Against SOPA/PIPA

Being that I don’t know how to “black out” my blog in support of the seven-thousand-something websites who have already done so today, I thought the second-best thing I could do was at least show my support!

Now, if I don’t live in the USA, why am I so scared of SOPA? Well, as has been the trend since about the end of World War II, where USA policy goes, many follow. I also live in Canada which is currently ruled by a majority government who is quite friendly to big-business interests (and, by extension I would think, their lobby groups), so I’d imagine I’d be dreaming if I thought my government wouldn’t enact a similar policy in Canada should the USA’s SOPA and PIPA become law.  (Plus there’s the fact that it’s an American company that controls all the domains in North America, so even if no law comes about in Canada, Canadians will still feel the two bills’ effects.)

Now, I barely understand the bills; with all the scrambling going on to get my business off the ground, I haven’t had much opportunity to better educate myself on the matter.

As a friend wrote on her website, “If you don’t quite understand [SOPA], in a nutshell, it’s terrible legislation that allows the takedown of sites which would ruin the internet as we know it and take away freedom of speech. “

Yes, VERY “the sky is falling” language being used, I know. But if what she wrote is overstating the ramifications of SOPA/PIPA becoming law, I don’t think it’s doing it by much;  as the National Post (partially) explained it:

Several of the provisions in SOPA force American Internet service providers or ISPs hosting websites to remove a site from the Internet if there’s a claim it’s infringing against copyright, even if it has not been fully proved in court. The argument is that this would make it easy for someone to make false or weak claims to take a website offline while the case makes its way through the courts.

Additionally, it would force ISPs to block non-U.S. websites accused of having infringing material, meaning sites from other countries might not be available in the United States.

Some interpretations of the bill say that sites that even link to other sites accused of infringing might be at risk.

Basically, any site that has a large user-generated component is worried about SOPA. This is the document Wikipedia references when explaining why they are against the bill.

Please read Michael Geist’s post as to why Canadians should participate in the SOPA/PIPA protest for a decent yet brief explanation. And the National Post has a very good Q&A about it here.

More information about the two contentious bills can be found here:

SOPA information: Wiki, CNet, CNN, Bill Doc

PIPA information: Wiki, CBS News, ABC News, Bill Doc

Some of the other sites standing against it today:

• Google
• Reddit
• Mashable
• Wikipedia
• WordPress
• Mozilla

Special thanks to Mi40k.com –I saw their post today and felt that if I couldn’t black out my site today, the least I could do was follow their example (most of the links, images and format in this post were just copied and pasted from their post today!)

Related articles

• Canada would feel effects of U.S. web-piracy laws (cbc.ca)
• Canadians join SOPA opposition (blogs.vancouversun.com)

The End of Imaginary Wars as We Know It?

Though it came just in time for the holidays, this little paper didn’t come to me from under the Christmas tree (Christmas and New Years have kept me significantly busy—I’ve only had the chance to post about it now!).

(In my best Strongbad voice) IN-CORPORATED!!!

So as of now, Imaginary Wars is an incorporated business!

If you’ve been coming to my blog regularly, you’ve probably gathered that I’ve been heading towards opening my own store; though I don’t think I’ve been saying much on the blog about the endeavor (beyond “school is taking up more time than I’d like). I have been a bit more candid about my progress, here and there, when I’ve been a guest on Jaded GamerCast.

I think I’m also only mentioning the store now because things have finally begun to really pick up steam—or rather, there wasn’t much momentum being gained through the fall until about December, so I never really felt much like writing business updates like “still writing my business plan; projecting future sales is tricksy” or anything like that.

And then there’s the fact that I don’t have buckets of money simply “tucked away in The Banana Stand“…so to speak, and I’ve been feeling like banks aren’t really going to be too open to talking money with me (I mean, banks don’t lend money to people who need it, right?). Accordingly, I decided early on to go the way of bringing investors into this endeavor. So with no easily quantifiable progress on the building-a-store side of things, and nothing new happening on the funding-a-store side of things, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to write a ton of updates until…well, something happened.

And that’s where today’s post comes in: not only have my incorporation papers been finalized, but some early enthusiasts in this venture have begun to give me solid numbers on what they can invest—more accurately, I began to get the good news–and money–about mid-way through December. Now things are really starting to take shape!

