The Painting Continues

May has turned out to be a great month for painting. I've completed 10 additional Sisters of Battle, as well as number of other items that I'll showcase in a separate post.  While I'm significantly behind in trying to accomplish achieving a paint rate of a model a day, May has been very productive. 

I've painted 10 Chaos Epic Landraiders, 10 Sisters of Battle, and a number of Flames of War models that will bring my total up to lofty heights.  I'll be posting the Flames of War models in the next few days

Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K GT Tickets

You may now get your tickets for the Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K Grand Tournament.

Simply head to the WarStore Weekend ticket sales and purchase The Full Warstore Weekend Pass and add 40K Tournament into the comments section.  Your tournament fee also gives you full access to The WarStore Weekend and exhibitor areas, as well as the opportunity to participate in many other great gaming events.

The Fort Buyaki Invitational Tournament is a 5-game, 2000 point, 2 day event held on October 8-9, 2011 in Seacaucus, NJ.

Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K Grand Tournament

I'm pleased to announce the Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K Tournament to be held on October 8-9, 2011 held in Seacaucus, NJ. The FtBI is part of the 2011-2012 Games Workshop North American Tournament Circuit.  All are welcome and invited to participate in this great event! And I expect to see many of you there!

This event will feature 5 games over the course of two days and will be held at the same site as the Warstore Weekend in cooperation with TheWarStore and TheWarStore Weekend. We expect to have at least 60 players and we are able to easily expand as player demand grows.

The FtBI features Swiss-style pairings based on game play results to crown our overall champion and we offer painting and sportsmanship awards that are scored independently from game play.   We expect all players to conduct themselves in a polite and civil manner and we use a ranking system to recognize outstanding sporting individuals.  The great feature of the sportsmanship ranking system is that all opponents must be ranked from best to least best which creates a clear delineation between players.  More about my thoughts and ramblings on sportsmanship here.
 

Over the coming months, we'll be rolling out all kinds of information on this blog regarding this event, but in the meantime mark your calendars and work on your army now!

January Painted Models

This update is a bit later than I had intended but it has arrived.   I painted 11 Sisters of Battle and 2 Imperial Guard Steel Legion models in January.

I have on the verge of being finished 9 GW Epic flyers, 5 Polish TKS tankettes, a Polish 4 gun 75mm battery with Staff, Command Rifle, and Observer Rifle teams (7 models), and a Polish 7TP jw tank.  This batch would certainly diminish the shortfall but not wipe it out.

The smaller tank on the left is a Polish TKS tankette, a two-man tank with very thin armor.   The larger tank is the Polish 7TP jw tank.

Tournament Sportsmanship, The Way to do it Right

I've run my fair share of tournaments while I was at GW and beyond and have seen and experienced all manner of sportsmanship systems. Few are good and some are just plain dreadfully awful.  For years,  I've been pondering what makes a fair and unbiased sportsmanship system that would reflect a player's true nature and remove all manner of chipmunking.

But first, let's go through some bad sportsmanship systems and show why they are rubbish. 

Descriptors -  This style featured a series of descriptions that a player could use to reflect upon their opponent and game and mark an appropriate score.  For example, the sportsmanship card might say "My opponent was fantastic, I wish all my opponents were this much fun," or "We had a few rules problems that we worked through," or any number of broad sweeping statements to describe an opponent's sportsmanship during the game.  Many will notice that this style was the Games Workshop Sportsmanship style used in  Grand Tournaments during the 90's and early 2000's and was one of the first methods to judge sportsmanship in the tournament scene.

Checklists - The checklist system came into use from Adepticon around 2007 and GW borrowed the format for a few years. This format awards points by checking off any number of boxes whose descriptions might apply to a game such as "my opponent showed up on time at the start of the game," "Hey, my opponent showed up with his rulebook and codex," "My opponent brought his dice," "He measured and moved his models correctly," "My opponent was fun to play against." I've paraphrased these a bit but you get the idea.   Half the points in this system rewards players for basic principles that are required for players to have a game, and the other half are so general that they fail to deliver substantial differentiation amongst the player's sportsmanship scores.

Up/Down systems -  The Up/Down system is another variant that scores players as either fun to play against or not.  This system fails to create substantial differentiation amongst the scores as well as most players will get the nod and get an up vote, unless they are a real bear to play against.   

On the whole, the systems above evaluate one player at a time, and usually ignore previous evaluations of other players, while scoring a large group of players with similar scores and needing additional tie-breakers.  If we must have sportsmanship, then these systems must disappear if we want real results.


