Real Life Stuff - Floods March 2021

Sure there was lots of rain, but there was probably similar quantity and timespan back when we were putting the cement pylons down for the pergola. Really - it rained for about a month non-stop, and heavy most of the way through. What we didn’t have was people dumping out from the dam at the same time.

Just a quick preface: There are some mud-maps at the end of the article to aid locational context.

On Saturday we’d been out visiting people and on the drive home swung by for a look at the sports fields. There was water onto the middle field (bottom field, middle field, canteen and carpark). In the previous flood (per paragraph 1) it got to the middle field and stopped.

Ok, so that’s still quite a lot but it took the last couple of weeks to reach that height. Fine.

I drove by the following day at around 4pm and the water was up to the top of the carpark. That’s new.

And the dirt road out to some properties was over and the adjacent fields. hmmm...

I walked back and had an in-person look. This was a panorama shot more-or-less from the canteen/carpark.

there are some stairs that go down to the fields. See that orange arrow - that just the top top of some chainlink fence behind some goal posts, probably 2 storeys tall including the roof. So that's quite some volume that filled up in about >12 hours.

The rain wasn't done though - I'll skip ahead a bit but on Sunday night I had a dream that I was walking down our street and there was water coming up from the Eastern end.

That morning early I went for a wander and discovered that yep, the water was now at the end of our street, though not as far as in my dream.  I think these two pics were Monday morning (maybe tuesday).

These are the fields along the border road of the suburb, parallel to my street. The sports fields are to the left of the shot.

Same again. Water weed from a small dam/creek somewhere in there. Covered the border road and some ended up floating into my street too. Very glad it didn't clog up the drains.

Sunday near midnight we got warnings from SES to prepare to evacuate our specific suburb. This here is the power box for our sector of the suburb. On Monday morning around 10am the power went off - the company had switched it off deliberately. Although the box itself is some way back from the waters there were power poles right in the flooded area and the risk of electrifying the water was obviously significant.

Again I'll skip forward a bit. Monday and Tuesday passed and there was no real sign of getting any power. From memory on Tuesday it actually stopped raining in the afternoon. Rumours were passing that it could Saturday before we got power back so I went for a drive to pick up a generator from a friend. Quite a drive - some detours, drove over the Nepean River into the blue mountains, the river was definitely up, but generally confined to the banks. 

The overpass bridge had a newly formed lake in all directions. Normally this is stock fields.

Skip forward, the rain had been and gone and the weather was actually quite nice. However the water level continued to rise due to run off from other areas, and tidal effects. 

This is the highest it got to, which was Wednesday around 10am. This is about halfway up the street. The road has quite a convex ridge along the centre so it can be a bit deceptive how far the water is up. 

Fortunately I don't think any houses were actually reached, though a few front yards will be quite soggy for a while.

The electricity co truck arrived just as I was about to leave for the generator so I managed to get some info, bottom line; 'probably unlikely to put it back on. go get the generator.'

This is the cul-de-sac about halfway up the road. The previous day there were pools on each side of the road that didn't actually touch, the following day it had accumulated quite a bit.

The power box is on the left side where the power pole is (red/brown fence).

Just looking down the street again.

This morning we went for walkies nice and early. The water had receded back by about 2/3 and the cross road was actually visible. Back to being an annoying pond. The cul-de-sac was also entirely clear. 

This is looking at the final pond from the other side, we walked around a connecting road.

Same spot but further left, looking out to the fields. The sports fields are to the left at the end of the street (just past the last houses).

Around 11am I had a look down the street and the road was clear through.

At 1:55pm the power went back on.

To their credit the electricity co were pretty on the ball with getting us back on line and their inspections. Can't fault their decisions or their handling of the situation. 

At it's highest I saw someone walking through the water in our street and it was about knee/mid-thigh height perhaps. Once the rain stopped people were kayaking on it and in the street it was fairly safe.

Some kayakers also went out onto the farm fields and where the sports field was, which would probably be a bit more dangerous - especially the sports fields as it's so deep, plus all kinds of chaotic currents I'd guess. 

This here shows the local area. The sports fields are the green lines, light green - lower field, darker green - middle field. The darker blue lines are the nearby parts of the farm fields (the water extended beyond that too). The red 'X' shows the position of the power box.

The medium blue lines along the streets show the position of the water around monday-tuesday. The light blue extensions show the highest reach tuesday-wednesday. Wasn't that long really in hind sight but feel like a lot longer - only 5 days, but felt like 10.   The orange dashes was our exit route if we decided to leave and the pink dashes was a cheeky alternative across a small reserve (hoping not to get bogged).

And that was that. Far tamer than many other people's experiences but quite worrying, distracting and annoying non-the-less.  We're obviously grateful that we and the suburb in general didn't go under. As one neighbour suggested it's actually a selling point that even with a 1:100 year flood we're still not getting cut off.

I estimate that it would take double that effort to come close to cutting off the entire street. and double that again to start reaching all of the houses in the street (and that's just coming up to the front door, not covering entire residences).

So, that's that. Could have done without it, but I learned a few things, and chatted a bit more with neighbours, so some positives I guess.

