An Objective Point of View

A trio of objective markers

Getting in at the last minute with some more points for the month of December in our Trucidos campaign. During the campaign you can make up to six objective markers, at any time, and get one point for each for them. Basically that's just one a month, but since these were kinda 'themed' together, I did three this month. I figure I should do them while I had the chance and not wait until the very end, when I'll probably be furiously painting figs to get up to 2,000 points!


Two drums and a kerosene can rest on wooden planks

I've had these drums and fuel cans around forever, heh, since 3rd edition 40k came out, sheesh, ten years ago. I had snagged up a couple of the boxed sets, and these were extras included on some sprues that I never got around to using...until now. There were also some tank traps, dragon teeth and the like too, which I'll be using in some upcoming terrain projects.


Three drums on rusty steel platform

These are supposed to have been lying around on the surface of this planet, untouched, for at least a couple hundred years, more or less, so I wanted them to look worn and weathered, but I also wanted them to be brightly color. I undercoated the barrels in black, then drybrushed on a chunky white. After that I brushed on some craft paint orange, followed up by some red wash along the can creases and Devlan Mud wash around the gaskets. Lastly I highlighted with a watery pumpkin orange, and before it dried completely I blotted it most of it off with a paper towel, leaving some rough texture and taking away paint layers on some of the edges. The platforms the barrels rest on were made out of broken tongue depressors as well as a small sheet of plastic from an old Land Raider kit. These were painted with Snakebite Leather, Vermin Brown, and an ink wash.


The tire is from an oversized Matchbox dune buggy

I went once again to my venerable pile of old water slide transfers to make the barrels more 'official' looking. On an Ork Stormboyz sheet I used some icons of red lightning bolts inside an outlined, red square. I thought those look good enough for some kind of 'caution!' warning. The black Imperial Eagles were from some very old Blood Angel transfers than I have and make a nice touch, I wish had more of those. For basing size I used 40mm Warmachine bases, I like these because of their beveled edges.

Lego Power Miners

Set #8956

I picked up the $5.99 set of the new Lego Power Miners line, the Stone Chopper. I heard about the Power Miners line a while back, but the sneak peak pics kinda turned me off with all of the brightly colored pieces, even if one of them was my fave; green. There were rumors of a new mini-fig type though, I don't what you'd call 'em, some kind of dwarf elementals, (the site lists them officially as 'rock monsters') so my curiosity was piqued.

The colors aren't too bad once you get into building the set. Although a small box, you get two mini-figs, and a pretty nifty bike with some interesting build techniques and a rubber wheel as well. The human doesn't come with any equipment, just a helmet, which is the older Rock Raider style in a new color. There is a new colored crystal (transparent red) and an old school red ruby in the set. The rock monster is a nice addition to boot.

The Rock Raiders line by Lego was a very short-lived theme almost a decade ago. It was in a similar vein (pun intended) as the new guys and featured very similar figs and equipment. There was even a rock monster in there too. I really liked the Rock Raider lineup, but there wasn't much going on, they lacked true adversaries, which is what Lego's hoping to fix with these little rock monsters.


The two mini-figs of the set

The human mini-fig is a good one. He's got a Raider style helmet, which is visor ready, and molded in a new, bright blue. He's got a double-printed head (one mean, one surprised) and his torso is also double printed. Not only is his torso printed on both sides with cool pouch and equipment motifs, his legs are also printed with some gear. My one complaint, as mentioned already, no equipment. It would've been nice to give him a pick axe or a radio or something.

The rock monster, named Firox, is a great little addition, and so much better than some of the aliens and what-not Lego has put out in the past. He's way better than the prequel Battle Droids too. This little guy is a transparent red, with opaque gray 'rocks' painted on, and comes with a red transparent crystal too. Something like a flame-pike or what-not would be nice, but he's good as is.


Open wide!

Firox is a stout fig with a large, hollow body and a widely hinged mouth joint. I was able to fit both of the set's crystals inside with some room to spare. I'd say a mini-fig head or two would fit just as neatly. The coolest part are his rocky arms...which will fit into the shoulder sockets of a regular mini-fig, and vice versa!


Rock on!

The human mini-fig with the rock monster's arms. This opens up a lot of new possibilities with swappable arms, even more so if you include the robot arm from the Agents lineup too.

