Chooser of the Slain Dilemma

So in the last Space Wolf codex, the Chooser of the Slain was a piece of wargear that a Rune Priest could take. It counted as an additional CCW and prevented people from infiltrating near the Rune Priest. I made a Chooser for my Space Pups when I went to BoLScon. A friend of mine gave me a falcon from some WHFB empire set, and I turned it into a cyber-falcon.

Ultra-meh-rines: The Movie

So they have released a "so-called" trailer of the upcoming Ultramarines movie. The CGI bits of the trailer aren't too bad, but the fact that about 10 seconds of the 96 second trailer actually shows the CGI was disappointing to me.

I'm really excited about the voice actors they have, but I just don't like the fact the Space Marines look like my 97 year old grandpa on a bad day. I know that the Marines are supposed to be hundreds of years old, but I have never seen art from GW that shows a marine as geriatric as the ones on this trailer.

That being said, I'm sure I'll be pre-ordering the move, and I'll be watching it 10 times the first week.

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Poop on a Stick!

So last time I finished up my Grey Hunters. And for this week I was planning on getting my Blood Claws up to my new standard. Then I opened my Battlefoam case and realized that I have a TON of Blood Claws to finish up; six from one squad, four from another, and worst of all, I have another 5 dudes that I have to do from the ground up!

Before and After

So I initially painted my Space Wolves to go to BoLScon (now War Games Con). I painted most of 20 Grey Hunters, 25 Blood Claws, 2 Land Raiders, a Rune Priest, Dreadnought, 2 Wolf Guard and a Wolf Guard Battle Leader in about 2 months (pretty friggin fast for me.) My goal was to get to "table-top quality," and I think I did that.

So now, a year later, I am revisiting my painted Space Pups and setting the bar a little higher with their paint. I call in improved table-top quality! So I have highlighted the armor and bolt guns. The skin and armor got washes (different colors of course) and some basic clean-up of the painting all around.

I still haven't 100% decided what I am going to do with my right shoulder pads, so for these guys I have left them as-is.

So here is the before...

Rune Priest Plus More!

Well getting back into the swing of working has been tough. I actually finished these two models before the weekend was over, but I haven't really had the time to do anything since then.

I finished the Rune Priest and a ghetto-bashed missile launcher that came from scavenged parts.

I have six plasma pistol dudes sitting on my bench, but they just look too daunting to contemplate doing at this time. I think I may look into do a second pass at some of my Grey Hunters or Blood Claws left over from BoLScon last year, although I doubt I will have the energy to get to them before the weekend. Here's hoping.

Review: Nemesis

James Swallow seems to be a hit a miss author for me. I don't really care for many of his Blood Angles books, but I really enjoyed Flight of the Eisenstein. I believe that Mr. Swallow should stick with the Horus Heresy novels because Nemesis is a very good read.

The book feels like part detective novel and part Dirty Dozen. There is a serial killer that is being tracked down by local law enforcement on a sleepy little world that has largely untouched by the heresy. We also see the an execution force put together by all of the different sects or "clades" of assassins on Terra. These killers are sent to kill the Warmaster and stop his insurrection before it can continue any further.

Slooooooooooooow Down!

Well I started back to work on Wednesday afternoon and boy, its weird how tired I can get with just two and a half days of work! Thankfully I got most of my painting I wanted to get done before Wednesday and I was able to finish up the rest this morning. I anticipate a huge slow down once school starts, but once I get my teaching legs back, I hope to speed up again.

Anywho, here are the two Grey Hunters with power weapons I got done. I really like the fact that I have a power mace. It came off of the Dark Angles sprue, and I think its pretty unique. I already had a compliment on it, unpainted, at the Kill Team battle a couple of weeks ago.

Weekend Update

So it was a busy weekend of painting. I finished up my Long Fang Pack Leaders. I really like these guys mainly because I think I'm being clever with their backpacks. I like the skulls on top of the backpacks, they have a couple of wires and a augmetic eye. I am calling them the signum for the units. I don't care if the signum doesn't do anything anymore, I think it looks nifty! Plus this makes them look unique rather than just random dudes with bolt pistol and chain sword. I don't really expect to be taking anything other than a BP and CS as I expect my Long Fangs to be in the backfield raining missile-y death from range, and if someone outflanks into them, they are probably dead before they get to shoot.

Review: Crossfire

So this is the first of Matt Farrer's Arbitor Calpurnia series. In it we get to see an aspect of the Imperium not seen too much, one of the Adeptus Arbites. Arbitor Calpurnia has been moved to a new planet and pretty much as soon as she sets foot on the plant there is an attempt made on her life! The rest of the book follows her investigation.

This book isn't exactly what I was expecting. I was hoping for a detective story, but this book isn't like that which I dislike, but nevertheless it is a good read.

The book was a bit confusing to me in some places and while there where some good action, Calpurnia seemed to spend much of the book standing behind a group of arbites with riot shields.

This wouldn't be my first choice for a 40k book, but it isn't bad. I give it 3 shock mauls to the face out of 5!

Space Wolf Kill Team

Well I found out at noon that one of the FLGS is hosting a kill team event this evening at about 5pm. So I decided to pack up 500 points of space Wolves and give it a try.

I decided to try a Wolf Priest because I figured I can "prefer enemy" on infantry and be pretty safe seeing as we are only allowed an HQ and 2 Troops. So this kicked me in the ass to finish up my Ulrik the Slayer.

Tutorial: Quick and Easy Hair Part 1

Now I don't claim to be a very good painter, but after re-capitating all of my Space Wolves, I have a lot of hair that I have to paint. Now I got some practice painting my Dwarfs and I have, in my humble opinion, come up with a down and dirty way to paint a number of different hair colors.

Everyone started with just a black primer.

Mini-Update: Long Fang Pack Leader

So I finished my first Long Fang Pack Leader. I wasn't sure I was going to do him, so I wanted one fully completed before I did the other two.

Mathhammer: Coldblooded Leadership

So this week I was taking a look at coldblooded leadership. With this rule, whenever you take a leadership, you roll three dice and take the lowest two. Not surprising, this makes passing the leadership rolls much easier, but how much easier?

This was actually difficult for me to figure out with mathematics. The problem being, I can't just count up how many different ways there are for a person to roll a 6 on three d6 (33 different ways, fyi) but I had to count and differentiate the different rolls because 1,2,5 and 3,1,5 and 5,1,6 and 6,2,4 will all be the equivalent of a leadership roll of 6. I tried several different ways to make this easier on myself and I found that it was just a simple matter of listing out all 216 different ways you can roll three d6. Then I just went through them and figured out the sum of the two lowest dice.

WHFB 8th FAQ Checker from North West Warriors!

It may boggle the mind to find out that GW is actually putting out FAQs in a timely manner (but really, how long can we expect it to continue?) but they have already updated all of the army books and the main rule book within a very short span of time. Plus many of the army books have already had their new 8th ed. FAQs updated since the initial release.

Some inventive gentleman in England has created a script that scans the GW site for new FAQs and sends out an email to anyone that subscribes to his email list.

Jump on over to the North West Warriors forums to check it out!

War Games Con Weekend Wrap Up

So I took part in War Games Con's first working sessions and I had such a blast I don't even know where to begin!

I didn't play in the "couples" tournament because a) I'm a pussy and b) once I heard that Dave Taylor was doing a number of workshops I had a nerdgasm!

I walked around the hall quite a few times and it was very busy. There was the 40k and WHFB couples tournament a well as Flames of War and Warmachine Tournaments on the first day and then the WHFB and 40k singles tournaments on Saturday and Sunday along with three narrative Appoc battles.