Here be dragons!

o/

First off, I need to rant. Our FLGS went out of its way over the course of two years or so to nurture and cultivate a dedicated gaming group. They were successful. Now we often get the impression that we're an 'inconvenience.'

Last summer due to AC issues there was no gaming for a month and a half. Okay, we can understand that as it was hotter than blazes, but the initial closings of game night were without warning, or reason, and was poorly handled. It was also inconvenient for me as I live about 25 miles away, luckily I was informed by friends who live closer which saved me both time & gas. However there were several guys in the group who had about an hour drive, yet we had no contact info for them. Happens once, fine. I'm sure that they would be annoyed but could live with it. However after happening several times with no forewarning, and yeah. We've never seen them again.

Then, the owner decided that game night was going to switch to Tuesday nights rather than Saturday nights. The uproar was immediate! Virtually all of the college students in the group had class that night. My job requires me to be @ work @ 7:30am, so making a dedicated trip to game every week, midweek, where I'm liable to be up too late and a zombie at work the next day isn't feasible for anything other than once in a while. So that idea was dropped as the entire group wouldn't be able to attend.

The 'FLGS' has three tables with a good amount of really nice terrain, but currently they're looking to open another store in Nashville, and from what we've heard, they're looking to take close to half if not more of the terrain out there with them to cultivate a new gaming group. WTF?!? Are we to just be discarded? (I'm pretty sure our business is still expected though)

This week I got an email from an employee of the FLGS that's a friend of mine saying that Saturday gaming is canceled this week and going to be every other week from now on. No reason was given by the owners and again, we don't have everyone's contact info. So some guys will show up with an army only to be turned away. Annoyed with that Screech called and said 'screw it, let's just play at your house this week.' And so last night we did (which leads into this post's title).

So, as I wasn't able to try out my Exodites this Saturday, they instead got their battlefield debut right on my own game table. 1k, annihilation, pitched battle deployment vs. Space Wolves, I got to go first, and it ended in a tie of 3 to 3. No, this isn't a bat. rep., rather just going to touch on a few things of note.

The Dragon Knights (Wraithguard) only got to shoot twice but, due to lots of cover (as always) their AP2 guns weren't that big of a deal. Once in HTH they didn't do all that much except as to act as one hellova tar pit. A Space Wolf lord, and (by that point) five Grey Hunters and WG w/thunder hammer storm shield basically got stuck there on turn three, and never left except via gradual attrition. At the end of turn seven (and 4 full turns of HTH later) both sides of that melee shook hands and parted ways.

GUARDIANS SUCK! We hear that about a dozen times a night it seems from our self-defeatist Biel-Tan player at the FLGS. A squad of Grey Hunters hopped out of their rhino and opened fire, however due to good cover saves, only two guardians fell. In return, and with the battle cry of 'GUARDIANS SUCK' they returned fire! 14 hits for 11 wounds (and only one of those was from the scatter laser)! Cutting that GH squad in half. Actually turn three's shooting phase went quite well as all three opposing GH squads were cut in half that round. That said, out of both guardian squads, the warlock pictured above was the only member to survive. Still I was quite pleased (and now they have a battle cry)!

Then there is the Autarch. He spent the first few turns, just kinda fluttering back and forth, staying out of the long fangs (with lascannons) line of sight, while awaiting the approaching Grey Hunters. Setting himself up for a charge the following turn he turbo-boosted into position. Where it occurred to me, just how does a Griffin turbo-boost? What do you call that? Fast flying? Super flying? and then there it was :

'He's SUPER FLY!' (he's thus been named)

After laughing for a bit Screech pulled up that sound track on his droid (also known as the 'druid' after a typo in his first 'test' message), and we listened to that entirely un-40k-like music on into Super Fly's charge the next round. In his first gallant charge, he followed in the footsteps of my Warboss with a powerklaw by rolling a bunch of 2's to hit, and only killing one SW. In the following rounds where his laser lance wasn't in effect, he was hitting like a champ, but that doesn't really matter when your target is in power armor. Typical. In the photo above he's over in the table's 'dead pile' corner (the other casualties were moved out of the way for the photo).

While I didn't think to get a photo of it (its still under construction anyways) my new Siam-Han Vyper (compliments of Loquacious) also did resonably well ending the game immobilized but not dead. It popped a rhino in such spectacular fashion that the resulting explosion killed two Grey hunters that were stuck in the Dragon Knight tar pit.

All in all it was a fun game and the Spinifex didn't crumple like tinfoil in their first outing as I had feared they would. As for the long winded rant up top, sorry but such things are all too common on this blog (as you readers already well know).

AND on a totally different note (and likewise added an hour or so after the above): I accidentally clicked on my flag counter, and figured that while there I'd check my stats. In doing so, I saw that I set a new page hits record of 240 on the day 2/17/11. Apparently the Imperial Forestry Service is no longer so obscure of an Imperial institution. ;-p