Voltron: second verse same as the first?

I have never, ever in my life read or watched anything from the Voltron franchise. I'd heard of it, knew it was a big deal but never experienced it. The only time it really pinged my radar was when that rumour went around that Cloverfield was a secret Voltron reboot and that was... about as wrong as its possible to be, let's face it.

Now I'm planning to watch a Netflix reboot of the thing. Why?

Well, one of the oldest marketing ploys known to man: “This thing is like a thing you loved before!” Netflix put up a trailer full of animation, voice acting and humour that reminded me of Legend of Korra and, of course, a short Google search later it turns out that Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery of Legend of Korra are working on this thing.

So, philosophical question: do I want truth in this advertising?

Short answer: … ish. Long answer: I think this is one of the greatest traps in the creative world. You absolutely cannot predict what someone will enjoy except by looking at what they already enjoy. This is as true of a friend recommending a book as it is of a multi-national corporation greenlighting a movie. Netflix poured money into this thing because some of the makers of Legend of Korra wanted to make a Voltron reboot and here is how it has been marketed to me:

1. The animation looks like Legend of Korra.

2. The humour sounds like Legend of Korra.

3. There is a comedy coward like Bolin in Legend of Korra.

4. Press were very clearly told about Dos Santos and Montgomery's involvement.

5. Press have speculated about the series based on this connection, as they were meant to.

What we need to disentangle here is that using this connection to interest me and using it to entertain me are different ideas. Would I like more Korra? Yeah, of course I want more of the thing I enjoyed and I'm well up for Dark Horse's sequel comics when they eventually deign to publish them. I'm a nerd, which is just hedonism disguised as literary taste.

The thing is that just producing the same thing again and again bores your audience no matter how much they loved the first thing. I loved Legend of Korra but I already watched four seasons of it. What I hope, given that Korra was a 1930s movie serial in cartoon form and Voltron seems to be a Sentei series, is that I'm going to get a very different experience from this series almost by default.

Essentially, once I knew Dos Santos and Montgomery were involved I wanted to see what they were going to do next, not see what they did before again. I want to see them run off in a new direction, just as Legend of Korra ran off in a very different direction from The Last Airbender. 

Why we love Leela

There's a rant I've been meaning to have over how something being problematic doesn't make it irredeemable. It can. It absolutely can but not every time, which I think is something people on both sides of the issue don't always get. Just because there's an issue with a work doesn't mean you can't or should allow yourself to enjoy it. Other stuff can redeem it.

So, Leela. I love this character. Lots of people love this character. In fact, I'd go so far as to say you'd have a long walk ahead of you trying to find a Classic Who fan who doesn't at least like her a lot.

But why? I mean, there are a lot of problematic characters in Doctor Who and Leela is up there. She's a hot mess of racial and colonialist issues; there's the infamous screen test photo where she was original going to be played in blackface; her costumes basically exist only for sexy value; and, no one on the TV series other than her creator Chris Boucher could write her worth a damn. Oh, and she gets one of the worst exits in the series history: married off to a wet guard she's barely shared a line with let alone share actual chemistry.

Love her, though. Why? Well, basically, this...

Louise Jameson has infinite reserves of dignity and between Tom Baker's hostility to her presence and some damn awful scripts she bloody needed it. She's an absolute joy to watch and Jameson always manages to find something to do with her lines even when they're bad, condescending to the point of racism, or just damn filler. Jameson is so much better than the stories she's appearing in.

Luckily, times change and now Jameson has the scripts to match her talent at Big Finish: Wrath of the Iceni; Nigel Fairs' Companion Chronicles; any given episode of Gallifrey... the list goes on. Also, she and Baker get on a lot better now so we finally get to see the fantastic synergy they had at length instead of in the rare moments back in the day when Baker could actually stand to share the screen with someone else. 

Pokemon Sky Trainer roleplay is a go!

Nintendo just revealed the starters and legendaries for Pokemon Sun and Moon and... boy, do I love it when a plan comes together!

So, yes, we have a dual Grass/Flying type starter, the spherically adorable Rowlet. Also, the legendary for Moon is a big bat thingy. All good news for me and my plan to roleplay a Sky-Trainer character. I genuinely wasn't expecting to get a Flying type starter, I think the only time that's even sort of happened is that Charmander evolves into one.

I actually picked up a cheap copy of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire this morning (they're good games to tinker with whilst I'm listening to audio plays) and I'm going to take it more “blind” than I did Pokemon X. With Pokemon X, I was perpetually checking out the weaknesses of my enemies on my smartphone. Honestly, I feel that's no more cheating than the strategy guides we used to have as kids but I would like to see how I do actually trying to learn the advantages and disadvantages of the types and items and so on.

