++++INLOADING DATAFILE 103++++ Zone Moratlis table part 1

A project I've wanted to take on for a while now is to build  Zone Mortalis table.  I looked into a number of different options for how best to go about it, in the end I stumbled upon a particularly awesome set of products over at www.hirstarts.com.  They sell molds of modular terrain components you then cast copies of and use like legos to build your own terrain.

A week later and my 11 molds arrived.  The rubber is really high quality, good tensile strength and very durable.  It also came with some great tips on maintenance and storage which will be quite helpful for newbies.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 102++++ More BFG ORKS

I've been chugging along on my scratchbuilt Ork Fleet over the last week and I've made quite a lot of progress. The Kill Kroozer and Basha Light Kroozer from last week have now been joined by a Terror Ship (Horrible name, I call it a Karrier), 5 Slaughter escorts, 4 Onslaught escorts, and 5 Brute Rams.

These conversions are really fun and they move pretty fast, almost makes me want to play orks in 40k. Anyways onto the pictures (there's a bunch...)

The Karrier

++++Inloading Data file 101++++ BFG Ork Scratchbuilds

Recently I've gotten some of the local guys interested in Battlefleet Gothic so I've been working on completing my two scratchbuild fleets. I loved this game when I was in college and I still had a sizeable Imperial Fleet, but a few years back for fun I started working on a Tyranid Hive Fleet made from spare parts and with an originally sculpted Hiveship. As one of the local guys is an Ork player I promised to build an Ork Fleet from scratch. It's been a fun challenge so far, here are the first two completed ships.

 Ork Kill Kroozer

Ork Basha Light Kroozer

I've also made over a dozen escorts, I'll post pictures of them soon. Unfortunately I've run out of Ork bits (I don't play them myself) so I'll need to ask around to see if anyone has some they don't need. I'm about halfway finished with another Kroozer, this one is turning out to be huge though so I'll probably make it a Battleship. 

More to come on these guys and my hive fleet soon. 

X-wing Battle Report: Templecon Narrative Campaign Final Battle

This year the Rhode Island X-wing & Armada Club hosted a 3 day long Narrative Campaign event at Templecon in Warwick, RI.  The event went well, especially given it was our first time running anything like this, and we had a pretty decent turnout of players each day.  Here's a quick recap of its truly EPIC final battle.

++++ 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"

++++ 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.

++++ 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

++++ 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?

+++++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

Tie Defenders Fly Backwards!

So I'm super excited to try out the upcoming Imperial Veterans expansion for X-wing, and I want to talk about how awesome the newly revealed pilot Countess Ryad is.

Interdictor WIP 5.5

More progress on the Interdictor. The right side has come along far faster than the left side did, but the next series of panels for it will take a while to finish as they are a lot more complex.

Interdictor WIP 5.0

I hit another milestone today by finishing the paneling on the port (left) side of the Interdictor raised "gun deck".

The process I'm using involves making a stencil first before making each panel, and up until this point I've just been tossing the stencils after I've made the panel. This worked well for the first 2/3 of the model as I wanted the details to be asymmetrical, but as I want both gun decks to be identical I've numbered and saved each stencil and panel. Hopefully this will speed up the process on the right side.

Close up of the panel work for the gun decks.

It looks pretty good from the left. The Tie/D is for scale purposes.

Interdictor WIP 4.0

Ok it's been a long while since I last posted an update in the Interdictor, I've been quite busy over the last two months and have had to steal time away here and there when I could.

Molding the gravity well generator is still on hold but will happen soon, I've gotten my equipment back from my friend's place 2 states over and purchased the replacement hose I needed for the air compressor.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 095++++ Chaos Contemptor WIP 2

++++VOX TRANSMISSION RECIEVED++++

..............STANDBY

..............DECRYPTING

++++WARNING SCRAPCODE DETECTED++++

..............EVALUATING RESPONSE

++++DATA CORRUPTED++++

..............COMMENCING DATA PURGE491!)aw(I8++++

................cRIT#){ak}ERRO!390sd

................

++++BINDING RITUALS COMPLETED++++

++++ALL PRAISE THE OCTED++++

Now that I'm back from another training course with the National Guard I've found a bit of time to finish converting my Word Bearer's Chaos Contemptor Dreadnought.

Check him out in all his majesty!

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 094++++ More Truescale progress

So I've been doing more work on my Word Bearers, I think we finally have achieved good positive inertia on this project. You know, the point at which it's easier to keep going then to stop, kind of like the descent into chaos actually...





EDIT: I apologize for the graininess of these photos.  I was posting from my iPhone and sometimes it does a terrible job uploading photos.  I'll take better ones and replace these as they look like ass.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 093++++ Autocannon test model

So I'm still working away on these guys, for a while now I've wanted to try doing a Havoc Squad with Autocannons using a bunch of Reaper Autocannons I've had for a while.

This is the first one I've put together as a test model. Still needs lots of finishing touches.

Interdictor cruiser W.I.P. 3.0

So it's been a while since I've posted any updates of the Interdictor Cruiser I've been building for use at some cons. The construction was paused because it was hard to keep moving forwards without having the gravity well generators done and ready to be installed. If I did the detailing and the generators didn't fit just right it would be a failure.

About a month ago Jeff James made a 3D model of the gravity well generators that came out amazingly. That went off to Shapeways for printing and came back a whole week ahead of time! It's 8" in diameter and 2.5" tall. It's beautiful and fits into the slots I cut perfectly!

Now I just need to make a mold and cast copies. I have a lot of clear resin lying around, so my plan is to cast transparent copies of it. That plus careful painting and some LED work will allow the gravity well generators to light up!!!

Unfortunately It will probably be at least a week before I can make the mold, and I have another two week course for the national guard later this month as well as work and the beginning of another semester.

As a result it can't be finished by Captaincon as I had originally hoped (Feb 6th). I will definitely have this thing finished by the regional championships, it will definitely be at the Rhode Island regional and maybe some others in New England/the North East if people want me to bring it.

Super awesome day!

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 092++++ Massive Truescale Word Bearers Update pt1

So I've been meaning to upload these pictures for months.  I've been doing a LOT of work on the truescales over the last few months, I"m now up to about 10 which are finished and 8 which are works in progress.  I just played in an Apoc game yesterday where I had two squads as a part of my 3000 point host, it was quite awesome to see.  Apoc sadly is built to rob any chances of climatic moments, when my warlord and the Dark Angels player's warlord were moving to duel a necron player came in an killed my warlord before it could happen despite our asking that he not, huzzah for trolling...

Anyways these are some old pictures of a bunch of the minis as works in progress.  I wanted to show what they look like mid stage so you guys can see my process.  I'll take more pictures of the finished pieces this week and make another much larger part of the post.  So much to update.

Dark Apostle Mik'esh Ng'ath

This model was inspired initially pose wise by the superb chaplain model from the Betrayal at Calth boxed set.  The cape is from a chosen model and the purity seals are from the regular dark apostle model.  Its amazing how you can take parts from such static models and use them to convey movement and emotion in a piece.  The backpack is a merger between the Sorceror's backpack and the Dark Apostle backpack.  The mace was a place holder, just wait till you see the finished piece.