LOL

Yesterday I played my first game of League of Legends against real people.  Our team won which was a bonus, but that’s not what made the game memorable.  It wasn’t that I beat opponents that were real people instead of a computer.  What made this special is that my team was me, Matthew, and a couple of his friends that I know (and they know me).  They all thought it was cool that I was playing.

My recollection of growing up is that if I wanted to spend time with my dad I basically got to tag along while he was doing what he wanted.  The most memorable moments were of us camping and fishing.  I liked the camping, I like being outside and away from everything.  The fishing I could have done without.

The last time I went fishing with my dad was the summer of 1996.  How do I know that?  Well we went to Truman Lake. It was hot.  Really hot. 100 degrees in a boat on a lake fishing is no fun what so ever.  We ended up coming in around lunch time, driving into Warsaw and catching a movie.  I’m glad we caught a movie since we hadn’t caught any fish.  Oh, the movie was “Twister”, and the following image is permanently burned in the “absurd” part of my brain.

Dad tried to be interested in the things I liked, and did try to participate, but it was obvious that he just wasn’t interested.   Not everybody likes historical war board games.  I still like them, but no one else I know does.

Matthew and his friends played the game, while talking on Skype.  I wasn’t hooked into that conversation, which I think is appropriate.  If they needed to talk to me either they sent a typed message via the game, or Matthew would yell from across the house.  Doing something with Matthew that he was interested in and being able to talk about it intelligently with him was something special to me.

Oops. I forgot to make him do his homework first.  Too bad: somethings are more important than homework.

Randomness, VI

Randomness, V

Spoiled Milk Grenade

More Scout Camping!  This time it’s summer camp, redux.

So I got back from mini webelos camp Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning headed straight for summer camp at S-F.  Having been through a summer camp already, I have to admit that I was looking forward to getting there this time.  Got there midday, and with the help of a couple of other adult leaders pitched a tent for myself and another late arriver.

Last year I ran myself ragged making sure that Matthew’s patrol made it everywhere they needed to.  One of the things we were blessed with this year was an abundance of adults.  We varied from 9-11 adults on site at any one time for a grand total of 17 scouts.  Since the older scouts didn’t really need much help or supervision we were able to spend our time with the first year scouts, and the second year ones too from time to time. 

Even though I didn’t run myself into the ground chasing the kids I kept busy.  The Scoutmaster delegated to me the task of helping those who wanted to get their cooking merit badge.  There were three takers, reluctantly including Matthew.  They had been given homework prior to summer camp and they had to discuss it with me when we were there.

The stew he made (yes at home, prior to going to camp) was really good, but it took him about 45 minutes to dice 6 potatoes.  He got a little OCD on making the pieces all the same size.

Three of the scouts finished what they needed.  Now that I’ve been through that once it’ll be easier next time.

Thursday night was parents’ night again.

Last year I skipped the Order of the Arrow “tap out” ceremony, as my feet were spent.  This year though, Matthew and five other boys were eligible along with me and one other adult.  Figured I ought to make it to this time.  The Order of the Arrow is the scouting national honor society.  It is for those who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives.  Three of the boys, not including Matthew were selected.  So was I.  I’m sort of glad Matthew didn’t get selected, he just isn’t ready yet.  He still has moments were he is decidedly unhelpful.

The second year scouts figured out that if you hang a plastic bag off the rain fly you can save food in it that the raccoons can’t get.  I noticed one day that someone had put a milk carton in the bag.  When I fished t out it was so swollen I thought it was going to burst.  I could even partially smell it through the carton.   I was going to throw it away, but one of the second years said:

Hey, what’s that?

Uh, spoiled milk.

Really?  Can I open it?  I’ve never smelled spoiled milk.

That’s fine, but do it over there…

What a perfect example of scouting.  Being somewhere outside and doing things you wouldn’t normally do.  A wonderful new experience!  He went and rounded up several other boys, and they opened it.  You would have thought someone had set off a hand grenade with the way the scatted!  Based on the look on his face the kid who opened it really, really came close to puking.  He got some on his hands too and it must have taken him 15 minutes to wash it off.

This years’ butterfly

The last night we were there I got awakened in the middle of the night with a raccoon trying to get into my duffle bag.  My duffle bag was under my cot.  It woke me up by head butting me in the back so it could get on top of my bag.  All I had to do was roll over and it ran away.

We were the last group of the summer and in the end we had to take down the entire camp site.

Git 'em!!

