2015 Gaming Summary & 2016 Forecast

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Andy

I’m a few weeks late on this one, but I wanted to take a moment to round up my gaming activity from 2015. Lets get started!

Miniature Gaming

For miniatures, I played a total of 15 games. These games included Firestorm Armada, Dystopian Wars, Star Wars Armada, and Star Trek Attack Wing. The game I played most was Dystopian Wars, with 5 games played. My overall record for 2015 was 6 wins, 5 losses, and 4 draws.

Board Gaming

For board games, I played a total of 11 times (that I remembers to write down, anyway; I suspect there are a few games I forgot to log!). The most played game for me in 2015 was Tiny Epic Kingdoms, and my overall record was 7 wins, 4 losses, and 0 draws.

Forecast for 2016

2016 looks to be the biggest year in gaming for me since 2012! Due to the fact that I’m on shore duty, and planning on going to two major gaming conventions, I expect that I will easily shatter the number of games I’ve played in 2015. In fact, I might very well play more games than I played in 2015, 2014, and 2013 combined. Looks like it will be a good year!

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Time to Hunker in the Bunker

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Andy

WinterStormJonasAs I write this, snow is just starting to fall outside. However, those light flakes fluttering to the ground are just the advance guard of a diabolical snow horde colloquially referred to as “Winter Storm Jonas” that is descending upon the DC Area. The forecast is calling for up to two feet of snow…for a region that goes to pieces if it gets two inches. And here Gwen and I thought we had left the blizzards behind when we moved from Maine! At least there, people knew how to successfully live, work, and drive in snowfalls measured in feet. For those hardened denizens of the New England tundra, two feet may as well be a dusting. By way of contrast, the average Virginia driver’s solution to a half and inch of snow fall is to put on their hazard blinkers and drive 5 mph down the freeway.

Thanks to the snow, I didn’t have to go into work today, which was nice. Gwen, the boys, and I are now safely holed up in the house, ready for whatever Winter Storm Jonas can throw at us. To be sure, I’ve got a few thinks I’m looking forward to doing…the boys always need attention, of course, but I’m still playing lots of Fallout 4, I’ve got models to paint, and several books to read. So, I would say I’m pretty much set for entertainment, regardless of whether we keep our power or not.

So far, 2016 has been a fun but busy time. It is very entertaining to watch the boys grow and gradually expand their range of interactions with the world around them. They are getting closer to crawling every day, so we had better watch out! My job at the Pentagon has been going pretty well, too. I’m gradually figuring out just what it is that I’m supposed to be doing, so that “fish out of water” feeling is gradually diminishing. Speaking of the Pentagon, check out this neat picture I found:

012d5ce5fa68970268db646579f604058f6a3c293dGiven that I walk the halls of the Pentagon every day, this is probably the best scale reference to the Enterprise-D that I’ve seen yet!

In the mean time, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to play some Fallout 4, play a game of Dystopian Wars, and even work on painting some of my miniatures back log. I’ve also started a naval wargaming podcast with a friend of mine as the co-host. If you are interested, make sure to check it out!

And as always, here are some new pics of James and William. Until next time!

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The Inevetiable Episode VII Post

Posted on January 16, 2016 by Andy

Star_Wars_The_Force_AwakensIt’s probably past due for me to write this, given that I watched the movie weeks ago, and its been out for nearly a month already! Still, better late than never. Oh, and it should be obvious, but if you haven’t seen it yet, there are spoilers below. Continue reading →

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Happy New Year!

Posted on January 2, 2016 by Andy

014d33aa13f2776c7626452547eb805f9920140135Gwen, the boys, and I have had quite a holiday season, and I figured I would sit down for a few minutes and update you all on how it went. For Christmas, Gwen and I drove out to Indianapolis to spend time with my family. We stayed with my sister Sarah and Brother-in-law Chris, along with my Mom and Dad. This was the first chance that William and James had to really meet their extended family; not surprising, they were a huge hit! We were able to make it over to my Grandma’s house for Christmas Eve, which is when my Dad’s family traditionally gets together. It had been years since I’d been able to attend, and having Gwen and the twins there made it doubly special. While we were there, my Dad made several of his special dishes, including Lasagna and Sauerbraten. I feel like I gained 15 pounds last week! Also while we were out there, Gwen and I went to see the new Star Wars movie with Dad. We all really liked it! I think it is a definite improvement over the prequel movies, but I’ll save more detailed impressions for another post.