The only thing I have to decide (for this and for Moon) is whether I'll be giving my trainer a new name or whether my Pokemon X character Vicki is going to be travelling the various regions Ash Ketchum style.

If I decide to go with a new character here, I think I'll call her Elspeth. 

Ah, Old Battle Reports

I really miss battle reports. When I first got into Warhammer, battle reports were my favourite part of White Dwarf. This was around WD280 – 300ish, my first year or two in the hobby. Those issues had great battle reports with five minute fictions to set up the story, long introductions by the players explaining their army selections and a very personable prose style. Those batreps really helped me see the world of Warhammer in the game I was playing. They were also a great place to see a fully painted army in all its glory, which is a real inspiration and something you very, very rarely see in an actual gaming environment (no criticism, we all buy more than we can paint, nature of the beast).

Those battle reports (and the Tale Of Four Gamers that ran from WD300) are something I go back and reread every now and again for inspiration. Just the other day I dug through my shelves for WD278 and WD292, which ran a pair of Tomb Kings/Bretonnia match-ups.

These two reports tell a linked story. In the first, Duke Theuderic led his knights against the Tomb Kings of Khemri and got absolutely slaughtered. In the second, Theuderic's grandson Henri returns to exact revenge. It's a simple narrative but I like it. That second batrep was the one that convinced me I wanted to paint some Bretonnians and now they're my signature army.

I'm rereading them, incidentally, because I'm planning a series of games with my Tomb Kings against my friend Tom's Bretonnians. It's a classic match-up to me and I'm really looking forward not only to playing it but to playing against Bretonnians, which I've only done once or twice.

Also for the nostalgia kick, not that there's anything wrong with that. 

The joys of incremental progress

I am getting dangerously close to completing Pokemon X: I've defeated Team Flare; caught the legendary Xerneas (jury's still out on that decision); beaten the final gym in Snowbelle City to get the last badge; walked the Victory Road; and, now I'm standing outside the Kalos League Building prepared to take on the Elite Four and the Champion.

I haven't completed a computer game in years. It might not be much of an achievement but it does feel nice to get further in one of these games than I ever have before. I think my record before was seven gym badges in Platinum and then I got stuck fighting the boss of Team Galactic and his damned invincible Gyarados. So at least I've proved to myself I can defeat the narrative villain, not just gym leaders.

Incremental progress is a lot more important than we give it credit for.

For instance, I've spent the last fortnight hitting my head against a brick wall with my painting. I've been having a lot of trouble painting a unit of sixteen Glade Guard for my Wood Elves. I couldn't get the highlighting right on their red tunics and was blanking on how to do the leather areas.

So last night I decided to change tac. I picked up five of the many, many Skull Pass Night Goblins I have lying around and decided to use them to do some colour tests. I painted them with red hoods and used their shoes to test out a leather method. Both look great, both will now be used on the Glade Guard and now I have five nearly finished Night Goblins and a cool new colour scheme for them to show for it!

I also finally got those damned Skeleton Horse Archers to go together. Great thing about Skeletons is that once you have them undercoated they start to look like something pretty quickly which cuts out that frustrating phase where every model just looks dispiritingly terrible.

Not a bad start to my week off. 

Oath of Moment #1

I am getting these half-built Skeleton Horse Archers off my desk! I only need to glue a few small components on and then they can go to the painting table. Hopefully once they're built I can get them painted relatively quickly but, to be honest, that's kind of secondary to not having them just sitting there any longer.

So, not even a particularly arduous one this week since we're in for some nice weather: just finish building these five models. Getting them painted would be nice but I'm not going to beat myself up over not finishing them. 

Pokemon Sun & Moon roleplay idea

I've really been enjoying Pokemon X, I was surprised by how much the updated graphics refreshed the experience. I've also been watching Dan Jones' Pokemon Diamond Nuzlocke Challenge series on the Extra Play channel and I'm considering doing a sort of roleplay run when Sun & Moon come out.

Not a Nuzlocke run, though. Maybe I'll do a second run of X under Nuzlocke rules but it doesn't feel like a “new game” sort of thing when you're as bad at keeping your Pokemon alive as I am.

No, what I'm considering is giving my trainer character Vicki a speciality type of Pokemon. Yes, I know that every strategy guide ever has counselled against this very thing but I think I've found, if not a loophole, a way to make it semi-work. The only way to be sure is to try it.

