WFRP... the sad demise

Well… I suppose I should write about this now before I forget about it completely, but, I have some very sad news to tell you all… Black Industries, the creators of the Award-Winning Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay line and the creator of the highly anticipated Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay, Dark Heresy, is shutting down.

Now… they didn’t want to… and it really sucks, but the truth is that their parent company, Games Workshop, is losing money, and needs to streamline themselves again, refocus on their primary market which is the war gaming business, everything else comes secondary. And, sadly, RPGs are just not lucrative enough to warrant them keeping in the business.

Now… what does this mean for me? Well, it means I need to speed buy all my books that I want to buy, and grab them all from Amazon.com before it’s too late. Secondly, it means that a large amount of the expected 40kRPG will not even be released. Its so depressing.

But… there is yet hope! This is not the first time Games Workshop has abandoned its RPG market for more “lucarative” gains. We, the fans, are used to this, and while I myself am a new comer to this situation, I am not prepared to pick up DnD 4^th ed. Which is evilness incarnate.

No, instead I shall press forward with renewed strength to delve into the darkness which Black Industries did not! I, and many other devoted fans have endeavored to begin our work of creating fan-made sourcebooks for our wonderful game. So far, we have in line several books… an elf sourcebook, a dwarf sourcebook, a Halfling sourcebook, a Araby/Lands of the Dead Sourcebook, A Estelia/Tilea sourcebook, and a Goblinoid Sourcebook. I myself have committed to the Goblinoid Sourcebook, even though I have no idea what the heck I am supposed to do, or what this entails…

So… wish me good luck so that I may manage, somehow, somewhere, to do well in this process, so that those who love WFRP will not be let down and that our sourcebooks will be of spectacular quality.

My weekend was… unique. In what ways you ask? Well… my grandfather had appendicitis. His appendix exploded. Yes, he is fine. He in the hospital and quite alright, however, it did mess up my weekend a bit. You see, we were supposed to watch a movie or two, go to Barnes and Nobles, enjoy life, etc. Instead, we end up in the house, ALL DAY LONG with no one… just me and my PC… hey, I think I could make a song out of that… ROFL.

Anyways… so what did I do? I played Civ 4… all day long… I was Spain, in total, I killed Alexander the Great of Greece, and Caesar of Rome, crippled Louis XIV of France, and then tried and failed to defeat Fredrick the Great of Germany. I then proceeded to lose the space race and a Diplomatic Victory that I knew was my only hope of winning… *sigh* I can’t even win on the easy level of play.

The one thing I think I can take home from that game was this… don’t declare war if you can’t win. I knew I couldn’t… I thought that I could possibly swing it… but I couldn’t he just had better military units that I did… at first, it was just some infantry, which would rip apart my cavalry, but then it was marines… yes, war in the modern age is just not fun. Anyways… next time I believe that I will attempt to fight someone more… easy…

Oh, another thing, my diplomatic skills need work… I lost the diplomatic victory because I declared war against Fredrick, and chose the wrong side with the American war of Montezuma v Roosevelt.

So… once again, the Official Empire of Isaac fails in its bid to world domination…. Dumb Chinese and their cheap toys… I bet that’s why the beat me, they bribed everyone to abstain from the voting so they could win!

And now onto the next item on my agenda… Black Industries is shutting down.

No this isn’t some cruel early April Fools’ Joke… its for real, BI, the beloved creaters of WFRP V2 and 40kRPG Dark Heresy are shutting down… the reason… its more profitable to sell novels, not RPG source books. All I can say is… they suck. It really has gotten me angry that Black Library would do this, I mean, its good business sense and they are a business that is in it for the money… but it still sucks. What sucks more is that I have this strange feeling that there will be no sale of PDF format books… and Green Ronin, who has partnered with BI on the RPG development part will probably not be able to continue creating books.

I mean… what I am supposed to say about this? Black Industries introduced me to the wonderful hobby of roleplaying. And, while surely this game will continue to be popular… I just think that it sucks that Black Industries would do this. If they do decide to release their books in PDF format… that would be great, it would mean that I could buy all the Source books at my leisure, instead of deciding what I want to buy and quickly grabbing it all up… and then getting annoyed that I can’t buy other things that I wanted more… but waited for because I can buy them later.

Anyways… I think I’m going to write something else for now… I’m in the car right now, and I don’t want to go back a few miles and see if I can hack the Police’s wireless (unlike Bangaldesh, the police hear are actually competent… sometimes, ROFL)… I’ll upload when I get home.

