General Specialization and a new look!

As stated in a previous post, I've been mulling the idea of changing my focus from strictly Epic to a more generalized Specialist Games view. I've been kicking around the idea for some time, but it really became relevant when one of the guys in the gaming group (Dave, The Epic Gamer) offered a general Specialist Games day up, rather than the usual "Let's play Epic."

Now, of course, I still love Epic. But, I've been playing other games for at least as long. 40K, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Blood Bowl, Man O' War, Battlefleet Gothic, Mordheim, and Space Hulk were all staples for me as I was growing up. Well, I was already out of high school for them most part, so my growing was pretty much done, but you get my point... Every now and then, as I go into my basement to look for a specific model, I'll glance at the shelving unit and see boxes full of games and miniatures I haven't touched in years. For the area I live in (around New Haven, Connecticut), the gaming scene is pretty non-existent, which is weird since I'm literally minutes from three universities! This isn't to say that there is no one who plays the games I do, it's just that I haven't found them yet. So, the classics collect dust...

This all changed when Dave (The Epic Gamer - check his blog in the Blogroll) mentioned a Specialist Games day - "Hey!" I thought. "A reason to clean off the old games!" And going through those old games rekindled my interest in them.
I've got almost an entire Empire Fleet for Man O' War, along with ships for Skaven, Orcs, and Chaos... Oh, and I really need to repaint that Skaven team and I've always wanted to do a Blood Bowl Human Team, and those Orc football team heads from Puppetswar look awesome... Oh yeah - there's my BFG stuff. Man, I've got more than an entire Imperial Fleet here! And there's the Ork fleet too! Add to that boxes and boxes of Space Marines, Orks (and Orcs!), Imperial Guard, Chaos - I've got enough to paint for the rest of my life (well, at my rate of painting anyway...) On top of everything I already own, now I'm developing an interest in Warmaster (I picked up both Undead and Orc & Goblin armies) and Gorkamorka (I already have the Boys and vehicles for 40K, so why not?)

So, now that I have all of these rekindled interests, I'd like to have a place to talk about them and share what I've painted. I could start another blog, but that would be a hassle. I don't see any reason not to combine everything into one (hopefully somewhat organized) location. Who knows - maybe I'll get someone else interested again in one of those games sitting in the basement...

Also, as you can tell, Direct Fire has a new look to go with its new direction! I was toying with moving over to Wordpress, since they allow more options for customization and offered something Blogger does not - subpages. I did some looking around though and found that I can get what I want with a different Blogger template design. I've still got a bit of tweaking to do behind the scenes, but I'm pretty happy with the look.