Friends,

I start this thread with no small amount of trepidation. While I'm no stranger to posting on forums of one sort or another, this is likely to be a very long, demanding and personal endeavor if I do it justice. I ask you for your patience and apologize in advance if I too often wax philosophical... it is my nature. I do promise lots of photo's of miniatures and projects in process and a lot of opportunities to give feedback on what you see and read. So hopefully even those of you without kids will find something of value. There will also be discussions of things particular to guiding a child through the ups and downs of 40k, dealing with losses, setting standards for your own conduct, learning to model and paint, placing value on aspects of the hobby besides just winning the game. You are welcome to comment on these issues as they arise, or bring them up on your own for others to respond to, whether you have a child or not. Wisdom is not the unique possession of those who have bred successfully (often it's just the opposite).

I'm hoping that this topic comes at a rather unique time in the hobby. At around 20 years old, 40k has reached (by several years) a natural point of generational turnover. The kids, like me that were playing it in HS or in college, are now old enough to have children of our own who might also be interested in playing. While this offers wonderful opportunities for parent/child togetherness, it does offer specific challenges as well. I'm certainly not above asking for help or a second opinion when faced with a difficult situation, neither am I above saying "Lookie what he did!" when one of my boys do something cool. Sorry, you'll have to put up with that once in a while, I am a proud father of two wonderful boys.


Enough of that... let me give you a very brief bit 'o background, then we'll get to the interesting stuff.

I've been playing 40k since the Rogue Trader days back when I was in college. I had two armies back then, Mantis Warrior space marines (beakies), and pirate eldar (which eventually became craftworld eldar). Two principles have always guided me in 40k; have a good time win or lose, and have the best looking army on the field. I almost always succeed in both. NOT that I'm a great painter... I'm a good painter... but I always field fully painted armies where every figure is painted to a good standard... so the effect of the whole is greater than my skill with any one figure. About 6 years ago I stopped playing, not for any specific reason... new state, new house, new job, new kid... life just got busy. About a year ago, my two sons (6 and 9) came home from school with a "library book"... an old... OLD copy of White Dwarf (how this got into the school library I'll NEVER know), and were all excited because their friends were playing this cool game with space marines, etc. In the midst of excited begging and pleading about letting them start to collect figures and play, I walked them downstairs into the basement and pulled out some old boxes containing several thousand points of fully painted Marines and Eldar, vehicles and all.

The rest, as they say... is history.


(more to come... need a fresh cup of coffee)

Up next... "Chapter and Verse": the first two units of Doom Eagles


NOTE: My Necron painting process can be found here. (This note is mainly for me as I keep forgetting and am tired of trudging through the blog looking for it.)

Wow, what a story. I wonder what your kids' expression was, when they saw all those figures. I hope to see pics soon!

"Chapter and Verse" : Choosing the Doom Eagles


After we'd played my two armies against each other for a while it was only natural for both boys to pick army's of their own. The youngest chose orks... since I'd harbored a long suppressed desire for a Bad Moon army and we had the orks from the Black Reach set to get started, that was fine. I'd been hoping my 9-year-old would choose something equally interesting... something with expensive troops so I didn't have to buy a million of them and easy to paint... like Necrons. In the end though, he decided on Space Marines. This vexxed me a bit because we already HAD a fully painted space marine army... having the same army in a different color scheme doesn't really get us anywhere. In the end I relented however, and agreed to let him build a Marine army with the following caveats. 1) It would have to be a color scheme he could paint himself. 2) He would have to be satisfied with hand-me-downs and extra's from my SM army, or use his own money to buy them as I would be d#$%ed if I was going to spend thousands of dollars buying yet another SM army! (I didn't swear but you get the idea.)

Luckily for him, I had accumulated a LOT of extra's over the years, had written all tracked or wheeled vehicles out of my Mantis Warrior list so he could take what I had, and had a good friend (the guy who got me into 40k all those years ago) who donated some more guys & even painted up some command figures for him. Oh, and we had the Black Reach figs too.... so he was set. Lastly, I gave him a special job around the house the payment for which he is allowed to spend on 40k. If he completes his tasks on schedule, it could amount to around $300 a year, plenty for him to spend on a hobby. Money he gets from relatives and such as presents is not to be spent on 40k.


The Great Debate

So... what chapter to choose. My son chose his chapter the same way I chose mine 18 years ago... paging through pictures of marines until you found one that you liked and thought you could paint. We looked on the web, found an old poster with a bunch of different chapters on it, found my old scans of the pages from the 1st Ed rule book that had chapters on them... the whole bit. There was a great back-and-forth debate as he would select one incredibly complicated chapter paint job and I would summarily veto it. Finally we settled on these silver guys with black and red highlights. Striking yet simple to paint... all good.

The fluff we found for them is here: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_Eagles

Clinically depressed space marines... 50mg of Lexapro would do these boys wonders.


When it came to painting, I saw no reason why his models couldn't be as well painted as mine at the very least. He's younger with better eyes, and though his coordination is still developing, he's more than capable of performing the basics (spray priming, dry brushing, washing and basic color selection, detail painting). Our goal is to have his army be one of the better painted armies out, regardless of the age of the painter. There was nothing in your average Doom Eagle, that he (or any other kid his age) could't do if taught properly. It should be noted that the 6-year old can do everything I've mentioned above... he just can't do it on a single figure scale yet... so he paints terrain and the old gorkamorka trucks, of which we have several.

Anyway, here's a photo of the very first figures my son painted... a Doom Eagle terminator squad.


I'd like to break the narrative for a sec here... is this image too small for what you'd like to see? I'm trying to use as little space in my gallery as possible with each image, but looking at it in my preview... it looks a bit small.

To continue:
Here are 5 of the 10 members of my son's Doom Eagle terminator squad. If you're old enough you might recognize the terminators from the original Space Hulk game... I just cut the antenna off. Straight-forward but attractive color scheme that is easy to paint and looks good on the table top. Two shades of metal were dry brushed over black primer, then washed with Badab Black (GW). Black and red details were then painted and washed. Gold eagles and such were drybrushed on. I helped out with the detail on the sergeant (I can never make a face this good on one of my own figs) and the heavy flamer. There's still a lot to do, but rather than forcing him to add detail at this stage, we called them done so he can play with them. Later on, when he's motivated and a little better painter... we can come back and work on adding fine detail to each. Since getting my Foredom up and running again I've been drilling the gun barrels on everything, easy to do and makes a difference... but you have to be careful! It helps to put a little dent in the middle of the barrel with a punch or small nail so you have something to center the drill bit on before you start drilling.

The rule when it comes to painting at our house, is that you can't start the next squad until you finish the one your currently working on. This helps him to stay focused and field completely painted models rather than a bunch of half painted ones. I get final say as to if they're done or not... so I can make sure he's not rushing from one project to the next. Once the termies were done, we cobbled together a bunch of bits out of the bits box into a 10-man assault squad. Here is the result.

The troopers in the 10-man squad were all assembled from random bits left over from my Mantis Warrior army. The sergeant is from the Assault on Black Reach tactical squad. We stuffed jump packs on them all and viola! Instant assault squad. There are at least two different era's of bolt pistols represented in the squad (some are chopped down bolters from the original plastic beakie-marine sets), and only a couple of them have been given any detail yet. Personally I wouldn't have made the entire weapon red... but it's my son's chapter and that's where he wanted to go with them, so I butted out.



Close-up of the sergeants showing detail. Again I did the head and some of the other fine detail, but my son did everything else. This is a good example of a figure that still has a lot of room for added detail. That's O.K. I've been trying to impart my ethic, which is that I never field an unpainted figure... so rather than paint all the little details on each figure from the get-go, we paint them to a good standard so they can be played, knowing that he will eventually return to them when he can relax, take his time and finish them right. On top of that his brush control isn't quite fully developed yet... so I figure waiting on the fine detail as he develops as a painter is probably a wise idea. The assault sergeant also benefited from a little extra attention since at the time he and the termie srg were the closest things to characters in his army.

Next: "The Objective (marker) of My Desire"

Wow, those termies were your son's first models! Those are excellent for a begginer. For me, the pic is just right. I think the termie heads should be a different colour (like white) to provide relief from all the silver. It also makes the heads easier to spot. Again, looking great!

This is a short post when compared with the last two. This is a Doom Eagle objective marker that I made for my son's army depicting a battle brother pinned beneath wreckage and fighting fro his life, on his last clip of ammo. The whole scene was scratch built from bits and pieces. Unfortunately it went to a big gaming birthday party last night and did not come home... so it may be lost. But... it is my first attempt any any type of diorama and is a reasonable approximation of my level of modeling skill and at least my attempt is now immortalized in the electronic ether of cyberspace.


So now you have a bit of context. Like I said, I'm not a great painter... but if I apply myself I can turn out a pretty good looking figure and see no reason why my son can't do the same.

That looks excellent! I'm not really sold on the position of his legs. But if it's lost, well you can't really change it. Looking awesome!

I think I just used the standard beakie legs from the original set, so that's just the positions they were in. The one thing I think I was proudest of, which you can't see in the photo is that his left arm is actually going straight down to the ground with his hand flat out like he's pushing himself up to get a better shot. I like doing objectives... have an involved eldar/chaos one I'm working on at the moment. I'm sure I'll have lots of opportunities to refine my modeling technique in the future based on what I learn on the forum, so I'm all smiles.

Good idea on the terminators, I make the suggestion to my son.

Your son is a pretty good painter , even though hes only 9

One thing I want to add though is dry to have the drybrushed layer a bit more even . If you take the leg of the termie sgt. and then his chest you can see that the legt has a way thicker drybrush than the chest

Can we see your other sons Orks ? I would love to see progress from them both

Cool story, cant wait to see some more!

This next one is something I'm really hoping to get some help with. This is his first vehicle... an old Mantis Warrior Predator, decommissioned and given a new lease on life with the Doom Eagles. Problem is that I was never any good at painting vehicles... it's one of the reasons I wrote them out of my Mantis Warrior army (love Dreds though... lots of Dreds). So when it comes to teaching my son to paint them... they end up looking like my vehicles... not so good, just different colors. That being said, I thought he did a fine job with what he had... I've just never had the knack of turning out good tanks so he didn't get much useful information from me. Any good ideas or links would be most welcome. Since I just joined the forum I haven't had the chance to dig around for good articles, I'm sure they're out there though.




As far as the little one's painting, I can share a couple of things. I've been doing most of the ork painting as I've always wanted an ork army and his attention span is NOT that of his older brother. But he did a bang-up job on one of the pieces of terrain I gave him (one of the GW pre-formed pieces) and one of his little gorkamorka trucks was really impressive considering he got NO help or input from me... he just did it. Will include shots of those in the next post.

That vehicle is great! If you want it to be even better, try wethering it. Also, try getting the "How to paint citadel tanks" book. It helps alot as my friend insists. Sorry, but this is all I have to offer.

OK here by popular demand... the painting efforts of my 6-year-old... otherwise known as "Thing 2".



My 6-year-old's first piece. Guided by me but he did most of the work himself, I just touched up the pod and added the center dome. Still needs flocking. He did the priming, base painting, highlighting and washing. We had to go back to it a couple of times with each step to make sure he got everything... but he stuck to it and turned out a pretty nice piece.



My 6-year-old's second attempt. He did this one with no guidance or involvement from me what-so-ever. I don't know about you, but I was impressed... I don't look at this as an end-point but as a starting point, and a pretty good one for that age.

My six year old couldn't do that, although he does the odd interesting conversion. Really like the use of classic models, especially the termies. Kind of fits the doom eagle "hard luck chapter" theme.

Wow, good work. As a father of two (9 & 5) I gotta say it's awesome when they take an interest in Dad's old models! So far mine both have a couple of multicoloured Space Marines (they love playing with the B&C SM painter), we also have games of Mighty Empires running on rainy days (even 75yr old Ganddad has been known to join in on this...) This year both the young 'uns are joining me and my gaming buddy on our annnual pilgramage to Salute, they already have shopping lists longer than mine!!

I wish i can get my younger sister into warhammer sigh... Anyways your kids are doing great so far, be sure to post their completed armies.

Heres an article for painting vehicles , I can imagine a 9 year old doing that with help from his parents

To represent the hard luck of the Doom Eagles , you can weather them with this article , also you can use GW's toutorial as a guidance .

Love that tank... I've got an old Predator myself I'm rebuilding for my Space Wolves.

A couple of things your son could do on the pred:

Some brown and black washes to create a scorched effect around the holes in the exhaust pipes.

also, a couple of cheap spray paint cans, one in a very dark brown, another in a more medium shade.

hold the tank up and spray the underside with the darker shade, then put the tank down and spray, but don't hit the tank directly, spray a little off from the tank, along side. you're mainly looking for the back splash from when the spray hits the surface near the tank.

don't overdo it, go slow, and until it looks good to you, targeting areas on the tank that would normally see the abuses of overland travel. Then come back with the lighter shade and do the same thing, but a little less liberally, and you'll have something resembling a general weathering/dirty look on the lower parts of the tank.

After that, if you wanted to take something like graveyard earth and a good stippling brush and stipple in some of that in places, it can help the effect.

The main issue with his, and any tank really, is you've got what amounts to a large block of <insert chapter's main color>. It gets boring. Use the weathering to break it up without over doing it. As he progresses, he can start doing some chipped paint effects to the red parts of his vehicles (which is really easy, too) as well as some freehand, as he gets more adventurous.

Hope that helps.

I wanted to let you guys know that I've run all your ideas by my son and he's very excited about it all. I must say I'm excited too, never had help before really... not like you folks are providing. Got a tidbit here and there of course but to have a number of accomplished individuals looking over and providing helpful advice is a tremendous experience. Thank you!

So I started with something simple and took Munch Munch!'s advice and fiddled with one of the terminators. I figured I'd experiment with one first before setting my son to the task. Here's what I came up with...



I painted the head skull white, washed with Valejo "pale wash", then went back over the ridges and such with white again. While I was at it and because I'd been digging around GW's site looking for their painting tutorials (thanks again for alerting me to these), I made an attempt to paint his eyes using their technique (my son picked the color). When all was said and done it looked good, but something was still missing... so I painted the power fist to match.

My son loves the way they look, and so do I. Problem is that a fair amount of this is above his level yet (the eyes stretched mine to be sure). But he can do the white, the red trim on the PG and the washing for sure. Who'd a thunk that these cheezy old plastic terminators would turn out looking this decent? Unfortunately the storm bolter is just kinda... yech. But hey... they were free. What do 10 termies cost now-a-days?? Few bucks I'd guess. We'll stick with the free ones & spend our sheckels on things we don't have.

He is a good painter (he as in both for their age). but i would like to see some background on this "storm eagles" chapter.

The link to the background info was in my second post. Here it is again though...

The fluff we found for them is here: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_Eagles

Did a little more fooling around with the terminator... found a great article here about using green stuff to do a bunch of things including making purity seals... something all terminators should have. It was easy and worked really well. Will update the photo in the earlier post with the final results tonight.

Terminators are $50 for 5 of em retail. you can pick up the AoBR termis of eBay much cheaper, but they dont come with any extra weapons (assault cannons, etc).
If your interested, i have bunches of extra dark angel assault cannons from the upgrade sprus, I'd be happy to send one your way, and they are easy to put on the AoBR termis

That's very generous, thank you! At the moment the only heavy weapons he has for his 10-man squad are the flamers, so something with a bit more range would be greatly appreciated.

Tell your kid he's better at painting than I am, and I'm 12!
I'm doing something similar to you Gitsplitta with my little sister, who wants to take up IG after seeing the Rough Riders.

I must say, those are incredible for a nine year old, and they are certainly better than my first attempt (which was made at the age eleven). You had better be reading out this feedback to him.

looks like a great start!
cool that your useing older models XD

You inspire me... but my sister breaks models not paints

She got mad at me and stompped on My Best painted ever land raider

Thanks everyone, he does do a good job... though if I didn't re-focus him from time to time I think he'd be rushing through some of this stuff so the results wouldn't be quite as good.

Here is, I think... the final version of the terminators. For those of you going "wow!" please keep in mind that the picky little details (head, eyes, purity seals) on this version were done by me (the dad). Look at the original photo's of the troopers and tanks (and read the narrative) to sort out what he's done vs. my contributions. That being said, I expect that he will be doing the heads and power fists on his own from now on... I'll do the eyes and make the purity seals. I have a really neat idea for making a "banner" for one of the terminators that will be a golden rope baldric with campaign ribbons and purity seals hanging off of it. I'll start playing around with it tonight and will post pics if it works out.

And yes, we go through the posts together so he can see everyone's comments and read the advice for himself. We've both learned a lot in the last few days since beginning this blog... and it's been fun to work together on improving the models. It's been even neater than usual because he get's to see ME learning new things too, rather than just me always teaching him.



Ah yes... the "raging sister" special attack... devastating. The only defense is to have your Land Raider "hull down" somewhere in the back of your closet or hidden under the bed.

Looking awesome!

One advise on the eyes . Instead of doing a pure skull white dot on the lenses , try micing together Skull white and Bleached Bone(ratio Skull white 2:1 Bleached bone) . It will look way better , imho , and always has

EDIT : Also , this might be the photos , but the white on the powefists a bit uneven . Try to build it up using Dheneb Stone > Bleaced Bone > Skull White

As usual , your sons models are way better than most , if not all , 9 year olds models i've seen to the date( and since I often go to the painting lessons to hang out with my friends at the FLGS , I've seen what cannot be unseen ) .

Will do, thanks gretar!

Funny bit... looking at those purity seals, the center "ball" still looks way too large for the seal. Let me tell you those are the smallest little balls I could make. I just kept "rounding" a ball, cutting it half, rounding it again, cutting in half again, etc. The reason they are so uneven is that they were so small I could no longer round them between my fingers, they ended up oblong. I need to find tiny little spheres somewhere that I can use instead.

Have you thought about teaching your son how to do it? Chances are, his hands are smaller than yours, and alot of kids learn easily.(which is evident in how great your sons minis are)

Excellent suggestion! He's really excited about the way they turned out, so I don't think I'll have any problems convincing him.

Wow, honestly I didn't think you would take my advice and actually make a blog about all of this! I just read through the entire thing and I am absolutely impressed by the amount of work that you are putting in! It really shows how much you love the hobby and your kids. You said in your first couple posts that you wanted it to be slightly philisophical; so here i go:

-Since we haven't heard much on how games go for him I am gonna leave that alone (for now), but how do keep your kids focused on doing a good job while making sure that they still like doing all of it AND not being that mean forceful dad (because it doesn't seem like you are) saying, "PAINT YOUR MODELS!!!" The reason I ask all of this is because at my FLGS, I have seen a few fathers that speak very harshly to their sons when they don't paint things amazingly, or when they need a break from a game so they go wander off and do something else. So I guess as a dad (I am only 21 and no where near the maturity level of fatherhood) how do you handle these types of situations when your kids push your patience level just a little too much?

PS- Keep up the good work!!!

I have a lot of faults... not listening when people share good ideas isn't one of them.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this a bit. I actually have a few things of this type I'd like to talk about, but everyone seemed so interested in the figures that I thought I'd let that run for a while (plus we were getting excellent advice).

