Comic: Chaos Convert

LINK: Here's a blank version if anyone wants to play around with it.

The Burning Brand of Skalathrax

I am more and more interested in this Chaos Artefact, probably because (as far as I can tell) it's the only ranged weapon a Daemon Prince can take. Am I wrong? The uillustration shows him with a big ol' boltgun, but I sure can't find any way to give him anything from the wargear section.

Woot for ap3 and torrent. This thing can lay a template of hurt pretty much where you want it and kills half the loyalists under it dead. Add sould blaze for the change of another kill or two. Admittedly, at its absolute highest number of hits, soul blaze only has a 25% chance of killing one marine (0.5 burn out x 3 hits * 0.5 to wound * 0.33 armor, right?) I suppose it might be a little worrisome if you stick it on a lightly armored IC. 

So here's the more epic version of the BBoS. It's just a dragon head and hook from the chaos vehicle sprue, along with the igniter from the original flamer muzzle. Looking at the photo I can see gaps, so I'm guessing I'll be filling or filing/re-gluing soon. Ah, bleary eyes and late night hobbying.

rawr. I flame at you.

I spent most of the weekend writing PHP for work in prep for a dog & pony on Monday, so any hobbying I did was distinctly jeopardizing my deadlines. Poor, poor me.

Nurgle Jump Pack Throttle Bio-Control

No need to elucidate on this one.

The Lord of Pestilence continues. Like most sculpting I do the underlying volume is aluminum foil. I used colour shapers (oh, hey! pictured unintentionally in the top pic) to shape the green stuff more organically. A regular GW sculpting tool was used for the sphincters. I just pushed it straight into the center with the blade pointing in different directions. After that I used a colour shaper to compress the outside diameter a little. I also pinned a chaos space marine flamer to his left arm to represent the Burning Brand of Skalathrax, a chaos artefact. It's supposed to be an uber flamer, and as far as I can tell the only ranged weapon a daemon prince can purchase, but the flamer I used looks a little weedy. I might find something a bit beefier or sculpt one myself. I was trying to avoid using GW parts as much as possible, but I don't really know why. I'm using this as a 40k model, and that's all I plan on doing with it. Mixing some GW IP will tie it into the rest of the army.

Next item is a large bladder to act as fuel, sitting in the middle of the thrusters and some hoses and tubes to duct the ... whatever is going on there to wherever it needs to be.

Posted Progress and Secret Projects

The Nurgle Demon Prince continues to get work. Tonight I did the basic work to build his jump pack to make him a flying monstrous creature. Swooping with S6 AP3 vector strikes plus the Burning Brand of Skalathrax will be an interesting combination. 

The basic construction is the protection tubes that my W&N brushes were mailed in. I cut the tubes down and left the caps on for structural support. I then glued styrene bars to form a frame. Getting the isosceles triangle wasn't as has as I had imagined it would be. I cut the long leg first to fit where I wanted the thrusters to sit on the shoulders. I then positioned the third thruster roughly where I wanted it, cut a length of bar the distance between the third thruster and one of the others, then cut another bar that same size. I also used some thin styrene to wrap the open ends, but I'm not convinced that step did much for me. 

 Once the basic structure was build, I placed milliput domes on the top of each. I drilled the holes out in the classic nurgle pattern once the milliput was getting firm but wasn't yet cured. I will go over it and sand them smooth later. I imagine this to be the air intake for the jump pack, but in a world of disease demon princes I don't suppose any sort of rationale is necessary.

I smeared a thin coat of Vallejo black lava over the jump pack and a good part of the base. I love the semi-random texture it adds. Hopefully it will turn out as I am envisioning.

The first half of the DV cultists is built, bringing my assembled total to 58. That includes the 30 plague zombies.

I would say that brings me significantly close to having my army ready to roll, except I acquired 25 Flagellants in trade, and I'm sure they will see table time as cultists. I'd like to come up with some sort of autopistol for them to have. hmmm.

Lastly, we have the secret project. It's not that big a deal really, but my kids and I came up with this idea so I'm acting on it. I'd tell you what it is but you'd laugh, then realize I'm serious, then laugh some more.

Yes, I'm sculpting cat heads. They are definitely "heroic" scale  compared to normal cars, but they're still pretty darn small. This is pass #1 at them, and I'll go over with watered down milliput after they cure to smooth things out. Maybe I should have just done one and instamold reproduced it. Hmmm. I still can, I guess, if one turns out far superior to the rest.

Nurgle Demon Prince (Ultraforge)

Another hobby night comes and goes and I didn't do what I had planned. I did however do something with which I am pleased.