The adventures of Felch and Turd Burglar, part 2

So last week in an attempt to make the army at least look better I finished painting the bolt throwers, and mounted them on bases, and started painting their crews.  I’ll save the bases and do them all at once.

With my extra hundred points this week I dropped the pump wagon, added a wolf rider, and upgrades Turd Burglar to a level four shaman lord, and gave Felch a 4+ ward save.

There were four of us.  Me, Patrick the High elf again, Donny the Chaos, and the Ogre Kingdoms player.  Someone rolled a die, and announced that I would get to pick my partner.  Based on the army lists I brought the High Elf army would be my best partner, but that’s just plain wrong.  The Chaos guy is nice enough, but he felt his army was driven by magic and would want all the dice.  So I picked the Ogres.

Again, someone rolled for the scenario when I wasn’t looking.  We got the “Meeting Engagement” scenario, and then won the setup dice roll.  So they had to place their entire army first.  Yeah us!  So they deployed.  Poorly.  All their units were bunched in the middle.  I guess they assumed that we would deploy right across from them and have at it.

Sadly they were right.  Before I could say anything my wonderful Ogre partner plops his three big units right across from them.  Now I’m stuck deploying there to.  Great.

You know there is this thing called tactics?  Had it been left it to me I would have deployed my units in the middle, way back, and used his units in a double encirclement.  Then when their ends units had to pivot, my wolf riders would have had a flank.  Instead I had the wolf rider on the flank and my night goblins holding the left end of our battle line right across from the phoenix guard with cheesy special character. Sigh.  As a bonus though with the diagonal deployment zones my bolt throwers were looking down their battle line from both sides. Yeah!  It could still work; I just think my way would have been easier.  They went first and did some really, really silly maneuvering.  They turned one unit of chaos knights to run down two of my bolt throwers (which they did and in the process took themselves out of the game until turn 4), and wheeled the other knight unit out to face my flanking wolf riders, but they hadn’t managed to cover the flank of the chaos knights on foot.

So they were going to lets us charge in the bottom of turn one.  OK? So the plan had been for the OK monstrous cavalry things to charge one unit of chaos knight, his iron guts with butcher to charge the foot knights in the front and my wolf riders to charge them in the side at the same time.  The night goblins were to move up and be threatening to the phoenix guard.

Then I failed the animosity test for the night goblins; since there was no other goblins nearby they had to charge the closest enemy unit.  The Phoenix guard. Really? Eh, that’s ok it’s a long way I needed a 10 on 2D6.  Rolled an 11.  Really? Sigh. Fine.  One fanatic hit them; the other didn’t, so I ran through it.  The wolf riders needed a 5 on 3D6 with taking the highest two. So of course I rolled 1,1,2.  They failed their charge! Really? Ugh. Fine. I see where this is going.  Played enough games with these guys to know how the rest of this game was going to go.

I had a good selection of spells; maybe they’d help in the magic phase.  Then my partner says hey, I’ve got this spell that would give us all 4+ regeneration!  I say that’d be cool, so he grabs ALL of our magic dice. Really? Face-palm.  Even with the regeneration the goblins lose by three.  Then run, and then get run down. The monster cavalry gets spacked, and disappears, and the iron guts die except for the butcher.  For all intents and purposes the game was over after the first turn. The Ogre Kingdom player didn’t care; he had to leave early anyway.  Really? You came to play knowing you only had 90 minutes?  That explains a lot.

Since Felch and Turd Burglar had regeneration going when the unit was run down, I’m going to assume that they lived.  This time.  No one there likes sharing the magic dice. I think next time I may not take a mage at all.  At least next week I’ll get another 100 points.

Skunks!

So this year I got to participate in mini-webelos camp.  A Sunday through Tuesday adventure that is in retrospect set up to prepare the boys for Boy Scout summer camp.  The camp site is set up using the same equipment as the Boy Scouts

The biggest difference being that they don’t cook for themselves.  Thankfully.

The schedules and activities are set up in a similar fashion

One other thing that amazed me was how crowded it was. 

I tried swimming on the first day, but there was so much chlorine in the pool that my skin reacted very badly to it.  I’d guess that there was enough chlorine that the public health department would have been upset, but from my perspective, it was better than the alternative of people possibly getting sick.

I was told that we were in the biggest group of the summer and that there we’re 350 or so cub scouts. 

350!

350 – 9 year old boys in one place is deserving of a reserved place in whichever level of hell includes total chaos.  I managed not to get a full picture of the dining hall, and have been trying not to remember it ever since.  350 kids and the associated adult leaders all eating in one place at the same time is… not something to dwell on.

