Combat Patrol Tournament and Dreadnoughts and Princes

So I’ve been busy lately. Two Saturdays ago, my good friend Peter helped me get the old chest freezer and the very old (and very heavy) refrigerator out of the basement, freeing up more space for nerdery in the Nerd Bunker. I was able to get people to come and pick up both of these behemoths (free of charge!) by putting them up on CraigsList under the ‘Free’ category. It feels really good to have these things out of my hair and it allows me to progress with work in the basement.

This past Saturday I played in my first Warhammer 40k tournament. It was a 400-point Combat Patrol event at Chimera Hobbies and Games in Appleton, and I didn’t completely tank. I did bring a totally new list that I’ve never played before and even used units I’ve never played before (Plague Marines) because, why come to a tournament with all of those preconceived notions about what your list is like and how your units work? That’s for boring people, I assume. I did actually win two games and of the three that I lost, one was really close (only point point) from a draw, so I felt like it was a good showing. I got a terrible painting score because, well… my figures aren’t painted. So I need to fix that soon.

Speaking of figures: I’ve been working on some of the bigger figures in my army in prep for a potential 1000-point battle in a few weeks. You may recognize the dreadnought here from a post a few weeks ago. He’s been changed, however:

Chaos Dreadnought made from Venerable Dreadnought

He still needs a little more grunge and pitting on his legs, and a bit of baking soda corrosion, but he’s pretty close. The tentacles turned out pretty well, and the spikes and skull-chain accessories from the Chaos Rhino troop transport set fit this guy just about perfectly. While the spikes on top make the figure look a lot more interesting, it makes him a lot taller and might make him a bit more difficult to transport in a Battlefoam bag, so I’ll have to figure that out. I’m really looking forward to painting him, though I haven’t decided on a color scheme yet.

Then there’s this guy, who has been a bit of a pain:

The Daemon Prince

The kit goes together fine, even though the instructions are a bit difficult to decipher from time to time. However, I wanted to magnetize his wings, not so much to give me options (I’m not sure why you’d ever use a Daemon Prince without wings, duh) but for transport purposes: removable wings would make him easier to transport to games at other people’s houses, etc. After much screwing around, I finally got the rare earth magnets all set up and put in the right spots and the wings attached properly and everything about the model was great.

Unless you touched it. Or breathed. Or looked at it. Or thought. Or your heart was beating. If any of those things happened, then the wings would fall right the hell off.

So now I’ve glued the damn wings on, and I have to do a little work with some ‘green stuff’ putty to fill in the holes left over from my magnetic shenanigans (‘Magnetic Shenanigans’ is the name of my next band, by the way) and then I have to texture this guy’s base. There will be a new post about base texturing and painting coming here quite soon, as I’ve been doing preliminary work so I can get my whole army properly textured the same and then ready for priming. Then painting. Then I won’t get such a terrible painting score at the next Combat Patrol tourney. Hopefully.

Excuses and Resolutions

So we’ll start with the excuses: you may notice that my last post was way back in September. This is ridiculous, and should get me thrown in jail. Luckily, our legal system doesn’t work that way, so I’m out, free as a bird and able to commit other crimes in the future like jaywalking and aggravated buggery.

An OshCon 2009 "action" shot

However, I do have reasons for my silence, however weak they may be: in early October, I ran OshCon 2009: a gaming convention here in Oshkosh, WI. This year was our biggest yet, with 233 attendees over the two days. Hey look, pictures! Obviously, a gaming convention doesn’t prepare for itself, so I was very busily crossing “i”s and dotting “t”s for weeks beforehand, including the date of my last post to this blog, meaning I did actually take time out of my busy preparations to give you a lame and phoned-in post. You’re welcome.

After OshCon, I attended RockCon in northern Illinois. That was really fun and I met some really cool people and found out that my hotel room didn’t give me a disease, so it was really win-win. I did accidentally (nearly) kill a guy, so it wasn’t all roses.

