Boy was a fun time had today! We had two mega battles going at the same time, a 40K mega battle with about 30 people, and our Epic Mega Battle with 12 people. I came equipped to play either side, but ended up as an Ork on the Forces of Disorder side of the table. I had Tau to the right of me and more Orks to the left. I faced down Imperial Guard across the table from me.
Here’s how my forces looked set up. As with all pictures, click on them for a full view:

I felt like I was playing Whack-A-Mole and I was the mole. I would advance a unit, it would get broken and run away. Wash, rinse and repeat. I wasn’t making any headway, but by the inverse the IG player wasn’t making any headway on me.
Here’s how it looked at the end of turn 1:

I dropped a Rok (landing craft) in his backfield and assaulted his artillery, wiping it out. At least he wasn’t going to do a lot of steel rain on me this time. I dropped a second Rok and he was ready for this one, I was wiped out to an Ork on the second assault. But still he spent his time on his side of the board defending it from me, unable to advance onto my side.
Here’s how it looked at the end of turn 2:

We had to wrap it up at that point, a lot of people had other obligations and we wrapped it up, calling it a draw. Neither side could make it on to the other side of the board. Each side would advance in turn and get beaten back. So we resolved to meet again, before New Years Eve and try again.
Mike and I stuck around and played another 3,000 point game, kind of hoping to ring in the new year there at the Bunker. I played a weird list, all vehicles and no infantry. I played my Supa-Stompa, which is the same points as the Warhound titans that Mike routinely plays against me. Except this one is a lot nastier. It’s weaker in some areas, but stronger in others. I fielded a 765 point unit with that as the center piece, and he fired at it once, with both of his Warhound titans. I promptly saved all of the hits, then put the smackdown back on him, killing one Warhound and breaking the other, which went and hid in the corner of the battlefield with only one point of health left on it.
For once, I ended up on top. I’ll have to explore this kind of list a little more throughly, as it seems to work. The Big Gunz on the Gunwagonz are fairly accurate and Mike is afraid of them.
Just so you can see the difference, here is a picture of my Great Gargant and my Supa-Stompa.

And that’s how my 2005 ended, with two great games and I got home in time to ring in the new year by myself. I hope all of you had a great time and got home safely.
Happy 2006!

I have to go to work in two hours, and I have to get paining for the Epic:Armageddon mega battle New Years Eve. I’ll see you next year and let you know how the battle went.

Well, it was a big thing, no doubt about it. That Flat Top game is the bees knees. Mike has his own BatRep here. A fairly complex game that we messed up in some ways, but all-in-all we carried out the spirit of the game.
We took about 2 hours to set-up the game, because we each had about a hundred counters to manage, split into various task forces and airbases. I myself, playing the Japanese had 9 task forces.
The game started rather quickly, we carried out the first 6 night turns in about 30 minutes, because all we did was move the task forces around secretly. You see, there are two board maps that take about about 5 square feet, and then you have sheets that you plot your task force movement on, because the movement of task forces are hidden until discovered by an air unit.
Once planes were in the air, we had to track every air groups movement, test to see if it could carry out a search, then keep back checking to see if they saw anything. You also had to track were the air group launched from, how long it could stay in the air, who was at high and low altitude and several other things. Like Mike says, you really need a staff to play this game.
I now understand why the modern generation likes their RTS (Real Time Strategy) games, you don’t have to worry about the details, just focus on throwing forces at the enemy. This was as close to real combat as you could, hours of boredom with minutes of stark terror interspersed among them.
I had spotted his main carrier force first, but I had spent my aircraft on a couple of minor task forces. I sunk a Light Cruiser and damaged a Battleship, but again my forces were busy reclaiming aircraft and it would have taken several hours to recycle them to a ready status. Could he find me and strike before then? We’ll never know, because after 7 hours and only 10 turns played (again, 6 of them were really fast night turns) we had to cut it off for the night.
By the end, both of our brains hurt, but for a good cause. We were working at a WWII strategic level, with their level of technology. This is a game that both of us want to try again, and we will. There is also a game engine that we can use to play by email (PBEM) that will take care of the small details for us. That should go better, since we will be able to leave rules and details to the computer.
All in all, a magnificent experience and one that will be repeated again.

