212

212

So made it down to 212 pounds so far on the diet of doom…  I haven’t been down to this weight in a very long time and am easily fitting into clothes I’ve not fit into for decades.  Cleaned out my closet last weekend and dug out a bunch of things I had buried in the back of the closet in the “maybe someday” pile.  Actually having to rotate out things I was wearing for the last several years as I cannot actually wear them anymore without looking silly…  Boxers for instance J  Need to be sure they are caught under the now tightened belt lest they fall victim to gravity…  But is nice wearing things I wore working at Illinois Power or Ciber up in Chicago and finding them actually loose these days.  WW seems to be working quite well for me, had one “real meal “yesterday with the non-diet approved burger and it was quite nice…  While eating it.  After, not so much as I am clearly no longer used to eating that sort of food.  The running and workouts are going well for me, finally fully recovered from my illness and back to my now normal times on the runs.  Planking, body weight workouts and the like for the other 2-3 days filling in.  Probably best to start switching over to actual weights at some point as my cardio workouts are going well.  Endurance and strength back at levels I’ve not seen since my Army days, so just waiting on my Iritis to finally clear off (Doctor says it is ALMOST there) so I can get back to wearing my contacts…  I had forgotten how annoying glasses were, especially during the winter.  And without sunglasses I count on wearing a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes…  Ah well J

Gaming wise, waiting on the new FFG stuff to hit tomorrow we are told… My X-Wing card packs and Republic (Clone) reinforcements.  Slowly getting those lads painted up, or at least the few I have.  500 point games are fine for now, but until I have a Tank I suspect the 800 point level is simply not going to be a thing for me.  General Kenobi and 2-3 Squads or CPT Rex and 3-4 Squads being the best choices.  I have the BARC speeder and it does…  Well it does.  Some games it is amazing and it kills many things.  I typically send it off as a guided missile to be my Jaeger (hunter) and deal with Sniper teams or flanking Scouts that my Clones would otherwise have difficulty dealing with.  Were I playing more competitively I suspect that skipping it and having more Clones would be a better choice.  And with the lads, it is somewhat counter intuitive to have them bunched up…  When I was in, it was drilled in to keep spread out to minimize the damage from Artillery or things like Grenades or the like…  To b fair I suppose the armor I wore was nowhere near what the Clones are wearing and as of now there is simply nothing “Artillery-Like” in the game to pose a realistic threat to forming up in a flying wedge and moving toward the Enemy…  With their ability to share Tokens and easily get the Surge Tokens (“Focus” equivalent from X-Wing) to be used either offensively or defensively to enhance their battlefield effectiveness…  Between this and the far better basic weapon they have a huge advantage over their eventual replacements in the basic Storm Troopers.  It reflects the Republic’s emphasis on better training and far better equipment over that of the Empire with the more…  Well, more is better with no regard to quality…  “Quantity has a Quality all its own” I suppose.  This translates across most of the games FFG does with the Imperial things being the ones with the overwhelming numbers on their side and the Rebel/Republic having the FAR better but usually hopelessly outnumber Units…  And I usually fall pretty well into one of those sides with my personality and preferred play style, so that works out well for me.

Other game stuff, Bolt Action is still here, test minis for the British Airborne (though I suppose they use the word “Airbourne” J) camouflage smocks…  Still not really getting that, but getting FAR closer with some of the GW “Contrast” paints. At this point though I have only a handful of the lads even assembled so a ways off from actually getting in games…  One Armored Car though so the lads will have minimal Armor support when they do hit the table…

BattleTech….  Well, in cleaning some of the Basement of Doom™ I DID come across a large number of the ancient miniatures I had from the ancient times.  Some of them at least are just “point of pride” ones as we played the far more hard corps where if you lost the Mech on the field, you lost the miniature.  Could ransom it back or the like, but we were very much keeping with the “history” of the in game universe….  So, the ONLY reason I had some of those minis would have been captures that were never repatriated.  Like my eventual command Mech, the Banshee-3S.  The original Banshee was just bad.  Dropping the smaller engine in place dropped the maximum speed from 4/6 to 3/5 but freed up a LOT of space and weight for an actual Assault Mech’s weapon load out.  Went from a bad joke to an Assault class Mech that I would argue was actually better than any other out there including the (at the time) king of the hill in the Atlas.  So, it took some time, but I had mine go into the shop as it were and came out as a real Assault class Mech to lead out my Mercs.  I’ve stripped the lot and am repainting in the colors of the Skye Rangers.  So, dark red/crimson body and black on the arms.  Looking pretty good so far, at least a unified pattern to make them all look like part of the same force.  And keeping with my tradition of finding a strange, usually Scottish, sub faction to put my forces into J…  Waiting on the Kickstarter to have the new things including the redesigned Clan Mechs which for me will go either Clan Wolf or Clan Wolf in Exile… Keeping with the theme, and the WiE forces are allied to the Skye forces, so planning ahead I am to keep ALL of my stuff in a nice, neat package…