Campaign Turn 12

I have been betrayed!! For those who don't know, our WoC player and my erstwhile ally is also my brother. But he has turned on me. This was my initial response to learning of his betrayal:

The lowest level of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers. I shall bring down wrath upon your army. It shall be with raining fire and brimestone that I shall smite you. You destruction will be total for my fury and vengeance shall be of biblical proportions!!

And he responded in kind:

I heard a sorcerer say once "The gods favor no sacrifice greater than to spill a brothers blood."

On these blood stained battlefields, a thousand leagues from home, we let our axes sing, and serve the brass lords throne. We liberate these countless fools, from the chains of mortal form, we bleed there bodies endlessly, forming rivers of our own. Let the ravens fly tonight, with words of war and lies, for on the bloody morrow, we'll slay the Lord of flies.... attributed to Gunnar the heavy handed war Skjald of Kharnath

So there are 5 battles to be fought:

Vampires vs Skaven
Vampires vs Wood Elves
Warriors of Chaos vs Vampires
Warriors of Chaos vs Daemons of Chaos
Daemons of Chaos vs Skaven

Cultists are done!

So this morning I finished up painting all the cultists. The bases are not done yet but I always do my bases as a complete army to keep consistency. This was by far the intensive group to paint for model count. I wanted to keep them dirty and grimy looking.

Because they're a horde of rabble I just used the same colours repeated over all the unit but in different spots. Once they all had their basecoats done I washed them with a brown wash. I then went back and made the green brighter, highlighted the champions, and added the weathering and blood.

I like this colour scheme because it can work for 3 different chaos armies. They can be for a Tzeentchian force, Alpha Legion, or even as a Tyrant's Legion force from Imperial Armour 9.

Pre Wash

Autoguns and a decapitated Wolf

4pts/model and look awesome!

Review of Dupli-colour primer

A few days back a thread was started on the ICs forum regarding primers. There were a number of good quality responses, but one of the members, Pez recommended Dupli colour sandable primers. He regularly paints with Golden Demon winners, I was was willing to pull out the stops and trust his opinion.

Here's what what I got, a can of black, a can of red and a can of grey. At this time I have only used the black primer, but it was amazing. The coats went on incredibly thin but still had good coverage. The drying time was faster than anything I have ever used before. I am sold and other than to paint skeletons or necrons, I can't forsee using anything else. I got fully covered black on every model and no detail has been lost at all. Seriously,  go buy a can and try it out.

And when a guy who paints like this tells you a product is awesome, you listen.

And if you've got a moment, check out some of his other work.  http://www.theindependentcharacters.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3259

It rubs the Chaos on it's skin or it gets the hose again!

With the ICs 2015 Hobby Progress Challenge now kicked off it's time to unveil the latest additions to the Chaos forces.

So first on deck with have 43 Cultists. I primed them black and then drybrushed them grey. So far I painted one test model. I'm really to emphasize the dark and dirty nature of Chaos troops. So here goes nothing...

Some Scenery Inspiration

This weekend I got to take a break from the grind and get a bit of rest. My family spent 2 nights out in the Rocky Mountains and it was a really nice break to get away from the city. While we were out there I was further inspired to work on my Alpine table.

Another development was in a game of Scrabble with my wife after the minions went to sleep. She got first turn and pulled out the letters to spell QUIETLY which is 19ptsx2 for double word +50 for using all 7 letters in the rack. She proceeded to complain "Well I already pulled Q out first and now I've pulled J and X in the same hand. Oh wait, I can spell JINX." It hurt a lot. She usually has trouble beating me at Scrabble so I'm proud of her for kicking my butt.

Finally, my fall of chaos continues as I start working on some new Cultists. It should be a lot of fun to knock these guys out.

Campaign Turn 11

After Turn 10 taking a full 4 weeks, we're back at it with everyone rested after a nice holiday break.

The Skaven and Wood Elves continue to coordinate well and have a firm grip on the Western front. Territories are changing hands quickly as some forces flail around in all directions. This may indeed be the point of no return.

Battles are for the following:
Territory 59 where the Ogres have 2500pts vs 2200pts of Undead
Territory 19 with 2000pts of WoC against a Woodelf army that could be doubly supported.
Territory 33 with 2200 points of Chaos vs a Skaven army of variable size
Territories 30 and 31 are both Daemons vs Skaven.

