Penticton

   In an effort to spend quality time with Rachel's mom, her family booked a trip together to Penticton. Rachel's sister has a house there with her family. I was nice to have other kids for Rosalind to interact with. Cousin One is a 4 year old with a plethora of energy (what four year old doesn't?) and Cousin Two is 6 days younger then Rosie but isn't yet walking. 

    

    We drove to Edmonton to catch the plane to BC for $50 each way, how crazy is that? I sure wish Regina had direct routes like that! Not that I'm much of a flyer. I have a fear of highs, which is all fine on an airplane as long as I am not falling out of said aircraft. I actually do enjoy looking out the window and seeing all the mountain ranges and lakes and bonkers flat prairies when we land back in Alberta. 

    Before this year and last year,  I had only been to BC once. When I was 10, my family drove to Vancouver. We spent time at the Butchard Gardens, rode a ferry to the island and rented a cabin in Ninaimo, BC. There was also some visiting of Uncles and Great Aunts throughout the trip.

    In Penticton, there are bike lanes all around! Electric bikes are fairly common on the paths. I originally thought that took away from the experience, the point of a bike is to be fit and go places right? I wasn't thinking of major health problems as you age or whatever the case. Electric bikes assist those who need it and the more bikes on the road the better the infrastructure, hopefully. Some people are opposed to the bike lanes, on the board walk, there was a lady with a bristle board complaining about the bike lanes in small print. Who are you talking to? The tourists? Like that's going to change anything!

    Anyways! Bikes are great PERIOD. Rachel and I did manage to get some board games in with some of the family. We played Five Tribes, which we both haven't played, and Wingspan. 

    Five Tribes I had hear was good, and it is. I think the "worker placement" part of the game is a great change of pace for the traditional pick what you want to do type games. Instead you pick up any group of works on a tile and spread them out like bread crumbs from the original tile. On the last tile you pick up all the same coloured meeples as the last meeple in the line. Each colour is a different action to play out. Rachel beat me by 2 points with the other players being about 20 and 40 points more, not too bad for our first times.

    Wingspan is one of the only board game that Rachel's sister will play. We had some odd end of game bonuses, like Birds looking Right. Which I focused almost exclusively on throughout the game. Rachel won, of course, but the scores were 105,106, 107 and 111, the 107 being mine. That's only one more round of laying eggs or one more bird! Crazy! The copy of Wingspan also had 3D printed token holder and bird house action selection markers, linked for the Wingnuts out there. I might've sent those files to my local library that night to be printed so they would be ready when I returned home.

    We went on hikes through the forests, one which had a stream running parallel to the path. Swam in the lakes, and took in a farmer's market as well as visited family and such. 

So proud of her stick!

Discovering puddles on our morning walk

    There was a lot of down time for me during the evening, as I would stay and watch Rosalind so Rachel could visit with her family more. This meant that I surfed eBay quite a bit, and found a listing for some Imperial Guard Sentinels. Four Sentinels for the price of one new one.... ish. They aren't in the best shape, after putting in an offer and getting it accepted, I thought maybe these were metal Sentinels not described as such in the listing. They arrived a couple days ago and wasn't the case. 

    Sentinels are one of my favourite vehicles from the Imperial Guard line. I owned one sentinel before buying this lot so now I have 5! These would make for a good combat patrol, scouting out the frontline for the heavy support. Seeing as I picked up Sly Marbo for the previous edition of Kill Team and the store reopening/ support independent model, the Catachan Colonel. I think building a small Catachan force might be in my future if new models from GW come out or I find decent 3rd party miniatures.

    The weekend I got back from BC, I was able to go to a Warcry Tournament at our local GW store. Got three games in with my Slaanesh Daemons, with an ally of Vasillac the Gifted. 

Setup all original starter set Warcry Terrain

    The first round, I was paired against a warband made up of units from the Cursed City box. The blood born vampires, the one perched on ruins on it's base, were able to keep up with Slaansesh speed wise and did some good damage. The ogre was very tanky, taking them out wasn't an option. I mainly went for the objective of getting units off the board, but should have taken out more of his warband to deny him points. Lost the first round.

    I had a buy for round two. Third round I won, as it was a game of keep away against slow orcs. Due to a poor decision of activation, I almost lost the treasure which would have costed me the round. Silly me didn't take pictures, oops!

