The FWT Games 2nd Birthday Celebration!

As you know I traveled down to Virginia with Fritz to attend the FTW Games 2nd Birthday Celebration. It was a fantastic time!

We decided to drive down the long way. When traveling South from the NYC area, you have two choices. I 95 which includes the NYC area traffic, Jersey Shore, Baltimore and DC. Or you can go inland a bit and take I 81 which skirts most of the traffic spots by traveling through mostly farmland. But it is quite longer.

We chose the long traffic free way.  It took us about 8 hours to get there, but that included getting lost in the Virginia back woods for a bit.

We arrived on Friday night at about 8:00 to a packed house. First of all the store is in a really nice area, located at:

13176 Midlothian Turnpike
Midlothian, VA 23113

The shopping centers were neatly manicured and well kept.  So the store is in a nice location with ample parking.  Next door to the store is also a pool hall/bar that serves decent food.  A perfect combo!  40k and beer.

Fritz and I arrived and chilled with the crew. The house was full of guys playing Magic and other card games. There was a tournament going on.  But that didn't stop curious 40k guys from showing up and shaking hands with me and Fritz!  We mingled a bit, then jumped over to the bar where beer and nachos flowed.

Then I busted out Rob's Death Company banner that he ordered for the store.  Here you can see Goatboy admiring it with his grubby fingers.

Not much went on for us that night. We hung out for a while then headed back to Rob's to crash and get ready for Saturday.

On Saturday we had a fairly huge breakfast at Denny's and headed back to the store.

The place was packed right at opening with lots of people showing up to take in the many demonstrations or to get a chance to throw some dice.

We met a blog reader who we have played 40k Space Marine with on Xbox live named Joe and I was the first to get him on the table.

Joe had space wolves. I won the roll to go first and passed it to him. So he set up... then asked what I was playing... much to his chagrin I hissed "drop pod dreads..."  :)  He had 3 squads of 10 GK Troops, a wolf lord with about 12 little wolves, terminators, long fangs with missiles and a vindicator oh and a rifleman dread.

For this tournament I switched one of my furiosos from Blood Claws to a Frag Assault launcher with fist and heavy flamer.  This nasty toy got it's chance to lay the pain very quick. I dropped it right next to his wolves, and killed them all.  Then the wolf lord failed leadership and ran off the table. It was not going to be a good game for Joe!

The rest of the game would go about the same.  My dreads slammed down and got into assault with his troops. A DC dread mowed down a squad and the frag dread locked another one down. They were no where near an objective so that would last the whole game out of the way.  Another squad managed to survive a dread charge then run away and actually managed to not get wiped out.

After much slaughter, the game ended in my favor.




Later in the day, I did some painting demonstrations. I did some hand painting on a blog readers Vindicator, painting an angel wing and blood drop on the side, and a skull and number 3 on the dozer blade. Then I demoed how I painted the power swords on my recent army, and helped another guy with painting force weapons.  That was easily the most enjoyable part of my day. I got to talk about painting with lots of interested folks. I forget the name of the guy whos vindicator I painted, so if you can send me pics please do and I will post them up!

Then came the 3 game iron man tournament.  We didn't get started until about 7pm, so we all knew it was going to be a long night. In game one I found myself up against a chaos marine heavy double lash list. He had lots of oblits and I think it was four full squads of chaos marines with Fabius Bile.  It was pretty nasty because most of his boys ended up being fearless which takes away the biggest weakness of the standard chaos marine.  He had lots of melta on the table, and I knew it was going to be a nasty first round. My plan was to drop all of my blood claw dreads, pop smoke, and hope for the best, I needed at least one to survive the first salvo.

So I did just that. I dropped all the blood claws, and the death company.

On his shooting, he began blasting away my dreads like they were made of paper. I didnt make a single cover save, and his first two shots killed both of my DC dreads.  But luckily for me, my blood claw furioso lived! He failed to lash my death company.

On my turn, as you can imagine, the carnage began.  I had a poor reserves roll so not much came on, but I wasted no time getting into assault. My Furioso chewed up most of a squad of chaos marines, and my death company charged another, killing most of them and taking great losses, but locking down Fabius.  My heavy support asscan dread and the frag furioso went to work on another mob of marines, and killed a lot.  On his turn he had little to do but shoot plasma at my troops sitting on objectives. The squads were small so this was not a bad tactic. It would not take many shots to take them out, since I could not hide them from LoS and still claim objectives. In hindsight, I should have hidden them until the last turn.

