The Grymn Dark v2, part 2 (the who is what)

o/

Well, my beloved Grymn didn't get their battlefield debut this weekend due to the weather. It snowed here (ironic as they're painted in winter colors) and whilst the roads were probably fine by gaming time, its better to be safe than sorry. By northern standards, the amount of snow was probably laughable, but the south isn't too well equipped to deal with the stuff. That and having learned to drive in Florida, I worse when driving in the snow than the locals.

Anyways, below is a breakdown of what minis I'm using as what.

First up, my Inquisitor. This little guy will be an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor equipped with power armor, power sword, Hell Rifle, and frag & krak grenades. I won't bother with the psyk-out grenades as they'd most likely offend the Grymn's Nicassar allies (more on them below). I really like this mini and will hopefully paint it up soon.

Neverness commented that its kindova plain looking sculpt, but its a nice change from GW's 'skull/spirit stone/glyph/whatever-on-every-surface' look. Its also a bit of a challenge to paint as I can't just slather him in a wash, then drybrush and call it done like I often do with all of my normally 'dirty' armies.

Next up, the venerable Grymn Prospectors themselves. These will be Acolytes with hot-shot lasguns. I have a little over a dozen of them (sadly only two are painted) and truth be told the Grymn would probably work best as IG. But for now I'll use them as the Inquisition as I'm not looking to buy anymore at the moment.

Now we come to my still favorite Grymn sculpt, the Grymn with a laptop, or in this particular case, the Jokero. The Jokero's WS & S is lower than that of the acolyte, that's easily explained by being weighed down/encumbered by her equipment. Truthfully, I only want the Jokero for the chance to roll a 5 on her chart, as these guys need a 5++ save. Small as they are, they disappear from the enemy's line of sight in ruins (the most common terrain we play in). The problem with that is these little guys do need to all but stand in the wide open in order to shoot anything. Also, if you think it isn't plausible for this chick to manifest a lascannon, multi-melta or heavy flamer out of thin air, just remember: a fucking orangutan doing that is even less so!

Hey, guess what? I found a use for this mini, as a Nicassar. For anyone who never fielded or faced the Tau in Battlefleet Gothic, that probably means little (so by all means click on the link). As such, this little guy/girl/it (and the two others I just bought) will be used as Inquisitorial Psykers.

Lastly, my little Info-bot which will work perfectly as a Servo-skull. I have three, and conveniently, an inquisitor can have up to 3. Rob mentioned the upcoming CSM supplement which will possibly bring back his all infiltrating Deathguard army. To which I replied by saying that three servo-skulls (totaling a mere 9 points) will keep him back almost in his deployment zone, negating that strategy for the most part. His stunned silence for the few moments that it lasted was hilarious!

So there they are, my little allied Grymn contingent and all of its constituent parts. Hopefully they'll fare better than they did as Tau, and if not, there's always the IG. Barring that, then possibly they'll fit into Beyond the Gates of Antares if that game ever makes it off of the ground. By the sounds of it, the Grymn could easily qualify as Pan-Humans.

A long history ramble and a few spaceships at the end...

Yes apparently...

I highly recommend these!

So, I'm not sure where the inclination quite came from, but recently I've become rather quite interested in naval deign & history from prior to WWII, yet after the American Civil war. Honestly I think it came out of Wikipedia searches on ship's names for my space ships in EVE online of all things. So after digging around online, I bought these two books which are way out of print, yet still available via Amazon (cause everything is on there). Brand new (if even available) they're priced to the point of ridiculousness whereas used, I was able to find them at fairly reasonable prices.

Now, if you're not interested in this sort of thing, they're probably as dry as a high school textbook (as this post may also be, if so just skip down to the space ships). However I am, so they are in fact quite entertaining to me. The state of naval warfare in those days was almost comical (unless you were in the engine room or just about anywhere inside a ship where it was literally hellishly hot). The US congress ignoring actual naval opnions and instead demanding the biggest guns, heaviest armor, and putting it all on the smallest (i.e. cheapest) displacement and short range (so as not to offend foreign powers) resulting in many of the same errors being repeated in designs, and as a result a fleet of  absolute mediocrity.

