This week's odds & ends

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Unfortunately I'll have to start this one off on a sad note. It seems that lost in the rugged and mountainous hinterlands somewhere between eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, half frozen by the blizzard and no doubt starving to death (there were only so many grots to go round I guess...), WAAAAUGH Neverness has fallen casualty to last week's blizzard and as such our game this coming Friday has been postponed.

Despite the inclement there wasn't a whole lot of free time to paint this past weekend, but I did start work on my APC for The Buffet Assault Group. Its not too far along, but then again I'm no speed painter either. No worries though, the WIP pics below highlighted several flaws that need going over. Normally the camera doesn't show me those till after I declare a mini 'done'.

Gaaaah! So many flaws, so little time!

I'm still on track for the goal painting all of them before I get anymore. That's a feat that I've NEVER once accomplished in all of my gaming career!

A side-by-side with its stable mate. 

In other news, I heard an interesting tidbit from Admiral Drax. Apparently, he enjoyed painting my Tankbustas soooo much, that he's looking to get a job here in the good ol' US, presumably so that he'll be able to paint even more of my Orks! As such I wish him the best of luck in that job search!

lol!

Pyg Bushwhackers

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This week in (not-so) random ebay purchases:

Don't be hating Rob!

Nope, I don't like the game...but I do like to paint the minis from time to time. These guys will go along with my Captain Gunnbjorn. Its almost like I'm building a themed 'The Big Bang' army...BUT REMEMBER, I only like to paint them, I don't read their rules or anything...

This box has an MSRP of $45, meaning I didn't think I'd ever get it. However, after making minimum bids on this boxed set several times I finally won it in an auction. $20 shipping included? Yes please! Granted, the auctions I had lost previously were only going for $25ish, makes ya wonder why they go for so cheap till ya read about these guys on Battle College.

Apparently they suck.

Not totally, but in comparison to say...Trollkin Highwaymen, they do. Aaaaand we all know that all Warmahordes players are a bunch of cutthroat mother-fuckers who only play purely optimized lists, right?

I kid, I kid (well, no, not really...lol). 

...anyways, I'm not sure how long it'll be till they find their way to the front of my painting queue but I'm looking forward to painting them up!

Rizin' like da Feenix frum da ashes!

Dats right folks, Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop is prepping for its first battle of 2016! This will also be my first game of 40k since...uh, hell its been a long time to be honest! With the return of my Tankbustas from Admiral Drax, da boyz are once again up to fightin' strength! Especially as my Green Alliance Kickstarter Orks are still nowhere to be seen...

I realized after the fact that adding in my url was kinda redundant...

Neverness and I have been planning on playing a new shitty Ork codex vs. the old shitty Ork codex game since my Tankbustas returned. I sold the new codex several months back because I despise it, and reverted back to the previously flawed (but still better for the most part) codex. Ironically though, my Tankbustas are one of the units that managed to improve in the new codex (assuming you ignore the new, retched mob rule) due to the 'Glory Hogs' rule no longer being insanely stupid. That said, in one of my 2 games with the new codex, after suffering 3 casualties, the Tankbustas failed their mob check and then my 15 point-a-piece Orks with their 6+ save tore themselves to ribbons, only 2 remained afterwards rendering the mob next to useless.

Yup, you know they've done well when after winning 2 games with the new codex, I hated it! Locally, when the dust settled, of the 5 Orks armies known to frequent our FLGS 2 Ork armies had been sold/traded off almost instantly. Mine suffered a major purge of the ranks, and the remaining two (along with my shattered army) went into hibernation.

Good Job GW! 

Not knowing how many of da Boyz survived ebay, I pulled em out of their case to find that I had more than I thought (though not much by Ork standards). I also found an old list and scribbled changes all over it till I had a new, 1k list for this coming Friday. I can probably stretch it up to the 1250 point mark, but given that neither of us have played in well over 6 months and neither have the 7th ed rulebook either (lol). Odds are the game will go slowly anyways without adding in more troops.

My egg plane is complete!

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After I worked half a day Saturday, Wolfy and I decided that we'd just have a lazy Saturday from that point on. So, whilst she watched movies and colored, I painted all afternoon, something I haven't done that in quite some time.

After starting out on my Grymn for a bit, I switched gears and painted from start to finish my Lemming Mk I Fighter for Bolt Action. I'm rather fond of it and as its kinda late as I type this, I'll just end it here with a few pics of a fun afternoon's work.

I tried applying the 'Flying Tigers' fanged mouth decals, but they just wouldn't cooperate for whatever reason.

lol, the instrument panel is so high behind the canopy, I don't think the little hobbit pilots would be able to see forward!

Such...uh, sleek lines...

A close up of that instrument panel.

I love getting free stuff!

Especially GOOD free stuff!

Fallout Hobbies had a contest during December for a variety of store credits in return for the best painted minis in several categories that featured their decals. Not having much time to paint before the December 30th deadline, I was only able to send in a few blog pics of my Buffet Assault Group hovertank and my Black Dragons Captain. I was fully expecting to lose, but figured hey, at least I tried right?

