Big Toe (40K)

I built another chimera today while also working to get a big toe removed from the base of a sentinel. Both took about the same amount of time, and in the end I had a completed chimera and a freakin' big toe still stuck to a base! I finally just squirted out a bottle of Z7 Debonder and soaked the big toe in a dish. Still, it would not come off. I considered destroying the model and making it a wreck terrain piece.

Then it hit me. This sentinel is one tough mofo! It's been sheared off and re-glued at the hips and legs. The feet have been sheared and re-glued so many times that they look almost like an organic elephant foot. The toes of both feet have been cut off and re-attached several times, just to get that big front toe in the right direction. I reglued it, snapped it off once more, and reglued it one last time. This sentinel WILL fight, big toe of one foot facing the rear or not. This sentinel is now my good luck sentinel, my command squad sentinel. It will look like it's been beat up on the battlefield when I'm done painting it, but it's not getting away with being scrapped. Oh no, it fill fight and die for the emperor.

In other news, I sold me Flames of War army today at our store auction. The proceeds will go to the Imperial Guard fund.

Troublesome sentinel

New grenade launcher figures. More to come...

Everything so far. Still waiting on the core troops, 6 boxes of 10 figures, along with some lascannon and grenade launcher figures. Two side projects are also in the works: an Armageddon class basilisk (enclosed crew compartment) and flamer models.

Games People Play (Top Lists for May)

At first glance, the last 30 days have been dominated by collectibles in the store, with a new Magic release, new Yu-Gi-Oh releases, a strong World of Warcraft release and continued sales of D&D and Star Wars collectible miniatures.

Mexican Coke is the undisputed heavyweight of the drink cooler. If I had a group that wanted to come in and sit around the game center discussing the merits of Mexican Coke, I would gladly seat them in a prime time slot. Heck, it outsells Yu-Gi-Oh, and I would probably get fewer complaints.

TOP ITEMS

1. Magic The Gathering -- Shadowmoor Booster
2. WoW CCG: Servants of the Betrayer Booster
3. Magic The Gathering -- Shadowmoor theme deck
4. Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures - Dungeons of Dread booster
   
5. Magic The Gathering -- Shadowmoor - tournament pack
   
6. Magic The Gathering -- Shadowmoor - fat pack
7. Mexican Coca Cola
8. Chaos Marine Battleforce
9. YGO: Light of Destruction
10. Star Wars Miniatures - Legacy of the Force Booster

Looking at the top games below, you get a slightly different story, since the wonder of collectibles (and Mexican Coke) is the same people buying the same item over and over again. Other departments are about breadth (and a lot more inventory!). Magic remains on top, but we see Games Workshop still hovering up there. Dungeons & Dragons exists at the number four spot solely on the dozens of gift set pre-orders.

Warhammer Fantasy has remained very strong throughout the year. Warmachine continues to slip, although we've had a LOT of new players start lately.

Anime CCGs have been the surprise for us this year, with lots of fans for Bleach, Naruto, and Yu-Gi-Oh, although I expect the last one to begin slipping since we canceled their organized play. A new set of Kingdom Hearts and Maplestory were released this week, but the love is gone. These customers can be fickle too.

TOP GAMES

1. Magic
2. Warhammer 40K
3. Warhammer Fantasy
4. Dungeons & Dragons
5. Fantasy Flight Games
6. Star Wars CMG
7. Warmachine
8. World of Warcraft CCG
9. Rio Grande
10. Bleach CCG

TOP COMPANIES
Here's an interesting chart by company. Not so diverse now, is it? These top 10 companies comprise 75% of our sales.


THE FUTURE
What should we expect in the coming month? Dungeons & Dragons will explode upon the scene the first week of June. Keep on the Shadowfell is released next week, and based on pre-orders, will probably be our best selling adventure ever. Warhammer 40K 5th Edition has Mexican Coke like strength, and we've already pre-sold a dozen $90 gamer edition sets, including one to me. We've got 8 more available either for pre-order or for sale the day of the release. Those who don't splurge on that, will surely buy the standard rulebook when it's released July 12th. I've been reading a pre-release copy and I'm wondering if mortar teams might be viable....

