More Tannhauser - nearly complete

I got an offer on a set of Tannhauser that I found hard to pass up. It had been bought at Pendragon’s by a member of the armed forces who was hoping to play with his buddies but then they all got shipped out so he sold it to someone else. It seems to be complete (I’m still going through all the counters to verify) and includes Tannhauser, Novgorod, Daedelus, Hinansho, the equipment pack, the revised rules, the first two novels, and all the figure packs (except Frankenstahl). Originally it was $250 which was a good price but more than I was willing to pay for the remainder I needed.

Then he offered it to me for $150.

I still had to mull it over for a week – I was going to the States and was going to see if they had any available down there. They didn’t, so I picked it up.

It seems in pretty good shape. The previous owner had punched out all the tokens and sleeved the equipment cards and sorted all the tokens into bags. This is actually slowing down verifying the sets as some figure sets had extra tokens for factions or even other characters.

I now have a lot of doubles that I will probably end up packing away. I could sell them but that always seems like a hassle. This way if anything gets damaged or goes missing, I'll already have a spare.

Costuming

Cosplayers tend to dress up in costume and act as that character. Costumers tend to dress up in costume but still act normally. While I might throw out some quotes from movies, I remain mostly a costumer.
That said, I need to speak out about costume contests at conventions. I’ve been in a few, my children have been in a few, we’ve both won some contests, and been in contests without winning. Granted, we’ve only been at the small-to-middle-sized conventions so they may have vast differences at the big conventions.

Prizes
The prizes for the contests have been mostly improving over the years. The top prize can usually be a membership to next year’s convention but most of the time it is merchandise. Sometimes, if the convention truly values the costume contest, the prizes make sense – like gift certificates to a local fabric place or the convention dealer’s room, or even theme-related prizes but they are usually random items donated by the dealers in the dealer’s room.
Sometimes they will also give certificates, ribbons, or medals. I know the kids like the ribbons and medals. For me, we’re really not in the contests for the prizes. (Especially with most prizes being what they are). The recognition is more what we are after.

Often they will have some categories in mind – workmanship, junior, group, but a lot of times we have found that they decide on winners and then pick a category to assign them. This helps to cover if there are no costumes in a category and allows them to recognize extra costumes that might miss out by being the second or third in a category. This allowed our friend Sean to win as Best Female Hormonal Response.

Time
While some costumes can be pulled together in short time, a lot of costumers will spend a lot of time working on their costumes. This is not to say that we haven’t been working on the final touches of a costume the night before or even final modifications just before the contest. Any extra time allows for extra touches or tweaking up until the last minute. The bad part about some judging is the amount of time it eats up of the convention. A lot of contests will want you to show up for a walkthrough to show you the contest space and where they will often do some prejudging. Even with this, you have to be there before the contest itself, the entire length of the contest, and then wait around while the judges take their time to decide on the winners. At one convention we were at, that ate up over four hours in a row on a Saturday for the kids’ part of the costume contest. Judges
Often the judges will include the guest, who may or may not know anything about costumes. Sometimes you will also have at least one judge who does know about costuming and will look for details like stitching, materials, and techniques. Hopefully this knowledgeable judge will be at the prejudging and can check for all this at that time. The other judges will often be committee members who have been rounded up to judge without haven been given much instruction.
At the smaller conventions the judging may even be done by crowd response – which can allow a store-bought costume of a popular character to beat a fabulous costume of an obscure character. Sometime the MC will be the judge although it often works quicker if they aren’t.

Prejudging
During the walkthrough the judges will sometimes take the time to inspect the costumes up close and ask questions. This allows them to take their time and helps to speed up the actual contest. This should allow them to have those portions already scored and only require them to note presentation and crowd response during the actual contest and then add them to the totals, but it still seems to take an hour for the judging to finish.

MCs
A good MC can help explain a costume or help to bridge those who don’t have a good write-up or music. A bad MC can distract from a good presentation. We’ve seen an MC treat the costume contest as her own personal stand up routine. They can definitely lead an audience if the judging is by audience response.

So, of the three conventions we go to, while some of us will costume (to varying degrees) at all of them, my daughter only really enters the costume contest at Keycon now. Although, if we get a great costume idea done, we might try again at Valleycon.

More Tannhauser

I really should play Tannhauser before getting more of it. I have read the rulebooks and it definitely seems like it should be fun. It does have a lot of paperwork – with stat cards for every figure with tokens their equipment load outs. So I’ll need to actually try it to see if that gets in the way of the enjoyment of it.

That said, I have already picked up the Operation Novgorod expansion set and more of the figure and troop expansions. I already had the expansions for Yula Korlitz, Ramirez, and Gorgei. When I got the Novgorod at Pendragons, I also picked up the figures that they had – Oksana, Hoax, and Edison.

Last Friday we popped into Game Knight on the way home. They were expanding and moving around their games. As we were standing there, looking at the racks of games, one of the clerks came by with a handful of boxes, looking for a place to put them in the racks.
“You wouldn’t happen to want some Tannhauser, would you?” he asked jokingly.
I had to smile, “Actually, I just might.”
He was glad to give us a deal of the lot so I picked up another five sets – Asteros, and Natalya, as well as the Union, Reich, and Matriarchy troop packs.

