Sick

I feel like crap.  No post today.  I still have to go to work, but might leave early.  I'll post something good next week to make up for this.

Hobby Doldrums

I'm at a weird place right now with my hobby.  This happens from time to time.  I usually know what the culprit is.

The culprit today is Necrons and the uncertainty associated with knowing a new Codex is probably only a matter of weeks away.  I have Warriors and Immortals just waiting to be worked on, but the rumor mill seems to think that these units will be moved to the new 32mm bases.  If this happens, I'll need to pick up some of those bases and re-base my units.  I know myself and I know I won't be happy if my models are on the "old" bases size.  I also love scenic bases and larger bases gives me more freedom.

I'm really hoping we see some nice new formations and detachments for the Necrons to liven things up a little.  I'm really, really hoping for something that puts Crypteks in charge of lots of Canoptek stuff.  A "Guardians of the Tomb World" type of Detachment, if you will.

In the meantime, here are a couple of random inspiration photos I found online.  If they belong to you, please let me know and I'll credit them appropriately (or take them down if you'd rather).

Lazy Weekend + a Gundam Kit

I did literally nothing this weekend.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I did literally nothing productive this weekend.  I played a game of 40k with an old friend.  That's something.

Oh man was I lazy.

The game was pretty fun.  I brought a Tau list with Shadowsun, 4 Crisis Suits, some Broadsides and a couple of Skyrays.  Mix in a ton of Kroot and it's a party.  My opponent played Nurgle Marines.  Tons of FNP, T5 dudes in Power Armour are ridiculously hard to kill.  I ended up winning 5 VP to 4 simply because I killed his Warlord and got 2 VP for doing so.

One cool thing is that I got this for Xmas...

I've never gotten a Gundam model before, so I was pretty interested to see what the models are like.  I know they make fancier (and MUCH more expensive kits).  I'm fairly certain this one is middle of the road.  Here are a couple of shots of the sprues.  I'm absolutely fascinated by the multiple colors in the single sprue.  OMG do I wish GW could figure this out.  Imagine Space Marines with blue armour, red/white helmets and white addon bits.  You'd basically have Ultramarines without having to paint them.  These Gundam models seem to be miles ahead of GW in terms of this sort of tech.  I might have to do a little more research.  For comparison to GW models, this kit was 15 USD and came with roughly the same amount of sprues/plastic as a Space Marine Rhino.  There were also two full sprues of white bits.

Multiple colors on one sprue.  What?

Detail of the color changes.

Lastly...  it comes with extra hands, so I have two spare sets for Tau Battlesuit conversions!

Extras Hands!

10,000 VIEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I honestly never thought I'd get to this point.  When I started this blog, it was for my own personal entertainment and also as a way of keeping me focused on hobby projects.

I never thought I'd hit a point where people were visiting my blog on a regular basis.  Blogger gives me all sorts of metrics and I'm seeing regular visitors from multiple countries.  It's pretty exciting.

But you don't want to hear about this.  You want to see some pretty pictures.  I decided to spotlight my favorite paint job of 2014.  I feel like this model really shows off some improvements to my cloth, skin and fine details techniques.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  I'm not sure I could have painted it a couple of years ago.

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor - My Favorite Paint Job of 2014 (that I painted!)

I've got a couple of projects coming up for 2015.

In no particular order, there are...

1. Paint MOAR Necrons
2. Make myself a fancy, leatherbound Necron/Tau Codex like I made for my friend for Xmas
3. Acquire, Convert and Paint an Imperial Knight.  These models are just too cool.  I kind of want to make it Tau themed to go with my Tau army.

Also, and this isn't Hobby related, I've decided to go Vegan for the entirety of 2015.  I'm the sort of guy who can eat his way through a 5 lb container of cheese ballz in 2 days, so this is a pretty major life change.  I did a month once as a challenge and the health benefits were amazing.  I only mention this because you may see me post occasionally about it as I hit major milestones in terms of weeks/months or in terms of weight loss.  Wish me luck!

