Wargaming Social Networks

One of the biggest problems facing any wargamer, or any niche hobby enthusiast, is the difficulty in finding an opponent. This is one of GW's greatest strengths since their games is well known around the world compared to small companies such as DP9. That great strength however is just as limited in many aspects, as being known and played around the world makes no difference if there is no known stores or clubs in your region. The players at that point is left to hunt down people through sheer luck that play the same game as themselves.

One of the things that my years within this hobby has shown me is that wargamers, and the companies who make the game in which the gamers play, don't really push for a truly social networking ability. You get ways to play *some* wargames over the internet using various programs such as Vassal, but even that means you need to find opponents willing to play with you. Of course this problem can be easier or harder to see depending on your region. A Warhammer player in London is going to be able to network easier with fellow gamers due to GWs innate influence in that region, whereas on the Pacific coast of the US, GW stores aren't commonly seen and all gaming takes place in either clubs or indie stores.

I am not immune to this either, as I have mentioned many times before that since Knightfall Games closed their doors, my gaming time and opponents has also been severely cut down on. If it wasn't for my only single nearby opponent, that happens to be my wife, I would not get a single game in. Knightfall Games wasn't the only store to close their doors either, as Rivals closed their doors a few months later, effectively dropping most gaming support in this area. Rainy Day Games is still alive, but the gaming scene isn't as heavy there when compared to the Magic and Pokemon players.

On the flip side of everything, going back to my London example. In London it might be easier to find an opponent for a GW based game to play, but what if you don't want to play a GW game? Suddenly it becomes a bit more difficult and you are in the same predicament as the person on the Pacific coast of the US. GW's games are only a support while focused on GW games, once you start exploring other options of the hobby, you find an uphill battle.

For most things, the internet hasn't really changed the wargaming hobby overall. From the way I see it, that is because of numerous issues that separates the hobby from other hobbies. I'll use a comparison between myself and someone I know. One of my co-workers does a wine tasting blog, but from the blog they get samples (A few companies game companies do this), they have speakers come onto their videos (fewer game companies do this unless you are a big network such as BeastsofWar), and even offer temp positions if interested during harvest season (no game company does this to my knowledge). That is just from the company side of things, once you get into the actual wine side of things it becomes even more different. Wine tasting always seems to be a social gathering, far more than one or two extra people around a table, but a full on evening spent talking about the wines.

You look at wargamers though, and suddenly the social aspect vanishes. Even at a club or a store, people separate into their games, and once the game is over people go their own ways usually. Rarely do you see gamers sit down and talk about the hobby as a whole. Problem becomes more exasperated by the rampant fanboyism found within the gaming culture, which makes speaking about other systems a frustrating ordeal with the wrong crowd how may not have played any other system, or absolutely loves/hates one company or another.

As gamers, we need to be more social, need to be able to get out and show off our hobby, and most importantly we need to support each others preferred systems even if we don't play them. Just because someone prefers GW to Mantic or Anima Tactics to WarmaHordes shouldn't become impassable barriers for lines of communication between gamers.

Firestorm Armada - Banshee Dreadnought Review

The last of my Captain ships, and most likely to take the name Archangel from Gundam Seed just for it's looks alone. This build review is on the RSN Banshee Dreadnought for Firestorm Armada.

This was probably the most expansive build I have seen for Firestorm Armada when you compare it to the other ships. My wife's Directorate dreadnought for instance only had three cannons to glue on and it was ready for battle. As you can see from the below pics, the Banshee has just a few more bits then three cannons.

The parts within the particular kit I got were very well done and needed very little cleaning before it was ready to go. I did have to sand one of the front 'fangs' a bit, as it was at a weird angle that looked odd when compared to the other fang. Turned out pretty decent though once it was set in place and the gap filled in a bit. Outside of that one issue I only ran into one little problem with the build which I wasn't really sure about.

On the underside of the Banshee there is a third, and smaller, fang that looks to be mounted under the mass driver. The bottom looks fine, but when you look at it from the top you notice that there is no details on the topside of that fang. It just looked odd and I had to do a Google check just to make sure I wasn't messing up somewhere.

The ship looked good once together, and there wasn't even a need to sand the flight rods as I had to do with the Spectre and Argus ships. That was a real bonus.

