The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

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Hello! I am alive. It's been a while!

Judging from the e-mails I've been getting, a lot of you were wondering what the hell happened. The Warforge was temporarily 'closed' for a few months as a corollary to the increasing difficulty of the material I was getting put up against in law school. Accordingly, the site's been unupdated for at least two months, and for that I sincerely apologize.

Additionally, our previous web provider, Powweb.com, threw a monkey wrench in the whole site when they decided to delete the entire web site on the grounds that we were in 'violation' of their Terms of Service. As you can imagine, I was in contact with them pretty much immediately, and over the course of the next week I discovered a few things. Powweb outsources their support to India. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, what it means is that nobody you talk to on their '24/7 support' team has any idea how to fix anything, or why anything has happened, ever. They could not give me a straight answer as to what files on my account were in violation of their Terms of Service, other than the amorphous 'anything unrelated to your web site', which apparently was everything.Good call, Powweb. That's one way of eliminating a customer who has been with you for three years.

Eventually, I got a full refund from Powweb, but they refused to furnish all of the files they deleted. I've been piecing The Warforge back together little by little, and I think I've got everything back the way it should be. If you spot any broken or missing images or posts, please let me know immediately!

Something squiggy this way comes

On Jan 31st of this year, I placed an order with Forgeworld for one of their small squiggoths (as opposed to the Gargantuan ones, which I already have two of ). It took almost four weeks, but it finally arrived today, and I'm excited!

A few things struck me about the kit right off the bat. First, the squiggoth is much smaller than I was expecting. My initial reason for ordering it was to use it as a 'Counts-As' battlewagon - I figured with a bit of work to the howdah, you could easily pass the thing off as a battlewagon with various upgrades, and it would be a fun and entertaining thing to see on the field. However, I'm a bit surprised to find that the squiggoth is hardly larger than one of the new ork trukks! I think I might have misjudged scale a tiny bit based on how ridiculously huge the Gargantuan model Forgeworld makes is. Knowing its actual size, I probably would have waited and bought one of the new Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen Stegadons instead. That said, however, it looks to be an exceptionally nice kit.

This is actually the first Forgeworld kit I've seen that provides any sort of options as to how you want the model to look, which I found quite surprising. The iron gob for the head seems completely optional, and extra tusks are even included if you decide you want to leave it off. Likewise, there seem to be two options for the 'tail' weapon, both of which are represented by choppy flail bits. Although the legs are separate, it does not look as though the kit is intended to be easily reposed due to the armored plating and chain details.

There is a notable absence of included weapon with this kit, which Forgeworld makes clear up-front on their web site. However, I think the addition of at least a kannon or other big gun would have been very welcome, given the model's price tag and relative size.

Here's the squiggoth's main torso alongside one of my trukks for comparison:

Given this relative scale, it's pretty clear my initial goal of creating a "squig-wagon" is not going to be doable, as the squiggoth is just too weedy to measure up to the required size. A bit of creative howdah construction could probably provide something to carry 20 boyz, but it's a stretch. I've been scratching my head as to what I could possibly use the model for at this point, and come up with a few ideas. Most obviously, I could make it a counts-as Trukk, as it's just about the size required. However, a few problems crop up when you try and count it as an AV 10 vehicle that can move 18". The squiggoth is arguably more armored than the trukk kit itself, and given it's size I don't think it fits the rules very well.

Instead, I've been giving some thought to tooling it out as a 'looted wagon', which I think fits the profile much better. With a higher AV, a slightly smaller transport capacity, and the ability to haul big guns, it seems an apt fit. It's even better if you consider the 'Don't Press Dat!' roll looted vehicles are required to make - rather than the vehicle breaking down or careening off, it could represent the Sqiuggoth being ornery and breaking loose from the commands of it's handlers. The mean gob on the squiggoth can probably be used to represent a wrecking ball, reinforced ram, or perhaps even a grabbin' klaw if you can picture the squiggoth snatching things in it's maw. I think this is most likely what I'm going to end up doing with it, though I will also admit the idea makes me want a couple more!

