Fathers and Sportsmanship

Well today is Father's day here in the States, and I have been contemplating the different gifts that a father can bestow on their children.  A father is not just the guy that makes sure that the power bill is paid on time but from my experience has the ability to get you to the other side of adulthood, and offer a perspective that a mother on average is unable to fulfill, even after you reach adulthood.  One of the big areas that I see fathers affecting their children with is sportsmanship.  Regardless of an athletic sport or just moving chess pieces, sportsmanship is crucial to most past times and for that matter most of life. 

Now I did play little league baseball and soccer when I was a kid, and I enjoyed playing baseball.  However I did not follow through with it afterwards in life.  I was more interested in camping, hunting and fishing more than general athletics and I lettered in Band in High School. (Lettering in Football would not have been hard for me at my school actually.  It was a terrible team when I was there and I was a tuba player in Marching Band, and some on the tuba line did quit and joined the defensive line while was there.)  I did play Lacrosse in college which was just out of pure fun.  I cared less if we lost and I was on teams that we did, but the fun of hitting someone else with a stick legally outweighed the score of the game, when we were keeping score.   I still watch a fair amount of sports but where I really learned sportsmanship was when I was playing board games with my Father.  Most specifically this:

That's right, my first foray into war gaming was Axis and Allies.  I remember many a game played by the two of us.  I learned the most about sportsmanship from these games than any other place.  My father would soundly beat me every time for the most part.  I would range from being in tears all the way to snippy at times playing him.  Here is the difference though.  Mom hated the game, but she would always ask how we did.  After every loss she would give my dad a cross look, as if telling him "Let him win for once."  He would reply verbally "He is getting good, I almost lost to him today."

I can't tell you how glad that he would always play to win and actively beat me.  It taught me humility and most importantly to be gracious in victory like he always was.  One thing that I did not learn was to be more gracious with rules disputes.  I really do have a hard time being amenable when I am disputing a rule that I know is right.  Since then I have shown frustration quite a few times after a game which I do regret quite a bit in retrospect, but I don't consider myself a bad sport, and given the atmosphere it can be different for me.  I take tournaments not nearly as seriously as campaigns for example.  Which leads me to the bad sportsman out there.

I certainly do understand being frustrated and short with people at times, and I very much try to avoid it at all costs.  However as this thread from Warseer shows there are people who really needed to be taught good sportsmanship:

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?339929-Physical-aggression-and-fighting-in-a-GW-or-flgs

I would assume that most of these stories are crap, but like many stories that are too absurd to be true, I am sure that there is a kernel of truth to be sure.  I have seen dice being thrown, I have seen people who have packed up in a huff, and I have seen people carry on a rare occasion.  I can tell you that my father would not have put up with that crap at all from me.  People are people and you do eventually find a few jerks in your life.  Hopefully they do learn what good sportsmanship is and practice it, but I do wish that they had a father figure like mine who would have taught them good sportsmanship practices.

Bashing GW is just getting too easy.

While in the process of moving, I noticed that I have sold over half of my collection that I had in boxes.  The good news is that hopefully those miniatures will see the light of day with someone who will appreciate them.  The bad news is that I am compelled to sell them as opposed to using them for what I originally was planning for them.  I guess that is a good thing that I sold all of my current models given my lack of enthusiam for the game and the company in general.  This is really for both 40K and WFB. 

I could write several articles as to how I hate what the current management have done to a company that I have liked and have done business with in the past.  Looking at the bloggers that I do follow, there is plenty of people who have what seems no end in sight of rants ranging from the failings of finecast to the annual June price hike from the wisemen in Nottingham.  I am sure that there will be plenty more to come in the future. 

However that is getting to be booring for me overall.  I have tried to limit the "I hate GW" rants on this blog for the most part as of late.  Don't get me wrong, I have a bevy of complaints about GW, including their foray into finecast which I really have been silent about.(which I may still do a Finecast rant for several reasons)  I may do a rant from time to time, but I have other issues to deal with now-a-days than the obscene prices and the apparent lack of quality and service that you get from GW.  The only hope is that the current management get sacked and a massive re-organization of the company.  I may start paying more attention after that if it ever happens. 

