Craters and Dreadnoughts

 We have had a wild ride so far at the start of the year.  Lot of medical and business issues with my surviving parent put writing this post out of my mind.  But better late than never.  I have two new items to display on my blog.  

First thing is my craters.  I actually finished these a while back, and now I am going to put them up for display:

I used plaster as the form of the actual crater, painted them up using the paint formula from Hirst Arts on earth tones, and then gave them a wood stain finish.  I like the look and I think that it will last for quite a while.  

I also finished up a dreadnaught for the most part.  It is still missing the varnish, but that is something that will come later when I have better weather here in a few weeks.  I included the older squad of tac marines that I already have done for a family photo.  

I finally found a company that can do what seems like good squad markings for Crimson Fists.  I am still testing them, and finishing off the last of the marines in the new squad.  Little by little this squad will be finished.  I also have a scout combat squad that is currently being worked on, as well as one of the Ork squads from last year that I have been working on.  They are on the back burner right now but still actively getting paint on them from time to time.  

Orktober AAR

 So October has come and gone, and I now that I have some time to take a few photos, I decided to provide an update on the painting that I was able to accomplish.  Honestly it ended up going into Nobvember as well, but we will hold off on that.  Here is all that I managed to accomplish:

That is in total 44 Boys, 5 Nobz, and 1 Warboss.  A Total of 50 Orks with some kind of paint on them.  Now there is a lot of work to do, and likely are not going to be able to see most of the work, as most of the green is base coated that looks too dark to see the difference between black and Dark Angel Green, but trust me there is paint on all of these little guys.  

The front unit of boys are currently on the painting table right now.  Both are the sluggas and Choppas from the old AOBR box.  I am also using the Nobz from the box as the nobz for all of my units in this particular army.  Most of the boys in the back have problems that I will likely have to clean off using Simple Green.  I did not notice it at the time that I was painting on the green way too thick and it is marring the detail.  Good news is that I have plenty to work on until I can get these guys ready for priming once again, like these two units. 

These two are from the normal Orks box, one is a group of Ard Boys with Sluggaz and Choppas, and the other have the Shottaz.  Both get a Nob from AOBR likewise.  In addition to about the same painting treatment for the Nobz in the back, that is it.  I would show you a pic of the Nobz, but the picture turned out terrible.  Anyways hopefully more will be due from this lot here in the next year, but first it is back to the Crimson Fists.  I do have an update on them that I will show off here next week, I wanted to give the Orks their due limelight for now.  Until then.

Orktober

I am still having trouble with the decals on my Space Marines.  The decal manufacturers are kind of far and few between with some mediocre results or just not what I am looking for.  I will give a full update once I get that sorted.  Meanwhile I am still working on the rest of that squad and a new scout unit, but that is not the subject of this post.  The subject of this post is the targets for the aforementioned Space Marines.  

This month, being officially October, is also known as Orktober.  It is a month where we focus on those green little monsters and finally get some of them wet, with paint that is.  As someone who has plenty of Orks and need to work on them, I decided that I will change a few things up and get some paint down on them.  I will be participating in Orktober by working on a few Orks that I have ready and in inventory.  I already have been working on a few for a while as you can see here:

They have some shading and a few bits and pieces that need to be fixed, but they are very much along the way.  I did start up on the other half of this motley band of boyz just this week as you can see here:

What is after that you say?  Oh, I don't know I have a bit to choose from:

This may spread to Nobvember perhaps, which I have a unit of so that will work out for me.  Crimson Fists are not complete on the back burner.  I still have a whole batch of miniatures that I am going to continue to work on throughout the month, and trust me, more where that came from.  

Long Time Coming in an update.

Alexa, how do you spell Negligence.  Sorry folks, you should know by now that real life got in the way of things.  Nothing too important, just the usual elderly mom being a lot to handle with little time to do any hobby stuff let alone blog about it, and when I do, I tend to get into a perfectionist loop of always trying to fix problems that I see.  That also does not include accidents.  I did have one full squad almost done but then I ruined them when an errant paintbrush went across them and ruined my paint job.  I also don't like to post pictures that are WIP usually.  I like to showcase what I have finished.  On the other hand, a PLOG may spur me to paint more if I start posting WIP's.  

