Build done. A few minor divergences from the stock kit. The first were the censors on the scythes. They looked silly, and incredibly impractical. Not that scythes are particularly well suited to mounted combat, but the extra bits and bobs made them look even worse. The second was a minor re-do the the guy with the beige head. He started with a flaming hat and a burning brazier on his shoulder. Little too much with the warp/ghost flame there. Cut him down to be more sensible, and a simple head swap. Plus it makes the basic guy on the end there feel less alone. I’d have liked to to something with the guy in the middle, but left him as-is. I figure he’s a fallen grail knight, cursed to some horrid life after death fate. Makes for a good leader for the squad, and the overdone grail/headgear thing fits with the old bretonian lore (from which my undead army springs)
Next step is to start thinking about paintjobs. I know the rider’s bones and flames are going to be in the same blue I did for Manfred’s mount. I’m leaning towards doing the weapons/robes/armor is normal colors. Also thinking of doing the horses in normal bone, not etherial blue. But the lazy painter is me is saying to just to the whole lot etherial. It would be the easy out.
Can you ever have too much stuff primed? While it might have rained a little overnight, today was mild and dry. So I rushed home after work and broke out the rattle can. Now I can actually paint up the hexwraiths, or as many as I can bang out in what’s left of the month. Tippy will have to wait for another time to get paint.
While I’d love to build some more stuff before winter, I need to get some paint in. I’d like to build another squad of intercessors, and the gravis armor captain. Jump primaris would be nice, but not required. Plus the jump LT I’ve got the parts out for. All told it would be enough to break out the can for one last go. Putting together the hexwraiths also reminded me that I was going to make some spirit hosts out of old random minis. I should get back to that. And head down to the FLGS some Tuesday for an actual game of AoS.
Love those rider models, such a nice kit. I think your idea of ethereal riders with proper aged weapons/robes armor sounds great. Maybe if you want an easier paintjob do the rider and horse in ethereal blue and only do the horses cloth in normal colours, even the weapon can be blue and that would just leave you with a bit of armor and robes to paint.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Love those rider models, such a nice kit. I think your idea of ethereal riders with proper aged weapons/robes armor sounds great. Maybe if you want an easier paintjob do the rider and horse in ethereal blue and only do the horses cloth in normal colours, even the weapon can be blue and that would just leave you with a bit of armor and robes to paint.
The more I think about it, the more I’m thinking keeping the hoses normal, and just ghosting the bones and flames. I should start getting some paint down.
But first a word from the floor:
That’s right folks, a game of floorhammer. Going to game like it’s 1980-something! The morning was a little grey and miserable, The Boy was getting over a cold. Slow start to the day. We had everything boxed up and ready to head down to the FLG, but he wasn’t really feeing it. So we set up here. The “battlemat” is an old piece of of fabric that at one time was crumpled up and hit with some SAC Bomber Tan to give it a little character. Terrain is random stuff I had kicking around, included the downed flyer from a few months ago and the webway portal I built for the LoER contest. Armies ended being 2,004 points each. We knew the mission ahead of time - The Scouring, as it’s the only core eternal war mission we hadn’t played yet. Classic Red vs. Blue match, my Eldar vs. my Ultras, being played as salamanders.
Vanguard deployment, first turn to The Boy.
The high value objective is the center, low one is over by his bikes.
He moves forward. Shooting takes out the nightspinner and a couple of bikes. First blood, but could be worse. My response is to move toward the center and blow all but the last wound off the raven. That thing keeps eating all my first turn fire, but I can’t let it live; too dangerous. My hawks drop backfield and kill his devs (ignore the one in the pic, he failed his morale roll and ran, took pic too soon). His bike captain was valiantly leading the charge, and ate a face full of fusion guns for being the closest target. But due to our fickle little friends, only took one wound.
End of turn one:
Despite being in cover and concealed and fortuned, I take a pounding in the center. The VV and JP captain hop out of the raven and charge and kill the spiders. Bikes take some more fire, but the two with cannons still live. His rhino drops off the tacs and picks up the HG and company champion for redeployment. Snipers also pack up and start to hoof it to the objective nearby.
I respond but killing most of the VV, but they eat a ton of fire. I shoot up the bikes a little, and the Emperor still protects that bike captain, who should be dead at least 3 time over at this point. The hawks take to the sky again.
End of 2
His bikes pull back a bit, and most of his shooting goes into the guardians. They are finished off in CC by the captain and the VV. The contemptor mugs the warlock on the bike. For reference, Salamander warlords with the +1S trait and the Teeth of Terra are MEAN. Ton of attacks at S7 is lethal. Not that he hit many tanks this game, but he did the blender thing quite well. Rhino moves to hold the back objective, dread moves to claim the minor one. Falcon takes a few wounds.
I deploy the DA as another ablative speedbump and castle up for the conceal bonus. Fire puts a few wounds in, but mostly ineffective. Dice are not my friends at this point. Little evil cubes of pain.
End of 3
It’s getting late, so we figure turn 4 is probably going to be the last. He finishes off the DA (mostly with the captain, I interuped him to kill the last VV) and the bikes mulch the hawks. Vyper goes down, Falcon eats more wounds, putting at in the last bracket.
At the start of my turn I do the math. I hold two objectives, for 4 points. He holds the major, minor and two others, for 9, plus first blood for 10. If I can blow him off one, and take another, while killing his warlord (the jump captain) I can swing it to a 7-6 win. I don’t have a whole lot left, but lets see what I can do. Farseer zips over to the scouts, contesting that one. I space magic the bejesus out of them, killing 3 with a smite, dooming and revealing them. In the shooting phase, the seer clears the last two. My objective now, Mon-key; 6-8. Now I just need to kill an almost full health venerable dread to tie and finish the warlord for the win. Unfortunately, two falcons, one badly mangled, were not up to the job. I took 4 wounds off the walking coffin, but not enough. The captain mostly shrugged off the WS. We called it before the warlock embarrassed himself trying to kill the captain in CC, which was my backup plan. But with the dread alive, it was a forlorn hope.
Victory for the forces of man. I think if we had gone longer I might have had more of a chance. Instead of working over the scouts, I probably could have take out the captain and the bikes. With another turn of fire, I might have been able to get that dread. Who knows. Close game at the wire.
Spiders did kinda meh on their first run out. I was not shooting at optimal targets. While they were tough to shoot at, they folded pretty quick in CC.
I like my Eldar, but they are not the best on the field. Not sure what to get to stick with my theme that could help. I should probably field the crimson hunter. The Boy loves that raven, and I can’t blame him. But I can’t let it live, and it eats up so much firepower. Maybe I should castle in the corner better and try to down it with long range fire before the rest of his army can get to me. I also need infantry that can take a hit. I need wraithguard badly. And probably another WS. I think the next time my guilt-free money pile crosses the threshold to buy something, it might be a box for the Eldar. But I’ll probably wait until the codex drops. Who know what it will bring, and I’m patient.
Thinking about it, I think the last time I played 40k on the floor was RT. My back is not happy right now. Floorhammer is a game for the young. I think next time we just play smaller lists and I put the leaf in table. It's not large, but could probably host a decent 500-1k skirmish. Without the leaf it could barely hold the War of the Ring board game we played this weekend.
Back pains aside it's great you were able to have a good match with the kid, worth a bit of pain in my opinion. Match looks like a good one that could have gone either way in the end. On a side note there's no space in your place for a 4x8? What about a hinged 4x4 that folds to 4x8 that can go on the table?
Looking forward to seeing what you do with the horses, it's great seeing an undead force come together.
With my weight problem, playing on the floor would be a real problem for me. I guess sitting on a folding chair or couch nearby would work though. Great batrep anyway, and I hope the Boy gets feeling better soon!
Inevitable_Faith wrote:Back pains aside it's great you were able to have a good match with the kid, worth a bit of pain in my opinion. Match looks like a good one that could have gone either way in the end. On a side note there's no space in your place for a 4x8? What about a hinged 4x4 that folds to 4x8 that can go on the table?
Looking forward to seeing what you do with the horses, it's great seeing an undead force come together.
If I get something that folded up and could be stored, I’m sure I could fit in a table. The fact that we were playing on a roughly 4x6 section of floor means it’s possible. But I don’t have space for another table just hanging out, even a 4x4. How tight a folding table packs would be the issue. While my current place has plenty of closets, most apartments my size don’t have quite the same level of storage. And I might be moving in half a year-ish. Pretty high cost of living where I am, and while I don’t mind the commute time, the gas price is bad. So I’m not investing in furniture.
My old 4x8 was solid wood construction, and did not even pretend to fold. So there was no way I was going to be able to fit it into my new place when I moved out.
Put the first layer of black on the wraith. So it’s begun. Which is always a major step; progressing from the theoretical to the practical.
ZergSmasher wrote:With my weight problem, playing on the floor would be a real problem for me. I guess sitting on a folding chair or couch nearby would work though. Great batrep anyway, and I hope the Boy gets feeling better soon!
I have to say, while the bending over to move stuff was irritating, it was nice to be able to sit down on a comfy sofa or my recliner between turns, rather then the old stools and folding chairs of the FLGS. The boy was just on the tail end of an upper respiratory infection. So mostly better, but still a little “bleh” he’s better now.
Gitsplitta wrote:Oh man.... I remember playing games on the floor in college! Great times!
Very nostalgic. The drop cloth and hex based hills date from my high school days. Nice to drag them out for a game.
So there are leaked pics of a new Eldar SC box. Wraithlord, 5 wraithguard, war walker, and the farseer on foot. Enough stuff in there I want (the wraiths) to justify the price. War walkers are generally solid, and I could use a seer on foot. How the codex looks can of course make or break it. But if this is dropping in November, I think I know what I’m getting myself for my birthday.
Not a fan of the sculpt on the hoses, Lots of filler in spots they couldn’t do undercuts. Like hooves and legs just stretched wide to meet up with the fabric. Probably won’t be that noticeable on the table, but when building and painting it really irks me as a modeler. Once the wash on the horse is a little more set, I’ll attempt a little weathering. We’ll see how that ends up.
The wraith is just done with his first wash. Turquoise glaze over black and a very light blue/grey. I need to go back and darken up the robes a bit, to boost the contrast with the flames. I like the slight tinge of color they got from the glaze though, don’t want to disrupt that too much. I think for the others in the squad I might put a black wash or ink down before the turquoise. Still need to do the scythe blade. Instead of the general slathering I gave him already, I think he also needs a targeted wash in some of the low points just to help define and deepen them.
No big plans this weekend, so hopefully I can get some decent progress in. But there is also a chunk of adulting I need to take care of. Darn that “life” stuff.
Guildenstern wrote: Nice work on the hexwraiths. I like the horses as normal skeletons. Wraith is looking good too, nice ethereal tone there.
I hated those kits personally still have little bridle bits falling off. Wish I had taken the censors off as you'd done as well
I could see leaving the censors on if you were going for some plague/miasma theme. But that’s not me. They just added a level of impractically to their looks. If there were some rules based thing to justify them (like clouds of unholy incense) I might have left them on. One or two guys I think have them hanging off their belts, which is subdued and doesn’t get in the way of the scything.
While the bridles and hose heads are finicky and look fragile, at least they don’t have the horrible undercut problem of the steed’s bodies. If they snap off, I’ll hate them later, but right now I’m OK with them.
So almost done with the first one:
I needed to re-do the flames on the scythe. I put a wash on the metal, and it pooled around/on the flames. While I’m not doing OSL, I’m not letting etherial flames cast shadows either. Rest of the guy is basically done. I’ll need to flock the base, but he can wait until his fellows are done for that. I did want to get the goblin green down, just to give an idea of his final look.
Thoughts? He’s still a WIP at this point. I’m going to start a few more using the same basic techniques as this guy.
Loving the Hexwraith dude, the bone came out great and the ethereal blue is a nice contrast. A unit of these guys on the table will look great. I really hate those filler joins they hide on models too, makes some models very difficult to paint as you don't know where to put what on those fillers.
I do enjoy the way these guys are coming together. Getting close on the second two, and moved the last guys to the on deck position.
Just put the black wash down on the scythes and horses. Once that dries I need to dirty up the mounts a bit and do the flames on the scythes. Then get started on the next two. It’s the 22nd, I have high hopes for finishing the squad by month’s end.
Got a game in yesterday. Another Floorhammer vs. The Boy.
His forces:
Mine:
Due to a slight error (I forgot to add his assault marines in battlescribe) we ended up playing about 2,100 point lists. I just added a JP LT. to my list to even things out.
The 4 objective mish, long table. I go first.
Most of his army is in reserves. I delay dropping the pod full of sternguard until he commits. My LR, talon, and dread move up and blow his scouts off the webway. First blood, but not a lot else.
He responds by advancing his forces and dropping all his jump troops in my back corner. Due to not checking the range, his raven is outside of 24” from my talon, so instead he blows up the ironclad. Again, because he didn’t check the ranges closely enough, most of his assault troops fail their charge range. I’d be more forgiving here, but he marked off the 9” no-deploy bubble from my troops in the corner, but didn’t hug it. The long charge on DS is hard enough without being 1-2” behind the line.
Things are about to get ugly.
My Talon and LRR take a hard right and hit his raven, dropping it from the sky. 4 tac marines die in the crash, the survivors stagger away from the wreckage. The pod with Tigurius and the SG drops, the tacs deploy. He left his captain a little too close, so between smite and the other psychic blast I explode his brain. The tacs shoot his assault marines off the table, while the sternguard take care of their opposite numbers. His chaplain remains alive, so I charge him with a rhino to tie him up. He smacks a couple of wounds onto it for it’s insolence.
In retaliation, he drop his terminators in the corner to seek vengeance. His chaplain falls out of CC, to be in range for the combat. Which never happens due to a failed long charge (even with a command re-roll). Not looking good for the corner. Back in the center, he shoots down the talon and puts some wounds in on the rhino over there. He also deployed the half the cargo of the LR and killed my scouts in CC with his HG and company champ. The apoth. failed his charge and remained in the open.
But things are going to get better for The Boy.
Turn 3 I pour a TON of firepower into his chaplain. A smite takes him down to one wound, Null Zone up so no invuln. Full Tac sqaud shooting? Nothing. Assorted stormbolters from local vehicles? Not a scratch. Half the special ammo bolters from the SG? Shrugs it off like a boss. I need this guy dead, or taking out those terminators is going to be bloody. I charge with a tac squad. Tigs and the SG charge the terminators. This was a gamble, but I wanted to finish them off quickly so I could help the rest of my forces. I run the tac squad first, and they finally finish off the chaplain. He spends the CP to interrupt, which is what I was worried about. Due to some lucky rolls, and poor saves, he manages to drop the librarian. Ouch. The SG get revenge, killing all but the sarge in return.
On the other side of the table, things go a bit better. I deploy my assault terminators, move up and deploy the tacs, and jump the LT into a central position where he can buff everyone. The LRR trains a flamestorm on each of the tac squad fragments, burning them both off the table, while slapping a chunk of wounds off the LR with the rest of its guns. In the charge phase I move out to cause some havoc. My LT engages his apothecary, my terminators go for the LR, and as the chaplain makes to run down his Lieutenant, he kills himself with a plasma pistol on overwatch. Luckily, both my LT and termis were still in range of the chaplains buff. The terminators take the LR down it its last wound, and my LT punched out his medic.
His turn 3 found vengeance in an odd place. The 5 man sternguard with c-meltas hops out of the LR and heads towards mine. As they pull the triggers, they have no idea about the cataclysm they are about to unleash. The easily remove all the wounds from the LRR, and I roll to see if it explodes. 6. Boom. But not just any “boom” but an apocalyptic firestorm of biblical proportions. All 5 sternguard pay for their folly. The two LC terminators at the back of my squad are scythed down by flying debris. A tsunami of burning promethium engulfs my chaplain, and even his faith cannot protect him. Continuing down the line, my LT takes more mortal wounds then he can stand, and drops lifeless. Even the tac squad near the woods loses a pair of marines, and the rhino gets dented. As the conflagration dies down I survey the charred wreckage of my central front. I still had 3 TH/SS termis who finished off his LR. Most of a tac squad who needed to deal with his elite choppy guys, and a rhino. He also had the dread lurking about. His choppy guys charge my tacs, and killed a few. They survived though. On the other front, I finish pulling down the last capheracti.
Turn 4 I start redeplying from the back corner. I’ve got the pod on one objective, and the SG start legging it to the webway. The tac squad reembarks. My terminators charge his dread, and due to some abysmal dice, fail to scratch it. My tacs fall out of CC, and shoot up his HG. Luck returns to me (or fails him, depending on your POV) and assorted small arms fire kills both the HG. Lots of 1s on armor saves. I charge his champ with my rhino to pin him, and he carves a few wounds off it.
He falls back with his dread towards an objective. His champ carves aprt my rhino. There is a chance he can even up the points if he can claim objectives.
Turn 5 my terminators run down and finish off the dread. My sternguard take the webway. His champ remains alive, the only man standing. We call it here.
12-1 (I held 3 objectives and had all the secondarys. He killed my warlord) Victory Ultramarines.
Lessons learned were to measure carefully, and don’t play with matches near rolling tanks of refined promethium.
Fresh paint report.
This was the 2nd time out for the LRR, but the first under my command. Despite wiping out half my army, good outing. Nice work as an AA platform, and the flamestorms did a number on the survivors.
His jump chaplain was his own, not one of mine. His first painted mini on the table. While he didn’t do much offensively, due to his accompanying units being blown off the table, he was stubbornly resilient, and ate a ton of fire that really should have been dedicated to killing terminators.
Now to put some more paint down and help him assemble some of his own capheracti. Enjoy the rest of your weekends all.
--Nev
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit:
Pic of the chaplain:
CTDA built.
Mostly choppy with a little bit of shooting. Mostly because if you want a chainfist there is next to no reason to take a LC these days. He built one with a PF/LC for looks. Not sure if he will field him that way.
It might be Saturday, but I couldn’t sleep in due to my internal clock still being on work time. So I got a little bit of paint in with my morning coffee (which is still on it’s first cup). Hexwraiths are almost done.
The glaze is still drying on the scythe’s flames, and might need a second coat. Horses need their bases black rimmed and then tufted rocked and flocked. Need to do silver edge highlighting, mostly on the scythes. And the robeless guy has a bangle on his wrist I forgot to paint, so I need to go back and do that. I’ll do it in the brighter silver when I edge the scythes.
I was also debating going back to the first three and adding more mud to the hoses. The last two I drybrushed a bit heavier then the earlier ones with some vermin fur for a bit of mud on the fabric. No that you can tell from the pic. Once I’m more awake and the light is better, I’ll check them out again.
Quite happy with the way these guys are turning out. And they came together quite quickly as well. I don’t think they beat the Fire Prism’s record for time from box to table, but it’s probably close. I just built them at the top of the page. They did linger in the pile of shame for a bit though.
Once I finish these guys I’m going to do a quick bit of building. I want to finish the jump LT I’ve been planning and another squad of intercessors. I’ve got plans for putting the grenade launcher on them, and if I build two in the next squad I can swap one over to the squad I’ve already built. I should also figure out how to give the sarge a power sword. Both the sword and the GL are such low point investments for what they bring. If I built one more sarge with a sword that will give me two fully tricked out squads and one bare bones one when all are built. Not a bad mix.
And then I need to figure out what to paint next. November is “Hold the Line”. I was thinking about doing a 5 man intercessor squad for myself, but at some point I need to paint the SG for The Boy. I could try to do a full 10 man squad in a month. Or break it up and do 5 in Nov, and 5 in Dec. Although the holidays are not really the best time for ambitious projects. Not that spreading it out over two months is much of a stretch, but I often have motivation issues at this time of year, and that’s a lot of the same project. As I actually want to get some primaris on the table, they have a much higher motivation factor.
OK, enough rambling for now. Paint should be dry. Enjoy your weekends all.
Hexwraiths are coming along nicely, the contrast in the colours is looking very good. My vote would be to try and get the 10-man squad done in November and keep December as a "whatever I get done will be a bonus" month.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Hexwraiths are coming along nicely, the contrast in the colours is looking very good. My vote would be to try and get the 10-man squad done in November and keep December as a "whatever I get done will be a bonus" month.
I think trying to get the whole 10 man squad done in one month is a little overly optimistic for me. I can’t crank out Ultras that fast, and I’ve got them down pat. These guys are going to be salamanders, so I’ll be feeling my way along with them. Plus, as they don’t need to match my work, I’m planning on doing a lot more edge highlighting and other things I normally skimp on.
It might be fun to challenge The Boy to competitively paint the intercessors. He already did one of the guys in the squad I sold him, but it might be fun to see if we can both bang out a 5 man squad in a month. It would give him a completed squad to put on the table, which I think would help motivate him to get more paint down.
On to some hobby progress. Done with these guys. I’ll set up the light box for their final glamor shots once the glue on the flock dies.
And a little building. Those ravenwing swords from the old accessory sprue are really coming in handy here. Cut off pointing hand, add pointing sword. Profit. The GLs are spare grenade harness bits from the HH plastic terminator kit. These are from the tarteros, but the CTDA ones would probably also work. Arms just sticky tacked on for now.
Also in the news I picked up the new Eldar codex and a pot of Waaagh Flesh paint at the FLGS today.
Hexwraiths look ace man, looking forward to the photo-op. Painting challenges are a great way to get motivated to get it done, whatever motivates you and your boy sounds like a great idea.
Conversions on the primaris marines are looking good, nice and clean. On the Eldar front do you have an idea yet of what craftworld rules you're most excited to try out?
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Hexwraiths look ace man, looking forward to the photo-op. Painting challenges are a great way to get motivated to get it done, whatever motivates you and your boy sounds like a great idea.
Conversions on the primaris marines are looking good, nice and clean. On the Eldar front do you have an idea yet of what craftworld rules you're most excited to try out?
The new Eldar rules don’t look that different the the old ones honestly. Massive across the board point drops I’m pretty psyched about. I’m still digesting the relics and traits. One of my issues there is that I’ve always painted/played as Saim Hann, but their rules are almost useless to me. I don’t have a lot of CC units, so the charge bonus is wasted, and I never embraced scatbikes, so the no penalty for shooting heavy weapons from bikes is meh. Might help if I upgunned my vypers. Pretty much any of the other ones would serve me better.
Beil Tan: I pack a lot of shuriken into my lists, the reroll will make it so I don’t need to hug someone for buffs.
Iyanden: I like my tanks, this keeps them functional longer.
Alitoc: -1 to be hit is money in the bank.
Ulthwe: 6+++ armywide is another solid pic.
So I much as I dislike the idea, I’m probably going to army wide counts-as a different set of rules.
Swooping hawks got some major buffs, enjoying the look of them. Spiders being able to DS should be fun. Double-tapping the prism might get me to field it over the night spinner.
It’s not going to change the way I play in the short term. Mostly because I was already emptying most of the shelf to get a 1,850-2k list on the table. And that’s before they slashed points on a lot of things I liked to use. Once battlescribe gets updated I’ll see what the damage looks like. Slightly farther out I intend to pick up the new start collecting box. Probably wait until after my birthday in November. Need to wait for the sellers on Amazon to list it anyway. But I need the WG so I have a unit that can put boots on an objective and not die to a stiff breeze. I’ve been coveting the WL since it released in plastic. The WW I’m less thrilled about under the new rules. It’s free pre-game move in the index struck me as a nice way to extend the no DS bubble around my army. Outflank can be nice, but without armor facings less useful then it was in the past. The footseer w/ spear I’m sure I can find a use for. I also asked my FLGS to grab me a bonesinger, so that should be showing up in a month or so. Might be a little overpriced (points wise) but I like the idea of patching up my tanks.
So barring the release of any new plastics, my Eldar hobby plans are:
Pick up the new SC box
Get bonesinger
<stretch goal> Get another WS. (if they release another bundle with one I’d be very tempted)
Once I digest the rules I might paint up some more guns to swap. Right now I’m using a lot of brightlances.
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Just built the JP LT. Both arms and the pack are magnetized.
Those Hexwraiths look great. I love the contrast between the glowing effect on the riders and the regular bone look of the skeletal horses. They are not something I'd want to see riding at me full tilt!
Speaking of my Death army...
Got a game in yesterday. Probably a bit large and a late start, but pushed some plastic around.
I’m not going to do a full in depth report here, but some overall thoughts. I tried to chain the blocks of skeletons towards the center for buffs, and that worked pretty well. I did have to move manfred over to one side to blend things (which he excelled at) The black knights were very meh, I need to stop fielding them. Unless they get the charge they are pretty useless. Grave guard on foot however are glass hammers. Not that tough, but they bring the pain. I think I’m going to start focusing on them a bit more. With some buffs they really can go to town. 40 man blocks of skeletons seem to be the way forward. The attack bonus is quite nice, and the discount for the full sized unit seems to make the extra buffer worthwhile. I need to work on my screening and mobility. He had a lot of backfield campers who I really need to shut down. My battle line got stuck into his, and I was going to win given time, but he was going to have more time on objectives due to speed and mobility, so took the game.
