Venomcrawler WIP

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If i hadn't trimmed this in gold, it'd likely be already done! Any future VCs that I purchase will not have this time consuming trim color... 

I got this Venomcrawler 2nd hand off of ebay. as such it was mainly a pile of parts, many of which where already clipped from the sprue. No worries (or so I thought), as I just downloaded the instructions from a google search and set to assembling this beast. It went together nicely up until I got to the rear legs. 

This is where the 'pile of parts' became as issue, as the part #s weren't known to me and unlike any of the other legs, the back two are essentially the same, and their armor plates will fit on either side. I know this as I assembled them wrong twice, tore both back apart and reassembled them again and uh yeah. They're still wrong! The nerd-rage was in full force by this point...

As such they're in really different  positions so I just trimmed off the pegs that are used to properly positioning them in their respective sockets, as well as the bit of terrain the one leg was on, and will position them in an even manner once its all painted up. Well, that's the plan anyways, we shall see...

Yes, that's pink and red 'camo' for those of you weren't too sure from the 1st photo.

This will be used as a counts as, long OOP Forgeworld sentinel powerlifter in my Dark Mechanicus IG army. Going off of the 8th ed datasheet, this will operate essentially as a mini-dreadnought which is something the IG desperately need (as opposed to the pathetic close combat abilities of the sentinel with chainsaw). 

It has no guns however, and the old weapon mounts have been trimmed to serve as smoke launchers. I wasn't sure how to mount a suitable gun onto this until I saw the powerlifter datasheet, and then simply didn't care. 

I always come back to the Guard in some form or fashion...

o/

Come on, you know you want some...

With my battletech commission finally finished, I can now get back to my toys without distraction! My current projects that I'm already working on are my Eldar corsairs, and my baby squiggoth (though the latter has been temporarily sidelined until I get some greenstuff to fill in a few atrocious gaps). As such, for those of you who know me, it only makes sense for me to add more to my already considerable to-do list by starting yet another project: 

The Dark Mechanicus (v.2). 

Well sort of...I did say the 'Guard' in this blog's title right? Right. Yes the good ol' IG have been calling to me yet again. They're just about as bad as space marines when it comes to restarting new armies. The IG was my first army, going way back to the generic, 'black codex' imperial army minis, supported by my old Predator as the Leman Russ tank wasn't out yet!

Previously I've fielded (and each one of these will be whole armies): The generic Imperial Army, Mordians, Valhallans, not quite IG but...the Adeptus Arbites (yes an army of them, god that was a lot of blue paint...), Armageddon Steel Legions (fully mechanized), an armored company, Cadians, Beastmen (the only IG army I wish I'd kept), and finally Renegade Guard (the 728th Sabbat Irregulars that Neverness is so fond of). 

Lately, the loyalists have been calling to me, all 4-5 of them that i have left. However the cost to build an army of...well, anything in this day and age that isn't the cheap as chips (relatively speaking) Spess Mahreens is just mind-boggling! Seriously, how do people do it?

Yeah, this is the only realistic option I could think of too...

Not wanting to embark on a life of crime, I instead perused my collections to see what I had in the 'unused' category and I found: 20+ Chaos cultists, and a slightly converted Magos who was originally intended to lead said cultists in 30k anyways. So forget the skittari legions, this bunch will be a bottom rung, cannon-fodder army of  Dark Mechanicus menials, using IG rules! 

My favorite two IG special characters happen to be Colonel Iron Hand Straken, and Vet. Sgt. Harker, so...my cultists will use the Catachan regimental doctrine. The Magos-turned-Straken, whilst visually might be a stretch, stats wise won't be. Here look:

Magos Dominus:  M:6"  WS:3+  BS:2+ S:4  T:4  W:5  A:3  LD:8  SV:2+

           Straken:  M:6"  WS:2+  BS:3+ S:6  T:4  W:5  A:4  LD:9  SV:3+

All I really need do is swap out it's funky pistol for a plasma pistol and it'll be ready for paint. Then there's Harker:

Yeah that was easy. Moving on...

Lastly, I have my 20 cultists, of which 8 are complete. So, its a start, albeit a small one as these in total add up to little more than 200 points!?! Vehicles will boost that number up quickly (I hope). For a starting point, I'm aiming for about 500pts. for now. My next post will likely be for this little bunch's 1st vehicle, the currently WIP Little Daemon Engine that Could Sentinel. 

