Steel Legion update, plus some terrain!

Okay,

I have completed half of the Steel Legion project for my buddy Lonnie, which consisted of all troops. Well Lonnie wanted to make his force mechanized and one of the models he got was this Valkyrie. So this is a shot of it after about 5 hours worth of work as well as the base color on it. I still have a few more hours of paint but it will be ready soon. One critique of the kit is the mounting for the bolters in the crew compartment. The design of how it is attached is not the best. Basically its a rod with a flat spot that you glue the arm to which has the bolter sitting on it. It broke many times during the construction and when I build my own I will leave them off with the side doors closed! Anyhow, here on the WIP pictures.


Since Lonnie is over seas and I did not know what load out he wanted under the wings, I decided to use rare earth magnets to mount them. So it can hold the missile pod or the stand alone missile, I will be doing this on mine as well. But care must be used in mounting the magnets on the payload bracket, as seen below.







So besides Lonnie's stuff, I have been in the mood to build some terrain, I have had the Cities of Death box set for a while, so last weekend I went over to Rob's and started this building. Not being satisfied with building something straight out of the box, I busted out a few Electrical box's and started going to town on them. The building is not done and there needs to be a bit more work done to it, but it is coming along nicely.

The parts are from the CoD terrain, PVC Plastic sheeting, a Necromunda Bulkhead and whatever else I have lying around from my bitz box.

Here is a figure for scale, so you can see this is a large building! By the way, the Imperial Pilot was painted by John over at Plastic Legions http://plasticlegions.blogspot.com/ I acquired him in a trade about a month or so ago.

Something else Rob & I have been working on is this narrative 40K game. Well Rob & I are about to start an Inquisitor game in 28mm to go along with our narrative theme. So after talking to Rob on the phone, he told me he needed a few rooms for the game. So below is what you can do with Masonite and about three hours of sweating in the hot Arizona garage yesterday!

The first piece is a hallway that is about 18" long by 12" wide. It is made out of 1/4 inch Masonite and has two doors on either end. I used a couple of eagle buttress's from the CoD box and will continue to add more to it.

The second piece is about 18" by 18" and represents a warehouse of some sort. For the game we will add crates and barrels to give us some cover. I once again added bitz from my box as well as random sections of plastic sheeting on the floor, just to break it up. This piece also has doors on either end.

Here are the two sections sitting together, you can see by the figure just how big these are. The inspiration came from this website Parasitic Studios http://www.parasiticstudios.com/index.html following his Sin of Alacrity he did. This guy does some awesome work, but has not update his site in a long time, but still good stuff! Also the inspiration for this comes from Space Hulk & Warhammer Quest. Both of those use a tile system that had connectors, but I wanted something more. So I guess I finally got of my butt and started this.

So there you have it, I will be posting up some pictures as this gets painted as well as build a few more rooms.

TK

How much for that?????

Okay,

A small rant today, so hang in there! Today a good friend sent me a message about a local guy trying to unload some bits as well as some unpainted models. So my buddy sends the guy a private message since he has a huge lot of stuff for the army my buddy is working on. He gets a response back with this guy wanting something like $2.00 for each bit and $4.00 dollars for the completed models. Now none of the stuff was new, it was all half ass painted or primed and most of it looked pretty beat up.

So here is the rant part, why do some people think they can charge more money than GW for primed or unbuilt models? I can see asking more money for fully painted models, but most guys are trying to get ride of their crap models and bits! Don't these guys know that this stuff is not collectible and doesn't go up in price?? And why in earth would you charge more than what it cost to get new?? This bugs the crap out of me!

It's the same thing for "painted armies" that are painted to a sub standard paint job! I see people trying to sell off stuff that looks like crap for prices that are more than regular retail or for the price of Golden Daemon quality. Don't these guys get it? hell why would I buy your crappy looking army for more than what it costs for me to paint it myself? I just do not understand it at all!

Now I have painted a few figures & armies in my years, and while I am not a Golden Daemon painter, I still think I do a good job. I usually charge people about $3.00 to paint a clean un painted figure. If I have to strip or build the model than the price goes up. My quality is right for the price. I have sold some of my armies in the past and barely got the full retail, and these were fully painted! Heck I have even given away units or figures for free if I have duplicates or if I know someone, but I never try to gouge someone on my leftovers! I just don't get it, you want how much???

Anyhow, rant over, I will climb down off my soap box for now, but God people, wake up and look at your stuff and ask your self this, Would I buy this for more than retail???

TK

Ideas, Ideas & more Ideas!

Okay,

A while ago my buddy Rob (http://dspaintingblog.blogspot.com/) had a blog entry on "How do you Play 40K? (http://dspaintingblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-do-you-play-40k.html) Well I have been thinking about this since this past weekend.


