June 28, 2011
33
Really past the point where these birthdays are occasions for celebration. (Well, in the "you didn't die" sense, sure.) Starting to feel some age, though. I ought to be getting more exercise, which would probably take care of some of the problems.
Went back to re-watch Asobi ni Iku Yo and discovered... I'd never finished it in the first place (or even picked up the last two episodes). Watched 1-10 again and I'll finish the others off shortly. I'm liking the series more on the second pass. Maybe I'm just adjusting better for the fan service this time?
Went back to re-watch Asobi ni Iku Yo and discovered... I'd never finished it in the first place (or even picked up the last two episodes). Watched 1-10 again and I'll finish the others off shortly. I'm liking the series more on the second pass. Maybe I'm just adjusting better for the fan service this time?
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June 25, 2011
(cough cough)
Still recovering from a lingering chest bug. Nothing terrible, but it was bad enough to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics...
Had a fun day at the game store, which ran a Warhammer 40K tournament today. Lost to a clever last-round ploy by a gorgeously-painted Space Marine army (his Salamander's Land Raider was also a canvas for a mural of lizard scales, and most of his guys were fitted with custom dragon-themed parts he sculpted himself.) Tied against a kid with a nice ork army in a mutual slaughter of near-epic proportions. Third round was against the kid's dad, whose Eldar eked out a win by one kill point, though there were a couple rules questions that we resolved the wrong way (massively in the dad's favor) and it probably should have gone the other way; on the other hand, 15% of my army exploded and died before he even got a turn, and when there's that much self-inflicted damage, why carp about imagined slights? Antonio (the ork kid) won the door prize too, and he was quite a considerate player, so well done for him.
I had a great deal of fun, even if waking up early and standing up all day is enough to leave me sore. I'm getting old...
Done painting the unit of ork shootas, and on to a few nobs. Pics later, along with some talk about the anime I've been watching.
Had a fun day at the game store, which ran a Warhammer 40K tournament today. Lost to a clever last-round ploy by a gorgeously-painted Space Marine army (his Salamander's Land Raider was also a canvas for a mural of lizard scales, and most of his guys were fitted with custom dragon-themed parts he sculpted himself.) Tied against a kid with a nice ork army in a mutual slaughter of near-epic proportions. Third round was against the kid's dad, whose Eldar eked out a win by one kill point, though there were a couple rules questions that we resolved the wrong way (massively in the dad's favor) and it probably should have gone the other way; on the other hand, 15% of my army exploded and died before he even got a turn, and when there's that much self-inflicted damage, why carp about imagined slights? Antonio (the ork kid) won the door prize too, and he was quite a considerate player, so well done for him.
I had a great deal of fun, even if waking up early and standing up all day is enough to leave me sore. I'm getting old...
Done painting the unit of ork shootas, and on to a few nobs. Pics later, along with some talk about the anime I've been watching.
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June 10, 2011
Steps to a Happy Andy
1. Go on vacation to San Francisco and see the family. Bonus if your sister-in-law gets her doctorate and you find a couple of nice art prints.
2. Buy a new car. (Was thinking about this anyway, but my Malibu chose its return to my apartment as a good time to dump all its coolant spontaneously. Last Chevy I'll be buying...) New car is a Kia Soul, which I like even if it's boxy. Photos to come.
I suppose it's pretty easy to get happy if you take several thousand dollars and spend them all in a short time period, huh?
2. Buy a new car. (Was thinking about this anyway, but my Malibu chose its return to my apartment as a good time to dump all its coolant spontaneously. Last Chevy I'll be buying...) New car is a Kia Soul, which I like even if it's boxy. Photos to come.
I suppose it's pretty easy to get happy if you take several thousand dollars and spend them all in a short time period, huh?
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May 30, 2011
Oh, right, anime
Dog Days - still paced a little too slow. Knowing Leo's motivations helps a good bit. I'm always quite fond of no-antagonist shows, where you have conflict that doesn't neatly slot into the good-guy, bad-guy paradigm; 7arcs did a wonderful job of that with Nanoha A's. Not quite as good here, but I think a lot of that is just being pitched at a younger demographic. Cute, light-hearted, not too deep, but why not? There's plenty of room for that kind of show too. Images of Shinku playing frisbee with the princess were quite cute in a kind of that's-so-wrong sense.
Ano Hi damn long name - brilliant drama without being mawkish. Best thing this season. Could still end in flames, but that's not the ending I'm expecting at this point. Also tremendously high quality for a show with no real compelling visual elements. I'd call it "slice of life" but that implies vignettes at the expense of plot, whereas this is well-plotted but without a whole lot of fantastic elements other than the obvious one.
Hanasaku Iroha - not completely caught up on this one. First episode was terrible, just raised all sorts of I-do-not-like-this flags. Then it immediately bedded down and started generating good comedy. Go fig. I don't expect much resolution out of it, but I'll take what I've got.
Denpa Onna - too weird to pigeonhole after two episodes. But there's enough there for me to keep watching, to see where it's going to take it. Could get really good or could make me want to throw Erio under a bus, either one's just about as likely. Might sink or swim on the secondary characters...
Ano Hi damn long name - brilliant drama without being mawkish. Best thing this season. Could still end in flames, but that's not the ending I'm expecting at this point. Also tremendously high quality for a show with no real compelling visual elements. I'd call it "slice of life" but that implies vignettes at the expense of plot, whereas this is well-plotted but without a whole lot of fantastic elements other than the obvious one.
Hanasaku Iroha - not completely caught up on this one. First episode was terrible, just raised all sorts of I-do-not-like-this flags. Then it immediately bedded down and started generating good comedy. Go fig. I don't expect much resolution out of it, but I'll take what I've got.
