The Empire of Mankind

Hulk-A-Mania

2009-09-09T11:48:00.002-04:00

We played the new Space Hulk yesterday and we were all big fans of the original.

It was incredible. Moreover, it was beautiful. Where I play is a place that has a lot of non-gamers coming in and out. Friends, pizza people, friends of friends, etc., and we set up the board (mission 4) up in a place where anyone coming into the house would pass us up to see it. We had people oggling it, and not the miniatures which are phenomenal, but as per usual with GW, need to be painted (that's really a drawback in my opinion).

The game played smoothly. I found the time limit dynamic to be immaterial (on no turn did it ever actually matter), but I believe they resolved some of the issues of the original game and made it a heck of a lot better. I really like the on-guard dynamic, especially with the Storm Hammer sergeant who puts the fear of the Emperor into genestealers but who ends up not being able to move much. The game provides real tactical choices for game play and can be played in about an hour easilly.

I have, however, two major complaints. It seems to me that the doors are still a major problem in the game as it's far more easy to open them to break them (so why break them?). Genestealers end up spending far all their forward momentum closing doors behind them so as to keep up their shields. As a result, in both games, the marine players won (though in both games, they won with 3 out of 10 marines left!).

My second complaint has to do with the assault cannon which has all these strange rules associated with it once it has fired ten times. You'll probably never fire it more than three. We fired it twice in our game to take the objective. It is highly possible that this was mission contingent, but I just can't imagine a space hulk game going for ten turns, much less more. Part of the game's fun is that it doesn't take very long to play. Having said that, I'm sure I will run into a giant space hulk battlefield at some Con where the game takes forty turns, and the assault cannon's maximum of 20 shots will come into play, but for my money, games of that size are better played using the 40k rules (or even Apocalypse--yes, I did say that).

Regardless, though, I think the game is a great occassional alternative to 40k. It is beautifully constructed, and with more than 10 missions, has great replayablility. I'm sure that some people will flinch at the $100 price tag, but it's well worth it (though don't count on using the genestealers in a regular game, they're poses would prove innefficient for purposes of cover and line of sight).

New Rules, Old Codexes

2009-09-05T11:57:00.002-04:00

When the new rules came out, I had just finished painting enough Thousand Sons to host an army, and a rather, inconceivably awesome armada it was. I had converted Rhinos to look amazing, I had decorated terminators and defilers with headdresses, I had found appropriatly crazy spawn...

And then I lost for about 6 months straight. I've moved on. I tried Orks, which admittedly makes me the worst player imaginable because I lost with them. My defense is that I didn't play them for long enough until I moved on. I've met with failure, likewise, with Necron, and have had some success with Eldar. I have felt in no position to offer advice, but here it is anyways.

The new rules are entirely unforgiving. You simply can't pick up an old codex and make your army any fool way you want. At one time, grinding out a point or two here and there gave you a slight advantage. This is simply no longer the case. If you are playing the necron and you are buying anything but phalanxes (monolith/lord/20 warriors), you are wasting points that will end up costing you the game. Thousand Sons are simply cost inneffective and an army of them cannot win. CANNOT.

Now, obviously, someone may play badly, but equally matched, rolling well, you simply paid twice as much for your army than you should have. Invulnerable saves aren't worth it except on guys with powerfists and lightening claws. Moreover, you pay for that force weapon and it can't kill anything anymore.

What's more, I find that cheat armies can stand up in the new rules with greater impunity. Feel No Pain means that you should always play Nurgle if you play Chaos. If you aren't, you aren't doing the math. Deathwing terminators as troops choices make them win, and win big, because you can't get them off an objective across a board.

Now, the good points. The truth is the newer armies are a hell of a lot more powerful than the previous editions which means that the game becomes more interesting. Cheat armies from the previous edition are as good as the normal armies for the new edition.

Lastly, and I think this is the most important thing--game play in the new edition is much better. Tactics really matter more than they did before, and mobility is key, even more than 3+ invulnerable saves. I think the Eldar and Dark Eldar are very good armies right now, but that means that they're evenly matched with the Marines--making it a good battle.

So, the problem is that you have to wait for your codex, but the good news is that, as it stands right now, once the new rules make you even with everyone else, the battles offer far more options for scoring a win.

My two cents anyways. When are they making the Necron Codex anyways?

a few Nurgle-y tips

2008-11-04T07:41:00.002-05:00

It's been awhile. I got two orders back to back-one for a 6x4 city and the other for a 6x12 landscape, and well...that's an f-load of scenery. I'll be returning soon with many other interesting ideas, but as for now I'll have to keep it short.

I'm working on three armies right now, my ultramarines (as always), my Thousand Sons, and my Death Guard. For the latter two armies, I have figured out how to make their terminators. For Thousand Sons, it's kind of obvious (add a head dress), but many I love my death guard termies, and really nurgle in general. Here's a hint for those of you playing Nurgle or planning to build a Nurgle army. Get yourself some self drying clay and some cheap zombie miniatures. Plus, the dollar stores sometimes sell something called a fly launcher which comes with little fake flies (just big enough to put in someone's head mount). I also recommend getting dollar store versions of Battleship. The little pegs are great for spikes.

Easy Roman Columns for Warhammer 40k

2008-09-08T08:38:00.004-04:00

So, I got tired of buying roman columns 4 to a pack (cake topper aisle at Michaels) and decided to build my own en masse. Here's how it's done. Go to the dollar store and pick up one of their mops. You're going to be using the handle of the mop as the column so you want something that has that column texture to it. Okay, great. The stuff's made of cheap metal so you'll need somthing to cut it with that wont crush it. I used a dremel cut off wheel. It's really thin stuff so it won't really take much effort to cut it. Bases of columns and tops are the real tough part. I just cast mine with Hirst Arts molds--it's just easier. If you don't have Hirst Arts Molds, you still have a few options. For one, there's the Scrapbook textrure strips. They stick on but you're going to want to reinforce them with glue. If you wrap them around something already round and slightly larger than the handle (say a coke bottle cap) they'll have a seem, put it away from the world and you've got a kind of base. You can also use the spout of a two liter: cut it below the threading (just below the flat part and turn it upside down (this looks particularly sci fi). For the top of the column you can similar to the base, but an easier move (especially if you're dealing with ruins) is that while you're at the dollar store, pick out some of that crappy statuary they've got around. Normally it mounted on flat bases with some kind of texture to it. Bus. t that for the base. Remember to save the statuary itself. We use every part of our kill. I'm waiting to put all of mine together in some kind of demented chaos collage.

Apocalypse Yesterday

2008-06-25T11:15:00.001-04:00

Has anyone figured out a way to fix Apocalypse? I just scratch built two titans, a Cobra, and a Scorpion and I'd like to play them in something resembling a game. You know, with rules...

Summer for casters

2008-06-19T11:34:00.002-04:00

It's summer. It's hot. That means for those of you who cast, your molds are beginning to go out of shape. A good tip, always, is to pop the cast first, fill it and then leave it. A mold with a casting in it is far less likely to contort.

5th ed. a review

2008-06-07T13:56:00.003-04:00

Well, like the rest of you, I have seen "the new edition of Warhammer 40k" (if the version I saw was legit, and I think it was) and it is...not good. I'm not sure that they fixed anything that was wrong with earlier additions and from what I can tell they mostly reverted back to 3rd edition. They don't clear up cover (though the forests are now 4+ saves so there's no point in playing space marines), they didn't fix rending, nothing. I was kind of hoping there would be a reason for producing a fifth edition aside from them wanting more money, but none of the arguments that you have at your table will be solved with this new one.

Because the new rules basically allow troops to block one another and because there is that 4+ cover save everywhere on the board, I imagine this will be the hey day of hand to hand and big shooty armies. Everything in between will probably have to call it quits for awhile. Like I said, I don't see any reason to play space marines (maybe Blood Angels). Maybe they'll fix this in the codex but if there's going to be consistant 50/50 cover saves for every army, they need to make the 3+ a little less of a factor in marine costs (or give them a 6+ invulnerable, that I think would work too).

Good things? Not much. I like what they did with the area affects (though BS for blast weapons has now become totally irrelevant). Being able to shield is kind of cool, but it will make the Hormagaunt/genestealer combo absolutely deadly. I think its interesting that they'd include city fight rules in the main book, but hey, how about covering how hills work. Seems like that might be worthy something to someone.

Overall, I just don't really see the point. The book corrects little, changes little, and what they do change or correct they either get horribly wrong or the rule is now as it was in 3rd edition.

Baby's first Titan

2008-05-31T13:56:00.003-04:00

So, lot's of work to be done still. But this is, I think, a pretty good start.

Eldar Titan

2008-05-06T21:15:00.001-04:00

Eldar Titan, minus head and gun arms...$6.99.

Beat that.

Apocalypse on the cheap

2008-04-19T06:24:00.004-04:00

It is, perhaps, not good that I am setting my sites on apocalypse, but I am.

The reason it's not good is because I am one of those players who can field a 10000 point army, in sheer man-power, but that's not really the point is it. The point is that you want to field a Titan, and well...I don't have a Titan. Not yet, anyway.

But what in the hell are these people thinking over at Forgeworld? The scale of superheavies is the scale of cheap toys. Seriously, go to the toy aisle at Big Lots, Walmart, Target, or the dollar store and tell me you can't, in five seconds, pull a model off the shelf that's in Apocalyptic scale. Hell, they sell a tank for army men for $9.99 at Big Lots that looks a hell of a lot like a Baneblade and it's the exact right size. I know they don't expect people to have great modeling skills, but really, how hard is it to glue some bendy straws to the thing and maybe pop on a few extra guns you got from a GI Joe lot auction on Ebay. How much do they want for a Baneblade?

For $18, I found a Scorpion that is nigh-playable right out of the box. I just have to get the barrels of the cannon on it. Do you know how much forgeworld wants for a scorpion. I'm not kidding. Right out of the box. Now, I know what you're thinking, "how much conversion are you going to have to do?"

If I were sloppy, none. I'm not sloppy though so I'm going to have to cut up a frizbee a bit to fill out the back slopes of the wings. Still $18.

And now, I've set my sights on Titans. Did you all know that they're only 10.5" tall. You know what else is that tall? ED 209 vinyl models on Ebay. You know, that robot? From Robocop? Looks like a titan? So, now I'm cruising the cheapo store to find a headpiece that looks remotely like a dog, though I've already figured out that it also looks like the cockpit of a plane, maybe with the nose sanded flat, but how hard could that be to get for under $5.

Seriously, $500 for a 10" model. Are they fucking high?

Making daemonhunters not suck!

2008-04-17T12:30:00.003-04:00

I like that 40k finally came up with an army for the daemonhunters, but they are the worst army they've so far devised. They aren't even really that good at killing daemons unless they take the options. An army called Daemonhunters shouldn't have to take options in order to hunt said daemons.

On the other hand, they're such a great idea for an army that it seems like a crying shame that they suck so bad. I've seen a few people try to work their way around the "suck" factor which I thing revolves around the lack of any ability to kill a tank, and this seems to be how people have managed.

First tactic, Allied armies: This tactic seems to work a bit. There's a direction you can't go. I think you have to do Space Marines with Daemonhunter allies rather than Daemonhunters with space marine allies, but there are problems here. You end up having to buy way too many troop choices to get a single las cannon on the board. Also, don't you want to load the grey knight terminators in the land raider? Well, it's like Mac and PC--the Ultramarine land raider is for Ultramarines, the Grey Knight land raider is for grey knights, and you can't buy it unless you have a Grey Knight hero along with the Ultramarine hero. It gets to be too many points just to play a normal army. Lastly, the problem is in conception. Are you playing Grey Knights, or Blood Angels with some Grey Knights hanging out. And hell...why not just make it Eldar with some Grey Knights hanging around.

Second tactic, IG/Grey Knights: Great tactic so long as you know you're playing IG. I even think that this is a great idea to punch up your IG's hth possabilities. But don't fool yourself. You can't just drop IG guys into another army. They need to be there in numbers to be effective. Otherwise, this only looks like a fix, and will normally come back to bite you in an actual game.

Third tactic, IG/Inquisitor: Again, this tactic is more about making a scary IG army than a real daemonhunter army. You're basically still playing IG with the added benifit of an Inquistor in a Land Raider. But the army will play the same thing and it's not nearly what you want to do, which is to play a grey knight army that doesn't suck....

Which brings me to tactic four, which comes to me from one of the guys in my group:

His reasoning is this: First, no psycannons. Aside from daemons who realy does it hurt. It's a waste of points.
Second, Daemonhunter dreadnoughts, un-modified with all the stuff you can buy dreadnoughts, are cheaper than marine dreadnoughts. Okay, use them. Three of these guys aught to take care of your more obvious tank problems.

Trade in the force nemesis weapons on the terminators for thunderhammers. They bust tanks. The urge is to throw around strength 6 power weapons, but you should think about at least trading over a few thunderhammers in order to make the terminator threat more real.

Lastly, you are a shooty army. You're not that great in hand to hand, but at a range of 24", you are mean. Anything longer, leave to the dreadnoughts and the inquisitor with heavy weapons servitors. Set up some fireplatforms, defend them at medium range with your grey knights, and kick the hell out of people as best you can with your terminators.

Last week I fought this force and won, but by the skin of my teeth and with a Thousand Sons army who are basically designed to wrip through Grey Knights like a hand goes through air.

Hope this helps.

Painting the nids, pt. 2

2008-04-12T13:58:00.004-04:00

Here's the thing you should understand: my other color for the nids is orange. Orange is yellow and red. Purple is red and blue. Between orange and purple I make black. In other words, if you put orange over purple its likely to turn black.

Step 7: moistbrush all the appropriate areas orange. Moistbrush all the appropriate areas burned umber. Moistbrush all the appropriate areas green.

Having completed only this step and having done nothing by way of shading. My miniatures look like the Tyrant guard mini in the picture. That's without shading and already you can see three different layers of color (red-orange, orange, and light orange). This is clearest on the creature's head and chest. After this, I need only paint on light orange and then a dull yellow and the sections in orange will be done.

I go over the white/purple sections with a strong white to dull out the purple and to make it nearly white also.

Nonetheless, it took me about an hour and half to paint the hive tyrant.

Painting the 'Nids pt. 1

2008-04-12T13:47:00.004-04:00

So, first of all, this is what I hope my Nid army will all look like after they're painted.

And here's how I'm painting them... I say this because I think they look good, and my method is extraordinarilly simple.

Step 1: Paint it black! Everything.

Step 2: Drybrush it white. Heavy heavy drybrushing. The figure after all is said and done should look white with black only in the cracks and low lying areas. It doesn't matter if it looks scratchy.

Step 3: Using a method that I'm calling "moist-brushing" apply purple over the entirity of the miniature. Moist brushing here refers to an ammount of paint on the brush somewhere between dry brushing and normal ammounts of paint. Take the brush. Dip it in the paint. Drag it across the paper until the paint is thin but still apliable to the miniature in one stroke. The goal here is to basically, cover the miniature in purple but in such a thin coat that the black remains visible underneath.

Step 4: Drybrush it white. Heavy heavy drybrushing, but a little less than in step 2. This should make a miniature where the deep spots are purple with a darker stain at the really deep crevices.

Step 5-6: Pretty much do steps 3 and 4 with violet, and drybush white even less. The overall result should look like the Tyrant guard in the picture.

ICon update: The Tournament

2008-04-08T15:24:00.002-04:00

The guys over at The Brothers Grim turn out to be pretty good at running tournies. Out of 20 or so tables, I think there was a game going in all three rounds. No Orks, No Eldar, No Necron, 1 Dark Eldar, a couple of tyranids, and a few chaos. It was surprising how many people were playing marines and daemonhunters, but no biggie.

How'd I do. Well, the first two rounds I lost the raptors and a daemon prince and that's all. The first battle, I left behind a squad of marines and an immobilized predator. The second, 3 plague marines. So, I'd say I did pretty well.

I have no idea how to score tournaments and still don't so I can't really help anyone with that. I don't think I was in the running for overall victory, but it wouldn't have mattered because in the third game I played against this really hostile kid who cheated from beginning to end of the game. I actually thought about walking away from the table at turn 3 and telling him to go fuck himself, but then I think he would have scored a massacre against me, and I didn't want to give him that.

By the way, cheating included 6"=8", rolling dice when I was talking to people, rolling dice at random and just yelling out numbers of hits, giving his land raider the Grey Knight cloaking thing, and before the game even began, offering me a IG guy as his "traitor" when he should have handed me over a Grey Knight terminator.

Is there a W40k version of shinanigans that can be called on people like this in tournaments?

Everyone else though was awesome. The scenery looked great; most of it made it down in one piece; and a lot of it didn't get used because they already had too much to go around. I don't know if any of you reading this live anywhere near New York, but if you do, I recommend you go to ICon for the Warhammer 40k tournament. It's really fun.

By the way, I now love rhinos like they are the center point of my army, but I'll save that for another time.

Apocalypse Now!...or later

2008-04-07T14:55:00.003-04:00

I played Apocalypse at ICon. Here's my review. If you don't have a bunch of squadrons and all that stuff, it reminds you quickly why you don't play 5000 point battles in 40k. This was our front line at the beginning of the game. It was 19 tanks big and there were about an equal number to that waiting to come in on the reserves. You can't even see me in there. I'm the orange guys. 1500 points of chaos stationed between 9000 points of Space Wolves. And it just kept getting weirder.

My gaming group gave up on four person battles because they were just too much. Here we had a 12 person battle. People would walk in and just plop miniatures on the board. It was insane. Ocassionally in a good way. Occassionally in a bad way. Overall, I think if no one has a titan or a formation of baneblades or something, it's probably more enjoyable to play 40k. The sheer volume of crap on the board was amazing, however, and if I weren't playing, I think it would have been, in and of itself, an amazing thing to see.

The picture below, for instance, is just crazy. That unit in front of my 2 obliterators was 4 chapter commanders and a terminator.

ICON

2008-04-04T16:52:00.003-04:00

I have officially prepared myself for ICON, which I will be going to tomorrow in time to watch the Armaggedon tournament and then hit the dealer's room. On Sunday, I will be sponsoring the great big tournament which has about 20 or some odd tables. I already told the guy who's running the thing that I'm not really bringing hills. Hills take up space. Let the guys who actually live in that state bring the hills.

In any case, last year we rented a van which was WAY too much. This year, we've got a subcompact, which is WAY too little. One day we'll get this right. Next post I should have some pictures from the Con assuming I don't lose my camera like I did last year.

By the way, my Chaos list....lost to IG. Yes, it did.

How? Well, the mission wouldn't allow deep strike and the guy took a division of Daemon hunters for support, namely an Inquisitor in a Land Raider. So, I was running up against 2 Leman Russes, 1 Land Raider, 1 Basilisk, 1 Chimera, and 40 guys with Las-cannons all within 4+ rubble (because of the crack that the makers of Cities of Death were smoking). I pretty much destroyed everything down to an Inquisitor with a servitor, a Leman Russ without a big gun, and a squad of storm troopers, but VP was easilly in IG favor by about 250 before the mission gave him another 200 for having kept me from getting a hold of a hostage.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: mission rules can break the game.

Ace of base- part 1

2008-03-30T14:30:00.005-04:00

Okay more on the basing problem. This time with pictures.

Stituation 1:

Here we have a Thousand Sons Termie (converted from a chaos squat in exo-armor) shooting at a genestealer. They are 6" apart and nothing is between them.

Would you let the termie fire on the stealer? Does the stealer get cover?

Does that count as area terrain? If so, across the whole base, or only in part, and if in part, what part?

By the way, that's my new Tyranid color scheme and my new Tau scenery stuff that I'm planning on taking to the con and then putting up on eBay.

Ace of Base pt. 2

2008-03-30T14:06:00.001-04:00

Okay, how about this? Clearly, this scene could be area terrain or just as easilly it might not be. Does the stealer get a cover save? Hell, is that difficult ground?

Ace of Base pt. 3

2008-03-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

Last one. Clearly the stealer aught to get, at the very least, a cover save. Should the termie have line of sight? Note: there is not 6" of terrain between the stealer and the termie. At table level, the termie can see the stealers top claw, but nothing else.

The "Base" of the problem

2008-03-29T09:51:00.004-04:00

Okay, here's the problem in a nutshell. As a scenery designer, I realize that if you make scenery that doesn't have a base on it, it will, most likely, fall apart. One of the guys in my group is an unofficial scenery durability tester and he habitually breaks little things off of bigger things and drops big things on the ground. In the real world he fixes computers. It boggles the mind.

