To Post, or Paint, or Purchase or Play

Or otherwise spend my free time.. I have seriously cut back on my usual forum activities.. mostly non game, semi poli-sci and ethics debates (flame wars, insults, and the occasional reasoned rant) and managed to make some progress on a few home projects, tidied up some areas of the Geek Room, and even fit in a game or two.

First the confessions on purchases. Wargames Factory had a deal on Romans on 9.9.09 - a box of plastic Romans for 9.99. Seemed good but I don't have a use for 28mm Romans. Or do I. My recent foray into 4Fnord0k has taught me much about the virtue of kit bashing plastics. For example, I saw some really cool IFnordG made using WHFnordFB EmFnordpire troops and fitted with weapons to look a bit like WWI British Trench Tommies. So I started thinking. (That phrase, I suspect, can be found at the beginning of many misadventures..)

Before I finish that thought, I think I need to explain some other things. In November Chirine and the Aethervox group will be hosting a big Empire of the Petal Throne battle (actually two different battles) at the Source in the cities. I really like Tekumel, as an RPG world, and have decided next year to focus on it. I realized that, if I had spent the money I spent this year on other things, on Tekumel figs, I would have quite a nice little pile of Tekumel lead.

Back to the Sale. I start thinking about kitbashing WGF Romans. And I look at the WGF Numidians, and think, you know, I could swap out some heads, and bodies, and such.. maybe make some decent and varied gaurds, soldiers, and such for Tekumel. So I ordered a couple boxes of Romans cheap, one pack of Numidians at regular price (Cause I was already paying for shipping) and an extra sprue of Ancient Light Infantry bodies, cause I know I am gonna have lots of spare heads. This is an interesting aspect of the hobby I had never considered before, and I believe it is one reason for 4Fnord0K's phenom success. Most of us can't sculpt, but we can glue, and we can, with enough parts, approximate something like our own unique sculpts. Addictive.

So, from there I start looking at my options for my 4Fnord0K army. I need some Armor, but I have been debating looking for cheap models, using proxies, or building paper models based upon age old designs to be found on the web, from back before GFnordW supplied Armor models. Building paper models is kinda fiddly I find.. More on that, perhaps in another post.

So, on Bartertown this guy is selling these painted Warzone plastics. Simple, but nice figures in a Sci-fi versions of a WWI Tommy and a German in Picklehaube. And in Gas Masks. These fit my theme of SteFnordel legFnordion, even if they mean I may never field them in a tourney. I have no interest in Tournaments, so, who cares. He has some, but not enough, so I start scouring Ebay, and find that Prince August sells em in a pack of 80 (4 10 man squads of each type.) So, Purchase no. 2. Haven't done much towards painting my current steel legion, but, now I have an additional 80 40K figures in the paint pile. I am kinda kicking myself for passing up some SentFnordinels, on Ebay though. 9.99 each, and they went without bids. He has reposted them, but, now they have bidders.

And finally, I broke down and and bought a couple more of the MageKnight I felt I needed. They are specialty figs. Two Dragons, a Cyclops and the Giant with the Mounted Dwarves with Machine Guns. He has been holding up my Dwarf HotT army construction for a long time, and, I gotta say, I am very happy with that purchase. That is a cool sculpt, right out of the box. The Cyclops, I am still not sure about. Not a terrible model, but I am not sure how I will use him. An Orc God?

This all brings me to the title of the post.

Am I using shopping as a way to avoid the more time consuming and difficult parts of the hobby - building and painting, and even posting here. Or am I using it as a substitute for playing, which, though fun, is difficult to coordinate? I have managed a few games lately. I will start posting more often and shorter posts, in order to catch up.

Another Battle, and a Blog enhancement

Well, George and I met again on the field of Battle with my two complete MK/HotT Armies, Orcs and Elves. I didn't have a camera, so this are courtesy of George, and we missed the opening deployment.

George was defending, a swamp he took from us in the last battle. His Knights and Riders deployed left flank, and his Shooters, Blades and Magician on right.

