Friday Night Internet Fight: Round 29

In this week's fight, two men enter and one cup leaves.  Wait, I think that's another thing entirely.  Back to the thunderdome!  In truth, though, this week's fight only involves 2 people for the first time I can recall.  This is a huge first for us here and a great feat considering the fight is from BoLS. 

FNIF: Round 28 Results Show

You guys officially all suck balls.  "Worst 200th post ever" appears to have won by a wide margin, snaring 39% of the 53 votes this week while decimating my feelings.  It wasn't that bad, you're all just jerks.   Just kidding, I still love you all... except you, you know who you are.

Saint Hazard was able to snag 21% of the vote, destroying the other actual participants even though he squandered what should have been an easy victory by turning into a jackass halfway through the ordeal. 

Time to write up the next fight, so stay tuned.

Return to the Ogre Kingdoms

After a couple people pointed out that my previous Ogre list was illegal and Randroid pointed out that it also sucked, I've made a few changes.  I was able to use better equipment on characters and upgrade my Butcher to a Slaughtermaster while only losing a total of 2 models, both of which are leadbelchers, so probably nothing really lost there anyway ;P  I think the real accomplishment here is that I've resisted the urge to mention Shrek.... shit!

Grinderman

Nick Cave has been busy as of late.  Hot on the heels of a new novel, a critically acclaimed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Album, the first record from his side project Grinderman, and scoring a handful of movies such as The Road and The Assassination of the well whatever the rest of that title is, Mr. Cave and co released the second Grinderman album, Grinderman 2 yesterday.  Of course I already have it and of course I got the deluxe edition.  For the other two of you out there that still buy cds, the deluxe edition is totally worth it, even if there are no extra tracks.  The packaging kicks ass.  You get 64 pages of sketches, lyrics, and liner notes that don't come in the regular edition along with a poster. 

In case you're not familiar with the work of Nick Cave, he's an Australian native who has been working in the music business since the early 80s.  He got his start fronting The Birthday Party before forming Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, (and now you know that the Johnny Cash version of that song is a cover) whose revolving cast of members has included more people than I can possibly list here.  Highlights of that roster would have to include Mick Harvey, Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld, and Warren Ellis, though.  He's also written two novels (the first being better than the latest, but both are good), penned the screenplay for the excellent film The Proposition, and scored quite a few other movies as well as lending his voice talent to the short film The Cat Piano.  Tired of links yet?  Sorry, but the fucker is prolific if nothing else.  Thankfully, he is also a god damned genius.  I can't say enough positive things about most of his work, although there are a few Bad Seeds albums from the late 90s/ early 2000s I could have lived without.  He got into this weird sort of gospel music, ultra-mellow religious thing that I don't get.

 Luckily, he's learned to rock again.  The last two bad seeds albums set the tone which he continued in the first Grinderman effort and through into an amplifier again for the newest Grinderman.  The album is like getting punched in the gut...in a good way.  As long as you don't hate rock music, you'll love the album.  Grinderman is composed of Long time Bad Seeds Nick Cave, Warren Ellis (not the comic book writer), Warren Casey, and Jim Sclavunos.  Warren Ellis' guitar work puts a lot of hack players attempts to stretch the limits of their effects pedals look amateurish at best.  The man is a virtuoso on the violin and guitar, although he's actually playing a fendocaster rather than a guitar, which you'll probably see later.

I could try and describe the sound for you, but would no doubt come up short.  The closest I can come is imagine Ministry playing blues rock (but not Ministry playing this, because it was fucking awful and far too literal an interpretation of what I was trying to convey).  Probably best just to let the music speak for itself.







and because Warren Ellis' fendocaster is the craziest thing ever- so much noise from such a tiny little thing (and the entire band collectively look like Jesus), here's a live clip from the first Grinderman record

2,500 Point Ogre Kingdoms List

It's official- I've been bitten by the fantasy bug.  After getting in a game with my Empire army, I'm really excited about playing more fantasty.  While I like the Empire, it's not a radical departure from the type of army I normally take.  Grab big guns, set up a cheap meat shield of piss poor troops, perhaps throw in some combos and sneakiness, et voila- sit on your ass and throw templates at people all day from the comfort of your own deployment zone.  Let's look at a brief history of armies that I play/played regularly: Mech IG, Semi-mech IG, airborne IG, Protectorate of Menoth (template/combo city!), Empire, and a deep-striking shooty Tyranid list.  Lots of camping and shooting with a shitload of models.  The pattern should be obvious.

