Sometimes real life gets in the way...

Things have been crazy the past few months. I'm currently caught in a vicious cycle of sickness--catching a cold from my daughter, only to reinfect her and vice versa. This has been coupled with some home improvement projects. All the family is moving in with my mother-in-law. And work has been busy too. All of this has conspired together to mean that I haven't had time to sit down and paint for ages... :( And there's no end in sight. Perhaps in a few months things will settle down, but until then, I'm stuck taking care of other things. There's no question I'll get back into it, but it'll take some time. Out.

The End is Nigh...

For a long while now I've been working my Brazen Claw army--specifically, the Brazen Claw 2nd Company. It's been a long road filled with distractions due to other projects, as well as burnout painting so much red and blue quartered paint schemes.

Recently I've been trying to inject some self-discipline into myself and not buy any new miniatures for a while. Then I saw my Brazen Claws sitting on the shelf. The company is almost done, mainly just the above miniatures left to go. Painting the whole company seemed like almost an insurmountable task in the beginning. But now, I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Finishing the company before I buy any more miniatures seems to be a reachable goal. Also, as it's going to take me a while (at least a few weeks) to find the time to finish these guys anyway, it'll also help my wallet a bit too.

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 3

I think GW has a workable business model with The Lord of the Rings line, provided they marketed it right.  The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game is a perfectly workable skirmish game--easy enough for a new player to get into with a relative minimum of effort.  Once they become a veteran and want to play games with huge armies, then they can "graduate" into playing War of the Ring, and purchase the additional loads of miniatures.  If The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game was marketed as the "entry-level" game, it might attract new players.  As it is now, it seems to be presented as a sub-game to War of the Ring.


It seems to me that there are three levels of games that could be tapped in a logical progression for each genre.  

1. A fast paced "board" game.  This could consist of interlocking board pieces like Space Hulk or Warhammer Quest, and a few miniatures that act as game pieces.  The game should have simple enough rules to appeal to players who are not gamers (the genre itself should keep the veterans interested).  The game should be something that you could play with your children or disinterested SO.  An example is the Settlers of Catan, which is arguably has some fantasy elements and yet is popular outside of traditional gaming circles.
2. An intermediate level "skirmish" wargame.  This should contain more miniatures than the previous level, while not being huge battles, either.
3. A wargame.  This is the level of the current games of Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, and War of the Ring.

The key to a marketing strategy like this is to ensure that the games should be as compatible as with each other as possible, at least in terms of the miniatures.  That ensures that a new player will "add on" to his army as he progresses up the chain, rather than feel like he has to "start over" each time.  

For each of the three main lines that GW has, I can envision the following tiers:

Warhammer:
    Tier One: Warhammer Quest.  A handful of characters doing a dungeon crawl to accomplish a quest.  
    Tier Two:  Mordheim, or something similar.  Basically warbands fighting each other for whatever reason.
    Tier Three:  Warhammer itself.

Warhammer 40k:
    Tier One:  A Warhammer Quest analogue, perhaps a Rogue Trader or Inquisitorial Retinue on a mission on board a space hulk to accomplish a quest, like retrieve an artifact and then escape.
    Tier Two:  A skirmish game, perhaps more like Necromunda, the original Rogue Trader version of the game, or something along the lines of the Kill Team rules from 6th edition 40k.  A disadvantage of Necromunda itself was that you couldn’t use the miniatures in Warhammer 40k, and, as far as I know, the vice versa.  Suffice it to say, it should a be a squad level game where each player has maybe a dozen miniatures.
    Tier Three:  Warhammer 40k.

The Lord of the Rings
    Tier One:  A game called something like “Escape from Moria”, where the Fellowship (or a small band of other heros), has to escape the mines of Moria before they are captured or killed by its evil denizens.  This is a different concept from the boxed set The Mines of Moria, which is the starter set to The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.  Rather, this game would have the interlocking game pieces like Warhammer Quest or Space Hulk, which creates Moria as the players explore it, searching for an exit.  
    Tier Two:  The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, albeit marketed at the skirmish level like it was originally envisioned.
    Tier Three:  War of the Ring.  

