Musings

It's been a dogs age since I posted here, but that's no surprise considering that my daughter has been eating up oodles of my time.

In the news:

Hobby HQ
I've built a game table so that I can host get togethers. It's a fairly simple construct, 2 folding tables made from table legs and 2 4x4 plywood boards. The idea being that they are easier to move around and you can combine them to play. It leaves you a 2 foot staging area. I plan on reinforcing the bottom of the tables, and maybe even doing some extra work on the staging area to make it a good place to roll dice. Tough to decide, I have 2 warmachine/hordes tables at that size.
I also have a bigger/better hobby cabinet with cupboards and glass windows to display stuff in. Neat. I'll post pictures when I can.

Best painting discovery in the past month or two ? Acrylic flow improver/retardant. Get some.

Chaos
The Chaos slowly progress. I settled on a list to build towards and am slowly priming and painting things. My defiler came in the mail as well, but I've promised myself not to crack it until I get more stuff done. Really happy how these guys are turning out.

Tau
These kids are almost done. I'm putting the finishing touches on my HQ and accompanying Crisis Suits and after that all that's left is a Hammerhead and Piranha. It's actually been hard to finish this army. Part of the problem is that my skills have grown an incredible amount since I started the army. It's been a 2 or 3 year labour of love (I've lost track), but now that I'm at the end, I'm a bit unsatisfied. A large part of that has to do with the quality of my paint job on the early models. Granted, I was learning and they are a good tabletop quality. I'm tempted to go back and *fix* some of the older models, particularly my stealth suits and pathfinders, but I'll have to do this some other time.

Menoth
Still waiting for a package in the mail to round out my starter force. Eager to try out Warmachine.

Orcs
Getting my fantasy bug. Talked to a friend about playing it, been reading my rulebooks and getting excited. Watched Lord of the Rings which makes me excited about the fantasy genre again. I have had sitting around everything I need to build a good starting army, I have no excuse to not start them at this point.

Changes to my Chaos

After playing a game with a friend of mine, we discussed the painting end of the hobby. I had always enjoyed that he picked a custom scheme for his Imperial Guard army, with his own background/ideas instead of a pre-packaged GW theme. I had mentioned that I was starting my second army using a Black Legion colour scheme, and he suggested that I make my own faction up and do it my way. Now, while I enjoy the game-play a great deal, I think that the hobby end gives me some of the greatest enjoyment, it's certainly a focus for me. At any rate, here is what I've come up with so far: It's just a test scheme, but I enjoy how it looks so far. I figure my veterans will have bone colour helmets and a slightly different chapter emblem, while the less experienced marines will have green helmets with black as a secondary colour. I think I'll base them on a bit more of a wasteland look, with dead grass. I tried to keep the tones muted, yet give it enough oomph to stand out on the table, I think the contrast in the shoulder emblem really works for this figure. I'm really trying to think of a good name for the chapter that suits their theme. I feel that this groups is more on the space pirate/raider/marine renegade of the spectrum (a la Red Corsairs etc) than the "I'm crazy and mutated and tainted" end of it.

Continued sickness

After a brief recovery for a few days, I'm back to being sick again. I spent yesterday down in the dumps and today is actually worse than yesterday. Seems to be the same cold rearing it's ugly head. Some hobby update.


I picked up the new Greenskin codex for fantasy. Really impressed with the binding/presentation. Finally GW is going full colour. Good layout, easy to read and built for the beginner or the vet. Haven't delved too far into it yet, but hey, gives me an excuse to at least basecoat what I have laying around.

Put the finishing touches on a Chaos Lord on a bike, with a daemon weapon. Banged out a scenic base - basically a cliff/jump of stone, with space marine helmets underneath. The lord is a bit of a kitbash, using a unique head, one of the less possessed posessed backpacks, and the flaming sword from an empire wizard kit. He looks awesome. I'll post pictures as I work more on it.
Only thing I am concerned about is that the scenic base is going to give me LoS issues, since he should be able to safely ride behind a rhino without being seen at normal base height. I'm sure that the rulebook covers scenic bases though if I recall. At the very least I can clear it up with my opponent before I start any games.
Also primed up some Chaos. Giving up on the Black Legion scheme for my army, going to go with my own scheme/chapter. More on this later.

Played a game with my Tau vs IG doing a battlemission. Great close game. It really looked like it was anyone's game in the last few turns, but in the end I managed to get the victory.

In the next few days I plan to get my but in gear and get the start of the planetary empires campaign that I'm promoting off the ground.

Sickness

It's official, my daughter is a germ incubator.
I've just been off two days of work, one to take care of my family, the other to have them take care of me. The good news is, I had some time for hobby.

Now that the dust has settled after the move, I've organized up my hobby.

Today was a bit of off topic hobby. Though I didn't think I'd ever try any tastes outside of the GW hobby, I picked up a starter warmachine force. Realization that to play the game required very little models (I have four to start with!) made it pretty approachable as a side project. After all, that's maybe a week's worth of hobby work. With that in mind, I plan on putting extra work into the figures as I do them, really take my time.

In the past two days I did up the bases for the starter force.

Since I'm doing a Menoth force, I opted for dry, cracked earth, to lend itself to some of the desert/fire themes in their background.

Here's how I started, filling the bases with GS, using bark for some extra rocky detail. I textured the greenstuff with crumpled aluminum foil, a toothbrush and a sculpting tool:


Then I primed in black, basecoated in a medium brown and drybrushed lighter colours to achieve this look:


With a model:



I also wanted to experiment with off-whites of late, so I've been working on this marine for fun, painting him to a higher standard than I would an army. Still thinking up a unique chapter symbol/name.




