Decals, Decals, Decals...

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Progress has been a bit slow this week. Monday's hobby time was mostly spent blogging about my recent battletech game (which will post tomorrow). Aaaargh, multi-blog interference already!?! 

Worse yet, even though its only fucking February (and ya know, supposedly winter...), the allergy nightmare normally reserved for spring/summer is already in full swing! Medications are flowing freely, but as is always the case with the initial onslaught, they're having little-to-no effect. Already being doomed, I said fuck it and drove around town in this 'spring' weather with the truck's windows wide open anyways, not like it would make any difference in whether or not I can breathe thru my nose anyways right?

I did manage to add some decals to my container at the very least (and many, many kleenex gave their absorbent lives in said endeavor). 

'Pizz off Wankaz'? HERESY! **BLAM!!** Seems WaaarghPug's boyz have been here...

 On the other side we have: 'Waaaaggh Beeotch? 'MORE HERESY!!  (and another) **BLAM!!**  Hrmm, maybe instead it was Neverness and his nefarious bunch.

Yeah, I love decals soooooo much that I went and added an Aquila inside on the partition wall! Curiously, that gave me less trouble then those on the exterior.

So anyways, that's all I have for this go round. Now if you'll excuse me...I need to blow my nose for the umpteenth time today...

Daughters of the Burning Rose Kickstarter minis assembled!

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Even if you're nice to these ladies, they won't be nice to you!

During the Saturday's deluge of rain, we decided to just hunker down for the day, giving me plenty of hobbytime. All that I had planned anyhow was for our buddy Hoss to come over to play a game of battletech that evening (and more on that later). As such, I got the remaining daughters assembled, and started adding skulls to their bases. 

So how is it that Anvil Industries can have the ends of their infantry's gun barrels already molded as being 'drilled out', yet GW is incapable of that themselves? 

Overall I'm very happy with my minis, castings were flawless, and they fit together superbly! I highly recommend them to anyone interested once they become available for regular sale. 

No sets of arms were the same, giving them all a bit of individuality.

I'm thinking that they'll make good stand-ins for an admech kill team, as that was my original intent for using them as 30k admech-ish militia. So I'm asking: are there any admech players out there who think that that would work? 

*****

As for Battletech, Hoss and I had a good ol' slugfest Saturday night and a battle report will be forthcoming...just not here. For good or ill, I've been wanting to move my Battletech posts over to a separate blog dedicated just to that game. Not sure why exactly, but the idea has been in the back of my head for quite some time and I finally took the plunge and set up another blog for just that purpose:

The Buffet Assault Group

It won't be updated as frequently as this blog is, but I'm think of posting at least once a month to start off, perhaps more in the future if content allows. So give it a look if you would like (I just know that Neverness is dying to, lol!), and I ought to have that battle report posted around the 1st of the month. 

New Toys! So many new toys!!

Seriously, its like painting paralysis! Where do I start?? Worse yet I'm completely out of the oh-so-essential bleached bone, and am down to the last, sad dregs of my Mephiston red...but who needs those colors right? Yeah...I do.

 I was going to work on my Muppets, but (1) it never stops raining which hinders priming and (2) every one has a skull or three of some sort on each their bases, meaning the lack of bleached bone rears it's ugly head at the out set. My Relictors also suffer from this same exact problem.

It only took 'em 30ish years to make a decent sculpt
for the Catapult and Thunderbolt!

I did however get my new Battletech starter set in the mail and after perusing the rules, I found the rules weren't any different from prior incarnations of the game, though I did find that I'd been calculating the heat costs of jumping both incorrectly, and to my detriment. The main reason I got the box was for the minis.

Scale inconsistencies...its still a thing. As you can see by the 85 ton Stalker on the left next to a 65 ton Catapult on the right.

That said, I sold 2 to my buddy Hoss (the Battlemaster and Awesome), to both minimise the expense and give him a functioning lance, getting his collection off of the ground. Also, I and am trading out my Shadow Hawk for his  Wolverine.

My painted Awesome is the same size as the older metal sculpts.
The new one however...is not.

Ignoring Battletech for the short term, Monday I instead finished base coating my munitorum container and 'ard coated several surfaces with plans to add decals on Tuesday, but then...

