What a Year

I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted on here.  Life's been really crazy this year.  Early on in the year, we found out we were expecting and I spent the first 3 months of 2014 wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into.  Eventually my panic and depression gave way to optimism and hope, and in two months our baby girl is expected to arrive!

I've thought a lot about how this is going to affect our lives.  The first year of my daughters life is going to be filled with me attending school and missing out on a lot of important events.  It saddens me to think that I will miss her first word, her first step, and a multitude of other firsts.  But there is a trade off there, one that I can't avoid.  Either I put the time into school, to get a better life for our family, or stay for those moments.  But I can't help but feel some level of sadness at the thought that I will not be very involved for a while.

Thoughts from there start turning to the lack of time for hobbies, gaming, and everything else I like to do.  Those actives are distractions in our lives, sure, but they are still a part of who I am.  I have several projects however that I can maintain for the time being, things to keep me distracted.  Even in the midst of a busy schedule, you still find time to painting and game.  One of my cooler purchases this past year was an Elgato Game Capture HD device that I am intent on using to produce videos and content from new and old video games.  I'll link to those Youtube videos once I get a good collection up.

I'll leave you with this painting of a Space Marine Captain, one of the limited edition releases for now.  The few white spots on his armor have been touched up since this photograph was taken, and he has now become my official showpiece.  Besides, this is my hobby blog after all, 

-Cj

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years everyone!

Jessica and I got talking about the blog last night on our way to a party, and I realized it had been a while since I had blogged.  I got to thinking and figured this would be a good opportunity to write about some of the games and what not I had played this last year, and some thoughts on them.  Because I don't have much time now, I think I'll start off with X-Com and try to use time throughout the next few days to write several blog posts

X-Com: Enemy Unknown

So this game hands down ended up taking the most of my gaming time this year.  I've clocked about 100 hours into it, which may seem like a lot of time, but when you factor in the 5 college classes, getting married, and working full time, it seems like even more.  Yikes!

What drew me into this game was the science fiction setting of aliens attacking earth.  Events start out at about the time we are in now and take place over the course of the next few months to few years.  Each month you gain money from countries that you offer protection from abductions.  You provide early warning assists in the form of satellites, each one guarding a particular country.  Get enough satellites over a region and you gain some sort of bonus including quicker interrogations of captured aliens and cheaper upgrades.  You use the income resources to purchase equipment for your soldiers and expansions to your base.

Research takes place after you defeat your first aliens and includes researching different devices, like strange alloys and power sources.  Biological research leads to interrogations of alien subjects, which give bonus' of their own, usually a decreased research time on different weapon, armor, and other research paths.  Research speed is dictated by the number of researchers you have working for you, which you can gain more of through completion of mission assignments and from countries you protect.

Missions are fun and tactical, involving a turn based system where you issue squad orders, and then the aliens get to issue their own.  This can lead to some really bad situations, for instance if the random map generator decides to place tons of enemy's right where your troops spawn, your in for a really bad time.  This leads to two complaints of mine, the first being that the spawn system is a bit bugged, and secondly that the random number generator is in fact not random at all.  I should take that back, it is semi random, but it's a seed generator that weighs each action you take in planning out the next action of the AI.  So, if you save your game and then shoot at an alien, you will always get the same result if you decide to reload the game and shoot at him again.  If you reload the game, then have a soldier move, you will get a new seed and thus a different outcome on your shooting.  This can lead as well to some interesting situations, like if you reload a turn before and complete your actions in the exact same pattern, then the aliens on their turn will move the same and shoot the exact same.

However, aside from the bugs, I really did enjoy the game.  The tactical nature of the turn-based combat system really makes this game shine.  The nature of character deaths as well adds a unique spin on the genre.  If you loose a squad member during a firefight, they are gone for good.  Survive, and they gain experience levels unlocking new power ups and abilities.  This ends up giving you quite a the incentive to have your soldiers survive, and makes it personal when they die.

