A base for a bug (Part 2)

Notta whole lot has gone on hobbywise this week. Christmas didn't net me any new toys, though My Beloved Wolfy did get me the novel: Magos, the latest in the Eisenhorn series. True to Abnett's form, its been an excellent read right from the start! Its a fairly thick tome, I'm a slow reader, and do so usually only on my lunch breaks at work, so it ought to keep me entertained for quite awhile. 

On the painting front, I'm chugging along slowly but surely on my Tyranid Warrior's base. Its ready for a decal on the escape pod door, and aside from the final assembly, snow flock. However the latter won't come until I first paint the pile o' parts that is my Tyranid warrior (the bastard took a swan dive off the deck during the priming stage that left me searching thru the grass for bug bitz!). 

Oh well, it'll probably be easily to paint unassembled anyways...

Have a happy and safe New years folks!!!

(oh, and be sure to drink heavily if you're hunkering down instead of going out)

My last finished unit of 2018...

o/

Just as the title says, I'm finishing out the year with a completed unit. Thus, I present to you my Marik Militia lance for Classic Battletech:

Two new mechs and all new paint = their inevitable table top DOOM!

Yes, it took almost a full month to paint just four measly mechs, shut up! (lol) I'm quite pleased with them overall, and will do a group shot with all of my Marik Militia forces once I paint my tanks. Here are a few close up pics:

The Griffin's attempt to shield the vitals with its arm was mostly successful...

The twisted, burnt up and mashed wreck at the Hunchback's feet is (was?) a Lyran Royal Guards 10-ton wheeled APC.

Its curious what the camera focuses on. Ya see that black area below the red stripe on the side torso? Its all but invisible on the mini, but SCREAMS at you in this photo! (nope, not fixing it)

The trusty little Whitworth. I'm rather fond of this mini and am contemplating purchasing 3 more to form a medium fire support lance with my Stinger LAM
acting as a spotter.

I'm not sure what's next in the ol' painting queue...I'm thinking its a toss up between Nids, Marines and Muppets!

Christmas break...

There's just too much going on at the moment to dedicate any appreciable time to hobbying. That's alright though because there's at least a few presents, and a lot of people whom I haven't been able to visit with in awhile involved! So its all good.

Da' Red Wun loots fasta!

As such I wish all of you out there in the ol' blogosphere a Blessed Yule & Winter Solstice, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy Holidays to whatever you choose to celebrate that I've missed!

Also, I'd be remiss without reposting my Christmas classic repost from 2010, a song I can't help but sing whenever I hear its mainstream incarnation that's been playing incessantly here of late:

'Walking in a Winter Wasteland'

(Just keep the tune of “winter wonderland” when reading)

See the trees,

Watch them burning

Refugees,

camps are forming

A horrific Sight

We’re fleeing tonight

Walking in a winter wasteland

Gone away is the Governor

Here to stay is a Chaos Lord

He brings a long war

We’re put to the sword

Walking in a winter wasteland

In the middle we can build a bridgehead

Then pretend that we’re gaining ground

They’ll say are you ready?

We’ll say no man!

But we’ll go when

The Commissar’s around

Later on

We’ll conspire

To kill him with friendly fire

To face unafraid

The treason we’ve made

Walking in a winter wasteland

In the middle we can build a bridgehead

Then pretend that we’re gaining ground

With bayonets we’re gonna go in!

Until their guns mow us down

Landmines blow

And their killing

Through your nose, blood is spilling

We’ll falter in pain

And then run away

Walking in a winter wasteland

Walking in a winter wasteland!

Walking in a winter wasteland!

Defeat is....inevitable.

He's dead Jim...

SPOILER ALERT!!-oh wait, lol yeah never mind. 

The Silver Drakes had a good run going there, but ya can't win 'em all. That and the combination of only being able to field 5 guys vs. a Nid KT with a fucking lictor that's all but being guaranteed to be in close combat at the beginning of turn 1 kinda skews things outta my favor no matter what strategy one tries. 

Still, my boys went down fighting (or, in some cases hopelessly flailing) and as is always the case when playing Screech, a fun time was had at least.