I will say however that the Banshee really doesn't scream dreadnought when compared to the directorate dreadnought at least. I would have gotten a pic comparing the two, but wife was still working on her's at the time. Even stranger is when you compare the three RSN Capital ship next to each other, the Banshee looks far more like a battleship then the Spectre looks like a battleship. Those two are nearly the same size even.

Albion, Archangel, and the Argama together

Still lacking the 'Gundams' for the Gundam theme, but it is coming along with the core main ships built now. just have the Cruisers, Escorts, and Frigates left to build.

Firestorm Armada - Spectr Battleship Review

As I said in an earlier blog post, I recently got a hold of the rest of my fleet. I'll do various reviews on the building to the minis as I go. I already did the Carrier a few posts ago as some folks might have seen, so these others should be along the same lines. Of course the pictures are incredibly grainy because the camera seems to get worse each time I have to turn it on any more. I try to get the point across though for the pictures that do come through.

This build review will be about the RSN Spectr Battleship. Again, it was a pretty simply build with not to many parts in the blister over all. Didn't notice any outright bubbling as I did with the carrier so that was a good point, but the flak on the pewter was a bit worse as I will go over later on.

  
Cleaning the Spectr was actually extremely easy since I only had a few bits of pewter to clean and the resin was more or less go to go right out of the box. I did make a mistake and tear into my thumb cleaning off a thicker chunk of pewter that obviously came from the mold. Of course I probably shouldn't have been cutting towards my thumb, but either way, thick bit of pewter to watch out for.

It's a trap!

Probably the hardest part of the build was the sanding of the flight stands for the battleship. The mounting holes on the underside of the ship seemed to be narrower than the flight rods were placed in the flight base, as well as to small for the rods to fit into properly. Got it to work after some sanding, but you can still see one of the rods slightly bending due to the misalignment of the holes to the rods. Not game breaking, and not really noticeable unless you are aware of it, but something to keep an eye out for. If you look at the photo below you will also notice how far front it stick out of the base. Makes the Spectr look rather odd when placed side by side with it's other RSN large class ships.

In the end, the Battleship came out rather decent looking and I can't really complain about it. Looks rather small when compared to my Relthoza battleship and my wife's Directorate battleship, but not much can really be done about that now.

The Hype of Something New

Today my nearly 5 pounds of RSN fleet arrived on my doorstep (I'll get around to doing reviews of them as I get to it), but the best part of opening the box for me was unwrapping the new Firestorm Armada V2 rulebook.

It may sound strange, but one of the major things I enjoy about the wargaming hobby is reading the rules and how a particular company tried to make itself stand out from the other companies out there. I actually enjoy reading through rulebooks and looking at the various studio armies shown in the books.

Even if I don't play a game any longer, I find it hard to get rid of the rulebooks because I always seem to find something I missed earlier. Could be a rule that slid under my radar, an interesting piece of terrain, or a paint job that strikes my fancy. I still have the 4th edition Warhammer 40K rulebook for this exact reason, some of the terrain ideas could still work for Heavy Gear Blitz, Infinity, or a wide variety of other games (40K wasn't as GRIMDARK as it is now days).

Miniatures are great, nothing like holding a well sculpted work of art in your hands fresh out of the package, but at the end of the day, it is the rulebooks that keep me hyped for a game. If the book is good, fluff is well placed, and the art actually makes me want to look at it, then I will spend hours upon hours going over that book. Already I was going through the V2 rulebook and found a space station I hadn't seen before. It looks amazing, and my interesting is piqued in regards to how it was constructed. Looks better than my idea of just using the Battlefleet Gothic Blackstone Fortress (although the Orbital Dock looks good too).

So the obvious question to the public then; Do any other folks get more hyped about the prospect of reading new rules over the idea of new miniatures?

Firestorm Armada - Argus Carrier Review

The first of my Gundam FSA fleet arrived today, and it was the Argus Carrier, the FSA miniature that more or less struck the chord that made me want to build the fleet in the first place. Since it has been a while since I had done a miniature review, figured I would go ahead and take this chance while building the Argus. You will have to forgive the less than stellar camera shots. My camera is apparently on the downward curve towards death and the shots are not at all as consistent as they once were.

Firestorm Armada miniatures have never been hard to assemble out of the box. The Argus Carrier is no exception to this rule. Majority of the miniature itself was one solid piece of resin, with only three pewter bits that needed to be added on. Also included in the package was the stat card for the carrier and the three pronged flight stand. The miniature isn't overly large, but certainly impressive non-the-less.

