Secret Project Revealed

I am very excited to finally reveal to the diceRolla community the results of a secret project that I've been working on for most of the past year. Sorry to have kept so many of you in the dark about this while all the behind-the-scenes stuff was going on, I thought it would be more appropriate to keep quiet until everything was in place. So it now brings me incredible joy to introduce you to my newest gaming and painting buddy, Oswald Montgomery Jones!

Little Monty!

Ozzie (or Monty for you fans of The Simpsons) was born earlier this week on Monday and then my wife and I adopted him on Wednesday. Hopefully this explains at least somewhat why I have not been blogging as much as I used to. I've been rather preoccupied these last couple months. ;) With all that we had to do in order to become eligible and qualify for the adoption, I've had less time than usual for hobbying and blogging, though that was certainly a trade-off I was more than happy to make.

We'll be staying just across the border in South Carolina for the next couple of weeks as we await the legal authority to travel across state-lines with our new baby. During this time I don't have a lot to do other than taking care of Ozzie and our now three year old daughter, Cassidy, who is by the way very happy to be a big sister. :) Therefore I'm optimistic that I'll be able to post a few more times over the coming days about some of the gaming that I managed to squeeze in recently. Also I have with me a small stack of wargaming rulebooks to read, so if everything goes alright I might be able to review a couple of them as well. Of course I'll likely be delirious from a lack of sleep but that's never stopped me before.... Here is what I have on hand to help pass the time:

5150 - Star Army

Larger Than Life

Adventures in the Lost Lands

Strange Aeons

Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten (BETA)

Fear and Faith

Pulp City

Heavy Gear Blitz!

Songs of Our Ancestors

If anyone is particularly interested in hearing more about any of these games, let me know and I'll put it (or them) at the top of the list for examination and discussion. I've already started testing out Strange Aeons and so far I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. It feels like it was written especially for me as it hits all the right buttons, being a skirmish-level game based on the Cthulhu Mythos, and I suspect that it will become a big part of my hobby life once things settle down again. Therefore I'll likely start the reviews with Strange Aeons unless someone would prefer me to begin elsewhere.

Okay friends, that's it for now. If you want to check out the beginning of what promises to be a cool series about another secret Mystery Project (and one that is actually intended to benefit fellow bloggers too!), you can go check out Thor's blog Creative Twilight. Here's the link for that: Mystery Project WIP. So until next time, happy painting and gaming!!

Day 4 Giveaway Finale

Hello again, friends! Well we've come to the end of the "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" contest with just one more 2.5 oz jar of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver left to give out. Before doing so however I would like to say thanks one more time to all of you who have visited diceRolla and found something here worth your while. After spending a lot of time reading other folks' blogs I feel that my own can be, putting it nicely, something of an oddball at times. Therefore I am very grateful to have reached as many people as I have and to have sustained so many regular readers over the past two and a half years. This has always been a personally motivated thing that I enjoy doing, but it certainly has made it much more fun getting to interact with such well informed, interesting, and lively people.

Okay, now that I'm done with the blubbering part let's get on to the exciting conclusion and announce the final winner. So who will be joining GopherDave, The Grim Darkness, and nickthewise in the winners' circle? Why it is none other than...

Spacejacker

Congratulations! I encourage everyone so inclined to find out more about Spacejacker's hobby interests by visiting his blogs, Tiny Solitary Soldiers and Nano Solo, as they are chock-full of miniature goodness. I've been a long time fan of painting and gaming with 15mm scale and smaller miniatures, although my experience with them has been mostly in the realm of historical wargaming. Spacejacker however has some of the most incredible small scale sci-fi minis and scenery that I have ever seen. When I first started reading Tiny Solitary Soldiers, I found it so inspiring that I was barely able to restrain myself from buying up as many little spacemen and monsters as I could afford. In fact I still find that quite tempting but have held off from doing so mainly because there are already enough projects clamoring for my attention. Nonetheless I'm sure at some point I'll pick up at least a few 15mm sci-fi minis and... um... just see where it goes from there. ;) When you get a chance, Spacejacker, please email me and let me know where I should mail your jar of Brush Cleaner and Preserver.

Alright, that's about it for this contest so let's wrap it up. Although I was able to give out four prizes this time around, unfortunately that leaves 230 of you going home empty handed so to speak. I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a way to do something nice for each of you. Instead I'll just have to say how grateful I am for all of you who have helped make diceRolla so much more than I ever imagined it would become. THANK YOU!

And until next time, happy painting and gaming!

Day 3 Giveaway Winner

Hey, hey! It's that time again to announce another winner in the always thrilling, "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" giveaway extravaganza. Okay, that might be overselling it just a bit. :) But I do have another 2.5 oz jar of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver to award to one of my faithful readers chosen randomly from The Esoteric Order of Jason. If you haven't seen anything about this before and want to know what's going on, I welcome you to visit the original post in which I explain the rationale behind this contest.

