Checking In and Where I've Been

Hello, Nikephoros checking in. 

I’ve had a bunch of emails lately from you nice folks asking what I’ve been up to and what my thoughts on the state of the game is.  So I think I should make a post about those things.

I have been still going strong with Guild Wars 2 to get my gaming fix.  I am a member of a srs bsns guild, Death and Taxes [DnT] on Blackgate server.  The guild is a PvE dungeon/fractal speed clear guild with the top players, and has been super fun.  We have started playing tournament pvp for fun and its hilarious since we are so low ranked in pvp yet since most of us are really good players we still beat much higher rated teams.  Lot’s of QQ and all that.  A guildmate, Strife, posts video speed run guides to each dungeon some of which I am in so if anyone is interested I can post those here. 

In non-gaming updates, I’m still going hard with my cycling training and racing season starts for me this Sunday.  I have a 60 mile road race, which is a fun way to kick off the season since in a large field race I don’t have high expectations and I can just test myself and get a gauge for my fitness.  I hit 12,000 miles on the bike last year, and I basically had to destroy my social life and alienate all my friends and family to do that.  This year I am paring it back to 10,000 in hopes of maybe having some kind of interpersonal relationships with other humans.

So enough about my life, what about Warhams?!

Bluntly: 6^th Edition killed 40k for me.  I played a bunch of games when 6^th came out and I didn’t have any fun.  After the last game I played I asked myself, “Am I even enjoying this?  If not, why am I spending my valuable Saturday free time doing something I don’t enjoy?”  The answer, sadly, was that I wasn’t getting anything from it.

6^th Edition forces me to play a style of army I don’t particularly enjoy.  I am 100% sure that when I say “6^th edition doesn’t reward maneuver” someone will try to prove me wrong.  Fine, whatever.  Maybe I am wrong.  But my experience was that 5^th Edition greatly rewarded playskill by emphasizing maneuver and timing.  In 6^th Edition, my experience has been that the ability to outmaneuver your opponent to gain an advantage is significantly less.  Again, I’m sure someone will try to tell me that isn’t the case but I really don’t care as I’m talking about my personal experience.  I don’t want to play an IG blob, I don’t want to play with allies, and I don’t want to play an all foot army against other all foot armies.  So the style of army is not my cup of tea.

Additionally, I like to play Black Templars.  I think we can all agree that BT are essentially unplayable in a competitive setting at this point.  Especially without allies, because as I said above, I don’t want to use allies.  I do still have my GK that I could readily play but I would have to spend another couple hundred dollars to make them ready for 6^th edition, and that would mean a foot army.  Since I don’t enjoy foot armies, spending hundreds of dollars and hours of time modeling and painting just so I can play something I don’t enjoy… that makes no sense.  My vanilla marines army is what I played in the games I did play, and it just reminded me how little I enjoy vanilla marines.  Boring army with no flavor that just does stuff and has no edge to leverage.  The wins are close and the losses are close.  Maybe that works for some people but it’s not interesting to me.

When the new BT codex comes out in the White Dwarf in 2015 or whatever the rumor is this week, I’ll buy it and if I like the way it looks I’ll give it a shot.  But I don’t see any chance of me coming back to 40k without a new BT book OR a vanilla marine book that is like the 4^th edition book that allowed you to use traits to make interesting armies.

As far as fantasy goes, 8^th Edition was never seriously competitive due to the magic system being so over the top.  What killed Fantasy was the Storm of Magic or whatever supplement that came out and took the worst part of 8^th edition, Magic, and made it 10x worse.  I COULD just ignore that supplement, except for a good 6 month period no one locally played anything else.  And once ‘Ard Boyz was canceled there was literally no reason to play what passes for competitive Fantasy.  If you’re going to go carebear fluff bunny, might as well go full carebear and play Storm of Magic.  Unfortunately, going carebear doesn’t interest me.  So much like 40k, I’m not going to waste my Saturday playing a game for 3 hours that I don’t find compelling.  I read on the rumor site that Dark Elves are getting a new book next year.  Sad to this one go as it has some pretty OP stuff I enjoyed using, but maybe the next one will rekindle some kind of interest in Fantasy for me.

