A motion has been proposed to my local Labour Party regarding Venezuela. As speakers will only have two minutes, I would not be able to reply to the motion in any great detail, so I’m going to address it here. I’m going to go through the motion line by line, and provide some general comments at the end. First, though, I want to address directly the question of whether Venezuela is currently a democracy.
Continue reading “Venezuela at my CLP”Blog
The Independent Group’s website and Panama
Skwawkbox have a story highlighting the fact that the whois for the Independent Group has a mention of Panama, and are drawing some slightly silly conclusions as a result. Sadly, I’ve seen people sharing this on social media. I’m going to go through what a whois entry is, why Panama appears there, why this is a nothingburger, and then make a couple of (probably snarky) comments.
Continue reading “The Independent Group’s website and Panama”Vigilus: 1500 IG/Admech vs Tyranids
The List This evening’s game saw my Imperial Guard, with a little AdMech salt, doing their best to make their way back to the (relative) safety of a hivesprawl while being pursued by the vicious hordes of Adam’s Tyranids. We move onto the second round of Colin’s Vigilus Defiant campaign. I’ve been really looking forward to this round as it has two particular missions that I find interesting – Convoy and this evening’s game, Running Battle. In Running Battle, the defender deploys everything in a stripe widthways across the middle of the battlefield. The attacker then deploys as much as they want in a stripe across the western (short) edge of the battlefield. They can bring on anything they want on a 4+ from reserves on either of the long edges of the battlefield. To simulate the running nature of the battle, at the start of each round after the first, everything on the board moves six inches towards the western edge; anything in the six inches closest to that edge is destroyed. To make this easier, I’d nipped round to B&Q and had a 6′ by 4′ board sawn into 6″ by 4′ strips so we could just take away the westernmost board, shuffle all the others down, and add the board back to eastern end. As defender, my aim was to keep as much of my army by power level alive as possible, while Adam had to destroy as much of mine as possible. 12″ by 4′, with a couple of bits of scenery thrown in, isn’t a huge amount of room to deploy 1500 points worth, as it turns out. I went into this battle with a relatively clear strategy. My intention was to deploy my infantry in a line to slow the oncoming horde while all my vehicles turned around and scarpered. I took Tallarn specifically so Guard vehicles could move and fire their heavy weapons without penalty. The AdMech vehicles could all move 8″ (though the Dunecrawlers can only advance an extra 1D3″), and the Techpriest had a handy-dandy teleporter in the form of the Solar Flare archaeotech relic available to Lucius. The tanks, both commanders, could have used the ‘Full Throttle!’ order to advance backwards instead of shooting. Adam advanced his Tyranids towards me on his first round and didn’t have much luck with his shooting; I think he only inflicted a couple of wounds on a Leman Russ. At that point, I should have either moved my screening infantry forward, or moved my armour back, or both. Instead, I was tempted by this swarm that had just moved into easy shooting range and I wanted to try to thin it out. That mistake should have, and almost did, cost me the match. I used the Manticore, Master of Ordnance, and Leman Russ Battle Tank to try to take out the Tyrannofex lurking on Adam’s back line. Despite excellent shooting, I couldn’t wound it for toffee. At the start of round 2, the armies were essentially the same as after round 1, except much closer together. Adam started bringing on his few reinforcements, and I was at risk of being outflanked. Well, out-tunnelled. The rest of the battle was largely me doing, all things considered, a pretty good job of holding back a close-combat Tyranid army. As I found out, the Dunecrawlers are pretty tough nuts to crack; if you’re finding that out in close combat, though, something’s gone horribly wrong. My Scions dropped in from their Valkyrie and took on a Trygon that had appeared out of the ground. The Trygon had a -1 to hit, meaning my plasma-wielding Command Squad was at real risk of blowing itself up and, indeed, three of the squad promptly did so, but not before turning the xeno into a smear on the ground. On turn three, I did what I should have done right at the start: I We ran out of time and, per the rules, I won a minor victory as I had lost more than a third but less than a half of my army. If we’d been able to keep going, I suspect Adam wouldn’t have had much difficulty in taking out the rest that he needed to. I felt slightly limited by the models I have available, but it’s still a fun list to play. When I have time and money, I have some ideas for where I want to take the army, but that’s for another day. I’d like to give this mission another go as defender, but stick to my tactics. I think I’ve made that mistake – changing plans on the fly – before, and it didn’t end well then, either. The mission is really interesting, though. All in all, it was a fun match and very much welcome after the day I’d had.
