Too Many Dogdamn Distractions and Some Relevant Resolutions

Ok, so I have a lot of stupid little hobbies that I spend money on. TV shows, writing, video games, P&P RPGs, reading, 40k, etc. That's six, but each of them is so massively large scale that the whole lot of them is rather unwieldy. On top of this there are several hobbies I want to begin: beer brewing and firearm shooting. If I was an idiot I'd add fencing and/or martial arts and learning German onto the pile of things I someday want to do.

The point is that I have too much stupid shit on my plate and I need to analyze and trim the fat if I can. We'll start with TV shows.

Currently I "watch" 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Bones, Californication, Cougartown, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Dexter, Doctor Who, Flight of the Conchords, Grey's Anatomy, House M.D., How I Met Your Mother, Metalocalypse, Modern Family, The Office, Star Trek: TNG (with the intent to go back to TOS and then to Deep Space Nine and Voyager), and Supernatural. If I watch one episode of each of those in a week, that's like fourteen hours of television. Last year I quit watching CSI: Las Vegas because of a lack of Grissom. Before that I cut CSI: Miami because no show based on a lab/science should have that many explosions and expert marksmen. I think it might be time to cut a bit more. There are other things I can be doing with my time and looking at this list there are only six shows that I feel like I love enough to absolutely under no circumstances give up (30 Rock, Californication, Dexter, Doctor Who, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office). Another seven I watch because Heather watches them (The Big Bang Theory, Cougartown, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Modern Family [which I think I could grow to like enough to add to the previous list], and Supernatural. So there are Bones, Flight of the Conchords, House M.D., Metalocalypse, and Star Trek that I watch because they're there to watch, but to be fair I am really starting to like Star Trek: TNG and it will probably move to my must watch list. Anyway, its not a good enough reason to watch a show just because its there. House was great, as was Bones, but I just don't feel it anymore. I haven't even thought about them since they took the Christmas break or whatever, so why continue watching them? There's no good reason for it, so I guess I'll stop. Metalocalypse is stupid funny and you barely have to pay attention to it, but why waste my time in the first place if its not riveting television? As far as tv and movies are concerned, I can pretty much enjoy anything if the acting is halfway decent and the story is ok, but why keep wasting my time and subjecting myself to sub-par stuff on such a willing and regular basis?

Edit: Add Burn Notice and Eureka to the must watch list, those two shows are great.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #1: Watch less stupid/uninteresting television. By that I mean, if something isn't riveting enough that I can watch it without doing a bunch of other stuff at the same time, turn it off and focus completely on something that is worth my time.

Next hobby on the list, 40k. Look, I'll be honest, this was a dumb idea. I enjoy the game and I enjoy painting, but the enjoyment I get out of the game isn't worth the time and expense required to get good at it and field a respectable army. On top of this Eric and Tony seem to have no inclination whatsoever to work on their armies and Shawn doesn't have enough time. I haven't been fired up about 40k in a LONG time as well. I do find painting to be fun, but I get frustrated and daunted by the prospect of six gazillion models to put together and paint. Lately I've found myself wondering if my time and money might be better spent buying a model or two (not necessarily 40k models) that I find striking and painting them or perhaps buying a twenty dollar multi-part plastic car model from a hobby store or something and decking the thing out with plasticard armor and weaponry ala Mad Max and giving it a custom paint job. I wonder if they make kits for 89' Dodge caravans...

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #2: Give up the 40k army dream for the moment, but not the fun and relaxing painting dream. Pack away the 40k shit but not the paints and files and such. Buy a twenty dollar model car kit and see if I still enjoy it like I did as a kid, and also a regular pewter miniature and paint it up. After all, miniatures will always be of use to DnD. Also, stop frequenting 40k sites every day, I don't need to and there's rarely much going on.

Next, video games. Video games are a hard thing to value and discuss because its so very hard to know what you're purchasing. I've bought some amazing games (Planescape: Torment) and some damn stupid ones (Qix++, Prototype, etc). Too often, I find myself buying on a whim because Tony or a podcast I listen to was talking up the game in question and I just don't do my own research. At the very least, I need to stop buying so many damn video games. I have plenty of stuff to do, and plenty of games already on my 360 and PC that need playing.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #3: Be more discerning in my video game purchases and stop buying them on whims like I have been lately. Think hard about my money and the games I have at home before laying down money, whether its virtual (i.e. Microsoft points) or otherwise. If I do decide I need to have a game, give it a day or two and play something else and see if I still "need" the game. Also, borrow shit from Tony and Mark once in a while.

Writing. I love writing, its swell and I like bringing characters and worlds to life, even if no one will read about them. This one is staying around in its entirety.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #4: Write more stuff, keep varying it up and don't sink completely into writing fantasy so much that I can never get free of it, try different point of views and styles as well. Finish writing the story of Keroen Skathos for the second time and get my friends to finally read it like they all have said they would. If they don't like reading stuff on monitors, they shouldn't have offered to read or agreed to do so, no one twisted their arms. Kudos to Eric for being the only motherfucker around here that said he'd do something and did.

Reading. I don't read as much as I should. I love reading and have a stack of a dozen or so books backlogged on my shelf and I can never seem to catch up because I only read a couple times a week. I'm ok with reading slower nowadays because it means I'm doing more than reading with myself and if I string a book out over the course of two weeks I seem to retain more information from it. I can still burn through something awesome like Sanderson's stuff in a weekend though, heh.

Hobby Resolution Part 2, #4: Stay the course, or perhaps read a little bit more regularly. Maybe even just set aside five or ten minutes before bedtime every night. I like to read and exposing myself to more books can only broaden my knowledge of writing and plots in general, so reading more often than I have been lately seems like a pretty good idea.

Finally, the beast, P&P RPGs. A lot of my life is taken up by this stuff recently. Heather can attest to the fact that I focus a lot of my free time on this stuff. I'm always posting and yammering on in real life about this stuff and I'm sure everyone has just about had it with my intensity. Sorry. I've got a lot of things going on in DnD that I'm really really excited about and I really really like GURPS and am itching to use it. There's no real resolutions here because I've posted them before, they're part one of my hobby related resolutions. I guess as an update I'll take another look at my resolutions.

The post is from December eighth and it is titled Of Impressive Length. My first gaming resolution was to find and use an audio mixer program. I've got it and I've played with it a bit and it seems to be working. We'll see what everyone thinks when we game on this sixteenth though. The second one is about learning to let go of my frustration and not be so irritable about shit: FAIL, but there is progress. The third is about really sticking it to the guys in combat and letting the dice have their way with the group in a fair and balanced combat, haven't gamed since the resolution so we have yet to make progress on this one. Number four is about plots and finishing campaigns, I've got this campaign planned out to fifteen scenarios and this includes the final conclusion of the campaign and how it effects the world at large. First time that has every happened, so definitely making some progress. Number five is about input from the guys and after an email last week, I've definitely been getting some productive feedback and it is swell. Six, seven, and eight are about a larger mini collection, recording our sessions, and shorter more frequent gaming. No progress on any of those fronts.

So there's an update on my gaming resolutions and a few new ones as well.

The Long War

I play Chaos Space Marines, more appropriately they should be called Legionnaires. The reason I chose Chaos Space Marines over Loyalists is that they're chaos. They have thrown down every oath they have taken, killed every last bit of humanity in their souls, burned away their honor and cast its remnants at the feet of dark, hungry gods. They have spent the last ten thousand years in a bleak wasteland where reality (time included) is mutable and unpredictable. their bodies and minds have been broken and reforged in the crucible of insanity and violence that is the Eye of Terror. These are the warriors that stood beside Horus and Angron and Perturabo. These are the men that spat in the Emperor's face and turned their back on him, despite his power and majesty. These men were not little wieners of weak faith that decided they could cheat the Imperium out of some cash (coughHuronandtheRedCorsairscough).

I chose the Iron Warriors out of the nine Legions because a) they have a slick color scheme, b) they like bionics, c) they kneel at the feet of no god, and d) because they are the most bitter and twisted of the Legionnaires. During the heresy their homeworld rebelled against Imperium control. At this point they had been thrown at fortress after fortress, ordered by the Emperor to wage war against every unbreakable bastion that ground the Great Crusade to a halt, they were much abused and when their homeworld rebelled they could not stand it. They fell upon their home planet with unstoppable fury, slaying 5 million inhabitants in one evening of slaughter. When the bodies lay still and the smoke cleared, they realized they had gone too far. All the fury that had filled them every time they were forced to crack open an unbreakable fortress with an unending siege had been poured out on their homeworld and they knew there was no returning to the Emperor's light. They weren't seduced or tricked into evil, they went too far and decided there was no going back, so they went another mile from His light and turned traitor with Horus.

