Thoughts from Tim

Posted 12:48 PM by Tim
I managed to get some painting done last night. Just a bit, mind you, but some, nonetheless.

I've sort of interjected a new project into the works of the Slaaneshi guys. After all, there's no chance in hell that I'll get any of them done in time for the end of the month. Well, I might stand a half-chance of getting the four done if I really applied myself to it, but that's not likely to have an opportunity - I've other things that need doing.

Anyway, the new project is Exorcists. Space Marines. I think I may have mentioned that I had my marines all packed up to be disposed, but nobody was buying... so, I've reclaimed them all. Good and bad news for me I suppose. While they were waiting for disposal, they met a couple of accidents. I guess I've got about 10 or 12 of them that need repairs - which has lead me to the thought that I should just disassemble all of them, and start from scratch with them. It's not a horrible idea, so I'm going to at least look into it. I've got a sneaking suspicion that most of the models are properly assembled, which means there's no way they're coming apart now. Not without some clippers and a lot of greenstuff work to repair the damages.

If nothing else, I'd at least like to try my hand at cleaning them up properly and giving them a good colour scheme for a nice unified look. We'll see what develops, eh?

As far as painting them goes, I've started with their landspeeder. It's horrible, and with luck, I can make it look good. Maybe. I've decided to challenge myself with it, and try painting the "proper" way. Thinned paints, multiple coats, successive layers of paints. I've tried this on one or two other models, and there's things that's good and bad about the process. I'm just wondering if this sort of thing will make the finished product look better or worse than expected. I suppose I'll know in a couple of weeks or so (yes, this process means the total painting time is very, very long). I'm not concerned about the time. The army isn't important.

Posted 12:25 PM by Tim
I took a few minutes and worked out the colours I want for my marine force (and the traits and drawbacks). I'm working with Codex Grey, Catachan Green, Skull White and Blood Red. The white will be on the helmets of the normal marines and on the squad markings., Blood Red helmets for Sergents, and Blood Red right kneepad (or greave if no kneepad) for veterans. Weapons will be kept simple: Chaos Black casings, Boltgun Metal metal bits. I'm going to avoid the use of gold on the models except for on ICs. I don't want to overuse the gold execpt for outstanding individuals.

I'm still working out where the green and grey go exactly. I'm trying to figure out if it's going to be green or grey as the main colour, or if I'm going to try a quartered scheme. Honestly, the quartered scheme is probably far too much work for a "for fun" army, but I've got a couple of pretty hated models I can use for test patterns. I've got the green main variation already attepted (quick and badly), just for illustrative purposes. I'll do the grey main variant tonight, and if I've time, I'll try the quartered (maybe also halved) style as well. That'll give me a good idea of what I'm looking at. Maybe will shoot them over to the boyz for their vote.

Since I own everything I need for the marines, I feel absolutely no need to buy stuff for them. That's good, because it means I don't have to concern myself with getting them little fiddly bits of whatever, or purchasing new models or minis or anything. I can paint them up as slowly as I like, and even take the time to do them one at a time. I suppose I should be focused on my Slaaneshi guys, but I'm not worried about getting them done quickly either. They'll get done when they get done.

Which reminds me, there's been no progress on them for a while now. I do need to get back to that one model's arm and get it finished. Then he can join the Lieut on the shelf. He's currently vastly outnumbered against the Dark Eldar. The two of them should be able to hold them off though. I'll see if I can get him done this week.

Posted 1:01 PM by Tim
About a year or two back, before the release of the Witchhunters Codex, I'd heard a rumour about Space Marines being allowed as allies for a Sisters of Battle force. At the time, a number of the people I played with were heavily trading their marines around. A lot of older models, and a lot of out of date items.

Since I was hoping to build up a good sized SoB force, I took advantage of the marines I saw passing by and snagged a fair number of them for reasonable prices. Now, these had changed hands a few times already, and more often than not, they'd gotten a paint job at each stop - or part of a paintjob. So, they were quite a crazy mix of chapters.

The Codex came out, and the SM were included, but not in the way I'd hoped, so I dropped the idea of them as an allied force, and pushed them to the back burner. A little later, I decided to make them a regular marine force. I went with the idea of just making them all one chapter. I decided on Crimson Fists, based almost entirely on the fact that the majority of them were already in those colours. Repainting happened to almost all of the marines, but the vehicles were left as they were.

I didn't get very far with them before giving up on them.

The force shrunk over time as certain models were traded away for other models, and I ended up with a force of just over 1200 points of mostly unwanted models. Old, bad and covered in enough paint to make them into pretty much big blobs of paint.

I thought I'd sell the whole lot of them, so I packed them up, and sent them off to be disposed. I was hoping to convert them into some slaaneshi models in the exchange. It didn't happen. I got all the minis back, and I find they've damaged themselves quite a bit. They need a lot of work, but I'm now thinking to do them up. I'm looking at a very simple colour scheme (three, maybe four colours + black and metals).

On to the reason for this post. One of the models I've had for a long time is a badly mistreated land speeder. For whatever reason (probably because I've played Dark Eldar so long), I like Speeders, but most other marine players around here hate them. Too flimsy, too worthless, etc. I've decided that I'm going to recover this model. It's broken in places, and been painted nice and thick. But I think I can do it. I think I can not only clean it up, I think I can make it look pretty good. It'll never be great, but it shouldn't be horrible.

The first step was to see if any of the model could come apart. Surprisingly, the whole model had been assembled with crazy glue, and came apart with a minimum of force. None of the pieces broke during disassembly either, so I'm quite happy about that. Basically, I've got a fully disassembled Speeder, which has been painted really badly. Even the pilots came apart completely. So good for me.

Next, cleaning the paint off. The Speeder was heavily coated in red, over a heavy coat of white, over a reasonable undercoat of black. Now, I could have taken the model and dumped it into a vat of something or other. This would strip the model down to the plastic, but I don't feel like investing quite that much time into the cleaning process. It would probably be worth it, but, I'm a little impatient and a lot lazy. So, it'll have to deal with me doing things the quick way. I've scraped the heaviest deposits of paint off, and it's down to looking only mostly bad.

I suppose it'd be worth the effor to fully strip it, but this isn't going to be a showpiece army anyway, just something playable.

Now, I just need to work out a colour scheme.

Posted 11:32 AM by Tim
No painting happening this week... and I'll be lucky to even touch a brush at all until next week. Maybe I might happen to get a few moments on Saturday.

Posted 10:11 AM by Tim
Painting has been really slow this week. I took the stuff over to the boyz earlier this week, and despite painting for over an hour, I only got an arm, and a shoulderpad done. I'm really rethinking the idea of trying to outfit each of my marines with the actual Slaanesh pad. They're way too much work.

Still, I'm sticking to the idea that each little bit finished is one less bit that needs finishing. So, I've got just that tiny bit less to do now. And, it turned out looking pretty cool... so I'm pretty pleased.

I hope I get a chance to get back to work on these things soon.

Posted 10:22 AM by Tim
Progress on the Slaaneshi force. I took a couple of minis over to the boyz house, and got the body, and an arm of one entirely done, including shoulderpad. I even manged to glue all the bits together. Now, he's just missing an arm. This makes him the furthest along officially.

I've also managed to get some paint onto the other two models, so now they are all at least based in purple. Unless I get these three done this week (unlikely), I doubt there will be any chance of me managing to get the other eight marines and the 6 Daemonettes finished by the end of November. It's a good goal, but I'm just too booked right now.

Posted 2:00 PM by Tim
Work on the Slaaneshi force continues. I've put a bit of a buying moratorium up, but it's a weak one. Basically, I won't spend any money on miniatures until the Marines I have are converted into cash of some sort. Then, as much as possible, I'll use that money to purchase new minis. If I can, I'll be working towards getting more Chaos guys. I've only got until the end of the month to get them all, assemble them, and paint them fully... and it's been slower going than usual.

NaNoWriMo has eaten up a considerable portion of my evenings the last couple days, which limits my paint time to the last thing in the evening. Not the best time for getting quick painting done, but beggars can't be choosers.

I brought a couple of minis over to the boyz last night, in an effort to encourage them to get on with their painting. I managed to do the edging on one marine (after wilfully snapping his arm off to get at the stuff it covered up). And I managed to finish the old champion's new power sword. I'm going to have to seal it tonight to keep me from messing it up between now and assembly time. I suppose I'll have to finish his other arm while I'm at it - not to mention his body and backpack... ok... so I've got his arm done, ok?

I'm a tad disappointed that I'm not farther along with the whole painting of this squad - then again, it's only been a week, and I've only managed to put about two nights work into them, and not even full nights at that. Maybe I'm doing all right after all. Then again, with another 8 men to buy, build and paint, then a set of Daemonettes.... hmm... no, I'm not going to be done in time - short of something miraculous happening. :(

Still, I'm going to press on with it. I want to get them done, and they're the main focus right now (until, and unless I get some additional Necrons). It's going to be much slower going than I like... but if I'm lucky, I'll finish my novel before long and then, I dunno... I'll either start writing something else (without the need to rush and get it done), or I'll just swap in the time for painting.

Posted 10:09 AM by Tim
While waiting for NaNo to get started, I figured I'd at least get things painted. I figured it'd be easiest to finish one guy, rather than trying them in series. After all, there's not much similar between different chaos marines, and my little mob is probably as much different as they are the same.

I didn't manage to finish the marine, but his body is done at least (including his backpack and base). This leaves me with just his arms to do. Since I started with the Sonic Blaster marine, that leaves me with doing this rather complicated and essential weapon. I'll have to take a look at this weapon to figure just which colours should go where.

After doing a chunk of NaNo writing, I was kinda inspired to try something a little more... difficult. I got the greenstuff out, and added a couple extra details on his power weapon. In this case, fire. I haven't really sculpted fire before, so it was an interesting challenge. I'm not sure whether or not it worked out yet. I'll know once I paint it. The question is, do I paint the flames in the same colours as the sword, or do I make them different? I'll mull that question for a while.

Posted 9:59 AM by Tim
Modeling news, as always.

On Saturday morning, before the bring-and-battle, I managed (with a little bit of overtime) to finish off the Slaaneshi Lieutenent. Glued together and set and everything. He looks good, I think. I'm thinking of getting some pictures taken of him to get a little bit of criticism on the mini from a forum I read.

With the Lieutenent done, I was open to the idea of buying more Slaanesh troops. Kind of the same deal as I had with the Necrons. I'll buy stuff, but they become the paint project, and nothing else gets bought until they're done.

