Monday, June 30, 2014

Lego Simpson Minifigures



Lego has recently done a licensing deal with the Simpsons.  Earlier this year they released a Simpsons House and the Simpsons did a Lego themed episode.  Now they have made the most recent launch of the Lego Collectable Minifigure line a Simpsons release after the last release was a Lego Movie based one.  I picked up 13 of the 16 as a former big time Simpson fan.  We have not watch the show that much recently mainly due to it not quite being little kid friendly and the fact that it is on just as we are putting the kids to bed.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Blood Bowl 2nd Edition Treeman


Very excited to have picked this guy up on ebay from the UK.  Just arrived yesterday to fill in a hole in my Blood Bowl collection as I had no second edition treemen.  It was not cheap but not really more expansive than any GW finecast blister now for a model this size.  Given this model is probably 20-25 years old (copyright data stamp 89) not to bad of condition either.  Never painted as far as I can tell but was formerly glued together.  The 2nd edition treeman models are also on the rarer side as it is not like you can go to ebay at any random time and find them for sale at a reasonable buy now price.  Another one I saw recently was in a 2nd ed halfling team that listed at like 250 dollars.  I do not have that team and an a collector but no I will pass.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Cell Phones and Aereo: US Supreme Court

Now totally off topic today, but the US Supreme Court released two nerd related decisions yesterday that both seemed pretty sensible.  Modern Cell Phones are essentially computers now so cops need a warrant for searches of them outside extenuating circumstances like a kidnapping where someones life is currently endangered.  Now I do not personally have a smart phone so anyone searching my phone will find a couple of random bad pictures of my kids and the phone number of the local pizza place but it is still good to see some common sense applied here.  Even a 9-0 decision.  Whose says liberals and conservatives cannot get along.

The second case is more interesting involves a TV Recording and playing over the internet.  US noncommercial entities are legally allowed to record broadcasts they receive and watch them later or save them, but a company cannot record a TV show and then send out copies (physically or over the internet). One enterprising company decided that they would try to act as the middle ground and came up with a scheme involving tons of tiny antennas that users control to record shows off the air and then store in individual folders.  The users "rent" the set ups to record over the air broadcasts in various cities and stream them over the internet.  Now that setup seems pretty inefficient with tons of things doing exactly the same thing and lots of identical files being saved, but they structured it that way to essentially take the home user case law to the ridiculous extreme.

Such shenanigans worked well with the lower courts as they were bound by precedents, but the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision was not buying it.  They used a if it walks like and talks like a duck argument to state that they believed that this activity is not essentially different from the activity that congress specifically regulated when it updated the copyright act in the 1970's to cover community antenna collecting over the air broadcasts and transmitting them by cable to peoples homes.  Having the user tune the antenna was seen as no different than having them turn the knob on the tv back in the 70s.  Now the 3 conservative justices who dissented did not imply that they thought the scheme was legal.  They just did not agree with the method of the decision specifically in that it found that the company was actually breaking copyright law directly as opposed to just knowingly, willfully, and enabling its customers to break copyright law themselves (ie napster).   They had a funny analogy about this being a copy shop that hands out local library cards but seems to me it is more like a copy shop that has a robot with a library card who checks it out, copies it, and then mails it to you.

Overall the decision is pretty reasonable, but the text does have some worrying parts involving what is a performance of a piece of copyrighted works that will probably get cloud based streaming sources sued in short order but those causes will not be clear cut as the justices tried to note that these ruling apply to collection of circumstances and not to all cloud based services in general.  The details of the case very closely match the formulation for the community antennas that congress crafted the section of the law to make its desires specific to the supreme court in the 70's.  The company could very easily sign agreements with the broadcasters to cover its service (their even might be statutory rates available so consent might not be required) but they did not want to pay.  There is a fine line between renting equipment and providing a service when the equipment in question never really leaves the possession and control of the owner.

Ofcourse no one reading this blog will probably be interested in this stuff,  I am not sure why I am giving I am not really a techie or a lawyer.

Update:  Fox has already added claims from the decision to an ongoing suit with Dish over its hopper streaming calling it a public performance to which Dish counters that the decision does not apply to them since they are a licensed retransmitter who pays fees to fox to provide the content to the customers unlike Aereo.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

X-Wing Miniatures: Y-Wing


Oh the venerable Y-Wing, work horse of the rebel alliance in the days before the battle of Yavin.  Be it attacking large ships or raiding commerce, the Y-Wing was the go to ship where slow and steady was what you wanted.  I have only recently picked up one for the X-Wing Miniatures game as I had not seen any of the shelves in a while.  Looks like FFG has caught up with demand for the older ships now as I saw everything from starter box to a Rebel Transport at a local Barnes and Noble about 2 weeks ago.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Lego Star Wars Imperial Shuttle Polybag


Just a couple of quick shots of the Imperial Shuttle polubag that I got a Meijers after the easter.  The scale is actually pretty close to the FFG version but the cost is way better at ~ 4.50 but ofcourse the detail level is pretty weak.