My new Ultramarine 'deadnought'

o/

Clearly the Smurfs were in retreat, making recovery of
this once mighty hero an impossibility.

My latest ebay purchase, well...arrival I guess (I'll explain this bit later) is a 3D-printed, wrecked Space Marine Dreadnought. The printing lines that cover every surface of virtually every 3D printed item that I've bought thus far are annoying, though this is by far the worst offender in my little collection of said minis. Still, as this if just a 'wreck', such striations can be written off as deterioration, weathering, etc.. 

Perhaps the plasma cannon was set to supercharge?

This was pretty much a 'speed paint' as from the time I sat down with the primed model to the time I was clear coating it was a mere 1.5-2ish hours. It works though me thinks. I had intended to paint this in the colors of Neverness' beloved Space Dogs, especially as they're the only space marine force to fight on my new gaming table thus far. 

However I was afraid the greys of the wreck would get lost given that the table's gaming surface is also grey. That and the striations would make painting the triangular pack markings a bitch (which is also the reason I forewent using decals). 

I'm thinking that the' powdah' that WaaarghPug is so fond of would have worked well here, but alas I only had the Ryza Rust paint on hand. 

Luckily for me however, the trolling of Neverness (something he accused me of recently) can continue as he has a Smurf army as well! 

Whilst I'm happy with this purchase (finally), I'm not sure I can recommend it for purchase. Sure, it was a mere $11, shipping included, but it also took the ebay seller ELEVEN freaking days, and two email inquiries (the second of which was rather hostile) before finally marking it as 'shipped'...and even then it would take approximately another 36 hours to make it into the postal service's possession according to the tracking info. Grrrr...

...but its ready to mock my favorite opponent the next time he can come over to play!

The (Eldar) Guardians of the Galaxy

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Another recent purchase has arrived:

Taste the rainbow bitches!

Following our recent game in which I borrowed about 1/2 of my army from Neverness, I decided to bolster my Corsairs with some substantial (and dirt cheap) reinforcements! Clocking in at a mere $26, I got 33 obsolete Guardians. 

I'll add the weapon and shield after painting. This will be a difficult enough job as is.

Well, okay...the 6 with the metal shuriken catapults are still viable with the current Craftworlds codex. They've been primed in a bone color, and will be my 'test squad' for these new fangled GW contrast paints (whenever I get around to buying some). All they'll need is an easy-build box of Guardians  and the above weapons platform to flesh out the squad. 

Two lasgun Guardians had broken guns and were guinea pigs for conversionability. How difficult was that? Not very. In the top photo one can be seen with Dark Eldar arms and a splinter rifle. Those will likely get replaced (yet again), as will the vast majority of the lasguns (or rather lasblasters) with shard Carbines. 

Lasblasters are great and all, and suck it IG players, because that blob of 25 above, armed as they currently are will sling out 100 (assault) lasblaster shots (which strength and range wise are no different than lasguns) a turn.

HOWEVER...lasblasters are 7 points a piece. Meaning those same grunts clock in at a total of 16 points a piece as equipped!! By contrast the vastly more capable Craftworld Swooping Hawks clock in a 13 a piece. Worse yet, I have another 3 with lasblasters already as well. 

Just look up your friendly neighborhood Black Dagger Games on ebay...

So instead, for approximately 200 points less, I can swap out those lasblasters for shard carbines which are almost as good (6" less range and only 75 shots per turn), and clock in at 0 points. Conveniently, I found a bunch of 'em for $6 on ebay! I also got 3 dark eldar hell-glaives (I think?) which will serve as Corsair spar-glaives (Chainswords essentially, granting +1 CC attack and also 0 points). 

They ought to work as Storm Guardians as well.

So...I'll have a good bit of work to do on these guys before it comes time for a cohesive repaint. Luckily they're table top ready (if a bit expensive) as-is. That said, I've gotten the initial batch converted and I'm pleased with 'em so far:

I'm thinking that I'll need to scrounge up some more of those glaives, though I like the look of carbines as well!

I gotta baby Squiggoth!

o/

Neverness, paging Neverness...(again)....

Anyone who reads the Neverness Hobby Chronicle has probably noticed at one point or another that in the comments, I periodically can't help but cajole/badger Neverness into painting his gargantuan squiggoth. In person, on Facebook, (on this blog), etc., this also happens as well.  

All to no avail I'm afraid, sigh...

