Better Late Than Never

I knew it was coming... I just forgot to announce it and all that stuff.

My blog is officially 1 year old- 2 weeks ago.

I've been on kind of a slowdown for a little, and didn't feel good about celebrating the fact that I haven't blogged terribly consistently lately...

but who cares? It's my blog and I've been talking about games and all of the things that amuse me here for over a year now!

I'm debating a couple of thoughts, elements, ideas and so on for y'all... Maybe having a laptop and wireless will help me get writing again.

Be Well,

'Lo

Stylin' and Profilin' WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

A nod or two to the Naitch, Ric Flair. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

So I've been nominated as a Stylish Blogger by my pal Lefteris (AKA, the Anti-Pope) over at 122nd Cadian.

Lefteris/Antipope,


σας ευχαριστούμε!

Thank you so much for the fabulous honor, and for being ever-so-generous to me and my blog. I am especially grateful for your assistance with my MOST POPULAR post ever, "Show Some Skin". Your kindness and willingness to share your lovely tats was most appreciated by yours truly. Your blog is a true asset to the Greek community. I've found some great articles, fabulous writers, fun models and really interesting lists over your way, and learned some more Greek. I'm truly honored to be so well regarded by such a treasure.

This award is a way for us bloggers to show appreciation for each others' work and efforts in the community- something I can really get behind. 

Here are the rules:

-- Thank and link back to the person giving you the award (see above)
-- Share seven things about yourself
-- Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award
-- Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award

Seven things...


1- I've spoken on the phone to over 1000 people in 60 different countries and 10 different time zones. 


2- As a result of #1, I can speak roughly 10 phrases in about 20 languages. I can also read basic phrases in most Romance and Germanic languages, and infer or deduce content in many others. 


3- I am a certified Francophile.


4- I love serial killer fiction, facts, films, novels and much more. I especially love to read how they are CAUGHT. 


5- I am a terrible housekeeper, but TheDude married me anyway.


6- I can bake anything except pie. 
7- I've already admitted this several times, but I love professional wrestling. I'll totally admit to marking out! (At the moment, not watching, as the writing truly stinks.)

Now it's time to return the favor!  Let's plug the community. My community is a little larger and a little more diverse than just 40K, so I've got some real treats for you. 




http://netherwerks.blogspot.com/  A lovely couple, who produce some mind-blowing, non-traditional work. 


http://unknownzine.blogspot.com/ I'd be hard pressed to find a more generous, creative, innovative and WOD digging dude. 

http://www.implausiblenature.net/laeroths-blog.html Has had a large hand in my ability to actually win games with my Black Templar in 40K.

http://lauby.blogspot.com/ A guy who gets the call of roleplaying, miniatures, and the community in general.

http://craftworldkahos.blogspot.com/ I pushed him to start his own blog, and he's doing a grand job with it. I'm especially fond of his rants.

http://dicerolla.blogspot.com/ Thanks for stopping in, and your blog is always a treasure.

http://digital-waaagh.blogspot.com/ Has done a ton for Orks, and 'Old Skool' 40K.


http://kennedy40k.blogspot.com/ The Resident Professional! With all kinds of shiny advice and fantastic goodies.

http://creativetwilight.com/  Thor is the man, with some of the best information for a new player available- he totally puts my "40K for Beginners" to shame and I love it.

http://touchedbygreatness.blogspot.com/ Stormy has a ridiculous sense of humor and a great army. His blog is a trove of information and fun for those on the other side of the ocean.

http://thefallenprinces.blogspot.com/ Who else is doing the Badab Project? Who else has the Eldar Dictionary? How cool is this blog?

http://defendinghumanity.blogspot.com/ I really love this IG oriented blog, and I'm still hunting for the beer he showcased during his live tournament blogging. 

http://von-gameover.blogspot.com/  Von's another voice with a blend of RPG, miniatures, and other obscura. I find his wealth and depth of knowledge, intuition and experience a genuine pleasure to read. 

http://jrients.blogspot.com/ Simply, the best OSR RPG blogger. Great wit, wonderful insanity, and genuinely nice guy.

http://gopherdave.blogspot.com/  I might be a little prejudiced, but the man wears a tie every day. How much more stylin' can you get?

So there you have it, a list of some very styling blogs and a big huge thank you!

Be Well,

'Lo

[RPG] Who We Want

Inspired in part by Christian's post, "I Need To Recruit These People", I started thinking about the social aspect of games. I was really struck by certain facts: I'm not actively in an RPG at the moment, and it's a pretty deliberate choice.

I want to have a good time when I play a game- and I want a truly social experience. I've discovered that there are a lot of people I want to TALK to, but not near as many that I want to game with. I deliberately try to play with people that have an idea of what "cinematic" and "thematic" visions are, and aren't afraid to share their creative genius (but do so without hogging the spotlight). I try to play with people that have some manners, respect for others, and a sense of irreverent frivolity as much as an ability to carry a serious scene.

