This and that and a lesson about Krylon

Nice productive couple days off. Got a game in with a friend of mine, finished a few build projects, got some terrain glued to bases, and finally painted some shoulder pads..

First off- Played a 2k point game with Matt. He played new Chaos. His list was Typhus with a wad of ablative zombies, a three man unit of Obliterators, two 10 man plague marine squads in rhinos, a 10 man squad with no vehicle, a maulerfiend with whip coils and finally a forgefiend with hades autocannons. I played Orks with 3 trukks full of boyz (one with Warboss), a trukk full of tricked out nobs, a battlewagon with a big squad of lootas/ meks, 20 man grot squad, 3 deffkoptas, a 5 man squad of stormboyz, a deffdread with a few skorchas and finally a 3 man killa kan squad with grotzookas.

This is the biggest game we have played in 6th ed. but due to the low model count it didn't really seem like it. Got lucky and got first turn but because all of his stuff was really far away, placed in cover well, or in armor it was remarkably ineffective. His first turn, however, ended with me trukk-less (or maybe one left) and a with a bunch of dead boyz (explosions were ridiculously deadly early game for me) Although, to be honest, no trukks at the end of turn one is pretty much par for the course hahaha
2nd turn my reserves came in. The Koptas put the hurt on his forgefiend (it wouldn't recover before getting axed) and I dropped my stormboyz in the middle so they could partake of the action as soon as possible. Got some decent shooting in with a few units and positioned my walkers well. The ork boy shooting was overall really ineffective the whole game, Plague Marines are brutal. They are just so hard to shift or kill with fearless, T5, and 2 saves. His 2nd turn he decided to backtrack with one of the rhino plague marine squads to deal with the koptas while running his nurgle marked spawn forward. He also ran his maulerfiend up (it got take out by lootas and CC with the nob/ Warboss) The spawn's charge was one of the highlights of the game for me, a butt-load of wounds on them between 2nd round shooting with the grotzookas and overwatch with the boyz squad. Though, that was balanced by failing x3 4" charges in 3rd turn (one of which he let me have because of the vagaries of the terrain and where models were positioned.

With my vehicles gone and his troops being pretty slow, the rest of the game came down to just shooting and slugging it out without a lot of movement.  Lots of crazy rolls and some epic moments (especially loved the obligatory chaos champion challenge ending in a Superman/ Doomsday style dead power klaw nob and plague champion) All in all extra fun game and can't wait to play many more permutations of the new Chaos Dex.

Build projects- finished up my second unit of 3 killa kans, got 5 more stormboyz put together, and finally cleaned up the filthy chaos bits off of some Sanguinary Guard Matt gave me. The Stormboyz has got to be one of my favorite plastic kits at this point. The heads and bodies are just so awesomely sculpted and covered in gubbins. Hope to get a few more boxes of them! The Sanguinary Guard were Matt's old Slaanesh Jump marines that he decided he no longer wanted. Being the resident Blood Angel player (well, one of them at this point) he decided that they should go to me. That brings me up to 15 of them...makes me want to play Emo-Wing (Dante and all Sanguinary Guard)

The terrain gluing was pretty simple. Just more GW terrain gorilla glued onto MDF. I think I need to watch it in the first half hour after gluing it and be a bit more attentive to getting the extra mopped up. I am going to be gluing sand and debris to the terrain pieces so it won't be too bad but there are some marshmallowy looking bits where the terrain meets the board from where the glue expanded up and out. They aren't lying when they say you only need a little of it.

Finally, the painting. I did up the company (right) shoulder pad for the 5 man BA Tac. squad. Red and a green blood drop (for 4th company) for the regular marines and black with red trim and green blood drop for the sergeant. Here are some pictures (I finished up their bases and got them glued down the other day) The blood drops are green stuff from moulds taken from DC shoulder pads. My lovely wife helped me make 5 of them. Be careful when super gluing painted models. That shit clouds up paint and you have to redo it...

 The Green is kind of washed out because of the brightness of the photo but it is pretty electric!

 The sergeants have black shoulder pads in the most recent dex.

And on a final note-when it says to shake Krylon Spray paint for 1-2 minutes before use. Do it. If not it just sprays out liquid paint and kills your mini. Simple Green to the rescue!