I took a photo of this Squiggoth with one of my Gargantuans for further scale comparison.

I think the fact that I now have 2 Gargantuan squiggoths and a smaller one has hilarious (and terrifying) implications involving squiggoth breeding. The fact that I now have three also means I can run the nifty Squiggoth Battle Herd formation in Apocalypse! I'm going to have to get all of these things done so I can throw them down on a table.

Awash in digital dice

I talked to my buddy Zach and he and I banged out a handy little tool for my iPhone that I'd like to share. We're tentatively calling it 'DICEHAMMER' for now, and you can see it by clicking here. It is designed to fit comfortably on the screen of the iphone's browser, and to make a horde army player's life immesurably easier. A quick breakdown of what it can do currently:

• 'FILTER' function allows you to sort dice into winning and losing categories, which are displayed at the bottom in the Total readout. For example, applying a filter of 5+ will report, at the bottom, how many dice that were just rolled successfully passed that test, and how many failed.
• 'REROLL' function is available if you have a filter selected; it will automatically reroll any dice that fall into the selected category before reporting the totals at the bottom.
• 'QUICK DICE' function is for those times that you have to roll fairly common things, but don't want to go through the hassle of adjusting the 'AMOUNT OF DICE' readout at the top of the screen.
• The totals readout displays the results by number, so you can still tell fairly easily if you rolled a 1 for overheating or a 6 for rending. Additionally, the TOTAL field will sum up all of the dice rolled, as well as how many were successful or failed if you have a filter on.
• 'USE PREVIOUS SELECTED RESULTS' button allows you to quickly change the 'Amount of Dice' field to however many dice successfully passed the filter last roll. You can also select and deselect values at the bottom by tapping on the white space beneath the 1's.. 2's.. 3's.. readout - green means that the 'USE PREVIOUS SELECTED RESULTS' button will take that # of dice and add it to the Amount of Dice to Roll total.

That last one is best illustrated by an example:

You roll 9 dice with a 4+ filter. The readout is as follows:
1's: 2
2's: 1
3's: 1
4's: 0
5's: 3
6's: 2
TOTAL: 34 (5 Pass, 4 Fail)

34 is the sum of all of the dice rolled. The 4's, 5's, and 6's category is made green (and therefore, selected) because you just rolled a 4+ filter. If you were to hit 'USE PREVIOUS SELECTED RESULTS' right then, it would change your Amount of Dice from 9 to 5. If, however, you were to also tap the 1 beneath the 3's column and turn that green before you hit the Previous Selected Result button, it would make your Amount of Dice number 6; the number of dice in the selected columns. By setting it up like this, you can easily switch from acquiring dice for hits (for things like shooting) to acquiring dice for saves.

Anyway, the page itself should be a huge timesaver for anyone who runs an actual horde army (30-boy ork squads). We're going to work on expanding the functionality further via a couple different menus, with things such as scatter dice and generating deployment.

A last little note. I just got an e-mail from one of my readers letting me know that my previously stated goal of trying to get my Stompa into CoolMiniOrNot's Top Last 7 Days section came true. Needless to say, I am beaming with vanity and pride over here. Thanks, guys.

Staving off responsibility

Wee bit of dissapointing news was just delivered upon me. Apparently Gamesday Baltimore falls right on May 9th this year, which is right in the thick of my final exam season at law school. I'm really distressed by this, because I was looking forward to making my way down to that wonderous event and maybe entering some more stuff into the Daemons (with very little hopes of actually winning, granted).

I honestly am not quite sure why GW's picking these weird dates for their events, aside from maybe they were able to get space at an affordable rate for such dates. Most people I know (college and graduate school) have exams or, even more, classes, during that window. They've sort've cut their prospective audience down to very young kids who can get away with taking a random weekend off from their normal school, and those who are out of school and can make their own schedules. I sort've think a large portion of the hobbyist demographic is somewhere around my age, though I know there's obviously people much older and much younger that participate. Still, it seems like a bizarre bit of timing - last year, it fell on Father's Day, and this year they've decided to push it all the way forward to Mother's day.

