Apparently its long-overdue Kickstarter season...

For the 2nd time now inside a month, yet a long overdue kickstarter has delivered. Previously I got my Green Alliance WWII Orcs, and this time our Dynamic colored X-Wing templates arrived! The movement and range templates look just fantastic!

Our only complaint (aside from being so late) is the line and number 2 on the range ruler is hard to read due to the background image being so light in color.

As for the various other tokens, eh. they look alright, not sure if we'll use them or not. Though the binayre pirate insert will allow us to run all three of our Z-95s with the Scum and Villainy faction now.

The nightmarish variety of colors for the tokens on the right are largely responsible for the long delay in delivery. Some have the symbols cut out, and other just etched and printed in white. The latter no doubt to speed up production...

The dial is held together via magnets. Its pretty nice for a freebee!

We couldn't resist using these in a game, and left em in place to give a good view of how they look on the table top (which is to say: better than the game mat!).

This was likely the Violet's final battle. Neither one of us have had much luck with this ship and it has since made its way onto ebay. 

The empire won the day just in case anyone was wondering. 

This just leaves Rick Hunter's custom VT as the only thing left in the woefully overdue Kickstarter department. However the only thing fucking Palladium has managed to do on that since the laughably optimistic release date of 'December 2013' is to show a single CAD rendering. Hate, vitirol, threats of legal action and general disgust continue daily on that KS's comment page (which is dangerously close to the 100K comments mark). Like most backers, I personally I have written that last mini off entirely.

'Appy Tanksgiving!

o/

Yes, its a recycled image. Shut up!

Its late and I have lots to cook tomorrow morning...well, okay not too much but I'm not getting up early either. As such, this is my cop-out of a Thursday post.

Happy Turkey day!

Eat LOTS (and then eat some more...because remember, there's always room for pie!), basically 'gobble till you wobble'. And maybe just maybe the idea I originally had for this post will be Monday's post instead of me punting on that one too.

:-)

Another round of Kill Team Carnage

For the first time in a little over 2 months, my beloved Wolfy and I made it to game night at the FLGS. Looking to play Kill Team, we ended up with five players which is one too many for our usual combination of the old 40k Carnage scenario and Kill Team mixed together. I suggested Screech set up in the middle and everyone else's collective objective would be 'GET HIM!'.

Instead however, after 15-20 minutes of hemming, hawing and general confusion in regards to how to fit everyone into the game, Wolfy opted to bow out and just play peanut gallery and combat camerawoman.

All of the combatants in action! The central statue (of Alpharius?) was the objective.

I was fielding my Alpha Legion who were masquerading as the Blood Angels (or a successor chapter, purely so I could use a heavy flamer in a tac. squad.). My force was fully painted.

Mac was using the Red Corsairs (which I gave him a few years back and considering their phenomenal paint jobs, I still have no regrets about that). Unsurprisingly, Mac's force was fully painted.

Pay no attention to the Corsairs hiding in the corner. Mac was rolling so badly (havoc missile launcher aside), that Screech's die rolls were elevated up to being mediocre!

Bob was fielding the accursed Dark Angels. Bob's force was almost entirely painted.

Screech was fielding the Tyranids. The 'nids were mostly base coated and one warrior was painted. No credit goes to Screech on that though as he bought them in that condition. Well Screech, with your Germans out of the picture for the time being, its time to get to it pal!

Whilst she didn't play, Wolfy's Exodites were all painted as well.

Attack of the little gribblies...

Anyways...As Mac's force was opposite me, and thus farthest away, I never once shot at him. In fact most of my combat was directed towards Screech's bugs, though Bob and I did kill 2-3 of each other's models (fucking Dark Angel plasma guns...).

My MVP by far war the Heavy Flamer marine who outflanked on the far side, right in front of a horde of Gaunts. He torched 3 and wounded a warrior as they all charged in to chop him up into little bits! Screech however was rolling horribly, and my marine held on for three turns taking at least one more little gribbly with him. I think I only lost one other marine to Screech's other blob of gribblies.

My Heavy Bolter marine's view of the battlefield.

In the end, Bob held the objective when Screech failed the roll to continue the game into turn six.  

World WAAAAAUGH II Orks are all assembled!

o/

Just a quick post as its kinda late in the evening. Now that I have an actual adhesive that works the rest of my WWII Orks went together quite easily. Despite having to remove the arm pegs on a few in order get them to fit. In the end, only one Ork had arms that didn't align properly at the wrists...but, considering some of the poorly designed GW models I've assembled over the years, 1 out of 11 isn't bad.

Da whole skwad.

Don't much care for the head on the shotgun toting boy on da right. So I might swap it out for another of the western ones.

Da one on da left has the mis-aligned arms.

