Irken Rising

It's got chicken legs! I'm gonna eat you!

The Cygnar minis have been sold, and (hopefully) soon I shall have enough money to assemble my mighty Irken invasion force! I have (of course) located my Irken soldiers, I have found my SIR Units (Hydra Miniatures' Minibots with a head resculpt), and I have even found my Megadoomers (Hasslefree's Grymm Walker to the right). A little tweaking will be in order for all above, and they will not quite look the same as their cartoon counterpart, I will strive to get as close as possible.  A rocket pod added here, a gun repositioned there, and voila! The Megadoomer Mk. II Combat Mech!!!

But then I am confounded. I need a Riptide stand-in. I need something to represent my Crisis suits.

My first concern is the Riptide. I have a plan here. I'm thinking of using a decent sized Zaku model. It has to be big enough to fill a GW oval base convincingly, so I'm thinking 1/100 scale, but that might be too big. I'm pretty sure 1/144 will be too small though. Another model altogether would be preferred, but what to match this?

You! Twist some knobs! And you! Pull some levers!

I'm also hung up on what I should use as my Crisis Suits. Since they're pretty agile I was thinking some sort of hovering machine, sort of like these, but I'm not sure. Irken technology tends to be rather bulky. Again, I continue pondering.

Since this "invasion" takes place some time after the events in the series (yeah, we'll say that) the vehicles can look a bit different, but I don't want things to be too radically so. I posted the question on a couple of forums looking for help, so hopefully I'll get a response soon. If not, however, my friends have been quite helpful in finding minis thus far, so here's hoping, right?

It is Done. A New Era Dawns.

A new home for so many minis.

Well, I went through with it. Many, many miniatures are now briskly on their way to the local landfill. I would be lying if I said it didn't break my heart a bit, but it is something that had to be done. I needed to refocus my time, attention, blog space, and most importantly money onto something actually useable. The many, many minis that were trashed last night were not amongst those games.

This brings some changes to Wargaming Chaos. This is now primarily a 40k, WHFB, and Infinity blog, with bits of boardgaming miniatures thrown in here and there. That's pretty much it. Maybe a miracle will happen and I'll get back into Warmachine; I've decided to hold on to my Cryx, but that's it. My Cygnar stuff is gone. Finished. Outta here. After hearing that you pretty much need a Stormwall to be effective, I decided to bail.

Seriously, no.

I know you can potentially run (almost) any list in Warmachine, but I don't want this mini. In my opinion it is ugly, overpriced, and it being an auto-include doesn't help my opinion of it. The fact that you have to have this hunk of resin to be competitive just grinds my gears. I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them "Sam I Am".

I am still not pleased that I have to buy a Bane Thrall command section for my Cryx, but it is much less a bitter pill to swallow than having to spend a hundred and some-odd dollars on that Gargantuan.

Now the problem:

Selling my Cygnar minis.

I hate eBaying things, I prefer to get rid of things in one fell swoop. I want somebody to swoop in and grab up my stuff at the low, low price I'm offering them for. The problem is that not everybody (in fact fairly few people) want to drop the kind of money involved in picking up an army all at once. I have one potential buyer, but that's assuming he doesn't balk at the $400 price tag. This, for this much pewter, is a STEAL. The fact that they are (in my opinion) quite well painted only adds to the value. I can try posting them on eBay if nobody bites, but will anybody start the bidding at $400 plus shipping? I am seriously not willing to let them go for anything less.

Operation: Impending Doom

But what to do with said money? Well, as alluded to in my last post, Tau.

...But wait! Not just any Tau. I've been wanting to do this army for a while, and now that I am refocusing my attention onto games I can actually play, I will build an Irken army worthy of the Almighty Tallest! The Tau, with their high-tech weaponry, inability in close combat, and overall shootyness just screams Irken. I will be using the Zombiesmith "Grey Alien" range, as the sculptor basically said he modeled them after Invader Zim. I've got some ideas as to how to represent other machines of war, but they're still in the planning stage and may or may not change as I consider my options. This is my dream, it will be realized.

Oh, and I'm building an army for my wife, too. It's pretty stupid to be honest, but it does have potential. I'll just say I flagrantly stole it from somebody else and leave it at that.

