First Hab Block

The outline for the first Hab Block was cut last night, as well as the support structures. I'm fairly pleased with them and Rachel was already able to identify what it was going to be. I did this while A.I. was on TV last night, hwat a wierd little movie, and I love Science Fiction.

At any rate, I need to duplicate what I did last night three more times to prep for throwing up the ruined buildings for the apocolpyse game.

I've decided to add some support around the sides, to give it some definition. I'm trying to decide now between adding wire mesh in the windows, or bits of broken glass (plastic). I also plan on making some large red flags with the Aquila on it as well that drapes from one of the central windows.

I had been planning on doing some walkways between the buildings, but have changed my mind on it. I think the tall frame with the windows looks quite nice, and I don't want to go ruining it now because of a desire to link them together. All I have to say is taht you had better have some jump troops if you plan on getting to anyone on the higher levels, that is for sure.

Rogers needs to cut my bases before I can mount them, but I have plenty of work before I will get to that stage to be honest with you.

Next

So I won the tournament with my Tau. Don Brown came pretty damn close in a game between he and I of overthrowing me though. Go Tau!

At any rate, I picked up about 12 more hounds so that I should be able to field them consistiently now, instead of kroot warriors making up the rest of my force. There are based and assembled, but that's about it.

My marines, paint wise, are still exciting me, even if rules wise are driving me crazy. Odd to say, but I feel that marines really aren't that good. Sounds like heresy to say, but there it is. I'm working on a squad of assault terminators and the two old school rogue trader dreadnoughts I have at the moment.

Setting up my law office has definitely cut into my paint time, but I am going to try and get more hardcore about painting a bit every night. The hard part right now is that normally I paint to build a list, but at the moment, I'm just painting my marines because I like the models.

On another note, the apocolpyse game is now confirmed for up here on the 23rd of January. I am going to try and build some terrain and hopefully get my old stuff up from Hattiesburg.

Recently there have not been many photos here, and there is an excellent reason why. The computer I regularly post on is now at my office, and my wife's laptop is at home. Now I will probably start posing pictures as the models are finished, that way I have a good beginning to end shots.

And I don't have as much time to paint :-(

Tournament

Well tomorrow we have a tournament locally. I will be bringing my Tau. Some time next week I will post my army and also the battle reports for each game.

Update

Well I have been working on my marines, but nothing finished painted. My recent losses have forced me to reasses what I plan on doing with them. I think the problem is that the way that I want to play them is just not supported in the new edition. I'm not going to give up, but considering the tournament is this weekend, and the army that is painted is NOT ready to field... I have no choice.

Time for my Tau.

Now I have played some games with my Tau in 5th, and found a few things effective. I hear a lot of moaning in groaning and it's true that a few units took a hit, but overall I'm not sure what is so bad. I'm going to playtest some on wednesday and see how it goes. I'm running a fairly basic list that I'm about to post on wednesday and then make changes for friday. I do need to paint a few things up by the weekend... although I don't know where I fill find the time!

I haven't reached a conclusion about it but it has a lot of guts. It is a little paper thin IMHO, but I think it does successfully take advantage of the metagame (lots of vehicles). I think that it could fail against an army with large amounts of indirect, but I simply do not thing those armies are fielded in enough numbers to matter (besides Andy).

I'll be play testing tomorrow night.

Second Game

Was even more a rout then last game. I won't go into it, but in the Liber Angelis that the Angels of Wrath keep from the days of the Nova Terra Interregnum, it is known as the Folly of Chaplain Xarivus.

I will do a rematch against andy on saturday to try another list design. I'm sort of half playing as I throw units on the table and just watch what happens. I think I am starting to get a feel for how I want to play my marines... but it's a slow go.

On the painting front, I need to get down on some more stuff, but I am still getting used to the move and settling in. I am going to try to get a dreadnought painted this week, and if I do, that's doing good I think considering my new schedule.

I'm actually considering not taking marines to the tournament on the 5th and instead taking tau. I think at the moment my Tau are more competitive. I'm just more used to playing them, the marines are giving me fits.

Back to the drawing board. I'll try and get a dreadnought painted and posted by next week.

First Game

Well... not my first game ever... but my first game back.

I took a mish/mash of marine stuff and threw it against Ryar's tooled up salamander list... it got stuck in like a spit ball down a volcano. I maned to almost have a tie... and didn't get tabled (by one immobilized, partially damaged predator and (2) scouts.

The scouts were more impressive then I thought.

