Overpriced miniatures

Since Firestorm Planetfall is the ground combat companion to Firestorm Armada, it’s no surprise that it shares core mechanics with Armada. This post will serve as a primer and “upgrade guide” for anyone familiar with Armada but interested in Planetfall. What’s the same? Well, the core mechanic of Exploding Dice is still present, and used in almost all dice rolls just like in Armada. Weapons fire, shields, command checks, and close quarter battle (melee, more or less) all use it in most situations. Similarly, the concept of DR or Damage Rating is basically identical. Damage Ratings in Planetfall range from 3 for basic infantry, through 5 for some heavy infantry and light units, around 7 for most tanks, and up to 11 for some of the heaviest and most impressive units, the leviathans! What’s a little different?  There are several of these. Activations is one of them. Planetfall takes the alternating-by-unit concept of Armada, but modifies it a little bit. When building a f...

I wrote this on Facebook a moment ago, and it deserves to be preserved somewhere a little less noisy. After finally having time to watch the whole debacle with Elizabeth Warren, Mitch McConnell, and Senate Rule 19, it's abundantly clear to me that rule 19 is stupid! In Modern English, which a rule written over 100 years ago does not resemble, it says that senators are not allowed to suggest that other senators have motives inappropriate to being a senator. It doesn't matter if the phrasing is polite, or supported by evidence, or anything else. It is apparently an article of faith that those who have managed to get themselves elected to the senate are beyond reproach, which is a strange thing to take on faith these days! The only thing the rule seems to get right is that you can't get out of it by quoting someone else and arguing that "I didn't actually say those nasty things about a senator, 'my friend' said those things." However, there are ...