The Infinity group at my store is currently running a mini-campaign that I’m greatly enjoying. Each of the eight participants has created a Spec Ops character for their army, including a bit of backstory to explain where they came from and why they’re awesome. Each week we’re paired against an opponent; the organizer writes some fluff about why we’re fighting, and assigns us an objective-heavy scenario to resolve the conflict. We play it out, and any Spec Ops who survive accrue experience to pick up new abilities and gear. After the game, both players write up a short fluff piece about the battle from their Spec Ops’ point of view; some players write a play-by-play of the coolest parts of the battle, while I’ve focused more on the grisly aftermaths of my relentless series of crushing defeats.

It’s been a hoot. 🙂

I haven’t written a rant in a couple months, so let’s see if I remember how to do that.

I figured that if I’m going to start talking about Infinity, I should probably start with what made me decide to get involved with the game. And it’s probably not what you’d guess.

• It isn’t the game’s setting, even though I find the setting fascinating and a really creative break from the GrimDark and GreyVsGrey universes in so many other games.
• It isn’t the sculpting opportunities, though I do really look forward to trying some full sci-fi sculpts.
• It isn’t the ruleset, even though they could scarcely have come up with rules better-suited to poke my brain’s reward center.
• It isn’t even the minis line, despite the fact that as far as I’m concerned, Corvus Belli is putting out the best gaming minis on the market– the sheer dynamism and detail in their current line is just mind-blowing to Sculptor Spud.

No, those are all awesome things, and they’re all contributing to my current enjoyment of the game. But the first thing that drew me in, and the thing that has consumed by far the largest chunk of my time since my induction over the last two months, comes down to two words:

Space Buildings.

-Spud

First up: YAAAAAY CHRISTMAS GRAPHICS!

Second: Sorry for the extreme dry spell on the update front. The reason I haven’t had much to show this year is that I’ve spent easily 70% of my modeling time between March and October of this year working on a single large project. It represents the bulk of my productive output in 2013, but I didn’t want to reveal it until it was completely finished. I originally thought it would be done in May, then amended that to August, and then Christmas. It was finally looking like I would meet that last deadline, and then…

I burned it.

Well, not the whole thing. But about 30% of the Fimo project’s work to date was baked too hot and destroyed, and I’ve been too depressed to restart that component just yet. As such, I’ve deferred any further work on the project to 2014, and am using my time to work on holiday projects instead. As a result, I’ll have at least three projects to show you in December, including a holiday-themed conversion, a terrain project that I’ll be lugging down to Templecon this coming February, and finally, flat-out the best model I have ever sculpted. All three projects are in various stages of completion, and I expect to have all of them posted up by the end of December.

Next, I’m building an entirely new, heavily converted 50pt army to bring to Templecon, and I’ll post some updates on that during January.

And then, after all of that is done, I can hopefully work up the courage to rebuild what I ruined and finish the 12-Month Sculpting Project From Hell.

I promise it’ll be cool when it’s done, though. Maybe not worth a year’s wait, but definitely cool nonetheless. 🙂

-Spud

The fish summoner‘s adventuring career has been ended prematurely by a poorly-designed plot contrivance (NOT THAT I’M BITTER), so I spent some time last week figuring out what her replacement would look like.

Please join me in welcoming her replacement, a half-orc witch who eats people.

Hopefully I can keep this one alive for more than six months. :/

-Spud

Yep, it sure is.

-Spud