Bizarro, errr, Reversed Buffalo Wings Marines

So trying out my buffalo wings paint trick today, I thought, it works so well this way, why not reverse it.  I have to say, this marine looks much more like the single pass air brush marines I see online all the time, so I won't be rinsing and repeating, but this is how we learn things.

Cerebrus Legion Terminators...the warm marines!

So its been a while, with work, a sudden operation for my spouse, and the subsequent holidays, I've been out of sorts for months.  But finally, back on the wagon for the IC challenge.  Recently, while making lunch for my two little ones I had a great idea.  I was making hot wings and noticing how the sauce on the wings as it cooked spread and tore/thinned leaving wonderful shading.  So I stored that way til the next time I was painting.

Today I tried something similar on my warm marines, basically a lot of air...and very very bright colors.  I'm not confident on the process yet,so I won't bore anyone with details, but I got these guys:

As you can see it is not a perfect process...yet.  I added in a little pre shading on the claws and details, just to break them up a little.

I do, however, love the automatic shading on items with larger surfaces, such as the powerfist.  I plan to continue this technique until I can quickly paint up all my marines.  I currently have 40 in the queue for this challenge, but I have probably 150 that need to be added to this army to cover all the permutations of using various codicies(thank you Goat!).  Even though I plan to use the same marines and vehicles for each chapter's codex, I do plan to have all the correct models that are specific to that army as well, such as sanguinary guard, grey knight models, etc...so loads of different opportunities for beautiful orange marines.

Blogging suspended due to heat and AC issues, but hobby progress!

Hello all,

Sorry, I've had to cut off the blogging for a while, which is sad since I'm making a ton of progress on my grey knight army for the Independent characters hobby progress army challenge.  I've been taking pictures, but just can't get motivated to go out to the computer room until the temps drop below 100 for a while.

But to prove I am making progress(however undocumented), here is a pic of my test model for my warm marines:

I hope to return in a couple weeks with a flurry of posts to show my army changing from a pile of sprues to a fully painted force ready to stomp Carl's ultramarines at Adepticon!

Keep Cool!

A Brief Finecast review

It seems everyone was against finecast when I first heard about it.  I have to admit, its only because of my advancing years that I decided to not give into the fanfare and instead wait until I had my very own finecast model before passing judgement.

Hobby Progress Challenge, WIP looted wagon

Not much to report, finished up a looted wagon that I believe will be in my sideboard for the IC's challenge.

Before and after its primer:

This little guy is part green army man tank(for the wheels, mostly) part tamaiya tank, and then just random ork and imperial bits and a cannon from a small toy.

1/18th war, first battle report

As I've said previously in this blog, not only am I working on a play table, 1/18 city playset for my kid, I'm also working with a buddy of mine on a wargame for our action figure collections.  Coincidence, right?  Well, before I posted the rules I've been using up on the work group for the project, I felt I needed a second test(the first being before the rules were very fleshed out and basically just dice rolls at random).

The Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge

The Independent Characters - View forum - The ICs Hobby Progress Challenge

Carl, Geoff, and Zach(and I'm sure their two hitmen) are busy cooking up a sweet contest for those 40k players eager to start, complete, or just paint an 1850 tournament list.

GW Price Hike, a Hooligan Revolution!

Hello everyone.  I won't bother commenting on the upcoming GW bendover tax...err price hike, I'll just say I agree(for once) with the Hooligans:

Free Chaos Renegades? Head on over to the wolf god!

I do so love free miniatures, :)

Grey Knights Army List

So, this week I have been working on a list to test out my grey knights in friendly games this weekend.  I can't believe how much the army has changed from its last codex.  I feel I'm going to have to buy or convert up quite a few models(which I'm sure is the point of any new codex).  The biggest change for me is the amount of special weapons.  I am in total shock at how effective the new psycannons are.  So naturally, I want as many as I can muster.  To me, this means purifiers, of course since I'm re-using my 3rd ed army, it also means purifiers with force halberds.  Here is my working list so far:


1850 Pts - Grey Knights Roster

Total Roster Cost: 1846

HQ: Castellan Crowe
1 Castellan Crowe,

Troops: Purifier Squad (11#, 356 pts)

1 Purifier Squad, + Psybolt Ammunition 

   1 Knight of the Flame,(base cost  + Nemesis Daemonhammer )

   4 Purifier,  (base cost  + Psycannon )

   5 Purifier,(base cost  + Nemesis Force Halberd )

   1 Rhino, (base cost  + Searchlight)

Troops: Purifier Squad (11#, 356 pts)

