New Raven Guard Banner

Hey Folks, Here is a quicky update on my most recent banner!  This is the Raven Guard Redo that I am doing for a client. The first one, while very nice, was not what they wanted because of the amount of liberties I took with making it. SO I am doing this one for them.

It is mostly done, I just have to enhance the dark grey Raven, add a star field in the bottom right and a few other details, then clean it up.

Coming up I have a bunch! I have a couple of custom ones. One for an Imperial Guard mounted army, a custom space marine one for a client in Texas, but I won't go too into detail until I hear from him. I think he wants it as a surprise.  Also I have a Death Company one for Spikey Bits, and a Night Lords one for another client.  Then there is my Gamesday 2012 banner.

By the way, I am looking for some one from the Chicago area to build me this years pole for my banner!  If you live in Chicago and are willing to help me, send me a shout and we can talk details.  Since I am flying, I need some one on the ground to help with getting a pole to Gamesday, etc. Let me know if you are in the area and willing to lend a hand!

This week I am planning to discuss my new drop pod army. I will be airbrushing more pods this week and I just rebased all the infantry. So I will have some of that to show you, including a "how to" on airbrushing. It won't be much as I just taught myself recently and have been practicing, but I have found little instructional material out there so I figure any thing I put out will be helpful.

UGH!  Oh the hazards of using my classroom as a studio...

I started writing this post at the end of the day on Friday and left it unfinished until this morning. I took the first pic then. I came in this morning to find that a mystery painter added his touches to my banner.  Over the weekend there is a painting class that uses my room it seems. I forgot. They got hold of a brush and my paint palet and tried their hand a painting a Jawa Banner.

It's totally my fault. I should have put away the banner and paints.  But God Damn this is some pretty inconsiderate shit.  The least they could have done was wipe up the gob of white paint they poured on the banner so I didn't dry in a big clump. Grrr...

Jawaballs

Battle Report: Blood Angels Drop Pod Dreads vs Necrons!

Sorry guys, no pics here.  But I wanted to give a quick report on my game yesterday.

I went out to Comic Book Heaven in White Plains to pick up some drop pods I had Brother Captain James assemble and try to get a game in, and found myself against a player known as Twig. Why? Not sure, but he was a good guy.  :)

His list was fairly strong, Monolith, some destroyers, zandrack the guy who causes difficult terrain to become dangerous, ctan, some warriors in those transports, some imortals, some scarabs and three spyders.  Oh and some dude flying around in a little flyer thing.

I went with my new drop pod dread list. 2 dc dreads, 2 furioso dreads, 2 heavy support dreads, 10 dc, 10 tacticals, 5 assault marines, and 7 assault marines with librarian and 2 priests, all in pods.

10 pods total.

He won the roll to go first and took first turn. It was a kill point, DoW mission.

He chose not to reserve any thing and on his turn rolled his stuff on to the table, spreading out along his edge with the mono in the middle supported by Ctan and the flyer hq and he loaded his right side with destroyers, spyders, scarabs and a warrior transport.  Oh he had some nasty dudes with the Zandrack guy.

I would like to mention that this player was fairly new.  Be nice.

So any way, I choose to drop my DC, two furioso and two DC dreads on turn one.  I played it sorta safe, placing my stuff about a foot from his edge, give or take an inch.  My first dc dread lands on his right side next to some immortals and a warrior transport.  I place the other not far away, in position to take on the Ctan.  Then I try to place a furioso another foot away, right in the middle, and mishap! I rolled an 11 and off the edge he went.  The dice gods were nice though and had my oppponent place him, and he put him right on my edge.  Then I put my other furioso on his left edge, ready to go after the other warrior transport.  Finally I placed my DC pod, and WOOPS, I rolled boxcars for the scatter... right off the table.  Terrible accident, dead Death Company.

Sigh.

So my dreads get out and penetrate and explode both warrior transports with melta fire.  My furioso on my edge runs the other DC takes cover behind it's pod, having scattered away from threat range.

Aside from the loss of my DC, I was in good shape, game tied at 2 KP a piece, both of his transports dead so I would not have to chase them, and one of his warrior squads pinned.

On his turn he pumps a lot of shots into my furioso on the left near his destroyers and spyders but fails to hurt it. He blows an arm off my DC dread on my right, then assaults. He sends Ctan after my undamaged DC dread, which ends in a drawn combat due to his terrible dice.