The local store that has lots of cool second-hand stuff had some chaos minis in the shelf, so I picked them up. I was hoping to exchange my loyalist stuff for my chaos stuff, but that didn't work out in the long run - the guy who does the buying wasn't there.

I picked up five marines, including an old style noise marine with blastmaster. The new blastmasters are significantly larger than the old style, so I'm thinking of using it as a sonic blaster. I'm kinda torn between the idea of mixing old and new sonic weapons, or just sticking to the one type and hoping I can either find or bitz the parts I need for the army.

So, I'd picked up two guys with power fists, and a couple other marines, and this noise marine. After taking a look at them, and cleaning them up a bit, I noticed that one of the guys I had bought was not chaos. He was painted to look chaos, but he was still in loyalist armour. I didn't yet have a force, and already there was a spy in the ranks! He was stripped of his arms and all other useful bits, and re-assigned to join his waiting loyalist brethern to be sold and replaced with either Chaos or Necrons.

Along with the marines, there were four Daemonettes available. I scooped those up as well.

After fiddling with the bodies, arms, weapons and backpacks for a bit, I decided that the thing I was missing most for them, was a consistent army badge of some sort. I want to make sure that every single model in my Slaaneshi force has a shoulderpad with a Slaanesh mark on it. On Sunday I went to the local store that carries all the bitz, and dug through a couple thousand shoulderpads looking for the right ones. I found two. And needed three. The old sonic weapon shoulderpads already had Slaanesh marks, so they were fine. The store guy pointed out a chainsword in the other bitz box, which also bore the Slaanesh mark. I had hoped to have all the rank and file have the shoulderpad on the same side, but such consistency doesn't seem to be a trait of the chaos powers. Still, I had enough to make sure everyone had at least one properly marked shoulderpad.

I had one of the boyz by yesterday to do some painting. He's working on an Ultramarines force, and trying to get them painted so they'll be playable. I've issued a bit of a challenge to him and another of the boyz. Get 500 points painted. They've agreed (more or less), and I've made a quick list:

Lieut (Dark Blade, Plasma Pistol)

5 Marines (2 Sonic Blaster)
+ Champ (Power Weapon)

5 Marines (Sonic Blaster, Blastmaster)
+ Champ (Power Fist)

6 Daemonettes

I left the timeline open, but the Ultras player has suggested the end of November. Since I don't even own the required number of miniatures (I need 8 marines and 2 Daemonettes), and I'm writing all this month, I'm rather concerned about my ability to stick to this as a hard deadline. I'm making an effort towards it though. I figure I can probably (depending on what kind of time I give myself) end up with at least a couple of the marines finished by the end of this week. Far too slow to actually finish for the end of the month, but still quick enough to keep me working towards it.

So, in case you weren't paying attention, the current project is the four marines I've got. They're a rather mixed bag of marines too. I've nominated the old noise marine as the Power Weapon wielding champion, and one of the other marines have been given a power fist. I found (amongst the other bitz) the same backpack as the old noise marine has, so I've pretty much decided to keep this as a mark of rank. All Champions will be equipped with this backpack, or some other suitably ostentatious pack.

The arms of the old noise marine (the sonic weapon) have been given to a rank and file, and I've got one marine with a bolter and chainsword.

For the power weapon guy, I've built him an all plastic weapon from several bits, and added a little bit of green stuff for cabling and am thinking of putting on an extra detail or two to add to the overall coolness factor of the model. Besides all that, the original pose of the model is horrible, but he's all metal so I can't do too much modding to him without ruining the very cool detail work on his legs. I'm trying to overshadow the ugly pose with interesting painted weapons and his base. Anything to distract attention from the way he's walking.

I'll be putting in updates here as the models progress, of course. As they stand right now, the rank and file guys have both been primed and gotten the first armour colour on. The whole group of them had custom greenstuff bases made for them, just like the Lieut had. I can see now (and probably could have guessed then), that needing to make a complicated base like paving stones for every model means adding a significant amount of time to the assembly process. Still, when you see how it looks, it seems worth it.

Posted 10:41 AM by Tim
I've had to push painting aside the last few days. Evening out on Wednesday, and yesterday, and tonight, and tomorrow too. Just to much social life going on to get the painting on.

Saturday should be both a gaming day and a busy as all-get-out, day. There's the Black Templar Codex pre-release bring and battle. I'm thinking, I'll bring the Necrons. A fair size Lord, with a good glob of Warriors should hold the fort nicely - or at least smash up other people's forts.

I'm still very much wanting to get the Lieut. done, it's just taking me time to do him up. Maybe Saturday morning?

Posted 9:44 AM by Tim
The nightly painting routine seems to be working for me overall. Things (painting things anyway) are getting done.

The Lieut's backpack was the main focus last night. It worked out to be easier than I thought it might be. Just some Tin Bitz, highlighted heavily with Shining Gold, and occasionally set off by Boltgun Metal, highlighted with Mithril Silver. That covers all of the speakers and pipes, anyway.

The rest of the backpack is pretty standard, so I went with the usual armour colours, Liche Purple, edged in Blazing Orange, covered by Warlock Purple, and highlighted in Blazing Orange again. It looks good.

The flagstones for the base were done too. More trouble than I thought they'd be, but they look good in the end, so I'm happy. I also took some time and drilled the body for pinning. Put the pins in too, so I should have somewhere neutral to hold on to (if painful to do so). I drilled out the arms as well, so when the body's ready and sealed, I can just go straight to assembly.

I figure that if I had some time tonight, I'd finish the body off and get him assembled by Thursday morning (my mornings are the best time I have for doing epoxy work. I've got time to sit and wait usually). I'd love to show him off to the boyz before we get to playing.

I don't think I have any time this evening though, so he's just gonna have to wait.

While I'm thinking about being done with the Lieut, I might as well think about the next mini to get done. There's several options open to me. I have units in the Guard, Dark Eldar, Witchhunters, Harlequins, and Marines that need doing.

Well, I can eliminate the Harlequins, Marines and Witchhunters from consideration for now. I've got a very specific idea of what I want for the marines, and I don't think I have the models I need (likely, the entire force will go up to the store for recycling into Necrons). The Witchhunters still don't have a finalized colour scheme, and I don't feel I'm good enough to even attempt the Harlequins yet. Soon, maybe.

So, either DE, or IG units. On the DE side, I've got those 9 guys I wanted to do, and I've remembered that I've got the Talos to paint also. I started pre-assembly some time back, and it's been waiting as parts for a while now. No reason not to get back onto that.

For IG, the main item would be the Commissar. I did the conversion so long ago, and he's been primed for ages now. I really should get started there. Trouble is, I'd need more skin tones than I've got right now (some of my paints are horrifically bad). There's also the Orgyn, or even just getting more of the rank and file done.

I think, just given the successes I've had with the Necrons, I'm in the mode to work with the Talos. That's assuming I don't do the Marine -> Necron exchange this week. If I do that, then they will take precedence.

Posted 9:36 AM by Tim
My wife bought me a lamp for doing paint work many months back. It's one of those lamps with springs that hold the light in just the right position. It also has a little magnifier on it, so you can see details up close. I never used it, simply because it was broken on one spring. I kept meaning to fix it, but never quite got around to it. Last night, she fixed it. It's very good for providing the extra light I've been missing.

Progress on the Emperor's Children Lieut continues. I got around to the left arm last night, which has the plasma pistol. I'd done the armour plates, shoulderpad, and the chains on Sunday, so they were done already. All that was left to do was the plasma pistol, really. It's a fairly small piece out of the whole model, but something that people will notice. After all, it is the main firing weapon for him.

I asked one of the boyz for some colour suggestions on the pistol. Usually I do the casings of plasma weapons in Blood Red, regardless of the army, to give them all a nice unified feel (and most people seem to do this also). But, the lieut's armour is purple, so red won't really stand out. I want the weapon to be visible, so that people know right off that he's got something dangerous in hand. The suggestion I got was to make it blue. Well, I think they meant the power cell to be blue (I usually do power cells in blue, to contrast the red casing). So, I figured, why not just switch my usual colours around. Do the casing in blue, and the power cell in red?

It looks sweet. Wish I could take a decent picture of it.

While I was painting the Necrons, I consciously restricted the number of colours I was using. Firstly, I had a lot of them to do and wanted to actually get the finished. Second, the 'cron just don't seem like the overly decorated type to me. Other than the 'cron lords and the Flayed Ones, the total colour palette was: Chaos Black, Boltgun Metal, Blood Red, Snot Green, Shining Gold and Ultramarines Blue. Quite a small selection for me. The Lords really only added about two or three other colours, and those were all used as highlights for their weapons and equipment.

The Lieut's plasma pistol though, used way more colours: Chaos Black, Boltgun Metal, Mithril Silver, Tin Bitz, Shining Gold, Dark Flesh, Scab Red, Red Gore, Blood Red, Blazing Orange, Sunburst Yellow, Skull White, Bleached Bone, Bronzed Flesh, Snakebite Leather, Hawk Turquoise, Lightning Blue, Ice Blue, Snot Green, and Warlock Purple. That's just the plasma pistol itself. The arm adds on Liche Purple to that list. I know, I'm totally going overboard on this guy now, and well... like I said earlier, it looks sweet.

While I was waiting for the sealant on the arm to dry (it's been raining, so I've been sealing minis in the garage), I decided to work on the model's base. I've been mulling this for a couple days now. I've got sand, grass and a yellow dirt flocking at the house. I don't have a lot of cash to get more flocking elsewhere. My 'cron are based with sand. My Dark Eldar are based with the yellow dirt, and the HPL are based with the grass. I want the EC to have something different. An idea struck me for them. I have green stuff, I can make floor tiles and have them as if they were indoors!

So, last night, I tried my hand at getting the green stuff to look like large floor tiles. I've found a use for the larger dental tool I have. It worked really well in getting the green stuff to flatten out over the entire base, and was also very good at cutting into it to set up the tile edges. I was thinking about maybe trying to putty on a slaaneshi symbol, but I now think that I might just paint one on instead. I basecoated the tiles in black this morning, and I figure I'll get at working up the colour range on them tonight.

Posted 10:16 AM by Tim
With the 'cron all done, I figured it was time to move on to the next guy on the list. The Slaaneshi Lieutenent.

I managed to work out a colour scheme that sounds hideous, but doesn't look too bad in practice. Liche Purple base, with Warlock Purple and Blazing Orange highlights. Generous amounts of other colours accent everything.