The bikes were not. I was fairly impressed with combat tactics to be honest, but I think the problem with the use of the bikes wasn't them, but me. Sometimes when you use strange units and they don't work out, blame yourself. The scouts were actually pretty good that game, even though everyone told me what trash they were exactly because I knew how to use them. I am going to drop my terminator librarian and use a normal librarian I think. I also need to get to painting a few units, but I want to finish my dreadnougths and drop pod first.

Anyway, that's it. No new pictures, I'm to busy trying to get settled here.

I should play another game on wednesday, and some this weekend. I'm very very glad that I have a

Landed

Well finally landed in Jackson. Nothing new to post hobby wise, as my things are still in transit. they should get here this week and hopefully when I get some sanity I can work on my dreadnoughts and drop pods next week and *gasp* actually get a game in. If I get a game in, I may post it as a video blog of the battle to youtube if people are interested. Hmmm, that's not a bad idea.

Ug

I'm drinking the random beers that seem to breed that are left in the fridge.

MGD 64 is not a drink fit for consumtion by man.

I'm Out

Ok, minitures/paints are packed so this will probably be my last post for a few weeks. I leave on saturday and will drive until next wednesday/thursday. My guess is that my stuff will not arrive till around another week or so after that, and it will take me a week to get set up, so expect something realistically before Thanksgiving (late November).

See you guys later.

Angels Terminators

Ok, so I got the terminators and the terminator Librarian finished last weekend. They took quite a bit more time then I had anticipated to be honest with you, but I'm pretty pleased with the way they came out. As usual, I think they are better then the photographs. The highlighting is always better, and it always sort of gets muted in the photos. I tried using the flash, but that didn't come out that well either. One day, when I'm stable again, I'll work on that.

Anyway, as I wrote about on the 40K Radio Forums, I did the battledamage and weathering on these terminators. I struggled with that decision, because I thought they looked good the first time, without the need to any, but then they would not have worked well with the army. Also, it took me awhile to decide how to paint them. I'm a Dark Angel successor chapter (sort of) so we use their number system for squads and companies, so it makes since they would also have single colors for the the 1st company (or 1st Order in my case). However the Deathwing didn't paint their armor bone until after an event from Post-Heresy. I decided to stick with the army color scheme. However I did make the decision that the Terminators from my First Order all wear their individual heraldry on their right should pad, so you may notice that. The reason for this is that by the time they are part of the 1st Order, you are quite the hero. Also my guys are sort of a Dark Angel/Black Templars blend. I'm working on their background that I will throw up here at some point



Here is my cyclone terminator. The cyclone is magnitized and can be pulled off. Wow did the highlights not come out on him at all. The red in this photo generally pops a lot more in RL. Sad really.

A picture I took with the flash of the Sarg.

Terminator Arixa, who has some battle damage on him.

And finally my terminator librarian

No Camera

The wife is in Jackson/Tupelo, MS scoping out the new place we're living, with the camera as I pack up the rest of the house. Yesterday I had a breather though, so I was able to finish my terminators. They took quite a bit longer then I honestly anticipated, but are now safely bixed away.

For the next hour or two I have some things around the house to work on, then I am going to dive into probably "The Last Models Painted In California" for me. Two Rogue Trader dreadnoughts and my scratch built drop pod.

Rogue Trader dreadnought you ask? Aren't those the bix boxy crappy dreads from the late 80s? Why Bother? Well, first off, I like old stuff. All my dreadnoughts are lead actually (3 new style metal, 2 rogue trader). Next, I think with a little conversion work, they look pretty good. Sadly, you probably will only get to see the finished stage of the miniture. Yesterday night was spent completely scratch building the arms and weapons and what not for my Ironclad (Rogue Trader) that turned out... quite nice to be honest.

Anyway, that's what I'm up to. I'll post photo's this week if I can. On saturday we hop in the car and leave so I will be out of contact for a week or so. That's it.

Ok

I psoted on the Freeboota forums at 40K radio about weathering today, but it occured to me that I haven't posted probably my best vehicles, which are below. Two Rhinos and a predator that I painted. I'm not 100% pleased with them, and honestly, I see some flaws from this angle. I didn't bother doing under them too much (mistake, now, but I can fix this later) and I wish I had blackened the drilled out barrel a bit more. But all in all I think they do a good job of showing the finished techniques I was talking about.

Next!

Ok, I have less then two weeks before I get on the road for my weeklong drive from San Francisco to Jackson MS. The WW (Wonderful Wife) is leaving this weekend to travel with the cat to Jackson to drop her off, take a look around where we are staying and also visit with her parents. So you know what that means? One last push for my models? Yep, you are right.

