Let 'em Burn!

I hope you didn't really think that I was serious about ending the blog.


Here's a quick filler post.  Last August I made some tealight smoke markers.  Hard to take a picture of, but I'm sure you get the gist.

You can obviously use them on or off, but it's just so much more cinematic with them flickering.  I've got 6 more of the tea lights but I need more stuffing before I can make any more.

KV47 AERO

A New Year, a new blog post.  I was pretty lax on updating this blog through the latter half of 2013. Furthermore, I was pretty lax in painting and hobby work.  I was spending my free time doing other things. I started playing some more video games, playing airsoft, and in the last month or two I started playing Magic The Gathering for the first time in a few years.  This year I am going to do my best to update this blog at least every two weeks and have something new to present in every blog post. With the new IG codex due to drop in the next few months I feel I will have plenty of motivation to finish working on my Guard army this year.

Anyway, a few months ago I went to Millennium Games for an X-Wing tournament and had decided beforehand that I wanted to start collecting an SSU army for Dust: Warfare.  When I got there I saw that all of the Dust stuff was on clearance since sales were not doing that great.  For me, this is sad since I love the miniatures and it's a pretty solid tabletop game.  However, it also meant that the models were 50% off...  I ended up winning the X-Wing tourney and spent my store credit on a KV47 Aero kit and a few squads of infantry.

I finished painting this model in I think November.  But with hunting season and other stuff going on I would get home and not feel like taking photos at all.  I have been sick the last few days and had some free time, so today I set up the camera and finally took some pictures.  I've been using Flickr to host the pictures for the blog since they allow up to 1TB of free storage and the in-site photo editor, Aviary, is rather nice indeed.

The KV47 Aero is transported in game by a helicopter, which was also included in the kit.  I did not yet paint it, but it will probably be the next Dust model I work on.  I painted all of the greens with my Badger Anthem airbrush using a Russian Green paint set made by Vallejo which I picked up at Section 8 Hobbies.  It includes 5 different shades of green which I used to do a lot of color modulation on the surfaces of this model. More after the break.

On the Workbench

It has been some time since I have updated the blog,  but that is not to say that I have been idle with regards to the hobby.  I just sort of lost steam with the battle reports, as I usually do.  From now on I will probably condense the reports into a single tournament summary post.  Once in a while highlighting a very good or close game with its own battle report.

The primary reason I got into this hobby is the building and painting aspect.  Being able to play with all of my models is really an excellent bonus to that and has become a larger part of my enjoyment. That being said I'd rather not turn the blog into a chore by trying to force myself into writing bat-reps and just write about what I do each week.

Several weeks ago I finally got around to painting some more Dust Warfare stuff.  First up is the first walker I have painted the Medium Panzer Walker.  I recently found out about a relatively new hobby shop a few blocks from where we game every week.  They don't carry much in the way of wargaming but they have begun to stock some Games-Workshop products.  They have an awesome collection of scale kits and a wide array of paints and weathering products.  I picked up the DAK weathering kit from AK Interactive, it includes a wash, a streaking grime, and a filter.  I watched a few weathering tutorials and ended up with what you see here. The filter helps modulate the base colors, the wash helps bring out the details, and the streaking grime adds streaks of washed down grime.  I also started using a fine sponge to add the chipping and then paint some some finer scratches here and there.

MURDER: INITIATE!

I don't really care for Ogyrns, I mean sure they endearingly stupid and naive but they're abhumans.  So, here's my solution so that I can use Ogyrns in my army; Mechanicus constructed Murder Servitors.  They're big, they're mean, they have guns for hands.  I built these guys a while back (over a year ago I think) and I finally got around to painting them thanks to an ongoing challenge.  My friend Kevin and I have agreed to paint 1 unit a week for the foreseeable future, barring and sickness or vacations.  If one of us fails to complete something in a given week, then we owe the other $20.  The first week I painted my Recon Grenadiers and he finished his Cygnar Stormwall.  Last week he painted his Mordhiem Warband and I started these guys.  I did not get too much done and wound up owing him 20 bucks.  This week I spent 4 nights working on these guys and finished them!