Armed with a multitude of shotguns, rifles, thompson machine guns, pistols and a pair of big shootas that vaguely resemble the lewis machine gun, these boyz will make for an excellent Blood Axe shoota boyz mob. That does leave me with an extra big shoota boy...but I'll find a use for him I'm sure.

Lying down on da job...

The Ork in the laying/lunging/riding-on-a-vehicle maybe?-pose...not quite sure what they were going for with that one. Guess I'll have to get creative with his base. Given that he's armed with both a revolver and a shotgun, and I didn't like the two remaining Military Ork heads, I opted for one of the 'hillbilly' styled heads.

Why you no haz kitty cube?

Coming unglued...

o/

No longer
recommended.

For years, well...probably close to 2 decades, I've been using Zap-a-Gap to assemble my minis. Sure there's a difficult one every now and again. Ya know, one of those models where the sculptors just assume that everybody loves pinning every fucking bit together, but luckily those miniatures are either rare, or more accurately:  rarely purchased.

However recently, my bottle of Zap-a-Gap finally ran out and I bought another, and that's when the problems began. That purchase coincided with the arrival of my new box of Betrayal of Calth Mk IV marines. My beloved Wolfy would ask what all the bitching was about, and all I could figure was GW changed the chemical composition of their plastics probably to something cheaper at our expense (one might assume) and the Zap-a-gap wasn't working near as well anymore. The glue worked, but took what what seemed like forever to set up.

She asked: "Maybe its the glue. Why don't you contact the company?"

Nope, I've used this stuff for years. Then I got my Urbanmech IIC and had one hellova time getting that little bastard together (which, for such a simple model should not have been the case). Gluing it (and others to their bases, and rocks to said bases also took an inordinate amount of time and Za-a-Gap to accomplish.

March of the trash cans...

Then came my Green Alliance Orks...and once again: WTF?!? Minis that dry fit together and in position almost perfectly and yet still, the glue won't set! Seriously?!? I fought with an Ork with a pistol and Shotgun, who's shoulder insert points were both mismolded, and the pegs to-be-inserted had to be removed for close to an hour before I gave up.

Fuck it, angry email time!

It looks kinda odd, but he's actually looking into the scope.

Actually It wasn't really angry, more of a "I've bought this stuff for well over a decade and now its not working, did you change the chemical formulation?' Their response:

Phone number redacted, not that it would help anyways...

Yes, I'm sure the distributor knows all about the chemical formulation of the products that they distribute. Certainly the schmuck who sent that, from the superglue company itself should have known how stupid of a response that was as he typed it. At least you would think that. My response to this customer service failure:

Into the trash the Zap-a-Gap went.

I was at Big Lots (which is about a half mile away) the other day and saw that they had Gorilla glue, so rather than drive 15-20ish miles to the FLGS, I just went and got that instead. My first mini in which to test out my new glue? The aforementioned Ork which the mis-molded shoulder sockets. I got the gel Gorilla Glue which is considerably thicker than what I'm used to, but it was easy to adjust the amount needed and the result: That Ork which was an exercise in fury to try to assemble with Zap-a-Gap, went together in no time at all with the gorilla glue.

Dakka! Dakka! Dakka!

So now I can go back to the assembly line, rather than cursing and swearing about the fact that none of the parts will fucking adhere to one another!

World WAAAAAUGH II Orks

THEY'RE HERE!!! THEY'RE HERE!!!

Just short of two full years after the (wildly optimistic) estimated delivery date of December 2014, my Maxmini Green Alliance WWII Orcs Kickstarter minis have arrived!

Sarge!

I may have pushed myself to the front of the line after a recent update showed a new sculpt that was (quote) 'holding up a lot of the orders' (or some such excuse to that effect). I however only had a squad of Orc Shooters, for which prototype sculpts were already cast at the time of the KS itself. So one screaming WTF?!? email later and I had an apology and shipping notice shortly thereafter. :-)

I bagged them up once a pair of matching arms were found to save me from having to figure it out again later.

Is that an E-tool, or a choppa?

The sculpts themselves are crisp and clean with little to no flash or mold lines! There are two kinda significant miscasts though, in the arm sockets, which are squared off to cleanly fit the required arms (which is a bit of a puzzle to figure out), 2 sockets, one each on two different Orc bodies are semi filled in. One is workable, the other...not so much. That said, I did get one extra Orc, and I have plenty of plastic GW Ork arms and bitz, so I'm sure I can make it all work.

I can't help but wonder if the Hillbilly sprue was chosen because I live in Tennessee.

In addition to the extra Orc, I also got an Old West/Hillbilly-like (Squig rustlers perhaps?) Orc head sprue and some ammo crates. Freebees are always good, though I would have liked more...yeah maybe that's kinda greedy, as there are a whole lotta people still waiting for their orders.

