In a few short months there is a very big birthday coming up on this blog, and it's not my own! Mine was a few days ago (Happy Birthday to me). The big one I'm alluding to is The Art of Caesura's 10th birthday, which is coming up in January.  Anyway, this week is for me so I'll share a quick anecdote from a couple days ago. We were listening to our classical music radio station (RTE Lyric FM) - as we do every morning to try to bring a little peace into our lives - when the host, Marty, made an announcement for the concert of the choir that I'm in. Saoirse, my six year old, shouted "Daddy! Marty talked about your choir on the radio! Your famous! ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!" It was very adorable So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! And wish me luck on my next league game tonight! See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Accept Any Challenge, No Matter the Odds! - Black Templars Oath Welcome one and all to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! Today, we're looking at Game 5 of the Warhammer 40k league that I'm involved in at the moment. It was a fun game against my opponent Chris's Tyranids.  I think I heard subsequently that Chris is currently standing in second place in the league (of around 16 people or so) and his Tyranids are beautifully painted as Hive Fleet Gorgon. I was excited to play against 'nids, I've always had a soft spot for them since my days of "maining" Zerg in Starcraft 1. I professed my love for these bug-like aliens when I painted a Von Ryan's Leaper as Hive Fleet Klendathu (inspired by Starship Troopers).  Anyway, the Primary Mission was Scorched Earth where you still get points for holding objectives, but you get more points again for "burning" them (then they're gone from the board and no-one else can claim them). The deployment z...

Anything you can do, I can do meta.   - Rudolf Carnap  Welcome back to The Art of Caesura! I hope you are well, and if not, join the club! We're meant to be heading on a family holiday tomorrow, and our eldest daughter (who has almost never been sick) currently has a fever of almost 40 degrees (104F). Wish us luck.  Today I have two topics, the first is a brief discussion of what it means to be "meta" and an update of my league list (which ties into the first topic).  Coming from a literature background, I was only familiar with the prefix "meta" in terms of something being self aware or self-referential. The play / film "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" is metafiction in this way, as is the game Undertale.  I have often heard this term used in gaming but just accepted that it had been adopted, in some convoluted way to mean, like, the most efficient version of something, the bandwagon that everyone is jumping on because that particular problem i...

Hello friends of the Caesura, and welcome back to another post on The Art of Caesura! Our Warhammer league is still in full swing - we're in the fifth round now - I'm playing my fifth game this weekend. There are already a few heavy hitters who are currently standing at 5-0! (I'm at 2 wins, 2 losses - hey 50% win rate isn't bad for a noob).  This time I was up against the Adepta Sororitas - the Sisters of Battle! I don't think I'd ever played them before and I was kind of nervous going into this match-up. My opponent, Kim, did a great job of psyching me out before the match, by explaining all the (massive) threat ranges of his gals. Plus, the whole concept of "Miracle Dice" - the army rule for the Sisters - seemed extremely strong.  Basically, at the beginning of each round or whenever one of his units died, Kim could roll a die and add it to a Miracle Dice pool which he could draw from for almost any roll once per phase. He also had certain models whi...