diceRolla

Lord Carver WIP

2012-02-12T22:32:00.009-05:00

Well it looks like this month's painting challenge that I set for myself is off to a bad start, on hold for now and likely to be pushed back to later this year. Sorry about that. I'm waiting to hear from my LGS about whether or not the rest of the Cygnar guys that I ordered from them are going to arrive anytime soon. Otherwise the only progress I've made so far was in successfully tracking down my missing box of Stormblades. So yeah, not good really.

Sure I could have started this past week on the Cygnar stuff that I do have, but instead I decided to hold off until the rest of the miniatures arrive. I'd rather wait and try this again in a few months, than start now but not be able to finish because half the models are on back-order. I'm actually kind of curious to see if I could do this challenge, so I'm willing to wait until I am better prepared before trying this again. Oh well… it's lame, I know. Feel free to call shenanigans on this. I only hope that regular diceRolla readers have by now become conditioned to such disappointment. ;)

So in the meantime over the last couple of days I've been painting this charming Farrow from the Thornfall Alliance for Hordes. In case you're not familiar with the model, this is the Minions warlock Lord Carver, BMMD, Esq III.

"ManBearPig is real. I'm super cereal."

Realizing that my chances of getting the Cygnar army painted this month were worsening with each passing day, I was ready to move on and start painting something else, anything else. I've had Lord Carver for about a year or so still in his blister pack and this seemed like a good time to paint him. I've got no other plans for collecting a Farrow Minions army so I'm painting this guy just for the hell of it.

I get a real kick out of this miniature. I love the pose, so serious for such a silly subject, and his cape is more than sufficiently swoopy. :) I had lots of fun painting that part of the model, though I'm considering going over it with a red glaze to knock the orange back a bit. Then again, maybe I should just leave well enough alone. Nothing wrong with it I suppose.

Swoopy.

I haven't settled yet on what I'll do once I've finished painting Lord Carver. I feel at this point, even if my Cygnar order were to arrive in the next day or two, that it would no longer be a fun experience trying to blast through painting all of them just to make the goal I set for myself. I'm content to save 'em for later. I have a few other things sitting on my painting desk that I could work on but right now none of those older projects hold much interest. I'll think it over and see if anything jumps out at me. So until next time... happy painting and gaming!

February Painting Challenge

2012-02-01T23:50:00.016-05:00

This month my goal is paint from start to finish a 35 point army for Warmachine. I'm doing this for no particular reason, I just thought it would be fun to challenge myself a bit and perhaps shake off some of my hobby lethargy. I've had an old, metal Cygnar battle box sitting around for years waiting for some attention which will provide the core miniatures needed for this project. Cygnar is not my favorite faction as that honorific goes to the Mercenaries faction for both its Magnus themes and the Talion Charter as well. Nonetheless I'd like to see this group of minis finally painted after having held onto them for so long, and as a bonus they will make a nice foil to my own Magnus-based collection once I get around to those guys.

It looks like I'm not going to be able to get much done tonight as I only decided to do this a very short while ago. That's why for Day 1 of my February challenge I must be content with simply taking stock of what I already own and then planning how I want to fill out the rest of the army. Here's a rundown of what I have with which to begin this project:

PIP 21001 Warmachine Cygnar Battlegroup

- 1 Cygnaran warcaster Commander Coleman Stryker

- 1 Charger light warjack

- 1 Lancer light warjack

- 1 Ironclad heavy warjack

PIP 31008 Sentinel Cygnar Light Warjack

Warmachine MkII Cygnar 2010 Faction Deck

Warmachine MkII Cygnar Token Set

PIP 1024 Forces of Warmachine: Cygnar

Taken together that's enough to get started with a 15 point army, plus all the little doodads used during play and the army book as well. The faction deck should come in handy too as the cards packaged with my minis appear to be quite out of date. I also have a currently missing box of Stormblades that, once located, will add another 5 points to the army's total. Alright, I'd say I'm now off to a pretty good start with the new army.

To this I next plan on adding a Journeyman Warcaster to jack marshal the Sentinel and a full-sized unit of Long Gunners with their Unit Attachment for some extra ranged support. This brings the total to my target of 35 points and would allow me one month in which to paint 20 infantry and 4 warlocks. Right now that seems like an entirely reasonable goal for me to set, though I do have a bad history of evaluating this sort of thing. :) To give me an ever so slight amount of flexibility with my list, I would also like to paint one Hunter light warjack. By dropping the Long Gunner Infantry Officer and Standard from the list, I could then substitute the Hunter in place of the Sentinel. That way I believe I could tailor the Journeyman Warcaster to either a more anti-infantry or anti-warjack role as necessary. So with those 25 models at my disposal, here are the two 35 point lists* I could play:

pStryker (+6)

- Charger (4)

- Lancer (6)

- Ironclad (7)

Journeyman Warcaster (3)

- Sentinel (4)

Long Gunner Infantry (10)

- Long Gunner Infantry Officer & Standard UA (2)

Stormblade Infantry (5)

…. OR ….

pStryker (+6)

- Charger (4)

- Lancer (6)

- Ironclad (7)

Journeyman Warcaster (3)

- Hunter (6)

Long Gunner Infantry (10)

Stormblade Infantry (5)

So that's it. That's the army I'll be working on this month, hopefully painting it to completion. And of course I'll do my best to post regular updates along the way showing my progress. I might be able to get a little done tonight, but most likely tomorrow will see the actual start of work on this project. I'll check-in again soon but until then, happy painting and gaming!

*For what it's worth, both of these lists qualify for Tier 1 of Commander Coleman Stryker's theme force, Combined Arms. There is no benefit gained from this however as you have to include at least one unit of Field Mechaniks before any bonuses are granted. So... whoop-de-doo! :)

HQs of Christmas Past

2011-12-24T19:45:00.008-05:00

Merry Christmas!

And Let the Firewood Burn!

Day 4 Giveaway Finale

2011-11-27T23:42:00.002-05:00

Hello again, friends! Well we've come to the end of the "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" contest with just one more 2.5 oz jar of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver left to give out. Before doing so however I would like to say thanks one more time to all of you who have visited diceRolla and found something here worth your while. After spending a lot of time reading other folks' blogs I feel that my own can be, putting it nicely, something of an oddball at times. Therefore I am very grateful to have reached as many people as I have and to have sustained so many regular readers over the past two and a half years. This has always been a personally motivated thing that I enjoy doing, but it certainly has made it much more fun getting to interact with such well informed, interesting, and lively people.

Okay, now that I'm done with the blubbering part let's get on to the exciting conclusion and announce the final winner. So who will be joining GopherDave, The Grim Darkness, and nickthewise in the winners' circle? Why it is none other than...

Spacejacker

Congratulations! I encourage everyone so inclined to find out more about Spacejacker's hobby interests by visiting his blogs, Tiny Solitary Soldiers and Nano Solo, as they are chock-full of miniature goodness. I've been a long time fan of painting and gaming with 15mm scale and smaller miniatures, although my experience with them has been mostly in the realm of historical wargaming. Spacejacker however has some of the most incredible small scale sci-fi minis and scenery that I have ever seen. When I first started reading Tiny Solitary Soldiers, I found it so inspiring that I was barely able to restrain myself from buying up as many little spacemen and monsters as I could afford. In fact I still find that quite tempting but have held off from doing so mainly because there are already enough projects clamoring for my attention. Nonetheless I'm sure at some point I'll pick up at least a few 15mm sci-fi minis and... um... just see where it goes from there. ;) When you get a chance, Spacejacker, please email me and let me know where I should mail your jar of Brush Cleaner and Preserver.

Alright, that's about it for this contest so let's wrap it up. Although I was able to give out four prizes this time around, unfortunately that leaves 230 of you going home empty handed so to speak. I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a way to do something nice for each of you. Instead I'll just have to say how grateful I am for all of you who have helped make diceRolla so much more than I ever imagined it would become. THANK YOU!

And until next time, happy painting and gaming!

Day 3 Giveaway Winner

2011-11-26T23:31:00.012-05:00

Hey, hey! It's that time again to announce another winner in the always thrilling, "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" giveaway extravaganza. Okay, that might be overselling it just a bit. :) But I do have another 2.5 oz jar of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver to award to one of my faithful readers chosen randomly from The Esoteric Order of Jason. If you haven't seen anything about this before and want to know what's going on, I welcome you to visit the original post in which I explain the rationale behind this contest.

I'm quickly running out of steam this evening and, due to spending the past week with my in-laws, my patience and cognitive functioning is just about used up. Therefore let's move right on to the fun part. Joining our two previous winners, GopherDave and The Grim Darkness, tonight's lucky winner is...

nickthewise

Congratulations, Nick! 40k players may know nickthewise from his Dark Eldar Blog where he is focused on compiling as much information as possible about those most sinister of space elves. If however you're not already familiar with him, I've copied the following little introduction from one of the other blogs he contributes to regularly, The Dice Abide.

Nick aka nickthewise
Started Playing: 1996
Favorite 40k Army: Tactically I’m really drawn to the new Dark Eldar and the versatility the new Codex offers. Fluff-wise, Eldar has always been my favorite – I can’t wait for their new Codex!
Favorite Fantasy Army: I’m a 40k snob, sorry!
Current Armies: Dark Eldar (8,500), Eldar (6,000), Grey Knights (4,500)
Favorite Aspect of Hobby: I really enjoy the tactical aspect of the hobby, and pitting my wits against my opponents. I’m also a big collector and really enjoy seeing Rouge Trader era models and armies.

With more than 14,000 points of Eldar, of both the Dark and Craftworld varieties, that's some serious dedication. I don't think the Eldar are in any danger of dying off so long as nickthewise is in their corner. It looks like he's also got a significant pile of mon-keigh Grey Knights as well, but I'm pretty sure that's just to make his Eldar feel superior in comparison. (Yes it's true, Eldar even look down their noses at the Grey Knights, despite those humans somehow being better psykers than them.) In case there's still something left to be painted from that huge collection of minis, hopefully this brush cleaner will come in handy.

Thanks again to everyone for reading my blog, I'll be back tomorrow to announce the winner of the last jar of brush soap for this giveaway. And nickthewise, please email me and let me know where I should send your prize. Happy painting and gaming!

Day 2 Giveaway Winner

2011-11-25T22:28:00.002-05:00

Hello and welcome to Day 2 of the "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" giveaway. In case you've arrived here and don't know what this is about, you can check out yesterday's post for a full explanation. Short version is that, beginning on Thanksgiving and going through this coming Sunday, I'm randomly selecting one person each day from those Following this blog to win a 2.5 oz container of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver. It's just meant to be a little way of saying thanks to all you good people who read my blog.

With GopherDave having won the first one, that leaves three more jars left to give out. Therefore today's winner is...

The Grim Darkness

Congratulations! The Grim Darkness is author of the aptly named blog, The Grim Darkness. Well somehow I'd missed out before on signing up for his blog but I took care of that earlier today. I highly recommend for anyone interested to pay him a visit, he's got some fantastic models and scenery that are definitely worth taking a look at. I especially like his Death Guard Chaos Marines and his recent work on an outstanding 28mm Inquisitorial warband. I appreciate his style of painting and am hopeful this brush soap will prove to be helpful with future projects.

Okay, that's it for tonight. The Grim Darkness, if you would please send me an email (you can find the address near the top of my blog's right-hand column) we can work out where you would like me to send your prize. Thanks again for supporting diceRolla! And for everyone else, please check back tomorrow because I'll be choosing another winner. These past several days I've been in New York staying with my in-laws so it will likely once again be later on in the evening before I get a chance to post the next winner.

So until then, happy gaming!

Thanks Plus Giving Plus You

2011-11-24T18:27:00.006-05:00

Since today is Thanksgiving for those of us celebrating in the good old U. S. of A, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you kind people who visit this blog. Thank you! I really appreciate all the support I've received over the past few years and have enjoyed immensely hearing from each you. I've had a blast sharing my hobby life with you and I look forward to continuing to do so for a long time to come.

In the spirit of the holiday I am kicking off a little giveaway for all my blogging buddies as a way of expressing how thankful I am for your readership and your participation in the diceRolla experience. Starting now and going through Sunday, each day one member of The Esoteric Order of Jason will be randomly chosen to win a 2.5 oz tub of "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver. This brush soap works like a charm and will seriously extend the life of your brushes, not to mention getting out all that left over pigment stuck to your bristles.

And so the first winner in our "Thanks Plus Giving Plus You" drawing is...

GopherDave, aka Dave, aka TheDude

Congratulations Dave! For those of you who don't know him, Dave is one of the co-owners of Armored Gopher Games in Urbana, Illinois. As well as being an entrepreneur, Dave is also a philosopher, artist, devoted husband and father, and one hell of a sharp dresser. It was a great honor for me to meet him and to be able to spend some time talking about our favorite games when I stopped by his store on my way to Adepticon earlier this year. I'm therefore pretty psyched that his number came up first for the contest.

Although Dave has won this round, I've got three more jars of Brush Cleaner to give away. Using the trusty random number generator we'll do this all over again tomorrow to select the next winner. So thanks again to everyone for checking out my blog and offering me so much encouragement along the way. Happy painting and gaming... and of course, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Old Bloggers Never Die

2011-11-23T23:11:00.009-05:00

Nope, I'm not dead yet. :) Trying my best not to fade away, either. I'd say it's therefore time for a little bit of updating.

After staying busy throughout October, my family and I then hit a rough patch at the start of the current month. Nothing too dire, mind you, but stressful enough to kill most of my hobby and blogging motivation for the past few weeks. Normally painting is a great relief for me but I was in too much of funk to even pick up a brush for a while. Fortunately everything seems to be working out for the best now and I've started to get my hobby-groove back. Yippee!

Thus with the will to paint having been restored I finally got down to business and began working on my Sea Dog for the charity auction Project: Orange Crush (Hunger), part of Foodmachine 2011. (You can see my original post about getting involved here if you like.) I finished painting my pirate this past weekend and I'm really pleased with how he turned out. I had planned on keeping this under wraps until the auction goes live but I'm simply too excited to wait that long. Therefore I'm going to hold off from showing any further photos for the time being, though I cannot resist presenting at least one shot of my contribution to the effort. I'll have plenty to say later on about painting the miniature and the project itself, but until then here's the first look at my Sea Dog:

While painting my pirate I also spent some time thinking about the hobby in general and what I would really like to be doing with it. To help me out I reconvened my war council so as to determine the best use of my hobby time. After some discussion concerning various army projects and the different game systems with which I've been experimenting, it became apparent that I have not adapted to my new environment and instead I have continued on as if I were still living in a hobby wasteland. Despite moving more than six months ago to a much more gamer-friendly city, I have been slow to take full advantage of these new opportunities.

Once again I had allowed side projects to take precedence over my painting time, neglecting what I had initially intended to focus upon after moving to Asheville. While I am still very keen to get deeper into Dystopian Wars, Infinity, Malifaux, and Flames of War, there is just no way these other games can compete locally against 40k with regard to the availability of opponents and the potential to play games on a regular basis. I was starved for gaming in Charleston, yet now it would be no problem at all for me to play a few games of 40k every week should I choose to do so. I have been dissatisfied however with the state of my armies for quite a while and so, in order for me to get back into proper 40k-gaming form, I have decided to rededicate myself to working on my Raptors Space Marines.

Ideally I'd like to have 1500 points worth of Raptors painted by the end of this year. From there I will continue to expand the army with the goal of having significantly more painted in time for the release of 6th Edition. I always feel like I'm caught flat-footed whenever a new edition comes out and so this time around I want to be prepared as much as possible by having an army I'm happy with painted and ready to go as soon as the new rules drop. And in the meantime, if all goes accordingly, I'll have something I can take to the FLGS so as to enjoy these waning days of 5th Edition. That's my plan for now at least and I'm starting off by painting a squad of sniper Scouts.

The last thing I want to mention for this update is that starting tomorrow I will be doing another little giveaway for those of you Following my blog. I'll most likely post the details sometime tomorrow night (November 24th) though I'm not exactly sure when due to it being a holiday and the potential for post-turkey lethargy. At this point I just want to give everyone a heads-up in case you're interested. It's going to be a simple random drawing so all you'll need to do is check in occasionally to find out if you've won.

Okay, that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing really well... happy painting and gaming!

Spawn of Halloween

2011-10-31T22:54:00.003-04:00

Once again in celebration of Halloween I'm passing the night away painting something scary. Of course few 40k players will find anything at all frightening about a Chaos Spawn. But with rumors now circulating about both Chaos Legions and Chaos Renegades in the works for Sixth Edition, maybe there is cause to hope that Chaos Spawn won't forever be a waste of points. They're a fun unit to paint and very thematic as well, it would be a shame not to make them a viable choice in at least one Chaos book. Is that too much to ask?

Spawn that don't suck, now that's scary. :)

I built this ugly fellow a couple of years ago for the planned revamping of my Chaos Space Marines army. I don't foresee putting much effort into that project until I have a better sense of what the army will be like in the next edition of the game. I'm excited about the early chatter but it still seems too far out to take anything seriously. In the meantime I'm content to wait and only occasionally paint a Chaos Spawn in supplication to the Dark Gods.

May they give us a Codex worthy of them. Ia! Ia!

A heretic can dream, right? Oh well, back to painting... Happy Halloween, everone!

A Rather Different Necron

2011-10-18T18:12:00.002-04:00

Despite all the buzz concerning Beasts of War's stash of leaked Necron pictures, a little piece of the puzzle seems to have been missed in the ensuing excitement. So dig this. It would appear there is one more special Necron HQ coming our way to lead the metal-heads in war.

I've got to say that it strikes me as a peculiar choice in design considering the style of the new miniatures due to be released soon, but of course that's just my opinion. Judge for yourself if you think it lives up to the standard we've seen with the leaked Necron photos.

Behold, the secret Necron Lord!!

Bleep Bloop Bleep, I'm a Necron!

Ay ay ay... sorry about that. :) I've had that picture for more than a year and could no longer resist. It's from a training mission I set up for my then 7 year old nephew who had become interested in "Whammer Hammer" as he refers to 40k. After pushing around his five Necrons against my five Chaos Marines for a few turns, the lad decided we needed to spice up the game with a couple of heavy hitters. Fortunately his supply of toy robots and monsters provided exactly what we were looking for, including the heartless mechanical overlord seen in the above photograph.

And yes, I lost that game too! After setting up the terrain on my nephew's Thomas-the-Train table, we placed three objectives evenly distributed along the centerline of our gameboard. I held the middle and right-hand objectives for most of the game until being driven away from the center of the table by a brutal assault on the final turn. Oh the humanity, I lost 2-1!

Hmmm... next time I go up against my nephew, I'll be sure to slow-play him!

My First Time Stripping

2011-10-06T21:50:00.001-04:00

I'm having a go at stripping the paint off a batch of miniatures, a hobby first for me. For this I am using Simple Green and the incessant chanting of the Litanies of Purification. By doing so I hope to salvage a combat squad of Space Marine Devastators for my Raptors army, the models having been terribly fuzzed by priming them when it was too humid. This was at the start of the summer when I still lived in Charleston but right before we moved, and thus it seemed an appropriate note on which to depart the city.

I began soaking my minis a couple of days ago but presumably it is still too early to report on any results. I'll likely let them float around in the Simple Green through the upcoming weekend before I try to remove any of the paint. I don't know if this is going to work as the miniatures were really heavily textured by the primer. I admit that at this point I am skeptical but am eager nonetheless to give it a shot.

Swim my pretties, swim!

After dropping in the Space Marines there was still a lot of room for more miniatures that could be added to the chemical bath. I recently came across a small box of minis that hadn't been touched in ages and which also happened to be in need of cleaning, mostly thanks to some very sloppy priming. In this case however the primer has sat on the models for perhaps twenty or so years. I don't have any plans for these other minis but stripping them seemed like a good challenge for the Simple Green, just to see what the stuff can do. So those minis too went into the sauce...

