Things to come...

     2012 comes to a close tonight and in looking to the future, I'm already starting to make plans. For 2013 I want to make a return to wargaming in league, tournament and casual play. For the last few months I've been consent to make up excuses not to head down to the shop and partake in the hobby. In the coming year my hobby motto will be: Get in more games!
     I also hope to to hit the homebrewing hobby, hardcore. I shall dub 2013 the Year of Beer as I branch out from the 2 passable batches of Mead we've made so far to making dozens if not hundreds of batches of homebrew. Obviously, for legal reasons, when I say hundreds, I am referring to 1 gallon batches, and no more than 200 at that as ours is a household of 2 or more adults.
     I'd like to get some painting back in on the miniature hobby side of things. I've had some of these minis for over a decade and it's high time they get some color.
     I'm shedding my shelves of GW. I haven't played a GW mini game (or video game come to think of it) in over a year and a quarter now, and I have to say, I'm not missing it. That being said, ebay, here I come... The funds from which should help fund both my Privateer Press gaming as well as the homebrewing.
     Speaking of homebrew, my lovely wife supplied me with a year's membership to the American homebrew association, so I have tons of content to go through over there. So much to learn and do. Can't wait.
     And lastly, maybe an idea for the brew-pub/bakery combo: http://growlermag.com/spent-but-valuable-ideas-for-using-spent-grain/.
   Have a happy new year's eve folks and we'll catch you on the flipside.

WARGamesCon post-action post

     It's been a week now since my wife and I took to the field for our doubles games at WARGamesCon and I've had plenty of time to analyze our games. I've had time to consider what happened in each and why we saw the outcomes we did.  I could say, "Waah! Our codex is older and can't compete with the current books," but the internet is full of whining and I'd rather be more constructive. Besides, I know competitive lists can be built from the current Chaos Space Marine codex. If they couldn't, I'd never win ANY games instead of the 35-40%-ish win ratio I have. It seems like for every win I get, there's a draw, or a hard-fought, very close loss. So what were our failings? What caused the 3 losses we suffered? Stay tuned to find out...

Hobby Project: Sons of Saint Arnold

     Another hobby project in the works. My own Blood Angels' successor chapter, the Sons of St. Arnold. Time for a history lesson (according to a combination of our good internet-friend Wikipedia, and the fine folks at Saint Arnold's brewery in Houston Texas):
Saint Arnold, in the Roman-Catholic Church, is the patron saint of hop-pickers and Belgian brewers (why only Belgians, I dunno, but as Belgian ales are my favorite, I'm not too concerned). This guy is excellent to base a chapter around as he was a career soldier who retied to an abbey where he became abbot, and then later after rising to bishop, founded another abbey where he became a brewer of beer. He encouraged local peasants to drink beer instead of water because it was healthier. At the time, the beer actually was healthier than the water because during prep for brewing the water was boiled, killing many of the pathogens in the water.
     So with the Sons of Saint Arnold, what we have here is, a chapter of warrior-monks who brew and consume beer. To 40k it up, all we have to do is make Saint Arnold an imperial saint, a brewer from the agri-world Bel'Gia who provided the populace with the ability to make their drinking water safe to imbibe during the Age of Strife by brewing it into beer. The chapter was a 'Start-up' chapter. An experiment by the Adeptus Mechanicus in creating new chapters without a primarch from the geneseed tithed by the chapters for purity-checking and archival purposes. The chapter was named in honor of the Saint whose agri-world the would-be marines, or Bel'Gians, were recruited from. Little did they know the chapter name would prove quite apt as red thirst of the blood angels was transferred through the geneseed used. However, due to a mutation in the oolitic kidney caused either by mistake from the AdMech while growing the organs, a flaw inherent in the geneseed itself or, as the AdMech claims, a result of local Bel'Gian food and beverage on the processing functions of the oolitic kidney, the Sons of St. Arnold or SoSA Marines crave processed, brewed hops and grains: Beer!
     I love the Sanguinary priests of the Blood Angels and their ability to give Feel no Pain and Furious charge to those around them. I love that the Blood Angels are so gung-ho about assault squads and dreadnoughts (especially the blood taloned ones) as my favorite part of the game is the assault phase. I just never could grow comfortable enough with the emo space vampires to allow myself to consider playing them. And I hate red. Can't stand it as a color. So this gives me a way to use the very cool, very appealing rules set of the blood angels without having to use them at all.
     For an added twist, I'm thinking about making Bel'Gia a high gravity world and converting up my entire army from Fantasy dwarves or Dwarfs as GW calls them. Hey, that's how they originally explained the squats, and what better way to reintroduce squats to my gaming circle than as short, angry, beer-drinking marines.