1 Purifier Squad, + Psybolt Ammunition 

   1 Knight of the Flame,(base cost  + Nemesis Daemonhammer )

   4 Purifier,  (base cost  + Psycannon )

   5 Purifier,(base cost  + Nemesis Force Halberd )

   1 Rhino, (base cost  + Searchlight)

Troops: Purifier Squad (11#, 356 pts)

1 Purifier Squad, + Psybolt Ammunition 

   1 Knight of the Flame,(base cost  + Nemesis Daemonhammer )

   4 Purifier,  (base cost  + Psycannon )

   5 Purifier,(base cost  + Nemesis Force Halberd )

   1 Rhino, (base cost  + Searchlight)

Troops: Purifier Squad (11#, 356 pts)

1 Purifier Squad, + Psybolt Ammunition 

   1 Knight of the Flame,(base cost  + Nemesis Daemonhammer )

   4 Purifier,  (base cost  + Psycannon )

   5 Purifier,(base cost  + Nemesis Force Halberd )

   1 Rhino, (base cost  + Searchlight)

Heavy Support: Dreadnought
1 Dreadnought, 136 pts = Psybolt Ammunition + Searchlight + Assault Cannon  + Twin-Linked Autocannon )

Heavy Support: Dreadnought
1 Dreadnought, ( Psybolt Ammunition + Searchlight  + Twin-Linked Autocannon  + Twin-Linked Autocannon )



As you can see, quite a few psycannons and a pair of twin linked autocannons to boot.  I think this army is probably a little too bland, but I'm hoping it will help me get my feet wet so to speak and provide a basis for an eventual "all comers" list.

Armies that never quite took off

I think we all have them, good ideas for armies, love of models that make us want to play armies, random bits in our bits boxes that make us think we could do an army cheaply or well.  But they never really go anywhere.

Today, I thought I would share a few of mine.  The first my poor neglected space wolves.  I was calling my hunt(for lack of a better term) "Baldr's Reign" but I never really liked them, another baby blue army after fielding my ultramarines for years was a no go.  Eventually, I just painted them orange and they are still space wolves.

Next, oh boy, my Ultramarines 1st company; I had high hopes for this army but never go around to adding any vehicles or converting up a Belial(though the new Deathwing FAQ is encouraging).  Add in that now I would need to rebase the entire force to the large 40mm slottas...just not worth it right now.

Ahhh, my much loved IG force.  Most of these guys got pushed into the Daemon Hunters force back in 3rd ed, but a few models I just didn't have the heart to change up.  This guy looks mean, but he's steel legion...so not exactly an army I can afford to play.

My first army was Dark Angels.  This squad was painted by a good friend of mine as a birthday present, but I quickly switched to ultramarines.  Because of the way I based and painted back then, I actually have about 40 marines, a rhino, and a dread to go with these, probably a 1000 pt force that will never see the tabletop.

Ok, this isn't a refugee from a lost army, it was Christmas gift, but since the picture was found while looking for the above, I had to include it.  Rogue Trader marines FTW!  Also, this guy has a santa hat, thus he was "Christmas Calgar."

Ahhh, the mythril hunters cadre....the Tau was a super fun army that I enjoyed back in the day.  I actually had a very large force of these, but my opponents refused to play them.  The guys show below were human auxillaries, which I think even had rules.  Anyway, when I traded the army away...these guys were unwanted, so they stayed in the display case.  They are certainly a fun set of models and remind me of simpler times when the Tau were a force to be reckoned with.

Oy, 2nd ed Tryanids...need I say more?

Orcs in fantasy...another short lived idea.  I blame the starter box.  Interestingly enough, I found use for the chariot in my Daemons army, so all was not lost.

This poor guy is just a representative of my 2nd edition Biel Tan eldar army.  I loved these guys back in the day, but the modern cookie cutter eldar lists just make me want to box these til another edition comes out.  This guy also got called the "algae avatar" quite often, so fun times.

So I hope you guys enjoyed a brief tour of armies past and never to be.  Maybe you have your own phantom armies floating around.

Dusting off the Grey Knights or....Joining the Bandwagon!

Back in the darkest days of 3rd edition, I fell to the lure of very nice models and mediocre rules...the forces of the Daemon Hunters!  I never really liked the way they played, so beyond just enjoying the models...I didn't really want to play them.  I shelved them waiting for the day they might be fun again.

Now, with a new codex, I don't know, I feel dirty playing them.  I wasn't loyal to them while they were suffering under their old rules, so I feel like I'd just be jumping the bandwagon to play them now.  Also, this army has a nice detachment of IG that can no longer be used....so do I want to start an IG army?  Not sure.

