Category: Uncategorized

Reinvent, reinvigorate, reorganize; Or how I learned how to stop worrying and love my hobby.

Welcome back, dear readers, to this latest entry from the WCF bunker. It’s been a long minute since I last posted and honestly it’s really just because I had a lack of interest. No other excuses! Actually, in all fairness that’s not entirely true. I’ve still been painting and gaming, along with putting together a ‘project’ business – Lord Chaos – which is my first foray into the world of resin casting designer ‘toys’. Me and the family moved into a new place last summer as well. I’ve also been spending more time expanding my already huge Masters of the Universe collection too. All this, along with the arrival of my second child recently has ensured I’ve had little time to devote to my sadly neglected blog. As I originally started this venture when my first son was born, it seemed appropriate that I resurrect it with my second arrival, so here we are! I dropped a bunch of stuff from here (you may notice the right bar looks a little lighter than it used to), and I’ve lost the domain name, as I refused to pay $100 for a blog name. I may switch to another hosting site down the road, but for now I’ll continue as is, and if we get some momentum I’ll re-evaluate.

Anyway, plans are afoot, and you’ll be seeing some changes around here very soon. I wonder if I’ll still show up in the IHOP blogger feed?

Coming up this week: my first product review of 2016: Amazon bikers from Prodos Games – Should wearing helmets be mandatory? Stay tuned!

IMG_8807

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Judge Dredd Miniatures Game – out of the box review

Hello my friends! It has been too long since I last paid my faithful blog any attention, but I intend to remedy that! I started this blog nearly 6 years ago now, and I can’t just let it go now, can I?

Although I have not been blogging, I have certainly been keeping up with the hobby on a number of fronts. I finally completed my Flames of War British late war forces, which was a herculean effort, I can tell you! I now owe the wife a sushi dinner for letting me finish it lol! I’m very happy to report that my initial battle with my ‘stiff upper lip’ force resulted in a victory for the Tommy’s, but only just, it was bittersweet for sure. Also, Dethtron recently picked up X-Wing, or as it’s affectionately known now: “X-Wang”. Of the 4 games I have played, I’ve won 3 of them; there truly is something to be said for the Dark Side… a lot of fun though! I’ve come to realize that I’m a fan of Tie Fighter swarm lists.

Anyhoo, back to the meat and potatoes of this entry: Judge Dredd!

A while back I downloaded some test rules for the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game (a Warlord Games/Mongoose Publishing collaboration) and that was it, I saved it to my computer and pretty much forgot about it. At that point the only people making 2000AD miniatures was (and they still do make them) Wargames Foundry. Initially I was going to put together a couple of factions, but then realized that it was going to cost quite a bit for the miniatures and so put it on the back burner. Fast forward to a couple of months back, I saw a copy of the starter set at my FLGS and thought “fug it” and bought a copy. Not cheap, I will say, coming in at a cool $120. I’ve seen it about $100 on ebay, but guess what, yep, they charge you $20 for shipping, so do the math. So what do you get for your money? Is it worth it? Let’s take a peep in the box (hehe):

Get playing, CREEP!
Get playing, CREEP!

 

  •          Hardback copy of the rulebook – This is a beauty! Full color from beginning to end. The rules themselves only take up a small portion of the book, the rest is all breakdowns of the different factions, characters, scenarios, stats, lots of color photos of the miniatures and everything you’ll ever need to put the beat down on the perps of Mega City One.
  •          Academy of Training quick-start rules – just like the label says: a leaflet-style set of rules to get playing pretty much straight outta the box, you can’t miss it, it says “READ ME FIRST” in big red letters. It basically works as though you are a cadet on your first day on the streets and gives you a simple overview of the game mechanics to get you going before you embark on the more in-depth version of the game.
  •          Exclusive starter set miniatures – Definitely one of the incentives to buy this package: it comes with 2 figures only available with the set. A heavy weapon Judge and a Street Gang member.
  •          Metal (yes METAL) miniatures – The set comes with 2 boxes of miniatures: a set of 8 Mega City Judges and a set of 8 Street Gangers! 18 metal miniatures in total! Certainly nice to get some metal figures in an age when everything is plastic. This definitely appealed to my nostalgic side. It’s also where I have my one negative point that I have on this set – continuity. I took the judges out of the box to take a look, and one thing that jumped out at me pretty much off the bat is the proportions of the sculpts. Now I know that not everyone is the same height, weight, build etc, but I feel that there should have been some effort made to keep certain things the same. There is a lot of variation in sizes of shoulder pads, knee pads, guns etc. Some of the shoulder pads are super thick and wide, while others are thinner and less defined (look at my painted examples below). Some of the helmets are a little odd proportion/symmetry wise, but I have a feeling this is more due to the limitations of casting in metal, which also would explain the depth of posing on a couple of them too. Aside from this, these miniatures took me back to the very early 90’s when I would buy Judge Dredd miniatures made by Games Workshop, so I was practically surfing on the waves of nostalgia. The Street Gangers look great, and are full of character (and I’ll possibly pull some of my Necromunda miniatures in to bulk up the numbers a little).

