Real talk time-
I'm practically done with my book.
But
I refuse to work on it.
It's finished. It is a grand total of about five pages from being done, I know what needs to be on those pages, but I don't finish the book. The reason I don't finish it, is that if I don't have a finished book, I don't have to work on marketing it. I don't have to try to sell myself. If I don't have a finished book, I don't have to put myself out there. If I don't have a finished book, no one can tell me no. With a finished book that all changes, so I don't finish my book.
I know I should be working on it. I know that I should be doing something with my time rather than just staring at my comptuer doing absolutely nothing, but I don't want to. I'm throwing a fit that Addie would be proud of and I just don't want to.
Speaking of her - I'm going to go check on her and make sure that she's asleep. She's been sleeping through the night for years now, but I'm still going to do it because it's something to do rather than finishing up my book.
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 24, 2016
Avoiding Writing
https://soundcloud.com/kutski/learning-to-count-with-hardstyle
I am so finished after stumbling into this one. A DJ started to figure out all of the songs he had that he could mix together with the counting that always happens in the songs. It's genius, horrible and awesome at the same time.
For those wondering - thanks to the comments of the song - here's everything that he uses.
Tracklist:
1) Zany & Ruthless - Free For All
2) Crisis Era - Loud
3) Dimitri Vegas, Martin Garrix & Like Mike - Tremor (NY TNZ remix)
4) Flux Pavillion - One Two Three (Playboyz and Carbine Bootleg)
5) Brennan Heart vs Noisecontrollers - Just As Easy Again
6) E-Force - Seven
7) Kutski & Bioweapon - One
8) Dr Phunk - Blasterjaxx Megamix
(I can't easily find a video of this one)
9) Coone - Aladin on E
10) Sourcecode - I'm not a Number
11) Al Twisted & Necrotic - 4&3&2&1
Again, one that I can't find yet.
This is what I'm rocking out to right now instead of editing chapter two like I should be doing.
I am so finished after stumbling into this one. A DJ started to figure out all of the songs he had that he could mix together with the counting that always happens in the songs. It's genius, horrible and awesome at the same time.
For those wondering - thanks to the comments of the song - here's everything that he uses.
Tracklist:
1) Zany & Ruthless - Free For All
2) Crisis Era - Loud
3) Dimitri Vegas, Martin Garrix & Like Mike - Tremor (NY TNZ remix)
4) Flux Pavillion - One Two Three (Playboyz and Carbine Bootleg)
5) Brennan Heart vs Noisecontrollers - Just As Easy Again
6) E-Force - Seven
7) Kutski & Bioweapon - One
8) Dr Phunk - Blasterjaxx Megamix
(I can't easily find a video of this one)
9) Coone - Aladin on E
10) Sourcecode - I'm not a Number
11) Al Twisted & Necrotic - 4&3&2&1
Again, one that I can't find yet.
This is what I'm rocking out to right now instead of editing chapter two like I should be doing.
Feb 23, 2016
Part Time Job
I am a professor at two universities.
I have a master's degree.
This summer I'm most likely going to have to get a part time job at a dead end job because the universities that want to hire me during fall do not have the student inflow to keep me during summer.
If you know any place that is hiring a professor of English (or just a person with a pulse) on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and some Saturdays) during the summer, let me know. I'd like to be able to survive the summer. My only one that I will flat out refuse is anything that is even slightly reminiscent of a call center.
I have a master's degree.
This summer I'm most likely going to have to get a part time job at a dead end job because the universities that want to hire me during fall do not have the student inflow to keep me during summer.
Feb 22, 2016
Do You Know What You Should Write Next?
"You know what you should write next? How about you . . ."
No.
How about you write that book?
Did you ever consider that I'm not writing that book because I don't want to? That I hate that genre? That it's not my style? That it's just not what I do?
Just because I'm an (aspiring) author, does not mean that I'm a freelance author. You can't just tell me a story that you think is great or a duplicate of something that someone else has written, and then expect me to run with it for as far as possible and publish a multi-million dollar deal. If that is what you want me to do, please hire me and start paying me money, because if I know that I'll get my money up front, instead of having to deal with the stupidity of the publishing world, I'll take that action.
I understand it's coming from a good place. You're just trying to help me out, but let's get this straight right now. I don't need your help coming up with story ideas. If I need help on what to write next, I'll ask. If I don't know what to do with my life, I'll come to you and say something. When someone that doesn't know me, or that I don't care about, tries to pull this on me I get really snarky really fast and have some cutting comments back to them. If you're related to me, I'll smile and say thank you as I quietly plot ways of giving you advice on how to do things that you're specialized in. I'm sure you'd love some advice about how you can be a better accountant, or start dealing with accounts payable if you've done nothing but accounts receivable for your entire career because it's from a creative writer, no?
Until I come to you and ask you for help on a story, shut up.
If you think that it's that great of a story, you write it. I give you full permission to write it. Sit down and crank out three drafts of it. I'll enjoy the view as you struggle to get past the first ten pages because you realize that you have no clue what you're doing and don't know how to do anything beyond telling other people what to do with their lives.
Seriously, never, ever, ever tell me what you think I should write. I have enough in back log to last me a few decades. If I ever run out of something to write about, assume I'm dead.
Until I stop writing, don't give me advice. I know you really want me to be successful, but I want to write something that I'm proud of, that I'm thinking of, that I actually want to do. It's part of the perks of the job, I get to write what/how/when/where I want. I'm not going to just drop everything that I'm working on and start writing your rough story idea that doesn't have much more than a genre that I have zero experience or desire in.
No.
How about you write that book?
Did you ever consider that I'm not writing that book because I don't want to? That I hate that genre? That it's not my style? That it's just not what I do?
Just because I'm an (aspiring) author, does not mean that I'm a freelance author. You can't just tell me a story that you think is great or a duplicate of something that someone else has written, and then expect me to run with it for as far as possible and publish a multi-million dollar deal. If that is what you want me to do, please hire me and start paying me money, because if I know that I'll get my money up front, instead of having to deal with the stupidity of the publishing world, I'll take that action.
I understand it's coming from a good place. You're just trying to help me out, but let's get this straight right now. I don't need your help coming up with story ideas. If I need help on what to write next, I'll ask. If I don't know what to do with my life, I'll come to you and say something. When someone that doesn't know me, or that I don't care about, tries to pull this on me I get really snarky really fast and have some cutting comments back to them. If you're related to me, I'll smile and say thank you as I quietly plot ways of giving you advice on how to do things that you're specialized in. I'm sure you'd love some advice about how you can be a better accountant, or start dealing with accounts payable if you've done nothing but accounts receivable for your entire career because it's from a creative writer, no?
Until I come to you and ask you for help on a story, shut up.
If you think that it's that great of a story, you write it. I give you full permission to write it. Sit down and crank out three drafts of it. I'll enjoy the view as you struggle to get past the first ten pages because you realize that you have no clue what you're doing and don't know how to do anything beyond telling other people what to do with their lives.
Seriously, never, ever, ever tell me what you think I should write. I have enough in back log to last me a few decades. If I ever run out of something to write about, assume I'm dead.
Feb 16, 2016
It Must Be My Fault - My American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/126/do-gooders
This one is a good one for me right now because apparently it's my fault when I'm trying to do a good job at LDSBC.
