A Big Table and Big Terrain

Today, I had the opportunity to play in a pretty fantastic multiplayer game.  After not giving my opponents a very competitive run for the past two games, it was nice to be able to sit back a little and just try to do cool stuff. 

It was a big board with lots of dead stuff

We played an objective mission on a double sized table, with an objective in each deployment zone and another in the center.  This was my first experience playing against the Necrons codex.  I can't make any judgements about the book, due to the way we played, but there are definitely some things I liked.  The Doomsday machine is pretty sweet.  With an army full of Terminators though, that thing became target priority number one and died quickly.  Mindshackle Scarabs are amazing against some things and not particularly useful against others.  War Scythes terrify me. 

Deathmarks? Meet Lone Wolf...

All in all, I'd call it a book full of interesting things.  The game itself was well played on all sides.  It's too easy to gang up on one player, but I think it was played evenly throughout.  At the last, I fought a teleporting squad of Necrons off my objective, then had a chance to score the objective in the center of the table, when my Thunderwolf and a lone Terminator finished off a Plague Marine squad.  Unfortunately a Greater Daemon chose that moment to make his presence felt, charging across the Fortress of Redemption and wiping out the last Terminator.  I can't complain too much.  I think I made three Crux Terminatus saves in a row at one point.

A nice fulcrum, perhaps

I finished the High Elf menhir that I've had for quite some time.  I picked up a few of them with a big Forge World order several years ago, and just never got around to finishing any of them until now.  This is the first of them.  I thought it would be a great piece to experiment on with my new airbrush.  It wasn't a perfect process, but it's only the second time I've used it.  I didn't mask the lines well enough, so I had to do a lot of clean-up.  Not a big problem, considering the time I was able to cut off with not having to do multiple layers of white to cover mistakes and get a smooth surface.


List building has been occupying a fair amount of my brain space during the quiet hours.  I'm considering attending a Con in the near future and if I'm going to play in the 40K tourney, I'd like to bring some of the more visually impressive elements to bear while remaining somewhere close to competitive.  Of course, a Land Raider and four Thunderwolves including a Lord isn't exactly cheap, so it might come down to really sacrificing some things.  That's a scary notion though, with only have twenty scoring models in my list as it is now, so paring that down doesn't seem like a good idea, but where else to cut?  Those are the puzzle pieces I keep playing with. 

I've been playing a lot of Dominion online lately.  I feel like the layout of the site lets me be more detached and analytical about card selection.  I'm also pretty sure that I'm less attached to my deck, so I'm more likely to go with strategies in which I'm trashing a lot of cards.  I definitely recommend checking it out, whether you already enjoy Dominion and would like to play more often than random game nights, or you wanna give a set a test run before picking it up.

In Hobby Love

In less than 5 minutes

Today was all about spraying paint from various things.

I had the opportunity to give it a go with my airbrush for the very first time.  When asked to describe it, I broke out the dictionary and dropped the word, "Revelatory."  I don't know if I can oversell it.  The heavens opened up, trumpets blared, and I saw visions of me painting legions of all kinds in a matter of hours.  Alright, maybe that is overselling it, but I slapped a very nice coat of Red Gore on the tower of my Fortress of Redemption in a matter of minutes.  By hand, we're talking about an indefinite period of time, plus breaks, plus boredom, plus me eventually putting it down to find something more interesting to paint.

The second attempt was a little less enthralling and it pointed out a few problems, beginning with, "I have no idea how the heck to do this."  I think I accomplished the mission, but paint didn't come out as smoothly.  I tried mixing in some water, but if there's too much, it gets runny.  So it'll be a while before I get everything figured out.  At the same time, the Word Bearers somewhere deep in the queue are very excited about getting several deep layers of red and probably moving up in the order.

I also hit up my drop pods with a layer of Testors Dullcote.  That's way less exciting, but definitely pragmatic.  The Drop Pods take a beating in my current transportation set-up, so they needed it.  I don't think the varnish messed with the color at all which is great.  I've heard about gloss and matte varnishes either raising or dulling the intensity of the color, so I'm glad this worked out.  It also left a very nice texture on model.  I don't know why I put if off for so long, but now I'm definitely going to spend a little extra time touching up things and varnishing them. 

Facing down the firing line

Finally, I got in a game against Imperial Guard.  It was Dawn of War with five objectives.  Things went my way from the start.  He took the first turn and brought everything on.  I counted four targets that I had to eliminate as soon as possible, with three Vendettas and a Leman Russ with five plasma cannon shots.  He had several other veteran squads with some scary stuff, but they didn't have nearly the range or the speed.


Because of the night fighting rolls, he didn't have the chance to reach out with the long guns in turn one.  In response, I deep struck Logan and his squad and the Dreadnought right next to a Vendetta and the Leman Russ respectively.  All the meltas hit and penetrated, and I quickly had two less targets on the field.  Just after that, my Thunderwolf Lord assaulted one of his squads and wiped them.  His turn two response saw some terrible shooting, but the Vendetta and melta fire took down the Lord.  Meanwhile, several squads worth of shooting could only take the weapons off the Dreadnought.  My turn two included Logan's Living Legend and four combats, all of which went my way.  Essentially, all my Terminators were into his lines, running around, and demolishing everything, and I still had a pod to come in.  My opponent got incredibly disheartened at this point, and I asked if he wanted to call it, so we did at the top of turn three.

Not now.  I'm about to run amok...

Hobby Accomplishments
-Airbrushed something!  Two things actually.
-Finished a Drop Pod, so now I can run a fully painted 1850 point army.
-Built some Storm Boyz and some Vargheists.
-Got above .500 with a win over Imperial Guard.

Hobby Goals
-Finish the menhir.
-Work on the Land Raider.
-Figure out how to do Space Hulk bases.  Suggestions?