I'm quickly running out of steam this evening and, due to spending the past week with my in-laws, my patience and cognitive functioning is just about used up. Therefore let's move right on to the fun part. Joining our two previous winners, GopherDave and The Grim Darkness, tonight's lucky winner is...

nickthewise

Congratulations, Nick! 40k players may know nickthewise from his Dark Eldar Blog where he is focused on compiling as much information as possible about those most sinister of space elves. If however you're not already familiar with him, I've copied the following little introduction from one of the other blogs he contributes to regularly, The Dice Abide.

Nick aka nickthewise
Started Playing: 1996
Favorite 40k Army: Tactically I’m really drawn to the new Dark Eldar and the versatility the new Codex offers. Fluff-wise, Eldar has always been my favorite – I can’t wait for their new Codex!
Favorite Fantasy Army: I’m a 40k snob, sorry!
Current Armies: Dark Eldar (8,500), Eldar (6,000), Grey Knights (4,500)
Favorite Aspect of Hobby: I really enjoy the tactical aspect of the hobby, and pitting my wits against my opponents. I’m also a big collector and really enjoy seeing Rouge Trader era models and armies.

With more than 14,000 points of Eldar, of both the Dark and Craftworld varieties, that's some serious dedication. I don't think the Eldar are in any danger of dying off so long as nickthewise is in their corner. It looks like he's also got a significant pile of mon-keigh Grey Knights as well, but I'm pretty sure that's just to make his Eldar feel superior in comparison. (Yes it's true, Eldar even look down their noses at the Grey Knights, despite those humans somehow being better psykers than them.) In case there's still something left to be painted from that huge collection of minis, hopefully this brush cleaner will come in handy.

Thanks again to everyone for reading my blog, I'll be back tomorrow to announce the winner of the last jar of brush soap for this giveaway. And nickthewise, please email me and let me know where I should send your prize. Happy painting and gaming!

Day 2 Giveaway Winner

Hello and welcome to Day 2 of the "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" giveaway. In case you've arrived here and don't know what this is about, you can check out yesterday's post for a full explanation. Short version is that, beginning on Thanksgiving and going through this coming Sunday, I'm randomly selecting one person each day from those Following this blog to win a 2.5 oz container of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver. It's just meant to be a little way of saying thanks to all you good people who read my blog.

With GopherDave having won the first one, that leaves three more jars left to give out. Therefore today's winner is...

The Grim Darkness

Congratulations! The Grim Darkness is author of the aptly named blog, The Grim Darkness. Well somehow I'd missed out before on signing up for his blog but I took care of that earlier today. I highly recommend for anyone interested to pay him a visit, he's got some fantastic models and scenery that are definitely worth taking a look at. I especially like his Death Guard Chaos Marines and his recent work on an outstanding 28mm Inquisitorial warband. I appreciate his style of painting and am hopeful this brush soap will prove to be helpful with future projects.

Okay, that's it for tonight. The Grim Darkness, if you would please send me an email (you can find the address near the top of my blog's right-hand column) we can work out where you would like me to send your prize. Thanks again for supporting diceRolla! And for everyone else, please check back tomorrow because I'll be choosing another winner. These past several days I've been in New York staying with my in-laws so it will likely once again be later on in the evening before I get a chance to post the next winner.

So until then, happy gaming!

Thanks Plus Giving Plus You

Since today is Thanksgiving for those of us celebrating in the good old U. S. of A, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you kind people who visit this blog. Thank you! I really appreciate all the support I've received over the past few years and have enjoyed immensely hearing from each you. I've had a blast sharing my hobby life with you and I look forward to continuing to do so for a long time to come.

In the spirit of the holiday I am kicking off a little giveaway for all my blogging buddies as a way of expressing how thankful I am for your readership and your participation in the diceRolla experience. Starting now and going through Sunday, each day one member of The Esoteric Order of Jason will be randomly chosen to win a 2.5 oz tub of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver. This brush soap works like a charm and will seriously extend the life of your brushes, not to mention getting out all that left over pigment stuck to your bristles.

And so the first winner in our "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" drawing is...

GopherDave, aka Dave, aka TheDude

Congratulations Dave! For those of you who don't know him, Dave is one of the co-owners of Armored Gopher Games in Urbana, Illinois. As well as being an entrepreneur, Dave is also a philosopher, artist, devoted husband and father, and one hell of a sharp dresser. It was a great honor for me to meet him and to be able to spend some time talking about our favorite games when I stopped by his store on my way to Adepticon earlier this year. I'm therefore pretty psyched that his number came up first for the contest.

Although Dave has won this round, I've got three more jars of Brush Cleaner to give away. Using the trusty random number generator we'll do this all over again tomorrow to select the next winner. So thanks again to everyone for checking out my blog and offering me so much encouragement along the way. Happy painting and gaming... and of course, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Laborious Day

Well I hope everyone had either a great Labor Day, or else a great Monday, depending on whether or not this was a holiday for you. I'm more or less taking the night off from the blog in honor of the occasion, although I have kept myself busy today cleaning and organizing my hobby space for the first time since moving into the new house. In the process I'm finding some neat things that I haven't seen in a while, such as my old set of Gorkamorka toys.

