Hobby Update: Spousal Perspectives, Death Company and More

I imagine that many men who play Warhammer or something like it have had something similar to the following conversation with their wives:

Wife:  I like that your army men are on the kitchen counter.  They're cute.

Me:  ...Um, they're the Death Company of the Blood Angels Chapter.

Wife:  They're still cute.

Can a unit with the Rage USR be cute?

Anyway, these past couple weeks have been good as far as painting progress.  Actually, quite good.  I managed to finish up the aforementioned Death Company.  I painted the entirety of three Banshees for some Daemons.  I airbrushed the first coat of green on a Coven Throne.  I finally finished remodelling my Defiler.  I primed a bunch of basic Chaos Space Marines.  Progress!

Of the ten models in the squad, one of them has been done for quite some time.  The remaining nine have sat with varying stages of colors finished.  At one point, all the actual Marines were finished, but the jump packs were still totally black.  Motivating yourself to bang out nine jump packs can be quite a task, but I managed to sit down and knock out three batches while watching football.

It's probably a little cliche, but I am feeling good about how they turned out.  OK, it's very cliche.  But once I slapped a layer of Dullcote on them, they lost a lot of the shiny black gloss color that tends to bleed through because of the crappy primer I use.  Prior to that, I was pretty nervous.  The varnish does tend to even things out, but it's definitely never a matte finish. So, happy surprises.  The other reason I like these guys is they include my first attempt at doing lots of highlighting.  In some cases, I may have gone a little overboard, but the orange really pops coming off the red, and the dark gray looks really good on the black armor without making them look like they're supposed to be gray.

Some of you who tend to focus on the play side of things may be wondering about the squad and its loadout of weapons.  Technically, Death Company can't take a meltagun, nor do they have a unit champion option, and seriously, where the heck are the power weapons?  Well, the squad was put together during fifth edition, when Allies weren't a thing.  This unit was intended to be a Skyclaw squad originally, but with the advent of sixth edition, I reached a point where I could conceivably include them as Death Company.  I'd love to do that.  What I'd really love to do is add five more dudes with power weapons and Infernus Pistols so I can do both, but we'll see what comes.

I plan on using them as Flamers.

Trying to prove that I can paint colors other than just red, I also painted a trio of Banshees for my Fear Daemons army.  My original intention was to try to do these girls in their entirety with an airbrush, or as close as possible to it.  That didn't happen.  I went all paintbrush.  Unfortunately, I had some serious issues with getting any kind of paint flow through the airbrush.  Turns out, I tried a little too hard to keep the pots clean and created some Q-tip blockage.  Whoops.  So I got that fixed, but not in time to work on these ones.

The models were originally from the Coven Throne kit.  I clipped off the tails after applying the paint, so I'd have something extra to grasp while I painted.  It was a pretty straightforward process.  The models got multiple layers of the same shades of green that I've used on some previous monsters, with lots of dark greens blending into much yellower versions. I've added some of the lighter colors towards the top of the models, which is a departure from the way I painted their big brother, the Nightbringer.  I tried to make those lighter colors more prevalent, but I think the extra layers could do with some more glazing to try to smooth it out.  I also might try to matte up the black some.

Briefly, I'd also like to touch on my Defiler.  Not in a dirty way.  A few weeks ago, I went a little nuts and ripped off all the legs and arms, plus I pulled the torso(?) from the chassis(?).  I'm not sure what to call what on a daemon engine.  Then I went even further off the deep end, magnetizing just about everything.  The result?  A defiler that was more transportable since I could take it apart and put it in a Rhino slot in my carry case, plus I could also easily represent the vehicle being immobilized, destroyed, or losing weaponry.  Success!  Except that the weight of the model was too great, so the Defiler just slid down to its base as the magnets would rotate.  Failure!  Because of that, I pretty much just left the thing at home.

Now he's a walker, instead of a sitter

After some practical thought about problem, I decided to go as simple as possible and glued some ordinary sprue to the Defiler's ball and socket joints.  This prevents the magnets from rotating, holding the legs in an appropriate pose.  It doesn't look pretty right now, nor will it when it is finished, but there's enough going on that I don't think it'll matter if I stick to dark colors in those sections.  Plus I'd much rather have a functional model at this point.

Hobby Goals
-Airbrush the Coven Throne by Wednesday
-Mechrite Red on the Chaos Marines by Saturday
-Silver on the Possessed by Sunday

Hobby Update

Lately I've been keeping the number of irons in the fire at just two.  I began the week by finishing up a member of the Death Company clad in white power armor.  He needed a little cleaning up and a few details asked to be polished a bit, but it wasn't too much effort before he was finished.  I wouldn't call him perfect, but it's the best result I've had using that much white, and he's guaranteed to pop when people look at the squad.

My approach to the Word Bearers Possessed has been a little more workmanlike.  They're great models, but I think I bit off more than I could chew by trying to do ten at a time.  As it is, I'm up to doing the silver edging.  I'm making sure that I do at least some every day and that seems to be keeping the progress steady.  At the same time, I'm making more mistakes than I'd like to.  Every couple of shoulder pads has a little slip of silver paint that's just not in the right place, and it's starting to frustrate me.  It is also making me a little nervous as going back to repair the red might not yield the same result.