 

One thing I did think was a little odd – as this is a starter set, with quick start rules etc, I was hoping that a set of dice and maybe some rudimentary measuring device (like the measuring stick that comes with the Warhammer 40K box set) would be included, but surprisingly not. The game runs on a D10 system, which would make sense to include, especially as it’s not a regular D6 driven system.

 

 

The crime issss liiiiifeeee!
The crime issss liiiiifeeee!

I recently also picked up the Dark Judges set because they are hands down my favorite characters in the 2000AD universe. You get all four of the bad guys and they also come with their spirit versions as well. Warlord Games makes quite a comprehensive line of miniatures to support this game, all of which are available through their website: http://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/judge-dredd/  seriously, check out just how much they have, it’s great!

 

Mega City Judge
Mega City Judge

 

PSI Judge I just finished
PSI Judge I just finished

I am concerned that the miniatures are a little pricey. The set of Dark Judges came in at the $50 mark. While I know that makes the figures $6.25 a piece, which for metal ain’t bad, it could put off casual gamers or first-timers. I’m not too sure if the figures are available as singles through retail outlets (they are available this way through the website). It might be a little easier to swallow if you can walk in off the street and gradually build up your factions through single figure purchases if you don’t have the money to drop it on a box set all in one go.

So the bottom line: is it worth it? Yes! Zarjaz! I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who is a) a fan of 2000AD and likes tabletop games and b) those of you out there who like smaller, more intimate skirmish games with smaller amounts of figures.

I haven’t had a chance to have a game yet, but I’ll do another review on the mechanics when I can organize it.

Until then…

Squaxx dek Thargo, Splundig Vur Thrigg!

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How to… Paint Space Wolves Quickly, AKA…

I seem to have snapped out of the hobby funk I had been languishing in recently. Helped in part by our move from the desolate wastelands of the Southside suburbs back to the North of the city, and familiar territories. While it is only a temporary set up, a measure of inner peace has been restored, and with it, my painting mojo.

I am, and was, quite literally getting sick of looking at unpainted miniatures and decided I wanted to do something about it, so I set about working a test mini for a recipe to paint my Sons of Russ. Now I have been agonizing for months on what shade of grey to paint them.  I see a lot of the really dark grey, which is great, but actually is a color that was used by the Wolves pre-heresy. Now I like the dark grey, and don’t get me wrong, there are some super wicked paint jobs out there, like Space Wolves Grey  (one of my fave SW resources) but I feel I wanted to stray a bit from that, as the plastic the minis are made in are a dark grey too.

I was never a fan of the ‘uber blue-grey’ that seemed to dominate GW’s later paint jobs (you know, when they were painting practically everything red?). Some of you may (or may not) have seen the Terminator and Wolf Guard that I had already tried out. Well, I liked the color I had achieved here, but did not want to spend 8+ hours on each miniature.  I wanted to get a decent looking, fully painted force on the table, with as little painting time as is legally possible.

So, while on vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought ‘frack it’, sat down and just started painting to see what would happen…

I had picked up a can of the ‘Army Painter’ Wolf Grey Primer, which looked like a pretty sweet starting point. I had already sprayed a Rhino in it, and was pleased with the result, so I blasted a couple of primered figures with it too, to test it out. Now while with tanks, you can get away with weathering and not really doing anything to the base color, it’s not really the case (IMO) with troops. While I liked the color of the primer, I felt that highlighting up from that color would make them look to ‘bright’.

So, I slathered the minis in a head-to-toe wash of Devlan Mud (which I admit is my best friend in my paints). Then, for good measure, once this layer had dried, I went over them again with another wash, just to make sure that the Devlan Mud was EVERYWHERE.