I should have some pictures of a Chaos Sorcerer and standard bearer for my Black Legion up soon. As well, my Tau army nears completion. All that remains is some finishing touches on a crisis suit squad and a bit of vehicle painting.

Hobby Mastery

So, I've been painting and I've been comparing and I've been thinking.

Since I've started back into the hobby, my hobby skill level has gone up quite a bit.

Since I've been packing to move, I've had to organize my hobby stuff before I box it up. This caused me to dig into my models. I lined up a selection of models from different points in my development, from one of the first cruddy blood angel marine I painted to the more recent stuff like my dreadnought. I was pretty shocked at the degree of difference from my early work to my more recent projects. I'm encouraged. I always wanted to paint magazine/competition quality models and it's good to see that I'm still improving and haven't hit a plateau. I really need to get a better camera so I can take a photo to accompany this post. It should be happening soon.

The other thing that has picked up is my painting speed. With my improvement as a painter, I'm painting at a fairly rapid pace. I think I'll get into hobby overdrive mode once I'm settled into my new place.

Expect more frequent updates with photos shortly after the move.

On the block for the coming year:

- Game table and terrain building.
- Completion of my Tau army
- Orcs and Goblins
- Chaos Space Marines
- Gundam models painted, possibly dioramas. I plan to mostly airbrush this
- Warmahordes
- Baby pictures
- tons of battlereports including events surrounding an upcoming campaign that we should be starting shortly.

Measurements

Man, wargaming has made me an inch machine.

My wife phoned me last night because she's picking out a curtain rod for our new shower.

Her: "I don't know what to get, this one says 72" how many feet is that?"

Me, (immediately): "That's....6 feet. Yeah that would work".

Her: "how do you know that so fast?"

Me: "Uh... a standard gaming table is 6 feet by 4 feet."

Her: "......."

Chaos

Hello there,

A while ago I started building a chaos army. Really, I have almost 2k points in stuff built yet most of it isn't primed or table top ready from a painting standpoint.

The first thing I tackled were some older models I inherited from a friend.

First off, Raptors. I love the old models, I had some fun mixing in new shoulder pads, hands, and weapons to bring them up to date a little bit. The photography still needs some work, but mostly I need a better camera.

Not shown - the one raptor that I managed to break on th way to being photographed, I need to redo the base, and do some touch ups.

Click on the pictures for a much better view. The detail is much clearer in real life I'm afraid.






And there's the dreadnought. I'm really proud of how this guy turned out.

I'm back baby!

Months after the cuteness invasion in my life, I'm back into hobby. Sadly I have no pictures for this post, since my cameras are bursting with pictures of my sweet Ava.

Some of the more exciting news comes in the form of the life changes that came with my baby. I've bought a house, which turns the hobby dial up. I have 500 square feet of basement to play with, and a garage, which opens the doors for ease of priming, setting up my air compressor permanently (for basecoating etc.), and creating a real hobby space with a game table or two. Finally I can get into building terrain and making my own little slice of hobby paradise.

Hobby Update

I squeezed in my fist game since my baby's birth just a week ago. Orks vs Tau, I tried out a list with stealth suits rather than Crisis and included a load of Kroot. It was a fun infiltration/outflanking list. Very close game, came down to the last turn, but ultimately the Orks squeezed one out ;).

Tau-wise I haven't painted too much more. I finished a few more of my Chaos hounds turned Kroot hounds, painted a Fusion stealth suit and basecoated my second Broadside and final Crisis suit team. I'm so sick of painting blue-grey that it's becoming a chore to finish the Tau. Sometimes I wish I picked a different colour scheme for them, but they look sharp on the table and for my first complete army it's a great first effort. My painting skills have really grown with the army.

My Black Legion project progresses slowly, but I'm not in a rush with this one. I love how the chaos models look, and I'm really taking my time to get a close look at the detail as I paint. I put together my plastic Daemon Prince finally and he's a real monster! I knew he'd be around the size of a dreadnought, but he is so much more dynamic. Can't wait to paint him and field him.

My squad of old school Raptors is almost complete. I basically inherited 5 of the old raptor models from a friend. They were missing a few limbs, but Chaos Space Marine parts filled the gap and look real natural. It really updates these models using modern weapon and shoulder pad sculps. I can't wait to post a photo when they are done. I really went to town on them and hand painted their shoulder icons when adding detail and it makes them pop. I wanted to give them each different versions of the Eye of Horus, inspired by the codex rather than using the bunk transfers that come with the kits.

Tenatively, I'm starting with a 750 list as a goal. I plan to cut on some painting time by making my chaos hound as kroot hounds be summoned demons for this army as well. This doesn't represent a competitive list, but rather one of the easier/fun lists to put together.

HQ
Demon Prince - Wings, Warp Time

- wish I could spare points for a mark of Nurgle here

Troops
10x Chaos Space Marines, Icon of Chaos Glory, Rhino, 2x Melta
5x Lesser Demons
5x Lesser Demons

Fast Attack
5x Raptors, Champion with power sword, Icon of Slaneesh, 2x Melta

- a bit pointy for this scale of game, but useful when used correctly. Great for armour hunting or wiping out squads of 5 men or less (stragglers).

Heavy Support
Predator with Sponsons

That's off the top of my head, probably some small errors in there. Nice and basic, has some flaws of course, but I've played some variations of this list and had a lot of fun with it. Normally I'd run a squad of Khorne Beserkers at this point level rather than raptors, but I'm a Fast Attack sort of guy at the heart of things.