Some things, and also... Stuff!

First of all, I want to thank everyone that reads our blog! Thanks! We just passed 40k views about a week ago and we are going strong!

Get it, 40k?

That's relevant!

BLAM!

This weekend I will be going to the first GT held in San Diego being TO'd by the ever handsome Dave Fay! I decided to go with Grey Knights because that's what all the cool kids are doing, I heard.  Also, it's going to be jam packed with some of the best players on this side of the world so I figured I need to bring my A game. I'm hopefully going to be cognizant enough to remember to take pictures and do battle reports for these as I'm going to be on vacation all week next week. Keep an eye out for the battle reports posting daily!

In addition, I finally got a playable amount of points for my legion list! Me and Soldado are going to be messing around while we're on vacation and trying to learn the rules better by day and drinking our asses off by night!  This is what I have so far:

Absylonia
Carnivean
Proteus
Angelius
Shredder x 2

I'm looking to move into a tier 4 list for here and have stuff on the way from ebay... But it's coming from Poland so I have been waiting about a month for it. Once I get that stuff in, I will have a lot of options. This is what I have coming in:

Saeryn
pThargrosh
Angelius
Seraph
Shredder x 2
Harrier
Forsaken x 2

I think that will open up my list options a lot. I'm excited to play with Saeryn as she seems like a beast. I also really want to play with more than one Angelius as the one I have has been ridiculous so far!

Lastly, we are thinking of doing a contest, but we haven't worked out the details on that yet. Stay tuned for details on that and battle reports from the potentially last GT in 5th edition! See you guys next week!

Becoming a better painter, I hope!

Hello reader,
This article is a little information about how I "Hobby" and the steps I am taking to becoming a better painter /  hobbyist. Here is a little summary of what I am going to talk about in the following text wall. If this doesn't interest you, carry on. If it does, well awesome!!! Welcome to my painting geekout!!

• What the fuck I am talking about.
• AwesomePaintJob washes distributed by Secret Weapon Miniatures.
• My Airbrush, and how all of this ties together.

Dok on the right, Blood Lord Soldado on the left!!
Just kidding, we would never wear Ultramarines...

Random Rambling: Counts as and third party models in 40k tournaments

An interesting idea occurred to me recently. With GW removing it's prize support from tournaments and the upcoming newest price hike, who are they to say what models we use in those tournaments?  All tournaments from here on (with the exception of the last throne of skulls) will be ran by third parties and therefore have nothing to do with Games Workshop.

So, what's to stop people from going to third party retailers(read, potentially cheaper) for replacement, potentially cheaper counts-as models? Nothing as far as I can see. Of course, clear all count's-as with your TO before-hand. If the wargear/model is not clearly identifiable.

That being said, this opens the floodgates wide for other company's to start producing lower price alternatives to existing GW items. IP infringement notwithstanding. (hint, hint third party company's!)  I say if GW isn't going to support it's players and wants to do it's best to drive up the prices, it's time for consumers to fight back in the only way we can. With our wallets.  There has to be a point where it's one price hike too many. I think I have reached that point.

Do I want to pay $80+ for a stormraven?

No.

I didn't want to pay 60+ dollars for it!

I'm really getting interested in the lore of some of these other games.  So check them out. Give someone else your hard earned money.  Not blindly of course, always research your purchase and make sure you have someone to play with! If you're in the LA area, come find me! I'm down to try any kind of gaming at least once!

Hordes : Painting Progress! Painted Pig Pics.

As you noticed, there are lots of P's in the the title of this article and it won't stop there!!

Painted some Privateer Press Pigs and Purchases Paints as well... Here are a few Pics of the Progress.

Details on colors and stuff after the break

Happy Memorial day weekend!

No better way to start it off then with the all American pastime of watching Kate Upton!  Have a good weekend everybody, I'll be back Tuesday!

Stormtalon: Why do you want it?

The new jets are causing a bit of a stir and I'm not sure why. So I thought I would dig a little deeper into the Stormtalon as it's the only one I have any real perspective on.

What do we know about the Stormtalon? Quite a lot now, thanks to the white dwarf being released! Let's check out the rules.

Unit cost
130pts + upgrades in the fast attack slot for C:SM 

Special rules
BS4 AV11
Fast Skimmer
Supersonic - moves up to 36" when going flat out
Aerial Assault - moves 12 and can fire all weapons
Ceramite Plating
Deep Strike

Escort Craft -  Can be attached to a unit in reserve, and must move on within 6" of the unit. Both units come in on one reserve roll.
Hover Strike - Can forgo moving in order to recieve a +1 to BS against certain targets. Weapons become pinning

Wargear:
Twin linked Assault Cannon, Twin linked Heavy Bolter
The H. Bolter can be upgraded to the following
Twin linked Lascannon
Typhoon Missile Launcher
Sky Hammer Missile Launcher 60" S7 AP4 Heavy 3

The weirdest thing about this vehicle is that it has 0 vehicle wargear options. No option for EA, searchlights, nothing. It seems weird for a supposed scout craft to not even have the option for a searchlight.



