Da Ork Royul

So I had a bunch of bids in on ebay for an Ork fleet, all new in the blister, and cheap! As usual I was outbid & counter bidding would've negated any savings so I let 'em go. I then realized that my insurance payment was due for my truck, so losing the auctions was probably for the best. I've never played with Orks in BFG, but in relooking over the rules, and (more importantly) being able to come up with a bunch of goofy names, I figured I'd give them a go. Kinda bummed by the whole ebay thing, I thought that I'd scrounge up my paltry collection of left over Imperial & Chaos bits and build an Ork Rok. Of course I really didn't have anything that even looked like an asteroid but that doesn't matter, because while scrounging I found...

Inspuhrashun!

Some time ago a buddy of mine gave me some sorta pulsa rokkit looking bit off of the Stompa that he figured I'd put to good use. I said thanks and its been on a shelf ever since, till yesterday. Tossing the Rok idea, I instead built my first Kroozer, da 'Ork Royul' (that name should be creditied to someone on Warseer where I first saw it) Admurral Orkbar will be pleased I think (at least until I get him a bigger Kroozer). I have no idea how big it is in relation to an Ork Kroozer, but figure its a bit smaller, and built it as a light Kroozer using the 'Smotherman 2.0' formula off of the Port Maw website (basically BFG's VDR) I painted it up this evening, nice & simple & some dry brushing (as with all BFG ships), and am rather pleased with it.

Renegade IG Lascannon Squad is Finished!

FINALLY!


I finished the last team late Sunday night, and less than 24 hours later my newly finished squad that I spent so much time painting, died its first death! Typical. Of course that happens to anything that's newly painted, a right of passage I suppose. They did successfully kill a Carnifex before a chewed up Genestealer squad led by a Brood Lord tore them limb from limb. Corner deployment & 2 squads of outflanking stealers, cringe. It brought to mind a post on BoLS a little ways back where someone was crying that the Imperial Guard were totally broken & had ruined 40k. Heh, hardly! Straken doubled back & held the line for a little bit, but there's little to do against that onslaught (a brood of hormagaunts arrived along with a lictor, all in my corner! His dice were with him). In the end the Nids won with my Sabbat Irregulars contesting the Nid objective (shocked that I almost pulled out the tie) while a lone Genestealer sat on mine. Another close game with horrific casualties on both sides, so can't complain.



The last team is probably my favorite of the bunch. On the first two I positioned the lascannon back off center to give more room form the crew. On the last I did this as well as positioning it a bit off to the left (looking @ it from the front) so I could put both crewmen on the same side. I wanted to show a little more interaction between them. True, heavy weapons squads don't have Sergeants, however the gunner with the bolt pistol is clearly in charge! Even though the loader is apparently ignorant of the fact that he can't actually use it. This squad does pose a dilemma though. Prior to their completion my 'howitzer' squad (missile launchers using modified OOP Ork Splatta Kannons) was the pride of my army. Until I laid the army out on my coffee table last night with both squads sitting aside one another. Side by side, well...the howitzers look terrible to me. Sigh...dunno, will leave them for now. My Tau Broadside arrived from Forgeworld yesterday, so will start work on that (or something tau, tired of Renegades for the moment).

Just a quick addendum after my last comment. After posting this I tinkered around converting a FW Nurgle preacher (the skinny one with the cloak) into an adept of the dark Mechanicus. Guess I'll start the Tau tomorrow.

Just a quick update.

I've been kinda busy this week, so not too much has been accomplished in the painting realm. I've finished the 2nd renegade lascannon team. I swapped out the 2nd. crewman. I didn't much care for the guy with the autogun, so I cleaned, trimmed & assembled the set of renegade artillery crew that I have. I switched the arms around so the ones holding the targeting/auspex/thing was added to the kneeling guy. I hope those aren't required to hit or else the 3rd team will be doomed to forever miss (meaning they'll fit right in with my howitzer squad). I was rather pleased with the standing crewman. I bloodied up the metal 'blade' strapped to his arm, and added a bit of splatter to his uniform. It looks like he knifed somebody while the loader was setting up the lascannon.



Sorry for the bad pic on this one, its too late to set my little photo 'booth' back up.

Lascannon team 2 in progress.

Just a quick update. In a rare change from my norm of indecision, I actually painted the second bastion lascannon for my anti-tank squad, rather then veering off in some of other random direction. The gun itself is done and I'm now working on the two gunners. I'll pop them off of their respective bases when done & add to the 60mm base. I was a bit disappointed to find that the targeting thing-a-ma-jig that mounts over the lascannon's barrel is missing on the 2 sprues I ordered off of ebay. Good feedback was left already so instead I just popped it off of the original lascannon & touched it up. Oh well, such are the travails of ebay. In the end i think it'll make for a cool looking squad.

