The Real 2011 in Review, and a Look Towards 2012

2011 was a great year for me in many ways, and I feel blessed for my friends and family and my life in general. 2011 was a pretty good year for my hobby gaming, and since that’s what this blog is about, I’m going to go over it here.

GAMING
I played a good deal of Warhammer 40,000 this year. By my best count, I played 31 games of 40k this year. Most of them were Combat Patrol, and some of them were in tournaments but it’s still a decent amount of games. Over all of the games this year, my average was certainly under .500, but I figure I’m still learning, so that’s not too bad. In 2012, I’d like to play even more, and I’m pretty sure I can accomplish that, especially now that the Nerd Bunker is at least partially set up and ready for play.

I also played some Dwarf King’s Hold (mostly with Lee) and enjoyed that. I wish I would have played some Space Hulk this year, but that game stayed packed away in the weird annex off of the Nerd Bunker. I also didn’t get a chance to play any Song of Blades and Heroes or Flying Lead this year, other than running a bit of SoBH at Fire and Ice last February.

GAMING – HOPES FOR 2012
I’m planning to play more Warhammer 40,000 this year, at home in the Nerd Bunker, at other people’s houses, and at game shops / tournaments. I know Chimera Hobby Shops (both Appleton and Fond du Lac) is planning to run a 40k Combat Patrol or Kill Team (an event smaller point game, just 200 points with special rules) tournament at each shop each month during 2012, on separate weekends, so if I can’t make it to Appleton one weekend, I can still maybe make it to Fond du Lac the next weekend. Or maybe both!

I also really want to play some different games, as well. I want to get back into Song of Blades and Heroes and Flying Lead from Ganesha Games. I want to play more Dwarf King’s Hold and Space Hulk because they’re fun to play – yet, as board/miniature game hybrids, don’t take as much setup and time as some full-blown ‘real’ miniatures games.

I’m also working towards some other skirmish-type miniatures games, like Warmachine and Infinity and MERCS and Hell Dorado and Mordheim. What’s great about these games is that I can frequently put together two forces (as they’re small) and then invite someone over to play and teach them the game and have figures for them to use. That’s a bit more difficult with the bigger army-style games.

PAINTING / MODELING
I got a good deal more work done on this front this year than I did in 2010. As far as miniatures are concerned, I built and modeled more this year versus last, and even painted a little more than I did in 2010. I started a new Warhammer 40k army (Chaos Space Marines) and built quite a few troops and a few vehicles. I was able to get 10 of the standard Chaos Marines painted and six of the Plague Marines, enough for a fully-painted Combat Patrol army at a tournament in September. I finished painting a unit of Kroot for my Tau army, and I started a small army of Black Templar for Combat Patrol. The Black Templar force is now about 20 troopers strong, and a couple of vehicles (out of four) have been started. So, over all – I did okay on the painting and modeling front, quantity-wise. But how was my quality?

I like to think that my painting is currently the best it’s ever been, and I’d like to make sure I progress from here. Three main things have helped my painting this year: I started using a wet palette to thin and mix my paints, I started attaching my models to old pill bottles when painting so I had a nice handle to hold the miniature for painting without actually touching the model, and I started using my airbrush.

I wanted to start using an airbrush last year to help with priming my miniatures (specifically in winter, when it’s too cold to prime models outside with a rattlecan) and using it for basecoats, shading, highlighting, and painting terrain. I’m happy to say that I was able to use it for all of these things this year, and it’s really made a difference. Once I finally got the room cleaned out and a decent work surface and some good lighting, things came together pretty quickly. It’s great for priming, as it uses very little paint and you don’t feel wasteful just priming one model. Basecoating, shading, and highlighting are great with it, too. Colors can be laid down and blended very easily with an airbrush, which gives the models more depth and really improves their look. Overall, I’ve painted some of the best figures I’ve ever painted this year.

PAINTING / MODELING – HOPES FOR 2012
My main hope is simply to get more done and to improve more in my speed and quality. I have a lot of figures built right now, so there’s no reason I won’t start priming and basecoating them in smaller batches and then just get to work. I have a group of 10 figures built for a Combat Patrol tourney near the end of the month, so they’ll be my next big project. You’ll see more about them here in the coming weeks.

