New Deff Dread?

This just in from the GW Newsletter -

This is the teaser image from the newsletter showing what is coming in 2010 for 40k. I was trying to figure out exactly what this was and then I went to save it and everything became clear - a new Deff Dread.

You can't really tell more than that by looking at the picture. I am hoping that it is plastic and has gobs of extra bits in it. Judging by the recent plastic Ork kits I think I should be in luck.

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag - German Tyranid Codex Leaked

Well, it took quite a while but the Tyranid codex has finally been leaked - only it is the German Codex. This makes sense though since all the rumor sites are saying that the GW Black Box that shipped to all the markets except Germany didn't include the new Codex due to a printing mistake.

The rumor confirmations are starting to trickle in though - from German based gamers as well as those who live in other countries but speak German.

From what I have heard it looks like there are a TON of neat special characters in there. I haven't heard to many specifics about abilities but I am seeing great modeling opportunities.

One of the biggest things that I have seen that was pretty much already confirmed is that Genestealers remain troops and keep their old profile. Something else that I haven't seen get a lot of press is the new Harpie - a winged monsterous creature in the Fast Attack slot. I haven't heard what this thing does but I already want one. Supposedly it is some kind of flying Trygon.

On a sadder note (to Tyranid players at least) it does appear that the Carnifex does weigh in at 160 points per model now. I am not sure what all it comes with standard and what options it can take but you can take 1-3 per brood.

This is all I have for now but the floodgates are open so it is only a matter of time before all the juicy details are floating about the internet.

The Hogs of War wish you a very Merry Christmas!  Enjoy the day - spend it with family and friends and remember what is truly important at this time of year!  We hope your holiday is filled with peace and joy and that it is a wonderful day for all of our readers! 

We hope Santa brought you buckets of cool stuff for your favorite table top game!

Merry Christmas!

The Night Before Christmas - 40k style

 From the internet and Dakka Dakka:

The Night Before 986996.M41

by Patrick Marstall (MarstallP@bah.com)

'Twas the night before 986996.M41, and all through the station
All there was clear, there was no abomination.

My helmet was set on the desk to my right,
On the chance that I was to need it that night.

The guardsmen were ensconced, asleep in their beds,
All the tanks too were safe, secure in the sheds.

Marines in the barracks, some manning the wall,
Assured me that the bastion never would fall.

When out in the yard there arose such discord
I grabbed up my bolter and unsheathed my sword.

Away to the window, I ran to take aim
As the marines around me all did the same.

My bionic eye turned the night into day
Allowed me to see, and to seek out my prey.

When what did my loyalist ocular show,
But an ancient conveyance, knee-deep in the snow.

The vehicle was pulled by horned quadrupeds
And a fiery red nimbus glowed from the sled.

The driver was mighty, his eyes full of scorn,
Dressed all in crimson like a servant of Khorne.

I gestured for other to shoot without pause,
For I was now certain this was Santa Claus.

"Fire Marines! Fire Guardsmen! Fire Ogryn and Ratlings!
Fire bolters! Fire lasguns! Fire mortars and gatlings!"

"You in the courtyard and you men on the walls!
Now blast away! Blast away! Blast away all!"

But all through this maelstrom the evil one flew,
Past plasma and bolt shells and frag that we threw!

And then, to my horror, I heard on the roof
The vile cavorting of each decadent hoof.

Screaming my orders, I spun quickly around,
As down the chimney shaft it came with a bound.

I saw its eyes glow, its vast stomach gurgle,
Bloated and fat, like a deamon of Nurgle.

Blinded by anger, I attacked with a scream -
Charged into battle with my brave space marines.

As we thundered towards him, closing the rift,
He reached in his satchel and pulled out a gift.

Then it tossed the vile boxes - I fell in a stoop,
As they arced through the air at me and my troops.

The wrapped missiles fell short, and plopped at our feet,
Our morale was quite strong, we did not retreat.

But the marines paused - our charge was disrupted,
They picked up the gifts and were quickly corrupted.

For each box contained a chaotic present -
The marines (damn their souls), found them quite pleasant.

A bolter, a flamer, a new power fist,
The Claus gave to all, and he checked off a list.

It moved through the station and left in its wake,
The sound of bright laughter and the stench of fruitcake.