I'm trying, as much as I'm able, to blend things, and highlight things nicely. No idea if I'm managing it, but I'm giving it a go.

The right arm is done (and sealed so I won't mess it up by fiddling with it later), and I've started work on the right. I'm doing him bit-wise, so each piece will be finished seperately, and he'll be assembled all at once - possibly pinned if I can figure out a good method for it. I've never been good at pinning.

At the rate I've been doing him (quite slow), I figure he'll be 4 or 5 days of work, and should end up being tabletop playable. I'd love to do him up in such a way that he'd look really nice, but I just don't have that kind of skill. Especially not with Marines.

Once I've got him done, though, I figure it'll either be on to the Dark Eldar Warriors, or maybe back to the Imperial Guard. Both forces have been crying out for attention.

Also, I finished the accounting yesterday. I've gone through every army and miniature I own. The numbers are both encouraging and also shameful. I own a total of 413 minatures for Warhammer 40K, spanning 7 races, and providing a total of 9500+ points of troops. I have two armies that are not tournament legal (not enough required units), and one force (the Dark Eldar) that have too many unit choices to be fielded as a single list.

Just as an FYI, I own (in order of points):

Emperor's Children
Harlequins
Space Marines
Necrons
Imperial Guard
Witchhunters
Dark Eldar

I was quite surprised by the number of points Witchhunters I have (nearly 2000), as I didn't think I had anywhere near that many. Maybe I should start making them the next force to be tackled? Maybe not.

Posted 1:15 PM by Tim
Finally!

I took some time on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and this morning finishing off those last two Necron Flayed Ones. They are completely done. This means that the entire army is done - at least, everything I currently own. I have to say, this is the first army I've ever finished. And the only army I've managed to keep up with as I bought it.

I need a minimum of three more Immortals to fill out the army, and that will give me about 1300 points of Necrons. Not a bad starting force really. Then, I'll just need a couple of other guys to give the force some extra variation. Somehow, I'll need to save up for a Monolith. That's gonna take me a while I think.

So... next up on the painting block: The Slaaneshi Lieutenant.

The Lieutenant's got the power sword, plasma pistol and the huge backpack modeled, which I will take to be the Dark Blade, a plasma pistol, and Doom Siren. I'm giving him Daemonic Resilience too, to make him toughness 5. This makes him 115 pts. Not massive for a Lieutenent, but not too tiny either. Should be a decent points cost overall. He'll be somewhat cheaper if I end up using him as an Aspiring Champion.

Posted 9:29 AM by Tim
Started into the Flayed Ones last night. They were much like I figured they'd be. Sort of like painting two models each. The first is a straightforward (if awkwardly posed) Necron Warrior. The second is a draped-like-fabric, man thing. All streteched and bloody. Fortunately, I made it easy on myself and went with a quick method.

The flesh was pre-painted by the original owner in what looks like Elf Flesh. So, I painted over that (roughly) with Dark Flesh, letting a little of the lighter colour show through. Drybrushed Dwarf Flesh over that, trying hard not to get any on the already painted Necron bits. I was pretty hasty with this too, just trying to make the skin look a little lighter. I know the Flayed Ones are supposed to look like they're covered in fresh skin, but I'm going for something a little bit older and ickier.

I wanted to do the edges in a dried blood colour, so I tried Scab Red. Of course, I'd forgotten that Scab Red and Dark Flesh are very close to each other in colour. You couldn't tell the difference under normal lighting. So, I thought about Blood Red, but that seemed too light overall. I went with Warlock Purple. Which worked great. I hit most of the flesh edges with Warlock, then went back around and put Blood Red highlights on a lot of them. Looks good to me. I even went and added a few blood drippings and stains in Blood Red to the Necron Warrior underneath, and added a copius amount of spatter to the flensing blades, and drippings on the base.

Given the amount of individual attention these models need (I have 4 models, and each of them are different from each other in pose and flesh layout), I wasn't able to finish more than one. But! I did get that one completely done and sealed. Only 3 to go, and the entire force I have will be done.

All that will be left then will be to buy enough Immortals to make up a proper squad. I've got 2 and need 5 in total.

With some work, I figure I can get another one or two Flayed Ones done tonight. I should have the squad finished off by the end of the week.

Posted 9:50 AM by Tim
I decided it was time to get those last few Necrons sealed. I've been talking about getting them done for long enough. There was only 9 left to do... so I did 'em. Finally. I'm left with only the Flayed ones.

Looking at the flayed ones last night, I can see a lot about them I don't like. First, their fingers (the flaying blades) are huge. Way too large really. Second, they're modeled like they're broken! Like they are regular Warriors who've ripped their guns off and mangled themselves so they can stumble around slashing at things. This strikes me as really odd behaviour for the 'cron.

The difficult part about painting them will be getting the skin done. They're normal warrior models (which means Boltgun and Ultramarines colours, with white death mask), and then happy, more or less alive (but bloody) flesh tones. It's not going to be quite the same as painting clothes on them. And there's a lot of flesh on them It's drooping all over.

At least they've given it some thought though. Their bodies have a number of added spikes on to jam the flesh on and keep it in place. I guess I'm just going to have to try them against some guardsmen.

Posted 1:49 PM by Tim
I had a fit of activity last night while procrastinating on my writing. The Necron footie Lord and the Immortal were needing their plastic rods installed, and they were very, very close to being finished as it was.

The footie Lord got a bit of a conversion done to it, partly because I wanted him to have a Resurrection Orb. So, a bit of putty and some time working with the placement of the fingers of one hand, and he's all set.

There's an odd trend with the Necrons that I've noticed. First, there doesn't seem to be any consistency with the size of the hands. On models like the footie lord, the left hand is reasonably sized to hold the War Scythe, but the right hand is huge. And not just because of the talon-fingers. The hand itself is larger than the left. You see the same thing on the Destroyers. They have huge hands.

Oh, while I'm ranting about models, let me say this: The left arm of a destroyer has probably the most limp-wristed pose you could get in the entire 40K line. Seriously. Somehow, after painting, it doesn't look nearly as bad, but for a while, I was thinking I'd have to make some sort of Necron interior decorators squad or something.

Anyway, to bring things up to date. The Necrons are all painted (9 still need sealing) except for four Flayed Ones. They need some serious work. The previous owner started in on them, but didn't seem to get very far. I'm torn between stripping them (they've already been based), and working from what's there. I think it's going to have to be a quick file and re-paint job really.

So, the full force at this point is:

1 Destroyer Lord (warscythe, res orb + a scarab on the base which I use as either chronometron or phylactery)
1 Lord (warscythe, res orb)
2 Immortals
30 Warriors
1 Heavy Destroyer
7 Scarabs
4 Flayed Ones (in progress)

I've been proxying in a Monolith and 4 more Immortals instead of the Flayed Ones. This pushes the list to about 1600 points or so. Quite solid.

In other news, the local store is going to be doing a bring and battle for the new Black Templars codex. I just need to bring a troop choice and an HQ. At present, the best plan seems to be the footie Lord with War Scythe, Res Orb and Veil of Darkness, and 17 Warriors. That gives me 18 total, and means I'll need to be down to 4 guys total before having to worry about phase out. They might waive the phase out rule, which would be pretty sweet.

I just love the idea of being able to teleport around the table, playing clean up on anything wounded or isolated. Of course, as a bring and battle, there's bound to be a lot of people, a lot of confusion, and a general sense of anarchy. Really, long run, should be fun.

I'm hoping to convince the boyz to join in. They've got a few weeks.

Posted 7:02 PM by Tim
Well, the Necron army has drawn me in. I'm not even following my own rules anymore.... I bought a new model. I knew the store had a second hand Heavy Destroyer, and I've been lacking in the heavy firepower in my games against the Khornates. The thought, of course, was that a Tomb Spider might cover the difference in firepower, but it's shooting and combat stats are horrible. Even if it is one of the few models with power weapons. I'll consider it for the full force, but I think the Heavy Destroyer is better at this point.

Anyhow, as a way of making up for breaking the "no buy" rule, I've been putting all my efforts into getting the Heavy Destroyer completely painted and sealed. And, it's done! Completely re-built (you should have see the shape it was in, not horrible, but far from complete), painted and sealed. It'll hopefully be a good addition to my army.

One of these days, I'm gonna have to find a place to post pictures.

Posted 1:08 PM by Tim
No painting last night though I could have done. Probably should have done. But, I had other things on my mind at the time. Work's stepped up to make my evenings rather short.

I played against the Khornates again on Tuesday. Another loss, but this was at least closer than last time. I made it to round 6 before phasing out. I'm still learning how to use the force. The lesson this time is that it's better to have a couple of res orbs than just one. Also, if you've got a veil, use it.

I keep getting my veiled Lord into combat and forgetting that he can and should leave at the earliest opportunity. Getting stuck in is what's getting my warriors all ground to shavings. That, and the veiled Lord isn't carrying an orb. That's gonna change really quick.

There's a hope that I'll face off against the Daemonhunters soon. Should be a rather cool battle if I can just get it on. Maybe this weekend.

Posted 10:12 AM by Tim
The Necrons have taken me longer than I wanted to get done. Regular life has hopped into the way, and it's slowing me down something fierce. I'd forgotten why assembly line painting always drove me bats. It's boring! 19 guys, each getting an identical treatment. Working with a single colour, and leaving the fixes to later. Guh. So annoying.

Anyway, at the start of last night, the 'cron were needing green, gold, white, and red. With touchups on blue and black. I finished the green, gold and red, and did the blue touches. I figure I can live without the black touches if I need to. After all, painting on the sealant this time around will be the suckiest part of it all.

I'm hoping to get the white and black touches done before 8 tonight. I'm really hoping to go by the boyz place and hang out/play. Though... if I do that, I'll probably get the sealed and unsealed models confused... hmm.. maybe I"ll mark the unsealed ones with something first...

Anyway, what's left to do is the footie Lord, the Immortal, and the 4 Flayed Ones. Honestly, it's the Flayed Ones that worry me. I'm just not sure what I should do about them - skin tones are hard, so they're going to take a fair bit of effort to do up right. They're definately going to take me more time than they're worth. Might as well give them individual effort. Then they might look like something.

Posted 12:20 PM by Tim
The Necrons basing got done, it just needs to be blackened. I ran shy of Chaos Black, and went out to the nearest store to get some. I was surprised. They had moved into a bigger space, and now had gaming tables. I'm going to have to go there more often.