The field of battle.

The bugs, lurking to my right and looking to overload my flank (which they achieved with frightening speed!).

Only one volley of overwatch was fired before the Lictor connected with a grunt. That did inflict a wound on the monster at the least.

Sarge charges into the fray with his usual brand of mediocrity (i.e.: 2 guaranteed missed hits per turn, with no hope of improvement no matter how many CPs are spent on rerolls).

The big beastie's charge was weathered however, and it took a wound as well! Following that, the little gribblies poured into the fray!

How hard can it be to dispatch 2 little gribblies on the 3rd floor?
Quite hard, apparently... 

With my Sergeant down on turn 2, Demotion and my AGL gunner assist by uselessly shooting terrain pieces, along with squandering a my few remaining CPs on futile rerolls to hit.

Now THAT'S how you aim for promotion! My breacher specialist takes down the Lictor armed with no other CCW than his fist! Thusly inspired, my team summarily fails it's break test calls for EVAC and an orbital bombardment now that it's mission is accomplished, and flees fights a textbook withdrawal from the battlefield!

So much for chasing a promotion...apparently he didn't get clear before that orbital strike hit and was instead blown to bits! Martyrdom...it sounds so good until it happens to you.

Well, with the loss of one veteran, to be replaced with a noob means I can field 6 guys again right? Wrong! The rest of my fire team went up to both level 3 as well as another point each, all but negating the noob discount! Hell, after surviving a single game that noob will then rise up to the same level (both in XP and point cost) as the rest. Worse yet, that infernal Lictor not only recovered following the battle, but gained an armor save increase to a 4+!

Oh well, on to the next battle I suppose!

*****

Earlier, Bob played a demo vs. Michael. You can tell that they're both playing Dark Angels not by the paint jobs, but rather because they're both on the same side!
..snicker...

Samuel L Jackson, the Resurrection!

o/

Nope, no progress on the mechs, instead...

Whilst this pic better suits the mini below, Jules from Pulp Fiction is,
I think Samuel's finest acting performance! 

Waaaaaaaaay back in the day (pre-blog times) I had a sizable Iron Hands army lead by the infamous Iron Father Samuel L. Jackson. I used a techmarine as a base for the conversion as I didn't like the actual Iron Father mini, and later on he was cross-promoted (though to the Iron Hands, it was probably more like a demotion) to a captain when the Iron Father rules went away with an edition change. He was armed with a combi-flamer and a trimmed down chainsaw off of the IG Sentinel kit.

When I was tired of the monochromatic-hell of that army, I ebayed 'em but Samuel had earned himself an honored spot on my Hall of Heroes (HoH) display stand, where he lived out his dusty retirement until...I bumped the shelf atop of which the HoH was sitting. Unfortunately Samuel took a tumble to the floor and shattered into his constituent parts! Not having any use for him at that point, I collected his remains and tossed them into the purgatory of my bitz box. 

Whilst this mini lacks the afro and mutton chop side burns, UI have no doubt he'll be shouting Ezekiel 25:17 throughout every battle!

There he rattled around amongst years of collected gaming spares and detritus till I decided to resurrect him a little ways back. Had I thought it out properly (rather than just on impulse), I would have stripped his paint first but oh well. I added a pack and 2 bolt pistol hands, added a new 32mm base and ta-dah! He'll now be a 30k Moritat for my Blackshields/Renegade Iron Hands army. The arm on his pack is less a servo-arm and more a mechandrite. In-game it serves no purpose, aside from adding some visual appeal. Instead I figure it would assist in reloading his pistols, especially as it would be able to swivel around and actually reach the ammo pouches on Samuel's pack!

It was no picnic repositioning that fiddly little servo-arm...

With so many half-done projects already in the works, I have no idea when I'll actually get to painting him up, though given my usual tendencies...probably Tuesday!

WHITE OUT CONDITIONS!!!

o/

Our greyhound Sheba romping around the yard in her tiger coat!

Yes, Da Masta Cheef likes playing in the snow too!

