My Twilight Order Force

The Twilight Order is a religious group of vampire hunters. In the Dracula's America lore, before the current timeline, the Twilight Order hunted down and nearly destroyed Dracula. However Dracula manage to escape to America and infiltrate the political system. The Twilight Order learn about Dracula's whereabouts over a decade later and immediately sent agents to pursuit him. This lead to a secret war between the Twilight Order and the Red hand Coven, the servants of Dracula.

I envision my Twilight Order posse to stay close to this lore. I imagine my posse to be a mix of agents from Europe and newly recruited Americans. All the models I have brought for Dracula's America were meant to be apart of my Twilight Order posse. Well, except for a vampire model which was meant to be either the vampire encounter that is possible from random events or a start of a Red Hand Coven posse in the future. However, with a new campaign on the horizon, the fact that most of my models are still not painted and my interests in playing a different faction, I'm going to take a hard look at my collection and decide what I want for Twilight Order and what could possible be better off as a different faction.

She was the first model I brought for Dracula's America and she always was meant to be my Twilight Order's mage or arcanist as the setting calls them. She is one of the few models I got paint on though I still need to finish her, especially around the face. She was the prototype for designing how my Twilight Order models were going to look. I don't think I really decided on my posse color scheme when I started painting her. Eventually I decided to have every Twilight Order member have their own color scheme but paint everyone with a red cross on their back. That way I can show off a model's individualism (and practice different color schemes) and having an unifying theme with the red cross.

In the campaign I made her my leader so she would have an easier time casting spell. Funny thing is that I've never successfully cast a spell with her and really only tempted to do so once. One thing I would like to do before the campaign ends is to summon the Twilight Order's unique summons, the Seraphim (I still need to get a model for it) in a game. In my Twilight Order lore, she is an important high ranking member of the Order but she is not the leader. I've always envision the leader (local leader I suppose) would be one of the two Crusaders of the Order, the special units you get free for being a Twilight Order posse.

This is an official Crusader of the Order model by North Star Military Figures. I've was never a big fan of their models, plus they seem to be a little smaller than Reaper Miniatures. Now that I have it, I will paint it eventually but it is going to be after others that I like much more. One of the things I dislike about the model is that he has two pistols. The Crusaders of the Order are really slow due to them wearing armor. Being slow and using short range weapons doesn't seem like a great combination to me. Since I still haven't put him together yet, I might put a different weapon in his left hand. Extra rifle bits are probably going to more important models so this Crusader might still wind up with a short range weapon. But at least it will be a special weapon.

An issue I had when I started working on my posse was that I needed a second Crusader of the Order. I wanted to find an armored fantasy model in a pose that it would be easy to removed a hand so I could replace it western bits. Eventually I did find what I was looking for but not before the campaign started. The other players didn't really care but I wanted something that made sense to count as having armor. With this guy I imagine his coat having metal plate woven into it. I named him Mr. G in the campaign because I was going to paint his coat gold. He had the biggest impact in my games in the campaign so far. I've played 3 games and he is my only model that had a kill in every battle. In every game, he took out a supernatural threat in one shot. He would hit the opponent hard and they would fail the save by 5 or more. That means dead. So even though I got a new model to be my second Crusader, I'm still painting Mr. G gold because he has earn it. I may even continue having him count as armored.

The model on the left is the official Templar of the Order figure by North Star. Templar of the Order is a melee-only hired gun that only Twilight Order posses can hire. The model on the right is the Reaper Miniature I brought to be my second Crusader. That said, I almost like the Reaper Miniature better as the Templar of the Order! It would be less work and I can use my rifle bits on someone else. The problem would be then what would I use the official model for? Taking another look at the rules, I suppose it is possible to have 2 Templar of the Orders other than its a bad idea due to how expensive they are. Think I will stay with my original plan for him to be the second Crusader as that would make him my Twilight Order's leader. It is also fitting that Reaper calls the figure a Templar.

This is the last guy I definitively keeping as a Twilight Order guy. Early on I was buying models armed with the same weapons and equipment I wanted them to have in the game. Lassos have interesting rules in the game and I wanted someone in my posse to have one. With the lasso being the main reason I brought him, I don't think I realize he has an eye patch. Either that or I didn't realize the game has rules dealing with characters with one-eyes, (they sucked). Once he is painted up, game rule-wise, the eye patch will be something we will just ignore.