Looking through the parts, it was apparent that there was some bubbling that was going to be visible along a few edges near the rear thrusters of the ship, and a bit of flak to remove from the casting process, but overall there was very little actual prep needed. You can see one of the bubbles in the below picture near the area the rear thrusters, but it is surprisingly one of the larger ones, thus not all the hampering to the over all model. The flak itself was extremely easy to clean off with a blade, took only a couple minutes to get the ship ready to put together.

The miniature went together easily since it was such a simple miniature to start with. The cold air of the season wasn't doing me any favors in regards to the glue drying any quicker, but eventually everything fell into place. The only part that required a bit more elbow grease than originally expected was the acrylic flight stands. They were just slightly to large for the points they were supposed to connect to on the bottom of the carrier.

As you might expect, there really isn't much 'flavor' to be had for a spaceship. The Argus is more or less what it is, but like the other FSA ships, the Argus is a good looking model overall. A bit of bubbling, which isn't uncommon for resin, and the need to sand the flight stands was the only real issues I came across in this particular build.

Customization - How Much is Too Much?

One of the things that irk me while gaming, and has turned me off of various games is the amount of character customization available to me during the creation of the army. I am not saying I expect every miniature to have it's own rules for creation, as that would be simply too much for the table. I do however go into a force creation wanting to make a force or fleet *mine*, and some games do this better than others.

One of the worse offenders of character creations is Anima Tactics where almost every miniature has a name, stats, and about the only power you have over it is if you give it an accessory or not. They have some absolutely lovely miniatures, but the fact everyone is a special character is a major killer there. They are not alone in this regard either, as WarmaHordes also has this to a degree with the Warlock/Warcasters being 'special' characters right out of the gate. You will find that I don't even really enjoy playing Warhammer or 40K with special characters either. To me, as soon as you add a special character, the force is no longer really mine at that point.

On the flip side, if you have too wide an option for character customization, then you run into the issue of redundant, overpowered, and just worthless pieces of equipment. you see this heavily in WFB and 40K for instance. Look at the WFB Slann and how many people take the Cupped Hands of the Old Ones magic item as just one example. HGB sort of falls into this same category as well to a degree, as there are many gears that simply are outclassed by other available gears. Cheetah versus Jaguar for a quick example.

Wargaming is a strange beast in that even in this topic you will find peoples thoughts vary greatly about what they feel about the use of special characters and character customization. You are going to have people that play games like Mordheim that put HEAVY focus on individual characters because that is the game it is built around, then you have the other extreme of games like Firestorm Armada that has zero special 'characters' as all ships come just as listed.

For me, I find Firestorm Armada's lack of customization fine for some reason because it is in fact a ship and not an actual individual  It could be from all the various Gundam, Firefly, and Babylon 5 episodes I have watched over time (I am sorry but I simply have not watched Star Trek or Star Wars outside of the passing glance if it was on TV so can't talk about their space battles), but for me the tone of a ship should be based on the exploits of the crew aboard that ship. You take that combat to a gear or other man shaped mecha, and suddenly I start wanting more option loadouts available to me as I could easily see a pilot customizing his mecha to fight in his preferred methodology.

Getting back into standard foot soldier themed games though, there are so many good games available to people, and yet I have found so few good character customization options available. Strangely enough, for me one of the best I have seen is the Kings of War ruleset. All the characters have a set stat line, they could be equipped with a great sword, sword and shield, halberd, or a harp if you so wanted, and it wouldn't change their stat line. In fact, even the magic items have a section that state that the magic items warp and twist to the form most preferred to the user. What this allows is for you the player to make ANY character to lead your forces and not worry about massive impacts and gear discrepancy since the weapons you put on the miniature don't actually affect that miniatures playstyle.

As I said, for me character customization seems a weird beast to tame. So obviously the question is, where do the players think the companies should aim for? Make a system like WFB, Mordheim and HGB with multiple loadouts per character, or a simpler game where the characters are preset like Warmachine and Anima Tactics? Should more companies walk that line Mantic does with trying to allow as many various companies as possible?

Gundam Fleet is in the Hangar

Well, thanks to the Black Friday sales, got almost all the RSN vehicles for a decent sized fleet.

