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?!?

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm so glad that followers contacted me if I'd messed up or missed their blogs in the previous post. Those that I missed have been added. What's embarrassing is that I was following almost all of them, but I just couldn't connect certain avatars or usernames to those blogs. And Blogger doesn't always make it easy, not giving you the information you think it should.

We're up to speed now, though, and I also get to welcome my newest follower, pulpcitizen of Pulp Citizen. This supers-centered blog focuses on the game Pulp City and is filled with good hobby content that's applicable across a wide range of genres and to a variety of pursuits.

So we begin the chant, "Gooble-gabble, gooble-gabble, one of us, one of us!"

Welcome, pulpcitizen. Enjoy!

A heartfelt and personal thank you to all my followers

I've never done a proper welcoming post to thank those of you who've honored my by joining my blog. Thank you and a belated "Welcome aboard!" to all of you. I never thought this blog would have 24 such distinguished followers, much less 5,000+ page views in its first six months of existence. Since you've done me a solid, I'd like to return the favor. In the list below of my blog's followers, I've listed YOUR blogs, that is, if I can discover them from your blogger profile or through my weak web fu.

• adam of Miniatures, Painting and Hobbies
• Bringer of Death
• Brummie of Brummie's Wargaming Blog
• Chronowraith of Chronowraith's Corner
• clint of Anything but a One and 28 Dice Later
• commisarmoody of Moody's Adventures
• dannydiddle of diddle's world and (the currently empty) The Monkey Lives
• Doctor Warlock of Keelhauling for Fun and Profit, The Illustrated London News, Pulp City Planet, The Realm of Dungeons & Dragons and (the currently empty) Not Another Wargames Blog. 
• elquintodestino of el quinto destino blogzine. I guess this is actually blogger member homerleonidas, but I'm not sure. I also don't speak Spanish, sadly.
• laughingferret of Laughing Ferret Lab
• Mecha Ace of G3 and The Hangar Bay
• Minitrol of Strange news from under there
• Mr. Lee of Mr. Lee's Painting Emporium (I think)
• myincubliss of Dead Lead Project
• pench
• Shelldrake of Shelldrake's Wargaming Blog, Shelldrake's Soapbox and Shelldrake's Zombie Wargame Blog
• shintokamikaze of Shinto Kamikaze's Zed Men Walking
• spankyhojek of The Haunting of Portsmouth and Geek in the basement
• styx of Strange Aeons Adventures, Dice of Legends, Suncoast Skirmishers and Army of the Week
• The Secret DM of The Secret DM
• Vampifan of Vampifan's World of the Undead
• watchtower78 of The Armchair General and Aliens vs Hillbillies
• Weird WWII of Weird WWII
• Xander of Xander's Wargaming Musings
• Zabadak of Zabadak's ZombieWorld
• and my loving wife, Tracey Sheets

If I've missed your blog out, I apologize. Please comment below or drop me an email and I'll get you added in. Likewise if I've credited you with work not yours, please also let me know and I'll correct the listing.

From here on out, it'll be acknowledgement as people join. Again, thanks for your support in this venture and best wishes for 2013.

Eyes front, mister

Today I got an email to one of my online accounts that someone had left a comment on my blog.

Only not this one. This was on a blog I had back in the heyday of Livejournal. (I used to have a Myspace page as well. Good Lord!) It was a response to a post I wrote about the alleged "War on Christmas" that has been waged, apparently, ever since, well, Christmas. I wrote that piece back in 2005 and had no idea it was even accessible anymore. Here's the link, if anyone wants to check it out.

My "holiday" musings

I used to write a lot of stuff like that, slightly political, embarrassingly personal. Loads of fun.

I am much happier doing this, sharing my interests and my passions and sharing, usually to those of you who are my friends on Facebook, the real events that impact my life, normally dealing with Tracey's and my health challenges. Thank you all for your support, attention, and prayers during the tough times we've had during 2012.

Oh, and I passed a milestone the other day. Or was that a kidney stone? Actually, this blog passed a milestone, not a huge one, but one I'm proud of and didn't think I'd hit so soon. Sometime around Dec. 8th or so, Dispatches from the Rim passed 5,000 pageviews. Too cool!

I couldn't have imagined back on July 8 of this year that so many people would've looked at my writing here. Thanks, everybody, for the time and attention you've given my corner of the Interwebs. I promise it's just going to get better from here. More posts, more pictures, and some actual PAINTED miniatures -- newly painted by ME -- in the new year!

More soon. This is Christopher Sheets, over and out from the closing minutes of 2012 and looking forward to sharing 2013 with you, all my amazing, talented friends.

Last few hours for Zombie Plague kickstarter

Everybody loves Zombie Plague, which has been around as a free downloadable game for a number of years. Now Brian Roe (Roebeast) has incorparated the game into a double sized comic book and created minis for both the survivors and the zombies. There's about 5 hours left, and he's only a few hundred dollars away from reaching his final stretch goal, which is scenic bases for all the minis. For a $50 pledge, you get the four survivors and the stretch goal zombie minis, the comic with game rules inside, and there are great add-ons to choose as well. C'mon people!

My wife surprised me with this. I'm quite fond of it. Oppa!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

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!