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Mechwarrior Dark Age SMK
Seafield SMK Seafield in
Half-Life SMK Seafield in
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(Links without hyperlinks means that page is under construction)
e-mail : ljm16@hotmail.com |
Welcome to Paanjang's website , where a typical SMK Seafield student brings his school to the world through his own means for honor , glory and driven by the urge to be ahead. Currently studying in Adelaide Australia, where catching up with the demands of university life and letting lose through Mechwarrior is a daily affair. Also looking forward to the day he meet the girl he loves. Monday, 19th April 2004
Yesterday I receive my Joel Brane Redemption! I was surprised it took less than 3 weeks for the Redemption to arrive as Wizkids redemption offers usually takes a long time for them to be processed and even longer to be delivered. I sent the form on the 30th of March, the money was banked in on the 8th of April , Wizkids sent the package on the 9th, and I receive it yesterday! Shows that it takes a week to for any mail to go to the USA and vice versa.
I ordered 2 Joel Branes, the LE Highlander Koshi ,one for my personal use , the other for my friend who wants it. I intended to use it as trade fodder to get bigger mechs, but I decided to see if any of my friends wants the mech first. I also got 2 Cesar Spanos (VV1 Ranger) and 2 SW infantry pack. All of them are highly powerful and playable LEs. Joel Brane is one of the best Highlander mechs ever and the SW infantry pack shows just how powerful a single Hoverbike , Gnome , Hauberk and Peasant Company can be. I was annoyed that one of my VV1 Ranger has no cockpit :( Oh well, looks like it was nothing Wizkids can do since the box was unopened when I took a look at it. That is the effect when you try to save money by giving low wages and forcing them to work no day no night. Come to think about it, the 2 Joel Brane LEs are going to circulate the entire Pacific Ocean when I bring them home (China>Japan>USA>Australia>Malaysia).
I tried playing with the SW infantry pack with Kriya ,SW Dumpster Mod and some filler SW infantry against Joel Brane , Melva Golan , HL Cavalry , HL JES and SS Fulcrum. It was a fun battle with no artillery and at a leisurely pace. No cut-throat tactics. Just playing for fun to see the units full potential (like allowing a Behemoth to actually have a shot off). Melva proved a difficult target to shoot when she's in hindering but her SS heat dial shut her down, allowing the SW BAs and infantry lead by Tora's Claw to damage her by a maximum of 3 clicks! Tora Zephyr managed to punch a big hole through the SS Fulcrum's hardened armor, but used up all her missiles after the attack. Joel Brane shows he is the chargemonkey of DA when you only take 1 damage pre-FAQ and charged Kriya past her sweet spot. Kriya went to her sweet spot early by having a critical miss in the early part of the battle. Kriya and her dumpster friend took out the poor sleeping Koshi after the Joel went overboard with his mech. Tora's Unruly Mob taught the HL JES not to mess with peasants by successfully making 2 critical hits at 3 damage each time! The star of the battle? The HL Calvary. It stayed out of the range of both the Dumpster mod and Kriya and busy poking Tora's Claw to death. After Joel Brane and the Fulcrum has dealt enough damage to the 2 SW mechs, it when in to mop up. With a 22 defense while cruising and still at its prime with a 9 attack, no one was able to shoot it down. After taking out the 2 mechs, it then tickled the remaining SW infantry to death. Notice that the unit that turned the tide of battle was the VTOL. That is why all the MWDA players hate the VTOLs introduced and some venues have a "NO-VTOL" rule.
Saturday, 17th April 2004
There was a Mechwarrior Tourney today! Since I wanted to play for fun I decided to field the biggest , most expensive piece in the game , the DF Marauder II with 2 SS raiders and some SS support. I played as the SS instead if Liao this time because I was only able to have an exact 600 point army by playing SS.
I arrive early at my venue today at 10.40. The other players came in later because this is during the school holidays and no one wants to wake up early on a Saturday holiday (By right the tourney starts at 11 am). I was surprised to see that the Battlemaster brought along his daughters (and most probably her friends too), all of them primary age, to come and play along. Of course I was not the only young adult playing, 3 more men like me later arrive with their toolbox full of units. Maybe the Battlemaster was taking Wizkid's intention to include junior players (hence the junior events) a little too far.