Inconsistancy, it keeps me from getting bored...

...and getting anything accomplished.

As I'm sure you'll have noted by now, there's no rhyme or reason to my painting projects. In general I have a dozen or more projects going at any one time. This week alone I:

Finished Commander Farsight & 2 Fire Warriors, painted a bit on the 4 renegade storm troopers, primed a Tau Hammer Head, cleaned, assembled & primed a Forgeworld renegade heavy stubber team, trimmed the backpack nub from an old RT chaos marine that'll be used as a rogue psyker in my renegade's battle psyker squad (they're too small to qualify as proper marines anymore, 5 more to go), primed 2 bastion lasers & worked a bit on their crews, and rebased my one finished renegade bastion laser team after receiving a pack of 60mm bases.

Forward progress, theoretically its there...somewhere.

I do have fully painted armies (or at least close to it) however at the above rate it takes years. I think I'll work a bit more on the bastion lasers this weekend. I think they'll make a great looking anti-tank squad for my Renegade IG, the 728th Sabbat Irregulars. Large & cumbersome, there's really no way two Guardsmen could move these themselves. So my story is that adepts of the Dark Mechanicus refitted the lascannon's base structure with Xenos grav engines from wrecked speeders. While the internal generator isn't capable of providing power for simultaneous movement & firing, it does allow them to be used a man portable weapons.



Note: The gun's barrel moves so it doesn't always look like an anti-aircraft battery.

My other anti-tank squad uses field howitzers (missile launchers), these are old Ork Splatta-Kannons with the ammo clip filed off of the top & some missile tubes on the bases. Unfortunately they're on the old thin/flat 60mm bases. I need to order some more of the standard 60mm bases.

All in good time I suppose...

Ok, why can't I always paint like this?

Sorry for the delay, I was going to post this last night, but my corp in EVE online got war decked & we needed to move some assets out of danger. Considering the haste I renamed one of my ships the 'Evacuation of Hoth' for the occasion. I haven't logged in yet today to see how badly we're doing...

Anyways, 40k!

So, have you ever painted something that came out really good, and then failed (repeatedly) to recreate that paint scheme on other minis? Yeah me too. I picked up the Shaso R'Myr at Gamesday in Atlanta a few years back to paint as a high school graduation present for a friend of mine (these damned kids are making me feel old). He wanted the mini, and was looking to make a polar/winter themed Tau army. So I painted this up, and to be honest, I think that this is one of (if not) the best painted minis that I've ever done! I wrote down the colors used, the order in which dry brushed, when brushes were swapped out for clean ones, etc., so he could try & recreate it. His painting skills weren't as good as mine but I figured he could come close, commanders should stand out a bit from the crowd.



I had a small SW army at the time, almost entirely unpainted, so I figured I'd follow my own instructions and use this dry brush scheme on them. Three characters later (all looked good, but not as good as this mini, nor even remotely consistent) I realized that I wouldn't be able to recreate it (the guy I gave R'Myr to didn't even try).



Note: There was a Really bad air bubble in the tip of the shield, hence I made it look like a bit of battle damage.

While I'll admit, I took a little extra care as this was a gift, I find it can be infuriating when I paint something really well & then find out later that its going to be a 'one off' paint job. Sigh...not so much talent I suppose rather just random bouts of it. R'Myr doesn't match my Tau army, but I do borrow him from time to time. Below is my Commander Farsight. I finished him this past weekend. The poor little grot is most certainly trying to wish himself away to a happier place (though considering the miserable existence of the average grot, I couldn't imagine what that would be).

...and the winner is....TAU!

No, no, no contests, just an internal debate. Every year for the past several I've blown my entire income tax return on a vacation (felt good too!), not this year though. Money's a bit tighter, and I have several odds & ends that need taking care of, so I had to scratch the spring vacation this year. I will spend about $100 or so on 'toys' though, and that's been my debate. What to buy?

I was bouncing mainly between 3 choices:

(1) CSMs, I gutted my army earlier this year after realizing that I had fallen into the standard cookie cutter Plague marine list. Plague marines seem to be the most common CSM flavor as they work the best. Currently I have about 700ish points of CSMs, but after trying to paint a few earlier this week...well, I just put them back on the shelf. Moving on...

