Good morning all

Happy Saturday – Long weekend so time to work on some DfC

Hurrah for the weekend and a chance to relax and catch up on what’s been posted this week. Work really does get in the way of my hobby time. Still, it does pay for all of the shiny!!!!!!!

Huge thanks to @az and @dignity for the great interview segment. 😀

Yes @Warzan – Challenger went up in January 1986 (Reagan’s second term). I was a freshman in high school taking English midterms when we heard.

I was in my second month of recruit training (Weapons Training Battalion) when the Wall came down. You are so isolated in that training (absolutely no TV, newspapers, phone calls, no Internet in those days, and even your mail in censored) I didn’t even learn much about it until a month after it had happened.

I notice Warren and Az are going for the Americans, Justin is going for the Germans. No one picks the British. No surprises here. This is one reason I advocate “sliding the time scale” either forward or backwards just a little bit. 1985 really is a year when the British armor is “half a generation behind” the US and West Germans, with 1960s Chieftain upgrades trying to keep up with brand-new Leopard 2s and Abrams.

Go back to 1982 and they’re half a generation ahead (Abrams and Leopard 2s haven’t arrived yet and the Chieftain is still a world-beater). Forward wind later into the 1980s and the Challenger 1 starts showing up, and the British have totally “pulled even” with the Leopard 2 and Abrams.

Looking very hard at the Red Thunder expansion, if for no other reason than the T-64s. Hallelujah. What a huge step forward for Team Yankee, especially for the Soviet players.

Now if someone would just manufacture some T-80s . . . 😀 😀 😀

Happy Long Weekend!

Happy Weekend everyone

Some lovely models for the Hobby God bag.

I do like the look of the sculpts for the Necromunda release and have been thinking about the question posed by Warren.
For me I think there is definitely a nostalgia component to seeing the game released again but the big draw is the character/gang progression which was done so well in the past version and bitz box building a gang.
With the huge increase in companies since the original release the potential models and bitz available are now so much more. I am looking forward to building a gang that will likely consist of a number of models from different ranges based around a theme and shoe horned into a generic gangs ruleset for gameplay until I have a feel for the balance and then make my own.
I think a big part of the fun will be hunting for the right model, weapon, gear or equipment to make my own custom gang and taking them from concept to tabletop.

The Challenger mishap took place on my 20th Birthday which all seems a long time ago now? I remember watching the wall come down live on TV after weeks of protests in various countries . I have a bit of it in the house somewhere? A lady I work with was in Bucharest when Ceaușescu fell. She remembers being scared and hopeful all at the same time

To add a little to TY . The big games I mentioned in another thread were always based smaller Satellite states of the Warsaw Pact. Rumania Vs Hungry is an obvious choice given the animosity between the countries but may Greece Vs Turkey where a the revival of the Greater Hellas idea that was became a short war in the 20’s could be used as the Greeks try to retake Smyrna and then push into Anatolia

Wow. Tough crowd this morning. That’s what I get from not doing up my bases 🙂

But seriously. Congratulations, @fishman. Those goblins look absolutely awesome! I love the magical style that they have. I tip my hat to you, sir.

So I guess I’ll have to try even better next time? Challenge accepted! Getting a hobby god bag before Steve Jackson just became a life goal 😀

It’s the Weekend! (I think… been off for 2 weeks so every day’s like the Weekend)

Reading the printed rules for some games is important to know what rules are where. A tutorial app is all well and good for the core mechanics etc – but how many games a serious gamer will play have countless little ‘rulettes’ dotted about. When you need clarification mid game “Who you gonna call?”

dized works well for somethings, board games certainly but i think it would struggle with tabletop mechanics and things which dont resolve as move n square or collect n tokens as it currently stands, had a look at games expo and seemed ok, at best, perhaps as a demo game in pocket system, but with out the known constraints of the board i think it will struggle i.e. if you dont have the same terrain and exactly same layout as they use a demo of say 40k would be the same crappy getting started battle as you get in the book but on your phone, the main thing for me is that i want something to remove as many tokens/wound counters and similar clutter from the table as possible which you forget to update till you have finished your turn and get rid of the accountancy involved in some games, i.e. it needs to track what my opponent and im doing…

That said and its way to early for me to announce anything i am working on a companion/game tracker app framework of my own devising which will do things in a bit more of a war gamer way, which i plan to make compatible with warconsole’s battle report system…..

ah, the week is back on track starting off with a weekender.

Not even a hordes player but I want all the new Grymkin models, the entire collection is great and might just turn me into a collector.

The dized app is interesting but I would much prefer to watch a Lets Play. A shout out to @thisisazreal for his recent Dark Souls lets play, watched those and they pretty much taught me the entire game but was done in a way I was enjoying the show and learning at the same time.

Only a couple of weeks now until the Bootcamp, really looking forward to it.
Martin

ah, the week is back on track starting off with a weekender.

Not even a hordes player but I want all the new Grymkin models, the entire collection is great and might just turn me into a collector.

The dized app is interesting but I would much prefer to watch a Lets Play. A shout out to @thisisazrael for his recent Dark Souls lets play, watched those and they pretty much taught me the entire game but was done in a way I was enjoying the show and learning at the same time.

Only a couple of weeks now until the Bootcamp, really looking forward to it.
Martin

Many congratulations to our latest Hobby God; @Fishman. And kudos to our Demi-god; @tmsmnns. Great and deserving winners!

