Finding a new tiny god

Hey,

So I'm thinking about getting a PC in the near future. I've been happy with my MacBook, but when I work from home, connecting to my work PC through this Windows Remote Desktop program for the Mac gives me a sad face. I could partition the dive and yadda-yadda-yadda, but what I'm going to do is just pick up a PC and go direct.

So I could pick up any crap-box and just go with that because the PC is little more than a dumb terminal to my work machine. But y'know...there's an awful lot of neat PC games.

So, if you've got some informed opinions, what would you buy? Say that I'd like to spend no more than $1k, but I'll go to 1.5. I'll probably play FPS games (like Battlefield or Left 4 Dead) and maybe a few action sims (like World of Tanks, or some space dogfight games). I'd like a box that comes with a minimum of added 3rd party crap I'll have to uninstall (do not suggest HP for example).

Regale me with your opinions, Internet!

later
Tom

In Soviet Russia, little dudes paint YOU!

Hey,

So I've been puttering away a painting little dudes again. Actually, these are slightly bigger dudes. Normally, I paint in 15mm because it's fast and you can paint up a lot in a hurry and my poor skill is less obvious. However, the guys at the store have finally (finally!) settled on a WWII skirmish rule set. They've opted to go with Bolt Action by Warlord Games. It's a pretty nice little set of rules with some nifty mechanics and it covers a lot of periods without getting too wound up technical advances. The rules are also designed for Warlord Game's 28mm line of figures.

The Warlord stuff looked pretty good and so I picked up a basic infantry set and a medium machine-gun team. Here are the results:





These guys came together and painted up real well. This box set was also put out before Warlord Games developed Bolt Action so they don't form a convenient force to send out into the field. Plus, it's WWII Soviets and that means large groups of Infantry. In fact, one of the Soviet's special rules is that they get an extra squad of troops for free. So I needed more little dudes.

I liked the look of the figures so I went back to Warlord Games. They've got army deals where they'll give you a whole bunch of figures, a few heavy weapons and a vehicle or two. Most of the infantry figures are made of plastic -- because you can get more troops for the dollar and you can kit them out in different ways. So I figured, "I need the guys" and picked it up.

Ugh.

The plastic Warlord figures are made up of torso, head, arms and sometimes separate legs. Weapon sprues hold weapons and gear of every sort. In theory this means you can combine parts and pieces to make anything you want. In practice you get a bunch of troopers suffering from some terrible bone disease that makes their bodies twist unnaturally who also have some localized telekinesis causing their gear to float near, but not at where they would normally keep it.

So...no good. I little searching around led me to Black Tree Designs who have a very nice line of WWII Soviets in a range of styles and groupings. So now I've got the first batch of those up on the blocks for painting. I'll let you know how it goes in a week or two.

That said, I do like the metal Warlord figures above and they're a good first set for my Red Hordes.

later
Tom