Over the course of X my “Pikachu”, my bestest Pokemon who takes on all comers and wins hasn't been my starter but my Talonflame, Redbird. There are also a ton of Flying-types I absolutely love the look of like Emolga and Hawlucha

In Sun & Moon (whichever has the coolest legendary on the cover) Vicki will be training to become a Sky-Trainer. How I think this will work is that I'll just catch whatever I can as normal to fill the Pokedex but whenever I catch a flier I have to go the Pokecenter and put them on my team. Oh, except for Bug types that evolve into flyers, obviously. I might be tempted to keep things that are obviously flying even if they aren't Flying types like Gastly or Honedge, I'll have to have a think about that.

Maybe I'll pick up a copy of Alpha Sapphire / Omega Ruby to test this idea out.

Tomb Kings cavalry (an exercise in frustration)

Building Tomb Kings Skeleton Horse Archers almost makes me appreciate the decision to cut the range. These might actually be the worst designed miniatures I've ever had to put together.

No, I'm serious. The riders aren't designed to fit on the horses; the quivers aren't designed to actually rest against the torso; nor are they designed to leave room for the skeleton's head to attach to the neck connector; and, the bows are so heavy on so small an arm connection that you have to hold it in place for ages before the glue will actually hold it in any position that looks halfway decent and even then it doesn't line up with the awkward angle the head is looking in unless you want it to look terrible.

Do I have any advice to make building these things easier. Yes! Don't! If you want any from now on you have to get them second hand anyway so just skip the twitch-inducing frustration of construction and buy them pre-build on eBay. 

Let's talk about this new Spider-Man

(Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War, especially the bits about Spider-Man)

My thoughts on Civil War are complex and we'll get to them once they've percolated a little longer. The short, tentative, early version is that it's a good film. The good bits are amazing but the bad bits are a little too vital to the plot to entirely ignore. Overall I'd say its a better film (certainly a better Avengers film) than Age Of Ultron but not as good as Winter Soldier, there are just a few things I want to work out before I discuss the whole film at any length.

Tom Holland as Spider-Man, though? I know where I stand there. I like him, I'm looking forward to the new movie.

Okay, okay, I know the character is only in this film as an extended trailer to reassure the audience that this reboot will go better than the last one (and let's hope so, if we have to go through this again, Aunt May will end up in her teens) but that doesn't stop it from being very convincing.

So what's to like about this version? Well, for one thing I think Holland's version is the best yet at the half-sardonic, half-hysterical fight banter. For another, he has a couple of moments of utter panic in his first scene which sell how he hasn't been doing this long and doesn't have the coping mechanisms in place for when Peter and Spider-Man's worlds collide, which is a pretty big element of a lot of Spider-Man stories. Seriously, Tony Stark frantically signalling to Peter to be cool by blinking with both eyes would be the cutest thing in this film if not for the Vision trying to cook.

The costume looks better than the trailer led us to believe (and is there an element or two of Ben Reilly's suit there? Just me?) and there are plenty of cool “Spider-Man poses” to keep things visually interesting. The new ebbing also looks great, too. Most of all though, Holland splits the difference between the two previous versions. He's a believable teenager (like Garfield) and he isn't classically “Hollywood attractive” (like Maguire, sorry pardon).

Of course, holding down a couple of extended scenes and holding down an entire movie are two different things. On the evidence, Holland at least has the charisma to stand out in an ensemble piece. Rumour has it, based largely on the title Spider-Man: Homecoming, that Marvel and Sony are going for more of a Buffy-style high school dramedy, which I think Holland would be perfect for.

Time will tell, of course, and for the first time in years I find myself looking forward to a Spider-Man movie. 

Warhammer Resources: Norba Miniatures

Hello and welcome to the first installment of Warhammer Resources, an occasional series highlighting third party resources for use in Warhammer Fantasy Battles now GW have done the honest thing and started cutting product left and right for the game they no longer care about. As a disclaimer, the products highlighted in this post are ones I haven't bought (yet) and so I can't vouch for physical quality or customer service

Yeah, bitter. You know why? Because my signature army, Bretonnia, no longer has a product range. I have what I have and that's it. Unless...

Norba Miniatures came to my attention the other day when my friend Matt sent me pics of their Not-Bretonnian Foot Knights (available with or without command models). They also have a Not-Great Unclean One and Not-Chaos Dwarfs, all of whom obviously are. Judging by the website photos the quality of the sculpts, whilst not up to modern GW standards, won't look too out of place, more like classic miniatures.

I've yet to research how easy and reliable Norba are to buy from and, like any new company, I suggest doing so before purchase but I remain cautiously hopeful for their future offerings. 

Xerneas, the legendary imposition

Talking of things I get an itch to do every couple of years: Pokemon. Every once in a while I'll upgrade to the next Nintendo handheld up and, inevitably, the first game I buy will be a Pokemon title just out of sheer nostalgia. I find them to be nice, low strain games to fiddle with as I listen to the radio or during a spare moment and I rarely get very far in them. In fact this time round is the first time I've got as far as catching the game's legendary, let alone beaten all the gyms and or reached the Regional League.

