It's a new year, time for a new post

2010 was a fun year for my hobbies.  Recaps are trite, but here are the highlights:

• Started a 2nd army to languish in the hell of my backlog of unfinished projects.  Sitting next to my desk is an entire box of Deamons. Painting them has been a blast, thouhg.  Now to make sure they don't take a year and a half to be playably ready to go.
• Completely collected and then completely abandoned a Warhammer fantasy army. My poor dino-horde is why I continue to have mixed feelings about 8th edition despite knowing better.  The silver lining is that I broke even and didn't waste time with wood elves.
• Got my first and only hate mail from a man very confused about how the internet and logical arguments work.  Bonus points on this one for receiving one worthless rant and then receiving a spell-checked version with a polite explanation on why I was getting two copies.  Also, thinly veiled threats of physical violence.
• Started up the House of Paincakes with Dethtron.  It's killed my ability to write for this blog, but the whole thing been fun as hell and great for networking.  Its going strong and getting lots of love.
• Discovered the wonder that is the wet palette.  For your own sake, go get one. Now.
• Entered a BoLS painting challenge.  Got third place as far as I can tell; they never announced winners to my knowledge. 
• Got tons of fantastic books from GW and Forgeworld.  They're relly stepping up the quality of what they produce and it is fantastic.  Badab War II is on the way and I have a bit of a hobby boner.
• Sold a bunch of my old crap to pay for new crap.  The viability of hobby cannibalism is firmly established for me.  I also got better at letting go of my precious, precious work.

 I think 2011 is shaping up to  be better.  I have an army pretty close to done and if the job-gods are kind to me, I'll be in a better position to actually make some games happen and then fart around with new stuff.  Plus, the Eldar will actually be done and ready to play.

Now, because it's that kind of listy/re-cap day, here's some recent news and my take on it:

Chapterhouse Studios is being sued by GW.  For the most part this is almost entirely unremarkable.  GW goes after people who are infringing on their IP.  Why is it a shocker when a new group gets caught doing something legally stupid?  How are people still surprised that a company practically famous for its protection of its IP keeps doing this?  I mean really, the only interesting or surprising thing here is how many people in the BoLS comments section think they're lawyers and how many people just don't plain get why this keeps happening and have based their decisions on any number of false analogies.

Auretious Taak is a madman.  Seriously.  The guy fielded a 1750 point army composed of 10 guys... and won all three of his tourney games.  ITS FUCKING CRAZY!  There's a lot going on here and all of it is cool.  Mostly what impresses me is the attitude he has towards the whole thing.  He knows the army sucks on paper but he's pluggin' away at it because its fun and challenging to play ven if it isn't a stone cold killer of an optimized list.  Its the whole BoLS/Footdar thing without the ego.  Its the kind of attitude a lot of people could learn from.  Oh, and that one guy has twin chainfists.  


More Blood Angels Models.  Pretty cool stuff.  I'm still not sold on the Storm Raven turret, but the Dreadnought is pretty sweet from what I can tell.  Pretty exciting stuff.  On a larger note, the recent pace of GW's release schedule has been refreshingly awesome.  We're actually seeing armies brought up to having complete model ranges and we're seeing a ton of 'out of cycle' stuff.  Its a good time to be a GW fan.


Lastly, I'm going to make this post a bit of a sandwich.  A healthy and filling slice of news sandwiched between two pieces of trite bread.  Its time for some new years gaming resolutions:


1) Finish that Goddamn Eldar army.  Seriously.  It's a whole two tanks away from being playable and I even own the first couple of things that I want to expand into.  I'd love to have this ready to go before I turn 30, but a month is a bit close for that in the face of all the video games I got for Xmas.  Hell, I even expand this to include getting all the major expansions I want to do for the Mechdar part of my plans.  


2) Finish the Deamon army before the end of August.  The Eldar are gonna be at two years come to December and they've only been fielded on vassal.  Fuck that.  I spend too much money on this hobby to keep things locked up in development hell that long.  Like I said, the Eldar are a months worth of hard work away from being done and there are no vehicles in the Deamon army.


3) No new armies until certain criteria are met.  First and foremost I need to have at least on playable army before another bunch of shit gets purchased to sit in boxes.  Other than that:

A) No Dark Eldar until the Voidraven and Void bomber kits come out.  The whole codex was amazing, but the two shiniest things in it for me were the goddamn space fighters.  Any army I would want to build has three of these things and a whole mess of reavers.  
B) No terminator heavy Space Marine armies until the Forgeworld pre-heresy armor comes out.  It may not be scheduled for IA10, but I hear its in the works and virtually all of the marine armies I want have 10-20 terminators in them.  Bonus points if GW ever gets around to making Thunderwolves

4) I have to stop thinking about Privateer Press stuff.  I stopped playing/collecting during MkI.  The rules were clunky and full of the kind of Byzantine interactions that drove me crazy drew out the worst part of my gaming personality.  So bad, in fact, that Dethtron felt compelled to warn me about it when meeting his gaming group for the first time.  MkII is 'awesome' from all reports and everywhere I go a new blog pal is picking it back up.  Plus there's this.  I know if I pick it back up it'll just be another huge distraction from all my 40k stuff and there's always the chance that my gripes during the field test are valid.

What in the name of Unholy Krondor is this thing and why is it just now existing?