• 1x Battleship
• 1x Carrier
• 1x Dreadnought
• 6x Frigates
• 6x Escorts
• 3x Heavy Cruisers
• 4x Cruisers

All for a pretty respectable $166.96. Not a bad haul at all. now they just have to get shipped and arrive here with all their pieces, which sadly enough has been more of an issue this year then I would like to remember. That is the hobby as a whole, which is strange to me in this day of age.

Anyhow, it was slightly more expensive once I added the new V2 rulebook, mine markers (I didn't want to bother painting up the Battlefleet Gothic mines), and my wife's Directorate Dreadnought.

Oh Black Friday, I Love You!

I have not done the mad store rush in years on Black Friday. It is just worthless to do now days since the internet is so ubiquitous, but I do get in on the online Black Friday sales whenever possible.

This year I was keeping an eye out for my normal Amazon, TheWarStore, and Miniature Market sales, and thus far (at least for MM) they have not disappointed. I should be able to complete my Gundam Firestorm Armada fleet for well under $200, not counting the Jovian Chronicles minis I still need to get. There is still TheWarStore left to announce their sales, but should just go even further to helping me get my fleet of the ground cheaper than planned. I might come across some Amazon sales that strike my fancy, but we'll see.

For this year, that is really all that is on the radar for purchases at all since I have been buying gifts for the last few months now out of every paycheck. My wife is still less than happy that I have a total of two gifts lined up for this year, but I am okay with that. Not really much I need or want, unless of course I want to start my zombie apoc survival gear collection....

So not a very long blog for today. Hobby times have been pretty quiet around the house with the wife and kids getting sick for a while and the rain going almost non-stop. I am trying to get my daughter into a game of Monsterpocalypse, but she merely moans some type of response than goes back to her Pokemon game.

Firestorm Armada - Gundam Fleet Wings

In my most recent blog I posted about my Gundam themed force. To carry onward with those ideas, I figured I would push with my various ideas for Wings and flights.

For the first thing, the way Wings are handled in Firestorm Armada is no longer the same as it was when I last played. The V2 rulebook has changed how wings work, so I will need far less minis than I had originally thought I would. This works out great for me, and keeps the battlefield from getting jumbled up with tons of small ‘gundams’ and losing focus on the ship combat.

The idea is pretty specific for the most part.

First off, the odd man out. Not a Gundam, but a common sight within all the series is the mobile armor. For my force, I wanted to go ahead and use these as Assault wings. The Lancer miniature in particular fits the image that came to mind. In a lot of Sci-fi you see assault troops with some form of delivery system, and these mobile armors large thrusters will make excellent delivery systems for the foot troopers. I envision the fighter taking the cargo ever closer to the target, bobbing and weaving through combat. Once they are within range, the cargo system unlatches from underneath and almost immediately the main thrusters fire. The assault troops are sent at a high speed straight at the hull of a ship, breaching it and allowing them to unload.

For my Fighter wings I picked the Pathfinder miniature, as it is a main line troopers for the Jovian forces in Jovian Chronicles. Only fitting it would fill the same role in my force. Not much else to say. It is a fast vehicle, capable of launching the pilot into combat at great speeds, and has a general combat stat-line to handle more or less any situation. Not the greatest mobile suit, but certainly capable of getting the job done. I am tempted to add a shield to this mini to give him a more gundam-ish style, but for the most part it is decent out of the box.

 

For the Interceptor wings, only one of the Jovian Chronicle minis really screamed ‘MUST GO FASTER!’, and that is the Hector exo armor with nothing but massive thrusters instead of legs. For a machine that whole purpose exists to stop other ships and attacks, it seemed more than fitting. Yeah, it looks like it won’t do a ton of damage on it’s own, but it isn’t meant to, rather it is out to play the support role and make sure that no enemy mobile suits and mobile armors can endanger their squad mates. To me, this model seems like the one that most needs an active beam saber added to it, while every machine, expect the mobile armor, is expected to have a beam saber as standard armament, this one is the one that would most likely get right into melee if needed, while the others would tend to try and gun length.

The final ‘gundam’, but one I simply love the mini of and think it makes perfect sense, is the Stormrider exo armor that will play the role of the Bomber wing. The massive energy cannons look like they could put a decent sized hole in the side of a ship, and the massive thrusters make up for the large armor and weapon system weight loads the vehicle has to transport on the battlefield. While it’s main weapons are the twin mounted plasma cannons, there is also two turreted 30mm Vulcans mounted on the shoulders for use during defensive engagements while the machine is trying to get into a better position to use his guns.

