Yearly Archives: 2014

A very specific form of not particularly famous

Mantic Plague

 

The photo of my Plague I posted back in January is the thumbnail on a Mantic Blog post.

Very cool.

(The image isn’t on the post, and either they filter comments or their comment system is busted ’cause I don’t seem able to post there to give them permission to use it.)

To Infinity… almost

Wednesday Workbench 20141217

It’s been a bit over three weeks since I got all of these guys assembled, and I’ve made excellent progress on painting them.

They’re pretty close to being all done: I need to do a couple of finishing touches on the Healer (though I’m not happy with her and am half-inclined to strip the paint and start over), and I’ve got to wrap up the Iguana(s).  That’s it!

I got the chance to muddle through some how-to-play games with Chris S last week.  It’s not the full rules or anything (yes, the Mobile Brigada will have a flamethrower and a techno-rifle, but for this: he just has a gun), but enough to convey how the game plays, how the dice mechanic works, etc.

I like what I see so far… but I’m utterly boggled how anyone would or could play this in a tournament environment.  Given that A – my experience with “competitive” 40K and Fantasy is that you cannot assume your opponent will play his rules correctly (deliberately or accidentally) and B – (to make a wholly unfair generalization that I’m going to try to make as least awful as I can) competitive skirmish game players skew towards taking full advantage of every advantage than can wring out of a situation: Infinity’s expectation that you don’t even know what models your opponent has taken until they turn up just makes me tense up.

Like: there’s a whole “optical camo” thing where a model is invisible until they do something.  That’s facilitated by just not putting the model on the table and, when you decide to do something with them, put them down and say, “This guy’s been here, all along.”  In a vacuum, casually, that’s cool.  Hella cool, even.  With prizes or money on the line, though… We used to have a guy around for Fantasy who’d have Magic Standards on his units… that magically changed what they were from game to game to whatever was more appropriate against their opponent and situation.   There is no way that that guy’s list wouldn’t end up shifting from game to game, and no way his dudes wouldn’t uncloak in the most advantageous place, always.

What I’m saying is: I’m looking forward to actually playing Infinity (grown-up, all the rules Infinity, whenever it decides to come out), but I don’t think it’ll be what I play at NoVA this year. (Which is a shame, ’cause I’m still trying to figure out what that’s going to be.)

Wednesday Workbench

Wednesday Workbench 20141119

It’s Wednesday. I’ve been doing stuff: like building the Nomad half of Operation: Icestorm (plus the recommended “add these” units to flesh it out to a full list).

Need to work up the base on the Iguana suit: Dragon Forge doesn’t make 55mm bases in that range (and, for some reason, I didn’t realize that was a 55mm base; I thought it was a 40mm when I ordered the bases because I’m an idiot).

Deadzone Terrain

Most of this terrain showed up in December of 2013, I think.

I’d dry fitted some of it together to get a feel for it… and left it there.  It’s meant to be modular, but the idea of painting the individual pieces and then snapping them together at game-time just isn’t practical at all.  On top of that, I was shorted connectors in the initial shipment: more showed up with the Wave 1 Mitigation shipment, but by that time I’d been distracted and was working on something else. When Wave 2 showed up, it renewed my motivation.

It’s actually a little disappointing: if I’d filled that Wave 3 survey out now, after having really assembled and painted this stuff, instead of before, I’d have bought a lot more.  Like a lot.  Like definitely enough that it’d get me in trouble with Mrs. Rushputin.

Anyway: everything’s painted and gloss varnished.  I need to weather it (some stains, some rust) before another coat, but the involved part’s done.

This is the full table (same configuration from four directions):

Deadzone Terrain (2) Deadzone Terrain (3) Deadzone Terrain (4) Deadzone Terrain (5)

I shot for a board configuration that was crowded and busy… but left a lot open.  This is a lot more terrain than it looks like Mantic normally puts on their tables: I’ve got two mats (plus the paper one), so I think I could safely smear this across two mats and it’d still be dense enough to play with.

If I’d had more tiles, I’d have tried to get some interleaved walkways.  A walkway at Level 2 going East/West and one at Level 3 going North/South immediately above it is the sort of thing I’d really like to have, but it wasn’t in the cards.

I also tried to make sure that most of the pieces would work for 40K.