Friday Night Internet Fight: Round 28: Post 200 Bonanza: Longest Post Title Ever: Colon

Woohoo, I've made it to my bicentennial post and even got it to randomly sync up with FNIF.  Hooray for me.  It's seriously been a fun ride guys and gal, so thanks for reading and sending me e-mails about all of the stuff/people that are pissing you off in the hobby.  Isn't catharsis great?

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 27 Results show

Well that was barely a contest as it turns out.  With 58 votes this week we were up from last week slightly, but down from where I know we could be.  I'll blame my inability to maintain a posting schedule these last few weeks.

With 44% of the vote, The Paint Monkey had no problem pulling out the W this week.  His only stiff competition came from the joke votes about 'shrooms and adults controlling all of the money in gaming, with 25% and 24% of the vote respectively. 

You'll all be happy to know that late yesterday evening, I replaced my cable modem, so I am fully functional again.  Hopefully I can make a better account of myself this week.  Ps, fuck Amazon.  I buy A LOT of shit from them and pay to be an Amazon Prime member to get free 2 day shipping.  Increasingly, however, this has run well over 2 days.  Case in point- I just bought a TI BAII+ calculator and modem, both eligible for 2 day shipping, which took 4 and 5 business days to arrive.  Glad I'm paying for that great service.  I probably won't be renewing that (much like my Barnes and Noble membership that I let lapse recently- seriously, $25 to get a 10% discount in stores and online and free shipping and then they go ahead and extend member benefits to everyone on their web store?  That's a fucking dick move right there.  Not to mention, their prices aren't even competitive with the discount...)

I'm not dead, but my cable modem is

I apologize for the lack of posts of late, but as I have alluded to previously, I'm having Internet connectivity issues at the moment.  Specifically, my cable modem is completely jacked and I only have a connection briefly and intermittently as it spontaneously resets itself (according to my isp it reset 50 times in a 12 hour period).  Woo hoo good times. 

My new hardware should be here later today or tomorrow, though, so I'll be up and running again soon.

In other news, I got to bust out my empire forces for my first game of WFB since 1997 against Hoagy this past weekend.  I had a blast in spite of the forces of fate conspiring against me.  I did learn some valuable lessons though

1. Pistoleers are the shit
2. That Tomb Kings spell that gives you extra shooting or close combat attacks is crazy annoying
3. Always give expensive wizards some type of ward save
4. Never trust probabilities (I'll be posting a brief article about this on the HOP later this week)

To check out a brief battle report and see more pictures of partially painted minis from the event (like the above) check out Hoagy's blog When Cannons Fade and then go listen to some Bolt Thrower.

Speaking of metal, my new band, Crusader,  is playing its first show tonight for free at the Exit in Chicago at 10:00 if you're in the area.

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 27

If you had asked me this time yesterday what the FNIF what going to be about, I would have told you it wasn't happening.  I'd been dealing with my cable Internet being down for nearly 2 days followed by a day of my modem being responsive for about 15 minutes every hour.  Hence my general lack of presence on teh intertubez this last week.  But, the problem appears to have been on my ISP's side rather than a problem with my modem, and everything is working fine now, so we'll just move on.

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 26 Results Show

The polls are closed and we have a winner!  For the second time in recent history, somebody actually won a FNIF- pretty definitively this time too, if I may be so bold.  Sadly, this poll was also one of the least active we've had here in quite some time with only 49 votes.  I blame my utter lack of having time to post anything of substance to drive traffic this week.  Oh well, better luck next time.

Back to the subject!  PagingMrHerman managed to corner the market on win this week with 42% of the vote, so congrats on that one.  Even though he clearly started a thread to get in a fight and be a dick, he still managed to win your hearts.  jmurph managed to grab 14% of the vote and "whoever wins, society loses" snagged 20% of your votes.  Everything else was scattered around in clusters of 1-2 votes that were probably mostly sarcastic or people with google alerts voting for themselves. 

Stay tuned fight fans, round 27 is coming up shortly.