KR 16 Campaign

KR 16

PMCs:
Artemis Arms
Ex 10

Companies:
Comstar
Weyland Industries
Shinahara Heavy Industries
Oki Corp


Factions:
Bugs
Quar (indigenious)
Junkers
Confederation Marines
Draconis Combine


Rules:
Pick Mercenary Unit
Bid on Contract with mining Company
Recruit Junkers
Build Facility
Establish Town Charter
Build Town

Gamer ADD

I really hate my gamer ADD. I'm sure I can't be the only one who gets frustrated by this. If you've ever been in the middle of a project and you get a great idea for three other projects AT THE SAME TIME. I really need to focus on the Balarant unit and the Type 61 tank company... It's been too long since I posted anything.

Deloyer Government requests military support from the Commonwealth to deal with growing Junker Insurgency

August 20, 3258

Union City - In the wake of the fifth Junker attack on a mining facility in under a month, the Deloyer Government officially requested military support from the Terran Commonwealth. This comes after Weyland Industries has expressed a lack of confidence that local planetary forces can adequately handle repeated attacks on there mining facitilies.

Weyland Industries has contracted with Private Military Contractor firm, Artemis Arms, to handle the security of it's mining operations. A Weyland spokesman Casvol Armand  made it clear in a press release earlier this month.  "If the Deloyer government doesn't get a handle on the Junker situation, then Weyland will be forced to take a more direct roll in the Junker Insurrections.

"We at Weyland harbor no ill will towards the Junkers and completely understand that they feel as though they have some sort of a bone to pick. That said, taking up arms and destroying privately owned property is not the way to do so. Weyland is more than willing to meet any Junker groups with grievances."

Armand also mentioned that he believes that Weyland's chief competitor in the region, Shinahara Heavy Industries, is at the root of the problem. He claims that Shinahara has been supplying the insurgents with weapons and equipment. Unfortunately, he also says that Weyland has no proof of this, but they are in the process of getting that proof.

Meanwhile, the men of the 22nd Fleet Initial Strike Team is preparing to deploy to the troubled world. The Commander of the 22nd, Brigadier Thurgood Foster, says that his men are ready and more than able to handle the situation. Brigadier Foster feels confident that his Marines can keep the situation from escalating, but only time will tell.

Pacific Rim Review Part Two

Edit: I wrote this some time ago. It's not quite finished but I hope that you enjoy it anyway. (published 9/27/2020

The Hype:

Growing up in the United States, any news of a live action giant robot movie that didn't involve the Transformers is alway greeted with nothing less than utter glee. I developed a taste for giant robots at at a young age, so it was safe to say that I was excited to hear the news about Pacific Rim on Gundamn!  I don't think that I had been that excited since the announcement of the Heavy Gear CGI animated show. Ok, ok so that didn't pan out exactly as I had hoped, but in the original announcement Heavy Gear was supposed to be done by Foundation Imaging. (the same company that did Roughneck Chronicles)

At any rate, more than likely there were alot of North American mecha-heads that checked the date to see if it was April fools. Guillermo del Torro... ok I can see that. Idris Elba... mm, not so sure. They're going to call the monsters Kaiju... ok you need to stop playing with my emotions before I hurt you.

So many trailers these days ruin movies. They try so hard to sell the movie that they end up showing too many of the good scenes. The result is that you end up seeing something that would have been better left as a nice surprise. I decided that I didn't want to take that chance with Pacific Rim. So I challenged myself to not see a single trailer until after I saw the movie. I have to say that there was a definitely a payoff.

My first thoughts about giant robots fighting giant monsters was that it was either going to be absolutely phenomenal or completely dreadful. Either way, I had every intention of seeing it in the theater. This is kind of a big deal for me as there are very few movies that I feel compelled to see in the theater. On a good year, I might see 3 movies in the theater. It was safe to say that come hell or high water... I was going to see Pacific Rim in the theater. 

The Story:

While the overall theme of Pacific Rim was fairly simple, there was a very rich and layered story that comprised of four parts. There was the Main Story Arc, Raleigh's Arc, Mako's Arc, and Dr. 