Deadzone Terrain (6) Deadzone Terrain (7)

These pieces are the components of the building above: I tried to keep things so they could break down into multiple pieces.

Deadzone Terrain (8)

I also tried to keep the terrain practical.  While I loved the idea of a cargo-crate structure up on scaffolding, it wouldn’t be very playable.  So, I kept it so every square’s accessible.

Deadzone Terrain (1)

Deadzone Terrain (10) Deadzone Terrain (9)

I’m nuts about these towers.  I’d have made more if I had more of those bare frame tiles.

Deadzone Terrain (11)

I thought the Landing Pad would be impractical: the Skyshield Landing Pad kind of is.  I’ve got one in tub around here someone and never use it.  This is a little bit to pack away, but by keeping the little cubicle detached, it’s not that big of a problem.

 

Deadzone Terrain (13)Deadzone Terrain (12)

Not Dead!

Shan Yu Lives

I’m not dead (I think)!

NoVA was a thing that happened: I had a great time (as expected). It’s weird, though: even though I love 40K, and on paper I think I should love this version of 40K, I don’t think I like it very much right now.  I won as much as I lost and most of my games were a lot of fun (even the one really, really, really unbelievably awful game would have been just as awful with any other edition or any other game, I think), but yeesh.  That, plus a literal 24 hours of 40K over a weekend will make anyone want to take a breather.

That, combined with work hitting a level of busy I’d only describe as “traumatic” (seriously: it hasn’t been that bad for a month or so but it still feels that bad) has meant I haven’t time for much gaming.  I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve been able to move toy soldiers around since Nova was a three-way goof-off game of Saga with John and Mike at Victory comics what feels like months ago.

On the bright side: I have not been idle on the hobby side of things, even if I’ve been too busy to blog about it.

Since NoVA, I’ve:

  • Painted 85% of a By Fire & Sword Polish starter (I just need to wrap up those last two bases before I’m done!)
  • Painted an entire USMC starter for Bolt Action starter, plus a few models (63 infantry, including weapons teams).  Enough paint’s been applied to a half-track and a Sherman that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to put them on the table, but they’re not done.
  • Assembled pretty much all of the Wave 2 Deadzone stuff (I’ve got some Plague Zombies left to do).  Since I didn’t initially put together the Marauders, that’s a total of 3 full factions
  • Settled on a Deadzone terrain configuration and painted it.  It’s done and varnished.  Still want to weather it, and I need to do the scatter terrain, but I could drag it out to the game store tonight if I wanted to.
  • Did a lot of airbrushing (see: terrain).  I’m not going to be winning any awards for airbrushed models any time soon (or, ever, really), but I did enough with it, got more comfortable with it, and finally started doing more with it than basecoating.  I leveled up with it, at least.

In fact (because I’m obsessive about tracking what hobby progress I make, I can tell you that), I’ve done more hobby stuff so far this year than I have since I’ve been tracking this stuff. By September, I’d painted more models in 2014 than the entirety of any other single year.

Now to just find time to drag out the lightbox and start with some photodumps.

And to get out and game: I think I need to make that an actual priority, effective ASAP.  Like, “Sorry, I cannot do this thing you ask of me, because I need to be playing with toy soldiers.”

NOVA 2014 Inbound!

NoVA Open 2011 Logo

It’s here! It’s at hand!

NoVA’s the big game convention I get to go to, with Games Day dead and Adepticon being as big a fan of my wedding anniversary as I am: NoVA’s it for me. I started out having a great time there and it’s only gotten better.  So, this stands as the gaming high point of my year.

I’ll be popping in later today to register and poke around without the pressure of tournamenting.

Most of the weekend, I’ll be playing in the 40K tournament – it’ll be a thing, given how little I’ve played of this edition, but I’ll muddle through.  I’ll be running my Daemons – I won’t be that guy, though, I promise.

Against my better judgement, the imp of the perverse seized me and I spent time I didn’t have… working on something to enter into the Capital Palette. No clue how well it will or won’t do, but – it’s something I think is worthy of entering. Just need to finish up some freehanding and basing today.

There’ll be a CGL thing Saturday, so if that’s a thing that should be a thing for you and you don’t know about it – hit the forum or tweet me.

