I finally broke down and bought X-Wing...

I was weak... and I went on a bit of a spending spree at one of the cooler game stores in my area... which is also a coffee shop... Alpha Omega Coffee and Games. I love that place!

Fishies!

Random intro is random: for some reason I still don't feel like a Tau player. This may be because I haven't actually played the army with my own models yet... dunno. Just struck me as odd that I feel this way... even though I'll likely end up playing the Tau more than I ever played the particular Marine variants.

Tau-tally awesome!

So I finally bit the bullet and have started phase one of my future Tau Empire army.

The End of an Era

Not an accurate depiction of how much I get paid, but the first check still felt that way!

So... funny story... I haven't had a full-time job in all my 4+ years of playing tabletop games... until now. I've been working for a factory running an injection moulding machine (non-gaming related... unfortunately...) since April 1st, and boy was having a goodly sized paycheck a cool thing. The first gaming purchase I made with the new source of income was a secondhand Landraider Crusader, a Secondhand Dreadnought (with dual autocannons and everything!) and an Arjac Rockfist (who is freaking awesome, despite the obvious casting flaws and bubbles... I'm still on the fence if it's bad enough to complain to GW about it...)

Apocalypse Now (Yesterday!)

Yesterday marked the second Apocalypse 40k game at Battlefront Gaming. It was freaking amazing. There were two teams of three with ~3000 points each. I was with the Forces of Disorder and had the Titan Maniple you see in the first pic, my teammates had 3k of Imperial Guard/Chaos Space Marines, and ORKS! The orks did infinitely better than I ever imagined they would. Especially that squad of Grotz, who just would not die (vs a Dreadnought!) Unfortunately, I didn't get good pictures of that side of the battlefield, as I was slightly preoccupied with my end. My worthy adversaries included another Titan Princeps, commanding a single Warlord and a handful of Stormtalon reinforcements, (who was actually kind enough to allow me the use of a Reaver!) a Tau player who felt the need to NOT run the "cheese list" he came up with with tremendous amounts of Rail Weapons (including Area Denial Nodes, which could have gotten NASTY.) and a Space Marines player (he calls them Salamanders, but they aren't green yet... :P )

Now on to the breakdown of turns:

What a week!

Well, it's been ~13 hours since that last post, and I officially declare myself to be done building titans for now. I didn't finish them all, in fact, I only got one more to the point where I'll be able to use it tomorrow (for a total of two), but that's ok. Chance smiled upon me today, and as it turns out, there will be another Titan Princeps joining the fray, and he was kind enough to agree to allow me to utilize one of his Reaver Titans he ran out of room for. I'll be 50 points under the 3k limit, but I'm totally fine with that.

It's the Final Countdown!

I wish I had 24 hours left!

So it's Friday, and the game is tomorrow. I'm not sure I'll be able to make all the remaining Titans in time, but by the Emperor I'm going to try!

Progress!

I'm currently taking a break so I figured I'd sit down and share what I've gotten done already. I finished the first Titan yesterday, and assembled the torsos of the other three. I'm about to start on the heads and then the... pelvis... area of the Titans, and if that goes really quickly, I'll finish off the weapon arms tonight that way I'll have two whole days to work on the legs and feet, which happens to be the part I'm dreading... the pose of the model is 100% dependent on the legs and they take FOREVER to assemble. And I'm doing all this before the big game on Saturday... I hope there's an Apocalypse game this Saturday... if not, well at least I'll have the structural stuff done and then I can detail as I see fit. In any case, here's a couple pics:

Combat Patrol 40k... the best kind of 40k

I'm starting to see the appeal...

So I played in a Combat Patrol Tournament today at Evolution Games in Lansing, MI...

Made of Win

One of my friends who plays in the local tournament scene sent me some pictures of one of the other armies in attendance during one such tournament. I really do still have a soft spot for Salamanders (and Space Wolves for that matter!), so I found these to be... most impressive. Now I want to take the time to share them with you, because they are so awesome!

The Eastern Sea

Release the KRAKEN!

So, I played an 1000 point game on a 4x4 board, vs Empire of the Blazing Sun. I don't remember much of it (the game was played yesterday night, but I've slept and worked since then, so my mind is fuzzy on the details...) so I'm not going to do a play-by-play, and I apologize, but I really don't have the current brain-capacity to remember order and the details.

Shock and Awe

I'm sure my opponent felt this way after the game.

So I finally got brave enough to venture outside in the snow and went down to Battlefront to get a game in of Dystopian Wars. I got there a little after 12:30-ish, and nobody else showed up until almost 7 (well there was one 40k guy, but I didn't bring any 40k stuff with me). In the meantime, I cut out some Medium (medium-area and small-area) and Large (mostly small area) Height Iceburgs. We ended up using some of them in the battle later on. I also took the time to cut out some Iceburgs the size of my Iceburg templates, which was handy. I look forward to painting them up.