The big box has been opened but everything is there and still on the sprue, while the two boxes of Ork Boyz remain unopened. Hmm... I wonder if I could track down some more of the vehicles from that era and start a Gorkamorka campaign. Then again maybe I should just sell the stuff and be done with it. It's not like I've gotten much use out of them in the previous fourteen or so years, and I imagine there are still people who would have a blast with this game. Whether I keep the Gorkamorka gear or sell it off, this was nonetheless a nice find for the day. Groovy.

Okay, that's it for now. Tomorrow I'll get back to my usual blogging nonsense. Happy gaming and painting!

Frontline Infinity

I'm taking a little break from the hobby whatnots tonight as another round of family visitors arrived earlier today. Thursdays are nominally my Infinity day for blogging, although during my first month back to diceRolla I hardly did anything at all related to the game and so it was skipped a few times in my weekly rotation. This is personally disappointing for me as Infinity is one of the games which I am right now most excited about. I am eager to become more familiar with it and I look forward to playing the game as well as painting a bunch of miniatures from Corvus Belli's beautiful range of models, it's just taken me longer to get started than I had hoped.

Therefore I've been sort of frustrated by these largely self-made delays in getting underway with Infinity. Fortunately to help me get the regular Infinity-fix that I have been craving, not long ago I started reading an awesome wargaming blog called Frontline Gamer that is written by an unabashed fan of the game. There is a lot of excellent content on the blog concerned with other games besides Infinity so I recommend you check it out even if that one particular game does not interest you. The Infinity articles however are the main reason that I've been digging through Frontline Gamer's blog archives as they are not only very clear, informative, and well written, but also the passion the author has for this game is infectious. Therefore tonight I would like to highlight a few of my favorite Infinity articles that I've found over at Frontline Gamer. Here is a selection of them:

Infinity: The best game there's ever been? Part 1 -- The start of a thorough discussion on why Infinity kicks so much ass.

Infinity: The best game there's ever been? Part 2 -- A continuation of Frontline Gamer's thesis on why we should all be playing Infinity.

Infinity: The best game there's ever been? Part 3 -- Umm... part 3, right? Yes, just in case you need more convincing this one is about the Infinity community.

Building an Infinity army (plus how not to do it) -- Along with covering a lot of important points to keep in mind while deciding whom to take to war, this article is also an awesome introduction to the game and goes over many of the key features to playing Infinity.

Infinity factions Haiku's : A really fun article offering a summation of each of the factions for Infinity, presented in the form of a haiku. Perfect!

There are of course quite a few other Infinity articles posted at Frontline Gamer, those that I have highlighted here were as I said simply my favorites. Thus if you're interested in the game I encourage you to visit Frontline Gamer's blog as it looks to be a great resource, and not just for Infinity but a slew of other games as well. Frontline Gamer is also currently participating in the HoP Idol competition at the House of Paincakes blog network so check there too for more hobby goodness. Voting for week 2 has just begun should you want to help decide who will carry on to next week's round. (Hint, hint.)

Alright, that's it for now. If you haven't previously done so, take a moment when you can and go visit Frontline Gamer, I think you will enjoy it. Goodnight!

250th Post and Some Evil Dead

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to write on either of the topics I had in mind for tonight's Warhammer posting. We had a surprise visit from family today and will now be entertaining house guests for the next few days. This was a very happy surprise for us but it has curtailed somewhat the time I have available for blogging this evening. What I had planned on writing about can certainly wait another week so it doesn't seem sensible to rush through either of them.

This does however happen to be my 250th post for this blog, and I am not above taking the easy way out. Therefore tonight diceRolla is celebrating having reached an entirely arbitrary and meaningless posting milestone. Hooray for blogging! Hooray for me! Woo-hoo! I believe this is the first of these of which I have taken note and mentioned, so please forgive the gratuitous nature of my self-congratulation. It's taken diceRolla some 30 months to arrive at this point and it seems like a long time coming. So… ta da!

It wouldn't feel right, however, to mark such an important accomplishment [snicker, snicker] without anything at all related to our shared interest in the world of gaming. I thus went digging through my photo albums in search of something that would be appropriate. Here then is what I found for such a solemn occasion:

This... is my BOOMSTICK!

This photograph is from one of the team 40k tournament games I played in earlier this year at Adepticon. In the first round our team was matched against a group of guys from Florida called Skull-N-Bonz who had brought to the event an alliance of Imperial Guard and Nurgle-based Chaos Marines. You can probably tell from the picture that what really made their armies outstanding was that they were all themed around one of my favorite movies, Army of Darkness. The miniature version of Ash pictured above was used as a counts-as Colonel 'Iron Hand' Straken for one of their Guard armies. I was playing on the adjacent table and so did not get the chance to go up against Colonel Ash myself, though I did enjoy watching him chew his way through a big group of Space Wolves. I tip my hat to the Skull-N-Bonz crew for bringing such a fun army to the tournament and for being an awesome group of competitors, too. Well done, guys!

