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Sunday, 11 November 2007
40k: Apocalypse Now!!! See what I did there?
  Posted by mace at 5:12 PM // 0 comments


Ok, it just occured to me that it's nearly been a month since my last post, and I've definitely been uncapped for a while, infact on my way to being capped again.

Stating the obvious: Yes, It's stuvac now. My exams start on the Tuesday 13th with MATH1231, followed by ELEC1111 (Wed 14th), PHYS1231 (Mon 19th) and finally COMP1921 (Wed 21st). Yes, it kinda feels like the HSC. Am I studying as much? HAH, sif. So I've looked through an ELEC past paper and going to look at a Maths one soon.. and realise how screwed I am.



Before I do that though, I didn't get around to finishing what I was saying about Apocalypse!

So, the new 40k Expansion was released on October 13th, whereby I went to the store expecting to find a whole bunch of gamers (I won't use geek stereotypes here, but probably apply) huddled around a table eagerly constructing their Baneblades.. but even arriving a few hours later than I had intended (slept in and all, yeah I know it's Apocalypse and all but still) - I was evidently the first to sit down and look through my stuff.

I bought the Apocalypse bundle that had the big rulebook, a Line-Breaker Squadron (3 new Vindicators), a Baneblade, and templates. My wallet was empty by then. Spent most of the day assembling the Baneblade, and long story short, as I had pre-ordered a Baneblade, I went into the draw to win another, and surprise surprise, I won! So now I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it all. Probably start IG or Armoured Company. I gave a Vindicator to my brother, but still, now I have a hell of a lot of tanks.

See?

Got Dakka?


Keeping in mind each Baneblade covers an area about the size of an A4 sheet of paper.. that puts things into scale for ya. Now I've heard of news of a 'Steel Fury' datasheet that consists of 3+ Baneblades.. I may just need to invest in a 3rd, just to make things nice (3 is a good number!).


Two weeks later, they called me in for a big game, so I came along, given that GW Parra were aiming for 30 Baneblades.. and we had around 15 superheavies.

I had to eat my words with that 'Got Dakka?' statement above. We were playing against a massive armoured company that consisted of 8 Baneblades, ~20 Leman Russ tanks, including Vanquisher variants, a Hellhound Tank Company (10) and a few Hydra AA tanks. Got pwnt. We still won game though =) My Baneblade held the line and contested an objective whilst what was left of his army fired everything they had at me. That was a little nerve racking. Probably less so than carrying $500 worth of plastic around Parra.

Just a portion of the Armoured company that we were facing:

Got Pwnt?


Some of his other stuff in their plastic transport crates.

Reserves.


More Pics - I haven't looked through them or anything, there are some repeats where I changed the exposure and re-shot them..
[40k] Battle of the Bulge


Keeping this short, so I better run back to study.

Good Luck everyone!
- .mace

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40k Project: Motorized Land Raider
  Posted by mace at 4:58 PM // 1 comments
Well I'll keep this short, over the course of the past week or so I decided I'd kick off an old project I had in mind, rather spontaneously. I know, the timing is a little iffy given that it's stuvac... but nonetheless, here's a much needed intro/progress update.

Preface/Intro

Ok. Ok. Let's not try word this like an Engineering report or a Science experiment. See this thread for more in-depth detail.

The Plan:
1) To build a motorized 40k-scale tank.
2) Preferably make it RC controlled, with realistic tank drive and working tracks.
3) Add lighting to it, like headlights
4) Add special effects, like gun lights and sound effects

Videos/Tests


Well, long story short, I've bought some components, I have an RC car that I'll pull apart after exams are done, and I have a tank base with twin motors/gearbox just so I can test out the voltages and eventually the electronics. I also have a Land Raider Terminus Ultra on its way, it should arrive hopefully AFTER I finish exams.

So, videos ahoy.

Motorized Tank - Test #1


Motorized Tank - Test #2


Motorized Tank - Shout-out to Mr. Spinnytank.


Sometime soon I'll get the electronics together, have to design and build a power module and a amplifier/control module. That'll be fun. More updates on the fly, that forum thread linked earlier will have my latest progress. I cbb doing a direct copy/paste of what I've posted there into here...

