I know what this means. Zoe knows what this means. That's all that matters. 😄
Be a Dog, Empty Head
Glorious Near-Victory
I haven't had access to my Thursday nights for a while. There's a pretty good reason for that (antenatal classes) but it does mean I've been unable to get to Crossfire Gaming for a while. Today, that changed. I have a precious window of opportunity between the end of the antenatal classes and the start of, well, having a child.
As such I was able to get over to the village hall and do tiny battle, fighting my way to another glorious near-victory. I hear what you're saying, you're saying "near-victory sure sounds like a euphamism for defeat" and to that I say yeah, obviously.
I also say "bloody Tau". I haven't beaten the Tau once. Not once, I tell you. Of course part of that is because I play fluffy lists and I don't give a damn about mathshammering or scouring tournament lists for strategic tips. I just like putting tiny men on a table and rolling dice for an evening.
That said, I think if we counted up the victory points I'd have done better than either I or my opponent think I did from objective play. Thing is, when you get utterly tabled it doesn't matter much how you played the objectives. Still, it feels thematically 'space marine' to play the objective and take catastrophic losses. I'll console myself with that.
Rule of cool, friend, rule of cool.
And the actual news
Yeah... maybe you can understand why I've been a bit too busy to update the blog!
A long time and a little different
It's been a while since I wrote anything here, huh? Yeah. It's been a lot.
So the headline is we still haven't moved in to the new flat despite owning it for a few months. On the other hand the kitchen is almost entirely re-done. It would be finished but on removing the fibreglass ceiling tiles we discovered the ceiling was... in a state you might expect from a Glasgow tenement building. So the ceiling needs rebuilding.
Also, given the state of the bathroom in the last post, you might not be surprised to learn we deiced to move forward the bathroom renovation to before we moved. We happened to be able to and it's certainly easier than living there without a bathroom. And without a bathroom is certainly where we're at.
That's not the only big news but this headline is basically "no news".
Not how I'd choose to meet the neighbours
No, that's not a particularly shiny floor in my bathroom. That's a centimeter of water spilling in from the flat above. That's what I found when I turned up at the new flat today to meet a kitchen fitter. The kitchen fitter didn't turn up, but that's a whole other story.
So the first time I meet my upstairs neighbour is by knocking on his door to tell him water is pouring into my bathroom and ask if he has a leak. And I mean pouring. It was like it was raining indoors. The neighbour's bathroom is bone dry though.
The uninteresting part is that we got plumbers out and they did find the problem the more interesting part is that as a result, I was running up and down the stairs trying to coordinate things with my upstairs neighbour, at the end of the day when everyone was coming home from work. Which is how I met most of my new neighbours.
The good news is they all seem very nice and I now have names and phone numbers, I'm even in the whatsapp chat for the owners group repairs discussion. That happened a bit faster than anticipated but at least it's out of the way!
The less great part is that the water was flowing through the light fixture of the bathroom and the circuit breaker had tripped. Ok, the circuit breaker tripping is probably a good thing actually but it wouldn't reset. That's less good. On the other hand, the flat's being rewired in a week anyway so it could be worse.
Still, it turns out the saga of this flat purchase is not quite over yet!
It is done. Now, we begin.
By which I mean we bought the flat. Like I have keys and everything.
Which means the journey of sorting out changing addresses on every account I have or have ever had, getting new IDs issued and the small matter of repairs, rewiring and redecoration begins now.
One day... one day I'll relax.
10th Edition
I've actually managed to play a couple of games of 10th edition. It's been out less than a month and I've nearly played as many games of 10th edition as I did of 9th. There's a few reasons for that but honestly one of the main ones is that 10th edition is simpler to play.
Cutting down from the rule book, the codex and extraneous paraphenalia like strategems really helps. I played a game with my Imperial Fists using five sheets of A4. A game with Imperial Guard using four sheets. Not only does that make it easier to pack it has a much more important role.
Before the fight I give my sheets of A4 to my opponent, they give me theirs and in moments we have a full understanding of each others' armies and their abilities. That is game changing. No more slogging through an opponent's codex (if you have access to it) to get a sense of what they might be able to do to you.
There are some downsides. A lot of people have issue with the lack of granularity in the points. There's some truth to this. My Basilisks got revalued just before my match last night and having to tweak things around to find 40 or so points in my list when I couldn't just drop a couple of dozer blades and plasma pistols but had to swap whole units around was a problem.
Counterpoint: Everything in both matches I've had has been its' most elite, lethal version of itself. Sergeants with plasma pistols and power weapons because the chainswords aren't a cheaper option any more. Plasma cannons and lascanons on tanks, kitted out special weapons. It makes the game feel grand and powerful. I like that.
The cover and line of sight rules on the other hand are... strange. Two squads, each on the upper deck of a ruin, firing across what's technically a 'ruin' but much lower in the middle of the board can no longer see each other as that short ruin represents an obscuring pillar reaching into the sky. The opposite is true of a squad hiding behind a tank or their transport. Models don't block line of sight any more so they're out in the open, counter intuitively. It's weird, yes, but it goes both ways so it's not unfair.
Oh and also, my dice are cursed. Let me tell you, people are complaining about indirect fire in 10th edition but that doesn't matter when every attack from your Basilisk is a 1 or a 2.
But here's the most important conclusion I have reached after two games.
10th edition is faster to play. It's better balanced (both matches I've played were incredibly close to being draws even though they were wildly mismatched in many ways). That makes it fun.
The Extreme Excitement of Looking at Fridge Freezers
Aren't they scintilating? Don't they set your nerves ablaze?
OK, no. Fridge Freezers aren't exciting, I'll concede that. But, see, the sellers of the flat we're trying to buy are taking theirs with them when they move. That means I need to look at Fridge Freezers for pretty much the first time in my life. And with 10 days on the clock before I'm supposed to pick up the keys I need to look at them now. And that is kind of exciting.
I say 'supposed to' because yet again things are uncertain. You know those lists that say moving house is right up there on the list of most stress-inducing things you can do in your life? They're NOT WRONG. Technical problems with my mortgage provider have cropped up at the last minute and it's literally the last thing on the checklist before the sale's concluded. I mean technically if my sellers had something dire happen to them that could affect it too but barring natural disasters and such this is the singular holdup.
I'm told everything should be relatively easy to sort out by the lender so I'm trying not to actually have a coronary but I'd be lying if I said I won't sleep easier when I've heard the sorting out has happened.
Stay tuned, dear reader (heh) for more as I learn it. And maybe in just over a week some more optimistic posts about our plans for our new home.