I pulled my Troll Artillery and replaced them with a Troll Warband, who served as my General as he was easy to spot. I formed a mass Battle line near the center with Shooters on both wings.

George had deployed plenty of terrain, with bad going two corners and center, a hill on my side left and a lake on his left.

His mounted units moved behind the lake and waited for a chance to hit my flanks. My line was going to prove to be too long as I tried to get passed the lake and I would eventually get muddled up in the Woods in the center.

One reason George deployed terrain so liberally is to force me into areas I would encounter his lurkers, Elvish archers. We had some rules questions when we got that far. Lurker deployment says lurkers must deploy with a front edge in close combat contact with an enemy that has just entered the terrain feature. The pictures below are staged a bit, as we recreated the event of Lurker first deployment.

His Bound came up, and his first pip was to bring on one lurker on my left. Pretend for a moment that the second lurker is not there. My understanding is that my unit then has to turn to face and he then spent another pip to deploy his second lurker on my new right flank. As seen in the second picture.

I got lucky rolls and managed to drive off the primary attacker, which left the flanking lurker deployed. Can someone tell me if we did this wrong?

The lurkers worked really well to bust up my groups and I spent a lot of pips over the next few turns trying to straighten out my lines. George redeployed the lurkers often (actually we were in error there as we didn't realize the cost for redeployment is incremental.. just one of the errors that we now know we committed.)
On Georges right flank my other shooters appear over the crest of the Hill. In retrospect, I am kinda wishing I had deployed all my shooters to one side and marched my warband down my left flank en-mass. Maybe next time..

The next pic is of his lurkers harrassing my shooters as they try to take control of the woods. I drove them off again, and managed to destroy one by breaking off two units of War band and attacking them from the rear.
But now my shooters were in the way of my Warband, who were fragmented and this was going to create problems that kept me from getting a good solid attack going. You can also see the battle field from the opposite direction in the one pic. George is a much better general than I am. He is patient. His troops hardly moved once he had them deployed. This was partially because he rolled a lot of low rolls, but, partially because he is better at defending. War band probably suits me.

I am having trouble with the editor, and pictures, so I am going to give the rest of the battle by narration only, as best as I recall it. The knights attacked my shooters who had moved to protect my right flank from the knights. This proved a stalemate, in large part because of error number two. His first attack was soundly repulsed despite the fact that he caught me in open ground. This surprised us both, but, ok, the shooters peppered the knights with in coming and drove them back before they hit. This emboldened me, so I sallied forth and focused all my fire on one knight. He recoiled, and then advanced to hit us, out in the open. Somehow I missed that this should destroy the shooters, and both sides just kept bouncing off one another.

Over on the other flank, I finally managed to get my warband in a row again and marched on his shooters. I was doing pretty well, pushing them back and subsequently his magician, until I lost the warband leading the way for my general. The way this happened was that George was using his Magician to drop magic on my general, and managed to force him to recoil, which left the front unit unsupported. Now my General was out on his own. Sporadic successes with other warband, and subsequent follow-ups left my line all akimbo again. Eventually a concentration of distant shooting and Magic forced my general into a retreat that caused him to trip over his own unit. From their I conceeded, as we had already stayed long enough for George to get a parking ticket.

There are more pics over at George's Flicker stream.

I have also added a gadget to the blog to keep me on track. The MK/HotT project is in red, as it is my current focus.

Alright, getting sore wrists. More later, I hope.

Guilt

OK, over on Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog he was talking about statistics and the tendency to lose ground in the never ending battle between the unpainted lead and the painter. Now Tim is both more talented and more productive than I am. His blog is updated regularly with pretty pictures of both newly painted and based figures, and actual game sessions. The later often made even more beautiful by his lovely spouse, who actually humors him and plays. I am cheating and using prepaints, and I am not getting anywhere near the same levels of production or, obviously, quality. But one trait we share is a tendency to be distracted by

Squirrel....

distracted by opportunities to buy new shiny bits of metal. With his level of productivity he can probably be forgiven. He may one day catch up, and, if not, he will certainly increase his range of playable games. I, on the other hand, probably need an intervention.

