Team Oxymoron

My Voidraven Bomber

2011-02-05T21:52:00.000-06:00

Batman would be proud.

67 Division still getting there

2010-09-25T17:15:00.003-05:00

More pics of my ever-evolving army. It's all been re-based and more touch ups added..

First Look-Converted Cauldron of Blood in Progress

2010-09-08T19:10:00.000-05:00

Ok it's been awhile since I've posted anything here, mostly because I haven't been doing much painting. The release of IoB with all those wonderful HE models has reinvigorated my desire to paint, but I refuse to start those until I finish some of the projects I was already working on. That being said, here's one that I've been working on. It's got a long way to go, but so far I like it.

Quick Wolf Update

2010-08-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

Been a busy couple of days. I finished off my special weapons guys, and all of my Wolf Guard. Here's a picture. Next up for me is the Long Fang pack leaders.

WHFB 8th FAQ Checker from North West Warriors!

2010-08-03T13:58:00.000-05:00

It may boggle the mind to find out that GW is actually putting out FAQs in a timely manner (but really, how long can we expect it to continue?) but they have already updated all of the army books and the main rule book within a very short span of time. Plus many of the army books have already had their new 8th ed. FAQs updated since the initial release.

Some inventive gentleman in England has created a script that scans the GW site for new FAQs and sends out an email to anyone that subscribes to his email list.

Jump on over to the North West Warriors forums to check it out!

Wolf Updates!

2010-08-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

So with War Games Con over, I can get back to work on my Wolves. My Special weapons guys are pretty much done, they just need the wolf pelts on their shoulder pads and some need back packs.

Next thing is my combi meltas for my Wolf Guard. I have ripped the bolt pistols off of my existing Wolf Guard and the arm off of one dude. I did a really quick conversion to make the combi meltas. I think they look pretty good!

War Games Con Weekend Wrap Up

2010-08-01T12:45:00.002-05:00

So I took part in War Games Con's first working sessions and I had such a blast I don't even know where to begin!

I didn't play in the "couples" tournament because a) I'm a pussy and b) once I heard that Dave Taylor was doing a number of workshops I had a nerdgasm!

I walked around the hall quite a few times and it was very busy. There was the 40k and WHFB couples tournament a well as Flames of War and Warmachine Tournaments on the first day and then the WHFB and 40k singles tournaments on Saturday and Sunday along with three narrative Appoc battles.

So I spent most of the first day in Dave Taylor's seminars. Let me tell you, not only is he a totally down to earth dude but, as if you didn't know already, he knows his shit. The first hour was how to use green stuff. Not only did the give us a full thing of green stuff to take with us, but they also gave us a sculpting tool and tweezers. So after two hours I made a dreadnaught-sized purity seal, a lop-sided laurel for Captain Gianthead, and a beginning understanding of how to make cloaks, loin cloths and gems.

The second session was painting theory for painting an entire army. We did color theory and Dave's suggestions on what you should try to paint an entire army to whatever standard you are looking to paint. One of my favorite things about Dave Taylor is that his view on painting armies is "do whatever what you need to paint the army as fast as possible to the standard you want." he is not the guy that puts 15 layers onto the nose of a gretchen.

The third session was kind of a mixed bag. It started out as the opposite of the previous session, painting a showcase model. This is where you CAN paint the 15 layers on that gretchen's nose. The second part of the session was talking about general modeling such as using plastcard, bondo, 14 different ways to do rivets and much more. We got to see most of his Blood Pact army, the Horus model he made for Bushido Redpanda and the Leman Russ (the primarch) he is making for another client.

Another thing that I thought was cool was Romeo from Battlefoam was in my sessions and I got to talk to him for a while. On the last episode of 40K Radio, he's was talking about how people don't think he's a gamer and doesn't hobby. Well, let me tell you, he is and he does. This guy knows his shit and he is passionate about all things miniature war gaming.

The second day I took over 250 photos and got a couple of games in. I spent quite a long time taking pictures of the painting competition, and let me tell you there was was very nice stuff there!

I returned the third day and got a quick game in but I was pretty beat and left early.

The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was the lack of alternate games going on while the singles tournaments were going on. Last year they had Space Hulk going on and I was hoping there might be some demo games for Blood Bowl or Battlefleet Gothic or something.

Aside from that, it was a very nice weekend. I got to spend some time talking to JWolf, BigRed, Goatboy, Bushido Redpanda and Darkwinn.

Maybe I'll have to talk to the guys and see if I can help out next year!

War Games Con 2010 Rules Quiz

2010-07-31T17:03:00.001-05:00

So here is the 40K rules quiz they gave out this year at War Games Con, enjoy!

1) How many models must a 12-man unit of Chaos Space marines lose in one shooting phase in order to be required to take a morale test?

2) How close can a unit Scout towards an enemy unit?

3) Frag Grenades have what strength against vehicles?

4) A Leman Russ Battle Tank moves forward just over 8" to strike an Ork Battlewagon in the side. What is the strength of the Russ' ram against the Battlewagon?

5) An immobilized Space Marine Dreadnought, armed with the stock layout, has how many attacks in close combat?

6) What is the coherency distance for a War Walker squadron?

7) What is the coherency distance for an Attack Bike squadron?

8) What dice rolls normally result in Perils of the Warp?

9) Give three conditions that normally prevent regrouping.

10) The minimum cost of an Imperial Guard Infantry Platoon is how many points?

11) What are the name, strength and AP of the missiles fired by a Whirlwind?

12) A Wolf Lord armed with a Thunderhammer and Stormshield with the Saga of the Warrior Born destroys a Guardian squad, ending the enemy assault phase with 12 attacks. In his next turn, he charges a squad of warwalkers, inflicting 4 penetrating hits, 3 glancing hits, and 2 undamaging hits. How many attacks does the Wolf Lord get in the next round of close combat?

13) Without using psychic powers or near any friendly model, what is Mephiston's initiative on the charge?

14) A Wyche Archite with Combat Drug Dispenser, Agonizer, and Splinter Pistol get at most how many attacks on the charge?

15) What is the effect of Eldar Runes of Warding on a Psyker 25" away from the Farseer with the Runes?

16) What is the cost of a Grey Knight Justicar with Meltabombs, Frag Grenades, Sacred Incense, a Nemesis Force Weapon and Storm Bolter?

17) List the name of each Ork HQ Special Character in order of points cost.

War Games Con Day 2 Photos!

2010-07-31T12:45:00.001-05:00

Four albums and 252 pictures from Day 2!

40k

WHFB

Narrative Campaign

Painting Competition

War Games Con Day 1 Photos

2010-07-30T23:57:00.004-05:00

99 photos from today here and here, plus the best team write up, right there

---------------------------->

ZOMG WAR GAMES CON STARTS TODAY!!!!!!1!11!!!!TWO!

2010-07-30T07:15:00.001-05:00

I'm ready for a fun-tastic fun-filled fun-venture with Dave Taylor today. I plan on getting down there early so I can take pictures before the "couples" tournament starts.

Pictures this evening.

Special Wolves

2010-07-25T19:18:00.001-05:00

So in the last week, I worked on a number of my space wolves. I moved heads around, and I worked on the paint job of the minis that I told to BoLScon last year. I worked on about 12 Grey Hunters and 10 Blood Claws. I took their painting quality from table top-quality to, in my opinion... < drum-roll >... good table-top quality!

So I have more of my GHs and BCs to get to this new quality (all the ones that already had bare-heads at BoLScon last year), but I've decided to work on my special weapons. I am pretty much building every combination of special weapons I think I could use, so that means 6 meltaguns, 2 flamers, and 2 plasmaguns. I really can't see me using more than this at one time.

About half of these guys already had some work done on them, and only one or two I started from scratch. All of my special weapons squads will have the wolf pelts on their right shoulders, and at the moment, only 3 of them have finished pelts, five of the remaining haven't even been started yet.

I've got the heads, base coats and bases down for everyone. My next step is to do highlights and washes. I have ordered some bits for my four wulfen, and when I get those in I will do some green stuff up for the wolf pelts and fur for the back of the clawed hands.

Oh, and btw, I hate painting yellow...

Review: Heart of Rage

2010-07-19T19:16:00.001-05:00

So I got my hands on another of Black Library's audio books. This time it is Heart of Rage by James Swallow.

The book details a Blood Angels squad entering a dead Tyranid hive ship in order to find an Adeptus Mechanicus team that had previously been sent in to the ship.

This book is read by Toby Longworth he reads all of the BL audio books and he does an excellent job. I was a little critical of some of his voices in Thunder from Fenris (because one of them sounded like a certain California Governor) but I really have no complaints in this one. He voices about 10 different people throughout the book and manages to make each of them pretty distinct.
As for the story itself, it is a little predictable, the Astartes are sent into the Tyranid ship which they are assured is dead, but lo and behold... not so much. Combat ensues... yadda yadda yadda.

I don't want to sound like I am detracting the story. It is a bit predictable, but I think it is well done. Perhaps it is the sound effects that go along with the audio book, but it did a good job of keeping me interested.

My big complaint, as with Thunder from Fenris was the length. If this book were in written format, it would be a short story, and I believe that this book would fit in nicely with one of the many anthologies that BL has put out, but this is a stand alone story, and instead of coming in a large book for about $13, it is by itself for about $20.

I went to the gym this morning, listen to the story while I worked out, and on the way home, I was done with it. Seems a bit too short for the money I spent.

I give the book the slaughtered Hive Tyrants out of 5.

Mathhammer: Wolf Guard with Mark of the Wulfen?

2010-07-19T13:31:00.003-05:00

So I am planning on running a Space Wolf Scout Pack in my army. I love the fact that you can really trick out the scouts (although they can be a huge points sink). The thought of 10 dudes coming in from the back field with a melta, 2 power weapons and a MoW dude can be quite scary if your opponent leaves someone in the back field. Now what I am considering doing is attaching a Wolf Guard squad leader to come in with them, but I'm not sure what I want to outfit him with. I was thinking of Mark of the Wulfen because the only thing that really seems better than one crazy mother F'er is two! But I got to wondering if there were better options, that lead me to break out the old probability hammer and figure it out.

Now what I am looking at is pure close combat killing ability. I'm not worried about making this Wolf Guard capable of killing vehicles in the back field (with a PF, combi-melta, or meltabomb). This is all just, which weapon is better.

The reason I was leaning towards MoW as the best was the sheer number of rending attacks. The dude's attack characteristic becomes D6+1! Add in the extra attack for two CC weapons (assuming BPistol and CCW), and another attack because of charging, that is 4-9 attacks!

So I was thinking of how to do this, and it quickly became apparent that it was really impractical to see how the five different weapons I am looking at would do against every possible encounter, so I tried to pick some generic "dudes" that this crazy mother F'er might charge.

First out would be s S3, T3 and Sv 5+ guy, more commonly know as the Imperial Guard Guardsman. Attacking the Guardsman I came up with this table for the average number of unsaved sounds created.

Weapon

Wounds

Mow

2.17

Power Weapon

1.78

Power Fist

1.67

Frost Weapon

2.22

Twin Wolf Claws

2.96

Next I moved on to a basic Tac Marine. This gave me S4, T4, and a Sv 3+. This time I got the following.

Weapon	Wounds
Mow	0.90
Power Weapon	1.00
Power Fist	1.25
Frost Weapon	1.33
Twin Wolf Claws	1.50

Lastly, I looked at a Terminator to see what the invulnerable save would do to things.

Weapon	Wounds
Mow	0.54
Power Weapon	0.67
Power Fist	0.83
Frost Weapon	0.89
Twin Wolf Claws	1.00

So the MoW does well against the Guardsmen, but really starts to do poorly against anything "tougher," and it really loses it's punch when you toss in an invulnerable save. I was just about to wrap it up and say that the Wolf Claws were the way to go when I realized that I didn't take cost into account. A Wolf Guard with MoW costs 33 points. A Wolf Guard wtih Twin Wolf Claws costs 48 points. So the last thing I threw into the excel spread sheet was to devide the number of wounds by the cost of the weapon. When I ranked up the weapons I got something that looked like this.

IG	SM	Term
PW	PW	PW
MoW	FB	FB
FB	PF	PF
WC	MoW	MoW
PF	WC	WC

So it looks like, when you bring cost into it, the power weapon is the clear winner. Now with all that said and done, I'm pretty sure I'm going to outfit my scouting Wolf Guard with a power fist and a combi-melta. But I'm a math nerd, so I really don't consider the time I spent calculating this wasted.

Outfitting Wolf Guard

2010-07-18T11:13:00.000-05:00

So Wolf Guard are an intricate part of any space wolf army. Or at the very least they are in my Space Wolf Army. Now Grey Hunters are great because they can take just about any type of war gear in the Space Wolf arsenal from Terminator Armor to combi weapons to power weapons, frost weapons, wolf claws and even thunder hammers with storm shields.

Now I don't tend to drop a lot of points into my Wolf Guard. Most of them get a power fist, and thats about it.

One of the things I really don't understand is that while, Grey Hunters carry bolters and bolt pistols standard, Wolf Guard carry only one or the other. So because most of my Wolf Guard will be toting power fists, I'm thinking I'll be slapping bolters on them. The bolt pistol won't add an extra attack in close combat, and the bolter adds an extra shot if you are out of charge range, or you are trying to draw a charge from the foes of the Emperor.

Guess its time to break out a knife and chop off some bolt pistols.

A-Head of the Game

2010-07-17T17:09:00.004-05:00

So due to my spray issues, I haven't continued with my "next project." I going to have to break down and buy some GW spray on payday, the Armory isn't cutting it even in the house with low heat and humidity.

Anywho, what I am currently working on is updating my Space Wolves. Way back at x-mas, the wife bought me the Space Wolf Battle Force and I really haven't worked on it much other than to turn the scouts into Black Templar neophytes.

I did put most of the 20 dudes together way back when, but then I got caught up in another project.

So what I've done recently is to pop all the heads off of my Space Wolves that are wearing helmets and replace them with one of the 100-odd heads that came in the Battle Force. I then primed them Chaos Black with a brush and then painted up the heads. Here are the Grey Hunters.

Here are the Blood Claws, although in a pinch, they can be used for Grey Hunters as well, seeing as GHers have a Bolter, Bolt Pistol and CCW.

Next are my melta gunners. I am planning on doing up six, as I don't believe I'll ever use more than six in a game. If you'll notice, from the left, dude #3 and dude #5 have what will become wolf pelts on their right shoulder, this will be a standard issue for all of my special weapons guys. I am still considering if I'll do it for the Long Fangs or not, but I will be pelting up the rest of these guys. Also, as you can see, gunner #6 is looking a little skinny, I'll have to find him a body.