Hobby Project: DeathWatch

So, the rumors flying around are that the Grey Knights will be coming out in 2011.
I'm looking forward to it. Not because I want to play it, but more because I love the Inquisition of the 40k universe, their organization and the background story and fluff. Ok, maybe I want to play, a little.
     However, the Ordo Malleus 'ain't my bag, baby' so I've gone and got meself an idear. I love the ordo hereticus. Maybe it comes from my first army being Black Templars, but the witch hunting inquisitors are my favorite. I'm not wholly enamored of the bolter chicks of the sisters of battle, but give me a suit of power armor, a tall wide-brimmed hat and a combi-bolter/stake-crossbow and whee... Hours of enjoyment. The mention of the Grey Knight book losing many of the iconic inquisitorial units has saddened me somewhat, but when they finally get around to the ordo hereticus we'll see what we shall see, I guess.
     My focus here though is on the random thoughts percolating around in my brain currently. The spark that popped up at the thought of a new book of marines running around with inquisitors. Ordo Xenos and the Deathwatch! The DW role playing game has just released this year and with it has seen a resurgence in my local gaming circle of people buying deathwatch shoulder pads and converting up figs for their RP games. Back in the day, I pointed up (and started converting) a deathwatch unit for my Templars.  The idea of a specialist unit with different ammo, suspensor-assisted heavy bolter and non-termie lightning claw craziness appealed to me immensely. With the recent trends of 'counts-as' armies, I asked myself, "why can't I do that?" and couldn't think of a good answer in the negatory.
     So it looks like one of my next personal projects (once I finish the wolves; and I promise myself I will finish the wolves) is going to be a Deathwatch 'counts-as' Grey Knights army once their codex hits. There are a few more projects on the project list and hopefully those posts will be up soon. Putting these down on 'paper' as it were, helps me focus on what I need to accomplish these things and actually makes the projects seem more real to me and less a pile of ideas that I'm never going to do anything with.

GRARRRR

Work continues to be work, just that.
Motivation continues to elude me.
I need to find my spiral wherein Daniel, Damon and myself poured in creativity in the form of a tabletop wargame for a year or more.
I need to start writing again. Ideas can only get you so far. Putting text to page gets you published, or at least looked at by an editor/publishing company.
The tavern looms on the horizon.
As does a promising career as a sci-fi/fantasy author.
So too looms the great games-developer career.
It's all there, I just have to motivate myself to put in the time to work on it.
Grrrrrrr.

The next big step...

March 18th...
My ride to the airport will be here shortly.
Can't eat, stomach too active.
Nervous, scared, excited, anxious.
Lots of preparation has gone into this so far...
Can't wait.

Website.... and... Stuff.

Looking at getting a domain name registered.
Maybe a google apps site so I can learn how to throw together a wiki.

Also, Gary Gygax died yesterday.
That guy was a great example of 'doing what you love'.
I only wish I can find something as enjoyable and nifty as he did to make a living from.
Guess that goes back to the old list of goals and what I need to start back on...

Off the reservation...

Some people make reservations every year that they may or may not stick to.
This year I made an outline of the things I want to change and/or see changed:

1.) Get a new place.
a.) Get more organized at home.
b.) Get a spot to work on minis.
c.) Get painted armies for the games I play.
2.) Get Casey here.
a.) Get her a job.
3.) Get in better shape.
a.) Physically.
b.) Mentally/Emotionally.
4.) Write Something.
a.) Minis game.
b.) Flesh out the world for novels.
c.) Novel
d.) Supplement material on the world of Balance for Lore Forge.

Update to the outline so far:
1.) Done
1a.) Working on...
Daniel ( the roommate that is staying) and I have cleaned up the house, moved the living room around so that we have more space now, built a shelf to house my movies and TV shows on dvd (instead of using Wendy's French Fry boxes), created a dining area, complete with table and chairs, and I bought a dry erase board that we can leave and/or keep notes on.
The other roommate, Chris, as soon as we move him out (this weekend) will create a void in the house that can easily be filled by more projects like:
1b.) and 1c.) These will be covered by converting my current room into a workspace/computer room after I move into the master bedroom.
2.) This will be accomplished during my 'Vacation to Indiana' which begins in 18 days.
2a.) I think she has begun calling around the local hospitals and whatnots here in the hopes of at least getting some contact info for HR people or dept. managers.
3.) No real work on this yet. at all.
4.) Does a blog count? (Not really)
I think these will be easier when I am A.) Not spending all my time on the computer playing games with Casey in an effort to have 'together time' despite our geographic distance from each other, and B.) settled into a room that actually has something of a 'work here' feel about it once we get the study or w/e up and running. (Once again necessitating that Chris get moved out, and soon.)

So yeah, my update on 2008.