That’s about it, I’ll check in again when I have something for ya!

Extended Absence: Guild Wars 2

Hello.  Short but sweet: Guild Wars 2 comes out tonight and I'll be playing that for the next few weeks hardcore enough that I don't anticipate writing anything for this blog, though maybe I'll write about GW2?  In any event, I'll see you on the other side.

If you are playing GW2 I'll be on Stormbluff Isle server with my guild doing what you'd expect: crushing faces in PVP.

Increasing Confusion

Today’s post will be a collection of short rants that may or may not be worthy of a longer treatment, but this way I can touch on everything in my head and get it out.

Games Workshop is betting the house on 6th Edition

6^th Edition: WTF?

I rarely comment on the business end of things for Games Workshop.  I usually leave that to the people on other blogs with MBA’s, and people who wish they had MBA’s and still comment anyway.  However, I feel compelled to comment on the handling of 6^th Editon, or lack thereof.

Except for Apple, every other company (especially entertainment companies) hype their products before launch.  Even other game companies preview their new stuff before launch.  Why does GW not?  WotC sends out preview cards of new sets to the various fansites and blogs to show off.  This builds hype and anticipation, and allows people to make purchasing decisions today for things that won’t be happening until later.  Games Workshop could easily allow the bigger news blogs access to rule snippets and art work that would build anticipation while allowing people to make slightly better informed decisions.

From a personal standpoint, I am not (and have not) made any 40k purchases since the fake (or not?) 6E rules leaked.  There is far too much uncertainty.  Are vehicles going to be as good as in 5th?  Or bad now?  Is plasma going to make a comeback and melta catch a nerf?  WHO KNOWS?  This uncertainty has killed any sales they may have got from me since my last 40k purchase in November, and I suspect I’m not alone.  If a new player decided to get into the game, and asked me what to buy, I would tell him to buy as little as possible so in 6 months he won’t find half his good units reduced to unplayable.

Or worse, the game itself reduced to unplayable.  It could very well be that the game changes so radically from 5^th that a great many players are alienated completely.  Right now, these are all valid possibilities.  It would certainly assuage some of the more extreme fears if the design team used the GW blog to discuss even the basic philosophies of 6^th Edition, if not provide some rules snippets.

‘Ard Boyz

‘Ard Boyz for Fantasy sucked, I’ll admit it gladly.  3k points in Fantasy is like playing Apocalypse 40k.  It was unnecessary and gave a lot of people the wrong impression about the game.  Had they made it 2.5k, you may have seen a lot more participation.  Then again, maybe not because the people who were going to play played anyway and those that weren’t weren’t.  I don’t know that there were that many fence sitters.

40k though was always fun, in my experience.  In the four years of ‘ard Boyz prelims and semis I’ve played in, I’ve only encountered minor and infrequent douchebag moments and dick moves.  Am I lucky?  Nah, I think that what I encountered good and bad is fairly representative of the whole tournament scene and players associated.  If 10% of my opponents in ‘Ard Boyz were dicks, my guess is that the percentage is about the same at other local/regional/national tournaments I’ve attended.

My only big complaint is the unpainted armies.  I love playing with and against painted armies.  I won’t play a unit or model that is unpainted, even at ‘ard Boyz.  Maybe I’m OCD a bit, but it irks me to have my models be unpainted.  And if I’m going to lose to somebody at a tournament, I want to lose to a painted army that they clearly love and labored over.  So the unpainted thing bothered me.

So all in all, I’m sad to see ‘Ard Boyz go.  This makes me one of the few ‘competitive’ bloggers to say/admit that.  Most opinions have been ‘good riddance.’  I’m not going to shed any tears over it, but I’ll miss it nonetheless.

NOVA 2012

I’m doing my best to make it again this year.  It will be the last hurrah for 5^th Edition, and likely the last hurrah for my Black Templars’ list before 6^th Edition and a new codex changes them radically.  I’d love to make a run at the 4-0 day 1 bracket and see how well I could do playing a list that is truly competitive.  The stars would have to align financially for me to go again, and other activities around that time that I would rather do would have to fall through, but I’d say it’s 40:60 at this point.