Ducks in a Row

One of the things I’ve learned so far is the importance what order things should be done in. I’ve managed to half start a few different steps before realising I needed to get other things done first. Where is this going? Well, I took a serious look at several retail spots back in October and November; it was then that it became apparent that I had to complete a bunch of steps before I could actively start pursuing a location. With most of those steps either underway or out of the way, I was able to take better look inside the place that is the top contender for locations right now (barring any unforeseen weirdness).

The view from the back room door, looking towards the front.

Measuring in at 2000 square feet, the spot is ideal for a games store: plenty of room for gaming tables—but not too much room so as to make it just an empty bay with tables in it (one of the local competitors has a bit of that going on).

...Though of course, with these photos I’m NOT making a very good argument that this place won't be just an empty bay with a few tables.

There’s also adequate storage space in the back room to make selling on the internet much more realistic (in that it will have adequate space for prepping orders and storing shipping materials) The last games store I managed had no back room worth mentioning and always suffered whenever we got a little too much of one line restocked…or heck, even when we’d get our pop orders in—the shop couldn’t effectively store eight flats of pop. And don’t even talk to me about the gong show that Christmas stock levels brought to that store.

Storage aplenty! There's another row of shelves along the wall on the left that's just out of frame. (My daughter's there for scale.)

Plus the location is part of a strip mall with some decent anchor-like stores–it also not only has a Tim Horton’s in the same parking lot (if you’re Canadian, you’ll understand my excitement), but there’s a pub just a few doors down! Hello, late-night gaming!

Well, I’m sick as a dog and still have to go meet with some other people today, so I’m going to leave things here. I’ve a pretty good idea of what lines I’ll be carrying and will maybe go into that within the next couple updates I make.

2011 in review

WordPress prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog, and according to them I did a pretty good job in 2012. You can read further about my stats…if you care about this sort of thing.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men.

Christmas dinner served up amidst the firefight during the Battle of Ortona, 1943.

I wasn’t sure what to write for a Christmas blog entry—or if I even really needed to do one—but a documentary link cropped up on my Facebook feed on Christmas Eve, (coming from the Canadian Virtual Military Museum) and got me thinking about Christmases past and how the turmoil back then makes the present-day holiday season feel downright peaceful in comparison.

Sadly, the CBC archives won’t let me imbed the videos onto this update, so I’m left no choice but to simply link to the documentary in the archives.

Return to Ortona (link)

The documentary not only touches on the time of year but dovetails appropriately with my nationality (Canadian), my getting involved in Flames of War and the army I’ve decided to play in the game: the Loyal Edmonton Regiment (as a tribute to my hometown), who were there.

The Battle of Ortona by Gerald Trottier (1925-2004). Oil painting on masonite. This image doesn't look it, but the painting measures 48 feet wide by 8 feet high. In it, a group of infantrymen assault down an Ortona Street under the covering fire of a tank. Veterans of the battle attest to the accuracy of its imagery.

Being that I’m working on my Flames of War Mid-War Canadians, I’ve been meaning to do a more involved update about the force I’ll be playing. It was back in summer that I hoped to write up enough of a brief(ish) history of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, but that just hasn’t come about…the write up of the framework of the army I plan on fielding has also been curiously  absent these past months.

A Quick History

The regiment that would become the Loyal Edmonton Regiment (affectionately nicknamed, The Loyal Eddies) was raised in 1908 as the 101^st Fusiliers: the first local militia in Alberta—Alberta itself having become an actual province in the Dominion of Canada only three years previous.

The outbreak of World War I transformed the local-yokels of the 101^st Regiment into the newly-formed 49^th Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel W.A. Griesbach. The battalion acquitted itself honourably during the Great War and included  such well-known battles as the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele in its honours.

The 1930s, saw militaries everywhere being downsized by peace-time governments and the Edmonton Regiment decided to ally themselves with the British army’s The Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire)—one of the oldest regiments of the British army—to bring extra clout to the regiment (and hopefully stave off further downsizing). In 1943 King George VI granted a name change to reflect that alliance, with the Edmonton Regiment’s name being changed to “The Loyal Edmonton Regiment.” World War II saw the Edmonton Regiment commence combat at the start of the Italian campaign with the invasion of Sicily and continued through 1943 and into 19444 before ultimately transferring to north-western Europe where they finished the war in Holland.

After the war, Great Britain’s The Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire) was amalgamated into The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment,effectively dissolving it and thereby making  the Loyal Edmonton Regiment the only regiment in the entire Commonwealth with “Loyal” in its title–a claim the regiment can still hold to this day. 