The reason I mention this is that there is some discussion on The Bolter and Chainsword regarding the current Chaos Space Marine codex and the previous codex. The current one is dubbed the 4th Edition Codex, and the previous one is 3.5. I've remained mostly...apathetic about edition/codex hate. I don't care, 4th is what I have and what I've always had, so I have no nostalgia for older, better things. I mean, with the whole counts as thing, I can do whatever I want basically.

If I really truly want cultists, I can counts as some Lesser Daemons. If I really truly want Siege Breakers, I can throw in some Berserkers. If I want some heavily bionicised troops I can use Plague Marines. Or, if I want to have bionic troops using Kai guns I can use Thousand Sons. Oblits and Dreads are what they are, no work needed there. If I want a servo-arm on a model, I can pay the points for a power fist or power weapon. Now, we get to the crux of the problem. Read on,

In the 3.5 codex for Iron Warriors, all that had special effects. Their servo-arms had special rules, just like their bionics. They could use cultists, not counts as lesser daemons. The Kai guns had actual rules that were not just AP3 magic bolters. They also had the option to take a basilisk from the Guard codex because they often salvage war machines from battlefields. They could also have one more Heavy Support slot at the cost of two Fast Attack slots. In addition to this, there were all kinds of mutations and warp-fueled powers that Chaos Space Marines could be upgraded with, and they got Veteran Skills. You could pick and choose (and pay for) a special rule and apply it to some of your squads if you liked.

I think this is the thing that gets me. According to the current codex, if you are Average Joe Chaos Lad, a Lad that fought on the soil of Terra and faced down everything the Emperor and his blind minions could throw at you, then when your masters died like bitches and fled and you survived ten thousand years in the asshole of the galaxy that is the Eye of Terror, do you know what this nets you over the Average Joe Loyalist?

You get a close combat weapon.

That's right. Loyalist Space Marines come bog standard with a bolt pistol and bolter. For selling your soul to the powers of Chaos and breaking your oaths to the Emperor you get a chainsword, some paint, and some spiky bits. Don't get me wrong, there are five troop choices in the 4th book and they are all solid. But the average Chaos lad is underwhelming. Even if that whole "ten thousand years" is subjective due to the vagaries of the warp, you should still be slightly above the effectiveness of the common tactical marine freshly out of his scout squad. The basic, unaligned, Chaos Space Marine should have much more in common with the Sternguard and Vanguard veterans, or even the Honor Guard, of the Loyalist codex. They should be priced accordingly, but they should nonetheless have a bit of umph to them. They're supposed to be veterans, they should fucking look like it.

Call it codex envy or or whatever you want, but I am seriously starting to understand and pick a side in the codex hate/edition war that is seething within the chaos boards.

I also want to start a Night Lords army because I have a nice looking dark blue and raptors are badass. They used be more badass because they had this Hit and Run veteran skill. The lightning on their power armor (which in the 3.5 codex was actual lightning and had actual in-game effects, but no longer) is difficult to paint though.

Rage on brothers! Rage on and pledge your undying hate to the merciless powers of Chaos!

Music: An hour and a half of Bowie.

Bananas!

Did I already do that one? I can never remember what I title these things. (I guess I did. Oh well.)

I finally finished my Black Templar space marine and I am super glad I was able to completely scratch that itch. Good looking model (especially those Black Templar specific bits) but I need some practice with it. I think it needs a bit more red as well. We'll see. Regardless, it is done and I am happy with it as a test model. If I do end up pursuing Black Templars at some point, I have a test model to work on improvements to.

Currently I am in the process of re-painting my ork skin before I move on to the final details of the model. I ended up going over the bright green my guide said to use with the previous shade of green and that looks good, pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I might try a green wash to see if I can get some easy shading on the guys. If you can do it properly I've found ork skin shade nicely, they're very muscular and all the ridges and valleys collect paint well. I think all I need to do is finish up the teeth, do the "lucky" blue Deathskull face paint, and eyes. Maybe a little bit of touch up and detail work as well, then they're all done.

I also have a Blood Angel I'm working on. I really like the red. It has the benefit of being simple and also looking decent. I'm using it as a test mini for my Space Hulk guys, which I eventually intend to paint, if I can find a varnish that works for me. I had some trouble when I tried to use Testor's Dullcote to protect some of my earlier chaos space marines. It left this kind of grayish residue on the models that I did not care for. Hopefully I can attribute this to operator error.

I also played Space Hulk, using my Iron Warriors. It was fun. The time limit on the terminator side really makes you a bit tense when trying to plan out your extremely limited number of moves per turn. Then when your guys start dying on you, each death kind of made me cringe a bit. Genestealers just start coming at you like four or more at a time and it gets pretty hairy for the terminators pretty quick. Sadly I lost the mission. It was definitely fun though.

Up to page sixty-something of two hundred and eight in The Last Blade revisions. The next part is rather tricky because a new character is introduced and he was a red cap and there is some discussion of his nature and abilities that must be removed and heavily altered. I think I have a solution though. I'm not sure how different it will be from what red caps are, but we'll see what happens when I start tapping away at the keyboard. I sometimes manage to surprise myself. Not sure what to do about the leprechaun though. To cut a long story short, work progresses on my revisions.

Totally stalled on Traith Harris, and I've come to the conclusion that roughly four or five chapters of what I've written are totally pointless and add nothing to the story. I think I can salvage pieces of it and incorporate it to where I'm going but it was basically a silly way to show Spineplate, a character from my DnD campaign that has nothing to do with Traith's at this point. Oh well, I intend on converting Traith to GURPS (there is a 4E version somewhere around my laptop) and I think that will be an easy route to getting back into the story. Plus, supposedly we're returning to The Known World on the 26th and that always gets me psyched up about Traith because I know that while they're killing shit or engaging in dialogue, he's back in the 37th busting heads.

Sometimes when they do stuff I kind of zone out and imagine what Traith is up to. Its kind of fun to imagine my world as living and breathing. Witch hunters are out there killing innocents to save them from themselves and Traith is out there caving in faces with that big brass arm of his.

My next few pieces of Inconcistencies are probably going to focus on my attempts to introduce the Sorcerer and the Charlatan (kudos to Laura if you are reading this, neat idea). I also have another idea for that story that makes me giggle a bit. To be fair though, I do a lot of giggling when I write that story because it is so ridiculous.

Music: Survivalism - Nine Inch Nails

Music: Capital G - Nine Inch Nails

Hulks of Space

This post will be regarding the contents of the Space Hulk box. The only unfortunate thing is that the sand timer busted in transit, as did the power sword on one of the terminators.

The pieces of the board are all heavy duty cardboard type stuff. Very durable and they aren't just going to fall apart, they're a lot heavier than you'd expect, the whole box is heavier than you'd expect for any sort of board game. The colors of the board pieces are all pretty nice and the artwork isn't too shabby either, you can clearly see everything and understand exactly what it is supposed to be. All good things.

The rulebooks are pretty nice as well, I assume the rules will be as easily understood as the rules for 40k are. The pages of the books are on the thick side so they should hold up to frequent flipping and use, which is another good thing.

The models. These sculpts are pretty much the most amazing I've seen for plastic terminators. The genestealers all look suitably alien and though they repeat a few looks in the twenty-two in the box, they all look nasty and all look like they're about ready to tear some stuff up. Two are even bursting up out of metal walkways and others are depicted as crawling on or through the ceilings of archways, its good stuff. The broodlord is the king of the crop though. He is enormous and sits atop a heap of skulls with a terminator helmet clutched in one of his massive claws. As a genestealer objective there is a dead space marine captain on a throne, and that is pretty good looking as well. The genestealers are nasty and awesome looking, enough said. As an interlude before I get into the terminators, all of these models are snap fit and and only come in one or two pieces, and when they go together they all look pretty nice, its very hard to tell that they are snap fit models and the mold lines on them are almost nonexistent. It looks like they went to great lengths to ensure that the mold lines fall on corners or the edges of parchment and such and I have heard that this was the intent of the makers, and they did extremely well with this. Things on the terminator side of the fence are even better than the genestealer side. There are only eleven termies so each one is very characterful model and none of them repeat. Each one has a name in the mission books and they all have plates and parchment pieces for you to put names on them and individualize them. Each of the terminators has little bits of genestealer remains on them and one is crouching to rip up a slab of bulkhead with his powerfist.

