Barter Bucket + 6 easy painting points = win!

Have been doing pretty well getting brush to mini recently.  I've nearly finished my CF sternguard (just some decals and final details left), and as well have gotten another couple Space Sharks magnetized rhinos at the point where I'm working on the giant mouth/teeth painted on the front.  Today I pulled out a blister of spore mines with the intention of just getting them glued to their bases while I was doing some more work on the sternguard.  However I ended up undercoating them and from there they didn't really take much work at all.  The reason I picked them up is due to the "Even Wyrder" necromunda pdf put out by Anthony Case. The spore mines can be used as new beastmaster beasts "lashoaters" who float around and have random numbers of attacks.

3 colours, 1 wash = done!

All I did was use three different colours, in different spots depending on the model - then gave the whole model a healthy wash of baal red.  This all came around after some testing where a red wash over a coat of golden yellow gave me a nice gruesome fleshy colour, so I started with that and through some more testing chose two other colours to use  with the single red wash to tie it all together.  They look suitably different than my necro rats.

good ol' barter bucket

Finally, I should just throw a little shout out - I picked up these guys in a trade through the barter bucket over at Santa Cruz Warhammer.

Space Sharks: updating champions power sword

Originally I had a vision of all the sharks power weapons being white (as if made from sharks teeth? definitely not well thought out!) since I did the chainswords in a similar vein.  Here is the champion with the old white power sword.  When I updated my original captain to Kundera, I realized it was stupid and went with a different, brighter green than I use as the company colours.  I really liked the result and so I pulled the champion out (I don't use the command squad much) to update his sword when I felt like something fun to do.  I got about halfway through before I shelved it for something else - and it's been languishing in that state for several weeks.

I managed to get myself up to the local GW today for a couple games (1 win/1 loss - used my Kundera "counts as" Khan for the first time) it meant I had to pack up the stuff I had been painting recently.  When I had a chance to do a bit of painting but didn't have time to pull everything back out, I figured I would just try to finish off the command squad champions power sword - seeing more painted Space Sharks on the field has me debating a command squad again.

side view, top edge of sword

front view, underside of sword

I used a combination of washes and metallics for the "band" and I basically tried a NMM style slash.  Then I blended the rest of the sword from the original green to white near the metallic edge of the band.  They are positioned differently top compared to underside, I was going for the appearance of the electricity coursing up the blade.  Not sure if I achieved this well, but that's ok - I like trying different methods for all my power weapons.  It looks very "comic book" to me - from a few feet away.  I debated using a wash of gryphonne sepia or thraka green to tie it together but I think it might ruin it.  Thoughts?

close up of the sword

Still need to give the gold a wash of ogryn flesh too - whoops!

Canadian Open 2011 - Result: Top 50 percentile

As per usual at two day events, I had one pretty decent day and one less good day.  Day 1 even though it started with a win, didn't really go the way I wanted, whereas Day 2 also started with a win, but didn't degenerate into multiple losses.  I ended up in 6th place overall out of 12, 6th place for both TD's scored for and against, 2nd for CAS for, and 11th for CAS against (only the winner Laurent with his Skaven took more casualties than me!)

For this event you start with a legal "rookie" team.  Before game 1 you get 80k to spend on skills, I went with multiple block and piling on for my mummies, guard on a wight and sure hands on a ghoul.  I was very happy with these selections.

Day 1 (bad day)
Game 1 vs. Chris E (Ogres) 3-0 win

game 1

I was pretty jubilant getting matched up against Chris for my first game, figuring his snotlings would be casualty fodder for my "kill 'em dead" roster.  Unfortunately it didn't really go that way as Chris did better at killing his snotlings than I did! It began when he tried for a throw team-mate touchdown in his second turn and ended up killing the snotling he threw. I ended up winning 3-0 because I kept trying to score as quickly as possible to give his KO'd snotlings a chance to get back on the pitch.  Ended with my lowest amount of casualties for the whole tournament in this game when every other game was vs. mostly AV9 teams!