Wings fold out.


Not bad on the swoosh for little ones.   The wings do not have the characteristic bend but a 3 year old can fly it around provided he does not try to eat the pieces.

Monday, June 23, 2014

X-Wing Miniatures: Tantive IV Rules


So Today I am going to talk about the rules for the new Tantive IV expansion for the X-Wing Miniature games.  Now I had not really followed all the little releases from FFG about the Huge ships so I will probably be covering stuff that shows up there but here are my thoughts so far.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Argh!!!!!

If you had asked me before the world cup, I would have told you a tie with Portugal was fine.  If you had asked me after Portugal went up 1-0 in 5 minute, I would have told you a tie was fine.  But if you asked me with the US up in the 94th minute,  I would have told you a tie feels like a loss.  It did look like the whole middle of the game Portugal took off not taking the US very seriously.

US controls their own destiny going into the last match to not just advance but win their group which I probably would not have believed was possible before the start of the world cup.  I am sure Germany would not be interest in a gentleman's agreement for a 0-0 tie.

Blog Comment Censorship and Proper Discloures



So I was reading a post a a major blog yesterday.  Probably the number 1 for the 40K community right now.  The post was about storage cases and I wondered if the author bought the cases or received them for free so I asked if he bought them or not.  In the states, the Federal Trade Commission require that bloggers reveal in their posts if they are sponsored with monetary or goods payment.  Now it is no big deal to disclose this all you need to do is write a generic sentence at the end in the same fonts size and italics to differentiate it that says: Products(finicial compenstation) for this review where giving to X blog by the manufacturer, etc.   Literally like 5 seconds of boiler plate stuff that can be copied from other posts.

I went back to see what the response was and my comment was deleted.  So I asked it again as a reply to someone else who noted that this seemed like a sponsored but helpful post.  Go back to check again and I find that the post has its comments section now turned off.  Now I doubt that the site owner polices the comments section himself but shutting down the comments section over people wondering if something is a sponsored posts seems a bit much.  I was not questioning the authors integrity just mainly pointing out his legal responsibility for disclosing these types of posts.  Sending someone something free to review is very standard practice in blogging and is often just what is required for people to review new stuff that they cannot often buy yet anyway.  Now cash payments are somewhat less common but it still fine.  You can write an ad for a product you like to let the community know about it and that site does have costs like lawyers to fight takedown notices from GW.  You just need to tell us.  It is not just the right thing to do, it is also the law.

Now my interest has been drawn.  The site talks about a whole lot of different stuff.  How much of it is just to inform his audience and how much might relate to back room stuff.  Wargaming is a pretty small community and a blogger getting 1M hits per month is a pretty useful tool.

Another site that has issues with disclosures is Spikey Bits since it is a blog run by a store.  They need to probably have something on every post and something special on posts related to companies that the store does business with and might recieve certain perks for the blog based promotion.

Friday, June 20, 2014

X-Wing Miniatures: Tantive IV Model


As I noted previously, I got the Tantive IV expansion for the X-Wing Miniatures game for Father's Day from my kids (wife).  There is a lot in this set but that is what you should expect for an 89.99 game expansion.  That cost makes it about the same as a GW Wraithknight or Nid Flying Monsterous creatures.  So lets see what your hard earned money buys you.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Your Baby Corvette is so Cute


While I had the X-Wing Miniatures Tantive IV out for some pictures, I decided to get its picture next to my Lego version.   The Lego version is 95% of the proper scale from the FFG star fighter models while their model is 58% of the star fighter scale.  These two next to each other made me think about how my kids assign things as baby and mommies/daddies when they have to similar things in different sizes.  My son has two Luigi's from the Cars movies.  One is about matchbox scale while the other one is bigger such that it wheels line up with wooden track sizes.  Big one is the daddy and the little one is the baby.  So we get the same thing here.

For practical reasons the log based size scale makes sense but it would be cool to see someone play with a scale star destroyer (6 m long).

Old Timer's Rose Tinted Glasses?



