Festivus: the airing of grievances

  Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it! -- Frank Constanza

Two things have been stewing in my head for a bit, though one is a little more recent than the other. Let's start with the recent one. Alert: this is a long post, but you should be used to that from me by now.

Grievance #1: Quality of Service

I am not sure if this is a Covid thing or just something I can blame on post-Covid shifting in our human psyche, but I have found that the quality of service among various game-related companies has gotten bad. I am not going to name names, but I have had several issues where I placed an order, paid for the goods, and never got the product. These are not the heavy hitters like Games Workshop or Reaper Miniatures, these are the little guys. In one case, I placed an order in early September and waited, and waited... I did get a prompt email response that my order had been received and my PayPal account was billed. Finally, at the beginning of November, I emailed to check the status of my order...nothing. I did again in about the first week of December....again nothing. So, I called my credit card company and sicked them on the issue. It was funny because when the customer service rep asked me what kind of company it was I hesitantly said it makes wargame miniatures. I'm sorry, I know nowadays it's cool to be a nerd, but I come from an earlier time where at least in the USA, wargaming was looked down upon. I carry that baggage still today. She was very positive and said her brother is a gamer and plays D&D. She asked if I wanted my money back or to resolve the situation where the order is expedited and I get the minis. I chose the later.  A week later, I got an email from the company saying I was going to get a refund on my credit card. That was it. No apologies for nonexistent service. Nothing. 

In another case, I placed an order with a company that 3D prints their miniatures. Again, I got a confirmation that my order was received and I paid for the miniatures. I realize that 3D printing can take time. A Shapeways order would sometimes take up to five months, but they always sent update emails on the progress of their printing. After four months, I contacted this company on the status of the order. The person completely forgot my order. Yes, take my money, please. 

You are probably saying, "gee Chris, you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. These are only two companies." Yes, that is true, but I noticed a deterioration of service from a number of companies I regularly order from. Companies that had excellent service in the past seem to be slipping. Orders seem to be very slow (I find myself sending more emails lately to enquire on the status of an order than in the past); they screw up the order multiple times and send me the wrong things; I get a pack of figures that are supposed to have multiple poses and get all of the same pose; or I email a company and never get a response. 

I am not an expert on business or business economics, but it seems that small, niche companies live or die by customer satisfaction. They need repeat customers. I get they are small maybe even one man operations, but at least keep your customers in the loop. And when your company does screw up, offer a small token to make up for the screw up. Will I order from these companies again? No way for the first case study and not likely for the second. The owner did say he will print the order but I won't get them until the new year.

Grievance #2: Historical Revision regarding Rules

This one has been really been bugging me for several years now. I blame it on the rise of Games Workshop and all the big box companies that adopted their business model such as Warlord Games. This may seem silly but it is as if table top wargaming with miniatures never existed prior to the 1980s or whenever Games Workshop went full corporate. Its almost Orwellian. 

I am not necessarily talking about where I went into an official, stand alone Games Workshop store and they stare at me blankly after I answer their question of if I have ever played Warhammer 40K, and I reply no, but I have played lots of other rulesets. Then, they condescendingly proceed to explain it all to me as if I had never picked up a miniature and some dice before. Yes, this happened to me several times. 

Its not so much that, but the ardent followers of these various games. I have had conversations with many younger gamers and have watched many YouTube videos on wargame rules. They seem to think nothing existed prior to the rise of these big companies, particularly with regards to rules. These YouTube experts go on and on about rule mechanics not bothering to do a little research of the past. The state that the latest edition of game X introduced this new mechanic innovative mechanic. Bullsh*t!! That "new" mechanic has been around for years and I can cite the rules where they are found. A number of times I have or wanted to say something along the lines of, "you do realize that rule mechanic X is not an invention of [insert big name company here]. It can be found in rules A, B, and C that were published in the 70s and early 80s." They give you a puzzled look. 

These are the same folks that if you criticize some aspect of a rule, they get all ballistic. I remember recently stating a game was over that there was a mechanism to resolve a hit didn't make sense and that another rule set did it better. My opponent didn't seem to realize that there were actually other rules of this genre out there and that this was how its done and that is that. I even dared to suggest it could be modified...nope, can't happen! I guess when you plunk down $100+ for a set of rules (hence, Big Box), they are perfect whether you really believe that or not. When I was in college the first time around (a whole separate story), one of my gaming buddy's (math and history double major) absolute joy was to dissect a rules and try to come up with a better mechanic that made more sense to him. Then, we'd play test it to see if his tinkering held up. Even back in high school, my high school buddies and I found the infantry rules for Angriff! the WWII rules awful and came up with our own that we thought were better. Were they better? I don't know but at least we didn't have this blind loyalty to the rules. 