As I experienced in the past, Ultraforge makes some quality yuckiness. Now that I have my own CSM army, I thought I'd give this fellow another go as a Demon Prince. I've never been a big fan of GW's demon prince models, and this fellow looks like he could be an exalted plague marine just fine. 

I constructed the base from styrene, with a thick brass rod used to add structural integrity to the platform. The diagonal support beams are just for aesthetic. The goal was to suspend as much of the model over negative space as possible, and there is definitely a strange visual flow to the piece when you look at it. I think once the base is more muted and the mini more prominent it will be more like how I envisioned. I still intend to scratch build a large jump pack to act as "wings" for him. I'm thinking  1/2" tube, cut and arranged as three thrusters in the general nurgle trio shape. The outer two would be more or less in line with his shoulder joins, and the third centered on him and a bit more away from him. Jimmy suggested I grab some Ork Stormboy packs and use those, but I'd have to see how they size up. 

So the tally comes to about 70 playable models (painted or just assembled) and I have my first 2k game arranged soon vs. Blood Angels. This guy likes plasma cannons, but I think I can minimize damage if I keep distance between the models. Killing two or three 4-point models per plasma cannon shot will not wear this army down terrible fast. Unless he brings 15 of them. Then I have some problems. 

Ideas or suggestions for the jump pack or the base?

Forge World Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle

This is the first thing I've submitted to CMON in over two years. It doesn't seem that long.

If you like it, please go vote on it!
http://www.coolminiornot.com/317008

If you don't like it.... well just look at it longer, I guess. Maybe it will grow on you. Heh. Nurgle will grow on you. Ewww.

Chaos Cultists: Wargames Factory Style

I'm all in on Chaos Space Marines after putting the Rat Flail Cultist conversion together. Chaos is like crazy, crazy, crazy in your face, all the time. I traded a bunch of unassembled vanilla Marines for a bunch of painted Chaos Space Marines, so I have ready to.. um... repaint. They are good, but I just have something else in mind. But back to Cultists... DV comes with a paltry 20 Cultists, organized as two units of 10. Considering Cultist units can have 35 models in them these units don't seem very survivable. Enter the box of Wargames Factory Shock Troops I bought many moons ago. I didn't know what I wanted to do with them, but they seemed pretty cool and it was a pseudo-impulse-buy at the model shop I frequent. After a little time and energy, all of which was today oddly enough, here is an 18 model Cultist squad with autoguns.

These guys are normally built with their kaiser helmet / gas mask heads that make them look like DKoK. (They are pictured on the box that way, fwiw.) For Cultists, I went with the head I had the least interest in when I first got them..., the bug eyed mask (gas mask maybe?) with open back. For Cultists, it just seemed perfect, and I'm pleased with the result.

Oh, and did I mention that a box of 18 of these guys is $20? That's list price, not street price. 18 minis for $20. I am unaccustomed to that level of value. The squat little boxes they come in have six stacks of identical sprues with three figures and lots of options on each.

So the Cultists were built with almost completely stock parts, but I did throw a few knives on as bayonets. There are a few I used GW parts on to give them more of a Chaos flavor or switched parts around a little differently, and I'll show them isolated.

These four are the only models I did any real conversion work on, and even then it's barely conversion. The guy on the far left got the barrel of his gun extended by attaching the end of the flamethrower barrel to it. Since all six sprues have a flamethrower (and a grenade launcher, and the most uninspiring pistol in miniature wargaming history) there were plenty to chop up. The guy on the far right merely has a little chain from the Chaos Space Marine command sprue hanging from his gun. The third guy is nearly stock, but I glued the leftover axe blade from the Rat Flail conversion. The only real conversion work was on the second guy, who I will be using as Cultist Champion in the unit. The icon and spike are from the same command sprue as the chain from #4. The outstretched arm is the same pointing arm that #3 has (you can see him pointing better in the first pic) with the normal gun cradling hand glued in place of the pointing hand and the thumb re-sculpted the Space Marine helmet. The helmet is hollowed out, and after a rough cut getting a lot of material removed, I put some very thin Flex-I-File Plast-I-Weld (for the Touch-N-Flow application system... someone kill me Ple-A-Se.) and let it soften the plastic inside the helmet to a much smoother surface when it dried. The head is one of the regular shock troop heads with the top knot shape cut down. It looks like he's about to mic-drop that helmet. BMM-- wheeeeee.....

So now that I have almost doubled the number of Cultists I own by adding these, let's talk about Cultists in a Typhus army that are plague zombies! PZ's are fearless and have feel no pain, but you can't buy them upgrades and they can't use their guns. GW recently FAQ'd that you can add zombies beyond the starting count of 10 models. (Yes, there were some people arguing that adding models counted as an upgrades. Sigh.)

Here are the six I have assembled so far.