Okay so, scenery needs a base. That's fine. I've worked through this a bunch of ways. I used to cut bases out of pink styrofoam insulation, which is fine, but I've switched. Hardboard is a pain to cut but turns out to be pretty good for odd shapes. I've settled on "plates" that I can pull out of a box, so tiles from Home Depot and CDs which you can buy en masse off the internet for really cheap (anytime someone offers you a free CD take it and use it as a base for scenery).

In any case, this post isn't about making scenery, it's about playing with it. When you put something on a base, it immediately becomes a point of contention for the people playing the game. Is that area scenery? Do I have to be behind something to get my save? Do I get my save everywhere? Is the whole thing level 1, 2, or 3? My IG player came to me with a piece of scenery to put ground on. It was one foot by one foot, had four broken walls around the edge. He wants to play it as level 2 area terrain ruins... 4+ save. Four walls across a square foot!

So, I ask, is it really that f'ing hard to put a tape measure through the center of a base to the enemy and see if it crosses anything. I mean, has that become a physical impossibility? I'm just curious. Because it seems to me that not everything in the world has to be area terrain. It seems to me that we might call the terrain by what it looks like and just figure it out, on our own, with the help of a straight line...just sort of figure out whether or not a miniature's line of sight is partially obscured, and if it is, give a cover save.

What are you guys doing out there?

Gallery up!

2008-03-28T13:40:00.001-04:00

The gallery on my scenery website is up and running again.

Monstro- A brief history of madness

2008-03-28T10:23:00.004-04:00

Q welcomed me the other day to the dark side because I'm playing chaos. That's funny.

1988- See Warhamer 40k at DunDraCon at the Oakland Hilton. Began playing Orks.
1988-1991- The great arms race builds up between me and the two marine players. By the time 1991 rolls around, the marine player has 6 dreadnoughts, hundreds of men, five rhinos and a predator.
1991- Marine player goes into the army, sells me all of his miniatures for $100.
1992-1994- I begin playing Slaanesh (because the book for Tzeentch and Nurgle is not yet out). Chaos rocks. My oppposition is an Eldar player and a Tyranid player.
1994- Both of my opponents give up the game and hand me their armies. At this point I have an Ork army, a marine army, a chaos army, an Eldar army, and a Tyranid army (the Tyranid army began as a genesteeler chaos cult so I also have a squat army and all the khorne daemons). All armies contain at least fifty miniatures. Chaos and marines top out at about 250. Eldar include a squad of every aspect except Warp Spiders (which hadn't yet been invented).
1997-2004- I stopped playing. During my hiatus, somehow, the genesteelers multiplied. I have during this time given away enough Orks to make an army and enough Tyranids to make an army. My god there are still more. During this time, GW discontinues Squats and Zoats. I still have yet to fully recover.
2004- I begin playing again as Eldar. The only thing I lack is all the hover stuff. I buy a bunch of that. Including Nuadhu. I own Nuadhu. How pitiful is that?
2005- I went through a little grey knight phase which I think included an entire guard army just in case. I don't know why I own so many damn guard. I have yet to ever play one of them. Around this same time I began to divide my chaos army in half--Undivided (The Pyre) and the old Slaanesh army (light blue and black). My space marines have ultimately settled down to Ultramarines, but as that constitutes about a 1/4 of them, I'm still contemplating making another marine army.
2006- Tzeentch. It's hard not to own a Tzeentch army. You buy two squads, Ahriman, a squad of horrors, and a Lord of Change, what else do you need? I broke down and bought the Thousand Sons dreadnought and a couple of chaos predators, but I think at least one of the predators is going to be chaos undivided.
2007-2008- While it is fun to own fifty f'ing armies, even when you play week after week, you settle into a routine. I go through phases as to what I want to play. Normally, it's either Eldar, Chaos, or Marines. I haven't played Orks in a LONG time, so I'm thinking of painting them up and bringing them back out. I like the new codex so we'll see. I daily fight the urge to own a necron army. If you look at my scenery, you will notice that it is the stuff I'm best at making.

Wrap up: I have too many damn miniatures and I'm not a fast painter. This week, I painted 8 genestealers and 8 noise marines. I haven't even made a dent. This is no longer a hobby, it's an albatross. I will be painting from now until doomsday. In a box somewhere I have 20 plague marines and a great unclean one. I'm sick.

How to be an A-hole guard player, aka how to win with guard

2008-03-28T10:05:00.004-04:00

Okay, I don't play guard generally, and when I do, they have grey knight auxillaries...or is it the other way. Grey knights have weird auxillary rules. But I digress...

There are lots of ways to win with IG. I'm not going to go into all of them here, and whatever your particular way is, don't worry, I'm not going to step on your toes. My goal here is to suggest a style of play, rather than actual game actions, that will insure an increase in the number of guard victories. The advice I am about to give has really nothing to do with what you do when you put your miniatures down on the table or even which miniatures you should put down on the table. It involves something else entirely.

You see, most games are played by two players who basically know what the other person is going to pull out of their bag, so to speak. You play Tyranids, there is going to be some hand to hand and you are going to have to deal with that. Necron will be hard to kill. Tau have long range. Eldar will have monstrous creatures and the ability to pick out your squad leaders with mind war. I mean, they're playing army X and army X does thing Y. They may do other things, but you basically know what those other things are.

Okay, guard are not like that. I know what you're saying. You think I'm high. I am not.

I know that guard are essentially the quintessential shooty army. Yes. And I know that most attepts to make them hand to hand do not work. Power fists with 6 strength: kind of funny. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that a guard army really has three choices of what it will look like and those choices are so dramatically different as to keep the enemy from ever knowing what they're going up against. The first choice is the horde. Conscripts and commissars. The horde is a merciless flesh pool that cannot simply be shot. Las cannons are no good against the horde. Hand to hand is difficult because of thirty man squads. If the enemy is prepared for the horde, they are generally not that hard to beat. But that's the point, will they be ready? Do they know that this is the army you will be bringing out, because last time you played...

The armored fist. Yes, the tank heavy guard army. Heavy bolters are no use. You need las-cannons and plenty of them. Monstrous creatures only have so many wounds and two Leman Russes (or three by golly) have a LOT of weapons.

And of couse, the mixed bag, which is generally not really that mixed. You lose the conscripts, you keep a tank or two. Lot's of fire power. Let's call this the generic guard army which is easilly beaten by solid hand to hand troops, but not easilly beaten by anything else.

Now look, each of these three "types" of armies has its own weakness which it doesn't share with the other types of armies. If you play the same army week after week, you aren't playing your guard effectively. Anyone who has ever had to fight the tank army and ran out of las-cannons will know exactly what I mean. Anyone who has ever had to face the horde having not brought along enough plasma guns and heavy bolters will testify.

The point here is that you switch this up. Play a different variation of this army all the time. Never play it the same twice. Your opponent will complain. They will say, "I should get fair warning that you'll only be playing tanks," but this is part of the joy of the guard. They should sometimes win just by showing up.

Weird one

2008-03-27T11:07:00.003-04:00

Okay, vehicle is destroyed. The squad inside disembarks and is entangled. On the next round, a greater Daemon becomes available. If he possesses the aspiring champion of that squad, is he is still entangled? The rules say that if a greater daemon possesses an aspiring champion who is in close combat, then the model is placed outside of combat, and that if the possessed model is in a vehicle, it must immediately disembark. I can find no other rules that even closely resemble this one.

Any suggestions?

My chaos army for the con and why

2008-03-26T13:18:00.004-04:00

Okay, so I've decided on a 1500 pt. army for the ICON tournie--

Here's what I've got.
Summoned Greater Demon--because. At a 100 points and with the new rules for possession, you're kind of an idiot not to get the Summoned Greater Demon.

Daemon Prince--Better, I think, then the chaos lord, and not really that many more points. It's a monstrous creature so I'm basically pulling the Carnifax/Hive Tyrant move, except with Chaos. Plus, I make the Daemon Prince a sorcerer, give him Wind of Change (in case I find a bunch of the enemy huddled together) and then give him wings. I'm not sure if he'll go toe to toe with a Wraithlord, but I think he will. Oh, lastly, mark of Tzeentch so that he has a 5 toughness and a 4+ invulnerable. Ouch!

2 squads of obliterators with 2 obliterators each: With the new rules for chaos deepstriking, the obliterators just went through the roof. Sure they lost a point of toughness, but that just means they're terminators with 2 wounds, better deep strike, and whatever weapon they want, including twin linked plasma guns. Notice how many things I have that can act as a focus for summoning these things. That's an importnat part of this army.

Raptors (9 with 2 meltas)+ aspiring champion with lightening claws--mark of Tzeentch. Okay, raptors with 5+ invulnerables stay around. Yes, you can no longer pump up the aspiring champion, but it doesn't matter that much. They have the icon which means they can act as a teleport homer for the obliterators (and can jump so I can get the obliterators down anywhere I want them) plus the aspiring champion can be popped in a pinch for the greater daemon. You lose lightening claws but you really are only out 60 points. The champion here is, by the way, not the first choice of hosts. Of course, as the daemon prince can fly, he's the unofficial leader of this squad.

Squad 1: (6 troopers+aspiring champion+rhino): The six bear a standard of chaos undivided (or whatever they call it now) and have a plasma gun. I give the champion a power weapon just in case. Clearly, I'm not going overboard on this squad. They are decent. They are not great. But as they can host the daemon or summon the obliterators and as they are in a Rhino and as they are very likely to be ignored by enemy fire, I can move them downfield in a snap with less flack than will be received by the raptors. Basically, if the raptors get hit by the enemy heavy, they pop the deamon. If they don't, squad 1 moves into position and pops obliterators and/or daemon. Plus, the rhino has a combi-melta which is one shot at taking out the landraider (or whatever).

Squad 2: (5 noise marines+1 noise champion+rhino): The rhino is a diversion. The squad doesn't start in it, but with a combi-melta, it is a diversion that one cannot ignore. The squad itself acts as a poor man's fireteam. They can fire a lot with sonic blasters and a single blastmaster. I gave the leader a power weapon and a doom siren, but if all goes right, he'll never have to use either. I may switch those out.

Last night, I played with a Defiler to round all of this out, but I'm trying to decide if I like that. To be honest, it's a lot of points for a weak dreadnought once it loses indirect fire. Now, with fleet of foot, I'm not really sure I see the point. I may replace it with a real dreadnought, or, if points allow, a chaos predator. I want more las-cannons, just in case.

Step 12

2008-03-25T13:16:00.003-04:00

From the Book of Heresies

2008-03-25T10:27:00.003-04:00

Countless wars, corrupt xeno-cultures, perils of the warp... but no force has turned so many to the path of the eight pointed star as step 12 of the Baneblade's construction. Evidence of corruption can be seen on step 16 when the chinks in the armor of the emporer's most favored weapon become evident to even the most green of soldiers.

Many are the cries heard of "Khorne give me the strength to smash this infernal model to bits."

Chaos codex for me

2008-03-23T19:21:00.003-04:00

The thing that really makes me mad about the new codex is that I've run out of Thousand Sons heads with which to make the heavy weapons troopers. I mean man. I've spent years dealing with an army that can't do squat but move forward and fire and all of a sudden I get upgrades. What the Warp? know what I mean. Oh, and what the hell happenned to my flamers?

Oh I know, every other chaos army got the shaft and that I, a Tzeentch player, have no right to complain. Evidentally my Thousand Sons army and my undivided army (The Pyre--"Purge in conflagration!") got the step up they needed to get as much stuff as they want, but seriously, are they going to be making figures for Tzeentch Obliterators any time soon? Well, are they?

No. Of course not. So all of my heavey weapon troopers painted in ash and ember (Orange and gray win the day!) are useless to me and I'm going to have to go out and buy heavy weapon guys that I can put funny headresses on. Oh, and I'll do it too. Mark these words. One of you will be fighting against me and you'll say, "what's wrong with that Obliterator's head? I mean, more wrong than usual?"

The Lord of Change shall turn the tide, my friend. That's what's wrong. It's that something's just that right! It's like it's so hot, it's cold. It's just so right, that it's gone all the way around the spectrum. Oh...and dig the funny hats on my raptors. No, it's not a birthday party. It's Tzeentch time!

Love/Hate or me and the Baneblade

2008-03-22T13:03:00.003-04:00

I'm currently putting a Baneblade together for a friend of mine so that he can play Apocalypse at the con.

Okay, nice big tank. Great. Pretty much looks like the Forces of Valor tanks, only it's twice as expensive, unassembled, and unpainted.

Next problem. Exactly how many different parts were actually needed to make this thing? I mean, I put together the seventy or eighty parts to make ONE tread and when it's done, it pretty much looks like they could have cast it as one piece. They do that for dollar store toys, what's the problem GW?

Lastly, I've got the thing halfway put together and I've noticed something. There is literally no space for any sort of customization. My friend plays a kind of daemon hunter support army. He likes squats and things painted red and gray. I like the idea. It's great, but I've got no place to put an inquisitor symbol on this thing and it's the size of a...well...a tank.

My recommendation. Go to your local toy store, buy a Forces of Valor tank. Cut a commissar in half, and put him up top. Later that night, play your Baneblade.

Or...go the GW route and have your Baneblade in play some time around the fourth of July.

Geez, do these people have stock in crazy glue or something?

Monoliths- plural

2008-03-21T12:37:00.003-04:00

Did you know that the plural form of monolith is "Holy Shit, There's Two of Them!"

You see, in the 40k universe, fighting the Necron is supposed to bring with it a kind of dread...a certain hopelessness. Now, I myself would have translated this into the game rules as maybe a -2 to enemy moral checks, but the guys down at GW came up with a better solution, just make the army so f'ing powerful as to make the opposing player feel hopeless.

In my most recent battle, I fought against the Necron, 2 squads, 2 lords, 2 monoliths with what I thought was a terrifying rendition of the new chaos rules. Here's what I learned:

For every 4 necrons you kill, one (on average) will actually die. The necron's normal get back up thingee combined with the monolith's ability to let them get back up combined with the resurrection orb means that if you kill 20 necron, only 5 will actually die.

Getting Necron into hand to hand is useless. You get them into hand to hand, the next round they pop out through the monolith and rapid fire you at close range.

Attacking the monolith is useless. It hovers so in hand to hand, you'll need 6s. It has a 14 Armor value all around so, you basically need strength 8 and up weapons to hurt it, and it never lowers that value or allows people to roll extra die. Monstrous creature? Too bad. Bright lance? Too bad. Thought the game was fair? Too bad. By the way, the number of things that can destroy the monolith goes down every round as you're being wiped out.

And as hard as one monolith is to deal with, two of them are impossible. If you concentrate everything, you may kill one, but the other one, and the necrons (let's not forget about them) will wipe you off the face off the planet.

So, here's my question. Anyone? Anyone at all, ever managed to win against a necron army wth 2 monoliths? In two weeks, I'm playing in the tournie at ICon and I'm sure I'm going to face this army. I can't even think of a way to design a chaos army to beat these guys. I could play Eldar, but I don't think they'd fair much better. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them.

Making home made Titans

2007-10-22T20:03:00.000-04:00

Q asked me a question about making homemade titans and so I thought I'd put this advice up because it's pretty sound:

Something tells me I'm going to have to answer this in my own gaming group pretty soon. You guys starting Apocalypse as well? Anyway, this might be extraordinarilly optimistic, but the truth is, a Titan really isn't THAT big. It's, what, 2' tall? Two things: go hit a Big Lots and go find yourself some little robot things that look like they could be hacked apart for Titan parts. A cheapie store toy aisle is your friend in this project. Because the titan is big, you don't have to worry as much about the detail that you'd have to worry about for little minis. I would say, make sculpi your friend for things like bas relief. Do parts at a time so you're not doing all the detail all at once. As for gears, struts, and hydraulic looking stuff, Three things: Lego Bionacle, there's another lego looking set that's all "gear" looking and never lose the power of a dry wall anchor cut in half. Nearly half of my mechanical shit is drywall junk.

As for weapons, big sized army men (12" tall) will probably help here, but in any case, keep a look at for cheap plastic toys. Try to look past the color. You're going to paint this stuff so what you want is the shape.

Of course, you're going to need a dremel. Get solid cut off wheels and the little sanding drums. They're indespensible. I do recommend that you try testing out the dremel on similiar kinds of plastic before you hit the titan. You never know how quickly something will melt or cut until you're melting or cutting it. Also, do this with ventilation. Burning plastic lets off some nasty fumes. Also, don't put plastic in with the sculpi to dry. Plastic melts.

For spikes on something that big, I'd hit a Hot Topic and try to find the spikes they sell for bracelets. Lastly, I'd find yourself a Michaels and a Home Depot, take a picture from Forgeworld, and walk the aisles for a couple of hours. You wouldn't believe the crap they have that you can use. Unfortuantely, you can't just ask for the Titan Head. The guy in the vest won't know what you're talking about.

New house, same gang

2007-09-28T17:25:00.000-04:00

I'm back. The guy whose house we played at moved and so we had to pack everything up. Including, I might add, a top of the line city board as well as 2 or 3 totes of random terrain, 2 Eldar armies, an inquisitor army, and a marine army (all with one army transport kit). We went from having 2 tables set up every Tuesday to the new house with high hopes, but then, we knew we wouldn't have an attic to ourselves.

Having moved it all, we then had about a week off trying to find things to play with. The first game we played, we used drink coasters as drop pods, and allowed that anything big enough to be a dreadnought could be used as one.

But we played. I think it was a total of 4 weeks off preceeded by a 3 week long vacation which allowed a total erasure of all mental faculties Warhammer related. Case in point, I jumped an entire assault squad against a land raider carrying a veteran squad led by a chaplain so that I could attempt to use my power fist against it (3 attacks, 6s to hit). I...uh...didn't kill the land raider and so the veteran squad, with furious charge, reminded my assault squad why it pays to be careful.

I remember thinking, as I was doing it, 'Wow! This is a really bad idea!' but, you know, I'd measured.

Strangely enough, I still nearly won that battle, and here's why. Nothing beats dreadnoughts with Assault Cannons and Heavy Flamers entering via drop pod so long as there's a spot of level 3 terrain that you can use to your advantage. I lost, though, to victory points. I was unable to kill the land raider as it retreated away from me and around a corner and so there were a whole lot of points left on one side (which couldn't have killed my dreadnoughts) and only my two dreadnoughts to stack up against them. Oh well...I prefer games that aren't just "kill 'em all" so I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

Cheat Armies

2007-09-03T10:30:00.001-04:00

Every now and again I'll hear something about a particular army being a kind of cheat army--an army that turns out to be so unbalanced as to make them unbeatable. I am not convinced.

I think that my opinion has a lot to do with having played Rogue Trader all these many years ago when there really WERE cheat armies. Orks were useless, marines were about the same, and Chaos could get a greater daemon for 25 points. Eldar Avatars could buy three exarch powers and all of those were better then than they are now. I still remember bounding leap in which at the end of the turn, if another enemy unit was within 6" of the unit that you were attacking the Avatar could jump to the other unit and attack them that turn with its full number of attacks. Swooping hawks could jump over a unit and hit them with 3 strength 8 AP1 attacks (-6 armor save for those who remember) per Swooping Hawk model.

Basically, Orks, space marines, and Imperial Guard could fight. Chaos and Eldar could fight, and Tyranids, once they were invented were pretty much between all of these. There were no Dark Eldar; there were no Tau, Necron, or Sisters of Battle, and Chaos unidivided meant you couldn't get daemons. There were Grey knights but there were only terminators and they cost 1000 points per squad of 5 (and they weren't worth it).

Let's be fair. Since that time, GW has done a pretty good job of figuring out how to make the game a lot more fair. People get into hand to hand now. That never happenned before. I do cringe to think that the Dark Eldar guardians get the same things the Eldar get but at 2 less points and with a dark lance cap at...what...4, four f'ing dark lances in a guardian squad. And yes, I think that's ridiculous, but cheating? No.

Every army has something. There is always some way for you to cause the other player to pull their hair out. Ever played that Necron army with 2 monoliths! They're horrendous. Or what about the Space marine army that can buy Dreadnoughts as both heavies and elites and decides to drop them all on to the table! Six dreadnoughts all with assault cannons and heavy flamers just kicking the crap out of everything. My favorite is, of couse, fighting IG during a nightfight scenario. You might as well just declare them the winners. By the way, how come only the IG have developed the technology of the flashlight? Eldar? Eldar have a number of really good options of how to make them powerful. I wouldn't however call them a cheating army, I'd just say that they are a good all around army. Dark Eldar only have about four types of troops that anyone would ever choose, and I've seen two Necron armies at 1850 points that both looked exactly the same. That's just the 1850 army that really works.