Squats. Why'd it have to be Squats?

Again I am not sure what effect this stuff will have on these minis, but I'm in the mood to experiment. Maybe they will turn out well or maybe they will melt, who knows? It's not like there is much else I am going to do with some silly little Space Dwarfs. I've considered adapting them for use in an Imperial Guard army but that currently doesn't have much appeal for me. It would be kind of fun to chop up some of them to decorate the bases of my Tyranids. That however might be too cruel even for me as it would be like rubbing salt into the wounded collective conscience of Squat-players. Hmm, then again some 'Nid-themed terrain showing Squats bubbling around in the digestion pools would be a hoot. :)

Well I suppose there's no need for me to worry now over the fate of my Squats. For the time being I'll just let them and the marines hang out in the jar on my desk, like some creepy exhibit in a Mütter Museum for OOP 40k. I hope to start working on the Raptors soon assuming this Simple Green trial is a success. I feel inclined to start using Space Marines again in my games so that has motivated me to focus on them for at least a little while.

Happy painting and gaming!

Charity Painting Opportunity

2011-09-29T18:25:00.013-04:00

Hey, I'm back! Sorry about going MIA from the blog the past couple of weeks, I've been really busy with family stuff and all that jazz. No time for gaming, blah blah blah... let's get on with it! :)

A few minutes ago I was flipping through the new issue of No Quarter Magazine and right away noticed mention of the upcoming Foodmachine 2011. The idea behind Foodmachine is to encourage Warmachine and Hordes players to organize a bunch of events between November 1st and January 2nd as a type of food drive, the entry fee to play being canned food for donation to local food banks. Participants in these events are allowed to purchase "Cheats" for use in their games by bringing along more canned goods. The more you donate during the event, ever more powerful cheats become available for use. All the details about this charitable cause, rules packets, and info about the various cheats can be found by clicking the link already provided.

If you're more of a painter than a gamer, however, there is another way to get involved. This year the organizers want to auction off a complete Tier 4 army, to be made up entirely from painted miniatures donated to the cause. Here are the details for this project copied from the main website:

Painting for Charity

We’re also kicking things up this year with a companion event for all the hobbyists out there. Orange is the official color of hunger awareness and so we wanted to combine that aspect of the charity into Foodmachine. Project: Orange Crush (Hunger) gives hobbyists the chance to devote their special talents to the cause.

We've drawn up a Tier 4 Shae army full of pirate models. We’re asking the community to sign up to paint a model from the army in an orange scheme of their choosing. The army will then be auctioned off for charity. Privateer Press' studio painter, Matt DiPietro, will be painting up Captain Phinneus Shae and the Commodore cannon in an orange-based paint scheme. In addition, this year's Formula P3 Grandmaster, Zach Lanier, will be painting up Dirty Meg for the army.

To participate, follow the link (here) and sign up to paint one of the models. Glue the model to a normal base but do not add any flocking. After you have finished painting it up, mail the model to Matt at Privateer Press:

Project Orange Crush
c/o Matt DiPietro
Privateer Press
13434 NE 16th St STE 120
Bellevue WA 98005

Privateer Press will be basing all the models and the photographing them in preparation for their eBay auction. Your model must be at Privateer Press by December 2nd, 2011.

+++

Pretty cool, right? I dig that our gaming community embraces these charitable causes and so I've signed up to paint a model for the army's unit of Sea Dogs. Pictured below is the smart-looking fellow that I'll be working on to help CRUSH HUNGER... um, pirate style of course:

Along with painting my own miniature, if possible I'd like to recruit some additional painters to work on the rest of the Sea Dogs that I have. Therefore if you are interested in painting a pirate for charity, but do not have any of the requisite minis that are being sought for this project, I'll gladly send you one of my own scurvy bastards by express mail. Just be sure that you can have him painted and shipped out in time for your mini to arrive in Washington by the December 2nd deadline. If that sounds good to you, go to the website's google document and sign up to paint one of the remaining Sea Dogs. Then send me an email or leave a comment indicating which of the following minis you want to work on for Orange Crush (Hunger).

Sea Dog Crew Leader

Sea Dog #2

Sea Dog #3

Sea Dog #4

Sea Dog #5

Alright, that's it for now. If anyone is interested in painting one of these dudes for a good cause, please let me know as soon as you can. So until next time... Aargh! ;)

EDIT: I will update this post as I hear from interested painters, making note of which models have been selected and which are still available. The ones chosen so far are: Sea Dog Crew Leader, Sea Dog #2, Sea Dog #3, Sea Dog #4 and Sea Dog #5. That leaves the following still available to anyone who would like to contribute some of their time to this charitable effort...

Nothing's left!

All the miniatures now have painters!

Woo-Hoo!!

Thank you again to everyone who has gotten involved, I really appreciate it!

Follow Your Blisstonia

2011-09-12T23:56:00.007-04:00

After a few more setbacks over the last week concerning my nascent Chaos Daemons army, I've decided to put that 40k project aside for now and return to more familiar ground. For whatever reason I couldn't get my Slaaneshi mojo working so instead I have switched back to the Blisstonian 9th, my Simpsons-inspired Imperial Guard regiment. Also at this point I would much rather spend my time painting than building another army. I still want to do the Daemon thing but that can wait as it is not something I want to rush or do half-heartedly. Thus onto my beloved Blisstonia...

When I was last working on these guys I had become bogged down with the very first penal squad of the army. I may have to rethink their color scheme or at least change my approach to painting it as I remember those Guardsmen not being very much fun. In the meantime however I am going to begin by painting Techpriest Smithers and his squad of servitors, the Drones of Sector 7G. This seems appropriate too in that they were the first unit I included when developing the theme for this army. I'd also always planned on painting them in a different set of colors from the rest of the army, so that way I can work on them without knowing exactly how I will proceed with the main portion of the Blisstonian 9th.

As evidenced by the extremely early WIP photo seen above, I only sat down to begin painting these servitors a few minutes ago. Therefore I am eager to get back to it while I still have time this evening. Hopefully I can get more done on my Blisstonians than I did with the Slaaneshi daemons before I once again change directions. Despite how fickle I can be, that still shouldn't be too hard considering how little progress I actually made on the Chaos Dameons. Hmm, maybe Tzeentch would have better suited my hobby temperament after all.

Happy painting and gaming!

Pericles Class Fleet Carrier WIP

2011-09-11T17:15:00.008-04:00

I'm still magnetizing the turrets for my Covenant of Antarctica ships, now having placed 20 magnets of 40 total, but I feel I need a break from dropping magnets and swearing. Therefore I have also started painting my first big ship for Dystopian Wars, the CoA Pericles Class Fleet Carrier. It is a lovely model with lots of neat little details to discover as you paint. So far I've had a lot of fun working on my Dystopian Wars stuff and this one is no exception. In fact I suspect these larger ships will be even more enjoyable to paint than the little guys. It's off to a good start at least. :)

The hulls are washed and dry so I'm ready to begin picking out all the details. Due to the funky design of this vessel I plan on painting almost everything before assembling the launch ramps and command bridge. I can't imagine trying to paint the interior of the ship if it were already glued together. Yikes!

Okay, back to painting....

Tiny Magnet Blues

2011-09-10T23:57:00.017-04:00

Oh, joy... little magnets. Lots and lots of little magnets. Yippie.

Okay, so I'm not too thrilled about working with these tiny little magnets (N52, 1/16" x 1/32") and neither are my apparently oafish fingers. Therefore it's been sort of a slow, frustrating evening at my hobby desk as I plod through magnetizing all of the turrets for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet. At this point in the project I have in place 14 magnets out of the 40 total that I will use on the battleship, the three cruisers, and the fleet carrier. This is certainly not one of my favorite hobby activities but I suppose it's worth doing this now rather than risk losing turrets every time I play. Even just them falling off the ships throughout the course of a game would quickly become annoying so avoiding that at least motivates me to keep going.

It was not all magnetic tedium however as I also managed today to clean and prime the Pericles Class Fleet Carrier for my CoA naval group. The two-tone priming turned out better this time than on the last set of minis, but still not as well as I had done on the original test batch. Again I do not think I was conservative enough when spraying the blue primer over the initial bone-color paint, but with this color scheme it doesn't really matter as variation among models is fine and in fact desirable. I just hadn't originally intended them to be quite so blue overall, but regardless I like the results so I'm sticking with it. If I can find the time I hope to start painting the fleet carrier tomorrow.

Alright, that's all I have to report for now. I'm going to do a little bit more with the magnets before calling it quits for the night. Happy gaming and painting!

Kazak Assembly Line

2011-09-08T23:45:00.008-04:00

After much dithering over how to do the bases for my first 300 point Infinity army, I've finally decided to just set that question aside for the moment and begin work on the miniatures. My favorite line of models from Corvus Belli for this game are the Kazaks of Ariadna, so tonight I am starting off with them, having put together an army list based on an all-Kazak theme. I've not yet found any local Infinity players so in order to learn the game and hopefully introduce it to others I plan on painting an opposing 300 point army soon after finishing this one. Therefore once I'm actually playing and understand the game better, I will then start to think about how to tweak and expand my initial selection of miniatures or perhaps even look into additional factions.

Here though is my jumping off point into Infinity:

Ariadna "Kazak Heavy Patrol"

GROUP 1 (Regulars:10, Irregulars:0)

Line Kazak - Combi-rifle / Pistol, Knife (0 SWC/9C)

Line Kazak - AP HMG / Pistol, Knife (1 SWC/29C)

Line Kazak - Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife (1 SWC/28C)

Tankhunter - AP HMG, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife (1.5 SWC/40C)

Tankhunter - Autocannon, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife (1.5 SWC/40C)

Veteran Kazak Lieutenant - AP HMG, Light Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW (1 SWC/61C)

Veteran Kazak - T2 Rifle, Light Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW (0 SWC/49C)

Scout - Ojotnik, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (0 SWC/26C)

300 points, 6 SWC

As a total newcomer to the game I have no idea if this would at all be an effective army or not to use. I'm not worried about that too much as my only interest at this point is to have some painted minis that I like so that I can begin the learning process. While working on my Kazaks I will sort out what I want to do for the other 300 point army from a second faction. I really like the aliens of the Shasvastii Expeditionary Force but haven't been able to come up with any lists that also have a lot of appeal for me. Also I get the feeling they might be sort of a funky choice as a learner's army, thus I'm still looking around at the other options. Pan Oceania or Yu Jing, maybe? I am keen on painting some aliens though so perhaps I could stick with the Combined Army and focus on the Morat instead of the Shasvastii.

No matter whom I end up choosing to work on next to be enemies of my Kazaks, it is certainly a fun dilemma to have. Although Ariadna is my favorite aesthetically and fluff-wise so far, all of the factions look great to me. I'll likely just continue experimenting with army lists until I find one that really interests me and that seems like an enjoyable matchup for my first army. I am of course open to suggestion as well.

Happy painting and gaming!

Witchling Stalkers WIP #2

2011-09-07T23:55:00.005-04:00

I'm right now waiting for some things to dry so I'd like to do a quick painting update. I am back to work on those Witchling Stalkers for my Guild crew and so far tonight I've mainly focused on the greenish glow coming from the creatures' eyes. My recent experience painting the flyers for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet was apparently good practice for this and helped me sort out how I prefer to build up the blend of colors. This time though I took the green mix to an almost pure yellow to try to make the colors glow even brighter. I'm not positive but I think this was also my first intentional, albeit crude, attempt at OSL painting... yikes!

I may give the eye glow one more highlight with a little spot of white added in to try to make the color really shine, but otherwise that area should be finished. Along with working on the eyes, tonight I'm also doing some initial shading on the Witchling Stalkers' tattered rags and robes. I am therefore still not very far along with these weirdos but nonetheless I hope to finish them off in the next couple of days.

Okay, it looks like everything is dry enough now so it's back to painting these miniatures. Phew! After a day of toddler-based insanity it feels nice to relax and chill out with my paints and brushes for a little while. :) Goodnight!

Finecast First - Cockatrice

2011-09-06T23:51:00.023-04:00

I went to the LGS today to pick up a copy of the new Ogre Kingdoms book, but while there I decided it was also time to buy my first bit of Citadel Finecast, a Warhammer Cockatrice from this summer's Storm of Magic wave of product releases. After hearing so many stories of disappointment from gamers about their own Finecast purchases, I had not been in a rush to buy any myself. The Cockatrice however looked cool to me and seemed like it should be fun to paint, plus I have some homebrew ideas in mind inspired by Storm of Magic for which this model would come in handy. Still though I was rather anxious about buying the Cockatrice since it comes in a fully enclosed box, thus concealing the condition of the miniature and any potential defects it might have.

I was therefore initially quite relieved once I had opened the box as there was no obvious damage that I could see right away. Everything looked pretty good but then as I worked on the pieces more and more the little imperfections became noticeable. Most troublesome of these was the fit of the wings to the body which required a fair amount of trimming and even now feels like a fragile and insecure bond. Despite all the hype about how easy Finecast is to assemble, I think pinning the wings onto the body might have been an appropriate precaution.

Along with a somewhat wonky fit for the wings, the other problems were of the sort that most folks have probably come to expect from Finecast. There are a few areas that have been affected by air bubbles, mainly on the sides of the tail where many of the tips of the scales are damaged in such a way. I also found some voids on the monster's back and the little spines at the base of his tail all look instead like dripping pipes. The final problem I found was that the tip of the biggest claw on the Cockatrice's tail had broken off while still attached to the sprue. I may try to fix that by cutting down to the right size the end of Tyranid Scything Talon, but I probably wouldn't mind just leaving it the way it is now.

Despite these flaws overall I am more impressed with my first Finecast miniature than I had thought I would be, though this might have something to do with my expectations being so low. Even with the wings not fitting quite right it still seemed like it was an easy model to assemble. Requiring only minimal clean up and other preparatory work, building the Cockatrice did not take very much time at all to do which was really nice. The other thing that surprises me is that I am ultimately not bothered by the relative light weight of the model, having believed it would feel overly fragile and delicate. Perhaps most importantly, the level of detail on the miniature looks quite good and especially so on the wings and mane.

Therefore as my first experience with a Citadel Finecast miniature, I think the Cockatrice is, while not without its share of flaws, nonetheless a good addition to my collection and I am in general happy with my purchase. Had the marketing people at GW not completely oversold the virtues of Finecast upon its introduction, I would likely be more accepting of those casting mistakes that I did find on my mini. As it stands I find them mildly irritating but otherwise I am relieved that there was nothing worse, and certainly nothing so bad as to make me consider returning my toy monster. Hooray for low expectations! ;)

Happy painting and gaming!

Laborious Day

2011-09-05T23:41:00.010-04:00

Well I hope everyone had either a great Labor Day, or else a great Monday, depending on whether or not this was a holiday for you. I'm more or less taking the night off from the blog in honor of the occasion, although I have kept myself busy today cleaning and organizing my hobby space for the first time since moving into the new house. In the process I'm finding some neat things that I haven't seen in a while, such as my old set of Gorkamorka toys.

The big box has been opened but everything is there and still on the sprue, while the two boxes of Ork Boyz remain unopened. Hmm... I wonder if I could track down some more of the vehicles from that era and start a Gorkamorka campaign. Then again maybe I should just sell the stuff and be done with it. It's not like I've gotten much use out of them in the previous fourteen or so years, and I imagine there are still people who would have a blast with this game. Whether I keep the Gorkamorka gear or sell it off, this was nonetheless a nice find for the day. Groovy.

Okay, that's it for now. Tomorrow I'll get back to my usual blogging nonsense. Happy gaming and painting!

CoA Flyers Finished

2011-09-04T23:44:00.011-04:00

Okay, they're not completely 100% finished yet. I still need to spray them with varnish but otherwise I've now painted the Ptolemy Class Bombers and the Tiny Flyer tokens that come in the Covenant of Antarctica naval box. The bombers look a lot like they did the last time I showed them on the blog, having only added highlights to the metal areas, the orange canopies and windows, and the glowing green rotor blades. It's all pretty subtle though so the changes might not be noticeable in these pictures. I love these models and am quite happy with how they tuned out.

Ptolemy Class Bomber Squadron

The giggle-inducing CoA Tiny Flyer tokens however look fairly different from how they did last night. I took some good advice and pressed on with my plan, painting through my momentary hobby panic. I am thankful that I did as these Tiny Flyers ended up looking nicer than I had expected, likely better than they would have had I not botched my original color scheme. As for the glowing coil that makes up each drone's midsection, I opted in favor of expedience and decided not to repaint anything, instead leaving them as a mix of colors to denote what type of tokens they represent.

I have to say that the green ones are still my favorites of the bunch. I agree that having them all the same glowing green color would help to visually tie together everything in my fleet, but for now I am willing to forego that level of consistency in appearance. I may want to paint all my future drones with green coils but I can accept this first batch as they are. Also this way it might be easier for me to keep straight the different types of flyers as I learn the game. Nonetheless at this point I think having all of them with green coils and squadron markings on the wings or wingtips would look the best. I'll save that however for another day as I would rather continue on to the next part of this project.

Fighter Plane Squadrons

Dive Bomber Squadron

Recon Plane Squadron

I was going to work longer on the bases of these tokens but then ultimately chose to keep them very simple and plain. At first I wanted to try to blend and stipple over the top of the bases several various shades of grey to hopefully mimic a cloudy, overcast sky. While I think that could have looked really cool, there's also a good chance I would have just made an awful mess. Therefore I wanted to make the bases seem as unobtrusive and neutral as possible.

So moving right along I hope to finish painting the three squadrons of Diogenes Class Frigates either tonight or else early tomorrow. I may try to magnetize the turrets for the rest of my ships but I currently don't have enough magnets for anything other than the Pericles Class Fleet Carrier. I'm having a lot of fun working on my Covenant of Antarctica miniatures and overall feel good about the color scheme for this fleet. It could be premature but I am also starting to think about what I would like to collect as a second, rival fleet to go up against my South Pole scientists. It will be tough to choose as I like just about equally each of the four other major powers in Dystopian Wars. If anyone is particularly partial to one of them, I would love to hear the reasons why.

For now though I suppose I should just keep on painting. Goodnight!

CoA Tiny Flyers WIP

2011-09-03T23:58:00.011-04:00

I've hit a couple of snags tonight while working on the Tiny Flyer tokens for my CoA fleet. Due to an early mistake I had to change my plans for these little buggers and I'm not as thrilled with the revised color scheme. Nonetheless I will continue on with it and perhaps plan on picking up a 30-pack of flyer tokens once they're released which I can paint as I had originally envisioned. Initially I had wanted to the flyers to be based on the same blue scheme as the rest of the fleet but have instead opted to paint them in a mostly metallic set of colors.

The Tiny Flyers deployed by the Covenant of Antarctica are quite different from those of the other major powers in Dystopian Wars as they are in fact remotely operated drones. They thus have several notable differences in how they function in the game. Further the CoA cannot make use of any Torpedo Bombers so that all of their drones are classified as either Fighter Planes, Recon Planes, and Dive Bombers. I am using the color of the central coil as a means to distinguish each of these types of tokens.

Fighter Plane

Dive Bomber

Recon Plane

The ten Tiny Flyer tokens that I get to include for free with my fleet I have chosen to organize into the following squadrons: two squadrons of three Fighter Planes each, one squadron of three Dive Bombers, and lastly a single Recon Plane that is its own squadron. I primarily chose that arrangement of flyers however so that I would have at least one example of each type of token to paint.