Every now and then you'll find X-Com on Steam for under $10, like at the time of this writing.  If your looking for a great tactical shooter, I'd recommend picking this one up ASAP!

-Cj

Progress

Just thought I'd take a picture and share the status of this project.  I need to spend some time on it and fill in some of the white areas, but honestly I'm really proud of the progress on this model. 

I'm really proud of how the bases are coming out.  The base was done in the same style I've talked about before.  A layer of Armageddon dust, dry-brushed with Ubshanti (I'm sure it's spelled wrong) bone, and washed with Agrax Earthshade.  The outside is layered with a light brown, which blends the whole concoction together.  Some static grass later and you end up with a really pretty base.

I've got another type of grass I need to add to it, but at this point after I've polished up some of the smaller details on this model I'm going to add the head, left arm, and backpack.  I'm still hunting for an appropriate mace for this character, but have my eye on something that looks really good.

-Cj

Recent Projects

Been pretty busy lately, but I thought I'd throw up a pic of a current project for you to enjoy.  I played a few games of Zone Moratlis a few weeks ago, and during that time the guy I played with showed me the Forgeworld stats for a named space marine character from the Exorcists.  I decided that such a model deserved a place in my army, and as such purchased a Lord Executioner sans head to model him with.

I'm really happy so far with the results.  The blue on the ropes helps out a ton, and the grey on top of black that I used for the buckles turned out a lot prettier than I was expecting.

-Cj

A tournament!

So I entered a tournament!

Mind Games held a 1000pts tournament today.  My wife was going to a football game (we are a messed up couple) so I decided to skip out and go play Warhammer 40k!  It also helped that she doesn't have a ticket for me, but we won't get into that.  For this tournament, I took 1000pts of Tau.  The list comprised of:

1. Tau Commander: Fusion blaster, missile pod, shield generator, iridium armor, stimulant injector.

2. Riptide:  Ion blaster, smart missile system, stimulant injector, velocity tracker.

3. Riptide: Heavy burst cannon, fusion blaster, advanced targeting system, stimulant injector.

4. Fire warrior team w/Devilfish. (6)

5. Fire warrior team. (6)

6. Pathfinder team w/2 ion rifles. (9)

My theory with the game was first, big guns = dead models, and taking two riptides seemed like the best choice.  The heavy weapons gave me some flexibility in taking out targets, and the heavy burst cannon plus pathfinder teams meant I could do some serious damage.

Game 1: Vs. Space Wolfs

Okay, repeat after me.  DO NOT WALK SPACE MARINES ACROSS THE BOARD!  That's a little harsh, but the way this game worked is he had 3 tactical squads footslogging across the board along with a dreadnought and speeder.  I felt bad when I looked at the list, but what can you do?  Game 1 came down to the first turn when I wiped one squad of tactical marines with his psycher off the table.  This particular guy had a lance that removed a model on a failed initiative roll as well as a shoot-anywhere-beam-of-death weapon.  Having two riptides, I knew that with my low initiative values I would be loosing a guy a turn so the psycher became first target.  I passed the turn having killed off the psycher and the rest of the group whom were standing out in the open (missing in above picture, they were just to the right of that tactical squad in the middle).  From there it became an academic game of wipe a unit a turn until there was only his speeder left.

Total: 1-0, 9 pts earned.

In all honesty, this was a rough match up for this guy, and he ended up not winning any games.

Game 2: Vs. Eldar

Wrathknights are tough.  The above picture is the state of the board upon game ending.  Simply put, this game was based around killing off his troops, toughness 6 models with 4++ saves and ignoring the walkers.  Even that ended up being a pain, and by the end I had only killed 8 of the buggers.  8!  Meanwhile his wraith knights had a field day with my riptides and troops, and in the end I lost this one 2-1 in-game points.  He got first blood, and I was broken (a game rule the store uses).  I had broken him (under the pt values we were using).  In retrospect, I was unbroken, and so was he, so it should have only been 1-0 his favor.

1-1, 1 pt earned.