Space Hulk cost me a hundred bucks plus tax, no shipping because of Games Workshop's until further notice free shipping. From the cost standpoint Space Hulk is immensely worth it if you play marines, especially Blood Angels. That's the thing, all the awesome character of the models is wings and blood drops, the icons of the Blood Angels and some of their successors. Now, filing could get all of that stuff off and some of the better modellers out there would have a pretty easy time converting this stuff. It presents a bigger problem for noobs like myself, but I think I have a solution. Anyway. There are twenty-two genestealers and a single broodlord on the side of the tyranids. At full price, this amounts to ninety dollars for twenty-four genestealers (they come in packs of eight), and twenty for a broodlord (who looks a lot less awesome than the Space Hulk one). That alone is over a hundred bucks. Granted, the bases are odd and some of them would be really easy to hit based on true line of sight, but that brings it down to maybe eighteen useful models for a regular 40k army, or perhaps even sixteen if you wanted to be picky. Even still, we're at eighty dollars. On the terminator side we're looking at one librarian and eleven regular terminators with various loadouts of weapons. Depending on the model, a terminator librarian goes for seventeen or twenty (roughly) dollars and boxes of five terminators (assault or regular) go for fifty bucks a pop. So that is at least another hundred and twenty dollars of models, ones that may require added effort to fit into your army and may not be able to be used based on what type of terminator unit your using. Looks like nine would be fine as regular terminators, the other two have lightning claws and a thunder hammer/storm shield combo, making them assault terminators. So, for a hundred dollars you get one hundred and eighty dollars of relatively useful models, plus a new game to play. A pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned. I've always wanted to play some Blood Angels and I love the look of tyranids, so the box is made of win for me.

Limitivity

Just so you know, this blog will only be available for a limited time in extremely limited quantities.

What does that mean? Nothing. It means that eventually I will stop posting or die and you will stop reading or die as well. Or the internets will break. Games Workshop has a bunch of ads for Space Hulk, each of which professess limited quantities. That means nothing. They could continue selling it for the next five years and still call it "limited" because they stop producing it when they go out of business. It seems to me that if molds cost what they do and they are in fact using the same type of molds they use to make their other models, its just plain stupid to not use the fuck out of them till they break. Unless they're ultra shitty quality molds designed to break and they are counting on the breaking to ensure EXTREMELY LIMITED QUANTITIES.

I remember Hollywood Video here in Bay City used to have video rentals for ninety-nine cents for years. Then they quadrupled their rental prices. Turns out that the ninety-nine cents was a special "limited time only" rental. Don't get me wrong, I don't fault Games Workshop for this method of advertising, its fucking brilliant and kudos to them for making a smart business decision (if you believe the internets they don't make many of those, and also their plastic is actually moon plastic and that is why it is so expensive). If it turns out that Space Hulk is no longer available like a month or three from now, I will totally admit that I was wrong about their use of "limited" as a descriptor. Anyway, like I said, it was a smart move for them to add in limited. I mean you have a bunch of what DnD calls grognards who have actually played the original Space Hulk and all of them will likely purchase it, you add on limited time only and you immediately get the new kids to the game wanting to get all the new toys and you get the psychos that will buy two or three copies so that they can collect one, play another, and then put the third onto eBay.

I don't have any thoughts as of yet on the game itself because it is currently at my parent's house and I am not there.

I need to finish my lone Templar. He looks awesome and makes me happy and I want to finalize that awesomeness.

I started reading Space Marine the other day, I think I may have mentioned that the other day. So far I am extremely pleased with it. There is just something about it that I really find myself digging, which is odd because it is supposed to be utterly atrocious and I'd hate to think I enjoy it only because of my lowered expectations. It has this odd quality where it reads more like a random sci-fi novel than a Warhammer 40k novel. I mean, I understand that 40k is technically speaking sci-fi, but Tony and I never think of it that way. The books are sort of their own genre. Don't get me wrong, Abnett is a fantastic author and there are others among the stable of Black Library writers that are skilled raconteurs as well. That said, the books are kind of like an action flick. Most of them you just turn off your brain and giggle internally as space marines just pound the piss and/or shit out of everything in the galaxy while everyone but the main characters drops like flies. Most of the time the characters are awesome hardassess and the aliens are fucked up nasties and it all meshes into a glorious tapestry of fast paced action and mayhem. Just like with movies, sometimes its just fun to read something that is simple and enjoyable and an easy read.

If you look back to the earlier artwork of the game there's a lot more...I guess you could call it fucked up shit. Anytime you see a human of importance they're all bionic and have cables snaking every which way from them, a lot of the artwork is like a mild dose of H.R. Giger's artwork, kind of cool but vaguely unsettling and I think Space Marine kind of captures some of that in Watson's writing. Tony tells me that the last third of the book is where it really becomes shit-like sludge, so we'll see.

Music: Alcohol - Gogol Bordello

Stuff and Things

Hi. I was looking at my Orks and Black Templar marine last night and I found myself really wanting to paint. The orks are definitely too bright of a green. Goblin Green is definitely too bright to be the final color, so I think I'll redo the orks skin in...Knarloc Green I think it is, with maybe a wee bit of Goblin Green in it so there is some lightness to it, but overall it will be a nice dark green that I like. I look at that Black Templar and I get extremely excited because it looks pretty solid right now and I can kind of envision the final product and it makes me happy. I'm jonesing to get back to my chaos boys though and try and play around with some stuff I've read since the last time I put paint to a model. Good times.

So, with our little GURPS group there has been some discrepancy in points and who wants to do what with points. At this point, my Socialist Robot needs 750 points to work properly and not be a lame half effective concept. I could probably, maybe, scale it back to 500 and get the effect I am going for but I would really have to put some effort into that. Eric also wants a high tech character which will need a similar amount of points, or he will be a mage and still need high points. Dan wants to be a gangster and Jeremy wants to be his wheelman, realistically speaking these two characters become blatantly absurd if they are made with more than 250 points. I mean, how do you justify a 25 in strength or dexterity for a run of the mill 50s gangster? It makes no sense.

I have achieved a solution of sorts! (Because I am a downright brilliant motherfucker.)

First off, the most obvious thing is for Dan to use points to purchase contacts and allies and the like to simulate the fact that he is in fact a member of an organization (perhaps an Outfit?). That could easily take up a chunk of change. The other option is to use the Innate Attack Advantage coupled with Limitations like Breakable and Can Be Stolen to simulate his own homemade, lovingly cared for Tommy gun. Obviously to justify this he would have to purchase some Armoury (small arms) skill to simulate his technical know-how. The fact that Innate Attack does not require reloads or clips could be justified by some suitably cinematic method of reloading or the fact that this motherfucker always has a clip (or drum) or two stashed away somewhere (Perhaps in an extradimensional space inhabited by some manner of toothy and hungry extradimensional creature? No one gets that, its ok.). A similar solution could be achieved for Jeremy's character and his grenades, although in this instance it seems like it would be prudent and sensible to apply the Limited Use limitation. I love the fact that GURPS is so damn customizable that you can do shit like this, its glorious.

I broke down and bought Space Hulk finally. Heather actually talked me into it funnily enough. I was really reconciled to the fact that I would not own it, which bummed me out to no end, and she said to just get it if it is going to be a limited release. I am a such a collector that I want to have everything associated with 40k, like to the point where I have considered going online and trying to pick up the original Space Hulk and I have in the past scoured eBay for reasonably priced copies of Space Marine (which has been so retconned out of canon by now that it is only relevant in that Necromunda exists in 40k and there are space marines in it, I mean come on, they talk about Tyranids being around in the 25th millennium). Regardless, I have it pre-ordered and look forward to it, the sculpts on both sides of the bulkhead look pretty slick. Each of those termies has a shit ton of character to them, scrolls and iconography unique to each model, plus their dripping with the remains of stealers they've clobbered into pink mist. The genestealers are slick as well, they're all crawling around arches and walls and there's even at least one bursting up from below a metal walkway that howls Alien at me. I can't wait to see what the Broodlord looks like, hopefully it is crafted from refined awesomesauce and forged upon an anvil of epicness with Mjolnir.

I have determined that Inconsistencies Continued will be a once a week sort of thing, probably mid day on Mondays prior to me leaving for work, so those of you that are interested will find a nice little story waiting for you at the end of your Monday workday. You are welcome. I enjoy writing it, but it is pulling my attention away from other more important writing related shenanigans, like my rewrites for The Last Blade, so I need to cut back on the frequency of its posting.

