New Doo-dad

I've added a painting progress thing on the right hand side.  It has the number of painted points out of the total number of points that I own.  My Khador stuff isn;t included out of a need to not bum myself out and to further help me forget about the Motherland and how boring it can be.

The Deathripper seems to have taken precedence over the Razorback.   That's not to say that 
progress has stopped entirely on said tank, but the Deathripper is very close to completion (excluding the base).

So. Tired. Of. Green.

There, I said it. I am so tired of looking at all of the stuff I have to paint green. However, I shall push on - due to the cool factor of fully painted Dark Angels and a promise to the little lady. As you can well imagine (based on my past expedience and this post) the Razorback is taking a bit longer than I'd like. All of those Forgeworld panals add a high degree of detail I hadn't anticipated.

However, I am going to intersperse some Cryx stuff that I have into the job list.

I just got all of the P3 paints that I need for my bonejacks, so I'll start there. I've got a Deathripper on deck. Its coming along very nicely (granted I’ve only worked on it for an hour or so).

ATTENTION:

If you have not tried the P3 paints, do so immediately. They are incredible.

That is all.

Leadership

The command squad is finished. Took a while, but I spent a bit more time on them due to their 'elite' nature. They look snazzy. I'm fairly happy with the way the apothecary turned out and really happy with the standard bearer. This crappy picture doesn't do them justice.


Next on the agenda is the razorback these guys ride around in. I've already primed the main body. The forgeworld panels and the greenstuff-work look pretty good. Last time I worked on a tank, I got it done in like a week. Lets see if I can repeat that feat.

Then, I'm pretty sure I'm going to finish the rest of the vehicle pool (Rhino #2 and a landspeeder). Thus leaving me with a mere 10 man tactical squad. Then, its time for Cryx.

False Alarm

My second blog is a bust. I just couldn't make it interesting to read - let alone interesting to create.

I've got the heads on the last two command squaders. I've also made a good start on their backpacks. You should see some pics of new work soon.

Rotary Tools

About 3 weeks ago I got a Dremel. I had wanted one for a long time. So, when Angie got a job, I celebrated by getting something we could both enjoy: A Dremel Stylus.

Pretty neat, huh? Its cordless which is awesome. AND it's comfortable to hold for long periods of time. A bunch of people on the privateer press forums suggested this. If they're reading: thanks.

Just a few quick hints that I've found people commonly mention:

• Don't operate the Dremel at high RPMs when working on a model. High speed = high friction = lots of heat. White metal and plastic have melting points well below what a Dremel can produce at the contact point.
• Buy the quick change collet kit. The various Dremel tools have a number of collet size requirements. The orginal collet is a bit tedious to keep changing all of the time.
• Do not use the Dremel for pinning. See the heat issue. Also, you have much less control with the Dremel (vs. a pin vise) and could easily hurt yourself or the model. Though grinding/cutting the brass rod seems OK>
• Make sure you have the right attachments. The Stylus comes with a mixed bag of goodies - not all of them usable until you have the quick change collet. Additionally, things like the drum sander bit are sold separately from most of the drums.
  

I haven't had much cause to use this yet. I've done a bit with some base modification. Mostly I've just bored holes in random things.

Lightning Round: Vol. 1

Ok, I'm gonna start a new super speedy update format. I'm just experimenting with this, maybe I'll start using it more often - like when nothing super good has happened, but there are lots of little updates - especially since I got really tired of posting boring progress pics.

Here goes:

Lightning Round:

- Progress on the command squad is moving again
- I pre-ordered a Linebreaker Squadron for extra tanky goodness (its also cheaper to get three from GW rather than 2 from forgeworld - to the tune of 40ish dollars. Limited time only.)
- I am playing around with the idea of starting a second blog (unrelated to table-top gaming)
- Team Fortress 2 is pretty sweet.
- Team Fortress 2 crashes on me. A lot.
- Hordes: Evolution is yet another quality expansion book from Privateer Press.
- I went back and fixed some typos in the blog.

Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Old business:
- Irusk's grind spell cannot affect non-warjacks. I didn't really win the Amon game. Shit.

New Business
- Colin and I played one more game of Warmachine: Sorscha vs Severius. I lost.
- Colin has left for Illinois.
- Painting has resumed - more on this in the future.

Yeah, so last week has taught me that I am woefully out of practice with Warmachine and that I am positively bored to tears with Khador. I won the first game on the back of bad rules interpretation and lost the second on the back of bad roles and bad army management. Colin has gotten very good with his Protectorate army and I salute him.

My position with my Khadorans is fairly representative of my gaming habits. I get drawn in by some big stompy guys and then get bored when the big stompy guys don't meet my expectations. This happened with my chaos army in the days of yore, my chaos bloodbowl teams and, now, Khador. In all fairness, Khador is actually a well made and balanced army. The problem lies with my latent love of swarms of things, the undead and being sneaky.

For those of you who don't know: Khador is the neo-cossack faction in warmachine. Lots of guys with fur hats and lots of big stompy warmachines - just like the Russian army in WWI & II. There is also this fun old and new working together angle. There are mortars, snipers and guys with blunderbusses fighting alongside armed peasants, spearmen and mounted knight type guys. Amazingly, the army maintains a visual solidarity.

