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.

There were several interesting events that we attended, one of which was the Preconstructed Deck challenge against Peter Adkinson & Richard Garfield.  Me & Shananana Ben faced off against them as the first people to play and it was definitely a fun experience, for me at least.  Peter Adkinson is a decent player and actually a really nice person.  It was a pleasure to sit there and bullshit with him for 10 or 15 minutes while we played.  In the end I lost to him but I am fine with that.  I was there more for the experience than anything.   Ben faced off against Richard Garfield (the creator of Magic The Gathering in case you lick bus windows), and managed to beat him.  At the end of the convention I had heard that only two people actually managed to beat Mr. Garfield the entire weekend, and Ben was the first.   According to the Shananana though, beating Richard Garfield isn’t a very fun experience.  Seems the dude was either in a really shitty mood and was taking it out on those around him, or he just doesn’t like loosing at a game he created.  Either way I say Meh.

One of the things that I tried to do was hit up several of the panels just to try to get the full experience of the convention.  Most of them were fairly disorganized and amateurish and a waste of the hour that you sat there when you could have been next door in the console gaming room having a lot more fun.  One that while it was quite disorganized was still good was the Character Acting vs Acting out panel.  This one was chaired by Skull Dixon, Vincent Baker and someone else who I’m not sure if they were worth remembering or not.  Most of the useful discussion was done between Misters Dixon, Baker, and the attendees of the panel with Meesers Not-Named-In-This-Scene piping in something occasionally.  If I feel like it I might at some point right a post about this panel if I decide to get back into writing about gaming in general.

The final thing to mention was the Warhammer 40K tournaments.  These were run by the guys up at Game Matrix in Tacoma.  And boy, let me tell you they should have fucking stayed in Tacoma.  A lot of hype was put into this tournament by them stating that it was going to be $300 worth of prizes and swag for winning the tournament.  Knightfall Games had three of us there repping the store, plus one of the other local stores had someone in the tournament repping them too.  When it came time to hand out prizes it wasn’t so much $300 worth of swag for first place, it was more “we have a cardboard box with shit in it that we couldn’t sell at the shop and has been sitting around getting drawn on with permanent marker so we threw it in a box and now we are getting rid of it by foisting this shit on you” that maybe added up to $300.  On top of that KFG donated $100 worth of gift cards from the shop so it ended up everyone got some sort of prize and just for being in the tournament they got a $10 gift card from the store.

The MegaBattle & the Tournament were both won by yours truly.  As far as competition goes, the only real competition was from the people that regularly hang out and play at the shop here in town.  Overall it wasn’t worth the time or money that I put into sending three of us, there was a lot of drama with the people who run GameStorm, and I am not sure if it is worth it to go back next year.  The sad part is that unless I want to drive to Seattle I probably have no choice if I want to go to a gaming 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.

For those of you who are wondering whatever happened with the orc painting series I was going to do last week it was unfortunately cancelled.  I ended up getting none of my models fully painted, and they still aren’t painted.  Yay for schoolwork and mid-terms interfering. The tournament went well though at least.  The last mission of the day was sort of a load of bullshit, but overall it was a fun event.  My little sister competed for the first time and ended up getting “Best Sportsmanship” which netted her $70.  Not bad for a first showing.

One last piece of news is that the Blood Angels codex is coming out.  I managed to get my hands on a copy of it and I posted a preview of it over on my youtube site. Video is at the bottom.  I am definitely interested in seeing how well the army plays, and seeing some of the new models that are coming out.  Shananana Ben is working on creating a Stormraven gunship and will be running some test games with the new codex so hopefully will be able to get some videos of that up soon.

I will also be doing a report on FailStorm over the course of the weekend, posting pictures, and may do a live broadcast from there several times.  If anyone is in the PDX area and attending, hit me up and lets get a game in or something.  I will probably be either wandering around, or wasting time playing Magic just to have something to do.

