Sick of bugs for the moment. What do I do now?

Hey there,

Post #4. Its been a week since my last entry so I hope you are well and have recovered nicely from my previous attempts to entertain you. If you're still here for post #4 I'm glad you stuck around. If this is your first visit, feel free to have a look at the previous three but don't get your hopes up. I love to see comments because I don't really know if anyone is bothering to read this thing unless they comment on it. If you take the time to read it, please take another moment to write a few words about the blog entry or just to say "Hi". If you find it even mildly interesting, entertaining or just so horrible that you need to share it with someone else, please pass along the address to those you know and love(or hate).

This time I'm going to try and do my best to keep this on topic and in line with the title of the entry. Hopefully I won't stray too far off course or miss the target completely and leave you wondering what the Hell I was thinking when I decided on the title.

Things have been pretty interesting in the last week or so in regards to my future in the infotainment segment of tabletop gaming. I had some interesting phone calls and text messages that were exciting and a little disappointing.

The phone calls started out looking pretty promising and then the tone changed to a decidedly "don't call us, we'll call you." feeling and I was a bit disappointed with the turn of events. I can't say what it was all about because its not my project and I was entrusted with some information that I promised not to share. I would give it away if it was mine but its not, so I can't.

I got an offer to take part in a pod cast recording and that was pretty exciting but the weekend turned out to be crazy busy for me and bad timing for the guy running the show so we took a rain check on that. If we get together to record it, I'm sure it will be fun and I'm excited at the prospect. I can't say if this will be any more than a single engagement but everything begins somewhere so who knows where it may lead if they like me, I like them and the listeners like us together.

So, that leaves me with one thing looking not so good, one thing that is waiting to happen that might be good and so many things I may be interested in doing as far my future in the tabletop gaming media goes. Of course, I have this train wreck of a blog but I don't really think that it counts as much because a lot of it is my incessant blathering on about whatever is on my mind and not a lot of it is about what most people think I should probably be doing with this type of outlet. What do you all think, should I let this blog evolve into a strictly tabletop gaming blog, create a new one to cover gaming, leave it as is with a little bit about me and a little bit about gaming or just call the whole damn thing off because its really not worth the bandwidth it occupies? Comments would be sincerely appreciated.

Now, on to the stuff that has something to do with the title of this post: I am REALLY sick of bugs. Sick of building them and painting them and looking at them. I built so many frickin' bugs that just hearing the word "Tyranid" hurls me into bottomless chasm of despair. I just can't even think about them right now. I still love the bugs as an army, I just can't stand the thought of building more of them and (sadly) I still have more to build. So, what does a hobbyist do when he can't stand the thing he's been doing for so long? He either steps away completely or finds something else to occupy his hands and mind for a bit.

Malifaux is an option. I've built all of my Arcanists and just need to base and paint them. That's not too many models so I should probably do that first. I think that will be my first project. I'll get them based and primed this week and see where it leads me.

Firestorm Armada....I have a Terran starter fleet, a carrier and a box of escorts to build and paint. They are not currently in my possession but I think I'll probably be getting them back in a week or two so that will be a nice project to occupy me. I'm not sure which color scheme I'm going to use for that fleet so I'll spend some time scouring the web for pictures of different amazingly painted fleets that I will never, ever, in a million years be able to reproduce. I have an offer from someone with a couple fleets to try a game or two out so I may do that in the mean time.

I'd like to do a little something with WH40k but the bugs are out and I don't want to start a new army. Here's something I've been thinking of since the Battle Missions book dropped: Building both of the Assault on Black Reach armies and using them strictly for battle missions. I do still have one AOBR box set in the shrink wrap and I never did build any of the AOBR Orks so it would be a nice change after building so many bugs over such a long time. Perhaps I'll even paint the Orks up right and proppa' and do the Space Marines up in Ultramarine colors so Maldus will know I still love him even though I'm no longer on the Freeboota forums. I've been a huge fan of the AOBR set since it arrived on the scene and I think it would be great to use that set and the Battle Missions book as the ultimate beer and pretzels WH40K game. Nobody needs to bring an army because they are both at my place. You can play both sides of the mission with the same army and then switch armies and play both sides again, essentially getting 4 games out of whatever mission you choose. Of course, some of the missions won't be possible with the number of points and unit configurations available in the AOBR box but with a little tweaking here and there and some....umm....adjustments made to the battle missions scenarios I think it could be a huge amount of fun with very little time commitment. I also think it would be pretty damn cool to have the whole AOBR set painted to look just like they do on the box and on display for anyone who comes to the house and dares to ask the question "What the Hell is up with the toy soldiers?".

Speaking of bugs: The reason I got the idea to use the AOBR set for the battle missions is that I played Kill Team against Scott's IG army and got my ass shot to pieces long before I made a dent in his line. Look at the kill team rules and you'll see that the Tyranid army is pretty much impossible to field against and army that has ANY kind of shooting capabilities at all. Synapse kills you because you can't take a model with synapse that has a low enough number of wounds or is not an HQ or independent character. Since all the stuff that shoots needs synapse or has multiple wounds, the only thing you can field(at least from my available models) are Genestealers. While 200 points of 'Stealers looks pretty good on paper, trying to get them across the table to engage a shooty army in close combat is nigh impossible. When we were making lists and setting up all I could think of was how much I was going to crush those IG guys with with my wicked Genestealers but when Scott started shooting I realized that I had severely overestimated my ability to get to him and severely underestimated his ability to shoot the living shit out of me while I was trying to do so. The game went pretty badly for me and I realized that kill team was a game designed for armies that could shoot and deal some punishment in close combat. That led me to think that I needed some Space Marines and that led me to think that I really didn't want to buy more Space Marines and THAT led me to think that I had about 600 points of Space Marines in a box in my attic just waiting to be unwrapped, built and painted. That finally led me to the idea that if I built the AOBR Orks and the Space Marines I could play quite a few of the battle missions and kill team without buying one more model and be able to offer an army to anyone that stopped by and wanted to play a quick game.

So that's where I'm at. If time permits and the summer weather doesn't keep pulling me away from indoor hobbies I will definitely get some stuff done this week. Definitely.

Now, as I promised, your payment for reading this whole awful mess of a blog is that one little bit of awesomeness, that one pearl of wisdom that makes it all worth it:

"Remember; no matter where you go, there you are."- Buckaroo Banzai