Anyway, we started off with 8 players , with 2 girls playing each other and another facing against a vehicle-warrior army. These young girls ain't playing with those pieces that were drawn from boosters like we usually do , but high-powered hardware like the LE Hellstar, Liao Arrow 4, elite targe, DF Schmitt, or all the competitive pieces that players usually use. The only thing that kept them from winning any battles was the fact that they were not as experience or have the knowledge of how to use some of the pieces.
My first battle was against a good player with 2 merc snipers, 2 liao arrows, Katsu , elite liao raider and some SS infantry support. It was a pog-warrior match from the start, as my Marauder II dodge and ran towards his deployment zone ,fearless. It also attracted tones of attention, virtually his entire force on him. After 4 turns, he was in his deployment zone, facing me with his back to my opponent. Even I was surprised that the DF Marauder could run all the way across the board. It left behind the other SS units struggling to to cross half the board.
That is when things start to turn around very quickly. My opponent charged my DF Marauder II with his elite raider. If there is one thing the DF Marauder is bad at, it is its low defense against chargers and brawlers. (That is why I play Highlanders, high defense is the best deterrent for chargers) With an 11 attack he easily hit my low 22 defense. After taking 3 damage, my mech has only a 21 defense. On my next turn, I TOTALLY forgot about the Marauder II's heat dial and attacked the elite raider. After hitting the raider my mech entered the fourth click of heat with colors on every dial. For ammo , it was safe. For heat sink overload, it was a fail and I entered shutdown.... oh yeah, now my opponent have a 326 point fatty waiting to be charged to death in HIS DEPLOYMENT ZONE :) Katsu had the opportunity of the lifetime and charged the Marauder II.
In the end, I lost EVERYTHING , had the DF Marauder II and a SS raider captured, and my deployment zone was swarming with scimitars. The only thing I killed was a HL peasant company guarding the arty. What a start to my second tourney here :P
My next battle was somewhat easier, since my opponent was one of the young girls playing. She was however one of the BM's daughter , which means she has access to some very powerful hardware like the Liao arrow 4, DF Schmitt , BR Lego, Elite Targe, HL hoverbikes ,HL Elite IS BA and SC Mobile HQ (she doesn't' know the purpose of the Mobile HQ in her army BTW, and after I explained it to her the use of that unit, she never use it at all. Also, I got the feeling the BM build the army for her). Any experience player could easily charged and pog my Marauder II to death easily with that army. In the end I was easily able to wipe-out the artillery and took a stroll through the her deployment zone with the Marauder II with the 2 SS raiders covering his back. I can't say it was a great victory since I was playing an opponent who plays the DF Schmitt WITHOUT any infantry support (we all know the DF Schmitt's weakness: minimum range; base it from the side). Ok, that was only a scroll in the park compared to my next opponent.
My next opponent was also one of the BM's daughter (or was she her friend? if so then my BM has 4 daughters all within primary school age!). Her skill is as lacking as my second opponent , but her hardware was once again top-notch; Liao LE Hellstar, Elite Centurion, 2 SW Donars , LE Demon tank (with its non companion) , and a formation of SC purifiers... proof that the BM assembled the army for her. Again, any experience opponent will wipe the floor with that army and this time the army was scarier that the skill of my opponent.
It was a very close match , with only a 5 point difference in points for VC1. At at time she was leading in VC1 but I managed to destroy enough to win. The scariest part of the battle was when she decided to charge one of my SS raiders with the Hellstar. It charged for a whopping 8 clicks!!! 5 for primary, 1 for charging, 1 for brawling and 1 for ruthlessness because the raider was green. Took out the unlucky raider in a single charge. My raiders also seem to foul up during the battle. One critically miss, the other took a bit of damage from the centurion, and later charged to death. My Marauder II allowed a SW Donar at its starting click to dent its armor for 1 damage (she needed a 16 and managed to roll it , luckily not critical hit). Imagine if she decide to charge my Marauder II instead of the raider. After 7 clicks my Marauder II will only have an 18 defense!!!!!