Denpa Onna - too weird to pigeonhole after two episodes. But there's enough there for me to keep watching, to see where it's going to take it. Could get really good or could make me want to throw Erio under a bus, either one's just about as likely. Might sink or swim on the secondary characters...
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May 26, 2011
Many pics - Fate, orks, also orks
First up, a pic of the Fate figure that arrived today, because let's be honest... Fate is much cuter than orks.
The movie design for Bardiche is a little round and not as angular-techy as the original, but of the several Fate figures I've seen, this one's got one of the better faces. Most of them have a bad case of masculine-face...
Orks below the cut. Finished pics of the deffkopta "skwadron", and the next batch of boyz, still a work in progress.
more...
The movie design for Bardiche is a little round and not as angular-techy as the original, but of the several Fate figures I've seen, this one's got one of the better faces. Most of them have a bad case of masculine-face...
Orks below the cut. Finished pics of the deffkopta "skwadron", and the next batch of boyz, still a work in progress.
more...
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May 14, 2011
Keeping plenty busy
Good stuff going on all fronts.
Watched some episodes of Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (gah, mouthful!) and found it to be most agreeable. Drama running off of some excellent characterization, well-executed, uninterested in moe (not that Anjou is hard on the eyes). Normally shows with a little-girl character turn me off pretty quickly, but Menma is making it work. Definitely worth a try.
Another show I've taken a run at is Princess Jellyfish. Based around the travails of a group of modern-day female otaku - not "I like the cute stuff" anime otaku, but grungy unsociables with weird interests that just happen to be female. Throw an outsider or two into the mix and it's good comedy. I've been assured that it remains brilliant, but I've certainly enjoyed the first four episodes.
The guy behind Billy vs Snakeman has been interested in Weiss Schwartz cards for ages now. Apparently he ran into trouble getting a solid supply of them, contacted the manufacturer, one thing led to another, and, well... now he's their distributor in the US. The cards are all in Japanese, of course, and frankly, getting legal permission to redo them would be especially nasty. The plan is to make available translated inserts that can be placed inside card protector sleeves along with the cards. Things are still kind of catch-as-catch-can with respect to translation availability - or more like, there's an almost total disconnect between card sets they have available at the store, and cards they have translated. To their credit, though, the listing of cards contains almost everything from every set that's been released in Japan, so it's fair to say they'll catch up with the translations as they can.
Couldn't tell you how fun the game is to play, but I picked up a couple of packs just for collecting them (and got a foil Haruhi, so that's not too bad!) I figure I'll probably end up getting whole boxes when they manage to get in some Nanoha, and there's a few other shows I wouldn't mind getting some cards from either, especially once the translations are available. Any game with a card titled Freeloaders of the Emiya Household can't be too bad...
Been doing lots of painting this week. Koptas are done (still need to do pics) and the next batch of boyz are proceeding well too.
Watched some episodes of Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (gah, mouthful!) and found it to be most agreeable. Drama running off of some excellent characterization, well-executed, uninterested in moe (not that Anjou is hard on the eyes). Normally shows with a little-girl character turn me off pretty quickly, but Menma is making it work. Definitely worth a try.
Another show I've taken a run at is Princess Jellyfish. Based around the travails of a group of modern-day female otaku - not "I like the cute stuff" anime otaku, but grungy unsociables with weird interests that just happen to be female. Throw an outsider or two into the mix and it's good comedy. I've been assured that it remains brilliant, but I've certainly enjoyed the first four episodes.
The guy behind Billy vs Snakeman has been interested in Weiss Schwartz cards for ages now. Apparently he ran into trouble getting a solid supply of them, contacted the manufacturer, one thing led to another, and, well... now he's their distributor in the US. The cards are all in Japanese, of course, and frankly, getting legal permission to redo them would be especially nasty. The plan is to make available translated inserts that can be placed inside card protector sleeves along with the cards. Things are still kind of catch-as-catch-can with respect to translation availability - or more like, there's an almost total disconnect between card sets they have available at the store, and cards they have translated. To their credit, though, the listing of cards contains almost everything from every set that's been released in Japan, so it's fair to say they'll catch up with the translations as they can.
Couldn't tell you how fun the game is to play, but I picked up a couple of packs just for collecting them (and got a foil Haruhi, so that's not too bad!) I figure I'll probably end up getting whole boxes when they manage to get in some Nanoha, and there's a few other shows I wouldn't mind getting some cards from either, especially once the translations are available. Any game with a card titled Freeloaders of the Emiya Household can't be too bad...
Been doing lots of painting this week. Koptas are done (still need to do pics) and the next batch of boyz are proceeding well too.
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May 11, 2011
You can't help but laugh
Wikileaks has apparently issued a non-disclosure agreement to its workers. Do they just not understand the nature of irony? Or of the legal doctrine of "clean hands"? Or that, while you claim that information is "valuable proprietary commercial information", it's not YOUR proprietary information in the first place?
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May 03, 2011
Dog Days
Eps 4 and 5 down, and in some ways, the series isn't keeping up. The art in ep 4 was the biggest offender. The first few episodes didn't have supremely fluid animation, but it was well-choreographed and highly kinetic - Shinku jumps around like a jester kicking butt. The combat in episode 4 didn't have any of that - instead we got kwality animation, with static poses where the characters occasionally jerked their weapons against each other. C'mon, I've seen clockwork figures that moved better than that!
Not all is lost, though. Story arc ends on a positive note, and not only is Shinku adapting pretty well, he's already thinking up ways to cheat. And he'll need to...
