A Hint of Apocalypse...

I picked up the latest Apocalypse rule book and has been reading it ever since, I must admit based on my pass experience on Apocalypse games my stance on it was even though I have great appreciation such projects it was very unlikely I will get into another Apocalypse game very soon.

That assumption was soon overturned as I went deeper into the book, GW's new approach of simplicity and added benefits of being fluffy have actually tempted me again to venture into the madness of massive battles.

The way I see it Apocalypse greatest appeal is also its undoing, impressive great battles is one thing, taking over 2 hours to run a single turn is in a way a madness on to itself. So my way to go about this is to get the best of both worlds... essentially turning Apocalypse game into a controlled beast. Yes to massive battles, yes to super heavies, yes to screw the FOC but no to whole day playing, that is simply too mortifying. In fact 4 hours should be maximum time for my taste to run what is essentially a mini Apocalypse, I have seen how players became zombified after more than 7 hours of dice rolling and to be frank it was not a pretty sight nor was the game in my opinion, "ënjoyable" any more.

So how should we go about this? Well we will see...

More Members Joining the Venerable Club

It could be because I recently bought the latest Apocalypse rule book or it could be also of a TV series which inspired me a bit anyway I am turning into over drive mode for modelling and finishing two dreadnoughts I had in stock for some time.

 A good old GW plastic venerable dreadnought and a resin Forge World Chaplain Dreadnought which I snipped from Ebay a long while back. I started on the afternoon and managed to assembled and primed both dreads and had the Chaplain dreadnought done to about 85%, not too shabby for a day's work.

Inferno canon... the ultimate reason to quit smoking

Also recently done, the chief Librarian of Ultramarine himself, clocking at a ridiculous point cost at the current codex I doubt he will see a battle field any time soon, but then again there is always the chance of Apocalypse...

Getting the Imperial Eagle Wing onto Your Vendetta / Valkyrie

Yes I ran a squadron of vendettas on some of my lists, their frequent appearance demand that I add some spice to their otherwise dull appearance ( for I "painted" them in... ahem, black) so having some free time on hand I finally decide it is time to get my butt on working on their "winged" look.

While process seems straight forward enough I have no doubt some of you can benefit from my experience while working on it, not to mention the free template.

First, trace a wing.

Then scan the tracing result.

Working in Adobe Illustrator, digitize the tracing. 

The Imperial logo is something I have traced a long while back, now it comes in handy.

Remove excess components.

Do a mirror replication.

Print the result onto sticker and cut them out carefully, use the nuts and bolts
on the wing as cue on making sure both wings are parallel in height
... last thing you want is a pair of off balance wings.

After careful masking spray the color you want for the wings

How painfully you mask your wings will determine the quality of the final result.
Stickers quality will also come into play, it is up to you to experiment.

The final result on the bird, by using only cheap spray and run the mill sticker,
it is a result I can live with... the only question left is how much time will I be
willing to invest on the endless touch up/weathering.

Now it goes without saying of course you can achieve much much better result by using professional usage masking film and/or airbrush but the whole point of this is to provide folks who are without such hardware to pimp their war birds with common items  :D

You can download the template >>HERE<<

Pimp My Inquisitorial Ride

The lazy assembly of Grey Knight stuff continues. This is an experimental painting which started by spraying the rhino in base coat silver, and I made a grave mistake of using one with a smooth finishing ( Or do all silver spray come like that? That itself will be another subject worthy of inquisition...)

Also note the kit bashed stronos turret with bits from Aegis defence line. The end result is acceptable but the overall increase in center of gravity for the turret means unless it is tight fitted it will fall off given the slightest chance to do so, a small price for overall swag level increment.

The Throne of Judgement Painting done, for now

I must say I am a slow to warm up person, while a lot of people in my gaming group are jumping on to the Greater Good wagon only now I am slowly gathering my Inquisition force N years after the codex release date. This slow reaction to  "hot cheese" might be a sign of inner fundamental shift from looking at what to field to how to look good while fielding stuff... or simply could be sign of age.

Triple barrel multi melta, what is not to love about it?

Kamarazov and his band of misfits.

Warrior henchmen with assault weapons, on the left is a kit bashed storm bolter dude, middle guy from the old metal storm trooper box who will almost never find an employment in the elite unit anyway.

Interceptor squad.. yes I broke off one of the personal teleporter back packs antenna.
  >.<

Painting The Throne of Judgement

While working on the throne, I began to understand why Cheng vowed to ban fine cast. This stuff feels like resin but does not react in the same way to super and plastic glue, the whole experience felt... weird. To add insult to injury, upon close up inspection certain details / connecting parts just don't live up to the "fine cast" status they claimed nor does it felt justified the for the price they demand.

