Triathlon Roadblock

I'm beginning to see why most bloggers don't make multiple posts a week.  You try and save up enough info to post, then forget half of it before you write it down.  Anyway, I've run into a problem.  In order to run my 40k list that I used against Alpha, I have to have two more obliterators.  Well, being the procrastinator that I am, I left off buying my other two obliterators too long and one of my hobbyists came along and bought all mine before I could.  No big deal, I'll just buy another prince instead...oh wait, he bought me out of those too. 
Store Sales - 2, My Tournament Army - 0

So I think tonight, I'm going to build a couple more plague marines, to add to my squad of seven.  I'll put those in with either plasma or meltas for objective sitting and sub out my thousand sons for another squad of normal CSM's with 2xflamers.  The list would look something like this...

Daemon Prince
-Wings
-Warptime
-Mark of Tzeentch

(10) Chaos Marines
-Champ w/Fist
-2xMeltas
Rhino

(10) Chaos Marines
-Champ w/Fist
-2xFlamers
Rhino

(10) Berzerkers
-Champ w/Power Weapon
Land Raider

(8) Plague Marines
-Champ w/Power Weapon or Fist (don't have my new list in front of me)
-2xMeltas or 2xPlasma Guns (depends on what the champ has)

(2)Obliterators

I think that's it.  I have all of it painted except for the finishing touches on the second Rhino and the two special weapons plague marines.

In other news, I played a game of fantasy last week!  I forgot my army list aaaaaand my army book when I went so I kind of had to patch it together from memory, but it went pretty well.  I played against dwarves with the mission where the table is divided from corner to corner and you stay 6" away from the center line.  The quick version is this. 

He lined up on a hill near the center, I used the ghoulkin vampire power to take a free 8" movement towards him.  He shot me a bit, I summoned them back and charged.  I killed his stuff over the next couple rounds and only lost my 20 ghoul unit due to some direct hits with the grudge-thrower.  The blood knights had the best game ever and I fully expect them to do nothing in the next 10 games I use them to make up for the ridiculous rolls I had.  I can't remember much else, it was a week ago and this post is getting pretty wordy.  Here's a rough outline of my list as I remember it.

Vampire Lord
-Master of the Black Arts
-Wristbands of Gold
-Raise Ghouls power
-Other stuff I can't remember

Konrad

Vampire
-Mounted
-Blood Drinker
-Other stuff that is cool

Wight King
-BSB
-Drakenhof Banner

(20) Ghouls
-Ghast

(40) Ghouls
-Ghast

(20) Grave Guard
-Full Command

Vargulf

(5) Blood Knights
-Full Command

I think that's about it, not a very good list overall but I do alright with it.  Mostly I just use the models I have painted as much as I can. (I like painted minis if that isn't apparent by this point)  I was considering picking up some cairn wraiths to use instead of the blood knights.  The knights are very cool but the are just huuuuugggggeeee point sinks/targets.  We'll see.  I'll try and post one more time before Sunday's event.  If I'm on the ball, I'll remember to take my camera to take some pictures.  If I forget, I'll at least post up pics of my armies next Monday/Tuesday.  I think this has gone on longer than I meant, time to go paint!  Again.

-Noah

Once more unto the breach...

As planned, I had my rematch with Alpha's space marines today.  The mission was seize ground with spearhead deployment.  I used the same list as before except I remembered to bring my daemon prince, which turned out to be the difference.  It wasn't so much that the prince went out and killed a bunch of stuff as much as he was bait in a trap for the terminators.  He got charged while hiding behind my land raider and managed to take two of them down and then...dead!  Luckily I had a squad of berzerkers and chaos marines near enough to fire into the remaining five and kill them in assault.  After they were down it was still a close battle but I managed to squeak out a 2-1 win.  Overall a really quick and fun match.

Too quick.

