I just thought these were funny

Upcoming Tournament

I'll be playing in a partners tournament in November.  It's going to be 1000 points each.  My partner is playing with Orks.  I think he'll be doing a 10 man Biker Nob squad with some other support elements.  I'll be using my Farsight Enclaves army with a mini-Farsight Bomb and some Riptide support.  I'm seriously considering adding in some Necrons for the Canoptek Scarabs and Spiders.  I hate the Warriors, so I need to put together and paint some Immortals before then.

I decided to Tau them up a little.  I know these photos aren't very clear, but I had pretty poor conditions in which to take them.  I used the sniper heads and added a little Tau antenna.  My plan is to paint the large armour segments in the same colour scheme as my Tau to make it look like the Tau have reverse engineered the tech and are controlling the Necrons.  I'm seriously considering a conversion for a Destroyer Lord where a Tau Earth Caste Engineer would be basically riding on his back with wires running from a controller into the back of the Lord's head.

I also primed the Riptide I've been working on.

Oh, and on a final note, I purposefully left the gaps in the Immortals shoulder armour.  My plan is to paint it like the segmented sections of Tau armour.  It'll make them fit into my army more easily.

Current selection of items on my paint tray.

Immortals!  Tau Immortals!  Taumortals?

This shot shows the antennas a little better.

A quick shot of the Riptide's cork and sand base.

Riptide

This is what I'm assembling right now.  I'll post more later.  I just wanted to get a pic up quick while I'm awake.  I was at the Renn Faire all day!

Hobby Table

The parts came!  The parts came!

I can start building the table!

I'm hoping to have it fully together this weekend.  I'll need to enlist some help, but it'll be totally worth it.

Hobby ADD and a Rant

I totally have Hobby ADD.

I just can't decide on what I want to work on.  I think this comes down to my loving Warhammer 40k.  I love the fluff.  I love the models.  I love the game.

But I don't like the play style of all the different armies.  I'm a Tau player.

When GW announced that they'd be going to a weekly release schedule, I rejoiced.  I thought to myself, "Self, this is awesome.  They'll start releasing random things for different armies.  I won't have to wait another seven years for a new Tau model."

...

They never REALLY went to a weekly release schedule.  All they did was stick more or less to one army release per month with the actual new products doled out over a 2-5 week period of time.  Sure, that allows for more releases in a year, but it give me no indication that I'll see a new Tau model between now and half a decade from now.

I would even be happy with some more Formations.  Orks and Tyranids both have 15.  Tau have 1.  It's a nice one, but it's points heavy, so if you take it, that's a defining chunk of your army list.

7th Edition introduced a new psychic phase.  Oh, maybe I can at least add something new to my army - some new capabilities.  Nope.  Tau Empire has no psykers.  One of the biggest changes to the edition and I can't participate even a little.  How hard would it have been to add "Psychic Emulation Tech" operated by an Earth Caste Engineer?  Make it a dual kit - psyker emulation and techmarine equivalent.  I mean, these ideas aren't exactly hard to come up with.  I understand that design doesn't happen overnight, but there are only so many armies.  Each one should get something (new model, new rules, new formations/dataslates) at least once every so many months.  Every week, White Dwarf should have a formation for 40k AND Fantasy that isn't for the Flavor of the Week.

What I'm getting at is that GW is extremely inconsistent.  I'm primarily a Tau player.  I want to give them money for more Tau stuff, but there are only so many Crisis suits you can buy.  I'm honestly not expecting to see another plastic Tau kit until after 2020, assuming GW is still around.

I'm REALLY, REALLY hoping whoever they hire for the new CEO decides to make some changes to how things operate.  Start listening to what people want.  Mix up your product releases.  Release fewer things, more often and for different armies.  I'm not an Orks player.  I don't want 5 consecutive release periods of Ork products.

Scout Hold

There are some rumors circulating that when the Blood Angels are released, GW will take the opportunity to update some model kits from the primary Space Marine line that need to be updated.

Now, Blood Angels could definitely benefit from plastic version of some of their HQs, but they have a pretty solid assortment of plastic kits already.  Between the Baal Predator, Sanguinary Guard, Death Company and Furioso Dread kits, they're not really missing anything.

