Back from the dead

I'm back, it's been way too long and I don't know how many more posts I'll have, why? Well my friends seem to have abandon most miniatures and my time spent on painting/assembling has been eaten up by, well, life.

However, I did pick up the Mutant Chronicles starter set and I haven't played it yet but I'm excited to get some games in.

What have I been doing? Well mostly video games and a lot of RPG's. I'm currently in three campaigns, Star Wars, D&D 4.0 and Mutants and Masterminds 2.0. I like them all but I seem to be the tank in all 3. I sort of wish I'd diversified a little bit.

Anyhow I'll try and post a game recap for Mutant Chronicles after I get a chance to play some.

Board Games, the other white meat

Part of my lack of production/playing in miniatures lately stems from a new fascination with board games (ok and a fair amount of video games too) lately. There's a site called Tanga.com that has sucked money out of my wallet. My hope is Christmas eve or day I'll get some crazy family members to play a game or two.

Holidays are around the corner

And while I see great deals, I've been trying very much not to buy anything. The one concession was a super deal on the Marvel Heroscape set. When a $40 set is $13 and it has superheroes, I'm in.

Other than that, no painting going on lately. I have most of the holiday week off and my hope is to either play or paint at least one day. I asked for some AT-43 stuff this tear, we'll see if I get it. I never seem to get the miniatures for the holidays but who knows.

It's been almost a month, have I done anything mini related?

Well that depends on your perspective. BobG the dungeon master gave me some figures to paint up for the current D&D campaign we're playing in. I got the D&D players manual and Oriental Adventures to get myself into the D&D realm. I even rolled up a few characters with a little guidance from Grandmaster Jay.

This of course was not good. Now I've ordered the Star Wars RPG for a few reasons. First, it's friggin' star wars! Second, I have approximately 200-300 star wars minis getting very dusty in a bin waiting to be used. And finally while D&D is cool and I'm not abandoning it already, how in the hell could I resist the potential to use the force. So I am eagerly awaiting that book.

In the meantime, I decided to stop buying anything metal for a while until I paint more of what I have and use it some. I have a lot to do, the Hordes starter, the rest of the em-4 samurais, lots of Confrontation that I bought on sale and a unit of Halbediers for War machine that still aren't even fully together.

But I still had a jones for some gaming. So almost a year after it came out. I bought the AT-43 starter set. Because it was pre painted and ready to go out of the box and the figures and rules seemed pretty cool. Because I am a bastard, I got Nat X over to play a game so we could both try it out. Needless to say he's buying the big rulebook and probably some more Therians. He tried to resist before seeing it but I think he enjoyed himself too much to leave it alone. The fact that it's pre painted non collectible has probably sealed the deal. I already had a giant poster size picture frame that I put my star wars maps in and the AT-43 map fit under the plexi glass quite nicely as well. My verdict on the game? Pretty fun. Definitely worth more interest and time in the near future. The Therian strider came broken and I emailed Rackham as they suggested with pictures. Lets see if they really win my business and send me a new strider and take back the slightly broken one. Anyway there are now 4 factions and the UNA and Therians both aren't bad. I'd probably go forward building a bigger UNA army or go communist and devote some time to Red Blok, I like their look a lot. They have a lot more mini striders than the rest. Armor is good!

So Hordes is on hold. I'm trying to get maybe a once a month game night going with some folks but it hasn't happened yet. All of this could take a back seat to Star Wars RPG when it comes in though.

So there I was, all set to paint blue trollbloods

And then I go play old school D&D last Friday night and the DM sets me up as a brand new Samurai and I kicked some major a$$. That's right, it was D&D, I don't want to hear anyone busting on it. Tabletop miniatures probably wouldn't have happened without D&D. So anyway Bob the DM had a few characters to represent the 7 of us that were involved that night but no good Samurai. Afterwards I remembered that I'd bought a 4 pack of the Oriental Blades from em-4 about three to four months ago. So I broke out the one that matched up the best and I gave him a rough initial blocking with the paint.

Because I was on a roll, the next night, I painted up a barbarian type I had from Mega Miniatures for my friend Gangrene who always hosts these things. It turned out alright. His character is half man half orc so I made his skin greenish.

Anyway long story short, the trolls still aren't painted yet but I did get back in the swing of things and get some painting in. I still have Halo3 that will occupy a fair amount of free time and Bioshock waiting behind that to finish but it felt good to sit down for an hour or so a few nights in a row and knock out some figures.

Oh I also bought some Warmachine Menoth figures on ebay for really cheap and the paint jobs on them are FAR better than what I've done, it both depresses and inspires me. So the Trollblood project will continue to be delayed. This weekend doesn't look great for time to paint either.

Video stole the painting star

Cheesy, yes but stoopid NatX kept up the pressure and I finally caved Monday and bought Halo3 on launch day.

I had a Best Buy gift card, I read a bunch of reviews, I love multiplayer co-op games... So I caved and between that and trying to install blinds/curtains/bathroom vent fans in my house this week all of my free time has been sucked away. I need at least a solid hour block to do any worthwhile painting and I just haven't had it. The trollbloods sit there taunting me and I just take it and go back to playing Halo.

NatX even gave me Bioshock for my birthday and I haven't even really put that in to try and finish the game which is probably a 6-8 hour commitment at this point since I'm at least a 1/3rd through already.

Oh and the worst part is I keep checking ebay to see if I can get a deal on a different Hordes warpack so I can get a friend into this thing. So far, no luck.

So week 1 of painting a Trollblood a week isn't happening. Hopefully by week 2 I'll have knocked one out. I'm involved in an all day kickball beer party Saturday so that kills that free day. Sunday I may be hungover. Don't want to paint hungover. That's how Trollbloods become troll blobs.

Oh and if anyone reading this (all 2 of you maybe) has a 360 and hasn't gotten Halo3 or Bioshock yet, do yourself a favor and splurge. Halo3 is great for multiplayer, Bioshock is a great storyline shooter with good twists that I think make it the game of the year.

Trollbloods have arrived

They got here about 6 days after order. Not terrible. I did an unboxing that I may put up later, nothing fancy.

So my new idea is to try to do one of each of them every week so in a maximum of four they'll be done. This should be interesting. I've got the first two soaking in a little dish soap right now to take some of the grime off 'em. I'll try to post pictures with the updates. This all assumes I'll have at least 3-4 hours a week to paint. The clock starts Sunday since I want to at least have a few glued together and primed to begin. All I can say right now is great friggin' sculpting on them. Hopefully they turn out cool. I bought the P3 paint set for them because I felt they were the most difficult faction to paint.

I'll take all the help I can get from the proper paint to get them ready.

Okay off to take them out of their soak.

-Lefty

P.S. Everblight is also a pretty cool looking faction and probably would have been my second choice.