The Daughters of the Burning Rose KS minis arrived, and they look AMAZING!!! Just look:

Cyber Assassin #1

Cyber Assassin #1

...and their glorious backsides!

The Inquisitor-esque freebee and an assembled bolter grunt.

...and their respective backsides.

Nine more bolter grunts in progress...

What a novel concept: gates that are usable as terrain!

Unfortunately, I've been stuck adulting the rest of the week during my usually allotted hobby time, so progress has stalled at the above building stage. I hope to get them going again either this weekend, or else next week. For the immediate future, I have a 'teaching' game of Battletech vs. Hoss set up for this coming Saturday afternoon.

Relictors Kill Team Debut

o/

The Tau were remarkably resilient in HTH...must've been the additional,
ablative layer of paint. My Relictors really need some of that!

I managed to get a game in at the FLGS Saturday, and was having so much fun that photos were more or less an afterthought. As such few photos were taken and of those, most were lousy. We had a 4-player free-for-all, between myself with the Relictors and a few cultists liberated penal guardsmen, Bob and his (sadly muppet free) Tau Fire Warriors, Noah and his Salamanders Pollywogs, and Phil with his frickin Ulthwe (I think) Eldar that hid in the corner, behind heavy cover all game. 

The good guys shooting the bad guys...as to which is which is a matter of opinion.

Noah and Phil are younger players, and have the ridiculously simple tactics match (i.e.: nobody moves and everybody readies themselves). Thus the 1st turn, Bob and BS'ed whilst the teenagers blazed away at one another with their fully readied teams. Noah actually started moving after that...Phil, not so much.

They're game play is very reminiscent of Screech at that age, so much so that I was calling Phil: Screech (the actual Screech wasn't present but at home playing video games on STEAM, I meant fixing software...). Noah does at least maneuver to some extent now...well, sorta. 

Mercifully, the Tau's massed overwatch supporting fire was wildly inaccurate, allowing me to make multiple charges in as many turns!

My marines used stub cannons in lieu of bolters and they really weren't any better or worse. The S:5 is lost when shooting at filthy xenos and the inability to rapid fire was a little painful, however the shortened range was of no concern in such a target rich environment and wounding marines on 3's balances out the negatives qualities. 

In the end Phil won, Noah was down to his last, shaken Primaris marine when his ride showed up (and he promptly fled the field), Bob's Tau were broken and the game ended before I could test to see if mine were broken as well. I probably got that last bit out of sequence, but the game was over and I  certainly wasn't in the lead making it a moot point. 

Tau Muppet Auxiliaries-Built and ready for action!

However Shas'Wut aside, paint has yet to be acquired...

Yeah they're not much to look at right now, especially as photographing bare metal, or minis primed with light colors wash out terribly due to the glare from the flash.

As you can see, I finally got my Tau Muppet Auxiliary Kill Team assembled. I got them a little over a week or so ago, but I had to wait to get some non-slotta bases for them prior to assembly. The slotta bases they come with leave a lot to be desired, and the tiny little tabs under their spindly little feet were best just removed altogether in my opinion. 

For those who are wondering just what the hell these are, you can refer back to my earlier fluff post on how these fit into the 40k universe (well, according to me anyways). 

I specifically requested that they all
be wearing helmets.

It took awhile to get my order set up as I placed a special order for these. As they're just 'toys' with no sense of urgency attached, I took my time and waited for Anthony at Zombiesmith (who apologized profusely when he admitted he forgot about my order), to get it all together. No worries though, despite being a small company their customer service has always been first rate, and I knew from prior special orders that such oversights on their part usually results in freebees, discounts or in this case: both!

These muppets on the other hand have kinda ugly helmets (as is
seen on the base of the one in front), so I left them bare headed.

As such I got a trio of technicians and a robot as freebees! These will be perfect for use as scenario objectives for my Muppet Kill Team. They're serve as Earth Caste Muppets and their accompanying 'drone' who presumably have wandered into harm's way and are in need of an extraction.

As for the robot, whilst there are several available, this one in particular is nowhere to be found on the Zombiesmith website. When I inquired about it, Antony just replied with a cryptic: The robots are coming... Woot! An advance release mini! I did use a slotta base for it as it's feet were so tiny I was afraid they'd snap off when removing the tab. 