On his assault phase, my BC dread finished off its victim and the DC finished off Fabius in a stroke of luck.  So on my next turn, I went to work on another unit of marines with my dread... but failed to wipe them out due to a bout of poor dice. This gave him a chance to hit me with lots of power fists, and he killed the dread.

So at this point, I was out of dreads except for one with an assault cannon that had been working on a squad of chaos marines.  My death company was holding off some advancing terminators, and my troops were sitting on objectives.  He had 4 oblits left, and one single fearless chaos marine.  I poured all of my fire power into that single marine, but failed to kill him. Meanwhile, he was pumping plasma into my troops taking cover on objectives, and reduced me to just one objective.

After a bloody game, we were tied, one objective a piece. All he had was a couple oblits and a chaos marine.  :) Fun game!

Game Two:
I found myself against a guy named Josh with a very pretty Grey Knight list.  This was the test. This was the list I built mine to beat. However, a kill point mission was not what I was hoping for against this army.  But thats what I got.  He had Coteaz and a Grand master attached to a purifier squad in a chimera. Then he had 3 psy dreads and lots of assassin/henchman spam in psy backs.  I think he had one more squad of purifiers.

It was kill points and 12" deployment I think. It matters not since I was drop podding.  He deployed coteaz on the table attached to a squad of purifiers, in the corner behind some impassable terrain. He had their chimera next to them with the grand master, and some razorbacks with squishy troops, all packed in. He reserved the rest, outflanking the dreads. The dreads would be the key to this fight. They had the capability to take out 3 pods a turn, and in a KP mission, this was bad.  With him out flanking, I knew I had a chance. If I got the 33.3% luck chance and they ended up coming out away from his main force, I could single them out and pop em with melta.  Or just lock em up in assault.  Just as good.

So my first five pods were all of my troops and a DC dread. I dropped my assault marines and tacitcal squad on my right, hoping he would end up there with his dreads. He would be unable to kill them with shooting, and then I would reach them within a turn, and either destroy or lock them down. I then stationed my DC and my DC Dread on his table edge, well away from coteaz. Based on the deployment and terrain, there was only so far that his psy backs full of assassins and henchmen could go, and I wanted my DC there to take them out.

Seeing what I had planned, my opponent mounted up coteaz and company into their chimera and moved out a bit to try to protect his paperbacks.  Psybacks hurt but are still only av11.  He brought on a small assassin squad and assaulted my death company, but lost handily.  He brought on two psy dreads, and unfortunately for me, they came on his favorable side out of reach of my kill zone and free to shoot.  Drat.

So on my turn two I got serious. Mounting up coteaz was a mistake. When he is on the table, the squad he is attached to gets free shots at any thing deep striking that lands within 12". that is a 2 foot bubble of death to any thing in my army, seeing as how coteaz was attached to 4 psy cannons, and they would not only get to shoot the pod, but they also would get to shoot the riders.  But the power does not work while mounted...

Game on!  My feint worked.  Getting Coteaz out of the way left a chance for me to drop dreads right in his ranks, create some havoc, then take cover from the psy dreads using the impassable terrain and pods.

In a feat of drop pod bravery the likes of which have not been seen since the early days of the horus heresy, I struck.

I didn't quite have the tools to do the job though. I needed more melta. You can see in the picture that my three pods landed perfectly. Coteaz in his Chimera moved out and left me space to land.  In a dramatic landing, my dreads got out and opened fire. He was particularly vulnerable because he did not pop smoke on the two rear razorbacks. I was going to pop them, and lather them in flame with the frag dread in the center.

But I whiffed.  The dread's melta missed, and the asscan was ineffective. Drat.

It was still epic though.

The rest of the game would be tight. His dreads put a pounding on me, with all three of them coming safely onto his edge and shooting my dreads and pods to death.  My death company performed fantastic, scoring 4 kill points. And actually one of my exploding pods was an MVP because it killed a henchman that had eluded my DC, forcing the squad to run.

After all that shooting, exploding and podding, the game ended a DRAW in kill points with me winning via secondary objectives.  Fantastic game Josh!

