HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!! I'm stuffed ... yet I hear a round 2 ... 3 ... perhaps even 4 calling me. Then there is the inevitable smorgasbord o' delectable Thanksgiving leftovers ... ahhh. I feel the childhood memory of Charlotte's Web ... Templeton at the fair.

THANKSGIVING IS a veritable smorgasbord orgasbord orgasbord After the crowds have ceased Each night when the lights go out It can be found in the fridge and all around Oh, what an excessive feast!!!! Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!!

2010 the year of Games Workshop Ultra Competition

Ok ... I'm sure many of you have seen the announcement on the GW page (link).  No Gamesdays ... no real GTs ... just a bunch of random events leading to a special GW run event. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong but at this point I'd wager that the people at that end event all hail from some group or club that are running the "Indy GTs" ... the Adepticon groups, BOLS groups, etc.

I have to say that in some ways this sounds exciting and enticing ... but once I hold myself in check by reminding myself that I'll never move in these circles. I am not part of an inner circle GW group nor do I have a relative who is a GW employee. We all know the way things work at the higher levels of GW competitive events in North America  ... its not just a matter of how much you spent on your Blue Table Pro Painted army but who your buds with.  So one of those GW "insiders" will be the ones dining with Mr. Johnson.

From the GW perspective I see this move as something nice to put in White Dwarf to excite the 15 year old fanboys and give the stores something to try to sell new customers on. The reality is a more inclusive system that gives the average joe gamer something for spending their hard earned dollars on this hobby ... would be much better.

I recall the days that the GTs were simply about braging rights and a plaque. You'd get your army and your mug in White Dwarf and that was it. Attending the GT was a chance to see amazingly themed armies from the hardcore to the hilarious. It was a chance to get BITZ BY THE OUNCE (SIGH!!!) ... it was a chance to play a cool mix of players and a damn good excuse for a road trip. Sadly those days are gone and now the competitive side of GW feels more like Magic the Gathering ... with endless net min max lists of doom and a sea of "professionally" painted armies. So the 15 year old kid and old duffers like me ... really have no place in the GW tourney circuit anymore. I see this announcement by GW as yet another nail in the coffin of the GW tourney scene that used to be. GW has opted to farm out all of the tournaments to random local clubs, some well run ... some very greedily run. I've heard many stories of the obscene amount of terrain and prize support GW is giving to some of the "Indy GT" organizers and I've heard how much of it ends up in some of their own collections. Those resources apparently GW doesn't care about ... yet they could be used helping new players and giving more people an opportunity to experience well run tournaments. GW used to take the attitude that there were certain standards for events involving their product. They would run some marquee events regionally to give people reasonable access to some cool very well run tournaments and mini-con type events.  Now it seems like they are simply looking to cut costs and quell the anger of internet vocal power gamers.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh ... but for anyone outside of those big "important" clubs and those "inner circles" of GW chosen ... this move really is disappointing as going more "exclusive" GW is doing just that ... excluding their fans. Great for the inner circle GW guys in the big "important" groups... very very disappointing for us average Joe gamers. 

Update on the Orks and Tanksgiving!!

Well to give a quick update on the Orks, I just finished dipping 10 Nobs and 30 Boyz ... bringing the post dip total up to 170 Orks! I'll matte coat those tomorrow and try to get the last 30 and Ghaz done up this weekend. So hopefully I have pics of the completion of phase one of the project early next week. I'll try to post some picks of the new squads tomorrow or Saturday as well.

