A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Warhammer 40,000 – Our week one event went off with only a minor hitch. Two of our players couldn't make it which left us with 6 guys. It would have been easy to play a team of two and a one vs. one game, but because three of the players hadn't played since 6th edition and hadn't had any play experience we opted to do a team battle of 3 vs. 3 (total of 1500 points per side).
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – One of the most daunting things about starting this hobby is having to put together your models. (Painting is a close second, since before you can do that you need to put them together.) This is especially true for newer players that are interested in the social and tactical aspects of tabletop gaming but come from a background of video or board games where everything is ready to go right out of the box. A large percentage of these newer gamers don't have an interest in the hobby aspect of the game (yet, it will come with time) so paying to have these parts taken care of makes sense for them.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – My local group has decided to play along with the Games Workshop Worldwide campaign. Looking at the requirements for the weekly challenges we opted to do a 500 point list to start with, the core of which has to be from a Start Collecting Box. Each week you get another 100 points to add to your force. You're required to add the new focus unit and can drop one unit from your previous list, everything else has to stay the same (Excluding upgrades). The goal being a completed 1000 point force by the end of the six weeks. We opted to build to 1000 points since out weekly games tend to be team affairs and we weren't completing games in a reasonable time with the larger totals.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – To be honest I've never liked Tau. I don't really know why they suits are cool, the backstory is fine and the Damocles Gulf Crusade supplement and book was really great. Something about them just never sat right with me. (Probably the anti-commi sentiment drilled into me as a youth in the 80's)
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Cover is one of the things that doesn't seem to really matter much in 8th edition. You're either in it or not and if you are you get +1 to you armor save. When you're blasted by something that's ap -4 it won't matter to most models. The advanced rules add a little bit to the terrain rules but the core is still really simple.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – So I really liked what my initial Raptors list did on the table. It felt like the special forces style of play I was going for and the individual elements seem to have played their parts really well. As a 1v1 force that allows Forgeworld I look forward to playing that list.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I have another Black Legion Client, apparently he saw the work I did for another client with the same army and really liked what I did. Back in third edition Black Legion was my first army when I got back into the game and have always been one of my favorite bad guys.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I'm been grinding through list building using a core force based around Liass Issodon. The idea is if I can get good at playing the core of the force I can swap around elements to expand on their potential. Ideally the parts I swap around with help to make them a more balanced all take-all-comers still list. I feel like the core of the force is geared toward taking out high value targets quickly, but it might have a hard time in a war of attrition.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Back in 2003 when I started the Twilight Ravens chapter they were based on the Chapter Approved Ravenguard rules. I did this because I loved the logo and the local meta was skewed toward Chaos Marines, so the idea of Marines that hit chaos on threes seemed like a good idea. Over time my chapter has evolved with the editions and now fits in the generic marine realm. I have models from the entire range and with a few tweaks of building a new model here or there I can build most anything I want to play. This means that since I devoted myself to marines as my primary army the Twilight Ravens haven't be shelved even if tactics and army builds changed with each edition. With eighth edition I want to do something different with my marines and until the codex comes out with chapter tactics (I really hope Forge World comes out with a pdf chapter tactics update to go along with the indexes) making do with the generic Index entries will have to do.
Read MoreKickstarter – After some minor delays the Reaper Bones 3 Kickstarter arrived. I didn't go whole hog on this one as I don't play D&D I don't really need a boatload of Fantasy models, even if it's an amazing deal. While this was running my group was playing quite a bit of Frostgrave however, so I did pick up the Graveyard set to fill out my board.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – 8th edition continues to shine as my group tries playing through various size battle and themes to see what we like best in 8th. I've owned Fantasy Arc's Bug Hunt Corridors for some time now and I will eventually complete all the parts I have so i can justify picking up some of his cool new rooms and specialty corridors.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Eighth Edition 40K still seems to be a hit with my group. Each week we've had a four player team game trying out different styles of play. This week we put a restriction of 2,000 point battle forged armies with no "titanic" models. The idea being that we'd see how things work with focusing on the more standard units. We rolled off to determine teams and then followed the rule book to set up a standard Maelstrom of War Mission.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – Having played a few games of the new edition of 40K my gaming group decided to do a large battle bringing all out big toys to the table to see how they work in this edition. Initially it was going to be 6,000 points per side but one of the players had to bail so we dropped it down to a 4,000 point per side team game.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – With the games I've played so far in the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 I'm really happy with how things have worked out so far. There's still a bit of lag mostly due to looking for things that were in previous editions. Getting you're head around the whole, "Does it say anything about that on the 8 pages of rules, or on the unit's data slate? No, then it's not a thing" can cause some minor disputes about things that aren't really a thing.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Regular readers will know I have a terrible time following my own projects to completion. Commission work I breeze through in record time and can easily crank out a massive force in a few weeks, but when it comes to my own models I have shelves of things that got three colors to get to the table and I never quite got around to finishing them (Looking at you Space Marine Chapter...)
Read MoreMy painting table is going to be a bit of a mis-mash of things for a little while. I've had several clients drop off big jobs that hit many different parts of the gaming spectrum. In the weeks to come I'll be working on:
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Drones and suits; suits and drones. I've been doing quite a bit of both of these lately. The newest additions to the Tau force I'm painting for a client are a Commander, Ghost Keel, and Stormsurge (As well as the associated drones). These will be joining the other units I've painted previously.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Eighth Edition Warhammer 40,000 is out! With the rules that have leaked out so far I've had several clients bring by units that they never would have used in previous editions to get painted up to match their existing forces. Being able to assault out of reserve is a big deal and the Tyranids have a cool burrowing horror that can do just that, it can also bring along another unit to join the party. This seems like a pretty strong option, hence I have a Terragon on my table waiting for the purple and white of Hive Fleet Leviathan.
Warhammer 40,000 - The next batch of Daemons is done. These are part of an economy commission I'm doing for one of my clients. It's a fairly simple "three color" scheme that's meant to look messy and gross.
To get the effect I start with a olive drab basecoat. I then paint any of the metal either brass or gunmetal. A quick dry-brush of an almost neon green pulls out the details and adds a interesting texture to the metal bits. I then got into the mouths, pustules and wounds on the models with a light pink, which is pretty jarring looking at this point. To tie the while model together and tone down the super bright colors I do a full wash of Crimson. This fills in the recesses, tones down the color and makes everything look infected and sore. Once the wash dries I dot the eyes with neon yellow and pick out the teeth and horns with ivory.
At this point these are done to and economy standard. If I was painting these to a higher level I'd do some pale yellow highlights, add some washes of purple, yellow and green to really bring out that infected look and probably add some Nurgle's Rot and Blood for the Blood God Technical paint. I have a feeling when my client has his characters ready I'll be taking them up a notch.
Warhammer 40,000 - Here's another piece for my mining industrial terrain set. At this point it's playable but no where near done with painting. My goal with this set was to get it together, base coated and washed as fast as possible so I could get it on the table to play Shadow War: Armageddon. Now that 8th edition has released I'm thinking I'll get back to this project after I finish the Genestealer Cult army that is supposed to match this terrain set.
I stopped working on my own armies to focus on terrain until the rule set was released and I could confirm what I was working o was still playable.
