Swamps of Death

My birthday has come and gone, the last of my still not 50 birthdays. This is the last year that I live outside of that 5th decade and I don’t know that I like that it is still fast approaching. But I digress…

The family asked what I wanted this year. The past couple years they had all chipped in and gotten me some bigger presents. Heck, last year, the xbox one was a god send. I spent a good part of my time at home playing Diablo 3 Ultimate Edition. This is the edition with the Necromancer, my favorite character from Diablo 2. I spent far too much time playing Diablo 2 on PC years ago.

Anyway, Flying Frog Productions had come out with revised editions of the Shadows of Brimstone core sets (City of the Ancients and Swamps of Death). The first set I had purchased a while back was City of the Ancients and I picked up the update pack specifically to update my older set. But for a long time, it was next to impossible to get Swamps of Death. The cheapest I had seen it priced was over $200, more than double what I had gotten either of the sets I already had (Forbidden Fortress and City of the ancients, together they were only about $150 when I got them).

Once the revised editions hit retail though, things changed. You can find the original edition of Swamps of Death on Amazon for about $100. It’s a much more realistic price. But no one selling on Amazon had the revised edition for sale without being bundled with the City of Ancients revised edition. So we find ourselves back into the $200 range.

I mean it isn’t that it isn’t a bad deal. Sure that price could be doable if I wanted to own a second copy of City of the Ancients. But I had picked up the update kit so I wouldn’t have to do that. And sure the update kit had the cards and such needed to bring the original Swamps of Death up to date as well. But I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the older mini designs.

I started doing some searches. Found the revised edition on Miniature Market for cheaper than the older edition on Amazon. I figure that’s the better deal. I mean obviously, right? And they had free shipping if my order was over $100. Yeah, I added in a set of Bone Eater monsters too.

Now here’s the thing. I figured with the free shipping I chose, I wouldn’t see the stuff for well over a week or so. It took three days. Color me surprised.

And this is where I find living in the modern age is a bit maddening. See, UPS not only gives you updates on the where abouts of your package, but they also give you the link to a page that shows you where the truck carrying your package is when it is getting close to your house. I ended up watching this truck go back and forth within a mile of my house, while completely skipping the neighborhood I live in, for over 2 hours. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

I ended up spending about 4 hours popping cardboard tokens out of their sheets, sleeving and organizing cards, and assembling about half the minis. And then I finished assembling the minis the next day. I haven’t even gotten to painting anything yet. So far I have printed off an end cap holder and started printing another token holder. It’s nice having the files handy for the stuff I need for all the tokens and such that come with these games.

So, I stepped away from this for a little bit. Basically, I wanted to get stuff painted before I finished out the piece. I have reached that point. Over the course of Spring Break I dipped into the paints and got some stuff done.

The funny part of this, I still haven’t painted the character models. I am about 8 models behind now in all this. But I have all the monsters finished. They are ready to go on the table and for the players who show up for games, we have our models painted. Maybe one day I will actually have everything painted and I will be able to move on to other projects. But you know, that is a long shot.

I can paint and make stuff look pretty adjacent. But I am happier just putting things together and seeing what they look like. Heck, if I could get away with it, everything would probably just be left in primer. But that doesn’t look pretty on the table.

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