Game Three:
Not much to say here.  I ended up against an entirely unpainted grey plastic Eldar wave serpent army.  The mission was pretty cool though. It was single objectives that were not deployed because they were held by an HQ of choice.  When the HQ died, the objective dropped on the table. The HQ could not be deployed in a transport.  He gave his to a farseer and stood him in the corner behind a serpent filled with Dire Avengers. Then he got inside that serpent and that was the game.  I spent 6 turns chasing serpents around the table and suffering the usual Eldar last turn tank shock. It was not until the end that we realized the game was invalid because he embarked his HQ which was against the rules. There is no way he would have survived wave after wave of me assaulting him on foot and I would have dumped every pod I had on him.

Back to my feelings about fielding grey plastic in tournaments.  Guys come on.  Just don't!  I know they were allowed in this tournament, and I get it that you want to play an army and might not be able to get it painted in time, but tough!  Play it in pickup games, I have no problem with grey plastic in a LGS game but don't like seeing them in game three of a tournament. This is especially bothersome because I believe 3 guys, including Fritz, did not get to play in this tournament. I bet they had painted armies!

This concluded the weekend for us.  The tournament ended at about 3am and we crashed hard.  The next morning Fritz and I were off early for our drive home, battling NJ traffic.

Ok I'm gona go ahead and publish this, it has been in my tray for a while. No time!  I would like to say though that with the advent of 6th ed, we have some huge plans. Stay tuned...

Jawaballs

Night Lords Chapter Banner!

Now for something particularly terrible!  The Night Lords chapter banner!

The client wanted a Night Lords banner that inspired terror. He wanted it a little more realistic than the standard banners, with a more horror inspiring skull.  He sent me a picture for reference.  He wanted a "Negative Space" chaos star behind the main image, illuminated by the crashing lightning bolt behind it.

After playing around with a few ways to do this, I decided to use masking tape to make the star, then painted right over it. I put down layers of blue, getting lighter and lighter, to create the glow effect. Then I did the hard edged bolt down the middle of the glow.

In the bottom left he wanted a nod to the 8th legion. So I added a roman numeral 8. He wanted an eclipsed sun in the center. I decided to go with a muted blue for the color of the sun. He wanted a few words on the right, not sure what they mean.  For the numbers, keeping with the dark Night Lords theme, I painted them black with a single grey highlight. The picture is a little dark so they are hard to read, but believe me, they look subtle but striking.

So there you go!  I am particularly pleased with the lightning effect on this one.  I had a lot of fun painting it.

Let me know if you want one for yourself! Next up, a special custom one for a client attending Wargamescon.  More on that soon.

Jawaballs

Holy Weekend Batman! FTW Games was awesome.

So Fritz and I returned from our trip to  Virginia, exhausted and satiated.  I don't have time right now to do a proper write up of the weekend, plus I want to compile some of the video, but I just wanted to share quickly the outstanding time I had.

First of all, there is a billiards bar right next to the store. Look at the size of this beverage!

I particularly like the lighting. Nice. :)

Any way, if that beer is any indicator to the amount of awesome that we had over the weekend, you can bet that you are in for a treat.  I did some painting demonstrations, and played in a 40k tournament with my drop pod dread list.

I will write up more later.

Jawaballs

Road Trip!

OK folks,

As I previously mentioned I am leaving today for FTW Games courtesy of Spikey Bits! (Rob Baer)

Fritz and I will be arriving tonight and hanging til close, then spending ALL DAY there tomorrow doing seminars, shaking hands, rolling dice and crushing skulls in a tournament.

Come on out and get in a game or just say hi!

I will be trying to broadcast live so check my stream often over at Jawaballs Live. While you are there feel free to check out the footage that Fritz and I shot last week!

So if you are in the area I hope to see you pop in for a visit and a beer!

I will be playing my Drop Pod Dread list but I will also have my Mephiston Jump Pack army on hand as well so you can see it in person if you wish.  By the way, I still have footage from last weeks tournament to post. I will get it all up asap! After tomorrrow I will have about 32gigs of additional footage to sort.  :)

Jawaballs

Oh My.

Come on 6th!

First of all, am I the only one who is happy as a pig in shit about 6th ed?  40k has become so stale for me personally that I just can't wait!  Fritz, Smurf and I have lots of stuff planned to celebrate the launch of 6 with the return of my regular live show and loads of new content breaking down that book cover to cover.

Sorry I have been so quiet of late, just nothing to write about.  More soon.

