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Not My Day? Toss up

3/2/2014

Battlefront (Flames of War) have taken over Dust Tactics, yes, I know, old news, but the trivia I've heard is that part of the divorce with FFG limits Battlefront from "reducing the value" of the Dust Warfare product they still have on hand....which means Battlefront with their Flames of War mentality cannot touch the actual game they'd love to fiddle with. Instead, Tactics is getting "warfarized" a bit. BF has been doing a lot of good, they now have multiple specific battle boxes for each faction, consisting (so far at least) of a hero, vehicle(s) and a squad or three. They have also rationalized and consolidated the various rules (which were spread over a half dozen books) in a new rulebook...but then the meddling comes in. First they got rid of the simple & clear LOS rules for ones that are a bit muddier and arguable; as in over the table top arguable....

Next, and most stupid, they started introducing firing arcs for vehicles, which I consider a good idea in a number of cases, but then they make the exception for turreted vehicles. Well, okay, that works too. Then they decided that the Axis walkers that turn at the waist (making the entire upper torso a turret) are "fixed gun" vehicles too. Hello <knock, knock> anyone home? The justification for walkers was their extreme (compared to tracked AFVs) agility in urban and close environments, but now Battlefront decides not only to kill that but make them fixed forward tank destroyers that are easier to see & easier to kill than a real tank destroyer...dumbasses.

However, I did pick up Osprey's little skirmish game, Ronin. It looks like a lot of fun and thanks to some stuff I snagged for free at NOVA and a couple of other places, I can build up a Buntai or two for some quick and easy fun.

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Building New, Fixing Old, Shelving Scraps

9/24/2013

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Little flaw in my plan to generate interest. If the store doesn't carry it, then there isn't so much interest, but if there isn't much interest, then why should the store carry it. Unfortunately, I contributed to a bit of the wariness a couple of years ago when I was getting bored with 40k and playing the same list over and over, so, I'd load up my bit of Dust Tactics and take in it along with my Deep Strike List, then when another player arrived, I'd "extort" a quick game of DT out of them before we pulled out 40k. Which caused a little buzz, which tempted the owner of the FLGS to get some core starter sets, which didn't sell for crap because about the time he got them, I wasn't bothering bringing in DT anymore.

Anyway, I talked to the owner and I'll know more later. Pretty much, drop DZC for the near term since I'd have to buy lots of units for multiple factions, several of which I'm not even interested in. Dust Tactics, maybe, but since the owner would want to promote an event a bit, we would be running into the expected Robotech RPG Tactics release and the owner is most definitely going to pick up a lot of Robotech stuff...I think like me, plenty of people would buy it for the models. Soooo....we'll see.

Anyway, I'm having fun putting together my DZC PHR starter set and playing around with the modelling some. I've been patching up some of my DT models that had taken some damage and trying to source some tools to fix the bad pose on some of the models. Finally, just going through the boxes I set aside as half full on my iniial sort and condensing it down. Otherwis, nothing else new.

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The Sorting has been continuing

9/17/2013

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It still proceeds apace. Almost all of the Dust stuff is off the shelf, replaced by 40k boxes. The 40k stacks are taller...

Now I'm pretty much down to one box a day sorting as I go to put it on the shelf. I've split some time off to start converting foam blanks I had already cut for my Plano gun case mini boxes to Dust ready ones. I had to get the next size up copper coupler (30mm bases, heroes and maybe IA3 needing 40mm), then sharpen one end, and I had forgotten what a pain that was. Now they are glued and drying, but after fixing the technical issues from my first attempt, I've ran into another, my homemade foam trays have gone from perfect fit for 3 per case to probably just a bit too tight for 3. I should be ready to take DT to the FLGS on Saturday. Especially since I'm not planning on anything more ambitious than the original core set units for playing, although I'm going to take some of the newer models along for display.

Heh, the reason for all this goes to the wife. I was looking at my NOVA buy one-get one free coupon for KR Multicase and noticing that Dust foam is rather cheap, so she pointed out that I could put the extra stuff in the gun cases rather than just stacking gun cases full of 40k up on a shelf.

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Sorting...Contiues

9/9/2013

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Okay, all of the DT stuff is off the shelf, my two black Army Transport bags are packed to the gills, the shrink wrapped GW boxes are up on the shelf and I've run down some of the stray DT items that weren't where they were supposed to be. The gun case idea kinda works, the bases for DT are a bit bigger (30mm) so I cannot use the egg crate foam for now. I'll have to find my other foam I used to cut spots for 40mm bases and get something closer to 30mm to use as a cutter. Considering I don't need all of the units at first, I can probably just use the cases where I have the original foam and just lay the guys into the egg crate for now. Or just take the big Dust box with all the minis in it.

Now it is just sorting through and condensing all the boxes. I'm beginning to choke at all the minis I'm finding stashed in boxes. Except for Neophytes, I think I could field six full Crusader squads (weapon options might be limited), plus some Sword Brethren and probably a squad of Assault Marines , maybe two. And the sprue, the massive amounts of sprue. Actually, this is good, I've test build one small piece and it works fairly quickly once you get past the boring bits of cutting it up. You make "bricks" out of the sprue, then just plastic glue them together into a wall. Easy building build.

BTW, what's up with you guys. Dead, dead, dead on traffic for a while, now

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You Start Again

9/8/2013

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Not a lot that is important. Mainly I have to pull all my Dust Tactics stuff out of my room and reorganize my "temp" stack of stuff from when I set up airbrush station. Then pack up all my 40k minis in their boxes and put them on the shelf where the Dust stuff is now. After I get it all reinventoried, I'll have to decide how I want to move it around. I've got a lot in a the original Core box using foamboard to make pockets for troops and walkers. I think I can get most of what I have outside that box into a couple of KR cases using my buy one get one free from NOVA. I actually could also recycle stuff out of my gun cases with the stuff in the Dust box for long term storage.

Hmmm, the wife suggested using the gun cases for Dust instead of jumping out an buying the KR stuff right away, so swapping will probably be a great idea.

Funny thought, if I start doing both Dust and DZC, I could bring both armies in a KR2 bag (2 KRU cases).

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Dust Tactics Thoughts

9/22/2011

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Dust Tactics is a Weird War 2 game from Fantasy Flight Games. Fairly basic outline if you are familiar with Nazi conspiracy theories. While a U-boat is messing around Antarctica, the Nazis discover an alien ship with alien aboard. From the alien, the Germans (with strong connections to the mystic side) figure out how to build new high tech gear with new power sources and use it to deploy walker tanks, advanced infantry gear and "heroes" (think original Captain America type without the costume, tough with a bit better combat capability and some special ability). Of course, add in the gorilla warrior experiments and zombies (trying to research how to apply alien longevity treatments to humans). Of course, wanting to sell the game in Europe, fluff provides for the elimination of Hitler and liquidation of the Nazi party so it becomes Axis vs Western Allies, vs Sino-Soviet Union. The aliens (Vrill) will be added later as they want to reclaim their power resource reserve planet. Unfortunately, FFG hasn't decided to start releasing SSU units yet, so all we have are Axis vs. Allies.

Having just ordered my monthly budget of stuff for Dust Tactics, I thought I might give a few thoughts on list building for the game. Oh, entry cost is much cheaper than for 40k.

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Not My Day? Toss up

Building New, Fixing Old, Shelving Scraps

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You Start Again

Dust Tactics Thoughts

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