In the bathroom Part 2

o/

...and now for the exciting conclusion of my off topic train...

Left: Bob admiring Mom's expert cutting job.
Middle: The finished shampoo shelf.
Left: The faucet.

Ah yes, the faucet...remember when I said we hit a snag yesterday? Well, the faucet was it. Tile was done, grout drying, shower head & knobs attached, all was going well. Then Mom put the faucet up to the pipe and 'clink', the faucet met the tile before it connected with the pipe internally. You would think that getting an extension for the pipe, a coupling or something would be a simple job. Indeed, you would think that....we thought that...and in the end while we were able to do that after countless trips/purchases & returns to Lowe's (and their guy in the plumbing dept. going above & beyond to help us out) over the course of approximately five hours, we did get it to work. All that work, and a mere $5-$10 in parts ground everything to a halt.

...sigh...

Victory was had in the end though, and I must say that to be 6'6" tall, and not have to bend over at all to wash my hair is a truly wonderful thing! Below are the before & after photos.

Quite a difference & one hellova improvement!

So that's it for the remodel for now, still need to paint the walls but that can wait a bit. I'll relax on my New Years, and would like to ask that everyone root for UCF in the Liberty Bowl tomorrow! Also, below is a pic of my 'weekend project' which will also be my guinea pig for testing out the new light tent that I got for Christmas.

Happy new Years everyone! Be safe (and if you're not driving, drink heavily)!

Sorry I uh...was in the bathroom...

...yes...all week, in the bathroom.

o/

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past week, its been quite busy for me. My folks all got together & decided to remodel my bathroom for my Christmas present this year (with various fixtures & whatnot taken care of by my sister & her fiance) and that's taken up a good portion of the past week (interrupted only by Christmas itself).

Initially the plan was to totally gut & remodel the entire bathroom but when we got to looking it, things were scaled back a bit. We had wanted to move the toilet and replace the sink & vanity, that is until we got some contractors looking at the plumbing in the basement. Moving the toilet would require repositioning the cast iron piping (my house is close to 90 years old, though the bathroom was added on some time later) and would be a MAJOR construction project (not including needing to remove half the deck to get at the pipes from the outside). Now I'm no plumber, but the piping under the sink always struck me as odd, and it generally elicited a 'What in the hell...' kinda response. Given that December is a really bad time of year for major plumbing projects (outside temps the past few days ran from low 30s to single digits) we shelved all of that & instead focused on the shower.

After the nightmare of trying to find a reliable contractor & negotiating a reasonable price (no small feat, especially in Tennessee) my Dad & Stepmother financed the gutting of the shower & replacing the tub/drain/shower head & getting it all ready for Mom & Bob to come in.
Left: the 'before' photo.
Middle: The shower all gutted, and tub replaced. A few things of note: There's no insulation in the walls aside from around the tub faucet which was added last year when fixing a leak after having had to get to it via an outside wall. Also, in the left corner you can see some of the original wood siding still in the joint which confirmed my suspicion that the house was originally built without indoor plumbing. We also removed the window as being a custom size & the potential of lead being present, the price to replace it was astronomical! One more thing, some of the wood has dark sections, that's tree bark, still on the wood after the saw mill, something you'll never see nowadays...
Right: Mom & Bob scoping things out.
Left: You'd never know a window had been there on the outside!
Left-middle: The bathroom will now have the only insulated walls in the house, though there's still a vapor barrier to avoid moisture build up issues.
Right-Middle: Bob's starting to set the tile (btw, Mom & Bob are retired tile contractors).
Right: Mom's cutting tile & all is going fairly smoothly.

Indeed all went relatively smoothly till the very end, but I'll tell you about that tomorrow after I have the 'finished' photos downloaded from my camera. We were all too exhausted after that last 'snag' last night for me to bother with uploading photos to facebook (for the far flung relations to see) as well as for me to get them ready to post here.

cya

Walking in a Winter Wasteland

Here's something I came up with a few years back. I had posted it on Warseer's forum under my old handle 'Red Corsair'. This seemed as a good a place as any to repost it.

'Walking in a Winter Wasteland'

(Just keep the tune of “winter wonderland” when reading)

See the trees,

Watch them burning

Refugees,

camps are forming

A horrific Sight

We’re fleeing tonight

Walking in a winter wasteland

Gone away is the Governor

Here to stay is a Chaos Lord

He brings a long war

We’re put to the sword

Walking in a winter wasteland

In the middle we can build a bridgehead

Then pretend that we’re gaining ground

They’ll say are you ready?