I’d also like to point out that there has been some backlash against MVB for the terrain.  Personally I had 0 problem with the terrain rules, but some tables were admittedly pretty bad to play on.  A lot of vocal bloggers have said the rules don’t match what they feel the rule book says they should be.  I’m not going to debate that one way or the other, but what I will argue is that the NOVA rules –if different- are superior to the rule book rules.  In 8 games at NOVA I had zero arguments about terrain or cover saves.  That doesn’t ever happen in local games where the rules for area terrain are less defined. 

Mike did a smart thing: he simplified the rules for cover and terrain to the lowest common denominator in order to create a simpler, more understandable and faster game play.  Part of the reason why 7 turns at 2k points in 2.5 hours was possible was due to the uniformity of the terrain rules.  With the terrain rules so streamlined, the biggest cause of arguments and misunderstandings and room for shenanigans was removed and people could just play.  I was so impressed with the way it ran, that I have suggested that tournaments at my LGS be run the same way.  Not because it’s the closest way to the rule book, but because it eliminates a lot of the problems that often lead to unhappy players.  So kudos, Mike.  Whatever changes you make (or don’t make) I’m sure the interests of fairness and speed will be kept in mind.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?

Real Life: 2011 Year in Review

Plugging my cycling/training blog.  Wrote an article summing up my year of training and racing.  It was a fun year.  Please check it out. 

I raced. I won.

So I won the 70 mile race.  I can't really believe it, either.  The short of it is that I was with the leaders of the race for the first 40 miles or so, and the peloton kept a very fast pace.  At about mile 40 the people doing the 100 mile race split off from the people doing the 70 mile race.  When the split occurred, there was nobody else among the leaders of the race doing the 70 besides me.  So all of the sudden instead of being in a group of about 75-100 leaders, I found myself on a long solo break.  I realized that there was a good chance that I could win at that point since there was likely a large gap between myself and the next rider in my group, so I gunned it hard.

I was still unsure if I was in the lead until I hit Buckhill and from the top of Buckhill you can see behind you and in front of you for a loooong way and that's when I realized that there was nobody else but me.  I pushed it really hard, attacked hard on Sugarloaf mountain (I take a lot of pride in the fact that I was the first person to summit Sugarloaf out of all 2,300+ racers) and from that moment on I knew that nobody could catch me.  

From there it was about 16 more miles to the finish with just enough climbing to make it non-trivial.  I basically rode as hard as I could for that 16 miles to lock it in.  Despite the hard effort, once I realized I was going to win, it felt like I had wings.  3 hours in the saddle at a race pace, with a pretty high heart rate and it felt like a nice Sunday cruise.  Cloud 9.

I crossed the finish line as the first finisher in the 70 mile category with a time of 3:24:11.  I was elated, and still am elated.  I went to Chipotle afterwards and ate a big burrito, which in the absence of any kind of prize will have to serve as my prize.  And it was a good darn prize.

Real Life: New Bike

I got a new bike a few weeks ago, but I wanted to share it on the weekend when I didn't have any wargaming content to share.

Got the frame on eBay for well below retail, and borrowed the groupset from my old road bike.  It's much awesome.

Frame / Size / Year:
Specialized Tarmac Pro SL / 58cm / 2009 

 

Handlebars / Stem:
Ritchey PRO Butted Aluminum Ergo Bar / Ritchey PRO Aluminum 1.125 inch steerer 

 

Fork / Headset:
Specialized Pro FACT carbon / FSA IS2 Sealed Bearing Threadless Headset 

 

Front Wheel / Hub / Rim / Tire:
SOUL S4.0 / Continental Grand Prix 4000 S Tire 

 

Rear Wheel / Hub / Rim / Tire:
SOUL S4.0 / Continental Grand Prix 4000 S Tire 

 

Crankset / Bottom Bracket:
Ultegra 6700 Compact Crank 

 

Saddle / Seat Post:
SMP Glider / Specialized S-Works Carbon Seatpost 

 

Pedals / Chain:
Shimano 105 Pedals / Shimano CN6700 Ultegra 10spd Chain 

 

Shifters / Derailers:
Shimano Ultegra 6700 10 Speed STI / Shimano Ultegra 6700 10 Speed 

 

Brakes / Brake Levers:
Cane Creek SCR3 

 

Notes:

Love. 17.4lbs. Not bad for a 58cm.