Unlike the Shock Troops, I feel like I'm missing something with these guys. Five of the six models on each spue have separate torso/legs, and one has combined torso/legs.  Hold on a second.... I need to get this out of the way...

Did I mention that a box of 30 of these guys is $20? Yeah, <$1 per zombie.

Okay, I feel better. Anyway I've only built 6/30 of these models but I don't feel like I'm doing it quite right. Some of the bodies didn't fit with the legs all that well, and I suspect there are combos that work better than others. I have plenty more to get the hang of them. As my previous post showed, they are a little less heroic scaled than GW models, but an empty Cadian helmet is going to fit one of them nicely. 

So between a starter box, $40 of Wargames Factory minis and a few dozen models acquired in trade I have better than 2k points, ready to be assembled. Let the Galaxy Burn, one insufficiently terrain covered table at a time.

Hobby Tip: Use Satin Floss for Straps

A recent post on From The Warp discussed straps for bolters, so I figured I'd share my favorite non-hobby hobby item for this. Oral-B (a common dental manufacturer in the U.S.) makes a type of dental floss branded "Satin" that is a wide tape instead of a twisted cord like most other floss.

Yup. Looks like dental floss.

I've been using it for a few years for any leather strap or cloth wrap that I need to create. It's already the right size to represent am approximately 4" wide strap, and it's thin and durable. It takes superglue beautifully, and I typically glue the end to what I'm working on, then wrap the floss around after the glue has set and cut/glue the other side in place. This saves me a lot of trouble cutting putty sheets or styrene to shape/size. Plus, at 25m per container there's something like 1.5km of scale material. I'm thinking about buying a second box just in case they stop making it before I run out.

It's about the right size for a rifle strap.

Here I've used it for leather reins for a wolf, more to justify the crazy outstretched hand of the goblin shaman I wanted as rider than anything. The execution is a little clumsy, but you can see how the floss looks used as leather strap.

For my Skaven Giant, I wanted to attach some dwarf shields that  were painted in the scheme of a friend's army to replace the Empire shields that are normally on the giant's left arm. I cut holes in the shields and threaded floss through them to wrap around the arm, then painted it to blend in with the cloth straps that were already sculpted there.

Does anyone have a similar material they use out of the box for these sorts of tasks?

Chaos Sorcerer, Plague Zombie and a Rat Flail

So after purchasing a Dark Vengeance set and a CSM codex, I find myself wanting to put something together to field. Another army. Even I am surprised. I had bought Nurgle Lord Typhus a while ago, and between a unit of plague marines I traded for, the Hellbrute, HQ, Chosen and cultists in DV I figured I am most of the way to a fieldable army. I like the fact that Typhus can turn any unit of cultists into plague zombies. The only issue I had was the idea of giving up the cultists shooting for the sake of zombification. Enter FLGS and a box of Wargames Factory zombies. For a meager $20 you get 30 modern looking zombies with lots of permutation options, with 5 sprues of six zombies in each box. When I first opened them I was a little worried about scale, but seeing them next to a cultist leader from DV and alongside lots of other 40k models I am not so worried now. 

Size comparison shot ... Space Marine, Eldar Guardian, Imperial guardsman,
Wargames Factory Zombie, Chaos Cultist, Nurgle Chaos Sorcerer, Blood Bowl Dwarf

Sure, they look smaller than a Space Marine, but not appreciable smaller than an Imperial Guardsman. They will make excellent civilian zombies.

A few weeks ago during hobby night, Mike made me a "rat flail" for one of my cultists to wield. It goes well with the pose of the model. Original rat flail inspiration here.

Here's a little closer pic of the DV cultist and the WGF zombie. On a regular GW base they don't look too out of place.

Lastly we have the completed Nurgle Sorcerer. The fly on the banner turned out quite a bit more cartoony than I had hoped. Oh, well. He's off to his owner as soon as I can get over there. I will likely face him on the field of simulated battle one day. Considering I have played maybe 5 games of 40k in the last two years, it may be a while. Despite infrequent play, I still like to think of myself as a player of the game. Evidence says otherwise.