I'm not saying that Games Workshop rules or any other big box company rules bad. I really like Warmaster and Lord of the Rings Big Battles rules. I think X-Wing Miniatures game by Fantasy Flight Games has a really neat mechanic. I just feel that there have been rules going back far earlier than when I hooked a ride, and this should be acknowledged or at least superficially "studied" before making bold, expert pronouncements and pontifications. 

Somewhat related, is sad to see that so many folks, particularly younger ones, are so hooked on the big box games that they won't even think about playing games using non-big box rules. Last spring, I attended a small local convention. The miniature wargames section consisted almost all Warhammer 40K except for one guy who put on a zombie vs alien vs rednecks invasion game using some rule set I can't remember the name of. NOBODY signed up for his game, except for me. It ended up that his older son and wife played to make up for the two other factions in the game. It wasn't the greatest game, but it was fun and entertaining and there were no arguing over rules minutiae.  

I guess I am old.

Updates

Time has passed since the last post. 

First, no International Naval Wargaming Day game happened. Wow, be surprise coming from me. There was actually a good reason why, but over a month has passed and with it the reason. I'm sure it was a good reason though. 

Second, I have been mostly painting of 15mm fantasy/medieval for Dragon/Lion Rampant gaming. Robert over at Shogun Miniatures has been very busy with my orders. A great guy to do business with and his prices are pretty reasonable. If you need custom-made metal bases, suggest you check him out. On the other hand, I had some big issues with another vendor of 15mm fantasy figures who shall remain nameless. I know that with the exception of some huge corporate entities like Games Workshop, most businesses we deal with are "mom & pop" affairs. Still, I should not have to sick the credit card company on them after three months and repeated ignored emails. I liked there minis but they are "dead to me" as they say in organized crime movies.

I've also done some work building structures for 3mm-1/600 gaming. For some reason, I cannot seem to get the scale right. The buildings always seem to fit better with 1/300 miniatures. 

Much of what has been occupying my time is all my son's extracurricular activities. We won't go there, but my wife is not very involved in much of my son's activities except for tennis. Even there, I am the one who does most of the driving to and from lessons. Between tennis, Boy Scouts (sorry now known as just Scouts), and church youth group activities, I don't have a lot of time for my self except late at night. Even then, I am grading exams or papers, or going over the next day's lectures. Man, I miss the days long ago when I worked 9 to 5 at some relatively mindless job and then had the rest of ,my day free!

The last thing I want to mention is my current state of being. I live in northeastern Tennessee right on the border with southwest Virginia. Its is about an hour drive from the North Carolina border. Other than a day's power outage and a few days of no cell or internet service, my town survived Hurricane Helene intact. No so in other towns nearby, especially those that are nestled in mountain valleys. So far, 227 people are dead and a number are still missing. A lot of stories of people I know suffered from this. My wife, son, and I have done volunteer work to help out, but it is still devastating on the psyche. And to add to this, like everything else now in the USA, its become politicized. It is hard to focus on hobby things when events like this hit close to home. 

Shalom.

Basing for Rules Rant

 Things have been slow in the hobby area of my life. I have had little time between moving my daughter to college, starting the semester at my school, and the ramping up of all my son's activities. I have been working on various things, but in piecemeal fashion. Projects make some headway but then come to a grinding halt. There really has not been anything blogworthy to report on.

Even though I have nothing visual to show for, I have been thinking a lot. And what I have been thinking a lot about is figure basing. It has become my pet peeve that every new rule set I encounter seems to wants different basing. Let's take ancient/medieval/fantasy rules for example. One set still has you base your figures following the old WRG format (40mm length x Xmm depth, depending on troop type), which is fine with me. Then you have rules where figures have to be in squares. Then you have rules where the base dimensions are odd so that you have to special order them from some company. Finally, you have rules where each figure is individually based.  You have rules where the commanders are based independently from the units they command. Then you have rules were the commander must be based among the rank and file troops. The variations seem to go on and on. 

One one level, I do get the point of having bases of a standard size, but I have read through enough rules to conclude that the justification of basing troops a certain way did not seem to be all that critical to the rest of the rule mechanics. The rules would work fine as intended so long as you keep things consistent.

I read a lot on the various Facebook groups, particularly those that center around a single set of rules where posters rebased their figures to conform to this latest rule set. So in a year or so, when the new latest & greatest set of rules come along, are you going to rip off all of those figures from their current bases and rebase them? What if it ends up that you don't really like the rules?  Sorry, but I am not going to rip up all my figures and rebase them for a rule system that is relatively untried, nor do I have the money to duplicate units to match the various basing systems ("...and here is my unit of Orcs for Rules A, and here is my unit of Orcs for Rules B, and here is my unit of Orcs for Rules C...."). It would not be that big an issue, but some rules seem to force you to use a particular basing system. I will not name names, but the wording of the first edition of a particular rule set seemed to shame the reader if they dared to have multiple figures on a single base. Recently, I read some reviewer of rules state that those who insist on using the WRG basing conventions were old dinosaurs and need to get with the picture....really? 