New paint report:
Manfred delivers. Awesome buff, decent casting, CC blender. Pricy, but worth it.
Hexwraiths did fine. Probably should have put them on a flank or behind a screen.
One guy who just picked up a deathrattle ally box didn’t really want the knights, so offered me the Hexwriaths for $15. Couldn’t really turn that down. So I’ll be painting up another stick of 5 of them at some point. Does push my “paint more then I buy” goal out a little bit more, hopefully I can still make that.
Sounds like a fun battle, your death force is looking very nice all arrayed for war. Glad to see the new paint performed well on the board, that's always a huge bonus. I know my recently finished scourges for my DE are enjoying their first games out.
It's always tough to see the Painted vs plastic pile skew towards the plastic side but sometimes when a deal like that pops up you just gotta take it.
I was getting close to my paint/buy goal, even after the DI box dumped a huge load of stuff in my lap. As it is now, I need to paint 10 more models by year’s end. 5 men a month is actually doable. Assuming I don’t buy anything else. Like the new SC Eldar box I’m drooling over. That’s only 8 more, which is starting to get dicy.
I have made my 1-a-week goal for the year with a couple of months left, so that’s a win.
Speaking of paint:
Sloppy basecoats are almost done. The observant among you will note the red shoulder trim. And probably checking to see if I’ve been replaced by a pod person. Classically I’ve not done the red trim, as I didn’t want my trimless RTB01s to feel left out. But the primaris are a whole new thing. They are going to be different enough just in size and sculpt, I’m tossing aside my old “I want my army to look uniform” excuse for not doing more. So shoulder trim, edge highlighting, etc. Going to try to paint them to a higher level. They will still use the same basic scheme and palette, so should still mesh with the rest of their older brothers. We’ll see how long this lasts, but I want to make a go of it.
Just an an illustration of my process. The guy one the left has had his second blue cleanup pass done, while the one on the right is still at his drybrushing and targeted washes done stage. So the next step is to blue wash the left, while the right needs his cleanup pass to bring him to where the left is now. Then I will go over them and do edge highlighting.
So the weekend was fun. Had The Boy, played some games. Not 40k this weekend though. Fun little card game called "gonuts for donuts" by the same people who brought us Sushi Go! Both recommended for kids of all ages. Also broke out the Big Box and introduced him to the world of OGRE. Ran the classic Mk III scenario with him at the helm of the cybertank. As a first time player he made a few mistakes, the major one being excessively risk adverse. Sometimes you just need to barrel in and crush a few tanks under your treads and take your licks. Diverting to the side isn’t going to slow down the incoming fire that much, and gets you no closer to the command post. He killed enough of my units to prevent a total defensive victory, but not by a whole lot.
Also went down to the FLGS. Just to shop. He got a command squad, and he also got me a squad of scouts for my birthday. Which raises an interesting question; Do I count them against my “paint more then I buy” goal? They do get added to the pile of shame, but I didn’t actually purchase them. But they will add some much needed variety to my scout force. I have a number of CC scouts and snipers, but am short on the shotgun/bolter guys. Once I paint the LSS converts, I’ll have a few more bolters. I am also looking forward to putting together a scout sarge or two. Maybe one with a combi, and one with a power weapon. With me being WYSWYG and most of my scouts being old metals, I’m looking forward to playing with some plastic bodies.
He accepted my challenge to paint his squad of intercessors to match mine, and actually got some work done while here. Not that I got a shot of that, but here is his proof pic. He has a bit of a head start. But we should both hopefully be done at the end of the month.
Highlighting is almost always a welcome addition to a model, even if it's not high contrast it'll still add a little pop to the model. Your highlighting is subtle but still effective at helping to *ahem* highlight the individual plates of the marine. Looks good man.
Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet. Last weekend I spent down visiting my folks. Mom’s been having some intermittent health issues. Fine now, but was a bit worried. They were going to visit up here for my birthday, but weren’t up to traveling. But that’s in the past. I’m back home, another year older and more decrepit, and back to painting.
All done bar the bases and decals, which will wait for the squad to be done. I got the base blues down on the other 3 guys. Plugging along.
Of course, I’m coming down with a cold, which might hamper progress. Still aim to finish these guys by month’s end.
Well, I'm just happy to see you keeping on posting. This is honestly one of my favorite plogs to see pop up with new stuff. I really like the Red trim on these guys. Honestly Primaris stuff looks amazing in Ultramarine colors. Keep up the awesome work man.
Happy late birthday, and I'm glad your mother is feeling okay now (hope you feel better soon too; it's easier to paint when you aren't fighting health issues). The Ultras look great with the red trim on their shoulder pads; nice to see someone who isn't doing the standard gold trim.
"The Ultras look great with the red trim on their shoulder pads; nice to see someone who isn't doing the standard gold trim.”
I remember a while ago I did an informal survey on the Ultramarine players here on Dakka. At least those who either painted, or had a stated company they played. The majority were 2nd company gold/yellow, but 3rd’s red was not far behind them. One army in the green trim of the 4th, and a bike list in the 6th’s orange were the true rare ones. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use the black trim of the 5th, despite them being just as much a full battle company as the 2-4th Cos. I understand why you don’t see much reserve company heraldry.
One more work day and then the weekend. Probably going to keep it low key. Got the stuff to make chicken soup and a bag full of drugs yesterday to help with the cold. I’ll have The Boy, so I’m thinking a lot of movies and maybe another game of floorhammer.
Wrote up lists and pulled them from the shelf tonight, will set up and play tomorrow. 2k, and very mirrored lists for being from two different factions. Should be fun.
Finished all the basecoats on the intercessors. Next step is washing and drybrushing.
He zip the raven almost straight forward, lights into the falcon with the DA and cracks it open. Razor puts a pair of wounds on the other falcon, and he plinks a few off a vyper for good measure. Scouts take down one of their opposite number. First blood for him, but it could have been a lot worse. The long table and his predominantly short ranged guns helped me out here.
My Crimson Hunter moves over to where the Flacon was before, while Jain Zar takes offense to the bikes on the Webway. One bike squad and the DAs move over to help intercept the raven and it’s cargo. The stormraven, like it does most games, eats the lion's share of my first turn fire. I do have a little extra after downing it, and the prism slaps 5 wounds onto the dread after it bails out of the flaming wreck.
Here is the top of 2:
The angry jump captain and the VV bodyguard take umbrage to me shooting down their ride, and butcher the DA. The wounded dred slaps down two of the bikes. His bikes fall out of combat with Jain, and a squad of tac marines unload into her doing 2 wounds. I used the -1 to hit stratagem to help keep her alive. The grav bike squad puts a couple of wounds on the WS, but nothing major. Razor wiffs due to bad dice, and his snipers drop another one of mine.
Things are about to get nasty. I deploy the troops, emptying out all my transports and dropping the hawks down into the perfect spot. Outside the required 9”, inside the 12” for grenades, and close enough to HQs for buffs. I erase everything that was in the raven, and put some other random wounds in on that side of the table. Of the left flank, I kill the razor. He messes up a bit on his disembark, and puts the c-melta sternguard where the prism can see them, and it was the only thing I still had to fire. They go quickly to the casualty pile, but the captain with them lives. Jain carves up a few tacs, she’ll be at this for the rest of the game.
Top of 3:
He disembarks the last tac squad in an attempt to stem the xenos tide. He downs the last of the wounded bike squad, and his MM attack bike puts a couple wounds on my remaining falcon. Assault sees the lone captain storm the ranger’s position, with predictable results. He consolidates back downstairs. The bikes charge the dragons, killing two of them.
I use the stratagem that lets me fall out of combat and still do stuff with the dragons, moving them towards the rhino. The rest of that flank follows suit. With the firepower brought to bear, the results are predictable. Bonus points for the spiteful explosion of the rhino, which killed a handful of it’s foes. My hawks and falcon have LOS to his captain, and drop him. Tactical marines continue to get dismembered in the middle. We call it at the end of 4. He’s got his snipers, a rhino, and the dregs of a tac squad left.
Final pic:
This was my first outing with the new book. I didn’t use any new psychic powers, but the old ones still did fine. Like the new hawks, and the across the board point drops. Double-shotting the prism is MEAN. Love it! Still disappointed in the scatter lasers, need to paint new guns for the WS. I was using the Beil-Tan rules, and they worked well. Farseer was my warlord, so was able to hand out a lot of buffs where needed. Fun was had by all.
Gitsplitta wrote: Thanks for the batrep Nev. Really enjoyed it! Congrats on the convincing win.
Not that I plan on softballing things, but he was griping about me always winning. Which is, of course, false.
Ultras vs. Ultras, Loss
Eldar vs. Ultras, Win
Ultras vs. Ultras, Win
<Marine codex drops>
Eldar vs. Salamander, Loss
Ultras vs. Salamanders, Win
Ultras vs. Salamanders, Win
Eldar vs. Salamanders, Loss
Ultras vs. Salamanders, Win
<Eldar codex drops>
Eldar vs. Salamanders, Win
Overall I’m 6-3 vs. him. He’s got a team win with me, at the 8th opening day bash. Other then that, these are all his games. He complained that I always win with my Eldar (again false). With yesterday’s win, I actually brought it up even at 2-2. I'm much more apt to crush him with my more familiar Ultras, where my record is 4-1, and my one loss was his first solo game, where I wrote both the lists.
Considering that from his perspective, I literally have multiple lifetimes more experience then him, I think he’s doing pretty good! But I do need to be careful about crushing him too hard. Might try a list swap, or a pure mirror game, or some semi-functional wacky theme list next time.
OK, enough woolgathering, I need to get some paint down, and do some chores around the place. Mondays after I have The Boy are always rough, as everything piles up over the weekend.
Most of the detail pass is done. I need to go over the red trim. I base it khorne red, but then go over the raised surfaces with an old blood red (much brighter). After that I need to do the second blue coat, wash, clean up, and edging. Plus the arms, but they go quickly.
I think I’m going to brave the Black Friday traffic and hit the FLGS tomorrow. They are running a sale, and I’ve got things to buy. Mostly for The Boy, as I want to get him something nice for Christmas, but also a board game for my nephews and maybe a little something for me. Because I deserve nice things, and the holiday might otherwise be a little sparse. I’m also thinking of getting The Boy some better hobby tools and brushes, but can do that at the local craft stores, which I’m not brave enough to hit on Friday.
Hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving. Try not to strangle your irritating relatives.
Got the blue coat down on the first two. Taking it slow, as my back’s been a bit achy lately. Limits how long I can stay at the bench.
Yesterday was surprisingly mild for late November. So I jumped on the chance to prime a few things, even though the pile was mostly empty.
JP LT, and an intercessor sarge and pair of GL troopers.
And I may have picked up a little something for myself while I was out shopping. I was intending on buying it on Amazon with guilt free money, but it never showed up on the retailers there. Got tired of waiting.
As I was sorting through the box and instructions, I wanted to go out and buy a second one. I was that psyched about it. And I’m also dithering in a bad way on how to build. Magnets, of course are the easy answer, but I think would be too much effort for the wraithguard. These 5 are going to be d-scythes, but I also really want a box of CC ones, probably with axes. Warwalker gets it’s guns magnetized, so he’s easy. But they seem to me that they would work better as a squadron of two. Farseer on foot will be a welcome addition, but the though crossed my mind to mod him into a spiritseer.
But all that whembeing is a pale shadow compared to my thoughts on the wraithlord. There are a zillion options in the kit, and it looks to be fairly easily posable. My fist thought was as a fire support/countercharge unit. Pair or BLs or other long range guns, the glave, resting point down on the ground waiting for things to get close. My second thought was as an offensive unit. Convert him to a running pose (should be a fairly easy knee bend) glaive out and swinging, and probably full shurican cats/cannons for some low priced dakka and he moves up the table.
Do people think it’s worth the +9 points for upgrading the cats to flamers? Seems a chunk of points for a moderate upgrade that he might shoot once or twice. Auto-hits are nice and all, but we are still talking moderate firepower at best.
The glave seems a no-brainer for 10 points. While I like the solid 3 damage of the fists over the variable d6 on the sword, going from S7 to S9 is huge. That’s going from wounding on 4/5s vs most vehicles to 3+. and wounding T4 on a 2+ rather then a 3+. The extra AV is gravy. Plus it looks cool.
The options to leave the heavies off a pure CCWL is tempting. 113pts for a basic lord with a glave seems a decent amount of chop for not a lot of points. But the 20 points for the shucans seems reasonable, as he can fire them on the move, (although he lacks battle focus).
In other news I had a nice Thanksgiving with my friend and his family. Thankful they welcomed me to the table. Got together yesterdays to play some boardgames. Lords of Waterdeep (I came in second) and Dead winter? Some zombie survival genre game. Also fun. We cured the plague (our mission) but I didn’t win, as my victory card also needed me to exile any traitors we had (we had one, never caught him). But fun was had overall.
Feels odd that it’s still the weekend. Holidays do strange things to my schedule. All day yesterday felt like Sunday.
I say build the WG as your ideal load-out, sounds like D-scythes are the winner there. I'd magnetize the war walker weapons for sure then for the WL build with the glaive and magnetize the shoulder weapon. Personally I think the flamers are worthwhile, they're a great charge deterrent for many small gribbly units.
youwashock wrote:I like the idea of the stoic WL surveying the battlefield, guns or no guns. Cool idea.
That’s the easier of the two concepts, so more likely to happen. I’ve just seen a lot of cool conversions of more “active" WLs that tempt me to try my hand at one.
Inevitable_Faith wrote:I say build the WG as your ideal load-out, sounds like D-scythes are the winner there. I'd magnetize the war walker weapons for sure then for the WL build with the glaive and magnetize the shoulder weapon. Personally I think the flamers are worthwhile, they're a great charge deterrent for many small gribbly units.
It helps that I care less about WYSYWG for my Eldar, so might just glue the small guns on the WL. I shouldn’t balk at the points for the flamers, but I think after a number of games with the vastly overpriced index costs, I’m a little focused on shaving points where I can.
For the wraithguard, the scythes are just that good. And the WG are not that shabby with their fists in CC anyway. But the fall back and shoot thing with the scythes is murder in the bank. What I need them for is an stopper unit. I tend to play my Eldar more like Tau. I stand back and shoot with the tanks, and when things get close dispense chaff to help slow down and eliminate threats. Chaff being DAs/FDs/ guardians. The problem is that once they step outside their transports, their life expectancy is measured in minutes. So I need an durable door stop. Any WG unit would fit that role. The scythes bring some serious charge deterrence to the table, which helps a lot.
One thing I do lack (as the Tau I play like) is a decent CC element. I’ve got a bike autach, the Avatar, and Jain Zar. That’s it. And I might not even have one of them in my list. Now I do have access to a lot of fall back and shoot tricks, but sometimes I want to be the one locking the other guy into CC. Unfortunately, due to finecast, we don’t have a lot of options. Which is one reason why the wraithblades are very tempting. Not only do they look cool, but they are plastic. And the axe/shield guys are probably one of the toughest things in the codex, which helps fill my doorstop role.
Anyway, I’ll build them in a bit, I’ve got painting to do first.
Put the blue wash on the last two battle brothers, and the sarge got his second blue. Just need to wash him and then do the highlighting on all 3 of them. Not that I got the AGL guys primed I really want to paint one up quick to join the squad. Probably not going to happen by the end of the month though.
I was expecting to get more done this weekend. I blame Sollaris. Fun 4x space game I grabbed Thursday on sale. Doing bad things to my sleep schedule as well. But I want to get the squad done with the painting stage today. I can do decals and basing during the week. Our course, I also put off all the chores until today, so need to get those done as well. I can go grocery shopping while layers dry.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
The wash is drying on the arms. Just need to edge highlight them and glue them on. Then the decals and bases. And nothing ventured, nothing gained; I started to paint a grenade guy. When these guys hit the table, it’s most likely going to be a 5 man squad, power sword sarge, 1 AGL. Which according to the CA leaks, will be a tidy 95 points. Not that I thought they were overpriced at 105 for that loadout, but I’ll take it.
Done with the squad. Still working on the GL guy. I need to get the second blue coat, wash, and edge highlights. I’d like to have him done for this weekend. But that would require more painting and less typing. Later all!
Thanks. I’ve been using the green soulstone gloss paint on my swords for a bit now, I like the effect.
He didn’t make it in time for the group shot, but the AGL guy is done
I also put the first blue coats down on a pair of hellblasters. I figure if I keep working on my primaris, my highlighting might actually improve. Rather then do a few, and then move on to other projects and forget what I learned. Plus I want to field them; probably one of the highlights of the primaris range from a performance POV.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And not that they look much different the the intercessors I just painted without their guns, started the sloppy basecoats on two hellblasters:
Did the drybrush pass on those two, next step is the second blue.
For bases it’s pretty simple.
Paint top of base white, rim black
Glue rocks/tufts to base (currently Army Painter frozen tufts)
Mix PVA and water in roughly a 1:1 ratio
Add Woodland Scenics soft flake snow until you get a nice paste. You want it wet enough to spread, but not too runny.
Smear paste on base. Sometimes I also dab a little on the tops of rocks.
Clean up any glue on the rim (otherwise it will collect more snow in the next step)
Swish base through tub of snow, making sure the loose powder gets coverage.
Tap off excess. Brush off any stuck to the rim.
Wait for it to dry, bask in the glory of a based mini.
fin.
A while ago I picked up a palette knife/paint scraper thing from the craft store to help, seen here. It’s basically a diamond shaped offset spatula. Much better tool for the job then the old hobby knife I was using.
youwashock wrote:Nice. I like the green as an accent color for the plasma, swords, etc.
Inevitable_Faith wrote:Looking great, that green plasma is awesome, it`s the soulgem green over a base isn`t it? Whats the base under it?
I actually did a few extra steps here.
For things like the power sword on the sarge, it’s just the soulstone over silver. Which these days is mostly runefang steel (I also have a pot of leadbealcher that gets use, but not here).
Most of the time, for things like eye lenses, gems, and plasma coils, I used the soulstone over a coat of Glistening Green, the green metallic from the Coat D’Arms days.
For these particular plasma riles I wanted to step it up a bit. So I did a little drybrushing/edgeing on the green with some silver, to basically pre-shade them before the “wash” of the soulstone. Not sure how well it shows, I might try with a heavier hand on the next few.
More progress on the hellblasters:
They are just about ready for the second blue coat, and I started work on the guns.
Hopefully will get a game in today. The Boy and I picked and packed lists yesterday, and plan on hitting the FLGS to play on an actual table this week. I aimed to get as much of this year’s paint on the table as possible:
He seems to be channeling my “I can’t believe it’s not Blood Angels” period of this blog:
Right now he’s trying to finish up his jump captain so he can field him. Battle report will follow, but I should probably start making waffles.
Nice work! The only constructive criticism I'd make is to maybe add an extra color to the bolter and they seem a bit monotone to me. I'd paint the panel around the aquilla on the bolter a different color (maybe the same as your armor?) like you see in alot of bolter pics.
I hear you about it being a decent place to add some color. I’ve just never liked the look. I’ve seen it done well a number of times, it’s just not my cuppa tea.
So Sunday The Boy and I headed down to the FLGS. But what’s this? A new player has joined the fight!
So one of the local guys was there and was willing to toss together a 3k list. So not only did The Boy get to play against someone not me, but go to cut his teeth against a different army. Deathguard in this case. The lists we brought were a little on the odd side when combined into a larger list. Very light on long range AV for a force that size. I think we did OK all things told though.
Mission was the 4 objective one. Once we saw him start to lay out the wall of cultists/plauge zombie things on one side, we decided to shift to the other flank and try to roll him up from there. It would have gone a bit better if he didn’t seize the initiative and roll very well on his first turn advance rolls. So he was all up in our face turn one, which is not a place you want DG. My dice were also ice cold for the early game. When the game ended I think were were starting to solidify the flank, but it was still fluid enough that he could grab/contest the objectives he needed to win. But in all fairness, I’m not sure we had enough left to grind through all the chaff before the game ended, and as he got first blood, we were pretty much doomed to loose. Clearing him off the objectives he was on would require a lot of fire.
But our flank strategy was working well. We had enough stuff DS in that there wasn’t a good place for his characters to hide, and thus were able to pick them off rapidly. Which is good, as there was a lot of fell sorcery going on.
Sorry for just the brief synopsis, but with juggling everything I didn’t note a lot of specifics.
OK, that’s enough typing for now, need to get some paint down. Hope everyone’s week is going well.
Game looks interesting, I think DG look really strong (though they don't seem to be regarded as such). Big blobs of chaff are hard to deal with these days, I'd like to a revision to (formerly) 'Blast' weapons and probably flamers so they scale shots/hits with the size of the target unit, solves a lot of problems re Hordes without increasing the AT/Single target performance.
ZergSmasher wrote:Did your son enjoy the game, seeing as it was against a different army than Marines or Eldar?
He seemed to enjoy himself. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but he was generally engaged in the game and chatted about it afterwards.
RandyMcStab wrote:Game looks interesting, I think DG look really strong (though they don't seem to be regarded as such). Big blobs of chaff are hard to deal with these days, I'd like to a revision to (formerly) 'Blast' weapons and probably flamers so they scale shots/hits with the size of the target unit, solves a lot of problems re Hordes without increasing the AT/Single target performance.
Hordes do seem to be in a very good spot right now. Templates/blasts were one of their drawbacks, and as you say, they are gone. The question is how to scale it, without becoming cumbersome. Some thing like the Vindi could be a good template to follow For flamers I might suggest letting them re-roll the number of hits against units >10 models. Skews the number higher, without getting too out of control.
Yes that sort of thing exactly. like you say the Vindi is already doing this but I'd like more units to have that function and for there to be more brackets.
Plugging along on painting. Put the second blue coat down on one guy and finished up the plasma coils. Even with a heavier hand with the silver, most of the difference is lost in the soulstone, so I’ll probably just skip that step in the future.
But in semi-hobby related news, today was our office Secret Santa exchange/holiday party. Props to my amazing coworker, who while a huge nerd herself is not fluent in 40k. She did reach out to her contacts (one of whom owned the last FLGS I frequented) and got me these (glasses + the beer):
If I poured into the other glass, I’d be drinking an imperial stout. We drink for Macragge!
2/3 of the guys have their second blue down, waiting for the wash, and I got the basecoats down on the arms. My weekend goal is to finish them off, at least the painting. Basing might come later in the week.
Not sure what to do after these guys. Might do some building. Or at least one test model for the Salamander squad. I’d also like to get some more spare bits painted up; pushing some plastic around has shown a lack in options. I should also re evaluate my shelf deployment with 8th in mind. I’ll need to reshuffle everything around in a few weeks anyway when the YTD shelf gets merged into the general population.
There is the normal year-end retrospectives and woolgathering, but I’d like to keep working while I ramble.
Next up basing! And I have the time, so should really do decals as well. Just need to pick something random to experiment with the microsol/set on. I don’t seal my minis, so a little worried it’s going to affect the process.
Warboss_Waaazag wrote:That's one badass squad there. Looking good.
Gitsplitta wrote:Nice work as usual Nev. Those should do you good on the table.
I’m so used to painting and fielding fun and fluffy stuff, I almost feel bad about these guys. Mostly because odds are The Boy is going to be on the receiving end of them. Maybe I’ll let him take them out for their first spin. I’m finished baseing them, but haven’t done their final pics yet, as I should hopefully get decals on before the end of the month. But as decals are optional, they are officially in the finished pile.
So I spent some time rearranging stuff this morning. With the Hellblasters done, I’m closing up the YTD shelf. While I might paint something else before the end of the year, I figured I’d get started on the EOY wrap up.
The shelf:
And all laid out on the table. Kinda missing my 4x8 here, where all my other year end pics were taken. Oh well.
Not a bad spread. While I had them out, I decided to pick my top 5 favorite minis of the year.
My top favorite is Manfred, I really like the way he turned out. Ranking the others is a bit tougher. Probably the Howling Griffon in second, and the terminator and primaris sarges tied for 3rd. Still like the destroyer sarge, but he brings up the rear of the top 5 list.
Of course, with the YTD shelf being emptied, that means it’s time to reshuffle the display shelves to make room for them. Ultras had space, but it’s getting pretty cramped over on the glass fronted bookcase. If most of my Undead army wasn’t still packed I don’t think I could fit them all on the shelf. Eldar is getting tight. Once I build/paint the SC box I picked up, they might need an expansion space.
I should probably start my day now. I had vacation time I needed to burn before the year ended, but had trouble scheduling it. Hence the random Wed off. But I plan on getting some holiday baking done and catch the new Star Wars movie.
Definitely some nice work this year Nev! I do think the general consensus is that Manfred is your finest work this year, although closely followed by everything else.
ZergSmasher wrote:Nice to see I'm not the only one having space issues after finishing more models. I agree with your opinion of Manfred, he turned out amazing!
