Absolute Power!

Or at least a new PC. After 7 years, it was time to deep 6 the old Gateway and get a new computer. Through two days of playing around with the new computer, I can’t believe I waited this long. Its like moving from a Model T to a Corvette.

Dell Vostro 400

• Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 1066FSB, 8MB L2)
• 3GB memory
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS 2DVI.
• 22 inch Widescreen monitor

And due to Dell’s end of the fiscal year savings it turned out to be rather affordable. FYI -If you are looking for an XP machine, check Dell small business (and no need to be a small business). They are still providing XP as an OS option in that department

February has been a very busy month, and very little of it was able to be posted to the blog. Most importantly, C. was born January 27th - giving me two little girls to chase around the house. They say adding a second child is harder to adjust to than the first - but I don’t think its true. After L. I did not pick up a figure for six months. This time I’ve been able to keep at least a hour or two per week to myself.  Cute little bug, isn’t she.

I’ve been casting up a pile of resin objective markers for Adepticon - 440 tokens needed for the tournaments and more for the convention sales. The blocks for the Hirst Seminars are about two thirds done.

Two weeks ago I took a Web design seminar as part of my MBA program. The seminar was a bit week, but it gave me a taste of HTML. Since then I have been reading up on the subject and playing around with products from Komposer and Coffee Cup. Komposer is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor with very few frills. Coffee Cup has a large line of products including both a Visual and WYSIWYG HTML editor - both have 30 day trial downloads! The class was taught with FrontPage 2003 - a nice enough program ( for a HTML rookie) - but I have concerns about witting pages in a format that requires the web server to have proprietary software.

After far too much effort, I finally have my Legend of the High Seas book from The Warstore. Contrary to popular opinion - this store is not the best to be found on the web: shipping delays, out of stock products and a failure to send the right product will keep me from ordering again. Despite all of that, I did get a group of Foundry pirates Scurvy Swabs to add to the pirate collection. Knew they were small (actually advertised as 28mm on the foundry site)- but these figs are tiny. They will look like children on the table compared with the GW, PP and Black Scorpion figures.

March is not going to be much better for blogging than February. Expect to see more pictures of armies buried in my gaming closet. I have 4000-5000 points of WFB Chaos, so plenty more of them to see. I also have an Eldar (well painted for 2002) and Chaos Space Marine army (not so well painted from 1999) if anyone would rather see pics from those collections.

Fine Scale Modeler magazine

I recently broke my 10 year White Dwarf addiction (yes, I do measure my WD collection in linear feet) and have been looking for a replacement hobby magazine.  The local library carries Fine Scale Modeler in the periodicals section & I’ve been reading through a few back issues to get a feel for the magazine.   Fine Scale has always been referenced in the best light, and after reading two issues - the accolades seem well deserved.  This 80+ page magazine generally publishes 4 or 5 step-by-step articles where a modeler demonstrates the use of various techniques used in the creation of a stunning tank, plane, boat or diorama.  Also included in FS are 8 to 10 model kit previews/reviews and a health portion of advertising pages.  Over all, a rather pleasant product filled with new ideas, but I’m not sure I’ll make a habit of purchasing this $6.50 magazine.  Instead, I will continue to pick up a copies from the library to page through.

When comparing the two magazines, I find it amusing that the standard GW fanboy complaints about WD carry over to Fine Scale:

• too expensive
• too much advertising
• not enough content

WD retails for $6.00 and delivers 140+ pages, FS retails for $6.50 at 80+ pages.  So much for WD being too expensive.

Fully a third of FS is advertising for various model makers.  Granted, the adverts come from a large number of companies instead of one and might actually be useful or interesting- but the principle is the same.  In addition a substantial page count is given over to reviews of new kits by various modelers.  In the WD,  it is common for GW to preview new products - an effort that is dismissed by many readers as just more advertising.

The main articles in FS are high end modeling content designed to raise the bar for its gronard readers.  Most of the articles seem to first present a technique, then show how it is used on the model but fail to actually demonstrate how to achieve the effect.  WD focus on beginning to intermediate articles that attempt to teach the new hobbyist the basic skill set (build,paint, play) needed to use the game.  WD achives its goal of educating the reader as much or more so than FS.

Let the old farts read FS and let the young turks read WD - just don’t confuse the target market & everyone will stay happy.