Sportsmanship Ranking - I am of the opinion that this is the finest way to get realistic sportsmanship results if a tournament is to have sportsmanship.  Using this method, a player ranks all of his opponents at the end of the tournament on a scale of best sport to least best sport (which in some cases could very well be a worst sport but that isn't always the case!).  Players must remember who they have played and a T.O. should provide the players with a sheet so that players can record the names of the people they played. 

When a player ranks their opponents, they need to take into account anything and everything that happened during their game, which the above mentioned systems may not always account for, and usually don't.  As such, the ranking system takes everything into account and allows the player free reign in determining the results.  Reminders to the players to evaluate the players, not the game result can help discourage dishonest evaluation.   Only one player could be the best sporting opponent, there are no ties.

One might argue - What if both players are your best opponents or equally deserving of the highest mark? They aren't, you must dig deep, reflect upon your games, and figure out which is the truly the best and the other second best.   There can be only one!

This system is less likely to be abused by chipmunking and open sportsmanship scoring (whereby a player marks his sheet in full view of his opponent hoping that his opponent will score him the same highest value) and creates realistic scoring.  Irregardless, we know there are plenty of unscrupulous, malicious, manipulative, and unsporting players out there who's only way to win a tournament (with soft scores) is by being disengenuous to other players to gain the win.  Don't be that guy!

I like to have opponent's ranked from 5 (the best) to 1 (least best and not necessarily a bad sport).  Then simply add up the ranks to determine a score.  If the tournament has a large number of players, then double or triple the values to create a greater spread of scores.

If you attend tournaments, encourage the organizers to use ranking systems in the next event and let's cut down on the sportsmanship abuse and put the emphasis back onto the table!

Sculpting

I took on a commission recently to sculpt a 13th Company Wolf Lord based off the new plastic Daemon Prince model.  My job is to kit him out with hair aplenty, a new wolf greave on the right forearm, and a howling wolf head.

 The model is coming along quite nicely and you'll notice the basic structure of the head and mouth.

I've dabbled a bit with a 54mm style head. I am happy with most of the features but the eyes gave me a lot of trouble.  The eyelids don't look quite right, so I will have to try a different technique. 

While I am sculpting away on these projects, I am attempting to sculpt on plenty of Blood Angel iconography onto regular Space Marine Terminators in an attempt to bring them up to the outstanding quality of the Space Hulk Blood Angel miniatures. Pictures to come!

The Warstore Weekend

The Warstore Weekend was a fun-filled, fantastic weekend.  There were plenty of great inspiring games and loads of challenging tournament action.  There were tournaments for 40K, FOW, and Warmachine and the dice were rolling the entire weekend.

I met a lot of great people and got in a number of games.  The 40K tournament was a blast to run and the players were excellent sports and brought all manner of challenging armies. 

The winners of the tournament were:

Overall Champion - Dmitry Fetisov (Blood Angels)
2nd Place - Joe Biasco (Imperial Guard)
3rd Place - Sean Nayden (Salamanders Dreadnought Drop)
Best Sport - Sean Nayden (Salamanders Dreadnought Drop)
Best Appearance - Daniel Oppedisano (Imperial Guard Traitors)
Player's Choice - Daniel Oppedisano (Imperial Guard Traitors

More pictures of Dan's army can be seen on his blog found here: http://teninchtemplate.blogspot.com/.  There were a number of great looking armies and not a single unpainted model could be found in the tournament.  I look forward to next year's tournament. 

For those that didn't make it, I'd recommend to begin making plans now to attend the Warstore Weekend next year.   You won't regret a weekend of gaming with great people!

Chuck the Blood Angel and Games Day 2010

Meet Chuck the Blood Angel Space Marine.   Years ago, GW had a set of Space Marines create to be 'life-size' and this Blood Angel was one of them that was sent over here to the good old US of A.  He didn't have a name and the Promotions Department named him Chuck.  He's been to more shows than I can remember, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up with him.  I'd gotten the chance to play Artificier with Chuck years ago and patched him up for battle. 

In the grand tradition of Games Day wackiness, here's a photo of a life-size Empire Cannon.  Why anyone would want to be a crew member of a device that will explode in your face 16% of the time is beyond me, but my Empire Cannon crew never complain to me about the explosions.

These big wacky things always made Games Day quite a bit of fun. For the 1999 Games Day, I build a large 40K Bunker for the Big Game, and I can't remember the year that I built the life-size Chimera.  That one blew people away (sometimes when they had to pick it up and move it around).  I'd really like to have some photos of that Chimera so if you see any, let me know!

I had a lot of fun at Games Day this year and got to see old friends again.  Sadly, this will be the last Games Day in Baltimore for who knows how long, but we'll get together again for some East Coast events.