Lastly I want to say a big THANK YOU to all the fantastic people who have been reading my blog, however long that happens to have been. It's been a blast getting to share with you my experiences with this hobby and I greatly appreciate you providing me with such an opportunity. Thanks for sticking with me!

Goodnight, everybody. And remember… shop smart, shop S-Mart. :)

Newton's First Law of Blogging

The past month ended up being a rather slow time on the hobby front, but that's not to say I have been entirely idle these past several weeks. After fighting unsuccessfully against inertia, with regards to both hobby stuff and blogging, I decided it would be best for me to take a step back and consider what it is that I want to do with my little corner of the Internets. To that end I packed a satchel full of my favorite rulebooks along with some dice, then ascended to the top of my mountain for a period of deep contemplation and soul searching.

Reviewing the latest from Wargames Research Group

And so what did my meditations upon the great mystery of the d6 reveal to me? Not much really. I did however make up my mind about what to do with this diceRolla blog. I feel that it is time to take a more deliberative approach to updating my blog rather than the haphazard manner which I have previously employed. Therefore starting tomorrow I am going to attempt to keep a regular posting schedule and will initially aim for at least a daily post.

Early on in the history of this blog I tried to post something every day but that experience ended in disaster and tedium. With a newborn in the house there wasn't a whole lot of hobby time for me and even less time available in which to post anything meaningful, but conditions have changed since then and I'm optimistic about being able to maintain my routine a little more successfully this time around. It's probably best however to still think of this as something of an experiment as it very well may crash and burn within a matter of days. With that caveat out of the way, this is the posting schedule I have in mind:

Monday - WH40k

Tuesday - Warhammer Fantasy

Wednesday - Warmachine/Hordes

Thursday - Infinity

Friday - Malifaux

Saturday - Dystopian Wars

Sunday - Open/Misc.

Like I said, I'm not sure how long this will last and I may want to revise the rotation as I go along, but I do feel like this will be a good start even if just to try it out. I enjoy a variety of games and certainly love painting a wide range of miniatures, so I think this schedule would be fairly representative of my current hobby interests. Also as I inevitably have a lot of different projects underway at the same time I figure I might as well make something of that too, thus making my tendency to jump around a feature of the blog. We'll see how it goes but it can't be any worse than my recent, nonexistent blogging efforts, right?

So the new era of my diceRolla blogging adventures is set to begin on the 1st of August. May it last for years and years, or until I become burned out and bored. Hmm... I give it two weeks. :) In the spirit of new beginnings I'll be kicking off a brand new 40k army project tomorrow, previewed in the following picture.

Who loves hedonism and corruption? I do, I do!

Thanks again to all my fantastic readers and the many friends I've made through our shared passion for glue and paint. If this blogging experiment works out, hopefully you'll hear from me more than just once a month. Really my main goal is to get that hobby inertia working once again in my favor, and since this blog has been such a source of motivation and encouragement for me in the past, I believe I can use it as a way of launching back into the swing of things. So until tomorrow (fingers crossed)... happy gaming and painting, everybody!

Mountain Warfare

And........ I'm back.

Hello and welcome to the start of a new era for this blog. Well it's not really so dramatic as that I suppose, this is just my first post since moving in to my new home in Asheville, NC. Hooray! My family and I have now lived here for a full month and we are exceedingly happy with our new surroundings. Rather than live in the city itself, we're actually located just a few miles north in the town of Weaverville, on the side of a mountain at an altitude of 2400 feet. Having spent the last decade at sea-level, it has been an exciting experience so far adjusting to mountain life. Driving here can still feel somewhat frightening at times, but otherwise everything is going swimmingly.

My goodness, though, how time flies! I can hardly believe it's been six weeks since I last wrote anything for this blog, and it has been even longer since I had any productive hobby time too. It's taken longer than I thought it would to get settled in, and indeed there is still unpacking left to do, but at this point we've done enough around the house that I can begin thinking about spare time again. Ah... spare time. :) Therefore this weekend I hope to start painting again and I should be able to return to my regular (i.e., erratic and random) blogging habits as well. That's the plan at least, yippie!

I am by the way very eager to become reacquainted with all of my favorite blogs, too. I have not been able to keep up with everyone's hobby activities as much as I would have liked over the past couple of months. Nonetheless I assume it's been quiet around the old blogosphere during my absence from it. Surely there have been no significant changes or controversies concerning our hobby, nor any upheavals or customer revolts of any kind during that time.

Right...?

Regardless I am thrilled to be back and look forward to sharing lots of wargaming hobby goodness with all my readers. Thanks for sticking with me, I appreciate your patience and continued support. Mahalo!

