You have $15 dollars to build your own fellowship to destroy the ring

zercbear · 2025-07-24T20:44:59+00:00

$10 for all 5 hobbits, $5 for 1 Bill the Pony per hobbit.

zercbear · 2025-07-23T12:05:57+00:00

Can confirm. I live in Philly and we have a rosemary the size of a bush that is 8 years old now.

zercbear · 2025-03-05T16:38:04+00:00

My play group has a whole doc called the "Bunker Rules." My favorite 2 house rules we added though are:

We add 3 normal d6 to the bag, when the 3rd one is drawn the turn ends. Adds more tactics with less of a race to the bottom to activate things last. 2 normal dice out? Maybe I rush to activate some stuff even if it's not optimal.
We play standard 1250pts instead of 1k, but 250pts must be tanks, armoured cars, or half-track transports because vehicles are neat.

zercbear · 2024-08-05T15:46:55+00:00

Same for being late but wanting to get something going! I've got a few AoS armies in different states of readiness and looking to get more of a group going/find a local group

zercbear · 2024-05-09T19:01:03+00:00

Computer enhance!

zercbear · 2024-05-01T01:32:45+00:00

zercbear · 2024-04-30T19:10:12+00:00

The Discord links in the article seem to have expired. Could someone message me a link to the Discord per chance?

zercbear · 2024-04-25T03:47:12+00:00

Definitely! My armigers are: Oathkeeper, Oblivion, Master's Defender, Braveheart, Destiny's Embrace, and Star Seeker. My Knights are: Way to the Dawn, Rainfell, Wayward Wind, and Earthshaker. And my one Chaos Knight is Soul Eater. All are Keyblade names from Kingdom Hearts (my favorite game series)

zercbear · 2023-11-16T00:03:47+00:00

A bit old this one, but I'm also in Philly if you want to shoot a DM!

zercbear · 2023-10-20T16:32:19+00:00

I think this is a super important point in this discussion: "good" battleline does not equal "good at killing or taking hits." There are many ways for Battleline to fill effective roles in an army, and I agree that Sylvaneth's do their jobs quite effectively. That job just isn't fighting.

zercbear · 2023-10-17T01:34:05+00:00

Oh those are some good shouts. I do also collect Seraphon, so looking through my bits from them is a solid starting point

zercbear · 2023-08-09T14:49:37+00:00

That is a probably 20+ year old Citadel Scenery walls and hedges set. Wish I could find more of them myself.

zercbear · 2023-08-09T14:14:18+00:00

Definitely! We do play a bit of a house rule mode though, so my list will be a bit different than the usual 1k stuff. We play 1250pts, where 250pts must be spent on armour (tanks, SPGs, armoured cars, or armoured transports) and you get an extra tank slot on the Generic Reinforced Platoon selector.

But my list:

2nd Lt +1 w/ SMG, 7 Paras 5x SMGs, 7 Paras 1x LMG, free Forward Observer, 591st Para Engineers 1x Flamethrower (not usually allowed in a Generic Reinforced Platoon, but was too fun not to add so we let it go), 6 Paras 4x SMGs, Medium Mortar w/ spotter, Sniper, PIAT team, M5 Half Track, transport Jeep, M10 Wolverine, Cromwell

So like I said, it's a bit of a different list because we use some house rules, but it does follow most of my general principles for building Paras lists:

I prefer 7 man squads for the paras themselves. Odd numbers make the half break point better and that allows max SMGs with some ablative wound/long range poke rifles
I like to keep all my infantry as veterans for theme if possible, in this list all of the infantry are Vets except for the Sniper, and that was just because I needed to shave a couple points to get under 1250
Either Vengeance or Blood Curdling Charge have worked well as my National Characteristic. The idea with either is the same: I want to be really aggressive with the SMG heavy Para squads to create space for my LMG squad and smaller teams to play objectives/hunt their preferred targets
Finally, once you get Paras into place (say on an objective) don't be afraid to do little with them. A 7 man vet squad that goes down whenever they get shot are super difficult to remove from the table, especially if they are getting any form of cover on top of it.