Crisis of Faith? Or Warmachine Atheism?

It is with a heavy heart I say this, and not lightly.

I do not enjoy WARMACHINE any more. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was my total inability to win. Perhaps it was the nerfing of so many rules my old armies depended on. Maybe it was the introduction of Battle Engines, Colossals, and Gargantuans. Perhaps it was that there are (in my opinion) too many units with too many rules to keep track of. Maybe I just no longer get the game. It's got to be one, a few, or all of these things.

I think it started a while ago when I sold my Skorne. I felt no pain at letting them go. None. I gave my Hordes rulebook to my sister who was at the time starting up the game (who knows what happened to that). I never even flinched at getting rid of any of these things.

Just not doin' it for me...

During this time my figure cases full of minis have been sitting in the closet. Not just unused, not just collecting dust, but getting in the way. I have a limited amount of closet space, and on several occasions I have found myself getting annoyed that I can't put things like my Skaven or Dust Warfare minis there. They're beyond unused, they're almost a hassle. it is at times like these I begin to contemplate things.

Let's throw out an example. I really, really like Song of Blades and Heroes. A lot. I have a bunch of miniatures for it. I have a ton of terrain for it. What I do not have is an opponent to play the game system. The same goes for Alien Squad Leader. The same goes for Hordes of the Things. The same goes for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Finally, the same goes for Flames of War. These are, to me, dead game systems. They are great games, but with no opponents, they are dead games.

It could get worse. I built an entire In Her Majesty's Name warband (that was the secret project) and barely even finished painting it before coming to the realization that there was no way I was going to be able to play the game.

Tau to be?

I guess what I'm getting at is this; it's "spring" cleaning time. All the above miniatures have to go. I'm going to sell the ones I can, but most of them (LotR, HoTT, SBH, ASQL) will be seeing the dumpster. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars of stuff getting pitched because of impulse buying into systems that looked cool, but I had no opponent for. Watch this space for the upcoming picture of the "Big Mountain O' Trash Minis" coming soon.

Now my attention turns to games I actually enjoy. Games I want to play. Games I have an opportunity to play. There's just this big part of me that doesn't care to play Warmachine any more. Maybe it'll pass, but it's only got until I find a potential buyer for my stuff.

Time will tell.

Mystical Mice

One of my birthday presents this year was a surprise- a very welcome one at that. As you may have gathered from the title as well as the image to the right, I got a copy of Mice and Mystics. Now, I am a BIG fan of the Redwall novels, and a board game that approximates these books is a more than welcome addition to my already generous collection. This would be great alone, but there was an added bonus. The game is gorgeous. Let me repeat that- the game is gorgeous. the art has a very storybook feel, and the components are made of very sturdy cardboard. There are also excellent sculpts of the mouse heroes, as well as their foes. The box has six mice, eight roaches, six rats, and two very large sculpts; a spider and a centipede. at first I was willing to let these minis be. The sculpting is excellent, with fine crisp detail and very few mold lines. There were of course a couple of burs where the minis had been separated from their frames before assembly, and the plastic is the typical sorta flexy plastic. About on par in terms of flexibility with the GW Finecast resin. I wasn't exactly thrilled with that, but it's a board game not a miniatures game.

...Then I went to the company's website. There I found the picture to the left. A fully painted set. Well painted too. That sold me. I'm going to paint up my set as well. This is sort of a leap of faith since I have yet to actually play the game, but look at those pieces! Even if the game is abysmal they'll look good on display.

I've been in a bit of a painting rut lately as between X-Wing miniatures (which are prepainted) and the fact that my regular Sunday gaming group (sort of) plays Magic: The Gathering. Again, there is very little painting involved in trading card games. The primary reason for this is that I am now working earlier on Tuesday, and we only have an hour or two to game on Sunday nights. Those games are quick and easy to play, so there's no doubt that we'll be able to finish a given game before Real Life gets in the way.

My next post will feature my fully painted roaches and rats, so unfortunately no images from my camera today.

...Also, I've been having a bit of a crisis of faith on a certain wargame's front. That's a rant for a different entry though.