We play a lot of games at home. I just started bringing him to the local gaming shop as I've started to get to know the owners and the other players. It's a great place & the other 40k'ers are fun and very talented, and I'm very comfortable bringing him there. In general... the rule around the house is "you can't field unpainted figures"... and since I already have a space marine army, if he wants to he can always borrow my Mantis Warriors to fill the gaps in his army... but to be honest he will always choose his figures over mine. So that's a self-motivating factor. The second painting rule is; "You can't start another unit until you finish painting whatever you're currently working on." I have final say over when a unit is complete. So he knows that if he want's to move on the the next, greatest thing... he has to finish up what he's working on now and do a good enough job that I'll give it the OK. (even the little one knows this rule)

I've never yelled at the kids about painting, though I certainly have made comments about sloppy work when I know they can do better. I spend a lot of time painting myself, and as you can see from the blog I try to inspire them by not only working on my own stuff, but by helping them with their stuff. The two termies in the last photo will be the last I do the heads and fists for him... they were just the inspiration and something to get him started. I'll encourage him to go back and paint the white and red on the rest himself, then I'll come in, tidy them up and do the really difficult stuff like the eyes. Eventually I'll teach him how to do that too, but all the painting can be very overwhelming, so rather than ramming it down his throat, I just gently encourage him and help him along the way.

We also do a lot of story telling and narratives based on our games or the units we have. The ork army is loaded with little stories about different units or characters. Even though I'm the one painting the orks... the stories help to fire their imagination and keep them motivated. The other thing isn't something I have any control over... but it helps tremendously. As I mentioned in the into, he's got a bunch of buddies from school that also play. I think only one or two have made any attempt to paint their figs, and none of them have the "vintage" figures that he's gotten from me. So, the fact that he's got all these retro figs combined with how they're painted get's him a lot of attention from his buds... which of course he loves. More motivation to keep painting, and having the nicest painted army helps take the sting out of losing (works for his dad too).

So, the fact that he's never seen an unpainted figure on the gaming table at home before, and the fact that I help him paint and the reenforcement he gets from his friends all add up to keep him pretty well motivated when it comes to painting.

He got a little $5 store credit in a gift bag from the 40k birthday party he went to. He and a buddy combined their credit and bought a little blister pack of 2 Tau (the winged guys) and split it... pretty smart. Now he's all cranked up about painting the Tau and is talking about a Tau army.

Can I continue to write this blog even *after* I wring his neck??? *grin*

Yes, you must continue. But you can blame him for liking Tau due to the Vespids? I think vespids are awesome.

haha, in the tau phase is he? not to worry, i went through that... i still think kroot are awesome fun to paint, but i am back with my SM army... Black Templar forever!
on topic though... your kids are doing an awesome job! i wish i had had a mentor to guide me... if it weren't for dakkadakka i think i would never have challenged me painting skills as much as i have.
keep it up!

Regards the eyes, have you tried painting them all white, then using a watered down paint (in your case a green, to match your current lens colour) to dot into the eyes?

That way, the paint will run into the corners and give you a much more natural graduation to the white.

You could also try this using a bright green (like snot green - if they still make it, it has been a while since I last bought any green paint ) as the base, and then a dark green to wash the eye. You can then go over and highlight with white/light green if you feel it needs doing as well.

And for the purity seals, I make a long, really thin snake of GS. Then you can take really thin slices from it using a knife (coat it in a bit of water, or a VERY small quantity of some kind of vaseline) to make the wax seals.

Alternately, you can leave it to dry and harden and do the same to make rivets, or other such things

Great stuff from your kids. Hope they now have a hobby for life

This is truly inspiring stuff. I've been spending time with my nephews, 12 & 8, getting them into the hobby, but live far away and only see them maybe once a month; being the only gamer in their lives means I don't get to spend as much time painting with them as I'd like!

It's also really lovely to hear about this as I have a 2-yr old just now who loves nothing more than "Paint my model": sitting on dad's knee slapping paint over old plastics (one proudly sitting in display case, one sold on ebay for charity - to his auntie!) I only hope he wanders down the path with as much enthusiasm and I can emulate your skill and patience!

Since we're sort of discussing what vehicles to use to keep a young hobbyist motivated, I thought I'd share one of mine. I'm also promising not to post a dozen little chatty comments a day for those of you who may key in on updates. Not that I won't answer questions or talk with folks (that's the whole point after all), but I would like each of my posts to have some actual substance to it. I'm sure you folks would appreciate that as well. You can always PM me to chat... could spend all day doing that. (chuckle)

As I've mentioned before, one of the things I do to help keep my kids interested in the "hobby", as opposed to just the war game... is to make up stories about certain figures or units. Right now they're all limited to my orks because there's not a whole lot funny or silly about craftworld eldar or space marines. Besides, the 6-year old can't read yet, so he's still very dependent on story telling as a way of accessing "fluff". I try to make the stories fun and a bit funny... if not in a "slap your knee, haw, haw" way, then at least worth a smirk and a giggle.

So, I present to you... the story of my Bad Moon Warboss, Oozegob Gitsplitta (along with a little pic so you can see the fig that inspired the story). It's just the Black Reach warboss... just about the first figure I painted after getting back into the hobby last year. Hope you enjoy it!



Back in the days when Oozegob was just another young nob in the mob, he was looking for a way to distinguish himself from the other nobs (aside from his constant drooling) and curry favor with the war boss. While he was ferocious in battle, it just took him too long to hack his way through the armor of the "oomies", "fairies" and "bugs" with his rusty old choppa to rack-up the body count he felt he needed to get the attention he deserved. So, he collected up his teeth and went in to see the mad dok for an upgrade... "sumfin' splitty-like", he said. Unfortunately the mad dok explained that in spite of the prodigious pile of teeth Oozegob had brought in payment, times were tight in the clan and supplies for such a modification were hard to come by, so only "battle damage" was allowed to be repaired by such a process. Oozegob... realizing that his dreams of advancement were being dashed before his eyes... flew into a rage. He took his own, rusty choppa and in one mighty blow... cut off his arm below the wrist. He then took the severed appendage and proceeded to beat the mad dok near to death with it. He then shook the bloody stump of his arm at the bloody stump of a mad dok, and bellowed... "Dere! Now dis is bat-le damage! Now git me my Splitta you Git!" When the dok regained consciousness, his orderly was immediately dispatched to get the clan mek, and after three days of intensive effort (and several more beatings)... Oozegob's mighty power klaw, dubbed "da Git Splitta" was created.

Over the years of course, Oozegob and his appendage have split a lot of gits... and his name and that of his weapon have become synonymous. "Oozegob and his Git Splitta" became "Oozegob the Git Splitta" followed by "Oozegob Gitsplitta" and now more often than not... just "Gitsplitta". It is a transition the War boss is entirely satisfied with. There is even some indication of a schizophrenic break in Oozegob's psyche, with some of his boyz reporting instances of Oozegob referring to his arm in the 3rd person and suggesting it is making it's own decisions. i.e. "Da Gitsplitta don't like dat... but I'll see if I can talk 'im inta it." Only time will tell if the role-reversal will ever be complete and Oozegob the ork will become simply an appendage of "da gitsplitta", rather than the other way around.



*whoops!* I did actually intend to answer the questions...

I used to technique from GW where you paint the whole eye black, then do the upper part dark tone, the middle mid-tone and the lower the lightest tone. You leave a thin black line just visible along the top and put a little white dot on the lens to represent a reflection. I know you can't see it from the photo... but it's all there. I am very open to suggestions & happy to try other techniques. As to the purity seals, it just dawned on me that if I use a small nail-setting punch to turn the GS ball into a seal shape, I should get exactly the shape I want in one step. Come to think of it, I'll probably make my own "seal stamp" out of a little piece of styrene rod. As usual, will show a pic if it works. Should be pretty simple though... The power glove is actually a solid white, but then it was washed over with Valejo "pale wash" just to keep it consistent with the head (which also has the same treatment).

Gitsplitta wrote: He then took the severed appendage and proceeded to beat the mad dok near to death with it. He then shook the bloody stump of his arm at the bloody stump of a mad dok, and bellowed... "Dere! Now dis is bat-le damage! Now git me my Splitta you Git!"

That was so funny! I loved that bit!

Seconded.

I love the background on the warboss! It's nice to see that you take an interest in your kids and even better that you can share a hobby with them. It is unfortunate but you just don't see a lot of that anymore. My hat is off to you. My two year old little girl like to "help dad paint his guys". right now it is just painting water on primered models but she loves it just the same. I am impressed with the quality of work your kids are capable of, they obviously have a great teacher! Keep up the great work and keep us posted with more pics and background

OK, I know I said that I wouldn't deluge the blog with posts, but I also said that if something I tried worked... I'd post it. What I tried tonight worked beyond my expectations.

This is a follow-up to an excellent article on how to use green stuff, part of which was how to make your own purity seals. (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/242387.page)
I had issues with making the tiny little balls that went on the inside... so I decided to use my brains rather than my fingers.

I made a purity seal "stamp" out of a toothpick that makes perfect purity seals, every time. Not the ribbon part, but the seal part. Here's a very brief tutorial...


1. To make perfect purity seals every time... make a tool by either drilling or grinding a small hole in the end of a dowel or toothpick. The tool I used with my Foredom (rotary tool) is on the right... it's just a ball with grooves for grinding away material.



2. Next, dip the tip of your tool in water and press down on the ball of green stuff. Seems to get the best definition of you roll the tool around gently once it's pressed down.



3. And here we are... perfect purity seals every time. I made about 25 of them in less than 5 minutes. Making the little round balls was the hard part.



4. final result...



5. Here's how you make the tool. If you don't have a rotary tool, simply drill a straight hole into the bottom of a small dowel, then bevel the edges of the dowel with a file until you reach the edge of your hole. Since the green stuff will only go up the "shaft" as far as you push the tool down, and friction will give the inner section a natural curve, the end result should be nearly identical.





Neat thing is that once you get the hang of it, you can make fancier stamps. You can file grooves into the face of the 45-degree bevel to make a starburst pattern if you want. I'm even looking at taking a tiny little plastic I-beam and trying to use it to make a Maltise cross (or something similar).

O.K., now I'm done for the day. :-)

I just want to say that you and your kids are doing a great job , I hope that your kids will stick with the hobby. This thread gives me high hopes that when my son is older (he is three now) that he will take an interest in the hobby. I don't have much to add than what has already been said, just keep up the good work.

I am slightly demoralised that my painting skills have been outclassed by a six year old. :(

Your ogryn are awesome... can't wait to see them completed.

My son got the white on the power fists done tonight after homework, 3 nice thin coats. He also read the entire blog start to finish. I thought he might get a little full of himself with all the attention, but I think he handled it very well and he called all the compliments "very sweet" (my wife's influence). The little one was excited about seeing his stuff on the web, and was pointing to everyone's avatar saying "Read this one!" "Read this one!" He also made me go to the article that Much pointed out so that we could see how to weather his little ork trucks... he liked it, so I figure we'll be trying that system out pretty soon.

I read them the gitsplitta story (off the blog) as kind of a bed time story. The last part is a little advanced for them, but as I was trying to explain it... my oldest smiled and said, "You mean he's losin' it." LOL Yes son, he's losin' it.

This is great stuff guys ( I say guys cause I mean you AND your sons )

It's a real inspiration to read about you all enjoying the hobby together and doing such top notch work , glad to see the 40K gene is passed on!

Man I wished I had a dad that would halp me with the hobby. =(

anyways, tell your kids that their painting has thrashed the level of a 11 year old!

Well, there are a bunch of kids in the local gaming group, and a couple of parents (including one mom) who are very supportive of the hobby... but as far as I know, I'm the only parent who actually IS a gamer & am actively doing the hobby with my boys. That's one of the reasons I thought it might be an interesting topic for the blog... it's kind of a unique situation.

But, as you can see from the posts, there are a lot of gaming parents out there... just seem's like most of their kids are too small to really get into it yet. Based on my experience, if you wanted to try and get your kids interested in the hobby, I would recommend the following...

1. Let them see you having fun. Let them hang around and ask questions during games, even if it is an annoyance.
2. When they're old enough to play computer games, dig out one of your old DOW games. A lot of the teenagers at our local store got hooked that way & both my boys play (grades and behavior permitting of course) and I know it's helped to keep them interested.
3. Try to get them somewhere they can meet other kids their age who are also interested in the hobby. Peer "pressure" (in this case, positive) is very important.
4. Let them paint! Dig out some old models you don't want any more or buy some cheap off the internet and let them go nuts! Kids love crafts... this is just another one. Help your kids work on them, teach them real techniques but don't be too critical. In the early stages, what the figs look like is immaterial, it's the process of painting and the fun they have doing it that's important. Make sure to use those figures in games too, so the kids can see and play with them.

I like how you're going about this and hope your boys don't lose interest. Small warning though they will both probably be drawn towards other armies figs. They will grow out of it for the most part. Just let them buy within reason(I.E. no codeces or large/expensive sets like a trygon)

As a 40k playing dad of two small boys myself ( nine and five) I am loving this blog. They too have recently started taking the plunge into 40K with me and I look forward to comparing notes...

BTW,that purity seal tool is ace.

I like the termies, can't wait to see what he does with them. My wargaming buddy who owns an Iron Warriors Army as well as some Tau was eh, INTERESTED, to discover that his kids, aged 6 and 8, had taken an interest in the hobby. The two of us(me and my buddy) had been out at the LFGS when we went into his house and turned on the lights to see the kids gluing Fire Warriors to the spikes on His land raider. The look on my buddy's face was priceless. The kids have since started their own armies, Imperial Guard and Eldar for the 6 and 8 year old, respectively.
TACOSSSS!

WOW truly awe inspiring stuff... i really like this blog, i started the hobby when i was 9 and i'm 17 now, unfortunately i didn't have a father like you who helped me along the way.

I love your purity seal tutorial! Will definitely use it in the future. Have you ever tried using etched brass off cuts to make purity seals? They can look pretty good as well.

Another thing I may add is bases go a long way to making a great model. I remember someone telling me when I was younger that what really makes models look good are faces and bases.

I must say your son is definitely on his way to becoming a fine painter if he can produce models like that at 9!

If you want some tank painting tips have a look at my blog... I go through painting a SM landraider though it’s pretty advanced stuff... there's also a bit about the marines I’m working on at the moment which may help.

You can find it at: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/274891.page

Hope this helps

Cheers, Sons of Orar.


P.S. love the old school minis

Good evening all. Have progress on a painting project to share, but first... to respond to some of your comments...

CM: Yep, they're already looking at other things. I figure if they finish what they're starting up to about 2000 pts, they'll have enough to play in any normal game or tournament... then they can move on if they wish. As I mentioned earlier... there is specific money they can earn by working around the house to spend on 40k... so that will limit their spending, and of course everything has to go through either myself or their mom... so we're covered (I think).

CT: Any time my friend! I knew there were others like myself and my sons out there... just a matter of getting connected.

Taco: Well, you can check out what I'm doing with one of the termies tonight (see below). "Thing 1" has a test tomorrow so he didn't get to paint tonight (studying), but he'll be working on finishing the terminator squad & we'll post a pic when he's done. He says he wants to "blog" too... so there will probably be a post from him directly here pretty soon. Oh... and your story... just about fell out of my chair! The mental image is just too funny...

SoR: Not sure what an etched brass off cut is... but my original idea was to make a metal stamp from scratch (I used to do a lot of jewelry & fine metal work... so making a metal tool is a natural leap for me). I was about to start when I realized that for green stuff I didn't need anything that "tough"... the toothpick seemed like a perfect answer. (what I didn't mention is that it still took me 3 tries to get one that worked right) Your comment about the bases is right on. He got fixated on this glittery stuff that came in a Harry Potter magic wand kit he got for Christmas. Certainly better than a bare base, but not up to the standards of the rest of the figure. We'll talk about it and see if he's interested in another option. Thanks for the link... we'll certainly check it out.


On to today's project...

So, the thing is... I hate painting banners... lousy at it. Love the way they look but couldn't paint one to save my life. But I like the idea of each squad having a banner bearer (not the commander of the squad though... it'd be like putting a large bulls-eye on your chest that said "Shoot Me!"). So, I was trying to figure out a way that a marine could bear the standard or "pride" of the unit, without a big, flappy flag that I couldn't paint decently in the first place. One of the "hats" I wear is that of a cub scout leader, and whenever our pack participates in a camping event, we get a large silk ribbon commemorating that event that we tie to our pack flag pole. So I hit upon this idea that the "standard bearer" for the squad would be decked with a heavy, golden silk cord or rope from which the units "campaign ribbons" would hang, commemorating each successful campaign that squad had participated in. Neat idea... unique, and I wouldn't have to paint some fool flag.

So, here's the shots of the project so far. First I made the rope out of green stuff as per the instructions of the green stuff tutorial referenced in an earlier post. It took days to get the rope right... at least 7 attempts, perhaps more. What finally did it was that I'd rolled out the rope, then forgot about it, so it was really pretty far along the hardening process when I remembered to twist it. It's far from perfect... but it was probably as good as I was ever going to get. I "sealed" the baldric with a handy-dandy purity seal... just lightly pushed a GS ball on to the tool and pressed it directly onto the model.



Next came the painting. First a coat of Golden Yellow, followed by lighter yellow highlights (any light yellow, I used a Valejo). Then I applied a thin wash of Burnished Gold to get the silky sheen, followed by a thin wash of Sepia. Final result really worked... and at least in-person is a very convincing silk braid. Looking at it I may try to very carefully add some full-strength sepia wash in the crevices of the braid... we'll see if I'm brave enough to try that.



So all I have left are the actual campaign ribbons. I have two different options... green stuff or my personal favorite... masking tape. Masking tape is cheaper, easier to work with, is bendable, more realistic width and will last forever (I have a Mantis Warrior banner that I painted 15 years ago that still looks as good as the day I painted it. That is to say it stinks... but the physical structure of the banner is as good as new. And, since kids are going to have their hands all over it... the masking tape will probably be more resistant to damage or at least easier to replace. But... we'll see. I'll do some test pieces and see how they turn out.

I have to say three things.

1) This is a truely inspiring blog and what really shines through is your love for your kids-which is something that isn't seen enough these days.

2) I'm 18 (almost 19). Your 9-year-old paints much better than I do.

3) I'm clicking "Subscribe" for the first time here.

Just thought I'd post a quick bit on what's coming up in the near future.

I'll post a pic of the finished banner bearer termie when complete.
40k fiction written by Thing 1 (the eldest) for school... got a good grade on it too!
Maybe a battle report if we can sneak a game in this weekend
Will post a photo of the re-vamped termies when Thing 1 gets them finished.
I'll be working with Thing 2 (the youngest) on using some of the weathering techniques folks have shown us on his little ork buggy/truck thing, so will post the results of that.
I'm looking for help on how to keep they boys positive and fighting even when they're losing (or appear to be losing) a battle. This is a big problem for us. Please hold your comments on this until I can properly frame the issue in a post, but I could really use some advice.

Next week might be slow 'cause da boyz and I are going crappie fishin' with grandpa (fishing is our other big shared interest). But check every few days and there may be something new!

Thanks

You don't know the half of it, although he still uses the LR in games. The kids actually did a good job, as far as separating minis from their bases and sticking them onto spikes al the while minimizing damage to the minis and LR. Our store had a little event where you could enter four elites of troop choices, an HQ, and a vehicle. The kids didn't have enough minis painted, so they used the Iron Warriors, including the tank. They are actually pretty good at the game, and they nearly slaughtered me, although my HQ got very lucky with a swing from his thunder hammer to the LR, and his frost axe then took the final wound of their HQ, a warsmith. The six year old was kinda annoyed though, my shin still hurts.

Gitsplitta wrote:
I'm looking for help on how to keep they boys positive and fighting even when they're losing (or appear to be losing) a battle. This is a big problem for us. Please hold your comments on this until I can properly frame the issue in a post, but I could really use some advice.

My advice: treat them like adults. Explain to them clearly that since they're new to the game and it takes time to learn how to play well they should expect to lose often while they're learning. As you get better, you should ever only go 50-50 against someone of equal skill as well....

EDIT-Oops, I need to LtR...

