Will Wonders Never Cease?
It's been another hard week in the studio, but that's not a complaint; simply the reason why I've been quiet for a few days.
In the last two weeks, as I noted a couple of posts back, the Memsahib and I have taken to a daily swim before work. This means that I don't get my first coffee of the day until 2 hours later than normal, but it does mean that I am getting exercise which is also beneficial as I spend my days hunched over my desk painting, and it goes some way to countering the effects of doing so on my neck and spine, without any high impact which would not be good at all for my arthritis.
I'd recommend swimming for any of you who have desk jobs or who spend a lot of time painting figures. It'll make a hell of a difference, and after several of my contemporaries have checked out from planet Earth in the last two years, I'll try anything that might balance the scales in my favour somewhat. The premature loss of my Mum to undiagnosed heart problems in May has played very heavily on my mind so a bit of gentle but determined activity is a step in the right direction.
As I also mentioned in a previously, I purchased the new Adeptus Titanicus game after Roger poked his stick of inquiry through the bars of my cage and then threw me the peanuts of curiosity to munch on.
I looked in the box on the day the game arrived and I frankly blanched when I saw the number of pieces which needed to be built. Now, when the original game came out, it was a 5 minute job to get a Titan into a playable form, but that was in the early days of GW plastic components. Today it's a different world where ivory tower dwellers like I, are assaulted by kits with 100+ parts and told 'it's normal' - Yes, of course it is for today's gamers, but in my day we called these precision model kits and bought them from shops like Beatties, Marcway and Redgates - they did not come as part of a game and would have been a very elite (and expensive * ) way to come up with figures for a tabletop battle.
Anyway, this morning my good lady was too fragile to swim and so, we had a bit of a lie in for a change, but by 10:27 I was getting restless and so I prowled downstairs for coffee and mental stimulation, my eyes alighting on the A.T box.
And that was where the first wonder occurred, when I decided to start and build a Titan...
Ten minutes and a cheeky shower later saw the second wonder graced our humble home, when a brief visit to my studio 'up on 3' saw me with clippers, glue and scalpels in hand (and yes I did trot through the house with a handful of sharp blades in front of me, because I was that way out this A.M) and was opening the box at the dining table (I know my studio would have been better, but I am in there enough as it is, so quit nagging!) and fighting down the rising fear which ran it's tongue up and down my spine.
5 hours of hard graft later, a third wonder came to be, and I had the two Warlord class Titans built to the point of painting. The bodies have been left partially constructed ahead of being sprayed and the armour plates have been left off as they will be painted separately. I did however make use of the magnet mounting points that GW thoughtfully included in the tooling so that I have my model future proofed ahead of any additional weapons sets being released. For this e interested, I used epoxy to secure the rare earth magnets, but always make sure that you have the polarities right before gluing them into place. I made all of the magnets on the torso mounting points, 'positive' and the magnets on the weapons themselves, 'negative'.
I am really really impressed with the tooling on the models and the detail is outstanding. I thought that they were excessively priced as you may recall, but I reiterate that I've had to reevaluate that position and apologise to Roger for my rantings because they really are something else and the building process although tedious for me (because of my job, rather than the models) endeared me to them even more.
Anyway, this is where I was at close of play today (although I really do hate 'working' a the weekend):
The legs are a work of art and are very possible if that's your bag. Just be careful as they are tricksy if you don't look at the instructions (yes, I got it wrong at first) and like me, you're building two kits at once.
So, all in all a day of wonders has ensued.
Having shelled out last week for 1200 15mm renaissance, together with the cost of having them painted, I am pretty much placing an embargo on any more spending for the year, but I did weaken slightly, earlier on in the week, when I purchased a couple of the new Reaver class Titans, which mercifully have a few less pieces.
I have to say that despite my earlier reservations, this is the most accessible LARGE mocha game on the market today. True, if you are a frugal gamer you may as well stick with Battletech but if you can afford A.T then it's going to give you a lot of value for money by the look of things.
TTFN
PS: I also indulged in several Marks & Spencer sweaters in pastel shades, for the winter convention season, because you have to keep ahead in the sartorial stakes after all, and being an old school gamer, knitwear was very big in the 80s.
* Back then, there were no mecha games so we bought 1/72 and 1/100 scale Robotech kits which were truly enormous and not cheap and as I have recounted before, we wrote our own rules - see that FASA? We were there first!.
This expense was magnified because we bought dozens of them and our collective pocket money was drained very quickly indeed. That said, we were pretty good builders and painters and there were always older sic-fi gamers we knew on the show circuit who would pay handsomely for our work. We could sell one and buy three more larger kits on average.
We also routinely carved up these expensive kits to model them with exposed superconductor cables and the like, which did sometimes lead to hysterical outbursts when we goofed up.
The Tactical Pod Regult was a bastard of a model with it's possible legs that were always loose, leading to the permanent posing of the joints with adhesive.