Now on to the game, the very first thing I want to do is thank my opponent for continuing even though the first turn's worth of dice were in no way shape or form in his favor. I rolled more 5's and 6's this game than all of my other games combined, and that coincided with him rolling next to none himself. It also didn't help that I both won and held the initiative the whole game.

The Battleship Titanic

The painting bug has struck me again. I got my first Borodino Battleship (which I christened the Titanic) done tonight, along with the Iceburg markers that came with the Kostroma Carrier. The decking was a pain in the butt, but everything else was fairly quick to paint. Here's some pics of the finished product:

Taking down a Dreadnought

The Doom Boat! (FSA Dreadnought)

Ok, it's been a few weeks since my last post about Dystopian Wars, and my fleet has grown a bit since the last time. Since then, I've taken the time to purchase a Carrier (one, so I have more tiny fighters in the air keeping my opponent's tiny bombers away, and two for the access to the sweet, sweet Glacier Generator) and a blister of 6 more Escort/Frigate models.

Rules Conundrum: In light of the recent FAQ...

My thoughts on the "new" range rule: I'm pretty sure that's actually how it was always supposed to be played... The big rule book mentions being out of range in the wound allocation section, though that particular paragraph made little-to-no sense given the context it was placed, but now with this FAQ, it makes just a little more sense.

A Frigid Welcome

My Naval Starter Box for the Russians came in yesterday /Happyface, but my rulebook and STAR cards were delayed for a few days /Sadface.

I'M ON A BOAT!

I'M ON A BOAT!

I've more or less officially bought into playing Dystopian Wars (I ordered a Russian Coalition Naval Battlegroup, a rulebook, and a set of STAR cards). I figured I should announce to the world I'm no longer a one-game-system kind of guy...

For the Greater Good!

I got to play a couple games using the Communist Space Fishies this Friday, and they are much more fun than I expected. I ended up borrowing the models from Yancy over at MyTauGoPewPew (he actually has pics of the Tau in question on his blog.). I ended up playing two games, both at 1850 and both being ended before turn 3.

Productive Day

So the servitors of Forgeworld Rohan have been busy this morning... I finished the stomped Chaos Rhino, I got all the leg sections done and piston-ed (still need to come up with an idea for the endcaps on the leg joints... the hollow PVC doesn't exactly say sturdy), and even got a couple shots of what the thing is gonna look like when the top section is complete. Lots of detail work to be done on this bad boy, and I keep coming up with interesting ideas on how to make it better. Also, I've made it so the top section can rotate around and what not. I'm amused.

Pictures after the jump.

PonyHammer?

These bad boys have been floating around the interwebs for a while now (usually with the URL in the bottom corner cut out) and I finally found the source of the hilarity:

Power's back!

Forgeworld Rohan, MkI

After ~18 hours of fiddly work, this is what I had done by the Apocalypse game two weeks ago. I ended up reworking a lot of the leg sections (to make them more stable), and have waaaay more to do.

For the last... few months, I've lost the "want-to" to do anything with 40k. I haven't painted anything since before Halloween, and I haven't been able to sit and build anything paper for longer then a few minutes at a time, and the queue is stacking up.

A Four Pack of Destruction

So... Apocalypse game in ~3 weeks, and I don't have any kind of marines painted or assembled at this point. So that means I build some Warhounds. The game (in so far as I understand it) will be teams with 3000 pts per player (with hopefully roughly even sides) and it will be set up on three? 6x4 tables arranged in a T shape. So for my contribution I'mma build 4 Paper Titans... one for each Chaos God.

More after the JUMP!

The Dragons' Demise

This is a post formalizing my abandonment of the Copper Dragons Space Marine chapter. I'm keeping the Dreadnought, the five man Shooty-nator squad with a Heavy Flamer, My Vulkan conversion, and the Black Reach Captain as mementos, but everything else is getting stripped and repainted in a new, somewhat generic color scheme (Black Primary, Gold Trim, and Purple Secondary). I may name the chapter, maybe not.

Tactics... Maybe: Sternguard Veterans

Salamanders Sternguard... picture shamelessly culled from the 'Net.

I was inspired to write this article after reading this.

I'm seeing a sweeping trend towards infantry and shootyness in 6th, and, with it, a decline in vehicles (when not spammed... too many hulls is still too many hulls... *cough*Acolyte Spam*cough*.) and assaulty-ness...

My Adventures in Power Armor

I've been torn in many different directions lately due to the advent of 6th edition and not really knowing which direction I want to go with it.

A visual representation of my current situation...

*Warning Wall-O-Text Approaching*