Then, let’s say work was pretty busy. Sure.

Then it was Thanksgiving, then St. Nick’s Day, then probably Presidents Day or something, then I started a tabletop miniatures gaming and hobby group, then built a web site and forum for said group, then Christmas. Everything is just a blur, frankly. Eventually, I found myself on the 2010 side of New Year’s, and now here we are. I did do a bunch of stuff during the time that this blog was dark, but I will post those things later, and make it look like new content. Aren’t you lucky?

Speaking of New Year’s, now is the time when I talk about my New Year’s resolutions. This year, I’m going to aim for an hour of painting and modeling per day. You read that correctly. Now, if I can’t paint on a Tuesday due to other commitments or something, then I just need to paint for two hours on Wednesday, and so on. Certainly, this may cause me to have to do a lot of catching up on weekends, but what the hell are weekends for, I might ask? Exactly. So an hour a day is the goal.

Another resolution: I am going to paint more, and buy less. Actually, the plan is to not buy any minis and just paint all the primed minis on my shelves and the un-primed and un-constructed minis in my storage boxes, but something awesome might come up, and I’m not made of stone, for Pete’s sake. However, I am going to stop surfing eBay and picking up things I don’t need just because they’re cheap. Do you know how many Necrons I ended up with doing that? A gaggle. A gaggle of Necrons. Or perhaps it’s a drudge.

I’m also resolving to get more terrain finished. I have half a dozen unfinished projects on and around my desk, and I have a brand spanking new Realm of Battle board sitting in my closet, waiting to be primed and painted. I really have to wait until spring and warmer weather to tackle that project, but I can work on several other terrain projects in the mean time, and I mean to.

Here come the Warjacks

Lastly, I resolve to play more. I have so many games, and I’m interested in many more. I’ve started a miniatures gaming club, so there should be plenty of opportunities to play. I’ve been playing Star Wars Miniatures most Tuesdays at the House of Heroes, but I really want to play more Warmachine (probably staying with the old Prime Remix rules instead of moving to the new Mk II rules) and AT-43 and Song of Blades and Heroes and Mutants and Death Ray Guns. Plus, there should be more playtesting of the rules that Peter and I are working on. Oh yeah, and I bought a copy of the new release of Space Hulk when it came out, so there’s that as well.

Anyway, enough rambling, I need to catch up on my painting for the week. It is a Saturday, after all.

Long Time No See

Or at least, a lot longer than I would have liked. Work was mainly to blame, as it is every year at this time. The company I work for hosts a big event (convention, trade show and more), and by big, I mean officially seven days long (but in actuality it’s much longer) and 578,000 people this year. For me it meant 10+ hour days for 21 days straight, so I wasn’t much in the mood to do much painting or terrain work. I barely even played any games. After the event finally ended, I did start working on cleaning and organizing my work area at home, and that has finally spurred me to get back to work. Well, that and reading all the coverage of this year’s Gen Con that I was missing (grrrrrrr).

Tau Stealth Suits and a new(ish) piece of terrain

Here’s some Tau Stealth Suit figures I built from Warhammer 40,000 (Games Workshop). As I have mentioned in the past, I don’t play that game, but they make the best darn figs in the industry in my opinion, so picked these up at last year’s Gen Con. I still need to add some basing to them (I think I’m going to use the tiny foam bricks I’ve been punching out) and then they need to be primed and painted. I’m going to use them in the new miniatures game that Peter and I are working on, so I might actually buy another box of three just so I can have a squad of six of them.

That odd looking thing behind the Stealth Suits is a piece of terrain that I got a few years back at Gen Con that I’ve recently started sprucing up. I’m adding some pieces from the Hexagon Chemical Plant set and some small plastic tubing and other greeblies. It’ll be some sort of holding tank or mini-reactor when it’s done.