Real Life: I Raced

Hard race. Huge 4/5 field, like 75 racers. The first lap was a prime so it was balls out fast right from the start. I'm happy with the effort I put in.  Finishing with the bunch was a victory in and of itself.

Adepticon and the Future + Black Templar 2k List... for NOVA?

So, as you all know, this has been a pretty rough month for me.  I'll be traveling to Chicago this weekend, but not to attend Adepticon to play Fantasy as I planned, but for more somber circumstances.  I hope everyone going has a great weekend and has plenty of good luck.  My money is on Xaereth to win in 40k and Rhellion to crush face in the Fantasy championships.  Don't let me down!

I was thinking about the rest of the year and planning out my tournament attendance.  June and July are my big months for cycling in terms of racing.  Pretty much all my races will be packed into those two months until the State Championships in October.  So From August -October I'm free.  'Ard Boyz prelims is early August and Semis in mid-September, assuming I make the Semis, ofcourse.  So basically, late August is looking like the best time to attend a tournament, which is perfect for NOVA.  So right now, I'm seriously considering it.  I have a buddy who lives within walking distance of the tournament location, so that is ideal too.  I should know this week if that is happening.

I've been following Laeroth's blog and his development of a 2k Templar list for the NOVA, and I've come to some very similar conclusions as him regarding Templars at that points level.  So I made a list.  It has a bit less gunline firepower, but it trades that for increased forward movement ability and a bit more resiliency. and combat punch.  I feel like with every match having five objectives puts an enormous pressure on your to have a list that can project units downfield while also camping strongly in your side of the board.

So here is my first draft a NOVA list.

EC with AAC - 140

5x Terminators with Cyclones, Tank Hunters -255

4x Landspeeder Typhoons -280

4x5x Initiates w/ Meltagun in TLLC Razorback with Smoke and Extra Armor Searchlights -756

2x5 Initiates with Lascannon -190

3x Predator Destructors w/ LC sponsons and Searchlights -378

Total = 1,999

I kinda like it.  My initial thoughts is if the meltaguns suck, or it turns out I don't need to move those units into the midfield, I can direct swap them for missile launchers and turn it into more of a list that plans to be a gunline.  The Terminators are a lot of points, but I feel they are needed to keep doofuses from just running amok in my back lines.  Thoughts?  

Who knows, maybe by August I'll have a Grey Knights 2k list I'm more excited about.

Tribute To My Dad

My dad, among all the other contributions he has made to my life, is the reason I'm into this hobby.  Primarily, he was into model railroading, and to this day he is the best terrain modeler I've ever seen.  I wish I had pictures of some of his stuff, it was mindblowing.  He also collected civil war miniatures, and he taught me when I was in elementary school how to pour molten pewter into molds and cast my own minis.  He taught me to paint them in high gloss oil paints. 

While I never really got into the historical stuff he was into, it was only natural that while pursing my Magic the Gathering career and spending endless days at the LGS that I would be drawn to the Warhammer hobby.  He encouraged me, bought me paints, modeling equipment, and basically taught me everything I know about the hobby side.  I don't claim to be a even a mediocre painter, but it was a proud day for me when my dad stopped giving me advice on how to improve my horrid paints and gave me the sincere compliment, "wow, that model looks great."

I even pulled him into the GW hobby a bit.  He never played a game, but he scratch built an amazing castle to 28mm scale, and bought a full Vampire Counts army to attack it, and a Wood Elf army to defend it.  For him, it's just a fantasy genre diorama piece but it still captured the GW feel.

My dad lost his long battle with cancer today.  I have a lot to thank my dad for, far beyond just this hobby, but this seemed like the appropriate place for this one, anyway.    I don't think he  knew just how much of a big influence he had on me, but hopefully the people who knew both of us can see some of the best parts of him in me.

Love ya, Pop.

Real Life: I Raced

Pretty hard ride. I came in 4th out a couple hundred so I am beyond happy with that result.  Have a great weekend!