H.E.A.P. #1

Scout Squad Whitefeather

A fully loaded Scout squad

Size: Ten Man Squad (split into two five-man combat squads)
Leader: Scout Sergeant
Wargear: scout armour, frag / krak grenades
Special Equipment: sniper rifles, shotguns, Heavy Bolter, and Veteran Sgt. gear
Naming Convention: Squad Whitefeather. Real life Marine Corps sniper, Carlos Hathcock is one of the most documented and well-known modern day snipers in military history. The tricked-out, mucho deluxe M25 sniper rifle was made in his honor and named the Whitefeather. For years I was perplexed at all the feather motifs on my Dark Angels, especially on my Deathwing models. Even though the word "wing" is in the title, I figured they were going with some sort of Native American thing. Even though the word "angel" is in the chapter name, again, I never put that with the feather references. So, named after the nickname of a real life sniper, and having feathers built into the chapter fluff, it was a no-brainer.


A close combat oriented combat squad armed with shotguns and a Heavy Bolter. The Scout Sgt. is also tooled up for melee. This can operate as a separate 'troops' entry, or as a combat squad split off from a larger, ten-man troop choice. Stat-wise, a missile launcher would've been a better choice, but it's hard to beat the Heavy Bolter model on look s alone. For this reason, he made the cut. I also chose shotguns for the same reasons, they look cool. Plus, it's neat to arm your Marines with something other than the usual Bolter fare. Stat-wise, the shotgun is also a legitimate choice to boot, so it's the best of both worlds.


On the plus side; lots of great pouches and add-ons.

The assembly of the Scout sprue was an incredibly tedious and frustrating affair. These are not good kits by any means. The plastic sculpts are nice, and the amount of extra equipment and doohickeys is a plus, but the assembly alone makes me think twice about doing any more Scouts in the near future.


Scout Sergeant Felix is armed with a bolt pistol and a combat blade, plus he's got the Data/Cyclops visor thing going on too. Since his pistol looks like it has a silencer on it, we'll just call it a Stalker-pattern Bolt Pistol, like Sgt. Telion's larger counterpart.


Another five man unit kitted out for a specialist role, this time it's long range support. I really like the finished look of the snipers, but the models once again are very simple, consisting of just three parts; the lower legs, the upper torso/rifle/coak, and the head. They paint up well enough though, despite their near-gameboard design.


I wanted to do an intricate camouflage for their camo cloaks, but opted out of it. Since the whole army is based with the desert-gravel-sand look, I went with cloaks that would blend in with a similar environment.


Detached as a combat squad from a larger ten-man unit, this guy will be "just another sniper". Fielded as their own squad choice, he'll act as the Scout Sergeant. I do plan on painting up a Dark Angel version of Telion however, and will field him whenever possible, who will obviously replace this guy as squad leader. Having chosen to go with the new Space Marine codex, instead of the antiquated Dark Angel one, a lot of new options open up to me, such as using Telion with my scouts. Of course I won't name him Telion, I've already bought the model and filed off the Ultramarine symbols, and since the Dark Angels have their own famous scout leader, with no stats mind you, I'll just name my new Telion model Scout Sergeant Naaman.

Industrial Conduit Array

If you don't know about our 40k Trucidos campaign by now, well, you haven't been reading this blog, haha. The campaign, as you know of course focusing primarily on building terrain. This is one of my entries for December.


I say "one" of my entries because to get the maximum three points for the month in the terrain category you have to build more than a square foot of terrain. A solid base as shown above will only get you two points. Ironically enough, a terrain piece just the size of a CD will also get you two points. The theory here is that it should be easy to get two points. It should be a task to get three points, and you can never get more than that in a month.


I opted for a base with towers, walkways, and ruins. The idea came a couple of years ago as part of a Necromunda terrain piece, but it never saw fruition. It was going to include a giant mushroom grove too, that detail was left on the cutting room floor for this piece and turned into its very own terrain project.


I can NOT say enough good things about using generic clay cat litter as rubble. This stuff is awesome, and when it's dry it is rock hard.


I painted a layer of white glue down, then sprinkled it on and let dry. I then liberally applied a 50/50 glue and water mixture to it and let it dry for twenty four hours. The cat litter clumps and then dries, leaving something that looks crumbly, but is hard as concrete. When painted and drybrushed, the result looks great with very little effort.


Since it was once a working industrial compound, I built it with a semblance of symmetry in mind. When this conduit was in working order it would've been both shiny and orderly.