As some of you know from my previous post, I played three games of 40K this weekend at the 400 point level. The games were a blast to play and we had a loose storyline develop over the three games. Now as some may have noticed, with the 5th edition of 40K, GW seems to be pushing the cinematic aspects of the game. Direct Line of Sight is in there and many articles that I have seen written by GW folk, seem to empathize playing 40K in more as a story rather than as a tournament game. Reason I bring this up is I am wondering if anyone else is picking up on this move towards more story driven games over one off games?



This move, for me at least, has gotten me back into 40K. It is almost like have a small taste of something that you have to have! My 40k appetite has been wetted and I find that I am craving anything 40k related. This morning while eating my breakfast, I was reading the Imperial Guards Uplifting Primer. I brought to work a GW Novel Called Necropolis, stories about Necromunda & I am lurking on a few well know 40K forums and boards!


You see I have not been this excited about 40K in a long time, at least not for two versions. As Rob would tell you, I play 40K, but it's not a game I like to play. I originally picked up the 2nd Edition way back when, right before 3rd Edition came out. I loved what was in the 2nd Edition box set, I loved the story lines & background fluff, but I had no one to play against.
So when 3rd edition came out, I jumped on the game and bought the new edition only to find out they had made some major changes to the game. That's were my dislike started and it continued on with 4th edition. To me they seemed to have lost that storyline driven sort of games and the game was geared towards tournaments.


Now with 5th edition it seems to be geared towards storyline games. Now there is nothing on the rules that really changed from 4th edition, it just seems that GW has made some sort of shift in their thinking. Look at the new Planet strike book, it has you playing 40K in a different way. Cities of Death is another good example of this, playing 40K in a different way instead of the tournament style game with the same old scenarios. This for me has been a breath of fresh air for 40K and that makes me want to play again.


This leads me back to my title, Ideas. Last night while talking to Rob, I started thinking about what else we could use for our linked games. I have Space Hulk (original version), Battle Fleet Gothic (with two fully painted fleets) and Necromunda (original version). All of these games can be used for 40K and the storyline games that our group is interested in playing.



Take for example the game 2 last Sunday where Rob used his Inquisitorial troops took over possession of a container with some sort of mysterious item inside. This could be a data slate, Bio matter or whatever, in fact Rob & I have not yet decided what it has. All we know is that it gives us a reason to have another story arc to follow.



The game with Jerry is already starting to shape up as a Kill team of Xenos Hunters against a lone Genestealer. I busted out Space Hulk and grabbed the old Blip counters from it. I also assembled and will paint up the 8 Tyranid Spore mines from the last 4th edition box set. I envision me running some sort of team going against Jerry and a whole mess of Blip counters. One counter will be the Genestealer the rest will be the Spore Mines and the team will have to track down the Genestealer.


Also Rob & I are talking about doing a BFG game where the Imperial Fleet needs to stop and incoming Invasion fleet of Orks, so there is another story arc out of the three games from last weekend. The possibilities are endless and this is what has me excited about playing 40K again!


TK

Trouble in Eden

Eden, is the setting for our narrative 40k Campaign, it's something I came up with years ago and has been floating around for a while. So this Sunday (7/12/09) Rob & Jerry came over for a few 4oo point combat patrol games.

This is the board layout for the first game against Rob and his Ork patrol, I was playing with Imperial Guard. We called this area The Garden of Eden which is a large forested are on the planet. We used a GW battle matt for the base, a few of the GW "creepy trees"as well as Robs scratch built hills and trees. We also had a Pegasus Hobbies river down the middle of the board, we both agreed that this was a nice looking table!

Well for the game we decided that the first turn we would be using the Night Fight rules, and we also stated that when each force reached 50% we would take a Leadership test to see if the patrol stuck around or took off. Also since Combat Patrols are not in 5th edition, we used the guidelines from our 4th edition books to design the patrols.

Here is a few shots of the Imperial guard patrol force, armour was allocated or this mission in the form of a mighty Chimera transport vehicle.

Here is the deployment of the IG patrol, Squad Alpha is towards the top of the picture, followed by the Platoon Commander riding in the Chimera. Right in front of the woods in the center was the Veterans squad, with Beat squad right next to them. On the bottom of the picture is the Special weapons team with 3 sniper rifles.

The vets were equipped with two flamers and a melta gun as well as all units were equipped with vox casters.

The Platoon commanders squad had a Vox caster, two Plasma guns and one Melta gun, the Commander was equipped with a Bolt Pistol and Chainsword.

The first turn the IG patrol could here movement but were unable to see any enemies, the only sign that there was trouble was when a shell from some sort of gun rocked the Chimer shaking everyone up.

The veterans decided on turn two to advance towards the wooded hill in the center, they spotted crude shapes lurking before them, but could not make out what they were. It seemed that the enemy had covered some of there troops in crude oil turning them all black, but the veterans could hear the grunts of the Orks as they approached there position.

