A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Warhammer 40,000 – So yeah, prior to the Betrayal at Cath set coming out I bought a tactical squad of resin Mark IV marines. I really have no plans to play Horus Heresy but the models were a good deal and I like that Mark of armor, so I'm using the bodies for other purposes.
Read MoreNinja All-Stars – I recently received a big package from Soda Pop Miniatures containing the backer rewards for their Ninja All-stars Kickstarter. Since they've taken over running their own Kickstarters everything seems to be delivering on time or at least really close. Makes me wonder who was at fault for the Relic Knights debacle (Really a shame because it's a great game with a fun system and background that got the shaft because of the way the Kickstarter went)
Read MoreReview – Friday night I went out to see Deadpool. After the travesty that was X-Men Origins, Fox finally made good on the property. Kudos to them for sticking with the the R rating, not every movie has to be toned down to milk the box office sweet spot, sometimes it pays off to just make a good movie true to the source material. (As a Rob Liefield fan-boy, yes I can say that with a straight-face his run on New Mutants and X-Force were some of my favorite books ... granted the character really came into his own in later books)
Read MoreFrostgrave – I had a little free time to do some additional work on this table. For the buildings I was going to do a Tudor-style face but realized that the Ultra-board I'm working with is rather difficult to carve stone into. I'm sure I could do it with my Dremel, but the amount of work compared to the payoff didn't seem to be optimal.
Read MoreDungeons and Dragons – These brutal looking guys are now on their way back to my client. I'm really happy with how they turned out. I tried to keep a fairly monochromatic scheme with these so they'll fit in with most any scenario. The bases vary a little bit to represent a dungeon, wasteland and generic exterior location.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I'm not sure if juggling several projects at once is the most efficient way to work when I have a bunch of stuff that needs to get done in a similar timeframe. It helps to show all parties progress steadily but I almost think it adds time to the overall process. Regardless I finally wrapped up these Salamanders that needed to match a previous army I painted.
Read MoreFrostgrave – After playing a game of Frostgrave, I'm hooked. The rules are simple yet deep enough to offer some interesting options. The concept is great and I'm eager to do more work on my fantasy urban table.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – One of my regular opponents just assembled a decent size Tyranid force and really wanted to get them on the table and I had a list I really wanted to tryout prior to a tournament coming up in March. We agreed prior to the game that we'd play 1500 points, Battleforged, Eternal War on a urban table.
It works out well when you can predetermine all those elements before a game, that way you're simply pulling out the models rolling off and going. We also emailed each other our lists prior to the game so there weren't any surprises.
I decided to run my Twilight Ravens as Imperial Fists this game:
HQ - Chaplain
Elite - Command Squad - Apothecary, 4 Melta guns, Melta Bombs, Drop Pod
Elite - Sternguard, Powerfist, 2 Melta Guns, 7 veterans, Drop Pod
Elite - Sternguard - 2 Melta Guns, 8 Veterans, Drop Pod
Troop - 5 Scouts with shotguns
Troop - Powerfist, 4 Scouts with shotguns
Fast - Storm Talon lascannon, assault cannon
Vindicator Squad - 3x Vindicators
My Opponents ran:
HQ - Flyrant
HQ - Flyrant
Troop - Genestealers
Troop - Genestealers
Troop - Genestealers
Troop - Genestealers
Fast - Lictor
Heavy - Mawlock
Heavy - Carnifex
Elite - Warriors
The game was Relic with corner deployment. The Tyranids set up and went first. Which resulted in me losing a scout squad and another getting pinned. My first turn dropped in the Sternguard who proceeded to paste two squads of Genestealers. The trio of Vindicators blasted the apocalypse template onto another group of Genestealers and managed to take out half of them.
Turn two the tyranids strike back. Closing into combat the bugs start to tear up the marines. Being locked in combat means my Sternguard are less than effective.
Turn three is more messy combat where the marines seem to be slowly winning. Even though a Mawlock burst out of the ground and killed of half a squad. The command squad and Storm Talon come in but are less than effective.
Turns four and five swing decisively to the Tyranids and i concede when I only have the three scouts left that can possibly score the objective. (The mawlock bursting out of the ground into the relic sealed that)
Overall the game was really fun. I don't see myself using a vindicator squad in this list again. The giant template was cool but I feel like I could get more bang out of several smaller units instead.