I'm a little anxious about how this batch of flyer tokens will turn out but fortunately they don't represent too large of an investment in either time or money, especially as I would have wanted to buy a pack of flyer tokens anyway just to get their stat card. I do still hope that I can salvage these ones as I could then use the differently painted tokens as a way of further distinguishing my squadrons. Plus I have a feeling I'll like the revised color scheme more once I am further along with the tokens. That in turn is good motivation for me to return to painting them right away. Goodnight!

Witchling Stalkers WIP

2011-09-02T23:36:00.014-04:00

I thought I was going to have more of an opportunity to paint today but with family commitments it wasn't to be. But hey, at least a little brush time is better than none. Therefore over the last couple of hours I've started working on my three Witchling Stalkers included in Sonnia Criid's Guild starter box for Malifaux. It took me quite a while before finally settling on how I would like to paint them, and if I can pull it off I think I will be really happy with how they turn out. We'll see what happens though as there's still much more painting to do on them. At this point I've only managed to put down the first layer of color onto these models so there's not yet much to look at... but it's a start! :)

Those are some creepy looking dudes, I like 'em a lot. I'm going to paint for a little while longer tonight as I do not know how much more hobby time I will have during the next few days. I will be busy having fun with my family and so probably won't have much of a chance to work on miniatures. I hope everyone has a fun weekend ahead. Happy painting and gaming!

Frontline Infinity

2011-09-01T23:52:00.018-04:00

I'm taking a little break from the hobby whatnots tonight as another round of family visitors arrived earlier today. Thursdays are nominally my Infinity day for blogging, although during my first month back to diceRolla I hardly did anything at all related to the game and so it was skipped a few times in my weekly rotation. This is personally disappointing for me as Infinity is one of the games which I am right now most excited about. I am eager to become more familiar with it and I look forward to playing the game as well as painting a bunch of miniatures from Corvus Belli's beautiful range of models, it's just taken me longer to get started than I had hoped.

Therefore I've been sort of frustrated by these largely self-made delays in getting underway with Infinity. Fortunately to help me get the regular Infinity-fix that I have been craving, not long ago I started reading an awesome wargaming blog called Frontline Gamer that is written by an unabashed fan of the game. There is a lot of excellent content on the blog concerned with other games besides Infinity so I recommend you check it out even if that one particular game does not interest you. The Infinity articles however are the main reason that I've been digging through Frontline Gamer's blog archives as they are not only very clear, informative, and well written, but also the passion the author has for this game is infectious. Therefore tonight I would like to highlight a few of my favorite Infinity articles that I've found over at Frontline Gamer. Here is a selection of them:

Infinity: The best game there's ever been? Part 1 -- The start of a thorough discussion on why Infinity kicks so much ass.

Infinity: The best game there's ever been? Part 2 -- A continuation of Frontline Gamer's thesis on why we should all be playing Infinity.

Infinity: The best game there's ever been? Part 3 -- Umm... part 3, right? Yes, just in case you need more convincing this one is about the Infinity community.

Building an Infinity army (plus how not to do it) -- Along with covering a lot of important points to keep in mind while deciding whom to take to war, this article is also an awesome introduction to the game and goes over many of the key features to playing Infinity.

Infinity factions Haiku's : A really fun article offering a summation of each of the factions for Infinity, presented in the form of a haiku. Perfect!

There are of course quite a few other Infinity articles posted at Frontline Gamer, those that I have highlighted here were as I said simply my favorites. Thus if you're interested in the game I encourage you to visit Frontline Gamer's blog as it looks to be a great resource, and not just for Infinity but a slew of other games as well. Frontline Gamer is also currently participating in the HoP Idol competition at the House of Paincakes blog network so check there too for more hobby goodness. Voting for week 2 has just begun should you want to help decide who will carry on to next week's round. (Hint, hint.)

Alright, that's it for now. If you haven't previously done so, take a moment when you can and go visit Frontline Gamer, I think you will enjoy it. Goodnight!

FoW, Take Three

2011-08-31T23:41:00.012-04:00

Okay, okay... just one more game to try out. Well, for now. :)

For the third time since this game came out I am once again interested in playing Flames of War, the 15mm WWII wargame from Battlefront Miniatures. The other day when I found my missing Tyranids army I also came across my copy of the Flames of War introductory box set, "Open Fire!" which I purchased almost two years ago. Despite an active FoW scene locally I did not go any further with the game at the time. I've had some reservations about the setting of the game which still linger with me today, but there is enough else about FoW that I like that I've decided to give it another shot. Although I'm going to start with the contents of the Open Fire! box, the Early War period has the most appeal for me and so I have already ordered the Blitzkrieg book. I have a good idea which nationality for this period I would like to collect but I'm going to wait until I've looked through the book before I decide on one.

I really want to like this game and I feel that I need to give it a fair chance. Hopefully the third time around with Flames of War will finally see the game click for me. I'm optimistic about it though and I should be able to play through the intro box fairly soon. Also those little 15mm tanks look like they'll be fun to paint so hey, why not?

Happy gaming!

CoA Bombers Almost Done

2011-08-30T23:50:00.004-04:00

Well it looks like I'm now really close to finishing my Ptolemy Class Bombers, and with a little more time painting I should be able to knock 'em off. This will be the first squadron completed for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet, plus the three squadrons of frigates are not far behind. I'm happy with how the color scheme is working out on these models but I do expect it will need some modification for the other ships in the fleet. For now though I just want to make the orange and green areas on the bombers glow brighter and perhaps give the metal parts a quick highlight. At that point they should be finished and ready for their actual flying stands.

I don't know what I'll paint next for my Covenant fleet once I've completed the squadrons of frigates. I am interested in magnetizing the turrets on the remaining ships but I'm not too sure how I should go about doing that. I have however picked out what I want to include for my first 1000 points which I will use to learn how to play this game. Since I already have the starter box and a fleet carrier, there wasn't a lot of room left to include more units. Conveniently by adding a single blister pack of Icarus Class Medium Flyers, due to be released only a few days from now, I'd reach that 1000 point mark.

So here's the initial list that I'm building towards for my CoA fleet:

Aristotle Class Battleship (185)

Pericles Class Fleet Carrier (130)

3 Plato Class Cruisers with Inventive Scientists (210)

3 Diogenes Class Frigates (75)

2 Ptolemy Class Bombers (110)

2 Icarus Class Medium Flyers (140)

10 Tiny Flyer Tokens (free)

1000 Total Points

That's the current plan at least for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet. Presently though I am content to relax and work some more on the bombers before calling it a night. Happy painting and gaming!

Dechala the Unassembled One

2011-08-29T23:49:00.021-04:00

Oops, I didn't realize how much of the evening had already passed so this will have to be brief. I'm again working on the Chaos Daemons of Slaanesh army that I started at the beginning of the month and am rather focused on it at the moment. Therefore tonight I'm going to forego my normally rambling project update and will instead just take a quick peek at what's on my hobby desk right now.

So far with this Chaos Daemons project I've spent all my time assembling Daemonettes and thus, to change the pace a little, a few minutes ago I decided it was time to put together the army's first Herald of Slaanesh. I'm using the standard Dechala, The Denied One miniature to represent this particular Herald so nothing fancy there. I do however plan on pinning her to the base without using any glue, my intention being that I'll eventually build a Chariot of Slaanesh upon which she can ride. For this army I want to keep my options open as to whether I field the Heralds on foot or mounted on chariots and I think it would be cool to be able to switch them back and forth between the two. It seems to me like a simple way of adding more flexibility to the army I'm collecting and well worth the extra couple minutes of assembly time.

Okay, that's it for now as I am eager to see this Herald of Slaanesh underway. Happy painting and gaming!

Did You Hear Something?

2011-08-28T23:52:00.002-04:00

"Hey Bill, did you hear something?"

"Um... yes."

"Oh FETH!"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I've been really busy with my family today and haven't had much time for painting or blogging, hence the random hobby picture this evening. This photograph was taken last Halloween after I celebrated the holiday by painting a set of Plague Zombies which some of you might remember. Even though this picture is one of my favorites, tonight is its diceRolla premier. I know however that at least a few intrepid readers have seen it elsewhere, to whom I apologize for tonight's repeat presentation. :)

Happy painting and gaming!

Ptolemy Class Bombers WIP

2011-08-27T23:43:00.010-04:00

This evening I began painting the next batch of models for my Covenant of Antarctica naval group. The last time I worked on this project I painted a squadron of Diogenes Class Frigates as a test of my color scheme, so in this group I have included the remaining six frigates from the starter box. I'm even more excited however to have started painting my two Ptolemy Class Bombers. I believe it was when I first saw the concept art for these weird flying machines that I knew which faction I wanted to collect for this game. Thus I wanted to paint them right away once I had my colors sorted out.

It's still really early in the process but I do like how the split color scheme looks so far on the bombers. Unfortunately I didn't do as good of a job this time creating a gradient between the colors on the set of six frigates. I did not space them out as much as I should have when priming them so that the blue paint would blast sideways onto the ships to either side, almost completely covering over the bone-colored undercoat. I'm fairly sure however that on such small models this will hardly be noticeable except when viewed from close up, if even then. Also I am happy to learn this lesson at this point rather than later on when I'm painting the bigger, more impressive ships. :)

Alright friends, that's all I have to report this time out. I've been waiting for the first round of Gryphonne Sepia wash to dry on these Covenant vessels, and it appears to have now done so. Therefore please excuse me as I go back to work on my fleet. Goodnight!

Requiem for a Termagant

2011-08-26T23:51:00.011-04:00

First I have some sad news to report about the passing of a humble Termagant, a steadfast warrior and servant of Hive Fleet Hydra. Yesterday when I was putting away my newly found Tyranids, I must have overlooked this unfortunate 'Nid and left him out in a vulnerable position away from his brood. Somehow the errant model made its way downstairs (I suspect a kitten may have been involved in this stage of the unfolding tragedy), to then be set upon by my awesome xenos-purging dog, Charlie Brown. The results were not pretty.

Upon discovering the dismembered remains of the Termagant this morning, I initially thought that perhaps I could fix him alongside the few other 'Nids that still need repairs. Looking closer though at the damage, I realized that an elbow, a leg, and his entire head were all missing and had been presumably consumed. Thus there will be no more battles for this valiant but woefully outmatched fighter.

Requiescat in pace, little Termangant.

On a happier note, after spending some time with the Codex today I realized that my Tyranids army can potentially field several hundred more points than I had remembered. Instead of the approximately 1500 points of models as I suggested in my previous post, I was very pleased to find out that by loading up on the optional biomorphs my 'Nids can even climb past the 2000 point mark. Although I would prefer to field more models and not have to rely quite so much on the biomorphs to bring up the points total, it is nonetheless an exciting discovery. Hooray!

Hive Fleet Hydra - 2000 points

Hive Tyrant - extra Scything Talons, Old Adversary, Adrenal Glands, Implant Attack, Wings

Hive Tyrant - Twin-Linked Devourers with Brainleech Worms x 2, Hive Commander, Adrenal Glands, Implant Attack, Armoured Shell

ELITES

Lictor

2 x Zoanthropes

TROOPS

3 x Tyranid Warriors - Rending Claws

12 x Genestealers

16 x Hormagaunts

10 x Termagants

FAST ATTACK

3 x Tyranid Shrikes - Rending Claws

4 x Raveners - Rending Claws*

HEAVY SUPPORT

Carnifex - Twin-linked Devourers with Brainleech Worms x 2, Regenerate

Carnifex - Heavy Venom Cannon, Adrenal Glands

2000 Total Points

* This brood of Raveners is the only unit in the army that does not comply with the WYSIWYG standard as it contains two models armed with Rending Claws and two with Scything Talons. I doubt this would ever present a problem as I cannot imagine playing this army outside of a very friendly and relaxed environment. I still think that it's something worth pointing out.

So with this list as a jumping off point it should be really easy for me to expand the army using the remaining models I own but have not yet assembled or painted. I mentioned yesterday that I already have a set of three Hive Guard and a Trygon waiting to join the swarm, and I also remembered today there is a pair of Tyrant Guard hiding somewhere amongst my boxes of minis. Once they're ready for the tabletop, just those six models alone will add close to another 500 points to the maximum size of my Tyranids swarm. I very rarely play games above 2000 points but it certainly would be nice to have the option, not to mention having a wider range of choices in lower point-level games.

Therefore even though this day started out with the grim discovery of my Termagant's demise, overall it feels like it has been a very positive day for my Tyranids. In fact the last two days have really renewed my excitement and interest in this army. I do not anticipate ever trying to fully update my Tyranids so as to include some of the more popular new units like the Swarmlord, Tervigons, or Tyrannofexes. However I am now at least willing to put some more time into working on the models that I have in order to get as much out of my collection of 'Nids as I can.

Well that seems like a decent enough plan I suppose to get me going again with these bugs. I look forward to the next chance I get to play a game using my Tyranids... should be fun times. I've never had much success with this army before but I have always enjoyed the experience leading the swarm. I like fast, aggressive armies and this one suites me quite well in that regard.

Okay, that's it for tonight. I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead... happy painting and gaming!

Missing 'Nids Found, Light Casualties Only

2011-08-25T23:38:00.022-04:00

While cleaning out the garage today I came across an army transportation bag that had been missing since we moved into the new house almost three months ago. Along with an assortment of blisters, sprues, and other random miniatures, perhaps most importantly this bag is where I had stuffed most of my collection of Tyranids for the move to North Carolina. Even better is that the 'nids managed to survive the trip sustaining only minor damage to a few models. Woo-hoo! This is surprising to me because of the lack of care with which I packed them. After lifting out the upper layers of hobby detritus, this is what I saw today in my army bag:

Wow... I'd forgotten just how haphazardly I had crammed these minis into the bag. There in the picture you can see the uppermost portion of my Tyranid swarm in a tangled mass of chitin and claws. I knew for quite a while leading up to our departure for the mountains that I would not have enough foam or other safe means of storage for all my miniatures and armies. In particular I had never bothered to work out a good way of transporting my Tyranid army as I rarely ever had a reason to take them anywhere. Rather than come up with a plan to handle this I instead ignored the problem for as long as I could until that last night in our previous home.

Finally with a healthy sense of desperation and growing panic I then set about packing my bugs. There was room left in the foam that I used for my Dark Elf War Hydra in which I was able to fit the Tyranids' winged Hive Tyrant, as well as the winged Warriors and my Zoanthropes, too. The rest of the army however would have to tough it out jammed together in my last army bag, which also served as the receptacle for whatever other remaining loose hobby junk that I came across in my haste. I was worried about the 'Nids but hoped that the minis would be packed tightly together so as to prevent them from shifting around much and crashing into each other. As unlikely as that seemed, at the time it was the best option I could think of in the few hours left to pack.

It was therefore to my great surprise today when discovered that the irrepressible Tyranids did in fact survive and in relatively good condition no less. After unpacking everything and sorting out all the minis, I could find only three damaged models. Of the medium bugs a single diminutive claw arm had popped off of a metal Ravener, and one Warrior's Rending Claw arms broke away, too. The only small bug in need of repair is one of the Hormagaunts who snapped off of his base, something which I expected many more Gaunts to have suffered due to their fragile ankles and minimal contact with their bases. Fortunately none of the large bugs however sustained any damage. Incredibly it looks like it should all be fairly easy to fix... nice!

So here is the entire swarm of Tyranids unpacked and deployed onto my desktop:

Under the previous Codex I could play games comfortably in the 1850-2000 points range with this army, although by maxing out on biomorphs this could be pushed up to around 2200 points. It has been a long time since I looked at the most recent Codex: Tyranids, but I believe the army now comes in right around 1500 points with the current set of rules. Thus it seemed like it would cost more money than I was willing to spend in order to update and expand the army to take advantage of the new strategic options and units now available to the Tyranids.

I've since revisited this and decided earlier this year that I would go ahead and make a few more additions to the army. I now have a unit of Hive Guard and a single Trygon/Mawloc kit waiting to join Hive Fleet Hydra. I would also like to pick up a couple boxes of Gargoyles if for no other reason than to celebrate their transition from plastic to metal. Lastly I think I need to sort out my Raveners as they currently cannot be fielded legally as a WYSIWYG unit, so I'll likely also pick up a box of them eventually. While I was not terribly thrilled with the current Codex: Tyranids upon its release, I'm at least interested in them enough to again put my 'Nids back onto the hobby to-do list. Maybe I'll even provide for them foam or a case of their own, though I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

Happy painting and gaming!

For The Khadorland!

2011-08-24T23:35:00.010-04:00

Originally I had wanted to begin working on my first Warmachine models today but my plans went a tad haywire. Most of the day was taken up in dealing with our basement that flooded during the night, followed this evening by my little daughter not feeling well. It's now too late for me to start on any of my hobby projects so instead I think I'll just take it easy and read for a while. I've been meaning to go back and reread the Warmachine and Hordes MkII rulebooks so maybe I'll start on them.

Therefore tonight all I have to share with you are just some more photos that I think are pretty cool. These are pictures of a large Privateer Press display that I saw at Adepticon a couple years back. It looked awesome but the only problem was that it was surrounded with plexiglass or something which made taking pictures of the minis rather frustrating. Thus none of the following photos turned out as well as I would have liked which is why I decided against posting them at the time in 2010. I guess my standards are lower now as I reason, "Eh... why not? They're still neat." But if obviously amateurish photography makes you cringe, you at least have been warned. Then again, if that were the case this blog would probably not be to your liking anyway, so why should I worry about catering to you hypothetical photo snobs?

Ah, sorry. This has indeed been a long day. I'll shut up now and get on with the pictures.

The display had been divided into three separate scenes, of which the Khador assault pictured above was one of them. I really like the alternative color scheme used on these models as well as the details of the overrun network of trench works and defenses, too. I've chosen as my initial faction for Warmachine the mighty forces of Khador, and since I wasn't able to actually get started on them today, I thought it would be fun to at least share these pictures of Khador minis. I hope you enjoyed taking a peek even if they were somewhat blurry or crazy looking from the flash. What can I say, it's been one of those days. :)

Goodnight!

The Return to Naggaroth

2011-08-23T23:55:00.005-04:00

Since my return to blogging and hobbying, so far this month I've focused almost entirely on new projects, and in most cases these have been for new games as well. I did post once or twice almost a year ago about assembling some Skorne models but otherwise this has been all new ground for diceRolla. It was therefore a surprisingly pleasant return to the familiar for me when I unpacked my Dark Elves earlier this evening. They've been stuffed away basically since finishing the tournament at Adepticon so it was nice to take them out of their foam and let them breath the fresh air.

After working so intently on the Dark Elves for much of the start of the year, post-convention I was initially relieved to set them aside and tinker with other interesting miniatures while I prepared to move to North Carolina. Having gone through my hobby hiatus and then having right away started a bunch of new army projects, now that I'm at last getting back to my Dark Elves it seems like I've bridged the gap between my hobby activities from before and then after the move. I feel refreshed and am excited to return to painting my treacherous Druchii friends.

When I left off working on these Dark Elves I had been scrambling to provide everything in my 1000 point army with at least a first coating of paints. It was a close call but with DrGabe's help I made it just under the wire, even receiving a higher painting score than I had expected. A few of the units are somewhat further along but the majority of them have received only that initial round of color. As the general of the army I spent some extra time working on the Sorceress so I suspect finishing her could be done rather quickly. That's likely where I'll start up again, although painting the War Hydra is very tempting to me.

The Cold One Knights pictured above were DrGabe's contribution to my late night paint-a-thon leading up to the tournament. It's impressive what he was able to achieve with just four hours to paint and a little Jack Daniels to keep him motivated. :)

While I finish painting the first 1000 points of my army, I will also plan how I want to expand the army beyond what I already have. Although it was only four games, the tournament I participated in nonetheless was still helpful in giving me a better sense of how my army functions and where it needs to be strengthened. First off I plan on increasing the size of the Black Ark Corsairs unit by the remaining five models that I own, though I can easily envision taking it up to a size of 25 or 30 Corsairs. I also want to add a second unit of Repeater Crossbowmen as the first unit performed well when tested in battle. They were admirably reliable killers.