The earliest of US battleships were more or less copies of one fielded by Brazil, which at the time had the biggest guns in the western hemisphere! That thought scared the hell out of the US governemnt when they realized it could bombard coastal US cities and there wouldn't be a thing we could do about it!  The best we had were antiquated river monitors (which were only meant for rivers yet we periodically  would send across the pacific to guard far flung US interests, how they didn't sink enroute is a mystery to me) and obsolete Civil War designs.


 Instead of listening to what the Navy wanted the goverment kept building ships with features like terribly low free board,  torpedo tubes that never worked right, casemate guns that were all but unusable in anything but flat & glassy seas, ram bows that sent waves over the tops of the bows & straight into the turrets & casemates that they could never seem to waterproof (powder doesn't fire when wet!). Super imposed turrets (which mounted an 8" gun turret on top of a 12" gun turret...think about it) were just plain stupid yet even when they started to realize that the concept was a mistake, they added them to a second class of battleships because they didn't want European nations to think that we didn't know what we were doing! They were already well aware is it turns out...

BB-1 USS Indiana

 While built before the debacle of superimposed turrets, I'll use the Indiana for example. It was the US's first real Battleship in the modern sense, and boy did it show!  Built without any kind of keels & unbalanced turrets,  when the turrets were turned for a broadside,  the ship would list heavily to the side. Thus, rather than arcing their shots at maximum elevation for better range, the guns would instead just be firing on a flat trajectory! Worse yet in a storm once, the turrets broke their locks and were swinging uncontrollably from one side to another (like a said eariler, comical) till the crew was somehow able to tie them down with ropes. Later they had to repeat the process in the wee hours of the morning when the ropes snapped, how they didn't drown anyone in that process I don't know. After that incident the Indiana would make a hard turn towards the nearest port when any storm seemed to be on approach.

The only real victory we had in those days was the battle of Santiago de Cuba which ended the Spanish American war. While they were effective in that these ships, despite their flaws won the war. That victory also had a lot to do with the Spanish ships being even worse than ours.

 When ordered to Cuba's water, the Spanish admiral said it the state of his fleet made it suicide, the Spanish government said to go anyways. Built along the same sad lines as ours (more or less) the Spanish flagship's main guns weren't even fitted but rather had wooden mockups, and budget cuts meant several of the Spanish ships were firing 'training' rounds filled with sawdust (guess how well that worked). Its no wonder that between the first ironclad engagements in the Civil War and the arrival of the HMS Dreadnought, this period of naval history is kind of ignored. The Battle of Tsushima is about all that is ever really mentioned, and even then rarely.

Anyways, what the hell does all of this have to do with space ships I hear you ask (assuming you haven't already closed the page)? Well, not being a historical gaming player, the closest thing to this kind of setting that I have in my collections, is Battlefleet Gothic (which could easily be played using actual naval ships rather than space ships when you think about it). So when purchasing my Rangers a few weeks back, to get to the $50 needed for free shipping I bought a box of Imperial cruisers (and then the rangers were out of stock, so all I got from GW was the cruisers & the free shipping, go figure).

I ran out of black primer for the other 2 bases.

So I painted those two ships up as well as an old Spacefleet cruiser that I intend to use as an Endeavor class light cruiser (which is impossible to find these days). I also have a blister of frigates, so toss in an admiral & a reroll or two & it ought to make for a 750 point fleet or so. True, in the time period discussed above, there were no carriers, I had to make at least one carrier as you can't play BFG with out them. I've mentioned playing games without carriers & always get the same response:

 'Why would you want to do that?'

I dunno, I always thought it was supposed to be a game about spaceships, rather than the stupid little fighter & bomber card stock tokens. However given that we rarely ever play BFG, it doesn't matter much really. At least they look good on the shelf!