Unavoiadable Absence

Hey guys.  I had a pretty rough weekend.  On Saturday they moved my dad in hospice and I flew up to Chicago on a last minute flight to get here to see him.  I don't know when I'll be back home, but I don't expect to have anything to type to you about for a bit. 

Say It Isn't So, Adepticon!

This is a serious topic, and I expect there might be some hate as a result, but I feel compelled to say it.

So this morning I get an email from Adepticon.  It was mostly about their charity raffle to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  My heart sank.  The Susan G. Komen charity is NOT an effective charitable organization.  It's a non-profit in name only, who only exists to bilk cancer survivors and their families out of hard earned money in order to raise more money.

Check out their tax return from last year.  They took in approximately $155 million.  They gave back $75 million.  Less than a 50% effective charity rate.  To put it in perspective, a charity is considered effective if it has a charitable rate of over 66%.  Look at the compensation of officers and other salaries.  Look at contract labor.  This is not a charity, this is a shake down.  

What they DON'T tell you on the return, which makes it even worse, is how many of the expenses that appear legitimate are not.  Many of those expenses are not paid to legitimate vendors giving good rates, but to companies that are owned by the board of directors' family members.  Illegal?  No.  Slimey?  Yes.

I STRONGLY urge you NOT to participate in this raffle, and to contact Adepticon and let them know how displeased you are with their decision to benefit the Komen charity.

Real Life: I Raced

Really short time trial, but the shorter they are, the harder/faster you have to ride. The two 90 degree corners really brought down the average speed. My official time was 5:20, which was good enough for second place. I'm getting used to finishing on the podiums. Winning is addictive.

Real Life and Shameless Plug

Hey gang.

This is completely unrelated to wargaming, but I thought I'd share.  As you guys know, I am a bike racer and I often talk about proper nutrition and diet on here.  I figure that's a topic that gamers can get something out of.  

So I started another blog, The Musette Bag.  It's basically a meal by meal summary of what I eat along with the nutrition information, and a summary of my training rides.  End of the day before bed I'll post my daily summary of calories and nutrition for the day.

From time to time, I'll post editorials discussing nutrition and fitness based topics that should be of pretty good value.  If that interests anyone here great, if not don't worry I'll keep the content here rolling as normal.

Real Life: My House Was Raided By The Police

This story starts, as most stories these days do, with someone trolling a web forum.  That someone was me.  I post semi-inflammatory comments on my local newspaper website.  The other people who post there are generally far right wing wackos, religious nuts, and people who are far too emotionally invested in city government.   What happens is the editors publish semi-literate Letters-to-the-editor about hot button issues.  This draws out the initial wave of wackos.  Then I come in and post someone that I know will inflame the wackos to even greater right wing nutjob fervor.  Classic trolling.

Recently, there was in my Podunk county a Frog Leg Festival.  Yes, that’s right.  A festival where rednecks and swamp people gather to eat fried frog legs and listen to country music and ride carney rides and play carney games.  The newpaper website posted a story about it, and I commented on the story by saying something along the lines of, “a well placed explosive device at the frog leg festival would do everyone a favor.”  Clearly, this is satire.  I am not a terrorist, not do I plan on using bombs to kill rednecks.  Mission accomplished, the next handful of comments were people offended by my comment expressing shock and outrage.  Classic trolling.  My comment was deleted by the moderators and I assumed that was the end of the story.

Before I start the next phase of the story, it will only make sense if I take a brief aside.  In our local government, there is a political gadfly.  The gentleman is a conspiracy theorist anti-government nut job.  He attends every city council and county commission meeting and regular accuses the councilmen and women of being liars and thieves.  He makes all sorts of preposterous allegations.  Not surprisingly, he also posts the same insane ramblings on the newspaper website.  He is my favorite character as he is a completely paranoid delusional nut job.  Not only do I troll the website in general, I troll him in specific.  My screen name is a variation of his real name, this is a key detail.   Remember, before you think I’m a jerk for what follows, that this guy is a lunatic.  He is an awful person and deserves all the bad things in life.  Don’t believe me?  The guy evicted his own children from the house he owns that they rented from him. 