Recently I've been trying to fight the fact that my turn over rate for first semester English students is ridiculously high. I start semesters with 20+ students in each class, and then all of the sudden by the end of the semester I'm down almost 50%. This semester I didn't want to do it. This semester I wanted to try to retain as many students as possible. I wasn't going to just sit back and do nothing, so I did what the college wanted me to do, I reported every single student that was struggling, and that meant that I reported half of my class.
That's right, I put half of my class into the list of students that needed help to pass my course.
Instead of thinking that possibly it was my students who were struggling, that it could possibly be the issue with my students not having the skills or knowledge required for being part of a university system, the first thing that got said was that it has to be my problem. It wasn't the fact that the majority of my students struggled to graduate from college, are first generation college students, or even the fact that most of them don't even show up to class - no - the real problem was with me, the teacher, the one who was trying to improve their lives and willing to point a light on those that were struggling with the simpliest of tasks of showing up to class, taking notes, and paying attention enough to stay awake.
It only gets worse.
As I was looking through the course when I first started teaching there I was thankful for everything that was given to me, because I didn't have anything. I was thankful for the fact that they had a course ready for me to teach, and that it was put together in a way that I just had to show up and teach and didn't have to rely too much on my non-existant lesson making skills. It was a great thing.
Now that I'm about a year into the teaching thing, I'm starting to notice a major bug in the system. It's impossible for a student to fail the course if they show up and turn things in. Even if it is horribly written, even if there is a quality to their writing that is down right unprofessional and has no right to pass an ENG 101 course, it's impossible for them to fail as long as they turn in every single assignment.
Let's break it down so you can understand.
There's five major assignments.
Personal application of a self help book.
Rhetorical analysis of a self help book.
Synthesis and analysis of a topic given from the university.
Group profile piece of a company.
Personal philosophy.
Each of those is worth 100 points for a total of 500 points.
What isn't told is that attached to many of those are 'checkpoints' and 'journals' that add unnecessary fluff to the course to make it impossible to loose.
In my opinion the synthesis and analysis research paper is the most important and technical out of the entire series. Unfortunately, it's weighted the same as a personal philosophy paper (we'll get to that later), and then the fluff that surrounds it is the exact same weight as the final paper. That's right, it's 100 points, and all of the fluff (including a 30 point assignment that is basically show and tell for college students) is also worth 50 points. That means that even if one of my students manages to absolutely fail that paper and get a 50% on it, if they do all of their fluff assignments, it totals out to be a C, and that is for the most important paper in the course.
The group profile piece is a joke and as long as students work together in the two weeks they have to write it, they'll pass that assignment with an A.
The 'final' for the course is a personal philosophy, but it's 100 points worth of fluff. The writing prompt for the personal philosophy is junk. All it says is explain why you think the way you think. It can be about anything, just explain why you think the way that you think. It could be about how Care Bears are a life influence for you and that your life is strictly influenced by the power and strength that Care Bears and the Care Bear stare gives to you, and you would get full credit. The technical merit of that paper is non-existent, and it essentially comes out to another free 100 points as long as it's turned in.
As long as students show up and turn things in, they can't get anything lower than a C. It's impossible. It doesn't matter if they know the skills required of them, what matters is passing them through the system.
The reason I'm talking about all of this is that I would try to change it, however I know that for this one case, it's impossible. The university isn't focused on teaching skills that are actually used and can be transferred to the real world, they're more focused on helping people believe in Christ. I know that this isn't a bad thing, but it gets in the way of an education. I could try to explain to people why I think that we're doing a disservice to our students by freely allowing them to pass courses even though they have no education and skills that we are promising them, but I'd be instantly put under the spotlight. Instead of looking at the course material or the university, I'd be the one in trouble. It can't be a problem with LDSBC, it has to be a problem with me. The reason my students aren't learning the skills required isn't because of the lack of rigor or the complete lack of credibility from a university, but because I must be teaching their approved lesson incorrectly.
This one is a good one for me right now because apparently it's my fault when I'm trying to do a good job at LDSBC.
Recently I've been trying to fight the fact that my turn over rate for first semester English students is ridiculously high. I start semesters with 20+ students in each class, and then all of the sudden by the end of the semester I'm down almost 50%. This semester I didn't want to do it. This semester I wanted to try to retain as many students as possible. I wasn't going to just sit back and do nothing, so I did what the college wanted me to do, I reported every single student that was struggling, and that meant that I reported half of my class.
That's right, I put half of my class into the list of students that needed help to pass my course.
Instead of thinking that possibly it was my students who were struggling, that it could possibly be the issue with my students not having the skills or knowledge required for being part of a university system, the first thing that got said was that it has to be my problem. It wasn't the fact that the majority of my students struggled to graduate from college, are first generation college students, or even the fact that most of them don't even show up to class - no - the real problem was with me, the teacher, the one who was trying to improve their lives and willing to point a light on those that were struggling with the simpliest of tasks of showing up to class, taking notes, and paying attention enough to stay awake.
It only gets worse.
As I was looking through the course when I first started teaching there I was thankful for everything that was given to me, because I didn't have anything. I was thankful for the fact that they had a course ready for me to teach, and that it was put together in a way that I just had to show up and teach and didn't have to rely too much on my non-existant lesson making skills. It was a great thing.
Now that I'm about a year into the teaching thing, I'm starting to notice a major bug in the system. It's impossible for a student to fail the course if they show up and turn things in. Even if it is horribly written, even if there is a quality to their writing that is down right unprofessional and has no right to pass an ENG 101 course, it's impossible for them to fail as long as they turn in every single assignment.
Let's break it down so you can understand.
There's five major assignments.
Personal application of a self help book.
Rhetorical analysis of a self help book.
Synthesis and analysis of a topic given from the university.
Group profile piece of a company.
Personal philosophy.
Each of those is worth 100 points for a total of 500 points.
What isn't told is that attached to many of those are 'checkpoints' and 'journals' that add unnecessary fluff to the course to make it impossible to loose.
In my opinion the synthesis and analysis research paper is the most important and technical out of the entire series. Unfortunately, it's weighted the same as a personal philosophy paper (we'll get to that later), and then the fluff that surrounds it is the exact same weight as the final paper. That's right, it's 100 points, and all of the fluff (including a 30 point assignment that is basically show and tell for college students) is also worth 50 points. That means that even if one of my students manages to absolutely fail that paper and get a 50% on it, if they do all of their fluff assignments, it totals out to be a C, and that is for the most important paper in the course.
The group profile piece is a joke and as long as students work together in the two weeks they have to write it, they'll pass that assignment with an A.
The 'final' for the course is a personal philosophy, but it's 100 points worth of fluff. The writing prompt for the personal philosophy is junk. All it says is explain why you think the way you think. It can be about anything, just explain why you think the way that you think. It could be about how Care Bears are a life influence for you and that your life is strictly influenced by the power and strength that Care Bears and the Care Bear stare gives to you, and you would get full credit. The technical merit of that paper is non-existent, and it essentially comes out to another free 100 points as long as it's turned in.
As long as students show up and turn things in, they can't get anything lower than a C. It's impossible. It doesn't matter if they know the skills required of them, what matters is passing them through the system.