Could listen to @oriskany the whole weekend!
I’m very much looking forward to the article series 😎

The new Necromunda has cash-in written all over it. Setting aside, is it really Necromunda with different rules and 2-dimensions?

Yes, you can use 3d scenery, if you have it, but the tiles look boring and uninspired.

Ah the Weekender and a free weekend to watch it… how I’ve missed this 🙂

Team Yankee – I bit the bullet a few weeks ago and picked up the US and USSR starter sets and hoping to drag some of the local club guys in with me, so article series is perfectly timed for me, looking forward to seeing where it goes 🙂

Necromunda – If you look closely the tiles are based on FW’s Zone Mortalis tiles, and are designed to replicate the sewers of the underhive. They’ve already stated that the game is fully compatible with 3D terrain, so I think it’s more of a budgetary constraint of the box contents rather than “make it a board game”. There’s 2 large gangs with multiple options included so the sprue contents are going to be fairly hefty with them alone. To include the SW:A terrain in on that as well would push the cost above the magic £100 mark which will put a lot of people off.

Happy weekend all.

@ben, without glasses, looking good, and nice for us, the Reflexion of your laptop was always on your glasses.

Morning All,

@oriskany Nice interview and thank you for your kind words. I’m still a bit spaced due to jet lag so I haven’t had the opportunity to get fully engaged with the discussions from Part 1 of the TY series.

Fully agree with your points around the technological advancement. It’s a discussion I’ve had in my FLGS and various online areas.

Time to do some more work to my TY T-64 Battalion.

On necromunda. I was a huge fan of the original game, which I owned and played when it first came out. I too was disappointed at the prospect of the new game being a 2D board game. I understand that the rules will still include the skirmish/campaign game played on dense high rise terrain which we loved as kids, and that including such terrain in the box would have increased the cost. I also understand that unlike when Necromunda first came out, there is a profusion of such terrain available on the market now, including the shadow war stuff produced by GW.

Despite all that though, I cant help but feel that necromunda just won’t be necromunda without a big box full of flat-pack terrain. The ability to open the starter box, and have everything you need to build modular gaming tables that looked great, and were fun to play on was a huge part of the appeal.

I know people will say that card stock terrain doesn’t cut it in the modern tabletop gaming market, but it wouldn’t have needed to. Better plastic and MDF options would still have been out there for the people who wanted to take it further. Or the option to buy in via a separate rulebook and miniatures could have been there for people who already had better quality terrain. But cheap modular card terrain in the starter box would have been that fantastic starting point in the hobby which necromunda was for people of my generation, and that’s a missed opportunity in my opinion.

I can’t help but feel that the reason for not including it is a marketing decision. Maybe cheaper modular terrain in the starter box would have eaten into sales of GWs existing high quality terrain kits, which they will want to push alongside necromunda.

Grindr for gamers? Gamr.

On the subject of Chernobyl, I’m personally fascinated by the history of the disaster, and the fallout, speaking both figuratively and literally.

The controversy about the ecological and public health impact of Chernobyl demonstrates how little we still know about radiation and it’s impact on the biosphere.

I think Warrens surprise about the fact that people still live in the exclusion zone, and the fact that it will be many thousands of years before some areas are safely habitable (both of which are true) stems from the vastness of the areas covered.

The site of the reactor itself is still incredibly “hot”. That’s why the concrete tomb is required, and why so much money is being spent on the new one. Nothing can survive under that shielding, exposure times of literally minutes would be fatal, and it will be thousands of years before that changes. The key is and will continue to be containing that contamination to the site of the reactor itself.

However, even relatively close to the reactor, it is safe for humans to work. It has to be – hundreds of construction workers go there every day. Their exposure times are limited, like many workers in the nuclear industry.

Pripyat was a city, now within the exclusion zone where many of the workers at Chernobyl and their families were housed. Durung the disaster, radiation levels in Pripyat were high enough for many people to suffer acute radiation sickness, although I don’t believe there were any immediate fatalities in the city. Pripyat, like the rest of the exclusion zone was evacuated.

However, as Justin pointed out, there were, and there still are people who refused to leave the exclusion zone, and who still live within it to this day. There are also lots of people who enter the exclusion zone regularly, either legitimately or less so, including companies which operate tours. Pripyat is a tourist attraction today.

It’s relatively safe to enter the exclusion zone, and get pretty close to the reactor without radiation levels getting much higher than background. As I understand it, the main risk is contamination from radioactive material in the soil which can can be dangerous if inhaled or consumed.

@warzan You’ve might seen it already, but some ace cosplay photos taken in Chernobyl from the cosplayer Maul Cosplay and photograpther EOS Andy: https://www.facebook.com/pg/maulcosplay/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1385235881553190

There was “Eldar Jetbike chase” rules for 40k in a White Dwarf maybe 10-15 years ago. The idea was that after they player turns you’d move the terrain down the table lengthwise to simulate the jet bikes zooming through jungle or whatever setting you were playing in. When the terrain piece reached the end, on next turn you’d place them back from the other end.

We played it slightly modified (but way cooler!) with Orks vs. Dark Eldar. Dark Eldar were on Raiders and jetbikes and Orks on Trukks and other vehicles. We had rules for boarding and fighting on the speeding vehicles. If the models fell from the transports, they stayed on the board but got moved with the terrain. We allowed limited turning angles and amount that you were able to slow down, so you really got into situations where the vehicles crashed into trees and buildings.