turned and ran made a tactical withdrawal. However, I had to make a load of stuff fall back, so I lost a round’s shooting. The Manticore was destroyed by a Hive Tyrant, and exploded, throwing shrapnel around the area. I used the ‘Fire on my Position’ stratagem for three costly command points when one of infantry squads fell to the oncoming brood, and proceeded not to do any damage. Those three points would have been really useful later, not least to change the protocol of my Kastelans. They did the best they could, stuck in Aegis, but, if I’d been able to put them into Conqueror, they would have finished of a squad of Hormagaunts and given me more space for manoeuvre.
Eurovision: You Decide 2019
This evening is Eurovision You Decide, when the UK will choose its entry for the contest later this year in Tel Aviv. The format is unusual this year; each of three songs are performed by two artists, with an expert panel then choosing which of each match-up goes through to a second round public vote for the eventual winner.
Unfortunately, the songs this year are distinctly lacklustre. As each song is sung in two different ways, I’m mostly going to look at the lyrics.
Freaks
This song is meant to be a hopeful and possibly empowering song for people who have been bullied or picked on for being different or unusual. Unfortunately, it works better as a recruiting song for some sort of cult.
The chorus runs
Come to the land of the lost and lonely
Don’t be afraid, we’ll be one big family
Of freaks, like you and me
I know a place where the bruised and broken
Live like the kings and the queens of tragedy
Just freaks, like you and me
We are the freaks
It never actually tells you where the ‘land of the lost and lonely’ is, but I suspect that reaching their involves Kool-Aid, particularly when we’re told we can ‘live like the kings and queens of tragedy’. I’m not sure whether these are fictional kings and queens (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Claudius and Gertrude, Lear) or real kings and queens (Dipendra, Anne Boleyn, Nicholas II), but it didn’t end well for them. However, we’ll be one big family in the land of the lost and lonely, so that’s fine and not at all creepy.
The cult aspect is brought home in the second verse:
We could all be disciples
And we’ll write our own Bible
We’ll put freaks in the titles
which put me in mind of Napoleon wanting to write a new Koran, not getting away from bullies. The outro includes ‘come home’ a couple of times, and now I can’t help but see it as someone wearing white robes telling vulnerable listeners to come and join the family.
There are a couple of another annoyances in the song. The first two lines are
I’ve been locked in the locker
I was picked last in soccer
Which immediately makes people think this song was written for an American artist and has been repurposed for Eurovision; not an auspicious start. The other annoyance is the repeated line
It’s me, you, your, tu and moi, vous
Which translates as ‘it’s me, you, your, you and me, you’, which is gobbledegook, but I presume that adding in three French words will make it appeal to a European audience, or somesuch nonsense. That may be why they sample Pachebel’s Canon, too.
I can’t decide which version I dislike more; I’m sure the singers are perfectly competent, but I can’t get past the lyrics’ mixture of banality and accidental creepiness. I think my preference is probably for the version by MAID, largely because the version from Jordan Clarke sounds like a singalong version from early morning children’s television, though I’m afraid neither recording has much to commend it.
Bigger Than Us
The word ‘bigger’ is repeated thirty-six times. The song, per Eurovision rules, is three minutes long. That’s an average of a bigger every five seconds. The lyrics to the song are uninspiring (but, on the positive side, hardly reminiscent of a cult at all), so it’s going to be much more the performance that matters.
The first two lines fall foul of showing, not telling.
