Specifically, Liz was playing Cygnar (shooty) and I was playing Khador (stompy). We were still working out the system and figuring out the wrinkles for the first couple of turns, as my guys charged in. I realized I had to close, so I allocated points to have them run. Liz shot at my guys as they came in, but was limited by the rate of fire of her weapons. So, she hit my guys, but not enough to do any substantial damage.

Once my guys closed, I allocated all the points to them, allowing for massive numbers of melee attacks with boosted (extra dice) to hit and damage rolls. This allows my heavy hitter mech to just crush her light mech in a single turn.

Now, at that point it was 10:00, so we stopped because we’d both had a long week.

If you’ve played Monsterpocalypse, it feels a lot like that.

Its at least as good as 40k, and they’ve put out fewer editions in the given 10 years. Whether this is maintained, or they end up going in to the same edition churn as GW (3 editions in 10 years? Really?) remains to be seen. Further, the minis are in the same price class as GW minis, but (at least theoretically), you need fewer of them – however I’m not sure how true this is. The entry cost seems to be about the same ($50 for a basic couple of units), but with 40k armies, I find that you need to bulk it out to the tune of $200-$500 in order to really get enough variety to work well and keep things interesting. I’m not sure how this works for Warmachine.

(For the curious, I’m not getting rid of my GW minis – after all, I already own them. I’m willing to play 40K under either 3rd or 4th edition rules, as those are the rules I own, and am currently experimenting with the F.A.D. 4.0 rules. I also have some modern minis which I’m going to play with around these rules.. especially since they’re almost all painted..)

• Played in a 5150 (by Two Hour Wargames) game. As the name suggests, it is a pretty quick system, but I’d argue that it was only so quick because half the people knew how to play, and it is *very* bloody. We played two games in two hours. The mechanic which makes it so bloody is that every time you take fire, you roll a check. If you pass, you get to return fire… and then the other guy gets to make the same check. This continues until someone routs, runs out of ammo, dies, or fails the check. The system is about as complex as battletech or 40k, which is acceptable for most folks, but I’m not really interested in picking up another set of reasonably complex rules unless they really speak to me. These don’t.

• As always, there’s lots of stuff in the dealer’s area, including a few lines of 15mm modern. I’m finding I like the smaller scales as opposed to the large ones. For fantasy or small squad or team-based games, 15-30mm is nice. However, when doing armies, the ground scale gets stupid (my 6″ long tank can only shoot 48″!!!) and the armies get expensive. I think it’s better to buy 15mm figures, base them individually, and just play with the 25mm scale rules. For smaller stuff (6mm), base in groups and run like that.

• I also found some guys selling micro armor for about $1 per mini, new, which is considerably less than GHQ. The quality seems decent too, but the modern selection seems limited to US and Russian. However, since SO many countries use Russian equipment, this is not as bad as it sounds.

• I also spent some time with the bored people at the painting university (well, I shouldn’t say bored per se – they were painting or otherwise working on things, but they weren’t teaching them). A very nice lady named Dorothy from The War Store sat with me for about an hour, and cleared up a lot of what I’ve been doing wrong all these years.
  • There is a DEMONSTRABLE difference between cheap brushes and good brushes. Good brushes end up being more expensive, but they last longer, so it is a wash in the end.
  • There is also a similar difference between paints. Craft paints work well at the thicknesses at which they come, maybe a little thinner. However, the size of the individual bits of pigment is quite large, so they end up not thinning out as well – they get chunky and grainy.
  • Liz and I quickly realized the above things (quality mattering) when it comes to house paint – I don’t know why we thought differently when it came to model paint.
  • Gloss paints seal the model, so that will TOTALLY mess up any washes you’re trying to do.
  • She also introduced me to a wonderful idea, the wet palette. The idea is that it is a plastic box, with a wet sponge in the bottom, and a special paper (somewhat like wax paper or butcher paper) above that. Paints go on the paper, and the sponge keeps it moist for hours. Seal up the box, and it will last for days or weeks – no more mixing a color only to have it dry out too fast!

And now, some pictures…

• Been sick with the seasonal flu. Got better. Mostly. Have this nagging cough which is bothering me. But, feeling a little better each day.

• A guy emailed me asking about his website. WTF? Well, apparently there is another Matt Caron, who owns 8bitorange.net, and this guy was looking for web design. Of course, I go look at the site, and I’m like “gack! You need a website redesign, so instead of just doing it, you put up a witty placeholder?” So unprofessional. I didn’t even do that when I redesigned this site, and it’s just a hobby/personal site, not something for a business. But, this ia one of the problems with the state of the industry today. Surprising that anything works.

• A friend sent me this very amusing video clip

• Traveller
• Alternity
• Full Thrust

(Primarily the last one).

Full Thrust is a very good space combat game, and the rules are available for free from Ground Zero Games website.

The main issue with them is that the rules are spread across 4 books, and later books replace rules in earlier books, so it’s pretty hard to learn to play just from books and playing – you kind of need someone to teach you.

