Monthly Archives: August 2013

Tectonic Craft Studios at NoVA Open

Guys, Tectonic Craft Studios is going to be at the NoVA Open this year. Don’t buy from these jerks.

Before you give them so much as a penny, be aware that they funded themselves via a Kickstarter that they have yet to fulfill. They’re one of Those Guys who’ve run a scummy crowdfunding campaign that’s given the entire process a bad name.

And, of course, there’s the small matter of them taking money for product that they haven’t delivered.

Look: crowdfunding hardly ever ships on time. It’s a disappointing reality, but one I think we’ve all accepted. Despite that acceptance, there’s a point where it’s clear that it’s not so much late as it is vaporware. When NoVA hits, they will be over 15 months late on delivery. That’s longer than the gestation period of a camel*.

The past year or so’s been an exercise in evasion and putting things off. “Just a few more weeks.” “Done by next month.” “I’ll have an update tomorrow.”

Whatever. I’m actually writing this a bit in advance (late July). He sent out surveys a month ago, and nothing’s materialized. It was just another stalling tactic. It’s telling that I’m writing this now, knowing that nothing will have changed in the next month and a half.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, myself: demand my money back, pick up the stuff he should have shipped to me a year ago, give him the finger, and walk out or what; I’m a pretty non-confrontational person, and it’s a lot easier to imagine screaming and flipping tables than it is to actually do it. I’m not going to lay out some hard-man act that isn’t actually going to happen.

Whatever I do: you, reader, should know about them, their character, and their failed obligations before you give them either your time or money.

UPDATE: About to hit Publish on this. The only developments since first writing this are 1) he sold stuff at GenCon and 2) he posted yesterday that his “ultimate goal is to get everything up to premium terrain packages out before 2014.”

Estimated Delivery is June 2012… but he’s hopin’ to get stuff out before 2014?

UPDATE 2: So, I talked to him at NoVA, and got my stuff. Some details can be found in my first post about the 2013 NoVA. This is a pretty negative post, so I wanted to make sure I noted the closure of the issue.

* Said gestated camel was found, spinal cord broken by promises of “next week,” “later this month,” and “soon.”

Workbench Snapshot

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I’m going to be unable to hobby for the next few days and, since I neglected to do a Workbench Wednesday the other day, I figured I’d do one now.

I was supposed to be TDY this past week but when it got cancelled at the last minute I decided to seize the opportunity to bang out some Plaguebearers for my NoVA Open army. They’re not done (as you can see), but they’re maybe 75%: that flesh is the longest part of the process.

While I’m not ashamed of them, I’m not especially proud of them. Lots of corners cut, and I can’t help but see them. Given the timeline involved, though, I’m not letting perfect get in the way of done.

Marker Drones

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So, I did a bunch of Marker Drones.

I’m digging on the idea of a Commander with some Marker Drones hooking up with a squad of Marker Drones for some BS 5 laser-pointing. So, here’s 6.

They were a simple conversion: the base Drone bits + XV8 heads. That’s it. Nothing else. Really, the beauty of the Tau army is that you really can almost get away with just gluing whatever to whatever.

I’m planning on doing a lot more flavor text on the models in this army. With the drones, I checked out this font, and numbered them all MD01 through MD06. Because everything in this army tends to run in 6’s (well, 3’s, 6’s, and 12’s; just like my Khorne army’s all 2’s, 4’s, 8’s, and 16’s), I’m probably going to make all my numbering base-6 (so the next Marker Drone will be MD10). Gun Drones and Shield Drones will be GD01 and SD01 respectively. Not sure what I’ll do for Missile Drones.

Since I broke out the lightbox, I figured I’d shove the test Fire Warrior into it, too.

Herald of Devastation

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This is the last mini I needed to do for NoVA.

I’d thought all I needed was a Bloodletter with an Instrument of Chaos, but I was wrong: I forgot that I’d included my Changeling conversion in my Pink Horror count. Reasonable, since he used to be an upgrade. So, I had to dig up an Ungor and grenade launcher for another Horror. I’m on a really tight timeline, though, and that shook out to not be practical.

Then I realized I could cut it another way: instead of pulling the Changeling model out of the unit and replace him with a regular Blood Horror, I could just leave that model in the unit and do a new Herald model.

(Remember: since this army is really all about me shouting, “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD BLOOD,” they’re Blood Horrors and not Pink Horrors, and this will be a Herald of Khorne, Devastator, not of Tzeentch.)

A quick dig in the bits box and I had this:

So, not a lot in the way of conversion, but it’s over the top and makes me think of P.A.G.A.N., which means it’s perfect.

Cheat Sheets

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I got in a game against fellow CGL’r Nick (who I wish had a blog because he’s an amazing painter)’s Tyranids a couple of weeks ago. He’s running a Nidzilla jam that’s all about Tervigons and flying Hive Tyrants Biomancing themselves out the ears.

Because he’s got so many different units with powers that change from game to game, he’s typed up cards that he keeps in card sleeves that he marks with dry-erase markers, Warmachine-style, to track who has what.

This reminded me that 1) I’d done something similar for my Skaven for the 2011 NoVA (printed on letter-sized paper and laminated) and 2) that dang those Chaos Daemons have a lot of stuff that changes from game to game and boy-howdy I need something like that for my Khornate Daemons.

I knocked something together for the tournament last weekend (that I probably should post about), spotted a number of issues, and revised it. Here’s what I’m currently working with. A copy of the page with the Warp Storm table goes on the back.