Painting, Painting, and Painting some more.

Anyone who knows me can tell you the two following things in regards to Warhammer 40k and other miniature gaming like Fantasy, Warzone, etc.

#1. I play a damned good game.
#2. I never paint my miniatures.

I'm not here to talk about #1, but instead #2.

I hate painting miniatures, I have hated painting them for years, which is why I have done it so infrequently. I mean, sure I have painted miniatures, my collection of old stuff I've done over the years proves it, as does my collection of old paints. That all aside, I never finished an army. For example, the Dwarves (Because I spell it like I want) that I have had for... phew... uh... almost 20 years are not fully painted. Sure, some of the squads may be fully painted, but that is mostly because those squads are like 10-20 in total. And truthfully my painting abilities back then sucked as much as the typical 12-15 year old gamer.

Not to knock gamers of that age, but truthfully I was horrible. I knew I was horrible, which is why I never really finished stuff, because while what I could easily visualize in my head was great and awesome, what I could produce on the miniatures was terrible.

So, because of that, as I got older I never bothered to paint. Sure I would convert miniatures, sure I would assemble them, I would play the various games, and I always did it with an army of either a various spray primer, or of just plastic/metal. I did paint the old Iron Warriors army I owned, but that was a labor of love, and in retrospect, while they may have been decent, they were far from good. The fact that the army was stolen was probably a blessing in disguise simply because it gave me a chance to not only rebuild them and get to actually painting something I wanted to paint. And lo did I discover, that I was actually a bit better than I used to be, at least better enough that the stuff looked good and received compliments. While I will never ever win a painting competition, I will be happy with how my stuff looks.

That said, I have more armies than just the Iron Warriors. For example, I own a collection of old and new Blood Angels, I own the afore mentioned Dwarves, some Empire, and a lot of Brettonian knights. But, other than my Iron Warriors, I love my Imperial Guard. Some of them are ancient enough to have once been named "Imperial Army". But the majority of them are bog standard Cadians. And most, if not all of them have been flat plastic in color save for a few individual pieces. That includes the tanks. But all that changed about a week and a half ago.

Despite over 20 hours of overtime in the past two weeks, I have somehow gone from no painted Imperial Guard, to 101 individual guardsmen, 6 Chimeras, 6 Leman Russ, and 1 Hell Hound, and this week I plan to paint my first Vendetta. So, somehow in less than 6 months time I have gone from no completely painted armies, to 2. The Mayans were right, the world must be ending.

What makes it worse, is that I have decided other than with the current Cadians I have, I will paint the rest of the guard, and convert the guard in full to be a heresy style army also. Which means... yep, say hello to the Olympian Planetary Defense force. Gotta keep up with the Iron Warriors theme don'tcha know.

AIR BRUSH POWER!!!!

Hello demons and demonettes, it's been two week since Adepticon and I have done nothing but play with the shiny toys I got while up there. For those of you who dont know and were not able to go to Adepticon, Badger (the airbrush company) had a booth up at Adepticon and was selling their products at a ridiculous markdown, all sales were cash only and they were not giving out receipts (FORSHADOWING!!!!)  So most of the people bought one as well as me. So this week and last I decided to bust out the air brush and give it a try (after watching about 5 hours worth of video on how to use them). I decided to start with a Razorback for two reasons: 1) I needed to paint one and 2) it seemed to be the easiest to paint.

I started off by spraying a base coat of white just to get used to the gun and the compressor and which setting to use if I wanted a wide spray or a fine pinpoint spray. Which I have to say there is a lot more that goes into the setting then I thought. After the base coat was done I wanted to try out the shading tech that all the videos i saw kept talking about(see pic below).

At this point I had plans to stop and wait until I had more practice before I continued painting (which lasted all of 5 second) until I started mixing paint to put the silver down. I used a 1 to 1 mix of boltgun metal (yeah I know its not boltgun metal anymore so sue me) and water. I decided the mix was right when it seemed to be the same consitancy as the pre mixed airbrush paint I bought in the store.

