Back in Black

     After some time away from the painting table (though certainly not from the gaming table), I have returned. What I've returned with, and what you see above, is my first "commissioned" piece. I must say that I actually ended up not charging for it simply because the fellow I did this for is a good friend, a great spirited 40K player, and has been very entertaining company at the local game store. As I'm moving away from this area next month, I though it would make a suitable parting gift.

     I was all too happy to paint this model. I have a strange love for Space Marine Chaplains. Their models, their back story, and their menacing color scheme just strikes a chord with me. If I were to point at a GW model that embodies that, I think the Chaplain Terminator would be just that model. The "Death Head" helmet on this particular model is just pure awesome. His solid stance, and embellished armor really gives as regal sense.

     I used a very familiar technique for highlighting the black armor, and it is certainly my favorite. I used Shadow Grey to do hard-line highlighting and then accented that with Codex Grey. I went further with the Codex Grey to create scratches, or wear in a few locations to break up the black. I still prefer a cleaner style of Space Marine armor as, regardless of how old these suits are or how long they might have been fighting, they are treasured relics, cared for endlessly. I would expect battle damage during battle, but not lasting for far too much longer once the proper repairs have been effected.

     My Orks continue to enjoy success on the gaming table. I've had some very interesting and enjoyable games over the last few weeks. I've also had the distinct pleasure of introducing another coworker into the hobby and I've been lending whatever assistance I can to help build his army list in an effective manner. It has still only been slightly over a year since I started into this hobby, and I've been able to guide him by avoiding any mistakes I might have made. Some more shots of the Chaplain follow, thanks for reading:

Trial By Fire

     Wow what a game! I wrote last week about a game that was less than amazing. It didn't even reach turn three! There really wasn't much in the way of war gaming nourishment to be had from an experience like that. I'm happy to say that THIS weekend's game was quite the opposite.

     I lined up a game with a friend from work. We had agreed on 1850 for the points level. He's still very new to the hobby, so I told him that he shouldn't stretch out his army to reach the agreed value, as it usually just ends up creating a frustratingly bad army. He reminded me that he was planning on using allied Grey Knights, and there's no question that he would be able to reach that mark. Those units can soak up some points. Usually it's not for the best, either.

     We decided to try a game from the Battle Missions. We rolled off, and came up with a Chaos Space Marine's mission called "Black Crusade." This was basically an annihilation game type with one MAJOR special rule: all non-vehicle units, once completely destroyed enter your reserves and can come back in. This turned our 1850 point game into something much larger. As a result, this game lasted nearly four hours!

     This was only his third game playing his Sisters of Battle (first time playing Grey Knights) and my third game playing my Blood Angels variant list. This didn't help us speed up play, but the biggest part of the problem was the units just constantly re-entering the fray. Most of the fighting was focused on the middle third of the table. It became a real meat grinder in there. He was able to deep strike his once dead units back on the table, and usually with some pretty good success. This meant more assaults, more shooting, and obviously more time!

     You might think that I'm complaining about this. Nothing could be further from the truth. I enjoyed this game immensely. I found the match-up profoundly interesting. He made some mistakes (namely he forgot to use his faith abilities), but I think he made some pretty solid tactical choices. I was playing my Blood Angels much better than I had before. I had really thought through some of my previous horrible tactical blunders and was able to foresee those problems before they occurred in this game.

     I ended up winning the game by a substantial margin. It was something like 12 kill points to three. The major reason for this was my Honour Guard. I haven't really talked about them on this blog, but I have to say that they are by far the most under-valued and overlooked units in the Blood Angels codex, and if used properly, can be one of the most amazing hammer units on the table. I'll have to talk about that unit in more detail in the future. I still need to finish painting them, so perhaps when I'm done, I'll do a little write-up.