This is an extremely sad story: Deadly rampage leaves loved ones asking why.
It’s about a man with Bipolar Disorder who kills two people, seriously wounds another and then kills himself. There, but for the Grace of God, go I. I have told you before that I have had the Memphis SWAT team out to my house to capture me. Twice. It’s not a sight you want to see, stepping out of your house to see a dozen armed officers, training their weapons on you.
I have been so close to what this man did that it is scary. Those thoughts and images haunt me to this day. It is not a right mind that thinks, “I’m going to take them with me” outside of a battle in a war.
The good news is, I am on medications that, for the most part, keeps those thoughts away. Oh, sure, I still think about suicide, but they’re more of a flash thought and no real impetus behind those thoughts. No driving force to carry them out.
I am very strict with myself about taking my medications. They sit right here, under my monitor where I can see them all the time. They are in a week long pillbox, so I can easily see if I have taken my medications today. I have no excuse not to take my medications. It doesn’t matter if I feel good or not, I still take them. I will never fall into the trap that because I’m feeling good and stable, that I don’t need to take them. It is by taking them that I feel good and stable.
Don’t worry about me. I highly doubt that I will end up the same way. The chance is there, always, but I have urges like that under control. When life starts getting out of control, I know what to do to retake control of myself, and violently lashing out is not an option.
This man’s family, and the families of his victims, will never know the answers to the questions that they have. They wouldn’t make sense to a rational mind anyway. The logic of an unstable mind is difficult to follow. While it makes perfect sense to us, it doesn’t to the rest of you.

I’m not sure who they were supportive of, Bush or Clinton. Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel: Clinton Would Have Gone Into Iraq, Too.
This smells like revisionist history, trying to bolster the Clinton Legacy. “Yes, if 9/11 would have happened on his watch, he would have gone into Iraq.”

KOPPEL: I mean, the only difference between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration was 9/11.
BROKAW: Right.
KOPPEL: If 9/11 had happened on Bill Clinton’s watch, he would have gone into Iraq.
BROKAW: Yeah. Yeah.

I highly doubt that stipulation. The “Most ethical administration in history” was hounded by *-gates from day one when Co-President Hillary fired the travel office’s staff to replace them with her friends. And it all went downhill from there.
No matter how much anybody (including Clinton himself) might say it, Clinton would not have gone into Iraq, or even Afghanistan. He would have just lobbed more cruise missiles and issued arrest warrants for OBL and company. He lacked the spine to make the hard choices, and I think history (especially his-story) should reflect that fact.
I will say that the present President Bush is a very lackluster President. If it wasn’t for 9/11, he would have been as forgettable as Rutherford B. Hayes. The only thing Bush had going for him besides 9/11 is his tax cuts. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, it is still nothing to significantly remember him by.
But again, this is all about Clinton and his-story. To even suppose that Clinton would have had the balls to do anything like what Bush has done is pure sophistry.

I don’t know what it is, but I can’t concentrate on the news this week. Nothing just seems to strike me. Maybe it’s the post-Christmas letdown, or this is “slack off” week.
Anyway, I’m preparing my apartment to play a game of Flat Top, an old hex board game of carrier battles in the South Pacific. This is in place of my usual time at the Memphis World of Battle Playing Epic:Armageddon. But with a 18,000 point game two days ago, and another mega battle on Saturday, I thought taking a break is the best thing. Besides, variety is the spice of life. It’s been years since I’ve played a hex-and-counter game. Gotta go, my opponent is on the bus and due to arrive in a few minutes.

Well, well, well. It looks like a lot of the EU countries are hoist by their own petards over Kyoto. Europeans missing their Kyoto targets.