In Canada, the years after the war saw all other militia-born regiments being amalgamated into regular-force regiments of the Canadian Armed Forces; and the Loyal Eddies were no exception. They were incorporated into the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) as its third battalion shortly after the Korean war (in personnel more than in name). though no longer their own regiment anymore, it was a natural fit for The Loyal Edmonton Regiment as  they had been in the same brigades as the PPCLI in both World Wars: having fought beside each other in so many battles already, the two regiments already  worked together well.

In 1970 Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry expanded further and The Loyal Eddies were officially named as the PPCLI’s fourth battalion that year. The Loyal Edmonton Regiment still serves today as 4 Battalion, PPCLI.

The Colours of The Loyal Edmonton Regiment (4th Battalion, PPCLI) with their battle honours.

My progress on the army itself has been slow and more than a tad sporadic. I’ll get pictures up once I get more on my first infantry platoon done, but Christmas is not a day for work-in-progress shots; it’s a day for being with family and appreciating all the ways we are fortunate.

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah—or whatever holiday you might be celebrating this December 25. Peace on Earth and good will toward men.

Further CBC Archives Documentaries on The Battle of Ortona (if you’re interested).

Road to Ortona

Memories of Ortona

Agents Aplenty!

Last week I got to partake in some (very brief) Strange Aeons [link] games. Being that I’m in the same town as the game’s author-owner, every once in a while when I game with Uncle Mike I get to do something a little out of the ordinary. And last week was one of those every-once-in-a-whiles.

Had I not been amidst a lengthy drought of Strange Aeons, I think the games I played that night could have easily been classified as being terrible. But when one is parched, having been wandering across the desert, one doesn’t check to see if the water at the oasis is cold enough.

I brought my Threshold team that had squared off (and fared quite well) against Jaded GamerCasts’s host, Lange, back in the beginning of November.

Game one had me privy to helping play test a new mission for the still-far-off-on-the-horizon second edition of Strange Aeons. It was essentially the (quite) standard “Fight” mission but with some crazy set up rules. My Threshold team faced off against a mob of rat swarms and a giant vermin….and the game was finished in about ten minutes—it would have been over a LOT sooner had we dispensed with pleasantries and conversation. There really isn’t much to report about that game—actually there is; it’s just that I have no pictures, so words are the only tools available to me for relating how the game went (and I’m not feeling up to building walls of text this evening).

The game went south from the start. Despite having my agents exactly where I needed them, my character got charged by the giant vermin almost immediately…and was taken out with a major injury in one round of fighting…which terrified my agent with a civil war saber and after three rounds of close combat was taken out with a major injury by the same giant vermin. Throughout this, my agent (Beatrice) with a double-barreled shotgun kept losing her nerve whenever she tried to shoot…seeing as how her last run-in with a Serpent man had resulted in her gaining Balistaphobia and she now had to test her resolve before pulling a trigger of any kind. Not surprisingly, the mob of rat swarms got the jump on Beatrice and took her out of action with a major injury as well. The game was done almost as soon as it began and my whole team had to roll and see what lingering ill effects they were to gain from being rolled by rats—and they beat the odds! Every single member of my Threshold team was taken out of action with a major injury, BUT they all rolled a full (ie: non-eventful) recovery.

MONSTER HUNT!

For game two my opponent and I rolled “Monster Hunt.” In Monster Hunt, my whole team must destroy the single Eldritch creature that was on the board—an easy mission for me, I figured…seeing as how I was a low-points team so no big monsters would be showing up (in Strange Aeons, the bad guys in each mission are tailor-made to equal the points value of the Threshold player’s team) and my leader was armed with dynamite!

Well, despite having my character and Agent Beatrice being taken out of the game with major injuries, I managed to win the game. The bad news: though I won, my “Character” —the leader of my Threshold team— died: my list had to be retired and I had to start up a brand-new Threshold team from the beginning once again. Oh…and Agent “too scared to pull the trigger” Beatrice also died.

Ah, Detective Nameless, we hardly knew ye. My leader succumbed to the classic skirmish game jinx: being unnamed during his career of on this campaign had marked him for an early demise.

This is where the really cool “something out of the ordinary” thing happened. I guess Uncle Mike was feeling sorry for me, inviting me to game only to see me lose twice and lose my whole Threshold team in the process. As we were wrapping up, we were talking and the idea came out that “what if” it were possible to salvage a team despite the leader having been killed? Essentially, story-wise, it would be a case of the agency seeing the merit of keeping the Threshold team together, seeing as how they were effective and were proven in the field.

