wasted weekend

Ah the wasted weekend. No not the good kind, you know when it’s Sunday and you realize that all you’ve done is gone to Checkers twice and had sex with your girlfriend 13-17 times since Friday,or been in a single room with smellnerds playing Terrible Swift Sword (note I’ve never done either of these).  This weekend was nothing like that,  but sick like a fucking animal with a fever, hacking dry cough disallowing any sleep at all (literally) and lots of snot, kids screaming and crying. Delirium.  Awesome.  Given that I was in a state of semi-consciousness for almost 36 hours straight, I decided to do something I rarely do– watch movies, or rather, have movies on while I stared blankly into space.    I always watch Ninja Scroll when I’m sick– sometimes on repeat the entire time.  The main character is dying of poison and all the rest of the characters hate each other so much (or pretend to) it just works.  I’m worried that if I ever do watch it while well, I might start to get sick.  However the real gems this weekend were found hitting up the Netflicks for some of the instant view Godzilla movies.

Now, having grown up in the late 70’s, I used to walk every Saturday afternoon to my neighbor’s place up on the hill as they had a GIANT antenna and could get channel 44 out of either Madison or Chicago.  Every afternoon this station would have a double feature monster movie– usually a kaiju one and then a real monster/horror movie after that (which I didn’t want to see!).  My neighbors were good kids but loved giving beatings, especially the oldest one who was in 7th grade. If he wasn’t out shoplifting or trying to fingerblast some bezitted hoyden on a Saturday afternoon, he would grab a bean bag chair, throw me to the ground and then sit on me for most of the film.   Sometimes I couldn’t even see the films (let alone breathe).  The worst was when he would make me watch the movie following the kaiju movie instead of letting me run home– which was invariably shit like Bucket of Blood or some movie with a chick melting in a volcano (I was forced to watch that fucker TWICE)–enough to creep me out for a week or more.

Most of the time he was off fingerblasting and I actually got to see the movies– Godzilla Vs King Kong, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs Mothra, and even some Gamera here and there.  All awesome incarnate, but I really hadn’t seen or followed the Godzilla films since then–except both Godzilla 1985 and the shit-stain Americanized ‘Godzilla’ movie with Matthew Broderick.  Both of these flicks were not too good, and I figured whoever controlled the IP, just didn’t have what it took to get to the same level of awesome the 60’s and 70’s allowed.   I think I was sort of wrong, though the 80’s certainly was not a good period for our radioactive friend, the 90’s (that I always think of as the 70’s 2.0) gave us some good films it seems, none of which I’d seen.

The first flick I watched was Godzilla Vs the Smog Monster; AKA Godzilla Vs Hedorah from ’71.  While not one of the worst Godzilla films, this is an odd one with all these crazy ass people dancing around, some Monty Python-esque illustrated bits and all the Godzilla/Hedorah fight scenes taking place at night– and shot in such a way that you can’t see a damned thing.  I watched this with the sound off, so I don’t really know why all the people were dancing around but it seemed like a bad people-bullshit / Godzilla ass-kicking ratio.  Now I had see this before as a kid– I just didn’t realize how fucking weird it was.

The second was the only newish Godzilla film on instant play: Godzilla vs Destroyah from ’95.  That’s right: Destroyah.  I watched most of it with the sound off, lying in a feverish haze as I was and I didn’t realize that there were actually two Godzillas in this film:  the main one that looked like he had been attacked by red hots on his rubber suit and the other that didn’t have big back fins. Most of the beginning of the film is about this red hot Godzilla being real pissed off and destroying shit and then people talking about it.  Then he gets frozen by some ice ray contraptions on an airplane and sinks into the ocean.  Then the second one shows up on the beach and I wasn’t sure what was going on there.  Meanwhile, some aquarium fish are attacked by some small red crabs that grow into crazy big crabs that shoot lightning.  These crabs go to a power plant, kill some people and then get attacked by squads of swat-like dudes in an Aliens homage sequence.  The swat guys even have the swivel-style heavy weapons that the Marines in Aliens had.  The swat guys take a terrible beating, but eventually they burn up some of the crabs. Apparently there are a lot of them and one of them keeps growing into, of course, Destroyah.

In the end, the little Godzilla and the red hot Godzilla take on Destroyah, little Godzilla gets his ass kicked and Red Hot has a melt down that destroys Destroyah and while he dies (yes, Godzilla dies) it heals the little Godzilla.

