Ohh…. Shiney!!! … strikes again…

As I have mentioned before, I have an extreme case of ‘Shiney’ syndrome and as of yet there is no cure but the effects can be subsided for a time by purchasing the object that you are drawn too. On Thursday, I was at the game store for our monthly club meeting and I picked up the new Skaven Army book. It was at that point that all hope was lost and I picked up a box of the new Clanrats before I left that night. Then last night on my way home form work, I picked up the new Skaven battalion box. Hopefully this will curb the ‘Shiney’ tendencies for a while and it provides a nice Core to the new army. I’ve been trying to get more involved with the local gaming community and we now have several Warhammer Fantasy players at the store so I thought it a good time to startup a WHFB army.

A couple of years ago, I purchased the Orcs & Goblins book and was looking forward to running the Grimgore Ironhide’s army list that allowed the player the use Black Orcs as Core units; basically, like running a Deathwing army in WH40k. So I purchased sixty of the new plastic Black Orc models and commissioned a friend to paint them for me. He did a fantastic job on the models but I was informed that that list was nullified and that I couldn’t use it anymore. So here I was having invested a large chunk of money on an army that I couldn’t use unless I spent more money on purchasing/painting up regular Orc boys. I made the decision to not get anything else for that army because I lost my enthusiasm for playing them.

Now a couple of years later, the Skaven are released and I feel the desire to start a Fantasy army again. The Skaven have always fascinated me, my buddy down in Austin runs them and he always seems to have fun while playing them. So with his guidance, I have begun painting the first box of Clanrats and so far they are going pretty well. My two test models turned out well and I was able to refine my painting style enough to where I think I can paint the basic troops quicker that before. The technique relies heavily on drybrushing and layering ad so far seems to be going well. I’ve got three more in progress to give me the first five models and then I’ll try a bigger batch over the holiday weekend.

I’m still playing in the local WH40k campaign and now that I’m off-call for the next two weeks, I’m hoping to get in some games this weekend. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and hopefully I’ll win some games this week.

On a different note, I think I have a solution to my light-tent issue. I located a vendor that has a light-tent combo kit available and it includes everything I’ll need to get started with. The EZ Cube site even has a package geared towards miniature and model photography which includes two table top lamps and some acrylic risers for setting your models on. Here is the link to their site and the specific combo that I mentioned: http://store.tabletopstudio-store.com/miphkit.html

Well, I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving holiday and doesn’t get too stuffed over the weekend.

Cypher Rules!!! and the Fallen are on the move….

Sadly, I’ve been on-call for the last week and a half so I haven’t been able to do much but surf the web and stare at my models that need to be painted. I have been tracking the campaign that is going on at the store and I can safely say that it appears that Chaos has a slim lead over the other teams; cursed Imperials are right on our heels.

Since I’m playing the Fallen Angels in the campaign, I thought that it would be a great idea to include the elusive Cypher into my army. The only problem is that his rules have never really been updated for 5th Edition so they are not really useable is today’s games. So enter the kind folks over at BoLS Lounge, who answered my plea for help. I started this thread and Mkerr was kind enough to develop an updated set of rules for Cypher, which can be found here, that look to retain the ‘fluffyness’ of the character while making him a viable character in 5th edition. I plan on taking the rules for a test run over the holiday weekend. Props again to Mkerr for helping me realize my dream of running a truly Fallen Angels army.

The campaign will be entering the third round at that time so the missions will begin to vary quite a bit form the initial Planetstrike format. The new round will include some regular missions and several City Fight missions that should provide some variety for the folks that are playing. Most of the players, have never really explored the City Fight missions so I think that it will be a nice change of pace for most of the people involved.

So all in all, while I haven’t done much hobby or game related activity this past week or so I’ve definitely got something to look forward to over the coming holiday weekend.

The Fallen have stumbled a little...

As you may know, I’m playing in a campaign at our local gaming store and have put the Imperial Guard on hold for the moment so that I can complete a few new models for my Dark Angels army. My new 1850pt. list seems to be working well so far and I have been able to add some new models to my army. I used the list this weekend to play two games, one regular and a campaign mission that involved Planetstrike.

I had difficulty in the Planetstrike mission but that was due to using a regular list and not one that takes advantage of the new force organization rules featured in Planetstrike. My opponent was very good and kept me boxed in a corner while I was trying to attack his bases. It was a good game if a bit frustrating at times due to some onlookers distracting us.

Earlier, I also played a regular game, Annihilation/Pitched Battle, against an Emperor’s Children player and I won that game in five turns. To be fair my opponent had serious issues with his dice rolls; ‘bad dice’ day doesn’t even come close to describing it. He had a squad of five Chosen, all with melta guns, move onto the board behind my Dreadnaught and Landspeeders and roll 1-2 for all ‘To Hit’ rolls. He was unable to assault so on my next turn the Dreadnaught opened up with its heavy flamer and assault cannon. They never had a chance and were wiped out to a man that turn. I was able to also take out his Daemon Prince, Sorcerer and a TAC squad at the start of the third turn while minimizing my losses to only 3-4 marines. The list seems to be doing well for me but I’m still reserving judgment until after I get several more games in.

The new models that I am working on are a squad of Sternguard veterans, Pedro Kantor and completing two Land speeders. I put together a drop pod for use in this list but I sprayed it black and I’m currently leaning towards leaving it that way and marking it as part of the Ravenwing. I’ll paint the metallic parts, drybrush the black with a dark grey mix and add a little charred blast affect to finish it off. I have some Mig Production pigments that are rust and smoke colored that should pull off the charred affect nicely.

I’m still trying to put together a light-tent so that I can take pictures of my work and post it here on the site. There are several manufacturers that make light-tent packages and I think that once I have a little extra money I’ll be picking one up. I’m hoping to have something added to the site after Thanksgiving.

The Fallen are on the move...

So I played my first game in along time this past weekend and it was a pretty good game. We are started a new ten week campaign at the store this past weekend and the kick-off was this past Saturday. I’m using my Dark Angels Battle Company as the Fallen due to a shortage of Chaos players and the fact that there is another Dark Angels player on the Imperials side. This should make for some interesting campaign fluff in the coming weeks.

My first round game was against a younger Imperial Guard player with an over-converted army; still trying to understand why younger players always feel the need to do that. He was using a space marine model as Commander Straken and all of his infantry looked like Stormtroopers and it was hard to differentiate between squads and veterans. Regardless, the game ended up being a draw I felt that I was lucky to get that. My problem was that I was using a list that I cobbled together and it wasn’t really optimized to deal with his imperial guard. His artillery was spot on and sadly I couldn’t do anything to stop it because it was on the opposite side of the table and I had nothing left that could get to that side quick enough.

I spent some time developing a new list based on advice that I received in the BoLS Lounge this week. The biggest change was to switch from using the current Dark Angels Codex to using the regular Space Marin Codex. This change allows me to take much of the same equipment but at a cheaper points cost and this allows me to add some additional units to the list to beef up the army. The campaign games are anywhere between 1500 and 2000pts. per game it is up to the players to decide the actual point value. Most of us will probably be playing in the 1850 range so that is what I have geared my army for. I’ll be using this new list this weekend and if it performs well then I’ll post it here so that you all can take a look.

Till then cheers and have fun playing and painting your armies.