Blitz !

Just a few lines to let you know about the Segway (wiki) as I have tried this great invention last weekend in Paris.
There is company in Paris which offers several tours, one of those is with a Segway. The tour is around four hours and you get to see the more relevant parts of the city (Eiffel tower, Les invalides, Louvre on so on).
Obviously, the city itself is worth the visit but the Segway is just amazing :D
The machine is really easy to drive. After a short explanation and a few minutes of practice, you can start "riding" the city :D
To speed up you just need to bend forwards, to break or go backwards just bend that way and to turn around just move or best say, push the handle to the right or to the left. This will make that one wheel will move slower than the other an the machine will turn around that wheel.
Only drawback is that every one is looking (or even making pictures) in your direction as you pass by ;D

Planet of Appes

Big blue monkeys with laser guns ?

Not a joke :D

There are the Karmans and they try to probe that they are also a force to take into account in the AT-43 universe.

They just arrived last week from their home world and joined the UNA first and then the Red Block in a "King of the Hill" scenario.

First impression, they are hard, really hard, but not indestructible. In both fights, the faction which with the Karmans were allied lost.

However, the last report from the front states that the UNA just got beaten up by those blue hairy guys :D

We will keep you posted...

The Time Traveler's Wife

Based on a book which was recommended to me some time ago by a friend, I must say that I did not get the time to read the book, however I just saw the movie and it is great.

Very well done, nice dialogues, good actors, incredible situations and a lot of time traveling :D

As usual no spoilers here, so nothing about how it ends or something like that.

Go to the cinema and enjoy it !

As soon as I read the book, I will tell you about ;D

Federations

Federations is a great anthology of short SciFi stories edited by John Joseph Adams. The same editor of some other anthologies, like the one which first called my attention upon its books, The Living Dead, an anthology of zombie short stories.

I have been fan of SciFi stories since quite a long time. This gender is one of my recurrent topics of interests. I must say, I have the tendency to read a lot of about a subject for a while and then changing to a sometimes very different subject for some time and so on. I can not recall when was the last time that I really enjoyed reading SciFi before getting this book as lately I was quite fix with Fantasy books and more recently with zombie stories.

The book has very good short stories from some of the best SciFi author of the moment. After reading some of them, I searched their names on the web for further reference as some of the stories were part of a more vast universe created by the corresponding. For example, the opening story is "Maze in prison" from Orson Scott Card and takes place in the universe of Ender, the main character of the book, Ender's game, also a great story on its own.

Take a look to the table of contents and try to get a copy :D

Sirens in the Aegean

Sirens in the Aegean is a film by Nico Perakis from 2005 which was projected last week during the Greek Film Festival in Delft (Wiki).
The plot is quite simple, a bunch of soldiers decide to scene a joke for one of the members of the platoon who was supposed to have three free days to meet his new girlfriend. Instead of that, his "friends" (including his sergeant) make him believe that they have be mobilized and send in status of maximal alert to the island of Pitta (a piece of stone barely visible above the sea level just in front of Turkey).
The situation gives place to weird situations and escalates when a turkish boat approach the island and some of the crew members try to disembark on the little island.
A lot of funny dialogues and remarks about the rivality between Greek and Turkey are present and will manage to get you into the mood even if you can not speak Greek or turkish and need to rely on the English subtitles.
If you have the chance, watch it and hope you enjoy it.

First Blood

The Red block Army Box.

A nice way to get an army for the Red block of 2000 army points (AP) for not so much money. The box contains a lot of things, but the interesting is the army itself:

• 1 unit of 12 Krasnye Soldaty: regular infantry containing three grenade launchers, two medics and an officer

• 1 unit of 8 Krasnye Soldaty: regular infantry containing one grenade launcher, two mechanics and an officer

• 6 Dragonov Kommandos: elite infantry with one sniper rifle, an electronic warfare specialist, a medic and an officer

• Odin O-1 and Manon O-2: the Red Blok’s two greatest heroes

• 1 Urod: Odin O-1’s and Manon O-2’s combat strider

• 1 Dotch Yaga: the most heavily armored combat strider to ever grace the battlefield

Before getting this box I was already having some Krasnye and some Spetsnatz Kommandos but I wanted to try the army box so I decided not to use any other unit for my very first game of AT-43.

My opponent was also a 2000 points army form the U.N.A. Mind (actually only 1990 AP)

1 Copperhead (470)

1 Fire Toad + Bad Dog (450)

3 Death Dealer Tac Arms + Lieutenant G. Epstone (440)

2 Wing Sniper Team (95)

2 Wing Laser Team (120)

1 Cobra M8 with a sergeant (415)

We used a quite big table, around 2 x 2 meters (7' x 7') and we decided to run a "King of the Hill" scenario. The hill was actually a system of trenches slightly above the general level of the table. There were some containers and other scenography maybe no so much as it would have be needed, but taking into account that it was also the first game of my opponent, we were (we are) still trying out things :D

The trenches system was open, without any roof and turned out to be a deadly trap for my infantry as the U.N.A. army was having several indirect fire arms which fired unopposed on my Krasnye, massacring them.

For the starting positions of deployment we rolled a dice but we considered also the corners of the table for the roll and sure enough we got that outcome. So we started the game on opposite corners of a big table without so much cover and a lot of AFVs around. The heavy vehicles dominated the field and the infantry was a mere spectator of the battle.

Impress by the heavy armour of the Dotch Yaga I decided to deploy it on my right flank with a unit of Krasnye to try to go for the souther side of the hill, whereas the Urod was deployed on the left flank with the other Krasnye unit and the Dragonovs.