Disable TouchPad on Dell E6510 in Ubuntu

The touch pad on my laptop is way too sensitive. When I am typing on the keyboard my palms frequently brush the corners and send the mouse pointer flying off into unexpected screen real estate. For that reason I use this little command, stored in a script, for easy shell execution when I have an external mouse.

xinput | grep TouchPad | sed s/id=// | awk '{system("xinput set-prop " $7 " \"Device Enabled\" 0")}'

So here's the novice explanation of what this does. (I'll assume you know that the pipe ( "|" ) sends the output of one command as input to the next.) The command xinput controls the various input devices. Running the command on its own displays a list of input devices and (crucially) their id. Since the id changes from time to time we can't hard code it. So we run xinput and pipe the results through grep to get just the line we want, which includes the word TouchPad. Any other unique string from that line item would have sufficed. The actual description is "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad". So now we have this line, returned from xinput and filtered by grep:

⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad         id=13 [slave  pointer  (2)]

Lots of extra info there since all we want is the 13. awk is a useful script for pulling apart tokens in a line, but it first needs the 13 to be by itself. To do that we'll use sed (stream editor) and run this line through the regular expression s/id=//. That just replaces all instances of the string "id=" and replaces them with "". So now we have:

⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad         13 [slave  pointer  (2)]

Great! Time to craft our xinput command to actually disable the touchpad. The actual command we want is as follows:

xinput set-prop 13 "Device Enabled" 0

We use awk to run that as a system command, passing our altered line from sed to it and sticking token 7 in between set-prop and "Device Enabled". There. Stick it into a .sh file and chmod u+x yourfile.sh and you're done! Oh, and to turn it back on, use a 1 instead of a 0.

Carnivean Hates Vassal of Menoth

RAWR

I suspect it's just paint envy though.

Unmatched Rat Meta

I have been playing Book of Heroes casually for a couple months now. It's fun, and modestly social if you are raiding in guilds.

But the clincher? The rats. Oh, man. Check this guy out. He's a rat, riding a bigger rat, swinging a flail made from the skull of a rat. Way to pack in the rats, Book of Heroes. The rat people are called Rath'een, and are the closest thing to Skaven I think they could include without needing to retain legal counsel. I was amused that the proper names for the Rath'een could have come right out of The Underempire too. Skar? Trask? Yeah, pretty sure I remember them. Heck, maybe the authors hung out there and the names are an homage. If I run into a Vorg I'll know it's true.

Short version: BoH is fun. Try it.

40k Nurgle Sorcerer WIP 2

I put some more work in on Mr. Nurgle here. He's looking about how I had expected, even if the Nurglings are a little low-contrast for my taste Once the backpack and banner are on I think he'll look more complete

The dark green bubbles on the base are liquid green stuff. This is the first time I've used it, and it was goopier than I expected. I ended up thinning a little with water before using it, much like I do with milliput. Once thinned it took a pretty nice hemisphere shape. I should have held it upside down a little while to let it set better.

The base is cork layers, Vallejo black lava for texture and little metal bits (grating and a gear) from the GW 40k basing set. I ended up carving down some spots for his feet to avoid the ever popular "floating on the base" look. I hate that, but it's really hard to avoid if you are making bases with any kind of complexity.

Oh, and tonight's secret sauce? Vallejo Model Color "black glaze" (70855.) I used it like crazy tonight, sometimes straight and sometimes mixed with a little brown glaze (70854.) I know shading with black has problems, but it just worked for me tonight. It certainly has a a different quality of color than VMC black (70950) does.   

Busy Hobby Shelf Update

The busy hobby shelf tells its unwavering tale of projects started, projects finished and projects left idle. The Blood Bowl Skaven and Dwarf teams sit proudly by my NAF dice, but in nearly the same state they were in last update. Forgeworld Nurgle Sorcerer has had some progress, although I broke his weapon end off and had to pin it back on. A figure from Munchkin Quest sits barely started. The most recent addition is the Vassal of Menoth on the far right. He's for our little Steamroller tournament at work (only 2 people, and only 15 points, but hey... we're playing.) My opponent Brian painted the Gunboar on the shelf for my not-quite-started Pigs 'n' Gators army. I can't quite remember why Gunboar migrated from the WM/H model storage to the hobby shelf.

Last night was a fun hobby night with Mike, Mark, Andrew and Kyle all showing up. Mark showed off his Ork flyer while Mike struggled assembling a Khador mortar. Apparently the fit of the model is a frustration.

I may have successfully kicked my Kickstarter habit for the time being. As much as I was enjoy buying stuff on "preBay" I managed to let some pass without contributing. Some were more painful than others, but it's getting easier. Just takin' it a day at a time...

40k Meme

Yeah, I don't really know what I was thinking either. It's based on the "Why not Zoidberg?" meme.

Clumsily done in Gimp. Then updated again.

Fixing Your Stupid U-verse Inernet Without Talking To a Filthy Human

On multiple occasions now my AT&T U-verse internet has stopped working for no discernible reason. The DSL and Internet lights are just off and no sites are accessible. After a few rounds of phone support, I have figured out how to correct the problem (sort of) without having to sit on the phone for a geological age.

