Blógünder Schlock

First, a holiday comic for you.

Too early? Not if you’re ordering Christmas cards! Pre-orders are open for 5-packs, 10-packs, and individual “Merry XDMas” cards featuring this cartoon on the front, and the XDM Fortune Cookie Magic System on the back. The interior of the card is blank and awaiting personalization… like an invitation to get together for some holiday-themed role-play during the solstice…

There is absolutely no better way to get the gamers back together for the holidays than to send the invitation along with an adventure hook AND a magic system.

We’ll be making the print run early next week, and we’ll order some extras, but if you want to be guaranteed enough cards to send to your gamer friends, please pre-order this weekend. We will have the cards in hand the week of the 16th, and you should receive your order shortly thereafter — in plenty of time to send cards out for Christmas.

(Sorry for the late notice. This was one of those ideas that kind of snuck up on me at the last minute. I only knew I had to do it once I realized that Kringle has been deceiving us for decades.)

First a quick note: We have 40 more Schlock Mercenary ACEO cards from Series One in the store. These are the last of them. There will be a series two, but we’re not launching it until these are gone.

Some of you may have met or heard of John Brown before. He is a local friend and debut novelist who Howard helped interview in two recent episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast: How Not to Repeat Yourself, and Emotion in Fiction with John Brown. If you click the links you can listen to the podcasts right on your computer. They’re worth the time because John knows what he is talking about when it comes to writing.

John is celebrating the release of his first novel by giving away copies of his book Servant of a Dark God. He has kindly offered two copies for us to give away here at Blogunder Schlock. The winner must be willing to provide a mailing address via email. The simplest method for determining who wins these books is for us to draw names out of a hat. There are two ways for you to get your name into the hat.

1. Leave a comment here on this post between now and midnight on Sunday November 8. You will get one entry just for commenting. Only one entry per name even if you make multiple comments. NOTE: The first time you comment after registering, your comment goes into a moderation queue and has to be approved before it will be visible. This dramatically reduces the amount of spam in our blog comments. There is no need to comment again, we’ll see it and put your name in the hat.

2. We are curious to know how many copies of XDM and Schlock books are making it into friendly local gaming stores. If you visit your local gaming store and see our books there, snap a picture. Mail that picture to schlockmercenary@gmail.com and we’ll throw your name into that hat two times. (Yes that is in addition to adding your name for a comment.) If we get some good pics, we’ll be sure to share them.

So that’s the contest. Ready, set, go!

We appear to be having archive trouble again. This is why we are anxious to get moved over to our new server and site architecture. For now you can check out the RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchlockRSS) The right sides of the images are truncated, but you can see them by right clicking and selecting View Image. Sorry for the clunky solution, but at least it lets you read the comic while we’re scrambling to get the archive fixed.

When the Astro-Boy movie first introduced us to “positive blue energy” and “negative red energy” I decided to dumb myself down enough not to care. Unfortunately, this set a precedent. I really wanted to enjoy the film, and I’m afraid that by the end of it I had shed enough I.Q. to grant full sapience to a cage of guinea-pigs.

(No, I didn’t actually go see that movie this summer.)

Drooling idiot that I had become, I was delighted with the film by the end and could find nothing wrong with it. The final battle between the blue-charged Astro-Boy and the red-charged Peacekeeper was heaps of fun, the plot twists at once surprising and chilling, and the moral lessons were both timeless and timely.

I’m not suggesting that you have to be stupid to enjoy this movie, nor that those of you who loved it are lesser minds. Far from it! If you liked this film, you’re smart enough to have installed an I.Q. Attenuator dial on yourself.

If you dial it far enough back you can probably watch television news without wincing.

Today’s strip features Fan Art from Cannon Hamaker of Animal Ward. His piece deserves to be seen in full, so here it is:

Thank you, Cannon! I love it!

The Schlock Miniatures are now sold out. Thanks to everyone who ordered. To those who did not yet get a chance to order, never fear. The re-order has been placed and more minis are on the way. The re-order is twice the size of the original order, so everyone who wants a mini will be able to have one. We’ll post as soon as minis are available again.

In other news, Yes we know that the archive calendar has gone screwy. There are Schlock archive pages that are not being built correctly and thus preventing people from reading. We’re working on the problem, mostly by scrambling to finish up the new architecture that won’t have either that issue or the “sometimes the blog doesn’t load correctly” issue. Until we get it all fixed, I direct your attention to the RSS button over to the left of this blog. It is orange and located right under the “contact” link. If you click that button, you’ll be taken to the FeedBurner page for Schlock Mercenary where you can find all of the recent Schlock strips. You can also subscribe to the feed and have it sent to you without interruption. Thanks to everyone for your patience while we work to sort it out.

