#Kasperl IRL

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GENTLEMEN

BEHOLD

AN OPERATIONAL RADIO SHACK

IN THE YEAR 2023

Found in Monroe Wisconsin.

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Got my first game of the Tenth edition of 40k in yesterday with my friend Adric. He stepped me through a simplified scenario at 1000 points, my Space Marines versus his Imperial Guard.

In the end it was a draw. Although if kill count went towards the score he'd have won handily. In the end all I had on the field were six Terminators against somewhere north of 30 infantry, a Sentinel, and a Rogal Dorn tank.

I think I enjoyed it, certainly less bloat than I recall from Ninth.

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Last month I lost my sister to cancer. Mel never had it easy being born with Nauger’s Syndrome, a series of skeletal and cranio-facial anomalies developed during birth. She was literally 1 in 26,000,000 if the odds my brother calculated were correct. When she was a kid she had her lower jaw broken every other year between ages 7 to 17 in order to stretch it out to get a better seal. She had to deal with me as her brother, not to mention the eight other siblings in the “yours, mine, and ours” situation that was our family. In 2013 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it then but would have to get a double mastectomy to excise it. I miss her.

Where some would let that make them bitter and withdrawn, that never occurred to my sister. She was the kindest soul I ever knew. She saw her time was short off the bat and wasted no time with getting preoccupied with “how things should be” and instead making things happen. She spent her life doing volunteer work with Riley’s Children Hospital’s Camp About Face, a summer camp for other children with cranio-facial anomalies. First as a camper, then as a counselor, and then staff. All the while finishing High School in three years, getting a degree in Journalism, and then getting a degree on Social Work; not to mention all the people she would meet up with going from Illinois, to Indiana, back to Illinois, to Wisconsin, to Washington, back to Wisconsin, to Minnesota, to California, back to Minnesota and everywhere in between. Heck, she even learned to knit without proper thumbs, the joints were fused except at the base of the thumb. Kind of like an Iguanadon. She was due to start working as a Social Worker at Riley’s on May 1rst; probably the closest thing to a dream job she had. Keep in mind she was living in Minnesota and interviewing for a job in Indiana all the while packing and testing to qualify as Social Worker in both states. My father and I helped her move out on the weekend of April 15th, the week of her 40th birthday.

That is unfortunately when things went south. The weekend of May 1rst she was admitted to the ER in Madison Wisconsin after having trouble breathing and palpitations. They drained about 1.75 liters of fluid from her lungs. The fluid tested positive for cancer. On Thursday May 18th she was on her way to the UW Hospital for testing and she couldn’t keep conscious on the drive up and had my brother drive her the rest of the way. The performed a CT scan and gave us devastating news. The breast cancer had gone metastatic and had migrated from her chest into her skull and was swirling around in the blood brain barrier in her skull. The diagnosis was terminal. It was non-operable. It would be like going to a beach and trying to sift out every black grain of sand.

I was and still am furious about this. She had done NOTHING to deserve this. NOTHING. Yet even with being told that death was immanent she kept up a brave face and kept planning like things were going to be okay. Listing and planning how to inform all the family and friends what was going on, especially her friends over at Camp about Face who she was devastated she would not get to see again.

To try to keep here mind off things I offered to make her a Battlemech, I recommended the Hammerhead. It’s initial release was used to drum up fundraising for Melissa Noe of Iron Winds Metals who had been diagnosed with lung and brain cancer. She liked the idea and selected the colors. Metallic purple, green, silver, and black. She was able to pick out the specific silver before she left, Turbo Dork’s Sparkle Motion. I was able to show her the miniature assembled, textured, and primed on the afternoon of May 23rd. She loved it. She was a little groggy that day as they had elected to give her radio-logical chemo to try to keep the cancer at bay for a little while longer. You wouldn’t exactly be the most balanced when your brain is simultaneously strangled by cancer and irradiated by chemo. Yet there she was, meeting me at a combination yarn store and coffee shop like nothing was wrong.

Unfortunately this was the last time I would see her in anything approaching “normal”. That night after her second round of chemo she fell on her way back to the hotel. Thankfully my father was there to catch her before she hit the pavement. They immediately went to the ER. That was the beginning of the end.

I got a test at 1:30pm on May 24th telling me I needed to get to the ER as my sister was not likely going to make it through the night. I made it to the ER by 2pm and saw my sister in intense pain but still keeping up a brave front. Her mind was still there but she had difficulty keeping up conversation as between the pain and pain killers she had difficulty focusing. The pressure from the cancer had also made it impossible to see beyond about three feet. We talked a little and did whatever I could to comfort her. At 4:30pm the doctors increased her pain killers and she was able to finally get some rest.

At 5:47pm May 24th 2023 my Father had realized she had passed on.

To try to work through my sorrow I worked on the Hammerhead I promised her. I think she would have loved the name of the purple I used to edge highlight the base metallic purple, “Purl Grey” by Turbo Dork. She really enjoyed Star Trek, we all did, so I think she would have loved the pun.

I was and still am devastated. Her funeral was this past Saturday, June 10th. Life will never quite be the same again. So many people were there. Her fellow campers from Bradford Woods and Camp about Face, the California Cousins, to her deep and wonderful crew from Minnesota. Those wonderful maniacs had paid to have us lodged up in Minneapolis for a “Melebration” the week before.

