Bang for Your Buck

We're addicts of an expensive hobby. Not only buying every miniature that our beloved overlords at games workshop concoct, but also every nuanced piece of equipment available from stylized foam transports, to the vast assortments of paints and primers currently available, and we consume them all with the enthusiasm of Charlie Sheen banging 7 gram rocks. Of course I wouldn't have it any other way but in the current climate obtaining armies of plastic crack is increasingly likely to break your bank. But I've stumbled upon a technique for the crafty and likewise patient amongst the gaming community to generally insure you're winning, duh!

I've always been drawn to imperial guard because I just love the militaristic models and fluff, I even attempted to start an IG army with the launch of the new codex a few years ago but it never really took off. As I drew up an army list to build towards I realized that the monetary commitment associated with the army would be substantial, like $500 substantial. Even with the 20% discount on GW product at my FLGS it was unrealistic that I would be able to invest that kind of cash so I did what any shameless gamer abandoning their store allegiance does, I went to ebay.


This is where I discovered something very important: people hate Catachans! Seriously, like Jar-Jar Binks hate. That's the only explanation I have for the abundance of cheap Catachans flooding ebay. A quick search turned up hundreds of auctions for the jungle-fighters (auctions that seemed to be as badly neglected as this blog). Luckily, I don't mind those roided-out 80's action hero rejects. In fact, I actually kind of like them, they're very cool and fun in a Duke Nukem kind of way but more importantly, they're cheap.

In terms of figures, I was able to get 60 catachan guardsmen, and 6 heavy weapons teams, all of which are brand new, unpainted and unassembled, for $106.45 including shipping! That would have set me back $190 before tax, retail!
But it's no secret that there are awesome deals to be found on ebay, and the variety of miniature trading sites out there now, so what am I getting at?

I remember an article not long ago from Bell of Lost Souls (I think) that covered getting deals on ebay, and dealing with the deals you were dealt. Particularly, stripping the gobs of paint off of the indistinguishable abominations you bought. Typically if you have budget eyes for the newest 'dex on the market this is where you'll end up. But for those who can contain themselves, and believe me I know how hard that can be, there is another way. When shopping for a new army, it pays to think ahead of the curve.

If we as gamers can delay our gratification, we're likely to be reap larger rewards. Look at GW's trends, and the multitude of leaked information we have surging the internet these days. It's not uncommon to have a vague idea of when an army is going to be released quite a while beforehand, utilizing this information we can play the curve, building armies of epic proportions for the price of an elite new force, and still not be completely hosed with an outdated codex for very long.

In just a quick ebay search I turned up tons of Tau on the cheap. There's currently a vendor on ebay that goes by "wizardsgames" who put up a brand new boxes of fire warriors and kroot like three times a week, which seem to sell between $6 and $12 dollars! Applying this logic to other codices likely to be updated in the near future could net you a cheap head start on the newest, shiniest GW offerings...

Otherwise, you've got a big, fun new army to occupy your hobby time for a fraction of the cost of a brand new force. And hell, a couple flayed ones I just bought would be shiny and new to me no matter how long they've been on someone else's shelf.

Tutorials

I realize our posts may be sporadic and random, and sometimes far between, so I thought of something cool that may be less of the typical "check out the cool stuff I did" and more helpful to anyone that routinely checks out the blog. Every Tuesday, I will do my absolute best to post a painting tutorial. It may not necessarily be something I made, but I will most definitely give credit where it is due, and I won't simply visit other blogs and steal their ideas. Instead, I will be cruising random forumns, and finding tutorials that most catch my eye, as well as creating tutorials that follow the projects I am doing if I think they would be beneficial. Feel free to send me an email if there is a specific tutorial you would like but can't seem to find (as long as it is painting related). I can then either try searching for it myself, find someone to make one, or make it myself! Hopefully this will lead to more days set for specific ideas in the future, and an overall more structured and reliable blog.

Also, tomorrow Jake and I will be involved in a tournament at a local game store. The point cap is 1850, he with his Khorne and me with my Blood Angels. I'm not sure what he is taking in his army, but my list is as follows:

HQ:

Dante

Elites:

Two Sanguinary Priests with jump packs and melta bombs (attatched to assault squads)

Troops:

10x Assault Marines - 2 meltas, sergeant with power fist and infernus pistol

10x Assault Marines - 2 flamers, sergeant with power fist and infernus pistol

5x Death Company - 2 power weapons, infernus pistol, power fist
-Lemartes

5x Sanguinary Guard - power fist, 2 infernus pistols, chapter banner
5x Scouts - sniper rifles, missile launcher, camo cloaks

Fast Attack:

2 Baal Predators - heavy bolters and autocannons

1st place - 90$ store credit

2nd place - 60$ store credit

3rd place - 30$ store credit

Not sure of my strategy yet, but I will be sure to give you guys a run down tomorrow night. This list got some pretty negative feedback on some forumns, people saying to take a librarian vs Dante, honor guard vs Sanguinary Guard, blah blah blah. Sometimes you have to go with what you like model wise and rules wise, and not what the latest cookie cutter list is. We'll see if I am proven right or miserably wrong tomorrow :P

Let me know what you guys think about the tutorials idea, and definitely shoot me an email if you have a tutorial request, or even one to contribute. Sorry for the wall of text and no pictures...this should make up for it

Cheers

More Nurgle!!