CREATING
I talked about starting some sort of podcast or PDF e-zine or something this year, and none of that has really happened. Mainly this was due to other projects taking up my time, one big one being the work I’m doing at Beasts of War. I did a dozen or so interviews at Adepticon this year (a great, minis-only convention outsid of Chicago) and about 18 different pieces at Gen Con, and I finally started making some videos at the end of the year from the studio I built in the basement, the Nerd Bunker. I’m doing the ‘writing’ (such as it is) and the shooting and the presenting and even the editing, and I’m really enjoying it and the response has been really good. I’m looking forward to doing more Nerd Bunker videos in the future (as of this writing, there’s one that just went live, I have one nearly finished editing here, and two more to shoot planned for this weekend and the next week) and I’ll be returning to Adepticon and Gen Con this year, so you can expect more interviews and news from me.

I also shot a simple video for our gaming club (and our friend Ted who is in Afganistan) of a bunch of us competing in a Combat Patrol tournament at Chimera in September. That was also a lot of fun to shoot and edit, and got a decent number of views, especially thanks to a link from the guys at Beasts of War.

CREATING – HOPES FOR 2012
Again, it’s just more: we’re planning for more interviews and segments from Adepticon and Gen Con again this year, and I’m planning on doing a lot of videos from the Nerd Bunker. I’m also hoping to do more gaming club videos and probably revamp the gaming club website, trying to offer some articles about how to do some beginner things in the hobby to help newer people out. We’ll see how it all falls together.

BASEMENTING
The Nerd Bunker got a lot of work this year. Two of the three main walls were completely primed, painted, and detailed. One wall (the longest) is 3/4 prepared, scraped, and primed. However, there’s been a Herculean cleaning effort and there are now three tables (two 4x4s and one 4×6) set up for gaming and the studio for the Nerd Bunker videos is ready, so I feel pretty good about the progress.

Speaking of tables, this summer my good friend Eric and I built a 4×6-foot gaming table outside in the driveway. A few weeks later, my lovely wife helped me bring the pieces in and we put it all together. It’s a monster, and very sturdy. It makes me very happy and I’m glad for all the help. It has been gamed on a few times already in 2011, but I think it’s going to get much more of a workout in the coming year.

BASEMENTING – HOPES FOR 2012
I need to finish up the final wall, and then do a little wiring so I can bring my computer downstairs and get that whole deal all set up. I also need to set up my painting table so I get my painting supplies off of the workbench. It will be a good idea to get some shelves set up, as well. Then it’ll just be putting stuff up on the walls and getting an old couch and maybe a chair, and I’ll have a cozy little bunker to call my own. I’m looking forward to it.

IN CONCLUSION
It was, as I said in the beginning of this post, a great year and I am thankful for it. I got a lot of things done that I wanted to, I
learned new things and progressed my skills in the hobby (at least in painting if not in gaming and winning). I got somewhere around 80,000 views on YouTube (50,000 on just Gen Con videos alone) and started working in earnest with the Beasts of War lads. I look forward to what 2012 brings and hope to be able to progress and do more. I also hope you can do more this year and that everyone has a successful 2012. Thanks for reading!

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Black Templar: A Third Army for Me, I Guess?

So, yeah: I’m building a small Combat Patrol force of Black Templar Space Marines now, because I am mental. If you’re not familiar with the Black Templars, they’re a chapter of the Space Marines that broke off from the Imperial Fists after the Horus Heresy, when the nearly-crippled Imperium of Mankind was trying to split up the remaining Space Marine Legions into smaller Chapters, so as to more easily nip that whole civil war thing in the bud, if you will. The Black Templars swore an oath to destroy the mutant, the heretic and the alien and since their founding, they have been on a non-stop 10,000-year crusade (or even multiple simultaneous crusades) to do just that. They technically don’t even have a home planet or main base of operations on some world; their main base of operations is their fleet of battle barges, strike cruisers and whatnot that are always on the move. These guys follow the ABC: Always Be Crusading.

Figure 1: a Black Templar Marshall and Emperor's Champion tear some stuff up

The fluff is cool and all, but the main reason I’ve chosen this army is because of the modeling and painting aspect, as is usual for me. Sure, they’re Space Marines (and there are a lot of Space Marines out there) but these guys have such specific iconography that I really dig. Their armor is mostly black (‘natch) with white shoulderpads and a little red and gold as accents, specifically on the veterans. Everything has got the cross on it, which is also a cool thing about this army: there’s an inexpensive upgrade box you can buy that just has tons and tons of cool bitz to make your Space Marines really look like Black Templars. It comes with specific shoulderpads, bolters, chainswords, tabards, helmets, even doors for your Rhinos and Landraiders, and all of it is covered with Black Templar iconography. For a pretty low price, you can get your troops kitted out quite nicely with a lot of custom bitz – special stuff that would cost a lot of cash if you were to buy the resin upgrade kits from Forge World.