The reason I'm talking about all of this is that I would try to change it, however I know that for this one case, it's impossible. The university isn't focused on teaching skills that are actually used and can be transferred to the real world, they're more focused on helping people believe in Christ. I know that this isn't a bad thing, but it gets in the way of an education. I could try to explain to people why I think that we're doing a disservice to our students by freely allowing them to pass courses even though they have no education and skills that we are promising them, but I'd be instantly put under the spotlight. Instead of looking at the course material or the university, I'd be the one in trouble. It can't be a problem with LDSBC, it has to be a problem with me. The reason my students aren't learning the skills required isn't because of the lack of rigor or the complete lack of credibility from a university, but because I must be teaching their approved lesson incorrectly.
I want the 90's back
My playlist is everything on my computer on a loop. I stumbled into this one, remembered it was a good song, and then decided to share it with you. Things went better than expected and it has a music video. The best part about this thing is that this music video is so 90's it hurts. It's so amazingly 90's that I want the 90's to come back just so this could be our music video world again.
I can't even begin to understand this but it's so awesome that you just want to keep watching.
Feb 14, 2016
It's The End of The World - My American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/125/apocalypse
It's the end of the world as I've known it, and I've known that for a long time.
It's one of the weirder parts of being Mormon, but the church firmly believes that we are living in the latter days (the last days). I mean, it's in the title of our church, that we think that we are the last generation of true believers here on Earth, until the apocalypse happens. To those inside the church, it's totally normal, and almost accepted to talk about when Christ comes, and how we'll be when it happens. It's nothing weird at all to hear people talk about their emergency preparedness kits because when Christ comes things are going to get hectic, and they're going to need supplies to survive.
It's to the point where it's fairly frequent that there is an individual in the ward, who has a job that is to get everyone in the ward prepared for an 'emergency' (read: apocalypse). We're the proud owners of gallons and gallons of powdered foods sitting in our pantries and under our beds. We're the weirdos that have large plastic containers in our garages so we can have clean pure water when the water supply goes bad.
The thing that I've never realized is just how weird it is to have an active belief that the world is going to end, and I have a decent chance to see it. No one knows the date or time it's going to happen, so it could happen next week, or it could happen 1,000 years from now, the only thing that I believe (thanks to my religion) is that my church is going to be here on the Earth when it does happen, and we're not going to leave until it happens.
The funniest thing growing up with an emergency prepardness kit and a food storage that included things like 20 pounds of barley, was when things started to get old. Each year during summer we would pull out our kits and try to eat lunch off of what was in them.
It was never good.
Then came the awkward times when my mom would buy something for our food storage. For the most part they were good ideas. Getting a giant 5 gallon plastic bucket of rice - great idea, we loved rice and ate it all the time. Getting a 5 gallon bucket of pinto beans - not the best idea because who uses dried beans that often? This lead to things sitting in storage for a long time, and then one day my mom noticing that things were getting close to their experation date, so we'd start to try to use that food in our meals.
There's a reason that no one eats barley any more.
The same goes for an excessive amount of dried beans. They're good for a small bit, but a small bit goes a long way. Seriously, you can buy a gallon tin can of beans and use them for about a year and not run out, and that's assuming that you're semi-active in trying to use them. Those things go a LONG way, and we were stuck with massive amounts of them just sitting there in our pantry waiting for us to use . . . or for the apocalypse to happen.
It's the end of the world as I've known it, and I've known that for a long time.
It's one of the weirder parts of being Mormon, but the church firmly believes that we are living in the latter days (the last days). I mean, it's in the title of our church, that we think that we are the last generation of true believers here on Earth, until the apocalypse happens. To those inside the church, it's totally normal, and almost accepted to talk about when Christ comes, and how we'll be when it happens. It's nothing weird at all to hear people talk about their emergency preparedness kits because when Christ comes things are going to get hectic, and they're going to need supplies to survive.
It's to the point where it's fairly frequent that there is an individual in the ward, who has a job that is to get everyone in the ward prepared for an 'emergency' (read: apocalypse). We're the proud owners of gallons and gallons of powdered foods sitting in our pantries and under our beds. We're the weirdos that have large plastic containers in our garages so we can have clean pure water when the water supply goes bad.
The thing that I've never realized is just how weird it is to have an active belief that the world is going to end, and I have a decent chance to see it. No one knows the date or time it's going to happen, so it could happen next week, or it could happen 1,000 years from now, the only thing that I believe (thanks to my religion) is that my church is going to be here on the Earth when it does happen, and we're not going to leave until it happens.
The funniest thing growing up with an emergency prepardness kit and a food storage that included things like 20 pounds of barley, was when things started to get old. Each year during summer we would pull out our kits and try to eat lunch off of what was in them.
It was never good.
Then came the awkward times when my mom would buy something for our food storage. For the most part they were good ideas. Getting a giant 5 gallon plastic bucket of rice - great idea, we loved rice and ate it all the time. Getting a 5 gallon bucket of pinto beans - not the best idea because who uses dried beans that often? This lead to things sitting in storage for a long time, and then one day my mom noticing that things were getting close to their experation date, so we'd start to try to use that food in our meals.
There's a reason that no one eats barley any more.
The same goes for an excessive amount of dried beans. They're good for a small bit, but a small bit goes a long way. Seriously, you can buy a gallon tin can of beans and use them for about a year and not run out, and that's assuming that you're semi-active in trying to use them. Those things go a LONG way, and we were stuck with massive amounts of them just sitting there in our pantry waiting for us to use . . . or for the apocalypse to happen.
Feb 11, 2016
Welcome To America - My American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/124/welcome-to-america
I don't have any experience with becoming an American citizen because I got that whole thing called born and raised in the states and am a natural born citizen going for me.
Most of the time I try to avoid talking too much about politics. I don't do it at work, I don't do it at home, and I don't do it much of anything because it's just not that often that I get the chance to say it, but it's my blog so I can put this one out there.
There should be no way shape or form that Trump on his current rhetoric should ever be elected president.
The problem that I have with him is that e bases everything off of hatred. Everything he does is based off of fear and hatred for the unknown, and his logic when he fights against those that don't agree with him is as simple as you're either supporting him or he insults you. The worst thing he does is insult immigrants.
I can not stand how he thinks that immigrants that are in the states legally, that are citizens of the country, are the issue. How is it possible that a person that is representing the people of a country that is founded on fleeing oppression and bad politics, is now supporting to throw out and blame those that are running away from oppressive governments and looking for a new opportunity?
What's even more impressive to me is just how many people are backing him even though he's racist, sexists, and quite a bigot.
The really sad part about those words is that they're so overused when slinging mud that no one really quite understands what the actual deffinition of those words are any more. Those words have lost credibility in the impact of what they say, but the sad part about it all, is that he fits the core definitions. They're not inflamatory or hyperbolic in any way shape or form. He is sexists, he insults women, he looks down on them, and treats them as second class citizens. He is racist, because anyone who isn't a white natural born citizen of the United States must be a terrorist that issecretly trying to destroy our economy, a rapist, or a murderer. Most of all he's a bigot. He's unwilling to listen to any other side of an argument. He is under the very strict idea that it is his way or no way.
