Daemons Ho!

I haven't blogged in a few days, and the reason is 3-fold
1) It's December and real life has been kicking my ass. Apparently kids like more attention at Christmas time, what the hell?
2) I have so many things that I want to blog about that I can't settle on one to start with
3) Daemons and playing games. In the last 6 weeks I have played 7 games, which pretty much ties my total for 2013. I have also been painting and converting like a,  well like a demon.

I finished converting the Beasts and pushed them right into the painting stage. They still need some work,  but they're up to tabletop quality for now. I used a lot of the same techniques from the Plaguebearers.

I started to work on the Skullcannon and quickly realized that if I want to get paint everywhere, it's going to have to painted in subassemblies.

I quickly slapped a Keeper of Secrets together from a Dark Elf Bloodwrack Medusa plus some bits from the Daemonettes kit. And on the topic of Daemonettes, I eBayed some brass butterfly wings to add to their backs and make Slaaneshi Furies.

Oh and Nerdmas 2: Darkness Reigns is on Sunday. I'm looking forward to seeing the boys and getting a few more games in. Plus, maybe I'll convert some of these Squarebasers into dual system players.

The Painting Escalator. Second Floor

So, today is the 2nd deadline for our painting escalation campaign. For those who are reading this and haven't seen the Escalation Rules , well you're wrong. Our first deadline was at the highly successful Nerdsmas event.

At this moment in time,  we have a 5 way tie for the most points. I can't explain how exciting that is for me. Each of the leaders is painting a great looking force and I find that each of them is exciting in it's own way.

First up we have the Skaven. Neil is an accomplished painter with hundreds of finished models to his name. His dark elf army is superb,  especially with his love for monsters. A large portion of the Skaven army was already painted,  but now he is expanding the army and adding cool conversions and some great looking OSL.

Then we come to the Ogres. Nick is relatively new to the wargaming hobby. His painting has improved 10-fold in the last 2 months. The last time he totalled up his painted Ogres,  it was something in the range of 3600 points. It took me years to paint my first army,  but Nick is really cranking it out,  and doing a nice job as he goes.

Let's talk about the Warriors of Chaos. Josh is my brother,  and the one who introduced me to this fine hobby. With painted armies that include well over 3k of Bretonnias,  a monstrous CSM army,  a loyalist Space Marine army,  and one of the coolest Astra Militarum forces I have ever seen. I really like the high contrast colour scheme that he is painting,  and his newest Sorcerer conversion is out of this world.

And then there's those dastardly Wood Elves. Colin is painting a really cool looking force. It's a lot darker than I typically see for Elves, and I think that adds a lot. Everyone has seen armies of High Elves with blue,  gold,  and silver,  but this flies in the face of that. I don't think Colin has even painted this many models for one single army,  probably because his hobby ADD is as bad or worse than my own.

Oh,  I've been painting some daemons too,  but daemons are easy.

I'm excited to see what happens with painting in the coming months. I think if it comes down to a vote worthy tie,  the Wood Elves will win as they are the least disgusting models. There's just something about daemons,  chaos,  and Skaven that make women cringe.

Nerdsmas was a success

I don't know if just saying it was a success accurately describes it. Perhaps a roaring success. Yes,  Nerdsmas was a roaring success. Everyone had fun,  everyone lost models,  had it gone one more turn I would have been tabled.

A note on the scenario. Each player brought a 1200pt list. The table was played on a 8'×4' table and each general was randomly given a 24"×12" deployment zone. The goal was to capture as many meteorite markers as possible. The winning side would receive a +1 to their 2d6 rolls to see who selected HQ territories first on the campaign map. At the beginning of each game turn,  the teams diced off to see who placed tge meteorite marker. They picked a spot and scatter an artillery dice. The meteorites hit like a stone thrower and also any unit touched by the blast template was hit by d6 S4 flaming attacks. When the meteorite was placed,  the placing player randomly pulled a card from 8 selected from the battle magic deck (5 augments and 3 hexes) and any unit in control of the meteorite gained that spells effect.

At the end of the game we called it a draw at the end of T4 and moved on to the campaign moves. The game was a blast and everyone had a lot of fun. Some memorable moments were:

-A horde of zombies charged through a meteorite marker and picked up +1S and flaming attacks.
-My daemon prince charged and killed a Slaan and then charged a Chaos lord on juggernaut,  only to die to the Lord who then turned into a daemon prince of Khorne.
-zombies... everywhere ...

