Figure Painting Total - December 2021

 I got a few more games for Christmas. Plus some games came in from Black Friday sales. I assembled more Blood Bowl teams, and still finished a few figures.

Bought

Blitz Bowl – season 2 – 12

Don’t Look Back – 7

Space Marine Adventures: Doomsday Countdown – 10

Space Marine Adventures: Rise of the Orks – 5

Unmatched: Deadpool – 1



Painted

MU – Psylocke – 1 (Heroclix)

Cowboys – 7 (Heroclix repaints)

Dec total – figures bought 35, figures painted 8

Running total 2021 – figures bought 323, figures painted 105

Books read September to December 2021

 Sept

Pfalz Scout Aces of World War 1 by Greg VanWyngarden

The Frostgrave Folio by Joseph A. McCullough

Into the Breeding Pits by Joseph A. McCullough

Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago by Joseph A. McCullough

Sopwith Pup Aces of World War 1 by Norman Franks

Blood Bowl: Death Zone – The Ultimate Blood Bowl Companion by Games Workshop Limited

 

Oct

SE 5/5a Aces of World War 1 by Norman Franks

Bristol F2 Fighter Aces of World War 1 by Jon Guttman

Shadow War: Armageddon by Games Workshop in Nottingham

Austro-Hungarian Albatros Aces of World War 1 by Paolo Varriale

 

Nov

Naval Aces of World War 1 Part 1 by Jon Guttman

Naval Aces of World War 1 Part 2 by Jon Guttman

Thaw of the Lich Lord by Joseph A. McCullough

 

Dec

Balloon-Busting Aces of World War 1 by Jon Guttman

Reconnaissance and Bomber Aces of World War 1 by Jon Guttman

Russian Aces of World War 1 by Victor Kulikov

My top 10 games of 2021

I have put together my top 10 games for 2021. Note that these are games that I have played for the first time in 2021, not necessarily games that were released in 2021. With all the games that I already have, I got another 16 games plus expansions last year. Some were gifts, some were purchased at the thrift stores, and some were new. 

 For the first time since I started tracking these back in 2013, I failed to play 10 new games this year. I only played 7 new games and 4 of these I played solo. There are another 6 games that I could have played solo but I did not find the time for them. Some of these require are the miniature skirmish games and require a larger space to set up terrain and I did not get around to clearing the space at the end of the year to play them. 

The new games were: A Billion Suns, Blitz Bowl 2, Disney Haunted Mansion – Call of the Spirits, Disney Villainous – Perfectly Wretched, Don’t Look Back, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, Marvel Villainous – Infinite Power, Space Marine Adventures – Doomsday Countdown, Space Marine Adventures: Rise of the Orks, Unmatched: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Unmatched: Deadpool, Unmatched: Little Red Riding Hood vs Beowulf, Warhammer 40K – 9th edition – Indomitus. 

 The ones I picked up not new were: Shadow War: Armageddon, Slide 5 

 A lot of these did not hit the table this year. Some games from previous years were finally played. 

 My top 7 is: 

 7 – Forbidden Desert – We’ll have to play this again to see if it was just the group we played with or if it isn’t as good as we had heard. 

 6 – Pandemic: Hot Spot – North America – It plays like a streamlined game of Pandemic. It is over very quick but the timing is very tight. I won a solo game with two characters but would have lost due to cards in two turns, or due to another outbreak. 

 5 – Slide 5 – It has a bit of a Connect 4 feel to it, with the addition of being able to shift rows that are already on the board. It is a fun enough light game. 

 4 – Roller Coaster Tycoon – Visually this is an impressive game with the roller coasters, and rides. Game wise, it is pretty simple, but wraps up before it starts to drag. 

 3 – Space Marine Adventures: Doomsday Countdown – I played this solo. This has the figures for the enemy team instead of just tokens. But the set up is a bit fiddly. This was the last of the three Space Marine Adventures games that I played. 

 2 – Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons – I was able to play this solo. It is a good, simple way to expose people to the Warhammer 40K universe without being too much of a drain. The Marine figures are quite lovely, but the Necrons are only tokens. 

 1 – Space Marine Adventures: Rise of the Orks – I played this solo as well. It has plastic Terminator figures and tokens for the Orks forces. It is the only one of the three Space Marine Adventures games that contains a game board. This doesn’t allow as much modularity but I found the gameplay the best of the three. It is the only one of the three that does not have a campaign so might not have the legs for a lot of repeated play.

Asterix and Obelix books

When my sister used to go to Brownies, which was held at a local library, we would hang around and peruse the stacks. This is where I was first introduced to some of the foreign graphic novels. This is where I first encountered Asterix & Obelix. They also had Tin Tin, and even Lucky Luke but you always had to be careful as some of the books were in French. 

Even back then, there were already a multitude of books in these series. The faux Roman and Gaul names really caught my fancy as did the antics of these two characters. 

