Bluetoothless

Dear Microsoft,

Thank you for telling me I needed the newest Broadcom Bluetooth driver.  I took your advice and I'm now unable to use Bluetooth to connect my computer to my stereo.  Please say hello to Broadcom for me also.

Sincerely,
Michael

First try at Space Marine fluff

If you've played 40K at all you know that there is a ton of existing chapters and most all of them have some sort of crazy bad color scheme. I do not want to spend a ton of time painting mine since I already have too many other projects. Instead I was going to go with a simple brown highlighted by a few other small areas of color. However, they ended up looking like baby poop so I ended up painting them differently. :(


If I had kept them like baby poop I was going to make up my own chapter and use the following as my fluff. This was my first version so please excuse it being a bit of a mess:


“Dear Aunt Harrietta,

Hopefully this message be reaching you before you reach Terra and you be having your date with the Emperor’s Throne.  There not be much news to tell but I figure I should be sending you something to read and hopefully keep your mind off of whatever they do to those with our gift out there.

Ma is fine but pa be having issues with the gout again.  

In other news, you knows that old Imperial Fist whoo-hah’s fortress-weapon storage-depot thing up in the mountains?  The one they only come to check once every fifty years or something like that?  Seems some underworld types been sneaking in there and be stealing things to sell on the black market.  Guess they found out how much a power armor cod piece goes for on the black market and they be figuring the risk be worth it.

Anyways, seems the Adeptus Arbites found them out and they been fighting all over.  Next thing you know they find space whoo-hah’s sleeping in there in some super-secret-under-level and they go ahead and wake them up.  Next demon marines are attacking the fortress and our Arbites boys with the half awake space whoo-hah’s are all fighting back.  Pretty soon missiles be flying down here in the city and messing things all up.  Even messing up the dilly bean’s I keep stored in the pantry!

After a few months of this the Imperial Fist whoo-hahs show up and the demon things all leave.  Folks start talking about maybe the underworld types been working for demon types but they all dead now and Arbites boys did a good job.  Next the whoo-hahs all talking about starting a whoo-hah marine chapter here and immediately start poking holes in our Arbites boys to make them into more damn whoo-hahs!

So where I be going with this?  The head leader types all come to me asking if I my data chips I can recommend some fearless animal type for them to name their chapter after.  After cousin Willy got caught with those barn animals, the sick bastard, they locked him up and I inherited all his animal data chips.  I been keeping them in the basement but if the whoo-hahs want a name I can find one for them.  So what did I come up with?  The hard-ass double bitch slapping Honey Badger.  According to all the records they be the most fearless animal ever and I’m including a data clip so you can see.

Now the whoo-hahs, they not be too sure about it.  Seems some be liking the name Hill Giants, and others the Trenchers or some other dumb-ass name.  So I just spat on the head whoo-ha’s boot and told him I’d be deserving an ass kicking if I not be right and then I turned on the video.

So our planet be the home of the Honey Badgers for now.  They say they going to be doing some training for a few seasons before going off planet but we’ll see.  Not going to miss them when they leave but maybe they can keep something evil from eating us.

Anyways, Gill and the twins say hi and all that.  Hopefully I can be getting a few more letters to you before they eat your brain or do whatever they do to psychers out there.

Sincerely,
Otto Mutter IV, Vice Charmain of Dilly Bean Production, Master Dilly Beaner

PS. I sold your house.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

For my wife...

Michael: Getting ready to heat up soup.

Sent at 4:40 PM on Wednesday

Jeanette: STEW. Outside waiting for Jenn.

Michael: Sure, I'll stew a bit before I warm up the soup.

Jeanette: Do not poo on my efforts!

Sent at 4:49 PM on Wednesday

Michael: It is just pee, I poo-ed on your pillow.

New Space Marine Army

With schedule changes and the constant need to be available for other things on my usual Warhammer night I decided to make the swap back over to 40K after not playing it for several years.  Back when I used to play I was doing it all the time.  Before I used a highly modified zombie Imperial Guard army that include “ghost-a-fied” Witch Hunters; they were fun to use.  Before that I used Speed Freak Orks.  However because of all the rules and codex changes I’ve decided to keep all those packed away and instead build all the Space Marines I’ve had laying around for years.  (I'll post about my rule change frustrations in the future.)