Overall, the monster battles in this one could have been awesome, with some great cityscape models, tanks and planes flying around blowing up, yet piss-poorly edited– one minute Destroyah and Godzilla are fighting close up and Godzilla knocks Destroyah to the ground and next we see Godzilla wandering through the city as if the editors forgot that the two were in close combat, only to have Destroyah fly out of nowhere for an attack.  I honestly though it jumped a reel.  Another example in the same fight: Godzilla gets swarmed by the ‘little’ crabs — one second he’s covered in them and knocked to the ground and the next he’s thrown one (just one) to the ground and then he’s wandering through the city with none of the others around.  Where was the sucker punch from Destroyah while Godzilla is fighting off the younglings?  It doesn’t happen!  Its unbelievable all the effort that went into the explosions and model design (and yes even the acting) only to have the editing fall flat. Inexcusable really. Despite all that, this is a pretty badass movie, for, you know people wrestling around in rubber suits as is the kaiju way.  Godzilla is SUPER pissed off in every scene he’s in– obviously in terrible anguish as he’s all red hot with radiation. Both the special effects and direction did a fantastic job with this there’s little confusion to the viewer that GZ is out to just terribly fuck shit up all over the place.

All in all this wasted weekend whetted my appetite for more Godzilla flicks– especially the most recent ones (Final Wars and the mega titled: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack –  yes that’s the title).

Champions now with some free

Champions Online just went free to play.  Sure microtransactions, but as the best part of the game is creating characters and their nemesis (just like the pen and paper game) this shouldn’t be a problem.  I’m going to jump in even with my extremely limited time for gayming these days.

Oops– Rackham is gone…

I guess I was a bit off in my post last spring about a new version of AT-43 coming out—looks like after some craziness and confusion Rackham Entertainment has gone into liquidation.  Neither of their websites come up and it looks like all news around the interweb tubes confirms that they’ve gone dark.  I think the lines will likely survive in some form, but holy crap I never expected to see one of the better rivals to Games Workshop’s fantasy and sci-fi dominance hit rock bottom so quickly.  While I really liked the rules to AT-43 when the full version finally came out, I was not impressed with the new version of Confrontation, specifically the prepainted miniatures*, while the same figures as some of the older lines, just looked crappy to me (where the AT-43 pre-paints looked really great on the table).

* not that I’ll ever actually get the time to finish painting my Drune…

Some More Cosmic Expansion Info

xenophile
Love the Hate

Fantasy Flight posted more info on the Cosmic Conflict expansion to the greatest board game ever made with the release of info for a new alien: Xenophile!  Other than the self-referential artwork comedy of an alien blubbering over one of the most hated alien powers in the game (aptly named HATE), I think the power is pretty solid as it’s after card reveal and add OR Subtract– given that you’re going to have at least one enemy colony in your home system during a game, this gives quite a bit of flexibility in the face of Anti-Matter, Loser, Magician, etc. Here is a link to the info page.  Hopefully this is out soon while we’re still stuck indoors due to old man winter.

d2 hardcore mraakaires – day 1

what the fuck is a man to do when diablo 3 is over a year away from being released? how about doing some hardcore diablo 2 runs, ya thats right, HARDCORE D2!

NOTE: i’ve never tried to play a hardcore character in diablo 2. this is my first time.

NOTE: i’m going to do my damned best to keep a diary of my progress playing single player hardcore characters here on mraaktagon.com

NOTE: i’m using diablo 2 v1.13c (the latest patch for diablo 2 at this time), plugy 10.00, i’m using some german 3dfx glide hack that lets you use the 3dfx setting with a video card that supports opengl or some shit (makes the game run better!) and that’s fucking it. i’m not going to install any cheats. if you think plugy is cheating that’s okay for you! the main reason i’m using plugy is for the shared stash.