My verdict for fine cast? While it is "fine" per say but expect less than what is promised by the GW promotional text. Anyway I just got a new macro lens for my brother's DSL and wasted no time in documenting the painting effort.

Primed and ready for paint!

Flanked by standard GK rifle dreads

Phase one painting complete, a few more hours into the details, details, details into this bad boy and he should be ready for battle.

The Woes of Power Armor

Source:http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1339/01/1339015399665.jpg

Been somewhat back into 40king loosely time to time. However something been observing on my own games and other people games.

I don’t mean that power armor is bad it’s just the expectation for it doesn’t match its capabilities. In a probability wise the Power Armor is really good. We are looking at a 66% chance of success each save which is good.

However in reality is a different story. For those who in the hobby for quite a while know how mess up dice rolls can do. So while overall odds are good. Power Armor have low tolerance for “bad rolls” or unexpected losses.

An example would be Wong idea of using Cultist as benchmark. So let say a 5 men space marine squad is around 90 points. (no upgrades, nothing) . So each cultist is like 4 points each. So for price of 5 Space Marine you can have roughly 20 cultist.

So now both squad takes fire from 3 wound from bolter round.  On paper the Space Marine would only lose 1 man at average and obviously the cultist would lose 3 guys right off. However in game there a chance that space marine squad would fail all their save and lose 3 guys. As for the cultist, losing 3 guys is already expected and if by some chance the squad had cover. Any saves that it make is already a bonus

People can argue saying that those Adeptus Astartes can withstand flamer and autocannon round.  Which yes that true but experience player won’t leave their horde army clump up or out in open to allow their squad to be easily slaughter. Also these are things that player can anticipate and control as mention above. While the Astartes can take less heed than their horde counterpart but still binded a chance that something can go horribly wrong.

Edit: Here a video of relevant content.

Angry People Squad One of... Many

The first of many to come, I did not paint up the flamer guy as I do not plan to field them.
Am looking for a way to balance up details / look / time taken ratio for these bunch of angry people... least I find myself forever in painting as I have at least 51 more to go.

Also note to self in trying to get better photos in future for "human" size mini as I discovered their smaller size did some what make it harder to get a better picture.

Angry people... and human limits

Of the dozen of games I had played with the my horde of cultists so far one thing became abundantly clear: these fellas has few times the staying power compared to power armored fellas except when faced with extreme weaponry that are designed to clear dug in infantries ( e.g heavy incinerator ).

I tried my best trying to flood the opponents with them (infiltrating them and attaching Chaos Lord to make them fearless, etc) but being mere humans armed with autoguns they can only go so far in the relentless meat grinder. None the less these desperados has earned my respect for their staying power VS cost ratio.

Next up a daunting task: painting them up and having a system to have them seamlessly merging into squads.

CSM Chosen Squad One done

These guys... despite how bad @ss they look they never did survive well into the later stage of any games I have had with them. Their mean looks plus the big guns they carry have yet to fail on attracting fire power to them. Power armour being power armour they usually go down like rag dolls after delivering their salvo on to their sorry target.

Chaos Rising -- as cheesy as it sounds

I have since had 3 games with my WIP chaos army with one theme in mind -- hordes of angry people under the command of even angrier people. One of the game was chronicled by the meticulous Cheng in his blog.

Other than the part of needing to further thinking on figuring out how to have the opponent staying put while a sea of cultists flooded them.. I am quite happy at the army's performance. A little bit more play test and tweaking with the list and it should stand firm to all but the cheesiest list out there.

But to win is not the primary reason I started the chaos army, I started it because of the only logical reason to do so... an excuse to field tonnes of angry people, under the command of even angrier people wearing awesome ornated power armor.

There the angry lead by the angrier will charge down the field, shouting, cursing, shooting and basically  messing the whole place up... let the table burn!

Anyway lets have at look at the WIPs. With the Dark Vengeance set one have access to some of the most awesome looking power armoured guys to date, naturally I resorted to attempt using the models from there to make up my army.Following my old habit of cloning unique codex characters with kit bash model here I have a clone of Hurion, guess I will name him "Helion Dark Hearts" for simplicity sake, below is the said fella at about 80% into painting progress.

He carries this HUGE chaos symbol on his back
so no one is confused who is in charge down there. 

One difficult decision I had to face is choosing between using the standard CSM box marines for my chosen or use the converted Dark Vengeance chosen. Problem being while the DV chosen totally out leagued the standard plastic box counter parts in terms of the sheer overall power armor feel, their biggest hurdle being the dreaded single pose problem -- and I have to field 8 of these guys!

After some back and forth deciding on this, for my personal reference I would rather suffer the single pose issue than the other, so seven more clones would be on their way... 