A couple of days after Christmas, though, we had to head back to Virigina. I had to be in to work on Monday the 28th, plus we still had to celebrate with Gwen’s family. The week has flown by, with all kinds of last minute preparations to see to. Fortunately, we were able to get it all done, and had a great New Years celebration with Gwen’s parents. We are still trying to dig out the house from that one!

All in all, Gwen, William, James, and I are doing great, and getting our 2016 off to a great start. I can’t wait to see what the year has in store for us! And, as usual, you will find another gallery of cute pics of the boys with their family ;).

Until next time…

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Our House In Virginia

Posted on December 23, 2015 by Andy

Hello again!

As promised, here is a photographic tour of our new house in Virginia. We are renting this house from another military couple who had to move to New York. Gwen and I are very happy with the place; it has tons of rooms, lots of neat features, and best of all is only 10 minutes from Gwen’s parents! Anyway, on to the pictures:

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2015 Modeling Year In Review

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Andy

I was going back through my picture folders, and I thought it might be fun to put together a quick post showing all the models I’ve painted over the past year. It’s funny…thanks to my job, having to move, and having kids, if you’d asked me how much I painted in 2015, I would have told you, “Not a lot.” However, once I started looking back at it, I’m surprised by how much I actually accomplished!

Anyway, here we go:

New Prussians for DW:
681746_md-Dystopian Wars, Prussians, Spartan GamesA Dindrenzi Test Scheme:
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New Terrans for FSA:
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DW Objective Markers:
681750_md-Dw, Dystopian Wars, Spartan Games

1:1800 WWII Warships:
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A 1/350 Scale model of the USS SCRANTON as a presentation gift:
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And last, but not least, my UNSC and Covenant test models:
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Overall, I would have to say that my favorite of the bunch has to be the Sturmbinger sub I painted for DW:
681733_md-Dystopian Wars, Prussians, Spartan Games

Although, the Terran Dreadnought I painted is a close second ;).

For next year, I’m vowing to finish up the box sets I’ve got for DW, Planetfall, and Halo, and clear out the impressive number of DW blisters I’ve got

Until next time!

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Fallout 4 Impressions

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Andy

latest War…War Never Changes. Or so goes the tagline for the post-apocalyptic video game series Fallout. I started in with the series about 5 years ago with Fallout 3, which was something of a new direction for the franchise. That sort of went over my head though, as I completely missed the first 2 games. However, Fallout 3 had me hooked, and some of the scenes and set-pieces from that game will be with me for a while. So naturally, I jumped in to Fallout 4 with both feet; this was a rare Day 1 purchase for me. Lately, I’ve been waiting months or even a year or more before buying big games to save a little money (not to mention to allow me to play all the games I’m way behind in!), but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it in this case. Awesome trailers like this one didn’t help:


Over the course of the last month, I’ve managed to put in about 30 hours into Fallout 4; the big differences from the previous game include a change in venue from the Washington DC area to the Boston area (referred to as the “Commonwealth” in the game). I’ve been playing off my character’s pre-apocalypse military background, turning him into some sort of Mad Max-like commando bad ass. Behold! fo4characterSo far, I’ve been working around the periphery of the game’s main quests, instead letting myself be pulled into a lot of side quests to help the folks in the Commonwealth area. I’m honestly quite astounded at all the stuff there is to do in this game. I’ve been spending a lot of my time working on custom modifications to my gear, especially my guns. It is oddly rewarding to roam the wasteland in order to come up with all the bits you need to create an extra-large drum magazine for that Tommy Gun in your inventory! A neat new feature is that the game allows the player to create settlements, safe havens for survivors to flock to and create a small pocket of civilization in the chaos of the game’s world. This aspect of the game is amazingly free-form; players can create farms, build structures, construct defenses like turrets and guard towers, and even employ settlers as shop keepers and supply runners between settlements! This feels very satisfying; its as if you are setting out to bring some order to the Commonwealth again. If it wasn’t clear already, this game is absolutely enormous. Despite the dozens of hours I’ve managed to log in so far, I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what there is to do and see. I’ve already had some memorable moments, like (minor spoiler) finding an abandoned diner staffed by robots who have literally interpreted their directive to “Serve the Customer” to mean not that they serve their customers dinner, but that they must serve their customers as dinner. Fortunately, I was able to talk my way out of being sliced and diced by a friendly robot waiter with an English accent! Given that, I’m well an truly hooked; I’m sure I will be re-visiting Fallout 4 again on the blog at some point. Now if you excuse me, I’ve got to instal a new scope on my rifle so that I can run some quests for the Minutemen. Oh, and one of my settlements needs a new water purifier. The wasteland beckons…

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Settling in…Finally!