So that is my general idea for the various mobile armor and mobile suits my Firestorm Armada fleet would launch. In terms of color, I have never had a problem with the classic white, blue, and red most main gundams use. That will also allow them to match the fleet itself with ease since I plan to carry over the Argama’s color scheme as true as possible.

I have not decided how I want to go about with naming. It only seems right that I name the mobile suits being launched, as those would be more personal than just another fighter jet. Biggest problem is that in no series does the various heavy, medium, and light armors really stay together on the Argama. In Z Gundam, you had the Rick Dias, Gundam Mk2, Zeta Gundam, and Hyaku Shiki. I guess you could say that the Zeta Gundam could count as the Bomber since it had the mega particle cannon, Gundam Mk2 was a pretty balanced mobile suit, but the Rick Dias was certainly no interceptor. It will take some work, but I am sure I’ll get something planned out. These are just the current rough ideas. I may scrap the idea of using the names from Z Gundam, and just stick with the theme.

So that is it for my wings. Not much, but something is certainly better than nothing at all.

Firestorm Armada Itch

With the weather change, I have been spending a lot more time on the PS3 playing Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2.Yes, I know it's an older(ish) game, but it is amazing at sucking up time. Anyhow, that along with my Gundam anime collection, I really started to look back at Firestorm Armada. More so after I made a discovery.

In the first Gundam's the flagship was called the Argama. Pretty simple collor scheme, but the heroic exploits throughout the series was massive. Just a simple, yet great, core ship for a fleet. Won't even go into the fact that the Zeta Gundam, my all time favorite gundam was stationed on this ship. Overall, it was a ship that saw lots of lives and deaths through it's time in the Gundam spot light, from Emma, to Reccoa, all the way to Kamile. It was all over the place, and where it went action and drama was sure to follow, as any good Gundam ship would have.



I know most games try to be different, especially the GW games. I was rather shocked when I stumbled across the Zenian RSN Argus Carrier for Firestorm Armada. Looks like a pretty close comparison at first glance. Being a carrier, and also being so close to Gundam gave me a great idea.

Now of course, this alone wouldn't make me post unless there was something else dragging my thought along. Being a former player of Jovial Chronicles I thought of something else that could link Firestorm Armada with Gundam even further. Something I am sure someone else has done out there, but it's the first real connect for me.

The idea of a Gundam themed fleet would be pretty easy over all. The color scheme would be easy enough to do, and the looks of the ships fit almost exactly. The problem though comes when you think about the fact there are no gundams or mobile armors only generic units called wings in Firestorm armada. Thankfully, this is where Jovian Chronicles comes in. DP9's space themed miniature game had a lot of mecha and space fighters to choose from, and since the Firestorm Armada miniatures don't have to be to scale (measurements taken from the base flying rod), this opens up the potential of bringing the two series together to create my vision.

Looks like a mobile armor to me.

Gundam? Check. Awesome? Double check.

Yes, it will be a bit more expensive than normal, but the idea of having such an amazing themed force on the battlefield is great. It certainly is an interesting idea, and you could get a decent size 1200 point Zenian Fleet for just over $200 without counting the Jovian Chronicle minis that is pretty close to the studio's force, but with a couple extra frigates added.

It is just a thought, but first have to get a few other things in order. Can't say this isn't a HUGE draw to bring me back into Firestorm Armada. Now to see if my wife thinks the same.

Friday showcase - Relthoza 'Borg Fleet'

Part of my blog's plan moving forward., I am doing a Friday Showcase day, a day where I show off either my own, or something I found on the internet that somehow left an impression on me for one reason or another. Any works that I post from other people, I will of course tell you where I got the pic from.

Every now and then you stumble across a miniature on the internet that just stuns you with its beauty. Today just happened to be one of those days. Today I decided, pretty much on a whim, that I wanted to see the last 7 days top minis on CMoN, and was shocked at one of the options were to look at. I'll let the picture speak for itself, but you can find the official post here.

The painter did an amazing job at making the ships uniform, and the end results is certainly a well designed force that looks like it was built to be flying together through the depths of space. This is one commission job that I have to admit I love, and could only wish I had anywhere near that skill level and love for painting.

