Quadragesima

Quadragesima, 40 Days, Lent. Today is Ash Wednesday the beginning of the season of Lent that leads up to Easter. As it began, I've had one friend accosted by a Bible Thumper online and my wife made fun of at work for having ashes on her forehead. Interesting.

No one would fault a Yogi for meditating for months at a time, no one dares say a word against Muslims praying 5 times a day, the neopagans and wiccans celebrate the spring equinox freely, nothing much is made out of Jews celebrating Passover, but smear some ash on your Catholic forehead and offer to give a little something up for 40 days and suddenly the Earth spins off it's axis. Curious.

Lent as we know it began early in Church history as adults fasted and went through the rituals to become full members of the Church. By the 4th century, the practices began attracting particiption from people already baptized alongside those waiting for admittance. Between the 6th and 8th century, "Confession" or Reconciliation became the focus of absolution for personal sins and the 6 week period of Lent began to take serious shape into traditions we'd recognize today in the 11th century. Though some of the severity of the fasting and abstinence were gradually removed, it wasn't until 1966 that modern guidelines governing the Season made them less stringent.

Why do it? So many people from Baby Boomers on down make the statement that it's all ritual and no spirituality in the Church. Yet here's a tailormade spiritual season of 40 days leading up to Christians' most important holiday and the very tools that in any other religion would be seen as key to kick off and/or enhance the physical and mental process of embarking on a spiritual journey are ignored, mocked or generally disregarded as outdated practices with no modern application.

For whom is there a spiritual vacuum?

40K Traitor Guard part 2

I'm WAY past due addressing this and I need to thank Jay from: Jay's Workshop for giving me a swift proverbial kick in the ass. Since November, I haven't just been complaining about how I've been priced out of a hobby I've been at for 24 years, I've actually been working on things and stuff that have been sitting on the shelf from the time when I bought and purchased and horded like a Democrat with someone else's blank checkbook.

While this isn't the comprehensive Traitor Guard List, this is everything that will appear in it! Because this isn't simply misled, misguided or otherwise foolish regular Guard, but full blown renegade traitors who have embraced Chaos and turned from the Emperor I use the colorful, "in-Universe" names and titles,and provide tailoring for all 5 styles of Chaos army. (Undivided, Slaanesh, Nurgle etc etc.) But when I post the full list, it will become clear what stat lines I am using for whom and I'll try to list which codex or article each entry was pulled from. Also, I'm not including point values here.

HQ:
Company Command Squad
-Arch Renegade or
-Beastman Champion or
-Herald of Slaanesh or
-Chaos Magus or
-Plague Disciple
--Heretic Veteran
--Heretic Veteran Weapons Team

HQ Independants:
-Dark Mechanicum Enginseer
-Alcolyte
-Chaos Magus Master
-Demagogue

ELITES:
-Big Mutants
-Demon Packs
-Rogue Psykers
-Heretic Veteran Squad

TROOPS:
-Heretic Infantry Platoon (Same as IG)
-Cultists
-Mutants
-Gibbering Hordes

FAST ATTACK:
-RoughRider Squadron
-Scout Sentinel Squadron
-Armored Sentinel Squadron
-Hellhound Squadron
-Chaos Hounds
-Valkyrie

HEAVY SUPPORT
-Defilers
-Chaos Spawn
-Leman Russ Squadron (Some type restrictions)
-Hydra Flak Tank Battery
-Ordinance Battery

This has come together nicely, providing a guide to build a tough tabletop 40K army that could go toe-to-toe with a loyalist Imperial Guard army without either side having an outrageous advantage or disability in the face of the other. I'm confident it accomplishes this while stylistically remaining true to the 40K universe and frankly would be fun to hobby as well! (Which is good because since I really can't buy new models, I have to turn inward on my stock!)