Sorry, Agent Beatrice; anyone too scared to pull the trigger has no place in Threshold.

The talk started circling around the idea of “Field Promoting” one of the lesser agents on the team—not one of the owning player’s choosing but the agent who was worth the most points—the thinking being that sometimes it’s fun to have a story continue despite the main protagonist’s departure. So that was the direction we decided to go—all under the auspice of the possibility that this may be an optional rule in a future Strange Aeons expansion or article as well!

Rory Reginald Esquire: now a full-fledged detective for Threshold …for as long as his sanity can handle it.

Despite the horrible losses I suffered, the night ended up being fairly serendipitous, seeing as how I finished more agent / civilian models at the end of last month…seemingly with no use for them any time soon. I now have total use for (if not need of) those agents!

Agent Leopold Humphrey.

Agent Alderice 'Old man' McGuillicutty.

Agent Sammy Wong.

Agent Faizel “Bomber” Backarah

Well, that’s it for my Threshold team for now; with luck, I’ll be playing some Strange Aeons tonight. We’ll see how a team of “agents” with no “character” leading them fares!

Boss Zagstruk: Work in Progress

I’ve been thinking that I should be showing off more of the stuff I’m working on—in an attempt to get me to sit at my painting table and get more painting done. So today, I’m “showing off” where I’m at right now with a commission I’m working on: Ork Boss Zagstruk.

I’m normally not a painting commission guy. However, I know a guy who gets some of his stuff painted from time to time; and I put the offer to him back in the summer—after I became unemployed but before I was accepted to the self-employment program I’m in.

He responded quite a while later…like in the fall. Though I wasn’t sure of how fast I could get this done up, I accepted all the same (completely unaware of how much of my time the E.I. program, selling my older bitz on Ebay and my wife’s new job requirements were going to eat in to my painting time).

Although my “client” and I never agreed on when I should be finished, I know I’m pretty late with this, so I’m trying to get this done up now and do a better job than one might normally expect of a commissioned paint job. The guy who I’m painting this for has been pretty exceptional about all this—he hasn’t bugged me or anything (making me feel even more guilty for taking this long), so I really want to impress him when he sees the final paint job and leave him feeling the model was worth the wait …at least somewhat.

I’m pleased with what I’ve done with the model so far: I really like how I’ve done Zagstruk’s skin; it’s substantially darker than how it looks in the ‘official’ GW product picture.

The darker skins tone does bring with it the problem that the parts of the model that aren’t going to be metal are all going to be dark, so I’m now running the risk of having the model’s skin getting lost in the dark colours prevalent in the models recessed areas (Zagstruk’s clothes). I could reconsider the colour of the clothes, but it was requested that I paint the model pretty much the same as how it looks on the packaging, being that it’s a special character and, story-wise, regardless of which army he was hanging out with that day, Zagstruk’s look wouldn’t change significantly.

So I guess the challenge will be to brighten up the metals anough to provide sufficient contrast to the dark clothes and darker ork skin—I can’t forget that there’s a preponderance of straps on the Zagstruck model, so if I choose to make them your everyday, run-of-the-mill, leather-coloured leather straps I’ll have to be careful with my use of bronze, rust and gold when doing the metals of Zagstruk’s jet pack and bionic legs.

I think I may also need to not overthink this project.

When it Sucks Taking a Long Time to Paint Your Stuff

Slowly but surely (with extra emphasis on the slowly part of that equation), I’ve been plugging away at more of my Space Marine army. A few weeks ago, I got around to my shading wash on my now-yellow terminators—or rather, I did my shading wash on five of them.

As I progressed on the first one I realised the brown wash I was doing was WAY too dark: building up to a vivid yellow was going to be more work than I had planned with the kind of dark wash I just put down on the yellow termie. So I switched things up and remembered—after the fact—that I wasn’t using a brown to shade the yellow of my army; I was using the old Flesh Wash ink. So I proceeded to wash the yellow terminators with the Flesh Wash ink wash.

Still too dark.

Generally the wash worked decently on this one--except that it didn't cover larger smoother areas so well, and the ink REALLY pooled excessively in some parts (fingers on power fist).