Here's hoping that theirs aren't too far off from delivery.

There are 2 Big Shoota Orks in da skwad.

Love the detail on these sculpts!

So what am I to do with em? Well, the original idea was to use em as a Blood Axe shoota boyz mob. Blood Axe Kommandos come to mind but they can't get shootas, so I'll just stick with the regular shoota boyz idea. Besides, its not like GW will ever make any Blood Axe boyz.


Given their WWII US Marines-esque appearance, I'm sure someone will say "BOLT ACTION!" (especially as I've never fielded actual humans for that game). But these are the same scale as 40k Orks, so they're ridiculously over-sized for BA. Konflict '47 perhaps? ...shrugs... Not sure and don't know if there's any interest in that game locally anyways.

For the moment I'm just happy to have my WWII Orks and will take a bit of a break from the Alpha Legion to put deez boyz toggevur!

The 3rd Urbanmech of the apocalypse...

o/

There was no reason this needed to be a multi-piece mini. The Autocannon is angled
down more because it was easier to attach than for any aesthetic reason.  

Okay, so this was an 'on the whim' purchase as I haven't played Battletech since February. However with an opening bid of $5.50 with free shipping, why not place a bid right? Much to my surprise, about a week later I got an email notifying me that I won it.

AWESOME! I now have THREE Urbies!!! Sure this one is a Clan IIC version but that's fine, there's plenty of captured Clan equipment rolling around the Inner Sphere by the time of the Jihad. For those of you who aren't familiar with Battletech in general, Urbanmechs of all types are by far the absolute worst mechs in the game. Mud slow, thin armor with lots of ammo hiding behind that thin armor and...yeah.

They're garbage.

That said, there are those of us who love the stupid things purely because they are so bad (and they do have their moments!). This Clan Urbanmech has a movement rate of 3/5/3, which is comparable to assault mechs that are often almost 3-times it's weight! That said, it's 50% faster than the standard inner sphere Urbie (of which I have 2).

Be nice Screech, or I'll use the HAG 20
variant against you...

So what to do with it? Well...I thought I'd make a Comguard (or possibly the fuckin' Wobblies) Level II, consisting of 3 tanks and my 3 Urbies. Whilst the 3rd tank is still up unknown, I do have a pair of 100 ton Behemoths. So, if I can scrounge up another tank that's as laughably slow as the behemoths and regular urbies (perhaps a Burke?), then that means this new IIC will actually qualify as a 'high speed recon' mech due to its 50% greater speed than the rest of it's unit!

That's so absurd its awesome!

Sheba!

Nope, notta thing to report on the hobby front.

This past weekend Wolfy and I went on an overnight trip to Asheville, NC to see Loreena Mckennitt. The concert was fantastic! As was our entire stay...well, except for the bed in our room, that was akin to sleeping on a hardwood floor (and my back is still a mess as a result). As such rather than sleep-in (an impossibility) we were up and going early Sunday morning, and after a much needed nap at home, we eagerly awaited the arrival of our new greyhound!

Wolfy, Myself and Sheba.

Sheba, has joined our family after we went to a greyhound 'meet & greet' the weekend prior and we 'clicked' with her. It was very much a case of she picked us rather than the other way around. She's very laid back and has yet to bark (which is not at all uncommon for Greyhounds). She's a retired racer and breeder and is learning what 'retirement' is all about.

She made sure that nothing was missed in her adoption contract!

Here are a few of Sheba's 'stats':

• 8 1/2 years old
• She raced in 32 races, with 13 wins
• Her average winning speed was approx. 37 mph!
• Mother of 35 pups from multiple litters from 2011 thru 2015
• One of her grandfathers was named Oswald Cobblepot (luckily no limp was inherited, lol)

More often than not she can found sleeping in this spot in our living room.

As you can see, she just about takes up a queen sized bed all by herself!

We're learning too. for example: I took her on a walk on Monday, leisurely paced and maybe 3/4 of a mile. The poor thing, at the end she was so tired I had to pick her up to get her back into my truck's back seat! Odds are she's never walked that far-ever! Indeed, as far as we know she had never gone a walks period until getting into foster care a few weeks ago. Likewise, we're trying to teach her that she can stay out in our fenced yard for as long as she likes. She doesn't have to just go out, do her business and come right back in.

Additionally, I've never had a dog who can watch your every move in the kitchen because her eye level is higher the counter top, and then there's that tail! When happily wagging its a thing of (of potential) destruction! Luckily, our decimator survived unscathed when Sheba's tail caught it by the flight stand and launched it almost clear across the dining room yesterday!

Greyhounds get chilly quite easily, but she slept like a baby under this blanket.

As I'm sure you can tell,  we're very happy with our new pup...well, except for the kitties, they're still mad...but they are adjusting (begrudgingly).