Gencon,WoW and FoW at 7:19 AM

Another week has passed and its been a little slow around here. I have been working on my various projects primarily working on getting my Gencon Terrain together I also finally registered for Gencon so now I can actually run the events I am already signed up for. Also last Saturday I participated in a FoW tournament in West Lafayette coming in second after having a solid day. I believe that I lost by 1 point and my final round didn't help I had to play a "hold the line" like scenario leaving me with little on the table and I didn't receive reserves until the 4th turn by then it was all over. Special Thanks go out the the guys of The Sages Shoppe they put on a great tournament in a really nice store.

In other news, I finally got my latest character in WoW up to level 40 and I have decided to take a bit of time off mainly to work on my other projects but much like it has before WoW is slowly becoming a job so in place of WoW I decided to cash in my three free months of City of Heroes I received after NcSoft closed down Tabula Rasa. CoH is a nice light hearted game that is a little less intensive than WoW and doesn't take itself very seriously it did take a bit of tweaking just to get it up and running but it seems to be work it. CoH actually reminds me of Anarchy Online which is a game that I loved at the time but seriously shows its age now even though it is free.

That's its for now not much is going to change in the next few weeks I have a lot of terrain to finish up for Gencon that will take up most of my time. I also have a Confrontation Throw Back day at my house in a week that should be a blast for the local group.

And on a final note I don't usually offer non gaming opinions on this blog but, I got to see the new Transformers movie matter of fact I have seen it twice and I will say that while its not going to win any awards it is a typical summer movie that is more of a exhibition in effects and explosions but its worth the price of admission. I am not sure what the deal is with the critics but it is not anywhere near as bad as they make it out to be.

Return to Battletech at 7:06 AM

After about a decade of not playing the game at all I finally got to play a game of BattleTech and I must say I had fun. Now, yea I tried a few years ago and honestly it looked like I was going to get back in them but I got involved with another game after Gencon and kind of forgot about BattleTech, however recently I have been going to one of the local stores on Sundays and they have been talking about there weekly Battletech game and encouraging me to play. After a couple of weeks of being unable to attend I finally went last night and had a great time so much in fact that I am looking to break out the old stuff and start playing again. One thing that readers may not know is that Battletech was the 1st wargame I ever played and I owned a ton of stuff it the universe I have always been interested so much in fact that I own a good portion of the novels as well as all of the PC games. I was even into Virtual World games for a while(I actually own a manual for the pods and how to pilot them).

Anyway enough about my Battletech past the future looks good especially in this economy where funds are tight I already have enough Battletech stuff to keep me going for a while I just need to pick up the latest rule book(I will actually own every major rule book published in the games 25 year history...crazy!) and some of the newly sculpted minis which have come a long way since I started picking up minis.

Awesome new Terrain and Painting site at 2:02 PM

Not sure if this site is actually new or not but it has some great work on it

Sentinel Minaiture Painting

I am not going to go into a huge review of the site but I can say that there is a lot of well produced terrain and miniatures on ther a well as a tutorial that shows how they put things together. I may not be up to this level of building but it give me a lot of ideal on how to approace scenery. Oh and the pictures are great as well.

Flame of War progress, Other News at 9:02 AM

It has been a wild couple of weeks, hence the lack of posting but thankfully things are now returning to normal or whatever normal is these days. Now that the explanation is out of the way we can get on with the post.

Flames of War Progress
The past two weeks have shown a resurgence in my interest in Flames of War not that I ever lost my interest in the game I just didn't see a whole lot of opportunity to play at the point level I like to play at which is 1500. Also the FoW Club that I am a part of is going through a lot of turmoil at the moment and I kinda got caught up in the middle of it. Now with the turmoil sorted out I actually got a game in a week ago it was a horrible version of the game but I still had fun. After the game I quickly started work finishing up my friends British Rifle Company that I have been painting for him as well as working on my own army for use in a couple of upcoming tournaments. I currently have a Royal Engineer Airlanding Platoon setting on my paint table I am working on for a tournament in Fort Wayne in August.

What Else is going on?

Work continues on my terrain for the Ambush Alley Games we are going to be running at GenCon this year. I would say that I am about a month or so from being completely finished and I believe that we have all of the troops painted that we will be using along with the vehicles. As for everything else I am contemplating entering a figure into a painting contest that TTGamers is holding, I don't have a chance in the world of winning specially with the painters that are over there but it would be interesting to see what happens. Finally I am working to completly paint up my Alkemy army for the tournament at Gencon.

Warmachine Mk2 Report, Other News at 6:43 AM

Warmachine Mk2 Battle Report, 5/21/09 Mercs vs Mercs

Thursday I was able to throw down with another local Totengräber in some Merc vs Merc action. Since the Mark 2 rules are still kinda of new to us this game was still more of a learning game but was still a blast to play.

