Mik's Moment of Zen, pt. 2

"Nothing like old school Star Wars to cheer up the infirmed."

Mik's Moment of Zen, pt. 1

"Who watches the...errant, red Sharpie?"

Dumping tons and tons of photos (600+!) from my phone recently I came across a few, smirk-worthy pics I thought I'd share with you here in a series of installments with a titled borrowed heavily from the Daily Show. Enjoy, here's the first of twenty!

Oh, by the way, I've kept captions and descriptions on each of these to a minimum in hopes to elicit more conversation via the comments below. It's that comment banter that I've come to enjoy the most.

Mik vs. The Gumbo Gator

Another week, another match. This was my second official doubles match, but we were on the #1 court (I don't know why exactly) so we had a tough match to weather. This was by far the best tennis I've played to date, we still lost but the score (at least the first set) was much more tolerable in my book: 6-3, 6-2. Our opponents were nice enough, if a bit confident. Honestly, slamming a couple of winners in their midst was pretty darn satisfying.

I felt my net play was pretty solid and even my serves, usually a trouble area for me, were surprisingly consistent. My main goal is to get some exercise, lose some weight, and have some fun. So far all three seem to be working.

The 2nd One is my 1st One

March is basically over and I'm just now posting my first painted figure of the year. That's unbelievable. Mind you, I do have a lot of irons in the fire right now, but first figure? March? I had jokingly thought after posting record numbers in painting for 2010 that I might sit back and rest on my laurels, well guess what? Yup, laurel resting is in full effect, you've been warned!

As you can see from the bits carnage up above, 2011's first painting foray was for a second Bull Centaur to add to my Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team, the Gorgons of Gorgoth. The Chaos Dwarves are a surprisingly finesse-driven team, coupled of course with sheer brutality. Bull Centaurs offer the best of both worlds, but why have one Bull Centaur when you can have two?

For the model I got a Bull Centaur standard bearer off of eBay. It came painted already, nothing great but it had a coat or two of paint in seemingly the right places. The model also had a large standard in its right hand an a wicked looking curved sword in its left hand. Both of those had to go of course, as did the top half of his big hat to make way for the customary Lego cowboy hat.


I should've grabbed my other Bull Centaur for some comparison shots. Unlike the first one, this Bull is not the official Blood Bowl model but just from the (now defunct) fantasy range. The proportions of the bull body are exactly the same, but this one is noticeably less beefy. Plus his face sculpt is a tad wonky. Otherwise, based up and on the pitch he should blend in well with the rest of the team.


I don't have a name for this guy yet, but I thought "Dances With Hooves" was kind of funny. Hopefully he'll be making an appearance on the team soon, I have the gold right now to buy him, but I'm still waffling. I need to drop a move-busted Hobgoblin for sure if I do, but then again I could buy a fifth reroll. It seems a bit excessive, but I have a lot of skill-less agility two players out there and I like to push the envelope a bit when it comes to the odds. Enjoy!

For the Emperor...and the d100

I may not be painting anything right now, but that doesn't mean I've been totally idle. I got this trio of Deathwatch books in the mail a few weeks ago and it's taken me some time to sift through them given everything else. I tell you though, the production value of these is outstanding, as I've come to expect from Fantasy Flight. It's a solid RPG system and adds so much fluff and depth to the massive 40k mythos it's not even funny. I've got to credit The Lead Head for giving me inspiration to get off my can and post some Deathwatch.

We've played a lot of Dark Heresy, and briefly toyed around with Rogue Trader but it's Deathwatch than I'm most excited about. I mean, you get to play a Space Marine, end of story. These aren't the Space Marines of the tabletop game that get lost in the points shuffle, these are the true superhuman giants and gods among mere mortal men. The way Space Marines should be!

Remember my Sons of Minos project? It's still around, and now thanks to the rules in the Rites of Battle book, I've been able to whip up an 'official' chapter writeup for these guys thanks to very detailed step-by-steps rules. Look for those coming up.

Mik vs. The Penguin

So I showed up, admittedly a bit nervous, for the second week of my USTA league. Last doubles match against Gene Hackman was less than kind so I was hoping to do a little better this time around. I asked the captain who my partner was on this fine, sunny day. After a page flip or two on the ole trusty team clipboard I got a, "Oh yeah, you're playing singles today."

Okay, I'm a real go-with-the-flow kind of guy, but I've never played singles in my life. I've only been 'playing' for a little less than a year and that has mostly been clinics and practice. This week's opponent I've dubbed the Penguin, but really he was a nice guy. He was shorter than me (which is saying quite a bit, I'm no basketball player!) and a good deal older than me (and I'm no spring chicken!). I didn't win this week either, without further adieu the final score was 6-2, 6-0.

Yeah, I got beat soundly, but technically I won more games this week than previous, plus I did manage to take two games off of a much more experienced opponent. For those readers who actually stuck around this far, thanks. I debated posting anything at all, but this can of worms has already been opened.

