10 Years of Marriage Today

10 years ago today I got married and still did not have to give of my childish toys. We are going to the beach with the little one to celebrate and got a new fancy french door fridge with 2 ice makers as our gift.

Love You to Katie.

Brad

Castle Ravenloft vs Isle of Blood

So the new WHFB box is coming out. I got the last one and both army books plus some extra dwarf minis but never played it once. I really have no interest in picking up fantasy but I have always loved Skaven back from 2nd ed Blood Bowl and the minis look pretty nice. The cost is sort of high and I am disappointed to hear that there might be even less information about the units you get than in the Skull Pass book and no story driven learning missions. Sort of like how Black Reach removed all the unit special rules and lacked the actual playable teaching missions.

Or we have the Castle Ravenloft Board game coming out. It is list priced cheaper but once you figure in the easy discount on GW stuff the difference is not that high. The playing pieces will be no where close to the GW standard but it is actually a complete game. I have a much better chance of playing it as it would be a good game to take to board game day since it plays fast and supports 5 players unlike say space hulk which is only 2.

There is also the Dark Sun Campaign setting coming out. No reason to believe I will actually play it but since that was the setting where I was involved in some of the longest and most memorable campaigns and played it since the beginning and still have many of the books(you can see them stored in the lower left) I am going to get that. If only for bathroom reading material. I picked up the 4e player handbook 1-2 pack a little while ago to get myself a little understanding of the current rules to be ready.

Epic: 2 Classic Space Marine Razorbacks

In the current Epic space marine lists, Razorbacks are the bomb for additions to mechanized formations. Normally as part of the cost for a tactical formation of 6 stands of infantry you get 3 rhinos as transports. You can then add a razorback to it for like 1/12th the cost of the formation. Since it only has capacity for 1 infantry stand you do not lose a rhino so you added a little more punch and extra transport capacity for very low cost. You can add another but then you get 1 less rhino so this is not often done.

These old razorbacks are on classic rhino chasis with a lot of extra components on them. Stowage and extra armor.

Here is a close up that shows the classic external gunner with his lascannon-plasmagun turret.

The previous owner of these, lost one of the turrets so I used that one for a more stylish Hunter. Extra armor to help protect it from all that additional fire it will take. Ofcourse no in game affect. It worked out since the plastic rhino I modified to formerly hold the Hunter turret now has a spare whirlwind turret on it which rounds out my second unit of classic whirlwinds.

Epic Air Assault

In the current edition of Epic, Space Marines are often run as an air assault army. Transports swoop in to drop off the marines directly into an engagement. Each Thunderhawk transport can carry 8 stands worth of power armored marines which could be an assault unit and a devastator unit, a tactical unit plus a dreadnought, or a terminator unit. For my classic Space Marine army I recently picked up 2 old style thunderhawks off of ebay.

These models are often called thunderbricks since they do not seem very aerodynamic. They are also quite small compared to there carrying capacity.


The models are three parts not including the flying stands. The body, the cannon, and the wing assembly. You can see how the wings join up with the body in these last two pictures.

New NAF Block Dice

I got a new set of NAF Block dice recently. If you do not know about the NAF you should take a look. They monitor the Blood Bowl international Tournament Scene. Members are ranked for each race they play based on quality of opponents. I do not have many tournament games under my belt so my ranking is bad since I stunk up the joint at the tournament I went to. When you join they send you a set of block dice which can be convenient for people who do not actually own the original game and play on customer boards.


Now I have 3 sets of block dice in the very American colors of Red, White, and Blue. Perfect combination to take to the Blood Bowl World Cup but I would never dare to handicap the US team that badly with my poor play.

Impact! Weather Dice

In a recent order from Impact! Miniatures, I got these neat weather dice. I always forgot to roll the weather in my league games. I think it is because the record sheet has spots for all the other pregame things to be recorded but skips the weather. These dice seem like the perfect solution to that problem. If I put them in the bad with the block dice I do not have to worry about forgetting all the time.

This set comes with two different dice that are rolled together to determine the weather. The first die has 5 partly cloudys which represent nice weather. The final face on the first die is a storm. When this comes up you look at the second die to determine the actual affect. There are 2 raining, 1 snowing, 2 bright sunny, and 1 heat wave on the second die.

I think this is a pretty neat product and hope to get some use out of it next time I play. The dice can also double as your weather marker by just leaving them sitting on the corner of the board.

I wonder if 40K scenarios could be improved with some weather rolls affecting sight distances and movement speeds.

GW Direct News: Ramtut and Zara back in Production

GW has placed 2 Blood Bowl Star Players back into production, Ramtut the Third and Zara the Slayer. While not as good as new models, returning them to production is nice. There are still a few of the more recent blood bowl models not currently available so hopefully they will make an appearance soon also. I am looking at you skaven with poison blade. Putting my money where my mouth is I asked Ryan down at Labyrinth Comics and Games to order me in one of each. Ofcourse now I get to wait a few weeks before they come in since I did not order them off the webstore but I am trying to buy local.

LEGO Time

My little one, ER, is now getting old enough to play with real LEGOs so while we were at my mom's this weekend for a split 4th of July/Birthday celebration we broke out the LEGO collection from when I was a kid. This is from before LEGO's went all tie in crazy so no Star Wars or other Brands just classic Castle LEGOs. About 1 copier paper box of Castle/Pirate and one of just general space and city. We had a lot of sets and they were all mixed together in the end. We tried to assemble one of the old castles from the plans but got stuck looking for some very specific parts that in the big pile are hard to find. We then did some sorting so next time we might have an easier time off it and actually get that castle built so the Princess can be rescued by the Knight in shining armor. I have a girl so a Princess must be involved current.

Epic: Mk I Predator

Here we get a look at the original epic Predator tanks. Turret mounted autocannon with lascannon sponsons. Ofcourse in Epic Armaggedon this is not an option so it will be another case of counts as use. I guess I get to choose with each army list to be Annihilator or Destructor.

They have 6 parts. Note the poor alignment of the vision slits on the chasis.

Side View. Newer kits are nicer looking I think but if you are trying to assemble a consistant force with old beakies then these are the ones to use.

GW on Witch and Daemon Hunters

So GW has in their daily blog commented about the change in rules to the Inquisition forces. Yes, they are different. The old one is still legal in general though, but it is up to event organizers to decide if only one is to be used. Huh.

Three posts in one day. That is like half my monthly output.