My wife doesn't play very nice...

o/

This past Saturday, we finally got another game of Kill Team in, our first mini game in what seems like forever. I was fielding my Farsight Enclave Tau with human auxiliaries, My Beloved Wolfy had her Fem Fa'Tau with Kroot auxiliaries, and Bob had his Dark Angels. Neverness was supposed to play as well, but (as it turns out wisely) fled the field of battle in apparent terror before we even deployed.

One of my Fire Warriors in the old, soon-to-be-repainted color scheme and some auxiliaries coming up on a Dark Angel.

And um yeah...she kicked our asses.

The first shot of the game, her crisis suit turned my recently painted Cadre Fireblade (who was serving as a shas'ui) into a smoking crater and it just went down hill from there. With 1st blood out of the way, she then proceeded to kill both of our team leaders, all of our specialists, and break both of our forces as well. Leadership tests were quite hard on Bob despite his ATSKNF rerolls, and...well, Tau and leadership...you know how that went.

Emerging from that ruin on the right, you can see the Fem Fa'Tau breachers killing all before them despite not getting into 'magic range'.

All told, when Bob and I folded at the top of turn 6 with one model a piece, we didn't even bother with tallying up VPs, as I think they would have come out as Wolfy: all of 'em, and Bob and I: zilch.

Oh well, it was a fun game at least.

Yeah, so this happened...

Neverness and Bob both have the starter boxes with both the vile Concord and treacherous Ghar Empire armies, Kris has another evil, alien race, the Isorlians and Waaarghpug has the fugly and beligerant rock people, so it was up to me to field the 'good guys'.

I wanna blame Neverness who will no doubt take full credit given that he bought me a squad of Ghar Tectorists 2 years ago. But Bob also deserves some of that after he posted on our local gaming group's FB page, a link to get the basic rules for free. Yup, reading thru that was also was a big nudge in this direction, especially as the more I read (especially on blogs), that BtGoA really isn't Bolt Action in space!

Conformity of color....no, its not going to be a thing with my rebels.

And last but not least, lets not forget good ol' GW, who released 8th ed 40k which I really, really don't like. Yup, good job guys. The above was financed by (mostly) your minis going the way of ebay.

In addition to the above, I also have a ghar rebel command squad and a Rebel commander in a battlesuit that ought to be arriving from England any day now. All in all I have about 300 points which ought to be anough for a few demo-games to see whether or not I want to pursue this game further or not.

You wanted this done when?

...it was the end of 2018 right? lol!

Slowly getting there...

Progress remains slow and waaaaaaay behind schedule, but... it is progressing. The current issue is I've hit a snag. My attempt to make a stencil for the front hull/shoulders crashed in burned horribly. So, I guess it'll be decals then.

...very slowly.

Fallout hobbies whose (awesome) custom decals I've used before, is too expensive for this particular project. I contacted a decal maker who offers custom work, but they never replied back (thanks dick). Following that waste of time, I contacted Fighting Piranha Graphics who responded quickly and forwarded it onto their artist. But I've yet to here back from him due to their backlog. Compounding the issue, they're taking the entire month of February off! Gee, must be nice.

The empty souls stones will be 'ard coated when all is said and done.

Anyways, in the interim I'm puttering along with the dread. The base is done at least. rather than the odd, oval one that came with it, I ordered a round 80mm, Eldar ruins base from a caster in Greece. Kushial despises all forms of vile xenos just as much as the Space Wolves, and myself, Bob, and Neverness, all field Eldar in their various forms. All the base needs is snow (to be applied after the dread is added), and its basically good to go. A fringe benefit of not going with a Space Wolves themed base is I don't need to drizzle any yellow ink onto the snow...

Farsight Enclave Cadre Fireblade

o/

We've had this mini for what seems like ages, but for whatever reason I all of a sudden wanted to paint it. This will be the commander of my small Farsight Enclave force, though odds are he'll likely serve as just a glorified Shas'Ui in Kill Team games. Unless of course I revert to the 6th ed codex in which case he'll get all of his Fireblade stats as the Fireblade was originally a squad leader upgrade.

