A Weekend of Gaming Part 1 - 40K Zone Mortalis

I had a big weekend of gaming. So as not to overload you with photos all at once, we'll focus on Saturday's gaming. My friend Brian Parisi has volunteered to provide a couple of Zone Mortalis tables for the 40K Warzone Tournament at Adepticon this year. I hadn't seen them yet so we decided to make a day of trying them out and seeing if there were any tweaks that needed to be made in order to make them comply with my Stratagem List that goes along with the tournament. We spent a little while analyzing the pieces he constructed and then set up a suitable 3'x3' layout. At the 40K Warzone Tournament the players will be fielding 1000 point forces so 3'x3' is ample space for an hour and a half game.

We used last year's Zone Mortalis mission and deployed on 6" deployment zones on opposing sides. I took the Familiar Ground Stratagem which gave me Move Through Cover and Scout for all of my Infantry. In the picture below you can see my firebase, a Dreadnought castled with a Techmarine with Power Field Generator, backed up by a 6 man Devastator Squad. You can see two Adepticon poker chips in the shot, representing 2 of the 4 objectives in the mission. This grouping of models was sitting on a 3rd. You can also see a bulkhead dead straight ahead. Brian's army lurked largely on the other side.

This is about as much as you need to see of my army since everyone died in bloody slaughter.

Below are the forces on the other side of the bulkhead, including Chaos Terminators, Obliterators, and Cultists, among others.

A formidable battle line waiting to advance.

As a distraction I sent my valiant Scouts up a straight passage hugging the right flank of the board. Brian sent 2 Spawn up said flank to intercept them.

Scouts vs Spawn was not a fair match up. And to add insult to injury I dropped one of the Scouts when I got home from gaming and he broke in two.

My distraction was insufficient and though I thought I had a commanding view of the center of the board, Brian flooded the opposing quarter with Obliterators, Noise Marines, and Cultists evening out the domination of the objectives.

Overwhelmed is the only way I can describe how I felt.

Meanwhile, on my left flank, a seemingly inconsequential group of 6 Chaos Space Marines with the Mark of Slannesh moved up to threaten my own dominant quarter.

People cry about how useless Chaos Space Marines are. The might not be as points efficient as the other choices in the Codex, but they where superior to my Tacticals in every way.

While the Chaos Cultists held the back objective, Brian made his move on the center of the board while punishing me with fire from the Noise Marines.

I never put a dent in this squad. Their white armor looks fantastic against the brown backdrop though doesn't it?

Bringing up the rear, the Chaos Terminators smashed their way through the bulkhead, but I was so overwhelmed by the other 750 points of his army, he could have left them in his figure case.

This unit would have scared me if the rest of his army wasn't so effective that they were completely unnecessary and took no part in the game other than as more eye candy.

All told, the Angels of Absolution suffered indignity after indignity has he smashed his way through my squads of Tactical Marines. I ultimately ended up conceding as he had 3 objectives at the end of turn 5 and there was no way I could bounce back. It would have been disheartening if I wasn't playing against a beautiful army on beautiful tables. Okay, maybe it was still a "little" disheartening, but as you can tell from the pics I love the spectacle of wargaming and Brian delivers the goods. It was a pleasure playing against him and I hope everyone at the 40K Warzone Tournament appreciates the time and effort he put into these awesome tables.

Oh, and thanks to Brian and Mike for introducing me to Seven Wonders after the Zone Mortalis game. It was a good time. To be continued tomorrow with a recount of Sunday's gaming.

Also, check out Broken Contract Blog to see some great work in progress shots of the Security Officer concept sketches and an early incarnation of what might be the new Broken Contract logo.

-Nick

My Hobby and Gaming Goals for 2014

So savage. I started these Orks around 2001. In the last decade I think I've added 5 models to the army.

A new year is here and I'm pretty sure just about every year since I started blogging 6-7 years ago I have posted my goals. Posting this year's goals wasn't on the top of my "to do" list either but inspired by Larry Vela's goals on Bell of Lost Souls, I felt compelled to post them after all. 2013 was a good hobby year for me with running a successful Adepticon event, getting out to several AWC tournaments, getting some games in at home, working on Wreck-Age with Hyacinth Games for a spell, and then starting laying the foundations for my own game. AND I also did some role-playing and board game nights dabbling in Zombicide, Gloom, Small World, Wreck-Age, Pathfinder, and Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. I didn't love everything I tried (Pathfinder just left me yearning for 1st Edition AD&D) but I played lots of games and hung out with a lot of different people. It was a good year for my gaming end of my passions.