Blue electrical box soon to be a LOS blocker

Lastly is this other terrain piece that I’ve been working on. It’s a blue plastic electrical box available at pretty much any hardware store. I used my Dremel tool to grind off some of the sticky-outie bits and have been adding more bits from the Hexagon kits to it. It’ll be a power transformer or a substation or who knows what when it’s painted and done. The Hexagon kits are really helpful to the DIY terrain creator. They’re great plastic kits that can be used by themselves, but I think they work better as add-ons to your home made projects. I’ll have to try and do a write up of the kits soon.

Saturday Night Gaming

My friends Peter and Lee came over on Saturday night and we played some Space Hulk (Games Workshop) on my dining room table. I forget the name of the scenario, but Lee and I each had a squad of five terminators that consisted of a sergeant, three soldiers and a soldier with a flamer gun. Peter had an infinite number of genestealers, and needed to destroy (in close combat) a back wall in a certain room by the end of the 16th turn. It had something to do with the genestealers stopping the terminators from using the vent systems to gas all the genestealers in a large portion of the ship, or something. Mainly, the issue was this: Lee and I had to survive and defend for 16 turns versus as many unholy genestealers as Peter could throw at us.

Kinda got a clump going on over here, guys. Guys?

I, personally, made a few small tactical errors. Also, my dice rolling was absolutely cursed. So as that progressed, most of the genestealers were finding it easier to traverse through the side of the complex I was trying to guard. You might say I was the weak link in our two-link chain. It was problematic at best.

The three of us just came by to say hello

In the end, our last two terminators fought valiantly in the control room they were tasked to defend, but the onslaught was too great, and they finally succumbed to the horde of ripping claws and gnashing teeth. However, we actually survived until turn 14, which upon seeing my earlier tactical mishaps and epically foul die rolling, was a lot later than we had suspected we would last. Our soldiers still died in vain (some more than others) but at least it wasn’t a total blow-out.

I think we all had a lot of fun, and playing with Peter’s painted Space Hulk set was awesome, as usual. I would like to host more game nights like this at my house. Hopefully, when our new miniatures game gets closer and closer to beta, we’ll be able to play more games like this. I do really enjoy the modelling and painting and terrain building and all that, but it really becomes fun when you can (finally!) actually get a chance to use all the little bits and buildings.

More Work on the Manhunter

It has been a bit too hot to paint, lately. We sort of waited a little too long to fire up the air conditioners in our apartment once everything went (literally) to hell and the atmosphere started on fire (or at least feels like it did) so, though it’s currently starting to get nicer inside than it is outside, it was still a bit too hot to sit between my two desklamps and paint little people. Or, at least, until last night.

Manhunter, shot in my windowsill again

I worked for another hour and a half or so on this Khador Manhunter. He’s been fun, but I’d like to be done with him now and maybe go on to my Widowmakers. I should be done with him soon, I think. I just need to work on his gloves some more, some other little details here and there (like his belt buckle and the clasps on his belt pouches), the detailing on his hat and fuzzy-ass boots, and then paint his base and call it a day. I figure another hour and a half and then I should be able to varnish him.

Maybe before I start painting the Widowmakers, I’ll work on constructing more of the Destroyer warjack. Putting those guys together is such a chore, they always slow me down. Maybe, just to keep me interested, I’ll alternate between painting my four Widowmakers, constructing my Destroyer and maybe building and basing a new fig, too.  Probably another solo, like Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios. She’s kind of a goofy looking fig with that big flowing cloak and odd pose that just doesn’t do it for me, but she’s pretty good in the game, so that’s why I’m adding her to my army.

Peter and I have been doing more work on our new miniatures game ruleset, and we’ve even decided on a name. Maybe I’ll tell you the name next time. Maybe.

PointCon – Stevens Point, WI

PointCon is a gaming convention held at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point campus and run by the Gamers’ Alliance of Stevens Point, a college club. This year it was held May 1 through May 3 in the Laird Room in the Dreyfus University Center. Peter and our friend Tim and I went to check it out (as we had never been to the convention before) and to run some playtests of our in-progress miniatures ruleset. We packed up the terrain and miniatures we’ve been using at the local conventions where we’ve been playtesting and made the hour and twenty-minute drive to Stevens Point.