I cannot put my finger on it, but I blame the rise of the Games Workshop mentality of rules. Not only must you buy and use only our miniatures to play our game, but you have to base them according to our conventions. Heaven help you if you do otherwise (even if it doesn't really matter so long as you are consistent). Again, a certain unnamed WWII set of rules seems to insist on basing your infantry on a particular sized base (which they are happy to sell you), even if it does not really seem to matter that much as far as I can tell. This mentality has permeated among a lot of rules that don't have their own line of miniatures. 

As a wargaming child of the late 70s, I am going to continue to buck the system and fight the Power, even if it means I will be using these rules solo. I will ignore their iron-fisted basing rules or adapt my already based miniatures to the rest of their system. I will make it work! 

Last Post for the Year

 I thought I'd join the bandwagon and have a wrap up of 2021. 

Counting up the number of yearly posts, 2021 is tied with one other one since I started this blog. There are lots of reasons why I didn't post, but its been another year where life got in the way of my hobby, particularly during the second half of the year. None of there events were particularly good ones. My bout with Covid did not free me up to do more. In fact, I did very little for the two weeks that I had the symptoms.  It did not help that my bosses felt that I could still efficiently teach remotely.  

The water disaster was a major game changer as well. In my November post, I predicted that we would have our new floors in. It turns out that that won't happen for another two weeks. So, we are still walking around on our subfloor and our garage and second floor of the house is packed with stuff from the first floor. 

Even without all the issues I mentioned above, work has become very stressful. I enjoy the teaching aspects, but the all the nonsense in dealing with not only administrators but even some of my faculty colleagues has become soul crushing. I thought I'd never say this, but some of my colleagues are as much idiots as the administrators. My college is not the same as the one I first started. The ideals that the school prided itself on are now lip service. The college has become a business. I get the need to be financially competitive, but the school has definitely lost its way. For the first time, I am looking forward to retirement. I'm looking at between five to seven years depending on were I am at financially. 

Even though my original goal for 2021 was to game more, I think my biggest success was whittling down my pile of lead. Painting made up for the lack of gaming mainly because it emotionally or psychologically allowed me to escape the real world, even if it was for a half an hour each night. I did manage to have a few games. Most of them were with my son. They were all prior to the various disasters. We had fun, but I don't think I have sparked any interest in him. I can't seem to compete with Fortnite and these other online games. 

I am not going to give any resolutions regarding the hobby, but I am currently on  a much overdue sabbatical. Already, I feel less stress! In addition to finally getting to do some major research (I have a lot of projects that have been languishing for the past 5 or more years), I plan to do some gaming in there. 

The last thing I want to say is that I greatly appreciate all my fellow bloggers out there. I live vicariously through their after action reports, and I really get inspired by there various projects. If you are reading this, thank you for your posts. They keep me going during dry times.

The Latest Insanity

 If September was family Covid month, October was flood-the-first-floor-of-your-house month! Whoopie! The little tube that connects the toilet tank to the tap that is on the floor decided it wanted to make a splash, and splash it did! My son came home about 20 minutes before I did from school, opened the door, and there was about an inch of water on the entire first floor of our house. We don't know how long it had been gushing, but it was a major mess both on the first floor and in the crawlspace. I guess I should be happy that it seems to be just the tube and not the spigot. My wife, daughter, and I spent the evening with shop vacuums borrowed from neighbors sucking up the water, and throwing out whatever paper items that were soaked beyond use.  

The upshot is that all our heating ducts had to be replaced, the restoration people (they are responsible for power drying the subflooring and walls) had to tear all our beautiful flooring that my wife and I put in about two months work on last year, and our first floor currently sounds like the inside of a C-130 transport plane from all the blowers and industrial-strength dehumidifiers running 24 hours a day. Fortunately, it seems that our house insurance will pay for most if not all of it, including putting in new flooring. Equally fortunate, the contractor in charge is very no-nonsense, and seems to really know what he is doing. The owner of the HVAC company that tore out our old ducts and put in the new ones that this guy is the best in the business. If all goes well, we should have our new floor in no later than about two weeks. Hopefully, the rest of November will be very uneventful. 

She said she was on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan

 March came in like a lion for me and still is roaring at me...more like screaming at me. A lot of health issues have popped up, but not for me. My mother has been in the hospital for the third time in two months. A friend from work and the husband of another friend from work both have been hit with cancer.  In terms of work, I am running out of steam. Between dealing with administrators, other faculty, and students who won't do their work, I am so done. Remote and hybrid learning is a joke, and the administrators feel that its business as usual during this time of pandemic. The only bright spot is that I got my COVID vaccine last Saturday and will go in for my second one on March 27. 

