Is The Terminator based on a Star Wars character? / ¿Está Terminator basado en un personaje de Star Wars?

En 1977 Marvel (sí, la compañía de cómics creadora de Los Vengadores, Spiderman etc) empezó a publicar la primera série de cómic de Star Wars. En abril de 1978, en su número 16, presentaba a Beilert Valance, también conocido como Valance el cazador, un cazarrecompensas empecinado en cobrar la recompensa por descubrir y capturar al piloto que destruyó la primera Estrella de la Muerte (curiosamente, en el cómic hay todo un arco argumental en el que el Imperio busca desesperadamente descubrir quién lo hizo). Hasta aquí todo normal.

In 1977 Marvel (yes, the comic company which created The Avengers, Spiderman and the like) started publishing the first ever Star Wars comic series. In April 1978, in its 16th issue, we are introduced to Beilert Valance, aka The Hunter, a bounty hunter bent on getting the reward offered for discovering and capturing the rebel pilot who destroyed the first Death Star (interestingly enough, in the comic series there is a complete story arc in which the Empire tries to discover who blew it up). Up to here, everything's ok.

¿Será familia de Kraven el Cazador? / May he be related to Kraven the Hunter? (Fuente/Source: wookiepedia)

En la última página del cómic Valance huye tras perder a toda su tripulación y se rasga la cara rebelando...

In the last page of the comic Valance flees after loosing all his crew and he claws his face revealing...

...que es un cyborg. Y aquí es cuando uno piensa... "un momento... yo esto ¿no lo he visto antes?"

...that he is a cyborg. And then i thought "Wait a moment, haven't I seen this before?"

En la película "Terminator", el personaje interpretado por Arnold Schwarzenneger (que precisamente es descrito como un "organismo cibernético") tras resultar herido al estrellarse con su coche se arranca parte de la piel, dejando a la vista un brazo y un ojo robótico. Justo igual que en el cómic. ¿Que no es bastante parecido? pues echad un vistazo al final de Terminator 2:

In "The Terminator" film, the character portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenneger (who is precisely described as a "cybernetic organism") after being wounded in a car crash takes some of his flesh out, revealing a robotic  eye and arm. Just as in the comic. You don't deem it close enough? then take a look at the final scenes of Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Al menos se molestaron en usar el otro lado de la cara.../ At least they bothered using the other side of the face...

Y ahora alguno me dirá "Vale, pues los del cómic se copiaron de la película". La cuestión es que Terminator se estrenó en 1984, 7 años después de que se publicara el cómic. Aquí no hay duda de quien fue primero.

And now someone will say "Ok, so the comic authors plagiarized the film". But The Terminator aired in 1984, 7 years after the comic's publishing. There's no doubt about which one came first...

Pero esperad que hay más "coincidencias". En el número 29 Valance, que tras su encuentro con C3PO ha tenido una epifanía y ha decidido proteger a Luke, se enfrenta nada menos que a Darth Vader sobre un lago formado por aguas capaces de corroer el metal en minutos. Tras una lucha titánica Valance intenta llevarse consigo al lord del Sith asiéndose de su pierna y...

But wait, because there are more "coincidences". In the comic issue 29 Valance, who after an encounter with C3PO had an epiphany and decided to protect Luke, battles no other than Darth Vader over a lake filled with waters capable of corroding metal in a matter of minutes. After an epic battle Valance tries to take the Sith Lord to the bottom of the like by hanging from his leg and...

...de un certero golpe Vader le corta el brazo, que es lo único que queda de Valance, presumiblemente muerto al caer al lago. ¿Parece familiar?

1) En Terminator, lo único que queda del terminator al final es el brazo  (de hecho, el brazo es el motor principal de la secuela).

2) Al final de la segunda película, el terminator es destruido sumergiéndolo en una cuba de metal fundido.

...with a quick strike Vader cuts his arm, which is all that remains of Valance, presumably dead after falling into the lake. Sounds familiar?

1) In The Terminator, the only part of the terminator remaining by the end of the movie is its arm (in fact, the arm is the main reason of the second movie)

2) In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the terminator is finally destroyed by submerging it in a molten metal pool.

James Cameron tenía 23 años cuando salió el cómic. ¿Se lo leería y luego le traicionaría el subconsciente?. Y lo peor de todo: ¿por qué nadie parece haberse dado cuenta de todo esto?

PD: para más cachondeo, Valance "resucitó" en el número 108 (publicado en 2019) y lo sacan con estas pintas:

James Cameron was 23 years old when the comic was first published. Maybe he read it and later his subconscious betrayed him?. And worse of it all: Why does it seem that nobody realized this?