Last but not least, I decided that I didn't want to waste all of those cool "wolfy" helmets that come on the standard Wolf Pack Sprue, so my Long Fangs will all be wearing Helmets, so I've had to cut some heads off the Packs and swap them out, but here is my first Missile Squad, again the last guy is a little lacking. I think I'll have to buy about 6 more missile launchers, because at 2000 points, I'll probably run two squads with 8-10 missile launchers.

DnD or Descent for the kids??

2010-07-15T14:12:00.002-05:00

So, the kids and I have been playing alot of Star Wars Miniatures games. They are quick to set up and play AND the rules are just simple enough that even Jake knows how to play. Also, both of the boys LOVE the Baldur's gate game for the PS2 that Calvin let us borrow. There are even 2 of Dustin's friends (both are cool kids, but geeks like Dustin and I), who have been coming over just to play with Dustin on Baldur's gate.

I've been thinking of moving on to something else for them. I first looked into the board game, Descent, which looks like a really cool game and if I'm correct, your character evolves as you keep going through adventures. It looks pretty easy to set up and can be played with just two people, plus the GM. The only problem I see with it is the lack of creativity you have with your character. Your only option is to pick a pre-set character.

I've also looked into DnD, which would allow the boys to be more creative with their characters and let their imagination explore more. The problem I have is the amount of effort that I will have to put into it to come up with suitable adventures, create maps of what their doing, and keeping track of stuff.

Price wise, it's about the same investment to do either. DnD would be ther more expensive up front with buying the 3 books needed, but they will take through quite abit of adventuring, while Descent, once you go through the intial box, each new adventure box is another $50 bucks..

Anyone have some good advise or opinions with what I can do?

Mathhammer: 8th Ed. Casting

2010-07-15T11:23:00.002-05:00

So with the new edition of WHFB coming out, we have new rules. All wizards are allowed to use as many dice as they like (suck it druchii) so you can have a level 1 Warlock Engineer throwing six dice at the Dreaded Thirteenth spell in order to get that 25+. And it might seem like a very good idea, I mean, who wants to miscast with your (possibly) very expensive level 4 wizard? The downfall of a miscast now is much more devastating that it was in 7th edition, so what are your odds?

When we look at rolling the dice and we look at rolling double sixes it is pretty easy to understand that when you roll two dice, the chance that you'll get a six on the first die is 1/6 and the chance you'll get a six on the second is also a 1/6. The rules of probability say that in situations like this, you multiply the two results, so the chances of getting an irresistible force/miscast on two dice is 1/36.

When you move on to three dice it becomes a bit more complicated. You could get a six on the first die, a six on the second and something other than a six on the third die. Those chances are 1/6, 1/6 and 5/6 respectively and this would give you a probability of 5/216. But this just tells you the probability of the first two dice being a six and the third being something else. We haven't accounted for getting a six, not six, and then a six, or even getting not six, six and six. Now the chances of each of these three separate situations occurring is 5/216, so because these three situations are the only ways you can get two sixes with three dice, these are the only ones we have to count. So probability becomes 15/216 or roughly 6.94%.

But this still does not cover what we need because we will still get an irresistible force/miscast if we throw three sixes so we have to add in that probability (1/216) for a total of 16/216 which is roughly 7.41%.

It becomes even more complicated with four dice as you have to account for rolling two, three or four sixes. Using what is called a cumulative density function (CDF) on a calculator I came up with the following table of values for the percent chance of an irresistible force/miscast depending on how many dice you throw.

Miscast CDF
Dice Used	Percent
1	0.00%
2	2.78%
3	7.41%
4	13.19%
5	19.62%
6	26.32%

Review: Blood Money

2010-07-14T20:21:00.002-05:00

C.L. Werner is fast becoming my favorite Warhammer Fantasy authors. Blood Money is the first book of the Brunner the Bounty Hunter Omnibus. It tells the story, oddly enough, of Brunner the Bounty Hunter.

Talk about the quintessential anti-hero. This guy is a total D-bag, but I couldn't help but love him. This book is a series of short stories that tell of Brunner's adventures in Bretonnia and the Border Princes, penned by a writer from the Empire.

I like the use of the short stories with Brunner as they give us many views of how he plies his trade and all the different ways he can be a bastard.

I think that what I like the most about Brunner is that he doesn't appear super-natural like many of the fantasy heroes such as Gotrek, and he doesn't rely on magic. What he does is use his mind as a weapon along with his very prodigious fighting skills.

I am very much looking forward to continuing to the next story Blood and Steal.

I give this book four collected bounties out of five.

Mathhammer: Gets Hot! Part 1

2010-07-06T11:03:00.003-05:00

So as the resident math nerd, I figure I'd do a semi-regular article on the probability behind some of the things we see in 40k and WHFB.

This time I'm going to look at weapons that "Gets Hot!" So what I looked at was the chance of surviving firing one of these weapons. So for a "Gets Hot!" if you roll a 1 on the to hit roll, the weapon has overloaded and the firing model suffers a wound.

So in essence, we're looking at what is the probability of rolling a 1 on a d6, which is 1 out of 6, and then finding out the probability of passing the armor save.

What I've done is figured this out for the number of shots fired, and then the different armor saves possible. What I came up with is this:

		Armor Save
		2+	3+	4+	5+	6+
Shots Fired	1	97.2%	94.4%	91.7%	88.9%	86.1%
	2	94.5%	89.2%	84.0%	79.0%	74.2%
	3	91.9%	84.2%	77.0%	70.2%	63.9%
	4	89.3%	79.6%	70.6%	62.4%	55.0%
	5	86.9%	75.1%	64.7%	55.5%	47.3%
	6	84.4%	71.0%	59.3%	49.3%	40.8%
	7	82.1%	67.0%	54.4%	43.8%	35.1%
	8	79.8%	63.3%	49.9%	39.0%	30.2%
	9	77.6%	59.8%	45.7%	34.6%	26.0%
	10	75.4%	56.5%	41.9%	30.8%	22.4%
	11	73.4%	53.3%	38.4%	27.4%	19.3%
	12	71.3%	50.4%	35.2%	24.3%	16.6%
	13	69.3%	47.6%	32.3%	21.6%	14.3%
	14	67.4%	44.9%	29.6%	19.2%	12.3%

So there you go, a model with a 2+ armor save has about a 67% chance of shooting 14 shots without suffering a wound, and a model with a 6+ armor save has about an 86.1% of surviving shooting once.

Now this of course really only applies to models with one wound. If you have multiple wounds you obviously have a higher probability of surviving. I'll be looking at that in Part 2.

Review: Empire

2010-07-05T21:15:00.003-05:00

This is the second book about Sigmar Heldenhammer. In the first book, Sigmar unites all of the tribes of humans under one banner, in this book he is crowned Emperor and must keep his fledgling empire from splitting apart.

I gotta say, the beginning of this book was a bit, "oh no! theres something terrible happening!" So Sigmar rides in with his trusty sword-brethren and after a terrific fight, comes out victorious! This happens 2-3 times before the story changes, and thats when the book becomes interesting.

Sigmar is tempted by the gods of Chaos and almost succumbs to their temptations, but it isn't until the last battle where the book really shines. This battle is written very well. It is visceral, and I could totally envision what was happening in my head as if I were watching a movie of what Mr. McNiell had written.

I been kinda down on some of McNiell's other books. They were, in my opinion, over complicated for what is essentially pulp fiction, but this one is different. There were two many plots, and they were written tight enough so that I didn't have to use a pen and paper to keep track of where each of the characters were.

Even though it was kinda repetitive in the beginning, I still give this book four skulls split by Ghal-Maraz out of five.

Fluff for the Fluff God!

2010-07-05T10:36:00.003-05:00

Well we made it back from Aggieland without a problem. The weekend went well for Tamara, and I had a pretty OK time as well. I got to cruise around and check out a Half Price Books I hadn't been to before. I am usually on the lookout for older, OOP paperbacks and current codices/army books on the cheap. Well this weekend was good for me I got one of each!

Codex: Daemonhunters

Army Book: Ogre Kingdoms

Plus I got an anthology book with a lot of the big names in Black Library. All in all, a pretty good weekend.

Crimson Fister

2010-07-01T19:53:00.002-05:00

Well I finished off my squad of Black Templars. I think they look pretty good. I think painting the Dwarfs helped with my control, although at times my hands still get a bit shaky.

Here is a semi-close up of the chaplain. The crozius didn't come out as well as I had hoped. I'm not exactly sure why but its not very smooth.

Here are the five initiates. I think they all came out pretty well except for the while on the shoulder pads. I tried a couple different undercoats, but the while still came out blotchy and unsmooth, but its good enough for me.

And here are the five neophytes. I did a bit of work to give them all chain swords and gave them Marauder Horsemen helmets (thanks to John for the idea). I really like these guys. I think that khaki came out very well.

So I began my next squad. The Crimson Fists. I did my first test mini today.

I think this one came out pretty good as well. The only thing I am a little disappointed in is the undercoating. I am having a real issue with the heat and humidity with my spray on undercoats. I am getting a serious orange skin effect on my minis which is pissing me off. I have some ideas on hot to fix it and I'll be trying those in the coming week.

Anywho...

Deathwatch: Who are we?

2010-06-27T17:21:00.006-05:00

As a response to John's reply of my post, I got to thinking of which chapter each of us would choose if we were to make character for the Deathwatch RPG. So this is what I came up with. Please consider tongue firmly in cheek.

First, me. Well I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that I would make a Space Wolf. According to the web site.

The Battle-Brothers of the Space Wolves are ferocious and aggressive warriors. Though far from mindless berserkers, they are certainly possessed of a feral exuberance for battle. They have an overriding sense of duty and honour, and are driven ever onwards by a strong desire to right the many wrongs that have befallen the Imperium of Man since the heady days of the Great Crusade. Space Wolves exhibit a fierce sense of loyalty to their comrades in arms and this is on occasion extended to their compatriots in other branches of the Imperium’s military.

This all really appeals to me. Well that and I'm too bloody predictable and generally unoriginal to pick something else.

Next, we'll look at John. For him, its a no-brainer as well. I would guess the Black Templars. The web site has this to say about the Templars in Deathwatch.

When serving alongside the Battle-Brothers of other Space Marine Chapters, many Black Templars prepare themselves through long fasts and week-long vigils in order to tolerate the presence of Space Marine librarians. For those who serve in the Deathwatch, fighting alongside a brother Space Marine who wields psychic power is a particular hardship, a trial they must undergo in order to serve the Emperor more fully and to strike down the hated alien. For this reason, great care is undertaken when selecting a Black Templar for secondment to the Deathwatch, for only a brother able to contain his deep-seated intolerance will be able to fight to his full capacity. Despite this, even these individuals are likely to pass every hour not spent fighting in deep contemplation and prayer, often cloistering themselves away from their fellow Deathwatch Space Marines in a personal shrine to the Emperor, Dorn, and Sigismund.

This should fit in with John and as he will be allowed to, "suffer not the alien to live!"

After John we have another no-brainer, Tom is going to be an Ultramarine. The site has this to say about them.

Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla. In all of their duties, from battle to study, the Ultramarines are thorough, analytical, and attentive to every detail. They are slow to anger and rarely make a rash decision. By constant recourse to the articles of faith enshrined within the Codex Astartes, the Ultramarines are able to face any eventuality with well-practised battle drills and established doctrine. Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla.

I personally think THIS is the best fit.

As for Jason, I had to think about this one for a bit. I had to figure out which chapter fit his personality. Then I got it. Dark Angels.

The Chapter has been shaped by its dark past and is secretive and monastic in nature, with much time given over to worship and prayer. There are many different levels within the Chapter which individuals may gradually rise through. On attaining each new level, they are granted a little more knowledge of the truth behind the Dark Angels’ origins, but only the highest-ranking members of the Chapter know the terrible, shameful secret of what occurred ten thousand years ago.

Broody, check. Mistrustful, check. Superiority complex, check check double check!

Now I have to admit I was stuck for Calvin. There are only two chapters left. Blood Angels and the new Storm Wardens. Which one fit Calvin better.

Most Storm Wardens enjoy debate and crafting points to support their arguments, although some outsiders see these tendencies as quarrelsome or insubordinate. However, once a course of action has been agreed upon, a Storm Warden will set aside any dispute and carry it out. Perhaps because of their fondness for debate or their own turbulent history, Storm Wardens have an interest in mysteries and engimas. This curiosity has led more than a few Battle-Brothers to volunteer for the Deathwatch.

Likes to argue? Super check!

Lastly, Stuart. This one came to me at the end. The Blood Angels are perfect for him!

Following the example of their primarch, the Blood Angels espouse a vision of the galaxy in which the enemies of the Emperor can be defeated and mankind can progress to the life he was always fated to live. There is a deeply mystical streak in the Blood Angels’ doctrines, and a strong belief that things can be made better. After all, the Blood Angels are recruited from the scrofulous wastelanders of Baal, and if such can be transformed into a tall, proud, and handsome warrior, then there is hope for mankind yet. This belief can be seen in everything the Blood Angels do. They strive for perfection in all of their endeavours. Their works of art are things of beauty and symmetry. Their martial disciplines are practised unceasingly. Their doctrines are permeated with a sense of mortality and the fallen greatness of Man.

Why? Well I'm sure that if he ever set foot outside in the day light, his skin would sparkle.

So after this, I'm assuming you'd pick what type of marine you'd be. I'd probably pick an Assault Marine for me. I would guess Devastator for Tom, a Tech Marine for Jason, but I have no clue for John or Calvin. Chaplin and Librarian?

Deathwatch RPG: by Fantasy Flight Games

2010-06-26T15:06:00.002-05:00

Well the RPG is supposed to be out at GenCon which I believe is the first weekend of August. The first chapters have been announced, they are:
Space Wolves
Ultramarines
Dark Angles
Black Templars
Blood Angles
Storm Wardens

The last chapter is a fan-brewed chapter that came about through a contest. There is, at this time, no way to make a Space Marine from a chapter other than these 6, but I guess thats what updates are for.

I'm really looking forward to this.

F You Mech Guard!

2010-06-22T18:21:00.003-05:00

This is totally a gimmick army. I wouldn't play this in a regular game, but I would like to take it one time against Tom's Armor company to see if it is decent or not.