I have a few more models but I want more time before I decide what faction to put them in. If in the new campaign I switch factions, I will be picking up a few models specifically for that faction. Until then, the above miniatures will be the focus of my painting.

What is Next For Chaos Magic

I had plan to do a solo podcast series about Dracula's America in a similar vein as my partnership War Journal podcasts. It was going to be very different in many ways but I did want to have a similar style and cover topics in a similar way. But I've since change my mind on doing it. Perhaps I spent too much time over thinking it or maybe I finally came to realize the would be limitations of the podcast. In either case, I don't think Dracula's America is broad enough to do a podcast on in the style I had in mind. Flames of War is a huge game. Now that I think about, our podcast didn't cover Flames of War as well as it probably should have. There was so much about Flames of War that our podcast never touch because neither of us played that army or we didn't play in that era. While Team Yankee wasn't that big at the time when we switch our focus to it, we knew over time the game was going to grow. And even at the beginning, there was plenty of things about Team Yankee we could discuss. I don't think I could do the same with Dracula's America. The second expansion was recently release and while that would be a good sign for a game just over a year old now, it seems the second expansion was meant to also be the last expansion as well. Obviously skirmish games will have less to discuss on than larger wargames like Flames of War but Dracula's America problems were more than that. The subject that can generate the most discussion are the strength and weakness of a games factions. In most games you need to pick a faction before anything else as that decides how your force will look, what options you have to pick and so on. In Dracula's America factions most just give one or two models free bonuses. These bonuses are quite significant but otherwise two different forces from different factions can look and play nearly identical. There are a handful of other things about how the game works that also restricts potential discussions. I still enjoy playing Dracula's America but between the above and the likelihood of additional releases being low, I think it would be better for me to focus on individual articles and videos about Dracula's America instead of doing ongoing series. If I ever get overwhelm by stuff I want to talk about I can revive the podcast idea, I just don't think it will happen.

My local Dracula' America campaign is about to end and we are planning on starting a new campaign soon after. That means some of my focus will remain on Dracula's America for probably the rest of this year at least. The new campaign is making some of the players (including myself) consider playing a different faction. The Twilight Order is the initial faction that I took a liking to. I've enjoy playing as them in the campaign and have future plans for them in terms of finishing building and painting a posse and writing narrative fiction about them. The expansion books each had a new faction that also interest me. Those two were the Shadow Dragon Tong and Salem Sisterhood. The Shadow Dragon Tong is an Chinese posse whom uses unique tattoo magic. I like magic and the Salem Sisterhood is the faction with the most powerful arcane magic in the game so far. They are balance by the fact that their 3 witches are encourage to stay next to each other. For a low model count skirmish game, trying to keeping 3 models together is a big disadvantage. They also don't have any unique creations to summon. I will probably write up an article on summoning and why this is a big deal in the future. The faction I will use in the newest campaign will be mostly depended on what other people play. I want to see as many different factions in the campaign and others are also thinking about the Salem Sisterhood. If someone else picks the Sisterhood then I will either stick with Twilight Order or try my hand at the Shadow Dragon Tong. Whatever I pick, I will be using mostly the same models. I probably won't get around to discussing the results of either campaigns, but I will post my progress with painting Dracula's America miniatures or building western style terrain.

One of my goals for while now have been to have create a constant stream of content here. I have lots of plans for Dracula's America but future updates here on will probably be slow coming. And since I'm still sidelining Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar, I'm going to need to expand the blog in new areas to have more content available to publish. I haven't made any decision yet but I do have 2 ideas for areas I could expand into.