To illustrate:
I am an avid thrift store shopper. 1 I have made great progress, and I mostly do not buy things I have no immediate use for, unless they seem unusually cool. I passed up a copy of Tumbl'in Dice at the local Good will the other day. I pat myself

SQUIRREL...

myself on the back. But, did you know there is a goodwill online. Addicts like me do. And it isn't like the things that sell there are necessarily thrifty. I mostly look at games. Last week Toledo Goodwill put up piles and piles of lead. Sold in X lb lots, mostly. Very little detail on what the lead was. But a box of War Gods of Ægyptus Asar stood out, and attracted my attention. On my foremost back burner, I have a dream of creating a decent set of Tekumel minis. Asar from this line make pretty good proxies for casual gaurds etc. And in another lot I found some Foundry Numidians. They could make good lower paid gaurds. And there were some Castle Parts from MageKnight. Ok, I figured if I could get these cheap, I would be doing OK. Buying them all would lower per unit shipping, and I would have a good set of generics for Tekumel Skirmish. I put a note in my calendar to look up the prices on the closing day.

Yesterday was closing day. Now, there were a lot of potentially great lots to be had on this sale. Most were simply listed by weight. A couple appeared to be 2 pounds of Greeks, of such. One lot was 7.5 pounds of - I think the phrase was Miniatures for a Rollplaying game. In the description they alluded that they "Might" be 40FnordK. Now I don't have any hankering to play 40FnordK, but 7.5 pounds of lead is a lot of figs. They were sitting around 20

Squirrel....

bucks. I had just bought a bag of OG pirates (I hadn't mentioned that indiscretion before, had I? Pretend I didn't now..) and the 30 or so in the bag were less than a pound.

So first I bid on the Asar. I take the lead for about 12 bucks. That is more than I usually like to pay, but far less than the Asar (a 10 pack) normally sell for, and there is also a 10 pack of their Greeks (Spartans?). OK, feeling lucky, I bid on the Numdians, and take the lead there. There are 5 blisters, with a fairly dense number of figs in each. Currently Foundry sells the Numdians in a 70 fig army pack

Squirrel...

army pack, so I could tell what their standard packing ratio was. I figure I should get about 40. Price 17 bucks. That seems a good deal. So, I go for the towers.. and take the lead bid at 5. Coolness. I start pushing my luck. I bid on some others, but can't take the lead. I start feeling skunked. I bid on the 7.5 pounds of maybe 40FnordK, cause it is cheap cheap cheap

Squirrel..

And I get a lead on that. Then some competitor comes along and outbids me. Now it is personal. Mind you, I don't really care about 40FnordK. But they are still cheap. Thrift disorder starts in, and I start looking for a better deal on a bunch of lead amongst these auctions, but it is hard to beat the 7.5 lbs of uncut Pb sitting out there. I bid on an Oriental Terraform Bridge, and take the lead at 10. OK, not terrible. I have a beautiful array of Samurai waiting for a place to play. This will go well with that, and can proxy into Tekumel nicely. I also take the lead in a lot of 1 lb of what I think are gladiators. GLADIATORS... I hadn't even been considering GLADIATORS. ( I justify it now. Gladiators might, possibly be proxied into a Hirilakte Arena. (this is a key indicator of my compulsion, I think. I hear Alcoholics use this kind of rationalization.) Still Gladiators could be fun, and I am ahead at 11 bucks. The Pb is coursing through me. But there are 10 minutes to wait. The bidding high won't last through that kind of

Squirrel...

temptation. I have time to place another bid. I go back and look at the Mega pile. It is a suitcase full of heroin to a dime bag junkie. I think the competition was at 32 bucks. What the hell, I will bid up a bit, and see. Most likely he has a proxy bid much higher. I bid 35. He doesn't. I am in the lead. Mind you I could care less about 40FnordK. And I have no idea what army, or armies, these bad boys come from. They are lead, my need is lead. It may ruin my home, my family, perhaps my job. But it is lead, and it is cheap.