HQ
Logan Grimnar, The Great Wolf in Terminator Armor
Belt of Russ, Wolf Tail Talisman, Wolftooth Necklace, Storm Bolter, Axe of Morkai

Rune Priest in Power Armor
Wolftooth Necklace, Bolt Pistol, Runic Weapon, Chooser of the Slain, Jaws of the World Wolf, Living Lightning

Wolf Priest in Power Armor
Fang of Morkai, Wolf Amulet, Wolf Tail Talisman, Wolftooth Necklace, Bolt Pistol, Crozius Arcanum

Elite
Wolf Scout Pack x 7
Bolt Pistol x 6, Meltagun, CCW x 7, Mark of the Wulfen

Troops
Wolf Guard Pack
Arjac Rockfist, The Anvil of Fenris in Terminator Armor
Wolftooth Necklace, Anvil Shield, Foehammer

Wolf Guard in Power Armor x 3
Bolter x 3, Power Fist x 3

Wolf Guard in Terminator Armor
Storm Bolter, Power Weapon, Cyclone Missile Launcher

Grey Hunter Pack x 9
Bolt Pistol x 9, Bolter x 8, Meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen
Rhino, Extra Armor

Grey Hunter Pack x 5
Bolt Pistol x 5, Bolter x 4, Meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen
Razorback, Twin Linked Heavy Bolter, Extra Armor

Grey Hunter Pack x 5

Bolt Pistol x 5, Bolter x 4, Meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen

Razorback, Twin Linked Heavy Bolter, Extra Armor

Grey Hunter Pack x 5

Bolt Pistol x 5, Bolter x 4, Meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen

Razorback, Twin Linked Heavy Bolter, Extra Armor

Heavy Support
Long Fang Pack x 6
Bolt Pistol, CCW x 6, Missile Launcher x 5
Drop Pod

Long Fang Pack x 6
Bolt Pistol, CCW x 6, Multi-Melta x 5
Drop Pod

2000 points on the nose.

So the idea is you have the A-Bomb of the Multi-Melta Long Fangs along with Logan and Arjac dropping in. Logan confers Relentless on the Longfangs so the turn they drop in, they shoot the MMs, splitting fire if they so choose, and Arjac throws his teleporting S10 THammer at one of those two targets as well.

If they survive the return fire, Logan either keeps Relentless on them, so that they can shoot and charge the next turn, or give them Tank Hunter so they have S9 MMs.

If the Guard opponent holds his shit in reserve, I drop the empty pod from the second Long Fang pack on turn one, and wait for Logan to come in on turn 2+.

The PA Wolf Guards get split up between the Scouts and two of the Razorback Grey Hunters. The Termie Wolf Guard goes with the ML Long Fangs so they are throwing 7 missiles each turn. The Rune Priest goes with the Rhino so he can shoot Living or Jaws as hes coming across the board, and the Wolf Priest goes with the other RB, conferring fearless, and preferred enemy to the GHs hes with.

I really only see this army being good against guard. They are the only ones with so much "static" armor. The hope is to have them shoot at Logan and his boys (Logan and Arjac are tough to kill, the MMs are pretty much extra wounds for them) so the rest of the army can get across the board and pound them, or have the enemy shoot at the squishy trasports, and let Logan and his boys go to town in the back field (with the scouts coming in on turn 2+). Hopefully the ML Long Fangs will have a couple of turns to cause some havoc as well.

If I were to tweak this list, I'd probably drop the Wolf Priest and put another Wolf Guard in that last RB squad. This would free up some points to put a Combi-Melta on the Wolf Guard that goes with the scouts, and upgrade the weapons on a couple of the RBs. BUT I'd like to see what the Wolf Priest can do. He seems to be the red-headed step child of the SW HQs.

Like I said earlier, I'd like to try this list out, just to see if its as good as it looks, but it was fun just to put it together.

New Black Templars

2010-06-22T11:22:00.001-05:00

So here are my first attempts at Black Templars. I'm pretty pleased with the Neophyte, but not so much with the Initiate. I still have to do the writing on the Neophytes purity seals, and of course the bases, but other than that they are done.

I went with a khaki color for the robes and the pants and whatnot because I wanted it to look different than the scrolls. I think it came out pretty well.

Issues with BFG.

2010-06-16T11:35:00.002-05:00

So I was wandering around the BoLS site and I keep seeing that ad right up at the top for BFG. Well today I noticed for the first time that they have an online store that is offering 25% off GW prices. So I clicked on the link and wondered around a bit. One of the first things I noticed was a link that said "Darkwynn's Imperial Guard Leafblower" so I checked it out. If you don't know, Darkwynn won the 2009 'Ard Boys and the 2010 Adepticon Gladiator with this list. Its called a leafblower because it is designed to blow your opponent off the board first turn. You can find the actual list for 'Ard Boys here, not sure if it changed for Adepticon.

Anywho, I was at the page with the army sale I thought to myself, "Wow! $750 for an army? That seems like quite a bit!" Then I see that this is supposed to be 25% off retail, and I'm like, "Really!" So I had to be me, and I went to the GW site and plugged in what is listed for the army.

3 x Cadian Command Squads
7 x Chimeras
4 x Cadian Shock Troopers
1 x Cadian Heavy Weapon Squad
3 x Valkyries
2 x Hydras (constructed from 2 x Chimeras and the Aegis Defense Line)
1 x Psyker Battle Squad (constructed from Warhammer Empire Flagellants)

All this for the low low price of $751.50. Now when you go to the GW site and put this stuff in you get a price of $783.00. Now to be honest, this would be for an unassembled and unpainted army, and there were probably lots of bits used to create the Psyker Battle Squad and the Hydras, but I think when you say, "25% off retail, it outta be 25% off retail."

The kicker for me was, the asterisk at the bottom. "Forgeworld Medusas and Manticores from this list are not included." Now I understand that these are expensive Forgeworld models, and if Jason were ordering them it would take 18 months for them to be delivered, but again, I don't think you should say, "Here is your chance to own the army run by Bell of Lost Soul's Darkwynn that won both the 2009 Warhammer 40k 'Ard Boyz Championship and the 2010 Adepticon Gladiator Championship." Because you are NOT going to buy that army. You are going to buy that army less the $200 Forgeworld models.

I know that this isn't false advertising because they say that the tanks aren't included, but it really just rubs me the wrong way.

Oh, and the kicker, how come when you go to the Dwarf section of the BFG store, they have 10 of every-f'in-thing, but when I went to the brick and mortar story they had shit. That just pisses me off.

IG - Roughnecks (4 SCs)

2010-06-16T10:13:00.007-05:00

HQ:

Straken (AKA Colonel Brennen Ironfist) - WS 5/BS 4/ Str 6/ Tough 4/Wounds 3/ I 3/ A 3/ Sv +3(+5)

Fearless and Furious Charge to any unit within 12inches

4 Flamers

2 Body Guards

Chimera - HB/HF

Elites:

8 Ratlin Snipers - BS4 and Stealth

Marbo (AKA Mkoll)- nuff said....

Troops:

Al'rahem (AKA Capt Zek)

4 Flamers

Chimera - HB/HF

3 Ten man squads - Lasguns/Flamer/Sgt with PW

Commissar Drake with PW

Priest with Shotgun/CCW

Harker (AKA Sgt Rock) - Relentless/Catachan Devils/ Payback HB

3 Sniper Rifles

6 Lasguns

1 HB

10 man vet Squad - Shotguns/3 Meltas/Sgt with PW

Chimera - ML/HB

10 man Vet Squad - Shotguns/3 Meltas/Sgt with PW

Chimera - ML/HB

Fast:

Hellhound

3 Scout Sentinals with ACs

5 Rough Riders with Lances and Laspistols

Heavy:

Lemun Russ Demolisher with 3 HBs

Lemun Russ battle Tank with 3 HBs

2000pts.

A lot of Outflanking and Infiltrating going on.

Zek and his whole 37 man unit outflanks. Priest allows the unit to re-roll thier CC hits (Yes, I plan on them charging stuff) Commissar makes them Stubborn.

Sgt Rock gets to sit on objectives and shoot at stuff with a +3 cover save.

The Rough Riders stay with Ironfist, which will give them 10 Str 6/ In 6 hits on the charge with no Armor saves.

Mkoll, well, he's just there to kill stuff (Probably himself with the Demo pack)

The Guant's Ghosts novels have inspired me....

More trailers from E3 2010.

2010-06-15T20:06:00.003-05:00

I'll give that a try!

2010-06-15T17:31:00.006-05:00

My Turn: 2k Space Wolf List

2010-06-13T10:32:00.003-05:00

I think this is what I'll be playing for a while.

HQ
Wolf Lord
Runic Armor, Wolf Tail Talisman, Wolftooth Necklace, Bolt Pistol, Frost Weapon, Saga of the Bear

Rune Priest
Wolftooth Necklace, Bolt Pistol, Runic Weapon, Jaws of the World Wolf, Living Lightning

Rune Priest
Wolftooth Necklace, Bolt Pistol, Runic Weapon, Murderous Hurricane, Living Lightning

Elite
Wolf Guard x4
Bolter x4, PF x4

Wolf Scout x8
Bolt Pistol x 7, Meltagun, CCW x8, Mark of the Wulfen

Troops
Grey Hunter Pack x5
Bolt Pistol x5, Bolter x4, Meltagun, CCW x5, Mark of the Wulfen
Razorback
Extra Armor, Lascannon/TL Plasmagun

Grey Hunter Pack x5

Bolt Pistol x5, Bolter x4, Meltagun, CCW x5, Mark of the Wulfen

Razorback

Extra Armor, Lascannon/TL Plasmagun

Grey Hunter Pack x10

Bolt Pistol x10, Bolter x9, Meltagun, CCW x10, Mark of the Wulfen

Rhino

Extra Armor

Grey Hunter Pack x10

Bolt Pistol x10, Bolter x8, Meltagun, Flamer, CCW x10, Mark of the Wulfen

Heavy Support

Long Fang Pack x6

Bolt Pistol, Missile Launcher x5, CCW x6

Long Fang Pack x6

Bolt Pistol, Missile Launcher x5, CCW x6

Land Raider Crusader

Extra Armor, Multimelta

This comes in at 1997 points. I'm not 100% happy with it, but I do have all the minis for it (not counting the turrest for the Razorbacks, when will someone make a decent turret for the las/plas).

The original list had 2 Rhinos and 2 RBs. The idea was to have the LRC charging forward with the Rhino/RBs moving 6 inches and the RBs shooting the las/plas and the Rune Priests shooting their psychic powers out the top. Now I've got the same idea, but the only one Rhino.

I figure three of the four WGs will go with the GHs and the fourth with go with the scouts.

Scouts pop in on turn 2+ and either pop some armor with the melta/PF or charge someone to tie them up.

I am hoping between the Long Fangs, RBs and MM/AssCan on the LRC I'll have enough anti-armor. I will have an issue with armor 14, but who doesn't?

The rhino-less 10 man GH squad is my "death star" unit. It will put the Wolf Lord and one of the Rune Priests in that unit. So if the LRC delivers them, I'll get 27 S4 attacks, 3-7 S4 rending attacks, 4 S4 force weapon attacks, and 6 S5 power weapon attacks on the charge. Assuming the LRC don't blow up in route.

Any thoughts?

Deff Skullz "Feral" Orks

2010-06-10T09:05:00.004-05:00

HQ:
Warboss (Lhok'ar) Combi-Scorcha/Powerklaw/Bosspole/Cybork/Eavy armor/Attack Sqig

Elite:
12 Commandos with 2 burnas and Stinkrot (I really like the sneaky backstabby Orks)

10 Lootas (Possibilty of 30 Str 7 shots coming from this unit)

Troops:
8 Nobs in Eavy armor with Painboy, Waaagh banner, 2 big Choppas, 2 PKs, 1 BP, and a Combi scorcha (Warboss in this unit) - (WS5, Furious Charge - Str 5 for most, AS 4 and FNP) (Will run behind the boys for a cover save until they get to the enemy.

19 Slugga boys with one big shoota and Nob with PK/BP

19 Slugga boys with one big shoota and Nob with PK/BP

29 Shoota boys with two big shootas and Nob with PK/BP

29 Shoota boys with two big shootas and Nob with PK/BP

Fast:
3 Deffcoptas with rockets

Heavy:
Looted wagon with big booma and Ard' case (Lemun Russ) (Str 8 AP 3 Large blast)

Looted wagon with Big booma and Ard' case (Lemun Russ)

2000pts / 11KPs / 5 scoring units/ 137 models

K.I.S.S. in full Orky effect here. A swarm of 11o screaming Orks running across the board (Waaagh sounded on turn 2 for Fleet of Foot) Lootas and wagons providing long range fire support. Deffcoptas outflanking to pop acouple of vehicles. Kommandos sneaking in from the rear for some back-stabby action. My biggest problem is AV14 vehicles as I don't have much that can even scratch them. Second biggest problem is Template weapons and the Orks crappy armor save.

I don't know how competitive this army will be, but It will sure be fun. I'm actually enjoying painting the models. The blue warpaint on them looks cool and the Orks are so big, they are easy to paint (unlike guardsman) I'm not dipping them, as I've found drybrushing to work really well so far.

All tagged up!

2010-06-07T17:02:00.002-05:00

So I spent the afternoon putting tags (Labels) on all the posts for the blog (all 163 odd posts). If you have a minute, go through your posts and see if I have done an adequate job tagging your posts. If you think it is tagged wrong, feel free to change it, I just ask that you look through all the tags to see if there is one that fits your post before you create a new one. If you feel I have tagged one of your posts incorrectly, I'm sorry, I was doing my best.

Anywho... so yeah, this is day 4 of my vacation...

I LOL'ed

2010-06-03T15:38:00.004-05:00

To all the people I used to work for...

2010-06-01T14:59:00.002-05:00

FYI. NOT WORK/KID FRIENDLY!

Review: Sons of Dorn

2010-05-31T11:17:00.003-05:00

This book by Chris Roberson tells the tale of some Imperial Fists as they go from being "regular" humans through their induction into the Fists, their time as scouts and their eventual elevation to full battle brothers.

This book is interesting because in the book Heroes of the Space Marines which was published a year or so ago, we see the main characters in the short story Gauntlet Run. So this first story falls somewhere in the timeline of the novel, but isn't really discussed.

