It's done!!!

It took many, many long hours of painting.  It soaked up many, many days worth of time.  In fact, this project took so long that I've sorely neglected a far more serious matter that I must now shift my attention to.  But anyone who's ever studied business management knows the difference between 'urgency' and 'importance', and this was urgent.

But it's done.  I have finally finished.  I took two days off over the last two weeks just to give my back and my arthritis-ridden fingers a break, and it was worth it.  I finished Sunday night and actually enjoyed a game last night.  It was my reward to myself, and well-deserved (especially considering I haven't even played a game at the shop in weeks now).  But I'll get to that game later.  For now, I want to show off the completion of everything I've been working on.  This is just as much for bragging purpose as it is proof to the rest of the team that is so desperately depending on me.

In case you haven't been keeping up with the blog, I'll to recap for you.  For the last many weeks, I've been frantically working on completing my Word Bearers army.  This army is for the Adepticon Team Tournament, an event that I can't go to because of that 'serious' matter I'm supposed to be working on.  So I had to get the army done even faster and then send it out priority so my team-mates could hand it to my replacement.  This morning saw the box get shipped off.  That's it!  You should be all caught up now.  And now for the good stuff:

Here's the army list again:

1000 point Adepticon Army- Word Bearers Chaos Marines

HQ-  1st Chaplain Erebus (counts as Huron Blackheart)  160
TROOP-  10 Chaos Marines, Power Fist and Plasma Pistol, 2 Plasma guns, Veterans of the Long War  220
TROOP-  20 Cultists, Shotgun, Flamer  97
TROOP-  25 Cultists, Shotgun, 24 Autoguns  136
ELITE-  5 Terminators, twin Lightning Claws, 3 bolter/melta-guns, Reaper Autocannon, 2 Power Fists, 2 Chainfists, Veterans of the Long War  272
HEAVY-  5 Havocs, 4 Autocannons  115


And here's the models:

The whole army, in all its glory.  Note that the display board is not the final one, it's just a random board I have laying around and use just for pictures.  The real display will be much nicer.

First Chaplain Erebus, and his trusty Daemonic sidekick...

The Terminators... of DOOM!

What's a Word Bearers army without Word Bearers?

Erebus ablative wounds, er, bodyguard.

Another unit of distraction, er, Cultists.

And, of course, some guns...

 Anyone going to Adepticon knows that you must bring an objective marker.  My army, being based off the Battle for Calth represented in "Know No Fear", would be trying to destroy every part of that Master World.  And this column is asking for it...

Wait, what's going on there?

Even a Daemon has to go sometimes...

And that's it!  There was a bit more work in the background as well, but it's all the boring stuff.  I had to make display placards and army lists and briefing packets for the poor newbie that has to make this force work and... yeah, a ton of boring stuff.  I'm most proud of the army.

The cool thing is that it's going to be fighting alongside Tyranids, Orks, and Necrons in the goal of destroying Ultramar.  My Word Bearers may have started the downfall of the piddly-little empire, but these other forces are certainly helping.  And hence our theme- 

Doom of Ultramar!!!

Wish my team some luck for this weekend's grand experiment.  And if you see this army on the field, please toss a shout-out on here so I know.  It'll make me proud.

Just like I'm proud to finally be done.  Whew!  Now onto more important stuff...

Lord of the Word

I have finished!!!  It's 3am and a day past my original due date, but he's done.  Again, he isn't nearly as pretty as I expected, but time is a major factor and my brush may have been a little rushed.  Whining done, let's move on to the model...

To fit the theme of the army, I decided that I would use Erebus to command the force.  In the attack on Calth, Kor Phaeron planned and executed the assault from orbit while Erebus made planetfall and set up a summoning circle while the five Chapters of the XVIIth Legion crushed the Ultramarines.  Since he was on the ground with the rest of the forces, I figured he'd be the obvious choice.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the Horus Heresy novel, "Know No Fear."

