On Our Painting Table - March 29th

Here's a hobby update on what we've been working on in the time between writing and gaming.  I've been steadily plugging away at my CSM.  Above is my Scibor Rotten Lord that I'm using for Typhus.  Pay no mind to the missing portion of the weapon's shaft, it fell off right before photographing.

Crossroads Spring Break GT Wrap-up

    The first Crossroads Spring Break GT is in the can, and it was a hell of a time. Corey Reynolds, the organizer and head TO, runs a pretty tight ship, and everything ran smoothly. I helped Corey with the paint judging, played a few games as the ringer, and acted as a general data entry monkey. I have to say that I had 3 fantastic games, and got to see a ton of great armies. Below, I'll include a smattering of the armies present, the results and the award winners.

     Here is where you can find all the winners and the full results.


First and foremost, The Overall Winner: Matt Cassidy of the Lost Legion running Empire

While Matt did win overall, he shamed himself by not getting max points in all categories. As a result, he had to commit seppuku with his trophy sword. 

Creating City Terrain: Rubble

In my last few articles on creating city terrain I walked through the steps of making city ruins using Styrofoam, pink foam, shale, and other odds and ends. Well, after making the main ruins you should have amassed quite a pile of left over small chunks of foam littering your work space. Hopefully you did not throw them out as I am going to show you how you can use those pieces of foam to create rubble terrain pieces. I like to use rubble in my city fight boards because it helps flesh out the visualization that you are really battling it out in a city landscape.

Daemon Codex - Initial Impressions

I have to be honest, the new Daemon release was making me nervous.  The last army I played to get 'updated' and I use that term in the loosest way possible, was Sisters of Battle.  I am now looking to sell all my Sisters after finding the new army not fun to play at all.

When it comes to Daemons, I am looking at the army in two distinct - and important - ways.  The first - "Is it fun to play?" the second "How strong is the army."  So it was with great trepidation that I opened the new, limited Slaanesh codex that had arrived in the mail and started to read.  This post will be my first impressions on the army as a whole.

Batrep: GK & SM vs IG & BA Team Event

This report was our (Crimthaan & hyv3mynd) first game in the local Adepticon team primer.  We had originally planned to bring double CSM, but my painting wasn't progressing quickly enough and I didn't want to handicap my partner with an unpainted army.  Here's what we ended up with:

What's on our Painting Table

As the week comes to a close we thought we would round out this weeks articles by highlighting some of the painting projects that each of us are currently working on. As with most of you, we are lucky if we can get in 2-3 hours of painting a night but yet we push on through into the early morning hours, putting off sleep until our eyes get too blurry to paint. But one thing all of us at the Mandulian Chapel agree on is that playing with a fully painted army just looks too cool when spread out on the tabletop. So take a moment and look through our current projects and let us know what you think.

Fantasy GT this Weekend!

    This weekend is Crossroads Spring Break GT out in Horsehead’s NY. I know it’s pretty short notice, but if you play fantasy and don’t have plans for the weekend, we’re going to be accepting players up until Friday. Email the TO (Corey) and let him know you'd like to come. Right now, we’re looking at around 50-60 players. Not too shabby for an event initially planned just 2 months ago.

    I’ll be paint judging, and I might even get a game in as the ringer. Friday night is going to be a Warmachine tournament (a few locals just threw this together, so I have few details), and Saturday night we’re going to be running a Dominion tournament. I’ll do an event wrap-up next week, but if you’re up to it, come on down.

  Speaking of Fantasy, I’ve been slowly plugging away at Savage Orcs, and I have to say that for being pretty much naked, they have a ridiculous amount of detail that needs to be painted on. The loin cloths, the bones, the belts, the weapons, and not to mention the tattoos, all make for a time/tarpit. Check em out below the fold.

Adepticon Team Tournament Primer Games 1 and 2

Two weekends ago I participated in a team tournament with a friend of mine who goes by the name sinistermind on this and other boards. Since we both seemed to have been touched by chaos at an early age we decided to run a dual chaos list. You can read our list selections and our plan of action over here. This was the same event the Calypso2ts, Crispy, Hvy3mynd, and Crimthann all attended as well. As luck would have it I do not believe any of us got paired up against each other. There was a solid turnout of 26 players, or 13 teams, which meant the TO played as the ringer.

We felt pretty good with our lists going into the morning because our two practice games ended up with two wins for us and we felt that we had a good synergy between our two vastly different styles of armies.

Adepticon Team Tournament Primer - Round 3 - Tyranids vs GK/IG

It seems like every that I participate in where I have to play against Grey Knights - which is really good when it comes to having experience against Grey Knights.  We are matched up this round against Zack and Paul with an IG/GK combination.  I had a chance to play against Paul a few months ago with my Daemons at the Millenium invitational  In contrast, Zack and I have played a number of casual games against one another but somehow managed to dodge one another at tournaments.

