5 Stitches

03.14.2017

Every 30 years I have to go to the ER for a cut on my hand. In 1987 I broke a window at BSC which merited a stitch. Yes, A STITCH. This time I was cutting on a plastic jeep with an Xacto knife and not minding the rule "cut away, not towards". Disobeying this rule garnered 5 stitches and a 3 ½ hour visit to the ER. Just to make things looks nastier, some thumbnails are pixelated to prevent projectile disgust.

I have a big dead/numb spot on my thumb now. I think it's like having a callous. I don't really know, as I've never had one before. I've always prided myself on my hands never seeing a hard days work.

It doesn't hurt. It didn't hurt when it happened (scared the hell out of me, but didn't hurt). Annoying, though.

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Thunderbolt Apache Leader Boot Camp

02.12.2017

After a long break, I finally played a game. A solo game. A game I've never played before. With all the minis painting I've been doing, it's even a game with no minis! Thunderbolt Apache Leader is a solo wargame that's been around for a while, and all the solo wargamers love it. It's a little complicated (so the reviews go) but not impossible to pick up. It's been a while since I learned a new game, but thanks to a well written manual and a handful of YouTube videos I had a decent grasp of what I needed to do.

The game has a campaigns and missions within those campaigns. Each game-day you pick enemy battalions to attack, with the makeup of that battalion defined by a card. Attack those units and units attack back. Destroy a certain percentage before you run out of fuel. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Phase 1 is picking the campaign - I selected the introductory Iraq campaign, hoping it would be easier. Next the situation (mission) is picked, which will give the number of points available for both sides to pick forces.

Phase 2 is picking which enemy battalion to attack, which leads to setting up the map, deploying forces, and getting ready for havoc.

This leads to phase 3 - havoc.

There are plenty of rules, and I'm not going over the rules. There's rulebooks and YouTube videos for that. I picked a mission to go after an Assault Battalion. I was supposed to defeat 2 battalions in 1 (game) day for the scenario win conditions, but this is a learning session so I threw everything at the enemy. I had 1 Warthog, 4 Apaches, and a Cobra all loaded out with ordinance. I went out on the attack and things started out pretty good.

Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to enemy ranged attacks and line of sight.

The 2nd turn was horrible. My 1st 4 units that attacked, which consisted of 7 individual attacks, ALL MISSED. When flying a Warthog through hexes of 4 enemy units and you're counting on dropping bombs that will destroy everything in a hex, you should really HIT AT LEAST SOMETHING. This started a barrage of being attacked not just by units in the same hex, but usually by 1 of not 2 more hexes (since they didn't get destroyed in the last turn like they should have).

Units got damaged to the point where penalties made it impossible for them to hit enemy units. I forgot that I needed to leave the map by the end of turn 5, which meant units needed to be facing a certain way to leave the map instead of on an attack run in the wrong direction. I kind of laughed at that one, though.

While the details in the pics aren't any use below, they give a decent idea of how things move along.

The end of mission results added an extra stress on the return to base phase. When rolling the Bingo dice for the final batch of stress, poor Hammer did not fare well again, and ended up with a total of 13 stress (he's unfit to fly at 5).

The enemy force was reduced to half strength (20 or fewer points remaining on the map, there were 15) which was a moral victory as I got nothing else from it game-wise. In the campaign this would affect another mission setup though.

Under the mission scenario I was supposed to defeat 2 battalions on the first day. I deployed all of my troops after 1 battalion, leaving nothing for a 2nd attack on the first day. While I didn't lose the mission outright, I didn't win either. Granted, it was my first time to play and I really shouldn't have won, but I thought deploying everything I had would give me a better chance. Better than I ended up having, at least.

Now that I've played the game I can understand why it's gotten such good review. It's a fun game, especially for a solo game. Multiple times I said "aww, come on!" when things didn't go my way (did I mention the turn where NOTHING HIT?). There's a lot to keep up with but the game board does a good job of helping keep track what happens and in what order. After the 1st turn I was going through the motions like I'd been playing for a while.

Setup takes a while. There's lots of little chits to keep up with, sort, and assign. I've got to find a good way to store all of this so it doesn't take me an hour to go through everything and find what I need to start the next game.

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Nova Corp Trio

02.04.2017

Needing a break from the skin tones I just can't get looking like I want, I opted for some fully armored futuristic military gun guys.

