Old Stuff Day (Small) Original Art by http://firstkeeper.deviantart.com/

Consider this post a string around your finger to remind you that Old Stuff Day is quickly approaching.  This time, I don’t expect that I’ll be digging up much of my own work, as I really wrote very little this past year, but I do intend to post some links to great articles from other bloggers that deserve to be high-lighted.

If you’re wondering just what exactly Old Stuff Day is, I’ll quote from my original post:

[To celebrate Old Stuff Day,] simply by taking a look back at some of your own classic blog posts, dusting them off, and presenting them to a new audience of blog-readers.  On March 2nd, I hope that everyone takes some time to renew some of their favorite posts from their blogs past to share them with the community.

And if you don’t already have a blog?  Well, don’t feel left out.  On Old Stuff Day, readers of blogs are encouraged to dig through older content of various blogs and comment on a post that might otherwise have been considered long-since dead.  The same thread0mantic behavior that would get you chastized on forums will surely earn you the respect of a good-natured blogger.

It’s a great chance to polish up an old post that deserves a second glance–be it one of your own, or somebody else’s.

I want to take a moment to thank Tamara, aka FirstKeeper over at Deviant Art, for allowing us to use her art as our banner.  I’d also encourage everyone to go take a gander at her stuff, it’s really quite good.  Also, special thanks to Thor, over at Creative Twilight for keeping the dream alive in my absence.

You’re surely aware that I haven’t been writing the blog much as of late, but what you might not know is that the blog itself costs me in excess of $100 per year to run.  It was difficult enough to justify such a frivilous purchase in the first place, but with me not writing updates for so long, it because an easy decision to switch servers.  That’s why you’ll now find the site at:

http://warhammer39999.wordpress.com

The bulk of my costs were from hosting fees (which are required when running a wordpress.org site), so I opted to switch to one of the free hosting providers.  As shameful as it might sound, my first choice was going to be blogger, as it integrates feedburner, allows other commenting systems, and automatically populates images for your recent posts in other blogspot blogrolls (something that’s been a thorn in my side since I started blogging–more on that here).

The downside to moving to blogger?  Well, the big one is that, while I figured out how to transfer all of my content (ie. my words), there seemed to be no simple way to move the photos.  Granted, I could export all of the photos out of my wordpress blog, and then bulk import them into my Blogger, but it would’ve been a tedious process to go through and re-link all of those images in my old posts.  Plus, all of my comments for images had broken formatting.  If you’d care to see what I’m talking about, check out my attempt at http://warhammer39999.blogspot.com (for the record, the images don’t look broken, but that’s because the original warhammer39999.com site is still up and running.  Once that comes down, all of the links will automatically die).  Perhaps if someone smarter than me knows of a simple way to bulk edit those links, I can still move to a blogger site–but for now, I’m choosing to stick with wordpress.

Unlike blogger, wordpress doesn’t have many advantages here:  I can’t still use my feedburner feed, they want to charge me extra money to use my domain (warhammer39999.com), and I can’t edit the code of the website to direct people to my feedburner link instead of the wordpress one, so for all followers that already subscribe to me via feedburner, they’ll be fine, but any new subscribers will link to wordpress.com, which would break if I move the site again one day.

It really came down to a question of whether I thought it was more important to have a better blog from this point forward, or to preserve all of the original content I’ve already created, and ultimately, it wasn’t a hard decision for me.  Though I’d like to have the best blog possible, nothing frustrates me more than when I’m looking up information on Google for some obscure modelling reference, only to find it points to a broken link.  So, for the people that might want to see this information preserved for posterity, I keep this blog for you.

I guess there’s always an option to keep this as an archive blog, and move the new one to blogspot though…

Long story short, this is still a work in progress, but after almost a year of neglect, it’s time to start posting again, and I’m now committing to moving to a new platform.  The website name, warhammer39999.com, might stick around, depending upon if I find another solution though.  We shall see.

Anywho, thanks for reading another diatribe.  I hope to be posting some quality content in the relatively near future.  By the way, as a reminder, Old Stuff Day is coming up soon, special thanks to Thor over at Creative Twilight for keeping the movement alive.