Here they are ready to murder your troops!

All that skin and muscle detail is the reason they took so long, I will say that I would never want to paint an Ogre army...

That's it for now, next week I am going to try and paint my rebuilt Mordhiem warband.  Last time I used Empre State Troops. I wanted a grittier look so I have remade them using Empire Militia and Empire Greatswords.  I am very pleased with how they turned out.

Stay tuned!

Not dead, but I am in Mordheim

My brother and I have not worked on much in a while, so tonight we got the balsa planks he ordered out and made up some terrain for Mordheim.  I made the stilt bridge in the middle and the barricades beneath it and he built all the crazy boardwalks.  We use these to connect terrain pieces while we place, usually buildings and usually only when we play Mordheim.  It just needs some wood stain and it's all done.


The week before Christmas is the last time I worked on anything.  I painted my Recon Grenadiers for my Dust: Warfare Axis army.  These are my first completely finished troops which include basing.  I also chose to cover up the large cross on their chests and just go with the one on the shoulder.  The groundwork really doesn't look so uniform in person, plus I got some assorted tufts in the mail which I put on some of them.  Really breaks them up more.

Here's a shot of the backs.  You can see the little bushes better.  I think they look cool, but they are a bit brittle so they may not be a featured when I base the rest.

To a new year, and to more consistent posting!

New table, new terrain! [Part 9]

Just a small update today.  I have not been doing much of anything on the hobby front for the last 2 weeks.  Tomorrow there is a tournament in Rochester though, so I am excited about that.  It should get me rolling again.

Here's the building I painted at our last game night.  It's a small mechanicus building.  It was built from spare parts by Kevin and has been known as the "Minifactorum" for years now. Glad to finally see it painted!

Here's a shot of the inside.

Gonna take my camera to the tournament and take lots of pictures (if I remember to) so expect some battle reports over the next week or so.  Probably going to pick up some more models for Dust: Warfare  so I should have an update for that game coming too.  I have actually painted quite a few units, but I have not come up with a basing scheme yet, so I have not photographed them.

New table, new terrain! [Part 8]

Got some more buildings painted up last week for the table.  Forgot to bring home a piece of foam to use to base the trees,  for the 4th week in a row... Still, the completed terrain collection grows every week and will eventually be complete.  Eventually, maybe not too soon for the list is long.

First up we've got a Cities of Death building which I have painted blue and white.  On the front the graffiti says "Freiberg Resists" with a small aquila above it.  What is the city resisting?  Why the enemies of the Emperor of course.

Here's a shot of the inside, there are a few small craters and bits of debris in there.

Next up is another Pegasus building.  This one has got a door and a complete first floor.  The writing is telling you to stay out because of the plague zombies.  Nurgle has visited our fair city.

Here's a shot of the other side and most of the interior.  A little bit of debris inside and there is a pot belly stove hidden by the wall.  There is also writing on the outside wall that says "All is lost."  Not everyone thinks the city is doing a good job of resisting anything.

Well, that is it for now.  I have received an order of medieval  horses from GW and have begun to construct my rough riders.  It's going to be rather time consuming to reconstruct all of the legs for each rider from the Cadian plastics.  I may just buy some casting stuff at last.

Stay tuned.

Battle Report: Learning 6th Event: Game 2: Guard Vs. Nids GAME OVER, MAN!

Finally got out to an event over in Rochester, NY yesterday at Millennium Games.  It was not really a tournament but a set of three games to let people learn to new rules and see how theirs lists would work out under them.  Multiple lists were allowed and prizes were handed out by a raffle at the end.

The format was 1500pts with three 2.5 hour long rounds.  Since this event was really just for fun and learning I wanted to try something that I had not really done before, bring a list with a minimum of vehicles and large number of infantry.  With the reduction in cover saves I really didn't know how this list would work out, last edition 4+ saves were good, but I was a bit worried about the 5+.  I also wasn't sure how this list would react to different armies.  I've used a vehicle heavy Guard army since I started playing in 3rd edition.   I just love tanks.