The Divinity

o/

Okay, so my Christmas break (blogging wise) was a bit longer than anticipated. I wanted to have SOMETHING to post other than 'look! I got even more toys for Christmas!' Anyways, while perusing Hoard o' bits for some bases last week, i stumbled across a Dwarven dirigible from Dreadfleet. It was kinda funky looking, so on a whim I got one along with my bases. Yesterday it arrived, and after adding a few bits, trimming the smoke stacks, a quick paint job (gotta love BFG for that fact alone), behold! I give you: The Divinity!

Its kinda cute for a BFG ship...

Now, in one of our Dark Heresy campaigns, I play an Adept-turned-madman, the 'living Imperial Saint' Boris Sevastopol. Currently his team is traveling thru the warp enroute to...somewhere (I don't recall where as its been quite sometime since I played him). However our GM has mentioned that a possible future outcome for him would be to place Boris at the helm of his own Imperial Crusade! Were this to come to pass, then odds are our Sister Secunda (among others) would go out of character & physically assault our GM! However the 'Divinity' is the ship I see as the vehicle for Saint Sevastopol's 'crusade'.

The Divinity was a tramp freighter known as the Sprite, and operated on a contract to contract basis, always teetering on the edge of financial oblivion. With neither a navigator nor astropath, it was limited to calculated warp jumps of no more than four light years, which further constrained her captain's (and owner's) dire situation. Desperate, a contract to smuggle Ghostfire pollen from Icanthos was accepted, and proved to be the Sprite's undoing.

Boarded & impounded, with her crew imprisoned and owner executed, the Sprite & her crew seemed destined to be crushed within the Imperial legal machine. Now just why the Inquisitor (known only to me as 'Omega') took interest in the Sprite is a mystery. Perhaps it was nothing more than a personal amusement, or rather he saw it as a creative way to eliminate a few loose ends (or is it loose screws?), perhaps it was an abuse of his power, or he was merely enjoying the perks of his position, regardless, Omega took ownership of the Sprite, her crew and rewrote their destiny.

With a few well placed donations, Omega was able to secure the official (and uncirculated) pronouncement of Sevastopol's elavation to 'Living Saint'. The Sprite's crew would be returned to their ship with Sevastopol as the highest moral (Hey! Stop laughing!) and religious authority aboard, indeed he was given absolute power (within the confines of the ship anyways) and a battalion's worth of penal troops (the Munitorum always has a surplus of these) which was to be led by Sevastopol's long time Inquisitorial teammate, the incredibly corrupt Arbitrator (or is that traitor?) Colonel Gentleman. Declared to be the 'tip of the spear' on a new crusade to liberate the space beyond the Koronus expanse! Saint Sevastopol's new ship the renamed Divinity would be this spear tip, to be followed on by the rest of the crusade fleet.

That was Omega's story anyways... Saint Sevastopol gathered his new minions, and made a glorious speech (he thought so anyway) telling them of the glories that awaited them. However no one aside from Sevastopol himself believed that a crusade was forthcoming, instead seeing the speech as the rambling diatribe of a lunatic, and their forthcoming journey as a death sentence (it is believed that the esteemed colonel Gentleman was too inebriated at the time to care). Asking if any of those present wished to not join him, Saint Sevestopol was pleased to note that not one man moved from his place! Truly his righteousness was proven! He then dismissed all present to prepare for immediate embarkation. Unbeknownst to Boris, the Inquisition did offer an alternative to joining this futile effort. That being a trip out of the nearest airlock. The human psyche being what it is, the chance to live a bit longer, and perhaps to save themselves via a savior pod later on (all of which were secretly welded into the hull & rendered unusable by Omega's order) is better than a miserable death now.

Leaving without any fanfare (Boris as per his usual, was too caught up in his own grandeur to even notice) the Divinity left for the Koronus expanse and was never heard from again...

Not a bad story for a ship that's not much bigger than the peg it sits on eh?

Orks! In! Spaaaaaaaaace!!!