After a great experience painting the Manticore head, I jumped into painting the body pretty quickly.  That process turned out to be even quicker than painting the much smaller head.  I met with some level of success.  There are certain angles and certain parts where the color runs from dark to light in a smooth gradient.  Then there are parts where it looks like I painted a darker green next to a lighter green.  Again, it's not perfect, but I'm not exactly a Golden Daemon level painter anyway.  I have a few ideas of things to try to improve it.  Suggestions are welcome as well.  Really, I want to get him to a level where he holds up a little better under close scrutiny.  Once the greens are done, it's just a matter of a layer of black on the skin.  There won't be a lot of models in the army so if I can figure out how to achieve the right effect, I could keep the whole thing to a high standard. 

Hobby Accomplishments
-Finished the Death Company Shapechanger
-70% done with Possessed's Silver
-Manticore's green is painted

Hobby Goals
-Finish the Possessed Silver trim (by Wednesday) and decide what to do about the details to make them unique
-Try to improve the blending on the Manticore, apply the layer of black paint, and magnetize the Manticore's neck

Apocalyptic Sunday

What $1800 of Realm of Battle boards looks like.

This past Sunday, the league I've been playing in for the past couple of months came to an end.  The league organizer is still tabulating the results, but to celebrate making it to the end, he gave us the choice of running a tournament or putting together a big Apocalypse game.  After discussing it with the rest of the guys, I voted for an Apocalypse game.  I was the "new guy" at the start of the season, and I felt like I had really managed to plug in over the course of the dozen or so games I had played in the last months, so I reasoned that blowing up a few things with some new friends would be a fitting way to end the league.

It didn't quite go the way I thought it would.  This was my first game of Apocalypse, and my expectations were for a fluffy, amicable game in which all kinds of random things happened and cool ruled all.  It's always interesting to play in multi-player games because of the way it stretches the social contract.  With two players, a game is fairly straightforward.  Their are basic cues that usually dictate what is what, and the chances of those being misread are slimmer, assuming a few basic social skills.  Adding players adds to the complexity and it's interesting to see that the tension builds not only between opponents, but between teammates as well.  When one person wants to play with their toys and another wants to wipe out the enemy, the latter ends up somewhere between Lord-High General and tyrant or an oppressive attitude and "That Guy" depending on which side you're on.  And when it happens in the ridiculous venue that is Apocalypse, the chances for that become more pronounced.

I think it's fair to say that I didn't have the best time.  Honestly, I'd describe it as the worst 40K experience I've had in quite some time.  I attribute this to the fact that not everyone was on the same page, but also the unbalanced nature of big games.  That said there were still a few really cool moments.

Hugs!

One of the players on the opposition brought a half-dozen Ork Warbosses that he ran as a single mob.  Meanwhile, I had a pair of Wolf Lords with either a Power Fist or a Thunder Hammer.  Seeing this, we both went all, "Come at me, bro!" on each other.  I had the chance to assault and took it.  Both my guys died horribly, as the Lord with Saga of the Bear was already carrying two wounds, while the other was doubled out, but before they got taken off, they each got to swing, netting at least two wounds on each Warboss.  Each was doubled out, except for one, who managed to make both of his 5+ cybork body saves.  So close...  That bosses power field must have been on point, because he later saved two of two wounds from my Librarian's force weapon.  Sometimes the dice just don't cooperate.

On the other hand...

Yes, I flank marched my Wolf Lords...

Logan and company rolled on and popped their shots at a nearby Stompa.  Arjac knocked him down to his last structure point, but I couldn't quite finish him off.  In response, a ton of fire gathered around them for retribution.  The chances of survival from all the lances and rail guns were reasonably close to nil.  As everyone around the table began firing, the Ork player stepped up and said, "OK, I'm gonna fire my Shokk Attack gun at you.  Here's my roll for the strength."  Much to my chagrin, he rolled up a ten.  But it was double five's and we knew that did something.  We checked the book, and sure enough, the Mek had shot himself into close combat with Logan.  There would be no more shooting at them this turn.  It was absolutely priceless to see the reaction of the guy who was so dead set on winning when he found out all his careful planning had gone awry for the quirks of the dice.


Anyway, the game trickled to a half after three and a half turns.  The victors were obvious at this point and I was more than happy to go home.  I may return to Apocalypse at some point, but hopefully under more clear circumstances.  For now, my votes will be for tournaments when the option arises.

Hobby Update: Ones and Twos

After wrapping up a bunch of Blood Wing projects last month, I've moved on to giving some of my other armies a little bit of love.

How could he not be awesome?

I am really hoping that whenever the new Chaos codex comes out that Possessed are just absolute filth.  I'm half expecting it as well.  In preparation, I'm grinding on what really amounts to two squads of five.  Initially, it was going to be one of ten, but I realized that when I was picking models for priming I grabbed both of the Aspiring Champion/Chaplain models.  It's not really a big deal, resulting in just a little extra black paint thrown around during basecoating.  For the other troopers, I put on their Mechrite Red, then applied the Scab/Gore Red mixture.  Now I'm up to straight Red Gore, then Chainmail.  There's a long way to go on everything, but it's nice to see things beginning to take shape.  I want to work out some unique details for each unit before I go much further, but Possessed are beautiful models and don't really need much added.

