Long time coming

Jesus it's been a long time since I posted anything, been to busy I suppose.

So, onto it, well I've passed all but one of my modules for my BSc in Computer Networking, which means a resit in August which is a pain in the ass, but never mind.

The fitness regime is lets say kicking, more I'm getting my ass kicked than me kicking ass but that's cool because I've got hard muscles for the first time in ten years, also I can do proper push-ups again and I'm starting to run the belly off, I couldn't do that with just walking and running last summer. The squats are easy, it's the crunches that are a bitch, and kettlebells are awesome even if they aren't the Onnit Primal bells, they looks so cool but considering they would cost almost £300 before posting and the import tax I can do without. Also I started to do Yoga, yes me, who always made fun of guys who did Yoga, but to be fair I made fun of the new agey assholes.

Carronade 2015 was a rousing success both for the Falkirk club which had it's biggest numbers in clubs, traders and feet throught the door this year, and for the Glasgow District club as well.

We did two displays, my own Assault on Gibraltar using Dystopian Wars (my what a surprise for you all) and a Spanish Civil War game run by Balkan Dave himself.

A few photos are below including George Dick's awesome Rock of Gibraltar, the Britianians were from Bill Robertson's collection and the Prussians are mine, some of which were I will admit whole heartedly finished the night before

 

I could not honestly tell you who won or how the game was played who killed what and what killed them. I was too busy talking with the many people who came to see the game. I let Bill and Sandy do the shooty shooty but ass the landing on Gibraltar never actually happened since we ran out of time I think the Britannians won by default, (BOOOO). We actually ran out of fliers for the game midway through the day, we never run out of fliers ever and the last one went to the Wargames Illustrated's roving reporter, hopefully we'll get a mention.

Details of both games are on the GDWS site.

Assault on gibraltar

There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama

Also Balkan Dave's blogpost on the show



Next up in displays will be an all aerial Dystopian Wars game at Claymore. Yes that's right all airships and fighters. Lots of aces flying around the place. Thing is though it's seven weeks away and I've got pretty much all the Britannians and Russians to paint. Thankfully the Prussians are all done.

I have finished my book I was working on and am currently in the early stages of the first edit before I send it out to have it perused by some people to get their feedback on the various aspects of it. Still on course for the March release next year, whether it's a traditional, indie or a do it myself publishing is yet to be seen.


Also I'M GOING TO THE UFC, yes that is correct I will be in Glasgow at the Hydro on the 18th of July, one of the lucky 13,000 that will witness the first ever Scottish UFC event and what will be the loudest ever UFC event in the history of the organisation. Dana White thought Dublin was loud,  I say fuck Dublin, there's going to be twice as many of us and as everyone knows the Scots are louder than the Irish any day of the week. There's only been 9 of the 12 fights announced so far, so I'm hoping that means some trials for some of Scotland's up and coming fighters. I'm going along with the sister's baby daddy but I know of a half dozen people who got their tickets. It's the fastest sell out of a UFC event in Europe ever, 25 minutes and all the tickets were gone. To say I almost bounced off a wall when I got the tickets would be an accurate assessment, also the shit eating grin I had for a week pretty much summed up how awesome I thought it was.

Still waiting on a release date for the Alliance of Worldbuilders Anthology and will post it when I know. I know there are some issues with it at the moment, I'm not sure what they are but as I said when they are available I will let you know.


All in all not a bad report of the activities.


***EDIT*****

Oh, aye, I forgot, 53 SNP MP's in Westminster (maybe 54 if that lying Wanker Carmichael get's booted out), tae fuck wae the establishment, maybe the EU referendum will give the English the kick up the arse they need to see that the fuckin established wankers aren't working.

Progress Report number how should I know.

Alrighty folks

So, it's been a couple of months since my last update.