Hear these words that I sing to you
I will make it clear, it’s me and you
Starting a song with an appeal to listen to the song does not suggest much about the author’s confidence in its appeal. Then we have more and more about ‘it’ being ‘bigger than us’. We’re not actually told what ‘it’ is, but I’m assuming that it’s love.
Take my hand and I’ll lead you home
Can you understand?
You will never be alone?
Oops, we’re verging into creepy again. I think this is meant to be sweet, but it has definite shades of looking through a window-pane. ‘Bigger than us’ also implies that it’s more important than us or our desires – and all of a sudden, we’re back at the cult, with the cult leader singing to prospective concubine #14.
The first version of the song, by Michael Rice, sounds like a very generic song released by a talent show winner; he won All Together Now, a talent show on the BBC, so it fits. It’s not a bad song, and it’s sung well enough; it’s just uninspired. There are some “emotional” sections where Michael can show off the depth of feeling that comes across, despite the power in his voice, as a bit flat. I find myself thinking that I need to creosote the fence, which suggests that the song would get lost if it reached Eurovision.
The second version, sung by Holly Tandy, I prefer; it has a slight country vibe to it, to which I’m partial anyway, that would make it stand out at Eurovision.
Sweet Lies
The last song is Sweet Lies. It has, I think, the best set of lyrics of the three. I find the chorus a bit weird:
We’re lying skin to skin
Our love is paper thin
I need you skin to skin (I need you)
Don’t tell me where you’ve been
Don’t wanna hear a thing
Don’t tell me where you’ve been
The ‘skin to skin’ line works, just about, the first time round; I suppose skin to skin could mean anything from holding hands in bed to being in flagrante delicto. Repeating the exact same, slightly weird, phrase two lines later is awkward, and just serves to emphasise something that would be better left unemphasised.
Unfortunately, it says a lot that my favourite of the three songs is the one I can pick least holes in, rather than there being anything particularly to commend it.
One of the versions is, frankly, a bit dull and plodding:
The other, by Kerrie-Anne, is the only one of the six that has any life to it. Once we move past the pre-chorus, she uses the song to show her vocal talents. I can’t help but feel that we’d have had a better end result if she’d had a song written for her, rather than one written for anyone to be able to put a spin on.
The selection format is odd, and one of the effects of writing a song that can be sung by two different people is that we end up with blancmange. Last year’s selection wasn’t, I think, quite as blancmange-y. ‘I Feel the Love’ by Goldstone and ‘Astronaut’ by Liam Tamne were dull, but any of the other four could have served. I wasn’t massively keen on ‘Storm’, the eventual winner, but SuRie’s performance was excellent. Asanda, singing ‘Legends’, seemed to bite off more than she could chew with her performance. My favourite combination was Jaz Ellington singing ‘You’. I think that a lot of it will come down to the performance on the night. That’s as it should be, but there’s no stand-out best song; it’s all just a bit middle of the road.
In terms of the pairings, for ‘Freaks’, I prefer MAID; for ‘Bigger than Us’, I prefer Holly Tandy; and for ‘Sweet Lies’, I prefer Kerrie-Anne. Ranking them from top to bottom, I would go for Kerrie-Anne, Holly Tandy, Anisa, Michael Rice, MAID, and Jordan Clarke.
I don’t think we’re going to be troubling the left hand side of the scoreboard this year.
I very much like the Spanish entry, ‘La Venda’ by Miki (although it has to be a live version, where Mike really sells it; the album version is insipid).
I also really like one of the entries in the Australian selection, ‘2000 and Whatever’ by Electric Fields.
Nukkun ya drekkly.