Death Company and flowers

I painted this a few months back to win an online painting contest and thought I should share it.  Its a Blood Angel Death Company Marine who's subject to a moment of clarity during the madness and has taken the time to admire some natural beauty.   Too bad for the Chaos Marine but that's the price they pay when the turn from the light.

The flower was sculpted onto a length of paperclip.   The leaves from the flower are simply strips of painted paper bent to have a nice curve, then affixed in place with a drop of super glue.  The roots were added by placing a drop of super glue at the root bottom and dipping it in static grass.  When the glue was dry I just painted the roots brown.

Awesome Elf Terrain

And the final awesome terrain set to be revealed at GenCon today in the GF9 booth is this immaculate elven tower surrounded by pillars and icons.  This was quite a challenging set to create but I think you'll agree that the results are well worth it. 

I've recently completed a few toppled pillars that will make great pieces for models to fight behind and take cover from enemy shooting, and slowing down enemy units as they try to climb over them (or perish trying!).  I think elf terrain is probably the hardest type of terrain for players to build and this set takes a huge chunk of work out of it. 

 My summer has been a very busy one at work but we've been creating some great pieces for tabletop wargaming.

Hall of Heroes Terrain

The month of May was spent working on the Tree of Woe and the Hall of Heroes ruins set.     These pieces are being shown at GenCon today and more details can be found at GF9. 

The Hall of Heroes is a great set and provides lots of great cover for vehicles and infantry in any game.   The round shapes are a refreshing break from most square buildings that we see populating the majority of gaming tables.   This makes a great centerpiece for any war-torn table and a serious objective to take from your opponent!

Tree of Woe terrain piece

The Tree of Woe!  This inspiring piece is sure to be a welcome addition to many tables and game systems.    Imagine the Tree of Woe dominating the battlefield on a lone hilltop, or controlling the only safe passage through a disease-ridden swamp.  The possibilities are endless.  This piece is being shown at Gen Con today.

This and some cool new tokens can be found at Gale Force Nine.

I have some mad plans on converting my Tree of Woe to tie in with my new Skaven army.  More on that when I get the tree finished.

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. 

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.

Skull Tower - Warstore Weekend

This picture came up a few weeks ago on the GW website.  I think the Skull Towers look pretty cool.  Are they a shield wall, warning sign, or something much simpler....like a flux capacitor!  I've got a bunch of extra skulls lying about so I've been thinking that I might give these a whirl. Yes, the bitz box is immense!

Many commented on other blogs that these were the same pieces.  They are not. I deal with terrain and details all day long so I pick up on the differences immediately.  So look again folks, look at the cracks and positions of the skulls.   What you need to know is the GW has had 3-D printers for well over 6 years now and I think these skulls are the same ones from Temple of Skulls.  It doesn't take much effort for GW to print out a series of skulls, mold them up and make some castings and then have the Hobby team paint them up.

But my skull towers, I need to wrap up a Death Company marine for a blog contest.

I also want to put in a plug for an awesome upcoming event called The Warstore Weekend.  Yes, that's right, those madcaps at The Warstore will be putting on a great weekend of gaming and fun.  Sign up now while you still have the chance.  I will be attending this event and hope to see you there.    More details to come as soon as I am allowed to speak about them.

Blood Angel 'Ardboyz list

Here's a list that I used over the weekend.

Dante  225
Librarian w/ Jump Pack 125  Powers -Blood Lance and Might of Heroes (now to be Shield of Sanguinius)

2 Sanguinary Priests w/ Jump Packs 150
Furioso Librarian w/ Drop Pod 210  Powers- Blood Lance and Wings of Sanguinius
Furioso Librarian w/ Drop Pod 210  Powers- Blood Lance and Wings of Sanguinius

5 model Assault squad w/ Melta gun, power fist, and infernus pistol 150
5 model Assault squad w/ power fist, and infernus pistol 140
5 model Assault squad w/ flamer in Razorback with twin-linked lascannons 160
10 Death Company w/ powerfist  225  and  w/ dedicated Landraider w/ multi-melta 260
Death Company Dreadnought w/ magna grapple and drop pod 175
Death Company Dreadnought w/ magna grapple and drop pod 175

Vindicator  145
Vindicator 145

Total  2495

Give every dreadnought a grapple.  If it can't kill a vehicle when it lands, then hit it with the grapple and drag it closer and kill it in an assault.  The grapple is an additional weapon that can be blown off by a damage result.

It is interesting to note that a Vindicator costs nearly the same as an upgraded assault squad.

Librarian Dreadnoughts - taking Wings of Sanguinius was a novel idea and seemed to be pretty good.  I think the better choice might be to take the Shield of Sanguinius to absorb some incoming fire at the start of the opponent's shooting phase.  Add in a locator beacon or two to the drop pods and the Librarians and DC Dreads can boost their survivability.