Classic style "Smiley" pumpkin

If you were drawn to read this post simply because of the title, then you should probably go seek mental help.  But as long as you’re here, won’t you stop and take a gander at my latest ghourd approximations?

In 2006, I gave up carving real pumpkins in favor of styrofoam equivalents that can be purchased from local arts and craft stores (such as Michaels or Jo-Ann fabrics).  My original theory was that I spend time creating these works, and would like to have them immortalized so I can enjoy them for years to come.  Well, five years into the experiment, I’m pretty much burned out on the fake stuff and long for the real thing. 

Creepy or Funny?

Well, this year, I had three fake ones left from the original 2005 purchase (mental note: never mention in passing to your mother that you like something, or you’re bound to wind up with a dozen or so for Christmas).  Two of those were carved, leaving only one for next year…  Almost done!

While I didn’t come up with anything of a 40k theme for this year (unlike last year where I did a Tyranid Pumpkin), I’m happy with the results.

The two subjects are a demonic baby fetus (which wasn’t my idea–but merely the result of Google searching for “demon pumpkin”) and a more classic style eyes and jagged-style mouth creation.  Of the fake pumpkins carved over the years, this is actually my favorite–though I still prefer some of the real pumpkins I’d done in years previous to it.  This will do nicely to scare tiny children off my porch…and I get to enjoy that for years to come!

Happy Halloween everyone.  Stay safe!

Just over one month from the first post (closer to two months since the inception of the project), my Imperial Guard contingent has been completed*.

You didn’t happen to notice the asterisk on that sentence, did you?  No?  Well, good…

Yes, there is a big asterisk on the end, indicating that my sentence requires conditions to be true.  Those conditions are:

1. “Finished” doesn’t include basing the models.
2. It also doesn’t include weapon options or magnetization, as I still haven’t given any thought to how these guys will be arranged in squads and/or what they’ll actually be used for in the army (presumably they’ll all pretty standard guardsmen, but which ones are in command squads and which belong in weapon teams is still up in the air).
3. They’re not labeled with army badges or squad designations.  This is partly because I don’t know the proper way to do so in an IG force, and partly because the above bullet point (how can I mark them if I dont’ know how they’re arranged?).  Any suggestions on this point would be appreciated.
4. Lastly the asterisk indicates that this batch of models is completed.  As this is my first stint into the IG force (ok, technically it’s my second), there are more to comes…

So, with that HUGE asterisk, I’m finished with 105 models.  I s’pose it would’ve been easiser to simply state that I’d finished painting these models, and I could’ve saved everyone alot of time, eh?

Well, here are some photos of the “finished” models, and as I’ve done with each WIP post, below you’ll find a brief update of the changes I’ve made:

1. All boots were repainted black.  Technically, I actually repainted about 20 pairs before I realized that once the paint dried, it was indistinguishable from the primer, so the rest of them were just touched up.  After that, I gave them a highlight of Delta Ceramcoat’s Chargcoal Gris Anthracite Opaque (that’s a mouthful), that I’d purchased at Walmart a few years ago.  The final highlight was a mixture of that and Delta Ceramcoat’s Quaker Grey Gris Quaker Opaque.  (By the way, now I’m starting to think that the name is just Quaker Grey, and “Gris Quaker” is the same name in French….).
2. Smallish details were added.  Models got proper hair color, the commander got an extra highlight of yellow on his gear, sunglasses painted,  flamers were singed, etc.
3. Eyeballs were added.  I was torn on this one.  The faces did need some additional accents, and I deferred this decision to the wife.  She said she thought they’d look much  better with eyeballs, and I begrudingly agreed. This actually reminded me of a fateful weekend when I helped my friend Monty paint 100+ metal cadians in a single day.  Sure, they weren’t the prettiest things, but they were certainly table-top quality.  When we were done, I insisted that he go home and paint eyeballs on each of them (which never happened), so I guess this was the universe getting back at me for making such frivilous demands.