The others succumbed, but it failed in its goal,
For to me it gave only a small pile of coal.

The station was lost, I could only instruct
The bastion computer to set self-destruct.

I failed to kill him, for I saw as I fled,
The target escaping, quite safe in his sled.

I heard it cry out as the base burst into light,
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Forgeworld Project #1

The first of my most recent forge world goodies arrived in the mail today. This will be a fun project, and I really am looking forward to tacking the avatar. I have never painted the molten lava effect successfully so I know this will require me to learn and improve my painting abilities.  If you have any pointers please don't hesitate to share them below!

The avatar arrived very well intact and had much less problems that some of the other pieces I have done before.  The sword was warped, but the usual hot water then cold water fix worked fine for that portion.  The only real problem was that the hilt of the sword was broken off when it arrived.  As I put the avatar together I pinned each piece together to help it hold up and a simple paper clip pin sufficed to fix the pommel.

Here is the avatar in pieces, after being washed to get rid of the mold release agent:

Here is the avatar built and ready for prime.  I have gone with a rubble-esque base, but the majority of the base will be covered with snow.  The area under his feet, of course must be bare due the flame which would melt the snow away.

Watch over the next few weeks for updates!

BFG, First Game

Today Fletch and I played our first game of BFG. We were pretty much learning the basic mechanics of the game, so we didn't play with any terrain. (celestial phenomenon) We chose a generic deployment and played line em up and duke it out.
Person with the most victory points wins. (remember back in 4th ed 40k)

My Fleet was;
Battle barge
master of the fleet
terminators
3x strike cruisers
12x gladius frigates



Fletchs Fleet was;
Desolator
chaos lord
mark of tzeentch
Styx
chaos lord
mark of tzeentch
2x Murderers
2x Slaughterers
one with chaos lord, mark of slaanesh



I started out writing a battle report and keeping up with specific movements and who fired at who and the like. After about 2 or 3 turns I found out this is not like 40k at all. I found all of that to be utter garbage. The true magic of this game, in my humble opinion, is what happens. As you duke it out, this game actually has the ability to tell a story. An example of this is at one point Fletch put a cruiser in front of me and shot all his starboard weaponry at one of my strike cruisers. He crippled my engines, knocked out my forward and port guns and caught me on fire. :O Because my engines were taken out I could no longer turn. In true Marine fashion, when the chips are down go for the throat. I declared I would Ram his pathetic chaos cruiser. After looking up some rules we rolled our dice and the results were that I plowed through the side of his ship without the ability to steer and on FIRE!!! I destroyed his ship but was slowly flying straight through space and eventually the flames engulfed my strike cruiser and it exploded. I really like how it tells a story as you play. I got excited about a couple of events that happened along the coarse of play. Another such instant I was able to surround the Desolator Capital ship. I launched all my weaponry at the mammoth 12 structure point ship. I managed to score 4 wounds after going through its shields. I then launched 9 thunderhawks carrying marines to assault him. At this point I managed to destroy the prow, dorsal, starboard, and port guns. I did 4 additional structure points. Lastly I did a a teleport attack with 2 strike cruisers and used my once a game terminators and hit him hard. At this point he lost 2 more points and got -3 to leadership and caught on fire. WOOHOO! The last ship of his I killed I sent 5 thunderhawks after it to take out its last structure point. I destroyed it... But his ship went nuclear which was pretty cool in itself. Overall Marines took this one home with only 1 alpha legion ship surviving.I'm pretty stocked about this game and will post more on it as we learn the rules better and get more acquainted with BFG. I can't wait to name all my ships to give them more personality and play games with actual missions and terrain involved.




All that survived the battle

Conversion - Iron Warriors to Imperial Fists

I have had an Iron Warriors Warsmith floating around in my bits box for about a year. I decided that he would make a fine Imperial Fist Sergent with a bit of work.


I filed off quite a bit of detail from his chest. I also had to trim off the arrow from his shin guard. Once that was done I gave him a different set of arms and backpack - I am saving those bits for some other models.




I still need to hit a few areas with some Boltgun - the bionic leg looks a bit lacking right now. This model turned out pretty cool. I doubt you would even know that it was a Chaos Space Marine unless you were familiar with the model. The only thing that gives it away is the helmet - it looks a bit menacing to me.