So I was involved in a discussion on warseer about the behavior of Games Workshop and someone was claiming that much of the newer additions to the fluff in 40K has been pretty poor.  Everyone seemed to agree that the older stuff was better done but I wondered if we might just have skewed perspectives on it.  Many of us veterans were initially brought into the gaming circles when we were young.  A Teen or maybe a preteen if you had older siblings or parents into it.  Now I can see two reasons how this would affect our judgement on these issue.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Tantive IV Docking at Sons of Twilight






My wonderful wife and kids got me the X-Wing Miniatures Game Tantive IV for Father's Day.  Since we were across town most of the day going to the Zoo and visiting my mom, I did not get very long to examine it or get a picture so I used my old one of my Lego version.  The FFG one is not as long and only about half as wide.

When we got home the Game of Thrones season finale was on so I could only quickly go through the rules last night, lots of new stuff in there.  While bare minimum is 90 points I doubt you will see many with less than 30-40 points of upgrades.  Seems to me that the bane of the Corvettes would be a tie fighter swarm of course.  More to come later in the week as I parse out all the details and get the photos taken.

The new ranges and weapons gives me a good excuse to dig out my +-Wing shooting probability calculator to see what is effective against various targets.

Friday, June 13, 2014

X-Wing Intro Games


Last week I showed a friend that I had not seen in a while X-Wing.  He is a serious Blood Bowl player and while he does have more than a few Blood Bowl teams, he actually gets out and plays so he is not a hoarder of unused and unpainted minis like me.  I followed advice I had seen on MetalBikini and set up 4 different 50 point lists.  They were Chewie flying the falcon with Luke as crew, Boba in Slave I with a Recon Specialist, Stealth Generator, and Homing Missile, 4 Tie Fighters (2 Academy and 2 Obsidian), and a Rookie X-Wing with Astromech with Dutch with a torpedo and Astromech.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Impact Resin Teams Kickstarter Final 24 Hours



Impact! Miniatures has entered the final 24 hours of their resin team conversion Kickstarter.  They now have over 20 teams you can choose to get as part of the process.  They have not gotten to the stretch goal where they combine the two new elf star player sets which I was hoping for as it would have made it economical to get a single copy of one of the deluxe teams then add a 10 dollar upgrade to be able to field both.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Looking for D&D Chainmail Model Statistics


So summer is approaching and my first born is starting to get old enough for some training in the ways of the nerd.  I have been looking at my model collection and think I might start her with a little X-Wing and some Dungeons and Dragons Chainmail action.  Now X-Wing is star wars and she has seen and enjoyed the movies (especially the presence of a Princess) and Chainmail actually has a fair number of female sculpts that are presented in reasonable (not totally sexist) ways.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Great Reminder Why I Do Not Play CCGs


I used to play Magic back in the day,  I started playing during Unlimited when Arabian Nights boosters will still available and followed through revised and started to stop buying after The Dark with only a little of Ice Age.  One of the turn offs during that time was the Legends expansion which seemed like it was so underprinted that all the cards where bought up by the time we knew they were out.  You could get boosters at like 4-5 times list price but being a high school student with my only job being minding the school computer lab after hours a couple of nights a week did not allow me to buy lunch from places not the school lunch room and 15 dollar boosters.  My older brother did pick a up couple at this price as he had a job with more hours but it left a sour taste in our mouths.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Impact! Miniatures Updates the Dark Elves in Kickstarter



Impact! Miniatures has updated the Dark Elf team in their Kickstarter.  They added a new Witch elf and shifted the previous witch elf  into the star player group.  They also added the assassin Star player and the undead star player to the Dark elves which makes the two sets of star players have 2 shared players and 3 distinct players.



Originally I was thinking that I would get one elf team along with a small pack of specialist for the other team and then the star players to get a team usable for either but with the new star players I would need second set which would move the cost of that up higher, but Impact! has said that if they can get pledges up to 41,300 (so about another 10K in a week) then they will combine the Elf stars into one set.  So help them do that and take a look at the teams.  

They have a special of 5 teams for 170 dollars which generally include like 22+ players with big guys.  So 34 dollars each.  A 12 man GW team was last retailing at 50 and generally cost another 45 for a big guy and 4 player booster. I think the Croc type team looks very nice and the old style chaos players would go well with my 2nd Ed Chaos Pact team.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Lego Star Wars: Clone Wars Z-95 Headhunter


Today we are looking at the Lego Star Wars Z-95 Headhunter from the Clone Wars line.  You get the ship and 3 minifigures.  The ships is pretty big as you can see from the pictures but it is also very flat.