So, about 100 dollars later (shipped), I have a pile of new lead on the way. The real irony; the Asar, my primary target, the thing that got me started in all this, fell victim to a more disciplined sniper during my lead lust 40FnordK shame. I still got the Numidians.. some Gladiators, some towers, a bridge and who knows for what besotted purpose 7.5 pounds of 40FnordK.2


1 Thrift store shopper is just a polite way of saying clinical hoarder.
2. Maybe. they could be something quite different. Won't know for a few days.

Finally, the din of battle

I finally got troops to the table. A classic Orc vs Elf battle. I was Orcs and George was Elves. I didn't have a stronghold for the elves, so I defended. Terrain included a lake, a swamp and some woods. He opted to enter through the rough, which made sense, leaving me on a big open plain with a lake. Not great planning on my part. I definitely need to make some nice terrain here soon.
I set up with my 5 units of Warband on my left flank, and shooters, Arty, and riders on the right. The lake protected me in the middle. Geo set up with his riders and knights on on my right and his shooters on the left with his blades (including his general) in the center. He also had two units of lurkers, off board. My thought was to use the riders to cover the much larger area open on my right, but I am an orc of little patience.

When the elves moved up and parked in the swamp, I rushed out to fight them. Too long just building armies, I guess, though I tend towards this mistake. I am a notoriously poor defender. I did recognize the potential threat on my right flank, and move up just far enough to use the lake as an anchor. But I knew this area was in danger anyway, as knights quick kill warband. Now, we probably made several rules violations along the way. For example, we see Geos Magician in the swamp, but I don't think we were adding the rough going penalty to his bespelling attacks. He managed to hit my General, but only got a recoil, which broke my line. We stalemated here for a while, while I tried to move my Arty up to reach his magician, and move my riders round the flank. Geo was plagued with ones for pip rolls, which kept him from trouncing my sorry butt. And for some reason, I don't have any shots after this one. But I can tell you what happened. First I got lucky and my artillery dropped a rock on his magician, driving him into the murky depths of the swamp. Then his shooter came in for a close combat and killed my artillery. That put us on even footing again on that flank, and we returned to a stale mate. Geo finally rolled a 5 and had the pips to move his Cav up on my left flank. I got lucky and killed a knight, but his other knight killed my a double ranked warband, and turned to roll up the flank. That put me at 11 points dead. He must have also killed a rider, because, the next turn we realized my army was demoralized, but, even if that weren't so, he had a clear shot at my stronghold and would have taken it in another turn or two.

Still, a fun game, held at our FLGS which got a few lookers on at times. People seemed intrigued, but not captivated.

Three months, a few days progress

Three months.. My goodness. In my defense, we did take a two week vacation in there. I do have some photos, and progress to show. I have found the second edge of the huge Mage Knight Purchase that I made. Sorting, classifying, and deciding what to do has been a bear. It is funny, that when I only had about 50 figures, I just grouped them and found 3 reasonable armies. Now, I have choices, and that means I have to weigh options against one another.



The Orcs are pretty well done, with 26 AP made, but they lack variety, being all Warband and Shooters with a couple Riders. I am working on a Cleric, and maybe a Magician and a Hero.








I am Diligently working on the Elves. They have a few units I hope to Flock this evening. They have more variety, with some Blades,

Shooters, a Magician, Riders and Knights. I am working on a Dragon and some Lurkers.
The lurkers are Woodland Snipers, and I have a pile of them. They are not bad sculpts, but a bit awkward, as they are preparing to shoot while retreating. And I may touch up the paint, and diversify the hair color a bit. I also have a another unit of Blades in the works, but, I really need more Shooters. Elves are Shooters by tradition. I have a few selected at Troll and Toad that I will probably buy, just to make a proper Shooter heavy Elvish force.