Perhaps this is my real life interfering with my hobby life.  Right now I am focused on other issues and my other hobby that I can do actually.  As of right now I really can't even paint unless I figure out a new arraingment at my new place.

Eulogy of Warhammer Ancient Battle.

It is with great sadness that Games Workshop has announced that Warhammer Ancient Battles has passed into the realm of used book stores.  Warhammer Ancient Battle was originally published in 1998 as a stand alone game using most of the rules from Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  The original creators of the game was the Jervis Johnson, Rick Priestley, Michael and Allen Perry.  While very similar to Warhammer Fantasy in game mechanics it had its own flavour and made it a more enjoyable experience by using experimental rules that actually worked well for the game.  I was once told that it was sort of a pet project of the four creators.  It had no miniature support yet sold well enough to last for 14 years and only needed one new edition and a retouch in between.  Not to mention a series of supplements for the various periods that were not covered in the basic rulebook.  It was killed in an apparent car accident when the driver drove Warhammer Ancient Battles off of the cliff.  Ironically everyone else survived. 

Warhammer Ancient Battle is preceeded in death by several less than stellar game systems and several that paved the way for Warhammer Ancient Battles to become the rules that it is.  While the original creators are still alive and kicking, most of them have left Games Workshop, to lead other pursuits.  Warhammer Ancient Battle will be missed by the many fans of the game.  Most hurt will be the gamers that have been waiting on their particular supplement of choice to be created as promised.  Those who are happy with what they have should play the game with honor.  I know that I will.

Woodies Comparison

Finally some content that I want to put on here.  I took a few pictures of what I have left of my Wood Elves.  I did sell the majority of my collection a few months back unfortunatelly.  It is an army that I do have interest and want to collect once again, but there are a problem with that proposition, the older models is what I most likely going to collect.

Now that metal is getting hard to come by for any new models from GW I am going to be buying second hand no matter what I do.  I will put a post on my thoughts on finecast in its own post later on, but lets just say that I am not fond of the idea, and it is not just the obvious.  Honestly if I want to start collecting once again I will most likely put together an army with older models mainly due to their character.

Nevertheless, here are the comparison shots of the two different editions that I have.  I believe that I have 4th/5th metal Wood Elves and 6/7th plastic Wood Elves. 

The first set has two standard new archers, and one metal archer and one kneeling scout>

From the Front:

The second set has two new plastic models, with one metal archer and one scout that is running:

From the Front:







As I have said earler I do tend to like the older metal models with their character.  I believe that the older metal models do have a lot of depth in their range.  Last time that I checked it was atleast a dozen of the standard archers for them. 

It is still something that I want to think on and something that I am not planning on doing any time soon however. 

Back from the land of the (working?) stiffs!

Most sincere apologies for taking this long to update my blog.  Unforutnatelly, I have still been pre occupied with a bevy things going in the real world.(imagine that)  Really I have not had much in the form of anything to talk about that was gaming related lately so why waiste anyones time with a useless post, like one of these.   

I do have a few posts that I want to put together, the first being another comparison shot that I promised from a while back, which will be posted up tomorrow.  The month of May looks like it is going to be another busy time for me as well, but I will make sure that I don't take three months until my next post. 

Still alive here.

My apologies for not posting over the past month.  With the new year came with it a new job so my primary focus has been to get settled down with that.  Unfortunatelly my hobbies suffered from it.  You gotta do what you gotta do in these times.  The only real thing that I have done with my hobby was to sell off a lot of my miniatures that I had boxed away.  It has basically paid most of my bills this past month which is a good thing that I was able to take care of that, but sad to see them go and also sad to realize that I had that many models and not one assembled and painted. 

