Hobby Highs and Horrors

How cool is this guy? Love the camo pants!

This week my Man Cave saw the best and worst of our hobby.


Firstly, a wonderful parcel arrived from Canada, courtesy of Snow Lord Curt himself - my reverse Curtgeld thank you for my assistance as a Minion during AHPC VII.

Opening the box...

 Thanks indeed Curt - I love this guy (and his strange similarity to the main character from Fallout New Vegas) but the message under the base is the best bit

This great treat more than made up for a far more frustrating incident from Sunday afternoon.  Odin the playful Beagle pup decided that my completed, based and varnished new Scrapper force needed to be removed from the drying area and reduced to its component parts again. Scrapped indeed.  Not quite the way I wanted to post these guys

On the bright side, some bits are still attached... Little bugger!

His Majesty at the National Portrait Gallery

Had to go visit His Majesty today to make it a balanced trip

7th Amnesiaversary Giveaway Winner!

A big hello and thanks to Millsy and Evan over at the Cannister and Grape blog. The boys recently ran a "7th Amnesiaversary Giveaway" to celebrate their blogversary. I was thrilled to be told I had won the GW Nurgle Chaos Lord prize and he is now destined to be a Star Player or a Chaos Warrior for one of Right Stuff's Blood Bowl teams.

Thanks Lads - very much appreciated!  Congrats on the blog milestone and I'm looking forward to many more years of fantastic eye candy there!

http://canisterandgrape.blogspot.com/2015/10/lucky-7-amnesiaversary-giveaway-winners.html?showComment=1444224825266#c1084645378368751378

"Star Quarterback Glorg Puscrusher"

PS If you are looking for today's Tanktober image look here

New Pike & Shot rules under way!

The Pikeman's Lament, a new addition to the expanding Osprey war-games rules series by Dan Mersey (of Lion Rampart fame and others).  While this will be of limited use to our micro scale gaming, this promises to rejuvenate a bit of interest in the period which is always a good thing!

http://merseybooks.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-pike-shot-rules-under-way.html

Cancelled: Secrets of the Third Reich 2 KS

Three minutes ago the KS page was updated with...

After an initial surge the project was plagued with issues and challenges.  Clearly West Wind are going to rethink their entire campaign.  I'm looking forward to hearing something more official from them soon.

Perhaps its for the best.  An improved and more effective campaign later is better than a failed project now I guess.  Disappointing though

EDIT - here is the broadcast from Westwind:

Good afternoon everyone, and thanks for jumping onboard and supporting our Secrets of the Third Reich II project. We were off to a good start but as you know, over the last few days, things have been more or less at a standstill. 

We always knew, to complete SoTRII it was going to be a costly exercise. We brought this project to Kickstarter in the hope at we would gain the support to be able to take the game where we wanted to take it, as financial backing for a small business such as West Wind is an absolute must to undertake a project the size of Secrets. All our finger have been well and truly crossed that enough backers would come in to make this possible.  
 
So to conclude, it greatly pains us to say that we have reached the following decision. After long consideration, number crunching to try to make this fit, plus a great deal of soul searching, it is with great regret that we have no alternative but to cancel the project. We have over the last few days looked at all the options to try to work around this to make it financially viable, and please believe us, this is not a decision that we have taken lightly. This is purely a financial business decision that we have had to take. We are very very sorry.
 
We will not be able to take the project to Kickstarter again in a different format, however, we will be looking at other avenues as a possible way forward outside of Kickstarter, together with John Bailey and Ian Hill.
 
We know you are going to be disappointed that we are not able to take this project any further here, we too are very disappointed, and we thank you all very much indeed for your commitment and support of ourselves and the project since launch.
 
With very best regards,
 
Andy & Wendy Cooper, West Wind Productions 

------

EDIT 2 - Andy later posted on the KS comments section:

Thanks everyone for taking time to post your kind words and also your views. This is by no means a fail, just not in the current offer which was not viable with the number of backers. 

