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EDITED IN INTRO (31 March 2011): When I first started this thread nearly a year ago on April 8, 2010, I had no idea this thread would become this popular or last this long. I wanted to thank you all for your support and encouragement.

If you're new to this thread, I would invite you to read all of it. It is a story of myself and some friends - back when I was in the army - developing a 40K playing group out of nothing and making something awesome out of some mail-ordered models from Games Workshop and some scrap packaging material for terrain. From there, all sorts of people joined in, and it became probably the most successful gathering of gamers that I have ever pioneered. Being in the army at the time, that was something very rare. To this day I am still playing and building 40K like a fiend, and have found in it the most long-lived and fun-per-dollar efficient hobby, ever. Since I have left the army and friends have gone separate ways, we have continued to document our growing hobby and how in between the inconveniences of life we continue to spread how wonderful of a hobby this is. Not everyone has stuck with it. But of those who have tried it, most have.

Me and the regular posters you see are always happy to answer questions, post information about the hobby, and generally enjoy correspondence with other enthusiasts. I would invite you to subscribe to this thread; it is being posted on regularly with new stuff all of the time. And we appreciate all of your comments. Thanks for taking the time to read about this and to share your thoughts.

I would like to point something out: The majority of this thread (as of writing this) was written while I was in the U.S. Army during a deployment. Not the worst one most of us have had, which helped give us the opportunity to do this hobby. This thread is made to express how me and other friends who posted here and played and cultivated this game out of a rather inhospitable environment and turn it into something awesome. While we talk about the American army and Iraq some, it is not the focus. We were, and still are, happy to answer questions and describe the deployment and life in the army. However...

What it is not meant to do is show off our work in Iraq, the U.S. army, or somehow thump our chests to the fact that we carried and fired guns. We aren't here to promote what was or is the American military agenda. I am aware that it can be a irritable topic for many people. Let me point out that most soldiers in the U.S. army do not agree with how things went or the justification of what America was or is doing. If you are opposed to America's military agenda, I can understand your frustration and would ask that you don't bring it up. I'm past that, and that is not what this thread is about.

Below his how this thread started a year ago. Enjoy!
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Hey guys. I wasn't sure if this should go in the P&M blogs section or what, because really this is a culmination of pretty much all 40K activity here in FOB Echo, Iraq.

Those of you who have seen me around likely know my predicaments. But I'm just going to post some pictures and explain in-between.

I basically started here because boredom plagues this place. The internet is too slow to do anything but look at non-flash websites, and uploading these pictures takes half an hour. But, when I saw that a couple of people were buying WH40K armies (I think mostly for the painting & modeling at the time), I thought it would be an excellent (if not outrageously expensive) diversion.

I was going to buy Tau, but decided against it when one of the others out here had Tau. So, I then switched to Necrons.



Here's what I've got put together so far. My monolith is shown facing away because I haven't put the front side on yet. I'm waiting until I get my varnish in, so that I can get the inside part of the Gauss Flux gun. I'm debating on varnishing this thing with Gloss or Matte. I've got a couple of wraiths, a tomb spyder, a heavy destroyer, an egyptian-themed necron lord, and the nightbringer waiting to get assembled. I also have a pile of Vallejo paints and 8 flayed ones coming in. I really need to order more brushes, but I don't want to pay GW prices, so I'm not sure where to get them.

You can see another guys' SM in the background.



Here's the scarabs that I did. I still to this day am unsatisfied with my "eye" work but I have to know when I'm asking too much of myself. Fortunately, the scarab eyes are fairly large.



Necrons I did. They were the ones I started on first. I was forced to get the hang of drybrushing to avoid getting paint on their black teeth lines, but a few guys I messed up. Didn't glue the green rods on yet, they're just stuck in place.



The destroyer has decals on it's shoulderpads and on it's... abdomen? To include a very light Tin Bitz drybrush near the top of the abdomen, around the slits in it.



Monolith closer... it looks like ass. But I've screwed up the model to the point where I've got to go with it and at least make it look decent.