NOTE: i’ve played each of the seven hardcore characters classes up to lv10 just to get this warmed up. no deaths yet. i will pick one of the seven to start with and play until death / or 10 lv’s are made, at which point i’ll switch to a new character. i’ll continue this 10 lv rotation until all 7 characters are dead. this allows me to stash items away for the other characters while ensuring i don’t get fucking bored playing one character class for too long.

so without further fucking around my 7 characters are,

FlyingAssBang – lv10 Sorceress
ShoeDrinker – lv10 Barbarian
SomeCallMeTim – lv10 Druid
BiotchLips – lv10 Assassin
DayLabor – lv10 Paladin
TugandRun – lv10 Necromancer
KunningLinguist – lv10 Amazon

i’m going to start with FlyingAssBang the sorceress. i think i’ve only beaten vanilla diablo 2 with the amazon, barb and assassin, but that was fucking years ago people.

here’s a link to a large image file that has all of FlyingAssBang’s stats at lv10 and all the items she’s using. i am not making some fucking proven build from some goddamned FAQ, i’m not a pro! i’m not going to use the plugy re-spec without making a good argument for doing so and clearly documenting the use or re-spec. i’m kinda scared about how i should spend points on this sorceress character. i think you just spend enough strength to get the armour you need, and get like 50 or so in mana, and the rest goes to vitality or someshit. but how about skills? shit i really have no clue, i am learning the fucking hard way, the hardcore hard way. okay off to play my lv10-20 as FlyingAssBang. i’ll post anything of interest back here, shit i have no fucking idea what i’m doing with this sorc build, i’ve got skill points scattered in all the tree’s already selected, that is just fucking terrible.

FUCKING HAPPY FUCKING NEW FUCKING YEAR 2011

Getting in on a good shootin’

I finally got to bust out my Old West miniatures and town over the Xmas break after almost 5 years of on and off painting for everyone’s virgin gun down.  We used Wargame Foundry’s The Rules With No Name to good effect as it’s a great pick up and play set of rules.  I just made up a scenario where a wagon tipped over in the middle of the town, breaking open some luggage that was filled to the brim with gold!  We had three players, and each player had three models (two gunman and one shootist) and won if they could survive or get off the board with the most gold in hand.  Gold was gathered by moving into touch with the wagon and rolling a d6.  I had to make up the action deck for the game before hand, so the players didn’t get a chance to pick their models from my meagre collection, but I did allow them to give them names, a fun way to start off the shootin.

TRWNN has an interesting impluse system for initiative wherein you build a stack of cards made up of all the models in play and add in a joker card (that instigates a reshuffle of the deck when drawn) and one card representing each class of character (Civilian, Gunman, Shootist).  The cards are shuffled and then drawn to determine who’s turn it is to act.  You can’t hold back a model’s turn and you don’t really know when each model will move again, so it makes for an aggressive game without a lot of dilly dallying around.  There is a way to control when your models move if you get a bit lucky.  When a class card is drawn, a player can take that card if one of his character cards is drawn next that is equal or above that class level.  For example, if a Gunman card comes up, the next card drawn is a Shootist or Gunman character, that player of that character can take the class card.  The class cards can be used to interrupt other model’s turns at any point (even in response to being shot at) to give another model an insta-turn.  This system gives a semi-random feel to the order of turns, and my only complaint was that some characters don’t get to move turn after turn if the joker card just happens to come up a lot.

This system of impulse is very much keyed to individual models and wouldn’t work too well if you were trying to simulate fights in big groups unless, like Confrontation, you allowed multiple models to act when a single card was drawn.

All I can say about this particular game was that my dice were the hottest I’ve had in a long time, and I almost felt guilt as my tiny lead men shot the tiny lead men of the others again and again.  One of my gunman killed outright two models in his first two turns of shooting, and I had my shootist out in the open, completely out of position relative to one of the other shootists, only to have one of the other shootist’s shots all go wild– and then said shootist was gunned down instantly with just about the best rolling you can have. See below.

We did not use the morale optional rule and this revealed an oddity about the TRWNN system– models can be wounded over and over and over at point blank range and still have a good chance of staying in the game (a model can be knocked out and come back on a dr of 1 whenever that model’s turn comes up).  One of the models had been shot and wounded 12 times and was still on the table, granted he couldn’t move, reload or turn in place, but he was still there, holding gold.

I would absolutely use the The Rules with No Name again, especially for pick up games like this.  It’s very beer and pretzel’s and though the scale seems to work best with just a few models on the table, the level of detail with the shooting and wounding is such that this isn’t a drawback, but simply what the ruleset is supposed to simulate.   Eventually as I get more models painted (in the next decade or so) I’d love to have a go with the Legends of the Old West rules, but that’s a dog for another day.