Auctions & Conventions

Tomorrow is our third quarterly auction, and possibly our last. We call these "Ding & Dent" auctions because we buy up damaged items from manufacturers and distributors at very low costs and then auction them off at bargain prices. The people who sell us this stuff are happy to get this "worthless" stuff out of their warehouses. We're happy because we make very good money in a short period of time, and customers are happy because they get slightly dinged or dented, new games, at a fraction of the price.

This might be our last auction because we're seriously investigating opening an online store. This store would have our entire inventory of games and toys, but the big feature would be these ding & dent items that draw such big crowds on auction days. It would only make sense that we divert these items to the online store, which also has the added bonus of not dumping cheap product into our own back yard. For example, if I'm selling a case of Duel in the Dark at $12 each, what are the chances I can sell that $60 version sitting on the shelf? It messes with my numbers, despite the nice auction sales day.

This brings us to conventions. Conventions have been a great place in the past to "dump" a lot of this ding & dent stuff. It used to be a place to sell large quantities of role-playing games, most of which we bought in ding & dent fashion, but over the last year, that market has dried up. It might be temporary, it might not be. The rest of our auction "fodder" has been other ding & dent stuff, like board games and clearance items. With the auctions (or possibly an online store), we have another outlet for clearance items. We're left with nothing to bring to conventions!

Worse, with Conquest San Francisco moving to the South Bay and Conquest Sac increasingly expensive due to gas prices and other expenses, we simply can't afford to bring standard margin fare to these conventions and still make money. They both now require hotels, meals, fuel and other expenses, while at the same time, the person at the con is making an hourly wage. It's looking like only Dundracon makes sense for us now, unless we consider these conventions "marketing" expenses. This is small business owner code for "I don't see how we can possibly make money, but we'll at least be in the face of potential customers." I'm not a big believer in "marketing" expenses.

Then again.... As of October our TV ad contracts expire and our Yellow Page ad contracts are up for renewal. These are "real" marketing expenses that I've been questioning. We'll probably drop or scale back our TV ads and instead focus on community related marketing, such as support of local schools and community programs. That might include a game convention, where we would attend for that customer face time and where convention sales just deferred some of the costs.

Here's our Ding & Dent auction list. Not included is my Flames of War army, which I'm selling to pay for my Warhammer 40K army.

All items in quantities of 1 to 4.

BOARD GAMES
1960 The Making of the President
Alhambra
Arkadia
Axis & Allies D-Day
Axis & Allies Europe
Axis & Allies Guadalcanal
Axis & Allies Revised
Baffle Gab
Balloon Cup
Blue Moon City
Bohnanza Fan Edition
Carcassonne: Princess & Dragon
Carcassonne: The Tower
Cash & Guns: Yakuza
Chicken Cha Cha Cha
Chrononauts
Condottiere
Cuba
Darjeeling
Descent
Diplomacy
Duel in the Dark
Dungeon Twister, 3/4 player Exp
El Capitan
Grateful Dead
Iliad
In the Year of the Dragon
King Arthur Chess Set
Lost Cities
Mall of Horrors
Medici
Mission: Red Planet
Munchkin 5
No Thanks!
Notre Dame
Nuclear Proliferation
Pandemic
Penguin
Phoenicia
Primordial Soup
Princes of Florence
Prophecy
Rumis
Settlers of Catan
Smugglers of the Galaxy
Soccer Tactics
Talisman
Taluva
The Hidden Emperor
Thurn & Taxis Exp: All Roads
Ticket to Ride
Transamerica
Twilight Imperium
World of Warcraft
WoW Burning Crusades
Zombie Fluxx
Zombies!!!

RPGS
D&D: Book of 9 Swords
D&D: Wizards Presents books
HERO: Battlegrounds
HERO: Villians, Vandals and Vermin
HERO: Viper City
OOTS Start of Darkness
RIFTS: Ultimate Rifts
Tunnels & Trolls Box Set
WW: Dragon Blooded
WW: Lunars

MINIATURES
40K: 4E rulebook
40K: Apocalypse Eldar Cloudstrike Squad
40K: Apocalypse Space Marine Land Raider
40K: Battle for Macragge Box Sets
40K: Chaos Space Marine Army Box
40K: Eldar Army Box
AT43: Accessory Box
AT43: Death Dealer Tacarms
AT43: Hero Box: Odino
AT43: Kossak
AT43: Spetsnaz Commandos
AT43: Therian Bane Goliath
AT43: Tiamat
AT43: UB Wing Troopers
AT43: UNL Steel Tacarms
Battlefield Evolution
Flames of War army boxes
Flames of War Mega Paint Set
Miniature Building Authority box sets
Sparta Warband (wargods of aegyptus)
Warmachine Superiority

The Army List (40K)

Post Dakka-Dakka, I feel like I've gone through a few stages of list building. At first it was about imagination, with the cool line of basilisks decked out with various options and lots of fluffy stuff, like vox casters. A lot of the fluff was an attempt to be more of what I thought of as Tallarn. Since then, I've been reading an account of their exploits and equipment in Forge World books, so I have a better idea of flavor, but I wasn't far off.