Having a tiered structure like this I think would attract more gamers.  As it is, many new players jump in and get hooked for life, while others start to get involved, build an army, get frustrated at the escalating costs or codex creep or whatever, and then and sell everything on ebay and leave permanently.  Those that are lost are going to tell others about their experiences, and potentially drive others away.  However, with more gaming options available, someone who gets frustrated might instead take a break from the Tier Three game and slide back down to Tier Two or One, and still have fun.  Even if their never go back up to Tier Three, they’re still playing games within the company, and even if they spend way less money than they used to, less is better than none at all.

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 2

Another point of the Specialist Game Rant the I mentioned in Part 1 is that the purpose of the "side games" was to draw in new blood with the side games, in the hopes of hooking them into playing the more expensive flagship games.  What GW supposedly found was that the veteran players were being pulled away by the specialist games rather than new players being hooked into the hobby by them.


On the other hand, I know several people who are gamers but not miniatures gamers, who stay away from GW stuff simply because they don't want to invest the time and money required to buy and paint an army (this is also a primary reason I don't play MMORPGs).  In such a situation, a smaller game like Battlefleet Gothic would be much more palatable to them, as spending less than $100 can get you a decent fleet that won't even take very long to paint--even though many of the miniatures are still expensive metal. 


But it's a maxim of the business industry that it costs ten times more to attract a new customer than to keep a current one.  Every veteran of Warhammer or Warhammer 40k is going to get burned out eventually, and want to play something else, if only for a while.  If the specialist games exist, the veteran will likely go to those.  Even if the veteran never comes back--they're still playing within the company.  If the specialist games aren't available, then the veteran might just leave the company and play another company's game, like Warmachine.  And then they might like that game better...and never come back.


I find myself in that position right now--after not playing Warhammer 40k for a while, I'm looking at Warhammer a little bit, but it'll be a long time before I can build up a workable army, so my motivation is low.  In such a situation, I'd be interested in checking out some of the other games, for example Warhammer Quest, Man O'War, Mordheim, Necromunda, who knows?  But none of them are readily available. 


The main one that is right now, Battlefleet Gothic, is great, and in fact that's the last game I played.  Many of the people who have read my battle reports have said that they've enjoyed that I've incorporated Battlefleet Gothic games into my 40k mini-campaigns.  With GW support of other games, I could potentially do the same thing with them... (for example, a Mordheim or Man O’ War game incorporated with Warhammer.  How can that not be cool?).  GW would do well to have more cross over campaigns and battle reports.  The intermingling of fans of both games can only serve to increase the popularity of both.

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 1

It's been almost three months since I bought anything GW-related. The reasons are many--but boil down to distractions and discipline, pretty much in that order. As can happen with many hobbies, it's become a situation where I want to get back into it, and even feel a little guilty about not being more into it, but I'm not motivated enough to dive in it yet. Possibly this is related to the fact that I haven't even played a game since early June.



My White Dwarf subscription is nearing expiration, and for a while I was seriously considering not renewing (eventually I think I'll crack).  The battle reports in White Dwarf were the original reason I got into doing up my own battle reports, and were by far the most interesting articles to me. Nowadays, even though their battle reports are little more than showcases for their army of the month, I still find them interesting reads, if only to read about the new armies and what has changed.  Sure, I can probably get more news and battle reports than I know what to do with on the internet, but there's still something about having the magazine in hand that is appealing (much in the same way that holding an actual miniature can in ways be more appealing than just looking at a video game character).


Despite the fact that I haven’t played the games all that much recently, nor have a I painted very diligently recently, I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it, both the games and the hobby.  What I like about it, what I don’t like, and what I think is missing.  The benefit of being out of the loop is...perspective.


I found an interesting link while surfing recently: It's some generic rants about the state of GW games and the company's marketing practices, and even though they are 5-6 years old, much of it still rings true.


One of the rants in particular talks about the demise of the Specialist Games, which I think is a real tragedy. The short of the story is this: Back in the old days GW had its two flagship games, Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, but also released rules and miniatures for many other games. These other games, while popular with dedicated fanbases, didn't attract quite the same audience as the two main ones. As such, GW has essentially discontinued the specialist games in favor of their "primary" games.