Now, for a quick rant about the local Warhammer scene.

There are three stores in the area I live. That should be more than enough to satisfy my gaming craving, right? Wrong.

One, is rather far away. They have the most stock, carry second hand models, and are generally a friendly place to go. They have a gaming table, but it's almost never in use because it needs to be signed out, and can only be signed out for certain days, depending on who's manning the store at the time. Technically, it could be used if nobody else was using it, but then you'd have to get the store guys to move the excess stock off of it (they use it for a sort of ad-hoc storage most of the time). It's just inconvenient to use. I like going there because they have the best selection of used models. They're also rather picky about models being fully painted and based, which up unitl recently has been a major hold-back.

The next nearest store has a ton of gaming space. If they open that floor. It is open on specific nights, and they do tend to have a lot of gamers up there on those nights, so it's good that way. They've got good selection, but not so much for used models. They're absolutely anal about models being painted since they're an official Rogue Trader, but that's not the worst of it. They're also just not very friendly towards customers. They had a long bout of shoplifting, and now they're paranoid that every person into the store is going to either steal from them, or break something. They're rather hostile towards children too. They do run tournaments, though, which, if they were a little less expensive would be a reason to get things painted.

The nearest store to me, has just recently gotten some gaming space set up. They're small, and their selection sucks. They've got some second hand models too, but the selection still sucks. The store itself carries a sort-of elitest feeling to to, since it's a hobby store first, and a GW store second. I think they're trying to change that though - the call of profits from the GW merch is just too good to pass.

I'll be making a bit more of an effort to go to my nearest store. Not only to support it's continued existence, but also to actually get to play on a more frequent (or at least monthly) basis. I like playing at the boyz place, but it's nice to have some different opponents now and then.

Posted 3:25 PM by Tim
The Accounting

I mentioned the idea of going through every army I own and working out the precise details of what I own, and how many points it's worth. I think it's a good idea. Then I'll know just what I have, and what needs doing. My collection has grown a little out of hand lately, and well... it needs some reigning in.

The lists will appear here in the blog, for full perusal by any who might have an interest. I'll be profiling my armies one at a time, but the whole collection will come up here at once.

Posted 2:20 PM by Tim
The Dark Eldar have been retouched, finalized and sealed. I'm gonna have to buy a couple cans of sealant - one to replace the one I borrowed, and one for personal use.

So. I've got 400 points (in two list variants) of models finished and sealed. I'm ready to play whenever the boyz get their stuff done.

I wanted to get a start on the rest of the Necrons, but didn't get past basing them all. I'd been putting that off for a bit, as there were so many that needed basing (12 Warriors, and 4 Flayed Ones). But, I also needed to get their bases done since the legs were finished on all of them (just Boltgun and Ultramarine).

So, I've got 19 Warriors in need of completion. They need white faces, red eyes, black guns, red and blue hoses, green energy chambers and blades, and gold chest icons. Then they'll just need the bases done. It's honestly less work than it sounds. All the parts needed are small.

A friend of mine suggested that I try using a paint on varnish instead of the spray, since these guys have their energy rods glued in already. I'm going to finish one of the Warriors and make a test run of it to see how it turns out. If it comes out bad, it'll only be on the one guy out of the whole army. If it works good, then it'll be the process for these Warriors.

I've decided to paint the Emperor's Champion model after the Necrons are finished and away. This will technically give me two fully painted armies. I only own the one EC model after all - so it should be simple to declare them finished.

Ultimately the goal is to chug my way through the unpainted legions of Imperial Guard and Dark Eldar models I currently own. I've been meaning to make a list of every army I have, just so that I know just how many point of whatever I could put down if I felt like it (although, it'd be one weird looking alliance force).

There's not going to be a time limit on getting the army done. I know that if I do that, I'll start getting bogged in other things and stressing about the whole painting thing, so I'm going to stick to the way I've been doing them so far. Pick a unit, work on that unit, finish it, done. If I can cycle that a few dozen times, I will get through everything and I will have some playable (and fully nice looking) armies.

Posted 3:16 PM by Tim
Painting plans update:

Here's the current plan for painting stuff.

I want to finish off the sealing for the Dark Eldar. They just need a very quick once over and touch-up paint, then they get sealed and set to go. Should be able to do that tonight barring interruptions, etc.

After they're finished, I'm going to continue on with the Necrons. I didn't paint a single one of them last night, so I've still got 19 Warriors, the Lord, the Immortal, and 4 Flayed Ones to do. And I wanted them done this week.

Third on the list is a toss up between the Commisar, and the Emperor's Children Aspiring Champion model. In a way, I'd like to get the Commissar done, as a spur to getting back to the HPL, on the other hand, getting the EC done would mean I'd have 2 armies officially finished and done (though I only own the one EC guy).

Once either of those are done, I'll do the other. From there, it's open again, though I'd love to get the Talos finished before bothering with anything else.

Posted 9:59 AM by Tim
Necrons versus Khorne last night. 1500 points. The lists, in brief:

Necron Lord - destroyer body, res orb, phylactery, warscythe - 195
Necron Lord - veil of darkness, phase shifter, staff of light - 195
30 Warriors (3 units of 10) - 540
6 Immortals - 112
7 Scarabs - d. field - 168
Monolith - 235
Tomb Spider - particle cannon - 55

I don't know the points or stuff on the Khornies.

Khorne Lord
8 Berzerkers - power fist
8 Berzerkers - rhino, power fist
8 Berzerkers - rhino, dark blade
Defiler
Predator - las cannon sponsons, las cannon turret.
8 Hellhounds
8 Bloodletters

We managed to actually play on the big table. 4 x 8 space. Was a nice change from the usual 2.5 x 4 space we tend to play on. Table had three big buildings, and wreckage from the IG across the mid-field.

We rolled up Alpha level Recon (we don't usually play missions, so this was kinda cool).

My deployment was pretty simple. Scarabs opposite the Defiler, Immortals opposite the Predator, Monolith in the center surrounded by the Lords and Warriors. Across the table, 2 Rhino, 8 'zerks, and the Lord.

Khorne took the first turn and ran more than halfway across the table at me. The Defiler fired and missed, and the Predator unloaded into the Monolith, glancing it. The glance reduced it's weapons by 1.

I teleported both Lords and 10 Warriors behind his lines, hoping to fire onto the Defiler and throw things off on his side. They ended up further away than I wanted, and could not fire on the Defiler as I had planned. The Scarabs sped up towards the Defiler, looking for the attack next turn. He hadn't seen the Scarabs in action before, so he didn't know how easily they'd saw through a vehicle.

Weapons fire was pretty good for my side. We killed off a number of 'zerks and ground a Rhino down to nothing. The Immortals managed to shake the Predator, so the guns would be slower. The 'lith blasted nearly a full unit of 'zerks into atoms. This is where I discovered that the Tomb Spider would be an utter waste of points and my time. BS2? Why give it a good gun if it can't shoot?

Second turn, the daemons came into play. The hounds rushed the Lords and Warriors, the Bloodletters marched towards them to get there in the next turn, and the 'zerks piled into my Warriors, slaughtering many. The Lord crashed into the Immortals, mashing 2 with his power weapon.

The 'cron Lords fought well, killing off a couple of hounds and making another unstable. The Warriors with them were chewed up pretty good.

On my side of turn 2, the 'lith ported the Warriors out of combat, pulling a few extra back together in the process. Shooting in earnest went against the 'zerks, felling far fewer than I'd like. The Scarabs assaulted the Defiler. The Defiler smashed two bases, but the other 5 glanced it and immobilized it. The Lords continued to beat on the dogs, saveing everything thrown at them, and most of the Warriors in their unit were back in action and helping to smash the dogs down. All but one of them went unstable. The Immortals lost another to the Chaos Lord, his own armour preventing him from being hurt in response.

The 'zerks re-assaulted the Warriors, hacking and smashing them utterly, and consolidating into the 'lith and the other Warrior unit. The Bloodletters mashed into the fight with the Lords, and beat the Warriors and the Lords down. The Destroyer Lord fell to their fury, and the Phalanx Lord was wounded twice. Two of the Bloodletters were beaten down in response. The Defiler could not get a grip onto the Scarabs, who quickly finished dismantling the machine and leaving the assorted parts for scrap. The Immortals and the Chaos Lord fought to a draw.

The Destroyer Lord recovered 1 wound, and the fallen Warriors on both sides of the battle recovered and rejoined the nearest units. The Scarabs moved into position to provide bodies and attacks against the daemons. The 'lith fired the particle whip against the Predator, but could not hit. Combat was messy. More dameons fell against the Lords, and the last of the Warriors were beaten down. The Immortals and the Chaos Lord fought to a draw again. The Warriors fighting the 'zerks fought back, but were losing the battle. The Power Fist 'zerk tried to grab onto the 'lith, but couldn't touch it.

Turn 4, the Predator fired into the 'lith again, glancing it but only managing to shake it. The fighting went poorly, the Warriors were getting crushed, and there was very few Necrons left on the table. The Chaos Lord bashed another Immortal. The Bloodletters were dying against the seemingly untouchable Necron Lords and their masses of Scarabs.

The 'lith ported the Warriors out of combat hoping to bring the numbers of Necrons on the field up over 9 - the minimum number I needed to keep from phasing out. Enough came back on the field to give me 13 necrons in total. The Warriors fired onto the 'zerks, finishing off the last of the Power Fist unit. By now, I was wishing that the Tomb Spider had been three more Warriors instead. The Necron Lords beat the last of the Bloodletters, and moved towards the 'zerkers, hoping to get across the table quickly enough to assist. The Scarabs moved off towards the remaining Rhino and the Predator, planning to chew their way through yet another vehicle. The Chaos Lord smashed the last two Immortals, leaving me with only 11 Necrons on the table. 2 more losses would mean the game.

Bent on destroying the necrons utterly, the Predator's guns were turned against the Warriors, vaporizing 2 of them. The game was won, but the bloodthirsty (or, in this case, oilthirsty) Khornates assaulted them anyway. The Tomb Spider was smashed by the Chaos Lord, and the last few 'zerkers tore the Warriors apart. Only the Scarabs, the Monolith, and the two Necron Lords (with 1 remaining wound each) remained.

At the beginning of my turn, with no chance of repair rolls, the Necron army phased out.

Not too bad a fight. The Khornates were left with a Rhino, a Predator, 4 Berzerkers and their Lord. All in all, only one scoring unit. Of course, phase out means they get a total victory, but meh, it's a for fun game.

