Four Days Left for Minos Color Scheme Poll

I've been so busy with a host things, both in matters applicable to real life and matters certainly not, to get any work done on anything geek related. That doesn't mean the Sons of Minos Color Scheme Poll has been paused however, it's still steamrolling along. Time is almost up however, and the sun sets for your chance to vote this coming week. Take a look below at the four choices, then vote for your favorite in the poll over on the right. The entry number correlates with the kneepad number. There are a couple of finished test models out already, and those are below as well. Once again, thanks for your input on this project and enjoy!





Sons of Minos Deathwatch Marine and Tactical Trooper

Battle Brother Artemis: Stats for FATE

Hot on the heels of our Deathwatch FATE game a few days ago I painted up my character. I thought I had slapped together a pretty cool model when I made him, so that made the painting more of a joy, plus, I haven't really painted anything in quite a while.

Since we were still working from pregenerated characters, this guy is almost a carbon copy of my first character, Battle Brother Elyas of the Dark Angels, even the name is similar. Since we departed greatly from the rules for round two however, I had the leeway to choose my own Space Marine chapter, and I really did go for "my own", opting for the Sons of Minos DIY chapter I've been cooking up with help from my buddy Biscuit. As you can see from the pic, the character's a little more feral, and little more rough around the edges, plus he has a cool mohawk, and has an awesome chapter icon shoulder pad sculpted by John over at Santa Cruz Warhammer. It's this pad that really makes the model proverbially "snap". So in a way, this is the same character as the first time around, but also completely unlike the first one at the same time.

By the way, there's still a little over a week to vote on the Sons of Minos color scheme.



Battle Brother Artemis
Health: 7
Composure: 6
Refresh: 5

Skill Pyramid:

• Superb (+5): Fists
• Great (+4): Endurance, Athletics
• Good (+3): Guns, Weapons, Might
• Fair (+2): Alertness, Resolve, Survival, Leadership
• Average (+1): Investigation, Rapport, Stealth, Intimidation, Academics

Stunts:

• Wings of Angels: While using a jump pack, may move from one zone to another and make a melee attack.
• Deathwatch Training: When you damage an alien target, spend one Fate point to cause one additional Consequence to that target.
• Last Leg [Endurance]: May spend a Fate point to defer a Consequence or Concession for one more exchange, or until hit again.
• Brawler [Fists]: +1 Defense when outnumbered; +1 Stress on hits against two or more Minions.
• Slugfest [Fists]: You may save your Defensive Spin to apply to your next attack.

Aspects:

• Hot-Blooded
• Assault Space Marine
• Sons of Minos
• I'll Take Point!
• I've Got My Helmet off for Dramatic Effect
• Bah, I've Had Worse on Tindalos

Oblivion's Edge Using FATE

It seems like its been forever since we all sat around the table en masse to play a game. Well we fixed that this weekend, still had a couple of players MIA but we had five ready to throw down in the name of the Emperor. We had played the Free RPG Day Deathwatch starter Final Sanction, and since the folks at Fantasy Flight were cool enough to put out a second free module, we picked up where the action left off.

As fine of a game that's been whipped up, which is now finally in stores after forever, this evening's Deathwatch game would be with a different rule-set altogether. The FATE system's been garnering a lot of attention as of late, and we decided to use those rules for Deathwatch, specifically the Starblazer Adventures book. FATE is a very nice system, and we've got a good deal of experience a while back while playing (and thorughly enjoying) Spirit of the Century.

Unlike a tabletop game, it's considerably harder to give a game report of an RPG. We did have fun with some miniatures though along the way, and fought all kinds Tyranid hordes from Hive Fleet Dagon. The adventure picks up within hours of where the first one stopped, so the characters are still right in the middle of the action, and a huge devourer fleet is about to land and eat the freaking planet!


FATE uses "zones" for the action, moving from one zone to another will cost the character certain successes when the commit actions. It's also a nice way to compartmentalize the action into separate theaters. Above, the central rectangle is a landing pad at the starport. Surrounding it are the other zones. The heavy bolter armed Blood Angel, as well as the Storm Warden tactical cover the eastern flank. PDF forces with their Chimeras guard against the southern direction (and subsequently will get eaten later), a fuel truck and fuel canisters are rigged to explode on the western flank, and the Ultramarine Apothecary and my character, a Sons of Minos assault marine guard the northern approach. The team is trying to hole up and secure the landing port for an incoming shuttle to get them out of there. An Eversor Assassin was also on her her way to the landing pad.

That was one change up I was happy about. I made my Dark Angels assault marine for the game, because that's what one of the sample characters were (and I happened to just have a Dark Angels army). In a sense you're kind of limited overall however since the main rule book only has six of a thousand chapters represented in it.

Using the FATE rules on the other hand you can use ANY space marine chapter you want, be it a standard one, an esoteric one, or a made up one. I had the go ahead to make my Deathwatch character from my DIY chapter, the Sons of Minos, so I was mega thrilled. The pic of him is at the top of this post on top of the poker chips. I whipped him together at the last minute out of spare bits during the pre-game chit chat and "what's for dinner" small talk. I'm happy with him, he's been primered black already and I'll get to painting him this week.

A Tyranid warrior and Genestealers rush across the maglev runway

"Get to the choppa!" Marines race to their shuttle EVAC

A Genestealer is about to get fisted, make that POWER fisted

A flying troupe of Tyranid Gargoyles

Aaahoo...Space Wolves of Minos!

