General Update - End of June

Summer is here!  I hope you are all staying safe and healthy - not only physically healthy, but mentally healthy!  As usual, I have several projects underway, but admittedly my progress has slowed with the arrival of summer.  I have had a number of things around the house to get done that has detracted from my hobby time.

The largest hit to that time has been my water heater.  It finally died after springing a leak.  It destroyed part of my garage floor.  I had the water heater replaced with a tank-less option (highly recommended!) and now I need to replace the floor in the garage (overdue as well, so no big deal --- will knock that out this weekend).

My AWI project moves along nicely.  I'll have Breed's (Bunker) Hill ready for September gaming, and Guilford Courthouse before the end of the year.  I had some existing units already and have finally got those based up (pictures below).  8 units below, but I actually have 12 American units completed painting.  The first wave of British are also due by the end of this week.

You can see some hulls for my 1:600 scale Napoleonic ships in the back left of the picture above --- more of those coming as well.  The British ships (~26) for Trafalgar are all completed.

I continue to love GMB flags - they are top notch and I use them whenever I can - the golden standard!

Roy Scaife has taken on WW2 naval for our group - doing this at 1:1200 scale (normally this is 1:2400 scale, so this large size) ... ships are all painted and just in need of basing.

I did finish up my Uruk-hai painting for that large pike block ...

Diverting from miniatures ...

The other detractor from hobby time - but at least related - has been my family diving head first into what I would call "more advanced" boardgames.  Two boardgames that have been at the top of the popularity list for the family is Root (just an AWESOME game) and Everdell.  We've played all of the expansions for both games, even doing the "massive" Everdell game, playing with all expansions at once.

I even hosted a couple of "casino nights" which the family/kids loved (yes, a small amount of money was involved) ...

Diverting massively from miniatures ...

I'm fortunate to have a nice backyard (at least for California standards).  I decided to host some outdoor movie nights for the family - which is actually fairly easy to accomplish.  I purchased a large outdoor screen from Amazon along with an HD projector --- all this for <$400 which is not bad at all considering the screen is 14 feet wide and the movie is in HD quality at that size!

I watched LOTR: Return of the King --- which was EPIC on such a large screen!  This is a great activity to do with the family.

I even built a raised garden and planted some vegetables ... picture below is older, the veggies are coming in nicely now.

I also managed to refinish my dinning room table which came out really nice.

Ok, enough of the non-gaming/non-miniatures stuff ... just sharing to show some things I've been doing to keep myself busy in these crazy times.  I hope you are all finding ways to make yourself happy/keep sane in what seems like a never ends cycle of bad global events.  I'm also working on some major updates to my ACW and Napoleonic rules based on many games/play testing and results --- finally homing in on what can be a "finally done" set of rules.  With that also comes my AWI rules.

Onward and upward folks!  Stay tuned for more!

CelestiCon 2014 Report

Well, another CelestiCon has come and gone for me and I must say each year it keeps getting better and better.  A special thanks to Roy Scaife, John Lantz, Dan Kerrick, Les Marshall and Wade Shows for making my con going experiences always a fun time no matter where we go.

This is a long one --- covering lots of bases here ...

I arrived at the con on Friday around 10am after getting a large breakfast.  We immediately checked in and moved our stuff into the hotel so we could hunker down into some gaming ASAP.  The first game up was a Bolt Action scenario based around the same bocage scenario I have posted previously, with some minor tweaks to the army lists (a continued work in progress).

The German PanzerSchreck teams could not miss ... they disabled several US tanks which really slowed down the US advance.  We may still have some army list tweaking to do ... but it was hard to say given the abnormally good dice rolls we saw throughout the game.  By turn 8 the US was near the final bocage line, but the remaining US armour was to far back to support and the game was called as a German victory.  Pictures below ...

12:45 - getting ready to start the game at 1pm ...
several more players arrived and filled out our ranks.

Saturday morning was the culmination of the effort I put into my Pegasus Bridge project.  I started setting up at 9am and I hoped to run through the game two times (5 players each time).  We had both experienced players and some completely new to the rules, but each game was 2-2.5 hours ... so we played through the complete scenario two times in 5 hours ... setup and cleanup made the whole engagement 6 hours ... not too shabby!

In both games the British managed to pull out the victory.  Both games were blood baths and a heck of a lot of fun for those who played.  I used the night fighting rules for Bolt Action (Flare).  Each turn I rolled a D6 to see if a flare went up - on a 4+ there is a flare for that turn and visibility is normal.  If there is no flare, visibility is limited to 2D6 + some +/-6" increments for various conditions.  One of the +6" conditions for night fighting is if you're firing you get a "muzzle flashes" marker.  I used the Warlord Games firepower lights to represent muzzle flashes ... which looked really cool (you'll see some of them in the picture below).  I'll be doing a separate post to cover the finalized scenario and special rules that we landed on this week ... but for now just enjoy the pictures.

We played several board games throughout the weekend - many of which were new to me which was awesome!  Dan supported the Kickstarter for "Heroes Wanted" - which we all enjoyed (my only problem with it was that I believe the "Quirk" rules have no real bearing on the game and should be optional ... easy enough to house rule).

Les brought several interesting games we played ... "Vinci" - which is the basis for the popular Small World games from Days of Wonder (the map is of Europe and races are rather combinations of skills/trades and such).

"Star Realms" was another which was so awesome I had to buy it right there at the con and play it several times throughout the weekend (deck building game, quick, very deadly).

"A Study In Emerald" was fun (a game about the H.P. Lovecraft universe ... with the setting being after the Old Ones have taken over and the revolution is one to restore the pre-Old One way of life - players being either loyal to the Old Ones or resisting against them).

John Lantz bought "Legendary: Encounters" which is the cooperative deck building game set in the Aliens universe (yes, covering all the movies)!  Lots of great quotes can be rolled out for this game - which was a very fun and challenging play experience.

John also brought "Modern Naval Battles: Global Warfare" along to try out.  I played the Canadian fleet (yes, they have one and it is a separate fleet you can run).  We played a six player game which was I think too much for the system.  My Canadians did well but could match the overwhelming force put against them by some of the other fleets.

I had brought "Takenoko" along ... which is a fun and fast paced game of a Panda that east bamboo and poops points while the gardener attempts to keep growing the bamboo ... a great light game that gamers and the family both can enjoy.

I was able to get a screaming deal on the Wave 2 ships for Sails of Glory at the Friday Flea Market (thanks Dan!!) ... I got 9 ships, which are pictures below ...

Throughout the weekend (mostly on Friday afternoon though ... but some from Saturday and Sunday) I took pictures of various games in progress, the miniatures room ... the hallway immediately outside of the miniatures room ...

DropZone Commander games getting ready to kick off.

A DropZone Commander game in progress.

This is a chariot racing game that I see run each year.

A neat post-apocalyptic skirmish game that looked
really neat and had several players. 

A game of 15mm WW2 getting ready - using
the Fireball Forward rules.

That's what I have for now.  I got a ton of gaming in and now it's on to the next convention and the next big project ... which there'll be more about that soon ... until then, happy gaming everyone!