Dakka-Dakka is a kind of trial by fire, a purging of everything unnecessary and an analysis of various equipment. The primary advice I got there was:

1. Cut the fluff. Most options are about what-if scenarios, rather than hard-hitting tactical choices. It's kind of like in Dungeons & Dragons 3x, where you might want to choose flavor feats instead of combat related feats. The bottom line in both games is hard hitting combat, although you unfortunately don't get to loot your enemies bodies in 40K. Some of the Tallarns in the Forge World campaign book were in Space Marine transports. Why can't we do that?
2. Don't be a Target. One of anything juicy is bad. One tank is a target, two tanks is good. One transport is a target, two are good. Let command teams command and don't make them a tactical threat by giving them heavy weapons.
3. The Not Enough Men Problem. Imperial Guard are almost always about masses of guardsmen, most of whom will die horrible deaths; but hey, there are billions more where they came from. The tendency is to want to protect your guys, deck them out in armor or make them elite. It's a losing battle. Let them go.

Post Dakka-Dakka, I went through a second stage and optimized the list for the most functional force. This meant dropping some trademark Tallarn equipment, taking some doctrines that were tactically good, but not accurate to the Tallarn, and generally trying to "fix" this interesting army.

Stage three came after more Tallarn reading from the Forge World campaign book. The Desert Raiders Tallarn novel arrived today too, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. This stage has me adopting good Dakka-Dakka advice while trying to preserve what's essential to the Tallarns. Some mechanized infantry is good, but these guys marched across deserts for the most part, rather than being driven. They were infantry and they walked. This also meant the drop troop doctrine went away and the Sharpshooter doctrine came back, even if it does seem a bit expensive.

As for heavier weapons, I kept the grenade launchers because of the versatility and I already had the models. I'm working on getting flamer bitz to use that option later. There are no Tallarn flamer figures. The rocket launchers, which come with the Tallarn infantry boxes (one day) are being replaced by Lascannon teams, which are fine with the Tallarn theme and more effective. There will be an obvious disconnect between modeling vehicles and the list, mostly because the game rewards uniform units with little equipment. Boring!

1500 Pts - Imperial Guard Roster - Imperial Guard Tallarns

HQ: Command Platoon (6#, 146 Pts)
Command Platoon @ 146 Pts
Command Squad @ [90] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters
1 Junior Officer @ [70] Pts
Iron Discipline; Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Honorifica Imperialis; Close Combat Weapon; Laspistol
1 Honorifica Imperialis @ [25] Pts
4 Guardsmen @ [0] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x4)
0 Sentinel Squadron @ [56] Pts
1 Sentinel @ [56] Pts
Searchlight (x1); Lascannon (x1)

Troops: Armoured Fist (11#, 189 Pts)
9 Armoured Fist @ 189 Pts
Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x7); Grenade Launcher; Lascannon
1 Sergeant @ [6] Pts
Sharpshooters; Laspistol & CCW
1 Chimera @ [86] Pts
Searchlight; Multilaser; Hull Heavy Bolter

Troops: Infantry Platoon (41#, 568 Pts)
0 Infantry Platoon @ 568 Pts
0 Command Squad @ [179] Pts
Sharpshooters
1 Junior Officer @ [45] Pts
Iron Discipline; Sharpshooters; Close Combat Weapon; Laspistol
4 Guardsmen @ [124] Pts
Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x2); Grenade Launcher (x1); Lascannon; Chimera
1 Chimera @ [91] Pts
Extra Armour; Searchlight; Multilaser; Hull Heavy Bolter
9 Infantry Squad @ [113] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x7); Grenade Launcher; Lascannon
1 Sergeant @ [6] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Laspistol & CCW
9 Infantry Squad @ [113] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x7); Grenade Launcher; Lascannon
1 Sergeant @ [6] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Laspistol & CCW
9 Infantry Squad @ [113] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x7); Grenade Launcher; Lascannon
1 Sergeant @ [6] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Laspistol & CCW
4 Remnant Squad @ [50] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Lasgun (x4)
1 Sergeant @ [6] Pts
Light Infantry; Sharpshooters; Laspistol & CCW

