Been real busy lately. So here's a brief update on my projects.

Painting the Angels: Ahah! so there I was reveling in the joy of bieng near completion of my angels. The only thing left was to do the fine detailing and then I noticed it. The black primer was still showing through the red. Disgusted threw down my paint brushes and didn't touch them for a week. The next week I re-approached the situation and sat down and did some research on stripping paint. I looked at all the methods simple green, brake fluid, oven cleaner. Eventually I stumbled into www.miniwargaming.com and came across a video about super cleaner. Turns out you can buy this stuff by the gallon at Wal-marts automotive department. The video claimed that it would strip the paint but leave the detail, so I tried that and two other methods out. The super clean worked! It stripped the paint all the way down to the model but didn't damage the model at all. This crap really is the boss. So I took all 30 of my crappy primed blood angels and gave them a flesh bath.

Space Wolves Review: Well as you know I have the first part up. I should be posting the second part this weekend or just after Halloween. For each of the In-depths I am running just some short scenario's trying different builds, just to test out my opinion's overall I think this first review will probably take me the longest mostly because I am so out of touch with blogging on a regular occasion. I plan to do a short tactica series in between the Space Wolves Review and the Tyranid Codex release so go ahead an stay tuned for that.

Warlord and Reaper Mini's: A good friend of mine is trying to become a demo rep for reaper minitures and wants to start doing some video's. As I have been toying with the same idea of starting a video blog for some time so I am thinking about getting a camera and just doing it. However I have absolutely no idea what to shop for camcorder wise so if anyone has any suggestions that would be great.

Legend of the Five Rings: After much deliberation and more than a month of not even touching my cards I was invited by a couple of my friends to on the semi-local tournaments that goes on every Sunday. it took me a day or two but eventually I came around agreed and threw together a slightly different version of my hero/deathseeker build. This normally relies on nagataka or a similar expendable personality to be on the board and then by using duty,deflect, strength of the bamboo and other similar negation or redirection cards to my useless character's. At the same time I use heavy handed amounts of pk to force attrition of the opponents "key" units. Great idea right? Well not apparently... I ended up taking 10th out of eleven people and that was because I received a bi on the 3rd round.

1st round (Phoenix Military): Funny enough this was against my friend. I drew into 3 holdings the entire game but managed to hold my ground . He eventually wore me down though through production.

2nd round (Spider Oni/breeder): Just completely creamed my on turn 5 I walked into his entire army and basically gave him the game. I have no idea where my brain was. Basicly just plowed into me and took me two turns later.

3rd round: I recieved a bi. At this point I think it was good, I was really pissed at myself and another loss would have seriously wrecked my mood.

4th round (Unicorn Military) Good game, my opponent was real cool. We just played and had fun. Came down to an attack on him I lost have about 7 or so actions but the battle was close. The recovery after that wasn't enough though as he had taken two provinces early in game.

Well thats pretty much it I will post my current decklist up I am going to tourney this sunday again, I hope to do better than last week.

Space Wolves Codex Review Part 1: Basic Army Options and Rules

There were many feelings that usually come with a new codex release. Joy...Rage...Terror. Usually each of these is felt by most of us in the warhammer 40k community. Many of these feelings were felt by myself upon hearing about the release of the space wolves codex. This reactions are very common in any game when new content is released, summarily hyped up and then launched in such a big fashion. Gamers of the Warhammer 40k community are no differant. What is differant however is the history of reaffirming the latter feelings...Rage and Joy, that games workshop products have had in the past.

It was therefore with a very mixed sense of Joy and Terror that I purchased and read the new codex I am about to review. You see codex's in the past have had the trend of upping the powerlevel of the game drasticly in favor of the latest trend. Each codex competing with the last to make the newest and best toy seem more attractive. This has led to a "power creep" an escalation of the powerlevel of the game overall.

When fifth ed. released I amongst many feared what that the newest trend of codex would bring about. While many were dissapointed overall with the Space Marine feeling that it was underpowered and there is no common opinion about the New Gaurd Codex. With the release of the New Space Wolf Codex and the leaks online about what some of the units where able to do, many feared that this codex would not only live up to that trend but surpass it. After reading the Codex I don't believe that this is neccasarily true.

