Oh Dark?

:-)  Yes, 5:30 sure seems to come earlier these days...  Been getting up every day to hit the basement and get in a workout before showering and herding the kids off to school.  Elliptical machine, weights, getting closer to where I want to be in order to actually start running again, though to be honest I am still concerned about old injuries there.  Knee, shrapnel, back, etc...  For the most part they never really did heal.  In retrospect, I probably should have taken the medical out from the Army, but there was that whole "pride" thing...  I just sucked it up and convinced myself that I was "better enough".  Made it through Ranger school, so I was probably right, at least for a while...  After a while, well...  :-)  Good thing I was never really a professional level athlete, it would have been more obvious that I was never going to recover fully...  'course, that also defined a lot of what I later became, getting "no one gets left behind" reinforced and drilled into your head over and over really did not change much for me, just really amplified a lot of how I was already.  Also made me completely unsuitable for other work...  That whole silly Pack loyalty thing just doesn't translate well to people who do not have it themselves.  If it has to be explained, it is unlikely it will be understood...

:-)  Yeah, darker moods these days...  Not sure why, but just can't seem to shake it in a lasting way.  Work is stressful, money is tight, other random issues keep popping up. And it just keeps building.  Have our first "real" vacation in a decade or more coming up next month, hoping that does not turn out horribly.  We'll see.  Should be fine, but Florida in June is going to be a hot swamp...  Maggie hates it when I refer to FLA as a giant swamp, but...  Well, the last few times I went there, I was air dropped or drove through huge swaths of swamp...  Having that whole "Green Hell" experience really does color your perceptions a bit.

Gaming is just not happening much if at all these days either.  Just not really getting into the current 40K scene.  Not enough of a group for much else at the moment either, so per usual 40K is about it for miniatures gaming at the moment...  Maybe Warmachine/Hordes will come back, I don't know...  We had a REALLY solid group for a long time that just faded and dropped off...  Infinity and Confrontation are good possibilities as well but just not there yet.  And at this point knowing how many miniatures I have in the basement of doom, I can't really justify buying a lot more...  Sucks a bit, there are a LOT of things I'd like to pick up, but I have to keep that annoying "reality" in mind...  And the fact that I have shelves and a desk overflowing with random minis from dead games of course...

Not much going on in the painting/conversion thing recently...  Really just a holding pattern until I see what, if anything changes with the new edition.  I have a bunch of Scouts I'm working on...  I always use them with my Fleshtearers, but don't have much use for them in other Marine armies I play...  Wolf Scouts are different :-), and those I am further along with...  Those lads are in every Wolf army I play...  'course, it has been a long time since I played them...  Perhaps telling...

We'll have to look over the Team rules from Adepticon, looked like they allowed some silliness there, but since those rules are widely used at other tournaments...  One player taking a special character modifying the Force Org allowed all of their team to use the modified Force Org...  So, Logan Grimmar becomes a MUCH better possibility, making Wolf Guard "Troops" for the partners...  And if Dave and I end up going out to play again, I think we can coordinate the lists a LOT better...  I think his list was good, mine was the weaker (Deathwing)...  I also screwed up bringing fully painted and WYSIWYG stuff over the "mostly painted" but better stuff I could have brought...  Silly me following the published rules :-)  Ah well, lesson learned...

Moving on...

So, working out every morning...  Getting up early and hitting the basement for the home gym and elliptical...  Trying to work out a schedule where I push myself, but not TOO hard...  Hit it too hard the other day, and so Monday was a much lighter day on the machines...  On the other hand, I'm also using the stairs a LOT more at work, and between that and the machines I'm already getting back into some semblance of shape...  We'll see, I am almost doing 10 minute miles on the elliptical and it hasn't killed me yet...  Seems to work the best for my schedule getting it in first thing in the morning, hoping I can keep at it... I can see my face getting leaner, and I feel a lot better overall, no clue how much if any actual weight I am losing yet, but...  Cutting out a LOT of random "bad" stuff, not quite all the way over to the "paleo", but looking like that is where I am headed...  Seems to be working for a number of my friends, and I'm guessing I can do it again...  Saying "again" because when we did our survival silliness, we ate what we could...  So deer, rabbit, snake, basically whatever I could catch or kill and didn't move fast enough to avoid me/us...  Worked, I survived...  Did not enjoy it, I'm still a city boy when it comes down to it, or that's what my Amerindian friends would say :-)...  Still, for a white boy, I move through the woods quite well, quickly and quietly...  Scares the hell out of a lot of folks, they assume that I cannot move that quickly and that quietly, I have a habit of just appearing places where no one really expects me to be...