Vigilus: 1300 IG vs Genestealer Cults
The List This week, I took on Colin’s new Genestealer Cults army. The army is still being put together and the Codex isn’t out yet, so I think Colin was at a bit of a disadvantage going in. The mission was Data Recovery, as last week, except that I would be the attacker. I couldn’t make a 1300 point list work with the AdMech – the models I have built are expensive, points-wise – so I went with a pure Guard list basically consisting of all the models I have. My initial deployment would be the three the company commander within vox-caster range of the three infantry squads, which I deployed as far forward as possible, along with the Manticore and Master of Ordnance hiding in the back corner. Aside from a few craters dotted around, we both had some buildings in our respective corners, and a massive piece of terrain across the middle of the board. Colin deployed some infantry on top of something I’d not seen before – fortifications, sporting enough weaponry to want me to keep well back from them. The Manticore did sterling work blowing up the fortifications, helped on round 1 by the Master of Ordnance’s artillery barrage. I’d not run the Manticore for a little while, but I think it works better than, say, a lone Leman Russ. I did a bit better in bringing the infantry forward than previously. I’m starting to regard them as a tax for the battalion detachment; they’d probably work better with a heavy mortar team in each. They did end up moving up to engage with some hybrids, a primus, and a patriarch, though that was largely because it took until round 4 to bring on the anti-infantry tank. The Taurox took a few potshots, but was otherwise unable to do much for most of the battle as the battle tank had come on ahead of it but was effectively stopped by the appearance of the above-mentioned hybrids, primus, and patriarch. A gap between the large scenery piece in the middle of the board and another building was thus effectively blocked by the Leman Russ. It made a dash for one of the data canisters that fell on the large scenery piece, but its cargo of Crusaders (and helpers) never left the safety of their APC. After pulling back to allow the infantry to deal with some of the Genestealers, the Leman Russ ended up dashing forward to grab a marker where three data canisters had fallen. The Valkyrie had been trying to take out the remaining bastion, but had flown over to allow the Scions to grav-chute out onto those canisters and deal with the xenos on there. A charge by the Genestealers allowed me to use a stratagem to have the Valkyrie help out the Scions in overwatch. By now, the Valkyrie was barely flying, with one hitpoint left, but the strategem meant it could hit on a 4+. That left the Genestealers able to deal with either the remaining Scions or the tank, but not both. With those three canisters contested, and so not scoring, I was able to manoeuvre enough units – the punisher tank, which had come on late and had a go at taking out the neophytes in the fortifications, and an infantry squad – into places that controlled the other canisters to secure a victory. All in all, a fun game. A few more general thoughts before I forget them: I need to come up with a more convenient way that BattleScribe printouts for reference during the game. I felt I was spending a lot of time leafing through papers. I also need something similar for stratagems, doctrines, and orders. I’ve got to know the orders and most of the stratagems, but I do forget the bonuses from doctrines and have to look them up. The same goes but double for when I bring the AdMech along.7 command points (+5 battalion, +3 battleforged, -1 MT Drop Force)
Vigilus: 1500 Admech/IG vs Raven Guard aftermath
The second match of the Vigilus campaign for me was against Richard’s Raven Guard. Evidently, another communications SNAFU has led the Imperium to attack itself again. The mission was Data Recovery; there are nine locations on the map on which data canisters can randomly land. Whoever controls the most canisters wins.
I ran basically the same list as against Adam’s Tyranids the previous week. I lost, but not by much, and it was a fun game.
The game turned on action right at the end, with two markers on one place. Whoever controlled those would win. I had a bit of difficulty getting my army onto the board – only a third by power level starts on the board – but ended up having a rush at the last minute that meant I was in contention for the central location that would decide the battle. In the end, my Crusaders were picked off so they couldn’t even attempt an Act of Faith, and we wrapped up the game when it became obvious that what I had left to contest the data canisters in the middle was about to become so much wreckage.
The deployment rules also showed up how slow much of my army is. That would be a recurring problem.
My Onager Dunecrawlers did excellent work again, picking things off from the safety of the back row – once they got on the board. I used an eradication beamer on one and the neutron laser/cognis heavy stubber combo on the other. The Icarus array could have been useful as there were a few flyers around, but I didn’t particularly feel I was doing badly because I hadn’t taken it. I’d taken it as a sort of default last time in case there were any flyers; I probably won’t make that choice again going forward, as the Icarus array doesn’t and didn’t go as well against ground-based targets.
