The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

A month for the Motherland

Hello folks!

My lack of recent updates has been due in large part to my law school final exams pulling up on me at high speed, but now that I'm all done with those it's time to get back into wargaming.

For whatever reasons, I've been losing interest in 40k a little bit recently. Perhaps I'm just growing tired of the way Games Workshop does things. Other than the new ork walkers, I haven't bought anything from them in ages, and I don't really plan on doing so.

Instead, I've been finding myself fascinated by Warmachine. I've been playing a lot of Warmachine over VASSAL in the past few days to get a handle on the rules and how the game operates, and I think I've reached a point where I am comfortable with it now.

I've dropped a fair bit of money on a nice collection of Khador models - all new in blister. I am currently looking at:

• The Butcher of Khardov
• Karchev the Terrible
• Kommander Orsus Zoktavir
• Supreme Kommandant Irusk
• The Old Witch and Scrapjack
• A War Dog
• Ogrun Bokur
• Beast-09
• A Kodiak Heavy Warjack
• A Spriggan Heavy Warjack
• A Beserker Heavy Warjack
• A Juggernaut Heavy Warjack
• One of the new plastic Khador warjacks that can be made into 4 different kinds
• A full unit of Kayazy Assassins with Underboss
• A full unit of Iron Fang Pikemen with Kapitan and Standard Bearer
• A unit of Widowmakers
• A unit of Battle Mechaniks
• A unit of Doom Reavers
• The Great Bears of Gallowswood
• Man-O-War Drakhun
• Man-O-War Kovnik
• A Koldun Lord
• Kovnik Grigorovich
• 2 Manhunters
• Yuri the Axe
• Fenris

All told, it's a sizable amount of stuff. Now, with that said, I'm laying out a couple goals.

My ultimate goal is to have all of this built, based, and painted. Initially, I figured I might be able to pull it off in a month's time, but I think that's unrealistic considering my previous track record... particularly considering how slowly I work.

With that said, I'm dedicating the next month of my work to nothing but Khador, and I'll see how far that gets me. I would like to reach a goal of 35 points of  Khador done within this timeframe... I was considering doing a 'build everything first, then paint everything' approach, but some models, like the Iron Fang Pikemen, can't be built completely prior to painting; their shields interfere with painting, which means I have to do those separately and then attach them. Given how disorganized I am, leaving parts unattached and loose like that is a terrible idea for me. So, I'm going to go unit-by-unit, I think.

To cut down on the administrative end of the web site during this time, so I spend more time working on the Khador and less time tinkering with the site, I'm not going to be subcategorizing this work - for now. I'm going to try and post regular updates (at least daily) with the fruit of that day's labors. This will all be lumped into the Khador category for the time being. After I'm done working on the Khador stuff, in a couple weeks time, I will go back and sort the posts into proper subcategories.

So, off we go! Hopefully, those of you that play 40k and visit the site because of it will give Warmachine a look. I'm really much more impressed with that game than I am with 40k, because the gameplay is a lot deeper. 40k is checkers; Warmachine is chess.

Page Navigation Fixed

I just got a couple e-mails letting me know that the page navigation for the site wasn't working. It should be fixed now - sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks for letting me know!

Blood Angel Rules?

Okay, hear me out on this for a second, I want to get an idea of what you guys think.

I do not actually have the Blood Angels Codex, so everything I know about it is bits and pieces that I have inherited from various internet fora. But, I was thinking... wouldn't the Blood Angels rules be a pretty good fit for my Legion of the Damned army?

Let me make the case.

• Fluff-wise, both the Legion and the Blood Angels suffer from a disease. The Legion's is apparently warp-based, whereas the Angels suffer from a geneseed defect, but both produce a roughly equivalent result: consuming rage. I can see equivalencies between the Legion's contagion causing squads of the Damned to behave much like a Death Company.
• Sanguinary Priests make everything within a radius get Feel No Pain... and Legionnaires seem to slough off what would look like fatal blows. You could make a character like Sergeant Centurius and his Animus Malorum (a Fire Hawks Librarian's skull that steals the souls of the enemy and reinvigorates nearby Legionnaires) into a very, very easy Sanguinary Priest, and the effect would still be perfectly true to the Legion's fluff.
• Blood Angels can deep strike a Land Raider. Now, arguably, this is a really dumb rule and also probably very limited in effectiveness, since you can't always find a ton of room on the battlefield to just plunk a Land Raider down in even if you don't scatter. But. The idea is there - a Land Raider can appear from an unexpected quarter, as though from nowhere, bringing it's cargo of Legionnaires and heavy guns to bear. It's perfectly in tune with the Legion's 'appear-hit-vanish' style.
• Blood Angels appear to be a relatively elite army. This means you won't see as many of them on the board as a normal Space Marine army, because they trade numbers for abilities. By extension, since there aren't a ton of Legionnaires (they're the remnants of a chapter, after all), there shouldn't be many of them knocking around the board, either. It would seem Blood Angel's ability to deploy slightly lesser numbers fit the Legion's general fluff.
• Blood Angels get some of the coolest dreadnoughts. I love dreadnoughts. In fluff reasons, I've been telling myself that the Legion might have a number of dreadnoughts just because their relatively advanced and integrated life support systems might help slow or stem the contagion that afflicts them; they're a means of prolonging the Legionnaires so that they can deliver the Emperor's wrath.
• I don't know anything about the characters in the BA codex other than the fact that they cost a truckload and are awesome to compensate.

Now, problems with the idea include...

• Blood Angels seem to use a ton of jump packs. I don't know how to model jump packs on Legionnaires and not have it look ridiculous. You could conceivably play off the BA's angelic look and give them skeletal wings or something, or regular jump packs, I just think on the whole they'd end up looking a little silly.
• I've made an Ironclad dread for the army already. I don't know if BA can even take an Ironclad dread.
• I don't know if the 'counts-as Vulkan' model I have (Thanasius) actually fits anything in the Blood Angels HQ options.

On the whole, though, I think it's pretty viable. What do you guys think?

A little skintone

So I've been tinkering with the Sneekboss a little bit, and I have managed to take some hilariously unflattering pictures of my work so far. I've only really been doing the skin, so keep that in mind.

 

My highlights are, as usual, pretty heavy handed, but I don't know how to do much better. I'll try smoothing it out a bit more with some Thraka green, but it looks acceptable from a tabletop standard, and I don't want to lose my mind over it.

After I get the skin settled, I'm going to work on adding a red warpaint camo pattern overtop, which will hopefully make him look less silly.

GW Conversion Contest

Since I'll be heading to Gamesday Baltimore this year, I took a peek at the contest categories this morning. Aside from the usual Golden Demon competitions, it looks like GW is hosting a slew of other ones this year... and this one caught my eye.

40K Vehicle Conversion Competition
- Single vehicle no taller than 18"
- 40K vehicles only (no Forge World models allowed)
- Unpainted models recommended to clearly see conversion work
- Must be composed of at least 60% Games Workshop product
- Register by 12pm
- Judging finished by 3pm, pickup at 4pm
- Awards for Crowd Favorite, Studio Favorite, and Best Overall

From Games Workshop's site.

Is this the contest I've been dreaming of? Did GW finally make something for the converters? They want me to submit unpainted stuff? Freedom at last!

Of course, the only problem with that is the fact that most of the stuff I'd like to submit doesn't satisfy their "at least 60% Games Workshop product" rule.

So, dear readers, I'm turning to you on this one. Do you have any great ideas? My current best concept involves a looted Valkyrie, but I'm totally open to suggestions on this one. Making something like a Mega Dread would be great fun, but I don't see a way I could really do that with 60% GW bits...