Inevitable_Faith wrote:Very nice YTD progress Nev. The ultras shelves are looking awesome with all them boys ready for war.
JustaerinAtTheWall wrote:Definitely some nice work this year Nev! I do think the general consensus is that Manfred is your finest work this year, although closely followed by everything else.
TheCustomLime wrote:That's a handsome Ultramarines army! I am jealous of your shelf of fully painted miniatures.
Thanks guys.
Slow but steady wins the race. Keep at it for a couple decades plus and you end up accomplishing something! I should re do my point tallies, just to bring everything up to current 8th numbers, see what I’ve got. It might also be fun to de-shelve everything and array them on a timeline, ordered by when they were painted. Would be a fun exercise, but take a lot of space/time.
I’m going to have to revise my top 5. I forgot that Long Drong Slayer was still sitting on my desk at work. Still not as good as Manfred, but enough to bump the destroyer sarge off the list.
ZergSmasher wrote: Nice to see I'm not the only one having space issues after finishing more models. I agree with your opinion of Manfred, he turned out amazing!
I had to redesign my entire shelving layout (yay ikea modular system!!) last weekend after my new sicaran arrived and I realised it didn't fit on the shelf. While removing the shelves, I managed to break half a battle-company's worth of marines off their bases after I dropped the whole shelf of them.
ZergSmasher wrote: Nice to see I'm not the only one having space issues after finishing more models. I agree with your opinion of Manfred, he turned out amazing!
I had to redesign my entire shelving layout (yay ikea modular system!!) last weekend after my new sicaran arrived and I realised it didn't fit on the shelf. While removing the shelves, I managed to break half a battle-company's worth of marines off their bases after I dropped the whole shelf of them.
Medic! Hope nothing worse then a few snapped off bases happened.
youwashock wrote:That pic of all the Ultras in the cabinet is a beautiful thing.
I do love the look of them all ranked up in a nice cabinet. Not as much as I like the look of them storming a battlefield, purging xenos, but I’ll take what I can get.
Captain Brown wrote:Great progress for 2017 Nevelon.
Considering everything that went on this year, I’m surprised I did as well as I did. While 2016 was my life disintegrating, 2017 was me starting a new one. New place, new job, etc. It’s one thing to keep up a healthy pace of painting and games when a stay-at-home dad, with plenty of free time. But going back to a full time job (with a hefty commute at that) and maintaining that pace is another. I do need to make more of an effort to get games in though. While the numbers are up, a lot of those games are vs. The Boy. That’s not a bad thing, but I need to put more effort into socializing myself. I’m naturally a introverted hermit, which isn’t the best thing.
I do plan on moving north to be closer to my job when my lease is up at the end of Feb. So there will be some disruption in my life again then. But after that things should settle down. The one big downside will be that my FLGS will be an hour away, both ways. Which will make weeknight games rough. I know there is a core of guys playing in basements up there, so might have to reconnect with them. Or see if there is any life over at the store I tried out after the Goblin closed. I’m more likely to swing by looking for a random game when I don’t need to drive 30 minutes just to check.
I just shipped The Boy off with my dad to spend a week in Kentucky with my folks. Will be good for him to see my side of the family, my brother and his boys. He always preferred to spend Christmas down there. Little bummed I can’t be there, but only so much vacation time, and being the new guy limits on when I can take it. Assuming the weather doesn’t scare me off, I’ll drive down to near RI to visit my cousins there for most of the weekend, and be back Christmas eve for a booze and dessert party with friends.
Hope everyone has a nice weekend and happy holidays. Stay safe and warm; throw another heretic on the fire and enjoy the time with your loved ones.
ZergSmasher wrote: Nice to see I'm not the only one having space issues after finishing more models. I agree with your opinion of Manfred, he turned out amazing!
I had to redesign my entire shelving layout (yay ikea modular system!!) last weekend after my new sicaran arrived and I realised it didn't fit on the shelf. While removing the shelves, I managed to break half a battle-company's worth of marines off their bases after I dropped the whole shelf of them.
Medic! Hope nothing worse then a few snapped off bases happened.
AFAIK that's about all that happened. There may be a few broken arms/missing heads, but I haven't gotten around to fixing them yet.
So got around to decalling today. Just the old fashioned way. Reading tutorials on the microsol/set makes it sound like a coat of varnish is required at the end, due to it thinning out the decals significantly. As I don’t normally seal my minis, I need to find a brush on matte that won’t look out of place only on the shoulders.
Due to a tie on the vote for next month we’ve got a good head’s up for what’s coming. Next month is “A few Good Men” followed by “Carry a Big Stick” and then we’re back at March and “Space Marine” again. My tentative plans right now are to do 5 Salamanders for Jan, the Hunter for Feb, and probably some LTs for March, assuming I haven’t painted them by then. I’m setting myself a deadline of the end of March to finish the Salamanders, as that’s The Boy’s birthday. Should be doable, especially if I focus on getting 5 done next month.
Here are my New Year’s resolutions: 1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IGHQs . Fail 2 Paint more then I buy. 64/71 painted/purchased. 8th ed starter box does bad things to the numbers 3 Paint my spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options. Did some plasma pistols 4 Try to get more games in. More then last year 5 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week). Hit the 1-a-week goal 6 Get my Eldar army to a larger level, 2 more full squads minimum, aiming to be more comfortable at 1,850, possibly 2k. Done! 7 Enter and finish an entry every month for the painting challenge. If the monthly challenge stops, enter at least one comp in the year. In addition, paint something odd from the back of the bench a/o try out a new technique every month. Going with a tentative “yes"
And here is where the excuses start.
1 is a hard fail. No progress at all. 2 I’m giving myself a partial win. Yes, I purchased more models then I painted. But a good chunk of them (cents, SC: skeletons, Repulsor, so 20 minis) were from my guilt-free amazon cards. So I’m counting them as “gifts” and not models that I bought. So while this might seems like a simple boolean check, I’m going with a partial. 3 I could go green here, as I did paint some spare bits. Considering the pile of random magnetized parts though, it’s hardly a dent, so just going with a partial here as well. 4 Solid win. Having The Boy as a regular partner helps a lot here. Won more then I lost with an overall 15/1/11 record. Again, The Boy helps here 5 Another solid win. 6 Even with across the board point drops, still a major victory. 7 How do we want to parse this goal? Enter the monthly comp is a solid yes. The following “if” can be ignored, as the comp is still going strong. That last bit, particularly with the and/or, is where things get fuzzy. Did I try out new techniques? I know I did more edge highlighting, tried some new tricks with washes/glazes, did more freehand, etc. So While nothing earth-shatteringly new, I think I’ve met the spirit of pushing my boundaries as a painter. Odd stuff from the back of the bench? The pirate, skeletons, marauders, crashed lander, and warp spider should all count. Over a dozen things there, so while not “every” month, the volume is there.
So I’m going to call it a 4/2/1. 2016 was 6/2/1. Ratio not quite as good due to less overall goals, but still a major win.
So now is the time I recycle my old resolutions: 1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IGHQs. 2 Paint more then I buy. 3 Paint At least 12 spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options. 4 Try to get more games in. Optimally 24, with at least some being AoS. 5 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week). 6 Get my Eldar army to a larger level, 2 more full squads minimum, aiming to be more comfortable at 2k. 7 Enter and finish an entry every month for the painting challenge. If the monthly challenge stops, enter at least one comp in the year. In addition, paint something odd from the back of the bench a/o try out a new technique every month.
So I’m going to refine them with some slightly more solid goals. For #3, that’s one spare bit a month. Should be doable, and having a number might actually motivate me. With The Boy playing, 24 games should be much more achievable. That’s 2 a month, so as long as I play a game every week I have him, I can do that. I was going to put a number of AoS games I wanted to get in, but getting to the FLGS might be significantly harder this year. I’m looking to move north, which will put it an hour away. Oof. Might have to re-visit Cooper’s Cave, or connect with the locals for some basementhammer. The point drops in the Eldar codex makes it a little rougher to get an army on the table with my collection. I’m still going to aim high for comfortable 2k lists. This will probably be the last year I put a point value on the goal. Once I can get a good sized army on the table without stretching, I’ll just focus on adding new units for variety.
---
I had also listed some more concrete goals. Lets see how those went: On a concrete goal front, here are a few off the cuff ones. Once I mull over the primed pile and random sprues, I’m sure I can get more.
--Paint the terminators from the BoP box. I had a lot of fun building them, looking forward to painting them. Done --Finish stripping all the stuff in the simple green right now. I’d like to get that box emptied Did some, still some in there --Finish all the Eldar in the primed pile, bikes at the very least. IIRC that’s 6 more bikes and another guardian squad. To be honest, I’m only including the guardians as a courtesy. No real need for them. Although painting them in a non black wash scheme would be nice. And I could use the weapon platform Did 3 bikes and some spiders, but not everything. --Source parts and build the bulk of the BoP guys as breachers. Nope. Did build a salamander squad from them instead --Build most of the stuff on sprue. The new Stormhawk is high on the list, but also the custodes/SoS from BoP, the rest of the SC:Eldar box, etc. While I track my paint/purchases, I don’t track my buy/build. I probably should. Pile of Shame is still impressive --Sell/trade unneeded stuff. I’ve got a ton of crap collecting dust. I need to lighten the load. nope
Things I’m thinking of picking up: --Rumors of new mechanized bundles are appealing, but price point will determine if I spring for one. But the Eldar one is a Wave Serpent and 5 DA. IIRC you get the avengers for like 10 bucks over the cost of the serpent. I wouldn’t mind being able to field a full 10 man squad of them, and need another WS. Slightly complicating the decsision here is the fact that my FLGS has the old battleforce still on the shelf. Which gets me a vyper and another guardian squad, neither of which I need. Although the vyper could be build with my new and improved magnetization skills, and frankly a 3rd one would not be out of place. The foot troopers would never come off the sprue though. Kinda miss not getting that WS/DA box --More Foam. Maybe just another KRU or two with custom trays for some of my new stuff, or a loaded Kaiser 2, just so I don’t need to lug my K3 down to the FLGS partially full. I think if I get a tax return this year, it’s going into foam --The same tanks I keep on thinking about: LRC/R, a WW or 3, Another pred or stalker. A unit of cents or some more scouts/scout bikes/LSS are also tempting. LRR, cents, and a box of scouts all happened --I’m not sure if GW is going to make the HH box and annual thing. But I was very happy with BaC, and not unpleased with BoP. I might budget for another one coming out next year. Not that I need to get it, but would be nice to have the cash set aside. No box released -- FW. In a few weeks I’m going to get a large check for my half of the house. This needs to carry me over until I get a job and an income source. Part of me wants to blow some of it on ale and whores. And by that I mean overpriced resin from across the pond. Totally irresponsible, but a little retail therapy to help keep me sane in a turbulent time. What to get is very fuzzy. Sicarian tank, Primarch, suzarian marines/other 30k Ultras. Lots of options. FW didn’t happen. Although I did buy some kromlech parts, so trans-atlantic resin did arrive
Automatically Appended Next Post: (hopefully someone will post while I’m typing to help break up the giant wall of text.)
Part 2, where we look forward to the New Year.
So lets take a quick inventory of what’s primed. It’s a larger pile then I can get through in a year, and will be added to. But a baseline is nice to have.
Quick count is at 76 things. Although the volume of bits is impressive.
Before I start to survey the pile of shame, some thoughts on what’s at the top of the to-do list from the primed selection. One of the Eldar bike squads needs to happen. My goal is two new painted squads, but honestly the WL/WG are probably going to be those. I do want to make some inroads into the backstock though. The salamanders need to be done by the end of March. Goal is to have them finished for The Boy’s birthday. The Hunter is tentatively my Feb painting project. From a “I’d like to see them on the table” POV, the JP LT, Guiliman, and the repulsor are all on the short list for paint.
The Pile of Shame: I’m not doing a full inventory. That way lies madness. Stuff most likely to see life:
The rest of my DI box(es). 5 more hellblasters, 2x3 of the jump guys, 2 gravis captains (one at least) 7 intercessors 5 scouts (probably mostly shotguns, with a new sarge) Centurions. No idea how to build them in 8th. The new SC:Eldar box. With the WG/WL being at the top of the list, and the seer and the walker being lower down. More Undead. 5 more hexwraiths, more skeletons. Cypher, as a 30k Moritat gunslinger HQ. I think I’ve got about 15-20 assorted power armor bodies I could work with. Mix of Mk III, IV, and modern. No major projects in mind. Had some 30k thoughts, but those are back burnered. I’ve got JPs for the destroyers that need cleanup and magnets. I’ve got parts to make 2 apothecaries. One was going to be on a bike, the other JP (for 30k). With bike apoths only in the index, I’m a bit wary of building new legacy models. Might do it anyway.
Things on my to-buy list Wave Serpent. At least 1. Another SC:Eldar box. Would solve my dithering on how to build things.
Scout bikers. I’ve always liked them, and 8th has been kind to them. Spare bits would also be useful for building the 5 normal scouts I have already. Another Razorback? Pred? Primaris HQs? I’m honestly running out of things I need/covet. Doubling up on things I only have 1 of is sotra where I’m at.
More skeletons. The goal is to be able to put down 3x40 man blocks. Not quite there (but close) Zombie Dragon. Right now I’m using my old WE dragon, but the actual model is quite nice (and plastic!) 50mm bases to convert random old minis into spirit hosts.
And of course, all the new shiny things that come out over the year.
Nice end of year review! I'll probably do mine tomorrow morning/afternoon local time. Sounds like you've got some solid goals to work towards at least. I probably won't mention my own painted/bought ratio though, as it's pretty shameful, but like you I want to paint more than I buy next year.
So we’re in that odd spot after the year end review, but before the new year. So the last supply drop of 2017 gets to slip between the cracks. That’s OK, as my folks gave me some cash to spend on the hobby, so I’m categorizing them under “gifts”
The Made to Order Bonesinger I ordered had finally arrived at the FLGS, and I grabbed a WS. The singer might be a little overpriced from a points POV (70, ouch.), but could always be used as a spiritseer in a pinch. But I do like the idea of healing d3 wounds on wraiths/tanks. Both these guys are going to be close to the top of the build/prime/paint lists.
Hope everyone has a good New Year. Celebrate responsibly, we’ve got a lot of stuff to do in 2018!
EmberlordofFire8 wrote:I forgot to pick up my bone singer when I was last in london. Hope they hold it...
He looks like a fun model to build/paint. Before we headed down to the FLGS, I was actually explaining the differences in cleaning up metal models. Been a while since I’ve had to do it. Should be fun. Or frustrating, we’ll see how the pointy eared git feels like behaving. I’m a little worried I’ll have to pin his hand on, very small contact point.
Zambro wrote:Another year down, and more Marines. That's a great output for you.
And I agree that Manfred is your best piece. So different to Ultras, it really stands out.
I’m really enjoying the resurgence in my undead. Manfred might be my finest work overall. Although there are some SM heroes I am quite fond of (like my avatar) But the hexwratihs and even the basic skeletons I did this year were a lot of fun. Looks like GW is ramping up to some new event in AoS, which seems to be slanted towards the forces of Death, so there might be some new shinies that shamble my way. Time will tell.
Before I reset the front page to 2018, I want to copy my YTD work down here:
Money spent on the hobby: $670 (Less $242 in gift cards and the stuff I sold, so $428 out of pocket)
Spoiler:
Superglue $2.50 Deathwatch LR $65 Triumvirate of the Primarch $73 Centurions $65 (note- purchaded via gift card from Amazon) Strat Collecting: Skeleton Horde $75 (also via guilt-free Amazon gift card) Kromlec bits ~$40 Dark Imperium, Imperium 1, pot of leadbelcher $175 Spray Primer $4 SM Codex $45 Repulsor, micro sol/set $82 (Amazon cards) UM upgrade sprue - $13 - Dark Imp. char sprue. -$20 (sold spare sprue w/ 5 intercessors, 2 Lts, ancient to The Boy) Brush - $10 Eldar Codex, 1 pot Waaagh flesh $41 5 Hexwraiths $15 SC: Eldar (new) $75
Games played: 15/1/11 (Green are vs. The Boy. Wanted to track them)
Spoiler:
Ultras vs. BA, Win Ultras vs. Sons of Garro (Vanilla codex, Ultra CT), Win Ultras vs. Tzeench, Win Ultras and Tzeench Vs. Necrons, Win Death vs. Dwarves AoS demo, Win Death vs. Elves/Orcs/Chaos 4 way free for all, Loss Ultras vs. Orks, Win Death vs. Chaos vs. Sigmarines 3 way FFA, Loss Ultras vs. Flesh Tearers, Win Death vs. Chaos, Loss Death vs. 2xChaos vs. Skaven vs. a few dwarves in a boat 4.5 way FFA, Win --8th edition-- Ultras vs. 1kSons, Tie 2xUltras vs. BA/Necron, Win. Ultras vs. Ultras, Loss Ultras vs. Necrons, Loss Eldar vs. Dark Eldar, Loss* (I don’t normally make excuses for my losses, but somewhere turn 2 I realized I was a bike squad shy. Kinda relevant in a 1k list) Eldar vs. Ultras, Win Ultras vs. Ultras, Win Ultras vs. Salamanders, Loss Eldar vs. Salamander, Loss Ultras vs. Salamanders, Win Ultras vs. Salamanders, Win Eldar vs. Salamanders, Loss Ultras vs. Salamanders, Win Death vs. Chaos, Loss Eldar vs. Salamanders, Win Ultras & Salamanders vs. Deathguard, Loss
Marines 1,581 points Eldar 183 Undead 668 Chaos 24 Total points painted 2,456+
I know I did this last year, but I’ve got another pic to add to it now. Want to see what 5 years in the hobby looks like? 2013 2014: 2015: xx minis painted 2,224 points 2016: 69 minis painted ~2,620 points 2017: 64 minis painted ~2,456 points (I really want to pull all these off the shelf and try to sort out the rest into eras. So tempting, such a huge project..)
While I’m happy with this years work, I do think 2016 was actually a more solid year of hobby progress overall. While the quality was a little lower, I got a lot of work done. Not having a job helped a lot with that.
And to start of 2018, I put the first green coat down on a Salamander. These might be a little more camo green the what The Boy is painting, but will fit the scheme, if not the palette. And the unit will be coherent. We’ll see how they end up looking.
While I’m happy with this years work, I do think 2016 was actually a more solid year of hobby progress overall. While the quality was a little lower, I got a lot of work done. Not having a job helped a lot with that.
Were you unemployed for most of 2016? What was that like, if you don't mind getting into it?
While I’m happy with this years work, I do think 2016 was actually a more solid year of hobby progress overall. While the quality was a little lower, I got a lot of work done. Not having a job helped a lot with that.
Were you unemployed for most of 2016? What was that like, if you don't mind getting into it?
I’ve touched on it tangentially over the last year and a half, mostly just light asides in spoilers. I do vent from time to time, but try not to do it frequently.
Long story short, I was a stay at home dad for about 10 years. I wasn’t so much “unemployed” as just a homekeeper. I say I didn’t have a job, but frankly worked pretty hard. It did however leave a lot of free time to putter around and paint. Summer of ’16 The Wife decided that she was not happy, and wanted a divorce. That process formally started in August, and finalized in March of ’17. Now being a full time dad is not really a viable option when you only get The Boy every other weekend. I’m currently working accounts receivable medical billing. Fascinating, I know, but willing to train people and it’s an entry level office job. I needed more stability then retail/food service. My previous field was computer tech support, but take a 10 year break from that and you are pretty much done.
As for what it was like? It’s real hard to have a family on one income. For a while I supported The Wife while she was in school, and then left my job and it was her turn to support me. From a hobby POV it means you have to watch your pennies. When the budget gets tight, fun stuff is first on the chopping block. But you need something to help keep you sane. I was able to sustain my 40k habit due to having a large army back from when I was young, single, working a big-boy job and still living like a starving college student. Then it was just a mater of getting one or two things a year to help keep up with the current edition, many of which were acquired via gifts for Christmas/birthday. The time frame of this blog, which covers back to 2013, was fueled by me selling the last of my MtG cards for a pretty penny.
One thing in life is that we often have time or money, but rarely both. And this day and age, often neither, where we work hard just to break even. I’m at that point now. I’m going to move closer to my job in a month or so, which will free up my finances a little, and give me more time. Lower cost of living up there, and less gas/commute time. The hard part is finding a good place. Looked at one last Friday, and while doable, was lacking in a few points. Need to look at another place just to compare. I’ve got to the 15th to let my current place know if I want to renew me lease, and it runs until the end of February. More news on that as it develops.
To end on a slightly higher note, if I do go with the place I’m looking at, it is a townhouse with a basement. Depending on how much of my furniture needs to be put down there due to the oddly shaped rooms, there might be space for a gaming table. Beats the heck out of floorhammer!
Still in the sloppy basecoat stage, but need to make a decision. What color for the dragonscales? I’m debating between a dark grey/black, or a burgundy red. The armor is going to get another coat of that green, and then a green wash. So will (hopefully) end up a little more emerald and a little less camo.
Thoughts?
I also started putting paint on a storm shield that I magnetized a bit ago. Part of my yearly goal to clear out some of the backlog of swap parts.
In personal news, I looked at another place today. Similar in layout to what I have now, but a little bigger and lower rent. Could work. Need to ponder changes.
When t comes to the scales I’d probably go with the burgundy imho, think that would really stand out with if the emerald colour of the armour works out,
Not particularly happy with the green. Kinda prefer the olive drab. I’ll check with The Boy for his opinion, he might get repainted. I still intend to nulan oil the whole guy, which might help tie him together.
The black wash I think will also help out the scales. Not that I’m unhappy with them. I did put a purple glaze on them after an orange drybrush. Not that you can tell much.
The bolter is going to be primarily silver. I don’t think the ones that come with the Mk III marines have casings, but if they do, those will be black.
Still a bit of touch up and details need to be done, but progress is slowly ticking away on the prototype here.
The baseing is more of a two-tone grit, bit washed out here, Just sitting in a pile of it for show. Still need to figure out how to apply it to the base. I think a thick layer of glue, press the grit in, then a thin glue wash to help bind it. Finish off with a nulan oil wash to cut the shine. The Boy likes the look of it, so I’m prone not to prime/paint it.
The wash did help. Just need to finish the bolter and base him. Then paint his squad mates, some of which have sculpted flames on their shoulders I’ll need to figure out. Also, WIP for this month’s spare bit: the Shield Eternal. Because sometimes you need a decent invuln.
So played a game yesterday.
Everything in my list was part of the monthly challenge. 2k of painted glory. I thought it was a little dysfunctional as far as lists go, but fun. A LRR with a 5 man tac squad and all the rest of the space full of characters, and a firebase of devs/primaris. Dreads to taste.
His list is a little tighter. Both my flyers, 2 dev squads (one close, one long) some troops, some VV, a LR.
I’ve got 3 objectives on my side. One in the lander, one under the dread, and the webway. His scouts are on one, one in the middle, and the open one in his backfield.
He moves forward aggressively to the center with both his flyers and the tac squad. LR rolls up the side. His opening volley kills a hellblaster and knocks a few wounds off the contemptor and LRR. A bit of luck, but he also had started the 4xLC devs embarked, so they were moving to position when shooting.
He pushed right in front of my army, and pays the price. The librarians use psychic tricks to blow a chunk of wounds off the raven, and the LRR finishes it off. My other long range fire splashes the talon. CC sees his forward tac squad butchered. I charge my LR into his devs (who were in the raven) to silence them in his next shooting phase, and take 6 wounds for the affront. He piles in with his captains and carves a few more off. I control the center of the table, but am a bit exposed. First blood and 3 VP from objectives
End of turn 1
His dominance of the shooting phase shows as he blows apart my LRR and brings the contemptor down to it’s last wound. But I’ve got a number of characters wandering around looking for trouble downfield. He drops his VV down to maul my intercessors. They do a decent job, but not enough to kill them.
The game goes downhill for him from this point on, although there are some high points. My HQ ball of death rolls on and kills his 5 man tac squad and LR in a couple turns. My librarians go into the woods to finish off his captain there, but he kills them both. I fall back from the VV, and then shoot them to death. Funny aside there. I overcharge my hellblasters. Nothing but 1s and 2s to hit. It’s OK, captain right here. Nothing but 1s and 2s on the re-rolls. All but the sarge die. The RTB01 beakie devs show the new guys how it’s done by polishing the VVs off with a volley of krack missiles. Sorted old school.
But I’ve been racking up points, and he’s got nothing but static campers left with no way to out score me, so we call it. Victory for the Ultramarines.
Fresh paint report:
Hellblasters. OK, I overcharged when I shouldn’t have and paid the price. Probably not worth the risk just to go from wounding on a 3+ to a 2+. Still pretty nice.
Intercessors. I like 'em. Solid long range fire, extra wound helps vs small arms, not half bad in a fight. (power sword on the 3A sarge helps a lot)
Cpt. Sicarius. I think this might be the first time I fielded him, at least in 8th. I like his tempest blade. The way wounds/mortal wounds work, doing d3 mortal on a 6 to wound is pretty sweet.
