Confession to make

OK, you readers have been too polite to say anything, but I hear the whispers of the questions through the vibrating power lines. My mechanical parts feel the doubt building in the stray electrons left by my posts.

"Christopher, why don't you ever post pictures of your painted minis?"

Because there are none. Not new ones anyway. To be honest, I haven't applied paintbrush to mini in over two years. And the last time all I did was spray-prime my nascent zombie horde.

It hasn't stopped my planning and acquiring minis to paint, obviously. You've seen those photos.

It's not for any insecurity about the results. I'm a decent painter, to what I consider a good tabletop standard.

My problem is finding, or rather making, space to paint.

Because I'm a hoarder. Every surface in my home is crowded and cluttered. The floor, to me, is a low, flat shelf.

God, it feels good to admit it in a public forum. I. Am. A hoarder. (Warning: Personal revelations only tangentially related to gaming follow. If you're a tl;dr type of person, you may want to skip to the end.)

For years I thought I was just sloppy. And lazy. And I am both those things, for certain values of sloppy and lazy.

It moved into full-fledged hoarding over the years, as health crises and family events chipped away at my stability. It's not to the degree of the people you see on television, mainly because I don't own property. (And no cat skeletons under the furniture here. Our cat is very much alive and a multi-clawed threat to my safety and well-being.)

My wife and I rent a two-bedroom duplex, and the clutter and collections and trash, sometimes all intermingled, have taken over both bedrooms and are threatening the living room and the kitchen.

If it were just me, I might ignore it and just go full-on batshit crazy and become "that guy" in our little town, with the house the kids warn each other away from with the judicious use of campfire tales and sleepover horror stories.

But even as the indecision, insecurity and, at times, obsession inch closer to overwhelming me, I am consumed with something more powerful.

The love of my wife. I love her with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. I would pull the stars from the sky for her. I would drag souls to hell for her. If I could heal her crippling genetic disorder with a smoothie made of severed heads and blended babies, I would become the greatest mass murderer this planet has ever seen.

But I can't. So I won't. (Who am I kidding? I abhor violence IRL. I even have trouble transgressing my own moral code in a VIDEOGAME. I am the only person who plays Grand Theft Auto and stops at the stoplights.)

Instead I am fighting the bad programming in my head that makes the stacks of boxes and mounds of clothing feel like castle walls and parapets, protecting my too-oft-wounded heart. Even as I shoulder Sisyphian guilt over the condition of our home, I also feel safe. The clown prince of clutter. A king of rags and patches.

I gradually make headway against the clutter littering the floor, which has reduced the amount of our home my wife can access to about 25 square feet.

Unfortunately, even if it were spotless, she couldn't move much farther anyway. She suffers the genetic disorder ankylosing spondylitis, which I think I've written about before. It's sometimes called "bamboo spine," because as it progresses, it fuses the spine into one solid mass of bone. It hinders her movement and leaves her in constant pain. She gets about some with a walker, mostly by wheelchair. Drugs manage most of the pain and the muscle spasms.

She has made friends across the world on the Internet, as have I. I try to make sure she has as much access to information, communication and entertainment as possible. Now I'm fighting my own brain, my fear, to return our home to a state of which she can be proud.

It approaches irony that the artistic release of painting minis would do much to ease my mind and soothe my brittle feelings. So all I can say is ...

Yes, soon. I made big strides on my days off this week, and I plan to do a little more each day. Eventually, I'll have enough of a clear work area that I can drag out my minis and paints and get to work. My goal is within two weeks. I'm also using this as a motivator:

Studio McVey painting competition on Wamp

Having just acquired Sedition Wars (and having a few of the metal SW minis as well) I am spoiled for choice. And the entry deadline isn't until April. Even I should be able to hit that.

I'll be back later today with more about the Empire of the Dead: Requiem kickstarter (to which I've already pledged.)

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

An in-boxing then, not an un-boxing

I promised an unboxing for "Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster," but there are so many of them out there right now I don't want to burden the Interwebz with another one that won't really add anything to the conversation. But there are some issues I can address.

First of all, packaging: This thing is huge!

And deep, too. This isn't a game to put on your bookshelf. It's a game to make a bookshelf out of. I may use the box this came in to add a room on to our apartment. It's big. B-I-G.

My meaty hand rests on the giant game box.

This is how thick the box is. Alternate use --
keep your trailer level.

Those of you who are members of the Miniature Addicts Anonymous on Facebook have already heard me talk about this, but I had a surge of disappointment because my Biohazard set of extras did not include the special edition resin Lt. Kara. I did, however, get two of the Mike McVey signed print of the cover art.

This is the Studio McVey painted version of the special edition
Lt. Kara from the Kickstarter website.

My second piece of signed art. I offered to send it back,
but CMON told me I could keep it. Hmmm, eBay maybe?

Now I'm nothing if not a whiny, entitled, overprivileged manchild, and that kind of mispack can just suck the joy out of a much-anticipated delivery. Two quick emails, one to Cool Mini or Not and one a message through the Kickstarter system itself, outlined my problem to them.

I seriously did not expect an immediate response, given that they're in the early days of shipping out the game. CMON's customer service sent an automatic reply acknowledging my issue, and I swear before I finished READING that email, I had a personal response from Ginger at CMON. She promised they'd ship it out as soon as possible, most likely the next day, and send me a tracking number. This was midafternoon on Tuesday, the 15th. On Thursday I got an email with the tracking number from Ginger, saying it had been sent out the previous day, AND I got a message through Kickstarter wanting to make sure CMON customer service was handling the issue to my satisfaction.

Here's the extra-special version of Lt. Kara herself, what Mike called in the Kickstarter
Updates "Tech-comm Lt. Kara Black." They've done special rules for her, in a pdf.
 Hard-card to follow in later release, I believe. Download her stats at alt-Kara stats

The package arrived Friday morning, less than 48 hours after I'd reported the issue. (It helps that I only live a few hours from CMON Central, I suppose.) But they were exemplary in fixing a problem that was, to me, serious. I told them Ginger deserves a raise.

CMON has always done right by me. This is the third Kickstarter they've been involved in that I've supported, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Sedition War is in!

Just as it says on the tin, I received my shipment of "Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster" today! I'll take some unboxing photos later today for a post tonight. Eager to dig in ...

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?!?