Raiding your Land with Free Hand

My regular Tuesday game was out sick, so I spent Tuesday hanging out at the shop and hobbying.  I brought the Vargheists, but got motivated to work on the Land Raider instead.  It's my first real attempt at large scale freehanding on a flat surface, and I'm quite happy with the results thus far.

Empire State Troop Banners

When I started on the tank, I got a little over excited with visions of the things I wanted to do dancing through my head.  I think I've said it before, but building models, especially complex ones, and seeing what I can create is my favorite part of the hobby.  I ordered Forge World doors and added bitz from the Empire State Troops box, such as the banners and laurels.  I drew a bunch of stuff up in pencil on the hull and banners and immediately started working on it.  Of course, my impatience meant that there wouldn't be a chance to do any airbrushing without a lot of masking, so it's been a long haul of laying down sheets of Blood Red then trying to keep it even as I worked around the edges or the free hand and the details.  Still, things are starting to come together and really coalesce into what I pictured in my mind.  At this point, I need to do some clean up, wash the tracks, and paint the weapons, and once that's all done, I'll be finishing up a pretty big project.  Now to cut 250 points from my list...

Death Mask Freehand

I'll have the chance to do that in the new league I've joined.  My regular haunt just kicked off a league on Thursday.  It's a pretty unique format, or so it seems to me.  At registration, you're required to pick your army, then either the Imperial or non-Imperial team.  Step two is play games and lots of them.  There's a whole list of unique missions, each with primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives that basically score battle points.  At the end of each week, the two games you played that scored the most battle points get credited to your total and your team's total.  At the end of the league, whichever team has more points will be the winner and the highest scoring member of that team will be the overall champion.

Spend $30 to enter? Can do

There are some things I really like about the format, but I have reservations too.  On the one hand, the best player might not win the league.  The competitive side of me hates that.  If someone plays head and shoulders above everyone, it only makes sense to reward that person.  It also enables the best players to duck each other, which is a little more gamesmanship than I prefer.  At the same time, this store is far from hardcore.  Don't get me wrong, we have some very good players, but I would describe most of the people I run into as casual players that want to take interesting lists from the army they like the most.  I guess what I'm thinking is that the league fits the culture well. 


Additionally, I think the format encourages continued participation.  Even if you're way off the pace, you are still part of a collective and should feel like you can contribute to your side.  You can be involved as much or as little as you like.  Things are really flexible as far as when you get games in.  So my initial reaction is largely positive.  I'm sure I'll have more to say when theory becomes practice.