Destroyer sarge: OK, this is kinda cheating. I fielded him as a Lt. But his did fine, love the buff aura.
Foot Chaplain: Not sure if he’s hit the table before, but did his buff things as well. Plus slapped some tac marines around and bonked a few of the LR.
... And the boy woke up as I was writing this, so I should probably go do something about breakfast. Not that he’s got a problem sitting there playing Minecraft while I type this up. Enjoy the rest of your (long) weekends all.
Zambro wrote: Nice game. Must of felt nice to make a list of everything you've painted in the monthly challenge, seeing it all come together and what-not.
It was pretty fun. Plus completely unlike most lists I write. Also scratched the itch that I’ve had for a while to play a “Seven Samurai” list where I just run nothing but captains. I was really worried about how it was going to work when I saw The Boy’s list. He had massively more long range fire then I did. If he had hung back and shot, it would have been an ugly downrange slog for me to get to grips with him.
So due to the long weekend, I got an extra day, so fit in another game. Wanted to try something different, so went with a narrative mission. Enter the Meat grinder. We decided he’d be the attacker vs. my Eldar. I’m not going to say he list tailored to the mission, but... Scratch that. Little weasel knew what he had to do. The armies:
No objectives to worry about, and reinforcements come in from your table edge when killed? Smells like flyer spam. We had spent some time the previous day getting his raven together, can’t fault him for flying it. I can fault him for taking both of mine on top of that. <shrug> He needs to table me to win, let’s see how he does.
Now hidden deployment could have been a big asset. That is if the entire attacking army wasn’t either dedicated campers or able to move 14”+.
My general thought was to deploy my core on one side, and move the decoys over that way to castle up. Kinda worked; three warp spiders made it to the rendezvous.
He gets first turn. He kills both my bike squads, kills a spider, and plinks a few wounds off the CH to the south. Up at the top of the table he evaporates my fire prism. Not bad for first blood.
Vengeance however is swift and brutal. I splash the top raven and take the southern one down to it’s last wound. In CC, my dread carves his apart.
End of 1
Turn 2 he kicks the tc squads out of the raven to deal with the rangers and then flies off the table. As he counts as destroyed, he can show back up at the end of the movement phase. Which he does, right in front of my CH. Ouch. Besides that. not a lot of other shooting, as he’s spending time respawning and redeploying. His bikes hug the webway portal cliffs to stay out of LOS from my army. My dread and autarch polish off his VVs.
My dread moves south with the spiritseer, and kills his bikes. I slap a number of wound on his flyers, but don’t kill any this turn. I kill his jump captain who had landed in the north to support his VV, but failed to join up with them.
(forgot to take a lot of pics this game)
Turn 3 he bike captain kills my spiritseer, and he shoots down my dread. I think the tacs polish off the rangers and start hoofing it north at this point. More respawning and running back to the frey.
I think this is the end of 3.
Things are getting ugly. Both his ravens nose up to my line and start putting down the fire. Wave Serpent goes up, and the guardians get mowed down shortly thereafter. One of the Falcons gets roughed up. Knowing the survivability of elves on the table, I’m staying buttoned up until the tanks blow.
I redeploy to the webway portal. Then end of the game is going to be here soon, I just need to hold out. I put some more wounds in, dropping his flyers into lower wound brackets. Mangled, but not respawing is where I want them at this point. My autarch and Farseer find safety in CC with his tac squads on the southern slope of the portal.
Top of 5 he cracks open the wounded falcon and kills the fire dragons inside. Jain Zar manages to disembark around back of the webway, and escapes the wrath of the Salamanders. His VV take the top of the portal and pull down my autarch.
I’ve got a wounded farseer, a pristine falcon with a hold full of Dire Avengers, and Jain Zar. Times running late, so I have The Boy check to see if there is going to be a turn 6. Die comes up , so I don’t bother running my turn. The bloody shreds of my army enter the flickering webway, snapping it shut before the Salamanders can pursue.
Victory Eldar.
I have to say we had a lot of fun. It can be rough being the defender, as you spend most of the game being worked over brutally. But even if the attacker is getting hammered, he keeps bringing stuff back so always feels like he’s in the game until the final buzzer rings. Probably a good spot for a new player to be in. I’m not sure what would have happened if we went another turn, but that’s random game length for you.
Pretty cool to see you getting more games in with The Boy. Keep the battle reports of those games coming; they are always fun to read. But remember, when I read them I'm rooting for him to beat you!
ZergSmasher wrote: But remember, when I read them I'm rooting for him to beat you!
To be fair, so am I. But I’m not going to throw the game to him. To be fair, his list building has gotten a lot better. Still makes a few tactical blunders, which I’m more then happy to capitalize.
Gota keep in mind, once he learns everything he can from me, he’s going to strike me down and take my place in the galaxy. Need to keep some secrets back to ensure my survival.
Just make sure to set up a nice golden lazyboy in the living room so when he does strike you down you can still guide him with a big ol' flashlight like another famous father we know.
VADER WAS HIS FATHER! That's ruined the film for me.
Glad to see you're getting some games in, I might get a chance to bust out my Land Raider for the first time in years, fingers crossed I get a game in over the w/e.
Inevitable_Faith wrote:Just make sure to set up a nice golden lazyboy in the living room so when he does strike you down you can still guide him with a big ol' flashlight like another famous father we know.
My lazyboy is blue, like a good Ultramarine. And I’m thinking more red lightsabers and looks of shocked revelation/betrayal.
RandyMcStab wrote:VADER WAS HIS FATHER! That's ruined the film for me.
Glad to see you're getting some games in, I might get a chance to bust out my Land Raider for the first time in years, fingers crossed I get a game in over the w/e.
I’m throughly enjoying LRs in 8th. Not that my faith in them has wavered over the years, but some editions have been kinder to them then others. GL with the game.
So nothing major planned for this weekend, so let’s try to get some painting done. Here is my start point: The next two Salamanders are done with their basecoats, and even some of their washes. Next step is to do the scale work, and then finish the greens. I suspect that the flames are going to have to be re-worked after the blackwash. Might just drybrush some of the colors back on, and leave the depths dark. I like the concept of sculpted flames, but the execution is a bit irritating. The Shield Eternal just needs the blue on the arm finished, and then it will be ready for battle.
My goal for the weekend is to get all this off the bench. Not sure if I want to push through and paint 2 more salies after this, or build something. I should probably do the painting; need to keep my 1-a-week goal, and we’re in for some disruptions shortly. My application for a new apartment was approved, so I’ll be moving again in a month. I’m meeting with the apartment manager next Wed to sign stuff and hammer out details, but the I’m tentatively taking occupancy on Feb 16th. Need to be out of my current place by the end of Feb. Planning on hiring movers, but still need to box stuff up. But once I move up there, I should be saving around $250 a month between lower rent and gas not spent driving 45 minutes back and forth to work each day. Time and money that can be better spent on hobby stuff.
Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
--Nev
Edit: Finished the shield, got the 2 remaining salamanders blackwashed. Next step is their bolters, and post-wash touch ups.
Another relic emerges from the armory, being presented by my JP captain. So far the Teeth of Terra has been getting a lot of play, simply because I had the giant chainsword captain. Shield Eternal is ready to tank some hits.
And the Salamanders march onward. Just need to do the hands on the bolters to finish those two, and started basecoating the next. I should also pick out another bit that needs paint. I figure if I keep one active as a WIP at a time, I’ll keep the pile in check and make progress towards my goal for them for the year.
Zambro wrote:Sweet captain! That's a big f-off shield! Very fitting for the Shield Eternal
When I saw that shield on the Deathwatch sprue, I knew what had to happen. It just took me a while to get around to getting paint on it. It helps that I’m a lot more fond of the SE in 8th then I was in 7th. I disliked having to pay LR prices for a captain, even if he was worth it. Goes against my “boys before toys” mentality. But I’ll gladly blow my free relic on it.
kavika0311 wrote:Salamanders are coming along nicely!
And they keep on coming along. Pretty productive weekend,
3 are done with paint, and two more are pretty much done with their basecoats. Still need to do washes, and probably fuss over the dragon heads a bit more. The old bolter huger was The Boy’s first mini that he left over here, I’m using it as a basing experiment. Undiluted PVA goes on the base first, then the rocks are dropped/swished/pressed on. Once that dries, I put a very dilute (maybe 1:4) glue wash over them to help keep things in place. Not sure if I want to Nulan Oil wash that to help shade. As I’m doing it over the rest of the mini, I’m leaning towards it to help tie him to the base. As the bolter hugger is done in a different scheme, it’s hard to judge from him.
Pretty much done with the axe, once that dries I’ll start in on the arm. Can always use more power axes.
Slow progress for the week. Probably got more done after dinner with The Boy then the preceding days.
Just about ready for their green wash. Then just the black wash and the touch ups. Also note the bolter hugger. I went with the black wash on the rocks, and it helps a lot. I think I’ve got my bases down.
Here is what The Boy was working on. Both were WIP before he got here, but he put a few more coats down.
His goal is to get both of them done by the end of the weekend. I’d like to finish my two guys as well. I think there is some hobby time being penciled in.
Quick update:
Put the green wash on the salamanders. Put the black on one, but the green hadn’t quite dried yet, so I held off on the other. Finished the axe. As the Salamanders are almost done, I decided I needed something non-imperial to break up the queue. Enter the Eldar grav platform. And the next bit in the row, a power sword.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Pretty productive day. Both the platform and the sternguard are ready for basing, and the sword is done with it’s basecoats. Plus a diluted blue wash on the trim to help it stand out. I also finished cleaning and building an intercessor that’s been sitting in parts in a pile for a month or so now. He’s got a partner still in bits, so I should finish him off just to tidy up the workbench before the move. I think I’ll hold off on building anything after that for a while though. It’s easier to box up sprues to move then models that might be in parts for painting.
Main focus tomorrow is to do all the basing. And get a game in with The Boy before I have to drive him home. We’ll see what I can get done.
Finished off the Salamanders.
Fun little project. Still need to do 5 more. But I’ve got them dialed in, so shouldn’t be hard once I sit down to do them.
The Boy made some good progress as well. Finished up both his LTs, and the last guys he needed to round out his intercessor squad.
Pardon the poor lighting, I need to find a better lit place for the YTD shelf in the new place. But here is where I’m at
5 Salamanders, one grav platform, and 3 spare bits. I also finished building the second intercessor I had in bits, so both of them are ready to prime come spring.
And we got a game in. 1,500 points, modified Ascension mission. We added Kill Points at The Boy’s request.
Coins are stand in for his intercessors, who were in the final stages of being painted last minute before the game.
Start:
I forgot about 8th rules for starting in reserves when I built my list. Which is why my CTDAs, Lib and chaplain are staring down his LRR in the center of the table. Both out scouts start off camping the flanking objectives.
He has first turn. He rolls the LRR and bike lib forward, while his flanks move up towards the objectives. Everything he has remains embarked. He said he was acting like my Eldar, which normally stay in their rides as long as possible, Not something I’d recommend for marines, but <shrug> He smites my terminators, rolls very well, and kills 3 of them. Which nicely puts them out of flamer range of the tank. Small blessings. My scouts get worked over a bit, but survive. His scouts move into cover, and start a long rang duel with my intercessors. He scores 2 VP for his objectives.
I drop both my pods into his backfield with the captain. Between my sternguard and scouts, I kill 3/5s of his intercessors. My melta tac squad blows most of the wounds off the Vindi. My pred chokes shooting at the LR. It really misses being part of a well supported gunline. In the center I decide no guts, no glory and pile in. The chaplain leads the charge and takes 2 wounds, but locks down the LR. The lone terminator left follows, while the librarian decides it’s time for a wizards duel, and goes after his opposite number. He had psychic scourged a couple wounds off him earlier, but now it was force axes at 20 paces. It doesn’t take long, a few good hits, failed armor saves, and decent rolls on the d3s and the salamander is no more. Due to characters being ObSec for the mission, I claim 2 objectives, and first blood.
Turn two sees his vengeance. He disembarks his assault terminators/captain from the LRR, which backs out of combat. His dread moves up to solidify his hold on the right objective, while the rhino and intercessors clear the scouts off the left. His captain fails his charge, but his terminators multicharged my chaplain and lone capheracti. He opens up by putting a thunderhammer through my chaplains head. Normally, that would be the end of him, but Only In Death Does Duty End. He’s not going down like a chump today, and both the the 2xLC terminators in the squad meet their ends via a well applied crozius. Which probably postpones the death of my terminator, who makes all his invulns against the much few attacks then he was expecting. He racks up 4 more VPs. 2 for objectives, 2 for KPs.
I focus everything I have in the backfield into the LRR this turn, and mangle it quite a bit, ending with the sternguard and captain in CC with it. I hate charging those things, but it’s a better option then letting them fire on their turn. At least you get to choose who it shoots at and the TLAsCs are hitting on 6’s. Cost my captain 4 wounds this time, even with the Shield Eternal. My librarian fails to get the smile off, but does get null zone. He kills one terminator, and luckily manages to live through the round. This lets me score 2 VP, as characters get more VPs every turn they hold and objective. Those 2 VP however are all I get this round.
Turn 3 sees his captain plow into my librarian. When the dust clears, he’s got two terminators and his captain on the central objective, as well as secure grip on the flanks. 4 VP earned.
But while he’s on all the objectives, I’m still in the game. This is the turn both his tanks die. I think that’s all I do, and gain 2 VPs from KPs.
Turn 4 he’s hunkering down on the objectives. Some light fire kills an intercessor. Still, +4VP from objectives. He’s got quite the lead at this point.
I think this is at the middle of 4
He’s got the centerline, and I’m moving in from the edges.
I decide to forgo the center for the moment and focus on the flanks. My captain only has one wound left, and really doesn’t want to tangle with his captain backed up by a pair of TH/SS terminators. So he and the sternguard go off to mess with the rhino/intercessors. My primaris and tacs move towards the other flank. A combinaton of melta and las fire end his dreadnought, yeilding me 1 KP. Not the best turn, but I’m getting into position for the end game.
The end game is him racking up VPs while I roll him up. My captain/sternguard clear their side. My captain hold the objective, nursing his last wound, while the sternguard race to the center. On the other flank, my tacs and intercessors charge his scouts, butchering them in CC. The tacs consolidate on the objective, while the primaris head to the middle. This is the end of 5. If we end, he’s got it on VPs. Dice gods tell us to play another turn. He racks up more VPs. My Pred blows away the last of the terminators. I’m out of CPs. He’s got the +1T relic, and I’ve got nothing but bother fire and rifle buts. Well, and a pair of power swords, but he’s got a SS so they don’t do much. He takes 3 wounds from the fire. Time to charge. He’s down to his last wound. I slap 3 wounds on him, but he fails 2 saves, so even if he used a CP to re-roll, he’s dead.
Victory via tabeling, bottom of 6. The final count was 24 to 23, but as 2 of mine were for slay the warlord and the KP for him, if I’d not killed his captain, he would have won. Incredibly close game.
As it turns out, I think my impulsive death spasm with the chaplain won me the game. If he had two more terminators holding the center at the end, I don’t think I’d have been able to table him. It was a close thing as it was.
Fresh paint report:
The SE was worth it. Captains are already pretty killy, but the shield made him a lot more tanky. Especially when charging the 2D flamestorm cannons. 1/2 damage FTW!.
Sternguard sarge was packing a new power sword. Carved up a few tacs with it.
Intercessors are still new-ish. Did OK with the long range firefight. The mortal wounds they were taking from the snipers would have let them win. But when I had enough fun being shot, I just broke cover, ran over, and carved them apart. I like these guys. Need to add some sort of decoration to the AGL guy; he blends into the squad too well. The Boy’s intercessors did well for him. Shot up some scouts, held some objectives. Not bad for a basic troop pick.
Nice battle report as always, and nice job to The Boy for getting more models painted and almost beating you in the game! The guys you painted are pretty cool-looking too, of course!
Just a quick weekly update. I’ll try to get something a little more substantial, but have a lot of adulting to do over the next few days. Got my renter’s insurance sorted out and hired movers, so all the “stop signs” are out of the way, but still a ton of crap to do to get ready to move. Going to cut into my hobby time.
While I had bigger goals for this month, I think I’m going to settle for painting 1d3 Lts. Not sure how many I’ll be able to fit it.
Almost done with the base coats. Alternating putting down layers, packing boxes, watching Altered Carbon on Netflix, and drinking bourbon. Going to see if I can finish these guys tomorrow. Nothing else planned. And if I can get them out of the way, I don’t need to worry about my entry for the month.
RandyMcStab wrote: Looking good. How is Altered Carbon? As I have boubon and Netflix also.
I’m about halfway through it, and would give it a solid recommendation. And not just for the sex and violence, it’s quality Sci-Fi.
Progressing on the LTs. Brown wash is done, just some random touch-ups, and then it’s back to blue/final wash. Started packing up the spare hobby stuff around the workbench. Not sure if I’ll start another big project after these guys are done, but I did drag out another bit to paint. Can always use more power swords.
Just put the second blue coat down on them. Noticed a few spots I need to clean up once that dries. Then the final wash, and highlights. Probably not going to finish tonight.
In general I prefer axes myself, and painted up the one I had primed already. I just never seem to own a lot of them. I might have one left in my bits box. But swords are almost as nice, and much easier to come by. With them being 4 points these days I’m a lot more likely to hand them out, which is one of the driving forces of getting me to paint up my spare bits.
I don't own many axes either, the ones I do have are from 2nd ed too. I usually give the models swords and use them as axes anyway, whilst I prefer full WYSWYG, swords tend to be prettier than axes.
I'm about 4 episodes into AC and I'm enjoying it. Kind of a 'Bladerunner' meets 'Strange Days' (the film) type of thing.
And done. Screwed up the eyes a bit, but that’s nothing new. Doesn’t look quite as bad from a normal table angle. Kinda meh on the freehanded LT insignias. Needed to do them though. The little guy insisted.
Used the micro sol/set. Worked quite well. Didn’t seal them with anything, so a little worried about them rubbing off. We’ll see how they wear.
And with them finished, that’s a wrap in year 3 of the painting challenge for me. Spoilering, due to size.
Spoiler:
Good Volume this year. Only 3 months were single entries, and the LRR and Manfred were hardly “simple” entries. 43 models (counting the lander bit separately). If I used my old cheating math, where bikes/calvary count as 2 and vehicles/monsters count as 4, that’s my entire 1-a-week goal ++ right here. Variety wasn’t bad. Very marine centric, but a bit more diverse there then normal. Salamanders and destroyers are outside my normal Ultra paint scheme, as was the apothecary. Primaris I’m painting to a different standard, including colored rims and edge highlighting. Two months of Death, which were probably my stronger entries. They and the Apothecary were the only times I hit about 1% of the vote this year. The marauders and crashed lander were good to get off my workbench. And now that I’m playing a decent amount of floorhammer with The Boy, the lander is getting use. No Eldar. I should be sure to enter some next year. We’ll see what the categories look like, but there is always December.
I’m not sure if I’m going to formally log in in my goals, but I do want to go back and put decals on a lot of my old stuff. They really help the look, and I have the right stuff for the job now. And it’s a step I’ve skipped on a lot of my stuff.
Decided to work up a scout. The Boy is over this weekend, so wanted something to do at the bench with him. Basecoats are almost done. I also finished up the spare power sword I was working on.
He’s doing some basing work as well.
Glue takes a while to dry with the gravel. But if you put the second coat on too soon, the whole thing falls apart. He’s also working on his captain, but the pic I snapped was blurry. I’ll try to get another one later.
kavika0311 wrote: Good looking LTs Nev! I agree that decals really help the look of your guys. The Dark Imperium set comes with some pretty awesome decals too.
Decals really do help, I need to be more on the ball about doing them. In general the crisp white really helps the blue pop. I’m just lazy. But now that I have the right tools, I hope to be better.
So I had The Boy this weekend. He finished his entry for the month, and while I had the lightbox out, I snapped some formal shots of his other stuff he had with him, freshly based.
And we got a game in. Ambush, 1,000 points a side. Left side is mine. The coin is a stand in for his captain, who was getting his last coat of paint as I was taking pics. I need to get 1/3 of my army off the bottom of the map. Anything less is a loss. He starts off blowing 3cp for the preliminary bombardment, and kills 3 intercessors with it. Ouch, but that’s a heavy investment. (turns out it was worth it) As the game stats of night fighting (-1 to hit) not a whole lot of damage gets done otherwise. I think he kills a few scouts.
My shooting is not much better, but I do make a long charge and mug his snipers. I fail to charge his pred though, which stung. I was hoping for a little better showing with the scout bikes. They did shave two wounds off the librarian. I should have just run them towards the edge.
He mugs the bikes with his VV and shoots me up a bit. Vindi is getting low on wounds, but hangs in there.
My rhino heads towards the edge, popping smoke. Hopefully I can make it. I light up his pred, mangling it and charge my intercessors into his tacs. Gota get to the end zone.
Rhino is not far enough to be safe, and he cracks it open with his vanguard/intercessors/Lt. My tacs pile out, but are pretty much cornered. On the other side I use a combination of charge/fight/fallback to leapfrog units downfield. UM tactics prove very nice here, as I get to shoot after falling back. I figure the Vindi has no chance to make it, so sit back and shoot for a couple of turns. Although after the tacs in their rhino look to be stuck, I do some math. I need to get 3 out of the 4 units I have left on the table off if I want to win. Time to roll out! The vindi starts the same charge tricks as the rest of them (he can’t shoot after falling back, but that never came up)
I think this is the end of 5 The hellblasters are already off the table. I just need to get one of the LTs and the Vindi off to win. We roll, and I get another chance turn 6.
He falls back with the pred to try to roadblock me, and his captain mugs one LT. I move the other one and the vindi towards the table edge, and blow up the razor. Turn 7? Turn 7! Both my LT and vindi are in range to head off the table. Half his army is still out of position from killing my rhino/tac squad. His captain is a little out of range, and won’t be able to make the charge. All he has left is the pred, with only one wound left on it. My LT only has 3 wounds left. He takes the shot: Mangeld pred is hitting on 5’s. He lands 3 hits, wounds with two of them. 4 wounds done, more then enough. If we had played my turn, the Vindi with Chrons driving would have rolled off the table, giving me 330 points off the edge, where I needed 333.
We’re enjoying the narrative missions victory conditions. In this one, the game was down to the wire. The last one where he needed to table me was also close until the end. There is always a chance for luck to turn; it’s not like games where you are uncatchably ahead on points, and the last few turns are just going through the motions.
Finished up the scout this morning. Wash is drying on the chainsword. Once that’s done, I’ll touch up the studs with another white coat. Then the question is do I start another project, or pack up the bench? Yesterday I got the keys to my new place, the movers are coming a week from Monday. I’ll slowly be moving small stuff after work over the next week. The hobby stuff is in the list of things I move myself. Almost done packing minis. All my foam is full. Of the painted stuff, the LRR and about 75 marines didn’t fit into the KR. A chunk of Eldar infantry are riding in plastic boxes/towels as well. Once I do my taxes and get my return I’m going to get more foam, the question is if I get a smaller bag as well, or just boxes. I guess that will be determined by how much I get back.
OK, I should get back to cutting out little squares of paper to see what’s going where in my new apartment. And other random adulting I need to do today. Enjoy your weekends all.
Looking good, love to see Scouts in camo rather than white jump suits. Toying with getting some more as I've been enjoying 'throw away' squads with little in the way of upgrades running about the place stabbing/shotgunning stuff.
RandyMcStab wrote: Looking good, love to see Scouts in camo rather than white jump suits. Toying with getting some more as I've been enjoying 'throw away' squads with little in the way of upgrades running about the place stabbing/shotgunning stuff.
I’ve got a box of scouts I still need to build. I was going to wait until I picked up a box of scout bikers to mix/match parts.
I’ve found basic bare-bones scouts vital in 8th. A lot of stuff needs to start 9” away from enemy units, and tanks can’t just back out of CC and shoot. So screening units are vital. With their low cost and deployment options scouts excel at this role. Fluffy and thematic as well.
Snipers with cloaks can still work, but they are pretty pricy for what they do. I’d rather have more basic guys.
Yes snipers with cloaks are 18pts a go now? Same as an Intercessor. They're pretty overcosted probably because they have that 1/6 chance of dealing mortal wounds. I'd much rather have an expendable (for SM) 11pt dude providing an anti deep strike buffer. Other people think so too, the bolter Scouts are out of stock online.
Quite an inspiring scout scheme Neve, I agree with Randy. I have some scouts on the workbench queue, and varying up the fatigues and cloak designs will break up the endless sea of blue that my Ultras force is starting to look like. The green armour makes them look all the better too, yet still somehow they look sufficiently vanilla to pass as ultras. Liking your stuff, the poses are neat as well.