Here's my list:
HQ
Company Command Squad(Power Fist, Med-Pack, Standard,Vox, Plasma Gun) + Chimera
Fast
Vendetta Gunship
Troops
Vets 1 ( 3Plasma Guns, Grenadiers, Power Fist) + Chimera
Vets 2 ( 3 Meltas, Demolitions, Power Fist) (In Vendetta)
Infantry Platoon
Command Squad (Vox, Power Sword, Commissar, Power Sword, Standard)
5 Infantry Squads (2 Commissars, 7 Power Swords, 2 Vox, 3 Flamers, 2 Grenade Launchers)
Heavy Weapons Squad (3 Lascannons)
Heavy Weapons Squad (3 Missile Launchers)
Special Weapons Squad (3 Sniper Rifles)
Special Weapons Squad (3 Grenade Launchers)

Vehicle Count: 3
Infantry Count: 101

I don't think I ever made a list without a Leman Russ before, and with the new Squadron rules taking a pair of them isn't so bad, even with the limitation of having Hull Points.

Game 2

My second battle was against Aaron (hyv3mynd from synaps3) and his Tyranids.  You can check out his version of events here.  Below you can see his list:
Tyranid Prime (warlord) + whip/sword, toxins, regen (bio)
Tyrant + wings, devourers, old adversary, regen
Hive Guard x3
Zoanthropes x3 (all telekenesis this game)
Termagants x30 (warlord here)
Tervigon + claws, toxins, 3 powers (bio), cluster spines
Raveners x6 + rending
Shrikes x3 + whip/sword, toxins

Mission 2 featured the Hammer & Anvil deployment with The Emperor's Will as objectives.  Below you can see our terrain set up,  I have the right side of the board and he had the left.  You can see his objective next to the gray ruin and mine was in the building centered on my side.  We both wanted to set up terrain to our own favor.  He wanted to cover his advance and I wanted to protect my troops so they could shoot more before they got nom'd.  I think that my warlord caused my units within 12 to have move through cover but I do not recall what his was.

Aaron gets 1st turn and deployment so I get to go second.  We both deploy right up on the edge of our zones,  he wants to close with me as soon as possible and I wanted to open fire as soon as possible.  He doesn't have any reserves but I reserve my Vendetta with Melta vets inside to outflank.I put the 20 man blob and platoon command in the far building.  The rocketeers and large blob are in the center.  In the nearest building is a lascannon squad, the grenade launcher squad, and my Company Command in their Chimera.  In the rear building are the snipers with the plasma vets just beyond that in their Chimera.

Turn 1

The nids begin to advance through cover,  the flyrant comes flying at my lines and so forth.  The tervigon spawns 17 gants but rolls doubles so they will be all that come out.  They move to hold his objective and get a skyfire nexus.  How amazingly useful...  The thropes cast some invul bubbles and buff the flyrant.

The flyrant shoots up and shreds my Lascannon teams and the 4+ cover is not nearly enough to save them,  Aaron takes 1st blood.  

I move nothing, and begin to fire upon the bugs. My objective is nothing of note. I order bring it down for the missile teams against the flyrant and then first rank fire, second rank fire on each of the blobs.  The 20 man blob downs a ravener and other shooting kills 1 gant.  No other harm is done.  

Turn 2

The tyranids advance again, gants and tervigon remain in cover the shrikes move up again and the ravenors prepare to assault the blob.  The flyrant flies over the 30 man unit and lands at its rear near all the sergeants and the commissar.  For shooting, the hive guard attempt to de-mech the plasma vets but fail to cause any damage.  Zoanthropes attempt to wipe out the missile teams but all of their crushes only manage to kill 1 team.  Still, it's enough to force a morale check.  The flyrant dishes out some pain to the blob and kills 2 sarges and a commissar as well as some troopers.  Look out sir! wasn't doing to well here.  Don't think the troops liked their leaders much. 

 The raveners assault the 20 man blob, I think overwatch causes 1 wound and striking first does not help me much either.  They end up killing more than half of the unit, though we're stubborn and hold fast.  The missile teams pass morale prepare to unleash some more rockets.