He (quote) has no place to work on and or display it in a way that would do it proper justice. Thus, it languishes in storage for going on close to a decade or maybe more now. I've never bought this beastie myself for much the same reasons as to why he won't build it. Well that and then of course there's that hefty price tag attached to it...

However, the badgering of Neverness is only going to get worse I'm afraid as later today, this beastie will be arriving in the mail and to be honest, I can't wait!

Okay, so its only a baby squiggoth, but its the only squiggoth we'll be seeing here locally for the foreseeable future!

I've wanted this mini for a few years now. However, when I first spotted it I (1) was mad at GW and their lousy atrocious Ork codex, which put the army on the back burner and (2) it was a bit pricey, and it would be coming from England (pre-Brexit) meaning the exchange rates were anything but favorable. 

My only prior experience with Hysterical Games (the model's manufacturer) was...not so good. Customer service was first rate, but the castings, not-so-much. That and the replacements weren't much better, which was another deterrent. 

However the Gnomes were tiny little things compared to this, and what few reviews I could find at the time (maybe one actually, but I can't find the link again), folks who had this loved it! However I kinda forgot about it, and then Hysterical Games had cashflow issues, and then they simply went out of business. Sad face. I wouldn't ever be getting my baby squiggoth after all it seemed...

They've since changed their name to Wessex Games and do still sell Panzerfäuste, although all of the old CAD sculpted minis are gone, and their minis lines now are all hand-sculpted (and to me a bit of a let down comparatively speaking). 

As for my baby squiggoth, well...I'm not sure if Noble Knight Games bought all of Hysterical Games' remaining stock or rather just placed a large order prior to their demise, but they have quite a few of the CAD designed minis, and if you want one of these then they still have one left in stock (I snagged the other one before I missed my chance to ever have it!) otherwise good luck finding it elsewhere.

I plan on using this in lieu of a deff dread (especially as I've never liked any of the ork dread minis throughout their entire history) and as I am wont to do, I remade the deff dread datasheet to fit this model. 

I'll replace the placeholder pic at the top after I paint my model up.

So, Neverness we can now look forward to seeing a squiggoth in our games finally! I'm sure you're thrilled...right? 

Eldar Corsair Void Dreamer for 8th Ed.

o/

So...I'm a pretty big fan of Foreworld's Eldar Corsairs, and I say that despite have next to none of them (and out of my small collection, none of them are actual Forgeworld minis). Corsairs were the Swiss army knives of the Eldar before they were effectively liquidated by Forgeworld when 8th ed was released. 

Such an awesome image and yet I have no idea who created it. 

Sure they have a handful of datasheets, but GW's sudden 'if we don't already make a model for it, then there will be no datasheet for it' mentality that curiously ignores their decades of character/unit customizability (something few if any other games systems could even come close to) killed the Corsairs as an army. Sure, sure, Foregworld's roolz boyz opted for the lowest of low hanging fruit in the 2018 FAQ with the following statement: :

Corsair Reaver Band, Abilities Add the following ability: ‘Corsairs: So long as your Warlord is Aeldari, you can include this unit in a Patrol, Battalion, or Outrider Detachment even if that Detachment contains no HQ units. However, if you do so, that Detachment’s Command Benefits are changed to ‘None’.’

Okay sure, that technically works but...the lack of an actual HQ still irks the hell out of me. This past weekend I just fielded my Corsairs as an auxiliary support detachment. However with reinforcements coming via ebay, I'll soon have enough Corsairs for a patrol detachment, and for that I'd like an HQ of some sort to lead it. 

Thus, I thought I'd forge my own fucking narrative and opted for the next-to-the-lowest hanging fruit: the Void Dreamer. In prior editions, Void Dreamers are the navigators of Corsair fleets, and on the table top, were essentially glorified Warlocks with a few more options for wargear, with...for the most part, a vastly inferior selection of mediocre psychic abilities.

That said, they were also cheap, and thus my usual go-to HQ choice. Never having a large number of corsairs myself, I figured most 'Princes' couldn't be bothered with such small and insignificant actions. Besides, I already have 2 Index Autarchs, so there's no need for a Corsair equivalent in my collection.

I still have the mini that I had used as a Void Dreamer previously, the original Farseer mini, and given said Farseer's abysmal performance last weekend, where he failed to cast ANYTHING for the first 3 turns (yes, even with rerolls), he was in for a demotion. Rather than just making him a Warlock however, is Exodite brethren gave him the boot apparently, and to navigate the stars for a bunch of pirates he goes...