While certainly they have been given very formidable options. Overall there is very little in the game that they have been given without having something taken away. The overall feel of the army mechanicly is that the writers of the codex were attempting to give back some of the classic options that people enjoyed about Space Marines in general (such as two special weapons, varied wargear combinations etc.) While trying update the mechanics that make the space wolves intresting in a balanced way for fifth edition. Are they competitive...definetly. Many players will have diffuculties against this army just simply because the style of play is simple, intuitive to new players and very potent. This is to be expected of a recent update. Are they broken or unbeatable? Hardly. Certainly there are one or two very poor design choice's in my opinion that are incredibly unbalanced. However they will certainly be dealt with by other options in the game or experienced players.

Now to get down to the nitty gritty...

Space Wolves are highly individualistic (As the design staff has so kindly pointed out half a dozen times in the codex). They also do not follow standard Codex Astartes, as such Space wolves may take four HQ choices with the restriction that none may carry exactly the same wargear of have the exact same set of psychic powers.

WHile not exactly a new option with the choices of HQ's present in the codex this will create some interesting combinations. Without getting into the HQ choices (that is a later post) this will more than likely be where the space wolves list in competitive play see most of thier power. HQ's of this codex all seem to have the trend of agmenting the units around them or the ones they are attached to, exception being to the WOlf Gaurd Battle leader.

The restriction of no character bieng able to carry the exact same gear isn't really a restriction in my opinion. I have no doubt that you will still see four of the same HQ's on the field each with one piece of gear differant.

Moving on to special army rules the space wolves seem yet again to differ from thier other astartes bretheran. Having the traded out Combat Squads and Combat Tactics Special rules for Counter attack and Acute Senses special rules.

This more that any other addition to this army I believe to be the most potent. Simply because it allows the space wolves to use thier prowess in close combat in a defensive manner. No longer do players have to be concerned with pusing thier melee units into the charge to get thier points back. Simply camping any unit on top of a position, going to ground will make it damn near unkillable if taken in the proper in the proper numbers. This allows for greater flexability in hands of experienced players and ease of use for newer players that are unfamiliar with the subtlies of movement in the game.

The other special rule they have been given in lieu of the normal space marine rules is acute senses. While not as overtly effective as counterattack I do think that this will lend space wolves significant advantage if exploited properly for night fighting senerios such as dawn of war.

Last I would like to add that the absence of combat squads for the wolves is a loss for them. Unlike normal marines the wolves will have fewer units to capture objectives. They will also be presenting fewer targets to thier opponents to make focus fire easier for them. I think that in the end it is just about an even trade for the wolves as far as basic army rules and options go.

Stay tuned for next review Space Wolves Codex Review part 2: Troops

Space wolves madness

So after a week of waiting for it to come in stock because I didn't pre order it I finally got my hands on thenew Space Wolves Codex. All I can say is DAMN. Normally I am not the one spouting that the newest codex is broken just because they added some new stuff and made other stuff compatiable with the current environment and ruleset. This I do believe is the one instance of which I can safely say that I am going back on my usual tendacies and saying that this book is indeed BROKEN! In order to back up my claims I think I am going to do a review of the book however so stay tuned (even though there is only one person on my blog paying attention) for that in the future.

Blood angels list

So fumbling out in the garage trying to put together an idea of what kind of list I can resonably field. I realised that I had like 12 marines that only had 1 coat of paint on them. So I guess that after all that accomplishment I still have tac marines to paint *sigh*

Other than that I am strongly thinking about getting ahold of Jump assault marines and Attack bikes. The assault marines because they have serious punch and are fairly affordable for throwing them away on deep striking. The attack bikes are slowly becoming a must just because they are mobile and the multi-melta's are a must.

Working on this list is going to be slow going.....

You can ink wash my soul

This week has been crazy. First off a good friend of mine waldo, call me up with a job offer for a business he owns and manages. The position would be temporary for two weeks at which point we would see wether or not we wanted to continue on a permanent basis. So needless to say I have been running around like crazy in adjustment of my new job training and stuff.