This seems antithetical to the original purpose of Games Workshop. I don't purport to know what GW's original "mission statement" was, if it even had one, but a company that has a name like "Games Workshop" seems to have an implied purpose. Namely, creating games. Creating two games and then sticking with them (albeit with new editions) doesn't fit that title very well. Back in the 90s when there were a dozen games running around, many with their own dedicated miniatures lines, with new games being developed all the time...that when was Games Workshop actually lived up to its name. Even though I'm not interested in playing all of the games available then, I still wish some of them were still around.


One of the major problems I think is maintaining the multiple miniatures lines. With the move to mostly plastic miniatures, I would think that separate miniatures lines would be easier to maintain. I think the market still exists for Epic 40k and Battlefleet Gothic, and probably a smaller market exists on the fantasy side (Warmaster and Man O'War (the latter despite being discontinued)).  The online communities that remain for these games are a testament to this.


The example set by Gorkamorka was a bad move in my opinion.  while the miniatures themselves were cool and usable in 40k, why the switch to different bases? The only reason I can think of to do it is to provide some distance from 40k and emphasize the game’s differences.  But why would you want to do that?  Perhaps the fear was that people would think the game was essentially the same as 40k, and so there was no reason to get it.  But it’s well known that many players buy the various boxed games because they just want the miniatures.  By having a different basing style, it’s an immediate turn off.


The current method of revitalizing The Lord of the Rings line by making The War of the Ring game is a better approach. Yes, The War of the Ring uses additional bases, but you don't have to re-base the existing models you have--you just plop them into the new, large bases. 



Space Hulk is an anomaly--which makes me think it was an experiment to test the waters.  From the beginning GW said it was a one-shot deal-- (although this has generated no end of skepticism by the cynical, who assumed that it was just a marketing ploy, and that it would remain in production indefinitely).  As a one-shot, the fact that most of the miniatures can’t be used in 40k without modification to their bases isn’t as much of a problem.  But still...I’m hoping that Space Hulk was just a “one shot” in that it they won’t support it beyond the initial release, and not that it was the only “old school” game that they ever intend to re-release.

Medic!

When you get wounded on the battlefield, especially one as brutal as the 40k battlefield, you'd like to think that your side cares enough about you that they'll try to treat your wounds, and possibly even save your life.  The Space Marines have their Apothecaries, whose primary duty is to care for the chapter's geneseed, but also to treat injured Space Marines so they can fight again.  The Imperial Guard, in an attempt to maintain some humanity in the uncaring grinding death machine of the Imperium, have medics to treat their injured guardsmen.  Even orks, after a fashion, have their medics, known as painboyz.  Their treatments might be more dubious, but orks medics exist nonetheless.

But what about the other races?  There's no mention of medical personnel.  Now I wouldn't expect a race like the Necrons to have medics...  And being treated by a medic in the forces of Chaos or Dark Eldar might be considered a fate worse than death.  But there are two other races, for example Eldar and Tau, that you might expect care enough about their own troops to try to salvage them from lingering death on the battlefield.

So here's my Tau Medic.  Keeping my Fire Warriors alive to fight another day.

Space Hulk Genestealer

Finished my first attempt at a Space Hulk Genestealer.  I don't think the above photo really does it justice.  I put gloss varnish on the claws, armor plates, and tongue, but it doesn't show up in the picture.  The highlights are a little more vivid as well on what is mainly a very dark model, but those are hard to see as well. 

Anyway, the color scheme is a reversal of my 40k genestealers.  I wanted something even darker and more sinister looking.

In any even, I'm so behind in painting miniatures that anything at all that I complete is a step in the right direction, hence this post.

Still here...

The past month or so has not been so friendly to me with regards to either blogging or playing 40k (or anything miniature related).

Fun-wise, I've done paintball twice in the past month:

You might think that a significant portion of my time would be taken up by playing this...

...but you would be wrong.

For the most part I've been busy with the backlog of chores and other jobs around the house that have piled up. Every time I think I'll get back into painting something, another distraction comes along. I still have hope though that in the near future I'll be able to find some time to do some painting.

