A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Warhammer 40,000 – The Lion came back at the end of 9th Edition during the Arks of Omen books, he didn’t make a huge splash at the time and in 10th Edition his rules are pretty solid in the index so it’s odd you don’t hear more about him. With Dark Angels set to get a full tenth edition codex soon he may make a bigger splash soon.
Warhammer 40,000 - It seems a 40k army is never truly complete. As is evidenced by this Thousand Sons force.
Warhammer 40,000 - A client asked me to paint this batch up to match a force he bought out of a second hand bin. It’s a weird scheme that looks really different from any Necrons I’ve painted previously. He also had some random Imperial models that needed to be added to his other forces.
Warhammer 40,000 - Leagues of Votan were in a weird place with the initial Index10th Edition release. However the recent updates and balance data slate seems to have moved them into a playable state.
Warhamer 40,000 - Now that tenth edition is actually here and evolving as a system many players are looking to add some units to their existing forces. Terminators and Inceptors are solid choices to bring a bit more survivability to a force.
Warhammer 40,000 - Happy Ork-tober! I painted these earlier this year but have been seriously behind in posting here with my various projects. This project was a pretty simple paint scheme to make some dirty rusty Orks. I used a variety of contrast paints to give them varied skin tones and to block in the base colors before rusting everything up to make it look grimey.
Board Games - There are some genres of board games that are overdone. I mean how many times do you really want to rebuild Rome, fight zombies or build a railroad? One genre that there aren’t enough games about is the 1920’s the era of Al Capone it seems like something that would be overdone but I can’t actually remember another game I’ve painted or played that deals with gangsters expanding their bootlegging empire.
Scarface 1920’s is a combination work placement / deck builder with some really nice components. Each player gang has unique sculpts for the various gangsters, their vehicles and buildings. The components alone make this worth considering.
The publishers description is a little vague, but sounds interesting:
You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot further with a smile and a gun.” -Al Capone
Chicago in the Roaring 20s. Prohibition has made liquor business illegal and now criminal gangs operate in the underworld to try and take control of the city. Blood, influence, power, and money add up to a dangerous mix on the streets.
In Scarface 1920 you will lead a gang of mobsters aiming to rule Chicago during the Dry Era (1920-33). To succeed you will have to rule every inch in gangland, expand your racketeering, run bootlegging operations, bribe the city officials, and make sure the coppers are on your side.
Scarface 1920 blends worker placement with deck-building mechanics in a game where you will have to recruit new associates, break new deals, fill the streets of Chicago with your thugs, enhance your headquarters —and do some dirty jobs along the way.
Every gang has a distinct set of abilities embodied in their boss, and in every game you will be able to choose a different path to victory. However, in this turf war you will have to confront other rival gangs that share an identical goal: growing their criminal empire. But they are not the only challenge you will face —Eliot Ness and his Feds are out to get you too!
Warhammer - 40,000 - Word Bearers are a pretty cool force, way back in 3rd edition I had a force that I loved playing being able to summon daemons mid-game was really fun. Since then they’ve had a bit of an up and down in regards to their rules feeling like the story describes them. Between 3rd and the 8th edition codexes many rules variations were attempted but nothing was really inspiring. The current 9th edition book finally really captures the feel of each of the traitor legions and the crusade rules let you take that to the next level. It’s really a shame that Games Workshop finally nailed a good Chaos Space Marine book and is invalidating it this summer with the release of 10th edition. Hopefully some of that flavor can come through in the new edition because what has been released as far as how the game works looks promising. I personally have really enjoyed 9th edition mostly because the narrative crusade rules don’t really suffer from the ups and downs of the rapid rules changes that attempted to balance out the matched play tournament scene.
Anyway this Word Bearers force was created as a crusade force with a focus on playing boarding actions. It has been converted from the Horus Heresy line and has a really unique look. All the crusade advancements have been focused on making them more daemonic and it’s really flavorful. Also being on the receiving end of some pretty nasty loses it is also very good.
Warhammer 40,000 - I’m really hoping that some version of soup makes it to the new edition of Warhammer 40,000. There are some armies that just love to be mixed with others like CSM and Daemons. It’s fluffy and I miss the days of old where you could summon a unit of daemons with an Icon or Spell.