Good news is that I am almost done with most of a full squad and my dread from way back when.  I cant use spray paint right now as the pollen is getting thick, so I am going to give them any final touch ups that I have to do and start with the decals on them.  Hopefully they will be ready for the varnish before May is here.  Anyways here is what I have so far:

I fully expect to have a lot more pictures once the varnish is on.  The three not pictured had a few problems that I could not fix and had to give them the old "Simple Green" bath for them.  I expect to have them as well as a Devestator squad done soon.  

Lockdown Painting

 As many of us are now confined to our quarters until further notice, I have noticed that a whole lot of us in the hobby of miniature soldiers suddenly have time to work on their hobbies, which you can honestly say that for just about most other hobbies.  I would consider myself to be part of my group as well, since about half of my extracurricular activities involve being out among people.  With that in mind I have been working on my backlog of Crimson Fists that need to get painted.  I finally was able to finish my first squad of these all the way to placing decals and applying a hard coat on them.  I learned a lot about painting in general, as well as painting space marines, once again while completing these.  Lot of the mistakes that I did on these, I expect to not do again.  I actually got these done last month, it was only now that I was able to get some pictures of them.  Without further ado, here is my first Space Marines completely finished and coming to a table top near me.(whenever the hell we open up again)

Combat Squad A

So I had some trouble with the hard coat while finishing these guys up.  You can tell the two on the left are a little "frosty," whereas the two on the right came out like I wanted them.  The Sgt came out ok, but I think that I frosted his hand a little bit.  

Combat Squad B

I am not going to be anal enough to specify which model goes in which combat squad, but this is the other half of the squad.  

Regular Tactical Marines

Tactical Marines with Flame Thrower

Tactical Marines with Missile Launcher

Some close ups of them in groups of three.  

Some pictures of my Sargent.  I had the hardest time getting the face just right, and that is what I had to re-learn a lot of while doing this one.  Had I got him right the first time, this post would probably be a month or two old by now.  

Family Photo

This is a group shot of the whole squad.  While I am happy with the painting that I did on most of these models, I have some issues with the models themselves.  If you notice, they are AOBR marines which will work in a pinch, but leave something to be desired when it comes to some of the details on the model.  Most of that is hard to see in these pictures, but you have parts of this model without any undercuts.  That does annoy me quite a bit.  As mentioned earlier, there is an issue with the hard coat frosting on me.  I think that was due to the varnish that I used and not the day, as it was a clear warm day with low humidity.  I also screwed up on the decals when I was applying them on.  I managed to make them more or less look like battle damage, but it is something that I want to try to avoid.  This is on top of the fact that I am trying to use decals for both chapter and squad badges on any new models.  I will certainly use them for many years to come as I build up the rest of my chapter, however when the time comes, I expect to retire these guys.  

Summer Painting Challenge 2018

So I am going to do a do-over to last years painting challenge.  Same parameters, same goal.  The good news is that I am further along than where I was this time last year.  Over the winter I did paint a bit more on these models.  I was able to lay a lot of ground work on about half of the 80 models.  Instead of being all dark blue, I now have a lot that are the base blue that I want to use, and red where they need to be.  The bad news is that my surviving parent is the one that causes more stress in my life than anything else these days. 

 

I am confident that this year we will have this project finished by labor day.   Stay posted for pictures of my progress.

Summer Painting Challenge 2017

So in my infinite wisdom, I have decided to embark on doing something different with my time than the usual, which was to get bored watching Cable TV.  I have decided to cut the cord and do something else with my time.  For the most part, I have been reading books during the weekend and spending a lot of time online.  As the summer is starting to get here in my part of the world, I have decided to do a few things with my spare time.  For starters, I am going to do some more outdoor activities during the daylight hours, and go out a little more at night.  However, I can only do so much of that at one time, and during nice days.

With that in mind, I have decided to get some painting done this summer as well.  My goal is to paint what you see in the above picture before September 1st, to as high of a standard that I can and to include decals and varnish guard.  As you can see most of these items are assembled already, and the first squad is almost done.  Most of these units have not only primer coats on them, but also undercoats painted on using an air-brush.  A few of these do need something like a new head or shoulder guard, but that is not what I consider to be a big issue.  This comes to 81 figures, 7 tanks, and 4 skimmers.  While not pictured, the supplement would be a metal Chaplain, and 4 scout bikes that I have not assembled. 

