HQs of Christmas Past

Merry Christmas!

And Let the Firewood Burn!

Old Bloggers Never Die

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

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

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

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!

Follow Your Blisstonia

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!

Laborious Day

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!

Dechala the Unassembled One

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?

"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!

Requiem for a Termagant

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

HQ

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

16 x Hormagaunts

10 x Termagants

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

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!

Imperial Fists Team Display

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!

250th Post and Some Evil Dead

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

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

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!

Chaos Lord Kit-Bash

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

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!

Review - MAS Radar Station and Pump Station

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!