Kustom Big Gunz

I bought some Empire Canons at a game swap today. Blinded them out with some Orky bitz. They are Zzap Gunz.

Dark Angels Paint Scheme

Adding this info for a new friend. 

Green Armour

Caliban Green, Warpstone Glow, Moot Green

Cloaks

Ushabti Bone, Seraphim Sepia, Ushabti Bone

Guns

Mephiston Red, Agrax Earthshade, Evil Sunz Scarlet

Flesh

Kislev Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade, Kislev Flesh again if needed

Libby Armour

Kantor Blue, Alaitoc Blue

Custom Conversion - Ork Dakkajet

I really wanted to add a Dakkajet to my small Ork army.  As I mentioned, my local GW is doing an escalation league.  For the next 250 points, I'm adding a Dakkajet and 3 Killa Kans.

I'm gonna just buy some Killa Kans, but I can't justify spending $100 on myself right around Xmas, so I decided to convert a Dakkajet from bits on hand plus a 9.49 USD Thunderbolt Razorback model I picked up at a local arts and crafts store.

Here you go...  still a work in progress, but I think I'm just about done.  I like that the Fighta Ace has a bag of stikkbombs in case he runs out of ammo otherwise!  Haha

4,000 Views!

I can't believe I've actually hit 4,000 views on this blog.  This is sort of a milestone.  I'm 10% of the way towards the very fluffy 40k views target.

I'm going to have to step this up a little to make that happen.

Escalation League Round One

I played my first two games in my local GW's Escalation League this weekend. I played versus Space Wolves and Dark Angels. Won both games.

The next level of escalation is 750 points. I think I'm going to add 3 Killa Kans and a Dakkajet. Should be a nice addition and it'll give me some newish kits to paint.

White Elephant

My family is doing a White Elephant gift exchange this year.  If you're not familiar with the idea, it goes like this...

1. Bring the tackiest, lamest present you can find.
2. Draw numbers.
3. The first person picks a gift at random and opens it.
4. The next person can either take an already opened gift from someone OR open a new gift.  If they take a gift from someone, that person then picks a new gift to open.

I just found this at the local 2nd & Charles (an awesome store).  It's the tackiest thing I think I'm likely to find.  That's right, it's a Justin Timberlake puppet doll.  Super cool.  Haha!

Hopefully, none of my family members reads this blog!

I'm now offering Life Size Purity Seals for Sale

I did a quick sculpt for a friend which was then used for a prize for a local tournament.  I had some interest from different people to do more custom seals for their different armies.

I've decided to sell these for $15 each with shipping included.  If you live local to northern DE, let me know and I'll cut you a price break and just meet up to make a hand delivery.

If you want one, email me at kriswall (at) gmail (dot) com and we'll work something out.  Be sure to include what you want the paper to say.  The below example was done as a present for a friend.

Custom Purity Seal

Plans for Upcoming Armies

I'm currently working on a display board for next year's Armies on Parade.  I'm currently thinking that I'll be going with a mixed Inquisition/Space Marines/Grey Knights force.  I might also add in the Tau Fire Support Cadre.  My worst allies level would be Allies of Convenience.

My plan would be to take the Space Marines as Red Hunters.  Their Chapter Tactics allows them to be Battle Brothers with Grey Knights if an Inquisitor is present.

So I'm thinking something like this...

SM
HQ Libby, Techmarine

Troops 2x Sniper Scouts

Elites 2x Sternguard in Pods, Relic Contemptor

Inq
HQ Ordo Xenos Inquisitor

GK
HQ - Libby

Troops - Termie Squad

Tau
Tau Fire Support Cadre (Riptide + 6 Broadsides)

Everything but the Tau will be converted to match the Deathwatch.  I have some of the scout worked out already.  They're supposed to be in Deathwatch "Infiltrator" Pattern Scout Armour.  This is from the Fantasy Flight Rites of Battle Deathwatch RPG book.

I know this won't be competitive at all.  My theory on adding the Tau is as follows...   The Deathwatch were hunting the Tau when something worse showed up.  The Tau, being pragmatic, thought that they might be able to parlay this temporary truce into something more binding.  As we all know, the Deathwatch probably fell back onto them moments after the battle was done!

Counts As Remora

Here's a quick photo of the Remora in it's current state.  I redid the gun barrels as well as making the main body larger and giving it some etched in lines.  My plan is still to 3D print this as soon as I'm finished.