There were some rumours a bit ago about GW having new Scout sculpts finished and ready to go, but just waiting on a good time.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that replacing the 2 $25 Scout Boxes with a $33ish 5 man new Scout Box would be a standard GW move.  As such, I'm going to put the Scout army on hold until the Blood Angels are released (theoretically soon).

What should I work on in the meantime?

These guys are looking pretty sweet to me.  I'm looking forward to the Codex because I want to see what options the Wracks and crew have for self sufficient armies.  I'm really looking for a themed army to work on.  I tend to have more fun assembling and painting when there is a theme.

Pig Iron Studios Helmets

As you can see from the below photo, I decided that my Scouts should have helmets.  Well, some of them at any rate.  I do plan on doing some Wolf Scouts with appropriately bare heads, but I generally like the ideas of helmets to go along with my Scout Armour.

The only bit of fluff I could find regarding Scout Helmets is in a Black Library short story about a Wolf Scout who is piloting his own space ship on some sort of mission.  I completely forget the name of the story, but at some point the Scout makes a comment about how he doesn't like wearing the helmet because the face plate is all glass and they tend to shatter and cut up your face.

Given this, I wanted glass faced helmets.

Sample Scouts with Glass Front Helmets

I finally found what I was looking for on the Pig Iron Studios website.  The helmets are called HD.19 System Trooper Alternative Heads and come in packs of 20 for 5 GBP.  That's around 8 dollars US for those of you who don't like doing math.  Pig Irons has a TON of different, cool looking minis and sells most of the heads separately.  The heads are made of metal, so I did have to pin them, but this definitely makes them a little cheaper than resin options.  Since there really isn't much detail, I wasn't worried about the lack of detail.

I'd definitely recommend you check out the website and give them a shot.

Pig Iron Studios HD.19 System Trooper Alternative Heads

A Storm is Brewing

A Land Speeder Storm, that is!  Har, har, har.  I crack myself up sometimes.

Seriously, though.  I did some actual painting yesterday.  I'm was going for a 70's style pleather vibe for the seats and I think I pulled it off.  I still have lots of work to do, but I'm happy with how it's looking so far.  I did realize that I need to go buy some more paints, and with my local GW store having closed...  that can be sort of a pain.

There is a gaming store on the Main Street of my local town, but it's run by sweaty neckbeards who seem almost hostile towards gamers, so I prefer not to give them any money whenever possible.  I'll probably have to make a drive to the next town over to get what I need.

Here is the latest update pic.  More to come!  If you look there, you can see my completed test Scout wearing his bitchin' Pig Iron Studios helmet.

Land Speeder Storm Work in Progress - All Base Coating is Complete, Highlighting Commences

Next I really need to work on the line highlighting, a little wear and tear battle damage and then glaze the whole thing in the yellow glaze.  Makes it pop!  Oh, and the gun isn't going to be silver.  That's a base coat.

I'm Back!!!

I'm back from the Big Apple!

Posts should recommence this week.  I've got a couple of things to post about.

The first is that I'm working on a gaming table.  The local GW store here in Delaware closed recently and I'm left with two choices.  I can either travel 45min to an hour to a store with basically no community, but a couple of gaming tables...  or I can build a table myself.

I did a little research and ended up deciding to use the same tables that Dropzone Games in Glen Burnie, MD uses.  The tables are pretty easy to work with.  You purchase a set of 4 legs for about $60 US.  You can order them from Lowes in the US or Amazon.com or wherever you can find them.  You then need to come up with a number of 2x4s and some 4'x6' plywood or MDF surfaces.  It supposedly takes about an hour to assemble once you have everything in hand.

2x4Basics Table

Once assembled, I'll put together a series of 2'x2' segments to allow me to swap out and rearrange the table.  The first set will most likely be a sort of standard wilderness table with accompanying terrain.

A Quick Upate - Land Speeder Storm

I have just a couple of seconds and a reliable connection to post what I'm working on right now.  It'll be painted using the Aurora Chapter color scheme in the Citadel How to Paint spiral bound book/dvd combo that came out a couple of years ago.

Should be fun.  I slapped a little paint on it already, but just base coat stuff.  It'll be a much brighter green when it's done.