American Independence Day

Happy 233rd birthday America!

Garden Update

The side bed, here's a before shot

Well, let me start off by saying how incredibly fun and incredibly easy gardening has been! I got so excited a while back when the first banana pepper came in, but man, everything is growing now. In fact, things are going a little too well. I didn't space my beds enough, if you click the caption's before pic, you'll see how small everything looked, but now that it's under full swing, these beds are overcrowded.


For want of tomato cages

I did not use tomato cages in the beginning, it seemed like overkill with those tiny little plants. Now I'm kicking myself for not using them. These plants are nearly out of control, I think this entire bed could have been planted with just TWO plants, not the eight I put in there, it's like a jungle in there. I also put four green pepper plants in there too, sadly, they are not getting any light and will probably die at worst, not grow at best.


Some 'maters nestled in the jungle


jalapeños coming along beautifully


Waiting for all the cayennes to turn red


The MVP of the garden, the single banana pepper plant


New Mexico Big Jims, coming along...


I was feeling confident, and on top of the garden I thought I'd start some herbs too. I planted six pots, I don't remember what all is in there, some of the usual (parsley, basil, anise...) and some other ones too. These are a little slow going, but I'm hoping they'll take off. My 'vision ' was that I'd have eleven total herbs and spices so I could boast the same garden as a certain Colonel in the fast food industry. Unless these six take off though...

If you're still reading this far, you may actually care about what I have to say in the botanical fields (and not miffed that a "40k blog" is waxing so not 40k! Well, the missus has bought into the garden now, trying to directly incorporate what we are growing into new recipes. We've been using the banana peppers for a while, and are about to start in on the jalapeños too. It's been good with my daughter too, who has helped with planting, watering, pruning, picking, and the like. I can't get her to eat any of it (yet) but it's been nice doing it with her. Lastly is my secret to success; there is none. Other than the twenty bucks or so I put into the plants in the beginning, and a little elbow grease to making the beds, I've done nothing other than make sure to water it every evening. Oh, and I talk to my plants too.


Now that the plants are as high as my dog, she's stopped messing with them

WIP: Discilian Apostates

First two squads of the first platoon

Sheesh, the above figs are jsut a hundred points? Are you kidding me, haha. Anyway, here's my Discilian Apostates I'm working on for my Traitor Guard army. I should jot down their fluff from my dated Eye of Terror codex, but I'll save that for later. I outfitted each squad the same, the Sergeant has a bolt pistol and there's a flamer in each squad. I also put a Vox caster in each squad, just 'cause the big ole radio pack looks neat.

As I mentioned in my planning post, I went with the Arthurian range of heads from West Wind. Shipping from across the pond wasn't too bad, and I'm happy with what I got. I'm going to need more though, this was kind of a test run. I'll need some heads for the platoon command squad, and maybe some heavy weapon squads too.


Squad One ("cool" name to come)


Squad Two


Dos Sergeants

I like the pose on the right quite a bit, it's kind of like he's shouldering through a door or something. The fellow on the left has a cool hooded head too, but you can't tell from the blurry pics. I took regular marine bolt pistols, cut off the back ends, and placed them in the empty hands where I cut away the existing laspistols.


Blurry flamers

I so did not like the flamers that come in the Cadian box. I didn't like the straps, I didn't like the fuel line going to the backpacks, I didn't like the straight left arm...can you tell there wasn't a whole lot I like about them? I do like the marine flamers though, so I took a regular lasgun arm, cut off the gun at the hand, cut the back end off a marine flamer, then just stuck the two halves together, voilà. They came out not too shabby too!


Vox casters

Again, my pics suck, my camera is old, ugh. It's not like I use decent lighting anyway, ahem. Here's a couple of vox casters, I don't even know what they do, but I'm guessing they'll be important with all the new orders being shouted around.


Initial test heads


Hopefully this gives a better look of the hooded heads

July Tidings

Crab-tastrophy!

Way back in April I realized I was on a pretty good pace to blog a post a day. Next thing I know, May was going just as strong, so I did what I could. Going for the three month hat trick, I planned on getting a post in per day for June as well. Needless to say, don't expect July to be the same, haha. I loved doing the weekly forecasts, but I could only do that because I had so many posts queued up. It's funny, I blog here to keep myself on track with my hobbies, but in a way, the blogging itself detracts from the hobby productivity.

So here we are at the six month mark. Looking at my 2009 totals, let's see where we stand. I don't have a barometer for 'games played', but I'm thinking forty four is a good mark. I only count boardgames, miniature gaming, and RPG's in this category mind you. My 'terrain built' category is pretty weak sauce. I am on pace for about two pieces a month, so I guess that's not too shabby! I'll try to crank a few more pieces out though going into 2010. For 'painted miniatures' I couldn't be more happy with a whopping eighty three figs completed! Let's see if I can push that number at least to a hundred, but I've been feeling burned out as of late. I may take it easy in July, then rev back up in the Fall.

Last, and most importantly, is the 'miniatures bought' category, which is every gamers' bane out there I know. I could delete every other category, but this one would stay. How many of us keep buying fig after fig only to store them and get to them much later (years later even)? I'm on pace to painting 129% of the figures I buy, so I've gotta stay on that track, this means that every time I buy a fig, not only do I paint it, but chances are I'm painting a fig out of the deep freeze as well. I've still got a ton in the queue too!


Mo-pedal-bot!