My Necron Lord was the most fun. Particularly it's cape and ressurection orb. I need to get this thing varnished, though, before it starts chipping.



A SM my friend is working on.



Iraq! In the middle of a particularly windy day, the dust is so thick that it blots the sun out of the sky. The camera didn't capture the lighting, but everything glowed with a much darker red aura... it felt like being on Mars.

If you look at the earlier pictures, you may be able to see that we play in a concrete bunker. We made a table out of sheets of plywood and used green duct tape to show the boundary line, making a 8x4' table into a 6x4 table with two feet of "storage area". We pretty much come in here every night after work and drink sodas (or near-beers), smoke cigarettes, and paint or play matches. I tend to lose...

Since everything we buy we have to ship home, buying unnecessarily large or expensive items is difficult to justify. That's why we pretty much made all of our terrain out of garbage we could find - mostly cardboard boxes, packaging foam, and PVA glue. I think I may break down and buy GW's craters, but until then we use a chopped-up dining-hall disposable bowl.

I've got some more pictures on the way, and we're probably going to play a game tonight, so I'll try to get some pictures of the match!

A guy here took old cds and used them as bases to make craters out of with sprue rubble bits. Something like that is pretty simple to make and looks pretty good too. Nice job with the green. Really makes for some good eerie lighting parts.

First, I want to say 'Thanks' for your service; I'm an old soldier myself and I realize how thankless your commitment can be. Secondly, I think it's just awesome you guys are forming a community out there to keep your mind off the boredom. The best we could muster around the tents were some girly mags when I was in. Oh, and one guy had a gameboy (The original gameboy).

I'm loving what you guys are doing with the terrain! The pre-fabricated terrain from GW is nice, but I so love making it up myself. I'm guessing the Necrons are actually based w/ sand from the desert? So appropriate

Rymafyr wrote:
I'm guessing the Necrons are actually based w/ sand from the desert? So appropriate

Actually, the "starter pack" I bought came with modeling sand, so I used that just because I might was well use it up and get rid of it before moving on to actual sand. ...but a lot of guys here are getting spray adhesive from our Supply Room and sprinkling sand and small flecks of gravel on the terrain pieces.

After tonight's game (Orcs Vs. Tau), I'll try to get the pictures uploaded. It takes forever on this connection to upload decent pictures, so we'll see. Some guys would rather play than paint, so they're fielding largely unpainted armies. And all of these guys are either totally new, or haven't ever messed with the hobby seriously, so expect a little sloppiness here and there.

Good stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Making terrain out of trash and scrap is a time-honored tradition. Cardboard and packaging foam are two of the main ingredients for terrain back stateside too. Using old or scratched CDs to build craters is one of the best and cheapest ways to go. You can use bits of sprue, clay, tin foil and/or pebbles to make the crater walls.

Here's some more stuff we worked on today. One of the guys who were going to do the match had to go on a mission, so we held off for the time being.



My executive officer. He's been working on his terminators lately, focusing on a largely assault army with a chapter he designed himself. Him and I have played quite a few games together and are starting to get a good grip on the rules. He informed me today that we've been using Special Characters attatched to squads in the wrong way when we assault. I'll have to research that further before our next game.



Specialist Erickson, painting his Valkyrie. He's a Tank Gunner. His imperial guard are popular around here for their resemblance to a modern army, and he is very good at cannibalizing his models with household items to make things like spare rockets, ghillie suits, bipod legs, ect. He still hasn't gotten around to playing an actual game, but fell in love with the modeling part and is eager to get started with actual gameplay. The XO and I playing matches inspired him to start actually playing.



SPC Erickson working on a LARGE blown-up imperial structure. Good thing the Supply Room has a very large case of super glue handy.



His finished structure from before, but finished(-ish? I never asked him.)

I did some work on my Heavy Destroyer today. I didn't take pictures, yet. I don't think I'm going to get more than one... I don't have much trouble with vehicles so far.

