Robbie is BACK!

Good to see www.robirwin.com back on the air... The only people who visit this site come from there... they press the wrong icon... and Bang! here they are!

LOTR the Third

Young Chris & I have had another Lord of the Rings Game... and stand-by sports fans... I actually won! Yes, don't adjust your set, you read it right! We used the rules for morale for the first time, and they actually worked in my favour!

The game started as a 'reinforcement mission'. Chris ways trying to get his 24 Men of Gondor across the board to reinforce a hypothetical garrison being besieged by my Urak-Hai. I had 15 Uraks with which to stop him. (This works out to 200 points a side... I also took a command / hero guy in Lurtz, mainly because I think the figure looks very cool. Chris decided to take more men, and no heroes.) So, I start the game out-numbered, and think to myself, "Well, here we go again!". But then I start to inflict some casualties by closing to melee range, and cutting of his advantage of bowmen. Then, we both hit 50% casualties in the same turn... Morale test time! I roll a courage roll for Lurtz, as he effects all of his underlings under 6" away... Lurtz says he is having a great time, and could he please have more Gondorians to tear apart with his bare hands? (He passes.) Young Chris has no boss-man. So each figure rolls seperately... and 6 of his remaining 11 decide that enough blood has been shed this day... and run away like girls! At last I outnumber him, and then the REAL slaughter begins!

It is scary exactly how much satisfaction a grown man can get out of beating a teenager at a game of toy soldiers... If I had a soul, I would be ashamed of myself!

Firefly

How have I managed to go so long without spotting this gem? It's created by the creator of one of my all-time favourite shows (Buffy), and is sci-fi... Both of these should have meant that it appeared on my radar straight off. But no. So I am grateful to my friend Sarah for finding it, buying it, and loaning it to me!

The basic concept, for the unintiated, is a space/western, set about 500 years in the future, and on the fringes of the civilised universe. Joss Whedon runs with the assumtion that the US & China were left as the only remaining superpowers, and so the cultures merged... and this means that the show has pockets of untranslated Mandarin spouted by the characters. He also assumes that the frontier of human space is very much like most other frontiers, very much Wild West. It works.

The stories centre around a Firefly class freighter Serenity , her Captain Mal Reynolds, First Mate Zoe, her husband & ship's pilot "Wash" and crewman Jayne Cobb. They are joined by passengers of various ilks and trades, and their hunt for work fuels the stories. As with Whedon's other work, humour abounds, and the show doesn't take itself too seriously. Perhaps this helped to grab me?

There is also a movie, "Serenity", done after the series was cancelled by FOX after only 14 episodes... a travesty! It is due for release in February here in Oz, and I know that I WILL be buying a copy!

Robirwin.com

I am still revovering from the shock demise of Robirwin.com . Where can I now turn for news, information, views and cute little online test thingies... Please come back Rob... we only meant about half of the stuff we said!

One of my men...

And here is Aragorn, son of Arathorn... at least, here is the GW Lord of the Rings version, as painted by me!

I have finally got around to seeing the fourth Harry Potter film, and I have to admit to being slightly disappointed. Don't get me wrong, the film was lavish in it's effects and production values. Everything looks exactly as it should, and all of the scenes from the book were well handled... even Emma Watson looked as though she may have taken acting lessons! My beef? What appeared on the screen was way too truncated from the book version. Now I know that the film was three hours as it was, but let's face it... Goblet of Fire was the first of the 'Harry Potter and the Doorstop of Doom' novels... it really could have been two films, released maybe a month apart. They really are a licence to print money, with an established fan-base... and the fans would rather see the full story than the Reader's Digest version.

My specific problems: Why did Barty Crouch Snr. die? How would Azkaban NOT be aware that they were short a prisoner? And why get a tent at the World Cup for one match? The book explains all this, but the film just glosses over it. Not really good enough, so far as I am concerned!

Still went away having enjoyed the look of the film, though!