Now I’m stuck with a third of my terminators shade far more darkly than I am comfortable with (and comfortable with having to put highlights on); so, first off:  uniform army colours have gone a bit sideways; second off: I’m now at a loss as to what my “super easy” shortcut to an amazing yellow is; and I now have to tinker with shades again. Sigh.

This one looks a bit better...as long as you don't notice the weirdly-pooled ink on the pauldrons and the over-inked shoulder and hip shields.

–Not that having to tinker with inks is a terrible prospect for me: I have enough painting experience (and enough experience with inks) that I’m not too worried. It’s just a hassle where I was expecting to have none. (Though the good news is that by my fifth guy, I started getting the ink mixture a lot closer to what I need….too bad that I didn’t get a photo of that guy for this post. Ah well; another day, Highlander.)

This one is a bit more of a step in the right direction--so long as you pay no attention to the weird drying lines on the shoulder shield ...and hip shields ...and ammo drum. Sigh.

Right. Lesson Learned.

When you start projects, don’t decide to string them along for over a year…you might just forget how it was you were doing things back when you started.

I Podcasted …Again!

Last night I helped fill in on Jaded GamerCast for one of the hosts (Nathan) who had the opportunity to escape the Canadian versions of  December & January in exchange for the Philippines version of those months. As is the tradition with Jaded GamerCast, alcohol and swearing were involved. I worked my way through a pretty big helping of Lagavulin 16 year, and I managed to drop a few F-bombs too! Sigh….what would Jaded GamerCast be if there was no alcohol or swearing like sailors involved?

What was really fun about this time around was that Lange and I were joined by Ward. Years ago, Lange, Ward and myself all worked at the same Games Workshop store, and for the approximate year or so we were all there, we were thick as thieves: always ready to give our co-workers, our favourite customers and our not-so favourite customers a hard time. We channeled a little of that last night.

The topic—one near and dear to me—was a bit different than the usual Sex-Pistols-esque “we hate everything” that tends to drive Jaded GamerCast episodes. Last night we talked about the thinking behind running Warhammer & 40k tournaments that aspire to be more than just the run-of-the-mill, ‘Ard-Boyz-style competitive events or regular competitive / hobby-weighted tournaments. 

The big question of the night that was like a black hole of discussion (or at least a looped discussion that brought us back to the same points a couple times) was how to go about running a narrative campaign-tournament weekend for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It seems pretty easy to set up a storyline weekend for Warhammer 40,000; but doing the same for Warhammer Fantasy seems evasive. 

I firmly believe the geography of the Old World does a lot to make a storyline that could potentially include every army in the game a tricky beast to snare. (I think I may have said it best in the podcast when I gave the example of Mordheim: one couldn’t help but wonder exactly how it was that High Elves, Lizardmen, Amazons and Tomb Kings were had come to the city located in the North-Eastern parts of the Empire.)

It's a big big big big Warhammer world...and each army is in its own isolated corner of it.

So now my brain is simmering on the idea of how to make a Warhammer narrative-campaign tournament.

Tournaments in the New Year

We also talked about future events Ward and I will be running (in our two respective cities, that is). After doing the 14^th Black Crusade and the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V, I’ve been stewing on what would be a good storyline for the next tournament. As I announced last night, I think there’s more than a nugget behind the idea of ret-conning the retcon the Necrons were given. So I think that’s likely the direction the next campaign tournament that me, Nathan, Teri and Scott will be running (of course, I need to take this up with them and make sure all of us are inspired by this idea). We talked a little about this already and we’re hoping to do our next 40k campaign weekend some time in February or March.

BUT…more on that once I have more committed to paper…

The new codex has given the Necrons the same feeling as when you find out you're really adopted.

White Dwarf 383–Reviewed!

I can’t believe I missed it! I missed it by a week! I missed the release day of the December, 2011 White Dwarf issue (if you live in North America, the issue I’m talking about is #383). It totally flew below my radar, and I just realised it was on the shelves seven days after the fact! Mind you, with last month’s issue being not much more than a bunch of forgettable articles, wrapped in Necrons and drizzled in retcon, there’s only so much guilt I can feel about being late picking up this month’s issue.

The issue itself comes poly-bagged, just like last month’s did. However, instead of a Christmas “wish list” mini-catalogue, this month includes a campaign booklet for Dreadfleet, which….I’ll talk more about at the end of this issue’s contents run down.

You know, if you can't be bothered to strive for the level of quality on a Magic: the Gathering card, what's the point of putting 'art' on the cover?

