Saturday, July 30, 2016

++++ INLOADING DATAFILE 100 ++++ Batch 3's finished & Deimos Predator Conversion

100 40k Posts WOOHOO!!!

This is a cool milestone to hit, though its taken me a while given my long period of very intermmitent posts.  Anyways thanks to everyone who reads this blog, My goal is to reach 200 posts before this time next year, ambitious I know but as long as I keep making new stuff to post about its doable.

Normally most other bloggers add some large expansive retrospective monologue about how much their blog means to them and reviewing works they've done over time.  Rather than do that I'll just say that this blog has been a cool way to show off my work and that its nice to see how my skills have improved over the last few years.  I could also talk about my feelings towards GW's products as well as other games, but the summary is GW's games really aren't very fun to play for me anymore and haven't been for a number of years.  The game's become a series of fixed outcomes where half the time there's really no point in playing out the match, you can just look at your opponent's army and know exactly what will happen before either player even sets up.  By contrast X-wing is a great game which very much relies on and rewards in the moment decision making and player skill is the single most important factor in who will win.

So to compare in my opinion the outcome of a 40k games vs a X-wing game are determined by:

                          40k         X-wing
List Building:   70%           30%
Luck:                10%           20%
Skill:                 20%           50%

Again that's just my opinion based on my own experiences.  I love 40k's lore and 30k is a lot more fun, but playing matches of 40k nearly always tends to be a big let down.  The game could improve with time, and seems to be right now, but in my view the core rule set of of the game needs some dramatic changes as it has a lot of anachronisms left over from 3rd edition which no longer deliver the experience they were created to deliver.

Oh and oddly if I really wanted to boost my viewership I should just post articles and conversions of X-wing stuff.  My most viewed 40k conversion posts have about 300-500 views a piece, and every x-wing post has between 1,800 and 3,500 views.  Does anyone have any advice on how to draw more eyes from the 40k community?

Ok enough of that, onto the actual post!

Truescale Batch #3

As I mentioned before I decided to make a number of MkIV armor legionaries in this batch for variety's sake and for the challenge of it.  I'm very pleased with how this batch came out, all of the poses work and I've refined the anatomy quite a bit.  I have come to the conclusion over time that the arms are about 15% too thick, and this has been causing some issues when posing the models.  Now that my molds are officially worn out I'll revise the masters a bit and decrease the arm thickness for future batches.

Here are the individual models.

MkIII Helmed Sergeant #2


While fielding a 20 man Legion Tactical Squad is awesome there is the issue of needing 2 compulsary Troop choices, that and a 20 man squad can be quite unwieldy in smaller matches.  So I made this guy who can either count as a sergeant or as a standard model depending on how I decide to run them in a match.



His pose screams "Casual Badass"

Monday, July 18, 2016

++++ INLOADING DATAFILE 099 ++++ I played a game! Batch 3 progress too.

It's been about a year since my last 40k game, but this past Saturday was my first league match for the local shop's escalation league. Apparently the shop has 20 players enrolled for the league, and there's another league for beginners as well. For any kind of event that is a great draw, and for a league it's awesome.

My first match was vs Chris, who I've played with on and off for the last 15 years or so. He's playing Orks and I'm fielding 30k Word Bearers. The first week games are 500 points and we were all told to include at least 1 HQ and 2 Troops units. Small points values do tend to advantage certain armies and disadvantage others, I'm honestly not sure if Orks are advantaged or disadvantaged at this small of a points level, but 30k lists have a rough time.  Particularly Word Bearer's due to the need to always take a Chaplain or Diabolist IN ADDITION to your Compulsary HQ choice.  Chris allowed me to ignore that rule for our match, which was kind of him.

I fielded:

  • Chaplain: Combi Plasma, Refractor Field, Artificer Armor
  • Legion Tactical Squad: 20 models, Veteran Sergeant had a Power Weapon and Artificer Armor.
  • Legion Support Squad: 5 Models with Volkite Chargers

He Fielded:

  • Weirdboy
  • 20 Slugga Boyz, Power Klaw Nob
  • 20 Shoota Boyz, Combi-Rokkit Nob
  • 5 Tank Bustas with a Trukk
We played on a 4' x 4' table an didn't bother to place objectives, overall the match lasted between 30-45 minutes.


Monday, July 11, 2016

++++ INLOADING DATEFILE 098 ++++ Lots of Truescale Progress

The next batch of Truescales is finished and ready to be primed.  My local shop has a 40k escalation league starting up this coming weekend, so I've been working hard to get enough finished to be able to run my Word Bearers as an army on their own rather than just an ally to my Warp Cult/Renegades army.

The league starts at 500 points so I figure one Legion Tactical Squad, a Chaplain, and a Legion Support Squad with flamers would fill that out pretty nicely.

Batch 2 PICS

Flamer Support Squad

Thursday, July 7, 2016

++++ INLOADING DATAFILE 097 ++++ Word Bearer's Painting WIP 1.0

The first 10 models are primed and the base layer of Mephiston Red is on for all of them.  Here's the one marine I've finished painting the red on, the second layer is Evil Suns Scarlet and the edging is Fire Dragon Orange.

Sorry some of the pictures are blurry, I was having a really hard time getting my camera to focus correctly for some reason.



The new paint scheme GW created for these guys in the Betrayal at Calth box looks really amazing.  I'm debating making the elbows black, metallic, or making them the same color as the rest of the armor.  GW's scheme has them red like the rest of the armor, but I"m not sure if I like that as it doesn't provide much variation in the color scheme.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to tackle this?

Monday, July 4, 2016

+++++INLOADING DATAFILE 096++++ The first batch of Truescales are ready to paint!

After nearly 6 months in storage I finally unpacked my 40k/30k stuff after moving into my new place with my girlfriend.  After working on a few other models, which I'll post about soon, I finally finished all the details on the first 10 Word Bearer's that are now ready for batch painting.  I've already started painting them, I'll upload some pictures once I'm past the super boring base color steps.

Here's what they looked like pre priming.

Missile Launcher Havoc Test Model