RandyMcStab wrote:Yes snipers with cloaks are 18pts a go now? Same as an Intercessor. They're pretty overcosted probably because they have that 1/6 chance of dealing mortal wounds. I'd much rather have an expendable (for SM) 11pt dude providing an anti deep strike buffer. Other people think so too, the bolter Scouts are out of stock online.
The cloaks are still priced like the 2+ cover save was invulnerable, like last edition. And that any guy in power armor behind a tree couldn’t get one. As for the snipers, I think if you pair them with an Lt. to re-roll failed wounds to fish for 6’s they can be a little more nasty. But most things get better with buffs.
Giving camping scouts heavy weapons is something the intercessors can’t do, and both the HB and the ML have some nice stratagems.
lipsdapips wrote:Quite an inspiring scout scheme Neve, I agree with Randy. I have some scouts on the workbench queue, and varying up the fatigues and cloak designs will break up the endless sea of blue that my Ultras force is starting to look like. The green armour makes them look all the better too, yet still somehow they look sufficiently vanilla to pass as ultras. Liking your stuff, the poses are neat as well.
Thanks Neve, you've given me some inspirado
My camo paint scheme originally was to allow me to use them as either BA or Ultras, back in 2nd when I hadn’t fully committed to blue yet. I sometimes have the thought of going back and putting in chapter marking in black. Probably wouldn’t be that hard with the micron pen. But I’ve got a ton of things to do besides going back and updating old models. They do serve the critical role of being something non-blue power armor to paint. Marines can be very monotonous to paint, and scouts give you an in-army way to break free.
In hobby news I’m officially on hiatus. All the minis are boxed up, and 4 plastic bins of them are already in the new place. Packed most of the workbench last night. Movers are coming in a week, so I’ll not be set up and ready to go until March probably. Of course, getting the workbench up and running is at the top of my priority list, so it won’t be long before I’m cranking out more models. Next on the paint queue is the other half of the Salamander squad, and I want to start building. Spring will be here shortly(ish) and that means it’s time to break out the rattle can and prime!
Also, Internet not up, and having problems with data on my phone at the new place. So only Internet at work on breaks. Hopefully will get sorted soon. Hate posting from my phone.
...And we’re back in business. Started putting the green down on the next 5 salamander sternguard. In an effort to paint bits, also dragged out a shurcannon to get done. In other news, the Ultras have resumed their post in the china cabinet, and the Eldar have taken over a second shelf of the glass fronted bookcase. I’m not sure all my minis are going to be able to come out of their boxes. I think my undead might take the other two shelves of the bookcase. This leave my random 40k stuff and the WHFB Chaos to find homes elsewhere. Some can go on the white plastic shelf, but others might stay in bins and live in the closet/under the bed. Not optimal, but both my Eldar and Undead were getting very cramped on their shelves, and are active (or at least semi-active) armies. And due to me having almost everything I need for my Ultras, most new purchases are probably going to go to those two armies.
Internet is sorted, and boxes are getting unpacked. Soon this place will feel a little more like home. Need to get more lights though. Last place had good built-ins, this one doesn’t, so I need to get some lamps. Especially for painting.
Not new per-se, but just putting decals on old guys. We all have different ideas of what “done” is. For the longest time, I didn’t count being based as a requirement for a mini to be complete. (I do now). Similarly, I don’t consider the decals a must. Mostly due to the finicky nature of them, and the trouble getting them on looking right. But with the right tools I think I’m going to be better about them going forward, and want to make inroads into my old stock.
I’m kinda afraid to survey my collection to see who needs work. Maybe I’ll just chip away a squad at a time and then be pleasantly surprised when there is nobody left.
So my office gets the morning sun. So until I get some more lamps, weekend mornings are the best time to paint. I did sneak in a coat yesterday before work though, which if I’m careful might be a productive way to get stuff done.
The salamanders are ready for their green second coat, then washes. I should probably start blocking in the next two. Need to finish all 5 before the end of the month. Eldar cannon is done, should probably grab another bit of the pile for work.
Hope everyone has a fun weekend. Need to balance running errands (get lamps!), unpacking, painting, and resting here. But I’ll probably end up spending most of it binge watching Netflix and working through a growler of beer. There is a beverage center literally a minute down the road with over a dozen taps (plus a zillion cans/bottles). I think the money I save on the commute is going into my beer fund. Or plastic crack. Or both.
Yup. 64 oz. (or 1.89L). A lot of breweries, taprooms, beverage centers, and even gas stations will offer growler fills. Often fresh, local, seasonal, etc, beers. So you buy your growler, and then get it re-filled with whatever floats your boat on any given day. Cheeper then getting cans/bottles, and often a higher quality of product as well.
In hobby progress, I put the second green coat down on those two guys, and the first green down on the rest of the squad.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let there be light!
The true test will be tonight when the sun goes down, but 2x100W equivalent LEDs should keep the Grues at bay. Might end up picking up a couple more of those lamps for other rooms. But a little illumination should help me get more painting in.
Light is working out just fine. Got the gold/black based on the rest of the squad last night, green washed the first 2. Put the black wash on them this morning.
And then shifted gears.
If you find someone waxing nostaglic about metal minis, ask them when the last time they build one was. Sure, it’s better then resin, but plastic is Soooooo nice. All those vents, mold lines in undercuts, odd gaps. Also, the real reason we don’t see bonesingers on the battlefield is that they'd all snapp their own necks! Not only do they have giant moose antlers, but vanes on their shoulders and back. Fine for base building away from the front, but terminal if you need to look around at anything other then a slow, careful pace. But once the glue dries, he can join the primed pile.
Wraithguard are in progress. Clipped all the body parts for wraithguard. Still very tempted to build them with axes. I feel my list needs an anchor unit, and that 4++ is enticing. But so are D-scythes. Next box will be choppy.
that's a very nice hobby space Nev, everything is within reach and that lighting looks like it'll be sufficient for now. Have you considered putting up some LED strip lighting along the underside of that top part to even out the light distribution? The bonesinger is a great model but I don't envy the job of putting him together. Working with the old metals was a miserable experience when I first got into the hobby. I remember having to try and build an "old one eye" for a nid army... never again.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: that's a very nice hobby space Nev, everything is within reach and that lighting looks like it'll be sufficient for now. Have you considered putting up some LED strip lighting along the underside of that top part to even out the light distribution? The bonesinger is a great model but I don't envy the job of putting him together. Working with the old metals was a miserable experience when I first got into the hobby. I remember having to try and build an "old one eye" for a nid army... never again.
There actually is a florescent light under there, it’s just off for that pic.
Nids and metal didn’t get along well. A number of years ago I (re) assembled an old metal hive tyrant for a friend, as his hobby skills were not up to the task. What an ugly piece of work. Lot of greenstuff, glue, and swearing.
Some progress:
Front guys just need bolters, back guys are mostly through basecoats. Overall pretty happy with how these guys are coming along.
So should be just about ready for the second green coat. Then the final washes and bolters/baseing. Month is half over, but looking good to make my goal.
UPS guys just rang the doorbell. New toys, my first purchase of the year. Using guilt-free gift cards. A second SC: Eldar box.
Which simplifies my life significantly. One squad of WG will get scythes, the other axes. One WL I’m going to try to convert into a more agressive charging pose, the other will stand back for fire support. Probably try to convert one of the farseers into a spiritseer. Little work on the helm and change the spear to a staff should be easy. I hope. While I’m not a huge fan of the war walkers, I think they will do a lot better as a pair, rather then just a loner. With Eldar, grouping up for buffs makes a lot more sense.
I’ve still painted more this year then I’ve bought, but do need to be careful.
Got The Boy this weekend, so hoping to get some games/hobby in.
If you find someone waxing nostaglic about metal minis, ask them when the last time they build one was. Sure, it’s better then resin, but plastic is Soooooo nice.
This. Started converting an Autarch out of a metal Fire Dragon Exarch about a month ago. Still not done. All this drilling and pinning just to get something to stick.
Did you sculpt those scaly skin things on the shoulders yourself, or are those some kind of aftermarket bits (sorry if I missed where you already said)? They look cool regardless!
If you find someone waxing nostaglic about metal minis, ask them when the last time they build one was. Sure, it’s better then resin, but plastic is Soooooo nice.
This. Started converting an Autarch out of a metal Fire Dragon Exarch about a month ago. Still not done. All this drilling and pinning just to get something to stick.
Roll on Plastic Aspects I say...
The lack of plastic options is severely hampering the growth of my Eldar. I’d love to field aspects, and would probably grab a box of each if they came out. But after the fire dragons, I’m not doing finecast again.
ZergSmasher wrote:Did you sculpt those scaly skin things on the shoulders yourself, or are those some kind of aftermarket bits (sorry if I missed where you already said)? They look cool regardless!
They are Kromlech.
https://bitsofwar.com/home/148-dragonborn-shoulder-pads-.html I did have a thought on making a dragonscale cape. I’ve got 2 gravis captains, and can hardly see myself fielding one of them, much less two. And due to silly primaris equipment restrictions, it’s not like I’d need to build them with different gear. So I thought I might try my hand at addling scales with greenstuff. My thought was that rolling little balls and pressing them on with a blunt object to flatten them might work for duplicating the dragonscale look. Not likely to happen anytime soon, but an idea.
So while the boy sleeps in like a slug, I thought I’d post a quick report over coffee. Last time he was here, he wasn’t really feeling like playing, but we did put together 1k lists. Played them yesterday. He really just wanted to play killpoints, as he things a more straightforward game will minimize my strategic advantage of experience. I need to break him of that thought and get him to play the mission. Anyway, that’s down the road. The armies:
His:
Fun little balanced force. Light on long range firepower, which will hurt.
Mine:
I asked if he’d rather play vs. Eldar or Ultras, he chose the pointy eared xenos. While no bikes, this is a pretty typical list for me.
He set up the table, won the roll to choose the deployment. This is where were were at game start:
He goes first. His JP contingent lands near the rangers/vyper whlie the rest of his forces move up. Setting the tone for his game’s dice, both of the plasma pistols in the assault marine squad overheat, even with a re-roll. Overall he does end up killing the rangers though for first blood.
Unfortunately, now his jump captain is exposed. I pull the vyper back to my hill and start shooting downrange. I kill his captain, 2 assault marines, and plink 2 wounds off the razor. Not a bad turn.
He pushes forward, and his shooting takes down a hawk or two, but nothing major.
I smite his assault sarge before he can reach my lines, crack open the razor, and kill the sternguard. My spiritseer does perils, and looses half his wounds to the warp.
Here is where we are at mid-game. Not looking good for the imperials. I convince The Boy to keep at it, and work on giving him some tips so he can get better next time.
At my suggestion, his rhino advances and pops smoke, positioning itself to block LOS to his captain. His snipers take down my wounded seer. I think he kills another hawk. Not the best turn, but it was going to be ugly, and he’s in position for next turn.
I do manage to kill the rhino, and a few of the tac marines, but that’s it. Considering I’ve still got a solid firebase, it could have been worse.
While he’s not going to win, it’s time for a little vengeance. His foot captain and the survivors of the tac squad move up and lay down some fire. His dice continue to be ice-cold, but we talk about the importance of fire order, which is particularly relevant for Salamanders. But despite bad luck, he finishes off the hawks and the vyper in CC.
I then disembark from my transports and murderize the survivors. We call it at that point.
I think the only fresh paint I had was the guardian’s weapon platform. Which spent the bulk of the game chilling in the WS.
He was fielding the Shield Eternal bit I recently painted, which doesn’t really help when you are doomed and being shot at by a buffed squad of swooping hawks. I’m not sure how many times he’s fielded his foot captain with maul/plasma pistol; I know he’s used mine a bit. But he actually did quite well for himself. While I’m not huge fan of mauls in 8th, they still do a really nice job cashing out squishy eldar.
Hopefully will get some hobby time in this afternoon. The Boy wants to try to finish basecoating the green on his stormraven, and I’ve got some building to do.
Hope everyone is enjoying their St. Patty’s Day hangovers, --Nev
Automatically Appended Next Post:
The dead walk. Right now the arms/torsos/heads are just tacked on, so I can still pose and swap around. But 3/5 of the squad is clean and partly assembled. Not sure if I’m going to add the extra armor plates and things that are supposed to go on the CC guys. I’ll try cleaning up a few and tacking them on once the squad is ready.
War Kitten wrote:Those Wraithguard are going to be lovely when they're done Nev.
youwashock wrote:Oh, metal models. How I loathe and love you. Nice new additions.
Zambro wrote:good job the heads are only tacked on. The guy on the right looks like he has a neck problem
For being sluggish animated constructs, these guys have a lot more life in them then most marine kits. Might be that the waist and neck are ball joins, so there is a lot of flex in posture, but also just the stance. Really enjoyed building them. The arms come off for painting, just tacked on for now, but they are ready for the prime pile. Hopefully the posture of the guy on the right ended up as “looking sideways” not “broken neck”
Some paint: Green wash is down. Next is a touch up pass, then the black wash. And I really should start on the guns. They need to be finished in a week.
I think the next build will be a wraithlord. Looking forward to digging into that kit.
Put the blackwash down on those guys last night, so just the touch-ups, basing, and guns left. We’ll see if I can finish them this weekend. Should be doable. Then I need to figure out what to paint next. Any preferences? Can’t prime for a few weeks yet, weather is still crappy.
In other news I did my taxes this week, and will be getting a nice check from the IRS. I normally earmark a bit of it for hobby use, so need to decide what I want/need. More KR boxes/foam is high on the list, maybe even a second bag. But I should also get something to paint. Both my Ultras and Eldar are in a good place right now though. Undead might be getting some new stuff, need to dig into the rumors more. Or at the very least, I might grab another box of skeletons. Should really build the the ones I got in the SC box a bit back. 3 blocks of 40 guys seems to be the go-to build, and I’m a bit shy of that.
Anyway, enjoy your weekends all. And have fun at adeptecon for those who are there. You lucky guys...
So many possibilities when you have some spare cash for the hobby... Do you have Shadespire? I'm told it's a good game to play on the side, and the undead expansion is ace, too.
Zambro wrote: So many possibilities when you have some spare cash for the hobby... Do you have Shadespire? I'm told it's a good game to play on the side, and the undead expansion is ace, too.
I don’t, and only sort of considered it. I’m not interested in any of the factions in the main set, and while the undead do look fun, you need the core set to play. So the question is how much do I want to blow on a game that I’m probably not going to get much play out of, just for some minis I enjoy? For things like BaC and BoP, the games were gravy on the 30k marines. Shadespire doesn’t have that. In a related vain, I enjoy the concept of Necromunda/Bloodbowl, but they require a regular crowd for play, and my attendance at the FLGS is spotty at best.
Speaking of which, I hit the more “L” of the FLGSs this afternoon. It’s the one I tried to go to after the Goblin closed. Perk is that it’s only a few minutes away. The owner claims that 4-8 guys are there every Friday for 40k, so I might give it a shot and see what’s up. Seems their stock is a bit lower then I recall from last time, but not terrible. Picked up some paints for The Boy and a paint handle for myself.
Some hobby progress: Black wash is drying on the arm/bolters, they will just need a touchup pass and are finished. First glue is drying on the rocks. I want to make sure that it is completely dry before putting a diluted glue wash down to help keep rocks from flaking off. We had a problem before rushing this step, as applying the second coat was knocking off the rocks it was supposed to seal down. After that the bases need their black wash. I figure I’ll do the glue after dinner tonight, and the wash in the morning. Then it’s just glue the guns on and the glamor shots.
WL build progresses. Torso is built, and I put some liquid GS on to help fill gaps. Will sand that down once it dries. Put some thought into how to gear him up. Since I now have two, I think I’m going to specialize them. The heavy weapons are going to be magnetized, but the small ones and the sword are going to be glued.
This guy is going to be fire support. I’m going to put one heavy on the pistol grip, and the other on the alternate shoulder. The other shoulder and arm will get shurcats. I don’t think it’s worth the point upgrades for the flamers and glave on him. 29 points is a lot for something he’ll probably not need. Basic fists should work well of something gets close and needs to be slapped around. Primary heavies will probably be brightlances. I want to like the other heavies, but the BLs just get the job done for a decent price. Stance will mostly be standing around at rest.
The other one is going to be more CC oriented. He’ll get the burners and the stabby bit. I figure with advancing and possibly taking hits on the way in, the auto-hit flamers will be worth the price. The Glave looks cool, and while I prefer the flat 3D to the d6, the +2S puts him at a good breakpoint. S9 is wounding tanks on a 3+ regardless of size, and is cashing out T4 models on a 2+. The extra AP will be nice for LRs, but mostly irrelevant. Default will probably give him 2xShurCannons. I’m going to hit a craft store tomorrow and look into getting a razor saw. I want to carve at least one leg for more of a running pose. I envision him running forward, one arm forward with a cannon on it, and the sword held back and to the side (behind?) in a reverse grip. We’ll see if I can actually execute this vision. I don’t do a whole lot of limb cutting/bending.
Still dithering about what guns should be on the War Walkers, but they will be magnetized, so no rush making decisions. Plus they are pretty far down the build list.
So they are done. Nothing earthshaking from the first 5, but done by the deadline. Here is the full squad, ready for deployment:
Which bring us to the end(ish) of March, so I should probably do a quarterly report. Here is the YTD:
14 minis, so ahead of my 1-a-week goal. But not significantly ahead. I’ve been doing much better then that recently, so should probably pick up the pace.
6 bits done, so halfway to my yearly goal. Good work there.
Little shy on games played, need to get more in. Heading to the local FLGS should help here, with the benefit of playing more then just The Boy’s Salamanders.
While I painted the platform, I do need to get more Eldar done. I’ve been building them, but they need to be painted to count. I suspect they will feature heavily in Q3-4. But I should try to get some of the old guys out of the queue to make room for the new. Getting to a comfortable 2k should not be hard if I get even half of the new guys to the table. A SC:Eldar box clocks in at over 500 points, and I have two working their way out of the pile of shame. Plus the WS I picked up; forgot about that. If I build/paint all the Eldar I recently picked up, that’s 1,250 points right there. And I have 6 bikes, a jetseer and 8 guardians already primed and waiting.
One thing I want to focus a little harder on is my much ignored 1st goal; painting stuff for my friend’s SoB army. With the news of plastics on the way (Emperor willing) he’s perked up a bit and might get back into 40k. With that in mind, I’d like to dredge up the remnants of stuff I’ve had waiting in the wings and get them done. If he does dive back in, I’ll probably end up painting some of the new stuff for him. One of these days I should kidnap the chunk of his army I did paint for a photoshoot. It’s hard to get a grasp on how many sisters I did paint, as they were delivered and deployed in waves, but it feels like I did a zillion of the little ladies.
You know, I never actually considered using my Mk 3 Marines as Sternguard. Once I get some suitably fancy looking bits I just might steal that idea, I still have 20 of the Burning of Prospero Marines to build, and I would like some more Sternguard
War Kitten wrote:You know, I never actually considered using my Mk 3 Marines as Sternguard. Once I get some suitably fancy looking bits I just might steal that idea, I still have 20 of the Burning of Prospero Marines to build, and I would like some more Sternguard
Suits of older marks of armor seemed a good match for sternguard. I think the Mk III works well for more aggressive squads; it just looks very brutal.
Captain Brown wrote:Salamanders look great.
Cheers,
CB
ZergSmasher wrote:Your Sallies turned out great! What's next for you and the Boy?
I’m quite happy with the way they turned out. Was a little on the fence on the shade of green, but it’s grown on me. I started work on some Eldar guardians for my next painting project. Mostly just to get them out of the primed pile. But they are fairly simple, so hopefully will go quickly. Not sure what The Boy has got on deck. I just sent him a reminder that the month is almost over, so if he wants to finish painting an entry for the month, he needs to get on it. He’s got a lot of things partially painted I’m trying to convince him to finish. He might also be picking up some new stuff as his birthday is imminent.
youwashock wrote:Eldar and Sisters coming up? Right on.
The new marines look good, especially as a full squad.
“Sisters” is a bit of a stretch in the short term. It’s mostly unloved scraps. A seraphim and superior without backpacks, a canoness (bare metal) another canoness who needs a new hand carved from spares and painted, a half dozen arcoflagelents, a vindicare assassin, 3 kurganova sisters for an allied guard force, and spare HF/MM/HB options for immolators. Which is the first time I think I’ve inventoried them. Some of the flagelents have a start to a basecoat on them. I wasn’t happy with how they were looking and just sorta stopped work on them. I think they would take well to a nulan oil wash, as my big issue with them was the confused detail and flat colors that were happening. But a good wash to muddy things up and hide the flaws might be just what the Emperor ordered. I should probably clean up the raw canoness and move to to the to-prime pile. She was a low priority due to my friend already having a few painted, and the special characters massively overshadowing her in every previous edition. But as the only complete sister model I have that’s actually a sister, I should paint her up.
Agents of chaos is this month’s theme, so im going to finish up these guys. Time allowing, i might build and prime two more to bring them up to a five man stick. As I’m a few hundred miles from my workbench, and won’t be back for a week, time will probably not allow, but it’s good to have stretch goals. Need to find their shields.
I should have grabbed a pic before 2 guardians are almost done with thier basecoats. I think I’m going to treat them as a background project, and slowly work on them as i do other things. I’d like to get them out of the primed pile, but there is no rush.
Gave The Boy the salamanders, he was thirlled. I also got him a set of the same brushes i use (slightly different sizes, is use 00, 0, and 1 ricktons, got him 0, 1, 2) and a puck of master’s brush cleaner. Plus a pair of paints, a base gold (he was complaining about his layer gold not covering) and BftBG, as I think it’s a fun paint to have, and he does his eye lenses red, so can use it. My folks got him an IOU for a KR box. So I’ll sit down with him and pick out what he wants to fill it. Get myself a new case at the same time, bump us over the free shipping threshold. So he didn’t get any new 40k kits for his birthday, but did get a lot of hobby support stuff. And a fully painted squad.
Hope everyone has a nice Easter, April fools, Passover, spring beak, or just a weekend. I’m semi-AFK for a week, so no hobby progress from me. Just relaxing, playing board games with my brother, his boys, and The Boy. And eating well and drinking top shelf booze. It’s good to visit home.
One thing I want to focus a little harder on is my much ignored 1st goal; painting stuff for my friend’s SoB army. With the news of plastics on the way (Emperor willing) he’s perked up a bit and might get back into 40k. With that in mind, I’d like to dredge up the remnants of stuff I’ve had waiting in the wings and get them done. If he does dive back in, I’ll probably end up painting some of the new stuff for him. One of these days I should kidnap the chunk of his army I did paint for a photoshoot. It’s hard to get a grasp on how many sisters I did paint, as they were delivered and deployed in waves, but it feels like I did a zillion of the little ladies.
I'm definitely pumped to hear this... I'll keep an eye out for these photos to come around!
Got some paint down on the marauders. Just the pants and flesh basecoats, but it’s something. I’ll try to get more done tonight, and a large chunk this weekend (as I have no plans/boy). I’m reminded how much these models suck. Plus, younger me who built/primed them did a kinda crappy job. Oh well.
In other hobby news I ordered another KR case. A Kaiser 2, so I don’t need to drag my 3 around for smaller games. It was partly subsidized by my folks, who got The Boy some foam for his birthday, so one of the KRMs is going to him. But it costs less to pick them up as a bundle deal, so I took advantage and ordered everything together. Tax returns are great for stuff you kinda want, but can’t justify the rest of the year. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the new bag, just more foam otherwise. I still probably need another KRU worth of foam, but can do that next year.
In non-hobby news my trip home to KY went fine. No problems with airplanes, lots of games played, less booze drunk then expected, but that’s probably a good thing. My brother and his kids were actually keeping passover all week (for the first time ever) so food was a little weird. Irritated my mom, as she did all the meal planning for the week expecting to use flour. Still excellent, but a little restricted.
Spring is still not here yet, but I should finish working up the to-prime pile just in case. And get some more paint down.
Hope everyone endures the rest of their work weeks,
--Nev
Need to do the red accents and golds on the guardians, plus more on the guns. Then all the grey edge highlighting. Marauders are still hatefully working through their basecoats.
Even in death, I serve: Silly Marine dreads, they are not even dead, just wounded real bad and stuck into a weaponized hospital bed. Wraithlords actually died, and still returned to kick your again.
Not 100% happy with the build. While I like the ball/socket arm/leg joints it makes it really hard to get everything lined up nice. I wanted to have the shoulder mounts linked to their opposite arms, but couln’t quite get the brightlance mounts to match. Getting the supporting hand to march with the gun hand was also tough. Close enough though, and ready for the prime pile.
Some paint:
I think the marauders just need the brass basecoated on a few accent bits, then touchups and washes.. Guardians need edge highlighting and a nulan oil wash on the silvers. And then basing for all.
Something needs to move onto the to-build station. Probably something marine oriented. Been assembling a lot of filthy xenos lately.
Hope everyone’s weekend is going smoothly.
Honestly, I was expecting more scale creep. But damn the old guy looks like crap next to the new one. Not enough rose-tinted nostalgia to make up for that old RT sculpt.
