New Pictures, Short update

Thing shave been quiet recently, since the last go around with Wyrd and my continued compliance with Eric's .... requests. Gaming as a whole has been a lot slower for a number of reasons, not the least of which a lack of opponents combined with a dramatic increase in work. Even with Dixon back in the area (and his happiness to play most any game) I have only gotten a semi-regular set of Netrunner games and ~ 4 Malifaux games over the past 6 weeks.

I was able to swing out to Huzzah Hobbies over the weekend and grab the remaining Malifaux models in the case to get some pictures. As I was transitioning away from Malifaux I used much of my outstanding Henchman credits to pick up a couple random crews. Some of these are for my collection despite the unlikeliness of my every actually playing them. I wanted to pick up some models that others may be interested in playing under the Malifaux Classic rules as the game editions change. One of those crews was Von Schill. I have never been heavily invested or interested in the Outcast crews, and Von Schill has been even less interest to me as I played Malifaux. Despite this, I know several people who like the German soldier look to the crew and suspect some of those folk will be interested in grabbing the crew to play. Once I got them in hand I asked a friend of mine, John, to paint them up for me. John's painting style is more earthy and muted overall, which I felt would really fit the look of the crew.

We start out with Von Schill himself, the leader of the Freikorps. Schill has regularly shown up in a variety of crews due to his Mercenary status, to the point that I rarely see him leading a crew himself. I love the colors John was able to pull together here, allowing the Hulk Hogan face and hair really jump out contrasting against the more muted uniform. The small splashes of color are great tools to draw the eye when the crew is on the table.

Next up we have the Freikorps Librarian. Dixon will take her form time to time in his Viktoria crews. Her healing is a nice little boost, although I have rarely found myself in a situation where she was a deep concern in a game for me. As you can see, John used the red sashes to create some unification on a model to model basis.

Mentioning the red sashes, we immediately move to another model where they disappear completely. Despite that I really like the overall look of how the specialist is painted up. Despite not being tightly drawn to the crew as a whole, the model's paint job looks really good.

The overall Freikorps releases can be split out into single models, double models, and the group. The last of the single models is the most recent addition, the Strongarm Suit. I imagine that somewhere someone has painted one of these guys up to look like Iron Man, but that's not the way this went. In this specific case I am happy with the muted earthy tones matching the overall crew.

Now we dive into the multiple models I picked up in the crew. To be honest, I cannot remember why I doubled up on the trapper aside from half remembering seeing trappers in pairs on the table previously. Regardless they came out nicely, with a really smooth muted white on their cloaks.

That brings us to the grunt line troops in the crew. I grabbed a second blister of these guys simply to flesh out my order and make sure I had enough Freikorpsmen to built out a decent stand alone crew.

And then we come to the end of the post with the group shot. Here are my Freikorps all together. They look great and will sit nicely in my mini cabinet. It's nice to have them on hand for anyone who may want to borrow them for a game of Malifaux.

As a last note, I grabbed some more pictures to fill in some of the missing links on the Malifaux Crew list. Check out that page (linked at the top) for some of the new pictures.

Perspective

I have been working on an article for a couple weeks which has taken a number of twists and turns before coming together. I saw the picture to the left recently which helped really crystallize the article as a whole.

Heading into the rambling to come, I want to say a couple things. First, if your a regular reader of this blog I do appreciate your patronage. I hope the blog brings enjoyment in some for or another to you. If the blog frustrates, angers, or somehow generates negative reactions for you then you probably should stop reading my opinions. There appear to be a fair number of people who enjoy reading, and even enjoy commenting and discussing the points I bring up. To those folk (who comment positively or negatively but enjoy themselves), kudo's and "good on ya!"

Onto the rambling itself, there are those out in the interweb who get awfully riled up on reading my opinions here and anywhere else. I have taken some time to read through their comments, responses, and opinions when and where I can find them. I do this in part because I enjoy observing people reactions, and many of the people I am referring to here have awfully extreme reactions. I enjoy observing others simply because it's interesting to watch some people overreact based on preconceived opinions and notions which are essentially baseless or false.

I had a whole long bit written up comparing the public opinion of me before, during, and after this whole transition of a game. I deleted that. I have a whole essay in mind based around the idea of "stop beating a dead horse", but decided not to go down that road. On both of those topics I wanted to try and help readers to see how things have progressed and provide some solid information they can use to ground some of their opinions in a base of facts. I thought that maybe helping others to perceive some of the events through my personal lens would benefit or enrich readers. I had this collections of information that has been shared with me via emails, forum screenshots, copy/pastes, and just general discussion which could all be referenced without implicating the sources.

Then I remembered who my readers are. My readers (appreciated and unappreciated) are the crowd.  There is very little I can write here that will truly matter, as the crowd just wants a show. This was particularly true with my popcorn post. I will tell you that the popcorn post was exactly what it said. There were happenings (and still are to some extent) in the world of Wyrd that I am greatly amused at observing occur. It's utterly fascinating to watch these events birth, develop, and take on a life of their own. I am one of the crowd who is watching in this case. The reaction of readers who commented and readers who emailed me privately surpassed my own expectations and almost eclipsed my enjoyment of watching the developments at Wyrd. Simply pointing out that I was sitting back and laughing at some comedy led to a great deal of conjecture in conjunction with a great deal of digging into issues. Yes, some of the things you (the crowd) identified were in fact what I was bemusedly watching. Other things I am still chuckling at were not caught by those who responded.

I cannot promise any level of wisdom to pass on from my blog or from this article. I can share some of my experiences and perhaps parts of the crowd will gain additional individuality through those experience. Those who do may just gain a different perspective and there is the very slim chance that a very small number will gain the perspective to view the performance with the crowd along with viewing the performance of the crowd. Often the crowd is more absurd than the performance being staged.

My experiences and perspective through this "Wyrd vs Bill" thing have surprised me as well as reminded me of things I used to know and chose to ignore.

Sometimes it is the game and they are not your friends. This can be expanded beyond gaming, but then I would not be able to reference Eric's post, which is a good post. As a general rule the crowd will be disingenuous and applaud you as long as they are getting what they want. The crowd turns in a moment and members of the crowd will always feel better if they can work out how to lead you to the gallows.

The crowd doesn't listen to what you say or watch what you do. The crowd creates its own opinion and decides that is fact. Your words and actions only "flavor" crowd opinion to a greater or lesser degree.

Individuals are different from the crowd, but the crowd is constructed of individuals. Often the crowd-think overwhelms the individual think. Only the strongest individuals stay individuals in the face of the crowd.

Sometimes its not narcissism, you really are the focus. That will often be surprising to you and others will blame you for being surprised.

The crowd loves a show but hates change. It does not matter how genuine and honest you are, if your genuine stance changes at some point the crowd will rebel!

There you go, has that helped you gain a new perspective at all? Let the shouting, throwing of food, and general rabble-rousing begin.

Be Careful to READ forum posts non-disruptively

**** This post seems to have caused an awful lot of disruption. One who "Once called me a friend" advised it should come down. Following his advice it has been removed. *********