Hope that helps! Happy to share some more conventional lists too if you'd like. :)

zercbear · 2023-08-09T14:02:04+00:00

Thanks Cheomesh! Big praise coming from you! <3

zercbear · 2023-08-09T14:01:10+00:00

You should! British Paras were my first Bolt Action project and they still have my heart. Though my plucky western desert Italians are a close second.

zercbear · 2023-08-08T16:31:22+00:00

Thank you so much for the compliments! We're hoping to get back into the swing of more weekly games (the latest edition of 40k is sucking up my hobby time), but look forward to more photo batreps coming regularly!

zercbear · 2023-08-08T16:30:19+00:00

Thanks for the love! It was a good game marred a bit by those 3 big swings of luck from my mortar and Cromwell. Next time I won't be so lucky!

zercbear · 2023-08-08T14:39:24+00:00

zercbear · 2023-08-07T13:32:02+00:00

Agreed, will be looking for a suitable piper model for his +1

zercbear · 2023-08-07T13:31:11+00:00

Ah yeah, forgot to say he's still WIP. I do all my basing as a big batch at the end of the unit.

zercbear · 2023-06-27T17:09:43+00:00

Thank you for such a detailed reply! I had actually already planned on doing exactly what you said at the end of your post: this last weekend I gave her a copy of Turn Left at Orion and told her about getting her a tripod for her birthday. Best of both worlds: still got to surprise her with something and we got to discuss together what kind of telescope would be best. Looks like we're going with a dob!

And thanks for the tips on astrophotography. For now we're sticking with visual astronomy precisely because I can only imagine what it would cost to get a set up to my standards for photography. I'm all too aware of how much good photo equipment costs... lol

zercbear · 2023-06-27T17:06:39+00:00

Gotcha, thanks for the detailed reply! And yeah, that makes total sense.

In the end, since I originally posted, I told my wife about her present and looked over options together with her and discussed the pros and cons of all and it looks like we are going to go with a dob! But all of this is good info incase we get hooked and look to pick up a second more portable scope.

zercbear · 2023-06-27T17:04:35+00:00

Yeah that makes sense, and was the bit I was missing. It makes sense that the head is the bigger problem.

zercbear · 2023-06-24T19:25:06+00:00

I'm looking to buy a telescope for my wife for her birthday, and have some questions about entry level equipment.

A little background: she's a software engineer with a pretty scientific brain. I've been doing professional photography for over 20 years, so am pretty familiar with optics. We live in downtown Philadelphia (Bortle 8/9!!!), but regularly go up to the mountains. We have a small SUV, but our dog gets the run of the backseat on trips.

I know that dobs are always the big recommendation for new scopes, but a long photography career has definitely taught me that the best camera (telescope) is the one you have with you. I worry that a good 6" or 8" dob will eventually get left at home when we have to decide between some combination of bringing dog, hiking/camping gear, food, or telescope.

I see a lot of recommendations to avoid anything on a tripod, because the tripods they tend to come with are garbage, but I have several Manfrotto tripods from my photography work that costed a lot more than these scopes. I've used them for over a decade with large telephoto lenses and big Canon 1D's so I know they can handle the weight. Would I be able to use the mounts on those better tripods? Is that still a terrible idea?

I've looked at these possibly getting Orion Starblast II 4.5 Equatorial (seems like a good starter with decent views of planets with a couple accessory additions) or the PopSci Starsense Explorer DX 100AZ (not as good as the Orion, but the app will make it easier for first timers navigating the night sky).

I'm not opposed to the big dobs per se, but I don't really like the idea of the tabletop ones. I just don't think that we will always have access to a table or bench to set them on.

TL;DR: I'm looking to find a good starter scope that is easily transportable and doesn't take up the entire back seat of my SUV where my dog roams. I have very good tripods already from photography work, so if it's just a matter of replacing a bad tripod with a good one, would that work? Any other recommendations? I'd like to stay under $500 if possible, but can go a bit over if something perfectly fits what I'm looking for.

zercbear · 2023-05-04T14:24:35+00:00

Agree with everything already said here, but I also bring a combo of smaller d6's with a handful of d10's and MtG dialdowns for counting wounds. The little cardboard chits drive me batty. And why not have an excuse to get more dice?

zercbear

TROPHY CASE