Page 0: Message from the editor, telling me this issue is “revisiting” all the articles of 2011…considering this year’s track record, I wonder if I should even keep flipping through the book—but enough editorialising on my part, this is supposed to be me just listing off the magazine’s contents.

 Page  1:    Table of Contents

Pgs 2-10: New Releases (the 5 splash pages reveal just how few releases there are this month).

Pgs 11-13: New Releases – Fantasy Flight Games & Black Library. Bill King answers 5 Questions and they call it an interview.

Pgs 14-19: Warhammer: Denizens of the Forest Depths. Light fluff piece on Beastmen and a sample army list.

Pgs 20-27: Warhammer: Bloodied in the Badlands: A summation of the new expansion and the developers’ experiences playing in a BitB campaign.

Pgs 28-31: Warhammer: Rules for the Jabberslythe, Cygor & Ghorgon (so anyone can use them in Storm of Magic).

Pgs 32-33: Advert: Games Day Monster Conversion Contest.

Pgs 34-53: Warhammer: Battle Report – Ogre Kingdoms/Orcs & Goblins vs. Daemons of Chaos/Warriors of Chaos…and I guess it’s a Storm of Magic battle but built up more as a Bloodied in the Badlands battle…?

Pgs 54-57: Blanchitsu: John Blanche focuses on two studio painters and their techniques.

Pgs 58-65: Warhammer 40k: New Apocalypse datasheets: 2 each for Grey Knights, Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar.

Pgs 66-67: Advert: Forge World’s Contemptor Dreadnoughts range.

Pgs 68-73: Warhammer 40k: Necrons vs. Black Templars linked-battles campaign.

Pgs 74-77: ‘Eavy Metal: “Article” revealing to us that the purpose of the ‘Eavy Metal team is to paint miniatures for GW.

Pgs 78-83: Modeling Workshop: Painting Warhammer’s Skullvane Manse scenery piece.

Pgs 84-91: Modeling Workshop: How to paint the Ogre Kingdoms’ Thundertusk.

Pgs 92-97: Lord of the Rings SBG: Battle Report: Lonely Mountain Dwarves vs. Moria Goblins and a Dragon.

Pgs 98-103: Painting Masters: ‘Eavy Metal’s Neil Green.

  Page 104:  Advert: Hobby Centre Birthday Celebration locations.

Pgs 105-119: The Augury (adverts & independent stores’ event info).

Pg 120: Also known as the inside of the back cover. Picture of Dwarfs defending against Skaven (possibly at Bugman’s Brewery?). Also mentioned is that next month’s White Dwarf is going to be late: it won’t be available until January 7^th, 2012.

Bonus Booklet: Dreadfleet: Into the Maelstrom supplement. Remember, just like it says on the booklet’s back cover: now’s your “last chance to buy” (so… you’d best hurry!).

I thought it being called a supplement, it would somehow ADD to the issue. Sigh.

Thoughts on the Issue

On first blush, this issue looks to have a little extra value: a magazine and a supplement booklet! The issue is generally a little more on the ‘plus’ side of middle-of-the-road…sort of. The book has three conceivable pluses:

1. If you play Storm of Magic, the rules for the Beastmen monsters will be appreciated.
2. If you play 40k Apocalypse (does anyone even engage in that any more?) the new data sheets are likewise pretty cool—if you play one of those three armies—though, if the internet is to be believed, who doesn’t play Grey Knights these days?

THIS is the only Apocalypse Grey Knights formation that will satisfy me if I can't have the "Dipped in the Blood of the Sisters of Battle They Just Killed" Grey Knights formation.

The 3rd conceivable plus—at least the one I see as a plus—is an article by John Blanche this month. Whether you like his art or not, it is John Blanche’s vision that has fuelled 40k all these years. Any company can make monastic space knights (and many do). John Blanche’s vision made monastic space knights fit into an entire universe and set 40k apart from the crowd. Anyways, his article offers the sage advice to paint models in a way that works for you (not so sage, really; but the bit after is revealing). Blanche reveals that for years he always tried to have his models match the style, if not quality, of the ‘Eavy Metal studio. He’s realised he should just paint his models in his style instead of trying to match (and fail) the ‘Eavy Metal style—with ever-disappointing results. That’s the sage advice. 