But then we discovered the wonders that are Scarabs vs Blood Claws.  His scarabs attacked, my furioso and I looked up the rules for Blood Claws, having not used them in a while.  I was hitting on 3, wounding on 2, and instant killing bases because of my Str 6 vs his T3.  That was bad news.  On my first round of swings, I killed four bases, which set me up for 12 more attacks.  Please correct me if I'm wrong here!  But BT say that for every unsaved wound I get an additional attack.  Each base was 3 wounds.  Any way, you can see where this went.  The meat grinder finished off those scarabs in no time.

On my turn, my tacticals come in and shoot at his immortals.  My two heavy support dreads come in right in the middle of the table and my assault squad with librarian comes in safely on the right side away from most trouble.  I don't do much with shooting, but jump into assault hungrily.  My furioso on the left tears apart a squad of warriors.  On the right my DC dread with one arm jumps the other warriors but only kills a couple.  With a single arm the BT extra attacks are  gone right?

He kills my DC dread with the CTan and we go on to his turn.  He kills my heavy support dread with assault cannon. He pulls the immortals away from my tacticals with this monolith and pumps shots into my pods and the furioso on the left trying to score kill points.  My DC dread kills a couple more warriors and he doesn't have much else to do.

On my turn I assault his Zandrack with my heavy support dread with multi melta. I wanted to use him against the monolith but I had to kill that guy.  I pumped a lot of shots into his Ctan, bringing down to 1 wound, then assault him with my librarian squad, finishing him off.  My furioso on the left gets immobilized on terrain thanks to Zandrack. Zandrack survives the assault from my heavy support dread due to invulnerable saves and my 1 arm DC dread kills a couple more warriors.

On his turn he kills my immobile furioso and again tries to work on a couple pods.  He actually has the lead in KP for now!

But my turn seals it.  My Heavy support dread kills Zandrack, and the furioso that mishapped finally made it into combat and finished off the rest of that squad.

The dice say the game ends on turn five.  He had his spyders, destroyers, monolith, guy on flyer, and immortals.  I lost a pod, DC, DC dread, furioso, Heavy support dread, priest and assault squad to a fantastic monolith shot.  The KP total went to me by one in a close game!

Good outing for my first game with the pods.  Learned a couple lessons and played a fun opponent.

Oh crap, time to go, I have an appoint to look at a new car.

:)

More to come,

Jawaballs

I miss The Walking Dead

Ok folks, this has been bothering me for weeks, and I wanted to discuss it further.

Michone.

I ranted about this a bit in my last TWD post, and most of you told me to relax, I was over thinking it, and it was cool.  Well my zombie world does not have room for this!

I hate it.

Probably the most intriguing thing about TWDtv is that the show is so firmly rooted in reality. "But Jawa, this is a show about zombies..." True, but the producers have gone through great lengths to establish a strong, believable foundation. This makes it easy for us to willingly suspend our disbelief.

Case in point:  The scene with Jenner in the CDC.

If this one scene did not exist, I would be much more willing to accept things like a mysterious sword wielding stranger leading around mouthless zombies on chains.  But it's too late.  Jenner pointed out that some sort of infection invades the brain, killing it. Then reanimates it, but only the most basic of instincts.

The instinct to feed, and basic motor skills are fed by this strange fire.  This answers how and why zombies do what they do. They need to feed, and go after any food source they can. Some have eaten possum, a group was eating a cow, etc.  But the episode also set the stage for another stark reality of zombies, if there can be a reality of zombies. Any thing that was human about them is gone. Most importantly, the human ability to think, reason and learn.  I don't know the exact quote, but it was something like "every thing that we were, is gone."

Enter Michone and her chain'o'zombies.

This kind of thing works well in comics and video games.  It's cool. We can willingly accept a chick with a katana and her tamed zombie pets.  In a fantastical comic world, it is ok to break the rules. (That Jenner set)

How are the rules breaking? Well, once you accept that zombies can be taught to be led on a chain, you accept that zombies can be taught to do other things. If zombies can learn that it is ok to be on a chain, what else can they learn?

You guys saw that one right? Humans built a stronghold on Manhattan because zombies would not go through water. But wait... zombies learned lessons, and figured out that an enmasse attack by walking through the water would overwhelm the survivors. Terrible.

Once we accept that these fantastical comic/video game images can be translated into a TV show based on reality, we lose it and get Umbrella Corp swooping in to erase any evidence of their wrong doings with chizled hollywood model soldiers.

Other examples?

How about zombie dogs that instead of biting you with their mouth, have entire heads that open up with banana sized teeth and snake like tongues.

It's worse than that, he's dead Jim...

