The Lion's last ride in 10th

   With the new edition being released soon (as of this battle, certainly not this publishing!), we had to get a game in with the Primarch I had embarassed many moons ago and try to gain redemption to end the current 10th.  I still brought that army list, but the Lion had come with a new strategy and we were playing a different mission and setup.  That last game saw everything working in my favour, but I was a little less confident.  It is Lion El'Jonson, after all!

  Now, admittedy, I must admit that it's been so long that we played this game, so the details will certainly be lost.  But my focus won't really be about the game in this case.  I'll still include a gazillion pictures and announce the winner at the end, of course.  But I really want to talk about the experience a bit.  First- it was my son that demanded this rematch, and he's been so busy that getting a game in seemed like an old story from days long past!  That kind of excitement can be a little contagious.

  But this was more about a new routine being built.  First, there is a new game store that's actually closer to both my work and my house than the other store in town (and that one is awesome!) and it's got a small 40k group there.  The group is filled with newbies and the gaming area is totally stocked by these people.  The store focuses on Pop figures (I'm still so surprised that it's such a strong industry!) and card games (MtG keeps game stores alive- duh!), but they've started carrying some GW products and Army Painter paints.  

  The store owner, Mike, is awesome and is constantly seeking feedback and improving the store (from the outside to the inside- every week something is better!).  He's a blue-collar, like me, but wanted to do something fun and suddenly this popped up!  The gamers there are pretty friendly (there's a couple guys there that just want to be left alone, but that's to be expected) and were constantly inviting us back to play again and again, and even asking for rules advise on things they didn't quite get.  My son and I are, after all, veterans at this and breezed through the game like we always do.  It's nice to be 'the guy' for a bit...

  Beyond the new environment and peers, we also decided to play with the official 10th edition terrain rules based on mission and deployments.  My buddy at Only War gave me some terrain and I bought another set (such a good set!!!) with the templates.  We opened the tournament pack PDF and found the official layout and laid out the terrain.  It was interesting to us because we always do the 'open deployment' where we place objectives and then fill the table.  For the first time (probably ever), we set up a battlefield that all those tournie-bros use.  We were as 'official' as we could be... for the last game of 10th edition!

  We will make a point of going to the game store on Sunday mornings and becoming part of the crowd (well, I will and I hope my son finds the time but he uses the other game store more often right now).  Better, this new routine may include going to a local family bar that has 'Game Night' on Saturdays.  I alaready have everything and provide the tablemats, terrain, armies, dice, rules, and just my own enthusiasm.  This new environment, new crowd, and new edition all give me the opportunity "un-retire" from the gaming world again.  That being said, I have some other distractions and that's some more posts for later.  

  Okay, now that all the ranting is done, let's go to some pics of the battle!  I don't remember what the actual mission was (we had to use a Post-It notepad to track- I missed my whiteboard from my game room!), and I don't remember what the deployment looked like.  Sorry (this old brain ain't so sharp these days).  But here's some pics!

Word Bearers vs. Dark Angels

  By this point in the game (Round 2 or 3), the Word Bearers had built up a bunch of points and pushed the 1st Legion boyz into their own quarter.  But then the Lion showed up and mayhem beset the heretic forces.

  By the time the smoke had cleared, The Lion had killed two Daemon Princes and finished off another unit before the combined firepower of the Land Raider and the Annihilator finsihed him off.  The Dark Angels had been reduced to little more than some Terminators and scraps trying desperately to break an armoured core of hateful survivors.  The score is now lost to time, but the Lion's vengeance delivered to so many heretics was a glory to see.  Lion El'Jonson may have fallen by the end, but the toll he took was well beyond 'even'- over 700 pts so his less than 300...  Ouch!

  We had such fun and it was a joy for my son to actually get to be a part of one of our games in a store.  While I have the experience running thiousands of demo game and being part of almost a dozen tournaments (hell, even 3 times at Adepticon!!!), but he's only played me at home.  And he saw how much of a blast it can be!!!  I wonder if he remembers the score of that game...

  Keep an eye out- I'm 'bombing' my blogsite with a lot of posts right now.  You'll understand as I go throug them, but just know that 40k isn't going to be a priority for a minute...  11th edition should be interesting, even if I'm unhappy to restart the cycle.  But I have other projects too, so don't fret.  11th edition 40k is coming...