So, there you have it.  105 painted Imperial bullet-stops.  I wonder how many more I’ve left to go before I’m really finished…

By the way, special props to RuntMcRory over at Military of Ultramar, for coming up with a kitchy name, and ultimately serving as my inspiration to do a PDF army.

Games Workshop "Field Generators" from Battle of MaCragge

My problem is trying to find a suitable model.  I know that the Battle for Macragge had some nifty little field projectors (pictured above).  They’re a little small for my likes, but they’d work perfectly…if I had any… 

Over the years, I’ve been notorious for buying a couple of starter boxes of whatever GW releases so I could have spare (cheap) models, but for some reason I never did that with the McCragge set.  Because of this, I’ve always wanted to have some of these projectors, a downed spaceship, and the pilot from the set.   Now, to make an effective wall, I find myself wanting the parts of 4 or more of these sets, but alas, it’s now out of print.

Does anyone know where to get these bits still for a reasonable price?

Quantum Gotchic's Alternative

For other alternatives, I stumbled upon Quantum Gothic’s “Forcefield Pylons,” and quite frankly, I’m in love.  This is absolutely perfect for what I want to use.  The only problem with these is that they come four to a kit (in 17 pieces each!) and are about $7 each.  I guess when you compare that to GW models, that’s not that farfetched, but I’m a cheap-ass gamer, and I’m leery about dropping a few hundred dollars for nifty fences that I can only use in Apoc games.

They are indeed pretty though.

So, I thought I’d ask around and see if anyone knew of a solution for this particular problem.  Are you currently fielding a “containment fence” in any of your games?  What model did you choose to go with for it?  Are you pleased with it?  Or maybe you have another suggestion for a cool forcefield idea that I just haven’t come across yet?

Likewise, does anyone out there have either of these pieces they’re looking to part with?  I’d happily buy them off you…

I learned a few things in this order that I thought I’d pass along to the teaming masses of fans I have.  Ok, but seriously, there are some things that you should be aware of when ordering custom dice, so here goes:

1. I’m sure there are plenty of places that make custom dice, but before I even stumbled upon the post, the B&C crowd had already settled upon Chessex as the manufacturer.  They’re pretty much the industry standard in dice making though, so I had no problem with that.  Keep in mind that my experience is wholey dealing with Chessex, so if you do decide to go with another manufacturer, everything else here should be taken with a grain of salt.
2. Pricing for custom dice is done “per side.”  The important thing to note is that while dice have six sides, you only pay for the sides that will have custom printing on them.  I’m sure the common answer is for people to substitute just a single side, which makes the prices far more reasonable.
3. When choosing which number to replace with the custom logo, the logical answer seems to be to replace the 1 with the logo (as it most resembles the 1).  If you do this though, you’ll typically hate seeing your custom image pop up, so the better solution is to replace the 6 instead.  I did make a comment earlier that you should replace half of them on the 1 face and the other half on the 6 face.  That way, when a bunch of icons come up, you can have your opponent quake in fear of your mighty rends (sort of).
4. When determining pricing for your order, you can have only a single icon (or set of icons) for your dice.  That is to say, you can’t receive the bulk discount for ordering 50 ultramarines dice and 50 blood angels dice.  They look at those as two orders of 50 dice.  Color, however, does not have the same requirements.  In fact, they told us that they could have as many five different color schemes of the same dice, and pack them into a single order.
5. They claim to be able to make any of their dice available in custom orders, but this isn’t exactly true.  Some color combinations just aren’t available in custom orders (at least this is what I was told).  Case in point, you can’t have the lustrous green with silver (though they can substitute the lustrous green with white pips).  Just be sure to email them and find out what’s available for committing to something in your mind.
6. They claim to be able to put most anything on the die, as long as you supply a high quality drawing.  Keep in mind, that it’s going to be rendered in two colors, so make sure it’s not super detailed.  Also, for common die patterns (like army logos) they have many on hand already, so if you can’t find the logo you want and it’s a pretty standard thing, just ask them–they might already have it on hand.
7. With that said, keep in mind that not all colors may be in stock at the time of order.   When we placed the order for the Ultra dice, some people requested the “black blue with gold” version of the gemini dice, but they just didn’t have the dice on hand to handle a custom order at the time.  We could’ve delayed the order, but instead we chose a different color scheme.  They didn’t give us an option to pay up front and have the other colors delivered when they were back in stock.
8. The time frame for custom dice depends upon their stock on hand, competition with other orders, and the size of your purchase.  Smaller orders are easier to fulfill and are therefore shipped faster.  When you pool dice together with 20 other guys, naturally it goes slower.  When you have them all shipped to the U.K. to then be distributed back to the U.S., well, that slows things down as well…
9. Before you place an order with a huge amount of friends, think about the benefits you’ll get.  Yes, combining more people will get you a greater discount, but after 100-200 dice, there really are some diminishing returns.  Look at the quantity you’d like, and the chart to determine where it makes sense to buy.  As a 40k player, you’re going to need at least 30-40 dice yourself, which automatically qualifies you for the first tier of discount.   40 dice will cost you $30, whereas 100 dice will set you back twice that (for savings of 20 “Free” dice).  So, if you can pool $30 with a single friend, you can get 50 dice each.  Trying to get too many more into it,  could lead to a huge logistical effort, for $3-4 in savings.