1. Reboot the gateway (or router, or whatever you want to call it) by unplugging the power. If you are like me, you've already tried that and it didn't help. Proceed to phase 2.
2. Go to https://ufix.att.com from a mobile browser and log in with your AT&T credentials. Yes, the mobile browser part is important. I haven't figured out how to get to the right page from a non-mobile browser. Strange, I know.
3. On the "Which service requires support?" screen press "Internet". 
4. On the "What would you like help with?" screen press "Restart Gateway".
5. Click Yes and Continue for as many times as you are prompted to perform the restart. Wait a minute and watch the gateway. From this point one of two things will happen.
6. If the gateway restarts, watch the DSL and Internet lights. If they blink and then go solid, you're good to go. If not, reboot the gateway by unplugging the power.
7. If the gateway does not restart (commonly indicated by an error on the mobile browser page) wait a minute and then reboot the gateway by unplugging the power. The DSL and Internet lights should blink and go solid when you have connection again.

This has worked for me every time. About 1 in 3 the gateway will actually restart when I do those steps, but most of the time I have to manually reboot the gateway once I initiate the remote restart. Something about that remote restart gets things rolling on AT&T's end.

Anyway, hope that helps someone! Drop a comment if you arrived here through searching and it worked for you.

Distorted Sense of Value

I picked up the Dark Vengeance Limited Edition box this week. Actually, I should say someone picked it up for me, since I spent absolutely zero energy on the endeavor (funds, yes... energy, no.) Let us, for one hot second, compare the value of the new 40k box set to the prior 40k box set.

Assault on Black Reach:

• 20 basic foot soldiers (Ork Boyz)
• 10 Marine tactical squad
• 5 elite foot soldiers (Ork Nobz)
• 5 Terminator squad
• 3 bikes (Ork Defkoptas)
• 2 independent characters (SM captain and Ork warboss)
• 1 walker (SM dreadnought)

Dark Vengeance:

• 20 basic foot soldiers (Chaos cultists)
• 10 Marine tactical squad
• 5 elite soldiers (chaos Chosen)
• 5 Terminator squad (Deathwing)
• 3 bikes (Ravenwing)
• 3 independent characters (chaos lord, SM captain, SM librarian)
• 1 walker (Hellbrute)

That seems amazingly similar, except for one thing. Black Reach was $60 when it came out and Dark Vengeance is $99. What in the world would warrant a 65% price increase in less than four years? Okay, I'm not starting on that rant... so basically Dark Vengeance is $2/mini. It didn't seem like a very good deal when I thought it over, but I think my box set value baseline might be skewed, for the following reasons:

1. Assault on Black Reach was an amazing deal at its release price
2. Sedition Wars kickstarter (about 100 minis) for $100
3. Reaper Bones kickstart ( >200 minis) for $100 + lots of cheap extras

Is it really fair to compare those three? Maybe not. Let's compare other things I have purchased and been perfectly happy with.

1. Warmachine starter box (5 jacks, 10 heavy infantry models, 2 warcasters) for $100
2. Malifaux "The Body Thieves" box (5 miniatures) for $36
3. "Dead Justice" LE Malifaux box (5 miniatures) for $50
4. Space Hulk (35-ish miniatures) for $100

So what am I complaining about? I'm not really sure. Maybe it's the fact that after all this time, I finally have enough miniatures. Wait, did I say that? Yes, and maybe I meant it.... not sure yet. I have 51 more figs now than I did a couple days ago, and another 300+ coming in March from kickstarters. I have battleforces in my office that are still in shrink-wrap. I have a shelf of unopened blisters, collected mostly through playing "impulse buy theater" at FLGS (what is dead may never die.)

Since I can't seem to bring myself to sell anything, I suppose I'd better stop acquiring them. And paint them. Maybe I can make a dent in them before I die, if I live to a ripe old age. 

Review: Braaaaains! The Zombie Card Game

On sale now at The Game Crafter. Top Media Studios moved to print on demand after a kickstart attempt. The short version: Braaaaains! is quick and fun but could use some additional mechanics.

The concept behind Braaaaains! is that you are one of a zombie  horde collecting brains and dealing with the various incidents a zombie might encounter. The first player to hold ten brains wins. Play involves drawing cards from a heap in the center of the table, which will either be a brain card (score!) or an incident. Incidents all have instructions to follow, some positive for you and some negative. If you draw a brain you may continue drawing if you wish, but an incident ends your turn. It plays very quickly, and my family had a lot of fun with it. My 8 year-old especially had a great time. He loved mixing the heap around (a common occurrence, since incidents are mixed back in after being resolved and some incidents involve "heaping" some of your collected brains.) He also won part of the time, which reveals both a strength and a weakness for the game. Braaaaains! doesn't give players a lot of choices. You can sometimes choose another players to steal a brain from, but for the most part you are just following the instructions on the card. For kids unaccustomed to strategic play this is great casual fun. The problem is that you can't really get better at Braaaaains!

