The (re)birth of a dreadnought...

o/

...yes, just a little over nine months of being submerged in the Simplegreen and I finally rescued my old dreadnought from its chemical grave. For those that don't recall (and that would be all of you), this is what I like to call the original resin dreadnought. For a recap of its history, click here.

Much better!

All ready for some plastic legs!

Originally, I had intended to clean this old dread up to join the ranks of my budding (now long-since-gone bust) Black Dragons army. However like so many things intended to serve the Imperium, the Alpha Legion stole, or rather is going to steal it.

Sure, sure, 30k's got all kinds of them new-fangled (but still supposedly ancient) alternate dreadnought types, but yes the plain old, standard issue Mk IV dreadnought that's in every marine army does have stats in 30k as well. And unlike Kushial who has TWENTY!?!?! dreadnoughts (seriously, WTF man?), this old wreck is the only one that I have.

Antenocitis Workshop Anomala Car

o/

As I said in my previous post, I did some painting Sunday just not on any spess mahreenz. No actually I finished my Anomala car terrain piece for Infinity (ya know...that game I don't play). In hindsight, I ought to have sealed it with semi-gloss rather than matte varnish but oh well. The Ariadna are kinda like the rednecks of the infinity universe anyways, so oxidized paint on their cars is probably more of the norm than not...

No pics of the front, they all came out blurry and I'm too lazy to take more.

While its certainly not my best painted model, it came out alright I think. I need to give the stencils another go and hopefully it will work out better on the 2nd try. I did get a suggestion on my last post on this subject to not wait until the paint was dry before removing the stencil. Perhaps that'll work...dunno, guess I'll find out when I get around to painting the 2nd car.

An Alpha Legion 'family photo'

o/

Whilst writing my previous post, I was thinking that I ought to take a pic of all of my finished Alpha Legionnaires together. Apparently I wasn't alone on that as Neverness specifically asked for the same thing in the comments. So as I'm happy to oblige, here it is:

Only TWELVE?!? Really, that's it!?

It, it feels like there ought to be more...such is the life of a slow painter I suppose. I did spend a bit of time painting on Sunday but not marines. That said I did assemble my first sergeant who will lead the no-decals squad. He's the next model in-line to be painted (assuming I don't get distracted...).

Burn them...burn them all!

o/

Just a quick post as today showing my (as promised) latest Alpha Legionnaire. This one will go with my non-decaled veteran tactical squad. The heavy flamer came from the new Blood Angels tac. squad box via a bitz seller online. It was a relatively simply weapon and backpack swap, so much so that I'm not sure if it even qualifies as a proper 'conversion'.

This model still needs to be clear coated with matte varnish, and then another 'ard coat on the eye lenses. However it was raining with 100% humidity last night, which is hardly a good environment for clear coating anything!

My next few Alpha Legionnaires will be sergeants and special weapon equipped veteran marines. I'm hoping they'll keep be busy until the next five Chinese recruits in their Mk III armor arrive. They'll bring me up to two full, 10 man squads and pretty close to the 1500 point mark for the army!

Lazy days...

Its August.

Meaning its hot.

Really hot!

So, we decided to not do a whole hellva lot this weekend aside from lounging around our house in the blissfully cool air conditioning. As such that resulted in a bit of hobby time, and I painted up the next Alpha Legionnaire in line as well as assembled another to replace it in the painting queue.

The inking went on a bit darker than I'd prefer, but not so bad as to make it stand out from the crowd.

It looks to be a busy week as it is my birthday week (my beloved Wolfy insisted I put that latter part in there...). However with a bit o' luck, I hope to have that miniature done in time for my Thursday post.

Took a bit of a break from the 30k bolter grunts

o/

Given my slow one-at-a-time building and painting process, it seems like I've been working on 'em forever. In reality no, I have less than 10 tactical marines actually done (seriously?!?! WTF???). Nope, I ain't got nuthin' on the high-speed painting machine that Mordian7th is, but I am enjoying the process at least. Anyways, given that my troops choices will be veteran legion tactical squads, I switched things up a bit and painted a heavy bolter legionnaire.

Ya know, I've painted probably a dozen or more heavy bolter marines over the years. Hell, I once had a dev squad with 4 heavy bolters in it! All models and designs but this one...this one for the pose alone is the best I've ever worked on! It looks soooo much better than all of the prior sculpts! This was also the first one to get the FW decals added. The ones on the shoulder pads ended up a bit low, but overall, I like it. That and these are of a much better quality than the standard GW decals!