That bieng said I haven't had a whole lot of time to dedicate to any of my projects during the week. It became so frustrating getting stuck in that wake,work,eat, sleep routine that Saturday on my day off I sat down and worked on my blood angels figs.

I am so relieved to have done that. For the longest time I have been struggling with the entire painting my army thing because of two reason's primarily 1) Lack of time 2) Not really knowing how to paint mini's. When I sat down to start the endevor to paint along time ago I became frustrated mostly because whenever I asked my friends who did paint well how they did it their answer was "take paint from the bottle and put it on the figs!". It wasn't as though they were trying to be mean. To them its just that simple. I however didn't want to just throw paint on models and "figure it out". To me that would leave me with on thing...a crappy looking model. Not that I would be master golden daemon winner right off. I just wanted to know what techniques would make my fig's look awesome when I did master them.

After some research online (shout out to Jawaballs, Black Matt!) I sat down and attempted to try something simple. A Blood Angels Tac Squad. After about 5 hours of painting I sat back and realised that after I primed my figs (which before I learned that BA marines should be based white not black) I had painted on a thin watered down layer of blood red (can't remember why I thought that was a good idea) see that the black was still showing through I just kept doing it. On went layer after layer of watered down paint until I became frustrated with the entire process. That was about 3 months ago.

Sitting down yesterday I resolved that I had to fix these horrible ugly things in front of me. Do in no BS I took out my bottle of Blood Red and dry brushed over each of these guys until the red on their armor plated were solid. Over the cracks and feet I dry brushed on Scab Red. Then after all that was done completely on the random search for something else I happened on a solo bottle of the new citadel Baal red ink wash. I had completely forgotten that I had purchased it on a whim a long time ago. Returning to my project I washed over the unit then hit them with a water-down layer of blazing orange just to lighten the up the red. After all that I have to say that I am quite pleased as to the progress of these guys. I have learned quite a bit. I think next time I approach a batch of guy it will not only take less time but will look a lot better. Even still I am impressed they don't look horrible and are definitely well on there way to be table ready.

First post!

Today i decided to start this blog. For months I have been following other blogs on blogspot mostly people in the Warhammer 40k universe. Its mostly my recent seclusion that I have been in dire need to express my idea's in a constructive venue. Its my hope that eventually I can use this as a means of keeping on track with my pursuits as well as a sounding board for idea's and opinions. One of my goals is to get a camera and link this to a VBlog.

Here is a brief list of some of the stuff that I have going on right now.

GURPS Fantasy Campaign: I currently building my own fantasy campaign set in a as of yet unamed city. Drawing inspiration from the Freeport campaign setting and kingdom of heaven, its my intend to create a low magic setting with a political bent. SO far I am stuck to trudging the considerable Tome that is GURPS 4th ed. as its my first time using the system

Legend of the Five Rings: This is a constant project as I play competitive tournaments in an area saturated by big tourney winners. The recently reset the format and with the introduction of border keep and the amped power level of the game overall I expect Celestial Arc to be interesting indeed. Currently I test running a Deathseeker/Hero Themed deck that revolved around sacrificing my units to pk actions then using recursion to bring them back into play. This is mostly a fun deck as I have as of yet to get some serious inspiration for a serious tourney deck.

Warhammer 40k Game Room: Currently halted but I have been slowly converted my garage into a safehaven for my wargaming habit.I wanted to start a play group that played weekly at my place. I don't typically like playing outside my friend group unless I am doing a tourney anyway. So far I have about half the garage emptied out, put up a shop light, shelf and have about 2 tables that can be taken down. Plus a fair amount of throw on the table terrain.

Warhammer Painting: Its a constant struggle. When I first got into the game about 4 years ago I just played and didn't paint. It wasn't until this last January that I decided to sit down and do some painting. Well between family, work and other things painting has been a real struggle to get done. So far I am almost done with a unit of Tyranid Warriors, Just started a unit of gaunts and decided that I wanted to practice how to paint on some space marines. Needless to say lack of time along with indecisiveness and plus lack of ability has made painting really a task but I am sure that i will get it done sooner or later.