So what does 2014 hold for me for gaming and hobby activity? At this point I'm still working at Next Dimension Games, running an event at Adepticon, working towards starting my own game company, and of course, painting the stupid amount of models I already own. So what am I striving for this year? Here are my top 6 Goals in increasing order of importance.

This Ork is one of the last ones I finished painting. I believe he was completed in 2008 or 2009.

6) Orks!

I want to push my fledgling force of 40K Orks to 1500 points and bring them to at least one AWC tournament. One of the things I noticed at the AWC Tournaments this year is that people stopped looking at my Angels of Absolution army because I don't make drastic additions (because I paint so slowly) and I will only bring a 95% painted army with me. The Angels have become tired and familiar even if I love them. The rumors have indicated for a couple months now that a new Ork book is coming this year and its left me excited. I want to be ready. This year its time to get wild. I own tons of Ork models and have a case full of models started. It'll be a hard goal, but its a goal I want to achieve to push myself.

Poor armless librarian. A little TLC and you can Prescience your way to glory. I'm still proud of that head swap. The head is from a Rogue Trader era lead model.

5) Angels of Absolution Nephilim, Command Squad, Librarian, and Techmarine

The above four items will push my Angels of Absolution collection over 2000 points and will add competitive options to my army. The Command Squad and Techmarine have come to the last 2 AWC Tournaments and are not finished. This absolutely needs to be corrected.

You're one of a kind. The rest of my Tomb Kings were painted 12-20 years ago (depending). This one was painted in the last decade after I honed my painting skills. I love them. They also took forever.

4) Play Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Working at Next Dimension Games has shown me there are people actively playing WFB in the city that I can tap into since my own gaming buddies only dabble in the game if they own any models for it at all. I don't want to commit to painting any of my Tomb Kings or Empire models, but if I can get in 3-5 games of WFB this year I would be stoked. The current standard 2400 points people play is way out of my league. Let's play 1000-1500. I'd like to be done in 2 hours including set up and chit chat and not field 100 unpainted models. That's not my style.

Victorious in the face of rampaging zombies! This was the first time we survived the zombie apocalypse so it was a photo worthy moment. In the background you can see Ian Mackaynine looking on wondering, "wtf?"

3) Play Fifty-Two Games

I don't need to get in a game every week, One AWC tournament can knock out almost a month of gaming as far as I'm concerned. I just want to play more games. Lisa (my partner) and I love having game nights and had a regular game night going last year that petered out when the summer ended. Ultimately, I want gaming to be a regular part of my life, whether its board games, the occasional card game, or heavy duty miniature war gaming.

The ill fated full color 40K Warzone booklet I did last year that was too hard to read. :( I'd love to take a Photoshop class this year to prevent having a week of work being wasted like last year.

2) Gaming Events

I'm running the 40K Warzone Tournament again this year at Adepticon. Now that I work at Next Dimension Games a couple of nights a week I'd like to run some Zombicide nights and possibly some other events. One of the things I need to do though is sell off some of my less needed gaming tables so that I can make some that are more durable and easier to store and transport. The new Warzone I'm planning for this year fits in with that plan, but I need space and that involves liquidating some of what I have.

1) Broken Contract - Release My Own Game to the World

This is the big one. There are no guarantees in this world, but I want to eventually live doing something that I love instead of floundering around. Tearing my ACL gave me time to reflect and I sat down with a dry erase board and jotted down all of the ideas I've had in my life and the things that I've participated in that brought me joy and reward - some of them could potentially be parlayed into a long term career and some of them can't (I can't really make money being a DIY punk vocalist, and I can't do it forever no matter how much I love doing it). After some encouragement I started working on Broken Contract with all of that free time I had in those initial weeks after my knee surgery. I want to take a stab at turning it into something. It'll be a lot of hard work, but my experiences with Hyacinth Games reminded me that game design has always been something that I knew I would love doing, dating back to being in grade school and writing my own AD&D modules.If its bust, so be it. But at least I'll be able to say I tried. Any encouragement, support, input, and hype will be greatly encouraged and appreciated in the coming months. :)

So those are my goals. I do have smaller goals, like getting my friends playing or blogging again, and getting some other projects done. I want to continue to improve my photo skills, and I mentioned wanting to take a Photoshop class. But these are the biggies. The important ones. We'll see how it all goes.