Good game,  good players,  a good afternoon. What more can you ask for?

Nerdsmas Eve!!

Well,  tomorrow we start the map based portion of our campaign. Someone in the group (Colin I think) coined the term Nerdsmas. Text messages and facebook posts have all shown that everyone is excited to get this going. I'm excited to see my new army on the table. For our beginning campaign moves,  I have a copy of the map printed out and laminated,  and I made some army banner markers. I'm sure everyone else will just use a couple of models, but I wanted something extra special.

Only one more sleep until Nerdsmas!!

Daemon Prince completed

Introducing Kul'Gal'Peth the chained,  Master of Acquisition,  bound to Ku'Gath.

This model took on a whole lot more character than I had expected. I am extremely pleased with the end result. I just hope I never need to Google "weeping wounds" and "blood soaked bandages" ever again.

With this guy,  the plaguebearers,  and the nurglings I now have 1200pts painted. Time for some bases.

First Units Done

Do you remember that time when I painted 26 Plaguebearers and 3 nurgling bases in 6 days and less than 8 hrs of painting?  Yeah that was fun.

It's nice to have this core of the army out of the way. I still need to sort out the Icons and a basing scheme. But for now I am calling these guys painted. Thanks to the guy who I bought the first 10 from. He had painted 2 and i couldn't bring myself to paint over his cool looking models.

So now I have 31 of my 32 models painted for our first game!

Daemons Progress Update

As I continue to work away at my nurgle force, I can't help but be amazed at how easy they are to paint. I have spent a lot of my painting time working on space marines, with nice crisp sharp edges. Including the time spent on the two test models, I have invested less than 5 hours on this batch. I will spend more time on the two heralds when I get to them. Still have a fair anount of work to put into them , but I could put these on a table and play without guilt.

Minor Hobby Progress

Hobby progress has been slower than I would wish. I did manage to assemble 10 more plaguebearers for the escalation campaign. And I got my armybook via a wicked deal on eBay!

And with the family tonight we painted some mini pumpkins. I'm half considering gluing mine to a 50mm base and calling him a Great Unclean One.

Escalation Campaign

My gaming group is starting an escalation campaign. We will be playing a map based campaign and scoring our painting. Painting will be scored on completed models rather than technical quality. The goal being fully painted 2400pt armies by the completion of the campaign.

Paint Scores and some Fine Print
On our first campaign day to kick off the map based events the players will be required to have 25% of the models in their 1200 point army painted to score 2 points. A bonus point will be awarded for the General being painted and named. Also, painted and named Generals receive Regenerate (5+). If the General already has Regenerate, it becomes 1 better than it usually is (a 4+ becomes a 3+ and so on and so forth)

Nov, 22nd: 2 pts for 50% of the models being painted of the 1600pt army. A Bonus 1 pt will be given for 1 core unit being fully painted.

Dec, 13th: 2pts for 75% of the models being painted of the 1600pt army. 1 Bonus point to be given for a painted special OR rare choice.

Jan, 10th: 3 pts available for having all models in the 1600 point army painted. As this spans over Christmas, the due date was extended an extra week. Also, no bonus points will be awarded. It's a family holiday, spend it with the people who matter.

Jan 31st: 3 pts for having a fully painted 2000 point army. 1 bonus point for painting a BSB or a Wizard.

Feb, 28th: 3 pts for having a fully painted 2400 point army. 1 bonus point is available for having a display board AND/OR painted and decorated movement trays. You can only score both of these points if you missed a bonus earlier in the campaign.

To encourage hobby progress for the participants whom already have a painted army, to score the points you must paint at least a single unit by each deadline. (The unit can be from a different army)

To score points, all participants must post a picture of an unpainted unit in the FB group( or email it to me ) at the beginning of each phase and then post a picture of that unit completed by the deadline at the latest 23:59 PST.

This allows a total of 13 Base points and 5 bonus points. In the case of a tie, only base points will be considered. If a tie stoll exists, a panel of random unbiased judges (wives/girlfriends/mothers) of the participants will be asked to vote on their favourite army. If a tie still exists, the affected participants can decide to either dice off or duel with axes at 2 paces for the prize.