At the moment I am working on a single unit of Terminators and a terminator librarian. I mentioned earlier that I don't like to work on to many models at one time. This little group is perfect. I've been told that this weapons configuration is not optimal at the moment, and I believe it. However, I own fifteen terminators and want to pick up five more, so I'm allowed to paint some un-optimal things from time to time. Also, in the long run, things that suck generally become things that rock. This unit is army all with chainfists because (1) they look great and (2) I obliterated a Stompa a few weeks ago with these five guys. You do NOT mess with a chainfist in HTH. I have magnatized certain pieces is why the cyclone and other guns are in front of them. They get painted seperately. I intend on making my assault terminators completely modular, but will not get a chance to get to them till after I am in Jackson




Now, as to this weekend, the game is to deal with these boys. First, I want to say they are all Pewter/Lead and metal. Two Rogue Trader dreadnoughts that I am working on and (2) Dark Angel metal dreadnoughts. The first problem is that I'm not happy with my weapon configuarations. I need some Power Fists. I intend on scratch building some power fists and perhaps some autocannons this weekend. Check back and I'll show you how it's done.
Lastly is the guy below with no arms.


Now, I don't own a Ironclad dreadnought. However, I intend on converting this guy here to one. I had him all done up, but hated it so I ripped off all the parts I didn't like. I do NOT like the GW Iron Clad. I hope to have this felow with an interesting look when I get finished, although my sketches are a little vague. Expect a ton of pictures this weekend as it develops. Saturday I intend on doing nothing much but getting some things in the house ready to move and also making all of the conversions necessary. We will see!

Bikes Finished!

Ok so the (6) bikes, Attack bike and (2) Landspeeders and Captain Morveng on a bike are finished. Honestly this was a larger project then I like to bite off. Like they say about that elephant, take one bite at a time till it's finished. This was a lot of models. In addition the Landspeeders were a late addition. The bikes have been sitting in my box for quite a long time, but the landspeeders are actually LEAD. Yea, they are the original Dark Angel RavenWing landspeeders that came out... years and years ago. This was before the new plastic speeder, but were quite a jump from the previous version. In general they follow the new landspeeder shape, but are more compact. Considering they already came with all of the designs that I like so much (angels w/sword and the ravenwing symbol) they were perfect for my Angels of Wraith. However, breaking them up, cutting off all their weapons nad adding magnets was a little difficult, but fun. Ok, here is the Bike sargeant. All of the bikes are painted in a similar fashion, but I thought I would just post him.


Front view here where he is riding someone down with his power fist.


Here is the side view of him. I'm still working on battle damage and weathering. You should be able to clearly see the mud, and the dirt lines as the bike races. That's the goal anyway.



Here is the attack bike from a few points. Honestly, I think some better photography would seriously help these. I think they are much better in person then they are in pictures. After I get settled in jackson hopefully I can make that happen eventually.

Lastly is Captain Morveng. I've posted him several times. I've hand drawn an angel on his banner that isn't my best, but it's pretty good. Sadly, again the photo's don't really do him proper justice. He's a great model.

The bikes are a mixture of the original Ravenwing models from years ago, and also the new models. I have a regular biker waving his sword around. Here are the Attack Bi

No Pictures

No pictures today. I'm still struggling with my bikes/landspeeders and bike commander. They will be finished by the end of the week.

It's hard to believe that I've been playing for about fifteen years now to be honest with you.

Anyway, while about 50% of the total marines I won are finished, I still haven't the fainest what list I will actually play. The painting part has been fun and easy. I think it's because normall I paint to play stuff, now I'm just painting because I enjoy this aspect of it. I'm 90% positive that some modification of my Angels will be the next army I take to tournament, but I couldn't tell you for the life of my what it will look like.

I'm considering so...so... so many lists. Living in San Francisco has been ok, but I have found that doing many things was simply harder then it used to be. In general I found 40K to be on of those things. The GW store doesn't even run 1850 tournaments. They have so many people they only run doubles. I don't like doubles that much, especially when I'm not playing with a close friend. In addition the store (with traffic) is about 45 minutes away. The guys that run it are first class nice folk, no complaints there.

I think I've just come to the conclusion that I like my 40K Indy. I like Indy Rogue Traders, INDY GT's and all the rest. Every time that GW seems to get seriously envolved in my hobby, they mess it up. *shrug*. Great models, amazing story, decent rules.

