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Glad to see you back Tom & really happy to see your work updated. Goliaths look great and I'm really excited to see what you do with that terrain!

As far as the thread goes... I'm trying to get back into the habit of providing regular content that's worth something. I don't have the productivity I used to have, but I think if I can be more disciplined there's no reason I can't be a more regular contributor of quality material again. Plus I get more models painted and have more things to play with. Win - win!


On to the Fulgrite Priests:

After hammering out that kan and 5 other scorchas, I decided to take a break from painting for an evening, but not from thinking. I stared at one of the Fulgrites for a while deciding how I was going to approach painting them. Not from a color perspective, more of a technical question.

I want to airbrush both the skin (top half of the model), and the skirts (bottom half). After a lot of thought, I think I'm going to do the top half first (which is counter-intuitive but I think the best decision) and then do the lower body. I've got a plan for doing this without masking that should still avoid any chances of overspray.

Might have some progress to show you tonight.

My custom made trophy from our last local event. "Best Overall" which I think means I won!

Thing 2 had my phone all day because he forgot his army list and was using an Ap to keep track of his list, so no pics.

CK: Fair enough. It's just the "Blood for the Blood God" effect paint. I'd forgotten to do an extra layer of black under part of it so there would be a couple of different shades. Too late to re-do it know, but I'll try and remember next time.

Actually, the guy who does the trophy does it out of the kindness of his own heart (and walket) so that more of the entry fees can be turned back to the players in awards. I love my little hand made trophy!

Thanks guys. First tournament I've ever won outright. Battle points weren't the main thing in this one, which is probably why I did so well.\

Last Killa Kan is on the painting desk. Airbrushed and washed. Long way to go but this looks like a good start to me.

LOL! It's tempting! I've got some ideas that should make it entertaining no matter if I go the minion route or not.

This must happen. Now I'm off to go find purple hair...

Supply run! There's enough acreage of hair on this thing (supposed to be an Easter basket) that I'll have multiple attempts to get it just right!



If you're wondering why the sudden change from a normal minion... it's because of the "face" on that particular killa kan. Big chompy teeth doesn't seem appropriate for a regular minion, so I thought one of the purple minions would be a better fit.

Yep, that's' the model I was looking at, was just having issues posting the pic for some reason.

The question is... do I leave the gob on or not? It does portray the protruding lower jaw pretty well but it does mess with the pill-shaped body. I may also need to get larger bobble eyes... though given the tiny pupils of the purple minions I'll probably have to remove the backing and paint the eyes in myself, just using the lenses for the goggles.

Progress got derailed by the need to do 5 orks for a tournament this weekend. Purple is airbrushed & washed and found a near limitless supply of good hair. Goggles are built and the hair here is just placed on top, I'll do the attachment properly when the time comes.

Love the "battle wagon" Skalk!

Sorry for the pic size, "GIMP 2" is NOT my friend.

Still a long way to go. The goggles are built but will be added last as I'm sure the protective lacquer spray won't do the eyes any favors. Still need to build the main straps for the suspenders. After that it's blocking out the black, edge highlighting & detail painting.

I could cut lengths of hair from my source (basket) and try to glue them individually to the top of the head. I'm just not sure how that would go. I may have to experiment a bit ... though having the "rug" nailed or bolted down to the top of the kan would be a really amusing visual I think.

Hey guys. Took a few days off to re-charge and get a bit of playing in. Should get back to it this week. Thanks for the compliments!

@M0rdian: Well, the wash kind of took out any good airbrushing effects that were going on, but I needed it to get the color adjusted so it matched the hair better. I may give it a very light airbrushing just to get a bit of the gradient back before I attack the other colors.

Hey folks! Sorry for no updates but I haven't had any time for hobbying lately. That being said I've got two games this weekend (one tonight and an Apoc game on Sunday). Hopefully will have some good pictures and stories to go with them for you.

More excitingly, we were FINALLY able to get DSL in our remote little part of the world. This means that I'll finally be able to do the video battle reports that I've wanted to do for years. Eliuj the Farseer (Wargamer Shawn on YouTube) is going to give me some basic lessons in filming, editing/producing and uploading videos to YouTube. I'm not sure exactly when I'll get the YouTube channel going (I mean it's there... but there's nothing on it), but I expect a few weeks yet before I have something worth posting. I'll let you know though. Would welcome your comments and feedback.