We’ll say no man!

But we’ll go when

The Commissar’s around

Later on

We’ll conspire

To kill him with friendly fire

To face unafraid

The treason we’ve made

Walking in a winter wasteland

In the middle we can build a bridgehead

Then pretend that we’re gaining ground

With bayonets we’re gonna go in!

Until their guns mow us down

Landmines blow

And their killing

Through your nose, blood is spilling

We’ll falter in pain

And then run away

Walking in a winter wasteland

Walking in a winter wasteland!

Walking in a winter wasteland!

Red wunz die fasta!

o/

That was my answer to the query about the Blood Angel debris on the base of my kan matching almost exactly in color.

I thought you could give kans the red paint job upgrade, but alas that is not the case. Oh well, odds are the kan skwadruns will be reorganized after all are assembled for a better match up of weaponry. I was thinking of painting the back pack and banner for the Ultra smurfs, or maybe the Templars, however after thinking of it, I went with the Blood Angels.

The last loyalist marine chapter that I beat with Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop was that BA, so they get the dubious honor of debris. It was one of those 'slugfest' games that was decided on the last turn, which is the best kind of game to remember! True, da kans weren't present for that fight, its obvious (to me) that they got lost enroute, and only showed up after the fact to claim credit & potential scrap.

Red kans run fasta!

o/

Just a quick post this morning as I don't have much to show for the past few days. As you can see I finished the first of my new plastic kans. The sprues look rather bedazzling with all of their parts at first, but it was rather easy to assemble. I figured red would be a good color to start off with as walkers are relatively slow (although like everything else in my army, expect to see a rainbow of colors on the next 5 kans). That said, I was telling a friend of mine the other night that the deep red & kinda orangey yellow bring to mind the colors of a McDonalds french fry container (see, that stuff is bad for your health).

I put a partial/damaged battle cannon barrel and turret hatch on the base painted in the colors of my renegade IG. Regardless of whether they're loyalists or renegades, to Orks 'oomies iz oomies'. I also recently sold the renegade Leman Russ, so this base can sorta explain it's disappearance...

I got Kanned...

'Killa-Kanned' that is...

o/

When I decided to give the Orks a go some years back, I got 3 metal killa kans along with a bunch of other minis in a trade for....something. I don't recall what I traded off, anyways... I painted up one of the kans, kindova ugly sculpt, but I supposed that it looked alright. However, I was having problems getting the other two's close combat arms to stay in place. Aggravated with them, I sent them on their way with a whole bunch of other unneeded extras, and have since only had this single kan.

One kan, by itself, isn't too impressive on the table top. My love of big gunz & looted wagons with boom gunz hasn't helped meaning that my lone kan has rarely seen the table top. Then, I saw the new versions and started to drool (still don't much like the new deff dread though). When the new kans came out, I bought a box on a whim (the FLGS hooked me up with a pretty good deal on them), BUT...I never built them.

This past weekend, Murl gave me another box o' kans for Christmas, and as a result, DLWDG is gonna have a wall o' kans! Here's the first (assembled out of the first box I purchased as it was already open):

This is one of those kits where you kinda giggle maniacally while assembling, as its such a cool & 'Orky' design (much like the mega tank which I glued together for the most part Friday night). Having seven, I think that I'll send the original kan, off the way of ebay. Two skwadruns of three, and a looted wagon ought to be good for eavy support. I could switch out for da big gunz, but I also got another chaos rhino as a Christmas gift, meaning that the havoc (and one of my lobbas) will be turned into another renegade IG nebelwerfer team (which can be seen here, about mid way down). I may just buy a new lobba to finish out that IG squad as the last one is still needed for my O&G army.

Speaking of lobbas, this past Saturday, they functioned pretty much like their O&G counterparts, meaning they sent (over the course of a game) 4 laser guided rocks into the head of a CSM demon prince (still not as effective as they are vs. giants though). Speaking of that game, I finally was able to pull off my Roag Skwadrun 1st turn alpha strike. It didn't kill too much when it shot & then charged into HTH on turn 1, but it did send my opponent reeling! Ultimately I lost the game, though I fared quite a bit better vs. the Deathguard than normal, so I was pleased. My opponent's army was more or less bottled up in his deployment zone all game (helped along by da kommandos arriving on turn 2). Also, while the deff kopta alpha strike is kindova one trick pony (and an expensive one to get mauled in turns 1 & 2), it does free up almost the entirety of my advancing army from incoming fire, as the DG was trying to deal with the koptas that were running rampant in their midst.

