Commission Complete

Well after a week and a bit of furiously painting genestealers for my friend I'm finished.

All twenty two of them and a broodlord.  Some close ups

Even closer close ups

this one confuses me its almost as if the sculptor forgot one of his arms

he's got the shoulder joint but no arm... and there's two of them in the box.



and the boss beastie the broodlord

Now he also wanted me to turn this chaos lord into an iron warrior

Now its an nice conversion, but was unfortunately was super glued together.  Everything I've tried to strip that's been super glued together has fallen to bits.  So I had to try and paint over the top of it.  There is a few bits poking through but its not that noticeable with the naked eye.

 I think he turned out alright.

I've got a couple games of batman lined up at the club tomorrow.  I might take some pictures.  I'm going to start painting my Joker crew up this week, expect pictures.


Well that's it from me.  Until next time happy wargaming.

Slade

Yes Slade.  No not the band, Slade Wilson a.k.a Deathstroke.  This guy.

Deathstroke here is from Knight Models Batman the Miniatures Game line.  And I have to say his sculpt is a work of art.  There where some pretty serious mould lines on him but I managed to get rid of those without damaging any of the stunning details on him.  Although I did accidentally snap the hilt off his sword. 

I picked up Deathstroke at my local gaming store, Games Without Borders (shameless plug).  I originally went in for a new paint brush and ended up playing a demo game of Batman.  Its a fantastic little skirmish game.  I'm totally going to start the Joker's crew.

Gaming Club related news.  I killed my warhammer quest party off with a horde on skeletons.  I've converted a whole bunch of the guys over to play x-wing and we're going to get some Deathwatch on the go.  I'm an iron hands techmarine.  I won another game of Munchkin through dirty elven bastardry.  And we finally won a game of Pandemic.   However we've broken up for the festive season and wont reconvene until January the 9th. 

Well that's it from me for now, and if I don't get another post up before Christmas then I shall wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy wargaming.

40k losing its appeal

Ok guys this isn't a rant about the prices of games workshop, even if they are getting ridiculous. This is my thoughts on the game in general. 

I love 40k, I've played it for years and have numerous armies.  But lately you could say that I'm all 40ked out.  Pick up games down my club or organized games against my friends have really lost all appeal to me.  Playing against the same people all the time has become repetitive, facing the same list week after week.  Not only that but its become an arms race.  One guy will get a bad assed new unit, and another guy will get one to counter it, then the first guy gets a new unit to counter that.  Now that gets expensive.  This just encourages power gaming.  Now there's a time in a place for power gaming its called a tournament.  If I want to try a new unit or army for that matter I don't want to be steamrolled off the board because I brought a weaker list.  Not that I have a problem with losing, I just don't like battles to be completely one sided.  The close games are always the more fun.

A lot of the guys from the club are feeling the same way.  We've been diversifying into other games.  Bolt Action and Malifaux are on the rise.  There's a bunch of us wanting to get into Dropzone Commander.  And everyone who has played the X-Wing games I've demoed have really enjoyed and have shown an interest in getting their own squadrons.  Actually there was one guy last night who played two games of X-Wing who then proclaimed that it was quickly becoming his favourite game.  Despite the rise of these other games increasing popularity I don't want to give up on 40k.

So how to make 40k more fun?  Well I reckon the key lies in narrative games.  Throw all the power gaming, all the arms races, all the poor sportsmanship out the window.  Make a narrative scenario with themed forces that's the key to unlocking the full fun potential of 40k.  Last year my cousin and I came up with a scenario called Ork's Drift, which we loosely based on the battle of Rourke's Drift.  The scenario involved my entire space wolves army manning a central fortification and he attacked it with his entire ork army.  He rolled a d6 for each of his units to represent the turn upon which they arrived.  His stompa was due to arrive on turn 10.  His units could arrive from any table edge of our 12' by 5' board.  If an ork unit was destroyed it would come back on the board the following turn.  In order for the orks to win they had to wipe out the entire space wolf force.  For the space wolves to win they had to hold out until the end of turn 15.  I lasted until turn 15.  I had one grey hunter left who was desperately trying to out run a stompa.  He addmitedly got squished.  The game came right down to the wire and had some great moments. 

I challenge any of you reading this to give a narrative game a shot.  They're a lot of fun.  In fact I might post a battle report or two of them in the future.  That's it for me for just now.  I'm off to plan my next narrative game, I've got a dark eldar slave raid in mind.  So until next time, happy wargaming.

Finially painted something

Well I'm back.  Haven't done a whole lot of painting recently, but I think I've rectified that over the past week or so.  On other news I passed my driving test, on my third attempt.  I also ran a Halloween game of Call of Cthulhu at my club, which was a lot of fun and went down really well, so we will be playing that again at some point.  Also on club news a lot of us are getting into Bolt Action.  So expect some pictures of my Germans sometime in the near future.  Now on to the pictures

The fourth proper monster to grace my dungeon, the dreaded cockatrice.  These things are deadly, although a bit delicate.  I think this is the number one contender for killing Pete's priest.  It was quite fun to paint, lots of dry brushing involved.  Behold the chicken-snake of doom... kwaaw!

Well if that fails send in the Deathmaster.  Deathmaster Sniktch.  Don't really have to say anything else, his title is Deeathmaster.  Dead priest... or party on the way.  I'm saving him as a last resort.  I'll also use him in my Skaven army.

More mummies.  That puts me up to six.  