Fast Attack: Sentinel Squadron (2#, 112 Pts)
0 Sentinel Squadron @ 112 Pts
2 Sentinel @ [112] Pts
Searchlight (x2); Lascannon (x2)

Fast Attack: Rough Rider Squad (10#, 110 Pts)
9 Rough Rider Squad @ 110 Pts
Close Combat Weapon (x9); Hunting Lance (- LP) (x9)
1 Sergeant @ [11] Pts
Close Combat Weapon; Hunting Lance

Heavy Support: Basilisk (3#, 375 Pts)
1 Basilisk @ 125 Pts
Earthshaker Cannon; Hull Heavy Bolter; Indirect Fire Capability
1 Basilisk @ 125 Pts
Earthshaker Cannon; Hull Heavy Bolter; Indirect Fire Capability
1 Basilisk @ 125 Pts
Earthshaker Cannon; Hull Heavy Bolter; Indirect Fire Capability

Total Roster Cost: 1500

Sentinels (40K)

40K Imperial Guard sentinels are Star Wars inspired "chicken walkers." They're the most overtly "sci-fi" item in my army, and I kinda like them. Unfortunately, they have a very short lifespan. Armed with powerful weapons but armored with paper thin protection, they're one of the first targets on the battlefield, especially if your opponent are furry little bear creatures. They're like a jeep with a machine gun mounted in the back.

This particular model has an armored crew compartment, which looks cool, but like most 40K options, aren't worth the points. I would think that from a game design perspective, Games Workshop would be smart to reduce points on all the cool options that nobody ever takes. I'll be modeling cool options, but they won't be on the list. WYSINWYG.


The "apocalypse" or "steel legion" sentinel is no longer available as a standard item. You have to order them directly from Games Workshop and they come in a cardboard box without instructions. They're pretty simple to put together, although when I finished I realized all the legs were backwards. That only took about half an hour to fix and probably resulted in better poses. The feet are still backwards on two of them, but you really have to be looking hard to notice.



On Deck
I've got four grenade launcher units to put on bases, a quick job.

On Order
I've got four lascannons on order but need a total of six.
I need to order two more grenade launcher units.
The six boxes of core troops are still back-ordered.

The Army List
I'm trying to keep it simple for now, so I've kept the same units, added more men, upgraded missile launchers to lascannons and removed extraneous equipment and junk from the list. I would add flamers, but there are no Tallarn models with them, so I'm not doing that.

Once I see how this list works in play, I can add more units. I'm sorely tempted to add a Hellhound flame-tank to the list, or make the entire list mechanized; tricky to get right and when it does work, often considered too good by other players.

Dakka Dakka

I'm playing masochist today by submitting my Imperial Guard army list to Dakka Dakka. I consider it a virtual play test of sorts and a reality check. Let the tearing of new orifices begin.

Prime Directive

If there's nothing left to put together, it's time to start painting. I'm still waiting on the Apocalypse sentinels, the back-ordered boxes of troops, and the grenade launcher guys, but it doesn't mean I can't get started on what I've got.

I primed the armor black in preparation for the paint job below, Mars Pattern XXI, by Ethan Anderson:

I'll be trying out GW Foundation Paints. The base is supposed to be several coats of Scab Red, a standard GW paint, but I'm hoping a single coat of foundation Mechrite Red will accomplish the same task. I debated on using an airbrush, but I knew if I entertained that idea for too long, I would end up owning one. Could this project get any more expensive?

For masking the camo colors, I'm planning to use clay of some sort. I'm not sure what type of clay to use, but I like the idea. It seems like a great way to get a more organic pattern.



If I haven't stressed it enough already, I really need to find something that stimulates my imagination to embark on projects like this. My first miniatures gaming project was Warmachine, putting together a small Cryx army. I painted the warcaster and a minion or two and then lost interest. I was doing it to do it, and it didn't really interest me enough to spend hours of my own time. Now I prowl the store eying Leman Russ tanks and wondering who has a miter box I can use to make cool custom jobs.