As for my trials and tribulations with Warhammer Online ... I am still very casually playing. I have been playing maybe 3 or so hours a week. My Ork Choppa is nearly lvl 20 and I'm excited to see how the game plays once you have a mount. Overall I'm still having fun but I've experienced the game enough to see why millions of WoW players didn't make the switch. The world is really amazing the game itself has some really cool MMO innovations, I like how PVP is a fun part of the entire game, but the PVE options in the game (Instances) are really lacking. Many of the cool features that were awesome when the game first launched (and had reasonable player population) are now almost useless, things like Public Quests. The concept is awesome, you can be playing solo ... out rumbling around a zone and enter a public quest area and A) grind up influence so you can get some cool rewards B) earn experience C) Have a shot at a drop from the boss at the end of the quest. Its really an awesome idea, however ... when there are ZERO players in the zone your in ... public quests designed for 10 players are not an option. So what people end up doing is just grinding up the influence for the reward and to work towards achievements I assume. Its fine ... but I'm missing alot of the content due to low player population. At this point I've agreed to simply stay playing until I hit 20 or my card runs out and then decide if I want to keep going. As a GW fanboy I'd like to say I finished the game ... but honestly I don't know if I want to spend the time doing so. We'll see.

Last and not least I'm in the process of setting up the agenda for family board game day ... otherwise known as Thanksgiving ... or Tanksgiving (if your a GW fan ... waka waka). This year I am leaning towards a game called Shadows over Camelot (if you haven't played it ... either buy it and get a group together or find someone who owns it ... its a blast) ... I own the expansion for it but I think I'm going to leave that out as I haven't played it yet and I hear its brutal.  I'm going to have Space Hulk set up as well and I'm going to run my nieces through a few games of it. If we have time I think I might try to get people to do a game of Arkham Horror as well ... that is a bit more iffy.

Orks Phase II continued ...

Some pictures of the next two squads of Orks. I am in the homestretch now ... just three squads to paint along with ole Ghaz and bada bing ... I'm done with my paint challenge. The following pics are a hodgepodge of the last squads I got done in the pre-dip and post-dip stage.

This is a shot of them after the dip and during the matte varnish. The rest are pre-dip and pre-touch up shots. What I'm going to try to do is get the remaining 70 orks done by the end of the weekend ... and then I will really try to get some good shots with a recap of why I did them how I did, how I did it, etc.

Gamesday 2010 GW Annoucement Rant!

Ok ... this rumor has been bouncing around for some time and I think as long ago as June I'd heard people talking about this. Tonight I was surfing the GW site and happened upon this announcement. The decision to host only one Gamesday by Games Workshop. For those GW fans who live on the Eastern seaboard in the US ... no one would really care ... how does this impact you right? It doesn't really. But for everyone else in the US especially those of us on the West Coast .... all I have to say is what the hell? GW axed the 2009 Gamesday events for those of us out west ... but now they are doing it in 2010 too? This is utter and absolute BULLSHIT! As a hardcore GW fan I'm very unhappy about this. I attended every single LA Gamesday and GT that GW offered. I lived in Las Vegas during the Las Vegas GTs however I have to honestly say I didn't attend one ... it just didn't seem worth it to pay that much to pay ... and by then the nature of the GTs had changed dramatically since the early 2000s GTs. Too many Adepticon organizer types showing up en mass with Tour De France type tactics ... just too much hardcore competition from guys who don't even paint their own armies for my taste ... anyway I digress. I really am saddened by GWs continued pullback on their product support. White Dwarf thoroughly sucks these days ... no Gamesdays, no GW GTs only random "indie events" largely put on by greedy game clubs siphoning off the obscene amount of prize support GW is sending their way into their own private hobby collections. The old outrider, GW run GT and RTT systems were really much better for the hobby in my opinion. All this "do it yourself" GW support is rather lame. I only wish we had the UK level of support from GW here in the US.