 There will forever be a void in myself but with a little luck I may grow around it. At the very least I can do no less than to push forward and power on like my sister. “Deal with it” is probably what she would tell me. She was the textbook example of the person who has it worse than you. I could never really ever complain over much as she always had it worse than me.

Yet she always persevered. Never daunted, never tiring, always moving forward to her goals irregardless of her struggles. She had little time and knew that she had to use what little time she had to get shit done. When she was born it was not known if she would live to 30 with her condition according to medical science of the time. She beat that by 10 years and it took apocalyptic cancer to take her down. I cannot and will not dwell on her loss, it is not what she would have wanted. I guess this is the ecstasy and terror of life. She would want me, us, to push forward. Be glad she was here, remember her in life, and push forward like a freight train going full tilt toward a better future.

Forgive me for the long winded and excessively personal post but I needed to articulate this to work my way through things.

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Possibly the best photo ever taken of a miniature.

Picture of Stormcrow taken by me by way of a Game Boy Camera.

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Stopped at a local game store, Mega Media Exchange in Madison Wisconsin, while out and about and found that the fine art of interpretive replacement box art is still alive and well in some corners of the universe.

The fact that someone referenced the old Warner Brothers short "I Love to Singa" particularly made my day.

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We had a surprise blizzard here in south central Wisconsin so here are some pictures of Stormcrows in the snow.

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So despite all logic and reason, I somehow took First place at the Sub Zero Shootout WolfNet 350 Alpha Strike Tournament.

All told I was one of four people competing so I don't feel I did anything too impressive. We had three 80 minute rounds.

Here were the Early Republic Clan Ghost Bear Omega Galaxy Forces I took.

Here was my competition, all painted up by the same guy.

Round one was Capture the Flag. This one was a loss for me, but it was mostly due to some particularly bad rolls.

Round 2 was Overrun. This was a victory for me, mostly by way of objectives. Although I was particularly proud of overcooking my opponents Stormcrow Echo to the point it could no longer move after taking a motive hit. Unfortunately I didn't reallt take any good pictures once we got underway.

The third and final round was domination. I won this match by way of objective points and fighting like Marshall Zhukov. It the end of the match all I had left was my Balac attack helicopter but I had successfully removed all of my opponents fast movers rendering his force irrelevant.

I'm still surprised and confused that I won.

I celebrated with a meal of Shrimp and Cheddar Grits.

As far as lesson's learned goes... Perhaps taking that Eldingar was unnecessary, I didn't take it to field once. Then again I mostly took it as an insurance policy against C3, which no one brought. I will also say once again Heat weapons are BOSS. While they don't necessarily do all that much damage, they do certainly help you dictate terms and make your opponent sweat out the decisions they have to make.

All and all good times and fine dining

To close out, here was the coolest dude at EverCon

Seriously

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@swedebeast Found this in the Noble Knight Clearance Cave recently. I recognize the S-Tank but I can't identify the other three, you got any ideas?

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Went gaming at my friend AeonStorm's place again. His new 3d printer is printing some very nice terrain.

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Still going through how I'm going to post my photos to San Diego. I took over 8 gigs of photos last week when I was there, 214mb of which contains Stormcrow.

Now is as good as time as any to post some of them.

I promised @enriquemzn262 I would take as many pictures of Heineman's Hotrod, the Douglas A4 Skyhawk, as I reasonably could. The following are my better pictures of the A4 while I visited the U.S.S. Midway and the San Diego Air and Space Museum.

First are from the Midway

The following are the few pictures I took at the Air and Space museum last Saturday. They were closed for the week of the 8th until the 12th. I almost skipped out on it until we ended up rescheduling our flight back, although that meant I only had an hour to tour the place.

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How many storm rows do you have?

The MURDER is 27 strong in proper Battletech scale plus one glow in the dark one 3D printed to be in scale with the Iron Winds Metals Mech Jockey.

I really need to make a group photo. Then again two of them are assembled, a little more than a third are unpainted, and I still need to fix the arms of the glow and the dark one so I feel I should at least fix the former and the latter before I do a updated one.

This is the last group photo when I only had a FULL TRINARY. Only.

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Well it looks like I'll have some interesting company down the street at Noble Knight in a couple weeks.

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@adornesibley went against one of your favorite guys at a game of Alpha Strike recently. Turns out the Yeoman is a real monster, especially when paired with Semi-Guided LRM's.

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That feel when you take out a WiGE with LB10 cluster shot and it crashes into a building. @swedebeast

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These are all in 1:18th scale. From left to right, JoyToy's Brother Orionus, Cobra Techno-Viper, Cobra Fluorescent Green Safety Cone, and the Dual Model Zwei Rabidlydog.

I think they're neat.

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BEHOLD THE MAGNIFICENCE

THE LATEST, GREATEST, AND LARGEST ADDITION TO THE KASPERL STORMCROW MURDER

AND YES

IT IS ARTICULATED AND GLOWS IN THE DARK

Going to pick it up from the Printer, my good friend AeonStorm, today. I'm planing to paint the cockpit and lasers with fluorescent glow in the dark paints and use a was to pick out the panel lines. I might look for some revojoints to replace the the original printed joints.