Comments, anyone?

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Sunday, 14 October 2007
Apocalypse Please
  Posted by mace at 12:36 AM // 0 comments
I'm capped at the moment, so I'll be going light on the internet usage and have more photos of my new stuff later in the week. For the time being..:

mace bags shotgun!

=)

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Monday, 1 October 2007
How things have changed... #1 - Life.
  Posted by mace at 11:51 PM // 0 comments
Well everyone, it's certainly been a while since I last blogged. But upon seeing Kevin's new blog, I too questioned why people create and post to weblog. "To what point and purpose? *1" I feel as though, somewhere along the way, I've lost my focus, or perhaps never had any in the first place when I started blogging.

So, to what purpose do I dedicate my blog to? this particular blog is a bit of a duality, I have my column for thoughts and opinions on anything that comes to mind, and a column to follow the life of mace in both meatspace and cyberspace. Someday I can look back at this and recall all the memories embedded in each post, or empathise with my past-self and the state-of-mind I was in whenever I wrote a particular post. Because, as unfortunate as the truth may be, there will be a time when things will have changed and I have forgotten (or don't want to remember) the events of the past...

*1 who can pick the reference? =P miffy probably knows it off by heart ;)



So much has happened in the past three months; where to begin?

House


I've moved house, finally! Quite seriously just down the road from where I used to live. So here's a shot of my *messy* room. But I cleaned it up today, no joke! Whilst i'm at it, my guitar:

mace's room mace's guitar

From what I can remember, only select few have actually been to the unit where I used to live, and I'm sure you can all remember how small it is! Packing my group in here + extra's after our Year 12 Formal was very fun though =)

Now our rumpus room is just as big, if not bigger than the unit's lounge room + bedroom area combined. So eventually we'll get a pool table and table tennis table to go in there!


Life


Life is good. Uni is.. meh. I'm making my way through the session. Been having fun, haven't really caught up with some old friends lately.. which is rather unfortunate. I'm glad I have my hobbies though...

It's back to uni this week, although I have engineering week, so I have a few more days of break =) I better start work and catch up on everything I've missed out on.

Working itself, at Dick Smith, well I've been doing ok in sales, but been dropping down lately, and haven't been selling warranties. Sometimes it's pretty stressful, but now I'm a lot more relaxed about it all. Next week I'm getting bumped off into music, so bye bye sales targets (and commissions) =)


More about life in the parallel post (when I get around to writing it...)


Tech


I've since upgraded my computer, and bought a new laptop from HP. It's allll good.
The specs, off the top of my head:
      Desktop     Laptop (HP DV6519TX)
CPU P4 2.53Ghz C2D T7100 1.8Ghz
RAM 2GB SDRAM 2GB DDRRAM
GFX GF 6600GT GF 8400M GS
OS WinXP Vista Premium
HDD 80/160 160
Mon 19" Wide 15.4" Wide
Res 1440x900 1280x800

Laptop has all this cool extra stuff, webcam, altec lensing speakers, fingerprint reader, hdmi out.. but it basically trumps my PC. Surprisingly good specs for a laptop, turned out to be a beasty entertainment pc.

My Desk My Desktop My Laptop

I've been gaming a fair bit lately, especially with the mid-session break (sorry theresa!) - although I haven't dropped as far as to play WoW. Instead, been playing Quake Wars demo, could potentially get recruited into a clan to play in competitions.. but I don't think I'll be getting the full game anytime soon. So much for being a pro-gamer.

Meanwhile, Halo 3 was released a week ago; played through nearly half the game at tom's house, and played a bit during my lunch break at work. It's just awesome.

After looking at Ikea catalogues, and searching the net for LED tables... if I had a chance to design my own house/room.. it would be as techy as I could possibly make it of course! I'm talking about LCD's everywhere, funky lighting and interactivity, the works!


Warhammer 40k


Well I've gone and given this a bit more attention lately. A few days ago I decided to pull out everything I had, and chuck it down on the table. That's not even including the Battle for Macragge stuff my brother has nor his space marines. The scale of my collection surprised even me =\

some reading material Daemonhunters Black Templars Tau Army Faceoff.

