Some BattleTech and Some Ramblings

So I had planned for this evening to be another fairly large BattleTech post since I have a couple small orders coming to finish off the 7th Striker Battalion.  Unfortunately one of those orders has been sitting in an Ohio USPS facility for the past 3 days while the other one looks like it'll be here Monday rather than today like I had hoped.  But I did make some progress and the 1st Armored Infantry Battalion now has a full motorized infantry company in trucks and a full mechanized infantry company in half-tracks.

1st Platoon, Alpha Company

2nd Platoon, Alpha Company

I've got enough trucks to do one more platoon with a couple left over but unfortunately I'm one half-track shy of being able to do a second mechanized platoon.  I'd like to do a third mechanized company, so it looks like sometime here in a couple weeks I need to get an order in for some more half-tracks.  Also, if anyone has some unpainted Epic space marines infantry models, I'm interested in getting about 40 tactical marines to do a couple companies of battle armor infantry.  20 assault marines to use as jump infantry bases would be awesome as well.

Now, on to some ramblings to finish off this blog post to fill in for the missing mechs.  I want to start with just saying some people don't realize how lucky they are to have a good stable local gaming store to not only play at but also for purchases and the camaraderie.  I'm here in rural Tennessee in a small size city and before that I lived in what was basically a decent sized town.  Almost my entire gaming pastime has been spent playing out of people's homes.  Using the spare bedroom or kitchen or evening the living room in different friend's homes who were willing to host until some reason forces it to move again.

The city I'm in now, Morristown, is okay sized.  It could support a good game store if it was done right.  Unfortunately we've yet to have someone come in and do it properly.  12 years ago there was a game store that was doing really well.  Then the owner had personal life issues just about the same time he over expanded the store.  It's never been close to good since.  We've had game stores come and go on a regular basis.  We had one that the owner was playing games against the customers and cheating to win so that one got real unpopular fast.  Then there was the store that was doing well and really supporting 40K and such before changing owners due to financial issues and the new owners were only interested in running Magic as it had the best profits with no need for investment in gaming tables, terrain, etc.  And the story goes on.

Now I know it can be fun to play at a buddy's house, but a wife, roommate, heck even the buddy himself, is only going to put up with 8 to 15 people coming over and staying fairly late into the night on a weekly basis for only so long.  Right now I'm on the borderline of lucky with a game store.  I've found a very good one with a very active group of players.  The owners and staff of the Johnson City Hobby Town are great examples on how to encourage and build a player base.  Unfortunately it's also about a 75 to 80 minute drive one way for me.  Add to that my work schedule and I only get up there 2 weeks out of 6, which gets a bit frustrating when you're wanting to get some games in and it isn't really convenient for that middle of the week hey let's swing by and see if we can pick up a game either.

Being single I'd be willing to turn the spare bedroom in my place into a game room with a couple tables, but since I rent, I've only got 2 parking spaces.  One for my car and one spot for everyone one else which also doesn't work well.  So how do all the rest of you out there deal with it?  (And in you are reading this and are in the central east Tennesee area with a regular group that plays, shoot me a line and we'll meet up sometime and get some games in.)

That's all for now and I'll see you all later.