I do happen to have some left over stuff to unload.

x2 GK Termies
x2 GK Dreadknights
x2 SM Razorbacks
x1 Necron Ghost Ark
x2 BA Sanguinary Guard
x1 Flesh Hounds of Khorne
x1 Lizardman Stegadon

Get em now for 20% off the current GW retail.

All new, though I will probably open the box and just ship the sprues to save on shipping.

Email me if interested!

Jawaballs

Battle Report: Jawaballs vs Fritz!

Last week Fritz and I got in a couple games so I could practice for a tournament. Here you go!



Youtube video format. Sorry no time to write this up.

Jawaballs

Going Live in an hour!

IN my last post I put March, meant today. :)  We are going live in one hour.  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jawaballs-live

Jawaballs Live! Saturday May 19

I know, it's been a while, but Fritz is coming over tomorrow and we plan on doing some Jawaballs Live!  We are going to be play testing my drop pod list for Sunday's tournament and if I can make it work I plan on doing some Ustream footage! HERE IS THE CHANNEL.  Look for us around 3pm EST until whenever!  I will be testing the link tonight from my laptop. Feel free to look for me!

Jawaballs

FTW Games here we come!

So Fritz and I are on our way down to visit Rob Baer and his gaming store FTW Games! Rob is the owner of his brick and mortar store, as well as Spikey Bits! We will be there the weekend of June 1.

Can even a mother really love this face?

Depending on who you talk to, Rob is a pretty stand up guy. I have always enjoyed hanging out with him and consider him a friend. But then again I am a sucker for the misunderstood. Say what you will, the guy has done a lot for the 40k community. And when he invited Fritz and I down I was happy to go! We are going down to help celebrate his store's second birth day and have a damn good time.  I don't know all the details, but I think Goatboy is going to be there as well!  We will be doing demonstrations during the day, then there is a tournament starting in the afternoon and running til we pass out.  Lucky for me Fritz is a non drinker, as I bet I will not be in condition to drive home on Sunday once I break out the scotch!

I will be doing some hand painting demonstrations, "Painting Scrolls, Skulls and Angel Wings by Jawaballs"

Simply bring your tank, and I will show you how to decorate it with nice effect!  I think that Fritz is planning on doing some tactical demonstrations. Who knows what his devious mind is cooking up.

So come meet some good people from the online gaming crew, and get a chance to throw down against the likes of Jawaballs, Goatboy and Fritz!  I will probably be playing my new dreadnought drop pod army, or my award winning, but not quite competitive Hero Hammer assault marine army.

Ok guys see you down at FTW Games!

Oh, and here is a banner I am doing for FTW Games.  I traded the banner for some store credit with Rob and got myself a boatload of drop pods and stuff. :) It's to go along with his suit of Death Company armor that he has. I will get more pics of this one up shortly.

Jawaballs

Big banner order out the door!

I finally finished the banner order for Dropzone Games, a new store opening in Maryland very soon. More details to come on that asap, but for now, here are the banners! I want to say that I am VERY proud of these. I put a lot of heart into making these as perfect as I could.

This was the first of the set that I made. I wanted to keep it simple and efficient. 

That was good, because the next two nearly broke me. :)  This banner was hands down the most difficult one I have done to date.  The boys at Dropzone were very particular about what they wanted, with all rights. They were making a big investment, and of course, the customer is always right.  I struggled for weeks on how I was going to do the cross pattern in the back, until finally I decided to make a stencil. So I got out my xacto and some stiff card stock and went to work with a ruler.

I cut a single row of crosses, and used Liquitex spray acrylic to spray the crosses onto the fabric.  My stencil started breaking down by the end, but it worked. With that done, I was able to do the main image. 

The next challenge was to get the large block of latin copy to fit on the pages of the book and of course paint each of the letters by hand. Normally with this sort of thing I just do gibberish letters. 

The scrolls at the bottom were a little different. They wanted some copy based on Arabic, so I made up some script to fill the pages using a style of lettering that resembled it.

It was the best banner I had done to date, then I did the next one.

Hand painting straight lines is hard. Especially 90 degree angles. These little crosses took me the better part of a week to get right. But also, they had to line up not only with the main image, but the squares in the checker pattern and the images below. My trusty ruler came through, and I managed to get every thing to line up on the first try.  :) Remember, this banner is 3x7 feet. It is not quite that easy to judge if something six feet away is lined up with an image I just drew. 

