Battle For Salvation 2013

My wife and I drove up to New York for the Battle for Salvation tournament this year. Ed, Bobby and the entire BFS crew, put on a fantastic event. It was welcoming, approachable, and a tremendous amount of fun. It was a wonderful weekend.  I can't say enough good things about the tournament. Everyone was friendly, the terrain was great, and the event was really well run. I am so happy we made the trip.

While I threw down with some dice in possibly the largest mall I have ever been in,my wife and her girl friend explored New York one day, and went hiking the next.

My wife had a lot of fun as well and we've decided to make a yearly event out of it, though next year we'll stay an extra day so we can both go hiking around one of the nearby lakes.

In terms of games, well there were many, and once again Telion lead Ultramarine scouts to their doom.  Rather ironically I played a lot of NOVA players. I learned a great deal about my army while repeatedly being tabled. I think I may need a few tutorials to really get it down. My two wins awoke the desire to at least play competently, so more games are in order. One of the things that would be nice is having time to watch better players play. I would have really liked to be able to wander around during the last round to see how the top bracket players were playing. That might not be practical from a tournament perspective, but it would be really interesting. It would also allow each of the top tables to have a tournament judge, and make the game more of a spectator sport.

So now that my ultras have two painting awards, I feel like I have to switch armies. I really want to keep painting them, and upgrade the quality of the work on the storm ravens and the tanks, but I also don't want to keep brining the same display/force to events.  I feel like every event needs a new army, even though I want to keep pushing the ultras. Grrrr....choices.. What do other people do? Do you keep refining or do you create a new tournament force every time?

Another great BFS side effect is that I've learned that I like creating display boards. This is both really cool, and impractical at the same time. Boards are hard to store.

Battle For Salvation Thunderhawk Recovery Force

Updated with new photos above

I wasn't able to get my real camera to work this morning, something about battery exhausted. So we'll have to make do with more blurry iphone photos. I had t post photos, because I am really proud of how this army is turning out. I plan to go back and re-weather the storm talon's after BFS to bring them in-line with the new painting style. Right now they lack oil washes, which makes them stand out quite a bit. I hope I am able to win at least one game with this army. I'd gladly accept a tie. I think with three full squads, I should at least be able to control one of my objectives. At the NOVA narrative I noticed that my army folded once close combat monsters got in range. Hopefully I can produce two bastions, using the dread to anchor two squads and the terminators and one squad anchoring the other. That leaves the scouts to hitch a ride in a rhino and sit on some other objective. The captain may join them to give them a little punch. Outside of that I plan to castle up.

After the experience making this board, I really want to make a full city table with ruined building and downed aircraft. I really want to play a game on a table where this board would be just one piece of the terrain. Too bad I used a non-standard size!

Battle For Display Board: Thunderhawk Down

May I present Thunderhawk Down, the display board that accompanies my Ultramarines 315th Expeditionary Chapter (pre-heresy eventually). I have no idea what possessed me to rip apart a display board and give myself a nightmarish amount of painting two days before hitting the road to New York, but the painter abides.

I'll take better photos of the army on the board tomorrow morning when the light is better, but the idea was to present a crashed thunderhawk being recovered by ultramarines. At this phase in the construction the model was still semi-gloss varnished and hadn't had the overall dusting of thinned down graveyard earth that is necessary to set the model back into the terrain.

I really can't believe I completed this. It goes to show how important weathering is as a painters tool. The more I look at it the more I want to surround the hawk with tallarn desert raiders in their yellows and greens, or kroot in their earth tones. I've always loved the movie Flight of the Phoenix, and seeing the hawk incorporated into a desert tent marketplace would be pretty interesting.  Think aliens, using the structure to build other make shift structures as part of some dessert bazaar.

I hope this display excites gamers at the GT. After all, I am not going there to win. (one came would be nice) If anyone else is going to BFS,  stop by and say hello. I'll be the guy with the crashed thunderhawk and the Ultramarine scouts ;)

Ultramarines & Battle For Salvation

My wife and I decided to head up to New York for the Battle For Salvation tournament. So lots of gaming for me, and lots of time in New York city for her. We needed a break from DC, so the tournament came at a perfect time. As is now tournament standard for me, I don't have a fully painted force, or at least a fully painted one that I want to run. I had to paint another tac squad. Fortunately for me I was out of generic plastic marines, so the new tac box was required.

I've read a lot of disappointment online about the new plastic tactical squad box. I am a hobbyist, and for me the new tac squad is just what I wanted. It is familiar, but at the same time crisper and with better poses. I love some of the new details, like the MK 8 backpack see on my sergeant above. I love how washes cling to the crevices making it really easy to highlight. Now, I wish there were no purity seals, since I've never really liked those details, but these are easy to paint. (mine are not done by the way--just the first thin coat of paint on)

How are these guys armed? With the new stuff obviously! I don't know how useful grav weapons are, but I armed the sergeant and the specialist with them just to paint up something different. The grav sculpts are a little weird, but I am happy to see something different on marines.


Now I just have to finish painting and base them....and put transfers on...and weather them.....

Did I mention that I might just grab my Blood Angels instead...oh the choices. At least the BA dex is not digital. (my SM dex is the ipad version and I can't keep it from crashing)