Thanks. It’s a kit I’ve deeply coveted since I first saw it. But lackluster rules and price stopped me from picking one up. The Start Collecting box helped with the price, although the rules are still a bit “meh”. I’ll put up with crappy rules for cool models though. It’s not like I’m playing ultra competitive anyway.
Started cleaning mold lines off an inceptor squad. I figure I’ll put together one squad of them and then the gravis captain. That will be the end of one DI box. I still have one more set of DI inceptor/hellblaster/intercessor/gravis sprues to put together. I’ve been enjoying how the primaris play, so getting them table ready is a priority goal. When digging into the pile of shame, I forgot I had a wave serpent I picked up. That’s another top priority. I’m getting a lot of Eldar built, and my no mud policy restricts how many units I can include in my army. Although the WL does sort of shoot that concept in the foot. Of course, so does the Avatar, and I field him. I wonder if I could do a footdar list? It would blow The Boy’s mind. He’s so used to seeing my army formed around the core of 2 falcons and the WS (with frequent appearances of the nightspinner/prism). Lots of stuff still needs to be built/painted before that point though.
Interesting comparison shot of the old Wraithlord next to the current one. Personally I like the older sculpts of most models; it's like a throwback to a very different time in the hobby (but I get your point about the old WL looking silly).
ZergSmasher wrote:Interesting comparison shot of the old Wraithlord next to the current one. Personally I like the older sculpts of most models; it's like a throwback to a very different time in the hobby (but I get your point about the old WL looking silly).
Captain Brown wrote:Interesting seeing the old beside the new.
I’m a huge fan of old stuff myself. For me it’s not just “classic” but actually hits the nostalgia button hard, as I was there when it released, so it takes me back to the halcyon days of my youth. But not everything old is just better from being from that era. The old wraithguard stand up a lot better to their modern versions. Still need to get another old metal one one of these days.
Some paint:
Touch ups in progress on the marauders. Just need to wash the silvers and base the guardians. Although I kinda like the guns like that. I should compare with other models I’ve painted and se how they look.
Got a game in with The Boy.
His army:
Mine:
I totally forgot to get pictures of the table. We tried out hand at maelstrom missions, just the basic draw up to 3 cards at the start of your turn one.
Playing down the long table, he lines up pretty tight forward on his deployment zone, I’ve got my captain, dread, hellblasters and one LT forward, scouts and intercessors camping, and the pred and other LT hanging back. Everyone’s jump packs are in reserve.
I go first. Movement sees me move the bulk of my forces up the table, heading for the fight. I light up his melta bike squad and kill everyone but the sarge. I also shave 4 wounds off one speeder. 0 points scored.
He pushes the remaining bikes up, deploys his tacs to cap objectives, and erases my LSS, the scouts inside, and the scout bikes. Between one objective, killing a unit in CC, and first blood, the score is now 0-3
But the scouts were not the teeth of my army. My hellblasters are now in rapid fire range of his bikes. I remove all of them, including his bike captain from the table. I also polish off the wounded speeder. My assault marines fail to make the charge on his scouts. One of my TaCOs is to kill stuff in the shooting phase, as I got 3+ units I get d3 VP, and get the full 3. I also get a point for having a unit in his backfield and warlord. 5-3.
He has a call to make now. He’s holding 2 cards for objective 2, which my intercessors are camping. But I’ve also got a big ball of pain rolling up the table. He decides to try to stop my army, and drops the VV and both JPHQs in front of my hellblasters. (I do auspex them, but his SS keeps the plasma off) He shoots a chunk of wounds off the dread, and wipes the hellblasters out in CC. My HQs are stuck in combat with his VVs, who took a beating from them. He scores one objective, bringing it to 5-4. Close on points, but I’ve got a serious amount of firepower on the table, and he’s getting kinda thin on the ground.
Shooting is pretty light. I splash the last speeder with my pred, and a few tac marines. CC is more decisive. My assault marines plow into his snipers, killing all but the sarge. My dread crunches his Lt. I kill a bunch more of the VVs, leaving 2 I think. He carves a few wounds off my Lt. I score all my cards, netting me 4 VP. 9-4
He pulls his cards, and they look bad. 2 of them are for objectives in my backfield that I’ve got solidly camped, and he’s got nothing free to get to them. The last is one of his objectives which he could score. But he’s basically out of army. His last sniper is about to be cut apart by my AMs, Both our captains are about to start the dance of death, both 1 wound down. But I’ve got a TH and the Shield Eternal, he’s got the Teeth of Terra. While he’s got a smattering of tac marines and a rhino left, I’m matching that with my wounded tac squad, plus have the dread for backup. He concedes.
If the cards had been better to him the last turn, or if I got a pile of garbage, he might have been able to even up the points a bit. But I was in control of 4/6 of the objectives and was going to finish off his VVs and captain in his CC phase, and then move to mop up the stragglers. Even if his captain managed to stagger out of that combat alive, Sgt. Chronos in the auto/las pred on the hill would have finished him off.
The lesson of the day was target priority. While the scouts/LSS/bikes were fast, irritating, and good for grabbing objectives, the hellblasters were the primary threat. He also needs to get better about remembering his chapter tactics and learn the stratagems better. Also aggressive deployment can come back and bite you when going second. He’s lucky he only lost most of one bike squad.
The new model looks fantastic next to the old one, I used to hate trying to keep the old wraith Lord in one piece. I’m happy with the changes they have made to the units but I hope they keep the shape and style of the Eldar Grav Units the same ide be gutted if they change them.
Stevo221 wrote: The new model looks fantastic next to the old one, I used to hate trying to keep the old wraith Lord in one piece. I’m happy with the changes they have made to the units but I hope they keep the shape and style of the Eldar Grav Units the same ide be gutted if they change them.
I hear you. I tried to build that old WL back when he was new. Got frustrated and left him in parts for a couple of decades. When I finished him recently, with far more skills and tools then I had when I was younger, he was still a bear to build. Giant lumps of lead on spindly legs with small, thin contact points is never going to end well.
The aesthetics of the Falcon are what drew me to the Eldar. While the sprues are dated and could probably be re-cut, the design is solid. If they are going to revisit the range, I’m much rather see attention paid to aspect warriors and the massive stock of finecast, rather then redoing the venerable, but serviceable grav tank chassis.
Just put the wash on the guardians, and touched up the dark brown on the marauders. Just assembly and basing left for the elves, and a few more passes on the barbarians.
Also in the news, the last part of my KR order was waiting for me when I got home today. The Kaiser 2 and half the foam came last week, but the remaining half of the custom trays got to fly over the big puddle from the UK factory. Shame it showed up on a Monday, as one of the KRU was a gift from my folks to The Boy. Oh well, he’ll get them next time he’s up. For my records:
Me:
KRM #1
EL5 (wave serpent, 4 bikes) 1/2 deep
SM47 (15 Terminators) 1/2 deep
SM2 + SM3 (Vindicator, 2 rhinos) 1/2 deep
SM51 (9 centurions) 1/2 deep
Basically done and waiting for rocks, tufts, and flock. I still need to glue the shields on the marauders, and as I posted this pic remembered I need to add a little BftBG on the weapons. Should be able to polish them off tomorrow. Not really happy with the marauders, but at least they are done. Enjoying the guardians though; I think they turned out well.
Some build progress:
One built, JP part left separate for painting. Next one clipped and ready to cleaning. Still not sure if I want to put them on their clear posts or work out some alternate system of attaching them to bases. Thoughts? Goal for the weekend is to get a 3 man squad in the to-prime pile. Halfway there.
Having a bit of a debate with myself. I really want some scout bikes, but they are out of stock on the GW site. I could grab a box from Amazon, but the one seller who has them is marking them at $55. Do I want to pay above MSRP? It’s not a heinous markup, but still noticeable. A quick check of ebay shows some random partial/fully built kits. One of the reasons I want the box is to mix with a box of normal scouts, so really want new on sprue. Knowing my luck, I’d pay the premium, only to have them nerfed to oblivion before I could build/prime/paint them.
Seriously considering chopping the BP hand off my scout bike sarge and putting a stormbolter on there. Wouldn’t be hard, but I have an aversion to taking a knife to finished models. Reminds me I need to make some new sarges for the normal squads. I should get on that, once I’m done with the DI stuff and all the Eldar. So sometime next winter probably at my speed. I really need to formalize a to-do list.
Vote for next month is up. 3/4 or the options are going to result in Tippy, the loneliest hormagaunt, getting paint. The last option will be my JP LT. We’ll see how things settle out.
Hope everyone has a fun weekend. Mine should include doing a lot of dishes, laundery, Dim Sum, and some hobby time. Could be worse.
Not that long ago I was answering a question about how to do snow bases in another thread. When describing my technique, someone commented that the extra swish through the flock step was unnecessary, as was painting the top of the base white. I decided to test that out.
I didn’t paint the base tops, and I don’t think that maters with the thickness of the flock. They might not be 100% dry though, so might get a little more clear. But the swish makes a big difference. It adds a lot of texture to the snow, and it well worth the extra minimal effort it takes to do.
Everyone is flocked and done at this point. I’ll break out the light box later today for formal pictures. I moved two more guardians on deck for paint. The Inceptor clipped in the last pic is almost done, just need to glue his arms and head on. The last one is clipped and ready for mold line removal.
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Done. Not happy with them, but done. Bad sculpts, crappy job cleaning them up by younger me, so many issues. But out of the queue.
Happier with these guys:
By way of comparison, here they are with one of my old guys.
Nice work Nev definite improvement on the Guardian-front, and I'm with you on the iffyness of the Marauder sculpts. I've got a few bits and pieces of them for my various kitbashes but haven't actually managed to work them in without looking oddly proportioned or unbalanced yet...
Looking good, I like the snow bases. I always enjoy the BatReps with your kid too, always seem fun. I look forward to playing games with my kid (and mercilessly crushing him!) but at only 5 it might be a while before he grasps it (even 8th ed).
Some progress. Just building. The goal was to finish these guys over the weekend, but I polished them off tonight. Little late, but not unreasonably so. Been rainy and grey (but finally warm) so nothing was getting primed anyway.
Just a stock build here, nothing fancy.
Also this month is 3 color maximum, so I’m going to paint Tippy. She’s old, top heavy, and finally getting paint!
Mostly blue/blacks, might add some bone or red for accents.
Nice! Agree with all on the guardians. The helms are especially more vibrant. Very satisfying in miniature painting when you achieve that 'pop' and it stands out nicely. They are helped a lot by your basing style as well - I like it
The question is, do I bother to re-do the old ones? Not a total re-paint, but put a clean layer of red on the helm, and maybe a drybrush of a lighter silver on the gun? Should get them a lot closer to the new guys.
Of course, I’m generally loath to spend time on old guys when I have some many new things that need paint.
I'd say just move on and paint more unpainted stuff before going back to touch up old models. That's what I do. It's the only way I can possibly put a dent in my backlog.
Onward it is. Revisiting old stuff is a nag in the back of my head. One I can put off as long as I keep buying new shiny stuff.
Here is the goal for May.
2 more guardians
Tippy
JP Lt.
Spare powerfist.
Should be doable.
Got a game in vs. The Boy yesterday. I’ll post write up after work. He’s getting better, but needs to remember his rules and abilities more.
Feeling the shiny model syndrome with the Deathwatch leaks. I’ve got one squad and a librarian on the shelf now. Really tempted to pick up 2x5 intercessors and another HQ and make a detachment out of them.
I let him pick the mission, out of the narrative ones, as those seems to have been closer to the wire. He goes with patrol, which I figure won’t follow that pattern, but hey, his call.
1,500 points. My list:
I forgot to take a shot of his list. LR, 4xLC pred, AsC razor, rhino, Talon, some tacs and scouts, 2 captains.
He’s packing a lot of lascannons in his list, a little worrying as my eldar rely on tanks. We’ll see how this pans out.
Contact! He starts with 8 LCs on the table, I start with psychic shenanigans and a flyer. I guess that’s fair. I start way back in the corner with the CH, so all his first round of fire does is kill some scouts.
I zip up, doom the LR and fortune the CH and blow some wounds off the LR.
Turn two see everything he owns bar the scout squad show up. I pop the -1 to hit on the flyer and weather the fire as best I can, looking roughly half my wounds. Could be worse, but he did get a bit lucky in spots.
I use the stratagem to get +1 on my reserve rolls, and get the WS and the autarch. That’s it. Joy. Could have used the falcons and their AV firepower. Other then that, my turn looks a lot like my last one.
Turn 3 his scouts show up. He moves the talon up, strafes the rangers down, and overall savagely mangles both the CH and WS, but fails to kill either.
Things turn around for me here. The rest of my army shows up. I finish the last of his LR, and bring down the talon. Nice shift in firepower on the field. ( I forget if I killed the razor this turn or next)
He kills the WS, and takes the CH down to 1 wound left. Not a huge amount of firepower left. The pred is shooting for now, the scouts are plinking away, but the tacs are buttoned up in their transports.
The final push starts now, as I roll up his army. Pred is killed, as well as one of the captains on the hill with it. The razor and 5 man tac squad are dead at this point. I charge his other captain with Jain Zar, but fail to kill him.
This is the top of 5. We look at the numbers. He should be able to get another kill or two; he’s got a full tac squad in that rhino. But I’ve already got a compelling lead, and he’s not catching up. His hope would be to skate by on VP and hope the game ends before being tabled. But the numbers are not close, so we call it.
Victory Eldar.
This was a list he made without any input from me. Not bad, overall. He did end up with an empty rhino as he was adding/subtracting units and forgot to take off. He’s also not utilizing his troops very well, and forgets about the special rules he has.
Fresh paint was the pair of guardians. They bailed out of their wrecked WS and took cover in ruins like champs. Also, helped hose down a captain with shurican fire until he stopped moving.
In other news a friend of mine pointed out that Mass Effect 1/2 were on sale at Steam. So I have a new distraction.
It’s officially spring out there. Got my first batch of stuff primed for the season.
Some slow work on the paintbech:
Plugging away with the basecoats. Not really into painting Tippy. It’s not the 3-color thing, but I think she’s just going to look lame until I hit her with about 2-3 glazes. Which makes all the progress up until that point rough. Still need to highlight the armor plates and put some taper/cracks/blending down.
Guardians are almost ready for the grey lining. Lt. is almost up to the drybrush stage, I think he just needs the grey down for his basecoats.
Edit for random musings: Looking at the AoS news I’m pretty hyped for the nighthaunt stuff. Might have to pick up the starter. Still tempted by the Deathwatch stuff. Need to work out some priorities. --
Hope everyone is having a nice Mother’s day. Do something special for the moms in your life. They deserve it.
Spring? Spring gave my area a miss and went straight into summer (it's 90+ degrees F here for the last week!). Nice to see you've gotten some stuff primed, though.
I keep seeing your battle reports of games vs. the Boy, and I hope he isn't getting too discouraged when he loses. I'm always rooting for him as I read about the games. Personally I think it's great that you are teaching him to play and paint. That's the future of the hobby you're raising!
Winter's on the horizon here. It's been miserable. I'm just glad I primed all my gear before it became too much of a mission to do so. Boxes full of primed stuff get me excited Eager to see how to trace the goals for this month.
ZergSmasher wrote:Spring? Spring gave my area a miss and went straight into summer (it's 90+ degrees F here for the last week!). Nice to see you've gotten some stuff primed, though.
I keep seeing your battle reports of games vs. the Boy, and I hope he isn't getting too discouraged when he loses. I'm always rooting for him as I read about the games. Personally I think it's great that you are teaching him to play and paint. That's the future of the hobby you're raising!
He says he like to play, but the length of the game is a bit long. Especially when loosing. I might start experimenting with more esoteric lists as a handicap. Or just start reminding him constantly of all the crap he’s forgetting. I want him to learn on his own, and not just have me spoon feed him. Sinks in better that way. I’m hoping Killteam comes out at some point and is good. That and he gets more of his stuff painted. More vested in the system when pushing your own plastic around.
Spring also did a quick fade here. More summer-like at the moment. Of course, “summer” in upstate New York is a far cry from the summers I spent in Kentucky. Of course, I’ve been up here pushing 25 years, so may have gotten a little soft.
lipsdapips wrote:Winter's on the horizon here. It's been miserable. I'm just glad I primed all my gear before it became too much of a mission to do so. Boxes full of primed stuff get me excited Eager to see how to trace the goals for this month.
Life on the flip side. I’m starting to mentally put together the list of stuff I want to build and have ready to prime for next winter. At the rate I go it pays to think ahead. Right now I’m thinking the Nighthaunt side of the AoS box is locked in. The big question if if I go for DW. Minimum buy in for that is a 10 man box of intercessors. I’d also need another HQ, but could probably put one together with parts on hand. Although getting another box of intercessors and making some primaris captains is a tempting thought. I like the look of the one they make, but at that price point he can stay away. Upper end of the DW would probably be a dread, blackstar, and kill team cassius. Plus one of all the other primaris boxes to mix up some new killteams.
One perk of getting some DW is that The Boy is quite fond of them. So if I built a ally force of them, he might get a lot of use out of them. Or might get a Christmas present out of them if I work diligently and am in a generous mood. But I deserve nice things as well.
OK, the Old Fashioned I had with dinner has subdued to the point where I can trust myself with a brush. So I’m going to put a layer or two down and then decided if I want another drink.
Got some progress in. Eldar are ready for grey edging. Lt is done with his accent washes, ready for his cleanup blue coat. Same with the spare powerfist. I should actually start in on the Lt’s gear. Not that he can’t just borrow spares from the armory, but he does have his own toys to play with.
Tippy is just about ready for basing. I might want to do a little more with her eyes, and the chiton might need another gloss coat. Not really happy with here, but <shrug>
Everything in that last pic is basically done. Guardians have been glued together, and they and Tippy have rocks and tufts, just waiting for flock. Lt just got his blue wash, needs a touchup pass and then basing. Powerfist was washed as well. Double-check for slop then off to the finished pile. Lt’s personal gear got the first blue coat down.
Next month is “knives in the dark” and I’ll probably paint up some scouts for that. Need to figure out what to do for the rest of this month though. Probably start another pair of guardians across the bench. I should also get off my ass and paint a vehicle at some point. I’ve not done one this year, and they aren’t going to paint themselves. Or more primaris. Thoughts?
As to what to paint, what do you find yourself needing? Moar Primaris or Vehicles? You must have a pretty good selection of SM armour out there already? So maybe Re-Startes?
I just accidentally got a new Scout squad to add to the gray plastic pile too!
RandyMcStab wrote: As to what to paint, what do you find yourself needing? Moar Primaris or Vehicles? You must have a pretty good selection of SM armour out there already? So maybe Re-Startes?
I just accidentally got a new Scout squad to add to the gray plastic pile too!
“Need” is such a loaded word. Most of the things awaiting paint could be fielded to good effect. I’m enjoying the intercessors, and would enjoy getting the second squad up to speed. Guiliman is waiting with the patience of a man who’s been in stasis for millennia. With the exception of the land speeder, all the vehicles are unique. Eldar have a large number of things eagerly awaiting the brush, and would give me a lot more flex in my army building.
But at the end of the day, the repulsor won.
Damn that thing has a lot of bits. First blue down on the top/sides:
Wish I had an airbrush. I say this all the time. Next house. I think I’ll forgo working on the pair of guardians while I tackle this monster.
While I had The Boy for part of this weekend we sorted out my pile of shame. Reminded myself that I had some scouts on sprue still. I was waiting until I could grab some scout bikers to mix/match parts, but they seem a little OOP right now. Might still have some spare bits from the old ones I built. I need to take inventory and see what I need. I think at least a sarge or two and at least a pair of shotgunners. I also sold the custodes from BoP to The Boy for $20, as he was far more interested in them then I was. So some money to sink back into the hobby. Thinking about Deathwatch, the Space Wolf from the BoP box might get a new arm/shoulderpad and see service as a watch commander. On the list of things do to...
Automatically Appended Next Post: And a blurry final shot of what I have so far. Lt. still needs his gear, but the body is done and he can borrow that powerfist while he waits.
Ooh, doing a Repulsor, huh? I still need to do my own- it's in at least as many bits as yours, with most of the weapon options magnetized. I look forward to seeing it finished.
I probably could have glued more together pre-prime. But things like the engine cowls will make drybrushing them easier, and the gunner in the turret all in parts will make it possible to set him up on top of the crowded tank without breaking anything. I could have done more magnets for the weapon options, but frankly I’ll just ride with all the tertiary options set. The main and hull guns are swapable. While separate, the bolters/AA missile are probably just going to be inset and forgotten. IIRC I could make another turret for the stubber on back, but that seems like a lot of work.
The zillion little grave plates are going to be tedious. Not hard, just take forever. But by leaving them off, I should be able to do the hull a lot easier.
He should hang out with my semi Aliens themed new LT. He's looking cool.
I was toying with the idea of having some Primaris as DW, they work well. I plan to do a small DW contingent at some point, I've a box already, be great IG aliies.
RandyMcStab wrote: He should hang out with my semi Aliens themed new LT. He's looking cool.
I was toying with the idea of having some Primaris as DW, they work well. I plan to do a small DW contingent at some point, I've a box already, be great IG aliies.
The old ‘Gaunts are very aliens themed. The mostly black paint job only reinforces the similarities.
Finished cleaning mold lines off of the gravis captain I’m building. Glued the legs on, but need to figure out how many parts I’m going to leave him in for painting. Put the first black down on the repulsor hull. Slowly plugging along.
Thinking of DW builds. I need one more HQ. Watch captain with a JP is very tempting. Can DS without needs to blow CPs. A Watch Master seems a pretty good deal, I might be able to cob together parts for a guardian spear. Or just poach one from the old GKs I’ve got in a box somewhere and hope it’s to scale with new stuff. I should also put together some more vets. At least one VV, and see if I still have that frag cannon lying about. Not sure if I traded it away. Maybe build the infurnus bolter while I’m at it.
I know some more UM sarges were on my to-do list. Might put together a stormbolter/powersword sarge. I should also do up a fancy sarge-type for the command squad. Now that the company veteran squad actually needs a sarge, I need a guy that stands out a bit more. At some point I need to reevaluate my whole shelf deployment.
Boring personal crap under spoiler:
Spoiler:
It’s time for me to vent. Holiday weekends are always rough when I’m alone. I had The Boy for the first half of the weekend, but had to drop him off with The Ex by noon. Could have been worse; the original schedule didn’t give me any time with him this weekend. Of course, if I didn’t have him, I would have gone to a cookout yesterday. But I didn’t want to drag him someplace where he didn’t know anyone and there probably wouldn’t be anyone in his age range. So now I’m home and lonely, and feeling guilty about resenting The Boy a little for hampering what little pathetic shards of a social life I’m trying to rebuild. And it’s not easy trying to make new friends. Pretty much all my contact with other humans is at work. While I’m friendly with a number of my coworkers (enough that one of them invited me to the cookout Sat) it’s hard to tell how hard I should push to get together. It might just be that most of them are younger and female. So I’m very cautious about not coming across as a dirty old man who wants to spent time with the cute young things at the office. It’s also hard not to come across as lonely and desperate, when in fact that’s pretty close to the truth. The wrinkle is that I’m not desperate for a girlfriend, but just a friend. But there is no easy way to tell someone that you don’t want to get into their pants, you just want to spend time with them because they genuinely seem happy and dear god I need more cheer in my life. Not without sounding desperate and creepy. As an introvert with a fairly low self esteem I’m not good at putting myself out there. But sitting around and waiting for other people to reach out to me is not working either. I haven’t seen my best friend in months. Everyone is busy with their own lives. I don’t want to intrude into other’s personal/rest/down time, as I know how possessive I am of mine. But if I don’t reach out, nobody is reaching out to me. So I end up sitting at my computer venting out in a blog and drinking my second martini (Sly Fox gin w/ a twist, very good)
It’s not all doom and gloom. I got together with some friends for dinner last week, and I did get the cookout invite, even if I couldn’t attend. Mother’s day weekend I had two coworkers over for mimosas; because someone should make Mother’s day nice for the single mom who's jerk Ex has the kids that weekend. But I tend towards the melancholy (particularly after a drink or two) and this is one of my few platforms to vent. I don’t see my old friends that often and my family is scattered far away. Can’t really post of facebook, as I’ve got a wide assortment of friends not all of whom need to know what I’m feeling. Here I’ve got the thin veil of an avatar to hide behind. I’ve got friends to lend an ear, but very few of you actually know me IRL. Not that I’m expecting advice or sympathy, but sometime you just need to shout out into the void to get things off your chest.
Thanks for listening.
--Nev
Damn, ok I need to step away from the keyboard. That’s a wall of text.
Hopefully I’ll get some more painting/building done tomorrow. Nothing else on the radar, and I did most of my chores tonight. Hope everyone is enjoying their long weekends.