Frostgrave – I never really got into Mordheim, the game seemed interesting but Warhammer Fantasy never appealed to me. The buzz about Frostgrave got me interested in the game. My wife gave me the short story compilation for Christmas and while it wasn't mind-blowingly good it was interesting enough to convince me to spend the $18 to get the rule book.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I've posted some additional photos in the gallery for the Dawn Spears custom Space Marine chapter I've been working on for a client. This is a basic 3-Color job with custom decals.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I recently picked up a Knight Atrapos from Forgeworld. The model is very nice and I was able to get it put together and base coated in time to put it on the table at my regular game night.
Read MoreBoard Games – This week I was able to get a few people together to play some board games. It was a nice break from more intense tabletop games to play a bunch of different games. I think I'm going to instill a once per month board game night as part of our rotating schedule.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I have two separate Salamanders clients, both of whom need new models for their forces. One of these armies was a commission I did a while back. The other is a match job to try and make the "new" models fit in with the rest of his force that was painted by someone else with a very different style than mine.
Read MoreDungeons and Dragons – One of my newer clients has been sending me miniatures to paint for Dungeons and Dragons. I never really got into the game but the models are lots of fun to paint. It's nice to do some fantasy models every now and then.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – It's been a busy season. Unfortunately that means I've been behind in my posts. The rest of the month might be a bit sporadic but I'm back on my regular rhythm with a new year.
Read MoreWarhammer Fantasy – One of my clients gave me a bunch of Warhammer Fantasy stuff to sell to cover the costs on his next army. One of these is a Brettonian force I painted back in 2004.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – One thing that is fun about having regular clients it that you get to see their armies grow and change over time. This batch of scouts is for the Orange Scars army I did which recently added a bunch of Raven Guard style units.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – I've been paying a loose campaign with four of the guys in my regular play group. To ring in the New Year they wanted to play a massive game. Initially the discussion was to play 40k of 40k (20,000 per side) we lowered that to 16,000 as my partner could only make about 4,000 points. After the last larger game the four of us attempted to play Christmas Eve eve, I expressed my concern that in order to play this we'd need at minimum 10am-8pm to play. (assuming everything went smooth). The general consensus was it wouldn't be a problem.
We arrived at 10:00am and started setting up immediately, first the terrain and then the models, we had agreed prior to has the Chaos forces set up first and agreed on the first Apocalypse mission using the Maelstrom cards in addition to the scenario rules. By the time we got everything set up it was 12:30pm (that was a bit unexpected)
If we couldn't seize the initiative Chaos would be going first. A quick roll turned up a six and we prepared to start our turn when our opponent informed us that he bought a legacy of glory that causes your opponent to re-roll any attempt to seize. I picked up dice annoyed and manage to flip another six. The look on their face was priceless. We began to pummel their side with a ridiculous amount of fire power. As we continued to roll our turn lasted until almost 2:30pm.
During our opponents turn they needed to stop to take a phone call. It turns out someone wasn't clear with how long this would take and was getting questioned with how soon he'd be home. Turning this massive apocalypse battle to a hard stop at 6:30pm. Sadly they wrapped up their first turn right around 5:15pm.
Deeming it not fair to bring on our reserves and begin the second turn we called the game after one turn and totaled victory points. We had scored 11 points of the maelstrom cards and an additional 3 for holding objectives, the forces of chaos had scored 5 points and held 3 objectives. Surprisingly we managed to squeak out a win with well over 1/3 of our forces not on the table yet.
The small amount we played was fun but I can't see ever attempting that large of a game with four people ever again. The set-up and process just takes forever and having a random "emergency" pop up can really mess up the timetable. The general consensus after this event was we'd keep everything to 4,000 per person max. It's twice as big as a "normal" game but still something that should be able to play through 4-5 turns over the course of eight hours.
Warhammer 40,000 – The first part of this month was consumed with several large projects. The insane number of assassin teams are finally wrapped up.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – This year I got just a few models to add to my forces. I took the time to quickly put together some of them to cover options that I didn't previously have with these new kits. (Namely more Grav.)
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