I was planing to go to the 40K tournament in Kokomo this weekend. Then I realized that tomorrow is the 30th not the 23rd. Well, shucks.
Anyway, I've got two 1/144 B-2 Stealth Bombers in the mail that should arrive today. Got them for like 13 bucks each of amazon. I'm going to kit bash some Tau flyers that won't look embarrassing on the table top. I also just sent out an order for two Master Grade 1/100 GN-X kits (the model from my last post). Further more, I traded some Black Reach Orks and Dark Age models to Sandwyrm for his used Tau stuff.
Probably buying at risk here since I haven't seen the codex. But running stealth bombers and giant robots in my Tau is too cool to pass up. I should have enough stuff horded away to be able to convert a competitive army so long as Vespids don't get super awesome or something. Plus I'm sticking it to GW by not buying their poorly designed and over priced "official" models. Still don't know what I'm going to do about the codex. Have to figure out a way that gives GW the least amount of margin for the purchase. Maybe I'll buy it from MiniWargaming.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Think this is Tau-y enough?
This is currently at the top of my list for a Riptide proxy. Master Grade 1/100. So it will stand 6 or 7 inches tall. Hard to tell from the leaked photos, but I think that's close to the Riptide's size. Cost about $45, so I'll be able to get two for the price of a single Riptide kit. I have several kits I could use, but they all look obviously Gundam. I think this could pass for some type of experimental Tau design.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
$83 for a Codex on IBooks?!?
There you go.
79.99 AUS is about 83 USD. We all know that GW hates it's customers, hates the internet, and hates Australia. So yeah, this is the trifecta right here. You realize that it cost Australians over $200 dollars US for a rule book and a codex? F.T.S.
It used to be that GW would do something shitty and then bury their heads in the sand for at least a few months until we all forgot about it. Now, it's just a constant fire-hose of crap.
GW's internal management must be bent up over some combination of bad Hobbit sales and the Capterhouse lawsuit. So they're just doing every shortsighted thing they can think of to boost revenue and protect their IP.
79.99 AUS is about 83 USD. We all know that GW hates it's customers, hates the internet, and hates Australia. So yeah, this is the trifecta right here. You realize that it cost Australians over $200 dollars US for a rule book and a codex? F.T.S.
It used to be that GW would do something shitty and then bury their heads in the sand for at least a few months until we all forgot about it. Now, it's just a constant fire-hose of crap.
GW's internal management must be bent up over some combination of bad Hobbit sales and the Capterhouse lawsuit. So they're just doing every shortsighted thing they can think of to boost revenue and protect their IP.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Or I can just buy a Gundam instead
So there's been some leaks with pics of the new tau kits. The flyer is one of the ugliest kits GW has ever released, but they've been failing pretty hard at fliers so that's no surprise. Seriously, is there a contract that says only Forge World gets to make cool looking flying stuff?
What't really got me going is the $85 dollar price tag on the super suit. Yeah it looks cool, but if I have to pay Master Grade Gundam model prices, I'll just buy a freaking Master Grade Gundam Model.
That's multi-color injection molded, posable, internal detail. Oh, and only $58.67 retail(minus cost of shipping from Japan). That's if I treated myself to one of the nicer kits. I could buy just a measly High Grade kit for $30-40, and it would easily match whatever GW puts out in terms of quality.
Given that I have about a dozen kits in my closet, you can guess how I'll be fielding my Riptide suits when the new codex comes out. I'll have to figure something out about that flyer as well, defiantly not paying real money for that fugly thing.
Can we get the big GT TOs(Nova, Adepticon, ext) to just go ahead and say that non-GW models are OK for their tournaments. We need GW to feel the pain for releasing crap that we have to buy so that we can still keep playing with the $800 of crap we already have.