There are some people who have all these abilities in spades, but I don't play with them. A good example: The Dude. He's a brilliant roleplayer, fantastic and dynamic, understands a meaty plothook as well as a goofy spinoff or tangent, and can pull heady sexuality, morbid or terrifying equally well. I'd forgotten until we played in TheJoe's HS6E together how hard it is for me to game with him. I find myself falling into a "follower" position very quickly and easily, because I'm generally his supporter in real life- it's just easy. I don't really LIKE this particular behavior and it's usually not appropriate for the character I am trying to play- and it's hard to admit that as much as I respect and admire him, I can't play with him and have a good time. I'm constantly battling myself- which I don't enjoy; even a little bit.

I was recently offered a chance to play in a different HS6E game, and I passed on it. Between logistics and knowing I'd be playing with TheDude, I knew it would be a struggle. I don't want to struggle with the real life aspects. I want any struggle I deal with to be game oriented.

I know who I'd like to play with, and I'll just wait until those opportunities are available, rather than playing "just because" and maybe not having a good time.  Maybe a little selfish, but I'm tired of struggling.

[40K] Rescued pictures

So I scheduled this last night after I spent some time figuring out why my pictures wouldn't upload from my camera (let's call it operator error and leave it at that, shall we?) and thought you'd enjoy a look at some of the fun things I saw.

First off, the conversion bug has hit a couple of the guys at 40K night HARD. There's an incredible Chaos/Dreadknight conversion, and now this guy- a Defiler/Dreadknight kitbash.

I love the arms on this guy!

Next up, we have my Terminator squad- yeah, the one that ran off the board. It was such a rare occurrence, I just had to take a picture. This particular one is from earlier in the evening, before they chickened out.

Last but NOT least, Tom's Eldar flying beauties.

I just love his use of color and "light". I'm also very fond of his thick black lines between sections. It's a real trick to get even lines without any bleedover, and his models always look nice and clean.

Thanks for stopping in!

[40K] Eldar/IG vs BT/GK

This was the last week of league, with my partner and I scheduled to face the Eldar/Star Wars IG army.

My good friend Tom came with his Eldar, but his partner of the "Ballerina Darth Vader" had to work. Tom got partnered with a different IG player, who brought TONS of mech. My partner brought Justicar Tharn, some Terminators to back him up, a Dreadnaught, a Rhino with some guys in it, and a small squad of elite guys.  I went with a "silly" list suggested by a friend, full of nothing but Terminators and a small CCW Squad of Initiates.

I got stuck at the counter for a bit with customers, so deciding first turn (them), deployment (standard), mission (seize ground)  and even setup was pretty much all done when I finally arrived. I got my doodz out of the bag and promptly rolled to seize. It worked!

On our first turn, we blow up a Vendetta and an artillery piece, which was pretty important to prevent template death. (That was pretty fun!)  Our opponents shot at us with a metric crapton of guns. That was pretty fun, too. Watching all those dice hit the table is always a good time. It does stink when your guys get blown up, though.

Turn two, I moved my Initiates across the board from cover towards another area of cover and shot some more. I refused some shooting by those Xenos and Heretical scum with my CMLS (yay), and got blown up by template weapons (boo).

Turn three was the GK show, with all kinds of shooting and IG death-dealing going on over the opponent's corner. A Demo squad got eaten up some, and then they shot at us.My contribution was support, along with deep striking the ThunderHammer/Storm Shield/Lightning Claws Terminators in close to their objective.

Turn four, my little CCW squad was headed towards the objective (a two-pronged assault on the area, wow!) when they got SHOT UP. Of course, this made my guys run the other way (towards the enemy), and put them pretty close to hand-to-hand range. They wound up taking on WarWalkers and having a little snack, but the big news was that my squad of Terminators at the back of the board (sporting CMLs) was shot up and they FAILED THEIR LEADERSHIP CHECK. (They have a 10! It's pretty hard to do on 2D6!) Then, I rolled 11" for fall back, and they ran right off the board. UGH. This was of course, good news for the other guys.

Turn five was pretty grim looking over all: We were down to the GK Terminators holding our objective and a few of my Assault Termies.Tom had a ton of Eldar troop doodz and was shooting the ever-loving bejezzus outta me with them. He shot them off the objective, which made me kinda sad, but my partner saved the day by staying put with his guys on ours, and when Tom rolled to end the game, we were up by 1 objective.

What I learned: Maybe I should be playing GK. Those guys kick serious butt. I pretty laughingly said that my job all league was to die so my partner didn't. But it was true. His guys were there to kick rear, take names and chew some bubble gum- and they were all outta bubble gum.

What I can improve on: I can really work on being a better distraction (heh). Maybe paint my guys pink or something (serious joke.)


About my opponents: Tom is a class act, a ton of fun, and has the loveliest models I have ever laid eyes on in person. His partner was very effective with his army but not so much fun.