Anyway, in a further rash and misguided decision I decided that with a tournament only a few weeks away I was tired of Chaos and I wanted to switch it up.  Give everyone at the tourney a surprise.  They were use to me playing my Sex for the Blood God list.  Lets give them something they aren’t expecting.  Hell, and while I am at it maybe I can push some wins instead of constant draws against all these Space Marine players.  So I decided to sign up for the 1750 Tourney and  at the FLGS, then a 2000 pt tourney the next week at GameStorm 12 and run a Green Tide Army.

This means that for my 1750 list I would have 11 days to paint 132 models.   This means that every day I would need to get 12 models fully painted, washed, sealed, and based.  And to make it even more difficult my display board painted, converted, and finished.  All of this I would need to have done by the 20th, without taking any time off from work.  This would mean I would have approximately 2 – 3 hours every day that I could work on my models as I work 10 hour shifts.  Roughly an hour before work and an hour to two after work.   I can do it.  Suuuuure.

I will be posting pictures and progress as things go on.  No matter what I will play these damned green skinned bastards at the next tournament.  Whether or not I get full paint points which the tournaments tend to come down to for deciding the winner is another story.  But it should be an interesting experience with lots of me covered in paint and my hands glued to the table.

There was a great turnout for the event with lots of good players showing up.  It ended up being 3 rounds with 14 people.  Overall though the entire tournament ended up being sort of lack luster though.  The missions were okay, they just really weren’t designed with a tournament in mind it seemed.  The most common outcome of the day was a draw, with me getting three draws and a crushing defeat (my last opponent tabled me), which was actually slightly better than average.  Pictures and some video from the event below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPMbmhmKAPQ

For my first one out I wanted to start out strong to get the ball rolling.  When I was thinking about it I quickly came to the realization that in all of the 40K Community there is one unsung hero everywhere.  This is the person that no one ever thinks about, few people if any talk about, and everyone just sort of generally ignores until they need them.  Who is this person you might be wondering?  It’s the employees and owners of the local gameshops and clubs that we all play at.  These people tire endlessly to give us our models, cut us good deals on our supplies, and make sure that we have a place to play and tournaments with great prizes.  Yet no one really stops to consider that they are there.

I got a chance to sit down and talk with Chris, the owner of the local game shop Knightfall Games, where I spend most of my time when I’m not working, at school, or doing stuff for the site.  Heck, most of my videos are even filmed at his site.  Chris runs a great shop that I highly advise anyone in the Portland area to come by and check out and maybe bring your army along.  He has several really nice tables in the shop, open gaming almost every day of the week, a large amount of terrain that he has either made and assembled himself or gone to great lengths to procure.  Always an interesting guy to talk to, and makes spending time at the shop really enjoyable. I found it to definitely be a learning experience to do this interview.

The fact that he took time out of running around the shop getting his todo list done to sit down and answer questions alone shows that he does care about his players and always makes time for his customers.  So if you ever have time I would suggest swinging by, no matter if your just getting started, have questions about this game or any others, looking for a new game to play, or just looking for a great place to hang out.   Now if he would just get my Rockstar Punch flavored crack in stock…

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.

Thought I would give a sneak peak of some of the things that are to come.  First off, more videos.  As you may have noticed there was a flood of new posts all with battle reports in them.  I was originally going to make a page and just slap them on there but that is to static, doesn’t send out notices to any of you people that actually care to subscribe, and a few other things.  This way you can also leave comments on them either here or on youtube.  Huzzah!

Next up is I plan on starting some videos in several different series.  Things like painting, converting, assembly, playing, explaining the rules, etc. are going to be the biggest ones.  I also plan on doing a question and answer series as well as possibly a series of articles and maybe accompanying videos on tactica. One of the big things that I want to do but I need to work out some of the details with people is videos of unboxing of some of the new swag and goodies that come out either before they are released or as soon as they hit shelves.  Give all you gibbering fanatics a chance to see what is in the box before you buy it, that sort of thing.