The Kastelans came on in round three, and so it took them a while to get into combat. Not having a Cybernetica Datasmith wasn’t a huge problem again. Mostly, though, I think I want/need more of them to put in the squad.
The unusual deployment rules meant I went for Mars again as the Forge World. Ideally, I think I’d go for Lucius or Stygies VIII. Either one would allow the Kastelans to quickly get into combat or sit on an objective. I was leaning towards Lucius, to be able to teleport to pretty much anywhere, but Stygies VIII’s dogma, Shroud Protocols, puts your opponent at a -1 to hit from more than 12″ away. As I found out when I tried to shoot the Raven Guard, that’s very useful. As I understand the rules for Clandestine Infiltration, it gives you a free 9″ move after both armies are set up; it’s not as good as Legio Teleportarium, but it’s still pretty useful.
On the Imperial Guard side, I only had one tank, and it was pretty soon a smoking hulk, as last time. Except in very small games, taking one just doesn’t work. The Valkyrie took a huge amount of shots before it finally went, and the Taurox hung in right to the end.
I ran ten Crusaders, again in the Taurox, with the intention of using the Valkyrie to drop in their supporting Ministorum Priest and Astropath. Long story short: it didn’t work. I needed the Crusaders in one part of the board, and the Valkyrie and its cargo of Scions in another. I’m better off putting eight Crusaders and their supporting cast in a Taurox than trying to bring the Astropath and Priest in on a different vehicle.
All in all, though, a good game that remained competitive until the last round.
Regarding Skwawkbox and Venezuelan elections
An article on Skwawkbox makes some eyebrow-raising claims about the validity of elections in Venezuela:
claims that Venezuela’s election was rigged and that right-winger Juan Guaido’s self-proclaimed presidency is therefore somehow valid, simply do not stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
source: https://skwawkbox.org/2019/01/28/video-neutral-election-observers-explain-venezuelas-world-class-election-system-is-unriggable/
This is what is known, in technical terms, as bollocks.
I’m dealing here with the narrow claims that Skwawkbox makes about the (I presume) presidential elections of 20th May 2018. None of that should detract from the appalling situation in Venezuela, or the Maduro regime’s culpability for the situation. The narrow claims that Skwawkbox makes about recent elections being legitimate are, I think, instructive.
The technical arrangements for elections in Venezuela are, indeed, impressive. The system is provided by Smartmatic. Smartmatic’s parent company is SGO, whose chair is none other than Mark Malloch-Brown, the former deputy secretary general of the UN and foreign minister in Gordon Brown’s government. Smartmatic are rightly proud of their achievements in Venezuela.
In a post linked to from the one at hand, Skwawkbox link to an article on the Forbes Leadership Forum setting out how good the Venezuelan election system is. Unfortunately, that article is from 2013. Things have changed since then.
Smartmatic are less happy with the 2017 Venezuelan elections.
It is, therefore, with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with.
source: https://www.smartmatic.com/news/article/smartmatic-statement-on-the-recent-constituent-assembly-election-in-venezuela/
Indeed, thereafter, Smartmatic stopped working in Venezuela.
After 15 years of service and 14 elections assisted providing a secure and auditable voting system, Smartmatic closed its offices and ceased operations in Venezuela.
source: http://www.smartmatic.com/news/article/smartmatic-announces-cease-of-operations-in-venezuela/
Why did Smartmatic, after a long and successful history in Venezuela, stop working there?
The reasons for the closure are widely known. In August of 2017, after the elections to the National Constituency Assembly, Smartmatic publicly stated that the National Elections Council had announced results that were different from those reflected by the voting system. This episode lead to an immediate rupture of the client-provider relationship.
source: http://www.smartmatic.com/news/article/smartmatic-announces-cease-of-operations-in-venezuela/
In short, despite the use of impressive election equipment, it was still possible for the elections to be rigged. The 2018 elections were not even conducted with Smartmatic there to audit the process; nor were the regional and municipal elections of the fourth quarter of 2017.