For the past few months I've been looking into the Android Universe. It is a science fiction setting own by Fantasy Flight Games that reminds me of Shadowrun without the magic. A friend has been trying to get me interested in the Netrunner card game. It was my first taste of the Android Universe and I like what I saw. Of course when I decided to invest in the game was also when it was announce that the game was ending. For whatever reason, Fantasy Flight lost the license to Netrunner. That means trying to buy the cards I'm missing will get harder over time as they are now out of print as well as there will no longer be any official tournaments to play in (the last official tournament was earlier this month). Not a great time to get into the game. That said, the end of Netrunner doesn't mean the end of Android. There are 3 board games, a handful of novels and novelettes and Fantasy Flight is working on a RPG book that will allow people to play pen and paper role-playing games in the Android Universe. Besides playing Netrunner, I have read the first Android novel, Free Fall. I will be writing a review of it, both as a novel on its own and as an introduction to the setting. Besides the review, I'm still toying with how the Android Universe will appear on the blog. I suppose I could get an inspiration to paint up a few models set in the Android Universe. Or Fantasy Flight Games could come out with a war game set in the Android Universe. Fantasy Flight Games have already dip their toes in miniature war gaming with Star Wars:Legion and Runewars, and there is a war in the Android lore on Mars. I will probably have a clearer idea of what I want do once I play one of the board games.

For a few years now I've been thinking about starting a new blog about my 20 years of playing pen and paper role-playing games. I wanted it to be a new blog because at the time I had a vision of what I wanted Chaos Magic to be and I didn't think role-playing games fit even though there is a lot of crossover appeal to both. That vision started to crumble when I realize it wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Also I wanted it to be a different blog because the tone of it was going to be vastly different. I try to make the tone of Chaos Magic lighthearted. Sure my stories could be dark and depressing but I always wanted my commentaries to be uplifting. The name I came up with for the new blog was "Tales from a Jaded Gamer," and it was going to be just that. At the time I was burning out on role-playing games and wanted an outlet to write about my frustrations over the years. It wasn't going to be ALL negative as I had a few stories that were more interesting or funny than exploring my dark side of gaming. But at its core it was suppose to be a way to channel my anger into something positive. I have since recovered somewhat from my burn out. I'm back to playing tabletop RPGs again and I still want to tell some of those stories of past games. I still feel that the concepts of "Jaded Gamer" and my vision of Chaos Magic are different and big enough to warrant having their own blog pages. However I know I am unable to write enough to keep 2 different blogs actives, especially since I'm also working on a different blog that has nothing to do with gaming and I have other outside projects that I'm working on. Given that for many tabletop RPGs, I prefer to have models representing the battlefield like a war game, the two concepts has a closer connection than I initially thought. I will start with the more lighthearted stories to post here, keeping the name "Tales of Jaded Gamer." After I publish a handful, I will consider if I want to bring the darker ones here as well.

I want to end this article that took way too long to write on some painting I recently did. Its not Dracula's America related nor is it anyway close to being finished. However I wanted to work on something so I started painting my giant for my Shieldmaiden force. With no current gaming incentives for the model, I'm just painting her for the practice and I like the model. Hopefully my next update wouldn't be as long as this. Until next time!

Dracula's America and 40k update

I haven't played 40k much recently due to being slightly discouraged. This is partly because of proxies and partly because of the latest FAQ. I have played around 10 games this year and I've thoroughly enjoyed them. However the army I played with looks nothing like what its suppose to. I have a decent collection of miniatures but they are mostly not for 40k and unpainted. And most of my 40k miniatures are Blood Angels which I'm not even playing. Playing with proxies have been apart of my gaming life for over 10 years now and it slowly been getting to me. For a period of time during the end of Warhammer Fantasy, I could play with a force without using proxies. The models were unpainted or partially painted, but otherwise the army looked like it should. Now I don't even have that luxury and its not going to change any time soon. I have pick up a small sample of what I've been using this year but I'm still in the progress of assembling and painting them. My delay in getting them finish is because I can't decided on how I want my 40k bases to look. I've never been fond of the idea of basing. The default of gluing green grit to the base to make it look like the model is standing in terrain just doesn't look good to me. However I wanted to something this time around with me getting back into 40k. I have an idea of what I would LIKE to do, but I have no idea how to do it. Trying to find a base scheme that I would like and in my ability to do has been seemly impossible so far. Until I solved this riddle, I can't really finish the miniatures I started working on. Of course there is also another reason I've been delayed on getting things done...