In my turn I roll to see if the Vendetta comes in but it does not.  I move my platoon command squad to cover the side of the 30 man blob, though I probably should have just charged for the extra attacks.  I shoot at the flyrant but fail to do anything.  I cause 1 wound on the terivigon and wipe out the shrikes.  I think one of the zoanthropes died this turn.  In the assault phase the raveners finish off the infantry and consolidate towards the platoon command.

Turn 3

The tervigon begins to come towards my lines, bringing some of the gant blob with it.  The tyrant flies over my command squad's chimera and toward the nearest table corner.  The ravenors continued to move at the PCS.  Both of my Chimeras are blown this turn, the plasma vets get pinned but the company command is not thanks to their Regimental Standard's morale reroll.

The Tervigon assaults the blob but the gants fail to follow.  The raverners engages the PCS and wipe them, they consolidate towards the plasma vets.  The tervigon takes a wound and kills a few guardsmen, they hold, even without their commissar.

The Vendetta arrives and outflanks this turn, I zoom it onto the board and shoot at the zoanthropes, killing those that remained.  The plasma vets shoot at the raveners and cause some wounds, killing 1 I believe.  Shooting from the CCS grounds the tyrant, even though it could not wound it, a lasgun brought it down to the ground. Combat with the tervigon continues to grind on.

The gants all shuffle around again to max out cover.  The tyrant turns and shoots my CCS to death.  The raveners charge my dismounted plasma veterans.  Overwatch manages to cause a few more wounds thanks to some lucky plasma gun hits.

The veterans must have been ready for action because I dish out quite a few regular wounds before he gets his attacks.  Then the powerfist strikes with them and causes some more wounds. In the end only 1 ravener remains alive while I lose 2 guardsmen.   He fails morale due to a lack of synapse but I fail to catch him.  The tervigon combat continues but the blob falls back this time.  They wind up right on top of the objective.

The lone ravener flees, making sure to keep an eye on the guardsmen just insane enough to fight them in close combat.

On my turn the Vendetta hovers forward and the mela vets dismount.

I move the melta vets forward and begin to open fire.  The melta vets shoot melta and some shotguns, but I also toss a demo charge and frag grenade at the gaunts.  All this only manages to kill about 6 of them.
Plasma vets put a wound on the last ravener.  The blob rallies and shoots at the tervigon dropping it to 1 wound. Most everything else fires at the tyrant leaving it with only 1 wound.  The vendetta hits the tervigon as well but rolls only 1s to wound.

Turn 5

The spawned gaunts on his objective shoot and assault the vets, the hive guard do nothing.  The Tervigon and tyrant both assault the blob.  The Vets and the blob are both wiped out.  

On my turn I take out the tyrant with lots of my fire.  The tervigon is able to absorb the rest, but I forget to shoot my grenade launcher special weapons squad.  We have to end the game here due to time.

Summary

In the end Aaron had 5VP to my none, since he took first blood, slayed my warlord, held his objective, and contested my own.  Had I fired my grenade launchers, it could have ended up 5-3, but my only hope of really winning would have been to pull the gants off of his objective somehow.  Overall this was a very fun game and it was great to finally play against Aaron as I have seen him at several events and have been reading his blog for some time now.  In this case I don't think player placed terrain worked out too badly as we both got what we wanted out of it, but it still looked kinda cinematic with my guard trying to hold their line against the encroaching alien menace.  Still, I think for tournaments that TO set terrain would be preferable.

My vendetta rolled a lot of 1s to wound this game but still preformed okay.  It didn't die, so that was nice too.  With this game in the books I was impressed with how this list preformed.  Coming into this set of games I really expected a lot worse.  Warlord traits are hit or miss, but I think they are a cool addition to the game

Game 3 sometime later.  I may just want to spend tomorrow night painting.

New table, new terrain! [Part 6]

Well, just go an email on Monday that my 6 ed rulebook is shipping.  A week after I got an email saying it was "dispatched."  Oh well.

