Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

In high school I was a voracious reader, but since coming to college I found that my time goes everywhere else first, and reading is just an afterthought for a plane ride, or while waiting for the doctor. Recently I've found the time to get back into reading, and have been enjoying spending time with a good book, no 1's or 0's involved. My choice of literature ranges from epic poetry (Beowulf being the most recent) to "classic literature" (such as Pride and Prejudice) to science fiction, my choice in high school. But I'm not here to talk about my history, rather to write up the first book(s) that actually made me want to write a review. These come from the Black Library, the publishing house for Games Workshop, maker of Warhammer 40,000 (40k), and are part of the history of 40k. I expected a nice "history" lesson, since I like to roleplay when i play any game and now I could really curse the foul beings of Chaos, but got literature that is coherent over the entire set, is well written, and deals with many themes that are extremely prevalent in our society today.
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Well, in case you can't guess from the title, it's been exactly a year since I started this blog. To be more specific, it was November 20th of last year that I registered the domain. This post also (totally not planned, I swear) happens to be my 100th. Again, to be more specific it's my 100th page... pages include things such as my warhammer picture pages and the others you find under "Pages" on the right. So, this'll be a fun past, five days in the making, about all kinds of things dealing with the past year. ((Published a second time, I apologize))

Some History
The domain was registered while taking one of my patented Long Thanksgiving Breaks. That was ThanksGaming 2005, and I grabbed the domain one night while talking to that coder I always mention, Malaprop of Cambrian House. Malaprop kindly put the domain on his site, installed WordPress, and away I went. My first actual post (I believe) was on the 20th of 2005, but it was accidentally deleted, so the first surviving post is from the 21st.
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Well. Yesterday I found out about a mega battle going on at the Games Workshop store in Arundel Mills Mall in Maryland. Its only about an hour jaunt around the beltway, which at certain times, takes on 30-45 minutes. So, I came up, and brought another friend because I heard there was no points limit. I have about big army, when I actually gear them out, and think about how I put it together. So, I played my Imperial Guard (for the 120" range on the Basilisks... the table was 120" LONG), and gave my friend the Space Marines. I had no real army lists drawn up, which was a mistake. Anywho, our table was the center of three, and there was another off to the side, so we were the center of the line. It was humans against aliens, 40,000 point battle. Very, very fun. I won't write a full bat-rep here because the game lasted about 2 and a half hours, but we lost the center big time. Luckily, we held them long enough to let other tables finish up and come to our aid, resulting in a human victory! Needless to say I will be here again next week for the end of the battle. I will have army lists, and I will be ready to go. Main reason I wasn't ready here is I spent 4 hours this morning base coating 100 guardsmen.

Those of you who know me, know I just turned 20 years old. Those of you who don't, well, I just turned 20.
The party I had was a LAN party at my apartment, with the first person arriving 1 pm Friday, and the last leaving 'round 2 am Sunday. We had serious game play from about 6 pm Friday to 6 am Saturday, then again from 12pm Saturday to 1am Sunday. Games we played were:

• Battlefield 2, both 2 v 3, and with bots.
• Rune. Imagine a Viking first person slasher
• Dawn of War, a Warhammer 40,000 RTS.
• Counter-Strike Source
• World of Warcraft. Got a free guild, read on.
• Quake II, I had som weird problems in this game, which led to LOTS of TKs. As in, I'd slide a bunch, and keys would stick on. So, my hyperblaster would fire until out of ammo. And I'd be stuck in one place. Fun times.
• E.V.O. on an emulator.

'Twas much fun. The BF2 was at first straight up 2v3. Then we played it as Sniper Wars. Only kit allowed is the Sniper, and it gets really fun with as many people as bases. (Camp the base, wait for someone to try to cap, head shot). Quite realistic, in my opinion, never know where someone's hiding.

In World of Warcraft, a friend and I started new characters on this one server. Some guy jumped on general chat, and said he wanted to give up his guild. I offered him nothing for it, and he accepted. So, we had a night full of guild raids utilizing the entire guild! (Naturally, I had kicked out everyone who wasn't me or Casey).

Rune, in my opinion, was the best "LAN" game we played all weekend. It was simple, easy to understand, and yielded many shouted curses and death threats, as well as frantic running after throwing the final weapon, hoping to find someone to kill the person chasing you. Fun game, you should check it out.

