The Giganti tribes emerges

           So a few years ago I got this idea about an ogre tribe that was formed around a very successful hunter. This hunter became so successful, that more and more bulls followed him on his hunts, until finally he eventually became a tyrant of sorts, even attracting a which doctor to help search the rune bones for prey to hunt. 

        Well I have now begun the project in full swing. The first unit I am working on, and you will see in various points of progress is a hunter bull squad (ogre bulls). There are 6 in total, each carries a spear, and a bola to better snare their prey. Each spear is created from a standard bearer arm, the bola's come from chaos marauder flails, and all the fur is green stuffed. This is a totally fun project! I plan to have this squad done by the end of next week so stay tuned for pics, until then enjoy the work in progress. 

The Road to Nova: Beginnings (Grey Knights)

              As mentioned in my previous post, one of my major projects fort he future is my army for the Nova Open this September. Well I have had a love for Grey Knights for about 15 years now, and still have a few of the original grey knight figures (horribly painted though) around. That said I have had an internal battle with myself to do this army as, it is so very popular at the moment, and most everyone has or is playing the army. However, after much hobby soul surfing, and wanting to stay excited in my hobby I have chosen to go with them anyway; I just really like the army, and back story, and models....... you get the idea. 

              Since Adepticon I have busied myself with two projects simultaneously, Grey knights pictured below, and Ogres (previewing tomorrow). I have taken, what I believe, is a different approach to the army.

The Future

      Well there is no rest for the weary now is there? I have two more tournaments on the books and several hobby projects to complete this year. So lets see, I will list out the my future plan project by project.

TipCon: This is a small tournament in Indiana that I went to last year and had a really fun time. It is a light field and well run tournament, that I find rather relaxing, and reminds me of the good old rouge trader tournament of old. I am doing nothing fancy, and will be running my Dark Eldar there, so all I really need to do I create a list and take pictures.

Nova Open: This is another  massive gaming tournament in Washington DC, in late August. I attended last year, and it was really fun. For the tournament I have decided to jump on the band wagon and do Grey Knights, but not the spam list we are seeing now. I have had Grey Knights since the day of rouge trader, and just love them, so wanted to do an army. I have created a list that uses all Grey Knights, and utilizes close but heavy fire power, I will begin featuring them in future post soon. That said I have to completely assemble and paint this army. My buddy, Brian Carlson (who is also doing grey knights) and I have found a paint scheme to base the paint scheme on, and are ready to begin. Okay to be fair we already have, assembly that is. This is my number one project.

Ogres: Several years ago I started an ogre army that has a complete Zulu them, lots of spears, fur, and bucklers in this army, aka lots of conversions. The army has several components done and in various stages, but with the new book out, I want to get them finished up. this has second priority to Grey Knights.

Empire and Terrain: If I manage to stick to my timeline, I may be able to get  the terrain and empire built that I have. My empire army is built and painted, I just need to build some new units to come up to speed with the new book. I don't plan on painting the new units for sometime, but want to play with them. And Terrain is always a need, I have lots to build and will get through it slowly, but I have a vision for several tables. These are wishlist items for me

The Manufactorum: This is going to be a great project, lets just say metal gods of war will walk to battle in my gaming room, or maybe yours. To be realistic, this is most probably a next year project, and will take sometime. I'm still excited about it though

Well that sums up the to do list for the next little bit, I am off to work on Grey Knights now, stay tuned for updates.

Adepticon 2012

         Well Another year and another Adepticon, the 10th anniversary this year, down! I had a magnificent weekend gaming against a horde of great gamer's.  I took part in the 40K championship, 40K team tournament, and 40K combat patrol, all with my Dark Eldar.

          So, completing the Dark Eldar took me much longer than I thought it would, they are really tough models to paint well, topped with the fact that I had knee surgery, and took on a major terrain build in the team tournament, I barley made it, but I did make it. I will break down each event one by one, and let me apologize in advance for lack of opponent army pictures, I need to get better at taking them. You will see a bunch from the Nova, I promise.

           Friday held the 40K championship, my army is pictured below, There were 256 players in attendance, and a whole lot of grey knights, lol. Round 1 I played an IG player with......... wait for it...........6 hydras! holy shit is all I thought, I doomed. Well I lost the game but not until turn 7! until then I was winning, and if it would have ended in 5 or 6 I would have won. Great game regardless. Next I played Blood Angles and won, I tabled the army, then had a mirror match against dark Eldar and won that game as well. My final game was against Grey knights, and lost. Pretty much got owned on that one. In the end I went 2 and 2 which was just how I figured I would have done, so was happy, and I placed 40th overall; which I was really, really happy about in a field like that. I have to say one of my biggest rushes was the compliments on my army, and I managed to max out my paint score. It made the hard work worth it.

