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.

Sink this Battleship

Battleship Galaxies - it's Battleship, in Space!

I had vaguely heard of this a couple of years ago when the movie came out (Battleship, In Space!) but was not able to find it in Toys R US or Walmart. Little did I know that, like Risk Legacy, it was only available in the specialty game stores. I then forgot about it until Tom Vassal mentioned it in succession in two lists on The Dice Tower recently.

A quick check on BGG does indeed confirm the cool ships. It looks like they intended to have more expansions but it must not have sold well enough to expand like Heroscape did. Now it was just a matter of finding one.

None of the local game stores had one but I was able to get one online from Snakes & Lattes along with a Lords of Waterdeep. Both games are big and heavy so their summer sale with free shipping helped.

It looks very impressive. The boy seems keen on trying it out so, once we finish some of the renovation chores, we’ll give it a spin.

Carpet out, flooring in

Two weekends ago we moved most of the furniture out of our room, removed the baseboards and pulled up the carpeting. We then put in laminate flooring over the next two days. On the Saturday we did most of the work and finished up the fiddly parts by the door on the Sunday. We even pulled off the closet doors and put two panels into the closet.

There were a few spots where we kept breaking the joints and needed to step away from it for a while, but otherwise, it went together without too much drama. I’m quite impressed with how simple it is to install the new flooring. Be sure to allow a few extra boxes for joint breakage – but these can sometime be used at the end of rows.

It took a couple of days to finish loading in and sorting the books. The clothes need to be fully sorted. Besides the rest of the closet, which can wait, the transition between the flooring and the vinyl in the hallway needs to be added.