Looking at things I did wrong, I can see that I spent too much time stuck into combat against the daemons. The Lords needed to hop away once they'd done their thing on that side of the board. Specifically, once the Defiler had been smashed, or at least, engaged, they needed to Veil back across the board to get the Res Orb near the units that were being smashed up by the Berzerkers. Had I done that, the Warriors there would have kept on fighting and coming back, instead of being slowly whittled away. We'd have lasted out the turn without too much incident. Also, I'd have been able to port the massed unit far away, making him run back and forth across the battlefield a few times trying to catch us again. It was my first game with a new army, and learning how to use it is going to take some time. I think I've got a solid list (aside from the Tomb Spider), I just need to learn how to use it.

Posted 1:02 PM by Tim
I did not, and have not yet gotten the Dark Eldar sealed. My plans of "just quickly touch these up and then spray" fell through. Life intervened, and it hasn't happened. Then, there's these pesky Necrons.

I've been rather good about sticking to my rule of painting every Necron within a day of purchase. But it's always been a reasonably small number of models to paint. Not more than 10. Given my tiny army size, I knew I'd be in for some trouble when I found out that a friend of mine was looking to get rid of his necrons.

He had 19 Warriors, a Lord on foot, 5 Scarab bases, an Immortal and 4 Flayed ones. Plus a couple of assorted bits. Oh, and the codex. I needed/wanted all of it, so... we worked out a price and I scooped the whole lot of them this weekend. I spent the evening I got them just fixing them and accounting for parts. They weren't too badly built, but there were about 5 of them that were misassembled, and 2 which had sustained some pretty heavy damage over time. One in particular had a broken leg, mismatched arms, the torso had come clean off, and, while in repairs, the head came off. That's a lot of quick-style fixing to make right.

Of course, I knew that even with a full day available, there'd be no way I could possibly paint 30 full model (5 of them bases of little guys, 1 a character that needs more time to do right, and 4 of them needing some detailed paint work). But, I did figure I could get the Scarabs done, and maybe work my way through a full unit of Warriors.

The Scarabs got done, the Warriors, however, got as far as being Boltgun Metal and Ultramarines Blue. At that point, I figured it would be just as easy to keep on with the other 9 guys, so I'd have a full 30 looking more or less like they're supposed to look.

As I was on a roll with making them look like they fit into the army (the original scheme was metal and gold with green accents), I cleaned up the Lord, and the Immortal and applied at least some of their blue armour also. This pushed them enough that they look like a part of the force (though they're both severely lacking in detail work).

I've been challenged to a battle too.... for far more points than I should have been able to field. I think one of the boyz found out about my purchase and is trying to get me to fail at my "paint in a day" rule. Well... I technically have, but I'm willing to let it slide, because I'm taking the set of miniature as if they were seperate purchases. Warriors + Scarabs, Lord and Immortal, and Flayed Ones. I figure... that's a minimum of three days, and if I get it done within four, all the better.

Tonight, the plan is to play 1500 points against Khorne. Should be interesting. I'm taking both my Lords, all 30 Warriors, 6 Immortals (I'm proxying 4), all 7 Scarab bases, a Monolith (proxy), and a Tomb Spider (also proxy, and only being taken to check out the Particle Cannon effect).

After the game(s), I'm hoping to get everyone painting again. Of course, I'll be focusing on getting the Warriors done. They still need Skull White faces, Chaos Black guns (they're all different colours), Goblin Green and Blood Red accents, and then they need to be based and have the bases done. All 'round, about an evening's work.

If the boyz don't know about my purchase (and they may not know unless they talk to the seller or read this), I think they'll be quite surprised at the size of the force I'll be fronting. It's more than doubled since the weekend. :P

Posted 10:34 AM by Tim
More news from the world of miniatures. I ended up with an extra Necron. Guy picked it up for me, and I said "I can have this painted in a half hour if I can get ahold of some paint." And I did.

Now, there's a bit of a story here. See, the local store has a fairly random - but good - selection of second hand models. They're pretty good about keeping their selection up to date and only getting good stuff, but they occasionally get some pretty mangled models. So, when I buy stuff from there, I've learned to check the models out pretty thoroughly to make sure they're put together well, etc.

Anyway, when I was originally looking at the Necrons, they had about 16 of them. 3 broken in one way or another (all on their guns), and 13 good ones. Now, I wanted to get all of them, but didn't have the cash to swing that. So I settled for getting 10, since 10 is the minimum size for a playable squad. So... I took a look at the 13 and picked the 10 best. Well, 9 best, and one really messed up guy who was apparently trying to look at the ground and shoot birds out of the air at the same time. I only took that guy because I figured I could snap his arms from their sockets and glue them back into a proper position (I did, and he looks fine now).

The other three I left in the store were all complete, but also had visual poses that were really odd. And they weren't things I'd probably be able to fix. I think 2 of them had odd spinal problems (backs arched backwards instead of standing straight or leaning forward), and the other one was fine except for his head. He was looking up. Not straight up, but up in a "wow, aren't the clouds pretty?" kind of way. A distracted Necron. Not the most threatening force if some of them can be enticed to stare into the distance by pretty colours.

Well, that just happens to be the guy I got last night. The lost Necron. I didn't bother trying to fix his head. I assume that maybe, he's watching for the Space Marine drop pods or something.

Oh yeah, the 'cron Lord I painted broke as soon as someone else touched him. I'd drilled out his flight base in an effort to keep from having to fix it all the time. Guess that plan wasn't really a good one. He's fixed again, but I think I'm going to have to take more drastic action. Still, having an army that is slowly (and with my cashflow, it will stay slow) growing, yet also being fully painted is nice. Very nice. Encourages me to get the rest of the armies done.

Now.... in a side note, I'm extending my no-buying policy for a while, even though I've got the 'crons done. I can't afford the cash to keep up with the hobby past maybe buying more paint or my own can of sealant. That stuff is getting a lot of use out of me lately.

Tonight's painting plans are simple and quick. Touchups to the 400 point force, and then sealing. I want to finish them tonight. Oh, last thing, looks like the boyz just might get their models done too. If I can get the IG guy to paint, and the Ultra guy to do at least a marine a day, they should both make it for games in early October.

Posted 10:28 AM by Tim
The Commissar is done. Or at least, done enough to make it so that anything I added to it would be excess. In an odd form of payment, the guy provided me with a Necron Lord model to enhance my fledgling Necron army (I bought that one unit of 'cron Warriors on impulse, and now! I've got a partial army...).

So, given that I already own Dark Eldar, Imperial Guard and Sisters of Battle forces that are largely (if not almost entirely) unpainted, and that I've owned forces (for brief periods) that didn't quite get finished being painted, I've made it a point to not let any Necron model sit unpainted for longer than a day. The Warriors I did the day I got them. The next day, I dug up the Immortal, and though he had been technically sitting for years, I had him done by nightfall.

Two Scarab bases and the Necron Lord came next. The Scarabs were easy to do and were done in a flash. The Lord waited a day before the work started. He's even gotten a mild conversion (double adjustment to his Warscythe). This is the first army I've ever managed to keep up painting and purchasing. It's a good feeling. Now I just need to save for a month or so to buy a second unit of Necron Warriors.

Posted 12:37 PM by Tim
The Commissar continues. I ended up with less time overall for working on him than I wanted, but that seems to have worked to my advantage in the long run. Making fabric isn't easy, and I'm not sure it's something I'm any good at. It looks like most of my big plans for the cape are giong to have to be scrapped, since I'm just not very good at it. I'm going to have to make a couple of adjustments here and there to make it look even reasonable in my opinion. Ah well, my mistake for not mixing the green stuff like I was thinking (more blue for harder dried stuff), so now I'm going to have to compensate with a hard layer tonight, and hopefully with a goodly bit of heavy cured softer stuff for the trim.

My camera is annoying too. It eats batteries. I've tried to take a few pictures, but it won't save them. It'll take the pic, but the memory kills the batteries too quick and the pic doesn't get saved in the end. Quite annoying. Hopefully, I'll have some better pics tonight so I can show the guy who's getting the model. He won't be by today though, likely, but I might be over there tomorrow to drop the mini off. I want to finish that cape tonight (just got smoothing, some extra shaping, definition, trim and so forth to do).

Last little bit. Tiny details are freaking tough to do! They need tiny tools which I just don't have! Grr... I'll get it though. I'll change my plans a little, but it'll be done and it'll look good!

Posted 9:54 AM by Tim
This morning I just had to get a few more bits of the Commissar done. There's a practical reason for it, not just because I like sculpting so much. I added the left epaulet, and the power cell hose to the power fist. With both of those things modeled, it's pretty apparent which way the cape is going to have to hang now. I'll have to lean over to the right pretty far (the bolt pistol hand side), since the arm join on the right is pretty bad, and the power cell hose is on the left. I do want to show that detail off... so, I'm forced to deal with a strong wind from the left.

In other news, I finished off the flocking on the DE models. I now have 400 points of painted and flocked minis. Yay! I'll be doing some last touchup painting tonight to make sure they're 100% ready for sealant.

Posted 9:49 PM by Tim
More updates! This is becomming a really good project blog place for me. :)

Ok. More work on the commissar sculpt. I had a couple of incidents of me being too smart for myself and having to do work over... I'll cover them as we go.

One thing I noticed from yesterday's work was that the left knee pad was slightly larger than the right. I took a very very tiny bit of green stuff and bulked that out just a smidge. I then went to work on the boots.

Now, normally, I wouldn't bother with the boots at all (I didn't for mine, and well, that's "normally"). But, I know the guy is modeling his colour scheme after the Canadian military, and Canadian military have very distinctive boot styles. I wanted to duplicate that. They're not too hard, just an extra layer on the toes and the heels (lightly sculpted) and the look is carried forward.

I added a tiny bit of something between the front and side plates. This, to me, gives the armour something to latch on to, to keep it whole and actually on the body. It's my concession to that idea, anyway. Then, I added the butt plate. It took me two tries to get it the right size, and sculpting it wasn't too bad. That's when the first mistake came up. While doing the butt plate, I had pressed the model against my fingers, and wrecked the very tiny and very careful work I'd done on the kneepad. I had to re-do it. Very irritating.

I noticed a couple of rather insignificant imperfections in the eveness of the lower chest plate, so I patched it, and then added a small bit of armour detailing to it (to match my own Commissar's armour - they'll look like they had standard kit, more or less). I then added the upper chest piece.