I really don't know what I'm going to do if he gets voted in for a presidency. I'm really afraid what stupid war he's going to get us in because of his large mouth and 'shoot from the hip' type attitude that is only going to get us in trouble. He's inssulting everyone in the country that he's running for a presidency in, I can't even begin to imagine what he's going to do with international relationships.
I'm calling it now, placing my bet and trying to predict the future. If he gets voted in to the white house, by the end of his presidency there will be a new war. If I'm going to go out on a limb, it'll be a world war, and unfortunately we're going to be on the loosing side because we no longer have allies.
Seriously, I don't get it. Why would anyone vote for him?
If you're one of those people that can rationally and logically show me a reason to vote for the racist sexist fear monger, I'd love to hear it.
I don't have any experience with becoming an American citizen because I got that whole thing called born and raised in the states and am a natural born citizen going for me.
Most of the time I try to avoid talking too much about politics. I don't do it at work, I don't do it at home, and I don't do it much of anything because it's just not that often that I get the chance to say it, but it's my blog so I can put this one out there.
There should be no way shape or form that Trump on his current rhetoric should ever be elected president.
The problem that I have with him is that e bases everything off of hatred. Everything he does is based off of fear and hatred for the unknown, and his logic when he fights against those that don't agree with him is as simple as you're either supporting him or he insults you. The worst thing he does is insult immigrants.
I can not stand how he thinks that immigrants that are in the states legally, that are citizens of the country, are the issue. How is it possible that a person that is representing the people of a country that is founded on fleeing oppression and bad politics, is now supporting to throw out and blame those that are running away from oppressive governments and looking for a new opportunity?
What's even more impressive to me is just how many people are backing him even though he's racist, sexists, and quite a bigot.
The really sad part about those words is that they're so overused when slinging mud that no one really quite understands what the actual deffinition of those words are any more. Those words have lost credibility in the impact of what they say, but the sad part about it all, is that he fits the core definitions. They're not inflamatory or hyperbolic in any way shape or form. He is sexists, he insults women, he looks down on them, and treats them as second class citizens. He is racist, because anyone who isn't a white natural born citizen of the United States must be a terrorist that issecretly trying to destroy our economy, a rapist, or a murderer. Most of all he's a bigot. He's unwilling to listen to any other side of an argument. He is under the very strict idea that it is his way or no way.
I really don't know what I'm going to do if he gets voted in for a presidency. I'm really afraid what stupid war he's going to get us in because of his large mouth and 'shoot from the hip' type attitude that is only going to get us in trouble. He's inssulting everyone in the country that he's running for a presidency in, I can't even begin to imagine what he's going to do with international relationships.
I'm calling it now, placing my bet and trying to predict the future. If he gets voted in to the white house, by the end of his presidency there will be a new war. If I'm going to go out on a limb, it'll be a world war, and unfortunately we're going to be on the loosing side because we no longer have allies.
Seriously, I don't get it. Why would anyone vote for him?
If you're one of those people that can rationally and logically show me a reason to vote for the racist sexist fear monger, I'd love to hear it.
Helldrake?
I'm not sure what I should do with my helldrake.
The rest of my army is nice and firey colors and it looks awesome, and then there's this thing as a monstrosity of a model, and I'm not sure how I want to approach it.
Let's be honest. I could field this guy as is and there'd be almost no issue. He's got well over three colors on him (they just happen to be very similar blues and blacks).
The easy way out is to do the metal like I've done with my warp talons, and leave the body blue and move on. That's the easy way out.
The slightly harder way out is to keep segments of it's body blue, and then go into the wings and in one wing do one color blend from the tip to the base yellow to red.
The massocistic way (that as I write it I realize exactly which one I'm going to do because it just has to be done) is to take each individual segment of the wings, and instead of treating them as one unified piece, take one segment at a time and do a color blend of yellow to red inside each segment surrounded by the metal. The real question is if I want it all directional (reds towards the body and yellows going out towards the tip in each area) or if I want it circular where the red is in the center of each segment and then blend it out to yellow where it touches the metal. Nah, we're going to go with each segment being it's own and linear fading reds towards the body, yellows towards the tip.
Yeah, I don't even know why I was worried about it. It's going to take me a crazy amount of time and there's no way that I'll have it finished by the 20th for the apoc game, but it's going to look stupid lovely by the end when I finally have it finished, and that's really the only reason that I'm doing this - to look stupid good and to eat up a massive amount of time.
NO SPEED PAINTING!
NO EASY WAY OUT!
PS - I've started in on Thousand Sons, and am slowly (because I'm getting distracted by other things) working my way through that unit as well. Spoilers.
The rest of my army is nice and firey colors and it looks awesome, and then there's this thing as a monstrosity of a model, and I'm not sure how I want to approach it.
Let's be honest. I could field this guy as is and there'd be almost no issue. He's got well over three colors on him (they just happen to be very similar blues and blacks).
The easy way out is to do the metal like I've done with my warp talons, and leave the body blue and move on. That's the easy way out.
The slightly harder way out is to keep segments of it's body blue, and then go into the wings and in one wing do one color blend from the tip to the base yellow to red.
The massocistic way (that as I write it I realize exactly which one I'm going to do because it just has to be done) is to take each individual segment of the wings, and instead of treating them as one unified piece, take one segment at a time and do a color blend of yellow to red inside each segment surrounded by the metal. The real question is if I want it all directional (reds towards the body and yellows going out towards the tip in each area) or if I want it circular where the red is in the center of each segment and then blend it out to yellow where it touches the metal. Nah, we're going to go with each segment being it's own and linear fading reds towards the body, yellows towards the tip.
Yeah, I don't even know why I was worried about it. It's going to take me a crazy amount of time and there's no way that I'll have it finished by the 20th for the apoc game, but it's going to look stupid lovely by the end when I finally have it finished, and that's really the only reason that I'm doing this - to look stupid good and to eat up a massive amount of time.
NO SPEED PAINTING!
NO EASY WAY OUT!
PS - I've started in on Thousand Sons, and am slowly (because I'm getting distracted by other things) working my way through that unit as well. Spoilers.
Feb 8, 2016
Show And Tell - Warhammer
I finished up the last detail stuff on the last terminator. I'm sure if I spent a bit more time I could polish these guys up even that much more, but my brain doesn't want to do that, so I'm going to stop with them where they are and be happy.
With that being said, just like I did a close up of all of my Chaos Space Marines, it's time to give some close up time to all of my Chaos Space Terminators. It's going to be picture heavy, and I'm going to make the pictures as large as I can without stretching things out too bad, because I want people to be able to see these guys close up and help me know what I can improve on. Seriously, any comments or suggestions on what I can do next time I pick up the brush are more than welcome.
Without any further delay, here's what I've got.
To start it all off, here's the terminator sorcerer, and my leader of my army.
And his back.
Then comes the other leader in the unit, the terminator champion. I'm a personal fan of this model and named him the champion on the pure fact that he has the middle finger power fist.
And then, of course, his back.
From here on out I'm just going to number them. So here comes terminator #1.
And his back.
Then terminator #2.
And his back.
Terminator #3
And his back
Terminator #4
And his back
Terminator #5
And back
Terminator #6
And back
Terminator #7
And back
Terminator #8
And back
And last, but not least, terminator #9
And back
There you have it. My massive 10 man unit of Tzeentch terminators, along side a Tzeentch terminator sorcerer. It's only 650 points worth of models in those eleven figures. Only. . .