So what's on tap for the next six months? I need to work in earnest on my Traitor Guard army, that should be priority one. I've also got another idea or two for some more terrain to build, but it's gotta be 'found objects' because I'm kinda broke at the moment! I've got ever so few Dark Angels lingering around too, I need to just stick a fork in them because they are done. What else? I dunno really, any suggestions out there?

3rd Annual Weekend o' Gaming

The ManCabin v3.0

It's been three years in row, so I guess we've got something of an event on our hands. A little backstory; I was a non-traditional college student, going in at age thirty, so it was kind of a big deal for me and my family. Upon graduating with my undergrad in Anthropology, as a graduation present, my wife and daughter gave me a cabin for the weekend up in the Smoky Mountains for me and my buddies to geek out in. Very cool. Well a year later, and I subsequently plowed through my Master's in Education and graduated a second time, thus a second cabin! So once again we packed up the XBox360, a bunch o' boardgames, and a metric ton of food and drink and headed again into the mountains.

We had no celebratory reason this year, but we had to do it again! So most of the original crew, plus a few guest appearances made plans and got yet another cabin with the intent of enjoying good food, fine drink, and nothing but gaming. Of course this year we all pitched in, which was nice for me! The big joke this year was doing a schedule and a "sign up matrix", but all jokes aside, there were a bunch of games to be played. I think our headcount at its height was at ten? Understandably, the entire affair blew by rather quickly, so my memory's a tad suspect, I did keep some notes though, heh.


In the previous two years we took some liquor with us, sure, but also a keg (Harp both years I think). For the sake of calories, ahem, we tripled the Scotch and Bourbon allotment, and left the keg behind (though we still had beer mind you). For food we go all out, and this year was no different making sure steaks we're at the top of the list. Sadly though, we didn't do ribs, which I enjoy quite a bit. This year I was able to bring some of my homegrown peppers though to juice up a little homemade salsa, woohoo!


A stack o' games

You'll have to excuse the blurriness of my pics, I was using my phone because I forgot a proper camera! The above pile of games is just the tip of the iceberg too. We also brought along a host of RPG's, my XBox360 with a ton of music games, and even had a Wii thrown in there for good measure. Only two games come to mind that were missing to my lament; Shadows Over Camelot, and Last Night on Earth (with its expansion).



Blood Bowl!

Wiht the pending release of the video game, plus all the teams I've been cranking out lately, we were in the mood for some serious Blood Bowl! We had a lot of gear on hand for some pure mayhem on the pitch and at one point we were sporting three games simultaneously. It was good because we had a few players who had never had a chance to play before, so they got to try their hands at it too. We had an obscene amount of teams on hand to pick from as well, I think we were pushing twenty completed teams out of the box.


Galaxy Trucker

I've only reported on this game once before, but man, if I knew it was this good, we would've been playing it much more all along. I can safely say that if this game wasn't the MVP of the weekend, it's near the tip of a top five list. We had a lot of people rotating in and out of this one, and many were still coming back for more.


Red November

I know I've posted a couple of times about this one. It's a fun game, a blast really, and I was really looking forward to it maxed out with eight player. Well, we did just that, but it wasn't the frenetic, zany fun I thought it might have been, too many players bogged it all down. There's a reason BBG suggests that it's best with four peeps.


Settlers of Catan

Well, if Galaxy Trucker wasn't quite first place, this one was. Oddly enough, there were a good number of people at the cabin who hadn't played this gem either. Like a knucklehead, after our last big game of Cities and Knights, I left all the pieces of one color behind, arrgh! We were only able to play five player games, but play them we did. The Settlers table was on fire, with many different players rotating in and out of this one too.


Carcassonne

You can't have a gaming weekend without everyone's favorite Meeplecentric winner, Carcassonne! This game is pretty amazing, no matter how many times I play it, it stays awesome. It was Spiel des Jahres after all (so was Catan), with an incredibly easy learning curve, easy setup, and amazingly infinite replay value.


Ca$h 'n Gun$

And now for something completely different. Ca$h 'n Gun$ is just plain fun, that's all there is to it. You play gangsters/crooks/mobsters/whatever and your goal is to split up the loot after a heist, of course your number one negotiating tool is the pistolero. You have a deck of cards in front of you ranging from bluff to full auto, and on the count of three, you point your foam pistol at another player. Before the action cards are revealed you can choose to duck down or stay in the 'negotiation'. Whoever is left standing at the end of each round splits the pot evenly. At the end of the game, those who are left alive compare their fat stacks o' cash and the big winner is (obviously) the one with the most dough.


Bear sign!

You can't have a trip to the Smokies without a bear sighting! This was taken off the back deck, but we saw this fellow early on walking about ten yards in front of our front door. Judging from the little log book left in the cabin, the last few families staying in the same place had also seen bears, multiple ones at times. Pretty cool...


That's a Wrap!

What a blast! I get in a lot of gaming, sure, but once a year I really look forward to this, I'm sure we'll continue the tradition next year. A lot of our gaming buddies who have moved on show up for it too, coming from many states away. What would I change for next year? I don't know, maybe less gaming and more hanging out, haha! I will say this, don't try to use Splenda as a substitute for sugar when making Sangria!

Like I said, I kept a tally of the games being played just for posterity. We played a ton of Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, Wii Golf and the like, but I'm not counting those below. Here's the breakdown of what all went down:

Carcassonne: four plays
Munchkin: one play
Robo Rally: one play
Blood Bowl: three plays
Galaxy Trucker: six plays
Settlers of Catan: six plays
Red November: one play
Ca$h 'n Gun$: four plays