Lest We Forget

God of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle line—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen.

Thunderwolf Delema

So I have been waiting, and waiting, and still waiting for some Thunderwolf miniatures from GW. Here we are, almost 2 years into the Space Wolf codex and I am pretty sure all we are missing from the miniature range are Thunderwolves and Fenrisian wolves. The latter is not much of a big deal, as I think you convert them pretty easily from chaos warhounds as seen here.

This came to the fore, in my mind, recently with the announcement of yet another wave of releases for the Dark Eldar. Now I know that the DEldar players have waited over a decade for a new codex (although I am pretty sure that there are few people that actually bought an army when the 3rd ed. codex came out and kept them until the new one was released). And I know that 99.99% of the miniature range was remade so there are a ton of miniatures to do as opposed to the Space Wolves. I don't begrude the DEldar players anything. I just wish GW would get off their butts and give the Space Wolf Players one of the two kits we are missing to make out line complete (and for the record, I want the Thunderwolves, not the Fenrisian wolves).

Book Review: Blood of the Dragon

This is the final book in the Brunner The Bounty Hunter omnibus. This book is a bit different from the other Brunner stories but all-in-all it is very well written.

This time Brunner is in Britonnia searching for a brigand worth 2000 crowns (less 500 if he is brought back dead). The brigand has fled into the cursed city of Moussillion so Brunner seeks out some backup.

Backup comes in the form of a dwarf. As per usual. The dwarf is inserted into the story as comic relief. Every times Brunner wants him to do something dangerous, the dwarf says he will be charging Brunner extra.

This book is very well paced but the ending confused me a bit. There seemed to be a climax in sight midway through the book. You could see it was possible that Brunner could get revenge on a very old wrong, and he partially does, but as in the other C. L. Werner omnibus I read (Witch Hunter) it seems to end unfinished. Perhaps Mr. Werner is planning on coming back and revisiting Brunner, but I believe the last book was written quite a while back.

That being said, one of the best parts of the book was Brunner himself. He seemed as if he was getting soft in the middle of the book, but at the end, he shows his true colors and reconfirms that he truly is a bastard.

I give this three severed brigand heads out of five.

Men in Blue

So I'm continuing my "chapter of the month project" with the Crimson Fists. I actually painted up my test model a looooooooooooooooon time ago. The rest have waiting while I went through my "blah" phase. 

Well its over and as you may have noticed with my Iron Hands and Flesh Tearers, I have been kinda busy (for me at least). With that in mind, and keeping in mind a special announcement I want to make in the coming weeks, I have decided to paint Pedro the same time I paint the regular dudes. With that done, here is the 50% point of my Crimson Fists.

Audio Book Review: Garro: Legion of One.

The latest in the Garro audio short stories, Garro: Legion of One is a pretty damn good tale. Nathanial Garro, former Death Guard, is still on a quest bestowed upon him by Macador the Sigillite. He is gathering others like him. Outcasts from both loyal an traitor legions to join what will be come (one would assume) the Inquisition.

In this book they have traveled to where it all began, Isstvan III. He is on a dead world searching for another to join their group, but he is not alone. He has the Ultramarines Librarian, and the World Eater.

8 Foot of Chainsword Lovin'!

So I finished up my Gabriel Seth. I debated before on my misinterptation of the Flesh Tearers paint scheme. I decided to keep Gabe (me and him are close like that) in the chapter colors, but after hearing the nice couple of comments I received (thanks guys), I decided that the marines I painted earlier are now part of the Flesh Tearers 4th Company, and that company has black arms.

Well to tell the truth, I don't even know if the Flesh Tearers follow the Index Astartes closely enough to have companies, or whether they have enough feet on the ground to field four companies, but in my world, those five guys are a combat squad from the 4th Company. So there.

The Hat Trick of Ass-Hattery

You gotta hand it to GW, when they screw you, they really do it good and proper. On the heels of my ill-timed post yesterday, GW made a slew of announcements.

First, the rumor was put to rest, metals are a thing of the past! Well sorta I guess. People are saying that Citadel Finecast miniatures will be a mixture of metal and resin. I certainly hope not. I think anyone who has tried to put together the old metal/plastic devastators knows the joy of how much they suck (that sentence makes perfect sense to me).

Get ‘em While They’re Hot.

So there has been quite a hubbub about retailers not being able to stock metal miniatures. This has got a lot of people thinking that GW is getting rid of all of their metal miniatures. People site the rising cost of tin as a factor. Tin is a major component (from what understand) of the “white-metal” that GW currently uses to make their metal miniatures.