As always, Happy Gaming!

Cordelia Clean

  It only took half-a-year, but I've finally gotten all the 'starter models' done, including the couple added models to bring the game up to 'full-size'.  Finally!!!  The last one was for the Radiant faction and was definately going to be the most... colourful as this warrior wears a flying exo-suit that happens to be the kind of pink that made 80's kids lose their mind (guess what I am!).  Much like purple, pink is not one of my 'forte' colours so this was a bit daunting.   

 

  Just like all the previous models, I did the 'zenithal' style of priming with black and white, hoping to get the highlights and shadows accentuated already.  Unfortunately, this model is not great and I even had to do some putty-work to complete the upper-arm rods and constantly felt like I needed to melt and twist the model.  Once I got the primer and zenith highlight on there, this feeling settled a little.  Between the massive amount of pink and the model itself, I was not enjoying her already.  Two thin coats of Pink Horror and it was on!

  I actually found an evening with the perfect sunlight angle and decided to take pictures to work on where to place the shadow wash.  The three pics above were very, very useful in that way- allowing me to lay down a blue wash over the shaded areas and really accentuate the high-tone areas with those shadows.  Still learning...

  Now that the wash was applied, it was time to work on the most important part of any Relic Knights model- the flest!  I used the Basic Skin Tone and Light Flesh (trying out some of these Vallego 'Face Painting Kit' colours- and I loved them as always!  I tried to work it up through fades and even highlighting with white mixed in, but there just wasn't enough exposed skin to really take advantage like I wanted to.  It still came out looking good!

    Then I got to the pink.  Pink Horror plus a bit of white worked up and up until it got to the highlights that I wanted.  Ironically, the pink isn't bright as I wanted in non-natural light.  But it didn't take me long to do, so I'm not complaining.  Her uniform and glowy bits got the gray treatment (not trying to do non-metal in this case) and blue for the glow.  The wings also got a wash of Agrax Earthshade and then Stone Gray edge highlights.  Again, this was very quick and I was pretty happy so far.  

  Next was the metal grill bits and intakes, and her hair.  The same grays and white used for her uniform were used (and this time was with the non-metal technique) and the blue hair was just layered up with Royal Blue mixed with white over and over.  This is where the model was different from the unit's card.  On the card, Cordelia has long, flowing blue hair.  Instead, she's got a 'bob' on this one and that was disappointing.  Surely that was for modelling reasons!  Oh, and the lipstick was added.

  After all that finally came the big giant huge gun of hers.  Black and gray mixed to edge highlight, and then a thinner line highlight of gray ended the based black stock, and white was coated into the glowy parts to get that same effect from her uniform.  A splash of Nighhaunt Gloom and a white dot or one goes a long way to the tabletop-ready glow in only seconds.

  To finish, the model go the same blue crystals and static grass clumps as the rest of the radiant team and the base ring was painted black.  She was done!  Cordelia is very... pink.  The model isn't my favorite, but she looks a lot better with colour than I thought she would, so I'm satisfied.  Let me know what you think, especially of all the pink!

As always, Happy Hobbying!

Gitz vs. Luckyboyz

   It's a beautiful thing to see- the fires of battle in the eyes of a rookie.  When the Emprah's light can be spread to the willing, his grace is euphoria.  Um... yeah, that's all the poetry I can come up with today!  We recently got a new game store in the area, with a brand-new community and that small home-town feel when someone with passion wants to share it.  So I was able to coerce one of my buddies to go with me and try out his first game of 40k.  It was awesome for so many reasons!

  Now, I must admit that our game had a bit of a pare-down for the rules (basically no strategems or enhancements just to keep things easy), but definitely no 'Combat Patrol' silliness.  Because of the upcoming new edition, I grabbed up some Ultramarines (the "lucky boys" because they're blue, of course!) and Orks (gitz by all measures) to make a 1000 point game out of all the modernized basics.  We still did the mission objectives, terrain, deployment, and all that so that it wasn't so simple- my buddy is a gamer-at-heart and pretty smart to boot.  I wanted the full grim-dark experience and some bolters versus krumpin' deserves that!  