Figure 2: Hey man... nice sword

Do I need a third army? Well, technically I’m not planning to build a whole full-blown army of Black Templar, just a much smaller Combat Patrol force. I already have enough stuff for my Tau and Chaos Space Marines to easily build 2000-point armies for each, so I don’t plan on going down that road again. That being said, the Tau are supposed to be getting a new codex rulebook sometime soon, between the next six months or a year. When that book comes out, I’ll check it out and if it doesn’t impress me, I could easily see selling my Tau army on eBay or something. Sure, they’re easy to build and paint, but there aren’t many cool options and the modeling is kind of dull, honestly. Chaos and Black Templar speak to me more as a modeler, I guess.

So that (and a little gamer A.D.D.) has caused me to place a small order for some troops and a few small vehicles. I played three games of Combat Patrol this weekend with different Black Templar lists, and I learned a few things, which is good. I’m sure you’ll see more on this blog as I progress forward with this plan. However, there’s a wrinkle: there’s a Combat Patrol tournament coming up on Saturday, January 21st, and I want to play in it. But, I need to make a decision – am I going to play the same list of Chaos Space Marines I played back in September, or a totally new Chaos list? Or am I going to try to crank out Black Templars in time? Or will the Tau make an appearance? I really have no idea at this point. Stay tuned, I guess.

Gaming Debut in the Nerd Bunker

I know this might seem at first glance like a repeat of my previous post about the Nerd bunker, but it’s not. The Nerd Bunker relates to the whole basement, except for the Outlying Territory (the root cellar) and the Forbidden Zone (the weird crawlspace area with the gravel floor). The studio area I built for shooting Beasts of War videos is only a portion of the wonder and greatness that is the Nerd Bunker. The majority of the real estate down there is set up for gaming, and this Saturday it got its large-scale debut.

Left to right: Kelly, Adam, Karl, Ben, Rick, Josh and Kevin are all blinded by the lights

Nine or ten guys showed up and played, painted, chatted, ate chips and drank some beer. I had my normal 4×6 table cleaned off and ready to go, and two new additional temporary 4×4 tables. Everyone mostly brought 400-point Warhammer 40k lists for Combat Patrol games, and the big table was used for team Combat Patrol, which worked pretty well from what I understand.

The battle rages, I guess? It's hard to tell with tabletop miniatures games

I need to work a few bugs out of the layout of the place, and finish the painting and the rest of the organizing, and then I just need to throw a whole bunch of stuff away, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. It took a lot or work to get here, and there’s a lot more work to do, but now at leas the “deadline” is past and I can try and go at a somewhat slower pace, if that’s even possible.

I even got two games in, one against Rick and his Imperial Guard, which I only barely won, in my opinion (but I did successfully pop one of his Chimera transports *BOOM*) and one against Kevin and his Eldar War Walker list, which killed me so bad that there wasn’t even a stain left to clean up at the end (technically, I did kill a couple of his War Walkers, but he has so many of them). It was a good time, and I look forward to playing more games down there in the future.

My First Beasts of War Videos from the Nerd Bunker

I’ve mentioned them on Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and lord-knows-where, but I neglected to link to them here, so I’m fixing that right now. If you don’t know: I have been doing video reports for gaming site Beasts of War for two years now, mainly from Gen Con and Adepticon. Now, I have built a video set in my basement (known as the Nerd Bunker) and I’ll be doing videos for the website on a semi-regular basis, hopefully.

A screenshot from the MERCS CCC Faction unboxing episode of "What's in the Box"

It’ll start mainly with unboxing videos (“What’s in the Box” is the segment name) as that’s currently the intro graphic assets that I have access to. I’m doing all the editing myself, to help take the pressure off of Lloyd at headquarters. I enjoy doing it, and I’ll get better at working within their template as it goes along. Hopefully I’ll be doing some other spotlight videos, maybe some tips and reviews as well.

Anyway, here are a few links:

Check out the Nerd Bunker! Our new set in the USA - This is a short intro video for the Nerd Bunker set. Just explaining who I am and what’s going on.

Mercs CCC Faction Unboxed - This is the first full-blown video from the Nerd Bunker. I show off the six models from the CCC faction for the skirmish miniatures game MERCS. I take them out of the packages and show off the parts, then do a quick commercial and come back and show them all put together. This video is just under 15 minutes long.

There will be more to come, I’ll be shooting two more episodes this upcoming week. I’d tell you to stay tuned, but that metaphor no longer works in the day and age of web video. Hmm. I’ll have to work on that.

