Paul's Basement League

How Penitent Engines Killed My Hobby

2012-01-25T03:52:00.000-05:00

Many months ago I put up a post expressing my desire to try taking on a whole army painting commission. I was fresh out of work and waiting to get my job back. After putting my self out there (And deleting my first nasty comment.) one of the guys from the club came over with his old 1500 point Sister of Battle army. We decided on a stupid cheap price and I began to boast about how quickly I was going to knock this army out! The next month, when we got together to play, I had cleaned and prepped all of the infantry and gotten a few squads painted. (The army came to me with and old chipped white base coat and some nasty glue jobs.) Things were going smoothly. The motivation was there. Then all of the real life duties started to sneak in. I had recently had my teen brothers move in and had to take them all over for appointments and attend foster care classes. My wife was pregnant with baby three and constantly sick for six months. Meet up after meetup I made little to no progress on the army. I began wanting to paint different models but instead doing nothing. I felt that I couldn't paint anything else until the sisters were done.
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Warmachine Slow-Grow Incoming!

2012-01-14T09:57:00.004-05:00

Look at your Caster. Now back to me.

Now back at your Caster. Now back to me.

Sadly, he isn’t me, but if you stopped using cookie-cutter-Casters and switched to Captain Jeremiah Kraye, he could win like he’s me.

Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a battlefield with the army your army could be as awesome as.

What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an army of Warjacks that have cavalry rules, making a Light Jack run-n-gun list not only possible but gloriously attainable.

Look again, the Light Warjacks are now Heavy Warjacks charging for free at +5 inches with boosted attack rolls.

Anything is possible when your Caster plays like Captain Jeremiah Kraye and not sissy traditional Casters.

I’m on a horse.

NOW GET READY TO PLAY LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR ON JANUARY 28TH!

My Two Days at Mechanicon

2011-12-31T05:21:00.002-05:00

This post managed to get lost in the blob that was MEM2, Thanksgiving, Birthdays, and Christmas.
But hey, better late than never, right? Let's just pretend it still mid November.

I recently attended The Mechanicon for the first time. I have wanted to go for the last few years but my son's birthday has been falling on that weekend since I got into 40k. This year his Birthday was on Sunday so I managed to get in on the Friday Night Fight and took my brothers for the Kill Team Alpha tournament on Saturday.

Foot Nurgle. Every model has magnetized bases to match any table!

I managed to forget my camera on Friday, but with a sixteen hour night shift beforehand and three hours of sleep before the event there wasn't much to see any way. I tried out a Vulkan list for the first time and my dice treated me a lot better than they did during The Warstore Weekend. Alas, I learned two valuable lessons. First get more sleep before a tournament!
After winning my first game versus plague marines on foot, I came up against a Thousand Sons themed Khan Biker army. My opponent used three thunder fire cannons to make difficult/dangerous terrain and pounded away with rifle dreads while I had to slog towards him. I played a good game for about three turns after which I made a dumb move unloading my TH/SS terminators and lost any advantage I had from that point. I have noticed that I'm often the first to attack during a waiting game and had I attempted to weather another round of fire I may have won the game. At least I can say I was half asleep!
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MASS EFFECT MARATHON 2 IS LIVE!

2011-11-26T14:09:00.001-05:00

It's that time again! MASS EFFECT MARATHON 2! A bunch of my friends are torturing themselves with 72 hours of non stop Mass Effect 1 and 2 play through (Plus DLC) and random hi jinks! I would be there right now forcing vomit favored jellybeans down if I could! All of the proceeds are going to Child's Play Charity and there's plenty of swag to be won for donating.

Also, once again Revenant Autumn is scratch building an awesome Normandy model to be auctioned off and this time it has lights! You can see last years finished model and his WIP shots for this years on his blog.

So what are you waiting for! Check out and donate to MASS EFFECT MARATHON 2! Do it for the children!

Space Marine, The New Facebook?

2011-11-13T18:57:00.002-05:00

So I was playing Space Marine way later than I should have been the other night when, out of nowhere, this Imperial Fist clad in MK VIII power armor runs by. I look at him and think to my self, "Man that name sounds familiar." We finish the match and in the lobby lo and behold he asks me, "Palinmoonstride, where do I know that name from?"

Sure enough, it was the same Mr. Went that I played almost two years ago in this battle report.

Now what are the odds of that?
Space Marine, now connecting battle brothers across the country!

Building A Metal Model

2011-10-28T15:58:00.000-04:00

Basic modeling knowledge was bread and butter to me when I first got into the hobby. I have noticed that once most bloggers get established they never really go back to talking about the basics and thus the current new guys miss out. Not so today! Most of you all know this but here are the basics of prepping, assembling, and basing a metal model.

Pillaged Videos

2011-10-19T17:36:00.000-04:00

TQ has been doing a video every day in October to test out his new video equipment, and work on his editing skills as he begins to venture into videography. Since he, like myself, is all about miniature war gaming many of his videos are and will be about the hobby. I will be posting them here since they could be of use to others who are looking for some tips or just want to see another dudes gaming room. So without further adieu, here is the first pillaged TQ video!

Here we have TQ making a list, checking it twice, and playing a game of WARMACHINE against the in-laws!

If you liked the video head over to his you tube channel and check out some more!

How to get easy XP in Space Marine PC

2011-09-11T00:16:00.000-04:00

So I just discovered this and thought I would share it with you all. If you're as bad as I am this will be a godsend.

The larger maps with more points give more XP from the capturing bonus!

Make a private Seize Ground server and capture all the points. That is all.

About 4 minutes for 1050 XP.

I was struggling to get 500 XP a match working my way up through the weapons you unlock. After discovering this much easier way to get XP I had my thunder hammer in 15 minutes, and seriously, who doesn't want a thunder hammer?

I sucked as an assault marine till I started swinging around this bad boy!

Space Marines vs Chaos Marines & Traitor Guard

2011-06-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

This past weekend's PBL pitted Paul and Scott's Space Marines against Jon's Chaos Marines and my (Traitor) Imperial Guard. The battle was 1k points each for a 2,000pt team match. It was spearhead deployment with 5 objectives. The game ended on turn 6 tied 2-2-1. It was a great match and here are some pictures from the fierce battle:

Charity Time Again!

2011-06-03T21:02:00.000-04:00

I've been slacking lately but others have not. Once again our awesome friends over at g33kWatch are hosting a charity event for Child's Play.

Among the myriad of awesome prizes they have lined up for auctions and raffles will be something of interest to 40k gamers. Rather than having to think about flashy catch phrases and hook lines I'm going to continue my slackery and copy / paste.

***PLAGIARISM TO FOLLOW*** (My old English teacher would be so appalled!)

Lets talk charity. My brothers in arms, the G33kwatch crew put on an epic Mass Effect Marathon last year for Childsplay charity, in which they auctioned off my Normandy SR1 model. While I have plans for the SR2 for this coming year's ME marathon, the G33ks have a new 24 hour marathon in the works on June 4th, consisting of many different party games! Talking it over with Charismatic guy Joe, we decided to try something a little different for my crafty contribution to this Slumber Party:

I will be purchasing the Warhammer 40k starter set Black Reach box, and preparing it for the Slumber Party(assembling, basing, priming). Early into the marathon day we will auction this set off, to be painted up to the exact specifications of the winner, DURING the marathon. I will be painting and also jumping into a few of the games and crazy hijinks during the rest of this 24 hour period.

What will Definitely be Included:

The full Black Reach box contents(minus sprue, unless you really want it..) amounting to a respectable Ork and Space Marine forces. Arguably one of the most generous starter kits to date!
Painted to match your color choices, or an existing army.
Based to your desired terrain, or to match any existing forces as closely as possible.

Additional Items I am working to also Include:

Custom Objective counters (mix of orky and Imperial)
Extra set of rules and templates (for those who might want to split it up between two new players)
Protective foam to fit the Blackreach set.
3-5 pieces of low terrain so you can play a real match right out of the box!

In addition, if the winner is new to painting and would prefer, I will document my colors and steps carefully. I can paint the base troops in a way more suited for a new painter to match when they add new models. In this case I will spend extra time on the commanders and elites, and may include some starter paints and brushes if I have them available.

Whether you are interested in this auction or not, I encourage you to tune in and watch the marathon during the 24 hour period. We will be playing plenty of fun video games, raffling off a metric ton of prizes to those who donate, doing crazy things for donations, and unlocking g33kwatch member special costumes! Sponser me in your donations to force me to do hilarious/dangerous/informative things while trying to meet my painting deadline!

Lastly, any help in spreading the word on both the auction and event would be greatly appreciated. As we approach the Slumber Party, I will be posting progress and updating this post should any of the specifics change. If you have any questions or suggestions for this Auction, please let me know!

Posted by Revenant Autumn

*** END PLAGIARISM ***

In a total non slacker fashion I made a few pieces of terrain that will also fit in the black reach box and will be behind the scenes (until they make me do a silly dance) assisting with this charitable endeavor.

If your looking for a way to get a friend or two into the game or just want to use the models for yourself this is an extremely good way to do it without having to do all the painting!
YOU CAN SLACK TOO! AND GIVE TO A GREAT CAUSE WHILE YOUR AT IT!

So check us out tomorrow around noon, get some laughs, do it for the children!

Razorwing? A Blast From My Past

2011-05-26T14:41:00.000-04:00

When Dark Eldar got their new codex my attention immediately went to the fact that they got a fighter jet. "That's awesome", I thought. At the time I wasn't planning on making an army and that was that. Months later while rummaging around at my parents I found this old model I built as a kid.

It looked like it would be about the right size so I brought it home and began to entertain the possibility of using it at some point. Splinter rifles could be placed in the recesses in front of the cockpit with a minimum of work. Dark lances and missiles could be mounted under the wings.

I had a few squads worth of the old warrior models sitting around and would only need a HQ to have a small playable force.

Recently I threw a minimum bid on a sizable Dark Eldar force on e bay with terrible paint jobs. Getting someones old unwanted army for cheap, stripping the paint, and breathing new life into the models has been something I wanted to try out for some time. Now that I have about 2000 points worth of models to work with the project can begin but GW has thrown a kink in my plan.

The official model is now up for advance order! It looks great and I would like to field more than one as my stand in bat wing has proven the units worth on the tabletop in casual games. Moving on form reserve and unleashing four large blasts can take out plenty of units and fits my alpha strike Dark Eldar mentality perfectly.

I have found other Bat Jets available on the internet for very reasonable prices but here is my question to you all. Should I just suck it up and buy the new models or continue with my original idea to convert the bat jet?

Meet Paul - PBL Documentary Series

2011-05-16T16:30:00.002-04:00

We'd like to make this a series, so if you have questions for Paul or would like to see videos like this of our other players or things we do, please comment below!

The New Ones Always Go First

2011-03-25T14:22:00.001-04:00

Our escalation league is still going strong with last week marking the 600 point mark. It was nice to finally play a standard game finally. Kill Teams are fun, but everyone was itching to bring out the heavy firepower. I haven't played an unpainted model in our "official" games yet, but I wanted to try out the storm raven so bad I decided the his to my points for the day were worth it.

Having just build my storm raven I was itching to give it a go and went with the following.

Librarian - Blood lance, Str 10
5 man Assault Squad - no upgrades (x2)
Land Speeder - Muti Melta / Heavy Flamer
Storm Raven - Hurricane Bolters, Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter

Since the games were so small we played on 4x4 tables with 3 objectives spread diagonally. In an effort to get everyone into the tournament mindset, kill points were also in effect.

I ended up playing against Kung Fu Joe and his Sisters of Battle. He was running two large squads of battle sisters along with Repentias and a squad of 2 penitent engines lead by a Palatine. We started with table quarters for deployment and he went first, moving his engines and repentias toward my storm raven sitting on the back of the table. He rolled well for his extra movement but I still felt secure that I could take down his heavy hitters and get away.
When it came to be my turn I opted to sit still and show my opponent the full fury of the Blood Angels gunship!
Boy was I wrong! After four blood strike missiles, four assault cannon shots, and three heavy bolter shots at his AV 11 walkers all I had to show for it was one explodes result and a shaken walker that ran up to punch my ship right out of the sky on the next turn! They don't get used much but boy those penitent engines are fast!

Lucky for me, my Librarian jumped out of the ship as it exploded and punched his walker right back! If not, I think I would have been hard pressed to deal with it for the remainder of the game.

My assault squads deep struck out of his troops line of site and managed to make a combined charge clearing out one objective as the rest of my force moved to take the midfield uncontested and the game ended up being a solid victory for me but I think the real moral of the story is this.

When you have that super shiny new toy you want to try out for the first time, it's going to miss a lot and get blown up in the most embarrassing possible way!

Playing catch up

2011-03-22T23:23:00.001-04:00

I know, I know... I haven't posted in forever it seems. Things have been crazy lately for our gaming crew but finally all the babies have arrived for everyone and life is starting to get back to normal. (Except for sleeping. New babies never seem to want to let you sleep.)

So in new news my wife had our third baby! And while I was at the hospital for three days I built a storm raven!

My youngest brother thinks shes beautiful!

My wife likes this one better!

I meant to post these pics a few weeks ago when it was new and exciting but my one year old daughter decided to pull the SD card out of the laptop and eat it. After drying the card off and putting it back in it appeared to be empty. " Great", I thought, "there goes all of the baby pics and my spider WIP shots." After a week in some uncooked rice (It helps to pull the moisture out) the pics were still on the card thankfully!

Back when it was the hot new black box item, my local red shirt lat me take the new Arachnarok Spider home to build and paint. I jokingly went to take it as I was leaving the store that day and said, "Well I'll just go home and airbrush some gradients on this..." To my surprise he replied, "Really! Here take the other sprue too!"
So that's how I ended up with this a few days later.

I ended up having a baby in the middle of painting and took it back to the store before it was finished but they thought it was so good when I took it back to the store that no one wants to put the chariot on top now. The model was a lot of fun to work with and it was a nice change of pace from painting 40k. I can't wait too see what they have done with it next time I stop by the store.One word of advice if you plan on getting one. DO NOT glue the legs on before you paint. it makes getting in all the recesses nearly impossible.

Deathwatch, The New Hotness

2011-01-16T22:40:00.000-05:00

When I picked up an early copy of the Deathwatch role playing game at Games Day back in August I knew we would play it. I knew we would all make models for our characters and set aside time on our monthly gaming day for it. I did not know it would become the main event! During the slow time between summer and Christmas attendance has been sporadic at best during any of our gaming related fun times. Every few weeks enough of us would be around to try out the game here and there. The immediate response was always something like this, "HOLY CRAP! THAT WAS AWESOME!", or like this, " I JUST DID HOW MUCH DAMAGE!", or ," WE ARE THIS POWERFUL AT LEVEL ONE?!"

Having played more than our fair share of role playing games over the years we all found the game to be both unique and refreshing. It can be played as a space marine kill fest but there is also plenty of room for depth of storyline like you would expect from any well done role playing system. Did I mention how AWESOME space marines are at level one? Its very refreshing to be able to start a new character and not worry about getting killed off in the first combat you come across. Not that you are invincible, mind you. Space Marines can still drop dead rather quickly given the right circumstances as our first group quickly found out. (Genestealers are serious business when they get a crit to your head.)

On the flip side when your team works together using the squad mode abilities you can deal with overwhelming threats almost with ease. When we were surprised by a Lictor while moving to a new area we brought it down so fast the GM was shocked and gave it more HP for a few rounds just so he could at least get a few attacks off. Running the game takes serious adjustment in planning simply because your players are no longer weak nobodies. They are the champions of mankind! They are space marines!

A big bonus for tabletop 40k players is that you can use your models and terrain to really make battles come alive. Many times throughout the missions we would see the map of the area we entered and make an approximate recreation with whatever terrain was available. I'm one of those gamers who really enjoys seeing painted models bring a battlefield to life and it really made the game that much more enjoyable. Defrolla Dan showed up with an old deathwatch squad he nabbed form ebay which some people used but many of us are working on our own custom figures.

If you have yet to give deathwatch a try you should. They have a free starter mission with abridged rules available here.

Soon you too could be hot wiring a chimera and rocking it like this!

This wasn't even the epic finale.

Rune Priest Yimeron Ready to unleash his power.

This is my Blood Angel apothecary. He's got magnets!

Ebay, Now With 100% More Gargantuan Squiggoth

2010-12-04T03:56:00.001-05:00

My main man Carl the killer has been in a tight spot as of late thanks to the economy and jobs and all of that stuff. He has been selling off his orks for a while now but the time has finally come to part with the pride and joy of his force. This was the first large model any of us worked with. I fondly remember the look of horror on Carl's face when I pulled out my power drill and started making holes for the nails we used to pin Squiggy together.

How can you say no to that face?

You can see more pics of squiggy on ebay.

In other news the Mass Effect Marathon was a huge success! We topped the donation goal by 33% and had a blast doing it. If any of you stopped by we want to give you a big thanks for checking us out and look forward to doing it again next year!

*Update*
The high bidder for the Normandy model backed out after being unable to pay the amount he bid. We now have the model sitting around with no owner and still want to auction it off for charity. You can see the model in the images below or go strait to the marathon page to learn more by clicking here.

The Normandy Goes Today!

2010-11-27T13:39:00.000-05:00

So I totally posted the wrong info for the Normandy model. All the practice for breaking boards on my head for the feats of strength section of the marathon must have scattered my brain.

Tonight at 8PM EST this awesome scratch build model made by Revenant Autumn will be auctioned off to help raise money for Childs Play. You can get in on the action by visiting http://masseffect.g33kwatch.com/
You can also watch and join the chat at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/g33kwatch-tv

Note to participate in the auction you must be in chat at 8PM EST! I apologize for having the wrong info originally but remember every donation is helping children in hospitals across America and every $5 donated gets you an entry for tons of prize raffles!

Your Missing Mass Effect Marathon

2010-11-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

The marathon is live and running! Stop by and check us out! I'm planning on breaking my face on space age boards at 2pm today and the model of THE NORMANDY is being raffled off around 8pm! Be sure to donate for a chance to win some cool swag!

Mass Effect Marathon!

2010-11-26T00:19:00.001-05:00

It's finally here! The reason our groups collective hobby time has stopped is about to arrive and we all hope you come and check it out.

For the next couple of days our crew will be together at Joey V.'s place broadcasting live on UStream! The feeds live and running! The embarrassing activities are happening! Heck, with full support form Bioware ,even the voice of the big man him self, Mark Meer, is helping us out!

Now I Know what your all thinking... "We like war games here." Here's the juicy part for you guys! Tau Dan has been working furiously to create a model of The Normandy.

This bad boy will be raffled off today at 8pm! You can enter to win by Donating, Liking g33kWatch on Facebook, or ReTweeting us on Twitter. There are lots of other prizes to win also so check us out! you don't really want to go shopping on black Friday any way...

The Warstore Weekend. 100% Untapped Awesome!

2010-10-27T16:22:00.001-04:00

So I found my self attending my first gaming convention this weekend. After playing Jawaballs at gamesday I felt the urge to wade into the pool of 40K competitive play and see how it felt. I have to say when all was said and done I had a lot of fun. The twenty guys who showed up at the WarStore Weekend 40k Tournament were all good players and great opponents. While my tournament score left me at the bottom of the pack I can honestly say that I put forth my best effort. The best plans can fall apart when the dice just are not with you. Even my opponents were amazed at my dice rolls, they were that bad. All dice moaning aside, I still feel I put up a good fight and had most of the games ended a turn earlier this would be a post about how I rocked my first tournament!
Not wanting to take a super list of doom I settled for something like I usually field in the basement with the guys. Seeing the difference in army composition between our group and the people of the tournament was rather interesting. The Tyranid and IG players had armies that I was used to and could play accordingly. The Logan wing, and Black Templars forced me to take the initiative and come up with some tactical tricks. Lastly the Dark Eldar took me completely by surprise. Seeing the sheer amount of firepower across the table and knowing they would be up in my kitchen fast I opted to reserve much of my armor and attempt to bring a wall of vindicators in on his flank once his vehicles spread across the table. When spotty reserves finally got most of my army into play my scatter dice went bonkers and I actually hurt more of my army than his on some turns.

I found my self wishing I hadn't left my TH/SS terminators and their ride at home as the tournament progressed but made good use of my drop pods and vehicles to restrict enemy movement and secure objectives. The overall strategy worked well. Marines and dreadnoughts can be a real hassle to get off objectives quickly without committing a substantial amount of your force to their destruction.

Anyway enough of the tournament, and more about the rest of the weekend. When we arrived on Friday not many people were in attendance which was understandable with people still being at work. After registering we got our massive loot bags and set off to check things out.

Now when I say massive loot bags I mean massive. There was enough weight in the plastic bag that it wanted to cut into your hand if you held it for to long. My brothers bag actually ripped form the weight. We both had the roughly same things in our loot bags as can be seen below.Dan on the other hand got a ton of metal minis and bases, but no rulebooks. Seriously he must have gotten about twenty metal minis and a good dozen bases or more.

Besides the tournament room, there was also a painting room where they did classes, a room for various clubs to run games besides 40k and WARMACHINE, and a vendor room that was loaded to the brim with everything you could want, except for one thing. I walked in and asked for a WARMACHINE rulebook. Over the last few months whenever I have been to a store it would be out of stock. Once the guy running the shop section realized there were no rulebooks he apologized and gave me his card, telling me to contact him afterward for a discount since they let me down. While in the end I still got a book this was an excellent gesture on the part of the Warstore and really cemented them as one of my top online shops. GF9 was present and their rep was very personable. We talked for a while and he let us know that he would be giving bulk discounts if we wanted to buy a lot. (Which we did.) Armorcast was also there with their awesome doodads and a big box of miscasts that they were selling for $10 a pound. I was tempted to go crazy but remembered that the wife would be watching via online banking!

After perusing the different sections we got a WARMACHINE demo from the guys running the tournament that weekend. You could really tell these guys had an infectious love of the game as they showed us how to play with their personal collections. I kept heading over to check out things throughout the weekend and making small talk about the game. Knowing about my inability to find a rulebook at the end of the day on Sunday, one of the guys came up to me, gave me his rulebook, and said, " I want you to have this because I want you to play!" This floored me. I never would have expected someone who was a complete stranger two days before would actually give me their rule book because they wanted me to play. If more of us did things like this I feel that the hobby would expand in leaps and bounds! Most of us have extra copies of books laying around and such a simple act could be what pushes someone into an enjoyable lifelong hobby!

In all the WarStore Weekend was a great gaming convention to call my first! If you can make it next year I would strongly advise it. The only disappointing thing I could think of all weekend was that there was plenty of room and not enough playing!

Warstore Weekend Tournament Prep

2010-10-20T22:15:00.001-04:00

So its two days before I head off to my first real 40k tournament and I'm doing just what I did not want to be doing, painting new models. In my last post I talked about feeling like I was going in cold and so, with the aid or my brother Jonathan, we got some games in this week. I felt that my play was sloppy but I ended with three wins under my belt. While my list is not an uber list of doom, I am comfortable with it and have been using a list like this for quite some time. While working on my display board this afternoon the thought occurred to me, "I have parts to make a typhoon somewhere!" So after some scrounging I found the dark angel upgrade sprue that was missing last time I looked for it and this beauty Joey V. got in a barter bucket trade for his old wood elves.

Lucky for me the previous owner used superglue like a pro and the bodies snapped right off so I can get to the insides! The model is drying from its new coat of $1 Walmart flat black as I type this and will hopefully be ready to rock on friday!

I also started working on a display board to carry my force around on. I don't plan on making it too fancy. Just a 18x24 bulletin board form staples with dirt glued in the middle and a couple drybrushes of gray on top. If i have a little extra time I may put a bit of static grass here and there but with a day and a half before its time to go I don't want to be waiting for too much glue to dry.

Its nice to finally see my first army nearing completion and I hope getting my stuff finished motivates every one else to get their brushes blazing! Having an army near completion is a beautiful thing!

It's quiet...too quiet...