But wait, the Chaos codex has no rules or stats for Lord Erebus!  Looks like I'm using the 'counts-as' principle I hate so much.  Resigning to theme over-riding principle, I began to look at characters.  I couldn't make up my mind and eventually settled on just making my own Chaos Lord and using that.  That is until my buddy talked me into using Huron Blackheart.  I resisted, he insisted, and eventually I capitulated.  I'll do a whole blog about that decision later, but it all led to a quick conversion and frantic painting.  Here, check it out:

First Chaplain!  That is, before Chaplains started carrying Crozius'

Of course, I have to have a model to represent the Hamadrya, and I decided that I liked the small, daemonic model available in the swag-bag from Adepticon all those years ago.  Unfortunately, the lighting didn't show off the layering quite right, so I have to show both.  Like all stories, the truth is somewhere in the middle:

And both- DONE!!!

 Aaaaand with that, every model for my force is fully painted.  I still need to base everything, and I still have much work to do on objectives and terrain and army-lists and...  Damn.  And here I thought I was done...  On to more!!!

Let me know what you guys think, and Happy Hobbying yourselves!

Work fastah for the mastah!

I finally finished the second unit of Cultists!  They're not pretty, but they're done, and that's what counts at this point.  This allows me to finally move on the unit that matters- the commander!  For now, though, I am so happy to be past the balance of models for this force.  

Here's the pics of the unit.  Enjoy!

All 20 of the buggers...

Nothing says 'Come to Chaos' like a little fire...

Twin brother of the other unit's Champion, this one shall be known as 'Silver-tooth'

Again, a massive variety of FOUR poses.

Twenty down, one more to go!  Now that I'm done with all the troops, I get to focus on the good model, as well as the Objective Marker and Ultramarine casualties.  Stay tuned for those.

Happy Hobbying!

GET YOUR OWN GROUP!

I mentioned not too long ago that I had started a game group at my local comic shop.  I went in there looking to get back into collecting and noticed a whole game-room and wall of product not being used, and I just couldn't let that continue.  Plus, the LGS in the area has a very well-established, cliquish, sometimes-too-competitive game group that I didn't much appreciate.  Ah, how opportunities present themselves too easily...

After running some demo games and talking to every poor schmuck that made the mistake of standing at the GW wall, I was able to get a regularly-meeting group started.  I must note that this is an 'Army town', so keeping these guys around can be difficult, and this group certainly has its share of turnover due to Uncle Sam giving orders.  But a little work and alot of cool guys (and gals) led to the crew growing to a dozen-plus and some major-league gaming going on.

In the last few months, I started a map campaign.  Using the Mighty Imperium (and Mighty Empires as well) set, plus some rules taken from the Crusade of Fire book, we had some epic battles.  Starting at 1000 points and restricting flyers, it took only a few weeks before we had escalated up to 2k games and special characters wrecking face wherever possible.  It was glorious!  Oh, and some people learned how to play, too!

Well, this campaign finally ended this week.  The results were tallied up and winners announced.  For this post, I'm gonna show the group off as well as the map and results.  These were taken by one of the guys in the group and posted online, so I must make sure to shout out my thanks to him.  Thanks, buddy!

Otherwise, enjoy!

The Gaming Group, hard at work!

 Final Week's breakdown of battles:

Table 1- Conan's Imperial vs. Dillon's Tyranids

Table 2- Jessica's Dark Angels vs. Taylor's Tau

Table 3- Bud's Dark Angels against Dan's Chaos Marines

Table 4- Steve's Tau vs. Dallas's Space Wolves

 The Planet at war, Killeenus IV

See where I am on this list?  And I'm the 'Master'.  Makes sense, right?
Congrats to the winners, by the way!

 A couple of ridiculous moments...

Conan denied First Blood by ONE Gaunt

Cover saves negating a Defiler's cannon

 And the other game group fighting us for space... 
These are some of the Heroclix players, with our Magic: TG guy in there as well...

And there ya go!  I'm so very proud of this group!  A few months ago, this place was empty (of GW gamers, anyway).  There were no 40k battles going on, and a ton of warriors sitting unbuilt and in their boxes.  It started with three guys (who're all re-stationed or deployed now), a couple more (again, elsewhere due to orders), and eventually it added up to this and more ('duty' doesn't care about weekend gaming, so there are others, I promise).  Now I get to see a ton of smiles, smack-talk flying around, and the awesome-ness of hand-painted and converted models everywhere.  This group makes my Saturdays fun and is the biggest reason I haven't dropped out of the hobby and sold everything off.  I'm happy I didn't.  And, again, so proud.  I also need to mention that the store-owner is awesome as well.  Thanks for the space and feeding our addiction!

AVE IMPERATOR!