So back to the story.  Someone reported my “explosive device” comment as a terrorist threat to the sheriff.  Some simple moron actually thought it was a legitimate threat.   So the super sharp detectives got my IP from the newspaper and zeroed right in on me?  As I learned after the fact, the extent of their investigation was to see that my screen name was similar to this guy’s real name, and assumed that I was him.  What happens next is where the story goes to epic.  They pay a visit to this guy at 9pm Friday night to ask him some questions about the posting.  Since he is a paranoid, anti-government wacko, he told the detectives to “get lost, pigs.”  Smooth.

The police did not get lost.  They got a warrant.  And they came back to his house around midnight and bashed the door in.  It didn’t take long after that to get his cooperation, and it didn’t take long after that for them to realize that he wasn’t the poster of the “threat.”  I knew I was an expert internet troll, but my trolling is apparently so good that it crossed over into real life.  A combination of his innate insanity and my expert trolling resulted in his door getting blown off the hinges.  Sometimes I manage to impress myself.

So the detectives finally trace the IP and narrow it down to my employer.   The IT people quickly figure out who it is, and I get summoned for an interview with the detectives. The detectives asked me a bunch of questions about the post itself.  I tried to explain the joy I get of exciting the lunatics on there with my trolling.  They were serious people and didn’t see the humor in making people on the internet mad at you.  Maybe it’s a generational gap, I dunno.  I figured everyone knows the internet exists for the sole purpose of half the population using it to infuriating the other half, and then laughing about it.   Then they asked me about bomb making and if I was involved in any extremist political organizations.  Of course, I replied that I am not a bomb maker, nor am I affiliated with any revolutionary groups.

I figured that cleared it up, but the detectives apparently weren’t convinced.  They asked me if I would object to them searching my house.  I asked, “if I say yes, are you going to destroy stuff and trash the house?”  They replied that they wouldn’t so I said sure.

They put me in the back of their car, which luckily enough was an unmarked car and not a police car which would have been humiliating.  We get to my house.  They do a cursory look around and even say, “You have a nice house.”  Gee, thanks.  They did a brief search through my living room, kitchen and garage.  I honestly think If I had the chemicals to make a bomb in my garage they wouldn’t have found it.   They went through the drawers in my bedroom briefly.  They didn’t even find where I stash my pistol and my shotgun, though I did warn them ahead of time that I was a gun owners.

What they were interested in, however, was my books.  If you haven’t been to my house, I have several book cases full of books.  I think they were looking for instructions on how to make bombs or revolutionary propaganda.  They spent 5 minutes looking through my room, but 20 minutes going through my books.  Every now and then they would pull one out and ask me what it was about.  “Umm that one is a compilation of essays from a symposium on the collapse of ancient civilizations.”  Very controversial stuff there.   My copy of The People Speak by Howard Zinn got a weird comment out of them.  The detective pulled it out and said, “now I see where you get it from.”  I don’t even know what that means.  I didn’t know Howard Zinn’s books spark people into trolling websites, or maybe the cop was a fascist and doesn’t like Howard Zinn.  Luckily, they decided there was nothing of interest  to them there and gave up. 

I say luckily, because I remembered later that I own a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook that I bought when I was 15.  If you aren’t aware, that book is basically an instruction manual of how to over throw the government and make bombs and weapons out of house hold items and things that can be acquired at hardware stores.  I am rather glad that they didn’t notice it, because it may have complicated matters somewhat.  Or a lot.  Then again, I didn’t commit a crime, and owning that book isn’t illegal.

So all told, I have achieved epic troll status.  I got my enemy’s door bashed in by the police through my machinations on a website, and I came away with a fantastic story.  At no time was I really worried, since my “threat” was clearly satire and covered by free speech.  Actually, the only thing I was worried about was how my boss would take it, but she didn’t seem to care at all, and in fact thought the story was great.  Win again.  A cursory search of my book shelf is a small price to pay for the smiting of one’s enemies.

Real Life: I Raced

It was absolutely brutal. My moving time was 5'49", which is on the slow side for a century, but when you take into account the amount of climbing (over 4,000 feet) it makes a lot of sense. I had awful calf and quad cramping from my 65 on, and you can see that my speed dropped a lot once that started happening. Luckily, I wasn't the only one, most of the field was equally shattered by the difficulty. I can honestly say that was the single most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.