Just spent the better part of three months losing over 30 pounds, and any time anyone tells you excercise is fun is talking out of their ass, it's not fun if you are 50 odd pounds from healthy and want to kick that fat's ass, got another nine pounds to go before I get back to the gym and start rebuilding the upperbody and getting arms to resemble the tree trunks that are my legs.

That's going to be slowed down due to me starting my 3rd year of my degree, it started last Monday and I'm already bashing my head off of the wall at one of the modules, Proffesional Issues in Computing, more like philosophical claptrap designed so I don't go out and start destroying people's computers just cause I'm getting paid to do it. I'm already a member of the BCS, the rest of the course isn't bad so far other than the fairly heavy duty labs for Unix, but Unix is frigging important for anyone that wants to deal with more than 2% of the World's servers.

Just found out that I'm potentially going to be published again somewhere around Christmas, you may have noticed that They Rise and We Smite was removed from the blog, that would be the reason for it, there's also another couple potentials. I had submitted it to the Anthology well back into 2011 but it never seemed to ever be going to materialise, hence the posting up here, but my good friend and all around crazy worker Sammy HK Smith, author of In Search of Gods and Heroes, available at Kristell Ink Publishing, and her team at Grimbold books, who recently held a very successful Kickstarter campaign to keep the indie publishing house open for another couple years, are going to publish it, more on that when everything is finalised and I'm actually sure that I'm going to be featured, from recollection They Rise was a bit of a frigging shambles and in need of some serious editing. But I'll probably still shill it anyway since it's a charity anthology and I can resist shilling for charity.

The Falkirk District Wargames Club to which I am a member is doing a Necromunda campaign, which I bought the day it came out way back in 1995 and had been playing in campaigns on and off into the early 2000s but probably not since 2004. I was going to use Ratskins, none of the official models right enough, just some Sci-fi Native americans that I had from some game that I got for nothing that I never ever played, I had converted them and painted them and then played with them a couple of times and promptly realised it that was a slightly dumb idea to use a gang that had no heavy hitters and ancient weapons even for today's standards. So I promptly changed my mind, and decided that I would use one of the House Gangs. Back in the day I used Orlocks, cause back when I was young and stupid, I liked the look of them so I bought them. This time around I decided that I would choose a gang that was more geared to how I play games, full tilt aggresive, so I went for the Goliaths. I was just going to use the plastics I had from the two boxed sets that I had bought in 1995 and 2002 the first for a fraction of the actual price in some one day sale that the Glasgow Games Workshop had on. But the problem with the plastics was no individuality, even putting in new heads and converting heavies, it wouldn't have the flavour of my old Orlock gangs where I only used one of each of the plastic figures, so I went onto ebay to see if I could find any, find many I did, and I promptly put three bids on two of which were essentially the same models, minus one player or another, the other was a group of Orlocks incase I didn't get the Goliaths and I could just supplement my old ones with the new ones. I was thinking, I might win one but I'll never win three, nope I'm an Idiot, I went and won all three, so here I am sitting with all these models and thinking, gods damn it I'm still going to have to get converting shit, though screw trying to convert the heavies, just be two heavy stubber identical twins with some different tatts and a different hair colour.

Once they're all done with the paint jobs, I'll be uploading the pictures from each stage of the process, a well documented one, I like projects like this where every model itself is an individual project in it's self.

As for the writing of the books, it's in it's constant state of who the fuck knows, I think I started another two projects over the summer and really didn't do much of it, though I did manage to sit down and go through Burn Forest City Burn, and decided the title sucked a disesed Monkey's puss infested nut sack, and the second go at the first edit will be beginning as soon as I get a few spare days to sit and go through it, line by line, otherwise the writing hasn't been too far up the line over the last couple of months, felt a little disconnected from my creative side for a while.

