Space Hulk SP

I've posted this before, but here it is again: a freeware computer version of the boardgame I found on the web. This is a fairly accurate depiction of the second edition rules, but is pretty much no frills. I'd like to eventually make a version with a 3D board and 3D models.

Lost Patrol

I've discovered another interesting old boardgame, or rather a mini-game. It's called Lost Patrol, and is by the makers of Space Hulk. Some people on Boardgamegeek actually describe it as "Space Hulk Lite," and indeed it seems that way from the rules. The idea is that you have a small team of five space marines in a living jungle on a distant planet, and your objective is to reach a dropship and leave the planet. The jungle, controlled by the other player, is constantly shifting, and contains alien beasts called "lurkers." These will try to ambush the space marines at every opportunity. In addition, the board, which is made up of hex shaped pieces, is changed by the jungle player as the game goes on and the space marines move. The jungle player places new hex pieces down and removes old ones, and using what he gets from the shuffled board pile, also tries to trap the space marines in the jungle. All in all it looks like an interesting game, and far less complex than Space Hulk.

These are the hex board sections, made in a similar way to the Space Hulk ones.

These are counters representing the lurkers.

These are miniatures that I've had for a long time, used to represent the space marines. They have lighter armour than the ones in Space Hulk.

Dice

Just in case someone wants a pair of heavy dice...

Wow!

Remember the game linked from Majik Sznak's website where you have to save your museum from modern art? Well, I finally finished it on hard:

ET?

This is umm... interesting. I would note though that this is PRWeb, so the article is essentially what those organizations at the end of the article want you to read. But Paul Hellyer is quite real. In fact, he's the one who unified the Canadian services, so that we have "the Canadian Forces" today, instead of separate army, navy, and air force.

The UFO stuff reminds me of this.

This site is evil

Oh dear, the Gematriculator has decided my website is mostly evil. Look at the right sidebar. I guess it's all the talk about daemons in the Dawn of War post. :)

Documentary Making

This is pretty much inevitable considering the technology available today. I really have no problems with people making their own films at all, but I do expect a lot of partisan stuff to come out of this.

Google

So this is the secret behind Google.

Commentary

An interesting commentary on the current situation faced by Bush.

PETA Video

Looks like PETA didn't like this one.

Space Hulk Doors

There's a bunch of cardboard doors in Space Hulk, and in the original game, they come with plastic stands to hold them upright. The problem is, I don't have any of those stands. So I thought of an idea: metal binder clips are very cheap, around 12 for $1 at dollar stores. The black metal part is perfect for the base.

These are the doors that come with the game.

A typical small black binder clip.
Put the clip on the bottom of the door.
Take the silvery metal hinges off and the binder clip becomes a door stand.

Hostage Negotiation

Ouch.

Ralph Goodale's Economic Report?

Well, I know the CBC editorial staff probably don't like the Martin government's tax cuts, but still... notice the picture and the caption on this page.

Stone Trek

I'm not sure if anyone has seen this, but it's pretty funny. Basically it's a mixture of Star Trek and the Flintstones. :)

Dawn of War

A while ago I bought a game from the bargain bin called Dawn of War; this is an RTS set in the Warhammer 40k universe. It's got a few elements that are quite rare in the RTS genre, and they make the game more like a tactical wargame in some ways than an RTS. For example, infantry come in squads instead of as individuals, and morale really matters. Plus, they fix some stuff that I've always had complaints about with games like Warcraft III. For example, in Dawn of War you can attach hero characters to regular infantry squads, which boosts their stats and makes the hero move with the rest of the army, whereas in WCIII I've always hated the hero going off on his own, away from the rest of my units. In general the game is just a lot of fun due to the universe - I mean, where else can you find heavy tanks, powered armour infantry with teleporters and plasma weapons, alongside daemons, witches, and avatars of gods, all in the same game? :)

As a side bonus, when you play the Space Marine faction, you get the Terminator Space Marines:


Yup, these guys are the protagonists from Space Hulk, coming in nicely detailed 3D models, with options for all their heavy weapons. The modding opportunity here is interesting...

Space Hulk Mission 1

I've finally got all the Space Hulk board pieces made. Just as a test, I built the first mission's map:


The red triangle shows the Space Marine entry area, and the green triangles show the Genestealer entry areas.

I also took a picture of what it looks like for the Space Marines to enter the board.


Now I just have to paint the miniatures...

Fountain Pens

This is just bizarre...

Arafat

This goes to show that anything can be used as an excuse.

Settlers of Catan

BoardGameGeek presents Settlers of Catan: Pizza Edition.

Japanese Recruiting

This is supposed to be a Japanese navy... um I mean... Maritime Self-Defense Force recruiting video. For some reason I keep expecting the Village People to show up. :)

Concerning The Recent Pirate Attack

Arrr! Swashbucklers open fire on US cruise ship off Somalia

By Daniel Wallis

Sat Nov 5, 7:00 PM ET

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Swashbucklers fired rocket-propelled grenades an' machine cannons at a U.S.-owned cruise arrr ship carryin' more than 300 swabbies in th' Indian Ocean on Saturday but th' vessel escaped an' nay one be hurt, its owners spake.

Men in two wee boats approached th' Seabourn Cruise arrr arrr arrr Line ship Spirit about 100 miles off th' Somali coast, fired on 't an' tried t' board in an apparent bid t' rob passengers an' crew, cruise arrr line spokesman Bruce Good spake.

"I looked ou' o' th' port hole an' saw a wee boat wi' about five swabbies in 't about 20 yards away," spake Norman Fisher, 55, a passenger.