If you have ever tried to paint something symmetrical, you can feel my pain. The wreath in the main image, and the one at the bottom were their own little challenges. They needed to look the same on both sides, same curve, same end point. 

I particularly like the star field. I stippled lighter and lighter shades of blue to make the "space". The star arrangement took many attempts. They wanted at least four stars, with the biggest one in the lower left. Maybe the guys at Dropzone can pop in and share some insight! They were also particular about three skulls on the scroll.  

I think my favorite part is the skull. I painted with metallics on brown, something I never tried before, and I like how it came out. Looking at the picture, I could probably have given it another highlight with an even lighter gold, but I am still pleased with it.

So there you go! These are on their way out. Next is Night Lords, Death Company, Blood Angels Chapter banner, and a custom IG one.  

Keep em coming!  

Jawaballs

Selling stuff off!

Hey folks!

Ok trying to raise money again. So I am selling off a bunch of factory sealed goodies this time. Every thing 20% off GW Retail plus shipping world wide.  I'm not posting on Btown because they gots beef with me linking my blog in my sig because I sell stuff. :)

Well selling stuff.

Space Marine Land Raider Crusader
Necron Ghost Ark
x3 Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard
x2 GK Terminators
x2 GK Dread Knights
Chaos Demons Flesh Hounds of Khorne
x2 SM Razorbacks

All of this I have plans for except the necron crap, but I can use the cash at the moment. :(

I do have some more goodies:
1 opened but fully on sprue new model Lizardman Stegadon 30% off GW retail
About 100 unpainted assembled/unassembled/onsprue Vampire Count zombies Offers
OOP SM Standard bearer on sprue metal. 10.00
x2 sets of Space Hulk Genestealers. Offers. What's their going rate?

Ok lets move this stuff!

Jawaballs

Another one out the door!

Here is a custom banner for a client. His chapter is called the Lions of Harlech. This is a customized banner for his army.

After that? Night Lords!  And a Death Company banner for Spikey Bits.

Here is my first sketch. As per his request, there will be a negative space chaos star in the background, illuminated by lightning. The details on the bottom flaps were his request. An 8 for 8th company, a planet with lightning eclipsing the sun, and a little scroll with some copy that I don't know what it means.

I am still trying to get in some games with my drop pod army. Maybe this weekend!

Oh, and for those of you who liked my wife's writing when she was doing her parenthood blog, she has a REBOOT. Go take a look! She is simply focusing on the daily adventure of raising a 2 year old. She is really a great writer with a dry, witty sense of humor. So check her out, follow her blog and leave comments!

Jawaballs

Pickup Games: When do you bow out?

Hey folks,

Ok, so you have all had this situation, or at least know some one who has.  You go to a LGS and end up in a pickup game against a guy you don't know. The game starts up, and usually fairly quick, you end up in a silly debatument over a basic rule. Not quite an argument, but a little more than a debate.

At that point you have to decide, spend the next three hours playing a game with a guy you don't know, who may turn the entire experience into one long rules debate... or bow out.

Rule number one of 40k is to Have Fun.  Both players are responsible for doing their part to make the game enjoyable.  I am certainly guilty of engaging in drag out arguments, but most of the time it is the argument that is more of the sport than the game, and always it is with guys I know and respect.

In tournaments, you have no choice who you play against so certain amounts of beardy behavior can be expected and tolerated. But need it be so in a pick up game in an LGS?

One big factor in this issue is that in tournaments you are being judged on sportsman by your opponent, so you are less likely to encounter issues. And also, most simple things are clearly defined, like how to play terrain. There is usually an accepted FAQ and rules are clearly defined.

 This is not so in a pick up game.  With no penalty for dodgy behavior, guys may go unchecked.

Well one of these situations ran into me tonight. I went out to the LGS in my area to play a game. I posted on the boards that I was looking for an opponent for my new 2k competitive GT Blood Angels list, some one replied, and there you go. We met at the LGS to play.  I have seen this guy there every time I have gone and he was always friendly, if a bit of a rules lawyer.

A good point of note is that I can't be sure if the guys playing against him were having a good time.  The three or four times I've seen him playing it looked like the opponent was just humoring him to get the game done.  At least that was my impression.

