Year Ending...Final post of 2012, Year in Review

And so 2012 is soon coming to an end. This will be my last post of this year. The year seems to have flown by.

Much like I did last year, I have decided to do a sort of summary and a comparison of sorts.

As I stated last year, I’m a numbers kind of guy, its my business to crunch numbers, not money but numbers in designing things. So once again numbers always fascinate me. I continued the Hobby Activity Log you can see on the right. The final tally:
                                        2012 2011
Models Built/Converted: 258   225
Models Painted:                46     74
Models Purchased:           181   191
Tournaments Played:         5        4
Go-Kart Races Entered:     72     11


As you can see, even though I did virtually no commission work over the year, I still built and converted more models; about the same number painted; purchased roughly the same number of models, only that the majority this year were not Games Workshop models, but were Gripping Beast. I played one more tournament this year than last year, still fewer than in past years. AND as you can see I really stepped up the go-karting.

Now as I said before, this was not intended to stroke my ego, but was more intended as a motivator and budget type of thing for myself. I have learned a lot by intentionally doing this. I started the blog back in April of 2009 and prior to that spent tons of time posting on forums. Quite honestly it has capped some of my spending, as I saw the gap between what was bought, converted/modeled/ and what was painted once again. I did play more tournaments this year, but far fewer games. And it feels like I converted less minis, but built a ton of models mainly because of my work on Historical armies and the large size of them. My painting is certainly lagging behind again.

Last year I raced in 11 Feature races, which woud be 33 races in total in the modern LTO go-kart. In 2011, my highest finish was second in a heat race and fourth in a Feature race, and I finished 6th in the points championship. This season I raced and attended a great number of karting events, 72 in all. I won 4 Feature races and tons of heat races on the local oval along with the Series points championship. That was quite the leap and a hell of a lot of fun in the modern kart that my oldman and I built. I also jumped into a vintage kart for some roading racing and won the Feature races at Dousman and Quincy, which was extremely cool. The equipment we built for the modern karts definitely worked well. So I did accomplish my goal of racing more.

Five tournaments played, 2 of which were at Adepticon last spring in Warhammer Ancient Battles. I played the singles with my Romans again and played terrible, but had fun. Then teamed Mike Butcher, my Crusaders with his Saxons once again, and we played well and the Team that we named Grumpy Old Coots came away with the Overall Win.

As for the blog, today we are at 254 followers compared to last year at this time the blog had 181 followers, that has increased gradually as I suspected it would. My blog list is growing, and my forum activity has decreased drastically and probably will continue to decrease.

I retired one post from last year as I thought it was a bit dated since it was a review of Conquest Games Mounted Normans, it did have over 2,105 Views.

This I find interesting, here is the top ten in posts as they stood all time on my blog along with the number of hits from 2011:

My first Skaven War Litter conversion: 1,586 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html

My first Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 1,478 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html

Converting Chaos Warrior to Chaos Space Marine post: 848 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html

Boba Fett Chaos Space Marine conversion: 737 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html

Pics of My WAB Imperial Roman Army: 657 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/pics-of-my-wab-roman-army-in-full-force.html

My Chaos Warrior Unit and its conversions: 640 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html

My Preheresy Iron Warrior - Old Stuff Wednesday: 512 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html

One of my Exalted Champions: 469 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-exalted-champion-done.html

My First Orc Fight Scene for a unit: 447 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/09/orc-boyzfight-scene-1.html

So, that was 2011, now we move to 2012 and the top ten viewed posts, with the views currently:

FireForge Games - Teutonic Knights Review: 5,224
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2012/03/fireforge-games-teutonic-knights-kit.html

Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 4,063
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html
Chaos Warriors to Chaos Space Marine: 3,518
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html
Gripping Beast Plastic Viking Hirdmem Review: 3,332
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/gripping-beast-plastic-viking-hirdmen.html

Something Different....Skaven War Litter: 3,058
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html
My Chaos Warrior Unit Beginning to take shape: 2,548
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html
Boba Fett Space Marine Conversion: 2,495
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html
Old Stuff Wednesday - July - Pre-Heresy Iron Warrior: 2,210
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html
Space Wolf Scout Conversions: 2,105
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/09/space-wolf-scout-conversionsusing-chaos.html

Khorne Chaos Space Marine Conversion: 1,590
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/khorne-chaos-space-marine.html

It appears people really liked looking at my review take on Gripping Beast Vikings and the Fireforge Teutonic Knights. As was last year with the Conquest Games Mounted Normans review, I’ve been quite surprised by that. The other thing that is always shown is the popularity of Warhammer 40k, it is really quite unquestionably the most popular of the gaming systems that I work in. My Old Stuff Wednesdays are certainly popular as ever also, as they are routinely high in hits on a monthly basis, even though only one is in the Top 10.

