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.

hyv3mynd's Hectic World - Painting, Playing, and Prepping

I'm going to throw a lot at you this week.  The approaching summer brings on the "slow season" for my day job.  On the horizon also is Parkhammer '13 which is the first official "event" of The Grand Strategery, the gaming club founded by authors of this blog.  While it's not a formal tournament, it will be a fun day of gaming and barbequing with friends and family.  DaBoyz have also announced the dates and venue for their 2013 GT so I'll toss in some list ideas for your review.

First off is a tutorial/WIP for my Sorceror of Tzeentch.  This model was chosen to be the focus of a painting competition at Parkhammer.  This will be my first entry into a painting competition (aside from trying for "best painted" at local events) and I'm pretty excited to spend some serious time on a single model.  This portion of the WIP will also serve as a tutorial for airbrushing small infantry models.  Since it's a competition model, I'll be taking steps that I normally wouldn't when painting an entire army.

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.

Chaos Marines Salvage Project

 Here's a glimpse of a project and side of me that only a handful of people have ever seen.  The first army I ever fully collected and built was CSM back from 2nd edition in my college days.  Above are some predators, metal marines, terminators, and a rhino from the army I collected 13 years ago.  The new codex release has rekindled my interest so I decided to approach this project from a new direction:  Build a 6th edition army based around models that I have and store credit/prize support that I've accumulated with as few cash purchases as possible.  This was a fun challenge because it involved using what I already have and resisting what I really want to buy.