Monday, November 28, 2011

My first trip to a GW store.

o/

As I said in my prior post, the mega tank went quicker than I thought & I had to go & buy something else to paint while in Florida. As it turns out, a brand new GW store opened up approximately a half mile from my old apartment (not that I'd be able to walk there were I still in my old apartment as it would require crossing an obscene number of lanes of traffic that are continually populated by Florida's insane drivers).

Anyways, in all of my years of gaming, there's never been a brick & mortar GW store within a 5 hour drive of me, so this was my first trip to one. I was hoping for the novelty of the hyper-aggressive 'red shirt' to pounce as I walked in so I could inquire about Squats (I hear that they have a standard response for that). However other than a 'Hello & welcome to games workshop' by a guy in a BLACK shirt, he was rather friendly instead of the stereotype. Which, was oddly disappointing.

Anyways, the selection was good (barring absolutely NO specialist games stuff, WTF?), 3 RoB tables to play on (sparse terrain by my standards, though they were desert tables), a nicely painted RoB demo table, the WHFB demo armies looked pretty good, the 40k demo armies (as well as those in the mini cases) were kinda basic in their paint schemes though. Another case had some really nice stuff in it along with various player names, I presumed them to be on display for a contest, or something.

So despite having been in the mood to buy something of the specialist sort, I had to settle for an Inquisitor Coteaz & an imperial bastion which will be split with Neverness (so I can make a low bastion, whereas his will be a veritable tower).

Coteaz was also painted easily enough, but took just enough of my remaining free time to fill out the rest of the week. I skipped his standard gold armor instead going for minty green. The storm troopers & hangers-on that he runs around with are in predominantly bolt gun metal, shadow gray & scaly green. So he ought to blend well with them while still standing out (assuming he ever gets out of his Chimera which which to date is only 50% of the time). As for the bastion, I haven't opened that box yet, as I've been working on my new Mordheim Warband. I'm using the Reikland list with a Stirland theme. But I'll save that for later in the week I suppose...

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Grot Mega Tank part 2....or is it 3?

o/

After just two weeks I'm back, though considering what my family has gone through in that period of time, it feels much, much longer... When I left I had grabbed my grot mega tank along with the paint box to act as a distraction. Therapy in little bottles (of paint, not booze) if you will. That distraction was much needed, indeed so much so as I finished it well sooner than I had expected, leaving me to go & buy something else to paint, but I'll leave that for my next post.

Just over a year ago my grot mega tank arrived in the mail and it was received by me with much enthusiasm. However my enthusiasm for my Orks was waning. So the mega tank sat, and sat, and sat... I have a speed freaks army (for the most part) yet when faced with overwhelming numbers of Space Wolves (locally), and one Ward codex after the next...this so-called hand to hand based army has more or less gotten shelved as it in general is fighting for it's life just to get a draw.

So will 'Da Grot Spee' reignite my interest in Orks? Who knows, probably not. However I can assure yo that Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop's Eleet Grot Mountain Divishun will be fielding it with much glee!!

It really is a gorgeous kit! Just the right blend of whimsical & WTF?!? I thankfully have the experimental PDF rules, and will be using those with the omission of the regular grot tanks. Otherwise I need to buy the raid on Kastoral Novem, a Skwadrun of grot tanks in order to just to field this. Of course the mega tank isn't in that book, no I need to get the latest Apocalypse book for that. That would collectively be an additional expenditure comparable to a small Titan, just to field a 155 point-ish tank.

One change I made was to the boom canister. It's listed as having two, one to each side. However the kit has just one. Plus mounting it on either side would hide some of the nice little bits & bobs that it's covered in. Whereas under the aft turret there was a large space for additional exhaust pipes. So I mounted it there instead. Rather than being a depth charge like it so obviously resembles, I think of it as an anti-Space Wolf scout device. I also need to point out (if only for Neverness' sake) that da kommunikashunz mast is equipped with 'Bloo Toof Teknology'