A Day at Gen Con

A five-hour whirlwind tour of the Gen Con vendor hall. This Saturday marked my very first Gen Con. Over all, I expected enormous event but instead found the convention to be merely huge. As you can tell from this blog, my interests run to war gaming, miniatures, terrain, resin, and sculpting - most of these areas were underrepresented in the vendor hall. The majority of the vendors catered to RPGs and CCGs, fortunately, I’ve enjoyed these genres in previous gamer lives. Finally, I was surprised by the number of costume & weapon sellers - never realized that Gen Con was such a draw for dress up.

The big find for me was Wyrd Miniatures. Their miniatures were familiar to me, but I had not given them much thought until seeing the figs in person. Their prices are reasonable too, the pics below left was only $6.50.

Aberant Games was a pleasant find. I liked a number of their figures, but was disappointed when the figure I wanted was part of a $30 box set. They have Saga - a Conan style fantasy game coming out soon, which should be a good source of human fantasy figs.

I could not pass on the opportunity to drop by the Hirst Arts booth. I wanted to meet Bruce & thank him for his support of the Adepticon Hirst Arts seminars.  Also, the new Ruined Fieldstone mold is out - lucky me, I was able to buy the last one right off the display table.

Other random coolness: Picked up ProCreate from a Kraftmark rep working the paint and take.  Ninja Magic was there with both their space ship figs & their magnetic connecter system. The new 40K RPG is due out Spring 08. Apparently the due date was pushed back when a third author was added. I have a mini-adventure book - the stats look a lot like the INQ game. Dark Age was there - unfortunately all of my pics failed to come out.

In addition to evaluating the products for sale, Dan (friend of mine with an eye for design) & I had great fun in evaluating the presentation of the booths themselves. Many sellers need to focus on their sales efforts - on more than one occasion we were forced to ask what the vendor was selling because the booth flash was confusing or incomplete.

Best Booth: Privateer Press did an excellent job of presenting their wares. The sales area contained 6-8 demo tables, a wealth of staff, many painted figure examples, a painting contest, accessible product and a central information booth.  Now I just need to find those pirate figs they had in the display case.  EDIT:  make that Sea Dogs.

Worst Booth: Rackham was a mess with just three demo tables, only a handful of painted figures & product hidden in the back corner of their area. This is a company that wows me every day on line, but all the super cool painting and exceptional terrain must have been left in Europe.

Honorable Mention Worst Booth: Somebody is learning how to throw money away on RPGs. This booth took up an entire row, featured 2 actors in high quality Angel/Demon costume and a full-length professional backdrop. But their whole sales effort were two staffers doing demos with non-descript figures on a generic square grid. No sales material was available & the staff was busy running demos. You notice I don’t include a company name or link- I never did learn who they were or what the name of the product was.

Meta Gaming Two vendors were on site to help gamers turn their own games into reality. Lulu is a print on demand publisher - here is your chance to publish a book, one customer at a time. Toy Tech is a Chinese game manufacture that can create cards, board games and tokens.

Figures from the Gen Con painting contest.

Gaming tables that caught my eye.

Games Plus Auction: after action report

I had a splendid time at the Games Plus spring miniatures auction. Appeared that 40 to 50 people came out as buyers, and the sellers must have had 500+ items up for bid. The auction was run smoothly, with 2-3 items per minute hitting the sales floor.

The miniatures for sale came from a broad range of companies: roughly one third GW, with strong showings from Confrontation, SST, and Warmachine. Bidding ran about 40-60 percent of retail with most items getting at least one bid (and frequently multiple bids). I found out later that a few Ebay sellers were in the audience keeping up the minimum bids.

I was please to see that all my times sold.
Set of 6 40mm bases: averaged $4
Bag of obstacles: averaged $15
Ruin building kit: averaged $15
Bag of 14 crates: $10

Terrain of all types sold well. Large foam ruin buildings sold in the $15 range. Painted Rail Road buildings from $15 to $22. Three sets of 10 razor wire sold for $12 each. And a number of Hirst builds sold: Bridge $20, Octagonal tower $32, Tomb $40, Bell Tower $50 and Cathedral $66. For the Fall auction, I need to bring in some painted Hirst kits of my own.

Games Plus Spring Auction

Games-Plus is hosting their spring auction in March.  I’ve never made it to one of their auctions, but have had great fun at other game auctions.  Reports from previous auctions make this out to be a must attend event.  Apparently the stock of product is large and the auction goes all day long.  Time to start thinking up a shopping list.