It was a tough job, but someone had to eat all those Pringles! Here it doesn't look like much, but I've gotta say, when the last coat of paint went on I was pleased with it. It won't blow anybody away, but on the tabletop it will more than get the job done.

How to Cook "Dinner"

Normally I would make a joke like "I've received hundreds of emails asking how I did this..." alluding that my geekblog here has legions of readers. Now ironically, I have received a couple of a peeps asking about it since it was posted, how I did it, if I did it (umm, yeah, I did, duh), and the like. So here's a behind-the-scenes-look.

It was this pic that I posted in a 40k report way back in November that got me thinking about the idea, notice the caption under pic in the actual game report also reads "dinner". That's what the Tyranids do; they eat everything.

Thinking about the "why" armies go to war, not just the how, usually isn't a factor in miniature games, but I still like to ponder the notion as part of the hobby. Why do the Tyranids fight? For food. How do they view the enemy? As food. It was a pretty easy concept, and not too far of a stretch to put two and two together. Shortly after I posted that game report I sketched a quick cartoon as seen above, nothing special, and it sat there forever.

I finally got around to doing something with it about a month later. Using a #303 Prismacolor pencil, I sketched out the pic in better detail. I also used a couple of guard models on hand in order to get the equipment just right. Using a model for reference trumps going from memory any day of the week. All of this is shown above as well. Next I went in with some fine tipped, permanent black markers, drafting pens actually, and went over my sketch. I use a bunch of different sizes, for line thickness, and then erase what blue I can when I'm done. The light blue pencil doesn't copy or scan, but I still like to erase as much as possible, just to clean it all up. When that all done I can either use my art markers, and color it by hand, or I can scan it and color it digitally. I opted for the latter, this way if someone has a non-Cadian scheme for their army or something, I can go back in and give the chicken leg that scheme instead. For digital coloring, I use a trial version of Adobe Photoshop I think I downloaded from their site. That's it, it's just some point and click with the paint bucket tool, a lot of patience, and there you have it, a nifty little 40k cartoon. It's not a web-comic like many have suggested I do, but it's a start in that direction.

Monsterpocalypse, live!

The new family dog does not appreciate the latest Christmas present!

Season's Greetings

A little Mass Effect for your holiday tidings...

It's that time of year again, whether it's Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, or just merely time off from work, I hope it's a good one for you and yours. I promised myself I'd get some work done, some video gaming in, some terrain built, and some miniature painting done while on break...err, so far not so good, haha...


Andrew Colunga's "Monster Claus"

Dinner!

Trucidos: First Contact

a compact 4x4 Battlefield

Month One of the Trucidos Campaign
Mission: Seize Ground (x3 objective markers)
Deployment: Spearhead
Size: 500 points
Forces: Dark Angels vs. Cadian Imperial Guard


Cadian Forces of the Imperial Guard

Just about the smallest 500 points the Imperial Guard can field...still weighing in at a whopping fifty five models! My marines would be outnumbered over 2:1 in the coming battle. Now as to why marines are fighting guard exactly, we just don't know. I think we're chalking it up to the whole "fog of war" thing.


The Dark Angels

Five hundred points of Dark Angels; a scout squad, a tactical squad, and captain. The scout squad, making their debut, was split into two combat squads filling two entirely different roles (one assault, one sniping). The tactical squad was also split into two combat squads for the game start.


Ray's army deploys around his new terrain piece

Turn 1: The fault of the entire battle lies on the shoulders of the Imperial Guard. Winning the initiative, they went first, and before friend-or-foe protocol was established by Dark Angels Captain Othniel, they opened fire with one of their autocannons on the marine snipers keeping watch in a dilapidated tower. The heavy shells ripped through the metal plating of the low wall and killed one of the scouts. The guard drew first blood. Othniel gave the terminate order and squad Primus, perched across the field in rusty towers, opened fire of their own with boltgun and missile launcher, killing three Cadians. The remaining snipers exacted retribution with their precision rifles, felling two more.


Another angle of Ray's stunning new terrain piece


Guard caught in a crossfire of scouts

Turn 2: The assault scouts hugged the base of a small rectory, hoping to scamper up and secure the objective when they saw the guard's platoon command squad approach around the corner. Shotguns blazing away, the scouts rushed headlong into the guard, Scout Sgt. Felix wielding a long combat blade as well as his Stalker pattern bolt pistol led the charge. Only the platoon commander himself survived the scouts' assault. A sniper in the tower was brought low by his own craft, victim to a guardsman's lasgun.