Another core choice of troops that would be very helpful I think would be just a basic unit of Dark Elf Warriors. They would act as a dedicated bodyguard unit for the Sorceress and likely not be meant for use as one of the primary combat units of the army. In my tournament games I kept the Sorceress deployed with the Corsairs thinking this would help keep her safe from sniping. Instead as the Corsairs were my main combat unit this put her far too much into harm's way and, thanks to a couple of brutal miscasts, proved on occasion disastrous for the Corsairs as well. Therefore having the Sorceress safely tucked into a unit of cheap Warriors, from whence she can cast her spells with reckless abandon, seems like a good way to go. Hmm... a Master to carry the army's Battle Standard should also be another early addition.

So while I consider all these options and decide what to add to the army next, in the meantime it just feels really good to be talking Dark Elves again. I think it was helpful for me to take a little break from the Druchii after Adepticon to avoid burning out, but I am now definitely happy to be returning to them. Having reviewed the army and where I left the project, I am ready to get back to it right away.

Happy painting and gaming!

Imperial Fists Team Display

2011-08-22T23:48:00.006-04:00

After months of delay I've finally started writing the story of my experiences playing in the 40k team tournament at Adepticon this past Spring. Yeah, I know... timely as ever, right? It's going to take me a little longer to finish my summary of the tournament but in the meantime I do have something else to share from that day.

While hustling from one side of the main room to the other in search of the correct table for my Round 3 game, I happened to pass by an eye-catching Imperial Fists army that made me stop in my tracks. Imperial Fists armies always get a lot of attention thanks to their not so subtle livery, but in this case it was actually not the army that made me take a second look. Instead it was the team's massive army display board, complete with a beautiful backdrop to help set the scene. One thing this tournament has become known for is the great amount of effort and creativity some teams are willing to invest into every aspect of their army's appearance and how it is displayed, of which this particular Imperial Fists army is an excellent example.

No doubt many other people stopped to take pictures as well so presumably this army display has been previously featured elsewhere on the internet, closer to when the tournament took place and likely in greater detail, too. However since I went to the trouble to take my own photographs amid the hubbub and chaos between rounds of the tournament, I'm now determined to use them here no matter how stale the subject might be for you, my fellow hobbyists. And of course if you haven't seen this before, I think it's worth taking a look.

I was in such a hurry that I was not able to learn anything about the team responsible for bringing this brilliant spectacle to the tournament. If anyone who was involved with the pictured Imperial Fists collection and army display happens to see this, please let me know and I will happily give you the credit that you and your mates deserve. It's a marvelous piece of art and I would really appreciate being able to properly recognize the people who created it.

Seeing this sort of fantastic army and over-the-top display is one of the things I most enjoy about attending big events like Adepticon. I only wish I had more time to take better photos of the display and to meet the people who had built it. Oh well, I hope you had fun taking a look at this one as well. Goodnight!

QuickPic - Hundred Years Project

2011-08-21T23:56:00.002-04:00

I just snapped this photo a few minutes ago of some 15mm Hundred Years War miniatures by Corvus Belli. These guys are for my HYW: English army for the fast-play historical wargame, de Bellis Antiquitatis. I have an element of four billmen almost fully painted and ready for basing, after which I'll have finished all of the support and optional pieces for the army. Not too shabby considering it's only taken me, um... 3+ years to get this far. :)

Next up will be six elements of deadly accurate longbowman who form the core of the army. I then plan on painting the three elements of mounted knights and their dismounted counterparts. Finally I'll wrap things up with a camp and possibly a separate element of camp followers, though I might model them as part of the camp itself. Since I'm saving that for last, however, I have plenty of time to think it over.

Happy painting and gaming... goodnight!

Dystopian Wars - How Many Points?

2011-08-20T20:40:00.004-04:00

My wife and I will be heading out shortly to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I therefore have even less time than usual for blogging this evening. I hope you will understand then my haste and will forgive my brevity. To that end, instead of a project update tonight I have a question to pose.

Right then, let's talk for a moment about Dystopian Wars. While working on the starter box for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet I can't help but wonder how I will expand my collection once this first batch is painted. These thoughts have been further spurred on by the pending release of the second wave of CoA miniatures, which will make available a variety of new ships and the Covenant's "special unit" as well. I am curious however with regards to how many points I should look at adding to my fleet.

For those of you who are playing Dystopian Wars, what range of points do you enjoy for your games? I've searched around on the Spartan Games forum but have not able to find much indication at all of games being played beyond the 1000 point mark. This seems surprisingly low to me. I wonder if this is due to the relative newness of the game and the influx of players just starting out, and thus being disproportionately represented among the forum's participants. (I tend to steer clear of forums and have no idea if this is a fair assumption.) Nonetheless I have also seen pictures of obviously much larger games underway, though I have no idea if this is any more typical than playing in the 1000 point range would be.

Hence I am putting my question to those of you who happen to play Dystopian Wars and might be willing to help me out. What is a typical sized game for you? Have you encountered any popular standards for play aside from your personal preference? I greatly appreciate any thoughts you wish to share on this matter, thank you.

Okay, that's it for now. Happy painting and gaming, friends!

Sergeant Homer in the Sewers of Malifaux

2011-08-19T23:40:00.006-04:00

Today I was able to put in some more time working with my Sewers of Malifaux set from Wyrd Miniatures. So far I have mixed feelings about the TerraClips system and my enthusiasm for it has waned slightly from yesterday. I think it definitely looks a lot better than I had previously worried it might, but there are some more pragmatic issues that I'm initially not too crazy about. I'm sure with more practice I will develop a better understanding of what I can do with this terrain but starting out it has been a bit frustrating. Also it's been slower going that I had expected but again I think with practice the assembly process will not take as long.

By now I've only used about two thirds of the pieces you get in one box of Sewers but already I'm running out TerraClips, especially the I-shaped and L-shaped ones. If you're interested in these kits I recommend you consider getting an extra pack or so of TerraClips. At the rate I've been going through them I think a good ratio would probably be 3 boxes of clips for every 2 boxes of tiles. I'm also noticing a shortage of solid wall sections and an excess of those wall sections with doors and gates for what I had envisioned building. I suppose this is just a matter of personal preference and one of the inherent limitations for this type of approach to terrain making.

While putting together my sewers I took some pictures to help show what these pieces are like close up. Once again to act as my visual reference for scale I have requested the help of Sergeant Homer of the Stonecutters chapter. He's no stranger to such filth and so did not begrudge the assignment.

Pictured above is one of the basic 6" x 6" tiles, of which you get 16 in the Sewers box. The artwork on them is double-sided to give more options and variety when deciding how to assemble your sewers.

You also get 32 of these 3" x 3" double-sided tiles, none of which I've yet used as I'm already running out of TerraClips. Some have narrow sewer canals while others appear as solid flooring. They seem to provide a lot of utility when designing your layout, although they will quickly burn through even more of your clip supply.

Add some walls to the floor tiles and Sergeant Homer is now in the Sewers of Malifaux, or at least a little box resembling the Sewers of Malifaux. At this point everything was still quite simple and straightforward. The more pieces you want to use, however, the worse it gets.

You can assemble your terrain to have multiple levels of elevation. Included are a couple of sheets of handrails, balconies, staircases, and ladders. I've not yet tried this out very much, in this case due to using up all of my wall pieces building the main level of sewers.

One aspect I am very pleased with is the appearance of the sewer effluent as this was something that had not impressed me in the pictures I'd seen previously. The sewer canals have a sense of flow in addition to looking suitably nasty. They remind me of the river of negativity flowing beneath Manhattan in Ghostbusters 2. Ahhh... now that is some lovely effluent.

Half of the wall sections included in the Sewers box are solid while the rest of them have cutout areas to represent doors and gates. I felt like I ran out of solid wall sections very quickly. The doors come as separate pieces and can stand up with the help of a little matching pieces of card. Of course the doors can just be left off entirely to make things simpler. Another option is to attach a TerraClip to the bottom of each door and anchor them to the floor tiles if you'd rather not have your doors be openable at all.

As I mentioned my experience with these so far has been rather frustrating and not as much fun as I had hoped. Since so many clips are involved it can be a little tricky wedging pieces together and you really need to plan at least several steps in advance. It can be annoying if you make a mistake or change your mind along the way as you inevitably have to pull apart many more pieces than just the ones you want to switch around. I therefore think it would be very helpful to layout most if not all of the pieces you intend on using so that you can plan the most sensible order of construction. Also that way you know you won't run out of something deep into the assembly process.

Despite my concerns and gripes I'm still optimistic about making good use of my TerraClips terrain. The problems I've run into so far will I think become less bothersome over time as I become more familiar with these kits and learn how to get the most out of them. I also think there's tremendous potential for using these terrain sets outside of the Malifaux universe. In fact one of things I'm now most eager to try out is playing a game of Space Hulk adapted for use with my Sewers of Malifaux. Hmm... Sewer Hulk, anyone?

Alright, that's all the time I have for tonight. I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead with plenty of painting and gaming fun. Goodbye for now!

Malifaux Bump - TerraClips!

2011-08-18T23:49:00.012-04:00

Well, well, well. It looks like Infinity is once again bumped from this week's rotation in favor of Malifaux. This time it's because my set of the new 3D modular terrain from Wyrd Miniatures has arrived and I couldn't wait to begin playing with them. So... TerraClips!

I only started a short while ago punching out some of the larger pieces from the Sewers of Malifaux box to test how these things fit together using the plastic clips. Based on the weight and quality of the card-stock alone I have a good first impression of this terrain. (I just checked and the Wyrd website says it's 1.7mm thick punchboard.) The pieces appear to be more durable than I had expected and the clips slide on smoothy. I therefore suspect this terrain will hold up nicely if not abused since assembling and disassembling your pieces are not likely to damage them. Nonetheless I'm interested in seeing how long it takes for wear and tear from usage to become noticeable.

In all honesty I had not been terribly impressed with the pictures I had seen of these terrain sets over the past year. In all the photos they looked to me too busy and actually sort of ugly. I am therefore relieved to think that they look much better in person. All the little details are much more impressive and do not appear to be as busy or distracting as I had thought they would. There's a lot of potential for Wyrd's terrain and it is a significant step forward from any card terrain that I've used in the past. Beyond just Malifaux these sets are clearly well suited for many other wargames and RPGs, for which no doubt they will come in quite handy.

As I said I have not had much time to play with this terrain but I look forward to experimenting and having fun with them this weekend. I'll revisit this once I've really tested them out and built a few different layouts. Last night I saw posted here at Rhellion's Tabletop an excellent review of Rhellion's experiences working with the Streets of Malifaux and the Buildings of Malifaux box sets. If you're interested in more info I recommend you check out his blog. There's plenty of good stuff there.

One thing Rhellion mentions is that Wyrd already plans on releasing further sets of terrain, including futuristic designs as well. Not only does that sound very exciting (oh... Infinity!), but also explains why my box of TerraClips is labeled as "Translucent Grey." I suppose this means we can expect these clips to eventually come in a variety of colors. Something about designer TerraClips is really amusing to me.

Fun, indeed. :)

Alright, I gotta run. Things should be getting back to normal soon as my visiting relatives will be departing in a day or so. Happy painting and gaming!

A Lovely Iron Kingdoms Table

2011-08-17T23:52:00.013-04:00

I don't have much time tonight for blogging as I continue to be occupied by visiting relatives. So for this week's Warmachine/Hordes post I'd like to show a picture of one of my favorite gaming tables. I saw this one at Adepticon and I have no idea who is responsible for it, although I guess it was made by someone associate with Privateer Press. It was located right next to one of their big display pieces in the ballroom where all their tournaments were held.

Okay, check it out:

Why then do I like it so much? To begin with I think it's just a really attractive table built to a high standard of craftsmanship. I wish at the time I had taken more photos of it so that I could show some closeups as the buildings and train station are all well detailed, beautiful pieces of scenery. Also the train and boxcar apparently received a similar amount of care and attention. I remember them being quite lovely.

Beyond its aesthetic appeal I appreciate that it is still a very functional wargaming table for the system for which it was created. It doesn't appear overly crowded with too many lavish terrain pieces and so it should still allow for an enjoyable, standard type of game, not one in which the table itself dominates how the game is played. While I definitely have a lot of fun playing on those specially designed, narrative-heavy tables, this one comes across to me as a top-notch, "I can play on it everyday" sort of table.

Perhaps what I like the most about the table, however, is how well it fits the background and themes of its game world. It seems to me a perfect expression of the Iron Kingdoms and very representative of that Steampunk-styled setting. Sure it would work fine for a lot of other games, but with even a glance I know where the action on the table is supposed to be taking place. I'm also impressed that this isn't conveyed by means of any overt references to in-game factions, symbols, etc. or other sorts of give-away clues.

Finally, I just think it's really neat that the table has train tracks and a train, too. I've wanted to build a table with train tracks for a long time but have not yet done so. That's a terrain feature I would like to see show up more often. Growing up my dad was into model trains so I've thought for a while it would cool to integrate a little of that into my own hobby. Maybe someday I'll get around to that... seems like it would be fun. By the way, does anyone know what scale or gauge of track works well for 28-30mm miniatures?

So that's why I think this table is so groovy. I hope everyone is having a rockin' week so far. Goodnight!

250th Post and Some Evil Dead

2011-08-16T23:58:00.011-04:00

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to write on either of the topics I had in mind for tonight's Warhammer posting. We had a surprise visit from family today and will now be entertaining house guests for the next few days. This was a very happy surprise for us but it has curtailed somewhat the time I have available for blogging this evening. What I had planned on writing about can certainly wait another week so it doesn't seem sensible to rush through either of them.

This does however happen to be my 250th post for this blog, and I am not above taking the easy way out. Therefore tonight diceRolla is celebrating having reached an entirely arbitrary and meaningless posting milestone. Hooray for blogging! Hooray for me! Woo-hoo! I believe this is the first of these of which I have taken note and mentioned, so please forgive the gratuitous nature of my self-congratulation. It's taken diceRolla some 30 months to arrive at this point and it seems like a long time coming. So… ta da!

It wouldn't feel right, however, to mark such an important accomplishment [snicker, snicker] without anything at all related to our shared interest in the world of gaming. I thus went digging through my photo albums in search of something that would be appropriate. Here then is what I found for such a solemn occasion:

This... is my BOOMSTICK!

This photograph is from one of the team 40k tournament games I played in earlier this year at Adepticon. In the first round our team was matched against a group of guys from Florida called Skull-N-Bonz who had brought to the event an alliance of Imperial Guard and Nurgle-based Chaos Marines. You can probably tell from the picture that what really made their armies outstanding was that they were all themed around one of my favorite movies, Army of Darkness. The miniature version of Ash pictured above was used as a counts-as Colonel 'Iron Hand' Straken for one of their Guard armies. I was playing on the adjacent table and so did not get the chance to go up against Colonel Ash myself, though I did enjoy watching him chew his way through a big group of Space Wolves. I tip my hat to the Skull-N-Bonz crew for bringing such a fun army to the tournament and for being an awesome group of competitors, too. Well done, guys!

Lastly I want to say a big THANK YOU to all the fantastic people who have been reading my blog, however long that happens to have been. It's been a blast getting to share with you my experiences with this hobby and I greatly appreciate you providing me with such an opportunity. Thanks for sticking with me!

Goodnight, everybody. And remember… shop smart, shop S-Mart. :)

Dark Angels Dreadnought

2011-08-15T23:40:00.005-04:00

More than a year and a half ago I was working on a Space Marine Dreadnought whom I named Brother Abraxos. He was to be part of a Dark Angels' 6th Company army project that was shelved not too long after I'd finished painting this model. At the time I made a few WIP updates about him but then never got around to posting about the finished model. It's time therefore that I correct this oversight by sharing some pictures of my Dreadnought that I took back in January, 2010. Having patiently waited for such an introduction, I feel it is his due. Here then is Brother Abraxos....

I've had very little experience working with magnets and so even the straightforward task of magnetizing the arms for this Dreadnought was a challenge. I made a few mistakes concerning their polarity but was able to fix them without too much frustration. Reassuringly I have since learned better ways to keep the magnets properly oriented. I'm happy that the arms turned out well enough although the alignment on one or two of them is slightly askew. Not that it really matters though as they are still usable and look fine to me.

I enjoyed painting this Dreadnought but perhaps not as much as I thought I would. Nonetheless I really like how the model turned out and am grateful for the experience, especially in overcoming my hesitancy about using magnets. Overall I think this was a fun and worthwhile project. Unfortunately my interest in continuing with the rest of the Dark Angels army gradually fizzled and I moved on to other things. If I ever do return to those plans, one reason will likely be so that I can make better use of Brother Abraxos, but for now that's not sufficient motivation.

Then again, if the rumors are correct about the Dark Angels receiving some extra attention with the anticipated arrival of 6th Edition, perhaps that will provide the spark needed to reignite my interest in the Unforgiven. I suppose I'll just wait and see what happens, and of course in the meantime there is never a lack of minis that I am eager to paint. Speaking of which, I believe it's time I went back to my brushes for a bit of late evening painting. Goodnight!

Flashbacks and Nightmares - Ork Painboy and Squig

2011-08-14T23:52:00.017-04:00

While searching for some missing paintbrushes earlier I came across one of my favorite old GW minis from back in the day. It's been something of a bust on the hobby and painting front today so for now I'd just like to share a few photographs of that old miniature, a rather archaic Ork Painboy. I'm not exactly sure when he was in production but I'd guess it was around twenty or so years ago. Likewise I don't know how old I was when I painted this one but evidently I was still rather new to techniques such as highlighting and even thinning one's paints. Thus he is a prime candidate for another edition of Flashbacks and Nightmares, in which I take a nostalgic look at examples of my painting past, both for a sense of perspective but perhaps more importantly for some simple facepalm-inducing fun.

So this Ork Painboy has for some reason always seemed really cool to me in that goofy old school Ork sort of way. I also remember well how much fun I had painting him and displayed him proudly for many years on my bookshelf. Even considering the more simplistic style of sculpting back then compared to what we have become accustomed, I think this model still has a lot of neat little details to enjoy. Looking at his gruesome range of doctoring implements, it's easy to see why this caste of Orks became known as Painboyz. The bone saw is great, as are his many knives, cleavers, and clamps. My favorite part of the miniature however is the doctor's head mirror that he wears. It has always amused me that an Ork doctor would be concerned about something as trivial as proper lighting.

As was the case with many Ork personality blister packs, also included with the Painboy was a randomly selected squigly beast. Over the years squigs have become essentially standardized in their shape and appearance, but in olden times there was a very wide assortment of squigs which took on many different forms. Some were pretty nasty looking and may have even seemed like the dangerous little monsters that they were supposed to be. Others, however, appeared rather less ferocious....

Now that's just weird. This particular squiggly beast could be one of the most bizarre and pointless miniatures Games Workshop has ever produced. It should be no wonder then that I am so fond of it. Due to it's standout nature, this squig has been a central focus for numerous homebrew scenarios and has served as an objective marker countless other times. Indeed it's possible that this horribly ridiculous squig has been used in more of my games of 40k than perhaps any other miniature. Not quite up to the usual Grim Dark standard, is he?

Hmm... it seems that I've run out of steam this evening and need to wrap this up. It's been a long day and I'm beat, although I've really enjoyed looking back on this classic GW Ork miniature and his less-than-classic companion squig. I find it quite interesting to see how things have developed and changed over the years. If there are any old minis that you remember fondly for whatever reason, please feel free to leave a comment telling me which ones were your favorites. Otherwise I hope everyone had a great weekend filled with plenty of gaming glory.

