Easy Roman Columns for Warhammer 40k

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 on the cheap

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!

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. 1

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.

Ace of base- part 1

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.

Gallery up!

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

Monstro- A brief history of madness

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

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.

My chaos army for the con and why

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

...into the studio

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.

Eldar Codex: A re-review

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: The Basics

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

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

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

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

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

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.