On another note I am going to be planning a few games with friends to test out a few other game systems.  I think that I will be starting with Kings of War and Fantasy Warriors to start.  They seem to have compatible armies for my willing oppoants right now, and something that we can easily set up with the armies that we have.  As far as the other game systems out there, I am working on a short list of games that I want to try out first.  They are mainly the free online games out there so that I dont have to buy the book right now.  Hopefully I can get a few games in this month and be able to write up a review specifically on one of the two mentioned above. 

2012 Goals

Right, well I decided to join in the band wagon and point out a few of my goals that I plan to do in 2012 for my hobby.  Some are as used as weight loss is for New Year Resolutions, some however are admittingly out there.  Without further ado here they are:

1:  Get painting again and paint over 100 miniatures to standard and varnished:  This one is proabably the mose widely used goal/resolution for hobby players out there.  I really did a terrible job on this front where I only painted basically 8 models to this standard this year.  To top that, I only had 34 models that I even started from priming which I really dont count as a painting stage.  This is one that I really need to work on.  I really want to start 100 miniatures and paint to completion not just work on the odd 26 models that I have yet to do. Needless to say I have some work to do. 

2:  Settle on one or two Fantasy game systems:  I am still evaluating a lot of game systems out there, and I have not had a Fantasy game since my post on alternative fantasy game systems.(posted here)  I have gone through a few of the free systems out there and to be honest, I did find one that was interesting to me.  There is also a few that I need to scratch off of the list mainly due to it breaking one of the rules that I set out to use already. 

3:  Sell minaitures that I will never build:  I have a lot of models still in their boxes, a shocking development to all who read this.  As stated before in my previous post about dwarves, (posted here) I have decided to sell all of my newer Dwarves that I have in inventory.  Tonight I pulled out some of my other bins that I store my boxes, and I see quite a few more boxes that I can see selling as well.  I will need the money for bills, and unfortunatelly I think that some projects that I had that were technically not on the list of "decomissioned" may find themselves on the list.  Damn it!

4:  Continue to look at different manufacturers:  While I am always looking for cheaper models, I am also looking for a variety of models so that I dont have the same damn miniature in the unit.  I see this happen a lot in WAB where you have an army that has several different manufacturers throughout the army that have the same dimensions.  I am trying to do this with what I currently have with my Empire troops, and likewise any future WAB armies that I think will work with both Fantasy and Middle Ages.  Although I have plenty of troops for a large Empire army, some rank and file variety within my army is a good thing, especially with my metal greatswords for instance. 

5:  Play more games:  I really only played two games of both WAB and 40K throughout this past year.  I really need to get out more to say the least. 

I would have to say that five goals for this year should be enough for the year.  I am not trying to make anything grandious right now in my hobby.  I want to take things easy until I have a good graps what I plan to be doing with my hobby.  I guess that it means that I will not be making anything from my castlemolds that take half of a table... unless I really want to for kicks.

Kazad ai-menu! (The Dwarves are upon you!)

As promised a month or so ago, I decided to make a few comparison shots of some of my GW figures over the years.  I am going to start with my first love, the Dwarves.  I started these guys back in the heady days of the mid 90's.(specifically 1994)  In my collection I really have three distinct lines that I have out there.  Given the merging of Marauder Miniatures, I will just characterize them based on the edition that they came out or the closest editions.  What I want to do with these pictures is to help me figure out whether I want to continue with my idea of using the 7th edition (well usually called 6.5 as well given that they came out earlier than the 7th) models in my collection.  If I really have lost interest in that line of models, I dont see a reason why to keep them anymore.  Without further ado here are the models that I brought out based on the edition used.  At the end I did take the caliper to them and have the results of my measurements below as well. 

Dwarves Over the Years

These are some of my 4th edition models.  I have sold off about 1/3 of my collection from that time, mainly from the look of some of the models that I am not interested with much any more and also because of the fact that I have just too damn much of one model.  I did not have much in the form of depth on the bench with this edition.  I really do love these models, but mainly as character models in my armies. For example, that fully painted handsome devil on the near left, is my thane of pain.