Now on to 2105!

Christmas Surprise Project! - Custom Ork/Astra Militarum codex

Hello all!

I've been working on this for quite some time and I'm happy to finally be able to post pictures.  My buddy Steve plays Orks and 'Umies...  er... Astra Militarum.  I decided that I wanted to make something nice for him for Christmas since he routinely puts up with my nonsense.

Enter...  the fancy, shmancy Kustom Kodex!

I went back and forth on what to include and how to make this work, but finally decided to use an Arc System notebook from Staples.  I picked one up in green leather and got to work.

The cover had to be appropriately Orky, so I cut and glued some plasticard.  I weathered it, but actually decided to scale back a bit on the dripping, so I washed a bit of it off.  I didn't take a pic though!  So, know that there is less dripping in the final product.

I also added the following...

• Codex: Orks via copy/paste/editing of the ePub files (which I bought for this project)
• Codex: Astra Militarum via the same method
• A section of Army Lists with blank paper for more lists
• A section of Painting Guides using the guides from various White Dwarf mags
• and a section of blank paper for notes

This was intended to be a Waaagh Journal of sorts and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Here are some more photos.  My intention is to make myself a Necron/Tau version next.

As you can see, it turned out pretty thick!

Zombicide Season 3

I got my Kickstarter copy of Zombicide Season 3: Rue Morgue a little early.  It wasn't supposed to come in until February.  Evidently, the warehouse was getting pretty full, so they sent out early shipments to the American backers.  I still have to wait until February to get all the various add-ons and extra backer awards, but it was nice to be able to play an early game.

My wife and I like to play board games together and as a group with friends, but I'm WAY too competitive.  To paraphrase a favorite author, if life were an elementary school run by well meaning people, my report card would say "Kris is a nice boy but doesn't play well with others."  I know this about myself.  So...  it's nice to have a cooperative game where if one person wins, everyone wins.

I've only played through the tutorial mission once, but am planning on playing through some more soon.  Here are a couple of photos of the game in action.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the game, you and your friends control a group of 6+ survivors who have to achieve different objectives.  Each turn, and also when certain game triggers occur, additional zombies spawn at certain spawn locations.  Zombies are controlled by the game.  They always move toward the loudest room and always attack anyone in the room with them.  The objective of the tutorial mission was to get all of the survivors to the helicopter in order to escape.  It was very easy, but I think the point was to learn the rules and not have a challenging game.

I'm really looking forward to the add-ons arriving in February.

Christmas Shenanigans

I wanted to post very quickly letting you all know that I still take this blog seriously, but that I just don't have much time to post today.  Christmas and it's related responsibilities are eating up all of my free time.

I did get a copy of Shield of Baal: Exteminatus, and I would expect that you will be seeing a review of the Necron parts next week.  It has some pretty cool stuff in it.  In the meantime, here are a couple of pics from the book to show some of the new style.  I particularly like the first one.

Merry Xmas!

You'll get a quality post on Friday.  I'm visiting family for the next day or two.

Reader WIP

One of my readers, Mark Griffiths, sent in some pictures of a Necron Scarab Base Work in Progress he's currently working on.  I think this is a great use of one of the Space Marine casualty models and might have to steal the idea for one of my future bases!  I really like how dynamic this looks.  It really makes you feel like these Scarabs are swarming and taking down a poor Marine.

Check out his Tumblr as http://marrrkusss.tumblr.com/. 

In other news, I should have some cool new things to show you guys in a couple of days once Christmas has passed.

Super Duper Secret Project

I have a secret project I've been working on for a couple of months now.  It's ALMOST done.  I can't wait to post some pictures.  I would have been posting WIP pics the entire time, but it's a gift and I don't want to risk the person in question checking this blog.  Since it's a Christmas gift, I'd expect to be able to post pics in a week or so.

Stay tuned for details!