The Snipers on the right flank spotted a bunch of Boyz coming out of the woods but then heard a rough thumping sound in the air and saw two of the craziest looking copters approaching in some sort of grey stealth camo scheme. But the snipers were unable to radio in the targets due to the fact that their radio was left back at base. Needless to say the Death Copters engaged the 6 man team and made quick work of the Special Weapons team.

At this time the Chimera spotted larger than normal Orks leaving the far woods, they tried to open up on them but due to the cover none of the shots hit there mark.

A close up of the targeting optics revealed that these were Ork Nobz and they looked hell bent on engaging the guardsmen and broke off running towards the line of guardsmen.

Two of the fell beasts were shot down but it was clear that not even loosing two Orks from their group of five they were out for blood as they inched closer to the guardsmen.

Soon the Orks crashed into the guardsmen line and a brutal hand to hand fight ensued. The guardsmen fought bravely but were cut down to the last man by the three rampaging Ork Nobz.

The Veterans were also cut down by the Oily Orks in the center and soon, the crude oil covering camo had helped since none of the blows made by the veterans could harm the Orks. With that the Commander sent out a signal on the Vox caster to retreat since the Orks had the advantage. Out of 40 men, only 14 returned to base to tell the tale of what happened in the Garden of Eden. (Victory to Rob and his Orks)

Game two was played with me taking the same Ork Force to go against Robs Inquisitorial Patrol which had 14 Storm troopers mounted in two Chimeras. The objective was a crashed Imperial transport that was carrying a mysterious container. The Inquisition wanted to retrieve this from Eden. Since my IG Patrol was routed, we decided that the Orks were headed towards the crash site to try to Salvage anything they could to up armour themselves and maybe ind some bigger & louder guns.

Here is the board for the second game, all we added was the crashed transport sections to it and rearranged some of the terrain.

The shuttle on impact scattered wreckage on both sides of the river, it would come down to the roll off to see which side got the piece with the container. We also decided that this would be a grab and go scenario. The first patrol to reach the container would have one model spend an entire turn doing nothing but looking for it. You would need to roll a 4+ to see if you found it at the end of the turn. We also stated that night fall would happen on turn 3, so Night Fighting would be in play from turn 3 on.

Luck was with Rob as he got the side with the container on it (the section of the model that has the removable container section). This meant that all he had to do was race to the crash side and look for the container. The Orks would have to run to get there as well as cross the river. So with that the Chimeras rolled on towards the crash site as the Orks raced towards the center. The Two Death Copters turbo boosted into the middle trying to reach the center to do a Kaboom on the stormtroopers but fell short by 3 inches! The Kannon the Orks had fired but missed the Chimera, the rest of the mob ran forward.

The second Chimera took up an Overwatch position and proceeded to shot down both Death Copters which was the closest thing to the objective.

As the Orks reached the river, with the sun setting, the Inquisitor Stormtroopers recovered the container, dashed back into the Chimera and started to withdraw. The Ork Kannon took one last shot but one of the Grots forgot to put a round in the Barrel and all that was heard from the Ork Kannon as a dull click!

Although the Orks were not aware of the mysterious container they still were able to salvage the wreck for more "Hummie Stuffz". So the win went to Rob again as he was able to retrieve the container and take it back to his board edge.

Game three was seeing me face off with Jerry and his 19 Genestealer list, I took the IG patrol again. This scenario was played like the first one with us having to test once 50% of our force was destroyed. I forgot to take pictures during this battle but we had a generic farm stead in the center and the Genestealers raced towards the Guardsmen position. I was feeling pretty good shooting one unit of 6 Stealers to pieces, but 3 Stealers did make it to a 10 man unit of guard. The 3 Stealers were finally cut down but this allowed another unit of 6 to try to sneak up on the other side of the farm stead. Also another 7 Stealers raced towards the other Flank.

The Chimera was able to cut all but 3 Stealers down from the 6 stealers and the Sniper team was able to cut down the 7 stealers racing towards them. Being Genestealers, they had a leadership of 10 and Jerry was passing his tests. The 3 Stealers that had escaped harm from the Chimera were able to attack another 10 man squad on the other side of the farm. They guardsmen fell to a man and the Stealers advanced towards the Snipers on the hill. I passed my Leadership and was feeling pretty good that I could kill the three Stealers. The Stealers engaged the Snipers and I was able to kill two Stealers, but unfortunately the the snipers were killed to a man. This left one Stealer left and I had to pass a leadership test. I picked up two dice and threw double 6's!!!

So Jerry won with 1 Stealer and he sulked off into the woods...

So after three games I went 0 - 3 but I had a blast! Rob & Jerry also had a great time. Because of these games Rob & I will be playing a 40K Skirmish game with my Witch Hunters wanting what he has and Jerry & I can now play a game where I hunt for the Lone Genestealer that got away.

TK