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Monday, June 29, 2015

300 (+1) Posts!

Somehow I missed that I've posted more than 300 times.  This is actually my 301st post, which is quite a milestone for me.  I've tried to get a blog going in the past, but have never been able to stick to it.  I'm pretty proud of myself.

In other personal accomplishment news, I walked 13.1 miles over the course of the day.  No all at once, but not bad for someone whose knees were so bad it hurt to walk over a mile a couple of years ago.  I feel like I could go right back out there and walk some more.  Haha!  Good times.

In hobby news, I've been going through and photographing all the things I've painted over the years.  Some are better than others, but I'll probably start putting the pictures up here on this blog once or twice a week.  I'll start off with a couple of Tau Empire Crisis Suit models.  One is painted up as a dual fusion Commander.  The three suits have a ton of magnetized weapons to choose from.  Their arms are all magnetized.  They're also all equipped with multi-trackers (the antenna thing on their left shoulders) and target locks (the thing on their right shoulders).  These guys are part of a seven suit block and intended to act as Farsight's Bodyguards.  The target locks let them fire at whichever target they want instead of the unit's target.  I generally equip three with plasma rifles, two with missile pods and 1 with a set of fusion blasters.  The seventh is equipped as a Ravensuit...  which is to say, it has no weapons, but has all the Signature Systems that buff the rest of the unit.



Friday, June 26, 2015

Weekend Plans

Haven't been home much the last couple of days.

This weekend I plan on doing a fairly major cleaning/reorganization.  I'm going to try to document all my finished models and make a list of everything I have in process or new on sprue/new in box.

I've also been reading the rules forums a lot lately.  Always reminds me of this...


Wednesday, June 24, 2015

New Lightbox!!!

I finally got my Foldio2 portable light box that I backed on Kickstarter.  I'm extremely happy with the quality of the photos I'm now able to take.  The following are two examples.  I snapped a pic with my iPhone 5, resized to 1200x900 and added a watermark.  There are no other modifications to the pics.



The plan is to photograph a bunch of the models I've painted using the more professional lighting and build a bit of a repertoire.  I want to link in some sort of gallery software here.  I'll have to figure it out.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Ad Mech Terrain Treasure Trove

I'm going to be working on some terrain soon to go with the Ad Mech theme.  I'll be starting with a couple of small objective markers.  I want these to look real techy, so I decided I needed some good bits.

Enter my mom's old laptop...


...which I totally ripped apart, discarded the case and held onto all the good bits.  The really big items, like the keyboard, won't be useful for 40k projects (more on that in a second), but all the circuit boards should be good to break up and so small computer consoles with.  This sort of thing...


...will work great as a bit of detail.  Add in some guitar wires to represent cabling and I think this will work out just fine.  I also got a whole array of very small screws that will actually be the perfect size to add to Ork and Ad Mech conversion projects.  All in all, it was a good find.

As to the keyboard...

The plan is to find an old briefcase or similar and add a sort of 'doomsday' electronic panel inside.  Keyboard, handprint scanner, switches...  that sort of thing.  It'll end up with additional storage for the various rule books.  I just think it'll make a cool hobby 'artifact'.  I'll be going to various thrift stores looking for the perfect case this week.

Lastly, my Foldio showed up and is at the rental office for my apartment complex.  Expect some cool photos on Wednesday (assuming this foldout light box works properly).

Friday, June 19, 2015

Real Life Steps In

No quality post I'm afraid.  Real life stepped in.  Work is tough right now and a relative is in the hospital.  I'm hoping to get things more under control this weekend.

:(

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Um...

Yeah, so I totally haven't done anything except for this...



It's free for iOS.  I'm addicted.  I can't wait for Fallout 4.  That is all.

Monday, June 15, 2015

Army Display Board WIP

I picked up the new Codex: Space Marines today and I'm VERY, VERY happy with it.  So happy, in fact, that I already started plotting out my Scouts only army list.  Scout Sergeant Telion is now a straight HQ, so you have a couple of options for a Battleforged army list.

#1 - Combined Arms Detachment.  Now that Telion is an HQ, you can field him as your required HQ.  This leaves Scout Squads as the Troops, Bikers and extra Land Speeder Storms as the Fast Attacks.

#2 - 10th Company Strike Force.  This is a new Formation included in the new Codex.  It's basically 3-5 Scout Squads or Scout Bike Squads with the option of also including Telion.