(use the narrator's voice from the Muppet Show's 'Pigs in Spaaaace!' segment)

o/

I'm still kinda in the 'I want to paint, but don't feel like painting' funk. Dunno why, or when it'll end. Its kinda odd really as even when burnt out I've never had any loss in the urge to paint minis.

...shrugs...

Anyways, I decided to drag out my Ork BFG fleet yesterday and paint some ships up. BFG ships are quite easy to paint as they're more or less a case of almost all dry brushing, and Ork ships make it even easier as they really don't need to look 'pretty'. So letting my attention to detail pretty much slack off, I managed to paint the following:

Da Red Orktober! This is one of my Kill Kroozers. Its kinda sad that there is such a limited number of Ork kroozer types. but such is GW's love of its specialist games division. Having an over-abundance of karriers, all of my various kroozers (konvershuns included) are all now counted as just Kill Kroozers.


A Brute Ram ship skwadrun. These have always been little psychological warfare weapons of terror, yet have never really accomplished anything aside from said terror on the table top. However after our last game (whenever that was) I realized that I had misread the LD checks for ramming and that that was the cause of their continued failure (which shall hopefully be corrected in their future).

And lastly a pair of Savage Gunships, which are now equipped with 'Bloo Toof Teknology!' Despite their increased speed over other escort/kroozer types, these two tend to hang back till da fleet gets 'stuck in'. At which point they charge in and (hopefully) cripple something that was more concerned with the looming Kroozers and/or battleship.

At this point, all that my Ork fleet has left to be painted is my Supa Karrier (battleship) Da Orktown, and a terror ship turned kill krooozer named Da Orkinawa.

Ghostship

o/

As you can see I managed to get my Wraithship painted up this weekend. It was a really snug fit on the sails, so I wasn't really able to test fit them beforehand, and as such I think I got the proper position reversed. Then again, after a google search of images, the sail position on these seem to be split in about an even 50/50 in regards as to which sail goes in front of which. With the larger sail in back, it looks as though the sail position can't be moved past the bridge structure. However seeing as how during the age of sail, the mon'keigh were able to vary the shape of their ship's sails (to some extent), I'm sure it would be of little difficulty for the Eldar.

I painted this in the colors of my Exodites and gave it the same name, Spinifex. The Spinifex (now a Ghost Ship) is the last surviving vessel from the fleet that carried the Exodite refugees from the home worlds to their new maiden world home so many millennia ago. The ship's original crew still maintain their ghostly vigil from within their spirit stones. Silently guarding the maiden world for eternity.

A profile view.

More Blue stuff

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As you can see I was able to accomplish my meager goal of washing, dry brushing and touching up Arkos and his fellow Alpha Legionnaires. I rather like them as they now appear to have kindova blued steel look to them. I still have three more that are base coated and once finished with those guys, all I will need to work on is their Rhino. Streaking in the wash layer will still be an issue with that, but I'll deal with that when I come to it.

Also on the blue front, I got an old (1989) Spacefleet sprue off of ebay. I've had one of these Imperial cruisers before ( I believe it was classed as a battleship way back when), however it was missing a bit on the front. Now that I can see what that little bit is, I think it looks better without it. Doesn't matter really as I don't want the Imperial cruiser, I want the Wraithship. The Imperial portion will be clipped off & promptly put back on ebay.

While I've never fielded Eldar in BFG, I've always liked/wanted one of these old Spacefleet Wraithships. It's just a really cool looking mini IMO. While it's debatable as to whether or not I'll ever use it (it may just sit looking pretty on the shelf) I did come up with a 500pt fleet for it. If I use the 'Doom of the Eldar' PDF available here, counting this as (fittingly enough) a Wraithship, add two blisters of shadow hunter escorts (4 per pack) and that comes to 480 pts. I could add aspect warrior crews for +20 pts. (like Eldar want to be involved in a boarding action), or (and most likely) count is as a 'ghost ship'. They only suffer critical hits on a 6+ like a normal ship, but also have the potential to not do anything for a turn if you fail their CMD check. Eldar LD is high however so that shouldn't happen too often, of course that is if it ever reaches the tabletop to begin with...

