Passion for the Plastic

Brilliant Picture taken from CAUSE MARKETING, an interesting blog on charity/business cross polination marketing, if you're interested... but a cool photo nonetheless.

Apologies to all for my extended absense. Life (and work especially) is vibrantly frantic at the moment. This leaves me with little time to lift a brush, play a wargame, or attempt a blog post. To cap it all, I've got a BIG battle report and a game development synopsis in the 'half done' editing list on my blog creation list.

This has resulted in serious constipation in the writing area, as I drift back to these monstrous blog write-ups. Simply put - there's too much on and something's got to give, and currently its my blog rate.

Now is a very busy time, as will be September (and maybe October too) ... but as the colleges and Universities go back to servicing their students and stop buying my company's equipment ... life may return to normal. The R&D (8 months worth) is complete, the new product is on the wall (literally, yesterday, I was involved), and hopefully life will be returning to normal...

Hopefully.

So nothing much to write about on the GW side, but to contemplate the following query ... we've all experienced the 'cycle' of wargaming. The flux and flow of an obsession (and really it is isn't it ... these are small plastic men after all) waxes and wanes* as the years pass. Certainly I've found that since being unable to play, or paint, or blog about W40k ... I've found myself less 'obsessive' on the subject. This worries me, but also encourages me to engage with my hobby with a passion normally held up for the couple in the dying throws of a relationship.

I'm sure my interest will peak again and I'm simply 'out of the zone' for the moment. The mistakes on the blog (losing the discus history for example) broke my rhythm and I'm now struggling to get back the old mojo. This combined with many many days on the road building business have palled my passion into a mewling form of its previous peak.

That said, I can see the moment when my Alpha Legion troops march on the enemy - but keeping it fresh is always a challenge. I could always attempt new games systems, but I'm loath to 'widen' my already burgeoning budget for plastic crack.

Perhaps a hiatus is exactly what the doctor ordered. A break to remind me on what I'm missing, the only concern is that I might not actually miss it that much...

NO, I MUST CLING TO THE PLASTIC CRACK.

Lol. Perhaps a Apocalyse game is what I need? So there's a quick glimpse into the brain of 'moi' and my current crisis of faith with the old plastic crack. As has been said before:

"Help me [Entername], you're my only hope!"**

What's your experience? Are you constant in your gaming passion? Have you had moments of doubt and pain? Come on lads, share it out... get me through this!

Please...

____________________________

* Waxes and Wanes ... I'm not sure about everyone else, but don't both these words sounds debilitating? I 'know' that waxes means grow, but since when did wax grow, it melts? You catch my drift...

** According to a recent interview I heard, George Lucas' original script was pretty 'clunky' and needed significant 'massaging' into the clipped statacco which boils over the internet like a plethora of adolescent excretions. That said, can anyone even remember a quote from the 'new' starwars... I got more one liners from Galaxy Quest***

*** Which if you haven't seen, then shame, shame, shame ... buy or rent it now.

Swords of Alpharius Painting Update

The entire family have dissapeared on holiday, leaving me at home to work ... earn money ... complete all DIY. This is kinda cool and kinda sucks. The sulky bit is the fact I feel like Woody and Buzz from Toy Story - I've been left behind. Meanwhile I get nice letter from my daughter and son with pictures and drawings - which is cool.

The great bit is that I can exploit the empty house to get some serious painting and gaming in ... in between the DIY (honest). Before I shoot off to remorter the brickwork around the window frame on the front of the house, here's a quick update.

Swords of Alpharius (not Sons of Alpharius ... or are they?!?)

Deathguard: In reverse order here's my Deathguard Sergeant complete with powerfist goodness. I wanted to 'bring him into the fold, colourwise, and so opted to paint his claw blue. This both doubles as a mockery of the Crimson Fists (my favourite codex chapter), as well as playing an important role in the Swords of Alpharius 'bribing' a deathguard squad on board... that's my fluff anyhow.

Shiny Deathguard with a less than shiny coat ... dullcoat anyone?

Dreadnought: Next up in my loverly 2nd Edition Chaos Dreadnought. I carried through the Blue/Green and Red highlight Triad scheme and kept him bright. As with all my models, basing is something I will be inventing at a later date...

Rahhh Dreadnought...

Assault Squad: Here's some new additions! The Assault squad are favouring red weaponry to go with their codex jumppacks (stolen in deepspace). The sergeant lacked red, but gained a bloody ICON, ammo and head strip - to help him stand out.

Charge forward boys and deliver the icon into the enemy...

Chosen: Next up are the completed and 'final tweak' Chosen, led by none other than Chesney Hawkes. For meltas in an infiltrating or flanking Rhino - can't go wrong really. Plus, if I need the spot for Terminators, these guys become havocs. You'll note than none of these guys look particularly 'chaosy' - which is on purpose. These boys are Alpha Legion renegades, not common-or-garden Chaos Marines ... pah?!?

The Chosen - pretentious bunch

Huron: Finally, good old Huron in all his glory. I've spoken at length on why I love this model and his rule ... so no need for more. The new camera really works the mini's ... I'll let the model speak for itself.

Huron. He cool. He bad. He got a little deamon monkey.

Suneokun out.

New Camera - nice photo's

Same shot ... from 3.2 megapixel cameraphone to 14.1 megapixel Canon ... a world apart.

Just a short post to highlight what a difference a decent camera can make. The following photos were taken at night with just the aid of two 'natural light' biobulbs (one in the roomlight and the other in a desklamp) and my new Canon Powershot SX210 (yummy) camera.

The 14.1 Megapixels are a bitch ... they show up my shoddy inking - bummer.

The beauty with this camera is that you can digitally control your aperture rating. For the unintiated (or the barely initiated like me), this basically means you can control how long the 'film' is exposed through the lens. This means that rather than 'snapping' a shot of the miniatures it can take a slower paused shot to really soak up the details.

Mr Trygon ...now with even more detail.

I hasten to add that these photos were taken at night, under artificial light and with no 'photoshop' work done beyond some 'paint' cropping.