Here's where it all went to h***. After about 5 min of using the silver my compressor stop working!! I spent 3-4 days trying to get help from badger to get this problem resolved, to which I was told they would not help me because I did not have a receipt (see told yeah). So after 4 days of trying to get approval to get it fixed I got impatient and fixed it myself (it turned out to be a bad bolt, if you need help fixing yours, send me an email). The next day, I did find out the the VP of engineering had been off for an emergincey, and was more then happy to fix it oops. So I finished up my base coat of silver.

At this point I had two different options, I would use masking tape to block off the areas I was painting next or try to be really careful and not color out side the line. With my track record, I chose masking tape and used "Tamiya Masking Tape", which is amazing. It has enough sticky to stay on the model but would not pull off any paint after I pulled it off. This process took me about 5 min and another 5 to paint the red.

From here all I had to do was paint on a few details and I was done. Start to finish the whole process took less then 20 min to paint the tank (if you don't count repairs, mixing and me playing around with the air brush). I have lots of plans to keep using my brush and cant wait to try it on different projects.

BPR6 episode 9 delay

So, we have had some set backs and delays in recording the next episode. Since this was supposed to be an Adepticon recap episode we wanted all members to be present. These delays are mainly due to work and school conflicts. Hopefully we will record this weekend and have it out soon after. Thank you for your patience.

Adepticon recap

So, it has been more than a week since our return home from Adepticon and it is time to reflect. I have been going to conventions for years but this was my first time to Adepticon so this will not only be a recap of how the team did but my general impression/evaluation of the con.

Thursday: We started off the fun filled weekend with a three hour wait in line. We had decided that it was an acceptable price to pay in order to acquire the Battlefoam Shield bag that was given to the first 500 in line (I think). There were only about 30 people in front of us so that was in the bag (see what I did there? Ok not funny). We spent the time talking to the people around us, watching them play games they brought to pass the time, paint minis, and even a little bit of trading was going on. After getting our badges and goodie bags we hastily reconvened in the room to evaluate the treasures hidden inside. Those who got the “good” bag received a Hordes starter set and the adepticonstruct among other random small bits. The night was finished off as the group headed to Medieval Times for a bite to eat and lack luster entertainment (It was so much better when I was 15).

Friday: Team Scabbard went to Adepticon with 8 members. On Friday four of those played in the 40k Championship. This included Duncan, Mike, and Jack who preregistered and James who was lucky enough to get in at the last moment. There did seem to be several open spots that morning as the organizers spent about a half an hour trying to find people to fill the empty spots. Andy, Conor and myself Spent most of the day relaxing and checking in on the guys between rounds to see how they were doing. Betty spent all day trying to paint his whole army for the 40k and Fantasy team tournaments. In the end none of the guys placed high enough to move on to the finals Sunday. Duncan did the best. He had a narrow loss to Reece playing footdar and a loss to our own Mike in the last round (had Duncan beat Mike he would have been in the top 16 and played Sunday)

Saturday: This was the big day. We had 2 teams put together for the team tournament. We all played Space Wolves (not my first choice but I digress) and our army composition was around 99% similar between all eight lists. The teams were broken down into Mike, Betty, Jack, Andy for team 1 and Duncan, James, Conor, myself for team 2. I won’t make comments on how the other team did since I wasn’t involved in their matches. I will however give a rundown of how Team 2 did. 

Our first game was against Daboyz, another team of Space Wolves. It felt like a mirror match except that they had a lord on thunderwolf cav while we did not. The game was very back and forth as both sides had hidden objectives and neither side was being too aggressive (See the Adepticon site for full scenario rules and details). There was nothing noteworthy in this game other than the death of their thunder cav lord due to jaws from our rune priest. Both halves of the team scored near max points.

Game 2 was against Grey Knights. When I first saw the match up I was concerned. I know GKs are popular and how good they can be. Luckily we got matched up with people who were playing them cause they are popular. They had 2 dreadknights that didn’t last long once standing in front of our whole army turn 2. It also didn’t help them that they apparently didn’t know about true line of sight and tried to use the whole “I’m behind 3 inches of terrain rule”. Again, both halves of the team scored near max points.