I promise there will be more colors

I've gone back and forth about what to do with the Manticore that I've had sitting around for most of the last year.  If I were to use it in the Widowmakers army, it would be painted in a more realistic (for a mythical creature anyway) style for an animal.  If I went with Chaos Daemons, I would be going for a more unnatural effect.  I still haven't decided what to do with the whole thing, but I thought it couldn't hurt to give the unridden head a shot and see how it turned out.  It would also afford me a chance to use some of the new paint line, since my greens don't get much of a workout currently.  I started off with a layer of Caliban Green on the mane.  From there, it's going to be Warpstone Green and then Moot Green on the more extreme lengths of the hair.  I want to really work on blending the colors well.  I have less space to do it than I'd like, but it should result in a cool effect.  Starting from black and going all the way to light would be a big change from the way I've painted anything in the past.  If all goes well, and I get close to the look I want, it'll definitely have an impact on my eventual decision.

Needs cleaning up, but looking good.

Finally, I'm still doing some Blood Wing stuff, but it is neither elite, nor is it red.  I procured the last Death Company models I needed following the tournament, did a little converting, and have begun working on painting.  Everything is primed, but the only model that's had major work done on it is the Mark of the Wulfen model.  I think this has a lot to do with how much I like how the model looks and how nice the new Ceramite White works.  Go out and try this stuff folks.  It covers black easily.  It covers red easily.  I'm not going to run out and start painting White Scars (or Knights), but I'm certainly more interested in trying to include it in various color palettes. As for the rest of the Death Company, they'll probably take a backseat to the Possessed, but I'm excited to be working with a new set of colors and a different style of armor.  For now, I need to focus on doing the rank and file guys.  It's so easy to get drawn into the shiny bits, but the bulk of armies really does get more time in the long run.

Hobby Accomplishments:
-Got initial basecoats on the Possessed
-Finished basing the Blood Wing
-Built and primed the Death Company and Astorath
-Closing in on finishing the DC Mark of the Wulfen
-Started working on the Manticore head

Hobby Goals
-Finish the DC Mark of the Wulfen
-Get the Red Gore and silver on the Possessed
-Work on blending skills
...so essentially more of what I'm already doing.

Based Up

After a week of staring sullenly at figures laid gently onto their armor, I spent Thursday happily gluing Terminators back onto their bases.

Pre-painted resin casts.

Detail shot with both varieties of floor.

I built the master copies of each 40mm base from the inside of a bunch of Rhino doors.  Each of the sides is made from the edge portion of a Fantasy movement tray.  I was trying to communicate the idea of a hallway in a space hulk without blocking off much of the model.  The edges create just enough of an illusion that when someone cares enough to look closely, I believe that they'll infer what they're supposed to.

Once the masters were built, I turned them over to a friend of mine to be cast.  The turnaround time was just about a week, and I have to say, I'm pleased with the result.  On a few of them, you can see where the mold started to degrade a little bit after several casts, but he managed to get more than enough quality bases finished to complete the project.  As an added bonus, even the miscasts will be usable because of the simplicity of the design.  A little puddle of superglue can become a fluid leak.  I can also add pipes, hoses, and dead Tyranid bits to further accentuate the bases, while also providing splashes of color to add to the visual interest, and confusing you into thinking they're not all essentially the same.  And all this out of a bunch of people's random scraps!

Vargheist bases all painted up.

Group shot.

Painting was simple enough.  I primed black, then airbrushed with Blackened Steel from the Reaper Master Series paints.  I exercised just enough patience to allow that to dry, then set about trying to pose them.  I ran into much more trouble than I expected for a couple different reasons.  First, Terminator stances tend to be extremely wide.  I suppose there's a reason why they're on 40mm bases.  This leads immediately to problem two.  If you try to put Terminators facing into what would be a wall to make them fit easily, it spoils the illusion.  It ended up taking a little bit of finagling, but I got each model in a position that works.  There's a little more work to do as far as getting them all flush, but they're definitely fieldable again.

Try to pick the master from the copies.

Now try it double-blind style.

The League Gets... Bloody

There always seems to be something a little perverse about playing my army against an actual Blood Angel's force.  We make plenty of jokes about training exercises and dum-dum bullets, but it still looks weird to have all the red on red crime.

This happened on a Thursday, when the league organizer finally gave up and said, "Fine, Imperials can play Imperials because they outnumber the Axis this week."  This led to my match-up with a heavily meched up Blood Angels army.  It consisted of three different Predator tanks, a bunch of Razorback and Rhino transports with Assault Squads inside, some Sanguinary Guard, and a squad of scouts.  I had just finished building the Vargheist's bases, so I decided to run a full squad of Thunderwolves.  I also wanted to run the Land Raider once again, and decided to use the extra random points to make the squad inside seven strong, including Logan.  That should strike fear into most units in the game.

Enough red to make your eyes bloody.  Get it?