It took a few minutes on Google to find this information. I question why Skwawkbox has published an article claiming that the Venezuela electoral system has integrity – indeed, that “its mandate is far more foolproof than governments in the UK and US can currently claim” – without mentioning that the company providing the election machines has said that an election was rigged even though its kit was being used, and has pulled out of the country because the elections are manifestly unfair.
In case there is any doubt, the Venezuelan National Electoral Commission (CNE) currently says that they are using Smartmatic technology.†
Who is maintaining and setting up these machines? Who is verifying that it’s all done properly? What are the audit procedures? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? How do we know that the fraud, identified by Smartmatic, that was perpetrated at previous elections was not repeated?
In case it needs clarifying, the company that provides the election machines has said a previous election was rigged, and has pulled out of the country. However, the integrity of the democratic process relies on more than just counting votes, and the legitimacy of a regime relies on more than just having been elected.
I was going to put here a list of the various outrages against democracy and human rights committed by the Maduro regime – the fraudulent elections, the imprisoned opposition leaders, the abrogation of the National Assembly’s powers, the removal of government critics of Maduro, the prevention of opposition parties from contesting elections, the extra-judicial killings. The information, for anyone who cares to find it, is freely available. There is a useful briefing paper from the House of Commons library; I found the timeline of political developments particularly useful. You could follow what the UN OHCHR or Amnesty or Human Rights Watch say.
To put such a list would be pointless.
It’s pointless, because Skwawkbox either does not care about reality, or has chosen to ignore it in service of its political aims. It is perfectly reasonable to say that there should not be a military intervention by foreign powers, and particularly not the United States, in Venezuela. It is defensible to say that there should be no intervention of any sort, and, again, particularly not by the United States. You could even say that Juan Guaidó has acted wrongly.
That is not what Skwawkbox has said. In its final comment, the editor of Skwawkbox says
The evidence is clear that the Establishment is selling politically-motivated snake-oil.
Maduro’s government may be imperfect, but its democratic validity is beyond question – and the process that gave it its mandate is far more foolproof than governments in the UK and US can currently claim.
source: https://skwawkbox.org/2019/01/28/video-neutral-election-observers-explain-venezuelas-world-class-election-system-is-unriggable/
Maduro’s government is not ‘imperfect’. It is a dictatorship that has reduced its population into penury and hunger.
Its democratic validity is not beyond question; the imprisoned opposition figures, the abuses of human rights, and the flood of refugees from Venezuela are testament to that.
The process that gave Maduro’s government mandate is held to be flawed by the company that set the system up.
None of this matters to Skwawkbox. The information is readily available, but they choose either not to look for it or to ignore it. Criticising the Maduro regime in Venezuela does not make one a neoconservative or liberal interventionist or even mean that you’re proposing a particular course of action. Skwawkbox are not criticising other people’s solutions to the crisis in Venezuela; they are acting as apologists for the Maduro regime by giving a false impression of the reliability of the process by which Maduro was most recently elected.
They are ‘selling politically-motivated snake-oil’.
† the first two paragraphs of the article read in English
“The voting system in Venezuela is totally automated and can be audited through all of its phases. In 2004, Venezuela became the first country in the world to hold a national election with machines that print the vote validation. Recently, in 2012, Venezuela returned to set the pace when it held the first national election with biometric authentication of voters before activating voting machines.
The electoral technology’s provider is the multinational, Smartmatic, which was chose in 2004 after having scored the highest results in system security and auditability compared to its competitors”.
Vigilus: 1500 AdMech/IG vs Tyranids aftermath
In the end, Adam’s Hive Fleet Kraken Tyranids won a minor victory. Particularly as I was playing AdMech for the first time, I was pleased with how it all went.
The mission was Storm the Lines from Vigilus Defiant. Essentially, Adam’s aim was to have at least one model in my back line at the end of the game. I had to stop him; however, his destroyed units could come back at his edge of the table.