The plot isn't very deep, but it's got the flavor of one where there aren't really any "evil" people, just aggressive ones that don't understand each other well. I tend to enjoy those, so I'll keep sticking with it, so long as the animation budget stays up there and doesn't resort to ten-minute pans or anything.
Not all is lost, though. Story arc ends on a positive note, and not only is Shinku adapting pretty well, he's already thinking up ways to cheat. And he'll need to...
The plot isn't very deep, but it's got the flavor of one where there aren't really any "evil" people, just aggressive ones that don't understand each other well. I tend to enjoy those, so I'll keep sticking with it, so long as the animation budget stays up there and doesn't resort to ten-minute pans or anything.
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April 13, 2011
No love for Elizabeth
Man, nobody wants a free model, huh? Seriously, I'll even pay shipping.
Watched Seitokai no Ichizon (more or less in marathon fashion, though while putting paint on the deffkoptas for the most part.) I don't know that I'd call it "good", exactly. The basic plot of the series is that a particular high school has a student council consisting of four voting positions, all of which were filled by cute girls... and by the top scorer on the previous year's exams, whose long-term goal is "the harem end". (No, he actually says that.) Cue conflict between goofball guy, exasperated girls with a bushel of quirks, and lots of otaku in-jokes that occasionally bust the fourth wall but good.
Steven's metric of whether a male lead "works" in a situation like this is simple - "does he get it together?" And in a lot of ways, Ken is absolutely not that. He's not hopeless in the incompetent, floundering sense; he's ridiculous, like Don Quixote visiting Holland. But he's got one quality that completely saves the show; Ken's in on the joke. Because he doesn't have serious romantic expectations with any of the others, a lot of the wince-value is taken out of it when he's shot down, in flames, repeatedly. And the rest of the cast knows that under the comic-opera womanizer affectation, he's a pretty good guy.
In the end, it wasn't too bad - generally (with a couple of exceptions) avoided the trap of riding a joke too far before mixing it up a little. Can't complain about the fan service either, of course - lots of costume fun, for example.
Also downloaded the entire Yosuga no Sora series, though I have no recollection of when or why. The less said about that the better; we don't need YET ANOTHER incest show, especially one that's taking it seriously.
I'm running through Oblivion again. It's always nice to go back to a game that wasn't half bad back in the day, except this time you've downloaded all the graphics mods and turned every setting up to Ultra Super Deluxe High Quality.
The biggest problem the game had originally was the leveling system, where tougher enemies appear as you level up; the game's practically a billboard for why this is bad. You level up when you advance 10 times in a certain set of skills that correspond to your character class. If you're so inclined, you can focus on those skills exclusively and rocket up to high levels... but doing that means fairly low attribute boosts at each level, so you'll fall further and further behind the difficulty curve. Ironically, you see better results from taking a bunch of major skills that you don't use that often. You level up slower, but each level gets you a larger attribute boost, and you end up with an excellent cross-disciplinary foundation when you hit the tough stuff later on. (Your character starts off at least barely skilled in every category, so you're not really locked out of any skill based on your class. Your bard can become a world-class fencer, wear plate mail like a second skin, throw around lightning, whip up potions, and what have you... eventually!)
Just like Morrowind before it, you end up with a resume half a mile long - running half the guilds in the nation, arena champion, knight this, knight that, savior of the other, prophesied one, yadda yadda. It can be a little unfocused at times. "Oh, okay, demon invasion occurring, and the heir's life is in peril! I'll be back later. First I have to scour every waterway in the land for Nirnroot!" But you can also take or leave entire areas of the game that you don't enjoy. Stealth does nothing for you? Just don't bother. Tired of trying to figure out how to convince someone to turn over the widget? Just cut them down and take it. Don't appreciate the game trying to force you to sacrifice some poor schmuck to get in good with the evil cultists? Stab one of them in the eye, grab your staff and sword, and go Gandalf on the whole cult! (The last is something that I actually did, too.)
The game's a lot easier if you're familiar with its systems - you're a lot less likely to do things that are stupid in the long run, and there's a few things that just break the difficulty. (You mean you can custom-craft a magic staff with a powerful spell and a soul trap effect, trap the monster's soul in your Azura's Star, and fuel the staff with the soul? So I can make a rocket launcher with infinite ammo in a fantasy game? Oh yeah.)
The one thing I miss from Morrowind is flying. Oblivion came out on consoles and so keeps you pretty close to the ground, but in Morrowind, you could zip around like a raptor. The first item I'd enchant in that game was a flying spell (usually flying, quite literally, by the seat of my pants.) Whole areas of guards, pursuing baddies, inconvenient monsters were left impotent on the ground as I cruised blithely past...
Watched Seitokai no Ichizon (more or less in marathon fashion, though while putting paint on the deffkoptas for the most part.) I don't know that I'd call it "good", exactly. The basic plot of the series is that a particular high school has a student council consisting of four voting positions, all of which were filled by cute girls... and by the top scorer on the previous year's exams, whose long-term goal is "the harem end". (No, he actually says that.) Cue conflict between goofball guy, exasperated girls with a bushel of quirks, and lots of otaku in-jokes that occasionally bust the fourth wall but good.
Steven's metric of whether a male lead "works" in a situation like this is simple - "does he get it together?" And in a lot of ways, Ken is absolutely not that. He's not hopeless in the incompetent, floundering sense; he's ridiculous, like Don Quixote visiting Holland. But he's got one quality that completely saves the show; Ken's in on the joke. Because he doesn't have serious romantic expectations with any of the others, a lot of the wince-value is taken out of it when he's shot down, in flames, repeatedly. And the rest of the cast knows that under the comic-opera womanizer affectation, he's a pretty good guy.
In the end, it wasn't too bad - generally (with a couple of exceptions) avoided the trap of riding a joke too far before mixing it up a little. Can't complain about the fan service either, of course - lots of costume fun, for example.