As I have not done much in the form of painting in quite a while, I would consider this to be ambitious to say the least.  That is where the tactics come in, I will be looking to do painting sessions on a daily basis, likewise we do have a few holiday's coming up as well as a wet weekend to work on these.  Summer time where I live can get very hot during the day, so I will have some time during the afternoon to paint as well, having spent the morning being outside.  I am sure in 120 days we will see if I am crazy like a fox, or just crazy.  I will attempt to send up to date pics as the progress continues every month or so.  We will see if having a challenge will make me pick up the paint brush once again. 

A new Initiative

So I have a new initiative that I have just launched this weekend, but before that I wanted to talk about a little about what has happened to our friends at GW because what they have done pertains to what I am doing now.  I have been quiet on the trappings of GW for several years due to it being too easy to berate them and their anti customer practices. 

So our friends in Nottingham have decided in their infinite wisdom decided to scrap the whole game of WFB that we all know and, for all intensive purposes, love.  For those who have been hunting in South Africa for the past month, the Warhammer World was hit by a nuclear bomb or a meteor the size of New York and is no longer as it once was.  

What replaces the game of WFB is a skirmish game of basically the fantasy version of space marines, in the form of a game called "Age of Sigmar".  The game rules are basically a 5 page set of rules which is augmented by various elements in the form of "scrolls," and has most of the mechanics of 40K.  I have no problem with 40K but I don't want to play a fantasy version of it.  On top of the overly simplified rules, that get ever more complicated by these scrolls, the rule of "he who takes the meanest toys wins the game" is more blatant than any other time in GW's history.  Depending on your taste, the models are well done, but they hold no such drive for me to buy them.  That is not anything new as anything made for the 8th edition looked terrible.   As far as the old models that they were producing, from what I get from the website, all old stock of WFB is now being sold off.

Perhaps I was a bit too soft when I said that it was with infinite wisdom, how about infantile, as only kids would be interested in this drivel.  On top of that GW's exorbitant pricing is back in full force in that the starter set costs 125.00.  Everything else get ever more expensive as you get hooked.  You know how it works by now with GW if you have been a customer of theirs over the years. 

I think that I have not been a Fantasy customer for GW in quite a while as their new models are too ostentatious for my taste even before this major change.  What few items that I want to get will be from E-Bay from now on.  I would rather have those old models that are "not cool" any more than what they are producing.  Honestly with all of this I am more apt to say "So long and thanks for the fish."

Welcome to Classichammer:

So my new initiative is to start a website for folks who want to play previous editions.  I call it www.classichammer.com where I will be focusing on 4th to 6th for WFB and 3rd to 5th for 40K.  I may add some more editions, but honestly it is getting to a point of where I either am encroaching on other forums in the form of Oldhammer or to editions that I really don't care to get involved in, such as the 8th edition of WFB. 

This was an old project that I have alluded to for a while on this blog, and probably too cryptic for most people to understand what I was talking about.  It was part chance in that I wanted to start putting together this summer, and part because I saw some of the backlash from folks who hated AoS.  While not specifically caused by GW's decisions, I feel that this site will benefit from the angst directed toward them.  For that part I have to say "Thanks Games Workshop."

My plans are to do much more than the usual forum that most people have.  I want to try to have a method of locating opponents as well as a convention or a games day.  One step at a time however.  I encourage anyone who is interested, especially disgruntled GW customers who have large obsolete armies, to check it out. 

Apocalypse Gaming and handling big games

(Next time I am bringing my Wagner)

 

Well I had my first Apocalypse game the other weekend, and it was rather fun on average.  It was a 6k game with me and two other guys that had space marines, while the opposing force had two guys running a Tyranid force.  We played for four rounds after six hours and basically took turns wiping out one half of each side, with me in the center dealing with a few monsters.  I guess that Space Marines loss but it was one of those things where another turn and it would be a different story. 