Phase II of the Ork Project

Well I got quite a bit done over the weekend. I finished painting a squad of choppa slugga boyz another warboss and 2 trucks. I'll get some pics of the boyz up later but for right now here are the trucks. To go over the technique ... I used just a random can of metalic spraypaint over a black prime, I did some slight detail painting, blocked the fields red, did touch ups and did a wash as heavy as a full submersion with minwax ebony. I wiped off really bad pooling but pretty much left it as it looked. Again remember my two goals with this project are: painting speed and ease, and a dirty, grimy, gritty look that I feel orks would have. They aren't electric neon clown color orks of yore. Nothing wrong with that by the way ... I actually might go for an old school look when I do my WHFB orks next year .... I am just going for a certain look here (again with speed and ease in mind). As for vehicles in this project at the end of the project I'd like to have 5 trucks, 2 battlewagons and 20 bikes along with 10 copters or so. That way I can field a speed freaks/mechanized ork list or a big foot heavy list (or both for a big game). But the mecha part of this project is actually part II as I won't likely get to that until December.  So here are pics of the trucks ... please bare in mind my camera work sucks (as does my camera) ... and again I think it might be the dip, matte varnish method ... it just doesn't come out well in pictures ... both the orks and the trucks look better in person in terms of depth and detail.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Ok I wanted to share some thoughts on the move by Fantasy Flight Games to completely redo the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system.  Here is a cool video on third edition BTW ... undeniably cool stuff. Its old news they announced that back on August 9th so that isn't the nature of this post as for the actual release of 3E I don't know ... haven't heard and would speculate sometime next year. I'm just lining up things I want to do this coming year and DMing a WHFB game is on the table for me ... I really want to do it. If I can pull that off I'm going to try a Dark Heresy game as well. But thinking about that got me thinking about why I'm so sad to see such a good game get ground into hamburger at the feet of the almighty alter of the dollar.  While I always applaud new GW related products ... and I generally am a FFG fan. I hate collectible gaming and FFG has pushed board games and Non-CCG games in that direction more and more. Actually look at this product and you'll see it ... what 3E is going to be is a boardgame-RPG hybrid ... where you can't play the game with regular dice ... you need to drop the 100 bucks (or how much ever for a player pack or whatever) just to play the game. No buying the books and OWNING the entertainment ... nope ... FFG doesn't like that ... they want you to have to come to them and give them money more often than just at the initial buy in.

 

My theory is that FFG picked up the GW boardgame license in February of 2008 WHFB was already rolling pretty heavy the core rules already released as of March of 2005, the big surge of purchasing into the system already gone by. Dark Heresy had only just released. So FFG has made alot more money on the Dark Heresy stuff and probably not so much on the WHFB stuff. Not to metion I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Dark Heresy outsells WHFB two to one as there are soooo many other fantasy roleplay systems and D&D is the granddaddy of em all ... so competition for gamer dollars is more stiff on the fantasy side. So there is my conspiracy theory ... I see this move to revamp a system that is amazingly good ... doesn't need an update, etc. as just that. A way to boost sales as they have this under a licensing agreement that I'm sure will expire sometime over the next five or so years ... so I bet they want to grind every nickle out of their license. GW is probably even pushing them to do so.

Unfortunately RPGs are now competing with World of Warcraft and that is undeniably where 4E went and I think WHFB will be going the same direction. Will I buy into the new system ... probably ... but only after I acquire a complete collection of the current WHFB stuff and that will be my WHFB Advanced game forever ... its a beautiful system that is really enjoyable to play and I will be sad to see it go. I really do hope though that new people are brought to GW products and to RPGs because of the new FFG system.

Warhammer Online Continued ...

Ok I thought I'd just do a post in response to comments from the last post. I really am right there with you guys in terms of fearing having it get out of hand. World of Warcraft honestly got pretty bad ... it took over as the only hobby in my life for quite some time. I really have no desire to ever let a video game get like that again. I sincerely love mini games and other types of games. WoW really makes me angry as it has co-opted a huge segment of gamers ... I'm sure ya'll know people who practically live their lives around that damn game. It makes me sad that so many people are totally ok with settling for a really mediocre game and forsake all other gaming whether playing other games like WAR or playing real games like 40K, board games, RPGs, etc. I honestly feel like WoW has taken a negative toll on gaming maybe more than any other single phenomena over the past six years ... save only the recession.