Also downloaded the entire Yosuga no Sora series, though I have no recollection of when or why. The less said about that the better; we don't need YET ANOTHER incest show, especially one that's taking it seriously.
I'm running through Oblivion again. It's always nice to go back to a game that wasn't half bad back in the day, except this time you've downloaded all the graphics mods and turned every setting up to Ultra Super Deluxe High Quality.
The biggest problem the game had originally was the leveling system, where tougher enemies appear as you level up; the game's practically a billboard for why this is bad. You level up when you advance 10 times in a certain set of skills that correspond to your character class. If you're so inclined, you can focus on those skills exclusively and rocket up to high levels... but doing that means fairly low attribute boosts at each level, so you'll fall further and further behind the difficulty curve. Ironically, you see better results from taking a bunch of major skills that you don't use that often. You level up slower, but each level gets you a larger attribute boost, and you end up with an excellent cross-disciplinary foundation when you hit the tough stuff later on. (Your character starts off at least barely skilled in every category, so you're not really locked out of any skill based on your class. Your bard can become a world-class fencer, wear plate mail like a second skin, throw around lightning, whip up potions, and what have you... eventually!)
Just like Morrowind before it, you end up with a resume half a mile long - running half the guilds in the nation, arena champion, knight this, knight that, savior of the other, prophesied one, yadda yadda. It can be a little unfocused at times. "Oh, okay, demon invasion occurring, and the heir's life is in peril! I'll be back later. First I have to scour every waterway in the land for Nirnroot!" But you can also take or leave entire areas of the game that you don't enjoy. Stealth does nothing for you? Just don't bother. Tired of trying to figure out how to convince someone to turn over the widget? Just cut them down and take it. Don't appreciate the game trying to force you to sacrifice some poor schmuck to get in good with the evil cultists? Stab one of them in the eye, grab your staff and sword, and go Gandalf on the whole cult! (The last is something that I actually did, too.)
The game's a lot easier if you're familiar with its systems - you're a lot less likely to do things that are stupid in the long run, and there's a few things that just break the difficulty. (You mean you can custom-craft a magic staff with a powerful spell and a soul trap effect, trap the monster's soul in your Azura's Star, and fuel the staff with the soul? So I can make a rocket launcher with infinite ammo in a fantasy game? Oh yeah.)
The one thing I miss from Morrowind is flying. Oblivion came out on consoles and so keeps you pretty close to the ground, but in Morrowind, you could zip around like a raptor. The first item I'd enchant in that game was a flying spell (usually flying, quite literally, by the seat of my pants.) Whole areas of guards, pursuing baddies, inconvenient monsters were left impotent on the ground as I cruised blithely past...
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April 06, 2011
Sick day and new models
Some days you enjoy dinner, and then other days it gets its revenge...
Fortunately, good things can happen too. A friend of mine is packing it in and getting out of the anime figures business, and sent me a couple of figures...
Tama-chan's not a terrible figure here, but it suffers a little from the posture - because she's bent over, you can't really see her face from above. (And you know, she's a bit short to start with...) She'll probably end up living on top of Figure Cabinet #2 rather than inside it for that reason.
Now that's more like it. I'm not a huge Strike Witches fan, to be sure, but this one strikes my fancy (and with that jacket, is actually quite modest for a girl who's not wearing any pants!) This one was nicer than I was expecting, to be honest. Still not surprised that it didn't sell, given that it's of a character who wasn't in the anime. Or was she even in the novels? Might just be an original sculpt.
Still, can't beat the price, which was better than free - I actually got two! Which means now I've got an extra. I've asked someone to take it off my hands, but if he doesn't want it, and you do, just let me know.
Fortunately, good things can happen too. A friend of mine is packing it in and getting out of the anime figures business, and sent me a couple of figures...
Tama-chan's not a terrible figure here, but it suffers a little from the posture - because she's bent over, you can't really see her face from above. (And you know, she's a bit short to start with...) She'll probably end up living on top of Figure Cabinet #2 rather than inside it for that reason.
Now that's more like it. I'm not a huge Strike Witches fan, to be sure, but this one strikes my fancy (and with that jacket, is actually quite modest for a girl who's not wearing any pants!) This one was nicer than I was expecting, to be honest. Still not surprised that it didn't sell, given that it's of a character who wasn't in the anime. Or was she even in the novels? Might just be an original sculpt.
Still, can't beat the price, which was better than free - I actually got two! Which means now I've got an extra. I've asked someone to take it off my hands, but if he doesn't want it, and you do, just let me know.
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April 02, 2011
3.14 out of 5
Just started Atelier Rorona, which I picked up at the same time as Neptunia. Cute and not complicated so far. Going through the various alchemy recipe menus, I noticed...
There is a PIE menu.
I'm taking that as a good sign!
There is a PIE menu.
I'm taking that as a good sign!
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March 31, 2011
One down!
Finally finished one of the things!
It came out fairly nice, not great. This one was painted when I was most feeling the difficulty of painting red, and so the frame is mostly metal. I'm fairly happy with the rust effect I've got on the skids, and I've got some nice scratch effects on there (maybe could use a couple more). The transfer worked out fine on the rear wing, too. Not really happy with the exhaust coloring (or rather, I've got it just right at the end, but it transitions straight to "too shiny"; I should probably get in there more with the black wash and dull it down, see if I can smooth it out more).
And there's a bunch of itty-bitty stuff here and there, but honestly, at my skill level you hit a point where going back in there, you're as likely to mess something up as fix it.
Five more to do, and they shouldn't actually take too much longer - the metal parts go a lot quicker than the red, and they don't have as much metal on them. I'm hoping I can get two more done by the end of the weekend.