It probably doesn't help I already had a Relthoza fleet for Firestorm Armada, but the color scheme was amazing in the way it was applied. I would love to see how a blue would work instead of green.

Another thing this fleet shows, that i hadn't had a chance to see before, was just how the Relthoza dreadnaught looks alongside others in the fleet. This has done a lot for me to get me excited about playing, and painting, my Relthoza fleet, as well as an idea of what my fleet will look like once it is done.

Of course my fleet won't have the two Venom class cruisers in it, instead I am choosing to use:

• Apex Dreadnaught
• Hive Carrier
• 2x Scarab class Heavy Cruisers
• 3x Bane R&D Cruisers
• 12x Drone Frigates

I picked the Scarabs over the Venoms for a couple reasons. Most notably I like the idea and appearance of the Scarabs as a swift killer in the fleet, thus it not being 'tall' like the others.

I never really cared for the Relthoza Brood class Battleship, it just didn't look right to me, but the Apex is just an amazing miniature. Most of the dreadnaughts are for the most part, but the Apex always stood as top of the chain along side the Aquan Prime's Medusa dreadnaught.

Once again, this painted Relthoza fleet that is an excellent source idea for anyone interested in some type of inspiration.

200 Posts and Counting

Rather shocked that I have managed to get over the 200 post hurtle. Granted to do so I had to delete my old blog due to a weird bug losing all those previous followers, and to this day this blog certainly isn't the busiest (not as though I ever aimed for it to be). I am still proud of myself for being somewhat regular in updating this blog thus far and plan to continue so far a good while longer. Life might get in the way sometimes, but wargaming is still my first love of hobbies.

So what is next on my chopping block...

I still have some Firestorm Armada Miniatures that I think I can paint up and get field ready. That will most likely be my next painting project.

My wife is working on a Utopian Heavy Gear Blitz force, so will be working with her to get that army built and battle ready. Shes still deciding between pure Utopian, or CEF with Utopian allies, as she wants the Overlord tank something fierce.

May expand on my PRDF with a Red Bull, Anti-Rover Squad, and a Patrol Squad. Fill out my PRDF so I can more or less field any type of unit I want at any time. After that will see about starting a Northern force.

Have to work on my Kings of War Elven army, not going to worry about painting it up right away. I am trying to think of the best way i can paint it up without wanting to kill myself later. I am thinking about using the Army Painter colored primers for the base colors, and work from there. That may make it less annoying for me, not to mention faster turn around.

Still working on my personal Warhammer Quest revamp. Getting into the sticky part of cardless dungeon creation now, but figure I'll be able to punch through that barrier eventually. The rules aren't set in stone yet, but thus far it is a mix of SDE, Descent: JItD, HGB, and WHQ. Not going to go into much further details just yet.

Those are just things off the top of my head. Lots of little projects to knock out, so plenty of blog updates to be expected as time goes on. Granted real life may slow down posts here and there, but as always I'll get something else up before too long.

Another busy weekend ahead of me

This weekend should be fairly entertaining. In addition to all the normal house work I have to get done, I also have some gaming planned with strangers.

Found out only recently one of my neighbors played Heroes Quest, which is just a basic form of Warhammer Quest, and they made a bunch of house rules that more or less made heroes Quest into Warhammer Quest (Character advance, travel, blah blah blah). This of course will be the first time the husband will play Warhammer Quest at all, and the first time the wife has played the genre of board games period. Will certainly be interesting, and I am not sure if I want to bring in my Elven Ranger instead of the classic Elf or not. I guess it will depend entirely on what the rest of the group chooses.

I also want to start knocking out some of my Firestorm Armada miniatures, as I believe it should be fairly quick turn around on getting those painted. Found a basic color scheme on the web I liked, with some modifications to make it 'mine' of course. This site has more or less what I wanted to do, mine scheme of course will use silver instead of grey, darker blue, red instead of orange, green for the command decks, ect. Will be interesting to see if it turns out the way my minds eye thinks it should, or if the painting just gets on my nerves and I quit half way through again.

On top of all that I am still fighting with myself if I should start up Warhammer 40K or Fantasy again. I really do want a Tau force, as I have gotten much better at playing a range heavy force, but at the same time rumor mill says the Crisis suits are getting a complete overhaul, and I will hate to have to get completely new, and most likely more expensive, minis. Of course the fact I won't ever finish painting the force myself is another heavy factor. Heck, my Lizardmen force is still largely unpainted and incomplete.