One of my big chores is to reorganize all my storage--since my daughter has been born, baby stuff has been displacing everything else in the house, and the clutter has been piling up in a rather disorganized, space-inefficient manner. So I've had to move lots of crap around, while throwing away lots of stuff that I no longer need. In the midst of this I had to make a heartbreaking decision. My garage has long been the home of lots of my 40k scenery, including a bunch of cityfight terrain, featured in multiple battle reports, for example:

• Orks vs. Space Wolves Meeting Engagement
• Orks vs. Lanterns Meeting Engagement
• Eldar vs. Tau Meeting Engagement
• Eldar vs. Tyranids Meeting Engagement
• Imperial Guard vs. Tyranids Meeting Engagement
• Tyranids vs. Orks Coup de Main
• Brazen Claw vs. Orks Meeting Engagement

Well, the cityfight terrain has been sitting on valuable shelf space for years now, and so I had to make the decision to destroy the city. I hadn't had the chance to use it in years, and when I examined it, it was covered with a thick layer of dust, cobwebs, and other detritus.  While I liked the terrain, it was just way too bulky and underused so I couldn't justify keeping it.  Someday, when I have more room, I'll have to rebuild my terrain collection, and I think my terrain building ability has improved somewhat, so I'll probably be able to do a better job. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

I do have several blog articles that I've worked on sporadically, but none of them are finished yet. Chances are I'll be able to finish one or more of those and post those before I'm able to get back into painting.

So anyway...I'm posting this update to try to tell myself that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that soon I'll be able to get back into painting etc.

Brother Noctis

Painted my first Space Hulk miniature this past weekend, Brother Noctis.

The highlights didn't photograph as well, but they weren't really "extreme" highlights to begin with.  I gave this guy a good coat of Testors Dullcote as well to give the paintjob some staying power.

I'll slowly work on the other miniatures from Space Hulk, but only once in a while to give me some variety from all my other projects...

Ork Land Battleship, Part 16

I'll tell you one thing.  Riveting isn't.

Port-forward track

Starboard-forward track

Port-aft track

Starboard-aft track

These pictures just shows the exteriors of the tracks--I had to do a bunch of riveting on the lower parts of the interiors of the tracks.  I estimate there is something like 1,300 individual rivets on these pieces.  The work isn't hard, it's just very tedious.  In the end I think it's worth it, as the rivets add a lot to the model and make it look ten times better than if all the rivets were not there.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 15

Ok, an Ork Battleship needs gunz. Lots of 'em. So here we go.  Six supa-gatlers. 

These guns are mounted underneath the bow of the battleship, facing forward.  You don't want to be facing them.

Next step I'm working on the forward assault ramp, and lots of riveting.  More to come.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 14

Just a quick update as I got some more structure done. Soon I need to start working on detailing, which is going to take forever...  Here's a (admittedly bad) picture of part of the superstructure, with some detailing on the after part:

The reason being is that I'm mounting another section on top of it--it will be visibile through the trusswork, so I need to put in detailing now.

Adding on the bridge section and another deck leads us to here:

And finally the top of the bridge:

Next post will have some detail work, as I've begun that now.

Miniatures Queue Update

Since I've added the Abandon All Hope blog, I've made some changes to the Miniatures Queue, to reflect the addition of fantasy miniatures that I've added to my task list.

I've split up the Miniatures Queue into subdivisions: 40k, Warhammer, LotR, Battlefleet Gothic, and Space Hulk.  I've left out Epic (for now), because that would truly make things scary.

The queue will probably spike several times in the near future as I get more organized and identify more miniatures I want to paint (and possibly make some ill-advised impulse purchases).

I've removed projects such as terrain projects and other scratchbuilt ideas from the queue.  I do have lots of ideas, but they frequently change.  As the queue is supposed to be a measure of mountain of miniatures I'm trying to reduce, scratchbuilt/terrain projects don't really apply here.

So here's the new queue, as of today:

Warhammer 40k:	185
Lord of the Rings:	147
Warhammer:	80
Space Hulk:	38
Battlefleet Gothic:	3
Total:	453

Ork Land Battleship, Part 13

When I first posted this as a "mystery project", it seemed to generate some interest in figuring out what it might be.  Responding to that, I attempted to do what I could to provide little hints, but without revealing the whole project.  Well, I'm sick of that now--I might as well just start posting progress.