Over the last few days I have been very productive on the terrain front!  A couple nights ago I built the base for this small swamp after I finished painting my Heavy Recon Grenadiers for my Dust Warfare Axis army.  The next day I got out the paint, some resin, and these GW plants and whipped this out. The water is really murky, I just mix some paint right into the resin.  They sell dyes but this really works fine and has not yet had a negative effect on the resin.

When that was done being poured I finally painted the sentinel and dead pilot to finish up this piece.  I have been working on this on and off for over a year, don't know why it took me so long but it did.

Sunday I started out by making the bases for a duo of ponds to be used for terrain.  Not really picture worthy, but it took a little while to get them how I wanted them.  Next we went supply shopping.  Lots of stuff was purchased, spray paint, glue, resin, stuff to make trees, craft paints for terrain, plasticard, and some other nick-nacks.  I was looking for pre-made trees like I've seen at Millenium Games tournaments but they did not have them at my hobby shop, despite having a huge selection of model RR stuff.  They sell higher quality single trees and I got one of those to use as one of the random happenings from Mordheim.  We had to buy the raw materials for trees instead.

After shopping we headed over to Kevin's for terrain work/ game night.  My brother and I got to work priming all of the buildings(expect the church, it still needs a roof) either brown or black.  It was nice out so we opted not to do the spraying in the basement this time.

Most of the buildings will be black, with the mechanicus ones getting a reddish brown base.  The bases will either be urban or sand waste to match my table so they got the black or brown paint as well.  My brother helped me out and really made a mess of his hands with the spray paint.

Once that was done I cracked open those new craft paints and got to work.  Here are the first two buildings.  I opted for a somewhat simple painting job as I have a lot of buildings to do and they are just terrain.  The buildings get a drybrush or two over the primer and then I picked out some of the key details.  Same goes for the bases.  It's pretty fast and looks pretty good.  Not my best work, but for this it really gets the job done and is much better than the unpainted buildings we have been playing on for the last 5 years or so.

Monday night I started out by doing a bit more on the ponds.  I did some sanding and filling where required on the clay and then added some sand and texture around the outside (it will end up matching the sandy part of the table there) as well as some places in the pond where it will be a gravel bottom.  From the outside to the waterline will be static grass and tall grasses, perhaps some cat tail like plants like the ones around the mini-swamp.  In the water will be algae like stuff, some lily pads I bought, and some fish I am going to make from plasticard.  Most of the bottom will be mud.

Since I could do no more on the ponds until the Elmer's dried I started to work on some trees.  Since they didn't have the multi-packs of the cheaper trees we opted to make our own using the Woodland Scenics supplies available at the hobby store.  We bought the largest armatures they had and 3 boxes of the fine-leaf foliage; dead, olive, and medium green.  Here are a bunch of the wire cored armatures.

Here you can see how it works.  You bend the flat armature into a 3d shape, then you tear out little tufts of the foliage and superglue them to the branches.  It takes some patience and a lot of time to do each tree, but it's really kind of fun.

I built 4 trees so far one with the dead brush, 2 olive colored ones, and one medium green one.  My brother wanted a scraggly looking tree so he built the one in the lower right.  I really like Woodland Scenics for this kind of stuff, they have a great selection and it's usually good to work with.  If you want great looking trees I really recommend doing it this way.  It may take some time but you should be very happy with the results.  It's amazing how lifelike they look when seeing them in real life rather than through my mediocre camera.

Well, my rulebook is set to arrive tomorrow so you may expect a reaction to that tomorrow.  Otherwise I won't be getting much terraining done until perhaps Thursday due to Tuesday disc golf league and Wednesday being Independence Day here in the USA.

I ran out of room on google for images for this blog, so now it's become a pain to add them to my posts.  I first have to upload them elsewhere then add the image URLs one at a time.  I may just cave in and buy 10gb of storage from google for the 2.50 or so a month that it costs.  May not. I still have 2 free gb at the other site so we'll see how my patience lasts.

They wait for me in the forest.

New table, new terrain! [Part 4]

Okay, some more terrain updates.  I spent the last gaming night working on the basing for the buildings.  I added some texture to all of the hardboard in the form of water putty.  I also added some bits and lots of rubble pieces. There are lots of buildings to work on...