Next on my busy weekend agenda is working on at least one of my RC helis. I know I posted about my 250 yesterday, but I think it'll come down to which I find requires less time from me over all. I do want something flyable by next spring though for sure, and one or another, one of these helis will be air born.

After all this is said and done, I still need to get leveling my Marauder and Lancer in FFXIV, fight Ifrit, work on my crafting. Almost finished with the basic Orcs must Die! game, so have to finish the up and try to clear all with 5 skulls. Maybe this weekend I'll also get some time to do a hot seat game of Might and Magic Heroes VI with the wife and maybe the kids. So much video gaming to top of the other hobbies.

This is all on top of doing yard work, changing the faucets in the house, visiting the wife's nephew (still not sure I care to), basic house cleaning, and many other 'fun' tasks all lined up. honestly these next four days off are just going to be loaded to the brim.

Lack of wargaming companions

Have not had any real wargaming to speak of. The latest family game night that we had was playing the game Talisman, which while fun lasted too long and eventually we just packed up and sent the kids to bed.

It makes me a sad panda:

I still want to play Firestorm Armada, and plan on building a decent Tau fleet once I figure out which miniature to place where, but at the moment it has been a long while since I got to play. For the most part simply don't have time, as either I am working on the front half of the week, or my wife can't be up long enough to play a decent game following the kids going to bed.

This is one of those times where you wish there were others in the area interested in wargaming and on the same schedule. Would be nice to have a few folks that could bounce around houses and play games as well as increase the tactical challenge of facing multiple enemies and not just the same general over and over. I love the fact that my wife plays my games, don't get me wrong in anyway, but like I said, there is sometimes where her and I simply can't play together due to scheduling or other reasons for not wanting to play.

The problem with wargaming in general is the upfront pricing needed to actually get into the game. The initial burst of cash is a lot and turn a lot of folks away. The funny thing is though that I can spend just as much on one of my RC helicopters as I could building a brand new army. I am sure many other hobbies are the same way.

In the end, I am patient and can wait to play more games later, but I won't say it doesn't annoy me when I can't play more then once or twice every couple months.

Another Tau ship joins the list

I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what I am going to be using as a Tau Dreadnought once I start building my force. Suddenly things clicked when someone mentioned Epic 40K. Found a great model, just the right size to use for my dread.

Behold: The Manta!

The Epic manta is around the size of a tau hammerhead tank from Warhammer 40K, which is about the size I was aiming for for a dreadnought to begin with. It has enough forward facing guns and turrets that it still fits in with the Fleet rules I plan on using, and arcs into the various other FW style Tau ships well enough that nothing will look out of place with the Manta on the table.

So far that means I have almost the entire force planned out now, and it'll still be relatively cheap for me to build my firestorm fleet I want. Getting more and more interesting.

Aquan Prime Dreadnaught finally shown

Spartan Games finally released their designs for the Aquan Prime Dreadnaught called the Medusa. You can find the official post here.

So lets get down to the nitty gritty of the mini as shown.

Right now it is incredibly detailed, 15 piece mini. Looks to be an amazing center piece to an Aquan Prime fleet on the table just like all the other dreadnaughts have appeared to be. It looks very organic, and almost seems as if something that would 'swim' through space. Have to admit, I almost wanted to buy it simply to have it, but I'll stick with my Relthoza Dreadnaught, the Apex.

My biggest problem with it is that it doesn't really fit with the other minis of the Aquan Prime minis without a longer stretch then compared to other dreadnaughts which could easily be associated with the race they belonged to.

The idea is obviously there. You can see that the Aquan Prime minis are supposed to look like a school of fish swimming, kinda... The thing that starts making things a bit shaky is the sheer amount of detail that is on the dreadnaught and to positioning.

I am hoping that this might hint that the Aquan's might be getting some rescuplts soon, as their minis are rather lacking in my eyes compared to almost every other Firestorm fleet currently available. To me the dreadnaught looks amazing, but seems as though it'll stand too far apart from the rest of the fleet to really fit in.

Now granted, this is all assumptions because we haven't see the Medusa next to the Aquan battleship, nor the actual sculpt. It could very well end up looking like it fits in more then I am giving credit once everything is said and done. That's the way it is when working with miniatures.

