What's New With WuhSawBe? ( LONG )

KC ComiCon 2017...

Some miniature progress, though hobby time has taken a backseat as a bit of the old "gamer-woes" has creeped in.  Halo, Pokemon, ComiCon and more in this "what's new" post...  Hopefully, this wont be too much of a "downer" post.

ToH Test Model

As usual, I like to start off with a bit of Hobby stuff.  I started out painting my daughter's 15pt Test of Honour army, finishing up her hero: Masahiro.  I think he turned out pretty well, I converted his bo staff into a naginata by just slapping on an old GW skeleton sword onto the hand.  I had to work out a method for painting the yellow, which is never an easy color, but after some struggles, I figured it out.  Finally, I was really pleased with how the phoenix mon on his back turned out, as I really loathe doing any kind freehand.  (and yet, I keep doing it for some reason!)

Masahiro

From there, I took a break and painted up the rest of my initial terrain for ToH, which I previously posted HERE.  Since then, something kind of happened, which has been making it hard to dive back into the hobby side.  Somewhere, somehow, a case of the "gamer-woes" has set in.  Remember when I kind took a year off from hobby stuff?  It's THAT same feeling.  (Don't worry, its not as bad as before, I'm gonna try to keep gaming through it)  I'll get into a little bit of what I think could have caused it...


For starters, I was gaming Tuesday and Friday nights, after my wife gets home.  My wife is working on her Master's degree Tuesday/Thursday nights, and so I'd end up painting into the wee hours of night on those two nights.  (My secret for getting lots of stuff painted.... just do it!)  So, I figured, why not hang out at the game store, get some extra games in?  Tuesdays were always hit or miss though, sometimes I could find games, sometimes not.  (its a 20-30 min drive, one way, mind you)  The last few weeks, I hadn't been able to find games, but worst of all, I had scheduled to play someone only to have them back out without telling me.  Luckily, I did find someone willing to give Test of Honour a try, so I did at least get to run a demo game of that on one of those Tuesday.  I also agreed to play in someone's Age of the Wolf SAGA campaign that was started in June, after a few weeks worth of pressure, only to get booted out of that in the very same day!  That was a big eye-roll moment.  Bugging me for weeks to play, only to find not only could I not use any of the factions I currently own and I'd have to start a whole new army, but I really couldn't even play any factions I'd have an interest in, I'd be limited to ONLY playing Anglo-Danes.  So really, being booted form that may have been a mercy.  Not only that, but I guess its a good thing I got the boot within 2 hours of saying "yes, I'll play" as I would have gone out the next day and bought my warband!  One of the pulls of Historical Gaming, is the history, and if its not a subject that you are not interested in (or in this case, faction) it will be harder to get INTO those games, if you understand my meaning.

So, needless to say, I think Tuesday game nights are a big, hard NO at this point.  Which is a bummer, because that's probably the only time I'll get to actually play CONGO, which I've recently started.  I was also thinking "Test of Honour Tuesday" had a nice ring to it for a potential organized game night, but I'm not so sure how much playtime it will get outside of games vs my daughter.  (unless something changes)  That's part of what helps the "gamer woes" set in, lack of consistent, stimulating games.  I've also said, I'm more of a gamer than a painter, I just happen to really, really, HATE playing with unpainted stuff.  So, my games fuel my hobby.  No games, no fuel.  No fuel, no motivation to paint!

If I'm not busting my butt, trying to get a bunch of armies painted, then I've got a lot of free nights, which means for the last week or so, I've been playing Halo almost nightly!  Over a year later of Halo 5, and I still find myself getting insanely frustrated (with my lack of skill) while I play, but at the same time, I love Halo, and cant seem to give it up!  I've come to the conclusion that I'm a competitive player, and I have a competitive mindset when it comes to Halo, I just lack the skills to back any of it up!  Oh well, not much I can do about a complete lack of aim!

Got em both...