Man...now I really want to buy that Gundam kit I linked to,
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Neptune: First Painted Dropzone Model
My test model for my PHR army color scheme. Some areas are a little sloppy. I experimented with a few more red detail markings, but it didn't work so well. I had to layer some more paint to cover it up.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Drop Zone Commander
I was really excited when news of this game originally hit the internet. The miniatures where just astounding in design and quality. When it finality came out I was a bit disappointed. It was a bit more expensive than I would have liked. I had just bought into Dust, and 6th edition was on the horizon. So I gave it a pass.
Fast forward 8 months. Dust is cool, but I have no regular opponents to play against. I've played 6th edition like 3 times in the past 6 months. Oh, and GW has been especially more GWish of late. My defenses where down when Jerry was selling the starters at 20% off at the Indy Open. I picked up the PHR starter and a rule book.
The models are every bit as quality as I expected. A few resin related issues with them. Small bubbles and slightly gritty detail in places. But these where the exception. The APCs where my only big gripe. They are split into two pieces right down the center, and leave a pretty nasty gap to fill when you stick them together. Superglue also works pretty well on the models, unlike some other companies' resin figures. My set also was missing two parts, but I emailed Hawk Wargames and replacements are already in the mail. Hawk Wargames should really do a Kickstarter to get these done as injection molded plastic.
The rule book has some layout issues, but overall it's well organized and the rules are clear. The writing on some of the the fluff sections is pretty bad, but thankfully there's only a few pages of it.
The game is terrain intensive. They've baked in urban combat into the system, and the game does it really well. You need infantry to enter buildings and secure objectives, but infantry are slow and squishy. That's where the tanks come in. Unfortunately the tanks aren't that much faster. That's where the drop-ships come in. Flyers are another feature that are baked right into the game. They work and are an essential part of game play. While most ground vehicles can only move 2-4 inches in a turn, a drop ship can move upwards of 12. This makes them essential for mobility and taking objectives. The game also has fast-mover strike aircraft that can do high speed runs across the battlefield. The flyers are just squishy enough, and AA is just plentiful enough that you have to be smart about how you use them.
Another neat thing the game does is it has two separate ranges for weapons. The longer range is for attacking units without active countermeasures. The shorter range is against targets that do. Most vehicles are equipped with AC, so you end up having effective ranges of 12-24. But buildings and infantry are fair game, and if you can see them, you can typically hit them from across the table. You can also remodel the battlefield by destroying buildings.
One downside to the rules I see is that infantry have little use outside of securing buildings. They usually don't carry heavy enough weapons to be a threat against armored units, and most everything carries a machine gun or two that is more than capable of tearing up an infantry unit. Though, currently each faction only has a basic and close quarters specialist infantry unit. It looks like some other types are on the horizon that are more specialized to stand-up fights.
I'm probably going to round out a 1500-2000 point PHR army. I really think this should be the Sci-Fi war game we should all be playing. It's scaled to produce the big battles 40K tries to give us, while providing enough room for maneuver and tactics. It handles all the dynamic battle stuff that other games tend to fail at like flyers. While the models are on the expensive side they have very good quality and design. The game ends up being in the FoW price range. You should be able to build a decent 2000 pt list for 200-250 dollars.
Fast forward 8 months. Dust is cool, but I have no regular opponents to play against. I've played 6th edition like 3 times in the past 6 months. Oh, and GW has been especially more GWish of late. My defenses where down when Jerry was selling the starters at 20% off at the Indy Open. I picked up the PHR starter and a rule book.
The models are every bit as quality as I expected. A few resin related issues with them. Small bubbles and slightly gritty detail in places. But these where the exception. The APCs where my only big gripe. They are split into two pieces right down the center, and leave a pretty nasty gap to fill when you stick them together. Superglue also works pretty well on the models, unlike some other companies' resin figures. My set also was missing two parts, but I emailed Hawk Wargames and replacements are already in the mail. Hawk Wargames should really do a Kickstarter to get these done as injection molded plastic.
The rule book has some layout issues, but overall it's well organized and the rules are clear. The writing on some of the the fluff sections is pretty bad, but thankfully there's only a few pages of it.