In retrospect, my list wasn’t great. I hadn’t looked at the missions, and built something to use my new toys (AdMech, plus the Tempestus Drop Force specialist detachment from Vigilus) and ended up with a list that would have been better playing as the attacker with its good mobility. It would have worked for one of the traditional missions with objectives to be captured, I think When I realised what we were playing, I had to redo my tactics on the fly. As I wouldn’t need to send my Kastelans forward, I changed the Forge World to Mars instead of Stygies VIII.
The original version of this list had two tanks without sponsons. I decided to scrap one of them, and use the extra points to pile extra weapons on the first Leman Russ and give my Scion Command Squad plasma guns. In retrospect, that was a mistake; more of that later. While fun, I’m not sure how much use the Valkyrie was.
The company commander and troops basically stopped Adam from being able to deepstrike into my end zone. That alone probably stopped him scoring a major victory. One squad never got close enough to the enemy for First Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire!. The other two did solid work slowing down the oncoming Tyranids. I think I’m going to outfit each squad with a heavy mortar, rather than just one, and take sniper rifles for the special weapons for their range as much as anything else.
The tank commander didn’t work very well. It put out a prodigious amount of damage, what with a Punisher gatling gun, lascannon, two plasma sponsons, and heavy stubber. However, that made it a huge target, and Adam made short work of it at the start of his second round once he’d seen what it could do. Basically, there aren’t enough wounds on the Russ to justify taking all that kit and, with Grinding Advance, the turret weapon is just vastly better for the points.
The Scions ended up getting dropped on top of a building. Safely out of melee, they were pretty handy at weakening some of the big gribblies that came towards them. I’m not sure the plasma weapons on the Command squad were worthwhile; I think I’d have preferred the extra shots, even at 9″, from FRF!SRF!.
The Valkyrie dropped the Scions off on their perch atop the battlefield, and then delivered the Astropath and Ministorum Priest to support the Crusaders that held the middle of my end of the table. It provided some useful shooting, but the mobility was wasted as I was essentially static. The Taurox again proved very useful both as a battlefield taxi and then being surprisingly durable and putting out decent damage.
The Crusaders lasted a couple of rounds. The Astropath’s attempts to support them with Psychic Barrier failed, and the beta Acts of Faith rules mean that instead of fighting twice on a 2+, they fight twice on a 5+. Without any Devotions from Sister of Battle, the Crusaders are much less useful than they used to be. I may end up going for Bullgryns, even though I much prefer the flavour of the Crusaders, because they are just not as good as they were. That said, the AdMech probably object to Bullgryns less than other parts of the Imperium, so maybe they do fit.
The AdMech were a lot of fun to play with. The long range attacks from the Dunecrawlers at the back did plenty of damage. I had expected them to take a lot of fire, so I sat my Tech-Priest Dominus between them. As it happened, there wasn’t a single shot against them, while my Kastelans were taking a beating from a Trygon, some Venomthropes, and, iirc, some Tyrant Guard. I ended up moving the Tech-Priest forward to repair the Kastelans, and should probably have done so earlier. Having a Cybernetica Datasmith would have been useful to change protocols, but spending a CP to change and lock them worked perfectly well. Nevertheless, I felt the Kastelans gave a good account of themselves. I might try using them with Phosphor Blasters instead of Kastelan Fists next time, and I’ll certainly take a Phosphor Blaster on the shoulder instead of the Incendine Combustor. I’m tempted, at some point, to pick up some more Kastelans for a larger squad.
I’m very much not up to speed on the AdMech stratagems (and forgot that I could have spent 1CP to repair a Kastelan twice) or dogmas, and went for Mars instead of Stygies VIII at the last minute (as rolling twice for canticles seemed like a solid choice). Together, that meant I was less effective than I could have been.
Adam ended up winning a minor victory based on having a higher power level in my forward deployment zone than I did. That was a bit of a screw-up on my part; I could have moved both the Taurox and the Valkyrie into that area, but didn’t think about it as I was focused on taking out the Trygon. Nevertheless, he did play well, particularly taking out my main source of anti-infantry fire in the Leman Russ so early in the game and keeping me on the back foot throughout. We both enjoyed the game, though, and I do like the flavour of having AdMech alongside Guard.
