The State of my 30k: Emperor's Children

lol, I guess this is slightly off topic for the first of my 'State of my 40k' series.

Current Disposition:

My apologies for the crummy photos.

Yes folks, I actually painted a pair of Space Marines this week! It is the first time in months in which marines of any sort have landed in my painting lineup! Sadly (as you can see) I don't have the FW recon marines, but lowly scouts…albeit with minor conversions done to them. Recon Marines are fully fledged marines and not in-fact 'lowly scouts' however they can switch to 'scout armor' which reduces their save to a 4+ in exchange for outflank.

The Night Lords Vigilator I had intended to pair with this unit originally is going to go into the Simple Green for a repaint (again!?!). Not sure what I'll do with him to be honest though. An infiltrating, Warlord with a 4+/5++ sounds great on paper, but a few test games with him resulted in all but giving my opponent the Warlord VP! Hell, the fucker never lived beyond turn 2! So needless to say, I intend to have someone else serve as my Warlord. I also wanted a more 'generic' army than the Night Lords list (true, that's optional, but the only Legion to wear the Aquila was the EC, not the NL. If anything my force may end up being a mix of beleaguered loyalists rather than just the Emperor's Children.

Ya see, unlike the usual 'pretty boy' appearance of the Emperor's Children, mine are (as is so typical of me) dirty and grimy with battle-damaged armor. These guys are loyalist (and thus short-lived) survivors of the Istvaan III betrayal. Forewarned of the impending virus bombing by Captain Saul Tarvitz, this squad took shelter in an abandoned drop pod after resealing the hatches. Luckily the pod was undamaged (ensuring a proper hermetic seal) as the Life Eater virus would have otherwise resulted in 100% casualties for the squad. Following that, they weathered the subsequent firestorm in the pod as well. Such an inferno was more or less 'just another day' in the life of a drop pod, and so was a safe place to continue to hold tight. Suffering psychologically from the outrage of betrayal, these marines fought to the last against their former brethren…and they certainly look the part!

In addition to this squad, I have an unpainted/assembled Techmarine with conversion-beamer, and his retinue of servo-automata (servitors with bolters and chainswords), and my old 1st. generation Predator, the aforementioned Vigilator and…well, that's it.

Future Recruitment:

God I wish! Currently even the Chinese knock-offs are financially out of my reach. Though going that route, It looks like about $130 would bring my force up to about 1K in points. For the time being, I'll have to content myself with painting what models I have. Of course given that I only ever manage to paint 3-4 models for any one project at a given time (at most), that ought to keep me content for quite awhile. If someone wants to play 30k, then I can (hopefully) borrow from Bob if needs be, as he has a sizable Emperor's Children force (or at least he does compared to me).

The Ebay Threat:

Zilch. If anything, ebay will be my answer to someday financing more 30k Emperor's Children, rather than finding themselves on it!

I don't know...fly casual.

o/

Thursday evening, Wolfy and I made a trip out to the FLGS for a game of X-Wing vs. I.R./Voril and Kushial. Originally it was supposed to be a 3v3 game, but getting 4 out of 6 original players is about right for  the stereotypically unreliable gamer crowd. I asked if I could borrow I.R./Voril's Lambda shuttle so I could give it a try. He's never been fond of it, but Wolfy really wants one, or rather wanted one...as much to our surprise, I.R./Voril gave it to her! Holy crap!?!? Really?

Yes really. So awesome!

X-Wing is really just bumper cars with guns...

As such, it was put to immediate use in our game, and Wolfy and I, fielding the Empire and won the game (eventually...200 point games can run rather long)! In a following 100 point game, I.R./Voril and Kushial won, though it was fairly close as their 2 ships had 2 hull points left between them, making it a rather close game and a good night of fun!

I lied...

...instead of my regularly scheduled programming, this post is non-hobby related. We carved pumpkins last night, and afterwards I was too wiped out to bother with taking photos of minis and whatnot. So instead you can just see the end result of our evening's endeavors:

The initial lighting on the kitchen table.

Here they are, all lit up on our front porch!

Happy Halloween everybody!

Well THAT was anti-climatic...or was it?

o/

Those poor Orks. Even when one is offered for free, there's still hardly anyone who wants them. That or few people read thru to the end of my prior post (the most-likely case). Nonetheless, thank you for the congratulatory remarks, and of the three who left one, Greg Hess (a.k.a.: Greggles) won my drawing for Masta Blasta. I've already emailed you Greg on your google page, and await your mailing info.

Whilst the lack of comments would seem like something of a poor showing for my 500th post, that really isn't the case. Indeed, as you can see below, last Thursday's post is already my 2nd highest in terms of page hits over the life of the blog!

Wow!!!

A such, I'm quite pleased with that. Anyways, I can assure you that this coming Thursday I'll go back to my regular scheduled programming.

My 500th blog post!!!!

Damn!

Most people I know personally will (all to frequently) say that I don't know when to shut up. Looking for new audiences, I turned to teh interwebz and by the 500th post, you'd think I'd be hard-pressed to find something to ramble on about...right?

Nope.

I have no intentions of stopping my incessant bitching, whining, ranting, posting half-assed battle reports, showcasing whatever it is that I'm currently working on, and of course my incessant gramatical errors. In the beginning...(all the way back to Janurary 2010, wow!) Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop was almost exclusively a 40k related blog. Since then...this blog has gone in all manner of gaming directions, and 40k is kinda a rarity these days. Oh well, nothing stays the same right?