Or you get situations like this one:  "WTF I shot that mutant zombie 20 times in the face with a shotgun! Why didn't he die?"  "Because has 3 million hit points you dummy."

Remember this?

Great scene. We immediately felt for the zombie. Rick came back to put her out of her misery. The webisode gave us background info on how this happened.  Fantastic. One of my top 10 TV moments.

Ever see Return of the Living Dead?  You know, that mid 80s punk rock zombie party?

Well, once we start accepting silly comical zombie stunts, we start getting this.

This is what could have happened instead of the scene with Rick.  They are essentially the same zombie! Know what this zombie is doing in this picture? Yup, talking to them. She is telling them, in Caveman type jargon, that she wants to eat their brains.

Once our zombies start learning lessons, like "Hey, I'm on a chain and have no mouth, I'm NOT going to try to eat the lady with the sword because she will cut my head off," the next logical step is that they start learning that certain combinations of moans and grunts, repeated in pattern, can be used as a way to communicate and once they are communicating, they are organizing, and invading New York.

Why stop there? Lets put zombies behind the wheel of Humvees.  I bet a zombie would have driven that tank Rick hid in. How about zombies with guns! Zombies in the CDC in Maine trying to find ways to make the virus work faster and infect humans before they die!!

It goes on and on. I really want to see the show as rooted in reality (Believable) as possible. Which is why I hate Michone's chained up zombie pets. What do you guys think?  Can you name any other absurd zombie moments?

Ok, got work to do. Those were my thoughts on the commute this morning. :)

Come on October!

Jawaballs

Hand Painted banner: Custom Banner, The Lions of Harlech!

Busy busy with the banners!

Here is my newest banner, The Lions of Harlech, a custom banner done for a client with his own chapter.  The iconography was borrowed from a Crimson Fist banner in the codex, with a few additions and the substitution of the lion in the center.  It is almost done but the top seems a bit empty. I am going to add some more highlights to the stone stylized aquilla, but will probably paint a little scrolling at the top as well, and the Roman Numerals VII.  The flange on the bottom right is going to get purity seals.  I am very pleased with how this one came out!  Now to do a matching miniature banner for his standard bearer and the finishing touches on this one and another one is in the mail.

If you would like one for your self or your club or event, drop me a line!  I am charging about three and a half Black Reach box sets for them.  Or 10 space marine razorbacks. :)  But honestly that is the best I can do. The banner alone costs me 100 bucks to have made with labor and fabric, plus I go through at least 30.00 worth of paint and gesso.

But if it is within your budget, they look great in the man cave or club room!

Here is the banner I did for Alabama CAGE match, a state wide tournament. Give me a shout!



Related, Lee Guthrie (Left I believe) was the winner of this tournament in Alabama, and sadly it seems he has passed away after taking this picture. I don't know many details, but I think he suffered heart failure while jogging. I didn't know Lee, but I am sorry to see any battle brother pass.  My thoughts are with you Lee.

In honor of his life, I will be donating 50.00 from my next banner sale to the Lee Guthrie Fund. I will also be digging out one of my older cherished models and giving it to them to use as a charity auction prize.  I will post this info again tomorrow with more info and a dedicated post, but if you are interested in donating to help Lee's family here is some info:

Excelsior 
Lee Guthrie Fund 
3150B Lorna Road, 
Hoover AL 35216


As I understand, you can send any thing you wish to donate to that address. 


So who wants to share in making that next banner and my donation possible? 


Battle on Lee.  


Jawaballs

Whats new?

Hey folks!

Ok, I have been slackin on my postin.  I'm talking like an Ork! Don't worry, I'm not going to play orks.

I just wanted to give a quick update on whats going on in Jawa land.  First, I have a couple more banners to show you.

Here is the finished Space Wolves chapter banner I sent out last week. I love painting this one and it came out way better than the first one I did.

And here is a fun one I am doing. It is a custom one for a client with his own chapter, The Lions of Harlech.

It is based on a Crimson Fist banner appearing in the SM Codex. There will be a lions head in the center and some other images placed about.  

New Armies?  The Grey Knights are coming along.  But as I knew coming into them, they are going to be a long work in progress culminating in the fall tournament season. My goal for them is to perfect a competitive foot list that does not rely on extreme cheeze to win games, while competiting for Best Painted.

But in the meantime, I need a tournament army! My Nova army just isn't cutting the mustard.  And while I was at that last tournament, I spent some time looking around and soaking what seemed to be trending in army composition, and what was doing well against it, paying special attention to Blood Angels success.