So this post is a sequence of pictures as I assemble the various parts of the Land Battleship from the bottom up.

All of the pieces I'm adding will remain removable in the final product, so I can add detail in each stage, and the various Ork krew will be able to fit inside.

Starting to get big...  I still have some superstructure left to go, mostly in the after section.  Once all that's in place, I'll start detailing everything up!

Ork Land Battleship, Part 12

This will be a relatively small update, showing some of the parts of the superstructure I'm making. Lots of these pieces are material intensive, so I'm finding that I've been using up my stocks of plasticard at an alarming rate.

With the lack of large materials, I suppose I could start on the detail work, but I really want to finish the main structure first, then start on the details from the bottom up.  Here's some pictures of some of my progress:

This is part of the superstructure that will contain a turret and aft of it, a control room.

Same thing, but with the turret ring in place.

An after section, which will go on top of the above section.

And finally, the bridge section.  More to come soon.

Inaugurating a new blog

With the release of Warhammer 8th edition today, I thought I would use it for the inaugural date of my new fantasy-dedicated blog, Abandon All Hope (of ever finishing painting all my miniatures). 

The blog will be focused on the fantasy side, and I'll use it to post Warhammer battle reports, progress on the fantasy minis and/or projects I'm working on, and any general articles I decide to write.

We'll see how it goes.  If it ends up tanking, I may just reincorporate it back into this one, despite "Arcadia Prime" having no direct relevance to the fantasy side of things.  Either way, if things are to grow, they have to change over time.  So rather than become stagnant, I'm branching out and trying new things.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 11

"It's not big enuff."
"Wot?"

"I can't fit all da boyz in da front part."
"Da bow."
"Da bow?"
"Da front part."
"Whaddeva.  It's not big enuff."
"I already extended it once for you."
"You wot?"
"Made it bigga."
"Well make it bigga again, ya git."
"All right."

"Gotta give it some supports, like."

"See, 'dere you go.  It's bigga."
"What's wit da...hole thing?"

"Da wot?"
"Da two parts don't touch.  You cocked it up, ya git!"
"Yeah, well, my foreman messed up with his measuring tape with the first hull extension, and one side was too long."
"Wot about da foreman?"
"I killed him."
"Good."

 "See?  All fixed."

Ork Land Battleship (formerly Mystery Project), Part 10

This weekend I will heading off to the land of James T. Kirk's birth visiting family, so I'll be away for a little while.  But I figured I would post some pictures before I left.

The commenters have guessed it...it's an Ork Battleship.  Sort of...  More like an Ork Land Battleship.

You know that when something requires trusswork that it's going to be big. 

Here's a picture of one of the engine room control panels.

And a picture of the engine room--still a work very much in progress.

And finally, here's an early picture of a cargo bay.

"What, it doesn't look big to me..." (no, I didn't photoshop this picture)

Mystery Project 1, Part 9

Well, I finally broke, and am posting something that's going to give away lots of information.

And finally, this last shot gives a clue as to what army this might belong to:

Mystery Project 1, Part 8

Another part showing some of the complexity--this mechanism won't be visible on the completed model, but it shows some of what will end up being moving parts.

Warhammer Blog

As I mentioned in a previous post, with the imminent release of the 8th edition of Warhammer, I'm tempted to get back into the fantasy side of things.

Well, it looks like I'm going to break down and get back into it. Fear not, this does not mean the end of either Arcadia Prime or my interest in the 40k side of things. 

Just thinking about it I have plenty of ideas for posts. Thoughts on the game and how I originally got into it, pictures of my various armies (old and new), progress as I choose/work on new armies, and battle reports (my original raison d'etre) as they happen.

But I'm struggling as to what to name it.

This blog "Arcadia Prime" is named after the planet where my original Imperial Guard regiment was formed, and as the fleet base of my Battlefleet Gothic fleet (er...rather it should be called Battlefleet Arcadia).  For the purposes of the 40k campaigns I've played, my gamer friends and I assume that they take place in the Arcadia Sector. 