Damn Nev, 'personal crap' reading was a bummer :( hope you're doing ok! Shouting to the void is totally worth it. Even if i'm on the other side of the planet, I hear you man; indulging in the hobby is never better than in those moments - especially if you branch out into new social spheres with it. There are a bunch of other things out there like that where people likeminded in that universal fethy situation of being alone get together from a common (usually hobby) influence. Problem is that you've got to proactively look and sometimes that's the last thing you want to do in headspaces like these. Power to you Neve! I'll keep checking in on yer progress, so we're always here.
Heh. It’s not as bad as I make it out, just in an odd space right now (and drunk off my ass ATM) just rattling around feeling lonely. I normally get together with some friends on the Sundays I don’t have The Boy to tabletop RPGs, but those plans were canceled this weekend due to memorial day issues. Feeling the pain as I’ve always been a big fan of grilling, and memorial day is the first high holiday of the grilling season. Just a bit out of sorts as I can’t have a grill at my place. Did bake some pretzel-wrapped brats with The Boy yesterday which kinda made up for it.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Nice to know people are still out there.
NP Nev. Find a nice park, bring a little charcoal grill and a blanket. You'll be around other people enjoying a beautiful day. Even if you don't know them, you won't be alone.
Gitsplitta wrote: NP Nev. Find a nice park, bring a little charcoal grill and a blanket. You'll be around other people enjoying a beautiful day. Even if you don't know them, you won't be alone.
All I need is the rain to stop. No help for the weather. Kinda glad actually I’m not organizing a huge gathering this year.
In the totally hypothetical of me starting another army, ‘nids are one of the prime candidates. I like the way they look, they make a great classic foil to my Ultras, and they play completely different then my other armies. But I have neither the time or resources to start a horde based army, so it’s going to remain solidly in pipe-dream land.
While I had The Boy here this weekend we didn’t get in a game of 40k, but did get in a game of Betrayal at Calth. Scenario 3, the first one with the dreadnought. I was playing the Ultras and split my forces, half running to activate the teleport device to bring on the termies, the other half a delaying actions to slow down the big guy. I was blowing chunks off the dread, but he kept coming, chewing through the brave marines in his path. Meanwhile my sarge got tangled up with his half squad of marines, and took a while to carve his way through. The first of the reinforcements suffered a teleport mishap, but then they started coming in solid. But by then it was too late. His dread was standing on the exit hex, on his last wound. I had a terminator poised to charge him. He won the roll for initiative, and got to activate first, staggering down the access tunnel to victory.
I like the mechanics of BaC. Fun little game. Simple and quick, but still capturing the feel of 40k. I suggested to The Boy that he might want to paint up some of his BaC minis so he could field them next time we play. We’ll see if the idea sticks/motivates him.
Some painting progress:
Got some of the details picked out. Next is going to be the drybrush on the black. Then another blue coat to tidy up and wash. Hull is getting there, and once that is out of the way, I suspect the accessories will fall quickly. Sure, there are a lot of them, but without the mental block of the hull, I suspect the desire to get it to the table will fuel the energy to paint.
I went with 2 parts for the gravis captain. Glueing the pack to the cloak will make it a little more difficult to paint, but not totally unreasonable. And 2 parts is much better from a priming perspective.
Got a little more work done on the Lt’s spare parts. They weren’t painting themselves sitting off to the side.
All done but for random touch-ups. One everything is dry I’ll grab a finished shot of the Lt.
And get started on the other bits for the repulsor. But the hull is the daunting part, and that’s out of the way. Killed my pot of blue, but I had a spare on stand by. Black will probably follow shortly (of which I also have a spare).
Hope everyone enjoyed their weekends. Spent the day painting and reading here. Broken Angels, the sequel to Altered Carbon. Good book, but not quite the same as the first. Only halfway through though.
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I love how you can be happy with a model, and then once you break out the camera for final pics, you get that nice close-up and BAM mould line to the face! Hard to un-see it now. Sigh. The fact that I didn’t see it until the zoom hit, and he’s mostly lit from off to the side tells me it’s going to be OK from arm’s length table-top views, but still. I’ll know it’s there.
In other news I got the first black down on the front grav plates and some of the guns. Also, fun fact, the citadel paint handle is wide enough to get a grip on the turret ring. Will make painting that a lot more easy.
Edit 2: Finished the front grav plates last night and glued them on. Polished off the right ones this morning, will glue later. Basecoats and washes/drybrush done on the turret, ready for the second blue coat. Mt goal for tonight is to finish the grav plates and the turret, which will just leave the secondary guns, hatch gunner, and engine cowls. In an ideal world I’d like to be finished with this before The Boy comes over this weekend, but I’m not sure there are enough hours of work time left. Kinda want to get it table ready for a game. I’ve got a vision of an I-can’t-belive-it’s-not-eldar hover assault spearhead.
OK, time to get ready for work. I’ll post pics later.
Damn Nevelon, I really like your Lieutenant! And don't worry too much about the mould line, I don't think it is going to be a huge problem on the tabletop. Still, I can feel your annoyance!
Repulsor also shapes up nicely!
The Lt won’t be the only guy on the field sporting a missed mold line. I just try to be better about it these days.
Almost done. Put down a lot of blue wash in the after breakfast/before work timeslot. Next round is touch ups and assembly. The only major paint that needs to be tossed down is the insides of the engine cowls. Which as a multi-stage process will probably take a bit. Although they are kinda optional, so if I get a game in this weekend I might fly without them
Also decals and the snow for the base needs to go on. I probably should have painted white under the clear plastic stand. Oh well.
Need to figure out what’s on deck next. Probably scouts for the challenge, and I should start another pair of eldar. Would like to do some more building, so that might happen. Votes/opinions?
Oh, and I got the confirmation that the intercessors I ordered shipped, so sometime around Tuesday some deathwatch might start being built.
So I had The Boy this weekend, and made him play a game of 40k (cruel, I know)
My list: I can’t believe it’s not Eldar, no mud on these boots.
As a list building strategy, I picked mine first and was open about it. So while I got first dibs on units, he was free to tailor against me. This is what he came up with. Mostly gunline, with some support:
Mission 1, so 4 objectives. He picks long deployment and the hilly side. I go first.
I push forward with half my grav, leaving the TML/HB speeders in the backfield. I unload a ton of dakka, but the dice are not particuarly kind. Plus my HQs are still in DS. Mangle the devs, but no kills.
End if top of 1
A word on the table. I had placed my objectives midfield, he put his on his hills. Knowing he was camping and I was aggressively zooming up, this made sense for both of us.
His retaliation is a little brutal in places. Luckily he mostly wiffs on the the repulsor, but he does splash both my forward speeders. Partially that’s my fault; I convinced him that the autocannon was the way to go on the pred. It does mean things to light armor. He kills a few of my scouts on the webway. With the firepower in his list I was expecting the repulsor to be at least half wounds if not dead. First turn helped a bit here, as well as some pretty crappy dice on his part.
My turn two I drop everything in front of his army. HQs to support the primaris disembarking from the repulsor, AM central to help where needed. My backfield speeders mostly miss (they do a lot of that this game) but the rest of my forces pop the pred. Mostly the hellblasters. They then seek safety in CC vs. the vindi, while the AM mostly just roll poorly and stand around. My scouts charge his tacs mostly to keep the quiet; would have been better if the AMs showed a little motivation.
Bottom of two his 2 pairs of HG and ToT wielding captain get out of the razor. The SG drop down near the AM. Things get really bloody, really fast. He erases the AMs, and between shooting and CC the intercessors. Hellblasters take some hits, but manage to survive. My CC scouts get polished off.
Turn 3 I pull back from CC. Being an UM, that only slows down the shooting a little, and I light him up pretty good. Sternguard are reduced to a pair of c-plas, his basic captain down to his last wound. My TH/SE captain plows into his ToT one and slaps 3 wounds off him (he got a lucky break on the saves; took 3, made 2). He carves a few off me in return, the SE taking the brunt off the ToT.
He also pulls out of CC, and my captain goes down in a hail of fire. His Vind doesn’t do a whole lot while repositioning. Both of us are getting short on units.
Turn 4 my speeders finally figure out how to shoot, and put down the vindi. My repulsor erases some troops and slaps some assorted wounds around. I think I finish off his second captain around this point, and go mug his scouts. After shooting, I ram his razor with my repulsor, because why not? I fly, he doesn’t. I also forget to take a pic.
Bottom of 4 his Tot captain is carving things up. I don’t recall if it is him, or some assorted other fire, but at some point around now my repulsor is down to half it’s wounds. My Lt. is also slapped down sometime around now. Hard to keep track of when things happened in the fast moving end turns. His razor falls back out of CC and rushes for the center objective.
Top of 5 I remove his tac squad from his objective and finish off his scouts. At this point I have a HB scout on the central objective, I’ve moved my speeders up to hold the center/side one, my repulsor and a single hellblaster hold the one on the hill with his captain being outnumbered, and one on the other hill is open.
Bottom of 5 his captain butchers the hellblaster, and his razor guns down my scout. We each old one objective, and contest one. He’s got more secondary points. If the game ends now, he wins.
We go to 6. Sad boy.
Top of 6 my tank guns down his captain. My speeders put a could of wounds on his razor.
On his turn he needs to get very lucky. If he can blow me off of one of my objectives, he wins. But a razor down in the mid wound bracket is not likely to get that done. His dice are mediocre. He slaps a few wounds on the speeders, but doesn’t kill one. Game ends.
Of the 2x1,500 point armies, we end up with two tanks at half wounds, 1.5 speeders, and a drop pod. The carnage was epic. Game literally came down to variable game length. 5 would have been his, but 6 was mine. He had a lot of fun, and was proud of his list. Talking about a few minor tweaks and playing it again next time.
Fresh paint:
I was honestly expecting the repulsor to be mangled at best after round one. Going first and a little luck helped a lot here. I was able to mostly de-fang his devs, and he rolled poorly for his pred. After that, I was able to put a lid on most of his AV, until the Vind blew half my wounds off late game. Put out a ton of dakka. Marines are not the optimal target, but infantry feel the pain of that many shots being tossed around. Lot of points though. Looking at the armies picked, I felt massively outnumbered and outgunned.
Lt. Did fine for himself, Mostly as a flying buff bubble, but he shot a couple of guys down with the grav pistol and poked a few with the sword.
Overall a good weekend. Hope you all enjoyed yours.
Sounds like the Boy is learning, Nev. You'd better watch your back! Great battle report, and your Repulsor is looking great too! I really need to get mine out and paint it. It's already in subassemblies just patiently waiting its turn.
One thing that helped The Boy a lot this time was that he used his CT pretty much all game. He still needs to learn the stratagems, the flack missile one would have done unkind things to the list I brought. He knows they exist, and I’ve used them against him (he’s a big fan of the stormraven, so has seen the flack missile in action). His list building is getting a lot better as well.
Did some building last night. When we were reshelving the armies I took a tally of my scouts. Decided I definitely need 2 more shotgunners and another sarge. Probably a SB/powersword one. I should really make 2, one shooty, one choppy, but thing I’ll just suck up the inefficiency and do one.
OK, this kit needs a recut desperately. Very bad mold lines (I see some in the pic that need more work) and some in really bad places (the head is horrible) Soft detail in spots as well. Anyway, I like how he turned out. Someone in the squad needs to toss that grenade. I wanted to use the resting shotgun, but had limited options for the other hand. Worked out. The next guy will be a more conventional build.
Edit: In the scout vein, I’m painting these guys for the monthly comp. If I get more built/primed in time, I’ll be entering the best 5 of the lot. We’ll see how fast I can work.
Also just snow based the repulsor, so it’s off to the finished shelf. I’m counting the LCs that I painted for it as spare bits for the year. Not making the pile of magnetized bits smaller, but they didn’t make it bigger, and they are part of the issue.
Also in the news, 10 man box of intercessors waiting for me when I got home from work. Deathwatch here I come!
Nev, the thing about scouts is they are kinda awesome in their own way, I mean if I could i'd have reg marines with shotguns I would so this will have to do. I'm glad to see you and the boy doing games together me and my better half and begging to trek into 8th I have a handful of games of 8th under my belt and shes brand new (she chose dark eldar for her starting force my poor guardsmen) anyway keep it up buddy
alabamaheretic wrote: Nev, the thing about scouts is they are kinda awesome in their own way, I mean if I could i'd have reg marines with shotguns I would so this will have to do. I'm glad to see you and the boy doing games together me and my better half and begging to trek into 8th I have a handful of games of 8th under my belt and shes brand new (she chose dark eldar for her starting force my poor guardsmen) anyway keep it up buddy
Don’t get me wrong, I love scouts. Mechanically they have a lot of fun rules and deployment options. Aesthetically they give me a change to paint something not Ultramarine Blue. From a modeling standpoint they are a lot more busy with kit, pouches, grenades, etc. that make them feel more like soldiers then power armored marines.
But those sprues are old and bad. Now quite “Die in a fire” bad, but they really need to be re-cut.
As for marines with shotguns, head over to Deathwatch. They can take them over there. From what I heard, the rules are kinda “meh” for them in 8th. But remember the most important rule is the Rule of Cool.
8th IMHO is the best time since early 3rd to start playing. Rules are streamlined, play is quick, and the models are probably the best they have ever been. The Boy prefers the model building side of the hobby the most, but I’m hoping with more experience he gets more enthusiastic about the game play side. He’s at the stage where he needs to get more games in to get things down smoothly. With more practice and experience, his game will speed up and he’ll win more. But right now all he sees are long games and losses. But a few of his losses came down to a single spot of luck (like the last game) so they are getting closer. Which is encouraging, to both of us.
Fair enough, on breaking up the the boys in blue. maybe oneday they will be recast here is hoping eh?
cool on shotgun deathwatch marines. mind you i gave up the tourney scence but it would just be great fun maybe when i get some gaurd knocked out along with my other smatterings...(so much stuff...) well i started in 5th so i dont know the super older editions. i do like it seeing older models and the like and old school bat reps.
i do agree it does take time and practice and a whole mess of losses i usaully lose more than i win but you gotta start some where. well again man keep up the great games and keep plugging away on your boys in blue.
if your ever in the inkling to see some horribly painted guys head over to my plog lol theres a smattering of stuff lotta guard and the raising of a new regiment along with some eldar and necrons and a little dash of chaos. haha take care man
They will be Ultras, but not in the snow. They are part of the recon-exchange program. My Eldar rangers are painted in arctic camo, despite the rest of the army being based on a maiden world. My scouts are on patrol in the lush meadows, rather then joining the muster at the polar fortress.
This all stems from me painting them in forest green back when I got them, long before I gave thought to basing. I’m not going to strip and re-do them, and having the camo not match the base, when you are the only thing in the army wearing it, seemed a big faux pas.
Now the thought did cross my mind to paint some snow scouts, but I’d want to do a whole squad of them. And these guys are just filler, to shore up gaps in what I already have.
Loving the Scouts. I'm also in the camouflage camp, much better than white jumpsuits. I love that biker shotgun arm and managed to bag one off a bits site, looking forward to doing my Scouts but they are not high up the priority list atm.
The biker shotgun is one of my favorite bits from the scout range. When I decided I needed more shotgunners, it’s use was mandatory.
Started off the day with a minor correctable mistep. I glued the stormbolter onto the sarge before drilling the barrels. I was just about to let it slide, but decided to drill it anyway. SBs are an odd lot. They look worse then normal bolters without drilled barrels, but if you screw them up, you get misaligned bores, which looks even worse then just solid plastic. I got it right enough that I’m OK with it. I guess I’ve progressed far enough as a hobbyist I couldn’t just leave them undone. Or I’ve just succumbed to the holy trinity of Dakka painting advice. Thin your paints, base your minis, drill your gun barrels.
Anyway, sarge and the boys:
When picking out a SB from my bits box I grabbed the one from the multipose captain kit. Just so the softer detail and mold lines matched the rest of the model. Next time GW decided to invent whole new units for the SM, I’d like someone to slap them and tell them to go back and re-do a lot of the old kits. Not that we are as bad off as some armies, but there is some seriously dated stuff in our range.
Going to try to get a lot done today. My normal non-Boy Sunday plans were canceled, and it’s a rough day for me to let my mind wander. Would have been my anniversary. Oh well. I had friends over yesterday and had a great day, so just need to focus forward today. Onward; we march for Macragge!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ready to start the first half. Going to build them with the auto bolt rifles, for a fast moving, aggressive squad. Power sword on the sarge, and an AGL on one guy. Also planning on kitting these guys up a bit more the normal marines.
Right now the squad consists of:
White Scar
Black Templar
Flesh Tearer
Space Wolf
Brazen Claw (I think, will look it up when it comes time to paint)
Not sure who the sarge is going to be, toss up between the WS and the BT. Long term goal is to grab an inteceptor/agressor/and a few reavers to fill out the squad. But right now they are just going to be a basic 5 guys.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bodies done, shoulderpads cleaned. Arms and guns next.
It was a nice day out, so I primed the scouts and gravis captain. I’d prefer to paint the new scouts for this month’s challenge, so will probably get right on that. Got some paint down on the old metal sarge.
Once I’m done building these guys, I’ll investigate how feasible it is to carve the shoulderpads off the DI inceptors and put DW pads on. I normally don’t double up on units like them, so tithing the second squad to the DW might be worth doing.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: Great, now I have to get some scout bikes because that arm is so cool.
You should get some because they are awesome. Another 3 are on my to-get list. They put out a ton of dakka for a very reasonable point investment, plus have a fun little stratagem.
Hmm. When every other word has little red squiggles under it, maybe I should not post. Feh, that’s what auto-correct is for.
This post brought to you by two strong pours of bourbon and a night watching Blazing Saddles. But it’s too early to go to bed, so I might as well post drunk...
(drink responsibly kids! or at least drink decent booze. Life is too short for the cheep stuff)
Edit: still sober enough to fix posts. Edit at least on the second try.
I love scout bikes, and I love the shotgun arm. I used 2 of them in the 6-man scout bike squad I made. They are really good on the tabletop as well, putting out 40 shots from 6 guys if you give the sarge a storm bolter (and you totally should). I've been having a ball painting my scouts, so I look forward to seeing what you do with yours.
I need to take inventory of how many stormbolters I have kicking around. Classically, I never used them. Well, that’s not totally true. I think I made one for a 3rd ed command squad, back before you could easily find them. But with 8th I want to slap a lot of them around my army. For very few points you basically double the model’s firepower. And for characters you no longer have the lost opportunity cost of not getting the +1A for a pistol/matched CC weapon. Plus they used to be overpriced for adding a drop more bolter fire to the loads included in most SM armies.
A number of my sarges have magnets, so making some SB arms should be easy. But for scouts it’s not. One of the reasons I built a new sarge for them. But should I chop the hand off my biker sarge and glue on a SB? Really tempted to. More likely I’ll pick up another box and just build a new sarge. I noticed they were back in stock on GW’s site. Hoping some show up on Amazon, so I can use gift cards.
As a Sororitas player, I can vouch for the impact of sprinkling stormbolters liberally over the entire army. I own a dozen, and they all get used every game. In any kind of mid-ranged shooting matchup, the low price point for 4x S4 shots when rapid firing has to be one of the best deals in the game.
Some progress (no pics, The Boy is sleeping in the guest room/workspace)
2/5 of the intercessors are built. Gun arms and chapter pads left off for painting. Flesh tearer and Space Wolf. Barrels drilled and all.
The scout sarge is almost done with his basecoats. I really need to get cracking on them if I want to get 5 guys done for the month, and I do. I might break down and just assembly line 4 at once after I polish off the sarge. Been a while since I painted more then 1-2 guys at a time.
AoS2 went up for preorder. I’m in for splitting the spook side of the box. Tossing together 1k list ideas for the local release day event. Probably cored around the deathrattle formation I’ve used in the past. Need to make some gravesite markers. Probably won’t have them done in time, but I should get started on them.
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends. Happy Father’s day to all my fellow dads out there. Have a relaxing one!
I've never played AoS, still not forgiven them for every edition since about 6th. Fantasy Battle was my first love (3rd Ed) and I watched it become a complete mess. Is theremuch changed in AoS II, this time it's war?
I've never played AoS, still not forgiven them for every edition since about 6th. Fantasy Battle was my first love (3rd Ed) and I watched it become a complete mess. Is theremuch changed in AoS II, this time it's war?
I’ve not been following the leaks as closely as I would a new version of 40k. From what I’ve seen, AoS2 is just a refinement to AoS. Lot of similarities to 40k 8th. I miss the blocks of troops. It feels more like a large scale fantasy skirmish without them. Most of my time in WHFB was in 5th. (Bretonian and lizards in the starter) It was a pretty horribly broken mess of overpowered magic and herohammer. But we had a lot of fun playing it. From what I’ve seen, AoS is just as easy to break as 40k. But like 40k, if you get two like minded people down for a game at the same level, it can be fun. YMMV.
It’s not like I’ve gotten a lot of games in myself. Half dozen? I could count them up. But they make for a nice change of pace, and some of those models are very nice looking.
Still slow progress on the hobby front, I need to pick up he pace. Edit: Quick couple of paints before work:
The problem with the old metals. Love the detail, but they are monopose. This guy almost lost his arm for a powerfist, but I didn’t feel like getting out the heavy tools for metalwork. That and he was already primed.
I would have got more work done yesterday, but I heard it was national martini day. I don’t fact check claims like that, I just celebrate. So no time at the bench. Looks like this weekend might be rainy, so a good time for making up lost time.
OK, scout sarge is basically done. As normal, the camera is showing all the flaws. I hate painting eyes.
A few spots need a touchup.
Also, first kill team is done being built.
The sarge is sporting the powersword arm from a tarteros terminator and similarly sized pad. This is a guy who has killed slavering spine-beasts and learned to up-armor his sword arm. I think it scales well with the primaris marine. Rest of the boys are pretty stock. Not quite happy with the templar’s knife work. He’s either lunging forward with an upward slash, or getting jiggy with the dance moves. Jury is still out.
I know it’s late in the week, but I’ve been putting off a lengthy post. I was planning on writing up a battle report from this Sunday, but couldn’t find the motivation. Game vs. The Boy. He won, My dice were quite cold, and failed me at some critical points. Pretty close game over all, a few lucky breaks going the other way would have swung me a victory. But he won fairly. Also got a Primaris captain as a Father’s Day gift. Will paint him as an Ultra, despite the Deathwatch bent of my mind these days.
Next built project is to do a reconstructive shoulder job on a DI inceptor to put a DW shoulder on him. If that works, I’ll probably do two more.
The scout scheme is awesome man! Don't get too down about the pics; they make the miniature bigger than he is in real life. They look good enough to me, but man am I in LOVE with that retro camo scheme! Might have to jot that down to steal sometime
Hard armor is based with Dark Angels green, cloth is Goblin Green. Camo colors are just black and brown. Dappled onto the hard armor, tiger striped onto the soft. The hardest part is making sure you get a decent distribution of colors, without looking regular.
Master Azalle wrote: Dude, how did you build your bolt rifles? I like that look a lot
The only non-stock option is the wolf talisman I hung from the front of the SW’s. The full intercessor kit (as opposed to the DI/easy build ones) you have the option for the 3 different guns. The box mags with no scopes are the assault bolt rifles. So I can’t take a whole lot of credit here, but I’m glad you like them.
Good morning Dakka. Little progress for the day. Started to clean and build the primaris captain. Also putting the base coats down on 4 more scouts. Greens done so far. The other major ones are black and brown, then to the details. Month is ticking away, so we’ll see if I can get them done.
Weekend actually filled up with stuff. Spent a chunk of time yesterday doing a tasting at a local brewery. Shame that IPAs are so popular. 10 out of the 12 beers we tried were of that style, as that’s what was on tap. The two stouts they had were excellent though. Can’t blame them for brewing what sells. Later today I’m helping a coworker put together stuff for her daughter’s wedding, and may help another friend paint her house. So mini painting time might be in short supply. I still want to get these scouts mostly done, so I can polish them off during the week. Next weekend is going to be dominated by AoS2.
Finished building the primaris captain. Had to leave him in 4 parts for painting, not really happy about that, but it is what it is.
Built the first DW inceptor.
Not that hard. The fact that the shoulder pads he normally has are two layered helps here. Just carve down the lower pad. The TDA pad fit close to the jump pack. I was worried I’d have to carve the rim off. It might be touching, but not interfering. My biggest worry was mangling the hose. Made it fine. Probably put together the second soonish.
Scouts are almost done with their basecoats:
Lighting sucks, but in theory there should be a solution on the way. I’ve been contacted by a lighting company to do a review, and am getting a free lamp. Normally I’m wary of to good to be true offers, as there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. But It looks like Gits got one and did a review, and is still alive and posting. So I gave my address to a random person on the internet. Worst case, a death squad kicks in my door, best case is free stuff that I actually need. Worth the risk. I’m not going to compromise my integrity to shill a review. If it sucks, I’ll let the world know. But I’m not above leveraging my fame and fortune for free stuff.
Gitsplitta wrote: Yeah, company is legit as far as I can tell & easy to work with. Which light did you order?