Da Orktown

o/

Personally, I think the Ork battleships for BFG are...well, vile to look at. So needless to say I refuse to spend $30+ on something that fits that description. Some ways back I bought a Ork battleship kunvershun off of ebay that was really just a mass conglomeration of bitz that really makes for a better looking BS than the GW ones. Wanting to expand the fleet, but with funds directed towards other things right now, buying more kroozers was out. So rummaging through the ol' bitz box, I thought I'd try my hand at building some more myself (especially as the Ork Royul & it's sister ship da' Ork-N-Saw turned out pretty well).

Quickly (if not immediately) exceeding the approximate size of a kroozer, da battleship 'Orktown' came together:
I've decided on the 'Gorbag's Revenge' class which is essentially a 'supa karrier' and is rather fitting considering it's WWII namesake. The Gorbag's revenge also has a variable torpedo launch capacity. Not sure what to use for torpedo launchas, I found a bunch of Ork ammo belts, and mounted them externally (don't ask how they get reloaded). In all some 23 'torpedoes' are scattered about the hull (mainly on the ventral side) as well as 3 launch bays and lots of gunz! Of course an inordinate numba of 'supa engines' are also included!

I'm not sure if it looks all 'good & propa' just yet, or if more junk needs to be added, but it's off to a good start i think.

Just an fyi, next week's Mondayish post may be late as I'm heading out of town for an extended weekend @ Mom's in Florida.

My side projects continue.

o/

I've gotten four more BB players (and a ball marker) painted these past few days. I usually paint them in pairs, one lineman & one of the other position models. This brings me up to eight finished. Enthusiasm seems to be bubbling just under the surface here locally, so I suppose I ought to download & reread the rules again.

In truth this was probably a good time to pick up a team as I'm once again heading towards 40k burnout. I play minimum once a week, often two or three times. Plus, no longer having the vast array of armies that I once had, I cycle through my lists with greater frequency making it easy to get bored with what I've got (and due to the incessant price hikes, its even more difficult to change that). So we're kinda looking at alternative games. The cheaper the better (in contrast to that statement, I do need to get some more Heavy Gear minis).

Blood Bowl I can do (assuming someone has a board, dice, templates, etc.), Necromunda & BFG, good to go, and I recently ordered a handful of Skaven off of ebay to use for a possible Mordheim warband. NO, I'm NOT making a new WHFB army (I've already had to state a few times)! I figure all I'd need is a single regiment box, and I'd have all I need to play. My city fight terrain isn't quite right for Mordheim, but should be close enough.

Speaking of ebay, I finally sold off the remnants of the 110th Ryza IG. The funds from that in turn paid for a cheap guardian squad to use with my FW conversion kit, as well as two extras to make an extra Exodite heavy weapon team. I also got a dirt cheap ($11 with shipping) Scout squad (both squads are still on the sprue). That should bring the Exodites up to about 1200 points, and the Aurora....well I have some ideas for them, but that's for later as those plans are contingent on this week's ebay auctions.

Da Green Skwadrun

o/

I didn't have a whole lotta time to paint this past Sunday. Usually I go to my grandparent's house for the afternoon & dinner. However as it was Mother's day, I was the one doing the cooking rather than Ma. So, knowing there would be little time for painting, I brought along some BFG ships.

Little more than an exercise in dry brushing, and picking out a few details here and there, BFG escorts fit my limited time slot just right. I have three skwadruns, each of a different type and this is the first painted one. These are onslaught attack ships, and with D6 shots @ 30cm they are one of the few skwadruns in the fleet that doesn't try/need to get into point blank range ASAP.

Also on the gaming front, Saturday my Exodites teamed up with some alpha strike Mechdar allies and we took on a Death Star SW army. It was a good game that seemed to be in the our favor, yet the Eldar victory wasn't decided till the bottom of turn 7!

The best games are always those that come down to the wire. ;-)

Oh, the Indignity...