Shooting Stars and a Studio

The Orionids were last week so I decided to take my camera along with me to the mountain. Managed to catch a few shooting stars and a satellite! (though you can't really tell the difference between the two) Then there was an article in Astronomy on photographing the meteor showers so next time I should be able to get even more. I wasn't too far off the mark but it is apparently better to aim between the radiant and the horizon not directly at the radiant, which makes sense when you think about it. Also, next time there is a meteor shower forecast to be really great I am going to try to get the day off. Trying to do all that while working was a bit tough and I don't think I excelled at either of them that night.

Here is the best of the pics and the pre-sunrise Eastern horizon from that morning (10/22)

that white line is a shooting star! (Orion center right) 

mad coloring that morning 

Now that I lured you in with some pretty pictures read the rest of my blog you bums!

On a gaming note the camera store that I bought my new tripod at had a mini-studio for taking nice pictures of small junk. So I picked that up too! The lighting is amazing! Much less shadowing and my camera has a white balance setting specifically for the bulb so there isn't any weird coloring. Took these pictures as a test, still some kinks to work out. Mainly the lint on the black background and I think I have to take the camera off the tripod and just hold it right in the light box itself (Warhammer minis are quite small) So the photos should get nicer and nicer.

So I did quite a bit of work the other day. I spent most of the day painting but I feel like the progress was kind of slow. There was a lot of 'what next' etc. The next batch of them should be faster as it is only repeating the process.

Here is a basic tac. marine that I finished the weapon and base for. I need to fiddle with the focus and depth of field or whatever. The bolter first picture, you can tell that the focus is on the bolter and the rest of the model is slightly blurry. Great coloring and you can finally see the highlights though! Bolters done in Black with adeptus battlegrey highlight/ Gunmetal, black wash and then vallejo chainmail highlight.

The right knee pad will get a squad marking soon 

The bases are Secret Weapon Miniatures Urban Rubble 25mm resin bases. Painted Army Painter Desert Yellow, sepia wash, desert yellow dry bush and then bleach bone dry brush. Planning on eventually getting a Zazzy terrain mat so I wanted some bases that would match that for my home field.

Had to cut the shoulder pad off of the Plasma gun so that the shoulder pad would fit on when I finally got it done. Also, it is magnetized so that I can swap it out for the melta-gun that I painted.

The sergeant. His banner was freehand but I am not super impressed with it. I need to sharped up the blood drop and maybe add something to one of the quarters, it's just kind of bland right now. I was happy with how the two tone turned out though. Arms and head are magnetized (weapon swap and Red Thirst/ Sanguinor Blessing head swaps)

Striping is obviously not perfectly even but looks good from a little bit of a distance. Also, no thanks to you bums for not participating in my quick online survey last post :-(

Pistol with a scope!

Some washing and blending on the cloth and purity seals. Don't know if I am satisfied with the purple on the seals, I might do an orange, green, or yellow instead.

And finally, kind of random but here is a picture of my DC (Chaplain) Dreadnought. I painted him quite a while ago but I just wanted to show off. I love how the skulls on this one turned out. I need to remember what I did lol

Got a couple of days off next week so hopefully I can finish, completely, the 5 man squad and then get them varnished. I'll get a pic up of the completed squad when I am done!

On a final note, I know I sound like a fanboy, but Mantic is just an awesome company. They have an official podcast and while it doesn't come out too frequently, they interview the owner and the game designer. They talk about upcoming releases and their plans. Which is a huge breath of fresh air when compared to how GW operates. Obviously the size of the companies is incredibly different but still, it feels like they care about keeping their players 'in the loop'

Also, new Warpath Rules (yay, hope these are better than the first ones...)

The portents are against us

Anyone that has been in the hobby probably knows how I feel right now.

You sit down to get a little bit of hobby progress done and then bam, the gods show you that it is not time. Sometimes it happens before you sit down as well.

Was planning on cleaning up some of the blood angel iconography I had made with green stuff and seeing if I could get it on a shoulder pad or two...cut my finger within 30 seconds of picking up the exacto.

Turn off hobby light, step away from the table, and get a Guinness lol

The BAs are coming along nicely. Just need to get their weapons painted (bolters should be quick, meltagun and plasma gun not so), do up the resin bases that I got from SW minis (waiting on some desert yellow paint from the Warstore) and then do the flag on the sergeants backpack and they'll be doneski (at which point it is rinse and repeat 20 times for an army...) I will probably paint some Mantic stuff after I finish the initial 5 guy BA squad but writing all of the color schemes down as I go should help maintain the coherency (I have a bad tendency to forget what I used to paint things)

Quick internet poll; Chainswords- Solid colors or 'hazard stripe' black and yellow striping on the sword case? I'm leaning toward hazard striping...