  It started with both armies advancing toward the objectives, but the greenskins weathered what little firepower came their way and jumped the combat squad right away to get the bashing going.  Some less-than effective shooting quickly swing the battle away from the Imperials...

  After his bodyguard was destroyed, Captain Acheron leapt in to face the Warboss one-on-one.  While the battle was epic and lasted for a while, Acheron's armour eventually failed and the boss stood victorious, taunting the Techmarine to join the fray.  

Not very lucky...

  Eventually, even the Techmarine fell, but only after dispatching the Warboss's bodyguard on the way out.  This led to the Redemptor dreadnought rounding the corner of the ruins to exact revenge, utterly annihilating the brute commander.  He then turned his attention to supporting his surviving forces against the deep-striking Deffkoptas appearing behind the lines...

  It wasn't enough, however, as the rest of the greenskins had already surrounded the final combat squad of marines with the full intention of krumpin' them with rokkits AND choppas!  With a massive gap in victory points and no forces left, the Ultramarines quit the battlefield to recover and rearm.  The Orks crushed the Imperials!

  During the game, there were so many other customers in the store coming around to watch and check out the models and terrain.  We may have even chattered a bit about armies, the upcoming rules changes in the new edition, and even a league-style tournament for all the 40k players.  The community was great and the new store is definitely and epic little treasure not far from my house.  And to see the enjoyment of my buddy after his first game?  Great time!  Even if my lucky blue-boyz weren't so lucky...

As always, Happy Gaming!!!

Alabaster Automata

 

  I've finally gotten the entire 2-player starter kit painted and it is time to paint more models and play larger games.  Because my wife likes to play the Void side, I focus on getting those painted first for her.  And the Void models, like all of the Relic Knights line that I've dealt with so far, area beautiful!  This model is of a female, getting choked by some magical chain-collar that's attached to a huge, broken sword that she's wind-surfing on.  Like, whoa!

  Admittedly, I couldn't tell what the heck was going on with this model.  The resin used to cast these definitely holds detail, but there's no artwork or even painted examples to really clarify how she's supposed to look.  So I slapped on the appropriate contrast paints where I though they should go and worked from there.  The card art helped but 'discovery' was certainly more necessary.  

  After figuring some things out, I worked on the flesh.  She had surprisingly less flesh than some of the other models in the starter forces, and that was surprise considering how much fun the geometry can be to paint and highlight (if you know what I mean).  Alabaster has an exposed rear-end, so that was something, but I'm focused on the front and top ('zenithal' concept).  

  It became very necessary, after an embarassing number of repaints for the flesh, to paint up all the leather and body-armour that she wears.  Again, the model's details are crisp, but there's so much layered leather and techy-plates that it was hard to find all the detail.  And it's all black.  I hate painting black so much.  Highlighting black can make a person go crazy and now I was having to do an embarassing amount of repaint and touch-up on both the flesh and the body armour.  After some frustration, I finally relented and abandoned those.  

  Then came the opposite experience- the purple cloth wrapped around her!  A second layer of contrast paint, then a very fast layer and highlight saw that flowing accessory done in record time and perfectly framing all the non-metal stuff.  I went from frustrated to happy in seconds.

  I absolutely adore painting non-metal metallics as it uses my old pencil-art skills from ages long gone.  I'm not great at it but I did learn from the best (RIP Wappels!) and really enjoy using my paintbrush like a pencil to 'draw' highlights and shadows.  Alabaster's chains were the first to get the quick version and then the flat of the huge blade received more attention to get that NMM silver- wash zenithal primed parts with Nuln Oil, then wash with watered-down Night Blue, glaze with Turquiose, follow-up by watering down a light gray (bluish tone if you have) to build up, and create crisp reflections and shapes with white.  It's no Giraldez, but it's good enough relative to the enjoyment.  My goodness do I enjoy non-metals sometimes!

  By now, I'm happy enough with the results, so I put the pink glow on the blade and gloves, painted the hair with Basic Skin Tone and White mix to get that platinum-blonde colour, and based her up.  She's done!  These models are so much fun to paint and trying out these new techniques makes this game rather neat.  Now back to painting!