekend.

1 - I finally went to a Sonic.  Twice in fact.

2 - I spent roughly two hours going about 35 miles on an interstate.
3 - I finally laid hands on Strakov, and my Winter Guard Deathstar is now at full power.
4 - I "won" the "tournament" down in Fredericksburg.
5 - I got a second ID battleship which "finishes" my ID fleet. 

A full recap of what all went down is on the way, but now at least whistles have been wetted.