After charging, the hellstar shot my second raider and destroyed my raider's missile rack, rendering my raider useless when it comes to range attacks. Fortunately for me, the hellstar shutdown. I based both my Marauder II and the raider to the now shutdown hellstar. Next turn, my Marauder II missed by 1 and my raider miss by a very wide margin. The hellstar , now powered up, pounced my raider to dust but missed my Marauder II. Had she actually hit my Marauder II I would have lost the match :)
To cut it short, my Marauder II managed to dent the Hellstar but did not destroy it (since this is an Elite Liao unit with NO salvage) and my condor tank and Gnome took out the LE Demon and some of the purifiers. It was a close battle against one of the best Liao LEs out there and beginners luck.
So my score for this tourney is 1 lost and 1 win. My second battle was not counted since my opponent didn't know what to do with her pieces. (like in MW3 : your defeat is not even worth mentioning in my codex). The winner of the tourney is the player who fielded a vehicle-warrior army (I was surprised he trashed my first opponent) with get this: 3 mobile HQs , SS AAA, SS arrow 4 , 2 BR cavalry VTOL, BR ATVS, 3 BR Regulators , SW MHI AA inside a SW Maxim and some other infantry and vehicles I didn't see. I really should have tried the DF Marauder II against him, since he will be unlikely to ram me to death! I once again, won fellowship, (I was the only player NOT using arty, NOT using VTOLS , NOT using ATVs, NOT using Tank-dropping Schmitts, NOT using Infiltrating SW J-37 with DF Schmitt, Not using cheese) only this time I have to wait for the prize to come. Last time the BM had to use some of his LEs as prize support, (which is btw, way better than the intended prize support on that day). This time, the first prize is the LE Yu Huang and the fellowship is the LE Pegasus tank I think. Oh well, any prize is good. I really want to see of I can win the fellowship for May, which is the LE Fulcrum Heavy hover tank (it is taunted as the cheapest tank-dropping vehicle capable of delivering 10 clicks of damage for only 60 something points).
I have traded away my second Shin Wolf for the LE DFA Black Knight, Melva Golan. I don't really know how to use Shin. Every time I use him he gets destroyed/charged before I was able to use his 4 clicks 2/14 range 10 attack click (I suck at using such low defense mechs). I think it is a good trade since I always wanted a black knight, play Highlanders and the fact it is a 75 tonner (I seem have a liking for heavies and assaults). I also got the dossiers for both the Shieldturion and the Nikol Brahe. To my surprised, all the pilots are female (I thought there were male all along, guess that Melva, Nikol and Maaaclevadreaaaaa.. whatever you call him errr her is a female name). Even more surprising is that the Shiledturion has ranged weapons and the pilot likes using them (according to the dossier) before using the mace and shield. How the shieldturion ended up WITHOUT range weapons is anyone's guess.
Thursday, 15th April 2004
I'll now continue what I wanted to type yesterday night (or more accurately , early this morning). I really miss playing Mechwarrior Dark Age back home in Malaysia. Back home all of us can play at our venue every Saturday at our venue for FREE. Here each player who wish to play have to pay AUD 5 = RM 15 to play. At first I thought our Malaysian venue sucks since we barely have any price support yet alone getting new expansions on time. As the saying goes, the grass is greener is on the other side of the globe. But the reality is our venue back home , Comics Corner, located in SS15 Subang Jaya is much better and much easier on our pockets than here in Adelaide. Did I mentioned the boosters back home costs cheaper too at RM 35 compared to AUD 15.95 = RM 45++ and the more you buy the cheaper it gets? I also thought about how much my collection back home is worth and to my surprise it is cheaper to acquire the huge lot of units I have at home than to do the same thing here. I think that if we want the latest hardware or unique units and LEs, we got to pay more for it. Nothing is free from the looks of it. Right down to going to the venue to play for fun, yes for fun! God bless Malaysia!!!