WarmaHordes with Sam

So I met with my friend Sam at Chimera in Appleton on Saturday morning to play some WarmaHordes (Warmachine / Hordes) and see how it turns out, with both of us being pretty new to the game. Sam has played more WarmaHordes games in general than I have, and this was actually my first game (I think) under the new Mark II ruleset. We played a 25-point game and had local expert Jason along at the beginning to help us out.

I was playing Khador, and had three warjacks (Juggernaut, Destroyer, and a Decimator), a unit of four Widowmakers (snipers), a Manhunter, and my warcaster was The Butcher. Sam was playing Hordes and had a Trollkin (I think that’s what they’re called) list with more than twice as many figures than me, because he had more troops and fewer warbeasts (the Hordes version of warjacks) than me. We set up, and with Jason’s help we started the fight.

Sam's award-winning troll dude assaulting my painted Destroyer and unpainted Decimator

I won the first game, though I didn’t think I was going to. Sam changed his list up a bit, and then the second game I lost rather badly. I have to admit, I still don’t understand a lot of the rules and the tactics, and some of the rules that I do seem to understand seem wrong to me. I’ll keep at it for awhile, and see if my mind changes about it. It seems to me that the game is all about the alpha strike, and I don’t think I’m very good at that. In the mean time, I’m going to try to finish painting up some of the figures I already have.

Starting the Widowmakers

These are the Widowmakers, sniper units that didn’t do a hell of a lot in the game. I want their overcoats to look like old, worn, almost dusty leather. Therefore, I airbrushed them a dark brown and then dusted them from above with white. After that was all dried, I dulled down the white and warmed up the brown with a wash of GW’s Gryphonne Sepia wash, as I thought the Delvan Mud wash would be too dark and get rid of the dusty nature I was trying to acheive. Next I’ll start working on faces and then picking out details. I’ll let you see how they turn out when they’re done.

Zombies in Spaaaaaace!

I attended a fun, pre-Halloween event at Chimera Hobbies & Games in Appleton on Saturday the 29th. It was called ‘Zombies in Space’ and all I knew going into the event was that each player was supposed to bring up to 150 points of Warhammer 40k troops, no vehicles. I assumed we’d be fighting zombies, so I figured I shouldn’t need heavy, vehicle-killing weapons so I just brought six Plague Marines: five with standard loadout and one was a “technician” (scenario-specific figure worth five extra points) with a flamer.

A lot of people showed up. Evidently this is an annual event and it’s getting more popular.

A lot of zombie-lovers, or zombie-haters more specifically

This year it was played on the Space Hulk tiles. Since the GM was planning on 10 players and 21 showed up, this made things even a bit more cramped, but it still scaled quite nicely. The players were all on the same team in the first mission, and we had a few objectives we all had to try to hold. There were tons of zombies all over the board, and if one of a player’s models died, it then sprang back up as a zombie. It was tough going, but eventually we beat the first mission.

My squad of plague marines, after cleaning up some zombies

The second mission was quite a bit tougher. We split up in to two teams, with each team trying to fight their way through to get to the center of the board and the teleporter off of this ship. Of course, there were many zombies and the entire other team to worry about. Plus, the ship was falling apart from the outer edge: each turn, each of the two GMs (Nick and Jason) would randomly pull a few tiles off of the outer edge of the ship. If there were figures on that tile (zombies or players) then they were lost to space.

Long story short, my intrepid yet putrid plague marines fought through a pile of zombies and got into the main room in the center of the crumbling ship, full of even more zombies and turret defense guns. Due to a botched run roll of a ’1′, I was only able to get my technician with the flamer to the teleporter. All of the rest of my squad was cut down by the defense turrets.

My only survivor. John decided that his swiftly moving crotch would make an excellent backdrop

However, my technician was the first figure for either side to actually get to the teleporter. Very few from either team actually made it. By the end of the mission, we only had three and the other team only had four survivors, but we won because it was based on the percentage of surviors, not the number; the other team ended up having many more figures on its side than we did. And since I fought through it all and got the first figure to the teleporter, I won a zombie-killing shotgun as a prize.

Sweet over/under suction-cup shotgun for killing very weak zombies or for sticking to the fridge

It was a long day but it was still a lot of fun. I knew a bunch of the players, but there was an equal amount there that I had never seen before. I saw a few nicely painted minis and won a neon-colored shotgun. And I killed 30+ zombies over the course of the two missions. Who says gamers don’t live a full life?

Nurgle Chaos Lord Conversion – Work in Progress

I figured I’d make a short post and show you the progress I’m making on my Nurgle Chaos Lord conversion, which I first mentioned in a post from a few weeks ago. I like how he’s turning out so far.

