Motivation

Ron's sent around an e-mail asking us for what keeps us motivated and painting/modeling/what have you. This actually led to a few revelations as to why I enjoy painting and modeling that I hadn't realized before. Surprisingly, this blog is not one of them. I originally started the blog to refine my tactics and force me to sit down and look at my tactics/strategies and refine them. I believe that I have seen some small improvement in that area, as my Mobile Infantry list has proven to be fairly successful, especially given my limitations unit-wise. However I don't feel any particular need to complete more models because I have a blog- if anything that's just gravy on the top.

One way I get my painting done is my compulsion to multitask. The girl and I enjoy watching shows together (currently working through a very impressionistic series of recordings of Battlestar Galactica season 4), so when we fire them up she gets off to reading/working and I break out my models. For some reason I can pay attention better to both things when I'm not focusing on them as much, especially during monologues.

Another is that I'm finally beginning to enjoy the work that I am producing. Adding dry brushing and washes to my repertoire has really made my dudes pop (at least in my opinion), so I'm proud of the work that I put into them now. I still need to try this "highlighting" at some point and my free hand needs a lot of work, but hopefully that'll all fall into place at some point.

A third thing is the many different paint schemes that I have going on with my army. If I ever get bored painting normal guardsmen I can switch off to one of my vets or the other platoon. Painting an army all the same color just seems mind numbing to me unless they have a really freakin' awesome paint scheme, and even then when you have IG to paint that could be a bit too much.

Finally, and probably the biggest reason that I do what I do is that I have vowed to not buy another model until I have painted/assembled all of the models that I own. This has a financial aspect to it as well, as on an Americorps salary I really can't afford to buy all of the units that I want (Valks, Demolishers, more Chimeras another army- maybe next year...), but I also know that if I didn't have this requirement I would probably just leave the lot of them blank and carry on.

And speaking of painting... some pics of me painting up Hearts platoon. The boys still need hearts on their bases and squad insignia, but for the most part they are done. Next on the list: flamers and sergeants. Base coat consisted of Gore Red and Bleached Bone uniforms, Boltgun Metal blades, Chainmail insignia and some Snakebite Leather and Tamiya flat black thrown in on places. Skin was either just Bronzed Flesh or combined with Elf Flesh or Snakebite Leather. Badab Black wash was used over the Bleached Bone, Leather and Chainmail bits and Ogryn Flesh over the skin.

First post and pre wash:



Now some pics of the squads post dry brush with Skull White:

Battle Report: 1500 vs Chaos

For the first time in a long time we had an MEQ player at the club on Tuesday. Sam, he of a thousand armies, decided to go with a Khorne/Nurgle list to mix up the pool and drew into playing me. We rolled up annihilation and table quarters for deployment.

Side note: does anyone else seem to keep on rolling Annihilation? Am I unconsciously rolling high because most of the time in this game that's a good thing? I swear, I play at least two games of KP to objective based missions, and often times we need to roll for mission 4 times before we get anything but KP.

Further side note: I would have had pics, but apparently the kids in my lab got a hold of my camera and deleted my pics. Or I accidentally did that. Anyway... grr.

Sam deployed with his Defiler and Obliterators towards the rear and the rest of his army up front. I only deployed my chimeras and Leman russes, the former hiding behind the latter. Turn 1 exemplified how the game would go, as Sam turboboosted his bikes and flew his daemon prince up to strike on turn two. Fortunately for me BID plasma fire from my command squad took care of the DP (yay 9 plasma shots!) while my tanks eliminated all of the bikers, the HB Russ managing to eliminate 4 of the 5 by itself.

Turn 2 saw a squad of summoned Khorne demons teleport in next to the Nurgle rhino and the plague marines disembarking. Lascannon fire from the Oblits eliminated my lascannon Russ and the PMs plus a battle cannon shot from the Defiler managed to reduce my command squad to just the commander. For my turn reserves consisted of Harker's squad and Al'Rahem's platoon. Unfortunately my astropath had been shot down, so I had to accept the results. Al'Rahem, the melta SWS and my merged squads came in on the flank with the Defiler, while the flamers came in on the other. Here was the second of the key turning points: When asking his squad to bring the defiler down, Al'Rahem rolled double 6s, meaning that his order failed so completely that his squad couldn't do anything that round. This is the second game in a row that this has happened... I'm beginning to wonder if Al'Rahem has been drinking on the job... The melta SWS squad missed completely, allowing the defiler to defile both squads on the next turn. I also failed to kill the plague marines when they were out in the open, opening the doors for plenty of punishment in close quarters combat. My last Russ was destroyed by power fists and more daemons teleported in to join the fray.