Yesterday ,a fter I left the MWDA venue I went to Woolworth to buy provisions and food. I got a long list of things to buy, from milk, bread to shampoo and a new drinking bottle. To my disappointment, there wasn't any peaches on sale!! NOOO!!! Don't know what happened that day but the peaches are sold at the same location every time I went there. So instead I bought grapes to try out. Too bad there wasn't any apricots to buy. I was only capable of buying part of the items on the shopping list because more than that I wasn't able to carry back home. Try transporting 4 Daishis when your drop weight is only 120 tons. Reminds me of how easy life is in Malaysia where I got a car and the hypermarket has a huge car park and a huge trolley to buy things. Got to make another trip back to the supermarket to buy more food stuff. This time the shopping bill was AUD 20 = RM 60. That doesn't surprise me, since back home any shopping trip will cost RM 150 and above at the hypermarket (and spending a lot on food doesn't hurt).
Felt so tired when I got back home I did not have the mood to do any uni work (it is the school holidays! still got holiday mood!) . So fast the first week of the holiday is over. Got to start on my uni work soon or the holidays are up. AARRRGghhhh I'm so lazy..!!!
A few days ago I received an ICQ message from my school mate. He says that he was surprised to know that I still make web pages and said my Red Faction map of SMK Seafield is very nice. Thanks, but too bad I already lost the file and the know how to build such a map after a very long time. I don't even know if the Half-Life map has been deleted or saved somewhere in my old hard disk. Then again, who plays Half-Life or Red Faction nowadays? Ahhh the good old days when I tested the Half-Life and Red Faction map with all the lighting and windows. It was very unstable , with a high chance of jumping back to windows, but the joy of walking around in your creation cannot be described (especially when you can blow up the place :) . Too bad the software wasn't capable of rendering the map. I also tried to make it in the Serious Sam engine (a powerful engine that allows for VERY VERY huge maps), but by that time I was too lazy to create another map for the third time and I have already left the school.
I checked the to see if some of my friends have blogs. I found out through the ICQ info and an old link I have that there are 3 blogs , each written by 3 diferent individuals , with 3 different perspective. What caught my attention was the blog by my friend who is currently in Monash and ICQed me about the Java a while back (look below for the post about him ICQing me about Java programming). It was interesting to read about his opinions and devotion that was expressed through his blog. Like he said, engineers have no life. How true that is, since I don't have any girlfriends yet !!!!!
So the links to their blogs are: http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Booth/8118
As you can see, the first link is very old since geocities no longer have the long link that we webmasters must use.
My friend asked me why I don't want to post any pictures of myself. The reason is that I want to guard my privacy and showing myself online is something I'm not keen to do . Sure, there are some of my friends to show their face to the world, but I prefer to keep a ferro-fibrous shield over my identity hehe...
Wednesday, 14th April 2004
Today I woke up at 6.40 in the morning, the earliest I ever woke up since I arrive here in Adelaide (I wonder how many more "firsts" are there left). This is because I need to be at uni at 8 o'clock to meet up with my Structural Design group in the CAT suite. At first I thought 8 o'clock is OK, but then I later realized that 8 o'clock is too early for someone who usually wakes up at 7.30 am. After eating breakfast made up of wheat bars/wheat biscuits/weet-bix whatever you call it minus milk, because I ran out of milk, I got myself ready to go to uni with all the Structural Design Notes and drawings. I left my room at 7.25 am. I was surprised it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. The past few weeks have very cold mornings where wearing a sweater is a must. Since I anticipated the morning to be cold, I wore my sweater. I should have turned back to my room to deposit the sweater back but I somehow felt that it isn't that hot to wear it.
As usual, when it comes to catching the bus on time, my timing is off by about 30 seconds. I was about to walk along the road to the bus stop from the street I am currently at, the bus went passed me, again. Not that it matters that I miss the bus, as I have decided to walk to uni today, but I try to take the bus whenever possible. So today I walked to uni instead.