So… in an attempt to garner some comments… anyone… how was your weekend? You can tell me via email (which I’m not giving because I don’t want spam… if you don’t have it… I don’t want your comment via email) on this blog… on facebook… on MSN or google talk… I don’t care.

You could SMS it to me, or even call me… but I don’t have a cellphone (yet!) so sorry.

Isaac… the masterofweirdness and toastmast4r

Civ 4

“Life… don’t get me started on life…” Marvin, Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Gotta love that book… well… that series really… but I have ‘em all in one, so I guess I’m allowed to call it one book… right?

Well… that was random… but then again, I’m random, right?

Well… I’ve been play Civ 4… and so far, its rocked… a lot. I love Civ 4 and I will say, without a doubt, that it is the best of the three Civ games I’ve played… Civ 2 was… blah… it just wasn’t any good… Civ 3 was okay… but it got boring… Civ 4… its awesome, its challenging, and at the same time easy… I should probably raise the difficulty level next time I play…

Anyways… I’m playing a map that is basically earth… only with the time clock all messed up (I have gunpowder in 22000BC… go figure)… I’m Saladin, in Northern Africa… above me is Mansa Munsa and below me is Isabella… to the East is China, Mongolia, Greece (in Japan… lol)… oh, and below Isabella is Japan. North America has Peter the Great of Russia…

I’m winning… I have a pretty good military and an amazing culture… several wonders, most of the religions. My only mistake so far is being friends with Mansa Munsa… who’s a jerk… but anyways… I’m doing good… I guess.

The worst thing that’s happened is when Motazuma (he’s also east of me… I forgot to mention) declared war on me… about two dozen turns later he sends 22 elephants at me… I fought back pretty hard, but in the end I had to settle for a peace treaty in his favor. I just didn’t want to take the chance that his army would burn down all my amazing cities… I liked them… a lot. Of course, if he had a smaller army (11 elephants?) I think I could of taken him… but I doubt it.

Right now I’ve decided to wipe Spain off the face of the Earth!

So… to World Domination!

LIfe in the states... school

Well… how is my first week of school going?

Its going pretty well… I’m getting back into my work… preparing for semester exams, getting my science done, getting right back into bible and history… my favorite subjects this year (English is my second favorite…).

Also, I finished my first model in my new 40k army… for which I’m very happy… I think the paint scheme is very good… I have it on the web somewhere… not sure where… I’ll find the link and post it up later.

Anyways… so I’ve had both my English and my Geometry classes… neither have changed much… English is Grammar and writing… while Geometry is all about theorems and proofs… I am enjoying both… as Geo is less about writing and more about logical thought progression, something that I do like.

In other news… Ikarus finally located the package that he shipped to me and Michael LAST MONTH (early last month… lol) it should be getting to me sometime within the next six days… which is awesome. That thing contains like $380 dollars of 40k minis and rulebooks (44 for the codices… 180 for the battleforces… 40 for my predator… I dunno… 30 for the farseer and stuff… 15 for the commander on jumppack)… here is the great part though… I only paid 240 for it! That’s including shipping! That is like getting the codices and a batteforce FOR FREE!!!!! This is why I will order as much as possible from Ikarus… even if he is now requesting extra money for it all (a 35 dollar fee for a yearly membership to the 40kterra lodge… this will give me the discount)… it’s still worth it… as I have to buy stuff for Jacob as well as some gifts… and probably some more 40k stuff…

So… the rest of life is good… I like my laptop… and on PBP house, I am learning how to RP… it’s not easy, and it is really all about getting into your character and trying to understand what would happen… it’s really fun and well challenging…

Anyways… I should be showing you guys a 40k CSM and Eldar 1.5k army list… at least, hopefully a 1.5k list for Eldar… mike might not have enough $$... oh…. I should probably get an email off to Brian.

Stripping Models

Well... I did it... its amazing what you can learn on the internet.

In fact, I realized something... I a geek. Not just a normal geek... but a SUPER GEEK. Its just... my hobbies are so... geeky... lol.

Anyways... model stripping...

Its quite simple, you stick your models in break fluid for 24 hours. Then, you pull 'em out and scrub off the paint with a toothbrush... works like a charm.

Now, mind you, not all the paint came off... but 90% percent of it did. Which means that I still need to spray paint the minis. But it'll all work...

So... a big thank you to those on the internet you gave me this wonderful idea!