With that being said, just like I did a close up of all of my Chaos Space Marines, it's time to give some close up time to all of my Chaos Space Terminators. It's going to be picture heavy, and I'm going to make the pictures as large as I can without stretching things out too bad, because I want people to be able to see these guys close up and help me know what I can improve on. Seriously, any comments or suggestions on what I can do next time I pick up the brush are more than welcome.
Without any further delay, here's what I've got.
And his back.
And his back
Terminator #4
And his back
And back
Terminator #6
And back
And back
Terminator #8
And back
Feb 7, 2016
I've Been Lied To
For a second of a moment, I thought that I liked a song, but then I realized that no, I just really like a bass system that can rock your soul out of you.
Over the weekend I got to go to a BYU basketball game. During the middle of the basketball game (as well as the intro that I was late to) they played Turbulence.
Now, I'm typically cautious about anything that BYU puts together because let's be honest, they're a bit limited in their options of songs that they'll play, so I was shocked when they had this song playing on the speakers and I could feel the beat a little bit. I thought that after jamming just the smallest bit out to this song that I'd throw it into rotation into my playlist and give it a listen, and then I realized that it was a pile full of nothing. It works well for about the thirty seconds that they used it, but in the long run, it does not hold up to what I'm listening to. Seriously, take the dynamics of that song, and compare it against anything that can actually rock the tag of 'hardcore' or even 'hardstyle' and the song gets blown away.
The only thing that it made me want to do was not listen to Aoki's stuff, but try to find a venue where I can listen to Gammer or Dougal live and enjoy their mixes at the intensity they're intended. I really want to feel the bass now.
Over the weekend I got to go to a BYU basketball game. During the middle of the basketball game (as well as the intro that I was late to) they played Turbulence.
Now, I'm typically cautious about anything that BYU puts together because let's be honest, they're a bit limited in their options of songs that they'll play, so I was shocked when they had this song playing on the speakers and I could feel the beat a little bit. I thought that after jamming just the smallest bit out to this song that I'd throw it into rotation into my playlist and give it a listen, and then I realized that it was a pile full of nothing. It works well for about the thirty seconds that they used it, but in the long run, it does not hold up to what I'm listening to. Seriously, take the dynamics of that song, and compare it against anything that can actually rock the tag of 'hardcore' or even 'hardstyle' and the song gets blown away.
The only thing that it made me want to do was not listen to Aoki's stuff, but try to find a venue where I can listen to Gammer or Dougal live and enjoy their mixes at the intensity they're intended. I really want to feel the bass now.
Feb 4, 2016
Lots of Time
I've been dumping a stupid amount of time into this unit of terminators, as well as the terminator lord that goes with them. It's one of those things that I'm hyper critical about my work and I see nothing but errors, but tonight I was getting to a breaking point (I still have two more terminators to do the final touches on) and so I took a picture.
The only thing I did was hit the "auto adjust" button once I was done I out popped this bad boy of a picture.
I'm sorry, but if you're not aware of this, this is awesome. It's so awesome, that I'm almost tempted to post it in original size, stretch out the entire blog and make things look ugly just for it. As annoying and as frustrating as this unit has been, wow, I didn't know it was going to turn out looking like this. I'm not going to finish the last two tonight, but it's just one of those things that I'm starting to understand with this hobby. You get so entrenched in your own work, and you're looking at the closest details you can possibly look at and you forget to take a step back and stare at the big picture. Take that for a life lesson or whatever else you might, but wow, it is important to take a step back some days.
On that note, I need to step back into writing my My American Life pieces. I've been listening to them, I'm just back logged a few episodes and haven't written anything. I've got to get off my butt and give that a shot.
The only thing I did was hit the "auto adjust" button once I was done I out popped this bad boy of a picture.
I'm sorry, but if you're not aware of this, this is awesome. It's so awesome, that I'm almost tempted to post it in original size, stretch out the entire blog and make things look ugly just for it. As annoying and as frustrating as this unit has been, wow, I didn't know it was going to turn out looking like this. I'm not going to finish the last two tonight, but it's just one of those things that I'm starting to understand with this hobby. You get so entrenched in your own work, and you're looking at the closest details you can possibly look at and you forget to take a step back and stare at the big picture. Take that for a life lesson or whatever else you might, but wow, it is important to take a step back some days.
On that note, I need to step back into writing my My American Life pieces. I've been listening to them, I'm just back logged a few episodes and haven't written anything. I've got to get off my butt and give that a shot.
Jan 31, 2016
1500 Points
Again, think back to my vampire counts, there's entire units of zombies/skeletons that are more models than this. This is why I love me some chaos, you can field a stupid amount of points for almost no models at all. It's relaxing having an elite army. Less to worry about, less to paint, less to field, less to memorize rule wise.
Jan 30, 2016
Terminators
I'm done with the most difficult part - color blending. From here on out, it's just the small details.
Only thing left on the list for these guys is to do metalics, some edge highlights, and then smaller details like skulls and helmets that are on spikes. After that, they're done. Also, you can't see it here, but my favorite figure is the from row middle with the power fist. He's the champion for no other reason than his power fist is flipping a power middle finger at everyone. You don't notice it until you look at little too much at them, but he's totally giving the bird to the opponent.
You Don't Realize It Until You Do
When I grade papers for my classes, typically I'm also mindlessly watching some Netflix in the background to give me some noise as well as a story to listen to so that I don't go crazy. I've gone through great shows like Murder She Wrote (seriously that show is a LONG show, it's got something like 13 seasons of 1 hour episodes, everyone in her home town is dead by the end of that show if you start counting deaths up) and even Supernatural.
Recently I've been tackling an old school sitcom of The Munsters.
There are times that I start to think they're being sarcastic, or trying to create some social commentary, because it's the Munsters. It's supposed to be about counter culture and the rebellion against what is normal and their life versus that suburban world that they are surrounded by. I expect that sort of content from their writers, but then I start getting upset because instead of a story about differences being acceptable, it becomes episode after episode about how differences should be hidden and how you should deconstruct your ideas down to the suburban world of life because that is the socially acceptable way of thinking.
Let's dive into this thing and the ways that it makes me angry.
Let's start with the husband/wife dynamic.
She's supposed to be the stay at home wife, he's supposed to be the working husband. While this doesn't bug me, the part that annoys me is just how controversial it is whenever a plot line comes around where she gets a job. Her family runs out of money and can't pay the bills for her niece to go to college, or any other story line, and she steps up and gets a job. Instead of showing her as being a contributing factor of what is going on, she gets boiled down into this idea that her having a job is a horrible thing, and that the husband should just step it up even more.
Don't even get me started about their personal gender stereotypes either. How that she is the ultimate power in the home, a passive wife outside of the place. How that he is a goof inside the home but a violent freak outside of the home. Hello! Did anyone not notice these and try to draw correlations to the real world and gender expectations between men and women?
Next, we have the children, or rather their one child and then their niece that is living with them.
