Summer is over and new school year

So over the summer I decided to make a gaming to do list which I will put up here again with the status of their completion.

• Finish painting my Deathwing squads.  I think I have two and a half squads to finish.
• Only got around to priming them.  Never got into the mood to paint or play as GWs whole pricing structure just put me off the entire hobby.  I don't understand how they are still in business given the price of their kits but I guess there are enough fans who want the latest models.  To be fair I really like their new models (the Riptide is really cool) but I've got better things to spend my money on that don't feel as much of a waste but probably are just as much of a waste, but at least it doesn't feel as big of a waste.
• Get the Road to Orktoberfest 2013 League running and hopefully smoothly.
• Not enough interest in 40k so this never really got off the ground.  Again this was mostly due to how I felt about GW so I had no drive to try and get this off the ground.
• Get all the Orktoberfest 2013 details finished.  The sooner the better so I can advertise it to the local gamers. - completed 8-2-2013
• Finish LA Noire
• Bought Dead Space through the amazing Humble Bundle deal and played that instead.
• Complete my MTG Noob Cube - completed 7-7-2013
• Rebuild my old desktop into a mediocre gaming PC
• Couldn't set aside any money for this but I did get a new laptop from work so that tided me over as far as new technology is concerned.  I still want to build a mediocre gaming PC as laptop gaming just isn't that great (my personal laptop is in its 3rd year of service and the work laptop isn't meant for gaming)
• Continue my Outlaw Shizzle D&D Campaign
• A few key members of the group moved away and we all decided to just play online games instead.  Might try to find new blood though as RPGs are still really fun (and way cheaper than GW games)
• Get to Gold division in League of Legends
• Harder than I thought.  I think I may have screwed up my climb as I went on tilt one week and had a massive losing streak (something like 15 losses over 20 games) so my MMR is fairly low.  Lately I've gotten better and over the past month I've been winning more than losing so I may yet be able to hit Gold before Season 3 ends.  If not, there's always Season 4.
• Finish one of the Imperial story lines in Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Sadly only got to the end of Chapter 1 on my Bounty Hunter.  Still, being free to play I'm not too concerned about my progress.  A friend wanted to start a commando so we all rolled new Republic characters as well.

So my progress on my to-do list was really poor but I did have other things outside of gaming to attend to.  My daughter (2 years old) can now recognize famous space ships (the USS Enterprise, X-Wings, etc.) and has a vested interest in a lot of fantasy stuff (sword fighting) so maybe next summer she can actually help me with some of my gaming related stuff.

For now, I've rekindled my interest in MTG with the Theros release and I'm going to stir up more interest in 40k for Orktoberfest 2013.

MTG - Noob Cube complete

One of my summer to do list tasks is complete.  I've completed a cube for MTG designed for newer players.  The cards are all fairly straight forward with not a lot of complex interactions.  No super complex combos, only evergreen abilities and a focus on creatures and creature interactions.  Now just need to find some new MTG players to test it on.

For those curious the complete list is here.

General Gaming - Summer To Do List

Woooo!  School is done for another year so I have a few weeks to relax a bit.  So between doing my normal house duties and dad duties I've got some gaming related things I want to complete this summer.  Hopefully I can incorporate my dad duties into some of them so that Penny can be exposed to the gamer side of the family and appreciate the little army men I play with.

In no particular order, here's what I want to accomplish:

• Finish painting my Deathwing squads.  I think I have two and a half squads to finish.
• Get the Road to Orktoberfest 2013 League running and hopefully smoothly.
• Get all the Orktoberfest 2013 details finished.  The sooner the better so I can advertise it to the local gamers. - completed 8-2-2013
• Finish LA Noire
• Complete my MTG Noob Cube - completed 7-7-2013
• Rebuild my old desktop into a mediocre gaming PC
• Continue my Outlaw Shizzle D&D Campaign
• Get to Gold division in League of Legends
• Finish one of the Imperial story lines in Star Wars: The Old Republic

I might add to the list, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.  Hopefully I will be able to do all of those during this summer and hopefully Penny can assist with some of it and maybe learn a thing or two.

My Gamer Bibliography

On the drive to work one morning I had some time to think about being a gamer.  It amazed me at how long I have been playing and the types of games I have played in my time as a gamer so much that I tried to chronicle when I started gaming and what I played throughout the years of my life.  I came up with the following list.  The list is by no means complete nor accurate but gives a sense of what I have been playing all these years.

League of Legends - Duo-Queuing

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Grouping Up) my friends and I started grouping up in League of Legends so we could avoid some of the toxic behaviour from grouping up with random people.  As a result I've been duo-queuing with our Blitzcrank player a lot.  Mostly in an effort to get him up to lv30 and maybe we can start duo-queuing ranked games or something.  At the very least our group will be completely lv30 so everyone should be on a level playing field.

Due to LoL's matchmaking mechanics it is sometimes awkward when I play with my lv30 account and he's only lv10.  Pairs us up with a bunch of 20s who are way more skilled than he is.  So I made a second account to level with him.  However because he plays Blitzcrank support almost exclusively (he does a good job at it), I've been playing ADC a lot.  I normally jungle when I solo-queue but there's not much to coordinate between jungle and support during laning.  Not a total loss though as it has improved my last-hitting skills and positioning skills and if someone else jungles when I solo-queue I will have another role I am decent at.

My ranked play has been really good lately.  I'm currently on a 4 game winning streak for ranked games and I'm only 25 league points from my next promotion series (promo from Silver V to Silver IV).  Haven't been grinding as much as I used to but work has gotten in the way lately.  End of semester is coming up so lots of last minute marking and catching up of marking because of students panicking.  If only they just did the work when asked.  Once this friday hits, no more assignments will be accepted as that is the end of the semester.  Which means more hobby time!

Video Games - Things I Bought with Diablo 3

I bought Diablo 3 about a year ago not because it's a good game, but more of an economic experiment.  The real money auction house (RMAH) intrigued me as it was the only game at the time (and I think still is the only the game) that allows people to sell their loot to other people for real money without having to go through a third party like eBay.

I wanted to see if I could make an appreciable amount of money by playing the game whether through actual grinding of content or auction house flipping.  To start things off I bought the game using money from selling a bunch of MTGO tickets.  For those who don't play MTGO, tickets are sort of an unofficial in-game currency.  You normally obtain them by buying them from the MTGO store but if you speculate on card values well, you can actually gain tickets which I did rather successfully (an aside, when I figured this out I financed an entire year's worth of drafts and online release tournaments with an initial investment of something like $20).

Warhamer 40k - New Deathwing models

I managed to find some time to start putting some new Deathwing models together (from the box my sister sent me a few weeks ago).  I have to say that the box was quite impressive considering all the parts and weapons and stuff on the sprue.  Here's a preview pic of what I did.

Sadly I still don't think the box is worth the price tag GW is asking (no disrespect to my sister, it was a very thoughtful gift and I will enjoy it immensely).  The hobby has really become a luxury that I definately cannot afford on a regular basis.  Thankfully I have a large 40k army already so I won't need to actually buy anything for years to come (when they make Deathwing terminators 15 points a piece, then maybe I will need to buy more).