The rest of the game was downhill for me, but it still felt fairly close. My stormtroopers deep struck in next to the Defiler and managed to kill it, allowing my wave of infantry to start closing in on the obliterators, hoping to make some easy kill points. Harker's squad managed to wipe out a squad of demons, but were then eliminated by teleporting terminators...

...which were in turn eliminated by Marbo, Lord of Awesome. Unfortunately by the end of turn 5 most of my army had been eliminated and I called the game.

Even though I lost it was still a fun game, as both of us got to make pretty fantastic plays that dramatically swung the balance one way or the other. I will never get tired of annihilating MCs in one turn with my plasma command squad, and Marbo is just too much fun. I just need to work on deployment and develop a strategy to counter dangerous CC MEQs.

Army Theme and To Do List

Felt pretty sick last night, so stayed in and painted for a long while. I got the white drybrush on most of the guardsmen that I had painted so far, and even added a picture of a club (the suit, not the weapon) to their bases as part of their platoon markings. I still need to add regiment, platoon, squad and rank markings to their pauldrons, as well as do some touch up on the models in general, but they are about finished. Yay!



A note about my army: I'm going for a playing card theme, as you may have been able to gather from my pics so far. No, I'm not really sure where the idea came from (probably one night while I was insomniac and decided to start painting), but it's been a lot of fun to paint so far and helps keep everything fresh as I'm not just using the same paint scheme over and over again. I'm also a big fan of card games, Euchre in particular, so that was a plus. I also didn't want to go with one of the more established armies, as it seems that as opposed to every other force in 40k to choose a different Imperial Guard army is to choose a completely separate model line. I don't want to be Cadian, but I do want to use their models and Catachan models... so I went for the crazy theme instead.



Clubs and Hearts will be the markings for my two platoons; Clubs will contain all/the majority of heavy weapons and will play base defense, while Hearts will be led by Al'Rahem and contain special weapon squads. Ironically I am mostly using Hearts platoon these days but only have Clubs platoon painted up in any significant numbers... Diamonds and Spades are reserved for my veterans, who have the better equipment and training as well as the authority to act more independently on the field. Certain characters will be representative of all 4 suits, such as my HQ choices and Marbo. And, as you can tell, I've decided on using painted bases as I think I want to see my troopers as game pieces rather than people... kind of reflects Imperial philosophy to some extent in that way.

Since I love Euchre so much, ranks are according to the cards available in that most awesome of games.
9- Guardsman
10 (or X)- Sergeant
J- Stormtroopers, Psykers, Sentinels, as they all tend to act very independent from the rest of the army and can have a large impact on the game if used correctly (in Euchre, Jacks of the trump suit and the same color suit are the highest cards in the game)
Q- Junior Officer
K- Senior Officer
A- Allies, Commissars and Marbo (because, really, he deserves to be on his own)

I am unsure of what the markings will be for my vehicles, as I am unsure of whether or not to make them part of the 24th or simply attachments to it, as I see the Fortunan regiments as more light infantry with occasional armor back up from attached companies.

Looking at my models that I have right now, here's what I still need to build.

2 Demolition charge guardsmen
1 flamer guardsman
4 melta guardsmen
1 plasma guardsman
4 carapace armored plasma vets
3 sniper vets
3 melta vets
1 Sgt Harker
1 carapace armored Company Commander
1 Platoon Commander
1 Al'Rahem counts as
1 Commissar with power weapon and bolt pistol
Possibly 6 more regular guardsmen for Clubs platoon if I don't want them to contain heavy weapon teams.

And I need to finish building and paint a Leman Russ, two chimeras and four sentinels. And paint up Hearts platoon. And finish off the heavy weapons teams. Lots of work ahead for me...

WIP- Guardsmen

I've gotten back into painting in the past couple of days and decided to put some effort into my rank and file guardsmen. These were my first attempts at painting, and they turned out all right, but I neglected to do much besides the basecoat. Here's an example of mark 1 guardsman, painted using Bleached Bone, black acrylic (Tamiya I believe) and some Bronzed Flesh.



Yesterday I broke out my washes and decided to experiment with them for the first time. Using Badab Black on the armor and Ogryn Flesh on the skin, the results turned out like this:



I felt that this particular shade was a bit too dark for what I had in mind, and had actually been having misgivings about the Bleached Bone for a while now. So I decided to dry brush the armor with Skull White and see how it turned out. I also threw some Snakebite Leather on the leather parts with a black wash and painted the emblems in Chainmail. Thankfully, I believe that it turned out very well; here's my test model...




Here's a side by side comparison of post and pre dry brushing guardsmen:



And here's a full squad post dry brushing:



I still need to do some work on painting the bases as well as getting squad insignia on their pauldrons, but I think I'll do some more games especially before the latter, as I'd hate to have to go back and redo them.