New Camera

As mentioned in my earlier post one of the things that was really holding my back was a lack of a good digital camera

The camera I was using is Kodak Easy Share

Now this camera did a great job 5 or 6 years ago but lately has been showing its age. In particular you can see the yellowish tint in the dreadnought below

So have after much discussion and debate with the wife we have settled on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V

The new camera gives me 13 additional Megapixels as well as the ability to capture digital video as well as a host of features that should improve my ability to take photos

With any luck Amazon will have it here in a few days and I will be ready to get posting again.

The Return of the Blog

A lot has happened since my last blog entry that lead to my extended break from blogging

1. My first child Kailey was born
2. I built and painted a 1500pt Grey Knight army for Adepticon
3. I put in numerous hours working behind the scenes at Adepticon on prize support allocation

Now that Adepticon is done and I have more free time I have realized something. I need to spend more time working on hobby activities throughout the year to avoid not seeing my family for three months as I get ready for Adepticon.

However the thing keeping me from posting while I was getting ready for Adepticon was the lack of good digital camera. Over the next few days I will be looking into getting a better digital camera and posting more of my work.

So what are my plans for the future of the blog? Same as they have always been. A place to document my hobby including modelling, painting, gaming, and all of the other activities that go into making this hobby so engaging. My desire is to have a couple of posts a week covering various topics, I intend to start off by showcasing the army I completed for Adepticon.

Dreadnought WIP

So I have been busy with school and staining trim for the house so I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I would have liked to this week.

However I was able to get some work on one of my heavy support dreadnoughts this week.

At this point I have a majority of the armor complete, I am still thinking I need to bring some red into the core of the model, but I haven't decided. After that I will be focusing on painting the parchment and other details.

I am still trying to determine why the pictures are yellower than I would like. Near as I can figure it has to do with the white balance and I think the light box I am using has too strong on light bulbs.

Lessons Learned

Quick recap of my Adepticon team tournament practice game. 

Setup:

We elect to play a previous Adepticon Team Tournament from years past. Mission was pitch battle deployment, with the primary objective being hold the center, via victory point total, and secondary was roll dice and tie

Lacking pictures I am not going into a full battle report we did however learn some lessons

1. Wolf Lord + Wolves is just too many points at such a small point game, over a 1/4 of the army.
2. Wolf Lord + Wolves is really at odds with the other army list(s)
3. The mobility offered by the interceptors out weighed the loss of the extra Str 6 Heavy Bolter
4. The DCA out of a Razorback are hard to use

After the game I looked at a lot of options and realistically I think the list is set. I still need to play it more to continue to learn how to use it but I am pretty happy. My buddy on the other hand has some work to do on his.

Adepticon Team Tournament Practice Tonight

I am sure by now everybody knows if they were able to get tickets for Adepticon's 40k events. It was crazy to see the major 40k events sell out in less than a day and the rest within 2 more days. I signed up within the first few minutes and I have tickets for the team tournament and the emperor abides tournament.

My buddy Brian and I will be trying out a few lists for the team tournament tonight.

The list I will be running tonight is:
Coteaz
2x 3 Warrior Acolyte squads, Razorback with Heavy Bolter and PsyAmmo
1x 5 Death Cult Assassins, Razorback with Heavy Bolter
1x 5 Grey Knight Interceptors
2x Venerable Dreadnoughts, 2 TLAC and PsyAmmo
1x Dreadnought, 2 TLAC and PsyAmmo

The list Brian will be running:

Wolf Lord on a thunderwolf, storm shield thunderhammer, wolftooth necklace, Saga of the Bear

2x 10man Grey Hunter packs, 2x meltaguns, Mark of the Wulfen, powerfist, both in rhinos

15x Fenrisian Wolves. Bodyguard for the lord

Long Fang squad, 3 missile launchers, 2 lascannon

The general idea is that dreadnoughts and long fangs provide fire support while the wolf lord pushes forward. The interceptors create a warp quake bubble to keep pesky deep strikers away and anything that gets through the wolf lord gets attacked by the Death Cult Assassins.

I will post a battle report covering the action and lessons learned

Cosmetic Changes

Not a lot at the moment I just made some cosmetic changes to the blog to make searching for things easier as well as a blog roll for my local gaming group so everyone can see what they are up.

Coteaz

So I have been thinking that I want to do more of inquisitorial force than a pure grey knights force. As a result I was going to need Coteaz. Now I am not a huge fan of the model, not to mention it is CrapCast so I decided to convert one.

As I looked around for color schemes that I liked I happened on this post on From the Warp and these posts from Dice and Brush

Combining the two of them I was able to settle on my scheme for the Knights of the Covenant.

Here is my counts as Coteaz

I have not finished his base at the moment. I am planning on doing a rusted deck for the base.

The list I am planning for the first 500pts of my gaming group's league next week is:

Coteaz

2x 3 man Warrior Acolytes with LP/CCW Razorback with TL Heavy Bolter PsyAmmo

2x Dreadnought with 2 TLAC with PsyAmmo

I'll keep you posted as I go.

My Dilemma

With my gaming group starting an escalation league I am faced with a hard choice. See I have 2500ish points of various marines painted but I have never been pleased with the way they came out.

So on one hand:

1. I don't like the color scheme
2. I don't like the fact that the scheme isn't consistent across all of my marines
3. I d on't like how dark the models are
4. I d on't like that the Soul Drinker fluff prevents certain more imperial icons.
5. The custom shoulder pads never seems the same size as normal shoulder pads
6. The custom rhino doors and front plates have numerous casting imperfections

And on the other hand:

1. They are painted and based
2. It would be a large effort to strip and repaint them

So I have decided to strip down all of my existing marines, in stages, and repaint them.

A Beginning

So what is Drybrush Wash?

Simply put drybrush wash is the simplistic method I use to paint miniatures. Basically it is a process by which simple techniques like base coating, dry brushing, and washing are combined to paint tabletop quality, or slightly above tabletop quality miniatures.

The way I paint will never produce Golden Daemon quality, unless I bribed the judges. On the other hand it does produce miniatures that look good on the tabletop and does not require a degree in art to execute.

So why blog about it?


There is a lot of time and space spent on much more complex methods of painting miniatures that many of us will never have the time or skill to be able to accomplish. As a result I want to show everyone that there are options that average painters can accomplish without having to pay for painting.

What will you blog about?


As with many gamers my hobby includes more than just a single focus. As a result I am planning on covering several topic areas within this blog

1. Painting
2. Converting (Kit bashing)
3. Gaming

Where do I play?

Actually I am lucky enough to be able to play at my house, more specifically my barn (aka The Battle Barn).

The Battle Barn

Currently we have space for 6 4x6 tables and a painting bench. We average around 15 people per night. If you are in the Grand Rapids Mi area feel free to check out our forums and gaming some Friday night.

What is up first?

Well the Battle Barn & Alpha Omega Coffee & Games is sponsoring a escalation league design to get people to have 1500 fully painted and based armies. So I will chronicling the creation of the Knights of the Covenant.