In spectacular 360-Vision!

I did the priming in black with my airbrush, making him the first single figure I’ve primed with my airbrush (I primed a vehicle a month ago with it). I used the Vallejo Black Primer (the bottle, not the spray) and it works great. And easy, really smooth coat that’s easy to get in all the nooks and crannies. Priming with the airbrush also wastes a lot less paint. I’m really looking forward to doing more priming soon.

The basecoat green was also done with the airbrush, using Vallejo Model Air paint. I tried to only get it to come down from the top to give the illusion of highlight and shadow. You can’t really tell how well it worked in these shots, as they’re lit by the shoplight on my workbench which throws off a heck of a shadow by itself. Hopefully, when the figure is finished and I shoot pictures of it in my lightbox setup, then the effect from the airbrush basecoating will really stand out.

So for now, I’m adding some washes to the skin and I’ve painted his chainmail loincloth (*shudder*… pinchy) all metallic, so next it’ll be painting a dark metallic color on his boots and wrists, then figure out what I want to do with his shoulderpads and those big honkin’ spikes.

Starting on MERCS Minis and Surviving OshCon

So another OshCon has come and gone. We had 237 attendees this year, up 17 from last year. This is exactly what we like to see, so we were pretty happy with the turnout. Everything went smoothly and everybody seemed to have a good time.

Some OshCon 2011 gaming in the big room

The day after the convention I traditionally take the day off to recuperate and get my voice back and such. This year was no exception, so I slept in a bit, hung out at the coffee shop a bit, and then came home and did laundry and worked on some minis projects.

Left is not highlighted, the right is highlighted with airbrush

These guys are from the USCR (think corporate Neo-Soviets, I guess) faction from MERCS. I primed them with the Khaki color of Krylon Camouflage spraypaint last week when the weather was still agreeable, and then I highlighted them with my airbrush from above to give them depth. I’ll admit, the shadows are pretty harsh in the above photo, so you can’t really see the effect, but it’s there, and it speeds along the painting process by leaps and bounds. I also used the airbrush to highlight some terrain I had bought from Miniatures Unlimited at OshCon and I primed my Nurgle Chaos Lord conversion. Being able to prime models in the house with my airbrush is going to increase my output greatly.

Anyway, I’ll post again soon with some progress on the tubby little Nurgle Chaos Lord and the USCR guys, and hopefully I’ll have more progress to show off on my Realm of Battle board, as well.

Realm of Battle Board: A Busy Weekend

I purchased a Realm of Battle board from Games Workshop a few years back. I knew I would eventually paint it and get it all set up, but I didn’t have a table to put it on, so it sat in a case, in the closet, for A Long Time.

You’ve heard a story like this before.

Anyway, this summer I did finally build a gaming table with the help of friends, so now I really had no excuse: I had done all of the research, figured out my plan of attack, my materials and how I was going to make it happen and I just had to start. And a few weeks ago, I did start… but only on one of the six 2×2-foot pieces. I looked at it as a test.

And then on Saturday, I woke up and decided that today was the day.

A dusty, sandy wasteland sitting in my driveway

I’ll be honest, it’s still not finished. There’s all kinds of little rocks and details and skulls and skulls and skulls (if you’ve seen this thing close-up, you know that the planet it represents seems to be made of skulls) so those things still need to be painted, and there’s a little bit of airbrush shading and highlight drybrushing I want to try, and then there’ll be the Dullcote clear varnish spray to protect it. But then, it’ll be completely done. I would say I’m at 70% at this point, maybe 75%.

Also this weekend, I primed a daemon prince and my entire USCR faction (six models) for the skirmish game MERCS. I’ll have blog posts about those things as they move along, I assure you. I’m really looking forward to painting the USCR guys. The daemon prince is a little scary because he’s so big and detailed.

On Sunday, I built a Nurgle Chaos Lord that I had picked up at Chimera a few weeks ago and converted him to make him work for Warhammer 40,000 instead of Warhammer Fantasy, which is what he was designed for. I like the way he’s turning out so far:

He seems to have a little problem there... and there... and there...

I mainly just added an old Chaos Space Marine backpack, a Nurgle shoulderpad on his right shoulder, a bolt pistol on his hip, and of course the bayonet he seems to be perplexed by, but overall not too concerned with. I’m really looking forward to painting him (as I do with nearly any kind of figure with the words plague or nurgle in the title) and will probably prime him and basecoat him with my airbrush some time after OshCon, which is coming up this weekend. If you can, you should attend and play some games. It’s a good time, if you’re a gamer. If you’re not a gamer, then you might want to make other plans.