For those of you who haven’t played 40K for years, for some reason the longer you play 40K the more Space Marines you pick up without even realizing it.  I picked up most of mine from buying the box set to get the mini-rulebooks and from running into kids who wanted to unload their poorly built and barely primed figs.  The last few things I really wanted to try I picked up at Crossroad Games which I highly recommend for all your gaming needs.

So what do I have?  Here is my working list of everything…

Built or mostly built:

• 1 Lysander (picked up from some auction for cheap and it is a good looking model)
• 1 Captain (from the box set)
• 1 Chaplin (was $1 but had to strip a lot of paint off of it)
• 5 Terminators with 1 heavy flamer (from the box set but added Imperial Fist arms that I ordered through Crossroads)
•  10 Tactical Squad Marines with flamers and missile launchers x 4.  (from box set and some kids who were dumping stuff, I wish they had some more weapon variety but oh well)
•  5 Space Marines with lascannons or a plasma cannon that can be subbed in to the 4 tactical squads or used to turn one tactical squad into a devastator squad (from the same kids)
• 3 Rhino/Razorbacks built so they can be used either way.  I also have turrets to make 2 of them Predators (also from some kid and maybe a store deal)
• 1 Land Raider (some kid nearly ruined it but I was able to get it looking right again, had to glue the doors shut)
• 5 Scouts with sniper rifles (new from Crossroads)
• 5 Scouts with pistol and weapon (new from Crossroads)
•  5 Scouts with shotguns (new from Crossroads)
• 1 Land Speeder Scout (new from Crossroads, I’ve yet to see anyone even use one yet)
•  1 Land Speeder (no idea)

In a pile so I need to decide if I want to build them:

• 2 More Land Speeders (not sure yet if I’ll build, one I got from some kid and is missing a lot pieces so I might turn it into an objective)
• 10ish more Space Marines (not likely to finish so I don’t need more than 40 marines)
•  5 Assault Marines (not likely to finish since I’m going to have too many Fast choices)
•  2 Predators

Things I want to get still:

• 1 More Land Speeder Scout (maybe, I don’t want to be spaming the same unit but I like the idea of using lots of scout units)
•  3 or 5 Scout Bikers (maybe)
• 5 More Scouts but with bolters (maybe, I want to be able to keep to units of 10 and right now I have 15)
•  5 More Terminators (just so I have a full unit of 10 but with the point cost I’m not sure if I would ever field a full unit)

As you can see this is more than enough 2000 point game, I might even be able to get to 3000.  I wish I had more options (such as plasma guns or melta guns) but with getting deals from other people you’re kinda stuck with what they had.  I might try to fix this with a bits order from GW but we’ll see.

Why so many scouts?  Half the 40K armies are some version of Space Marines and of those I almost never see anyone use scouts.  I like trying to win with unusual things as opponents seem more engaged when dealing with something they don’t normally see.  Most importantly, I like how the scouts look.  I’m a big fan of picking models that look good and building fluff and lists around that.

I the future I’ll make more posts about how I paint them, the fluff, and the lists I end up using.

End of Obsidian Shore

For years Kimlex and I played NWN2.  Mostly we bounced around various game worlds trying to find one we liked and eventually we ended up on a small game called Obsidian Shore.  At first what I liked about OS was that it stressed role-play but still had plenty of other things to do.  What also made it enjoyable was that it had a system for limiting PC levels so you always felt like you were advancing but the power level between characters was not so great as to destroy the chance for having fun.  Lastly and most importantly there were many many people who were fun to play with.

When OS was good it was great.  Being open to the public and run by volunteers there was always someone complaining about something but overall the DMs ran interesting plots and players developed engaging characters.  However, new games coming out and the lack of interest in the direction of plot lead to a minimal level of interest by both staff and players.

While seeming to have ended the game had a shakeup of staff and Obsidian Shore was reborn.  Several times the game world started to reach the level of interest it had years before but it could not be sustained as more and more competing games came out on the market.  Around December the server was turned off and a few months later the end made official.

I wanted to make this post to thank all the people who made OS special to me.  It started as just an online game world but became a true community.  There are many staff members and players who need to be thanked for their time investment with developing the world, their financial investment for hosting the world, and their creative investment for always pushing to make it better.  It is over now    but hopefully I’ll see you all again in some other game.

(If any old OS folks find this, I have copies of everything that was stored on the server if you decide that you ever need it.)

First Post

Yes, the world needs another useless blog.  Hopefully someone at some point in future human history finds a small part of what I write here interesting.