Counts as Remora

I've made significant process on my 3D Remora. I'm not at my computer right now, but I'll post pics when I get home. Today, I'm going to do some volunteer work at my local archery club. Gotta make sure the kids have a good place to work on their ballistic skill!

Movember

I'm doing No Shave November at work. It's coming along!

The Deathwatch

I'm starting work on a Deathwatch army which will probably end up being around 1500-2000 points or so. My intention is to use Space Marines as the primary force with Grek Knight allies and an Inquisitorial detachment to act as Warlord. For the marines, troops will be Sniper Scouts in Deathwatch "Infiltrator" Pattern Scout Armour. This is detailed in the Deathwatch RPG books, specifically Rites of Battle. The idea is that they are veteran marines equipped for stealth ops. I think the models turned out nicely. More pics to come as I work on the army. 

Ork Battleforce

My local GW store in Bear, DE is doing a thing where if you're able to paint a Battleforce or Battalion in 30 days, you get a cool looking patch that says Ready 4 Battle, or something like that.

I decided to go with an Ork Battleforce.  My plan is to ultimately have a Grot only (as close as I can get) allied detachment.  I'm thinking that this will be doable with a couple of very large Grot squads with some Killa Kans and maybe a Big Mek Conversion to give all the Grots a cover save/invuln.  I don't really remember how exactly the Kustom Force Field works.  I'm thinking I would just model up some sort of custom force field conversion and have a couple of grots poking at it.

Here is my standard bearer grot.  He's from the Biker Kit.

Grot Standard Bearer

Purity Seal

I made myself a purity seal. Only took about 30 minutes not including mold and plaster drying time. 

Tau Remora Counts-As 3D Designed

I've been working on a Tau Remora Counts-as since the Forgeworld quality control is so absolutely poor.  Let me know what you think.

Tau Remora Drone 3D Design

Iron Hands - Clan Raukaan Rhino Door

I've decided to do a small Space Marine Allied force and I'm thinking of Iron Hands because I think they would be relatively easy to paint and I have a ton of Techmarine bits laying around.  Plus, the new Forgeworld Iron Hands models are amazing looking.

I threw together a 3D Iron Hands Clan Raukaan Rhino Door for this upcoming force.  I think I still need to dress it up a little.

Iron Hands Clan Raukaan Rhino Door

Games Workshop in Olney MD

Today is field trip day!

Myself, my buddy Steve and his girlfriend are running down to Olney, MD today to visit the store I used to run and that my friend Josh now runs.

I have a bad habit of not bringing enough stuff to keep myself occupied and since we're going to be there for 8 full hours, I've made a list.

1. My Farsight Bomb army for playing against Steve.
2. My Blood Angels Codex for making a Blood Angels allied force for my Tau.
3. A ton of Blood Angels and Librarian bitz to use for the Librarian leader of my HQ team.
4. An unopened box of Sternguard.
5. Everything I need to base, prime and paint the 18 Drones that still need to be finished before October 4th (exactly 13 days from today).
6. All my tools and whatnot for hobbying and converting things.

My plan is to buy whatever I need for my Blood Angels allies while I'm there.  Most likely, this will be an Assault Squad or two.

Should be fun.  I'll try to remember to take pictures of the battle.

More 3D Tau Work

I've begun working on the weapon mount for the Aegis Defense Line.  I've decided to go with an Ion Cannon looking thing.

Check it out.

Taugis HOOOOOO

Tau Aegis Defense Line - The Taugis

I decided to spend the evening practicing with more 3D design shenanigans and I think I'm really starting to get the hang of things.

I put together a Tau themed Aegis Defense Line.  The Tau text on the long wall reads "TAU-GIS DEF-LIN".  The short wall reads "KWM-FTW"...  KrisWallMinis For The Win!  :)

Tau Themed Aegis Defense Line - The Taugis

Now with more Modular Weapons

I decided to give some more angles to the Fusion Blaster to make it look a little less blocky.  I think it looks nicer now.

I also decided to change the design to make everything modular.  You can see the round circular holes that I added to hold 3x1 magnets.  The idea is that you get one shoulderpad and a bunch of magnetized, swappable weapons.

Tau/Space Marine Dread Shoulderpad and Weapon Options

Tau/Space Marine Dread Shoulderpad and Weapon Options

More Tau 3D Design

I've tinkered with Sketchup for about 8 hours this weekend.  I know this because it told me my 8 hour trial was up and I either needed to pay for a pro license or agree to the basic end user license.  I tool the normal license.

Here are some pics of various works in progress.