Incomprehensibly Tough Competition

After stopping by my LGS a few days ago for what was likely my last visit, I am forced to admit that I have not given the 40k scene there the proper consideration or respect that it deserves. I now believe that my soon to be former LGS can in fact boast of having the toughest competition of any game store in the world. Need proof? Check out this sign-up sheet I spotted for an upcoming 1850 point tournament they will soon be hosting:

That's right, both Chuck Norris AND Bruce Lee have signed up to compete! Who would have ever guessed that my humble LGS would host the most epic confrontation in the history of table top gaming, if not that of all humankind? And you just know those guys are total WAACs, too. ;) I'm not sure about his skill as a 40k player but I'd say Springsteen is a lock for third place and the Players' Choice award. I mean really, who's going to give The Boss a bad sportsmanship score? (Uh, besides Julianne Philips, that is.)

Considering the dramatic rise in competition at my LGS, I am a little sad that I won't be able to play in this tournament, nor even be in attendance to witness what will surely be a battle for the ages. The reason for this is that I am officially moving to Asheville, North Carolina a mere two weeks from today... hooray! No more speculation or hopeful optimism, this time around everything has been confirmed and it's truly a done deal. We will be moving into our new place on June 2nd so unfortunately I expect that I will be too busy even for the colossal Norris v. Lee showdown scheduled for next weekend.

Preparing for my family's move to NC has been the main cause of my recent decline in blogging, as well as my overall lack of hobby time over the past two weeks. Since my previous post I've picked up my paintbrush just one other time before doing so again earlier tonight to work a little more on Captain Homer. I'd like to finish him and a few other small projects before I have to finally pack away the last of my hobby gear, though I am not terribly concerned should I end up having only a minimum of painting time for the rest of the month.

Nonetheless I will try to post at least a few more times before then. Tonight I just wanted to provide a little update on what I've been doing and to offer an explanation for my absence from the blog. I've been really busy but I am so excited about moving that it has been very much worth all the associated hassles. I hope all of you are doing quite well too, goodbye for now!

Old Stuff Day!

As decreed by Rob over at Warhammer 39,999, today is Old Stuff Day for all of us hobby bloggers. It's a chance to dust off some old favorites and to take another look at posts that may have been forgotten, overlooked, or otherwise somehow missed by the internet since originally being posted. Not many folks have the time or interest to dig around through archived material to find the juicy bits, and certainly some blogs [ahem, diceRolla, cough cough] do not make it terribly accessible either. So hooray for Old Stuff Day!

For today's fun I've picked out links to a sampling of vintage diceRolla posts, including a bunch of still unfinished projects, all of which I plan on returning to later this year. Therefore as well as being a sort of review of diceRolla's past, this is also a preview of some projects which I hope to work on in the coming months. Even though I might not have mentioned them in quite a while, they have not been forgotten. For your consideration the posts I have chosen are: a 40k army project, a Killzone project, the collaborative results of a contest, a "semi-regular" blog feature, and a 15mm historical minis project from long ago relative to the lifespan of this blog.

The Drones of Sector 7G (Illustrated) - I love the Simpsons, and I love 40k. Newer readers might not be aware of the ways I've been trying to make the two subjects intersect. This post describes the selection process I went through in choosing which units to include in one of my current army projects, the Blisstonian 9th, an Imperial Guard army based on the workforce of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Competitiveness, efficiency, and all other normal gaming considerations were discarded in pursuit of my chosen theme, an admittedly silly one at that. Work on this project has been on hold for several months with just a little bit of occasional painting but it's still one that I am very eager to get back to, hopefully sometime this coming spring or summer.

Killzone WIP: Rogue Trader Crew - What can I say, Killzone is awesome! Unfortunately I've only been able to play a handful of games so far since Big Jim and the Killzone development team made available this amazing set of fan-created skirmish rules for 40k. As part of the 10/10/10 Killzone Blitz I decided to put together a Special Ops team based on a Rogue Trader accompanied by his closest associates, bodyguards, and allies. I didn't finish painting these guys in time for the Blitz but was able to get a decent amount of color onto each one, certainly enough to get a sense of what they'll look like once fully painted. I'd like to have them completed later this month in anticipation of the big Killzone extravaganza at this year's Adepticon.

Contest Links Bonanza - This was the culmination of the most recent diceRolla contest, a big list of links supplied by lots and lots of hobby bloggers. To participate in the Good Karma Pre-Heresy Celebration and qualify for the prize drawing, I had asked everyone to provide a link to something of which they were particularly proud, or to link to someone else's work that had inspired them in some way. I really enjoyed following the links to learn more about my fellow hobby enthusiasts and to see the sort of things that really motivate and inspire them. This contest was a lot of fun for me and I look forward to hosting another one in the coming months, though details of which are yet to be determined.

Flashbacks and Nightmares: Plaguebearers - Ahh... the sweet, sweet taste of internet fame. :) This post garnered the much sought after approval of my peers in that it made From the Warp's Tuesday's Top Ten list. WOOHOO!! Many thanks to Ryan for being so kind as to honor some of my own handiwork with inclusion in one of his weekly lists, this was indeed an early highpoint in my blogging adventures. It also happened to have been the second and final installment in what I had planned on being a semi-regular feature here at diceRolla. I have a fair number of old minis I'd like to photograph for use in future Flashbacks and Nightmares, I just haven't gotten around to it yet... almost a year later. Pitiful, just pitiful. We'll see, I'd like to revive this series if it can even be called that.

