Meanwhile, cork-screwing thru the lower atmosphere of Endor....

...we played our first X-wing demo.

Kushial loaned me an X and Y-Wing, while he used an E-Wing. Whereas my GF teamed up with my old friend Johnny (who made his first appearance in 5 years) with a pair of TIE Interceptors a piece.

Apparently Endor isn't all forest...

In short, despite a few good hits in early, they kicked our asses. My two ships went down quickly, and Kushial managed to string em' around for a few turns, but even his beloved E-Wing couldn't survive vs. 3 interceptors.

It was fun though, and expect to see more of X-Wing on here in the fufutre.

:-)

Ward-Master Lorgath Maclir

Master of the Storm Wardens

Imperial Commander of Sacris

Lord Protector of the Northern Halo Marches

Marshal Designate Imperialis of the Ninth Convocation

Bearer of the Hideous Mold-Lines

 lol--wait what?

Yeah, this guy has some bad ones. I really didn't see them till I hit him with a wash and yeah...about that. Washes can really pretty up a mini, or they can scream: BAD! BAD! BAD!!! It seems as though this mini was telling me: 'Hey you lazy fucker, why didn't you do this the right way?' Yes I was being lazy, just painting over what was already there, didn't simple green and strip it. The banner pole was snapped off, so I cut off the stub and tried to smooth it out. The paint job looked pretty good till I hit it with the wash. It all kinda fell apart after that.

...sigh...

Oh well, good enough for now I suppose. I may have to go ahead and Simple Green the other termies before painting them though. I would have liked to have said, that when Maclir met his first foe in glorious single combat, he was victorious and damned the aforementioned flaws! but...

SQUIGGOTH! SQUIGGOTH! BLAAAAARRG!!!

Sadly he was defeated before he even made it out of the light box, lol.

Termies!

o/

Taking a step away from the Tyrant's Legion this time. Instead my next installment of Black Consuls-turned-something-else features these:

Their bases are decorated with Ork bitz, because we all know they're easy to kill...

These older, metal and static posed Termies will work just fine with all of the 2nd ed minis in my Storm Wardens' army. I don't think I've fielded a full terminator unit (referred to as: Inheritors in the Storm Wardens Chapter) since I had my old SIlver Skulls army, so its been quite awhile. The captain model will be used as Chapter Master Lorgath Maclir. He's already ben primed as you can see, and with luck I'll have him painted before the week is out. As for the squad, they have the options of an assault cannon, or a heavy flamer along with a chainfst or two.

Retaliator Squad

o/

This week's project was getting my Tyrant's Legion Retaliator squad ready for this coming weekend. Well, mission accomplished (paint not included):

We will confuse the enemy with our mis-matched color schemes!

Normally an Elite choice, my warlord: Arch-Centurion Carnac Commodus (center) makes one Retaliator squad a troops choice. A Retaliator squad is really little more than a glorified assault squad, that trades jump packs (meaning yes, they'll be riding in a Rhino) for combat shields and void hardened power armor.

Void hardened armor allows them to reroll failed armor saves vs. blast and template weapons (assuming they got a save in the first place). However that bonus comes at the cost of -1 to run rolls, charge rolls, and sweeping advance rolls. That's somewhat mitigated by Carnac's fixed warlord trait that allows his unit to reroll failed sweeping advance rolls.

No, he's not the Sergeant, but he wins the prize for the coolest pose in the squad!

I was hoping to have 2, 20 man Legion Cohorts for this weekend, but having just counted a short while ago I came up 5 short. Oh well, I'll tweak my list and fill that deficit up with something else I guess as we're kinda busy the rest of the week.

Another batch of Tyrant's Legion converts...

...literally! :-D

lol, notta whole lot of time for hobbying this week. Actually, it was a litte bit of a rough week for me. Whilst I've been a gamer for decades and cutting my fingers while converting minis is a daily occurrence. When I wanted to slice a bagel in two on Monday, the knife slipped and I made one hellova slice in my finger instead. Lovely. No stitches were needed, but my GF wouldn't let me use knives for the rest of the evening!

Skipping forward to Friday, and finding out that mother-fucking yellow jackets took up residence in the flower bushes out front while I was mowing really, REALLY sucked! Toss in a delayed allergic reaction (I never was allergic before), followed by a steroid shot for lunch Sunday, and uh yeah. I'm plotting and insect annihilation for later this week!

Anyways...

About all of my hobbying this week was spent 're-arming' more Black Consuls, turning them into Astral Claws for my Tyrant's Legion Cohorts. In some cases its only adding a base, or a bit or two, but there have been a lot of arm swaps, and this week will be no different. I've also added in 2 marines from my existing extras:

The Latest recruits for the cause!