     The picture at the top is from my newly assembled Hell Hound. I've started my Guard army, and I've got a few pics to show for it. I'm trying to be a little bit more involved in my basing for this army. The theme is more urban, and thus I've decided to put a bit more effort and time in making these things. I'm quite happy with my first batch. Here is a pic for ya:

The Most Dangerous Game

     I'm back in the groove at home. I've started work on my IG army, and I have just so many ideas spinning around in my head that I'm having difficulty focusing on finishing my Blood Angels. There's not just a terrible amount of work that I have to do, but there's enough that I'm letting the IG distract me willfully. On the Guard front, I've assembled my first Veteran Squad, I've completed all their bases, and I've even managed to build a Hell Hound (complete with magnetized weapons). I've also been pecking away impatiently at my Valkyrie model. I'm afraid of doing any substantial assembly as I need to understand what I'm going to need to paint and how I might magnetize things.

     I stopped by at my CLGS this Saturday for a game. I experienced what I might classify as the worst game I've ever been a part of. I brought my Orks (1850 pts) against a Necrons army. This guy is a regular, but he's not very... good. He basically lost the game in deployment. He crammed everything into a corner, put his Monolith in reserve, and let my Biker Nobz and Foot Nobz run rampant through his trapped Necrons. I've seen this guy up there on and off for the last year. I really have to wonder what he has been doing because there were some really basic 40K concepts that seemed to be alien to him. He didn't even know that you can assault multiple units. He asked if that was a piece of war gear that I had on my Nobz.

     The game was officially over at the end of round two. Unofficially it was really over after the top of round two. Though I won, it wasn't fun. I've said before that I thought my Orks were a little TOO competitive to be fun, and a game like this certainly shows that. I'm not saying that I can't lose, I've proven that I'm quite capable of that. I just think I just enjoy a game were there are more eventualities. Which is why, at some point in the future, I'll need to paint up a few less power-gamey type characters for my Orks.

Ever feel like you've forgotten something?

     I'm back from a two week vacation back to my home town, Dallas. Every time I take some leave time, that's where I'm compelled to travel. As a Texan, I must return to my home country to recharge my batteries and find some examples of better living than where I currently live. One of these pleasures is playing 40K with my long time friends that live in the area. One of the others is visiting the GW store that's in the area.

     I tried, desperately, to complete the eight models I needed to adapt my vanilla Space Marine army into a Blood Angels variant. The only models I managed to complete to any degree was the two Sanguinary Priests and a Sanguinary Novitiate. I was super proud of how they turned out as the models represented my most unique modeling attempt yet. It wasn't until my first night there, hanging out with one of my 40K buddies that I realized that I had left all three of these at home. ARRGH! I was filled with sadness and shame. To try and get back at least a small part of my pride, I took some pics of these models very soon after arriving back home. Those you see above were the source of my blunder. More details shots later.

     I had an excellent time, playing quite a lots of games. We played games from the Battle Missions book exclusively. This turned out pretty well. You might have heard other sources comment that the three missions for each race represent a difficulty scale of "Easy, Less Easy, and Hard." They aren't telling the truth at all. We examined these missions pretty closely and determined that the difficulty of the missions do vary for the originating armies, but it's not consistent across the entire book. It also varies based largely on the armies you are choosing to play.

     We played a few "Theory-Hammer" games, testing out some armies my buddy had dreamed up. I was shocked to see how these somewhat silly builds did on the table. They were difficult lists to play against, and at least one of these he seems to be determined to build. He had just recently completed a Grey Knights army and seemed pretty happy to build an army based on a codex that wasn't over eight or nine years old.

     I picked up the 40K basing kit from the GW store. For only $20, it seems to be a pretty neat kit. There's nice little resin base features, some slate chips, and some course gravel. I'm quite happy with it as I'm fairly terrible with bases, so this should help me out.

     The bigger news, however, is that I'm ready to start on my Imperial Guard army. I'm building a guard army that might not be super competitive, and that's totally fine by me. I'm wanting to make a sort of "elite" guard army. Veterans and Storm Troopers make up the infantry and a couple of Valkyries and just three all-out offensive vehicles makes this much more of a finesse army than most Guard armies.

