Quick update few days before Skitterleap

Only a few days out from tournament this weekend and I have vowed not to have yet another late painting night. Hopefully get the last few pieces finished tomorrow. Here are some pics of my progress

First up my zombie dragon (using terrorgheist rules for tournament but prefer zombie dragon model)

Mounted Vampire thrall, also known as 200pt scroll caddy.

 

Zombie block 1

Zombie block 2

Picture of army core and Varghulfs

Picture of whole army pre work on zombie dragon with a travelling board I am working on.

So quite a fair bit of work done. Main bits left to do are the basing of the knights and the zombie dragon, making 1 more zombie (79 done out of 80),  and finishing zombie dragon to tidy tabletop standard. I think that is achievable in the few nights I have left.

What Next?

I am currently doing the finishing touches on my Vampire Counts army for Skitterleap this weekend. As we all know an army is never truly finished but with selection of units I will have painted the undead are good for now.

So with no events planned for the near future except for the Team Champs in Feb and not willing to paint for other people at the moment, I find myself in a luxurious position I havn't had for a while. I get to paint whatever I want... thing is, what?

I really want a new 40k army and I know my regular gaming buddies have heard me say this an awful lot so I'm sorry. I've had a very good time with the Eldar and they're really fun in 6th ed but after 4 years of consistent play I want new toys. I think 6th ed is a good system and have enjoyed all the games I have played I just want a project to be passionate about like I was with my Eldar.

So ideas I have had and like are as follows. Most stuff is inspired by the Horus Heresy and with all the awesome kits FW is putting out any project would incorporate some heresy era models. Also all these ideas are Loyal or Chaos marines.

Alpha Legion leaning more towards heresy era with a less chaotic appearance. They are one of my favourite chapter in the HH books but I think they could look quite boring on the table if I stayed true to their fluff as they strive to appear very uniform without embellishment on their armour. I could go the new chaos codex route and use Huron for Master of Deception, cultists and marine squads and 'chaos' it up a bit more.

Imperial Fists. I like the idea of them being stalwart defenders and picture models based on fortified emplacements or on ruins. I would embellish the armour somewhat adding more gold to the yellow I think. As it uses the marine codex there are plenty of unit options available and I definitely would pack some Sternguard in there.

Night Lords. Always liked the imagery though I thnk they blinged them up a bit too much in the new CSM codex. Too much gold on that Helldrake for me, not nasty looking enough. Would try to make them very dark looking trying to emulate a dark environment. Where I could use the Blood Angel codex I would most likely use the new CSM one.

Blood Angels. Just finished Fear to Tread and at the end of 5th I was playing some fun games with the BA. They give me a lot of scope to make an angelic army with all the bells and whistles but I also like the idea of the feral bloodthirsty blood angels that were roaming the battlefield of Signus Prime in the later part of the book. So a lot of variety here. They play quite well and have the flying brick - stormraven which gets all the nice new flyer rules in 6th.

Dark Angels. New book coming, rumoured to be a Matt Ward book! Will most likely have broken plasma units in it thanks to Mr Ward. I have the Dark Vengeance models which also goes for the above Chaos options. Would model and paint them as more individual knight like units using the black preheresy colour rather than the green.

Generic Chaos Marine army. Don't worry about a legion and just go all out mutated evil. Savage bezerkers and Daemonic influences.

So if anyone has any suggestions or votes for something I've listed or something they themselves think I could pull off please share. It doesn't have to be marine based at the end of the day. Elaborate with possible units and allies if you want, never know what the community can come up with.

Vampire Count FAQ

Oh happy days

The FAQ is finally out for VC and yes you can scream into units in combat that the screaming unit is not itself in combat with and this with Skitterleap less than a week away!

The dual Terrorgheists I'm using just got a bit better.

Also nice to see the overrun/crumble issue has been officially clarified to no a charging unit that crumbles and undead unit can in fact not overrun.

Get it here

Chaos Marine FAQ

Nice quickly released and extremely small FAQ.

Good to see we can in fact have 35 plague zombies in a unit and even cheaper Hellbrutes. Not like I dont have enough zombies for my VC, I'm sure they can make an appearance on 40k tables for fun games too.