My 40k hobby has mostly been stopped in its tracks with the Big FAQ 1 release in April. In particular the Battle Brothers beta rules completely ruins how I wanted to play 40k. I will hopefully go into it more later but the highlights are thus. The small factions are probably not worth using. They have take up their own detachment and they do not give you command points. Given that using the various small factions of the Imperium was basically my army idea, I'm limited to only taking 3 factions (I sometimes use 4) and I have to organize them in an inefficient way that reduces the amount of commend points I get. In other words I get punished heavy for trying to make a Witch Hunter list from my 4th edition days. So now I'm not sure I want to use Sisters of Silence, Inquisition or the Assassins. And of course Inquisition and Sisters of Silence were some of the first new models I brought. I haven't even started painting Inquisitor Greyfax and now I don't think I want to use her anymore, not with the Big FAQ beta rules. The more I think about the beta rules, the more it depresses my interest in playing 40k. Besides working on an unit or two of Arco-flagellants I think I might need to step away from 40k for the time being. My future in 40k is too uncertain at the moment, and there are other games I'm interested in that aren't as much of a financial investment to play.

One of which is Dracula's America. I played a few games last year and I've like what I played. There were talks of a campaign but nothing really came of it. I also joined a pen and paper Deadlands game that reduce the time I could play Dracula's America with others. I grab a few models for the campaign that never happened. I planned to make youtube videos about Dracula's America but that also never happened. So instead those models just sat on my shelf. Then two things change in recent weeks. My library has an audio video studio that will eventually be available for me to use. That will make recording audio for podcasts and youtube videos much easier to do and allow me to get shows off the ground I've been thinking about for a year or more. I also learn that a Dracula's America campaign was starting this week and I could join. I was not exactly ready to be apart of a campaign but now that I'm in one, I will take this opportunity to work on my western models and to make Dracula's America content. I don't know how much of the campaign I will cover here. It is a pretty simple 5 person, 7 weeks campaign. I will mention highlights in my new podcast but that will probably be the extent of it unless something interesting comes up.

More Dracula's America content is coming! So stay tune.

Warhammer Gifts From A Friend, and Reset

A friend of mine did some house cleaning and came across old miniatures (mostly Warhammer Fantasy) he brought a long time ago. He brought them with the idea of making a fantasy chess board. At this point that project was never going to happen so he offered them to his gaming buddies (which includes me). I, of course said loudly I wanted them and he was more than happy to toss the boxes and blisters packs my way. Here is a picture of some of those gifts...

What to do with these new old models got me thinking. At first I consider using some of the collection for conversion projects but I couldn't think of anything they would be good for. Then I remember that I wanted an elven army eventually for Chaos Magic lore reasons and these miniatures would be a decent start. I'm not going to immediately put together the entire collection but I think I will work on the box of High Elves, the box of Dark Elves and maybe one blister soonish. This might even allow me to get in some Age of Sigmar games in.

Which leads into another decision about the models and even the blog itself. Am I going to build these miniatures so I can used them in both Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition and in Age of Sigmar or should I only keep AoS in mind? There are elements of 8th edition I like and do not see in any game I'm currently playing. That and along with the good memories I have of playing 8th is why I held out hope that I will get to play it again sometime. I really want to finish the Border Prince Campaign as well as play through the scenarios that were in the End Times books. However I'm beginning to realize it is getting unlikely that I will get to play 8th edition again and will probably never get to regularly play it. I only have one friend that I know of that still has 8th edition armies and has an interest in playing. That said, we never played one last year and even he has started selling of some of his armies. The final nail for me is that my friend is leaving soon for college. That means there is no hope for me playing 8th edition for at least 2 or 3 years from now. It makes no sense for me to work on new 8th edition armies, especially since I don't own any of the elven army books. There are lots of local players that play 40k and/or Age of Sigmar. I don't know how these models will fit into AoS but they along with my Bretonnians should be fun to find out.

I think it is time for me to remove the Border Prince Campaign page. I had a lot of story plans connect to the campaign but it doesn't make sense to have most of my blog's lore based on an unfinished campaign that will remain unfinished for years to come. As much as it pains me, at this point its better for me to reset my lore and start again with a new campaign or narrative tool. Age of Sigmar was made with narrative battles in mind and those are perfect for telling stories through fiction and gaming. Before I make any new plans for gaming fiction, I want to concentrate on getting more of my collection assembled and painted. I will need some time to decide where to take my fantasy stories and I have plenty of models to paint and even more to assemble.