Aside from Halo, I've recently been bitten by the "pokemon bug".  For whatever reason, I had a hard time putting ORAS away in favor of Sun and Moon, and as such, never picked it up!  Well, this time around, I wanted to make sure my daughter got the full pokemon experience (since you can only save 1 file per game) and so I ended up grabbing a copy of both Sun AND Moon, with my daughter choosing to play the Sun version.   It's a good thing I did too, as the first thing my daughter did in the game is blow all of her poke'-dollars in the game on hundreds of potions and regular pokeballs!  (she did a similar thing in ORAS, but I was rich in that game so it didn't matter)  So, I'm playing Moon, and I think I'm going to try my hand with the VG side of battling this go around too.  My daughter and I also seem to be perfect counters to each other already, as she chose to start with Litten, the fire-type, while I almost always go for the grass-types in every game, and so of course I chose Rowlet!

My daughter and I have also been playing a few rounds of the Pokemon TCG as well, picking up the theme decks for our newly chose starters.  There is a local tournament coming up in early June, that my daughter and I may both attend, IF we are still both in the pokemon mood!  I'd like to develop a Decidueye GX deck for myself, and an Incineroar GX one for her as well.

Saxons vs Knights, 13-13 draw

All that aside, I'm still committing to playing SAGA on Fridays, though I did miss a week in there.  I've decided to play my Milites Christi (Teutonic Knights) for a month, to see if I can figure out what my deal is with them.  People seem to consider them one of the top 3 strongest SAGA forces, and yet, I always lose out with them via points.  Sure, they are hard to fatigue, but I really feel that is their ONLY real trick up their sleeve, and they otherwise die just the same as any other faction!  Well, this last game was vs the Saxons, an army I'm familiar with, and one that my Romans seem to handle pretty well.  I did try a slightly alternative set up, with 2 units of 6 HG vs the usual giant block of 12 that I usually take.  It started off alright, I danced around while praying to raise my piety for the first 4 turns, not committing until the last 2 turns in the hopes that I could grab two big hits without retaliation and without losing too much to attrition.  As usual, despite some really good armor saves in combat (I made 2/3 of em consistently) they whiffed on the damage, and once again, the attrition came back to haunt me.  The game ended in a 13-13 draw, I didn't lose, but I didn't win either.  The group found it funny because I wasn't too happy with the draw, seeing as I technically didn't LOSE with them, but I think it was mostly because by all accounts I *should* have lost, and would have easily lost, were it not for the unusually good armor rolls.  I didn't out play, or out think my opponent, I simply out-rolled him on defense.  Oh well, next Friday will soon roll around, and I think the plan is to do Milites Christi vs Milites Christi, to see if there is anything I can learn about what I may be doing wrong....

Whispering secrets of the Dark Side...

... and finally, my family attended our 1st ComiCon this year after having won a set of 3-day tickets in a drawing.  Everyone I see on social media made it seem like it was a really big deal, it always seemed like I was missing out on something BIG.  Turns out, meh, not so much!  I came into it, hoping to find some cool Aliens/AVP/Predator stuff, maybe some Halo stuff, and possibly some Pokemon stuff.  I came away empty handed, as nothing really jumped out as something I just had to have, nor was there anything rare or a good deal.  I think that's part of the problem with online shopping these days, everything I saw there to buy was already right at my fingertips. and probably at a cheaper price too!  Still, we had a bit of fun, and it was a new experience to say the least!  My daughter dressed up as Captain Phasma, and she got a lot of attention in her costume.  Initially, she wanted to wear her Kylo Ren costume, but told her that there was probably going to be a lot of Rens, but no Phasmas.... and sure enough, we were right!  There was also a lot Deadpools (of course) and a surprising amount of Negans from the Walking Dead.... walking around!  (see what I did there?)  We basically walked around, took a bunch of photos, and really only walked away with my daughter getting a Harry Potter headband, and a bunch of Star Wars Lego mini-figs.

... and there you have it!  Hopefully it wasn't too full of complaints, or too much of a bummer for ya!  As one of my readers put it, "Gaming is all about ebb and flow, mate" and he's definitely right!  I'm just in a bit of an ebb at the moment.... luckily, not completely like I was before!  We shall see how the next few weeks go, and if I'll be back to gaming and painting, or if I'll still be doing Halo daily and being a poke'-bro.  

Until Next time,
-WuhSawBe-