Friday, January 21, 2011

Going to PrezCon 2011

Well, PrezCon 2011 is coming up (end of February!), and I've finally begun planning what I'm going to be bringing and playing there.

I posted a geeklist on Boardgamegeek with the games I will be bringing to PrezCon, as well as what my buddy Rob will be bringing as well.  He'll bring a few other games as well, which are also on the list.  Check out the list here.

If you see these games being played, and see me playing them (I'll be the handsome guy with the red hair.  Handsome-ness not guaranteed), come up and say hi!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

2010 Recap, and my hopes for 2011

Just as with all my blogs, I'm putting up a post to summarize the last year (as far as gaming is concerned), and look towards the next one.

First, let's start with the blog.  I finally moved away from doing news, because CSW does it better, and started putting content up on here.  Last year that consisted of 53 posts, most of it news, but resulted in 950 visits from 589 visitors (since April).  The five most popular searches that led here were "Cardboard Warriors", "Cardboard Soldiers", "White Star Rising", "Wargame Publishers", and "Spearpoint 1943".  I managed to get 3 Battle Reports and a discussion about a book up here, but that's about all for real content.  Not very impressive.

Gaming wise, I did a lot better.  Looking through my plays listed on Boardgamegeek, here are my wargame plays for the past year:
  • Advanced Squad Leader  17 
  • Some Poles Apart: The Battle of the Westerplatte  9 
  • Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943  7 
  • Manoeuvre  6 
  • All Things Zombie: The Boardgame  4 
  • Dust Tactics  2 
  • Nations at War: White Star Rising  2 
  • Wellington  2 
  • 1898: The Spanish American War  1 
  • Corps Command: Dawn's Early Light  1 
  • Dixie: Bull Run  1 
  • Hold the Line  1 
  • Jena 20  1 
  • Kingmaker  1 
  • Panzer Grenadier: Airborne (Introductory Edition)  1 
  • Triumph of Chaos  1 
  • World in Flames  1 
Obviously, what exactly qualifies as a wargame is fairly loose, but these are what I would consider to count (that don't include miniature games).  That's 17 different games, 58 plays.  Really, that's not terrible, but i could certainly do a TON better.  Expect to see more playthroughs on this blog in the upcoming year, as I play more games, especially a larger variety of them.

Reviews are something I've not quit gotten around to on this blog.  There are two reasons for this.  First, I feel that a person should play a game several times, be familiar enough with all of the variants and ways to play the game, and have a pretty good experience handling the game as a whole to give a good review, and there aren't many games I'm qualified to do that with.  Second, most of the games I'm at this skill level with are older, and the average person who wants to read a review is going to want it about a newer game which they are interested in buying.  With that said, I may still throw a few up there this year, simply 'because'.  We'll see.

I may take a crack at designing a scenario or two for various game systems, but we'll see if I get that far.  With my life a bit more stable, PrezCon and the Winter Offensive coming up, and a lot of new games to get on the table, you can be sure this is going to be a great year to read this blog!

Recap of 2010 for this blog, and what to look forward to in 2011

Well, another year gone away, and a new one to look forward to.

I'm going to spare everyone a long post about how and why I failed probably all of my last year's resolutions; instead I'll look at what I managed to do last year, and what I hope to do this upcoming year.

To start, last year I played 19 games of Warmachine and Hordes, 7 games of Warhammer Fantasy, 2 games of Arcane Legions, 2 games of Space Hulk, 2 games of Warhammer 40K, and a game of Lord of the Rings.  That's not a terrible amount (almost 3 games a month), but I'm sure I could do better, and I plan to. 

I put up 101 posts last year, here on this blog.  I won't pretend that many of them were worth reading to the random person on the Internet, but there were a few articles that I think turned out well, in particular my Skorne and Dark Elf articles.  The posts resulted in 9,350 visits from 5,291 visitors... and that's just since April (when I started using Google Analytics).  The 5 most common searches, in order, that sent people to my blog were "Dark Elves in 8th" (in a variety of forms), "Boisterous Exhuberance", "Deneghra Tier List",
"No Quarter 31", and "Asphyxious Tier List".

I didn't really paint that much last year, although I did make progress in several areas, especially on my Cold One Knights and my Skorne stuff.  Nothing finished, but if I can focus on working on it, I just may get things completed this year.  I also assembled a bunch of models last year.  Not too terrible from that standpoint.

So, what's in store for 2011?  I'm not going to make hard resolutions, since my success rate with them has been... well, terrible.  The big goals this year will just be more of the same, but also more of the stuff I haven't been doing.  For instance, although working on my Warmachine/Hordes armies is a blast, and I enjoy playing them, they aren't the only game I love.  I really want to get more games of 40K in, especially with the Chaos Space Marine army I'm building (I also want to play a bunch of Killzone games).  I plan to play more Games Workshop games, in addition to giving Malifaux and probably Firestorm Armada a try this year.  In addition, the building and painting will definitely be happening in the background. 

Once again, I don't intend to proxy.  I got in the habit of proxying a little over the years since college, and I'm glad I forced myself out of it the past year.  We play with miniatures because it creates a visual experience we can't get with other boardgames.  Part of the joy of that visual experience is to provide the tools (models) that we are expected to provide for that game.  I don't plan on proxying again, if I can help it.

As for articles, I'm going to start working on my Skorne articles once again, and I may even throw out some Cryx ones.  I also have some basic designs for some posts on a miniature game based off a popular fantasy book series, just to keep me busy.  All of this and more coming in 2011 :).

Thanks for reading guys!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Local Competition December Results

Painting: Frans painted a ton of models this month, as you can see on his blog, so he won here.

Construction: Frans also did the most assembling of anyone, including a small conversion for his Plagueclaw Catapult.  Definitely a point here as well.

Blogging: And Frans wins the point here!  He's begun a series of articles on the Skaven army in Fantasy, as well as posted a ton of progress about his Skaven.  Great stuff!

Gaming: I get the point here, since no one played many games this month.

Totals, and final results:

Frans: 9 (3 Playing, 2 Construction, 3 Painting, 1 Blogging)
Steve (me): 7 (4 Blogging, 3 Gaming)
Ben: 4 (3 Painting, 1 Blogging)
BK: 2 (2 Construction)
Rob: 2 (2 Construction)
Nathan: 0

So, the final score has Frans as the winner.  CONGRATULATIONS MAN!  Not only does he get the joy of beating us all, but he made some good progress on his Skaven army as well.

For this upcoming year, we're not really sure what we'll do with this, or indeed if we'll have it at all.  I certainly hope so, but that's going to depend on interest :).

Accomplishments for December

Annnnd ended the year on a fairly un-productive note.

I did no painting this past month, and as you can tell from my blog I really didn't do a whole lot of blogging, and certainly nothing outstanding even so.

For Assembly, I finished the assembly of my Soulhunters, as well as assembled my Warwitch Siren and Rutger Shaw. 

With gaming, I played a single 35 point game of Warmachine, as well as played 2 games of Blood Bowl.

I'll have the final results of the local competition up soon!