The mission we rolled was called "The Listening Post."  The primary objective would be one piece of terrain, based on making a 5+ die roll attempted each time we initially entered a wood or hill.  The secondary objective was a marker that was placed in the middle of the field, while the third was who could pop the most tanks.  With only one tank, I was pretty sure I could pick up the tertiary easily enough.  It was Dawn of War and I took first turn.  My plan was pretty simple.  I wanted to move into as many pieces of terrain as possible, as quickly as possible.  If I could find the main objective, I could castle up and I'd be hard to shift. 

I managed to make a mockery of this fairly simple tactic by failing roll after roll over the course of the first two turns.  I countered this by rolling well to pop his tanks and was stoked to have four points in the bag from turn one.  My opponent found the listening post deep in his back right corner, which would present a problem for me as I had already committed the Thunderwolves on the left flank, and the rest of the army was going to struggle to make it across the field fast enough.  The only thing close by was Logan's squad, safely delivered by their transport just before a string of 6's from the lascannon Predator blew it up.  They'd have to do the dirty work alone and quickly set to it.  Even with poor rolling, they just put out so much damage that they quickly carved out all the resistance in that corner.  To compound this, my opponent deepstruck his Sanguinary Guard in my end, and victory was preserved when the Thunderwolf Lord made it 24" to finish them off.  Unfortunately, they wiped out the remainder of my Terminators, so I could only secure the points for the primary and tertiary objectives. 

Thirty Guardians vs. five Death Company = Not Fair

My second was something of a surprise bonus game.  All my models have been pulled off of their bases while the master copies of the scenic versions are being molded and cast, so I had anticipated being out of commission.  However, the army that won best overall was offered to me while the owner went to lunch so his friend could get in another game, which meant I was playing real, actual Blood Angels for once.  Speed, light armor, and a Storm Raven makes for a very different army, but similar employment.  I was playing against a foot Eldar list with an old school, 3rd edition Rescue mission that would see us looking for two hidden objectives.

I elected to go first again and chose the side with more markers to search.  It turns out my decision was a good one, with my troops jumping out and quickly finding both markers.  The two units carrying the markers used their transports to quickly relocate to the opposite corner of the board from his firebase, while the Death Company and Assault Marines applied pressure, killing off Guardians and forcing a reaction.  My opponent was so busy dealing with them that he never had a chance to go after the objectives.  That said, he pretty much annihilated the rest of my force, leaving a grand total of thirteen marines alive by the end of turn five. 

That adds 28 points to my league tally.  We'll see how quickly I can get the rest of the boys back in action.  Hopefully the bases will be done by tomorrow, but if they're done by the weekend, it'll work. 

Tournament! Part Deux

The Tau, who won best painted.

Round two, thankfully, did not begin with a bang.  I was playing a Tau list with two Shas'o, alongside some Crisis Suits, Broadsides, a Skyray, and a few other things.  I won the roll for first turn and immediately painted a big, fat target on the Broadsides.  It was always going to be a matter of whether or not I could get into his lines fast enough, and their railguns were the biggest threat to knocking out my Land Raider at any kind of range.  My meltas only managed to get one because of the cover they were sheltering in, but that turned out to be enough, as my Raider survived to turn two and delivered Logan into the Crisis suits. 

From that point, it was mostly academic.  There were a few highlights though, mostly involving the apparently ultra-resilient Skyray.  By turn four, it was the only thing left on the board.  We ended up going to turn seven because I couldn't kill it.  My Land Raider shot at it from turn three onwards and failed to even score the paint.  Despite roughly 15 hits from the assault cannon, I failed to roll a six to get a penetrating hit.  The multimelta fired at it four times and when it did hit, I rolled a three each time.  In the final turn, I even charged my Wolf Lord in on the final turn.  Did he have flechette discharges?  Yes.  Did they wound?  Yup.  Did I fail my 2+ save on my final wound?  Darn right I did.  For some reason, I don't think that will be written on his saga.

The game ended and scored me all three points.  That put me on the second table, matched up against Eldar.  This list was interesting because it included a squadron of Hornets, a Forge World unit.  Apparently, they're toting two pulse lasers apiece, meaning 12 strength 8, AP 2 shots per turn.  Just as in the game before, they got a big target painted right on them.  It turned out pretty well, as I got the first turn again, dropping in the Terminator pod and immediately blowing up two of them.  The assault cannons also found their range, knocking out two of three War Walkers.  This was a pretty devastating blow, as it knocked out almost the entirety of his weapons that would deny me saves or could seriously threaten my Land Raider.

Bridge over the river Sludge?

My turn two was equally productive.  He tried to block my path across one of the board's bridges with a Wave Serpent, but the Raider's firepower downed it and exposed the Dire Avengers inside to the Thunderwolves charge.   Over the next two turn's the Wolves ate that squad and another Dire Avenger squad, while the drop Terminators punched the last Hornet to death, and the back line Terminators shot down the last War Walker.  With all that damage, my opponent decided to concede.  While he might have been able to deny me an objective or two, I don't really blame him for his decision, as getting any result other than 3-0 was improbable. 