After game 1 Eric the organizer randomly determined everyone got 40k to use for their team. At this point I wasn't sure who I would be playing, so I opted for wrestle and tackle on each of my unskilled ghouls. This turned out to be a mistake, as I ended up playing dwarves twice - tackle being useless and my wrestle ghoul ended up off the pitch quite early in both games!  Thinking back I should've listened to Chris my first opponent and put wrestle on one of my zombies.  It also meant my other wight was unskilled for a majority of the tournament.

me prior to game 2

Game 2 vs. Rod D (Dwarves) 1-2 loss

game 2

This was a rematch of a trial game the night before as Rod crashed at my place Friday night.  I would definitely have preferred a similar result to the trial instead! (1-1 tie).  After overextending myself, he killed my wrestle ghoul on turn 2 and it went downhill from there! I was pretty happy with the result even though I was losing until after he scored the winning touchdown turn 7, on his turn 8 Rod casualtied 2 extra players to even up the casualties (these 2 also essentially won him Most CAS over me by 2, would've been a tie otherwise! Grrr!) Still I did manage 4 casualties against AV9! (Which I had done the night before too - Piling On mummies are scary!)

just after kick-off, Rod rolled quick snap!

was looking pretty good here - I overextended myself pretty soon after!

Game 3 vs. Rob P (Dwarves) 0-3 loss

game 3

This was essentially the same team I had just played! Wait not essentially - EXACTLY! We both managed 4 casualties each again, but Rob was much more brutal in terms of scoring and defence. Rob had a really up and down tournament, winning some games with great fortune (uh, long bomb with Dwarves?) and getting smoked equally in others (Laurent killed 2 of 3 and a stun on his first 3 hits vs. Rob).  Even though he beat me I still beat him to 6th place and the last spot in the top half of the players. Ha!

After game 3 Eric again randomly determined an additional 70k to spend on your team.  I gave block to my multiple block mummy and both mighty blow/piling on to my unskilled wight.  I was reasonably happy with these selections.

Day 2 (good day)
Game 4 vs. Alex W (Orcs) 1-0 win

game 4

Really? AV9 again? Alex is pretty new to blood bowl but is already a very challenging opponent.  Other than beating the snot out of each other (a 3-3 CAS game) there was a special weather table and we ended up playing on slippery ice meaning if you move >3 squares, after that models action is completed on a roll of 1 he will slide one square in the same direction as he was last moving, pushing anyone in that square another square over.  He pushed my ghoul back far enough I had to rely on sliding into the endzone to score in the first half and it didn't happen.  Then fortune smiled on me as his blitzer with the ball tried to blitz my wrestle ghoul off him, and proceeded to roll double "both down" (which would have resulted in his blitzer going down) so he rerolled only to get double skulls! Fortune began to smile on me, and I took full advantage.  In the end my ghoul had the ball deep in his end zone and I had to blitz into the end zone throwing a 2 dice, he picks block.  Worked out he chose a push and I dodged away and in for the late score.  It only left him two turns to equalize and his Orcs were just too slow.

Game 5 vs. Mark H. (Chaos Dwarves) 2-2 draw

game 5

Le sigh.  More AV9.  This is the third time I've played Mark's Chaos Dwarves, so far we each had 1 win each.  We very nearly played on the icy pitch again but thankfully my kickoff roll changed the weather.  Mark took his time pushing downfield in the first half and scored late enough I didn't really have much chance to equalize, much different to the second half where we both were just going for it.  I managed to score on turn 2 meaning the whole thing was up for grabs.  I couldn't stop Mark from scoring a second touchdown though with only 3 turns remaining, but once again I managed to score in two turns to end the game at 2-2, with each of us picking up 3 casualties each. Thus Mark and I remain tied overall (1 win, 1 loss, 3 ties) and I ended up pretty average for the tournament too. In doing so I also screwed Mark out of 3rd place which was just icing on the cake! ;)

So overall I am not too disappointed with my results. In the top half of the players has become pretty standard for me, and I think it comes down to scoring - often just a push by my opponent results in me failing to score. It's tough when I am forced to receive as I find it difficult to manage both causing casualties and scoring, if I can improve at scoring a little bit I think it will go a long way to making me better overall with the team.  I can't feel too aggrieved at losing out on Most Casualties as I spent the whole tournament trying to break AV9 and still came out 2nd!