Anyway, here are the models:

Cerberus Legion Terrain, WIP

So I think my table needs a few pieces that tie it in with certain armies I play.  This is pretty easy to do with orks...I already have the barricades and various pieces of wreckage, but with my warm marines, I wanted to go in a different direction.  I also needed to tie them back into the space wolves(a hard sell with no surviving successor chapters), so here we go:

I figure a statue of a guy wearing animal skins should tie them back into Fenrir as well as anything(or Hyboria).  This started life as a conan desk statue, but I primed it grey and washed it in tamaiya smoky ink for what I hope is a marbled look.

Additional photos:

First battle against grey knights!

I had my first chance to battle the Grey Knights this week at the local game store(local being a relative term since it was a 90 minute drive).  Pictured above, my space wolves attempting to meltagun a Land Raider Crusader.  I have to say, I am not as impressed with the way the army plays as I was when just reading the codex.  As a Grey Knights player(hesitant to play them until the bandwagon leaves town), I had high hopes for them.  It appears the leadership of 8 is actually important with such an elite army.  
My force was my typical space wolves at 1750, 2 vindys, LRC with 15 bloodclaws and wolf priest(awesome scoring unit!), 5 wolf scouts with melta gun, 2 grey hunter squads with one meltagun in drop pods, 2 rune priests, and Ragnar.  His forces consisted of 2 10 man squads with halberds and one guy carrying a 2++ rod, both riding in Land Raider Crusaders, I think a leader type of some sort(he got stuck out of position and in a vehicle the entire game), and one each of the 3 assassins.  Granted, the player was still testing out the codex and was not fully optimized, but I had no problem overcoming this force with my own semi optimized list.  I tended to avoid close combat(nemesis weapons look scary) and was able to just control the shooting game.  I will say the LRC with psy ammo upgrade is awesome, even if a little harder to fully utilize.  I was able to use my drop pods to fully neutralize his assassins and then use my vindys to keep his grey knights mounted up.  We were playing roll dice and tie and that certainly didn't help.  The game was going to be a nice tie(as always), but in round six, I landed a vindy round into his squad holding his objective and he failed his leadership....and ran right off the board.  Winning on a bad die roll?  I'll take it.

My buddy Jestyr traveled with me playing his WIP deathwing against a WIP Ultra army.  Why someone would put off playing ultramarines this long and still want to play them is beyond me.

As you can see here, a classic castle defense, which did not work against all those cyclone missile launchers.  Jestyr made short work of him.  The player, while normally a strong adversary, recently switched from jetbike eldar to power armor, so I assume that is where the disconnect occurred.

My second game had me playing against a completely mobile bike army(ok, he had one pod and one vindy).  I played my same force(with the addition of a squad of wolf guard) against 40 bikes, a vindy, a pod with dread, a captain on bike, and Khan on bike.  It was going fairly well until turn 3 when one bike captain took out half my army.  It was very humiliating, so I will not relate it here.

I would like to say thanks to Castle Perilous for providing not only a place to play, but a ton of beautiful terrain and various game boards.  This is a wonderful store to play in with a very active gaming community.

BBI WW2 weapon packs, 1/18 scale, found at Tuesday Morning

So while watching my wife assault the local Tuesday Morning looking for deals, I tried to amuse myself in this mecca for the meticulous saver.  I did find a nice pair of sprue clippers masquerading as some lady beautification device for half the price GW wants, so that made me a bit pleased, but I still quested further into the toys section.  Most of it was quite horrible, but at the end, near a ton of Tron figures, I found some cool litlte 1/18 scale guns.  They seemed to be accessory packs(from back in the day of collecting IMHO) for a BBI's figure range.  they had multiples of two separate sets, so I purchased one of each.

As you can see, BBI originally thought these were worth five bucks each, but the market seems to have determined otherwise.  I thought they were a steal at 2 bucks...oh how right I was...someone was getting robbed.

The first one had a cart of some sort, as well as a thompson, a bazooka, 4 ammo boxes, grenades, a trench tool and a few other random bits I didn't even bother to catalog.  The first thing I noticed about these toys...they are very cheaply made, I thought I was going to destroy the cart just putting the wheels on.

After messing around with these for a bit...not impressed.  The one cool thing, the 1/18 scale makes all my joes look like giants...which is good for a killer robot with a funny hat.

Speaking of scale discrepancies, these guys seem to work great for my 40k marines.  I think the cart in particular looks fetching on my terminator and the grenades will definitely find their way onto my marines as I continue to build the warm marines.

Sadly, the other pack was even more useless to me

And again will find its way into my 40k bits box...can't have too many grenades and rockets and ammo belts.