Technological Terror Strikes!

It has been one of those utter WTF sort of days, my daily side kick and companion of the last 2 years, my toshiba laptop has seemingly expired(looks to be a POST fail or corrupted Bios). The hard drive still seems functional at least- so the data is at least savable.

Then around 9 this morning- I notice its getting warm- and I hadnt heard the air conditioner turn on....so- yep- the blower motor wasnt turning on. Not the best news when at 9 am it was already near 100 outside. Made for a long day, and a 200$ repair for a stupid capactior. And that same 200$ came outta the funds that coulda went to replacing or repairing my laptop.....

So, Im on our old backup pc. by old- Im talkin a single core 5 year old 1 ghz processor. So, I may actually get more painting done- since typing on this tiny ass keyboard is a damn nuisance.

Also- might be selling some 40k excess to help fund a decent laptop- so if anyone has any interests/wants let me know and I'll give my blog readers first grabs ^_^

Devil Dogs! More WM goodness

Ive had this unit of minis sitting around for a couple years- and figured it was about time they got some brush love ;) It gave me a chance ot play with the p3 Cold Steel paint- which I happen to really like. It has good consistancy, covers well ever over black. I didnt do any dry brushing with it however- so I cant vouch for its worth on that.

Anyways- another basic/dirty merc paint job. Wanted them to look like theyd been out in it for a while- mercs arent paid to be clean are they? Although since there are 3 Mr Clean clones with axes- it might be kinda ironic. I might have to give one of them some hair or a hat.

Theyre about 90% done. Stuff like eyes, final brass touches and all that I do after I base my stuff. Keeps the clean up & touch up phase all at once so Im not dropping the paint on the pallette more often than I need to ;)

New books, lack of pics, fun stuff ;)

Got my Prime Mkii and Merc books last friday, theyre gorgeous books and I tip my proverbial hat to the Pivateer fellows. I had learned about all I could of the rules from the MKII pre release PDF, so the book with actual diagrams was helpful. And the Merc book landed some solid motivation to keep going.

The monsoon here made an effort to get going, which means stupid migraines and the shakes that I get with them- so my paint efforts will get kinda random. I havent even been able to finish Durgen since I posted the last round of pics.

Anyhow, found that the local(which for me means 50 miles away) gameshop runs all nighters on warmachine most friday & saturday nights. Its a 24/7 shop, which makes my inner vampire happy! So, hopefully I can find a few 'training wheels' games if I can make it out that way soon. Maybe even find some sucke-- I mean um, gamers to trade my piles of 40k stuff for more Warmachine :D I also bought my first in store WM purchase, a Highshield officer & Standard bearer UA. I'll need one more for a Tier 2 Gorten list! And got a pot of Cold Steel P3 paint. I noticed the pots had the same lids as the old, old Citadel pop tops- and it turns out theyre made by Coat de Arms! Which is cooo as it means if I dont use the up theyll still be usable in 20 years like some of the Citadel stuff I still have. Yes- that likely means I have paint older than some of the readers of this lil blog- I was once a gamer nerdling too ;)

More Rhulic Rumblings (Warmachine is addictive!)

Alrighty, had to take a little break after the paint fest of last Friday & Saturday. Mostly because I knew the infantry were going to take more effort than the 'jacks did. Like the last batch, these are about 90% done, and I havent clear coated these so the shades are a tad different still.

So, heres the pretties.

Gorten Grundback. Im not sure I like his playstyle yet, but hes a caster and hes painted! Hes also based on the rough idea I have for basing these guys. Just with cleaner paint, and some weeds growing up between the stones(that I obviously havent added yet o.0)





























Next up are Herne & Jonne. I giggled about the idea of a dwarf with a pet ogre that carries a triple barreled mortar. So they had to be done.






























And last up the Highshields. If they take as long to kill off as it took to paint them they'll be worth the effort ;)

Warmachine progress at last! Rhulic rampage begins!

Havent managed to post as often as I'd like- but Ive had a few days of delightfully shake free hands so I made the most of it and painted up some of my Rhulic WM stuff!

The onsluaght of pics is gonna make a mess but I'll edit it as best I can ;) I have more pics, but it seems blogs limit me to 5 at a time. So I can post up more if theres any interest.

These arent 100% complete. They still need basing, and some cleanup/touchup work(and a layer of dull-cote to tame the shiny!). But I think theyre more than adequate for gaming and even tournament usage.

So, heres Thor Steinhammer, the flamethrowing dwarf mechanic. I was origianlly just going to experiment with him- trying the light sourcing highlights coming off the flames. The results were good enough I plan on keeping him. Since the health decline I havent been too happy with most of my paint results, so I was happy I can learn new techniques to replace the old ones I cant do any more.
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Heres a Wroughtram Rockhammer. It seems like fun, a giant dwarf robot with a gun & hammer. Nothin spectacular, but Ive seen much worse out there(and much better lol).