Positives: fun to play; quick games with fast pace keep attention spans in the game; simple enough rules that kids can pick it up easily; fun artwork and humorous event descriptions; the opportunity to repeatedly groan "Braaaaaaaaaains...." in your best zombie voice.

Negatives: game mechanics limit strategy; Shipping from print on demand service makes game a bit expensive

Black Crusade Deadline Mere Hours Away

Falk sent out the three hour warning today, so I have to assume the last chance to contribute is noon today, not midnight. Kick a few bucks in and possibly win a bunch of stuff. The linked post also includes a bunch of photos of the included models. It's roughly a 5k point army.

Last Chance To Win a Huge Army

Black Crusade 2012 is coming to a close. If you haven't thrown a few bucks their way, this is your last chance.

The contributions close at 12 AM EST on thursday, 30th of AUGUST, which is either tonight or tomorrow night. I always get confused when people use midnight as an exact moment. About half the time they mean the day before. So don't delay! This is your last chance to win a big Chaos Space Marine army, including pieces painted by me.

Noise Marines - Black Crusade 2012

Here are the Noise Marines, converted and built by Kenneth and painted by me. There are some really neat bits in this unit. I wish I had more time to work on these guys, but the sad confluence of vacations, bit ordering and very slow post from the other side of the pond conspired against me. Nevertheless, they are ready to deliver pain to the servants of the False Emperor.

Even though they are "finished" I am likely to touch up details over the course of the week, before they are sent off to the winner. Get in now! You only have a few days. Angel Giraldez is painting something for the army. That alone is worth the price of admission!

Lucius the Eternal - Black Crusade 2012

Here he is in final form. You only have a couple more days to get in on the charity raffle!

As you can see, my photography skills remain as mediocre as ever.

Later tonight, some Noise Marines!

Minis for <$1 + Back From Vacation!

I'm back from a week with my wonderful family! We had a great time, caught a few fish, ate ice cream, etc. Now the crunch time for the Black Crusade minis begins!

Now, on to the "insane deal" portion. There are only 5 days left on the Reaper kickstart. Currently, the $100 pledge level ("Vampire" level) gets you this:

That's about $.72 per mini for what's shown. Sure a single rat at that price isn't fantastic, but getting Ape-X (normally $13) and a Marilith ($11.50) in that deal more than makes up for a couple rats. Plus, everyone gets more as the pledged total increases, so get in now and help grow it for everyone.

Oh, and this level unlocks the ability to purchase sooooo much more. Want dragons for $10-15 each? Yeah, that cheap. Check this out.

For reference, this is what it looked like 20 days ago:

100 Figure Case, Delivered, for $26

I know I've been hawking kickstarts like crazy, but I just realized that the Reaper Bones kickstart has a figure case available as an option to all funding levels for $25. That means you could pledge at the $1 level, add the $25 to the pledge amount and claim the case. Even if you're not interested in getting a ton of minis, that's a fantastic deal.

And just today, the $405k stretch goal was revealed. Two demons (Rauthuros and Agramon the Pit Fiend) will be available to add as a $15 option. In metal the two would total $75.

Edit: I just got clarification from Reaper on this. Yes, it's true, up to five units to U.S. or Canada. If you want more than five you'd have to pay actual shipping.

Noise Marines Have Arrived! (Plus Kickstarter News)

The Black Crusade 2012 Noise Marines I committed to paint have finally arrived. Now comes crunch time. I have about four evening to paint ten very cool looking servants of Slaanesh. Argh. Doing them any justice in four nights will be a task of Herculean scope (if Hercules was a pudgy old guy hunched over in a chair painting toys perhaps.)

Not much to look at yet

Oh my, but I do have a long way to go on them. Yikes.

Kickstarter news: 

Jack Houston and the Necronauts funded. Barely, but yay! A stop-motion point and click adventure game was too cool an idea to pass up.

John K (of Ren and Stimpy) had his cartoon "Cans Without Labels" reach the 100% mark. For a minimal contribution you can get a cartoon!

Wyrd Miniatures' Evil Baby Orphanage has 3 days left to jump in. At the $55 level you get the card game, three minis that can be Malifaux proxies, a case, poster, two expansions, and a deck of evil baby cards that can be used as a Malifaux fate deck. I doubt they will make their $100k stretch goal but you never know!