I was also having a great deal of trouble with super-glue and minis. I was going to stick to straight green-stuff (I hear it's a great adhesive, but I'm not positive). But I tried sticking little bits of paper inbetween the contact areas for a quick-stick so I wouldn't have to hold the parts together for half an hour, and to see if that also helped guarantee a good join. I'm getting really tired of having to re-file down every contact area when a part falls off with the slightest pressure.



Here's another terrain piece Erickson built.



And here is the inside of the bunker. It's a mess, but we've all got our own projects, so things get scattered about.

Well, next time I have some more, I'll post some. It will probably be tomorrow. Would you guys rather me post them in clickable thumbnails?

I like the monster themed valk

Badass, troop. It's good to know that next time I visit the 'raq there might be other foots that paint and play 40k. Good luck, may your weapons be always clean, your feet always dry, and may a camel never spit on you!

I actually find this kind of heart-warming

I mean, I view the Iraq War pretty negatively (and if I'm honest, the US military).

But it's nice to see you guys acting like, well, guys! Hope it relieves you of some of your stress and you get home...

Necrons are looking good.

Thanks for serving, btw, much respect. I'm always tempted to enlist, but my wife(a chAir Force LT) needs me around to keep her sane.

Try this place for significantly cheaper GW minis:
http://www.thewarstore.com/

The necrons you posted look good, keep at it.

God Bless You!!!

In answer to your super-glue problem. There's some stuff you can get called zip-kicker or glue accelerator.

http://www.thewarstore.com/product50185.html

Basically, once you apply the super glue lighly spray this stuff and the glue will dry instantly. It helps make it go worlds faster when assembling miniatures.

Just be careful not to get the accelerator and the glue on your fingers at the same time or it will burn like a mother *%$#! (They're have been days where I've had to take an Exacto knive and saw my fingers apart because of this stuff.) However, you should be able to assemble whole units in a much quicker and cleaner time.

Thanks again, your service is appreciated.

Ahhh Fob Echo..

Spent some time at that fine establishment myself around 2007.

Though I think it was called Camp Echo then.

See that stuff right their? Thats what 40k is all about baby!

Ok! We had a match today, and of course more pictures. SPC Erickson played his first game, and had a blast!



Erickson plays Imperial Guard, but he didn't know enough of the game yet to even have enough men to fill a Platoon, much less the two required for his Force Organizational Chart. But we let him go with it because we're here to have a good time, and to keep people interested.



Here's his sniper squad in their ghillie suits.



And here's a squad of guys he did. I seemed to have trouble uploading another that had camo-facepaint and tatoos painted on his models.



An overview of the match IG vs. SM. Our XO and Erickson had laid out their units but had not moved yet. Erickson did relatively good for an army he barely knew how to organize, and he learned to play as they went along. Somehow his IG squads managed to drop a terminator squad.



Our XO shaking his dice for a roll. Doc is in the back observing the game. He's one of the many who come in to see us play, but shy away from committing to being a part of it. I guess the price tag alone is enough to scare many off. Hopefully we'll get a few more players in here as time goes buy. Our Tank Platoon Leader was thinking about buying Chaos Space Marines after watching the last half of the match.



The battle was half-underway here.

Erickson lost an Annihilation match 5 vs. 2 units, in a 5 turn game. Unfortunately most of his points were used on vehicles that he loved to paint for modeling purposes, and one of them was a half-assembled Valkyrie. He did put some brown patterning in addition to the green, for those of you who saw his Valkyrie before. He's a big fan of the camo patterning, and tends to gloss coat all of his dudes. I'm not a huge fan of that, but I encourage everyone to do what they think is good with their models. I just wish some players would paint their sets instead of just playing with them.

I helped officiate rules while assembling more of my two wraiths and my heavy destroyer. We called it a night earlier than normal, so I could get a chance to come in here and upload more pictures. It took me an hour to upload the ones on this post. The internet is so slow out here...