(2) SMs, I have a rather substantial Dark Hands Space Marine army (they're one of the ubiquitous name & color scheme but nothing else chapters). I also have a small contingent of Imperial Paladins (another that GW just gave a name & colors to). I've been considering the idea of a 10th co. list, and was intrigued by that topic which appeared on the BoLS today. BUT, in the end, it'll take quite a bit to fill the ranks. Currently I only have a Commander, tac. squad & predator. So...

I figured that I'd just go on the cheap (relatively speaking) with the...

(3) Tau. I've got about 1250ish points of Tau, with roughly half of it painted. I haven't played that army too much here of late as I always need to borrow minis from a friend to hit the 1500pt. mark (the usual minimum at our FLGS). Usually a squad of Fire Warriors & Shas'O R'myr (more on that model next week). For reasons unknown, my dice don't seem to like the greater good, don't feel like buying more of those though. I've given them the Farsight Enclave icons, though I only occasionally use Farsight himself. Mainly because the model isn't fully assembled, and I hate proxying & using 'armless wonders' as I sometimes call them. No, I'm not above using unpainted minis. Also, due to the limitations of the Farsight list reductions, I can't use my piranha & broadsides in the same list, the broadsides win out every time.

So what'd I get? Well, my army falls into the typical Farsight format (ironic considering my thoughts on the CSMs), of basically lots of fire warriors & crises suits. I have (2) FW broadsides with smart missiles, so today I ordered a third with the plasma Rifles to use as my squad leader. This Saturday when I go to our FLGS (aside from restocking on some much needed glue, clear coat & primer) I plan to get another box of fire warriors. I have a Sky Ray kit already that needs to be assembled, I had intended to build it as just a Devilfish, but the sky ray (somewhat oddly) comes with both turret options, so I dunno how I'll build it just yet.

Below are my two assembled vehicles so far, mainly to show my color scheme.



Okay, back to painting my renegade storm troopers!

Imperial Guard Storm Troopers

On paper: They're awesome! On the table: More of a 'one trick pony'.

Okay, so we all went nuts when we heard that Imperial Guard Storm Troopers had AP 3 weapons, next we lamented the fact that the strength stayed the same. Then we found out that they cost as much as Space marines, what?! Mere humans? Huh?

Then the dex came out and a full 10-man (stupidly expensive) squad of my storm troopers hit the table, out flanked, opened fire, hit a or so dozen times, and then proceeded to kill one lone Black Templar. Passing their LD test, the Templars (looking somewhat astonished that a battle brother died to a glorified lasgun) pivoted on the spot, charged, and 200+ points of storm troopers died. To a man.

Brows furrowed, I had to rethink this strategy...

Personally I normally run a minimum 5 man squad with a single special weapon & fairly well equipped Sgt. Two little squads out flanking (preferably far apart) seems to work best to me. I've taken down Long fangs, stealth suits, and the occasional tank with them. At just 5 guys they don't draw enough attention till they're in range, 10 guys tend to alarm people. (and) DON'T forget that they're WAY out there on their own, on other side of the table either. It's easy to do if your camo-scheme actually resembles the table's terrain! It also doesn't hurt as much to lose just 5 guys. They're almost a throw away unit, that rarely ever survives the game.

We have something like 8 IG armies locally, though only 2-3 people ever bring them on a semi-regular basis, and I'm the only one who uses storm troopers. This may have something to do with my previous post, I dunno. I also really like the models & have a bunch of them (as shown below). I prefer the older (2nd. gen.) storm troopers. Festooned with pouches, grenades, back packs & such, they look like they're outfitted for war as opposed to the Kas-R-Kin models. To me the Kas-R-Kin look like they've just been dropped off at the front (via Valkyrie of course). Curiously, the 2nd. gen. storm troopers are devoid of any Imperial heraldry. Not a single imperial eagle anywhere. Odd, but quite convenient as I decided today to paint up my remaining squad for my renegade IG.

Just wondering how common storm troopers are being used elsewhere I guess. I seriously doubt that I'm just an oddity (well in this particular case anyway).

Here's my Storm Troopers. The squad in front with the silver armor still fights for the Ordo Malleus (el-cheapo storm troopers), and as such still have the trusty old hellguns. The sniper model is Vet. Sgt. Longshot with his master-crafted hellgun (yes I'm serious, now stop looking so incredulous). The two green squads on the flanks fight with my loyalist IG army, the 110th Ryza Menial battalion (the 144th Podunk fights with this army), and the 4 primed ones in back will join my renegade IG, the 728th Sabbat Irregulars. Still need to get a Sgt. for them. I'm going to get the one with the pistol & sword. As I recall, that mini doesn't have a backpack, however I have a holstered/sheathed bolter from an old SM attack bike to have strung across his back.