I have not done a whole lot hobby-wise. I have no energy for it. I've managed to do a few things. For now, I give you 15mm fantasy Dwarven Princess Leia from BVG. The photo is not up to par, but it is what it is. I wasn't too happy with the face. Unlike a lot of other miniatures from BVG, her face lacks detail. She will likely join other Dwarves in future skirmish battles with my son.

Weird and Annoying

I wanted to check out an old post dated October 21, 2016 where I play tested and evaluated Thud Ridge air combat rules. I noticed that the post was truncated. As I recall, there was at least two more turns. The way it reads at the end, its pretty obvious that there should be more. Admittedly, its four years old now, but its pretty annoying all the same. Was this due to the "new and improved" update? Already I notice some annoying issues with the Blogger text editor. Unfortunately, I don't have a Word file of this post. I read that you can use Google Docs and then cut and paste into Blogger. For now on, I am definitely going to do this.

Update: Life Goes On

 Its been forever, or at least it seems like forever since my last post. The culprit: my house. We've been thinking about this for years, but finally, we are remodeling our main floor of our house....pretty much ourselves! The floor is the first, and probably main thing that is being done. 

This is a job for a younger man. Even wearing knee pads, its killing me. My wife is helping a lot, though her constant obsessing with the smallest measurements is not really helping. The other issue is that its only now that we are putting down the floor. The last three weeks have been nothing but prep work. The people who built this house were idiots. But hey, I got to use a nail gun! And, my Dremel tool has been put to good use cutting the flooring. I also learned to take all YouTube home-improvement videos with a huge grain of salt. Nothing every goes as smoothly as they show (see above comment about the idiots who built this house). 

So this is the state of things for now.  Laundry, washing dishes, my teaching, all that other stuff have gone out the window. I'm lucky that my kids get fed. My hobby daydreams are the closest I get to things for now. One other thing I want to mention. I am a lucky man to know people who can lend some time, even if its just for an hour or two to help. Both my boss and a friend from church who is a retired software engineer who seems to know a lot about this stuff and has almost all the tools I need have been helping a lot. Without them, I'd be swimming in quicksand.

Tale of 3mm Woe

I am finding more and more frustration as I dabble in 3mm/1:600 scale armies. The frustration is with the infantry. When it comes to WW2 and Modern ground forces, Oddzial Osmy (sold by Pico Armor in the USA) is the only game in town. The issue is that they are cast in a very hard metal. I don't know what the alloys are in it, but its a lot harder than miniatures like GHQ that use a lot less lead if any. I totally understand why this hard, brittle metal is used, BUT the problem comes down to the infantry. They are on strips. The infantry needs to be cut from the strips. Unfortunately, the sculptor didn't put deep enough break points between each figure so that they easily snap off. A good pair of wire cutters are needed. The issues that I've had include figures flying off into space (thank god for safety glasses) to only get lost in the carpet, and due to the brittle nature of the metal, a number of figures break off at the knees. 

A recent prepping project has revealed an improved method of removing infantry from their strips as well as a new means of stripping old paint off. I had painted up a bunch of infantry, but when I gave them a dark wash, they looked horrible. So, I decided to strip them. 

I tried a number of different solvents including Simple Green, but nothing worked. Consulting the web, I found several that were touted to be very effective. Being where I live, the only one I could find was this stuff called LA's Totally Awesome. 

I don't know if it is made in Los Angeles, or they use it there, but that's the name. Man, did it work well!

In about three days, the miniatures were pretty well stripped of their paint down to the metal. However, the cleaner seemed to have reacted with the metal and left this thin powdery film of oxidation on the figures. Sorry, no pictures, but it would have been hard to see much anyway. A normal tooth brushing could not remove much of it. In comes the Dremel brush.

A metal brush tool would probably have been safe on metal this hard, but I opted for nylon brushes. They worked pretty well and buffed off most of the oxidation and any paint that still clung to the figures. 

Now onto second half of the story. 

I got them cleaned but now the issue was to cut them out. This part I dreaded. In the past, I have used my Dremel tool with a cutting wheel to thin out the base between two figures and it seemed to work well. 

I started doing this with this batch of infantry, but for whatever reason, more figures where having their legs broken at the knees! What saved me was a pair of pliers. To clean off the oxidation from the figures, I held the strip with the pliers. I did the same while using the cut off wheel, holding them tightly between the figure to be cut off of the strip and the one next two it, which usually was the one that got broke off at the knees. My guess is that the vibration of the cut off wheel on the metal broke off the legs. As I said, this metal is very strong, but very brittle. Holding the strip tightly reduced the vibration and allowed me to thin down the base to snap off the miniature successfully.

 

So, happy ending! I got the figures stripped and enough cut off to mount them onto their bases with no further leg casualties in the process.

As a note of caution, I could not get absolutely all of the oxidation material off of them. Also, the metal is no longer shiny but a dull gray. Hopefully, re-priming and painting them will not cause any more oxidation. In the future, I might spray them with a clear coat just to be safe. On larger figures, I still use spray primer, but with this tiny guys, I use a brush on. 