I'm still working out the details, but I did start an army display board for this force.  It's going to be a 2' x 2' board segment, so it'll fit in with a modular table setup.  I've got the general terrain layout set up.  The one bit that sort of looks like a footprint is totally going to be a giant footprint.  I'll write up a little fluff to go with this.  Some sort of Chaos Giant will figure in somehow.




While I was at the saw, I went ahead and cut out a couple of area terrain bases to use for the WIP terrain I posted earlier.  I'll most likely finish these up first, in between painting models and working on the display board.



Friday, June 12, 2015

Execution Force

Just a quick post today to say that I got my copy of Execution Force in the mail.  Well, that is to say, I got the copy I ordered off eBay for about twenty bucks that doesn't come with any of the models.  The four Assassin models are nice, but I just couldn't see spending 125USD for four models and a board game that may or may not be any good.

Seems like a cool idea though, so I thought the twenty was a worthwhile investment.  I'm going to try to coerce my buddy into playing.  I have plenty of models, so working out game pieces is a non-issue.

Looks pretty cool...

 You play on these tiles.  If the game is good, I might have to pick up some of those 1" square DnD maps and make up some additional scenarios.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

A Little Terrain WIP

In between painting projects, I'm slowly working on building myself a table and a table's worth of matching terrain.

I'm going for sort of a Xenos, semi Tau look.  I want the terrain to look truly alien.  I'm so tired of Imperial terrain or "human hive city" terrain.

I decided to go with a sort of natural looking building with various "mushroom" looking growths.  I'll use some putty/green stuff to make it look like the pegs are growing out of the building's top.

I think it's working out pretty well so far.  The one tall one will have battlements on the top.  I still haven't quite worked out how that's going to look, but I can't imagine it will be too hard.

The white things are pieces of a gutter system for a house.  I think they make perfect sci-fi looking terrain pieces when turned upside down like this.  The wooden bits are various pegs and furniture buttons.  I still have work to do.  Mainly, I need to work out battlements and add some doors.  The doors shouldn't be too hard.  The gutter system has some end caps that I'll be using.  They're a little pricey, so I'll be using one to make a template and then just duplicating it using poster board.








Monday, June 8, 2015

Crap Weekend

Hey guys.  I did literally nothing fun this weekend.  It was a garbage weekend.  It started off with a drunk driver slamming into my parked car and then fleeing the scene.  Nice little hit and run action.  I now don't have a car.  Good times.

FML.  Trying to stay positive.  It's hard.



I had all sorts of grand plans and they pretty much all fell through.  Not having access to a car and living in the United States can be pretty rough.  Admittedly, I do live in a place with rudimentary public transit, but it only runs every 60min or so.  Sometimes you have to change buses to get somewhere and you'll get stuck at a stop for 45min waiting for the next bus to come along.

I'd rather ride in this...


PuppetsWar makes some pretty cool stuff!

I actually have a bunch of stuff queued up on my painting table right now, but all of my time is going into dealing with insurance, the police, car rental places, etc.  It's so frustrating.


Friday, June 5, 2015

Plasma Obliterator - More Paint!

I decided that the Plasma Obliterator from a couple of days ago just didn't look very good, so I decided to give it a little more oomphah.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out this time.  I think the additional color makes it stand out much more.  I think I'll probably still do some more work on it, but I'm not quite sure what yet.  I might do the stairs and hatches in dirty silver.


In Maelstrom's Edge news, the Kickstarter ended with just over 70K USD.  This unlocked all of their stretch goals.  Now, the long wait until fulfillment begins.  They're targeting December of this year.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Planning

This has been sort of a rough week.  I haven't really had as much hobby time as I normally do, and what time I did have was spent mainly on organizing and cleaning.  As such, I don't really have anything to show you today.

My 'next up' list has a number of different items on it.

1. I'd like to finish my Skitarii forces.  They're all primed and based at this point.
2. I'd also like to keep working on my Necrons.  I have 6 Wraiths, an Annihilation Barge and two ICs ready to go...  sprayed with boltgun metal and everything.

I'll definitely make some progress over the next day or two and I promise you'll see honest to god hobby pictures on Friday.

Until then...


Monday, June 1, 2015

Plasma Obliterator, Mostly Painted

I'm following the paint scheme for the Fortress of Redemption that was presented in the US White Dwarf #359.  It's most dry brushing.  In retrospect, it probably works better when there isn't as much detailing on a model.  Live and learn.  I still have some work to do.  I'm going to makes some of the trim gold so that the model stands out a little more.  The grey areas need some pizzazz.




Also, it was amazing outside today.