The Bloodletting continues, and other musings

I'm selling off stuff at a fairly convincing rate over on my Alderass blog, so much so that I'm now toying with the idea of selling painted armies. The experience is starting to remind me of a short story my father wrote, where a man gets hooked on selling his possessions whilst his wife is on holidays, and she returns to find that he has sold everything they owned, lock, stock and barrel.

Maybe it's in the blood? ;-)

I had originally planned on selling off various Rackham metals I collected back in the day of second edition Confrontation and the original Rag'Narok. Rackham is trying to rebrand these metals now as "Legends" and to sell them at an even higher price point then it used to before it lost its way, but this will probably only work if it has a monopoly on the North Korean toy market. I saw virtually the full range of Rackham metals on sale at 50% off at GenCon, and you can find them on the internet at 75% off. What a sad disaster it has all been.

Now back to the idea of selling my painted armies. As so many others have done before me, I went a bit overboard with the Privateer Press miniatures, and even after ridding myself of almost $600 worth (MSRP) of NIB stuff over the past few days, I still have an awful lot of NIB and painted stuff on hand. The thing is that I actually have no one to play a game with where I reside these days, and even if I did, I have come to realize that I really don't need everything I have. I'm a short step, therefore, from realizing I don't want anything that I have.

I've purchased a lot of choices that I don't really want...is it our daydreaming that bankrupts us? I always thought that daydreams were harmless.

What I might do then, is just to sit down and figure out a few core army lists, and then sell the rest. That's a choice, isn't it?

News - The Bloodletting begins

They say George Washington died from an overvigorous bloodletting. I hope I survive mine, but it is beginning now. My lead collection will be halved over the next couple of months. The prices will be 50% off MSRP plus shipping with insurance and PayPal fees. Everything shall be shown with pictures on my blog for this operation which is titled, appropriately enough, "Alderass". The link is on this page.

In other news I am painting away at the EIR. I am doing the mass painting thing, all 200 plus foot at the same time. At a certain point I will divide everything up into units and then finish them as such. There will come a time then that I shall be posting completed units fairly quickly, but that time is a ways away yet. What to do about the shields doth perplex me. I'd like to hand-paint them, but it's not realistic to do that, so I'll probably get Little Big Man transfers I expect.

Most excellent Privateer Press gaming tables

Tour of Duty tables from GenCon 2007. Lots of great ideas here. The centerpieces are related to the scenario, so they do not have to be included on every table, but they are great...erm...centerpieces? One was used for the Nationals final that year, the one with the raised decking with a wooden crane assembly.

GenCon 2008 Highlights

Well, just got back, so to speak, from GenCon 2008. There's a lot of independent material on the web about this convention, and about every part of it for that matter. All I did was war game, and I had very few opportunities to take pictures. These are the pictures that I thought worthwhile to share:

This is a game of Warmachine/Hordes using the Tour of Duty format. It's very similar to the old GW Carnage scenario, and in some ways is more fun than Carnage just due to the rich variety of rules associated with Warmachine and the smaller number of models, which gives space to move about and try a few things. I am playing Vlad, Joe W. ("Minidragon" on the PP forums) is playing Sorscha, Joe's friend is playing Mortenebra and my buddy Ken is playing a Trollblood army provided by Joe. Great fun, and a nice table provided by PP. Many thanks to the umpire, "Polar Bear" on the PP forums.

This is another view of Minidragon's army. I actually thought his Khador army was the nicest one I saw at GenCon.

This are three of Minidragon's infantry. The bareheaded Sergeant is an excellent conversion.

This is Minidragon's army on view before the HardCore tournament. I think the Manhunter's head is a superior conversion.

This is Minidragon's Kovnik Joe. Brilliant job. And note the converted Mechanik in the background. Small details like this make all the difference.

This Skorne Titan is excellent. The guy who owned him played with a Skorne sashimono faithfully attached to his back throughout his games.


The Skorne player also showed me his Carvivean for his forthcoming Legion army. Sweet.

Another view of the Carvivean.

Is Wargaming Immature?

I often wonder about this. It's probably a learned horror latent within me from a few of the agonistes of the female persuasion that I've walked the walk with. But, you know, I don't think war gaming is all that bad. Why would it be any different for us than it was in the 19th century when it was considered a leisure activity a grown man could be proud of? Maybe a little like this:



And I did recently observe this person driving down the road near my house:



So I don't think war gaming is that bad at all.