I owe the National Newspapers of Ireland €1000. Allegedly.

My gold. Mine

I've enjoyed the Christmas break and hopefully you have too. Having lined up an article about the other game systems I'm playing at the moment and how much I hate my xbox, I was completely blown away by something I read online. A friend passed this to me on Facebook and I had to laugh. Eventually.

A solicitor firm in Dublin (McGarr's) have pieced together a brilliant story about how the media (or meedja as they're known in certain parts) have tried to come up with alternative routes of generating money, which ended up with them issuing a demand to a women's domestic violence charity for them to cough up for linking to a newspaper's website a story about their fundraising efforts that had appeared in the print version of said newspaper. I'm not joking: see the link here and feel free to criticise, review or ask questions in the comments below.

So I figured that I'd do my bit and see if I could get them to issue me with a warning. Apparently 26 links to various websites of members of the National Newspapers of Ireland means they'll charge me €1350. Which is £1094 or $1767 at the time of writing thanks to xe.com (I hope they don't charge too). This got me thinking about things that more traditional forms of businesses are doing to keep their profits coming in: see Ruport Murdoch's losing battle with Google (and Chrome and Firefox's Murdoch-block app) and I thought of GW, seeing as they are the biggest of the Titans when it comes to miniature wargaming and some of the many things that they've been doing in, or not doing, in order to keep their shareholders happy.

40k 6th: What's your plan B?

Random shit really is random

I met the Pinball Wizard a few days ago and we ended up chatting about what our hopes and fears for 6th ed were. There's two basic scenarios: A - they clean up the game and improve upon it or B - introduce an unnecessary amount of 'random shit is random' and ruin the game. Ala Fantasy, which for the record has seen numbers playing the game plummet in this part of the world. Except for Eoin, who is one of the few new gamers to buy and build up an army around here.

One thing GW did in the past with 40k was to use their GT/Throne of Skulls as a testing ground for rules changes. I think it might have been 1997 when they brought in wholesale changes (limiting the number of psychic powers a psyker had and requiring them to take a Ld test to use them) at a GT and they found their way into the 3rd ed version of the game. I'm quite worried that Jervis Johnson will be let loose on the game and we'll all be forced to play along with his vision of the game where at tournaments we'll all be made to give each other blowjobs to get most sporting awards to do well while in the corner Jervis chews his own faecal matter telling us how much more fun everyone is having due to the changes.