In the Den of the Great Wolf

We had a family trip last month which ended with a two night stay at a Great Wolf Lodge. For those of you without kids, a Great Wolf Lodge is a hotel/waterpark. On the day you check in you get access to the park starting at 1 PM and have full access until closing at 9 PM on the day you check out. So if you live a reasonable distance away you can get a pretty solid day in at the pools before heading home after checking out.

Since we were there for an event for my wife, I had our daughter with me most of the time by myself. So we got to explore the water park together and learn what was fun for her. They do not let you bring in flotation tubes for kids but they do provide life vests. We had brought our own for her but decided to use theirs so we did not have to worry about having another wet object in our room.

The water park has many different zones enclosed inside in a 85 degree room which feels warm as soon as you enter. Being inside meant I did not have to worry about my pasty white skin getting sun damaged. I am so pale it looks like I am only come out at night. The first place we went was the toddler pool that had like a 1-2 ft depth and some spray zones. Attached to this was like 5 different waterslides built into a little hill. The top height was probably 6 feet with a pretty long length. The next stop was a larger pool with about a four foot depth with an area with basketball hoops for play. My daughters favorite area was a slow path that you floated down in a tub with occassionally things splashing on you. She would want to go around it like 4 or 5 times in a row.



They also had a wave pool which had about a 6 foot maximum depth and a 2-3 foot valley to crest. This is sort of small compared to a wave pool that I was used to as a kid which was like 12-18 feet deep and 4-6 ft waves but was nice since I could hold my daughter and hoop over the waves. I spent so much time doing this that one night it felt like I was still hooping while trying to go to sleep. They also had a water soaked play structured which is topped with a 1500 gallon bucket which would dump on to those below every few minutes. Right below this bucket was 2 water slides which where like 2 stories tall of twists and turns. You had to listen for the bucket alarm while waiting in line on the slides to avoid getting soaked. My daughter and I got up to them planning on going down together but when we got up there I learned that she had to go down on her own with me on the other side to meet her at the bottom. I asked her if that was OK and she said yes but did look nervous. We went down and when I meet her at the bottom not only did she enjoy it she demanded that we go back up to ride again. We also did an activity which had a rope net strung across a pool with flotation pads in it. You are supposed to hang on and work your way across but my daughter was not tall enough to react it so she just crawled from pad to pad and I moved them close together to help her jump from one to the next.


I tried it with the netting and expected more floation from the pads but it is not designed for the dads. Our trips to the pools always ended with a stop at the hot tubs to get warmed up a little before heading back to our rooms to get cleaned up. This should only be the last stop since it makes the other pools seem very cold.

I have not talked about the big water slides yet since I did not take my daughter on them even though I could have since while it might be pretty safe I am sure she would have been scared. They had 2 levels of these higher slides. The 3 floor high set of 4 different slides which go into and out of the building. One of the slides involved a drop into a big bowl where you went around a few times before dropping through a hole in the center. These were all fun but sometimes had a line when the area was busy. On our second day I was able to ride them as fast as I could climb the stairs back up since it was a weekday while school was still is session so not very crowded. I am not a huge thrill ride fan but I liked these. They also had a 4 story multiple person raft slides with three different choices. I only did one of them since you have to get paired with other people if you are riding alone. The ride I went on actually had powered parts which made it even faster than a normal gravity powered slide. I was not expecting that. I might have known what I was getting myself into if I had brought my glasses but I left in the room to not lose them.

We had a great time in the pools probably spending like 10-12 hours there during our stay. All the staff was friendly and helpful. I was constantly asking the lifeguards the time so I could meet my wife for events. They also had a nightly story time with both a short animatronic show and then a employee reading an extra large format book.



The only thing we did not like was the restaurant which was a buffet and we had a hard time find main course dishes that we enjoyed. We do not really eat seafood and many of the other dishes seemed very salty to us. We try to watch our salt by not adding extra but it is not like we eat salt free meals. We had already paid for the meals since we did not have time to go out and eat someplace else but in the future we would probably make time to go to other places in the area.

The Five Stages of Games Workshop Players

All the discussion of finecast miniatures has reminded me of all the different types of games workshop gamers. Not everyone falls exactly into these categories but I think they cover most often as a combination of two. While these can seem critical of the class all these different groups are needed for the healthy gaming community.

Newbie: "Those are nice miniatures. Oh, they go to this game, cool. Maybe I should give that a try." Trait: Innocence.

Fanboy: "Games Workshop miniatures are the best of any wargaming company. The games are great and GW does everything right." Trait: Passion, Zeal.

Invested Player: "Sure the price rises are annoying but they need to make a profit. The codexes have balance issues but that is because you have so much freedom in making your army. Those FAQ take so long since they really want to get it right and consistent. They must be doing something right look at all the players." Trait: Determination, Commitment.