The big one I hear about cheating is, of course, Chaos and in particular either the Iron Warriors or the World Eaters. Well...yes three squads of Obliterators is ridiculous. But then...shoot them! I've noticed with infantry, if you pour in enough shots shit dies. Plus, if they deep strike, one of those squads isn't going to make it anyway. As for World Eaters. Well, yes they are pretty hard core in hand to hand (so are Orks by the way), but there's a draw back...you barely play World Eaters. They just move at the whim of the dice. How's that fun?

I think if you're really concerned about why your army isn't winning, you should think about trying out new tactics or playing a new list. Sometimes the problem is that your opponent has fought your army so many times that they know exactly what it is, and isn't, capable of. One of my friends played Daemon Hunters so often that it was like deja vu every time I beat him. There's always something that can be done, some trick that you might want to pull or play, but you should also realize that a lot of 40k is no longer about tricks. Playing a 40k game is about making solid decisions on how to get as many dice thrown at the same time versus how many dice will be thrown back at you. Play smart and the cheat armies are just interesting battles. Look at your defeats as learning experiences about how to play. I now know, for instance, that when fighting Dark Eldar in Cities of Death, you must destroy those Raiders and as quickly as possible.

You should also think of sprucing your army up less in terms of cheating and more in terms of helping your army reach its potential. I knew a marine player who wouldn't use drop pods for the longest time. I kept insisting that this was why he kept losing. Putting a dreadnought in a drop pod is not cheating; it's the marine's thing! It's what GW gave the marines to make them competitive against the other armies.

molding for beginners- Summer fun

2007-08-29T12:23:00.001-04:00

One of the greatest moments one attains while building scenery is the day when you push something out of your first mold. Now, making molds is fun. It can be a bit troublesome at times, but it is incredibly rewarding. Of course, there are a lot of great molds out there to buy. However, for some reason, people still have trouble with all this. Something about making or dealing with molds is simply too intimidating. Believe me, I understand.

So, what I would like to suggest is that you begin with a bit of light work. Okay, here it is. You know those things they sell down at your local Rite Aid or CVS for kids to play in the sand with? Yeah, the bucket and the little thingies to build sand castles out of? Those are molds. Now, if you put sand into them, they will make sand castles. Guess what happens if you put plaster of paris into them?

You can buy the plaster of Paris down at Wamart. Go to the Hirst Arts web page for how to pour the stuff. Spray Pam or some other kind of cooking spray into the mold. Pour the stuff in. Let it dry. Pop it out. Sometimes these molds can be hard to release. I find that a little light tapping with a rubber mallet gets them out quickly.

Now the great thing about this is that these molds are actually designed to build castles. For this reason, if you do this a number of times, you will end up with enough pieces to build a castle. Note, the towers will not be hollow, but hey...You'll have a castle!

Bad day for Ultramarines

2007-07-18T12:23:00.000-04:00

This is the army I played last night. You'll need army builder to open it.

So, what went wrong? Well, first of all, I didn't expect to win. I hadn't played marines for awhile. I was trying out the honor guard. There were a lot of reasons that this army shouldn't have worked.

Here's the thing though, I'm not convinced that my fatalistic attitude in playing the army contributed to the loss. I could have won.

I was fighting Eldar. Avatar, two wraithlords, warlock and 4 wraithguard, five harlequines decked out, five scorpions, five dire avengers, 2 big squads of guardians with star cannons, and a falcon.

Here's what I did. I held my Land Raider out of sight for the first turn. On the second turn, everything became available and I did deep strike with everything. That allowed me to surround everything, jump out rapid firing, and etc.. This was my tactic. I pulled it off, and it failed.

The problem in a nut shell is this, a bunch of bolters rapid firing is scary. That's true. But it's not scary enough. I couldn't, for instance, kill an entire squad. I couldn't kill the Wraithlords, I couldn't kill the Avatar. The Assault cannon on the dreadnought is nasty, but it's not going to destroy any of the aforementioned stuff, even in combo with two las-cannons on the Land Raider (one being fired by the machine spirit). The counter attack on all this is brutal. The avatar charges the dreadnought, the wraithlords charge the marine units (who cannot fight back with the lightening claws). It didn't help that the falcon got off a lucky shot destroying the land raider, but even if it hadn't, I'm not sure I could have turned the defeat into victory even with a squad of power weapons re-rolling misses. The problem is strength against a wraithlord, wraithguard, or the avatar, and four strength power weapons just aren't enough.

So, toe to toe, best of possible worlds, I failed horribly.

What should I have done? I think power fists instead of lightening claws for one. I'm not against the land raider (there are those who are), but as it was centralized, there wasn't a real "choose a target" kind of scenario. My new opinion is that I should have made each of the marines a formidable unit on its own--and not because of rapid fire. I should have then dropped them on hard to reach parts of the board opposite that of the land raider. This would have made his forces have to come after me. With a few heavy bolters or missile launchers that would have taken care of much of the problem. I think if you're going to do the whole, "charge out of the land raider" thing, you need to do it and do it quickly. No waiting for the perfect moment because there's just too much risk that the Land Raider will get popped--which is precisely what happenned.

Ultimately though, what I think I did wrong, was I fought the enemy rather than trying to achieve objectives, which I might have very easilly done given the extreme mobility of an all deep striking army.

Armor Cast

2007-07-17T18:10:00.001-04:00

Armor Cast seems to be back in business!

Cities of Death- Where it's broke and how to fix it

2007-07-16T15:45:00.001-04:00

I am intrigued by how bad the rules are in Cities of Death. They are so incomplete as to be shameful even by GW standards and anyone who plays them will notice quickly that a hand to hand army is likely to win every time and by a margin of victory that makes one wonder how they didn't notice this...flaw...in play testing. I'm going to guess that they didn't play test.

Some minor points that have come up in our games.

Given the ammount of terrain on the board that's already difficult, is there any reason to put down 3-5 more strips. Come on. Can't we make razor wire do anything more interesting than that?
Can vehicles just drive through building walls where no opening is indicated on the scenery model?
Can troops just walk through building walls where there is no door, window, or hole on the scenery model?
Can troops and vehicles shoot through building walls that look solid for all intents and purposes?
Does height advantage allow a model to see further into shorter areas of rubble?
If a hover tank is shot (penetrating) while hovering over a building and it doesn't have the rappelling lines stratagem, are the troops inside killed if forced to disembark?
Why would anyone take all of the really crappy stratagems?
Can jump troops land on any level of the building? Can they jump over a building regardless of its height?
Can deep striking troops land anywhere or do they have to land on the top level of buildings?
What are shooting troops supposed to do to protect themselves from hand to hand troops? (this one is less a rule thing and more a MAJOR FAILING ON THE PART OF ALL CITIES OF DEATH GAMES)

At a certain point, what can I say. I love City fight terrain, but man these rules suck and games played with these rules just really aren't that fun.

But I think I can fix the problem. Here goes:

First of all. I would require that at least one square foot of the terrain placed on the table be declared dangerous. That's starters.

Second, razorwire should be dangerous terrain for charging troops.

Third, I would litter the board with terrain. I think Cities of Death boards aught to be thought of in terms of paths through the rubble rather than spots of rubble. More rubble means less advantage to hand to hand troops. It's as simple as that. This would mean that you have to be more inventive about paths through the rubble. Overhead walkways and roads become key board features.

Fourth, while all rubble and ruined buildings are at the very least area terrain, I would say that they have this characteristic by default. In other words, if they are nothing else, they are area terrain. If they have walls, then those stand in to block line of sight or stop firing or movement. One cannot walk through walls, and vehicles moving through walls must make a dangerous test on 1 extra dice.

Anything over 6 inches in height is vertically impassible even to jump troops. Jump troops do not have to roll 3s to get up 3 inches or 6s to get up 6 inches.

That's starters. I'll think of more after tonight I'm sure.

To all Ebay Scammers

2007-07-16T15:40:00.001-04:00

It's been a while, but then...I've kind of been busy.

So, over the last few weeks, I have learned that one of the major differences between ebay last year and Ebay this year is that the number of scammers has multiplied. So far, I have received four emails from people telling me that their stuff has mysteriously disapeared in the mail. Oh my! Has the federal government collapsed or something? No? Well, then I imagine people are still delivering mail.

The funny thing is that as soon as I say, "I have a receipt proving that I sent the package to you," I never hear from these people again. This is why it is good to keep those receipts.

In any case, listen to me, you various artists of the scam, I use the money I make on ebay to feed my baby. I want you to know that. I want you to have full knowledge that you are attempting to take food away from a baby. I don't know if you believe in karma or hell or cosmic justice or what have you, but believe you me, you are probably not in good with the powers that be for screwing with a child...

...and now you cannot claim ignorance.

Imperium Generatum Sanctus

2007-05-29T14:17:00.001-04:00

Hey, letting you all know, I put up a new scenery piece that me and mine will be using. I give a couple of tips on how to build it as well.

Building Tau scenery

2007-04-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

In one sense, Tau scnery is extraordinarilly easy to make. In another sense, it's hard as hell.

Let's start with the easy: do you have any frisbees, tupperware, empty containers of sour cream or yogurt, flower pots, washers, and dry wall anchors lieing around? Then you have a Tau city and you just don't know it. I like to take two such things, cut up one and lay it on a complete model of the other so as to make panneling or removable sides so you can look into the Tau structures, but whatever. Seriusly, this is beyond easy and should take you little time at all to get it all going.

Of course, Hirst arts will help you immeasurably with the interior of the building, but that's something else.

Hard? Well, yes, if you listen to anyone who makes Tau scenery. What the hell are those directions? Cut shit out of foam, cover it with spackle, and carefully, over a series of a hundred weeks, sand it down so that it's smooth like plastic? Why not just use plastic? I've now tried the spackle way and here's what I found. It chips. It's uneven. It has the consistency of a birthday cake's frosting, and then when you sand it down, it sands down to nothing before it looks right. I add spackle to syrofoam to give it texture, precisely the opposite affect I want on my Tau structures--which raises the obvious question: why not just leave the styrofoam unspackled and paint that?

If you're out there, and you make Tau scenery, could you let me know? I'd really like someone to fill in the blanks here.

Here are some pictures of two of the buildings on my most recent job. You'll notice that I didn't use spackling for the buildings, but I did for the ground if that's any help.

Pictures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

My New Tactic

2007-04-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

Here's my new tactic and we'll see how it goes. What it relies on is absolute and speedy death. Here's how it works. You need guardian jet bikes and you'll need either shining spears or mounted farseers. The trick is to surround transport tanks up to and including land raiders (especially if you're using the farseers in this tactic).

The guardian bikes are really not there to fire. You don't need to upgrade them. If you do this right, they'll probably either be unable to shoot because of their movement or because they are locked in hand to hand.

Instead their goal...their ONLY goal is to surround the tank and block off all exits. As they can move 18" and then an additional 6" during the assault phase this should not be a problem. Surround the exits.

Now, this means that either the farseer, seer council, or shining spears need only score a penetrating hit on the tank. They don't have to destroy it. On a pen, everyone must evacuate and if the exits are closed off, they die automatically.

Hee hee hee!

The best version of this tactic involves a mass mob of jet bikes, shining spears, and farseer. That way, if they actually do get into trouble, the shining spears can hit and run and come back in with power weapons. Note also how durable this tactic is. On the round that the jetbikes haul ass, they will have a 3+ invulnerable save, and if they are followed by a farseer, they get to re-roll missed saves (fortune). This will lock up any enemy that attempts to hurt them for at least that round.

disasterously fast attack

2007-04-26T12:28:00.000-04:00

Bad moves. I got my ass handed to me the other night by Chris and his Space Marine/Daemonhunters which really sucked because I thought my list was pretty good.

It consisted of:
5 fire dragons and an exarch with firepike and tank hunter loaded in a falcon with vectored engines, holo field, spirit stone, and two shuriken cannons

5 shining spears- 1 exarch with star lance, skilled rider and withdraw

Farseer w/ runes of warding, witnessing, spirit stones, jetbike, doom, fortune, guide, mind war

6 jetbikes- 2 shuriken cannons+ 1 jetbike mounted warlock with conceal

9 Dire Avengers- w/exarch: defend, bladestorm, power weapon and shimmer shield
in a wave serpent with twin linked scatter lasers

5 harlequins w/kisses and a shadowseer

3 dark reapers.

Here's what I was hoping to do. I wanted to use the bikes as a meat shield for the farseer who would follow up the shining speers making them a formidable fighting force. The firedragons and dire avengers would be popping around the board to blow up big stuff as necessary leaving the harlequins and dark reapers as mop up.

Here's what went wrong. Everything could get into hand to hand combat in the first round, which turned out to be too fast. Crap blew up, that's true, but then I'd find myself somehow locked in combat with terminators. The enemy troops that weren't engaged could effectively pick and choose what they wanted to get into hand to hand with and the skirmishes blocked line of sight from my mop up crew. It all turned out very badly.

Cool tool

2007-04-26T12:24:00.000-04:00

One really cool tool that's likely to slip your attention is the fabric cutter which essentially looks like a pizza cutter (a pizza cutter would probably work just as well). The roundness of the blade makes for really easy straight cuts. In addition, it's absolutely great for scoring plastic (cutting it enough so that it will snap apart) and will cut through the really thin sheet stryrofoam without much difficulty. Otherwise, you have to score plastic with a razor (pretty hazardous) or cut the styrofoam with a hot knife (hard to cut a straight line). It's a $.99 solution to both of these problems.

The bargain bin is back up

2007-03-31T15:30:00.000-04:00

Just letting everyone know monstromakes.com has been updated! The bargain bin is up and has been redone a bit. Further re-workings of the page are in place. In addition, I've added some new scenery rules.

Cities of Death question

2007-03-31T10:14:00.000-04:00

Does anyone out there have a clue what the difference between difficult and dangerous terrain is for vehicles. According to COD, almost everything is "dangerous terrain" for vehicles, but the rulebook seems to employ the rules interchangably.

The Basics

2007-03-28T19:40:00.000-04:00

I just got back from ICon where I kind of sponsored the scenery for the 40k tournament. I brought 3000 dollars worth of stuff in six totes and a few boxes and it was...well...hot. I will have more to say on the subject soon, including pictures I assure you. I will also have pictures of the drop pod I just built. Evidentally the world needs drop pods.

I will also, I swear, continue on with my expose on how to build your own city of death, but before that, I'd like to cover the basics.

You see, here at the Empire, we sometimes discuss scenery like you need special rules to make your stuff work...because you do. Let's face it. 40k was kind of made for 12 year olds. If you're older than that, you can handle a little complexity in your rules, or so I thought.

I found out that quite a few people simply do not get scenery--through no fault of their own, I might add. The rules are vague and well, there's no one to straighten it all out. I decided the best thing to do was to use this space here to discuss the basics of scenery.

1. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad without going through intervening terrain? If yes, then you may shoot. Line of sight is not blocked, cover saves are not allowed. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that you can see.

2. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad without going only through terrain that is smaller than the height of the shooting model? (note models are their own height or the height of the structure they are standing on, whichever is higher) If yes, then you may shoot. Line of sight is not blocked, cover saves are allowed. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that you can see.

3. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad going into (not through) intervening terrain equal in height to the shooting model? If so, and you may shoot any model that is less than 6" in. They get a cover save. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that is less than 6" in and can be seen.

4. Can you draw a line between members of your squad to targets in their squad going through intervening terrain equal in height to the shooting model? Without playing any optional rule, the targetted player may only take casualities from those members that can be seen (where the line does not go through the intervening terrain). These models do get a cover save so long as 50% of their squad are in or behind the intervening terrain. If no members are out in the open, they cannot be shot.

There it is. These four steps and you have everything you need to know about the basics of cover. And again, rule of thumb: if you're on a level one hill, you ignore level one terrain, if you're on a level 2 or 3 hill, you ignore level 2 terrain. No one gets their cover save, no one gets line of sight blocked. This is the point of taking higher ground.

Cities of Death-- prototyping

2007-03-16T08:12:00.000-04:00

I am a big believer in free form features. In other words, crap you glue on. But I think this only really works well when the crap you glue on is sort of already finished out. You don't want to take an electrical wire cap drill two 1/32 holes in it, take speaker wire, strip it, seperate it, create cables comin out of the wire cap and glue them to a perpindicular brace made from some kind of drywall screw contraption...or at least you don't want to do this five hundred times. My suggestion is this: if you see something in a store, it's the right scale, it requires only one moment of glueing (and it will glue with a modicum of attention), then fine: use it as is. Case in point, I find that 3/8" Lagshields with mini christmas bulbs make great sci-fi columns. They're kind of mad scientist-ish, but note: I buy both products in packages of fifty, and I glue one to the other and I'm done. I would not do this if I also had to sand, drill, cut, and or grind, because all of that takes time, space, money. Not to mention it makes a mess, which means you'll need a workshop or have to work outside. In the latter case, inclement weather is sometimes a problem.

"But," you say, "all the really cool stuff looks really cool because of detail." Yes. What I am saying is that you do not attempt to mass produce detail by hand. One building will take you a year. Mass produce easy to produce (or already produced) features by hand, glue those to the building, but for the serious stuff, the various pipes, the various hoses, the skulls, the layers of relief, the vents--these things require cutting with tiny scissors and holding them down as the glue dries with toothpicks. Don't do that five hundred times for the same effect.

Instead, do it once, and then mold the thing. Basically, what I'm saying is have a prototype, a mock up of what you want the thing to look like when you're done, mold that (and possibly make multiple molds of it) and then cast it five or ten times for the desired effect. This is the principle behind the Cities of Death plates that they sell you. They don't give you a sprue of little detail things, they give you detailed plates all ready to be used. I would suggest thinking in terms of prototyping on any piece of detail that takes longer than fifteen minutes to make.

As far as actually constructing the prototype is concerned, you build the prototype exactly as you would build anyother piece except for a few things.

First off, you're going to mold this piece. Yes, it is possible to make two part molds, but they take longer to use. Keep that in mind. The best things to mold have big flat surfaces and no "holes" in them . There's a lot to say about molding, and I'm not going to do it here, suffice to say, that you should think about how molding works when you are designing your prototype.

Second, when you design a piece you are normally looking for a few things that you needn't worry about when you build a prototype. First off, color and paintability are not a problem. What comes out of a mold will be made up of whatever material you cast it in. So, if the material you normally use requires three coats of primer before it will take a drop of paint, don't worry about it: it's replica won't. Also, normally when you construct a piece, you sort of do so under the acknowledgement that someone in your group is likely to break it. So, you don't want to use soft materials or anything that is likely to just break off. When you build a prototype, however, you don't have to worry. At the very least, your replica will be made out of some kind of mineral, possibly stone; it will be one continuous and solid piece. This means that you can (and I have) make something out of wet clay, mold it, and pour out solid versions of it.

Three things, though. If your prototype is too soft, it will probably be destroyed in the molding process. Balsa wood is fairly notorious for this because the mold rubber tends to want to stick to the balsa and...well...one of them has to give. A wet clay prototype isn't going to be around after you scrape it from the mold (but note, one pouring and it will probably clean out the molds details. Second, the preferred material for building is pink styrofoam insulation. Great....but it floats, so you're going to want to anchor it down first with glue or else it will keep trying to get a 1/4" off your tray and will ruin the mold. Third, if you have a prototype that is durable to survive the molding process, it can be re-molded. This allows you to have multiple molds going if you need lots of the same piece. Hirst Arts, for most of their projects, recommends casting a mold 20 or 30 times. I think that's a bit ridiculous. Make two molds, or mold bigger sections. I don't think it's too liberal for you to think that each molding will take an hour. This means that when you're making your prototype, if you want a whole bunch of an item, you should probably make the item out of more durable stuff than wet clay or balsa. At the same time, it doesn't have to be that durable. I use a glue gun for most of my molding stuff--anyone whose used one before knows that it's not the most durable of bonds.

Custom Cities of Death- use a skeleton

2007-03-04T17:00:00.000-05:00

My new feeling is that I want to make my own cities of death plates and mold them so that I can make my own cities of death buildings. The reasons for this is obvious: they'll sell, they won't cost $50 a building, I can do a better job, etc.. But it does bring up some rather interesting points about scenery design that I'm not really sure many people get into and so I thought I'd bring up some of the issues that this project has ultimately brought up.

The first trick is, how is such a thing done?

I'd like to point out an interesting fiasco of scenery designers the world over and that is the assumption that everything designed must be complete in and of itself. Hirst Arts, a company that I believe nigh-god-like, is just as likely to make this mistake as Games Workshop or even Forgeworld. If you read the Hirst Arts page about how to make things, they have directions for how to make flat blank walls. This I do not need. I have foam core, I have sheet styrene, I have pink styrofoam (as well as white styrofoam and Dupont board). I can make, with ease, walls that are unadorned of any sized. Thus I do not need to presss out hundreds of "blank" tiles to fill in the "blank" areas of the scenery. I have that covered.