So... problem #1.

It appears I can't change the name of the channel without changing my google name across every platform I'm on, which I don't want to do. Is it possible to have a YouTube channel without tying it to a google account?

I can do that? Hmmmm... I'll look into it.

@WM - PM'd you. Thanks!




Haven't had much painting to show but I've been really busy playing for a change. No proper battle reports but I do have some pics for you.

This was the grand finale of the campaign I was telling you about earlier. My dominus... THX-1138 had gotten disgusted winning most of the battles but still loosing the war, so he swore allegiance to Horus and the Tharsis Draconus forge participated in a massive siege of walled city/fortress held by the Crimson Fists and Space Wolves.

There were 15,000 points on the battlefield. Our goal was to take down strongholds/bunkers behind the wall... their goal was to protect them. We had 3k more points, but they had the wall (20 wounds per section, T9, 3+ save) and they ability to bring 1k points of casualties back from reserve.

I fielded 3 knights and every unit of AdMech that I own save one. 4000 points even.

The layout... yes, that's 12 solid feet of wall!


The rebels struck first and dropped 3 wall sections. The Mechanicum's cerastis knight lancer shot quickly into the left breach in order to prevent any cohesive shoring up of the defenses.


The leftward breach from dead on. The amount of firepower the Son's of Horus had access to was formidable and they constituted the bulk of the rebel forces.


The rebel forces in front of the center breach were primarily there to contain whatever came out of the fortress, though there was a knight errant to provide a bit of punch in assault.


The knight lancer storms the hole in the wall, momentarily engaging some crimson fist marines. It would go on to gig several Space Wolf contemptor dreads and shoot and stomp a variety of marines. It was definitely hurt by the battle's end... but no doubt had done serious work. I can't wait to team this guy up with a pair of the new mini-knights. His invul is cc really makes him surprisingly durable and there are a couple of different strategems that are useful for all knights, but he seemed to particularly benefit from them. (rotate ion shields means he's got a 3+ invul in cc, and the other allows him to function as if he's not degraded)


I don't take 4 neutron laser crawlers very often... this battle was a good example why. When I used them to fire in-concert with one another, they simply obliterated whatever they were aiming at. They did something like 24 or more wounds to the main loyalist bastion in their last volley to destroy it and win the game. They are very spotty though. Turn 1 and 3 they were awesome... turn 2 they did exactly nothing. It all depends on how may shots (d3) that your roll, so just be aware that you can't *really* rely on them.


On the right the Crimson Fists filled the breach with a large unit of storm-shield terminators which were really tough to kill. This flank stalemated for a bit as the stalwart marines held off 3 units including a knight. Eventually though, they were defeated by a combination of knight stomps and (mostly) Khorne berserker-like SoH assault specialists. Unfortunately the gap in the wall exposed one of the bastions which eventually was hammered to the ground by incoming fire.


This is around the beginning of turn 2. Note the large blue super-heavy tank on the near right and the landraider spartain on the far end of the table are now both missing. Bit-o-revenge taken by the Crimson Fists.


Same shot, different angle. The Mechanicum "containment" units (heavy grav servitors and kastellan robots) did their job. Any infantry units or light vehicles that squoze out of the middle breach in the wall that weren't dealt with by assault were wiped away by gunfire. I took rangers with sniper rifles (2x arquebus per squad) and true to form they did nothing of note. That's why I don't spend the ton of points that it takes to buy them in normal games. I realize they are very popular but they've never been worth the points for me.


Critical event takes place when a SoH assault squad is able to occupy a ML-armed dev squad on top of the wall (right side of battlefield). Had they been left free to shoot they could have done major damage to our assets there (10 MLs are nothing to joke about).


Heroic dragoon is the only Mechancus model to get within a foot of the enemy (aside from the knights). He was very slowly losing to the chaplain, but we love him for trying. He returned home to a data-tape parade!




Epilogue:

THX-1138 was satisfied with the day's proceedings. The change in allegiance to Horus was a hard one but it did bring him into alignment with both his Forge's loyalties back on Mars and the Fabricator General. His misplaced faith in the Emperor of the Imperium had been shown to be fallacy as his armies and fleets were victorious time after time, yet at key points in the campaign things would mysteriously go awry and his position would weaken. The fact that in this case, the Forge's position had been secured with the final victory over the loyalists was all the justification he needed for the change.

