Great article here about the success of the reactors in Japan in the face of this catastrophe. Of course things are looking dire and all, but these reactors have taken terrible beatings and power failures on just about every back up system preventing cooling and operation—far exceeding what they were built to sustain. The title of the article is alarmist: just because the Japanese can build reactors this steadfast does not mean, not by any stretch of the imagination, that the USA or any other country could build them (and maintain them) this solidly. Especially here, one year you’d have budget cuts that reduced the staff and staff pay, and then the next it would be privatized and the next year OSHA standards would be reduced to ‘allow more business to be done’ and then boom.
Author: littlemute
Avadon the Black Fortess is out
More new old school. Really looking forward to picking this game up and giving it a go. 25$!
That said, here are a bunch of old, free rogue-likes compiled by digital eel (the strange adventures in infinite space dudes) to whet your whistle.
Computer death!
And there it goes, my main gaming rig (I have a win2k box in the basement for the old stuff…. so much good old stuff….) died this weekend and it simply has to be replaced, what with the computer desk I just got a few weeks back. I’ve been waiting for awhile to get a new one and here is the perfect excuse. Honestly I think it’s just the power supply, but really, the socket 939 has got to be put out to pasture. The rig served me well since late 2006 with long hours of Oblivion, UT3, Mount and Blade, Fallout, BF 2142 and allowing me to play through the single player of BFBC2 stretching to the limit it’s capabilities with only one video card upgrade.
Needless to say I haven’t gotten any computer gaming this past week at all, and I’m going to start feeling withdrawal symptoms soon– a week with no Torchlight? No Shogun Total War 2 Demo? And what will my Caribbean beer empire do without me in Port Royale? My biggest issue with getting a new rig is that I have no more excuses not to spend a heap of cash and months on Starcraft 2, or splurge on Crysis 2, Bulletstorm and shortly, Brink. Mraaak!
Ooops, I won!
Nodamage and I headed out to Plattcon yesterday and though it’s a smallesque nerdcon, it had a very big game for me– the Wisconsin State Shadowfist Championships organized by John Monett. The board game room was dead (where were the free-rental board game guys that made it to the similarly sized Gaming Hoopla?) so Nodamage was dragged into 5 hours or so of Shadowfist as an almost n00b. Not expecting it at all but I pulled enough points to get to the winners table and then caught a few breaks in the final for the win. I’m the Shadowfist Wisconsin state champion for 2011, the big cheese as it were.
My first game was horrible with just a spew of foundation characters coming from my hand and I figured I wouldn’t be able to do anything during the tournament, but game 2, even without any Dragon resources, I was able to rapine through defenses with everyone’s favorite dude with a rock chained to him: Shun Dai.
The final was a mosh, Decks were (as far as I can tell): Dragon/Monarchs, Monarch Fire deck, Jammer Deck and my Hand/Dragon. The Monarch Fire player got to 4 sites really fast with two Fire Mystics who were also hurting everyone’s cards whenever an event hit the table, what’s more, the Jammer deck had Frag the G out for more site damage– so sites were falling fast to smallish characters. Three turns to the end I had no sites on the table and one in my burned for victory pile with what looked like no way to win. But the worm turned and I got a couple sites out and a Big Bruiser who started hitting the damaged sites with no blockers that could stand up to his beats. A big part of the endgame was that Ting Ting, played by the Monarch/Dragon player, got toasted by a card I had never even seen before— ouch.
My MVP cards were:
Character: Shun Dai (got me into the final)
Event: Blue Meditation
State: No states in the deck
Edge: Chinese Connection
Sites: Tomb of Angry Spirits
I didn’t take notes like I do at Gencon about decks, but there was a scary Jammer deck there and of course, whatever Willow puts together usually hits like a ton of bricks, but I only played her in the final and didn’t see enough to know what her combos were about. All in all some great games and looking forward to seeing everyone at Gencon for some more beatings.
Smell my book!
I accidentally picked up a Dark Elf army real cheap today with the 7th edition book in tow. I cracked it open a few minutes ago and not only has it been obviously exposed to rooms filled constantly with smoke from them tweeds, it reeks as if it was regularly used to hold quantities while it’s former owner was, say, packing a bowl or rolling a fatty not that I would know about any sort of things like that.
Common Sense
I really am not a fan of politics– as a history buff, it gets all too cyclical for me at times. However, I took a listen to Dan Carlin’s Common Sense this afternoon for the first time and it deals quite a bit with the attack on public sector unions, teachers and the like by Wisconsin’s corporatist-cunt-in-residence-governor, but more importantly, America’s failure to manage it’s decline properly (a theme Dan Carlin has focused on in a couple of his history podcasts in the last year). Good stuff and worth a listen certainly, especially since it’s explicitly centrist. I for one think Wisconsin deserves what it gets for how it’s people voted last year. Though, how can you stop a group from collectively bargaining? They can strike or have sit ins or marches– you can’t stop it no matter how you legislate it. What are you going to do? Put all the teachers in the state in jail? Can they be replaced by Chinese workers making $.50 per hour?