Oh, and thank you very much on your thanks and well wishes! I'll let the guys know the community sends their regards. And for some personal replies:

Captain Shrike wrote:
I like the monster themed valk

Yeah, Erickson's gotten a lot of comments on it. It visually dominates a battlefield, even moreso than my monolith. And he's still working on the paintjob. He's considering painting a face on the side, reminiscent of the P-52 Mustang WW2 fighters.

Henners91 wrote:
I mean, I view the Iraq War pretty negatively (and if I'm honest, the US military).

Yeah, most people, including soldiers, aren't fans of the war. Or maybe they're just not fans of trying to help out a country that seems to be hellbent on destroying itself. And unfortunately, the U.S. Army tends to attract the dregs of society since they'll give a paycheck and hot meals to anyone who can stand upright and count on their fingers. But like anywhere else, there's good and bad. I just try to ignore the bad. I'm getting out of the Army soon enough!

Well, I'll see if I can get some more stuff to post about tomorrow! It's nighttime here!

its nice to see and while im not a huge fan of the war and not an american i still wanna say thanks and i can only imagine the flak you guys must get and it must be kinda disheartening so im not gonna be that guy and just say thanks and your service is really commendable

Now I'm considering making my own deployment army when I go to Afghanistan Very nice looking Necrons, btw, they actually look a lot like mine, with the gold trim and shoulder decals Get home safe buddy, and if you ever are around Balad and run into a Senior Airman Whaley, tell him A1C Crowe says "Feth you!"

Aw, I can't see the pictures when I'm at work, but it's nice to know there's one more necron player out there. There's just not enough of us. Heh.

Hot damn guys, looks like you're having a blast.
Also, in that desert photo...did I see some Strykers?
Can you nab me some reference photos for my Stryker I'm working on? Trade you some pics of my WIP Guard for it

Thank you for your service: it is appreciated by more people than you may think. I'd like to believe that the Iraqi people will some day understand the sacrifices others have made for them. That day won't be tomorrow, but I hope it will be in our lifetime.

I think it's cool that you're letting guys take whatever parts of the hobby they enjoy without getting too uptight about it. Some people will only ever want to glue their minis to the bases and play straight from the box, while others will take the time to paint and convert every figure they own. The key is that you can get together and relax and take your mind off the fresh hell outside your bunker's doors.

Hey guys!

Unfortunately it was a slow day today, 40k-wise. It was movie night I think, and most of the regulars weren't there. I applied the final paint touches to my Heavy Destroyer, and placed a couple of decals on it. Its new shoulder-spine-thing makes the shoulder patterning like the other Destroyers impossible. Erickson also decided to dedicate lascannons to his Valkyrie today. After a game and a half he realized that he needed significant weapon strength do drop anything but soft armored targets. And twin-linked stuff to supplement the IG's lousy BS.

Because nothing really happened today, I didn't take any pics. I'll keep at it though, and I'll be sure to keep you guys up to speed. The day was pretty weird for most people - sleep schedules got messed up because the IDF (rockets incoming, ect.) alarm went off in the middle of the night and we sat out there in our shorts and flip-flops for an hour waiting for them to figure out with was just the tracker picking up false signals. A lot of guys either slept late or went to bed early today.

Kanluwen wrote:
Can you nab me some reference photos for my Stryker I'm working on? Trade you some pics of my WIP Guard for it.

What you saw were heavy-armored Humvees and MRAPS. I can't go into specifics for reasons below.

Unfortunately, as for the the photos, the answer can only be no. There is no detail I could give to you with a photograph from one of ours that you couldn't get elsewhere on google, without broadcasting strength intel openly on the internet. Such a thing is a violation of Operations Security. Don't be discouraged, though - plenty of legit photos of Strykers are out there on the internet. And plenty of other people post such information on the internet without thinking about it, and you can easily find it if you want it super realistic. I just don't want to be that guy, you know?

