A New Chapter

For those of you taken aback but this post's title, don't worry! I'm not switching to a different Space Marine Chapter. I would never turn my back on the Blood Angels and my beloved Sanguinius.

I just finished my final art class at Full Sail University. I have a Portfolio Assembly class for the next 4 weeks and then I'll graduate with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Game Art. So what does this have to do with 40K and why is there a picture of a Rhino in this post? Great questions.

Answers after the break.

Blood Angels Painted Models & Avoiding Burnout

I've been all over the place with my hobby the last few weeks. For starters, I have been doing a rebalance on Mordheim called Newheim, painting and assembling my Blood Angels, and planning our first 40K Battle Report featuring something really cool that I don't think anyone in the 40K blogosphere has done before.

There was a great post by Miniature Tim on how to avoid hobby burnout. If I can give any advice, have multiple projects going on at once. When you get bored of one, switch to something else. Also, try to avoid too much hobby crunch time leading up to a tournament or an event. While those deadlines are good to get some serious work done, a lot of times you finish that last model and walk away from the hobby for a few months. Just look at my run up to the Doubles Tournament at Adventure Games. No posts for almost 2 months after and I didn't get close to getting done what I wanted to.

The painting bug has struck me recently and I have been working a lot on my Blood Angels. It all started at our recent Club Day with getting busted on how all my Land Speeders had no pilots so they couldn't move or shoot. I started assembling and magnetizing a new Land Speeder and I couldn't fully assemble it without painting some of the details. So I've been working on that, my converted Librarian, and my Death Company Rhino/Razorback. Here's some pics.

I'm happy with how the Land Speeder is coming together. All of the magnets are in except for the gunner. Don't fret, I'll have a tutorial on how to magnetize a Land Speeder in the future. My recent snag is trying to get transfers on the shoulder pads of the gunner and the pilot. My first experience with Micro Sol and Micro Set didn't end very well. Hopefully my next go will yield decent results.

This is my Death Company Rhino/Razorback. I picked up an airbrush recently and the dust on the bottom half of the tank was done by spraying vermin brown. It still needs more weathering/battle damage and I'm not sold on the dust effect. The back door is a conversion I did. I figure the only way the Death Company would get back in the vehicle after the battle would be at the behest of Sanguinius himself. I'm not happy with the realistic painting of this. I'm going to redo it in aged bronze like I painted the Honoured Imperium. Tutorial and pics here.

I got tired of being schooled by all the Psykers in Farseer Frank's Eldar army and one of my other friends recently joined the hobby and started playing Grey Knights. I figured I needed to do my own Librarian and aside from hating metal miniatures, none of the Librarians available appealed to me. This one is made from a variety of bitz. You'll see Death Company, Sanguinary Guard, Grey Knights, and Dark Angels parts on there. I'm thinking of changing the Warding Staff for the Flaming Sword from the Empire Wizards kit. Do you like it as is or should I change it up?

Not sure what I'll be posting next time as I just bought a bunch of tea lights to make some destroyed vehicle markers and I've been doing a bit more work on Mordheim. Who knows what the future holds?

Till then,

–The Harrower 

Doubles Tournament Results

Long time no post. I won't go into a long winded apology about why I haven't updated in almost two months as Ron Saikowski had a good post on what not to post about and I don't want to break the Lord of the Warp's 3rd rule.

Anyway, the doubles tournament is long since over. For my first tournament experience, it went well. I paired with a friend of mine from the DED 'ARD Club that plays Imperial Guard. He brought all the big guns and I brought forth the might of Sanguinius with my Blood Angels and a deadly assault force. 

We ended up winning our first two games and playing in the third and final game for the championship which we lost to a really tough Grey Knights and Orks list. They used a Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field and a Grey Knights Librarian with The Shrouding to blanket most of their army with a 3+ cover save. It was like Episode I all over again. Unfortunately (fortunately?) our opponents were the Gungans and while I kept thinking it would get better, in the end it just sucked.

Late in the game, I made a last ditch charge with my entire army and beheld my Death Company felling an impressive 23 Ork Boyz on the charge and running down the remaining few. We had them on the ropes and nervous, but in the end, the nut was too hard to crack and some Grey Knight reinforcements arrived via deep strike and sealed their victory. One highpoint was my Reclusiarch standing toe to toe with an Ork Dreadnaught for 2 rounds and refusing to go down. I actually made four 4+ invulnerable saves in one round to stay alive at the end of the game and made the Primarch proud. I also got a good chuckle out of their Vindicare Assassin who couldn't hit the side of the barn even with an 8 Ballistic Skill.

As for my models, I never got them finished. I got the required 3 colors done for the bonus points, but I don't think they even scored painting (not that it would have mattered anyway). I'm still working on my Assault Squads, but honestly I haven't painted much since. I did pick up a Paasche Talon Dual Action Airbrush that I have been messing with, but I really haven't had a lot of time to do hobby stuff. I worked on some scenery here and there, but that's about it. I did finish up a lot of the details on my Death Company Rhino/Razorback and I'm pretty happy with how that turned out.

There's going to be a bit of a shift in what I'm covering in the blog in the coming weeks as I start doing some game design work again and focusing a little more on... Mordheim!

I'll talk a bit more about my history with Mordheim and describe the changes to the blog in my next post.