GWpertinent Contest #2 - winner revealed!

Drumroll please.....

Badab War character competition WIP pt2

Here's part two of todays Badab related posts, a couple WIP shots of my Space Sharks Chaplain.  Painting this guy up has taught me I need to go back and fix all the terrible badab black washed shining gold, ogryn flesh wash looks much better.

I built this guy a while ago to be able to use him as a Cassius "counts as". I used the filigreed bolter from the commander box with an old 2nd edition hand flamer mounted sideways for his master crafted combi-flamer. I also glued an old RT001 beakie helmet on his belt. Like the apothecary in my command squad, only his right arm is coloured - designating his rank. He's got some serious head bionics which is pretty suitable for T6!

He probably won't make the FLoT Badab War play aid update since "Chaplain Neth" doesn't seem to use a combi-flamer (ironic I had to convert the Raptors deathwatch marine to have a combi-flamer to be considered whereas it will likely disqualify this model from the play aid) Silar has said any model can win the competition.  Tomorrow is the 15th so I have a whole month to get these guys finished and my photos submitted.

Badab War characters competition WIP pt1

Here is a couple quick pics of one of the models I plan to enter in this competition. I originally built this guy just so I could tie my Raptors in with my other chapters. Once I saw the competition details I started to think about modifying him so he could be submitted.  Here he is as originally built, way back in January - but with some partial paint in the same style as the Raptor Legion Chaplain I finished as my first painting point in 2011.

Raptor Legion deathwatch marine

Here you can see I've magnetized a hand flamer from the new death company box to attach to the underside of his bolter so he can count as "Sternguard Sergeant Laufrey". I need to figure out if I really need to add the "chain attachment" or not.  Also got me thinking maybe I should do a melta attachment from an infernus pistol, might as well right?!? ;)

Counts as "Sternguard Sergeant Laufrey"

Last chance to enter Contest #2!

Tomorrow is the final day to get your posts up to submit an entry to the second GWpertinent contest.

image used without permission - created by littleboyblue @ the hogs of war

Three entries so far and I really love the posts they have chosen.  Why not have a go yourself?  Here are examples of the three entries received so far.
Silar @ The Fallen Princes
SC John @ SantaCruz Warhammer
Donogh @ Land War in Asia

GW's Expanding Worlds blog post REBUTTAL

GW having a go at marketing their Specialist Games selection?

Really?  What the hell!  These are great games that they've practically left to die through;

- Selling models made from the same crappy molds from years and years ago.  This is especially apparent in Epic figures (which are small and the tiniest problem with the mold really ruins the entire model), but I've seen it in recent models purchased for Blood Bowl (I bought an undead team booster), Necromunda (the enforcers packs I bought are covered in flash and mold lines), and as such have refused to buy any more specialist games minis from GW ever!

- Lack of updates to the rules.  None of the specialist games have had GW based rules upgrades for years. Andy Hall had done a good job of setting up a community for the fans to help with keeping the rules up to date - only for GW to go and ruin it by shutting down the original site, giving Andy a huge headache trying to backup all the content on the old forums (not sure he even managed it) and again making all of us wonder why we support you at all!

- Treating the fans who have kept these games alive like garbage!  First they leave the rules to the fans, then when the fans do a great job (eg. the latest version of blood bowl) they whine and remove all the awesome fluff and pictures that are their IP?  All because they can't be arsed to make models for a single new team? (Slann - I'm sorry but there's NO valid reason not to allow Chaos Pact and Underworld teams, they sell models suitable for those teams already!!) To what end - how did that help Games Workshop? All it did was piss off all the blood bowl community so that we now prefer to purchase miniatures from other companies (and in fact, many folks I know refuse to purchase any GW blood bowl minis - myself included!) - great business model there!