My little brother (15 years old) looses most of his games at the store we play at (like 70%+) but I keep him motivated by A) makeing sure he always has something to paint and B) when we play at home, I will use a softer list that I know will be a close game, not the super competative list.
I also picked up Army Builder, which he loves to mess with and then try new things in games (I think this goes with the wanting to try everything aproach, but without having to buy the models).
He also found some friends at school that play, and is quickly becoming the 40k "expert" in their group.

I've got a treat tonight. This is a 40k fiction story written by my 9-year-old for a writing assignment at school (got him a decent grade too). I didn't influence the story at all (didn't even know about it until it was almost finished). I did give him some editorial help at the end... but that's it. Spelling errors are mine.

Enjoy!


The Adventure
by Thing 1, age 9

Chapter One: The Wish
One New Year’s night I wished to be a Warhammer 40k soldier. Then it happened! I suddenly appeared on a battle field with a bolt gun in my hand. I was a strong, young man with space marine armor and I was surrounded by captains, commanders and sergeants. I saw the over-all commander. When I tried to move, he did an amazing flip over some rocks. I made my way to the commander. Once I got close I realized that I was surrounded by tanks, land speeders and dreadnoughts. The commander said… “Come here!”, and when I got there, he asked “Do you know what we are doing?”. I answered “No.” “We are fighting the orks.” He said. I looked, and saw a massive ork army coming over the horizon. Then the commander said “Here it comes boy, we might not survive this. I think this is the end.”

Chapter Two: The Orks
I heard the commander yell “Charge!” and I ran forward screaming “Die!”. I first saw an ork coming. I shot. “Bang!” I hit it, but he keeps coming. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The ork finally fell dead. I was about to shoot again when I heard; “Eewwwwwwww….. BOOM!” The tanks were firing. I pulled out my chain sword and charged. In a short time I have killed many orks. As the orks start retreating everybody fired at once and the rest of the orks fell dead. There was a short silence, then everybody started cheering and yelling. “Victory!”

Chapter Three: The Camp
We were sent to make camp. I couldn’t sleep with hundreds of questions buzzing through my head. I heard a small sound. I sat up, looked through a hole in my tent and I saw a bunch of little gretchin. I yelled to wake everyone, then heard a bang. I felt a sharp pain, then I fell. The last thing I saw is my partner looking over me as I fainted. I woke up in a medical tent. Looking around I only saw one other soldier. A medic came over to me with the company commander. He said “Thanks to you the camp is saved.” “Rest now.” I went back to sleep and when I woke I wasn’t in the medical tent. My cast was gone and my wound was has completely healed. I saw an Eldar Farseer and I realized that I’d been captured by the Eldar! The farseer, named Creyas, said “Come with me.” As I walked through the camp, I saw howling banshees, guardians and warp spiders and looked at the strange buildings. I was allowed to see the summoning of the Eldar Avatar. As I watched, I saw his horrifying molten body. He stared into my eyes and I could see the wars he had been through!
I asked the farseer if they were getting ready to fight the Necrons. “How do you know that name?” he said. “I once fought a battle against them and won” I replied. “How?” he asked. I responded by saying “I cannot tell you, but I can supervise your army.” The farseeer agreed, so off to work I went. I called for two squads of wraithguard, two squads of howling banshees, five wraith lords and ten striking scorpions. After the troops were summoned, we made our defenses.
I told the Eldar farseer to make all the buildings invisible so that when the necron army came we could attack out of cover, completely annihilating them. (note: DOW computer game reference - Gsplitta) The battle went as planned, and after the Eldar victory I was given access to a ship, a weapon and a warlock for protection. We set off and traveled to the planet Kaurava where the Imperial Guard were at war with the Sisters of Battle.

Chapter 4: The Trainer
Once we landed on Kaurava, to my surprise we weren’t attacked. Suddenly, I heard the sound of an arrow. A brief stinging, followed by a drowsy feeling, then darkness. I woake up in a tent with a cross on it. I looked over to see my warlock next to me, but when I tried to get up I realized that I was chained down. I saw the Imperial Guard leader coming. He said “Are you a spy?” “No” I respond. “I am a bodyguard of the Emperor.” “To see if this is true” he said, “you will challenge someone.” Then I said “Who?”. He responded “Me.” I suddenly felt worried. His name was Yarrick. I was given a gun and I went to the practice range. BANG, BANG, BANG! Bullseyes. After some more practice, I went to bed.

Chapter 5: The Tournament
The next day was the duel. I walked into a study room and all around me I saw Imperial Guardsmen. I was given the first choice of weapons. I picked a power fist and a storm bolter. Yarrick picked a power sword and a bolt gun. I went to the other end of the field. I shot my gun… PING, PING…. Nothing happened. Yarrick’s shot was also useless. I began my charge to attack him with my power fist. Closer… closer… As I was about to hit him with my power fist, he put his power sword right through me. I fell. I saw Yarrick come to my side and raise his arms in victory. With the last of my strength, I raised my storm bolter and shot him in the head until my vision faded. (Ick!!! – Gsplitta)

I woke up in my room, still thinking that everything I'd just experienced was real. Then I saw something in my closet… it’s my power fist and armor! A note was attached that read… “Dear friend, it has been a great adventure! Signed, Your friends… the company commander, Farseer Creyas and Commissar Yarrick.

-finis-

Wow! That was great! So much imagination put into it. I wan't moar!

Wow, I couldn't write stories like that when I was nine!

Dude, your kids are talented!

As a high school English teacher, I can tell you I read a lot worse by kids years older!

This is good writing. I can tell by the lack of multi-lazorz and I have read many a fan-fic in my time.

Great stuff Thing 1!

dude this stuff rocks, honestly your kids are talented, much more so than many guys ive seen at tourenments, also your oldest sons writing is great, i do alot of short story and poerty writing and that reminds me so much of what i used to write like.
you know its true ...
'the quality of the son is the honour of the father' its an old gaelic saying.
assult

Good Stuff I am just concerned with why you are always waking up in a tent!!!

I hope all you guys are having a good weekend fishing. I also wouldn't be surprised if the wife is having a relaxing weekend to herself as well.

I re-found a new blog that you might be interested in. Its called the painting corps and has a lot of fun techniques for you to try (It may be a little advanced for the kiddos but rumor has it you are planning on painting some new mantis warriors... yes this is a sad attempt to actually get you to start painting your own minis) The blog can be found here:
http://thepaintingcorps.blogspot.com/

-Luke

Thanks Luke, got it linked and "followed" (I think). Yeah... had these ideas bouncing around in my head for at least 12 years... finally decided to act on them. Will take my time with it, all new figures, all converted, each one painted individually. It get's done when it gets done. I've waited 18 years to get the guts do my chapter right... I can wait a couple of more to pull it off the right way.

My son loved all the supportive comments and says "Thank you!". I'm very proud of him, he's got a good imagination and has been telling me stories since he was maybe... 3? Not 40k stories of course, but stories none-the-less. Perhaps with some training and practice there's a future there for him.

Kids and mom are off to her side of the family for fun and frolic this weekend (fishing is next week), and I have to work two 12hr days... but I think I'll finish that banner bearer termie tonight, so I'll post that. Don't want to tip my hand but Thing 1 loves what I'm doing with it, and he had an idea for it that I just loved... so it's a cooperative project. So check back around 9 or 10 CST and I may have something up by then. It's kind of a prototype of what I'd like to do for my mantis warriors... so we'll see what you think.


OH, and for any of you able to attend Adepticon... I am really, REALLY jealous!

Can't wait!

Lucky kids. When I got into 40k as a kid, my dad wouldn't take me to the shop because he thought the staff were all paedophiles... Fun times

I'm sorry but .

Million wrote:Lucky kids. When I got into 40k as a kid, my dad wouldn't take me to the shop because he thought the staff were all paedophiles... Fun times

LOL, thats really bad but really funny

OK folks, here we go. Took me a while to get the photo's set... they're bigger than usual so you can zoom in on the in the gallery if you want.

I won't give a lot of background... I don't like big square banners as I've previously stated. Like the idea of pennants. Will probably do something very much like this when I re-make my Mantis Warriors, but I thought I'd try it out on my son's terminator. I was going to put "campaign ribbons" on the gold cord (that's what it's for), but my son decided that he wanted to EARN the campaign ribbons. So as this squad fights in 40k battles, they will earn ribbons that will be added one at a time to the baldric.

I though that was cool... shows character.

Anywho... here goes nothin... (sorry, not too chatty tonight... have a splitting headache).





Changes since last time: Painted sepia wash into the cracks of the baldric to help define it. Finished base. Drilled holes in lower back to accept banner poles. Made & painted banners (they're just stiff wire & GS). Banners are not glued in yet, so they can be moved and fiddled with as needed. Highlighted high points on armor and weapons.

I wish my dad is like you

Eh, don't be to hard on him. My dad never understood my hobbies... still doesn't, and he's 83 now. Just find something you both enjoy and run with it. My dad and I shot black powder rifles together, now we fish when we can. The gaming was my thing. Maybe some day my boys will find their own things too. That's OK with me, I don't get paid by GW to pimp their product line... I just want to spend time with my boys, however that happens. Even if some day they get out of 40k, it won't change the time we had together. Just means I have to find someone else to give my figures to when I'm too old and decrepit to roll dice! *grin*

If you have a look at the dakkadakka "painting and modelling tutorials" some people have made some great tutorials to be inspired in, taught me alot.

Murray?
Present.

I like your take on banners for the termie, didn't japanese samurai often have similar banners attached to their armour in the same way?

edit:
like this http://www.samurai-store.com/armor/crestbanner.html

keep up the good work!

Yep, part of my thought process was to make a banner style that was plausible to fight with. The Japanese back banners are an excellent prototype, but I didn't necessarily want these to look Japanese, so I opted for a pennant style.

Can I have your figures? =)

I have a small collection of rogue trader plastic beakies. I have little to no use for them in my collection because they just don't fit in with my current models. Because I support you trying to promote your children's creativity I would like to send them to you instead of selling them. I have nearly 30 in ruff shape. If you are interested please pm me your address. Here are some truly horrible pictures to show you what I'm talking about. http://s708.photobucket.com/albums/ww87/delerium101/?action=view¤t=PDR_0003.jpg&newest=1
http://s708.photobucket.com/albums/ww87/delerium101/?action=view¤t=PDR_0005.jpg&newest=1
If you don't think that you are going to use them then I would rather keep them because I would sell the lot for $10.

Wow, there are some great antiques here!

The back banners look great, and they are much more plausible.

Hey MeatShield,

Thanks to the generosity of others like yourself, I think my son has enough basic marines for several tac squads & filling out his dev squads. Thank you.

I, on the other hand would be very willing to buy those from you. In re-building my Mantis Warriors from scratch, I plan on integrating a lot of Mk-6 armor into my conversions, and cleaned up, those wonderful beakies would be perfect! Your call. Either way is was a very generous offer and both my son on I appreciate it.

Have a battle report between the boys that will be unfolding over the next couple of days, but in order to understand the ork objectives you guessed it... more stories. So, for your edification and entertainment... our Bad Moon objectives!



"Da Bronz Boss" (objective marker)
You see, Gitsplitta and his boys were raiding one year and came upon an Imperial installation that housed a foundry where a group of artisans made bronze statuary to decorate the halls and courtyards of government buildings all over the Imperium. Gitsplitta liked the idea of immortalizing himself in bronze, so forced the chief sculptor to make a statue of him. Fearing for his life, the sculptor created a perfect likeness of the ork leader. Gitsplitta was so enthusiastic about the results of the project, that he fed the sculptor his pet attack squig, Spot. (no wait... that's not right... must be a typo) "Gitsplitta was so enthusiastic about the results of the project, that he fed the sculptor TO his pet attack squig, Spot." (that makes more sense) No matter, I'm sure it was a great honor for the man whatever-the-case. Anyway, now Gitsplitta makes his warband carry this heavy bronze monstrosity around with them wherever they go, and the boyz of-course... not wanting to lug this thing around... have a tendency to leave it behind. So every once in a while, the boss realizes that is prize statue is missing and must send the mob out to retrieve it.




"Da Spook 'utt" (objective marker)
This is a dwelling that used to belong to Da Great Gobbo, a Night Goblin shaman and sometimes street magician that was a part of Gitsplitta's mob until he met his demise at the hands of an Eldar farseer. The hut has the unique ability to absorb and focus the ambient ork psychic energy around it. As a result, Gobbo's tent is the favorite place for the mob's weird-boys go to power-up their psychic powers before a battle. The tent's special attributes help the mob's weird-boys in the opening moments of a battle by amplifying their control over their first psychic attack. As one weird-boy puts it (after much drooling and gibbering)... "Da first bang, is da best bang!" Problem is that there's so much residual energy concentrated in this little hut after use that it has a tendency to "phase out" of existence like a ghost and re-materialize elsewhere... necessitating occasional retrieval operations by the boyz.

-finis-

With that background, I have photo's of the initial deployment and will give the background and objectives for the battle... probably in the wee hrs or tomorrow morning. See you then!

Very awesome fluff.

Lol, love the statue!

Very nice use of the AoBR warboss again. You sem to have a lot of them.

People kept throwing them in with things I bought on e-bay... think I have 2 more lying around somewhere. It's a great fig, just nearly impossible to use for conversions (at least for someone of my skill). So this was my compromise...

(snip)

Gitsplitta wrote:It's a great fig, just nearly impossible to use for conversions (at least for someone of my skill). So this was my compromise...

Seriously? That spook hut is awesome, don't be so hard on yourself! Do you own a bone saw? Cut along the joins at the shoulder pads and the banner top and you're ready to rumble. Could probably, with some careful cutting, get behind the head too.

Loving the objectie markers!

if this is a statue of the warboss... why is there a statue of a head on the base? I mean I get it and I totally understand the story (I think its great), just why is there a bronze head. did the warboss cut the head off? and why does the head need retrieval as well... It's just mildly irritating to me. The hut is awesome btw.


One more thought I had for the warboss... can you make him rusting a little bit? I figure since they carry this around everywhere there has to be more wear and tear on the statue. Its not like Orks keep things in mint condition. Plus if you make it more decrepit, it would make it funnier for Orks to be trying to retrieve it. So ya, I vote more wear and tear on the statue.

Oi! Lissen up yoo git! Da Bronz Boss iz one big fing! It'z not a buncha gubbins jus' tossed togevver! Dem humies what made Da Boss gone and put it on a roight solid base! And da head uv da lousy git wot was at Da Boss's feet wen 'e wuz pozin' is immorteelized roight along wiv 'im!

EDIT- Consistent Orkish.

Well, clearly Gitsplitta jumped the gun a bit on feeding the sculptor to his pet squig... or perhaps it was BECAUSE Spot was not included in the statue that the Warboss' ire was tweaked. We'll never know for certain. In any case, an appropriate oomie 'ead was found and placed at the bronze boss's feat in an appropriate tribute to his victory.

Bronze doesn't really rust, it tarnishes green. I did give the statue a green wash after all was said and done, and it is apparent when you hold it in hand, but it is rather subtle. I may come in later and really color up the statue, add greens and browns for age and bird poop and all that. Good suggestion though. Your right, it would look much cruddier given it's likely treatment at the hands of the boyz.

WONDERFUL orkish btw ICB... you can write for me ANY TIME!

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Oi! Lissen up yoo git! Da Bronz Boss iz one big fing! It'z not a buncha gubbins jus' tossed togevver! Dem humies what made Da Boss gone and put it on a roight solid base! And da head uv da lousy git wot was at Da Boss's feet wen 'e wuz pozin' is immorteelized roight along wiv 'im!

EDIT- Consistent Orkish.

I couldn't say it better myself. Well I could, being a human I have much better control on sentence structure and proper pronunciation. If I were an ork I couldn't say it better myself. But I digress, that was heart warming in a wierd way.

Gitsplitta wrote:Bronze doesn't really rust, it tarnishes green.

Obviously, Rust is tarnished Iron.
ooh, didn't see the wash before.

Weathering bronze can look a treat with a light dry-brush of bestial brown, 1:1 dark angel green/swooping hawk turquoise (or whatever the current equivalent is - if you can get MP Deep Bronze Green, all the better), 2:1 turquoise and skull white, and then a final re-drybrush of bronze very, very lighty. Admittedly, that's techincally a verdigris effect, but still, easy and tasty. Also, PP's Brass Balls is lovely as a highlight shade on bronze.

Gone fishin'.

Battle and fishing reports when we return!

Can't wait!

O.K., back home again...

I include a photo of the event for those of you who are curious. We went to Lake Shelbyville in central Illinois to fish for crappie with their grandpa. Photo below...



You'll note the presence of everything necessary for a great fishing trip... fancy boat, professional guide, grandpa (you guess which is which), and kids. Anything missing?? FISH! In spite of this lake's outstanding reputation... we got all but skunked. Gramps caught 2 fish, the rest of us caught butkis! *sigh* At least it was a beautiful spring day, sunny and very warm. Winds were very high (30mph +) all week, so we only got out on the lake the one day. Did some shore fishing the next day but got nuthin' there either.

After Easter (and happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it) I'll begin the "sibling rivalry" battle report. Orks vs. Doom Eagles!

Not ment in an offensive , mean way , but your father looks like Viatnam Tom

Also , two fishes are still two fishes , and they are just an extra . The real treat should be having a blast with you kids and your father

Actually "Vietnam Tom" was the guide... my dad is the guy waving... and we did have a blast. Found lots to do, had a beautiful evening shore fishing yesterday with my kids on this little secluded lake off the big one... no one but us, the herons and some pesky little bluegill and crappie that we fed worms to for a couple of hours. All-in-all a wonderful trip!

Gitsplitta wrote:Actually "Vietnam Tom" was the guide...

Ah well , he still looks like him though .

gretar wrote:Not ment in an offensive , mean way , but your father looks like Viatnam Tom

Also , two fishes are still two fishes , and they are just an extra . The real treat should be having a blast with you kids and your father

very true. But I want to see some minis!
ot but: I got my 1000 post! I'm so glad it was on such an inspiring and awesome thread!

looks like a great trip! But I agree, Orks vs. Doom Eagles. I am placing bets on both!

I think the Doom Eagles have the advantage because they are piloted by thing 1, who is older and more experienced (+1 point DE)
I also think that the Orks are going to get a lot of help from Dad cause he likes them more (+1 Orks)

In my limited view of who will win, I place $5 on both. So I can't really lose

gretar wrote:Not ment in an offensive , mean way , but your father looks like Viatnam Tom

Also , two fishes are still two fishes , and they are just an extra . The real treat should be having a blast with you kids and your father

It's still fish, there is no such word as fishes.
I'll put money on the orks WAAAAGHH!!!

Hello everyone. Been promising you a battle report... so here goes.

It will unfold over the next several days as I get things written, get pictures edited & the game finishes. As I begin this, the actual game is on turn 5, so while I welcome suggestions to improve things, keep in mind that the current circumstances are pretty well set. Also keep in mind that I gave both my boys a lot of freedom to choose the army they wanted, pick their own strategies, set their own deployment and play their own games. Yes, I helped them both out with the rules and did give my little one hints and suggestions along the way... but he largely ignored them... LOL... and I let him do it of course because I want them both to gain confidence and a measure of independence. It's worth saying from the outset that what's gone wrong for my youngest (Thing 2) has had little to do with his chosen army or strategy, and everything to do with my eldest (Thing 1) rolling out-of-his-shorts for the first 2 turns while the youngest couldn't make a roll to save his life.