Well, like little league T-ball games, everyone who plays is a winner! Ya see, on their FB page Fallout Hobbies announced that the contest was a bust as only four people sent in entries. However in thanks to those four that did, each got a $30 credit. Huzzah!

Ron contacted me yesterday about my prize, and this is what I ordered:

The vinyl airbrush stencils intrigued me, so I got this one to try out. True...I don't have an airbrush, but I do have spray paints and if that fails, I'll just spend some 'quality time' with my future-father-in-law as I have him teach me how to use his airbrush.

Not knowing what else to get, I opted for their decal grab bag, as its likely to have a little of everything. $4 went to shipping, and that was close enough to the $30 total for me. So many thank you's to Fallout Hobbies!

*All images are copyrights of Fallout Hobbies.

The Evolution of the 4-Player game of X-Wing

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Yes, this happens all the time. Rather than play 2 separate games and/or use a scenario, we usually have 4 players who opt/prefer just slug it out on one 3'x3' play area. Over the past year or so, the idea of playing 'regular' 2-player games has curiously gone by the wayside. I'm not sure why, it just has. Alongside of that, out multi-player games have evolved as well.

Initially, four (and sometimes six) player games were played on a 3'x6' play area, with the two sides forming up into teams to fight the other. In most cases this just resulted in essentially 2-3 side-by-side games, with a few random pot-shots crossing into other player zones (for lack of a better term). There were exceptions of course, the most memorable for me being where my force collapsed, and my last remaining fighter running full speed into someone else's dogfight in a desperate attempt to shake off Kushial's pursuing fighters!

Despite the game's evolution, I'm still taking shitty in-game pics on my crummy iPhone, and not my new, 20-megapixel camera...

Then we discarded one game mat, and everyone just took a side of the remaining game mat. The problem there being you can end up with enemy fighters in range 1 on deployment, causing people to bunch up in the middle of their deployment area (to avoid that). Nowadays we deploy in corners, diagonally (basically a triangular deployment zone) out to range 2 or 3 depending on the general consensus. Not sure who came up with that idea (it wasn't me), but it works very well.

(this is where the 'evolution' part ends, and the just general rambling begins...)

Sometimes we form teams, other times its a free-for-all. The entry of the Scum & Villainy into the mix (with can be kinda neutral) has made a mess of forming teams as there's no longer a clear-cut 'us' vs. 'them'. Or there's what seems like the 'everybody get him/her!' games. Whether intentional or not, invariably someone will feel like they're being 'picked on', but generally its a case of finding yourself in the middle of everyone else's crossfire.

In-game alliances tend to be shady affairs these days. Allies finding themselves with no viable targets aside from each other is the usual culprit for them to fall apart. Of course there are players (like myself for example) that frequently open fire on an unsuspecting and helpless 'ally' who finds their ships directly in front of the mine at range one and...how can I resist that? Seriously! I was shooting at the ships on the other side, but you were in the way...

More often than not however, 'teams' will change on a turn-by-turn basis. Sometimes in letting almost wiped out players stay in the game longer (occasionally against their wishes as happened Saturday night) by not putting them out of their misery to let them regroup, to not shooting my beloved Wolfy's new toy this turn after I almost killed it in one volley last turn (and she's wan't too happy with me for a bit...). You laugh, but nobody else shot at that ship that turn either. That said, it died the next turn (and I didn't do it!).

-off topic moment, check it out:

I have no way to tell just how many of those page hits are Russian and Ukrainian spam-bots. I don't want to know, as its probably a dishearteningly high percentage...

The Lemming Mk I Fighter

When I saw this kit on ebay I just had to have it! It was an easy build, and is now in my painting queue. Whilst its supposed to be a caricature of a P-40 Warhawk, my own name and backstory for this adorable little plane came about almost effortlessly...

Anime girl not included.

During the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force approached the Short Brothers with a request to build an air-superiority fighter for defense of the homeland as other manufacturers were struggling to keep pace with the current rate of attrition. Known primarily for long ranged flying boats, the Shorts were unaccustomed to fighter design, but their factories were (erroneously)  believed to be beyond the range of German bombers. The company, already pressed to meet their current production schedules, assembled a team of whomever could be spared to tackle the project at once none-the-less. 

Going with what they already knew, and in an attempt to use as many common parts as possible, Short's team built a mono-plane fighter around one of their massive sea plane engines. The design came together quickly and was ready to forward to the RAF within a mere two weeks time. The Short Brothers themselves, were a bit incredulous when the design was accepted, sight unseen by the Royal Air Force, but such was the desperation of the times that anything was better than nothing! 

Going forward with production, many an assembly line crew tried to point out the obvious flaws in the design to no avail. All complaints were ignored and the plane's production carried on with much grumbling. It was only when the first aircraft rolled off of the assembly line that the disastrously flawed engineering of the Short's fighter was truly realized!