10 BEASTS
As of 1:10 PM today, I made my quota for miniatures painted for the month. 4 Ungor, 6 Gor AHW for a total of 68 points added to the 1000 or so painted I have. That means In 5 months if I can keep pace I’ll have an additional 340 points for the beastmen army. That’s it? Ouch….
These were from a set off ebay that I picked up pre-built and pre-primed, so there are some mold line problems on some of them. Recipes– I hate it when people post pics of their stuff and don’t post recipes. Flesh is over a black undercoat, Dark Flesh, Vermin Brown and then Vermin brown with a slight amount of bronzed flesh for the final. I use the dynamic layering method so no washes, and only drybrushing where it really makes sense. The axes turned out pretty well as I overbrushed the blades and then cleaned up the head of the axe with a wash of black to just lightly cover the dry brush. Again, these are core troops, so if hold one to your eye you will see the impressionist style that layering methods create (as opposed to blending). and each color only at most, four layers (In contrast to 10+ for a blended model).
This batch of models includes the first time in history that I enjoyed painting shields. The plastic shields GW is putting out are just exquisite.
Now I just have to keep momentum and get more on the table to drive the horn in some more Night Goblin ass. Next up is 5 more Gor AHW.
The Big Man Now?
Wisconsin state championship in Shadowfist this coming weekend at Plattcon. I’m either going to play my Dragon ‘A List’ deck or the Hand/Dragon big Bruiser cycler. Neither deck has done great at the Gen Con tournaments, but I’ve just missed getting to the final by a few points with both. I’m thinking of stripping out the legendary Iron Monkey from the aforementioned Big Bruiser cycler as he really is just has a giant target on his chest any time he hits the table and what I’ve found over the years is that he just doesn’t take sites all that often. I only got one box of Empire of Evil so far but there are some juicy tidbits in there to throw in to each deck– it’s just deciding which NOT to put in that is the challenge. One thing I love about the Shadowfist tournaments is that they are friendly and fun AND hardcore competitive. It’s a very tough blend to hit for a game, and a game community as getting walloped is usually never fun in a game–and Shadowfist has a lot of walloping all round.
New Awful Green Things from Outer Space!
Looks like AGTFOS is getting a new printing from Steve Jackson games with an actual real board and thick counters. I’ve gotten about 10 games of this since I picked it up for 3$ on clearance at Kay Bee toys when I was 12 or so and it’s solid 2 player fun and one of Tom Wham’s best. Now if we could get The Great Khan game printed on a real board with real cards and a few tweaks to speed up combat that would be pure dwarven gold.
Beasts we are lest beef we become
Over the summer I fell into obsession with old west miniature gaming, well, painting them that is as I only got to play once so far. I had a goal to get through that involved painting 8 miniatures and completing two full gangs for Warhammer Historicals Legends of the Old West–gangs that I have been ‘working’ on since 2005. Over the Xmas break, I was able to finish all but two, and knocked the remainder out over the worst weeks of January.
Now after my first play of Warhammer 8th edition, I took a long view over my painting table and backlog in order to get to 2000 points painted. 50 beastmen, 1 chariot, a chaos spawn, a hound of scathatch, a giant and 5 harpies. 59 miniatures all told, with two of those being big models that will take weeks to complete. At my rate– about 5 miniatures per year that will take me until my kids are deep into high school. The bottom line is, I’ve never tried to paint an entire army before– sure Necromunda gangs, blood bowl teams, etc. but nothing equaling over 100 models– it seems totally insane. So to keep it reasonable, but to have a goal, I’m going to try to paint 10 miniatures per month, not including the big shit–the Giant will take me more than a month probably. At that rate I should be able to spend a few hours here and there on week nights and then one big chunk of time on either weekend day.
The motivational part is that my 1000 points painted hit the table this weekend, and though it was chaotic game where we absolutely did not get the rules right, my stuff just looked totally awesome on the table, even painted as mediocre as it is. Of course, the game itself was just great fun, 4 hours went by in a snap (and I stood for the whole game, forgetting to get a chair!).
The game was against Night Goblins, with their whirling fanatics, a doom diver and a stone thrower. All three did horrific damage during the initial turns of the game, but not enough to save the hapless goblins once the beastmen closed in for the kill. The beastmen themselves aren’t that great, just tough, but when you take into account that most of the time they can reroll misses on any round of combat with a slight chance of Frenzy happening, they get a ton of hits in combat with the potential, however slight, of just going totally fucking apeshit. Though the beasts smashed most of the Goblin army it was actually a very close run thing and a lot of luck in the pinch.
What I loved was the huge combats– just too fun, but also the insane terrain on the board. We randomly rolled and just about every roll had some crazy magical mystery terrain. The forest on my left was a fungus forest that caused Stupidity in my army, but helped the goblins! In the center was some sort of Necrosphinx who granted wishes or ate characters who tried to solve her riddle, and on the right flank was a Tower of Blood overlooking a dismal fen. The tower of blood shot the dicepools into the stratosphere– causing units within 6″ to have Frenzy (double attacks) and Hatred (Reroll misses). Never in my wargaming career have I rolled so many dice.