It gives me a new respect for professional cyclists: that would have been an average to moderately difficult Tour de France stage. And it left me completely wiped out. They would have to go repeat that ride, and much harder ones too, 20 more times before the end of the Tour. Their fitness is at an unreal level, and I completely understand the pressure on them to use performance enhancing drugs. To have to compete in races that difficult for 21 consecutive days, and to be expected to excel in them, let alone simply surviving them, the pressure must be enormous. When you expect people to be super human, don't be surprised when they resort to super human resources.

Anyway, I thought I'd share this with you guys. Have a good Thanksgiving.

Friday Odds and Ends

First, an update on my crash Sunday.  I am walking much better now, but I'm not anywhere near full mobility.  The joint where my leg meets my hip gives me shooting pain still when I bend certain ways, so I'm definitely not fully healed.  I have a race this Sunday that more and more is looking like it's not going to happen, which is a bummer.  I've been looking forward to this event all summer, as it was the official end of the racing season, and its probably the hardest race of the year.

But my problems are small potatoes compared to what happened to the other guys involved in the crash.  Dr. Matt, who was the first to crash, is in really bad shape.  He suffered 6 broken ribs, a collapsed lung, broken hip, and shattered his shoulder.  He is really messed up.  He is a surgeon, and he had to cancel his surgeries for the next 3-4 months.  I couldn't imagine what I would do if I was facing his medical bills and the 4 months loss of income.  In all honesty, I'd probably be moving in with my folks.

Dr. George, the guy behind me who crashed into me, suffered a broken knee cap.  He had no idea at the time.  He finished the ride home and went about his day, but Monday morning when he woke up his knee was swelled up like a basketball.  X-rays showed a fracture.  So he will be out of commission for a few months.  So compared to these guys, I got off lightly.

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On the 40k end of the spectrum, Kennedy made an interesting comment in his already interesting article.  He advised us that it is profitable to not look at war-games as war simulation, but as a set of rules, like any of the rules we encounter at work or in life.  I interpolate that to mean that as people are adept at figuring out ingenious solutions to the rules they are given on a work project, why do so many people ignore that ability while gaming?  Clearly, they would be better and more competitive gamers for it if they did.  But you know what?  I'm glad they don't.  I was at a tournament once and had an extremely awful game against a gentleman who was the definition of WAAC douchebag.  The game was not fun for me, and I highly suspect that the game isn't even fun for him.  Afterwards, one of my buddies made a very astute comment about him, "that guy isn't even playing Warhammer, to him the game is a really difficult math puzzle, and he doesn't seem to even enjoy it."

And it's true.  He reduced the game to a set up rules to be exploited or overcome, and the end result was just painful.  I know Kennedy was not suggesting to do that, but I throw it out there as a cautious warning of what can happen if the game is taken too abstract and simply becomes a math puzzle.

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Dethtron coined a new term: FAAC.  Fluffy at all costs.  I like it.  I will do my part to make sure it spreads around the 40k-web.  I've already mentioned a "WAAC douchebag" in my post today, hopefully in the future there will be "FAAC douchebags" given similar mention.

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Kirby is exploring the depths of his love affair with Master of the Forge.  He subsequently posted a few 6 dread lists of various flavors.  I enjoyed this whole series and have been following it closely.  The only thing that I'm concerned with is that 6 dreads in a list is slapped with the label "competitive."  I'm not convinced these lists are winning in the real world tournament scene.  I played such a list at this year's 'Ard Boyz semis and the 6 dreads DID scare my opponents during deployment, but during the game they were simply a nuisance.  Granted this was at 2500 points; at 2000 points or 1750 points, I could see 6 dreads being significantly scarier as the opponent will have ton less utility to deal with them.  At this point though, I would caution anyone of running out and buying 6 AoBR dreads without playtesting first.  While lists with 6 dreads qualify as 'Tricky and Cute' for sure, 'Tricky and Cute' does not automatically mean competitive.

Crash!

So yesterday on the local fast group ride there was a crash.  We were in a 6 man paceline on A1A going about 30mph. I was in third position, the guy in front of me (Dr. Matt) rubbed wheels with the guy just in front of him and he went down. I crashed into him and the guy behind me crashed into me....