Kind of brings me back to 40K with my Wolf Scouts...  Guessing they'll be the unit I finish up and get fully WYSIWYG in the event we actually get into serious tournaments...  We'll see how well the Army Painter method works for painting the lads...  Now, not all GW minis, in fact most are not...  Old Warzone minis, that silly Scottish faction I plaed, Wolves banes...  And they make excellent Wolf Scouts.  Something to kill time until the 6th edition hits, probably this summer...

What shape?

So, time to get more serious about the diet and exercise program...  More and more of my friends are doing this, and even most of the lads at work...  :-)  So, good peer pressure I guess...  I'm not entirely sure how much I've lost so far, and to be honest I'm not looking for a number here.  I want to get back into the shape I was in when I considered myself to be in shape...  Basically when I was playing Army, or right when I got out...  Finding that movement is easier at a lower weight, and the pain from old injuries is not nearly so bad most of the time...  But stronger now than I have been in a very long time, and taking the stairs at work and the elliptical more often is getting me closer to being "in shape" enough to start running again I think...  Also, the motorcycle is much easier to control in higher winds when I am stronger...  Not something that really matters much with the truck of course, but...

I'm not sure I am ready to go all out like some of my friends and completely change my entire diet, going "paleo" with lots of meats, no carbs, processed stuff, etc...  But, I have cut back seriously on the "junk", no alcohol at all this year, and a lot more in the line of :healthy food...  We'll see I guess...

Grey Knights for the win... sigh...

So, looking briefly at the Adepticon results...  8 of the top 16 playing for the Championship ended up being Grey Knights, and the overall champion was one of them.  I'm shocked, simply shocked to see so many there :-)  Yes, I am a big fan of "Casablanca"...  When I do play the GK, I almost feel like I HAVE to tone them down just to be fair to the opponent...  Not that I am just that much better than the other folks playing, but that I really feel the army is just that far out of line with the rest of them out there.  Any time you get so many special rules modifying or changing basic rules of the game, there is at the very least potential for it to be unbalanced and game breaking.  :-)  Not going to go into the ones I feel are game breakingly powerful, but there are sure a lot of them.  I have heard them called the "Easy Button" of 40K, and I think  that is a fairly accurate description iff you try to build a powerful competitive army...  Building to the "fluff" or artificial background, you tend to get powerful, but balanced forces...  Expensive, elite armies that can probably go toe to toe with anything in the game and fare reasonably well.  Guessing this is what GW play-tested and accepted as "This is how the Army will play"...  Now, if you go in looking at the min/max potential, the system starts to break down quickly.  And there are several REALLY good, powerful builds available to the Knights, far more than just about any other Codex out there...  Note, this, like everything else I write is just my opinion of course, based on my experiences and such...  But I am fairly good at math ( :-)) and have a fair bit of experience playing the game to base the opinion on...

Looking back I think it really was about the time I read through the GK codex that my "40K Malaise" really started...  I was able to spot a good number of game breakingly stupid combos on my initial quick skimming of the book, and more and more kept popping up.  I thought that it just could be my interpretation of the rules/book, but after the FAQs confirming them, no...  So, back in the back of my mind I think I started thinking that I've seen this all before, this is a game ending a cycle, ripe for a "new version that will fix it all"...  So, the company either intentionally breaks their stuff or realizes that "codex creep" has gotten to a point when a complete rebuild is the only option...  Sadly, this is also about the time I started to pull way back on my model purchases...  The GK Dreadknight is a neat model, glad I snagged one, and I play it in my forces...  Just it is one of the very few over costed things in the book given how silly the standard DN's are...  So, neat model, really expensive ($ and points), and essentially worthless on the field...  The Storm Raven is a very powerful model, I just can't stand the way it looks :-)...  Personal preference thing, but given how amazing the Vendetta/Valkyrie looks, the SR just does not work for me...  That and GW going over to a fairly poor resin for a metal replacement...  Understandable, I actually have "some" experience casting in resin myself, and with that silly useless Mechanical (Industrial) Engineering degree, I know WHY it is the best, most logical thing for the company to do...  Just that the results are far less than what I would have considered acceptable...  Guessing I'm more of a perfectionist there though, and without knowing a lot of the behind the scene details, that is just a WAG on my part...  But it was a factor in my decision not to be buying more stuff until it either evened out, or I found something I REALLY wanted...  And, sadly that has not happened or appeared...  Guessing my wife is happier about it a bit as not a lot of the wee toy soldiers are appearing to haunt the shelves in the basement, but going "static"in terms of what I have is slightly limiting...  Only slightly, I have a LOT of them in various stages of painting and assembly...