Over the past few weeks I have been involved in a few different projects, such as a new Blood Bowl team, and trying to finish painting my Angels Sanguine. Thought I would post up my progress on the thrid project, my Nurgle dedicated army, the Deathshroud. You can find the fluff behind the army here. Enjoy!

Cheers!

The Cunning Plan

Hello everyone! It has been almost a month since my last report and I am very happy to be back with some new material. I have spent the majority of the last couple of weeks recuperating from a very bad chest infection, which caused me to miss some serious class time right at the beginning of a new semester and I have been playing catch up ever since. This has left little hobby time. I haven't set paint to brush in almost three weeks, but fortunately, I have found the time to play my first two Blood Bowl league games at the LA Battle Bunker.

My first game I played a Dwarf team. It was a bitter slug fest with both teams bashing almost every model on every turn with very little consequence. I was able to halt his cage and steal the ball for a late touchdown in the first half. As the game progressed into the second half it was my game to lose and I set up a pretty tough cage with a few blitzers and black orcs and the game collapsed into a scrum along the left wide zone. My nerves eventually got the better of me, and I made the mistake of launching my ball carrier from the cage before the opportune moment, allowing my opponent to make a quick tackle and a very, very lucky bomb down-field to equalize. The game ended in a 1-1 stalemate. I had caused one casualty and my opponent had done zero.

The next game was against Evan's chaos team. I was unbelievably lucky the first half, breaking armor on 3/4 of my blocks every turn and was able to briskly put two points on the board and a handful of beastmen on the bench. Evan returned fire in the second half, employing a risky new onside kick-type strategy and was able to bring in one touchdown while down 3 players due to casualties!

Here's how the team looks after my first two games.

I am loving the league play so far but unfortunately, there isn't as large of a blood bowl community at the LA bunker as I had hoped. There are 6 or 7 people signed up for the league but thus far I've only actually met one other coach aside from Evan and myself. Some of the guys can't make it in on certain nights, and it has proven difficult to make contact with the other coaches because I have to have GW staff pass messages until I can actually meet them as GW can't give out their information.

This is where the cunning plan comes in. There is a fantastic local store called The Realm that carries GW product pretty close to where I live, and I have resolved to bring Blood Bowl to its tables. Not being able to hobby in the past few weeks, I have spent some time putting together a Blood Bowl collection. Through Ebay I have been able to procure one full starter box with all the gubbinz needed to play, including a Human team and another Orc team. Also, I purchased another Pitch. Evan has decided chaos doesn't really fit the play style he wanted from a BB team, and is looking into starting fresh. I offered to adopt the team and so now have 4 fully functional Blood Bowl teams, a set of templates, two sets of blocking dice, and 2 pitches.

My plan involves obtaining at least one more pitch and another set of blocking dice so that I can begin getting more people in the community involved in Blood Bowl. In the next couple of weeks I plan to frequent the open gaming night at The Realm, playing as much Blood Bowl there as possible, while also purchasing a couple more teams. I have quite a lot of painting to do now as all the teams except for my Cheez 'Eadz are unpainted. 'Ere We GO!

WIP Deathguard

Alright, don't ask how I've painted the daemonprince, as it was hours of layering random greens, browns and purples until it looked how I liked it lol. Let me know what you guys think so far. Believe it or not, the Plague Marines were based with a mix of 50/50 Catachan Green and Tentacle Pink (Valejo equivelant), then a drybrush of 1/3 Catachan Green, 1/3 Tentacle Pink, 1/3 Dehneb Stone (I think thats how its spelt 0.O ). After that, I drybrushed Rotting Flesh, did a heavy wash of Devlan Mud, and did the details. I wanted to go for a look similiar to The Cleaved, with toxic looking goop comming out of the eye sockets and face grill, as well as random parts of the armour. Have 9 done so far, need to do the Nurgle Herald from FW, another 12 Plague Marines, Two Rhinos more Rhinos (built and painted) and then possibly some heavy support.

Cheers!