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As an additional point boost to my BFG Ork fleet, I've been using a converted FW transport as the 'Gubernatorial Cruiser' Acheron belonging to the infamous Herman Von Straub (using the GW Rogue Trader rules). Von Straub disappeared in the aftermath of the 2nd. war for Armageddon & returned with his Ork 'allies' in the 3rd war. Thus, our games have been taking place during those intervening years where Von Straub was MIA.

The FW transport is modular, and so adding in an extra section, it was about the size of a Dauntless light cruiser. It also has launch bays for transports & such. With the Ork fleet I initially used it as the standard RT cruiser, but that had too much firepower for the model used. Then I tried it as a Defiant class light carrier for a while, but scratched that as it got confusing with the 'you can shoot these bombers, but not those fighta-bommas'. The Defiant class also has the +1 to defense in boarding actions due to it's narrow ship corridor, in the Achreon's case, Von Straub had so many luxury accommodations installed, that boarders simply couldn't find anything of value to damage.

So, using the Smotherman 2.0 formula (BFG's unofficial VDR found @ Port Maw which sadly, seems to be deceased), I stripped out the launch bays (those on the model itself were for luxury craft only) and kept the same armament making the Acheron a 'Gubernatorial Class' (which was a woefully undergunned light cruiser) from there on out.

After our last game I figured I'd paint & sell it (hard to see detail on a primed black mini). I popped off two of the chopped portions & reassembled it as an escort carrier. I made an escort carrier out of transport leftovers some time ago, and it sold for enough to cover both the transports! However after painting it last night, I decided that I liked it enough to keep.

So dumping Herman down to a mere escort (it does have two 'Xenos' escorts atwell, though they look rather Imperial to me) I thought 'Oh the Indignity', and thus it was named. I've learned in the past that an Escort carrier sucks (as does a Gubernatorial class cruiser for that matter), and using it as such would bring back the fighter confusion again. So, relegating the launch bays to luxury craft once more, I'm currently debating whether to use it as a Defense Monitor or a Q-Ship. Both are normally very situational, but we're pretty lenient in ship classes fielded.

Of course if it continues to epically fail for no gain as the Acheron in all of it's various forms did, it will eventually go the way of ebay.

Running a day late...

o/
Notta whole lot in this post, but as you can see I finished my Hardy Aller, still really liking this model! It looks a lot more like a 'real' tank than the usual GW types. While on the subject of Heavy Gear, I would like to give a shout out to Robert Dubois @ Dream Pod 9. I needed one particular bit to make my Bear into a Mauler Bear, but its only available with either the Grizzly or weapons pack blisters. However I didn't want to spend $20 or so (plus shipping) for one bit. So I sent an inquiry to the DP9 store & he hooked me up with a special order for that one part (totaling $5 with shipping). Very cool!

Also, I know the Orks haven't gotten much coverage on here of late (despite the blog being named after them). Fear not, they're are out there fightin' behind the scenes (most of them anyways). The WHFB O&G army has gone the way of ebay. I wasn't impressed with the plastic Savage Orcs which I was hoping to be 'wowed' by and I couldn't really generate any interest of my own in 8th ed., despite the buffs to horde units. I tried to make myself like the new edition. Really. But to no avail, so off they went.

Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop took to the field (a desert one fittingly) and pasted a CSM army this past weekend. It would have been a good game, except my opponent went for a 'quick cigarette' and disappeared for 30-40 minutes (and couldn't figure out why I was pissed when he finally returned). I should've packed up & left as I was so pissed off, that I didn't care about the game @ that point.

And last night 'WAAAUGH Orkbar' met the 13th fleet of Cadia head on. Things looked to be going the Ork's way early on but, there are only so many point-blank warp/plasma core breaches one can take before the table turns into a sea of blast markers. In da end it wuz a good scrap and we called it a draw. Da crippled battleship Red Orktober & one Onslaught survived on my side, and the almost crippled Emperor class battleship Indomitable survived on the other.

