Tag: Dethtron

Preparing for war!

By the gods! where has the time gone? it seems like only yesterday that I was at AdeptiCon hanging out with Dethtron and Evan… Well, I guess a new position at work, my computer at home taking a shit and generally being bloody knackered are the reasons that I haven’t posted in a while…anyway, enough of the excuses!

AdeptiCon was great fun, and a great chance to catch up with some people from the blogging universe. I met Tasty Taste, Brent, Sandwyrm and a couple of others from the HOP network (sorry, names are escaping me right now!). I also met Papa JJ from Dicerolla who is a gentleman! he approached me and Dethtron at the convention and asked if one or either of us were with Crusader, and thus, the ice was broken! Unfortunately we didn’t get to really hang out much, what with the tourneys going on, and our impending show that night at a venue that was only marginally bigger than my 3-year old’s bedroom. But, friendships were forged and i’m sure that we’ll be seeing Papa JJ again soon for more fermented grain beverages.

My one down point from the con was Forge World. I won’t go on about it, but this is definitely their second strike in my book. They had sod all I wanted at Games Day a couple of years back, and the same thing happened at AdeptiCon. I wanted the ‘event exclusive’ mini, a rather sweet ‘boarding marine’ in pre-heresy armor, but they had sold out. Way to go Forge World. They were painfully trying to get rid of some Eldar Titan that they didn’t want to have to cart home, and from what I understand they did end up taking it home. Well thought out lads…

Forge world: see all this really cool shit here?
me: sweet! hell yeah!
Forge world: well, you can’t buy any of it.
me: >sad face<

If any of you are familiar with the ‘Cheese Shop’ Monty Python sketch, it’s pretty spot on with my FW experience.

So, new Tomb Kings are imminent, and I am super excited. It’s put me into gear full throttle with painting my WFB army, which is also another reason I haven’t posted for a while.

I saw the leaked pictures and pretty much had a nerdgasm. I’ve heard on the interwebs a lot of hate toward the Sepulchral Stalkers/Necropolis Knights, but I think they’re really cool looking, and somewhat over-the-top, which I’ve been coming to expect from Fantasy Battle, considering recent releases. I actually also really like the thought of skeleton troops harnessing them and riding them, it’s just so ‘out there’ and quite refreshing to have this unusual take on what I believe will be a heavy cavalry class for this army. (about bloody time too!). The Sphinx is great too, and the model options just look incredible! I’m super excited about the Tomb Guard though. I actually held a box in my hand at my FLGS the other day, but alas it was still shrik wrapped, but it was on the ‘coming soon’ display. The down side to these guys is that they will be retailing for $41, the same price as a Stegadon… yowch! The one thing that I did find odd about them is the choice of head dress they are wearing, which looks distinctly more Mayan than Egyptian, in my opinion:

A small thing, which I don’t really care about, I just thought it odd… I also managed to thumb through the new army book too, which is gorgeous and lavishly illustrated in full color (yes, it will cost more too). Although we haven’t seen them yet, there will be another wave of TK stuff, as we have seen with other lines, GW will do an initial release, then a second wave. The second wave will consist of what look like plastic Ushabti (3 in a box for about $40 i’m guessing) and some new character figures, including some TK that looks like he’s appearing from a mound of scarabs. I’m hoping that new Liche Priests will be on the cards. Looks like we TK players are stuck with the gods-awful Screaming Skull catapult model, and I didn’t see anything about a new Bone Giant (I HATE that mini!) Having said that, I was in a bit of a rush, and didn’t get to look as deep into the book as I’d liked.

I was also half hoping that we would get new skeleton infantry minis, but alas it was not to be. The cavalry models seem to be out of scale with current horse models they make for other cavalry, which kinda sucks. I would’ve liked to have seen TK dedicated skellie minis, instead of the VCs ones with a couple of egyptian style upgrade sprues in there. There’s a lot I don’t use from those regular sprues, and won’t be using on anything else. Oh well, the pro’s defintely outweigh the cons for the imminent Tomb Kings, and I for one am a happy camper…

The release date of May 7th has totally put the firecrackers up my arse that I needed, and as I wanted to take a much needed break away from painting the Emperor’s finest, this has been perfect! I’ll be posting up some pictures of my progress in the next few days, so stay tuned.

Cheers for now

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.)

Weathering my Chimera APC

After reading a rather informative article from my buddy Colin, or as he is known in other circles, ‘Dethtron’, I decided to try out his technique for weathering vehicles. I thought I would try this out on my Chimera, and although I was missing one paint that Colin recommended, P3 Umbral Umber, I figured I would just do the dozer blade and see how it would turn out.

I think weathering works for nearly all tanks, and works well. There are some others that I feel probably would benefit from not having as much, if any, of these weathering effects as I feel it may detract from the paint job. I think that this works well for Guard stuff. The jury is still out, for me, on whether I want to do this on my Sisters or Marine vehicles. We’ll see.

Anyhoo, its pretty simple After I had painted my hazard stripes on the dozer blade, I took an old sponge from one of the mini blister packs and ripped a piece off. I first used black and stippled it on all over, to show where the wear and tear had taken the paint down to the undercoat. I was already excited at how this was turning out, so I eagerly busted out the boltgun metal and repeated the process. I concentrated more on the edges to show where general use had taken the paint down to the metal.

I am, so far, very pleased with the result:

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I won’t be doing as much with the rest of the vehicle. I went a little overboard on this as I figured it probably gets the brunt of the hard work. I’ll probably put a couple of bullet marks on there as well.

Thats it! Thanks to Colin, who, under the moniker of Dethtron, can be found with his rapier wit over at his blog ‘Dick Move’ (yes really!) for showing me this stupidly simple, but effective method of weathering. I’ll be sure to put more pics of this APC up as I get more done on it.

Cheers!

Paul