In their debut battle, the scouts were worked overtime


The surviving platoon leader stands defiant

Turn 3: Although the surviving guard platoon leader was outnumbered five to one, he dodged every blow in melee and lived to survive another round. The snipers in the tower locked in on the guard's HQ command and opened fire, mortally wounding the lieutenant...or so they thought. A guard medic was by his side in an instant, injecting stimulants and bandaging the grievous wound, their leader was saved.


missile launcher element of Squad Primus

Turn 4: Advancing guard on the other side of the field still came under fire from the entrenched combat squad of Squad Primus, high atop their own tower, boltgun and missile launcher a constant blaze. With only three objective markers to secure, the guards' superior numbers ensured almost sure victory. The marines had one marker secured, another hold was tentative at best, slipping every turn, and the third was outright lost to them. Captain Othniel himself took matters into his own hands, charging across the open field to single-handedly contest this third objective, he couldn't win it, being a non-scoring unit, he simply had to survive until the end of the game.


The last stand, but of who?

Turn 5: Othniel was a force of nature, firing with his plasma pistol, and charging into melee with his power sword with abandon. His efforts nearly cost him however. Although protected by his articifer armor's 2+ save, and his 4+ invulnerable save thanks to his Iron Halo, he still lost two of his three wounds. One was to a bolt from a plasma rifle, which is almost understandable, those are formidable weapons (a shame I failed the inv. save though). The second wound however came from a most unlikely source; a single shot fired from a laspistol of all weapons. I had really hoped the die roll at the end of the turn would end the game, but it did not, we had at least one more turn.

Turn 6: We knew this was most likely the final turn, so all scoring units (troop) choices moved towards their nearest objective markers to secure them. The assault scouts moved to the back end of the rectory, where they had started the game, and to just within reach of the objective, denying it to the waiting squad of guardsmen just on the other side of the building. The ground element of Squad Primus remained unusually ineffectual throughout the entire battle. They had traded shots with a guard unit, but nothing more. Their one job was to secure an objective however, so in this respect they fulfilled their role. The last objective was the domain of Othniel, and he secured it valiantly, although it swarmed with guard. The irony was he dared not fire a shot with his plasma pistol; as luck would have it, I would roll a '1' to hit, suffer a gets hot' backfire, and fail my invulnerable save, lose his last wound...and have that cost me the game. Instead, he stood there, power sword raised in defiance to any who dare cross him. The turn ended, as did the game. The Dark Angels controlled one objective and contested the other two, which otherwise were squarely held by the Cadians.

Conclusion: Dark Angels victory

Since we're playing a campaign game, we were able to roll for veteran abilities after the battle. The winning side can pick two units, the losing side one unit; each of these units in turn rolls for a random ability. Ray had an incredibly difficult time with this, being Cadians, once a unit received an ability, they technically become a 'named' unit, therefore fixed in composition. I had an easier time, but found my new abilities didn't augment anything really, just duplicate some of what I already had. I picked Othniel to receive a melee ability, which ended up being hit-and-run, useful if he didn't already have combat tactics, which is very similar. The overworked scout squad was also selected to receive an ability, and they received stealth. An amazing ability from the fieldcraft chart...if they weren't equipped with camo cloaks already which grants them, well, the stealth ability. Fortunately only my snipers had the cloaks, so now the whole unit benefits I guess.


It was exciting to kick off the campaign in such a grand fashion. We played two games side by side simultaneously. While I played against Ray, another battle raged next to us between the Andy's Necrons and the Tyranids of Hive Klandathu, belonging to Chris. Ironically enough, they rolled the same mission, number of objectives, and deployment as we did. They were finished much quicker than us however, with the Tyranids securing the win.

We get points for wins and losses sure, but remember the whole basis of the campaign is to build up some terrain, historically the one weak link in many games. Images like Ray's ruined building on the table top, along with nicely painted armies, I can now see, are what the games all about. Other factors play into the points system, like writing a quick piece of fiction or what-not from the perspective of your army, all of it however is made to be very easy to obtain. Even the terrain maxes out points wise, so it's a bit of a task to get three points (the most you can earn in a month from terrain) but not too terribly difficult at all to get two points for a piece. It's all being tracked on the Trucidos blog, with points totals for each player being tallied, so check it out.


Score!

