Tournaments and Tau

                                           

     

 Several weeks ago I attended a 4 round 40K tournament across the border in Canada.  It was great event. I took Grey Knights seen in the picture below.  Or blue knights as some people would call them.  I also took Grey Knights to the last major event I attended, AdeptiCon.  The main difference between this list and my Adepticon list is I included a Land Raider and the obligatory 45 Guardsmen Platoon with Power Axes and Meltaguns.  Although part of my self-assessment for Adepticon included being rusty, I also felt I did not bring enough troops for the missions.  To compensate, I added the Guardsmen.

 

Batrep: DE/Eldar vs Tyranids 1500pts

I had a chance to have my friend Gerry over for a casual game this week.  He's been using my tyranids to get a feel for the 6th ed mechanics before he builds an army of his own.

Here's a shot of the table and terrain.  I had set it up earlier so we use the "narrative" setting rather than the alternating method.  We rolled up The Scouring and Hammer/Anvil deployment.

Parkhammer! This Saturday

     Parkhammer is just a few days away, and I’m getting pumped. I haven’t been able to make it out to many events over the past few months, so I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone. I think we have a great group of people. It’s a real confluence of top tier players, fantastic hobbyists and good sportsmen. On top that, we’re going to have some great food! There will be several different entries into the Chili Contest, and I know that we have a few good cooks in the bunch.

      For those that are making their 1^st trip down, here’s a map of the area and the blue dot is where you want to go.

View Parkhammer in a larger map


     Below the fold, I’ll go through a few reminders, and post up a list I’m thinking about bringing. See you this weekend!

Grubnards Hobby Update and Eldar Feedback

This past week I have been pretty lucky to sneak in a lot of hobby related projects. For starters, I have nearly completed my Tzeentch Sorcerer model for the ParkHammer painting competition. This model has been a blast to paint and it has allowed me to test out some new techniques. Next week we should have pictures available of all the models entered into the contest and who ended up winning the contest.

Secondly, I have started the Tyranid Ripper Pads terrain but rather than combine that with this article I figured I would save that for next week. I have also been working on converting a section of my basement into a gaming room. I plan on having a full sized table with storage underneath and plenty of room to seat 4 players comfortably. I should have that finished up by the 4th of July weekend and pictures will follow.

Daemon Codex - Heavy Support - Daemon Prince/Soul Grinders

The Heavy Support section of this reviews comes at a good time - mainly because I finally finished off the wings to the Daemon Princess pictured below.  I acquired her from Cersi at DakkaDakka when he was doing custom sculpts/casts and finally started painting her around November of last year.  The last nagging quality was the wings - which I just could not seem to get the way I wanted them to be.  With a little airbrushing and some washes, I am pretty happy with the result.  Part of the overall issue, is the pale skin color really makes it difficult to have a light white feathery wing - so I really wanted to push the pink/purple core colors of my army with her.

I have tried to position all these pics to make her safe for work - also note the wood floor she stands on.  This is the Grand Theater of Excess, where mortals play their role on the battlefield in the creation of an atrocious artistic masterpiece.  To this army (my army) "All the world's a stage..."  And now for the review!

The Mandulian Chapel Presents - Woodcock

Hello my name is Jay Woodcock.  I wanted to join the fantastic guys on this blog to share my experiences in the wargaming hobby.  I chose the name DaCock.  Yes I did! Something to remind me of my last name.  I don’t think I am usually a cock at the playing table, unless I am being cheated.  Let me tell you little about myself. I am married with 3 kids and I have been playing 40k since 2^nd edition.  I played 2^nd edition with some old high school friends.  I really got into 40k at the start of 3^rd edition.  It seems like a lifetime ago.  I have several armies including: Tyranids, Sisters, Eldar, Grey Knights and a small detachment of Guard.  I have been playing a lot of Grey Knights lately and I am still trying to figure out Tyranids in 6^th edition.  I still want to run a genestealer focused army, similar to the one I used to place 4^th at the AdeptiCon championships a couple years back - I had the red/orange Tyranids.  I love to go to tournaments and hang out with friends.  I love the tournament experience, including local events.  Tournaments enable me to play more games in one day than when I went down to play pickup games.  I am also one of the Tournament Organizers of DaBoyz GT. So you might see some DaBoyz/GT related posting and thoughts here. 

Another Fabulous Friday

Remember these guys?  This week they were elevated to a new level of internet nerd fame with their own demotivational poster featured on Spikey Bits.  If you don't get the reference, it's about the GW vs Chapterhouse Studios case where it came up that GW polices internet forums looking for IP violations.

Anyways, onto other news.  Since I've added more authors over the past year and backed down to posting once a week, I have several things to cover.

Tyranid Terrain: Carnivorous Plants Conclusion

In my last article, I left off with the basic egg-shaped pod with the tyranid ribbing drying with a mixture of white glue and super glue. Since then I have painted up the pods, added jungle foliage, and flocked the bases. As I did this process over a series of 10 days, I was not able to take pictures of each step but I've included the final images for you to review.

Daemon Codex - Fast Attack: Slaanesh, Unaligned

Last week I set a goal for myself to get back into painting - that goal was to finish at least a single miniature a week.  I realized this week that I did not set an end date for my painting goal - and when there is not an end date you can never achieve the goal, only take longer to fail at it.  As such, I am going to attempt the at least one miniature a week mark until the Da Boyz tournament.  For last week, success took the form of a Dark Vengeance CSM, pictured below.

 

Tutorial: Easy Custom Bases

     Whenever I start a new army, my first thoughts focus on how bind my force together with a common theme. I think most people do it with their painting, but I also like to do it with basing. Basing can bring together a force that is painted differently, and it can tell a story of the on-going battle.

     Here's the display board for my Chaos Space Marines, along with a bunch of bases I made. In this example, I made each base individually for each spot on the board. This way was fairly easy, but took a bit of time to make sure each base fit exactly into place. My CSM force is also relatively small, so custom bases for everyone wasn't that big of a deal.

     Alternatively, when you're dealing with a horde army (like my Orcs & Goblins) you want to make up a bunch of custom bases, and do it as efficiently as possible. Below the fold, I'll go through the simple method I use to crank out bases.

Daemon Codex - Fast Attack: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle

I am at a bit of a tough place as a 40k player at the moment.  It is not that I do not want to play/paint, but somehow by the time all the responsibilities of the day have come and gone, I simply do not have the time or energy to jump into projects, blogging, or reading about 40k.  I have read other posts from bloggers that express being burned out from the hobby - but that is definitely not the case - if anything I am more interested in getting games in than before.  As added motivation for myself to push through I am planning on a two part challenge.  First, I am challenging myself to complete one miniature a week - whether it is a Daemonette or a Keeper of Secrets - in an effort to jump start my painting.  Second, in fulfillment of the first goal I am making Wednesday and Sunday nights dedicated painting nights.  I plan to post the results of each weeks painting at the start of my Blog posts.  The first model I am looking to complete is one of the Dark Vengeance CSM who has been half finished for a month now.

For the core of this post I am going to look at the Fast Attack choices available to Daemons.  The Fast Attack slot might be the best in the codex and each god brings an interesting option - although they all fulfill roughly the same role - engage quickly with the enemy gunline to tie up shooting until something big comes in to finish the job.

Getting Tired of Tournaments? Here's a Different Type of Event

     For the past few months my local game store (Mythic Game in Elmira, NY) has been running a tournament series that has had slowly declining attendance. I think it’s a common problem that a lot of stores have had since the tail end of 5^th edition. While the first few tournaments had over a dozen entrants (good for a new store), attendance at recent events has dwindled. 

     As an occasional TO, I’m always looking for new ideas to get people into events. I think the problem in our area is that there are a lot of players, but only a few really like the tournament experience. We have a lot of casual players and hobbyists, but what kind of event can draw them all in? 

     A good friend told me about an event series they were running for their local Warmachine group, and I decided to modify it slightly for a Warhammer Fantasy & 40K event series. Dan down at Mythic will be running it over the next few months. In short, we’ve come up with a raffle based system that rewards attendance, painting, and playing games. Check out how the system breaks down below the fold:

Friday Reflections

We've come to a very interesting place 11 months after the release of 6th edition.  Games Workshop has turned around and given us new codexes and models at a pace we've never experienced before.  A year ago, the 40k forum collective and blogosphere were ripe with people bemoaning the snail's pace of releases and updates.  Today, we're getting new books, units, and models so fast that only the hobby elite (read: those with the most free time) have actually had time to read every page if every new book and play with or against the new units.  The most common complaint I hear from my closest circle is lack of time to reflect on all the new content and experience the meta changes on the table.

Tyranid Terrain: Carnivorous Plants pt II

Welcome back to the next installment on making tyranid terrain. This latest series is about creating carnivorous plants that will be part a part of a tables worth of terrain that represents the later stages of an Tyranid invasion. Last week I started the project by gluing some foam eggs to particle board and adding feeder tendrils to the base of the pods. You can read about that phase by clicking here. This week I did some clay sculpting to add an alien look and feel to mirror the digestion pools I worked on a few weeks ago (click here). So let's take a look at what I was able to add this week.