Monday, January 25, 2021
The Carrot
Thursday, January 21, 2021
He's blue steel & sex appeal!
Yeah, sorry Smurf fanbois, this post isn't for you. To the devotees of Slaanesh however, read on...
To be honest, I actually just sold off the bulk (meagre as it was) of my Children of Torment chaos marines just the other day. The hideous amount of detail on every sculpted surface makes the notion of painting them in bulk something of a nightmare in my opinion.
Already having two painted chaos marines (that Helbrute is now gone btw), I painted this one up this week (and just when you though I'd given up on painting 40k minis...). That leaves me with my aspiring champion, cultist champion and flamer gunner left to go. They, along with my already painted cultists are enough to make a nice looking Kill Team. I could squeeze another cultist in there actually, but folks want too much for em on eBay, and hell they're only 4 points so the absence of one isn't really worrisome.
Originally I was painting each marine with their armor trimmed in a different metallic color, because Chaos. Conveniently, having three of them, it'll now be easy to differentiate which kill team specialist is which.
Next up though I think I'm going to work on some cavern tiles as I have 6 of the primed and ready to go. Also my father-in-law got Frankie's lightsaber working...without really doing anything, but the kid is thrilled so it's all good. Speaking of, Ultrasabers finally contacted me today after 19 days of silence, by basically repeating their last email which I had already answered but they apparently failed to actually read.
As such, I pretty much told them to go to hell. Schmucks.
Monday, January 18, 2021
The underworld expands!
I ordered another set of caves and they arrived this past week. I just love these things and probably spent an hour or so just putting this layout together, assembling and reassembling so as to use every piece that I have.
As always I want more, but am thinking I'll hold off on any more purchases till I get these painted up. Yeah I know, everybody says that...but this will more or less just be an exercise in dry brushing using a color palette reminiscent of the vastly larger Triceratops I painted some years back.
Monday, January 11, 2021
Check out my new Light Saber!!
er...well, actually it was a gift for my girlfriend's 11 year old son Frankie. The look on his face Christmas morning when he opened the box was priceless. Sadly, those few minutes of glee are about all the good that came out of this purchase. In hindsight, do your research before buying folks, because I got taken for a ride.
Ultrasabers.com (not linked because you SHOULD NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM!!!) was the only company I knew of that makes light sabers aside from going to a Disney theme park. As such, as I've since read on reddit (a site I normally loathe as I find it difficult to navigate) that I made the 'classic mistake' of making my first saber purchase from Ultrasabers. They're one of the longest running, most heavily marketed, and biggest names out there.
Years ago, they were one of the best too. A friend of mine has one of their sabers, has had it for about 3 years now and loves it. However after lighting up as it did above, I wrapped the saber up and awaited Christmas (FYI: you can only return your saber within 3 days of arrival, because they're clearly aware of their poor quality). Christmas morning it went out after about 5 minutes of swinging it around, coming into contact with nothing. 5 sets of batteries later (all different brands) and I realized we had a problem.
After 2 weeks of the run around by customer service, I went looking online and found youtube videos, reddit posts, Better Business Bureau rating, reviews and complaints and found that at some point the company took a bad turn and is now pretty much the worst of the worst. I've read a lot of the horror stories this past weekend, and have to say my experience with them is sadly one of the better ones.
My father in-law is more or less a retired electrical engineer (skills-yes, that actual degree-no), so will see if he can fix it as from what I've read, were I to send this piece of junk back, I'd never see it again. Currently I'm researching other makers and will buy Frankie a proper, functioning light saber soon I hope (he's such a great kid, he feels bad for me because I've been so mad about what I thought would be the ultimate present that was instead total garbage).
Don't be like me, do your research before clicking the 'buy' icon! Also, NEVER EVER BY ANYTHING FROM Ultrasabers.com Scumbags.com!!
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Team Yankee LAV & HMMWVs assembled
o/
Whilst watching our national embarrassment play out on the news, I was at home, fortifying my 15mm defenses by assembling my Team Yankee LAV-25 and TOW missile equipped Humvees. The irony of assembling a WWIII army whilst rioters had raided the US Capitol building just a few hours earlier is not lost on me.
They're simple little kits that go together quite easily. That said...Screech has informed me that my two A-10s are reportedly rage inducing according to a mutual friend of ours who has already built them. If that turns out to be true, then perhaps one of my infamous Nerd-RAGE!!!! rant posts is in the future? lol, we shall see.
