I Think I'm In Love

A while back, I talked about Avatars of War and the new Dwarf Berserkers that they have coming out. Well finally after a loooooooooooooong time waiting, they finally have them up for pre-order.

These models look fan-friggin-tastic. The detail on them is superb from the looks of it and I can't wait to get my grubby mitts on them.

The only bad thing is that they pre-orders don't ship until the end of May, and I really don't want to wait that long.

I don't know if I'll ever play my WHFB Dwarfs, but I think that these Berserkers will look great as Slayers. The best part is that for abolut $36  (€25) this is much cheaper than trying to get 20 slayers off of the GW site.

Seeing Red

Well after my Iron Hands and Iron Father, I decided to do go for the Flesh Tearers. Partly because they are red, and I haven't had much experience painting red, and partly because this will be a 5-man assault squad with Gabriel Seth leading them so about half as many models to finish the project.. I think Seth is one of the most dynamic poses for a Space Marine GW has produced in quite a long while. Plus the dude has an 8-foot chain sword!

So I built this squad using some bits from the Blood Angles Death Company boxed set I bought off of eBay, and random bits I had laying about. I think they look pretty good, but I did notice that one of the heads has a big "X" on it. I think I will just ignore it and not highlight it.

So here we go. I started by painting Mechrite Red over the primer. I then put on a coat of Red Gore, and then a coat of Blood Red. I'm not sure if I like it. The Blood Red looks very orange to me, where as the Red Gore seemed darker like the color of dried blood (oddly enough). I plan painting some highlights and washing one of the models to see how it looks after it is washed. If I don't like it, I'll probably go back to the Red Gore with a highlight. I only took one picture of the five guys so here it is.

Guess who got a Nook/Bolter and Hammer Review

So my wife got me a nook for my birthday this year. With all of the Black Library books coming out as ebooks, and the fact that they are all a dollar cheaper if you buy them electronically, it makes sense. With all the books I read in a year, the thing will probably pay for itself before the year is out.

So last night I broke the thing out of its box and powered it up. One odd thing about the nook is that it is recommended to be fully charged before you play with it. So I had to plug it in to the wall and wait a couple of hours.

Another odd thing my wife tells me (she has a nook as well) is that even though it uses a USB cable connected to a plug to charge it, it will only charge if it is plugged into the wall. It will not charge if it is plugged into your computer through a USB port, even though it is using the same cable.

Being a Better Gamer

I don't really know what it is about me, but I hate to lose. I hate it so much that sometimes I refuse to play a game because I may lose. In the army, we used to play a lot of spades. I got pretty good at it, but now when my wife asks if I want to go over to another couple's house to play spades, I don't really want to because my wife suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks at spades. She likes to go bowling and I don't because I suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck at it.

This has even translated to 40k. The group I got into 40k with has grown a bit stale. When they aren't complaining how over powered the Space Wolf codex is, they are being a pain in the ass to get together for a game.

This leads me to the FLGS. Last week, my wife wanted to go out to dinner on Thursday evening. While we were in Austin, I suggested we go to Dragon's Lair. This is one of the best FLGS in my area, but it also happens to be the one the BoLS guys hang out at. This is a problem for me as they tend to be a group of highly competitive guys and I really don't feel like driving 30-45 minutes into Austin on a school night to get curb stomped.

I know what I need to do. I need to cowboy up and grow a pair. I used to go to Dragon's Lair to play Battletech all the time and I got curb stomped all the time at that, so I shouldn't be upset by it. Who knows, maybe I'll make it into a BoLS battle report. Lord knows that outta do something to make people think that Wolves are not the all-powerful codex the interwebs seem to think they are.

Anywho, maybe it'll happen once school lets out and I can't use the "school night" thing as an excuse.

Podcasting: Bad Dice Podcast

I first heard of the Bad Dice Podcast from listening to Podhammer (Jeff Carrol does a very good Ben Curry impersonation btw). I really don't know what it is, but I must be drawn to the accents in my podcasts. So far, only one of the Podcasts I listen to on a regular basis have american accents.

Bad Dice (which started before Heelanhammer) is similar to Heelanhammer, but it seems to be to be more tournament oriented. One of the things I really enjoy about listening to Bad Dice and HH is often times, you get two different prospectives of the same gaming tournament. I find that interesting. There are actually times where you get to hear a battle report from the same battle from two different views. For me that is pretty cool.

Audio Book Review: Hellion Rain

Time for a pure Raven Guard story! I liked The Hunt for Voldorius but it was mainly a White Scars book. This may be the first purely Raven Guard story. Its just a shame it is only a short story.

In this story the Raven Guard are on a planet fighting Tyranids. The people of the world, in a desperate attempt to destroy the massive Tyranid Bioship in orbit, destroy Helion, of the moons of their world. The remnants of the satellite now fall upon the planet creating the name for the story.

This story is broken up into two parts. One part from the point of view of the scout squad and another from the point of view of the company Captain. Both stories are written well and both of the two main characters, the Captain and the scout Sergent are given pretty good time in the lime light.