It looks like something out of the old Disney cartoon Talespin doesn't it?

To call the design rotund would be a bit of an understatement! Worse yet, due to measurement errors in the blue prints, the cockpit was too small for anyone but a child to fit in! Aghast RAF ferry pilots were asking 'how in the bloody hell such a fat plane could have such a small cockpit!' Unable to make delivery as no one could fly the planes, the finger pointing started in earnest. Soon thereafter, the RAF hastily arranged a committee to look into the fiasco, and it produced a solution to the Short Brothers' fighter debacle:

What about the Hobbits?

The Hobbits? 

Yes the Hobbits, down in Devonshire I think. There's a Homeguard regiment full of Hobbits...the Eleventy-First or some such thing. Why don't we assign these awful planes to them?

Are you daft?! That would be akin to sending Lemmings into aerial combat!

Well at least we could make use of these bloody worthless planes! 

And what will we call them? The Laughing stock of the RAF, that's what!

Actually, the 'Lemming' does have a fitting ring to it, and the plane does need a name...

…and with that, the Eleventy-First Devonshire Homeguard Regiment became the first (and only) Homeguard Regiment to have its own dedicated fighter squadron. Accordingly, a 'crash' program (no pun intended) was started to teach Hobbits how to fly. The program wasn't without difficulty however, as the trainee pilots were too small to fly any actual training aircraft, and the trainers themselves were too big to fly the Hobbits' own aircraft. Still, British determination carried the day, and eventually the Hobbits took to the air in their 'Lemming Mk I' fighters.

Getting a Hobbit pilot up into that cockpit is no doubt an exercise in hilarity!

With all of the aerodynamics of a wine cask with wings, the Lemming itself as well as it's Hobbit pilots were found to be severely lacking for air-to-air dogfighting. However they were adequate for long-ranged coastal and convoy patrol (a hallmark of the Short Brothers' other designs), as well as the occasional surface attack strafing run with the fighters's six .30 cal. machine guns. 

Despite its rough start, the Eleventy-First's unsung Lemming Squadron has served with commendable 'pluck' in it's defense of Devon's coastline. That said, to date their most notable battle was when the Hobbits petitioned (unsuccessfully) to have their squadron renamed the 'Great Eagles' much to the amusement of the of the rest of the RAF!

Tankbustas are ready to go!

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Per my request, I asked the good Admiral Drax not to base my Tankbustas so that I could base them to match the rest of my Ork army...and then? I based them differently anyways.

Typical. 

lol, actually I opted to base them the same as I did with my GorkaMorka Orks. I guess its about time that Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop actually looked like it came from the Dezert! Going with that, I had to rebase the one Tankbusta that I didn't send as he was already painted/based.

Ere we go! Ere we go! Ere we go...

Given that aside from Da Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun (which could theoretically be considered a separate unit), I only have a handful of Orks based in my generic flock that I've been using for years. I suppose that this is as good a time as any to give da boyz' bases a new look.

Happy New Year folks!

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I took the tail end of 2015 off from blogging as the lead up into Christmas, along with visiting family (all within an approximately 3 hour radius) during Christmas was going to all but eliminate hobby-time all together...but then I got sick Christmas night. Resulting in cancelled plans all around, and now our previously planned 'quiet New Years' has gone all to hell with rescheduled visits. As such, we're most likely on the road today, meeting up with my Mom who's still in the region rather than back in Florida. But, you guys don't care about that so without further ado...

Here's my last paint job of 2015! A Sword class hovertank rom Khurasan for my Gruntz, Buffet Assault Group army.

The drybrushing caught the edge of the TBAGerz decal...but I guess that can be passed off as the edge of an added on name plate. 

This amount of grime is probably kicked up just from gliding over the average parking lot!

During my quarantine, I was able to get some painting in after passing thru the varying stages of 'god this sucks' (runny nose = no paint). I really enjoyed painting this, especially after painting so, soooo many GW tanks over the years. Yes I've painted tank from other manufacturers, but this model felt like a breath of fresh air!

That said, it is a bit of a memorial to an old friend who had passed on a few years back. Olen, and older guy at one of the (now defunct) FLGs's that I used to frequent, was known for (many things actually) his favorite battle cry of 'You'll die like bitches!' (followed by a cackling laugh) as he was rolling the dice! As you can see, I had a few decals saying that in my Fallout Hobbies order, and this is the first of them (all the same design) which has landed on the front glacis of this tank.

Sadly, this tank was powerless in its 1st battle (no, I haven't actually played Gruntz yet) vs. our kitty Neeka. She, like her sister Kiya don't understand why I keep putting my minis in what they think is their kitty cube (and not my light box). She actually tried to swat the tank aside which promptly (and quite unhappily for her) caused me to remove her from the cube (and for that injustice, I was given the cold shoulder for the rest of the night).

;-)