Woo-Hoo!! Painted Archers! - I generally advise against going too far back into the history of my blog but this is a special day after all, so for this last one let's go waaay back. This post is from the second week of diceRolla and showed off the first minis painted since having started the blog. At that point I was primarily focused on de Bellis Antiquitatis and so I spent most of my hobby time working on various 15mm armies. These archers from Corvus Belli are for an unfinished Hundred Years War: English army that I haven't touched in over a year. Since moving on from the idea of collecting Bretonnians, I've realized that whatever interest I had in painting medieval knights and archers could be directed at this old HYW project instead. I don't know when I'll work on them again but it's nice having them around should I feel so inclined. And once I've finished with the English there's still the French to be painted, too.

That's it for my participation in Old Stuff Day. I hope it's been an enjoyable look back at some of diceRolla's past glories. Thank you very much to all my readers, both old and new alike. It's been an exceptional joy posting up my hobby ramblings here for you to read. I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to check out what I've been up to and I am grateful for all the excellent feedback and comments I receive. I understand the blog has been quiet lately but with Adepticon less than a month away it's going to be a busy couple of weeks. Thanks for sticking with me so far... there's lots more hobby fun still to come!

Reminder: Loq's B-Day Contest

This is a reminder for you procrastinators (no offense intended, I assuredly am in that group as well) that today is the deadline for Loq's birthday contest. So hurry hurry if you haven't already sent in your entries! If you were waiting for the last minute, well you're pretty close... the deadline is set for 10:00AM CENTRAL.

Details about the contest and guidelines for submissions can be found here. All you need to do to enter the contest is help Loquacious out a little by writing a descriptive sentence about her blog, World of Wonder. There's also a way to enter for the more visually oriented of you but I imagine time's running short to design anything. Now go on you slackers, send something in and wish Loquacious a happy birthday, too.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOQUACIOUS!!

[Edit: I posted this earlier today when there was just a little more than an hour before the end of the contest, which has since then closed. Thanks, folks!]

Knights of Bal Timorea, the Finale!

I just returned home from staying out at the beach for the last several days with my family so I'm now catching up on all the exciting hobby goings-on I missed while disconnected. Right away I am delighted to learn that Alex of One Inch Warrior has won the drawing for the Knights of Bal Timorea project. Congratulations, Alex... hooray! Along with the big announcement last Thursday SC John of Santa Cruz Warhammer also posted some awesome pictures of all the entries to the contest. Seeing them together is really cool indeed. I'm grateful to all the other participants and had a fantastic time working on my knightly submission, this was easily one of my favorite hobby projects from last year.

I hope there are more opportunities to participate in community projects like this in future, this was a lot of fun and also a nice little diversion from the usual routine. Thanks again to everyone involved and to Santa Cruz Warhammer guys for issuing the call to arms. Woo-hoo!

Sir Cumference rides again! Only now he has joined company with a glory-hungry band of knights... happy questing, fellas!

Ultramarines - Everyone's a Critic, take 2

I'm just getting underway with my new Dark Elf army and am very eager to start blabbing about it here. Before doing so however there are a few loose ends I feel I should take care of before getting too far lost into the world of Warhammer Fantasy. First off I realized that it will take some time until I have anything ready to paint for the Dark Elves so I'm leaving the rest of those Frog Fighters to finish over the coming days. I'll just work on them here and there when I have time to spare. No need to rush them after all and I'm rather excited to begin work on the new army.

Next up, I told Thor of Creative Twilight quite a while ago that I wanted to post a review of his list building tool, Command Center. I will still do a full review but it's too good of a resource for me to keep quiet about it any longer. Command Center is a free, online-based army list construction tool designed for use with Warhammer 40k. It's not meant to replace your Codex or do all the work of building a list for you, like Army Builder for example, as you must initially enter the relevant stats yourself. Rather it facilitates working with the saved information to help you adjust and refine your army lists, as well as allowing for easy access to your army rosters whenever online. Most gamers I know want to own a copy of their army's Codex anyways so why then shell out more bucks on something like AB when you can use Command Center for free? I like it a lot and recommend any 40k player give it a try.

Okay, last on my list tonight is the review of Ultramarines: A Warhammer blah blah blah that I promised a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure at this point most of you have seen enough reviews of the movie and could care less about hearing yet another opinion on it. I will therefore try to keep this brief.

Ultramarines is bad and disappointed me as a fan of the 40k background. The movie itself is a real stinker but I still enjoyed watching it. I agree with most of the catalogue of charges made against the film but all of the artistic and technical shortcomings were essentially what I expected. I'm a diehard MST3k fan and so cheesy, B-movie lameness never bothers me and is something I actually enjoy in the right context. On that level I thought Ultramarines was a lot of fun and could make for a very funny, albeit geeky, RiffTrax episode. And I thought there were indeed some genuinely cool scenes too, so it wasn't all bad really.

