Mainstream is the new "nerd"

Being a nerd nowadays is surely the new mainstream. Is there anyone that's a "regular jock" nowadays? If it's not that they play pretend-LOTR during weekends they obsess over fixed gear bikes or analyze the football scores. In a real nerdy way.

So I saw this over at Total Fan Girl and kinda fell in love. Mostly because it was -ages- since I played a proper hack-n-slash dungeon crawl. Or any roleplaying game at all tbh.

Vampire kinda stole the crown of my gaming group when I was into RPGs. With it's more theatrical way of roleplaying (some might say it was finally roleplaying and not rolling dice and looking at tables). After that came the (european style) LARP-ing and one thing led to another and suddenly re-enacting was what I did. And all I wanted to be was in that forgotten land, hacking stuff in the head with my broadsword (1D8+1) and getting the loot and a bunch of XP in the end.

Will it go full circle? Just after I stopped playing RPGs for real I went into table top games. Will I, in a few years be a neckbearded dungeonmaster again? (Not that I had any sort of resemblance to bear when I was fifteen-ish)

So, to recap to the "everyone's a nerd" thing I started with.

I studied advertising school during 2008-2010. Some might say "The leading advertising school in Sweden". Hard to get in, hard to finish. There was a ton of A-type personalities there. And sometimes pretty hostile in a very intellectual way. Pretty high percentage of hipster/jocks there.

So one day, I walked into the school studio (where we did all our projects) with a newly bought AOBR-set, a battleboard and god knows what else I bought that day. The GW store was then just a couple of blocks from school.

And not -one- -single- -person- said something disparaging about the "toy soldiers" I bought. Some asked, and I told them the basic premises and they lightened up and said "My brother did that when he was young. How cool that it's still alive." or "Yeah, I had a Tau-army back in the days!".

Some dudes, with a little less points on their geek-card, asked if it was kinda like World of Warcraft, but in space, and with plastic dudes. And I told them the differences, the history et al. While realizing that these people are ALSO nerds since they immediately jumped to the WoW-connection. Some of them were level 80 wizards already. With robes.

So tell me, do you know anyone, in your age span. Say from 20-40 who has not played some sort of "adventure game" (I clump every dungeoncrawl -> D&D game into that phrase).  Do not play "computer games" and talk about it not-hushed tones? Or hasn't gotten any form of nerd-cred? It might be just a simple thing as knowing/nurturing an interest that's work related. One girl I know, she collects viruses. (She's a virologist, so she's excused from the label "Weirdo!")

I think you will find it hard to find anyone around you that's not a nerd in some way. Hell, even a fashionista-girl I knew collected hard to find Chanel-handbags. She knew everything about those goddang bags. Just like a military modeller would know everything about the colors DAK used during the desert wars...

Food for thought...?


In other news. Those of you over the pond that's interested in the paint storage racks I got, can now order them from Warpath. The offial post over at TTG is:

ESLO Terrain products will now be available in North American from WarPath Games.

From their announcement:

We are happy to write that we have an exclusive distributor for the U.S.A. and Canada.
Now all resellers can contact WarPath Games. They have a large stock (become in next time a restock) and will be attending several shows. We think this is the perfect solution, and will provide better communications for all resellers.

ReviewAnother paint storage alternative

So I've tried the Paintier carousel-thingie. After the rave-reviews it's gotten on some places on the internetz. I guess people do more drugs than I thought they do, because that thing sucks a bag of weiners (Not Safe For Work). Spin it around and paint bottles fly everywhere. The 80-paints (holds about 120-ish dropper bottles) is also so high that it wobbles a fair amount. So if the bottles don't fall off by spinning, they will fall off if you happen to nudge the table it stands on.

So I sent mine to the garbage can and stored my paints in the Vallejo suitcases you get when you buy complete sets. Still not an optimal solution. It's hard to see the colour of your paints. Since Vallejo also tends to separate fairly quick that sand brown looks like lime green if you look at it from the top.

While looking around for terrain, don't ask me why, I seldom play at home. I stumbled upon Eslo Terrain and their accessories section. And lo and behold, they have a tiered paint storage thingie! Much like the ones you can buy from that laz0r-cutting company I've forgotten the name of. But actually (and to me, this is a good thing) made for dropper bottles and dropper-bottles only!

Now, they clearly state on the site that the kit version (you can buy them pre-assembled too) is not the easiest thing to build. I kinda scoffed at that. I mean... I build 500-part german tanks. I should be able to put together a shelf-system?

It was most likely the most frustrating build -ever-! If you work with wood-working or have tools made for stuff like this. Sure, it might be super easy. For me, not so much.

The shelves slot in to the sides, and in order to get the next level of shelves in their slots, you have to move the sides a little. Making the ones you just put in fall down. So you have to align them to their slots, caaaaarefully put the next level in their slots. And then you have two more sections to do... rinse & repeat.

I ended up using two boxes of cat litter to make sure the sides would't fall off / away and took my time. And still there was a couple of moments when everything fell like a house made of cards and I wanted to burn it all in a fire while laughing like a mad man.

Anyhow, as you can see from the above picture. I got them assembled finally. And my workspace is suddenly less cluttered and I can see the colours of my paints! (Assembly-line painting some Ultrasmurfs as well...)

Now, I would advice against buying them in kit form, if it wasn't for the fact that you can actually buy sections for Citadel style bottles and mix-n-match as much as you like. There is of course pre-assembled ones to buy too... but if you're like me with just a handful of Citadel bottles you might want to go with the kit.

Overall, I'm really pleased. Once the glue had set they're really sturdy, and I can move them away from the table without having stuff fall off (forget doing that with the carousel) if I would need to.

The verdict is... Five angry squigs out of five! Do buy! Great stuff!