Now, the orignal chest plate (which I'd be covering) is a band of metal, with two pectoral plates on top. I wanted to replicate that look, so I knew I'd be doing some interesting indenting and sculpting. My new dental tools made this soooo much easier. The only thing I'm lamenting is a dental pick for doing tiny detail carving.

Ok. After I got the chest plate on, I went to the back of the model again. I was pretty much stuck handling the model by the base and arms now. I added a lower back plate, to match the lower chest plate, and then, a power cell plate above that to cover the upper back entirely. The last of the horribly unsightly miniature was covered. Only good looking miniature was left.

This is where mistake #2 came in. Remember the detail I'd added to the lower chest plate? Well, I'd squashed it. So I had to push the stuff around again and re-form it. It meant making sure I didn't touch anything I'd worked on now.

I then tackled the arms. The left arm has the power fist on it, and a heavy marine-style armour. I'm not sure if I want to cover that or not, so for tonight, I've left it. I think I might convert the elbow pad into something a little more square though.

On the right arm, he's just got cloth. He needed a heavier elbow pad, so I made him one. It's important to make the elbow pad similar to the knee pad. They're supposed to be part of the same armour, so it'd look odd for them to be too different. It also needed to face more or less downwards, since that's the direction the elbow would point if he bent his arm.

Then, the fist concession to him being an actual commissar. The right epaulet. The epaulet is pretty easy to make really. First, you put a block of green stuff down, then you give that block a hat. The hat you leave pretty much alone, as long as it flows with the curve of the shoulder pad. The block under the hat, you notch a lot to look like tassles. This gives the full effect of a nice, fancy epaulet. I'm not worried about matching it up to the rest of the body on this mini, because I'll be putting at least part of the cape over it.

I'm still working out the details of how the cape will rest on the model, and just what exactly it will look like in the end... but I've lots and lots of ideas.

Now, you may be wondering... why go to all the trouble of sculpting the back armour and power cell if you're going to cover it all up with a cape? Well, I'm not 100% sure what's going to be covered, and what's not. Wouldn't it be more difficult to try to shove those details under the cape later on? I think so. Besides, this way gives the cape a real, true flow. It's going to look like it's sitting on top of the other armour and power cell because it really will have to sit on top of them. :P

I'll have to find a way to put pictures up at some point. There's got to be some place I can store 'em. Maybe I'll look into photobucket...

Posted 11:27 PM by Tim
I started the Commissar tonight. Here's the overall plan:

I'm starting with an assembled, plastic Cadian officer. Got the officer hat, a bolt pistol and a power fist. The fist is probably from one of the plastic Space Marine boxes, and the bolt pistol has been modified slightly to add a scope, and it looks like it probably came from the other Space Marine arm. The Commissar is glued down to his base too, so I have to work around that also.

What I'm going to be adding with green stuff is enough detail to make him look like a Commissar, and all the outfitted wargear. This, to me, means adding epaulets over the existing shoulderpads, and making them look the way they're supposed to. There's also going to be a couple of added skulls and such here and there to make him look particularily bad ass.

There aren't many wargear options on him that aren't already present. The only thing he's missing is Carapace Armour. That's easy enough to do, I just need to add something that looks more or less like Karsakin armour to him. That means knee and elbow pads, heavier chest and back plates, and a set of plates covering the upper legs.

I'll be looking to make the already quite visible power fist into something a little more impressive, and adding additional detailing on the carapace armour.

The owner of the model has requested that I add on a cloak instead of a great coat. I think I can do that. I've got plans for it, but I'll have to try a couple things out before I get a good idea of just what it'll look like in the end. Likely, it'll end up covering over most of the back armour I'll be sculpting, which is probably for the best anyway... the current model's back is severely mangled, and even filling it over is probably going to leave it messy. The cloak covering it will totally obsure it, and leave me to just making it one smooth area instead of really needing to sculpt the details onto it.

Lastly, there's just a couple of detail things which will be added on by me for purely aesthetic reasons. I won't even bother to list them here, but I hope they'll show up on the model well. Likely, they'll be the super tiny details that only I'd notice..... but we'll see if the boys will find them.

Anyway, progress for tonight... I got the knee pads on. One is just a smidge larger than the other, but I might let that slide, since they both look pretty good. I knew I wanted to start with these, since they'd be hard to do right after I started working on the cloak.

I mixed way too much green stuff, so I also prepped those bases that needed it for the Dark Eldar, and flocked three of my five guys that didn't need the green stuff. With the rest of the stuff, I put on one of my tiny details, and added the side and front leg panels. I also put the first chest plate on.

I'm leaving the model to cure all until tomorrow night, when I'll be working on the rest of the chest plates, the butt plate, back, and probably a few more of the details.

With some luck, I'll get this done this week.

Posted 1:59 PM by Tim
I've finally gotten ahold of the spray primer. Yay!

Tonight I plan to do some touching up of the Necrons, and some green stuff and flocking work. If there's enough daylight (or temperatures remain good), then they'll be hit with the sealant.

I've made a rather odd trade of models. I get an IG rocket, plus loader, and a female IG (for use in my sisters force or the Penal Legion) in exchange for a green-stuff makeover of a guardsman into a carapace armoured Commissar. I think I need to pick up a few new tools....I know a place that sells dental equipment, and I've been meaning to pick a few up so I can work on my conversions with a little more accuracy.

The commissar work is moving up the hierarchy of things to do, but the work will be interspersed with my painting. After all, I can only do so much green-stuff modeling at a time before there's too much likelihood of making a mess of the rest of it.

He's given me carte blance, but also a couple guidelines to keep me on track. He wants it to look like a Commissar, and he'd like a cape or something similar. When I did mine, I gave him a great coat - but I think cape will really stand out. I've got big plans.... Remind me to get some batteries for the digicam too... a few in progress pictures will be nice I think.

Posted 12:51 PM by Tim
All I need is a little flock.... and then the necrons will be done. The single Necron Immortal I have is all that's holding me back. I did manage to get the paint on it in an acceptable tabletop fashion. It fits into the army ok, but not as nicely as I would have liked. I doubt I'll ever have more than a tiny, tiny force if I expand them at all. After all, what's the point, right? No sense in collecting a huge "for fun" force.

Maybe 500 points or something, and call that done.

I may be playing tonight. If so, I'll put the results up. If not, I am at least stealing the sealant tonight so I can finally get those models done!

Posted 10:57 AM by Tim
If you don't know me (or haven't read very far into my blog yet), then you need to be told how much of a big gamer I am. I love games. I like playing them, I like reading about them, I like thinking about them. I am a gamer.

The current top interest game is Warhammer 40K. It's waxed and waned over time, but as long as I've got minis, I'll probably have some interest in painting, converting and playing. My trouble is, I see all the cool armies out there, and I just want to find out about, and probably play all of 'em. I'm exactly the person Games Workshop dreams about during their "me time."

Anyhow, I've always had a soft spot for certain armies. Dark Eldar and Dark Elves were my starting forces, and they're still my first love. They have such great themes and story potential. That's the bit I like most, the story behind the armies.

I also own some Imperial Guard, Witchhunters, and a small contingent of Space Marines (to be be turned into something eventually). I also own single models (or not more than three) of Tyranids, Necrons and Slaaneshi Chaos.

In the past I have owned (and later sold) Eldar, Tau and more Space Marines.

As it stands, I've probably owned at least one model of every 40K army that's interested me. So... it should have been no surprise when I went out looking for second hand minis for some Harlequin conversions, and came back instead with 6 old-style Eldar (who can work as Harlequins), and 10 Necron Warriors.

Now, just owning the models isn't an issue in itself. It's the fact that none of the models were painted. No paint means I'll eventually have to paint them. I'm not known for having hours and hours of free painting time. Adding on 16 models (yep, 10 warriors and 6 Harls), could easily translate into weeks of time. Assuming I start on them at all.

Well, as a sort of punishment to myself, I decided that I would not paint or buy anything else for any army until I had those 10 Necrons painted. Painted and done. So, last night, I focused on getting the paints out and just working assembly-line style on those little buggers. It took me from about 7 till 2 to get them all done, but they are totally finished. I have 10 tabletop quality Necron Warriors staring back at me from my Dark Eldar shelf. They look cool.

Now, I've got a hankering to find the other Necron I own (update: I've found it. It was in amongst my bitz, and he's whole and complete - yay!) and paint him up in the same scheme. Ok. That's the modified plan. I've included him in the other Necron purchase, so I can't paint or buy anything else until he's done too.

FYI, the colour scheme is pretty straightforward. Bodies start with a Chaos Black basecoat. Boltgun Metal is brushed on over that on all joints, ribcage, fingers and the back of the skull. Armour plates (shoulders, arms, legs, hand plates and feet) are done in Ultramarines Blue. The skull plates are touched up with Chaos Black to ensure they're dark, then Blood Red is painted into the eyes, and also put onto the smooth gauss rifle cable. Skull White is applied in a heavy drybrush over the skull plate to make it look very white, but also retain it's skull-like shading. This looks very cool with the red eyes. Goblin Green is applied to the end of the rifle barrels, and also to the pre-fire chamber of the weapon. It's a very close match for the green plastic rods of the rifles. Ice Blue is used on the other rifle cable, and Shining Gold is done on the center chest plate (that's the sternum, BTW). The last bit is a Codex Grey drybrush on the bases (flocked in model railroad ballast), to make the ground look dead and lifeless like them. The overall effect is very nice.

So. I've got this one mini to paint (hopefully today), and then, I'm all set.

Posted 1:47 PM by Tim
I bought a Dark Eldar codex today. Seems a little odd for me to be buying a codex for an army I've owned for years, but I needed one. No, my old one did not wear out - I lost it. Some time back actually.

Anyway, now I have one, and I won't need to rely on Army Builder's item notes (as useful as they are), to tell me what my stuff does. Happy!

Posted 3:47 PM by Tim
I had a plan. It involved me getting all kinds of painting done on those 8 Warriors last night. It didn't happen. I got involved in conversations, then had to field a couple of questions, then had friends drop by for a minute.... not to mention getting home late because I had to pick up some stuff. All in all, everything else hopped onto last night and wanted doing.

I'm gonna be aiming at getting at least the first colour done tonight. If I can't, then I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. Tomorrow night looks out, and well, the weekend seems busy too. I'll get to it.

I wanted to take some pictures of the group at the start, and as they got done in stages... but the camera eats batteries. :( If I can find some cheap ones, I'll look into that.