Simon Lean has some pretty good success, with a list very similar to mine, sans Mephiston and scouts of course.  However, even his army is not consistent enough to do more than place him in the upper tiers. What was working? Well, I noticed players who use BA Storm Ravens with Furioso Dreads having some fun.  But the SR usually serves as nothing more than a delivery system for it's occupants. Essentially a winged drop pod. A very expensive one.  But it did the trick!  Those ravens move up and die, hopefully taking a lot of fire power in the process. Then the dread gets out and tears into the squishy infantry, killing entire squads of purifiers at a time!

As it turns out, it seems that I believe I stumbled upon a brief window of tournament meta that has a pretty big weakness.  And with a quick deal made with Spikey Bits, I am on my way to making it happen.  Death From Above is back!

I made a pretty loud splash a few years ago using the BA PDF to win or place second in some fairly big tournaments. My list was unconventional. 3 Venerable Death Co. Dreads, Dante and Corbulo giving the ven diagram of death, 3x Baal Predators and two Tactical Squads.  Thats right, only two troops choices. I won second at The Conflict earning a golden ticket with a list that worked not because it looked good on paper, but because the current meta was ill equipped to deal with it.

Well the dead pods are back.

My list: Roughly... 2k

Librarian with Shield and Lance
10 man Tactical with Melta, Multi, and combi melta in pod
7 man assault with melta, melta pistol, pw and pod
5 man assault with melta and pod
10 man Death Co with melta pistol, hammer and PW and pod
x2 DC Dreads with HF, BT and Pods
x2 Furioso with BT, HF, 1 EA and pods
x2 Heavy Support dreads in pods, one MM, one Asscan
x2 priests, one with PW

and if I drop upgrades, I add a third heavy support dread in pod with MM.

Game on fellas!

I already had two dreads and most of the infantry painted from previous armies. I had to paint the 10 DC which I am doing now. I also had 6 pods remaining from when I originally intended to do this army but held off because of the great Melta Explosion of 2010.  So all I really have to paint new for this army is 10 pods and 4 dreads!  But then I remembered the second reason why I didn't do the pod army... I hate assembling pods.  But a quick fix was available. A phone call to Brother Captain James and a C note later and the BCJ Forge World is activated.  He will have the first wave of pods done while I wait for the rest to arrive from Spikey Bits, whom I made a deal with, the stuff I need in return for a full sized banner for his store!  Win Win.

Now the plotting.

I need to get Fritz over to the Jawa Cave to do some battle testing, but I already have a pretty good idea how to use the pods after playing my own dreads a few years ago, and talking a lot to Sean Nayden who plays Salamander dread pods.  But the strategies are fairly simple. Drop and destroy.  Try to take second so that my opponent has stuff on the table for me to destroy on turn one. If he reserves every thing, then the fun begins. I deploy some units on the table, and drop empty pods on his objectives and line his table edge, forcing him to come on in a choke point, where I have nasty dreads waiting for him.  You get the picture.

Kill point games are going to be tough, but pods are not as easy to kill as you may think. Objective games are going to be fun, as I know from experience vs Sean that 3 pods on an objective can be quite the challenge to take off, and most guys will not start killing them until it is too late.

You can guess what the troops do. The 7 man unit has 3 openings in it's pod for my ICs.  I keep them close, using one of the priests to split off and go join my tacticals, while the rest of the guys support the assaulting dreads. The 5 man drops into safety if it can, and uses it's melta if I need it, or just hides some place on an objective. On occasion, if needed, I can throw them a priest to help keep them alive.  The death company wreak havoc.

I painted up some tanks using my airbrush as testers for my pods and came up with a fairly good method. So they should not take too long.  End result, I will quickly have a fun and hopefully competitive army to carry me into 6th edition.  Then I can go in either direction, GKs or stay with the pods if 6ED proves a boon to dreads.  In that case though, I would need to repaint most of the army, as all the infantry are old and outdated, not quite competitive for painting honors in the big events.

What else?  Warmachine!

Jim the Stout Smurf, Fritz and Myself have decided to delve into something new.  Jim decided to go with Khador, Fritz may go with the blue guys, and I decided to try out Cryx. I simply looked at the website and picked the models I thought were coolest.  There is a store nearby that has Warmachine night on Mondays and Jim and I are going to give it a go.  I ordered up the battle box from Rob Baer and got my hands on some other models, and am looking forward to something different.  I will keep you posted!

Thats it for now, time to get back to painting before the kids come in this morning.  One more week til I am off for a week. Looking forward to getting some serious painting done during my spring break!