Probably won't play again till next week, and I'm not sure if anymore painting will get done in the next few days. I have friends from out of town coming for a visit this weekend, so I need to clean up the ol' bachelor pad.

This may just be a single post week, will have to see...

DON'T SHOOT DAT YOO FOOLZ!!!!

o/

Running a little late this week due to a game of BFG last night. We fielded carbon copy fleets from our last game of Orks vs. Imperials, and while the net result was the same (Orks were crushed) the route from point A to point B was quite different this time around. True, in both games the Orks epically failed, however we had a hellova good time failing this time around. Lemme explain starting with the BFG version of L.A.'s rush hour traffic:

As you can see, Orks are no better at merging in heavy traffic than the average American driver is.

Now it looks like in this photo 'Dat da boyz 'az dem rights where we wants dem.' That said, my DethDeala Klass battleship Da Orktown (the big reddish monster in the middle) and Da Orkinawa (the silver Terror ship) were crippled at this point. THAT and the Gothic class cruiser named Avenger had just been reduced to a blazing hulk. Now, in such close proximity, no one in their right mind would shoot at a blazing hulk in hopes of getting a warp core breach at such close range, right?

However Orks are never in 'da right mind' (or are they?).

The Ork escort just to the left of Da Ortown jumped n the opportunity, and actually got that warp core breach (1 lance hit for each starting hit point [8 in this case] inflicted on everything within 3D6cm) The ensuing conflagration caused a chain reaction resulting in a warp core breach on Da Orktown (12 lance shots), and Plasma core breaches on Da Orkinawa & Kill kroozer Da Bizmork (plasma core breaches are the same as a warp core breach, you just halve the ship's starting hit points which equaled 5 each in this case).

As you can see, everything that I had in range died, spectacularly! One of the escaping Dominators was crippled, the other beat up but uncrippled and the last Gothic also was crippled.

After a few moments of 'oohs & aahs' by the krews of Da Ork Royul & Ork-N-Saw, they charged into da breach with wild abandon! And in the three remaining turns Da Ork Royul also suffered a plasma core breach, however Da Ork-N-Saw escaped the engagement relatively unscathed. Proving beyond a doubt that indeed, 'Bloo iz a lucky color!'

On the painting front, I made a bit of progress on the rhino. Not too much, just the doors & combi-bolter & hatch.

This tank is taking far longer than I had anticipated, but it's looking good so far i think.

Monday Morning Update.

o/

Not a whole lot is new since my screaming FW rant.

Murl came over Thursday evening for a game of BFG. He'd never faced the Orks before and made the mistake of closing with them quickly. Once you're within 15cm (eavy gunz' range) the Ork fleet is in its element and in short order, three Chaos Murder class cruisers fled the field leaving the shattered remains of their fleet behind them.

Friday evening Screech came over to to pick up that infernal Medusa (as I wouldn't be @ the FLGS this past weekend). He seemed pleased with the model. He mentioned getting another one, to which I informed him that he'd be on his own. He had also brought his Imperial BFG fleet, and the Orks went to battle once more. I would like to say that they weren't yet fully recovered from the previous evening's engagement. However, I think it was an EPIC failure to brace for impact, despite a reroll on my Deth-Deala class battleship (Da' Orktown) when it was caught between 2 locked on Dominators on one side, and a locked on battlecruiser (the class escapes me) on the other. With da' Orktown badly crippled in one turn, my Orks never really recovered and were eventually tabled.

Ah well that was the first defeat for my Ork fleet, was bound to happen.

On the painting front I painted my shoota boyz Nob.

They say the camera adds 10lbs, or for minis, 10 mistakes. So after this was taken, several touch ups were made. Anyways, this is actually the one-off Flash Git mini that GW has made. Personally I would think a flash git's equipment would be 'flashier' but it works well enough for a nob.

...and so it begins...

