Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Halloween!!




We had a great one here. I hope you all did too!

Monday, October 26, 2009

Bon Voyage mon amie

Well A good friend is moving out of the country for a few months, so what to do...go to his house and get in some 40k before he leaves of course!!! I went to play IG on IG and boy did I get in a game. we rolled an anhiliation mission and pitched battle deployment. I lost BAD. I have had this army for almost a year now, but this is only about the third game with them. Basically I didn't castle up,and my flanks got rolled by a heavy flamer toting sentinel and some veterans in a valkyrie....not pretty. Oh well take the good with the bad, I learned a valuable lesson about basic 5th ed play...watch your game more than the Buckeyes....

While i'm here, Congrats to Craig and Beri!!! Many happy years to you my friends!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

And now for something COMPLETELY different...

I'm keeping this one short, promise....

I worked on my Volscani Traitor guard today for about 2 hours. I got about 40 of them tabletop base coated. I consider this major progress, and I hope I can do the same tomorrow to get all of the infantry to that standard.

I am still working on the command for Fluffy's vampire blood knights as well. I am putting some hand stenciled detail on the barding of the unit champion and redoing the banner. I have a crazy amount of detail to pick out yet, but progress is being made.

I should have seen this one coming....

Well, I posted the suggestions from my last post to the message boards at out FLGS and wouldn't you know it the ONLY people to come out to play were the local power-gamers....I should have seen that coming....Oh well. The way I see it is that they are an important part of the community even if I do not support that play style (and accompanying attitude).

That said, I feel like I need to explain. The way I see it, our hobby has three main parts. Part one is the game itself, and by extension the competition that comes with it. We all want to win and do as well as we can at anything we do...but this can sometimes take over and turn into an evil thing I call the power-gamer. We all know the type, meta gaming, min-maxed units, optimized lists, refusing to use a unit because isn't the "best" choice....you get the idea.

The second part is the hobby. This includes the models themselves. collecting, assembling and painting them, converting them, and of course the fluff, or story, associated with them. This is my favorite part of the hobby, and I know that everyone enjoys seeing a fully painted army on nice terrain more than grey plastic on a tablecloth and rocks. I tend to compensate for gamer creep with this aspect of the hobby, as it is easier to define than the third main part of our hobby...social interaction.

We all enjoy hanging out with our friends. Our hobby is great in that we get to game and hang out all at the same time. Now, there are specific things I want to point out here. Chief among these things is sportsmanship. I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand that everyone takes something different away from our hobby, and this is universal to most things we do in life. I can't imagine some one with a bad attitude keeping many friends around long enough to really enjoy themselves. I can say this, I have fallen into this before, and have been fortunate enough to have friends point it out to me, then give me the chance to change. The second aspect of this is community. We are all part of a community of people that go into their FLGS and participate in events, spend time with friends and support our FLGS and hobby through our purchases there.

I want to point out that all three of these "pillars" of our community effect and react to the other two. If a few people are nasty to others, people withdraw and don't contribute as much to that group. If people don't contribute to one aspect or another, the hobby as a whole gets hurt. Let's work together to make this OUR community a better place and help each other with keeping all three "pillars" in place.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

About time....

We ( my local area group) haven't done much as a group lately, other than Will's great combat patrol tournament. I want us to do more as a group and I think smaller point level tournaments level the playing field for newer player (a bit). I propose a monthly, or bi-monthly 1k point tournament as a "keep it real" tournament. Now I haven't asked the FLGS owner about this yet, and I'm in no hurry to get this started before the first of the year because I will be swamped until then.

Here are the things I have been thinking about, and would LIKE to include in this little recurring tournament/meeting. You tell me if you think it is good or bad on a point by point basis, and we'll find a common ground to get this going. Upfront, NO flaming. If you don't like an idea, and that's cool, just be prepared to not only provide details and maybe an example of why it's a bad idea, and then provide an alternative. Feel free to add other suggestions if I miss something here, and I will keep a running tally update of what we have so far.

1. I think 1000 points per army. I don't want to get bigger because we are aiming this at players with either new armies, or are new to the hobby, and let's face it we kinda have to stick to a 4x4 board for more than a few of us to play.

2. I think we need to try crazy missions to shake things up, and be okay with it when they don't work perfectly. I think we need to expose ourselves to something other than the 3 missions in the book ever once in a while to stay flexible and competitive

3. Competition: It is just that, BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF FUN I want to play a game and enjoy myself. That means not necessarily running the "best" force or "optimized" lists. Maybe run some not so normal units just to try them, or dust off some stuff I haven't used in a while to try a crazy idea and not get laughed at for it.

4. Positive atmosphere...I can't emphasize this enough, I WANT THIS TO BE ABOUT ENJOYING THE GAME, and my time relaxing. I have a right to not hear people bitching...they can do that while i'm at work.

5. Hobby as a whole. We all enjoy playing games, but lots of us really like the look of a fully painted army on the table (MEMEMEMEMEME) Lets face it, it just looks better and you get more of a sense of pride from playing with something you put real effort into....at least I do.

6. small armies actually force you to think more tactically, as every model means more to you. 5 points has a much larger impact when you only have a 1000 to start than when you have nearly twice that.

7. Develop The Armoury gaming groups as a community regardless of what game they play. I want to be able to get out and play more than one opponent without worrying about a schedule. If I know that a certain day is 40k tourney day, then I have a reason to be there for more than a single game (read as wife will better understand)... lol

8. Hobby days like the one the later this month where we meet to paint and model, and help each other out with modeling and painting projects....like Jerome for example I KNOW could use help with his 130 boy ork horde.

9. Rotating event staff. I like to think I do fairly well running tournaments for you guys, but I know there are at least a few of you who would like it, and lets face it, I wanna play some too....If you want to see what it's like to run an event this would be a good place to get your feet wet!


Okay guys have at it. What would you like to see happen at these "regular" tournaments/meetings?