-Nick

Angels of Absolution Wardens (Ravenwing) Nephilim Part 1

Its been almost a year since I bought the Dark Angels Ravenwing Nephilim/Dark Talon kit. People have ranted for the last year about how useless this model is. It may be more points than the Space Marine and Imperial Guard fliers, but I discovered in the last few tournaments that I love my Dreadnought with Twin-Linked Lascannon, Eros. Eros with its re-roll has a knack for taking down Stormravens quickly and easily. My logic is that sticking that Twin-Linked Lascannon in the air where its harder to hit it'll be that much more effective. Sure, this is theoretical. I could face a Quad-Gun and have it go down the second it arrives on the board. A lot of things could happen. But I want to try it out for myself.

Originally I started on the wings to test out my scheme, but I was obviously starting at almost the "end" of the kit in terms of assembly. Near the end of the summer I cleaned up the cockpit bits and primed them black. Yesterday and today I detailed the cockpit. I probably would have gone more "crazy" with it, but I assembled the whole section to see how well it will be seen from the outside and decided it wasn't worth putting it through hyper detailing. Still, I went for all of the basic 3 levels highlighting so that what can be seen looks finished. Here's the cockpit:

Back of the cockpit/seat. The primer across the whole bottom of this piece was scraped off for a solid flush gluing area.

The seat from above and control panel from above.

The cockpit all painted and assembled, waiting for a pilot.

That was my weekend for the most part. I did start work on one of the first FW models I ever bought that is long since been discontinued I think. More on  that later in the week.

-Nick

Three! - Angels of Absolution WIP #5

Yesterday I completed my third Angels of Absolution Scout. For me this pacing is nigh unheard of; and I have more completed bitz on the painting table.

I wanted to try out giving a Scout a backpack like how the art consistently depicts them. I'm also cycling through the various bald Space Marine heads with rebreather masks, so when I pulled this vehicle driver head with antenna I decided to go all out and add an Imperial Guard vox pack.

Like my other Scouts he is based with a mix of GW Sand, GW slate, GW Static Grass, Noch Spring Grass Tufts, and clippings of broom bristle.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to shoot to complete 6 Scouts, so I'm halfway there.

-Nick

Two Down: Angels of Absolution Scouts WIP #4

Before the weekend hit I finally finished up the Angels of Absolution Scout I had been working on all week. Here he is. He has a Space Marine head with the neck shaved down to fit in the armor's neck socket. He also has a green stuff loin cloth and the "skull on a rope" that I no longer recall where it came from. So he's got a few little conversions to give him some character.

 

Here's the same model from a slightly different angle. The base has standard GW basing material, a little pile of shale fragments, a spring grass tuft from Noch, some German company, some standard GW static grass, and a few broom bristle fragments sticking out of the ground out of holes drilled with a pin vise.

This model is the "test model" I completed February 17, 2010. 2nd City Warzone - First Blood! 2/17/10. He's been waiting over 3 years for some buddies to go to battle with. He also has the green stuff loin cloth and Space Marine head.

These are more legs waiting in the wings. The legs to the far left have a veteran crux attached to the loin cloth so those will be the sergeant legs. The legs in the middle are for a normal Scout, or maybe since the combat knife is at his side, maybe that would be the ideal heavy weapon Scout? The legs all the way to the right have received a lot of work since this pic was taken and actually if now a mostly done 3rd Scout. Note that if you look closely I took a moment to drill holes in the bases for broom bristle to stick out of. I think doing this now is better than when the model is done and I'm almost ruining a completed model as I'm drilling into it multiple times.

This final picture is from the 4th Edition Dark Angels Codex and shows you some of the reference material I'm working with. This is where I got the idea for loin cloths and bald heads. I noticed that this pic and the one in the new book both depict Scouts with backpacks, so I'm trying to incorporate that as well in the future.