With eight of a possible nine points, I was in the running for Best General.  The top table was a Dark Eldar vs. Grey Knights match-up.  On turns five and six, it was 1-0, but unfortunately, on turn seven, the Knights finished off the last of the Dark Eldar, putting the Knights player on nine points and bumping me to second.  That was disappointing, but I felt a lot better when I found out that I had won Best Sportsman.  It's important to me that my opponent's enjoy their games, and if they can do so even in a competitive environment with me going as hard as I can, then mission accomplished.  Going into the tourney, my goal was to finish in the top three in every category.  Once I find out my paint score, I'll know if it's mission accomplished. 

As a bonus, here are a few shots of some of the other armies on the field.

The aforementioned top table Dark Eldar.

The eventual overall winner.  Gorgeous army.

The Best General Grey Knights.

Tournament!

Saturday, At Ease Games held a 2000 point tournament.  Obviously, I mention this because I was in attendance. 

After playing so many games at 1850 points, the extra 150 felt a little weird when I was trying to come up with a list.  I had just finished the Land Raider, so that had to be part of the list.  That meant Logan wouldn't be coming out of a pod, so I dropped two of them, plus a Lone Wolf and Dreadnought.  That meant I had points for a Thunderwolf to provide a running mate for the Thunderwolf Lord, providing him with just a little more protection and squeezing a strength ten Power Fist into a very fast unit. 

It really doesn't look like much at first.  And then it punches you in the face.

Going into the tournament, the thing I was most worried about was my general lack of experience with the list.  I've been playing my castling drop pods list for quite a while, and this was a pretty big departure.  I thought the theory was sound.  I wanted to alpha strike something significant with the drop pod, while the Thunderwolves and Land Raider raced forward to provide support.  It's always nice to have a theory, but putting it into practice can be interesting.

The missions were Bay Area Open style, meaning we'd be playing Seize Ground, Capture and Control, and Killpoints every game, with whoever fulfilled the most of these claiming the win.  After giving these a run, I have to say it's not incredible, but definitely plays pretty simply.  I guess my biggest gripe would be that it's not the most interesting way to play over the course of three games.  At the same time, not having to read the mission pack intently before every game to determine exactly what I need to do, then think through how to accomplish it while trying to deploy, is a big positive.

Evil St. Celestine

For my first game, I drew my favorite opponent, Chaos Daemons.  It was the same opponent as my first league game, though he was running a pretty different list.  Essentially, he tried to squeeze a bunch of Pavane's of Slaanesh on a Keeper of Secrets and three Daemon Princes into a list with a couple units of Flamers, plus some Horrors and Bloodletters.

He won the initial roll for turn order and elected for me to go first.  I dropped my Terminator pod deep in his end to put pressure on his Capture and Control objective.  My intent was to force him to defend that end with some of his heavy hitters, because most of the Seize Ground objectives were in my end.  If he didn't respond with enough resources, he'd be conceding one of the three win conditions and I liked my chances.  He ended up dropping all three units of Horrors nearby to try and shoot the Terminators to death.  Twenty straight saves later, I think he knew he was in trouble. 

I assaulted two of the units and did enough damage over two turns to kill all of them, then wiped out the third in the following turn.  At the same time, his Bloodletters came in on my end.  I put all my shooting into them, then charged in my Thunderwolves.  I cut them down to three, but they put three wounds on my regular Thunderwolf and he failed two saves, which really hurt.  He piled in with his Keeper of Secrets and finished off the Lord.  In the following turn, I had a choice to finish the Bloodletters or shoot the Flamers.  Despite the Flamer's potential damage output, I targeted the Bloodletters so I could pick up another killpoint and wipe out his last troop choice.  This ended up really costing me because the Masque and the Keeper of Secrets funneled two of my terminator units into one cone of death with the Pavane and Flamers put so many wounds on the terminators with Breath of Chaos, that it left just the Rune Priest and one Assault Cannon alive. 

What would turn out to be the deciding objective marker

As the game wound down, Logan and his bodyguard finally got involved killing a Daemon Prince and a unit of Flamers, putting me up by two killpoints.  On the final turn, the Keeper charged Logan's unit, while one of his Daemon Princes charged my immobilized Land Raider.  The Keeper put all his attacks on Logan and just barely managed to kill him, while my unit swung back and couldn't quite finish the job.  Then his Prince swung at my tank with the game on the line and managed to whiff three times out of five and failed to do anything significant on the damage rolls.  

We counted up the killpoints twice, but I had one more, and I also had my drop Terminators on a capture and control objective, netting me the win, 2-0.  I drew a Tau player next, which I'll cover in depth with my next post...

Hobby Update and Fantasy 40K

Work continues apace on the Land Raider.  At this point, I've advanced to the stage of my process in which I go section by section over the vehicle to ensure each one looks the way I want it.  This could be clean up, detail work, highlighting, or whatever.  I kicked off this afternoon with the assault ramp.  While that may be a very small section, I like to take my time and make sure there doesn't have to be any follow up.  Additionally, it means I'm free to really dig into the details, such as each of the individual feathers.