They are all but forgotten. For being a show about a family, the children (and especially the son) seem to be given no regard to having a voice or opinion about anything. Even the smallest elements they are washed over and the parents act almost as though the kids aren't even there. It's such a weird thing to look at considering that 2/5 of the cast are younger, and they never get story lines. The son is always off doing something, and occasionally we hear about him being at school, but his own issues or his own life are non-consequential to everything else that is going on. The niece that is 'normal' is just as flat a character. She is cute, and boys like her, but they get scared away by her family. That's all she is. That's all she has for every single episode. Past that we have no clue of who she is, what she likes, or what she wants to be in her life. We get nothing from them because they're just the kids and they don't matter.
Given, for that fact, the writing on all of these characters falls a little flat, but at least with the mother and father we get some sense of there being something more behind what they're acting. It's just unfortunate because the entire set up of monsters being normal and trying to live a normal life has such good place for talking about social inequality, the feelings of injustice that we all feel, and ultimately the goal of embracing your weird to be who you are without any fear of judgement around you.
Unfortunately it doesn't follow into that world, but instead creates small little dramas that are fixed in slightly unique ways, but ultimately build up the stereotypes and cultural expectations of it's era. You're not going to find the munsters ever doing anything to break away from suburbia, no matter how weird they are, no matter how backwards they tried to look, they still exemplified the boring, stifling, oh my goodness how I could never had lived during that time period, life.
Recently I've been tackling an old school sitcom of The Munsters.
There are times that I start to think they're being sarcastic, or trying to create some social commentary, because it's the Munsters. It's supposed to be about counter culture and the rebellion against what is normal and their life versus that suburban world that they are surrounded by. I expect that sort of content from their writers, but then I start getting upset because instead of a story about differences being acceptable, it becomes episode after episode about how differences should be hidden and how you should deconstruct your ideas down to the suburban world of life because that is the socially acceptable way of thinking.
Let's dive into this thing and the ways that it makes me angry.
Let's start with the husband/wife dynamic.
Don't even get me started about their personal gender stereotypes either. How that she is the ultimate power in the home, a passive wife outside of the place. How that he is a goof inside the home but a violent freak outside of the home. Hello! Did anyone not notice these and try to draw correlations to the real world and gender expectations between men and women?
Next, we have the children, or rather their one child and then their niece that is living with them.
Given, for that fact, the writing on all of these characters falls a little flat, but at least with the mother and father we get some sense of there being something more behind what they're acting. It's just unfortunate because the entire set up of monsters being normal and trying to live a normal life has such good place for talking about social inequality, the feelings of injustice that we all feel, and ultimately the goal of embracing your weird to be who you are without any fear of judgement around you.
Unfortunately it doesn't follow into that world, but instead creates small little dramas that are fixed in slightly unique ways, but ultimately build up the stereotypes and cultural expectations of it's era. You're not going to find the munsters ever doing anything to break away from suburbia, no matter how weird they are, no matter how backwards they tried to look, they still exemplified the boring, stifling, oh my goodness how I could never had lived during that time period, life.
Jan 26, 2016
It's So Evil It Just Might Work - Warhammer
I got my assignment for the 1500 point game, and it's based off off 'kill points', but the thing is that the setting for the game is a little wonky, because if anything dies, it doesn't die.
https://crusadeforroannoke.wordpress.com/missions/Black%20Crusade/
Read there for the it comes back if you kill it thing.
The bonus stupid part to this is that I'm going up against Tau, which is one of the most broken armies in the game, super over powered, and a terror to even see on the list because I know that there's no way that I'm going to do well in this match up. Knowing that I'm not going to do well, now is the time that I get to pull out all of the stupidity that I can muster, and do something annoying and cheesy, but potentially workable.
Kill points is based off the basic idea that if you kill an entire unit, it counts as one point. With the system that is set up, once something dies, it just comes back on the board a few turns later ready to give your opponent even more points. This boils down to a very simple idea for me - don't let him kill me. I don't mind if I don't do much killing, but as soon as I feed one kill, it's not going to look good because then it'll just start snowballing out of control and I'll be feeding points left right and center. To put it as nicely as possible, I tried to make it impossible to kill any unit, and if a unit did die, they have the very real possibility to avoid death when they come back.
My entire army is as follows
Chaos space marines - maximum point value. Tricked out, in a rhino, that is also tricked out with extra armor and fun and games to make it hard to hit. No points spared. I can (and should) consider going with more thousand sons here, and having two units of thousand sons, because that'd be interesting, but for now we're going to stick with what is painted and treat it as is.
Thousand sons - in a rhino. Fancy rhino, but still sticking around for a while is hopefully what they do best.
A ten man unit of terminators - bye bye warp talons, you look awesome but really sort of suck. Hello, ten wounds of having the best saves the game can possibly give me to dodge bullets and tank an explosion. Seriously, the amount of damage these guys can survive is stupid, and the guy I'm fighting against is going to have to take on ten of them.
A terminator sorcerer - shoved in with the terminator squad he's another two wounds of tanky tank on more tank.
Helldrake - It's pure job is to fly around, poop fire out on things, and run away. Never die. If it gets close to dying, run off of the table and back into reserves.
That gives my entire army a grand total of five kill possible kill points, and within those kill points I have two units who come attached to a rhino so they can run and hide, one unit who has some of the best (if not the best thanks to mark of Tzeentch stacking with all sorts of stupid fun stuff essentially giving them a 2/3 chance of dodging ANYTHING, even things that are super powerful) saves in the game, and a flyer that is the only thing cheesy enough that might stand a chance against Tau.
The bonus round to this strategy is that at the start of the game again I'm only fielding two things (my rhinos) and they're going to show up as far away as possible from the death. I'm planning on running the exact same strategy that I did last time. Pull the opponent army across the table to look at the squishy opening and then hopefully deep strike behind them with a ten man unit of terminators and wreck face.
I doubt that it'll work, because it never works that well, but at least this time I have some intention behind what I'm fielding and some basic strategy. Which was a whole lot better than my first games where I just looked at stuff and said, "Why not? Let's do something stupid!"
The only thing that I'm hopping for with this is that the Tau player brings in a lot of gun lines. Lots and lots of gunlines that I can smash through.
https://crusadeforroannoke.wordpress.com/missions/Black%20Crusade/
Read there for the it comes back if you kill it thing.
The bonus stupid part to this is that I'm going up against Tau, which is one of the most broken armies in the game, super over powered, and a terror to even see on the list because I know that there's no way that I'm going to do well in this match up. Knowing that I'm not going to do well, now is the time that I get to pull out all of the stupidity that I can muster, and do something annoying and cheesy, but potentially workable.
Kill points is based off the basic idea that if you kill an entire unit, it counts as one point. With the system that is set up, once something dies, it just comes back on the board a few turns later ready to give your opponent even more points. This boils down to a very simple idea for me - don't let him kill me. I don't mind if I don't do much killing, but as soon as I feed one kill, it's not going to look good because then it'll just start snowballing out of control and I'll be feeding points left right and center. To put it as nicely as possible, I tried to make it impossible to kill any unit, and if a unit did die, they have the very real possibility to avoid death when they come back.
My entire army is as follows
Chaos space marines - maximum point value. Tricked out, in a rhino, that is also tricked out with extra armor and fun and games to make it hard to hit. No points spared. I can (and should) consider going with more thousand sons here, and having two units of thousand sons, because that'd be interesting, but for now we're going to stick with what is painted and treat it as is.