The problem is that these companies are not thinking with the right philosophy. They are attempting to have you build EVERYTHING using their product. Every bit of your futuristic landscape should be popped out of a Hirst Mold. Every piece of your Cities of Death building should be cut from the GW sprues. Why?

It's much easier to make the basic "no frills" shape of the building out in regular materials that are easy to work with and then dress it up using a piece here from whatever sci-fi scenery set you want to buy. This allows your bit bin to include pieces from various legos sets as well as star wars models, Hirst arts castings, Cities of Death snippits, beads, craft store jewelry making supplies, hardware bits, dollar store items, etc.. In short, you are not thinking of the building altogether, completed with shape, volume and detail. You need only think of the building's shape first and then figure out how you want to spruce it up. Maybe you spruce it up with Cities of Death pieces. That's fine. But with a skeleton of the building already in place, you don't need to cover it entirely. And believe me, a few Cities of Death pieces will go a long way.

To give you some idea of how not in this frame of mind GW is, look at any Cities of Death piece. It's two sided. Why? Wouldn't it be easier to make it one sided and just glue it to some kind of superstructure, be it foamcore or board? Wouldn't that make the piece more structurally sound, and wouldn't that allow the building to have areas of "blank space" so that the entire city doesn't look plastered with those same five frescos (three of which are pretty much the same from any set)"? A ground floor that is composed of skull backed arches would be interesting, but a whole building of such pieces looks odd. Plus, this way, the detail doesn't obviously come in little 3"x2" blocks. You can have molding underneath over which rests a ground floor of high ornamentation seperated by some line of relief with a second ruined story with a continuous brick face.

But GW's design does not allow for such an option. The back, having detail, will not sit flush unless ground down, and of course, you don't want to grind the detail down. The floor tiles of Hirst Arts, I think, betray the problem with their ideas on the subject. You're making a battleship floor plan a square inch at a time. I remember making the plan I have on my home page, it was several dozen castings and it really didn't even cover a quarter of a 40k table. I can do similar things with screen (either nylon or mesh), some flex rex, and maybe a few pieces here and there that look like storm drains. Plus I can cover an entire 40k table with this setup and do so in an afternoon. Hell, you'd be surprised what you can do with just the cheap 1' square lynoleum tile pieces they sell at the dollar store. All with the advantage that nothing has to be ground down to make the floor level.

So, this is step one I think for a builder of their own city fight pieces. Don't think of building the entire urban landscape using only these pieces--it's too much and no set is that versatile--rather, think of your project as an attempt to make interesting bits of detail to add to an otherwise featureless building shape. Then, if you want "inside" detail, you can worry about that after you've already insured your ruins structural integrity.

...into the studio

2007-02-02T08:26:00.000-05:00

My photography area is upstairs...above my child's nursury. This is problematic as it means that I cannot take pictures while my child is asleep. Also, as I mostly watch him when I'm awake I can't always pop off and leave him to go up into the attic. Of course, I can't take him with me because, well...it is the attic of a scenery designer. It's full of stuff.

Long story short. It has been awhile since I've had the chance to take pictures, but I've managed. Just FYI, there's a picture of my new hillside bunker up in the gallery. It pretty much dropped my gaming group's collective jaw when they saw it, and I've updated my bargain bin.

I've got tons more stuff and I'll probably be exploding out onto Ebay pretty soon. So, keep an eye out.

There's cheating and then this...

2007-01-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

So, the other night, we were playing city fight because, well because I've pretty much built a city and so there's really no reason not to have a Cities of Death game.

In any case, as you all may know, COD is a bit unfair for certain armies, namely the IG because they all of a sudden get good saves where they didn't have them before. That is not the point of this post.

I, Monstro, was fighting the IG and playing my Eldar as is my want these days, and I chose the Sewer rat stratagem. Here's the kicker. Dire Avengers, blade storm, pretty much deep striking without deviation. That's...ummm....not fair.

Now, I'm not saying that the tactic skews the battle a bit. I'm saying that it is absolutly cheating. Like playing with loaded dice really.

What made matters worse is that they popped up in a building that I had bought the Ammo Dump stratagem for and they could re-roll misses.

So, for those of you not paying attention, that's 32 shuriken catapult shots (w/ an 18" range for the Dire Avengers) that can re-roll misses. They already have a BS of 4. The exarch has a 5. I hit an Ogryn squad with 30 shots one round, and destroyed an entire 10 man fire squad two rounds later (who happened to have a 4+ invulnerable).

Cheating.

Two BIG tips

2007-01-23T18:52:00.000-05:00

So, I'm crazy in the middle of making about a million things. Seriously.

I've basically figured out how to make monoliths. I'm going to sell them as Necron buildings, but they look like Monoliths. In addition to that, I made a series of Necron powerplants from the Dawn of War game, as well as a greater summoning tower from the same. I've painted up about four necron spires which I routinely sell on Ebay...and that's just the Necrons.

For some strange reason, mainly because I'm not doing this to pay to eat, the pressure is off. As a result I have, and I'm not kidding on this, about thirty irons in the fire. I will share more when the time comes.

Until then, I would like to point out something. I have long believed that whatever GW says you should do in order to make something is a load of crap. Always. I believe I stand vindicated now. I decided to buy some Miliput (Green stuff) to use, and well, a situation came up where Miliput as it is described by GW seemed the obvious solution to my problem. So I used it.

That shit is horrible. Actually, its worse than that. It's useless. And when it dries it will screw up whatever piece you were attempting to reinforce before it falls off of whatever thing it was supposed to adhere to. It is neither an adhesive nor a very good putty whatever. You can buy air dry clay that works twice as well. Or if you really feel the need for something that dries to the durability of porcelain, may I recommend a trip to Home Depot. Look for stuff to stick Kitchen tile down to counters. That shit's awesome and comes in gallon bucket for about three bucks. If you are actually attempting to make things out of miliput--may I recommend sculpy or...geez anything else; that shit sucks, is I guess what I'm saying.

Meanwhile, a long time ago I recommended the plastic that people put in ceiling lights in offices instead of Plasti-card. This is because plasticard is about $8 per square foot and the sheet plastic for the light fixtures is about $3 for 6 square feet. The only problem was how to cut it. I tried an electric knife (shattered), a dremel cutting wheel (melted the plastic to the wheel), the actual tool you're supposed to use (useless and only cut in straight lines after breaking your arm). Solution: scissors.

You're welcome!

Eldar Codex: A re-review

2007-01-12T10:29:00.000-05:00

So, I've been playing Eldar since the new codex came out.

First off, Harlequins are just ridiculously bad ass. It is as simple as that. I'm not sure why anyone would ever buy Striking Scorpions instead, and I'm damn confused as to why anyone is still buying the Howling Banshees. I think if you're going to buy the Howling Banshees, buy the phoenix lord to go along, but that's beside the point, which is simply: Harlequins are bad ass.

They took down the star cannon, the bright lance, and the vehicles (no more combat crystal). Okay, that's true. The first two problems with the eldar army are negligible next to the third. If you don't have vehicles, you don't worry about star cannons and bright lances. They made some strange rule in case you're playing two fire prisms, but who in the hell is playing two fire prisms? So, basically, the guardians got taken down a peg, but that's okay, because the Guardians can now have two fields of fire open for one weapon at the same time. Read the rules closely. It's nice.

Keep in mind, I have 15 jet bikes. They gave the jet bikes a major bump. They are sooo hot as to make Swooping Hawks even less desirable, and yes, they still get a move during their assault phase, fire or no, so something still has that Combat Crystal-esque tactic. I love the bikes.

Also, dire avengers, which used to suck are now so tactically powerful as to make any drawbacks one sees in the guardians to be negligible.

Wraithlords and Avatars, not that they needed it, are bumped. In fact, though I play Eldar, I would list the Avatar as a kind of cheating miniature (much like the Chaos Lord, Tau Crisis suits, the entire Dark Eldar army, etc.--every army has a little cheat, so don't get on your high horses, non-Eldar players). It's the point cost. It's so low! I have played about four battles with my eldar now, and have still yet to buy the farseer.

The problem, and I mentioned this before I think, is that the book is divided in two. All the necessary rules are in the front, and all the stats are in the back. That's so fucking stupid as to make me want to slap GW employees (harder than I normally want to slap them). Why in the fuck did they do that! Oh wait, I know. It's to make pirated PDF versions prohibitive. Great GW, I bought your book and it's a pain in the ass for me too!

Finally, and I can't stress this enough, Harlequins kick ass!

By the way, last tuesday, a half strength squad of Dire Avengers (3), plus a full squad of Howling banshees (4+exarch) killed a fully decked/four wound/monstrous creature Chaos Lord. It was so very sweet that I didn't even care when that same squad got mowed down by one of three pie plates the Iron Warriors (cheat army) decided to bring to the battlefield.

Hills re-revisited: It begins

2007-01-12T10:23:00.000-05:00

Man, I hate hills. No seriously. As a terrain designer, I suppose I should love hills--the challenge that they represent, the ease with which one can make an okay looking hill, the zen of trying to improve the hills design, but I don't like hills and here's why.

Any time you put a hill on the battlefield, you run into problems. No amount of rule stipulation on the part of Games Workshop has managed to shore up this mess. Honestly, the people I play with now just turn to me and ask with every squad that fires, "Can I see that guy and does he get cover?" I mean seriously, how hard is it to say "things that are X" tall are level 2, and things that are Y" tall are level 3." What I've tried to do here is make hills more reasonable for game play to clear up the confusion.

By the way, if you are part of my game group, READ THIS!!! I'm tired of making terrain that I don't want to set on the table because nobody knows what to do with it. It's a hill, for Pete's sake! It shouldn't complicate game play for longer than a moment.

Hills re-revisited: The Basics

2007-01-12T10:22:00.000-05:00

The Basics:

A hill is any piece of terrain that a miniature can stand on top of. A hill may have other characteristics—a bunker is, for instance, a hill for miniatures standing on top of it.

Hills have three levels of height. These height levels do not directly correspond to the height levels of figures (a level 3 hill is not the same height as a level 3 miniature). Hills allow figures on top of them to ignore terrain equal to or lower than the hill’s height, bearing in mind that no vantage point will allow a model to ignore level 3 terrain. Enemy models attempting to draw a line of sight to a model on a hill may ignore all terrain features of equal to or lower than the height of the hill. Models on top of hills do not gain cover from the hill itself though they may gain cover due to bluffs, canyons, or area terrain on top of the hill.

hills cont'd: some strangeness

2007-01-12T10:21:00.000-05:00

A hill’s height remains constant and is not relative. In other words, a level 2 hill is still level 2 even to models standing on top of level 1 hills. It is level 2 even to height level 3 models. So, a level 2 hill blocks LOS between 2 level 2 models even if both figures are standing on level 1 hills.

Standing on top of a level 3 hill, because it does not allow you to look over level 3 terrain, confers no real height advantage over a level 2 hill. However, as a level 3 hill it will block LOS against everything not on it (including figures on a level 2 portion of that same hill). In a worse case scenario, one might imagine a 3 step hill with a defiler on the level 2 area attempting to fire upon a Land Raider also on that same level 2 but with a level 3 step between the two models. Despite the gigantic nature of both these vehicles, and despite their elevated position, the level 3 rise between the two figures will block LOS.

As height level 3 figures already ignore level 2 terrain for purposes of LOS, and level 1 terrain for both LOS and cover saves, this size model gains no advantage on a level 1 hill. On a level 2 hill, these models ignore the cover save conferred by level 2 cover as well as the hull down that tanks get behind level 2 terrain. …But the same is true of any size model on a level 2 hill.

hills cont'd: commentary on the strangeness

2007-01-12T10:19:00.002-05:00

At first these situations seem counter-intuitive, but correct modeling can make such rules more realistic. As level one does not block LOS between level 2 combatants, it must be shorter than level 2 models; less than 1 ½ inch aught to do it. Level 2 blocks LOS between level 2 models but not level 3, which means 1 ½”-2”. Level 3 must be modeled that LOS must be blocked between two dreadnoughts both standing on level 2 hill. Optimally, this would mean that level 3 should be about 5” tall.
The problem seems to be the grey area between level 2 and 3: 2”-5”. I am inclined to split the difference and make level 2 go from 1 ½”-2 ½” and make level 3 any height greater than 2 ½” with an optimal modeling height of 5”. If one imagines then that level one equals up to 1 ½” with an optimal height of 1”, level 2 between 1 ½”-2 ½” with an optimum of 2” and that level 3 is 2 ½” and up with an optimum of 5”, the board becomes remarkably self evident in regards to what blocks what for everything except the largest of tanks.

optional rule for hills: hull down: Duck and Cover

2007-01-12T10:19:00.001-05:00

As the rules stand now, level 2 and 3 hills do exactly the same thing: they allow you to ignore level 2 terrain. Because of this, there is no reason to climb to the top of level 3 hills.
To simulate the increased height advantage, assume that a hill does not negate area terrain cover’s cover save for cover equal to the height of the hill. The hill will still allow firers to ignore terrain of any depth as far as LOS is concerned. Therefore, a figure on a level 2 hill would still be able to see over level 2 terrain and ignore its capacity to grant a cover save unless figures are actually imbedded inside level 2 area terrain. In such a case, they get a cover save, but can be fired at no matter how deeply they are imbedded.
With this rule in effect, level 3 terrain would allow a figure to ignore area 2 cover terrain.

optional rule for hills: hull down

2007-01-12T10:18:00.001-05:00

One other way to increase the virility of firers on level three terrain is to allow such firers, and only such firers, to ignore level 2 terrain against level 3 enemies. Thus, enemy tanks attacked by fire from a level 3 hill (and not on a level 2 or 3 hill) would not be able to claim the condition of “hull down.”

optional rule for hills: canopy

2007-01-12T10:16:00.000-05:00

Most terrain is “open topped” some terrain, however, is not. In such cases, terrain may have different “game heights” in regards to what it blocks for LOS and when it will provide cover. Terrain with a roof, for instance, counts as level 3 for cover saves, but may be only level 1 or 2 to block LOS depending on the size of the building. This terrain cannot block LOS regardless of depth to enemies that are higher than its “LOS size”. For instance, a bunker that is level 2 in height has a roof. Enemies that take higher ground cannot ignore the cover save afforded the bunker by taking a position on a level 2 hill, though they can ignore its ability to block their LOS. If the bunker is large, and there is more than 6” between the target and its attacker on the hill, the attacker may still draw line of sight to the enemy as he is shooting down and not horizontally, through the terrain.

Eldar Codex: A Review

2006-11-22T14:19:00.000-05:00

Keep in mind. The Eldar collection I inherited began around the time that the Harlequin boxed set came out. This was before Avatars (well, harlequin sergeants were called Avatars), this was before Dark Eldar. Hell, this was before aspect warriors. Since then it has grown. I have probably 80 or so Guardians. 3 Wraithlords (one harlequin), 4 vypers, fourteen jet bikes.

I have Nuadhu. Who in the world has Nuadhu? Just me, right?

So, my read of the new Eldar Codex is probably a lot different than other peoples...and that's good I think. Let me try this another way, between Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions, you would have been a fool to pick the banshees, and realistically, you would have been better off putting your points into a seer council. Between Guardians and rangers, that was a toss up, but they were both better than dire avengers. Dark Reapers were nice, but better than a fire prism or a falcon with a combat crystal? No way. Bikes were useless. Even the special wild riders from the craftworld codex. They were too expensive and they didn't do anything. The Phoenix Lords weren't worth the points, and the Avatar was worth the points even if he never did anything. In other words, while the Eldar codex had grown over the years to encompass a large array of models, half the book would have been a mistake to use. Eldar have a plan for victory--that plan did not include Swooping Hawks. Nice models. Great chance to really show off your painting skills, but actually putting Swooping Hawks on the table was a big f'ing mistake.

Now, from what I understand, the big news behind the codex is the inclusion of this new HQ choice: The Autarch. Okay. I'm not against that. That's nice. I'll probably never use him since the Eldar have ten or so HQ choices already. I suppose if I run out of points, I could put in an Autarch, but I don't really need a cheapie HQ for my Saim Hann force. Plus, given WYSIWYG, I can already see that people will expect me to have twenty versions of this guy so that I can play every Autarch combination. So...I'll convert, but I'm not going to be going crazy on this.

The big news for me is that the codex seems to have brought back to life the troop choices that had fallen into ill repute. Swooping Hawks and Howling Banshees, Jet Bikes and Dire Avengers are all worth buying again. The bad news is that Eldar vehicles aren't nearly as kick butt as they once were, but let's face it, that combat crystal on all the vyper combination was...how should I say this...unfair (and not just in the 40k in 40 minutes games where it wasn't unfair but rather cheating). The best part is that GW didn't cheap out on this. Their solution to the "fix the Eldar" dilemma is ingenious in its simplicity. Half the Exarch powers now extend out to the squad. Wow! That's a good idea. It's great. Oh, and give everybody Fleet of Foot. That was the stupidest crap I'd ever heard of in my life. Half the army could fleet of foot, unless they had an exarch; that was dumb.

But I think the single most worthwhile thing they could have done in the new book (besides making War Walkers worth buying again...thank you GW) was that they brought back the Harlequins. They even made them an interesting troop choice. They aren't the "unofficial Harlequins from GW's site, but for that we should be thankful, I have a feeling that these harlequins will hold their own. My only complaint is that they took out the Solitaire, but I'm sure the Solitaire will make an appearance soon enough.

Problems? Yeah. The way the book is set up there's kind of like this doubling up thing. Under each troop choice is this intricate list of what everything does and then the second half of the book features the point cost of those same items. That's kind of dumb. Just put the PV down with the troops. Last night I was reading the Striking Scorpions entry and was tricked into believing that they didn't have shuriken pistols anymore. Because the weapon wasn't new it wasn't explained along with the striking scorpions; I had to go to the back of the book to look at the "real" army list to see that they were still using two hand to hand weapons at the same time.

My other complaint centers around GW's ever shrinking photo gallery in these codexes. With the number of painters out there, it seems ridicolous that I can't get more than one picture of a Fire Dragon and no pictures of guardians from Saim Hann (the craftworld I play). I realize that most of Saim Hann is flying around and all, but to have that same tired old picture from the old Eldar codex and the old Craftworld Eldar codex...well, I want to see some new stuff. When you pay $20, I think you can ask for some full color glossys.

All in all though, I think that this is a wonderful incarnation of one of the classic 40k armies. I realize that Eldar players are not as common as Necron or Marine players, but as the army has been around for awhile, it has accumulated a lot of different figures to account for, and so I can appreciate the complexity that goes into making rules for the Eldar.

On a final note, this has little to do with the codex itself, but the hot new figures for the eldar are NOT the Autarch. What GW has done with the always ugly Wraithlord and the war walkers is absolutely amazing and I recommend hitting a store just to see these figures.

Slow month for 40k

2006-11-16T10:49:00.000-05:00

Jeez, it's been a while. Well, ebay's been flopping, or not flopping depending on how much money I guess I want to make. The problem with ebay is that you really know the ammount of time you put into something and you put it up to sell. Past that point, it wouldn't be so bad, but they let you know how many people are "watching" the item and so as a seller, you know that there's interest. If the item doesn't sell past that point, you know that your prices are too high, but then, I'm not about to drop my prices just because...some of this stuff takes quite a bit of time and effort. In other words, I make this pact with myself to not sell out by selling low, and then... well...and then I have an attic filled with scenery that I need to do something with.

At that point, I should update my bargain bin, but things have been hectic around here. I hope to get pictures up this weekend.

On the playing front, not much to report. Our spot has had major surgery (the ceiling was coming down) which meant not much playing for a few weeks (and a number of comments from the landlord who simply cannot wrap his head around miniaturized wargames). We've supplemented with guitar hero to pass the time and are now, nearly, back on course.

Back on course, by the way, means that I can bring back the scenery that's worth playing on. Last week we did manage to get in a game played almost exclusively on unpainted, unworked out scenery. There was one hill that looked like a hill. Two forests that didn't have any trees. Six or seven little hills made out of green styrofoam that looked like...green styrofoam, and a pink building frame for the center to the table. Oh yeah, and an obligatory terrain bit from Battle for Macragge. We played carnage with four 40k in 40 minutes armies, and no one won because, well...we forget to make the half strength morale checks. My army, though, was last to reach the point where they could not claim the center of the table and I learned a really important lesson: I hate the dark eldar.

Seriously, a raider with a disentegrator, a splinter cannon, and 10 guys inside all rapid firing--what kind of bullshit is that?!?

But, as per usual, the genestealers (which I was playing) did pretty well, managing, in one turn to dessimate an entire squad of grey knights without taking a single casualty. I like to only play Tyranids once in a while so that I don't spoil my fun with too much of a good thing.

