Corporations and you

So looks like I'm going to throw down with some planetfall on Thursday. I've got a 2500pt Relthoza game scheduled, and I've also invited my buddy down to give the Directorate a go. I've only got a half core for it (same with my Aquans) and have only done a little bit of painting on it.

Last night though, I busted out the minis to make sure they were ready for the field. Thankfully, the Directorate doesn't actually have much to put together. I stuck the few infantry models on their bases. I really like the mix of pewter and cast infantry on those bases. They really pop.

Also, I decided to try to magnetize the turrets on the tanks. While Spartan does not cast ready made holes for the magnets, they are really nice to add a divot so that your drill bit finds the center easily. So after rummaging through my magnets, I found some nice small ones that should work. Then I found a drill bit that was just about the perfect size. I used a pin vise to do the drilling...no need for power tools. I could have probably just done it with the drill bit to be honest, but the pin vise makes things easy.

A few turns, then clear the scraps (is there a word for the material a drill displaces? you'd think there would be...) a few turns more, and viol la, a perfect hole for a magnet. A little super glue later and the first magnet is all set. By the way, those tiny rare earth magnets come in nice little columns. So what I did to make sure they all aligned correctly, was that I would take a black marker and color the end pieces of both ends of the column. That way, I knew to glue the magnet black side down into the holes for each pair. Was an easy way to keep track of which way to insert the little buggers.

All said and done, took me about 30 minutes to assemble and magnetize the Directorate core helix. Just one more reason I love Planetfall. It doesn't take long to get them ready to play. And honestly, doesn't take long to get them painted either. I'll try to remember to take pics and notes during my game on Thursday. Till next time.

Planetfall! (as sung by a squeeky voiced rocker)

A tad over a week ago (or possibly two, my sense of time is failing) I got to play Planetfall again. I really love that game. Exploding 6's for the win....cool Epic style combat....super sweet models. What's not to love? I own the two player starter...and as previously blogged, I've even painted a few models. However, that is about as far as I got. I did, over the holidays, pick up a Relthoza starter helix, because those bugs be awesome.

So I went home and build those little guys. How cute are they? I love those towers. So anyways, I then went online to start seeing what people were playing in terms of size. Apparently, 3k-4k games are the norm :o

Well I only own three half helixes...helixi? so that was a problem. So I might have gone over to evilbay and taken a look around. Fast forward several business shipping days....

* insert wild cackling laugh here of the muwhahaha variety *

* go ahead, you know you want to do it again *

I haven't actually figured out how many points this is just yet, but it should get me close to 3K at the very least. That right there, is a full core, a recon, an assault, and a heavy helix. Basically what I could find the best deals on. No complaints as it gives me lots of lovely towers to drop down. Sure, they aren't as good as they used to be, in fact, recent reading of the forums says they got a bit crushed by the nerf bat this time around, but its all good. Having never played them before, I haven't really lost anything.

Next up, I need to paint one up and see if I like my proposed color scheme. You'll just have to wait and see what I come up with. :)

Oh...I also go to go shooting this weekend. We were hitting the 100 and 200yrd range so I brought out my M39 Mosin. I really should take a picture of it...it is quite the lovely rifle. Also, it shoots really well over iron sights.

I forgot to take a pic of my 200yrd target. Shooting was going so well at 100 yards, I didn't want to waste much ammo.

The big holes are from my rifle. :)

Weekend hobby retreat

Close to a year ago, I tried to see if people in my gaming club would be interested in going to a hobby retreat. Basically, going away for a weekend to a retreat center to hang out and enjoy our hobby. While some said they were interested, once I tried to actually set one up, the board went silent.

Well my wife has been doing scrapbooking retreats for quite a while now. And this past weekend, she was going to go to a combined retreat for scrappers and quilters. Well she invited me to come along too. The retreat is at Menucha (you can google it), and it is an amazing place that I have been lucky to be involved with for many years.

My wife even payed for me to go, so I got a weekend getaway with my wife, and got to work on my models for the entire weekend. Yeah..she's pretty amazing.

We got there Friday night and was provided supper. Menucha does family style dining, so tables sit 6-7 and everyone takes from a variety of dishes. Friday's meal was roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, salad, and corn bread. Very tasty, and neither my wife or I had to cook it. After that, it was off to my table to get to work.

Originally, I was going to just work on my Ad Mech models...but then I realized that I can already play with my Ad Mech army...one army I couldn't play with is my Space Wolf army...mostly because I don't have many marines put together. So first up, grey wolves. I was able to get five of them done and that pretty much was it for the night. The next morning, breakfast was at 8am. The day was simply perfect outside and Menucha is in the gorge, you couldn't ask for a better view. Kind of a shame to be indoors doing modeling. But alas, it was back to work. Since this was the long day of the retreat, I decided to tackle bigger projects. First up was an Ad Mech dunewalker, and then an Imperial Knight.