MaxMini Thunderhammer and Chapterhouse Studios Storm Shield

Here are some pictures of a project that I have been working on for a few months now.

When I started working on my Imperial Fist Space Marines I decided that I wanted to include Lysander and a unit of Terminators armed with Thunderhammers and Storm Shields. I was reading through the book and I came up with a nasty and ineffective list - Lysander, 30 TH/SS Terminators, and a few units of Scouts with teleport homers. I didn't figure this list would do well on the table - too slow - but I figured it would be fun to play. Being the impulsive shopper that I am I set about figuring out how to accomplish this list in the cheapest way possible.

Six boxes of Assault Terminators would set me back $300. That is just too much to spend for a goofball list. I had set of Black Reach Terminators laying around and I figured that those would work with a bit of conversion work on them. I started asking around on our forum and came up with the following bits for the hammer and shield -

The Hammer from MaxMini.eu

And the shield that I used from ChapterHouseStudios.com

I am glad that I went with the Chapter House Studio shield. Max Mini sent me a few of theres as a freebie and they just didn't 'pop' for me.

These bits ended up costing me about $4 a model for the hammer and the shield - add this to the cost of the Terminators off of ebay - about $3.5 a pop - and I didn't end up saving too much money per model but it did add up since I was doing thirty of them. I think if I add it all up and I ended up saving about $80 to $100 converting my Assault Terminators out of Black Reach models - not too shabby.

It was a bit of work doing the conversion work on the Terminators. I started off by cutting off the bolter and using that arm for the Storm Hammer. I cut the hammer in two and pinned it in place. This was going to take forever. After doing this on two models I decided that my Assault Terminators would be hodling their hammers in a Powerfist. This worked out nicely. One of the fists on the Black Reach marines is slightly open. I bent the thumb just a bit and the model would practically 'hold' the thunderhammer.


The other pose had a closed fist so I just cut the hammer handle in two and used my power drill to bore out a hole the two bits to go in - worked like a charm.


The shield was also easier to attach to the other hand. The backs of the shields have two slots for a hand to go between and I just cut down the hand to fit in there and glued it in place.

And here is the model painted up and dipped -


I decided to go with bone and black on the shield and a Boltgun with Shining Gold on the hammer. Other than that I painted this guy up like the rest of my Imperial Fists and am happy with the way he turned out. I have more bases on order from Iron Halo and they will be here the middle of January (shipping out form New Zealand). Once they arrive I will be able to finish this unit up.

JR Miniatures WWII Terrain

I had a bit of an interesting project that I worked on this previous week. A buddy from work said his kid wanted a World War II battlefield for his green army men. I showed him around at The War Store and he ended up buying some JR Miniatures WWII Terrain. I told him that I would paint it up for him.

He ended up ordering about ten pieces of terrain and it only came out to about $50. I was a bit worried about the quality for the price. When it came in I was a bit shocked - the pieces are nice and heavy, not broken, and they looked pretty good. I will say that the casts were pretty clean - not any flash, but there were quite a few holes in the models.


I worked on this little project all week. One night I washed the pieces, the next they got primed, and then the next I hit them with a coat of Amond Krylon spraypaint.

Once I let the pieces cure for a day I broke out my Wal-Mart Applebarrell paints and got to work. I painted in the wood and dirt and then washed all the pieces with a nice thick coat of my wash that I brewed up. Once this was dry I went back over the sandbags with a light drybrushing of an off white and added the black to
the house to make it look like it had been on fire.

I was quite pleased with the way the pieces turned out. The slight casting imperfections were not noticable at all. I was happy with all the pieces but one - a sandbag wall that was built up out of the mud with some rocks - it just didn't 'pop' for me.






My 'client' was very pleased with the results and thinks his kid will be quite excited about them.

Massive Resin Base Mold

Here is the mold that I have made for my Thunderwolf Cavalry Bases. Thats right - 60mm! It doesn't look very big in the picture above but when you are pouring it full of resin it seems like the size of a small swimming pool.

I had to leave it in the Lego frame because when I took it out and cast a base in it the result was warped. The edges aren't thick enough to stand up the weight of the resin and the whole mold buckles in the middle leaving you with an oblong base.

I have been pretty happy with the way these are turning out. They add some height to my model and are pretty easy to paint.