Battle Honors - Update (Week 5)

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Battle Honors - Update (Week 5)

Warhammer 40,000 - Our first season of Battle Honors moved into week 5 and I faced off against a Goff Mob led by Ghazkill Thraka. Moving through the eternal war mission from Chapter Approved 2018, we played “In the Wind” this week, which makes units with the “fly” keyword faux-obsec, being as my force consists of multiple Land Speeders and jump pack infantry I had a slight advantage. This week we played 2,000 points per side and neither force had units sidelined because of injuries last week.

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Polar Vortex - Tempestus Scions Test Model

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Polar Vortex - Tempestus Scions Test Model

Warhammer 40,000 – My painting queue is incredibly full at the moment. One of the projects I’ll be working on is a Tempestus Scion force with a Knight detachment. This client had another painter start work on the force and wasn’t happy with how they turned out. White models are typically really hard to make look good especially for something that’s meant to be viewed at arms length. Arctic Camo tends to be completely white which is also incredibly hard to paint well. Typically you’d start with a blue or a gray and work you way up to pure white. For a single model this is pretty reasonable, but for a larger force that much blending would take more time than most people would be willing to pay for.

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Battle Honors - Update (Week 4)

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Battle Honors - Update (Week 4)

Warhammer 40,000 – Our Battle Honors campaign has moved into the fourth week. This week we played the fourth Eternal War mission from Chapter Approved 2018. With the weather improved there were four of us so we played two 1000 point 1v1 games. Xenos vs Imperial and Chaos vs. Imperial. We had the non-imperial players roll off to choose their table and opponent before setting up the game.

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Battle Honors - Update

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Battle Honors - Update

Warhammer 40,000 – For the first part of 2019, I’m running a Battle Honors campaign. This is a super flexible system that allows players to participate whenever they can. Since each non-character unit gains honors the more you play with it, most of the players are keeping the same 2000 points to maximize the growth potential. If players miss a week or fall behind the power level increases help to balance out the games by giving the lower power level a ruse card or sudden death card from the open war deck.

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Taking the Black - More Deathwatch

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Taking the Black - More Deathwatch

Warhammer 40,000 – I think I’m near the end of the infantry for my current Deathwatch client. This batch has a few more Vanguard Vets and some armed to the teeth Primaris Marines. As with the previous models I started with a dark grey base, painted the gun metal bits and then washed with Nuln Oil. This is my standard for painting black at the basic level. The wash accomplishes the shading and highlights well enough with minimal effort. For a budget job many of my clients will chose this option.

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Flying Lawnmower - Death Guard

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Flying Lawnmower - Death Guard

Warhammer 40,000 – Another one done. I feel like I must be nearly done with everything my Death Guard client might want to use in his force. Every few months he brings me another piece but at this point I’ve painted pretty much one of everything in the line with the exception of basic troops.

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The Tale of the Bloody Baron - A bit of lore behind my list

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The Tale of the Bloody Baron - A bit of lore behind my list

Warhammer 40,000 – While building competitive lists and winning is fun; I find the most rewarding part of this hobby is coming up with a backstory for your army and seeing it grow and mature over time. While I’ve dedicated the first part of the year to painting and learning my Blood Angels list, I still have several other armies that I continue to think about which inevitably leads to me going off on a tangent and another year of unfinished armies but that’s neither here nor there.

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Is a Leadership Based List Viable? - Chaos in 8th

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Is a Leadership Based List Viable? - Chaos in 8th

Warhammer 40,000 - Early in 8th edition I decided to do a Night Lords list, my idea was to do a ton of Raptors that messed with leadership to force my opponents to run away. Sadly with the rule of three spamming a ton of minimal Raptor units isn’t really viable. Another issue is that “assault troops” with a single base attack don’t really do well in assault, nor do small specialized units. While they’re vicious and great in combat in the lore and other background; in reality Raptors are a mobile firebase that can max out on special weapons.

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Totally Tau - More White Wariors

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Totally Tau - More White Wariors

Warhammer 40,000 – With changes to the points costs for several Tau units one of my clients has opted to add some additional firepower to his existing force. I painted the bulk of said force last year which you can read about here. It sounds like he wants to do a mechanized force backed up by various suits. As there is only one vehicle in this batch I expect that there will be many more as the year progresses.

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3D Printed Terrain - Check this Out

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3D Printed Terrain - Check this Out

Terrain – 3D printing is all the rage these days. There are some amazing designers selling stuff on Shapeways, super creative generous people that upload designs to thingiverse and a plethora of etsy shops that specialize in table top accessories. In fact there’s so much cool stuff out there it’s sometimes hard to cut through the clutter and find the best stuff.

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Three's Company - Dealing with an Odd Number of Players

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Three's Company - Dealing with an Odd Number of Players

Warhammer 40,000 – With a new year I’m working on running a new campaign. Rather than get complicated I’m opting to try the “Battle Honors” system presented in Chapter Approved 2018. Most of my group has committed to playing and painting a single 2000 point list before the end of the year. Which makes it really easy to have fixed unit cards that will allow us to keep track of the units experience during the campaign. I picked up a fancy hole punch to keep it official, so after the game honors can be doled out.

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Cabinet Treasures: Captain Smash and the Robo-Wizard

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Warhammer 40,000 – Way back when the Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought kit was released I picked it up along with a Storm Raven and decided I’d run my “Raven Guard” as Blood Angels. The new kits were really cool and the codex seemed to be a slightly better fit for what I wanted to run than what I could build with the “standard marine” codex. Sadly I lost interest before I finished painting any of the list and it found its way back onto my shelf of silent shame … I think at that time I was disappointed with 40k and moved to play Malifaux and other skirmish games as a replacement.

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Men In Black - Death Watch

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Men In Black - Death Watch

Warhammer 40,000 – This fall has bend quite full with commissions. While I’ve managed to get through them all, it was a bit of a challenge to get through them all. Part of the reason is most of these were fairly large model count batches. Which is typically easier for me to grind through when everything is similar in color or shape. Deathwatch is a bit different.

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Big Timers - Primaris Death Watch

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Warhammer 40,000 – With this year’s Death Watch codex the Men in Black of 40K got a big boost to their available units. Intercessors will give them a bit more range and a few more wounds to help stand up to the various Xenos threats that plague the Imperium of Man.

To make the marines stand out as coming from a multitude of far reaching chapters I painted some of the shoulder pads in off-colors and applied a decal. Much like the old-pallet swaps in video games subtle changes make something into something brand new.

Rush Job - Nurglings and a Herald

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Rush Job - Nurglings and a Herald

Warhammer 40,000 – For some of my regular clients I offer a rush service. For a slight premium they can get bumped to the front of my queue. This option is very popular with some of my more tournament minded clients who have crazy list ideas pop into their head and need a few models to add to their existing force.

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Bring in the Big Guns - Death Guard Heavy Armor

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Bring in the Big Guns - Death Guard Heavy Armor

Warhammer 40,000 – Death Guard continues to be on the top of my commission list. It seems to be flu season or something with all the infected that are crossing my paint desk lately. The most recent batch include some of the tracked guns, a landraider and a group of Terminators with scythes.

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