The SECOND victory was far sweeter however... as revenge, well planned and executed should be. He had not forgiven the Son's of Horus for their destruction of his orbital space station at the beginning of the campaign and he intended to see the Legion's forces weakened to the point where they could not interfere with him again. While he had committed major forces to this last battle and they had fought unrestrained in order to help secure the victory for Horus... nearly all of the units provided were fire support. Their effort in the battle could not be questioned, but he had carefully crafted his forces to stay out of harms way as much as possible.

The battle had been won. The Son's of Horus were a very effective spear tip, but as a result took massive casualties. The Forge... well, the forge had lost exactly two individuals. Two rangers peeled off their hiding place by a fusillade of small arms fire. In effect, his forces were untouched. THX-1138 vaguely recalled an ancient battle out of Terran history. A place called Agincourt...

I took 3 videos actually, just cant figure out anything to do with them.

That's exactly what I did, I just can't get the phone to do anything with it. Can you even post video directly to dakka?

OK, figured out how to create a separate YouTube channel. Here it is. Nothing on it yet save the banner photo. I'll keep working on it.

Gitsapalooza

@graven: Thanks mate. I hope I can make a go of it. No idea what to do with a video camera or editing software. My goal is to tell a good story with a pretty table and models. I guess we'll see if I can pull it off.

@Skalk: I live in the boonies, so no cable or DSL... only satellite up to this point. That video (audio) is disturbing.

Yeppers. Can finally use the house internet rather than always having to use my phone as a hot spot.

 Briancj wrote:
Gits, I work for an a/v software/hardware company. If you want help getting those videos pretty, I could use the practice.

--B.

That's very generous Brian and to be honest... my complete lack of experience handling videos is something that is holding me back (well... it has me dragging my feet mentally anyway. Since we got the good internet I haven't really had any time to do anything) I would LOVE to take you up on that. I'll be in touch by PM.

@Yorkright & CK: Thank you my friends.



Well, I'm kind of excited. My old gaming friend and college roommate is coming to visit for a long weekend. I took tomorrow off so I'm looking forwards to two full days of unbridled gaming. I'm planning on doing some filming as well, though I suspect it will be mainly for practice rather than something I actually intend to put on the channel. We're going to hang out, play, paint & I'll give him a lesson in my basing techniques.

For the last two days, Thing 2 and I have been working really hard to clean my gaming room/studio. It's been both wonderful and horribly depressing all at the same time. I've got a big room over the garage... tons of space. Unfortunately for a long time now it's been mired in the kind of organizational depravity here-to-fore reserved for troll lairs. Two days of us both working steadily and there are still piles of stuff lying around on the floor and trip-hazards everywhere. I just have too much stuff and even with a huge hobby room... just no place to put it all.

They're talking about a swap-day at one of our local FLGSs. I think I'm going to have to make some hard decisions about what I'm going to keep and what I'm going to let go. I've done that before actually and have been pretty happy having let go of 3 different armies... but it's clear a lot more needs to be done. It also doesn't help that every time the house gets cleaned frantically before someone's visit... anything that doesn't have an obvious "place" gets thrown into my game room. It also doesn't help that it serves as my office as well as housing a fairly large model train set.

The fun part though, is the re-discovery of all kinds of models that I'd forgotten about. My marines were scattered all over the place for example, so it allowed me to bring them all back together into their proper foam storage trays and get a lot of things repaired that had fallen apart over the years. I even found some rather big, showy kits that were in boxes buried under debris. Those boxes are now properly labeled and stored so that one day I might actually get to working on them.

I also found several "Mantis Maker" entries that competition participants had sent me and got them put into the display case where they should have been all along.

There's days worth of work yet to do on the studio/game room... but for the first time in a long time I'm making progress.

@cormandepanda: Please note I have not been begging for subscribers as I have yet to post one second of content. However, I am very grateful for the faith of those who have subscribed "on spec". Hope to make it worthwhile.

