Bend and stretch, reach for the stars, there goes Jupiter here comes Mars

Title is mainly because I thought up and down would be a bit boring, and this Romper Room song jumped into my head. Romper Room was cool.

I've had a very Jekyll and Hyde run the last couple of weeks in both fumbbl and tabletop.
First I was getting some extremely good luck - laying the smackdown on the TBBrookie league on fumbbl, and rolling 2 +ST on the one Beastman (w00t!).

Then I played a PBBL league game that went quite well, and rolled another 2 for my Dwarfs! Next day we had a bit of a meetup at UH in Blcktown, and after the first game for my High Elves, I got another +ST!

Then it all fell to bits again though. Playing two games at once with my High Elves and Dwarfs, my HE were down to 6 players in about 4 turns at the hands of Doubleskulls, with all my best players being the casualties.

On the other board, bu Dwarfs were playing pretty newbie Ogres, and they were dice rolling us off the park! They didn't fall over on a single one of their Blocks, and there were very few Bonehead failures either. In the end we took 6 CAS, including a dead Trollslayer, my ST4 Runner copping -AV, and two other MNGs.

The bad luck has continued through my SWL regional games, losing a ghoul and wight off my necro, and we got absolutely smacked in 3BL, where we saw a Saurus score a one turn TD, and our buzzing troll on 4spp BHed before we got a turn.

The kicker was yesterday though, when in the top of the table clash between my undefeated Dwarfs and the undefeated (and very dubious, but thats another story) Wood Elves. We got beat 7-0! We'd only let in 3 TDs all season, then bang. We only had 3 AG 3+ players on the pitch to start, and one of these was Grim Ironjaw, who had better things to do than ball handle. We lost the AG4 Blitzer very early though, and my Runner proceeded to gift the Woodies 5! touchdowns with spectacularly incompetent ball handling. All in all, we simply had trouble knocking over the woodies, and then injuring them when we actually did knock em over.
I think I'm a take a break a bit this week.

Random Mates Blogs

Thought I'd chuck in a few of my mates blogs:

http://www.castleandco.blogspot.com/ - bunch of my mates from uni do this one - I even have a post in there myself -if anyone wants to boost up my hot or not score feel free - apparently my drunken rudolph the shitfaced loon look doesn't appeal to many :)

www.gumbi.net - the one that inspired me to start up my own blog, gumbi raises of a lot of interesting but mundane questions

That'll do for the moment, there are more, but I can;t be arsed finding them right now

Come to Eucalyptus Bowl!

I figured I should probably do a plug for an endeavour I'm helping to organise.

I'm going to be helping to run a Blood Bowl (www.bloodbowl.com) tournament on the 3rd and 4th of September at Earlwood Bardwell Park RSL Club.

A thriving tournament scene exists in Australia for many games, but IMO, Blood Bowl is not one of them Myself and my colleague Ian 'DoubleSkulls' Williams (he's a pom but he's alright) decided to bite the bullet and run one ourselves. After all, its all well and good to wish for a more active tourney scene, but if you don't put your money where your mouth is you get bugger all.

My role is mainly to try and drum as much numbers as I possibly can. I've played a lot of WHFB tourneys, so I've done my best to promote the tourney as best I can on those sites to try and attract interest outside of the bloodbowl community, which is so far going pretty damn well. On our website (http://www.eucalyptus-bowl.info/) we now have 20 entrants lined up, which would make us the second biggest Blood bowl tourney in Australia at our first attempt!

A lot of the rules we're using are fairly standard fare in other countries with more active tourney scenes, but haven't been used a great deal here, which has led to some stirrings among some people. This leads into a bit of a rant I've had coming on for a while, and it applies to more than the Blood Bowl games system and tourney scene.

People in general are whinging whining bastards - I know because I'm one of them. Its amazing how demanding people can become of such trivial things, especially ones where you freely volunteer your time in trying to assist people to have a good time. There seems to be an attitude of my way or the highway with a lot of people - which with a hobby sush as gaming which is a very fringe thing is unproductive IMO. We really should be supporting people who try things in the gaming community rather than trying to tear them down at every opportunity. If you don't like the rules of a particular tourney there are two options, rubbish to everyone you possibly can and don't go, or support the people who are making the effort and try to have a rational discussion with them about your concerns (not online - in person) and if nothing changes well then fair enough, at least you've given it a go. It takes a bit of gumption to actually make the effort to get something up and running, and the organiser you rubbish today may not be around tomorrow - which might seem fine now, but what happens when the established organisers feel like playing?

That being said, there is room for honest feedback and criticism, but I think its important in doing so that you make sure people understand where you're coming from. I recently had a problem with this when I critiqued a tourney I attended (and actually did very well at), as I didn't make it sufficiently clear that I very much enjoyed the tourney and the points I was making were what I thought to be minor quibbles - the garnish on the dish if you well - good to have if you can, but not at all important compared to the rest of the dish.

So I spose my thing from this rant is that I'm going to try not to whinge so much, and hopefully some of you will to (if anyone actually reads this thing)

G'day folks, welcome to my blog and thankyou for having a look.

For a very quick and inadequate summary of who I am, I give you the following:

My nickname for about 9 years now is Chunky. There is a story behind it but it contains unfirendly words so I won't repeat it. I get a kick of people trying to find out my real name, so those who do and comment here, please don't ruin the surprise - make the buggers earn it! BTW - I do like this nickname (I think it describes me quite perfectly - and I'm not just talking physically).

As you can tell from the nickname (well assuming its not one of those opposite Aussie nicknames) I'm a pretty big bloke - think front rower who has retired and likes a beer - no, not Sammy Backo, think smaller in all dimensions, smaller still, yep thats prolly about right.

The two most common stereotypes I'm referred to as are Nerd and Boofhead - naturally I'm an engineer then ;) Civil variety for me - I work for the RTA, as it means I get good opportunities to work away from the wasteland known as Sydney, and also means I have plenty of time outside of work. Standard Civil Engineering boast: We build gigantic erections!

My nerdish half likes to play all sorts of strange wargames, role playing games and computer games - pretty much anything with game at the end I'm willing to give a go. So that I don't go mad trying to explain these things to people who probably don't want to know but will ask anyway to be polite (believe me, you'd be surprised how it can start to grate after a while), I tend to refer to these broadly as Nerd Games. Blood Bowl is my current favourite.

I also love sport - playing more than watching, but I rarely seem to find time to play much anymore - I hope I will again once I move back out of Sydney. For playing my main sports are Tennis and Basketball these days, I'm too old and injured to bother playing Rugby League anymore really - too much chance of stuffing up the other sports I can still play and hope to be able to play well into old age.

For watching, its Rugby League, Basketball, and I'll have a look at most things. I rarely enjoy watching Union though, always seems too negative for mine - the players simply don't back themselves enough. I don't really follow a team in any of them though - I'm more someone who likes to watch the game for the game itself,and the team supporters are often too parochial for my liking. I may barrack for one team over the other (NSW in State of Origin ffor example), but I'm not one of those people who hurls abuse at the ref for getting calls right that aren't in our favour for example. As much as I'd like NSW to win, if its not a deserved victory by them being the better team I don't think its a victory at all. I also despise the general trend in sports for people to question the referees. The poor buggers are out there doing a difficult job with little thanks, and deserve to be treated with a bit more respect - especially on the field while playing. I suspect I'd make a rubbish ref as I'd get rid of any players who carried on with that sort of caper.

So there we have my introductory post - as you can see I like to ramble.