The Weekly Top X - Whither Brent?

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Top X.  X equals seven today which is two more than the old stand by of five.  However, Brent was been called back to his unit and was unable to add his wit and charm to this weeks post until right this very minute.  He couldn't tell me exactly what he was up to - he just kept muttering something about the penis being evil...  welp, lets dive in!

Brent in uniform - artist's interpretation

Brent: Well, folks... one of these days Lauby is just gonna kill me - not pretend kill, or saying it for effect... I mean he’ll come to Texas and settle my hash once and for all.

For making Top X late! You have my apologies, Ye Ol’ Blogosphere: I’ve been losing days again. (I wonder how that happens?)

Lauby: No worries, Brent.  Shit happens.  Well.. actually... some worries are in order. There is that whole hash settling things.  I'm just glad you showed up after all and saved everyone from a lame, Brentless Top X.

1) Ten Inch Template - Putty in Progress: A Visual Tour 
Brent: Ah, Lauby! I’m glad you lead off with this (which is a lovely little greenstuff lesson any of us can do), ‘cause everyone knows what a debt 10-Inch Template owes me, yours truly - Brent! Do you remember why?
Lauby: I'm sure it was something.  You're just going to pretend that I'm participating in your fantasy anyways, so my answer could be anything - even something about his constipation problems.
Brent: Yes! That’s right, I encouraged him to take the leap into the House of Paincakes!
Lauby: Oh Brent.  There you go with the over the top egomania again.  I'm gonna have to ask you to stop taking credit for everything.
Brent: Why not? Why are you always taking things away from me?
Lauby: Because children need boundaries.  Arbitrary, invisible boundaries.  Now we just need to stop auto-including posts about green stuff.  We've got to try and keep the selection process as secret and nonsensical as possible.

2) Game Over - Meta Gaming: The Worst Army Ever?
Lauby: This post is perhaps the most near and dear to my heart in the whole bunch.  I too was a Chaos player back in the day and I too felt the sting of the long slide into boringness and crappiness.  Sadly, Chaos is kinda crappy in both systems now.  As a game designer, the implications of having your stories' bogeymen be vastly underpowered on the table should probably be considered..  Like Von, I love the forces of Chaos.  Unlike Von, it will be a cold day in hell before I go back.  Thanks, psychological trauma!
Brent: Yea - a bad run can do that to you.

3) The Back 40k - Lictors: The Red-headed Step Child
Lauby: The Tyranid codex has always been a tricky beast to nail down in my experience.  They bugs were rebuilt from the ground up due to the amount of time between the books and GW's new design philosophy (sustainability - who knew?).  On top of the off-kilter play style, there are a ton of units in the book that seem a bit more fiddly and out of place than they are.  I'm not about to say that the Lictor is the bestest EVAR, but I do think it's gotten a bad rap - enter Anonymous Foodie and his excellent analysis of the problem. 
Brent: I’m right there with you, Lauby. Lictors don’t get the love they deserve. They’re lonely, too. Personally, I find the whole thing just sad.
John: Maybe we could get the Lictor an eHarmony profile.  That might help.  Oh and be sure to check out the comments since there's a lot of good stuff there as well.

4) Miniature Painting - Private Frazer Strikes Again
Brent: You knew this one would tickle me in all the right places, didn’t you Lauby?
Lauby: Brent I have no earthly desire to know anything about tickling you.  Especially which places are the right places.  I picked this one because it was an anti-rant on a topic that comes up all the damn time and because it was logical and well written. Unfortunately, I think we can all say that we've just about used up the last of out collective ability to care about GW's recent financial report.
Brent: Right you are! I enjoy these personal point of view non-hobby-hobby articles. Good stuff.
Lauby:  The really interesting thing here is how the author manages to highlight the actual cultural gaming differences between the two nations.

5) The Midnight Shift - If it wasnt for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.. (pic heavy)
Brent: This is just mean, Lauby. Mean.
Lauby: What are you on about, Brent?  This post is great and even though your precious deamons lost, so did mine.  Seeing as how I am also.. nominally... a deamon player.
Brent: You know my opinion of Fateweaver... so you just go and find some dude who got rolled by him!
Lauby:  Aw, don't be like that.  This post is great - the sheer simplicity of it all 9No need for a detailed report when you're getting your ass kicked.) and the laugh out loud captions.  C'mon, man - its blogosphere gold!
Brent: (I think you did it to mess with me!)

6) Roll With It - The Nurglizer (Hot Pin Method)
Lauby: There is nothing about this post that I don't want to have sex with love.  Its an easy (if dangerous) method for some rot damage, its a Nurgle tutorial that doesn't relay on adding big blobs of stupid looking growths and there's this great production value. It's genuius... now to figure out how to distill it into some kind of potion...
Brent: I agree, mate. This might just be my favorite article of the bunch. I love these sort of hobby tricks of the trade - great find!
Lauby: Important safety tip - DON'T FUCKING BURN YOURSELF!

7) I Roll Boxcars - Unboxing: Protectorate of Menoth Battlebox
Lauby: You'll have to forgive me on this one - there are a ton of conflicting emotions for me here.  I played some MkI a few years ago and quit because the rules sucked.  But these days all the new blog love has got me thinking about it again.  On top of that, there's this massive jealousy at how much better this battlebox is than the crap I was stuck with when I started.  Bah!
Brent: Well, I find myself in a forgiving mood! You know I’ve enjoyed playing some Warmachine lately as well - I think you threw this in to soften the Fateweaver blow! Anyway, I can get where this dude is coming from. The first contact with a new game is often best.
Lauby:  Right you are, Brent.  There's nothing like the feeling of opening a new game before you get all jaded and analytical.  Its just you and some new game pieces and it makes the world seem just a little bit better.