First off, the whole reason I got Pokemon X was that it had the coolest looking legendary on the cover: a deer with crystal antlers. Beautiful design, certainly the best of the four legendaries the 3DS game covers were touting at me. Yes, thought I, I want that one, I will play this game.

Then something happened. You see, once I'd beaten Team Flare and captured Xerneas the game asked me whether I wanted to add Xerneas to my party, displacing one of my six Pokemon to the storage system. I agreed. Though I'd never got this far in the game I was sure there must be compelling game reasons for this choice.

The thing is, though, that I resented it. Against all expectation, I had actually bonded with my party and was sort of miffed at the idea that this random Johnny should come in and just assume a place on the team, displacing one of the Pokemon who had travelled across the Kalos region with me.

I'd spent some twenty-odd hours of this game slowly but surely assembling a team that could take on all comers: Gumdrop the Greninja (Water, Ghost); Sizzles the Raichu (Electric); Rosebud the Venusaur (Grass, Poison and bearing a mega-evolution stone); Dorfl the Golurk (Shadow, Ground, Ghost, Steel); Redbird the Talonflame (Flying, Fire, Steel); and Cuddles the Pangoro (Fighting, Dark).

I felt I had as many bases covered as any six-man team could and, honestly, even by sending Sizzles to the PC I've actually benefited on that score. I might have lost Electric attacks but I gained Fairy and Bug attacks.

Still, I find myself in the odd position of wanting to go against the obvious game mechanics and just reinstate Sizzles to the team. We went through a lot, that electric rat and me. If nothing else he managed to one-shot a couple of Gyarados and I hate Gyarados. It was a Gyarados that kept killing me in Pokemon Platinum and I've fostered a grudge ever since.

Funny how we invest in these things, isn't it?

Terry Brooks, it's not you, it's me

Terry Brooks is an author whose work I'd love to read but I just can't get into it. I say this having just given up on The Sword of Shannara at the 58^th page, and that's an improvement on last time.

Consider this another nail for me to drive into the coffin of “objective” review because, ultimately, I can't call The Sword Of Shannara a bad novel. It's a New York Times bestseller; its remained constantly in print for nearly forty years; and, Terry Brooks is still making a living writing books in the same series. It is, in short, an utter classic of modern fantasy.

An utter classic that I just can't get on with. There's nothing functionally wrong with it, even the dense info dump Allanon gives to Shea and Flick Ohmsford in the second chapter is no worse written than the literal history lesson David Eddings opens the Belgariad with and I love that series. There's just something about Brooks' writing that doesn't click with me, not just here but also in The Scions of Shannara and Magic Kingdom for Sale – SOLD!. Yes, this is basically an author who I try to read every couple of years and have the same lack of success with every time.

Why? Because I feel like I'm missing something. Now, I don't subscribe to that whole “you're not a proper fan of X unless you've done Y” gatekeeping bullshit but this series is such a massive part of fantasy's history that I feel odd not having experienced it.

Oh well, suppose I'll try again in a couple of years, we'll see how it works out then. 

Painting Journal #1: Tomb Scorpion

After some severe hobby doldrums, I finally finished my first miniature of the year and, let me tell you, just getting something finished has really energised me. So, the Tomb Kings Tomb Scorpion, one of my favourite models ever. I remember when I first got into Warhammer there was no model I wanted more, unfortunately the army just didn't grab me back then but here we are now and here he is...

Ease of Building

I cannot imagine the nightmare this would have been in metal. For all of Finecast's deservedly awful reputation (and I did have to bend a couple of legs back into shape) I don't know how anyone could stand a body that large on legs that small in metal and not have it collapse every five minutes.

As it was, working with the Finecast version of the kit, the only issue was that the legs don't really offer any obvious contact points for the gluing the Scorpion to the base. In the end I just had to hold the model down on the base and dribble superglue over the ends its feet. It isn't elegant and it is a bit visually obvious but it was the only way to go.

Ease of Painting

There are these two round... objects on the back of the model, wedged between the mummified Liche Priest and the stone body of the construct. No one seems to know what they are and no official photograph is at a angle for you to see what 'Eavy Metal did with them. So my friend Dave and I decided they were canoptic jars and I painted them as earthenware. I think that makes sense and if it doesn't then someone should have said something in an official source.

Aside from that small philosophical issue the kit is actually pretty easy to paint, being comprised of the four basic Tomb Kings materials: bone, stone, bandages and gold. Of these the biggest challenge is deciding what sort of stone to paint, the other techniques being pretty basic ones that most painters have preferred methods to achieve anyway.