It was fun game and for once I brought a 'green tide' list (i.e.: no transports), so quite a bit different than my normal speed freaks set up. The forth coming 'wall o' kans' will give me yet another variation to play with now as well!

Grot Mega-Tank Rules

(Image property of Games Workshop/Forgeworld & used without permission)

o/

So, as you all know, I've bought one of these awesome things named Da Grot Spee after this. Sadly, I still haven't really done any work on it since my last post on the subject. Yeah I know, an EPIC fail on my part. However when I made my purchase I also sent in a few rules queries to FW as the experimental rules are kinda vague on some things.

I asked:

(1) If I don't have any grot tanks, then does this just count as a HS and not an FA choice?
(1) it moves 2D6, yet all of the weapons (barring the one shot boom canister) are STR 5 and up, so does it still fire if more than a '6' is rolled on 2D6, and/or does everything fire and at random targets like a super heavy?

Two months later I get this reply:
(1) it may only be used if grot tanks are also included, and may only be an FA choice.
(2) it's considered a 'standard' tank and so uses normal shooting rules meaning that it may only fire @ one target with an offensive weapon if it moves 6" or less, as per normal. However it may fire all of it's weapons if it sits still (though again @ '1' target meaning at least one gun gets left out of the fun).

I could care less about the time required for response (like I said, its not yet built), but the answers are sorely lacking.

Really? I need grot tanks to field this? Sorry, did I forward that query to the sales dept. by mistake? If it needs grot tanks, why isn't it mentioned in the Kastorel-Novem book? Sorry, but I don't have another $100 to drop on the (awesome) grot tanks right now, nor another $60-$70 on a book. My friends are cool with me running this as a heavy choice, so ignoring (1) I move onto (2).

(2) WTF? So it's festooned with weapons, yet assuming I don't roll a '1' @ the beginning of the turn (a '1' means a squabble has broken out among the krew, and it can't shoot this turn), AND I roll a '6' or less on 2D6 (and I'm pretty sure that on a roll of 2D6 the average total is '7') I get to fire just one of it's main guns. Whereas if I sit still, I can level one hellova broadside! Meaning I most likely will do just that the majority of the time. Also, if this is most effective when stationary, then I would like an official explanation as to why this qualifies as an 'FA' choice?

It looks to me like the sculptors went 'above and beyond' in their duties (as per the FW usual) while the rules makers failed utterly. More or less like they're saying, 'you'll love this on a shelf, but hate it on the table.'

Does anyone know of any other FW models with such screwed up rules?

Note: I did send another query to FW regarding my issues with #2, and I tried to write it without the ranting tone of this post.

Note: #2: I got a new answer this morning that's the polar opposite of yesterday's response. So YES it can split its fire, and also YES it can fire ALL of it's weapons at DIFFERENT target if it just rolls the 2D6 for movement, regardless of whether or not that distance is over 6" or not (and you don't roll a '1' which denies shooting due to an on board brawl). Whereas rolling 3D6 qualifies as moving flat out, and no weapons may fire. So MUCH better (though it does suffer from the typical GW roolz boyz issue of different guy, different answer).

Exodites

o/

Well my Guardian box and Dark Elf legs arrived earlier this week an I've started work on the Exodites in earnest. As you can see they blend pretty close with my original 'one-off' model. Still going with the kill-zone idea for now where the original will be a Dire Avenger Exarch/team leader (because he who has the fancy helmet leads). The others are pretty easy to both assemble & paint. Indeed, I painted all four yesterday afternoon. Solid/opaque colors, and a liberal slathering of Delvan Mud to dirty them up. Actually I was painting the red onto the gems after the wash dried, and it looked as though I'd missed several areas in their blue chest plates & the antenna things on their backs, only to realize it was where the wash dried on heavily. In the end I left them as is. Exodites, while still having the same level of Eldar technology, probably don't have the same ease of access to it. So the dark, dirty, discolored and worn look suits them well I think.

As you can see, to call these 'conversions' is a bit of an over statement. Sure it takes about thirty seconds with a hand saw to cut the bottom of the torso flat, but beyond that its no more difficult than putting a Cadian Torso on some Catachan legs.

