Too Many Mechs!

First let me apologize as I haven't done an update in a long time.  It isn't that I've been on hiatus or anything, just haven't updated the blog.

To keep it short, my December was pretty much destroyed when I tried to fight a speeding ticket (I have had dozens in the past, and usually just do deferred adjudication and give the cities the money they wanted).  I always believed the system worked if you used it.  I believed judges were honest, I believed cops were good, and most of all I believed that my fellow citizen wasn't stupid.  I'll just say all my beliefs were squashed, my desire to try to help my country (by running for congress) obliterated, and I have to avoid thinking about it as it still infuriates me.  Just a ticket, no biggie, probably won't even raise my insurance, but I I decided to make a stand, and it was pointless.  However, I did gain a huge amount of sympathy to people in prisons, people who say they get harassed by cops, and anybody who has ever been the "victim" of the "system".  It was an eye opener, and the City of Richardson Texas, and its corrupt police, corrupt judges, and completely stupid citizens, make me ashamed to be Texan.  

So enough with excuses, what about Battletech?

First, I did do a little bit of work to the site.  I formatted the output at the bottom when you select a mech so you can see costs, availability, BVs, and so forth.  I fixed numerous bugs, all in the history page.  Nothing real significant though.

I decided I have too many damned mechs, WAY too many, like *hundreds* too many.  I went through them all and got from about 1200 down to 650.  I plan on knocking another couple hundred out.  I just didn't need a battalion of stingers or a regiment of LAMs.  So I now have boxes of stuff to get rid of.  Note that these are just my unpainted stuff, I plan on keeping my hundreds of painted ones :)  I have some pictures, you can see them at http://bte.battletechengineer  .com/BTPics/ (remove that space before the .com as its a lot of huge pics, and I don't want to kill my bandwidth with spam bots.  If anybody wants to buy a bunch of mechs, many unseen, and has a couple grand or so feel free to inquire... I loathe the idea of wasting my time with ebay to sell it all.

I played a bit of X-Wing miniatures, pretty fun.  There goes $1k.  Pre-ordered the 2 big ships but gotta wait a few months to receive them :(.  I have 3 of the freighters I could use now from an old model set, and have like 5 AT-ATs and a dozen snow speeders that would work great.  Need opponents though.  It is nice the minis come pre-painted, but they feel like they are made out of styrofoam they are so light.

I bought Dropzone Commander.  Best miniatures of any game I've ever dealt with.  Just great quality, easy to assemble, no flash, highly detailed, just perfect.  For a starter box it is complete (down to the tape measure) and was a quality item.  The game seems ok, though I haven't played it.  I will say that even though the miniatures are GREAT quality, they are ugly and stupid looking.  But perhaps some folks would like them.

I got some of my Battle Armor painted, they look *really* good.  Here in the next month or two I should have the other 1000 painted as well, muhahaha.

Nothing has came out for BattleTech, go figure.  Still errata galore.  I email errata now as I'm not allowed to post it.  If I was still allowed, I'd be the #1 errata producer again.  Oh well.

I bought the Shadowrun DMZ boxed set.  This is the same core game as Battletroops, but they added stuff like magic and many new rules.  I absolutely loved Battletroops way back in the day.  I hope to play it again soon on some Battle Systems terrain.

Been loving some of the new Megamek icons coming out.  Props to Deadborder and P0pr0cks on the forums.  Wish they'd do a Rattler/Wyrm and some dropships though.  Wish even more they'd do the robotech stuff :)  I don't play megamek very often, but they make it better.

I purchased 75 painted mechs on ebay, great quality, very happy with them.  Will probably purchase another couple hundred from the same guy in the next couple months.  

Since Eric Hotz at Hotzmatz apparently hates his customers and the thought of selling stuff aggravates him, I need to find a new solution to getting maps done.  GripMats will probably work, but I was thinking of taking some of the map packs to kinko's and getting them printed on vinyl or something.  May end up being too slippery or glossy, but may be worth a shot.  The key thing is we use 1.75" hexes so we can use my huge collection of heroscape terrain, so we need to find maps that size.  I love the canon maps, but they are too small.  Perhaps if I can print them with 1.75" hexes it'll work really well.  Just need a good solution as my railroad green mat with almost straight painted hexes on it has a short life.

Anyway, I hope to get back into Battletech soon.  The first thing will be the app to let you use your phone/website/tablet to track your alpha strike units.  I guess I'll call it "Alpha Strike Helper" or ASH.