Thousand sons - in a rhino. Fancy rhino, but still sticking around for a while is hopefully what they do best.
A ten man unit of terminators - bye bye warp talons, you look awesome but really sort of suck. Hello, ten wounds of having the best saves the game can possibly give me to dodge bullets and tank an explosion. Seriously, the amount of damage these guys can survive is stupid, and the guy I'm fighting against is going to have to take on ten of them.
A terminator sorcerer - shoved in with the terminator squad he's another two wounds of tanky tank on more tank.
Helldrake - It's pure job is to fly around, poop fire out on things, and run away. Never die. If it gets close to dying, run off of the table and back into reserves.
That gives my entire army a grand total of five kill possible kill points, and within those kill points I have two units who come attached to a rhino so they can run and hide, one unit who has some of the best (if not the best thanks to mark of Tzeentch stacking with all sorts of stupid fun stuff essentially giving them a 2/3 chance of dodging ANYTHING, even things that are super powerful) saves in the game, and a flyer that is the only thing cheesy enough that might stand a chance against Tau.
The bonus round to this strategy is that at the start of the game again I'm only fielding two things (my rhinos) and they're going to show up as far away as possible from the death. I'm planning on running the exact same strategy that I did last time. Pull the opponent army across the table to look at the squishy opening and then hopefully deep strike behind them with a ten man unit of terminators and wreck face.
I doubt that it'll work, because it never works that well, but at least this time I have some intention behind what I'm fielding and some basic strategy. Which was a whole lot better than my first games where I just looked at stuff and said, "Why not? Let's do something stupid!"
The only thing that I'm hopping for with this is that the Tau player brings in a lot of gun lines. Lots and lots of gunlines that I can smash through.
Jan 23, 2016
I Won! - Warhammer
It's official, I finally won my first match!
It ended early, and by either victory points, or just looking at what was happening and betting on the fact that things were going poorly and not looking much better as they were going for my opponent, I was headed towards winning.
To start off with, we were on a lava/volcano terain, so yay for lava! We got set up and followed rules for determining victory points and rolled that there would be five objectives. We put them all over the place and even one of them in a pool of lava. We deployed and set up like the tournament said we needed to.
I got in the bottom right corner, he got the top left. My deployment was a grand total of two models (two rhinos)
.
His deployment was significantly bigger.
On turn one, I ran the rhino full of chaos space marines (you've know the ones I'm talking about) straight towards the corner and spit them out so they could stand in the middle of a lava field on a floating chunk of rock and say that they had at least one objective secure. If there was one thing that I knew, it was that they could stand and shoot at anything that came their way, and going into melee with them was a death wish because who is going to stand and fight in lava, so I had one point.
The thousand sons was a bit more devious. You can tell a bit in the picture above, but there's sort of a fork in the canyon that the objective (the white dice) is in. The rhino pulled over to the right to block two of the entry ways and then the sons popped out the other side to block in the other entrance. To get to that marker he either had to punch through a rhino, that could at least soak up some fire for a while and keep the thousand sons alive, or go for the sons which were a tarpit waiting to happen.
He then moved a lot of his army forward to deal with the two units I had on the table. In the front line going face to face with my rhino and thousand sons was a five man unit of lichguard and a five man unit of immortals.
However, because of how I wedged in my rhino and hid behind cover, the lychguard (who have no ranged weapons) were the only ones that could see my sons, and the immortals, could only see the rhino, so yay for using cover properly and not wrecking myself!
His lychguard charged in on my thousand sons and then for the rest of the game the two units were in melee combat and the thousand sons just sat there. They took some wounds but by turn three (when we had to end the game because the shop was closing) there were still four of them on the table standing their ground, but we'll get to that later.
Top of turn 2- me
Helldrake comes out from reserves and vector strikes his immortals and distance wise lands right behind them (within one inch). Doesn't wipe them off the face of the world, but at least hurts them a bit.
The lava space marines sit in their corner on their objective, and the thousand sons go back to smacking the lychguard who don't die either, so it's about even. Still, no one dead.
Bottom of turn 2- him
Moves things around in the background because he's starting to realize that the fight is mainly going to be on the opposite side of the board. Gun lines start moving, his 'bikes' (I use that term loosely still not sure what they actually are called) come in, and even his warlord manages to make his way across a bunch of lava and terrain to get within an inch of my thousand son rhino. Seriously, the entire necron army at this point is trying to get in position to get rid of a ten man unit of thousand sons and their rhino. A bit of damage to rhino and sons unit, but they were still there and life still went on because thousand sons just stood and laughed.
Also important to note - his doom scythe came in and tried to shoot stuff but nothing went boom too much.
Top of turn 3 - me
Reserve rolls got warptallons, and my terminators in. Both rolled in about the same spot (just a little away from an objective that was only defended by a gun line) and got REALLY good scatters to put them in cover hidden behind things without ruining where they were. All things considering I couldn't have asked for better positioning on my deep strike scatter rolls because it was stupid how perfect they were.
My sorcerer came on, so that means that it's psychic time. Rolled a 6 for charges, and was in a good mood because that meant a killer psychic phase. Managed to get off the primarch tzeentch power on a gunline, but no one actually died (they just reanimated) so no bonus boom to that, but then came the doom bolt. Doom bolt is now my favorite friend. I pointed the bolt straight towards the scythe and was expecting maybe a glance, nope, I got a pennitrating hit. On the misshap table I was expecting a bad roll, nothing too amazing. Nope, I rolled a 6, with strength 8 that meant it exploded. I sniped it out of the air only allowing it to play a role for one round. It crashed and burned and fell into the lava.
By the way, that picture right there, is my favorite picture of the group. Minus the terminator sorcerer not being painted, it just looks awesome.
Shooting happened and the lava loving marines took a few pot shots at things that were getting a little too close for comfort and lit them up with soul blaze.
Unfortunately I was not able to get too much further into the turn because the shop was closing down and wanted us out, but the whole deal went a little like this.
Points for me -
lava marines objective (3 pts)
thousand sons objective (3 pts)
first blood (1 pt)
then the one that I can't remember that gives you points for being close to your enemy's deployment edge (my lava rhino and helldrake were practically parked on that side of the board so go team) (1 pt)
His points -
2 objectives (6 pts)
In the next rounds he would have to deal with warp tallons, terminators, and a terminator sorcerer all on his rear flank. His warlord and most of his fire power was off staring at the marines and sons, while on the other side of the board people were ready to jump straight into combat and show just how awesome a power fist on a terminator can really be.
Officially because we ended early I said it was okay to have a tie (because also honestly it doesn't matter at all on the rankings because I lost everything else. It's not going to lead to me getting first place if I want to fight that point) but honestly, I won. Even if the game kept going I was going to win.
I finally won my first game of 40k.
It ended early, and by either victory points, or just looking at what was happening and betting on the fact that things were going poorly and not looking much better as they were going for my opponent, I was headed towards winning.
To start off with, we were on a lava/volcano terain, so yay for lava! We got set up and followed rules for determining victory points and rolled that there would be five objectives. We put them all over the place and even one of them in a pool of lava. We deployed and set up like the tournament said we needed to.