The overlapping fields of support should prove to be interesting once they are declared.

Warhammer Podcasts and You!

I love podcasts. Absolutely love them. When someone tells you that they love their shirt, or a song, or their Grandma, usually they just mean that they really like them. But I love podcasts. I love that I can download and listen to groups of like minded people talking about some of my favourite things in the world. I love that I get to see into the hobbies of other people and learn about what it is in this hobby that they love and that excites them. While it may be a discussion best left for another day, a few years ago I came to the realization that this hobby is varying things to everyone that participates in it. The majority of Warhammer enthusiasts enjoy a delicate blend of Fluff, Painting, Modeling, scenery building, Gaming, List Building, Blogging, etc. There do exist those whom focus exclusively on one of the different parts, but they are the exception that makes the rule.

For the people who don't know me in the real world, I work in construction as an opportunity to escape my children. It's a good job, feeds my family, buys me Plastic Crack, and keeps me physically active. One disadvantage is that I often have a lot of time to think while my hands are busy. I have found that working and hobbying both benefit from me having something to listen to. This means that I chew through podcasts at an incredible rate. I got through the entirety of the Independent Characters backlog of episodes in about 3 months. That's over 300hrs of podcasting to listen to!! And it was awesome.

For this post I am going to focus on the podcasts about my first love, 40k. Later I'll do another list of Fantasy Podcasts and then I'll just review new podcasts as I find them.

My #1 favourite podcast is the Independent Characters I stumbled across this podcast while looking for information on how to run gaming events and tournaments. At the time I had considered myself a competitively focused 40k player. To my surprise the hosts had a couple of guests on the show and they were discussing running narrative events and campaigns. This concept was so new to me that I was hooked and new life was given to my hobby as my perceptions of the game changed. The ICs continue to be the most positive 40k podcast that I have listened to and bring top quality content to the interwebs every 2 weeks.

While I listed my #1 podcast first, the next two are in no particular order because I love them both for different reasons.

Masters of the Forge is another fortnightly podcast that focuses on letting players play the way they want to. By writing and releasing special rules the MoFos help the listeners to explore the 40k universe in ways that go beyond the BRB. In one of my favourite episodes they explore The Death of Antagonis by David Annandale. They present unique scenarios and units to represent the different battles in the Novel. The MoFos are quickly on their way up on the community and I couldn't be more excited about it.

I'm not 100% sure how to describe The Overlords podcast. They are either a comedy podcast with 40k content sprinkled throughout or a 40k podcast with comedy sprinkled throughout. You are hereby notified that Phallic jokes abound in each and every episode. A variety of Brits and one confused American bring some excellent content and comedy to your ears every 2 weeks. The first time I heard the theme songs I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into, now I sing along with them. In fact, my Nurglr Daemon army was started because I fell to Nurgle, but just to try it.

If you haven't already given these podcasts a listen, I highly recommend that you do. Short of getting your group together for a hobby day,  these guys are without a doubt the best companions to getting your hobby work done.

A new year and a new plan

Yes,  I fully recognize that I haven't posted lately. Truth is that I put some much effort into my Daemons and my Marines that I've kinda burnt out a bit. I've also backed off of blogging because I have been trying to focus on what I would like to accomplish in 2015.

1) I want to get my Daemons painted up to 3000 points so that I have lots of options for list building. This includes modelled movement trays and a display board. I would really like to get more involved in the local WFB tournament scene.

2) I want to finish my winter table terrain including 2 centerpieces and some more 40kish terrain. I really need to come up with a snow technique.

3) I want to start and finish the terrain for my Urban Combat FaT Mat. In my opinion, the Urban mat is the best one that they have produced thus far and I would really like to use mine.

4) I picked up a small Beastmen army for less than 7% of its retail price. I spent 6.5hrs on stripping the models and now they're ready for the reassembly. I don't want a huge army but enough for small games that I can use for Megabattles, Narratives, and as a lender army. I expect that they'll be speed painted and based to match my Warriors of Chaos army. Maybe I can play around with some End Times fun.

5) I want to grow the Nerdmas events to have more participants and more fun gaming. We'll be running another one in late February or early March. I realize that this is fairly hard to track but so far our best turnout has been 8 players.

How about you? What are your hobby goals for 2015?