Those damn Xenos!

I know it's been a little while, but I've been busy hunting Xenos. In fact, I found them:




It turns out they were in Philadelphia.

Anyway, the other thing I want to show you is a WIP picture of my HQ, a Thousand Sons Sorcerer Lord on a disc of Tzeentch.

First, I want repost this image from the old blog:




And here's where he is now:


You'll notice that I switched from the old metal Dark Angels Veteran bottom to one of the new plastic ones. The old metal version has a lot more detail, but the new version is a lot lighter. This is important since he will be precariously perched on his disc. Also, since that metal version dates back to 2nd edition, it's a slightly different scale than the current models.

I have a lot more WIP pictures of this model that I'll be posting soon.

The Horrors! (or Happy Easter)

Over Easter Weekend, I started painting some of my horrors. The holiday may have influenced me as I think they kinda look like Easter eggs.





These three demons actually represent three different techniques I'm trying for this group. The one on the far left was painted with regular thinned paint, the middle one is thinned magenta ink. The final one is paint mixed with glaze medium. I'm happiest with the results on the one on the far left, so I think that's the technique I'll be painting the rest of the demons. More on this soon.

Finally!

No, I'm not done with that first squad of Thousand Sons. I'm saying "Finally!" to another monumental event. That event being the first game of Warhammer 40k that I've won in the last year. I know, it's shocking.

Here's the story. After spending a couple hours at Adepticon on Saturday the 31st, my friend Art invited Jason, my son Max, and me over for a game on his brand new gaming board. I had my Space Wolves and Jason had his Chaos marines (I think they're recent converts to Chaos as they didn't look very spiky to me).

Anyway, this isn't a full blown battle report as I didn't take notes. I just want it to be noted that I won a game.

After I won, Art asked me when the last time I won a game was. As it turns out, it was at Adepticon last year. So it was almost a year to the day of my last victory. Sad, I know.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the battle. Art's table and the terrain are pretty phenomenal.


Can't see much action in this picture, so just enjoy the view.
Just so you know, that's not a die on my rhino; it's smoke.
Although you can barely see him in this photo, my wolflord under the smokestacks on bike is about to get swamped by one of Jason's units .

Adepticon Recap pt. III

I've been holding off posting these last few pictures because I wanted to give the people who painted these armies credit for their work. Unfortunately, I lost the piece of paper that listed everybody's names and armies. If it turns up, I'll post make sure they get credit.

Anyway, now for the rest...


I admire this guys commitment. Not as strong as say, this, but still, a good showing of spirit.




Not much to say about this one besides that fact that i just thought it was a well painted Tyranid force.




I do have this guy's info. These are the Iron Lions Space Marines by Dan LeMier. I really like these speeder conversions. Nicely done.




A great looking 13th company force with a lot of wolves!




I've long thought that the local pet supply store was a great place to find stuff for gaming terrain (sand, fish tank decorations, fake plants). I never thought you'd also be able to find drop pods there as well.

I have few more pictures to post, but it might be a little while. I need to get back to my Sons!

Adepticon Recap Pt II

On Saturday, I took my son with me to Adepticon. He's only six, but I figured he'd get a kick out of seeing all the cool armies and meeting more of my friends. He definitely had a good time.

One memorable conversation went something like this:

Max (pointing at a Tau Hammerhead):"Look, Dad, it's one of those tanks you don't like."

Me: "Yep, that's a Hammer head all right."

Anton (my regular Tau adversary): "Hey Max, you know who's always beating your dad with those tanks? Me, that's who."

On one hand, I'm proud that Max was able to identify a Tau Hammerhead from pictures I've shown him in White Dwarf. On the other hand, I had to walk away in the shame that my son knows I can't down a skimmer to save my life.

Anyway, on to more Saturday highlights, the main one being the Aeronautica Imperialis demo game we got to play. Oddly enough, Max and I ended up playing Tau. Apparently, our adversaries don't have the same problems I do shooting down Tau vehicles. Max's and my fighters were shot down on the second turn. Jason, our ally, wasn't able to avenge our deaths, making it a bad day for Tau in the skies of the 41 millennium.

I found the game itself a whole lot of fun to play. You have these cards which you play on your aircraft at the beginning of the turn. These cards represent maneuvers that your craft can do at any point in their movement. Order of play is determined by a d6 roll at the beginning of the turn. Then the sides alternate moving one craft at a time until everything on the table has moved. Then shooting is carried out in the same way. I liked the change of pace from the typical 40K set up of one side moving everything and then shooting everything. It made the game seem a lot more tense.

Here are some pictures:

Our game in progress.

Max keeping watch over our "ghost planes" while Jason fails to avenge us.

Another shot of the action.


This is the other Aeronautica Imperialis board. I wish we would have gotten a chance to play on this one as well. It's a stunning board.

Adepticon Recap Pt. I

Well, Adepticon 2007 has come and gone. What an awesome event this was. I had so much more fun than I did last year, and I'm even more excited about next year.

My favorite part was being able to meet up with people I normally only communicate with over the Internet. That experience is kinda odd in itself as people rarely look like you picture them. Still, I was glad to have real-world communications with a lot of cool people.

I ran into Rich Nelson in the bathroom. He was getting water for the plaster to be used in his Hirst Arts seminar. I overheard him telling someone this fact and realized it was him. It was odd because I also realized that I had in fact met him face-to-face before, but had just somehow disconnected the face and the on-screen personality.

The other face to face meeting was almost as odd. I was sitting in the lobby killing time waiting for the Forge World people to show up. I was on the phone with my girlfriend, and a guy sat down across from me, apparently also killing time. Just then Jervis Johnson walked by. I stood up to introduce myself to Jervis and mentioned my blog to him. The guy sitting there realized who I was and introduced himself as "Old Coast" who I know from AWC (you should check out his new blog ).

As I suspected, I did play in the same Blood Bowl league as James Wappel many years ago. His object source lighting seminar was amazing. I'll talk about that more later in another post.

I also got to meet the Fly Lords of Terra who have an awesome blog that you should also check out. These guys were super cool and it was a pleasure talking about blogging with them.

I also have to give a special shout out to Brian for picking me up and driving my car-less but out to Shaumburg on Friday.

There is a lot more to talk about and more pictures to post. Here are a couple to hold you over for now.



Here is the hall pre-Gladiator Tournament and pre-gamer funk.


Dan here was a judge for the Gladiator tournament on Friday. Yes, that chain is real... Real weird that is (Just kidding, Dan. Don't beat me).


This is me looking totally insane during an Aeronautica Imperialis demo game.