This wasn't a bad book but I kept having the feeling I'd seen it before. This is a story of "savages" taken by the sky warriors to become space marines. I was thinking, "I saw this in Space Wolf." They even have the plot device of Zatori hating du Quest because du Quest killed Zatori's master before both were taking up by the space marines. This is just like Ragnar hating Strybjorn in Space Wolf, but this is even better because in Sons of Dorn, you also have Taloc hating Zatori because Zatori killed Taloc's father! Its a hate three-way! So I'm sure that like Space Wolf, the three will finally come to an understanding that all of that drama was in their old lives, and their bond as battle brothers is stronger than past transgressions.

Nope.

There is lots of "Zatori couldn't wait for the moment when it would fulfill his blood oath and kill the dog du Queste," but nothing ever comes of it. I was waiting for a paragraph at the end of the book saying they were all happy with each other now, but nada.

Another complaint I have had with a lot of the Black Library authors is their verbosity and loquaciousness (I had to look both of those words up). As Calvin put it, "these guys need to understand they are writing pulp fiction." But I fear that with Graham McNeill getting on the NY Times best seller list we'll see more of this. To give you an example of what I'm talking about, this is the first sentence of the book.

"In the exercise hall deep in the heart of the Imperial Fist strike cruiser Capulus, Captain Taelos swun his blade through the air in a two-handed grip, eyes closed and thoughts racing."

I think these guys are trying too hard. One of the best opening sentences in my opinion comes from The Gunslinger by Stephen King, "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." Short, to the point and thats enough. Some of the other gems from Sons of Dorn are as follows.

"Ever since he'd been a mere neophyte, to perform the sword-forms had been for Taelos a meditative act, one which in even the most stressful and demanding of circumstances helped him order his thoughts and centre himself, pushing away distractions and focusing on the essential matter at hand."

"In the near distance, just north along the ocean's shore, rose a huge structure of some kind, and thought they could see little of its detail, they could clearly see the bright lights which twinkled merrily on towers and steeples, and the brilliantly bright yellow flames that danced atop the tallest spires."

Each one of those is just one sentence each! All in all the book isn't terrible, but I just couldn't get away from the overly wordy sentences, the contrived division between the tree initiates and the total ass-hatitude of Imperial Fist Captain Lysander. I mean, that dude is a douchebag. I can't believe he wasn't exiled for the shit he pulled in this book. If I were the chapter master I'd be pretty pissed at the resources he had thrown away.

Anywho, I give it two slightly unsettling (as if yearning to be more than their humble beginnings as an arbitrary classifier to mediocre science fiction) stars out of five.

Get your Drink on!

2010-05-28T09:29:00.002-05:00

I know Calvin & Jason play Warhammer online so they may have seen this, but I thought the rest of you might like it seeing as everyone is on the WHFB kick.

I mean if you've got $300 bucks to spend before May 31st, there are worse things to buy. Check it out here.

New vs Old

2010-05-27T20:27:00.006-05:00

Heres the new Lemun Russ model that I assembled and painted for display at Wonko's. It's sitting next to the "now" old style Lemun Russ. I like it. The turret is longer and not as blocky and weapon swaps are easy.

Wulfen anyone?

2010-05-24T10:52:00.003-05:00

So the Mark of the Wulfen upgrade that I can put in one of my Grey Hunters, Blood Claws or Wolf Guard Units. The dude in the unit that has the mark replaces the number of attacks he normally has with D6+1 attacks with rending. If someone has a special weapon (fist, claws etc.) the special rules for the weapon are not used. This is still frigging awesome. I have charged a sole survivor with the mark into a full squad of Tau fire warriors and wiped them out.

For the modeling side of this, I wanted to get a box of the 13th Company Wulfen from the old 3rd ed mini-dex Eye of Terror. These minis are pretty cool and show the fluff of the model. It says that the marked Space Wolf has shunned the use of any close combat weapons and is clawing at his opponent.

The problem is that these minis are OOP and go for a mint on eBay. I believe the original box went for $35, and I have no problem spending $7 on a mini as most metal minis are $15+ on the GW site. On ebay you are lucky to get the box for $70.

So I was cruising the interwebs and I found these bits from Maxmini as I was reading the Hogs of War blog. I'm not 100% on these, but 6 heads for $10 beats 5 dudes for $70.

I may have to pick some up.

Updates! Crimson Templars

2010-05-23T19:25:00.002-05:00

So my first batch of shipments from eBay and GW are in and here are the fruits of my labors. I have created a Crusader squad of Black Templars. I have added a Chaplin to lead them, and

The next thing I really like about this squad is the neophytes. I got some Warriors of Chaos helmeted heads from WHFB and cut the horns off. I also did a bit of surgery so they are all sporting chain swords. I got an old-school Castellan mini off of eBay for about $3, but hes in pretty bad shape, I'm not sure if I'll use him.

Sticking with the Imperial Fists successors, my next squad is a pretty vanilla Crimson Fists squad. I mainly got these ones so I could paint up Pedro Kantor. I think his mini is one of the best Space Marine Minis out there.

Along with these guys I bought the Crimson Fists accessory packs, so that I would have the raised shoulder pads. Everyone in the squad has one.

I just got my next check for proctoring the SAT, so I have another order to GW for my next squads.

Well thats what I've been up to, how about everyone else?

I am going to BoLScon

2010-05-21T17:42:00.002-05:00

So I was thinking I was going to skip BoLScon this year. At first it was because of the seven 2000 point games. I am just too old and too fat and too crappy at 40k to spend so much time over one weekend standing around. Another thing is that with the 40k tourney I didn't get to see anything else going on, there were Space Hulk demonstrations going on last year that I really would have liked to have sat in on. So the tournament was right out for me.

Then they opened up the team tournament on Friday. Tamara and I were going to go and each bring 1000 points and throw down and get our asses beat. But that was gonna be a bit pricey. It would have been $30 each for weekend registration, and then $25 each for the tournament. I was planning on going down on Saturday and Sunday to watch games, find pick-up games and play in any demonstrations, but Tamara probably would not have come down, so we were paying $30 for her to get in for one day.

So the other day BoLS posts that Dave Taylor will be doing classes at BoLScon for green stuff and what not. If you don't know who Dave Taylor is, he used to be a GW employee, but has since moved on. He currently is a bad ass converter. Check out some of his conversions.

Anywho, I am going to be signing up for this shortly, and I thought it would be cool if some of you guys came along as well. I know that just about everyone has done some conversion work on minis from time to time.

Spearhead?

2010-05-19T20:41:00.004-05:00

Would anyone else besides me want to play it? Or should I not bother with it?

Summary of rumors:

Spearhead, and how you play it!

Basically at least, I'm not giving any detail (because I can't, I was just given a short overview)

1st: Pick your Army.

You all know the basic FoC? Can draw it while sleeping? Good. Spearhead uses the same FoC - with two major changes. The first: No minimums. You don't have to field a HQ. You don't need Core Units. The Second: There are apocalypse-datasheet-like Units. You may field as many of those as you want, though you may not duplicate any of them.
So, your army will consist of: 0 - 2 HQ, 0 - 3 Elites, 0-6 Core, 0-3 Fast attack, 0-3 Heavy support, and 0+ "Big Spearhead Units". Appearantly, if you are having a 2000 points battle, you would have to field something. Just pick your choice.

So: You don't need to field anything with a AV at all. It's just that anything with a AV will get some huge boosts.

2nd: Deployment.

Both armys are deployed at the narrow board edges. Ah, Meltaguns for infantry only work like, 12 inches? To bad. It's your fault showing up with infantry for a tank battle. Forward, for the emperor, CHARGE!! (Though, not to far forward, remember, they got meltaguns...)

3rd: Scoring units: In addition to core units, any vehicle or walker and all Spearhead-battlehosts score. Even if immobilized, stunned or shaken and/or stripped of all weapons.

in addition to this;
- spearhead units are either groups of 3 tanks (no more no less) OR groups of 1 superheavy
- the spearhead formations gain different USRs depending on their role; ie: tankhunters for pred annihilators, scout for some fast vehicles, etc
- works similar to apoc formations, with a small points cost for the spearhead formation
- pretty sure superheavies don't get USRs

Tank Hunter Squadron - Up to three Tanks. Gains the Tank Hunter special rule.
Skyfall Squadron. - Up to three Skimmers. Gains the ability to Deepstrike. On the turn the squadron deepstrikes into play, shooting attacks from the unit gains Pinning, and always hit the side armour of vehicles.
Superheavy Squadron - One Superheavy. Can be either FW or Apoc. If deployed on the table (instead of being put into reserve), it suffers an automatic penetrating hit, representing it attracting fire from the defenders.
Archeotech Squadron - Up to three Walkers. Weapons gain +1S with potential drawbacks.
Ambush Squadron - Up to three Walkers. Gains Infiltrate and Stealth, but must be deployed on the table (i.e. cannot be outflanked).
Monstrous Creature Squadron - Up to six Monstrous Creatures. Gains Rage, Furious Charge, Fleet and Counter-attack.

New spearhead rules are in WD366.

pretty much all of the issue is devoted to 40K with spearhead in mind. Lots on IG vehicles, and eldar, with a full bat rep between the 2.

Deployment rules and setup rules are in there as well as how spearhead works.

Deployment will be 100% different, and different again to apoc. This is new.

Objective based missions.

Objective taking is different, and the number and type of objectives is new. Better than apoc.

Can easily be moulded to fit apoc.

You don't actually need tanks to play But they will help.

I Have an Author-Man-Crush

2010-05-17T11:28:00.006-05:00

So I think Black Library has a new king and his name is Aaron Dembski-Bowden. I thought he did a excellent job in his first book Cadian Blood which I have already reviewed. I have just finished reading two of his most recent books Helsreach and Soul Hunter.

I fell both books are do a very good job of bringing me what i want in a BL book. A good friggin story and nothing else.

Now I consider myself a big Dan Abnett fanboy, but he seems to be getting into the Tom Clancy habit of having a mission sub-plots in each story. So many that some of them don't seem to have anything to do with the main plot, and so many characters its hard to keep track of everything. This was certainly the case in Abnett's book Titanicus.

Dembski-Bowden's first book had nothing like that. It had just a few characters that you followed and got involved with and made things simple to follow for a simple dude like me.

Soul Hunter is the best example of this. I am very surprised I actually liked this book. It is the story of 1st Claw, 10th Company of the Night Hunters. I usually don't go in for "bad guy" books, but Talos, the main character in the book does a good job of making me give a crap. He's not evil, and in fact he abhors how some of his legion embarased the ruinous powers.

In this book, we see the Night Hunters as a struggling legion. Individual space marines will fight to the death over a piece of wargear from a slain enemy, or ally.

Helsreach is another of the in the Space Marines Battles Novel. I was a little wary reading this one after Rynn's World because I was thinking, "Oh look! Another SM book, and they are fighting... orks... again." But this book is very different from Rynn's World. That book is about Pedro Kantor's struggle to get to New Rynn City to link up with the remnants of his Chapter. Helsreach is the story of Grimaldus, the newly promoted Relcusiarch of the Black Templars. The story of his struggle to feel worthy of his new position.

Helsreach does get a bit Abnett-esque in the amount of characters introduced, but he does a keep it together, and it is no where near Titanicus.

All in all both are excellent book certainly worth reading. I give both books 4 Ibram Gaunt's out of 5.

New terrain...

2010-05-14T19:22:00.004-05:00

New terrain I've finished...

Tanks....

2010-05-14T19:18:00.004-05:00

Here's the vehicles I've finished so far.....

Next Project

2010-05-10T20:21:00.006-05:00

So now that I'm dong painting Dorfs for a bit (I still have a full block of miners and 10 or so Slayers to paint up) I am itching to get back to painting 40k. I was hoping to start a new army but some Indian-seller (joking joking) foiled my plans, and there really isn't an army I'd like to start right now. I wouldn't mind doing Sisters, but I don't want all that metal. It sounds like Grey Knights might be the next ones redone, so maybe when they come out.

Until then I think what I want to do for pure hobby satisfaction is to do some squads of different space marines chapters (I'm a 3+ armor save fan boy!). I've been proctoring the ACT and SAT to finance this little extravagance, and the first order was just placed.

First up is the Black Templars and Crimson Fists (Oddly enough I have no desire to do their founding chapter). From the bits John gave me and some I've ordered off ebay I am going to do a squad of 5 neophytes and 5 initiates with a chaplain leading them. Best thing about this is I get to use one of the Chaplain minis I've always wanted to do, but couldn't really fit into my Space Wolf Army.

I've also ordered some bits to do my Crimson Fists squad. I am going to throw Pedro Kantor into this squad mainly because I love the mini. I am buying some of the bits packs from GW to CF-up the minis.

I am pretty sure I have my next order lined up. I think I'm gunna need some bodies and legs for my CFs, so I'll be ordering a Tac Squad, but the major purchase is an Iron Hands Squad. With this squad I want to try to convert a Tech Marine into an Iron Father, and so Agument-up a Terminator to act as a squad leader.

Eventually I'd like to do a Dark Angels squad as well. I think I'll probably give them a Librarian so that I can use some of the cool Librarian models as well. I've got another SAT to proctor on the 5th of June, so that's where that cash will come from.

Anywho, what do you guys think? Anyone working on anything?

Review: Thunder From Fenris

2010-05-09T18:45:00.004-05:00

So the Black Library has been doing audio books for a little while now. One of the first ones they did was a Space Wolf book by Nick Kyme called Thunder From Fenris. I have been wanted to get it for some time now but I haven't been able to find it at Barnes and Noble or Borders. I finally got it off of eBay for a bit under "cover price".

I have never listened to a book on "tape" before, so I really didn't know what to expect. The guy the got to read it, Toby Longworth, did a pretty good job. There are three main characters and Toby did a pretty good job of making them all sound different (even though one of them sounded remarkably like a republican governor from California). I also enjoyed the sound effects. There were bolters and lasguns and howling wolves and the sound of a power axe going into a zombie brain; all were very interesting to listen to.

The story itself was pretty good. It is the tail of 5 Thunderwolf Cavalry. They come upon the remains of one of the own, torn apart as if by beasts claws. Worse yet, another of their brothers is missing, and what the fear for him is worse then death. So begins a chase across a world ravaged by Nurgle, where the dead don't stay dead for long.

The story took 75 minutes to tell which I think puts it at a bit longer than the short stories that the BL puts out, but no where near the length of one of their novels. And while the sound effects were kinda nifty, I'd rather have have a book in my hands. Plus the fact that these audio books cost about $20 for 75 minutes. To me thats just too much.