The roads to the city was not congested at all. It is like a Sunday morning where there is very little cars on the road. Most probably it is still 7.30 in the morning and the fact that today is a school holiday. It took me 30 minutes to walk to uni, the usual time it takes to walk. I can catch the bus along the way to ride the remaining 2-3 km, but once I start walking , I might as well walk the entire journey.
I arrived at the CATS suite a few minutes past eight. I took off my sweater and put it in my bag as I am sweating a bit from all that walking. Two kwai loh from my group was already there, warming up to start work. My group has 7 people, 2 from Malaysia , the rest kwai loh ,and in the end my Chinese friend didn't turn up. We spend the next four hours finishing up our work in the CATS suite. The CATS suite is fully air-conditioned and fully equipped with the lastest Pentium 4 Compaq computers from, wonder of wonders, Seremban Malaysia. All the computers are assembled in Seremban. That shows how far this machines can go.
At noon, I went off to have lunch nearby. Went to a food court at the Myer's center. Since today is a school holiday, the shopping district is packed with people. I ordered myself a huge square pizza that comes with a foot long garlic bread (One and a half times longer than the Pizza Hut garlic bread). It was worth it , as it is feeling and the portions are big for its price of AUD 5.95 (food seem to cost around AUD 5-7 here, and this is in Adelaide where everything is supposed to be cheap!). After having lunch I went to my MWDA venue to see if I can buy any uniques from the Battlemaster. There as usually games on Wednesdays.
Since today is a school holiday, there are more people playing at the store than usual. I also got a first hand look at a pure "Pogwarrior" army. No mechs, no VTOls, just lots of artillery , hoverbikes and some mobile HQs. That kind of army is unbeatable against the armies usually fielded. Too bad for that army however, it was facing the the Battlemaster's army which has Arnis Drummond. To cut it short, the mech can run behind all the artillery and slowly kick the base screen and then the artillery to death, one by one.
Everyone was playing a fun army. One of the players was fielding 4 assault tanks with large minimum range and with little infantry support (the best part was, the players who fought him didn't took advantage of the tank's weakness like everyone do) . Another was fielding a Pure HL mechless army with tanks and hoverbikes. The most surprising, the Battlemaster's daughter who is of primary school age fielding the tried and true HL army combination with Caden (Ryoken II) , 3 hoverbikes , HL schimit and a Liao Phoenix Hawk as support. She was against a boy , also her age, who fielded the BR Catapult, SW Mad Cat 3 , Merc Mars and some other support. None played artillery. How I miss seeing that kind of army since I got here. All the armies I face are either cheese with little mechs or no mechs at all.
After the battle was over I asked the Battlemaster if he has any Liao unique units to let go off. I was looking for a Tian-Zong which doesn't cost a bomb to pay. He has quite a number of Liao unique units, but no Tian Zong :( He does have however, the LE Hellstar, LE Shen Yi , Chee Sang and some other Liao units. I asked him for the price of the Hellstar. He then looked up a price list in the magazine Scrye (not so sure of the spelling) . I was shocked to know that the LE Hellstar cost a jaw dropping US 45 = AUD 60 . It costs more than the LE Tian-Zong at the store counter. I checked the price of the other Liao unique units and they all cost either US 20 or US 30 something.
All those prices are way above my budget and after paying AUD 40 for Arnis Drummond, only to see the price drop 2 weeks later, I decided to wait until Falcon's Prey comes out. He told me not to worry (as Aussie always say, no worries) , as Falcon's Prey is coming out soon , meaning the price of Pre-Falcon stuff will drop and these mechs aren't going anywhere because there aren't many Liao players here (the only Liao player I know is Danny , he sold his lot to me). I was not the only one looking for unique units to buy. There was this women who has a son who likes MWDA, looking for MWDA units for him. She seem to know which units are good, as she picked out a BR Giggins and get this, the LE DF Balac from all the BM's units for her son. The LE DF Balac costs more than any of the Liao mechs I wanted and it is only a vehicle!!! I am not sure if she did bought it in the end.
It is already very late at night now; 1.30 am in the morning. I still got some more things to type, but I am too tired to continue.
Entries from the beginning of this website to 1st May 2004
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