Finally finished one of the things!
It came out fairly nice, not great. This one was painted when I was most feeling the difficulty of painting red, and so the frame is mostly metal. I'm fairly happy with the rust effect I've got on the skids, and I've got some nice scratch effects on there (maybe could use a couple more). The transfer worked out fine on the rear wing, too. Not really happy with the exhaust coloring (or rather, I've got it just right at the end, but it transitions straight to "too shiny"; I should probably get in there more with the black wash and dull it down, see if I can smooth it out more).
And there's a bunch of itty-bitty stuff here and there, but honestly, at my skill level you hit a point where going back in there, you're as likely to mess something up as fix it.
Five more to do, and they shouldn't actually take too much longer - the metal parts go a lot quicker than the red, and they don't have as much metal on them. I'm hoping I can get two more done by the end of the weekend.
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March 21, 2011
Dwarves win - sheer luck blamed
I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy as well, though I'm spending all the craft time on painting the 40k orks, and so the dwarves of Kazak Nyoron are unpainted gray plastic and bare metal. They also don't have a good tradition of victory - I've pulled out a few draws before, but about half the time I get stomped pretty hard. The game store has started up a league, and the first two weeks of play (1000 points, equal to a fairly small force) saw me go 0-2-2.
Today I played a larger, 1500 point game against a force of Dark Elves. The other player had warned me in advance that he was bringing two War Hydras, whose regeneration, toughness, and big pointy teeth are normally enough to wreck large units of troops. (His actual words were "bring the cheesiest list you can!" Bringing multiple Hydras in limited-points games is not considered sporting by many players.)
Thus forewarned, and absolved of worrying about accusations of cheesiness after the fact, I promptly took two cannons, an organ gun, and the Grudge Thrower, all inscribed with runes of burning (fire stops the hydras from being able to regenerate the damage). A unit of long-bearded warriors, and a second detachment with great axes, formed my battle line; the artillery was guarded by a ten-strong detachment of dwarven thunderers.
Suffice it to say that everything I had ended up performing pretty well. One of his hydras survived a cannon wound to charge the dwarven gunners, who did one wound to it with their guns as it charged, and finished it off with their belt knives as it closed. This was pretty bloody unlikely.
At the same time, his lord (mounted, wearing pretty much the best armor possible, with magic protection that got stronger the harder he was hit!) charged into the organ gun's crew. He'd already taken a couple of wounds from the thunderers who were at that moment trying not to become hydra chow, mostly through sheer luck. Under ordinary circumstances, the cannon crew would strike last, except that the powerful character would doubtless slaughter all three of them pretty darn easily. However, this particular lord was burdened with a great weapon - +2 strength, a considerable advantage when trying to hack through heavy armor, but unwieldy and forcing him to go last. (This is most unusual as well. Dwarves have terrible initiative - I tend to take great weapons along purely because they never get to go first anyway!)
Gunners swing, two hits. One hit causes a wound to the lord. Rolls a 1 for the armor save (2-6 would have saved him). Blows the ward save (which gets better with higher strength, except a dwarven gunner is not a high-strength unit!) Dies, without doing anything at all, except making me cackle like a madman.
The battle quickly became a rout. The other war hydra takes two flaming cannonballs to the face, the catapult lands a shot directly in the middle of his block of spearmen and kills nine, and in the ensuing charge, his attempts to pierce my dwarven thane's armor failed as well. Total survivors, two fleeing dark elves in their giant-lizard-drawn chariot as they fled.
And all that with my runelord, with fully a sixth of the points of my army invested in him, twiddling his thumbs the entire time. (He's a potent anti-magic character, but... the dark elves didn't bring a wizard along in the first place. D'oh.)
I really need to bring the camera along for these to snap some pictures, though today it's just as well we didn't... both our armies were unpainted and didn't look all that nice. Ah well, something to do when my orks are done (which should happen in approximately ten years at this rate, heh.)
Today I played a larger, 1500 point game against a force of Dark Elves. The other player had warned me in advance that he was bringing two War Hydras, whose regeneration, toughness, and big pointy teeth are normally enough to wreck large units of troops. (His actual words were "bring the cheesiest list you can!" Bringing multiple Hydras in limited-points games is not considered sporting by many players.)
Thus forewarned, and absolved of worrying about accusations of cheesiness after the fact, I promptly took two cannons, an organ gun, and the Grudge Thrower, all inscribed with runes of burning (fire stops the hydras from being able to regenerate the damage). A unit of long-bearded warriors, and a second detachment with great axes, formed my battle line; the artillery was guarded by a ten-strong detachment of dwarven thunderers.
Suffice it to say that everything I had ended up performing pretty well. One of his hydras survived a cannon wound to charge the dwarven gunners, who did one wound to it with their guns as it charged, and finished it off with their belt knives as it closed. This was pretty bloody unlikely.
At the same time, his lord (mounted, wearing pretty much the best armor possible, with magic protection that got stronger the harder he was hit!) charged into the organ gun's crew. He'd already taken a couple of wounds from the thunderers who were at that moment trying not to become hydra chow, mostly through sheer luck. Under ordinary circumstances, the cannon crew would strike last, except that the powerful character would doubtless slaughter all three of them pretty darn easily. However, this particular lord was burdened with a great weapon - +2 strength, a considerable advantage when trying to hack through heavy armor, but unwieldy and forcing him to go last. (This is most unusual as well. Dwarves have terrible initiative - I tend to take great weapons along purely because they never get to go first anyway!)