Right.

In an attempt to inject a bit more 40k back into Da Groop, I plan on having a forthcoming (and most likely intermittent) series called: The state of my 40k. In these posts I'll detail what state (in most cases sad) my armies are currently in, my future plans on expansion of them (if any) and what the potential threat is for them popping up on ebay (which is nothing new for me, as any of my long-time readers will already know).

Speaking of my readers...check this out:

Holy shit Batman!!!

Ya know when I started this blog, I also pondered buying one of these to go with it...lol. Luckily in my case, that shirt isn't accurate. My 'test blog' perhaps, but not this one, and I thank all of my readers for that! Honestly, thank you! Without you, I might not have become a narcissist.

Now my minions-ermm, uh fellow gamers (?), read on...

Yes, now if you've read this far into my glorious  ego-stroking-extravaganza, then there is a (potential) reward for you...if ya want it of course.

It is well known that my general impression of the new Ork codex is much like my thoughts on 7th ed 40k. Basically, they both suck! As such my Ork Army has (State of my 40k SPOILER ALERT!) suffered heavily in its war with the great devourer itself. Yes, I'm talking about ebay. That said, I still have more HQ choices than I'll ever need. As such, since this is my 500th post, I figured I'd give away a member of Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop to you! (sorry, right now we're too poor to offer ya something new)

Thus I offer up to you: Masta Blasta!

Suck it Spess Puppy players!

He's metal, not that FAILshit! Lacking any other meg-nobs, he's served as a Big Mek in my armies for years, racking up many victories in the process! He also comes with his trusty (but not pictured) Fenrisian Attack Squig!  He's wearing SW colors not out of respect (no self respektin' Ork haz dat for da beakies!) but out of pure mockery!

The usual method for this sort of thing (Read: I stole the idea from other blogs) is to just leave me a comment on this post by say...7pm EST on Sunday, and then I'll put all of the names in a hat, pick one out, and announce the winner in my next post (jeez, talk about milking this shit out...), and I'll ship it out after getting their mailing info (and yes I'll ship internationally).

So, here's to 500 more...

A brief crash course in Infinity

o/

Our buddy Hoss offered and having accepted, he gave Wolfy and I crash course in Corvus Belli's Infinity this past Saturday. Wolfy played the Nomads after Hoss described them as Space Gypsies (or as I called them 'Spipsies'), and I used the PanOceania. The Pan'O are something of an evil empire in the game's universe...I think. No idea on points, no mission other than kill each other, and unfortunately, real life reared its ugly head and cut our game short (at about the two thirds point). So we weren't even able to get a full game in.

A clear illustration of my lack of rules comprehension...

Poor Hoss, he kept apologizing for not explaining things well/clearly. In response I kept telling him that I suck at learning rules, and was trying to dragoon Rob and Screech to figure it out for me (my usual method of learning new stuff...). On that front, my efforts have thus far come to naught.

Look at them buns of steel! Or uh...pewter. lol, yet another ridiculously posed 'Look! She's sexy and has a BIG gun!' type of mini that so often infects the gaming industry.

I thought the unconscious tokens were amusing till my troops started collecting them. :-/

My Lieutenant, and ORC Trooper who was green as is good'n propa!

As stated (and pictured) above, I suck at new rules comprehension. The 'you need to roll under this, but she rolled that so you need to roll above that number' was really hard to wrap our heads around. I'm sure that will still take us some time to figure out.

Corvus Belli's free, online Army builder is a nice touch (still feels odd considering GW's 'WHAT!?!?! GIVE THEM SOMETHING FOR FREE???' mentality). That said I still find it kinda confusing to use.

This was a poor time for distraction, as my Fusilier opened the door, spotted an enemy Commando and...

...she took a hit and was knocked unconscious. Luckily, my Sniper (the buns of pewter chick above) killed the commando! Our game ended at this point though leaving the engagement as something of a draw.

Shrugs...oh well, seems like it has potential and we have plenty of time to figure it all out.

Grymn Flyer WIP part 2

o/

With all of our X-Wing minis painted and in no position to buy anymore right now, I decided to do a bit of work on my infinite backlog of projects. About halfway thru yet another Grymn mini, I had the typical 'SQUIRREL!' moment and switched to my Grymn flyer's base instead.

Yeah, I kinda like it!

I purchased a bag of these tiny little bricks from Secret Weapon Miniatures some ways back, and decided to try my hand at brick laying. I didn't want the (also SWM) force field generator sitting in the sand. Besides, I'm going to need some stairs for my vertically challenged Grymn to actually reach the buttons/monitors, lol.

Looks like I need to tidy up the displays on those monitors.

They're a bit fiddly to work with, but I got the hang of it. Luckily, I wanted it to look old, so the crooked lines are more a case of: 'working as intended' rather than 'fuck! I suck at this!' (though I'm sure a few of you will insist its the other way around...). The Red sand of the Grymn's bases will go into the nooks, crannies and around the edges to tie it all in with the rest of the army. I also need to rust up the generator like I did to my Grymn's antique heavy bolter.

All in good time though, for now I think it's coming along nicely!