We are in talks with John Bailey and Ian Hill and looking at a good way forward for both rules and miniatures. So at the moment it's business as usual for West Wind and Forged in Battle. We will keep you posted as we have more information. Thanks again for your superb support.

Secrets of the Third Reich 2 KS now live

Got to be in it to win it and its 50% funded in less than a day!  The mechs have been redesigned and some of the stretch goals are very interesting, including the Japanese and USMC forces! Note that its only a 20 day campaign...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/832150598/1949-sotr-ii-the-weird-wwii-miniatures-game

Whats not to like about 3-headed werewolves?

Yes...MORE Figures!

Who doesn't like coming home to such a package...

OK, we really should stop buying lead for a bit now...but I snagged a bulk deal from a nice chap at Bartertown (Hi Dave!) which included not only a full Army Pack but also more dragoons, heavy guns, some tumbrils and carts, and 10 old OOP Baccus buildings with thatched roofs and tudor style walls.

So many goodies...

This brings our collection to 5 full Army packs plus some extras - enough Alan thinks to do Marston Moor.  I may also take some of the foot figs and base them specifically to defend a city in ditches and so on, rather than in normal battlefield order.  Then we can play a siege game or two, maybe even recreate the Battles for Arnescote Castle from the series 'By the Sword Divided' :-)

The lead piles grows, the boys are happy and somewhere the God of Wargaming smiles!

Unreasonable distractions

Awesomely, this is one of our textbooks

There are very real perils in undertaking the fascinating Strategy and Policy course of study I am doing at the moment.  Each week we study a new war in depth, analysing the strategies of different sides, diplomatic and economic factors, operational conduct and so on.  Clearly this has a reading burden associated with it, but its also a burden to the gamer in that every week something shiny comes along!  One week I want to refight the Pelopennesian War between Athens and Sparta, the next week it is the French Indian Wars, then the Napoleonic era... you can see the problem!  Really quite unfair to the wargamer's typically undisciplined mind.

This week really threatened to make me crumble as we revisited the German Wars of Unification, reactivating my desire to game the FPW which I have mostly held a lid on since the early 1990s.  I almost fell off the wagon for Baccus's lovely 6mm range last year, so I just have to close my eyes and think about all the other projects I have in train or planned.  Like my 6mm ECW project.  Of course, if somebody wanted to jump in (I'm thinking of you 'Bish) I might have to change my mind yet again..

And before anyone says it: yes, its great to have such a dilemma!

The Royal Standard has been raised!

Forces are now mobilising both for His Majesty and in support of the Parliamentarian cause.  

For whom do you declare?

The King's standard is raised at Nottingham castle, August 1642.  

An intermittent blog by two gamers sharing their adventures into wargaming the ECW in 6mm.

There goes the weekend...

This Thanksgiving Holiday weekend I planned to try and get ahead a bit on my various study readings and the papers I need to write. That just went out the window with this release today.  Hurry up and download will you!!!

https://www.civilization.com/en/games/civilization-beyond-earth/

Some interesting stats

Like many bloggers I rejoice in seeing hit counters hit milestones; enjoying the idea that other, similar minded gamers enjoy my humble gaming and hobby related ramblings. While I was away this blog surpassed the heart warming half a million hits mark, but how many of them are truly attributed to human action as opposed to some kind of 'bot' I wondered?

So it was with interest that I looked at my blog stats for the past year, during which my post count was barely a third of the previous 12 months.  I know that many 'bots' hit sites with recent updates - if so, does this perhaps show a truer representation of gamer activity?

Honestly, I just hope that whoever pops by finds something of interest or a link that takes them somewhere they like.  I found this trend of interest though and wanted to share it.  Hits aren't anything really, its the blogosphere community and interaction that I think is fantastic - I missed being part of it while away.

cheers

A few Miscellaneous purchases

Finally managed to get home for the weekend (first time in almost two months) and found all the goodies I ordered before I went away.  These included (in no particular order):

'The Abberation', by Vesper On games
Just loved this mini- great for both Cthulhu/Pulp/Horror games, and also for use as a Beast of Nurgle in Blood Bowl (he is about the size of a Troll fig, maybe a touch larger but not too much).  See what I did there?  Convincing yourself that it two uses = bargain = justified :-)

Axis Gorilla Squad aka "Blutkreuz Korps Kampfaffen Squad" - giant mutated monkeys.  'Nuff said.  Clearly everybody needs some of these! (Note to self: repaint them using the great tips by ferret Labs here)

Cloning Tanks, by WestWind Productions.  Look at the picture - no reasoning required!