A couple of other pics of units for armies in the works just to fill the post out a bit. The Centaurs will be Knights in an army of Hybrid Critters. Minotaurs, Satyrs, etc. There are a surprising number of these kinds of figs in my piles of MK. The biggest disappointment is finding that many of the varied Centaur units made for MK are midget sized, completely out of scale for the rest of the line. They might work well for a 15mm or 20mm army, but MK is a big 28mm.




Finally some random Knights and Blades from proposed Human and Amazonian Armies. Got a lot of work to do. Should spend less time arguing with people on the internets. Not gonna change their minds anyway.

no posts for a month, and a broken promise of pictures. I am a failure at this whole blog thing. Real life has been interfering a bit. I was trying to buy a spare house, and we had a death in the family, and such, but, I still could have put up pictures.

On the other hand, I do have some news. My shopping impulse got the best of me and I bought a pile of Mage knight figs. 800. I have been sorting and classifying for HOTT purposes. I should have taken a pic of the table overflowing..

I have also been working on the Dwarf army. Trying to decide on unit types, really. I have Dwarven Fusers, and a couple thunder gunners who will be shooters. I had originally planned on putting mixed melee weapons together for Warband, but, the Orcs are currently warband, and the trolls are leaning towards warband. And, dammit, do I really need more warband? I considered redoing the orcs as Hordes, but I would need more of them. That might be a long term option.

I am also trying to keep enough figs free to base for Song of Blades and Heroes or TFT. I know that I am building my HOTT armies way too large, but the impulse to have spare units for the kind of game I would like to run is strong.

Let me talk, then, a little about my ideas for a HOTT campaign. The rule book has a system, but it is very formal, and kinda dull. First it assumes that all armies deployed are the same size (24 points). But in reality, Commanders deploy forces in variable sizes, so I would like to let the commanders in my campaign do this. Of course, concentrating too many forces in one spot leaves you hinterlands exposed, but that is a risk one might take, if the reward were right.

I was also thinking of adding rules for spying on other armies. A commander could deploy certain units - Heroes, Magicians, Paladins, and Sneakers, into enemy controlled areas for recon missions. If there were enemy units in the area, they would dice to see if they could learn anything. I haven't determined the odds yet, but sneakers and magicians would excel at this, and Paladins and Heroes would we be the weakest. It might also work to use SOBH to play out these encounters, if the spies were discovered.

Another tweak might be to add in supply lines and scavenging. Each area might have a maximum capacity for "living off the land". This is all very nebulous so far. I should probably take pencil to paper and sort it out. I still sort best with pencil and paper.. Old school

My weekend plans are flocked

Tomorrow, 12 hours from now, I will not be playing Fields of Glory at Recon in the the cities. Recon is a quarterly miniatures 'micro con' held by the MMGA* every few months. George and I went a few months back and played some DBM with a fine gentleman down in the cities. He has moved on now; to Field of Glory. In the interim I bought two armies for 15 mm FOG/DBM. Ostrogoths and Romans - a fine match. I had hoped to go down this weekend and take part in a FOG tourney (as a total NOOB) and get my ass kicked up and down the table top. But, today I got hit with OT at work. A mixed blessing, because it means all the things I had planned to do today, I didn't. And therefore I won't be going tonight or tomorrow. I will, however, get a little extra on my next check, so that will help. FOG appears to be on the move in the twin cities. I will probably get more chances to go down and learn to lose gracefully.

Instead, I have put some effort into getting my HOTT armies to table. I still have plenty of figs to base, but I also have enough bad guys and good guys to field some armies - though less strictly themed than I originally envisioned. Basically, for the moment, it will simply be forces of light and forces of darkness.. Orcs allies vs Elves and allies. I won't offer an opinion on which is the force of darkness, as the reader probably has his or her own opinions. Tonight I did a quick and dirty flocking off all my based Elves and allies.They look ok. I used a wet paint flocking technique, using a very wisconsinesque (iron rich mud) brown paint I picked up free at the local haz waste recovery place. I made several trips there last summer to get rid of a few things - more trips than were strictly necessary mind you - each time coming home with a few of their recycled paint cans in various earth and water tones. These are set aside for making scenery, battle mats, etc. Paint applied to base, base dipped in a mixed flock while paint is still wet and Viola! grass on a muddy field.