This was a simple conversion, with the addition of a helmet and a hand swap showing him tossing a grenade rather than waving a sheathed blade around in the impotent fury as he was on the original sculpt.

In looking for a color for the cloak, it ended up with a rainbow of individual splashes of color on it until I decided on orange. Not quite sure why, perhaps because I use the color so rarely? Dunno, but I figured a Fireblade would want something a little less ostentatious given that he's only armored in Tau equivalent of carapace armor. In the red desert terrain of his force's bases, this doesn't stand out nearly as much as would on say, a green flocked one. 

This still needs to be clear-coated
but its too cold outside to do so.

Speaking of his base, the Tau debris is painted in the colors of My Beloved Wolfy's Fem Fa'Tau army. The Fem Fa'Tau are commanded by none other than Commander Shadowsun who (it is rumored) has been charged with the task of taking out the renegade Commander Farsight. I have no intentions of getting the Farsight model given that this will be such a small force, but it easily justifies her Fem Fa'Tau and my Farsight Enclave forces fighting one another in games of Kill Team.

This week's emotional roller coaster...

:-(

Why you no haz photo cube?

Dis...dis thing? Dis thing is mine...

Its been a rough week. We had to put our Kiya to sleep. She was my Beloved Wolfy's familiar and soul mate (way before I came into the picture) as well as my little buddy who wanted part of every one of my meals (oddly, unlike our dog Sheba), and loved nothing more than to steal the individually bubbled-wrapped bundles of minis (sold on ebay) out of the boxes I was preparing to ship them in.

She had two heart attacks last weekend, and as such this week was heartbreaking as we watched her not recover. She's at peace now, though she left us many, many years ahead of her time.

While her little sister Neeka will no doubt miss her as well, she's also more than willing to carry on the torch...

On a brighter not, my Beloved Wolfy and I are now an aunt and uncle! My sister had a baby girl Wednesday night, about an hour or so ago as I type this! She came about a month early so there was some concern on that front as well for a few days but all is well now! So...yeah, its been an emotional roller coaster this week,

Stinger LAM

Holy cow!

No, nooo...resemblance to anything Robotech, none whatsoever....

I got a late Christmas present* from Kushial, a Battletech Stinger LAM (Land-Air-Mech). This is a mini type of which I've never owned as (unsurprisingly) the makers of Robotech sued the shit out of Fasa for ripping off the design making this one of the many 'unseen' (copyright infringement) mechs.

Pretty close to the artwork...

On top of that, they weren't produced in large quantities (both in the fluff and in reality), making the minis prohibitively expensive to buy. Kushial got this one in a lot (and no doubt kept some for himself). Indeed, I know he's been wanting to try the Battletech's aircraft rules whereas I haven't due not wanting to over-complicate an already over-complicated game (hey wait a minute, am I'm detecting a nefarious plot here?). 

eh, who the hell cares? This thing is cool as hell!

Given that I never figured I'd ever own one, I have no idea on how its rules work, so I guess I have some reading to catch up on. In the fluff, these were produced in the Draconis combine all the way up till the clan invasion. So I'm thinking this will get added to my 8th Sword of Light command lance as it's recon element. 

The DCMS' version known as the A10 (though sadly it lacks the real life A-10's anti-tank capability), mounting a quartet of small lasers and a single medium laser. That said the 'standard' A5 version mounts a trio of medium lasers which is far more useful offensively, though any way you slice it, this is a recon/hit-and-run mech at best. 

Still in air-mech mode (as sculpted), this baby will run circles around anything short of another LAM or other aircraft, making it an excellent harasser!

*Speaking of late Christmas presents, Kushial's present from me is tied into his woefully behind schedule Leviathan dreadnought painting project, but more on that at a later date...

The State of my 40k: 8th ed, take 2

o/

Sure, let's resurrect this long defunct series of mine...

