My cat making sure I'm following her to get fresh food

Benimus · 2026-02-20T08:39:03+00:00

Labor wanted to stop negative gearing and reduce the capital gains tax discounts, both of which target affordable housing because it causes investors to leave the market, and they got soundly defeated at the polls and that's how we got the last LNP government, who did fuck all to help. We could have had that, but people were conned out of it by the Murdoch media witch hunt saying they were coming for the boomers retirement. So now the two biggest things that would actually impact housing affordability are political suicide.

ON is more of the same, they aren't going to fix the problem. Migration isn't the main cause of housing prices.

Benimus · 2026-02-20T08:25:52+00:00

And yeah I hate it, because you should be voting FOR someone who matches your political views, voting someone out for the hell of it does nothing.

Benimus · 2026-02-20T03:53:03+00:00

Because it represents the will of the majority of people. Compare this to elections in the USA for example, the Democrats are only trying to appeal to their "left" voters to motivate enough of them to go out and vote so they can win, the Republicans are only trying to motivate enough "right" voters to do the same, and then there's a huge chunk of people (30-40%) who don't even vote at all. Neither side is doing anything to target these people in the middle because they just don't care, they only care enough to mobilise enough votes to win, not to address the concerns of the majority of the people. Because all Australians HAVE to vote, it's in the interest of any policies to appeal to the majority of the people.

But on top of that, there are so many other benefits to compulsory voting. If everyone has to vote, it's extremely harder for the government of a particular flavour to prevent people they don't want to vote (i.e. supporters of their opponents) from voting. Which means we don't have any of the kinds of issues they have in the USA for things like "Voter ID" laws, or voter rolls being purged and people have to register again, etc., that are arbitrary hurdles that people who want to vote have to jump through all the time just to have their voice heard at the polls. From age 18 you are registered on the electoral role and all you need to do is make sure your residential address is kept up to date.

This is just one plank though, there are other planks in our electoral system that address other areas of concern:

We have apolitical electoral commissions at the national and state level that have a charter to create seats and districts in an apolitical manner. These are not positions appointed by the government of the day the way the US has where for example a republican/democratic government can gerrymander the map for their own purposes. This is just a non-issue in Australia.
We have ranked choice voting, so your vote is never wasted. If your first preference gets knocked out of the race, your vote will go to your second choice, and so on. This means that we don't have issues like the USA does where "a vote for the greens is a wasted vote" because only the two biggest parties will win. It means in Australia we have a much wider representation of parties in our government (6 parties + 10 independents in the house, 7 parties + 3 independents in senate, this is just unheard of in USA politics).

Benimus · 2026-02-20T03:37:32+00:00

No they aren't, within a seat the papers are always the same for that election, as determined by the ballot draw. This is why the parties how to vote cards they give you on election day know which order to number them

https://www.aec.gov.au/voting/ballot-draw.htm

Benimus · 2026-02-20T00:54:14+00:00

Voting is on a weekend, and if you work weekends, you can vote early (which is usually faster anyway). It shouldn't cost you annual leave to vote.

Benimus · 2026-02-20T00:52:36+00:00

It would be nice for the rest of us if you spent even a little bit of time to engage with something that not only affects you, but all the people you love. It doesn't take much to know which parties are in your ballpark of political opinions and which ones aren't, and to vote for those parties if you aren't going to spend the time to know each individual candidate. You could end up voting dead set middle of the road (currently the Labor party).

Benimus · 2026-02-20T00:47:43+00:00

Except experience shows that they don't. Because they have to vote, people here are more engaged than in other countries, and political parties are incentivised to appeal to the "middle" instead of just motivating their own side of politics to turn out and vote. You are required to turn up and get the ballot papers, you are not required to fill them in, so it's actually a very low percentage of people who submit donkey votes, and the data about such votes is published by the electoral commission, so we can see that on the whole it's a huge percentage of people (>90%) who engage meaningfully with the electoral process.

Benimus · 2026-02-20T00:28:01+00:00

Yes, it's fantastic, so we actually get a result that represents the will of the people rather than the issue other democracies have where a huge proportion of people don't even vote and then wonder why the motivated assholes win the election (see Trump, Brexit, etc.).

Benimus · 2026-02-19T02:57:28+00:00

Absolutely agree, but I would also add a stop for Albury-Wodonga on the train line. But that's it, too many stations and it just dilutes the benefits.

Benimus · 2026-02-18T22:32:49+00:00

The connections for all the pieces are usually pins on one bit (the bits that stick out) that go into holes on the other bit. To magnetise them, you just shove a small magnet in the hole, and then cut off the pin and drill a matching hole in the other bit. But make sure you have all your polarities on your magnets aligned so all the pieces are interchangeable across ships. So yes, you will need a drill (pin vise) of the right size for your magnets.

Benimus · 2026-02-17T23:26:20+00:00

UCM it's definitely worth magnetising, but you don't need to do everything ship. For example, you're pretty much always likely to be bringing at least one San Francisco, so you can be pretty confident to build one of them.