Britain and Sweden are the only European countries honouring their Kyoto commitments to cut greenhouse gases, according to a think-tank report.
Although the US is portrayed as the ecological villain for refusing to sign up to the agreement, 10 out of the 15 European Union signatories – including Ireland, Italy and Spain – will miss their targets without urgent action, the Institute for Public Policy Research found.

And “urgent action” are words not found in their vocabulary over there. Singularly or together. So what will happen? The governments will get fined billions of dollars, which they will pass on to their citizens with higher taxes. Remember, New Zealand got stuck with a bill because there were too many sheep emitting greenhouse gases. It came to something like $3,000 per citizen in fines.
So there you go. Bureaucracy in work. To create the mess and make it worse.

Well, all I can say is what a battle! On one side was Tyler and Mike and myself, with Corey, John and Ernie on the other side. Space Marines, Eldar and Orks facing more Eldar, Imperial Guard and more Space Marines. I got to be the supreme commander for my side. With each player fielding 6,000 points, that was 18,000 points per side, 36,000 total on the table. We took up about 15 feet of table, and even at that we were pretty tightly packed.
We got whomped a good one at the beginning of the first turn when the IG’s Mantacores opened up with an artillery barrage, breaking two of my warbands before they even got a chance to activate. Then the other side walloped us some more. We were holding our own, but barely. We used turn one to get our forces in position.
Turn two things went drastically different. The Mantacores were busy reloading, being slow firing (can only fire every other turn) so we got a relief from that steel rain. Tyler rolled up the left flank, and I rolled up the right. Both of us pulled off coordinated assaults on multiple enemy formations.
You see, if two enemy formations are too close to each other, then you can declare them “intermingled” and treat them as one formation for all intents and purposes for the assault. Using a method known as clipping, you “clip” one small side of the enemy formation. You bring overwhelming force to bear on one little part of the enemy formation, doing a lot of casualties on their side while avoiding a lot on your side because not everybody can shoot back at you. By having more kills than your opponent, you get a head start on the combat resolution roll, where you roll two dice and see who actually wins the assault (that’s what you do, but there are a lot of modifiers to the roll. I won’t go into them here). If you win, you break the enemy formations and they must withdraw. If you have multiple formations involved, all of them must withdraw.
It was about 8pm when we hit the halfway point of the second turn (we started at 2pm. Remember, we have about 100+ units per side, and each activation takes 2-5 minutes) and we had to wrap up, but the inertia had swung to our side. We had about 10-15 more activations left than they did, and they knew we were going to savage them with those activations. It would have taken another turn to sew it up, but we were on top and everybody knew it. we were driving both flanks inward, and we were consolidating our hold on the center.
I feel pretty good with this win, it’s one of the few times when I’ve gotten to be supreme commander and won. But I must admit, I couldn’t have done it without my teammates. It was truly a team effort. This is something that we’ll have to try again, albeit with a slightly less point value so we can get through all three turns.

Today marks the weekday we get off for Christmas, and people will be busy getting back home again after visiting relatives. Just be safe and courteous out there and arrive home safely. Nothing newsworthy to report today.
As far as what I’m going to do today, I’ll be playing 7,000 points (that’s a lot all by itself) each player of Epic with Mike and some friends today. It should be a slugfest with Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Necrons (or more Eldar). Maybe some pictures. I’m literally throwing everything I have into the force, and some stuff I don’t have (I don’t have an Ork Killkroozer, but I do have an orbital bombardment planned).
I’ll let you know how things went tonight.

Thanks, Mike, for the link.
Today, on this Christmas day, a great victory was won by the American forces fighting for Liberty. Read the whole story here.
The very will of these men make me proud that I share military Service with them. What they endured, what they went through I can only imagine. But went through it they did, and because of their brave actions, America is a free country, dedicated to the rule of law, where the people who run this country must periodically bow to the will of the People, instead of the other way around.
WE THE PEOPLE, those tall, proud words eleven years later started an experiment that continues to this day. Let that experiment continue forever.