I do crave a bit of wargaming-event-related goodness, though. I may look at going to GD Chicago, if I can come up with something that might be worthy of entry. Alternatively, I may try and make my way to PAX this year, as I'm told there's at least some good Warhammer stuff going on. I'm sure there's other conventions like Adepticon that are going on that I don't know much about - I'd be interested in hearing, particularly if they're not an ungodly distance away.

I realize a lot of my projects are in some sort of unholy limbo at the moment. Fear not, likely intermittent reader, for I shall win out over the forces of distraction and education and eventually complete said works. I have my Torts final exam on the 17th of Jan (thanks to a snow delay that pushed the exam back a whole entire goddamned month) which is consuming a lot of my free time, and atop that my Paintaplayadrinkathon requires a great deal of preparation (oh god I am sick removing mold lines from Black Reach Orks).

I've purchased two new nobz boxes, two stormboyz boxes, and one of the new Battlewagon kits, but I am resolved not to work on any of that until I finish up at least my ork bikers (including the boss) and my currently-unfinished Salamanders projects (vulkan, dreadnought, etc). I will try my best, though truth be told once I see that battlewagon kit I may just get carried away. I've been harshly missing my old battlewagon that got sold off, and brainstorming how I might remake its design with the new kit - a sort of updated version, if you will.

Likewise, I'm going to try to update the site more, at least after my exam is over on Saturday. I've invited my friends, Brian and Mike, to give me a hand with the site by contributing the occasional article for the site. Once they get around to putting some together for me, I'll throw them up in their own section. They've got a wealth of gaming (and drinking!) knowledge that I am certain will together provide some enjoyable wargaming content.

My father's just recently bought a rather neat video camera from Microcenter for around 300 dollars. I played around with it briefly, and I was actually really impressed. It records at a good resolution, and most importantly, it has a terriffic macro function; I could very easily record video of the fine print on a receiptI can't remember the brand and make of it off the top of my head, but when I find out I'll try and make an effort to post it. In any event, I mention this because I am probably going to 'borrow' it in the next month or so to try and put together the tutorials that I keep putting off. I've been neglecting doing such tutorials (for example, lighting a rhino) because I didn't have the video hardware to do it with, but now I have no excuse. I prefer to do such things with videos, largely because I find it simpler than taking hundreds of pictures, sorting them, typing up an article, and so on. Plus, it's a bit more intuitive to learn by watching, rather than learn by reading. For now, my father's gone on a two-week long cruise and taken the camera with him, so I have to wait a little bit regardless.

I will take plenty of pictures of Sunday's festivities, and they should be up sometime on Monday. I told my folks I was going to end up needing to buy alcohol for it, and in their unending generosity they dropped off what must have been enough booze to down a herd of elephants. I hardly have room in my fridge for food right now. It promises to be an entertaining weekend.

Lastly, a bit of vanity: The Gargant and my Waaaghboss have both been uploaded to CoolMiniOrNot. Vote them up (if you like 'em, at least)! I want to see if once in my life I might be able to make the 'Top Last 7 Days' category on their site.

Praise the Emperor, etc.

So I imagine most of you have figured out by now that I'm looking at starting work on a Space Marines army. I know, I feel bad about it too. Actually, I feel dirty. Marines on the whole feel impossibly cliche. Still, I'm going to point to my ork army in defense; I think I've put in a decent amount of time in a non-marine army that I can justify some Space Marines hanging around my apartment.

I am also helping to justify it by playing Salamanders, and fluffy themed salamanders at that. I imagine most of my army lists will be dense with melta and flamer weapons and exclude things like land speeders or jump packs. Vulkan He'stan is an absolute beast and I am shocked that GW didn't put out a miniature for him with their last release. I'm probably going to be making a Vulkan from Sicarius' new model.