           Saturday was the team tournament, and again there were lots of grey knight in the field. We played against grey knights three times, and orks once. We pretty much pulled draws the whole day. One of my biggest parts of the team was the building of the display board, and as you will see it is quite massive! I am proud to say that that our team, Chicago Kamikazes Red won best Xenos for the tournament, a fantastic accomplishment! and I give a shout out to my teammates, Brian, Arron, and Matt, well done boys.

          As Sunday came around I was tired and still had combat patrols to play, i was leary. I have to say the combat patrol is the best way to end a tournament ever. I don't really know how I did over all, because I was having such a good time. small armies quick games, and tonnes of laughs; if you never have played in this event you should. Well that quickly summarizes the weekend, and to repeat I had a great time, below are some pics of the table and my army on display.

The Barrone

        Introducing The Barron. This is my main HQ in this army. He makes hellions troops, as well as  giving them grenades, skilled rider and stealth. If you run hellions do not leave home with out him. Many times the Barron would begin the game attached to a wrack unit, and detach with there pain token in the first turn of the game, and join the hellions. This would further enhance the already formidable unit with feel no pain; makes them a real bitch to kill when they are in cover.

       I created the Barron from several kits. I used a hellion base, two raider/ravager rutters to extend the skyboard, the head from a dark elf warrior, and the cloak from the high elf wizard from the Isle of Blood set. I have included some unpainted picks so you can see the conversion itself. I used Prince Yierl from the Eldar as my inspiration to create the pose, I figured one cast out price is just like the other.....right?

Look to the skies

           Introducing my biggest unit of the army, my hellions. This unit was also my biggest troop, and  as the army also features the baron as the HQ, the hellions are troops as well. Stay tuned for the baron tomorrow, as he was a project unto himself. The role of my hellions was to capture objectives, and to support where needed and both shooting and hand to hand. There are a total of 14 hellions in the unit, that's 28 splinter pod shots, and a whole lot of str4 hand to hand attacks. When the Barron is attached to the unit, they also gain defensive grenades, skilled rider, and stealth, so you now have a unit with a 3+ cover save, re-rolling dangerous terrain tests (I never lost a model to DT), and removing enemies charge bonuses. This unit preformed fantastic in every single game they played in, and scared the hell out of my opponents.

The fast, and the deadly.... Wyches

Introducing my Wyches. They have a couple roles in the army, They are wound counters to keep the hemoculous alive until the webway drops, capture objectives, secondary anti-armor with their haywire grenades, and a tar pit unit. Unfortunately they usually died a horrible death to shooting, and their raider blowing up before they did anything, pretty much the whole weekend. I think that was the case because they would end up very close to the enemy as the hemoc popped the webway. From a hobby scale I am quite pleased with how they came out, this was my first stab at painting the skin and it took a few attempts to get the effect I was looking for, but I was happy with the final product.

Beasts, Beasts everywhere

This unit is by far one of my favorites in the army, and I ran two of them. Introducing the almighty beast packs. This unit is comprised of 3 beast masters, 3 Kymera, and 4 razorwing flocks. each pack comes with 24 rending hits on the charge, the ability to survive las cannon shots with the Kymera invulnerable save, and can reach out and touch someone asap with a move, run, and 12 inch charge.  There role is to engaged. kill, and distract. Most of the time both packs would be held in reserve and enter the game via a webway giving them even better strike range.

 These unit where also the most time consuming for me to complete, I converted the Kymera from plastic warhounds, and hormagaunts, the razorwings are flying ripper swarms from forge world ( they just look better than the lame birds GW has for the flock now), and the beast master are a mix of cold one riders and Dark Eldar warrior bits. This was a great project for me and I could not be happier with the final outcome. Many thanks to Brian Carlson for help with the concepts.

Heavy Hitters

Introducing the heavy hitters of my army, RAVAGERS!!!!  Okay the hit hard, but have a glass chin themselves. I ran two ravagers in my list with the sole purpose of anti tank, and they did the job well. They are in my opinion a must have in every Dark Eldar army, but that is just me.