I was all set to show you Tom's magnificently pretty Eldar, but my camera is acting up and I can't upload pictures. BUMMER.

The game moved very quickly, which was pretty interesting to me. I've been really catching on the rules and doing better, but I caught a couple mistakes and a few moments where I didn't know what was going on.

[RPG] 2 Weeks

Half a month. A fortnight. 2 weeks. 14 days.

That's all it takes (sometimes) for something beautiful, expressive, touching and evocative to be born.

In my experience, the quickly born-but amazingly deep works, ideas, concepts and stories are the ones that you have no control over. They take off like a freight train and just keep going until they arrive at their destination- usually your brain all "explodey" with possibility and change.

Some of these monsters take longer and some are shorter. Some are characters, while others are settings, or scenes, or maybe even adventures for those at your maniacal mercy.

I love the fast and furious ideas-how burning they are while they work their way through your head, and how real they are when they are finally birthed.

I'm not ready to share mine - it's a brilliant and sexy concept, but I don't know how to use it yet.

What kind of speed freak ideas do you have that you're willing to share? Where did the idea start? How did you process it while it burned you up? What do you like the most about it?

[40K] SW/SW vs BT/GK

We're almost done with our team league, and this game we played the Space Wolves +Chaos (counts as) Space Wolf guys (but he didn't use his pretty Chaos guys this time)

This team had been playing Terminators and Thunderwolves, but they made a change to their list, anticipating that they would play a different team. We also made a change- my partner didn't bring Terminators for the first time in 2 leagues!

We brought a TINY list as far as bodies go. Something like:

Brotherhood Champion
Xenos Inquisitor
Purifier Squad (2 Psycannon, 3 Halb)
Vindicaire Assassin
Rhino
Strike Squad (Psycannon)
Razorback (TLLC)
Dreadknight (Teleporter, H Incinirator)
Dreadnaught (Ass Cannon, TLAC, Psy)

and my list was even smaller. Really. Here's what I brought:

And 2 Land Raiders.  That's it.

The other guys had 6 drop pods full of Long Fangs- some with melta and some with las. 4 Land Speeders, Missile launchers, all kinds of long range firepower. They had bodies all over the place, probably outnumbering us 2-1 if not more.

We got pitched battle, sieze ground- but if we had gotten Annihilation I probably would have asked for the one allowable re-roll. They just had that many bodies. My partner did not seem worried at all- but I didn't see a way to get through all their guys. [He showed me.]

We deployed in cover, with the Land Raiders lining up along side the objective, and my Terminators elevated in a ruin on the far left corner. The Dreadnaught and DreadKnight escorted our rides on the field. We shot at the Land Speeders and a small fire support squad, destroying 3 Speeders and killing a couple missile launcher guys.

Their turn 2 brought on 4 of the pods. The special psychic ability provided by the DN that kept them 12" away from our forces REALLY helped- but they still came in to assault us. One squad landed right behind my Terminators, and the other just outside our 12" bubble. Another came in more towards the middle of the field, trying to block us a lane to their objective and wanting to kill our Land Raiders. The last came in kind of on the side of our column of mech, hoping to dump fire along the side arcs.

Purifiers on the objective, DreadKnight killing guys in front and on the side. Land Raiders distracting.

Turn 3 my Terminators assaulted the Long Fangs that popped out of the pod and sent them running. The rest of the turn was spent shooting at any melta or las on the board and taking out heavy hitting targets.

Their pod full of melta failed to arrive, and the other scattered to the board edge, which resulted in us being able to place it. We put it so that the guys inside had at least 3 feet to move before they could get to any action, and the DreadKnight continued to destroy the troops set against him.

Turn 4 was a lot of harassing fire on both sides.if I remember right. I know their Melta drop pod failed to arrive. We sent a Rhino to the other side to get rid of the last of the melta.

Turn 5, The Rhino we sent over towards their side of the board got busted open and the guys inside came out to do some damage to the troops hidden in cover at the manufactoium type thing. They break the Wolf Squad right up and begin the slow escort off the board. I continued to provide fire support with my CML Termies and the Land Raiders.  Their last drop pod fails to come on AGAIN. At this point, the other guys decide to concede, as they don't see any way to even get a draw.

What I learned: My guys make really good body guards, and maybe a mech heavy list isn't so bad, if it is done right.  Cover matters and using my mech to defend something big and important CAN work if there's either enough of it or enough support.

What I need to work on: Thinking long term. My partner knew just by LOOKING at the board that the worst we could do was a draw. I had no concept of how he came to that conclusion.

About my opponents: Man, they were fun! One player is new to SpaceWolves, and the other was trying a non-Terminator list for the first time in a while. They tried something new, which was a challenge- and they were super good sports. They teased me a lot about being the best bodyguard in the league, which is honestly kind of true. I provide distraction so my partner can get things done.

It was a fun game and I am really looking forward to next week when I get to play my buddy who is also just getting back in after many years of being on the sidelines.