Music: Discipline - Nine Inch Nails

I Want To Paint

I am quite psyched to paint. My orks are looking rather nice, and I am really really into painting my Black Templar and all I've done is basecoat the armor, skulls, metal bits, and the maltese crosses, which sounds like more work than it really is. I think I over-watered the Boltgun Metal when I was working on the metal stuff though. I am really developing an eye for thinning my paints, I started out at a 2:1 paint to water ratio and I've sort of gotten good enough to just eyeball the amount of paint and put the appropriate amount of water into the puddle to thin it. The only problem with the Boltgun situation is that the Vallejo eye dropper bottle I use for water has a split in the nipple end of it which isn't too much of a problem, it just slipped a little extra water in this time.

The orks look really good to me and I can only imagine the details with tighten up nicely as I apply more paint to the mix to build up the colors. As I kind of expected, the Devlan Mud wash had no effect whatsoever on the Tin Bitz colored metals. I'm not sure what effect the Games Workshop guys were going for, but we'll see what Badab Black adds in.

I like going by these guides I have. They offer a nice starting point and allow me to have a concrete example of what happens when I do something with a wash or a certain paint on a certain basecoat or primer. If I want to, I can also change up the paints to see if I can get my own specific effect. I'd like to play around with colors and see what I can come up on my own without the guides, but the paint is too expensive to waste in that fashion too often.

In other news, I am having a crisis of faith in my DnD campaign. 4th Edition is pissing me off. I like the system and it works and its very solid, if all you want to ever run is high fantasy campaigns. My kitchen sink monstrosity is having a hard time being hammered into the weirdly shaped hole of 4th Edition. The problem at its core can be related to lasers. That is correct, lasers. I want to throw lasers in to my campaign world, and not steampunk lasers either. Like fucking Weird West lasers. I have ideas about heat dissipation malfunctions and misfires that melt your fucking face, but I cannot work them (the lasers) into 4th Edition. What is the point of using your class granted powers if the powers you can use with your laser top those, and what's the point of using a laser if its power is not comparable to your powers granted to you at your current level. The other option is this: It does fire damage, and that is boring as fuck. If I do a laser or a lightning gun, I want it to be slightly more snazzy than a sword that does fire damage or lightning damage. I don't know. I want to do so much awesome shit and it just ends up seeming like 3.5 Edition would have been an easier place to do this shit, despite the nice things about 4th Edition. I can't just change editions on everyone and be like "Oh well, bummer about the money you spent, now go buy some more." That's just plain a dick move. Plus, I really like 4th Edition. I really really do. It is so much more fun to be able to have neat tricks to perform as a fighter, rather than just swing a weapon every round.

The more I ponder this topic the more I consider d20 Modern/Past/Future/Apocalypse/Etc to be the ideal setting for my campaign. Magic is present, but toned down and could work in sync with my initial conception of the screwball random ass system. There are rules and such already in place for medicine, explosives (and the creation thereof), car (or steam wagon) chases, firearms, etc, etc, etc. All the gadgetry I want to put into my campaign already has rules in d20 Modern, or one of its expansions. It has the prestige class system I like Plus, Fell-Humans won't be tieflings, I can just make them fucking humans with mutations like I want to and make magic radioactive like I want to. It has oodles of skills and skill points, which I like.

The problem is that I made everyone buy books this time around and d20 Modern books are going to be a lot harder to find than 4th Edition books. I can't justify making them purchase or obtain another book just because I want to have my setting work better though. We'll play 4th Edition, and I'll ask the die hards like Jeremy and Eric what they think and we'll go from there. 4th Edition works perfectly fine for ninety percent of what I want to do in my campaign. Unfortunately, that last ten percent is one of the more delicious parts.

I wonder if there is a way to hybridize the two systems or if there is a Modern ruleset in the works for the current edition of DnD.

Fuck. This hurts my brain.

Music: Deep Inside - Incubus

The Mother Effing Post (It's Long, You'll Be Fine)

I played 40k with Shawn this past weekend, it was a...480 point battle I believe. He fielded a Tau Crisis Commander, Kroot Carnivore squad, Stealth Suit squad, Pirahna with Gun Drones, and a Fire Warrior squad with attached drones. I fielded a Chaos Lord, and three Chaos Space Marine squads. He outnumbered me slightly. Heh. Things went as expected for most of the game, his range and weight of fire were matched by my very solid armour save and good toughness units. This battle was pretty evenly matched, the dice didn't seem to favor or spite either of us. I did completely fuck myself when i forgot the rules about shooting at vehicles and penetrating hits, which led to a squad of chaos space marines getting pretty heavily chewed up by his commander. We played annihilation but towards the end I got confused and thought we had a draw because neither of us had totally destroyed the other. Each squad is worth one victory point in annihilation, I had four (three squads plus my commanders) and Shawn had five (four squads plus his commander). I had my commander and the remnants of one squad at the end of the sixth turn (you roll to get a fifth and sixth turn in the game and we rolled high). I can't positively remember whether or not I took out any of his squads. I know his commander and fire warriors were still around and perhaps some of his stealth suits. I kind of recall killing his kroot, but cannot be sure, so it looks like he won. We are now 1 to 1 as far as wins, though I hate to call my previous game a win with the way his luck was that time.

I've found that my troops are durable, but they lack punch. Bolters and bolt pistols cannot compete with his pulse weapons, and meltaguns are too short range of a weapon to rely on for tankbusting and crisis suit popping. The point is, my list is too basic. Even an obliterator would have made the battle easier. A seventy-five point model is a bit much for a low point game, but I think I can swing it if we up the points to six hundred or so (which I just suggested to Shawn earlier today). I guess that is the plan for the next enhancements to my army. I want to have two full squads of Iron Warriors done and then at least be able to proxy rhinos or an obliterator. I need to be either more mobile or pack more heat. With my oblit deep striking with perfect accuracy near an icon I can somewhat negate the maneuverability of Shawn's crisis commander. That tactic relies on one hit with a lasgun or multi-melta and I think oblits have twin-linked versions of the multi-melta. They both penetrate the 3+ armour save of the suit, and I believe they are both instant death for the commander because they are double the toughness of the unit. On the other hand I could choose rhinos as my next augmentation (for about the same mother effing price as an oblit) and increase my mobility and just negate the issue of range by being right up in his face on turn three instead of turn four or five. I dunno, we'll see. I'll have to see what I can cobble together as a counts as obliterator and perhaps get the dimensions of a rhino to use something blocky as a counts as rhino while I paint up another squad of Iron Warriors. I'll probably try the obliterator first since that is the easier one to do.

Interestingly enough, one of the things I had the most fun doing was talking to Shawn about his tactics and units in an attempt to get them to perform better against mine. I really enjoyed the hypothetical discussion on how to fuck my guys up. It was just fun to kind of pick apart units and figure out different ways to use them and ways to counter them.

I bought myself a Black Templars upgrade sprue and assembled and primed it at Shawn's. Unfortunately I put the Gesso on too thickly and it did obscure some of the detail. Well, not obscure, but further paint would have. When I got home I kind of cleaned the dried Gesso off and reapplied it. The Gesso went on kind of lumpy and not smooth looking, which would only have been exacerbated by more paint. I'll be dunking the fucker in Simple Green here and completely removing all remnants of Gesso, then I'm going to try thinning the Gesso with water, which some people do and it might not be a bad idea to get a look at the results. We'll see. I really look forward to painting up a Black Templar, I have two pretty in-depth guides for them and both look rather nice so I'm hoping to have a nice model when I finish.

My orks are working out rather nicely. I think I've got all the basecoating done, except I need to touch up some spots of metal with Tin Bitz. I am going to have to play around with some different browns or tans or something because black pants are just not working for me, but I have brown boots so I'm not sure how that will work. I may just paint the boots black and the pants brown and just do all the leather straps on the pants in Imperial Blue like I've been doing with their gloves and armbands and will eventually do up their lucky tattoos in. They're orks, so if they're a bit of a mishmash of colors, its not a terribly big deal. They're fun to paint though, I do very much like the mess of colors I have collected to paint them with.

I think I'll spend a couple hours painting tomorrow while I catch up on the shows I haven't watched yet. Eureka is back on the air after a year break in the middle of a season (wtf?) and there are a few new episodes out, along with Burn Notice, and the first four or five episodes of the seventh season of Penn & Teller: Bullshit.