The Urod managed to get cover behind a container and open fire on the AFVs of the imperialists. At the same time, the Dotch Yaga was able to see them over the low elevation of the trenches and also opened fire on them. Unluckily for my side, the U.N.A. AFVs were all of them having the ability of mechanic and therefore able to repair themselves. Obviously this made the destruction or serious damage of these units very difficult even for the Dotch Yaga. Some attempts of concentrating the fire on one unit were also not so fruitful.

However, the Tac Arms tried to approach the trenches from the East side and were deadly close to the heavy mortar of the Dotch Yaga, only the hero (Lt. Epstone) managed to survive the round :D

Nevertheless, she managed to manoeuvre and outflank the Krasnye on cover behind the Dotch Yaga and to shoot them on a very short range, killing the last mechanic. A lucky salvo from the imperialist AFVs landed on the frame of the Dotch Yaga and destroyed it !!!.

In the mean time, the Urod was shooting the U.N.A. forces from behind the trenches, but without too much success. The Wing Sniper Team was behind a fortified wall and able to target almost any point of the battle field. Something not very good for the survival chances of the Krasnye Soldaty.

The Urod charged against the U.N.A. forces on an attempt to short the range and destroy the leading AFV, but the destruction of the Dotch Yaga focused all the fire on it.

The second unit of Krasny had managed to reach the trenches but the position was so exposed that the mortars of the U.N.A. and the snipers were able to almost wipe them out.

The destruction of the Dotch Yaga was also the end of the game. The time we were having for the whole game was over and the final outcome was more or less clear. A sounded defeat for the Red Block :(

Our posterior analysis of the battle in the light of the forums and related webs pointed out to an excessive size of the table and a lack of cover for the battle. The tactical error of letting the Dotch Yaga alone on one flank with only one mechanic was also something to learn for the future.

But, the game was incredible funny, fast paced (more or less, we are still mastering the rules after all) and with glorious moments.

After this first battle we decided to go on with the game and order some more miniatures and plan the second round, but with more cover and a better hill; a bit higher, so that no unit should be able to see over it ;D (the first one was very low and allowed the AFVs to see the other side, which kind of hill does it?)

Even having being defeated, I really enjoyed the battle as well as my opponent did.

We were both of us looking forward for a second go !

Not Funny

Not funny at all !

According to my DVD magazine review this movie was supposed to be very funny but actually Paul Blart*Mall Cop is not a funny movie.

The plot seemed fine. A guy with some problems due to hypoglycemia tries to be a cop but due this issue does not manage to pass the physical test and just goes on with his job as mall cop. There is daughter for a previous marriage and a nice girl on the mall which the main character finds very attractive and you learn almost at the beginning that she also likes him. There is also a bunch of bad guys who try to take over the mall to steal all the money from the shop just before they close thanks to some computer thing.

At first approach, the movie has a bit of everything: romance, not so common disease, action, bad guys, and so on; but the movie just falls into common easy jokes.

The guy is quite fat due to his problem and a lot of situations arise where this issue is used to try to make fun by the easy method of ridiculing him or best to say to try to make fun but the jokes are so bad that you almost have to cry.

The secondary characters are also very easy and the plot just does not add. The bad guys are bad, very bad but just as characters not as opponent. They are a useless bunch of idiots without any substance. They are just there because they are needed for the plot but they are so bad portrait that no one can believe on the characters.

The romantic part of the movie is more or less fine, but that is not so difficult, isn't it?

Conclusion: A movie that maybe you should avoid wasting your time with.

By the power of Grayskull !

Last night we watched the film Hot Fuzz (Wiki) and we really enjoyed it.

The film is about a kind of fantastic good police officer in the UK which is transferred to a little nothing in the middle of nowhere and how he (not)connect with the new surroundings.
The film is from the same team as the fabulous "Shaun of the dead" and very hilarious.

Plenty of great moments and ironic dialogues together with excellent actors, habitual from English movies. Two of the secondary characters, for example, were part of the team of "Love Actually", namely the old rock star and the guy making the poses for the porno movies.

But no spoilers and no more words here.

Just Watch It !!

AT-43

AT-43 is a miniature sci-fi wargame from the company Rackham in which several factions fight for their lives.

Actually there are six factions: U.N.A., Red Block, Therians, Karman and the new factions Cogs and O.N.I.

As usual in this kind of games, each faction has its own "philosophy", that means, each faction follows a different approach to war and to technology (better accuracy but lower damage, slow fire-rate but high armour, and so on).

U.N.A. and Red Block are human-like, Therians are a kind of hybrid between humans and machines, Karmans are big intelligent apes, Cogs are giant high evolved creatures and O.N.I. is a human corporation with access to a kind of "zombie" virus. Those two (Cogs and O.N.I.) are new additions to the game universe, so there is no so much information about them, however, there are initiation army boxes for both of them (the one for Cogs is already on the market since some months and the one for O.N.I. was presented last month and will be released this November).

I discovered the game some time ago, in 2007, in the GenCon in Paris and it was probably the only good thing about that GenCon (how can you call it "the European GenCon" with barely 20 stands in a ridiculously small hall which was still half empty and no parking possibility??? go to SpielMesse in Essen to see what a REAL games convention looks like).

But coming back to the game, at last year SpielMesse in Essen we found some of the miniatures at a very reasonable price (actually it was a very low price) and we decided to buy a few. The offer was not so big, basically some U.N.A. soldiers, some Red Block Kommandos and some Therians. Biassed by the bizarre look of the Therians we decided to buy the U.N.A. and Red block guys but afterwards we never found the time to try the game, until last month...

After the initial adquisition of troups, we got some more U.N.A. and then the Red Block army box (great deal, really) and we try our first battle with this army box of Red Block against a U.N.A. army of also 2000 AP (more on that on further post).

The outcome is that we are waiting now for not one, but two quite big deliveries of more miniatures, including Therians and Karmans and that we are trying (with quite a success) to mutate more people into players :D