In any case, supposedly the week after Thanksgiving is the grand re-opening of Chris's attic and at that time I plan on putting up a new battle report. I am gearing up because we plan on innaugerating the new attic with a city fight board, and well, I want to do this right. I should be putting some pictures up soon under coming attraction, but I'm not sure how forthcoming they will be. After all, we've cleared the attic. No reason to take crappy scenery back out of the box when I can replace it.

Chris is telling me that there may be a big con at Stoneybrook that he wants me to go in on with him. Supposedly one of his WOW guild members runs the show which guarantees us super top secret backstage passes. In any case, I don't think they'll have too much complaint when I show up ready with an Ice World to run some 40k games.

I plan on writing more later about molding techniques so watch for those, but I think that belongs in its own post and not in an update.

My special place

2006-10-23T11:08:00.000-04:00

I'd like everyone to know that I, Monstro, have a special place. It's the place where I put scenery bits that I plan to use within the next twenty four hours, like that second floor to the bombed out building that fit perfectly and that I lost in my special place for nearly 2 weeks, or the sidewalks that I plan to mold from some child's toy that are perfectly detailed and to scale, there in my special place now too, wherever that is...

You see, what I do is I look through my bits and I say, "Grip tape, this will be perfect for the fences that I'm about to make." And then I move the grip tape to my special place and lose it.

Of course, since I'm a scenery designer, that means that half the crap I own was bought at a dollar store, a clearance bin, a yard sale (tag sale for you New Englanders), or browsing through the Final Cut, Big Lots, Walmart, or Home Depot. In short, half of the things that make it into my special place are things that I can't just go out and buy again. The Bit Bin on my website is an attempt to not have a special place, but let's face it, it's incomplete: I have five other boxes filled with stuff that have yet to be catalogued. Not to mention two little bookshelves covered with bits, pieces, chemicals, clay, rocks, flock, and paints that I'll never get to.

I write this here as advice to fellow scenery designers. DON'T HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE. It's just somewhere where you can conveniently lose things for weeks on end. Leave that important bit in with the general mass of crap you've collected. Yes, it will take more digging to get to it, but damned, you'll be able to find it without having to tear your house apart. Or you'll go out and buy a suitable standing part, which is right when you find the original, and now there's no damn continuity between your pieces!

Man, those sidewalk things were sweet. I'll never find them again.

Monstro: Not Quite Beta Material

2006-10-14T09:08:00.000-04:00

So, recently I've been told that my blog is too old school to allow commentary from new school hep cats. In other words, it's not beta. So, I decided to rectify that situation by becoming beta. Good news! I am now beta. Isn't that awesome. Bad news. My blogs aren't.

You see when I log in as Beta Monstro, it asks me whether or not I want to make a blog. It does not give me the option of transferring over the blog. According to blogger.com, as time goes on they will be asking more and more blogs to move over to the beta format. They just haven't asked me yet.

Obviously I could open up yet another blog called Gretchin Rock! or some shit like that, but man, I've got links going back and forth from my site. That sounds like an incredible nightmare.

Of course, this does make me feel a little better. I think I've received three comments on my blog total, and one was quite clearly a mass mailer. On my website, my guest sign in book is pitiful. Maybe I should run a bulletin board? By the way, anyone out there know how to run a bulletin board?

The idea that there are thousands of Warhammer junkies out there who would just love to comment on my blog is, I think, inticing, but my general attitude is: "how the hell would they find me?" I have a vision of how this thing sort of works and it involves using ebay as advertisement for my website, and from there, maybe they find my blog. Or the opposite, maybe people who look for 40k websites will find "The Empire of Mankind" and move from there to my website. I did not expect, however, to get anything going until I started putting crap up on ebay again.

Well, last week the website got 71 unique hits. Eleven of whom stuck around for more than twenty minutes. Where are these people coming from? Well, glad you like what you see, tell friends. I will attempt to put up more stuff on the bargain bin shortly.

As for people who'd like to comment, man, I'm trying. I really am. I have a minor in computer science. I have worked as a webmaster. I can obviously design a web page. But I know nothing about how computers work. If there is some "interesting" feature that I should be using, forget it. I'm a busy man, or I'm not a smart man; take your pick. But if I can't figure out how to get frinds on my IM account, I sure as hell can't get my blog turned beta until they make it some sort of push button operation.

There's always anonymous posting. I would love to publish even anonymous posts so long as they're not rudeness or open hostility.

Space Marine Tactical and the las cannon option

2006-10-13T21:17:00.000-04:00

Again, this is based primarilly on my playing space marines in the most recent battle, but I'm not quite sure that the las-cannon option for the space marine tactical squad is the best option available.

With a devastator squad, it seems to me, you know what you're doing. You put them in the corner of the board and there they sit. They fire. They don't fire. Either way, you know they are where they're supposed to be.

The problem with the tactical squad armed with the las-cannon is that you're inclined to sit them back like a devastator squad and let all the regular marines sit around doing nothing the enitre battle. That's a lot of people getting nothing done so that you can fire 1 measley las-cannon shot a round. Enhhhh... I'm just not sure it's worth it. Keep in mind, the standard of the tac squad is the sergeant with a really mean hand to hand weapon. So, you have a squad sitting at the edge of the board which will never get into hand to hand armed with a sergeant with master crafted power claws or something like that. That, or you make a squad with a las cannon and you put them in close so the sergeant can attack shit and the las cannon never fires.

I think the heavy weapon in the tac squad sort of has to be viewed as the thing you use if there's no reason to move. The problem is, when that weapon's a las-cannon, you kind of invent reasons not to move.

Obviously, all this is a thing of personal preference, but this is, I think the reason I suck with tactical marines but I love playing Thousand Sons. There's no reason the Thousand Sons shouldn't keep moving forward. After all, they want you in rapid fire range and their sergeant is an absolute bad ass. There's never the whole, "but then I'm wasting a las-cannon shot" to screw up your game.

Marine Snipers

2006-10-13T16:54:00.000-04:00

If you read my recent battle report, you'll notice my use of marine snipers. I don't know. The juries still out.

I've noticed that GW has this habit of making a weapon that's almost okay. Hits always on a 2+ (cool). Wounds always on a 4+ (cool). Full armor save (nearly useless). The same is said of nearly every harlequin weapon available, ultimately making that army not worth playing. I don't know. I haven't seen the new Eldar codex so I dont' know if Harlequins are in it whether they've been improved or what, but as it stands now, you either take the target's toughness out of the equation or their armor out of the equation, but never both. Some weapons should have that capacity. Without such potential, harlequins kind of suck.

As for the marine sniper rifle, who exactly is it good against? Eldar Wraithlords? Tyranids? Anyone else. I mean, a bolter against most infantry grant a better to "wound roll" and have a better capacity to ignore armor saves. Plus you get two shots at close range. Like I said, the jury is still out.

Two things, I think, keep the marine sniper squad in the game. Well...three unofficially. The unooffical "third reason" is that I have about sixty space marine scouts and I want to play them as a "10th company army." With that many scouts, you kind of hope you can pull their cool force--the sniper rifle--out of the pit of uselessness.

The second reason not to immediately abandon the sniper rifle is its ability to kill low armor vehicles. It's alright at killing walkers, sentinals, and all manner of hover vehicles. I know what you're saying: "no it's not very good. It has to roll a 10 minimum on two dice." Well, yeah, but a whole squad with those weapons gives you a pretty good shot that someone will roll a 10 or higher.

This brings up the third advantage, and one that I keep forgetting. Scouts have inflitrate. The real trick then is to make a scout assault squad and send it forward, but there's another advantage to having infiltrate beyond being able to get as close to the enemy as possible. Infiltrate allows a squad like snipers to set up with a clear shot at whoever they're mission is to take out that battle. They don't have to get close, and they shouldn't; that's not the point. But you can set them so that they are perfectly positioned, after everyone has deployed, to have an open shot at the speeder or whatever.

I just wish they could insta-kill. That would make them loads better.

Battle Report updated

2006-10-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

I have officially put up a battle report on my site. Chris and I play against one another. I'm playing Ultramarines (which is my main army which I never get to play) and Chris is playing Daemonhunters. Wee Fun!

It's pretty much win-win for the Emperor.

new stuff for dead worlds

2006-10-10T10:47:00.000-04:00

I suppose it's not too hard to figure out that I really like Ice Worlds. The problem with ice world is that, in 40k, they're just worlds that are white rather than green (or brown). I think that's...nice. I mean, I like the aesthetic, but...can I get some more, I suppose is what I'm asking. I mean the idea behind an alien ice battle is troops popping out from under the ice and losing your dreadnought in a fozen lake and giant geo-thermal vents, and that damn monster that grabs Luke and hangs him in this cave. That's an ice battle!

So, two things. First of all, up on my website, monstromakes.com, I now have rules for using Stratagems to spice up your ice world games (including a couple of new stratagems). My list of new stratagems is growing, but I've decided to put them out a bit at a time as a teaser.

But not teaser on point two. I've put up the basics for how to make snow and ice effects for ice world scenery. I got tired of answering all the damn emails one at a time. I figure, if you read those directions and want to make the ice world scenery then chances are, you aren't rushing to me to buy scenery anyway. On the other hand, if you look at the directions and think, "oh, I'm never going to do that," maybe you'll be more willing to buy the scenery from me. So, yes, that's kind of a trade secret, but not one that, if leeked to the world, will put me out of business.

3 Way

2006-10-09T22:02:00.000-04:00

Heh...heh...heh... I said three way.

Hey all, I put up scenario rules for a three way battle up on my website. I say this because I know that three way scnerios are a rarity. I will be playtesting it tomorrow at which time I will be shilacked as normal. I'm hoping that at that time (cross your fingers), I will have a battle report to put up.

Wish me and the Ultramarines luck so that my foes (who will most probably be IG and Daemonhunters) will fall by the forces of the emperor.

negative cover

2006-10-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

This is a reprint from my website:

As of now, there are a few ways to define cover: height, cover save, difficult ground, area, passable/impassible, dangerous, etc. All of these are well and fine, and I would even say the more variance you put into your cover rules the more dynamic the game will be. Let's face it, your 1000 point Necron list doesn't really change much from week to week, but the board does.

That being said, I would like to add another terrain characteristic that I'm pretty much stealing whole sale from Dawn of War: negative cover. Negative cover means that an area of the board is more dangerous than just being out in the open. Maybe there are things nearby that might explode if shot (making that position intensely dangerous) or perhaps moving or "getting down" is an impossibility. In D.O.W., negative cover is generally applied to any water areas. I especially like this because the rules concerning water, standing or otherwise, seem to me to be remarkably inadequate. Most people say that water is impassible terrain, be it stream or ocean.

What negative cover does in terms of game mechanics is that it allows opponents to re-roll misses during their shooting phase. Thus, it isn't that the water is impassible, exactly...it's just that you don't want to be caught in it!

Two special concerns for negative cover (over and above the enemy re-rolling misses in their fire phase). First off all, if the enemy re-rolls misses those hits must be allocated to troops that are actually in the negative cover. This is different than the general cover idea of majority rule. Some members of the squad can be in negative cover, while others may be out of negative cover (or even in cover! In which case majority rule, and the troops that are in negative cover get a cover save).

Lastly, as far as hand to hand is concerned. Negative cover still counts as cover. Troops without special equipment charging a unit in negative cover will attack last.

The New Site

2006-09-24T12:15:00.000-04:00

For the most part, my activity on Ebay has sort of dwindled...which is kind of hurting me because business is pretty good right now for selling scenery on Ebay and I'm out of the loop. I took myself out of the loop for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I got a really big custom order and I don't think I realized how big. It's very close to being done so I'm happy about that, but it took a damn long time to build. Teaching three classes and trying to get a Ph.D. is taking more time away from my business than I figured. Maybe I
was a bit too optimistic about the whole thing.

The other thing consuming my time has been the creation of my new web site. I've gone from having 250 mb of space to 2 gigs and so I'm really excited by the possabilities of what I can do. Of course, it's just me and so again, I'm possibly getting a little too optimistic about how much ass it will kick, but nonetheless, all signs point to "major."

My gaming group, thank God, has finally decided to play one on one games instead of the four way (or more) battle that we've been playing week after week after week. for the past year or so. The result is that two of the players who rarely win, won--which I assume makes the game a bit more enjoyable. I mean, it's a friendly game and all, but still, no one wants to lose every week. So, congrats Chris and Russ on your fine victories, and Chris, I underestimated your demon hunters--it won't happen again.

The funniest part about our last game was that Russ, the durability tester in my group, commented on my lack of stuff up on Ebay. I think he may be checking to find out what kind of scenery is going to be in play. I don't know. It's kind of funny. Russ, if you're reading this, I'm bringing the death world again next week. Hurrah for the death world!

I haven't heard anything from Griffon Games, but then I need to take them some better stuff I think. I don't know. I'm a pretty harsh critic of my work so...there you go.

That's it for now.

Busy, busy, busy

2006-09-15T11:05:00.000-04:00

Well. Let's see.

I now have a physical place that is selling my stuff. I take the first armload of stuff down to Griffon Games later this afternoon. I am really excited about this because I like the store. its a good place to play, the staff is helpful, and everything looks really good. When I first came to Massachusetts, I went to Griffon games and pretty much slobbered over their display case. Now I will be in it...not for my miniatures obviously, but for my scenery. It's a hell of a accomplishment for me.

Next up, the website is getting re-vamped. My beautiful and wonderful wife has signed me up for enough space to make it much bigger and much better. But even better, it will have a much shorter URL, which I think makes the whole thing more convenient.

Custom orders have been coming in and that's always good. A few small ones, some larger ones. Regardless, it's nice to see that side of the business taking off because I really much prefer working with a customer in mind than anonymously for ebay. Of course, with Ebay there's no deadlines and that's nice too. I will in the future be doing both, don't worry.

Moreover, someone finally pointed out that all the email addresses on my Bargain Bin were wrong. Great! The one part of my website where I sell stuff and I couldn't sell anything offf of it. I kind of gave up on the bargain bin because of this so you can all rest assured that now that the problem is fixed, more stuff will be going up.

Well, that's the appraising of stuff at this point. Keep watching the site, it should be getting a major facelift very soon.

Thinking about levels of height for terrain in 40k

2006-09-03T17:53:00.000-04:00

Because people use space marines as the basic unit of measurement in the 40k game, level one is an inch or less. Level two is an inch to three inches, and level three is three inches or more. This is, of course, absolutely wrong, and what's worse, it makes boards look like crap. Chances are 90% of your terrain is going to be level one; it provides cover for level two minitures but it doesn't block line of sight. That means, 90% of the stuff on your table should be an 1" tall. Does anyone have a board where that's true? If so, how does it look? Like crap? Yes, I imagine it does.

Now, I know that there are a lot of people out there who assume that if a building or structure has holes in it at less than an inch then it's considered level one terrain. Great. So, a ten inch tall building is level one because you can peek through a window.

This all seems to me to be badly worked out solutions to a common game problem. Here's a better solution. First of all, don't use marines. Marines are one of the smaller of the level 2 miniatures. A better idea is to use something like a wraithguard, a Tau crisis suit or a Tyranid ravener. If you use a Tyranid ravener for instance, you'll find that level two really starts at about 2 1/2". Level one is below 2 1/2" and level three starts at about 4 1/2" or 5". Well, why not? I mean really, if I put something down on the table that's 5" tall, very few players are going to have trouble believing that it can provide cover for most level 3 models (except the Defiler, of course). 3"?....Not really. Put something down that's 3" tall and put a Land Raider behind it. Hull down, yes; blocked LOS, no.

Keep in mind that this is also extremely useful for terrain designers like myself. If 3" is level three, than a 3" hill is level three and there's really not that much room to do much in terms of sprucing that hill up. You can't carve out interesting symbols in a 1" space--at least, you can't carve them out so that they look interesting from 5' away. But if a level one hill is up 2 1/2" tall, and a level two hill up 4" tall, all of a sudden there's more room on the board to move upward without having to get weird about it, or without making pieces on the board look out of scale.

So, final results or me are: level one hill 1 1/2"-2" tall. Level two 3" tall minimum. Level 3 about 4 1/2 or 5" tall. Of course, this coincides nicely with the basic unit of scenery building: the styrofoam sheet which sells in 3/8", 3/4" or 1 1/2".

How's that for convenient

Quick Tip: the glue gun

2006-08-26T14:10:00.000-04:00

Seriously, you want to use the glue gun. The glue gun will glue shit together. Yes, it's hot, but then, you aren't a real scnery builder until you have your first third degree burn. Ahh, nothing like scalding hot glue melting your skin. You take it off, but it takes a bit of you with it.

Alright, problem. Crazy glue, sucks, doesn't work half the time, and won't bond to a lot of surfaces (but man it bonds skin like nobody's business). Better glues take longer to dry. By the way, Mod Podge is king of the White glues. It takes an hour to dry.

Here's where the glue gun comes in. It will hold something for awhile. It is not a permanent solution, but it will definitely hold something for long enough so that the E6000 or the Gorrilla Grip will dry. That's why you use the glue gun.

I'm not sure if this will work for little miniatures. I imagine that the gloopy mess of the glue gun is prohibitive, but that's really not my department.

More paiting big stuff

2006-08-26T13:52:00.000-04:00

The first thing you need to know about painting big things is that you have five stages of highlighting, so beyond anything else you do, you are already going to be highlighting five stages. Maybe you want to do more. Fine. But five's pretty good.

Those stages are: Base coat. Oh I know what you're saying, the base coat isn't a highlight, it's the base. Very good, but not really. The priming is the real base. Don't screw around and make this harder than it has to be. Spray paint it black. Use Krylon, or whatever, if there's no styrofoam involved. Use Design Masters or H20 if there is styrofoam (neither of these paint lines will melt styrofoam, except for Design Masters Black) Then you paint over that. Probably in really dark grey.

stage 2: Overbrush- Overbrush is what happens when you make sure the brush isn't dripping but you don't care whether the whole area gets painted. Yes, you're still slathering on the paint, but you couldn't care whether it gets in all the cracks.

stage 3- Overbrush with crappy brush- Either a foam brush or a stenciling brush. You're looking for a crappy brush that will barely hold paint. Obviously if it holds less paint than your good brush, it will spred less paint too. You can buy a bag of stenciling brushes at Michaels for about $2 for a bag of $20. By the way, when I say good brush, I mean a pack of brushes 4/$2 you buy from hardware stores. You're wasting your money buying anything better than that.

Stage 4- Drybrush with good brush- Do the drybrushing thing, just like you normally would. It's a little harder with a big brush, but don't worry about it, you just need less paint than before.

Stage 5- Drybrush with a crappy brush- It's really here when you'll figure out the ingenious nature of the crappy brush. I swear all of those effects you've been trying to do for years, the crappy brush does them naturally. You'll say, "wow, it only deposits paint on top edges!" Yes, that's because it's a crappy brush. Remember Monstro's motto: you don't need talent when you have the right tools.

Now as for how to paint. You should prefer downward strokes from the top of the scene to the bottom rather than attempting to paint in all directions all over the model. Remember light FALLs. And therefore, the top should be lighter than the bottom. Also, you're going to want to lighten large flat spaces. Steps 1-3 are technically still your shadow stages. Large flat areas really don't have shadow on them.

Mostly, take no time. Honestly, the quicker you go painting large things, the better. You can overdo this, and for most 40k painters, that's the real temptation. I can paint a road in about thirty minutes, most of which is spent shuffling pieces.

Good, now all you have left is the metalic bits. Test out all your silvers to find out which is lightest and which is darkest. Paint the thing the darkest. Good, now you'll want a reddish copper. That's rust. wash the thing in rust, running a wet brush down the flat parts of the silver thing to keep them clean. Great now take your really bright silver (or if you have a silver pen this will work even better) and put a straight line through the middle of all the flat pieces. Whallah. You're done.

Painting big stuff- the philosophy

2006-08-25T10:19:00.000-04:00

First of all, painting scenery has very few of the same artistic components as painting miniatures. There are reasons for this, but before I go into those, simply, think about what you want a miniature to look like. You want that space marine to look like the light of the emperor is upon his reflective armor. Every edge highlighed up to the lightest shade of the base color before it becomes white and everything on the miniature describable as "rich."

This philosophy is fine. As far as painting is concerned, it comes from the romantic school, where what you are painting is, essentially, idealized versions of the warriors of the 41st millenium. You're not painting gritty realism. I rarely see a space marine that doesn't look fresh off the drop pod. The armor doesn't look 10,000 years old and dented by hundreds of rounds of bolter fire. No one so much as has mud on their boots. There are no drowned out effects. Hell, what your going for when you paint a miniature is that the miniature looks like the paint is still wet. Look at White Dwarf and you'll see what I mean.