Goodnight!

Diogenes Class Frigates WIP

2011-08-13T23:50:00.001-04:00

Today I started painting my first models for Dystopian Wars, beginning with a squadron of CoA Diogenes Class Frigates. Initially I'd planned on trying out a different color scheme on each of the three ships in the squadron. I really liked the first paint scheme that I tried however and so I proceeded to paint all the ships the same way. There are some more details left to work on and a few areas that I need to clean up, but otherwise they're close to being finished. What you see in the pictures is a good indication of the look that I'm going for with my Covenant of Antarctica fleet.

I'm really pleased with how these three Frigate have turned out so far and they've been fun to paint as well. Another nice thing is that the color scheme was very easy to do as most of the work happens in the priming stage. I may have to modify my approach somewhat when it comes to painting the bigger ships, but for now it's encouraging to think that I might be able to finish this fleet fairly quickly. The Frigates are indeed rather simple models so perhaps I shouldn't expect to much at this point, but I can be optimistic at least.

Dystopian Wars is another game that I am quite excited about playing and I expect that will help keep me motivated to paint my ships. After today's experience however I don't thick motivation will be a problem when it comes to getting my fleet painted. I look forward to finishing this first squadron so that I can promptly begin work on the next set of ships. Thus far I'm really encouraged about this game and am happy that I decided to take a closer look at it.

Okay, that's it for now... time for more painting. Goodnight!

Holes in Time

2011-08-12T23:55:00.010-04:00

Just another Friday night drilling holes into little metal soldiers....

Ah, the good life. :)

I'm happy to say that the Witch Hunters starter box is now assembled and the members of the Crew are each pinned to their respective bases. I left Sonnia's sword unattached for ease of painting as I will glue it onto her once the rest of the miniatures is finished. Otherwise everything is set so that I can start painting these guys tomorrow, something about which I am very excited. I still have some more time tonight and hope to have the Executioner and the Purifying Flamer Totem put together before calling it quits.

So that is all I I have to report for this update, it's time for me to get back to the drilling. Happy gaming and painting, everybody!

Oh yeah... and best of luck to all the 'Ard Boyz this weekend, too!

Malifaux Bump - Starting with Criid

2011-08-11T23:50:00.014-04:00

Even though my attempt at scheduled blogging is less than two weeks old, tonight I'm calling an audible as I want to post an update concerning Malifaux instead of Infinity. This is because over the past few days I've become absolutely fascinated by this game from Wyrd miniatures. It's been quite fun reading the rulebook and I now remember how jazzed I was about the game when going through the original book last year. It comes across as such an elegant and innovative system that I am really keen to try it out. I may be in luck too as apparently one of the local LGS's has a fairly regular group of Malifaux players from whom I can learn how to play. Jackpot!

So that's what has motivated me to change up my hobby plans a bit and for the time being give some extra attention to Malifaux. A chance to jump in right away and start playing is too good to pass up in favor of an arbitrarily chosen blog schedule. I trust no one will be too upset about this. ;) I expect there is a tremendous depth to this game that I won't otherwise be able to appreciate without actually playing it. Based on the glowingly positive feedback and testimonials that I've heard about Malifaux, I doubt I will be disappointed with it.

Therefore tonight I'm set to begin work on my first Crew, for which I decided to go with Sonnia Criid and the Guild Witch Hunters. If all goes well I should have some extra hobby time tomorrow and I'd really like to start painting my Crew this weekend if possible. Besides it's been too long since I lasted painted anything so I think that would be a good goal for me. With the first batch of minis there's not a lot of assembling to do so I'm hopeful about being able to knock the rust off my paintbrushes quite soon.

Okay, that's all I have to report on for this update. I apologize to any fans of Infinity annoyed about your game getting bumped from the rotation in favor of Malifaux. No doubt I'll make up for it once I'm ready to begin painting my Ariadna Kazaks.... holy smokes, those are some sweet minis. That will be a lot of fun when I get to them, but now it's Malifaux's turn.

Happy painting and gaming!

Hordes Switch, Time for Skorne

2011-08-10T23:32:00.006-04:00

This is going to be a quick post tonight as I am about to start assembling my Titan Gladiator, hence I want to spend as much hobby time as I can working on the angry elephant. It looks like he's going to take a lot of pins and greenstuff so I'm eager to get to it. As I look at the generous pile of pieces that await me, I have a feeling this guy would really benefit from being rereleased as a plastic model. Hopefully PP has that in the works for their future Hordes plans.

Earlier today I repaired that Cyclops Savage who was damaged in the move without too much trouble. This means that once the Gladiator is built I will have my first 15 points of Skorne ready for painting. I still don't know if I'll go with the standard paint scheme or an alternative selection of colors. I like the basic red-flavored Skorne enough that I'm happy to use it as my default paint scheme should I not think of anything else with more appeal. Since the current Gladiator will likely take me a while to build, I'm sure I have plenty more time to consider my options.

As for the change of pace, I decided that I was ready to switch from working on Circle Orboros and start in on my next faction. Eventually I'd like to be able to run intro games in the Asheville area as it seems there is not yet much of a following here for either Warmachine or Hordes. Unfortumately I do not believe there are any Press Gangers within several hours drive of me so no help there. No worries though, I don't think it should be too hard to teach the game to someone else should I get the chance.

In order for me to do that, however, I need to paint some more monsters. Therefore it's time I return to the knives, glue, greenstuff and pins. Goodnight!

Daemons and Dinosaurs

2011-08-09T23:45:00.003-04:00

Earlier today I was able to recover a large amount of data from my old computer and so I'm in the mood to celebrate this bit of good fortune. Among the recovered goodies were all of my photographs from this year's trip to Adepticon, and therefore tonight I'd like to share a few of my favorites. First up are a couple of crazy count-as Flamers of Tzeentch followed by a count-as unit of Flesh Hounds. These are from the gorgeous Daemons of Chaos army painted by Jeff Schiltgen for Adepticon's 1000 point "It's How You Use It" tournament. I could be mistaken but I think he won a Player's Choice award for his well painted army and display board.

Unfortunately a lot of my pictures of this army did not turn out very well, being in many cases much too blurry for me to use. The next photograph is itself rather blurry though perhaps not as bad as some of the others. Still I think the unit of Bloodletters is pretty enough to be worth a look despite my shoddy camera work. (I apologize to Jeff for not doing his army justice.)

I spotted this next set of Lizardmen miniatures during a break between games and had to take a few minutes to admire the uber cute approach to modeling Stegadons. While these lumbering beasts may not seem as intimidating as the standard Stegadon model, I think they have a very pleasant and light-hearted charm that you rarely find in wargaming. Unfortunately I forgot to find out the name of the army's owner, though I do remember him being quite generous with his time as I asked questions and took my pictures. If anybody should happen to recognize this army and know the name of its painter, I would happily update this to give him his due credit.

There were of course many other fantastic armies to drool over at Adepticon. However my schedule was primarily filled with gaming this year and so I did not have as much time as before to wander around and take pictures of all the cool miniatures. Although I had a blast playing in the events, in the future I think I would prefer to leave more time unscheduled so that I can take advantage of having so many lovely armies gathered in one place. It's a great opportunity to be inspired and see some amazing works of art.

Happy painting and gaming!

Chaos Lord Kit-Bash

2011-08-08T23:47:00.002-04:00

The other day I noticed some pictures of a fantastically Chaosified jump-pack Chaplin which Rich had posted over at his blog, Ineptus Mechanicus. He's been working steadily on a Word Bearers army for close to a year that makes heavy use of converted and kitbashed models. It's been a really cool project to watch develop because of the creativity, thought, and planning that Rich has put into each model, his corrupted Chaplin being no exception.

Along with admiring his conversion work on the Chaplin, seeing Rich's use of those Possessed wings reminded me of a model that I had kitbashed for a Black Legion army, another project that's been sitting on the back-burner for quite a long time. There's not much to my Chaos Lord, just a simple mix of pieces from various Chaos Marine and Space Marine kits and the tiniest amount of cutting. There are bits from the Chaos Space Marines, Possessed Marines, and Terminator Lord kits, and from the Dark Angels and Space Wolves frames as well. All that's left that I want to add to this model would be some Chaos-style gauntlets made out of greenstuff to his wrists in order to better disguise the loyalist origins of his arms.

Ripper Murdark, scourge of the Groening Sector and diabolical leader of the Black Legion warband, The Cancelled Souls. Having established his base of operations in the tumultuous region of space known as the North Haverbrook Anomaly, Ripper Murdark has since waged a ceaseless campaign of terror and sabotage against the valuable Agri worlds for which the Sector is famous. This aggression reached its peak with his attempt to overthrow Imperial control of the planet Fonsager, fostering a protracted and violent rebellion which was bloodily quelled by the Stonecutters chapter of Space Marines. Having escaped the planet with his Black Legion warband largely intact, Lord Murdark has sworn to take revenge against the Stonecutters and to personally kill the flamboyant leader of its Second Company, Captain Homer, whom he blames for his defeat.

Chaos Space Marines Chaos Lord - Mark of Tzeentch, Daemon Weapon, Melta Bombs, Personal Icon, Jump Pack. 175 points.

That's the basic idea at least. To go along with the Stonecutters and the Blisstonian 9th that I've been gradually working on, I thought it would be fun to include some bad guys to further populate the Groening Sector. Since updating my progress on Captain Homer last night, this seemed like a good time to introduce his nemesis, Ripper Murdark. The Cancelled Souls are obviously in a very preliminary state right now but I've nonetheless enjoyed having an outlet for the occasional Chaos fix. I don't know what I eventually envision for this Black Legion army. At this point I do not have any grand ambitions for them beyond a rather small but still playable collection.

Okay, that's it for this now. I'm going to work more on those Slaanesh Chaos Daemons this week and I will try to post an update about them soon. Happy painting and gaming!

Captain Homer and Mojo WIP

2011-08-07T23:53:00.024-04:00

Last May I spent some time working on one of my most drawn out painting projects, Captain Homer and Mojo, and posted an updated about them here. After writing about the progress I'd made, I went on to spend another evening or two later in the month working on Homer and Mojo before once again setting the pair aside. While the painting itself had not advanced very far, the noteworthy accomplishment was in finally attaching Homer's head to his body. Woo-hoo! Having left the last time with Captain Homer still in a headless condition, tonight I thought it would be worthwhile to update this project, even though it's been a while since I actually sat down to work anymore on it.

Before gluing on the helmet I finished bringing the white areas of power armour up to a pure Skull White. I tried to keep the paint thinned enough so that the white wouldn't buildup too much, but I then wasn't able to entirely prevent it from running into some of the darkened lines which define the various armoured segments. I'd like to tidy that up somewhat, in particular on the should pads and a few other more noticeable places. Otherwise I plan on leaving the rest as is due to the likelihood that trying to fix anymore would just lead to new mistakes in need of further correcting.

Once I was satisfied with the white areas around Homer's collar, backpack, and should pads, I evened out the yellow of the power armour and added a layer of highlighting on top of that. I would save the final round of yellow highlighting, however, for after having glued in place the helmet. This seemed reasonable to me should the final positioning of the helmet would alter which lines I wanted to emphasize the most. Additionally the blue legs are now either finished or else close to it. They could probably use one more pass of highlights so as to pick out the uppermost edges of armour as they catch the light. Lastly Captain Homer's power sword is the result of lots of trial and error until I finally had an effect that looked decent enough to me. Well, so long as I didn't look too closely it seemed alright. :)

At the same time that I was working on Captain Homer, I also made some more progress on his buddy, Mojo the Helper Monkey. At this point everything is blocked out in the basic colors and has received at least one round of shading and highlights. I'm rather pleased with how his face and other fleshy bits turned out. He seems to me crazy and dangerous, just the way a monkey with a flamethrower should look. There's still some highlighting and detail work to do but I think this monkey is close to finished.

I don't know when I'll return to work some more on Captain Homer and Mojo. One reason I've been hesitant to go any further is because I haven't yet finished planning out the design for Homer's back banner. Also I'm nervous about freehand painting a design onto such a relatively large area... that a mistake there could really botch the whole thing. Nonetheless I'm pretty sure that once I have the details sorted out to my liking, I will be ready to paint the banner if only to have that particular step behind me. And besides, how hard could it be to paint a big donut and some beer cans?

So that's all I have for now with regards to these two miniatures. Hopefully it won't take another three months before I'm ready to put together the next progress update on them. I'm not getting my hopes up, though, as these guys seem to have become permanent residents of my WIP shelf. Nonetheless it would be really nice to finally move on to the next batch of Stonecutters. Ah, someday... someday.

Goodnight!

Covenant of Antarctica

2011-08-06T23:52:00.009-04:00

With tonight's post we come to Dystopian Wars, the last of the three new games which I'm now learning to play, the other two being Infinity and Malifaux as previously discussed. Dystopian Wars has looked interesting to me since I first heard about the game, particularly due to its integration of land, air, and sea units into a single game system. Plus I find the Jules Verne styled, Victorian steampunk setting for Dystopian Wars strongly appealing. Of course I'm also a big fan of the all the miniatures Spartan Games has produced for each of the original nations so far. This actually presented something of a problem for me initially as I could not decide which nationality I wanted to collect. They all looked great, but none of them grabbed me more than any other.

I therefore thought it would be best to wait and see how the game continued to develop as more models became available. Eventually I picked up a copy of the rules and really enjoyed reading it during the time that I wasn't able to paint or work on any miniatures. I was no closer to picking a faction however until I saw the early artwork and pre-release images for the upcoming Covenant of Antarctica. I was hooked. The weird pulp style of their vessels, planes, and walkers was right on for my liking. Also it's just a hunch but I suspect these guys might turn out to be the true villains of the Dystopian Wars universe, which would be a cool bonus. I'm rather certain that it's not possible to build giant, mechanical, clawed walkers without also being an evil genius. It just seems to go with the territory.

So I was really excited earlier this week when I received in the mail the initial batch of CoA miniatures to be released. I'm thus starting out with a Naval Battle Group, an Armoured Battle Group, and a Fleet Carrier. As the first expansion nationality to be added to the game, there's currently no information about the Covenant units in the Dystopian Wars rulebook. Instead they've included a 40 page booklet with each of the Battle Group boxes. This handy booklet has new rules introduced for the Covenant of Antarctica plus stats for all of the CoA units. Additionally the first fifteen or so pages of the booklet is all new background fluff about this youngest of nations, providing it with a greater sense of depth and history. It's so well done in fact that I think it's too bad similar booklets were not made for the other nationalities as well.

For those curious about these starter boxes, the Naval Battle Group contains models worth up to 740 points fully loaded, while the Armoured Battle Group comes in at 745 points.

I haven't decided yet how I want to paint these miniatures, though a few possible color schemes that I like have come to mind. If time allows I hope to paint a test figure or two this week. I'd originally planned on starting with the CoA fleet, but seeing both in person I'm now tempted to begin with the ground forces. I wonder if it would be easier considering the terrain and space I have available to initially work on learning the land-based aspects of this game. I think by first focusing on the Armoured Battle Group, I could begin trying out Dystopian Wars as quickly as possible which would be nice.

All in due time I suppose. If anybody has a preference concerning this, I'm certainly open to suggestions. Otherwise I'll make up my mind in the next couple of days whether my introduction to the game will be by land or by sea. Okay, that's it for now. Happy painting and gaming, everybody!

Malifaux Revisited

2011-08-05T23:28:00.010-04:00

Malifaux from Wyrd Miniatures is another game I want to become more involved with this year. Interested in finding out about how its card mechanics operated, more than a year ago I read through the original rulebook and thought it seemed like it could be a really fun game and that it definitely had a lot of potential. Intent on really learning the game with the possibility of running demo games in my local area, I bought a pair of starter boxes along with a few extra models for each faction. As is so often the case however, there were other distractions competing for my attention at the time and these Malifaux plans were pushed to the side.

A few months ago at Adepticon I played against Bill Anderson from Gamers Lounge and The Dead Tau Project in the first round of a Warhammer Fantasy tournament. Before our game began we spent some time talking about other hobby interests and I mentioned that his own blogging about Malifaux had been one of the original reasons I became interested in the game. He then went on to excitedly advocate on behalf of Malifaux and strongly recommended that I give it a try. It was a great reminder to hear again about the things I'd found fascinating about Malifaux and our conversation reignited my interest in it, though I decided I should wait until after the move before picking it up with it again.

Now that I'm settling into the new house, I am psyched to be taking a second look at Wyrd Minis distinctly weird game. One of the things I find most appealing about Malifaux is just how different it is from the other games that I enjoy. I think it goes beyond using cards instead of dice, although that certainly does create a very novel play dynamic. One feature that I suspect I will especially enjoy is the system of variable and indeed even customizable victory conditions, Strategies and Schemes. Aside from these neat game mechanics, I love the deeply atmospheric setting created for Malifaux and have found the development of the storyline surprisingly compelling. All quite good stuff, really.

The Guild - Sonnia Criid and her Witch Hunters

The Arcanists - Ramos of the Miners and Steamfitters Union

So you can see in the pictures above the Crews that I'll be starting out with for my introduction to Malifaux. When I originally selected these minis I did so without much understanding of the game itself aside from an appreciation for its unique aesthetic. Fortunately from what I remember Sonnia Criid and Ramos seem to be a fairly decent matchup and I'm optimistic that they'll provide a good feeling for what this game is all about. I've heard so many positive things about Malifaux that I will be shocked if it does not become one of my regular favorites.

Along with putting together and painting my models, I've realized recently that I had forgotten almost everything I learned about playing the game since first reading the rules. After talking to Bill at Adepticon I purchased a copy of the mini rulebook which I started reading earlier today. I do remember there were some areas of the original rulebook that I found either confusing or at least a little ambiguous, so I am eager to see if the mini-book brings more clarity to the rules. My goal is to have a good understanding of the rules and game mechanics by the time I have painted both of my Crews.

If anyone's been playing Malifaux and has advice for someone just starting out, I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences with the game. Of course I'm keen for anyone else to share his or her thoughts about the weird world of Malifaux, too. Otherwise I'm ready to begin assembling my minis and hope to be painting them soon after. I don't know which group I'll work on first though I'm leaning towards Sonnia Criid and friends.

Okay, that's it for now. I hope everyone has a great weekend with plenty of gaming fun. Goodnight!

Review - MAS Radar Station and Pump Station

2011-08-04T23:40:00.008-04:00

Months and months ago, I posted this about my interest in playing some new games this year. I solicited suggestions but then in typical fashion never got around to following it up. Well one of the games I picked out is Infinity by Corvus Belli, which I chose partly because it allows for a much greater density of terrain coverage than you typically find in games of 40k. Working on terrain is one of my favorite aspects of this hobby and so I liked the idea of playing a game that encourages you to have a lot of scenery and cover on your tabletop.

Therefore for diceRolla's first Infinity-centric post I thought it would be appropriate to review a couple of hardfoam terrain pieces from Micro Art Studios, namely the Radar Station and the Pump Station. I bought these especially for use with Infinity in mind, but as they are meant to be generic 28-30mm sci-fi scenery pieces, I think they would fit comfortably into most futuristic settings. You'll see in most of the pictures that I used Sergeant Homer as my standard reference for scale, which handily also serves to provide a little glimpse of these terrain bits in a 40k context as well. Most of the official photos on the MAS site show them beside Infinity models, therefore it seemed like it would be more helpful to use a Space Marine for my own pictures.

