Battle Bunker Opened!

Don't you want to go where everyone knows your armor save?


     So the Bowie Battle Bunker has opened! I swung by today around 11:00am to take a look. I saw a few familiar employees from the now closed Arundel Mills store, and one of them was kind enough to compliment me as I walked in the door, boasting about my painting skills to another customer. It's really kind of silly, but regardless it put a smile on my face. The store was very busy with games going on all the tables. They had a Spearhead tourney that started around 2:00pm that had a surprising number of participants, but I didn't hang around to see the conclusion.

     The only down-side to the day was the incredible temperature in the store. I'm not sure if the AC was just not cooperating, or if that many heat-radiating nerds in that confined space just over powered the system. Thankfully, no musty dank nerd smell. Give it time though.

     I played a game against a younger player. He had Necrons and I had my Orks, but I didn't want to slaughter him, so I have to admit that I pulled my punches a little. Though he was tabled in turn four, he managed to put up a good fight. He was very loose with his measurements, but I didn't call him on it. I did stick to the rules on everything else though, because I still feel that he could learn from that. We had fun, and I gave him praise when he made smart moves. Hope he keeps with the Necrons because I'm sure the new dex will bring them in line.

     So here are some more pics, I didn't get pics when the crowd was thickest, but trust me, there was little room to move about. Here they are:

 I drove around the place three times before seeing that tiny banner.

 "Wait... is this a trick?" Yeah that's the door... squeezed in between two stores.

Yeah... it got worse before it got better. Strange narrow hallway leads to the store.

WHAAAAA? There's more than just one painted Ork army? I met the best dressed wargammer I had ever seen; Suit with a tie and classy suspenders... playing painted Orks. I gotta say I liked the man's style.

He's a hell of a converter too. Here's a custom made Big Mek. Absolutely stunning work.

Punch for the Punch God! Cake for the Cake Throne!

That's a Land Raider Achilles as part of a Spearhead army that had a total of 5 Land Raiders. I sorta call this cheating... those things are stupid awesome. Guy playing it was a bit of a smart ass though. I heard him boasting that he could table any multiple other tables after he was done with the Spearhead mission. Jerk.

Busting up a Slaneshy tank. Nice modeling work, and a clean and simple paint job. Thumbs up. This guy's Eldar army had some good solid work all around.

That's about it. It was a thrill meeting some good gamers out there and I really look forward to making my way out there for some more games in the future.

Maybe I'll just paint it red. Works for the Orks!

Camo time!


I know it has been a hot minute since I've posted, but work has been crazy, parents came to visit, and just other stuff getting in line ahead of my painting table.

But enough with the excuses! So this is my second attempt at knocking up a camo scheme I might want to use on my Imperial Guard. The first go was so horrible, I didn't want to document the mess.

So I decided I'd put my new airbrush to good use and came up with this scheme. It's easy, I can replicate it, and it doesn't involve three hours of masking.

A couple of "excuse the..." things that I need to explain about this mock up:
-Ignore the tires... just... well.. just do that.
-Yes... I sorta took my silly putty mask off the windows before I sealed it with matte spray. Dumb. But I really don't care all that much on this model.
- Vallejo weathering powders! Very easy to use. I'm sold!
-Blue/white/blue stripe thing is going to be on the front side of each tank hull. I only did it on the back of the hummer because there was enough space back there to really test the look.
- The roughness in the paint is because I didn't bother stripping my previous failures off before just respraying. That's why I test on this model. The 40K models will be smooth.

So I learned some important things, and I saw the cleverness of using silly putty for masking, and learned of the perils of tape masking in general. Weathering powders are working like I want them too, and I'm becoming a little more confident with them.

That's about it for now. I've got to work on magnetizing my first Chimera. That'll likely be my next post. Here are some close ups of the stripes and the different levels of weathering I was trying out. The one with more weathering gets my vote. Something about the chipped white paint, just looks right.