Reaper Bones continued to swell, with the baseline contribution reward growing well past 100 minis now, and options for lots of other things that would have cost a mint before. The dragon Ebonwrath (previously $70 in metal) is a $10 add-on option. Shadow Dragon ($30) and Fire Dragon ($33) add-on together for $15 (not quite reached but soon.) Fire Giant king and queen (combined price about $58) as a $10 add-on. This is the all you can eat Reaper buffet I tells ya. I just hope their sales aren't negatively impacted for the next two years because everyone has more minis than they could possible paint (ha!)

Cool Mini Or Not kick off their third campaign, Relic Knights, featuring Soda Pop Miniatures. They are certainly interesting kits but I don't think I'll be getting in on this one. I seem to be alone on this based on the fact that it's >500% funded after about two days.

Lucius the Eternal - and eye problems

I've got Lucius mostly done, but this has been a difficult week to paint. My left eye has something strange going on where the lid is all red and puffy and goopy with conjunctiva. As a result, everything looks like soft focus through that eye. As it turns out, painting with one eye in focus and one eye fuzzy is really honking difficult. My depth perception was completely messed up. In any case, Here is the current WIP.

I was going to go with blue and red cords fading to purple and pink in the ... tentacle thingy. Hobby buddy Jimmy convinced me otherwise. I had done some Nurgle work for him where I painted tentacles to look like umbilical cord. Considering how much fleshtone is already on this guy, that ended up being a nice look. Granted, it's not as precise as I would like (as in... ugh) but I couldn't really wait until my eyes were 100% to make progress on him.

In other news, Noise Marines I am also painting for Black Crusade 2012 have not arrived. They have been in transit from the UK for more than 10 days now.

Evil Baby Orphanage ... Another Kickstart

Fun looking party card game from Wyrd. I want some stretch goals, so buy this now. Do it. Now.

From the Kickstart page...

Evil Baby Orphanage is a card game for three or more players. Each player takes on the role of a Time-Nanny in an Evil Baby Orphanage, kidnapping villains throughout history and raising them to be accountants, ballerinas, or... something. Each player takes turns playing cards to help keep their Evil Babies from burning down their whole orphanage, and adopting more Evil Babies from the Time Stream.

Use good toys to keep Evil Babies from wreaking havoc, bad toys to encourage Evil Babies in other orphanages to cause a little trouble, and various Nanny actions to swap and adopt them as you try to keep the most evil out of the time stream.

I love non-collectible card games lately. I collect enough lead/tin/plastic that I don't want to add paper to the list. Infernal Contraption, Munchkin, Dominion... all great fun.

Reaper Kickstart ... Shut Up And Take My Money

Seriously, do it. I missed out on Zombicide and Ogre. Whoops. Then there was Sedition Wars. Now there's Reaper Bones. With 26 days to go, I can't wait to see what the final reward package will be. It's looking pretty sweet now.

I don't know if you've seen Bones yet, but they are quite inexpensive. A Minotaur on Reaper's site that costs $6.29 in metal is only $3.29 for the same sculpt in the Bones line. If they really take paint without priming then I am completely enamored. I pretty much hate the gooey plastic PP uses (maybe I just don't know how to work it properly, I dunno...) so the idea of hard plastic for minis appeals to me. Plus, when my kids want to paint something (and not another clan rat or AoBR Ork) I will have a lot of (inexpensive) choices for them.

EDIT: Lovely. Now this. Backed, of course.

As much as I love kickstarter, I can't really discern it from walking into Gamestop and being asked to pre-order something. Except I don't have to deal with a filthy human teenager trying to sell me NHL 2013 Xtreme Icecapades. This is stuff I really want. Really want.

Lucius Continues, Khador Cutie and Horrid Dwarf

How's that for a mixed title. Work on Lucius continues. I have enough free time in the next 10 days or so to finish both him and the unit of Noise Marines that I am expecting on my doorstep any day now.

Look out! He's armed now!

I slapped some quick paint on one of the Grind Khador runners. Isn't it adorable? 

Arms come later, after I magnetize everything.

 Lastly, I received this craptastic recast of a Dwarf Blitzer in an eBay lot. I'm going to try and make the best of it. His right hand was horribly miscast, and major surgery was required. Resculpting with an xacto knife isn't really a precision technique, but at least it looks like a hand now. We'll see if I can rescue this guy from his inauspicious roots.

I am a pale shadow of my original sculpt.

A New Strain Emerges

My eight year-old son wanted to paint one of his Tyranids last night. We didn't have any build, so I got out the sprues and we looked them over. After considering whether to build a Hormagaunt, Termagaunt or Genestealer he chose Genestealer.... sort of. He wanted it to have guns. Lots of guns. This is the shootiest Genestealer you've ever seen.

It's your hobby. Enjoy it.

You Know Your Car Is Awesome When...

you get one of these stuck to the antenna...

...and the car is parked on the street right across from your house.

