Painting the nids, pt. 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

Weird one

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

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

From the Book of Heresies

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

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

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

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

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.