I always value finding out why people do the things they do, what informed them to act that way. That’s why I always like the articles where developers reveal the reasons behind their rules—which GW stopped doing a decade ago—and I like when a painter talks about not what he painted but why he paints how he does. The best we get now are developers telling us their new rules as a means of soliciting sales for new product, and painters walking us through the twenty steps of painting a miniature. It should come as no surprise that the last half of Blanchitsu didn’t hold my interest as well as the first half, being more about two painters in the spotlight talking about how they paint and less on how they came about to painting that way (still, the painters reveal more than any games developers have in the last decade…so I’ll be careful of just how critical I am of this article).

Oddly noteworthy: Jervis Johnson’s Standard Bearer column was nowhere to be found in this issue. Hopefully, Jervis has left on some sort of sabbatical with aims of writing more inspired Standard Bearer columns rather than the poorly disguised sales pitches that his column has become. I enjoy his column—when Jervis is inspired and not simply trying to take a gaming truism, connect it to a new product or new GW sales initiative and then tell us how that truism is at the core of the new product / initiative. Hopefully, this month doesn’t mark the month that Standard Bearer was sent off to the glue factory.

Picture unrelated...?

Summary: reprinting some monster rules and having John Blanche weigh in on painting models does little to keep me from feeling that White Dwarf doesn’t care whether people buy the magazine or not. Don’t get me wrong, they provided some definite (albeit unintentional) Plan 9 From Outer Space, laughingly bad writing in the “Four Ways Necrons can Face Off Against Black Templars and We’ll Call it a Campaign” article (in a big highlight-box, the Necron Lord, Imotekh, is quoted as referring to the Black Templars as “Sombre Fellows”).

As with Padme’s will to live, in one definable moment, so did my fear of Necrons drop through the floor.

My fear of Darth Vader was replaced by a fear of George Lucas' writing.

So, if you weren’t dazzled by the Apocalypse datasheets or the rules for the three big Beastmen monsters, it’s easy to see that this issue continues with what has become a tradition at White Dwarf: demonstrating that they don’t want you to like the magazine—to be fair, this issue isn’t as much a throw-away as last December’s issue: an issue that offered very little in content beyond thirty pages of battle reports between *gasp* the White Dwarf staff and the games developers (seriously, when this is used as the “angle” of battle reports every single month for a year, it’s not an angle; it’s a format! Did I mention this month’s battle report is between the ‘Dwarf staff and the games developers…as is the write up about Blood in the Badlands…ugh).

But with articles like “The ‘Eavy Metal team: what do they do?” taking up a few pages this month, how can this issue not feel phoned in?

My “Street Beef”

The Dread Fleet Supplement: the cover calls it a supplement; but I think GW’s definition of a supplement is different than everyone else’s in the world of gaming. It should come as no surprise that by “supplement” Games Workshop and/or White Dwarf really means a fifteen-page essay on some games some guys played of Dreadfleet. Essentially, it’s presented in battle-report format but meant to cover the twelve-game campaign that entails the box game. The fully played-out campaign—as played through by some White Dwarf staff guys—condenses down the twelve missions into the highlights of just three games. I went from being eyebrow-raisingly intrigued over the possibility that GW came out with an alternate mini-campaign for the Dreadfleet game…to eyeball-rollingly unimpressed that it was merely GW shilling a slow-selling board game.

(It needs to be said that fundamentally, I have no problems with Dreadfleet. I suspect I’d enjoy playing it, but I just don’t understand why GW thought keeping their NOT-Space Hulk board game such a big secret and trying to drum up interest only after the game came out was such a good plan. I mean, if they’re been reading over the shoulder of Fantasy Flight Games to find out just how much board games are a hot commodity right now, you’d think they’d have also read up on how to make it so that their newest item for the board-game market was also a hot commodity.)

Of course, one of the key problems facing Dreadfleet (in my scotch-addled brain, anyways) is that the only people who would have cared about this corpse of Man-O-War floating to the surface that is, ideologically, Dreadfleet are the same people that GW chased out of all their stores (and customer base) years ago because those customers weren’t twelve years old. It’s no surprise that the clientele GW has planted and grown over the last decade wholly don’t care about a board game that revives (and quite likely improves on) Man-O-War.