Posted 2:10 PM by Tim
Waiting about at work, reading 40K articles, looking at converstions and also doing a little bit of actual work, and I'm thinking about getting home and doing those minis up quick. While I'm thinking, I keep getting quick ideas about doing some more green stuff conversion work. I've got a couple nubs of it about, and more than enough reason to try it out.... Just wondering what to do with it.

I think I should put the Commissar model up on the paint block too. No chance of getting him done, but some chance of nabbing a few pics of stuff to tease the guys with. :P

That Commissar is going to get done this month though. I may need to buy some colours...

Also, the Slaanesh guy (who was going to be a Lord but will likely be downgraded to an Aspring Champion) is also slated for doing at some point this month.

I'm starting to build a list, so I'll restrict myself from thinking too far ahead. Here's the deal though:

7 Warriors, 1 Splinter Cannon Warriors - start tonight.
2 Incubi - soon
Commissar Derin - after the Warriors or with them. Whichever.
Slaanesh Aspiring Champion - after the Incubi

That's the list. I figure I can get the lot done by the time the month is out. As long as I start painting soon.

Posted 9:50 AM by Tim
The painting is done. I managed to sit down and get some actual work done last night while chatting with a couple of the guys. So, every model (both new and old lists) is now done. I'm quite pleased. All that's left to do is a little bit of green stuff on the bases to cover holes and such, then flocking and seal. Simple.

So now, the only thing to think about it what to paint next. I could drop the painting habit right away, since there's no longer a need for it, but I've got so many models that are not painted. It just doesn't seem right to leave them that way.

Part of me figures it would be pretty useful (and easy) to paint enough warriors to finish off the Raider Squads. There's only 10 models each, so there'd only need to be 20 painted in total. I'd done 10 before, and added three already, so that really only leaves me with about 7 to paint to have full units ready. Add on an extra Splinter Cannon guy for extra retinue goodness, and I'd be all set. All my Dark Eldar models are based already, so it's just putting colours on. Seems like a solid idea to me.

Let's make that the next project.

Project 2: Round out the Raiders.

7 Warriors - based.
1 Splinter Cannon - based.

Now, at about 30 minutes per model (my average timed speed for Warriors and the scheme I'm using), I should finish the whole lot of them in about 4 hours time. Given my painting time available... that's maybe 4 days. Less if I start them off tonight. Since I'm doing green stuff work tonight, it'll need an evening to cure properly, so I wouldn't be basing until tomorrow night anyway. With a bit of effort tonight and tomorrow I could base the lot of them and not miss out on anything. Sweet.

Posted 11:48 AM by Tim
So yeah, there's not much going on in the world of painting. Nothing done last night. Had planned to get the skin on the biker at least inked. Just couldn't be bothered. Too much staying up late I suppose.

The hope tonight is to get a bit of game on. If that fails, I'm going to do the basing, and possibly get the sealing done in the wee hours.

Posted 9:57 AM by Tim
I tried out the army against the Imperial Guard again. The first encounter I tried to use my firepower to whittle him down to size. It didn't work. First, he's bigger than me, and second, he's got a lot more heavy guns than I have survivable units.

So, second battle (the most recent), I swapped tactics. Use my speed to drop my troops on his head before he has a chance to cripple my units with his firepower. Then, I assault him full force in an attempt to hit and break his flank, then moving across each unit in turn, scattering them as I go. Fair idea, difficult implementation.

A quick recap, just for those interested.

He did the same sort of deployment as before. Long line of troopers taking the entire deployment area. I concentrated all my units in a glob on the right, except for the bikes, who took cover on the left. Opening turn, I hopped everything the full distance forward, but pulled the bikes back slightly (not enough though, since they should have moved cover to cover - silly me being reckless with my men again). The IG focused on the jetbikes, knowing how annoyingly difficult they'd be to break if they hit the lines. I think they didn't consider the Raiders to be a real threat. They can weather the firestorm from them, and I don't think they'd considered the idea of me disembarking and assaulting.

The focused fire of the IG killed all of the jetbikes, but the plamagunners of his stormtroopers fell to their superheated weapon's exhaust gasses. Good for me, bad for him.

On my turn, the Dracon found herself likely to be just shy of being able to get into combat. This was bad for my assault plans, because it would leave my hitting their forces in pieces, rather than as a consolidated push. Both raider squads disembarked, fired wildly but killed nothing, and then assaulted. The assault went well. They killed several, lost none, and broke the IG, sweeping as they went, smashing on into the next nearest unit. As far as my assault plans went, it was textbook. The IG retaliated by throwing every unit into combat against my well-outnumbered forces.

The assault thinking on my side had been for local superiority. At least even numbers of guys, but having mine be a little stronger in combat to give me an edge. It didn't work that way. My 10 were facing some 25 others. The DE tried to fight, but it looks like the assault from last turn had taken the fight out of them. They only killed two. The IG made a solid showing, and tore my guys to bits, killing an entire squad, and squishing half the other. The broken unit held though they got completely mobbed.

The Dracon hopped into the fight, and pretty soon, she found herself completely useless. Her weapons did nothing, and she was cut apart by the IG. The other unit broke and ran. The IG consolidated into it, catching them flat and killing the lot.

Both raiders played hopscotch for a few turns, getting pelted with rockets until the game ran out. In the end, I had one mobile (but weaponless) Raider, versus almost the entire IG starting line.

The loss was less punishing than game 1, though, so I think I'm doing something right.

After this battle (and a draw against Khorne), I decided to make a change to my list. Normally, the idea of painting different units than originally planned would make for bad times for me, not so in this case. Most of my stuff is done, and any swapping would be small.

Anyhow, what I've done is swap out one Raider squad and the Dracon's skyboard for a retinue in a Raider. The actual change in models is that I use my Dracon on foot (I've got one that's been painted a long time), drop the Blaster Warrior and the Sybarite, and pick up an Incubi and a Splinter Cannon Warrior.

This weekend (last night actually), I took a few hours of paint time to chat and hang out with the guys, and painted up the Incubus and Splinter Cannon warrior. All told, I'm at the same spot I was for painting before I did the switch. Cool, eh?

Just that one pesky jetbike pilot left to do, and a little bit of highlighting trim on the bike itself and I'm done the painting. Then, it's flocking, drying time and a blast of the sealant. Then all done. I'll be well ahead of schedule if I can get that done tonight (I'll have to pick up some sealant though).

Posted 10:23 AM by Tim
The army is coming along great. I took some time to work on the jetbikes yesterday and noticed that the one I was working on had a rider with skin. I didn't want two riders like that to work on (skin takes me a while to do), so I swapped a rather nice looking jetbike out for a much sillier looking jetbike with an easier to paint rider. That let me do some quick painting, and get him done. So, there's only the other jetbike rider to do, and I've already started his skin process.

I had some more time yesterday to paint (my evening of maybe playing with the army fell flat), so I figured I'd finish off the sybarite model. They're not that hard to do really. They don't have any more armour than a regular Warrior, it's just differently shaped. They do have a couple of hooks and bangles, but they're small and simple to do. The main difference is their hair and their close combat weapon. I always think of them as poison blades. I left the blade for last, as I knew they'd be the most difficult.

I wanted to do them similar to how I've done blades in the rest of the force. I've got the other sybarite (blades in several shades of highlighted green), and an Archon model on foot (blade-fist done in shades of blue, highlighted to white). I'd been debating either doing the blades in blue, or in red. I don't have enough shades of green to do wet-blending, which is what I was planning to attempt.

So, I collected my blues and my reds and took a look at them.

Reds went:
Chaos black (not red, but a good foundation)
Dwarf flesh (brown-red)
Scab Red (more red-brown-red)
Red Gore
Blood Red
Fiery Orange
Warlock Purple (a purple-red, but blends in with Fiery Orange to tone it)
Tentacle Pink
Elf Flesh (very light pink-white)
Skull White

Blues went:
Chaos Black (again, good foundation)
Midnight Blue (discontinued colour, almost black)
Regal Blue (the replacement for Midnight Blue)
Ultramarine Blue
Lightning Blue
Ice Blue
Skull White
Hawk Turquoise (too green to be blue really, but could have blended in before Ultramarine Blue)

As you can see, the range for red went much deeper than for blue. Also, I already had a model with blue blades.

Let me tell you, wet blending isn't easy. Keeping each of the colours available, and painting them on with enough water, and in succession is not easy. I had a couple of gaffs I had to fix after the fact too, but I think it worked out in the end. The blades are definately red, and do tone their way up to white at the tips. That's one bit that's been consistent with them all. The blades shade their way up to lighter colours from black, and always end up pure white in the end. I think they look fairly decent, but far from great. Certainly play-worthy. I really need to flock and seal that mini soon, so I don't accidentally rub the paint from the tips with my fingers or during moving. It'd suck to have to repaint them.

Also, though I said I had the jetbikes finished, I took a serious look at them and compared them to the army. That's when I noticed it. On the raiders, the front armour plates are Liche Purple, edged in Warlock Purple. It looks good. But, on the jetbikes, I'd left them just Liche Purple, even though they have similar shapes. It didn't take me long to realize I'd need to edge the jetbikes too just to bring the colours together more. So I did.

Edging is something that really adds to the model's look, but it can be take too far. Not every surface should be edged, but once you start, you sort of feel like needing to do everything. I've kept it limited to just the front armour on the bikes though. I just don't have the time to do the edging on every single Warrior and vehicle surface. Way more time than I want to invest in their painting.

I've still got to do the edging on the last jetbiker, and also do up the skin colours. Once that's done, I'll be able to finish off the model's armour and hair, and it'll be fully done. Then I just need to get ahold of flocking and sealant and I'm all done. The force is so close to being finished, and I'm way ahead of deadline. I'm so happy!

Posted 11:05 AM by Tim
I must be in the mood for painting because the work keeps on going. I got to work on the blaster Warrior, and finished him off (except for basing). That leaves me with rather little left to do on the force as a whole. Horray for me!

Once I get these done, I'm not sure what's next. Either I'll churn a few more Warriors just to get them done and out of the way, or I'll maybe take another look at that Slaaneshi marine champion I've got.

Posted 11:35 PM by Tim
More progress today. Managed to get one of the jetbikes done. Started the more complicated rider of the other biker, and got a second colour onto the Blaster Warrior.

