Friday Night Fight

It's on! My brother and I are going to play a game of 40k this Friday night which will be the first game for both of us in probably two years or more. Neither of us has read the 5th edition rules but I want us to try them which means I have some reading to do in the next day and a half. I figure we would be rusty with 4th edition rules so why not give it a try as I'd be having to review rules with my brother either way. I haven't gotten any painting done (big surprise...sigh) so we'll be pushing a lot of grey plastic across a grey plastic Realm of Battle gameboard. I'm planning on having us play 500 point armies featuring Imperial Guard vs. Tyranids, but if I have extra time I'd like to write a scenario for 500 points of IG against a 1000 point Nid army just to have more painted minis and plenty of carnage. My brother suggested we use thousand point armies each but I don't know if I could manage that with the minis to which I have easy access. Should be fun!!

I have 36 hours to get everything ready in addition to learning the new rules set... no problem.

The Stonecutters Guild

I still am no closer to figuring out what paint scheme to use for my Imperial Guard army, but I have had a break-through on a different front. I've played Space Marines for as long as I've played 40k, which dates back to the Rogue Trader era. Early on I primarily focused on the well known First Founding chapters, painting and gaming with Ultramarines, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves, in additiona to many squads from various other random chapters. For the last ten or so years I haven't done anything significant with Marines other than paint up the occasional figure to test a color scheme.

As I could no longer settle on any one of the established chapters, I've been interested in doing a Space Marine army from a DIY chapter. But with so many options this has lead to my previous hobby paralysis, although I did paint a full Chaos Space Marine army with a DIY background that even made it to an actual GW-run Grand Tournament. (My tournament record of 1 win and 5 losses was not so impressive but it was good motivation for getting an army project completed.) But now I know what Marine chapter I was born to create... the Stonecutters! I've still got lots of blanks to fill in about their background, but it's a start! For those of you not familiar with the Stonecutters, they are a secret society and fraternal order featured in The Simpsons episode "Homer the Great," from season 6. I'm a die-hard fan of The Simpsons and I've been watching the show religiously since about halfway through its first season. Doing a Simpsons-themed Marine army will be a fun way for me to pay tribute to my all-time favorite television show and take my hobby to whole new levels of dorkitude.

Name: Stonecutters

Founding Chapter: Silver Skulls

Founding: Twenty Sixth, 738.M41

Chapter Master: Number One, Patricius

Homeworld: Fonsager (Springfield in Latin, sort of...)

Fortress-Monastery: Primary base located on Fonsager's moon, Hertagha.

Main Colors: Burgundy armour, yellow chapter badge and unit markings, yellow trim on the pauldrons, steel -colored chest eagle, turquoise or emerald helmet-lenses.

Specialty: Drunken assaults and Belligerent defense

Battle Cry: "We Do!" (usually in song form, like this, "Who shoots Ork Boyz in the face? Who kills off the Eldar race? We do! We DO!!")

Estimated Strength: 10 Companies with approximately 1000 Battle Brothers and Initiates

Hesitation

The last few days haven't been very productive on the hobby front though I have gotten a lot done around the house. In the meantime I have also learned that I am subluxated and have been for probably the last twenty years, at least according to my chiropractor. My wife is a long standing advocate of chiropractics which in the past I never took seriously. But after a year and a half she finally succeeded in getting me to see one and I am now a patient committed to a year's worth of care. So although I still haven't done any painting in close to two months, I now have a new excuse... my spine is misaligned! Oh yeah, I'm also getting new glasses in less than two weeks which I think could make an immediate impact so maybe things will start to turn around. We're making real progress on the house too so I'm feeling positive about the general direction of things and I believe I'll get the hobby side worked out soon.

As for the Jopall 99th I have decided to put together the minis needed for an initial 500 point army while I try to sort out my concerns about their paint scheme. I'm having second thoughts on using the standard Jopall colors. The use of white is really starting to bother me but I'm liking the regiment's background more and more. I feel like if I abandon having white plates then there's really nothing much left that ties them to the orthox costume and that they would be essentially Jopallian in name only. It makes sense to me that a regiment wouldn't be defined by the colors of its uniform but it often feels that way to me with the less well defined IG regiments. By comparison it was just in the previous codex that featured almost a full page of alternate uniforms worn by just the Cadian 8th, so I suspect there may be more latitude with my army from Jopall than I am currently feeling. I'm still going to paint a test figure just to see if I like it but regardless I am not as set on a scheme than I had last believed. Meanwhile the little bit of hobby time I have had has been spent putting together more guardsmen, including a plasma gunner and two standard troopers to replace a pair of old ones with poses for which I no longer care.

[Maybe more to come on this, but I probably don't have much else to write. Sorry]

Lost in the Desert