Brewed beer while I was down visiting Shawn as well, except that I fell asleep for a portion of it, so I don't exactly know what we were doing. I know there was some milling, and some heating, and some transfering. I just don't know all the details, other than the fact that the cooler where all the hops were stored smelled delicious, as did the milled malt (?) that we were milling. It is possible I need to get a book or two on beer brewing and read up. I almost did when we went to a bookstore, but I really didn't know exactly which one to get.

Speaking of books. I've got a stack of nine or so fantasy/fiction books at home, including two I'm borrowing, plus some stuff Eric loaned me for no real reason other than he wanted to. Even with this hefty amount at home, and my seeming inability to make progress on my exceedingly interesting Nikola Tesla biography, there is a pile of books I want to pick up. Oddly enough, they are primarily non-fiction.

As I said, I would like to find a book on beer brewing, if only because financially speaking it is a wise decision to brew my own beer rather than purchase it from stores (forty to fifty beers for twenty dollars was the math I could get behind FYI). I would also like to peruse something that would teach me how to identify flavors and qualities in the beers I like and how to achieve those effects through brewing procedures. I would like to find a book about the "wild west" and the whole era, perhaps more specifically something about the lawmen. Someday I would like to read up on World War 2 because of my family's involvement in it and I'd also like to learn a bit about the whole Nazi obsession with mystical relics and stuff. Not because I am exactly interested in Nazis, but more because I am interested in magic artifacts and enjoy the Indiana Jones films and Hellboy comics. I also just honestly don't know much about shit like that, I'm not a history buff of any kind but I think I'd find information about stuff like the Civil War and World Wars interesting. I think I'd like to read one of those "history of guns" type books. I've always been fascinated by firearms and their evolution. I even did a report about how the invention of firearms was responsible for the death of knighthood and chivalry and whatnot. I think something I should definitely pick up is some kind of book about the modern political parties of the United States and their tenets and goals and stuff like that, I know how I feel about issues, but I don't know what political parties, if any, feel the same way. I can watch the news and elections and debates and get information that way, but so much of those have been hacked up by television folks to be sound bites (bytes?) that tell me nothing, or they center on pandering to interest groups and religion and shit like that. I don't give a fuck about your religion and your relationship with Xenu or the Morningstar or Odin and how that relates to your views on abortion and the driving of your enemies before you. That shit has no place in politics, I want to know your politics and those of your party, tell me those and keep the prosletyzing to yourself. I guess a citizen should be aware of the agendas of the people who are "in charge" of his country (Spoiler Alert: The people in charge are the citizens, that's why I used quotes. Governments are supposed to fear the people, because the people outnumber those in goverment and have the right to bear arms and generally have something worth fighting for other than a paycheck.), at least as much as he or she can without going to a politician's house and saying "What the fuck are you about?" Finally, I want to get a book about the basics of the English language. It has literally been over a decade since I had any real education on basic crap like sentence structure and grammar and things of that nature and I think it would be extremely prudent for me to revisit the basics if I'm going to continue with my writing and such.

On the fiction side of the equation is the series known as the Saga of the Pliocene Exile. Its an older series from the late eighties I think. It is basically the Celtic cycle of myths turned into a Sci-Fi setting. Its a pretty cool idea, alien races invade and conquer early humans in the Pliocene epoch and are what Celtic myths refer to as Firbolgs and Fomorians and Tuatha De Dannan. Not sure on the exact plot of it but the setting alone seems like a pretty interesting read to me. I've read bits and pieces of the Wikipedia article about the series and it really does sound quite nifty. It looks like I'll only be able to pick it up on something like eBay or Amazon or used from Barnes and Noble used book sellers.

Music 1.0: Love On The Rocks - The (Mother Effing ) Darkness

Music 2.0: Australopithicus - Intronaut

That's Math I Can Get Behind!

Work progresses on my Orks, except anything involving green paint because my GW order from early last week still has not arrived in the mail, nor has my thewarstore.com order. This is somewhat vexing. I have most of the first stages of painting for them done and I really like the blue that is the base of the Death Skulls clothing and tattoos. I'm really glad I chose Death (Deff?) Skulls as my clan. I like the Snakebites as well, but I have no desire to try converting the orcs and boars from the Warhammer Fantasy line of models into orks riding cyboars to be counts as warbikers. I mean, it would be cool as Hell, but fuck that. Those boars are metal and I don't hate myself enough to try my hand at making them cyboars. (I secretly do though, because boars are awesome, bioniks are awesome, and putting the two together is exponentially more awesome.)

The ay key on this laptop is effed up, so that is why one or two may be missing from this post. For some reason I enjoy spelling letters out phonetically. Ay, ee, eye, oh, yoo. See? Fun.

DnD has totally stalled out at the moment. This is ok though, I have a real good framework for the fourth scenario and as I have previously stated, the third is done and our next session will be run by Eric so there is bit of a buffer. I do need to make Walthuler's Missive for it (the third scenario) though and figure out how they get it in the wilderness. I think a dirigible will be involved. Anyway, Jeremy (beautiful glorious bastard that he is,) has decided he wants to pull off a heist in Kusseth. (If there is a van involved I think I can get Tony back into the game for at least one session) He in fact wants to finish the heist that got his character sent to Beltan eight years prior to the first scenrio of this campaign. Three years ago I would have shit myself if he had said he wants to do that in a campaign. Today all I can say is that he gets another Dogdamn gold star of awesomesauce.

I'm going to Shawn's this weekend and we pln on engaging in a variety of activities, possibly including laundry. One thing we will be doing is brewing some beer, another is some 40k GAMING. Not painting or blogging or scraping away at shit with the flat end of an exacto knife. We will gaming. We're only working with 500 points and whtever we have on hand that kind of looks like scenery and we won't have a regulation 6' x 4' table, but we will be rolling dice nd our manz will definitely be pew pewing at each other. That is not a dick joke.

Hopefully we can get two games in. I hve enough stuff put together and partially painted to field an ork list and a chaos space marine list, as long as Shwn doesn't mind proxying. I remember a time when all I ws missing was a counts-as Kharn for my HQ and I would hve had 1000 points of Khornate Chaos Space marines. But now I have Iron Warriors and they are a wee bit cooler. I plan on trying to play a real game this time , we'll roll for deployment and mission type and everything, then maybe I'll post battle reports.

Oh, yeah, if they have it, I intend on buying a Black Templars upgrade sprue from the hobby shop by Shwn's, and some Mordian Blue paint as well. I've given up on Eric and Tony painting anything and Shawn seems to have no desire to go beyond 500 points in the foreseeable future, so I'm just going to play with 500 point lists for the foreseeable future, and occasionally purchase a model that looks fun to paint. That is what this hobby has become to me, more painting than anything else. (In case you didn't notice, that was n admission that I will be canning my Lamenters and plying Blck Templrs as my loyalist space marines.)

Eric kind of freaks out every time I switch paint schemes. I'm not sure why. This is only the second time I've bought any paints this year and the cost for the paints I bought last time was under ten dollars and maybe slightly more this time. I also bought Simple Green, which is like 3 bucks for a jug that we did some household cleaning with in addition to stripping 1000 points of Khorne. Did I "waste" cash? Yes. Do I feel I got my money's worth out of the cash wasting? Yes, because I got more hours of enjoyment out of painting my models than I do out of most of my video games. Meanwhile, Eric blew money all over eBay for paints, models for Spce Marines and Tau, and brushes and now it all sits in a corner somewhere collecting dust and any skill he had with painting has atrophied because he hasn't put a brush to a model in like half a year.

Apparently I was agitated about that issue.

To return to the topic of gaming, its looking bleak for August as well. Tony and I are trying to get our schedules switched round at work and this makes changes to Josh's schedule, and he apprently has all his weekends in August filled up with shit, since he didn't run any of those plans by me I can only assume none of them are gaming related. Since he and Jeff are like peas in a pod I can also infer that Jeff may possibly be involved in some of those plans. I could handle gaming with one less person than usual, that is part of why I force NPCs down the group's collective throat, but losing two guys just makes the group too small. More people usually equals more fun in my book. We'll see though, I remain tentatively optimistic about August. If anything, its more of a buffer for work on scenarios and that is in no way a bad thing.

Music: I Fought Pirahnas - The White Stripes

'Ere Comes Da Waaagh!!!