- Ridiculous prices.  I downloaded the old "Bommerz over da Sulpher River" PDF board game that Andy Chambers originally wrote.  I've even gone so far as to print out the board tiles on stickers to make my own board.  Then I went to look into buying 4 fighta-bombers and 2 thunderbolts in Epic scale to use.  Fighta-bomberz are $24 CAD for 3 tiny little models (all three would be about as much metal as a single 28mm mini) and I would need to buy 2 to get 4 models.  Then the thunderbolts are $30CAD for 4 tiny models - which would leave me with an extra.  So even if I decided screw the fluff and used thunderbolts for the players and fighta-bomberz for the interceptors we're talking $54 CAD for 7 tiny little planes.  That's over $7 for each tiny plane - NO THANKS!

Games Workshop - get your head out of your ass!  If you want to push your specialist games, treat the gamers with some respect or I can promise we will continue to find better/cheaper alternative models.  This coming from a blog titled GWpertinent!!  Don't make me change my blog name!!

Contests around the blog-o-sphere and other stuff you should follow....

If Paint your Toys hits the 100 follower mark by Sunday, March 13th - he will be having a giveaway TBA on the following Saturday March 19th.  The prize is some cool old school genestealers! Plus you gotta love the blog's motto "The blog, where all the models are painted, all the tables are good looking, and the dice roll below average."

Miniature Wargaming Conversions has been having tons of raffles recently and April seems to be no different (I know it's still March, but the draw will be in April) - lots of awesome prizes are up for grabs including a Storm Raven and new Grey Knights stuff.

House of Paincakes is holding a contest to name their blogrolls.  Pretty easy to enter, I have already entered myself!  There is a bunch of different random prizes - including a free winning slot to the above mentioned miniature wargaming conversions April raffle!

The Fallen Princes is also holding a modeling/painting contest for Badab War related marine characters.  Aventine from FLoT is looking to do a playaid update and wants some new photos to use.  Have a couple ideas for entries myself - check it out!

and of course there is my own giveaway, our second contest here.  We've only had one entry and I have to admit that if it stays that way, there will be NO further contests/giveaways.  All it takes is a simple post on your blog - give it a go and give me a reason to hold more contests in the future!

Finally - I would like to recommend you start following the Realm of Lead Addition.  Michael has been painting small groups (blood bowl teams, etc.) and putting them up on ebay for charity.  Be sure to check it out!

5 days left to enter GWpertinent Contest #2 (all it takes is a blog post!)

Still 5 days remaining in our second ever GWpertinent contest.  All it takes is a blog post to enter!

image used without permission - created by tacticangel

Found the above picture, which I thought is quite suitable considering the prize.  Hope to see some more entries!

GWpertinent contest reminder

A reminder to get your posts up to qualify for the second ever GWpertinent contest and win yourself an old school Dark Angels Captain model painted by myself.  It's a simple task, just a small write up about some of your favourite posts that I've done over the years.

There's just over a week left to post your submission, and I can't imagine it would take very long to write up, so get those entries in!  So far there's only a single entry so Silar would win by default.

GWpertinent Contest #2 - win yourself a (painted) old school mini!

Alright, it's definitely time for another contest, especially after how much I enjoyed having a look at the first contest and reminiscing about all the cool old miniatures that were submitted.  Basically I want you to pimp some of your favourite GWpertinent blog posts.  I hope this will spawn some more discussion on some oldies (but goodies) as well as help both parties (entrant and myself) with SEO/Google pagerank.  Full rules & regulations below.

1. You must be a follower of http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/
2. To enter, you must have your own wargaming (not necessarily 40K) related blog, and write a post where you select your 3 favourite posts from GWpertinent that are related to the 40K universe (ie. Necromunda/Space Hulk/etc. posts would be acceptable).
3. Your post must have 3 pictures, one from each of the posts you selected to portray.
4. Your post must have 3 summaries of the posts you selected to portray - each summary must have a minimum of 3 sentences.
5. You must post a comment on each of the posts you selected with a link to your post.
6. The contest is open to anyone in the world.
7. Post your blog link as a comment to this post by March 14th, 2011.
8. On March 15th, I will use Random.org to determine the winner.  The order of entries will be determined by exact post submission date/time.
9. I can't guarantee the time frame for the winner to receive the painted model, but it will not cost anything (I will cover p&p)

the prize!

This time around the prize will be a little different.  Instead of just receiving the above old school Dark Angels Captain, not only will you get the mini - but I will paint it for you!  You have 3 options (see a theme here?) for the paint scheme; he could be black (pre-heresy/ravenwing?), bone (deathwing) or dark angels green (standard).