Jawaballs

Tournament Report:

Tournament Report: Battleground Gaming

So I drove out to Massachusetts not long ago for a little 40k action!  On the reccomendation of Alex Fennel, I made the drive out to Battle Ground Games and Hobbies in Plainview MA for an 1850 tournament. The venue was not the easiest to find at first, it was sort of tucked away in a nondescript mini mall of sorts, but the store was surprising to walk into!  

Row after row of beautiful gaming tables took up most of the floor space. The terrain was top quality and the place was packed with guys ready to play! There were at least 40 in the tournament. I have been to GTs with less!  I didn't get a lot of content because my card was almost full but I did score a few pics and some videos I will get loaded up to youtube shortly.  

Simon Lean's Blood Angels (Sisters of Battle counts as)

Bill McFadden makes an appearance. Enjoying a tasty beverage.

Bill's Grey Knights. (I think)

On with the show.  First of all, painting was not a requirement to play which allows some weekend warriors to get in some action without having a painted army.  I personally would always prefer a mandatory painted army as I put a lot of effort into mine and would like to face opponents who at least make an attempt, plus it would cut down on some of the craziness since guys have to be committed to a list in order to paint it. Painted armies hopefully encourage at least a little bit higher level of playing, in my opinion for what it's worth.

One thing I can say though, is that none of my opponents had a problem with painting, in fact, I would say I played against some of the nicest armies in the room!

How did I do over all?  Terrible.  Here are some brief batreps, mostly because I don't want to relive the nightmare.

Game One:
I found myself up against one of the members of Team Bastard. Damn guys haunt me.  Jim and I first encountered them at Templecon last year, then landed against them at Nova and got spanked. Thus the name Team Bastard was coined. Let me say that it is a fond moniker. The guys are nothing but gentlemen and play hard, but nice armies.

This army was a nasty Demon army with Fateweaver, a few princes, about a dozen Blood Crushers, some fiends, and a few squads of Plague Bearers for troops.  I was in pretty good shape because the table was covered with little houses that could be only used as impassable terrain. Really pretty terrain that is impractical to play on.  I figured at least a couple of his nasty squads would scatter upon landing in wave one and mishap. No luck.

Oh, I brought my Nova Blood Angels. The Grey Knights, while assembled, were mostly just grey plastic, and I cannot allow myself to play them in a tournament.

So on turn one, he does not get his preferred choice of drops. Fateweaver is does not come down. He has an icon in a large Blood Crusher squad, and it lands in the middle of the table. He lands a prince on my right. The prince is in my land raider assault range, but the blood crushers are not because he manages to run them just out.  This pretty much sunk me.  I needed to kill that crusher squad to have a chance at winning, as then I could spread out and force mishaps on him.  Instead, I sent my termies after his prince and killed it.  My plan at this point after considering it for a few was to simply ignore his beef and kill his squishy troops. I sent my termis to the right to try to squash that side of the battle and sent an assault squad to support them. Mephiston and another RAS and scouts were on my left. I made a small feint with Mephiston, forcing him to drop the rest of his stuff in the middle of the table, then I skirted up the left side where with luck I could sweep through his plague bearers before he could get to me.

But then Mephiston started rolling perils. Four to be exact. Thats right. He did four wounds to himself. It was going to be that sort of day.

By about turn three, my opponent knew what was at stake, and knew what I was trying to do. There was little I could do and I was going to try to force a draw.  My termies slaughtered the prince on the right, but took heavy losses when his fiends countered. My assault squad then finished off the fiends clearing the right side of the table and leaving me with two troops choices there. Not bad position.

But the left side was where I was in trouble.  I killed two of his troops but not fast enough.  I was left with a decision. He had two left, and I had to reach one of them with both Meph and my RAS. It was extreme assault range at best. But I had to get the ras in there because I had to bubble wrap meph with them. My plan was to slaughter them, them wrap meph with the ras leaving only the troops to be assaulted by his crushers and princes. Then Meph would be free to jump over the impassable terrain and wipe out another troop squad. Then he would be able to chase down the last since the enemy nasties would not be able to reach meph over the impassable terrain, and the plague bearers would not be able to escape.

Well my ras got slaughtered by his counter, but meph was free. The vampire then jumped over and slaughtered the plagers. I had a chance! At this point I had only rolled three perils I think. Two snakes and a box car. On my next turn though, I went to assault his last plague squad and box carred again. No preferred enemy. I didn't kill any and the perils counted as a wound in close combat so I lost by one. Not being fearless, I rolled my dice, and broke... Mephiston ran.  He then got assaulted by some nasties and died.

