"My Anaconda don't want None" ELITE: Dangerous

 View out the 'Moon Roof' of my Eagle MK III, staring at Freeport Dock in the Anarchy system of LP-98-132.  Note the planet's rings.. which you can fly close to, and see they are individual asteroids.. and you can pick one.. drop gear and LAND on it if you like!

 

So now for something completely different, I have been playing some Elite: Dangerous beta lately, and got together with Clockwerks from http://clockwerk-warriors.blogspot.ca/  Its basically a space game where you can do what you want, except you have to fly your ship (rather than click stuff like in EVE) including docking from hollow cube stations.  We decided to get some testing in vs NPCs, though we can at any time play vs 'the world' and possibly get ganked by player pirates, especially in Anarchy zones such as Freeport.

 

Speaking of, as I was lifting off to follow Clockwerks, I saw this Anaconda lifting off from pad 02.  Its a large ship, and bristling with weapons, we are in small light fighters..

The NPC Anaconda AI barely squeezes it through the space/air force field barrier slot on the inside of Freeport Dock

 

View from the outside, these things spin to make artificial gravity, and you can see the blue forcefield aka "the mailslot" where ships have to come in and out, and in the background the Milky Way and Large Magellenic Cloud can be seen.  The game has 160,000 of the closest stars to Earth in the game, and will procedurally generate the rest of the Galaxy.  The background stars are the ones around your current location.. so the constellations don't match our night sky in this case. 

 Well Looky Looky..

After a few rounds of killing NPC fighters defending a huge NPC capital ship, we came across an Anaconda (I like to think it was the same one we saw earlier) with some fighter escort.  I killed the wingmen, Clock engaged, and while it hit with a heck of a punch, if we stayed out of its front arc, only the turrets could hit us.  We kited it and finally killed the thing.  No loot though :(

Unlike EVE, even when traversing large distances within a solar system, you can steer your ship and go where you want to.   Here I am travelling at 12.8 x the speed of light, following Clockwerks (small blue comet looking blue dot center of the HUD)    This is still in Beta, but is a freaking blast.  Recommended you run a joystick and throttle.. since this is more of a sim than a space shooter..

 

So yeah.. this is my guilty pleasure when not painting my Panzer IVs like I ought to be!!

 

 

Podcast Episode One

After a successful first podcast, Episode Zero introduced our little group as we dove into Flames of War and other topics. We've just wrapped up episode 1 and it should be up this weekend! Myself, Tristan and Dennis dive right into Canadian Nationals, upcoming events and even some retro video game chatter.

We'd really like to hear from you, if you download this episode and have something to say, please drop a comment below. We look forward to bringing you more Canadian content and our perspective on all things Flames of War, tournaments and other interesting topics! Thanks for listening!

Here it is!!



EDIT BY MATT VARNISH:

Here are some pics I took of Cdn Nationals.. just for giggles.

 Table set up on Friday (Thanks Petawawa crew!)

A New Venture, An Old Army!

Hey guys, JO here again to show you what's been on my workbench the last few days. I was getting bored with my current Space Marine Bike Project so wanted to do something new. 

After looking around my hobby room I found inspiration in the oddest of places, my box of incredibly old 40k models. 

So started a plan to make a small (1000 points) Ultramarine army using only my old Rogue Trader Era marines.  Here are the first two guys I've managed to get done:

A chaplain and librarian to start, but I have a command squad based and ready for paint and 2 tactical squads assembled. I have to locate my old Mk I rhinos in my bitz closet but they will be next on the build queue. 

Thanks for looking and you can follow more updates on my twitter feed @MartyRayHart

Cheers, 

JO

Canadian Nationals 30-31 Aug 2014

This event marks the first time a Nationals has 'truly' been held North of the border. The title of the event was Eastern Canadian Nationals, the location was Ottawa. Downtown of Canada's capital city was the backdrop for a great event that almost never made it off the ground. A small group of players paved the way with their time and great risk to their pocket books to get this event out to the masses. 44 players total from all over Canada and the US came out to play in this event. Dave from Battlefront made the trip solo over the long weekend to ensure there were tables and terrain to use, a few out of town tables and terrain were also brought in to help out with the tournament.

 Players had lots of room between tables and chairs to sit on, a nice change from using a chair as a table for your army, dice, etc...

Warhammer 40k Batrep #s 5 & 6!

Well hot damn, its looking to be a busy time here at Dice Devils! We've managed to light a few fires and see continued content posted to the blog every few days! Heck its even tough finding room to squeeze in some things without bumping the other new content. We even have a new podcast! If you missed it, here it is again! That said, I know most of the Dice Devils crew has moved on from 40k, I'm back with renewed interest after starting to look at the game in another light. Despite the general negative sentiment we put out about 40k and Games Workshop in general, they still produce the best model, bar none, and have an amazing universe for us to play in. Without anymore chatter, here are a couple batreps I did over the last few weeks, the latter being a tourney prep game for a Tournament held a week or so ago at FDB Gatineau. Enjoy, and please comment if you like, hate or have a recommendation!

 Battle Report 5:

 

For the Emperor..... of France!

So, for anyone who has listened to our very first podcast will know that at Historicon 2014, we dabbled a bit into some historical 19th century action.   Ca$H and RKelly played a 10mm game, and I had been eyeballing this stuff for a while, and figured, why not?    The second wargame I ever played back when I was a kid was some chit-based napoleonics game, where I learned about the defensive square formation, artillery, and how a messenger from the General could be captured and cause a flank to fold because "you didn't get the memo"   almost 30 years later, its time to revisit that period.   The ruleset we decided on is Osprey Games' Fields of Glory, and we went with 15mm, since European buildings we have aplenty in our FoW terrain collections.  I had to be bad guys, so the French!  At the flea market, I was able to score an entire army, painted, for $90.  I had to buy just one Dragoons blister, and then paint those to match the pre-paints I bought, and I would be table-top ready.    Below are the pictures, fairly easy to paint just 12 cav models.

What's Next!?

As usual, I have been too busy to really concentrate on a Nationals list for the event that is a mere two weekends away....(should I have sent that in?)
I have been super busy with real life and have not had that much time to paint, play or really do anything other than maybe get out for a few hours on the weekend and go game hunting with Tristan. We've dusted off some of our old consoles and have started to add to our collections, tracking down some vintage stuff at flea markets and the odd retail store. I've also been pretty active on my Twitter account and getting into reading about all sorts of things that interest me. NASCAR, Flames of War, retro video games. Even managed to work a few extra hours of research into editing and making the podcast a success. The next episode will be cleaner and a little easier to follow, I did some up some intro and outro music as well.