Major Painting Burn Out

Ennui: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction; boredom.

Robert Cordrey wrote about it on his blog a few weeks ago. I've read other bloggers discussing similar issues. For me, I though way back in March that I'd have lots of time for projects, and dare I say it, actual gaming. It seems, however, that the situation has magnified what I have been feeling for a while regarding my hobby. I paint a lot of stuff, make terrain, but never actually play a game. This came to a head the last two weeks. I mentioned back in April and early May that I have been making a lot of progress and multitasking. Things were chugging along. But then, I got caught up in a painting contest on a Facebook groups page. I started working on my entry, a unit of fantasy heavy cavalry. The more I worked on it, the more burned out I got on it. I wanted to make it as high quality a paint job as I could. It seemed endless tedium. I wanted to shelf the whole thing and forget about it, but at the same time, I just wanted to finish the damn thing. Finally, I finished last night. I took some pictures and posted them on the group site that is having the contest. I don't pretend to a great miniature photographer and I really don't have to time nor the wherewithal to take great shots. When I looked at the pictures (see below), I thought, "I spent all this *bleepity-bleep* time working on these things but the pictures don't show most of the detail I put into them!!!"

So, here's some pictures I took of very recent miniatures that I painted. I think these are going to be the last ones I paint for awhile. For now on, I'm going to redirect my efforts to playing games, even if they are board games.

First, a couple of dwarves from Battle Valor Games:

He plans to enter the Gandalf the Gray cosplay contest.

Queen Keona; King Ivan's sister:

Queen Keona is a kitbash. Originally, she was a Battle Valor vampire general. She looked perfect from the photos, and it would be easy to swap shields. However, when I got her, the upper torso was fine and the horse she rode on was fine, but her waist, legs and feet left something to be desired. It was mainly her foot attire. It looked like she was wearing Inuit mucklucks. I've worn them. Great for sub-zero temperatures and snow, silly for riding into battle. Unfortunately, Battle Valor's riders have their lower halves sculpted directly onto to the stead. So, there was no way I could get rid of the legs and use the horse. Fortunately, the proportions and size matched fairly well with Essex 15s. Some poor knight in full plate mail gave his life....legs for the queen. I used one of the many Essex horses I have accumulated over the years. Threw on a standard heater shield and there you go.

A female elf fighter also from Battle Valor:

The objects of my scorn, Battle Valor evil heavy cavalry:

Finally, an impromptu battle scene that includes some Goth slingers from Essex along with the spider warrior that I painted a couple of weeks ago:

They are supposed to be Battle Valor's version of dark elves, but you really cannot tell except some of them have pointed ears if you look close enough. The spiders on the shield were done with Sharpies. The flag was done using Adobe Illustrator.

Its time to box these, like I do so many others, clean off my workbench, start gaming. 

Not What I Expected Part 2

Yesterday, I received a much anticipated package from Shapeways. I had ordered some 1/600 aircraft and vehicles. Yes, Shapeway stuff is more expensive than traditional minis, but they make things that others don't, and by others, I mean O8 because they are the only company that makes ground vehicles, particularly modern. So one of the orders was for the South African APCish vehicle, the RG-31 Nyala. Besides the fact that O8 has yet to make them, it was a pretty good deal at about $9 for 12 vehicles.

I got the package and instead of the Nyalas, I got these:

They are some sort of 40K vibroblade thingies with a hand conveniently attached to them. Both the invoice and the label on the plastic bag that they came in said Nyalas. I contacted Shapeways about this, but have not heard back. I have no desire to spend the time nor especially the money to send these things back.

Somewhere out there, there is 40K fanatic straining his eyes to figure out what he got instead of his vibroblades.

Not What I Expected

Once again, I am compelled to say why I have not posted in awhile. Believe it or not, I have had a little more time to work on hobby stuff, but taking pictures and posting for me takes longer than I think it will. I'm this close (putting two fingers together) to starting the campaign between Bovatopia and Lavonia. The armies are build and I am finishing up slapping together terrain.

The main topic of this post is to briefly mention my latest purchases. I've hit a few duds recently. I am so disappointed that the first two don't even get a photo included in this post. I suppose the phrase, "buyer beware" applies, but I still think that I am not 100% to blame.

1. British Battleships of the Victorian Era by Norman Friedman
You may or may not be familiar with Mr. Friedman's work on various warships. The ones I have are really good references, and for folks like me who are crazy about deck plans and line drawings of warship and are incredibly useful for building models of them, they are chocked full of them. Photos just don't do it compared to a good side view and top view of a ship. I bought his British Cruisers of the Victorian Era and was pretty happy with it. So, I expected this to be the same with this one...WRONG! There are just two line drawings in the whole book. There are lots of the original deck plans included, many are fold outs, but to me, these are a pain in the ass to figure out what is going with them. Plus, these are photos of the originals....time is never kind to illustrations like these. Was Friedman in a rush to publish this book? Was A. D. Baker not available (is he still alive)? If not, there are a now a gazillion illustrators who could have done the work for pennies. He just had to go onto something like Deviantart.com to find someone. I do have Baker's British Battleships, 1889-1904, so I have a good reference of illustrations.