Back Story:
Doom Eagles: On the eve of a major mechanized engagement between the forces of the Imperium and several ork tribes united under a Waaaagh, the Doom Eagles have been sent to reclaim a badly damaged Bane Blade tank abandoned the day before which CnC believes can be put back into fighting trim to play a pivitol role in the upcoming battle.. They also must rescue a fallen comrade, trapped beneath some rubble while covering the flank of the retreating Imperial Guard.
Bad Moons: While surveying his mob’s preparation for the battle, Warboss Oozegob Gitsplitta noticed that his beloved statue, “da Bronze Boss” had once again gone walk-a-bout. “Ow do it keep doin’ dat?” he wondered. “Dunno.” answered the Gitsplitta. “Best send da boyz fer it den… bad omen not ‘ta ‘ave it fer da bat’le.” Just as he was about to bellow orders to his boyz, an agitated wierdboy approached him. “Dey’z alwayz dat way…” he thought. Apparently Great Gobbo’s “Spook Utt”, which the wierdboyz use to help focus their power before a battle, had once again phased out of existence, rephrasing in again somewhere else. “Not good.” said the Gitsplitta. “No.” agreed the Warboss. With a roar Oozegob issued orders for the scouts to be sent out, and the boyz to prepare for a recovery mission. There was no way the mob would fight the main oomie army without it’s treasured icons.

Scenario:
4x6 table, DOW deployment (9"), 2000 pts, reserves, etc. (standard rules)
1 command counter was given to each player which could be assigned to an infantry unit, making it a "scoring unit"
Objectives:
Marines: Primary (Baneblade, 5 pts), Secondary (Rescue, 3 pts), ork tanks/dreds destroyed (2 pt), other units (1 pt)
Orks: Primary (Bronze Boss, 5 pts), Secondary (Spook ‘Utt, 3 pts), marine tanks/dreds destroyed (2 pt), other units (1 pt)

I weighted the VP’s to favor killing heavy machinery as it would be more critical in the following battle, however I think there are still too many VPs awarded for killing units in comparison to the objectives. In retrospect, I think I should have assigned points in the following manner… primary obj (5 pts), secondary obj (2 pts), tanks/dreds destroyed (1 pt). That keeps the focus on the objectives as there would be only 4/3 VPs available (respectively) from kill points.
I’d placed the two marine objectives on the Doom Eagle’s left, with the Rescue objective in their corner and the Bane Blade more towards the center close to the orks deployment zone. I did the same thing for the Bad Moons, placing their two objectives on the ork left and in the same relative positions. My thought was that both would load up their deployment on the half of the table that was in line with their objectives, could move forward to secure the objectives and then wheel to try and drive the opponent off of one of their objectives, probably the primary since that would be closer. That was the idea anyway…

Here's the table.

As you can see the deployment zones and objectives are marked. Since the Bane Blade was so big the actual "objective" was a hatch on top of the turret. There is a large fluid transfer junction in the center of the table with rubble walls and ruins scattered around. Generally I prefer fewer larger, more realistic sized terrain pieces but these scattered pieces seem to be the standard, including at our local shop so I want with it. Perspective aside, the two armies objectives are basically in the same relative positions. The table doesn't quite look that plywoody in person... camera flash does it no justice... though I have been researching some options for improving it's look, but for now, it was quick and cheap, and if it gets messed up (the kids paint their figures, do homework, etc on it) you can just spray paint over the mess and you're good to go!

Oooh! i want to see this battle report! I bet your a massive inspiration to your kids.

@million, sorry i just had to put what you said in my sig. I almost wet myself.

good idea to have the tablefor multipurpose, i need too get a battlemat or gameboard or make a board cos when at home i just use the table -brown oak wood (i think)- and it looks rubbish!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Good idea to have the tablefor multipurpose, i need too get a battlemat or gameboard or make a board cos when at home i just use the table -brown oak wood (i think)- and it looks rubbish!

The Armies:
This was Thing 1’s introduction to army builder. I showed him how to select units, add members and pick wargear… he pretty much did the rest. Thing 2 told me what units he wanted to play with and I just filled out the list around it. Sorry about the quality of the photo’s, I oversimplified them a bit to save on size. You’ll note that both armies are rather motley as some of the Doom Eagle vehicles are still in Mantis Warrior colors and the orks are using a couple of my beloved Epicast vehicles that I just picked up on the web & haven’t had time to convert and re-paint yet.

Doom Eagles (2000 pts exactly)
HQ: Librarian w/ jump pack, force dome, machine curse, epistolary
HQ: Chaplain
Elite: Terminators (10)
Elite: Techmarine w/ Servitor + plasma cannon
Troop: Tac Squad (10), rhino, flamer, missile launcher
Troop: Scout Squad (5), missile launcher, Sgt. Telion
FA: Vanguard Veteran Squad (10) w/ 3 plas pistols & relic blade
FA: Attack Bikes (2) w/ multi-meltas
Hvy: Predator (2 las cannons, autocannon turret)
Hvy: Vindicator
Hvy: Whirlwind



Bad Moons (2000 pts exactly)
HQ: Grazghkull Thraka
HQ: Old Zogwort
Elite: Burnas (7) + mekboy w/ CMB
Elite: Nobs (8) + painboy & orderly in trukk, 3 PK, 3 BC, ‘eavy armor
Troop: Slugga Boyz (10) + nob w/PK in trukk
Troop: Slugga Boyz (29) + nob w/PK & 3 BS
FA: Deffkopta w buzzsaw, twin-linked RL
FA: Deffkopta, twin-linked RL
FA: Deffkopta, twin-linked RL
Hvy: Deff Dred w/ 3 CCW & skorcha
Hvy: Battlewagon w 2 BS, 2 RL & Zzap Gun, ‘ard case, armor plates, rigger
Hvy: Battlewagon w/ 2 BS, Killkannon, ‘ard case, armor plates, rigger




Again please keep in mind that I specifically did not meddle too much with the kid's choices... as they both seemed like solid, balanced lists I let them take the lead with very little modification on my part. I did help Thing 2 a bit, but everything out there is something he picked... I just helped with numbers and war gear.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
I thought it would be interesting to "interview" each boy to see what their thoughts were on strategy once they'd seen the table and listened to the rules. Here's what I came up with...

Thing 1 (Doom Eagles)
Does not feel that the Baneblade is attainable by a scoring unit, so will capture the secondary objective and try to deny orks their primary obj & win in kill pts. Command counter is given to the terminators... not exactly certain why. Tac squad in rhino will drive forward into ork center. The Vanguard assault squad will move to the bane blade with the attack bikes in support. The two ordinance weapons will eliminate the ork killkannon and flama squad/Zogwort. Termies and dred move into cover and forward through ruins.

Thing 2 (Bad Moons)
*lots of enthusiastic pointing and gesticulating and sound effects from the 6-year-old* In essence… the command squad and burnas will press hard on the left flank. The two battlewagons and lootas will hold the center and shoot. The lootas have a command counter and will secure the secondary objective). The ork right flank will advance and try and take out the assault squad while the truk boyz move to the primary objective. Deff kopta’s are in reserve for tank killing duty & objective contesting.


Deployment

As you can see, my clever idea of "They'll move onto their own objectives and then wheel to face their opponent." theory pretty much died before turn 1. The marines deployed heavily on their right flank, away from their own objectives, freed by the "we don't need no stinkin' primary objective" battle strategy... while the orks deployed more-or-less as I'd envisioned (granted Thing 2 had a little guidance from me, so it was self-fulfilling prophecy). Both boys did grok the the idea of sitting a scoring unit on the secondary objective, though Thing 1 would have been better off with his scouts on the objective and his tac squad free to roam.

Can you you show us bigger pics of the individual units?

It might be kinda sad that I am watching this with the interest of the Superbowl. I am very excited to see how this all plays out. The Orks look good in yellow by the way, I wouldn't mind seeing a few more pictures of them on the blog!

Sure... orks first.

I get a lot of orks off the net, most painted decently but they're not really "mine" until I give 'em a good goin' over. So here are a couple of photo's of things that I feel are mine, either painted from scratch or significantly re-painted.

Da Boyz... and yes, there's a Santa ork & grot in there. There's a story to go along with that (of course). Real reason is I finished painting the mob on Christmas day and decided to recognize the occasion.



Really proud about the job I did on the lootas, took forever (have a full squad of 15)... but the figs are so 3-dimensional that a 2-d photo never does them justice. Dred turned out nice too, used an old Skorcha turret for the burna arm.


Slowly converting this old Epicast Bowel Burna into a proper Bad Moon battle wagon. Took a lot of fiddling to get the tone of the yellow right, but I think I've got it. Once it's all painted, I'll add painted on details and weathering.

Wow, awesome stuff. Must have been really fun. As for your warbosses, even with my low GS skill, I managed to make a sweet conversion with mine. I cut off the head and gun arm, before placing the head on an GS neck so he was looking down the length of his klaw. The gun arm was Green stuffed so it swung out horizontally, just out of line with the klaw. He resembled Grotsnik when done.

I'm pretty sure you could do something better than that one of the spare Bosses, if you put your mind to it.

Now the marines...

Since you've already seen photo's of the assault marines & termies, I'll skip to the units you haven't seen...

Commanders, painted and given to my son by the friend who got me into 40k all those years ago...


A quick re-paint of some of my cheap, old Mantis Warrior scouts. Didn't realize until I took the photo how bad the faces were... will have to fix that. Camo cloaks are made out of masking tape and look just fine.


My son's paint job... work in progress, though the right bike is closer to finished than the left.


Predator painted by my son, and a quick re-paint of a Mantis Warrior rhino done by me. That poor rhino is on it's 4th paint job... and there's evidence of each one still visible (though mostly from underneath). Kind of my own version of "living history".


I don't include photo's of the Mantis Warrior equipment as it'll all eventually be re-painted anyway.

Hope that suffices... GS

Im sure its based on "what I have" but on an objective heavy game id take more then 2 troop choices.

I agree, but I wanted them to have the freedom to choose the troops they wanted to play. Since Thing 1 pretty much abandoned the concept of playing for the objectives from the get-go, I guess it didn't really matter for him at least. I have the write-ups done, late tonight I'll work on the photo's and should have the whole report posted by 11ish (CST).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I know I promised the battle report tonight but I forgot to e-mail myself the narrative... however, I've uploaded all the photos (they should be better than the past ones so you can see the detail & zoom in a bit) and will load the whole thing up tomorrow morning. Again, sorry for the misfire.

Finally, the long-awaited... much anticipated battle report, in it's entirety...

Turn 1: SM go first
Doom Eagle command, realizing that they have no units capable of freeing their pinned brother marine from the rubble in the area, issues orders to have Tactical Squad Kappa proceed as quickly as possible to the secondary objective, while the predator on the left flank moved towards the center. The terminators with Chaplain Norton and dreadnaught move forward though the rubble to blunt the ork assault on the right with the scouts providing cover with their missile launcher The vanguard assault squad and attack bikes move cautiously forward, not wishing to be overrun by an early Waaaagh. Marine shooting phase goes extremely well, they destroy the center (yellow) battlewagon with vindicator fire, kill 6 slugga boys with the whirlwind, the psycher uses machine curse to take out one of the CCW on the dred, and the center trukk loses it’s big shoota.
Bad Moons move forward aggressively, undaunted by the space marine’s devastating opening salvo. The nob trukk and burnas move up on the left, while the mob and deff dred advance in the center. The boyz trukk makes a mad dash down the middle toward the bosses statue, their primary objective for the day. The orkish guns awake into a blaze of dakka… in retrospect, it appears that the orks might have loaded extra powder into their weapons instead of actual bullets, for when the shooting phase was over, one attack bike had one wound… that was it.


Turn 2:
Doom Eagles continue to advance on the right flank through cover. The left and center both stay pat and opt for maximum shooting capability instead of taking ground. For the second turn in a row, the marine shooting phase is devastating. Doom Eagle attack bikes point their meltas ad the deff dred, superheating the fuel tanks and causing a massive explosion that turns a near-by slugga boy into lumpy cinder. The whirlwind salvo deviates into an area that is even more favorable than the place it was aimed at, killing 9 more slugga boys. Autocannon fire from the predator blows up central trukk and the resulting explosion kills half the squad inside who rout (eventually) off the table. A round from the vindicator knocks the big shoota off the other ork trukk and a hail of bolter fire from the terminators wipes out most of the lootas (but they pass their morale test). Everything shooty for the Doom Eagles has worked insanely well, most shots hit & wound, templates only deviate to better locations, armor penetration rolls nearly always penetrate, damage rolls are high (3 or better). Of course with no effective saving throws the orks just die by the dozen.
Bad Moons are in a sad state, having lost roughly 60% of their forces without causing a single casualty of their own. Two of the deffkoptas arrive for the orks, one from each flank. Shooting does nothing but a buzzsaw armed kopta takes the autocannon off the pred & shakes & stuns it. Graz & Co charge forward into the dred and smoke it, then consolidate into cover behind the terminators. The killacannon on the last remaining battlewagon lands perfectly in the middle of the tank/tech marine cluster in the Doom Eagle center, but fails to have any effect on either the whirlwind or vindicator’s side armor or the tech marine and only wounds the servitor (who dies). Zogrot zapps himself, taking a wound and pinning his squad of burnas in the open.


Turn 3:
I must mention that at this point, I’m playing the orks. My poor little 6-year-old has been great up to this point, but he just can’t take the beating anymore and loses interest in the game. I don’t blame him, don’t yell at him… the game has been no fun for him since the first shot (which blew up his battlewagon), so I let him go. I’m a stubborn SOB though and feel the need to try and make a game of it for my son’s sake. My thought is to take out as many 2 VP vehicles as possible with the deffkoptas, get the empty, gunless truck across the table so it can contest the marine’s “Rescue” objective (counting on the truck being a low priority target) and hide everything else & shoot at the vanguard squad… hoping to survive with my own secondary objective. Probably can’t win, but I might be able to make it close. This was also a lesson for my eldest son, who has a tendency to give up the minute things start to go badly… I wanted him to see that in spite of all outward appearances, if you keep thinking and fighting you might just have a chance to make things interesting.

Doom Eagles are now moving aggressively forward on the left flank, and the terminators respond to the threat posed by the nobs on the right. For the first time, a marine ordinance templates misses, both of them did actually. The vanguard assault squad wipes out the remaining boyz mob (takes both assault phases) but takes 2 casualties in the process. The terminators assault and destroy Grazghul and nobs but lose 2 (should have lost four or five but Thing 1 made 5 of 7 invulnerable saves) then consolidate into cover.
Bad Moons need help, and they get it. The last deffkopta arrives and comes in from the left. The surviving battlewagon moves cruising speed into corner, yielding the opportunity to shoot to make sure it doesn’t get assaulted by the vanguard. Surviving (nob) truck moves flat out towards the vindicator. The lootas forgo shooting to move into the ruin in front of the secondary objective, which should block them from LOS while securing the objective. Shooting from two deffkoptas blows up the whirlwind and immobilizes vindicator. Shooting from other deffkopta takes out the lascannon on predator & the following buzzsaw assault stuns and shakes it again. On a high note… Zogrot uses his special power to turn the Doom Eagle Chaplain, Brother Norton… into a squig… so…. Brother Squignorton I guess… A small measure of justice at least. (I did have Thing 2 make this roll, so at least he had the satisfaction of squigifying one of the marine commanders.)


Turn 4:
Doom Eagles continue to press their advantage in infantry. The terminators advance on the nearest deffkopta, assaulting and killing it while on the other flank, the vanguard move aggressively towards the last concentration of orks in the corner of the board. The Doom Eagle psycher knocks out the last remaining heavy ork gun, the killakannon on the battlewagon. Luckily for the orks, all other shooting fails to either hit or wound, including two multi-melta shots from the attack bikes on the deffkopta w/ buzzsaw.
Bad Moons are finally able to kill the predator with a bazzsaw assaulting deffkopta and stun Vindicator with shooting and assault from the other deffkopta. The battlewagon, Zogwort, mek and lootas all shoot at assault squad, killing only one marine. This was the pivotal failure in the end game. If the shooting had significantly damaged the vanguard, the orks might have held out with Zoggy to stay in the game… but with a cherry veteran assault squad piling in, there was little hope left for da boyz. Meanwhile, the empty, weaponless ork truck meandered ever closer to the marine secondary objective, unmolested…


Turn 5:
Doom Eagles actually don’t have much to do at this point as there are only a handful of orks left on the table. The two attack bikes move up and slag the deffkopta with buzzsaw, the terminators and Squignorton move towards the last deffkopta and shred it with storm bolter fire. The vanguard and librarian wipe out Zoggy and burnas in close combat.
Bad Moons are determined to see this through, at least to the end of the turn to see if the game ends. The trukk makes a mad dash towards the marine objective, tank shocking the attack bikes on the way. The bikes decide not to death-or-glory, and FAIL their morale… keep in mind that they’re only about 8” from their own table edge at this point. Could be an easy VP for the orks….. no…. they only fall back 4”. But, the truck does get to the marine objective, contesting it.


At this point, the whole thing hinges on a single die roll. Yes the orks have lost, but if the game ends right here it might be worth counting up the points… Thing 1 rolls…. once again, no love for the orks… the game continues. Looking at the immediate demise of two of the 3 remaining ork units (truck would be taken out by attack bikes and tac squad in rhino, lootas by the vanguard)… the orks finally call it quits… but can gain some measure of solace in knowing they were fighting and scheming up to the very end.

Epilogue:
“That went better than we could have hoped.” said the Doom Eagle Librarian to Tac Sergeant Valus.
“Yes Sir, the orks just never recovered from our opening salvo… it was just a mop-up operation after that.”
“The bane blade?”
“Forge Master Darius reports that it will be up and running within the hour Sir.”
“Praise the Emperor for his favor sergeant, may tomorrow go as well.”
“Praise indeed Sir.”
---
“Sergeant.”
“Yes Sir?”
“Brother Norton just peed on my leg…”
“I’ll take care of it Sir.”


*KA-POW!!!*


“Thank you sergeant.”
“No problem Sir.”

-finis-

A small measure of justice...


At this point, I make note of the fact that I have not laid a brush on one of my own figures since I started this blog. As I have tournaments to prepare for, I need a bit of time to actually do work, rather than just blogging about it. When Thing 1 finishes re-doing the terminator squad, I'll post the results so you can see the fruit of his labors based on your advice. I'm not closing the door on conversation of course... more than happy to do that, just saying it'll be a bit before I do another major post as they take a lot of work and I have other things that need doing. Cheers! - GS

Awesome battle report! I loved it when you showed Thing 1 to never give up, even in the face of impossible odds. You're a good dad.

agreed

Thanks guys. It was interesting to walk the kids through my blog post last night... Thing-1 was very curious to read my "take" on things. The review made Thing-2 sad again (I read it to him), but he'd bounced back by the end of the night and was talking about the next game. All good!

Brilliant read this. A potential YoungBlood entrant I think. Wish I was that good at his age and I like seeing the older minis painted so well and with a great chapter choice.

Though the dice may not be in your favor, what make a player great is that they are at their best when things are at there worst. Win or lose. Some of the best and most fun game are games I have lost. I learn more from them and it makes me take the time to work the things I need to improve. Your sons will learn from their fathers excellent example of gamemenship.

Public Disclaimer! Solar_lion there is the guy who got me started playing 40k 20 years ago.... so he has to be nice to me, because all this (me pointing at thousands of dollars in figures) is HIS FAULT!


There is a certain freedom in knowing you are hopelessly outmatched... you can do darn near anything and not be criticized for it. Also any good that happens, regardless of how futile, is a point in your favor. Those 3 deffkoptas killed 2 tanks, took the other two out of the game (stunning, etc), and made two of his units turn around and go the wrong way to deal with them... I thought that was pretty good work for what... 160 pts? The weaponless truck wandering across the battlefield to challenge his objective and nearly chasing the attack bikes off the table was another high point. (Didn't think it would work... but I thought he just might be so preoccupied blowing things up that he wouldn't see it as a threat, which he didn't. He actually grinned like the Cheshire cat when he read my battle report about how I was going to use the truck... think I might have given him some ideas...)

