First let it be noted that the black/blue rogue deck was devastated by Sean’s multicolor sliver deck.  I’m still tweaking my green/white archer deck; right now it’s far too slow and seems to have a hard time producing mana despite having as much land as every other deck I’ve been playing.  My next project is going to be a red burn deck, which I’m going to try to put together this week when I take breaks from painting my new Sisters of Sigmar. 

Saturday’s WHFRP session ran for an unprecedented seven hours and spanned two chapters from the Ashes of Middenheim campaign.  The party started off in the Khornate tomb, in possession of the Chaos artifact that we had been sent to retrieve.  The elf suddenly went catatonic (Scott didn’t show) so we decided to do our very best to use him as a decoy if ever the opportunity presented itself.  Upon leaving the tomb it soon became clear that A) the intoxicated dwarf had no idea where he was leading the party and B) the party was being followed.  Shortly before nightfall Poor Old Tom’s dog discovered the remains of a conveniently placed burned-out house, which the party naturally decided to loot.  Otto the weakling wizard tried unsuccessfully to break into a chest in the cellar, but hurt The Hammer of Magnus’ feelings by demanding assistance.  The Hammer, despite graciously offering to help in exchange for minimal foodstuffs, stumped off to bed.  Theodora, obviously the more intelligent magic-user, offered the Hammer alcohol in exchange for his services, so after proving his superiority over the lock on the chest the Hammer promptly got sloshed.  It was at roughly this time that Tom discovered that the leering skull that we retrieved from the tomb had an irritating habit of warping to different locations.  After abusing the nobleman for losing track of the skull and taunting the skull for being...a skull, Tom tied it into a box and began carrying it.  Otto continued to ransack the ruined home while Magnus serenaded the forest with a selection of dwarven drinking songs, which tapered off abruptly as he passed out on the lawn.  Tom booted the wizards out of the cellar and fortified it with an impressive array of traps, which nearly took his life when the skull attempted to possess him during the night.  Luckily Otto, showing a suspicious degree of clairvoyance in evading the rat-catcher’s traps, was able to pry it off his head.  Although he passed the night in a drunken stupor, the Hammer nevertheless managed to gain personal renown by demonstrating the complexity and range of the dwarven gastrointestinal system to Theodora, who had foolishly decided to curl up next to him (most likely hoping to use his comatose form as a shield in the event of an attack). 

After fighting off the random demonic possession, the group decided that the best course of action would be to charge blindly into the woods in the middle of the night and hope for the best, leaving the elf and Father Odo behind.  Tom sensed danger, although the rest of the group was by this point becoming so accustomed to seeing the rat-catcher dive into the underbrush that no one seemed to care.  Tom then snuck away from the group, which no one seemed terribly perturbed over either...until he began screaming from the underbrush.  The Hammer, once again risking life and stubby limb to save a comrade, charged off in search of the noise and massacred a confused beastman with very little assistance from the effeminate noble.  Otto, displaying typical loyalty, convinced the party to leave their comrades to save their own skins.  And thus the pursuit through the forest began.  Hemmed in on all sides by beastmen, the remnants of the party decided to break out of the net even though it meant veering away from the path toward Middenheim.  Despite the excellence of this dwarven idea, breaking through the net turned out to be a suicidal affair.  While resting at a small stream and attempting to get their bearings, the party was ambushed by seven beastmen.  The noble, daunted by the prospect of facing pain and ickiness without his mother to protect him, turned heels and abandoned the group only to run into another group of beastmen.  Theodora was zapped into the river by the beastman shaman where, in a gesture applauded by the dwarf, she decided to drink away her pain with the last bottle of expensive wine.  The Hammer and Otto decided to sell their lives dearly (the wizard no doubt planning to “Pull a Vaulkner” if the opportunity presented itself), when suddenly the cavalry arrived!  Apparently Tom had evaded the beastmen and run into a group of witch hunters who were searching for the party.  These three gentlemen proceeded to slaughter and mangle the beastmen, for which the party members who HADN’T run away were profoundly grateful.  Although they were rightly suspicious of Theodora, the group escorted the party back to Middenheim.  Upon returning to the Temple of Ulric with the artifact, the group’s summary pat on the head was interrupted when Father Odo rudely transformed into a Chaos spawn.  He proved to be no match for the six party members and angry priest who assaulted him, but a commotion alerted the party to the existence of three more mutated clergymen at the temple’s entrance.  Fighting their way through the stampeding crowd the party attempted to contain the mutants...except for Tom, who wisely decided to take advantage of the disruption to steal religious paraphernalia from the god of violence.  The Hammer of Magnus, once again exhibiting wisdom behind his intelligence score, decided to hit the mutants with his hammer first and ask questions later, but the overly liberal Father Ranulf was able to convince him that the mutants were unwilling victims of powers beyond their control.  The party learned that the source of the corruption was a well near the temple, from which they decided to begin watching the wells of the city for criminal activity (also, this would provide ample time for Tom to engage in his own criminal activity). 