The assault marine with the combat shield will lead my Retaliator squad. Whereas the former Techmarine will take the role of Centurion. He can control the Sentry Guns with his techno-wizardry, while keeping the Legion Auxiliaries in line.

This guy came from our FLGS bitz swap night a little ways back. I've always liked this model, and equipped him a little differently (he already has the 3 color minimum!) than the one I already have. Will probably put them in separate squads too.

I found and used several old Iron Hands' bionic arms on these guys. Also, I'm thinking that once painted up, it'll be hard to tell whether its a Daemonette or Eldar Corsair's head...

We didn't make it to the Saturday gaming either as we went to a friend's (3rd!?!) 30th birthday and (unbeknownst to her at the outset) engagement party! We had a great time (and she said 'yes'). Plus it was bit of a break from game nights is always good every now and again, but we'll be back there this coming weekend.

The demise of the Black Consuls...

o/

Some ways back, Necron Bob (who no longer has Necrons nor, at this point anything 40k) sent me a message asking if I wanted an old 40k tank that needed some TLC.

Sure, why not?

After some scheduling issues, keeping us from meeting up, he was in town last weekend and stopped by the FLGS whilst we were all gaming. He didn't have just 'a tank' rather he had his old Black Consuls army in its entirety! Holy crap, really? 'Keep it, trade it, sell it, do whatever you want with it its yours.' Damn, that was a surprise!

I haven't seen this army in many years, not since before Bob moved out of state. Prior to that time I fought against it quite regularly. Bob was ever the good opponent, fun to play against and yet always making for a hard fought game (skills that serve him well in his current preference for winning WHFB tournies with alarming frequency). 

All of the green Predator's missing parts were included too!

Indeed, whilst the army is in need of some serious TLC, its nothing insurmountable. For a short moment, I pondered using them as a separate marine army, but figured that I would grow bored with one of the (at that point) three marine armies and dump one on ebay. So instead I decided to fold the majority of them into my two existing armies: The Tyrant's Legion (Astral Claws) and the Storm Wardens.

I ordered a bunch of combat shield arms off of ebay to change the assault marines w/o jump packs into a Tyrant's Legion Retaliator Squad.

The first bunch of (literally) rearmed marines.

The 1st repainted Astral Claw!

 The Tyrant's Legion allows me to field 20 man blobs of marines with ATSKNF, this looks like the quickest and easiest way to be able to field that! The Storm Wardens and their old static poses will fit nicely with the old school termies, giving that army a much needed boost. Whatever is left will probably be folded into the ANGRY MARINES!!! (though that will leave me with a tyrannic war veteran that I don't quite know what to do with).

Additionally, there was a considerable pile o' bitz. In separating out the 40k and WHFB bitz to be dumped into their respective bitz boxes, I found an old Inquisitor in terminator armor with psycannon and null rod, along with enough Necron Scarab swarms to make 3-4 bases of the little buggers for my GF's small but apparently growing Necron force.

Another brand of geekdom!

One day a little ways back at work, my friend Ryan asked if my GF and I liked pinball. I said yes though neirther one of us could remember the last time we'd even seen, much less played a pinball game. Ryan said he had some and invited us over for (an excellent) dinner and to play. Holyshit folks, check this set up out!!!!

He has 14 pinball machines total, though a few are in varying states of repair.

Not the original display, but certainly a good one!

Kinda dazzling isn't it?

Of all of the game I played, this one was my favorite!

This is planned to be mounted above the game display pictured above.

This would really have pissed me off were I feeding quarters into it. I think 4-5 balls were gone before I even managed to hit one with a paddle!

Antique Roadshow...this one you can have as many as 3 balls going at once!

Sadly the Judge was currently under repair.

The first thing you see as you open the door to his arcade! Note; the box to the left is a new Wizard of Oz Pinball prototype that hasn't even been officially released yet! On the right is a still wrapped up Tron II pinball machine.

Spiderman has always been my GF's favorite super hero!

This one is upstairs!

He buys/sells them at shows/cons' swap meets. He also replaces the lighting with LEDs, put real speakers in them rather than the el-cheapo speakers they come with, and as you can see, many of them are even signed by their original designers!

Not content with just pinball, Ryan also has all sorts of movie memorabilia. Some of his own creation, and some purchased, all quite impressive though!

Any Hellraiser fans out there?

Yes he acid etched the brass himself!

He made this and brought it to be signed by the MST3K creator but the guy didn't have any of his...um, puppets(?) for promo pics so he used Ryan's. Just add it a bit of photoshop and...

...tah dah! Dozens of fans got signed glossies with a fan made Tom Servo!

All in all we had a great time and are sure to be back!