These are the models of my main line army from the 6th edition.  I really do like these models mainly due to their functionality and versatility.  I will talk about this later but I have no problem with the "monkey hands" that everyone incessantly complains about with this edition.  When I got a good hold of them, I really liked working with these guys.  From my experience, they fit really well with my 4th edition Dwarves. 

While technically from the 6th edition, they came out just prior to the 7th, and part of the joke in Dwarven circles as Dwarves 6.5.  I have put these guys together, and I am still rather undecided as to whether they will serve as a functioning wing of my Dwarves.  Unlike in the two previous editions, this army is significantly different in looks so much that they really dont fit side-by-side with previous editions.  This means that they would have to be a separate army. 

Now for the Comparison

The following pics are my comparison shots, rather self explanatory so I will leave the repotage out of the pics.  The commentary will come later on. 

Now this following pic is one with one of my Romans from Warlord Games, just for laughs.  I know that there are some discrepancies between historical miniatures and fantasy miniatures, and that Romans tended to be on the shorter side and thus modeled by some to be shorter, but this is rather rediculius.  From my Calculation of the models without the base, a Dwarf is about 4'7" or so.  Just by looks that would make that Roman no taller than 5' or so.  That would make Napoleon a LARGE guy for during the Roman Times.  I really do find that hard to believe that the Romans were that short given that the Greeks were as short if not shorter and they ranged around 5'4" or so last time that I looked.  It really does make me wonder if Warlord made their Romans more for 25mm playing initially. 

Comparison Stats

I also decided to do some comparison statistics with my models.  I dont really know how to import a table just yet onto one of these posts so please bear with me on this one.  Height is self explanatory for the model itself, but I am just measuring top of head gear to bottom of base.  Width was from Arm to arm, and if different the widest part on that axis in parentheses.  Girth is how I measure from front to back  at the widest part of the beard.  I also did the hands with or without a weapon in hand in both width of hand and length of hand.  All of these numbers are in mm. 

Body Dimensions

Edition:                                  7th          6th          4th

Model Height:                        25           25            24

Model Width:                         17(20)    20            16

Model Depth:                         12           11            10

With Hand weapon

Hand Lenght:                           3             4              4

Hand Width:                            3             4              4

Without Hand Weapon

Hand Length:                           4             4              4

Hand Width:                            2.5          4              4

A note on the 4th Edition measurements, they were the most wildly varied of the three whereas the 7th and 6th are very consistent concerning the body measurements.  It is proabably due to me not using any poses that have the arms tucked down in a ready position rather than in a heroic upright position.  Honestly I dont think that I can find one of those models if I wanted to.  I will have no problem standing by the measurements on the hands, which were eaiser to do than expected. 

What did suprise me was the hands being that much different in size, and yet that consistent between the previous two editions.  Likewise how different the variability in bodysize in the 4th edition also suprised me as well.  What also suprised me what the consistency in the height of the models.  I think that the comparison shots show that any variances in height is based solely on the headgear of the models and not on the projected height of the models.  This is odd since everyone bemoans the fact that GW has been making bigger models, which includes me on this.  Perhaps that this is a Dwarf Thing in that the size comes from a thicker and bulkier plastic model rather than a taller model. 

What to Do with the new Models?

Honestly, doing this comparison and subsequent measurements have raised more questions and uncertainty in general than answered any of my questions.  When I was putting them together, I really didn't like the general bulkiness of the model, yet when I did the measurements there was not that much difference.  Admittingly I only measured a few points on the miniature which does not take into consideration other points that could show how bulky the model is.  Unfortunatelly even a milimeter difference can cause a big change in the look of the model, which should make sense on a 28mm miniature.  I know that I hate the look of the warmachines that are in this edition in question, and what looks like a monopose of the rank and file with the models does not help out either. 