Hmmm, lots of different lists are rolling in my head.

Sanguinary Guard Wings Assembly

I had the hardest time figuring out how to attach the wings to the Sanguinary Guard models.  The instructions provided by GW were worthless in trying to figure it out and since they are all digital diagrams, a reasonable person would expect that they'd show how it assembles. But the finer points of model construction are not GW's bag.

So, the wings contain a spot that fits into the round bubbles on the back side of the marine torso. Yeah, its complicated to describe, so check out the picture for a more accurate description.  The areas that are circled are glued together.  Hope that helps.

 

Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard

First off, thanks to The Warstore for fulfilling all of my purchasing needs.  You guys rock.

Second, it's been many a moon since I've posted and I'm back!  Thank all of you for your comments and I will be responding more as your comments pop up.  The truth is so much easier to handle!  I'd rather be known for telling it like it is than one who can't face the facts!  So on we go.

I've been a rabid Blood Angel player since I played Space Marine Epic with the black armored Salamanders on the cover way back in 1991.  I've always like the color red, the glorious Red Wings and I think part of the draw of choosing the Blood Angels for Epic was they were always pictured in White Dwarf magazine.  So I got my copy of the Blood Angel Codex last week. Thanks Warstore!!!!!!

I'm very pleased with the Codex.  There are a few things I'm still digesting and figuring out, more on that later. 

But today is a discussion on Sanguinary Guard. These are some great models with some solid rules. I haven't used them yet in a game but overall I think they are a pretty good choice.   A player may take 5 models at the cost of 200 points.  It's pretty expensive, but I think there are a few good bits in there.  Each one has veteran stats and thus have 2 attacks. Artificier armor gives them a 2+ save and they are fearless. With Descent of Angels, they can drop in nearly anywhere they want.  The Glaive Encarmine is a two-handed master crafted power weapon so they can be devastating when they engage in combat and Death Masks can be taken that force opponents to make a leadership check and if they should fail, they will be at Weapon Skill 1 for the duration of the assault phase.  I would bet that during playtesting they tried the Glaives at Str. 6 and found it to be too much with the Artificier armor and Fearless rules and thus reduced it to merely a master crafted power weapon.  I think that losing the attack of the additional hand weapon to be rather silly for Blood Angels. Why shouldn't the Sanguinary Guard have 4 attacks each when they charge?  They are the Elite of the Elite!  I'd like to take units of 10 models, but alas, I can only take units of 5. Guess someone figured out just how good they were.

Add in a Sanguinary Priest to give Furious Charge and Feel No Pain, and a player has one fantastic and dangerous unit of 5 models, and sadly not 10.   Taking Dante as an HQ choice allows a player to take Sanguinary Guard as Troops choices.  That's awesome and allows for GW to really sell lots of these models which is what they want to do anyway, so why not give players that opportunity!  Good job, GW.

The models are fantastic too.  My only real complaint is that the sprues come with only one Infernus pistol, one Plasma pistol, and one Power fist.  The options in the book allow me to take as many as each of these as I'd like, but I'm limited by the number of pieces in the box. GW dropped the ball here.   It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how the wings attach to the model and I'll post up how that's done in the next few days as a proper customer service bit!

I like the way the Death Masks and armor look in that Italian Renaissance sculpture style (think Michelangelo's David), but I'm not a fan of the bare heads behind the Death Masks and they have the exact same hairstylist! Upon closer inspection, the un-helmeted heads have the same stylist too!   I like my Marines with close-cropped hair. These hairdoos look like they should belong in the Emperor's Children Fulgrim pretty boy camp. (Note: I like the Emperor's Children and Fulgrim, so this isn't a slam on them, just a statement of truth).  But I do applaud GW on the amount of different bits and shoulder pads on the sprues.

If you plan on taking Blood Angels Honor Guard, I'd recommend using most parts from the Sanguinary Guard models for your models. Just paint them red instead!

More Lamenters

Years ago on the GW website when the 4th edition Space Marine Codex was released, GW put up some awesome marine sketches.  Mark Gibbons, now with Blizzard Entertainment, was doing concept art for GW at the time, and contributed some great variety to the ever growing Space Marine ideas vault.  One that captured my attention was a heavily armored heavy weapon totting Marine.  This conversion is one of my attempts at playing around with a few different ideas.
 

 I expect this marine to withstand a fearsome barrage of weaponry and still maintain a high fire output due to the additional protection of the shield and armor plating.  

This marine has personalized his equipment with a lone bleeding heart on his knee guard and the artificiers have placed a zorathrax hair crest on his helmet.

 Maybe I'll get around to painting more of the Lamenters one day. But before then, I'll be working on my Blood Angels