PS: to make things even more hilarious, Valance "came back from the dead" in issue 108 (published in 2019), and they show him looking like this:

Que no se parece en nada a como va vestido Arnold en Terminator 2, que va. Solo le falta la chaqueta de cuero y la Harley.

Which isn't anywhere close to what Arnold wears in Terminator 2. Not at all. He is only missing his leather coat and the Harley.

The battle of the river Oze: The last battle of Ii clan's Red Devils (TMWWBK)

During the Second Chosu Expedition (1866) forces of the Ii clan were expected to attack Chosu Domain by going westward in Honshu island. Their traditional army, who seemed straight out of the Sengoku Jidai, was ambushed by a modernized Chosu forcé when crossing the river Oze, making quick work of them. Could it have gone otherwise? The scenario is "Take the high road" from the core rulebook. Lists were made using the "The last samurai rebellion" sourcebook. Both sides use the rebel army list but the leader traits came from the rebel list for the Chosu army, meanwhile the Bakufu used the Imperial trait list. I also had to change some stuff to accomodate the period (e.g.: samurai using teppo). Here are both armies' compositions: 

                      Literally this cover depicts the battle (Source: bacninhminiatures.blogspot.com)

Chosu forces 

Type                                    Leadership      Leader Trait 

Well drilled crewed weapon      5+          Cream of the crop (+1" movement) 

Samurai volunteers                    7+          Loyalty (first time the leader is killed on a 4+ it's a trooper instead) 

Samurai volunteers                     7+          Inspiring presence (reroll failed rally tests) 

 Bakufu forces 

Type                                             Leadership              Leader Trait 

Rebel riders (no shooting)                   6+                  High Spirits (+1 Discipline until first killed) 

Rebel riders (no shooting)                   7+                  Sake (roll each turn. 1-3 Ld becomes 8+, 4-6 Ld becomes 6+) 

Samurai volunteers (Fierce, pikemen) 5+                 Crippled (reroll one succesfull hit in melee) Samurai volunteers (Obsolete musket) 5+              Sake (roll each turn. 1-3 Ld becomes 8+, 4-6 Ld becomes 6+) 

Shimpuren samurai 7+ High Spirits (+1 Discipline until first killed) 

 We went native so the Chosu rebels were led by mr. Babbage.

 Chosu artillery (ok, they should have looked more modern but I have my bakumatsu crew unpainted and missing right now)

Kiheitai infantry holding the bridge

We used WFB's terrain generator. There was a lot of terrain (which wasn't good at all for the shogunate side, although it may seem the contrary).

Shogunate deployment. Yes, there are some unpainted samuai cavalrymen (shame on me and on my cow) 

Unarmoured samurai with teppo (I didn't have enough miniatures su mixed them with archers and armoured samurai) and shimpuren samurai 

On the first turn, every bakufu unit marched on the double

First cavalry unit suffered two casualties in the rebel turn. "They surely won't get pinned down..." (see the test result) 

End of turn 1

"We are going to reevaluate the tactical situation" (they won't regroup until the end of the game)

Second turn. Again everybody runs at the double, and then the second cavalry unit is obliterated in the rebels' crossfire

Third turn. A samurai pikemen is shot to pieces. The cannon fails to activate

May this guys change the tide?

4th turn: the cavalry regroups!

But the pikemen fail to activate and are shot to pieces!

The cannon hits the armoured samurai and kills more than half of them!

It's almost over for the bakufu

The rebels' first casualty comes from a teppo shot

Pikemen charge but are annhilated in the end

The (last) armoured samurai charges the cannon but is repulsed. More teppo samurai are shot dead...

... and one third of the rebels are just sitting idle. So we decided it was a good time to concede victory to mr. Babbage.

Estandartes para no muertos/undead flags

 Estoy construyendo un ejército de no muertos para Warhammer Reforged y le pedí a mi amigo CH si podía colorear unas viejas banderas de 4a edición. El resultado lo tenéis abajo (ojo, quizá deberían reescalarse antes de imprimirse)

I'm building up an undead army for Warhammer Reforged so I asked my friend CH if he could colour some old 4th edition flags. You can see the result down here (beware that maybe they should be reescaled before printing)

Gretchin flag/Estandarte Gretchin

 Acababa de pintar esta miniatura cuando me di cuenta de que no tenía una bandera para ella. Mi amigo CH creó una en jpg, que os pego debajo. Si la quereis imprimir, mi consejo es que la pegueis en un documento word o similar y la reescaleis hasta que el alto sea de 3 cm.