Let’s not forget that Dreadfleet’s marketing plan was essentially a sequel too: the first time GW announced a secret release and we weren’t allowed to know what it was until the reveal, the cheekiness of the plan was genius. (It helped that it was Space Hulk and a 40k-based game—talk about hedging your bets!) The second time they did it, the law of diminishing returns that applies to sequels kicked in—and the cheekiness of the marketing began to smack more of arrogance. I mean, it’s almost Christmas and everyone still has Dreadfleet on their shelves (not a bad thing—except GW ostensibly produced it to sell out…just read all the taglines on the website and in the magazine).

So…is #383 Worth it?

I liked John Blanche’s article. I see the value in the Apocalypse data sheets and in printing the monster rules. I even liked some of the painting tips inside the Painting Skullvane Manse article. And honestly, I’m curious about Games Workshop’s renewed interest in the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game (is War of the Ring officially dead now?)

The Dreadfleet supplement is the reveal: this issue was totally phoned in …via another phone’s receiver held into the transmitter of the first phone. This issue continues in the legacy of Games Workshop, as a company, not giving even one fuck about the magazine—like perhaps the magazine was the vehicle that allowed them to lose money for taxation purposes, so they no longer try to make it even remotely palatable for fear it might please some fans and FOOOM! GW loses their tax shelter / loophole / magazine due to it being too successful. …Which, of course, would result in much gnashing of “Group’s” corporate teeth and mass layoffs once more among the GW studio (the ones that escaped the round of 2006 layoffs).

Wrapping it up (because I’ve typed WAY more than I intended to and feel I’m coming across WAY more angry than I actually am…though as someone on the 11th Company’s online forum suggested: perhaps I hate GW so much because I love GW so much), I don’t think I’d recommend this month’s issue to anyone—unless that person is really after those new Apocalypse data sheets.

I Blame World War II

It was just two days ago that I was so filled with hope and thought getting two miniatures painted up (possibly three) was going to be but minimal effort.

Sigh.

I barely touched the miniatures I planned on getting done for Strange Aeons’ Brushoff 2011 competition. What’s worse: they weren’t even ambitious entries. They only required that I put some paint to models that were to have a two-colour paint scheme (plus some detail colours on things like their weapons). Had there been any real stakes riding on this entry, I’d be more disappointed with myself.

The two models are on different bases because the entry had to be the contents of 1 pack, and the sitting model I''ll be having based on piece from another Strange Aeons pack.

However, I did get an entry done and emailed off to the fine folks at Strange Aeons (yes, yes, I emailed it at midnight which rides the cusp of the competition’s “November 30^th entry deadline”  …so long as they consider “by November 30^th” to be any and all times prior to when the judges awake on December 1^st and check their emails, I should be fine). It turned out that I had a pack of ‘Scrawny Ones’ that were about 80% done; so I did the last bit of details and basing, got them photographed, then posted the pictures on the Strange Aeons forums and emailed my submission in.

My Scrawny Ones: the base for the sitting model is too large for game play and is on one of the components from the 'Objective Markers' pack.

Here Come the Excuses…

I think I’d also be more disappointed in myself for not following through with my painting plans had my not getting them done been a result of me just being lazy. As it turned out, the night I was pumped to get my stuff painted, I was supposed to be heading over to a friend’s place for a painting night—I never do painting socials, so I was unsure of how effective that evening would be, BUT I also don’t really leave the house (at all) any more, so I thought I should go out and be social.

The painting night ended up turning into a ‘let’s wrap our heads around Flames of War’ evening, so the evening I was planning on getting the bulk of my painting done, I didn’t get home until 2am: not a good time of the day to start painting. But this is NOT me complaining; I’ve been trying to get started in Flames of War for seven years now (that’s how long I’ve owned some of my FoW miniatures!). And for once I was actually playing the game and learning the rules—though technically, this could count as the second time…if I include the summer evening where me and some friends essentially had a ‘mega battle’ in my basement …and none of us knew the rules nor tried to play with the rulebook open to make an honest stab at learning and retaining the rules.

So:

Minor Loss: I didn’t get the planned models painted for a competition I was really unlikely to ever win.

Minor Victory: I finished a figure that’s been sitting on my table ¾ painted for a year now, photographed it and entered it into the painting competition (never mind that the paint scheme was one that was almost identical to previous entries from other years).

Minor Major Victory: I spent an evening playing Flames of War! I spent an evening learning a new game! I spent an evening out of the house!

I think overall I came out ahead. And because all gaming activity gets me pumped to paint more models, I foresee me getting more Flames of War stuff finished and table-worthy (plus, my friend and I decided we need to do a Flames of War evening as a regular bi-weekly activity!)