The game is terrain intensive. They've baked in urban combat into the system, and the game does it really well. You need infantry to enter buildings and secure objectives, but infantry are slow and squishy. That's where the tanks come in. Unfortunately the tanks aren't that much faster. That's where the drop-ships come in. Flyers are another feature that are baked right into the game. They work and are an essential part of game play. While most ground vehicles can only move 2-4 inches in a turn, a drop ship can move upwards of 12. This makes them essential for mobility and taking objectives. The game also has fast-mover strike aircraft that can do high speed runs across the battlefield. The flyers are just squishy enough, and AA is just plentiful enough that you have to be smart about how you use them.
Another neat thing the game does is it has two separate ranges for weapons. The longer range is for attacking units without active countermeasures. The shorter range is against targets that do. Most vehicles are equipped with AC, so you end up having effective ranges of 12-24. But buildings and infantry are fair game, and if you can see them, you can typically hit them from across the table. You can also remodel the battlefield by destroying buildings.
One downside to the rules I see is that infantry have little use outside of securing buildings. They usually don't carry heavy enough weapons to be a threat against armored units, and most everything carries a machine gun or two that is more than capable of tearing up an infantry unit. Though, currently each faction only has a basic and close quarters specialist infantry unit. It looks like some other types are on the horizon that are more specialized to stand-up fights.
I'm probably going to round out a 1500-2000 point PHR army. I really think this should be the Sci-Fi war game we should all be playing. It's scaled to produce the big battles 40K tries to give us, while providing enough room for maneuver and tactics. It handles all the dynamic battle stuff that other games tend to fail at like flyers. While the models are on the expensive side they have very good quality and design. The game ends up being in the FoW price range. You should be able to build a decent 2000 pt list for 200-250 dollars.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Battlestupid
I finally got around to watching Battleship the other day. I really like naval stuff in general, but everything I heard told me to stay away from this one. But it's been on HBO on-demand, so I thought, "What the hell, I'll give it a look." One word: Terribad.
That movie makes no sense. In that the people in the movie don't do things for reasons. Also the aliens have to be the most incompetent bad guy aliens in the history of cinema. And I'm including this movie in the equation. Honestly they make no sense.
They come to earth, maybe-maybe-not from a nearby planet earth has been sending signals to, and crash their communications ship. And they crash it by running into a dinky satellite. Invading alien warship taken out by random space junk. Now, random space junk can do some damage if you are traveling at relativistic speeds. But dealing with running into random things when traveling at relativistic speeds is the first thing you need to figure out how to deal with when building a ship to travel at relativistic speeds. I interned at a research lab where 60% of what they did was shoot frozen turkeys at airplane parts to make sure they could withstand the impact. You'd think a species that managed interstellar travel where at least that smart.
But it's OK, because the aliens conveniently land near a communication system that they can use to phone home. Which must have been where they where going anyway since they made no terminal course corrections. On the other hand whenever we see this system used, it shoots some type of energy beam into space at what looks to be sub-light velocity. So I guess the aliens are cool with waiting 150 years for their backup to arrive.
It's not clear whether the aliens are there to conquer the planet or not. If I was going to take over a planet, and I had a supply line of over 100 light years, I'd want to come with overwhelming force. Especially if I didn't know my enemies capabilities. I guess they could have been a scouting force. Yeah, again that only makes sense if they are fairly incompetent. The aliens also bounce between having a Predator style don't kill civilians code of conduct and generic kill em all evilness. Further muddying their motivations.
Their weapons are also impractical. One is a non-guided mortar-style weapon similar to an old Hedgehog anti-submarine rocket. It seems to have a pretty short range with no terminal guidance, and would be a terrible weapon for a spaceship. The weapon depends on gravity to hit its target. It wouldn't work in space. Another is a spinning buzz-saw thing that's massively more effective. To the point where they should probably just shoot that one first in every situation. The ships kind of hop about awkwardly over the water like they don't have enough anti-grav to just hover. I'm not sure they could get these things back into space if they wanted to. And they have wind shields that can conveniently be pierced by a .50 cal rifle.