Nova Corp Soldier. I had the most fun playing with the base on this one. There was a normal scattering of small rocks on the base, but for fun I painted them. Metallic blue, then I mixed in some red along with a steel drybrush. Finally a gloss coat wrapped it up at the end. I can't decide if those painted rocks look like alien minerals or some kind of metal debris, but so far I like it.

Nova Corp Rifleman. Honestly I just screwed this one all up. The paint was too thick. Everything ended up too dark. I tried to add some highlights to lighten it up and it just.. well, it just didn't work out too good. This was also my first test using Citadel texture paint on the base, and I'm not sure how that's working out yet.

Nova Corp Sergeant. After glopping on too much paint on the other 2, I decided to try a different approach I'd heard about and just used washes and drybrush. This kept the details on the mini visible and kept the colors lighter. The other 2 ended up too dark, so this was a nice change and I actually ended up pleased with how this one turned out.

Previously I've been priming 3 minis and working on them at the same time, usually by whatever paint color I was using at the time. Then I'd end up getting ahead on the details of one, but somehow end up finishing all of tehm around the same time. This round was different. Since I was screwing up the Rifleman first, I would take whatever bad thing I discovered and try to do the opposite on on of the others - some things worked, a lot didn't. I ended up with 1 mostly finished, yet horribly painted mini, while also having one that barely had any paint on it. Again, this turned into a learning experience more than anything else, a learning experience in lots of little things to not do!

I worked on these off and on for 2 weeks so they took a little longer than what I've been taking for working on a trio of minis. Part of that was work keeping me busier of late, but it was also painting the same thing (paint scheme) 3 times, which felt more like when I was cranking out Dust minis.

Next up is a batch of zombies from Wargames Factory. These came on sprues so step 1 was gluing them together.

The zombies aren't the best cast molds (Wargames Factory as a brand is no longer around). These came in boxes of 30 minis to put together. I'm pretty sure I bought them for around $20/box, so I wasn't expecting the best quality. Basically good enough to have a bunch of zombies running around at some point. I actually have a goal with these, as I recently picked up the Walking Dead: All Out War minis game and every play video I see with painted minis & scenery looks fun. Sure, unpainted would still be fun, but painted is funner! Not sure how long it will take me to get all the fluff together before I play, but that's just part of me being me.

In the interim, I've finally taken the shrinkwrap off a game that's been on the shelf for years: Thunderbolt Apache Leader. It's a solitaire game that's long been lauded for it's quality of rules, components, and game play. It's been a while since I played a game, much less read through a rule book. Next blog-time we'll find out how this went.

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My First World Problems

01.26.2017

This is one of those weeks when little things caught up to me.

I had my eye exam that I've been putting off for 6 months. I only put it off because for some reason we didn't just schedule the time for my follow up eye appointment when I had my last eye exam. The doctor's office sent a reminder that it was time for a checkup, but of course I was too busy at the time to make an appointment. It's been 3 years since my prescription changed, and last time I was right on the cusp of needing a notch stronger. Over the past few months I've been noticing how billboards and road signs were harder to focus on, so it was time to go forward with that notch. The saving grace for this year's exam is that I could, with a guilt free conscience, skip getting my pupils dilated and my eyeball touched - I hate that part.

After getting checked out I was told I was still right on the edge, prescription wise, but I seemed to notice the difference a little more of the finer details with the stronger lenses. I go forward with picking out new glasses. I also decide to get new lenses for one of my existing set of frames, and also replacement lenses for my sunglasses since I'm not getting any type of transitioning lenses. There goes $1000, but this is the one thing I mess with every day so I'd rather pay the money for something I like that be frustrated and pissed off every time I look in the mirror.

Last week my garage door opener died. It's close to 20 years old and these things wear out (according to YouTube). I watched a video or 3 on how to replace one and it seemed to be within my realm of ability. Off to Amazon I went and ordered as close to my existing model as I could find, hoping that I could just switch out wires 1:1. New opener arrives and I start looking at everything closer. First, the wiring connections are just different enough that I can see I'll connect things wrong the first 3 times. Then, I see where the screws that hold everything to the ceiling are and can easily see everything falling down on me as things likely require more than 2 hand and one ladder. I return to my normal ways - getting people. I email garage people and tell them I want to replace an existing opener with one that I have, and I live out in the boonies. I get no replies, as I expected. I call garage people. I learn none of them will install equipment they don't sale. I know it's a scam since they'll service anything, and Chamberlain makes 90% of the garage equipment out there. The hard part, as ever, is getting someone to show up at my house. After learning I can return my Amazon purchased opener I make an appointment for this Friday to have garage people come and install their opener, with the early estimate being about $120 more than what I paid at Amazon - so in essence it will come to $120 in labor which is fair enough to me. Except I think the end price will be higher. I'll find out Friday.