Anyways, back to their technology access. Whether or not my little war band will be the whole tribe or just a patrol/hunting party split off from a larger one I've not decided. Regardless though, it kinda puts me in a quandary in regards to the weapons platform. True, kill-zone doesn't require me to take one but let's face it, a dozen Exodites armed with the xenos equivalent of shotguns doesn't exactly instill fear. However a nomadic tribe isn't really going to have access to factories (or the Craftworld equivalent), so where are they going to get their platforms from? My thought was to paint the platform in the colors of the Biel-Tan Craftworld. Biel-Tan are pretty gun-ho about the Exodites, and I would imagine that they would have little reservations on gifting weapons/equipment to them.

Another thought on the platform was to treat it as a beast of burden. These guys don't have backpacks, and essentially live off the land, that said, extra gear and equipment are still essential. Craftworld/Dark Eldar engage in raids, and have vehicles for logistical support, Exodites, not so much. So I was thinking of having them strap all of the their supplies onto the weapons platform (or I could convert up some cold ones like baggage Knarlocs). No tents though, I kinda have the mental image of a Warlock planting his singing sear into the ground and raising a force bubble over their little encampment, keeping out the rain, bugs, etc...

Another need for my Exodites is a tribe/clan name. I don't know of any Exodite tribes, and in any case wouldn't use them as I'm making this up as I go. Why be constrained by someone else's ideas? I pulled up wikipedia looking at what is known about the remaining 'hunter-gatherer' societies left in the world. There aren't too many, and while an interesting read, there was little of use to me. However I did come across a name that was rather appealing and had (oddly) a nice sci-fi feel to it, the Spinifex. So for now I'm going with that.

In other news, this is my 100th post! No, no fanfare, giveaways or anything. Sadly my finances really do not allow for such things. However I would like to thank everyone for their feedback, comments and the like over the year. My readership (assuming I can call it that) isn't the biggest, nor is my name all that well known of the blogosphere. However THAT said, so far (and this is only after a counter was added a few months into blogging) I've had over 4000 unique hits from 59 different countries! Indeed a fair few I've had to look up to see where they even are on the map! That's a response that's far in excess of what I ever could have expected (especially when considering the literally bedazzling number of gaming blogs out there).

Currently I have as much intent to stop blogging as I do to give Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop a coherent theme, which is to say: none. So to all of you out there I send my thanks!

FLGS Rhino is finished!

(with 6 SW armies locally, it was easy to decide on who's helmet to put on that spike)

o/

Well its all done and I hope they like it. Its not the best of paint jobs, but I can see now why I like dirty tanks so much: its easy to hide mistakes under grime. Shining gold is a difficult color to get a consistently opaque coverage of, and after endless touch ups to try and correct that I had to just give up and move on (which is also why I prefer to use opaque colors). Overall its not bad, but not the greatest either. I did dirty it up a bit near the treads at least, but over all its still a 'clean & pretty tank'. That sounds like an oxymoron to me, but I suppose that's all just a matter of personal aesthetic preference.

I'm still not pleased with the Nurgle icon on the front either (made even worse given that the CSM battle force comes with Khorne Berserkers), but couldn't think of a sufficient alternative to fit into that spot. The fact that Nurgle armies are often associated with the color green didn't help on a black and gold tank either. After various shades, I ended up using scaly green. However, as stated previously the emblem does cover the hole in the front glacis nicely. I asked the guy who built it why a gargoyle bit was needlessly stuck on there with all of the other excessive amounts of accessories, and his response was (quote) 'I figured that whomever painted this would be pissed.' Indeed. It seems to me a counter a productive train of thought for something that was donated to the family business, but in the end its not mine so I suppose it doesn't matter.

Aside from that I've started work on the Exodites, but that's a totally unrelated concept which I'll leave for my next post (that one being #100!).

VOR: The Maelstrom

o/

Just wanted to post the flyer below to try & spread the word. Skuzzy (the game's creator) is trying to raise funds to publish/produce a revision of the old Vor game. It was a fun game that we've played on and off over the years. My 144th Podunks (the story for which goes all the way back to my 2nd post) was originally used for VOR & is in the process of being reorganized to pull double duty between VOR (again) & my Renegade IG.


Anyways, please check out the VOR forum (where I go by my old online name of 'Red Corsair') & kickstarter if your interested.

Thanks!