Deathwing card expansion by FFG - I love this game as its easily played solo and deosnt take up much space. I've been looking forward to this one for a little while and now have all four expansions.

A Ginger for the Brat Pack

If you haven't seen it before, Tristan from the blog GW Pertinent (and who kindly got tme the swag and figs from Chaos Cup last year) is putting together a Necromunda Gang based on Eldar Harlequins named the Spire Brats. His concept is that the figs are painted by people all around the world and then sent to him.  Its coming along great and he has seven already as you can see here.

Well here you go buddy - this will be number 8 for your Brats!  I went for the traditional loud colour scheme with a quartering style, but made sure the colours were different to the other models.  Then I specifically gave him flaming red hair for the ginger painter!  He will be in the mail this week for the journey from Oz to Canada.

NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone

"The potentially habitable alien world, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one which could conceivably harbor life, scientists said."
At least we know where the invading Bug horde will come from now!
http://www.space.com/13821-nasa-kepler-alien-planets-habitable-zone.html

Planet Kepler 22b - Lovely this time of year

EDIT: Maybe those dirty bugs are already here!!!
http://gizmodo.com/5865808/has-nasas-satellite-captured-an-unidentified-object-near-mercury

Most liveable alien worlds ranked

I think this is pretty cool:

Scientists have outlined which moons and planets are most likely to harbour extra-terrestrial life.

Among the most habitable alien worlds were Saturn's moon Titan and the exoplanet Gliese 581g - thought to reside some 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.

The international team devised two rating systems to assess the probability of hosting alien life.  They have published their results in the journal Astrobiology.

In their paper, the authors propose two different indices: an Earth Similarity Index (ESI) and a Planetary Habitability Index (PHI).

Continue reading the main story

"The first question is whether Earth-like conditions can be found on other worlds, since we know empirically that those conditions could harbour life," said co-author Dr Dirk Schulze-Makuch from Washington State University, US.

"The second question is whether conditions exist on exoplanets that suggest the possibility of other forms of life, whether known to us or not."

As the name suggests, the ESI rates planets and moons on how Earth-like they are, taking into account such factors as size, density and distance from the parent star.

The PHI looks at a different set of factors, such as whether the world has a rocky or frozen surface, whether it has an atmosphere or a magnetic field.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15863549

One in 3,200 chance a person will be hit by 18,000mph out-of-control craft today

So keep your helmets on!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2040818/On-alert-satellite-crash-One-3-200-chance-person-hit-18-000mph-control-craft-today.html

A Visit to Eureka

On the weekend we managed to get a few hours to travel up and visit our friend Nic at Eureka Miniatures.

Naturally we loaded up with goodies while we were there, and had a squizz at his great

Dinotruppen display figs: 

Ale Drinking Figures

Halfling Drinking Ale
http://freeboardgamesnow.com/halflingdrinkingale.aspx

The perfect companion for the friar here:
http://www.impactminiatures.com/minis/big/Shadowforge_FriarBarrels.jpg

Several great gaming uses come to mind for these fellows!Know any others?
(apart from the Viking Party figures: http://tasmancave.blogspot.com/2011/03/six-stages-of-drinking-as-told-by.html)

Free online MW trial

MW is offering some free trial editions of their magazine, right off the net.
Check them out here:

http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/443/1286

Congrats Comrade!

Over the weekend, Comrade James went in his first WHFB tournament playing his lizardmen army. From of a total of 12 players, he came 5th overall, was equal third for army presentation and equal second for sportmanship.

Bravo Sir - well done indeed!  And to my mind that last one is the most important.