Get it here

I really like the balance of thr CSM codex so this small FAQ hopefully reflects some good playtesting it may have had.

Looking for a White Dwarf

Talk about bad timing.

My subscription to White Dwarf ran out with my final issue being the one before the new format magazine. Expecting the usual surplus that GW and other gaming stores have I did not secure a new subscription straight away thinking I could at my leisure go and pick a copy up.

Well I was wrong. Obviously the issue has been out for a while and the next is not far away - though I have now organised a regular subscription now. I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of the new format White Dwarf at all. GW in Wellington has sold out twice and apparently it is sold out from GW direct as well.

This is all my own fault for not being onto it enough to get a copy. However I have every issue of White Dwarf since the early 90's and really want this one too.

If anyone out there has a copy they would part with or knows somewhere with some still in stock please let me know and I can follow it up compensating appropriately.

Contact me here or via my email in the link under Wryth on the contributers list.

Star Wars RPG - Part 3 - It's all Marks fault!

Long time coming I know but here it is, the final SW rpg post from that infamous 'fun' game...

So with all the players banded together at last! They set out in their stolen courier van to Aramur City's industrial area. They travelled through the city with little delay as most other traffic headed back in the direction of the starport. Leaving the commercial areas they crossed major arterial highways which headed into the mining facilities in the eastern mountains. Taking an exit the van turned down a sweeping off ramp and passed into the shadows of the roadway above.

The headlights of the van illuminated debri strewn across the road in the form of a large dumpster and rundown vehicles. Conan at the controls swerved the wide van to avoid a minor collision throwing the unsecured passengers in the back into each other. As they questioned the ability of the merc's driving blasterfire erupted from behind the dumpster and highway support struts. The panels of the van blackened under the assault and with the other players clamering to react Conan successfully swung the van completely around with it's rear exit facing the assault.

Ryan and Conan exchanged fire with their assailants from the driver and passenger windows with Aaron(the Jawa) clambering over them with jetpack in tow attempting to exit. The attackers looked to be an armed street gang taking advantage of the chaos in this sector, unfortunately a van full of armed player characters are not the ideal victims of a car jacking. Leon burst out and broke right, opening fire from his heavy blaster cannon upon the very outclassed criminals. Cody having kept his toys concealed in the earlier bar fight, leapt from the rear doors, landing in a suitably Neo pose and igniting his twin lightsabers!

At this point and with no regard for the initiative order Mark proclaimed loudly from his seat at the table "Filthy Jedi! Kill him!" or words to that effect ;) There was the expected "Are you really going to say that?" with Mark being true to his character replying in the affirmative and this is where it all went pear shaped.

Mark opened fire on Cody as he was engaging with the crooks. This drew on Stu to defend his fellow Jedi and upon Cody being free of thugs in reach had Mark's character flung within range by a Force push. Leon having spent his time blowing large holes in the crooks decided he'd best defend his bounty hunting mate. Aaron awkwardly clambered free of the drivers compartment and rocketed into the air with his jetapck. Now seeing as the trio of Ryan, Conan and Joel were all seated together at the end of the gaming table they had already worked out their next move. With the other two subgroups clear of the van, Conan gunned the engine with Joel's wookie hanging on for dear life in the back and sped the van back the way they had come towards the onramp.

In amongst the sudden infighting Leon took offense to this act of retreat and sighted the damaged vehicle with his cannon... 1 die roll later and the van and its contents went into a careening flip horrifically damaging the player characters inside. At this point I think it was Ryan who had suffered enough damage to transform his smuggler into a red smear upon the road so he used his force point(which can be used as a get out of the sh!t option) so instead with the shattering of the windscreen he rolled out as the vehicle flipped up and over him to land upon its roof. The other batterd two joined Ryan and they fled for the refuge of some small buildings near the onramp to wait out the fight.

All the gang members were well and truly down or fleeing at this point. Mark had been knocked out cold with no dismemberment as I recall due to some repeated force slamming via Stu, thats right 'force slamming'. Leon was in a game of run around the intervening terrain and blow up the Jedi while Aaron was dropping stun and frag greandes on Cody from his aerial position.

In the end the details are hazy but I think Aaron escaped into the night screaming "Utini!" on the wings of a jetpack at the Jedi. Cody and/or Stu had been dropped by the combination grenade/blaster cannon combo and if Leon was still standing he wasn't in a good position either.