Good Luck!

Old Stuff Day pt3: 2010 Blood Bowl antics...

Not really _that_ old, but possibly a perfect time to put together a little compilation of all the blood bowl I got up to in 2010.  I played a lot of blood bowl last year.  I mean a lot....

Tournaments (Total of 35 games)
Canadian Open - Result: wooden spoon (aka last) 3 games
Challenge of Q'ermitt - Result: top 50 percentile (barely) 6 games
Golden Sweetbun - Result: not wooden spoon (barely) 6 games
Lakeside Cup - Result: not wooden spoon (barely) 6 games
Warpstone Cup - Result: middle of the pack (2 each; win, draw, loss) 6 games
Deathbowl - Result: 6th/16 (still averaging top 50 percentile) 4 games
Power of One - Result: 2nd (and most casualties) 4 games

Leagues (Total of 19 games)
NBBL (Season 1) - Result: unknown (commish had RL get in the way) 8 games
NBBL (Season 2) - Result: 2nd (2 less games than 1st) 4 games
XTBBF - Result: 2nd (Lost the Spike! final - was still standings leader) 7 games in 2010 (ongoing)

So that's a staggering fifty-four competitive games played in 2010 (with more casual - ie. non-league or tournament games also played).  I doubt I broke 60 games total but I figure I averaged at least a game every 20 days last year.  Not counting any Cyanide BB Legendary Edition games either.

Last year I bounced around from team to team a lot.  This year I plan to play only Undead at tournaments, and other teams will be relegated to league play only.  I plan to get one new team painted up this year, as it's fairly multi-purpose easily used as amazons, humans, norse, pro elves, and ever wood elves.  I hope to debut this team at the Deathbowl this year.

Old Stuff Day pt2: GWpertinent Forces!

Part 2 of my old stuff day posts is a bit of a cop-out.  Technically these posts are my "oldest" because way before blogger offered the option to create actual "pages", I wanted to use the blog to track everything about my armies, gangs, teams and warbands.  I found a little hack where I limit everyone from seeing any posts prior to 2008 so they wouldn't show up in my archive list and I then set about creating "post-pages" for the various forces I have as of January 1st 2007.  Not all forces have a "post-page" created for them yet, but eventually they all will.  I've also included a "current state" percentage towards being painted/based - broken out by colour coding to describe who's done the painting (green; all me, yellow; some of my stuff came partially painted from my brother, or I received assistance in building/painting, or red; for some of the forces which I commissioned out)

Within these "post-pages" I try to incorporate as much varied info as I can.  Everything from why I started collecting them, the background and history to the force (including any fluff I have developed/written up), game records (ie. win/draw/loss), awards won, composition & development notes, pictures, etc.

I guess these are my posts that I think receive less traffic than they deserve.  There's lots of cool info in there, but they rarely get any comments.  Any suggestions you may have to get people to visit them more often, please let me know.  Maybe it's the face it's not obvious they are links?  I recently did a large update to my Novamarines page, and two of my blood bowl teams (orcs and undead) are similarly fully fledged.  My Spyrers page definitely needs an update since it only has half the gang in the photos, while I should really get my act together and get some games in with my Pit Slaves since their page is looking rather bare.

Well I hope this prompts you to take a look at any of my force pages that interest you.  Please feel free to comment as I'm always looking for feedback.

Old Stuff Day pt1: First (and so far only) GWpertinent contest...

This somewhat falls into line with Old Stuff Day and Rob from Warhammer 39,999 thoughts on dredgeing up old posts which didn't receive much traffic.  This was probably one of my most popular posts, but since it was about finding your oldest mini's, I believe it is a suitable topic to re-post today.

the original prize!

Here's the link to the original contest post. It included the rules (very simple) to participate and I updated it with links to all the other awesome bloggers who participated.  It was a random contest allowing everyone to easily participate and I think that was a major reason for it's popularity.  Be sure to check out all the old school mini's that ended up being sent in as entries in the contest results post.

I remember how much fun this contest was, I think it's been long enough that I should bring it back - what do you think?