That is a lot of terminators and the Dreadknight with its Heavy Incinerator is one of my least favorite weapons to play against in the game...

March Blog Update & CSM Rebuild Update

March was an exciting month for the Mandulian Chapel.  We saw our 300th post and brought our 5th author on board.  Crimthaan (Andy) posted yesterday's article and will be a resident Space Marine player and fluff enthusiast.  Now that we have five authors, it will be our goal to get in one article per day Monday through Friday.  Our content will span from fluff to theory/mathammer, terrain, painting, converting, and battle reports.  Together, we share a deep passion and respect for the hobby and the desire to share our thoughts and discuss our experiences.  I hope you enjoy the additional content!

Adepticon Team Tournament Primer - Round 2 - Tyranids VS CSM

     This past Saturday, Calypso2ts and I teamed up for an Adepticon Team Tourney primer. Each of us brought 1000 points of Tyranids, which can be found here. Calypso covered our first game against the Orky team of Trevor and Ben. Damn those Dakka-Jets!! Coming out of the first round with only 10 points hurt, but we still knew that we could still turn it around.

     Heading into round 2, we were paired up against Beth and Scotty from Erie PA. The Erie crowd is made up of a great group of gamers, and I've played several of them in single tournaments. They always offer up solid competition, and are great gamers. Beth & Scotty brought CSM lists, built around their Slaaneshii Adepticon team.

Building City Ruins pt 2

In my last post I walked through the steps of cutting up white and pink foam and building out the shapes of walls and debris. I glued the foam pieces in place and let the glue set for 24 hours. In this post I am going to show you how to bring your city walls and ruins to life.

Calypso2ts - Adepticon Style Teams - Tyranids

I had the outstanding opportunity this week to both play with a fellow Mandulian Chapel coauthor/friend (Crispy) and to bring to bear a Tyranid army for a tournament.  I have been playing exclusively Daemons for the last three years - since I took a Sisters of Battle army to Da Boyz and just did not enjoy the way they played.  I am fairly familiar with assault armies, but when it comes to armies that have to deploy I was going to have to rely on Crispy for a lot of guidance an mentoring.

Luckily he was up to the task - the lists and format of the tournament are described here - and we had three great games.  The first game saw us up against Ben and Trevor running a very Orky coalition...

The Mandulian Monks go to War - March 2013

If you've been following the blog over the past 6 months, you'll have noticed some pretty major changes.  I've recruited 3 more authors and changed the blog from synaps3 to The Mandulian Chapel.  These changes were not brought about lightly, and I had several motives.  The first factor was the birth of my son last year and other medical stuff behind the scenes.  More authors means more regular content for the 400 visitors we get a day.  The second thing I took into consideration was that all of us share common values in the hobby realm.  You'll see that develop more as hobby articles become more prolific from painting to basing and terrain building.

My co-authors have also been regulars in our local tournament scene over the past 3 years I've been playing.   They were strangers to me until I had attended several tournaments, and have grown to be great mates.  As mentioned in earlier articles, this month's tournament is a team/partner event.  We're fortunate that our 4 authors will all be attending and representing 3 teams.  My buddy Andy (Crimthaan) hit me up months ago, Crispy and Calypso2ts paired up, and Grubnards is bringing Chris (Sinistermind) along.

Mini Review – Citadel Paint Station +

     After a recent incident of paint spilling on our couch (a minor accident, I assure you), my wife made it clear that my old paint setup had to be reinvented. I was using Tupperware containers to store models, and a rectangle of MDF as a tray, but that no longer cut it. Knowing that I would drag my feet on purchasing a paint station ($55 on a paint station or maybe a new Monstrous creature?)  my wife leapfrogged me and bought the GW Paint Station +.

     I think the paint station works wonderfully, and its value increases when you use the accessories built for it. The build quality of the station itself is solid. GW’s old paint station used to be made up of MDF, and was susceptible to water spillage and deformation. This one is a heavyweight plastic, and it’s a different plastic recipe than our models, so spilled plastic glue won’t harm the surface. It also has spaces designed to accept GW paint pots, and paint brushes of virtually any brand. 

Building City Ruins pt 1

In the first installment in a series on building your own terrain I thought I would start with building a couple of city ruins. Since the setting of 40k revolves around mankind and his conquest of the stars, buildings and fortifications of man are probably the most common type of structures that would be found and fought over  throughout the galaxy. Whether it is an alien invasion of a city, an uprising of chaos cultists, or simply two  xenos races fighting over the ruins of a human city; we can easily identify with structures similar to what we  see in our own daily surroundings or in the media and replicate it in miniature scale.