In the last two weeks, as I noted a couple of posts back, the Memsahib and I have taken to a daily swim before work. This means that I don't get my first coffee of the day until 2 hours later than normal, but it does mean that I am getting exercise which is also beneficial as I spend my days hunched over my desk painting, and it goes some way to countering the effects of doing so on my neck and spine, without any high impact which would not be good at all for my arthritis.
I'd recommend swimming for any of you who have desk jobs or who spend a lot of time painting figures. It'll make a hell of a difference, and after several of my contemporaries have checked out from planet Earth in the last two years, I'll try anything that might balance the scales in my favour somewhat. The premature loss of my Mum to undiagnosed heart problems in May has played very heavily on my mind so a bit of gentle but determined activity is a step in the right direction.
As I also mentioned in a previously, I purchased the new Adeptus Titanicus game after Roger poked his stick of inquiry through the bars of my cage and then threw me the peanuts of curiosity to munch on.
I looked in the box on the day the game arrived and I frankly blanched when I saw the number of pieces which needed to be built. Now, when the original game came out, it was a 5 minute job to get a Titan into a playable form, but that was in the early days of GW plastic components. Today it's a different world where ivory tower dwellers like I, are assaulted by kits with 100+ parts and told 'it's normal' - Yes, of course it is for today's gamers, but in my day we called these precision model kits and bought them from shops like Beatties, Marcway and Redgates - they did not come as part of a game and would have been a very elite (and expensive * ) way to come up with figures for a tabletop battle.
Anyway, this morning my good lady was too fragile to swim and so, we had a bit of a lie in for a change, but by 10:27 I was getting restless and so I prowled downstairs for coffee and mental stimulation, my eyes alighting on the A.T box.
And that was where the first wonder occurred, when I decided to start and build a Titan...
Ten minutes and a cheeky shower later saw the second wonder graced our humble home, when a brief visit to my studio 'up on 3' saw me with clippers, glue and scalpels in hand (and yes I did trot through the house with a handful of sharp blades in front of me, because I was that way out this A.M) and was opening the box at the dining table (I know my studio would have been better, but I am in there enough as it is, so quit nagging!) and fighting down the rising fear which ran it's tongue up and down my spine.
5 hours of hard graft later, a third wonder came to be, and I had the two Warlord class Titans built to the point of painting. The bodies have been left partially constructed ahead of being sprayed and the armour plates have been left off as they will be painted separately. I did however make use of the magnet mounting points that GW thoughtfully included in the tooling so that I have my model future proofed ahead of any additional weapons sets being released. For this e interested, I used epoxy to secure the rare earth magnets, but always make sure that you have the polarities right before gluing them into place. I made all of the magnets on the torso mounting points, 'positive' and the magnets on the weapons themselves, 'negative'.
I am really really impressed with the tooling on the models and the detail is outstanding. I thought that they were excessively priced as you may recall, but I reiterate that I've had to reevaluate that position and apologise to Roger for my rantings because they really are something else and the building process although tedious for me (because of my job, rather than the models) endeared me to them even more.
Anyway, this is where I was at close of play today (although I really do hate 'working' a the weekend):
The legs are a work of art and are very possible if that's your bag. Just be careful as they are tricksy if you don't look at the instructions (yes, I got it wrong at first) and like me, you're building two kits at once.
So, all in all a day of wonders has ensued.
Having shelled out last week for 1200 15mm renaissance, together with the cost of having them painted, I am pretty much placing an embargo on any more spending for the year, but I did weaken slightly, earlier on in the week, when I purchased a couple of the new Reaver class Titans, which mercifully have a few less pieces.
I have to say that despite my earlier reservations, this is the most accessible LARGE mocha game on the market today. True, if you are a frugal gamer you may as well stick with Battletech but if you can afford A.T then it's going to give you a lot of value for money by the look of things.
TTFN
PS: I also indulged in several Marks & Spencer sweaters in pastel shades, for the winter convention season, because you have to keep ahead in the sartorial stakes after all, and being an old school gamer, knitwear was very big in the 80s.
* Back then, there were no mecha games so we bought 1/72 and 1/100 scale Robotech kits which were truly enormous and not cheap and as I have recounted before, we wrote our own rules - see that FASA? We were there first!.
This expense was magnified because we bought dozens of them and our collective pocket money was drained very quickly indeed. That said, we were pretty good builders and painters and there were always older sic-fi gamers we knew on the show circuit who would pay handsomely for our work. We could sell one and buy three more larger kits on average.
We also routinely carved up these expensive kits to model them with exposed superconductor cables and the like, which did sometimes lead to hysterical outbursts when we goofed up.
The Tactical Pod Regult was a bastard of a model with it's possible legs that were always loose, leading to the permanent posing of the joints with adhesive.
If you look at the price of the better quality scale model kits, these prices aren't bad at all. Is there only one titan kit? I had a look on the GW site and could only find one.
ReplyDeleteThey are very cool reincarnations of something from the 80s - turned up to 11.
ReplyDelete