Be warned, there are a lot of little chips in the stone and bone sections, as well as some hard to reach sections in the hole the Liche Priest is lying in so you might have to go over your base coat a few times.

Self-Critique

Not much to say here. The bone is the same basic technique I've used on all the bone in the army and that's most of the model. My quest for a decent gold method continues. This is Balthasar Gold washed Agrax and drybrushed Golden Griffon which is duller and “older” looking than the one from the painting guide but somehow not deep enough for my purposes. Eh, further experimentation ahead and perhaps it'll look better on smaller details with my infantry.

My crappy pictures (new house = new photography set-up = LEARNING EVERYTHING AGAIN!) doesn't show the Dark Reaper drybrush on the black stone but it looks quite cool in person, trust me. Please?

Anyway, I'm happy with how the mummified Liche Priest turned out, especially the bandages, which makes this a good test case for the Tomb Guard I'm building right now.

Overall, I think I did well.

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!!

Not as homo-erotic as it looks.

I'd never seen Space Seed, you see. The housemates and I were watching The Wrath Of Khan and I mentioned this gap in my knowledge. Naturally, we then had to watch Space Seed...

I had high hopes for this episode or, at least, higher hopes than I should have had. Now, for the most part it was exactly what I expected: the Enterprise stumbles across Khan's sleeper ship, wakes the fella up, he hides his evil semi-competently for about quarter of an hour, tries to take over the ship and gets promptly defeated before being dumped on Ceti Alpha Five with his followers and his beloved wife. In most regards it was exactly what I expected.

So why was I disappointed? Why did my housemates look so gleeful when I slotted the DVD into the player?

Well, it's the beloved wife, I'm not going to lie. You see, what I had imagined went down in this episode, based on Khan's motives and dialogue in the movie, was that he met someone on the Enterprise, they fell in love, she talks him down from whatever evil plan of evil he was trying to execute and they retire to live happily ever after on the planet of the brain-eating earwigs.

Lt. Marla McGivers, ship's historian and a hot mess of 1960s gender issues. The woman is obsessed with the big, butch manly men of history. She has filled her quarters with endless paintings of Roman centurions and other warriors. She becomes infatuated with Khan before he's even awake on the tenuous logic that he's a 20^th century Sikh and that makes him a great warrior (so add some 1960s racial issues to the aforementioned hot mess). Though the whole scene where he gives her the choice “Go or stay, but do it because it is what you wish to do!” is a nice little number where you can sort of see what she sees in him... well, it's far outnumbered by the moments when he roughs her up, tortures her colleagues in front of her and transparently manipulates her to follow his agenda all while she simpers submissively.

And then she decides to settle down with him.

I felt I was being realistic. I didn't expect this episode to be anything more than a run-of-the-mill TOS episode with what I knew to be a superlative actor in the guest villain role but the sheer awfulness of Marla McGivers genuinely shocked me. Okay, Star Trek is of its time and that's some defence but it does far better with female characters in so many other episodes that screwing up this badly here genuinely baffles me. Even the functionally identical subplot with Carolyn Palamas in Who Mourns for Adonais? gives that character far more agency than McGivers gets here.

I just can't connect the reality of McGivers with how Khan talks about her in the film. Eh, the memory cheats I suppose. 

Tomb It May Concern (Lessons Learnt)

I think I'm starting to get the hang of Tomb Kings. Oh, I got crushed yesterday but every time I roll the army out I last a little longer and a little better.

This time round I finally worked out how to use my chariots: slamming an early flank charge into a weak rank-and-file unit (Night Goblins who had already spent their Fanatics), who I broke, ran down and overran into another unit. That other unit, a 30-strong Squig Herd, smashed me up but I took half of them with me. Skeletons Of The Match, right there.

I had a good idea that didn't work, sadly, but worth remembering. I tried to bring my Tomb Swarms up between two Night Goblin units to tempt out the Fanatics. If they had emerged odds were that the Fanatics from either unit would go through my Swarms and into the other unit. Sadly, I rolled a misfire and stayed underground. In hindsight I should have stayed patient and tried the tactic again next turn rather than charging in with my ranked units and Ushabti but... eh, hindsight.

My Hierophant needs a ward save. I already pay for one for my Tomb King but I'm starting to think those points would be better spent keeping the Hierophant alive. Every one of my three defeats have come off the back of the Hierophant dying so old Crookback is getting the Talisman next time and Amanhotep can look after his damn self.

I think I need to make some economies and get some Skeleton Archers in. Right now the army has a grand total of eleven bows, which is a mighty waste of one of the armies big advantages: shooting without modifiers. Okay, without modifiers on a mediocre ballistics skill, but still.