So with that out of the way let's get to the terrain, starting with the Radar Station. It's comprised of three different materials as seen below: the main hardfoam structure, a resin piece for the doorway, and a sheet of pre-cut HDF pieces from which the radar itself and the building's walkway are assembled. The second picture is of the bottom of the terrain piece to show what this hardfoam stuff is like for those who have not encountered it before. It's pretty strong but can be brittle and it becomes gritty when broken or crunched.

The resin entryway piece had minor flash and will need some tidying but was for the most part in good shape. The hardfoam had several rather more noticeable problem areas, in particular warpage on the top and on two side sections.

I don't think any of these flaws are that bad besides causing a little annoyance. Instead what bothers me is that MAS charges what I consider to be a rather premium price for their products. Thus I did not expect there to be quite so many areas of damage right out of the packaging. To be fair I also was not expecting the foam to be perfect either, just not this bad. What surprised me the most however was when I realized the HDF sheet may have been cut backwards from the way it was intended to be cut. You can see with the walkway piece that on one side there is a little bit of etched-in detailing, while the other side remains unadorned.

The problem I encountered is that on mine the walkway only fits onto the building if you have the detailed side pointing to the ground instead of pointing up. D'oh! I'll likely use some thin cardboard and strips of plasticard to breakup the flat surface of the HDF, thus adding back some visual interest to it. That way it's an easy enough fix. What surprised me about this is the apparent carelessness in its manufacturing which I did not expect from MAS. I still think it's a great piece of terrain, though perhaps somewhat overpriced for the quality you get.

The HDF radar was easy to assemble and there were no problems due to the radar panels' detailing having likely been etched into the wrong side of the sheet. I did a dry run without gluing any of the pieces to test out their fit and to make sure I understood how everything was supposed to go together. It was a very straight forward process but you do want to be gentle when punching the individual pieces off of the sheet so as to avoid any of them breaking or tearing.

Here then are some final pictures of how the Radar Station looks when assembled.

Moving on to the other scenery element for tonight's review, the Pump Station consists of just two pieces, a big chuck of hardfoam and a resin doorway. As with the Radar Station, the hardfoam was damaged in a number of places. In this case it's primarily the coils of those duct-looking things to either side that have suffered the most.

The above unpleasantness is on one side....

And this is on the other side. :(

There are also a few noticable areas of warpage scattered on the surface of the piece. Otherwise I think it is a really nice bit of scenery and will look quite spiffy on the table once fixed up a little and painted. I appreciate its overall simplicity.

Once again I believe the damaged areas should be easy to repair with greenstuff, or I may just leave them that way and paint them as battle damage. However considering the price MAS charges for their terrain, I was not expecting them to be in such rough condition. I still have some of GW's old hardened-foam terrain pieces that even after years of use are in better shape than these new ones from MAS.

Overall I am satisfied with the MAS Radar Station and Pump Station, though I feel the damaged and problematic areas were excessive. I'm excited to see them painted and I suspect I will be happy to have added these pieces to my collection of terrain once they're finished. As a consumer I'm left with a less-than-thrilled feeling, but I'll get over it as they're still some pretty cool pieces of terrain. :)

That's it for now, happy painting and gaming!

QuickPic - Lord of the Feast

2011-08-03T23:36:00.002-04:00

Today I unpacked my Hordes miniatures for the first time after the move and was relieved to see that all of them held up quite well to the jostling. A couple of smaller pieces popped off of one of the unpainted Cyclops Savages but otherwise everyone appears to be in good condition. Phew! Also I noticed a few areas here and there that will need touching up but again it doesn't look like it will take much to fix 'em.

So after inspecting all the models I couldn't help but play around a little and take some pictures of them. Even though he's been seen on this blog a few other times, this Lord of the Feast is still one of my favorite minis to photograph. I hope you don't mind me posting him again, I kind of like the way this one turned out.

Hmm... I wonder what he's pointing at.

Oh well, goodnight!

A Rising Waaagh Lifts All Orcs

2011-08-02T23:49:00.012-04:00

Earlier this year I asked fellow blogger DrGabe if he would be interested in doing some commissioned painting for me. He had been working on what was to be a 3000 point Blood Angels army when, halfway through the job, his client ended up having to quit the hobby entirely. Thus the completed portion of the army went off to eBay and DrGabe, as it seemed only natural to me, was presumably left befuddled with how to use his newly liberated painting time. Sensing an opportunity to exploit a longtime friend, I delicately broached the subject with him.

"If you can paint an army for a stranger, you can paint one for me!"

Or maybe at the time I was more diplomatic about it, there are conflicting accounts about how it all went down. In exchange for a bunch of Eldar minis I'd stashed away for the better part of a decade, DrGabe agreed to paint an Orcs and Goblins army for me. Turns out he was in fact eager to paint a Fantasy army as a change of pace and for the opportunity to develop different approaches to painting. DrG had told me he was particularly keen to practice his speed painting techniques and thus an Orc Waaagh would be quite suitable to that.

Perfecto!

The O&G models that I shipped to Gabe mostly date back to the early days of the Battle for Skull Pass era and had been untouched since then. Although I know I would have enjoyed painting this army, after choosing to go with the Dark Elves for my main Warhammer faction I realized it was unlikely I would ever get around to working on these greenskins. I'm therefore very happy to have entrusted them to DrGabe as I knew he would do a great job with them. We discussed what type of army I wanted to have and kicked around ideas about the potential composition, background, and color scheme options. Ultimately I gave him instructions along the lines of a more or less traditional O&G force, though perhaps a tad livelier with some extra orange and purple added to the selection of colors.

There was one detail however about which I was more specific, and that was the treatment of the bases that I wanted. I had been inspired by a passage of background from the current Orcs and Goblins army book about the greenskin tribes who live in Naggaroth. It tells of their history of originally being enslaved in huge numbers by the upstart Dark Elves and then being forced to wage war on behalf of the Druchii. Eventually the Orcs fought their way out of captivity, established themselves in the wild lands, and hence forth have been a sometimes-enemy, sometimes-ally of their former Dark Elf masters. It was this little nugget of fluff that provided the inspiration for this army in addition to being the reason why we elected to use snowy, icy bases befitting Orcs living in the Land of Chill.

I plan on trying to emulate DrGabe's technique creating snowy bases for my Dark Elf army. I think it will therefore look really nice when I use the armies to fight against each other when providing an army for an opponent to use, but would also appear complementary should I want to ally the two armies together for really big games. I'm sure when we get together it will be a blast to play a game against each other using these two armies. Just the thought of that has really motivated me to get back to work on my Dark Elves. Groovy!

The Night Goblins seen in the above picture are the first unit finished for this Waaagh-in-Progress. I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. If you want to check out any of his previous posts concerning the army project, I encourage you to utilize the following link:

http://drgabe.gabeusry.com/search/label/Orcs

Summer is always a busy time for the good Doctor so it looks like things have become understandably quiet lately at his blog, DrGabe's Miniatures. He's off to Gen Con in a day or two so hopefully he might be able to get some interesting photos of all the neat new things there on display. I've duly complained about his recent lack of posting (haha!) and have encouraged him to share anything really cool that he sees with his lucky Followers.

After his trip to Gen Con however I have threatened to banish him to the salt mines if he doesn't get back to painting my Orcs, so I expect the Waaagh will be growing again very soon...

[Evil hand wringing ensues.]

Goodnight, everyone!

Embracing Slaanesh - A Rationale for Excess, Part 1

2011-08-01T23:55:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned yesterday I'm just now beginning work on a new project for 40k, a purely-Slaanesh themed Chaos Daemons army. I did all of the planning for this one prior to my move to NC so I am excited to have it underway after several months of waiting. While keeping in mind lower point level games, I'm primarily aiming to build a 2000 point army, though it should ultimately top out in the 2250 to 2500 point range. This will likely be my main hobby focus over the next couple of months. Allow me to explain why...

Until recently Chaos Daemons as an army had almost no appeal for me. As a longtime Chaos Space Marines player it took me quite a while to adjust to losing access to my favorite daemon units and getting saddled with flavorless generic ones instead. (By the way, Summoned Lesser Daemons are once again one of my favorite units for my Chaos Marines army, but I do still miss those T5 Plaguebearers.) I unfairly held this against Codex: Chaos Daemons when it was released, as well as the changes to their fluff with regard to the Chaos gods newly acquired spirit of cooperation. Partisanship may be a dirty word in politics nowadays but I personally enjoyed the hostility Chaos Daemons felt toward the minions of the other gods. Lastly, their whole approach to deployment seemed at the time too whacky and gimmicky for my taste, and so I therefore made up my mind that the mortal followers of Chaos would be enough for me.

Nonetheless my sentiments softened over time and I found it fascinating to hear or read about others' experiences collecting and playing Chaos Daemons. I liked the new plastics kits and eventually came to appreciate the changes that had been introduced as well, in particular seeing their unique method of deployment as, if nothing else, an interesting change of pace for those playing against the evil critters. I thought that as a Chaos Daemons player the Daemonic Assault rule might get tiresome after a while, but that it would offer a fun and novel challenge for their opponents, so that seemed cool. With so many other armies calling out to me, this gradually developing respect for Chaos Daemons was still not sufficient reason for me to take the plunge into collecting my own batch of Daemons.

It was actually not until the new Codex: Grey Knights came out before the idea of playing Chaos Daemons became a serious consideration for me. Though I should not have been surprised having seen their beautiful range of minis, I had not expected the Grey Knights to take off in popularity to the degree that they seemingly have this year. It seemed too bad that there wouldn't be more armies of Daemons for them to fight against as no doubt the rise of the Grey Knights has been something of a downer for both veteran Chaos Daemon players as well as for those thinking about pledging themselves to the dark gods. Having a new Codex on the loose that was specifically designed to beat up on your army would I think be discouraging no matter how otherwise appealing the bullied army might be. So it was with this set of assumptions that I decided I wanted to build a Chaos Daemons army.

Let me be clear that I do not think I have any better chance against the Grey Knights than anyone else using Chaos Daemons. In fact I am fairly sure I will not play the army as well as many others could and will face even more of an uphill battle against GK armies than would normally be expected. Nor am I doing this to try to prove anything to the Internets. (Yeah right, if anything I'd just prove what an ass I am!) Rather I decided to collect Chaos Daemons just so that anyone I happen to meet with their own army of Grey Knights would have the opportunity to play them against what is supposed to be their preferred enemy. It seems kind of funny to me to imagine all of these Grey Knight strike forces scouring the universe and battling against all manner of xenos, rebels, and traitors, but saying to each other the whole time, "Where are all the bloody Daemons?" And I imagine it must also be frustrating as well to own a Grey Knights collection but then rarely or never encounter a Chaos Daemons army against whom to match your army of goody-goody heroes.

Therefore my initial reason for starting this new army project was to provide a classic foil for whenever I happen to cross paths with a Grey Knights player looking for an amenable antagonist. I am by no means a gamer masochist, though I do like a good challenge and whether I win or lose any particular game is irrelevant to my enjoyment of 40k. Plus should I actually manage to win a game then it would be all the sweeter for the extra difficulty involved, and while losing I can at least still revel in the casualties that I inflict along the way, knowing that my guys have merely been banished back to the Warp, but every Grey Knight killed is a serious loss to the Imperium. So even if this puts me squarely in the land of moral victories, in my mind that's still better than outright defeat. :)

Okay, I see that's all the time I have for tonight, and yet so far I've only managed to explain why I've chosen to collect Chaos Daemons, though not specifically the mono-god, Slaanesh only approach. Therefore I'm going to make this a two parter and will go over my choice of Slaanesh in part 2 as well as getting into the particular elements of the army. So until next time, happy painting and gaming!

Oh, and be sure to indulge in your favorite vices, too. Hooray for Slaanesh! ; )

PS for Silar Lannanaris of The Fallen Princes blog - I've not given up on my Raptors army, nor am I turning my back on the esteemed Badab Veterans. I have a couple of reasons for letting this new project take precedence over my other armies which I'll explain soon, though I did want to let you know it might take me a little while afterall before I get back to my Space Marines. I'll be back onboard with the group and in the Maelstrom just as soon as in can.... Sorry, buddy!

Newton's First Law of Blogging

2011-07-31T23:54:00.001-04:00

The past month ended up being a rather slow time on the hobby front, but that's not to say I have been entirely idle these past several weeks. After fighting unsuccessfully against inertia, with regards to both hobby stuff and blogging, I decided it would be best for me to take a step back and consider what it is that I want to do with my little corner of the Internets. To that end I packed a satchel full of my favorite rulebooks along with some dice, then ascended to the top of my mountain for a period of deep contemplation and soul searching.

Reviewing the latest from Wargames Research Group

And so what did my meditations upon the great mystery of the d6 reveal to me? Not much really. I did however make up my mind about what to do with this diceRolla blog. I feel that it is time to take a more deliberative approach to updating my blog rather than the haphazard manner which I have previously employed. Therefore starting tomorrow I am going to attempt to keep a regular posting schedule and will initially aim for at least a daily post.

Early on in the history of this blog I tried to post something every day but that experience ended in disaster and tedium. With a newborn in the house there wasn't a whole lot of hobby time for me and even less time available in which to post anything meaningful, but conditions have changed since then and I'm optimistic about being able to maintain my routine a little more successfully this time around. It's probably best however to still think of this as something of an experiment as it very well may crash and burn within a matter of days. With that caveat out of the way, this is the posting schedule I have in mind:

Monday - WH40k

Tuesday - Warhammer Fantasy

Wednesday - Warmachine/Hordes

Thursday - Infinity

Friday - Malifaux

Saturday - Dystopian Wars

Sunday - Open/Misc.

Like I said, I'm not sure how long this will last and I may want to revise the rotation as I go along, but I do feel like this will be a good start even if just to try it out. I enjoy a variety of games and certainly love painting a wide range of miniatures, so I think this schedule would be fairly representative of my current hobby interests. Also as I inevitably have a lot of different projects underway at the same time I figure I might as well make something of that too, thus making my tendency to jump around a feature of the blog. We'll see how it goes but it can't be any worse than my recent, nonexistent blogging efforts, right?

So the new era of my diceRolla blogging adventures is set to begin on the 1st of August. May it last for years and years, or until I become burned out and bored. Hmm... I give it two weeks. :) In the spirit of new beginnings I'll be kicking off a brand new 40k army project tomorrow, previewed in the following picture.

Who loves hedonism and corruption? I do, I do!

Thanks again to all my fantastic readers and the many friends I've made through our shared passion for glue and paint. If this blogging experiment works out, hopefully you'll hear from me more than just once a month. Really my main goal is to get that hobby inertia working once again in my favor, and since this blog has been such a source of motivation and encouragement for me in the past, I believe I can use it as a way of launching back into the swing of things. So until tomorrow (fingers crossed)... happy gaming and painting, everybody!

Mountain Warfare

2011-06-30T23:45:00.013-04:00

And........ I'm back.

Hello and welcome to the start of a new era for this blog. Well it's not really so dramatic as that I suppose, this is just my first post since moving in to my new home in Asheville, NC. Hooray! My family and I have now lived here for a full month and we are exceedingly happy with our new surroundings. Rather than live in the city itself, we're actually located just a few miles north in the town of Weaverville, on the side of a mountain at an altitude of 2400 feet. Having spent the last decade at sea-level, it has been an exciting experience so far adjusting to mountain life. Driving here can still feel somewhat frightening at times, but otherwise everything is going swimmingly.

My goodness, though, how time flies! I can hardly believe it's been six weeks since I last wrote anything for this blog, and it has been even longer since I had any productive hobby time too. It's taken longer than I thought it would to get settled in, and indeed there is still unpacking left to do, but at this point we've done enough around the house that I can begin thinking about spare time again. Ah... spare time. :) Therefore this weekend I hope to start painting again and I should be able to return to my regular (i.e., erratic and random) blogging habits as well. That's the plan at least, yippie!

I am by the way very eager to become reacquainted with all of my favorite blogs, too. I have not been able to keep up with everyone's hobby activities as much as I would have liked over the past couple of months. Nonetheless I assume it's been quiet around the old blogosphere during my absence from it. Surely there have been no significant changes or controversies concerning our hobby, nor any upheavals or customer revolts of any kind during that time.

Right...?

Regardless I am thrilled to be back and look forward to sharing lots of wargaming hobby goodness with all my readers. Thanks for sticking with me, I appreciate your patience and continued support. Mahalo!

Incomprehensibly Tough Competition

2011-05-19T23:53:00.012-04:00

After stopping by my LGS a few days ago for what was likely my last visit, I am forced to admit that I have not given the 40k scene there the proper consideration or respect that it deserves. I now believe that my soon to be former LGS can in fact boast of having the toughest competition of any game store in the world. Need proof? Check out this sign-up sheet I spotted for an upcoming 1850 point tournament they will soon be hosting:

That's right, both Chuck Norris AND Bruce Lee have signed up to compete! Who would have ever guessed that my humble LGS would host the most epic confrontation in the history of table top gaming, if not that of all humankind? And you just know those guys are total WAACs, too. ;) I'm not sure about his skill as a 40k player but I'd say Springsteen is a lock for third place and the Players' Choice award. I mean really, who's going to give The Boss a bad sportsmanship score? (Uh, besides Julianne Philips, that is.)

Considering the dramatic rise in competition at my LGS, I am a little sad that I won't be able to play in this tournament, nor even be in attendance to witness what will surely be a battle for the ages. The reason for this is that I am officially moving to Asheville, North Carolina a mere two weeks from today... hooray! No more speculation or hopeful optimism, this time around everything has been confirmed and it's truly a done deal. We will be moving into our new place on June 2nd so unfortunately I expect that I will be too busy even for the colossal Norris v. Lee showdown scheduled for next weekend.

Preparing for my family's move to NC has been the main cause of my recent decline in blogging, as well as my overall lack of hobby time over the past two weeks. Since my previous post I've picked up my paintbrush just one other time before doing so again earlier tonight to work a little more on Captain Homer. I'd like to finish him and a few other small projects before I have to finally pack away the last of my hobby gear, though I am not terribly concerned should I end up having only a minimum of painting time for the rest of the month.

Nonetheless I will try to post at least a few more times before then. Tonight I just wanted to provide a little update on what I've been doing and to offer an explanation for my absence from the blog. I've been really busy but I am so excited about moving that it has been very much worth all the associated hassles. I hope all of you are doing quite well too, goodbye for now!

Captain Homer WIP

2011-05-05T23:55:00.016-04:00

Hobby time has been sparse the last couple of weeks and I feel as though I've been in sort of a painting funk as well. There have been some exciting developments for my family concerning our desire to move to North Carolina which I will explain once things have been finalized, but in the meantime that is what has been taking up most of my spare focus and energy. I have therefore just been working on a few small projects whenever I've found both the opportunity and motivation to do so. There are quite a few half painted minis on my desk I can choose for such tinkering, none of which have been sitting there for as long as Captain Homer. I therefore decided a few nights ago it was time I went back to work on him.

Well what can I say? I hate painting white. It drives me crazy and is the reason I waited so long before returning to this miniature. Yet there's no way for me to realize my vision of Captain Homer without him wearing the blue and white power armour. As expected it's been problematic and I am not entirely satisfied with the results so far. I am happy nonetheless to finally be making some progress on this guy even if it has been at times frustrating. This should be however only the first of my Captain Homers as I plan on making several other alternate models of him for use with my Stonecutters army. Also, having been inspired by the story from Treehoue of Horrors XIII, "Send in the Clones," I would eventually like to make a squad of Homer clones with the same color scheme for use as the army's Death Company. I therefore should have numerous additional chances to practice working with white paint and hopefully I'll soon find a technique that feels more comfortable to me.

