Meanderings Archived
10/08/06 - 11/21/06
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Meanderings Archived
10/08/06 - 11/21/06 |
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The Squid and the Whale (2005)
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Lucky Number Slevin (2005)
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My Friend Flicka
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Fungus Amongus Orkses in my house last week. Mackus and his pal Pat came over, bringing 100 little green bastards with him that gave my Space Wolves a hell of a time. It was the best and most fully painted ork army I have ever played against, a very enjoyable match albeit a little anticlimactic. The footbound orks had a long way to run to make it to their objectives on my side of the table, and after I lost one of my Grey Hunters Drop Pods from scattering off the table I couldn't capture my objective on his side of the table - and we both had all-or-nothing mission types. Lots of death dealing on both sides, but we ended up with a draw. I went and picked up the new Eldar Codex. An interesting direction for codices, really, the most glaring new features being the absence of a true generalized wargear table, the separation of unit and item descriptions from the actual points-priced army list, and no mention whatsoever on needing an opponenent's permission to use special characters. Phoenix Lords, Eldrad, even some new pirate bigballs, all the expensive historical characters are now apparently fair game. But does this crossapply to special characters in all the other codices? Abaddon? Logan Grimnar? Celestine the Living Saint? Maybe they rationalize it being Eldar-only with the idea that they're a dying race, bla bla bla, there's so few of them that ole Eldraddy is bound to show up in 3 battles out of 4. After I sell my Sisters army, I'm going to round out some old stuff I had sitting around into a new army with a couple of the new boxed sets. A unique aspect-heavy Craftworld somehow focused on wraithbone... mainly as it will be bone colored. Hawks, Spiders, Scorpions, Avengers, Dark Reapers, and maybe even some Harlequins. My AT will probably be in the form of War Walkers and Wraithlord. Topes linked me up to some cool stop-motion video. Now you watch. Sigh. Comment on this entry... |
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Rockers (1978)
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Time Flyswatter Before I expound on more current events, I need to play a little catchup with various goings on... The first picture there is from the first 2000 point battle I played against Mackus, way back on 10/25/06. He's added quite a bit of mobility to his robot horde, including several destroyers, a heavy destroyer, and best of all a Lord on foot with nightmare shroud, allowing him to bounce around the battlefield with a squad of warriors. In this battle, however, the Space Wolves were a little too hardy for the Necrons and my reserves (scouts and a drop pod with Grey Hunters) came in at just the right time to put the squeeze on em. Usually with the Wolves it's an uphill battle to overcome being heavily outnumbered, and this game was no exception. Mack's 2000 has scores of the metal turds and always requires getting good shooting rolls before you get swamped. Yesterday I finished painting the drop pod plus two more, as well as a new Terminator. I can't wait to try the new Termie squad configuration out - it now includes two assault cannons and two bolter-plasma guns, perfect for dropping in and inflicting instant casualties on even the most heavily armored infantry. But I digress... Halloween came and went, had a little punkin carving whatnot, here's the pictures from that. On the 31st we had quite a few little freeloaders come by for treats. The balls of these kids (and their parents), going trick-or-treating with just street clothes and a bag - well I never. Times have changed. God forbid you do a little internet research and make a t-shirt ninja hood, ya little ingrates! Bzz! Bzzzzzz! Last weekend we went up for our annual reunion whatnot at Daingerfield, here's a few pictures. It was drier this year, none of the usual rains, but the weather was nice and mild. We went to Pittsburgh and ate at Pittsburgh Hot Links, which is a ridiculously awesome place. Anyone passing through East Texas should take a detour and eat here, great food and atmosphere. I didn't know this before I went, but Hot Links are not like BBQ sausage, more like breakfast sausage, a little mushy and not very hot by themselves. Luckily you've got plenty of hotsauce lying around in the place, and a few dabs will do ya. Good shit. Comment on this entry... |
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Mannequin (1987)
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Saba-labag This is a really good record. Seriously. Comment on this entry... |
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The Chumscrubber (2005)
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Slaaneshi Scum The Cities of Death tournament turned out ok, some fun matches against new enemies but with just as much unsolicited advice as ever... What are you gonna do? Whereas last tournament had a ton of vanilla or other loyalist chapter Space Marines, this time there was tons of Chaos armies. Mine did alright. I had a draw in the first round against a pure Slaanesh army, though technically I had a bit more points in the end. Both of us were rolling rather poorly, but in the end my Demon Prince was able to smash up two Defilers (you can see them in the picture, early in the game when they were still tooling around) to edge my Black Legion/Khorne CSMs just a tad bit over, but not enough for a solid victory. Second round was against Blood Angels, featuring a ton of jump-pack assault troops, including the inevitable Death Company squad that ended up eating my lunch pretty badly. Another sucky point was losing my Berzerkers to Blood Rage and watching them fly headlong into a Dreadnought (1 of 3), which of course they had no chance of beating in CC. They were effectively stuck till death. I tried to make my way over with Terminators but it was too late. I did manage to eat up a squad of his Terms with my flying Possessed... so many attacks with those chainaxes just chew them right up. But I still ended up getting slaughtered. Third round was against a Guard army where the troops were either deep-striked Special Weapons squads or Chimera'd Storm Troopers. That along with 2 Leman Russ, a Basilisk, and a Hellhound. The objective was to hold the center building, which I managed to do, although the squads in there took quite an artillery shelling. My various demons just hopped from tank to tank until I had wiped everything out save the Basilisk. After the Demon Prince ate up the first Leman Russ, the second turned to fire its battle cannon at him. It scattered and destroyed the Hellhound just behind him. After the smoke cleared, I had only effectively lost a Rhino. Comment on this entry... |
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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)
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Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
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What the F Happened To These Kids?