I got these three for $20 along with what I had thought was an M-113 sprue. Instead it turned out to just be an M-113 upgrade sprue (because I apparently can't read). These were actually my first Team Yankee minis purchased, with the prepainted Abrams horde being bought just a little while later. Speaking of, I asked the Abrams' seller what paints he had used and inconveniently, all of them were both oil-based and OOP. So trying to match those paint jobs ought to be fun (but hopefully doable, due to my collection of 'army' colors).
I suppose I ought to try playing a game or two of TY before buying anymore stuff for it but...well, you all know how that goes.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
So long to this wretched year!
o/
2020 has been an awful year for most everyone. Rather than recap my personally experienced horrors, I'll instead let ya know where things stand as this ol' blog has been fairly quiet here of late.
First up:, I based my 15mm Quar kickstarter army and tweaked their 'Sentinel tank' as well. Not knowing just what I'll do with them, I've organized them as a 250pt IG Combat Patrol force for 40k in 15mm. A few liberties were taken but not enough to really matter in the event that that anyone wants to actually fight 15mm anteaters in 40k.
That said, much like I did with my Weird War II Quar in Bolt Action, there is a temptation to rebase them and use them with my Abrams tanks as a Weird War III Team Yankee army. We'll see on that though...
Speaking of Team Yankee, the MLRS' that I'd gotten with my tanks were actually toys and more importantly, of the wrong scale. So I gave them to my GF's son who was quite please with them. I did however get 2 sprues of individual Humvees, and for Christmas a box of A-10 Warthogs as well as the American army book and unit cards. So more to come on that front in the future.
Just today I ordered a 2nd allotment of modular caves using my government stimulus $$$. What d'ya mean that's not what it's for?? Fine, fine, the rest will go to my property taxes and savings, sheesh...lol. Essentially it was a carbon copy of my first order. That ought to do it for the caves for the foreseeable future, as now I need to get em painted up.
All is quiet on the 40k front. I sold off my still new-in-box alt IG, as lord knows when I'd ever get around to them. I haven't painted ANYTHING for them (or much of anything else really), nor played in quite some time. To be honest I don't see any expansion of my current forces/collections for the foreseeable future.
Which means of course that I still have an endless queue to paint on. The FLGS is starting a Crusade campaign this weekend...power levels, bleh. As such, don't expect to hear too much from me about 40k for a bit aside from my getting bored and painting a random model or two here and there.
Happy New year folks! Hopefully things will get better for us all in 2021!
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Team Yankee Revisited.
o/
All of this post's photos are straight from the eBay listings as they've yet to arrive.
About a week or two ago Screech commented 'you're all about 15mm gaming here lately, so how about Team Yankee?' He was referencing my recently acquired caves (which are great for 15mm gaming yet totally useless in TY). I'd looked thru the rules some years back, but nobody I knew of locally was interested in the game so I shelved the rulebook. Not sure where I shelved it as of yet, but I'll find it eventually, my house is fairly small so there aren't too many places for it to hide.
I'll have to add a decal to one Abrams tanks to mark it out as my army CO's tank.
There's a new, 'old school' FLGS that opened recently, and Team Yankee is one of the games they're looking to build a following for. However as you may have noticed by my lack of recent posting, I've been fairly busy with real life and haven't had much time for hobbying. Thus adding another army to my unpainted pile of shame isn't high on my list of things to do.
As such I found a 98pt, fully (and nicely) painted American army on eBay for the approximate original retail cost and bought it. Whilst that doesn't help the FLGS any, if I like the game this will (1) only be the beginning and (2) I still need the unit cards, army book, templates, etc..
I'm hoping I can match these paint jobs when/if I acquire further units.
Currently it's a small, uber elite min/max army which you all know isn't my style. So as I add units later on I can 'dumb' my troops down into something more to my liking (ie.: exchanging M1A1's for older M1's and the like).
My army consists of the following:
M1A1 Combat Team:
(x1) M1A1HC Holy Christ! 'Heavy Common' (up-armored) HQ tank
(x2) platoons of (2) M1A1 Abrams each
(x1) platoon of (2) M1 Abrams (the older, 105MM gun toting variety)
Support Unit:
(x1) MLRS270 Support battery of (2) vehicles
So notta whole lot, but enough to get me going. Currently my army is traversing the wilds of pandemic stricken America via pack mule it seems, so don't look for any bat reps just yet. Speaking of, I also need to actually visit said new FLGS. To date I haven't as it's a mere 5 minutes from my GF's home, and curiously that proximity is distracting me from visiting the store itself.
Now, off to find that rulebook...