There's nothing wrong with that. Miniatures are meant to be painted as if they could be picked up and examined and someone will raise cries of oooh or ahhh. It's just that you're not going for any of those kinds of things with scenery. Every so often you see someone paint a building the same way they'd paint their war hero, and well...it just looks cartoon-esque. I mean, you're making a hill--does the light of the emperor really fall on hills the same way it falls on Brother Captain Sterne. I think not.

The thing is, scenery isn't painted (generally) in the romantic school. The reason is that you've seen a building, you've never seen a space marine. You can romanticize a space marine much more easilly than you might a building. Most 40k scenery is based off of scenes from the world wars. Again, you can see actual pictures of those things. Objects that have been in a warzone for a couple of days are generally covered in dust, can you imagine what they look like having survived shelling for a few centuries?

The other source that 40k draws its scenes from is sci-fi, but sci-fi is pretty standard stuff. Scenery is either earth tones (Tantoine, Pitch Black, Starship Troopers) or grey scales (Death Star, Terminator, Aliens). --For a good combination of both, see Dune or Universal Soldier--. Most things drawn from sci-fi are HUGE in scale("that's not a small moon"). It is better to think King Kong (the over the top Peter Jackson version) than it is to think Braveheart. Braveheart scenery is perfect for Fantasy, not for 40k. Hell, in Empire they aren't on an icy continent--even Antarctica is too small. They have to be on Hoth--an ice planet.

So big, and rather simple in color. Simple color has the added effect of really making the details on the miniatures pop...and after all, they're the one's you're spending lots of time (or money) on painting, right?Keep in mind the tenants of this philosophy. Quite a few miniatures are already on the verge of looking busy all by their lonesome, put them on a giant checkerboard crazy looking building, and they clash. For Orks this tends to not be as much of a problem. They're kind of supposed to clash. But for imperial stuff, the scene can quickly look like a carnival, and unless you're playing Harlequins, you don't want that.

Keep in mind, however, that when I say that colors should be "simple"--I am refering to the number of colors on the palate, and not on the actual painting. You're still going to have to do a lot of highlighting and shadowing of grey. You're still going to have to pick colors that go together. And, despite what I'm saying, there are still some color choices that you'll have to make. If everything's grey, after all, think how much a single yellow object will stick out. Sometimes, you'll want that.

Cities of Death- Battle report

2006-08-23T20:23:00.000-04:00

Chris and I played Deamonhunters versus Thousand Sons on a Cities of Death board last night and I have to say, even with my second forray into COD, I really really like it. There's something of the grittiness of Rogue Trader in it but with the rule clarity of 4th ed.. We played the second level up on Firesweep mission, so it was essentially capture the flag with five ruined buildings and one intact building (a water cooler). I think my major victory came the very first roll of the game when my dreadnought got firefrenzy with the Inquisitor's squad in his sight (twin linked las cannon and havoc launcher). After that, it was all sort of downhill for the Emperor's finest.

However, Chris and I had loads of fun. I think we had more fun being in a city then we did playing the game, but we both kind of came to the same agreements and I thought I'd share them with you.

First of all, if you're going to take special building stratagems (like ammo dump or medical facility) then take them all in the closest building. Chris kind of spread them out and it just ended up taking too long to get to the building that would have allowed him to re-roll to wound rolls.

Second, range is never better than punch. You're just never able to get a long shot off. So, if you have the choice, I would suggest always going for the punchier short range weapons, or even better, load up on hand to hand troops--they will come in immensely handy.

A spin off on this is that dreadnoughts seem to be far more useful than vehicles. Your average tank is going to get within charging range before it can get its shots off, and that means its opened itself up to some of the more powerful weapons in the game.

Third, we decided that at least one grey knight in any squad should be armed with a thunder hammer, because, man, they can't do shit against dreadnoughts. Oh, I know, this is their downfall, but its a huge downfall. They are supposed to be bad asses, but they never seem to come through. If you're playing daemonhunters concentrate on the army that they're running around with. Think of it as an IG army that can get terminators or a space marine army that can get crazy personalities, but don't think of it as a daemonhunter army with some people tagging along. You'll be wondering why you have no las cannons and you won't be able to stop the predators, the Land Raiders, or the Dreadnoughts.

I'm still curious to see what my Eldar do in the city fight. I think next week we're back to a 2 on 2 match up, so we'll see then maybe.

By the way, I got the booby trap stratagem. It was absolutely awesome. I think it killed one guy, but who cares. I had booby traps everywhere! If the rules allow, get it twice.

A Funny Story About Game's Workshop

2006-08-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

So, there are two game stores in my area where one can purchase 40k merchandise. Both are twenty minutes away in opposite directions. One, Griffin Games in Greenfield (everything's a field in Massachusetts) absolutly rocks. It's what you'd expect in a game store: big selection, numerous titles, four tables, book cases full of scnery, etc.. The other is a GW store in a mall. It's one of those tiny stores too. It has two tables, both are maybe 4'x4', and I'm stressing maybe. And they generally have a game set up so that they can teach barely intersted (and slightly astonished) people how to play the game by pitting a squad of space marines versus a land speeder.

The other day I contacted both stores to determine whether they would be interested in my services. The guy at Griffin Games was out on vacation so...cross your fingers...but the guy at GW was in.

Me: "So, do you guys ever have people make scenery for your store."
Them: "No."

That was about it, but it reminded me of a funny story which I would like to now share.

Okay, so the funny story happenned awhile back. I had managed to purchase two Obliterators off of Ebay and the third one arrived in the mail but it was the old kind (will those work as Termies?) and so in my disappointment, I broke with my plan to slowly build up my Obliterators on the cheap. No, I don't play Iron Warriors (grumble grumble frickin' cheaters grumble).

So, I walk into the GW store on a Saturday afternoon and it's loaded with twelve year old guys who could probably come up with better shit to play on at their house, but you know...it's a GW store...it's official. So anyway, they're all huddled around a table watching a squad of Orks charge...whatever (anything's charge range if the table's small enough!) and there's a mother and her son on the other side of the store, and the son is attempting to convey to his mother how necessary it is for her to buy him a Necron battleforce or some shit like that, and the big owner of the store (and I do mean big!) is attempting to run the battle for the kids while two register jockeys in their red shirts (which is unfortunate because the store is just outside the exit of Target and it really looks as though they've escaped, or that Target has started selling 40k stuff). Anyways, the two red shirts are up there looking smug because they know if they were playing the Orks they would have charged a different enemy. Yey team.

So, one spots me over at the shelving unit marked "Chaos" and he siddles up because I'm the first male adult he's seen in the store for a while. I am obviously NOT a mother listening to some argument that ends with her $60 lighter, nor am I one of the kids at the table, of whom only one will buy a Terminator and that will be that for this week. Oh no no no, I have money. I can afford to spend bucku bucks. Just as importantly, I look like I know what I'm doing. Chances are I'll be buying something impressive. So, here he comes, offering "Can I help you?"

I resist the urge to plead, "Look, I used to play Squats, now I play Eldar. You're not going to discontinue that army too are you?" After all, this red shirt, he is not the face of evil. He is, at best, a Nurgling to Grandfather GW in Nottingham or some crap where they have absolutely lost their frickin' minds.

This is what I honestly say to him, "Hey, yeah I'm looking for the Obliterators. I've got two, I need a third. I was trying to, you know, wait for one to come up on cheap on Ebay..." he looked around nervously hoping that no one heard me mention the dreaded E word, "but I'm tired of waiting. I'll tell you, with prices in these stores going up and up, it's hard to justify buying the lead, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. I can't paint the Obliterators unitl I have that third one, so I guess I'm willing to break down and pay the $20."

His reply, no shit: "They're $25, they raised the price last week."

And that was when I kind of lost it.

"My God, is the company going out of business."

He looks around knowing that the trouble is starting.

"$25 for a piece of lead are you crazy? I could cast twenty of them for that price."

Really, it's getting ugly and he hurries me over to the register as I go into good old days mode. "I remember when I could buy twenty space marines for $30 and Rhinos came three to a box for $25." Which, by the way, they did.

He rings me up and I walk out of there with my $25 miniature with the stares of confusion from a group of twelve year olds, and a nice mother who suddenly realizes just how senseless her son has become. Hopefully she bought him that Battleforce on Ebay.

Anyways, two weeks later I go to my game night and who should show up but the red shirt guy who was trying to usher me out of the store. He tells me that he doesn't blame me, that he doesn't much like GW either and he doesn't mind that people are mad at the company.

The thing is though, he doesn't really mean it, and I launch into another tirade about how GW going out of business would be the best thing for the game. You'd finally be able to afford the minis and there wouldn't be the threat of another "edition" of rules every two years.

It is then that I find out why the GW employees are so fiercely loyal to the company they work for. They pay for bits by the pound. They pay like a tenth of what the rest of us pay. That's their employee discount. That's crazy.

I'm fairly sorry that the GW store does not want to buy my scenery. Mine looks better than there's. Had they said, "come on down and we'll take a look," they could of put me on payroll or at least given me the employee discount, but too bad.

Last time we were in there they had three deli trays from a dollar store put together with four cardboard tubes from wrapping paper that were supposed to be elevators and all of this was set on a black base with clear glossy plastic over it. It looked horrible. I said nothing. I stay to their display case now looking at the miniatures all lit up with beautiful day bulbs (which isn't exactly a trick, but it's sneaky nonetheless). My wife looked at the scenery and said, "You should tell them how to make scenery honey." I thought the red shirt standing next to the scene was going to choke. He'd built it and up until she said something he was all but beaming with pride.

Upstairs, downstairs.

2006-08-21T22:56:00.000-04:00

If you've ever watched someone really play gin rummi then you have some inkling of what it is to design a lot of scenery all at one time. First of all, you have to understand the constraints. My workshop is about 12'x10'. It's tiny. I do most of my work on a card table and the space on my desk. I have little 1x1 1/2x trays that I move around with my various projects on them. I am able to paint in the living room, which I do while I'm watching my son. I store most of my materials in my attic, which is about four times the size of my workroom, but I can't go up there when my son is sleeping. So, when my son is sleeping, I can't go into the attic, and when he's awake, I watch him 50% of the time. Meanwhile, anything that involves a hot knife, resin pouring, spray painting, or baking, is done on my back porch. Mine is a second story apartment. Meanwhile, as it is impossible to store certain materials upstairs because of my son and his sleeping (well, he's 9 months old so cut him some slack), I store the materials that are vital to my trade in the basement or, as is the case now, I let them collect in my anchorite cell hampering my every movement.

Did I mention that I'm claustrophobic?

On any given day, I run up and down probably twenty flights of stairs. Not bad for an aesthmatic I'd say. Meanwhile listen to this:

River
2 sets of city ruins
2 sets of ice craters
2 sets of glaciers
1 set of road
2 sets of brick walls
2 longhouses
death world
ice wals
2 spires
ice hill
Jungle
Pine forest

This is my list of stuff that I'm currently working on and that are close enough to completion as to require only one or two more tweeks. That's 19 things! And most of those things contain multiple parts. I've counted 'Death World' as one thing, but clearly it isn't one thing. It's 13 plates!

So, the question then becomes, how in the hell do I do it. Good question. The trick to this is, strangely enough, performing like tasks. I look a the list and I try to determine from what I see how many of these products are going to require me to cut styrofoam. Great. That means downstairs. Okay, what else can I do downstairs?

Today I cast road pieces and sanded them flat on the ends (that's downstairs work). I spray painted them (also downstairs). I put "ground" on the river bank (not technically downstairs, but the basement is becoming the place where I put down large ammounts of things that need plaster of paris or hydrocal--the basement has a sink, but it lacks a drain...go figure). I also put flock on the walls, the same flock needed on the river banks, so it was...downstiars, that's right. And then I went upstairs, and while my child played in his play pen and we watched "Reading Between The Lions," I painted glaciers so that they would be really white and not blue.

And then, out of nowhere, I made the pine forest, which might have been a mistake as I think people are getting a little tired of the ice world stuff. Yes, it may be time to move on.

My point is that this is reminiscent of the game Gin Rummi where people move cards around to make their stuff. I find that I'll start the day with two projects and then quickly, while I'm waiting for the hydrocal to dry, I'll find myself making a hill, and well, as long as I have to spray paint a hill, I might as well cast some rock walls real quick, and there's no sense casting just some rock walls, why not cast some gothic bas relief plates so that I can make a bunker, and now I'm gluing, so I might as well... It can be days before I get back to the original thing.

Aye.

Night fight Tonight!!

2006-08-18T20:17:00.000-04:00

Okay, so Tuesday last, I went to play 40k as I always do, except that I knew we'd be a man down as one of our regulars had headed out to S.F. to hang out with his wife's family.

When I got there, one of the other regulars bowed out of the fight because three way batttles are kind of dull and that left me playing Eldar versus my buddy Russ who plays IG, and Russ suggests that we play this new scenario that he found that he really thought looked good. The scenario allowed for reserves, no deep strike, no infliltrators, but most importantly it started as a night fight and on turn four you rolled a dice, on a 4+ the sun came out and the night fight was over.

It sounded good. Let me say that. I love the idea of a night fight because it means that tanks aren't going to be as important. People with long range weapons just don't get to fire all the way across the board and the hand to hand troops are more likely to get in close before they can be fired upon. Or so I thought.

Here's what I learned. First of all, the Eldar (ex rulers of the universe) have yet to master the highly technical advance of the searchlight. Whereas, the IG have a searchlight every third man or so. All those tanks pretty much get searchlights, the IG player need only highlight a squad and everybody on his side can annhialate you.

As it turned out, I needed to worry more about cover more during a night fight because the IG could see me, and I couldn't fire back because they were always out of range. Oh sure, I could rush across the battlefield (not a very strong Eldar tactic), but I still wouldn't be able to open fire until I was within 21" on average.

The game lasted something like 30 minutes. It was a route. I managed to destroy one sentinals multilaser, but it didn't matter because it still had a search light.

I think the bottom line is that night fights have tactics to them, but not the one's you'd expect. The game becomes about annhialating one foe at a time. Shining down one search light so that one vehicle is vulnerable and then unleashing with everything on the target it illuminates.

This is well enough for most armies. IG excel at it, but if you're playing a night fight battle, leave the Eldar at home. They can't get searchlights so they're pretty much just waiting to get destroyed. They can only attack the thing that hit them with the searchlight, and if they're fighting IG, that target will always be a Chimera (because its expendable) or a Leman Russ (because very little can kill it). The hundreds of little guys out there will stay safe for most of the battle.

Ebay=Sketch

2006-08-17T12:26:00.000-04:00

Not to bite the hand that feeds me or anything, but man, Ebay is sketchy. Honestly today I received two emails. The first, a guy who took a month to pay me for the $200 worth of scenery he bought, wasn't there to pick up the package. According to him, the box sat on his stoop until the Post office picked it back up and sent it back to me. This would have been a month ago, and I have yet to receive the box.

Ahem...does the U.S. mail really pick stuff up that sits on someone's porch too long. I mean, I know that UPS will do that if they require a signature or something, but the USPS has an option for that sort of thing, which this guy didn't take. Theoretically, the box should have stayed on his porch from now until doomsday.

My guess is that someone walked along and stole it.

In any case, because I was the one who sent him the package, evidentally, this is my responsability. He's wondering how I can fix the problem.

On the other hand, in the second email, there's an object that arrived broken. It happens sometimes, that's why I advise insurance. I don't think after today, that "option" is going to be optional anymore. So, I'm writing this guy back telling him that I can replace parts, if he wants to send it back to me, I can fix it, etc., and then I notice the date. The guy has had this particular item for a week. A WEEK! He hasn't noticed that its broken for an entire week?

The worst thing is, I'm really trying to do business with a certain ammount of trust. I want to be the guy who sells you a product and then stands behind it. Unlike the Dell computer I'm currently typing on, I want my things to have some sort of reliable fix-it man face behind them. I want to tell the guy that as soon as I get his package I'll send it back to him. I want to ship out spare parts to fix the guys broken scene.

But then, what if the package is sitting in the guy's living room and he just wants more stuff? What if the guy just wants two pieces of scenery for the price of one? What then? There's a fine line between customer service guru and sucker.

The bottom line is that if you're going to sell on ebay, you kind of have to be a hard ass. There's really no two ways around this.

So my answer now is that I will refund anything, but I want the item back, and I'm not paying for the return shipping. That's pretty fair I think.

Terrain rules redux

2006-08-11T10:24:00.000-04:00

Man, I just read my previous post and it was both long winded and complicated...the one on cover saves. So, let's try that again. I'm taking the level 1,2, and 3 from the regular 40k book. So, level one miniatures are like wripper swarms, level 2 is your regular miniature, and level 3 is a big miniature (a dreadnaught or a tank). Fine.

And I am also taking from the rules that if a level two terrain, say, sits between two level two miniatures, it blocks line of sight. Good so far?

On my boards, level one terrain is up to 1 1/2" tall, level two is between 1 1/2" and 3" and level 3 is above 3". Fair?

Alright, here's my problem. Officially if troops (level 2) are standing behind a level 2 hedge, they cannot be shot at nor shoot over. If the hedge were considered area terrain, they could move into it and then fire (so long as they were within 6" of the edge) but just on the other side, they would be blocked completely. The problem is that a hedge can be conceivably entered. The model of the hedge might even accomodate this, but what about a wall. Can a 1 1/2" wall not be taken as cover and be fired over? See the difficulty?

Also, the other problem is that quite often we play with ruined slabs of something or other or overhead things. Terrain that you can see through in spots but not everywhere. Should that block line of sight?

If your answer is yes to those questions then you're probably okay with the regular rules. But I don't know, I want the interaction between the minis and the terrain to be a bit more complex.

I think that the answer may very well be to divide terrain up so that it does two things (at least), it can block LOS and it can provide cover, but it does not necessarilly do both. What I'm saying is that you might define a plate of ruined buildings that are little more than skeletons as level 3 cover but unable to block LOS at all, or maybe they block line of sight at level one.

I think the way you figure this out is that you put a mini behind the scenery. If you can't see his knees when he's behind the scenery than the scene blocks LOS at level one. If you can't see the head, then it blocks LOS level 2, and if you can't see a space merine dreadnaught behind it then it blocks LOS level 3. If you can see these things, but there's still a whole bunch of stuff here and there, or you can't see these parts of the mini looking through the scene from every angle, then it will still provide cover to the level of the scenery's height.

Maybe say that vehicles can't get "hull down" unless LOS is blocked at level 2.

I would also say that scenery that clearly isn't area scenery (like a wall)--scenery that cannot be "entered", can be taken if it is equal to the miniatures height and the miniature is within an inch of the scenery. So, a unit of space marines lined up at a level 2 wall, would be able to shoot over it, and the enemy would be able to shoot at them. The wall would provide a cover save but it wouldn't block LOS. Of course, the unit would have to declare that they were "taking the wall"--I wouldn't make it automatic that just being within an 1" of this kind of cover would immediately make you a target.

That's what I think I was going for with all that crazy tech language.

Dawn of War- evil Eldar tactic

2006-08-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

Well, I officially played my first on line game against total strangers and it was...every thing I feared it would be. Honestly.

Now I know, I know. I'm a newbie. I'm so new that you have no idea, and to tell you the truth, there's a reason I'm a newbie. I don't want to play against random people. I want to play against a computer the way that God intended video games to be played.

But, unfortunately, they don't really make games for people like me any more. It's the multi-player option that sells the game. Witness Doom 3. What a disapointment.

And so, I figured it was time. I'd after all beaten both Dawn of War and Winter Assault on the highest settings, how bad could it be?

So, I called up my friend Russ, who plays IG at our usual game and runs a computer fix it business, and we tried to connect. But of course, my computer has three firewalls, and the wireless router is connected to a gateway and the gateway is connected, evidentally to Bill Gates who then tells me that I can't play on line. The only other option is game spy, and well...Russ can't play on gamespy with his copy.

But I can, because I am an honest person. I knew there would be an advantage in there somewhere. So, I get on gamespy and quite suddenly find out that something is wrong. I produce, no shit, a squad of scouts, and my base begins to be assaulted by wave after wave after wave of marines. So someone's cheating. Then I play another guy and I lose. Fair and square I'm thinking, but the third game is a four player game...I think. I don't know, my support never showed up and when I went over to see what the hell he was doing, he appeared to be making Defilers. No troops mind you, just Defilers.

This was the point at when I stopped playing on Game spy and began again to play against the computer. Man, am I good with Eldar. Also, I've managed to get games going against my friends (I just had to reload the game and get rid of those pesky patches), but they've got a bit of building up to do, I think.

