New technology is dangerous

You will not believe what I did.

After adding apps to my new Android tablet, I did a little browsing on Amazon. I was getting used to the much larger screen than on my iPhone 5s.

I created a new wishlist for gaming-related items. I added some minis,  some tools, the usual, but for some reason, one of the items didn't appear on the list when I checked it later. I figured I'd just screwed up the necessary keystrokes.

If only.

About 10 minutes later I get an email that the third-party Amazon vendor is preparing my order for shipment.

I'd hit the verdammten "Order with One Touch" button!

And what mini was it, you ask?

The effin' Woldwrath Gargantuan for Hordes' Circle Orboros. FML.

At least I got a good price on it and had a gift card waiting to be spent on my account.

And I immediately disabled one-touch ordering.

Bag it and tag it

This isn't my usual kind of acquisition, but it's one I felt needed sharing. I recently ordered ThinkGeek's newest addition to their "Bag of Holding" line, the Bag of Holding Con-Survival edition.

My new Con-Survival Edition Bag of Holding from ThinkGeek.

Considering the crowded trade floor at most cons, they made this bag slightly smaller than their original. Other geekcentric features include the mesh pockets on the side. You could carry a water bottle in each, but one of them has drawstrings at top and bottom, so you can carry longer items, say a poster tube, a spyglass, a lightsaber, what have you.

Please note that's not a puddle of Wite-Out,
it's the glare from the overhead lights.

Yes, that's 1:08 a.m., and I was still at the office.

Additionally, the front zippered compartment drops like a drawbridge, giving you access to a pocket covered in clear, thick, flexible plastic with a Velcro closure. Its ingenious design gives you access to your iPad or other tablet without having to drag it out of the bag. I will say it works for quick things, like say checking your schedule or scanning your email. I've found that if I have to do much typing or clicking of icons, though, I go ahead and remove my tablet. That clear cover requires just that extra "oomph" of effort to make haptic contact with the touchscreen that my fingers tired quickly. But it is, as they say on their site, ideal for checking the Hall H schedule from the dealers' room at Comic-Con.

Those are three-month prescription bottles, folks, to give you a sense of scale.
Also, you can barely see some of the side pockets lining the inside.

 This thing is chockablock full of little pockets and compartments, just as you'd expect. The main interior section is roomy while maintaining the bag's convenient size. I'd wager you could carry three, maybe four, hardback gaming books in there with no problem. For me, this is going to be my daily carry bag, so it is, of course, filled with all my meds. I used to carry them in a black leather shaving bag, so this definitely puts that bag to shame.

Rue Morgue, in my opinion the best magazine covering the horror genre.

One feature I appreciate is that, on the back, there's a document pocket. It's sized to hold letter-sized sheets (8.5 x 11 if you're in the U.S. In Britain it's what, A4?) My one tiny, nitpicky complaint is that, if you do put full-size sheets of paper or, say, a magazine, or a manila folder in there, it blocks the Velcro tab that's about an inch down inside the pocket. A flap would've been too much and spoiled the bag's aesthetics, but I wish the designers had thought of something else. I seek closure, dammit.

For customization, ThinkGeek has provided a fuzzy front panel, actually the "loop" half of "hook-and-loop" fasteners, i.e. Velcro. All those faction patches you have? That Viper pilot unit patch from BSG? Bring it on. If they don't already have Velcro backing, just iron on some hook material (available at most craft stores or from scifigeeks.com) and customize to your heart's content. They even get you started with rubberized patches of their logo and their little monkey mascot.

The Skorne Privateer Press pin is much bigger than I expected,
and the quality of the cloisonne is exceptional.

As you can see, I've added my Skorne faction logo pin from Privateer's Hordes. They do include a shoulder strap, which would be a great place for pins as well, but I'm not using it. In fact, my wife and I each have these bags, and that's the quickest way to tell them apart. She uses the shoulder strap so she can more easily hang the bag on her wheelchair.

These bags are popular, so expect some delays if you order one, as they go out of stock quickly. As of this writing, it looks like they're expecting more next week. I bought Tracey's the day they came out. I ordered one for myself a few days later and they were already gone.

OK, enough of me wearing my reviewer hat. Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon.

Making the tough decisions

I have to narrow down my endeavors on the miniature front this year. I have a mountain of unpainted lead that is likely big enough to shield me completely from errant radiation. I have limited financial resources and climbing medical expenses, so I have to learn to focus. I'm also undoubtedly going to have to part with some things from my pile.

But how? I have such eclectic tastes and magpie instincts that everything looks like fair game as it's released. The lure of the "ooh, shiny" is almost too much to bear.

Some large guidelines are already in place, simply because of my interests. I'll be sticking to skirmish-level gaming, which was always my intent, as you can see in the subtitle at the top of this blog. I don't have the attention span or patience to paint large armies. I much prefer an assemblage of characterful individuals on my table.

I'm sticking to 28mm, or 32mm, or "heroic scale" or whatever it's called now. I want my baseline humans to be about an inch tall. My eyes are too old now to paint details on anything smaller, and I want everything to be pretty much compatible.

So here's what I'm thinking so far:

Modern zombies: I have multiple rulesets and sources for these, and I absolutely LOVE zombie gaming. With Zombicide's Toxic Mall expansion coming out and the remaining character figs from their Kickstarter due, and the recent 7ombieTV expansion from Crooked Dice, and the continued creativity of Kev White at Hasslefree and the folks at Studio Miniatures, and too many other good companies to mention, this one genre could keep me booked all day every day until 2014.