For the story, I give this a 3 out of 5, for the fact that it was a $20, 75 minute audio book, I give it a 1 out of 5. I don't think I'll be paying the money to get another one of these.

Not to be a D-Bag...

2010-05-06T13:54:00.002-05:00

I know it's been a long time since the Eldar got any love, but I don't think I like the new Fire Prism model coming out in June.

Now I have seen the current Fire Prism with its off-ballance metal turret that causes the model to fall over if you look at it wrong, and I think it could use an update, but for some reason, I don't like the look of the new one.

Maybe its just the lenght of the weapon part. i guess it could look ok If you could end the weapon right after the "big" prism.

And while I'm being a bit of a D-bag, I guess I can point out that I don't like the Night Spinner at all.

To me, the turret looks way to bulky. I think the Falcon/Serpent/Prism body looks so cool and sleek, and then they F it up with these bulky, ungainly turrets on them and just (in my opinion) destroy the speedy look of the model.

It just kinda blows to see what should be a really cool model look bad.

Done and done!

2010-05-01T21:28:00.003-05:00

Actually finished it Friday. I still have to do the edges of the bases and the movement trays, but close enough for government work. More pictures sometime.

I think I'll be taking a break before I start painting again. Probably until school is done.

Dual bases for Daemons of Chaos

2010-04-28T23:06:00.005-05:00

Click to Enlarge

So, I didn't realize until I had already decided to give it a go with Daemons of Chaos, that they were the exact same models for Fantasy as for 40k.. That's pretty cool (and extremely surprising considering GW isn't known for letting you do that.. )

Really the only issue is that fantasy uses square bases, and 40k uses round bases. That issue can be complicated further by the fact that 40k bases are one inch in diameter, and fantasy bases are typically 20mm or 25mm square.. So, if you want to use the same models in both games (as opposed to buying the same models twice.. ) then you have to get clever about your bases..
I solved it this way;

1. I got some washers that are smaller around than both the 40k bases and the fantasy bases you’re going to use. With the Daemonettes I was in luck, they use 25mm bases so I could get a slightly larger washer than if I was stuck with 20mm bases. Also make sure the washers have as small a center hole as possible. The washers I’m using are 7/8 (0.87″) with a 7/32 (0.20″) inner hole, got them at Lowes for $3 or $4 for a hand full..
2. I then assembled the model as I wanted it and glued it to the top of one of the washers — trying very hard not to foul the hole in the washer.
3. I then drilled 4 itty bitty holes in the base and stuck in some of the tiny magnets I have. I mean it these things are small.. 0.05″ is small man.. 4 of them hold the washer down nicely, and are small enough to not cause clustering.. (Where a bunch of magnets jump to one another.. ) Drill all the way through the base with a drill bit slightly smaller than the magnet, and then enlarge it a bit by in and out movements.. This is a tiny hobby drill bit.. Once that’s done, I glued the magnets in from the underside so they wont go anywhere.
4. I then got a dowel from Walmarts hobby area that was the exact fit for the washers.. You can get a bag of like 20 of them for $0.89.. I drilled a whole in the direct center of the base and pushed the dowel through.. I had to be very careful not to split the base.. And I made sure to push the down through the hole a bit so that it touches the table the same time the edges of the base does. It helps with gluing later.
5. I then took the thinnest washer I had ( they are varying thicknesses for some odd reason ) and slid it down the dowel until to stuck to the magnets.. Put the dowel in a vice, and used a coping saw to cut the dowel at the washer. Once that was done I applied glue to the underside, again ensuring that nothing goes anywhere.
6. And that’s it.. Paint and flock it up.. When you flock the square base you want to make sure that you use an extra washer because it gets kinda nasty.. And when it dries you might have to do some minor surgery to get that washer off.. I had to carefully Xacto around the edges to free it from its flocky jail..
Click the image to see the results.. it works out nicely.. The 40k round bases snaps up in there and only requires a touch of flocking on the top of the dowel.. the fantasy base you see snaps down nicely too almost 100% hiding the washer..

So I had this brilliant idea. Talk about it on the blog...

2010-04-26T21:47:00.005-05:00

More reliable rumours

[*]Army construction is moving back to percentages.
[*]Strength in Depth/ Stepping up (models may fight in 2 ranks)
[*]Crush attack for larger creatures
[*]40mm models moving to 3 model-wide ranks.
[*]Multiple objective driven scenarios in the rulebook
[*]All non-english rulebooks are moving to inches.
[*]Power dice aren’t generated by the number of spellcasters. The pool is decided by 2D6. Magic users add their magic level to the score rolled. All Wizards have a chance to generate more power dice.
[*]All missile units fire in two ranks (not just High Elves). Missile units will not gain a rank when shooting from hills.
[*]Autobreaking from fear or terror is gone.
[*]Combats are strictly decided in initiative order.

Warhammer 8th Ed Rulebook to be released July 10th
500+ pages (probably 528)
Possibly going to get the pdf erratas for all armies on July 6th

There will be a "General's" Edition as well as a "Gunner's" Edition: Both are the basic rulebook along with multiple different gimmicks, as golden templates, dice, angulometer, combat-resolution-calculator, markers and more. "General's Edition" is supported with a white linnen bag with two silver coins attached to it, so if you fall in battle, they may put them on your eyes...

Other rumours (and description of above)

These are all listed in no particular order.

ARMY SELECTION

[*]Army construction is moving back to percentages.
This is looking more like 25% max characters, 25% min core, 25% max special and 25% max rare (anonymous source, but trustworthy ) The 25% characters includes mounts.

Edit. Just as I thought this part was looking certain, there have been some rumours/ sources saying 25% max characters, 25% min core, 50% max special and 15% max rare. I will edit one out as it become clear.

[*]Categories for core/special/rare are remaining.
[*]There *may* be something to prevent spamming...
[*]There will be a system wide errata to clear up issues for each army.

MAGIC

NOTE: The magic rumours nobody seems to agree on, so rather than try and find what exactly the truth is I will just put here most of the theories

Edit: I've sorted out the ones that seem more likely, based on the info from an anonymous (trustworthy) source:

[*]Power dice aren’t generated by the number of spellcasters. The pool is decided by 2D6. Magic users add their magic level to the score rolled. All Wizards have a chance to generate more power dice. - Avian
(edit: This could be 1 PD for lvl 1/2 and 2 PD for lvl 3/4).
Example: 2D6 roll gives you 3 and 6. You have 1 level 2 and 1 level 4. Power dice =9+1+2 = 12

[*]Giving irresistible force a downside
[*]Double 6 = a miscast
[*]Making miscasts much more devastating.
[*]Something rumoured is carrying over power dice, but holding too many could lead to a ‘magic backlash’. Wizard will recieve wounds or hits if he didn't use the excess power-dice (than originally allocated) at end of the turn.
[*]All the book Lores will have more supportive spells than they have now, and will all be getting a major overhaul. Each lore to get a mega spell.
[*]Spells can be chosen, not rolled for.

And the other rumours:

[*]There's no limit to the number of dice used to cast a spell, by any level of caster.
[*]If a wizard fails to cast (not counting dispels) twice in a row he miscasts
[*]Dispel scroll only adding dispel dice (+2 dice to the dispel dice pool once per game). (edit - possibly speculation)
[*]Dispel attempts to be made by specific wizards (presumable your casting level is beneficial for dispelling spells)
[*]A higher chance of miscast with multiple casters.
[*]If a wizard fail to cast a spell he can't cast other spells in the same phase.

COMBAT

NOTE: Trying to nail down what the facts are here is very hard. Some of this is only my understanding of what has been discussed.

Fighting in 2 ranks

[*]Units fight in 2 ranks all the time, with their full quota of attacks, and with any special rules they have.
[*]Spears may be +1 rank as normal.
[*]Spearelves may fight with an additional rank as normal (citzen levy).
[*]Cavalry still only fight in 1 rank.
[*]This is the same regardless of which side they are attacked on.

Stepping up. – Harry/ Avian / other people

[*]Casualties are strictly removed from the back.
Horde - Still no closer to nailing this one down

Fight in 3 ranks if 10+ wide (4 with spears). - Avian.
OR
Some benefit to fighting in large units, may automatically become stubborn beyond a certain unit size. – Harry - (edit) seemingly confirmed from another source).

Another edit: Seems this Horde rule may work like this:
If the unit is 10+ wide and 5 ranks deep (50+ models) the front 2 ranks may all fight, regardless of whether they are in base contact.

[*]Now it would explain how people have got up to 5 ranks in combat (2 front, Spears = 3, Citizen levy = 4, Horde = 5). At this stage just another rumour, but a little closer perhaps to the truth.

Rank bonuses

[*]Unchanged apparently.
One Save to ruin them all!

[*]Models will only ever get one save (be it ward, mundane or magical armour). No word yet on whether regeneration is included. From Alessio himself!
40mm models

[*]40mm models moving to 3 model-wide ranks. Ogre sized models are officially being put into their own size category (finally).
Crush them!

[*]Additional stomp/crush attacks for big infantry (ogres, trolls, etc) to represent them trampling lesser races underfoot. Bigger bonus for large creatures like giants. These are not impact hits. (edit: these could be overrun hits)
Armour Save Modifiers

[*]Fewer armour save modifiers
Striking in Initiative order

[*]Combat will always strictly be resolved in initiative order (confirmed). Chargers do not get a bonus apparently
Chariots

[*]S7 autokill is gone. (edit: possibly not speculation)

MOVEMENT

Standard Movement

[*]Measure the distance for the furthest moving model, and perform whatever manoeuvres you wish within that lax limitation (i.e. they all move like fast cav currently do, minus the reform). Command models will have some role to play in giving free manoeuvre as you move (Musician bonus similar to Ancient Battles?).
Charging.

[*]An added 'bonus' of getting an 'extra' +D6 or +D3 inches of movement to your Movement range (presumably the D6 or D3 decided by the category of warrior; infantry/cavalry/ogre sized).
Edit; rumoured to be:

Movement equal to or less than 6 (and not flying):
-> Basic M value + D6

Movement equal to or more than 7 (and not flying):
-> Basic M value + 2D6
Heavy cavalry

[*]- Heavy cavalry, defined as any cavalry with a 2+ or better save, cannot march. They can double their move when charging as normal, but they are not allowed to make a March move.
- "Medium and Fast cavalry remain the same".

SHOOTING

Armour Save Modifiers

[*]As it happens to be the same rumour; fewer armour save modifiers.
Fire in 2 ranks as standard.

[*]Missile units fire in two ranks (not just High Elves). - Harry & someone else. Missile units will not gain a rank when shooting from hills.

PSYCHOLOGY and SPECIAL RULES

Fear and Terror

[*]This may be

Fear +1 to Combat resolution
Terror +2 to Combat resolution

[*]Autobreaking from fear or terror is gone.
[*]Leadership tests against fear is rumoured to be going
[*]Fear and Terror incorporate immune to panic (with possibly a change to crumbling for undead).

Killing Blow

[*]Killing blow only against models in a similar size category or lower (large creature>ogre sized> infantry/cavalry sized) (edit: apparently this is close, but not quite right)
Always Strike First

[*]Models with great weapons will always strike last, regardless of ASF. There is supposedly a change to the ASF rule to compensate HE a bit, not sure what yet.

OTHER RULEBOOK CONTENTS

[*]Multiple objective driven scenarios in the rulebook (no kill points). See GW grand tournament and doubles scenarios.

[*]15 or so missions in the new rulebook. 9 or 10 of the missions required Core units to capture objectives. Units must have banners to capture objectives. Several missions had multiple objectives

[*]Victory Conditions
Interestingly something I picked up from a post was that ‘victory conditions’ have been referred to in the last 3 books, not victory points.

[*]A section in the rulebook dealing with specific issues that may arise during battles

Terrain

[*]Difficult terrain may be merged with very difficult and encompass more things (presumably more than just affecting movement).
[*]D6+4 cumpulsory terrain.
[*]Terrain will not affect the movement phase so much but will affect fleeing units, like in the War of the Ring game.
[*]Bonuses and hazards for terrain (such as rolling the dice to see how many people don’t make it out of the wood...).

And then there were 5...

2010-04-24T16:13:00.004-05:00

Done with the last block... So what I got left, is the general, two, shield bearers, the BSB and the last engineer.

I'll try to add some pictures later.

7 Days left.

Dashing through the snow...

2010-04-21T19:46:00.002-05:00

What fun it is to laugh and sing a slaying song tonight!

Get it?! Slaying? Druchii-humor. Good stuff.

Time to Cowboy Up!

2010-04-18T13:38:00.004-05:00

Well I finally did it. I finished my 10 warriors. It only took me a couple hours, and was no big deal. I think they look pretty good. I don't have any pics because Tamara is off to Brazil this week for Dell.

I figure that this week I'll finish the last 10 warriors. With Tamara gone, I'll probably have a bit on my time on my hands. I think I'm getting jazzed up to finish the Dwarfs (or at least jazzed up to be on to something different).

After that I'll only have the General, shieldberers, BSB and the last Engineer.

In totally unrelated news, I went to BFG on Saturday, and they had a WHFB tourny going on. I counted 1 Wood Elf, 1 High Elf, 1 Dwarf, 1 Warriors of Chaos, 1 Vampier, and 5 Skaven armies (Including at least 8 HPA's).

I also placed an order for Honoured Imperium, I just think it looks cool.

Anywho, I am done feeling sorry for myself, decided to just get over it, stop pouting and get to work.

FAIL!

2010-04-11T14:57:00.004-05:00

So I didn't make my goal this week. I didn't quite finish up my 10 warriors. I'm close, but I still have to do their bases, do a black wash, and then paint in the horns of their helmets.

I think I'm getting a bit burned out of painting the dwarfs. I didn't do any painting Monday or Tuesday, then went out to play D&D with some guys from work on Wednesday. But I think the main reason I wasn't able to finish my Dwarfs this week was the fact that the site looks like ass. :)

Seriously though, I'm sure I could finish this evening, but I just don't feel like it. I think I'm going to finish them up tomorrow, then take next week off from painting. That'll give me 2 weeks to finish my last 10 warriors, my General, Shieldbarers, BSB and my last Engineer which I think is plenty of time.

Anywho, I'm off in a bit to go play 40k so that'll probably put me in a better mood.

You asked for it...

2010-04-08T20:57:00.006-05:00

You ridiculed me about it. You taunted me with the lack of it. So here it is, at your request... The Slann....

All my friends...