Update 2021-03-26

Time just loses it's flow at the moment. about 24 hours since the power came on, but feels like 4-5 days.

Went for walkies down to the sports fields. The main border road is clear and clean, not sure if they sprayed it down or something but it's back to normal, just detritus in the barded wire fence along it.  cows back in those fields too.

The sports field still has a sizeable quantity of water in it. You can see the top of the goal posts on the middle field, so mental comparisons for when it's gone entirely.  the water came up to (and including) the 10th brick of the canteen at pretty much the highest point in that area - visible water line below that.

Until (hopefully a far less soggy) next time...

 

Zona Alfa - Human Plant Anomaly

I'm just going to publish this and keep WIP adding to it as it progresses.

One of the things I enjoy about the fb group for ZA is the appreciation of terrain and 'props' in making the game come to life. 

A recurring comment within the group references the 'human plants' in the movie Annihilation, which commonly includes the pic below... 

There's actually some variations that are fairly nifty too.

Haven't yet seen the movie yet, though I have a dvd on the way from ebay and have watched some clips for it. The movie did not rate well (which doesn't surprise me really) but the visual concepts are fun, creepy and well realised.

Yesterday I thought to myself, "have a  go", so I did. Base structure made from left over printer filament, then some twist-tie wire, greenstuff and wood glue. Then some paint. and finally some static grass and foliage. I really like this birch foliage.

Here is the end result. Not a great pic, but quite hard to capture it. It's not finely detailed, more of a capture-the-concept piece.

Standard model to show size...

They're not really detailed or menacing enough to be zone hostiles, so I decided to make a couple more which I'll then put on a single larger base. This will be an anomaly feature piece - aka a mission objective.

There is a new supplement coming out/intended for ZA which will focus more on exploration and skills rather than being combat-focused.

It is anticipated that this will require more anomalies, so I'm slowly reviewing the anomalies I have with the intention of sprucing them up and/or potentially make some new ones.

There was recently a build-an-anomaly comp on the group which I didn't have any inspiration for, was a great idea and some fantastic pieces were presented, I just couldn't think of anything that felt inspired.

Will put up a 'finished' pic once the extra models are complete and the piece is done. Am out of twist-ties.  [later: just remembered i had some fine gauge wire that i used for epic trees. wire and wood glue done.]

2021-03-18

Finished off the figures, then wood glued the bases to a mdf plate.

Then a layer of wall plaster to hide the figure bases. Will take a while to dry given the current weather (wet as). After that, base coat of black, then astrogranite then some finishing. Will probably get a small stick to make a log just to add something to the ground cover.

2021-03-21

Well, project done.

It will do, looks better in real life as usual. I may give it a coat of clear spray once the weather dries up (so much rain). We'll see.

In other adjacent news I retired 2 of the 3 crystal anomalies that I made a while back. The only one i kept was the swirly clear crystal one which I always use in games anyway. I did the base up a bit as it was not finished. Just the usual astrogranite treatment.

Until next time...

Adeptus Titanicus - CoD March 21

Saturday was CoD March 2021 meet.

My first time back and rolling dice this year and if memory serves, my first since December 2020 (checks diary - where I rolled Epic with my titan list, and got smashed horribly! eeek!).

So everyone was playing 'other games' systems this month so Epic got a month off which is all good and fine.

The usual Epic-sketeers were spread across Battle Fleet Gothic (BFG), Kings of War, and I manage a game of Adeptus Titanicus (here-after AT).

[Spoilers: I have been assembling an AT force for quite a while now and there is an unpublished and extensive build log post (which will get well edited). As well as having other projects and things to do it's suffered from not having pending games approaching thus requiring completion. Additionally I like to paint my 'good armies' all at the same time to get consistent colours etc, I've had a few things on order from caster which I've only just picked up at CoD etc. Basically I wanted the entire force assembled before starting on (at least) any detailing.  This force will be replacing my Epic titans and knights forces so there's probably a bit more than would be required for just AT.]

I had an intro game back in 2019-09, and then two learner-but-includes-most-rules games in 2020-08 2020-09. Then last weekend. So a long time between session - probably enough rules remained in memory to be useful. Four games for me all up, and this was my opponent's second.

More or less matched forces, with variations being changes to weapon loadouts. About 1450 points per side - Warlord, Reaver, 2x Warhounds, sundry small knights.

The table was roughly 4x3 so the action/combat was virtually immediate. Last time I put on way too many buildings - less this time.

No real official objectives but it was a 'book mission', just basic 'cruiser clash' lasting 4 -> 6 turns depending on dice rolls from turn 4 onward. 

The Warlords immediately took positions across the middle of the board and blasted away at each other with the smaller titans and knights moving around a bit. Wont detail too much of the battle. I learned new stuff and re-remembered old stuff and by turn 2 we were both getting more confident with the rules (again).

This poor city copped a number of stray heavy plasma blasts (missed) that would have turned most of it to rubble unfortunately, and one of my Warhound got knocked back into one building by a concussion weapon.

