Tuesday, August 29, 2017

X-Wing for the upcoming Season and Political Hysteria :-)

So, thinking about what to fly next…  Current list is:


My Dengar Nym build is absolutely solid, but not what I would think of as being “fun” to fly against I think.  It is REALLY good but it requires a bit of skill to actually fly.  Counters?  I guess…  If I fly it smart though there are not many I am concerned about honestly.  I can arc dodge fairly well with both of my ships and the unlimited bombs are a thing that just erases fragile Aces.  Might swap the Plasma Torps and Cruise Missiles for TLT or something...  Dunno, people MIGHT figure out how to deal with the ABT version of Nym at some point...  

Looking at the “Hired Guns” expansion and the additional silliness that will ensue I think there…  My Kihraxz fighters get a HUGE boost and the Harpoon Missiles just look stupidly good.  Wave 12 is kind of spoiled as well and some things look interesting.  Frankly concerned about the Epic actions coming into the game with coordinate being on the new version of the Phantom Shuttle.  14 points seems pretty light for the action boosting potential.  The Rebels already have a number of points fortresses that would benefit greatly by having another Free Action at the end of Activation, so I am waiting and seeing with this one I think.  Might take some time, but I am confident someone out there will find a silly and broken combo to make this thing way too good for the cost.  The Reload action on the other 2 we have seen so far is another one, especially with more complicated Ordinance like the Harpoon Missile hitting at about the same time.  Having an effectively unlimited supply seems like it might be a bit too good.  And with the Harpoon especially, formation flying might well be a thing of the past.

Eh, wait and see…  Next event is in a few weeks so I’ll have to get in and preorder the Hired Guns stuff, maybe it will be here by then, else Dengar/Nym hits the table for me.

Started on Tanks by GF9…  Uses the 15mm WWII models that Battlefront uses for Flames of War, and I have a few of them around.  NOT really all that many frankly, I had a Platoon of M-3 Lee/Grant tanks in the mostly assembled/base coated US OD Green…  Quick repaint and turret swap for the British Grant tank gets me a LONG way to fielding the swarm of cheap tanks…  The typical game is 100 points and the basic Grant is 14 points, so I COULD field 7 of the bastards…  I have one coming along with my order of the base game through the Gopher gets me 6 and I secured an OP kit with I think 10 cards to field them if I need to…  So, I’ll have my first force in the game ready to go pretty darn quickly.  My main FoW force was American Airborne, so useless in this game I suppose, I’ll have to see what else I actually have as it has been a LONG time since I played that game.  1st and 2nd edition were kind of broken if you actually knew how Artillery worked and used it correctly.  American Artillery was the worst offender by far, and I felt kind of bad fielding such a broken force…  Well, usually, there were a few times I was proving a point and taking down someone annoying with what they felt was their uber force….   My Infantry was stubborn as Hell, armed to the teeth with every Bazooka they could “find” and backed by Artillery on the field.  I never had to move in most cases, just range the shots in, call for fire…  Then just keep calling for fire/FFE on the same target until it broke and/or died.  Tanks looks to be a VERY much simpler game, almost to the “beer and pretzels” level, but I think X-Wing has gotten more complicated and in depth, this makes for a nice break. 

And it got me out to the new Gopher for the first time to see Ken demo/have their first tournament.  The place is nice, big play area.  Not a LOT of product on the shelves, but I think it is starting out nicely.  Inside the mall, so limited in some ways, but again something to start out with and test the waters I guess.  CU seems like it works well with 2 good game shops, and I’m happy to see what looks like another nice place starting up.

Had another fair bit written up about politics and the like…  Lost it apparently, but going from memory:  Nazis?  I cannot believe that there are actual Nazis marching on the streets.  I remember watching the “Blues Brothers” when I was a kid and thinking “OK, they needed something bizarre and outlandish as the ‘bad guys’ for the film, so Nazis made sense for that”.  Now here we are 30+ years later and there are actual Nazis out marching.  Well, when I say “actual” perhaps I am stretching things…  They CALL themselves Nazis, but I suspect they are not actual National Socialists, just silly racists putting on airs.  In the other corner we get “Antifada”…  So, another continuation/throwback to the 1920’s/30’s in Germany…  The originals were the militant wing of the Communist Party supported by the Stalinists in Russia.  They were fighting in the streets against the original Nazis to determine what “flavor” of Socialism would rule in Germany.  They lost.  Thing is, I am not convinced the current iteration is NOT actually Communist.  They claim to be “Anarchists”, but once you actually look at what they are saying and wanting it all looks familiar to those of us who studied history and understand what Communism actually was.  Now it is appearing to those of us in the center that both extremist groups are willing to use/promote violence to achieve their ends, just that one group shares a great deal of ideology with most in the main stream media, so they do tend to either get NO coverage or coverage slanted to make them appear not so bad. 


If the President were to actually put down the cell phone and get off of Twitter for a bit…  Or better yet, just get someone ELSE to actually write posts and not seem so silly, reactionary and childish, perhaps the press/Left (not a lot of difference, I know) could relax a bit and calm down.  Not likely, and working where I do…  Well, being what I would consider a “fiscal conservative” / Heinlein style Libertarian I am seen as pretty far to the Right here…  I see myself being somewhere in the middle, I am not a Republican and cannot see any reason for the Government to involve itself in many of the “big platform items” that the party seems to care about…  Certainly not a Democrat, I grew up near Chicago and here in Illinois where the running joke is the sheer corruption that party stands for.  Wish it were just a joke, I get to see it firsthand a lot…


So, I keep to the old Army rule of “No Politics On Post” and just do my job to the best of my ability.  The hysteria levels HAVE dropped over the last months locally, and with the State doing its level best to destroy the economy in Illinois, there have been far more valid local concerns to deal with.  Glad on one level, sucks overall of course.

Eh, plus side a new Semester has begun and I have a LOT more to deal with so I can safely ignore that hysteria :-)...