So there you have it once again, my blog. We say good bye to 2012.  As always, I am very much open to suggestions that you the readers may have, I don’t always ignore them.

Fire Forge Miniatures - Mounted Sergeants Review

Well, awhile ago I did a short review of the FireForge Games Templar Knights box, which is a variant of the Teutonics Knight box that I reviewed. The following are links to those reviews:

Teutonics Review

Mounted Templars Review

So, recently I picked up the Mounted Sergeants box.What can I say, here we are again with what I believe is good variant of the the best medieval plastic kit on the market.If you have not checked out my reviews of the Teutonic Knights and the Templar Knights, also from Fireforge, I would recommend that you do so now.

As for the Sergeants kit, much of the box is similar to what we have seen before in the previous two releases.  The weapons are the same, the rider bodies are the same, the command sprue is the same.  What is different are the heads, the shields, and the horses.

In the box you receive two of the above sprue and one of the command sprues.  They are once again coming out of Renedra.

The horses are from Fireforge’s Horse Sprue #2, an unbarded horse, which you get six of in the Templar box set. In this box all twelve horses are unbarded.It comes in 3 base poses with 3 different heads. You can vary up that and make various versions of the horses as shown in the following where I did up just 6 of the horses:

I'm very impressed by the horses, they are very nice looking sculpts. They also compare nicely to their Horse Sprue #1, the caparisoned or barded horse:

The horses are in two halves split down the middle and that sometimes leads to gaps, especially in the rump area of the horse. I put them together very fast and the one below was the worst of the gaps, nothing that I can't fix though, my bad:

Onto the riders.  There are 6-different shields on the two sergeants sprues.  The mounted sergeants heads in this kit are very sweet, I love the variety.There are a total of 20-heads available for twelve miniatures on the sprue and 10 are different ones.  That is awesome variety.   Below are the heads:

Size comparisons, once again I would refer you to the previous review of the Teutonics Knights kit as these are the same size as the previous stuff. Below are some more shots for size comparisons:

From left to right:  Perry Crusader, FireForge Sergeant, GW Brettonian, FireForge Teutonic Knight, Conquest Games Norman.

 Above: Perry Crusader vs. FireForge Sergeant.

 Above: Conquest Games Mounted Norman vs. FireForge Sergeant.

 Above: FireForge Sergeant vs. FireForge Teutonic.

Above: FireForge Sergeant vs. GW Bretonian.

How does it compare to infantry?  Above:  Warlord Games Giant Auxiliary, Warlord Games Roman, Warlord Games ugly Officer, Perry Crusader/Norman, Conquest Games Norman, FireForge Mounted Sergeant, Gripping Beast Plastic Viking, Foundry Roman Tribune.

Bottom line, a great looking kit, well worth my pennies, I’m extremely impressed and I simply cannot wait to get my hands on the infantry. I like this kit much more than the previous two.  

The Hobbit....I went there and back again

I went to the movie yesterday....I've been purposely avoiding anything written about it.  It was somewhat, what I thought it would be early in the movie, with the exception of the dwarf musical that broke out early in the film.  That part I could seriously do without.  I read the book over 25 years ago, and I'm not a fan of Tolkien, so I remember very little of the book. 

I can't say I remember the 3 Stooges being the book, but they did make an appearance in the form of Trolls.  Now I'm a huge 3 Stooges fan, but I did not care for this.  I guess I really don't think of  the book as Children's story as I would something form CS Lewis, but the movie definitely seems to be directed at a very young audience, even though the majority of the people that were at the theatre watching were my age or older, and very few were teens.  There was quite a bit more humor in the movie, than say in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I also did not remember the talking standup comic known as the Goblin King.  And for awhile I thought I was watching that Raider of the Lost Ark movie scene where their in the mines.

The Gollum and Bilbo interaction was good, I did remember the riddles and such.  The warg chase scenes were fun, and the eagles were interesting.  The Elves were just as I remember them pompous jerks.  They did a pretty good job of hiding the dragon in the scenes. 

One thing I did not like was the sound in the Theatre, even for someone like myself that has a bit of a problem with a ringing ear and some minor hearing loss in that same ear, I found it way too loud, the normal sound should not make a person cringe.  I noticed this in the last movie, Prometheus, that I went too also, and a older friend of mine mentioned the same thing when he went to Lincoln.  I may have to take ear plugs next time.