I got the walker fully assembled except for the weapon systems. I decided I wanted to magnetize them as much as possible, but since I left my magnets at home, that was going to have to wait until later. So then I started in on the Knight. I have to say, that is one beautiful model. I had the walker done by lunch at noon, and then after that I worked on the knight. It lasted me all the way until dinner. I need to magnetize the shoulder pads so that I can swap arms. Plus I'll probably do the same for the torso. Makes it a lot easier to transport.

My wife had done a half marathon that morning and had stopped by the house before coming back to Menucha. So I asked her to bring some more models for me to work on as I was making such good progress I thought I might run out of stuff to do. So after dinner, I got to put together some electro priests.

Thank god for Loctite. That gel glue was a life saver for these guys. I can't imagine trying to build them with normal super glue. As the evening rolled on, I did another five grey wolves as well.

I was the only guy there for the Scrap and Sew retreat. Most the ladies there were quite impressed with the models and showed actually interest in them. Most had kids or family that they could see getting into the hobby. So that was nice that I could share this with them. They never made me feel like the odd man out.

Sunday morning was the last day with breakfast and lunch being provided, and we had to be out by 4pm. My glue was running really low, but I started on some Casteleans (sp?). No pics, but I got them mostly assembled, and need to do some magnet work on them as well.

What a great weekend. I got to hang out with my wife most of the weekend (she was sitting beside me at the table). I got to work on models the whole time, and put together 15 infantry, a vehicle, a super heavy, and two MCs. Six great meals were provided, and two nights stay, all for under $200 a person. And we only had to drive 20 minutes to get there.

I may try again to set up a retreat for my fellow wargamers. I had a great time and got a lot of work done. Next time I'll probably just bring models and paints.

Transport lost in the Warp

Dang it, no game for me this week. My schedule got super busy and I wasn't able to make it to game night. Still though, things are looking up for the Ad Mech. I have an entire weekend coming up to work on nothing but my army. I will be spending most of the time assembling, but I will also do a test model for my paint scheme. My wife and I are going to a "hobby" retreat this weekend. She'll be doing scrap booking stuff, and I'll be building and painting models. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be the only guy there, but that doesn't matter to me.

About a year ago I tried to organize a hobby retreat for my game club. A few people said they were interested, so I started to organize the whole thing. But then when it came down to picking a date and signing up, everyone went quiet. Typical. Ah well, I get to go away for the weekend with my wife and spend all the time doing model stuff that I want. How cool is that??

I might even try to build the Imperial Knight model that I have. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn! Scary.

It has been a pretty cool week for me actually. I've been organizing a reunion with some college friends of mine for next year. I have a few of them committed to going. In the mean time though, I decided to see if any of them wanted to get together and play a game online together. These are gamers after all. So we settled on DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) and have actually met up a couple of times. Now some of these guys I haven't seen or gamed with in over 20 years. So that has been really cool. DDO is just a great game and being able to hang out with them and get in gaming....just priceless. And the best part? No one has to be a DM! :) Yeah...I'm a nerd....sue me.

Oooooo and tonight? Captain America: Civil War!!! whoooo hooooo! I love the CA series. I have a serious man crush on Cap. I mean how can you not? Chris Evans was just the perfect casting for the character. Yeah, I know...its a little weird...but if I'm going to have a man crush, then who better than Captain America?

Oh, and I'm keeping my eye on Warmachine v3 due out in June. Looking good so far.

Ad Mech rolls on

So we are in week five of the 40K old school league, and last night I faced off against an armored cav Dark Eldar army. There were three raiders, three vemons, two ravagers, and a bomber thing, plus a squad of jet bikes. Kalabite warriors were the troops inside most of the vehicles. One contained some grotesques and his Succubus. Now my opponent had challenged me after last week's game. I had battled against a blood angel army stuffed in drop pods. So I knew I was facing DE. So out went anything with high toughness, as his poison was going to make short work of that. Instead, I tried to bulk up on numbers. Grav weapons wouldn't be any good against his low armor, so in came the breachers. My list was the following:

Dominous with upgraded weapons, and cognis armor with conversion field.
10 rangers with long rifle thingies and -1 cover gear
10 rangers with three arc rifles
10 vanguard with three plasma (Dominous went here)
8 vanguard with one arc rifle
5 stock breachers
3 ironstriders with autocannons
2 dunecrawlers, one neutron, one icarus array

So I will admit I loaded up on haywire and weapons that could take down light vehicles. But almost everything was modeled that way...so it wasn't a huge stretch. I just made sure I didn't take stuff that wouldn't do well vs the DE.