Since my posts have been far and few between, there's not much of a gaming update on my end here. We're still acclimating to our newborn, who is doing great, but the painting desk downstairs is collecting dust. I hope to get some gaming in this weekend however.

Great Stuff Over at GW Pertinent

There's some goodness going on over in a fellow blogger's neck of the woods, GW Pertinent, and although I'm an avid reader I never really mention the sites I frequent. Well, Tristan's got a contest up about such a thing, so that was enough to spur me into action. I should say, this is quite the feat in and of itself considering my schedule recently!

So, in no particular order, here's three of my favorite posts of his on different gaming subject matter. They're supposed to all be from the 40k universe, well you might argue they are but frankly I like breaking the rules. Besides, variety is what gaming's all about. And I like breaking the rules.


#1: Warhammer Quest Characters

Obviously I'm a big WHQuest fan as you can tell from my past exploits here. Tristan's taking all of the characters, those form the base game as well as the character packs, and coming up with proxy equivalents to fill in. I particularly like the Trollslayer and Warrior Priest models he's chosen, both of which look better than the actual models that were put out for the game.


#2: Travel Space Hulk

Wow, this project is just way too cool. When I first saw it I knew right away it was destined for greatness. Okay, that might be a bit much, but I knew it was cool. The plan is to have little portable tiles, magnetized Epic figs, and all kinds of corridor-cleansing goodness. When I was a kid I used to really think the magnetized travel mini chess sets were cool, and his post immediately took back to that time of innocence, a time when bygone dreamers lazed about on warm spring days, the grass of the new dawn under their feet.


#3: Blood Bowl

Anything Blood Bowl under the sun can be found here. The thing that impresses me the most is the sheer amount of tournaments Tristan travels to and plays matches in. We're picking up the Blood Bowl gaming around these parts, and I've gotta say it's all of Tristan's Blood Bowl posts that kind of inspire me along the way. Here's a great post about his themed Orc team based off the St. Louis Rams.

Mik vs. Gene Hackman

The title doesn't make much sense, unless you were there. And you weren't. So it has been a while since my failed trek across Middle Earth. That didn't really work out, haha, no pun intended, it wasn't because I miraculously got a new, healthier, thinner body either.

So then I took up tennis, and have been going regularly to a weekly clinic, based mostly on skills, for the past six months or so. I do want to get in shape, and I think some kind of sports route is the better option for me than anything else. Now tennis isn't the same as cycling or whatever, but when you don't do anything, something is better than nothing.

What's a competitive sport without competition? The skills clinics and all are fine, but I've also joined up with the USTA and a couple of days ago had my first sanctioned league match. The guy was good (though our respective skill levels were supposed to relative to one another). He also looked just like a younger Gene Hackman!

Well Gene Hackman put the old Lex Luthor on me and nearly skunked me in the match. My moral victory is I did get a single game off of him, and to his credit he was pretty cool about it. For those keeping score; 6-0, 6-1. This isn't the last you've heard of my exploits on the court, I've committed to a league, so for better or for worse there you have it.

Renegade Guardsmen

Two years ago I had an idea to do a 'traitor' Guard project, I even ran a poll. Last summer I posted a "where are they now?" missive, yet the non-Imperial sanctioned troopers continue to languish. I'm a bit offline right now, so this may be more of an eye-candy post. Anyway, here are the Discilian Apostates and the Sentrek Freemen.


The Apostates are pretty standard plastic Cadians, with the headswap exception. When I think "apostate", I think "hoods". The hooded heads are part of Westwind's Arthurian range and I think they fit pretty well. Above is a selection of the different heads.


Next up are the Sentrek Freemen, and when I think "freemen" I think beards and Hollywood Viking-horned helmets. 'Rag-tag' comes to mind as well. I went with Catachans for these guys, but instead of simple headswaps I went even further with conversions and parts/bits swapping. I really like the look I ended up with here.

Lots of WHFB bits are in this mix...




I didn't show off a lot of the Apostates because frankly if you've seen one hooded headswap Cadian, you've pretty much seen them all. With the Freemen however it came out where each figure is pretty much an individual.


There you go, a bunch of renegades taking up space in the "complete models" bits box.

Mik's Multiplying

Gotta keep it brief...baby Nikolai is here, all nine pounds of him!

Blood Bowl Oskars Tourney

One last pitch-o-rama before I'm sidelined a bit (hey, a pun). This past Sunday we got a bunch of peeps around the game table and threw some blocking dice. I believe there were maybe five total matches played that day. Some people were coming and going so it was hard to keep track. We pulled in some fresh blood as well, including a couple of guys new to the game, but I do believe they'll be back. All in all it was a good evening, good friends, food, drink, and of course fantasy football madness. As usual you can track all of the teams and matches on the newly made league page, the Painsphere. Rock on everyone.