Standard Dice

Tournaments should provide players with tournament dice.

There, I said it.

How many times have you seen players change out their dice when they need a certain roll? Why not just remove any doubt of irregularly by removing it from the game altogether?

Ok, mini-rant over, back to the regular modeling and painting content.

Chaos Khorne Berserkers

I started painting this squad years ago. In fact, they sat so long that when I decided to paint them I had to wash them under the sink remove years of dust from the partially completed paint jobs. My techniques have changed quite a bit from those used when these guys were started, but I am really pleased with these none the less. I think I just needed a non-Necron diversion. I wanted to paint a squad start to finish. I wanted to toss these guys on the test bases you see, and just enjoy their ferocity every time I glance at them in the cabinet. I might even paint some more Chaos goodies now. It was so fun just painting something different that I feel like I may need to paint that old Chaos dreadnought I found on ebay. I have no idea how to put together a chaos army, but I think if I just paint what I want, I'll end up with something enjoyable on the table.

So I've been bit by the Chaos Marines bug. Does that mean I intend to paint cleanly and carefully? Nope. My plan is to speed...er...even speedier paint a force of these guys. I just want to enjoy loose brush strokes and the freedom of heavy washes, weathering, and verdigris. How long will this chaos spurt last? I think just long enough for me to use up all those black rusty test bases I painted up for no apparent reason. I may do something I rarely do, which is go back and take finished older miniatures, and weather them up, rebase them and make them fit in some kind of visually coherent way.

Necron Army Update

I've made a lot of progress on my Mint-crons recently. The Stormlord and Trazyn are complete, as are the death marks, and the Praetorians. I based both scratch built crypteks, painted another, as well as painted up a Heavy Destroyer I found neglected in the back of an independent hobby shop. (see there is a reason to go to non-GW stores!)  I also managed to paint up 10 more warriors yesturday.

Visually the biggest army wide impact have been the blue power tubes attached to the rank and file necron warriors. I have not decided what color to paint the power cables test, but once I do, the last step will be basing all of them. Warriors have a wide stance, which makes them fit poorly on normal GW bases, so I may gin up some resin bases for them. My last completely unpainted models are 4 bases of scarabs.

I'm glad the end is in sight. I love the new Necron models, but there just isn't enough variety to keep and hold my interest. I find myself itching to paint some good old power armor.

I wish everyone a happy new year, and oh yeah..world peace.

Black Templars Music On Vinyl!

Sometimes really weird stuff shows up at the office. A friend of mine from college sent me a note asking for an address to ship something that "I would not want, and probably could not use." Naturally I thought it was related to college gag we had going years ago. What turned up from the good Dr. was incredibly cool, a Black Templars themed album. In every way this hits the 40k button perfectly for me. Modern retro! (notice the soft orange leather ottoman in the background---mid century modern is where it is at people) I may have retro furniture, but I do not have a record player. I'll have to rectify that. I mean who doesn't want to hear tracks like:

The Emperor's Champion
10-inch record pressing

Side A
"Abhor the witch, destroy the witch"
"Uphold the honor of the Emperor"

Side B
"Accept any challenge, no matter the odds"
"Suffer not the unclean to live"

What an awesome gift this is. I thought that the two pre-heresy land raiders by wife gave me for Christmas were cool. This is far cooler. I've been wearing a smile since this arrived. Maybe this is a sign to use all those FW goodies I've been collecting and make a Black Templar force?

Trazyn and Imotekh WIP

I am nearing the home stretch of having enough HQ/royal court members to start playing games with my Necrons. I am ready to paint something else for a while. I am eager to base all of these guys, put dust on their legs and get them on the field of battle.  I like both of these guys as HQ choices. I could see myself running a mostly royal court army just for fun, maxing out on crypteks and scarabs, and taking minimum sized troops choices. It wouldn't be a tournament list, but it could be a lot of fun to see what happens when there are 10 crypteks on the field all in small squads. What are the other fun cryptic lists?

Bits Box Crypteks

I like the GW Cryptek model, however after buying two of them, and needing three more, I decided to see what I could do using some of those extra bits left over from some of the kits. I started with necron warrior bodies and added LG loin cloths, TT tails, LG rods of the covenant, and then half LG heads half death mark heads. I have no idea where the left arms came from, the the gestures looked amusing. So what do you think? Do these guys pass as Crypteks? I can always use them as little generic lords and go out and buy three more identical dudes.

Completely unrelated to the modeling, I am really happy with how the green shading on the torsos came out. There is a lot more contrast, and I don't feel the immediate need to lightly wash the things.

Covering Up Necron Green Plastic

I can't stand the transparent Necron plastic that comes with the older Necron kits. There is no way around it. In a hobby where I paint tiny models, something about seeing bare plastic makes  screams tacky to me. Rather than delve into this inherent contradiction, I'm going to instead focus on what I've done to get rid of the green stuff. In some cases I think It worked, and others, I am sort of meh about the results. Good word meh.

First off I had to come up with two replacement color schemes. I had already determined that white to blue would be the color/style for all of my power weapons, so I decided to push this theme for all of the green rods that come with the kits. Implementing this was the work of tedious air brushing. The new blueish rods are all done, and can be seen in the destroyer models, the warriors, and the sides of the monolith. after weathering I plan to add a gloss coat to all of the blue throughout the army. Having both matte and gloss is another way to bring visual interest to the army.

The second set of tacky green plastic to replace was the giant crystal at the top of the monolith and the warp portal on the front of the thing. Much like the blue, I had already picked purple out as the color scheme for resurrection orbs and the weird teleportation balls on the backs of teleporting troops. I wasn't sure about this decision at the time, but my desire to be consistent, and follow my evolving painting rules, lead me down this path. The crystal was a pain to paint, carefully cutting blue painters tape and taping off alternating faces of the crystal and then airbrushing the shading on.

I wish I had gone with blue. However, the purple is here to stay, at least until I have weathered and sealed the thing.

A couple of other painting updates.
1. I finished the airbrushing of the Triarch Pratorian war scythes.
2. I finished and based the last two flayed ones
3. I painted one of the classic Necron lords and added him to my royal court.

Not bad for a Saturday!

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) ;)