Category: General

So I realize I was suppose to write this as a daily post while it was going on.  I also realize that at the very least I should have done a wrapup either Sunday or Monday after it was ended.  I didn’t, so sue me. I had finals to do, thesis papers to write, overtime to do at work, and lots of crap going on.  I’m writing it now though.  So be happy or go tape your thumbs to your fingers and pretend your a dinosaur.  Either way is fine by me.

For those of you who don’t know GameStorm, is a gaming convention in the Portland area. In fact it is one of the ONLY gaming conventions in the Portland area.  This seems to be the 12th one that they have done so far. As such you would think that it would be a veritable smorgasboard of gaming, well run conventionness, and in general live up to it’s name.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.  Twelve Storms in and the only thing they manage to “storm” is FailStorm.  The entire convention feels very amateurish, slap-dash put together at the last minute, and in general not worth the money that you pay to go let alone all of the other money that you pay for the events, food, gas, etc.

So it’s that time again, time for GameStorm.  This marks the 12th year that this convention has ran and one would think by now that they would have figured it out and managed to gain a clue by now. So to give a bit of back story to help you understand, they have had a year to plan this convention. I know for a fact that for at least the last six months they have been meeting regularly to work out the details. Yet somehow they managed to not have the event signup system open until less than a week away from the convention.

To further row the failboat along, they then closed event signups three days after they opened them.  Further evidence comes from the fact that the game store just received the fliers for the convention today.  Yes, you heard me right. They sent out the advertisement material and it was delivered the day of the convention.  I could go into more details, such as the fact that there was hardly anyone at the convention today, the bullshit stuff that they did regarding comps that they said they were going to give away to last years event organizers, the fact that the convention wasn’t even setup today, or how most of the material for things wasn’t even there (such as the miniatures for the painting competition).  But I won’t.  Let’s just move the hell along.

So before I get to far I want to let everyone know that I fixed the comments on the site and they can be left again.  There, that is out of the way.   So onto other things.  In a decision that smacks purely of self loathing or stupidity, I’m not sure which yet, I decided to start an orc army.  It all started innocently enough.  I was curious. A friend told me about them, said they were really cool and everyone was playing them.  Said it was just splitting the Assault on Black Reach box set with him since no one else would.  I swear I didn’t inhale.  Then next thing you know I’m short on rent money, I have a scar on my side and waking up in a tub of ice, and I own the shoebox full of orcs that you see in the picture.  We have all been there.  DON’T YOU JUDGE ME GOD DAMN YOU!  All of them unpainted and 90% of them not put together and/or unprimed.  Plus I have other stuff still on the sprue that is not pictured.  But this is the majority of the army, almost 2500 points worth of Orcy goodness.

So last Saturday was the 1500 pt Rogue Trader Tournament at Knightfall Games.  I rushed about trying to get all of my army put together and painted and tried to finish making a display board for them.  Unfortunately my display board did not get finished and actually managed to break itself mid tournament.  However, I did manage to get most of my army painted.

So a quick preface of the whole point of this community spotlight series.  I realized that a lot of people do tutorials, tactics, battle reports, and everything else.  And don’t get me wrong, that stuff is great and I will be doing some of that in the future.  But I noticed that most people don’t really talk about the community that much.  When they do they generally only mention it briefly and they only talk about Games Workshop employees, or various writers & designers.  Little attention is given to the players.  So that is what this series is going to be about.  It will focus on talking to the people that play the game and getting their ideas, opinions, and insights no matter who much they should be stabbed for having them.

So the site is still changing and a lot is going on around here.  The look of things is changing, homework is being missed as I’m forgetting it in the mad rush to get everything done, homeless people aren’t having rubber squeeky toy cheeseburgers thrown at them.  I’m just way behind on all of my obligations.  Hopefully things will get a bit less hectic once I get everything setup so that I can have some semblance of order and an easy routine.

Also I wanted to let everyone know to check out a couple of videos that Chris the owner over at Knightfall just put up in the last day or two.  The first one is here, this one has the music that he asked me to make for his videos.  For my first time back at creating a track in two or three years I thought it turned out really well.   The second one is here.  This is a video that he made testing out his new camera featuring some of the models from my Chaos army and some really nice stop motion photography.  Definitely check them out.

Since I know that all two of you readers out there have just been dieing to know what is going on with the website I thought I should give a quick news update. For those playing the home game you may have noticed that I have started to make some changes around here.  First off I am refocusing the site in line with my new hobbies, video editing, photo’s, and mainly Warhammer 40K.

So your thinking about getting started with miniature wargaming are you? Thought you would see what it’s like and pick up an army and get to      slaughtering the alien, the mutant, the heretic.  More likely you are like the rest of us and either have no life, no girlfriend, to much money, are a rampant nerd, or some combination there-of.  Whatever the case you need to find a place to start.  Well, look no further as I will get you started on that wonderful path and soon you too will be worshiping our great overlord and provider of our WarCrack, Games Workshop.

If your interested I also have a companion video to this guide up on Youtube that is a good place to start. It gives a quick and brief synopsis of the major salient points.  I also want to take a quick second and thank everyone who watched and commented on the video and everyone that comes here and reads and leaves comments.  I will be making more videos and trying to update this blog with more information and articles as much as possible.  Unfortunately between work and school it doesn’t always leave me much time.  Anyway, on to the reason why you came here.