 

-Nick

Piece By Piece: Angels of Absolution Scouts WIP 3

I've been working along on that Angels of Absolution Scout Squad. The other day I highlighted up the flesh for the head I intend to use on the body I've been working on (visible to the right of the head). I'm really happy with how the flesh came out. Hopefully I don't destroy it when I do the eyes.

Tallarn Flesh, Ogryn Flesh Wash, Cadian Flesh Tone, Bronzed Flesh, Elf Flesh, and Agrax Earth Shade in the eye sockets. Only 2 of those paints can still be found on a shelf at a store. That's how I roll.

I've started base coating Bolt Pistol Arm attempt number 3. Its coming along.

Part of me wants to convert this in some way or add some sort of bit, but after painting up two separate arms previous that didn't work, I'm afraid to do anything fancy and run into the same problem a 3rd time.

This set of legs is all ready to go and will be used for the Veteran Sergeant. It pretty much has to be - considering I have the Veteran Crux hanging from the belt.

Green stuff loin cloth and a Veteran Crux bit.

I started dabbling with some sculpting. I'm planning on giving the Sergeant Melta Bombs so I took a Catachan arm and started the process of giving him a sleeve over his bare muscled arm. The piece of plastic card will be part of the Scout Armor Gauntlet they all wear. Its got a ways to go. Since I had some leftover green stuff I made some pieces for a purity seal. I'm really happy with how well I got the scale on these.

I suck at sculpting but I want to learn. This is my attempt to push my limits. Hopefully when the gauntlet and shoulder pad are added it will look decent.

Also while sculpting I gave this head a mohawk like the old scouts had. I think it came out pretty well. We'll see when I get it all cleaned, primed, and painted though.

Green stuff mohawk. Someone get him to Hot Topic for some bondage pants. I kid since if my hair didn't thin in my early 20's I'd totally have rocked a mohawk somewhere in the last 20 years.

Finally, here's one more set of Scout legs all base coated and ready for highlighting.

Another green stuff loin cloth with an Imperial Eagle groin protector to show he has faith in the Emperor to protect his junk.

-Nick

The Wrong Arm Take II - Angels of Absolution Scout WIP #2

One piece at a time. I just completed this arm.

Here I am again, trying to complete the same Dark Angel Scout model. Since the last post I completed this Combat Knife arm and glued it in place. If you read my last post you know that the gun arm I had completed for this model couldn't be fitted in place because of the amount I had rotated the torso - it was impacting the holster.

The Wrong Arm: AGAIN!

Well, the comedy of errors continues. I have the arm above mostly done - just some highlights and the squad marking to go. I decided to pull an extra of the identical arm from my bits box to make sure it still lines up correctly with the Combat Knife arm glued in place. Of course, it does not. The blade tip impacts the gun and though I could make it work, it looks awkward with the knife and gun touching. I spent a good half an hour test fitting Catachan, Cadian, Orlock, and Scout bitz to see what my best/easiest option would be. Sadly, most of the bitz I tried would have been most suited for a Sergeant or would require a lot of sculpting work.

Hopefully this arm works because the only other Scout arm that fits doesn't really go with the rest of the pose.

Finally I settled on this bit. Space Marine Bolt Pistol Arm attempt #3 coming later this week.

I hate the Scout heads (like a lot of people) so I'm making do with some Space Marine ones.

Finally, this blurry pic shows the Space Marine baldy with rebreather that I shaved down to use for the head. Lets hope nothing goes wrong here.

-Nick

The Wrong Arm - Angels of Absolution Scout WIP

I'm glad I'm still working on Squad #1. I'm out of practice so that freehand 1 took me a half hour.

Its been a while since I made a 40K post. I played in an AWC tournament a few weeks back and I'm excited to paint my Angels of Absolution again. I decided to pull out some Scouts I had started in the hope of working my way through a 5 man squad. One disadvantage of painting piecemeal and doing test fittings with blue tack is that sometimes when everything comes together the pieces you were working with don't line up as planned.

You'll notice I added a green stuff loin cloth as well as the skull on rope bit.