    I'm planning on giving the army an urban camo theme, but I'm having a little difficulty finding a good tutorial vids or pics on some good grey or like colored guard. If anyone knows of one, please let me know.

    Here are some more detailed pics of the Priests:

The Holy Hand Grenade

     Here's a little sample of what I'm working on this week. I've set myself a goal of completing at least 8 models. I'll start priming tomorrow. Above are my two Sanguinary Priests. One with a Power Weapon (an Axe in this case) and the other with a Power Fist. I decided to model each of my priest type characters using some Black Templar bits to really make them stand apart. In addition to this, given that the Sanguinary Priests are typically holding a chalice, I thought I'd put my own chapter's spin on it. Each priest is holding a sort of "holy relic" if you will. The one on the left has the "Holy Hand Grenade" which is an orb from the Black Templar upgrade kit, and the one on the right has a thurible (incense burner). These priests will be painted black, to match the chaplain, with white surcoat. I choose the Death Masks from the Sanguinary guard because I thought they'd give the models a bit of a ominous look.

     Here's a look at my captain I'll be working on as well. He's modeled with a Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield, as you can see. Again, I mixed some bits from the Black Templar upgrade kit along with a Space Marine Commander kit, Assault Marine kit, Sanguinary Guard helmet, and some Terminator bits for the hammer and shield. I magnetized the back pack to be either a jump pack or a regular back pack, thus giving me some flexibility on how I field him. In addition to that I'm preparing a Librarian for the same purpose. Here's a look:

     I'll actually be painting him up first as I've never placed a psycher on the table, so I'm wanting to give that a go. I've got a week to paint all these models up, before I head home for some vacation time and thus some serious Warhammer 40K time as well. I have a friend that is frantically trying to complete a Grey Knights army in time for my arrival as well. Best of luck!

Get to the Koptas!

     I've wrapped up my Deff Koptas, and this brings my 1850 point Orks army to a close. I have plenty of other Ork units that I will work on in the future, but for the time being, it's time to move to my Blood Angels SM variant army. This will allow me to play my current SM army with a little twist. I'm very excited about some of the modeling I'll be able to do with the few models I'm adding to take advantage of the BA codex.

     I also reached an interesting milestone with the completion of these Koptas. I've now painted an entire Assault on Black Reach starter set! I think that's pretty awesome. I purchased that kit just about a year ago, and from it I've developed two 1850 point armies. I've got to say that it has been a great first year in a new and interesting hobby. I'm really looking forward to continuing my armies and playing a ton of games. Here are a few detail shots of my Koptas and my AoBR set:

Can you hear the distant thumbing of Koptas?

     Here is a quick shot of my Deff Koptas all ready for priming. I should have a few more ready for assembly in the future, but these six will be enough to fill out my 1850 point list. I'll be running them in two squads of three. I've really tried my best to make these six Koptas as different from one another as possible. As these are the last units for this army, I have a large selection of bits to throw around. I dug through some other random odds and ends and used those for the bases. Hopefully these will be properly interesting to look at.

     I didn't have a chance to get any 40K games in this last weekend as my wife graduated from college. Her parents and god parents came into town and we had a great few days of celebration and fun. It was  a ton of fun, but now I must focus back in on my army and get these Orks finished up. I had a goal of attempting to finish my Blood Angels variant of my Space Marine army before I return home on vacation, but I don't think that's going to happen. I would need to complete five Honour Guards, a magnetized Captain, and at least two Sanguinary Priests. Though that's not outside the realm of reality, I think I'd maybe end up rushing the job just a little too much. We'll see, I suppose. Depends on these Koptas.

     Stay tuned for the Blood Angels variant project, I promise there will be some truly interesting models and paint jobs. Until then, here are a few more closer shots of the Koptas, enjoy: