7th Edition I Barely Knew You

Three years ago the 7th Edition of Warhammer was released. I remember going in to do a sleep study and bringing my brand new pristine copy of the hard cover book with me. It was a sleep deprivation study so I read quite a bit of it for those 3 horrible days. The problem is, I never did much else with it. Nerd Night gents, Anton and Chad, each started collecting armies at various points. Anton was accumulating Goblins and Chad had some Ogre Kingdoms models. Still, between the two of them I think I only ever got in 5 or 6 games total of Warhammer in the last 3 years.

Our group is pretty obviously immersed in 40K and Scott and Eric have stuck to those guns all along. It just makes sense to get the most out of one system I guess. In fact, even with as many games of 40K as we've played in the current edition, which is countless, we still have only gotten in a couple Apocalypse games and no Planetstrike games. We still have a lot more 40K to play to get the most out of this edition is what I'm saying.

One of the frustrating things about the Games Workshop hobby is getting the timing right. People scream and cry that its been years since their Codex or Army Book has been updated. The Tomb King's Army Book came out in 2002. I've barely touched it. At this exact moment I don't feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of it and I'm in no hurry to replace it. Conversely, my Dark Angels Codex is only a few years old and it was the first of the "stripped down" Codex philosophy that they built back up on over the last 2 years to make a superior product. Ultimately, the end result is that though my Dark Angels Codex still does the job, it kind of sucks compared to similar armies and since I've played it to death I wouldn't mind it getting an update.

What I'm getting at is that for the immersive player, the release schedule often doesn't feel fast enough and for the casual player it feels like it moves way too fast. If they released a new edition of 40K in 2010 or 2011 I wouldn't sweat it too hard - I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this edition already. Warhammer on the other hand, I've only played a couple of games over the last 3 years and I've effectively paid like $10 per game when you think about the cost of the rule book and how much I've used it. Its kind of a shame.

I know its heresy in certain circles, particularly amongst the most rabid players and younger types who think 4 years is a lifetime, but I kind of wish GW would slow down just slightly. We're going to see a new edition of Warhammer next year and my binding still creaks when I crack open my mint condition hardcover rule book. I hear rumor that the impending new edition of Warhammer will have the same sort of Expansion support that this edition of 40K has. I support this line of thinking. I had some fun with Warhammer Skirmish two editions ago and was always excited by the idea of the n--aval rules that appeared in the General's Compendium that I sadly never purchased when it was around. Take your time GW and milk the latest editions for all they are worth. Why not make it a 5 year cycle, two editions a full decade, and keep cranking out cool expansions to keep things fresh?

Regardless, I'm undaunted and still screwing around with updating my Tomb Kings. I have 20 Skeleton Warriors with hand weapons and shields now in the display case that weren't there previously. I'll be adding a front rank and five more basic infantry to make it a unit of 30 over the next week as well as completing an update on a unit of 5 Light Skeleton Horsemen. It only makes sense to end with a pic:

My name is Daemon: for we are many.

I had a classic hobby freak-out the other week. I took stock of the myriad of projects I have laying about the basement and was overcome with a sense of buried dread. Something...anything...must get completed soon or nothing ever will. After years of collecting shiny objects I find myself neck deep in 7-8 major projects, having only made any considerable headway on my Epic Blood Angels (a strong 10,000 points that have no opponents!). With a renewed sense of urgency, I dedicated myself to a few hours of painting each and every day this week. These are the results so far:

Flamers of Tzeentch - Epic: Black Legion

The Black Legion will someday be the complementary army to my Blood Angels and hopefully allow me to run a massive story-driven campaign utilizing a majority of the my Epic models and terrain. The Flamers of Tzeentch join my Bloodletters and Plaguebearers on their crusade to consume to the soul of Lemartes and his followers. Endless amounts of infantry and armor are slated to go under the brush in the months to come...and I desperately need Chaos War Engines and Titans! Get in touch if you have anything you are willing to part with.

Preacher - Legends of the Old West

Gunfighter - Legends of the Old West

I recently purchased a ton of Black Scorpion Tombstone miniatures for use in my Deadlands RPG as well as in Legends of the Old West. These miniatures are fantastic - hands down some of the best sculpts from this genre to date. The scale is really more like 30-32mm which makes them difficult to mix with other ranges like 500 Nations or the Foundry line, but the quality and breadth of the range stand on its own. Technically I completed these a few weeks ago...but I thought I'd post them here to remind me I still have about 35 more gunfighters primed and ready for paint...

Onward to Valhalla!

Second Facelift in 15 Years

Usually, whenever I take a long break from painting I usually return to the Angels of Absolution. They are my main army and since I work on them piecemeal I can get back up to speed on a set of legs or a shoulder pad - something where I can put a lot of focus into getting things right on what is really only a small part of the whole. For some reason, I wasn't feeling coming back to the Angels, or even the Orks or Redemptors of Golinar (Imperial Guard). Instead I decided to go back my roots.

I originally cut my teeth in the Games Workshop hobby on an Undead army. This was back in 1994 when there were no Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts, there was just a book titled Warhammer Armies: Undead. I assembled and painted a full 2000 point army in no time at all. I was working at my gaming store, Adventures Unleashed, buying everything at cost, and painting through every day I worked (when I wasn't playing that is!)

One of the things that led me to choose the Undead beside the fact that skeletons and zombies are cool as hell, was that WA: Undead had a step by step on how to paint a skeleton. I knew I wasn't going to do this hobby without painting my models and this was a huge bonus. Plus, the instructions were easy as hell: 1) Prime white. 2) Cover the entire model in Brown Ink. 3) Dry brush Bubonic Brown. 4) Dry brush Bleached Bone. 5) Done.

The earliest skeletons looked something like this guy who never got a facelift:

Not only was this model's base the standard Goblin Green, but it also had that really fuzzy light green flock originally that I eventually went back and coated in Goblin Green and dry brushed with shades of yellow because the fuzzy flock would all rub off.

In the late 90's the minds at Games Workshop decided that the Undead army was way to vast and varied. My army had Skeleton Chariots and Horsemen alongside Zombies, Ghouls, Vampires, Ghosts, Wights, Wraiths, Skull Chuckers, Necromancers, and Bat Swarms - and I didn't even have everything available in the army list. So GW dropped a Tomb Kings of Khemri army list into White Dwarf magazine separating the "dry" Undead from the "wet" Undead. One of the characteristic changes that they had just started to experiment with in conjunction with the release of Gorkamorka were brown desert bases. The vast majority of my army was based around skeletons of all sorts so I decided to join the dry team and did a major facelift. Thence forward my skeletons all looked like this model:
Sick mold lines and sweet shield design eh? When I got into the hobby those types of shields were in vogue and originally I never cleaned mold lines. I was never a model guy previous and just didn't know to do it. Eventually I got clued in, but I am pretty positive the vast majority of this army still has all the mold lines and that's something I'm not going back to try and fix. My Tomb Kings have remained in this state for the next 10 years until now. I actually only have half of my Tomb Kings in my display case in the living room (should I be admitting that my models are on display in the living room?) because of unfinished or embarrassing details like the above model's shield. I'm also extremely dismissive of my Tomb Kings because they are almost entirely dry brushed and I am an admitted hobby snob. So only this small selection of models sit in the case:

In the last week I got inspired to drag out the Tomb Kings and give them some love. Part of it was announcement of Adepticon Registration and the inclusion of a Warhammer Warbands event this year, and part of it was just the desire to get a finished army into the display case for the 1st time since the mid 90's when my Undead army filled the display case at Adventures Unleashed. One of my first orders of business was to redo the shields on an entire unit of 25 skeletons with hand weapons. Those red skull insignia shields had to go and this design was based on some Egyptian design I thought I remember seeing in a Warhammer Ancients book that I always thought was kind of cool. Other upgrades are in process as well. I figure in a couple of weeks I'll have a full army in the case that I'm semi-proud of despite the dry brushing and mold lines. I'll likely have to build a few more models to get the army up to 2000 points again, but I still have tons of skeletons, horsemen, and even a few chariots from the early 90's lingering around. Bulking the army out will not be an issue.
I painted over the center of the shield with Bestial Brown. Then in consistent strokes in the same direction did a couple of layers of Bleached Bone and then Skull White to create a streaky dirty white effect. I then used a Brown Wash around the perimeter. A final succession of Skull White streaks was done over lapping some into the Brown Wash. Large Chaos Black splotches were added and these were streaked with Chaos Black mixed with a tiny bit of Skull White (Adeptus Battle Grey or Codex Grey would be fine). Finally some random Brown Wash was added to dirty things up a little more. It sounds like a lot of steps but goes remarkably quick since its really just slopping paint on. Here's one last shot of where I'm at:

Expect more updates in the coming week.

All Is Quiet

It was a quiet summer here at 2nd City Warzone. The Nerd Night Crew have all been busy with other aspects of their lives and even our regular Monday night gaming took a backseat for most of the summer. Scott's been painting slow and steady like always and he's posted some beautiful shots of his daemons. Eric was working on some marines and then started working on a Plague Marine army. Matt I'm sure is messing around with any of the dozens of games he owns in and plays and he gave us some great Epic pics. Me, well I've done a whole lot of nothing all summer. I played 2 or 3 games of 40K I think, and I got dragged into playing D&D a couple times. I don't think I picked up my brush more than once or twice either. The gaming and hobby front has been quiet indeed, and I am the worst culprit. Luckily, Scott has been chastising me regularly on Facebook in an effort to get me back on track. haha. After constant harassment, and the well timed announcement that registration for Adepticon has begun, I finally put brush to plastic the other day. Additionally, I started scrutinizing the latest rumors more thoroughly than I have the last few months and I'm getting hyped again. Of course, there is more to come on all of that, but in the meantime I wanted to show off these stunning Red Scorpion Space Hulk Terminators that Nerd Night friend and ally, Mike Hughes, just showed off to us. Enjoy!

-Nick

Fiend Complete

I'm really happy how this came out.



I'm particularly happy how the eyes came out. It's been a while since I've painted jewels. I'm also happy with the transition between the black on the rear legs and the pink on the body.



Thanks for looking and please leave comments!

Flame On!

My first unit of Tzeentch Flamers is complete. I'm still having problems with having my camera focus the way I want it to while in Macro mode, but I'll try not to belly-ache too much.

I noticed we haven't been receiving too many comments lately, so please comment, critique, argue, whatever. Just give us some feedback , please!





Also...

There's this. This is my Fiend of Slaanesh (work in progress). This is also the first mini I've painted "on a stick' and I have to say, it's much easier to paint like this. Not a practical way to do things if you're painting a whole unit, but it's a nice way to do centerpiece minis like this one.

Death Guard part I

Hello all,
Yes its been a while for all of us here at second city but summer is drawing to a end and modeling/painting/playing will hopefully be happening more often, which will mean more post here! Anyhow, I still have not finished my landspeeder storm nor the scouts that accompanied it, but I finally managed to make it to the oak park store to get some primer and get going on em. On a side note, actually the reason I went to Oak Park was because I had gotten a no subject email by someone named whatsnewtoday, normally I would have just deleted it as spam, but it was early so I clicked on it and I am glad I did. It turns out it was an email for GW UK saying that I had won a free Battleforce just for adding Oak Park as 'My Store' on the GW site. Well I gotta say I was surprised and a little bit skeptical too! So I headed on in and showed em the email and sure enough it was legit. I really have no need for any of the models in any of the Battleforce boxes so after chatting it up with (Joe) and looking at the available Battleforce boxes some more I decided to just ask if I could wait for the release of the Space Wolves one and come claim my prize then, he had to make a call to some (probably inquisitioner or commissar) unknown person and after a bit of a wait he said it was a go! Sweet, all I really want is the drop pod but I am sure that some of the SW spures will be cool too.
Lets see, well as the title of this post says, this is my first Death Guard modeling post. I've been really excited about getting together a Nurgle Army for a while now and ended up trading some stuff for the 7 man box. I really also decided that I was not so into chaos that I was going to spend an enormous amount of time on em either, so after some googling I managed to come across someones post on Bolter and Chainsword that provided some super quick and easy painting tips for Death Guard. I really like the first go at em. I was able to do all 7 in a couple hours time. granted there will be some additional highlighting and such but for the most part the are almost tabletop ready so here are a couple pictures. Flash does not do them justice either....







(Thanks Matt) for the SW Rhinos.... and sorry they are being so horrendously mutated by Nurgle!



here is where things get a bit sketchy... Yes I am making Death Guard Berzerkers... I want to be able to have the best of all chaos gods yet maintain a consistent looking army, will probably get shit for these but whatever I like em...




Well will post more and I get more done.
-Brose