Books read May through September 2018

May
VOR The Maelstrom by Mike “Skuzzy” Nielson
40K: Sanctus Reach: The Red Waaagh! by The Games Workshop Design Studio

June
40K: Sanctus Reach: Hour of the Wolf by The Games Workshop Design Studio
40K: Shield of Baal: Leviathan by The Games Workshop Design Studio
Artful: A Novel by Peter David

July
Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip by Nevin Martell
Monsters by Vincent Price and V.B. Price
Last Days – Zombie Apocalypse by Ash Barker
Serenity: Big Damn Heroes Handbook by Cam Banks, Jennifer Brozek, Jim Davenport, Jason Durall, Tony Lee, Nathan C.S. Rockwood, and Clark Valentine
Egyptian Mythology by Veronica Ions
Werewolves by Jon Izzard

Aug
Poseidon’s Warriors – Classical Naval Warfare 480-31 BC by Mark Latham
The Boardgame Book by RC Bell
Dracula’s America: Shadows of the West: Hunting Grounds by Jonathan Haythornthwaite
The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction by Philip Athans
The Mysterious Maya by George E Stuart and Gene S Stuart
Batman Arkham Knight campaign by Mark Latham
Rolling Stone: The Complete Covers 1967 – 1997 by Fred Woodward

Prospero achieved!

Our local Games Workshop posted that the Horus Heresy games have been discontinued and removed from the website. Even though they were released about a year apart, they discontinued both Betrayal at Calth and The Burning of Prospero at the same time.

Since I missed out on the Gangs of Commorragh, I will probably have to pick up the rest of the game (without figures) online cheap, and then have to buy the figures for a much higher cost.

I wanted to be sure that I was able to get Prospero without having to do that. So even though I haven’t been able to save up beforehand, I checked with the misses and got the approval that it wasn’t going to cause any problems to pick it up. I probably could have waited a little bit as they had six copies but I didn’t want to take the chance.

I also popped in to a new Hobby Store called Hobby Sense and picked up some glue as well as a Revel Nieuport 28 and Fokker E-III. They seem to be a nice new store with a lot of model kits.

Figure Painting Total - August 2018

I have picked up a few more figures for the Batman Miniatures/DC Universe game. As well, I picked my first batch in several years of regular figures. With the summer winding down, we have a busy two months coming up, but then I hope to be able to really get to painting some.
I really think that I'm close to approaching critical mass here.


BM Arkham Knight – 1
BM/DCU – Birds of Prey – 3
BM/DCU – Enchantress – 1
Reaper – Dumpster – 1
Savage Worlds – Stone – 2
Savage Worlds – Texas Ranger Male – 1
Savage Worlds Undead Outlaw – 1
Chronoscope – Agatha Fox – 1
Chronoscope – Deadeye Slim – 3
Chronoscope – Ellen Stone – 1
Chronoscope – Highland Heroine – 1
Chronoscope – Hillbilly – 1
Chronoscope – Max Graves, Pulp Investigator – 1
Chronoscope – Rex, Dark Future Hero – 1
Chronoscope – The Black Mist – 1
Townsfolk Strumpet – 1
Townsfolk Undertaker – 1
Wild West Wizard of Oz – Dorothy (and Toto) – 2
Wild West Wizard of Oz – Lion – 2
Wild West Wizard of Oz – Wicked Witch – 1
Wild West Wizard of Oz – Winged Monkeys – 3
Wagon and 3 figures – 4


Aug figures bought - 34, figures painted – 0

Running total 2018 – figures bought 93, figures painted 0

Game Knight new location

I also popped into the new location of Game Knight, a local game store. They have a much bigger place. It looks really nice. I was looking for expansions for the Firefly board game (which they no longer had) and ended up picking up some figures while I was there.
They had a lot of the Reaper Bones figures. I picked up a dumpster, 5 western figures, and 3 other figures. The dumpster is for scenery for Batman miniatures / Universe / Last Days.

The western figures are for RWNN and Dracula’s America.

The three other figures caught my eye and looked like they would be fun to paint.

I also picked up some 30mm and 40mm bases for some proxy Universe figures. I picked up a 2” base in the hopes that it would be close to a 60mm bases but it is too small.

The Reaper figures don’t come with bases. I almost picked up 25 1” GW-type bases for $5 but decided not to.
I’ll have to go back and get them.

Birds of Prey

I also took some of the money that I was saving for Burning of Prospero and made another miniature order. I picked up some more Batman Miniatures/DC Universe figures. I bought the Birds of Prey and the Enchantress.

The Birds of Prey were a repacking of the older metal figures for Black Canary, Hawkgirl, and the Huntress. These came with DC Universe cards on one side and Batman Miniature Game cards on the other. The first two had cards in the rulebook but this is the first time for the Huntress for DC Universe.

The Enchantress is one of the new resin figures. Since I already had the Suicide Squad set, I figured that I should probably pick her up to complete it. Plus she is one of the magic users for the new magic rules of the second edition.

The figures were complete, which is often a worry with Knight Models (although I haven’t had too much trouble). They are lovely figures but the sculpts are tiny and the joins are very small and fiddly.

Osprey Wargame Series

I’ve picked up a few more books from Osprey. They have been doing a Wargame series with small rules for skirmish games. They also numbered the books, so I feel compelled to get them all. Some are quite good. I do hope to be able to give a bunch of them a try. With the extra Heroclix and Arcane Legions sets, I should have enough figures to try out a bunch of them.
I just picked up Broken Legions – skirmish rules for Roman warbands, and Poseidon’s Warriors – ancients ship battles. They both look pretty good.

Their newest hardcover set thought is Last Days Zombie Apocalypse. It is by Ash Baker from Guerilla Miniature Games, which is a youtube channel I found when looking for playthroughs of the Batman Miniature game. He’s from Ontario and used to work for Game’s Workshop. He seems to have a pretty good attitude about games and is fun to watch.
His game looks like it will be good to try. I will see if I can get it to the table sooner rather than later.

Celebration of Life

Because I turned 50 last month, my wife held a celebration of life on Saturday. She cooked up hot dogs and hamburgers, and my mother brought potato salad and coleslaw. She invited a bunch of my friends and we got together around the fire. I had wanted to do a spread of condiments for hot dogs for a while and this was finally the excuse. We had ketchup, mustard, barbeque sauce, and sriracha sauce as well as relish, onions, hot bell peppers, sauerkraut, pickles, and cheese, as well as the two types of buns.


She had also made a trivia contest and scavenger hunt. This allowed those friends who were not able to attend in person to still participate. I thought that this was a brilliant idea. Apparently my friends did not.
One of my friends who was not able to make it sent in some pictures for the scavenger hunt, and my sister did the trivia even though she could not come. My mother, who did come, did the trivia, and had some pictures for the scavenger hunt. The rest of those friends who showed up did neither, and the rest who were not able to able it did not even try the trivia. My kids, who have access to everything from the scavenger hunt at our house did not even try.
We ended up going through the trivia questions (all about me) and I gave the answers provided by my mom and sister, and then the actual answer. My wife had come up with the questions but did not have all the answers. While I normally dislike trivia games that do that, I had fun with this one. It gave me the chance to wax philosophical to my friends.

While it would have been nice to have more friends show up, and more of those who did and didn’t come to have done the scavenger hunt or trivia contest, we still had a good time. We even ended up trying a modified version of Geek Out – another trivia game that only provides questions.
We had two Jeanne’s cakes – marble and banana. We had a lot of food left over. We ended the night having a bonfire and hanging around and chatting. It had rained briefly early in the afternoon but otherwise the weather was very nice, and we were mosquito free.