At the same time, sometimes it's good to have something else interesting going to break up the monotony.  Or I have ADD, which might be more likely.  I banged out a single out of production Khorngor as the test scheme for the rest of the unit.  I'd forgotten how easy it is to paint single rank and file models.  Or maybe it seems that way after the long odyssey that is the Land Raider.

It's a pretty straightforward paint job.  Brown on the fur.  Silver on the armor.  Heavy wash for that grimy, dirty look.  Really, the interesting part was drilling holes into the marble tile for the base.  Because these models are the old metal design, they use slotted bases.  While I could just clip the metal parts off, the contact points with the base would be pretty flimsy.  Instead, I left the parts directly beneath the feet untouched and sank them into the base.  I used a little too much glue, resulting in a good bit of frosting, but he's sturdy, which is what I really want and I'll be on the lookout for this with the rest of the unit.


Finally, some friends and I got together for a goofy, little exercise.  We held a fantasy football style draft for all the units in 40K.  We had to take one HQ, Elite, Heavy Support, and Fast Attack, two Transports, and three troops and fit all of them into a 1500 point list.  I had the second overall pick and drafted the following:
1. Ork Boyz
2. Tau Crisis Suits
3. Mycetic Spore
4. Grey Knight Interceptors
5. Blood Angel Death Company
6. Eldar Jetbikes
7. Dark Eldar Haemonculus
8. GK Dreadknight
9. Blood Angel Rhino


I like my draft.  Honestly, I got pretty much everything I wanted and it works better together than you might think at first glance.  Can you spot the fun strategery?

League Night

Cityfight and small points games adds some new wrinkles

Because the league officially started on a Thursday, week number one is running through St. Patrick's Day.  I'm pretty stoked about that as it allowed me an extra opportunity to pick up points for my team...  Okay, who am I kidding, it's all about my numbers.  But seriously (or as seriously as Warhammer gets anyway), I appreciated the chance to not start a game behind some folks.

My opponent this week, Nick, is building a brand new Necron army.  The nice thing about this is watching him progress both at the table and while painting.  The downside is that it's hard for him to get games in while the list is under construction.  I offered to play him at a reduced points level to make sure he got a game in and we settled on 775 points.  He agreed to let me run a Deathwing version of the all-Terminator list, because otherwise I'd have been running Logan and not much else.  While Logan may have been able to run through a whole army himself, it wouldn't have been much fun to play for either side.

I hammered out a quick list that included Belial, two squads of Terminators with an Assault Cannon and a Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield in each squad, plus a Dreadnought.  Nick brought a Necron Lord, a Cryptek, a five man and twenty man squad of Warriors, five immortals, and nine scarabs.  We agreed to play on a 4x4 table and snagged one of the special mission tables which meant we were playing a scenario called "The Prepared Mind."  Essentially, it was a Cityfight game with a primary objective of holding table quarters, each worth a preset number of points, between one and four.  Based on a random table we had to roll on, my side had quarters worth four and two, while his had sections worth three and one.  The secondary objective was to have one unit positioned entirely out of cover on one of the roads.  The tertiary objective was to wipe out your opponents most expensive unit.

Orange: Striking, but makes you stand out in the grimdark

He had first turn and spent most of it trying to get his models into position.  His twenty man squad climbed the large building in the center of the table, while the rest of his army ran forward at street level.  I did mostly the same, hugging cover and trying to stay out of the line of sight of the giant warrior squad.  With few targets, my Assault Cannons opened up on his scarabs.  For worthless little insects, their high attacks were probably the scariest thing for my heavy armor.  Unfortunately, their cover saves and my poor rolling meant I only killed two of them in the first two turns of shooting.  Meanwhile, my Dreadnought acquitted himself well.  Two turns of good shooting at the five man squad meant that the Lord and Cryptek were running across the field together.  Additionally, in turn three, he downed four Immortals in one go, and their remaining squad member failed his morale check and slowly fled off the board.  

Sadly, the Dreadnought's run would not last.  He was charged by the Lord, and though he killed the Lord once, the Lord made his We'll Be Back roll, stood back up, and wrecked the Dreadnought in the following turn.  During the same turn, I assaulted the Scarabs who had gone to ground in my shooting phase.  The Power Fists went to work, causing Instant Death across the board.  I didn't do nearly as much damage as I should have, with lots of ones on rolls to wound, but I did just enough and killed the last of them.  I consolidated into the far table quarter, which meant I controlled quarters worth four and three.  He then charged his Lord into one of my squads.  While he killed one of the Terminators with his War Scythe, the Storm Shield did its job and the Power Fists were just too many high strength hits to handle.  In the following turn, the Cryptek failed to stand up, but the Lord did again.

League Night!

With the game coming close to ending, we both positioned units to try and score objectives.  He moved his Lord to contest my four point square, while his warriors moved into the three point square.  I then moved one unit of Terminators back into the four point square, hid Belial in a corner in the three point square to contest it, and moved the second unit of Terminators onto the road in the two point square.  The Terminators gunned down the Lord so they could score, but he stood up yet again.  Three different units killed the robot, but he refused to stay down.  That turned out to be the last act of the game and I pulled out what was actually a pretty narrow win.