My biggest problem I am running into now is what I am going to be using for my Tau themed army as a dreadnaught. A part of me wants to kitbash a Tau Hammerhead tank, or use the Orbital city from Forgeworld. That's in the future far out though, so only time will tell what I'll do when I get there. Obviously getting the Tau tank bits are going to be easier then getting the Forgeworld bits.

Didn't fully accomplish what I wanted

Well, I made some decent headway this weekend, but didn't get everything I needed done due to some real life things stepping in the way.

As I posted, the Firestorm Armada playmat is done and looks excellent. Wife did a great job doing that. You can see pics for that here in case you missed that post. Went out with the wife and bought a bag of lava rocks, $5 for a few pounds of lava rocks not only lets us have asteroids, but also starts making the yard look a bit nicer, figure I'll buy a couple bags a week to keep working on that second aspect. Anyhow...

Reprimered the Firestorm Armada carriers that got boned up by me primering to early a couple weeks back. Simple green did the trick yet again, and the minis came out looking excellent, just needs to be painted and assembled. of course we forgot about the minis outside and it rained, so those minis are drying off before trying to paint them.

I priced out a Tau Firestorm Armada fleet, and it was pretty cheap, even my wife was rather surprised. it came out to just over ~$100, but even gives me a few extras. Yeah, I am aware that it is more expensive then the official Spartan minis, but that's par for the course when dealing with Games-Workshop in any fashion.

Have my eyes set on the new LM leader, think it will go awesome with Warhammer Quest and Kings of War. Unfortunately for me, doesn't look like my nearest store even carries finecast, so need to start widening my search or order it offline. Either way it still looks excellent. In this regard I do wish LM I had extra LM bits to make my own equivalent leader, but the LM boxes are rather limited in giving JUST what you are supposed to built. It is rather disappointing, especially when looking at the same dour Slann as the only option.

This week in FFXIV my wife and I just putzed along for the most part, still coming to grips with the game. I got my Marauder to 25, Gladiator to 19, Archer got a few levels, ect. Still trying to figure out all the skills I need from each job since I don't have the dedicated subjobs I am used to in FFXI. Not making a whole lot of gil in FFXIV right now, some items are just questionably harder to sell as I am not sure what exactly is worth selling and what isn't at my level.

So was a semi-busy week this week for what I managed to get done. Not all my projects were met, but you can't help real life taking priority. I shouldn't have as much on my plate for next weekend, so will try and get a few more tasks on the list to complete when it gets closer to that time.

Firestorm Armada playmat done

Wife finished the Firestorm Armada mat tonight. Looks pretty decent thus far. just need to get those lava rocks and some ships painted up.

Not to terrible looking and far cheaper then some online places are trying to sell starfield mats for. On the mat you can see the Storm of Magic 'planets' we're using. Coming along nicely, and is much more transportable then a hard board.

Firestorm Armada Tau Fleet

So I think I have made my mind up while I was sleeping, sine my dreams were filled with Tau starships. I am going to go ahead with my plan to make a Tau fleet for Firestorm Armada. This will of course be in addition to my Relthoza Fleet I currently have. The nice thing about Firestorm Armada is the fact I can start up this core army for ~$100 give or take a few and have a working army from the get go, rather then hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for a normal standard force, even with Forgeworld's pricing.

Forgeworld seems to make a good number of miniatures to fit the roll of pretty much anything I would need. For the time I plan on using the Dindrenzi rules, since both uses railgun tech on their ships, it is a better and more natural fit.

The Battleship shall be the Tau Custodian. It looks like a good strong center piece respectable of being the center point of the army.

For my basic cruisers I will be using the Tau Castellan escorts. The need to be smaller then the Custodian, but larger then whatever I use for my frigates (which I'll get to next).

The frigates I am aiming to use the Tau Warden Gunships. Not much to say here other then they do they job.

Of course this is just the basic fleet, and subject to change.

Now for the spiffy stuff, I am thinking of using the Tau protector for my Carrier. Looks like docking bays in the front, and still fits in with the theme.

The heavy cruisers, R&D ships, and escorts is where the theme of the Tau force would start splitting off. I have yet to fully lock down which each will be, I'll come back to it as I get some play in under my belt and figure out which seems best for the force in terms of theme and looks.