Community Announcement - Headshots from the Heart is Now LIVE!

Hey cats and kittens, just a quick heads up this fine Saturday afternoon on the cool charity work by Dave G that you've been hearing all the buzz about.

Anywho, the live coverage started just a little bit ago (as I post this) and there's all kinds of cool updates and even some live video.

Watch Them!

But that's not all!  No sir.  There's also the many and wonderous auctions that are going to be going up throughout the the next 24 hours.

You can find info a list of what kind of cool things you'll have a chance at here.  Though you'll have to go to the live stream page for the details on the when and how.

Good Luck to Dave and the gang!

The Weekly Top X - Raw Sexual Magnetism

Hello everyone and welcome to another House of Paincakes Weekly Top X!  With me as always are animated gifs of Kate Upton dancing.  Hi Kate!

Haha, right you are!  So... yeah.... that thing....  buuuuuuuuuh...

Wait....what were we talking about?

Something something Kate Upton.  No.  Before that.... something with counting...  Ah ha!  The Weekly Kate Upton!  Shit.  That's not it.  Though, note to self:  make that happen.

Ok, folks.  Go ahead and read these blogs while I figure this out.  Kate, take 5.

The Kate Upton Weekly Top X


1) Warpstone Flux - Battle Report: Blood Ravens vs. Chaos space marine
Battle reports with pictures are always great.  Battle reports with pictures of awesomely painted models are even better.  For those of you who didn't make the connection:  this battle report is chock full of pictures of awesomely painted models.  Full disclosure:  none of those models are Kate Upton.

2) Sons of Taurus - Space Sharks: WIP Rhino, Captain, Ironclad
Space Sharks are pretty rad.  Even if you want to fancy it up and call them Carcharodons Astra - which, I can't stress this enough - did not happen here.

HoP Idol II Auditions Now Live

With the recent, and most likely (and most hopefully) temporary departure  of GMort due to the powers of that bitch IRL, we at the HoP have decided to go ahead on a planned resurrection of the HoP Idol contest.  We've upped our timeline on this a wee bit, but are happy to get right into the swing of things again after last year's wildly successful outing.  As an added spoiler, we may be adding an author or two prior to the contest getting under way, but we'll keep you abreast of that situation as it develops. 

For those that missed it last time around, this will be a singing writing competition aimed at finding a new author to give a permanent weekly series to on the HoP.  Weekly/Bi-weekly challenges will be assigned and our readership will vote on who stays in the competition as we eliminate prospects before the big final finale.  

Rumors that this year's contest would be patterned off of the highly superior NBC singing contest The Voice have proved false- those fancy ass spinning chairs are expensive as hell.... just ask Gary Numan.  More specific details about the contest format this time around will be made available as we make them up.  We're going to be pulling out all the stops on this one, but want to wait and see how many applicants we get this time around before we decide how to proceed.  This year you can all expect bigger and better challenges and a host of twists- although the twist could be that there are no twists... guess you'll just have to wait and see.

Instructions for entering the contest are after the jump.

Community Re-Announcement: Headshots from the Heart Charity Drive

Hey guys, SinSynn is running a bit late today so while you're all waiting for whatever insane thing he's going to post, why don't you check this out?

A while back, we posted a little announcement about Dave G's (of Wargaming Tradecraft) charity event.

In essence, it's a video game marathon and painted miniature auction where the proceeds go to the Child's Play charity.  All the details are here and here.

Anyway, Dave has masterfully finished up the minis for the auction and the actual gaming marathon is right around the corner and will be starting this Saturday!

So you have a few days to consider donating and drooling over Dave's amazing models.

GMort's Sabbatical

I know you we're all hoping against hope to see another GMort post today, but I'm afraid all I have is ashes and bitterness for you instead.

GMort is taking some time off.

I'll let him tell the story:

Hi Guys and Gal, 

Though I have greatly enjoyed the last few years writing for the IHoP network I'm sad to say that I no longer have the time or energy to commit do doing so with any regularity.

I will be the first to admit that the quality of my articles isn't up to the standard they once were and that's primarily due to lack of time. I also have almost no time to spend actually doing any hobby which means there's much less to inspire me I'm afraid. Should this unfortunate situation change then I hope you'll have a place for me again in the future but for now I'm afraid for now I'll have to call it a day. 

It's been fun...and I hope some time soon it will be so again... 

Bye.

You'll be missed, man.  But you gotta take care of that pesky IRL stuff.  If you get that all nailed down, there will definitely be a place for back on the roster.

New Member Monday - Awards and Accolades

Hello and welcome to another week at the only blog network to have have won Shropshire's coveted "village of the year" award.  Keen!

Also, we got one of these.

I won't say that it didn't take a lot of hard work to clench the win, but not in the way you think.  It was a massive undertaking, but one mostly of deception, card board cutouts and caffeine fueled miscreantism.  And SinSynn may, may have killed a guy.  But he could be taking the heat off of Lo.

Note to self:  keep my eye on those two.

[Musings of a Game Store Owner] Where Can I Get Some More Plastic Crack?

As a game store owner, I hear all kinds of jokes about being the 'crack dealer' and how it's so hard for my customers to resist...


We love it, and enjoy the joke to it's fullest. What a lot of our customers don't understand is that we have dealers too...

Our dealers are distributors. Our dealers reach us in a variety of ways- email, phone calls, direct trade magazines and more. Email has become huge- TheDude gets no less than 50 a day with sell sheets on new products and information on upcoming specials. They call at least once a week (sometimes more- we got a new rep from one of our smaller distributors who has not yet learned calling every day isn't wise) and often make deals to help boost their numbers.

Something that a lot of folks don't know is that while we get a discount on what we buy, we're restricted to how much by the distributor. They set the prices, and if we like a product that doesn't get a good discount, we gotta PAY to get it just like you do.

Distributors are able to sell lots of games to lots of people at pretty good prices, and give more geeks opportunities to play games they have not heard of, or seen reviewed and want to try, as well as expose designers and companies to the masses.