See the blue guy? He is like totalling out of place amongst the other dudes... 
and he is the best dressed dude from his box!.

40k Cookies 1.5

As shown in the earlier post I salvaged the damaged cookies, refit, re-primed and painted them together with a batch of 3 that were made half way last time for cookies batch 1.5. 

This time taking some excellent advice on how to paint a proper crater from this excellent tutorial.  I am quite happy with the end result, let us see how long will this batch can survive in the grim dark future.

Primed and left under the brutal sun, batch 1.5 is coming along fine

No cutting corners this time,. primed and painted for consistency 

An Imperial Fist guarding a rhino wreckage, little did he know he costs more than 
1/3 of the ill fated vehicle

Cookies for the Grim Dark future

The explosion ripped the rhino  apart and exposed the Oreo cream beneath the earth

If you have ever been to Comics Mart Midvalley for a game of 40k, it is common to hear players asking for a "cookie" when yet another random vehicle exploded to the hostile war zone of the dark grim future.

The term cookie is the nickname for the DIY craters I made a long time ago when I was still fresh to the hobby and was addressing the need for craters when vehicles succumbed to hostile fire. It fact someone once said the cookies were one of the few perks of playing in Comics Mart as most other hobby outlets are ill equipped with such commodities.

The common substitute for the crater for other outlets are the infamous GW moon scape crater but these have some drawbacks in as 1) their size being uneven 2) being genuine GW item; i.e. expensive, most place does not provide them in sufficient numbers 3) Mind boggling as it is, models do not stand well on them.

As the Keeper of Cookies in Comics Mart I have noted the abusive nature of stuff being handled on the table top has literally obliterated some of the cookies over the years. While the number of cookies in the shop remained at a healthy level at the time this is posted the hobbyist in me has already been itching for the making of cookies batch 2.0 with the hobby knowledge I acquired these few years.

Megatron, the cookies were for 40k! 

Of all the hobby centers / outlets I have been to the terrain of one place stood out above the rest: Legio Malaysia. The pieces of terrains there by quality and material are made of ... "sterner stuff", as Optimus Prime would approve. I will try to emulate my batch of cookies 2.0 with that kind of standard in mind.

Emperor willing, hopefully I will have the first batch of cookies 2.0 done during the coming long CNY holidays.

New Approach to 40k 6th Edition

After a devastating recent encounter with a Dark Eldar army, I was convinced on 2 things on 6th edition: 1) Close combat is a last resort measure; the combination of overwatch, random charge distance and the added extra dimension of flyers rendered the traditional close combat death stars too rigid for the modern battlefield. 2) Multiple small units with some core elements is the way to go... and you need to pick your units very carefully. 

A sign of modern time, any unit you inducted into your list should have dual capabilities unless they are really really dirt cheap. Stagnant and underutilized resources are the great pit falls of any 40k army. A great example would be a 5 men tactical marine squad dedicated to capping objective. Just to give you an idea for the same points you could get a scout sniper team with rocket launcher who could  lend some fire support while they are capping or 10 men IG veterans with 2 melta guns who are more capable of earning back their keeps.

So there you have it, I am concluding this post with my newly finished painted storm trooper squad with dual role: 1) Strategic deep strike to take out vital target 2) If option 1 proves too suicidal or futile, go deep behind enemy line for line breaker point.

2 pistols, Yipikaye Mother f**ker!

Angry people are angry

My new parcel arrived, and out came the angry masses, for some reason I really like the idea of angry mobs rolling across table with their guns blazing, chanting blasphemous curses as they go and making a mess.

Knowing myself this pet project will take a long time before it can hit the table, but that is OK. Imperium has endured for ten thousand years, a little bit more wait wont make a difference.

Project Ultramar: Core Elements Done

It has been a long time since I posted anything.

Between the paragon wars and daily grinding, there is no denying personally the 40k hobby for me is in a low tide as do things that goes around the cycles in life as I found myself slowly drifting from a game player to a hobbyist, meaning I became more concern of WYSIWYG-ness of my army rather then how "optimised" my army list is.

Also hard lessons learned from the relentless battlefield has taught me how ridiculous was my obsessions of hoarding some minis like tactical marines, for any person who field more then 2 squads of these over glorified over cost good-for-nothing power armoured boys deserves to have their own bottoms handed to them in silver platter.

Back to the Project Ultramar, the core elements has been (finally) done after I did a threw my hat over the fence bet, it was worth it.All that is left to do are the tertiary details like gun holes.

Vanilla Goodness, did the far right grenade guy to remind myself you can throw grenade in 6th ed 

Codex sanctioned standard ride

The Hammer boys

God hammer Pattern smurf death box

Group Photo with the Grand Duke of Talassar himself