Remember how last week I managed to get a chunk of stuff done? Sadly this week was the opposite. I spent the latter half of this week struggling with feeling unwell including a pounding headache that made focusing on anything pretty much impossible, effectively killing the hobby pace I had gained. However, the week moved on and I managed to finish on a high point!
Before that though, a quick sidebar.
The MDF sales are still up – I’m going to do a larger push to try and get more of these things sold so drop me a message if interested. I am now offering postage for anyone in the UK (as long as I can get it into a box) so that should open up a few more opportunities.
Opinion time. One thing I did manage to do last week was actually play through the Modern Warfare 3’s campaign – the new one that came out last year rather the original one that featured Russians in Paris. My love of Call of Duty had returned strongly with Modern Warfare 2019 which managed to tell a story reasonably well, feeling a little more “real” than previous entries combined with some great level design and performances. The problem is since then it’s been a slide into the mediocrity it had managed to escape and MW3 is it in a nutshell – a limp story that makes literally no sense when you spend more half a second on it, missions that rely too heavily on you being a solo operator rather than the cool operator moments with you and your team (including half the campaign that plays using the Warzone system rather than the more crafted feel of the regular missions), a villain that manages to be useless all game and an overreliance on nostalgia for the original Modern Warfare series. If you want some tacticool fun, you won’t find it here – most of the interesting elements can be found by watching a YouTube video of the campaign. Its zombies mode is an especially painful stab in the gut, feeling like something wearing the skin of a mode that was fantastic and provided something new while now it’s worse than empty calories.
Why does this matter for wargaming? Well, it’s telling me how not to tell a story or use real-world elements in fiction. There is a mountain of fiction and historical elements that provide better influence on building your games for the table. While previously I’d also say that the Call of Duty series is good as a guideline for references when painting (being able to rotate your Operator figure when selecting a skin and see all the angles has helped during the MW2019 era), the latest few games have been trading the ‘realistic’ skins (the quotes are doing some heavy lifting) in favour of the flashy and the fluorescent. Frankly, even on a discount, it’s pretty pointless to pick up.
Right, let’s be more productive. I started off this week preparing a new series of articles that will be coming to the Patreon covering the work that was done on building the world for Gunslinger 2030. Seeing as all this work is currently sitting in my Notion notebook or on my Google Drive, and I have no intention of continuing the setting, I thought I might as well get it out there. I’m aiming for the first post this coming week (covering the world situation and the factions) and once the series is complete, then it’s full speed ahead on the ChargeReal.
Right back in the tiny mans, let’s kick off with some prep work. The main bit of work I did this week was getting the big pile of Spectre printed figures ready for painting, with a quick spray of black and then a top-down splash of white to make it easier to see what on earth I’m actually painting. There are a few additional figures I still need to reprint (blame my cack-handedness when removing support) but I should now have a pile of guys ready for painting and getting on the table. The mojo for some ultramodern combat is back, now I just need some new playing pieces!
In the background, the FDM printer has been hammering away on these trench models. I did a few test pieces earlier in the year, but I’ve switched over to some different setting and adding some supports to minimise misprinting elements. The problem I now have is to decide how I’m going to use them. They are obviously modular but flat-sided so there are no lugs for locking them together, making it a little risky to leave them loose in-game. I think I’m going to assemble them into a few strong points on a piece of plasticard as a base, letting me add some decorations and making them more playable. Building trenches is obviously always a pain for a modular setup (it’s hard to dig down into the playing surface, but I think these will do a good job of compromising between a full trench setup and something I can easily move around and reposition.
Finally, this post actually did its job! Earlier today I was going to post out a simple message saying I hadn’t managed to get enough done to fill a post. However, thanks to both an evening watching wrestling and a need to fill this post, I got my act together and finished off the first of my Spyrers. This guy, one of the Orrus, is deceptively detailed – the front is all smooth plate and little details while the back is a mess of wires, cables and metallic elements. I’m actually really happy with how he’s turned out – the orange energy cells were one place I wanted to put the work in, as well as picking out the details on the spine. The best effect though has to be the armour – turquoise contrast over Leadbelcher metallic gives a look that shifts in the light, helped with a few highlights (an evolution of the scheme I used on my Battletech team). I have five more to paint and then this team will be all done – and hopefully more successful than they were in the last game.
That’s it for this week, with a new update coming next Sunday.
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