So, for starters, for anyone who isn't aware of it by now, yes I play warhammer 40k, as you can expect a typical 'true' geek to do. For those who are game-savvy - well there's a new expansion coming up, called Apocalypse. Yes I'm caught up in the hype, but it's just going to be massive. Huge 3000+ point battles, where the FOC restrictions are removed and you can basically put down and use anything you want, in arbitrary quantities (I've been hearing things from 6 Baneblades to an army of assassins!).

I'm getting closer to my aim of a 2000 point pure mech list, but once I have the models for that, I'll have 3000ish points in models anyway that I can put down and use. 1/4 of it largely useless IMO but anyhow.

Apocalypse on October 13th. Funny to casually put a date on such a phrase. Anyway, I have one of the bundles on pre-order, that includes a Baneblade, Linebreaker Squadron (3 Vindicators), the book, and the Apocalyptic templates. Meanwhile I've just won some stuff off Ebay for my Tau, which should hopefully arrive soon.

With all this attention back on 40k, I'm now tossing up even more ideas of projects to run in parallel. So here goes:
  • Tau: Reach my ideal 2000 point mech list. Move onwards to 3000 points for Apocalypse.
  • Marines: Figure out what to do with my marine army. Thinking of going for Blood Angels, but Dark Angels and leaving it as Black Templars and just expanding is tempting.
  • Daemonhunters - well I have that 2000 Point list to work towards. I can always add in a Baneblade just for fun, and more units of Terminators.
  • Imperial Guard - I'm getting a Baneblade. What do I do with it!? Thinking of getting more IG.
  • Movie Marines: I want to convert up some models for this. And build a remote-control and/or LED-lit rhino for the squad.
  • Deathwatch: I just want a squad because they're awesome. I've been reading too many sci-fi novels.
  • I should build a gaming table. I mean I have the space now, even to put one in my room. Cities of Death/Apocalypse themes are the way to go.


I've also been to GW a few times in the past week, been working on some models that have been sitting here for over a year... So, from my WIP bench, I have a techpriest and a piranha that I'm working on at the moment. The techpriest was kind-of subject to a 15-minute speed-painting session.. just so I have a general idea of what it will look like. I will of course go back and fix it up with a lot more detail... As for the piranha, I'm still on the first colour, the blue-lining still has a long way to go, but you can see the general gist of it =) Still heaps of detailing left to do on the cockpit and pilots, as well as the drones and engine blocks. The highlighting is really dodgy in the second pic...

Techpriest Enginseer Tau Piranha Front Tau Piranha Back

More on my Tau army progress and Apocalypse as it comes.

.mace out

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Thursday, 28 June 2007
40k Post #1
  Posted by mace at 9:19 PM // 1 comments
This post will more or less be photo spam, of various things I have here, representing my current status.

Chrome Space Marines! I can't really focus on them because they're so shiny... (Grey Knight is there not just for awesomeness, but to help focus =P)
Chrome Space Marines Chrome Space Marines w/ GKT
Got them from GW for intro'ing Tom to 40k. I'd like some more!

My recently assembled Tau:
XV25 Stealth Team Skyray Skyray
Yes, that's the Skyray that you guys got for my birthday last year. Don't worry, I have a special paint scheme in mind for it!

Soon I'll order some stuff off eBay so I can bump up my army to my ideal full mechanised list. Then it's just waiting for Apocalypse...


And I recently got an old Black Templar army off a friend, amusingly it totals up to 1337 Points at the moment! Big army nonetheless, and very dusty =\

Black Templar Army Assault Squad w/JP (10) Commander-type Dudes Tactical Squad (10) Assault Squad (10) Combat Squad (5) w/Plasma Combat Squad (5) Combat Squad (5) w/Plasma Old-school Rhino Old (metal) Dreadnought Landspeeder Old (Baal) Predator

At the moment I'm not sure what I'll do with these Black Templars yet, I can either keep them as they are and just restore the models and paint job (they're all covered in dust) OR - I get some Dark Angels and repaint them. Oh Ravenwing are so awesome.

I also want a squad of Marines and a Razorback so I can build a quick 1500 Point Movie Space Marine army in DoW-Intro-esque style.

I'll see how it goes =)

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