From now on the 4th of July will take on a whole new celebration for my family as this was the day my daughter, Eleanor, decided to join us in the world :)
She's absolutely perfect and my wife and I are thrilled she is finally here!
Needless to say, my free time (and sleep) has been a bit limited as of late. Between a new house and a new baby I have plenty to keep me busy this summer. I wont be attending the NOVA or any other multi-day events this year but that is just as well since I haven't had the hobby time or practice to tune and update my lists to 7th edition yet. I'm curious to see how the first big tournaments of 7th shake out in terms of what is allowed or not. I know it's a difficult spot for TO's to be in and I can understand the initial reluctance to allowing things like Unbound or multiple Combined Arms Detachments(CAD). I don't deny the potential for abuse but I also feel like it is impossible to fully guard against army list imbalances -- it's pretty much baked into the game, even with a faster codex update / release schedule, there will always be a latest and greatest while older books continue to suffer until their day in the spotlight arrives. From a Dark Eldar perspective, with one of the older books in the game right now, I would love to see double CAD as it allows DE to make up for some of their current shortcomings; not all of them as points in general are pretty high across the board compared to the new books, but it still goes a long way in helping an older book hang with the new stuff. That being said, if a new book is coming before the end of the year it's probably a good idea to wait on making any big additions to the army. I'll continue with the Dais and other projects I've started as these were hobby driven in the first place and I want them in my display case.
My new hobby space is coming along nicely and has already seen some gaming action in the form of a modified Kill Team style campaign. One of my best friends is quite gifted in the art of game design and in one evening he developed a backstory, universe map, mission catalog, and specific game mechanics for player actions and progression through the campaign. Before I knew it, we were 7 rounds in fighting our way towards the goal of capturing the planet Hexos and uncovering the strange singularity which resides there. I'll get more into the details of this in a later post but so far it has been a blast to play and I can already see it being a great way to introduce others to the 40k universe.
Before I go, I wanted to give a shout out to the charity army raffle that is being sponsored by the NOVA Open Charitable Foundation. The armies are incredible and the proceeds go to great causes. Even if you're like me and can't attend, you're still eligible to win, so check out those armies and click here to purchase your chances to win a one of a kind professionally painted army and feel all warm and fuzzy for donating to something that is good for the world ;)