I also finished my Techmarine. There's a saying which says 'the devil is in the details'. Well, if that's the case, then after painting this guy, I've decided to name him el Diablo! Seriously! I don't think GW (or me and my conversions) could have added more detail if we tried! Well, I guess I did actually, as why not add a small generator to his base as well to add some more visual distraction, am I right?

Right.

'Wow! This looks like something I'd buy...'

'...even the Space Marines look cool!'

And somewhat shocked at my beloved Wolfy's pronouncement, especially about space marines whom she categorically despises, I damned near drove off the side of the interstate in shock! (I didn't or else I probably wouldn't be typing this)

She was looking at the email from GW on her phone for the new Death Masque boxed set, and whilst the Deathwatch marines did meet her approval visually, she would much rather play using the Eldar.

Not sure if we'll get this set or not, but I thought it note worthy to share this little moment that we had Saturday.

:-)

Kill Team Carnage v.2

o/

No gaming at the FLGS this weekend, instead my beloved Wolfy and I enjoyed dinner at our friend's beautiful farm in the foothills of south west Virginia. Last weekend though, we played round 2 of our 4-player variation of Kill Team. We used the 'king of the hill' scenario where the more models in and around the center objective at games end, the more victory points you got. Here are the cliff notes of the battle:

To hell with painted models only! Thus DLWDG deploys with Tank Bustas, and Ard' Boys (with one Ard boy outflanking)

Mac's Bloo Beakies. As I still use the old Ork Codex, the Rhino did its best to avoid my Tankbustas who were required to shoot at it! A small tac. squad was riding inside.

Drinks: Check. Munchies: Check. Tower and plenty of cover: Check. Yes as always, my beloved Wolfy's Fem Fa'Tau come prepared for battle!

Zac ran a bare bones IG platoon and a small psyker squad. Without the brotherhood of psykers rule in effect however, they weren't the fearsome threat they normally are. The 5 minis off to the side were all outflanking.

Turn 1, Zac started off by moving and shooting everything possible at the Tau. Despite stealth suits, night fight and cover giving them 2+ cover saves, he still managed to kill Wolfy's team leader and one specialist stealth suit. Zac even said he felt kinda bad...
However the enraged Fem Fa'Tau retaliated by unleashing overwhelming firepower in return! Despite numerous bad die rolls, the entire front rank of Zac's platoon was turned to mist and curiously, he didn't feel guilty anymore...

The rhino survived a penetrating rokkit hit due to cover, but did take another glancing hit and then promptly fled out of visual range. Despite their best efforts, the orks pretty much failed to hit anything aside from my big shoota taking out the heavy bolter scout. Mac's Scouts meanwhile picked off tankbustas with alarming ease!

Realizing that da bloo beaky scouts had actual gunnery training, da ard boyz instead try to take da hill and shoot at the Fem Fa'Tau, which does nothing more than get their unwanted attention.

Unlike the last game, everybody's armies were quite mobile!

Curses! A tau Skeet actually manages to finish off da rhino and my tankbustas weep in their usual despair. Da Ard boy in the woods tried to charge the offending skeet, but the resulting massed overwatch supporting fire was noted with some worry by the others (unsurprisingly my Ork died before making contact).

At this point, everyone but the Fem Fa'Tau were below half strength and LD tests wrought a heavy toll amongst the IG and Orks. Stupid marines have ATSKNF meaning they were able to reroll failed tests, which kept them all on the board. I was reduced to just one tankbusta and my outflanker who was feelin' good after killing an IG psyker in a protracted bout of HTH. As an aside, Mac was incredulous that an Ork's base Strength was '3' and initiative was only '2'.  Just remember folks, Orks are the HTH army!!!

After one of their number was incinerated on the charge, the Guardsman's hearts really weren't in the fight, and the 4 all failed miserably to hurt one another for a turn or two. Winded from the long run into combat, my Ork fared no better. 

Da next round 'oweva he killed 2 Oomies, making him my MVP as he was my only Ork left on the board, and also had the highest kill tally. That tactical marine was untouchable btw.

Fearing the supporting fire, the Ultramarines instead attempted a short ranged firefight to clear the Tau from the objective...

...and here you can see just how well that worked! One of us killed Zac's guardsman (I forget who), and that was game! My beloved Wolfy easily won the game because (quote:) 'Boys are stupid, because while they were off killing each other, I was winning the game!'

Welp, my Beloved Wolfy won by a landslide and was crowned Queen of the hill! We didn't even bother to tally VPs up. Once again fun was had by all we look forward to more kill team games in the future.