Now, earlier in the day, I had been at my FLGS and picked up a pot of Vallejo Blue Grey paint, which is nearly a perfect match to the primer coat. So, over the primer/Devlan Mud base I simply painted over the armor plates, leaving the darker base in all the cracks and nooks. The pigment in the Vallejo paint was incredible, and took in one (thinned) coat. Already I was beginning to like how this was coming together.  I decided I was only going to do a harsh line-edge highlight, completely stepping away from my usual 3 or 4 layer blending I normally do. So I took Space Wolves Grey (GW), which is almost a grey/white and used that to highlight armor plates. POW!

I was really pleasantly surprised at the results, and that was when I knew I had found my groove with my new fledgling army.

The beauty about this way of doing the armor is that if you get some paint where it shouldn’t be, it takes literally seconds to correct it, as you’re not having to re-blend etc etc.

Other areas were a snap too. For the flesh, I simply painted a basecoat of Tallarn Flesh, followed by a wash of Gryphonne Sepia, then Ogryn Flesh. When that had dried, I washed Devlan Mud into the eyes and mouth areas to add deeper shading. Paint the teeth with a touch of Bleached Bone and you’re done. That is IT!

Metal areas were base coated with Boltgun Metal, and washed with a coat or two of Devlan Mud (see how this keeps popping up?) then rough highlights on the edges with Boltgun Metal to look like actual wear and not just a pretty sheen on the armor plating.

Gold/Brass areas were painted with a 1-1 base of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold, followed by a wash of –yep, you guessed it- Devlan Mud, then highlighted with one layer of Shining Gold.

Bone/tooth fetishes – base coat of Snakebite Leather, wash of Devlan Mud, then add Bleached Bone to the base color for highlighting.

Runestones – Base coat of Graveyard Earth, washed with Devlan Mud, then a quick highlight with the base color mixed with Skull White.

Furry bits – Choose whatever brown, or grey you want, base coat, wash with DM, then add white to your base for highlights…

You’ll see that I do little more than one highlight after the base color and then the wash. This is the point of this article, to get your army painted, and quickly. Golden Demon winners these ain’t, but with a little TLC, your force will look very nice on the table, and hopefully garner you a few compliments.

I have’nt added the shoulder pad detail yet, as I wanted to do sqauds of them at a time, and also will be having combinations of the different ‘clans’ in my army. Down the road I may add weathering to the armor, but at the moment, I want the armor painted…

Hopefully this will inspire some of you to whip up those undercoated minis and get them on the table…

FOR RUSS! FOR THE WOLFTIME!!!

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Battles and Brotherhood! Painting project is GO!

I got together with my cohort Matty in the UK, via email, to put together a buddy project. As this will be a pseudo series over the next couple of weeks, I started it’s own page over there ===========> Or, if you’re too lazy to look, you could always teleport there using this nifty link: http://whencannonsfade.com/the-bro-project-or-i-can-get-by-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends/

So, go check it out, go on!

🙂

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Crusader, Adepticon, oh, and some Sisters of Battle news…

Ultra quick post today my lovlies…

After what we thought was going to be a big shit dump of a mess, no thanks at all to Brauerhouse in Lombard, We’ve actually managed to secure a spot on a show for this saturday night for all those people at Adepticon who want to listen to some heavy metal. So,  Brad, our He-Man-esque guitar player, whose pastimes include playing guitar for us, and wrestling dragons, managed to get us on the bill with She Likes Todd and Situation red. The best bit is it’s f*cking FREE to get in,  and only a 10 minute ride from the Adepticon venue. For more in depth details on how to get to the show from Adepticon, be sure to swing by Dethtron’s blog, Dick Move, to get the information. So, come along, hang out, have fun, drink some beer, and pick up our brand new release EP – ‘Rise of the Templars’ for a mere $5 🙂

In other news, I found out yesterday, with thanks to the Blood Of Kittens network, that we have a little taster of what is to come for Sisters of Battle! HELL YEAH!! It appears to be a page from the upcoming new codex… Looks like Sisters will be ‘losing’ acts of faith as an ‘extra’ , but gaining some of them as standard special rules. I’m wondering if different slots will have access to different AoF? AND we see that Repressors are included as vehicle options. Could this possibly mean a plastic kit??? and WTF is an ‘arcaballista’? Anyway, i’m very excited, and you will be too, when you see the image by clicking here! 

If you haven’t already, I urge you to join up with BoK, it’s a great network for fellow 40k bloggers.

Thanks for listening, and see you Saturday night!

Paul

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Tomb Kings and other asshattery.