Gunners swing, two hits. One hit causes a wound to the lord. Rolls a 1 for the armor save (2-6 would have saved him). Blows the ward save (which gets better with higher strength, except a dwarven gunner is not a high-strength unit!) Dies, without doing anything at all, except making me cackle like a madman.
The battle quickly became a rout. The other war hydra takes two flaming cannonballs to the face, the catapult lands a shot directly in the middle of his block of spearmen and kills nine, and in the ensuing charge, his attempts to pierce my dwarven thane's armor failed as well. Total survivors, two fleeing dark elves in their giant-lizard-drawn chariot as they fled.
And all that with my runelord, with fully a sixth of the points of my army invested in him, twiddling his thumbs the entire time. (He's a potent anti-magic character, but... the dark elves didn't bring a wizard along in the first place. D'oh.)
I really need to bring the camera along for these to snap some pictures, though today it's just as well we didn't... both our armies were unpainted and didn't look all that nice. Ah well, something to do when my orks are done (which should happen in approximately ten years at this rate, heh.)
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March 20, 2011
Still painting red
Haven't been posting on the topic much, because let's face it, it's only marginally more interesting than watching paint dry. Five of them with a nice smooth coat of red, one to go.
The earthquake has, incidentally to its tens of thousands of casualties, also done for all the anime I was watching this season. Ah well, it'll come around at some point. Got plenty in the backlog, for that matter.
The earthquake has, incidentally to its tens of thousands of casualties, also done for all the anime I was watching this season. Ah well, it'll come around at some point. Got plenty in the backlog, for that matter.
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March 04, 2011
Hyperdimension Neptunia
Definitely not a great game. But a fun one, mostly for the sense of humor.
Basic premise is pretty simple. The main characters are anthropomorphized game consoles (with the protagonist being Neptune, named after Sega's codename for the never-developed Dreamcast successor.) The heroes spend a lot of time running from dungeon to dungeon on various fetch quests, interspersed with 2D character dialogue and the occasional blog post.
The appeal is the video game humor - some of the "encounters" are just "ha ha, that person is making a Street Fighter joke" or "ha ha, NISA's really flat". (The various companies who worked on the game were all written in as supporting characters - Compa's adorable-ditz act goes well with IF's tsukkomi and Neptune's hyper dialogue streams.)
The actual game isn't terribly great, if I'm going to be honest. The dungeons are pretty small, the healing system is bizarre and baroque (and awful inconvenient at the beginning of the game - if a character is at 1 HP and has no skills that heal them except when they take damage, you will have a rough time finishing the dungeon.) There's a complicated combo system where you can set up 256 different combo attacks per character, but honestly you're going to stick with a fairly small number of them, and you'll generally be doing the same moves over and over for a while. The difficulty ranges from "Neptune killed every enemy in the dungeon in one hit" to "the boss one-shotted Compa, who is my only person with a revive ability... again", and it's hard to tell when you're pushing your luck on a given dungeon until the game smacks you.
It works because the game's pretty cute, generous with the fan service (more like, takes every opportunity to bounce Green Heart or Black Heart's assets), and the dungeons are short - you can play one in fifteen or twenty minutes without rushing too much. It's not a tremendously long game either - I'm already two-thirds of the way through it and I just bought it Thursday.
Definitely only for people with a good bit of game nostalgia, though. Most of the humor is bounced off that, and if it falls flat for you, the rest of the game won't carry it.
NISA shipped it with the Japanese track included, though the text is matching the dub. It's interesting to notice some of the dialogue changes they made... sentences missing, sentences added, including quite a few game references that just weren't in the original at all. Could have been terrible, but it ended up fitting the tone, so eh, why complain.
Huge like Xbox, indeed!
Basic premise is pretty simple. The main characters are anthropomorphized game consoles (with the protagonist being Neptune, named after Sega's codename for the never-developed Dreamcast successor.) The heroes spend a lot of time running from dungeon to dungeon on various fetch quests, interspersed with 2D character dialogue and the occasional blog post.
The appeal is the video game humor - some of the "encounters" are just "ha ha, that person is making a Street Fighter joke" or "ha ha, NISA's really flat". (The various companies who worked on the game were all written in as supporting characters - Compa's adorable-ditz act goes well with IF's tsukkomi and Neptune's hyper dialogue streams.)
The actual game isn't terribly great, if I'm going to be honest. The dungeons are pretty small, the healing system is bizarre and baroque (and awful inconvenient at the beginning of the game - if a character is at 1 HP and has no skills that heal them except when they take damage, you will have a rough time finishing the dungeon.) There's a complicated combo system where you can set up 256 different combo attacks per character, but honestly you're going to stick with a fairly small number of them, and you'll generally be doing the same moves over and over for a while. The difficulty ranges from "Neptune killed every enemy in the dungeon in one hit" to "the boss one-shotted Compa, who is my only person with a revive ability... again", and it's hard to tell when you're pushing your luck on a given dungeon until the game smacks you.
It works because the game's pretty cute, generous with the fan service (more like, takes every opportunity to bounce Green Heart or Black Heart's assets), and the dungeons are short - you can play one in fifteen or twenty minutes without rushing too much. It's not a tremendously long game either - I'm already two-thirds of the way through it and I just bought it Thursday.
Definitely only for people with a good bit of game nostalgia, though. Most of the humor is bounced off that, and if it falls flat for you, the rest of the game won't carry it.
NISA shipped it with the Japanese track included, though the text is matching the dub. It's interesting to notice some of the dialogue changes they made... sentences missing, sentences added, including quite a few game references that just weren't in the original at all. Could have been terrible, but it ended up fitting the tone, so eh, why complain.
Huge like Xbox, indeed!
