New Terrain

Fantastic new terrain is being unveiled at GenCon in the Gale Force Nine booth created by yours truly. I hope that you'll find it useful and inspiring.  For more information and for additional updates everyday, go to Gale Force Nine.

Yes, Brad, you will want it and you will know ahead of time that I made it, instead of after you leave the store. :-)

USAF Fly-by

During the last half hour of work today while painting something special for Gencon, I was greeted with the roar of jet engines as the flight path of a United States Air Force F-18 flew nearly over my office building.  At first I didn't know what jet plane was the cause, but I rushed out the back door for a quick check as it rushed past.   The noise was tremendous and it was quite thrilling to see one of the great workhorses of freedom in action!

The F-18 was doing a few touch and goes at the local airport and I could still hear it flying around as I left work.  My commute takes me right past the southern end of our airport and so I stopped for a moment on a little pull-off and was rewarded with a few fly-bys right over the top of my truck!  As he flew off into the distance and curled around to the northeast, the parked aircraft started moving onto the tarmac so I knew that was the end of the maneuvers so off to home I went.

Thank you to all our servicemen and women who protect this nation.  You have my gratitude for your efforts and patriotism.  God Bless you all!  If you happen to see a member of our Armed Forces, take a moment and thank them for their service.  It puts a smile on their face, and brightens everyone's day.

How do you make ruins more ruined?

It's been a long time since I've had a chance to work on the blog.  I've been busy doing some remodeling around the house.  I did manage to get a sweet deal on some old Khorne Beserkers while at Historicon  and enjoyed some good meals and tasty drinks with the Warstore crew.

So here's a picture of a classic Khorne Beserker that I recently painted up.  The model was primed white, then basecoated with GW Blood Red. Details were picked out with Bleached Bone, Snot Green, Chainmail, and Vallejo Glistening Gold.  Then the model was painted with Army Painter Dip Strong Tone.  A coat of Army Painter Matt Varnish removed the shine from the model and then I painted the base Catachan Green.  I plan to go back in with some GW Gloss Varnish to make the metallic areas shine.

August is going to be filled with painting Perry Miniatures Samurai for an article on how to paint samurai for Wargames Illustrated.

And the answer to the question is here.  You make ruins more ruined by having them fly off a moving vehicle at 70 mph on a busy interstate and watching it shatter into pieces when it hits the road. No joke! I picked up the classic Outrider Thunderhawk Down tables and terrain, which were a big hit at Games Day USA back in 2003 or 2004, from my buddy Rick a few weeks ago.  We strapped the tables and most of the terrain down and sandwiched one piece of terrain amongst the rest.  45 miles later right in the heart of Baltimore, I glanced back in my side mirror and saw it peeling off the back of the truck and hit the asphalt and explode into hundreds of pieces.  Being made mostly of foam, it was a goner and I kept on going for there would be nothing left of value. 

GW New FAQs

New FAQ's popped up on the GW website today.

Blood Angel FAQ

Tyranid FAQ

 Most of the answers are as we've been playing them.    A good number in the Blood Angel FAQ show once again that the INAT FAQ is to be avoided at all costs.   Just stick with the GW FAQs and avoid others 'clarification manipulations' to the rules of the game.

That's all for today.  I've been extremely busy around the home as of late, and thus not much time to do postings. 

In upcoming posts, I'll write a bit about the Warstore Weekend Tournaments.  Its set for 2000 points and I hope you are making plans to attend.

New fancy junk from GW

Here's a link to a video some new fancy junk from GW for their release of 8th edition Warhammer   The broken GW website.  Watch at your own wallet's peril! 

I'll be the first to say that these new templates look pretty cool but do I need them to replace my already nifty GF9 multi-template....I think not! 

While the measuring device (both folding yardstick and compass) brings back thoughts of yester-year carpentry, it's unweildiness will certainly see it left in the figure case.  I'll go for a standard tape measure as my ally, unbreakable and unbendy in all its METAL goodness!

The combat calculator looks pretty interesting but its small counting sticks will soon be lost, thus the piece becomes irrelevant and nothing more than a decorative sconce for a terrain piece.  Send me yours and I'll make you something with it.

The rulebook is coming in at a pricey $75US for a mere 115 pages or so of rules out of 528 pages.  The rest of the book is background and hobby articles (which should be in White Dwarf, GW!!!). This book isn't guaranteed to stop bullets, but it will stop some (maybe from ticked off spouses, girlfriends, or lone wolf boyfriends).  Go here to see all the details including 100 pages of Citadel miniatures.... You didn't buy their catalogue this year??? well guess again!!!

A couple of folks have already told me that the new books pretty much makes all Warhammer Army Books obselete immediately upon purchase of the 8th Edition. I haven't seen it for myself, and no one at GW was willing to give me an answer so go figure.

I've also been told by a secret squirrel that the big rulebook's rules don't match the rules in the small softcover book that is included within the box game coming in the fall. Oh dear, let the speculation commence.