This really seems odd to me. It has got to cost them a bit of money to make the models for all of those beautiful Dark Eldar miniatures, and now they are on the list of unavailable miniatures. There are also those new Grey Knights HQs (and even a monkey) made of metal. So that makes me wonder if this is real or not.

Then Friday morning, I get my newsletter from Mini War Gaming (you should check them out) and they offer a different scenario. They suggest that maybe GW is going to repackage their blisters (they are kinda flimsy when compared to the competition) and they are trying to clear out stocks of the old blisters before they start sending out the new ones.

This sounds much more reasonable to me. Which probably means that it is unacceptable from GW’s point of view.

With that in mind, I have started buying some of the metal minis that I think are cool. The first ones that I have picked up are the Black Templar’s Emperor’s Champion and Chaplain Grimaldus with his posse of servitors.

Book Review: Fall of Damnos

So I'm a pretty big fan of the Space Marines Battles series. The latest offering from the Black Library is the Fall of Damnos by Nick Kyme. 

I have been having a hard time with some of Mr. Kyme's books. I read both of his Dwarf books pretty easily, but the Salamanders books are foiling me at the moment. I can't put my finger on it, but they are just hard for me to get through.

Fall of Damnos is different. It is an excellent book if for no other reason than I firmly believe this gives us some deep spoilers into the upcoming Necron Codex.

Much like many of the 40k novels that deal with the Necrons, some miners disturb a Necron tomb, and all hell breaks loose. Same thing on Damnos. Before the Ultramarines can get there to help out, the planet is completely overrun except for one city near the southern pole.

Well Crap...

So here I got all ready to do a post about how GW had screwed up their Gabriel Seth miniature. I thought they had forgot to paint the arms on the mini black. Then as I'm getting everything ready to go for the post, pics are in place I'm finding pics from the web where other people had painted the arms on their Seth mini wrong. Then I noticed that it wasn't the rest of the world that got it wrong, it was me.

What I did is to paint the arms on my Flesh Tearers black when they are supposed to be red.

Well crap. I am really pleased with the way they look, so they'll be staying black. Oh well.

What I'm wondering now is if I should paint Seth's arms red or black. I am leaning towards red, but I'm not sure.

Anywho, until next time.

Crimson Tide

This has nothing to do with the University of Alabama. This is the completion of my Flesh Tearers. I think they turned out very nicely. The Baal Red wash really darkened up the Blood Red which I originally thought was too bright.

Disappointment: Hammer and Bolter - Issue 2 Review

So hot off of finish the first issue of Hammer and Bolter, I wanted to download another ebook and I figured I'd get the second issue of H&B.

Wow was I under-whelmed. The first issue weighed in at a hefty 219 pages, this issue, 85. That is almost a 62% reduction.

Up first is a Time of Legends, elf story by Gav Thorpe. Not a bad story, I am having a bit of trouble getting through Shadow King at the moment. I really liked Malekith, but I am having trouble getting through and elf story without him in it.

Next up is a Steve Parker, Deathwatch story. Which is the same story that is in, Victories of the Space Marines. I guess this isn't terrible if you had downloaded H&B when it first came out as you would have had this story five months before Victories of the Space Marines was published. What I am interested is knowing is whether all of the short stories in VotSM will appear in H&B. Getting the stories early would make H&B much more with while.

Audio Book Review: Slayer of the Storm God

Here is the next of the Black Library audio books that I have taken a listen to. This is Gotrek and Felix story. One thing I found out is that Gotrek is not pronounced "Go-Trek" it is pronounced "Got-rek". Just a funny little thing.

Well this story takes place after one of the books I haven't read yet (the last one being Manslayer) and Gotrek and Felix are in Marienburg with Max Schrieber and someone I haven't heard of before. They are waiting for a boat to take them down the Riek river to Altdorf when (I know you will find this hard to believe) but adventure finds them! This time Gotrek has thrown himself up against a full fledged god! OK, well the avatar of a god, but pretty scary none-the-less.

The is a very nice short story and goes very well with the way that Nathan Long has been writing the Dynamic Duo, but I have got to say that the way the reader, Danny Webb does his job is what makes this story worth while. There were times, when he was reading some of the action scenes, where I was holding my breath (no, really, I was!).

So all-in-all a very good story to sit and paint to. I give this story four severed sea-god tentacles, out of five. OK, sea-god-avatars' tentacles.

Re-seeing Red

So last time, I was not 100% pleased with the tone of red I had for my Flesh Tearers. I went ahead and washed them with Baal Red and I think I like the way they turned out. I went ahead and painted up one of the five to make sure I really like it, and I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out.