The Lightview 2-in-1. After reading your review I wanted to check out the one where you could adjust the warmth of the light. It was basically a coin flip on better light or better lens. As I’m not used to using a magnifier, but I know my light sucks, that edged me towards that decision. Plus, from a review POV, going for the one you didn’t will make for a more thorough assessment of their products. The one thing I wanted to avoid was a clamp lamp, as those never fit nice on my workbenches. I like the concept of a lamp that can shift between a floor lamp and a desk lamp. On desk, it should be able to cover my whole workspace, at the cost of eating up some of it. On the side, I suspect it will only cover half with light, but take up no usable space. I’ll find out when it arrives.
They asked me to post my review in the same thread as yours, just to keep them all in the same space. I was planning on doing that as it keeps the information concentrated for people interested, and doesn’t spam Dakka with product placement.
I'm looking forward to reading your review. It's always good to get multiple opinions and I'd be very interested in reading about your experiences using it.
I was made a similar offer about the Brightech lamps, and like you I was wary of a possible identity theft scam or something. Reading that other users have also gotten the same thing with no ill effects so far has put me at ease, so I'll probably do one of those reviews too at some point.
Looks like the TDA Deathwatch shoulder pads work okay with Gravis armor, which is nice. At one time I was thinking of starting a Deathwatch army (until I came to my senses about my number of armies!), so I'll be interested to see how your xenos hunters turn out.
ZergSmasher wrote: I was made a similar offer about the Brightech lamps, and like you I was wary of a possible identity theft scam or something. Reading that other users have also gotten the same thing with no ill effects so far has put me at ease, so I'll probably do one of those reviews too at some point.
Looks like the TDA Deathwatch shoulder pads work okay with Gravis armor, which is nice. At one time I was thinking of starting a Deathwatch army (until I came to my senses about my number of armies!), so I'll be interested to see how your xenos hunters turn out.
In theory the TDA pads fit onto the agressors and inceptors. For the full kits, I’m sure it’s seamless. Getting them to work on the easy built pushfits was the tricky question. But now I know it works with a bit or carving, I wonder how hard the other models would be? The push fit agressors are the flamer models, which are not the ones I’d want, so probably pass on those. But I wanted some reivers. 3 for $15 isn’t a bad deal, but I think I’d prefer them with the carbines, not the pistol/knife. Their gear is less of a dealbreaker then the agressors though. Mostly there for chucking the odd grenade.
The inceptors are the one models I really wanted to add to the kill team for the rules, and had the spare DI ones, so it worked out well.
To be honest I’m not sure how far down the rabbit hole I’m going with these guys. I could easily see a start collecting box and another unit box or two. Time will tell.
So the other day I was saying I needed to get some good light to finish up the scouts. With my current set up, unless there is light from the window, half the mini is in shadow. So as I came home in the rain today, I thought I was sunk. But at the door was a new present! The light had arrived. For reference, they had it shipped from Amazon on the 24th. So pretty good turnaround. Not sure if that will carry over to normal customers, but if the are using Amazon Fulfillment (which I think thy are) it’s pretty quick. Amazon probably could have put a little more packing material in the box, but everything arrived in one piece.
Set up was very simple. Flip out the stand to keep it from toppling forward, put the lamp in the base, tighten screw to hold it in. Little wobble in the base screw, but that gives a little more mobility. Went with on-desk to start:
Just first impressions for now. I’ll break out a ruler for some measurements and get lots of comparisons later.
Base has a pretty big footprint, I think my desk is about average sized, and it eats a chunk of it. That said, in a central position it covers the whole thing. This is also me just plopping it onto a messy clutter. If I tidied up and organized things around it, it might not seem so bad. But it is making me glad I ordered the 2-in-1. If I replace the standing lamp off the the side with it, it should cover the painting side of my desk. I don’t really need the light/mag over on the build side.
Started with the light on bright white. It illuminates quite well. First time using a magnifier since I experimented with a fly tying rig a long time ago. You know how you take a picture, and when you post it online all the flaws jump out at you? It’s like that, but worse. On the bright side, it’s in time to let you fix them! But I did have a “well, time to stab my eyes out with my brushes and drink my paints” moment. I need to work on my stance and distance. Brush was bumping the lamp from time to time. Probably just need to get new habits. One of my fears what that I’d be able to see stuff, but due to an unsteady hand not be able to do anything about them. Seemed to work OK. Had some flashbacks of when I was (much) younger having to time my brush strokes with my pulse to get the eyes done.
So far, very impressed. I’ll play with it more later, but need to get a few things done tonight before I can get back to it.
A lamp is so important. I have two (less fancy than yours), one on each side of me, and it makes painting so much easier when you can actually see the damn model.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: A lamp is so important. I have two (less fancy than yours), one on each side of me, and it makes painting so much easier when you can actually see the damn model.
Oh my, yes. I knew the light in my current set up was crap. It might not have been perfect in the last two, but it was significantly better. When in the house my space might have been in the basement, but I had a large overhead florescent fixture. Last apartment had a good sized window for daylight, and an overhead light that gave some nice light from behind me. My current place has a small window off to the side/back, and the lamp next to the desk, and the built in desk fixture. I do have another table lamp in the back corner, but it’s not bright enough to really affect my workspace.
So a little work. Painted the bases and glued the shotgunner together before work. Just glued rocks and tufts on. Probably flock tonight once they dry.
Swung the lamp over to cover the workspace. It took a little work to sing over. Not force, but it has a bit of give in the mount, so wanted to rebound back a bit and a little odd resistance. I hadn’t noticed much problem with fine adjustments the other night, so it might just be big swings. I’m not expecting ultra precise clockwork movements, but it did take more effort then I expected to swing the lamp over to the new space. I’ll keep an eye on this. Light worked fine for illuminating the scouts for this pic.
Edit: Flocked, will set up the lightbox for formal pics after work tonight.
Nice progress, man, and a very cool lamp. Do you think it would be terribly hard to mount upside down under a shelf? I could use an upgrade, but real estate is very tight on my work surface, and that swing arm coming down from above might be the answer.
RandyMcStab wrote:Those scouts are looking good, makes me want to paint mine.
The lighting looks good, be interested in seeing how the lightbow works out, I never got much joy from the lend of one I had for a while.
MacPhail wrote:Nice progress, man, and a very cool lamp. Do you think it would be terribly hard to mount upside down under a shelf? I could use an upgrade, but real estate is very tight on my work surface, and that swing arm coming down from above might be the answer.
Thanks.
I’ll post more details and comments about the lamp as I go. As for mounting it upside down, that might take a bit of work. First off, you would probably be better off getting one of the ones that comes with a clamp, rather then a base. I assume the lamp is the same. The lamp sits in the base via a hollow metal peg, with a hole in it for the screw that holds it in place. You might be able to rig something. I’ll check the bits when I next take it apart. One thing about the 2-in-1 I got is that it doubles as a floor lamp. So while it might take some space off to the side, it takes none on the bench. I’ll probably end up using it this way, and will condense my thoughts on the mater when I switch over. I just want to give it a bit more time in this configuration.
Progress: Done.
Old sprues are old. The basic scout box desperately needs a recut. Still, at arm’s length they aren’t half bad. Maybe only 2/5ths bad. Anyway, off the the YTD shelf with them.
I had also promised to get a formal shot of the JP Lt. While the previous version wasn’t bad, he deserved his time in the lightbox for the finished pic. Just as a comparison, here is him just on top of the YTD shelf.
I’ve moved two guradians to the active area, going to start in on them. Next month looks to be "Might Makes Right”. Going to be a short month, as I’ve got a week vacation late in the month. I think I might try to get the WL done. Big, but not horribly complex.
Part of my orginal goals was to photograph everything. Some weekend when I’ve got nothing going on I should actually take stock of what hasn’t had it’s time in the lightbox.
So today is the release of AoS 2.0. So I went down to the FnsLGS and devoured the souls of the living. Picked up the nighthaunt side of the box and got a game in vs. some Order soup list.
Some snake ladies with bows, sea elf blademasters, fish throwing mage, and some elf knight lord and his boys, and some hammer stormcast.
I’m running my normal mix of skeletons and wights, with a necromancer and wraith for flavor.
Mission is 6 objectives, where the longer you hold them the more points you get when you burn them. But once you burn them, they are gone.
He starts by burning the one objective near the blademasters and moving them up. He aggressively pushes his knights up the other side, but flubs his charge rolls. This puts me in a good position. My black knights plow into his badeguys and carve a large chunk off the unit. And then die. They will do this again (to lesser success, due to better armor saves on his part) due to the miracle of resurrection. reuse, reduce, reanimate.
His blender unit did a lot of that. I think it started 30 strong. We’d get into combat, I’d kill a few, he’d blender things. But I’d bring more back. Either skeletons, or whole units of black knights. I think he ended up killing 10 knights and around two dozen skelies before I polished him off. He also managed to snag and burn my corner objective, but broke against the wall of my spearmen in the center.
On the other side my Wight Lord and 20 swordsmen chewed up and spit out his lord, knights, and stormhammer guys. He did pull down my lord at the end, but the damage was done. That flank was secure.
At this point (end of turn 3 IIRC) he had burned 4/6 of the objectives for a total of 8 VP. But was pretty much spent. He had his snake archers and guppy mage left. I had two solid blocks of skeletons and a necromancer and wraith backing them up holding the two remaining objectives, which I was holding all game. With no way to dislodge me, I was going to ride those objective to the end of the game and score 8 points each for them, giving me the win.
Victory for Death!
While I was down there I grabbed a SC: Deathwatch box. That plus the nighthaunt is going to do ugly things to my purchased/painted ratio. To help that I did get some layers down on 2 guardians this morning.
Got the 4th off, nothing else going on so I might as well get some painting done. Just about ready for the edge highlights. Will need to do a little work on the WL’s tabard. Subtle folds call for subtle highlights, so it probably won’t be very noticeable. Still need to do some depths and highlights on the fabric.
I’ve always claimed them as Saim-Hann. Slightly shifted palette, with black and red, rather then the normal white/red. But now that Eldar have chapter tactics craftworld attributes I’ve been flying them as Bail-tain. While I like the lore of the Wild Riders, the rules do next to nothing for the lists I field.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Put down the grey edges on the guardians. While I was doing it I kept thinking what I hash job I was putting down, and that it looked like trash. But once the magnifier swung up, it wasn’t half bad. Still need to get used to that. They are basically done, need to assemble and base them. WL is still plugging along. Put a little bit of lighter red on the edges of his tabard. We’ll see how noticeable it is when dry. Once my back has recovered I’ll edge him. Then figure out what I want to do for his base.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edge highlighting. <twitch>
Almost done. Need to flock and flower the little guys and finish the base on the big one, and slap a transfer or two on him.
But my back is telling me that can wait. Time for a drink and the recliner.
So those two guardians are now flocked on on the YTD shelf. Big guy as well.
Like the way he turned out. Lots of edge highlights, little sloppy, but they will do. The eldar ruins base was a little out of touch with the rest of the grass bases, so I added a few patches and flowers poking though.
Tell me of the old days gramps...
Surprisingly little scale creep, at least for raw hight. Much more bulky and robust. Old guy has charm, but I much prefer the plastic.
Put down the first black coat for the last two guardians. Once they are done, I’ll be able to firmly check off one of my goals for the year.
Edit: Also used the last of the flowers on the WL. One little pack covered a lot of bases. I ordered more earlier this week. I’ll add them to the money spent list once they get here.
Not going to do a full batrep, but got a game in vs. The Boy. He’s taking the same list out for the 3rd time, but this time I’m playing Eldar. WL suffers badly from the curse of fresh paint and gets popped turn one. That said, he ate fire that could have crippled one of my other tanks.
Rest of the game was pretty typical, I pop armor with pulse lasers/bright lances/fire prism, and shred anything that pops out with shurican fire and lasblasters. Game would have been closer if he had remembered to run the relic back towards his line first turn and moved up the razor. But in the end I was able to just keep shooting him back. Victory for the pointy ears.
Nevelon wrote: WL suffers badly from the curse of fresh paint and gets popped turn one.
Reminds me of my favourite ever game I played of WHFB (for other reasons), which I bought a gyrobomber for the day before, and spent 7 hours painting. I walk in the next day and the store manager commented, 'hold on, I only sold you that yesterday.' It was probably the best paintjob I'd ever done t the time too. Anyway, it got blown up on turn two as soon as it moved into range of the enemy.
Glad to see you're getting so many games in.
I’m actually a little behind on games I want to play. My goal is 24, so basically 2 games a month. But I can’t complain about the ones I’ve had, I do enjoy pushing some plastic around.
Finishing this WL really makes we want to start on the next one’s build. He’s going to be the choppy one.
Minor setback. Flowers showed up yesterday, but they were not the ones I ordered. The ones I had been using (and were shown in the pics on Amazon for the ones I ordered) were a mix of yellow/white that you tore off of a sheet in bits to glue down. The ones I got in the mail were tufts. Now, when I first went to buy flowers, that’s exactly what I wanted. But now that I’ve already based everything I own, I want consistency. So let’s see how customer service works. I fired off an e-mail late yesterday, so hopefully will get news in the next day or two.
Also in the news, a friend of mine is trying to start a regular board game night. Last night I headed down to play Scythe, which was a fun little 4x game. Hopefully going to be a regular thing.
Hang in there guys, one day down in the work week, and it was Monday, one of the rough ones. We can survive until the weekend!
liking the jump lt. good for you on stealing the souls of the livng, I dig the new nighthaunt guys they look like a blast to paint. good work on the new eldar guys
alabamaheretic wrote:liking the jump lt. good for you on stealing the souls of the livng, I dig the new nighthaunt guys they look like a blast to paint. good work on the new eldar guys
I need to start building the spooks. When I split the box, I let the other guy take the assembly instructions. Rather then screw things up, I figured I’d be able to find the instructions online if I waited a bit. The internet did not disappoint. I figure I’ll take a stab at them tonight/tomorrow.
Captain Brown wrote:Nevelon,
Love the Wraitlords side by side. I have to admit I still have a special spot for the older ones.
The old one certainly has nostalgic charm, but my soulstone goes to the new guy.
Very little progress this week. Put a few layers down on the guardians. I think they are fully base coated, will need to double-check.
Shifted the lamp today:
This is not going to work out. I think. Not going to arbitrarily write it off, will give it a good test. I’m not sure if it’s the hight of my workspace (three feet) but the lamp just seems to be stretching to reach. Which means there is not a whole lot of swing to it. That said, it should still be able to cover the area that I paint in. But I can’t do things like swing it up out of the way to just use as a top down lamp. I’d done that a few times when doing rough basecoats that I didn’t need the magnifier for. If I used the lens 100% of the time, or didn’t have a need for the extra light for slop work, it might not matter. Or if my desk was shorter. My kitchen table and computer desk are 30"-31” respectively. I should move it over and see how it covers workspaces lower down. I think it would make a big difference.
And so it begins. I forgot where I read it, but someone advised to replace your knife blade before starting on these guys. So true. They are crazy delicate and fragile. I’m sure they will look great when I’m done, but cleaning these guys is going to be rough.
Finished the last two guardians. They are glued and awaiting flock. Then that squad is done. I should probably dig around and see if there are more bodies to build for them, particularly the gunners. IIRC there were some, but I didn’t bother to build them as I had spares. But as these guys are painted to a different standard then the rest, I’d kinda like to have dedicated gunners.
Moved a wraithguard and a power maul to the in-progress part of the bench. I suspect the WG will go quickly, in which case I’ll follow him up with the rest of his squad in pairs.
Bad news on the flower front. Looks like Army Painter no longer makes the kind I used. Bright side, I got a refund on the tuft version I was sent, and they don’t want me to send them back. Bonus: free stuff. Downside: no matching flowers. Anyone know of a good replacement for these:
There is one company on Amazon that claims to have them, but due to amazon fulfillment shipping, can’t check. I’m dubious. If I wasn’t heading out of town I’d try them, and then see what their return policy is. I just want the flowers though, not to jump through hoops.
Lamp testing today: Yup, gets in the way a bit as is. Not enough flex to move it up. Workable, but not ideal. I have to adjust my posture to the lamp, not the other way around.
You were smarter than me and actually got the floor lamp version. I got the one that clamps on to the desk (which might have worked better for you?) and I don't have a proper hobby desk. I thought it would work on my computer desk, but it's HEAVY and I didn't like the stress it was putting on my keyboard tray (the only place there was to attach it). It's attached to my card table now (where it seems to be working okay). How are you liking the magnifier? I'm still trying to get used to working with mine; I've never used a magnifier much for painting. I need to learn to hold my hands more steady!
ZergSmasher wrote: You were smarter than me and actually got the floor lamp version. I got the one that clamps on to the desk (which might have worked better for you?) and I don't have a proper hobby desk. I thought it would work on my computer desk, but it's HEAVY and I didn't like the stress it was putting on my keyboard tray (the only place there was to attach it). It's attached to my card table now (where it seems to be working okay). How are you liking the magnifier? I'm still trying to get used to working with mine; I've never used a magnifier much for painting. I need to learn to hold my hands more steady!
My workbench doesn’t have a convenient edge to clamp onto, otherwise I’d have gone with one of those. Clamps are the best option if, and only if, your table is the right fit for them. The closest I’ve come is when I was working off a rolling printer stand. You are correct about these being heavy lamps. and that’s without the base, which weighs a ton. On the plus side, seems like solid construction. Downside, if you table’s quality doesn’t match, there might be issues. The 2-in-1 I got I think will go back to being a table lamp once I finish experimenting on the floor. Just not high enough to adequately work with my workbench. It doesn’t take up that much desk space.
I’m still getting used to the magnifier. Steady hands don’t bother me, I just need to be careful about my caffeine/alcohol levels when I’m working. Depth of focus, where to hold the mini, and bonking the lens with the back of my brush are my main issues. That and seeing my crappy work up close.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Some progress:
Spook HQs built. Fiddly little guys, but cool.
YTD shelf:
Not bad progress. Tried out one of the flower tufts. Not a fan. More of a flowering bush then meadow wildflowers. But chalking the guardian squad up as done, which clicks off a goal, as that’s two units.
Played with the lamp a bit more. The 6” workspace height is a huge deal.
While it was straining to reach my workbench with any slack left over, it comfortably covered my kitchen table.
Some playing with the light options: There are two adjustments. Brightness and warmth I think. This 4-square is the extremes. I suspect that my camera is auto-compensating, so take this with a grain of salt. If I knew my camera better, I might try to force it to play dumb. But I’m afraid I’d not be able to get it back to normal. Hopefully someone with more photography skills can do some real analysis if they get one. For reference, these shots were in my lightbox with the lamp shining in from the front. No other lamps, just the ambient light (as seen in the first picture) The bright LED ring in the lamp does a good job of very bright, dispersed light that we seek for photos. At some point I’ll just grab a sheet of paper and get a quick and dirty WIP of something on my bench. I suspect it will be much higher quality then previous WIP snaps.
I should be condensing my thoughts down into a formal review soon. But I’m heading on a trip to KY next week, so don’t know if I’ll have time before I go. This week is kinda a chaotic mess.
youwashock wrote: Thanks for the YTD shot. Seeing the progress of others helps keep from falling into a slump.
I’m glad my progress helps. One of the reasons I started this blog was to represent the silent hobbiest out there. We see a lot of high end work, and a lot of new players, but not a lot of the average joe. I’m not Golden Demon level, but I thin my paints. I couldn’t finish a model in the time it took me to write this (like some posters), but I get layers down. It’s OK to paint at your own pace and level. Solid, table-top work at a steady pace is what I am for. And if I can do it, anyone can.
Keeping track of what I’ve done helps keep me focused. I’m not the most prolific painter here. There are folks who could bang out the amount I’ve done YTD in a month, at a higher standard. But I keep lugging along at my own pace. I’ve got my one-a-week goal, which I’ve been making with room to spare for a few years now. I’ve considered upping it, but am not sure how high. This year I tagged on the “paint 12 spare bits” rather then up the mini count. Need the motivation to burn down that pile. Next year I think I’ll merge them. 52 (one a week) + 12 (one extra a month) = 64 models for the year. I want to keep the goal reachable. Once it gets to be too far of a stretch, it becomes easy to accept failure. But, <hands Fate a loaded gun> there shouldn’t be anything major on deck for the next year. My job seems stable, I should be done moving for a while, all the crunch of the divorce is over. I’ve got a decent stock of projects to work on, and motivation to get them done. Barring anything horrible happening <glances at Fate> I think I can start ramping up my pace and getting some major hobby time working in the next few years.
Still alive, back from vacation. Put a little red down on the WG on the bench. Pots getting really low, will need a new one soon.
Unsure of what to paint next month. “Above and Beyond” is the theme. Flavor text suggest elite/HQ picks, but the literalist in me was thinking jump/flying unit. Probably the UM Inceptors in the pile. Although some RT-era vets might be fun, and would probably get me some nostalgia votes. Going to be another short month, as my folks are going to be up here for a week mid-month.
Glued some sticks to the back of the inceptors to help painting them, as they won’t be glued on to their bases until the very last moment. My superglue is low and turned gummy, so need to get a new bottle. Basecoats down on the scytheguard. Not that’s saying much, as there are only 3 colors needed. I’d like to finish him up today and start the rest of his squad across the bench. I think they are going to replace the guardians as my background project.
I’ve borrowed a copy of the KT book. Going to read through it and see what it’s like. I might use it as an excuse to paint some old lead. Or build some new things. Time will tell.
Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
--Nev
Edit: Also, if you have a chance go over and vote for the monthly paining challenge. And if you don’t participate, I’d recommend giving it a shot. Painters or all skills and ages are welcome. Sure, you might not win, but it’s a fun way to keep motivated and stretch you painting talents.
I really need to get around to building the other WL. So many projects, so little time. Especially in the summer. My workspace is not particularly well ventilated, and has no AC. But I’ve got some work in.
Not a lot, but some. Might try to get more in tonight, but the ice-cold martini is making a very compelling argument just to slack off.
Next week is going to be sparse. While I still have to work, my folks are renting a place on a lake close by and will have The Boy. So pretty much all my evening time is going to be spent doing family stuff. One of the reasons I’m posting tonight is is that I don’t fall too far behind on my blogging responsibilities. As August marches on, I also need to take stock of my winter stores. Might have to switch over to squirrel mode and build and prime a bunch of stuff.
Martinis can be very persuasive. Nice to see your progress ticking along, I'm always impressed by your consistency, I tend to be more sporadic in my output (that's what she said).
Had any thoughts about Killteam, dipping a toe in that lake?
Back. Put another layer of black down on the inceptors, hopefully will grab a pic later after more progress. I also plan to do the grey edgeing on the WG once the morning coffee wears off.
I’ve noodled around a few ideas for kill teams but nothing really stuck. I should probably try again to look into teams and come up with something. Might get inspired. Might be fun to put together some narrative missions for The Boy. Break out some of my old dusty stuff for some non-marine opposing forces.
One problem is that kill team, and a lot of the other specialist games, really promote regular game play with a stable group. Which I lack. I could try to make it down to the F(not really)LGS, but that’s an hour on the road on a work night. Optionally, I could see is there is any action at the local store, but their 40k night is friday, which I have The Boy on for every other one. Not that I couldn’t get him involved, but I’d want to know the local guys first.
Edit: Progress.
Also, weather cleared enough to prime. Been rainy and humid of late:
I think KT would be good with the boy. Less models to bother with and you can make all sorts of them out of stuff you have already. Also much less setting up and play time. Might be good.
youwashock wrote:Progress. Progress is good. Interested in seeing how you would tackle a Kill Team.
RandyMcStab wrote:I think KT would be good with the boy. Less models to bother with and you can make all sorts of them out of stuff you have already. Also much less setting up and play time. Might be good.
I like the concept, and I think it would be great for The Boy, so odds are good. There are just a lot of moving pieces between the specialists and the army lists to figure out how best to put a team together. Hence my need to sit down and play with some lists. Not sure if I’d build specific models for it, although getting some custom specialists could be a lot of modeling fun.
Some painting progress. Actually sat down last night and edged the wraithguard. Next step is to glue his arms on and flock him. I really hate edging. Basecoat and black/brown washes are down on the inceptors. They are ready for the second blue coat, and then their blue wash. Cleanup and then their edge highlighting to finish them off. Oh, and I should get started on their backpacks and bases at some point. Month is slipping away.
Most of my issues with Primaris are the lore and mechanics. As minis I’m quite fond of them. Glued sticks to the inceptor backpacks for painting. Need to get moving.
But this guy is off the bench now:
I’ll hold off on starting the next one until the inceptors are clear. it’s the 24th, still a lot of work to do.
Base blue on the backs. second blue down on one of the inceptors.
I was intending on buying it on Amazon with guilt free money, but it never showed up on the retailers there. Got tired of waiting.
, so I don’t bother running my turn. The bloody shreds of my army enter the flickering webway, snapping it shut before the Salamanders can pursue.
again.