That happy little fellow pictured to the left of Captain Homer is his buddy, Mojo the Helper Monkey. Simpsons fans will remember Mojo from episode #5F15 of Season 9, titled "Girly Edition," in which Homer acquires a service monkey to do the various chores and duties that he is too lazy to do himself. Once I saw this miniature from the CoolMiniOrNot Limited Edition Series of a monkey armed with a flamer thrower, I knew he would make a perfect Mojo and had to find his way into the Stonecutters project. The approach for 40k that I've chosen for this is to treat Mojo simply as a marker denoting Captain Homer's weaponry, thus abiding by the standards of WYSIWYG but otherwise having no in-game effects. This particular Captain Homer will count as being armed with a power weapon and a hand flamer, making him a fairly cheap HQ option relative to most of the others that I expect to have with this army.

I am excited about the prospect of having this miniature painted and complete. It marks the long awaited beginning of the actual assembly and painting stages for my Stonecutters army, having been previously stalled in the conceptual and planning phases for far too long. If my schedule cooperates I think I should be able to finish Captain Homer and Mojo in the next few days, although I still have not made up my mind what I'll be doing for their bases which might have to wait a while longer. I'll try to get another WIP update posted soon once I've made some more progress. So until next time... happy gaming and painting, everyone!

Chris Borer's Killzone Team

2011-04-29T23:50:00.018-04:00

I don't have much time for blogging right now so tonight I just want to quickly show a few pictures I took at AdeptiCon of some really amazing Space Marines. I played in the Killzone event on the last day of the convention and had the good fortune of both playing against and then later teaming up with one of my favorite miniature painters, Chris Borer of Full Borer Miniatures. Having admired his painting for years and even taken one of his painting classes at the previous AdeptiCon, I had come to think of him only in terms of his work as an artist. It was therefore a particularly special treat for me to get to actually spend time gaming with him and have fun throwing dice with a winner of four Slayer Sword awards and more than twenty Golden Demon trophies. (Click here to see his tally of Golden Demons.) You can imagine then my elation when Chris even complemented my own Killzone team and said what a pleasure it was to play against a well-painted army!

For his Killzone team Chris brought a mix of Space Marines and Space Marine veterans primarily equipped for rather specialized roles, and complemented by a number of cheaper Space Marine Scouts. His team was lead by what I think was a Veteran Sergeant who had been upgraded to carry the special issue Medipack, and hence was modeled as a Space Marine Apothecary. The other members of the team included a Sternguard veteran, a Vanguard veteran, two basic Space Marines armed with a Heavy Bolter and a Flamer, and one more Space Marine with the standard equipment. Finally there were five Scouts, one carrying a shotgun and the other four armed with bolt pistols and close combat weapons. It seemed to me to be a really well balanced and quite lethal Killzone team and I believe Chris did fairy well with them in his games. Oh and they look fantastic, too! Check 'em out...

Apothecary (Team Leader)

Sternguard Veteran

Vanguard Veteran

There was also one more member of the Killzone team, a very cool Space Marine posed in the act of throwing a frag grenade, but unfortunately none of the pictures I took of him turned out well. Too bad as it was one of my favorites from the bunch and I apologize for not getting the complete set photographed. Chris was very kind and allowed anyone who was interested to handle his minis and set them up for photos, an opportunity of which a number of people took advantage. So who knows... maybe I can track down a decent picture of that last Space Marine from this team.

That's it for tonight, however. I hope you enjoyed taking a look at these beautifully painted miniatures, I'm very thankful for the chance to share them with you. Happy gaming, everyone!

It's How You Use It - Round 1

2011-04-28T15:25:00.008-04:00

For my first game in the 1000 point Warhammer Fantasy tournament, my Dark Elf army was matched up against a Dwarf force commanded by Bill, one of the co-hosts of the Gamers Lounge podcast and author of The Dead Tau Project. Cool! There were some problems with the registration and check-in process for the tournament and so Bill and I had an extra long time to talk before the start of our game. It was a lot of fun and was good for my pre-game jitters too. Bill assured me that he was very new to WFB as well and that we'd be making mistakes and looking up rules together. Unfortunately we missed the announcement to begin playing as we chatted on about Malifaux and the upcoming NOVA Open, until we at last noticed all the players around us were already deep into their first turns. Oops! So in a rush we flipped open our mission packets and got underway.

The tournament used a closed-list format and required opponents to exchange army lists at the conclusion of the game. I therefore didn't know any of the following specifics about Bill's choice of runic items until learning about them during the course of our game. Otherwise we went over the units in our respective armies before deploying to make sure everything was clear. Details about my Dark Elf army can be found here, while Bill's army consisted of the following units:

Dwarf Lord: Shieldbearers, Rune of Might, Rune of Stone, Master Rune of Spite

Thane Battle Standard Bearer: Rune of Cleaving, Master Rune of Gromil

18 Longbeards: great weapons, shields, heavy armour, full command

14 Hammerers: great weapons, shields, heavy armour, full command

Cannon: Rune of Burning, Rune of Forging

Scenario 1: Line 'Em Up!

Every campaign begins with marching out to take what is yours, either rightfully or just because you want it. Sometimes we go to defend what is ours from others, either by right or by power.

Special Rules

Sudden Vanguard: One unit of your choice in your army that does not have a character in it or does not already have the Vanguard Special Rule gains the Vanguard Special Rule for this game.

Victory Conditions and Battle Points

Standard victory points per the main rulebook, requiring a margin of at least 100 points or more to count as a Victory. If the difference in victory points is 99 or less, the game is considered a Draw. 15 Battle Points are awarded for a Victory, 10 Battle Points for a Draw, and 5 Battle Points for a Loss.

Bonus Battle and Objective Points

+3 points for destroying your opponent's chosen unit completely.

+2 points for keeping your chosen unit alive or not fleeing at the end of the game.

+3 points for having a unit garrisoning the building feature (Pyramid) at the end of the game.

+2 points for having a non-fleeing unit in your opponent's deployment zone.

Terrain

All of the terrain was pre-set throughout the tournament and every table used a standardized layout of terrain pieces, though the actual style of pieces did vary somewhat. For the first game we played on a desert themed board that had on my left between the deployment zones a Pyramid which used the standard rules for buildings. Also on the left hand side but within my deployment zone there was a Mysterious Forest with scrub and a couple of cactus plants, though the exact nature of the terrain would be randomly determined once entered by a unit. On the right there was a hill located in my deployment zone and beyond it closer to Bill's side of the table there was a more conventional style building. In the middle of Bill's deployment zone there was a hill and then another Mysterious Forest on Bill's far left flank.

Deployment

We were starting our game so late that I really didn't put much thought into how I deployed my units, I just wanted to begin playing as soon as we could. In hopes of securing those 3 extra objective points, I expected my Shades to be able to Scout forward and outrun the Hammerers to arrive first at the Pyramid. To the right of where the Shades would go I deployed the Cold One Knights. Then the Corsairs and the Repeater Crossbowmen formed the center of the line, and finally the War Hydra and the Harpies took up position on the right flank. I chose the Harpies as my special Vanguard unit for the scenario and fianlly, having rolled for her spells and taken Fireball and Cascading Fire-Cloak, I placed my Sorceress within the unit of Corsairs for safe keeping.

Bill nominated his Hammerers to gain the Vanguard special rule for this game and deployed them in position to rush the Pyramid. He then deployed his Cannon on the hill in the middle of his deployment zone with the unit of Longbeards placed near the hill between the Cannon and Hammerers. Both his Dwarf Lord and Thane joined the Longbeards and he used his Vanguard move to get the Hammerers just inches from the Pyramid. I moved my Harpies from the hill on my right and began angling them toward the Cannon as they advanced forward. And with that we were ready to play!!

TURN 1

Bill won the roll to go first and quickly claimed the Pyramid with his Hammerers as the unit of Longbeards loaded up with his army's potent characters marched straight ahead at my battle line. With his movement phase complete Bill opened fire with the Cannon and targeted my Hydra. Fortunately for me it misfired and despite the Rune of Forging saving the artillery piece from a potentially disastrous first shot, the cannonball then failed to bounce and stopped a few inches in front of its intended target. Phew! There was nothing else for Bill to do at that point and so he concluded his half of the turn.

Right away I was faced with a dilemma. I had wanted to race my Shades into the Pyramid first but instead the building was now crammed full of elite Dwarf infantry, heavily armed and armored. It seemed like it would be very long odds to dislodge them from the building with my small unit of Dark Elf skirmishers. In hindsight I believe I should have opted to ignore them, concede the measly 3 bonus points awarded for occupying the Pyramid, and then concentrate my efforts on fighting the rest of Bill's army. That probably would have been the wiser thing to do, but come on... I didn't travel all this way to play it safe and NOT charge headlong into combat the first chance I could. Besides, what's the worst that could happen? Therefore...

CHARGE!!!

The rest of my army moved forward in anticipation of potentially charging into combat on the next turn. Thanks to their Vanguard move I thought it might be possible to get a first turn charge against the Cannon with my Harpies but decided they would be too far to try. [A very helpful reader emailed me and pointed out that a unit which has made a Vanguard move cannot also declare a charge in the first turn, so the Harpies would not have been able to do so anyways. Thanks for the assistance!] With the Shades having disappeared into the Pyramid and the Harpies closing in on the Dwarf artillery crew, everything else in my army began to head toward the Longbeards. Although the Hydra had the farthest to go, I was happy that any further cannonballs fired at it would at least be bouncing away from the rest of my army rather than at them.

In my first magic phase I was able to roast a single Longbeard with a Fireball and then put Cascading Fire-Cloak onto the Sorceress and her bodyguard of Black Ark Corsairs. The Repeater Crossbowmen fired a long-range volley on the move and managed a couple of hits, none of which made it past the Dwarfs' hefty armour save. That was it for the Shooting phase and it was now time for my first taste of combat. Ooh, so exciting!

Although outnumbered and outmatched in terms of equipment, I nonetheless reasoned that my Shades might still be able to pull off something spectacular with a heavy dose of luck in their favor. They would be striking first after all with two attacks each, while the Dwarfs would be without the benefit of their ranks or standard. So maybe, just maybe, the Shades could inflict a bunch of casualties, somehow survive the retaliatory attacks, and thus pull off an amazingly unlikely victory. Regardless it seemed like a dramatic way to start things off so I didn't care how badly the odds were stacked against my Dark Elf ninja squad.

It should therefore come as no surprise that in the ensuing combat my Shades were butchered mercilessly. I was able to inflict a single casualty on the Pyramid's defenders before having all five of the Shades killed in return by the Hammerers' great weapons. Not what I was hoping for but still nothing too upsetting... well, until I remembered Panic. With the Shades having been wiped out, the nearby Cold One Knights promptly failed their leadership test and broke off in a trot for my table edge. [Again another mistake on my part with the rules. The same reader explained to me that as the Cold One Knights are subject to Stupidity, they are also Immune to Psychology and hence would not have needed to test for Panic. D'oh!] Disorder spread down my line as the Corsairs next failed their leadership test and succumbed to Panic as well. I then had to test for the Repeater Crossbowmen who showed a little more courage and stood their ground. With half my army now either killed or running away, the first turn came to an end.

TURN 2

Spurred on by the success of the previous turn, Bill declared a charge with the Longbeards against my fleeing Cold One Knights. Showing off a surprising amount of speed, the Dwarf unit forced the Cold One Knights to move even closer to the board edge, the Dark Elf unit having stopped just a couple of inches away from leaving the battlefield entirely. With the Hammerers still occupying the Pyramid, the only other thing for the Dwarf army to do was fire their runic Cannon once again at my Hydra. This time the shot was on target and successfully bounced through the Hydra, inflicting three wounds and denying the monster its Regeneration save due to the Rune of Burning. There were no combats to fight and so ended the top of Turn 2.

Eager to protect my Hydra from anymore flaming cannonballs, first I declared a charge against the Cannon with the unit of Harpies. Next I was able to rally my fleeing units before moving the Hydra as fast as I could across the table. The Repeater Crossbowmen stood their ground and took aim at the menacing Longbeards. After losing another of their number to a Fireball cast by the Sorceress, the Longbeards took a few more casualties from the increasing volume of crossbow bolts directed at them. Meanwhile the Harpies launched their assault against the crew of the Cannon, killing two of the Dwarfs and taking one casualty in return. The last crewman stubbornly clung by his artillery piece, thus ending both the combat and the turn.

TURN 3

Bill declared a charge with his Longbeards against my Corsairs who in response held their ground. The Sorceress succeeded in burning a Dwarf with her Cascading Fire-Cloak and the Corsairs did a fair job cutting into the Longbeards' ranks, their attacks upgraded to Armour Piercing thanks to the unit's Banner of Murder. At the end of the Dark Elf attack however there were still too many Longbeards left alive, as well as the uninjured Dwarf Lord and Thane Battle Standard Bearer. The remaining Dwarfs attacked and inflicted a huge amount of pain on the Corsairs and also knocked a wound off the Sorceress, who only survived the carnage thanks to her Talisman of Endurance. Still the Dwarfs caused enough wounds to win the combat resolution by a difference of four. I failed the subsequent break test and watched helplessly as the speedy little Dwarfs caught up with my fleeing Dark Elves and cut them down from behind, running down and killing the Sorceress as well. Not done with the onslaught, the Dwarfs continued their pursuit into the recently rallied Cold One Knights. That fight however would have to wait until my half of the turn.

For my part there wasn't a lot left that I could do. The Cold One Knights and the Harpies were already engaged and the Hydra was at last set to charge into the Longbeards' left flank. There was nothing for the Repeater Crossbowmen to fire at and nowhere helpful for them to go, so instead they nervously shuffled their feet and looked around for a convenient route away from the battlefield. The Hydra crashed into the Longbeards and combat began again. The Cold One Knights did nothing at all and were wiped out by the Dwarf General and Battle Standard Bearer. The Hydra succeeded in killing some of the remaining Longbeards and thundstomped another, but it wasn't enough and the Dwarfs won the combat. The Hydra broke and ran away although the Dwarfs this time were not able to move fast enough to catch him.

Finally the Harpies were able to kill the last of the Dwarf crewman from the Cannon but it was too late for the victory to matter any to the overall outcome of the battle. There would not have been enough time to complete another turn and so our game had to come to an end at the close of Turn 3. All that was left was to tally up our dead and to turn in our score cards for the round. Even before doing any of the math however it was clear though that Bill and his Dwarfs had won the battle.

Come get some!

Results and Aftermath

After an hour or so of intense maneuvering and furious combat, my first game at Adepticon was complete. My Dark Elves were bloodied and had taken a sound thrashing, but on the other hand I had a great time and enjoyed the game immensely. Bill was a fantastic opponent to play against and made my reintroduction to Warhammer Fantasy tremendous fun. I couldn't have hoped for a better first game and felt much more comfortable and relaxed going into the next round thanks to Bill's outstanding character and sportsmanship.

Having destroyed most of my army in exchange for losing only his Cannon, Bill did indeed get the Victory from our game. He received bonus points for keeping his chosen unit of Hammerers alive and for occupying the Pyramid at the end of the game. I took the Loss but picked up bonus points for keeping my chosen unit of Harpies alive and also for having them in the Dwarf army's deployment zone at the end of the game. Therefore the final score on Battle Points for this game was 20-9 in favor of the Dwarfs.

The tournament organizers were hustling to make up for the late start so there wasn't much time to reflect on the game or my army's performance between rounds. I was just very happy to have had a fun time and to have gotten through without making any big mistakes concerning actual gameplay. [Well, except for where noted above, and the many other likely errors I made that were simply never noted or remembered. Ha! I am very grateful for the help provided and welcome all such feedback as I am eager to learn and improve. Thanks!] For my first game of Warhammer Fantasy in six or sever years at least, I was more than satisfied with how things went. Sure it might have been helpful if I had remembered to use the re-rolls on misses in combat granted by my army's Eternal Hatred but oh well... too bad for those Shades!

With the table assignments posted I rushed off to find my opponent for Round 2. Next up... the Skaven!

Initial Plans for Raptors Legion

2011-04-19T23:48:00.020-04:00

Well once again I apologize for the unplanned absence from the blog. Busy times, family stuff, taxes, etc... you know the routine. I am sorry though that I haven't gotten a chance to write anything lately, I'll get back to the Adepticon business soon enough hopefully. Staying true to diceRolla form, I'll be ready to go over my experiences at the convention once any remaining interest in the thing has finally died off. Tonight however I want to chat a little about the plans I've been working on for the Raptors Legion, a project which, along with my Dark Elves, I expect should receive a fair amount of my attention and hobby time for at least the next several months.

Sometime ago I decided I would aim for collecting an entire Battle Company of the Raptors Legion along with supporting elements attached from the first and the reserve companies. Once I began to seriously consider the scale of such an undertaking, it seemed a bit intimidating and so I realized I would need to break it down into more manageable chunks on which to work. But before writing any lists or building any more models for the army, I thought it would be best to check out the latest fluff concerning the chapter's organization and approach to warfare. So with all of the hustle leading up to Adepticon now past, I finally spent the previous few nights planning out the composition for my Battle Company, having only this past weekend opened my copy of IA9 for the first time.

I'm not too far into the book but based on what I've seen I am impressed with this first volume covering the Badab War and think it looks like a cool resource. All the background material provided concerning the Raptors chapter seems fantastic to me and I am really quite happy that I picked them out. I've a minor quibble or two with their special character, Lias Issodon, but otherwise I think he presents some interesting options for the army and should be a fun model to build. In general though I don't anticipate having to do anything drastically unusual in collecting and designing the army so as to stay faithful to their fluff. Although they are described as being an unorthodox chapter of Space Marines, my impression is that they are not distinguished by having an unusual organization or selection of equipment and weapons. Instead they come across as more distinctive attitudinally with regard to their combat doctrine and wider strategic vision. Refreshing stuff for the 41st millennium. :)

Enough about background for now, let's get on to the army lists. So as I mentioned above, I've decided to break up this project into several large sections to help me move things along and not get overwhelmed by the total number of models still to be built and painted. First off I want to be ale to start playing as soon as possible, and therefore my initial focus will be on getting a usable army ready to hit the table. With this army project I want to take the time to include squad markings and all those other fun little details I usually end up leaving off for the sake of flexibility with my collection of miniatures. To help me stay consistent with the assignment of minis to their various squads, over the weekend I wrote out a master list for the complete Battle Company from which I will select units to build whatever size army list I need.

Therefore to guide my early efforts on this project, I have put together an 1850 point army list along with some simple variants for different sized games. These are largely based on what I had already assembled before looking over the Imperial Armour book, and so I do not mean to suggest there is anything particularly characteristic of the Raptors Legions with the lists. Also a primary goal of mine was to use full units as they will appear in the completed Battle Company, and with their dedicated transports, so this is certainly not meant to be an "optimized" list either. Once the first 2000 points of my Raptors are built and painted I will figure out the next block to work on, but for now this is all I'm going to be concerned with. Like I said, I'm eager to begin playing some games while still being somewhat deliberate in my approach.

Space Marine Captain - combi-melta, power fist

ELITES

Dreadnought - heavy flamer, multi-melta, Drop Pod

Dreadnought - twin linked autocannons x 2

TROOPS

Tactical Squad - 5 additional Space Marines, plasma gun, lascannon, power weapon, Rhino

Tactical Squad - 5 additional Space Marines, meltagun, multi-melta, combi-melta, power fist, Drop Pod

Tactical Squad - 5 additional Space Marines, flamer, missile launcher, melta bombs, Rhino

Scout Squad - 5 additional Scouts, sniper rifles x 4, heavy bolter, camo cloaks

FAST ATTACK

Assault Squad - 5 additional Space Marines, flamers x 2, power fist and combat shield

Land Speeder Squadron - 1 Land Speeder with a multi-melta

HEAVY SUPPORT

Devastator Squad - 5 additional Space Marines, missile launchers x 4, Rhino

TOTAL POINTS = 1850

2000 point variant: Add an additional Land Speeder with multi-melta, add a Predator with Heavy bolter sponsons, add melta bombs to the first Tactical squad sergeant.