An Arco-Flagellant Force

I never used Arco-Flagellants when I played Witch Hunters in 4th edition. I thought there rules were interesting but I didn't like the models at the time nor their lore. I didn't like the idea that part of my army were convicted criminals overdosing on combat drugs (and I still don't). Back then I had the idea of doing a conversion using ninja models with cybernetic limbs and using the Arco-Flagellant rules. That never actually happen. At the time I only wanted to use Games Workshop models and I don't think GW had anything in their catalog that fit what I was looking for. While I still think it is an interest idea for a conversion, it not something I would do today. The conversion would make them thematically similar to Death Cult Assassins and I already have 3 of the current miniatures.

I have used Arco-Flagellants quite a bit in 8th edition. Earlier this year I made an Ecclesiarchy list to test out all the close combat options available in the Adeptus Ministorum. A lot of the options were okay at best in my opinion. But there were two that both my opponent and myself thought were really, really good. Of course Arco-Flagellants were one of them (the other being Penitent Engines). They have a clear battlefield role of killing low armor, mid range tough enemies. And they do that extremely well. The shear number of attacks they can generate in close combat is insane. More than once this year my Arco-Flagellants generated so many attacks that I had trouble holding the dices. In my test list I initially thought aforementioned Death Cult Assassins had the same role as Arco-Flagellants, only Arco-Flagellants were much much better. But after playing a few more games and taking a closer look at the Death Cult Assassins abilities, I realize Death Cult has a slightly different role from Arco-Flagellants. Death Cult Assassins are much better at dealing with low toughness, high armor opponents due to their armor piercing which Arco-Flagellants lack. Death Cult also possess a lot of close combat attacks of their own. In fact one Death Cult Assassin has the average number of attacks that one Arco-Flagellant has. I never realize that before. Though with Arco-Flagellants having random attacks, they benefit more abilities that give other units bonus attacks, like priests. I always did have a fondness for Death Cult Assassins (thought I never played with them either in 4th edition) with them essentially being Imperium ninjas. But with Arco-Flagellants being stronger, more resilient and point-wise cheaper, Arco-Flagellants are currently just better. That said, I will be using both.

The Big FAQ 1 of 2018 was just release and it prevents taking a datasheet(an unit) more than 3 times. So far I have not used Arco-Flagellants more than twice in an army but I was contemplating a list with 6 units of Arco-Flagellants. Now with the Big FAQ 1 around, I can only use 3 Arco-Flagellants units at most. Which is more than enough for most of my games. I just wish I could have played one game with a ton Arco-Flagellants. It seems Games Workshop are constantly updating and amending the rules so I suppose there is a chance the 3 datasheet limit could get removed in the future and I can legally run a mass Arco-Flagellant army.

I'm not the type of player whom makes a single army list. The player that plays the same list over and over again, making slight tweaks to the list after every game or two. That type of player only buys miniatures that are also in that single list. And once they have their army completed and painted, they will only buy new miniatures when they tweak the list. That type of player is definitely not me, though it would make miniature buying much much easier. Every time I played 40k this year, I made the army list from the ground up. Many of my lists were made to test certain elements while others were made based on what I was feeling like playing. The downside to make new list every time I play is that I can never fully learn the strength and weakness of a particular list. That only comes with playing the same list multiple times against a wide range of opponents and scenarios. However I can and have learn of the strengths and weaknesses of individual datasheets (units) as well as the strength and weakness of the overall collection of forces that I call my Imperium army (mostly the Sisters of Battle, Ecclesiarchy, Sisters of Silence and the Inquisition). The makeup of my army changes from game to game, but there are datasheets that I use repeatedly. And it is those elements I think I will focus on collecting models for first. Ever since I first learn how great Arco-Flagellants were, I've always included at least one unit of them. The 3 Arco-Flagellants pictured above will be the start of me building 2 full units of 9. With 3 already assembled, I'm thinking up ideas for conversions to use for some of the other 15. I'm not going to use my old cyber ninja idea, but I am thinking of doing a few priests with the cybernetic limbs. I haven't found any models I want to convert yet but the plan is buy probably a reaper priest model and replace the arms with Arco-Flagellants arms. I also have Chaos Spawn limb bits that when painted up metallic should work for Arco-Flagellants. Why priests? I have a short story idea that will explain in universe for priest Arco-Flagellants. Hopefully I can post it soon. I will be posting my painting progress on the Arco-Flagellants I currently have and the entire conversion process of the next batch of Arco-Flagellants. Stay tune!