And finally Queen Neferata.  I plan on using her as a homebrew Lamhia vampire character, but I could also use her as a vampire bad guy.  She might also find her way into my Vampire Counts army.

That's it for this installment. So until next time happy wargaming.

I found my camera, update time

Well I'm not dead.  Sorry there's been on updates from me for while.  So what's been going on.  Well I got a new PC.  During the computer swap I misplaced my camera, and since I think that this blog would be a wee bitty boring without pictures, I didn't do any updates.  I also went on holiday.  However I have not been idle.  Prepare for a barrage of pictures.

Lets start on a warhammer quest front.  Its still proving extremely popular at my gaming club.  I've got a hardcore group of 5, whose characters are doing really well.  Especially one guy's home brew warrior priest of Ulrik that has effectively become the hulk, he tanked his way through twelve chaos warriors .  On top of those guys almost everyone else has had a shot, as characters who will occasionally drop in and out when a space becomes available.  And it turns out that calling a barbarian Conan is a death sentence, for some reason they keep dying.  But the games of warhammer quest will be taking a break for a few weeks as our Priest of Ulrik is of to the US for a few weeks.  I'm still going to paint things up while he's gone, I'm determined to kill that priest.  Now onto some pictures.

First up we've got some ghosts from Reaper Miniatures.  I really like the ones with the invisible limbs.

And here are some classic games workshop goblin netters.  I have another 4 waiting to join the queue.

Here's some classic GW mummies.  One of the proved a challenge for my party.  I wonder what all 4 would do to the priest.

And a wad of skeleton archers.  Or fodder as they're role up to now has been.  Would that make them arrow fodder?  Ha ha! I'm hilarious.

Some more heroes. First up is the chaos warrior, which is the armoured Big Boris from Heresy Miniatures.  This one is being played by one of our party members.  Doesn't kill much, but is wearing so much armour that he's immune to S3 attacks.  Next up is a witch hunter from GW.  The only thing I dislike about this miniature is that fact its finecr... I mean finecast.  Admittedly he was a joy to paint.  Lastly we have a female barbarian again from Heresy.  She is very much the valkyrie.  I really like this sculpt, the pose is nice and rather unusually for a female fantasy miniature she's quite curvy.

Lastly is the skaven warlord from the Island of Blood boxed set.  I've had him sitting around for ages and decided it was time to paint him.

Finally here's a bunch of kabalite warriors I painted for a tournament that never actually happened.  

Well that's it for this installment.  Next time more warhammer quest monsters and evil doers.  Until next time happy wargaming.

Quest Update

I ran my first game of Warhammer Quest a couple of weeks ago at my gaming club and it went down really well.  Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the game but I'll give a rough account of the game. 

We had 6 players, a dwarf, an elf, a warrior priest, a barbarian, a trollslayer and Bretonnian knight. Three of them survived, I'm going let you guess which ones for now.

The warriors entered the ruined cellars to find a room filled with cobwebs and big chuffing spiders.  The spiders proved no problem for the intrepid band of adventurers.  Taking the passage left the part came across a locked door to the side of the passage.  Deciding it would be a good idea to shoulder it in the dwarf and the barbarian promptly did.  Beyond the door was a tiny room containing an orc bleeding from dozens of stab wounds.  The knight spotting the crown he was holding in one hand decided to run his scaly hide through.  Also finding the key to the locked door they just smashed in.  The orc had obviously hid from his assailants.

Continuing along the corridor our brave warriors stumbled upon a triangle room that was full of clanrats and smelled awful.  It was a skaven skat den.  Succeeding in murdering the rat men, the party made their way back to the entrance and went down the other corridor.  After following it for a bit the stumbled on a room full of snotlings.  The bogies with legs proved to be nothing more than a speed bump and the warriors continued.  They walked into the next room which was tiny, with 4 doors and big mound of treasure.  At this point the elf found his 4th Eltharion's bow (seriously).  Picking the path to the right the warriors followed it to its terminus, an impassable underground river that had a blue glowing sword wedged between some rocks on the other side.

Back tracking back to the now looted treasure room they decided to take the western passage.  Immediately noticing two elven statues.  As the approached the statues began to crack and the stonework crumbled to dust, revealing two black guard of Naggaroth.  Which proved no contest.  Following the corridor they found the objective room.  Containing half a dozen clanrats, a clan rat champion (with a magical cleaver) and his pet rat ogre.  Unfortunately during the brawl a couple of ones were rolled for the power dice resulting in seven stormvermin and 8 clanrats following them up the corridor.  

The barbarian, knight and warrior priest took on the boss room while, the dwarfs and elf held back the Skaven reinforcements.  The knight bellowed a challenge to the rat ogre, and managed to last several rounds with the monster before being smashed to the ground.  The warrior priest managed to dispatch some of the clanrats but was eventually overwhelmed.  And the barbarian was squashed by the rat ogre.  Managing to fall back to the boss room and pour his healing potion down the knights throat.  The knight jumped up and beheaded the ratogre.  The two of them backed by supporting fire from the elf managed to dominate the boss room, but after heroically dispatching some of the stormvermin the trollslayer met his doom to their halberds.  Things looked grim, but with their leader dead the ratmen retreated.  The remain warriors gathered their loot.  The elf who was especially chuffed at finding a potion of water walking and retrieved the magic sword from across the river.  And was ecstatic to find out that it was the frostblade.

Next time the party will be clearing out a barrow for the merchants guild, and will be joined by a chaos warrior, a knight of the white wolf and an imperial noble.  So I will see you next time, happy wargaming.