2. Bug Hunts: Surviving and Combating the Alien Menace (Dark Osprey) by Mark Latham
OK, I guess this one is my fault for not carefully reading description of this book. For some reason, I thought this was a rulebook with a lot of background fluff. The reviews of it seem to point that way. Nope. I am not sure what its supposed to be exactly. It rips off the Aliens and Starship Trooper franchises to describe a future history of various alien bugs and the human fight against them. Its nicely illustrated being an Osprey book. Had I known that it wasn't a set of rules, I wouldn't have gotten it. To this day, I still kick myself for not getting 2-Hour Wargames' Bug Hunt back in the day. It was cheap and probably worth the price.

3. Hail Caesar by Rick Priestley
This one is probably the best of the three. I kept hearing about how great these rules were, so I thought I'd get them and see if I can modify them for fantasy.  Being that I grew up on WRG ancient rules, I am all OK about stats being somewhat generic. If Greek hoplites want to fight dark age Vikings, I'm OK with that.

The rules aren't bad, just sort of "meh," particularly for the price. There wasn't anything in the mechanics that really stood out as new or interesting. Give me good rules over pretty pictures anytime. I also ordered the army list supplement for late antiquity to early medieval. That made up for it a little. I'm not sure if I will keep them or put them up for sale on Facebook.

I "Like" Facebook Groups

Over the past few years, I've seen increasing criticism of The Miniatures Page as a forum for discussing miniatures and gaming. I've been a member since 2002, so I've seen it change over the years. I would largely agree with many of the criticisms, particularly pertaining to its use as a political soapbox for certain more vocal members. I've also seen more and more of a "snotty" attitude by posters when responding to a question posted by others. There are some other general miniature wargaming news sites, but they seem either not-so-general as in they focus on the more popular games (as opposed to covering different genres) that the cool kids are playing, or they are nothing more than advertisements for products.

Additionally, I've lost a lot of interest in Yahoo! Groups. I cannot pinpoint exactly why, but I rarely visit any of the Yahoo! groups I belong to anymore. Same goes with the groups in Google+. Many of these groups have become nothing more than free ads for certain miniature companies. I guess you can argue that no one posts, then at least it is something to look at.

Recently, I joined the 6mm Wargaming and Terrain group on Facebook. So far, I have been very happy with it. It has successfully avoided the problems with those groups I have mentioned above. Same goes with the Naval Wargaming group.  Hopefully, these issues will not pop up in the future.

If you are on Facebook, you might want to check them out.

I'm Confused

For a LONG time, I've hoped that either GHQ or C-in-C would make the M103 US heavy tank. Here is some info on the M103 if you've never heard of it.  Why do I want one? Well, to make a long story short (which you know I'm not good at), it was one of the Roco minitanks that I owned as a kid. I thought it was really cool...so what if it wasn't successful! It was part of my Roco "holy trinity," the M103, the M47 Patton, and the M42 Duster. When I started my ImagiNation game, the trinity had to be a part of it. For a long time, GHQ only made the M47. Yes, Heroics & Ros and Soctia made the M103 and Duster, but they weren't the greatest models. I was excited when GHQ made the Duster. I hoped that the M103 was right around the corner. So far, it hasn't happened.

So here's my rant and its directed at GHQ because C-in-C hasn't made any new AFVs in who knows how long. GHQ just released a set of WWII German trailers. I'm sorry, but why???? For that matter, they have HMMWV w/ Towed Generator. Again, why? What in the world do you do with these trailers and a portable generator in a wargame? Did I miss the section in all my microarmor rules where the trailers are used? Is there a huge demand for microarmor trailers?  I don't understand why a company would put out trailers as well as a lot of other stuff that are not combat vehicles, and not something like the M103? I really like GHQ's products, but come on, guys!

An Apology for Comments not Posted

I want to apologize to Jim Casey and the other folks who made comments on my blog but never appeared! Your comments are valuable and I always greatly appreciate them!

My blog is set up to send an email saying that you have made a comment. A bunch of them never did get sent to my email.  They also didn't seem to initially make it to the "comments awaiting approval: until I clicked on a previous post and then all of a sudden they showed up like gangbusters.  I don't understand the selectivity of this.

I'll admit, I don't have a lot of time to get on Blogger and check things beyond just throwing up my post, hence the numerous typos and such. I still can't seem to figure out how to take a MS Word document and paste it into Blogger without all the formatting junk that I have to manually edit out, but that's another story.

I promise that I will diligently check more often to see if this happens again.

Again, I apologize to those who commented but didn't see their comments up on my blog.