I might get rid of the Carrion. They're actually pretty rubbish. The original idea was to have them flying along by the side of the Necrosphinx to back him up but its not working out. They aren't that resilient, they only have two wounds. They're pretty much just filler, even if their suicide charge at the first Night Goblin unit freed up a channel of assault for the chariots. Basically, they exist only for the times I need something fast and expendable.

My Level 1 Liche died relatively early on, taking the Incantation of the Desert Wind with him, thanks to which I'm starting to think it's nowhere near as essential as I assumed it to be. Upon which subject, the augments on the Lore of Light are amazing so she's earned a semi-permanent slot on the order of battle.

Now, to get some painting done so my army can be more presentable for my next incrementally less embarrassing defeat. 

On Tomb Kings and the learning curve

Tomb Kings are a difficult army to learn: they're slow, they're highly dependant on their magic, more even than Vampire Counts; and, even their strong stuff can be killed off just by being outnumbered at the end of a fight. They both suffer and benefit from a need for synergy between units that I'm just not used to, though longtime Empire players might have better luck with it than me.

Just to be clear: I love this. I love the learning curve on this army. I can usually get a bead on how an army works pretty early on but this one is giving me so many chances to experiment before I find my feet, which I hopefully will.

This afternoon I'm having my third game with the Tomb Kings and after my first two crushing loses I'm looking forward to testing out some new units and tactics on my way to probably my third crushing loss.

This will be my Tomb Kings' first 2,000 points game and with that extra space comes the confidence to use my Tomb Scorpion's Entombed Beneath The Sands rule unafraid that it'll emerge somewhere useless again. I'm taking a third Liche Priest to road test the Lore Of Light as well as a Casket Of Souls, though I admit that five magic levels and a bound spell might be too much magic even for this army. I've also finished building my Tomb Guard so I shove my Tomb King in there and keep the Necrotect with the Skeleton Spearmen so I have a buffing character in both infantry units.

And I really, really need to remember that the large constructs need support when they move in for the kill. They're strong but they're slow and that Unstable rule is a bastard, especially as I'm facing Matt's Orcs & Goblins. I'm pretty sure I'll lose. Matt has strength, speed and Fanatics on his side, not to mention experience but it will be a learning exercise and that's fun for me all by itself.

Plus, now I'm up to 2,000 points I can debut my Tomb King. After the dismal failure of my Tomb Prince Rastaph to cleanse the stone mines around Mortis Tarn of their Dwarven occupiers it is time for his honoured father Amanhotep the Intolerant to take command as a horde of greenskins bears down on Zandri from the barbarian north. At his side marches his daughter, Rastaph's sister, Zandri's Priestess of Ptra, Oili (aka my Lore Of Light wizard), his favoured child.

So Rastaph licks his wounds in Zandri, snubbed by his father, waiting to see if he will have to welcome his sire home in glorious victory or ignominious defeat. 

Joanie "Chyna" Laurer, 1970 - 2016

This past week one of the greats of professional wrestling passed away.

On Wednesday, Joanie Laurer, known to wrestling fans around the world as Chyna, died at the tragically young age of 45. She debuted back in the Attitude Era as Triple H's bodyguard; was at one time in consideration to become the first ever female World Heavyweight Champion; actually was the only women ever to hold the Intercontinental Champion; and, was the first of only two women to ever appear in the Royal Rumble.

She was a big, muscular woman (a professional bodybuilder, in fact) working in wrestling when blonde hair and implants were basically part of the uniform. She almost always held power in her storylines and had dignity even when she didn't (with the exception of that... rather uncomfortable angle with Chris Jericho). She was a part of D-X in its most legendary form which alone makes her a major figure in the Monday Night Wars. She competed on a level with, and even feuded against, some of the best male wrestlers of her day. She even competed in a few inter-gender matches that weren't horrible to watch, even if one of them did seriously bring into question whether WWE's bookers know how vaginas work.

Like Trish Stratus and Lita she was one of those great female wrestlers who was better than the women's division of their day ever deserved, one of those who worked to elevate the form even as the industry itself sank into valuing female competitors only for their looks.

She was the Ninth Wonder of the World and we were privileged to have the glimpse we got of her. 

A glimpse of professional nerds at rest

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment that Peter Capaldi, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss entered a Doctor Who themed pub quiz and came third...

I just find this so sweet. 

A Little Hobby Idea

The quest for blog content continues with this little idea a friend had to get me back into painting:

Every time I finish painting a unit or a character model, I will write a small piece of background for them. Nothing extravagant, just a hundred words or so, give every character some personality and every unit a little piece of history. Just a few lines for each thing that makes it off my painting table fully painted, based and varnished.