On Monday the kids rolled out of bed at 520am, and lights out was 10pm.  It was kind of warm that day; the official high was 106. 

The kids all passed out which was a good thing for a couple of reasons.  The two troops that we shared our campsite with had adult leaders that made some puzzling choices.  One group moved their scouts’ cots out of the tents, and put them in rows under the rain fly.  I assume that it was because they thought it would be cooler.  Not fifteen minutes after all the kids fell asleep, while I was getting myself ready for bed a momma skunk and her kits were taking a late night stroll through our campsite, and walked directly under all of those cots that had sleeping kids on them.  How do I know that they were skunks? 

It was dark, so I walked a little closer get a better look, and was rewarded with a tail up, sideways dance by mom.  I have no idea how far a skunk can spray.  Thankfully I still don’t.

Then sometime in the wee hours of the morning we got our nightly raccoon visit.  Someone, not in our pack, left a can of cheese pringles out on a table.  I didn’t hear the raccoon open and start eating them, but when someone did and tried to shoo it off all it did was hiss at them.  Those were some tasty pringles!  When they went for the walking stick and started beating the table to run it off I was sitting up in my cot, hoping that none of the kids woke up.  They didn’t.  When the raccoon finally ran it went right around my tent.  It was likely no more than 3 feet from Jacobs head. 

Waaaagggghhhh

The adventures of Felch and Turd Burglar #1.

So Felch and Turd Burglar are the night goblin big boss and night goblin shaman respectively that have been leading my night goblin spearmen for the last 20 years.  The two of them have seen many gruesome deaths over the years, and on occasion have actually killed things.  They haven’t been outta the box since the 2005 Hillbilly, sadly that was the last game of Warhammer I had played, until last Sunday.

There is a new GW store not too far away that is doing an escalation league starting at 800 points.  Went and watched one weekend to see what the other players were like in general.    

Felch hadn’t ever been allowed to lead an army before, so I figured it was about time.  I dug through my figs and found his regular unit of 41 night goblins, full command, 2 fanatics, and this time I added netters, then rounded up 4 bolt throwers, a snotling pump wagon, and a unit of 15 wolf riders.

Someday I’ll actually finish painting them all, honest!

Got the store to find out that this week we going to be random partners week!  Oh, joy.  Got paired with a warriors of chaos army that consisted of a Tzeentch sorcerer, 5 knights, and two units of 12 warriors.  We got to play two high elfs.  One of the HEs had just bought the box and put the figs together.  He had never played before.  As an aside the total newb was Greg Dieckhouse.  I hadn’t seen Greg in the better part of twenty years.  If you have every play Star Fleet Battles and like Lyrans you’ll surely recognize his name.  Greg is a smart guy; once he gets some experience he’ll be really dangerous.  The other guy -really?  My first game in 7 years and I get a dice throwing, rules lawyering, high elf?

Really?

Whatever.

So I tried shooting various things with the bolt throwers the only thing I managed to hit was a unit of phoenix guard that had a special character in it.  That’s when I found out that the unit had a 4+ ward save. 

Really? Maybe these 8^th edition high elves aren’t so bad.

So I wanted to try to something different with the wolf rider since they get all the new fancy rules.  Used the vanguard special rule to run up the middle of the table.  They got shot to up badly by regular archers, had the survivors charge a unit of 12 archers with their mage in it.  After the stand and shoot only 7 made it into hand to hand.  Yes I knew they would get both ranks, and yes I knew that they had higher initiative, but no, I didn’t know about the “always strike first by the way I get to reroll my missed attacks nonsense”.   Stupid archers killed 5 more riders.  My champion’s wolf killed one, and then the boys ran.  I was going to remove them, but someone said that at under 25% you could rally with insane courage.  I actually rolled a two on the last turn, right before they fled off the board.  Ha!

So since Greg was new we decided that we would resolve the charges one by one.  When I say resolve, I mean declare charge, then reaction, and then move charge. 

Really? 

Whatever. 

Apparently no one has ever brought night goblins to the party before.  So the first up was a unit of 5 dragon prices.  The fanatics vaporized them.  Ha! Then a small unit of what I had though were spearmen charged the same unit since the dragon princes didn’t make.  Oh those aren’t spearmen, they’re swordmasters?  Yes I know the -1 strength from the nets doesn’t make a difference, but they’re netted anyway.  So, 17 attacks and 13 dead night goblins later NOW I fear high elves. Given the spears and the hoard special rule and getting charged I still got to roll lots of dice and managed to kill four of them.  Yeah me!  While this happened the pump wagon got charged by a unit of spearmen.  In light of the new charge rules I had left the wagon at 12 inches.  Not quite far enough.