Tomorrow I hope to do the Orcs and allies. Most of the troops that are close to table ready are core army types. Blades, Spears, Riders, Knights, Warband. The only unusual units are the Magician and the Troll Artillery (I neglected to mention them in the last post, but they were pictured). That's ok for now, I suppose. I also popped one of the elf riders off the base, so that all my rider units have two figs and all my knights will have three, for standardization. It also allows me to make another Elven rider unit, as I still had one in the lab.


* the MMGA website is woefully out of date, but they have an active yahoo group.. if you want to join it, and can't find a link, drop me a note, I will modify this footnote to include one.. for now, I am a bit ty ty.. and rambling on as well oh, bother, it was easier just to add the link..

amazing the typos you see after you post these things. There are still quite a few, but the worst are gone.

Pictures...

Well, I finally have some progress to report on the HotT project, and pics to prove the point. The pics aren't all great, I need to set up a system for consistent, focused images..

An Elf Mage, Two Elf blades, Elf Riders, Knights and Shooters.


I will try to figure out what figs I used for each, at some point. I know the Blades with three elves were cloud warriors.. the shooters are combination of master archers and High Elven archers, the blades with four figs are High Elven warriors. I think the mage is Master Cyrus, and some apprentice adepts or some such.. At some point I will make a chart, maybe. Not mission critical, I guess..I also have a pile of Orcs based...

6 stands of war band, and 2 shooters. And a fair number of figs ready for basing.

if any of my legion fans knows of a tutorial on formatting the page when I put pics into it, I would love to get a link..

Screw it, done is better than perfect

I have been delaying the inevitable decision to give up on the removable basing for my Mage Knight HOTT armies. I am better off just mounting the figures to fixed bases, than taking more time trying to figure out a way to have my cake and eat it too. That said, I will begin this task this week. But I also must work on cleaning the geek room and its geek lab. That may be a project for tomorrow.

I loaned my digital camera to a friend who was taking a class, so pictures may be delayed indefinitely, or I may borrow one from my wife or kid. Right now the background for any pics I took would embarrass my family, and bring social services to clean my house.

I have also succumbed to my ebay compulsion, and purchased more mage knight figures. This time they are packaged as sets built around factions, which, I hope, means some consistency of theme. The pics on the auction were poor, but, if I am lucky, this should represent a nearly complete Elf and Orc army.

I did get Ubuntu online, and, in fact, got a new computer (2.4 G with a 40G hard drive and larger monitor for 45 bucks) to run it on. It has a dual monitor vid card, and I have an old LCD projector I plan to mount in my geek room for RPG purposes. My long term goal is to use the older P3 computer into a wiki server to manage my life, and all that data I have piled up.

I am probably going to start selling some of my board games. This feels like drowning my children, but, I have some projects that are going to demand some funds. A part time job might also be an option.. the horror..

just an update

To keep my hand in, I suppose. I have been fighting with getting Ubuntu on an old puter and wireless for my Geek room. Finally succeeded yesterday, so that is nice. Now I have to find a spare hard drive, cause I can see I am gonna run out of space pretty quick on the 13 gig that was in this one. My thanks to whichever neighbor leaves an open network available, as it was very helpful in the process. When I needed to look up some step I could connect to open wireless networks and go online to look up the problems I was having with our WEP network. Personally, I would rather our wireless network were open, but wireless security is an issue for my wife, so we are WEPed.

On the topic of small victories, I also succeeded with the DIY table saw project, at least marginally. By cutting a steel plate that then sits on the tabletop, and restricts the blades lateral movement, I am managing to cut reasonable HOTT bases. They aren't perfect rectangles, but they will work. There is a problem with Heat, and the subsequent risk of fire. I stop often,and cool the plate and blade with a damp cloth. I will post some pics of this.