So any way, he sets up his army and pulls out his 1750 Necron list.  I guess he missed the details.  No big, he just added another monolith and wraith.  And we progress to table set up. He suggested we play no terrain... I thought he was joking. Then he suggested again. I laughed and shrugged, then went to the shelf to get an armload.  The WHFB piece with skulls, the sloping chaos piece with the sculpted rock.  Good LOS blocker for center field. The rest of the pieces were some standard LGS stepped stone foam pieces, and your usual ruined corner of building made of 1/2" foam with 1x2" windows cut in the walls on a board base.

Like this but much smaller, just two levels.

Game is Kill points and DoW. He wins roll and gives me 1st turn claiming he will seize initiative.  I declare no deployment cause my stuff is in pods, and he starts deploying.  At this point it occurs to me that we may want to discuss terrain...

So I say "ok lets talk terrain".  :)  "Lets keep it simple, every thing is 4+ cover save if you are on it area terrain. The buildings are ruins as per standard rules."  He agrees.

Then he says "Ok, you better hope you don't land on these." pointing at the ruined walls.

A little confused, I say "It wouldn't matter much, I would just be landing in terrain and not much bad would happen." (If I roll a 1 it gets immobilized which instead destroys the storm bolter.)

He looks at me coyly and wags his finger, "nope, Mishap table!"

Now even further confused, I ask why... those are ruins.  Then he says that you cant land on ruins, or pass through them if there are no doors.  Then he went on to quote deep strike rules, how I mishap if I land on ruins, or on models.

Uh oh.

"So you are saying that you want them to be impassable terrain?" (I didn't feel the need to get into inertial guidance systems yet.)  I then went on to explain that according the rule book it didn't matter if there were actual doors in the ruins. Models could move through it as difficult terrain as normal.

He insisted that they could not, then went on to say that bikes definitely could not. (Or something like that, I cannot remember.)

So I ask if this LGS played things differently from normal rules? He insisted again that the way he was saying it was the way it was supposed to be played. SO, I bust out the rule book and turn to page 14 and quote him the rules that say that models can push through walls and the like regardless of windows, doors etc. It is assumed that they are bashing their way through, or using weapons or explosives to blast a hole. It just took a second, in the early days of 5th ed that particular discussion was had many times at BFS.  At this point of 5th ed, this rule is pretty much the accepted norm, at least in tournaments.

After reading him the rule I paraphrase that what it is saying is that unless we both agree to something else, this is how it is played.  That since he wanted it a different way, and I wanted it by the rules,(We were in disagreement)  it should be played by the book.

He insisted again that my pods could not land on the ruins.  Honestly, I don't even disagree with him for the sake of game play. We have all seen the silly pictures of land raiders balanced on a skinny wall. This causes all sorts of issues. I agree that a pod should not be able to land on the wall if it cannot rest without help. In that case you would just move it a bit more or less to get it to rest. (not mishap) But it was his insistence that models could not move through the wall that bothered me.

At this point I am getting frustrated but keeping a cool smile on my face and a calm tone of voice.

So I explain that we were at a standoff. He wanted it one way, I wanted it another. But being a decent sport, I digress. The fair thing to do would be to roll it off. I offered a 123 my way 456 his and roll the die.

He exclaims... "But this is the house rule!"

My blood drop die rolled off the table and my interest in the game drops through the floor.

Impasse.  Time to decide! So what do you guys do in this situation?

I can just give in and let him have it the way he wants and play the game knowing that I was probably in for more of the same, continue to argue, or bow out of the game.  Plus it really didn't matter, my inertial guidance would have kept me from harm. But that's not the point.

I chose the latter.

As I am picking up my blood die, he says "It's just a game, you can have it your way."

True, it is just a game, I appreciated his admitting that, but I explained that I decided to take a pass on this particular game. I don't think he heard me as he continued deploying his army.  So I zipped up my transport and offered him my hand.  I thanked him for making the trip and apologized for bowing out and asked that there were no hard feelings that maybe we could play at a later time. I really did feel bad for bowing out, but frankly, I wanted to watch Idol with the wife and didn't want to pass it up to play a game and end up not enjoying it.

He said "So you are not going to play?"

Nah, I'm taking a pass, I'm sorry.

He finally got it, and said "Ok have fun!"

So I open this up to you guys. How many of you would have played that game? The guy really wasn't being a jerk. Believe me, there have been many times in tournaments that I wish I could have just walked away from much worse, but could not. But with that in mind, I knew I just didn't have to stay, and could not let myself.

Jawaballs

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