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Andy

01c5dde2ff6a1a120cb71188d94b29a250b562c4aeHello again! It’s been WAY too long since my last update. I have a decent excuse this time, though. A LOT has been going on. I’m probably going to wind up leaving something out in my discussion below, but I figured I had better cut my losses and get an update posted before something else happens!

First of all, Gwen, the boys, and I have completed our move to Virginia, and are all set up at our new house. I can’t tell you how awesome this house is, and how excited we are to be living in it! This place is by far the largest we have lived in so far, and it has some very cool features in it. I will be posting some more pics and an update specifically related to the house later on! The move itself went pretty well, as we had an excellent team of mover01f49eb30789857f14386c94e39bd24955625320d7s that did a bang-up job packing up all our stuff and getting it unloaded here in Virginia. We were finally able to set up a point-to-point delivery, which means we avoided having our stuff go into storage. Up until yesterday, however, our otherwise excellent move had been marred by one issue; our cat Phoebe was missing. She somehow escaped from my in-laws house the first night we were in Virginia, back on 18 October. We had just about given up hope on ever finding her, since it had been 3 weeks since anyone had seen her. Then, out of the blue, we got a call from a couple that live not 500 yards from where she went missing, saying they had found her and cornered her in their shed. We were overjoyed! Phoebe has lost a lot of weight and had a wound on her shoulder that needed stitches, but is otherwise fine.

William and James are doing great. We found out last week that James has a cleft palette, which is a big reason why he has so much trouble sucking. This will require surgery to correct, which has yet to be scheduled. Fortunately, the cleft is in the soft palette at the back of his mouth, which will require only minor efforts to correct. It also isn’t slowing down his appetite at all!

While all of this has been going on, I’ve been trying to settle into my new job at the Pentagon. This job involves work that is very different from anything that I’ve done before. There is a lot for me to learn, including an alphabet soup of new acronyms! I’m also trying to adjust to the fact that I’m no longer responsible for a department of 30+ people. Instead, I’m only directly responsible for myself;

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Riding the Whirlwind

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Andy

image

As I write this, I am sipping a stiff rum and Coke from a comfy Business-class seat in Amfleet car 81537, which is careening south at over 100 mph, along with the rest of the consist of Northeast Regional train #67. I departed Boston about an hour ago, and I should arrive in DC by 0700 tomorrow. This latest sojourn down the Northest Corridor was prompted by the need to return to Portsmouth for my Command Qualifiaction board, which I am pleased to report I passed! With that, my tour as Navigator on a nuclear powered fast-attack submarine is now well and truly ended. On to my next adventure at the Pentagon!

In between now and my last post, much of my time has been spent on getting Gwen and the boys down to our new house in Virginia. My Mom and Dad helped a lot with this task, whether it was wrapping small articles, driving one of our cars, or taking care of the boys. Our new place in Virginia is, in a word, Incredible. The house is more than half again as big as anywhere we’ve lived before, and has a lot of nice luxuries. I’m especially excited about the study! On top of all that, it is only 1o minutes from Gwen’s parents. All of our stuff got delivered on Monday, after what was perhaps our smoothest move yet. Now all that’s left is to unpack the boxes.

Here are a few pictures from the move:

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All Aboard for House Hunting!

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Andy

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Gwen, William, James, and I are down in Virgina this weekend looking for our next place to live. We took the train down on Thursday, which was the first train ride for the twins. Gotta start them early! In all seriousness, the train ride worked out just about perfect. It was about the same time as driving, but it allowed us to be able to get the boys out and feed them, change them, and calm them. With a car, we would have had to stop and pull over to do that. The train also allowed us to avoid the security hassles and cabin pressure changes of a plane flight.

So, yesterday and today Gwen and I went looking at places. We saw three yesterday and three today, with one more scheduled viewing for Monday. So far, we have a couple of very promising options. We haven’t made a final decision yet, but our front-runner is a house in Woodbridge not far from Gwen’s parents, Jim and Debbie. I had originally wanted to get something as close to the Pentagon as possible, perhaps in Arlington, Alexandria, or Springfield. The commute will not be as nice from a place in Woodbridge, but it shouldn’t be too bad either. Plus, the size and quality of homes goes up dramatically the further you head south. Stay tuned! In the mean time, here are some pictures from our little adventure on Thursday:

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