I almost outsmarted myself here. I'm working up doing my "last great Space Marine project", if you haven't voted on a color scheme, don't forget! Well I've been busy, but the other night I had some free time so I started putting together my first two tactical squads as well as a couple of HQ choices. I was thinking of my Death Spectres list from way back and as I was clipping and trimming all these cool Space Wolf bits I was thinking to myself how unfortunate it was I wasn't using the Wolves codex. They had cool things like sagas, solo heroes on the battlefield, specialized scout units, cool things like frostblades and rune armor, the list went on and on.

The fluff I'm working up for this chapter was a very "frozen death world" kind of thing to boot. That's where I almost outsmarted myself. Instead of sticking to the original plan, grudgingly I might add, I made the obvious choice that it's my army and I can do whatever the heck I want!

So there you go, another "counts as" Space Marine army. I'll get around to working up my own background and organization, but the easy part is done, the Space Wolf codex doesn't need to be reinvented. I will have to get kind of creative with their "Imperial Guard" allies, which will take more work, but I'll worry about that later. For now, I've got to get painting! Enjoy some very rough WIP shots below, still need to pick up some resin bases, as well as embossed tactical shoulder pads and the awesome custom-made chapter icon pads too!





Basically I'm making a hybrid of Space Wolf and Dark Angel with a little pinch of Chaos thrown into the mix for an extra kick. The hooded Dark Angel heads will be prevalent throughout, as well as the more characterful Space Wolf elements. The Chaos bits will be more subtle and consist of things like the belt-fed bolters, spiky-kneepad lower legs, and the like.


The late, great Warren Zevon

Mik's Minis: Now With More Testosterone

Nothing says father-son bonding like the Riddle of Steel


Today was a big doctor's office visit in that we got to find out the gender of our new baby! As you may have guessed from the Conan pic above that yes, it is a boy. And yes, I put "Conan" forth as a possible name, and yes, it was promptly shot down! With my daughter we've painted miniatures, played boardgames / wargames, wrestled, took MMA classes, had Nerf gun battles, and the like. Having a boy doesn't necessarily open up all these new doors of things to do, but it does broaden the size and scope of the family unit considerably. I would've been happy with pretty much anything, but now thinking how both the dog and the cat are female, as are the rest of the humans in the house, it's kind of nice to equal out the testosterone just a little bit.

A Mad Man Had a Cape...

"A mad man had a cape on his back in the fog."

Color Scheme Poll: The Final Four

After the last round of voting, with a decent 34 votes, we've narrowed down the choices further to just four. I whipped up four new color plates for each of these schemes as well and assigned them new knee pad numbers to coincide with the new poll over on the left for voting.

If you voted last time, please, please vote again, like I said, we're narrowing this down and just cut 60% of the lesser picked color schemes. These final four are all good ones, I'd be happy with any of the bunch...but even I can only vote for one!

The Sons of Minos are moving along at a good clip. SCWH John has wowed me with both his skill and his generosity yet once again and I've got all the bits of those boxed sets clipped and sorted. In the spirit of "doing this right" I've decided I am going to go with custom bases as well. If it was good enough for the Storm Wardens, it's good enough for the Sons of Minos! So that's it, please vote and make your voice heard!

The Waterford War Pigs

This season marks the whopping tenth fantasy football season for me and the boys of the Appalachian Football League. We've played on many different sites over the years, but we've called CBSSports.com home for the last three. It's a pay-to-play site, but it does give some nice features for the money. It's kind of cool too, playing with the same group of teams for such a protracted length of time. Well this year's draft has come and gone and below is what my team consists of. We play in a keeper league, and my two keepers from last season were WR Reggie Wayne (a no-brainer there) and RB Michael Turner. The latter is kind of a gamble, but with twelve teams in the league, quality RB's will be kind of hard to come by, plus I'm banking on him having a better season this year than last year. I'm not exactly a coaching genius though!

I won't bore you with the details, I'll let my roster speak for itself, needless to say I do have a good feeling this year, but we'll see. A couple of snags I'm pretty happy with are Matt Schaub at QB and, surprisingly the Jets DST. A lot of times the DSTs play second fiddle, but a solid core can really pack in reliable points week in and week out. Enjoy!

Hordes of the Things: Four Army Clash

Wood Elves and Grail Knights joined forces to eliminate a scourge of Undead and Barbarians that were running rampant up and down the countryside. The Elves and the Knights have shared a mutual partnership for night on a century and their armies have a lot of experience fighting alongside one another.


The Barbarian hordes and the Necromancer's Undead are a tenuous alliance at best, although it is rumored the Barbarians worship the same fell gods as the Undead. The two alliances clashed at dusk, the Undead fortress, a plane-shifting necropolis has just become visible. With the Necropolis in sight, the forces of good attack.

The forces of the Grail Knights, with Unicorn (magician) and Pegasus (aerial hero)

Knights square off against Barbarian riders and Mumaks

The Pegasus takes a dive, the Knights' aerial hero falls lifeless

When Gods attack! The Undead summon forth their colossal God...

...who is subsequently bested by the Unicorn and driven off!

The Wood Elves summon their own deity, in the form of a mighty tree

The Wood Elf God attacks the Necropolis (then we realized you couldn't do this)

The Tree God faces the Barbarian Mumak behemoths

This is one of those games that no miniature gamer should be without. Hordes of the Things is just a great, simple, easy-to-use, and incredibly adaptable game. Working in 6mm is great too because an entire army, all you'll ever need will run you twenty buck, thirty if you want a lot of options thrown in there. This battle took place a couple of weeks ago, with as busy as I've been however, it's just now going up, my apologies. I wish I could lavish a little extra detail into the report as it is, but my recollection is a tad fuzzy. Enjoy!