Otherwise on the HOTT project, I was notified yesterday that the second pack of Mage Knight figs I bought on Ebay has finally been shipped. I payed for it on the 12th, so this is a bit annoying. I have pretty much finalized my needs for figures, and I am waiting on this order to see what I am short before I contact a dealer in CA who, if I'm lucky, can supply me with everything in one shot - that's assuming his prices are reasonable..

I have been a bit distracted of late by an email I received out of the blue from a gamer we will call, for the moment, Spoon. He is a transplant to the area from a more civilized gamer Haven in the southern part of the state, and, as it turns out, he has a hankering to play some samurai games. He has his own collection of 28mm samurai. So we have been kinda chatting via email about what game system to use for Samurai Skirmish. We have talked about Lord of the Rings, and Songs of Blades and Heroes. I once ran an event using Savage Worlds Showdown, but it seemed too static. Song of Blades looks fun, but perhaps a bit too simplistic for rich genre of Samurai. I am waiting to see a copy of the LOTR rules, and looking at some freebies online.

If I find one that really impresses me I will link it in here somewhere..

Home made table saw.. FAIL

I don't have room, or finances to buy a table saw. So, I have seen on the inter tubes where some enterprising DIYer built his own with a circular power saw through a board, inverted. My circular saw is battery operated, so I figured I would get better mileage out of a power jig saw. I mounted it to the underside of a cheap work bench I picked up some time ago from the Big Box Hardware store. Problem is, it won't cut a straight line, which is the reason for having a table saw. The blade has enough flex that it rides out as I push the board through, making a nice arc, if that's what I wanted. It's not, of course. This is a Game related fail, as I had intended this to be a convenient way to make bases for my HOTT armies. But the results aren't good enough for this purpose.

On a related note, I have been using the Wiz Kids Mage Knight figure Gallery to create army roster image maps. Basically, selecting figs I need to acquire to build each army. Last night I built one for a Dwarf army. It was nice. It was gone this AM, because I neglected to save the file. Not a good day for the gaming projects..

Well, took some time during breaks to think about project priorities. I am thinking I should balance gaming with real life, so I will limit myself to one project at a time, gaming wise, while I select two projects from real life. Eventually, I am hoping to get down to one project in real life. But this Blog isn't about real life, and I doubt that is why anyone might read it.

So, next I got down to the task of choosing a gaming project. This was easy, really. I have invested a fair chunk in the Mage Knight Hordes of the Things project already, and it is the easiest to do. I sorted the 104 figures I bought on Ebay the other day, and can scratch out 4 armies. There are some issues on some figs that need attending, like some broken weapons, and some paint touch up. I need to make many Bases, and then figure out a good way to attach them. If I figure out a way to make them detatchable, I can use them for other things. Some of the figures are quite nice, really. Heroscapers seem to use them a lot. I have a fair pile of Heroscape stuff in my Board Games piles. And I have a friend whose child is a budding game geek in OK who might be interested in any I have left over.

Currently I am thinking of trying to use the snaps that seamstresses sew onto clothing. I will stop at the fabric store tomorrow after Bagpipes and look at options.

I am also looking at the Mage Knight galleries to see what is available to either flesh out the armies I have in the works, or create some new ones. The armies I have assembled from my current supply are

The Trolls
Wood Spirits
Elves/Centaur
Human Empire

I will post some pics as they start looking like HOTT armies and not piles of Mage Knight figures. I could see splitting the Elves/Centaur into two armies if I can track down appropriate figures to bulk up both halves. I would also love to build a Dwarf, Necro, and Orc/Gob army. Mage Knight has a fair number of Steam Punk figures as well, and an all Mech army is feasable. Mounted Units will be a challenge, I think. They will certainly add to the costs.

Enough for now. Staying up late thinking about these things is one reason I don't get them done during the day.