NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 4

 I continued working on the charity Knight today. Oils were added to the pneumatics, eye lenses were repainted, and pigments were liberally distributed to tarnished surfaces. This guy is getting close to completion. I wish I had the opportunity to win this army!

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 3

The gloss is starting to go away, and the finished knight is beginning to emerge. I usually take photos of stuff, not just to share, but also so I can review the painting and clean up spots I might have missed. For instance the sensors need cleaner green transitions, and the leaking oils to the pneumatics needs to be reapplied post matte. I am happy with this guy. Some lucky person will win this model along with eh rest of the army as part of the charity raffle.

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 2

The NOVA Charitable Foundation knight is in the home stretch. It might be hard to tell due to the gloss coat, but the armor plates are done. Once I dull coat the model the shading will be brought back forward, and the weird interplay between the matte oils and chipping and glossy undercoat (for protection) will have the same finish quality. For those who don't know, you can win this knight along with a beautiful Mechanicus force by entering the NOCF raffle. Once again we are supporting Doctors Without Borders, a wonderful organization providing medical care to people all over the world.

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation Knight

This ungainly fellow is a 30k Knight for the Charitable foundation. Every year I paint something for charity, and this year I was lucky enough to be tasked with painting an all resin Forgeworld knight. Since this guy is part of an army give away, I am sticking to painting style of the team leader. His style involves a lot of transparent paints, which is new to me. So far so good.

Going To NOVA 2012

So last year I had a great time at the NOVA open, it allowed me to play all eight of the games of 40k that I had played that year. I had a great time. The people I met are great, the games were fun, the room was stinky, and the hurricane and rain provided a sort of gamer car wash when lunchtime came around.  So obviously I signed up for the NOVA for next year, but I haven't played any games since the last NOVA.

....crickets......

Yep, I played all of my games last year at a single tournament over the course of 2 days. I need to play this game more often. Tim over at The Tau of War who predictably a beautiful tau army, suggested a place called Dream Wizards in Maryland wednesday nights. I'm not sure if I can get there from Capitol Hill during the week, but if they do gaming on the weekend..... Challenge Accepted. My Tau versus your Tau. (Tau are the coolest army after all) ;)

1st game in over a year

I played my first game in over a year yesterday against a really great painter, and an even nicer guy, shawn, over at Glaven.net. I brought the army above(yes in that sexy cardboard and tape movement tray), and he brought 2k worth of demons. I've never played demons, so it was thrilling to get the chance to play one of the essential fluff armies in the 40k universe.

Shawn's army ate mine. It was fun, I learned a lot, but I really think BA are more my style. Perhaps I do have to finish off painting troops so my BA force can be a contender. I was hoping that with the relatively small deathwing force that I was going to be minimizing the trouble of transporting them and then setting them up and playing. However versus 17ish units I just could not maneuver.

Since I was railroaded\d\d\d\d\d into playing in the NOVA (thanks jawa! :) I now have to train. I'd like to think I am Rocky in this fantasy, but really I am just training so my opponents can have relatively fast and fun games. Things I learned from game one of my training sessions.

1. I need to have all special rules and main rule book rules on hand. This includes psychic powers. I am going to make a cheat sheet
2. Just because my army can DS does not mean it needs to. I think I should have castled
3. My bikes are glass, they shatter on everything. Best use them as last minute objective grabbers
4. splitting a bike squad into two units of three, makes a single weaker unit even worse
5. If I can't play to win, I should play for the draw
6. DW are neither hand to hand, nor long distance fire support. I have no idea where they fit.