Third of three projects on the go

So I apparently just can not get excited by the Nid codex. There is a 1000pt tourney coming up in May and I planned to take Nids. I really did.But there is no play style in that book that I like or could make effective. So I am bringing my Ultras instead. An all infantry list led by a Terminator librarian (from the Space Hulk box), 2 tactical squads and a pair of Terminator squads with Cyclones. The list necessitates the painting of a Terminator squad and the Librarian. Six models is not too bad and it will expand my 1st company and character complement as well. There are alternatives however. A pair of Thunderfire canons would cost only 200 of the 2nd Termie unit's 230 pts.Or a landspeeder unit...or other stuff as will be decided shortly. 

The hierophant is still in progress but I have not yet done anything new to it recently but I do intend to get back to it soon.

And the newest project, the table of terrain #1. And I have really decided to go big. Originally intended to be an Adeptus Mechanicus forge world table, it has morphed into a space ship launch deck. I am trying to incorporate my Space Wolf display base.

The intent is to have a large frame structure throughout the entire table. I had played with a lower profile for the arch portions you can see in these shots but I decided to go with the taller profile. I wanted the launch track to exit out of a large profile that would dwarf the ships.  I am hoping to give players the sensation that they are reaching into a ship to play a game. I am hoping the frame throughout the table will strongly convey this feeling. Here are the initial concept shots. The teleport pad is in some of the shots and I have laid out what will be a cargo elevator in the floor behind the Thunderbolt.

Storm Eagle Control Surfaces Template

Hopefully this works. Near as I can tell I can not post a file for download so I have scanned in the images and posted them as a jpeg instead.I have included a legend bar to show the scale of the drawings as well (the bar marked as 5cm).

I do not have any templates for the body itself, but I can tell you that I extended the main body by about 2 inches. This portion was done on the fly and completed before I thought to keep a record of what I did to convert it.

Hopefully these are helpful to whomever wishes to use them. I want to say I would appreciate a mention that these came from this blog (i.e. mine) but considering I am copying a design conceived of by someone else, it would make more sense to say "Have at it".

And then this happened....Astro 2013

It almost seems fitting that the 13th Astronomicon tournament in Winnipeg would see the remnants of my 13th Company army (re-tasked as a Space Wolves drop pod army) take the Best Overall trophy. It was a bit of a surprise as my playing while admittedly better than normal, was not spectacular. Astronomicon is best classified as a hobbyist's tournament in that your painting scores, army composition scores, sportsmanship. army list, display base, etc....all go into your overall score. So while my points earned for playing over the weekend was not overwhelming, my high scores for painting, conversions, and theme put me over the top. Oh and I should mention that over the top means that I took top place by only 1 point, so things were very close indeed.

I have played in numerous Canadian GTs in the distant past as well as one Chicago GT back when GW recognized the value of such things. Inevitably in a weekend with 6 or 7 games with total strangers you will probably encounter a player whose play style or demeanor just does not mesh well with yours. Astronomicon has yet to produce such an experience for me over the 13 year span that I have played in it.

Worth mentioning is the fact that amongst the winners there were two people whom I have known for years who had their first trip to the podium ever for an Astronomicon. Neil Spears, playing a Blood Angels army, won the award for Best Army list. Alex Bedard won a well deserved award for Best Army for a heavily converted ork air cavalry army.

I was also pleased to finally get an Astro game in against Dave Violago and his Eldar Sword Wind. Dave has been playing Eldar for as long as I have known him, and in a game where victory requires some luck and some mistakes on the part of your opponent, Dave makes very few of the latter.

In all I had a superb set of games against a good range of players, and I feel I must thank them all again for their patience as my experience with 6th edition wh40K was limited to two games before the tournament. I know I still managed to screw some things up but in the end I had a blast and found the weekend mentally draining in trying to out maneuver and out play an exceptional group of players.

My opponents for the weekend were:

Dave Violago - Swordwind Eldar (In my mind Dave is the epitome of a true Eldar general....the fight will happen on their terms foolish mon-keigh).

Jim Baidacoff - Dark Eldar (his Vietnamese restaurant themed army list was a joy to read; and never have so many Dark Lances done so little to a flier; the effects of Drahzar on Grey Hunters was another matter entirely).

Darrel Hoover - Space Wolves with Imperial Guard allies (my face hurt from laughing so much during this game. Darrell was just a lot of fun to play against e.g. this was the only game where I lost the Storm Eagle, but the explosion finished off his Rune Priest while he was locked in combat with my Rune Priest)

Charles Janke - Crimson Fists and Blood Angels, Including Pedro Cantor (mental note: never again will I drop pod a dread in front of a Contemptor Mortis dread... there wasn't enough left of my poor dread for a dental record check)

JP Perrault - Night Lords Chaos marines (perhaps my best tactical performance but we ran out of time before we could make a boss fight happen; by the way the Helldrake bale flamer is nasty, killing 12 Grey Hunters before my Storm Eagle finished it off with a lascanon enema)

Sean Habing - Necrons led by the Storm Lord (apparently the Necron's true strength is in completely nullifying my ability to roll anything more than a 2 leading to two of the most pathetic close combat performances by a pair of Space Wolves dread and the almost complete nullification of my melta weapons; another game where I laughed a lot but mainly at my bad luck...what else can you do?).