Until then,

–The Harrower

Change of Plans (1,000 points • 4 Days Left)

Everyone from DED 'ARD got together at my house 2 Sundays ago for some 40K madness. I ended up playing 2 games. First one was against club member Necromonger and his homebrew Vanilla Space Marines chapter. He's new to the Space Marines and was trying out a list with a Land Raider, Thunder Hammer Terminators, 2 Predators, a Vindicator, Land Speeder Storm, and Vulkan. We ended up playing Capture and Control.

In the first turn, I immobilized his Land Raider and took out the Demolisher Cannon on his Vindicator. From there, it was pretty easy to control the board and stay away from the Thunder Hammer Terminators. I pretty much dictated the flow of the battle and my opponent couldn't do enough to get into position and capture the objectives. Victory for the Blood Angels!

Second game ended up being a 3 vs. 3. with Chaos, Blood Angels, and Eldar vs. Grey Knights, Vanilla Marines, and Imperial Guard. We played 3,000 points per side with 1,000 points each and our own force orgs. I ended up trying the list I intended to take to the Two Headed Giant Tournament at Adventure Games this weekend and I absolutely hated it. We played Kill Points with Dawn of War deployment and won the day, but I sunk way too many points in the Stormraven's unit with Death Company a Reclusiarch and a Death Company Dreadnought. We won a narrow victory with my army giving up most of the kill points.

I decided to scrap that list and start over from square one. I have a much more balanced list which I'm confident will play much better. I'll share my list after the tournament. I haven't had time to post since I've been feverishly painting this past week, but I have taken a lot of in progress pics so expect some painting tutorials in the near future. Been messing around a lot trying to get a nice black and this is what I came up with. There is a lot of clean up and little details needed to be done, but I'm pretty happy with the final look.

I learned a valuable lesson with using Badab Black Wash to try and "tint" down my highlight lines. It left a ton of brush strokes all over the tank and I had to redo all of the black. I've done a lot of black previously with my old Death Company and the Rhino I entered in Golden Demon many years ago and I never ran into this problem. Maybe that was because I used Games Workshop's old Inks or my pot of wash is just bad. Anyone else run into this issue?

Lastly, Ron Saikowski had an interesting post on From The Warp on the top 3 things not to say in a post and I'm sorry to say that I'm guilty of all of them. I'm going to do what I can to make sure what I post shows a model or something I am working on and isn't just filler because I've been a lazy git and I feel bad because I haven't done more with the hobby and updated my blog.

Tomorrow, I should finish up my test marine and get going on my infantry models. I'll post it here in the next few days.

Till next time,

–The Harrower

SP200 Photo Studio Review

So my wife bought me the SP200 Photo Studio for my birthday last week. I had a little bit of time to mess around with it and my first impressions are very good.

I have a Canon PowerShot SD780 and while it's not the greatest camera, I like it a lot and it does take really nice photos. I don't think the pictures on my blog are bad, but I definitely don't have the best lighting or a good backdrop and I want an easy way to take nice photos of my finished miniatures.

All of the miniature company's out there retouch their photos in Photoshop and that's definitely something I can do to make up for bad photography. Problem is, it's too time consuming and I'd rather spend time working on my various projects or just being lazy. While I don't have a ton of time with it, these are the pros and cons from my experiences so far.


PROS

• Comes with everything you need including 2 lights, a tripod, the photo booth itself, and 4 different colored backdrops (red, blue, white, and black)
• Folds up for easy storage and doubles as a carrying case
• Good price at $50
• Easy to set up

CONS

• The lights seem to be cheaply made
• Requires an entire table to setup correctly
• Lights need to be plugged in (only an issue if you want to take it to a tournament and grab pics of someone's army)
• Backdrops wrinkle easily and need to be ironed (I don't do ironing)

Overall, I'm definitely happy with it. I was having a bit of difficulty taking clear shots with single miniatures, but that is something I need to work on and has to do with my camera settings. Here are some sample pics with only minor tweaking in Photoshop.

My Death Company Rhino back from the 3rd Edition days. This model made final cut for Golden Demon, but didn't place because I glued it to a scenic base. I believe I might have been one of the first people to put a vehicle on a scenic base because no one else had them that year. The judges were arguing and one of them wanted to put it in, but the other bloke won out. Sissy. Reason I didn't win was because "I couldn't use it in a game". The only reason I glued it was so it wouldn't fall and get broken.

This is the Baal Predator that I entered in the following year at Golden Demon. That year I didn't make any cut because I didn't bring a scenic base! Seems I started a trend the year prior and everyone was sporting cool bases. I was so upset about the irony that I never entered Golden Demon again...

The old and the new. That's the first Blood Angels figure I painted along with my latest converted Razorback.

Once you have a nice picture like this, you can take it into Photoshop and trim out the background. This is currently what Games Workshop does with all of their new miniature photography.

Once the background is trimmed, you can make your pics all retro style with the gradient tool like in the old 'Eavy Metal Painting Guides!

So in conclusion, I think the SP200 Photo Studio is pretty awesome and I'll definitely get my uses out of it. I have seen higher end photo tents like this and while this isn't ready for publication in White Dwarf, it suits me fine for my hobby.

Tomorrow is our monthly gathering of the DED 'ARD Gaming Club and we have a couple new faces this week with Necrons and Imperial Guard. I'll take some pics of our games and post them in the next few days.

Till then,
–The Harrower