I had originally planned to use that arm for this body. Sadly, when I glued the torso in place I twisted it too far for the arm to clear the holster creating a terrible gap if I had chosen to glue it. I worked on that silly arm on and off for the past couple of days. It'll still get used, but I was excited to have this model almost done. Instead I'm going to have to prime a different arm tomorrow and start over. I guess at least I have an arm done for one of the other Scouts in the squad.




-Nick

Converted Dual Storm Bolter

I own a lot of Rogue Trader era Rhinos. Most of them are in boxes, half converted or in storage bins sitting half painted. To be honest, I've always loved the Rhino in all of its incarnations. With the release of 6th Edition people have fled from mechanized builds feeling that troop transports are too much of a liability with their new limitations on both disembarking and a perceived fragility. My mentality is that I own them, so I'm going to use them, so how do I make them into something more usable?

This is a fraction of what I own of just old school Rhinos..

At the tail end of 5th Edition I had already started to think about doing things a little differently. If I like Rhinos so much and I'm going to use them anyway - why not make them as annoying to the opponent as possible? I decided I wanted to start toying with upgrading them in unconventional ways. My first idea was to pay the 5 points for a Pintle-Mounted Storm Bolter. The single Storm Bolter can add some supporting fire from the Rhino and make it a little more effective, so why not try and improve that effectiveness? For 5 more points I'm essentially adding the fire power of a 15 point Space Marine. Now a Rhino that might get ignored by a savvy player might draw more attention and that might draw fire away from my all important scoring units.

In the spirit of WYSIWYG I usually only ran one of my Rhinos that way because that was the only one that I had set up with 2 Storm Bolters. Well last week I just wanted to convert something. I had this Rogue Trader era Rhino that I had stolen the driver compartment off of a 2nd Edition Sisters of Battle Immolator. The 2nd Edition Immolator traded in the 2 top hatches for a single central hatch with twin linked Heavy Flamer that I had simply replaced with the standard Imperial Storm Bolter hatch. The problem is, if I wanted to double up my Storm Bolters where would I put it?

My solution was to look at the housings on a variety of Space Marine upgrades and build one to hold 2 pairs of Bolters. The Bolters are two pairs of extra Rogue Trader era Rhino Bolters that I trimmed, filed, and pinned on top of each other. I scratch built the housing and decided it needed an ammo feed. I looked at the Attack Bike Heavy Bolter and decided to build a similar box. I had used a hunk of sprue for the center of the box so I filled the angled areas in with green stuff. Here are two angles on the converted Dual Storm Bolter.

I don't think its my best work but I'm a little rusty. I still felt it was cool enough to paint up and use in games. so over the next week it was meticulously painted to my usual standards.

The only thing I messed up on is that the specific Rhino this Dual Storm Bolter was built for was once the subject of a great quandary - dating back before there were pictures of Angels of Absolution vehicles in Forge World books. The question I had asked myself back then was, "Does the wing always face the same direction - feathers to the right? Or does it flip depending on the side of the vehicle its on so that the feathers always point to the back of the vehicle or nearest side?" I ended up learning that it was the latter, but my first inclination so many years ago was to go with the former. So now, when I painted this Angels of Absolution logo I automatically painted it to face the "right way". You will understand better when you see this next photo.

Still, I think it came out pretty cool and it adds a little bit of character to my Rhinos. Around the same time I had the idea to trick out my Rhinos with extra Storm Bolters I started entertaining the idea of alpha striking Rhinos equipped with Hunter Killer Missiles. On one Rhino it seems like a waste of points, and maybe with its single shot it is. But what about if you roll onto the table with 3 or 4 Rhinos, and get off a flurry of HKM's? Or maybe you save them all to late in the game just to force your opponent to focus on those annoying little Rhinos, blocking line of sight, directing focused fire, and harassing their lines? Sounds like fun to me. Maybe these will get some attention next? Just because.

 Let me know what you think. Am I crazy for trying to make these options work? Thanks for reading. -Nick

Distracted! Angels of Absolution Mix and Match Week.