I was playing a 2000 pt ork army vs. some space marines at the local shop a few weeks back, and was just getting my rear handed to me. A marine squad that I really needed to shoot at was in HtH with one Kan, thus unavailable as a shooting target. In desperation, my near-by tankbusta squad released all 3 bomb squigs at a useless target (drop pod) in the hopes that one would go astray & blow up the killa kan, thus releasing the marines from HtH and making them viable shooting targets for the rest of my army. It didn't work... but my opponent (an experienced player) was impressed at the outside-of-the-box creativity of my idea. And it was just so "orky" that I had to try. Even though I ended up getting crushed... the epiphany of that moment was worth the game.


Just goes to show what you can do if you're creative and don't let the "probable" outcome of the game get in the way of having a good time.


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Short update: Thing 1 finished the white on his termies tonight, I did a bit of touching up on each, but less than I expected. His brush control and patience are improving.

If you'd like to see some of the things I've been working on lately, you can visit the Bad Moon section of my gallery. There's a shot of my metal killa kans (my babies!), one of the new grotzookas I just finished and one of the RLs. Also an old school Bad Moon weird boy from the dark ages that I re-painted and based up for play. Feel free to comment, vote, ridicule me in PM's... I'm just happy for the feedback. Though I will admit that I'm not trying to paint these to a golden demon standard, too darn many of the buggers for that... just tryin' to make 'em look good on the table.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-26790-7283_Bad%20Moons.html

I think I mentioned before that I was planning on re-building my Mantis Warrior army from scratch... well, I got some help from an unexpected source. Someone (probably Thing 1) left my carrying case with the marines in it open... and our young male cat peed in it. Don't know how long ago, I just discovered it. If you have ever owned a male cat... you can guess what my entire army smells like right now, not to mention the case. I'll try to deoderize them, but I suspect any chemical that would remove the smell would also remove the paint... if that's the case, than the die is cast. I'll just strip everything and use them for parts for the re-build...

On the bright side, I'm going to try to get a couple of combat patrol pick-up games at the local shop tomorrow evening. Have a couple of nice builds with orks and SMs (scouts mostly) that I want to try out. My semi-annual performance review is tomorrow... so if I can't find a game it'll be straight to the nearest bar. I'll need to decompress one way or the other.

Hello friends. Thought I would give you an update. Thing 1 finished washing the white faces and power gloves on his terminators... next is the red piping on the gloves. After that I'll paint the details on the faces and we'll re-base them on standard 40mm bases & I'll work with him on proper basing technique. Might have them done in a few days, we'll see.

I've been working on converting a spare terminator into one carrying an (edit) assault cannon (thanks to the generosity of a forum member who donated the gun). This is no small task as the bolt guns are essentially molded directly into the left half of the body. (check the first page of this thread for a reminder of what these guys look like) So I had to cut out large chunks of plastic and then rebuild the body and leg shapes in the newly exposed plastic. I even used a couple of engravers to make some basic lines resembling the imperial eagle wing in the chest. Don't get me wrong... it's a crude job when compared with a lot of the work on this forum, but still... I was happy I was able to install the (edit) assault cannon on the old terminator frame in a reasonably convincing way. I think with a little more cleaning up it'll paint up just fine. I have an idea for a way to hide the scarred area if I don't like the way it looks... only time will tell

Woah I figured you would of put that on one of the black reachers! As for covering up something, purity seals FTW!
Also, assault cannon, not autocannon

Good job there ^__^

Nice conversion. Prime it and paint it, and you prolly won't see a difference.

A very, very inspiring blog.

I wish my dad was remotely interested in 40k.

Anyway I really like what you did with the Terminator and the flags. Sure it's simple but I am now going to be replicating that effect on my Terminators as it's so dang cool.

WM: My dad used to say... "Son, if there's an easy way and a hard way to do something, always choose the hard way. The end result won't be any better than the easy way, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing it was, well... harder." Well OK, my dad didn't really say that... but if you'd spent your youth helping him around the house like I did, you'd have SWORN that was his life's philosophy! I was going to do what you suggest, but so many people have commented on how cool it was that someone is using those old figs, that I didn't want to break the integrity of the squad (sergeant non-withstanding).

I could use one more of these (I mean this style of termie) for a second assault cannon if anyone blunders into one. Be happy to buy it off you. Otherwise I'll see if I can pick one up on e-bay.

Vlad: I've started adding campaign ribbons to the yellow cord. Each time the unit fights in a battle they get a ribbon... white if they live, red if they die, "vici" if they win, "det" (for detrimentum") if they lose. Green stripe down the centr for a draw and the ribbon gets a gold border if the unit contributes in some major way to the battle. That way my son will have a record of all the battles that unit has been in, and how they did... all "in charachter" so-to-speak on the body of the standard bearer. He's got 1 ribbon now, when he get's a few more I'll post a pic so you can see what it looks like.

I've started working on my Mantis Warriors... so far it's going amazingly well. Really.... better than I expected. I'll start another blog on that project because I don't want to dilute this thread with too much "me" stuff as it's really supposed to be about the boys, but as it'll take a bit of writing to explain what I'm doing... it may be a bit before I get something going. I'll post this one pic here just as a teaser, the rest will wait for the other thread.

These are the legendary Mantis Warrior Tranquility Snipers, one would assume a veteran squad of fully armored marines with special bolt gun sniper rifles. Based on artwork from the 1st Ed rule book. My restrictions are armor that is based largely on Mk VI tech (though not necessarily entirely Mk VI) and the the sniper rifles have a distinct bolt gun look. Either by being based on an actual bolt gun, or by modifying the sniper rifle to look more bolter-like. I'll run them like a normal sniper squad... but WE know what they really are (I was hoping Sternguard could take sniper rifles... but no luck). You can see these are cobbled together from a bunch of different era bits. Very appropriate considering the MW's just came off a 100 year campaign into the Eye are were probably bereft of any material support from the Imperium during thas time.



The final versions of these figures will have a lot more "scouty" detail and customization added, as well as the special "Tranquility Campaign Camo" paint job. These are just the mock-ups to see if my conversion ideas will work.

Vets can take the ammo that lets them shoot 30' if they dont move. Thats pretty snipery, plus they can use the other ammo when they get attacked. Just a thought.

That IS pretty snipey... I'll have to take a look into that. Problem is that they'd lose all their "scout" abilities, but I plan on having a scout heavy army anyway so perhaps I can give up that point. It would allow the figs in many other ways to perform as I'd hoped.

Hmmmm.... thanks.

OH, and we found one more of that old style of termies lying around... so we're good for the last conversion.

Cool. I can't wait to see your mantis warrior blog.

You could use your snipy marines as sternguard veterans imho. They look rugged and ainchent and the sniper bolters could just as well be a modification and could represent their armour penetrating bullet the bolters are firing?? (the vengeance rounds) Just a thought.

I think that's what whalemusic was getting at... and looking through the details, I think that's a nearly perfect fit. The sniper mods on the guns represent their enhanced capabilities, and the "antique" look of the figs matches the source of the unit & fluff (i.e. 1st Ed) and the veteran status matches my role for them in the army. Perfect start for the MW blog... which I will get to.... soon.... hopefully....

'spose I should get into the habit of taking pictures of things as I do them rather than when they're done.

Lining up a 2000 pt battle with the boys which we might get to today... we'll see. I'll keep notes in case the narrative is good...

Battle Report #2: All marine battle... even with an "excuse" as to why two of the Emperor's Finest are slugging it out... we're on turn 3 at the moment... This is a true Mantis Warrior build for me. I don't claim it's the ultimate form... but it is the direction that I'm heading (no tracked or wheeled vehicles). I know, I know... I developed the concept 3 rule sets ago and have no intention of changing it just because GW wants to encourage me to buy tanks. Some deficiencies have come to light already in the course of the game, but nothing I can't address within my own self-imposed list restrictions.


Doom Eagles vs. Mantis Warriors

Scenario
“desperate scavengers” The Mantis Warriors are travelling through unfamiliar regions of space after their epic 100-year deployment and crusade to wipe out their old allies, the Astral Claws who had fled into the maelstrom after the failure of the Badab Rebellion. Critically short on supplies, equipment and with ranks so depleted as to be near the point of total collapse, the tattered remnants of the chapter have been granted special access to a small contingent of recruits from a newly re-discovered feral colony world to replace their nearly non-existent scouting force. From this brief stop, they are been sent across the sector to a forge world for emergency re-supply and upgrading of equipment. Unfortunately, the technological supplies needed by the chapter to complete the last leg of the journey are greater than the small feral world can supply. Mantid command re-directs the fleet to a medium sized Imperial world not too far off their scheduled path, where they will obtain supplies and materials needed for the journey. Being space marines of course, they do not bargain, ask permission or negotiate… they take what they need. Not cruelly or with malice, just with the self-assurance of the galactic warriors that they are, and with the knowledge that the sacrifices of materials and supplies given up by the planet are for the greater good of the Imperium.

“misunderstanding” Doom Eagle command receives a distress call from one of the planets within their sphere of influence. An unknown chapter of space marines, calling themselves the “Mantis Warriors” have invaded the planet and are impressing its industrial capabilities, food, medical and ammunition stores into their service, placing a heavy burden on the planetary economy and straining the resources of the planetary government. Astartes records indicate the chapter was involved in insurrectional activities, stripped of its home world and sent on a 100-year suicide mission to pursue a traitor chapter. No recent records exist. Perhaps these “Mantis Warriors” also fell into chaos and were using the guise of their former status to roam the Imperium freely to pillage and corrupt? The decision is made that no overtures will be made to this new threat before offensive action is made, if warned… the Mantis Warriors might simply slip back into the depths of space and avoid justice, to raid again somewhere else. Their actions are proof enough of hostile intent.

(I also had a little story of why neither of us had any jump packs… but the little, shriveled up, creative part of my brain is toast for the night, so you’ll have to settle for the above as justification.)

Points: 2000

Missions
Primary: annihilation
Secondary: hold objectives (5-2-2)
Tertiary: tactical bonuses -+1 if… if your most expensive HQ unit is not fleeing or dead at the end of the game, if your most expensive unit is not fleeing or dead at the end of the game, if you have more scoring units left at the end of the game than your opponent



Armies
Doom Eagles: (Thing 1 & Thing 2)
HQ: Librarian – jump pack, force dome vortex of doom, epistolary
HQ: Librarian – terminator armor, force dome, machine curse, epistolary
Eite: Dreadnought – assault cannon, missile launcher
Elite: Terminators (10) – assault cannon, hvy flamer
Troops: Scouts (5) – ML
Troops: Tactical (10) – flamer, ML, rhino
Troops: Tactical (10) – plas, hvy bolter, rhino
FA: Attack Bikes (2) – multi melta
Heavy: Predator – auto cannon, 2 x lascannon
Heavy: Vindicator



(Please ignore the Mantis Warriors in the ranks... some of the doom eagle battle brothers left their armor in the wash with their St. Pattie's Day underwear.)

Mantis Warriors: (Dad)
HQ: Master of the Forge
Elite: Venerable Dred – multi melta, CCW
Elite: Terminators (7) – cyclone ML
Elite: Sternguard Veteran (7) – 2xML
Troop: snipers (10) – ML, PW
Troop: snipers (10) – heavy bolter, PW
Troop: tac squad (5)
FA: Land Speeder – multi melta
FA: Land Speeder – multi melta
FA: Land Speeder – multi melta
Heavy: Dreadnought – TL lascannon, rocket launcher
Heavy: Dreadnought – TL lascannon, rocket launcher
Heavy: Dreadnought – TL lascannon, rocket launcher



(Two things worthy of mention... note the unpainted Sternguard/Tranquility squad... man how my standards have fallen. Secondly, note the home made drop pods. Buddy of mine owed me a favor long ago. Knew I wanted drop pods but couldn't afford them (we were all poor as church mice) so he found some plastic cups at the dollar store and built me 3 drop pods from scratch. Doors hinge & as you can see they'll even hold a dred perfectly. They ain't pretty, but they're very special to me.)

May i see a pic of your Master Of The Forge? I am stuck for ideas on what to build mine as and need some insperation.
Thanks in advance.!!

EagleArk.

I'm just using an old tech marine figure. Nothing special really... more of a proxy, just wanted to try out the MoTF rules. I was thinking about that myself though... I have one of the new tech marine figures (still in the box) that I suppose would be the starting point, but I'd think he'd need a lot of creative modification to be a convincing MoTF. I mean his gear isn't any different... but you'd want him to appear different than a normal tech marine. More gadgets, more "modifications".... maybe a cybork head... *grin*

This was an idea and difficult to carry out but the WD subscription model would look okay as a MoF, it would be different to the normal techmarines for sure

I was jus panning to cut up the tech marine model but if anyone else hase one can you PM me the picture.. thank you.

EagleArk.

Special Terrain Rules
The two patches of woods and the ruin are area and difficult terrain. Woods are 5+ and ruins 4+ invul.
Our rule for woods (and we use large, more realistically sized pieces) is that you can only shoot in or out of the last 2” of woods, but if two units are within the woods you can shoot 12” (everyone gets the cover save though).

Pre-game Interviews
Doom Eagles: As expressed in deployment… take the objectives, obliterate everything from afar with the tanks, then smash the MW’s in the mouth with the termies & dread. Librarians serve as a tactical reserve for dealing with the land speeders when they arrive, or supporting the troops in melee’.
Mantis Warriors: As this was the first real run of the MW’s as envisioned by yours truly… I wasn’t exactly sure how it was all going to work together, so I just kinda winged it. Hid my guys in the trees to protect from shooting on the opening turn & secured my objective… and waited for the reserves to start showing up. If I’d realized the vindicator only had a 24” range I probably wouldn’t have hidden like a rat in a hole… but who knew?? Was counting on my outflanking land speeders to deal with the Doom Eagle tanks, while “fire base alpha” (the dreads) were intended to pop the transports and whittle down the termies.

Deployment
The Doom Eagles win the roll off and go first. They deploy in two commands (one for each boy) with all tanks on their right flank. The scouts control their secondary objective (Thing 1 learned this lesson from our last game) and the tac squads are set to move forward to the main objective. The terminators are deployed on the center left and will lead the spearhead to and destroy the enemy. The dreadnought and attack bikes anchor their left. The Mantis Warriors put drop pods, land speeders and terminators into reserve, with the land speeders outflanking. Everything else deploys out-of-sight in the woods, denying the Doom Eagles their opening salvos and waiting for some reserves to arrive.



Turn 1
Doom Eagles: The 10-man strong terminator squad runs forward toward the enemy… power fists writhing with energy, anticipating the slaughter of these new invaders. Tactical marines in their rhino race to capture the strategically important ruin in the center. The attack bikes move to support the center. All others wait and watch. The enemy is here… they know it… but the cowards will not show themselves. Shooting from RL scout and dreadnought kills 1 scout who stuck his head out of the woods.



Mantis Warriors: Fire base alpha (the dreadnoughts) moves out of woods towards the table edge to pour fire into the Doom Eagle’s left flank. The dreadnoughts and lead scouts open up on the opposing dreadnought and scout squad, and nearly every shot, including the twin-linked lascannons… misses. No casualties or damage caused.








Automatically Appended Next Post:
Turn 2
Doom Eagles: The terminators move near the edge of the woods where the Mantis Warriors enjoy relative safety. Tactical troops in their rhino now occupy the central objective. Predator re-positions itself to deal with MW “drop” and outflank when it comes. Attack bikes swing around ruins to support center of table. All is going according to plan. Shooting from dread and scout RL on MW scouts is ineffective.
Mantis Warriors: Because I’d never used drop pods… we screwed up as one of them should have appeared in turn 1 as a “drop pod assault”… but I just rolled for them as normal. Both MW pods, the termies and one land speeder arrive. Speeder comes up behind the dread for a sure kill-shot in the tokkas with the multi-melta. Scouts move up to support the newly arrived terminators with bolt pistol fire into the Doom Eagle terminators. Sternguard targets the attack bikes. In essence, a perfect storm of Mantis Warrior firing results in almost no casualties. My terrible rolling assures that both multi-meltas, the dreds, and nearly every other heavy or special weapon misses completely. Two terminators fall to bolt pistol fire from the scouts (thank God), one to storm bolter fire. One bike is killed by the sternguard srgt’s combi-melta, otherwise the entire squad, including the master of the forge with his twin linked plasma pistols all miss or fail to wound.

Shouldnt your area cover saves be cover saves? Invul is mostly the same (can save almost anything) but there are differances (flamers ignor cover, dreads and tanks would get cover, etc).

I am in love with this blog, I wish someone could teach me when I started (8 years old) it is a great thing to see a father, a proud father I may add take an interest in the hobby.

Well played sir, I will someday spawn some underlings of my own and we can duel!

But keep up the great work I will keep an eye on this =)

I <3 this thread

I am very much liking how the doom eagles are coming along!!! more painting!!!

Do land speeders outflank?? I know that they deep strike and LS Storms can outflank but normal LS???

Otherwise i like the report, interesting to see who wins, it looks fairly balanced so far :/

I assumed they could... have I erred? In my mind I kind of equate LS to like... deffkopta's... but then deffkopta's are scouts aren't they? Shoot. Back to the rule book... At least the only thing they've done is kill the dread (turn 3), I can give that back and give the boys an out-of-turn phase of shooting and probably a movement phase to compensate.

Painting will resume once this battle is over. Sorry, most week nights are spent with dinner, homework and keeping the house clean... doesn't leave much time for hobbies. Even with my ability to stay up late... I haven't been able to do much... just noodling around trying to figure out how to paint plasma guns decently and working on some extra armor bits for one of my Killa Kans (I know it doesn't help them, but I had this neat idea so I'm going to model it anyway).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Turn 3
Doom Eagles: Are totally spastic at the “feast” of Mantis Warriors now laid helpless before them. Transports unload, psychers move forward, terminators prepare to charge. A “vortex of doom” nearly wipes out the MW terminator squad. “Machine Curse” takes out the multimelta on the venerable dreadnought. Bolter fire from the tac squad causes one wound on one of the remaining terminators, who rolls a “1” and dies. Scout squad strips multimelta off of land speeder. Termies kill 6 scouts with fire, sternguard looses 2. Terminators assault the scouts, scout sergeant rolls to 1s to hit with his power sword, others do nothing… the get wiped. Librarian charges surviving terminators.. to make it short, every roll I throw, fails... they die. The only bright spot… the MoTF kills one of the doom eagle librarians (the guy who nuked my termies).

Mantis Warriors: One of the remaining Land Speeders arrives on the right flank behind the dreadnought, while the other, weaponless, flees across the table. The sternguard advance on the tac squad while the dread turns on the librarian. Everything in the MW rear positions itself to shoot/assault the terminators. Land speeder blows up dread, killing one scout in the explosion. Dreads kill 2 termies, MoTF kills 2 tac marines, deathwind ML from a drop pod kills 1 tac marine. The scouts and tac squad assault the terminators, the venerable dread assaults the remaining librarian and the Sternguard assault the rearward tac squad. Mantis warriors assault en’masse. Dice rolling is an issue again. Venerable Dread squishes the last remaining psycher, scouts and tac squad kill 1 termie while losing 3 total between them, tac squad falls back. Sternguard w/ MoTF kills only 1, but wins combat (DE fall back), they do not catch them, so decide to consolidate into cover.

I'm not sure what happened to my photo of the kids half of the turn... if I find it, I'll edit it into this post, but here's how things looked after my half.



This now brings you to the current state of the game... as my parents are visiting tonight, it might be a bit before I have another update... though I will review the rules on the land speeders so that remedial action can be taken if necessary.

No, LS do not have scout, just deepstrike. LSS have both.

Thing 2 will be delighted (it was his dread).