I got in the bottom right corner, he got the top left. My deployment was a grand total of two models (two rhinos)
His deployment was significantly bigger.
The thousand sons was a bit more devious. You can tell a bit in the picture above, but there's sort of a fork in the canyon that the objective (the white dice) is in. The rhino pulled over to the right to block two of the entry ways and then the sons popped out the other side to block in the other entrance. To get to that marker he either had to punch through a rhino, that could at least soak up some fire for a while and keep the thousand sons alive, or go for the sons which were a tarpit waiting to happen.
He then moved a lot of his army forward to deal with the two units I had on the table. In the front line going face to face with my rhino and thousand sons was a five man unit of lichguard and a five man unit of immortals.
His lychguard charged in on my thousand sons and then for the rest of the game the two units were in melee combat and the thousand sons just sat there. They took some wounds but by turn three (when we had to end the game because the shop was closing) there were still four of them on the table standing their ground, but we'll get to that later.
Top of turn 2- me
Helldrake comes out from reserves and vector strikes his immortals and distance wise lands right behind them (within one inch). Doesn't wipe them off the face of the world, but at least hurts them a bit.
The lava space marines sit in their corner on their objective, and the thousand sons go back to smacking the lychguard who don't die either, so it's about even. Still, no one dead.
Bottom of turn 2- him
Moves things around in the background because he's starting to realize that the fight is mainly going to be on the opposite side of the board. Gun lines start moving, his 'bikes' (I use that term loosely still not sure what they actually are called) come in, and even his warlord manages to make his way across a bunch of lava and terrain to get within an inch of my thousand son rhino. Seriously, the entire necron army at this point is trying to get in position to get rid of a ten man unit of thousand sons and their rhino. A bit of damage to rhino and sons unit, but they were still there and life still went on because thousand sons just stood and laughed.
Also important to note - his doom scythe came in and tried to shoot stuff but nothing went boom too much.
Top of turn 3 - me
Reserve rolls got warptallons, and my terminators in. Both rolled in about the same spot (just a little away from an objective that was only defended by a gun line) and got REALLY good scatters to put them in cover hidden behind things without ruining where they were. All things considering I couldn't have asked for better positioning on my deep strike scatter rolls because it was stupid how perfect they were.
Shooting happened and the lava loving marines took a few pot shots at things that were getting a little too close for comfort and lit them up with soul blaze.
Unfortunately I was not able to get too much further into the turn because the shop was closing down and wanted us out, but the whole deal went a little like this.
Points for me -
lava marines objective (3 pts)
thousand sons objective (3 pts)
first blood (1 pt)
then the one that I can't remember that gives you points for being close to your enemy's deployment edge (my lava rhino and helldrake were practically parked on that side of the board so go team) (1 pt)
His points -
2 objectives (6 pts)
In the next rounds he would have to deal with warp tallons, terminators, and a terminator sorcerer all on his rear flank. His warlord and most of his fire power was off staring at the marines and sons, while on the other side of the board people were ready to jump straight into combat and show just how awesome a power fist on a terminator can really be.
Officially because we ended early I said it was okay to have a tie (because also honestly it doesn't matter at all on the rankings because I lost everything else. It's not going to lead to me getting first place if I want to fight that point) but honestly, I won. Even if the game kept going I was going to win.
I finally won my first game of 40k.
Jan 21, 2016
Tales Of Eternia - The Games I Play
I've been working on this thing on and off, but I've gotten to the point that I want to actually write up a review of it. I'm not all the way finished with it, but I'm a bit afraid that the second disk is a bit scratched or isn't reading correctly because the loading times in the area that I'm at are a bit long, and I'm worried that I won't be able to progress any more.
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This is the Tales game that started it off for me. This is the one that I ran into forever ago while playing with Ryan, and I thought it was amazing, and the best part is, is that between then and now the game has kept up really well.
The best part about it, is that it's not stupid impossible difficult like Dark Souls, but it's unforgiving enough that if you make a mistake that it hurts. It doesn't hold your hand, but gives you enough freedom to let you do what you need to do.
For example the game gives you subs. You can go and explore the ocean floor, and you're told to just do it. You don't get directions, you don't get told exactly where or what you have to do, you just have the freedom to do whatever you want and explore whatever you want. Do what you want, and it's okay. The same goes for dungeons and mobs. You can grind out for a long time and be levels ahead of where you should be, but if you get lazy, allow yourself to get attacked in a weird way and don't react fast enough, your over leveled party that used to be cleaning up the dungeon without a second thought, suddenly is going through a tough fight and you're having to struggle for everything.
All of the tools and 'gimmicks' that are part of the game are oddly really well balanced and interesting. For example the summons you can split between two of your characters. Depending on which summon you give to which character they get a different skill set and the summons themselves interact with each other in different ways to unlock specific skills if you level them up. It has the potential to be nice and complicated, but they do it in such a way that it works, even if you hate it.
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The only part about the game that makes it cringe worthy, but also lovable, is the writing. I don't know if it can be counted as bad writing, or just amazing ideas to keep things light, but each character has their cliche phrase that they love to spout out. Max's "Yeah!" or Meredy's "Biba!" is either borderline genus (because neither of them are all too smart) or just such bad writing that it's wrapped around from the negatives and somehow looped around to be considered good again.
To me, this is the classic Tales game that I judge all of the other Tales games against. It has smooth game play, interesting characters, a solid plot line, good alternate quests and story lines, detailed fighting system and skills, and just what I want for a game.
This is the Tales game that started it off for me. This is the one that I ran into forever ago while playing with Ryan, and I thought it was amazing, and the best part is, is that between then and now the game has kept up really well.
The best part about it, is that it's not stupid impossible difficult like Dark Souls, but it's unforgiving enough that if you make a mistake that it hurts. It doesn't hold your hand, but gives you enough freedom to let you do what you need to do.
For example the game gives you subs. You can go and explore the ocean floor, and you're told to just do it. You don't get directions, you don't get told exactly where or what you have to do, you just have the freedom to do whatever you want and explore whatever you want. Do what you want, and it's okay. The same goes for dungeons and mobs. You can grind out for a long time and be levels ahead of where you should be, but if you get lazy, allow yourself to get attacked in a weird way and don't react fast enough, your over leveled party that used to be cleaning up the dungeon without a second thought, suddenly is going through a tough fight and you're having to struggle for everything.
All of the tools and 'gimmicks' that are part of the game are oddly really well balanced and interesting. For example the summons you can split between two of your characters. Depending on which summon you give to which character they get a different skill set and the summons themselves interact with each other in different ways to unlock specific skills if you level them up. It has the potential to be nice and complicated, but they do it in such a way that it works, even if you hate it.
The only part about the game that makes it cringe worthy, but also lovable, is the writing. I don't know if it can be counted as bad writing, or just amazing ideas to keep things light, but each character has their cliche phrase that they love to spout out. Max's "Yeah!" or Meredy's "Biba!" is either borderline genus (because neither of them are all too smart) or just such bad writing that it's wrapped around from the negatives and somehow looped around to be considered good again.
To me, this is the classic Tales game that I judge all of the other Tales games against. It has smooth game play, interesting characters, a solid plot line, good alternate quests and story lines, detailed fighting system and skills, and just what I want for a game.
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