Early last week I had a really hard time focusing. I went into the week knowing I had two weeks to get ready for the next AWC Tournament here in Chicagoland and I needed to come up with another 100 points. I do have more models than what I used in the last tournament, but I'd basically just be adding another Tactical Combat Squad. One of the things I learned at the last tournament is that my army doesn't have enough dedicated killing power that isn't just the modest boltgun. My army is basically a big blob of Tactical Squads without a lot of heavy weapons or close combat potential.

Some of the bitz that were staring me in the face when the week started that I completely ignored - a half complete Warden bike squad.

I had gotten back from the last tournament the week previous and spent a couple days using weathering powders on a Tactical Squad, a Dreadnought, and a Rhino. It dawned on me that I only had less than 3 weeks to get ready for the next tournament and I really needed to get something else done. I grabbed an unfinished Assault on Black Reach Dread that I figured I could plow through rather quickly. Then I realized it was going to take me longer than I planned. I finished the stage I was working on and then put him back in the drawer unit where my unfinished vehicles spend most of their time.

I spent a day and a half of the week making the Bleached Bone nice and opaque and then highlighted it with Screaming Skull and White Scar and then filed him back in one of my 3 AoA vehicle part drawers.

Then I thought to myself, "No one uses Techmarines, and a Techmarine would eat up that extra 100 points." I dragged out the Techmarine I started in the early 2000's to see if he was up to snuff and then I pulled out the 3 Servitors I had with him. They'd actually make a pretty threatening close combat unit so I decided to put them on the painting table and do some work on them. I worked on them all Tuesday and then thought, "What are you doing? You'll never get these done in time." Once again I completed the stage I was working on and then took them back off the table and shoved them back in the figure case where unfinished infantry reside while awaiting their turn on the painting table.

This is an old batch of conversions and paint jobs. The servitors used to have Blood Red pants but a year or so ago I dabbled with changing them to Graveyard Earth/Khaki to match the robes of my army. The whole group needs some serious work though some of the conversions are pretty cool. On Tuesday I worked on base-coating the back two servitors and covering over their red pants. I started switching over the Techmarine's robes to Graveyard Earth/Kommando Khaki from Bleached Bone/Bubonic Brown/Bestial Brown. Finally, I put some Chaos Black on areas that will eventually be metal on all the figures before I said, "Enough!" and put them back away in their carrying case.   

Last night I was thumbing through my Codex, the recent FAQ, and reflecting on the Veteran Squad Load Out thread on Bolter & Chainsword. I was moments away from pulling some robed leg/torso bitz I have cleaned up and ready for priming out of the aforementioned figure case and it dawned on me again, "Nick, what are you doing?" I needed to get myself focused on a more realistic goal.

Oooh Veterans! I definitely want a squad of these guys, but I have one started and one body cleaned. There was no way in hell I'd finish a squad that isn't even really started. I just paint way too slow.

You see, I started that Warden Bike Squad back in August and its halfway done. I could finish it in 2 weeks. I just need to force myself to focus and get it done. That's the problem with project A.D.D and the reason why its taken me 18 years to get where I'm at with the Angels - I just can't stay focused long enough to get a model done when there are so many models I want to add or complete. My energy is spread over 100+ unfinished projects.

Here's that bike squad again. They were staring at me all along and I just needed to get my head on straight. I'm just too easily distracted.

Over Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I got focused and I turned some of that pile of bitz into this model here. This is my second complete biker and I'm fairly confident I can finish the 3rd and final necessary biker by this weekend's tournament.

Warden biker with Meltagun. I feel like I'm getting a better hang of the sword on black shield logo that I came up with for them.

I love the skull with the X on its head. Like I mentioned before the right shoulder pad with get a squad number when I get further along on the squad. Also, the mistake down by the front wheel wasn't fully covered because I know it will get covered by weathering effects, otherwise I'd never allow it to be shown on the internet as "complete" because I'm a nerd.

The final bike as of this morning. The legs are pretty much done. I need to put metal on the buttons onf the keypad and I need to put the Wardens logo on the knee pad. The Purity Seals also need script. The torso is about a 1/3 of the way done and same for the bike and backpack. His arms are still up in the air.

Alternately, the base is pretty much ready to go. I hope to have this model done by Thursday morning so I can work on my army list and send it off to the AWC Tournament Organizer.

Thanks for reading!
-Nick