"They be firin' th' rifle an' then fired th' rocket launcher twice. One o' th' rockets certainly hit th' ship. 't sailed' through th' side o' th' liner into a passenger`s suite."

Th' 161-member crew gathered th' 151 passengers into a central lounge away from windows an' decks durin' th' attack, spake Good.

"Th' captain managed t' change th' course o' th' vessel an' speed away. Most o' th' passengers be believed t' be Americans or Western Europeans. Nay one be hurt," spake Andrew Mwangura, program coordinator fer th' Seafarers` Association in neighborin' Kenya.

Good spake trainin' had helped th' crew repel th' attack.

"Thar be some windows broken, nothin' that affected seaworthiness," Good spake. "Th' crew did an excellent job an' them guys gave up. ... These guys didna plan this too well."

DANGEROUS WATERS

Th' Indian Ocean waters off th' Somali coast be classed as among th' most dangerous in th' world. Typically buccanneers target freighters that carry only a handful o' crew members.

Th' Bahamian-registered Seabourn ship be on a 16-tide cruise arrr from Egypt t' Mombasa, Kenya. Th' 10,000-ton vessel sailed on t' th' Seychelles Isles, arrr, 'ere passengers be t' disembark an' fly t' Mombasa, Good spake.

Seabourn be headquartered in Miami an' be a subsidiary o' Carnival Corp., th' world`s largest cruise arrr squadron.

Fisher spake th' captain tried t' ram one o' th' boats in an attempt t' capsize 't an' avast them gettin' aboard.

"Th' captain didna sound th' usual alarm on accoun' o' he be worried that swabbies would run up on th' deck thinkin' 't be a fire, an' that would be th' worst place t' be," he spake.

"Instead he made an announcement at five past six, saying: `Stay inside, stay inside, we be under attack."`

Th' Spir'tis passengers included 48 Americans, 22 from th' United Kingdom, 21 Canadians, 19 Germans, 19 Australians an' six South Africans. Th' others be mostly from other European nations, Good spake.

Authorities in th' United States, United Kingdom an' Seychelles be investigatin', Good spake.

Hijackers be havin' commandeered two vessels used by th' U.N. World Food Program this voyage an' ship owners now demand armed escorts t' set sail in th' waters, th' agency spake.

This week, th' London-based International Maritime Bureau spake 't knew o' 27 buccanneer attacks off Somalia since March.

Th' attacks highlight insecurity in Somalia, without a government since warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

(Additional reportin' by Jane Sutton in Miami)


Produced by

Gunpowder

An interesting article for today is John Derbyshire's comments about the Gunpowder Plot (today is Gunpowder Day) and a discussion of Muslims in the UK.

Generally I find John Derbyshire to be very well written and always thought-provoking, even though you may not always agree with his views.

Book Review

This has got to be one of the funniest book review quotes I've ever seen :)

"My only gripe is that the battle scenes seemed a bit too perfunctory to me, as if the author was going through the motions just to get past them and on to the more interesting parts, such as character development and backstory (which are both done well I think). "

Space Hulk Board

Here's an example of board pieces assembled together. Full maps from the actual missions use more sections and are quite a bit larger.

Space Hulk

Space Hulk is an old boardgame published by Games Workshop. One player controls space marines in heavy powered armour who board derelict star ships called "space hulks", in order to perform a variety of missions. These usually involve retrieving some kind of data or going to a particular room to access the ship's controls. They are opposed by aliens called "Genestealers" that live on these derelicts and try to kill the boarding space marines. These aliens, of course, are controlled by the other player. The game is played on a board made up of interlocking sections (with jigsaw puzzle like connectors) that can be rearranged to give a variety of different maps. The space marines and Genestealers are represented by nicely detailed Games Workshop miniatures from their Warhammer 40k line. I've played some computer adaptations of the game and found it to be a lot of fun, so I've been trying to get a copy. The problem is, the game is long out of print, and commands very high prices on eBay, if you can find it at all.

Interestingly enough, I found out that Games Workshop has released the rules of the 2nd edition of the game free as a .pdf file, along with .pdf file pictures of the original board sections. So I've started a project to create a set of the game.

The board sections:
The board sections are easy, if tedious, to make. You can simply print them out on regular paper using a colour printer, glue the paper to cardboard, and cut out the sections. The full game has some 54 individual sections, so I'm still in the middle of doing that.

The rulebook:

You just have to print it out. No problem.

The miniatures:

This is the cool part of the game - collecting and painting miniatures is a fun hobby by itself.

For the game, I'm using some heavy powered armour miniatures I already have from a different manufacturer (Ground Zero Games), but at around the same scale. These will stand in as the space marines.

This represents a space marine with a basic ranged weapon, called a "storm bolter" in Space Hulk. I'll use the guy on the far right with the antenna on his back as a Sergeant in Space Hulk. The guys with two boxes on their shoulders will be regular space marines - I'll just say they have searchlights mounted. The guy on the left has a heavy weapon, which I will use to represent a "flamer" (basically a flamethrower) in Space Hulk.

A closer look at the heavy weapon guy.

With the Genestealers, I don't have any models, so I ordered a bunch of them on eBay. These miniatures are fairly common, since they are a common troop type in the table top wargame Warhammer 40k, which uses the same models. I got some painted ones and unpainted ones - I might have to repaint the others anyways.

These ones are already painted by the previous owner, but I might change the colour scheme.

These are freshly assembled out of the box, plastic-coloured.

Well, I'll keep working on these and see how they all turn out.

Image Test

If this goes right, you should see an image.

Just Starting

I just started this thing to see what it's like. This will just be a place for my daily musings, and it exists only because I'm too lazy to maintain my main site.