Now I just need to get these guys painted up, along with everything else in my current paint queue, i.e.: the container, my Relictors (sorry Siph), and whatever else strays into view of my oh-so-short attention span.

WYSIWYG in Kill Team...

o/

In the Grim Darkness of Kill Team, Chaos Marines
once again come across as pretty bland...

Okay so, I originally made these guys to be 30k Blackshields in pariah armor with pariah bolters (i.e.: kinda shitty power armor and bolters). However after going in a different direction with my 30k army, these guys suddenly found themselves unemployed. Instead I'm thinking of just using them as chaos marines in Kill Team, but as recent turncoats like the Relictors, or the Avenging Sons' 3rd company, but their color scheme/theme really isn't my concern.

What is my concern is their weaponry. 

I like my forces to be as close to WYSIWYG as is possible (well, I do plan to run Tau 'Muppets' so there is often some ambiguity, but even their weapons are kinda obvious). So...do you think folks would be opposed to using these guys' weapons as the actual Necromunda Goliath stub cannons that they are, rather than the flavorless, generic bolters that virtually every fucking flavor of marine has? 

Stub cannons have no KT stats, however they're easily convertible to KT as: 18" range, Assault:1, S:5, D:1 AP:0 with no special rules. Point cost would be zero like most basic weapons, as Strength 5 aside, they're really kinda meh.

God I love this mini!

Another question would be my leader's Goliath Renderizer. I figure a powerfist would be obvious as it does look rather unwieldy, though a power maul/axe would probably be a better fit. However only the Deathwatch has access to those weapons. 

So, what do y'all think?

On a different note, My Beloved Wolfy has finally expressed interest in playing Kill Team. I was supposed to give her a demo game this past weekend, but real life being what it is, that didn't happen. So perhaps we'll give it another try one night this week instead. Curiously, she wants to play Chaos marines (but not the guys above) rather than her Fem Fa'Tau. 

She's complained many a time of her dismay at my selling off of my old chaos marines which was the first army she used. However she's taken a keen interest in the new chaos marines in the shadowspear box (well, all except for the obliterator). So there's a good chance we'll get that set. The chaos will all be 'hers', I'll probably just keep a chunk of the primaris marines, and we'll sell off the remainder to recoup some of the expense...or rather that's the plan at least, I guess we'll see...

Demotions all around!

o/

I was rummaging thru my spess mahreen collection a week or so back and was curious as to just how Rainbow Warriors I actually had. Not too many it turns out and even less for actual, usable squads. My Rainbows were suffering from a serious case of too many chiefs and not enough indians! Indeed, the sergeant-to-squad ratio was 3:1.  

Well collectively they surpass the 3-color minimum...

Thus it was time for some demotions: Bolters for everybody! 

Ironically though, I did make one new Sgt., whilst four others were reduced to the rank to mere grunts. The new one commandeered the Signum backpack of Chapter Master Profanitus to make a proper devastator Sergeant.

In the interim, Green Arrow has been promoted to Lt., and has taken command since Profanitus' armor lacks a power plant (but will eventually get one of those eagle headed packs) that, and a chapter master leading a 600 point patrol detachment is just plain dumb. 

Munitorum Container WIP 4

Yes, prior generations of my family include dairy farmers, why do you ask?

The majority of my recent hobby time was spent fiddling around with new acquisitions, and adding caution stripes to the ramps/doors of the container. The latter required about 3 coats each per yellow stripe! Unfortunately, once I decided it was too much of a bother, I was too far along to want to paint back over them. Oh well, a bit of leadbelcher dry brushed over them to show wear and tear and the doors are done...on one side at least.

Behold: the curiously ironic monotony of adding visual interest...

Other than that, the roof is glued in place (sorry Monkey), and after blue-taping off the open areas,  the exterior is now primed and ready to be painted. 

About that though...I've been asked if I'd be interested in doing a 30k commission of painting 30 Salamanders. Assuming the buyer agrees to my price (determined by consulting a commision painting buddy of mine, and shopping around online for the approximate costs of others who do that), I could make a tidy sum. However I'm worried that I'd paint nothing but Salamanders for the next three months and find that I hate doing so about 5-10 models in. 

Dunno...might be worth trying just once I suppose. Maybe.