   At the end of the day we had a battle royal with 500 pts each with five players. Victory went to the warband that was holding the treasure at the end of round four. The other Slaanesh player brought Fiends which are able to climb, unlike my mounted Seekers. Letting him escape over terrain and leaving me in the dust.

View from my starting area

    Death and order had a bit of a grudge match in the opposite corner of the map, mostly due to how slow they both were. 

    This tournament has gotten me excited to keep playing Warcry, even if there is rumoured to be another version coming out this summer. And based on the turn out, two chaos, one order, two death and two destruction warbands) I want to start a Cities of Sigmar flavoured warband. There is a lot of variety and customization that can be added to the warband. A crew from Hammerhal Ghyra might have Stormcast Eternals of the Hallowed Knight or Anvils of Heldenhammer variety or Sylvaneth to aid them, where as the Aqshy might have Ironweld Arsenal at their disposal. What about Anvilguard? Under morathi's control the Daughters of Khaine and Black Arc Corsairs would fit in nicely. Lots of choices! I picked up some Freeguild guard and Crossbowmen from Varagesale for cheap to start with, all I know is this project could get wildly out of hand! I am already looking at the Demigryph Knights longingly.....

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I plan to join the Season of Scenery Challenge started by Dave Stone which starts on July 1st and runs to August 31st. In the last week of June, I have been finishing up miniatures that were an inch away from finish. Chaos cultists from Blackstone fortress, Metal Slaanesh Fiends and of course continuing with the Character of the Month Challenge, which I am really behind on! I have May finished, just need to post it with a story and June's character is getting close to being done too.

Triple the Glott, Triple the Fun! - Monster May(hem)

         Here we are, final day of May. More importantly, the end of the Monster May(hem) challenge! I didn't get around to the Idoneth Deepkin, instead I opted to paint some of the Giant Spiders I picked up from Wargames Atlantic as they can be used in Rangers of Shadowdeep which requires 6 or more. A quick peek through the rules and I didn't find anything about what base size these giants spiders should be. The box comes with 12 of each size so that shouldn't be a problem.

    These boxes are great, they have victims that are wrapped up in webbing and options to make sci-fi spiders with guns! If the stinger wasn't lethal enough, the plasma gun will be! Combining a Goblin box from WA allows you to make Spider Riders, pretty nifty box. However, not having instructions and fiddly spider legs doesn't make it easy to assemble. A good trick is using baking soda with your plastic glue, makes it harden quickly so you can get onto the other 7 legs and 2 mandibles. In the future, I might use the plasma gun arms of the spiders on some Tyranids, there is also some cybernetic implants too. 

    Someone reminded me on a comment on Facebook that due to rules changes (and also new shiny models), The Glottkin is now over priced for points and no longer has the keyword Daemon. Clearly, this lump of flesh is a Mortal. I am probably the last person to follow meta for games, Rule of Cool is number one in my books. Looking up the base size, it is a 130mm, which a Great Unclean One is also on. Could easily be a proxy model for his daemon counterpart, not in tournaments of course but in friendly games. 

        I painted Ghurek's left tentacle with a rotten segment on the upper section. I figured this was the start of his putrid mutation, bound with rope in hopes of stopping the spread of the diseased flesh only for it to consume his whole body. For the base I used Crayola Model Magic Clay, I purchased a box of six packets and one of them covered this base. For the pools of standing water, I used a mix of white glue and Super glue. For my first time, I also created a brown ink wash to cover Ghurek's body. All and all, I am pleased with the results, especially my base. It's not that I am getting better, but more that I am trying new technics and putting time in them. My skaven were the first models that I started to paint my bases for and they have come a ways since then.

    So with the Glottkin being three brothers and my 6 spiders, that's nine models for Monster May(hem) right?

    I really enjoyed painting monsters over the month, maybe next year I will go for quantity instead. Don't forget to check out the other entries on Angry Piper's blog as he will have a round up there.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I will be on vacation* for a good section of June, but I will be participating in a Warcry Tournament once I get back. My time away will help me decide what warband to bring. I probably should try to do some scenery.... if only there was a challenge for it....

*Parental leave but with beaches!