I had just finished painting this miniature when I realized I didn't have a flag for it. My friend CH designed one in jpg format which I putting down here. My advice if you want to print it is to put it on a word document (or something similar) and change the scale until it is 3 cm of height.

Napoleonic halflings - Halflings napoleónicos

 A very long time ago I was mastering a D&D campaign which was intended to become a multi-generational one, with the PCs starting at a roughly equivalent of the renaissance, then go through the enlightment era with their children and then jumping to an early victorian age. One of the points of the campaign was the Halfling Fiefdoms, a country mostly inhabited by halflings but controlled by ruthless human warlords, which the PCs would have helped to take down. The halflings would then go through a revolutionary period, with the sons and daughters of the original characters having to deal with their own version of a halfling Napoleon bent on conquering the world (which would be easy with the spread of firearms taking into account the halfling's absurd natality rate). As I like playing with miniatures, I searched the web until I found that Alternative Armies had a "fantasy napoleonics! line (Slaughterloo). So I bought their halflings...

Hace mucho tiempo estuve mastereando una campaña de D&D que pretendía ser multigeneracional, con los PJ empezando aproximadamente en el renacimiento, luego pasando por la era de la ilustración con sus hijos para acabar al principio de la era victoriana. Uno de los puntos de la campaña eran los feudos halfling, un país habitado fundamentalmente por halflings pero controlado por brutales señores de la guerra humanos, cuyo gobierno los PJ hubieran ayudado a derrocar. Los halflings hubieran pasado a continuación por un período revolucionario, con los hijos e hijas de los personajes originales teniendo que enfrentarse a una versión halfling de Napoleón lanzada a conquistar el mundo. (lo que le resultaría fácil debido a la generalización del uso de armas de fuego y a la absurda tasa de natalidad de los halflings). Como me gusta jugar con miniaturas, busqué por la red hasta que encontré que Alternative Armies tenía una línea de "fantasía napoleónica" (Slaughterloo), así que compré sus halflings... 

The napoleonic halflings as is (source: Alternative Armies online shop)

Los halflings napoleonicos tal cual (Fuente: Alternative Armies online shop)

But they didn't carry muskets! I asked their producers and they told me they were too small to carry them, which IMO makes them almost useless, literally carrying knives into a firefight. But I don't play Slaughterloo, so why can't I convert them? I'm probably never going to use them but at least I can prove they don't look so bad with a firearm. So this summer. with the help of a cutter and a fork (yes, a fork), I did this to them:

¡Pero no llevaban mosquetes! Le pregunte a la compañía y me dijeron que eran demasiado pequeños para llevarlos, lo que en mi opinión les hace prácticamente inútiles, ya que literalmente llevan cuchillos a un tiroteo. Pero yo no juego a Slaughterloo, así que ¿por qué no convertirlos? Probablemente nunca los use pero al menos puedo probar que no quedan tan mal con un arma de fuego. Así que este verano, con la ayuda de un cuter y un tenedor, les hice esto:

I would have liked to change their hats for bicornes but I didn't know where to get them. After this came the paint, in a more French Napoleonic style:

Me hubiera gustado cambiarles los sombreros por bicornios pero no sabía de donde sacarlos. Después de esto vino la pintura, con un estilo más francés napoleónico:

Speed painted in an hour. I didn't want to use putty on the bases so tried to conceal them a bit with static grass

Pintados en una hora o así. No quería usar masilla en las bases así que intenté disimularlas con cesped estático

Done! Maybe I should have painted the skin with a lighter tone, but who cares. Hope I get to use them even once in my life.

¡Hechos! Debí haberles pintado la carne en un color más suave, pero que más da. Espero poder usarlos aunque solo sea una vez en la vida.

Man O'War Tilean Galley Papermodel

 It's been a while since I last posted anything here... well, anyway: a year ago I bought Evil Twin Artwork's Man O'War: Corsair videogame, and while not being the best videogame ever it made me feel curious again about the original game. I had seen Ralf Scheman's Man O' War papermodels and, after talking with him and finding out he wasn't making a galley model anytime soon, I decided to create my own, with a friend of mine (CH) adding textures and putting each Tilean and Estalian state's symbols in the flags and sails (the imperial patterns can be found elsewhere on the net). Here are the Tilean ones.

A comparison shoot between the GW model and the papermodel. Not an exact match but a close proxy

Just a quick preview

I haven't included any instructions but i feel it's quite intuitive to build. If anyone has any problem building these beasts just tell me!

You can download the actual papermodels HERE

Grimdark Future: Eldar Raiders vs Human Defense Force

750 points game. Rolls determined that we had 10 scenography elements and just 3 objectives, which should have worked in the eldar's favour.

