Hadross: A speed bump

I played a couple games of Wrath of Kings this weekend (and a game the previous weekend).

This weekend's list was:

Torvosh
Frenzy Charger

3x Carcharian Frenzies
2x Sevridan Gutters
8x Deepman Guardians

Ilva
Orsund

First game this past Saturday was against my friend's Nasier at skirmish level.  He played the motivation where he had to get markers for his infantry for interacting with my leaders/specialists.  I chose burn it down.  The game was over pretty fast, as Ilva devastated his Pelegarth and the rest of my forces picked apart his ashmen before they could do any real damage.

The second game was against Goritsi playing alpha, wolves, some dance masters, Anton, and shield breakers.  Motivations were disrupt supply lines for Goritsi and Land Grab for my fish men.  I was wrecking his wolves the entire game, but he kept me penned in and slowly worked his way to one of his objectives and popped it (while sitting on one on the far side of the board in wait).  He then popped the second one and killed the carcharians and leader and a few guardians.  Dropped me to zero and it was all I could do to grab one of my objectives.  Final score was 2-0 Goritsi.

I played a similar game the previous weekend against Goritsi using Disrupt Supply Lines.  The wolves having skirmisher and their raw speed with the Alpha as Commander makes that matchup an uphill fight.  I'm still working on how to beat that one with a tournament list (core for all games and 2 sets of options)

Holding Water

I was out on staycation last week and finally got the 125 gallon acrylic system setup.  Only had a couple leaks.  One was where I threaded my hose barb into the manifold as a placeholder (teflon tape fixed this).  The other was a missing O-ring on one of the ball valves which was replaced.

I bent some acrylic and used weldon to attach it to the stand to support the manifold and anchor the return lines on the back of the aquarium.

I utilized the Marco Rock I got from a LFS on sale...around 65 lbs of it.  The 2 pieces on the right will be supports for a natural frag rack.  I plan on placing a piece of shelf rock with a grid of holes drilled in it for frags to sit in.  I'm not sure if I'm going to stack it higher than what you see there yet or not.

Eventually I'll end up putting T-5 lights in it.  I'm not convinced with my LEDs abilities to grow well and produce the colors I want.  I've found them to be lackluster.

My existing rock will have all the corals removed from it, and then it'll get sanitized due to the extensive aiptasia infestation I'm battling.  Then that 65 gallon tank/stand/canopy and sump will be sold to buy more equipment for this one.

The Waveline DC 10000ii does not disappoint.  It pumps so hard that I have to keep it around 3-4 (out of 6) to keep water in the chamber for it to pump out.  And wow is it quiet.

Death Eater: Rules and Moderator Guide

Time to post up the rules for Are You A Death Eater...and the handy dandy moderator guide.

These will be handed out at the Dragoncon panel on Friday night at 10pm.  They have a double time block this year, so double the time to play!



First off, the Rules:

And the Moderator Guide.  This really helps the game to flow.

Manifold Destiny

Finally got the buffing done and started working on the plumbing for my 125 Reef Aquarium Build.

Running my return line from a Waveline DC 10000ii pump and splitting it off into 5 separate lines for 4 returns and a stub (all with valves).  Also installing a check valve to prevent water from siphoning back into my sump when I cut the main pump for water changes and feeding.  That's currently a problem I have on the 65 gallon reef system in my living room.

Had I run the manifold in a straight run, it would have been 3 feet long...way too much to deal with in that stand considering the sump is resting on the floor between 2 cross braces.  So I made it C shaped with the connection and the check valve on the bottom and the 1" manifold above that.  I also incorporated a union to minimize cost when that check valve finally stops working.  A friend of mine is using 1/2" check valves on his return lines and they kicked it after about 8 months of use.

It aint pretty, but it'll do the job.

With the stand being acrylic, I had an interesting thought.  So I cut a bunch of acrylic brackets, popped holes in them and plan to use my tube of Weldon 16 to just mount them to the stand instead of using conventional hardware...fewer holes in the plastic that way.  I'll then use zip ties to keep the pipe attached.  Theoretically that'll work like a champ.  In the above photo you can see burn marks on the board where I used it to help bend my brackets after I heated them with my brand new heat gun.  I hope to be able to put that thing to some use after this project.

With the existing 2" holes in the stand, I'll be able to run 2 return lines out of each hole with room to spare.  I may mount some additional acrylic brackets to the top of the stand to anchor the return lines and then pop some locline on each one.  Ordered the locline from Premium Aquatics per my LFS's instructions (he could only save me about $0.60 on my order).  End of the day I'll have about $140 in the plumbing, not counting the pump.

Death Eater Update

Quick update.  Our new batch of Are You A Death Eater cards came in.  We now have enough cards for 347 people to play at Dragoncon (12 decks with varying numbers of players per deck).  We'll likely add to each of the new decks later this month and push up closer to around 380 players.  Everyone should have a chance to play that shows up to the double time block panel on the YA Lit Track.

Past Project: Drink Dispenser

This is from my other blog (now defunct).


The Mask (Final Stage):
So I finished the mask, did a wash in black, then drybrushed Inca Gold acrylic paint onto it.  My significant other's mask is pictured below (the half mask) along with mine.

Drink Dispenser:
I got a dual cylinder gravity fed drink dispensing backpack for my birthday.  It was a lot of black nylon, so I opted to change that to fit more with some steampunk stuff and possibly even one of the LARPs I play in.

I built out the backpack with some leather I had laying around, keeping the guts of the system, and dropping the nylon bits.

(Everything laid out after cutting, edge finishing, tooling, and punching stitching holes)

(Tooling with a simple stamp)

(Dyed with a diluted Dark Brown alcohol based leather dye)

(Dry Run to make sure it fit together...added LED puck from Harbor Freight with some green cellophane inside the unit to filter the light)

(Mostly finished.  I had to wet down the caps to allow the leather to stretch and accomodate the original black plastic caps.)

Overall it turned out great.  I'll have to snap some shots with liquid inside and of me wearing it later.  It's pretty comfortable to wear around, and as long as I dont incline my body more than about 30 degrees, it doesnt slosh too much.   There are two modified ammo pouches attached to the front straps to put the nozzles in. The nozzles feed pretty well into a cup or you can just drink directly from them with a bit of suction.  When I added Orange Juice to the mix in the tanks, it started to look like toxic waste.  Got a lot of questions about what was in the tanks after that.