For this battle we played 35 points which allows for a little more flexibility and defiently put a lot more stuff on the table here are the lists:

Totengräber

• Magnus, the Traitor
  
• Steelhead Halberdiers x6
  
• Stannis Brocker
  
• Mule
  
• Mangler
  
• Renegade
  
• Vanguard
  
• Dirty Meg with Talon Jack Marshalled
  
• Orin Midwinter
  

Sryth

• Fiona, the Black
  
• Alexia and the Risen
  
• Steelhead Halberdiers x6
  
• Sea Dogs x6
  
• Buccaneer
  
• Mangler
  
• Mariner
  
• Bosun Grogspar
  
• Aiyanne and Holt
  
• Master Gunner Dougal McNaile
  

I was lucky enough to win the initiative roll and choose to go second forcing Totengräber to deploy and go first. The first turn itself was pretty much the same for both of us all about moving up into position and setting up for the second turn. I was able to get a shot off with Mariner on the Vanguard but did little damage. Turn two resulted in more movement some shooting and some Orin Midwinter magic limitation. I was able to get a charge off with the halberdiers and killed a few infantry models feeding more risen to Alexia. From the 3rd turn on the game boiled down in to a war of attrition with Alexia chruning out Risen all of the open terrain between Fionna and all of Totengräber's are hitting jacks as well as Magnus. In the end we both tried one last ditch effort to get a caster kill in but to no avail. Overall I would have gathered the most victory points because I had killed all of the infantry on the table(to the point I was killing my own guys to get more Risen) however Totengräber still had both of his heavies as well as

Vanguard.

Overall I did learn a lot from this game the primary thing is I need to be more agressive with my Jacks and use Alexia to manage the enemy infantry specially against a caster like Magnus mainly due to his high armor. I am going to have to dedicate a Jack or two to Magnus in order to take him out. 

New Mass Combat Collectible game?

Tabletop Gaming News reported on this earlier this month and most recently Wells Expedition the compnay behnd the game has releases images from the game and also talked a bit more about how the game is going to be distributed . I am not going to rehash the entire article but I can say that the concept is interesting and from the pictures the painting masters look good I am a bit concerned because the designers are ex-Wizkids employees but Wizkids did make good games earlier in the life it wasn't till the end that things went crazy. Hopefully they can fulfill this promises and provide a solid game in an easy to collectable format.

Wednesday Update::May 13 2009 at 7:15 AM

Update

Well not much to say really, I have been hard at work getting this blog cleaned up and running again. You may have noticed that I have added a couple of sections on the right, one for all of the podcasts that I listen to(yes this is more than one I have a few logos to prepare) and one for links to other cool sites as well as ones that my friends run.

Aside from my blog I have been working on some commission work along with a couple of terrain pieces for Gencon.  Personally I assembled a couple of Warmachine solos and continues work on Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile for my mercenary army.

Thursday Night Gaming

For those not in the know my gaming group normally meets every Thursday at a local store. In the past we have been dedicated to just one game but for the last couple of years now its been kind of crazy, to the point where we rarely play the same game from one week to the next.  Anyway enough about my unusual group this week the plan is to play the new Force on Force rules from Ambush Alley games. There have been a lot of positive reviews on the rule set and we are going to be runing it at Gencon this year so we have to learn some time. I am also going to brining along my Warmaching and Hordes armies just in case...you never know. Expect to see a battle report of update sometime Friday

The New and Improved Indy Gamer at 12:41 PM

Its been what two maybe three months since my last post...ok maybe a bit more than that but to be honest my normal posting time are now filled by..gasp..work. With that said I have been trying to make some tme to post about my own personal gaming and also whats going on in the Indy scene.  I am also going to make an effort to add some more sections and posts to the site about what I am currently working on along with that I have recently added the ability to post via my cell phone with has a camera so I will be blogging about gencon and other gaming events I am attending as well as  possiblly even local game nights.

Thats enough about the site here is the big news that has really got me excited

I can't say enough about the new rules, they have fixed the learning curve and made the game fun to play and easier to understand. Don't get me wrong the depth is still there as well as the complexity but over the game is far more accessable. As of right now Warmachine Mark 2 is the #1 game on my list as far as games I want to play. I am also working on a  mercenary army in between all of my commission work an work from Gencon.

Speaking of Gencon work continues on all of the terrain for the Ambush Alley Games that myself and a friend are running at Gencon this year. We will be testing the games in June to see where we are with out knowledge as well as how the just release rules for Force of Force battles work.

I think that pretty much covers the current news and what is going on currently expect to see more in the days ahead as I will out the new shell of the website