Thoughts On - My birthday and "Beyond All Reason"

 Hi everyone,

                     This is just a bit of a filler to keep you informed on what I have been up to lately. It was my birthday recently, and a very good mate and I had an afternoon walking around Lichfield town centre. We visited most of the local charity shops and acquired some DVDs and a couple of paintings each, plus she found a couple of summer dresses that she liked.

                     I did a quick sketch of one of the statues in the Library Square while we were having a break, then had a quick glance in one of the antique shops. Time was getting on, so we had a very nice meal of fish and chips with cider in the Acorn pub before getting the bus home. I put my feet up and had a film night with one of my new DVD's and a chilled bottle of wine.

Success

 I found the Chepheus Engine RPG rules amongst my files earlier today. I thought it had been lost, but in fact, it was a case of not being renamed from its extracted .zip file name in the first place, so my search engine could not find it. Better late than never.

                        I gave my new strimmer its first run around the front garden today. It felt much lighter than my old one, which I am pleased about. I also treated my conifer to another haircut with the trimmer. It's now a truncated pyramid.

Something New

By chance the other day, I found myself watching the Virtual TableTop wargame "Beyond All Reason" (C) on YouTube (C) for the first time. To let you know, my wargame viewing habits are usually just of the miniature fighting variety or occasional sniper sims, so to see a ginormous 8-player electronic battle simulation in full colour blew me away completely. How the team leaders can plan strategies among the chaos is beyond me. 

The graphics are superb. Each warring team is colour-coded, so they can see their own forces easily. Power plants spawn weaponry, tanks, gunships, and many other sorts of tiny nastiness that were scurrying all over the place at the eight warlords' whims, trying to get and keep the upper hand and gain victory by wiping everyone else out. 

I think the commentator said there were over 19,000 units on the board at one point. Fantastic. Explosions range from small to devastating. They were even throwing multiple tactical nukes at each other at one point; these were being deflected by defending force fields until their hit points gave out. It was utter madness, but great to watch. I have now seen some other battles with different landscapes and numbers of troops. It makes for very entertaining viewing.

That's all for now, take care.

Ivor Cogdell

Thoughts On - Busy Bunny

 Hi Everyone,

                       This is just to let you know that I have not deserted you good people out there in gameland. I have been catching up with real life stuff, as you do and it has thrown a spanner into my gaming stuff. It had been so long since I was on here that I had to search a few times to find it with google.

 I have got a couple of bits of terrain from my pal M, (a bit less to pack) and they will star in my reworking of my Nations battle report, which I have been trying to get done for ages. I may just do a reset. I have a few more celtic warriors to do, thanks to Wargames Illustrated Magazine adding them to their front cover.

                      I have also started to work on a painting that has been idle for a while, as I needed some ideas on where to go next. I have seen a rock formation that has what I needed in the way of lighting, so I am starting to amend the skyline.

                      I am in the middle of pruning in the garden and the Jazz festival has just sailed through, I visited three new venues and bands. I visited the tribute area to Ozzy Ozbourne Passing Away in the local museum.

                      There has been no Alien gaming for a while, but I am still in touch with my other gamers. All are doing ok.

                    Now I have got the site updated and added a bit more into Red Alert 4 page, I can do a bit of painting with a clear conscience. I will see if I can find any wargaming podcasts to listen to while I am slopping paint about.

Regards all,

Ivor Cogdell

P.S. Oh yes, on the subject regarding to my mate being evicted by his landlord, which I mentioned in a previous podcast, well social services said that they have found him a place to rent about an hour away from where he is now, but he has not got the keys or a moving date as yet. He said he is swamped with boxes and can hardly swing a cat in his living room, as they say. He needs to be able to shift some stuff before he can do any more packing. But he is more cheerful than before, now that the process is under way.