I THINK our 40K group will survive the summer, but if 6th hits and is complete crap...  Maybe not.  Already looking like we'll be losing a few folks here and there with real life stuff...  Maybe Confrontation, Infinity or Warmachine/Hordes will rise up and fill that gap...  :-)  As it happens I have a few armies out there, so will probably be fine with any of them, assuming that there is a regular night to game...  Needing that stress relief more than ever these days...  We'll see I guess.  If not, I guess I pick up some vid games and spend more time riding the motorcycle to blow off steam...

Ah, another week...

So, looking like I'm taking some time off of the 40K leagues and such...  I think just taking some time off will be best for the moment.  Some things keep calling me away, and honestly, my heart really isn't in it at the moment. Boredom I guess, but I think I have run out of interesting "let's try this" concepts for my armies...  It only took a few years :-)...  Rumors of the new edition coming, at least one of my armies is on the "short list" of armies to get a Codex update (Dark Angels)...  I just hope they don't screw up my army too much.  I like the Terminator suits...  A LOT.  And so I really hope I can field an army I think can compete with the new book using them.  Sadly, I actually HAVE a bunch of Powered Armored DA troops, so I COULD rebuild that army after I strip and repaint them...  Just that this particular army does not interest me nearly so much, especially being an old school Wolf player...  Remember the old traditions when Chip and I would send out a single trooper each to duel before each game whether we were on the same side or not...  And my lads trying really hard to sneak in and capture/kill the renegade DA's that his lads were hunting (2nd/3rd ed codex?) for no other reason than the DA wanted them, so having my Wolves take them was worth almost any risk :-)...  Besides, I really have little interest in playing yet another Powered Armor army, my Wolves are pretty much it for me...  While I HAVE a bunch of GK in PA, the main units in that Army for me are the Terminator suits...  I have "a few" of the RT era ones around...

Getting back into shape, albeit slowly...  Elliptical rather than running for the time being, working my way up in terms of time on...  Usually doing this after a LONG day at work, so I guess I will be more successful doing this first thing in the morning...  Don't WANT to mind, but I suspect it will be better all around.  So Elliptical, stairs at work, weights and cutting way back on the junk food...  Getting myself closer to the "correct" diet, loads of extra protein usually in the form of tuna, smaller portions and just staying away from the known "bad" foods for the most part...  I'll have to fire up the Wii as this is the only scale that I think we have at the moment...  Good enough way to track with the Wii fit...  Not really so into the Wii fit as a workout though...

Killing time in Bloomington...

Between meetings :-)  So, thought I'd jot down a bit of what I'm thinking...

Confrontation...  If it does come back, great.  There were some really silly, broken things in 3.5, so here's hoping they fix those things in the Phoenix edition.  There IS a campaign supplement called "Dogs of War", but that one was REALLY a beer and pretzels thing...  The silliness you could come up with made the Mordheim/Necromunda power games look like minor league child's play...  Yeah, didn't help that I was playing with 2 borderline broken lists to start with in the Wolfen Packs and Sessairs Kelts (Horde of Mugan, so the cheap Centaurs and Giants were even cheaper)...  But getting to choose from SO many of the broken abilities to add to just about any of your troopers, it got really silly and broken really quickly...

But in any case, I do miss playing the game.  As a tournament game it had some problems, but it was always fun to play in our group...  But then having a good and reasonable group tends to make just about any game good...

Infinity...  I do king of hope that the game picks up here locally...  I've only played it a few times, but it is a good system I think...  And I'm picking up a few more of the Highlanders for the Aridrana (sp?) army...  Lacking the whole "High Tech" thing without ANY hackers or BFR (the giant robots, I think TAG is what they were called :-)), doubt it will be a hugely competitive force, but it WILL be fun to throw down an army of Scottish Werewolves to tear up those armies depending on their high tech toys...

40K...  Well, I'll keep painting I think...  Decided to redo my IG vehicles in a US WWII paint scheme using "Brown Violet" from Vallejo like the FoW stuff I'm doing...  Fleshtearers are getting Scouts and I need to finish up the magnets for the Assault Squads so I can have them as Drop troopers or Mechanized...  Wolves?  Dunno, DA are looking like one of the next forces up, so I'll hold off on those lads to see what GW messes up for my Deathwing army...

So, things looking interesting for gaming, just not so much for 40K....

Wolfen...

So, looking like the Wolfen will be prowling again...  Time to break out the wolves...

So, here's some bad pics of the lads as I revive them from deep storage...

So a BUNCH of half painted Wolfen, and entirely too many for 3/3.5 games, but pretty broad selection of the lads...  OK, there are 2 females in there, Irix and Ashan'tyr...  So, a powerful mage and one of the really weird LE figs...  Mine is somewhere in the 3000's of 5000, "neat" figure, but honestly not all that powerful, and she really does not fit with the rest of my Wolfen's play style...  So, hopefully our old Confrontation group will start getting back to gaming...