So even though this all went to crap in a can it did leave the RPG virgins wanting more. The Wellington based lads are very eager to start a regular monthly game which is fantastic and I am more than happy to run for them. In whatever system we do end up playing I will enforce one thing, the players will agree to be a functional party before the game starts. This will allow us to avoid the situation that occured, even though if you were there it was hilarious with all the good natured name calling and yelling about that table. I will point out that the players barely got through half of the material I had prepared so this leaves me in a good position to start with in a future Star Wars game.

Tonight after a couple month break in which I played an absolutley useless barbarian(any roll over 10 on that D20 would be nice) I embark on the DM'ing of another RPG game. It will be the start of a story I've had in the back of my head for a while and the regular Levin guys can use the Pathfinder/D&D characters they've used in Aaron's fun game if they want.

Whatever happens tonight it will be ok though, as a certain Imperial bounty hunter won't be there to implode the group =P

The Dark Night Rises

Gathered my army for Skitterleap all together last week and realised quite a bit of work still to be done.

Over the week I have managed to mostly finish my 40 skeletons who were half done, finished and base another 60 zombies (80 total done now) and do a fair amount of basing work. Thus leaving me with 2 weeks to focus on the big part of my list, the black knight bus and the two mounted vampires. Don't have any specific model pictures at the moment as I finished last night and my phone camera isn't good in the dark

I do have a couple of shots from some Sunday gaming at Chateau Dunne. First up played Pete himself with his Night Goblins. 

Game went back and forth for a while. I put knights on the flank but between itchy nuisance and hand of gork I never made it to the big target they were heading for. Terrorgheist got on same flank and screamed his way through most a spider, unit of archers and finally both doom divers. Summoned unit of zombies and dogs drew out most fanatics which hung around Pete's army most of the game until my knights destroyed a squig hopper block (taking heavy losses) and popped them killing the 3 nearby fanatics. Lost two varghulfs who took a few wounds on the way in then failed to kill more than 4 night goblins with 10 attacks and 2 thunderstomps leading to a double combat res crumble for them. Game ended a draw with my characters, knight bus and terrorgheist alive and on Pete's side surviving was a big block of gobbos and 4 (!) characters all hiding out inside hand of gorking away from my two angry mounted vampires who managed to dodge death by doom divers after their black knights disappeared.

I had a game versus Tom and his Khorne with splash of Slaanesh daemons army. Forgot to take any photos as it was rather short. Turns out a Bloodthirster is rather good in combat, a 20" charge and 2 killing blows on my vampire lord put him back in the ground while my varghulfs got bogged down by daemon chaff. My zombie horde managed to last 2 rounds against each respective bloodletter horde, could have been longer had I a vampire lord still around to keep topping them up. My terrorgheist didn't have room to land close enough to his Bloodthirster to scream before his charge thanks to my poor choice of side and Tom's excellent placement. Instead he showed a unit of screamers what screaming is before crumbling from the Lord demise (him and 4 zombies my total loss from general death!). Skeletons and foot vampire with book of arkhan managed to almost get through the chaff on the right flank but were in line for being flanked by angry bloodletters so I conceded.

In other news I put together some infinity terrain I recently acquired. These holo boards (http://www.slavetopainting.co.nz/collections/infinity-accessories/products/infinity-holo-ads-terrain) arrived at my place in less than 2 working days (bought Sunday night, here Tuesday day), kudos again Slave to Painting and I get a free lollipop to get me started. The big one will need gluing to stay together (hence the rubber bands) but will paint the stand first. The other two sit there happy as with about 15min of pushing out of the laser cut frames and slotting together. Fantastic terrain from micro art studio.

More work to be done on the Fantasy army this week, hopefully have some daylight shots of the new hordes of zombies and finally get some decent colours on my black knights.

Star Wars RPG - Part 2 - B&E Jedi style

Part 2 at last...

After the 'incident' at the bar the three groups of galactic entrepreneurs made their way through the evening streets of Aramur City to the spaceport. Sounds of distressed citizens and traffic grew as they converged on their destination and as they crossed onto the main thoroughfare to the port came across a mass of halted traffic and growing crowd. Still not making any attempt to join forces the trio of groups all made their approached differently.