Blizzards, and anything approaching the like are quite rare here in the Appalachian Subsector, but luckily we awoke to just that Sunday morning! When I measured the white stuff around noon, we had 8" but it kept on snowing for quite awhile so we probably got more like 9" in total. Meanwhile, at my sister's house in Knoxville, a mere 2 hours away all they got was a dusting of snow, and another and a half further south, a friend of mine in Chattanooga reported that all they were getting was a cold, miserable downpour all day! Yes I'm bragging and no, it doesn't matter since neither reads my blog, lol!

This probably isn't even worth a mention by the likes of
Mordian7th  and his fellow Coloradans!

Whilst I excavated my trukk to make life a bit easier Monday morning, I made no effort to reduce the 1.5-2 foot high berm of snow the plow trucks have left about 5 feet behind my trukk.  I'm not gonna lie, I can't wait to finally have an excuse (albeit a brief one)  to actually use the 4WD that I haven't used since buying it almost 3 years ago when I leave for work!

At this point, I'm pretty sure Baxter was still thinking: THIS! IS! AWESOME!!!!!

With the white stuff falling, we opened the mini blinds all the way, put on the Christmas music and decorated our tree. Its the first time our kitty Baxter has ever experienced one and he was having a field day with it! After a few passes amongst the faux branches, he decided to romp thru the packaging of the decorations when a vicious gift bag attacked him! (he got his head stuck in the handle). After ramrodding around the house in a panic he broke free after colliding with the threshold to our bedroom at full speed! Luckily he was alright, but after removing the remnants of the offending bag, he's avoided the living room since. Clearly he's had enough of this holiday shit.

They're getting there, slowly but surely...

As for the hobby front this week, not much to report I'm afraid. I did at least paint the metal bitz on my mech lance, clearing the way for touch ups and detailing before slathering them in ink. With luck I'll finish 'em up this week, but don't hold your breath on that...

Three-color minimum achieved!

o/

Lavender Death approaches!
...snicker...

Having just built my the final two mechs in this lance last week, I thought I'd divert myself away from Kill Team projects and try to capitalize on my Battletech enthusiasm by painting these before my mind wanders off in another direction...again, as usual. So I took one of my Urbies out of the case to use as a guide to make sure the red and blue are on the correct sides. Despite being a simple color scheme, its easy to fuck up by getting the colors reversed... 

Woops! Had to hold up on the red to get a quick pic for this post's 3-photo minimum (that's a thing right?).

Aside from the Purple base with red and blue trim, there's no real definitive way to paint FWLM mechs. I figure the trim is left up to the individual mechwarrior's preference, kinda like the nose art on real-world military aircraft (well, mostly vintage aircraft anyways). True, my urbies all match, but hell they're just urbies. Their mechwarrior's are too busy trying to get promoted out of those deathtraps asap, to even worry about what colors they're painted! 

...and now with the red. Next up will be the metal bitz and then onto detailing rather than slogging thru a bunch more yucky batch painting, bleh!

I had hoped to get a game of Battletech in this evening with my buddy Rob, but that's not going to pan out I'm afraid (my schedule is at fault this time, not his as is the norm). Oh well, that give's me more time to get these closer to being done (as opposed to the current: base coated/fugly stage). 

Metal minis, oh how I loathe assembling thee...

o/

Glue not bonding parts together, glue all over my fingers, parts glued to my fingers instead of each other, ah yes...so many bad memories revisited... 

So uh yeah, surprise! Nothing was painted this week as I spent an inordinate amount of time assembling these two little Battlemechs. Seriously, I could've assembled a full tactical squad, hell maybe more in the same amount of time! Its no wonder that there were so many single-piece monopose minis back in the day. 

Now I just need to pick a color scheme and get 'em painted up!

Still, these mechs look far, far better than the previous sculpts that they replaced. Better yet, these two (a Wolverine and a Griffin) finish out my mech company meaning I have no need to buy and build any of these two minis ever again! That is assuming of course that I don't drop one, as a fall from a table with no doubt be enough to shatter either into it's constituent parts with frightening ease.