For this current Glasgow District Wargamers Society club year I will be doing both the Falkirk Carronade show and the Edinburgh Claymore show, both will be Dystopian Wars, Carronade will be a port strike, witht he Prussians striking a Brittanian port, possibly Malta, or Gibraltar, the port itself I won't be making, that'll be down to the esteamable George Dick who's Wild West town at this year's Claymore (At which we were fuckin well robbed of the best Public Participation game by the Political shitheads at SEWC, who I found to be kind of obnoxious and cunty) was absolutley stunning and made all the more so by his hand crafted Mine. The pictures are somewhere which I can't remember and I'll post them at a later date. The Claymore one will be probably an aerial battle between Brits and Prussians again, mainly cause between us in the club that's the most collected fleets.

Anyway, that's me all up-to-date as far as I can think of.

Adios

Long time gone.

        So, it's been about a month since I posted, been busy.

        At the beginning of the month I was at Carronade, the Falkirk Wargames show, for a display of Battletech, one of two at the show, nice to see the game getting a new breath of life. Pictures and a report will follow soon, just been busy with other things. It was a good game I think, didn't get any people into participate though the show was awash with a whole load of public participation games and the G3 battletech display was using the quick play Alpha Strike rules so it's no surprise we got no play. I did break the no buying more Dystopian Wars ships until the new rules come out rule, when I bought the Ottoman Battlegroup but the boxed set was over 30% off, and I was never likely to see that much of a discount, when you save almost twenty quid you aren't going to argue about it, also bought a blue mat for doing sea games.

       Planning on doing a Dystopian Wars game next year at Carronade, depends on whether or not I can get more assistance from members of the club next year, both GDWS' displays manned by two members a piece, would have been nice if we could have got some help.

         What's been keeping me busy is College which is nearing it's end, only got one exam to go  and that's me done, also got my conditional acceptance to Uni year three the other week which is great. I passed the second to last today with 96%, think I got the best grade in the class which just goes to show if I actually study for shit I pass it with flying colours, wish I had learned that twenty years ago.

          I've based a number of my Dystopian wars ships in lieu of the Display next year, and if I do say so myself it came out awesome, some of them better than others, and like the Falkirk Display pictures will be forth coming. I decided that the plain flight stands were kind of boring with the clear perspex so did some basing of them too, by no means is it a pro job but for my limited experience with basing (the only stuff I've ever done are the Battlemechs that I finished four years ago) they came out damn good.

          Also the writing constantly keeps me busy, more ideas keep flooding in, it's as always the discipline of stopping myself from letting my imagination run amok.

Battle of the Marianna trench

As promised the first battle report from Glasgow using Dystopian Wars fleets.

Facing off against each other were myself in the guise of Vice Admiral Rudolf von Der Goltz in charge of the main Prussian Fleet, Sandy Dewer as Air commodore Johan Müller in charge of the Prussian Air contingent and my younger brother Andrew in the character of Kaigun Shōshō Enomoto Sukeyuki of the Kappa Division of the Sword army of the Empire of the Blazing Sun, on the other side Bill Robertson in the as Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Northbury of the Brittannia Naval Armada and Ian Beal (Yes, that's really his name) playing the part of commodore Josiah Tattnal of the Federated States of America's Navy with attached units of the FSA air fleet.

The Prussian order of Battle:


IPNS Bismark a Blucher Class Dreadnought and Admiral Von der Goltz's flag ship
IPNS Graf Spee a Blucher Class DN
IPNS Graf Zepplin a Rhine class Fleet Carrier
IPNS Brandenburg an Emperor class Battleship
Cruiser Squadron 1 (Konigsberg class battlecruisers)
IPNS Moltke, Vonder Tann
Cruiser Squadron 2 (Reiver class Cruisers)
IPNS Prinz Heinrich, Furst Bismark, Prinz Aldebert
Cruiser Squadron 3 (Reiver class Cruisers)
IPNS Agir, Elbing, Falke
Destroyer Squadron (Stolz class)
IPNS Stoltz-II, Sachesen, Wuttenberg
Frigate Squadron 1  (Arminius class attached to Graf Zepplin)
IPNS Borther, Berlin, Rothe Lowe
Frigate Squadron 2 (Arminius)
IPNS Morian, Chur Prinz, Kur Prinz
Corvette Squadron (Saxony Class)
IPNS Stoch, Biene, Eber, Stien, Viper
A Metzger-B class Robot commanded by Brother Theodore Janus of the Teutonic order
Air Contingent
IPAS Derflinger  Imperium Class Sky Fortress
IPAS Fritzjof Gewitterwolke class Airship Air commodore Johan Müller Flagship
IPAS Geifon, Goeben, Pflicht class Scoutships
2 Geier Class Bombers

