Update? Who does that?

L-O-L-A Lola, Lolololo Lola.

I'm shamed by how long it's been since the last post.  I'd love to offer something of substance by way of apology, but that'll just have to wait until next time.  In the here and now I have some very modest hobby progress, plus something I've been meaning to do for a while and have just now finished.  Spurred on by EV's recent escalation of the Warmachine arms race I put together a man who needs no introduction, pictured right.  I had cleaned the model a while back, but I guess the arm assembly kept me from assembling it at the same time.  Everything went together nice and easy thanks mostly to the greenstuff + super glue combo.  How I was engaged in the hobby for better than a decade and never found out that the two play so well together is beyond me.  Regardless of our time apart, we're together now, and that's what counts.  (Unrelated: I spent a couple minutes working up a Warmachine-centric version of the Kink's classic "Lola," only to realize that the tiny caption space under the picture wouldn't contain all that awesome.  Instead you get a much smaller, rather less awesome version.  Blame Blogger and how their photo captioning works.)

This is a horrible picture.

This is as good a time as any to address the quality of some of the photos in this post and posts to come.  Since I hear nothing but raves about the iPhone's camera (at least the iPhone 4), and since I'll always have it handy (unlike my actual camera), I've decided to shake up the picture taking process a bit.  WIP shots and bits of randomness will be from the iPhone, while battle reports and shots of finished models will remain the domain of the real camera.  Of course I'll have to finish painting minis to take finished shots of them, but that's another matter.

With that said on to the main attraction.  I got one of the PP 10th anniversary deals a while back and mentioned a value breakdown, but never got around to it.  Now I'm getting around to it.  I've written about the deal before, but just to recap here's what I got:

• Hordes rulebook
• Trollblood starter box
• Trollblood tokens
• Mystery bonus item

What was inside, at least most of it.

Leaving out the mystery item, let's do a quick price check.   Bought off the shelf at full retail, this all would cost the unwary consumer who pays full retail $30 (book) + $50 (box) + $16 (tokens) = $96, plus tax.  Via what is becoming my go-to source for any gaming items, the Warstore, the same set would cost 25 + 40 + 13 + 6(shipping) = $84, again plus tax.  Final invoice from PP, including tax and shipping?  $77.66  That's what I call a pretty good deal.  But wait, there's more!

When this deal first appeared, it also included a PP tape measure.  This tickled my fancy as the El Cheapo tape measure I got a year and a half ago no longer locks and isn't the best implement I could hope for.  Unfortunately the tape measures soon ran out, but were replaced by dice.  While I don't really need more dice, I always covet more, so this was just as good.  Unfortunately the dice also ran out before I put my order in.  I wasn't sure I'd get anything, other than a deal, but I ended up with not one, but two things:

Mystery items revealed.

Granted one of those things is a note explaining the lack of dice and tape measures, but a thing is a thing.  The thing of actual, if debatable, value is the card.  "Signed" by two PP staffers, this pMadrak card may be of great collectable value to someone.  Unfortunately, that someone is not me.  Is it kinda neat?  Sure.  Would I have rather had dice or a tape measure?  Yes.  But bonus items are bonus items, and there may come a day when I'll value the card higher than I would another set of dice.  Even without any mystery bonus items this was a great deal, so I'll stop looking that horse in the mouth now.

With another game of Warmachine on the horizon I've been at work on lists.  I'm fairly sure I'll be facing Cryx and all their dirty tricks, but beyond that details are slim.  I can make an educated guess and figure on facing one of the two casters EV has recently painted, but since I have no experience facing either of them, or any real knowledge of their abilities beyond a vague idea of their feats, I'm basically building an all-comers list.  This suits me just fine since I don't like tailoring my list to a particular match up.  Since I have a bit of advance knowledge of EV's list, I figure I'll return the favor and give him a heads-up on the two new-to-me casters that I'll be choosing from.

Blurry, but still easy to identify.