Unfortunately, the army is fairly straightforward to play: absorb casualties, smash enemy, repeat. There are very few sneaky tricks that I can see and most of my units are expensive in points. If I took the time, I could fill in my ranks with more unit types that I don't own and learn some good tactics, but I've still only found one warcaster that I can actually claim to like and I am extremely jealous of other people's hordes of guys, arcnodes, overt synergy and dirty tricks. Everything that Khador does is out in the open for all to see - smash stuff (except for the old whitch, who I can't figure out (as mentioned) and fear assembling).

It also doesn't help that the paint scheme I picked for the warjacks is abysmal. Colin pointed out that I have McJacks early on. He was right. Its like I got them out of a goddamned happy meal.

So, its time to finish my dark angels, and move onto a new and different Warmachine army. I will come back to my first Warmachine army, but not for a while.

Nope: With Battle Summaries

Yeah, so about that "getting the command squad done and maybe some other stuff".
Status: FAIL!

Didn't even get close. Got super distracted with the Orange Box. I bought it for TF2, but got hooked on the Half life 2 series. I can rally only roll in TF2 on Thursdays (due to noise and availability) and have only had one such unclaimed Thursday. HL2 is much quieter as fay as my noise making and easy to start and stop.

As I was saying, I didn't start a land speeder, didn't partially assemble a rhino and didn't finish the command squad (still got 2 of the 5 left - but a good start on the remainder). Once Colin leaves, I can get started on finishing 1000 points of dark angels.... and move onto some Warmachine.

In the meantime, Colin and I have played a couple of games. We've so far got one game of 40K and one game of Warmachine. This post may be long, but I'm going to discuss the battles:

Warhammer 40K - Dark Angels vs. Dark Angels - 1000 pts

A really fun experience. I hadn't played 40K since junior high (during 2nd edition). The game has really improved. Everything was streamlined and made a hell of a lot more sense than I remembered it making.

So, zee battle: Even though we were both rockin' the same Chapter, Colin and I had radically different armies. I went with a mechanized battle company force (lots of APC mounted footsloggers and a speeder) and he fielded his Ravenwing force (15 bikes of various types and a couple of speeders).

The battle went fairly quickly and fairly evenly. I had a hard time damaging his extra toughness guys, but had a a good selection of heavy weapons I could bring to bear on him. He had all kinds of mobility and lots of meltas as well, but I had some close combat punch.

Despite lower fire density, Colin out-shot almost every turn - my squads were getting chewed up quite quickly. Sameal (spelling?) was also a super quick plasma cannon-sized headache. Things started swinging back when my command squad engaged his flanking bike unit in melee. Man did that suck for him. 6 bikes gone to my company master and two surviving command squaders. The company master took out 4 by himself on the charge. That was pretty much when both of us decided to stop messing around with shooting and get stuck in. His remaining bike squad slaughterd one of my squads and Sameal started the process of chewing through my other squad. This would actually prove to be his undoing as her got bogged down and my company master, fresh from the bike massacre got stuck in and killed Sameal as well. Colins last turn saw him melta the previously undefeated company master into dust.

End result: Draw. I had more victory points (due to every vehicle I had managing to survive the game intact - super lucky), but the margin was very slim and had we gone a 5th turn his remaining squad and attack bike would have likely shot me to death. Tons of fun though.


Warmachine - Khador vs. Protectorate - 500 pts.

Another good time. Lots of beer involved.

Colin (protectorate) had been rockin' a 'Jack heavy force with Amon lately and decided to keep on keepin' on with it. I decided to use Irusk and some Iron Fang pikemen - largely because I guessed which caster Colin was gonna use.

The game went well, a little bit of rules lawyering on my part (sorry - but you DO need LOS to charge), but pretty good. Colin mispicked his force a bit, I mispicked mine to a lesser degree - but misplayed. All in all a very sloppy game for me. 'Course, I hadn't played in 5 months so I'm just happy I put up a fight.

Colin expected me to roll with Sorscha so his troops were aimed at her high-speed shenanigans. I dipped waaaay to heavily into ranged attacks (I always forget about safe passage). I also sacrificed my Pikemen by getting them stuck in to0 early. One of my mortars got stock in the middle of no-where and my all-star singing and dancing sniper team was almost totally ineffective. Not to mention the total uselessness of my lone warjack (who would later meet his fate at the hands of some crazed knights). Luckily, the Ironfangs did some damage before they got waxed. On a happier note, one of my mortars did some good work when it inexplicably managed to kill a couple of Exemplars with the bond of brotherhood up.

On Colin's end, he had a large number of good jacks and some great synergy, but not a lot of back up plans. He also subbed out an arcnode at the last minute. He played a pretty good game. His only real mistake was using the focus off of a wrack in the middle of his guys and misjudging its capacity to cause death. It went up in a holy explosion that took out what was left of a Choir, his reclaimer and a Dervish's arm. Luck-wise, his feat turn was less than steller and a crucial miss on a chain attack cost him an important charge.

At the end, I was down to a pair of mortars (only one anywhere near a useful place) Irusk and a pair of increasingly useless mercs. I won in the end thanks to some boosted magic attacks on Amon and a failed tough roll. I won, but only beacuse Amon sucks. Not really a savory or deserved victory. I played like shit and got lucky. But such is Warmachine.