First up is a Space Marine Dreadnought Right Arm which is sporting a large Fusion Blaster that I will "count
as" a Multi-Melta.

Dreadnought Gue'Vesa Fusion Blaster

Next up is a Space Marine Assault Jump Pack styled to look like a Tau Jet Pack.  I've sent one of these off to Shapeways to be printed out.  When it returns, I'll make whatever changes need to be made and then send some more things off to be printed.

Gue'Vesa Jump Pack

Gue'Vesa Jump Pack

Gue'Vesa Jump Pack

Gue'Vesa Jump Pack

More 3D

I did a little more tinkering and added some colors so I could get a feel for how this would look with my army's color scheme.

The piece is hovering over a 40mm disc, so you can get an idea of scale.

My idea is that this would be a communications node/objective marker.

Tau Communications Node

Trying to Learn 3D Design

I picked up Google SketchUp and the SketchUp for Dummies book and got to work.  My plan is to put together a Tau Aegis Defense Line and then go from there.  I'll most likely be using Shapeways to print out my designs.  I'm pretty excited about the potential for this.

I threw the below together in about 30 minutes of playing around.  It's going to be one of the "feet" of the defense line, kind of like how the Forgeworld Turrets have feet.  The Tau word near the bottom says "AEGIS".  Devil is in the details!  haha

First Beginnings

Farsight Painted

I cranked this bad boy out in about 4 hours or so.  It's not my best work, but it's intended for tabletop quality action.

Front View

Side View

Add caption

3000 Pageviews!

WOOT!

Commander Farsight Counts-As

I bought one of the new Finecast Commander Farsight models and was very pleased with it.

I cleaned it.

I assembled it.

I primed it.

I put it in my hot car...

Sigh.

So I decided to make a newer, faster, stronger and most importantly, more durable O'Shovah.  I wanted to keep the same pose, but also to upscale the model about 30%.  As is, the model is about the same size as the older Crisis Suits.  He's a little smaller than the new Commander Crisis Suit.  I needed to fix that.  I did decide to keep the pose though.

There will be more pictures as I paint this guy.

First, one for scale context.

Counts As Commander Farsight Scale Context

Front View

Rear View

Bitchin' Tabard (from the Ravenwing upgrade sprue)

Puretide Bomb Practice Game

I played a game against a new friend met at a Games Workshop tonight.

My new pal Ilir brought his Necron Army to fight my Puretide Bomb.  I don't know that I can replicate his list exactly here, but I'll try.

He had, approximately:

Imhotek the Stormlord
3x Crypteks
3x 10 man Necron Warrior Squads
3x Flying Croissant Dedicated Transports
2x Flying Croissants with Death Rays
1x Monolith

I had my Puretide Bomb:
Farsight, 7 bodyguards with assorted weapons, Shadowsun, 14 Gun Drones
2 Broadsides w/4 Missile Drones
2 Sky Rays
2x 6 man Fire Warrior "Filler" units

I deployed first, but he stole the initiative.

Turn 1.
Imhotek's lightning got lucky and exploded one of my two Skyrays.  Other than that, not much happened.  I think he shot and killed 2 or 3 gun drones.

My go I moved the bomb forward and killed about 20 warriors, 2 crypteks and wounded Imhotek between all my shooting.

Turn 2.
He brought on one death ray croissant and one transport croissant.  I killed the death ray one with interceptor fire from the Broadsides.  He killed another couple of gun drones and scored a glancing hit on the remaining Skyray.

I killed the transport croissant and killed Imhotek, who promptly stood back up.  I also killed more of his warriors.

Turn 3.
Another death ray and transport croissant pair came in.  (I wish I could remember the names of these things.  I feel like I'm being passively insulting to Necron players.)  Interceptor fire glanced the death ray one, but didn't kill it.  He put it to good use and between all his shooting killed some more gun drones and a total of 3 crisis suits.

On my turn I killed the death ray, the rest of the warriors and the crypteks.

We had to call it there as the store was closing.  We got started fairly late and the amazingly accomodating manager let us play through the extra turn so that we had a decent game.  We called it at the end of the 3rd turn with me having 9 victory points and him having 1.  Not bad.

Another victory for the Puretide Bomb.

Terrain Finished

I'm going to post up a tutorial on how I did this later, but for now, enjoy the new terrain.

Finished Tau'er [Tower!, :D]

Tau Terrain using a Scribing Tool

I went to Lowes yesterday and bought some parts that I thought would make a cool little piece of Tau themed terrain.  My intention is to paint it the same as my army and bring it with me when I play so I don't have to look at Imperial terrain everywhere.