You know the LSS would fit in perfectly with the direction I'm taking the Mantis Warriors in... at least from a theme perspective. Now that they're "back" they'll need lots and lots of recruits in a hurry to re-build the chapter. Lots of scouts... might be fun to have an army where pert' near any full marine is considered a veteran. Have to think about that... need to fool around in Army Builder for a while & see what I can come up with.

If you don't want to worry about redoing turns in the game, just say it DS where you placed it when it outflanked... kinda a cop out, but saves the headache of redoing turns and such.

This is easily one of the most interesting threads I have seen. Love hearing about the updates and how the kids are coming along. Keep it up

After intense negotiation with #1 Son, the dread and scout will re-appear in place and the dread will be given an immediate complete action series (movement, fire, assault). The damaged LS will stay as it is, and the undamaged LS will go back into reserves. My son tried to convince me to put the multimelta back on the damaged LS, but since this was my second major rule screw-up to my advantage during the game (the first being the drop-pod thing), I convinced him otherwise.

If I'd had 15 extra points we could have just called them LS Storms and been OK... but I built my list too close to the bone & didn't have any points to spare. I even looked at dropping some war gear that hadn't been used yet, but since my army is pretty much "fully involved", that went out the window.


Unfortunately a family emergency is going to put a hold on things for a bit. Both boys are fine... but I'll be occupied for a while. Hope to have an update by the end of next week. Thanks for all your comments and support. I don't know what I expected this thread to turn into... but this is much cooler that I ever anticipated. Talk with you on the flip side... - GS

Your son is a great painter! Tell him good job for me.

Love the old plastics - especially the pred.

*subscribe*

Snuck in one final turn before the pause...

Special Dreadnought Turn

Fires at Sternguard and kills 1.

Turn 4

Doom Eagles: DE rear opens up on Stearnguard and kills 3. Both drop pods destroyed by combined fire from vindicator, Tac squad. & Pred. Venerable loses CCW to HK missile shot from rhino. Tac squad enters woods and charges into combat with termies and scout squad. Kills several, they fall back, get caught, more die… now only the sergeant is left.
Mantis Warriors: Both remaining land speeders arrive, both shoot their multimeltas into the side armor of vindi, both roll 1s. Full barrage from dreds skims weapons off of DE dread, that's it. Stearnguard shoots rockets into scout squad holding objective, both miss. MoTF moves towards tac squad & kills 1 w/ plasma pistol. Tac squad moves to edge of woods (flees overwhelming DE assault). Armless dred kicks rhino into immobilization. MoTF assault kills 1, takes one wound. Scout srg kills 1 termie in HtH, then dies pitifully. Kind of a disaster all-round.



Given the current circumstances we decide to call it quits with the Doom Eagles gaining a major victory. I figure I'd be all but tabled by the end of the next turn (maybe a couple of land speeders and a dred left) without having gained a single VP. I figure I rolled about 55% 1s & 2s this game... not exaggerating. Boys did great and had a good time. I did too, just frustrating when nothing works because if the dice rather than being outplayed.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
One last thing. I know most everyone keeps up with the blog to see the kids develop... that's cool, it why I started it. But every once in a while I throw something of my own out. Feel free to ignore if it's not your cup 'o tea.

Thought it would be fun to model heavy armor and riggers on my Killa Kans... very orky to have extra bits and riggers crawling all over the machines. Then I found out neither did anything useful & were a waste of points. Then I didn't care and modeled them anyway... just for modeling's sake.

So I says, says I... "What would a grot use for extra armor on his kan?" Why, a defunct beaky-boy dreadnought of course! And since I don't like covering up my hard work with extra bits... I looked for a rather plain and vulnerable looking part of the kan to upgrade.... the legs!!

So, here they are in all their glory... battledamaged and everything...

sweet lookin Kan! I am not quite sure if I like the red leg plate. Any particular reasons why you went with red?

Nope, not really... Just a whim. Have any other suggestions I'd love to hear them. Did want to keep it consistant with the chapter though. For Dark Angles (which these are) that's pretty much red, black, green or white. With all the frenzy over blood angles, I thought red would be appropriate. But... I'm open to suggestion.




Automatically Appended Next Post:




Finally started the Mantis Warrior PM blog. You can find it here...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/289929.page#1495433


I realized that I may be spending some long nights over the next few days and will need something to keep my mind occupied (and awake)... so the opening salvo of the MW blog might do the trick.

I just thought I'd make a quick comment for all you young players out there who might be keeping up with this thread. You might notice that at the end of the last battle report I sound kind miffed and am grousing a bit about my luck with dice. Well... I was. I was a grumpy dad 'cause no matter what I tried to do things just didn't work out. I don't care about winning really, and I LOVE being out-thought by my kids (proves they're smart after all)... but I hate being beaten by the dice. Everybody get's that way from time to time because we all have lousy luck occasionally. Even old farts like me aren't immune... and it still stings when it happens, even after all these years. I try to remember that it's not my opponent's fault that I wasn't able to roll the dice that day, so I don't get mad at them. I also try to remember that if I pitch a fit about my dice rolling... I spoil the enjoyment of winning the game for my opponent. They played well, they deserve to enjoy their win without my whining spoling it for them. I'll be honest with you, I probably didn't do as good a job of that this time as I should have... but I'll keep trying, and perhaps I'll be better at it next time.

End of fatherly advice. Please return to your normal warmongering and bloodletting. - GGS (grumpy Gitsplitta)

Yeah, the red kinda stands out a bit much for my liking as well. Maybe in yellow to match, but not sure how that will look with the DA emblem on em.

Maybe on the Plate, rust it out. Have just a little bit of red (or green) so we know what it is. If Space Marines lost it, they would for sure go after it if dreadnoughts are a relic of the chapter.

I think this is really great.

I just wish my dad would play 40k with me..

If your dad isn't interested, he may never turn into a "gamer"... but you may get him to play small games with you once in a while so you can pass the time together. Dads (well most parents) are suckers for stuff that was made for us by our kids. You might get a squad's worth of figures, and try your best to give them a bang-up paint job for your dad to use. Something different than your current army... even if you both are playing marines, if yours are red & his are blue there's a feeling of two different armies. Marines are also a good choice because they're easy. Ignore any special Blood Angel rules for now, just play them straight. I would go no more complex than 1 ten-man squad w/ 1 special weapon & 1 heavy weapon. No charachters, no power weapons, no transports... just keep it stupid simple. If your dad's not really interested to begin with, he's going to really lose it when you throw a million rules and exceptions at him. Make a nice little 4 x 4 gaming area on the kitchen table... present him with his very own figures and see if he'll bite, you might even take the sergeant and make him without helmet so you can make him look a bit like your dad, or paint your dad's name on the shoulder pad.

Emphasize having fun with him and teaching him... not on who wins and loses. He might decide that just interacting with you on that level is worth it, even if he's not all that interested in the game.

It's worth a shot anyway.

What on the painting block for thing 1 and 2?

Gitsplitta wrote:
If your dad isn't interested, he may never turn into a "gamer"... but you may get him to play small games with you once in a while so you can pass the time together. Dads (well most parents) are suckers for stuff that was made for us by our kids. You might get a squad's worth of figures, and try your best to give them a bang-up paint job for your dad to use. Something different than your current army... even if you both are playing marines, if yours are red & his are blue there's a feeling of two different armies. Marines are also a good choice because they're easy. Ignore any special Blood Angel rules for now, just play them straight. I would go no more complex than 1 ten-man squad w/ 1 special weapon & 1 heavy weapon. No charachters, no power weapons, no transports... just keep it stupid simple. If your dad's not really interested to begin with, he's going to really lose it when you throw a million rules and exceptions at him. Make a nice little 4 x 4 gaming area on the kitchen table... present him with his very own figures and see if he'll bite, you might even take the sergeant and make him without helmet so you can make him look a bit like your dad, or paint your dad's name on the shoulder pad.

Emphasize having fun with him and teaching him... not on who wins and loses. He might decide that just interacting with you on that level is worth it, even if he's not all that interested in the game.

It's worth a shot anyway.

Wow, that's some really good advice...

I might do just that....

Well, let's see... Thing 1 is re-doing his termies... and I think Thing 2 wants to work on that one ork vehicle he painted earlier. Unfortuanately I've been out-of-town for over a week, so there hasn't been any progress (I suspect), but we'll have some time this weekend... so mayhap I'll have something of theirs to show soon.

When is Big Thing gonna get some MW painted up

I'll start working on them tomorrow when i get home... just got off the phone with the boys and Thing 1 is working on his termies and Thing 2 is chomping at the bit to work on a grot (he needs my help... though... if the FIND the grots... he may not).

I need to figure out my base color... have about 4 different greens, two green washes and will probably fiddle with some sepia / red washes as well. Don't worry, the last week of MW blogging has really got me motivated... just want to do it right.

Speaking of being motivated... YOUR darn pre-herasy blog has got me thinking of doing something similar, just for fun. Darn you to heck!

*grin*

LOL, glad I could help!

@Gitsplitta: Speaking mw, what kind of green are you going for?

Go to the MW blog... I'm just about to post a variety of "test marines" I made (just base and wash)... will need your feedback!


For the rest of you... Thing 1 pretty much finished his part of the termies... I'll post a photo later. Then I'll do the "detail" painting on the faces, work with him on edge highlighting and finally the bases. He's moving right along! Thing 2 started painting two grots... probably have a photo of those tomorrow too.

A'ight, I'll check it out.

Hi all! Back with the kids again and they did some painting while I was gone.

Thing 1 made progress on his terminators, finishing the red piping on the PGs.



He even tried doing the red details on one terminator head...



So, now it's my turn. I'll go over these, clean 'em up a bit and add detail to the face and eyes. After that we'll work on edge highlighting.

Wow. Your son paints better than I do...
Those termies look great. Also, a suggestion: Why don't you make banners for them on Photoshop or Illustrator or something like that? If you print them out and attach it to a pole it turns out really well, and it's pretty cheap.

That's a good idea. At the moment he's pretty happy with the pennant style banners I did for the terminators because they're so unique, but we haven't really discussed unit banners for the rest of his troops (I've never used them with my troops so he's not used to seeing them). Only issue is that we'd have to generate the artwork ourselves as the Doom Eagles don't have any official artwork... he might be interested in doing that himself... I'll have to ask. We have a scanner so he could just do the artwork himself on whatever he wanted to, then I could scan it to a file, fiddle with it as needed & print out a banner sized version. I have my painting plate full at the moment and painting banners has never been my forte' in any case... so I think for my chapter I'll be using the pennants.

I have made camo cloaks for his scouts out of masking tape... which is virtually free and gives you a very realistic thickness of material. Not as spiffy as molded cloaks, but no skill or money is required to make them. I'm all in favor of cheap solutions, especially when they work.

However, you have to watch out when it comes to scanning things if they're done in pencil, because it shows up really badly when you scan them.

Trust me, i've had it happen and it's not pretty

Wow, this blog is EPIC!
Wish my dad could play with me...

*Subscribe*

Thanks!

Been quiet for a while because of my "other blog"... but, it's about to get some action as my kids have been pestering me to help them with their painting & play another game. Give it a day or so and I should have something new of theirs to show.


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Hi again!

Back from my long Mantis Warrior experiment... decided my kids needed a little TLC 'cause they've been asking for it. Hope to have several updates on their activities over the next few days.

A number of people have asked over the course of this thread, how I keep my kids interested in painting. Well, one way is to occasionally let them go "off the reservation". My eldest (purveyor of Doom Eagle space marines) got a burr in his bonnet to do an ork nob. Since I have plenty of extra's... I said sure. Of course he's been watching me hack apart and re-assemble mini's since we all started playing 40k together, so of course he had to do the same. So he took the Black Reach ork body w/ gun that I offered, cut off the arm with my jeweler's saw, filed it flat, found another arm he liked better & glued that in it's place. Added an extra spikey shoulder armor bit, an iron gob for the head, assembled the power claw and picked his boss pole. Filed the mold lines, glued everything, added a sight for the gun and a stickbomb backpack. All done completely on his own! The only thing I did was to covert the boss pole from plastic to brass.

Here's a shot of the assembled model. He's got just a bit more filing to do, then it's ready for painting.

That's really impressive. I spent a happy afternoon yesterday with my nephews (12&9) raiding my bits box; the younger one in particular came up with some really interesting ideas (making tau-style drones) - it's easy to assume younglings won't take the modelling side of the hobby seriously. The older one is now subscribed to this thread and pinching ideas, too!

Yeah, he surprises me some times... they both do actually.

Last night I did my part on Thing 1's termies... added the red detail to their faces, touched up the piping on the power fists and started the eyes. I was surprised at how little touching up was necessary... he's developing better brush control as he gets more practice. With luck I'll finish the eyes late tonight or tomorrow, then we'll work together on the edge highlighting and basing. I won't post another pic until they're all done. Need to spend some time with Thing 2... he's been really on me about working on stuff but it's harder with him as he needs a lot more personal attention then his older brother. I want to work with him on finishing that one old war truck and then the two grots he's been working on. He's got it in his head that he want's to do a whole squad of gretchin.... fine with me... I can *always* find a use for more gretchin! :-)

@Gitspitta: That conversion is great! My only minor issue is that the gun arm is kinda small and dinky comared to the other arm. But as I said, this is only minor and it takes away nothing from this cool conversion.

I'm not sure where he got the arm... might have been a boyz arm rather than a nob... maybe I can bulk up the shoulder a bit with some green stuff... I think that's where it's most notable.

Call him 'Eftarm and call it a day!

Great blog! You inspired me to get my sister involved in painting, she's 13.

Btw Your MW are coming along nicely as well

Thanks F4... both blogs have been very rewarding to do, and I'm really glad this one seems to be filling a need. They take a LOT of work though. Some times I think I spend more time yappin' than paintin'.

Fix that tonight. Our local shop has a kids night every Friday and I want to get those terminators "in the bag" in time for Thing 1 to field the fully painted figs. That means I need to do the eyes and some of the edge highlighting tonight, so he can practice/finish the edge highlighting on his own tomorrow and do the basing. Then we move on to one or two projects with thing 2... THEN I get to go back to my Mantis Warriors... can't wait... I'm just so cranked up about them. Maybe I can sneak in some late night building of the Vanguard prototype....


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Eftarm.... I just got that... after what... 9 hours??

OK. Figured out the prob with the nob. Gun arm is indeed a nob arm... he's just got a subluxation of the right shoulder, same as I do. (For the non-sports injury savvy out there... that means he's stretched the ligaments holding his arm bone and shoulder bones together, which once stretched... never un-stretch). In other words his right arm is loose in the shoulder and hangs lower than the other arm. In OTHER words Thing 1 didn't glue them in the same positions. So I did a little green stuff work. It won't win me any sculpting prizes... but once it's painted I don't think it'll be noticeable. All I need do now is drill the gun barrels and this puppy is ready for priming!



Finished my part on the termies tonight (eyes)... the rest gets kicked back into his court for tomorrow. Hopefully he won't have too much homework.

Thing 1's terminators are finally finished!

We shared the flocking, washing and static grassing duties, and I can't tell which are his and which are mine. Thanks for all your help everyone... 1 unit down... a dozen to go!

Don't forget to paint the rims! But damn, those are excellent.

Done. How on earth did you see that from the photo??

Think we'll do the assault cannon termie next... though I think he wants to do his ork Nob first.

I honestly cringed every time I saw one of those old terminator models. I can honestly say now I am quite pleased with the result. I would play against that army any day of the week. It is painted much better than some of the stuff I play against.

Today's project... building a better gaming table!

We (both boys and I) tore apart a half-a**ed attempt at a model RR set up and turned it into a new 4x8' gaming table. Landscaping it so it basically looks like a giant version of one of our bases, minus the largest rocks as they might interfere with figure balance. The boys and I hope to play a game tonight... Orks & Eldar vs. my Mantis Warriors... IF the table dries. Right now I've got a space heater cranked up in the vicinity of the table in hopes in encouraging the process.

So the battle reports will look a bit different from now on. We still have a lot of work to do on it. I want to put wooden edging on the table and a big shelf underneath for terrain... perhaps even dice trays. But for now, it's a big step up over the spray-painted piece of plywood. Thing 1 helped with the painting (his first experience using a roller) and the flocking.

Wow, absolutely amazing terminators . Your son is talented. Also there's a great website that's full of tips on how to make good terrain at http://www.terragenesis.co.uk

@pie : Thanks for the tip... I'll be certain to give that site a good long look.



Well, when I started this thread I promised that I'd be talking philosophy and there hasn't been a whole lot of that. Now that there is a pause in the action (for reasons which will become apparent) it might be a good time to kick something around.

At this point... I expected to be writing up a battle report for our first battle on our new gaming table. As you can see I am not. "Why?" you might well ask? "Because" says I, Thing 1 and Thing 2 were at each other's throats all weekend finding any excuse they could to hamper, irritate and hurt one another.... and I finally got sick of it and "grounded" them both from 40k for a week. No games, no painting, no computer games (DOW) and no discussions about it. Nada. Can't control what they do at school of course, but once they're home it's a taboo subject for the week. And they'll be "aware" of the loss of it because I'll be painting and getting ready for a tournament this weekend.

So, I was wondering what any of you other dads (or kids) thought about using access to 40k as a disciplinary tool. In this case 40k had nothing to do with the problems they were having, but it is something they care about and taking it off the menu will get their attention without any hitting, screaming or other unpleasantness on my part. So it's not that I'm really singling out 40k... I could use access to anything they enjoyed as a way of helping them realize the negative consequences of poor behavior, but since they both love 40k, it's kind of a natural fit. I'm not asking for your approval as that would put you, the reader, in an awkward position. I would, however like your honest opinion as to if you think 40k is fair game as a disciplinary tool or not... & perhaps a bit of reasoning as to why you make your choice.

Gitsplitta
"bad daddy... no biscuit!"

I think it's very apropriate, I learned in that way when I were younger that my parents took something from me or restricted me from doing the fun stuff. (I'm 17 atm if you wonder) but the point whit this is that I think they will learn to behave beter in the future, at least i did back in the days lol

Good luck with it.

I have a friend who is having trouble with his boy at the mo and we are planning on using the opportunity to do some model painting at the local club day as an incentive for good behaviour. The chance to paint and learn 40k with the older guys is something that he has been wanting to do for ages and should help alter his attitude..we hope!

That's a good point Blackhand, and I do use 40k to reinforce good behavior as well. Case-in-point. "If you guys stay focused and finish up your homework before dinner... *after dinner* we can play the next turn of our 40k game." Participation in our local shop's weekly "do" for kids, or a kids tournament is also good incentive. Plus as I've mentioned before, the kids both have jobs around the house to earn money to buy their own gaming supplies. This works better with the 9-year-old than the 6-year-old... but it does work.

My parents have shot down my younger brother from playing when he got bad grades. They used to do the same thing with me and videogames, tv, anything else they could think of. There is a critical point where once you "ground" them from everything, there is nothing else to stop them from being "RLB"s, as I was called. I was a, well, not good, kid.

I think you really shouldn't have qualms about it. It's a good system, as long as one doesn't go too far. My parents use it to take away my *in a Gollum voice* PRECIOUS... WORLD OF WARCRAFT, and i'm not totally screwed up. Thing is that even though I get angry at the moment I eventually realize that it's not in my best interest. However, be sure it doesn't turn into a cycle where they just behave for a bit to get their privileges back, and then go and misbehave once they have it back. Also, a good idea is to lecture them for an hour about team spirit. It's like brainwashing, only better...

Just a kid's eye view...

Problem with lecturing... like anything else... is that if you get too much of it, you shut it off mentally. My father used to lecture me endlessly on a variety of topics & it got to the stage where whenever he talked it was like one of the adults talking in the Peanuts cartoons (whaa wha whaaaa whaa).

