2011: No Alone Anymore

Happy 2011!

As I'm getting into the swing of 2011, things seem to be settling down enough that I can get back to this blog. One of the big changes is that I'm no longer a gamer, alone. We moved back to Canberra at the end of the year, which means I'm back with my old gaming group. Which will hopefully mean a little more playing of games and a little less playing with myself.

I've had a great break over the christmas period, which has let me try out a few new games and get started on a few projects.

I've started trying to paint up the forces for Battles of Westeros. I've got all the Stark and special character figures primed. I've finished the archers and I'm about half way through the cavalry. So far I'm pretty pleased with the results - I'll post pictures when I do a proper project update.

CanCon is coming up in a couple of weeks. I was hoping to get something ready to enter into the painting competition, but that's looking like it won't happen now. But hopefully I'll be able to find a bunch of cool new toys to play with.

While it doesn't have anything to do with gaming, I do have a couple of new hobbies that are taking up a bit of my time. I got a home brewery kit for Christmas, so I should be "enjoying" my first beers in a couple of weeks (in time for Australia Day!). I've also been spending a lot of time getting my new vegetable garden up and running. I've planted all sorts of seeds, most of which are coming along quite nicely. Ironically for an Australian summer, my biggest problem has been protecting them from the massive amount of rain!

Weekend Gaming

Real Life has meant that there's been precious little time for any gaming or hobby stuff (let alone time to blog about it). But over the weekend I did manage to catch up with the guys for some Saturday night gaming.

Due to the weather and a massive blackout, the group was a little different to normal. So we started the night with a game of Ticket to Ride. I started with two routes that took me from LA, across the top of the board and down to Chicago. They weren't huge scoring paths, but I figured they would set me up well for future routes.

However, it was the first game I've played with 5 people in a long time, so I'd forgotten that it takes longer to build up your hand and the board fills up quicker. It took me 3/4 of the game to make my first two routes. I picked up another two routes that both joined onto the ends of my existing track, so I was able to keep to my goal of having one long track.

I caused the game to end, and ended up with a very tight second place (the last route card I picked up that I couldn't do was the difference).

We then broke out a game that I'm calling Beananza, although the real name is in German (I think it's actually the same thing). It was a set-collecting card game were you tried to plant different types of beans. We all picked up the game pretty quickly, and it went really well. In the end there were only two points between the highest and the lowest scores - I finished in the middle of the pack.

We played a couple of extremely quick games of We Didn't Play Test This. Amusingly I didn't get to play a single card in either game.

The boys then had a go of Cutthroat Caverns, which is basically Munchkin without the puns. A bunch of adventures are trying to kill all the monsters, but want to make sure they're the one with the most kills.

It was a good mix of cooperative and backstabbing play. But unlike Munchkin, it wasn't so much a case of the winner being the last person who hadn't lost. We were able to use different tactics and plan to try and position ourselves best.

Partly because I was able to pull out the right cards when I needed them, and partly because W decided to try something foolish, I ended up winning.

We ended the night with a game of Dominion with the Prosperity expansion. I ended up winning quite comfortably. It wasn't until we were scoring at the end that I realised that I had played the entire game with only one action card in my deck (a Vault)! My money-making processes had just fallen into place so I hadn't needed to buy anything more.

As always, it was a great night!

Weekend Gaming: Ticket to Ride

My sister and her husband came to stay with us over the weekend, so on Saturday night we broke out a board game to play. Having been a little bit overdosed on Dominion, my brother-in-law suggested "anything else". I probably would have pushed for SmallWorld, except it (along with most of the other board games) had already been pack.

So we settled pretty quickly on Ticket to Ride.

It had been forever since I last played Ticket to Ride. It used to be the standard game for K and I to play until we got Dominion, but since then I don't think it's come out of the cupboard. So I had to check back to the rule book a few times to get us going (how many track cards do you start with? How many route cards to you have to keep? etc)

We ended up with a bit of drama when K deliberately went for a section that she knew I was about to grab, which meant my best option was to block her off. I was down to four trains, and so decided to gamble by grabbing some more route cards. I got one card that would have given me another 17 points if I'd had ONE more train - if I hadn't had to make the detour, I would have been fine.