I like orks. I like the models, the fluff, and a lot of their rules. They are a very assaulty army that favors the horde (because the basic troop unit costs 6 points per model). I tend to like assaulty armies, so to combine that with my love of things orkish, it makes sense that at some point I would field an ork army. That point is now. I was looking at my Lamenters yesterday as I began to paint them, and I cannot muster any interest in the models, paint scheme, or fluff anymore. This happened with my Khorne guys, which is why I use Iron Warriors now. I was all into my Khorne guys for a while but I was just starting out the hobby and I was into a lot of things. One of which was the Iron Warriors. When I got bored with my Khorne guys I thought about it and realized I was still into Iron Warriors, so if after all that time and painting I still dug the scheme and the fluff, it seemed more prudent to field them as my chaos army. Same thing with orks, I liked them, bought some, painted one, set them aside, I'm still into them so now might be a good time to work on them and set my Lamenters aside due to lack of interest. The problem with the Lamenters is that I can't seem to get the precise yellow I'm going for, and at this point my freehanding skills (which are about nil) are not up to making decent looking checks and the checks are a big part of what I like about the Lamenters. I only have 8.37 of them painted up, so now might be a good time to put them on pause and see where my loyalist interests truly lie before putting more effort into them.

Somewhat on this topic, Space Wolves are getting a new codex and there are rumors of Black Templar and Blood Angels codices coming out in the sometime nearish future, and I have a slight interest in all three of those chapters. I'm not terribly keen on the Space Wolves paint scheme, but I do like the pre-Heresy dark gray that their lost 13th company still uses. Also, the Space Wolves are Norse werewolves in space and that is the kind of B-movie inspired background fluff that cannot be overlooked because of sheer awesomeness. Blood Angels, I am not so keen on, but they have a successor chapter called the Flesh Tearers that have a black and red paint scheme and heap of fluff that I dig. They are also vampires in space, some of whom have gone bat-shit crazy with bloodlust, I like this for the same reasons I like Norse werewolves in space. The Black Templars have a killer black, red, and white color scheme and an upgrade sprue that is amazing. One thing I like about chaos is the diversity of their bitz and the details on their armor, I would almost have to say that the Black Templars upgrade sprue bitz are superior to those possessed by chaos. There is a lot of neat shit on them, and I do enjoy the painting of the detail work on the models. So the upgrade sprue coupled with the nice paint scheme are definitely selling points for the Templars.

As I was saying, orks might be the way to go right now. I think I really do better work if I alternate between what type of models I paint. It slows both armies down, but its more fun for me to have some variation in what I'm painting, and right now I'm not exactly in need of a 100% put together and painted 1500 point army.

I've been playing with list building for a bit and I've settled on a Death Skulls army. My first gut instinct was to try an Evil Sunz speed freekz army. I do love the warbike models, and the whole very mobile, very fast moving theme of a speed freekz army. There is a problem with this, trukks only hold like 12 guys in them. Eleven boyz plus a nob is decent in assault, as long as they have the charge, but they lack survivability under heavy shooting. Ork boyz come standard with a 5+ save, and that is not remotely good. The trukk adds to their survivability with its speed and ramshackle rule (trukks are so rickity that if they get hit hard enough they can just go careening around the battlefield out of control and actually deliver the orks faster to their desired location), but I'm not convinced twelve orks in a lightly armored trukk can survive all the pulse rifle shots Shawn's Tau will be able to hit them with. I think twenty or thirty boys, a nob with a bosspole, a lot of running, and a well timed Waaagh!!! have a better chance of getting my boys where they're going than a trukk with its armor of 10.

Death Skulls allow me to take a more varied army. I can't really justify a place for lootas or burna boyz, or kommandos in a speed freekz army. There just aren't enough transport options. A Death Skulls themed army allows me to throw whatever I feel like throwing in, as long as their gear looks looted and they have blue facepaint on. That is the Death Skulls fluff, they steal shit and wear blue because it is the orkish lucky color, just like red is the fast color. Orks even have a vehicle upgrade called Red Wunz Go Fasta that adds an inch to a vehicles movement range, obviously you have to paint the trukk or wagon red to get this. That's what I like about orks, they have a bunch of neat rules and mechanics like that. Fun stuff.

I'm picturing this list in my head and I kind of see three big squads of boys, maybe one is 'Ard Boys with 'Eavy Armour. Probably some Lootas because they are pretty fluffy for Death Skulls, probably some Burnas as well because I love the idea of cigar smoking orks with flamethrowers that double as power weapons (they use them as cutting torches to burn through enemy armor), and some Kommandos as well. Unfortunately that makes my list very top heavy and fills up al three elite spots and three of the six troop spots. I'll probably throw a nobz squad in as a troops choice, normally they are elites but having a warboss as an HQ allows you to take one squad of nobz as troops. Then I'll probably have two fast attack slots as warbikers. I may toss the lootas if I need to. I haven't got a handle on unit costs like I do for chaos space marines so I've no idea what the total for this army is. But yeah, Lootas, the fluffiest unit of the bunch would be the first I toss. If I have any room left I'll likely throw in some stormboyz because they are both hilarious and awesome.

Obviously I have no idea how any of this stuff will play out because I've never played a single game with orks and have only played one with chaos. I may actually go back a few months on 40k radio and download the ork codex podcasts again and give them a listen to bone up on orks.

Music: Naked Burn - Mastodon

What The Fuck? Wednesdays

Yesterday was my second day off this week and I am somewhat astounded by my level of productivity. I did some banking type stuff and some dish washing related type stuff which is I suppose productive, but mostly I spent the day bumming around the house watching shows and playing with my hobbies. I managed to finally finish up my squad of Iron Warriors. Seven chaos marines, one aspiring champion, one icon bearer, a flamer guy, and a meltagun guy. I also cleaned up a sergeant, missile launcher guy, and flamer guy for my Lamenters. What cleaned up means is that I took my files and exacto knife to the models and removed all the mold lines and imperfections in them. Its tedious as Hell and really the thing I dislike the most about the hobby, but it needs to be done and I'm starting to get the hang of it. Its really something you have to concentrate on because it is real easy to inadvertently hack off a bit or shave a chunk out of the plastic with the files. Someday I hope to develop a bit of proficiency in the use of greenstuff so I can fill in all the cracks and whatnot. I had a total idiot moment and glued the business end of the missile launcher onto the body of it wrong, twice. Then I slopped some Gesso on the three models and they are awaiting paint, which I will possibly start on tonight or Friday after laundry. Playing with Gesso has got to be my favorite part of painting, its just a lot of fun to slop the goop on and come back an hour later and see how cleanly it dries to show details. Paint adheres to it very nicely as well, which is the point of the whole process. Once I get into some orks, I will likely switch back to black spray primer because there are a lot more orks in ork armies than there are marines in marine armies (basic ork costs 6 points, whereas a basic chaos or loyalist marine costs 15 points). My eventual ork army will consist of a lot of bikes and trukks, which could limit the number of models and might make the use of Gesso not a total pain in the ass time consuming event. We'll see.

I did some work on the Nel, mostly names and a little bit of history. The document I'm writing up is basically a companion to any game material I produce for them and also kind of a prologue type story. Its kind of a history of their origins I guess you could say. Some spots of it are spoken of and described during The Last Blade (now referred to as Keroen's story and not Cromm's) but a large chunk of it is only referred to or hinted at. Mostly I'm writing this out to get used to the names and the typing of them and to kind of give any future stories I write about the Nel a sort of starting point, or at least a concrete past. That was something of a problem when writing Keroen's (pronounced Care-oh-en) story, there were only certain past events that I could talk about or refer to because I had no real clue what the beginnings of the people were. The picture of their creation and rise to power developed as I wrote, but a lot of time was spent staring at a blinking cursor trying to figure out what was what. This thing I'm writing now will come in handy in the future I am sure.

Josh raised an issue today that I am aware of. His problem was that Glamour (no name for it yet) was too powerful. The Nel just did shit with it whenever they wanted. That is the point. When I conceived of Glamour in game and story terms (and not in terms of illusionary magic wielded by Earth faeries) I decided it would be a way for Nel, if they had the power and will for it, to alter reality around them. It was designed to be the classic "magic did it" mechanic that changes rules or provides a way out of impossible situations. Need a way through a wall? Glamour makes a door. Although, if Josh was referring to the door I think he was, it was not really Keroen just punching a hole through a wall with a door shaped bit of Glamour. It was more like his Glamour called a door that existed in that spot into existence from a hidden place deep in the hill. The door is always there, someplace in the hill, its just that Keroen knows precisely where it is at all times and can bring it to where it is supposed to be whenever he wants. Or he just created a door, which is not a big deal for him at that point. He can fling himself around through space (and technically time because he does not spend any time crossing those distances when he teleports) fairly regularly, breaking down the matter of a stone wall and converting it into wood and metal hinges and a doorknob is not a big deal in terms of energy usage. Anyway, I expressed my agreement with Josh that yes, Glamour is fucking ridiculously powerful and is always the thing the Nel fall back on when they can't get their way. Which is why part of the point of the story is Keroen's distaste for the Young Courts and their lack of spine (as he sees it), and also how he forces them to rely on themselves and not their magic so much. Read it, you'll see, or you won't, which seems to be the more common occurrence. Kudos to Josh for making it to chapter five (there are only twelve chapters) though.