Check this link

check this link:

http://www.40kterra.com/forums/developers-blog-wip/3388-black-suns-renegade-chapter-2.html#post66788

It is a blog on my Warhammer 40,000 army... the Fleet of the Black Sun. Eventually, this fleet will compose of a combination of Chaos Space Marines and Traitor IG/Lost and the Damned. Their oppenents, which I will also be creating, the Shrieking Falcons Chapter, are also in the pipeline... though they'll be a while. Finally, I'll also be adding some Grey Knights and a Ordo Malleus Daemonhunter Inquistor... not sure what his name is, but he's a long way off.

Anyways... since I'm blogging, I might as well continue my posting...

Life is good... enjoying the last few days of my holiday, loving my time here. I got my game board today, a nice piece fo 8' by 4' plywood... I've already dumped all my crap on it... its SO HUGE. anyways... I guess I can post pics of it later.

The year in review... anything happen?

Well… I suppose since its now 2008 I should look back… since that’s the whole point of New Year’s Eve… wait… isn’t it to get drunk? Lol… jk.

Now, seriously, Isaac, the masterofweirdness’ year in review.

First off… this blog is only over a year old… so this’ll be the 1^st time I’ve done this on my blog.

Hmm… the first big thing that happened this year was seeing Brian and Julie during the midterm… that was good fun. I got have a sleepover with Brian and for the first time saw his Black Templar army. That was really fun.

The rest… hmm… well I started looking at WFRP and 40kRPG… both of which are amazing (I just know that 40krpg will be amazing, even if I haven’t actually seen the rules… lol) and I finally started playing it… first time was the 4him Retreat w/ Jacob and Julius. Rping… its awesome. We don’t do to much of it, but I do enjoy it. I’ll miss RPing with Jacob and Julius… but well… I’ll have to deal with it I suppose.

Summer. Summer was very good. Regular sleepover’s with Brian, who is now finishing up his final year at Hebron, and regular gaming. That’s when I really got into gaming, and I now do it regularly and often, which is awesome. I also played a decent bit of 40k with Brian. Teaching him the rules and learning how the BT were good… and very bad. It was great.

After summer… my second year of High School… English 9 and Geometry with Potter’s School, Civics and American Government, Old Testament, Biology, and Latin I, those are my subjects… I need to work on my latin, but everything else is going good. I am really enjoying Civics, which is a bit surprising, its not at all what I thought it would be. Old Testament Law is really cool… not exactly practical, but at least I’m seeing how God wanted the Israelites to govern themselves. Geometry isn’t amazing, but I’m not failing, in fact I’m getting a good number of Bs… even a few A’s, which I consider VERY good… considering how hard the class is for me at times. Biology is one of my harder classes, but I’m doing pretty well at it. Not amazing, but pretty good, all B’s… a few C’s… so I’m doing just above average… my general goal in all my classes. English I really enjoy, but is actually quite hard. I get mauled over every time I submit an essay… despite me trying to work really hard at getting them good, and knowing that they are some of the best writing I’ve done. Everything else is easy, but getting a C- on several papers really doesn’t help me… I just have to work harder. Latin… well… I’m working on it. For me the motivation is the hard part, as I don’t have any… I need to discuss it with my mom.

Anyways… that’s school for the 1^st Semester of my Sophmore year… my Freshman year was similar, only different classes and higher grades… which may have something to do with the fact that the classes were MUCH easier… *sigh* guess you can’t always have it your way, eh?

Well then… what else… Rping stuff can be read on my RP Blog… its not much, but its what we’ve done. I’m planning a 40k Campaign as soon as we get back to Dhaka… I’ll have to go over it with Jacob and Brian… maybe I should send them a email…

Also, my trip to the states… that was hell… but I got here, and now I’m happy, reading good books, playing good games, enjoying myself really well. However, I will say that its not all perfect. Stupid USPS has totally messed me up and I’ve lost (well… it’s supposed to be coming… but I’m not sure… lol) a package… a big one… full of my 40k army. I can’t afford to buy the stuff retail, but I’m sure what to do about it… guess I’ll just have to wait and pray about it.

Well then… that’s been my year in review… I would say this:

2007 was a lot like 2006… only different. The same things happened, but so did other stuff. I grew taller, read more books, wrote more stories, continued my blog, started Rping, joined the forces of Chaos, got a laptop, went on a really cool vacation. But really… it was just another year in the life of Isaac, the masterofweirdness. What else can I say? Nothing really, at least, I don’t think I can say much.