BF2017

11.26.2017

Like most years, I try to save up some of my DVD shopping for Black Friday sales.  If it's not a movie I'm dying to see right when it's released on DVD, starting around September I push these to my "wait for Black Friday" wishlist.  There were a handfull on that list that I ended up buying 3 weeks ago.  Target was running a pretty good sale on most of what I was wanting, and I talked myself into "is it worth a few extra bucks to not stand in line and put up with crowds?" so that I thought I was going to indeed miss those crowds.

Like normal, come Thanksgiving & Black Friday there was price matching galore online.  I could have picked up that handfull of early-purchased movies for a lot less had I waited and bougth them online (have to remember that for next year).  There were sales on other movies that were on my long term "wait until it goes on sale" list, so I racked up on them, too.

The one movie I had been waiting for a really good deal was Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  Disney movies have an added $3 MSRP premium these days, putting the sale price in the $20-$23 range VS the $15 I was hoping to get it for.  The Target ad had advertised $15, but that was for in store/doorbusting.  I was on the lookout for an online match.  Amazon was listing it on Thanksgiving for $23.  Later in the day it dipped to $18.  Wal-Mart had it listed for $18.  If I entered my zip code to find out about in-store pickup, there was a listed price for $9.96 in-store only.  I guess this was their in-store/doorbusting price?  I couldn't add it to my cart for in store pickup for that amount.

If my hope was to avoid crowds whan I made that first Target purchase 3 weeks earlier, I really didn't want to deal with Wal-Mart Black Friday crowds.  Maybe there would be online price matching later?

Thursday I went to my cousin's in Killen for the familial Thanksgivign feast.  On the way back home, around 8PM, I neared the Athens Wal-Mart.  It'd been 2 hours since the doorbusting started.  I wonder if the craziness had died down?  Unlike other stores, Wal-Mart is always open and didn't have to bother with funnelling people in when the doors open.  I spied the parking lot as I neared to see it wasn't packed.  Oh hell, I'd give it a chance.  I parked and went in through the garden center.  There were 3 people checking out.  Not crazy at all.  

Making my way to the back of the store to find the DVD I was after was another story.  Aisles are not spaced for multiple people with buggies to stop and see what's on sale up there, down there, and over there.  Like a ninja I made my way to the back!  Ok, like an old man without a buggy I made my way to the back.  I found an ample stack of Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  I made my way to a barcode scanner and sure enough, it was a $9.96 blu-ray!  I went back to the garden center to checkout and became #3 in line.  10 minutes later I was checked out and on my way home.

If I ever have to go Black Friday shopping at Wal-Mart, I know the right time to do it.  And not having a buggy makes life easier.  That actually sounds like a horrible way to Black Friday shop at Wal-Mart.  But if you're after 1 precise thing, then THAT'S the way to go!

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End of Month Hobby Catch Up

10.30.2017

This past month, yes, evidently I decided to take a month before updating anything, I finally got around to test painting some MDF buidlings. I mentioned previously about picking up some Micro Art buildings for Infinity on sale a few years ago. Since I'd likely not make use of a sci-fi setting that these buildings were meant for, they'd make for a great test for paint and construction of MDF.

I put together a few pieces to form a square and set about testing different spray paints. Tamiya Fine Primer (white and grey) worked perfect. Testors super quality model stuff was pretty good, but I sprayed it a little thick and it ran more than I wanted. Krylon primer was crap. All my Krylon paint has been crap. I then tossed all my Kryolon paint.

Next I dry-fit pieces together to see how this stuff worked. District 5 buildings are meant ot be taken apart and reconfigured as needed, but I was testing stuff and wanted to glue things. Gorilla Wood Glue worked well for me.

There were lots of accidents along the way. 3mm MDF can be brittle in big beefy man hands like mine, especially when trying to squeeze crap together. As it was, stuff broke. Not splintered into a bajillion pieces, but broken enough to be noticed. I knew this would happen, so it gave me an excuse to test battle damage painting on the building. I like battle damage painting!

The 2nd building was an Objective Room. The floor on this one had some interesting detail. The etching when the MDF is cut is deep enough that priming doesn't obliterate everything. To try and bring out some of the details, instead of painting after priming I went through with ink pens and basically played around. It's gaudy, but that's what playing does. In the end it turned out better than I thought.

The final bit of the month was 2 more figure expansions for the Walking Dead game - Tyreese and Lori. I'm trying to practice more non-caucasian skintones, and finally making an effort to give people eyeballs. Both of these need work before I'm anywhere close to average.