 I think that I can kit bash the old 6th edition models for some variety for a Great Weapon that would give me the almost the same thing with a 7th model, but I can actually move the left arm around.  The problem is that it is a dis-continued item so what I have is what I have unless I get lucky on E-Bay.  Also I saw and I believe still have some awesome looking pictures of dwarfs that were greenstuffed to look like Ironbreakers from these guys.  One ray of hope is that I have what looks like four peanut butter jars full of Dwarf parts.  One is admittingly my bit jar, but the rest is all new dwarfs.  It will take me a while to run out of Dwarves when I start getting them up and running. 

The other good news is that may be able to find some 4th ed. miniatures out there that are not as flamboyant and can fit into the unit without looking like a character.  Not exactly the easiest but better than nothing.  Also I have not taken a look at Wargames Foundry, or Mirliton's lines and see if they match the same dimensions as GW.  Bugman's said that Foundry are supposed to be larger, however they are comparing a Slayer to a fat dwarf in the pic.  Unfortunatelly I want to see this for myself with what is supposed to be a regular with a regular.  Nevertheless, hope springs eternal on that front, and I saw online that Militron does have crewmembers for cannons and Stonethrowers.  That is something that I really do want to find since I do lack viable variety in models for my artillery crew.  I cant remember right now if Foundry has any warmachines.  Even if they dont quite match up, it would be better than nothing for a new crew.  I have not been impressed with any other manufacturers out there. 

All in all, it is looking worse and worse for the 7th edition that I do have.  Perhaps one or two of the thinner characters may pass muster for me, but I expect to be selling my inventory when I get  a chance to move them, unless I have a wild mood swing which I doubt will happen.  If anyone is interested, please let me know and I will provide you an inventory of what I have. 

Back to Middle Earth once again.

Well I have to point out that a fellow blogger by the name of Der Feldmarschall gave me this tid bit earlier this week in the following post. 

http://derfeldmarschall.blogspot.com/2011/12/hobbit-unexpected-journey-movie-trailer.html

Thanks a bunch for posting this DF.  Now as a Dwarf guy, you would assume that The Hobbit is right in my wheel house.  Unfortunally stereotypes tend to be right right and this is no exception. The Hobbit, and for that matter LOTR as well, is in my opinion an example of classic fantasy literature ranking up there with Grimm's Fairytales, and even though both of these books may be considered to be geared toward the younger crowd I tend to think that they are still great reads for us adults.  I get a lot more out of these works now than when I was younger, and I can understand the richness of these works. 

Now let me comment about the movie.  While I do like the LOTR movies so much that I have the full DVD set, there are several glaring omissions that I wish that they would have kept in the movie, like the clensing of the shire for one.  I understand that they had a time issue, but some of the issues that I have with the movie do change the storyline that provides a larger message rather than just fantasy entertainment.  The Hobbit had much fewer messages in the book, however the movies are supposed to take a broader view of what was happening in Middle Earth at the time.  I am really looking forward to seeing this movie, and from what I see it will tie into the LOTR movies quite neatly.  All in all it looks like a great movie so far and I look forward to seeing it, which will hopefully introduce a lot of the Dwarven culture to us that we see from the books.  For those who want a link take a look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSoD4BBCJc

As a side note the singing of the Dwarves in the movie is much better than the cartoon from back in 1977.  I thought that those damn songs were too childish when I was 6, let alone now.

"A date which will live in Infamy"

According to the story as told to me.  In the span of 24 hours 70 years ago, my Grandfather went from mooring his ship to picking up bodies from the harbor.  From never shooting in anger, to knocking down 7 planes in the span of four hours as the shooter in the battery. From being just a damn kid from the fields, to a veteran in two hours.  From waiting for the launch to go to church at 0800hrs to being thrown off of his boat from the concussion of the Arizona in the span of 20 minutes.  From being at peace to being at war in a blink of an eye.  Reflecting on this day, it should amaze us how quick things change when they do.