The Main Arc
When a portal to another dimension opens up somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, Giant Monsters called Kaiju come through and reek havoc on humanity. Conventional forces are deemed inadequate to fight the Kaiju so giant robots called Jaegers are built to fight the Kaiju. Jaegers were able to stand up to the Kaiju until higher and higher levels of Kaiju start to appear and are able to defeat the Jaegers. It quickly gets to the point where Jaegers can't be built quickly enough. The Jaeger Program is shut down in lieu of a Wall Defense Program. The Wall Defense fails spectacularly in Australia, but as luck would have it the country's remaining Jaeger, Coyote Tango, was around and able to defeat the Kaiju. Unfortunately for humanity,  by then only 4 Jaegers remain to defend the Earth. Stacker Pentecost, the Commander of the Jaeger Program, comes up with a plan to shut down the portal.



Mako's Arc

Mako was a woman who was orphaned as a small child and raised by Stacker Pentecost. She looks to Pentecost as a Father and treats him as such. Her dream is to one day pilot a Jaeger and take a more active role in the Kaiju War.


Dr. Newton Geiszler Arc

A self-professed Kaiju groupie, Dr. Newton "Newt" Geiszler grew up during the Kaiju Wars. He dedicated his life to studying them
At the same time a daring scientist ("Newt") attempts a mind meld with a Kaiju brain.

Pacific Rim Review Part One

At the risk of having a review that's entirely too long, I decided to break up the review into to parts. the first part will be my review of the movie and the second part will be a synopsis for those who thought it was interesting, but wanted to know more about the movie. Enjoy.

My Review:

Well it was a brilliantly done film. It reminded me of Resident Evil: Retribution in some ways. IT seemed like there was a serious focus on making a quality product, but at the same time the material wasn't taken too seriously. There were a few moments where the filmmaker clearly had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. There were a number of cheesy scenes in the movie, but it never seemed like they overwhelmed the overall feel of the movie. You really had to go along for the ride and just enjoy them.


I thoroughly enjoyed the story, but it wasn't without its flaws. There were two major problems with the story. The first is the fact that the story was VERY Japanese. While I loved this about the story, it was a little much for a North American audience. (sorry Canada, I meant the US) Most Americans don't have a taste for Anime let alone Japanese cinema in general. We (Americans ) all grew up watching Godzilla movies, but how many of us truly remember the stories. It was all about seeing a guy in a monster suit break some scale models. I have no delusions that the average American just wanted to see a giant monster get rocket punched in the face. The story to me was well done and well thought out. However, I have a poor track record of picking out what's cool as I've come to learn over the years. (no worries as I've made peace with it.)

The other major sticking point is the pace of the movie. Pacific Rim had a really weird pace. On one hand it seemed as though it moved much too fast, but on the other hand everything was explained. You really didn't miss anything and you could see that if they took their time then the movie would have been 3 hours long. Still the pace of the movie just didn't quite feel right.

The mecha design was well thought out. I mean piloting a giant robot must be a insanely complex task. It makes sense that it would take two people to pilot the Jaegers. And the mindmeld control system aka the "Drift" was nothing short of brillant. Unfortunately the  execution didn't quite feel right. I quickly got over it, but the way the pilots behaved just didn't seem realistic to me. Of course, it was at this point that I reminded myself "You can believe that there are Giant Robots fighting Giant Monsters, and THAT'S the part you have an issue with." Silly I know, but it still bugged me if only a little.

Also for a movie about robots fighting monsters. I expected to see more fights. Instead what I got was a bunch of best of clips. There were some REALLY good fights near the end, but it would have been nice to see some of the other Jaegers mentioned (particularly the Coyote Tango fight in defense of Sydney.). There was the sweet reward of seeing a ROCKET PUNCH TO THE FACE! Yeah... still got goosebumps from that and I saw the movie that Tuesday after opening weekend.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was the fact that there was no use of profanity and no nudity or even the hint of nudity. This is no small feat given a movie of this caliber. How many movies can you take a small child to and not worry about them seeing or hearing something that they shouldn't have? (Yeah I'm looking at you Transformers)

All in all I love the movie and in another rare first. I plan to ignore cost and buy the movie as soon as it comes out on DVD. I give the movie four and a half Giants... out of five.