As a bonus, Christmas came early! Andy presented us all with these amazing measuring templates before the game. They're the T.A.C. template made by Gale Force Nine, and have handy measurements on four out of five of their sides, with 40k specific items such as squad coherency, vehicle coherency, and assault movements. To say it came in handy is an understatement; yet another great way to kick off the campaign.

Codex Calamity

After, literally, twenty years of playing Dark Angels, one gets used to changes that happen to their favorite chapter along the way. Above is their original appearance in Rogue Trader (still in pre-Heresy black armor) and next is their first 'official' codex with real estate shared by another Angel chapter; the Blood Angels. This second edition book was actually a very cool codex, and had a ton of fluff and pretty pictures to accompany a pretty sweet army list; it was great all around.


On the left is the pamphlet, err, codex from third edition. This was, maybe, twenty pages and still cost fifteen bucks or so. Unfortunately, the whole bit torrent thing hadn't really taken off at that point, or I could've saved myself money and heartache. The 3rd edition codex, much like 3rd edition game itself, seemed to take a nosedive. On the right is the fourth edition codex, which ain't bad, but it ain't great either. It certainly has flavor and character, and it was written by GW veteran Jervis himself, but that shouldn't give him a free ride. If the fourth edition rules were all there were to this day, the codex would still be adequate, however now it shows many, many inconsistencies. Hence this rant, err, post.


Above are the third and fifth edition Space Marines codices respectively. They're here because all deviant chapters (Black Templars, Dark/Blood Angels, Space Wolves, etc.) still use them as their 'base' templates. Other mainstream chapters (or Codex chapters) like the Ultramarines, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, and the like use these codices solely on their own without the 'nutty' flair others have.

Herein lies the problem; the 4th edition Dark Angels codex falls so incredibly short in light of the newer 5th edition Space Marine codex, one truly wonders what the mindset is back at the ranch. Sure, one is written for an older version of the rules, but they would've fixed all of these inconsistencies with a simple FAQ, right? Wrong.

The FAQ that came out about a month ago (11/08) addressed none of these glaring issues. I understand some of the new goodies would be off-limits to current DA armies, but I didn't think that NONE of the new stuff would be available. Yes, there are at least a dozen items of equipment, and almost as many unit selections, that are off-limits. Not only that, but major changes have occurred to the exact same wargear with the exact same name. For example, a standard Land Raider now holds twelve troops, yet the DA Land Raider (same stats, mind you) holds only ten troopers. Storm Shields and Combat shields all offer different saves depending on what book you have in your hands. Cyclone missile launchers fire more (or less) shots too, again depending on the book.

In an interview with the writer, Calvatore, it was said that non-Codex chapters don't have access to the same forges as the ones on Mars, therefore their equipment is inferior and tech-priests not as knowledgeable. Really? The Dark Angels are the first chapter ever created by the Emperor, period. Their tech-priests maintain the only jetbikes left in any human hands anywhere in the universe, but they can't figure out how to put heavy flamers on the side of a Land Raider instead of Lascannons? Ludicrous. I understand it's an old codex just barely trying to tread water in light of the new rules, but stubbornly not giving any flexibility to even attempt to reconcile it into a more modern version is eyebrow raising at best, frustrating at worst.

I have no choice really, I will be fielding my Dark Angels army from now on as a fifth edition codex army. It's the little things, and it's the big things, and add them all up together, it makes for a mess. The above examples barely scratch the surface, literally. Remember my Veteran Troops? Well, there's no such unit in the new codex, so I may have to get creative with them and do another route. If that's my only 'casualty' of codex crossover though, the benefits will be well worth the hassle of retooling/re-purposing them.

Brickarms!

The vaunted M41a...in Lego!

Brickarms.com is an independent, garage-based endeavor run by a very cool individual and his family who absolutely excel at making third party weapons and accessories. The official blurb follows:

BrickArms LLC is a small toy company specializing in original, custom designed lego-compatible weapons and custom minifigs. All toys are original, and we produce high quality, low cost toys that "fit" perfectly with the LEGO-Universe.

An excellent Springfield Armory M21 sniper rifle


A great looking Mauser Broomhandle

Whether you're a rabid Lego animal, or just a casual fan, go check out the Brickarms site, poke around, even pick up a couple of the weapons. Most prices are merely a buck each, and as well as the three examples above, there's about THIRTY more to pick from on the site, including grenades, crates, and bipods too!