Disgruntled Veteran: "I still play some GW since I have the armies but I really only buy the new rules and an occasional piece. I really get sick of GW's balance issues, price raises, and bad rules. Anymore problems and I am done." Trait: Critical View

Moved On: "I used to play GW, remember how good this specialist game was. I am now spending my time with X. You should give it a try it is way better than Games Workshop stuff." Trait: Showing the outside world.

I am sort of between Disgruntled veteran and Moved On. I have yet to find the table top wargame replacement but I have been regaining old hobby interest after being very GW focused for about 4 years.

Memorial Day

It is Memorial Day here in the States to remind us to pay honor to those who have fought in wars to defend this country. My father served in Vietnam and later passed from what is now classified as a service link illness. I miss him and am sad that he passed when I had yet to truly grow up even if I was over 18. He missed my college and graduate school graduations, my wedding, his granddaughter and his soon to be born grandson.

Love You Dad

Finecast Poll: What is the Quality of your Finecast Models?

I am running an unscientific poll for people who have purchased a Finecast model. Let me know what you think. Perfect (No problems what so ever way better than metal just like GW says). Fine (some slight issues like flash, tiny bubbles but about what you get with the metals). Or Bad and the reason like flash obscuring details, large air bubbles, or bad mold misalignment.

Let us all know what you got so we can know what is normal and what you should not leave the store without checking with a fine tooth comb.

Photo from mechanicalhorizon via warseer used with permission

Any Publicity is Good Publicity

For Games Workshop is any publicity good publicity? I have not posted anything in months and nothing about GW stuff really since August but with all their great announcements in the last few weeks they got me to talk all about them again like they dominate the world of gaming. Those days are over Games Workshop. You need to remember that the best way to serve your share holders is to find better ways to serve your customers. Price increases, trade embargoes, and overblown sales talk about minis that might be slightly better but also seem to had very poor quality control on the line. Forge World might get away with shipping bad resin but you will not since you are nice enough to have local stores to complain to instead of international phone calls and unanswered emails.

I also added my unscientific poll about Finecast. Please vote once for each mini you purchased. Also check out the Termi Lib from the GW stuff. Just need to add some extra basing material around that front foot. This is what really concerns me that they could not even be bother or able to provide good models to the webstore.

Finecast is Hitting the Streets

So people have managed to get their hands on the new models a little early.So I am trying to collect links to the new citadel finecast model reviews. These are non GW people who have their hands on the models and provided pictures. As they say on the internet pics or it did not happen.

Lets take a look at what they are saying:

http://kirbysblog-ic.blogspot.com/2011/05/citadel-finecast.html

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/371719.page

http://www.gw-fanworld.net/showthread.php?t=155489&page=133

Seems sort of mixed reviews. People are liking some of the features of the resin but there are noticeable problems with miscats or mold parts left in the model.

I am not going to repost the pictures since they are not mine or a promotional image from GW, but go to the links and check them out.

Anyone else got a link add it here in the comments.

Update: GW today has another blog post on the Finecast line. While it is positive it is not Mana from heaven and admits that finecast will have lots of flash, and some air bubbles, and that you do not want to touch it with a file.

Update 2: Another review with a miscast crewmen on a dark elf bolt thrower. And no I am not only linking to problem ones:

http://piratevikingpainting.blogspot.com/2011/05/finecast-review.html

Positive Review here of Honor Guard, They do look nice:

http://itslikewatchingpaintdry.blogspot.com/2011/05/citadel-finecast-review-marneus-calgar.html

Some more pics

http://s3.zetaboards.com/The_Ammobunker/single/?p=8224497&t=7446341

Avatar Missing Fingers

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5542108&postcount=1201

Lelith's lost spikes

http://666kb.com/i/btvaxbj2xedrjdh9v.jpg

Lots of Flash but not bad

http://twitpic.com/53k4nr/full


I am getting the feeling that if you get a good one they are really nice but the miscast rate is high enough that if you are buying from GW you open in store to inspect them before going out the door. I only play 2 armies, Space Marines and Nids, and I am not needing most more models. The only thing that is in the line that I had planned on buying when i stopped last year were the Sternguard models. They are now 45 bucks up from I think 41.25 or something so about another 10 percent after coming out at 35 in late 2008. So for people who think GW has been raising prices for inflation that is 8.8% for three years. Inflation has not be close to that.

The Blood Knight box is now 99 dollars. I do not remember what it was before but that better be one great unit.

Price Increase! What's it in Retrospective: Comment

I was surfing the web and say a post over at d6wargaming.com. In it, he compare the price of gas, movie tickets, and sneakers to the price of GW products. I could not see how to comment so I am just doing it here.