This should bring a tear to your eye. It did for me.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone, in a one-bedroom house made of plaster and stone. I had come down the chimney with presents to give, and to see just who is this home did live.
I looked all about, a strange sight I did see, no tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by mantle, just boots filled with sand, on the wall hung pictures of far distant lands.
With medals and badges, awards of all kinds, a sober thought came through my mind.
For this house was different, it was dark and dreary; I found the home of a soldier, once I could see clearly.
The soldier lay sleeping, silent, alone, curled up on the floor in this one bedroom home.
The face was so gentle, the room in such disorder, not how I pictured a United States soldier.
Was this the hero of whom I’d just read? Curled up on a poncho, the floor for a bed?
I realized the families that I saw this night, owed their lives to these soldiers who were willing to fight.
Soon round the world, the children would play, and grownups would celebrate a bright Christmas Day.
They all enjoyed freedom each month of the year, because of the soldiers, like the one lying here.
I couldn’t help wonder how many lay alone, on a cold Christmas Eve in a land far from home.
The very thought brought a tear to my eye, I dropped to my knees and started to cry.
The soldier awakened and I heard a rough voice, “Santa don’t cry, this life is my choice;
I fight for freedom, I don’t ask for more, my life is my God, my Country, my Corps.”
The soldier rolled over and drifted to sleep, I couldn’t control it, I continued to weep.
I kept watch for hours, so silent and still and we both shivered from the cold night’s chill.
I didn’t want to leave on that cold, dark night, this guardian of honor so willing to fight.
Then the soldier rolled over, with a voice soft and pure, whispered, “Carry on Santa, It’s Christmas Day, all is secure.”
One look at my watch, and I knew he was right. “Merry Christmas my friend, and to all a good night!”

A Marine wrote this poem. The following is his request. I think it is reasonable…
PLEASE. Would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S. service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us. Please, do your small part to plant this small seed.

Before I leave you to have some good times with your family over the weekend, I want you to remember this: Democrat Landlord Bilks Republican’s Homeless Shelter.

A liberal lawyer in Los Angeles is threatening to throw nearly three dozen homeless center residents back on the streets because of something he finds indefensible: The center’s founder is a Republican and voted for President Bush.
[...]
Milton Sidley, a retired attorney and landlord, said he discovered earlier this month that Ted Hayes, founder of Justiceville/Homeless, USA, was a Republican.
[...]
Two days later, Sidley decided to raise the rent at Justiceville’s “Dome Village” from $2,500 per month to $18,333 per month because, he states, “This Democrat is tired of supporting Ted and his Dome Village.”
So much for the notion that Democrats want to help the country’s poor.

Liberals want to “help”, only on their terms, which is to give them just enough to keep them totally dependent on the Liberals for everything. God Help Them if someone should actually want them to be independent!

I wanted all of you to have this link: Norad Tracks Santa. It’s only a few hours until Santa starts handing out presents, and I wanted all of the kids (both young and old) to start tracking him as he flies across the globe.

Another well-attended bash last night! Mike has the full details. After getting both of our buts whipped in a three-way Epic, we cut the day short and rushed down to the bash, at Quetzal on Union.
Conversations abounded, on all subjects. What stopped the talking was an episode of Boondocks, being played on the Cartoon Network. It must be played at night, because one of the kid characters called Santa a “Bitch ass N*****” And that didn’t include the pixelized images of men having sex with each other. If I had the Cartoon Network, I would pull it from my channel lineup, as that kind of stuff has no place on a kids network. I realize that “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Sealab 2021″ pushed the envelope, but this stuff shot it in the head.
With the exception of Boondocks, the entire night was a night of good conversation and good friends. It took three midgets and a crowbar to get this crowd out of the door, 20 minutes after closing and the conversation still continued on in the parking lot.
I look forward to crossing swords with the liberals of the group. Now I know where they blog.