Game 3 was against Orks. The way the team mate matchings went me and Conor were matched up against the horde portion of their army and it was dawn of war. Orks got first turn and spread out in the middle of the table. It was just all downhill from there. We could not get enough momentum to do anything. We lost the primary objective but got a draw on the others and some bonus points so it wasn’t a disaster. Plus Duncan and James got max points against the other half of their team.

Game 4 was against Blood Angels and from the shirts they were wearing it was one of the many DakkaDakka detachments. My objective was to protect Duncan and that’s what I did. I went blazing forward to distract them and kill as much as I could. The game was very tight and came down to turn 7 and a very good round of shooting to give us a significant lead. Both halves of the team scored near max points.

In summary, we had 7 games near max points and 1 draw. We were very pleased with how we did and once the rankings went up I was more than pleased. The team that won was the Ork team that we drew to. We ended up in 4^th. Considering that was the 4-7^th games I ever played with Space Wolves I will take it. It is disappointing that we were so close to winning and just couldn’t pull it out. However, we had great opponents, a really great time, and look forward to another try next year. 

Sunday: This was a day of recuperation for me. I sighed up for the battle for Piscina V narrative event. I would have to say that it was fun to have something laid back to do instead of sitting in the room all day. The games were really fun and the guys participating were great guys and fun to hang out with. However, the event was poorly planned. It started an hour late and people were bored with it a couple hours in. I think that might deter me from participating in future narrative events at Adepticon. I am sad because I feel like this had a lot of potential. Betty and Mike played in the Fantasy team tournament and from what they have told me it was a blast. Conor played in the young bloods tournament. Everyone else enjoyed a day off and probably spent lots of money.

In conclusion it was a really great time. I am disappointed in the vendor area. I am spoiled from Gencon. I hope to register early enough next year to get into some of the painting classes. I was also unable to find the time to talk to some of the other podcasters which was something I really wanted to do. There is always next year.

New CSM Codex Rumors Via Blood of kittens Network

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 This has cause there site to be down most of the day so I'm putting on here for those who what to see it.

"WARNING: My last post caused my server to crash (traffic overload). I have fixed the problem temporally, as a side effect the site will load slowly. Only so many people can view the contents at a time so if you cannot get in try again later. If you cut and paste the contents below and put on another site, please leave this warning so others understand what is going on.
It is about time we get some information on the new Chaos Space Marine codex. Before we get right into let us start out with some ground rules.
The Chaos Space Marine codex is the only 40k codex for this year. It is not going to be divided into two codexes or anything special. This is not the return 3.5 codex everyone has been wanting this is more a clean up than anything else.
With that said let us get started.

• Troops choices will be Chaos Space Marines and Cultists
• All Cult Marines are Elites
• No new Special Characters
• Special Characters will unlock Cult Marines as troops (Kharn for Berserkers and so on)
• Typhus makes Cultists into Zombies
• Chaos Dreadnaught is removed and replaced with a new unit (like how pariahs were replaced with Lychguard)
• CSM now get a Flyer a Mechanical Chaos Dragon (model is done will be part of initial release)
• Lesser and Greater Demons are gone
• Spawn replaced by “Fell Beast”

I feel like I am missing something…
Oh yeah…

Almost Forgot...

As we get closer I will try to get us specific rules and wargear, but for now this is all I got with the Rumor Lock down still in partial effect."


As i said at the top this is from TastyTaste,  Blood of Kittens Network.

Here a link to there page .

So tell me what you think?

Adepticon!!!!!

Sensei Xeno here coming to you straight from Adepticon where I'm waiting in line to get the highly coveted Adepticon shield bag from Battlefoam. When I arrived at the Westin to check in there were only 3 to 4 people in line. Less than 30 min later, the size of the line had grown to 30 or 40 people, and the line keeps growing.

So the rest of Team Scabbard and I are now sitting in line for the next 3 hours in hopes that we all get one.

More to come from Adepticon!

Adepticon 2012

Were here.