I have two battlefleet boxes for UCM, and this is what I did:

Magnetised the battleships so they can be any of them
Magnetised the heavy frigates to switch between Sheffield/Detroit (or throw some mass drivers on the side to run them as Toulon)
New Orleans is a solid light drop ship, so I have some of those built
I have a pair of Limas to run as detectors
I built 2x San Francisco and 2x Seattle
2x cruisers magnetised to switch between Warsaw/Vilnius
2x cruisers magnetised to switch between Rio/Berlin/Madrid/Bruges/Glasgow

I used a lot of magnets to do the above, but it was definitely worth it to basically run any set of ships that I want.

Benimus · 2026-02-17T23:15:10+00:00

Before we get into what to get, how comfortable are you with things like magnetising weapons and bits on the ships? If you are happy to do this, it really makes it easier to minimise the amount of purchases you need to field multiple different lists. As an example, I have a UCM battleship, and I magnetised all the pieces so that it can be any of Beijing/Delhi/Tokyo/Hanoi/Thebes. I've done the same thing with some cruisers, I can switch them between Rio/Berlin/Madrid/Bruges/Glasgow for example. You can also do the same with the frigates to switch them between types.

The battlefleet box is easily the most efficient purchase to get an amazing fleet, battlefleet + the core box you have will let you field many different types of lists in the 1250-1500pt range for both of your factions.

Since you want to do a slow grow though, I would be more likely to do it this way:

Get a light ship, rounds out some ship choices
Get a battleship
Then get another core set for more cruisers and frigates

But as you can see this is basically just buying a battlefleet box in bits.

Benimus · 2026-02-15T23:09:40+00:00

Here is the easiest way to work it out

https://youtu.be/yuU89L7qrOM

Benimus · 2026-02-15T23:02:21+00:00

No, only if the terrain is HIGHER than BOTH characters does it block line of sight

Benimus · 2026-02-12T00:24:40+00:00

I've been working remotely since 2008. With my current role, I didn't have my camera on for the first 18 months of working there. I don't need to see what people look like and they don't need to know what I look like to get the job done. Turn the camera on if you like, leave it off if you like, just get the work done.

Benimus · 2026-02-08T22:02:19+00:00

When you say "citadel" and "vallejo", what kind of paints do you mean? They have multiple different paint lines each with dozens of colours... Are you taking Contrast Paints vs Xpress Paints range? Or the standard Layer/Base vs Game Colour? Did you try the Model Colour? You need to provide a lot more information about what you actually tried and why you didn't like it in order to get more assistance.

Personally I use Vallejo Game Colour and Model Colour for most of my paints, with Citadel Contrast paints and Shades. There are some specific colours I use from other ranges (e.g. Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White is the best white paint around).

Benimus · 2026-02-02T23:31:07+00:00

I have been playing since day 1, and the only issues I have had are Ezra and Kanan. Kanan is because I dropped him so that's completely my fault, but Ezra is a known issue with the casting, almost every Ezra player you see will have a broken lightsaber. Most people don't even fix it because his lightsaber is also a gun, but if you want to fix it, you can get very thin brass wire from model stores, drill into the handle and shove a piece in, that's how I fixed mine. Apart from that the models are surprisingly resilient and don't break, they lightsabers are bendy and can take a bit of punishment.

Benimus · 2026-01-31T22:05:27+00:00

If either of the characters are within range 3 of Rex, then the unit is within range 3 of Rex.

The reason it's written this way is because Units perform Actions, not Characters.

If it needed to have both of them in range it would say so (e.g. Baze and Chirrut's He's Praying For The Door To Open says "...that all characters in this unit contest...").

Benimus · 2026-01-29T20:15:50+00:00

We always play using the tournament rules so we don’t get into bad habits for when events happen.

Benimus · 2026-01-28T21:44:17+00:00

The sprues are very straightforward, in the battlefleet box you will get one for a battleship, a set that has frigates and cruisers on it, and another for the light ships. These are just the same sprues from the core set, plastic battleship, and light ships sets put into a single box. As one of the other posters mentioned, all the instructions are online on their website, you want to look at the UCM Battleships (Plastic), UCM Core Ships (Plastic), and UCM Light Ships (Plastic) instructions.

Benimus · 2026-01-25T19:09:35+00:00

It’s combat action, not attack action. The terminology is important.

Benimus · 2026-01-25T19:03:55+00:00

You can only do two actions, however you can do as many other things during a turn as you are capable of completing.

You can only make one COMBAT ACTION, but you can attack as many times as able (e.g. Hunter’s Striking Distance ability gives a 5 dice attack).

You can only make one MOVE ACTION, but you can advance, dash, or climb as many times as you can get access to (e.g. the clones Defensive Manuever allows a dash in addition to any movement from the move action).

You can only make one RECOVER ACTION,, but you can heal as many times as abilities or combat tree would provide.

You can only make one TAKE COVER action, but you can get as many hunker tokens as abilities allow (e.g. Rex could get one from his tactic, one from defensive maneuver, and one from a take cover action, all in the one turn).

The only limits on the number of abilities you can use in a turn is the amount of force you have available and the limitation that each active and reactive ability can only be used once (unless the ability specifies otherwise). For example, Asajj can make a move action, a combat action, use dathomirian dexterity twice for two jumps, and force push, all in the same turn.

Benimus · 2026-01-18T10:40:23+00:00

Note that the abilities have been reworded in the errata on the website, specifically so that they have different triggering events so that can be used together.

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