So, the boys do get occasional lectures, but I try ti mix them up with other types of things so the lectures don't lose their punch.

As far as children and hobbies go, this is a very interesting thread.

My child is 2. He likes to help me paint. I got a bag of plastic army men that I plan on priming for him to mess with. That way he will have a chance to have his own and it won't cost me a fortune. In the future, I think it is something we'll all be able to enjoy as a family.

@lorana: Most of the figures in my older son's space marine army are hand-me-downs from me or gifts (also second-hand) from friends. Not quite as economical as a bag of army men... but generally the same idea. And at two... your son won't care, he just will know he gets to do something cool with toy solders. Kinda like us adults in the hobby... *grin*


We did start our game before the boys got in trouble... if I think about it tonight I'll post a pic or two. They each had 1000 pts (orks and eldar) vs. my 2000 pt Mantis Warrior army. Playing on an 8' table is kind of fun because distance really starts to matter, mobility and weapons range play the type of roles that they don't usually do on a little 4x6 table. Even at 2000 pts per side... it just looks to me to be a more realistic looking deployment because there are empty spaces on each side of the board that are not filled with figures. Given that however, we all took basically foot-slogging armies. Go figure... Thing 1 has 1 battlewagon, Thing 2 has one wave serpent and I've got a couple of drop pods... that's it for "transports".

We set out 5 objectives. One in the middle of the board and two in each of our deployment zones. At game's end (random) you get...
5 pts for middle objective
1 pt for each of your own objectives that you hold
3 pts for each of your opponent's objectives that you hold.
And 2 pts each for headhunting the oppositions commanders.

Thing 2's Eldar are spread pretty thin... I'm not too worried about him unless his avatar, wraith lord & banshees get into assault range... hopefully I'll have shot up 2 out of 3 of those units by turn 3. It's Thing 1's 75 orks with Gahzgull (sp?) that has me worried. I have a lot of stuff in reserve... which is OK as it gives me a lot of room to maneuver, but if it doesn't come in on time... I could be in big trouble.

The table is really nice to play on though... seriously, if you're playing on a piece of plywood (like we were) or felt... you need to fix up your gaming surface. Ours took about 1 hour to do total... both kids got to help and it cost maybe $25 in materials and supplies.

pie_2054 wrote:However, be sure it doesn't turn into a cycle where they just behave for a bit to get their privileges back, and then go and misbehave once they have it back.

I figure that a reasonable punishment carried out as promised works way better than a severe punishment that you don't carry out or an indefinite punishment that gets lifted "when they start behaving." It also works best if you emphasize cause and effect: "You and your brother didn't get along with each other, so no 40k for X days," rather than "No 40k for you two until you learn to get along." Adding positive reinforcement along the way helps too: "I'm glad to see that you two are getting along so well. Keep it up, and we'll play a game as soon as your grounding is over."

Very wise advice.

For your game did you let them split a FoC or double up on your? That way its more like 2v2 or 1v1 rather then 2v1 (and all the advantages/disadvantages tha go with it)

They split the FOC, but really I didn't have to force it on them, they each took 1 HQ, 2 troop, 1 heavy, 1 elite with Thing 2 taking a FA choice as well (and maybe Thing 1 did as well... can't remember off-hand). Together the orks and eldar make a formidable force. Neat thing is they're picking their own armies... Thing 1 uses Army Builder himself, just leaves an extra 100 - 200 points for me to add in the subtle things he sometimes forgets (wargear, upgrades, etc.). Thing 2 just tells me what units he wants with what kind of weapons and I do the rest.

I'm using these games to experiment with my Mantis Warriors (as well as having fun playing with my boys)... while the army in this game isn't quite it... I think I've hit on a really good build. Probably not "competitive" in an 'Aard Boyz sense... but should look very unique and be fun to play under normal circumstances. The trick is to work in enough of my "signature units" to really make the army stand out... which of course is tough because the signature units are mostly veteran squads that are quite pricey. Know I can do it with 2000 pts... think I can do it with 1850. Not sure about 1500... but maybe. I'll have to hammer some things out on Army Builder and see.

Can you give me a link to the army builder you use? I don't want to get a virus, thanks in advance.

http://www.wolflair.com/

This blog is by far one of the most intersting ones i've come across - it's a pleasure to see the handover of the torch to the younger generation. love the thoughts, pics and battles. please don't stop.

Cheers,

Kensei

Lol thats soo fuuny I hope your boy becomes an awesome gamer


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Lol thats soo fuuny I hope your boy becomes an awesome gamer

This thread continues to entertain.

Can't wait to see how that table progresses.

As far as kids and discipline, I know my youngest is really loving to "play warhammer with dad" at the moment,and it has become a good incentive to get him to do certain things or as is often the case with kids: stop doing certain things...

Lists...

Mantis Warriors (2000 pts)
HQ: MoTF
HQ: Chaplain in termie armor
Elite: Sternguard (7) w/ 2 meltas, Srg w/ plas pist & PW
Elite: Venerable Dread w/ MM & CCW, drop pod
Elite: Terminators (5) w/ CML & 2 CF
Troops: Sniper Scouts (10) w/ ML + Telion
Troops: Sniper Scouts (10) w/ HB
FA: Land Speeders (3) w/ MM
Hvy: Devestators (8) w/ 4 ML
Hvy: Dread w/ TL-LC & ML
Hvy: Dread w/ TL-LC & ML

Bad Moonz (1000 pts)
HQ: Ghazghkull
Troops: Slugga Boyz (30) w/ 3 BS & nob w/ PK, BP & EA
Troops: Shoota Boyz (30) w/ 3 BS & nob w/ BC, BP & EA
Elite: Burna's (12) + mekboy w/ KMB
Hvy: Battlewagon w/ Zzap Gun & 2 BS

Eldar (1000 pts)
HQ: Avatar
Elite: Banshees (5) + exarch w/ PW & both powers, WS w/ TL-SCn, spirit stones
Troops: Dire Avengers (9) + exarch w/ PW & SS, both powers
Troops: Pathfinders (5)
FA: Vypers (2) w/ BL
Hvy: Wraithlord w BL, 1 flmr, 1 S-cat (just the model I have)


Termies, Land Speeders and Venerable are all in reserve... everything else for both sides starts on the table. Marines win roll and elect to go first.



Deployment as follows...



Red arrows indicate the objectives, with the longer red arrow pointing to the center (5 VP) objective.

Your Kids are REALLY talented! keep up the good work guys!

Thanks guys, the boys are talented... but mostly enthusiastic... I think that makes up about 90% of it.


OK, well... until the "hammer of justice" came down, we'd only done my half of turn 1... so I'll do that now.


I don't have to take a pic of the table because nothing really changed... I'd formed a gun line (which I can't remember doing before under the current set of rules) so I kept my behinds right where they were so all my "heavy" weapons could fire. There was a lot to be concerned about... the burna's and Ghaz could be in my face on turn 2, not to mention the banshees, with close support supplied by the two huge boyz mobs and the dire avengers. And I didn't want those pesky vypers roaming freely around the table popping my dreads.

So, starting from my left... my first priority was to disembark Ghaz and the burnas. This was facilitated by some very lucky rolling on the part of one of my fire support dreadnoughts, which hit, penetrated and blew up the battlewagon with a lascannon shot, killing 3 burnas in the blast. Telion and the two sniper squads on his flank then opened up on the surviving passengers, killing 3 more and putting a wound on Ghaz. On the eldar side, one of the scout squads opened fire on the Vypers, stunning them. The dev's fired at the Wave Serpent, knocking out the main turret (but certainly not what I had hoped for). The remaining snipers and the sternguard opened up on the pathfinders, hoping to hit the eldar where they were weakest... scoring units... and in spite of the pathfinders great cover save in the ruins... 2 went down to the concentrated fire (sternguard rounds that ignore cover help considerably).

Just one shot to share... Ghaz and burnas looking rather forlorn in the crater left by the exploding Battlewagon. Great crater by-the-way... made by Dugg. Comes in 3 sizes (LR, Rhino & Dred) and the rims are made so that you can easily stand guys up on them... really makes them useful as gaming aids, and the look great on the tabletop!



I apologize for the condition of the burnas & Ghaz, they were all either picked up off the net with no time to re-paint, or hastily assembled for 'Aard Boyz. They'll be finished by the next battle report.

Can't wait to see how this'll turn out!btw, those eldar are lookin' pretty nice. Can you show the eldar up close?

Gitsplitta wrote:Thanks guys, the boys are talented... but mostly enthusiastic... I think that makes up about 90% of it.


OK, well... until the "hammer of justice" came down, we'd only done my half of turn 1... so I'll do that now.


I don't have to take a pic of the table because nothing really changed... I'd formed a gun line (which I can't remember doing under the current set of rules) so I kept my behinds right where they were so all my "heavy" weapons could fire. There was a lot to be concerned about... the burna's and Ghaz could be in my face on turn 2, not to mention the banshees, with close support supplied by the two huge boyz mobs and the dire avengers. And I didn't want those pesky vypers roaming freely around the table popping my dreads.

So, starting from my left... my first priority was to disembark Ghaz and the burnas. This was facilitated by some very lucky rolling on the part of one of my fire support dreadnoughts, which hit, penetrated and blew up the battlewagon with a lascannon shot, killing 3 burnas in the blast. Telion and the two sniper squads on his flank then opened up on the surviving passengers, killing 3 more and putting a wound on Ghaz. On the eldar side, one of the scout squads opened fire on the Vypers, stunning them. The dev's fired at the Wave Serpent, knocking out the main turret (but certainly not what I had hoped for). The remaining snipers and the sternguard opened up on the pathfinders, hoping to hit the eldar where they were weakest... scoring units... and in spite of the pathfinders great cover save in the ruins... 2 went down to the concentrated fire (sternguard rounds that ignore cover help considerably).

Just one shot to share... Ghaz and burnas looking rather forlorn in the crater left by the exploding Battlewagon. Great crater by-the-way... made by Dugg. Comes in 3 sizes (LR, Rhino & Dred) and the rims are made so that you can easily stand guys up on them... really makes them useful as gaming aids, and the look great on the tabletop!



I apologize for the condition of the burnas & Ghaz, they were all either picked up off the net with no time to re-paint, or hastily assembled for 'Aard Boyz. They'll be finished by the next battle report.

Hey!!! GO GREEN TIDE! =) That always seems to happen to me too. =(

Thanks for the crater props. I'm so glad you like them.

No problem Dugg. Love my craters! So does Ghaz... they've saved his butt in two battles so far (vs. Nids and SM). He seems to have a recurring issue with "compulsory disembarkation".


Edit:

@Munch: Those figs are sooo old! You're not going to make me show pic's of them are you? I can't stand my Eldar paint scheme... it's changed like... 3 times and I've never liked any of them. *sigh* I'll show the wave serpent, banshees, scouts & the wraithlord (which isn't mine... but is a beautiful model). The rest of them can stay small and blurry.

Do you think you might be motivated to go back to eldar and work on that army any due to the new Fire Prism and sentry guns, plus Spearhead?

Also, have you tried blue?

Actually I picked up a few nicely painted eldar figs over the last few months that all have that kind of teal blue color in common, and I really like them.. So I think I'd go with that. Problem is that I'm trying to paint up a huge ork army for my 6-year old (and myself), help the 9-year old paint his army, and am completely trying to re-build my Mantis Warrior space marines, which I'm very passionate about... so there's no room for re-doing my Eldar right now. Maybe if I can find a painting service that's not too expensive that can paint them to a decent standard (I can always gussy them up down-the-line when I have time) I could work towards finishing them up, but at the moment I just don't have to time to deal with them.

I've never liked the Eldar vehicles as they're stupidly designed as models (top heavy, unbalanced, easy to tip over and break, turrets fall off constantly), add to that their relative uselessness as troop transports (way too expensive & only one rear access point) and there just isn't much incentive for me to work on them. I have a few of the official GW versions (1 falcon, 1 fire prism & 1 FW doom weaver) but I hardly ever use them because the models are just so impractical that it ticks me off to look at them.

Given that the essential design hasn't changed in the new models (so my objections still stand), I like the Fire Prism's new turret minus the crystal at the end of the barrel... but I'm not inclined to put any of my other projects aside to buy one & work on it. I used to love playing Eldar, they were my main army for a decade or more (RT - 3rd Ed), but now they just kind of bore me... the creative and gaming options with other armies are just so superior that I don't want to spend any time on them.

Gitsplitta wrote:@Munch: Those figs are sooo old! You're not going to make me show pic's of them are you?

I actually quite like the old models. It's a nice 'lil look back at the past for us recent gamers. The old models are actually what got me into the hobby.

All right Munch... here ya go. Can't take any credit for the Wraithlord... bought it off the web (but it is a sweet conversion/paint job).

Those are actually really cool. If you painted them all like the wraithlord, it would look awesome..

Well those ain't so bad. In fact, those are pretty great. I don't know why you're so ashamed of 'em.

Actually the aspect warriors of varying sorts I did spend quite a bit of time on. The rangers just got a basic paint job, but I think my color choice was pretty good so even though they're simple, they look decent. It's the stuff that I'm not showing, (vehicles, guardians, avatar, my wraithlords and war walkers) that stink. I have two nicely painted phoenix lords I'd be willing to show (that I did), but other than that they're only table painted... and rather crudely at that.

Well, why don't you show us? We can help and offer advice.

OK, here they are...no great shakes I assure you. I must have done these before I discovered washing or how to do jewels... or practically anything else. So... these aren't really indicative of how I paint now... but I suppose they're good "historical pieces". I remember them being better than this... that was the image in my mind anyway. Funny how time and your perception changes things.

Well now those arn't terrible. You seem to underestimate yourself. All I can offer is that the striking scorpion seems alittle busy. It's hard for me to really focus on one part of the model at a time.

@Munch: Yeah... Kharandras probably needs stripping & re-painting... your observation is a good one. Not sure when I was going with him. Feugan I think could benefit from a dilute sepia wash on the yellow scale armor... but other than that he's not too bad off. Was blending pretty well with him.


So, the boys were good at school and at home for the rest of the week so I let them off the hook for 40k a couple of days early. Part of the "ban" was that I refused to work on anything of theirs during this period. But... I'd promised to work with the younger one and build him an objective marker for his orks. He had an idea for a crashed deffkopta... and since I had one I'd chopped up for bits, I was happy to do it. So, this is Thing 2's idea, I'm just the facilitator... though having one of the stray rotor blades take off an arm was my idea. This is just a rough "sketch" of the build, I'll paint everything first, then assemble the kopta on the base, then add more rock and torn up ground to finish it off.


"Daak Awk down!"

I like it, are you going to use greenstuff to have blood coming out his arm, or are you giving him a different arm or something?

I'll model the bone sticking out slightly... not sure how I'll model the blood, but I'll do that too.

I agree I like the Fuegan he has some nice blending. I once painted a Khrandaras in a dark green and gold which came up pretty nice, course I have no idea what colours he is supposed to be.

Ouch!

Lol, I love it!

Fishing line with two-part epoxy layered on it makes decent looking jets of fluid.

Well, the boys and I went to my eldest's soccer game and stopped for gas on the way home. When I came out of the gas station, they were pounding on each other (with intent to hurt) in the back seat... so they're grounded again. Dummies.

Sorry folks. Won't be much to post for another week.

"but dad!!! we are brothers! we are supposed to pound on eachother!!!!"
i have a bro my self (we are fertil twins infact) and i know that it is a fun thing to do, and it is almost naturall xD although it does not end in the best ways some times....

Well, if they'd been "fun fighting", they might have just gotten chewed out... but there was no fun in this, they were clearly mad and trying to hurt each other, and when I got back in the car and let them know what they were in for neither one protested... they knew they were guilty as charged.

Gitsplitta wrote:All right Munch... here ya go. Can't take any credit for the Wraithlord... bought it off the web (but it is a sweet conversion/paint job).

YAY! I'm reassembling two wraithlords at the moment (mix'n'matching an old and a new). I am still debating whether to replace the old wraith head with the old zoanthrope armour (like this one). I think if painted well it will look like that good mix of craftworld and dark (IE. It will fit well in an exodite/harelquin/less-puritan eldar army). I just don't know whether it suits my army.

Your army(s) look great! I can see the kids overtaking you soon though...

Time to start putting their models on eBay as "Pro-Painted Doom Eagles" and "Got-Busted-By-Dad Orks"

whalemusic360 wrote:Time to start putting their models on eBay as "Pro-Painted Doom Eagles" and "Got-Busted-By-Dad Orks"

I have seen those "got-busted-by-day" sales xD i feel bad for the kids xD but they are usually a good price

I don't think i've been grounded ever..

What is going on with them?

Maybe it's the same problem I now have with my sister in that we're constantly trying to one-up each other...

BTW, those phoenix lords are pretty good actually. Don't be ashamed of your painting!

I'm not sure, but as long as they're not screaming "For the Emperor!" or "Blood for the blood God!" while their pounding on each other I guess we're OK.

Finch Claw wrote:I don't think i've been grounded ever..

Your grounded, now go to your room!

Maybe instead of taking away 40k you should make them paint 2000 points in a week. That'd teach em good!
"Smoke...errr...paint this carton of Land Raiders and dont come out untill they're done!" *door slam*

Whalemusic is on to something here... I don't feel like painting a whole bunch of imperial guard, and you could makes some cash punishing your sons. Oh never mind this has sweat shop written all over it.

whalemusic360 wrote:

Finch Claw wrote:I don't think i've been grounded ever..

Your grounded, now go to your room!

Maybe instead of taking away 40k you should make them paint 2000 points in a week. That'd teach em good!
"Smoke...errr...paint this carton of Land Raiders and dont come out untill they're done!" *door slam*

"NOW LISTEN UP! I've got a RTT this weekend and I need 1200 points of Necrons painted. This is what they look like. This is how to paint the rods and here is your paint and brushes. NOW GET TO WORK!"

Y'know I am very sad face now.

Lol. I feel you.

I told my older son about this and he laughed and laughed....

Laugh while you can monkey boy.... why do you think I've been showing you all these painting techniques??


He's already talking about a second army. I squished that impulse, but said that after he got done painting his doom eagles, he could move on to something else (but he would have to buy the figures himself). So I think we'll write up a 3k list based largely on what he has already and my unused marine hand-me-downs... then when that's all done, he can move on to something else if he wishes.... like maybe MY eldar.

Or maybe they should try Tau, because their vehicles are so swooshable!!

I think you should buy him a couple units of something else, and see where his interests end up. It is possible he just kind of wants something that's actually his.

@lorana: Not a bad idea, though he has bought some of his own figures... so he does have things that are not hand-me-downs. When he (the eldest) first got started I actually tried to dissuade him from playing marines because we already had an SM army in the house... but no... he wanted a marine army. Thing is he's young, and all his young friends are either playing mek guard or have jumped on the BA bandwagon... so he's got visions of flying tanks and pie-plates dancing through his head and he's getting rather envious.

Black templars! Any way. Yes maybe he should buy of his own, But he'll most likely do a guilt act or puppy eyes on you...

I want to see more ork pics! Now.

haha. My son, 8 yrs old, ask me if we could paint his Chaos squads and play this weekend. He has no idea that this is the first step to being dads painting assistant. ;-) .... "first army is free son"...but only the first


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haha. My son, 8 yrs old, ask me if we could paint his Chaos squads and play this weekend. He has no idea that this is the first step to being dads painting assistant. ;-) .... "first army is free son"...but only the first

@FinchClaw: Well, we'll see where things go. I think 1 army at a time is plenty.

@MonkeyMarine: At the moment the kids are still "grounded" from 40k, I'm sure work will resume on his ork nob soon after the ban is lifted.

@Dugg: I think you have it all summed up nicely... first army is free.... like that.