1750 point variant: Drop the 5 additional Scouts, the camo cloaks, and the sniper rifles from the Scout Squad, drop the melta bombs from the third Tactical squad sergeant.

1500 point variant: Drop the first Dreadnought and Drop Pod, drop the Scout Squad, drop the Captain, add either a Chaplin with a jump pack OR a Librarian with a plasma pistol (Null Zone and Might of the Ancients, perhaps?), switch the Drop Pod for a Rhino in the second Tactical Squad.

So all of that should keep me busy for a long time to come, as well as providing ample time for me to plan out the next block of Raptors that I will work on once these guys are done. I have a fairly clear sense of what units will comprise the other half of my Battle Company, in addition to some extras I will want to include. I imagine however there will be lots of occasions in which I can refine my plans as I get some experience playing these initial army lists. For now though I am happy with my starting point and feel comfortable enough with the lists to begin in earnest.

Hmmm, I suppose that's it for tonight. Happy gaming, everyone!

It's How You Use It - My Army

2011-04-10T23:51:00.008-04:00

Even though I would occasionally mention the other events, the last few weeks leading up to Adepticon my primary focus here was on preparations for the 1000 point Fantasy tournament, 'It's How You Use It.' I therefore thought it would be appropriate to first look over the army I used in those games since so many of my recent posts covered the initial assembly and painting stages. Despite having more than six months to get ready for this one, I was of course painting bases (and even still reading the rulebook for the first time!) the morning of the tournament. Maybe not how I envisioned things back in October but it was nonetheless tremendous fun and I was thoroughly happy with my introduction to 8th edition WHFB.

Although the final few days were indeed hectic, I am satisfied that everything in my army was painted well enough to just make the deadline and thus I was able to play in all the games. So... yippee! For the tournament there was a three color minimum painting standard with 1000 point armies, but otherwise there were no composition restrictions of which I was aware beyond the normal ones found in the rulebook. Listed beneath the following picture are the essential features of my army list, although I have also included photos of the actual lists at the end of this post should you enjoy looking at all those mundane little details.

Sorceress (General) - level 2 wizard, Lore of Fire, Talisman of Endurance

12 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen - full command

15 Bark Ark Corsairs - additional hand weapons, full command, Banner of Murder

5 Harpies

5 Shades

5 Cold One Knights - full command, Banner of Eternal Flame

War Hydra

Total: 1000 points

At first I was intent on using a Sorceress mounted on a Cold One to lead my army, but I was eventually persuaded by Nikephoros of the Bringer of Victory blog that I would be better off leaving her on foot. This made sense to me as I considered the prospects of having a T3 W2 general riding atop a big lizard who suffers from Stupidity. I hence thought she would be safer located within either the unit of Repeater Crossbowmen or the unit of Black Ark Corsairs. I elected to give her spells from the Lore of Fire because of their generally simple and direct method of application, something which appealed to me as a I expected to have a hard enough time keeping up with everything else during my games. As a newcomer to this, the principle of throwing fireballs around seemed thankfully easy for me to understand.

I planned my main line of battle to be comprised of the Repeater Crossbowmen, the Black Ark Corsairs, and the War Hydra, with the Harpies and Cold One Knights protecting the army's flanks. The Sorceress would deploy with the Corsairs or Crossbowmen depending largely on the terms of the scenario and the opposing army, perhaps moving from one unit to the other if necessary as the battle raged. And finally the Shades would deploy if possible forward in cover and in a position to threaten or weaken enemy units with crossbow fire in the opening turns of the game.

Thanks to its reputation I expected the War Hydra to be a formidable combatant but nonetheless still in need of support in order to reliably win combats. I therefore envisioned supporting it with the ranks and standard bonuses of the Black Ark Corsairs, or if those guys should be otherwise occupied, then I would support the beast with a timely charge from the Cold One Knights. The Repeater Crossbowmen would advance only as far as necessary to engage their targets, hopefully inflicting enough casualties as to knock an enemy regiment's rank bonus down a notch or two. With the Shades firing opportunistically as well, the last part of my battle plan was to fly the Harpies forward and charge enemy war machines as early as possible. If there were no war machines, the Harpies would then go after either other skirmishers or else ranged units, or as a last resort just act as a general nuisance to the opposing formations.

Having selected the units I would use, the last issue to sort out for my army were its magic items. Rarely are magic items a critical element of my armies and this time was no different as I had only 65 points left to spend on enchanted goodies. First off I gave the Sorceress a Talisman of Endurance so that my general would have at least a small chance of avoiding damage. With so many of my meager 1000 points already invested in this single model, I thought even that 5+ ward save would be worthwhile. Next I picked out the Banner of Murder for the Black Ark Corsairs to give their potential flurry of S3 attacks a little more bite against armored foes. Finally with just 10 points left I gave the Cold One Knights the Banner of Eternal Flame. I wasn't sure what else to do with the points and thought the magical banner would be cheap insurance in case I happened to run into another Hydra during the tournament.

So that was the army list and the basic strategy I had devised for my first foray into Warhammer Fantasy. There were a few areas that I was unsure of concerning my list, such as the relative value of command groups, but in general I felt pretty good about my army. I also felt however that it didn't really matter too much as I was likely going to lose and lose badly. I knew realistically I stood little chance as the first game of the tournament was also going to be my first time ever playing this game. Therefore all I wanted to do was have fun, learn some basic things about my army, and hopefully not irritate my opponent by having to ask too many questions or look up too many forgotten rules. On that account, then, I thought my chances at AdeptiCon were fair....

Next time I will discuss the tournament itself and describe what happened in the my first four games of Warhammer 8th edition. I had meant to cover more of the painting aspect tonight with this post but it is getting late and my pictures from earlier today did not turn out very well. I'll therefore save the painting chatter and a few words about my 5-minute display board for another time, too. Goodnight!

AdeptiDone - I'm Home!

2011-04-07T14:38:00.004-04:00

With the dust settling from AdeptiCon and the sounds of battle finally fading away, I am happy to report that I had an absolutely marvelous time! I will have plenty to report on in the coming days though it will take me a little while to get things in order and to sort out my thoughts on what took place. Unfortunately after spending almost all of Monday dealing with some... ahem, car troubles... it wasn't until after 6pm before I at last departed Chicago and began the thousand mile drive back to Charleston. I therefore did not arrive home till the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday and only now am starting to feel recovered from the past week. It was an amazingly good trip but has nonetheless certainly taken its toll on me. :)

AdeptiCon was a fantastic weekend, by far one of my most enjoyable hobby experiences and well worth the long journey and the associated expense. Every one of the twelve games I played in was a blast and in the process I didn't meet a single gamer whom I'd avoid playing against in the future. The games were fun and exciting and the opposing players were uniformly good sports, patient and fair. I couldn't have asked for a better lineup of people with whom to spend a few days rolling dice.

Besides the games which I enjoyed thoroughly and the huge amount of inspiring models, another highlight from AdeptiCon was meeting and befriending so many wonderful people, either across from me at the gaming tables or else those I randomly encountered while wandering the site. Along with all of my opponents from the weekend, I was also fortunate to have met many wonderful gamers and painters and enjoyed every minute spent talking with them about our shared hobbies. So that I don't forget to do so later, I would like to thank and say hello to the following new friends:

TheDude (aka GopherDave) of Armored Gopher Games.

Neil from the Dark Future Games crew.

Bill/Nix of The Dead Tau Project and Gamers Lounge.

Dave Pauwels of Gogon Studios.

Hoagy from When Cannons Fade...,

Dethtron of Dick Move fame,

and their bandmates from Crusader, Joe, Ian, and Brad.

Aaron V., Nick H., and Robert C. from the Friday tournament.

The members of Team Snake Eyes - Iron Hands contingent.

The members of Checkmate Hobbies and Skull-N-Bonz.

Brent of Strictly Average whom I accosted in the elevator.

My teammates Wolf Lord Pat and Company Commander Josh.

Chris Borer of Full Borer Miniatures

b.smoove of A Gentleman's Ones

Also I want to thank all the staff and volunteers who obviously put in a ridiculous amount of effort into making AdeptiCon as much fun as it was. Lastly I want to thank my good friend who has tolerated my antics for many years, DrGabe of DrGabe's Miniatures. Once again being able to hangout like old times was the best part of the weekend... thanks, buddy! It's my hope that I will get to see lots of these same good people again before next year's event, but if not until then, that will be yet another reason for me to look forward to AdeptiCon in 2012.

I do intend on reviewing the various events I played in at AdeptiCon though I haven't decided yet on the manner in which I will do so. Since I'm not sure if I was ever clear about my schedule before leaving for Chicago, essentially it was the 1000pt Fantasy tournament on Friday, the 40k Team Tournament on Saturday, and the Killzone event on Sunday. I expect I'll at least put together a separate report discussing each of those tournaments although I likely won't try to do a full battle report for every one of my games. But for now I've picked out a sampling of pictures from my weekend to sort of preview what I will be posting and talking about over the coming days.

"Follow me, men, I know the way to VICTORY!" Famous last words...

Mere seconds before rolling three of my many twin-linked misses of the day....

"Uh, guys... hello? Where did you go? Weren't you alive just a minute ago?"

One of Chris Borer's amazing marines from his Killzone team, of which I will show more in its own post...

Beasts of Annihilation enter the Killzone, never to be seen again.

I will begin organizing my AdeptiReports later this evening so hopefully I'll have more ready to post soon... until next time, take care and happy gaming!

Paint-A-Thon... GO!

2011-03-31T10:46:00.013-04:00

Hello, friends! Today I am writing to you from my hotel room in beautiful Lombard, Illinois, now with just under a day to go until my first event at Adepticon. Woo-hoo! After unloading my gear last night and settling in to my new home for the next four days, I tried to put in some time with the brushes but was too worn out from the drive to make much progress. No worries, though, as I am set to spend the day painting away on my Dark Elves. Also DrGabe should be here in a few hours and he says he is looking forward to helping me out as my painting assistant. Hehehe... sucker! :)

I'm sure I'll be busy not only today while painting but also during the Con itself. I therefore don't know how often I'll be able to post updates while here but I will check-in when I can. If you're interested however I believe DrGabe will be posting twitter updates during AdeptiCon so you can follow along with his own adventures in gaming by that means. Our schedules wil overlap somewhat although he is playing in only 40k events during the weekend. He does already have pictures of his army posted which can be seen here and here. I'll be commanding part of his Imperial Guard army, the Cadian Blackjacks, during the 40k team tournament on Saturday. I don't know yet which portion of the army will be fighting and dying for my glory, but I do have my eye on a certain HQ model that looks suitably distinguished...

Okay gang, I've got painting to do... I hope it's a great one for you and that anyone traveling today has a safe and pleasant experience. Take care!!

Yesterday's WIP

2011-03-27T13:16:00.001-04:00

Last night I began work on the Dark Elf Crossbowmen after having finished the Shades earlier in the day. Of course finished at this point is a very relative state of being, meaning only that I now think they're good enough to hit the tabletop but will still need more time later on for highlighting, washing, and picking out additional details. Likewise for the Harpies which I tidied somewhat and added a few more touches since my previous update. The Sorceress received more attention than the others however as she is currently my army's only Character model, and therefore I felt the extra time spent on her was warranted. She's not fully done either but is very close and will hopefully be the miniature that gets looked at most carefully at the tournament.

It has been quite tempting to spend more time painting the Shades so I have to keep reminding myself to resist the lure of Citadel Washes and simply move on to the step. Nonetheless I repeatedly found myself thinking, "Oh, how easy it would be to just go over things with some Devlan Mud," or, "A quick highlight would do wonders right there, that wouldn't take long...." But with plently left to paint I must press on. These are some of my favorites of the Dark Elf models that I've worked on so far and I definitely look forward to seeing them complete.

I only just started in on the following unit of Crossbowmen before pausing for pictures so there's not much to look at yet. I did however continue painting last night and was able to get the base coat of blue onto the rest of their armor and clothing. Out of consideration for my post-AdeptiCon plans for the army I'm working on 16 of them even though I will only be using 12 in the tournament. My normal comfort zone for painting is usually not more than five miniatures at a time so this unit presents another interesting change to my usual habits.

Eventually all of the armor plates on these guys will be the same greenish-tourquoise color as seen with the Harpies' hair and the column of magic upon which the Sorceress is perched, but with a glossy coat to hopefully make them appear like lacquered metal. Since I skipped painting any test models when choosing a color scheme, I am not sure how the end result will look although I do have a good sense of what I'm aiming for at least. Presently I am content for them to remain blue to allow me to hustle along to other areas in need of paint, bearing in mind the modest requirements I face in order to play in the tournament.

Three color minimum... three color minimum... three color minimum. :)

Speaking of which, it's almost time I resumed my painting. Goodbye for now!

Painting Underway on Dark Elves

2011-03-24T23:58:00.009-04:00

One more week until the 1000 point Fantasy tournament at AdeptiCon and there's still quite a lot left to paint. After my last update it ended up taking a few evenings to prepare all of the bases, something I had forgotten about when writing my previous post. (D'oh!) Unfavorable weather then prevented me from priming anything until Tuesday, and lastly I chose to spend that night cleaning my painting desk of the detritus from the past four months of hobby projects. So it was not until yesterday's nap time before I belatedly commenced painting my Dark Elves. With brush in hand however whatever stress I had started to feel over this project went away and I'm really quite happy to see just what I can get done in the time remaining.

I don't expect to have my army painted to what would normally be my finished standard. I plan on sticking with this army for a long time past AdeptiCon and so I don't feel any pressure to significantly change up my approach due to worry over how much time is left before the tournament. That's why I have decided against the dip method as was kindly suggested to me by James Brewerton among other commenters. I'm really impressed with the results from that technique, it's just not what I would choose were time not a concern for me for this army. I'm content to finish painting whatever is left after the event as I already am making plans for the next 1000 points of Dark Elves.

So after my first day and a half of painting I have my Sorceress general almost fully painted and a unit of five Harpies not complete but good enough to use next Friday. Tonight I'll start on my unit of Shades and hope to have them and the War Hydra painted by Saturday morning. That would leave me one day each to work on the Crossbowmen, Corsairs, and Cold One Knights before hitting the road next week. But will they all be done by that point? Almost assuredly the answer to that is no. DrGabe anticipates helping me finish painting my Dark Elves the night before the tournament, and truly I would hate to disappoint the good doctor. :) Oh and I want to make a display board too so add that to the list as well. Hmmm, I might just have to get that one done during stops along the road.

Okay, I've got minis to paint... happy gaming, everyone!

AdeptiCheck - 2 Weeks Out

2011-03-17T23:49:00.007-04:00

At long last I have finished assembling my Dark Elves. Well, almost... I have about a dozen more Cold One Knight bits left to clean and attach tonight but after that I will have more than 1250 points of Dark Elves built. Phew! Tomorrow if the weather cooperates with me I'll prime the minis and can then finally begin painting. That leaves two weeks to paint as many of the 50 or so models as I can before the tournament begins on the morning of April 1st. Oh and I'll need to travel to the event in Illinois as well so it's really twelve painting days left to go. Noooooo problem.

Considering last year I painted approximately 30 miniatures total, the prospects of showing up the morning of the 1st with a fully painted army seems to me rather unlikely. I am however very keen on finding out just what I can do in the time remaining. The tournament has a three-color minimum painting standard which I suppose must be my first concern. I'm not used to this sort of approach to painting but I think it could be helpful to shake things up a bit and deviate from my usual routine. Regardless it's worth a shot at the very least as I am still quite eager to play in the tournament and this should make for an interesting experiment.

My schedule at AdeptiCon has changed however in the last several days as I will no longer be playing in the 40k Combat Patrol event on Saturday morning. Instead I have been recruited by a desperate group of gamers in need of a fourth for the WH40k Team Tournament, billed by AdeptiCon as their "flagship" event, whatever that means. What it means to me is getting to spend the entire day rolling dice with DrGabe and a couple other pals from the Midwest. They're taking care of the armies that we'll be using, the display board, and the team beverages so all I have to do really is show up prepared to make a long series of what will surely be poor command decisions. Neat! I was scheduled to attend several seminars that afternoon but I'm more excited about playing in the team tournament after watching some of the action last year.

With little time to prepare the guys have been scrambling to sort out what type of army lists we can play in the tournament and what projects or details would remain depending on these choices. I have been fortunately spared from any such responsibilities and will continue to put whatever time I have toward working on my Dark Elves. Now that the opportunity for actual painting has arrived, I do hope to post more frequent updates as we get closer to the start of AdeptiCon. That's it for now though as I need to finish building those Cold One Knights. Happy gaming, everyone!

Flashbacks and Nightmares: Stone Trolls

2011-03-07T22:53:00.002-05:00

Since the new Orcs and Goblins book was just released this weekend, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at one of my old O&G units, a mob of Stone Trolls. I don't remember exactly when I painted these but suspect it was around the mid to late 1990s. Along with being influenced by the more colorful period of Games Workshop's stylistic history, apparently I was also in a rather experimental mood when painting them. I wanted to do something different from the norm for Stone Trolls, which I'd say I achieved handily, though whether the results were worth it or not I leave for you to judge. While I am fond of these miniatures in a nostalgic way, my assessment of them leans more toward hideous....

Now for a closer look at the individual trolls... yikes! I do however like those bases right down to the classic Goblin Green edges.

This mob of Stone Trolls is lead by an Orc Big Boss but I'm not sure if that would still be allowed by today's rules. I admit to really liking this miniature and think it's a good example of the outright silliness that used to be fairly common in GW designs at the time.

So that's it for this look at some of my old miniatures, I hope you enjoyed it. I really admire creative and innovative color schemes but there is a certain risk when straying from the tried and tested. Not every experiment can be a success, after all. Nonetheless I do like these trolls but if I had to paint them over again I would likely go with a more conventional approach. I would not, however, change a thing on the Big Boss as I especially like the brightly colored skulls on his wrist and orange belt buckle. The sides of his bracelet which you can't see in these pictures have a green skull facing to the right and a red one looking back. Taste the rainbow!

As evidenced by these pictures, this was my first attempt at using a lightbox photo studio thing. Along with getting some brighter lights there's obviously still much for me to learn regarding miniatures photography. It is my good fortune then that just earlier today I saw Nesbet of Nesbet Miniatures has posted what looks to be a very helpful tutorial on this exact subject. Part 1 of the tutorial even has instructions for making your own portable lightbox and photo studio. Awesome! Part 2 looks at correcting common mistakes made when photographing miniatures, and Part 3 is about photo editing. Good stuff if you're interested in that sort of thing... thanks, Nesbet!

Gratuitous Puppy Photos

2011-03-06T19:20:00.003-05:00

Hello and welcome to a special birthday edition of diceRolla. That's right, folks, today I turned 34 years old... woo-hoo! It's been a great day for me and I've had a blast visiting with friends and family. I'm putting together a hobby-related post for tomorrow but right now I just want to share some pictures of the newest member of my family, a puppy dog named Charlie! As an early birthday present from my wife, last week we went to the animal shelter and adopted the little guy. He's super sweet, loves to snuggle, and gets along extremely well with our daughter and two cats, although he does seem slightly intimidated by one of the kitties.

Awwww, he's such a good puppy! I haven't had a canine companion in twenty or so years and did not realize how much I had missed the experience. With a toddler already in the house it's been close to nonstop mayhem but tremendous fun, too. :)

Okay, that's all for now. I need to take Charlie for a walk and will then get back to work on those Dark Elves. Goodnight, everybody!