Kappa Division of the Sword army of the Empire of the Blazing Sun
EBSN Asahi a Sokutsu class BS and  Kaigun Shōshō Enomoto Sukeyuki's flag ship
Cruiser Squadron (Nakatsu class CR)
EBSN Furutaka, Kitakami, Mogami
Frigate Squadron (Uwatsu frigate)
EBSN Kaiyo Maru, Shohei Maru, Kaiten
2 DFA-17 Bombers

Brittannia Naval Armada
HMS Vanguard  a Majesty class DN and ice Admiral Sir Thomas Northbury's flagship
HMS  Courageous, Furious Avenger class Carriers
HMS Repulse, Superb Ruler class Battleships
Cruiser Squadron 1 (Tribal class CR)
HMS Cavendish, Hawking, Raleigh
 Cruiser Squadron 2 (Tribal Class CR)
HMS Trobisher, Effingham, Cumberland
Frigate Squadron 1 (Attacker class Frigates attached to Repulse)
HMS Heda, Pomone, Shannon, Leonidas
Frigate Squadron 2 (Attacker Class Frigates attached to Superb)
HMS Briton, Tenedos, Thetis, Lively
Corvette Squadron (Swift Class)
HMS High Flyer, Esk, Pylades, Cossack, Tartar
Frigate Squadron 3 (attached to Furious)
HMS Havock, Ferret, Hornet, Lynx
Frigate Squadron 4 (Attached to Courageous)
HMS Decoy, Boxer. Dasher, Haughty 
Frigate Squadron 5 (attached to Vanguard)
HMS Fearless, Nike, Harold, Hastings
Destroyer Squadron
HMS Lightening, Banshee, Dragon

 FSA Battlegroup
FSS Ranger a Saratoga class Fleet Carrier flagship of commodore Josiah Tattnal
FSS Indiana  an Independance class Battleship
Crusier Squadron (Lexington Class attached to the Indiana)
FSS Atlanta, Chicago, Harvard
Corvette Squadron (Revere class attached to the Ranger)

FSS Cayuga, Chippewa, Chocura
Air contingent
FSAS Polk Valley class Airship
FSAS Davis, Beuregard Lee class Scoutship
FSFR Huron, Kineo John Henry class robots
2 A-17 class Bombers

The fleets at the beginning of the game.

The first turn the Grand Coaliton won the roll (As they did the only two other turn we actually got in, note for next time, use less ships)

The Vanguard and CruRon 1 moved forward first  and along with the FSA Airships and were out of range when they stopped, next came the Prussian Destroyer squadron that fired and hit the Chippewa front scoring the armour,  the Geier's moved forward from the Air Contingent, and the Furutaka, Kitakami, Mogami moved forward and unleashed their rocket batteries at the Cavendish, Hawking, Raleigh hitting the Hawking's ammo hoppers blewing it to smitherines, the debris smashing into the Cavendish putting a hole in it and the Raleigh which survived intact, the squadron's morale didn't waver however..

The Vanguard battered the Mogami for a critical hit, damaging the engine.

The Graf Spee, Prinz Heinrich, Furst Bismark and Prinz Aldebert combined their turret fired on the Davis and battered a hole in it's side

The Graf Zepplin Bombard launched shells at one of the A-17's and sliced open it's armour.