Sure enough, no sooner did the party arrive at a well than a witless buffoon with a bag full of poison wandered up to it.  After rending the confused gentleman to shreds in a Khornate flurry of violence and stealing his poison for re-sale, Tom led Jotunn and Otto and possibly the noble (who is normally so quiet that no one knows where he is...this is probably an intentional effort to avoid abuse) back to the warehouse that the poor sap had come from.  After breaking in, the dwarf deftly led the party into yet another frontal engagement on a band of cultists, slaughtering them handily.  Although the sorcerer/warehouse owner attempted to save his hide by summoning a demon, the party was able to overwhelm him through sheer numbers.  Of course, the final honor of placing a hammer in his ribcage went the Magnus. 

Allen and I have both been drooling over the release of the new Warhammer 40K RPG, Dark Heresy.  We've waited about a decade for it to put in an appearance, and it looked like the wait was finally over.  The rulebook was getting very positive reviews, the 200 leather-bound special editions sold out in six minutes flat, and the first printing run (are they even doing another one?) sold out online through pre-orders alone several weeks before the book was released.  Therefore, exercising their typical brand of business savvy, Games Workshop decided to axe the game.  Along with WHFRP.  This is probably a bad thing to post online, but sometimes I think that the gaming community as a whole would be a lot better off if their leadership just kind of...died.  Violently.  That probably sounds a little extreme, and I'm not condoning murder.  I'm just saying that it would be very satisfying in this particular situation if their corporate headquarters caught on fire and they were all locked inside.  There, I've said it. 

Anyway, I didn't blow off a weekend gaming report.  Our GM suffered an unexpected death in the family so we called everything off this past Saturday.  Our condolences go out to James.  I've been keeping myself busy with sci-fi novels of various sorts.  I finished up the Ciaphas Cain omnibus, which turned out to be every bit as good as Allen said it would be.  I then buzzed through "Run Hard, Die Fast" by Mel Odom (the name of which just screams class).  I thought I'd throw in a Shadowrun novel after the CC book just to give SR a fair shake...I'm still trying to decide if I should GM Shadowrun or Dark Heresy here in a couple of weeks.  Back to the novel, Odom once again demonstrated his talent for leaving dozens of loose threads at the end of a novel due to the abundance of mysterious, haunted characters who can't trust anyone.  And do the (god-like) protagonist and the long-lost girlfriend from his (mysterious) past end up together after he expends every last yen putting together a topnotch team to save her life?  Of course not!  As soon as he sees her, deep in the catacombs underneath a buzzing web of intrigue and corporate security guards, he realizes that he doesn't have feelings for her anymore.  Lame!  Seriously, if you can't handle writing about relationships, don't write about relationships.  I just don't buy the idea that everyone in 2055 is dark, mysterious, and emotionally repressed.  Okay, enough about that.  I am now working on "Ravenor Rogue" by Dan Abnett.  I was a huge fan of the Eisenhorn trilogy and the first two Ravenor novels were nearly as good.  Hopefully this one lives up to my expectations.  At least some of the characters have lasting and realistically portrayed relationships (either romantic or platonic) with other characters in the novel...and this is with the threat of having their souls sucked out by warp demons hanging over their heads all the time.  Fucking Odom.