Of course, just because I am working on marines doesn't mean I'm not going to go over the top on them. For example:

Rhinos have these weird 'jump light' things by the rear hatch that I assume are present to indicate to the marines inside when it is time to deploy. I picture it pretty simply in my head; they're red until the doors drop, then they turn green. Anyone who's looking inside will obviously have the doors open, so I used a green LED and replaced the plastic one molded onto the tank with an actual working lit one.

I may soon do a full "lighting-a-rhino" tutorial. I'm probably going to do the egress lights like above and headlights on each of my rhinos.

Selling Out

I'm going to sound like an absolute shill for a minute here, but I swear up and down that I'm getting nothing out of doing this.

I want to talk about ApocaBitzNow.com. As of the time of this writing, I have placed and received two orders from them, and this morning I placed a much, much larger one if about to help flesh out my projects. I can tell you that, having dealt with them at length now, they are fantastic. While their range is currently limited to Warhammer 40k bitz, they bitz out a number of metal blisters and kits, which is a service hardly anyone else does. They even stock forgeworld parts, and I mean stock - they have them on-hand and ready to ship, unlike other services who will basically order it from Forgeworld for you. Their selection is good, but not great; some armies are lacking in variety, but their site says they continually aim to increase their catalogue. Compared to the old GW Bitz service, they are 1000% better, with the only caveat being that sometimes they may not have the part you're looking for.

My first order from their service involved a couple simple ork parts - some extra trukk bitz, engines, wheels, and the likes. I also ordered a Kommando Nob head. Within an hour of placing my order, I got an e-mail from their service saying that they had currently run out of Kommando Nob heads, and that their supply would be replenished in a week. They also informed me that I was overcharged for shipping; they ship bitz orders for 2.99 to the US, and orders with boxed sets for 4.99. They went through the trouble of refunding the two dollar difference for me via paypal - I had no idea I'd even been overcharged, so I appreciated their honesty. They told me I would not be billed for the later shipment of the Kommando Nob head.

A few days later, I received my first order from them. Every single part (and I am talking, like, the two halves of an ork trukk wheel) was individually bagged in tiny plastic wrappers, with prices on each, which I thought was tremendously thorough if a bit wasteful. That evening, I decided I wanted to purchase a set of Forgeworld Terminator Shoulder Pads and some other bitz. I sent an e-mail to their orders department, asking if I could also purchase a few more bitz to have shipped along with the Kommando Nob head, and they said that it would not be a problem. They invoiced me for the new parts via paypal promptly. They also did not charge me for shipping on this second batch of parts that I ordered, since it was coming with the Kommando Nob head from my original order, and the shipping on that had been waived.

I got the second order in the mail today, and again, everything is individually bagged. In both orders, even though I have asked for a ton of parts, nothing has been forgotten or wrong. Their communication is great - I've gone back and forth with their orders department a little bit over the past few days with questions about bitz and ordering, which always get promptly answered. They tend to keep most GW kits in stock and offer the standard 20% discount that many of us who purchase online are spoiled with. They did overprice the forgeworld parts a little bit (Forgeworld Terminator Salamanders shoulder pads cost three dollars more than the price listed on Forgeworld's site) but I assume part of that cost is from having the parts shipped from the UK to begin with; it's certainly no more expensive than buying direct from Forgeworld with the costs of international shipping considered.

This morning, I placed a bit order with them for a ton of Space Marine stuff, and they were great about it. You can do some wonderful stuff with their site. For example, I ordered a Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer set as part of my large invoice. The Crusader and Redeemer use the same side sponson pieces, so there is not enough in the stock kit to make your Land Raider interchangeable between the two. However, for a mere few dollars, I was able to purchase the extra sponson bitz needed to make it so that I could swap my Land Raider between Crusader and Redeemer at will. It's some serious value when you can get all of that at one place.