The mostly empty hall

We got there around 10:30 a.m., parked in a lot a few blocks away, and walked to the Dreyfus University Center, a brand-new student union building. It’s beautiful facility with a food court and all kinds of amenities. We eventually found the Laird Room, paid the five bucks (it covered the whole weekend)  and entered a huge conference center room with a very pretty hardwood floor. We were at the convention.

Actual ingame footage!

There were a few vendors, some videogames set up (a Wii, an Xbox360) and a sea of mostly empty tables. Plenty of places to play games. We found our table, met the people running the convention, and started setting up our terrain. The place was pretty empty, but it was still early (10:30 or so) to a degree, so we assumed the players would start showing up soon. I remember not being much of an early riser when I was in college.

A small force

Just before noon we realized that there were no more people at the convention than there had been an hour and a half ago. We did have one person who was interested in trying out our game, which was great, but he had been at the last several local gaming conventions we had been to and we knew him from the “circuit”, so we weren’t necessarily branching out much to new people. We played through the game in about an hour and a half (I won, but not decisively) and then grabbed some food. The number of attendees had increased a bit, but not by much: at the high point, I did a headcount and came up with 30 people, including vendors, staff and ourselves.

At least one full table

We didn’t have anyone to play with when our second timeslot came up at 4 p.m., so we just discussed rules and worked on how grenades were going to work next time we playtested. We packed up and had a quick talk with the organizer. He apologized for there not being many people there, and he picked our brains for suggestions. We gave him some advice, and we hope that they have a more sucessful convention next year. Wisconsin really needs more than two or three good, steady gaming conventions and we’re always happy to try and help.

Overall, I really hope they suceed and make the convention grow. It’s not too far away, it’s a nice drive, and it’s held in a great facility. They just need to advertise a little better and get the word out more effectively.

20-year-old Genestealers

So my very good friend Peter accidentally got me into miniatures back in the very early 1990s. He and I were in college, and he introduced me to Space Hulk from Games Workshop. He had just recently gotten it, and we started playing it in our group. I remember pouring through the booklets when I was watching him and our other friends play. I was keenly fascinated by the ‘fluff’ (the storyline and background and art and design) of the game and of the Warhammer 40k universe in general. I’ve been interested in the ‘fluff’ ever since, even if I really don’t like the game.

Recently, Peter decided to run Space Hulk for the kids in the gaming group at the high school where he works. However, after all of these years, none of the figures were painted. Many of the genestealers didn’t even have all of their arms glued on. He wanted to get them all constructed, simply based and painted before the group’s next game day, so he came to me. However, we only had two weeks to get it all done: 28 genestealers and 14 terminator space marines. It would be tight, but by splitting the workload, we figured we could do it.

The quickly-painted defenders of humanity

It turned out that by using plenty of the excellent Games Workshop washes, we were able to get them all constructed, based, primed, painted, washed, detailed and varnished in exactly two weeks. They were simple, but they looked nice, and we made our deadline, so that was what counted.

The quickly-painted horde

As it turned out, genestealers may be the nearly perfect quick-paint army. We spray-primed them with the bleached bone spray primer from Army Painter, painted the claws and tongues red, then just washed them several times with the Delvan Mud wash and picked out some other parts (mainly their backs) with the Badab Black wash. Hit them with the Dullcote and stick a fork in them, they’re done. I think they turned out pretty well, and he said the kids really liked them. Hopefully he (and I) have instilled the miniatures bug in the next generation of nerds. What more can we hope for?

Well, we can hope to play a few games of Space Hulk pretty soon, but I think we should be taking care of that next weekend. Maybe I’ll be able to shoot some photos of the figures actually in play.