Blood Bowl Update

I've had an exciting afternoon watching the Packers defeat our rivals to clinch the NFC championship and head into the Superbowl!!! With all the excitement it seemed like the perfect time to post some more pictures of my Blood Bowl team, Da Cheez 'Eads.

Here's the thrower, I'll bet you can guess which number he is...

Yep, he wears Bart Starr's #15. Green Bay has had some phenomenal quarterbacks throughout their history but it was no contest when it came time to identify dis ere boy!
Here's the finished BoB that I showed last time. Although, while uploading these pics I realized that I haven't painted either of my Black Orc's eyes.

Continuing with the historic Green Bay theme I numbered this massive Black Orc after real-life behemoth Ray Nitschke, a fitting tribute if you ask me.

A 2nd Lineorc


A fan that I plan to use as a score counter.

New BA Furioso Dread - Sneak Peak

So I won't start the modelling of this new Space Marine chapter until mid April, as I have told myself I can't do any more projects until :

1. I finish painting my BA army


2. I finish building and painting my Nurgle army


3. The new BA and DH stuff comes out

But until then, I will be posting progress on my Deathguard army every few days, as well as the paint scheme and army list. But before that, here is a sneak peak at the new Blood Angels Furioso/Librarian dread sprue, you guys may have seen it, I got it off Heresy. Just figured I would post it anyway, as the Librarian dreads are in my army list for the Ordo Immortalis.

Enjoy!
Cheers

WAAAGHHH Wisconsin! My Green Bay Pack-Orcs Blood Bowl Team

Since my last post, many moons ago I have been having more fun than I've ever had with miniatures converting and painting an Orc Blood Bowl team. As I've said before I have become hooked on Blood Bowl, devouring every podcast, forum post, and article on the game that I can find. I've printed and bound a copy of the living rulebook, ordered a pitch on ebay, and have spent every second of my hobby time working on my Green Bay Packer themed Orc team. I even bought the Blood Bowl Xbox game to help me nail down the basics before I get into the GW league (I know this isn't the version to be playing but I'm on a mac computer, and for only $15 I've already gotten more than my money's worth).

I'm not a die-hard sports fan by any means, but having hailed from Wisconsin I'm a huge Packer fan, it comes with the territory. I knew that I wanted to do something bright and sporty for my first blood bowl team as everything that I've painted in the past has been very dark and gritty. I wanted yellow armored Orcs, and after thinking about yellow armor and green skin I couldn't help but make them modeled after my beloved Packers. This way I'd be able to throw in some really characterful references to the franchise while making the connections abstract enough to still make the team a viable fantasy-world sports team.

This is my first Blitzer. The green lines on the helmet and pants need one more coat, but I'm really happy with the colors overall.

If you look closely at his right foot in this shot you can see the cleats that I added to the bottom of his shoe. I had a metric ton of chaos spiky vehicle bits and got the long points by cutting off the very tips of the spikes.

This is my 2nd Blitzer, and favorite model that I've converted thus far. I used thin strips of plasticard across the helmets to make the old school facemasks.

This is my first Lineman, I've made two but with the roster I'm considering now may only need one.

He's a sneaky git, pulling a hidden blade from beneath his shoulder pad for some fouling action. I further represented this by making him number 75 after the Green Bay offensive lineman, Bulaga, who leads the team with his stupid false-start/offsides/holding fouls.

Here's a WIP of my first Black Orc Blocker. I plan to max out on 4 of these boyz as soon as possible.

Evan is currently a little more than half-way through converting his Chaos team and they're looking really great. This Friday will be our first chance to get an actual game in at the Battle Bunker during their specialist games friday.

Until then, I've got to finish painting these, as well as the remaining 8 or so players on my roster, convert a coach (an Orky Vince Lombardi, of course), a few fans, and decide on a team name. The first thing that came to me was Da Greenskin Bashaz, but I also really like Da Cheez 'Eadz. Let me know what you guys think.

More on the Ordo Immortalis

So here is where I got the idea from for the armour, these were done by Paitor Angelica on DakkaDakka, and as soon as I saw them I knew I had to use that marbled armour somehow with a new Chapter (unorginial yes, but it was such an awesome idea I couldnt resist).

My tanks will be slightly different in the way they are modelled, to go along with the fluff stating that the Chapter's goal is to hunt down and retrieve stolen and lost artifacts. I want to have a strong Mechanicum feel, as they will be the only members of the Chapter allowed to handle the recovered artifacts, aside from the Father Librarians. I would like to have a lot of books, similiar to what you can find in the Dark Angels upgrade packs, as well as purity seals, writing like on this tank, and icons/hiroglyphics.