On our next turn my “ally” failed both his restraint roles and his frenzied knights and a frenzied warrior unit had to charge the phoenix guard.  The warriors failed so the knights got to go it alone.  The fanatic that killed the dragon princes managed to roll double ones and killed himself.  The other one came back right through the night goblin/swordmaster melee.  Good boy!  Killed three night goblins and one swordmaster.  In the ensuing hand to hand phase he killed another 10 night goblins. My return strike killed 2 more, the Felch came up to bat.  I gave him a great weapon, and in a fit of rage he single handedly killed the musician, standard bearer and the champion.  Unit destroyed!  Lots of stunned looks.  I peeked to see how the knight had faired.  They had been vaporized by the phoenix guard with special character.  Looks like the knights at least managed to kill a few of the phoenix guard.

The phoenix guard then vaporized one of the chaos warriors units, I think they were chosen cause they managed to kill a bunch of them in return.  The block of spearmen that destroyed the pump wagon failed a change and left their flank in charge arc of what was left of the night goblins. 

So my night goblins charged the side of the spearmen.  I won combat; he needed a 4 to pass his break test, which he did, but only with the help of a reroll.  The night goblins then took a charge in the rear from a great eagle.  I still won combat, but not by much and no one ran.

In the end I lost two blot throwers, the pump wagon, and the standard from the wolf riders.  We lost though because the phoenix guard essentially wiped out the chaos army by themselves.

I get 100 extra points for next week…

The Poetry of Work

A Renga is a type of Japanese collaborative poetry.  I have a vague recollection during my schooling of writing an Americanized version of a Renga.  What I remember doing was really alternating accretive poetry.  We would work in pairs mostly, sometimes more.  One person would write a stanza, then pass it to the next person who would fixate on one word in the stanza and use it as the basis. 

I’ve always loved non-sequiturs.  And to me a Renga is really just an excuse.  From work today:

The public notice for [Them], has expired. No comments were received. I am routing this for issuance approval.

What if anything do I need to at this point?

Nothing, just an FYI/status update. J Had there been comments, then you would have an action.

I’m really, really, trying to not make a joke about “getting action” at work.  Oops, I made the joke anyway…

LOL!!

Zombie Frog Strangler

Yes it’s time for more scouts camping!!

This time it was the spring camporee and this year’s theme was Zombies!  The older scouts that served as camp staff were all dressed up like Zombies, and they tried to take some standard scout activities and zombify them.   I thought they were successful, in an Evil Dead, Bruce Campbell, Cheesy Movie sort of way. 

While the camporee stations themselves weren’t terribly memorable; like the run from the zombie with your injured buddy relay race below

One of the biggest problems I’ve run into at these events is that the old scouts that plan the events have a hard time judging how long their activities will really take.  They leave an hour, but it only takes 25 minutes.  What do you do with the extra time? One of the thing I really liked is that most stations has a secondary activity to do while you wait, or after you were done

The real challenge to this camp out though wasn’t the Zombies, but the weather.  This was as nice as it got:

After the Saturday events, and thankfully after dinner, we had a frog strangler.  As out scoutmaster put it we only had a quarter inch of rain, under the rainfly.  It poured.  The Tornado sirens when off. We discussed emergency plans.  For some reason the kids decided that if they saw a tornado, they were going to hide in the latrine nearby because it was the only permanent structure nearby.  Really?  I told them that if I saw a tornado I was going to hide in the ditch across the road, not in a building that would just be shrapnel if a tornado hit it.  I told them the only reason I’d hide in there was if it started to hail, which thankfully it didn’t.

Every tent leaked to some extent.  The ones that leaked the least were the ones that had a rainfly that went all the way to the ground.  Mine didn’t, but lucky my sleeping bag, while damp, we still dry inside.  One of the other tents got so wet inside that the occupants ended up sleeping in a car.

On a couple of side notes;

I got to see a stunning display of anal retentive synergy – no I’m not going to say more.

I also realized that my hairline has crept back far enough that if I’m not more careful I’ll have a burnt forehead this summer.

Going Home

They were wrong. 

If you had told me this morning when I got out of bed that I would get a chance to apologize to someone for the way I treated them, which was really, really, badly, over 20 year ago I would have looked at you like you were smoking Crack.  But I did, and while I wouldn’t say that forgiveness was part of the conversations; acceptance and understanding of how what happened, happened, is enough for me.

Sometimes you can go home.