Alright the Eldar tactic, and this is fricking viscious, is to teleport in pretty close to their base with your bonesingers, build a webway portal and then just start building turrets...not late in the game; first thing. They'll never get more than a squad out before they lose their armory if all goes well. And even if they do, a turret can take out a commander before it goes down. Especially if the bonesingers are repairing it. Plus, you can hide them in the webway portal, if needs be to protect them.

My new Web page

2006-08-11T10:07:00.000-04:00

Hey, I've got my web page up and its ready for visitation.

Terrain: house rules

2006-04-05T08:59:00.000-04:00

For a while now, I've been thinking very seriously about how bad the terrain rules are for 40k and how they essentially destroy all possability of playing the kinds of games I would like to play as a terrain designer. In fact, they kind of impede the rather you're-right-there-ness that I think initially propelled 40k above the likes of Battletech or Carwars which were its contemporaries. These games used grids, whereas 40k said "any direction." And these games said, "this hex will be a hard bunker hex" whereas 40k said, "if YOU can see the model when you get down on the table then you can shoot that model." Okay, okay, yes I do remember the fights, but that's not my point. The fights happenned because, though the spirit of the rules were ingeneious, their application sucked. What GW has done since then has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Make rules that are better in that same spirit; that's my solution.

But of course, GW will never do this. Their goal now is to hook as many people as possible which means making the rules as simple as possible. Okay fine, but why not release a supplement that's a stronger answer to what terrrain is supposed to do.

To this end, I've decided to start the ball rolling with hills. First of all, I want to talk about the "footprint." The footprint aught to be that area that, when seen from above, obviously is the terrain. Thought of another way, if you were to wrap a rubber band around the terrain at the height which the terrain is supposed to represent (level one, level two, or level three), then that would be the footprint. So, take for instance a building, surround by rubble. The building is one terrain "zone" of say level three height, the rubble is another terrain zone of level one height. The entire area will not give you the building's save, nor will the entire area block line of sight.

A Note: Why Change Anything
I suppose the aswer, "because the current rules are ridiculous," or "because terrain becomes either useless or too useful," are not the answers I should give here. Okay, let's try this. Area terrain, stops too much fire and no one's really quite sure how it's supposed to work. For instance, let's say I put a wall down the center of my board. Does that block line of sight? What about people who are right behind the wall? What about city fights where there are various bits of terrain everywhere, should I always assume that I have a cover save, and that unless I'm ridiculously incompetent at tactics, I've blocked your line of sight. What I'd like to point out is that the current terrain rules for 40k only work if you use a few pieces of terrain, nothing too big, and you forget the rules half the time in order to make the whole thing work. People on one side of a wall, poised to shoot over it should get cover, but they shouldn't have line of sight blocked. A building of enormous size shouldn't just be level 3 if there are windows that one can shoot through on the ground floor.

But more than all that, 40k is a game of futuristic combat. Turn on any sci fi movie and you will see that futuristic means insane and often gargantuan landscapes. The death star is the size of a planet. The battle for the future in Terminator is covered with piles of debris the size of houses. Hell, even the pictures in the 40k guides are littered with gigantic bits of cover which could not be put on the battlefield lest they make play impossible. What I am essentially saying is, we need a set of rules for terrain that make those kinds of landscapes feasible. Keep the cheap and easy rules for people running games with one foam hill and three sets of trees. I want to fight in hive world and space hulks dammit; I need rules!

Being In Cover-
In cover and out of cover
Now, if we can conceive of the footprint, then we will define four modes of cover by it. The extremes are obvious. In cover means models wherein more than 50% of the squad are within the footprint. Out of cover means that there are more than 50% models to be chosen as targets in the same squad who have nothing between the shooter and the model to block line of sight or to provide cover.

Taking Cover
The other two conditions are a little more complicated, but only slightly. "Taking cover" refers to models that are not actually in the footprint but who are behind it and close to it. Models can be considered "taking cover" if:

More than 50% of the models are within 3" of the cover.
More than 50% of the enemies have a shot on a "covered" model (within 3" of cover) of the attacking players choice that must go through the cover that is "taken."

In other words, models take cover. The attacking player determines whether he can shoot any of the models within 3" of the cover without having to shoot through the cover. If he can't then the models are assumed to have taken cover.

Blocked fire

The last position, signifies shots wherein an attacker attemts to shoot troops with an intervening object within their field of fire. This type of fire occurs when the majority of the attacked squad (more than 50%) either cannot be seen or must be seen through a terrain feature by the majority of the attacking squad (more than 50%). For now, suspend the standard Warhammer 40k rule that any intervening area terrain immediately blocks line of sight.

Here's how this is done in practice: Take each member of the squad to be attacked in turn and ask the opposing player of that model, can this miniature be seen, seen but with intervening obstacles, or is line of sight blocked (more on blocking line of sight later). If the answer is yes, mark that model, and the model that can make the shot, and move on to the next attacked miniature. When you've gone through the squad, if more than half the squad cannot be seen, all members of the squad receive full cover save from the area terrain, and limited casualities (can only lose troops up to the number that are able to be seen to be chosen by the defending player). If more than half can be seen but are behind the terrain, the defending player receives a full cover save. Otherwise, the squad can be shot and wounded as normal.

Blocking Line of Sight

According to the 40k rules as they now stand, area cover of the attacking miniatures height will block LOS for anything behind it. Thus, a level 2 miniature cannot shoot through a level two terrain obstacle. He may shoot into it, up to 6" or something like that. What I suggest is this: given any piece of terrain one should be able to look at it and decide what can bee seen through it from eye level to the table. This can and should be used as the deciding factor of what kind of line of sight is blocked. So, for instance, if a terrain feature is put down on the table, and one can see the miniature beyond it, but not its base, then the feature blocks line of sight for level 1 miniatures. If one cannot see the miniature at all, then the feature blocks line of sight for level two miniatures, and if one cannot see something like a Predator beyond it, then the terrain blocks level three. This decision should be made by looking at the lowest point in the feature's footprint.

Two things are important here:

Some single feature may have multiple footprints. From the earlier example, the building surrounded by debris may block los up to level three though the debris only blocks los up to level one. A hill may have a level one footprint, a level two footprint, and a level three footprint.
Blocking LOS is not the same as providing a cover save. If that same building had windows at its ground floor, it might block LOS for level one only, but provide cover up to level three

There is conveniently, one exception to this rule. Before the game, while the players are discussing the scenery, they may designate a feature type which always blocks level three throughout its footprint regardless of what the feature's model actually looks like. Generally, this is a forest, but it might be something else depending on the nature of the board.

Hiding in cover

Squads that are actually within the footprint and with more than 50% of its members within 6" of the footprint's edge should be considered "hidden." As long as the cover is the same height as the hiding miniatures the squad cannot be targetted (even by miniatures with a height advantage). Likewise, the squad cannot target any squad outside of, or within the cover that has more than 6" between the majority of the squad and the footprint's edge. Simply take enough of the closest miniatures to make up a majority and measure from the furthest squad member to the edge of the footprint to determine whether attack is possible.

Providing cover

While blocking LOS is conservative (if I can see the miniature then LOS is not blocked), cover is more conservative. Generally, if the miniature is in the footprint, then it receives cover, if the miniature has taken cover, then it receives cover, and if the miniature falls into the situation described under "blocked fire" it receives cover. It should not be hard to get cover, it is much harder to block LOS.

I think that this effectively covers that basics. What I would hope for, and what I may write on this blog are some more expanded sets of rules for how to use terrain, especially the more common pieces, and yes, Avram, I think there is obviously room to make rules for gun emplacements.

The Many Brushes of Monstro

2006-04-02T16:49:00.000-04:00

Some painting experts promise painting tips that will improve your paint jobs, but sometimes their advice is a little thin on an actual new knowledge. But fear not for I, Monstro D. Whale, have got something that actually will help you.

Okay, go to Michaels, go to the children's paint aisle. Okay, okay, are you there? Good. Now look at their brushes. Do you see the bag of like twenty crappy brushes for $5? Good. Buy those.

They might as well say "brushes for dry brushing" on the pack. Use them. Abuse them. It doesn't matter. Their about a quarter a piece. They won't hold paint if you want them to, which means that they are PERFECT for dry brushing. Especially the big plastic looking ones, and especially big bits of scenery. This is not some minor tid bit here; this is the real deal.

'Nids go boom

2006-03-30T09:33:00.000-05:00

Up somewhere in the description of this blog is mention of tactics. Therefore, I would like to share with you a little something I'd like to call, how NOT to play Tyranids.

First of all, all mention in this blog of my tactical mistakes I owe to the fact that I no longer sleep due to the new baby. Also, most huge mistakes were due to my listening to my partner Chris who had never played Tyranids before. That having been said, I have, and thus, I should have known better.

Tyranids. You want rending claws. You always want rending claws. Gaunts are fine if you can get rending claws (some variations allow). Otherwise...

By the way, I haven't played with the new rules so I don't know what fleet of claw does in them or what nasty special something or other is available. However, I am using Army Builder, and as such, I sort of have the new rules, but not really, and anyone who uses Army Builder knows what I mean. Still, it does allow for Harlequin Wraithlords. There's nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, wrong army, back to Tyranids. They aren't as fast as you think. They aren't, for instance, "Dark Eldar in a raider" fast. They're just a little faster than normal. Like, for instance, the Raveners will get 18" instead of 12" if they charge, but if they can't charge, they only get an extra 3". This means that for a while you are going to have to move your tyranids across the board. This is important. You win or lose with Tyranids based on whether you can get them across the board. For no other army, save an all Vyper Saim Hann force, is cover so important. You want to ALWAYS be in cover. If you can't get everyone in cover, make sure that at least 51% of the squad is in cover. I cannot stress this enough. Without cover, entire squads are going to be dessimated before your eyes and Tyranid squads are big. It doesn't matter. 30 hormagaunts? Who cares? If they become a primary target on the battlefield, they will be done for. YOU MUST HAVE COVER!

Preferably, you want cover that blocks line of sight from as many models as possible, but if you can't get that level of cover, you at least want something that will give you a saving throw.

I ran Tyranids at an Eldar army and they wripped me a part. the main reason for this is just what I've described. I thought that, one way or another, they couldn't decimate entire squads of guys. They can. They will. Get into cover.

something new everyday

2006-03-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

One should learn something new everyday. For instance, today I learned that RTV rubber will strip the paint off (and most else) of something unsealed and made of plaster. So, that's completely destroyed.

Good news though, I got the mold! I just kind of had to pry out rocks with a dental pick.

There's a bigger crater that goes along with it. I'm hoping to spare it's destruction by using liquid latex. Cross your fingers.

Death Jester on ebay; harlequin question

2006-03-27T09:06:00.000-05:00

I did not, as it were, link from my newest ebay post back here because I didnt' want to write a step-by-step on painting death jesters especially since it's been a while since I painted said Harlequin. But I thought I'd put this out there for someome to help me out with this.

The question is this: power blades are bought as equipment--in other words, not weapons. They allow the harlequin to ignore armor saves (like a power weapon) Here's the question: do they give the harlequin this ability throughout the rest of their arsenal. Can, for instance, a harlequin with power blades and a harlequin's kiss ignore armor saves on the kiss's attack? Because if not, then why can the harlequin get two weapons in addition to the power blades and why don't the power blades themselves count as a weapon, and if so....DAMN!!!

Oh, I suppose I do owe some kind of painting tip. Before painting a death jester, get really good with black washes. There, don't say I never gave you nothing.

Dearest Avram

2006-03-26T11:12:00.000-05:00

First off folks, I am not Avram.

Avram is, in many ways, the first guide on my journey into the making of molds and such. Actually, Avram bought me my first hot knife. He is a long time friend and fellow wargamer, and evidently, a fan.

As such, it is unreasonable for you, Avram, to be bidding on these objects. You need but ask and I will grace your table with little trees, as many as you like..though admittedly, too many trees and the board gets a bit clutterred. I believe I was payed the highest compliment very recently by one of the guys I play with, Russ, who looked over at the bookcase of scenery they no longer use since I joined the gang and said, "can we get rid of this crappy terrain finally." If I could sell our city scape board without incurring $80 worth of S and H, I would. Perhaps soon I will post pictures of the ruined city. Though, Avram, I think you're right. The game needs rules for buildings, installations, listening posts, etc.. There are minor rules in City Fight, but that's for the last edition.

I presume that you are making this "move" of bidding on my items because you see that I have no bids on anything as of yet, and you fear that I will be left in the lurch. Fear not and stay the course--people generally bid at the last minute. Besides, if you do a search for trees and Warhammer, you will notice that I am one of two scenery designers in the U.S. as of now who are making little trees (probably for good reason, but hey, my masochism is your bargain). This is reason alone to think that the trees will sell.

bio

2006-03-25T19:06:00.000-05:00

I think way back when I started this blog...back in the good old days of January ought six. Oh wait, that was like a month ago. Anyways, hidden somewhere back there, there's a bio of me or something. Rather than have ebay customers trying to find it, I figured I'd just re-up. Let's see. I've been a carpenter, if that matters. I began playing warhammer 40k back in 88 or 89...something like that and I have always been the "scenery designer" of whatever group I play in. I wish I could say that I have 17 years experience, but that's really not true. I took a hiatus, so I probably have something like 9 years. Moreover, it's really the last four without adult supervision that have been the most profitable.

Let's just say this. I have a dremel and I'm not afraid to use it. I have three hot knives, not to mention the glue gun, which will melt Styrofoam. I have boxes and boxes of packing material, various Christmas town accessories, tubs of all kinds of spackles, and bottles full of chemicals. I am the McGuyver of the scenery building world, and luckily, I have a wife who supports me in this, occasionally saves trash for me to use, and most of all doesn't throw things out. What do you say at this point...I'm that guy.

What kind of guy? The games workshop stores take notes when I talk scenery building. Well, that's not always true, but it is sometimes true. And anyway, that's no great accomplishment. Those guys are good at painting armies, they don't build scenery.

So, I guess in the end, that's probably the thing I think is most important for my customers to know. Way back in '88, I saw this game at Dundracon, back at the Oakland Hyatt, and I thought, 'I don't care how it's played or how much it costs, I want to play that game.' I thought this because 40k looks good. Now, for some people, this means painting miniatures that could go in 'Eavy Metal. Okay fine. But what does it matter when you're throwing a sheet over some books to make a hill and decorating the board with shampoo containers to simulate a factory. If the scenery doesn't look good, it doesn't matter what your miniatures look like. That's where I come in. My scenery looks good.

The craters on Ebay

2006-03-24T22:22:00.000-05:00

Heh, heh, heh. I love my craters. Seriously. I love them.

First of all, these are not the first, nor the best craters that I have built. That much will be clear once I put up my other craters on ebay, but that's not the point. I spent three days working on a prototype for craters and then realized that the craters I had built weren't necessary. I could make the things out of clay, which I did. So, I made two prototype craters out of Sculpi and then bought RTV rubber from...geez, I don't remember any more.

Let's say this: there are different qualities and such to RTV rubber. For instance, I bought some stuff from a company that produces miniatures made out of lead, and thus, the rubber in my mold is extraordinarily heat resistant. Well, that's fine, except that it's about double what it should cost.

Long story short. I bought enough RTV to make a mold of one of my craters. I decided to start with the average sized and less involved of the craters. That sounds bad. The crater I might have otherwise made the mold of is bigger around the sides--the O is thicker, but it is also better looking. Trust me, if you're paying attention to what I sell, you'll see. But the starting bid isn't going to be $3. I will say that.

I digress. The point is that I wanted to make something that was comparable to the discontinued Armorcast line since I was tired of trying to buy them only to find that they were going for 3x what they were worth...and I think I have made a comparable product. They are not made of resin (which isn't that sturdy, let me tell you), but they are made out of Excalibur, which has held up against my fairly innocuous attempts to destroy it. In other words, pieces dropped on my hardwood floor don't break.

The only real question for me was whether I should sell these craters painted or unpainted. Truth be told it doesn't exactly take that long to paint them. Paint them dark brown, dry brush the a lighter brown, highlight in a different shade of light brown and you're done. The numerous details allow for effort if you feel up to it, but it certainly isn't necessary. If you so desire, however, just take a dark grey, paint the various pebbles, and then go over them again with a lighter grey. It took me about 30 minutes to paint one, once it had been spraypainted.

The problem is that it does take time. I want to sell these things dirt cheap, which means that I don't want to take time. I have other things that I sell that I paint. This need not be one of them. Furthermore, it limits the options. These craters could easily double for blown out tree trunks, or ice fortifications for an ice planet. I don't know. I figured I'd leave it open.

ebay trees

2006-03-24T21:59:00.000-05:00

The truth is, I decided to make these trees as a quick companion piece to the building I was selling. I figured, how hard could it be to make some trees. Three days later....

What I will say is that the trees were overbuilt. In other words, it isn't that there weren't corners that I could have cut, but rather, I added a whole bunch of corners.

Case in point, my basic design for the root system was based off of the War 40k, 3rd ed. version of making craters. So, I got out my Styrofoam, I got out my knife, and I cut forty or fifty little triangular wedges to arrange in a circle around the trees. Truth be told, this was absolutely unnecessary. Once you put the plaster of paris on, unless these wedges are an inch high and three inches long, the effect is negligible. Had I to do it over again, I could have achieved the same effect by by making 'O's of Styrofoam about an 1/2" to an 1" across which would have saved me an hour's worth of time, but no matter. I did all the work while watching episodes from The Office- British version. Man, that show is funny.

I'm not a big fan of plaster, which is what the ground is made of, mainly because it cracks, but having read the message boards over at Hirst Arts (love those guys), I figured out to put sand into the mix to strengthen it up. I decided to shred speaker wire and add that as well in order to get that root system look. This was aided immeasurably by the glop nature of the mix because bits of Styrofoam were left open to the air and they melted under spray paint. That's a trick I always enjoy...if it can be controlled, which I did. So, it looks like some of the plates have gopher holes and shit like that. Crazy as all hell. As for paint...what? Brown undercoat, camel drybrush, tan highlights. Nothing too spectacular. I was going for trees on a flood plain which means that the dirt has to be yellowish brown. The sand in the mix made natural rough patches which I painted as moss. In any case, if you read my blog, you know by basic feeling about two sentence painting tips: they're useless.

As for the trees. Trees are cheap, its everything else about them that's expensive. I took a set of plastic "make 'em yourself" trees and began by gluing and winding Spanish moss around them. This gives the impression of dead branches sticking out and the kind of character of a wild tree. Basically, I gave them all the horrible twigs and shit that generally screw up my frizbee golf game. Then I applied the major foliage in a few shades so as to give the impression of a forest of a few types of competing trees. I would have added ground cover too, but Russ has made me all but paranoid about making the bases presentable.

The trees are removable from the base, with a bit of care, which makes the area extremely playable (though without trees, is it still a forest? Sorry). Overall, I like the terrain piece, but I did not like how long it took me to build and paint. There are faster ways. I know them. I should have done them. Regardless, no sense keeping too many of these forest plates around so I put up on Ebay. Enjoy!

Armory on Ebay

2006-03-22T07:28:00.000-05:00

I put up a piece of terrain I made on ebay and linked from it back here to my blog, and thus, I must write.

Let's see. Well, the first thing is that this marks ultimately a transition for me from what I will call dry terrain building to wet terrain. In other words, having learned how to cast things, I've kind of changed my whole philosophy on terrain building, or I suppose heavilly modified my previous philosophy. What the hell do I mean?

Well, let's go with the old philosophy, of which this feature is pretty much a direct result. The old philosophy is something like this: SAVE EVERYTHING. Old chinese food containers, the sheets that house Oreos, plastic easter eggs. When I say everything, I mean everything. I've got twenty or so cans of Trader Joe's coffee upstairs waiting for the great big great big watertower project (and yes, I did mean to use the term "great big" twice). I've got three craft assortment bins, four large paper bags, not to mention countless boxes--big and little--filled with "unnofficial" wargame building supplies, plus enough bits to make Games Workshop thousands of dollars (and me nearly hundreds). My office and attic are otherwise full.

When attendant to such a philosophy, the dollar bins are your friend, as are fairs, clearance sales, tag sales (same as garage sales out on the west coast), dollar stores, church bizaars, and of course, flea markets. But no friend is greater than Home Depot, which is where I picked up most of the stuff to make this Armory in question. Would I be ruining it if I gave away the trick? I doubt it. The point I'm trying to make here is that this mighty conglomeration is nothing to you if you already have the stuff, and a pain in the ass if you don't. The building itself is a heavilly modified switch box, which means that it's designed to protect from electrocution. Folks, when I say sturdy, I mean sturdy. The rest of it is...geez, can I remember, lag bolts sawed in half, a couple of those power poles from Macragge cut in half. I like the front lights. They're lag bolts with little wooden caps. Here on the homefront, I pretty much litter our city fight board with them. That and those rubber door stoppers that look kind of techno in a steampunk kind of way. I digress.