Dr. Matt, the guy who went down in front of me got taken off by ambulance on a stretcher, he probably has broken ribs and a broken hip. I got off relatively OK. I have bad road rash on my hip, and my jaw feels like I got smashed by a haymaker. My helmet is crushed, but my brain isn't, so that's good. I don't have anything broken but I'm guessing it will be a few days before I can walk normally again. I'll post pics of my helmet and road rash soon. Also luckily, my bike is OK, I think. No signs of concussion or hemorrhaging so I think besides bruising and soreness I'll be OK.

The wreckage of my helmet Part 1.

Outside view of my helmet and the chunk that got crushed.

Road Rash.

Computer Issues

There was a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to get done this weekend, but thanks to my nVidia 8800GTS dying, I got basically none of it done.  Including modeling and painting.  Plus it's never fun to plunk down for a new video card at Best Buy prices unexpectedly.  If I knew I was going to need to a card I would have gotten one from newegg and saved a bunch.

Odds and Ends

Looks like I'll have a full menu of modeling and painting this weekend...

Ravening boxed set, command squad, and a pack of meltaguns.  Not pictured, the pack of storm shields I ordered.  Big pimpin' two wheeled command squad incoming.  

Before I put these together, though, I'll be painting my last two Reaper Bolt Throwers for my Dark Elves.  They are primed and sitting on my painting table.  I'll do a step by step pictorial on those for your viewing pleasure.

Now that the hobby crap is out of the way, I'd like to take the opportunity to criticize well liked people in the GW blogging community.

Stelek comments, quite rightly that 5 rounds of play is tough in a single day, but isn't too tough to ask when you're competing for a nice cash prize.  But I do have a bone to pick about the harshness of waking up at 7:30 to play.  Boo hoo!  I wake up at 6 A.M. everyday for work, and even earlier on the weekend for cycling training.  I don't think people who are out of college and living (ostensibly) in the real world should have any problems with being up and functioning at 7:30A.M.

This is a good tactical article.  This is not.  I love Fritz and I respect the work he has done for the 40k blogging community, but sometimes I feel like BoLS will publish some "tactics and strategy" articles that are basically filler.  I don't know what kind of pressure Fritz is under from Bigred to pump out articles regularly, but I think Spacecurves set the bar high enough that I'd rather reduce the posting schedule and put out more quality stuff than the current system.

In a non-wargaming note, it used to be that money could buy you the legal system through hiring a high priced defense lawyer and expert witnesses.  Now- apparently- money gets you off without even having to spend it.  Just BEING rich is now a defense in court cases.  If you are not familiar with this story, let me recap it for you.  

An ultra-rich hedge fund manager was driving down the road in his Mercedez, when he inexplicably veered into the bike land and hit a cyclist from behind causing life threatening injury.  Rather than stopping and calling 911 to get the cyclist emergency medical attention, Mr. Hedge Fund decided to just continue driving, probably to avoid having to take a DUI test would be my guess.  So he left the cyclist for dead on the side of the road.  The crime itself is heinous enough, smashing a 2500lbs vehicle into a defenseless person and fleeing the scene is absolutely awful.  But to have the temerity to argue that he should be let off with a slap on the wrist because a felony charge would "jeopardize his job" is the most egregious miscarriage of justice imaginable.   OFCOURSE IT SHOULD JEOPARDIZE YOUR JOB!  If I got found guilty of selling cocaine, the law firm I work for could, and should, fire me and I should lose my license to practice.  When you commit a fucking crime, you should pay the fucking price, even if that means you lose your fucking job.  

I don't blame the defense attorney for doing his job, but the prosecutor should be fired.  The guy's entire job is to see that justice is administered in the best interest of the citizens of the State of Colorado.  Unless you can possibly argue that the average citizen is better off with this maniac getting a slap on the wrist, this is gross incompetence.  Or maybe the State could just admit that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ultra-rich.  John Edwards (the disgraced political candidate, not the disgraceful psychic who takes advantage of old women) was right when he said that there are two Americas: there is the America that 99% of us live in, and then there is the America that the nation's multi-millionaires and billionaires live in which is essentially a consequence free paradise.