I have a few pics but there are a bunch from my game with Dave that I can not locate so they may be on another hard drive somewhere. Once I locate them I will post them. Luckily Dave will be posting his pics on his gaming group's blog, including great shots of the armies that were there,  which can be found here:

 http://wpggamegeeks.blogspot.ca/

The results of the tournament: 

Best Overall:	Mario Rocha	- Space Wolves
Best Sportsman:	Greg Ritchie	- Space Marines
Best Army:	Alex Bedard	- Orks
Best Appearance:	Brock Jansen	- Tyranids
Best General:	Mike Knudsen	- Dark Eldar
Best Terrain:	Kevin Nelson	- Jungle
Best Single Miniature:	J.P. Perrault	- Chaos Sorcerer
Best Army List:	Neil Spears	- Blood Angels

For more info about the Astronomicon tournament can be found here:

http://www.astronomi-con.com/

I recommend checking out the Astronomicon scenarios as it is this aspect of the tournament that really sets it apart. That and the fact that this tournament is run in 4 cities in North America (Winnipeg, Toronto, Vancouver, and Dallas) and the TO's consist of 3 guys doing all of the heavy lifting. This is truly a labour of love for them.

I should mention that while some of the pics below were taken by me, Mike Major and Christian Augst (2 of the TOs) are also responsible for some of them too.

And pics:

Photo by Christian Augst

Photo by Mike Major

Photo by Mike Major

Photo by Mike Major

Photo by Mike Major

Astro 2013 Prep 2: Progress with less than a week to go.

Just a quick update. The dread is done!! Now it is on to drop pod madness. I have done some initial dry brushing on the display base and the Storm Eagle cradle. More as it gets done.

Astronomi-con 2012 Prep work

So time has run through and it became obvious to me that I would not have the Nid army I wanted for the Astro tourney this year. Something about having to power paint four monstrous creatures and about 30 termagants just did not appeal.

So I started looking at what else would be available in my collection and the Wolves caught my eye yet again. Yes again. Last year I found an interesting special character from a FW book and that image drove the army I threw together for it. 

For this year there is only one model that I have completed that would also serve as an excellent center piece model and that is my converted Space Wolf Storm Eagle (shown in earlier posts on this blog). I originally was considering using both the Eagle and my newly acquired Caestus Assault Ram, but the two vehicles alone accounts for almost half of my points. Instead I have made a list using a small termie unit being led by a rune priest in the Eagle, 2 dreads in Lucius Drop Pods, and 2 Grey Hunter squads in drop pods. I have dubbed the list the Space Wolf Falling Circus.

The list has a risk of being wiped out in turn 1. I figure that the look of the army is more important to me and besides, that just means I have more time for socializing and relaxing. Now the question of the army's display base came to the fore.

The idea I had was of the staging area on the SW ship with the squads dispersing to their pods. The Storm Eagle was the only stand out as I had no idea how to incorporate it into this base. So I settled on the idea of building as hydraulic cradle that would move the Eagle within the ship to its staging and launch areas.The piece is intended to be a part of my long desired but barely started adeptus mechanicus terrain table.The base was designed as I went and is ultimately a bunch of card stock and foam core. The cradle itself is  warped due to the "as I go" nature of its construction but still looks good enough to use and should look fine once painted. 

I have photos below of the army in progress as well as a ton of shots of the base and the cradle. I am hoping to get into the painting this week with a completion date of next weekend as the target completion date. I need time to paint the base as it is now a fairly complex build. Here are the shots:

Phase 1a: Forelimbs Revised

So I spent a lot of time planning and planning, and being too worried I would botch the job that I have let this project sit for a while. Work was also pretty intense but the break is upon me so more time is now available.

I had been pondering how the forelimbs would look in their previous incarnation, and they looked far too plain. The detail necessary would have required a whole wad of green stuff and I began to have concerns regarding how much weight this would add. So for some reason I opted to add armored scales to the limbs using plasticard (yet again). The templates are below. I also modified the concept sketch and I think I have settled on the final look I am hoping to achieve.

The rear limbs will end in a giant hoof like the Fex and Tervigon. These changes will make the beast's limbs look a lot heavier at the terminal point, but should convey a better sense of the toughness of the model and should meet my need to reduce the model's footprint to make it more useful for games.

Phase 1: Hierophant fore-limbs (leg shield)

Inspired by the Tervigon model, this is my attempt to create a platform upon which to do some sculpting to detail the fore-limbs of my Hierophant biotitan. I used plasticard (about 1.5 mm thick) and created a template to guide the appearance of these shields. I drew one side of the shield onto heavy stock card, then used that shape to design a double-sided template. This in turn was used to trace out the desired shape in plasticard. The top ridges of the fore-limbs had to be cut down to allow better contact with the leg shield. So I am now committed to a conversion job.

Here are some basic pictures of the phase one of work. The shapes are still too flat and will need to be rounded using greenstuff but I expect that these shapes will serve as  a guide. I have included shots of the double-sided template with a  ruler for anyone interested in trying this out. Be warned that gluing the plasticard to make this shape was a pain to make happen..