I am going to resist with all my might the urge to expand into pulp zombies, Weird WWII zombies, ancient zombies, or any other kind of zombies (except the Strain, see "Far Future" below.) When I do get my John Jenkins Designs Terror-Cotta Warriors painted up, they will inhabit a museum in either my modern setting or my gothic horror/steampunk games. Speaking of ...

Gothic Horror and Steampunk: This will primarily be Empire of the Dead, although there will be a good mix of Malifaux and some Hordes and Warmachine (primarily Cryx) in there. I also recently bought the pdf of the Chaos in Carpathia rules and plan to give them a spin. And I may pick up some of the constructs coming out for Dystopian Legions. The rank-and-file troops, at 40mm, would just stand out too much, I fear. However, this giant sumbitch here is gonna be mine:

"You are direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9.
You have five seconds to comply."

Just like the Dark Age Abomination model, sometimes size is all that matters!

Far future: This will mainly be for Sedition Wars. I went a little nuts (for me) during the kickstarter campaign, but I'm really looking forward to getting my gribbly hands on these. Plus, if I were to lose about 100 pounds or so, I think I could cosplay Vokker Dargu.

The metal Vokker Dargu figure from Studio McVey. They've added an exclusive
conscript figure of him to the SW:BoA kickstarter deal to compensate for delays.

"Dead Space," which significantly influenced the look of Battle for Alabaster, is one of my favorite videogames of all time. How I'm going to figure out a way to shoehorn my Relic Knights Star Nebula Corsairs into this setting to justify that kickstarter spending remains to be seen.

Engineer Isaac Clarke from the "Dead Space" series of games.
I love it that most of his weapons are modified tools.

Captain Harker and Ceasar, space pirates!

There are also a couple of tasty Dreadball figures I might try to worm in there too.

Mantic's John Doe MVP for Dreadball. I prefer to preserve his Lovecraftian mystery and think of him as "The Lurker at the Goal Line."

Of course, Dark Age then has to go and release the new factions of the CORE and the Kukulkani. Dammit! Can't you people see how weak I am?!?

I'm a Kickstarter junkie.

I've really got to get it under control. Shiny, shiny! I want to support ALL the great miniature company Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects I see going on right now. But I'm not made of money. On the contrary, I'm made of old receipts, ticket stubs and dust.

I showed the unboxing for Zombicide, which was the first Kickstarter I got behind in a big way, but not the first one I contributed to. I first kicked in support for It Came From Beyond the Still, also known as Aliens vs. Hillbillies. I'll show some of my models for that later on,

What I want to share with you today is the result of what support I could put behind a project from Impact, called Little Urban Achievers. My rewards arrived today, and they look fantastic. The goal of this project was to produce minis with the look of the cast of a certain film involving bowling, carpet, and a Dude who Abides. I didn't have much spare cash as the funding period wrapped up, but I did have about $20, so I scored three figures from the initial run. I chose El Duderino, The Vet(eran) and Chino. Impact already had the Valkyrie figure available, so I figured I could grab her any time.

Chino, El Duderino and The Vet(eran)

 I plan on using them for my zombie table. Once I have a zombie table. Oh, I've got plans, but no table yet. Soon, oh my brothers and my sisters, we will viddy well a real horrorshow table for my zombie kriegspielen. Yes we will.

What you see behind the figures (and underneath them) was my other acquisition today, the limited edition strategy guide for Capcom's Resident Evil 6. I'm getting the game for Christmas, but I'm a patch collector, so I wasn't going to let these get away from me. I already had one of the BSAA patches you see behind Chino there, since it was included with the limited edition copies of the Resident Evil 5 game. But the other two are new. When I say I collect patches, let me be more specific. I collect patches of fictional groups or organizations and imaginary events. I have the patches for some of the Clans from Battletech, the factions in

Warmachine and Hordes from Privateer Press, one from the Miskatonic University 1930-1931 Antarctic Expedition detailed in Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," by Propnomicon, who is a propmaking mastermind and artisan without equal, the Ishimura Planet-Cracker patch from the original Dead Space video game, several more. I haven't added any of patches for units from the Infinity game yet, but I'm sure I'll get some in time as I get more into that game. I read "Campaign: Paradiso" over my vacation and really enjoyed it. The writing was top-notch, the production values are off the chain, and the painting and art are breathtaking. Love, love, love it.

Enough rambling. So here's the other two patches, along with the BSAA one:

One cool thing of which I was unaware was that the strategy guide's cover is the box art for the Japanese release of the game. The U.S. edition just has that funky giraffe-looking weblike No. 6 on it.

Has me all excited! I hope all my friends and readers in the States enjoy their Thanksgiving, however they get to spend it. And I hope all my readers and friends elsewhere enjoy the next few days as well. I've got to come into work on the infamous "Black Friday" this year, but I'm actually off on Thanksgiving Day, which hasn't happened in a while. Not sure yet what Tracey and I are doing.

Check back in a few days and I'll give you a rundown of the kickstarter and indiegogo projects I am backing and the ones I wish I was backing.

Oh, and I think I disabled the Captcha on the comments, at least I tried to, but who knows?!? Somebody try it and tell me how it goes. I really want people to feel free to comment, and I'd rather spend my time deleting spam than hearing only the sound of crickets because I've made it difficult.

Thanks, everybody, for stopping by and spending this bit of time with me. You, my friends, and this hobby we share (these hobbies, more like, for which of us is ONLY a wargamer) are some of the things for which I am truly thankful this year.

Cheers!