Did a bit of a re-paint of an old SoB mini for my friends Halloween-themed SoB army, "The Sisters of the Hallowed Word". This particular model has a very long history with my Mantis Warriors so it's really good to see her get a bit of fresh paint and be off to a good home. It's wasn't a complete re-paint (note the face is fairly basic), but I changed her to a primarily black & orange theme with green accents which looks really good (hard to tell from this angle, but I really like the overall effect).

The cloak came out really well in the back, unfortunately the model's in Iowa now so there's no taking a second pic.

Been playing a LOT of 40k helping my youngest to get ready for Adepticon. Man he's got his Nid list down. He actually had to back it way off because he kept winning the game in half-a-turn (i.e. he'd get the first player turn & after he was done there was no point in going on with the game).

Otherwise it's prep for Adepticon. Finished turning an old CD into a base for a Dune Crawler and am in the process of decorating the bases on the Reaver. Nothing fancy for the titan bases, just round dune-crawler bases (which is why my Dune Crawlers are having to make due with CDs for now). Been staring at the titan trying to figure out how to attach the arms. My magnets never came in so now I'm contemplating some kind of pin arrangement.

Also trying to decide how much crap to bring with me. I usually like to bring a couple of different armies for pick-up games, but they've been so hard to arrange (pick-up games I mean) that I think I'll just bring the AdMech. It's the army I know best anyway.

I did figure out that I can run an entire brigade at just 1500 points, which is pretty cool. It isn't super toothy... but it's not bad and I've got command points to throw around like nobody's business.

I know this isn't an exciting photo but it does show I'm working. As previously mentioned, I used my last two dune crawler bases to expand the footprint of the "Deus Ex Machina" to make it a bit more stable. I intend to have this beast see the table as much as possible (as a set-piece for battles if not actually participating in them) and as such, the huge bases you usually see titans mounted on create too much of a problem when it comes to how the titan interacts with terrain and other units. So I decided to do a simple rounded expansion of each foot which should improve it's stability considerably. What I'd really like is a plastic version of the carapace missile-launcher as the resin blob adds a huge amount of weight to the very top of the model, greatly decreasing it's stability.



With a bit of luck, I should finish these bases up tonight and then all I have to do is get the arms/guns mounted... shoot me now.


I've got my armies selected for the event. Just bringing AdMech this year as I've already got to drag along the titan and my knights. Thanks to Nerdfest09 who finished my last dragoon (chicken-walker), I can now field a full brigade and was delighted to discover that I can do so with only 1500 points (and it's decent.... no robots at 1500, but still decent). I like the fluffiness of the brigade and the fact that I can throw CP around with reckless abandon is a very entertaining. I I'll have iterations of my army from 1000 points on up, though since I've been using the battlescribe Ap I can reliably build lists on-the-fly with no need for printing out anything. Man I love that!

More later!

schank23 wrote:Wow Gitz the detail on those legs are great. The colors work really well together as well.

They are. That was painted by Nerdfest09 by-the-way. I'm just the sugar-daddy who paid for it!

cormadepanda wrote:The reaver legs are really attractive. I hope to see the rest of the model eventually.

I have faith you would do a good channel.

Imo the robots are really meh in admech. Dune crawlwes are amazing. Enjoy adepticon.

Ask and ye shall receive!




OH, and the magnets for the arms just came in. Yippie!! I'm saved!

Well, I'm all packed for Adepticon as is Thing 2. I feel like I should be doing something as I don't have to leave for 2 days. Feels odd not to be scrambling to finish something.

A few shots... the colors are a bit screwy, missing my regular graphics software which handled the variation quite easily (one of my photo lights broke so things are a bit inconsistent).

First, my 2k AdMech battalion. Not doing anything official with this, it's just for pick-ups.


Next, my titans. The Deus Ex Machina with her arms finally attached. Ended up pinning them because the magnets didn't show up until today.


Last, a glamor shot of the Deus Ex next to my favorite bits of terrain. You can see why I like the small bases, makes her much more playable.


Have the night off from regular responsibilities... might dig out an actual tech priest figure and see if I can't get it whipped together in time to take it with me.

Thanks graven!

Trying to quickly throw together a proper Tech Priest for my army. Will add some gold and a couple of more colors (and basing) and I think I'll call it done enough. Blending is a bit crude at this magnification but at tabletop view it'll look fine. I actually feel better painting something at the last minute... feels more like Adepticon now.