Guess Who's Back?

I'd like to apologize for the long hiatus. I've got a slew of articles that are in the works. The next one should be my Pacific Rim Review... yeah I know it's late, but hey, now I don't have to worry about spoilers. :) Also I'll be doing a better job of showing pictures of my recent acquisitions (gaming related that is) And since I've been bitten by the 6mm bug. I have a project I'm calling 7 Battalions. This is where I build... you guessed it 7 Battalions of different Factions. I have quite a number of rule systems that I want to learn and what better way than to kill 2 birds with the same stone. I'll also be working on Campaign Seeds as well as Tactical Scenarios. I hope to get back into more of a regular schedule where I have at least 2 posts a month. My apologies again and stay tuned...

ECBACC 2013 "Journey of a Black Geek"

The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC)

I've been a geek pretty much all of my life. My mom was a fan of Star Trek the Original Series. This is compounded by the fact that my dad would bring home circuit boards from his job for me and my brother and tell us that they were from spaceships. Thus the seeds for a science fiction fanboy were in the making.

As everyone in the geek community knows, it's only a hop, skip and a jump from scifi to the world of comic books. Like alot of us, the tales of modern mythology captured my attention as well as my imagination. My parents always instilled in me to not get too engrossed into anything that where there wasn't any representation of people who look like you. As a black person (African American to those so inclined.), I grew up seeing a plethera of white faces doing tremdenous acts of heroism and feats of superhuman ability.

Fortunately for me, I hit my teens during the nineties. It was a time of pan-Africanism as well as neo Black nationalism. For those of us who were geeks, it meant that where were a number of Blacks invovled with the independent comic scene.

I remember my mom excitedly telling me about a Black comic book that had made the local news "Brother Man." With a bit of a sigh and groan, (really you couldn't come up with a better name than that.) I was even more dismayed when I saw that it was that iconic graffiti style art that I simply wasn't that into. That said I eventually picked up an issue and fell in love with the book. To this day, it remains my ideal of what a comic book about hero without any powers should be.

There were of course Black heros in the big two (Marvel and DC). Marvel had heroes like Falcon, Jim Rhodes (he wasn't War Machine yet), Storm, Black Panther and Cage. DC had it's own line up with John Steward Green Lantern, Black Lightning and Cyborg. DC turned it up a notch however when it started it's Milestone Media line.

For me, it was love at first sight... I mean first reading. An entire Universe of heroes as told from a primarily (altho not exclusively) non white perspective. There were white heroes and characters, of course, but the stories were more reflective of a diverse world view. Certainly, Marvel and DC as well as others (who didn't love Frank Miller's Martha Washington) tried their best. Yet, still the characters didn't quite feel authentic. Often, I felt conflicted. On the one hand, it was like Black people don't act like that. And yet on the other, you had to give them credit for the attempt.

Obviously, I don't exclusively read comics by black artists/ authors or about black characters. It is nice to see a well done comic with a well thought out story that features non white characters. Ok so the noteable exemption is Manga, but you get my point. So when I was friended by the East Coast Black Age of Comics (ECBAC), I thought oh goodie I'll hopefully get to find out about more Black Comics. However, like many things on the Book of Faces, I quickly got sidetracked by the myriad of distractions and it faded to the recesses of my FB stream only to be periodically visited from time to time.

It wasn't a surprise when I was invented to some event or another. I mean, how many of us on the Book of Faces get an invite to some event that we couldn't possiblly get to. What caught me off guard was that ECBAC was holding a convention in Philadelphia. In my head I was like. AWESOME!!! Ok ok so there is that comic something or another every year, but that somehow always sneaks up on me and I forget about it.  However, thanks to my mild addiction to the Book of Faces. I was constantly reminded of the event.


ECBACC is the first actual convention that I have been to. And I had a blast. In part two I'll talk more about what I saw while I was there. Stay tuned...