Monday, April 26, 2010

Fifth Post - Eversor Predators painted

A few weeks ago I purchased the Horror Clix Predator boxed set. Inside were 6x 25mm predator figures. I decided that the skin was a little too yellow so I painted over it with tallarn flesh and gave the whole figure a mud wash. Just these 2 little changes made them look amazing and I've included some photos of them in my little inquisition case below.








These figs will make great Eversor assassins in the next apoc game.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Fourth Post - Mogul Khamir

Well last night I spent some time and built the Dragon Blood miniatures Skull Cracker bird. This model is 4 parts (body, 2 wings, and tail). I tossed the wings in my bits box as they impede the rider's leg position but everything else went together fine. The place where the wings went together is actually sculpted so the wings don't have to go there so yay for me. I also built the last few birds from the first casting. I'm debating trying to paint them for BOLS con but I don't think that's going to happen.
Below are pictures of the big bird next to the normal birds to give a size reference.




Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Third Post - Work on Rough Riders and final plasmasaurus

I'm going to try hosting the pics here to see if that changes anything. If it does I'll probably go back and edit the other posts.
Well tonight I got some work done on my Rough Riders and the final 2 plasma-saurus.
I had originally ordered 5 of the limited Pheonix Gamer's Society Moa bird rough riders and at the time I built 4 and cast the final one. I kept pouring molds until it broke and ended up with about 13 complete extra birds. So tonight I built another 5 birds to make 9 total.

As you can see they're kind of static. I'm going to build the first squad like this and then make a new mold of varying leg poses.

Here's a picture of one of the birds next to an assassin I'm doing as part of a commission.
The other thing I got accomplished is putting the gunmetal and silver down on my final 2 plasma-saurus.All these tanks lack now is tracks, stippling, touch ups, blue effects, squad colors, and finally decals. It sounds like a lot but I can finish some of those 2 per night.
I finally finished reading "Storm of Iron" last night and I really enjoyed it. You can tell it's a very early book by Grahm as Space Marines are treating guardsmen as equals, and sitting in chairs.
As a reward I'm starting Iron Warrior. It's one of those new limited release books from black library so I hope it's worth the price of admission.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Second Post - My Guard army up till now

I was originally writing this as a piece for the 40k radio webzine but due to some recent problems I will not be submitting it there.

I originally picked up the Steel Legion models upon their release as they were the coolest thing I had seen. I built a rather crappy army and took it to the 2001 Dallas GT, and got STOMPED I took second to last place.
Here's a couple of crappy old photos.

First post - My story

About me:
I started my miniature wargaming hobby with the release of 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy. I went to a plastic model show and purchased some loose minis of a saurus warrior, a skink, a space marine, and a genestealer. I went home and built these models and I knew I needed more.
I purchased the 6th edition Fantasy starter set and expanded into a sizable lizardmen force. In the beginning I made the same mistakes everyone does and only purchased 1 of each unit, this of course meant I had a horrible army and only won games against my friends when we would do "everything I have versus everything you have" games.
After a while I started to look towards 40k and pruchased the 2nd edition tyranid army box at the start of 3rd edition. I kept expanding my force but grew impatient with waiting for the tyranids to be re-released. I then went on to space marines and built an army of them. When the 3rd edition tyranids finally came out I purchased it and expanded my bugs.
I had originally tried to play at Hobby Town USA but upon complimenting one of the gamers there on his paint jobs I was told to "Go to Hell kid." I didn't really want to play with people like that so I went somewhere else.
I ended up playing in a weekly 40k tournament at a store in Plano called Rama Lama Comics. I was soundly thrashed every weekend for a year as not a single person was willing to tell me what would make a good army, or even how to play.

I kept up with my original 2 armies till I had around 200ish bugs and 50ish marines and then I started Eldar, guard (with the release of steel legion), tau(with their release), necrons, demon hunters (with their release), and 2 chaos marines (World Eaters and Thousand Sons when the 3rd edition book came out).
I did a few crazy conversions and scratch builds while working on my armies. I built a 5 foot tall Warlord titan to go with my Imperial Guard and had planned on building a manta to go with my tau, but before I could do that I managed to destroy the army in pine-sol and the manta only got as far as the cargo bay.
My next project was necrons who were going to be lighted. I had started dremeling out the necron gauss weapons and installing a light inside before I started expermenting with the cost of batteries and their running time. Since I was using grain of wheat bulbs I got about 20 minutes of life out of a single watch battery. This would turn into a BIG expense in batteries and the army was shelved.
Next up where demon hunters. I purchased a squad of Grey Knights in power armor on their release day and was able to paint them up for a contest at Games Workshop. To make their weapons appear different I polished the pewter blades up to a mirror finish (which takes about 2-3 hours a model) and did my best paint jobs on them. This won me first place in the contest and I was able to enter the next leg of the contest in Austin. I drove down to Austin with a newly repainted squad and re-polished blades and was beaten by the managers girl friend and best friend. My "prize" was free admission into all tournaments held in the store for the next year. Nothing like winning something that you have to drive 5 hours to use.

Well time came and went I grew up from that kid with his parents money to that working guy and I've decided that I can't fund a struggling cold war between my armies (or finish the ones I've just massed stuff for) so I've narrowed it down to just the Imperial armies.

I also started warmachine some where in there. I started with cryx then I expanded into Khador when I wanted to put some dead guys on my bases. Oddly enough this made me want to start a Khador army, and with the release of Mk II I've sold off my Cryx army (except for a few pieces). Since then I have been slowly expanding my Khadoran army, but refuse to play with anything that isn't painted.

This blog will chronicle my Imperial 40k armies, my Khadoran Warmachine army, and what ever else I decide to put in here.
While doing this I will also try and keep track of my resolutions for 2010.
Which are:
1) Buy more carrying cases. I have no room to store any more completed models (apart from a few more marines). So my number one objective needs to be to get some more foam to store my minis! I can't finish any half done projects if I have no place to store a finished product.

2) Finalize a paint scheme for my Khador army. I've got a Warmachine army that's been gathering dust waiting for the release of the new rules set this January. Once that bad boy hits I want to be able to play a few games and to do that I need to have a painted army.

3) Only play with painted stuff. Playing in Brian's campaign this year has inspired me to only play with painted figs. I've got enough figs and tanks around the house to field nearly anything I want to so I just need to paint it all, and the best way to do that is to only play with painted figs.

4) Finish rare models collection. I'm missing 2 models to have every Ultramarine GW has produced, I'm going to try and track them down this year and I'll let no ebay sniper get in my way. I'm also missing a few rogue trader mechanicus figures to finish off a collection of them.

5) Finish a super heavy. Stormlord, warhounds, reavers, mysterious projects no one's seen? Take your pick, but I definitely need to finish 1 or all of them.

6) Keep track of painting and purchases via log book. I've created an excel spreadsheet for keeping track of my gaming related purchases and accomplishments. I'd like to see at the end of the next year everything I've accomplished without having to rely on my faulty memory.