2010-04-08T18:40:00.011-05:00

Know the Dark Rider.

Dark Rider is a little higher.
Dark Rider rides a little slower
Dark Rider is a real goer.

So anyway, tried the dip method in an attempt to make the horse a passable black without being completely devoid of detail. I didn't like the way it came out, but with some overpainting I was able to make it something I kinda dig. Opinions?

Sly Marbo move over..

2010-04-07T22:08:00.004-05:00

The next Warhammer Army will be unstoppable.

Sure it's just one model, but with several hundred fists. And an entire army book full of special rules.

Anyone else think power creep is getting out of hand NOW?

The new Lizard list..

2010-04-05T16:21:00.005-05:00

Slann Mage-Priest : Lord - General - Battle Standard Bearer
Power Stone - Once per battle, adds 2 dice to a casting roll.
Power Stone - Once per battle, adds 2 dice to a casting roll.
Cupped Hands of the Old One - One use only; If the bearer miscasts an enemy wizard within line of sight will suffer the effects (ignoring 5-6) on a 2+.
The Focused Rumination - The Mage-Priest adds one "free" power die to each spell cast
Focus of Mystery - The Mage-Priest knows every spell from one lore
Sun Standard of Chotec - Missiles fired at the unit suffer -1 to hit, -2 if fired within 12"

Saurus Scar-Veteran: Hero
Hand Weapon; Light Armour; Scaly Skin
Burning Blade of Chotec - Extra -2 to armor saves. All attacks count as Flaming.
Maiming Shield - + 6 armor save, +1 Attack (total of 5)
Old One - Causes Fear; Stupid

Skink Priest: Hero - Level 2
Channeling: Slann Mage Priests may use a skink as the origin of magic missile spells. The spell is cast as if the Slaan is where the Skink Priest is, but miscasts affect the Slaan normally.; Hand Weapon; Aquatic
Dispel Scroll - Once per battle, automatically dispels an enemy spell
Dispel Scroll - Once per battle, automatically dispels an enemy spell
Ancient Stegadon: D6+1 Impact Hits. Jungle Poisons; 5 Skink Crew (4 if ridden by character); Engine of the Gods: If the Skink Priest is alive, he may use the engine (Lizardman army book p55): The Arcane Configuration, The Burning Alignment, The Portent of Warding.; Causes Terror; Immune to Psychology; Large Target; Scaly Skin; Stubborn

Saurus Warriors: Core (15)
Musician, Standard Bearer, Hand Weapon; Spear; Shield; Scaly Skin

Saurus Warriors: Core (15)
Musician, Standard Bearer, Hand Weapon; Spear; Shield; Scaly Skin

Skink Skirmishers: Core (10)
Hand Weapon; Blowpipe; Aquatic; Skirmishers

Skink Skirmishers: Core (10)
Hand Weapon; Blowpipe; Aquatic; Skirmishers

Chameleon Skinks: Special (6)
Enemies are at -1 to hit when shooting this unit. When deploying as Scouts, you may observe no minimum distance between this unit and the enemy, or place them in the open but more than 12" away.; Hand Weapon; Blowpipe; Aquatic; Scouts; Skirmishers

Temple Guard: Special (20)
Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std; Hand Weapon; Halberd; Light Armour; Shield; Scaly Skin
Revered Guardian
War Banner - +1 Combat Resolution
Sacred Duty: If a Slann is present, he must join the Temple Guard unit and cannot leave. While he is in the unit, the unit is Stubborn

Cold One Cavalry (5)
Musician ; Hand Weapon; Spear; Shield; Causes Fear; Scaly Skin
Stupid

Total Cost: 2248

Roster Statistics
Casting Dice: 9
Dispel Dice: 6
General's Ld: 9
# Models: 89

2010-04-04T22:48:00.004-05:00

Okay so this weekend I created my warlord on a stick.. er.. on a war-litter.. All in all I think it came out nicely.. I used bitz and pieces from all over the place and gave it a rather slapdash paint job. As with my other paint jobs I will dip this one and it will bring out the details.. or if nothing else, hide the mess..

Here's the pre-dip picture.. I'll put the post dip picture up here in a day or two when I actually have the dip done..

Crewed Dilemma

2010-04-04T09:27:00.003-05:00

So here is my first bolt thrower with crew.

And heres my second

The bolt thrower kit is a pretty nice metal kit, but as you may be able to tell, the minis are exactly the same. I tried to make them look different, but I'm not sure if they look too much alike.

So what I did is I bought some previous edition Dwarf war machine crew and painted them up. But I'm not sure I like them either. To me they look a bit like lawn gnomes especially with the pointed boots.

Review: A Thousand Sons

2010-04-02T20:59:00.005-05:00

Page 1: Blah blah blah...
Page 472: The Wolves Attack.
Page 556: The End.

I think Graham McNeill has the same problem that Dan Abnett has developed. They're both really friggin wordy. I know that this book and and Prospero Burns are supposed to go together, and I'm hoping that PB will deal a bit more with the actual combat, but after 470+ pages, I was hoping that there would be a bit more combat in the book.

Again, just like Abnett, there were a lot of sub plots that were just there...

Blah. 3 out of 5.

Dark Riders Kitbashed and Primed

2010-04-01T15:09:00.003-05:00

I think they came out pretty good.

2250 Pts - Dark Elves - Ghrond's Chill Embrace

2010-03-31T22:54:00.010-05:00

The latest and greatest Druchii List. Comments welcome (Not that I plan on taking advice from a bunch of humans and mutant slaves)

High Sorceress
1 Supreme Sorceress (Druchii Sorcery; General; Level 4 Upgrade; Hand Weapon; Eternal Hatred)
1 Cold One (Thick-skinned; Causes Fear; Stupid)
1 Black Staff
1 Pendant of Khaeleth
1 1. Dark Hand of Death
1 2. Steal Soul
1 3. Wind of Death
1 4. Walking Death
1 5. Doom and Darkness!
1 6. Drain Life
1 0. Power of Darkness

Sorceress
1 Sorceress
(Druchii Sorcery; Level 2 Upgrade; Hand Weapon; Eternal Hatred)
1 Dispel Scroll
1 Darkstar Cloak
1 0. Power of Darkness
1 1. Chillwind
1 2. Doombolt
1 3. Word of Pain
1 4. Blade Wind
1 5. Soul Stealer
1 6. Black Horror

Sorceress
1 Sorceress
(Druchii Sorcery; Level 2 Upgrade; Hand Weapon; Eternal Hatred)
1 Sacrificial Dagger
1 0. Power of Darkness
1 1. Chillwind
1 2. Doombolt
1 3. Word of Pain
1 4. Blade Wind
1 5. Soul Stealer
1 6. Black Horror

Noble
1 Master (Battle Standard Bearer)
(Hand Weapon; Great Weapon; Sea Dragon Cloak; Battle Standard Bearer; Eternal Hatred)
1 Armor of Eternal Servitude

Assassin
1 Assassin
(A Killer Not a Leader; Always Strike First; Hidden; Khainite; Hand Weapon; Extra Hand Weapon; Eternal Hatred; Poisoned Attacks; Scouts)
1 Black Lotus
1 Rune of Khaine
1 Touch of Death

Black Guard
17 Black Guard
(Warrior Elite; Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std; Halberd; Heavy Armour; Eternal Hatred; Immune to Psychology; Stubborn)
1 Tower Master (Warrior Elite; Halberd; Heavy Armour; Eternal Hatred; Immune to Psychology)
1 Ring of Hotek
1 Banner of Hag Graef (Always Strike First)

Dark Riders
5 Dark Riders
(Musician Mus; Hand Weapon; Repeater Crossbow; Spear; Light Armour; Eternal Hatred; Fast Cavalry)
5 Dark Steed

Repeater Crossbowmen
10 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen
(Musician Mus; Hand Weapon; Repeater Crossbow; Light Armour; Eternal Hatred)

Repeater Crossbowmen (10#, 105 pts)
10 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen
(Musician Mus; Hand Weapon; Repeater Crossbow; Light Armour; Eternal Hatred)

Cold One Knights
4 Cold One Knights
(Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std; Hand Weapon; Lance; Heavy Armour; Shield; Eternal Hatred)
1 Dread Knight (Hand Weapon; Lance; Heavy Armour; Shield; Eternal Hatred)
5 Cold One (Thick-skinned; Causes Fear; Stupid)

Reaper
1 Reaper Bolt Thrower
(War Machine; Eternal Hatred; Repeater Bolt Thrower)
2 Crew (Hand Weapon; Light Armour; Eternal Hatred)

Reaper
1 Reaper Bolt Thrower
(War Machine; Eternal Hatred; Repeater Bolt Thrower)
2 Crew (Hand Weapon; Light Armour; Eternal Hatred)

War Hydra
1 War Hydra
(Fiery Breath; Monsters and Handlers; Causes Terror; Eternal Hatred; Large Target; Regenerate; Scaly Skin)
2 Beastmaster (Hand Weapon; Eternal Hatred)
1 Beastmasters Scourge

Kitbash!

2010-03-31T20:18:00.007-05:00

So I'm very much not a fan of the GW Dark Elf Dark Riders. So I really don't like the idea of paying $12 a model for models I don't even like. So I pondered and came up with a kitbash that seems promising.

Thoughts?

CATCH!

2010-03-30T20:58:00.002-05:00

Bolt Thrower #2 done!

Up to Date (Sorta)

2010-03-28T19:11:00.003-05:00

Well now that I can walk without being hunched over like an old man, I figured I'd post an update.

I worked my ass off (or perhaps I should say my back off) this week, and I am pretty sure sitting at my desk hunched over for a minimum of 4 hours each day is what did my back in. The 8 hours I spent on Friday was probably the nail in the coffin, but I finished up the Hammerers.

They were pretty fun to paint, even 20 in a single week. The bases were a bit of a pain in the ass, as they took 5 magnets each to hold them to my movement tray, so I spent a long time with the dremel and resin dust drilling 100 holes for the 100 magnets for my 20 Hammerers.

All-in-all I am very pleased with them (except for one dude whose beard turned out really bad, but I figure that I'll stick him in the back rank, and no one will notice.

One of the things that I really liked about these guys are the shields. The hammerers come with shields, but they are kinda weird. They have an wood grain pattern on one side, but that side has an indent so that it will stick on the "post" that comes out of the dwarf's back. On the opposite side, there is just a flat area. It looked really boring so I bought some Dwarf Shield Bits on the GW site. I then used the emblems on the shields to give them some detail. The really nice thing about this is I painted the shield in a gold, and the emblem in silver, and I didn't have to worry about being sloppy. I painted the shield and then primed and painted the emblems on the sprue. That way I just clipped them off and glued them to the shields. I'm not that worried about gluing paint on paint, as there is no weight on the one side, so I don't expect them to pop off.

I also primed the rest of the minis I have to paint.

As I am a bit tired after doing those 20 dudes, I am going to do my bolt thrower this week. I think the three dudes and the BT will seem like a breeze after doing 20 Hammers in one week.

I have 5 weeks to finish the army (even though I don't think I'll be taking them to the Capitol City Carnage). I figure one week on the BT, 2 weeks on 20 warriors then a week on the last Engineer, BSB and General, and then I have a week to do the bases, and I should be done!

Last but not least, Tamara obviously found the camera, so here are a couple of shots of the gyrocopter.

Revamped SW 1000 points.

2010-03-26T10:20:00.005-05:00

HQ
Runepriest: (Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane), Wolftooth Necklace, Wolf Tail Talisman, Meltabomb, BP, Force Staff

Elite
Wolf Guard x 3: PFx2, Mark of the Wulfen

Troops
Grey Hunter x 9: Melta, Mark of the Wulfen
Rhino

Grey Hunter x 5: Melta, Mark of the Wulfen
Razorback: TWHB

Grey Hunter x 5: Melta, Mark of the Wulfen

Razorback: TWHB

Grey Hunter x 5: Melta, Mark of the Wulfen

Razorback: TWHB

Heavy Support
Longfang x 5: ML x 4

So I think this is what I'll be taking to the team tournament. Its really hard to team up with Necrons because they suck a lot at 1000 points. The two troups and a HQ take up most of the 1000 points. So I am trying to build a viable SW army and we'll see what the 'Crons can do to augment that. I am prett sure that most of the points left over will be destroyers (thinking Destroyer Lord for the HQ).

I'm not 100% on the Runepriest powers. I like the RP for the ability to negate Psycic powers on a 4+. I like living lightning for the unlimited range and the S7 attacks, but I am not sure about Murderous Hurricane. I believe it has an 18 inch range, and it does a number of low strength hits, and make it so the unit it shot is in dangerous terrain. I am possibly thinking of putting Jaws of the World Wolf in. It has a 24 inch range and makes any model it touches (even ICs in a unit) take a initiative test, and if it fails it is removed from the game. No invulnerable saves, no eternal warrior, no "look out sir!" poof! Its gone. This sounds awesome, but if you shoot at someone with at I3, they still have a 50-50 chance of making it. Anywho, I'm not sure.

The other thing I'm not sure about is the one Wolf Guard with Mark of the Wulfen. MoW gives the model d6+1 attacks with rending. This only applies to basic attacks, so if you take a PF, you don't get d6+1 PF attacks. I know I have a lot of melta, and with the MLers I think I have a decent anti-mech ability, but I like the usually needing 2+ to "splat" a dude. Dunno, not sure about that. I think, if I want to swap out the MoW for a PF, I'll have to find 5 points, which isn't, I'll just take the melta away from the Rune Priest.

Thwap thwap thwap

2010-03-23T22:10:00.002-05:00

So I got a bit behind. I let the gyrocopter lapse. I figured there would be time enough over spring break while my mom was here. I was planning to finish the gyrocopter and 20 Hammerers last week.

Then I got sick.

I just didn't feel up to sitting and painting all week. So essentially I was at least 2 weeks behind schedule. Plus I was planning on getting a lot of painting done when I didn't have to go to work.

So Sunday I nutted-up and finished my gyrocopter.

Yesterday I started up on my Hammerers. I had 6 that just had primer on them, but the rest had their beards, chainmail, reds and blues done. So first thing yesterday I caught those 6 dudes up with the other 14. Then I prepped for painting the gold on their chests.

Tonight I started work on the shields and painted the hammer heads. I am going to do my unit champion with a gold hammer, as it is a bit difficult to distinguish him from the others.

Tomorrow I plan on finishing up the shields and do my washes.

I hope to be finished by Thursday.

Then Friday is assembly of the bolt thrower and my general on shield bearers.