After the game, Alpha offered me the chance at taking on his double-lash chaos marine list.  I reluctantly accepted and then spent the next hour cowering behind blocking terrain and trading long distance shots with seven obliterators while trying to avoid being lashed out into the open.  I had a chance to at least tie it on turn 5 but my upset bid failed when I couldn't get enough marines into combat with his weakened daemon prince to finish it off and proceeded to get sweeping advanced by it.  Let me just say, playing against lash of submission may be the most frustrating thing you can face in 40k.  I think it would have been a lot worse at 2000pts too.  In any case, I can't see myself using it unless I was running a pure Slaanesh chaos army and even then I'd strongly consider not fielding it.

All in all I'm feeling much better about the list than I did last week after my short-handed loss.  I still don't think that second set of obliterators is the answer, but they will probably do for this tournament.  I'll try to get the rest of the berzerkers and the next two obliterators painted this week so I can focus on my Vampire Counts and LotRs armies next week.  That's all for me,take care!

-Noah

First Pics!

As promised, here's some pics of my latest project.  I definitely need some practice at photographing models but I don't think these turned out too bad considering I was using our back-up camera and didn't really prepare the lighting at all.  These were just taken in the empty cabinet of my display case.

Just a quick note on my painting philosophy in general since this is the first sample of my hobby ever to hit the 'net.  I definitely paint to a tabletop standard, lots of dry brushing and washes, nothing too fancy.  I like to have things look nice but I also like to finish models in a timely manner before I get sick of seeing them.  My chaos marine army is a good example of that compromise.  I think of it as my "quick and dirty" army.  I paint it to get it done because I enjoy playing with them.  Some day I may find an army or project that I can put the full effort into, but right now I bounce around too much.

I tried painting a chaos star on the side of the land raider using Dave Taylor's guide, super helpful and I love the look.

The obliterators I just wanted to bang out in a night and went with a rusted look instead of aligning them to a particular chaos god.

All in all, glad to have some eye candy up on here at last but like I said, I'll work on getting rid of those shadows with a real light box and a better camera.  Alright, enough messing around with the blog.  I need to get some more work done on the berzerkers tonight if I want to have this army ready to go come the 21st.

-Noah

More Chaos

I finished up the two obliterators I've had sitting primed and unpainted for the past 18 months.  Nothing like a tournament to get models painted.  Anyway, I'm going for a rematch with Chad's marines tomorrow and I'm considering changing out a few things in the list to better deal with TH/SS terminators and other super assault units.  If I drop two berzerkers and two of the four obliterators, I could just field Abaddon.  Once again, I'm faced with leaving a weak point in my list or falling back on using named characters.  While it would also help me get my painting done faster with three less models, Abaddon has a very dated model.  Decisions, decisions...

I'll post an update tomorrow after the game and I'm going to do some fiddling with posting some photos because, well let's face it, blogs without cool pics suck.

-Noah

Back to the drawing board?

So I played my first game with the new and supposedly improved chaos list tonight.  I played against a buddy of mine playing a pretty strong 1500pt Space Marine army.  We rolled up kill points with pitched battle deployment (yawn) and his list looked something like this...

-Shrike
-(10) Assault Marines w/power weapon
-(10) Tactical Marines w/flamer, multimelta
-(10) Tactical Marines w/flamer, multimelta
-Ironclad in drop pod w/melta, heavy flamer
-(8) Assault Terminators in...
-Land Raider Crusader

I was running option #3 from yesterday's post and I got tabled on the bottom of turn 5.  I'm not sure but this may have been my first time getting tabled since starting chaos.  Basically what happened is I gave him first turn and turtled up in a corner, hoping to make it extremely costly for him to come in with his infiltrating jump pack marines, Shrike and his drop dread.  He left his tac marines hiding in some cover and I ignored them at first as they posed no threat.  I managed to deal with his dreadnought, Shrike and his marines but holy crap those terminators just couldn't fail a save.  They destroyed my entire army.  At one point I counted them as saving 19 straight 3++ saves.  Unreal. 

So in the end, I lost pretty soundly and when I asked him what I should do different with my list, he recommended adding a daemon prince....I told him I already had a prince in my list....and realized I had forgotten to bring him to the battle.  Mulligan.