40K Traitor Guard

All these spare Guard models, what to do? Traitors would be a cool enemy for my Guard and Marines. Very "fluff", very appropriate to the setting. "Just make them Traitor Guard" is the common suggestion if the Lost and the Damned or the old Chaos Cult armies are ever brought up. "Just make them Traitor Guard." But how's that done effectively, then? Would Commissars and Stormtroopers be present in a Traitor Guard army? Not likely. They'd be the first taken down or the first to retreat and regroup if their companies started going sour with Chaos.

When it comes to the "fluff" of the 40K universe, it would be cultists and traitors and renegade guard that would be the major problem and at the heart of most of the conflicts in that setting. Even seeing a Space Marine is a rare occurence, a Renegade/Chaos one showing up would be that much more rare. It's a numbers thing. Eldar and Dark Eldar raiders a nuisance, but survivable. The Tau may be expanding, but their pocket of the galaxy doesn't even rate the word "pocket" in size. The Orks are a massive problem, there's no real way of knowing how many Tyranids are on their way and the Necrons could be any and everywhere, but we're talking Chaos. With the quadrillions of people that populate the Imperium, the Inquisition, Space Marine Chapters, the Sisters and the Imperial Guard would have their hands full mostly with putting down Chaos corruption and rebellion from within. Plus, with all those planets in "The Eye" and nearby other tears between real space and the warp aren't spilling over with Chaos Space Marines. They'd be the ruling minority amidst throngs of cultists and militia and Guard-gone-bad.

I've looked around online and there are a few decent army lists out there for bringing the Lost and the Damned up to date for 5th ed 40K, and it would be easy enough I guess to throw some spikes on the models, step back and say you have Traitor Guard... but I think there ought to be an army list. (Actually they should have their own small codex probably) So, using the 5 relevant codexes from 1996 to the present day I'm going to piece together a viable and hopefully fair army list for Traitor Guard. I'll post it here soon!

Summer of FASA

My best friend just scored an in-the-shrinkwrap, complete Battletech 3rd edition set!! I just scored an in-the-shrinkwrap, complete Renegade Legion 2nd edition box set -- yeah, the one with the 36 tanks included!!

Add to that the fact I've been studying this for the past couple months on and off:


And with Games Workshop doing something about inflation -- i.e. raising their prices -- and adopting a European store management model -- which apparently means they're never really open for any length of time -- I think we got the makings for the summer of Fasa! The material's just as fun and playable as it was 25 years ago and thanks to ebay and Amazon.com and loads of independant retailers/resellers out there in the world. Almost just as accessable. Woot!
Nope. Never played Shadowrun and have no ambition to, but thanks for thinking of that one.

Another Classic

"Do you have what it takes to lead men into battle?" So asks the bottom of the Battleforce box. It had been at leat 20 years since I played. What was I thinking? In the 80's I had avoided the Battletech phenomenon. How, I have no idea. FASA Corporation totally had their finger on gamers' pulses at that time. Again, what was I thinking? Still, at least I played this one.

Without true knowledge of the game that spawned it, I can't discuss Battleforce's connection to it's Battletech parent intelligently, though very soon, I'm going to remedy that and just get in on the modern incarnation. As my friend said, it's been playtested for 25+ years, the rules are solid.

Battleforce is putzy to set up. Small, thick paper representations of the different lances of Mechs, tanks, fighters, infantry, etc, each jammed full of info and each sprouting "chits" to designate the skill of their crews and other information. But past that stage, despite what seems like a ton of information, game play is fast and easy to pick up on. Are the pieces as glamorous as miniatures, certainly not. But it doesn't take much imagination to view the flat map and seemingly sterile pieces as small illuminations of larger units on a master tactical screen. Without knowing much of the history of the game and with very basic knowledge of the different types of mechs, the game still lends itself to imagery of the darkened command room with the main screen showing the distant battle play out, or a holo-table somewhere with information changing and winking out of existence as men and mech clash on the battlefield.

We just played a brawl essentially to refamiliarize ourselves with the game, but it deserves the detailed scenarios and campaigns it was designed to illustrate. Looking forward to playing it again.