As it stands now, I am still missing the two expansion map sets Daedalus and Hinansho, plus the figures Wolf, Hoss, and Frankenstahl, as well as the Shogunate figures Mizakage, Itami, Iroh Minamoto, and the Shogunate troop pack. All of which are available from Miniatures Market but the shipping on the map packs is pricy so if I can find them locally, I’ll get them here. Once we play it, I’ll probably pick up the remainder as needed.

Books read May to August 2014

May
Time-Life Books: The Old West – Expressmen by David Nevin
Time-Life Books: The Old West – The Texans by David Nevin
Time-Life Books: The Old West – The Loggers by Richard L. Williams

June
Deep Focus: The Sting by Matthew Specktor
The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep by Lawrence Block
Edge of Tomorrow (All you need is Kill) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Pinball 1 – Illustrated Historical Guide to Pinball Machines Volume 1 by Richard M. Bueschel
Time-Life Books: The Old West – The Chroniclers by Keith Wheeler

July
no books completed

Aug
Time-Life Books: The Old West – The Spanish West
Warhammer Armies: Tomb Kings (6th Edition) by Alessio Cavatore
Knightsbridge: The Art of Keith Parkinson
Crimson Skies by Eric Nylund, Michael B. Lee, Nancy Berman, and Eric S. Trautmann

Tannhauser

I’m a little late to the Tannhauser party. I got interested recently from the guys talking about it on The Dice Tower lists. I’ve checked it out online and it seems pretty Hellboy-ish, with a neat targeting mechanic. I’m not sure why I never noticed it before. The only thing that I can think is that I must have thought it was a Dust Tactics spinoff and I never got into that either.

It sounds like it would be worth giving it a try. Except now that it’s been out of print for a few years, it’s not as easy to find as it was. Most of the sets can all be found online with the exception of the equipment cards. This wouldn’t be so bad except they apparently make the game much easier to play.

I was lucky enough to win a used copy with both the equipment cards and a printed PDF of the updated rulebook. This seems to be the perfect pack with which to start. It all looks so pretty. Plus the background is interesting - World War I never ended, both sides have gotten into the mystical - more so the Germans. Tesla is helping out the Russians, and it includes a Japanese faction as well.

There are a couple of websites with extra scenarios and rules for other figures – like the Hellboy figures from Heroclix. Front Towards Enemy was a great one but is no longer being updated. Savage Tales has some good custom sets, as does Black Sheep Archive, and the Tannbunker - when it is working again.

Heroclix even offers a lot of extra figures that can be used for mods – Batman, Hydra, SHIELD, Hellboy, even army figures. I've read through the original rules and am almost finished the revised rules. I want to play a few games to verify that it is as awesome as it seems before I spend much more money getting more of the figures, maps, and sets.

I still hate drywall

Since we had the supplies out already, we also fixed the holes in the hallway and patched some water damage on the kitchen ceiling. A few days of puttying and sanding later and the ceiling is mostly ready for painting.

While we had the ladder handy I also updated the light fixtures in the kitchen and hall. I had a bit of trouble with the first one but, after rechecking the instructions, fixed the step I had skipped and they went up so much easier. We still haven't settled on the perfect fixtures, but these replace the old globes from the 70s.

I also put the new transition between the hall and bedroom to finish off that part as well. I started to replace more of the edging at the bottom of the siding. With a bit of work, I was able to pull out the nails without too much damage but when I put the new nails in most of the siding broke. Luckily I still had the construction cement to put them back but we will need to repaint them again to help hide the breaks.

So, a few more chores finished, and getting ever closer to the next steps of repainting the kitchen and hall.

I hate working with drywall - bathroom

We had been putting off redoing the ceiling in the bathroom until the leak in the roof had been resolved. That was finally fixed last summer and we had been waiting to see if we still had leaks in the spring. We still had occasional small leaks, and now finally had time to resolve it.

We opened up the plastic sheathing again and quickly saw that when the roofers fixed the shingles, the venting hose was no longer connected to the outside vent. This would cause moist, warm air to collect in the dead air space, freezing in the cold, and melting in the spring. The pooled and caused the new leaks.

I picked up some vent tubes and connected them to the hose. I wrapped the joints in the metal ducting tape and even fixed a small tear in the hose. We then replaced the insulation and taped up the sheathing again with tuck-tape.

I had picked up some moisture-resistant drywall, tape, and supplies, and we pieces together the ceiling and wall. I added putty and tape as needed, and spent the next few days puttying and sanding. I could have spent a few more days repeating this but the wife was keen to get it finished.

We also replaced the sink and taps. My dad happened to pop over so we put the new taps on the sink before we installed it. The boy and I pried off the old sink and put the new one on. The connections went on fine – a bit of a leak from another part of the water connections that had to be tightened – but the boy now knows how to turn off the water main.

I also took this time to replace the light fixture. We will have to replace the medicine cabinet at a later date. The wife had bought a few towel racks to replace the ones we have but they won’t fit on the wall space we have.

Two days of painting and a few touch-ups and we declared the bathroom done. The wife finished loading in all the extra stuff but we had a day or two with it looking all clean and bright.