So…I tried making another 8th ed list to give the game another try and found the process to be quite frustrating. I figured, I only played one game of the new edition and I have a bucket load of minis so why not give it another go. Sounds reasonable right? Right. So tossing the Orks aside (as usual) I opted for one of my other armies: The Aeldari, ahem: The Eldar.

Still viable...

From the get go it was a mess. Autarchs, what the hell happened to autarchs?!? Forget designing them however you want, instead you have 3 options: the jetbike version, the swooping hawk wing and fusion gun version, or else a footslogger with a spear and grenades, that’s it!?!?!? Where’d all the other options go?

This one, not so much...

Yes, like everybody else I want my army commander to be a footslogger (the generic version of Prince Yriel), who hits on a 2+ in both shooting and HTH and shooting armed with only grenades and a -1 to hit in HTH spear…(NOT EVEN A PISTOL?), what the fuck is he a Tau Ethereal now?

This and the Dragon Knight above are my idea of a footslogger Autarch! At least this guy can still qualify as an Exarch...

But wait! Then there’s the designer’s notes flow chart explaining that if you want an Autarch (or whatever) with options not available in the codex, then just use the index entry instead, but with codex point values. Well why the fuck didn’t they just put that into the codex in the first damn place?!? 

Quality game design right here...

The variety of wargear and versatility of non-special characters, not to mention the convert-ability of the minis has been a hallmark of 40k since the beginning. So why now are they just going for the ‘only if we have a model for it’ mindset. Yes I know they want to appeal more to kids, but us old fuckers are the addicts that have kept ‘em in business all these years, go ahead, alienate us and see where that gets ya…

Separate index for one fucking model, check. Moving on. 

Regular grunts are all but the same as before except that the having to give ‘em all of their specific wargear (half of which is ‘0’ points) making you wonder why they went this laborious route, but that's just a standard gripe of 8th ed., so nothing to add there. Anyways, all was going fine till I got to my Corsairs (requiring index/codex #3). 

Yeah, wow. Those poor bastards really took it between the legs! Whilst an interesting concept, I really never did much beyond paint a small squad and halfway convert (but still not finish) a venom for them (which will now be relegated to the role of a funky looking Vyper I guess). With no HQ’s, they’re no longer a stand alone army and I really feel for the people who had those (and there are countless forum posts of screaming, justifiable nerd rage on the subject). Also the option for a 4+ save is gone too, because that was necessary.

The 1st army casualty of 8th ed...

Basically they’re just guardians with lasblasters. Guardians on foot, guardians with jetpacks, and guardians on jetbikes skyrunners, with a handful of other options, to be added into your Craftworlds army. Yay. No command benefits for them…speaking of, the whole command benefit thing is lost on my eldar anyways. My army is made up of: Exodites, Siam-Hann, Iyanden, and Corsair contingents. So whatever command benefit my warlord would confer, would only effect a squad or two at most. Apparently variety is no longer the spice of the 40k-life.

So yeah, by this point I was annoyed with the whole process. Three index/codex PDFs AND a fucking flow chart are needed to build my list. Plus I have no idea if anything in said three index/codex’s changed even further in the just released chapter approved. Yup, no guilt on using pirated PDFs when considering that I could have $75+ tied up in books whose point values were partially rendered obsolete inside the year that they were released. 

(edit: yup, Corsair point values dropped.)

Regardless, after considerable frustration I did finally manage to make a list. Due to the demise of the Corsair HQ's, and the total lack of incentive to use my storm guardians as corsairs (with 4+ saves), the army now only clocks in at a mere 750 points. Bleh. For the time being I have no idea when, or even if I'll give the army a try though.

Lords of the Motleyverse!!!

o/

GO SUPPORT THIS NOW!!!

Just a quick plug for my Buddy Kevin's new, Lords of the Motleyverse Kickstarter! He's been working on this project for several years now. Whilst I've not played this particular game, I've some others of his own creation and they've all been a lot of fun. I don't see any reason why this one wouldn't be too, so go and check it out!