Big Week

This is a big week for us. Our second child is going to coming at the end of the week so I will be pretty busy with that next week. I have a few posts from the current series scheduled but expect to be off the web for a while as we get back into the groove of having a baby in the house (no more Lego Stars Wars kits on the floor).

Lego Star Wars A-Wings

If you are like me you grew up watching the Star Wars movies and they put a hold in you that never really lets go. I then played the classic X-wing series of games on the PC which were great fun with a multitude of ships in the star wars universe both on the Rebel and Imperial sides. My favorite ship was always the A-Wing. Fast and Agile, it could outfly any other ship. So when I started getting Lego Star Wars stuff the first thing I wanted was an A-Wing.



My fleet now has two A-wings. Red and Green so Christmas as we used to say about our chilis in New Mexico.



Models look fairly close to the studio model for Lego versions. Only issues would be that the stabilizer wings are a little thick and not angled.

The Green A-wing is from the Home One Mon Calamari Cruiser set. It has the cursed flick fire missiles mounted where the laser cannons are and a removable engine.

One thing I do not like about this ship is that it has a death star trench on the computer screen. No A-Wings at the Battle of Yavin and at the Battle of Endor they did not attack down the trench.

Here we see the red awing which was sold with a little maintenance/ladder sled. It has a removable container for supplies in the back. I think the cannons are not as nice as the green a-wing but it does have a star destroyer bridge in the targeting computer.

Pilots are the same except for the visor colors.

Lego has an older A-wing design but I think these are closer to studio model.

Halo ODST

I finally picked up a copy of Halo ODST a month or two ago and I finished it a couple of days ago. It is a fine game for me at the 20 dollar price point. I have already played through all of Reach and expected a slightly different game since I was not a Spartan but the game play was pretty similar. The game does have you switch from one member of a team to another as you play through the story in a nonlinear way but it is usually just you verses a ton of enemies just like in other Halo games. I would have like a little more of the action to be with other grunts even if it is scripted stuff on the side or more rifleman covering you. They throw in some vehicle stuff like all the Halo games. A good part of the game happens at night but you have a HUD system which must be come type of radar which picks up edges for you and show you visible enemies.

I have noticed that what I look for in a game has changed in recent years now that I have much less free time with 1 daughter turning 5 and a boy on the way next week. I used to like some of the tense and tactical shooters like Brothers in Arms and Rainbow Six but now I need a little more mindless fare so that I do not get stressed playing in those few hours I get every couple of weeks. I know that an update of the original Halo is coming and I will see how much they want for it before I get it. If they are expecting 60 dollars they will not get it from me. I have not spent that much on a game in years. I am so behind the times that I am just now trying Gears 2 only a few months before the sequel and might get CoD MW 2 sometime later this year.

Blood Bowl: Ogre Team Box

Another birthday present this year was a Games Workshop Blood Bowl Ogre team. This box has 4 ogre blockers and 1 ogre thrower but it should be noted the team rules just does not have any positions for the ogres. A full team roster is 6 ogres and 10 snotlings so this set does not really get you a playable team which is unfortunate. I have like 6 snotlings from second edition but these are not easy to come by to get another 4 so I am looking at other options.

Here are the box contents. Enough parts for 5 ogres and a goblin. Many duplicate parts so I will keep the close ups limited to the unique parts.

I got 5 different heads in my box.

There appears to be 3 different torso designs so I got doubles of the 2 of them on the right.


Four different leg positions.


Four different arm sets. Including one holding a ball.

Here are the extras. One arm holding a goblin with the ball about to be thrown, a goblin with the ball who I generally think is Grotty from the star player pair Brick Far'th & Grotty, plus spikey shoulder pads for all the ogres.



Here is a thrower assembled from an early blister purchase.

Last Trip to Borders

We made a last trip to our nice local Borders before they move into liquidation later this week or next. It was one of the last stores they opened I believe and was a large concept store with sections for all types of media and various digital areas. We might check out the clearance sales but until they get to at least 30% off you can generally do better online anyway. We liked our Borders and would go every couple of weeks to look at books and buy a book or two (with a coupon and our membership). I actually like to buy Lego stuff there until they stopped the coupons from working on them. We are sad to see them go as it was always a good place for our family to spend a little quiet time.

As a last purchase I got the Penny Arcade "Be Good, Little Puppy." which is a compilation of cartoons that I could get online for free but my wife really does not like me taking the electronic devices into the room where I get my quiet reading time if you get my meaning. It has a Witchalok character class for D&D 4e in it up to third level powers but I have to say it does not look very balanced. Apparently someone messed up the page numbering since anytime the text refers to page it is off by 2 from the correct one.