So, these are the lil tanks. Often called 'Gun bunnies', I think theyre kinda cute. Sorta like the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell. Theyre useful & cute, but disposable when theirs a need for it.













This here is the ubiquitous Rhulic Driller. It um...drills things. I still wanna add some highlights to it, and some more weathering & such as theyre supposed to do double duty as mining equipment I see it as bein extra worn & dirty.














Forgeguard, these were the figs that made me decide to paint my Rhulics before my Cryx or other mercs. Theyre sorta like stumpy lil badasses with steampowered hammers. They arent exactly cute, but they have a certain charm.

100 Minions!

So, this morning my blog list hit 100! I hadnt really noticed I was getting that many readers! O.o

I guess that means I'll have to make some attempts to be more amusing and post something worthwhile on a regular basis.

I'm amassing a rather large Warmachine Mercenary force, its not really a coherent roster yet since Im trading for the stuff- its kind of a random hodge podge of units. But many of them have alot of character, and will be fun to paint. The Forgeguard guys look kinda like pot bellied stoves with big ole hammers, Croes Cutthroats look like a buncha D&D or Warcraft rogues gone wild, and the Iridian skirmishers are some of my favorite as they have a very arabic theme(and since I like Tallarns....).

Im hoping, maybe in the next week I'll get some painting up. The health issues havent been overly cooperative lately, but Im gonna try to push past it and see if I can still get some decent results.

Le sigh....I think Im done with GW....

I've played 40k for a long while now. My freinds Bill and Mark sucked me into it back in 98-ish and we had alot of fun with it over the years. But sadly, all the changes have slowly been making it less fun for me. The last time I really had fun with it was with my Orks in 2004.

Granted, since 2005 I havent played much due to life getting in the way. But since then GW has made thier changes. My hiatus saw two new editions, and a variety of game changes, that really just look like the juggling of the meta-game in order to sell a certain type of model(like transports for 5th ed, or anything with an assualt cannon in 4th edition).

The last piece of GW stuff I bought was a BFM box in 2005, and a bottle of Devlan mud last summer. And I will admit they are putting out some great models, which we have to pay through the nose(and other orifices for).

Lets look at some of the things GW has done over the years-
2001- Online Price fixing- GW limits independent resellers to a 20% discount. Prior to this the norm was a 30% discount, and 40% could be found.
2002-2004 Price hikes. There was internet uproar-everyone was gonna quit. no one did. Reasoning from GW 'We need the funds to build our plastics plant in the US so we can keep costs down'
2005/2006 4th ed comes out. Only a minor price hike on a few kits.
2007 a few more kits get a price hike.
2008/2009 5th ed rolls out, Mech armies become king- first rhinos and drop pods are hard to come buy, then Chimeras as the IG codex comes out. Throw in a price hike for good measure- one that covers most of their ranges.
2010 Guess what....despite massive restructuring in GW-US, a move made for 'cost cutting and efficiency' we get yet another price hike. But with a clever bit of PR- they release Spearhead right afterwards- so the sheep get to think 'Oooh wow!! All tank games!!!' and they run out to buy 5 or 6 more tanks to use. Oh- and you have to buy the Spearhead book when it comes out too.

I should add into all that- the heart breaking decline of White Dwarf. The once noble dwarf used to be a useful read, hobby tips, chapter approved articles, short stories, painting tutorials, Army Spotlights. Then they pimped it out to some whorbits, er, I mean hobbits. After that it circled to bowl a few times before being flushed down the toilet into the realm of total crap.

I still like the the 40k fluff, and modeling. I have like 20 armies worth of crap to prove it. But Im going to whittle that all down to 4 or so. Pet project armies that may end up with no gaming value.

For gaming value- Im setting sail with Privateer Press. Thier prices may not be much better than GW's, but thier core product and rules are more functional and smooth. It evokes the sort of fun feeling that 2nd edition 40k did- but without the confusing complexity. Theres guns, robots, magic, and a variety of other goodstuff that make for plenty of eye candy and fun stuff to paint. And in all- the people into it seem to be more of a mind to have fun- the PP forums in general are much less tense than the 40k forums. A better vibe I suppose. And the artwork theyre putting forth in thier new books is impressive- along with thier sculpts improving over the years this makes me happy to see such progress.

Anyhow- for those that follow my bloggity goodness, you can expect to see Warmachine stuff taking precedence over 40k for the forseeable future. Something might change that, but Im really sick of GW so it seems unlikely I'll ever embrace thier game to the same extent I used to.