Embarrassing.

This quick mopping up of Meph allowed him to send princes over to the right to deal with what I had left.  With my heavy hitters dead, it was just a matter of rolling dice. I still had a chance to force a draw, but the dice favored him this day and my small chances were unfruitful.

In the end, the game went to the demons in fantastic fashion. Full points for him, zero for me.  My opponent was a great gentleman and his army was beautiful.  Great stuff.

Game Two:
Orks... ugh.

I found myself against shooty orks. He had lobbas, ork cannons of some sort, lots of lootas, and a few truks. It should have been a fairly simple game for me. But I decided to get pretty.  It was table corner deployment, and most of his stuff was at it's closest possible range to me. I should have simply deployed likewise with all of mine, taken a round of shooting, then assaulted the crap out of him. I believe the game would have been over in three turns. Instead I reserve every thing except meph. Then I combat squad the first squad that came down for me, and only squad, on turn 2.  By the end of two, Meph and that entire squad was dead.  Next turn did not get much better. My termies were unable to assault much from my edge, and then the raider was killed.  Soon, every thing was dead.  Yup, that's right. Tabled. By shooty orks. Only goes to show, never underestimate orks.

I felt a little bad because my opponent, maybe in an attempt to make me feel better, was saying how he got lucky. But I responded by telling him that I played like a noob and that was my loss! There was no luck involved.  That was poor sports on my part, but I was mad at myself for playing like an idiot.  Sorry man!  I think his name was Nate.

Any way, game two was done, and I still had zero points.

Game Three:
Orks... again... UGH.

This time I was playing against Tim Nolan who has a very nicely painted Mech ork army.  I found a bit of nostalgia as most of his stuff was painted red using the same noob tutorials that I found when I started. He has not been in the game long but fancies himself a painter and wants to compete with the top tier painters.  We shared some nice convo about painting and had a great game.

Mephiston leads the charge against some nasty orks.

Oh, the game. It turned out to be a center field slug fest. How else could it be with BA vs Orks.  In the end, I won the last assault and could have probably massacred onto the objective for the win, but as punishment to myself I chose not to and to take the loss. Might as well take the shame of smoking boots!  But I ended up scoring ten points any way, and got second to last. I could not even lose right!

Yup, there you have it. Second to Last. So much for taking that army out of retirement!  In hindsight I should have just taken the objective and let Tim have the smokin boots.  :)

Lots of pictures that Tim took can be found HERE.

Tim has a new blog following his 40k adventures that you can find HERE. Take a look his stuff is beautiful. It will be fun to watch a budding great painter grow a career.  On his blog you can see the results of this tournament and more pics as well.  Nice game and nice work Tim!

So that wraps this one up.  I have some video coming up shortly that I will make another post on.

I ended up winning Best Appearance for the tournament which scored me 50 bucks of Store Credit. I will use it to buy paints next time I go.  As for the winners, well, all of the entry fees came back at the player pool. I think first got like 300 bucks!  Certainly worth traveling to Plainview for.

The staff was friendly and fun to talk to. I had a great time hanging out with the boys, and even signed an autograph!  I really do appreciate when guys thank me for inspiring them.  That is the greatest compliment of all.  It was humbling, both on the tables, and to be awarded best painted with so many great armies.  I wish I had pics of them all.  Your compliments are always welcome, and appreciated.

Plainview was just over two hours from my house in Fairfield CT.  That puts it at about 2:45 from White Plains NY.  It was run efficiently and professionally. They had us out the door on time, and I got home at 10pm on the dot.  Important stuff for you family guys!  I have been to other, closer tournaments, and not gotten home til after 1am. Talk about wife agro!  It is a small thing, but she appreciates being able to say good night to me and snuggle for a bit before bed.  And I appreciate a road trip tournament that allows me to do it.

Oh, last thing.  They had a nice sportsman scoring system. There was 25 maximum points per game.  You basicly had to answer a series of questions covering a bunch of categories. Against the best opponents, it was difficult to answer them all.  I appreciate the honest and accurate sportsman scoring that this provoked. Much better than the basic five points for not being a dick, causing a 38 out of 40 way tie for first being decided by painting tie breaker.  That just doesnt work, especially since even painting is not a good tie breaker as the guy who has the best painted army is winning BP and is not allowed to win BS.  Any way, you get the point. Nice job Battle Ground Games!

I will definitely come to the next one.

Jawaballs