Here's a close up of one which I incorporated an Aegis line piece into.

A shot of some more of the buildings.  I believe there are somewhere from 8-10 pieces.

So while I was going to do the flocking as well, the rest of the gang started a new Mordhiem campaign.  They needed a lot of the buildings for their game, because it's not Mordheim without buildings.  In order to keep working,  I decided to start working on the pews for the church.  Here's the test one I did with Andy's spare balsa sheets.

Then I cut out all of the parts for 9 more of them...

And got to assembling them all.  Here's a little gauge I made to make sure the legs were all the same height.

Then 10 finished pews appeared in the church.  The congregation was happy that they finally had someplace to sit as they worshiped the Emperor and the dice gods.  A statue from a LoTR set will stand in for some sort of saint and the altar will be made of 2 d6 dice which will get a wood top.

As the people were worshiping, some chaos folk cam in and shot the place up. How rude! On this side we have some flamer damage, bullet holes, and shotgun blasts.

On the other side there are more bullet and shotshell holes.

So there we have it, a church in a warzone.  Next week I will be flocking all of these buildings and perhaps priming them as well.  It's going to be a long process on these and I still have an entire list of other terrain features I want to add to the collection to update it.


-Raised Pipes
-3ft Defense Wall

-6x Tanks Traps

-6x Fences

-Scatter Terrain

-Supply Dump

-HQ Emplacement

-4x Emplacements

Plus some other random stuff I already started, like a small LOS blocking hill, a couple ruined vehicles, and an overrun lascannon emplacement.  Wish me luck.

New table, new terrain! [Part 3]

Okay, so we've had these ruins for quite some time, so they are not technically "new" but they will seem like new when I get through with them! Step one is basing them all.  I think we have a total of 12 plastic buildings.  So this will be no small feat.  So we collected most of them here for viewing.

Next we had to cut up the hardboard which was purchased with the rest of the table supplies a while back.  My brother did not come with us today so I was forced to have Andy and Kevin help me maneuver the sheet over the table saw.  As a result, some of the edges are not the straightest possible though they will do fine for terrain.  Kevin also had a knack of pushing the material into the blade and pinching it, of course he would not admit to it.  The problem mysteriously vanished when Andy held the outside edge. Hmm...

Once I had the strips of a couple widths cut I could manage most of the further cutting on my own and measured and cut out the pieces for each building.

The next step was to take the buildings off of their old cardboard bases, clean them up a bit, make any repairs, add any extra details, or anything else that needed to be done.  So in letting Andy use my hobby knife he decided to use it to block a smack for some wise talk.  Absent mindedness is not a good thing when handling sharp objects.  There's a reason I used all the power tools.  So, I get a nice 1 in wide gash in my wrist.

After I tended to my wound I finished what I could on our chapel.  It needs a roof still, and the second layer shall be removable so that the interior can be accessed.  I will probably also make some pews and an altar and such for it.

The buildings got glued down to their new hardboard bases and that was pretty much all the work there was to do.  Of course we had the Stanley Cup game playing on the laptop, if you could call it a game...

So, we finished up with a game of Dust: Warfare.  150 pts Andy vs. I, Axis Vs. Axis.  We played corner deployment, secured area, and the one where you get to the enemy deployment.  In the end it was a draw.  We each killed one enemy unit of Battle Grenadiers with neither of us making the enemy's deployment with any units.  Mostly due to the lines of minefields we laid everywhere.  It was still fun, the fortifications were an interesting addition, and we caught a mistake or so more in how we have been playing.

Next time we're there I will be cleaning all of the buildings, as they are rather dusty.  I will also try to do most, if not all of the groundwork and flocking.  If I have time I will add any extra details and to the base coats of spraypaint.  We'll see.  I think painting all this terrain is going to take even more time than building the table.  I still have other terrain to finish, like the sentinel piece and a ruined land raider.  Some of the older pieces need a retouching as well and we still need more scatter terrain and barricades.  A lot of work to finish, so stay tuned!