Work on DnD was done as well yesterday, not a lot though. I have a rough outline made up for the fourth scenario I will run and I just put down specifics for an encounter that would occur at some point during that scenario. That's how Kusseth City is going to play out, some cool descriptions and some encounters that happen depending on when the PCs want them to. If they're walking through the city and following Spineplate home and they want to see if there is a shop to buy weapons in POOF! around the next corner they'll find a mall or some equivalent. If they want to check out a tavern for info POOF! I'll basically break down all the components of the scenario and plug them in as needed. I've never run a scenario like that, so we'll see how it works out. Hopefully well.

Music: Freya - The Sword

40k Related

I finished my icon bearer for my Iron Warriors squad, and I remembered (I think) how I did the scorched barrel on my meltagun so my flamer wielding Iron Warrior should be finished up quickly enough. My icon turned out a lot better than I thought it would. Originally I was going to make it old and worn and use Bleached Bone and a Devlan Mud wash to dirty it up with a dark red or something for the eight pointed star of chaos on it, then I kind of thought it might be better to do like hazard stripes on the banner portion, but there isn't really enough flat clear space to do that easily. I finally settled on a black banner with a yellow star symbol and I think it works pretty decently.

Maybe Wednesday or Friday I can put the pedal to the metal so to speak and bang out the warsmith and the flamer guy in one go. Then maybe I can take some pictures with Heather's camera and post them here. It would be nice to feel a sense of completion or achievement in 40k, it has been a while. I wish the guys would get their butts in gear because even if I do get an army together (finally) I have no one to play against so it really doesn't make much sense to work hard or with any degree of regularity. I mean, I want to develop my painting and modeling skills because I get a lot of neat ideas (I think) for conversions and such, but I don't have the skillset necessary to actually implement them and I'm left holding a bit in one hand, a model in the other, and a confused look on my face. Like right now, I have some possessed chaos space marine weapon limbs where the hands have morphed into large pincers with like teeth and spikes growing out of them and I think it would be awesome to hack off the grabber on a servo-harness and stick a crab claw arm on in its place to represent the daemon weapon of my chaos lord. Now, I can hack pieces off easily enough, and gluing is easy too, I just don't know how to get it to look like it belongs there. I have an idea to use greenstuff maybe to represent muscle tissue growing out of the metal servo-arm and going for a techno-organic feel with the backpack, but I would need to do some heavy searching on the net for some idea on how to make it look right. I also decided I will not be using a full techmarine harness for the leader of my Iron Warriors. Those things are loaded down with too much crap, they're too busy of a bit for my tastes. I think with the conversion on a regular Iron Warriors backpack would look nice. I think I'll probably use a metal chaos lord model with the backpacks switched out, I've always had a fondness for the model I'm thinking of.

Back on topic. My friends haven't really painted anything in the past six months as far as I know, and this bums me out quite a bit. Shawn has like 500 points of Tau put together. Neat. I want to hurl 2k points of chaos at a like number of fishheads. Troops and HQs are cool, but there is also shit in my army list like oblits, vindies, and dreads. Those are what I think are cool and I want to field the suckers. I aso want to do enormous hazard stripes (and possibly pieces of bodies) on the dozer blade of my vindie.

Interlude: For those of you not immersed in the hobby: Oblits are daemonic fusions of armor, marine, and warp energy that can grow energy-based projectile weapons out of their arms. Vindies are big tanks with dozer blades and a big fat gun barrel the size of my thumb jutting from their front end. Dreads are monstrous metal walkers with half-dead space marines that have gone bat-shit crazy inside.

Like I said, troops and HQs are cool, they are the core of any list, and Chaos Space Marines have some damn neat stuff in it for both slots in the list, but the elites and other slots are where you find the really neat stuff. Same thing with my loyalist army. I have dreads and vindies there too, plus drop pods and vanguard vets and sternguard vets. I'd like to paint and field all of this "neat" shit someday. I'd be ok with just painting it all, because up to a certain point painting is very relaxing and kind of nice thing to do while watching a movie or tv show. That said, it seems stupid to have fifteen hundred points (roughly 37 models) of Iron Warriors and a similar number and point total of Lamenters if nobody will be engaging in epic battles with them. Maybe I can teach Heather to play the game and fight me, heh.

I think I have a plan forming in my head. I'll build my chaos and loyalist space marine lists to about the 500 or 750 point mark, then see where everyone is. If nobody is above that mark I think I'll work on my orks up to the 500 point limit (I should only have to spend another 60 bucks or so to get to the point after having bought the Assault on Black Reach set when it came out many months ago and a box of boyz). Then, once again, check and see where everyone is with their armies. If that's a no go, maybe, maybe, I'll toy around with a 500 point guard list. I like this hobby and I like painting and I only put five or ten bucks aside a paycheck for it, so its not like my three armies are draining the coffers or anything.

The ork army in my head is basically a speed freaks army. Lots of red paint and lots of ramshackle ork vehicles. LOTS of bikes. I think the space marine (loyalist and chaos) bikes look stupid. The ork ones look fantastic, all kinds of jagged metal and an overall jury-rigged appearance that gives the models a lot of character. Throw fifteen or so of those guys down with some trukks and a Wazdakka counts as and you're set to turbo-boost your way into a 3+ invulnerable save and assault. I'd probably throw in some Kommandos and Burna Boyz as well, because they're both kind of awesome and there is an ork kommando model that I really love. Apparently ork nobz on bikes are one of the most hated armies out there currently, that and double lash PN/KB/oblit spam chaos lists.

The guard army I'm not so sure about. I have a theme idea, but I'm not as knowledgeable about guard tactics as I am about space marine and ork tactics (not that I am beacon of tactical brilliance). The theme would be penal legionnaires, conscripts, and commissars. Basically a penal legion full of some rugged looking models with kind of a gritty look and a lot of browns, dark greens, and blacks. I like the fluff about commissars and penal legions, and I like ninety percent of the commissar models, and I like the rules of the penal legionnaires in the Guard codex. I dunno, this is just the glimmer of an idea right now. I like a lot of things and that is part of the problem. Vostroyans would be pretty cool too, except their models, though I love them, are all metal and fuck that. Metal is a pain in the ass to work with. Someday GW will go all plastic and that will be glorious.

Music: Immigrant Song - The Sword

Operation: Thunder Clap/Fist OMEGA Condition

Also known as Operation: Oh Fuck Me.

So, I have decided to go along with the previously mentioned idea of cutting out all the Celtic mythology from my The Last Blade story. The past two days have been spent coming up with new names for all the main players and places and such and I am in no way close to done. I have a drafted email in Gmail with a bunch of shit just written in there, kind of like a free writing exercise with names and it is messy. Basically this should be easy, just plop a bunch of consonants down, then intersperse them with vowels and y once in a while and its all done. My problem is that I like all of the names I already have, I've grown attached to them and they have meaning. When I think of the Seelie Court, I think of Fey with personalities as shallow as a pool of light and natures as changeable as a flickering flame. That's the Seelie. I want the new name for the Seelie to have meaning as well, but without doing some tie in or using pseudo-Latin names I'm basically creating my own words and that just seems...I dunno what it seems like but I don't like just making up words. The wordsmith in me goes "That is made up and everyone knows it, you look like an ass every time someone reads the word Sokar."

Although, doing a quick Google of Sokar tells me that Seker (Sokar is a variant of that name) has to do with Egypt and death and Sokar is a character on Stargate that has masqueraded as a god of death on many worlds for millenia. Fuck them, I'm keeping the name.

