Droned Out, and Not-So-FLGS

I spent the weekend frantically painting, I give kudos to my wife for being patient with me this time of the year every year.  Yesterday was spent painting drones all day.  Whoa, they are monotonous.  I guess since it's the exact same model over over.  I'm about 90% finished with them: 8 marker drones and 12 gun drones.

Additionally, I painted about 25 flying stands.  I realized after playing tau for so long the drones pop off those flying stands all game long.  It gets super annoying.  Even though it'll be a bigger pain to transport them since they'll take up more space, I'm going to glue them down to the basing.

Here's where I left them at last night.  All lined up in their assembly line painting.

On to my little rant.  I went to my local gaming store Saturday for an Adepticon practice tournament. It was 1,850 and designed to prepare for the champs.  I really wanted to knock the rust off my dice and was excited to participate.  Made the 30 minute drive over and got my army out and set up on my display base.

After chatting with the other players I made it over to the check in.  Was #17, and heard an employee say, "well I guess that means we have an odd number of people".  I thought nothing of it.

Table pairings came and apparently they just went down the line for pairing.  When it got to my name they said I had a bye.  F@#K!  Maybe I am getting old, but honestly the point of playing in a tournament is "playing".  Not getting full victory points for a bye.  I don't want to wait around 2.5 hours until the next round starts.  Why they didn't have a ringer army was beyond me.

I went up to the counter and asked for my money back and to withdraw from the tournament.  The owner asked if I'd like to play a 1,000 point game.  My response was no, I was here to play my 1,850 list.  He then followed up with saying he could scrap something together.  I said no, I was looking for a competitive game (and didn't want to basically try to rush the game in a short window of time). Was this an unreasonable thing for me to expect?  Still not sure why there was no ringer army prepared since half of the time you'll get an odd number of people.  I've run many tournaments and it is just something you have to prepare for.

Packed up, then drove home.  On the way back my blood was really boiling and is making me reconsider going to that store anymore.  It is pretty irritating I basically wasted a few hours of my Saturday. At least I got to get a workout in and a little additional painting.

I thought more and more, is it time that I look at opening up my own store?  There is a lack of gaming stores in the Chicago area.  We have Games Plus in Mt. Prospect, and now Draxtar (my lovely experience Saturday) way out west in Batavia.  Not a whole lot in-between.  I know a couple of people that are interested in getting together to do this too.  Having been in trade sales at GW, I know how ridiculously hard it is to run a gaming store, but I wonder if I could make it work.  Food for thought...

Back to painting drones!