Considering my habit of playing with half-painted miniatures, they'll probably have some legit battle honours by that point anyway, which will certainly help. Take the Bogenhafen Handgunners I'm currently putting finishing touches to, which already saw honourable service at our group's big year end game The Siege Of Altdorf. I'm certain I can expand that to a couple of paragraphs. 

On, um... coming events

One advantage of finally being settled in the new place is I have time to catch up on the huge stack of comics that have accumulated in the last month and a bit. The advantage of that is it means I finally have some content for the blog I originally set up to be about comics!

It's funny what catches the eye as a good subject for a post. Take this snippet from Starfire #8...

… and, yeah, I may be 1,000 words into an essay analysing a masturbation gag. It isn't even a joke essay, this really did help crystallise a whole bunch of issues concerning Starfire's sexuality that I wanted to discuss into sharp relief.

I just read that last sentence back and I didn't mean it like that. I really didn't. I'm sorry. 

Kitbashin': Bretonnian Empathy Knight

Just a little something I cobbled together between assembling skeletons: a foot knight character for my Bretonnia army.

A friend came up with this idea a while back and I finally got around to putting it together. Basis is a Vampire Counts Wight King with the vampire iconography scraped off the shield, a Knight Of The Realm head and some other bits of bling from the same kit. The simple addition of the head with dragon heraldry on it changes all those bat wings on the model into dragon wings, which was either clever of me or lazy. You decide!

I'm keeping the ragged cloak and mail, too, since I like the idea of having a hermit knight joining the army on some mysterious purpose.

It hasn't come out exactly as I'd like: the head is tilted a little lower than I wanted but the overall effect works for me and I look forward to painting him up for a bit of variety between soooooo many skeletons. 

The Secret To Writing Flawed Women

I had to explain this to someone the other day and I think there's some mileage in putting this out there in case anyone is interested.

The reason I think that Mad Max: Fury Road can get away with doing things with and to its female characters that would normally bring it in for criticism (like, say, running a pregnant woman over with a monster truck or the one Bride who decides for a moment that, yep, sexual slavery in exchange for material comfort wasn't too bad a deal, actually) is because there are close to a dozen named, speaking female roles in the movie. What this means is that no single character has to bear the weight of representing their entire gender.

When you only have one or two developed female characters in an overwhelmingly male cast (oh, hello, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, I didn't see you there) you get way less leeway because there's nothing to offset these things. Its easier to read the Bride who breaks as an individual rather than a statement on women as a group because she's standing next to Furiosa, the other Brides and the sniper grannies.

So, how do you get to explore flaws or weakness in female characters without being accused of portraying women as innately weak? You include plenty of them in what you're writing to show that you are treating characters as individuals and not as a case study on your views of an entire half of the human race.

And I hate that something this simple even needed to be explained. 

Tomb Kings test drive

Yesterday Matt and I had a quick game of Fantasy to test drive our new armies. 1,000 points, Dwarfs versus Tomb Kings. I lost pretty conclusively after my Hierophant found himself standing just in the right spot to be in line of sight of ten Thunderers and nature took its black powdery course. My army actually survived its crumble tests for a couple of turns after that but with Matt's army almost completely intact we both knew I was only running out the clock.

Regardless, a loss with a new army is an educative experience. Obvious first lesson: pay very, very close attention to where the Hierophant is standing.

I think I might have made poor use of my general. I took a Tomb Prince on foot and kept him in a block of Skeleton Spearmen with a Necrotect. They did well as a team, conferring Hatred and WS5 on the unit between them. However, I also took a unit of three chariots. Both units did okay but as the game went on I began to suspect I'd made the wrong choice with the Tomb Prince. The chariots made a charge against a ranked up unit of Dwarf Warriors and did well in that first turn, impact hits and spear bonus and all, but weren't half as effective in succeeding turns. Once the impact hits and spear bonus were spent they just had their natural strength and weapon skill to rely on, neither of which are that good. Spirit of the staircase and all but I can't help but wonder how WS5 might have helped that situation.

The Tomb Scorpion suffered a mishap when I tried to bring it up behind Matt's battle line, appearing instead from my table edge. It spent the next three turns shambling forward and then crumbled to death when the Hierophant died. Pity, but it taught me early on not to rely too much on Entombed Beneath The Sands units.

One unit that did really, really well were the Ushabti who were a lot more durable than I expected them to be. They held their own for six rounds of combat against a ranked up unit of Dwarf Warriors practically identical from the one that both my Spearmen and chariots just bounced off.

I'll not lie, Tomb Kings are a challenging army and they're distinct enough from the Vampire Counts that I'm having to relearn how to work a whole bunch of units I thought I'd already have a handle on. That's actually kind of cool and something to look forward to.

