Wednesday - September 05, 2007
An Evening With Mah Friends
So last night, I FINALLY gathered up all my stuff and popped out to the Games Workshop store in Novi - the one Arica and Joe work at. I got out of work a little early, which availed me nothing, since my wife wanted to do dinner and we had to pick up kitty litter... but by 6:30 I was at the store. Only to find out it closed at 8, instead of 9 like I thought, and there was no chance of me getting a pick-up game going. I was S.O.L.
On the other hand, Arica was working, and was cool enough to give me a rundown of Warhammer Fantasy Battles - a game I had often seen but never played personally. Arica's really cool when it comes to balancing the work / friendship thing... She treats talking about the game like giving professional advice. She treats me like any other customer, and I respect that.
Josh popped in - also thinking that the store closed at 9 instead of 8, so he arrived 30 minutes before close. Arica, however was cool enough to invite us over to her place where we could continue the hanging-out / building / modeling / painting thing. We played a bit of the new Metroid game for the Wii. Without getting into a full game review - that I would be unqualified to give on the 30 minutes of play time I got - I would say first impressions are VERY good... which is refreshing. I was worried. I was severely disappointed in Prime 2 : Echos, as it felt like a copy of the first one with new skins. "Oh, no, that's not a plasma beam like the last game! It's a Dark Beam. You can tell because it's black. Never mind that the beam looks the same, the charged ability does the same, and it still burns over time like the plasma beam... it's black! it's a Dark Beam!"
Right.
So, a bit later, we retired to the basement and pulled out the modeling stuff. I had made 2 new purchases that night :
I have officially made up my mind on playing Raven Guard Space Marines, so I'm working to flesh out a fair number of them right now. I got my questions about mixing my forces answered for me, also, kindly, by Arica. Apparently, the Imperial Guard nor Ordo Mallus will be showing up in my army. Space Marines - apparently - do not play well with others. Thusly, I've also made up my mind about how my dioramas will be put together - I'm definitely making it so that the pieces can be removed for game play. I'll dislike the circular impressions around their bases, but I think I'll get over it after putting them in a few games. I'll post more on those projects in my The Games We Play blogs, once I start them.
Arica spent the evening pouring over the new Chaos Space Marines Codex... crying about nerfs, and gushing about other abilities that they opened up to make less restrictive and such. It sounds like the changes were much more balancing, and on the surface, I would say I'm more or less happy. In Arica's words, "You no longer need a degree in advanced mathematics to play Chaos anymore."
Josh pulled out his huge bucket of miscellaneous Tau bits, and Arica's dremmel tool. It was amusing, really, and sort of grotesque to see him surrounded by little plastic body parts, pieces of little plastic machinery, and a huge drilling device - it made him look like some sort of crazy mad scientist, who's life work culminated in the creation of a tiny grey plastic Frankenstein's Monster.
Really, he was just putting magnets into his Broadsides' arms so the Rail Cannons wouldn't snap off.
Then there was Murphy... who was cool enough to come hang out with us, even though Arica locked him in the bathroom somehow.
Murphy is.... well, Murphy's kinda like Concentrated Cat - Everything about him is over the top. He's huge, he's SUPER soft (like rabbit hair), he's super lovey, and super chatty. 100% sweetheart that meows constantly as you pet him, telling you ALL about it. He hung out with us for the duration of the evening, being a little attention-whore and bugging whoever he thought he could get pets from that particular minute.
But still, he's not without his darker side. Pick him up, and see for yourself.