What truly disappointed me about the film is that it felt so very small and bland. WH40k has such a rich and evocative background, filled with heroes and villains larger than life doing tremendously momentous things. It's a galaxy replete with warfare, the battles of which are epic and can consume entire worlds. Ultramarines had none of this vast sense of scale and hence left me feeling uninspired and decidedly underwhelmed. The other problems with the movie are at least for me forgivable but as a 40k product what I did not like was the overall mundanity of its vision. There was hardly any of the awe-insprining size or craziness that distinguishes Warhammer 40,000 from other science fiction settings. I'm not positive but I think that's why I was ultimately so disappointed by this movie.

Alright, that's it for tonight. Sorry about flubbing this post and initially publishing it after only the first couple of sentences. Oh well, all part of the diceRolla way I suppose. I'm off to glue some elves together... cheers!

Saying Goodbye to 2010

In lieu of a traditional look back at the hobby year that was as seen through the diceRolla blogging lens, I have rather decided to review the year that wasn't. I wanted to do a review of 2010 and still very well might in the days to come, but right now I do not have the energy or excitement to do so. The last few days have been rather exhausting as preparations for moving have now kicked into high gear around the homestead, leaving me this evening feeling perhaps a bit dreary and flat. I therefore don't want my current state of mind to sour any reflections I would have about my hobby adventures through 2010.

I've chosen instead to look back on some of the blog posts from the past year that never saw the light of day but instead ended up tossed aside on the cutting room floor. Regular readers of diceRolla may be surprised to learn that I do in fact exercise some discretion when deciding what to publish here, although I admit sometimes that filter is not quite fine enough. Nonetheless I do try to catch myself when I suspect something of being too dumb, pointless, or grossly off topic even for my own permissive standards.

Hopefully this will be a fun way of concluding 2010 here at diceRolla. My approach to blogging is I believe somewhat haphazard and I certainly do not have any notes or saved drafts to reference in preparing these examples of articles killed by the editorial staff. After scanning through old files of saved photos I was able to put this list together by memory and thus will only show the opening illustration and title I had planned on using. I think in most cases both the content of the articles and the reasons why I ultimately trashed them will be clear enough. So without further delay...

diceRolla's top 10 bad ideas for blogging from 2o1o

1o. Why guest cameos are bad for The Simpsons.

9. Terrible songs to listen to while painting your army or playing 40k.

8. H2O and You - Lubricate your Hobby.

7. Things Seen in Lombard, Illinois.

6. Step Brothers may cause brain damage, film review at 11.

5. How to ruin your Hobby Saw.

4. Jervis Johnson... time traveler?

3. Rejected Ideas for the Beasts of Annihilation.

2. Keep your Dignity - Losing with Style and Grace.

1. A History of the Groening Sector, Parts 1-3.

That last one is something I've held back on for reasons very different than those of the others listed above. Rather than labeling it as a "bad idea," I think it was rather like biting off more than I could chew as a writer. It's still an ongoing project that will hopefully someday be in good enough shape for me to publish here. Currently however I am happy to take my time and not rush anything along. So that's it, I hope you enjoyed this quick look at some ideas for articles so bad even I knew it was best to just discard them. It is sometimes good to just move on to more worthwhile pursuits. Even if I don't always get it right, I do try to make that distinction.

This really has been a great year for me on all accounts, both in HobbyLife and RealLife. I am very thankful for all of you who have played a tremendous part in making this such an enjoyable year. I appreciate the support you have offered to me and my efforts here at diceRolla and I value all the contributions you make to my blog. You have broadened my hobby horizons and for that I am quite grateful. Thank you and may you have a wonderful 2011!

Happy New Year!!!

Rubble by Nesbet

One of the bloggers I've been lucky enough to get to know this past year is Nesbet, author of Nesbet Miniatures who as it so happens is something of a renaissance man of our hobby. His breadth of knowledge is remarkable so that I'm now convinced there is nothing he can't do. You may even have recently seen Nesbet's technical and artistic savvy on display as part of Dark Future Games' search for a new banner design. My only complaint is that he doesn't post on his blog more often. I understand however he is a busy guy and has to spend much time playing bloody sudoku! with his miniatures' bases. :)

Tonight I want to show off some terrain pieces Nesbet made for me some months ago as part of a trade we hashed out over the summer. In return for the stack of movement tray bits I had leftover from working on Sector 7G, Nesbet agreed to make a batch of rubble and debris for me to incorporate into my urban ruins. He's actually not even a 40k player which makes these even more impressive to me, especially considering I gave him only the vaguest of instructions from which to work.

