Evolution of a Hobby

Today I wanted to share with you two minis. Each represents rather well the evolution of my Warhammer 40K hobby.

First is where it all started. I purchased a small container of various 40K bits from a local comic book shop. The bits sat in their box for over a year, and every now and then I would glance at them and say to myself "I really should make something with those". Finally I bought some paints from that same comic book shop and broke out some old brushes from my time as an art student. I put together a Space Marine and began painting. It took me about 18 hours to paint my first mini, I worked well into the night and would stop periodically to watch YouTube videos on how to do effects like power weapons. The result was something that I am still proud of to this day.

Lots of time and overly cautions perfectionism went into this guy. The shine came from using a glossy sealer, and sharp-eyed viewers will notice a missing shoulder pad. I cannibalized it as the shoulder was a unique one I have yet to find elsewhere and is now part of my stand-in Inquisitor. I didn't do any light effects or shading, no washes or basing. The only thing "fancy" about him is the lightning effect I did on the sword which, at the time, I was quite pleased with.

Now the next model is a project I finished just a few weeks ago. I am not a fan of some of the HQ models that GW has put out. This is especially true regarding Chaos HQs like Abaddon. That damn refrigerator box he calls a demon weapon is ridiculous looking, and the Talon of Horus looks a bit small for a primarch's weapon... I could go on but suffice to say, I have always wanted to build my own Abaddon. For any who might not know, this is Abaddon in his current incarnation:

       

Not garbage by any measure, but for me it leaves much to be desired. So after about a month of planning and taking what I had learned from making my own custom Typhus model, I created this:

Lots of over-the-top ideas got crammed into this guy. The dead marine with battle damage, the carefully crafted Talon of Horus made from a storm bolter and an Anvil Industries claw and ammo belts, an Ork top-knot replacing the compensation effort of the original model. Of course to start I had to find a replacement for the 2x4 looking Drach'nyen, which was done with a lovely Bloodletter sword.

The Obliterator legs, arms, and shoulder pads really helps make my Abaddon look like the bulky force that all four Chaos Gods feel they can rally behind.

Its a bit harsh but you can see the OSL effect I put coming from within Abaddons armor and shining out around his head. I used a really cool pinkish purple color who's name escapes me at this moment.

In game terms, Abaddons claw weapon gives all Blood Angels the Hatred (Abaddon) rule (since they kind of lost their own Primarch to that weapon during the Horus rebellion and all). So naturally I had to make the most recent victim of said claw a Blood Angel! It really helps visually drive home the reason why the Blood Angels hate him so much.

In this pic you can see the considerable beefing up the base and body used gives my Abaddon. He towers over all those around him as only a true Warmaster of Chaos Undivided should.

I look at these two models and I can clearly see the evolution of my skills as a 40K hobbyist. Washes, shading, converting, green stuff use, basing, the list of skills I have picked up over the years goes on and on. I could never claim that I am a master of any of them by far, nor would I want to. So far some of the greatest enjoyment I have taken from my 40K hobby is stepping back and seeing how I am improving. I also could never claim that my improvement was due to my efforts alone. Help and inspiration from local hobbyists and those of you online who also take the time to share your beautiful works all deserve the lions share of the credit. Its been a long journey to this point, but my hobby train isn't slowing down any time soon! I hope you have enjoyed this little expose into my oldest and newest works. Look for more to come soon.

Thank You!

590 views... WOW! I started this blog for personal reasons really. I wanted to catalog my work in the hobby. I never imagined that my blog would warrant this much attention. I'm sure there are blogs out there with millions of views but to me almost 600 is a lot.

Thank you all and I hope my work has provided some ideas for your own hobby ventures!

My First 40K Games!

After about a year in the hobby, I finally got around to playing WH40K! Our local GW store was holding a Kill Team tournament and I signed up for better or worse. Over the last two months I have been building my Kill Team based on my earlier ideas of a somewhat rogue Space Marine chapter. I'm still finalizing the lore but a rough explanation would be this:

Born from a campaign to find a cure for the curse hounding all marines descended from the Blood Angels and Sanguinius, the Flesh Eaters have found a measure of protection from the Black Rage and Red Thirst by devouring those they defeat in battle. While this is not an unheard of practice, the Flesh Eaters have taken these acts of seeming barbarism to new levels chapter wide.

So anyways, my first game... well was really a bit of a practice game about a month before my first tournament match. This practice game I shared with a fellow FLGS regular to get a feel for Kill Teams. I ran a team of 5 Chaos Possessed with marks and mutations etc. A very elite and small team (and unfortunately all melee... more on that later). I figured this might be the way to go, spend all your 200pts on making the best guys you can get even stronger. In my defense, this approach looks great on paper with all the nifty looking special rules that possessed get. This is where my opponents force of two Zoanthropes and 10+ Termagaunts with devourers (Devilgaunts as they are called) showed me the error of my ways... Long story short my force was tabled in 3 rounds easily. I realized two very important things that day. Volume of dice and bodies on the table are a huge factor, and melee in Kill Team games is something that you should not focus your entire force on (no more than 1-2 units/models for that matter). Things that look good on paper rarely perform on the table top...

My “second” game was to be the first of 13 I would play in our FLGS's Kill Team tournament. Luckily lots of the other tournament competitors were new players as well so it was a great learning experience for us all. This time I ran my Flesh Eaters. I used the Space Wolves Codex and brought 10 Grey Hunters lead by a Lone Wolf. My squad received a flamer and plasma gun for free thanks to the 5^th ed SW rules (the tournament started two months before the new SW book came out). My lone wolf was issued a wolf claw and storm shield. Math hammer readers may notice that this list would actually cost 220 points and you would be correct. Our local shop has some running house rules that if you buy merch in-store at the start of the tournament then you get an extra 10% in points to spend on upgrades. A pretty smart business boosting idea I must admit. Another cool house rule is that we track the kills our Kill Team's leader makes each week, and at the end of that week we roll on a boon chart and add the number of kills to the resulting roll. Your leader may be granted an extra wound, bonuses to Strength, WS/BS, Toughness, special rules like Fleet or Infiltrate etc. These bonuses stay with your leader through the entire tournament which is awesome. You can really watch your team's leader grow with each kill. And I don't mind saying that my Lone Wolf became a true beast by the end. My team specialists were the marines with the plasma gun (Preferred Enemy), the flamer (Feel No Pain 5+) and a normal Grey Hunter (Ignores Cover). Preferred Enemy was a great choice because it not only meant that my plasma gunner almost never had to deal with the Gets Hot rule, but also with scoring hits in general. Feel No Pain on the flamer marine helped him charge into range and fry enemies without dying half way there. Lastly, Ignores Cover on the bolter shots of the last specialist cannot be overlooked. Cover plays a big part in Kill Teams and stripping it outright was very useful!

The first tournament game I played was against one of the tournament coordinators. He brought a squad of Iron Hands scouts to the table with cloaks, sniper rifles/bolters and a missile launcher. I learned very quickly that those camo-cloaks are a pain in the butt, and that 6+ Feel No Pain can save guys at the worst/best times (depending on who's side you're on). Its also nice to be able to Infiltrate and Scout move your force for pretty much ideal placement every time. All these fancy tricks however proved to be false hope though, as my Flesh Eaters swept the board by the end of the game! We played Head Hunt so all I had to worry about was killing (perfect fit for the Flesh Eaters), and I used focus fire to quickly bring down his scout specialists. The Lone Wolf himself killed 5 enemies single handed, including hunting down and slaying the Scout Sargent. I will probably write some battle reports from the perspective of the Kill Team later. For now though, I'm glad to be able to blog again and I'm very excited about how these games have gone!

Big Plans

So I recently learned that a GW store will be opening about 3 minutes away from my house... Awesome! A friend of mine also revealed that he has some old Tau models still in the sprue. So after some talking, we came up with the idea of actually building our respective armies, learning to actually PLAY WH:40K, and once we are established we would start a special campaign game. Details are in the works, but I think if we can do it right it will be epic!

This is a pretty big thing for me personally since I had never actually planned to learn the 40K rules. But why would I then spend large amounts of money collecting sets and bits and have a 40K blog? I have always loved the 40K universe and its fluff, I just never liked the idea of buying two, three or more $60 books that are revised every few years... plus any other special Codex books (like this one that just came out) if I want to do cool special units (which I am a predisposed sucker for). I had always planned on using a more generic and unchanging rules set like Ambush Alley Game's Tomorrow's War which is a vastly cheaper book with easy rules that don't change every few years... Primary issue with this plan as I soon learned, is that everyone plays WH:40K. So I kowtow to the gaming juggernaut that is the Microsoft equivalent in tabletop war games... and must now find some books.

Now having decided that I will be playing by the "official" 40K rules, I do need to decide the direction my minis will need to go in. My initial thoughts are reworking my forces to run as standard Space Marines using the SM codex, but the models will be CSM and traitor related. I just like the chaos models so much more that the regular SM ones (with some exceptions naturally). Perhaps a play on a chapter like the Flesh Tearers or Blood Angels which are already borderline chaos in some cases. I think I can make it work...

But of course I'll also be making my real Chaos army with Nurgle and Khorne elements etc, so really I could play either SM or CSM depending on my desires that day (and possibly with the same army). Only time will tell, but first I guess I should finish painting what I have built so far...

I have completed most of the work on my Strain Troopers so expect some awesome pics in the coming week, but to hold you over I'd like to share another one of my past works. This is my Nurgle Hellbrute I painted up and I'm quite proud that I was able to get almost every little detail on this model painted! I had planned on buying another Hellbrute and converting him with some different weapons but GW just released their new Hellbrute kit... so choices of ease vs cost there...

Dunno if I'll keep that Nurgle symbol, its kinda meh...

Until next time then. Keep an eye out for my completed Strain Troopers!