I’m quite happy with the dice, as I was able to get the group to include the colors that I liked (red was a hard sell, but they’re ironically my favorite of the lot).  I haven’t used them in a game yet, so I have no idea how good they are (honestly though, I’m hoping they’re just average), but I’m sure they’ll get their chance soon enough.

If you’d like to order some dice of your own, be sure to check out Chessex’s website.

I would’ve said that was by coincidence, but when I think about it, it’s most likely not.  The anticipation of an upcoming Apoc game far surpasses that of a standard game to me.  I’m sure this is because they happen less frequently overall, have so many cool models that you otherwise never get to see, and just have an epic scale about them.  So, while I find it hard to make time for a standard 40k game, I seem to always make room for Apoc.

Some gamers in the community, however, look upon the game with disdain.  Whether it’s because of the inherent imbalance, the insanity of long games or too many players in general, each has a reason why they might not enjoy the games so much. 

This week’s question tries to dig into your psyche a little bit to find out whether you love or hate Apoc.  Please choose the appropriate answer to the quiz.  Additionally, if you have a reason or thought behind why you love/hate the format, please share.

Mahalo…

Does this look like Tony Shalhoub to anyone else?

A month ago today, I posted my first WIP status update on my Imperial Guard (lovingly entitled the Ultramar PDF–or planetary defense force).  It really seems like I’ve been at it much longer than that, but keeping track of progress is a big reason why I started this blog in the first place. 

Despite the overwhelming number of models (105 for those who are keeping score), it didn’t seem like a chore because of the way I wind up painting.  Yes, I painted them as one giant assembly line, but when I got bored of painting, I simply set the models down and came back to them when I felt like it.  Due to my lackadaisical methodology, I’m quite surprised that I’m this close to finishing in just a single month.

For progress this status update, I’ve managed to:

1. Paint their skin tones (mostly with Dwarf Flesh base, a Chestnut Wash, and then highlights with Elf Flesh.  My more nubian brothers started with Scorched Brown as a base, with Bestial Brown highlights.  Granted, with so many out there, I played around with those schemes, substituting other colors as I felt like it.
2. Yellow Aquillas.  These started with a Blazing Orange basecoat, and received a highlight of Sunburst Yellow.  For my marines I typically also add a layer of Bad Moon Yellow between those, but these were so small and plentiful, that I just skipped that step.

So, left to do are the boots (which are already black, but have unsightly splash marks where I went sloppy with the fatigues), and assorted piece/parts that are unique to specific models.  This includes things like hair on the sarges, staining the end of flamer barrels, etc.  If I feel particularly giddy, I might even throw eyeballs on each guy.