Once the Immortals and Scarabs went down, I think the writing was pretty much on the wall.  He just didn't have enough things to contest and score.  I made a conscious decision to ignore the tertiary objective, his giant squad, reasoning that the only way to lose my Terminators was to march into rapid firing Gauss weapons.  I scored 16 points for the Imperial side, bringing my week one total to 36 of a possible 40, which has to put me somewhere near the top of the league.  As an added bonus, because I won the special mission of the week, one of my squads was to be rewarded for their exploits.  The squad on the road that scored the deciding points gained the Stubborn USR any time they're contesting an objective, which is actually pretty cool.  Now I just have to remember I have it.

Hobby Accomplishments
-All the red on the Land Raider is done!
-Good first week of the league.
-Primed Khorngors and Stormboyz.
-Assembled Death Company.  Pics to follow.

Hobby Goals
-Finish the Vargheists.
-Clean up the banners and the white on the Land Raider.
-Airbrush 10 Possessed with Mechrite Red.

Kicking off a New League

We're skating to my humps.  It's provocative.

On Saturday, I played my first game in the aforementioned league.  It wasn't so much that I set up a game, but rather that I was told, "Oh, you're on the Imperial team?  We're playing after this."  Don't get me wrong.  It wasn't a brusque insistence, but rather, more of a friendly requisitioning.  And who would be my opponent?  But of course, my favorite, Chaos Daemons. 


My opponents army was about half completed and I'm really looking forward to seeing it in a completed state.  It's themed around fallen Sisters of Battle, so he has battle sisters that he uses as Horrors, Sisters Repentia proxied as Bloodletters, Seraphim as Flamers, and Penitent Engines as Daemon Princes.  The only thing in the army that is a true daemon model is the Forge World Keeper of Secrets.  It's a rad looking model that sounds incredibly labor intensive.  Apparently, each of the hair strands and spikes are individual bits of resin that need to be attached. 

We rolled on the league's special mission chart and came up with one entitled "Alone and Unafraid."  The premise was that four wounded soldiers were wandering the battlefield randomly and needed to be recovered by both sides.  For some reason then, this was the secondary objective.  The primary was an old school, 3rd ed recon, while the tertiary was a standard capture and control.  We used a spearhead deployment.

I lost the roll off and went first, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  I dropped both of the Terminator pods with Logan and the Priests into his deployment zone.  He got his preferred wave which consisted of his Keeper, the Masque, two Daemon Princes, a Chariot of Tzeentch, and a big unit of Flamers.  He came in aggressively and was rewarded with a string of hits on his scatter rolls.  The only mishap was the Keeper which got put way off in the corner by herself.  The Flamers put a scary number of wounds on the Priest squad, but thanks to my storm shield plus wound allocation, most of the armor ignoring saves went away.  He also tried to turn my Rune Priest into a spawn, but failed.  My Rune Priest cast Jaws of the World Wolf killing three Flamers and the Chariot, then charged with the remains of the squad into the Flamers, while Logan and his squad charged on of the Daemon Princes.  The Flamers weren't much of a match for the Terminators, even with their 4+ invulnerable.  Meanwhile, Logan did as Logan does and saw off the Prince. 

Two solid castles in either deployment zone

My opponent's next set of reserves rolled on which included two squads of Screamers and some Fiends.  Without any other real targets, I sent Logan's squad into the Fiends.  I decided to pop Living Legend to make sure and see them off which I did thanks to fearless wounds.  The Masque and the remaining Daemon Prince counterattacked, killing the Wolf Priest but a couple of Power Fists ended up seeing them off.  The Horrors and the Bloodletters finally put some pressure on my deployment zone, dropping deep into my lines.  Unfortunately for him, there weren't any other targets for my two shooty squads which had been guarding the deployment zone and waiting for someone to play with for three whole turns.  They gunned down half of the Bloodletters, then the Wolf Lord piled in and saw off the rest.  Meanwhile, the Lone Wolf held up the Horrors until the Wolf Lord made it over there.  At that point, everything was academic except for one thing.  The Dreadnought and the Rune Priest finished the Screamers.  The Keeper charged Logan's squad, but failed dangerous terrain tests (yes, multiple) on the way in.  He wiped the squad, but Logan went all Power Fist and got several wounds through and killed the Keeper. 

With that, it was a tabling, and I took max points from the mission.  Twenty points to the Imperials!  It was a really fun game against a new opponent and I'm stoked to keep my run for the league going.

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.   

Hobby Update: Further Vargheist Thoughts

The group in progress

I don't know if it's burnout or the models or what, but I find myself struggling to finish these guys.  Honestly, I'm not sure how to finish them.  I wanted to use dark colors to set them apart from the main body of the force and to resonate with the Death Company models.  At the same time, I didn't want to use pure black, since I'm using it for armor pieces throughout the force.

The color I settled on was a very dark slate gray for the body, plus Fortress Grey for the wings and hair.  I washed down the wings.  I put a pretty heavy drybrushing of white on the hair.  I don't think it even qualifies as drybrushing anymore, but I like the way it turned out.  I'd usually Badab Black on the rest of the body too, but the recesses are so pronounced, I think I'm going to go with actual black paint and then drybrush a lighter gray on the larger muscled areas for highlights.  Even with all that, I don't know how visually interesting they're going to be.  I'm worried they'll look basically like blanks on the table.  They need a splash of color or something to draw the eye, but I'm stumped as far as where that splash belongs.