Heroic 40K - Sentries

I've decided that I'll blog away on rules as they coalesce in my head. 

Today's topic is sentries.  Every army has them and posts them to guard barracks, outposts, ammo and fuel depots, prisoners, etc.  You name it, some dude or grot is tasked with protecting something which superiors deem important.  Of course, the sentry doesn't and would rather be thinking about girls, beer, synth-smokes, or whatever else is more thought provoking than standing around guarding some dumb thing while his buddies are off having a great time.

These rules are a blend of old GW and my own.


Each sentry on sentry duty will, in his turn, potentially move.

• Roll a D6.
• 1-3 - The sentry player may move the model D6 inches in any direction and place it in any facing.
• 4-5 - Random.  Roll the scatter dice.  If a hit shows, the model doesn't move, but merely turns to face in the direction of the little arrow on the hit.  Something has caught his attention like a rock, shiny bit, a critter moving around, etc.   If the arrows show, move the model D6 inches in that direction and facing that direction.
• 6 - The infiltrator/enemy player may move the model D6 inches in any direction and place it in any facing.

Sentries may spot Infiltrator/enemy models up to double their Initiative. An infiltrator/enemy is spotted when it is in the 90 degree front facing of the Sentry model.  GM's may change this amount depending on weather, visibility (night, chem waste clouds, drunk, etc), abilities (model attributes, equipment, etc), etc. Infiltrators may be harder to spot due to skills and abilities (scouts/assassins), or special equipment (chameoline cloak) - again, its a GM decision.

If any infiltrator/enemy model is spotted, both players roll a dice and add their Initiative and the highest score wins. If the sentry's score is higher, the alarm has been sounded. 

If the infiltrator has the higher score, he may try to react to eliminate the enemy model before it gets a chance to sound the alarm.  Move the infiltrator in base to base contact and fight a round of hand to hand combat.  If the sentry is still alive after a round, the alarm is sounded. If the sentry has been eliminated, then the infiltration continues to go unnoticed.

Infiltrators can attempt to silence the sentries by taking them by suprise by moving into base to base contact with the sentry.  The infiltrator will strike first and will receive a +1 to hit and a +1 to wound and the sentry will receive a -1 to his armor roll. 

That's sentries and infiltrators for the moment.

Heroic 40K

Heroic 40K!  What's that?  It a little project that I'm working on to bring more life into my 40K hobby.

When I first started playing 40K in the Rogue Trader days, the games we played were all oriented around small unit actions with a very developed scenario run by a game master.   The GM would set the stage and we'd begin gaming.  This was a lot of fun back then and when 2nd edition came along, those types of games fell be the wayside with the introduction of scenarios in the game.   Now, GW scenarios and tournament style scenarios are the standard and you won't find many people making an effort to try something different. 

I like competitive 40K tournament play, but I've found myself wanting more from my hobby. For quite some time I've wanted to do some small scale skirmish battles in both 40K, WFB, and historical settings.  Imagine a game with 30 Vikings landing ashore in North America fighting back against the Skraelings (American Indians) or a Space Marine night assault against an Ork settlement on Armageddon.  That's what I'm aiming to do.

I'm sure most folks have read at least one Black Library novel (with the exception of Patrick), and imagined how games would be different if the game was more like the background.   That's part of the inspiration in Heroic 40K.

So my storyline for next week involves about 20 Space Marines vs. 80+ Orks.  The SM players can pick their weapon load-outs for the action and will be accompanied by 2 scouts armed with sniper rifles.    It will be up to the players to decide how they are going to destroy all the Orks.  Additionally, some of the players will be playing the Orks and will have their own objectives.

The game will be a blend of 40K (all editions), Inquisitor, and Necromunda rules and will have substantially more depth and decision making within the game.  I won't be writing a set of rules for the game, but modifying the existing rules and I expect that they'll morph as we go. 

Here are some of the rules changes for the Ft. Buyaki Friday night game.

• Marine squad coherency is set at 6".  Each model may choose to move, fire, run, assault as if they were a seperate unit as long as they maintain their unit coherency.  This means that each model may shoot at a different target and a single model may assault without the rest of the unit. 
• Story driven.  Players can attempt to try things that regular 40K rules don't allow for.  The GM decides the difficulty of such feats and gives players a chance on a die roll to attempt it.
• Additional abilities on both side making some of the models in the game very unique, ie, sharpshooters, combat masters, beserkers, tough ol' sonuva guns, etc.  These unique effects will only be shared with individual players and will bring some surprises to the players in the game.  
• Anything goes.  Imagination is the limit!
• Points don't exist here, neither do fair and balanced scenarios.
• I will most likely have a semi-simultaneous turn, similar to old Space Marine Epic rules.

As I create my documents for these games, I will post them here so you may have a go as well.  I will take pictures and write up a battle report for the game and share with you.