Hey gang, it looks like the government may well be perfectly aware that Barry Bonds wasn’t lying. Isn’t it great that we all pay to harass him? I suppose I should probably be pretty supportive of the whole idea, you know what with the Witch Hunters and all, but quite frankly it just makes me much less comfortable with the recent rumblings from Washington about going after Roger Clemens, too.
The Exorcist is one of my favourite tanks. Not only does it fill a much-needed long-range tank busting and anti-goddamn-Carnifex role for a Witch Hunters army, but it also looks absolutely insane. Stained glass? check. Pipe organ? Double check. The kit is a bit more expensive than most tanks, but I found out why when it got here: there are about seven hundred million parts, and half of them are metal. Which also means it’ll be the heaviest tank in my collection, easy.
Not all is sunshine and rainbows in tank land, however. As you can see in the below image…
… there’s a piece missing. And not a trivial piece, either — an entire section of the pipe organ / missile launcher unit! And that’s my most favourite piece! So I e-mailed the store, and the dude there called Games Workshop, and they’re shipping me out a new one, so it’s fine.
I mean, they’re shipping me out an entire new tank. For free.
So what, you say? I’m still stuck with one incomplete Exorcist, which one must admit would look a bit pants on the battlefield. But there’s a catch here. Part of the reason the Exorcist kit costs as much as it does is because it’s basically a mod. The kit contains a whole bunch of metal parts to be used to convert an Immolator into the gigantic pipe organ of death. But since it’s a complete kit, and not a conversion kit, it also includes the base tank. Read: all necessary pieces to make a fully-functional Immolator are present in this box. The missing part is from the Exorcist conversion bits, so if I elect to build these bits into an Immolator, there won’t be any blemishes. And I can fancy it up with some of the Exorcist’s crazy decorative side panels if I so desire, since I have all that too. For free.
Games Workshop can feel free to send me kits with missing pieces as often as they like.
I’m starting a new D&D game soon — part of the reason I haven’t posted much this month is because I’ve been spending a great deal of my free time preparing for that; I’ve been writing such a large mass of words for the game that I haven’t had much fluid left in my writing appendages for the blog. I’m mad old skool, so I still run second edition, even here in the grim darkness of the far future. Maybe if you get real lucky I’ll post a long-winded pointless screed on why I like AD&D 2e better than the more recent revisions of the system. For now, I’ll just say that I agree with E. Gary.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. I’m here to talk about the draft alignment. Since I’m a damn great nerd, I’ve pretty much been thinking about the real world in terms of AD&D alignments for about as long as I can remember. I, in common with a great many libertarians, would consider myself to be Chaotic Good. This showed itself to great extent in my Burning Crusade raid alliance, where I and mine found myself working with an intensely Lawful crew. They were in favour of setting up rules and policies and councils and systems for determining whom to give the loot to, whereas I was just all "how about we all just roll on what we want and don’t be assholes?" Surprisingly enough, I won that battle, but that’s a bit of a digression.
Since I’ve been thinking so much about D&D lately, I’ve been thinking about all kinds of things in terms of alignment. I was watching Firefly earlier today, and was discussing with the wife what alignment any given character would be. Am I the only one who does stuff like this? I have to think that most people who grew up on D&D probably think the same way.
(Incidentally, I determined that Shepherd Book is Lawful Good, Zoe and Kaylee are Neutral Good, Mal and Wash are Chaotic Good, Simon is Lawful Neutral, and Jayne is Chaotic Neutral. Inara probably flatters herself by thinking she’s True Neutral, but in fact she’s largely devoid of personality altogether. And River is Chaotic Plot Device.)
I’m keen on dice, since I’m a gamer from way back. I always loved playing with the boring old white spot d6 that came with every board game I ever had, and when I got my first set of decent polyhedral dice (which I still have), I was just thrilled. I was probably nine at the time. What I enjoy even more than normal dice, though, is ridiculous novelty dice. Which brings me to the funniest set of novelty dice in my collection:
Aww yeah. Kama Sutra dice. Can you seriously look at those and not at least chuckle? Or, if you’re like me, giggle?
Well, if you can, allow me to tempt you further: they come with an instruction sheet describing a "game" to be played with them. The instruction sheet, of course, is entirely comedy ("If at this stage you wish to keep playing, somebody should be chosen to find the dice"). I mean, sure, the product’s a bit lowbrow, but, hell, it’s funny. And they’ll give me TEH MONEYS if you click through on that and buy one — or some other comedy dice, for that matter — and I consider this to be a plus.
My Acolyte, you may recall, looked like this last time I took a picture of him:
I think you’ll agree he’s progressed rather a bit since then.
Even my photography is improving a little. Of course, this time I left a noisy, distracting background in the shots, but, hey, what can I do? I can get off my lazy ass and get a proper photo tent is what. But enough about that. This picture really shows off the great shading effects that I got on the robe — the shadows look really deep. I’m also quite pleased with the final effect I got on the flames, even though I did have to paint over them a few times because I just wasn’t happy with it. And, no, that’s not a lopsided handlebar mustache — I’m not 100% sure what it is, but I expect it’s a breathing tube, since I imagine carrying all that fire around can make it a bit tough just to breathe open air.
I remembered, for once, to take a shot of the back of the model. Personally, I think this shot makes the flames look really nice, and it shows you those giant-ass fuel tanks he lugs around. Everything on this guy looks a bit dirtier than on my Inquisitor, and that’s by design; I figured, on the one hand, that an Acolyte wouldn’t be as pristine and sparkling as an actual Inquisitor, but, more to the point, he’s covered with goddamn fire. I thought that was likely to leave a bit of carbon residue all over everything. So I washed all the bronze bits in black to give that impression.
This side shot I mainly took so I could show off the purity seal hanging from his belt. It’s that white-ish bit below the black tube, more or less in the exact centre of the image. I was particularly pleased with the effect I got on that; a bit of Bleached Bone washed black, and then some black squiggles using a tiny brush to give the effect of writing on it. The base, you’ll notice, is the same as on my Inquisitor; my plan currently is to do all my bases more or less that way. We’ll see how that pans out, though.