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Suffer the Little Ekos Having mildly enjoyed the eponymous film, I tested out the first two episodes of Friday Night Lights. This review gets a little extravagant with its praise, in my opinion, but the show is fairly decent. Most of the cast manages to maintain the small-town folk feel very well, and the sort of quiet, introspective moments have been carried over from the movie in an enjoyable way. But as with most TV series, the first episodes have thrown in enough cliches to capture the mindless masses... many of the plot points are very much classic TV drama fodder. Ehhh, I'd watch it again. In any case, it's loads better than the other new show mentioned in the article (Studio 60 from the Sunset Strip)... I never liked West Wing for the exact same reasons I don't like Sunset Strip. The banter is retarded - way too quippy and clever - and everyone's a smartass, always just standing around jabbering at each other with their hands in their pockets. Perry fits in just fine with this particular schtick, but a burnt out Chandler Bing is still Chandler Bing, and that shit was already old ten years ago. Plus the film/lighting/whatever has the same formulaic West Wing style, blegh. Boooring. Fortunately, NBC doubled up and is attempting two different series about late night comedy shows. I managed to watch the pilot of 30 Rock and it was spectacular. Tina Fey playing the straight man, as it were, to two different kinds of insanity represented by Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan. It introduced a fairly clever method of product placement - Alec Baldwin's character is some kind of advertising guru that was given command of the show's production and shortly after he wistfully recalls one of his best slogans in a conversation with Tina Fey, we're "treated" to a commercial featuring the actual, identical GE ad campaign. When Baldwin was spouting the catchprase, it was amusingly oddball, ironically trite. Then the actual commercial plays and you hear the same stupid lines... I had to laugh. I wonder if that will be a perpetual gimmick in the series. In any case, I thought the show was very funny and I recommend it. ---LOST SPOILER ALERT--- So, another week of Lost has come and gone, about the most significant thing that happened was Hotel boy offing himself after he couldn't be with Sun, big whoop. He was kinda creepy-bald bald, and they never would have put a head of hair on him, so good riddance. But did Sun ever put 2+2 together enough to know that Jin was (sorta) responsible? The highlight of the episode was probably Kate doing some manual labor in the sun dress. She's got quite a spaceship. It was cool to hear Sawyer strategizing with Kate about a possible escape, but then we see that he's being overheard by Ben... eghhh. So much for that idea. I'm guessing this week we will get to Desmond, Locke, and Eko, and find out what the hell happened with those turds. Is it just me or did the whole bit about Eko abandoning the church construction seem a little scribbled in? Compared to most of the other plot elements, it stuck out as a bit half-baked. Maybe he'll get back to it now that the button is no more, but why did they have him start building it in the first place just to leave off at the very beginning? Just to give Charlie something to do for a few episodes during his temporary exile? Comment on this entry... |
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Some Shit A Teacher Might Have Mentioned (God Forbid)
Whilst wandering the wiki-skeins, I came upon the Prisoner's Dilemma, a particular non-zero sum game that was a very interesting introduction to game theory, especially compelling in light of NK's recent shenanigans. Some of my favorite parts:
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The Nids swarm in from the left
Tau Battlesuits
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Civil Warhammer My brother and I enacted a small "rules of engagement" skirmish between a small host of Tyranids from Hive Fleet Kraken and a Tau reclamation force, a bloody match that barely ended in a draw. In the end the main body of the Tau force fell to advancing Tyranids while their Battlesuit squads conducted lightning raids behind enemy lines, both armies achieving both of their objectives. The Battlesuits nearly destroyed the Carnifex occupying a Tyranid objective point but could not bring it below 50% starting strength. Good fun game, nice to dig out the old Tyranids again and play with the new codex a little bit. Saw a couple of shows over the last week or so. Last Friday I went to see Magnolia Electric Co. with Wilmo. They played a great set, mostly Fading Trails, What Comes After the Blues tunes, but also a couple of Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co. classics. I still wish he'd do a solo tour, because the one time I saw him do such a thing, fuckin Emos cut him down to only a few songs for whatever shite band was playing on the oustide stage. Let Me Go (x3) is really outstanding. At once quieting and disquieting. And then last Tuesday we saw Alice in Chains at Stubbs. The guy subbing for Layne was quite decent... he definitely did each song justice. I felt like he emphasized the asskicker attitude Layne over the burnout whine Layne. So there still ain't nothin like the real thing. Under the hill, with just a few notches on his belt. Jeez but there's fuckin truckloads of hipsters at Emos every time I go there. I do love watching the lil guys and gals though. Ah, that reminds me of a couple of amusing websites: Hipster Bingo and Soyouwanna... Be an Indie Rock Expert. Enjoy. -LOST SPOILER ALERT- Finally we're all caught up on Lost. The new situation is pretty exciting... My current theory is that Libby's husband who got sick (I'm guessing its Hugo's 4-Across opponent, the guy who gave him the numbers) worked for Dharma as well and slowly went crazy. Maybe he worked in the now essploded button/timer hatch. This may seem obvious, but at this point I firmly conclude that the main point of this show is examining destiny. What is random vs what is "meant to happen." The design of chaos. And now psychological mindfuck games will be the soup du jour indefinitely for at least three of the main characters. Creepy sumbitches, those others. Comment on this entry... |