Anyway, so I'm looking at Big Waaagh in Memphis next year and also potentially at BoLS Con if they do it again. I'm really impressed with the Bell of Lost Souls website. Waaagh is only three hours away from where I will be living. Maybe I will go to both, money depending.

I'll be moving to open my own law office in Jackson, MS soon, so time and money are probably going to be a little tight. Thankfully I think my Tomb Kings army I mentioned earlier should sell tomorrow. I also have 20 tac marines, 4 dreadnoughts, 1 landraider, 7 scouts, 7 assault marines, 3 librarians, 1 chaplain and about 10 honorguard/command squad to paint. I probably have another devestator squad if I do some converting. So I have plenty to keep my busy. I will need to pick up some transports though, as scratch building more drop pods/rhinos is out of the question. The next thing I scratch build will be my Micharius style tank.

I started playing 40K years and years ago, but I was never very competitive about it. I played with some friends, I went to collage, I stoppoed playing. As I neared graduating from law school I picked it back up, and started playing again. I sucked at painting then, but was enthusiastic. I had the remains of a badly put together dark angel army, and that was about it. I piddled with them, and around that time the Tau came out. My (current) tau army that I use is at dakka, but I have the (poor) pictures of my first tau army on my hard drive. I'll post them some other time. I played Tau, and managed to win a Rogue Trader or two with them and took them to my first Grand Tournament in 2004... I didn't do that great. Actually... that's not true, I did pretty good, but not perfect. The codex started getting dated, so I switched over to Demonhunters. I still have the Imperial Guard remnants of that army, and my painting technique had improved by then. Anyway, Grey Knights were such a dismal dissppointment as an army that I wanted a "hammer" army. Something that people quaked in fear at when they saw me coming. Well, I decided that Lysander was the way to go. I painted up a VERY specific Lysander Wing army for Adpepticon. I came in 5th overall, and got quite a decent painting away. I later sold the army, and honestly... I really wish that I had not. I probably would be playing Fists now if I hadn't sold them. Ohhh well Cest le vie. I did however win a GT in 08 with my Tau, which made it all worthwhile. Anyway, here are some the photo's of my first (in my opinion) decently painted army. This was the first time I also built a battle board that was any good, and used inset models for my army (which is awesome, but can be a pain in the Ass).

First, Captain Lysander. I thought he came out wonderfully.

Standard terminator sergeant. I didn't take this photo, the photgrapher at the GT did. I used the forgeworld shoulder pads (Buy them, they rock!) and the black templars bits to make them special.)

This was the battle board and lysander's command squad. The assault cannons were conversions.

This was a top down view of the battle board. It was four squads of six terminators, two squads of scouts and three landspeeders tornadoes. Assault cannons of death! That gun was broken. I'm glad they changed it, but now it's a P.O.S. (Piece of shit)

We also played in a team tournament and I made this librarian for that purpose. This was before the current librarian that they have now. The shield is freehand, and was the start of that as well.

I've got some more I'll post another time.

Drop Pod Finished

Ok, here is my Master on a bike with the base coats finished and the bleached bone on him. When the bleach bone is on all the bikes I will start on the highlights. I'll post when his highlights are finished.




Ok, here is my finished drop pod, all put together. Nod bad if I do say so myself for my first scratch built. I've started work on a Macharius pattern tank, but haven't gotten that far yet. I'm going to finish painting all of my bikes and landspeeders before I focus in on it again.

Drop Pod

Ok, the Drop Pod is done. I'll take some finished photo's of it later. I had a entire set of photo's of it's completeion, but they got deleted. Here it is right before I started the last 25% or so. I'm trying to hunt down a CD to make a base out of it and model it so it looks like a hard crater landing, but unfortunately, we are about 1/4 packed to move, and the CD's all are in a box.

And my wife HATES it when I start unpacking packed things. No surprise really.

Some remarks on the design process. I started off using some thick card, but in the end, I enjoyed working with the plasticard a lot more, and found it a lot easier. Also I sued some balsa wood to give the fints some depth, but wood glue does NOT work well with plastic. Stick with standard white glue. Sadly, I probably used about a hundred bucks in supplies at this point. Let's hope this pays off in the future. I've already started on my next scratch build project, pictures of it next time.






This is what I'm working on at the moment. My bikes for my Angels of wrath. They just have their base coats on at the moment. Six bikes, vet with Power Fist, attack bike, and commander (popping the willy). The Landspeeders are the original metal dark angel models, all lead I believe. They were held to go with glue and a prayer when I put them together around fifteen years ago... Fuck has it been that long? I've been playing 40K since around 1992-1993, right at the end of Rogue Trader before 2nd edition came out. Anyway, all of the weapons are magnatized. I'll take some photo's of these guys through the process.