The Brandenburg, Moltke and Vonder Tann fired their Main Batteries on the Polk slicing open it's frontal armour but missed with the  of the Battle cruisers.

This was it for the first turn

On turn 2 the Repulse and it's escorts pounded the Elbing to scrap and it's consort likewise sank the Falke forcing the Graf Spee and Agir into retreat before they could even fire a shot.

The Prussian's returned the favour however when the Brandenburg, Moltke and Vonder Tann's Main Batteries trained on the Polk hitting, the Prussian Capital ships mimicing their allies in their smashing of the ammo stores of the airship, it exploded taking with it the Beuregard and almost the already damaged Davis, the Moltke and Vonder Tann turned their Speerschleuders upon one of the US A-17's killing it and making it's brother run away.

Firing after this pretty much sucked as the Ranger's fighter wing was decimated from AA from the Brandenburg, Moltke and Vonder Tann as it prepared to launch torpedos at the Emperor class leaving just one squadron that broke off and headed back to the carrier. Eveything else couldn't hit the broadside of a Dreadnought, and they tried.

Turn three really turned the game against the Coaliton though started so well when the Huron and Kineo scored a hit on the Bismark, annoying Admiral Von der Goltz, his shields didn't even turn on.

The Corageous and it's escort took out the Kaiten though the squadron's morale held.

The Stoltz-II, Sachesen and Wuttenberg fired on the Thetis and their gunners jumped for joy when they landed a dozen shells on the poor ship until they realised the Superb's Guardian generator had stopped the lot.

This wasn't the only time in the turn where a Guardian saved a ships bacon it happened a few times and greatly annoyed the Prussians and Japanese.

Though the Cavendish was also saved from death by it's own shields as fire rained down from the EotBS cruisers rocket batteries, it set the ship on fire but it would survive. The targets of the Nakatsu class ships broadsides in the High Flyer, Esk, Pylades, Cossack, Tartar couldn't say that when the High Flyer, Pylades and Tartar were hulled, forcing the rest of the squadron into retreat. They fired their torpedos at the Vanguard's escort but did no damage.

The Furious and it's escorts fired upon the Geifon and Goeben killing Prussian Air Marines on the Geifon and setting fire to the Goeben in addition to almost hulling them and damaging the engines.

The land based fighters of the Coaliton took out the remaining Uwatsu's with torpedos and bombs.

The Superb and it's squadron managed to land another hit on the Bismark further infuriating the Vice Admiral though he got some measure of revenge on the Coaliton when he virutally hulled the Ranger as FSMC personnel were killed and the ship went on fire.

The Morian, Chur Prinz and Kur Prinz took down the Briton and damaged the Thetis and the final firing of the game came in from the Stoch, Biene, Eber, Stien and Viper who were deadly the Viper took the Heda, Stoch put a hole in the Repluse, Biene killed off the Pomone, Eber hulled the Shannon, the Leonidas was lost with all hands as the Stien beat it to death, forcing the Repulse into retreat

 The state of things at the end of play on turn three.

Essentially we of the Imperial Bond won the game because of the damage we had done versus what we had recieved, it would probably have continued to go our way because we had pretty much and intact centre barring the tremeandously lucky attacks on the Elbing and Falke and Bills Guardian generators constantly saving his behind, the Ranger was scrap metal in at most another turn and so were the FSA bomber and remaining airship, probably the John Henry too, the Prussian fleet would do a burly on the island and come into the side of the remaining American forces then pile down on the Brits.

The consensus of everybody was it was good fun but we had far too many ships on the board. We'll have to cut it down to probably about half the next time we play it, and it's going to take us a while to get the rules down, so hopefully by next year at Carronade we can do a display.

Next up me and Ian are going to have a game at the Falkirk club two weeks tomorrow and hopefully we can arrange something in March or April for the Glasgow club. Maybe by then I'll have some Russians too and have them painted.