My use of ApocaBitzNow coincides with a bit of dissapointment with thewarstore.com; in the past two weeks that I have been looking into marine items, pretty much everything that I wanted to order from the warstore was out of stock. Obviously, with the new Marine codex out, Neal's being hit hard with orders, but I was still consistently let down by their lack of inventory for the items that I wanted. In light of this, and considering the great service I've been getting from ApocaBitzNow, I think I'll probably be placing more orders with ABN. I can only hope they continue to improve their selection of individual bitz; I would personally like to see some fantasy stuff on there, if only because I dip into Fantasy model ranges from time to time in the hunt for the perfect part for whatever project I'm working on at the time.

I think I'll leave it at that, and I will see how ApocaBitzNow handles my much larger order. So far, though, I have nothing but glowing praise, and I would seriously recommend them.

Off their rockers

Now, I'm not usually one to jump ontop of posting Warhammer-related news, since I think other sites like Bell of Lost Souls and Warseer do (and will always do) a much better job of providing bleeding edge updates about the hobby.

Still, I feel compelled to throw a little discussion up here about something I dug up from Warseer regarding Forgeworld's sneak peeks at future releases. There's a couple new models that actually aren't Imperial Guard tanks coming down the line; specifically an Ultramarines-specific Venerable Dreadnought, a Chaos Terminator character, and a three-pack of Ork Nob Bikers. It's the bikers in particular I'd like to discuss for now, seeing as my primary interest in the hobby is everyone's favorite greenskins.

Now, I want to preface this by first saying that I am very happy that Forgeworld is actually starting to make new Ork items. The ridiculous amount of stuff coming out for Guard this past year has been fun to watch, but certainly in some ways dissapointing for those of us without any pinkskins in their army cases.

That said, I need to voice my complaints at the absurdity of Forgeworld pricing. I can understand they charge a premium for some of their items based on the detail they produce, but in the case of these ork nobz it is just unreasonable. The preliminary pricing stated at Warseer is 52 BRITISH POUNDS - 90 US DOLLARS - FOR THREE BIKERS. This breaks down to just about thirty dollars per nob biker. Let's compare that to the plastic boxed set GW produces, which retails for 35 dollars, and contains enough to make three ork bikers, one of whom can be made into a Nob. This means that, in retail terms, for five dollars more you can get two extra ork bikers.

Let's further suppose that you purchase the bikers from thewarstore, or any other online distributor who sells GW stock for 20% off. That's 28 dollars - plus three dollars shipping or so, and you still end up with a nearly equivalent cost to what Forgeworld is wanting to charge for these bikers. (And that's not even considering the cost of shipping Forgeworld would level at you if you wanted to buy their 90 dollar bikers!)

I think this is an exercise in insanity. They're wonderful models, don't get me wrong, but there is no universe in which I would ever consider purchasing these models over buying the normal plastic boxed set. Not to mention the incredible amounts of negativity I have been reading over Forgeworld's quality control as of late - botched and warped casts, awful moldlines, models impossible to clean up.

I'm very dissapointed. We'll see if this price pans out to be the actual value of the final product.

A different kind of greenskin

I managed to get my fiancé Kim painting at Gamesday back in June, and to try and encourage her interest in the hobby I tracked down and bought her a pair of Reaper Killer Frogs. She and I spent an afternoon painting together while I worked on Wurrzag, and at the end of the day she had this very tidy killer frog to show for her efforts! I thought it'd be fun to share with all of you:

 

She's done a great job with this little guy, and I'm very happy that she enjoys painting with me.

Edit: July 18, 2008

It's been a little while since Kim last painted with me, but since I had company over to game with, she kept herself busy with us by painting the frogs up some more. I have to say, her results are really something special:

 

She highlighted their bellies with a nice whiter color, and did a lot more work on their details. They're really awesome - the jumping one in particular came out really nice, especially the water on his base and his mouth.

So proud!