Suggestions?

Hobby Accomplishments
-Finished Deneghra
-Played the first two games of a campaign
- Made Space Hulk bases
-Worked on the Vargheists
-And finally, fifty posts!  Woot!

Hobby Goals
-Finish all the red on the Land Raider
-Finish the Vargheists
-Acquire more Rhino and Land Raider doors

DUNDRACON!

Road tripping all the way to the bay area and back in less than 48 hours means about 16 hours of total time in the car. 

Totally worth it.

I drove up with some friends who had committed to helping run the 40K tournament.  They were asked to do some of the judging and to help make sure things ran smoothly.  They asked if I wanted to come along, and while I hesitated at first, I'm glad I did.  Geoff, who ran the tournament, did a great job.  Rounds started on time.  The missions and explanations were clear.  Everything just seemed like it came off with zero hitches without too much fuss, which can certainly be a lot harder than it seems.

Nice venue and definitely an interesting Con

In round one, I got paired against Nick who was playing a Daemons army.  The mission had three objectives with one in the middle and one in the center of each deployment zone.  They were weighted so that the objective in your opponents end was worth three, the one in the center was two, and your ends was worth one.  We had a pretty close game, but a few mistakes and few lucky breaks ended up deciding things.  I cast Murderous Hurricane on the wrong unit of Fiends.  He managed to immobilize my Dreadnought, which would have tied up his Bloodletters in the next turn.  I didn't support some of my units enough.  I whiffed a lot with my Thunderwolf Lord and had a few rough turns of saves.  In the end, he held the center and my end, while I was on his end's objective, but it was contested by the second Great Unclean One who had decided to wander over there.  Logan did manage to handle the first one which was pretty awesome.

I hate Daemons so much!

Game two was against Mark and his Eldar army.  The mission was kill points, but added a number of bonus kill points for killing things like tanks and HQ's.  Unfortunately, this meant that my list jumped from thirteen kill points to twenty one.  This weakness came to the fore by the end of his second turn, when two fire prisms and Eldrad's ten man wraithguard unit opened up on the squad with the Rune Priest and Wolf Priest and he picked up a quick seven kill points.  Just like that, I knew I pretty much had to table him to win.  The Thunderwolf Lord went into the Wraithguard by himself.  Logan's unit was just out of range and got counter-charged by Asurmen and a squad of Dire Avengers after eating a full turn of fire.  Logan and the Thunderwolf went to work, while the remaining storm shields tried really hard to just not die.  Eventually, Asurmen would finally make it to Logan, who was on his last wound, but by that time the Lone Wolf had arrived and he doubled out the Phoenix Lord.  Meanwhile, once Eldrad and the warlock went down, the Wraithguard dropped pretty quickly.  I did end up tabling him, but Mark was a lot of fun to play and he had a great attitude whichever way things were going.

The final game of the afternoon was against Jon and his Blood Angels with multiple win conditions.  I lost Logan early, and things were looking pretty grim.  He fulfilled the kill point portion of the win condition early by nuking drop pods and independent characters, then had his scouts show up in my table quarter to further complicate things.  The game turned when the Thunderwolf Lord made a pair of Belt of Russ saves and killed Mephiston.  He then assaulted a pair of assault squads that had teamed up with a Furioso Dreadnought to whittle one squad down to a single Wolf Priest.  The Lord went crazy, killing seven marines.  Both squads failed morale and the still intact squad fell all the way back off the table.  That swung the game.  I still needed until turn six and some good shooting to pull off the win, but I did it.

So 2-1 for my first tournament of the year.  I had a great time.  I played well.  You can't really ask for much more.

Hobby Accomplishments!
-Won tournament games!  Finished in the top half. 
-Finished the menhir and a Daemon Prince.  Did some work on the Land Raider.
-Mocked up Space Hulk bases.

Hobby Goals
-Finish all the red on the Land Raider.
-Varnish the Daemon Prince and the Menhir.
-Do some work on the Vargheists.

Turning Scraps into Space Hulk Bases

One of the things my Terminators definitely need is an upgrade to their bases.  I love the way they've turned out, but nondescript silver discs just aren't cutting it as the floor of a space hulk and it detracts from the overall appearance.

Not pictured:  The suspension of your disbelief.

So rather than doing any of the things I'm supposed to be doing, whether that be in life or in hobby, I spent the day sitting on the floor, watching basketball, and fiddling with plastic bits pulled out of the vehicles box.  Here is the result of my labor:

Not the trickiest of conversion efforts.

Essentially, we have mostly the reverse sides of leftover Land Raider and Rhino doors, plus some cables and movement tray sides.  It's fairly straightforward.  There is a lot of cutting and snipping.  I should probably clean up the edges with some sanding and green stuff, but I'm not that concerned about it.  I think hitting it with some black primer will cover a multitude of ills.    

Thoughts?  Should I continue the project or scrap it and buy some resin bases?