The Imperial bounty hunters with their Droid dragging Jawa forced their way through the throng to the security guards stationed at the entrance. The guards had no specific details of events in the city but had been tasked with only letting registered ship crews into the port. There would be no exit from the planet though as a forcefield had been emplaced over all docking bays to prevent departure in case of a warranted medical incident. Mark, Leon and Aaron politely presented their IDs and were permitted into the port to check on their ship and stow the Jawa's damaged droid.

As the Imperial trio got access Stu and Cody the Jedi on the run made for an alternate entrance. Shying away from the crowds they wandered off around the exterior wall of the port looking for an access point and soon found one clear of and guards view. With concealing hoods up and a flick of telekinesis from Stu at the security camera out came the lightsabers at last, for the time honoured tradition of busting into somewhere. I swear in all the games I've used over the years the lightsaber is used for cutting through doors, walls and floors more than combat, it is the practical tool of the Jedi in any situation. Stu even made the effort to block line of sight from any bystander as Cody easily cut through the simple door. Scurrying down the maintenance corridor the pair easily blended into the horde of space farers milling about in the central promenade of the port.

The third group of Ryan, Joel and Conan had the easiest passage through the crowd for two reasons. Joel's bikini clad Wookie simply moved through like Moses parting the sea while any civilians who glanced at Ryan's smuggler cleared out of the way quick as his condition worsened, the infection from the bite inducing a feverish sweat and pale complexion. After a cursory examination from security the trio was hastily escorted to the spaceports A&E facility. The waiting room was a mess of different species all spreading wild stories as to what malady had fallen on the city. As Ryan had the only genuine medical issue he was seen immediately by a Mon Calamari doctor. With the 'it's a trap!' comments out of the way various medical drugs and bacta were injected into Ryan's character until the infection was stabilised. The Doctor took samples as to prepare for any further cases. Conan's merc seemed to have staved off any spread of the wound he had suffered but was treated as well for good measure. They were clever enough to question the Doctor about Cerulean Sciences, the company the guards ID badge had identified. The Doctor told them that Cerulean Sciences had an administrative and lab facility in the eastern industrial part of the city. This was also where the start of the public disturbances and injuries had occured. After a failed attempt to convince the Doctor to part with some medpacs they left the A&E.


After stashing the inoperative protocol droid on their ship the bounty hunters made their way out of the docking bay onto the main promenade as the Jedi duo came by(convenient eh). Recognising each other from the bar Stu and Cody concocted a suitably bulls*&t story as to who they were and why they needed passage off world. Mark, Leon and Aaron agreed to give them a ride if they could get leave to depart. Not seeing much else to do in the port other than be jostled about by irate travellers they made their way back out into the city(2 groups combined, 1 to go).

The Mercs - Ryan, Joel and Conan left the port as well with the interest of having a nosey at this Cerulean facility and any carnage ensuing in the industrial sector. Lacking any form of transport Conan spotted a large extremely dirty red hovervan obviously used for a courier service. Looking in through the windows at the mess of food wrappers and debri he decided to persist and break in(yeah we know whose van i'm talking about). While this 'subtle' attempt at auto theft was ensuing the now combined group of Mark, Leon, Aaron, Cody and Stu were approached by a disheveled yet attractive young human woman. Her business attire placed her as a young professional but her unkept hair and tattered clothing showed her to have been subjected to more of the city's current mayhem than others.

She breathlessly introduced herself as Hailen Wordew, administrative assistant to Mills Obera, CEO of Cerulean Sciences. Her boss had dispatched her to find a group of able bodied fellows to escort some important documents and himself to a starship at a facility not under the forcefield subjected by the starport authorities. When questioned as to why the muscle was needed she said that some lifting may be needed and that Mr Obera was in an agitated state and she was simply following orders. Aaron in firm Jawa mindset was already looking for a ride before Hailen finished talking. He spied Conan's ugly Merc making a balls up of unlocking the van and with a squeal shoved him out of the way and easily got the door open. Impressed by the Jawa's mechanical skill Conan assisted Aaron in hotwiring the transport and with a quick pooling of interests all the groups were teamed up at last... maybe this wasn't a good idea though...