Fall-In Convention

Fall-In approaches, and I can't wait to hop in a car and head up to Pennsylvania for some excellent GM lead gaming. One of those GMs is Steve Carey, who'll be running the Battle of Sollum game we put together for our gaming club. The game is excellent, with hidden units, and more realistic Bolt Action rules. I highly recommend you sign up for it. Personally, I recommend playing as the South Africans. Advancing into a town filled with hidden German DAK is stressful and exciting. 

I plan to spent Friday playing in a 1k Bolt Action tournament, and since all of my German DAK infantry are needed for the Sollum convention game, I had to get a little creative. The good news is that I can finally use a Tiger tank in a game of BA. (I have also never used a Stuka dive bomber, but aircraft rules for BA are terrible, so really nobody should have used one!) The Tiger will be the command vehicle, with everything else just running around attempting to crush opposing squads under tank treads. Viable strategy? No. Fun? Yes. 

Also, just in case anyone wants to pick up some Bocage, I plan to bring a bunch of bocage to the Walley's basement swap meet. I have a hankering for all things Epic 40K, so bring some epic stuff if you want to trade. Otherwise the bocage will be purchasable for some unknown price. Honestly, I have no idea what 20 feet of bocage should go for. I may bring some of the houses I made as well if there is any interest.

Anyone else going to Fall-In?

Weathering Experiments

Marc Raley kindly shared a method of paint chipping using windex a while back, and I finally had the chance to give it a shot and see what I could do with it. As usual, I picked up some rhino hatches and went to town. Given that I was going to go overboard with the weathering on purpose, I thought it would be fun to paint the doors as if they were Death Guard.

Chipping Process

• Paint base coat rust
• Laquer varnish
• Paint top coat
• Use Windex to eat through the top coat exposing the base coat

On the right door hatch I painted on some of GW's crackle paint to see if it would make realistic paint blisters. I think I need to paint up an entire rhino side section in order to get this right. Chipping control was very difficult for me. It was far easier using a toothpick to pull scratch around. The mud is Tamiya's mud product. It really needs to have a dry section of mud further up the vehicle in order to sell the effect, but I wasn't sure what color the mud would dry in the first place.

Given how weathered the doors are, these have to represent Death Guard who have already fallen to Chaos and begun the long war.

Epic 30K Troop & Army Shots

I had a packed of GW rectangular style bases arrive and decided that meant it was time to paint up some infantry. I have one detachment of tactical, three stands of devastators, four stands of terminators, and one captain stand. Once I complete two war hounds, I will have the basics of a nice little Sons of Horus force. I plan to paint up a World Eaters force to complement these. The change in color pallet will help keep the painting interesting. After that, I might have to tackle the Imperial Guard army. I managed to find two pristine Imperial Guard detachment boxes from the Epic 40k relaunch, which includes Valhallans and Catachan jungle fighters. I think those boxes are going to be a bast to paint.

Four Dreadtober Sons of Horus Dreadnoughts Completed

The Ork dreadnought is on hold while I decide if I want to paint it up for display purposes, lacking it, I had to find something to paint in order to fulfill my Dreadtober pledge. Enter Epic 30k. I had a lot of fun painting up a full unit of these guys, even applying panel shading on them as if they were 28mm instead of 6mm models. Since I had the paint out, I went ahead and painted up some land speeders, some original plastic land raiders, and three shadowswords for the force. The last shot is just a photo of what I have painted so far. Once I get some stands of infantry painted I will have a usable force. I've been holding on painting any infantry until I figure out how to base the minis. The crackle paint bases are serviceable, but rather dull. 

(ok I know 6mm dreadnoughts is not what Greg had in mind when he cooked up Dreadtober, however I found a way to make it work! You know what, I think I probably painted the most dreadnoughts for Dreadtober. Go me!)

Sons of Horus EPIC 40k

I am falling in love with Epic 40k. The game died years ago, but somehow a whole community has grown up supporting it. After reading one of the two free rulesets, I was struck by how similar Epic 40k is to Bolt Action. The basic idea of suppressing instead of killing works very similarly in both systems. In Bolt Action it is part of the pin marker mechanic. In Epic 40K it is the blast marker mechanic.

So with rules I like, the question was whether I could paint up some old epic models and make them look cool enough to enjoy a game. The models here are bad casts, so I did not feel particularly bad about laying down a quick test paint scheme. I like it. These guys are 6mm analogs to my 28mm Sons force. This is exciting as I have some FW resin Thunderhawks coming in, as well as some warhound titans. We should be able to get a good 4 legion game together in the near future.

NetEPIC one of the two rulesets.  A direct link to rules here.

EpicAU  great resources, especially for Epic Heresy

Army Builder For Epic 30K

Army Builder For Epic 40K

World Eater Rampagers (Updated Photos)

I tried to make these guys look a little bit less savage than the models really are by using soft blues, and green-grey colored whites. I also tarnished a lot of the brass parts on the armor so all of the extra spikes did not show up so much. I know these guys are supposed to be wracked with pain, and overcome by the urge to kill, but there was a point before they completely fell to chaos. I'd like to think that my painting pushes them a little bit back from that edge. The chain axes are blue mimicking the blue axes I painted for Angron.

I must apologize for the photography, I'll update this page when I find a way to take better photos.

30K World Eater Rampagers On The Painting Table

Angron needed a few soldiers, so after years of neglect, my World Eater Rampager squad is on the painting table. (yes I know both Abbadon, and Loken are not yet completed!) I am looking forward to seeing how these guys turn out, especially because they will be the only rampager squad I own. Putting these guys together was like some kind of demented arm puzzle. In the end I had to use a hair dryer to make the arms flexible and just bend them into position. In any case, my new favorite blue is XF-18. I really like how muted it is. What's on your table?

Loken WIP 2

Loken is slowly progressing. I debated doing a two tone cape, but in the end it seemed more reasonable for me to make it match the cape on Horus. After all, they should probably look similar since Loken is a member of the Mournival.