I think I've settled on an idea for the shape of the Courts (I'll be keeping that term at least, although the names of the Courts will undergo some changes). Giant-type Fey will be known as mountain-kin or something along those lines, but instead of breaking it down into Trolls, Jack-In-Irons, Ogres, etc, it will just be Mountain-Kin with the new name of the Court on it. So, instead of Spriggan from the Sluagh, they will be called Sokar Mountain-Kin, or Sokarian Mountain-Kin, something in that vein. (Anyone even remember Sokar? I thought not.) Ancients, which were once called Hags, Gruagache, Hobgoblins, Fomorians (or Firbolgs, I can never remember), etc will now be called Firstborn and the Sidhe will be called the Secondborn (because each Ruler made the Firstborn first and the Secondborn second, the Secondborn consider themselves a refinement of the Firstborn and there is some rivalry between the two races).

Looking back on the early stuff for the Fey has been an interesting trip down memory lane. Some of the choices of Court were odd. Like I put the Phooka (shapeshifters that could transform into a bird of prey or a horse) into the Sluagh (undead Fey), even though the Phooka make more sense as Common Fey, or even Court of Blades Fey. Seeing all the broken ass mechanics I introduced in each version of the races has been interesting as well. There is feat based Glamour, schools of Glamour that you could automaticall use that were just spells taken from spell lists, skill based Glamour that required a check to use, and Glamour that had no mechanic except vague outlines arbitrated on a case by case basis. Glamour never really had a final form, I was alway refining it or trying some other concept to make it work like I envision.

Looking back, it is shocking how oblivious I was to the concept of game balance and fairness. I wonder if it negatively impacted anyone's enjoyment of the game and they just never told me. Oh well, I'm a better DM now and that is something at least. Heck, if you want to get ridiculous, we invented free actions in 2nd Edition and basically ruled that anything you could innately do could be done without taking up any real time. So, Jason could attack like 16 times, lob a fireball, then transform into his mist form to avoid damage from the enemies when they attacked, all in one turn. Eric was able to scare a gelatinous cube to death by transforming himself into Bill Cosby. Later he was able to summon the rabbit from Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. In 2nd Edition AD&D balance of any remote kind was not exactly our forte. I think at one point the group played what I guess could be called dragonborn, but we called them spawn (anyone remember spawn from Dragonlance?) and they were platinum spawn that served Bahamut and could breathe disintegration rays. Thank you 40k forums for teaching me of things like codex creep and balance.

The Spellscarred powers and paragon path seems like the closest thing to what I want to achieve with Glamour this time around so that is cool if I do decide to take a go at hashing them out 4th Edition style. I'm too new to the edition to go my own way, I'd like something vaguely reminiscent of a template to work with, and Spellscarred stuff is certainly wonky enough to fit in with the powers at the command of the "Fey." I need some new names, anyone have any ideas? I wonder if they'll add stuff into the DMG 2 about creating new classes and powers and the like, that would be pretty nifty and a bit helpful.

I am suddenly really liking the idea of making whatever the Fey are renamed as my own. It allows me to bring back the draconic "Fey" and the psionic ones without trying to hammer them into Celtic myth as well. Although, I'm not even really sure psionic "Fey" would fit here in this collection of inhuman creatures. I think I'm also going to remove the specific physical features of the "Fey." I've always envisioned this collective race as somewhat malleable as far as physical form. I think just some general guidelines like: mountain-kin are big and burly, forest-kin are small and agile, firstborn are human-like but clearly not and tend to be agile. Things like that. Like a mountain-kin from the "Seelie" Court could be all big and stony but have patches of moss for eyebrows and hair with gold ore for eyes while an "Unseelie" mountain-kin could be all big and rocky and have a beard of icicles and eyes like chips of mountain ice, while a Sokarian mountain-kin could...I dunno have fucking fossils visible in his rocky flesh or something to indicate that he is a piece of undead rock. Or he could extrude the fossils to form weapons and armor. Or he could just be a hacked apart and bleeding version of a "Seelie" mountain-kin, that would actually make more sense (despite the awesomeness of being able to see a living rock with fossils in its very flesh) becasause the Sokar are a kind of afterlife for "Fey" and they only end up as Sokarians if their bodies die.

The more I think, the more I like this thing I am doing here. I'm no longer bound by the constraints of the myths I was taking inspiration from, not that I realized they were constraining me. I think the idea of what the "Fey" were and where they came from evolved over the years and I just forgot to evolve them along with it. Oh man, what if I remove the weakness to iron? Now we've really gone off the reservation kiddies.

It's About Damn Time...

Iron Warrior number seven is done. He did not turn out ideally. He looks ok, I just ran into some problems. I have no problem with chainsword and bolt pistol arms. They are simple, adjust to get angle you want and glue to your heart's content. Bolter/flamer/meltagun type arms are a bit different. I like to match arms, so I have to find two spike/skull/etc arms, one trigger hand and one cradling the bolter hand. The difficulty is that you have four points to glue, the arms to the shoulders, the hand to the barrel of the bolter, and the other hand to the grip part of the bolter. I find it difficult to arrange this with just glue, so I use poster tack to hold the mess of hands to bolter together till I can get glue to dry on the shoulders. Then I remove the bolter and tack and dab on some glue and replace the bolter. I had some trouble this time and had to re-glue the grip hand to the bolter a few times and this left a bit of a mess of dried glue between bolter and grip hand. Not pretty, but not really noticeable unless you get up close. The next problem was the head. I've always like the chaos space marine head in question, but it does not look good on the Iron Warriors metal chest pieces. Once I get the army built up enough, this guy will probably be one I strip and rebuild. I also found out Iyaden Darksun is too dark a yellow for my hazard stripes. Oh well, it is a learning process.

Seven Iron Warriors down, three more to go. I have the icon bearer, the flamer guy, and the aspiring champion. I just have to figure out how my scorched barrel mix went when I used it on the meltagun guy, who I think is pretty slick looking. I used a pistol arm but hacked off the pistol portion and put a meltagun in its place. The scorched barrel turned out pretty well, as did the helmet, which is another one I really like. Most chaos space marine helmets look pretty awesome. I cannot stand their goofy topknot ones, the half-helm and topknot ones are just plain dumb looking to me.

Once I get these guys done I intend on going back to my Lamenters and finishing up the squad with a flamer, missile launcher, and sergeant. Then back to more Iron Warriors, hopefully with some bionics and whatnot. Mmmm, bionics are delicious. I wasn't planning on it, but I think I may end up stripping my chaos terminators and playing around with them to see if I can come up with a decent obliterator counts as. Terminators are definitely bulky enough to be oblits and they lack the "I am taking an enormous warp fueled shit" look.

I've got six 40kradio podcasts on my laptop here, I think I might listen to one or two this week. They're usually entertaining and kind of serve to get me juiced up a bit about the hobby, so it might be nice. It also looks like they'll be (or already are) going over the chaos space marine codex, which should produce some handy tips and tricks for me.

At the end of this month I'll have saved a hundred bucks up since the last time I internet ordered 40k stuff. I think I'm going to at the very least get a loyalist techmarine, some Iron Warrior conversion bitz, another Iron Warriors warsmith (good model, and I want to monkey with it a bit to make it into another aspiring champion for a different squad than the one I'm working on now), and a hobby drill. I have a little pinning drill, but it only fits two drill bits of the dozen or so I have because it only has two size option for fitting bits into it. The one bit that came with it that I still have is also a bit rusty and bent from drilling out a barrel on a metal gun. The GW hobby drill looks like it can be loosened and tightened to accommodate different sized bits, and it has a nice looking handle so it seems like it will be a decent tool to have.

Work got rid of the heavy metal drug and IV boxes they use and I heard they'll be giving them away, so I might try to snag one and see if it would be a good place to stash all my hobby tool type stuff in. They supposedly have a tray that sits in them, so there should be ample room in it for the tools and such that I have collected, and maybe a bit more for some paint pots and bottles I have just sitting out. If that works out I can clean out the tray on my tackle box I have my tools in now and use that to separate my bitz, which would be nice because I think I only have like one tactical squad's worth of loyalist marine bitz and if I'm going to do 1500 points of Lamenters, it seems like I might need a wee bit more room for the bitz.

Someday I want to do ork and imperial guard armies, so ample room in my bitz box will be a good thing for future projects. Although, by the time I get around to those armies Eric will have finally admitted he has no intention of doing a full army, Shawn will have started a brewery, and Tony will have died in some manner of BBQ sauce related disaster. With them dead I'll have no one to play with so I'll have four armies in my basement and be playing against myself. Or I'll have to make new friends.

Because I can: Awesomesauce, robust, turgid...zebra cum.

Music: 1, 2, 3, 4 Guitars - The Blood Brothers