As such I just took the Warlock page out of the Craftworlds codex PDF, and altered it to my liking to change the Warlock into a Void Dreamer :

Right-click and save as...

Slightly off topic but still very relevant, I'm sure you'll note that I nerfed the brace of pistols down from a D6 to a D3 (doing the same for my other Corsairs as well). I just didn't like the idea that en entire faction could be (assuming you rolled high) better gunslingers than the average 30k Moritat or hell, even Cypher! Oh, and one more thing: I dropped the higher price for the Felarch making it a free squad upgrade just like every other squad Sgt./Nob/Exarch/etc. in the GAME! Seriously, why hasn't THAT been FAQ'd yet???

Pistols and squad leaders aside, I figured that most of the Void Dreamers' Psyhic abilities would be navigationally oriented, and thus of minimal utility on the battlefield. So the only offensive power he has is the Warlock's Destructor version of Smite. However given the Dreamer's talents of reading the warp, he/she can attempt to dispel two psychic powers a turn. That makes my Void Dreamer kind of a defensive leader (which I'll admit is odd for pirates), but is hardly game breaking. 

I'm sure he/she has other powers, but I'd imagine being able to psychically sail a freighter (why on earth I stripped this mini of that wonderful paint job I'll never know...) through an ethereal, soul-screaming patch turbulence has little table top merit. 

The 'condensed for my collection' point values, omitting all of
the other Forgeworld goodies I neither have nor can afford
(without purchasing them from our Russian friends...).

Point costs for the Void Dreamer are the same as the warlock, and the costs of his wargear are also unchanged.

I'll be using this guy going forward (with my opponents' permission of course), though I honestly don't see any reason why they would object to it.  

*****

Also, for all of the Americans out there: Happy Independence day! Now go out there, drink heavily, barbecue, and (carefully?) play with your explosives!

The Jasper

o/

Late last year My Beloved Wolfy and I made a rather expensive (for us) Impulse buy, and on a Kickstarter no less. We bought ourselves a new dining room table. Most people right now are thinking so? That's gaming related how? Well. It was a Jasper, meaning its not only a dining room table, but a game table as well!

WIP: this is as far as I got Friday evening before calling it a night.

Unlike most kickstarters that I've backed, this one only ran about a month late on the estimated delivery time. Part of that delay was due to feedback on a short run of prototype tables, several of which were damaged in shipping. Resulting in a redesign of their packaging. Yeah, I'm okay with that sort of delay. From what I understand, as soon as the project was funded (in approx. 9 minutes!), mass production started!

3.5' x 5.5' of no dice rolling off of this table's surface gaming space!

The tables' manufacturer is a small custom game table manufacturer in Jasper Missouri. Previously, they built the Duchess game table which I would have liked to have gotten, but couldn't afford at the time. Their other tables are laughably out of our reach, but we splurged on the Jasper.

You'd never know this was game table if we didn't tell you.

Aside from a few inquiries from Wolfy along the lines of where the fuck is MY table?!?, the wait for this KS was mercifully short. It took a week or so to find a home for our old dining room table (Florida, though we're only trucking it as far as Knoxville). We disassembled that, and I lugged its dreadfully heavy parts into other rooms for temporary storage. Thus, with our dining room cleared, I started assembly Friday night. 

Removable cup holder optional location #1: on each corner of the short table edges. 

The instructions were nigh on fool-proof...ha! I bested that theory in no time at all! Mistake #1: 'No honey I don't need any help, I can do it myself.' Followed immediately thereafter by mistake #2: trying (in futility) to get the incorrect bolts into what I thought were their allotted holes. 20 wasted minutes later....and I realized my mistake and it was fairly smooth sailing from there. 

Removable cup holder optional location #2: the middle of the long table edges. Regardless they don't ever need to be on the gaming surface!

Plenty of room for an X-Wing map,
whilst having a 1/3 of the table top for lists, tokens, etc. 

Well, enough rambling: its built! Looks great! is solid as hell, and the finish matches our chairs perfectly! Neverness is slated to come over this evening for the table's inaugural game. So look for a battle report from one of us soon.

My never used Kill Team map. Could probably move that table section to the center and still have 2 side-by-side games going!

a standard Battletech map sheet is about the size of the KT map, but even my over-sized hax map fits perfectly (something I made sure to of when I printed it off some months back).

After some deliberation, we rotated the table 90 degrees for a better fit for the room. Here it is, all set up for 40k vs. Neverness who is currently enroute.