My goal is to try to do what BJ has been doing ... just play for an hour or so a night ... if even. Maybe a couple hours at a time here and there on the weekend. One positive aspect of MMOs ... again like BJ mentioned ... is that the wife will actually play those with me. She will not touch a mini game (though I did get her to play Space Hulk with me .. woot!!) and will sometimes do a board game but no RPGs either. So any gaming I can do with her is cool and that was actually one of the few positive aspects of WoW ... we did play together and have some common fun with it.

Anyway I've got the toon leveled up to 10 ... looking forward to a boar mount at lvl 20. One cool thing about the Orks is the grow as they lvl up ... so the higher lvl Orks are perceptibly larger than the lower lvl ones. Pretty cool if you ask me. Anyway I'll try to chronicle my trials and tribulations with the game over the next few months.

Warhammer Online

OK ... OK ... OK ...

Let me preface this by stating for those friends of mine out there who feel I should avoid MMOs like the plague ... I'm sorry ... I have to do this. When Warhammer Online first released I got the limited edition version of it (kick ass WHFB Warboss model in there btw ... along with some cool hardbound art books). I played for a few weeks and went back to World of Warcraft (which I thankfully stopped playing last May ... for good) as few friends wanted to play WaR with me. So it was shelved and I'd forgotten about it ... the other day my wife expressed interest in playing a MMO over the winter ... and bada bing ... WaR returns! I am a GW fanboy through and through ... dyed in the wool ... a G tattooed on one butt cheek and a W on the other (kidding kidding ... but hey that's a good idea ... hmmm ... then when GW raises their prices again they know where to stick it eh ... LOL). Anyway you get the picture I'm a hardcore fanboy. So I need to lvl up one character to 40 and see at least the main content of the game. Its going to be a cold long winter and I'll have more time aside from my many gaming projects to get into an MMO in a casual way. My plan is to play through January/February-ish and then let the account lapse. I didn't re-fire up WoW ... or plunge into Champions ... I'm doing this as a GW fan who wants to experience the virtual world Mythic and EA created based on the WHFB universe ... plain and simple. I might do the occasional post here on my experience. Leme know if any of ya'll are playing on the Badlands server on the disorder side.  My main chr is named Eadbuzta ... he is an Ork Choppa.

Update on the Orks!

Ok phase one is done ... the pics aren't horrible ... but the Orks actually do look better than the pictures are turning out. I think the flash gives them an odd look. Anyway ... part one of a 3 part project done. In addition keep in mind I do need to still do some minor touch ups. 

1 AOBR Warboss

3 - 30 Shoota Boy strong squads, with a Nob with powerclaw and 3 big shootas. The paint scheme is basically the same, and each unit has a different uniform color. I went with a mustard color, a redish, and black. The colors somewhat approximate clan colors ... however I wasn't going for Evil Suns, Bad Moons, etc. something somewhat generic with each squad different to make combats smooth on the tabletop. 

Very simple paint scheme. I used the minwax dip method for two reasons. First and foremost to get my painting done on a big project somewhat quickly. Secondly I wanted a gritty, dirty look. I have never envisioned orks as the rainbow bright 2nd edition orks. I don't like clean, super bright orks ... its kinda lame IMO. I like gritty, oily, grimy orks ... as they would be per the fluff. They are constantly looting things, digging around on the battlefield looking for something worth taking. When in battle they love to be up close and ripping their enemies appart in hand to hand. Those things tend to dirty one's uniform :) Thus my iteration of what orks should look like. Again .. not Golden Demon quality ... but I'm pleased with the results. Considering when I'm done I should have somewhere around 250 infantry models ... I really needed something easy to repeat that wasn't insanely time consuming. I do have to finish up the bases ... but I'm waiting on some dead grass flock ... and I'm going to be doing a display board ... so I was going to wait until that is done to give the bases their final drybrush and static grass flock (so it matches the board exactly).