I ended up winning thanks to the longest route card (all my trains in one long line), but it was only by a couple of points. It was a great game.

My Free Ghoul Came!

In the mail this evening was a small padded envelope. I didn't remember ordering anything recently, but it was addressed to me. Turned out it was from Wayland Games, and inside was my free ghoul sprue from Mantic Games.

If you were reading this blog back in June, you may remember that back then Mantic Games and Wayland Games were offering a deal - sign up for the Wayland Games email, and they'd send you one of the brand new ghoul models.

So I signed up, and waited. The emails came regularly, but no plastic monster. I'd actually forgotten all about it, so the package was a very nice surprise. What made it all even better was that it's not one but two ghouls, with three head options and some some extra bits (a couple of weapon hands that would take a bit of careful cutting to use and some other bits that I'm not quite sure about).

Hobby Skills in the Real World

Work and home life have both been crazy-busy the last few weeks, which has left me virtually no time for anything hobby-related. But in the whirlwind of packing, cleaning and generally getting ready to move inter-state, I have had a couple of opportunities to use my hobby skills.

Over the past two years of living in our house, our small dog has been working on scratching a hole through the laundry door. Most of the time she's fairly happy and placid, but then occasionally she decides that actually she doesn't want to be outside by her self while we're all at work.

Despite our best efforts to stop it, she's managed to inflict some serious damage to the door. This will probably surprise anyone who's actually met our dog, but she had managed to tear up a section that was about 10cm wide and 20cm tall, and dug almost half-way through the door.

Unfortunately, the pictures I took of the damage didn't come out, but this photo of after I'd filled most of the damage with wood putty should give you an idea of the area we're talking about. Basically, anything that's brown is what I had to patch up.

After the first lot of putty had dried, I went back over it with another layer to fill in any more gaps. I then scraped over the whole thing to make it level with the door, and sanded back the area to make it all seamless.
Then, through several trips to the hardware store, I was able to get a tin of paint that almost matched the door colour. Fortunately, the door is off on it's own, so it the colour was a little out it didn't matter too much. But I did have to paint the whole door.

I was pretty pleased with myself when it was all done - a few hours work (while I was doing lots of other cleaning), and it looked as good as new!

Then, not really thinking about it, we all went to work on Tuesday. When we got home, I opened up the back door and discovered this

Really, it should have occurred to me that this might happen. But I was pretty close to turning the dog into sausages.

So that evening I repeated the process. I filled in the hole with putty again, sanded it back, and then filled in any remaining holes before sanding it back yet again.

The I broke out the tin of paint again, and re-did the area. Fortunately I didn't have to re-do the whole door, since I knew the colour was going to match

The second time around doesn't look quite as good - if you look really carefully, you can see where the area was filled. But you probably wouldn't notice if you didn't know it was already there.

Now, every time we go out, I make sure the door is VERY well protected!

Fantasy Flight's Excellent Customer Service

When I opened up the Wardens of the West expansion pack to Battles of Westeros, I discovered that I had an extra Daven Lannister figure, but was missing a pikeman figure. I had the right numbers of bases (the pikemen use the longer sized base, Daven the normal one), but I was able to mount the extra Daven on the spare base I had from the core box.

I emailed Fantasy Flight's customer support explaining what was in the box. The next day I got an email back saying that an extra pikeman was packaged up and would be in the post on Monday.

About a week and a half later, a small envelope arrived for me in the mail. This is what was inside:

The Fantasy Flight Games card had a hand-written note on the back

Really, you can't ask for better than that!

Island of Blood: Griffin Rider Part II - Rider Finished

I finished off the rider a few weeks ago, but I'm only just now getting around to posting pictures.

I'm really pleased with how he's turned out - so now I'm going to focus on the bits I don't like.

Like I said last time, the gold armour came out much more bronze then I'd intended. In places where I highlighted with silver, it make it look more like the gear is damaged and worn rather than super shiny.

I'm also aware that some of the highlights on the cloak look a bit odd. I need more practice in dealing with large areas of cloth.

I was quite happy with his face - it was the first time I've managed to paint eyes that didn't look completely stupid. He does look a little crazy, but in a "I'm about to fly over and ram my lance through your chest!" kind of way.

Now I just have to find some time to finish off the griffin itself!