Remind and Conquer

Its been a while...  ...time to dig out the cubes of randomness and some soldiers.

First up, a spot of Ambush Alley, the original version.  Is a simple scenario: Invaders are attacking to establish a beachhead, they are assaulting a small communications base to cut off possible reinforcements.  Invaders win by 'clearing' all buildings.  Defenders win by driving off the Invaders.
Invaders are Vets in good armour (+2), Defenders are Regular in decent armour (+1)

A small communications post, on alert

Defenders out on the perimeter

Contact!  Invaders spotted

First sighting, Rifle-things in fancy armour

The Invaders surge forwards, the base reacts, perhaps a little slowly...

The Invaders cut down Defenders in the security station

Things go from bad to worse on the perimeter

Payback!  Two Rifle-things go down

However, all that carnage allows a squad of Invaders to punch through the defense

Invaders surge forwards again

Cutting down Defenders in their path

Invaders stack to clear the security station

More Defenders appear

The fight for the security station goes badly for Defenders.  They fail to hold the station.  Invaders clear the first of the three buildings

Invaders use the Security station as a fire base to good effect

The squad with casualties resolved hits, one Rifle-things gets back into the fight, the other is a now a Dependent

On the flank reinforcements appear

The squad in the Security station uses Overwatch to cover the (relentless?) advance

The lead squad goes to clear the second building, gets interrupted mid-move

That didn't go well, Overwatch fire mows down the Defenders

And again...

Once more, with feeling...

See any pattern forming here?

STACK! and Clear. Invaders are two thirds into their Victory conditions

Defenders retreat into the final building

Battle status, could be 'better' fort he Defenders, going 'well' for Invaders

Reinforcements!  Huzzah!

The squad with dependents fall back to drop off their casualty

The reinforcements gain the drop on the squad

Finally, some more Invader casualties

It may be too late as the lead Invader squad goes for the final building

A stalwart defense forms

Overwatch is brutal, again

More Defenders rush in

And more, maybe things are about to change for the Defenders?

The shot-up squad bugs off the edge

They find they have three casualties

The attack on the final building starts

Defenders react, roll terribly, and get mown down, completely.  The dice just did not play.

Invaders Clear the final building

Victory!  The Beachhead will hold

Wow, its been a while since I played AA, and it is still a fun game.  BUT, Phew, the overriding theme here was difference in dice.  The Vets with D10s vs Reg D8 would not seem to be huge, but the Vets often rolled way more dice, pushing the advantage in their favour.  This sort of thing may be why Ambush Alley Games made the mod in FoF which leveled the number of dice to either the firer or defender. 

I wanted to play the vanilla game to get back into gaming and as a frame of reference (more on that later).  Next time I'm going to use the FoF dice-mod.

And finally...

Instead of buying commercial tokens, I made some ages ago from the bits box. Here they are in their glory.

Its Yuuuge!

Woot!  Got me a New toy, a Revell Pelican.  This is a 1/100 snap-tite kit.

The kit is clean of flash and already separated from the sprue, it goes together fairly easily in about 5mins

It is HUGE!  Here it is next to the resin Dark Horse version.  Now I see them together I was way off in guessing the scale of the DH version, its tiny compared to the 1/100 kit

The kit comes pre-coloured, so you could leave it like this if you wished.  Or, at least until is had its first test-flight (wargamer-minor was jumping up and down in excitement ready to fly the Pelican once it was built)

This just before decals

With Figs for scale ref, some Critical Mass and Art Crime Spartans deploy

Decals added, actually, these are more like stickers than decals

Side-on

A Spartan and Marine line up to show how big it is

Deplaning

The interior is moulded with jump-seats etc, so could be painted up.

In summary, its a nice kit, goes together easily, seems to have a decent amount of detail and is rugged enough for a 'game piece'.  In fact, wargamer-minor has been putting it through its paces, and so far its holding up well.  

Time to get some more figs painted!

Real-World Mega City

Fer realz...

This summer I went to Rio de Janeiro for a conference, the hotel we stayed at had this next door.  Made me think of Dredd's Mega City One

MC-1

And now, a brief diversion for something different

We have had a fairly big celebration at this end recently, a pretty darned reasonable amount of Champagne has been imbibed.  I've held off blogging this as I don't want to seem 'pushy', but I'm kind of proud of this one so I'm going to spill the beans...

A bit more than seven years ago I started a new job in a tiny Biotech company (I was employee no. 35), our goal was to discover new ways to fight cancer via targeting metabolic pathways.  Well, in short, we succeeded.

A couple of weeks ago the FDA approved out first drug, IDHIFA, for relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia with an isocitrate dehydrogenase-2 mutation.

If you look on the lower RHS side you can just see the little Agios swoop and name.  I'm pleased as punch for this approval as I've worked on this program since joining Agios, from its discovery phase through translational medicine all the way through to the clinic with the pharmacovigilance team.

So HUZZAH, a new drug to treat a nasty form of AML and a second HUZZAH for our team!

Steep and Loose...

...or Loose and Steep.  Just got back from my vacation doing the tour version of this:

http://www.transbcenduro.com/tour

It was 6 days Enduro-style riding (with more uplifts as it was the tour version).  It was an awesome trip.  Riding was very technical with huge descents. The trails were super dry and dusty as western BC is in the middle of a heatwave with no rain.  Instead of loam we were riding on sand/rocks, very loose over loose!

A definite highlight was heli-biking Mt Cartier.  Heli-lift to top then 7000ft down over 17km.  Wheeeeee!

Huzzah! a pic of me in action