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

Chaos Space Marine Hellbrute & Champion

Rawr.

This was one of my favorite paint jobs, even though looking at it you can tell it's not complete.  I picked up a Dark Vengeance set when it first came out thinking I'd like to paint some Chaos stuff, and was initially excited at the prospect of making an Imperial "Chaos" Army using the new cultists models.  However, it soon turned out that cultists were not anywhere near what I imagined them to look like.  I painted a few of the Chaos models, but eventually gave up working on them.

I've since given this army to a good friend of mine who has purchased quite a few chaos models in hopes he can put them to better use.  It's nice to still have these pictures to reference once in a while.

-Cj

Space Marines to the rescue!

So the new space marine codex came out two weeks ago.  I haven't purchased it yet, having made a promise to someone special that I wouldn't, but figured since it has arrived it's time to finish up some tactical marine models that are lying around.  These 4 are a part of 6 that will be my razorback squad.  The razorback is a transport that can carry up to 6 models that are normal sized, larger ones being denoted bulky and very bulky.  It has a turret on top of it giving it limited offensive capabilities and it's main purpose is really to soak up some incoming fire so the troops can move forward.

Up until this point, I've just pulled some of the Ultramarines painted back in my starting days and thrown them into the battle force.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist and it's always bugged me that these blue guys were riding around with the rest of my red forces.  Additionally, Dave decided he wanted to try out kill team, and from what we've read the tournaments for kill team require your models to be fully painted and based (it's only 200 pts of models, about 10 tac marines and a few heavy weapons).  The rules also said they needed to be What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).  If you look closely, each model has grenades and a pistol on them to represent the basic wargear options.

This painting experience was a bit different due to a supplement GW has just put out for free that covers base painting techniques for space marine tactical marines.  Using those techniques and suggestions on various parts of these models has really increased the quality of the paint job.  his guide also gave me some great ideas on how to paint various parts of the miniature.

Now one small statement here - obviously I am in no way shape or form employed or affiliated with GW.  I make this shout out however because that manual gave me some really good tips and suggestions, and it's free, so why not go pick it up and see there's anything helps you?

The model's base was done using some painting techniques from the book with a twist.  In the book, they use Armageddon dust on the vehicle for dirt kicked up on the side, and dry brush tyrant skull on top.  I used that same pattern on the bases and then washed with Agrax earthshade to make the top parts of the bases match the brown used on the ring.  Lastly, some hobby grass and flock was used to spice up the bases and make them a bit more colorful.

The other two models are complete except the Sergent.  For that model, I plan on using some transfer pens to apply the faction symbol to his shoulder pad.  If it turns out good, I'll post some pics later.

-Cj

Gauntly Appearance

Last time I wrote I talked about how I had worked on some Termagaunts.  I want to go over now how I decided to paint the skin.  We will only cover this process, but eventually I'll cover the armor chitin, weapon, and base.

1. To start off with, I applied a white base coat done with GW's  spray paint.  It's fairly expensive and there are cheaper options out there, but I've never persued them.  If anyone has some suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.  For now, I'll probably stick with the GW product for consistancy but am always open to suggestions.

2. Next up I took some Vallejo Medium and mixed in Citadel's Ungor Flesh in a 1:1 ratio.  The goal is to get the paint thin so the lower layers shine through better, while still retaining the ability to leave the paints mark on the upper layers of the model.  Previously I had just applied the paint straight out of the bottle, but this never seemed to give me an even coat.  Thinning out the paint seemed to leave a nice layer over everything.  Don't get me wrong, it did puddle in the crevices, but that works to our benefit later on. 

I didn't use GW's thinning medium here because I like how Vallejo's medium comes in a drip bottle instead.  Not having to guesstimate with a brush on how much medium is needed and instead being able to measure the amount of medium dropped instead has made the mixing process very easy.

3. Again getting a good mix, we apply a lyaer of Fire Dragon Bright.  The mix is again a 1:1, and I'm only doing a single layer.  I've seen it recommended that you do more for thicker, stronger colors, but I choose the 1-layer option because I want the coloring on the under layers to show through better.

4. Then you apply a layer of Troll Slayer Orange to the model to give it coloring that really pops.  You'll notice in the picture that you can still see some of the under layers, but the effect is subtle enough that the majority of the effect is lost on my phones camera.  I promise that the real model shows these layers a lot better than this picture.

5. Finally I applied a layer of Reikland Fleshshade shade to the model.  This fills in some of the holes in the model, making the recesses look darker.  I also liked how it seemed the lower layers shined through a lot better with the contrast from the darker wash.

Tonight I painted 3 more Termagaunts, and from beginning to end of painting the skin it probably took about 10 minutes per model, if that.  I've been really pleased with this coloring scheme since it's so different from the metal paneling of the Space Marines, Necrons, and Tau I'm used to.

I'll write another blog soon about how I decided to do the shell.  I like the purple layering, but decided to go with the green instead and have been quite pleased with the results.  Later on we will cover how I approached the gun these guys hold, since I really haven't quite figured that out yet.

-Cj

Gaunts and you!

So I went shopping again on ebay and picked up a Tyranid codex for pretty cheap about 2 weeks ago.  After having painted that Zoanthrope, the painting itch hit so I picked up a Hive Guard and gave painting Tyranids another try.  It was quickly brought to my attention that testing paint schemes on expensive models was not a good idea, as you'll see below.  I'd recommend that anyone wanting to try new paints styles on different armies pick up the cheap $8 - $10 box of troops for their respective group.

I used a brown base under the orange on the Hive Guard instead of the fleshy base I used with the Zoanthrope, thinking that the brown base would shade the upper layers of paint in a positive way.

Bleh.  I mean the red isn't that bad looking, but it was shaded way too much in the brown direction that I just ended up highlighting it in red to see what it looked like. I think a chemical bath in LA's Totally Awesome cleaner is in order.  If you haven't heard about it, you can buy LA's at most any dollar store and it will strip acrylic paint off of models with the best of them.  I had to use it on the Zoanthrope because of a mess up with the clear coat, and the resin was not impacted at all while the removal of paint was almost totally complete.

So now what?  I want to paint beautiful nids, but can't afford to keep messing up on fancy resin models!  Short tirade on pricing: Games-Workshop prices their models according to their value on the field, and not their value in plastic/material/molding costs.  A Riptide, at $85, has just as much plastic in it as some of the $55 models, but since it's the big go-to unit for Tau, it's price is dramatically higher.  I'm sure this is already known by others, but it bugs (pun intended) the heck out of me.

Anyways, back to my original suggestion: look into smaller troop boxes and experiment from there.  This then is the result of those actions:

I'll get into specifics in another blog post on how I got the color shading on the skin, but suffice it to say I really enjoyed the method and I am very pleased with the results.  The picture truly doesn't give it justice, but it'll have to do for now. I have some other armor colors to try, as well the base they stand on needs some big attention, but if I could get the purple color at the right shade on the armor scales I should be set and ready to go.

-Cj