Partida a 750 puntos, fuerzas de defensa humanas (Guardia Imperial) contra saqueadores eldar (Eldar Oscuros). El azar dictaminó que hubiera 10 elementos de escenografía y solo 3 objetivos, lo que en principio parecía ir a favor de los eldar.

LOS EJÉRCITOS/THE ARMIES

Human Defence Forces

• Comander

• Executioner

• 2x Psychic (both level 2)

• 3x 10 man Infantry Squad (sword and pistol, plasma gun, grenade launcher)

• Ogre squad

• Snipers 

Eldar Raiders

• Dark Lord

• Succubus

• 2xWarriors

• Witches

• Nightmares

• Light skimmer (transport)

LA BATALLA/THE BATTLE

Turno 1/Turn 1

(Ratling) snipers redeployed inside the forest, taking a objective for the humans. Later they would shoot two eldar warriors.

Los francotiradores (ratlings) se redesplegaron dentro del bosque, asegurando un objetivo para los humanos.  Luego matarían a dos guerreros eldar.

The eldar transport (carrying the witches and nightmares) made a strange movement and shot at the human commander, scoring two wounds and pinning him down.

El transporte (cargado con las brujas y los nightmares/íncubos) hizo un movimiento muy raro y le disparó al comandante humano, dejándolo a una herida e inmovilizado.

All the eldar army advanced while the humans (with a lot more activations) tried to pass activations while waiting for the units inside the transport to go out. When they finally did the entire witch unit was killed by a psychic attack.

Todo el ejército eldar avanzó disparando, mientras los humanos (con muchas más activaciones) se dedicaban a intentar pasar activaciones esperando a que las unidades eldar del incursor se bajaran. Cuando por fin lo hicieron la unidad de brujas en bloque murió por un ataque psíquico.

Turno 2/Turn 2

The human player (me) had to decide to either charge the nightmares with his ogres or take back the snipers to save them from the Dark Lord's charge. The snipers moved and the nightmares subsequently charged the ogres. It all ended up with two wounds for the ogres and the almost complete annihilation of the nightmares.

El jugador humano (yo) se encontró en la tesitura de o bien cargar con los ogros contra los íncubos o bien retirar los francotiradores para salvarls del general eldar. Al final se movieron los francotiradores para que luego los íncubos atacaran a los ogretes. Resultado: todos los íncubos menos uno muertos  por dos heridas a un ogro.

The shooting exchange kept running with large numbers of fatalities on both sides, something which didn't favour the eldar. The transport charged the flanking human infantry unit (it seems to be a lot more lethal in close combat than shooting), although it could not pin it.

El intercambio de tiros prosiguió este turno con bastantes bajas por ambos bandos, lo que no favoreció a los eldar. El incursor cargó contra las tropas del flanco (resulta que es más peligroso en cuerpo a cuerpo que disparando) aunque no pudo inmovilizarlas.

Turno 3/Turn 3

All troops keep advancing. The eldar warriors at last charged and killed the snipers, something which seemed to obsess the dark eldar commander, but not before they killed the aforementioned commander. The transport flew against the center human units inflicting severe casualties.

Todas las tropas siguieron avanzando. Los guerreros eldar por fin pudieron cargar y destruir a los francotiradores, algo que parecía obsesionar al comandante eldar, aunque no antes de que abatieran al susodicho comandante.  El incursor volvió a estrellarse contra la unidad del centro causando muchas bajas.

Turno 4/ Turn 4

At the very beginning of the turn one of the psychics destroyed the transport, and we called it a day. Strangely enough, should it had survived, the dark eldar could still have won the game despite massive losses.

Al principio del turno uno de los psíquicos destruyó e transporte, y ahí lo dejamos estar. Lo más raro es que, de haber sobrevivido, los eldar todavía podrían haber ganado la partida a pesar de las bajas masivas que sufrieron.

Infantería del ejército imperial/imperial army infantry + AT-ST

I'm slowly trying to paint my entire SWMB collection. For the time being I painted a imperial army unit (a part of the military created by WEG and confirmed by the Solo film) and an EMT AT-ST - not the best kit available, but the closer scale-wise.

Yo me hago viejo y no acabo de pintar mi ejército de SWMB... que va a ser porque no lo uso desde el verano pasado. Bueno, ya llegará su momento de gloria. De momento he terminado una unidad del ejército imperial (una rama del imperio que se inventaron los de WEG y que curiosamente se ha vuelto canon con la película de Solo) y un AT-ST de AMT, que no es ni de casualidad el mejor molde aunque si es el que tiene la escala más parecida a las de las minis (1:60).

Nota mental: repasar las bases


Edit: Coronavirus Outbreak painting