Normally, the Imperial Fists with a combi-weapon and Bolt Pistol is a weak squad.
Houserule
The
combi weapon has a "stun" effect when used as a plasma gun. If it is
used against an enemy with an armor value less than 4, and the enemy
survives, the enemy is "stunned" for the remainder of that Marine turn
and any attacker may attack it with 1 white and 2 red dice in H2H, with
any relevant equipment card bonus applied.
Comment
So the
Commander and a bolter Marine can Tag Team against a Chaos Marine. The
Plasma gun has a 58% chance of killing the Chaos Marine, a bolter Marine
would then have a 73% of killing the stunned Chaos Marine. 83% with
bolt pistol. The Power Sword and Glove would have a 73% chance of a win
by itself, but you would have Force Field or Medi-Kit as an equipment
card. And you use 2 attacks to get the effect.
So we are giving the entire squad a Power Sword/Glove under
certain conditions, and that roughly makes up for the weakness of the
combi-weapon.
This does make gameplay a little bit more interesting, and makes things slightly easier for the Marines.
Overview: The Space Crusade ship has an AI defence system which attacks everybody. The Alien player gets to place the AI gun turrets to their own advantage. In return, the Booby Trap, Auto Defense cards are removed from the deck, and the Bolt Pistols card give you an extra red die instead of a white one. The turret acts like a stationary miniature until it is destroyed, or revealed to be a dummy. It shoots at moving miniatures from both sides.
This gives less randomness, fewer Marine Hand to Hand losses, and
Optionally, each player may write down the number of gun turrets the alien player should receive. The player with the lowest number gets to play the alien. This means the Alien player has no advantage over the marines.
So, this improves Marine Hand-to-Hand capability, balances play, and adds strategy to the game.
3d print Battletech Turret by Tokugawa
If you search for "turret" on thingiverse, you will come up with things to print similar to the above. Or you could get something from EBay, stick 2 cocktail sticks on a bottlecap, or use a token.
For 3d printing, a simple design would be best, since it is for a boardgame. You could make a cube with a cylinder sticking out of it on TinkerCad in a couple of minutes:
"Simple Gun Turret" on TinkerCad
Very Maginot line, you can find it on TinkerCad. So, this can be a proxy Tarantula turret for the marines (there is a better proxy Space Crusade Tarantula, Marine Squad, Chaos Squad, and Dreadnought out there too). or a static defence turret for the marines.
Rules:
The Alien player gets to place 2 turrets per 12x12 board section (1 board has no turrets if there is only one marine player) when a marine moves onto the board for the first time. The turrets may not be within the LOS of the Marine. Roll a red die when a Marine first sees the turret, 0 = dummy turret, 1 = attacks like a bolter with 2 white dice, 2 = attacks with 3 white dice, 3 = attacks with 4 white dice. Each real turret is worth 4 points.
If the first turret on a board section is dummy, the other is real.
The turret has an armour value of 2, and can be attacked as if it were a Space Marine. It is removed from the board if it is revealed as a dummy turret, or when destroyed.
The turret fires during the Marine players' turn the first time a marine
moves into a square within the turret's LOS. The turret fires during
the Alien players' turn the first time an alien miniature (including Genestealers) enters a
square within the turret's LOS. The turret may fire 1 shot in the Alien
turn, and one shot in the Marine turn.
The gun turret is in all respects an immobilized miniature. Blind grenades disable turrets for the marine turn and for the following Alien turn.
The Booby Trap, Gretchkin bomber, and Auto Defense cards are removed from
the deck, and the Bolt Pistols card gives the marines an extra red die instead of
a white one.
Instead of rule 6, you could give the marines overwatch for marines who didn't fire. I suppose that might kill 10 aliens
Comment:
The Alien player has new strategies, such as placing 2 turrets in the same room as the Dreadnought, so that is more interesting. There is less random card death for the marines, and The Blood Raven Blades and Bolt pistol strategy is now reasonable.
The Alien get on average 4 extra turrets, which is a bit like have 4 Chaos Marines that don't move.
The removed cards save 1.5 marines. Auto turret 2x1/6 = 33%, Booby Trap 58%, Bomber 58%. The Bolt pistol upgrade is probably worth about 2 marines. So that is probably a slight bonus to the Marines, with less randomness, and less effective suicide gretchkin.
If you want to tweak the balance, you can add or remove event cards or add more turrets.
Also, you can use the turret as a Tarantula turret using the Dreadnought rules.
Tarantula, tracked Tarantula, and the Turret model.