2010-10-13T18:41:00.022-04:00

So things have been quiet around here lately on the gaming front. Too quiet. Many things are to blame, but it must just be that time of year again. Between getting my brothers enrolled in a new school, going to the beach for a week with the family, going to New Hampshire for a Scott's wedding, and everything in my house deciding to break, there hasn't been much hobby action to speak of. So, let me start by saying this post will involve a lot of catching up.

Gamesday Baltimore was a blast! Our table was pretty popular, and it was a lot of fun to run it! I got to meet a lot of the big names I follow from the blogosphere, and as an added bonus I got to play a game against Jawaballs! From his post that involved our game, I made him get into his serious mode, so even though I lost, it felt like I achieved a moral victory with him being my first tournament caliber opponent.

Speaking of tournaments, I'm signed up to attend The Warstore Weekend at the end of the month! While I'm totally pumped for my first 40k tournament, I also feel completely out of the game since Jawaballs was also the last guy I played. That was almost three months ago. Besides knowing that I will be running my marines, since they are painted and based, I have no idea what I want in my 2000 point list. This being my first tournament I feel like I'm going in blind. I want to bring a list that has a good mix of units and represents my style, but I wonder if it will be enough.

To that end I purchased an attack bike and painted it up. I always enjoyed running my biker squad, and it always seemed to warrant more attention than I thought it deserved on the tabletop. My plan so far is to run my normal 5 man biker squad with a fist, flamer, and melta along with the attack bike and my biker captain with a relic blade. The biker captain will allow me to make the squad a troops choice, and they should be able to fill a variety of roles depending on who I come up against.

While I'm on the attack bike, why doesn't GW make a base for these yet? Every guy who makes resin bases has attack bike bases. You would think GW would have made one of these when they released the standard bike bases. Instead I had to chop up a 60mm and a cavalry base and plasticard up the hole in the middle. It's not that it was a hard thing to do, but I did find it slightly bothersome.

Tonight I plan on painting my last drop pod. Ever since I built my first pod I knew these would be the bane of my hobby existence. If I didn't love dropping dreads up my opponents rear so much I wouldn't have bothered making more, but needing three pods to drop two on the first turn made it a necessary evil.

The last thing I would like to say before I end my catch up post is a big congrats to Scott! When I went to say goodbye before leaving his wedding reception he responded with a hearty, "See you on paint night!"
Needless to say he didn't make paint night that week, but hey, we all knew it was coming when he missed the previous three for dance lessons...
Dancing is serious business!

Dan's first Games day (and post)

2010-09-14T14:00:00.001-04:00

So, it's my first post at the PBL, and I decided to present my video of my escapades and interviews at Games Day 2010 in Baltimore

Yes. It's 24 days late.

But it's good. I swear.

Dan's games day overview from CapnFrosty on Vimeo.

My Brother's Youngbloods Entry

2010-09-01T12:55:00.004-04:00

This is my 14 year old brother Jon's Brother Claudio. He worked on it for about a week leading up to games day. I never made it through the golden demon lines but I heard he made first cut with it and am extremely proud. Since moving in with me he has been working on his painting skills and his new blood angel army is most likely going to be the best looking army in the house pretty soon. Not bad for the kid who build his models with gorilla glue not loo long ago! The base is even magnetized so he can still play with it in his space hulk set. He is planning on painting the rest of his space hulk up to this standard and honestly I cant wait to see the rest!

DEATHWATCH Collectors edition - Coolest Packaging Ever!

2010-08-27T22:37:00.005-04:00

Around lunch time today Scott sent me THIS LINK.
Sadly I didn't walk upstairs and read it until 10PM. That has to be the best collectors edition packaging I have ever seen in my 27.93 years on this planet. When a box for a book is so cool it makes you wanna go build models for your tabletop armies, it has to be good. I already picked up my copy of DEATHWATCH from games day but I'm sorely tempted to order this and pass the standard on. After I build a 10 man squad real quick that is...

With only 2k views on you tube I'm guessing many people don't know about this yet. Spread the word. This is definitely a collectors edition worth replacing the wife's antique clock on the mantle with!

*Update* Apparently the pre-orders went up this morning. With only 2000 copies being made and 500 of them going to retailers these are going to go fast. The coolest thing of all though, is that if you do get one, the Apocryphon Oath on the inside is personalized to any name and chapter you wish.