So, my Bones are unpacked.  My, there are a lot of them.  I can just imagine how many the people who bought extras have.

Almost all the figs are great.  The new sculpts range from pretty darn good to awesome.  The Bones plastic holds detail pretty well, not quite as good as metal, but servicable for most things.  Where it seems to hit its limits is on very small pieces-- not small details on large pieces, but on actual  small extrusions of plastic.  So the awesome runes on your great sword will look fine, but the thin, delicate hands of your elf-maid may look a little sketchy.

(But I haven't painted them yet.  The white material may just be losing some details to my 42-year old eyes.)

The gryphon requires some assembly, and the pieces went together beautifully.

There is a little bit of flash on some pieces, which I hadn't seen on any of the promotional Bones figs.  You'll probably be able to take care of it with a fresh hobby knife blade and a steady hand.  A slightly bigger problem is the warping that occurred during shipping.  I have several figs with bent swords, staves, and so on.  And one figure is bent over so severely she won't stand up.  The same thing happens with metal figures, but with the plastics it's a little tougher to fix (requiring a heat source)

My entirely non-scientific rating is 5 stars.  The figs are pretty much perfect for what they are: a cheaper alternative for minis.  I expect to be buying more of two categories.  Large/giant figures are better to me as Bones than as Metal, being both cheaper and lighter.  Among the human-sized and smaller figures, I'm interested in stocking up on anything I can't get pre-painted.  I bet iI'll buy more of the dungeon furniture stuff and the bugs, slimes, monsters and so on.  (All the NOVA dudes, multiple times.  And I think I may need more than one cyber-gorilla)

For "personality" figures like a player's personal PC or a really major NPC, I'm more likely to go with metal still-- but I'll say in quite a few cases the Bones fig would be fine.  The PC-worthy figures are the ones I plan to paint last, keeping them unpainted to offer to players for various games that use minis.

So great job, Reaper Guys!  I'll see you at paint club.

Forever.

(Oh hey, it's been an entire month.  I suck.)

This just arrived in my email box:

Hi there!  We're shipping out your Kickstarter stuff!

        You're getting:
        vampire x1

        Your shipment was postmarked on 04-02-2013 and is being shipped UPS Ground.

And this:

This message was sent to you at the request of Reaper Miniatures, Inc. to notify you that the electronic shipment information below has been transmitted to UPS. The physical package(s) may or may not have actually been tendered to UPS for shipment. To verify the actual transit status of your shipment, click on the tracking link below or contact Reaper Miniatures, Inc. directly.

That means a zillion (about 200) minis will be at my house in the next day or so.

And I intend to paint all of them.

I have no idea how long it will take me, but I'm going to do it.  And I'll post pictures here.

David G.

I skipped a couple days, and now I feel guilty.

But I also feel tired and a little sick to my stomach.  So I'm going to bed.

We'll see if I can get some serious writing done tomorrow.

Happy February. 

 

Time to check up on those resolutions.

 

On the blog thing, I'm giving myself a "needs improvement."   I can't work up the enthusiasm for little meaningless entries, and I don't have the time to write meaningful ones.  I'll soldier on until I figure out a better plan.

On the writing thing, I think I'm actually doing pretty well, but I need to adjust my goals.  (IIRC, I thought that might happen).  I'm letting off the pressure a little.  The new quota is to write a novel chapter OR a short story every month until I have the novel ready for the conference.  I may then start on a second novel, since I have two kind of in development.  I'm not totally giving up on the story a month thing, though.  I just want to do the novel chapters first, then if I have time to write a story that's a bonus.

I'll reassess in a few weeks when the novel is closer to done.

I have made one submission this month, so that's two months in a row.  Now, if only they weren't so SLOOOOOOO.

I must write more so I can submit more and get rejected more.  There's not enough disappointment in my life so far.

Tonight is the night I fail in my most serious Resolution-- unless I pull out a win at the last minute.  The story is currently not quite 10k words.  I think it needs something close to that again to be finished, and it probably actually needs more since I'm afraid I compressed things too far in places.

That's a really awkward length for a story; not quite long enough for a novella but too long for a lot of markets.  I'm curious what will happen when I start editing it.