Golden Demon and some other things

So one of the people I talk to on AIM was nice enough to let me know that Games Workshop now has Golden Demon Baltimore 2008 coverage up on their site. The ironic thing is that I was looking for this yesterday afternoon, but their newly-designed labyrinth of a site means that there's a decent chance you won't find the thing you're looking for, even if it's sitting right under your nose. I bring up their coverage for two reasons. The first is in vanity - my gargant is up there as a Honorable Mention, which has me giggling like a schoolgirl because I have invaded GW's webspace. The second reason is just that I was impressed by something - and no, it wasn't the Slayer-winning inquisitor, which I thought was a blindingly busy model. I was impressed by this - the gold winner of the Open Competition.

Why, you may ask? That miniature is the one you received at the registration desk at Gamesday this year. Meaning, the fellow must have gotten there, gotten the mini, presumably primed it, sat down at one of the painting events, painted the damn thing before daemon registration ended, and then submitted it and won the gold. That is a staggering result for what could have been no more than three hours of work. Of course, this is decidedly less impressive if he somehow managed to get his hands on the miniature earlier, but to my knowledge they weren't mailing them out with the tickets. Truthfully, too, I don't think it had any right winning the gold over the other two entries on the same page, unless the judges were also absolutely floored by the speed at which it was painted also.

Edit: I've been told that the guy who submitted the Salamander I was talk about above was a store manager, meaning that he probably had about two months or so to work on it in advance... meaning, it's not quite as impressive as I had imagined. Still, I think this makes an argument for a new category for Gamesday - speedpainting! They had tables for speedpainting events, but it'd be hilarious to see how Demon winners could do given only a handful of hours.

Moving on, I just want to mention that if you haven't spotted them, final photos of the Gargant are now up under it's project listing. The Pressure Casting Tutorial has also been completed as of this morning, and the third video is up for what I hope will be your viewing pleasure. I'm looking forward to making more tutorials for the site as I can, but I don't know what you all want to see from me! If you have something in particular you would like a tutorial on, throw it in a comment and I'll give it consideration.

Also, an unrelated point I want to bring up: Thanks are due to Mad Jazz of the Penny-Arcade.com forums for my wonderful Secret Santa gift, a boxed Space Marine Predator. It really is a brilliant present - it fits both armies I play nicely, and is loaded to the gills with bits!

More to come as I have time.

Gamesday Baltimore 2008, Part II

I've been digging through all of the additional Gamesday photos I took and I thought I might throw a couple more up just for the sake of completeness, since I went to the trouble of picturing some of them.

First, a couple of the other Gamesday entries that caught my eye and were subsequently photographed. I am not sure how these placed, don't ask! I was too busy trying to get my own entry boxed up and packed away at the end of the day, since it's a bit of a process. In no particular order:

 

It's a bit amazing how scratched up and dented the cases they put the GD entries is. Someone needs to buckle down and make some new ones, because it is hard as hell to shoot a camera through some of 'em. I got a peek at the photo setup they were using for the entries, and all I can say is that I'm mighty jealous - the dude even had a pair of lights attached to either side of the camera lens for when he actually shot the models. I have no idea how he keeps from washing out all of the models.

I snapped a couple random pics off of the boards as we were playing that I thought were neat, or ideas that I might consider making into a board of my own. Here's a couple of the ones that came out:

 

The costume contest was a bit of fun, though incredibly unfair. Everyone was milling around waiting to see who would come out of the woodworks until a kid dressed as an eldar titan crashed the party, at which point he effortlessly won the contest. I imagine the girl standing next to him felt a bit cheated by the whole ordeal, having spent most of the day being oggled by the Gamesday crowd for nothing. Still, that kid was awesome and I'm glad he won. I'm seriously considering giving the commissar outfit a go next time.

There was also a pretty good eldar ranger going around the place, too, who I missed in that picture:

Here's a couple more of the things they had in display cases around the convention.

 

I think that's about the extent of my worthwhile photography at the event. Enjoy!