It is costing some people 75 dollars to fill up their tanks. He might consider gas a luxury but many people have no other options than a car. I think a large part of the country was up in arms when gas was 4.25 a gallon. I know I was not happy and I have only a 2 mile commute since when I moved into my house it was not long after Katrina and I knew gas prices were not going back down to the 1.15 a gallon I paid in college. So the choice people are facing is they can fill the gas tank so they can go to work for a week or they can buy a plastic toy tank.

Next the discussion was that movie tickets are about 15 dollars each. This really adds up to a tank if you take your wife and your kids but guess what movie grosses are down. Also tickets where I live are about 10 dollars and I never go at night usually matinee or twilight where they are like 7.50. Then again I also have pretty much cut movies out of my life already with only 2 in the last year one of which we got free tickets through my wife's blog. So I can get a tank or take my wife and daughter to the movies (ignoring drinks) like at least 2 times

Next was 75 dollar tennis shoes. I might spend 75 dollars on shoes but I would hope to get 2 pairs that should last about 3 years total with BOGO half off. So I could buy a tank or get like 1-2 years of every day wear out of my shoes.

GW likes to see themselves as luxury goods but they are still just toys. Inflation is starting to show up again even outside food and energy but many buyers have essentially flat income for several years. Consumers are being squeezed and are looking for value even in their fun purchases. Any individual players makes these choices for themselves but GW is essentially pricing themselves out of the casual purchase level for many people especially with 20 dollar blisters, almost 40 dollars for a basic troop choice, 75 dollar rulebooks and 99 dollar starter boxes.

I think the GW customers would be more willing to accept the price increases if we had not gotten them like 4 years running when inflation was actually pretty flat. They raised prices and it netted them more revenue, then they raised prices again and it left revenue flat, the data from the last price rise seemed to have them generate less revenue from their half year report even though they released a new edition of Warhammer. They appear to have already crossed the point of diminishing returns in revenue as well as volume but they press on.

Strange Traffic Drivers and Mystery Jump

So sometimes when I post I like to follow where my traffic comes from. When there are no new posts it is generally from google images or various key word searches. Yesterday I had a post so most of the traffic was from Blog networks like the Bell of Lost Souls but I also had a really strange search turn guide someone to my page: "dwarf ultrasound". Why would this turn be linked to my blog?

Well it turns out at the beginning of the year I posted the ultrasound of my son due in August whom my daughter has named Bob Steve. I also have pictures of blood bowl and warhammer dwarves on my pages so clearly they must be linked. I am sure I also get weird traffic from people looking for information about the Twilight series but I have used Sons of Twilight as my marine chapter name long before that darn book series broke through to the mainstream.


I was also looking at my traffic in terms of days of the last month and noticed I had a huge traffic spike on May 9. I got like twice post free day normal traffic without a post and no reason I can think off. It is to late now to go back and see where it was coming from since my stats provider only provides the last so many at the free level of monitoring. Anybody out there no why I got more traffic like 2 weeks ago for no apparent reason.

More of the New Citadel Miscast

GW just makes it too easy. I am sure if I went over the metal models with a fine tip comb I would find tons of problems but these are your press photos. Check out the air bubble in the wing stone just behind the helmet on the pistol side.




What about Gandolf?




Those sword guards seem pretty uneven to me. The painted model looks more normal. Is this another miscast or just how the model is imaged. Looks like we are looking right at the flat edge of the blade so it should not be an camera trick.




These are little things, maybe we can only notice them now that the models are so sharp. I just hope they fixed the problem of the misaligned molds that leave the ridges in the models. Well even if they did not the resin should be easier to grind down than the metal. That can take forever and you have to pray no important detail lies on that line.

As a funny note I am now getting traffic from the Citadel Finecast search term. Remember the Citadel Miscast line will be available soon at your local GW store or independent retailer. These special limited edition pieces are almost identical to those metal models you already have but replace the flash with air bubbles. Strange how we only see picture of the fully assembled pieces not any of the blisters or straight out of the package.

The New Citadel Miscast Line

Wow, GW has reinvented miniature wargames with their new Finecast Line of resin figures. If you do not take my word for it check out their press release today. The finest miniatures the world has ever seen. I am sure this example taken directly from the page shows the fantastic promise that awaits all willing to pay the price for this magnificent new product.

Wait lets take a look at this model and compare it with the painted metal one shown on the sight also. Do you see the difference?




Miscast or damaged model. Take a closer look at the Iron Cross.



The resin on is chipped in one corner so GW has chosen to advertise their new high quality and extra cost models with a miscast one. Can this company really trip over their own feet this many times in one week. Sure it is a tiny little thing but you would think that you would want to show your best product to the world on your website.


Seems like Forge World Quality has finally made its way to Games Workshop and let me tell you that is not a good thing.