Last night after bailing out of the (somewhat-lame) office Christmas party as soon as was socially acceptable, I once again met up with my gaming group to see if we could somehow recover from the horrible luck we've been having of late.   Surprisingly, things went more or less according to plan for once.  Here's a quick rundown of what went on (keeping in mind that I showed up about 2 hours late due to previously mentioned lame Christmas party):

Important Thing #1:  Pat, the moron responsible for the idiocy that I blogged about last week, was noticeably absent.  This caused much scheming among the players who bothered to show up.  Current options are torture/mindwipe/repeat and sending him into an anarch bar  wearing a trenchcoat, a whole lot of explosives, and a remote-controlled detonator.  I voted for option number 2.

Important Thing #2:  With the holidays coming up, we decided to cut this game off following the next session.  I think that James is going to GM Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay next.  In any case, this will definitely have a profound impact on what we do next week.

 Anyway, the group decided to take things down a notch in terms of rushing around the city and trying to kill all the bad guys.  After all, as Sean reminded us all, Vampires have all the time in the world.  This is a totally different mindset and it takes a lot of getting used to.  It also led to a fun, if fragmented, gaming night.  My PC tried to contact his primogen (finally) but that was put on hold until next session.  Saul was able to acquire a new shotgun, after testing several to see if any of them bent.  He's also in the middle of trying to make a ghoul of one or more up-and-coming business majors on a local college campus.  That's kind of lame (in my opinion anyway...) but I figure that you can't get much more long-term than that.  If we were playing more than one session after this I could turn them into nice little cash-farms.  Josh (Scott) used his massive fortune to start construction of a custom-designed haven for the group.  

I finally got to roleplay Saul's acute hallucination derangement.  While enroute to his herd's hotel room Saul found himself suddenly facing a horde of angry shadows rushing at him from the darkness outside the car.  Acting rationally, he screamed and began blasting away at them with his new automatic shotgun, which did an admirable job of blowing a door off the car.  He then attempted to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, even offering the three members of his herd shotguns if they wanted them (which I thought was pretty nice of him given all the angry yelling that they were doing).  Note to self: Find new herd.   

Last night was the big one for my little black pit bull, Sasha.  She had NINE puppies.  NINE.  Is that even a lot for a dog?  I don't know.  As she was beginning to give birth I suddenly realized that there was quite a bit I didn't know about the whole process which is why I decided to stay in the other room and thus, keep the mystery alive.  Also I was trying to eat.  There is absolutely nothing that will ruin the experience of eating chicken fried rice faster.

I'm writing a ten(ish) page paper on the Battle of Plataea tonight.  It's not actually due until Monday and by my standards this is starting early.  My usual method is to wait until the night before the paper is due at around 10:00 all the while thinking about how much I like my class, and which class I should take next, and which book I should go and buy to help me with my paper.  At 10:00 I realize that my paper is likely to be drivel, break out in a cold sweat as I realize what will happen to my GPA, pop several caffeine pills, hammer out said drivel until the very last possible second, turn it in, then pass out.  

Although I continue to tell myself that I will write the paper tonight this pattern may well repeat itself.  It's like looking at the last donut in the refrigerator and know you'll eventually break down and eat it despite your best efforts to get an apple instead.  Oh, how I hate apples.

This post is actually half-way intelligent.  That means that by the time I start writing my paper later on tonght all my creative juices will be long gone (figure of speech...I swear).  Eh, I'll just do it tomorrow.

Dr. Zoidberg: [ecstatic] I'm going to a movie... with FRIENDS.

Globviously the above quote is from that greatest of prematurely canceled TV-series (after Firefly) Futurama.  Luckily, like Firefly, an outpouring of fan support has led to the creation of movies...the first of which, Bender's Big Score comes out on DVD today in North America! 

So anyway, since I forgot to actually pre-order the movie and I'm too lazy to go look for it I'll probably just end up spending the rest of the night working on homework.  This may be the first time in my life I've actually enjoyed a class I was taking; I'm really digging Peter Green's book on the Persian Wars.  I have a good professor too, which makes a HUGE difference, and in fact I'm taking another class from her in January.  

The Graham Humphreys Future System (our homemade RPG) is in its initial stages but seems to be progressing well.  Of particular note is the fact that we're still working on it, which is bizarre considering that when it comes to roleplaying games both of us have the attention span of hummingbirds.  With ADD.  Right now our biggest goal is busting out a solid timeline.