I chatted with one of the other guys about what to do for armies after 40K. I'm just not sure where I'm going, but there's a lot of options. I'd said that if I was going to do a Marine army, it'd be a Lost Legion kind of army. Basically, the legion is made up a rag-tag groups of warp-stranded marines, banded together against their common foe. I'd start small, and try to do each of the marines as seperate, individual conversions. Each one suited for their task and specialized for what they do. Might be interesting, but it's not gonna happen for a long, long time.

Posted 9:05 AM by Tim
A progress update on the status of the painting.

Let's start at the beginning. Here's my 40K in 40 minutes force:

Dracon - with Agonizer, Splinter Pistol, Hellion Skyboard and Plasma Grenades - 73 points

Raider Squad 1 - 121 points
4 Warriors - Splinter Cannon, Blaster
Sybarite - Poison Blades, Splinter Pistol

Raider Squad 4 - 121 points
4 Warriors - Splinter Cannon, Blaster
Sybarite - Poison Blades, Splinter Pistol

3 Jetbikes - blaster - 85 points

Total - 400 points.

Small list, eh? Well, it was mostly painted to start. There had been a bring and battle event some time back at a Games Workshop store. You needed a painted unit to play, so I did up a full Raider Squad. Sybarite, Blaster, Splinter Cannon and Raider with Horrorfex. It did very, very well. The point is, I've got those guys fully painted and based already. So I can use them to kick things off.

I've also had more or less painted raiders and jetbikes for a while now, and I did a Dracon on Jetbike a while back for a painting competition - it was never entered because I had to move.

Anyway, I've got a few finished models.

Here's where things were to start:

Dracon - done, needing minor repairs.

Raider 1 - 90% done.
Sybarite 1 - done.
Blaster Warrior 1 - done.
Splinter Cannon Warrior 1 - done.
2 Warriors - done.

Raider 2 - 90% done.
Sybarite 2 - based ~10% done.
Blaster Warrior 2 - based ~10% done.
Splinter Cannon Warrior 2 - based ~10% done.
2 Warriors - done.

Jetbike with Blaster - needs repair, bike done, rider based.
2 Jetbikes - based ~10% done.

That was the extent of things to start. And I've got until September 30 to finish and base everything.

I had a productive evening last night. I finished both raiders, Splinter Cannon Warrior 2, fixed the Jetbike rider, and put the first colour onto all the based models (except for the jetbike riders - they're fiddly). The Jetbikes need more or this colour, but it takes a few minutes to sort out which parts need what. Last week, I also fixed the Dracon, so she's now 100% again.

Here's where we stand today:

Dracon - done.

Raider 1 - done.
Sybarite 1 - done.
Blaster Warrior 1 - done.
Splinter Cannon Warrior 1 - done.
2 Warriors - done.

Raider 2 - done.
Sybarite 2 - 20% done.
Blaster Warrior 2 - 2% done.
Splinter Cannon Warrior 2 - done.
2 Warriors - done.

Jetbike with Blaster - bike done, rider based.
2 Jetbikes - 20% done.

I'm very happy with the progress so far. Dracon done, Raider Squad 1 done, and Squad 2 has only 2 members needing time to finish them up.

The jetbikes will be (and are always) the longest and most fiddly bits to do. They're annoying to fix and difficult to work on.

Posted 2:28 PM by Tim
Given that my other journal is too much of a place for me to put my real thoughts and feelings now... I figure I'll try to put more of the silly things in my life in here.

Last night, I managed to get two games of Warhammer 40K on. Both were 40K in 40 Minutes, but that's considerably better than what I have been playing the last few months - namely, nothing.

So, here's what's spurred this bit of playing on. I want to play a game at the local Bunker. To do that, I have to meet the store paint standard. Three colours minimum, and the base has to be at least painted. I've got a single unit which meets that standard. So, to force myself back into the hobby, I put out a challenge. Get 400 points of 40K in 40 minutes together, get it painted to store standard, then go down to the Bunker and play.

Making the list was step 1. I bantered around different ideas for the three armies I currently collect. Dark Eldar, Sisters of Battle, and Imperial Guard (the Penal Legion). I even briefly considered Chaos (Slaaneshi), but it would cost me too much to properly outfit a unit... even only 400 points. I just don't own enough of them to make a real go of it.

I thought about the Sisters. Good force, fair mid-range shooting, and can handle marines with sufficient firepower. Trouble is, I don't own the models I'd need to make a viable list. No cash for buying them either. So, they're out.

IG was another idea. I like 'em, I've got the models I need, and they've had a head start on the painting for a while now. I do have a rather limited painting time budget. Only so much of my evenings can be allocated to painting, and the number of models that need finishing is greater than the amout of time I could give them. So, I could field these guys, but I deceided against it.

So, we're left with just my original force. The Dark Eldar. Nobody else is playing them, so they're a good enough force to toss out there. Just for sheer shock value, if nothing else.

I figured I'd go with a themed army. Something that really captured the spirit of a patrol force. A little raiding party. I figured, I'd keep everyone from ever needing to touch the ground. All flying, all the time. That's raiders, skyboards, jetbikes and the like. I noodled with points for a while before settling on a rather skimpy list. 2 Raiders squads (5 man each with sybarite and toys), Dracon on skyboard, and 3 jetbikes. Not a lot of guys for 400 points. I figure that if I'd gone with foottroops, I could have easily put down an extra 8 to 10 guys. It'd give me a little more survivability, but it would be as nice to the theme.

So, the force is built on the idea of applying whithering firepower to focused locations quickly, and then bugging out of there to apply it somewhere else. As long as I remember the plan, and stick to it, I should be ok.

The others of the group, just FYI, are Imperial Guard, Chaos (Khorne), Chaos (Iron Warriors), and Ultramarines.

I played against Khorne last night as my first opponent. The game went quick. His side had a Berzerker squad of 8 with champ, a lieutenent on juggernaut with hound, and three bikers. 13 models to my mere 17.

We were playing on a battle strewn field (Khorne and the IG had just fought it out on here, and the IG had managed to win). There was some cover, but not much. A building on each flank at each end, and a couple of busted Chimera littered the center field.

I deployed the raiders in the center, the jetbikes in the building on the right flank, and the Dracon in the building on the left. He deployed the Berzerkers opposite my Dracon, and his bikes and Lieut held the flank opposite of my rightmost raider.

I took first turn, and raced the raiders forward together. The Dracon hopped her building, the bike hopped theirs also. The whole force had just moved 12" towards the enemy. Rush Khorne? You bet. The raider lances hit and killed a biker each, making my job with them that much easier. His forces ran forward, the bikes and lieut keeping pace with each other. The bike let out a shot at a raider, but it couldn't connect.

Second turn, both raiders move to the right flank, facing the lieut and bike withing charge range. The jetbikes crossed over near the Dracon, who made a short hop behind a chimera to take complete cover. The Raiders each let out their lance, and the full compliment of crew weapons. A blaster, splinter cannon, 2 splinter rifles and a splinter pistol. The lieut the bike and the hound all snuffed it. The Jetbikes fired on the Berzerkers, but couldn't wound. The Berzerkers moved forward, fired a pistol round and missed.

Turn three, the raiders both hopped over towards the Berzerkers, while the Dracon and jetbikes moved to charge range. The entire army fired into the Berzerkers, felling 4, and leaving the other four open. Dracon and Jetbikes charge in, doing some damage and killing two more Berzerkers. The jetbikes lose two members as well. We messed up the rules a bit here, and the other biker takes a leadership test and flees. On Khorne's turn, the Dracon kills the other berzerker, leaving only the champion. The champ squishes the Dracon with his power fist, and ends up looking down the barrels of the Raiders.

Turn four, the Raiders let him have it, and he is killed. Total annhilation for the Khornates, but they did manage to get some damage in.

Second game was against the Imperial Guard. I had the same list, the IG had 1 Infanty Squad (command, 2 troop squads and a 6 man remenant), a commissar, and an 8 man unit of stormtroopers.

Against the IG, I had a plan. Keep out of the raiders, and try to outshoot them. Stupid plan in retorspect. Keeping out of the raiders is a good idea, but trying to outshoot them wasn't.

His side has three rocket launchers, and two plasma rifles. Plus two power weapons, and probably a plasma pistol as well. Needless to say, this is an uphill fight.

My deployment jetbikes on the left, Dracon on the right, and the raiders in the middle. This time I'm playing the opposite end of the table. He puts the Stormtroopers opposite my jetbikes, and his infantry spread over the reast of the frontage, held in place by the commisar and the command squad in the center.

I'm given the first turn this time, and rush my forces forward. The men pile out of the raiders as a precaution. I fire the lances into the command squad, forgetting he has a commissar, and thinking that two early deaths may drive off the command. With the command gone, the rest of the army can be easily shot up enough to break them. Also, if the command goes, they'd take the power weapons and a rocket with them. One of my troop squads fleets forward, the other I"m hoping is in range so I hold. They're not. His troops hold the line except for the stormtroopers who advance. The infantry launch a rocket onto the Dracon (killing her), and downing one of the raiders with the other two. Nothing else has range on anyone.

Second turn, I re-position the surviving raider, and hop the jetbikes further ahead, hoping to get to charge range on the stromtroopers. The warriors walk, and let go with splinter cannon fire. It's all focused on the stormtroopers. The raider and jetbikes fire in as well. When the smoke clears, there's just one plasma rifle left. His nerve holds, and he sticks around for the IG turn too. Two missiles down the other raider, and the third blows away half of one squad of Warriors. Plasma melts two jetbikes, and lasguns shoot down the last one. It's looking bad for me.

Turn three, the warriors huddle towards a Chimera, and lay fire partly into the plasma gunner, killing him, and partly into the command squad, killing all but the commissar. The commissar leaves the battle line, to try to advance on the enemy. His bolt pistol kills one man, a missile takes out another leaving only the sybarite who chooses to stick around. The rest of the guns are silentas the warriors are hiding.

Here's where I make mistakes. Well, more mistakes anyway. The Warriors come out from behind cover, hoping to make quick work of the commissar in battle, and maybe reach glorious combat at last. Rather than using fleet to ensure they get to combat, they take the time to shoot some, and do it very badly, messing up pretty much every shot. They're just short of charge range and are totally stuck out in the open against 20-some guard. three missiles, a bolt pistol, and numerous lasguns and a melta eradicate all traces of the Dark Eldar, save one sybarite, who promptly loses his nerve and runs away.

In the end, a wretched showing of how easily such a small force can be mishandled and crushed. Still, a fun game. I'm looking forward to more.