If you’re in the DC area and aren’t going: you should be!

Workbench Wednesday

20140820-Workbench Wednesday

Just because I’m not painting anything for NoVA doesn’t mean I’m not painting anything at all.   I’ve been banging out models for my By Fire & Sword Polish starter in no time (they’re 15mm after all) and the airbrush did half the work on a batch of Marines for Bolt Action.

So, hobbying is happening, at least.

Historicon 2014

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Why bury the lede?  I placed second with the Captain Whistlelock figure I did so well with at NoVA’s Captial Palette last year.


Anyway, Historicon happened this past weekend!  Due to reasons, I was only able to make it out for the Saturday; I’d have really liked to have come out for the Saga tournament, for example, but it just wasn’t in the cards to do more than the one day.  (In fact, getting down for the single day was somewhat dearly bought, but not making it down wasn’t an option.)

I’d hoped to pick up a couple of things from the vendor room: The Crescent & The Cross, the Fireforge Light Mongol Cavalry and maybe, if I was lucky, somebody’d have Donnybrook.  No luck with any of those, though.  I did spend some getting spun up on By Fire & Sword (I backed their first Kickstarter for the rulebook but no minis, and had already plunked down for a larger buy-in with The Deluge), which turned into a purchase.  I also grabbed a box each of Wargames Factory’s new AWI minis, to supplement the Perry ones I picked up a few months ago.

I ran into Ashley and JC and kicked around with them for most of the day and checked in with Casey (who was Bolt Actioning) throughout the day.

I only played in one game, and it was the large WWI table.

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I had a good time, despite the scenario being somewhat lacking.  (Allies: run across the table! Germans: murder them all before they reach you! )

Next year, I’m definitely going knife-fight someone to make sure I can get out for more than one day.

Anyway, the rest of the disappointingly inadequate photodump:

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11-2014-07-19 10.38.31

10-2014-07-19 10.37.38

09-2014-07-19 10.36.36

07-2014-07-19 10.18.43

04-2014-07-19 10.17.29-1

Khorne-versions

Heralds

As you might know from reading this blog: my Chaos Daemon army’s full-on Khorne.  That’s gotten less and less effective since the 4E codex, though, so I’ve been progressively mixing it up more and more.  That’s okay: it’s an excuse to convert stuff.

I finished these up what feels like ages ago (though it was probably last month), but just finally got around to sticking them in the lightbox.

Well

Even though this guy is the stupidest conversion (deliberately so) I’ve done in a while, I’m happy with him.  He’s a BLOOD SCRIBE (counts as Blue Scribes).  They’re supposed to be two Horrors on a Disc of Tzeentch, so I did a goofy-looking beastly pterodactyl that feels, just a little bit, Blanche-ian.

Blood Scribe 2

He’s also a total midget.  Apparently, nobody’s actually supposed to sit in that throne; just stand menacingly over it, so the only model I could fit into it was a Plague Monk.

Blood Scribe 5

Blood Scribe 3

Blood Scribe 4

Herald of Desolation

You might remember the Herald of Devastation (counts-as Herald of Tzeentch) I knocked together for last year’s NoVA; I took pretty much the same approach for my Herald of Nurgle counts-as (Desolation), just with a Necromancer model instead of a Chaos Sorcerer.  Nothing fancy: just a headswap and an icon.

Herald of Mayhem

I did something a little different for the Herald of Slaanesh (Mayhem).  No headswap, just armswaps.  Not the most inventive conversion, but it’s hard to go wrong with buzzsaw arms.

Blood Fury

Speaking of lazy conversions: these are my Daemonettes: Blood Furies. Dryads with a bit of greenstuff.

Blood Furies

They painted up super fast, at least.

Workbench Wednesday

Workbench 20140716

Working feverishly to get this stuff done, but I’m running out of runway: I’ve basically got until Friday and then it’s a day here, day there without much predictability until NoVA happens.

Fortunately, the Soul Grinder’s, like, 95% done.  Just some washing (metals), black on the torso, highlight black, then touch back in some fleshy bits.  Made better time with it than I thought I would.

Then I just need to bang out four infantry-sized models for the base list to be done, and wrap up three larger models (that are mostly done) and three Screamers (which will paint up incredibly fast) and I’m done.