The other thing I noticed, the commercials for the TV shows, I don't remember ever seeing that damn many TV show promos for NBC, Fox, and FX.  I must say that most of those promos however bad that they were, were actually better than the Movie Trailers that were playing.  I just wanted to blurt out "Stupid" after having to sit through all of them.  I guess my tastes in movies is not that popular....

All in all, I thought the movie was.....okay.  Not great, but not bad either.  Its not an instant favorite or classic in my book, but my tastes in movies are very particular and I go to maybe one or two movies a year and view about 90% of what comes out of Hollywood as trash and not worth my time.

Edit:  One of the things I forgot to mention, was something that I have noticed with all the recent movies (which isn't many, I can count them all on one hand since 2010) that I have gone to since the 3D craze has hit the Theatres, it the amount of crap that appears to be coming at you.  Much of which is forced and bad camera angles, I really dislike that.  I noticed this movie had its fair share of that going on.  I purposely went to the 2D version since I already wear glasses and ride amusment park rides regularly in a high powered racing go-kart to get my fair share of entertaining ride-alongs.

2nd Foundry Roman Tribune in Paint

Well the previous mini was a disappoint, by comparison this miniature was a pleasure to paint.  Its a nice sculpt, decent size, and smooth, very easy to paint.

Like the previous two Roman officers, this model is for sale.  The basing I left plain for the future owner to do with as he or she pleases.

Warlord Games should take lessons from Foundry, this is how a cape should be sculpted.  It made painting it a breeze.

On the helmet I went for a nice bronze look.  All in all, I'm pleased with how the miniature turned out.

Imperial Roman Officer - Painted and Rant

 I've had this miniature for a long time, a Warlord Games, Imperial Roman Officer.  Its an okay miniature by itself.   The miniature has some problems though such as the hands and the head, otherwise its just okay.

Much like the Roman Tribune that I showed previously I intend to rid myself of this model.  Although I like the Foundry model, I can't say the same for this hunk of metal.  Probably get rid of it after the first of the year on Ebay or if someone wants to make an offer on it. 

This model came in a two pack with the mounted officer.  The mounted officer model is much nicer.  The cape is good from the front, but the the back just does not flow well.  The Foundry Tribune model is much nicer in that regard.  The model is not easy to paint.  The feet are poorly detailed.  The helmet on the sculpt is rather quirky to me.

Now onto the rant.  Its all about SCALE, something that Warlord Games apparently sucks at.  I really want to like their miniatures, but after working with them for 3 years, I don't like them.  This officer is another example of their poor quality control in the scale department.  Their plastics are already small to begin with, but this model in my opinion has a shrunken head and enormus hands.  Below is a comparison shot with a plastic model.

I can not recommend their Romans.  Yes they are better than War Factory Games, but that is not saying much.  To say that Warlord Games has disappointed me is an understatement.  I said this to a friend of mine the other day, I'm done with them.  I have a box of Praetorians that I'm dreading even working on, after that box is done, that's it.  They are off my list of Roman miniature manufacturers....

A Foundry Roman Tribune - Full Color

 I finished up this Foundry Roman Tribune while working on the Vikings today.  I do not have a use for this model, so its up for sale, probably Ebay after the first or the year, or best offer. 

This a good sculpt, very easy to paint in comparison to the Warlord Games miniatures.  Everything flows in the miniature.  The detail is quite good. 

I think the red cape turned out nicely.  The fleshtones are Reaper Master Series Triads.

I based the model with some ballast and left it plain for the eventual Owner to flock to match his army or as he sees fit.

Merry Christmas from Rome

Having taken care of the family things this past weekend, I have a day to myself to work on things.  So merry Christmas to me, I get to paint and build toy soldiers today.  This is where I'm at this morning after adding the static grass and and grass tufts to the bases and movement tray.

As you can tell, I still have not decided what to do on the shields, but I'm very happy with how things turned out overall.

I'm glad I added the guy with the cavalry mask.  The pilum throwers in the second rank were also a good addition to the unit.

I did not realize how psychotic the one below in the cape looked until after I painted his face.

The eyecandy on the movement tray is in my opinion awesome.  Just what I wanted.  I'll get all of the other trays put together today and based.

Note the weird prune faced guy in the second rank below.  I like how the Praetorian turned out.  I have plenty of command models, so I will add the musician and standard later.

There is your morning update.