Tomorrow, I will ideally play a match with my XO and I'll document it if I do. The habits of the group have been growing steadily for the past couple of months - so much that I had to stop my gym routine (I was getting poor results after 5 months of busting my keister) so that I could actually be there to play and work on a much more satisfying hobby.

Well, I'm not an expert in building terrain.
Your pics are great. Playing 40k in a bellicose environment.
Good bless you guys!

I salute proud hobby-driven soliders /salute

Love the camo work on the IG tanks btw

Looks like you have a good set up there, lots of space to play/paint and bomb proof too! What more could you want

If I was in you position I couldn't think of a better way to pass the time guys.

that boring in war eh? ah well, how do you get hold of all your stuff? the internet? cas you could make it seem less cheaper by going other maelstrom games or the warstore, influence other people by a hyper.. something, forgot what its called >>

From one military member to another I salute you!!! Keep the pics and posts coming.

Well, I got my match - Necrons Vs. SM... and lost. A little badly. To hell with Terminators and Jump Infantry... jeez.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures until turn 3, but I do have some for you guys.



Here you can see the beginning-ish of turn 3. In the past two turns we closed some distance. My squad of three Destroyers was dropped by his Land Raider with two twin-linked lascannons and a assault cannon. My Heavy Destroyer was dropped by his Dreadnought's Lascannon. I was, to say the least, not pleased. My Monolith comes in on deep strike on the third turn and a get a shot off on his land raider, roll a hit on scatter dice, and after everything end up rolling a 1 on the damage results. Gah!



I dropped his jump infantry with power weapons simply by swamping him, but as I realize he has closed in for the kill, waiting out turns in range simply won't do anymore. At this point half my units are gone and any point in planning some crazy thing has been dissolved. So, I run into the graveyard in the center of the battlefield to go toe-to-toe with his regular marines and hope I at least take down a few more squads before he closes with his Terminators.

With all of my remaining necron forces in one area, I goofed. He launched his orbital strike, and got a hit on the scatter dice. Fortunately, a about 3/4ths made their WBB rolls with the rez orb, but... I don't know. What else could I have done?



Well, at this point I'm done for, so I go for an all out assault just to get it over with. We all meet in the graveyard, his vehicles and terminators fired a volley, and in the closed. With powerfists, he made short work of my troops. I dropped a few of his, but far too little. And eventually he got my Necron Lord with his res orb, then his power-weapon heavy forces carved through.



At the end of turn six, he gets me with Necron Phase-Out. I'm not happy. The XO has habitually horrible rolls, but I was really aggrivated. This turns into a three draws, three losses record against his army. I'm trying to think of what I'm doing wrong, and it's probably something from the first turn. But I simply don't know other than to experiment and hope I get it. Unfortunately, each "Experiment" takes four hours to get through.

I order all of my GW models and stuff from GW's website. A package arrived today that contained another wraith, 8 flayed ones, the super glue with a brush, and Green Stuff. I was a bit dissapointed with the green stuff. It takes forever and a day to dry, and it doesn't seem to "stick" that well. Or maybe I still didn't wait long enough. I was under the impression it was also used as an adhesive, and considering my superglue woes, I thought it would be a good idea to give it a try. There's not much I can think of to do with Necrons that could "modify" them with Green Stuff or bits.

So, back to the drawing board. I'm not sure what's going to happen, but I'm eager to get my flayed ones on the field and maybe things will work out better once I do. I should have bought more than 8!

@OP:

Don't know about your internet, but you can look into Vassal. http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/oXa5UrAGpfJG

You can play 40k online with people from around the world; not much in the way of bandwidth required.

Hahaha I feel your pain on the loss man. Necrons are a very tough army to play, especially against Space Marines. Until today, every opponent I've played has been Chaos Marines, and they pretty much tabled me every single time. Today I played Guard and through some stupendously bad dice rolls managed to tie with him. Destroyers die way to easily and are a very tempting target, so I would recommend getting more so you can field more squads of them and prevent them from being attritioned to death. Also, you'll want a Destroyer Lord. I plan on getting one for my next paycheck.