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February 22, 2011
Paint it red
Still kind of ugly:
Got quite a ways to go on this guy. The pilot's mostly done, but the painted stuff around him needs a layer of wash to knock the shiny down, and the red's just a basecoat at this point. (Even still, took me over an hour to do just the red basecoat on this one, and there's five more to do!) Left to do:
-Lots of metal parts in the drive system
-The rotors, complete with spiky bits to use when attempting a rotor attack (!)
-The skids. Wasn't sure how much I could tear them up and still be believable. A veteran friend of mine assures me that skids get rusty even in the US Army, so essentially no amount of neglect and abuse is too much for an ork vehicle...
-The blood red top-coat, plus a lot of scratches, dings, and general wear on top of that
-The front-mounted rokkits
-Some transfers (probably just a couple of lightning bolts, though if those go well I might try some black-and-red dags)
-Five bloody more of them
Someone want to tell me what I was thinking when I took this up as a hobby? Even so, it's definitely better than just playing shooters all night. I mean, it's not great by any means, but it's not 'orrible, and it'll look pretty nice when it's done, and I feel like I've been at least somewhat productive...
Got quite a ways to go on this guy. The pilot's mostly done, but the painted stuff around him needs a layer of wash to knock the shiny down, and the red's just a basecoat at this point. (Even still, took me over an hour to do just the red basecoat on this one, and there's five more to do!) Left to do:
-Lots of metal parts in the drive system
-The rotors, complete with spiky bits to use when attempting a rotor attack (!)
-The skids. Wasn't sure how much I could tear them up and still be believable. A veteran friend of mine assures me that skids get rusty even in the US Army, so essentially no amount of neglect and abuse is too much for an ork vehicle...
-The blood red top-coat, plus a lot of scratches, dings, and general wear on top of that
-The front-mounted rokkits
-Some transfers (probably just a couple of lightning bolts, though if those go well I might try some black-and-red dags)
-Five bloody more of them
Someone want to tell me what I was thinking when I took this up as a hobby? Even so, it's definitely better than just playing shooters all night. I mean, it's not great by any means, but it's not 'orrible, and it'll look pretty nice when it's done, and I feel like I've been at least somewhat productive...
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February 09, 2011
Snake Eater
Yeah, I may have been playing it for a while...
My character's essentially done with the main series of content. I've unlocked the powers of the soul reaper, defeated the cool-coat denizens of the wasteland, vanquished Mister Tea and the power of the pantsless, defeated the dreaded giant interdimensional Eleven Tails (solo), crushed the evil BurgerNinja empire with the power of pizza delivery and Greass, and faced off against rival MMOs with the power of cheer squads. It is not actually possible for me to get better at killing zombie-ninjas. I've even mastered Mahjongg (as well as I need to, at any rate...) I've even got an almost-complete set of items dropped by randomly-wandering giant monsters.
So what does that leave?
-Candyween. I don't have a whole lot of luck with this and haven't collected any of the associated trading cards yet.
-BillyCon. A weekend-only event, where I've gotten pretty good at video games and shopping, but have a ways to go in cosplay and a whole raft of rave-related skills. It's a little weird for Billy (I mean, my character ate three cathedrals today, you're saying he can't go to the panel because he's too HUNGRY?), but it's an uncanny and hilarious sim of actually going to an anime con.
-Glowslinging. Um... think of the guy at a convention rave who's spinning glowsticks around on cords. Now mix that with the Matrix, except instead of Agent Smith, there's Hatsune Miku. Aheh. My character came late to that party and still has trouble beating people he finds in the ice cream line at the buffet...
-Helping people out. I've got plenty of extra resources available these days. Anyone need a Regalia or a Polar Star? Kimono of Shadows? Lemme know.
Edit: One Regalia delivered to Mappy. Enjoy your scary wall-climbing skates.
Yeah, I may have been playing it for a while...
My character's essentially done with the main series of content. I've unlocked the powers of the soul reaper, defeated the cool-coat denizens of the wasteland, vanquished Mister Tea and the power of the pantsless, defeated the dreaded giant interdimensional Eleven Tails (solo), crushed the evil BurgerNinja empire with the power of pizza delivery and Greass, and faced off against rival MMOs with the power of cheer squads. It is not actually possible for me to get better at killing zombie-ninjas. I've even mastered Mahjongg (as well as I need to, at any rate...) I've even got an almost-complete set of items dropped by randomly-wandering giant monsters.
So what does that leave?
-Candyween. I don't have a whole lot of luck with this and haven't collected any of the associated trading cards yet.
-BillyCon. A weekend-only event, where I've gotten pretty good at video games and shopping, but have a ways to go in cosplay and a whole raft of rave-related skills. It's a little weird for Billy (I mean, my character ate three cathedrals today, you're saying he can't go to the panel because he's too HUNGRY?), but it's an uncanny and hilarious sim of actually going to an anime con.
-Glowslinging. Um... think of the guy at a convention rave who's spinning glowsticks around on cords. Now mix that with the Matrix, except instead of Agent Smith, there's Hatsune Miku. Aheh. My character came late to that party and still has trouble beating people he finds in the ice cream line at the buffet...
-Helping people out. I've got plenty of extra resources available these days. Anyone need a Regalia or a Polar Star? Kimono of Shadows? Lemme know.
Edit: One Regalia delivered to Mappy. Enjoy your scary wall-climbing skates.
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February 05, 2011
Thawed out
Spent the last few days freezing my patootie off - it rained, then sleeted, then snowed on Monday night and didn't warm back up above freezing until today. I've been working from home most of the week, with the exception of Wednesday, when I managed to get to work. The power to the apartment had gone off with the rolling blackouts, and then failed to come back on. I checked back around 6 PM, and left some beer on the counter when I found the power was still off. When I got home around 11 PM, the lights had come back on, and the apartment air had warmed up, but the beer was ice cold. (So was the computer - one of the fans made a good amount of noise until it got up to normal temperatures.)