But what to call a fantasy blog?  I think it would be cool to have a title that ties it to my 40k blog, but that's not required.  It's easy to come up with a name for something related to 40k.  It's a big galaxy, far too big to define in detail, so all you have to do is carve out a portion of it and call it your own.  Not so easy in the Warhammer World, since it's just a planet, with locales already defined.  Since many of the races are rooted in their various nations. (e.g., High Elves are on Ulthuan, Bretonnians are in Bretonnia, Lizardmen are in Lustria, and so on)  So it's hard to pick a little niche in the Old World and say "here is where all those races are going to get together and duke it out.

At the same time, this blog isn't going to be about a single race.  In my time I've played any number of races, and I'm going to bully Badelaire to do some posts about his army as well, so this won't be restricted by an individual race.

So I think I should avoid a title that's tied to a location or a specific army and keep it more abstract (or at least, more general).

Also, I don't want to keep it so generic as to be "Darkwing's Warhammer Blog".  Lame.

While the 40k Universe is very dark, with a gothic style to it.  So is the Warhammer World, and I want to capture that somewhat in the title.

Badelaire and I bandied a few ideas around yesterday--here's a few of what I can remember, plus others that I thought of since then.

Battles of the Old World   (kinda generic)
Legends of the Old World  (is it arrogant to talk about my own progress blog as "legends"?)

Thinking about my neverending battle against the tides of unpainted miniatures, and considering the sense of impending doom associated with the Warhammer World, I came up with...
Stemming the tide of Darkness
Abandon All Hope of ever finishing painting all my miniatures. 
The Last Stand
Delaying the Inevitable 
Impending Doom


And another random idea:

Fields of Death  (too morbid?)


Any opinions?  Anyone else have any ideas?

Mystery Project 1, Part 7

Here's a zoom-in of part of the model...showing a couple of in-progress structures that have some kind of function or another...

Mystery Project 1, Part 6

Here's a new part I'm working on. Here's a hint, which may or may not help. There will be two of them.

Warhammer 8th Edition

Warhammer 8th edition is coming out soon (not that this is news to anyone). It's been a long time since I played it, as the 40k side of things has dominated my gaming for a long time now.  I originally played High Elves and have since played Bretonnians.  Due to getting various boxed sets, I've been amassing quite an Empire force as well, which has so far lay untouched and unpainted.  And I've been eyeing Wood Elves for a while now.  I still have tons of miniatures lying around, waiting to be painted.  Maybe this is just the thing to get me into it again.  (so many games, so little time...)

Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 3rd Edition, was the first GW book I ever bought.  Here's a picture of it below--my copy, not a stock photo.  It has weathered the 23 years rather well.  The binding is start to come apart, but other than that it's in remarkably good shape, considering its age and the amount of use it got.

Some thoughts on the price.  At $74.25 it's not cheap.  On the other hand, I bought the 3rd Edition rulebook in 1987 for $34.95.  Don't ask me how I remember that.  I just do.  It is a 278 page hardcover, not full color but with lots of color pages in it.  I still have it after more than two decades, and I'll still flip through it occasionally to look at the art inside, and just to remember how "things were" back in the old days.  I haven't once regretted spending the money, and this was when I was in the 8th grade.  And yes, I used my own money earned from a job, not by begging my parents for it.  Now the new book is $74.25, just over twice the price (2.12 times).  It's also 528 pages, just under twice the size (1.9 times).  It's also full color, and although I haven't seen it, I can imagine the production values are probably much better.  The price difference being largely offset by the bigger size, it comes to only about a 12% increase in net cost.  Considering inflation over 23 years is a lot more than that (about 92% according to my calculations¹), I'd say that this book is a steal.  So for those who are complaining that the new book is overpriced...well, guess what, it's not.

I'm very tempted to pick up the new book. Will I have the chance to play Warhammer very much, if at all? Probably not. And it's hard to justify spending $75 for nostalgia's sake. On the other hand, it just might get me back into playing Warhammer...  But considering the calculations I just did above, I might have convinced myself that it's more than worth it.

Notes
1. CPI Inflation Calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.