I'm not sure how he made this set of terrain (plaster?) but I really like it a lot and I think he did a great job making detailed, interesting scenery for my games. I haven't yet decided if I want to leave them loose for use as scatter pieces or if I would rather make them part of larger ruined structures. Either way I expect they'll look great once painted. Like many other projects, however, that will have to wait a while longer with all that I have going on now. I likely won't get back to work on Sector 7G until after AdeptiCon, but at that time this custom terrain specially imported all the way from Chile will no doubt become one of my top priorities.

Until then I have ordered some of the few remaining survivors of the cursed Haverbrook 212th Grenadiers to reconnoiter these rubble fields, as well as provide us with a better sense of scale. Initial reports indicate that they will make my gameboard look awesome...

... moving in for confirmation.

Confirmed, the terrain is awesome!

Thanks again to Nesbet for the killer terrain. If anyone is so inclined to let him know what you think of his hobby talents, you can find him at Nesbet Miniatures. Cheers!

Holiday Thanks to SNS

Hello, folks! I'm taking a short break from the yuletide celebrations (i.e., up late wrapping gifts and putting toys together) and wanted to wish all of you a fantastic Christmas. I hope everyone is enjoying a safe and wonderful holiday season with your families and loved ones. So, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Also I want to give a quick shout-out and thank you to Jake and Evan, authors of the new blog Shaken, Not Stunned where they are better known as Daemonetteboobs and Angelus Censura. I recently won their Holiday Giveaway drawing and chose as my prize a Space Marine Drop Pod for use with my Raptors marines. I was delighted to have received this generous gift from them yesterday afternoon and in time for the holidays no less. Awesome, thank you so much guys! This is my first Drop Pod so I'm eager to get it ready for use in my army although I haven't yet decided what manner of death I want to stuff inside. I'm leaning toward a Dreadnought of some sort but will have to think more about it to be sure.

Okay, no doubt most of you are either busy and having fun or else sleeping so I'll just end this now. Also I seem to be having all sorts of problems with my computer right now so it's probably best that I wrap this up by saying goodnight and farewell. I wish for you a peaceful and joyous holiday... Merry Christmas!

Knights of Bal Timorea, Part 1

I just got home a couple of hours ago from a quick trip with the family to NC looking for our future place to live. It was a good time and we saw a bunch of nice potential residences. Last weekend before leaving town I did, however, begin the review of my current projects and realized quickly what had to be my top hobby priority. The revised deadline for The Knights of Bal Timorea is Jan. 1st, at which time my entry must be in the hands of the folks at Santa Cruz Warhammer in order to participate in the project's finale. Since my knight will be competing with all the other late holiday season mailings, that means I need to send him out ASAP.

I have had more than three months to paint just this one miniature so of course I only get around to it now a week or so before it needs to be finished. Fortunately I have a pretty clear idea of what I want my contribution to this open group project to be so I'm not worried about completing the model in time. I had a couple hours to work on it Sunday night and made some decent progress. In all honesty though I'm really not happy with how it looks at this point and I considered scrapping my initial plan and going in a different direction. The thing is I'm working from a rather specific source of inspiration and so far am not satisfied with the way that idea is translating to my Bretonnian nobleman. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to post a picture because of my reservations over this but since I feel like pressing on with it, I might as well present my potential BIP (Blunder In Progress). Why not, right? Here he is pictured as I left him after that first painting session:

The color scheme is primarily green and black as seen above but I am yet to begin on the black which is the part that has been bothering me the most. I therefore hope once I work on the areas of black cloth I'll start to like it more and that's why I've decided to just continue as planned. If the scheme looks wrong in the end, oh well. This miniature is likely destined for someone else's figure case so I therefore probably won't mind nearly as much sending him off to his new home. And besides, it does seem like it would be a fittingly bizarre, ill-conceived representation of my efforts here at diceRolla. I say this because the whole idea is based on both a cartoon and a tired, horribly lame joke. Let me explain.

A couple of months back I saw a really old Disney cartoon called A Knight for a Day that I remember watching as a kid probably 25 or more years ago. It's a weird cartoon with a very weak hero, "Cedric," whom I never liked so that even as a little one I cheered for the bad guy to win. The black clad, cigar smoking villain in this tale is a true brute and spends most of the story bashing on the hapless good guy, driving him through castle walls and such. But for no apparent reason the writers chose to insert a completely inappropriate joke by naming this badass black knight, "Sir Cumference," a name which from that point on is not worked at all into either the story or any other more interesting jokes. It's used as just a dumb, throwaway math pun of all things. Why? I don't know... like I said, it's a weird cartoon.

And that was it for me. I realized then for SC John's project I wanted to make a tribute to this pitiful moment in animation humor. All the better that I would get to sneak in an admittedly awful joke into an otherwise very cool community effort. Now that's the diceRolla way! Having said that I might now be justifiably disqualified from participating in which case I will find my own suitably shameful way in which to display Sir Cumference, the Black Knight of Bal Timorea. At this time I don't know what that might be but I'll come up with something if I must.

Okay, that's it for now. My plan is to finish this mini off in a couple of days and then get back to those Raptors marines. Happy gaming, everyone!