Next up in the Vigilus campaign will be Colin’s Genestealer Cults. I’ll revise the Astra Militarum part of my list and hopefully have some AdMech troops to bring, too.
Vigilus: 1500 AdMech/IG vs Tyranids list
A 1500 point Imperial Guard/AdMech list to take on Adam’s Tyranids as part of Colin’s Vigilus Defiant campaign. The plan is to put the two Dunecrawlers and Tech-Priest at the back, behind the company commander and three squads of ten guards. The Kastelans will deploy as far forward as possible, and then use the Stygies VIII stratagem to move them forward 9″ before battle starts, and then charge. They will be supported by Scions dropping out of the Valkyrie using the new Tempestus Drop Force specialist detachment and, probably a round later, by Crusaders jumping out of the Taurox. The two tanks will sit between the two and pound away. Hopefully, I can cover enough of the battlefield to make deep strikes harder.
- Neotian Saints Battalion Detachment (Cadian)
- HQ
- Company Commander (Warlord; Trait: Master of Command; Relic: Kurov’s Aquila)
- Tank Commander (Command Punisher)
- Troops
- Infantry Squad (six guards, guard with grenade launcher, mortar heavy weapon team 1 sergeant)
- Infantry Squad (eight guards, guard with melta, 1 sergeant)
- Infantry Squad (eight guards, guard with flamer, 1 sergeant)
- Elites
- Crusaders (10)
- Dedicated Transport
- Taurox
- HQ
- Neotian Saints Vanguard Detachment (Militarum Tempestus)
- Tempestus Drop Force Specialist Detachment
- HQ
- Tempestor Prime (Tempestus Command Rod)
- Troops
- Militarum Tempestus Scions (four scions, 1 tempestor)
- Elites
- Astropath (psychic barrier)
- Ministorum Priest
- Militarum Tempestus Command Squad (four plasma)
- Flyer
- Valkyrie (Multi-laser, 2x Multiple Rocket Pods)
- Neotia Secundus Vanguard Detachment (Mars)
- HQ
- Tech-Priest Dominus (Eradication Ray, Phosphor Serpenta)
- Heavy Support
- 2x Kastelan Robots (Kastelan Fists, Incendine Combustor)
- Onager Dunecrawler (Icarus Array)
- Onager Dunecrawler (Eradication Beamer)
- HQ
The sex pest spreadsheet
I’ve seen a few people sharing the spreadsheet of allegations about sexual misconduct by various Conservative MPs. Some of the allegations are very serious indeed.
I would remind people of the Lord McAlpine case; McAlpine was falsely accused of child abuse and went on to threaten broad-ranging legal action. He dropped the cases against people on Twitter with less than five hundred followers who had retweeted the allegations if they made a donation of twenty-fine pounds to Children in Need: having a small footprint on social media isn’t a defence. It also led to McAlpine v Bercow, and to George Monbiot doing £25k worth of charity work, and the BBC (and, I think, others) paying hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages.
I’m sure that everyone publicly sharing the spreadsheet has taken the time to consider whether it might prejudice a fair trial in future.
Beyond that, some of the allegations that appear on the list are private matters that really shouldn’t be linked with some of the very serious allegations on the spreadsheet. One of the charges that appears on the spreadsheet is that an MP had a ‘workplace relationship’ with another MP; so what? One of the allegations that appears most often on the list is ‘inappropriate with…’. The list is apparently about sexual misconduct; if a workplace relationship or a male MP having sex with a man is ‘misconduct’, it does suggest that some of the ‘inappropriate with…’ charges could be veiled accusations of homosexuality, alcoholism, and so on.
Drinking too much, having consensual sex with colleagues, being gay, or having non-standard sexual preferences really aren’t anyone’s business. No-one – not even MPs, not even MPs from a different party – should be linked to allegations of making someone have an abortion just because they’re closeted.