Im just hope I get some use out of the Tomb Scorpion next time, I love that model. 

Guess who's injured today!

Okay, so Finn Balor left an NXT live event in Nashville on crutches this Friday. I'm not even sure I can remember the full list of injuries right now: Randy Orton, John Cena, Paige, Cesaro, Seth Rollins, Nikki Bella, Shamus, Daniel Bryan, Sin Cara, Rusev... that's just the ones I can remember.

Has anyone considered just booking an exorcism for WWE headquarters?

At this rate of attrition, the Wrestlemania card might actually be a four hour Iron Man match between Triple H and Frank The Audio Guy (if anyone remembers that joke...).

Okay, for serious, it's not all doom and gloom: there's AJ Styles and the other NJPW signings; Roman Reigns is currently being kept wrapped in pillows at all times by a heavily sweating Vince McMahon; the tag division is still mostly intact; and, 'Taker probably won't be competing until 'Mania and his presumed retirement match.

And then there are the women.

The women's division (and I will never call it the Diva's Division) has rarely, if ever, been in a healthier state than it is right now. Yes, the nine woman, three way “Divas Revolution” was a disaster of poor booking decisions but Charlotte's feud with Becky Lynch has been focused, well-written and brought us some great matches. Sasha's return from injury at The Royal Rumble got the biggest cheer of the night that didn't involve AJ Styles. Over on NXT we have the gloriously threatening Asuka and the brilliantly chirpy Bayley, who can get a crowd on their feet like few babyfaces I've ever seen. Bayley and Sasha's Iron Man match at NTX Takeover: Respect was the first time a women's match has headlined a WWE live special and it was amazing.

Now, there'll be a women's title match (never, NEVER going to call it the Diva's Championship) but maybe it's time to try pushing more women's matches on the grandest stage of them all?

Just a thought. 

New House, Ancient Tombs and Returning Evils

After weeks on end of packing, moving, unpacking, building furniture, arranging bill payments and entertaining violent revenge fantasies about certain employees of the local council, my housemates and I are now all moved in to our new place.

Both my new housemates are old friends and fellow hobbyists so we've set up a dedicated gaming space. Originally I planned to start a new project to celebrate a successful (if typically stressful) move but after a quick game against Dave with my Orks... well, I had a better idea.

You see, I got nostalgic from living with my friends again and so I decided to return to some old projects: one an army that I started but which never got off the ground, the other a revival of what was once my signature army.

A couple years ago I had a chance to snap up a bunch of Tomb Kings kits at a dirt cheap price so I did. Trouble was that whilst I was looking to move on to a new army, the army I was moving on from was Vampire Counts and so I just wasn't feeling it. I'd painted enough skeletons and so the kits have sat in a box ever since. Still, a year or so of Lizardmen later I can look at the Tomb Kings and see what I loved about them originally.

"Forward, my minions!"

I like that they're these Universal Studios-style Egyptian undead who are, in their own way, good guys. They even use exorcism magic. I like that just about everything in the army is either a skeleton or an animated statue and not just because it means I can dash off the block infantry and cavalry pretty quickly and concentrate my time on the centrepiece models. That's certainly a benefit but it also means the army has a very unified, focussed look to it. Plus, I have this odd affection for the Tomb Scorpion, which was one of the first “centrepiece” models I ever saw and one I'm really looking forward to painting one of my own.

The other army on the docket are The Lost And The Damned or, rather, Renegades & Heretics since I'll be using the list from Imperial Armour 13. The Lost And The Damned used to be my signature army back in the old Codex: Eye Of Terror days.

Whilst the Tomb Kings are an army with a very unified aesthetic that I can make straight out of the box, the Lost And The Damned are anything but. The Lost And The Damned are an army all about converting models, be it with the Forge World upgrade sets or by digging through your bits box. It is, in essence, the ultimate show-off's army. You can customise the characters and units as much or as little as you want. I have a bunch of the Forge World conversion sets I picked up at the final Games Day and oodles of ideas on top of that for cool conversions. Anyone who converts their models, I am convinced, loves that moment when someone asks to take a closer look at their work. Its a lovely feeling.

Also, the Imperial Armour list is, to my mind, the best version of the army so far. It has some very odd moments of copy editing and some rules my friends and I have flat out decided to ignore because they are flat out stupid. There's a lot of that Hordes of Chaos business where your choice of general opens up one or two options and closes off about a dozen others. That's just ripe for ignoring, frankly, which is why we don't usually see so much of it these days. Plus, there's a silly restriction on who can use Daemonology which, again, is a rule the group has roundly voted for me to completely forget.

I have some building to do, it seems.