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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.





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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.




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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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
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.