It was a busy weekend this last week. Hell, it’s been crazy the last few weeks. I started a new position at my job, so that has been sucking up a lot of my time. Now I’m getting into the ‘groove’, I should be able to start posting again, many apologies for my lack of new stuff since ‘Old Stuff Day’, which is not even really new stuff, its old stuff. I think a rip just opened in the time/space continuum.

Played a show with my band, Crusader, on Friday night, at some hole-in-the-wall place called Mikes Luv N Music on the south side. I couldn’t quite make up my mind if it’s supposed to be read as ‘Mikes Love and Music’, which would instantly call into disrepute the nature of the place, ‘Mike’s Lovin’ Music’ which would make me think of Barry White for getting your girl in the mood or ‘Mike’s Loving Music’ as in he really digs music. I’ll go with the latter, although I’m still not sure. Anyway, beware, as me and Mr. Dethtron feel that they may have an infestation problem, in which case, it would be option number one in regard to how to read the venue name.

The show went OK. Maybe a couple dozen people were there, but it opened up a gateway for playing shows at a venue in the city, so it was worth it. The sad news, it appears, is that Crusader will not be playing the weekend of Adepticon. This is in no way anything on our part, but on the part of a venue owner who offered us the night of the 2nd April, ignored my numerous emails for about a month, only to be told last week that he had a ‘booking conflict’ and that it ‘wouldn’t work’. Well, f*ck that guy and his shady business practices. We are still looking for an alternative, but I’m not hopeful at this juncture. Me and Dethtron will be at Adepticon though, and I will have a small amount of CDs and shirts available for those interested. Don’t forget you can hear a couple of tracks from our EP on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crusader/172112556153977  and can also buy our merch from our newly created Big Cartel hub: http://crusader.bigcartel.com/

Saturday saw a game between Dethtron and myself, with me fielding my Black Templars against his Tyranids. We were playing 1500 points, and I was wondering how the game would end. We were playing for kill points and Dethy was leading the way by about 5 points through a good portion of the game, but I managed to squeak out a victory by 1 kill point. The Emperor saves! Especially in the case of my lone Templar with a flamer who was the sole survivor of his 10 man unit. He just refused to die. His crowning moment was when he took 8 wounds in one go, which I was sure he would die from, only to save on all of them, much to the disbelief of Dethtron (and me!).

Yesterday saw me and the family running about hither and yon over suburbialand visiting various stores (including a Borders that is closing down – 40k books SCORE!) and also a brief stop in at GW in Orland Park. I marched in and picked up the new White Dwarf to have a peep. Yeah yeah, Grey Knights all over the place, Gundam walkers aplenty and orangutans flinging poop etc etc. Sod that, I went straight to the back page, and there was a picture of a Tomb King, with confirmation that April will in fact, belong to the dead. I spoke with the Black Shirt in there to see if I could glean some info about Nehekara’s finest and this is what I managed to get:

• The skeleton box set will NOT be re-done (booooo! Vampire Counts SUCK! – literally).
• Chariots will also remain the same, although these look good as is, I feel.
• Looks like Ushabtis will be in plastic, probably 3 in a box with load out options.
• Bone Giant redone (thank the gods) and in plastic, again, with different weapon options.
• New character models in metal, although not too sure who.
• Mention of a heavy cavalry? Something about riders on giant snakes? This sounds a bit lame to me, but I reserve judgment to see it in the flesh before punching any kittens.
• Most likely that mummies will be in the list now. Really? Mummies in an Egyptian inspired army? That’s LUDICROUS! I mean, they obviously are better suited to a mid-European style Vampire Counts army*
• Big Beastie. Every army has one, maybe even two. Much speculation surrounds this, but consistent themes that pop up are some kind of Sphinx based monster.
• New Liche Priest minis. HELL YES! I refused to buy those other pieces of crap they had because they looked completely out of place with the delicate detailing of the other models. Well done GW!*

That’s all I got. I kick myself now for not asking about war machines ala the Screaming Skull catapult, which, while being an awesome item, is an utter worthless piece of shit to put together. Oh, he did mention that the TK book would also be hardback, and $39… Please bear in mind that this was all info from a Black Shirt, so take it with a large pinch of salt (except the book price), as I think the general public is more informed than they are sometimes. But, we only have to wait a little over a week to find out. I expect an ‘INCOMING’ email from GW any second now.

On a completely unrelated note, it would appear that the traitorous forces are targeting children in order to swell their ranks by making toys like this:
Defiler, anyone??

Until next time…
(* in case you were wondering, this was sarcasm.)

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