Tamara seems to have misplaced the camera, so no pictures until that is found.

'Ta...

The Slaan list....

2010-03-21T16:58:00.007-05:00

EDIT: So it's not enough to have a Slaan, I have to field more Temple Guard as well. What I was thinking of doing is making the Temple Guard unit 6 models wide, which would put the Slaan in the exact middle and would give me a total of 19 Temple Guard (Which I have, just need to paint 6 more). If I field any more than that, not only do I have to buy more models, I also will have to drop other units that I really like, which sorta takes the fun out of the game. So here it is:

Slann Mage-Priest : Lord - General - Battle Standard Bearer
Power Stone - Once per battle, adds 2 dice to a casting roll.
Power Stone - Once per battle, adds 2 dice to a casting roll.
Cupped Hands of the Old One - One use only; If the bearer miscasts an enemy wizard within line of sight will suffer the effects (ignoring 5-6) on a 2+.
Talisman of Protection - 6+ Ward save
The Focused Rumination - The Mage-Priest adds one "free" power die to each spell cast
Focus of Mystery - The Mage-Priest knows every spell from one lore
Lore of Heavens

Saurus Scar-Veteran: Hero
Hand Weapon; Light Armour; Scaly Skin
Burning Blade of Chotec - Extra -2 to armor saves. All attacks count as Flaming.
Shield of the Mirrored Pool -6+ Armor Save. Any Magic Missile that strikes the bearer or his unit is reflected on the roll of 2+ (and resolved against the caster).

Skink Priest: Hero
Channeling: Slann Mage Priests may use a skink as the origin of magic missile spells. The spell is cast as if the Slaan is where the Skink Priest is, but miscasts affect the Slaan normally.; Hand Weapon; Aquatic
Ancient Stegadon: D6+1 Impact Hits. Jungle Poisons; 5 Skink Crew (4 if ridden by character); Engine of the Gods: If the Skink Priest is alive, he may use the engine (Lizardman army book p55): The Arcane Configuration, The Burning Alignment, The Portent of Warding.; Causes Terror; Immune to Psychology; Large Target; Scaly Skin; Stubborn
Dispel Scroll - Once per battle, automatically dispels an enemy spell
Plaque of Tepok - The Wizard knows one more spell than normal.
Lore of Heavens

Skink Priest: Hero
Channeling: Slann Mage Priests may use a skink as the origin of magic missile spells. The spell is cast as if the Slaan is where the Skink Priest is, but miscasts affect the Slaan normally.; Hand Weapon; Aquatic
Dispel Scroll - Once per battle, automatically dispels an enemy spell
Dispel Scroll - Once per battle, automatically dispels an enemy spell
Lore of Heavens

Saurus Warriors: Core (20)
Musician, Standard Bearer, Hand Weapon; Spear; Shield; Scaly Skin

Saurus Warriors: Core (20)
Musician, Standard Bearer, Hand Weapon; Spear; Shield; Scaly Skin

Skink Skirmishers: Core (11)
Hand Weapon; Blowpipe; Aquatic; Skirmishers

Skink Skirmishers: Core (11)
Hand Weapon; Blowpipe; Aquatic; Skirmishers

Chameleon Skinks: Special (6)
Enemies are at -1 to hit when shooting this unit. When deploying as Scouts, you may observe no minimum distance between this unit and the enemy, or place them in the open but more than 12" away.; Hand Weapon; Blowpipe; Aquatic; Scouts; Skirmishers

Temple Guard: Special (19)
Sacred Duty: If a Slann is present, he must join the Temple Guard unit and cannot leave. While he is in the unit, the unit is Stubborn; Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std; Hand Weapon; Halberd; Light Armour; Shield; Scaly Skin
Revered Guardian
Hand Weapon; Halberd; Light Armour; Shield
Sword of Battle - +1 Attack
War Banner - +1 Combat Resolution

Total Cost: 2250

Roster Statistics
Casting Dice: 9
Dispel Dice: 7
General's Ld: 9
# Models: 96

Mechanized army

2010-03-07T12:25:00.003-06:00

Coming soon to a battlefield near you....

Mother-FFF'in Khorne!!

2010-03-01T15:42:00.006-06:00

I am buying John's Warriors of Chaos off of him and will be going for a Khorne list, since everyone believes this will suit my tactics. Heres a list with what I have:

General:
Khorne Lord - WS8/St6/To5/In7/At6/Sv1+
Demonic Mount
Axe of Khorne
Enchanted Shield
Collar of Khorne -Magic Resist (2)
Favor of the Gods

Exalted Hero - WS8/St6/To4/In6/At6/Sv3+
Chaos Runesword
Shield

Core:
5 Marauder Horseman - Mark of Khorne
Musician
Flails
Light Armor
Throwing Axes

5 Marauder Horseman - Mark of Khorne
Musician
Spears
Throwing Spears
Shields

12 Warriors of Chaos - Mark of Khorne
Full Command
Shields
War Banner

11 Warriors of Chaos - Mark of Khorne (Hero here)
Full Command
Extra Hand weapon
Blasted Standard (+5 ward vs Shooting)

15 Marauders - Mark of Khorne
Full Command
Flails
Shields
Light Armor

15 Marauders - Mark of Khorne
Full Command
Great Weapons
Shields
Light Armor

Special:
9 Knights of Chaos - Mark of Khorne (Lord here)
Full Command

1 Chaos Chariot of Khorne

2240 points

The plan is to buy some Chaos Hounds to run in front of the Warriors. I could drop 3 Knights and take 3 units of 5 to use as cannon fodder and keep the Warriors from charging off before I'm ready for them...

Longbeards 1 of 2

2010-02-28T17:28:00.004-06:00

So I just finished up my first 10 Longbeards. For some reason this seemed like a shit-ton of detail work. A lot more, I feel than the other units I've done. For some reason it seemed that the shields were a PITA to complete. I am wondering it is because of all the gold.

With my Longbeards, because they are the units have been around the longest, they have the most ornate armor, and I have chosen to represent this in two ways, first, and (hopefully) most easily discernible is that all of my Longbeards will be wearing masks. They are painted in Brazen Brass, and I have painted up all the shields with brass backgrounds and gold trim, and symbols.

The masks are good and bad. They look cool, but are a pain in the ass to get on the minis and look good. They do NOT fit when they are cut off the sprew, so I have had to take a file to the back of the masks and a knife to my dorf faces. Oh, and a few of them still don't sit on the face properly. Oh well.

Lastly I have a picture of my two of my Longbeards, and a warrior on the right. I think you can tell that the Lonbeards are not regular troops in a fluff sense.

For other news I received my BSB, Bolt Thrower, and 6 Hammers came in the mail. The BSB and Hammers have all been base-coated.

Next week I am thinking of finishing up my Longbeard block. Those guys have have the beards, ~~skin~~ (gunna fix it so that the 5 of them with skin showing have masks on), blue and red have been painted on those dudes so they have quite a bit work done already, which the last group did not have. I am also planning to assemble and base-coat the Bolt Thrower and crew. If I am adventurous, I'm gunna try to do the beards on my BSB and Hammeres.

We'll see.

Commisar Lord vs Primus Psyker

2010-02-24T08:42:00.004-06:00

So I've been looking at my Guard again and have started working on models. I still like my Mech guard and have been looking at ways to make them more viable. One thing about Mechanized guard is that your HQ choice really needs to be cheap.

The only reason to take a Company Command unit is put a cheap Colonel in there with either 4 meltas or plasmas. The Order system is a waste on Mech lists.

The Commissar Lord seemed the only real choice. The problem I had with my first list was that I stuck him in with an Ogrynn unit (which is insanely expensive and still dies very easily). I thought that it would be better to put him in with a Veteran unit (saves alot of points and gives me one very Stubborn unit)

Then I got to looking at my 3rd choice, the Primus Psyker. 70pts (no upgrades allowed), laspistol/Force weapon, WS4, Ld9, and has an Invunerable save. His primary shooting attack is called Arc Lightning (range 24, St4, 2d6 hits). I could put him in a unit of Plasma Vets and he could shoot out of the top of the Chimera with his unit. In using him, the fluff behind him is that he is an Inquisator leading his own little army to root out alien and heretic scum.

Or as Pidge suggested, I need a Slaan.......

1000 Points Space Wolves for Team Tournament

2010-02-23T15:17:00.004-06:00

So this is what I am thinking of for my 1000 point Space Pup army to go along with the Necrons.

HQ:
Rune Priest with Runic Armor, Wolftooth Necklace and Storm Bolter
Jaws of the World Wolf, Living Lightning

Troops:
Grey Hunter Pack x 10 with Flamer, Melta, Mark of the Wulfen and Power Fist
Rhino with Extra Armor, Storm Bolter, Smoke Launcher

Grey Hunter Pack x 10 with Flamer, Melta, Mark of the Wulfen and Power Fist

Rhino with Extra Armor, Storm Bolter, Smoke Launcher

Grey Hunter Pack x 5 with Melta, Mark of the Wulfen and Power Fist

Razorback with Extra Armor, TL Heavy Bolter, Smoke Launcher

Grey Hunter Pack x 5 with Melta, Mark of the Wulfen and Power Fist

Razorback with Extra Armor, TL Heavy Bolter, Smoke Launcher

993 points.

67th Division, 3rd Company Mechanized

2010-02-22T15:57:00.004-06:00

This is more of just a fun, fluffy list based around a Colonel Commissar, 4 Grizzled Veteran units from different Guard units, and a butt load of armor. It is by no means a tourney list (hence the lack of Valkyries).

HQ:
Colonel Commissar Palestine Drake - Commissar Lord with BP/PW - Rides with 1st squad

Troops:
1st Squad - 7 shotguns/3 Meltas
Chimera - Multilaser/HB/Heavy stubber

2nd Squad - 1 Plasma pistol/CCW, 6 Lasguns, 3 Plasmaguns
Chimera - Multilaser/HB/Heavy stubber

3rd Squad - 7 shotguns/3 meltas
Chimera - HB/HF

4th Squad - 1 Laspistol/CCW, 6 Lasguns, 3 Grenade Launchers
Chimera - HB/HF

Fast:

Devildog - melta cannon/HF

2 Hellhounds - Inferno cannons/HB

3 Scout Sentinals - Autocannons

Heavy:

2 Lemun Russes BC/HB

2 Lemun Russes BC/HB

1 Lemun Russ Vanquisher with Lascannon

2000pts even....

Except for the Sentinals coming in on a board edge, that's a wall of AV 12+ moving across the board....

Blackguardses

2010-02-21T22:11:00.006-06:00

I haven't had much time to paint with Mardi Gras last weekend and packing for my site visits this week. I did redesign my Black Guard paintscheme though and managed to get the front rank painted up. There's also a preview in there of my kitbashed BSB Master if you squint real hard. I do still need to paint the banner for this unit, but I'm still working on what I want it to look like, so that may have to wait since I wont be getting any painting done at all this next week. So much for keeping up with the Joneses (Pidges)

Engineers, Crews and a Runesmith

2010-02-21T20:12:00.002-06:00

So I finished my challenge for the week. I actually got quite a bit of work done during the week. I almost finished up my 6 warmachine crew before the weekend started. I think I did pretty good with them. Its kinda hard to see, but I tried my hand at "jeweling" the lenses of the goggles on the second guy from the right. I also made one of the goggle lenses gold while the rest of it is silver. I think I did a really good job on the muscles of the guy pulling the lever for the bolt thrower.

So the cannonball and the bolt carried by these two both have runes inscribed on them. I was trying to make it look like the runes were glowing, so what I did was to do a wash of Fiery Orange, and then I tried a highlight of Red Gore to try to get the glowing effect. I then dry-brushed Boltgun Metal and Mithril Silver over that and left the orange-red peeking through. I really didnt get the effect I was hoping for, they both just look like they are orange. Oh well.

Last but not lease I have, from left to right, two Engineers and a Runesmith. All of the different aspects of my army have different colors associated with them (Warriors red, Ranged green) so the warmachine crews all have brown, the Engineers are yellow, and the Runesmiths are white. There is some more attempted jeweling on the stones on the Runesmith. I think they look O.K., but not that good. I guess they'll have to do.

So now for some updates. As of Friday, i have purchased the last pieces I need for the army. The last Engineer, Lord and Shieldbearers, and Standardbearer from GW, and the last 6 Hammerers from eBay. I am hoping that they will all arrive before the end of the week.

I am torn at the moment. I am unsure of whether I should work on my Gyrocopter, or start on my Longbeards for my next challenge. If I try the Longbeards I will attempt to work on the front two ranks. These two ranks have quite a bit done already (beards, chain mail, blue, and red paint) so I don't think that will take me too long. This will give me some time to prime anything that comes in the mail over the week. If I go for the Gyrocopter, I will be trying to work out transportability of the model. I am going to be placing a custom foam order from Battlefoam in April to carry my trays of dudes, and I want to figure something out for the Gyrocopter. I think I will magnetize the rotors so that I can take it off for transport.

Anywho. I think I'll make my decision tomorrow.

BoLScon 2010

2010-02-21T14:40:00.005-06:00

Well first off, there is some stuff about BoLScon 2010 on the web site. There are (in theory) to posts up about the schedule, one being the "master schedule" and the other just having the "date" well if you go to the links, you'll see its the exactly same info, which is a bit disappointing. I was hoping to see the days and times different things would be going on.

The most startling info is that Tamara has decided to join in the 40k team tournament. Yes, I know that there is no good reason for the Necrons and the Space Pups to be fighting side-by-side, but I figure it's about as equally likely to occur as a gamer having a wife that will actually play in a tournament with him!

Tamara has decided that she wants to get the Bowling Shits. So we'll be getting some shirts made up. I don't know if you guys are interested, but let me know. I'll post some info when Tamara and I have found something we like, to ask your opinion.

I am also strongly considering playing in the 40k Narrative Anti-Tournament. This is a 3000 point, Apoc game. There are three tracks, each with five different battles over two days. I think this will be more fun for me than the tournament. Mainly because I won't have to play seven 40k games in two days. You can play as many of the five games from whichever track you choose to play, you can jump from track to track if you want, or stick to one track if you choose. I figure this way, if I am burned out after 2 games on the first day, I can go home early, and I'm not screwing up the tournament. Plus I can still come back the next day and choose to continue playing if I feel like it. Even better, i am hoping this will give me some free time so I can play some of the demo games out there, and I won't be bone tired Sunday.

