News: Retreat To The Citadel
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Tycho:  There are more substantive (read: impenetrable) tabletop wargames, but you can have a lot of fun with Clix if you are able to stop buying them long enough to actually play.  Halo ActionClix have been announced for awhile, but when we sat down to write the strip yesterday we were looking over some pics of the final models and felt confident that we had discovered today's topic.
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By Matt Garfield, The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C.  Sep. 19--Walking between three of Rock Hill's most important landmarks is about to get a little easier.
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Gabe: I just have some random stuff to share here.Pokemon League night is next Tuesday at the Comic Stop. Matches start at six pm, but you can show up a little early if you'd like to trade cards. As always new players are welcome, just bring a starter deck. It's also a good idea to register at Go-Pokemon.com and bring your POP ID. A reader wrote in today to tell me that he was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle for January 30th and noticed this clue for 12 down:  "Tycho's pal in the webcomic 'Penny Arcade' (4 letters)." That's totally awesome. I'm sure the Force Unleashed will be fine. The time period around the original trilogy is just getting so crowded. Now Vader has a secret apprentice? I mean, it makes sense canonically to me. The Emperor had Mara Jade out there doing his dirty work. It's not unreasonable to think Vader had a similar arrangement. Also the very nature of Sith rule makes covering your ass a necessity. The hook for the game is fine and I don't mind the 3rd person action stuff. There are a few games I'd much rather see them make though. The fact that they have not made a sequel to Republic Commando is fucking criminal. That's not a joke either. I mean that someone over there should be put in jail for the rest of their life. RepCom was an incredible squad based shooter, and unlike most games in that genre it was packed with awesome characters. This games deserves a next gen sequel. The other game that needs a next gen installment is Tie Fighter. Seriously that game came out in 1994 and it's one of the best space shooters ever. And for fucks sake stop setting things during the movies. There's nearly sixty years worth of incredible content (minus the dark nest series) extending out past Return of the Jedi. You don't have to keep trying to cram stories into the same 20 year period. They're milking so much content out of that period that eventually we'll be playing a game as Luke where the goal is to repair vaporators on the south ridge. Hurry up you've only got 'till mid day!Rez is available on Xbox Live now. It's one of the best games ever made.   The most popular piece of clothing we've ever made, AKA The Black Mantle is back in stock. It's joined by its polar opposite, the Luminous Vestments. I have a feeling both will be sold out before I finish typing this.   -Gabe out
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Gabe: The Penny Arcade Battle Academy Will be meeting next Tuesday the 8th at the Comic Stop. We're an official Pokemon TCG league now. Those of you in the Academy who haven't done so already, should register with Go Pokemon.com. Once you have a POP ID you can post it in this thread and Joe will get you added to the roster. As always, new players are welcome. Just grab a starter deck and be at the Comic Stop around 6.PM. There will be plenty of people willing to walk you through the game if it's your first time. For our regulars, if you're looking for a place up north to get cards and boosters I highly recommend the Cardhaus in Lynnwood. He's got some singles in stock but he also has the best price on boosters I've been able to find. Also, Kiko and I picked up some great tips and a few interesting rules that we did not know about while at the tournament. We'll share our "key learnings" with you all on Tuesday. It should be a fun night, hope to see some new faces. -Gabe out
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We made it back into the house last night. There were National Guardsmen at key checkpoints in Poway that were set up to protect neighborhoods from looters. These young men were carrying fully loaded M16s. For a quick second I thought I was in a war zone. That was incredibly intimidating for me.
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Tycho:  The enforced revelry period has finally come to a close.  Thank Christ.
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By Edited by Katie Stirling  THANKS to Claire Collins, of Ayr, who wins my weekly tenner with this daft picture.  If you have a funny internet image, why not share it with us? Please include your full postal address.  (c) 2006 Sunday Mail; Glasgow (UK).
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Tycho: Keek directed me to a radical (and potentially even "badical") article on BioShock over at Gamers Wif Jobs. I've been wondering about the recent PR shift the game has gone through, because I don't just keep hearing that it is a "shooter first," but I keep hearing specifically that it is a "kick-ass shooter," even though it's a game where you learn about Objectivism underwater while helping jealous composers get revenge. I've never doubted that the game will be great, by whatever road it reaches that greatness. The recent WWE slant just had me curious about whether I'll be able to perform a suplex in-game. You may not think that is important, but it is totally important.(CW)TB
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By Kari C. Barlow, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach  Jun. 8--FORT WALTON BEACH -- Imagine a joyful family reunion at Cape Canaveral that centers on your middle son blasting off into outer space.
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Tycho: New one's up, for last week's "The Spore Cult." Feed is here. (CW)TB
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Solar fans will be happy to see (as mentioned in the latest post from Paul Jones) that all of the previous (and future) posts he's been making as tutorials on certain parts of the framework have been integrated into the Solar manual.   The translation went pretty quickly, because I wrote the original blog entries using Solar_Markdown, which converted them to HTML for the blog. Then I did some quick edits and re-converted them using Solar_Markdown_Wiki (which is the markup format for all the class API and manual entries at the Solar website).   Posts adapted so far include the posts covering views and layouts, using HTTP and sending email from Solar.
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Tycho:  I've been au Canada at Hothead since Monday, making a final pass on the entire script and writing new stuff for things we managed to fit into the first ep.  After two days of this process, I feel as though my brain has been dragging a plough through a stubborn field.  Like every other part of this adventure, it's been profoundly educational.  I enjoy it, but there is a constant electrical hum in my skull that I assume is the byproduct of creating a universe in real time.
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Tycho:  Do not forget!  All the information can be found at yonder page.  As requested, the date has been bumped up to the December 15th to give people more time for their projects.    The patch delivered a day or two ago makes the final game much, much easier to recommend.   (CW)TB
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Tycho:  If my earlier experiences with the co-operative campaign had not endured so, there would be no question - fifteen dollars is quite simply not a value that men of reason would associate with the GRAW Map Pack.  But, drawing on that idea, let us move forward as though the powerful fraternal bonds forged in Campaign One were sufficient to assuage price related suffering to some degree.  I realize that this moves our narrative into the realm of fiction.
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Tycho:  I'm glad that we were able to discuss the news of a Warhammer 40k MMO without resorting to apocalyptic threats.  I was able to present the idea to him by saying that they were making a Starcraft MMO, but they weren't going to call it Starcraft, and it wasn't being made by Blizzard.  He was intrigued, but wary.
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Word over at Penny-Arcade is that Mike and Kara are playing WoW again. My wife and I have also recently gotten re-hooked on the game. Could this mean a renewed interest in the conflict between Panda Attack and the Penny-Arcade Alliance? Considering that there are about 4 Arcadians to every 1/2 of a panda, that means [...]
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The Citadel has postponed its home opener against nearby Charleston Southern because of the potential that Hurricane Frances could be off the coast of South Carolina this weekend.