And it worked. He had one guy left on the table by the end of turn 5. He conceded instead of having a turn 6. I will say that my dice did well for me most of the time, which was a huge turn around from last week. But my opponent also made some pretty big mistakes. He didn't really use his speed to get to me when he had the chance. Also, he concentrated almost all of his fire on my breachers and dunecrawlers. Those were the two units that had the highest survival rates of my whole army. Had he spent only half of the shots at the breachers and put them towards my rangers or vanguard, I would have actually lost some units. As it was, I lost one dunecrawler and my breachers were down to one model. One of my ranger squads was down to two, and a few guys were off a vanguard squad...but that was it. I didn't lose a single unit.

I think the game could have been a lot closer had he been more aggressive. Instead, he hung back, and tried to out shoot me. My stuff was just tougher and I was rolling more dice.

There are at least three opponents I haven't faced yet, a nid player, a nurgle deamon player, and a sisters player. So I'll most likely be going up against one of them next week. I have three wins so far and one loss. Not doing that badly which is a big surprise for me. The format is helping to keep the game simpler. I've also expanded my Ad Mech collection a bit too. I just got some electro priests and will be adding more elites and a strider. I need to stop buying this army! :)

Warmachine V3

So the news has just dropped that Warmachine/Hordes is getting a new version of the rules, 3.0. I have to say I'm a little excited about this. A while back I had tried my third hand at warmachine. I even blogged about it. Since that blog ended, I haven't done too much with the old steam powered game. I did buy the Cryx All in One box. I am currently sitting on a decent Cryx collection and a starter for Menoth. I've actually been trying to sell my Menoth stuff, but so far no biters. However, with a new edition on the horizon, I'll have to come up with the tricky decision to keep it or sell it.

You know, because the Menoth faction might be super cool in V3 and then I'd want to keep it... :)

Actually, I've always like Menoth and wanted it as my first faction. But, most of my friends also wanted to run Menoth, so I chose Cryx instead (being the resident undead player).

I really dig the original infantry and rocket guys. If only the All in One box had had more of the stuff I liked, I probably would have picked that one up too.

The new battle boxes seem pretty cool. More figs than the previous ones, extra stuff tossed in, and cheaper! That is a great way to suck more players in. Plus I've heard the game will be faster and a bit more balanced as well. I'll be keeping my eye on the new release.

Ad Mech = Dwarves

So I've now played my second game with my Ad Mech forces. I didn't change the list at all and this time I faced a nurgle deamon army. The setup used opposite corners with a large night fight area in the middle of the board. We kind of forgot about it because it really didn't come into play for the most part. My opponent was rocking two GDs with Iron Arm for each of them (even his DP had Iron Arm). So my shooting just wasn't doing jack to them. That and he couldn't seem to fail a freaking 5+ ward save most of the night. When his softer stuff got in range, they were evaporated fairly quickly. And truth be told, by the end of the game, I had killed one of his GD, and his DP, as well as most everything else. However, my forces were equally bloodied.

What tipped the scales into his favor though was that the scenario was an objective grab. And that is when we discovered that the Ad Mech army on its own is like playing Dwarves. I simply didn't have mobility at all with my units.

Okay, so that really isn't a true statement due to the fact that my whole army is relentless and can move and shoot without issue. But that list simply didn't have any speed to it. The farthest I could go on a turn was 6" and only a handful of my units could run. The fact that he was running nasty CC units also kept me pinned into my corner. It is clearly something that I am now going to have to keep in mind while I'm playing. With limited turns, I'll need to make runs for locations fairly early.

Also, I'm adjusting my list a bit to give me some more speed. I've dropped the breachers and the kastelons in favor of some ruststalkers and ironstriders. I've also added a small unit of vanguard plainly equipped. Those Rad Carbines are just super nasty. They can toss out the wounds. I actually went out and got a Starter box for Ad Mech just so I could make another squad of vanguard. Plus, it gives me my third dunecrawler.

And don't worry, I got it second hand from someone getting out of Ad Mech, so no paying GW's prices. Which brings me to my opinion section of the day. I have seen the initial images of GW's Orruks for AoS. Holy Crap, they have finally ruined an army. I just can't believe how bad the models were. The orcs were always one of the best and most characterful armies that GW produced. It truly saddens the heart to see them now morphed into....this:

Look at me! I'm an angry green ape in a crab shell!

I am so glad I have a large orc army and that I did not sell off my extra models. Till next time.