I have decided to make my BA army the 4th company lead by Captain Castigon. The ambitious goal would be to build the whole company (6 tac squads, 2 assault squads etc) We'll see how much I like playing them once codex creep sets in and I face more and more 6th ed. codices. They might just get set aside when the new Eldar dex comes out.

Mantic stuff is coming along nicely as well. Only have the slave orcs left to put together, I was thinking on them though. I read a few comments of people complaining that the normal orcs looked just like the slave orcs. Anyone know of anywhere to by super fine chain and tiny manacles? (I'm thinking faerie bondage website or maybe jeweler) One guy online suggested subbing some of their axes for hammers as well so I may give that a go and see how it looks (lots of leftover hammers) I ordered their two player box set from Warstore. They are having an inventory clearance sale which luckily for me included the perfect Mantic stuff that I was looking for. The box has undead and orcs so I'll be able to make two units of slaves and then some bigger undead units. The awesome thing about Kings of War is that the ally rules are very lenient; a solid unit of core troops (20+) gets you a hero/monster and a war machine. That's it. So I am thinking an army of mostly Abyssal Dwarves with some undead and orc units mixed in. Niiiiice and fluffy. Gamer buddy was not too impressed by the abyssal half breeds but I really liked the models and I think I will paint them next!

Also, stop what you are doing right now and get on this! Fiddle with the icons until they turn red and your reward is multiple eargasms.

Also, yay! More old school games for cheap!

Been a little while!

I know that at this point it has probably become 'Oh, what a tool. Three posts and then he quit!' but nay fair reader, nay. I got married on the first and I have been out of my mind busy between work (currently one of the peak seasons) and applying for my special lady's 'you don't have to go home card.' Turns out it costs a butt-ton of money and requires a whole lot of rodent like scampering from place to place. Almost to a bit of a lull in the process though so that coupled with Ironman this weekend means I finally have a bit of hobby time.

So, I sit down to enjoy some plastic time and lo and behold I uncover a huge mistake; I have mis-based my Mantic Orcs! Those bastards lovely greenskins go on a 25mm base, not a 20mm (I hadn't even seen Mantic's 25mm base until I realized my mistake, though it makes sense cause that would make then useable with Warhammer) So my first hobby time in a while actually turned out to be negative hobby progress. Also, since I am an idiot and use plastic glue there isn't any way to get them off of the base short of some major work. The only consolation is that I only based 5 of them (though they were nicely based and partially painted...)

So, setting the Orcs aside I tried to put some Mantic Abyssal Dwarf Decimators together. Absolute worst model kit I have ever tried to assemble. The gun arms in no way line up with the torsos provided. Gave that up after an hour and switched to the Abyssal Dwarf Black Souls. Finally an awesome kit! It is their normal Dwarves with some upgrade helmets and weapons and stuff. Having learned from putting their basic box Dwarves together I was super careful when assembling them so that the unit of 20 is nice and pretty and ranks up really well. Quite impressed with the finished unit and hope to maybe get some painting/ basing time in with them soon. I think that they are going to look nice when finished.

Today I decided to de-clutter my space and try to finish up some of the lighter projects on my desk. I cleaned off some sprues and then finished putting the tracks on my 40k Ork Half-trakk from Forge World. Man that thing is going to look awesome fully assembled and carrying around a big unit of Nobs! Can't wait to get it on the table. I just have to finish the basic trukk bits (the FW stuff is all done) and then she'll be ready. Although, since it is FW, there is some minor heating/shaping to be done on the resin since the trakk and frame didn't go together quite flush causing the whole thing to tilt to one side a bit but that is nothing that some hot water and patience can not take care of.

Then on to some painting. Got the fiery orange final highlight done on the bodies of the 5 man tac squad I have been working on. The Wargamer Insane Detail Brush is just amazing. Next is highlighting the black areas and then painting the gubbins, after that they get hit with the red wash. I threw away my makeshift picture studio in favor of building a slightly better one in the near future so none today but I'll try to get some pictures up shortly.

Also, unless you hate having a lot of fun for a little cash you need to get in on this! (soon!)