I also bought a Scribing Tool from Lowes, which is just a big hardware store if you don't have them in your area.

Scriber

It looks basically like a pen, but the point is incredibly sharp and can be used to scratch pretty much anything.  I used it to scratch lines into the top of this tower to make it look like a giant drone.  I won't know how well it worked until I pain the sucker, but I'm optimistic.

Tau Tower WIP - The pumpkins are not gonna stay there.

Hard to see, but the lines are scribed in right now.

Some Puretide Bomb Progress

I made a little bit of progress yesterday.  Ok...  a LOT of progress.  I finished up the 6 Crisis Suits and the 2 Sky Rays.  I made hovering bases for them to match what I did for my Devilfish.

This is just a quick shot from my iPhone at the GW Bear store.  I'll take some better pictures later.

The Puretide Bomb is starting to come together.

Claptrap Fail :(

I just got an email from Shapeways saying that they can't actually #D print the Claptrap robots.  I'm pretty bummed out.  I was really looking forward to getting some of these little guys.  I might have to take a look and see if some small toys were ever manufactured.  I know they made a large version, which is WAYYYYYYY to big.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Claptrap Marker Drones

I did end up ordering some of these Borderlands style Claptrap robots.  They are 28mm scale and should fit on a 25mm base with no problem.  My intention is to paint them up in my Tau army color scheme and use them as Marker Drone counts as.  I think it'll work out pretty well and fit the general theme of the Tau.

Claptrap 3D Design Image

I'll take pictures of them assembled when they show up.  The website said they likely won't ship until September 10th or so.

Tau Communist Star

I'm totally gonna have to buy some printable wet transfer paper and add the below to some of my Tau buildings and vehicles.  I think that would be SIGNIFICANTLY quicker than hand painting it over and over.  The caption says "FOR THE GREATER GOOD" using the Tau font.  I love it.

This was done by Aethergod of Deviantart.com.

For The Greater Good

Marker Drone Counts As

I'm totally gonna buy some of these and use them as Marker Drones. I love Borderlands and Claptrap in particular.

http://www.shapeways.com/model/1000634/clap-trap-5-bot-squad.html?li=shop-results&materialId=60

A New Armies on Parade Board for my Tau Army

As a part of the Warhammer 40k Unit Cards attempt, I will need to take some nice photos of my models.  The best way to do so is using a background that matches the way they are based.

I went out to Home Depot and bought a 2" x 2" piece of plywood.  I then got a crap ton of cork and start tearing and gluing.  The technique exactly matches the bases I use for my army.  I'm hoping they will blend in pretty well once the army is painted.  The T shape cutout with the board edges front, left and right will be a road of sorts and I'll put two little Tau houses in the background.  I'm working on those also, but no pictures yet.  My local store is having a Halloween Terrain competition and I'm going to put little pumpkins outside the Tau houses and paint up models from different armies that will be little Shas'saals (Fire Warrior Cadets) out for trick or treating.

On a directly related note, my hands hurt like Horus himself stomped on them right now.  I think it's from dealing with all the pressing on the cork and spray painting.  I put on some Icy Hot, but all that's doing is making me smell bad.

Without further ado, here is the board in progress.  It has been sprayed black also, but that photo is pretty lame to look at.

Armies on Parade Board Work in Progress

Warhammer 40k Unit Cards

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I used to play Magic: The Gathering.  I worked in a comic book store at the time, so it pretty much consumed my work life.  I've since quit and haven't really touched a card or followed the game for years.

But...

I do remember a little application called Magic Set Editor.  Evidently, the program has been in constant development this whole time and is a lot more advanced at this point.

I've decided to use it to make some Warhammer 40k unit cards so that I'll more easily remember what wargear I have.  It'll also be easier to count up victory points at the end of the game.  I can just hand over cards as units die.

Here's an example of what I'm looking at.  I just used Pixlr.com and Magic Set Editior to cobble these together over the last 30 minutes or so.  A big shot out to Meleck for creating the base templates.  I added the spacescape background image.

Without further ado...

Warhammer 40k Unit Cards - DX36a Crisis Bodyguard Gun Drone

Warhammer 40k Unit Cards - Commander "Farsight" O'Shovah

Mexican Wrestling

That's right. I waiting for a Mexican wrestling match to start. I get asked to the weirdest things sometimes! I'm cautiously optimistic. Lol