All in all it reminded me of playing larger multi player games back in my days of playing WFB.  They are the fun to do on occasion but they have the same problems in my opinion.  Basically it comes down to how fast and comfortable of a player you are, in order to have an enjoyable game.  I would not call myself an expert, and I feel that I need some more experience in standard 40K before I take on another Apocalypse game.  Thus the reason why I don't recommend a game like this to anyone until they get experience in playing.  Playing fast and confident is a requirement in order to make the game go smoothly in a game like this where getting bogged down is easy to do. 

On another note, I am not sure that having different number of players is a good thing.  Usually when I play these games, I am usually ranking up against one guy and we never finish the game to the last model, so I rarely ever get to play other players in a game like this.  This is different, since I was in the center and attacking both opposing players at once.  The fun part is that I distributed playing against each other, but the bad news is that I have to vie for the attention of my opponent with my two other cohorts.  This lead to some confusion and having us wait on each other. 

All in all I would do it again, however like always, I want to try to do it with just me in command of the army.  It is one of things that partners in this situation causes hindrances to each other.  Like the old saying "Too many cooks spoil the broth."

Turning to the Dark Side

(Fitting given the Sci-Fi Theme)


I haven't talked much about my 40K collection, or much of anything for that matter in the past three months.  That damn real life again.  40K was not a game that interested me much when I was younger.  I am not much of a fan of the Genre when it comes to what we have in the Media.  It is something that really didn't appeal to me.  I do like the classical movies like the original Star Wars, Dune, and of course this. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8nPhsfYS5U


Recently what has driven me towards Sci-Fi is the Honor Harrington Series.  For those who don't know, it is basically like reading CF Forester interplanetary.  So that is my hook that opens up my mind to the Genre as of late.  Over the past few months I have been playing about half of a dozen games of 40K.  Space Marines are the army that I am currently playing with a Crimson Fist theme and play style.  After these games there are some issues that I have with the current edition of the game, however I would say that overall it is a system that I am liking more than Fantasy.  I won't belabor my disappointment with the 8th edition, since that has been expounded on in an earlier post. 

I espoused long ago that I would take my lessons of the past and limit my scope of what and how I do my purchases.  I do plan to keep that pledge with my space marines for the most part.  I have about 2/3 of a company that I am working on now.  I don't plan on getting anything new until all of this is up and running for Space Marines.  In addition to that, I am setting aside some time in my busy life right now to get some painting done.  Given how slow I am of a painter as well as the summer being as busy as it has ever been for me, it will certainly not happen overnight.  I will be posting my progress with this army.

New Games with Old friends

Well it has been a slow month for me so far with my miniature hobby.  However I was able to get a game in of 40K using the 6th edition last Sunday.  It is my first game and while interesting, we had a lot of distractions so it was not a great game to gauge whether it is an edition that I am fond of yet.  We were playing a 1K game and it took us over 4 hours to play.  One of the main distractions is that an old friend of mine dropped by the store that I have not seen in a few years. 

Honestly I was thinking of him as of late and wondering where had he been and if I should try to contact him.  It is kind of a chance encounter like what you read in the appendix of the LOTR with Gandalf and Thorin.  My fellow Roman antagonist for WAB told me last month that he was rather incognito due to real life issues that are occupying his time.  I know that he was not a fan of the current edition of WFB as I am, and had really not been active in any of the forums that he and I would frequent online.  As of late however he has been on TMP, so at least I know that he is still alive. 

My old friend and I of course struck up a conversation about 40K and WFB.  One of the topics of conversation was also the idea of trying to get together to play 6th edition once in a while, since we still had the capabilities to play the game.  Not to leave my opponent out in the cold, but he knew my old friend well and they conferred over an idea for a 40K apoc. game in the future. All in all it was a pleasant afternoon and needless to say I was glad to get out of the house for the time.  It is my hope that some good ole 6th edition game are on my horizon. 

A bit of yellow journalism

Well, I was contemplating the next post as I am currently running out of a few regular posts to do, and the intersection of my wargaming hobby and the real world found a dark corner today.  I was online for my daily read through Warseer and I found this post. 