28mm "Sergeant Schlock" by Melissa Mayhew and Drew Olds

My friends Drew and Janci, Garden Ninja Studios‘ Chief Artisan and Chief of Operations respectively, are impressed with your enthusiasm for these miniatures. In Janci’s words “The last couple of days have been pretty surreal.”

First: for those of you who have placed orders for painted Schlock miniatures, please note that each of these is hand-painted, and they’re not done yet. Drew wasn’t expecting to have to paint the entire inventory in one go, so it may be a couple of weeks before some of these orders ship.

Second: As of this writing there are only 36 Schlock miniatures left. Garden Ninja Studios is already planning a re-order from the caster. Since there is now a pre-existing mold the turnaround time should be fairly quick, but that’s not the same as guaranteeing that the next batch will arrive in time for painting and holiday shipping. Still, demand being what it is, Drew and Janci will do everything they can to make you guys happy.

Third: If you’ve got friends who play tabletop wargames, please consider Garden Ninja Studios for that one-of-a-kind, remembered-for-years-to-come Christmas gift. Drew’s “Movie Marines” are perfect for that Warhammer 40K player who “has everything” and is difficult to shop for. I’ve seen some of Drew’s conversions and kit-bashes, and they are gorgeous.

Fourth: Interest in the Schlock minis has been strong enough that we’re willing to consider doing another character early next year. I’m leaning towards an action-pose Tagon in the new uniform. What say ye?

Garden Ninja Studios is offering a new licensed product. You know you want one.

28mm "Sergeant Schlock" by Melissa Mayhew and Drew Olds

Sculpted by Melissa Mayhew, each miniature is hand-painted by the Garden Ninja himself, Drew Olds. And they’re available now.

There are only about 120 of them. They’re the perfect scale for table-top wargaming, and though we don’t have a rule-set for them, that’s okay. We’re sure you can find a way to work everybody’s favorite carbosilicate amorph into your collection.

If you’d rather paint Schlock yourself, or if you’re into the antique-patina pewter look, check out this page for the full set of options and prices on these.

While you’re over there, check out the other cool stuff that Garden Ninja offers. Their line of Mistborn minis and Goblin Quest minis are on sale for 30% off through January.

Update: As of 7:40am Mountain Time there are only sixty of these left (the inventory widget on the site is not accurate.) Garden Ninja Studios has another sixty on order, but that’s all they can get between now and the new year.

If you follow my Twitter feed you may have seen my tweet about renaming Swine Flu to Hogthrax. My buddy Dave said that Hamthrax is a much better name, and I agree. Later my brother Randy pointed out that H1N1 sounds like something out of Star Wars.

Do you want to defuse some of the hysteria surrounding this particular strain of Type A Influenza? Let’s make fun of it with pig-related names. Here are a few I’ve collected, and a few I’ve contributed …

• Hamthrax
• Hogthrax
• Spamthrax
• Tuporkulosis
• Porklio
• Cowpox oh wait that’s real
• Hogmumps
• The Other Yellow Fever
• Pigfluenza
• Mad Sow Disease
• Sowbola
• Sowmonella
• Spammonella
• Bacon AIDS
• Bacon Fever
• Baconator oh wait that’s at Wendy’s
• Whooping Oink
• Oinking Pneumonia
• Buboinking Pork

For you Star Wars fans:

• Gamorreanorhea

And the end-of-the-world scenarios for the epidemic?

• The Aporkalypse
• Hognarok

Yes,  I know that influenza kills tens of thousands of people annually. This is very sad. These people were not, however, killed by the name of this viral strain, which is what I’m actually mocking (unless I suggest that “Buboinking Pork” sounds more like how you caught the disease, which I would never do.)

Join me. Let’s hear your best names for an inappropriately pig-themed disease, and maybe our peals of laughter will make the world a happier and less hysteria-prone place.

Last night we had some issues with the main Schlock Mercenary server, and the index page wasn’t being built correctly. In these sorts of circumstances it’s good for you to know where to go to get the latest comic.

1) Howard Tayler’s Twitter Feed — Often the first thing I’ll do when there’s an issue is tweet about it. Last night I used Twitter to mirror the strip.

2) Howard Tayler’s Facebook Page — This captures my tweets, so if you’re already on Facebook this is another good way to get the word.

3) The Schlocktroops LiveJournal Group

4) The Nightstar Schlock Forum

5) The Schlock Mercenary RSS Feed — last night’s site issues left the RSS feed undamaged, and images were served up just fine to 5,000 or more Schlockers who never knew there was a problem

I’d tell you to bookmark this post for future reference, but if the site goes down, this page will vanish too. You’ll just have to bookmark the individual links. Maybe you can create a folder called “Schlock Emergency” or something.

We usually don’t see much down-time, but when we do I like knowing that at least some of you will still be getting your fix.

Maybe someday we”ll get proper redundancy with round-robin failovers for everything from DNS to WordPress, but that’s a more robust solution than my budget currently allows for.