To see some of the set up, check out this picture. Note me pondering my next move... I'm in the upper left, you can see two close friends in the upper right, and lower right. My system is in front of me, my laptop is facing the camera, next to it. The monitor facing the camera next to the laptop is mine as well. My roommate's system is set up on the bar. Not a bad amount of floor space taken up by 5 systems, two good speaker systems (could literally feel the progressive metal in the floor of the porch outside from mine).

If I missed anything, post it into the comments.

Ok, really long post I had on B&C about what I want my Marine Chapter to be. Please, someone comment on it, as I'd like to get a lot finalized before break.
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Well, thinking about the paint scheme I have right now (the 122nd Cadian) for my Imperial Guard, I realized I'm gonna need new paint. I'd rather not go spend money on that, so I'm rethinking my decision. Looking through the Imperial Guard Codex, I think I'm going to go with the 8th Cadian, in Winter Fatigues, as that will:

• If I get Ursarkar Creed, let him lead his 8th Cadian once more
• Use white, which I have about 4 of.
• Let me use my 8th Cadian Regimental banner

So, I'll be doing them, and hopefully start this week. Assuming I can bum a digital camera off someone, I should get pictures up.

Well, deciding to forgo my tattoo for a little while I've made a few Warhammer purchases.

I only buy off eBay now, due to my dislike to Games Workshop pricing policies, and also try to only buy when they're 2/3 off.

I got two basilisks, one not made, and one made and converted pretty well, and a Lemun Russ for my Imperial Guard. This is due to Shelby and my brother's pleas for more armour.

Normally that'd by $40 each for the basilisks, not including cost of customizing it with bitz, and $40 for the Lemun Russ. Total of $120. I got all for $60, with an extra $15 of shipping. Note, the shipping is not included in the GW prices above.

I'm quite pleased with this buy, and it's my warhammer purchase for this semester.

I'll let ya know how they turn out in battle.

Edit: Ok, I put pictures of them over on the right side, under "Warhammer Vehicles". Check 'em out. You can also view the pics by clicking on the name in the post.

We got crushed. Now, I wasn't able to get pictures (which I guess isn't too bad as only my forces were painted, and it was on a piece of plywood), but I will write up a short battle report, and provide links to my army lists. The First Company is the main bulk of the force, and the second was the rest.

For those of you able to read the lists, and understand 'em you might notice some weird things. I think Army Builder screwed up... a lot. One guy has 3 Close Combat weapons, and not bolt pistol... hmm... that's a puzzler, as I made all my sergeants the same. Also, there was user error. That's what irks me most is I didn't know my list well enough to use some stuff until half-way through the game. And some guys are all of a sudden missing power weapons I had previously given them... *peer*.

All told the game lasted 7 turns (6, with the random game length failing on the first turn, and our "Death Before Dishonor" rule being used) which was a major victory for the Eldar scum. They had 2500 Victory Points, we only had 1800. Excuses above aside, we got our butt's whipped. That won't happen again. From now on I'm going to design in Army Builder, then put it all onto paper. Just like the good old days.

Good performing units:

• Lascannon Dev squad
• Landraider
• Terminators
• Librarian

Poor Performing Units:

• Chaplains, all of 'em
• Scout Squads
• Vindicator, one lousy kill off ordanance

Now, take the above with this grain of salt. Those chaplains were user error for me putting them where they did not belong, ill-equipped anyways. The scouts just didn't do much, tragically, and that vindicator, should been in front of the rhino, not behind, as he never had line of sight.

As for the good, the lascannon teams elicited a few "oh crap's" out of the enemy, and were worth their weight. The termies only lasted one turn but, again, were worth their weight. Next time they'll deep strike somewhere painful. The Librarian didn't kill anything, but I kind of liked his powers. That landraider, I wish I had two of 'em. If I see another on eBay for $20 I'll definatly spring for it.

Sean or Will, if either of you'd like to make a post in response, lemme know (just use the comments).

I put up a pictures section using a WordPress plugin. Its on the right under "Pages". I need to fix the spacing, but that's gonna wait until I have real pictures to put up.

The title says it all.

Also, tomorrow I'll put up a battle report of a 4500 Space marine/Eldar Grudge Match. Hopefully we'll have a digital camera, and it'll include pictures.