If I could change how I played, I would have changed one move where I dumped my firewarriors close to his troops, and instead would have pushed them back towards an objective for the tie.  This guy ended up in 4th place, earning $25 for how nice his models looked.  And they looked really good!

Game 3: Vs. Tau

Alright!  I figured I had an easy win here since most of his army was kroot and firewarriors and old broadsides.  Here's what the board looked like at the start:

I was set to run my riptides up the ally's between the center building and the two on my flank.  Guess again, I suppose, since he seized the initiative!  Player turn one ended up with him blasting my left riptide with 20 sniper rounds and every other heavy weapon he had.  It had one wound left when an failed overcharge, failed armor save, and failed feel no pain gave him the first blood point.  From there it ended up turning into a slug fest, with smart missiles killing kroot from the devil fish and the riptide slowly advancing forward under constant sniper and railshot rounds.  His army kept on the riptide, eventually bringing it down in a hail of 12 S6 ap2 plasma shots, more than enough to finish off the tide with ease.  My commander deep struck behind enemy lines, but that didn't end up mattering much because he really wasn't able to down anything important back there except distract all the heavy weapons.  By the end of the game, both warlords were alive but he outscored me 7-4

1-2, 4 pts earned.

Him seizing the initiative totally cost me the game.  Otherwise I could have boosted my shields up to 3++ on both tides and walked forward in a path of destruction, preventing myself from taking the game killing wounds.  Absolutely nothing you can do to change the result of this one however, so there will be no loosing sleep over it.

So thus having earned a total of 14 pts, I found myself in 5th place.  1st through 3rd ended up in the money, and 4th won best painted.  Placing 5th out of 9 players made me feel pretty good, and I hope to get the chance to play in some more tournaments in the future!

-Cj

Marrige

Well I got married.  Isn't she adorable???  It's been a long month, and we are still not finished getting things straightened out, but it's also been an amazing time.  As such, I've had NO time to do any meaningful painting or writing.  I hope to have a blog post up on another painting project soon.

-Cj

Painting Tau

Since I haven't had computer access at home for a while, I've been doing a lot of painting.  I don't have any step by step pictures, but I figured it would be good to update the blog with the progress of this little pretty!  I picked him up a short time after the Tau update to 6th edition but haven't spent much time painting tau up until recently.  The yellow paint scheme came about from watching GW's main website where a person had posted some yellow Imperial Fists.  He used Averland Sunset base with a Seraphim Sepia wash, followed by another coat of Averland Sunset to pull it back to yellow.I loved the results so much that I had to try it on my Tau.

The whole model is base coated with Rhinox Hide, and I decided to trim the  yellow with Flash Gitz Yellow.  The blue itself was a discovery that came much later.  While working on my first riptide (seen in the background of the top image), I tried to find a good color that would stand out with the yellow.  Prior to this, I had used white and red on my Firewarriors, and decided to try the blue with the riptide.  I loved the results so much that I'm starting to convert all my yellow Tau stuff to have the Altorf Guard Blue stripes.

You start by laying down a layer of Celestra Grey.  Then, apply a few layers of Altorf Guard Blue.  The layer paint that makes up this particular shade of blue tends to not apply evenly, so you will have to lay a few layers down.  For this particular one, I tried both laying two layers of normal paint as well as a few thinned layers.  Both techniques will work just fine, so it's really a matter of preference.  The blue itself is then trimmed with Lothern Blue.

The metal parts are a fairly easy paint job.  Leadbelcher was applied to all the spots where I wanted the metal to be painted, and then I used Nulin Oil in order to shade the Leadbelcher darker as well as deepen the shadows of the crevices.  Finally, Runefang Steel was used on the servos and edges of the metal.

I hope you like the model.  I still need to finish the burst cannon and base it, so I'll post pictures of that when it's done.  I'm planning on using a spare crisis suit and a Firewarrior to finish off the base.  No spoilers, but I think it'll turn out fairly spectacular!

-Cj