In their defense, I had not moved it for several days, as I have been taking our van to work. I'm just glad this didn't happen while we were up north, or I would have returned to a missing truck.

Way to go Washtenaw County Sheriff Department.

Pirate Goblins Project!

I'm sure most of you are familiar with Kickstarter and Indiegogo after things like the Ogre, Zombiecide and Sedition Wars launches, or the money collected for that poor woman mercilessly taunted on that bus who is now quite a bit more wealthy (unless she is a miniature collector, in which case she now owns a lot more pewter... but I digress.) I saw this cool Indigogo project for a set of Pirate Goblins. They are only at about 20% of a fairly modest startup goal but they still have about 50 days to go. I think once people see how neat these are they will want to grab a set.

I can't quite figure out what a goblin Yarrrrr would be like though... squeaky? I can't make that noise in my head.

Summer Bargain - Grind

I was purchasing a conversion bits order at the Privateer Press webstore, when I saw that Grind was on sale for $25 as a Summer special. I added it to the cart. Sadly (for others who are not me) the price is back up to $70.

The basics of Grind... Steamjacks and a
giant metal spiked ball.

So what's Grind? It's basically Steamjack Blood Bowl, without the blood. It started life as a rule set published in No Quarter 10 (about 2 billion years ago) using regular Warmachine 'jacks and eventually made its way to the standalone game I bought. Each player controls a team of five Steamjacks (as opposed to the military Warjacks in Warmachine) equipped with a variety of arm types as they attempt to bash the other team back and push/carry/throw the "grinder" into their opponents goal. You can knock each other around a lot but you can't damage the other 'jacks. We played a lunch hour game as our first try, and managed to get 2 full rounds in (of the 10 that make up a game) but it looks like it will play much faster once we know the rules.

Each team, the Iron Storm (blue, Cygnar) and the Steel Fury (red, Khador) includes three light 'jacks (runners), two heavy 'jacks (crusher) and a variety of different ranged and melee arms. You kit your team out with arm choices before the battle (there is no cost for the different arms, as each has its different strengths.) Both sides have exactly the same weapon arms included, but the "open fist" arms match the faction 'jacks nicely (see the left-most crusher in the pic.) Yes, there are Khador light 'jacks. They are cute little buggers!

Iron Storm, with extra arms

The 'jacks themselves are quite nice. They are 4 piece (without arms) press-fit plastic models (the semi-flexible plastic that feels more like a toy than a scale model) and the sculpting is pretty good, with distinct details. They aren't quite the level of the current plastic, but they aren't bad at all. Size-wise they are comparable to their Warmachine equivalents. Each comes with a textured base to match the grind playfield. I almost think a Grind 'jack and a couple arms from the PP webstore could make a close facsimile of the Warmachine version.

Size comparison, Grind to Warmachine

The board itself is a typical high quality four section folding game board, with nice graphics. the obstruction columns and the grinder itself are two piece models (cleverly designed so that two identical pieces fit together to make each.) The rules hint at Warmachine's rules. Each turn (two turns, one for each player, makes a round) the player has 10 action dice to use. You activate your 'jacks one at a time and they can move and attack (either one first, unlike Warmachine.) The dice are d6, but have "hits" on them instead of numbers. The normal "action" dice have three blank sides, two with one "hit" and one face with two "hits" (super hit, I think that's called.) Blue "boost" dice (used when rules call for them, not when you choose like in Warmachine) have more hits on them and "action" dice that have even more hits. The fun part is that the "action" dice are used as turn counters too, so as the turns progress you move them from the game clock to your dice pool, where they can be used at will. This makes turn 5 a whole more successful than turn 1 for rolls. The game consists of two 5 round periods.

Check it out here, including tutorial slide show:
http://privateerpress.com/grind/

Or just download the rulebook and check it out:
http://files.privateerpress.com/grind/Grind%20Rulebook%20web.pdf

Melta Guy Gets A New Home

I was the lucky winner of the custom Sanguinary Priest and the famous Melta Guy given away over at The Dark Templar's "40 days of 40k" giveaway. Thanks DT! I was especially happy to get Melta Guy, given his epic saga. I love games with moments like that.

Melta Guy considers what manner of witchery
could produce so hideous a foe

So here's a WIP after a night of painting. To honor his illustrious past, I kept most of his old paint job intact, choosing instead to augment and add color as needed. He is a welcome addition to my collection. The custom sanguinary priest is very cool too, but I'll get to him after current projects are done.

In a fit of real hobby ADD, I grabbed one of the playing pieces from my copy of Munchkin Quest and slapped some paint on him. No, I don't know what I was thinking either.

Coming soon! The continuation of Black Crusade Lucius, and on deck "Extremeast-09".