The ground is that crazy press board that they make clipboards out of. God bless the Dremel corporation! Textured with...vynil spackling? Can't really remember at the moment. I think that's what it was, but then I'm always experimenting with various products sold in tubs. By the way Painter's Putty is all but useless.

Anyway, the new philosophy is that you don't need all that. No, no, no... you need one of everything and a whole bunch of molding equipment. Which means that where my house was once filled with trash, it is now filled with various molding chemicals, including plexi-glass resin, which I'm afraid to go near.

But notice that some sort of middle ground must be achieved. Without the proper prototype, what are you going to cast? And besides, this isn't a piece that one could mold (easilly anyway) in one piece. So, I suppose as far as craters go, I'll be making resin models of this, as soon as the new batch of RTV rubber comes in, but for buildings, it's still going to have to be piece by piece.

Battle for Macragge

2006-03-09T10:17:00.000-05:00

One of the guys I play with bought Battle for Macragge a while back, and well, we don't play it, because we play 40k, and as far as I can tell, Battle is just a 40k starter set. The thing is though, if you don't already know this, it is a very inexpensive starter set. It comes with a bunch of genestealers, a bunch of gaunts, a few marines, some really cool scenery, and a rulebook.

The real rulebook for 40k costs about $50 (last time I checked) which is only slightly more than Battle and you get a slightly abridged softcover of the book. Mostly they take out the crap rules that you could either come up with yourself, no one ever uses, or the ones you can get on line for free. No 40k in 40 minutes, for instance, but other than that, nothing you really need to play.

So, overall, I think Battle is worth the $45 it sells for. Here's the thing though, and I think this says everything about GW as a company and its relation to its players. The major terrain for Macragge is a crash space ship that basically composes five or so plates ranging from 2"x3" space to enormous plates of about 8"x4." They look good too. I'll give them that, but as a guy who builds terrain, let me just say this: getting terrain that looks good isn't difficult. Think about hills. Do you think it's hard to make a hill that looks natural? No. It's a lump of stryene insolation, nothing more. Cover it with some grass and people are likely to say, "wow, that's a good looking hill," but terrain makers don't do that. Nor, may I add, do we grab models from Korea anime and bury it half into a plate of styrene concealing the lines with spackle. We could. It's not that hard.

The thing is, 40k scenery has to serve two functions. It has to look good, sure--that's the first function. But it is the second function that is the most important. A miniature has to be able to interact with the scenery. If a building is supposed to block line of sight up to level 3, then I don't want to see the skimmer hovering over it. If the footprint is cover, then any miniature inside the footprint better look like it has cover. Otherwise, I could just draw out the battle on a vinyl battle map. At the very least, a miniature aught to be able to stand on the terrain.

That's why hills aren't made as lumps but created in steps of height. That's why staircases are the bane of 40k terrain designers. But GW evidently doesn't know this because it is nigh impossible to stand a miniature on any of the scenery that comes with Macragge. You end up having to call it impassible terrain or some shit, and it's just not true; it doesn't look impassible, just poorly envisioned.

Still, you get a rulebook, a bunch of miniatures, and terrain that looks good if little else, and for $45, as far as the GW line is concerned, that's a steal.

A cast of thousands

2006-03-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

Or not.

So here's what I did. First of all. I took plasticene and pounded it pretty flat. Then I pushed a flat piece into the impression mold and pulled it out. I'm fairly sure that vaseline would help all this, but I didn't use any, and the whole thing worked okay.

For the next step, I mixed up a little bit of paster (2 teaspoons, 1 teaspoon of water) and poured into the mold. Then I took a stir stick and carefully skimed across the top so as to even the paster throughout the mold and also to get the mold fairly even on top (no big bulges).

I let it dry and, after a few hours, I had a flat panel (one sided). I simply peeled the plasticene away and it was done. All I had to do was sand the back by floating it across a piece of 220 grit, and it was ready to ornament whatever installation I wanted to deck out in crazy techno looking stuff.

But the panel was about the thickness of three dimes at its thinnest and it was one sided. I have since set out to make the experiment a bit more challenging.

The results of those experiments are as follows:

First of all, don't go thinner than three dimes or so with plaster. You get chips. They break, they don't hold together at all, and well, you're wasting your time. Even three dimes is a bit thin, and if you get it to work you'll see what I mean. Whatever I put this panel on, I had better not drop it or the thing is going to fly into a million pieces.

So, I got myself some of that nylon resin that I've been hearing so much about these days. The problem with it is that you don't want to use too much of the hardening agent because it's dangerous, but then you don't want to use too little or the stuff comes out like a wacky wall walker. Maybe its the thickness factor, but you want enough of the activating agent to make the stuff hard. But that's easier said than done. The back of my box says 15 drops per ounce, and well, my molds hold about 1/10 of an ounce. Let's just say, I used two drops and it wasn't enough, but it did harden somewhat...it just feels kind of rubbery. At least that's how it worked for the one sided molds of the some power poles I got with Battle for Macragge. I can glue them to the side of a building, but they're not exactly sturdy.

My success story, however, came from my two part mold. I made a two-parter of the Ultramarine commander's powerfist. Here's how I did it. I took two beer bottle caps, filled them with plasticene, put the fist in, pressed them together, sheered off the excess plasticene that had squeezed out, pulled the fist loose, and wallah...I had a two part mold. Moreover, it worked. The fist looks about as good as the original--including the double headed eagle holding the skull and the coils on the power fist. Yeah!!!

Here's the thing, and this is my new project. The plaster breaks away from the plasticene clean. The resin does not. It doesn't mix or anything, but you do get a gloppy mess of plasticene that you have to clean off. There's got to be a better way of doing this, but I used Q tips and turpentine to clean the things. Still, it would be better if I knew some kind of release agent for plasticene. I'm thinking perhaps PVA (Poly Vinyl Alcohol), so it's another game of going to the store and finding a store to go to. Cleaning one of the power poles ended up breaking two of the coils off.

Speaking of the store. Nylon resin seems to be about the only thing that you can't get at Home Depot. I finally found it at a local upscale art store. I did not find any at Joanne's where the molding material is kept in the children's section. I have not checked Michael's.

Lastly, I switched to Nylon resin primarilly because the Fiberglass resin sounded too scary. Nylon resin is far less dangerous, but it still has its problems. It stinks like gasoline being the worst of them. Whereever the stuff is, it seems to put an odor out just underneath everything else. I was hoping to use the stuff indoors but I'm thinking that, even with proper ventilation, that might not be such a good idea.

I'll fill you in more when I have more information. Hopefully my RTV rubber molds will be here soon and I can play with those.

Results of previous experiment

2006-03-07T10:33:00.000-05:00

Okay. It worked.

Need I say more. I'm sure I will later, but it worked!!!

IT'S ALIVE!!!

(For those of you who are wondering what in the hell I'm talking about. Read the end of the previous post for greater detail. The lesser detail is this: I've figured out how to cast little things--so far only one sided, like Land Raider doors, for instance--in about an hour with really really good results)

Molding mistakes

2006-03-06T10:38:00.000-05:00

I suppose I should talk about successes and failures. Or more importantly, I should talk about my mistakes BECAUSE there haven't been any successes and...well...I should say something, right?

The truth is that when you begin to learn how to mold, even if you have a step-by-step process, and even if those directions are phenomenal, you are still going to have to give yourself about fifteen or so tries before you get anything right, and by the way, getting it "right" isn't really the end. Once you get the mold to work, you still have to find a good "release" as well as a good casting material, and you have to find a good way to get the casting material into the mold. Plaster of Paris, for instance, doesn't just naturally fill in the mold the way water would, and when you're molding things like Land Raider doors, you really have to think about what you're going to do to, first of all, fill the mold, and second, make sure the back of the casting is flat.

I have made one mold successfully of the imperial symbol produced by Forgeworld. I used a Sculpy Mold Maker thing and filled the mold with sculpy. Popped it in the oven and wallah! But the Mold Maker was only about enough for four such molds and it costs $7. That's not horrible, but keep in mind, you're kind of limited to making things out of sculpy. I want to make Ravenars and that's just not likely to happen. The mold doesn't actually have a release agent, so essentially you're peeling the casting out which can stretch it a bit if its uncooked sculpy. Moreover, the mold doesn't go in the oven with the sculpy, so there too you have a problem. It would be much better if you could bake the sculpy in the mold and then pull it from the mold all hardened, but you can't and so the delicate bits of raveners are likely not going to work in this. At least, that's my opinion on the matter.

But that's the point, because really, making molds and casting is all a game of trying it out. Don't trust me on the sculpy thing. Until someone puts the mold with the wet sculpy in it into the oven, no one will know if this thing works.

So, here are some things that I've tried that I know DON'T work. First of all, I've been making molds with plaster of paris. Bad idea all around, but it seems to me like a good place to start to figure out, conceptually, what you're doing. And believe me, you are going to need to figure that out.

The problem with plaster of paris, as I understand it, is that you can't cast very many materials in it. Really, the only conventional stuff you can cast in it are either liquid laytex (which is too rubery to be used for much) or plaster of paris, which if you work with plaster of paris for even a day will seem like a nightmare.

The reason for this is because, no matter what release agent you use (vaseline or hand soap) the original thing never seems to have enough on it and the plaster of paris ALWAYS sticks. You end up prying the damn thing loose. This probably is easier when you're casting a vase, or something like that, but a mold the size of a land raider door simply cannot afford to chip a half inch. I'm using a dental pick to get the pieces out of the plaster (which helps), but I started using an exacto blade which basically tore my mold out. Plaster is not very solid and it cracks and flakes and crumbles so easily, that anything you use to provide the trauma necessary to release your original is likely to break the mold. I have had success with this, but my success was due almost completely to my slathering the pieces in vaseline and letting the mold dry overnight with the originals still stuck in it. This process is harrowing considering the land raider door has plaster drying to its front and as you can imagine, if it doesn't release right, you will probably never get the plaster out of all the little contours. Mine worked, but I then tried the same thing on a collection of ravaner parts without much luck. Plaster seemed to come up along the spine about 1/2 a dime in length across, and about a dime in thickness. In other words, whatever I made from the mold would have a dime's thickness worth of flash. That's no good.

Still, what am I going to cast from these molds? If the plaster is flimsy at best, what chance do I have of prying a plaster press from the plaster mold. In my mind, I can picture the whole thing cracking into powder after hours and hours of labor. I hate plaster molds.

I tried another technique which was this. I put sculpy in the plaster mold and put it in my oven. I can't tell you what level of detail the sculpy picked up. From the flinty little pieces it didn't look like much, but I don't know for sure. The sculpy dried just fine in the oven inside the mold. The problem is that it didn't seem to want to come loose of the mold and nothing I tried as a release agent seemed to work. Believe me, I tried everything. I put it in for 15 minutes, I put it in for 45 minutes. I tried each of these with vaseline, I tried each of these with a wet mold. No matter what, prying the piece loose cracked it every time. I did not, however, try different kinds of sculpy, and maybe that was my problem. After all, I remember Sculpy coming out of the oven with a little give to it, and the sculpy I was using did not, but the sculpy I was using was not one of those .$99 packages, but rather the big flesh colored stuff that comes in a pack of pound for about $12. Maybe it's different quality, I don't know. I have a chaos lord with wings made of sculpy. They're thin enough to look tattered and they aren't prone to breaking, so...

Anyways, my next experiment is actually this. I've decided to do without the permanent mold. Rather than embedding half the miniature in plasticene and making a mold from the other half. I'm going to make the mold out of the plasticene. My thought is this: make the mold, pour in the plaster of paris and then peel the mold away. Will this work? Who knows. I'll tell you the results after I'm done. Wish me luck.

Mold making

2006-03-05T11:24:00.000-05:00

Avram has been waiting patiently for me to tell him all about my successes at making molds. Yup...waiting.

Listen Av-ram, if that is your real name, which it isn't...I...

Okay, so here it is. Avram got me this book on making molds so that I could, well, make molds. The point of all this is that no matter what I build I cannot sell it on ebay for more than $10 because its homemade. Oh sure, its reinforced with hard board, but everyone knows its still made out of some stuff I found at a hardware store. Now, if I were to make a mold of that stuff I found at the hardware store and cast the entire thing in one piece, they'd glad pay $20, $30, or even more, and that's unpainted! So, I am not without my desire to follow the advice of Avram and learn how to do this shit.

Here's the thing though. First of all, I like making models out of stuff from hardware stores. I suppose that no matter what I still will be making the intial thing out of such pieces, but still... Secondly, the book is flawed. Why? Because it starts you making molds out of plaster of paris which is by the way, very near to impossible and then it tells you that the only thing you can cast in a plaster of paris mold is a a plaster of paris cast. Aarrgh! So, once you've finally got the molding process down, you have risk ruining the mold in order to make something. I have recently made a very good mold of a land raider door. My goal today is to see if I can cast such a thing in plaster of paris. My recommendation, don't hold your breath. I might as well be making the thing out of wet sand.

The real thing to do is obvious. Make the mold out of RTV rubber which is step two. I bought some RTV rubber over the internet. Not much but enough to see if any of this is feasible. If it is great, because for the most part RTV rubber isn't really all that toxic! You just need to use it in a room with some ventilation. That's not too bad (even though it is 32 degrees outside). The only problem is that once you've made the mold, the casting material suggested is Fiberglass resin, which is so fucking toxic that the book actually recommends that wouldbe workers with fiberglass should consider swimming with sharks to be an alternative panacea for their death wish.

And if that weren't enough, all of these directions involve bits of fiberglass fabric to be added to the fabric to give it some oomph. Great, except I'm not making a fiberglass boat, I'm working with pieces the size of a dime, and I don't want touch this shit at all (though I should be okay with rubber gloves as long as I throw them away afterwards).

The good news is that if the fiberglass resin shit works I'm going to save quite a bit of money on Raveners as they will be my first test case. GW must be mad if they think I'm going to pay $150 for a squad. Don't worry. I won't be selling those, just scenery. But all this is a moot point now because I am not going to do anything with fiberglass resin until I can open windows and etc.. Until then, I'm buying a breathing mask, goggles, and rubber gloves.

Frickin' Necrons

2006-03-05T10:19:00.000-05:00

So, the guys and me normally play four armies and we link two of the armies up to fight each other. Two teams of two armies each. You know, its not a bad way to play but there's something about it that always seems a bit stupid. First of all, you get link ups between grey knights and chaos, but still why would the marines fight the imperial guard. Oh, I know, you can all think of a thousand reasons, but still.

What I really like is a good 2000 pt. battle between two races. That way you get to play around with your list and buy things you probably otherwise wouldn't. The 1000 point marine list kind of always looks the same, and well it probably should, but with 2000 points you have more leeway. Yeah, I know, so get to the point...

Well, I brought this up with everyone and we decided to play a 2000 pt. Eldar v. Necron battle, and as it turned out I ended up playing Eldar. I figured I'd share a bit of my wisdom on this subject with you.

Okay, first of all, I've been playing Eldar for a long time, and for the most part, I've kind of stopped playing them so much, and here's why. Vehicles. It's plain, it's simple. If you're playing Eldar, you are almost required to spend all your points on vehicles. There's really no reason not to. Now, I'm not saying that striking scorpions aren't neat and all that, but let's face it, the fire prism can jump out from behind cover, shoot, blow whatever it aims at up, and then jump back behind cover. I lost to the Necrons because I couldn't take out their Monolith, and you know what the answer was? Don't buy fire dragons, buy a fireprism.

Everything in the Eldar army--every kind of infantry--has a more useful vehicular counterpart. Vypers are better than Dark Reapers, Fire Dragons, and Wraithguard. If you have to choose between an Avatar and a Wraithlord, always take the Wraithlord. The only thing that isn't better to buy in vehicular form is the guardian squads and they probably would be if you could put a brightlance on the bikes. People talk about the insane power of the Eldar army, and I agree, but you can tell if you're fighting one of those kinds of armies--does it have any spiffy looking infantry. If so, you're in for a fair fight. In any case, Eldar should not be allowed the Vyper in 40k in 40 minutes, because the Crystal Targetting Matrix just makes that ridiculous.

So, you may ask, at what point value is it feasible that you are willing to try infantry along with the vehicles? And this I cannot answer. Honestly, I play Saim Hann which means that if you give me more points, I'll just buy more vypers. In the 2000 pt. battle, I nearly ran out of points before I got to my infantry. I actually had to not buy the falcon, and then I lost because I decided on Fire Dragons rather than a fire prism. Sad.

Are Eldar powerful? Oh yes. If you want to you can make a nigh unstoppable army. The only problem is that it's the same army every time: wave serpent with your seer council (twin linked star cannons and a shuriken cannon), six vypers (Shuriken and star cannons), a fire prism, and two squads of guardians with star cannons. After that, it's all just garnish.

Now, I did lose, so don't think I'm strutting too much. The truth is, no matter your army, you have to play smart against Necron. This is not an army you can chip away at. If you fire everything you have, you will find that the next round, you have really only killed one or two of them--and probably not even that if they're near the monoloith. The monolith itself is extremely invulnerable, and even the lowliest of necrons has the firepower to take down a Land Raider, plus the range of their weapons makes them.... Look, let's try this another way, everthing about the Necrons is totally nasty. They have only two weaknesses, if you can manage to hit them with a nuclear bomb, they won't come back, and they aren't great at hand to hand. I keep hearing people tell me that they aren't good at hand to hand. That's not true--they're marines that don't come with any special weapons. That's not bad.

Part of the tactic is to lock them into hand to hand with a guy with a power weapon, this can be useful, but only if the resurrection orb isn't anywhere nearby. My recommendation is that you never target any squad near a monolith--what you manage to kill vs. the ammount of firepower you need to kill it with is just insanely out of proportion. Either destroy the monolith, or if that can't be done, destroy the squad with the necron lord, or if that can't be done, destroy a squad far enough away from both lord and monoith that you have some assurances that they will die. To kill, keep shooting. Start shooting and do not stop until the entire squad is gone. If you don't manage to kill the entire squad, you probably shouldn't have attacked at all. Enough of them will be coming back to make the whole thing a moot point. Meanwhile, while your fucking around killing one necron a round, the monolith is coming up with that gauss field thingee that hits everybody 1-6 times. That's just plain nasty!!

Mind you, if the Necron player is smart, he'll keep throwing scarab swarms at your wraithlords, etc. to tie them up for the whole game. My problem is that I tried to fight a three front battle against these jack asses. I'd applaud myself for shooting down 3 or 4 flayed ones a round, and yes, after four rounds, I had utterly destroyed them, but that's three rounds that my wave serpent (and its twin linked star cannons) could have been doing real damage elsewhere. And besides, flayed ones??

If you are playing Eldar against the necrons, watch out for the destroyer bikes. It doesn't take too many of them to make quick work of your vypers, crystal targetting matrix or no. Your target priority should be monolith, lord, destroyers, stragglers, and for god's sake, don't stop shooting until its dead.

Necrons are, by the way, the only army where knocking out quantity is better than knocking out quality because of the "we'll be back" rule or something like that. If you can kill enough schlemiel necrons the rest of them phase out. This is the best way to win the battle because you can do it in one turn and they don't get to make all those resurrection rolls.

On The Wagon

2006-02-21T08:28:00.000-05:00

So, I'm also a writer, and I'm working on this really really really long novel, and the guy who's reading my really really really long novel had a problem with one of my chapters. In short, he found it to be too wordy. Basically, it was twenty single spaced pages worth of junkies talking about God. So, now I have to rewrite it. The thing is though, I've been writing this thing for some time and so I'm not always jumping for joy at the prospect of writing a whole bunch, even when I know what's going to happen.

As an incentive, I have given up painting until such time as the chapter is written. In the meantime, I've been trying to figure out how to make molds. I'm in the experimental stage right now, but I hope to soon share some wisdom with all of you. My goal is to turn my group of 3 Raveners into a group of 10. I'm nearly there, but we'll see.

Actually my goal is to sell $100 worth of stuff on Ebay per day this Summer, but I'm trying to crawl before I walk.

Anyways, as I'm not currently painting, I decided to put up some of my past successes.

This one's an Ogryn painted up in Deamonhunter colors. I've decided that since I have an imperial guard army and a couple of inquisitors, I officially have a daemonhunter army as well as an imperial guard army as long as I'm careful with my color schemes. There is, by the way, an I in team, if you can't spell very well.

This next one is my Ultramarine Dreadnought. Yes, yes, I know, decals, flags, etc. but look at the shoulder. That Tyranid with a sword through its head--that's all me.

Finally, the piece de resistance--my workbench. In the background, you can see my Tyranid army just waiting for the drought to end.