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=325498

It is also linked to this post from this blog.

http://cadia122.blogspot.com/2011/11/bad-journalism.html

The synopsis of these posts is that a reporter went to a 40K tournament and did a story on it for a greek publication.  Sad to say, this story was clearly a hit piece on our hobby, and from the second post it was even more sarcastic that protrayed in the english translation.  This woman did interview several of the participants that came to this event as well and they did not help the situation if they were accurately quoted and translated.

Honestly I have no idea whether this is an accurate translation or just someone trying to cause a fuss just because they were boored on a Wednesday night.  Since the second link is one of the guys in the picture, and he took the time to do a translation, I have a hard time believing that someone would take the time to translate and cause this uproar if it is not an accurate translation.  Now, some hippy reporter in Greece really should not bother me and usually it does not, but I do have some problems with this article.  This article is laced with insults ranging from the usual to the more obscure and more potent about gamers, expressed below.   

Wargamers are Shut-in Geeks

A common sterertype that all wargamers get from time to time.  Anyone who spends a lot of their lives gaming especially in their adolescence have experienced this bias.  Some of it may be founded and some of it can be unfounded.  I would have to say that I really did not have a problem with this since it just indicated to us her bias.  It told me her type real quickly as one of those judgemental, pushy, people that will denegrate someone just to make them feel better.  Anyone that has gone to high school has experienced these people.  If it was just this I would have dismissed her and not even write this post. 

Wargamers don't think

She really disapproved of the fluff of the 40K universe, and though that anyone who thought it through would also approve of her disapproval.  Therefore anyone who liked the 40K fluff did is not a thinking person, even though there were plenty of highly educated people at the tournament she stated.  In addition she also made sure to insult the british with her disdain for the 40K world.  I don't remember if I have ever stated this, but I cant stand the fluff that GW produces.  So painting a brush on all of us based of the fact that some of the people like the drivel that GW puts in their books certainly annoys me.  It makes me wonder if she saw a couple of guys playing a game of Armies of Arcania, which apparently has almost no fluff, and would still have the same attitude.  Somehow I think that she would disapprove based on the concept that wargaming fosters warmongering in her mind.  This closed mindedness that if you are not enlightened enough to be a left-winged community organizer, you are dumb as a fence post really gets under my skin.  World view is not an indication of intellect!

Wargaming Promotes Nazism?

That is a salient point of the article that either you are a Nazi sympathizer or a sympathizer in training.  Now this was very insulting to me on several levels becaue of the context. Apparently, this problem is rampant here in America.  Now, it has been a long time since I have been to the hazing rituals to join the wargaming community, but I don't seem to recall them including getting nazi tats.  All of it was hersay from what I gathered from the article, or her perception based on the loosely on the iconography that is in the GW fluff that she despised.  Throwing the Nazi word around was usually a cardinal sin for the media to use without evidence.  So not only insulting the gamers but Americans, and of course anyone conservative.  To be honest I have seen all walks of life play this game from the very hippy liberal, to the most libertarian.  I really don't check their political card at the start of the game to see if they are someone that I care to associate with, since I never thought that it mattered.  Apparently it does to this woman.


This entire article was decrying the zenophobic attitude of the gamers, but I wonder if they were trying to single out these gamers for their own political dialogue that is happening in Greece.  Remember that this was a published article in a newspaper so I am assuming that an editor actually read the story like you see in All the Presidents Men.  Clearly I get from this article that 40K gamers are a bunch of rich nazi's that have too much time on their hands.  With the strife that they are having in Greece, denegrating people will not end well for Greece, or for anyone else that starts this kind of attack.

My apologies for taking this post into a political realm, and perhaps making this more than just a reporter being short sighted and meanspirited.  It is my hope that no one takes this article seriously, but it does poses the question what is this world coming to when a fictional game can be taken in this light.  I have a hard time seeing this woman denegrating recreational sex or drug use, so why should she or anyone else give a damn what someone does in their spare time.  Add this to my musical hobby, where it is apparently illegal to make quality instruments here in the US regardless of the paperwork(Google Gibson Guitar Raids if you have no idea what I am talking about).  It makes me wonder if I will be running out of hobbies in the future, and when that happens wait and see how expensive the damn models will be then.  I guess that I should go out to the shooting range before that is not allowed either.