There was not a whole bunch of strategic positioning but we did both try to keep the titans moving around rather than just blasting away napoleonic style.

Here we're about turn 4. We've both lost our knights and have damage on Warhounds and Warlords.

Fairly obviously, the red titans (mine) are targeting the blue Warlord, and the blue Reaver and Warhound (left of pic) are lining up my Warlord (and came close to doing some major damage).

The blue Warlord fell (just) to the barrage of fire with barely a dice shot to spare, exploding and collapsing where it stood. The explosion reached the Warhound and Reaver who too some hits.

Unwilling to take another round of hits my damaged Warhound rushed into the firing line of the blue Reaver (which had a melta gun that was scary powerful), valiantly blocking the Warlord.

The fun part: the Warhound exploded - rolled 10 which is the most powerful catastrophic damage possible - so my Warlord, the blue Reaver and Warhound all took hits. As luck would have it the Warlord shrugged most or all of the hits off with his shields, but the Reaver took maximum damage to it's legs, effectively sending it out of action.

Thus the game ended with a bang at the end of turn 5 (rolled up 'no turn 6') and that was that.

I was exceptionally lucky from about turn 2 onward to get and maintain the initiative (go first during that particular turn, which you roll off at the start of each turn), so I was able to at least attempt the most advantageous sequence of moves - It seems to provide something of an advantage or at least guide the strategic setup for that turn.

- - -

Despite feeling like we were head in the rulebook for a lot of time (probably not as much as it felt like) the game was quite enjoyable.

I find it not entirely dissimilar to BFG in so far as the models require conscious manoeuvring and have directionality and limitations on turn capacity etc - aka, unlike Epic which is generally move however you want up to your speed distance (War Engines and AC aside).  

It is a fairly slow game to play in part because of this (disregarding reading time) - again, especially by comparison to Epic. Each titan has a control panel that reacts to damage or maneuvering and there's engine power to monitor, so far more 'simulator' than Epic.

Looking forward to playing again, hopefully it won't be a year or 6 months until next time though. There are possible half a dozen people working on AT forces at the club so it's nice to have people to play.

And it's given me suitable motivation to get to painting again, so that's superb. 

Until next time...

Zona Alfa - Remote Outpost

Original Draft 2021-03-01

The zone is a sprawling area, home to many unique, fascinating and deadly things. 

No on remembers the exact purpose of these outposts so old are they, but a few can still be found in the more inaccessible areas of the zone. That they exist at all in the zone's remote depths speaks of a rather large logistics budget - so most likely they are military sites, forgotten or abandoned.

It has been posited that they were intended as refit or resupply points, but for the military it seems far easier to get around by helicopter than bush-bash to these inaccessible locations.

No known examples of such architecture exist in the populous areas of the zone; demolished or replaced with something bigger and better where a permanent military ground force was needed.

The remaining examples of these small but strong shelters are highly prized assets for both bandit and free Stalker alike, and have been the focus of many intense and bloody territorial battles.

No constructed roads lead to any of the known examples, though the current inhabitants will often clear their own paths through the undergrowth if vehicular access is desired. Other are surrounded by dense bushland where the nefarious inhabitants wish to remain inconspicuous. 

- - -

Although I don't need anymore terrain for ZA I saw a similar structure being built on FB and it just triggered the 'make it' impulse.

It's all mdf for the main structure. A few paddle pop sticks around the doors and roof . The upper roof comes off.

The larger door will be like a garage 'roller door' and i'll get some corrugated cardboard for that.  The two 'people' doorways will have doors over/in them  and the large window areas will have bars across them. 

Will use a texture paint over it once done as it's intended to be a concrete structure.

Update 2021-03-04

The clear varnish is still tacky but close enough to call it done.

Added a bunch of stuff around the windows doors, air vents etc.

Theoretically the downstairs area is a garage space or storage area, accessible by the roller door or solid metal side door. There is a hatch and ladder that goes up to the top room, and from there another solid metal door allows access to the roof areas.

Moderately happy with the end result.  It should be table useable though it's not as generic as the houses or barns.

The roof of the top level comes off, and theoretically the top level door opens though it's probably clogged by paint and whatnot - I really didn't put much effort into the door design but decided that I wanted it closed and 'secure', rather than open and dilapidated.

I ended up putting bars over the window areas - the bars are vertical rather than horizontal to make it harder to climb up them.

I don't hate it, but I really liked the clean shapes of the original (mdf) structure. It would probably be a bit abstract for a battlefield setting though.

The doors of the lower level are all glued up, and all doors are covered in texturey stuff to break up the surfaces. I didn't want too many downpipes or ways for critters to narratively get up the sides. It's intended to be able to function as a stout little fortress - as inaccessible as possibly unless you're deliberately let in.

Oh, and also I painted up another two of the anvil prints I did. Mainly just because, but also trying to get the paint mojo flowing again.  The rest of the prints have been bagged and boxed, probably won't bother with them (only a couple left anyway).

The first batch of prints I painted were 'assault' weapon themed - these ones have 'specialist' weapons.

Like the first batch they are very basic paint job. They're loaner/demo level models.

Until next time...