When a Genestealer appears, roll a red die. If it is 0, the Genestealer
will be placed beside any Alien miniature, it will then chase and
attack the nearest Alien miniature for the rest of the game.
Amazon sent me a box that can easily be converted into a high capacity assault knife system. With just a piece of duct tape. Which they also sell. Coincidence? I think not.
p.s. I have just realised that my sword collection is worth 30 times more than my knife collection. One of those knives I found in the street, the rest mostly As Seen on TV. Honestly, I am planning to buy a Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef's Knife soon. From Amazon. Update: I have the Victorinox , luckily the system is expandable. Also, you need more tape, or the knives will fall out. Update #2: The Victorinox is not as good as the knife I found in the street.
Now my guitar playing will cause actual reproductive harm. Eat your heart out, Iggy Pop.
https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/
It uses GreenEdge: Harman is pioneering a new concept in energy efficient audio and
infotainment design called GreenEdge. Harman GreenEdge products and
systems combine new environmentally friendly design with dramatic energy
savings, without compromising the excellent performance for which
Harman products are known.
"The best fuzz-box to use is a Burn's Buzz-around which they discontinued making in England about six years ago." - Robert Fripp.
I haven't built a fuzzbox in 10 years, so here we go, 2 RCA trannies and a USAF tranny from Small Bear Electronics. I used the "compact" perfboard layout which is too compact really.
I have no 100k pots for the tone and gain knobs, I was pretty sure I had.
It does indeed do the Frippotronics infinite sustain thing, I have the fuzz preset on max and the tone on halfway. I could put it in a small box or a bigger box with bias controls. The USAF tranny needs to be leaky to self-bias, you could add a resistor to simulate leakage.
Work in progress, I will record a Frankotronics clip when it is finished, I need to order the 100k pots.
A useful mod would be a switch to disconnect the 4.7u cap in parallel with the 3k3 resistor to reduce the gain.
Ohhh, drug references...
Strange to go back ten years. But, still alive and well.
"Listen to me and I'll tell you no lie
Too fast to live, too young to die*
I bought a new machine today and say ...
It take your breath away" - Chris Spedding.
RBX-370A
I was going to buy a Flying V, like Chris Spedding's, but the only one on Craigslist was a 7-string, so I thought "why not an 8-string?", and ended up buying a bass.
When I was a punk, I had the cheapest P-bass in the world, and I put a Yamaha sticker on the headstock. Now I am totally legit.
Anyhoo, it is active, and I found the schematic for the preamp from the RBX760A II SERVICE MANUAL, which has the same PCB:
It is a bit noisy with the treble up, so I'll replace the electrolytic capacitors, replace the high value resistors with metal film and put in a TL072 opamp for lower noise and shorter battery life. If it is still noisy, I'll redesign the circuit to my own 3-transistor version:
My design uses a mosfet for a volume boost, followed by 2 BJTs to give an inverted signal for the -ve feedback loop which involves the tone pots. This should be low noise, low current drain, and $15 will give you high quality components. So this should be quieter and have more battery life than a fancy $300 onboard preamp.
It uses much the same tone control feedback loop as the Yamaha, and has a pretty flat frequency response:
The green line is the output. The input stage is greatly influenced by the reactance of the pickups, which give you a huge frequency spike at around 10KHz, like a waa-waa pedal. Which is probably why people put the volume control before the preamp, to stop the treble boost. Since I don't know the actual reactance of the pickups, I'll adjust the treble-cutting C15 400p capacitor by ear when it is installed, simulations are only a guideline.
Also, there was a high frequency noise which went away when you touched the strings. So, I took the pickups out, and the pickup cavity had been painted with conductive paint by an incontinent chimpanzee. So I repainted it with "Wire glue" carbon paint from eBay, and the noise is gone.
The Steinberger circuit is much the same as the Yamaha:
Back to Chris Spedding:
Chris Spedding in the middle
*I'm ancient enough to remember watching this on t' telly.
Well, when I say 'telly', t'wer only cardboard box wi' hole in t'middle, but t'wer telly to us.
With a Ruixin / Lansky style sharpener you can't sharpen an axe, because it is too big to fit. Here, we turn the horizontal rod 180°, and place the large thing to be sharpened in a jig that holds it at a repeatable angle.
Now you can have a scary sharp axe, which is reassuring.
Don't attach an axe firmly to a heavy jig, if it falls over it would be dangerous.
Please be careful...
The axe works but it may cause unnecessary suffering to the vegetables, who are just as important as us.
Challenge yourself to think about the individual vegetable you’re about to
eat—then make a change.
They had a family and feelings, just like you:
