I started my day, as always, at the Infinity booth. 32. That was the number of boxes left by the time I got there at 10:07. To give some better perspective: Corvus Belli brought in 300 boxes of Icestorm, Tabitha Lyons's figure, and Penthesilea. The cosplay figure and bootleg Penny were sold out on the first day before 4. The remaining Icestorm boxes sold out in only an hour of the 2nd day's reopening. That's all 300 boxes gone. Below, you can see what piddling amounts remained when I got there.
I also took some better pictures of Yojimbo (both poses) so you all could get a better look. I didn't see any real good pictures of standing Yojimbo here, so I thought I'd offer my services.
I mentioned it yesterday: Battlefoam's new Alpha bag is out, guys. I stood there with Kip for a bit and had him really show me some in-depth stuff on the bag and the standard foam loadout. I caved in and went and bought the sucker. It's gonna be a lot easier to carry around my three factions when they all fit in the same bag. It certainly helps when that bag carries everything else I need, too. Here's some photos of the bag. I'll try to write up a proper review as a Data-Sphere blog post, perhaps, later. Check out these images of the redesigned bag:
Pouch here on the side that's big enough to carry those tackle boxes everyone seems to be using to carry their tokens.
Wide pouch here on the back to hold your campaign book or iPad or even your templates. (I suspect it'd also be a nice place to store your Icestorm terrain. I'll try it out when I write up that blog post)
And here, you can see the front (lots of the soft velcro there to give plenty of space for those patches and factions logos). It's seriously a lot of velcro space, guys. On the side, you see another pocket, but it's a lot thinning, useful for a ruler, or something to clip your tape measure to. I tried putting my templates in here at first, turns out those pockets are super deep and a little too hard to fetch those templates in any sort of timely manner. And I've got thin and long girly piano hands. I've yet to decide what I'm gonna do with that side pocket.
After buying that bag and talking to a few guys looking to get into Infinity, Carlos dragged me away to Angel's painting seminar. He was not going to have me be late again! He's got a bunch of things to give me TOMORROW AFTER THE OFFICIAL SEMINAR. I doubt I'll be able to upload much without killing my phone bill (and thus my wallet) in 4G charges. I promise I'll upload those fine quality images when I can. In the mean time... Angel has a little project that he revealed at GenCon. Something about painting and masterclass and SOMETHING LIKE 150 PAGES OF LEARNING HOW TO PAINT LIKE ANGEL IN STEP-BY-STEP PICTURES AND DESCRIPTIONS! This new book is supposed to be released some time near the start of the year. Angel hopes to have completed it by October. If all goes according to plan, it should be available for ordering in January and ship out in February. Corvus Belli, to support one of their favorite artists, will be providing a limited edition miniature with each pre-order of the book. During his seminar he went into detail about how many chapters it has (four), what each chapter contains, and how far he's into completion on it. It's looking like he's halfway there with the writing. He's writing it entirely in Spanish, BUT! the final product will be in English. The book is entirely funded by Angel. Corvus Belli and Vallejo are only being able to distribute it. This is Angel's baby. And you can tell. If you'd like to see some previews, my camera tried it's best:
>>Imgur link to Angel Album goes here (Sorry if it's not up by the time you read this, I took over 100 pictures, it seems. Whoops.)<<
Guys, I seriously can't recommend this book enough. He goes through so many different techniques and gives a lot of great advice throughout at least the short section he previewed for us here. He thinks it's going to retail around 35 euros, so about 50 USD. I know I'm grabbing a copy as soon as I can. Angel's excited about it. Bostria's excited about it. I'm excited about it. It's gonna be great.
Later that day, I took part in a little bit of mischief as I performed a MORAT PRISON BREAK!
It's a little narrative scenario built by Bill (of Warsenal fame), Jay (also belonging to Warsenal), and Roger (again, with Warsenal). Bill ran the mechanics, Jay designed and built the the prison, while Roger delivered the story to the players. It was 1 person controlling Morats vs a good ol' host of a rag-tag team a' spec-ops. I gotta say, that narrative was well thought out and well delivered by Roger. He really brought the place to life. We started out doing fine until we ran into a Raktorak and his hacker buddy. A Kurgat mine gave us a bit of a speed bump, also. It came down to one poor Hatail left alive. This Hatail was played by the youngest member of the group: Gabe. I didn't ask, but he seemed no older than 14 or 15 years old. He was crazy! When he was the last one left alive, what did he do? Run up and stare down a Morat HMG with a Viral Combi Rifle at around 24 inches. He crit. Morat died. He ran over to the Morat hacker. He crit. Morat died. He went over and drug the rest of the party's lifeless bodies over to the medical ward. He swung open the medical ward's door and shot down a Med-tech. Just plain good rolls this time. Then he went around the door, swinging inward, and popped the Morat guarding an elevator. He then proceeded to revive all but one member of the party from a completely lifeless state. Rockin' we proceeded to mow down another guy who was watching the elevator before we got on and it was revealed we had just landed ourselves in "the Arena" as it was called by the mighty Sogarat prison warden. As we reached the ground, we were told to fight for our lives for the Sogie's amusement. Allusions to the ancient Roman coliseums were made. After taking some defensive positions in a small rock formation, a large door was opened to reveal... a group of Gaki hungries with a marshaling Oznat in the back. Not linked, the hungries each charged impetuously forward. Each took several hits from our party as we pumped AROs after AROs into the poor bugs. Gabe rolled no less than 3 crits during this, with the last killing the Oznat. Pleased with our performance, the warden bade we use the elevator on the far side of the arena which would grant us access to a dropship. Though, reaching the dropship, we opened up the passenger bay to find... only 4 seats... No way were we going to fit more people in. We had 6 guys remaining in the party: my Hatail, Gabe's Hatail, Roger's (different one) Indigo, Matt's Yuriko, Nick's Indigo, and (I can't remember your name! I'm so sorry! Shoot me a PM and I'll fix this post)'s Vortex. Realizing our situation, an alliance was quickly formed by the Indigos and the Hatails to work together and get out. Yuriko fell to Nick's Indigo in close combat, and the Vortex fell to Gabe's Hatail barrage. Fleeing in our (newly spacious) dropship, a Kurgat with an Autocannon that was hidden away on the side of the prison draws a beat on our ship and shoots!
...but luckily enough for the would-be escapees, misses! The Tohaa and PanO win the day!
Here are some pictures:
If you're interested in the terrain used for our Morat Prison Break, I've got some great news (as if Angel's upcoming book isn't already great). The Morat decorations are facades that are planned to be usable with Warsenal's already existing Alpha, Beta, and a new type coming out soon, building structures that you can find at [url=warsen.al]Warsen.al[/url]. The tentative release schedule for both the boarding action style facades is in maybe two months, Morats by the end of the year. Look forward to it!
That's all I've got for you 'Sphere denizens today. Stay informed. Stay connected.