I’m sure everyone has a bulk of new unpainted chaos stuff sitting around since many of the most recent updates made some unconsidered options viable. Sure it’s a little late in the game to be jumping on the new hotness but I’m guessing the revised unit cards are going to be similar to the Indexes of 8th edition where everything was pretty playable early on.
Warhammer 40,000 - A new edition of Warhammer 40K is due out this summer which means it’s the perfect time to get your armies in shape and painted up so you can start the new edition with a fully painted force. Now knowing that EVERYTHING is going to change you can’t really focus on exactly what you plan on playing but you can take the time to get that grey plastic pile of shame up to snuff.
This is the first of several batches of Orks that I’m painting up, ultimately it will be an entire collections worth of stuff but I’m batching it out to avoid getting burned out. Most of these are newer kits so it’s unlikely they’ll be invalidated by the upcoming rules changes.
Warhammer 40,000 - Boarding Actions are really fun small scale games that take most of the rules bloat out of Warhammer 40,000. Rules as written you have to use a very specific set of terrain with fixed layouts and your force is extremely limited in what you can take.
Our group has been playing Crusade for a little over a year now and were excited to incorporate Boarding Actions into our weekly games. Of course because there was not a specific supplement printed to address Boarding Actions and Crusade we had to make things up on the fly.
What we decided was to allow any of our existing units from the crusade roster with their upgrades so long as they were “legal” in boarding actions. Using the Crusade Points give your opponents extra CP to start has been pretty good in balancing the forces. We also set the game limit at 25PL with a +/- of 2PL to allow for some flexibility with the roster so you can easily pivot between boarding actions and normal games each week.
Since many of our games are 3-4 players I set up the table with two decks. The decks are connected by ladders and stairs that function using the “Open Hatch” Action. With the ladders the action results in you “Embarking” on the ladder and you can disembark at the end of your next movement phase. So far it has worked really well keeping everyone involved in the fight.
The other change we made is that instead of buying a new terrain set we’re using the Deadbolt’s Derelict from Death Ray Designs. As long as the layouts are balanced it seems to work out making unique layouts for each game.
Warhammer 40000 - I think the best use of Knights (either Chaos or Imperial) is as a supplement to another force. It gives you some really tough models and heavy firepower without the drawback of a small model count force.
Warhammer 40000 - The other Thousand Sons army I’ve been working on also continues to have more models added to it. I particularly love the spawn model.
Warhammer 40,000 - Sometimes it seems like an army is never finished. This batch of Thousands Sons is the latest addition to one of the two different forces I’ve been painting for the last year or so.
Warhammer 40,000 - Unfortunately in a game with an ever changing ruleset sometimes you get behind the changes and an idea you had just isn’t as good as it was before. Flamers while still good just aren’t as brokenly amazing as they were before the balance dataslate, hooefully these guys will still get to see the table.
Warhammer 40,000 - Imperial Guard Calvary Force this force is now something you can do in the latest Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) codex. I painted the core of the force ages ago as part of a Tyrant’s Legion army. This is a custom color scheme with decals.
Warhammer 40,000 - The Spartan plastic kit is pretty cool, it’s well designed and goes together relatively easily. The new Warpsmith model is different and it’s a shame it lost the options previously available to the model as a plasma pistol is the most boring weapon to give a character in my opinion.
Read MoreWarhammer 30,000 - The Horus Heresy line continues to pump out cool plastic kits, which are significantly easier to work with than the previous resin versions.
Warhammer 40,000 - I haven’t played against Orks in sometime, but Gazkill is one scary character to face on the field. The newest kit is really nice and has a ton of nice details.
Warhammer 40,000 - I really like the lore behind the Word Bearers, their role in the Horus Heresy is so well defined in the novels as the original bad guys. They show just how easily worship and faith can be twisted to evil deeds.
The newest models in the Chaos Space Marine line look so good. Possessed and Accursed Cultists really kick up the look of the line. It’s a bummer the models are single pose but with the current rules you probably aren’t taking more than a unit or two so it can be fixed with some light conversion work to get alternate poses if you want.
