++++ 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

++++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 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.

++++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.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 091++++ Word Bearers Aspiring Champion

So after a summer of AoS inspired despair turned me away from GW stuff for a while, I've finally completed the grieving process for Warhammer: Fantasy Battles and so I've started working on some projects again.

At the moment I'm in the second week of phase 1 of the Captain's Career Course at Fort Lee, VA, and I brought down supplies to work on some true scale Word Bearers. I'm now up to 11, with 1 Aspiring Champion and a replacement Dark Apostle (who looks amazing).

The problem is that none of the computers I have access to here will let me post on Blogger, and uploading photos via the iPhone app almost never works. But here is a sample, my first Aspiring Champion: Vorgash Nn'uhl.




It's remarkable to me how fast I can produce a single true scale marine now that I've refined my methods and have the press molds for making the armor components. I finished him over the course of two days while working on a batch of 5.

The cloak of the chaos lord from the dark vengeance starter set works very well if you trim it down and helps add movement and dynamism to his commanding pose. The impurity seals add to this effect and were left over from the dark apostle, who will be in the next post.




Here is a comparison shot next to a regular space marine model. These true scales really convey the shear mass of a space marine, I couldn't be happier with the way they are coming.

Oh and you can't see it in this photo, but he is armed with a power first and combi-melta which is chained to his backpack, the bolt pistol is there for epicness purposes.

I'll post more pictures when I have access to a non-government computer.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 068++++ Helltalon WIP 3

 For the last few weeks I have been activated for natural disaster relief by the Massachusetts Army National Guard, hence the lack of posts. Here is one to hold you guys over for a few days until I SHOULD be released. There may be more snow coming unfortunately, so we will see what happens.

So I decided to change the Hellblade Interceptor I was working on into a Helltalon Fighter Bomber.  It was mostly a matter of the model turning out to be about 30% larger than the Forge World Hellblade fighter, but I also really want to try out the Helltalon's rules as they seem fun.

The weapons were pretty simple to figure out.  The Helltalon comes with a Twin-Linked Lascannon, 8 bombs, and your choice of either a Reaper Autocannon or Havoc Launcher.  As I usually rely on my aircraft to engage enemy vehicles I went with the Reaper Autocannon.  This was simple to do as I had some spare parts left over from a Chaos Defiler.  After looking the model over there was an obvious visual space for weapon mounts in front of the cockpit and above the engine intake.

I settled on how to configure the weapons mounts quickly but there was a snag with the lascannons; most lascannon bits are quite bulky, so fitting two of them stacked on top of each other didn't work with the majority of the bits I tried.  The lascannons from a Storm Raven were the corret size, but they have a "right-left" orientation which would have made it tough to mount them vertically the way I wanted.  The solution was quite easy as it turned out, deep within my bitz box I found a single ancient lacannon from the original 1980s Predator Tank kit.  It was the right size and looked adequately high tech, so I chopped it in half and used it to make the "techno bits" for the Lascannon and added some parts from a Stormtalon and the classic chaos upgrades kit. I thought they looked cooler mounted upside down.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 065++++ Truescale Word Bearer WIP 3.0

 So I've started working on the next two truescales.  One of them has another extreme "action pose" to look like he is sprinting and firing, for the other I decided to try more of a tactical firing stance.  I've sped up the process of doing the pinning to establish the poses, and I like working on two of these guys simultaneously so I think I'll do that from now on.

The commissar is a request from a friend in exchange for a leman russ turret.  He wanted me to swap out the guy's bolt pistol with a shotgun, so that's what I did.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 057++++ Truescale Chaos Space Marine WIP 2.6

Brother Herat'Sul is now fully painted! Edit: I noticed during this post that I neglected to paint the teeth and horns on the power plant. I recognize my failing and will strive to correct it. I have never claimed to be a talented painter, quite the opposite in fact. That said he came out quite satisfactorily.




You may notice that the shade of red I used is lighter than is traditionally used for Word Bearers. I have never liked the 'Mud Marines' shade of red I've often seen, and so I chose to use the colors of the Gal Vorbak on the cover art of The First Heretic.

Anyways I learned a lot doing this model and I have refined the paint scheme. Now I need to figure out basing him.

It feels really good to finally have one guy fully painted. Next on the painting block are about 60 heretics. My FLGS is sponsoring a 40k league for which everyone needs to have 550 points painted by January for the official start of the league. At 3 points a model that is a LOT of heretics to paint!

As always let me know what you think of my work, and if you have any tips on how I can improve my painting please offer tips.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 056++++ Truescale Chaos Space Marine 2.5

My friend Sean brought up a really good point that in the photos that I have uploaded so far most of the detail was lost and washed out. This is mostly due to my camera not being able to filter the colors of the green stuff very well. So as I have now primed the model here are some pictures that show off the detailing on the model much better.

Enjoy!

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 055++++ Truescale Chaos Space Marine WIP 2.4

Battle-Brother Herat'Sul is effectively finished! I'm debating whether to add rubberized soles to his boots, but he is otherwise completely sculpted now. Instead of doing my normal sort of play by play post here I've taken a series of photos of him being rotated to your point of view. Soon I will get started on his next brother.

I will also paint him soon to develop the color scheme I want to use for the host, so we will be seeing more of him later. Till then enjoy!