So if you guys have any ideas for videos, things you want to see, suggestions you want to make, or questions that you want answered send them in!  All feedback is more than welcome, and I promise not to make fun of anyone for anything they send in (unless you just want me to). Just drop them in the comments, send me a message or email, or use the contact form on here to send in your ideas/suggestions/questions/concerns/tips/tricks/lessons learned on the best way to hide dead hookers/whatever!

With that in mind I have added a gallery where I will be putting the pictures that I take of my miniatures, various other peoples miniatures, you when you are in your room and think no one is watching (oh, I’m watching.  Don’t worry), things like that.  I have also added a section for battle reports .  This is where you will find the gripping video capturing of my games of Warhammer 40K and other peoples down at Knightfall Games (or on the rare occasion I go somewhere else those videos too), and occasionally other peoples battles if they look to be more interesting than me loosing.

I also plan to start posting more as is probably obvious by two whole posts already this year.  I will be doing articles on painting, modeling, and playing what else but Warhammer 40K (and maybe other stuff to if I get bored).  I am still slowly trying to redesign the layout of the site but I suck at making the pretty.  Damn it Jim, I’m a programmer not some mouth breathing mac user in the colored pencil department.

So for those of you I haven’t offended yet, check back again later.  I’m sure at some point I will manage it.  For those of you that I have, it’s okay.  We all knew eventually you would find a dictionary and look up what all those big angry letters mean.  It had to happen sooner or later.

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.

Necessary Tools

These are the tools that you really need and can’t live without.  I will try to provide prices for them where possible as well and give a brief description of it and why you need it.

• Hobby Knife: ($5 – $10) You will find a veritable plethora of uses for this.  From trimming flashing on your pieces, cutting up models to convert them, cutting out transfers, to stabbing your opponent when they kill your HQ on turn 1 before you even get to move him.  Like I said, the uses are endless.
• Clippers: ($8 – $15) Also known as sprue cutters.  As the name implies they well, they clip things.  Useful for cleaning up metal mini’s or clipping the pieces off of the sprue when you buy a box of miniatures.
• Super Glue: (Approx $8) You will need this for gluing your mini’s together. Also mainly used to glue your fingers to your other fingers, to the model, to your hand, to your pants, and especially to the table. You will generally glue your fingers together more than the model.
• Brushes: ($2 – $20 each) The stuff you put the paint on with.  As a general rule you don’t want to buy the packs of brushes that go for around $10 – $20 for a set.  They are good for things like dry brushes, applying  glue and varnish, etc.  That is about it though as they fall apart to quickly.  Get Sable or Kolinsky brushes.  You will need at least one set, though I recomend two.  One for normal paints, one for metallics.  You will need a range of sizes.  I suggest pointed round or detail round brushes: 10/0, 5/0, 0, 1, 2, 4 and flat brushes: 2, 4, & 6.
• Paint: ($3 – $5 per color) These tend to come in 12 to 17 ml bottle or pots and are generally sold individually.  You can buy them in sets.  I suggest Vallejo or Citadel paints. This is what your gonna cover your hands and hopefully with enough practice, the models with. They tend to last for a good while.  Get acrylics. NEVER GET ENAMEL! It is the tool of the devil and used only by right wing fundamentalist psychos for painting poorly speeled signs proclaiming that Jebus hates democrats.  Also get a can of flat black or white ACRYLIC spray paint or primer.  This will be the base coat for all of your models.  You can buy a can from Wal-Marx for like $1.  Do it.  Starving children in Africa will thank you for it.
• Water Pot: (Free) A glass, a cup, a bowl, your dog.  It doesn’t matter as long as it can hold water and you can wash out your brushes in them.

So that is really all of the necessary tools that you will need to get started with.  In a later article I will go into more detail on some of the optional items you can buy if you are ready to stop having a girlfriend and start being serious about mini war gaming.  For now though this is enough to get you started.