Wandered down to the game shop today, and got a chance to play a short game against a mechanized Space Wolves army (generally considered to be tough as nails, since they can take lots of missile launchers cheaply, backed up by psychic Rune Priests all over the place, and with everything else parked in tank transports or as armored dreadnoughts.) We didn't get to play out the entire game before the store closed, but my orks performed surprisingly well, crossing no-man's-land with only a couple dozen casualties. My freshly-painted lootas were shot completely off the board in the opening salvo, and the deffkoptas I'm painting now hadn't come in on the flank, so I can't say much for either of them.
But my battlewagon, sporting a huge spiked steamroller, surged up the middle with a unit of killa kans on the flank, and they absorbed a ridiculous and frankly unlikely amount of anti-tank fire from lascannons, plasma guns, and krak missiles, not doing anything more than scorching the paint jobs I haven't put on them yet. Comment from the Wolves' player was "I was screwed next turn", though honestly he still had a pretty good shot - the Wolves are nasty in close combat and he still had enough troops and Razorbacks to put up a serious fight.
The same player had managed to eke out a very close tie against an army of Chaos Marines just before, though mostly by luck - his dreadnought commander Bjorn was hanging on by the skin of his... armored carapace?... against a huge unit of Nurgle marines and would doubtless have died in another turn.
I'll get some photos of the koptas up as soon as I get their crew finished - right now they're maybe halfway done, with another coat coming on their greatcoat and skin, and the rest of the pants and boots left to tackle. Not looking half bad so far, though.
Wandered down to the game shop today, and got a chance to play a short game against a mechanized Space Wolves army (generally considered to be tough as nails, since they can take lots of missile launchers cheaply, backed up by psychic Rune Priests all over the place, and with everything else parked in tank transports or as armored dreadnoughts.) We didn't get to play out the entire game before the store closed, but my orks performed surprisingly well, crossing no-man's-land with only a couple dozen casualties. My freshly-painted lootas were shot completely off the board in the opening salvo, and the deffkoptas I'm painting now hadn't come in on the flank, so I can't say much for either of them.
But my battlewagon, sporting a huge spiked steamroller, surged up the middle with a unit of killa kans on the flank, and they absorbed a ridiculous and frankly unlikely amount of anti-tank fire from lascannons, plasma guns, and krak missiles, not doing anything more than scorching the paint jobs I haven't put on them yet. Comment from the Wolves' player was "I was screwed next turn", though honestly he still had a pretty good shot - the Wolves are nasty in close combat and he still had enough troops and Razorbacks to put up a serious fight.
The same player had managed to eke out a very close tie against an army of Chaos Marines just before, though mostly by luck - his dreadnought commander Bjorn was hanging on by the skin of his... armored carapace?... against a huge unit of Nurgle marines and would doubtless have died in another turn.
I'll get some photos of the koptas up as soon as I get their crew finished - right now they're maybe halfway done, with another coat coming on their greatcoat and skin, and the rest of the pants and boots left to tackle. Not looking half bad so far, though.
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February 01, 2011
More orks, by request
Some better shots of the lootas...
Still got a long way to go. Can't say that I'm upset with how that batch turned out, in the end.
Still got a long way to go. Can't say that I'm upset with how that batch turned out, in the end.
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January 26, 2011
Dat ain't no Stompa
Picked up the Vivio model from Hobby Link Junction, where it was on sale for 60% off; didn't think it was worth what they originally wanted for it, but it was worth what I ended up payin'. Also got a Mio, who will probably figure in the next one of these pics I finish.
The purple-based lootas on the left... man, I've been working on those guys for months! The detail on the models is crazy, and honestly I didn't really do them justice for close-up shots. But I picked up a few tips at the friendly local gaming store and I'm confident that the next few ought to come along faster and much nicer. I'm getting a little better at it and that's helping my enthusiasm level when it comes to working on more models.
I -am- glad that I did them relatively early, though, because lootas are one of the better ork units, and these boys will be seeing action pretty much every time I play. And I can always go back and add some extra highlights if, some time in the far future, I run out of models to work on.
Next up: deffkoptas! (Mostly because a friend of mine finds the idea of one-ork helicopters bashed together out of junk to be hilarious, but I don't mind - they ought to be fun to paint.)
Watched the first three eps of Madoka Magica, and it deserves its own post. Shinbo, you're a bastard, but you're a magnificent bastard; let's see if you can pull this one off.
Picked up the Vivio model from Hobby Link Junction, where it was on sale for 60% off; didn't think it was worth what they originally wanted for it, but it was worth what I ended up payin'. Also got a Mio, who will probably figure in the next one of these pics I finish.
The purple-based lootas on the left... man, I've been working on those guys for months! The detail on the models is crazy, and honestly I didn't really do them justice for close-up shots. But I picked up a few tips at the friendly local gaming store and I'm confident that the next few ought to come along faster and much nicer. I'm getting a little better at it and that's helping my enthusiasm level when it comes to working on more models.
I -am- glad that I did them relatively early, though, because lootas are one of the better ork units, and these boys will be seeing action pretty much every time I play. And I can always go back and add some extra highlights if, some time in the far future, I run out of models to work on.
Next up: deffkoptas! (Mostly because a friend of mine finds the idea of one-ork helicopters bashed together out of junk to be hilarious, but I don't mind - they ought to be fun to paint.)
Watched the first three eps of Madoka Magica, and it deserves its own post. Shinbo, you're a bastard, but you're a magnificent bastard; let's see if you can pull this one off.
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