Jumping into the Pool

Counts-as armies. People sure do seem to be up in arms about it. I think the big reason people are upset about it is due to mis-naming it, or perhaps the lack of an agreed upon definition.

I think the issue comes in with the distinction between a counts-as army and a proxy army. Doing second first, a proxy army substitutes one model for a completely different army. This past weekend, I played a buddy of mine and wanted to try something I had never played before, Logan Grimnar. But I don't own a Logan model. So I pulled out random terminator #3 and used magnates to give him a axe and a power fist. This model was a proxy. My model didn't have Logan's Storm Bolter, but it was easy enough to tell my friend that Mr. Axie-fist was Logan. With a proxy army you have this for the whole army. Space marine bikers as Thunderwolf Cavalry for example.

Wait 'Til Your (Iron) Father Gets Home

I promise, this is the last bad, heavy (Iron) handed pun I will make. OK, that one was.

One of the things I thought was really cool about the Iron Hands entry in the Index Astartes was that they had an odd mix of a Tech Marine and a Chaplin called an Iron Father. Last May my wife bought me the Techmarine Boxed set. This Techmarine was another model, like the Chaplains that I really wanted to paint up, but it didn't really look wolfie enough to go with my Space Wolves army, so this dude stat on a shelf gathering dust.

Then, last summer I came up with the idea to paint up a bunch of different chapters and the Iron Hands sprang to mind and the Techmarine fit the bill to become an Iron Father. So that led me to this guy.

Book Review: Victories of the Space Marines.

This is the third installment of the Space Marines short story anthologies. It continuations of some of the other stories, and some new ones as well.

The book starts out with Runes, a Space Wolf story by Chris Wraight. This wasn't a bad story. A little confusing to begin with, but it pulls it out in the end. Not sure I liked the animosity between the members of the squad though.

Next up is The Rewards for Tollerance, a continuation of Renegades from Heroes of the Space Marines by Gav Thorpe. I really didn't like the original story, but this one was a bit better. Putting aside how the Renegades becomes what they are, this story was enjoyable if for no other reason than the last couple of pages.

Third in line is Black Dawn a story about the Warbringers chapter. If you want to see how bad ass Space Marines are, and how a small group of them can take down an entire planet, then this is the book for you.

A Helping (Iron) Hand

So I finished up my Iron Hands squad. I realized that I was a dummy 9 months ago when I started putting this unit together. I should have given the squad a Multi-Melta or Plasma Gun and not a missile Launcher. I still need a few more for my Long Fangs and the eBay prices are crazy!

Audio Book Review: Throne of Lies

Insert obligatory rant about the price of the Black Library audio books versus the word count of the stories. 

Throne of Lies continues the tale of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords. It takes place not long after the book Soul Hunter. In this story the Night Lords are looking for a Hololith that contains the death of their Primarch.

Its been a while since I read Soul Hunter, so I don't quite remember why exactly they are looking for it, but by gum they are!

Blast from the Past

So waaaaaay back last summer, I was kinda burned out from painting Dwarfs, and didn't really want to restart my Space Wolves yet. What I really wanted was a new army. I am a space marine fanboy a heart and wanted a new space marine army, but really couldn't see buying more rhinos or razorbacks (I have like 4 of them) for a new army. But I did want to paint cool minis like some of the chaplains and librarians that GW makes, but do not transition over to Space Wolves.

So what I decided to do was to paint up a squad or so of some of the space marine chapters I thought were pretty cool. I started out with a Black Templar squad. I did way back. I also bought bits to make up some Crimson Fists, Flesh Tearers and Iron Hands squads.

I painted up the Black Templar squad complete with a chaplain, but then kinda lost interest in the rest as I was having trouble priming minis in the Texas summer heat.

Turns out it was not the heat so much as the craptacular spay primer I was using. I was trying to go cheap and I kept getting minis that looked like orange peels.

Flash forward to now. I have recently started repainting after a few months with some Khador Warjacks from Warmachine. After I finished those, I really wanted to paint up my Iron Hands. So I sprayed them with some GW primer this time and they turned out fine.

Here are some of my WiP pics of the Iron Hands. I think I'll finish painting them by the end of the week.

Book Review: Malekith

I've had this book sitting around for a loooooooooooooong time and I finally decided to get to it after I finished Blood Gorgons. I am kinda hit and miss with the Time of Legends books. I like the Sigmar books, but didn't really care for the style that Nagash was written in.

So this book is about the elves (or does GW call them elfs, like they say dwarfs?). It tells us the tale of Malekith the guy that will one day create the Dark Elves. The book begins right after the elves have finished battling daemons and their greatest mage has sacrificed himself to seal the chaos gate at the top of the world. Malekith's father, the first Phoenix King Aenarion, has died and a council of princes has come together to elect a new king.

But surely it's going to be Malekith. He is Aenarion's son. The cool one I mean, not a namby pamby priest of Asuryan like Aenarion's eldest son Morelion. He was kicking ass and taking daemon names along with his father. He's got to be a shoe in right? Well, not so much. The princes elect Bel Shanaar. And the stage is set for bad things to come.