EDIT: Who's a failure?  Not me.  I managed to squeak it out.  The big story isn't finished, but the one I was going to edit next month is done now, giving me something new to submit and giving me a big head start on next month.

I picked up the Settlers of Catan app for my iPad, and have been playing it kind of obsessively.  The app took a little getting used to.  The interface isn't completely intuitive, and the text crawl at the top can't keep pace with the speed of play.  I may get into the settings to see if I can turn off the computer players' exteraneous comments.

The hardest thing to get used to was a game where my friend Chris couldn't knock over parts of the board with wild dice throws.

(We love you, Chris)

If I have one serious complaint, it's that the computer players seem to gang up on the live player a little in the four-player games I've been playing.  I'm not completely sure that complaint is valid, though.  Some conformation bias might be at work, and it may be a difference in play-style.

For one thing, the computer players buy a lot more development cards than I do.  Three of them use dev cards as a major strategy, and all of them use Knights more offensively than I'm used to.  So there's this really annoying dynamic where I'll pull ahead by a couple victory points and all three computer players will take turns slapping me with the Robber over and over again.

I've never seen them do the same to each other.  But that could be because they all play somewhat similarly and most of the time they keep their scores pretty similar.

Still, I find it vexing.

After 40 games or so, I've picked up some strategy tips that will make veteran Catan players say "no duh, dufus."

* Start with a settlement on a 6 and an 8 if at all possible.

* Get a port, ANY port, as quickly as you can.  It's worth it to start with a costal settlement if your can snag the dedicated port to a resource you score easily.

* Starting with late-game resources (Wheat, Ore, and to Sheep) is slightly better than starting with early-game resources (Lumber and Brick).

* Wheat is the most valuable resource in the game.  If there's a "Kansas" on your island (a collection of three or more fields), Get into it.

I've also learned how to game the computer a little.  Trading with the computer players is different than with live players.  All the computer players will generally offer 1:1 trades.  If you turn down the first offer, most of them will frequently make a second offer.  For instance, wheat for sheep, then brick for sheep.  If you counter-offer on the second offer for wheat and brick for sheep, the computer will generally go for it.

However, I usually try to end up with a 2:1 port and just cut out the computer players completely.  The bastards only ever use my resources to buy more Knights to screw me anyway.

I have also found one way to trick the computer to avoid getting knight-stomped.  It' not something you can plan from the beginning of the game, though.

The computer players generally get more aggressive as your VP climb.  (They also seem to know when you have VP cards, which doesn't thrill me, but I guess human players could guess the same thing when you have a stack of dev cards you never use.)  However, they're not very good at predicting the future.  Particularly, the computer can't generally tell that if you have two 4-length roads that are separated only by a single hex-facet, that you only need to build one road segment to suddenly ahve a 9-length road.  So whenever I can arrange something along those lines, I will very carefully keep my two roads shorter than the current Longest Road until I get to 8 VP.  Then I'll buy the missing segment and win without sucking up as much Robbery.

Captain, the engines can't take much more of this!

We're not going to make it!

Yeah, as of this moment I'm at nearly 10k words on the story, with some unknown amount to go.  I get to write a little this evening, and I might squeeze in a little time at work, but unless the short story fairy visits me with a big bucket of inspiration, I'm not going to get this finished by the end of the month.

And yet, I've produced nearly twice as many words as I expected.  And they're good ones.  If I'd written 40 pages of crap I had to delete, I'd feel pretty bad.  Now, while I'm disappointed, I'm actually pretty happy with the work.

I think I'm going to try to finish last month's short story rather than write a forgetable nano-fic.  I'd like to have something to submit.  In the long run, it's more productive that way.  I get a new story ready for submission in February, and with any luck I'll finish the one I'm working on in February, too.  That would mean writing a new story in March and revising this one in April.

Unfortunately, work on my novel is going slow.  I need to get some of that into the rotation if I'm going to have 3 chapters and a synopsis by May.

This month's deadline looms.  I have essentially tonight to finish the story I'm working on, or else Thursday I'll have to punt and write a micro-story.  (Or possibly do the edits on another story.  That'd work, too.)

 

Can I write 3k words in a single night?  Will 3k be enough?  Tune in tomorrow to find out, true believers.