The Sister Who Speaks

Sometimes when I'm putting models together I brainstorm conversion ideas that I could do with said models. Other times I come up with mini-stories that explains the fictional role that the model or unit I'm working on has in the army overall and what are some of the intra-army relationships are like. And then there are those times I do both.

One of the things I'm currently working on is a box of Sister of Silence. I love the miniatures but I also want to have at least one with a "traditional" look. I think it would make her look similar to my Sisters of Battle and therefore help make both Sister forces look apart of the same army. While head swaps is among the easiest conversion to do, I won't be converting any Sisters of Silence anytime soon. I want 2 squads (one armed with swords, the other with bolters) to be model as is. Once I get a third box of Sisters is when I will start looking into the conversion. Also I don't have a lot of female head bits in my collection to use in conversions.

As I was crafting the story of how this future Sister conversion was going to fit into my army, a question came to my mind. Why would a Sister of Silence look so radically different from the others? I decided to go with her being the Silence Officer whom interacts with the rest of the army. That means she would be the one who would go to officer meetings, get issued orders for all of the Sisters of Silence in the field and in general the person to communicate to when concerning Silence affairs. This may not sound like a big deal but the job requires speaking and Sisters of Silence take a Vow of Silence when becoming members. With fantasy I would be more than happy to ignore setting fluff and make up my own fiction details in my stories. But 40k feels different. It is the setting a lot of fans call home and it is truly unlike anything I would have created on my own. Especially Sisters of Silence. Fortunately there is a really easy way to explain how this will fit into the setting. A jackass Inquisitor!

Inquisitors' authority in the Imperium is insane. They can practically order nearly anyone to do anything on penalty of death as long as they claim it is for the benefit of the Imperium. An Inquisitor can easily conscript a force of Sisters of Silence to serve under him/her as his personal army/bodyguards. It would even make a lot of sense if it was an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor currently hunting a powerful psyker. Sisters of Silence communicate with each other with sign language and to outsiders by acolytes. Acolytes are women training to be Silence of Silence but have not yet taken the Vow of Silence. If said Inquisitor felt it was beneath him/her to talk to an acolyte or wants to be able to talk with someone in the middle of a firefight when acolytes are probably not going to be around, he/she could give an Imperial Mandate to a Sisters of Silence to permanently break her Vow. And I have an Inquisitor that could fit that role already assembled. Just need to be primed and painted. And I also need to get a better camera.

With all that said, even though it makes perfect sense in the 40k lore, I'm not sure I want someone like that in my army. I suppose I could say the Inquisitor regrets issuing the mandate but that feels cheap and like poor storytelling to me. I think I would prefer to say that the Inquisitor was killed off and the Sisters of Silence were then later recruited into my current army. There is another scenario I could use that I just thought of. Starting off the same as before with an Inquisitor conscripting a force of Sisters of Silence, the difference being that the Inquisitor doesn't mind dealing with acolytes. In fact the Inquisitor grows fond of the working relationship they have with one of the acolytes to such a degree that they Imperial Mandate the Sisters of Silence order to accept the acolyte without her taking the Vow of Silence. Still a jackass thing to do and an abuse of power. However it doesn't setup a personality that makes me instantly hate the character. It will be awhile before I can bring this character to the tabletop. While I could use my new Inquisitor Greyfax model pictured above, this character for me deserves an unique model with my own personal conversions.

A little weird when you think about it that I've put this much thought into the backstory of two conversion projects I don't plan to do anytime soon. But that is how my mind works. At least now I can start looking for bits to fit into these projects. Also just because they don't currently have models doesn't mean I can't put them into stories. Thank you for reading my random musings on story and conversion.

New Year Return and Resolutions

It's the new year and this is my first update in nearly 4 months. By no means this was intentional. There are many reasons for the hiatus, but to go into those reasons now would probably derail this post. I hope I can discuss some of those reasons in the future but for now I want to focus on moving forward. Here are my Chaos Magic plans and goals for 2018:

Flames of War and Team Yankee - I have decided to drop Flames of War and Team Yankee. There are a lot of games I'm interested in and I have very limited resources to apply towards those games. While I'm use to playing with proxies, I'm hate it and want whatever money I put into the hobby to go towards not having to proxy. For me Flames of War and Team Yankee is competing with Warhammer in this vein. Anything I want to get in Flames of War is just a drop in the bucket compared to what I need. The reason for this is the Flames of War Germany has so many lists with so many options that I could easy find 5 different late war German list and not duplicate any unit between them. Now if I made a single list and just try to collect models for that single list, then Flames of War would probably be the best game for me to get to playing without proxies. But that is not how I want to play war games. It is also not a very good idea since Battlefront changes the official point limits of games every year. Not saying Battlefront is bad for doing that, but it does help explain why Flames of War is not good for me to invest in this year. My reason for dropping Team Yankee is slightly different but still related to limited resources. I still have a ways to go before I can play a 100 point game with West Germans and even further to go before a can play a good list at 100 points. Given that the local interest in Team Yankee has wain a lot, it makes more sense to me to instead invest in other games. Team Yankee (as well as Flames of War) has an unique problem in that I need to invest a lot into carrying cases. What I have now works fine with every game I'm playing except Team Yankee and Flames of War. At this time I don't want to spend any of my limited resources on carrying cases.

What this means is that I will not be picking up any new models, participating in any campaigns or write any short stories set in those games. With Flames of War still being active locally, I may still play one offs. I will also keep up with the rules and write any articles I think are worthwhile for others. It is also possible if I get into the habit of working on models regularly I may work on Flames of War and/or Team Yankee models I currently have and needs finishing. I will be posting pictures of any models that are newly painted. I know from last year that things can happen to change my plans and there is something I can foresee happening that could possibly have me picking Flames of War and/or Team Yankee back up. Nevertheless, I don't see me dealing with Flames of War/Team Yankee until 2019.

Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar - I really miss playing 40k. The last time I was really involved in the game was mid 5th edition. I then discovered Warhammer Fantasy and completely left 40k behind because I was far more interested in the fantasy genre than sci-fi. I played 40k a handful of times since and I never really felt the spark. At one point I had the opportunity to play with friends every (or maybe every other) Saturday morning. I was not a morning person and it felt like a real chore to get out and play. So that opportunity closed on me and I didn't miss it. I played 40k last weekend on Saturday morning and I couldn't wait to do it again. I'm still not a morning person but I'm now excited enough to be willing to get up every Saturday to play if possible. When I left 40k, I did not have many miniatures, partly because I tried to build 3 separate armies. This time I want to concentrate on a single army. A Sisters of Battle army with some various Imperium aspects. I've nickname the army "Sisters with Friends."

I wanted to spend Christmas money to get one new thing for my 40k army. Sadly my local store don't have much I want to buy on the shelf. I thought I had to settle for either the Triumvirate of the Imperium boxset which has the Saint but includes Belisarius Cawl which I have no interest in or the Talons of the Emperor which has more troops but is more expensive. After thinking it over I decided it would be better to get more troops to start. So of course when I finally decide to buy the box set that has been sitting in my store for 8 months was purchase under my nose recently. I can't even order it as its currently out of stock! So I ended up with the Triumvirate box set instead. Next month I will picking up a box of Sister of Silence and Sisters of Battle command retinue. I love the rules for the Imagifier and Hospitaller so I wanted to get those models soon. I actually wanted to get the Hospitaller ever since I started playing. At the time I was sad that she could only go with Inquisitors but now she is with Sisters of Battle proper.

After next month I will probably only picking up single sisters packs every other month or so. I need a lot of special weapon girls and I currently have very little. For the first half the year I see my self only playing for fun with lots proxies. Once I feel comfortable with the rules I will start considering local tournaments as I do have a Blood Angels force I brought from a friend. After a few months I should be able to make a hodgepodge tournament Imperium force. Later in the year I will see about setting up a kill-team mini campaign. By the end of the year my 40k goal is to have 25 models painted and participate in one event.

Age of Sigmar was a game I thought about dropping but this past weekend while I was playing 40k there was an Age of Sigmar tournament. I got to meet players that are into 40k and Age of Sigmar and were willing to travel to tournaments around the country. Traveling to tournaments is something I've wanted to do regularly do for a while. Even though I've only played a handful of AoS games, I've always stay somewhat up to date with the AoS environment by following Vince Venturella youtube channel. Now knowing there is a fairly strong AoS local community, it doesn't feel right to completely ignore it. Especially when I can supplement my AoS Poison Army with my older chaos stuff to make it playable. I still have a lot of work to do on the Poison models that I have. If I do get any new models for it, it will be the Skaven Plague Claw and/or the Verminlord. My AoS goal is to have 30 models for my Poison Army painted.