This is probably going to end up being Mollach, Master of the Arsenal. It's hard to tell that he is painted any different then DA's as his armor is so concealed by his cloth. To bad he isn't a good pick using the Space Marine 5th ed codex. But Still, not bad, he is my second master painted so far.

This is also going to be a master. I build his Thunder hammer from scratch, and am really looking forward to having him painted. I'll post his ongoing pain job here for you. I still have NO idea what army list I plan on settling onto when it's all said and done, so I'm just sort of painting everything.

Here are some of my completed marines of my Dark Angels Sucessor Chapter. I'm still working on the name of the chapter. Angels of Wrath won't seem to go away, but it's a little to... angry for these marines. I'll post their background here eventually. These photo's are a little rough. Hopefully after the move I can set up a better photography area for my minitures.

Anyway, first is Venerable Gabriel of the 5th Order (5th Company). When I painted him he was the first model I wanted to try some freehand angels on. I think they turned out alright actually.



Next is Captain Azazel. I may not use him as my current Master of the 5th Order, he may be a deceased individual. However, he was the first independant character I painted for the army.

Sergeant Raziel of the 7th Squad of the 5th Order. Raziel is a headstrong Sergeant that seems doomed to death. He has refused several promotions to the 1st Order, and has chosen to lead his men by example. His sucessess is only overshadowed by his attrition rate.

Veteran Sergeant Azerix of the 2nd Squad of the 5th Order. The oldest sergeant of the 5th order he is taciturn and mean as hell, but get's the job done. he is a conversion of the old dark angel sergeant with a Rogue Trader era Power Fist.

Here he is with his entire squad.

That's it for now. I'll post my chaplain, librarian scouts etc... later.

Tau Concept Work

Since the release of planetstrike I have been annoyed that there was (as expected) no Tau terrain. For this reason I'm considering scratch building about ten pieces of modular style terrain, then casting them to build tables for the group in Jackson, Mississippi where I will be back to playing again in a month (Yea!). Anyway here is some of the concept work so far. I don't plan on working on this for a bit, but sometime in early 2010. In addition, the last image is a piece I want to make to convert Hammerheads over to Swordfish (twin linked heavy railguns). I think I will have to build a new railgun for it as well actually. It's the worst one. I have the mathmatics of the piece down, but not the look.

Drop Pod Post 1

Ok, so this is really the first post, i.e. the BEGINNING of the blog. The first assessment of what I need to build my drop pod.

Yesterday I went out and purchased my supplies that I THINK I may need. We will see what I do and don't. This is what I picked up:

Plasticard .5 mm, Evergreen stuff, a lot of it.

Plasticard long circular pieces (to cut for rivets) two sizes,

Plasticard long square sections... this was for my thunderhammers that I want to self build. I did one last night that came out pretty well. I'll post a picture of the model later.

Aluminum rods for guns and weapons etc...

A paper ctter for straigt lines. I'm not sure I got the best one, but I have to deal with space alotments for the moment.

Some 2.0 mm balsa wood

1.0 mm card. The directions say thick card. I'm not sure quite what that is, I think these plans were drafted by someone in England, so you get these inconsistancies from time to time.

Here is a picture of them on my work table.

Now, I printed the plans that I picked up off of the yahoo groups. Great bunch of guys there. Here they are for all to see:

Now, I think that they meant for this to be printed on card stock of some type, then fold. I'm not going to do mine that way. The plan is for this thing to be almost identical to the GW one, so I am going to do a lot of these pieces the best way I can. It seems fitting that the 40K Radio Marathon is tomorrow, as I will be listening to them while the wife is out, and trying to wrap my mind around this.

Angels of Perdition

So I'll be posting up my painted Angels of Wrath soon. I'm finishing off a Tomb Kings army that I've had for a bit before I move. Anyway, here was the initial base design for the chapter. This isn't quite the cheme I went with, as I did Dark Angels iconography. I did go with the bone and black with red for the offshoot color however. Here is the base design. More to come. I've also decided that I'll be doing a set of scratch built drop pods when i get settled, and am really looking foward to that!

Tomb Kings

Well, I don't even play Tomb Kings anymore, but I'm finishing up an army of them this week. I'm preparing to move out of San Francisco, and back to Mississippi. I'm selling my tomb kings before geting back on my Space Marines that this blog will be about for the future.