A couple of years ago, the thought briefly crossed my mind to do a revised compilation of the rules (with GZG’s permission), but it appears that someone beat me too it, and good for him!

Anyway, I’m also thinking of a Transhuman Space / Traveller / Alternity: Star Drive game, likely using Savage Worlds rules and exploring the worlds a bit.

Of course, there’s also Eclipse Phase, which I’m still reading.

I’ve updated the blog to WP 3.8.

I also had a bit of an overloaded meltdown a couple of weeks ago. Basically, the working theory was that we weren’t going to work on the house or do anything until after the potatoes went in (which happens about the second week of July). At least, this is what I thought. After the list got stupidly long, and it had to be done sooner, rather than later, I basically just stopped doing everything outside work, working on the house, and being a fire commissioner. This made Liz sad, because she was looking forward to brewing beer, and I had told her not to get me any brewing stuff for my birthday, since I would not have time to use it and it would just take up space. I think that put a bit of a point on it, so she agreed to let me set the pace of things, and not set deadlines, and try to slow down. So, theoretically, we’re actually going to be able to do things like brew beer and sit and read…

At least, once the peas are picked and the potatoes are in. We picked and processed about 4 gallons of peapods today, and we’ll do our first picking of garden peas later this week. The replacement tomato, pepper, squash, etc. plants are all in (next year we’ll wait until the second week of June to plant them).

Fire stuff continues to be stupidly busy, with 3 meetings last week, and while there right now aren’t any this week, I expect there to be 2 by the time the week is out.

As I mentioned, I’m basically not gaming. Essentially, I’m not going to schedule anything recurring until it’s been a year and I’ve actually had at least one night free a week for a year where I can just read and play video games. I’m still buying game books, as I tend to collect them, and like to just read them, etc.

I upgraded everything to Jaunty, fixing the XFCE bad window placement problem by giving new windows focus. While it is not ideal, I spent several days poking different window managers and basically being disappointed by them. KDE4 is too unstable, GNOME is not configurable enough, and FVWM would take too much work to make it not make my eyes bleed. E17 is too unstable (though I may try the official E17.org Jaunty builds)

There’s more, but I think I’m going to break here for tonight. I finished reading Watchmen (there’s a pile of other books I need to review, and will do once I unbury them in the mess which used to be my office), and am now on to V for Vendetta.

Oh, as of right now, I’m planning on hitting Carnage, and will likely be bringing some homebrew. Since it’s not a regularly schedule thing, I likely will be able to find the time. If anyone else is going, let me know – especially if you want me to run something.

• Because of the above, I picked up a copy of Battletech:Total Warfare. It’s a good thing that the pages are kind of glossy because it makes it easy to clean off the drool. I really like what they’ve done with this franchise, as well as with Shadowrun and I’m looking forward to Eclipse Phase. Anyway, specifically about Classic Battletech. See, in addition to the book, there’s lots of supporting stuff on the website, including:
  • PDFs of tables from the books which I can carve up and make my own reference cards
  • PDFs of blank record sheets.
  • CBT Miniatures rules as a free ancillary download.

• As far as the book goes, I was pretty much blown away:
  • It is THE MOST gorgeous CBT book I’ve ever owned.
  • The full color treatment is wonderful.
  • $40? Come on – it’s worth $60. The Master Rules were $35 and were softcover and not nearly so nice.

• I also found (finally) an open source mech generation program. It’s called Solaris Skunk Werks, it’s written in Java, and it produces Total Warfare style record sheets. I like it, and will try to find some time to hack on it. Apparently folks have been complaining about the startup time taking too long, so I suppose I’ll dig into code profiling Java programs to try and optimize it, if possible. There is also apparently MegaMekLab, which I haven’t looked at, but is another approach.

• In an attempt to organize my life, and have the time to play things like Battletech and such, I’m starting to plan out my week for a regular schedule. The sad part is that once I did out how I wanted to spend my week, I realized that I really only have one day a week to devote to fire service stuff (and, to be honest, even that is more time than I want to devote to it, but that is another post, which involves talking about how I’m falling behind in my career, etc.). So, I’m going to end up taking a leave of absence from the department for the duration of me being a commissioner, because I really don’t have time to to both.

• So, last weekend I got the compost pitched into a couple of fields and got them tilled in, transplanted some seedlings into individual containers, did a massive supply run (including $100+ worth of beer… see, I’m collecting bottles for homebrew, and one of the best ways to get bottles is to buy beer and then drink it!!). This weekend I serviced the tractor and got it mostly done, except I can’t seem to break the bolts free for them. So, I’m going to swing by my father in law’s house and borrow his big breaker bar, as well as a larger bore hose for the impact wrench (he thinks that my hose is too narrow so it can’t get the volume it needs to really put much power to it). This year, I’m going to be sure to put never-sieze on it. I also swept and mopped the house, which means that it’s vastly less yeechy. I still need to vacuum, but it’s progress.

Friday night is game night with Lizzy, so we set up terrain for Battletech / microarmor. I took pictures.