Also, I have been playing around a bit more with the background, Jake had brought up a good point on Heresy that I decided to run with. Since the leadership of the Chapter is a council like the Iron Hands vs a single Chapter Master, I thought it would be cool to have a few of the Fathers become corrupted by Chaos, who has decided to use their psychic abilities against them, seeding heretical thoughts into their heads without them knowing, slowly turning them to the dark gods. Since the supposed homeworld is so close to the Eye of Terror, I think this would easily be plausible, and could create a rift in the chapter. 2 of the 5 Fathers that lead the Ordos Immortalis will become corrupted, resulting in a small portion of the Chapter following them in a civil war. Knowing they are outnumbered and outgunned by the Mechanicum, they decide to steal a powerful artifact previously recovered, and take it with them into the Eye of Terror. This sparks the interest of the Inquisition, who in turn decides to attatch a unit of Daemonhunters to the Order, giving me some fun new minis to mess around with while building my army at the same time :P

Heres the game plan for the make up of the army when it comes to tabletop, its rough, but gets the point across.

HQ: Mephiston counts-as
Elites: 3 Librarian Furioso Dreads
Troops - haven't decided what I will use yet, but if I go with a squad of Daemonhunters, they will be a counts-as Death Company choice. All troops will be mounted in Razorback Transports
Fast Attack - still looking into that as well
Heavy Support: Mechanicum controlled Vindicators, maybe a Devastator squad using the Tech Marine servitors.

Hopefully somewhere in the future, this will come together more coherently than a bunch of random notes, but for now this will have to do haha.

Cheers

The Ordo Immortalis

Here is the Colour Scheme (its sort of rough) for my new Chapter, the armour will look more like actual Marble when I paint them, but for the generator I just used the colour shown. Let me know what you think. Also changed the Founding Chapter from "Unkown" to a Blood Angels successor (for purposes of army composition, and this way I won't have to buy Codex: Space Marines :P)

If you check the link below to Heresy where the original post is on this new Chapter, I will be occasionally updating the fluff as I do more research - the latest update is from an hour or so ago. If you aren't already a member of Heresy, I would highly suggest becoming one, it has helped me out with ideas on modelling and fluff on more than one occasion.

Cheers

DIY Space Marine Chapter - Still a WIP

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Between New Years, Jake getting sick, and my car accident, we have been pretty distracted from the blog. I thought I would throw this up rather than keep it hidden in a notebook; does no good if no one can comment/critique/give their opinion. After finishing my Blood Angels army (aside from painting) I have decided to add another project to the list of things I need to get done. There have always been a select few SM Chapters that have had aspects which really caught my attention - The Iron Hands and their huge Mechanicum influence, the Ordo Psykana and their heavy use of psykers and Librarians, and the Deathwatch and their elite tactics, choice of members, and recruiting process.

Over the past few days I have been attempting to combine this all into one kick ass Chapter that would be fun to play, have some cool background fluff, and of course the potential for some cool conversions.

Here is what I have so far - but keep in mind, it is still a very rough work in progress, and missing a lot of specifics. However, this should give you a basic idea - opinions and critiques are most definitely welcome, as well as some proposed additions or ideas! You can also find it here.

Name: Ordo Immortalis
Colours: Marbeled armour with gold trim
Founding Chapter: Unknown
Founding: Unkown
Chapter Master: The Chapter is run like a clan with no known Chapter Master, but rather a council in which all the decisions are voted on and discussed
Specialty: Quick, precise attacks with an uncanny knowledge of enemy strengths, locations, and inner workings
Strength: Estimated at 750 strong, though the precise strength is unknown
Homeworld: No known homeworld, though there have been whispers of a Fortress Monastary located on a world just outside the Eye of terror, and prtected by an incredibly resilient psychic field. It is said that located within the monastary is an immense library, full of ancient knowledge, lost relics, and advanced experimental technology.


I can't copy+paste for some reason, so rather than type out the background, here is the basic overview:

The organization of the Chapter consists of a great number of psykers and librarians recruited in a fashion similar to the Deathwatch. The Chapter works closely with a mysterious group of Mechanicum. It has also been recorded that the Chapter has worked alongside the Inquisition in the past, though the current relationship between the two forces is unknown. The Ordos Immortalis have taken on the duty of recovering all manner of lost or stolen relics, artifacts, technology and knowledge, and prefer to remain shrouded in mystery.

For modeling purposes: So far, I know for sure I will be using dark angel robed heads on every Marine. Other than that, I am still thinking of other ways to make them identifiable, similar to the Deathwatch shoulder pad. The army may use the CSM codex, troops choices being Thousand Sons (for the psyker squad leaders) but that is still up in the air. The HQ will be a Librarian, but for the purposes of my army, a Father Librarian and then a Master of the Forge (or, with CSM, a chaos lord in termi armour with a daemon weapon).

That's what I've got so far, like I said, a lot more work to be done.

Cheers!