Static Grass Blues

I hate static grass.

In theory, it would be so cool looking...grass standing up. In 1/300 scale, it would be like tall grasses.  My prone machine gunners could hide behind it. It would add some nice variation to my 15mm figure stands.

The problem is that very time I apply it, it always ends up like its been flattened with a steamroller. I've tried blowing in it, poking it with a tooth pick, and even tried holding the base upside down and tossing the stuff upward. Nothing has worked. It always looks like a pile of grass. I have a big container of this stuff taking up room on my workbench. I look at it and think, "wouldn't it be great to use this stuff." Then I reach for the flock.

I have scoured the internet for answers. There have been many suggestions, but I have yet to try them. Plus some of them seem to be variations on what I've tried already, so I am rather dubious of the results.  I remember one of them had a nice technique to make your own tuffs of grass, but you need a static grass applicator.

It was recommended to me to get a static grass applicator. These will definitely do the job.  I'm sorry, I am not paying $200 for some fancy machine that I will only use occasionally. There are the $40 "electric fly-swatter" applicators. These are still a little pricey. There are instructions to build your own on the internet, but I am not handy with an electric soldering iron. That leads me to the last alternative that was recommended to me. The Noch 08100 squeeze bottle applicator. Yes, I am naming names here. It looks like an 8 oz. rubber bottle. You put the grass in and shake it up. The grass builds up a static charge rubbing against the sides of the bottle, and then puff it out where it will hit the glue standing up. Sounds great! It can't be all that expensive. Even if it doesn't really work, I won't be out of a lot of money. However, there is a problem: almost no one in the USA sells them! I found five online hobby shops that sell them, but they are in the UK, Germany, Italy, and even Finland. They are about £4 in the United Kingdom, which equals about $6 US; however, I have the feeling that the shipping would be more than what I pay for it.  So, is there some sort of embargo in the USA on the Noch 08100? Are they being sold to foreign powers and terrorist groups that we oppose? Can they be used for nefarious purposes other than to happily deploy static grass?

Now, remember I said almost no one in the good old USA sells them.  I found that Amazon.com sells them through a third party vendor. "Great!" I thought. The price in bold print stated little over $6. "Wonderful!" I thought even louder. Then, I saw, in not-so-bold type, Shipping & Handling: $16... WHAT!?!?
You've got to be kidding! Does a specially-trained Golden Eagle carry it to me in its talons? What are these people thinking? I'm sorry, but that is nuts, just nuts. The customer reviews went on and on about great service and great shipping. Huh? They must be millionaires to throw away that much on shipping.

This leads me to another somewhat-related rant: shipping and handling. Fortunately, pretty much every wargaming company uses the good old US Postal Service, or the postal service of their national origin. In the US, the postage is more-or-less a fixed price unless you are ordering 10 tons of lead. Not so with art supply companies. I have nothing against FedEx and UPS, but but paying 3 times or more for shipping for an item is not worth it. Case in point: I used to use technical drawing pens to illustrate my fossil specimens. These pens ain't cheap ($15 to $25, depending on the pen nib), but they are about the size and weight of a fine-point marker.  I remember an nationally known art supply store wanting to charge $25 for shipping. Why? Part of it was because I live in the middle of nowhere (I lived in Zone 7 or something like that), but the main reason was that the pen cost $20. No, there was no insurance to this order, they just decided to charge that much to ship it via a delivery service. Come on! You could put it in an envelope, sick a stamp or two on it, and off it goes! Every online art supply company, even those that claim they are discount ones, stick you with outrageous shipping costs.

So, will I pay $22 for a small rubber bottle that I don't even know will do what I want it to do? Eh, no. I will find my own bottle and give that a try first. It will be a long time before I pay that much for a domestic purchase. I might as well order it from Europe. The overseas postage might be a little cheaper. I might even buy my own bug zapper and try my hand at making one.

Does This Ever Happen to You?

The above title sounds like the beginning voice over for an ad for some sort of Made for TV product, but its fitting for my brief rant. Recently, I took advantage of GHQ's latest special deal that they offer. You buy $50 or more of figurines and you get 15% off. There were a few things that I really wanted to get. They've been coming out with a number of South African AFVs that I really like. There wasn't enough to make the $50, so I added a few other things to the order. To make a long story, short, when my order came I discovered that I already had some of the items from previous orders!  They aren't figurines that I need in large abundance, either.

As I rifled through my storage boxes looking to see if there were any more duplicates, another thing I discovered was that there were pieces of microarmor that I either couldn't identify what they were, and/or couldn't identify the manufacturer that made them. I've never been known as Mr. Organization, but I've always been pretty good at remembering what something was. I guess my memory is going. 

