Well, I’ve done all I can do. I won my game of 40k tonight, but the 2nd place player had to bow out due to illness. He has until Wednesday if he wants and can get together with his opponent to play a make-up game for the tournament. He can tie me, which is a win for him due to tiebreaker points, but he has to win everything to do it, unlikely against this particular opponent.
So, who do I get for my efforts? Bragging rights, maybe a small trophy, and a small handful of cash. How much I’ll know next week.
The levels of winning are Victory, Crushing Defeat and Victorious Slaughter. I managed to make it a Crushing Defeat and get two bonus points in the process. If I had kept one more model alive, I would have gotten a third bonus point and would have been untouchable.
My opponent basically defeated himself. I had two heavy weapons squads sitting out in the middle of the table, and he was so afraid of them that he crowded his entire army into one corner, and tried to push it up a bottleneck along one edge of the board. We had a large forest on my right flank, and only 8″ from the board edge. He tried funneling his entire army up this small area, hoping to overload my flank. The problem was, he couldn’t do it. Everything was in every other things way. Especially when I started killing vehicles and the wreckage really caused a choke point. It was easy at that point to hold him like Horatius at the Bridge. I managed to kill everything but two jetbikes, while I lost one Dreadnought, one Tactical squad and their APC transport, while another Tactical squad was reduced to just the Sergeant and my HQ squad was under half strength.
My opponent did the best he could. If he would have stayed in range of the heavy weapons squads, they would have torn him to bits. This way, both squads only fired once.
Anyway, I’m exhausted, mentally and physically from that tough game. I think I’m heading off now and I’ll see you in the morning.

Wish me luck tonight.
Tonight is the last week of a campaign I have been fighting in for Warhammer 40k. I have managed to go undefeated so far, and as of this past week, I am in first place. This is important, as there is cash on the line. If I win, I get first place. If I lose, I get second place. If I lose and the 2nd and 3rd place players draw (they play each other tonight) then I end up in 3rd place.
I am facing the 7th place player, the pairings for the entire campaign was determined at the beginning of the campaign. I don’t know if he can field his entire force (we are limited by cards as to what kind of selections we can use). Like I’m limited to 1 HQ, 2 Elites 3 Troops and 2 Heavy Support. He is limited to 2 HQ, 2 Troops, 1 Fast Attack and 1 Heavy Support. He can force me to start two of my units in reserves, but I have a preliminary bombardment and I can reroll 1′s in shooting. I just have to remember these advantages.
My opponent desperately wants to play the spoiler, and I’m going to do my best to win.
Wish me luck, I’m going in.

Al-Zarqawi came face to face with a 500 pound bomb yesterday, dropped from an F-16. He bought it at the hands of his own people, who turned him in.
What does this portend? The insurgency will go on, but it will likely stop trying to instigate a holy war between the Sunnis and the Shiites, and concentrate killing American soldiers. Zarqawi was a nut job, and out of control. Someone replaced him before he even died, since like I said he was turned in by his own people. The new guy will probably keep a very low profile, since it’s a given he doesn’t want to end up like his predecessor.
On to Hell with you, Al-Zarqawi. Good riddance.

All I can say is, WOW!
I’m pretty sure Southern Thunder 2006 was a resounding success! Two solid days of punching holes in the sky, and getting your tonsils sunburned from looking up into the sky so much.
I myself only got in 5 actual flights. I had a failure on the pad, plus I was taking photos for Extreme Rocketry really cut into my flying time. Plus, when you have a over a hundred people all vying for 10 low power pads and 10 high power pads, plus a couple of “away cells” where you have the BIG projects, then recovery and prep time, you don’t get a lot of individual flights in, but a lot of flights for the flightline.
My first flight was on my brand new, virgin Mars Snooper. I received a lot of comments about how nice and cool the rocket. I flew it on the low power pads first, and had a successful flight.
Second flight was my Strong Arm, a mid-power rocket. It flew straight and recovery was easy.
My next flight was going to be on a donated rocket, but waiting for the launch controller to get around to my pad, the pad fell over, and ripped the launch lugs right off the rocket. No way to repair it on the field, so this birds weekend was over before it started.
So, I took the motor meant for that rocket and put it into my Garth R., named for my father. That one jumped straight for the sky and landed perfectly. So ended the first day of rocket flying.
We went back to the hotel, and I loaded up my biggest rocket motor for a flight Sunday.
Sunday came, and we again lumbered out to the field, and I tried my Mars Snooper again, this time on a larger motor. This one I had bought as a reloaded motor, so I wasn’t sure it would fly, but fly it did. The bad news is the motor delay was too long and the parachute didn’t get a chance to deploy before it hit the sod. Total loss of a $70 rocket. But it wouldn’t be rocket science if there weren’t a few crashes and explosions to keep you on your toes.
I flew my Strong Arm again, this time on a reloaded motor, and I had quite a walk to recover this one. Who says you don’t get exercise chasing rockets? This, unfortunately turned out to be the last flight of the day.
I was about 3/4ers of the way prepping the Garth R for a flight to about 6,000 feet with the motor I loaded the night before, but a storm cell had come into the area, and I didn’t want to launch it while it was raining. Things are time critical when you load a rocket with electronics, as the batteries need maximum juice to fire the ejection charges. I need to assemble the entire rocket, then place the batteries and head off to the launch pad within a certain period of time. With the storm cell in the area (it never touched us, but it did shift the wind around) I scrubbed the launch. I’m glad I did, as the wind shift started sending the rockets into the woods near the launch pads. So this motor is sitting waiting for me to launch it this coming Saturday, weather permitting.
Last note, the biggest project of the weekend was a 3/4 scale Coyote, a rocket I had never heard of before. The rocket was about 12 feet tall and 9 inches in diameter. Here is a picture of it launching:
Click on pictures for full size.

Here is a picture of it landing, the bad news is it didn’t land under a parachute.



So. What did YOU do on your weekend?