The only thing I am a bid disappointed is in the fact there there isn't a bundle package". The prices are as follows: $30 for the badge to get in, $25 to play on Friday, and $50 to play Saturday/Sunday. So I'm looking at $55 for Tamara, and $105 for me. BUT, I don't go to many of these things, plus Tamara and I could spend just as much money to drive down to San Antonio and go to Sea World for a single day.

FYI, I have finished up my challenge for this week, but I probably won't be posting them until tomorrow.

Review: Rynn's World

2010-02-19T10:28:00.004-06:00

So I finished Rynn's World last night. Wow, what a book. Steve Parker did a really good job with this book. From reading a lot of the fluff from the 40k book and other sources, I knew that the Crimson Fists were gunna get jacked up in this book, but Parker did an excellent job of fleshing it out.

I have really been impressed lately with the action "scenes" in a lot of BL books (40k and Fantasy), and this book is just as good. The battles were pretty epic, even when it was just a skirmish. The only thing I was disappointed with was the fact that the space battle was glossed over, but this was a pretty beefy book, so a chapter or two of space battle missing isn't too bad.

My major pet peeve of having too many plots and characters going on at one time was thankfully absent in this book. There were quite a few characters, but they mostly revolved around different parts of two major plots. For me this was good because I got a bit of the "oh my god this is good, I can't wait to get back to it in the next chapter," but I didn't get the, "OK, now I have to remember what this character was doing 200 pages, and 15 sub-plots ago."

Another thing that was thankfully missing was the "uber-evil imperial guy" that is just there to make the lives of the major characters more of a PITA. There was one dude in the story that I thought was going to shape up into one of those characters, but it didn't turn out that way. Thank you Mr. Parker!

With prior knowledge of that fact that the Crimson Fists were going to get mauled in this book, it made me hesitant to cheer for characters, but I knew that many of them were gunna be blowed up, and this was the case. I actually think this was a good thing in the book because every time a new and interesting character was introduce, I was like, "Oh no! I hope he doesn't die!" Another thing I liked was that Mr. Parker did in fact kill off some of those likeable characters you were just getting to know. It made it feel real. It made it feel as if the Crimson Fists were well and truly boned.

A couple of the things I didn't like about the book were the distain that many of the Space Marines felt towards the humans that they were fighting for. There are some circumstances that do come up in the book that explain it, but it was the differences between that different Astartes that really made me stop and blink before continuing.

The last thing that sorta stuck in my craw was the fact that we saw Space Marines in this book had a stat line that was roughly, in my opinion, BS 7 WS 7 S8 T8 W10 I6 A8 Ld 11 Sv 1+. Regular tactical marines were ambushed by Orks and killed every ork without taking a casualty, there were fights were you would think SOMEONE is gunna bite it, but no one does. Now I understand why this is written this way. It's a Space Marines novel, so we want them to be heroic. We want them to stand against the Green Tide and never give up, but there were a couple of occasions where it was a bit unbelievable, even for Space Marines.

Overall this was an excellent book. I would encourage anyone to read it. I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

Grail Knights almost done...

2010-02-16T20:09:00.004-06:00

Damn You Black Library!

2010-02-15T20:48:00.011-06:00

So I've been reading a lot of Black Library books. Recently I've started in on Fantasy. The first one I picked up was a Dorf book (of course) called Honourkeeper by Nick Kyme. I then went into the Gotrek and Felix First and Second Omnibuses (Omnibusi?). There were some really good books in there. I especially liked Daemonslayer and Beastslayer, and I loved the use of the Skaven in the books.

Well after I finished the second omnibus, I didn't think the third was out yet, so I bought some other books. I picked up the 40k book Inquisition War which seems very interesting and it also happens to be one of the first Black Library publications, I believe. I also picked up Matthias Thulman: Witch Hunter which is a three book omnibus as well as The Blackhearts yet another omnibus. I heard on one of the podcasts about the Times of Legends series, which looks to be WHFB version of the Horus Heresy, so I picked up and read Heldenhammer with is the story of the rise of Sigmar and the fledgling Empire. Good book. After I finished reading that I went back and read the first short stories and the first book in the Witch Hunter book. I then saw the Third Gotrek and Felix book so I had to pick that one up.

Then Tamara comes home with Rynn's World which seems to be the first in a new series of books for 40k which go over some of the significant battles that the Space Marines have fought. And F me if it doesn't start out good. So not-so-long story, long. I've got an ass-ton (perhaps even a metric ass-ton) of really good books waiting to be read.

Anywho, I'm off to read some more Rynn's World.

Two posts in two day?!

2010-02-14T13:23:00.011-06:00

Well I finished up my Thunderers today (except the sides of the bases). I fell pretty good about them. The eyes look a bit like they have mascara on, but I don't like it when you paint in the whites of the eyes, because at the distance that you look at minis, you wouldn't be able to see the whites of person's eyes at a comparable distance. But that just me on that.

One of the things I am considering is making a movement tray for them out of my modular movement tray pack I bought yesterday. I think I may be able to just make a tray for them out of scattered parts, but I think it may be a waste, as I don't they they'll be moving too much once they are placed, and who knows if I'll want to put more than 10 into a unit. I'm not sure about it at the moment.

So as I stated, I bought a set of the modular movement trays, so yesterday i put them together, and then green stuffed the gaps, then primed them, and then stuck on my sheet magnet. So here is how it looks with my 14 Hammerers.

Heres a view from the back, I think they look pretty good.

I know that the bases I bout are a bit taller than normal GW bases, so I put my Thunderers into the movement tray to see if it make them look goofy, and I've decided that the stunties don't look bad at all, so I'm happy about that.

.
So I have found that if I sit down and get some work done, I can do more than 5 models a week. So I am going for a big challenge this week. I am going to paint up my (from left to right) Rune Smith, two Engineers, and six war machine crew. I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle it, but I'll give it a shot.

Thats it for today.

Updates updates updates

2010-02-13T21:01:00.016-06:00

Well I realized that I haven't posted any pictures in a while, so here it goes...

I finished my Quarrelers a couple of weeks ago, and here they are... Notice they have a full command. As I said before, I will use the champion (guy on the far left with a crossbow and a hand weapon) as just a regular dude, but I don't think I'll use the banner often, so I had to piece together another dude, but I had the parts, so no biggie.

Last week I finished my cannon and bolt thrower, so here they are.

I also painted up beards last week, so here is a pic of all my dorfs lined up. From right to left I have: A Longbeard with a white beard, a Warrior with a dark-brown beard, a Hammerer with a red-ish beard, a Quarreler with a black beard, a Hammerer with a grey beard, and Warrior with a light-brown beard and a Thunderer with a blonde beard. It is hard to see in the pic, but the light-brown and the blonde beards DO look different. Like I said in my last post, the colors didn't come out exactly the way I wanted, but I think they look pretty good.

So last weekend I won a Bolt Thrower on eBay and I was waiting for that to come in this week. I was gunna try to get it put together and primed before Sunday. Well it came in the mail on Thursday and when I opened the package...

Now personally I think I'll have the most unique Bolt Thrower of any Dorf army, but Tamara was nice enough to point out that this is a Space Marine Attack Bike, so I sent it back to the dude.

Also during the week I went to a website called Magnet Valley to see about getting some magnets to do some movement trays. What I ended up buying were these. They are 4x4 20 mil thick adhesive sheets. Today, I went to the store and bought a set of the modular movement trays. Whats really nice is that the 4x4 sheet will fit in the tray perfectly. I don't think I'll have to do much trimming. So I got 10 sheets for $8 including tax. I only see myself using 3-4 so if anyone needs some, let me know. Anywho, here are some test pictures. I had to put 5 magnets on my metal dude, but after that, he held like a champ.

Lastly, I am on track to finish painting my 11 thunderers and my last Quarreler tomorrow. So here is a pic of what I have so far.

From left to right I have my 20 strong Longbeards, then 20 Warrirors, the 14 Hammerers that I currently have, and then the 11 Quarrelers (the new dude is in there) and then in front of the Quarrelers is my 11 Thunderers (I did a banner for them as well). The Thunderers aren't 100% done, I still have to do the horns on their helmets. On the left are my cannon and bolt thrower again, and some of my Engineers and war machine crew.

Until next time...

Druchii Update

2010-02-07T21:37:00.010-06:00

I'm not doing a very good job of keeping track of the number of models I paint per week, but at least I'm making progress.

Reaper Bolt Throwers and Crew

Repeater Crossbows

Beastmasters

Opinions...

2010-02-07T20:40:00.007-06:00

So, I like the black on the Lord and his Grails, but I'm not sold on the white for the KotR. I'm thinking of going with blue for them and gray for the Errant knights.

They are the "Knights of the Ironfist". Does them SM Imperial Fist transfer look corny on the shield? I have no Brettonian transfers, but a assload of SM...

Excuse the picture quality and they are all still works in progress...

Beards, beards and more beards!

2010-02-07T19:47:00.009-06:00

Well two weeks in a row, I've completed my self-imposed goal. The funny thing about these goals is that I set them for myself for an entire week, but I usually just do 95% of it on the weekend. I should set the goal on Friday and look like a total bad-ass and have it done by Sunday...

Anywho, I have decided that my dorfs will have the following beard tones, black, light brown, dark brown, blonde, grey, red and white. I decided that there would be more black, and browns than the rest of the colors, so I divided up 2 blacks, 2 light browns, 2 dark browns and then one of all the rest of the colors except white (the Longbeards were the only ones that got white beards) repeat for all the minis I had to paint. I tried to be fairly random about who went in each group.

One day this week I came home and painted the Light Brown beards. I painted on Bleached Bone, and then did a wash of Bronzed Flesh. I really like the way it looks.

Saturday I painted up the cannon and bolt thrower. The fletching on the Bolt Thrower needs a second coat, but thats no biggie.

Today I got to work on the rest of the beards. I powered through the black beards, using the prime as a base coat, and then light dry-brushing on Codex Grey. The Dark Browns were pretty easy with a base coat of Scorched Brown and a dry-brushing of Bestial Brown. Grey was pretty simple as well with a heavy-dry brush of Codex Grey and then another light-dry brush of Skull White. I did red with a 50/50 mix of Scorched Brown and Fiery Orange, then a dry-brush of Fiery Orange and then a light dry-brush of Bleached Bone. Lastly, for White, I did an undercoat of Codex grey then a heavy dry-brush of Skull White.

All in all they don't look too bad. Most of the colors did not come out exactly the way I was expecting, (the white looks a bit grey, some of the reds look a bit brown, etc etc etc) but they all look distinct which is what I was looking for.

Now I'm not fooling myself, I know that most people wont even notice that I've gone to all this trouble to have the different color beards in my army, but I'll know, and I like it.

As for Army Assembly news, I have purchase my 2nd Bolt Thrower, and its in the mail. Should get it here some time this week. So If you are keeping track, I still need my General, one Engineer, and 6 Hammerers.

I was planning on making a BSB using one of the dudes in the Warrior box, but it just doesn't look right. My BSB is supposed to have Gromril armor, and the Warrior from the box clearly doesn't. So I am considering ordering the Dwarf Army Battle Standard from GW.

As for next week, I am going to try to tackle doing my 10 Thunderers . I am doing 10 because I already have the chainmail, and the blue and green "base colors" as well as the beards done for all of these guys. I figure finishing up the rest will count as my 5 minis for this week.

I will also assemble and prime the Bolt Thrower if I can.

p.s. oh! pics tomorrow!

A New Header!

2010-02-05T02:25:00.004-06:00

There is it. Yup.

Brettonian Roster #1

2010-02-04T19:55:00.007-06:00

These are the Knights of the Iron Fist. I plan on using the Crimson Fist SM transfers on their shields, since I don't have any Brett transfers. It's been edited at Calvin's advice. Pretty straight forward. Men at Arms in the middle with BSB unit and two KotR units on the right flank, then the Lord, Errants, and Relique to the left. Spearheaded down the field.

General:
Duke Brennen Ironfist (Lord)
Grail Vow; Barding; Hand Weapon; Heavy Armour; Shield
Warhorse
The Silver Lance of the Blessed
Gauntlet of the Duel
Virtue of Confidence

5 Grail Knights
Full Command
Banner of Defense

Sir Rothgar Blackraven - Paladin
Battle Standard Bearer
Grail Vow
Virtue of Discipline
Banner of the Lady

8 Knights of the Realm
Full Command
War Banner

Arrianna Silvermist - Damsel
Warhorse
Chalice of Malfleur
Dispel Scroll

8 Knights of the Realm
Full Command
Banner of Chalons

Breelanna Van Vaukenburg - Damsel
Warhorse
Dispel Scroll
Dispel Scroll

8 Knights Errant
Full Command
Errantry Banner

9 Knights of the Realm
Full Command
Twilight Banner

25 Men-at-Arms
Full Command

Grail Reliquae
14 Battle Pilgrims

Total Roster Cost: 2250

Mission Un-Impossible

2010-01-31T20:42:00.011-06:00

Well I failed to meet my first goal of getting 5 dudes painted up in the first week, but in the second week I challenged myself to not only finish up those 5, but to do another five.

Well it took me to within an hour of going over to Tom's today, but I got my 10-dorf Quarreler unit completed. I took them over to Tom's house, and Tom and John were nice enough to tell me how good they looked. This was really nice. I will try to put some pictures of them up tomorrow.

I like painting the Dorfs. With the Space Pups, I got a bit bored with painting that Shadow Grey armor again and again and again. The Dorfs have a bunch of little bits that need some detail work done, and I really enjoyed it.

I think that the 10 dudes I painted probably took about 10 total hours to paint, so I think I've got a good system down. The only thing I need to do with them is paint the sides of their bases (not sure what I'm going to do there) and seal them.

I did see that I made one mistake. On my list, I have 10 Quarrelers with a musician. I modeled one of them to be a Champion if I decided to ever give them one (though I doubt I ever will), but I also gave them (and the Thunderers) a banner, which they do not have on my list. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to take the dude that will stand in for the champion as a regular dude, but I don't think I can just say "hey that banner, its not really there." Thankfully, I had enough bits to create another Quarreler and Thunderer, so they are now sitting in the garage with the first coat of primer drying on them.

As for the week to come, I have decided to paint my Bolt Thrower, and Cannon. I will also paint the beards on all my remaining Dorfs. I think that will count for about 5 models.

Weapon	Wounds
Mow	2.17
Power Weapon	1.78
Power Fist	1.67
Frost Weapon	2.22
Twin Wolf Claws	2.96