Next up is painting and constructing some proper MDF buildings. Some retail stores from TTCombat are on the way.

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Quick Paint on the Core Set

10.03.2017

I had a spurt of activity this past week as I played around with washes of various shades while minimizing the actual painting. The Citadel blue wash on top of white primer gives a really good blue jean look, while the yellow wash finally seems to give the blonde hair shade I've been shooting for. With this batch of zombies and batch of regular folk, the Walking Dead core set is all painted up!

As fast as I was getting through painting these minis I know I rushed through some things and didn't get the quality I've been shooting toward. I think I'll take a figure break and finally try putting together & painting one of the MDF buildings that's sitting around from Black Friday sales past. I'm (mentally) treating this as a throw away/learning attempt so it's ok if I mess it all up. We'll see if any of it turns out decent enough to post pics of.

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Mornings and Hobby Time

09.24.2017

I've been trying some changes to my morning routine to get my day off to a good (better?) start. So often I'm (mostly mentally) tired after getting home from work that I just don't want to do anything. I normally wake up anywhere from an hour to three hours before I need to leave for the office. My body sets its own schedule that I don't always have any say in. Instead of just laying around, I've started doing something. Granted, I'm not being super productive and accomplishing great goals to make my life better, but I feel like I'm not just laying in the bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the alarm to go off.

The first thing I don't readily want to admit to is that I've started watching Supergirl via Netflix. It's cheesy. Oh so cheesy. When I watched the pilot almost a year ago I decided it was too cheesy for me. Somewhere along the way, watching all the other comic book based shows that are out there, I decided I might need a little cheese. Morning, pre-work cheese seems to agree with me. Granted, there's no binge watching for this show. 1 episode per day is the max. Sometimes an episode might take 2 days. Also, in the intor of every episode where Supergiel's voiceover explains "my pod got knocked of course" makes me shake my head and giggle. For some unknown reason I find that funny.

I've also taken to trying to fit in 10 minutes of hobby time in the mornings. Lately, for 2 weeks or so, I've been working on painting the zombie explansion pack for the Walking Dead game. Since running out of zombies on my last game helped to lead to my early demise, having 6 more zombies available to feast on me should help. I know, sounds backwards, huh?

I've also picked up a couple of tidbits to add to the zombie game. Although the Walking Dead game minis are supposedly 1:48 scale, other scales can work depending on what they are. My first 'outer scale' addition is the 1:43 Breaking Bad RV. I'd had my eye on this and had asked the Facebook gaming group for the game if anyone had used it. Nobody had, but suddenly the Amazon item I'd saved was out of stock, looks like I spurred some people to try it maybe. I found another one in stock, and as a bonus it was about $2 cheaper than the first one I'd seen. I placed the order, it came in, and I grabbed a mini for size comparison.

The width looks just about perfect at 2 inches. It's long - 9 inches - which is ok, but the 3 inch height makes it close to the same height as the houses I got from PlastCraft. Hopefully those are incongruities I can get past. The RV needs to be dirtied up for the game though. It's WAY too clean.

Speaking of those PlastCraft houses, they were in need of something. The first thing they needed were driveways and sidewalks. I've got a plan for printing something appropriate out and gluing to some really thin styrene to prevent the paper from curling up. We'll see how that works. But that's not all they need. Much like the lack of power poles were bothering me once I put a rural scene up, the glaring thing that I noticed the houses were missing - mailboxes. Every house needs a mailbox. Thanks to Daniel at work having a 3D printer, and the Google giving me a link to a mailbox model, after some scaling tweaks I have mailboxes!

Now to paint and base those mailboxes!

Next batch of zombies have already been primed. 4 of the 6 I primed are duplicates from the ones I just painted - the expansion set used 6 of the same molds in the base set. I randomly grabbed 6, and even though I just painted 4 of these maybe I can remember to not paint them the same way.

I'm getting dangerously close to my 3rd game of Walking Dead.

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What Kind Of Blog

09.15.2017

I haven't said anything in about a month it seems.  Mosts of my posts these days are about boardgame prep - painting minis, scenery, etc.  Sure, I do other things, but not enough of anything of interest worth writing about.  Maybe I should just dedicate/convert the blog section to be dedicated to boardgame prep?  Most of what I read for fun these days is dedicated to that.  Maybe I'll ponder that until the next post here.  Or another month passes?

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