While doing laundry this weekend I washed the key fob for my car. I've washed these before, but something didn't feel right when I picked it out of the washer. Sure enough, it didn't work. The problem here is that it's a smart fob and I don't have anywhere to insert a key, the car just knows the key is nearby. I can press the car start button with the fob and it starts (this is magic to me) but the car doesn't recognize that the key is present and will turn off after 10 minutes. Luckily, I have 1 2nd fob so I'm not completely screwed. I called the service department and they said it just needed a new battery. I don't believe them, but I'll try sticking a new battery in it now that I've again gone to YouTube and learned how to crack open the fob and replace the battery.

I ordered a new battery from Amazon that will be here in 2 days. I could go to some local battery shop and get a battery, and it would be close to $10. I ordered a 4-pack on Amazon for $2.50. It would make even more sense for me to take the battery out of the working fob and stick it in the one I washed to see if it works. With the way it feels my luck has been going, though, I can see that messing up the working battery or maybe I can't put it back together right, then I'm stuck with no way to run the car for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I'm now very paranoid about emptying my pockets when I walk in the door.

With luck in a couple of days all of this will be fixed and I can stop worrying about it. I only worry because it's completely out of my control and I'm at the whim of garage people, USPS delivery, potentially the Hyundai service department, and the eyeglasses construction lab/whoever delivers their stuff to the office. There's probably one of those phobia names for this. Hopefully I'm not at the phobia level though. Damn close though, I bet.

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3 More Minis

01.21.2017

Another trio of minis managed to get painted. I'm still trying out new techniques - I'm not sure if I can call this last batch a success or not. I guess I learned things for better or worse.

The first mini was a version of Mad Max, Rex, Dark Future Hero. At first I thought the mini was just Arnold from Terminator 2, but after seeing the torn/missing sleeve on the leather jacket the right light bulb went off. I tried a couple of new things with Rex. His skin was just white primer with Citadel Reikland Fleshshade. It turned out pretty good but there was still a little too much primer showing through. Instead of just painting everything leather straight black, I painted it grey and applied a Nuln Oil wash with some black drybrush/highlights.

None of that worked at all. It looked like crap, and I managed to get careless with my brush and a couple of grey and black streaks were on Rex's face. Cover up with a layer of (thicker than I meant) black on the leather, some various flesh paint for his face, and Rex was usable but his skin tone was off. Still, I couldn't really improve with what I know.

Next up is Noy James Bond, Daniel Sterling, Secret Agent of GUARD. My intent was to be simple with this one. Grey suit, nothing fancy. I tried a couple of shades of grey to get some highlighting to show up and it mostly worked. Again I used the Fleshshade wash, this time without messing it up. The problem here is that he ends up looking grey - in his face, not just the suit.

Lastly is my mandatory female, Candy, Anime Heroine who looks a lot like the Anime Hero Sugar. Again, Fleshshade for skin. I had a mostly dried up pot of Citadel Sky Blue that I was able to use thanks to my wet palette - it revived the paint pretty good! Very thinned out and then a drybrush of the blue managed to keep the details in the mini sculpt showing. The gunmetal drybrush on the gun just looks grey in the picture though. Of the 3, I'm least frustrated with this one.... I think that's the best way to put it.

I was also practicing more on my secret weapon bases. They've got great detail and I was concentrating on not covering that detail up. For Rex and Bonnie and put down a thick layer of Nuln Oil wash in the cracks & crevices to bring them out, then applied wash layers to rest of the base - a combo of the flesh and earth shades, then topped off with a thinned out Nuln Oil to darken it all and bring the highlights down. It worked best on Bonnie's base where to looks like she's on broken up marble.

Daniel Sterling ended up on a flight deck base. I washed this with grey (maybe 1:4 paint:water) which started out looking like crap because the wash was so thin it wasn't covering enough. I kept with it though, and kept applying washes after the previous has dried. Once the washes gave everything the proper grey tint I was going for, the whole base was drybrushed gunmetal to bring out the steel plating feel. Nuln Oil again, but extremely light, to tone things down a little and shade recesses, with a follow up gunmetal drybrush to try and bring out the top highlights. For all the work (ie multiple layers) that went into it you really can't see that much. The saving grace here is that I didn't completely mess it up.

The next batch up are all space marine themed. No skin to worry about, and they'll probably end up on standard bases to flock.

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