To 40K or to not 40K

Over the last year I have tipped my toe into 40K.  It was not because my interest for WFB is waning, but rather I made the decision to start playing before that happened.  I doubt that I will be as attached to 40K as I am for WAB or how I was attached to WFB, but I still plan on taking the time to play it well.  I have never been a major tournament player, I was better at Tournament Organizing instead, so I really dont see me doing the tournament scene with 40K.  Hopefully I will take some of the lessons learned from  my years of collecting WFB and be smarter with how I design my army. 

What Have I done So Far?

I have started my collection with the Assault on Black Reach box, which is the normal for most newcommers.  I have started to put together a Space Marine army right now with a Battleforce along with a few other vehicles.  I am currently around 1850 or so with what I have collected for them which would get me to a bare minimum for playing normal games at my LGS.  As far as painting  goes I am painting them up as Crimson Fists.  I figure that after another battle force plus a few vehicles or two and some sternguard and this army is done for the most part.  At that point it is basically an understrength company which fits the background of the chapter very nicely.  I may put together other companies of the chapter, but I am going to try to take a lesson from my WFB days and focus on one part at a time with this army. 

I may do a home-made chapter, but I am not interested in putting together many of the other different type of space marines.  They just seem like the same damn army but with a few changes here and there.  They remind me of the different bloodlines from the VC 6th edition armybook.  Why cant they put all of the different armies in one book is beyond me, other than GW thinks that their customers are dumb enough to buy them, which seems to be the case. 

What is upcoming

Imperial Guard is what has really brought me to 40K, and that was before the new book came out. IG reminds me of playing WWII games but not being WWII per-sae. I can't stand playing re-enactment games,(something that needs a post in of itself) so playing IG is something that really draws me. Of all of the different armies that I am interested IG is an army that I would most likely form an attachment with like what I had in fantasy. I have collected a few vehicles and some troops for this army and I can see me do a lot of things with this army. These guys are right next after I get the space marines done.

I still have the Ork portion of the AOBR models as well, and I find that to be the perfect opponant for my guys so I am planning on setting up an army with them as well.  My LGS does have a few cheap battle forces for Orks so I would be getting a deal with them.  I do find the army interesting, but not as interesting as the two previous armies.  Perhaps I need to get the codex and read through it.  They do have an easy paint job so I would not be putting much time in painting them.  These guys are proabably next in line. 

Interested but not that much yet. 

Eldar is another army that I have some interest in.  As of right now I have barely flipped through the codex so I have almost no idea what they are about.  I have seen one guy at my LGS that has a beautifully painted army and does play them all of the time.  They are also an army that looks like a sci-fi army, and not some kind of modern warfare knock off.  They are still a cheap battleforce as well which does attract me. 

Nids is an army that does interest me to some extent.  From Starship Troopers to Aliens I can see a few things that I can do with this army.  I think that they serve a great role in that they are the monsters of space.  They serve a very great evil opposing force role that does interest me. 

Tau is another army that I have some interest in.  They actually look like a sci-fi army like Eldar, but they are not Eldar with different rules and choices.  Something that I am interested in but not off the bat. 

After that I really lose interest in all other armies, which makes for about half of the armies that GW has.  An improvement in my mind since I still am enamoured with 75% of the fantasy armies even though I am not active in the 8th edition.  I dont have the emotional nor the physical investment with 40K right now so I am not planning on any grand plans that I had with Fantasy.  Good for me, bad for GW.  If they come to their senses, I will be here if that ever happens.  The good news is yet another hard lesson from GW is that I taking this piecemal as much as I can.  I am not going five armies ahead of where I am like I did in Fantasy, and if something is amiss in the next edition, I have no problem boarding up what I have put together, keep what I really like and sell the rest, sort of what I am doing with my Fantasy inventory right now.   

What is 40K to me?

Well it is a general change of pace for me, and I want to have it as an alternative to WAB and hopefully something that I can use for a break from WAB.  Incidentally I believe that 40K will be the go-to game for most people so that may be switched for me unfortunatelly.  I guess that I really need to start recruitment for WAB apparently.