So, I decided to make an inventory of all my figurines. It doesn't matter what stage of production they are in: unpainted, painted, based, etc. I'm going to start with the microarmor and then move to other collections. Good thing there are spread sheets. I am also going to aggressively label my boxes. I have in the past, and most or my WWII stuff is labeled, but I have not gotten around to labeling a lot of the modern stuff. I am not sure how long this is going to take, but its like periodically cleaning your workbench. You don't really want to to do it, but it needs to be done.

The Case of the Missing Model Piece

One of my recent purchases was Khurasan's 15mm Federal Army DIMOG Armorsuit Mk 2. I wanted to beef up Yogurt Town's militia. The model consists of a number of pieces, one of which is the door shield that makes up the front of the driver's compartment:

 When I was ready to spray it with primer, I couldn't find that door shield.  I looked everywhere. After giving up the search, I tried making one out of thin styrene plastic. It wasn't great, but it was serviceable. I took the model, along with some other minis, outside to spray, sprayed them, and then put them in a small box I use to transport minis to and from where I spray. Last night, I sat down to paint and assemble the Armorsuit. Guess what? The home made door shield is now missing! Tiny, individual 6mm infantrymen that were sprayed along with it were all accounted for, but a 12mm x 7mm bent piece of plastic is not. I could have sworn I put it in the box along with the other figures I sprayed. I'm not really in the mood to make another one. I spent a lot of time putting the thing together, particularly pinning the arms and legs to to the body.  I'll take a look outside where I did the spraying, but I wouldn't surprised if I don't find it. Is this some sort of sign?  *GRUMBLE*

Grumble...Grumble...Grumble...

So, I'm working on several projects at once, which is difficult because if I get a half an hour free, I'm a lucky guy. Anyway, one of the things I have been doing is making a hex mat to play various air combat games...or, I was until about an hour ago.

I am philosophically opposed to miniature games that require hexes. Don't get me wrong, board games are great things. I started wargaming with Avalon Hill and SPI years before I found miniatures. One of the immediate things that attracted me to gaming with miniatures is that movement and ranges were no longer restricted and seemed a little less abstract. Also, it meant that you have to have one, and that also felt somehow restricting. You can't just set a game up on any table, you have to have The Mat present to play the game. However, there seems like there are a number of air combat games that require hexes for movement of aircraft and weapon ranges. As I said in a previous post, I really like Air War: C21, which is hexless, but I found that with the newest addition, the turn radius is "fiddly" as they say in the UK. So, I broke down and decided to make my own hex mat. Yes, I could spend the money on a pre-made one, but that's just not me. If I were to have a coat-of-arms, the motto under it would read: Why Do Things the Easy Way, When You Can Do Them the Hard and Complicated Way? I guess I am sort of like Papa Bear from the many Berenstain Bears stories. I just have to do things the hard way.

So, I go to Lowe's and buy at set of foam interlocking floor mats. A 4' x 4' one cost me $18. There are cheaper ones at Walmart, but they were 1' x 1' tiles and they looked thinner and perhaps might be too flexible. I also bought a 1.5 " hex stencil from a company that shall remain nameless for about $25. I'm not going to blame the stencil totally for my woes, but when I got it, I was a tad dubious. The stencil is a 12" x 12", thin, clear, plastic sheet. The hexes are made of small holes. Now, I bought this thing several months ago so I am a little fuzzy here, but the recall that the company recommended using spray paint to put the hexes onto the board surface. I didn't think this was a good idea because once you sprayed it, it might be hard to line things up for the next set of hexes. There are at the edges of the stencil some rather finely etched lines that are supposed to be alignment marks. They are not very easy to see, and if you were to get any paint on them, they would be rendered useless. So, I decided to use a Sharpie marker and poke it into each hole. Its far slower, but at least I could see the where the dots were and weren't. Things went very well for the first 2' x 2' section, and things were seemingly going well for the second section. However, as I worked on it tonight, I suddenly found that the hexes were going out of alignment. I thought I was lining up the alignment marks properly, but somewhere, I must have misaligned things just enough to mess the whole thing up. A tiny misalignment in the beginning will greatly magnify itself over time. It might have been off by maybe 1 or 2 degrees, but by the time I got 2/3rds through this second board, lines were missing each other by about 3 to 4 millimeters. As I said, doing it with a marker is a slow process. I've been picking away at it for almost two weeks now. When I realized how bad it was, I sat there staring it all for about an hour hoping that maybe time would reverse itself back just before I made the alignment error and I could get it right. But that didn't happen. So now I have a less than half finished hex board/mat. I guess I could spray it over with some color to cover the hexes and start again. I originally painted the mats with craft paints, but there is no way that paint will cover over the hexes. I could try spray painting the hexes on, but who knows if I will get the alignment right this time.

No, I'm going to do like Papa Bear did in The Big Honey Hunt. After chasing a bee all over the countryside trying to get honey the natural way, he ends up being all battered and bruised but with no honey. So, at the end of the story, he stops by the nearby honey store and buys it. I think I'm going to order a pre-made hex mat.