I've come up with one plausible explanation that allows the movie to make sense. The aliens where just a bunch of random space miners. They got lost, ran out of fuel, and made a last ditch effort to land on a habitable planet. They probably tracked back the signal the humans where sending out into space. They want to call home for a pick up, but the primitive inhabitants are hostile and needlessly violent. They can't seem to break the communication barrier so first contact get's royally screwed. The miners have to use their mining charges and cutting equipment to defend themselves. They hoped the primitives would get the point that they are not out for blood by only firing on people that shoot them first. But alas the humans where dumb and kept shooting at them.
Would have been a much better movie. There's other things wrong. Too many to enumerate. OK, one more. The aliens jam radar, but the human CIWS can still shoot down the alien mortars. CIWSs are RADAR guided! That just annoyed me to no end.
That movie makes no sense. In that the people in the movie don't do things for reasons. Also the aliens have to be the most incompetent bad guy aliens in the history of cinema. And I'm including this movie in the equation. Honestly they make no sense.
They come to earth, maybe-maybe-not from a nearby planet earth has been sending signals to, and crash their communications ship. And they crash it by running into a dinky satellite. Invading alien warship taken out by random space junk. Now, random space junk can do some damage if you are traveling at relativistic speeds. But dealing with running into random things when traveling at relativistic speeds is the first thing you need to figure out how to deal with when building a ship to travel at relativistic speeds. I interned at a research lab where 60% of what they did was shoot frozen turkeys at airplane parts to make sure they could withstand the impact. You'd think a species that managed interstellar travel where at least that smart.
But it's OK, because the aliens conveniently land near a communication system that they can use to phone home. Which must have been where they where going anyway since they made no terminal course corrections. On the other hand whenever we see this system used, it shoots some type of energy beam into space at what looks to be sub-light velocity. So I guess the aliens are cool with waiting 150 years for their backup to arrive.
It's not clear whether the aliens are there to conquer the planet or not. If I was going to take over a planet, and I had a supply line of over 100 light years, I'd want to come with overwhelming force. Especially if I didn't know my enemies capabilities. I guess they could have been a scouting force. Yeah, again that only makes sense if they are fairly incompetent. The aliens also bounce between having a Predator style don't kill civilians code of conduct and generic kill em all evilness. Further muddying their motivations.
Their weapons are also impractical. One is a non-guided mortar-style weapon similar to an old Hedgehog anti-submarine rocket. It seems to have a pretty short range with no terminal guidance, and would be a terrible weapon for a spaceship. The weapon depends on gravity to hit its target. It wouldn't work in space. Another is a spinning buzz-saw thing that's massively more effective. To the point where they should probably just shoot that one first in every situation. The ships kind of hop about awkwardly over the water like they don't have enough anti-grav to just hover. I'm not sure they could get these things back into space if they wanted to. And they have wind shields that can conveniently be pierced by a .50 cal rifle.
I've come up with one plausible explanation that allows the movie to make sense. The aliens where just a bunch of random space miners. They got lost, ran out of fuel, and made a last ditch effort to land on a habitable planet. They probably tracked back the signal the humans where sending out into space. They want to call home for a pick up, but the primitive inhabitants are hostile and needlessly violent. They can't seem to break the communication barrier so first contact get's royally screwed. The miners have to use their mining charges and cutting equipment to defend themselves. They hoped the primitives would get the point that they are not out for blood by only firing on people that shoot them first. But alas the humans where dumb and kept shooting at them.
Would have been a much better movie. There's other things wrong. Too many to enumerate. OK, one more. The aliens jam radar, but the human CIWS can still shoot down the alien mortars. CIWSs are RADAR guided! That just annoyed me to no end.
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