Another Local Hobby Store Disappearing

The Ann Arbor area is losing another hobby store with the announcement that Riders Hobbies is closing down in the next few weeks. We lost Labyrinth Comics and Games last year, a GW store and Planeswalker Magic Bag the year before. Each one for its own reason but still quite a toll.

I have been and on an off shopper at Riders. For a while I would shop there often since they had an accessible location with parking but I had some problems with the attitude of one of the RC/Train hobby staff in helping me find a special order from GW that the store had called to tell me had arrived. He solution was to come back another time when the gaming people where in but as it is like a 15 miles from my house I did not really like this option.

I moved most of my purchasing over to Ryan at the Labyrinth since I got along well with the crew their but even after their closure I did not go back to buy much at Riders since my hobby money was not going for current GW products anymore and more OOP stuff and Lego Star Wars stuff to play with my daughter. I would still go in to look around. I went in a few weeks ago and even mentioned to my wife that the stock level looked pretty low. They used to have a GW aisle where the boxes where filed likes books but now less stock was filling up 2 aisles with the boxes set to up to show the front with spaces between them.

I used to go to another Rider's location for RPG and Magic stuff when I was a teenager but it closed many years ago. I am sorry to see another hobby store go leaving only one nearby to me but in an annoying location downtown for people who live on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. Add in the loss of Borders where I have been buying most of my gaming and black library books to liquidation officially announced today, just not a good day for nerd related shopping.

Epic Eldar Warhost Box

Here is the contents of the current Games Workshop Epic Armageddon Eldar Warhost. You get 2 copies of the same sprue which they have to cut in half to get it into the small box.

First half frame shows 10 Rangers, 6 jetbikes, 2 Auturchs, 5 Wraithguards, 5 swooping hawks, 5 striking scorpions, 5 dark reapers, and 1 farseer.

Second Half frame: 2 Warlocks, 5 warp spiders, 35 guardians, and 5 howling banshees.

Assuming 5 models per base (which is not a requirement), you get 2 farseer stands (1 farseer and 2 warlocks), 14 guardian stands, 4 Ranger stands, 2 stands of 5 different aspect warriors, 6 stands of 2 jet bikes each and 2 stands of wraithguard. How you build up the force from these will depend on the list you are using since some use different units as warhosts and troupes.

Close up showing Wraithguards, Auturch, Ranger, and Jetbike.


Here we have Farseer, Dark Reaper, Ranger, Scorpians, and Swooping Hawks.


Close up of the howling banshee section of the sprue.

Warlocks, Warp Spiders, and Guardians.

You will not that this box does not come with any avengers or dragons. I am thinking about using my guardians from the Eldar legion as guardians and the guardians in this box as the avengers and dragons based on paint job to tell the difference. Currently GW makes those minis in metal and want 20 dollars for a total of 8 stands compared to the 30 stands here for 20 in plastic. These newer sprue are also missing many other things found on the Epic 40K versions like heavy weapons, vypers, harlies.

Disaster

I had a model disaster today. I was moving some of my gaming stuff stored in my garage to get better access to some of it. I left it a little to poorly balanced and both my blood bowl and epic storage containers fell over on their sides from a few feet of height. It add insult to injury they fell into my wife's car path and she did not see them until she hit the blood bowl one with here car. Luckily she was not going fast and did not crush the container. I had to rush off to work so I did not get a chance other than reposition the containers and put the individual boxes back in the tub.

I will have to inspect the contents tonight. Hopefully nothing worse than some disorganized models or models with limbs popped off.

Blood Bowl: Amazon Team

As part of my birthday present this year, I filled in some holes in my blood bowl teams. Here we have a Games Workshop Amazon Team.


The box contents includes 2 catchers, 2 blitzers, 1 thrower, and 7 linewomen.

Close up on the thrower. Only one model even though the team can have 2 but this is pretty standard in the blood bowl line.


Two copies of the same catcher model.

Two different blitzers.

Four different linewomen models for the seven in the box. Do you see the problem?

This is the problem. One of the linewomen models has the same pose and very similar appearence to one of the blitzer models. This makes these player types very hard to tell apart on the pitch. I have seen people paint their uniforms different colors to make them appear different.

Epic Eldar Legion

Here we have some classic eldar box set for the Space Marine game and Epic Battles. This is a pretty old box of Epic stuff dating back to the late 80's so over 20 years old now.


Here we have some painting schemes like Eldritch Raiders, Sunblitz Brotherhood, Black Suns, and Void Watchers. The box came with 20 tanks and 200 warriors. None of these names seem to match up with any Eldar fluff still used as far as I have heard.


As you can see this models are all exactly the same as was the style in this first release of Epic scale models. Different units types were generally determined by base color. These guys would be guardians in the current game.


Here is the Epic Eldar Falcon Grav Tank. I might actually use these as wave serpents if I was building an eldar force since they look like the current epic models at little.