Smaller Goals - Reflecting back on 2017 I notice a flaw in myself. I tend to make my goals way too big. I make plans that require hundreds of painted miniatures and several detail terrain pieces that goes from there when I don't own most of those miniatures, much less even have them assembled and painted. That is why I'm trying to make my goals this year smaller scale. I might have too many goals, but at least each individual goal should be something I can achieve. And as long as I'm able to complete some goals and still make progress with others, I will consider this year a great success. I still have my big plans but I now realize I need to wait on them until I have a build a proper foundation.

More War Journals - The idea behind War Journal was to have a series dedicated to a particular war game that had a regular schedule release. Maybe with a co-host, maybe on my own. My first attempt at War Journal was for Battletech. That never got off the ground due to scheduling conflicts and failing to find a place to record. Later I did 26 episodes of War Journal: Flames of War with Tracy George. This year I want to start two new War Journals. One on Relic Knights which I've been promising to do for years. The other I want to be on Dracula's America. Both will be solo projects (though it is possible I could have guests) but will have their differences as well. Relic Knights will be about what it is like to start the hobby from the beginning and document my progress. Dracula's America will be closer to what War Journal: Flames of War was, except it will just be me and have video instead of an audio only podcast. My goal is to do at least 6 War Journal episodes.

Short Stories - The initial purpose of this blog was to have a place to host narrative fiction of my adventures in fantasy campaigns. Very little was done on this front because our campaigns ended before I could get much written. This year I want to go back to Chaos Magic roots a little bit by publishing more narrative fiction. The Border Prince Campaign ended early and unfinished but I am still using my army's fiction in the overall Chaos Magic mythology. There are a few campaign turns that don't have a corresponding short story. I had story ideas for them but I never got around to flushing them out. Writing those missing turn fictions will be a major goal for me. Also I have a couple of short story ideas that are not necessarily connected to any campaigns that I want to write. These stories will help flush out other parts of my Chaos Magic mythology. Doing any new fiction for new campaigns is unlikely for the time being.

Catching Up on Past Articles - In addition to missing turn fiction, there are some articles I said I would write that I never got to. The main ones I'm thinking of are the ones discussing my time at the Warlord's convention last year. I still have my notes on days two and three. I got sidetrack with other things and never wrote my article on day 2 and day 3. A 2018 goal of mine is to write 10 articles I said were coming. Included in this are Topics of the Week questions that I wanted to write about and I think are still interesting to have a piece on.

Other Things - Beside the two Warhammer games I'm still interested in BattleTech, Darcula's America and Test of Honour. These games require a lot less resources than Warhammer. The BattleTech community is far more forgiving with using proxies than any other community I've been apart of. That means I only need a handful mechs to play BattleTech outside of large epic battles. Dracula's America is a low model count skirmish game. Using Reaper's Miniatures, each figure averages to around $5 each and I already have the bulk of what I need for a while. Test of Honour is the most expensive of the three in the short run. However each box set usually has 10 to 30 models in it. The exception being the newly release Ninja of Iga expansion. The fact that Ninja of Iga only has metal figures (unlike earlier expansions that had 1 metal figure and multiple plastic minis) explains the low model count and higher price. Being that I love ninjas, I will have to pick it up at some point. I've recently grab Chobei's Renegades box set with Christmas money so I probably won't need to get any more Test of Honour stuff this year once I have the Ninja of Iga as well. My BattleTech goal is to paint 5 mechs and play a few games. My Dracula's America goal is to paint 9 figures. For Test of Honour, my goal is to paint 50 figures by the end of the year.

Lastly, beside War Journal, I have another series I want to do this year. It is a show that will mix League of Legends and Dracula's America. The idea is that I think a few characters in League of Legends would fit right in with the setting of Dracula's America. Trying convert miniatures to look like League's champions will be a major part of the show eventually. The first episode will explain more with how the series will work. I hope to do at least six episodes by the end of the year.

And those are all my hobby goals I've set for myself this year. I'm sorry for not having updated in so long. I don't plan on that happening again. Thank you for reading and I got work to do. Happy Gaming!