But that, is for another post…

The results of this poll, more than any other I’ve run so far, surprised me, and you can see them below:

[poll id="29"]

Of the four available answers, I see one as a Strongly Disagree, (“I wouldn’t be interested..”) another as a Indifferent (“I dunno…”), another as a Slightly Agree (“It could be fun…”) and the last as a Strongly Agree (“It sounds great!”).  My–perhaps naive–expectations would be that people would like this idea, so I thought I’d see a bunch of people leaning that direction.

Instead, I got almost the opposite.  A full 35% of people claimed they wouldn’t be interested in such a game at all, while only 7% thought it was a great idea.  The good news is that, f the remaining 58%, most of those were optimistic that it could be fun if it was done correctly. 

So, I s’pose it wasn’t all negative, but it does leave me wondering why things went the way they did.  Sadly, I didn’t get much in the way of comments as to why people thought it was a bad idea.  The only comments I did receive were somewhat skeptical (though optimistic) that such a game could work out–and they provided some nice alternatives to how to make it work.

Without any real opinions to go on, I’m going to throw out some possibilities of why I think so many people might be leery of playing a game with pre-built armies:

• It is out of their comfort zone.  Some people like to play specific styles of armies (shooty, deathstar, hordes, h2h, etc.), and know that they prefer these to other styles.  Allowing someone else to make their list for them might force them to play a style they don’t like.
• It removes a sense of self.  People can become very entwined with their armies and their lists.  Some people go so far as to play a single list for years without modifying it, so asking them to play a different unit, much less a different army, might make them a bit uncomfortable.  Furthermore, this is a multi-faceted hobby, so if the models you’re playing with are provided for you, then that means that HQ model you spent months converting/painting is sitting on a shelf in neglect…
• Lack of familiarity.  Not everyone knows every codex (I dare say very few of us do).  So it goes without saying that to commit to playing a random army that was made for you might mean you’re playing with a list that you have no idea what it does.  This might put you at a disadvantage, and perhaps increase your chance of losing.

I can’t say for certain why people weren’t enamoured with the idea.  Perhaps it wasn’t anything as sinister as I’d suggested, and perhaps I just didn’t explain myself clearly enough?  Or maybe I did, but you had to read an entire blathering post to really get what I was asking, and many people just voted based upon the poll in the corner of the site without reading the post?

Hopefully some of you that voted will step up and justify your reasoning.  Keep in mind, I’m not asking you to defend yourselves: you have every right to choose whatever answer you did.  I’m just curious as to why you chose the options you did and whether there’s any modifications to the concept that would help the idea seem more appealing?  Perhaps (as Cole suggested), if you were just assigned a portion of a force, but you were still given a contigent of points to buy whatever you’d like to supplement them?

As always, I welcome your feedback.  And please remember to vote on the current poll to the right:  let’s find out who knows how much GW paint really costs…

Image Credit:  “I Love Lucy” image copyright by CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Since the last last update, I think I’ve made some pretty significant progress.  At that point, their khakis were finished, their bandoliers had one coat of brown, and their guns had three coats of red.  My intention was to move forward and to through a few coats of BLOO on them (read: blue for anyone who isn’t as fanatic about Ultramarines as I am). 

I’m happy to say that they’ve been painted blue and more.  To date, they now have an additional:

• 3 coats of blue (a base coat and two highlights)
• 1 highlight on the brown
• the 4th (And final) highlight on the guns in red
• Boltgun Metal for anything that will remain silver
• Green grenades / misc pieces (2 coats of green)

Errr.. I also forgot that I have to paint some Comm Links...

They still need their Aquilas (and various other bits) painted yellow–which will require three coats, and their faces done.  I also need to do their boots up a proper black.  After that, it’s just a few misc bits on various models (headsets, skull emblems, etc.) and they’re ready for basing.  Hard to believe the end is in sight…

So, what do you think?  Are they far too cartoony?  I know they wouldn’t do a good job of blending in with the surrounding terrain given their gaudy outfits, but I think they’ll fit in perfectly with my Ultramarines.  Yes, the blue and the red are pretty stark, but that was intentional to match the rest of my forces.  I’m just wondering what some objective bystanders think on the subject…