-Noah

1,500pt Chaos Marine List

I'm planning on getting a practice game in tomorrow night with my Hobby Triathlon 40k list.  I'll probably be playing a pretty solid Space Marine player, we'll see if I get any pictures.  I have it almost all figured out, but there are a few points left over that I'm undecided on.  So here's what I'm looking at...

1500pt Chaos Space Marines

Daemon Prince
-wings
-warptime
-doombolt
-mark of tzeentch

(10) Chaos Space Marines
-aspiring champion with power fist, melta bombs
-2 x meltas
Rhino

(10) Berzerkers (in Land Raider)
-skull champion with power weapon, melta bombs

(9) Thousand Sons
-aspiring sorcerer with warptime, melta bombs
Rhino

Land Raider

(2) Obliterators



Here's the options I'm looking at with the remaining points...


[Option 1]
Take out a berzerker, substitute for Kharn the Betrayer

[Option 2]
Vindicator with daemonic possession

[Option 3]
2x Obliterators

I'm torn because I already own the vindicator but it's not painted and I usually have terrible luck with them.  I could get Kharn painted up really quick but I don't know how wild I am about using a named character.  I already use Lysander in my Imperial Fists and I don't want to be one of those players that uses named characters as crutches.  Which leaves me with the obliterators.  They're probably the best option here but they are terrible to build and I don't own them yet.  I'm planning on painting my other two tonight so if that goes well, maybe I'll be motivated to build/paint two more.

That's it for me tonight, happy hobbying!

-Noah

Ultramarine: The Movie

Woke up this morning, decided it was time to pre-order my copy of Ultramarine.  I'm really stoked about the movie but I've tried to keep my expectations low.  The fact that the Imperial Fists (my babies) are in it really pushed it over the top for me.  I just hope they don't look like impotent damsels in distress getting rescued by the Ultramarines.  Well that's it for me, here's the link to the site, pretty good trailer up now.


http://www.ultramarinesthemovie.com/

Hobby Triathlon

I'm currently involved in a challenge with all the other midwest GW employees to test our hobby manliness.  Basically what's happening is we're all meeting down at the Chicago Battle Bunker the night of November 21st to compete in a triathlon of hobby goodness.  Since we're all required to have in-depth knowledge of all our games, we're going to play a game of each of the three major systems to determine who's the best. 

The majority of my posts are going to involve this contest in one way or another for the next few weeks as I prepare for it.  I'm not sure what the format is going to be but here's the point levels for each game. 

40k - 1500pts
WFB - 2000pts
LotR - 300pts

I'll post my lists/strategies as they come up but my priority is to take all painted models so that will affect my strategies a great deal.  I'll post those sometime this week, back to painting!

-Noah

It begins...

Hi, my name's Noah and this is my first attempt at writing a blog.  I have been reading blogs pretty much every day for the past two years in search of inspiration for my own hobby.  I'm primarily a Warhammer and 40k player and I'm constantly in search of cool pictures and ideas to share with my friends and customers. 

Why start a blog of my own you ask?  Well, I'm somewhat sporadic with my painting and hobbying in general.  I typically go through intense periods where I get a ton of stuff done or play a bunch of games and then lapse into times of relative inactivity.  I'm starting this blog in an attempt to motivate myself and keep myself accountable.  Hopefully I don't let this lapse like I have the many, many army projects of the past.

In any case, the inspiration for this interweb adventure was found on another blog (surprise!) called The Adept's Forge (http://theadeptsforge.blogspot.com/).  Jeff H.'s side reel of painted models for the year got me thinking how cool it would be to keep track of models that I've painted and see just how productive I am from month to month and look back at the end of the year.  I was going to wait until the new year to start this but I don't want to wait and November 1st is just as good as January 1st right? 

In any case, I plan on posting some pics of my older projects (Vampire Counts, Imperial Fists, Chaos Marines) just to fill up the blog with neat pictures, so tune back in for that.

Anyway, I think that's all for now, have to go paint!  Happy hobbying!

-Noah