With the universal approval of the Marines Malevolent, I picked up a Scout squad and started painting some test minis. I was going to start off with a shotgun squad (I always liked shotguns as in the old codex they were more effective when the scouts beat you with them rather than when actually firing the weapon) BUT, one broke as I was cutting it from the sprue. Not wanting a mixed weapons squad, I instead opted for Bolt Pistols & close combat weapons.



As you can see I haven't gotten too far. I usually finish a mini off with some dry brushing for added depth & to dirty them up a bit, so that they look like they're on campaign. I forgot to get some decal paper at my FLGS this past weekend, so the dry brushing will have to wait. The Sgt. will be the one with the chainsword, and the guy with the servo skull will be designated as an aspirant for the Adeptus Mechanicus/Techmarine. Not sure how to paint his armor, all red or maybe just a red shoulder pad, red arms with black torso? I'll figure it out at some point. I have several servo skulls, so will have a few sprinkled throughout the army (maybe one or two in blue armor as Librarium aspirants too).

Actually this weekend was more about Orks. Admuarrals Orkbar & Ballsey led their little fleet of Ork ships to victory in their first game of BFG. I learned a few things during the game: (1) eavy gunz sound questionable on paper, but are devastating once in range, (2) Brute Ram ships are all about psychological warfare. They scared the hell of my opponent but didn't do any more than inflict 2 points of damage via ramming. The implied threat they carry are worth it though, (3) Fighta Bommas while a nice concept, aren't necessary to table the opponent (once the eavy gunz are in range) which was good as I only managed one 'reload ordinance' order due to consistently rolling 'box cars' for leadership, (4) one warp core or plasma breach in a game when the fleets are close together is bad. Whereas FIVE are REALLY bad! (virtually all of my escorts died from these).

I also got a hellova deal on a box of Killa Kans. It had a $10 off sticker on it, GW stuff was 10% off, and I had a $5 off (on a purchase of $25 or more) coupon, the $5 & $10 off don't stack, but I needed primer which as a result I basically got for free. How could I resist? Yeah I need more Orks like I need a whole in the head (and eavy support no less, I already have like 6 eavy choices!), but GW stuff on sale is kinda like spotting a unicorn.

A little BFG this week.

Hello, I haven't done a whole lot hobby-wise this week. I've been outside a bit more with the slowly improving weather (March is more or less a free-for-all weather wise). I also went to my Sister's for the weekend. My folks were in town for a brief visit. So was a good weekend.

Okay, minis...

I've been reorganizing my Battlefleet Gothic fleets. A buddy & I play about once a month on average, but we both have Imperial fleets, so its been a bit repetitive. So I've decided to try out the Orks. I'm now up to two of my scratch built 'Ork-N-Saw' Klass (the name is a play on the name of the state of Arkansas)light cruisers, however I need to bigger Kroozers as well as some escorts. So, with money tight as ever I've put the majority of my Imperial fleet on ebay. As they collectively stand, my auctions are @ $56 with four days & a hoard of watchers to go. So hopefully that'll give me a good start for Da' Boyz.

I did keep a paired down Rogue Trader fleet though, roughly 850 points or so. I've always liked the fluff of Rogue Traders, however the official GW RT rules 'Fabric of the Imperium' aren't too exciting. So instead i use the Warp Rift (issue 17) Rogue Trader rules. They allow for a lot more flexibility. However, there are quite a few typos and I really recommend double checking the point values via the Smotherman 2.0 formula available on the Port Maw website. Its about as close to an official BFG VDR as you can get. Its not technically official, but I've been using it for quite a while.

With the sale of all of my carriers, I reequipped my RT 'Trade Galleon' as a carrier. I had to repaint it but that's of no concern as i never much cared for its previous paint job. here it is so far, still a work in progress.



I've dubbed it the Merisicord, after a Rogue Trader like ship with a truly bizarre interior & culture(s) in the 2nd Sandy Mitchell Inquisition novel Innocence Prove Nothing.

We've also been looking into trying out Heavy Gear Blitz. I'm leaning towards a Port Arthur Korps (P.A.K.) starter box which also includes the rulebook. Dunno yet though, will see.

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.