 When I started working, one of the things I started buying was Asterix books. I did not get many though, due to availability and the quality of printing. The books from this era suffered from the same issue that the early Games Workshop books did – in that the glue that held the covers was noticeably lacking and would often separate. 

 Recently, while going through the books and magazine section in Walmart, I noticed three Asterix Omnibus collections. It seems Papercutz is reprinting the series in three-book collections. So I have been picking them up again. I have the first four already, and the fifth is coming out at the end of December. With volume 39 just being released in the regular series, I am about a third of the way there. 

 So far, my only complaint is that they name the Druid Panoramix as in the French versions, not Getafix as I am used to from earlier translations.

Figure Painting total - November 2021

I didn’t buy or finish painting any figures in October. I did assemble some Blood Bowl teams – Dark Elves, Goblins, and Lizardmen. I even had a nice enough day to prime everything up to here in advance, so I can paint through the winter. 

 Bought 

 Unmatched – Little Red Riding Hood vs Beowulf – 2 

 Dracula’s America – The Church of Dagon – 8 

 Dracula’s America – The Salem Sisterhood – 8 

 Dracula’s America – Spirit Creatures – 3 

 

Painted 

 Nov total – figures bought 21, figures painted 0 

 Running total 2021 – figures bought 288, figures painted 97

Shan 7 - Trees 1

 When we first moved to our current house I was very impressed that we had nine trees of various types and sizes on it.  My wife, it seems, is not as big a fan of trees as I am.

Shortly after moving in, I almost pulled down a tree in the back yard on top of her.  We hadn’t realized that it was dead.  Since then, the rest of the trees have been numbered.

The one at the very back of the yard was brought down as it gave too much shade to the pool.  The pine in front died out due to the trees on either side choking it out.  We had the one on the side taken down as it was growing way over our neighbor’s house and power line. 

I brought the last one in the back down myself and was very happy that I was able to drop it without hitting the house, fence, or deck. When one of the crab apples in the front broke in the heavy snow a few years back, I also safely dropped that one as well.  The last one on the side of the house was a different story though.

She has been wanting it down for the last few years as it gives too much shade between the houses, scratches on the roof, and drops a lot of seeds every year in May through the whole back yard, especially into the pool.  I’ve been meaning to trim back some of the branches for the last two years but could never get the kids to hold the ladder for me in spring or fall.

When we finally decided to cut it down, my folks and son were going to help.  On the day, they showed up later in the afternoon.  The tree had one branch extending backwards that we cut off.  It had another paid of branches that extended out over the roof.  I had originally planned to trim them back as well but, due to the time, decided we could probably leave them with the tree.

We notched the trunk, and were worked at opening up the notch when the tree tipped slightly and pinned the chainsaw blade.  It had leaned over onto the house.  I said I could go up on the roof and trim back some of the branches but my folks wanted to go to the store and get another blade for the chainsaw.

While they left, I went up on the roof and cut back a lot of the branches using a hand tree saw.  I cut back enough that I was able to move the tree off of the roof. 

Now, this would have been a great time to wait for my folks to come back and help guild the tree to the ground.  But I thought that if I pushed it off of the roof, with my son pushing from below, it should have enough of an angle to carry it down to the driveway. 

I was wrong. 

The tree cleared the roof, but caught the overhang over the front door on the way down, and pulled it off the front of the house.  So, my son, folks and I spent the rest of the week that I had off taking apart the old overhang, and rebuilding it back on to the front of the house.  We were able to get it reshingled, tarred and caulked, and even had time to touch up the paint before we got snow.

 

 

Buy Snow Tires

 We live in a region that has snow for four to six months of the year.  Growing up, we used to have ‘all-season’ tires on our vehicles and thought that was fine.  Since then, they had come up with specially formatted ‘winter’ tires but we never really thought much of them, until we tried them.

Up here, the temperature can drop to as low as -40 degrees Celsius (234 Kelvin), and regular tires, even all-season tires, get solid and lose a lot of their grip.  Fishtails and sliding on ice are sort of a rite of passage for young drivers.  It’s like drifting, but with actual snow drifts.

When we inherited the van from Shan’s dad, it also came with snow tires.  When we had them installed, we noticed a major difference in the stopping ability.  Instead of that slow sliding which normally accompanied stopping with all-season tires in deep winter, braking occurred at a much shorter distance.  It is a total game changer, and one that I highly recommend for those people who experience actual winter.

It is a major expense, both for the tires themselves, and for the extra rims and possibly sensors needed.  Plus add the cost of having them changed, or having to change them yourselves twice a year.  But it is easily worth it, both in the better traction and safety as well as not having to deal with cracked bumpers, or the hassle of getting stuck.  Plus, your tires will last longer as they are only being driven on half as much.  You can’t use snow tires all year as they as softer than regular tires and wear out much quicker on the summer roads.

The only thing to watch out for is that people behind you may not be able to stop as short as you are if they are still trying to get by on all-seasons.