Lets see some of thing1's latest work!

think this is a great blog, once folio week is over i'll be sure to check back in on the progress!

Well done to your sons, too, great to see some works by imaginative and enthusiastic kids.

The terminators look fantastic, and so do the warboss and bronze statue.

Hurry up and unground thing 1 and 2!

This is such a nostalgic blog is cant be held back by mere child rearing!

@Captain Klaw: You make me laugh.


They'll be off the hook soon enough. Might start by posting Sunday's battle report between my kids and the friend who got me started in 40k. After that get's their juices flowing, I'm sure they'll both be excited to get back into painting their figures!

My son did help a little with painting my craters last week. I painted up 8 sets of my combo sets, 32 craters for the Ard boy tourny last week.

I had my friends use them to show them off. It went well.

I ended up getting 5th in the tourny. I was only 3 kill points away from taking 3rd and going to the semi's, 3rd thru 5th was that close. I would of had those points if I could of taken out 1 more Space Marine that was holding an objective, I killed 4 out of 5. .....1 dang Marine.

@Dugg Very cool... I'm always amazed that once my boys reached the age that they could actually "help" do stuff (painting, housework, etc...) that they could really contribute. And when they're young, they actually *want* to help too... double bonus! Glad things went well for you regarding your craters at 'Aard Boys, speaking of which... did I remember to pay you for my second order? Can't remember... PM me please?

Maybe you should have thing 1 make a squad of space marines of whatever chapter he chooses as allies (*cough* blood angels *cough*)

@pie: subltle as a crutch... but a good idea. I'll think about it.

Gitsplitta wrote:@pie: subltle as a crutch... but a good idea. I'll think about it.

Yup, that's me!
Also, a squad of sanguinary guard would be cool if he chooses BA, sword brethren for BT, etc.

BEGONE you evil creature! Use your Blood Angel seductive powers elsewhere!! (off with you now... shoo)


... and you can buy him all those extra, expensive figures while you're at it...

Seeing your 2ed plastic terminators painted and looking good inspires me. I have 4 of them sitting in a box where they have been for over 10 years. I always thought they were poorly sculpted and wouldn't look good even painted. But you have shown me otherwise. Going to have to paint them now.

I'm glad they helped you make up your mind. To be honest, they turned out much better than I thought they would as well. We just got some good advice and followed it. I just figured... hey, the kid wants terminators, and these are free. After that it was just a matter of trying to make the look good, and the good folks on dakka helped out with that. Win-win.

I think the 2ed terminators have surpassed the 3rd edition ones after seeing this. The 2nd ed have retro appeal now, whereas the swivel-armed 3rd edition look antiquated.

I appreciate everyone being patient whilst justice is meated out to those two ner-do-well sons of mine.

I promised you a battle report though. The game will be on sunday but I set up the table today... so here's a little teaser.




This is a four by eight foot table. As you can see we use woods that are more representative of woods, rather than a couple of scraggely trees like you typically see on gaming tables now a days. At the moment the battle is shaping up into four people, 1500 points per person, orks vs. marines.

What is the blue thing in the middle?

So you play on the whole 8 feet huh?

@FinchClaw: I'ts a lake. Cut the shape out of the plastic that you use to reflect the light from overhead fluroescent lighting. The top is textured and kind of "wavy", so I just painted the bottom.

@Dugg: Well, our new table was made on a 4 x 8 piece of plywood, so in a 2 on 2 battle like this one we can use all 8 feet. Under normal circumstances we can mark off a 6-foot section and play on that, but to be honest I like a bigger table even in a 1 on 1 game... more movement, maneuvering and strategy... less static gun lines. Especially if you put some objectives around that force people to spread out a bit.

I like the macragge terrain

The tower looks pretty cool..

Is the terrain going to have any special rules?

@ChocolateGork: Yeah, it's really nicely painted & flocked... got if off e-bay from a guy who had painted and was selling several sets. Very nice.

@pie: The tower is an old piece from GW for their fantasy line. Came "painted" and flocked. I keep thinking I'm going to give it a different wash and hit the details, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Woods: Area terrain, difficult terrain, impassible to non-walkers, 5+ cover.
Our house rules for forests are as follows... You can only see/shoot into or out of the first 2" of woods (this represents that fact that usually plant growth is most dense right along the edge where there is a lot of sunlight). Once in the woods, sighting/shooting distance increases to 12" as long as the other thing you're trying to shoot at is also in the woods (representing far less under-story in a dense woods due to limited sunlight). This allows woods to act like woods, and units can move unseen and unmolested through them, forcing you to either go in after them or deal with the consequences. Also makes units with the "move through cover" rule much more handy. With the typical tiny woods you see in gaming, it won't matter, but with the more realistic sized woods we use, it's major. We've had some great battles on "forest worlds"... but everyone needs to know what you're doing ahead of time so they can build their lists accordingly.

Lake: completely impassible.

Tower: Impassible to non-walkers. 4+ cover, not difficult if you move on stairs & main walkway

Ruins: This time there is no area terrain status... WYSIWYG

Pipeline (upper right). 5+ cover if obscured... however... the top of the pipelines are made to hold a base perfectly, and to encourage people putting models up there ('cause it looks cool), the pipes also confer a 5+ save to any models on them. Getting on & off pipes requires a difficult terrain test. Once you're up there you can move freely until you want to come down.

Effluent Plant: 4+ area cover, difficult terrain

Nice! I like the rules! Have you thought about an exploding pipe? Like if someone uses an AP 1 weapon and rolls a 6, the pipe blows up and all models on the pipe suffer like a strength 4, AP 5 hit.

That's a neat idea, but counter-productive. The point of giving a cover bonus for being on the pipes is to encourage people to use neat terrain. If we then make it so that people can blow themselves up when on the terrain it'll just discourage them from using it.

But even armor 14 bastions can splode! Id agree the risk wouldnt be worth the reward in this case tho.

Gitsplitta wrote:That's a neat idea, but counter-productive. The point of giving a cover bonus for being on the pipes is to encourage people to use neat terrain. If we then make it so that people can blow themselves up when on the terrain it'll just discourage them from using it.

Communication problem! I'm sorry, I think I left out a part. I meant opponents get a single hit in when aiming at a unit on the pipe, in addition to the regular shooting attacks. The soldiers on the pipe wouldn't blow up the pipe when they attacked because they'd have to shoot the pipe.

I agree, an exploding pipeline would be cool, but how about this:

Don't tell any players about it at first. If a blast weapon hits it, the pipe explodes and hits, all units on it have to take a difficult terrain test. if they fail, they get removed

Gitsplitta wrote:I appreciate everyone being patient whilst justice is meated out to those two ner-do-well sons of mine.

I promised you a battle report though. The game will be on sunday but I set up the table today... so here's a little teaser.




This is a four by eight foot table. As you can see we use woods that are more representative of woods, rather than a couple of scraggely trees like you typically see on gaming tables now a days. At the moment the battle is shaping up into four people, 1500 points per person, orks vs. marines.

That board is an artillery mans dream, I could just put a bassi down or two and own it up..... Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, can't wait to see the bat-rep, may the Imperials triumph over the xenos filth. Ave Imperator

All-right... got the images uploaded for the battle report... it was a short battle due to time constraints, but a good one. Everyone got into the mix and everyone had a major accomplishment. We also has a clear winner... so all good. Hope to post the report later today, tomorrow at worst. Then it's back to painting!

Agreed nice to see the retro figures out and about, superb skills koodos to your son

Slightly off topic but playmobile makes great impromptu terrain,woods, rocks, even a castle (slightly out of scale) me and my brother use it all the time

O.K., here we go.


First, my old friend (Solar_Lion) shows up with a box of really cool, home-made city ruins and starts to salt the table with them. He'd told me that he was bringing some old terrain for us, but really... these are very, very neat... not the cardboard buildings we used to play with 15 years ago. Very sweet. I re-arrange it a bit to make it a little less busy (there were no shooting lanes) and we get ready to rock & roll. My friend's space marine chapter (the Solar Lions), were teaming up with Thing 1's Doom Eagles to take on a combined ork force run by myself and Thing 2. Each army (4) was 1500 points and had it's own FOC. This was also Solar_Lion's first 40k game since 3rd edition, so it would be a good learning experience for everyone. I don't have the rosters with me at the moment, but you can see from the 1st pic what was on the table... We each deployed in (roughly) each corner of the table, so you can probably figure out who had what. Thing 2 is in the far left corner, I'm in the near left corner, Solor Lions are in the far right corner, Doom Eagles are in the near right corner. Pitched battle deployment. 5 objectives on the table... sorry I didn't mark them... one dead center, our two in the woods on either side of our table, one of their's on the near right corner, the other is in the top of the tallest building in the back on the right.

Deployment:



The one thing I forgot to not on the pic is that there is a Solar Lion scout unit on the top floor of the building holding the objective. Everyone has basically the same objective... go forward and kill everything. Keep it simple.


Turn 1:

Orks
The orks go first. Basically the entire ork force with the exception of the grots holding the far objective, the two gun wagons and mysteriously enough... thing 2's warbikes... charges forward at full speed. No shooting. The Lootas run through the woods in order to get a decent firing position on the scouts who will be holding the near objective, hoping to clean off the only scoring unit in the area on the next turn. The tankbusta wagon barrels forward, as does nearly everything else. The shootas move up to support the center with gunfire, with the idea of eventually sliding over to the right to hold the near ork objective.

Marines
The Doom Eagles advance aggressively with their librarian led assault squad and full terminator squad to threaten the ork dominance of the middle ground, while the Solar Lions form a gun line along the right flank. A very risky Solar Lion drop works brilliantly and a dreadnought appears in the ork right flank to threaten the gretchin holding the objective while a second Solar Lion Dread moves in from the deployment zone. The Doom Eagle scouts claim their objective and hunker down. The marines open fire with expected results... the vindy blows a huge hole in the aard boyz squad nearest to the center objective, but not enough to put them to flight. The tankbusta's battle wagons explodes, killing about half... but they stay as well and hunker down in the crater along with the Big Mek. ML shots from various units kill scattered orks here and there, but no "results" of note occur. Multi-melta on the dread removes a warbiker from the scene, as does a shot from the drop pod's storm bolter.




Turn 2:

Orks
The ork hoards continue to advance and start seeking shelter in the burnt out buildings. The tankbusta's move forward and pile shots and bomb squigs into the Vindy, stunning it and buying the orks a turn of grace. The Loota's open up on the Doom Eagle scouts holding the objective and roll 3 shots each. Even though a good chunk of the unit is still obscured by trees, the rest are able to purge the scouts from the scene. Zoggy successfully turns the Doom Eagle librarian into a squig!! Which allows the Kans to pile into them with relative impunity in assault. The bikers, miffed that their dakkaguns can't hurt the dred, charge it, hoping the nob's PK will suffice. The assault squad loses only 2 to the Kan attack, thanks to the force dome of the squig librarian (we weren't sure if the psychic power ceased to work if the Libby was squigified... so I gave the SM's the benefit of the doubt). They voluntarily fall back to make room for the termies to charge into the Kans on their next turn. The Solar Lion dreadnought failed to hit any of the crafty ork warbikers in the assault phase, and was rewarded by a power klaw up the wazoo in return. One less dread.

Marines
Termies and assault marines trade places so their relative weaponry matches up better with the foes at hand. Solar Lion dread continues to advance towards Thing 2's forces, while the land raider moves 6" to get a better line of fire on the ork deff dread. Marine shooting is effective as ever... lascannon fire from the LR destroys the deff dred, the assault squad bolt pistols enough tankbustas that the Big Mek is now out on his own. The Predator, with nothing better to do, delivers a lascannon shot through the chest of the Big Mek leaving a dinner plate sized, smoking hole... KFF be damned. There is a lot more shooting of ork infantry, but nothing else significant. The Doom Eagle termies charge the Killa Kans, and by some amazing invulnerable saving throw rolls by Thing 1, escapes with only 2 casualties before delivering like... a million penetrating hits. Only 1 blows up though, though the others are destroyed multiple times over.




Unfortunately, this is where things had to end as it was 8 pm and my friend had a 4 hr drive back home. But... we had fun, and each boy had his moment of glory... Final score: orks held the center objective and one of their own (go gretchin!), marines held one of their two objectives. 2:1 Orks Win!!! (yeaaaaay!)

Speaking of moments of glory.... here they are...


The return of SquigNorton...


Thing 2's successful warbike assaullt...


Thing 1's Kan eating terminators...

Dude those flames are awsomesauce!

Thanks for the game. It has been a long time. I only wish that we could have played the following two rounds. I’m boasting the results would be different. ; ) Special note : 2 rounds lost 1 dread… hummmm
On a side note and keeping with the thread. Let me say… I was impressed on how much thing 1 knew his stuff. I let him decide the strategy and left me to figure out my own tactic’s. My guess is that the more games he plays the better field tactic’s he will get. Also his understanding of advantages and disadvantages of his units was pretty good for such a young guy.
Thing two was much more reserve. I’m guessing his style of play- is more undefined and cautious. ( after all he is playing with Dad – and wants’ to do well) This is more likely a product of age. It would be interesting to see him play a more reserved army other than Orks. Something with less troops and more direct purpose. With my lack of troops and fire lanes, he should get “stuck In”.
I have to say you were good at letting them make their own choices but gave great suggestions and jumped in only when needed. With time they will be playing without you. Hopefully it won’t erupt in to a real fight. After all boys will be boys (I’m referring to the boys here).
I look forward to the day when they are staring us both down without fear across the table.

Again.. thank you and the boys for the great game.



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PS. Anolther observation...It was fun to see thing's 2 overwealming determination when he sets his mind to it. IE. The Dread was going down no matter what. Even if he had to clog all the vents with gretchen. Not really a game objective, but funny to watch him get worked up.

Yeah, you know... that wasn't the way he started (Thing 2). He was balls-to-the-wall crazy aggressive when we first started... perfect for orks... but he teamed up with his brother enough (who usually plays very conservatively) that it seems to have rubbed off. Now he gets cranky when he loses figures and wants his piece of meat in return, but often does not take the aggressive action he should for fear of losing men or machines. And Thing One's gotten more aggressive... go figure. Thing One's voluntary fall back was good... that was new for him. YOU left him high-and-dry though! Making all that noise in the pre-game about charging forward and "the Emperor will protect" and then hiding behind your barricades and shooting while he had to fact the ork onslaught on his own! Bad space marine, no biscuit!

Wish my son had the diligence yours do, he seemed really hyped after I let him play a couple of practice games using a unit each from my army, so we pieced him together a small force of chaos to get him started using some old models (He chose chaos himself, so the majority of his army looks like recently turned, because there are a lot of loyalist models due to second handed-ness)

Thing is he has only painted half of one of his units so far, and loses interest half way through assembly, asking me to finish it for him.

Same goes for the two 1500 point battles we've had so far (his current army he owns somehow comes exactly to this total), resulting in him declaring half way through that his army was just going to sit there and do nothing so I could kill it off, especially in the second game where my hammerhead managed to pop his defiler on turn one.


Though to counter this I may scale back to having 500 point battles for now.

"YOU left him high-and-dry though! Making all that noise in the pre-game about charging forward and "the Emperor will protect" and then hiding behind your barricades and shooting while he had to fact the ork onslaught on his own! Bad space marine, no biscuit! "

In actuallty. the quote was in responce to thing 1's comment on were gonna get killed. ( based off of the number of models consuming square footage on your side of the table) - to which I reply... And I quote from Brent... " Marines don't die, they aren't allowed too. They can't be killed cause the Emperor won't allow it.

As for the wait and shoot approach.. this was thing 1's original plan. To shoot for 2 turns and thin the hoard. Again good strategy. His tactics didn't support his strategy.

In all his choice of units supported a more agressive stance. Thou eventually I feel he/ we would have pull this one out. We had two different types of armies. Mine more shooty, his more agressive.

I feel no shame, ORK boy! I did what I was told. I even managed to sacrifice a dreadnaught to keep the bikers occupied in order to not be overrun/ flanked giving more time for your center to advance allowing me to focus my attacks on the center.

Honoris Virtuis Preamium


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... still he did very well! with all the heat coming his way. he lost a scout squad, Lib ( squignorton ) and 2 termies. Got some vech. shot up. For all the pain he got he delivered way more than he got.. ( Emperor protect )

He did well under fire. His overall planning skills are coming along nicely and I know who is teaching him....

It would be nice to have more units at my disposal. I had to play what I had and I look forward to the re-match.

With that said.. I say thanks for helping me with all the rules. Thou I'm not going to be Thing 3 unless I get my own room!


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I now return you to your regular scheduled blog

Dude i saw a doctor suess shirt with thing 1 on it today at kohls. I almost got it for ya but i thought it may have been creepy. I lol'd at it tho.

@tiny5th: Be patient, it'll come with time. Thing 1 has a peer group that plays, that has a big influence on him and keeps him going. With my 6-year-old it's another story... he's interested, but is a lot more fickle. Maybe having him do half the unit is OK for now, then each time ask him to do just a little bit more. It's a lot to ask, all this modeling and painting. One caution with 500 pt battles, they tend to have very lopsided outcomes with so few points on the table. You might go with down sized units rather than only a couple of full-sized units.

@Solar_lion: *grin* Got-cha! Nope, you handled it right, nipped the self-defeating attitude in the bud before it could get started. You're right, he did a lot more damage than he took, I was just playing for time and the objectives.... figured we wouldn't get more than 2 turns in so I played accordingly. The dense terrain really messed us up... couldn't run anything across the table and take advantage of the KFF, and my big shooty mobs had no lanes of fire.

All-in-all, very fun. Sorry we were so pressed for time. I know the boys are looking forward to a re-match & so am I!


@whalemusic360: We have Kohls.... actually we have Senator Kohl.... anyway, thanks for the tip. I'll look for it!

Hmm yar, thankfully there's a GW opening up in our town soon, that may help give him a gaming group to motivate him, whereas right now I am his only opponent.

Wow, Thing 3 seems pretty whiney

I'm really liking that even this early into the blog we have seen some real improvement with both thing 1 and thing 2 (apparently thing 3 has regressed).

good bat rep.

tiny5th wrote:Hmm yar, thankfully there's a GW opening up in our town soon, that may help give him a gaming group to motivate him, whereas right now I am his only opponent.

Most likely it will. Having a good GW store near you is great, because they will frequently do special scenarios that will suck you in more than world of warcraft combined with a whirlpool..

Thing 1 picked up Calgar and his body guard today... but before I'd let him start on them, I said he had to finish up some "old business"... so he was a painting whirlwind today. So after many weeks off, here are a couple of his efforts...

First, the finished ork nob. I did NONE of this... he did it all.



Secondly, remember the Predator back on the first or second page of the blog? Well, we did our best to weather it using a combination of spray paint and various weathering powders. We both took turns working on this one.



He also completed the second of his attack bikes... but as it looks much like the first pictured earlier, I'll leave it to your imagination.

That nob looks great! A small bit of detail work and it will be better then most of the armys I play against! Actually it already is now that I think about it. His painting skills are very good these days, If he can do a bit of touch up on the edges and some details like metal buckels he will be very good for his age (or regardless of it)!

Yeah, all it needs is a little retouching and it'll be awesome. The worst part of the model is that the wash seems to pool at one end on the flat streches.

Munch Munch! wrote:Yeah, all it needs is a little retouching and it'll be awesome. The worst part of the model is that the wash seems to pool at one end on the flat streches.

Yeh, but that would create some natural shading, since you would have shadow a darker shades toward one side of the surface depending where the light is, it would just need a little tidying up to make it look slightly more realistic. They look really good, I like the orks skin.

Imp. Monkey

The nob looks really nice. Just one question: is this a new whirlwind, or a vintage one?