So let's compare this to some of the other FA choices of a similar cost

40k Orks Battlewagon Rush +2 Dakka Jets

Jets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to add 2 Dakkajets to my Battlewagon Rush.

Why?

They are decent anti-tank!!! DECENT!

Slightly more reliable than lootas at similar cost I think.

9 Shots @ BS 3 = 4.5 Hits, twin linked, 6.5 hits. Str 6 on armor 10, Faster vehicle will get sides... 6.5 hits on armor 10 is 3.25 Results....

8 lootas, 16 shots on average @ BS 2 = 5.3 Hits. Str 7 on armor 11 2.666 Results

Double Shots on a Waagh Turn? When I need those transports open the most!!! 4.5 Results!! = ASSPLODES! X2.

I think it will be interesting.

 HQ 

• Big Mek 
  'Eavy Armour, Kustom Force Field , Power Klaw
• Ghazghkull Thraka 

Elites 

• Kommandos
  Boss Snickrot, 2x Burna, 9x Kommando

Troops 

• Gretchin 
  10x Gretchin 
  • Runt Herder 
    Grabba Stikk
• Nobz (Troops)
  Painboy
  • Battlewagon
    Armour Plating , Boarding Plank, Deff Rolla, Kannon, Red Paint Job 
  • Painboy 
    Dok's Tools Cybork Body,Urty' Syringe
  • Nob 
    'Eavy Armour , Big Choppa, Bosspole Cybork Body, Slugga
  • Nob 
    'Eavy Armour, Cybork Body, Power Klaw, Slugga
  • Nob
    'Eavy Armour, Cybork Body, Power Klaw, Slugga
  • Nob 
    'Eavy Armour, Cybork Body , Power Klaw, Slugga, Waagh Banner
• Ork Boyz 
  19x Boy 
  • Nob 
    Bosspole , Power Klaw 
• Ork Boyz 
  19x Boy 
  • Nob 
    Bosspole , Power Klaw
  
  

Fast Attack 

• Dakkajet
• Additional Twin-Link Supa Shoota, Red Paint Job

• Dakkajet
• Additional Twin-Link Supa Shoota, Red Paint Job

Heavy Support

• Battlewagon
  Armour Plating , Boarding Plank, Deff Rolla, Kannon, Red Paint Job 
• Battlewagon 
  Armour Plating , Boarding Plank, Deff Rolla, Kannon, Red Paint Job 

          

No Deffkoptas, but we are adding Snikrot. Ambush is 50% more predictable than just outflanking a Kopta. My experience with koptas is, you need them on the left, so they come in on the right. Snikrot, while not being able to get them sooner, allows you to come in where you want. They also force your opponent to play away from the edge of the table.

If I find that Snikrot isn't all that great, I will swap him for 12 Lootas and a cybork body for my Big Mek.

Also, a lot of people say that my Nobz and Big Mek are too armored, to that I say... pfft! Although I am beginning to hate the idea of the armor since all I ever play is grey knights and armor and painboy are garbage vs them. Time will tell if they get watered down even further.

So why bother taking the Jets?

First off, they are a massive distraction. I need people to not shoot at my wagons first and foremost. Since my jets should be neglected, they will have an opportunity to do some damage with all of those Str 6 shots.

What these gits also allow, which will be even more interesting, is some decent ranged anti-infantry fire power. Being able to kill hordes of Footdar or Bugs, or whatever at a reasonable range is new to me.

I am pretty excited about these jets, but I am quick to react on things so time will tell!!!

Diablo 3 woes, continued...

This afternoon, I logged in to find that all my items and gold were missing... My fault for having a weak password? Maybe? It was listed as "strong" by the password verification system.

But, really Blizzard? You make us play online all the time and deal with the lag and the queues and the bullshit installer and then I have to deal with account hacking to steal my miserable 5k gold?

Here is their statement on the matter:

“We’d like to take a moment to address the recent reports that suggested that Battle.net and Diablo III may have been compromised. Historically, the release of a new game — such a World of Warcraft expansion — will result in an increase in reports of individual account compromises, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing now with Diablo III. We know how frustrating it can be to become the victim of account theft, and as always, we’re dedicated to doing everything we can to help our players keep their Battle.net accounts safe — and we appreciate everyone who’s doing their part to help protect their accounts as well.”

Suggested?  I'd like to take a moment and suggest that you go F yourselves. Historically, the release of a single player game with multi-player support doesn't require a constant connection to your pos battle net servers to play the single player portion.  This "game" has been nothing but an inconvenience since it launched.  I'm generally a fan of blizzards games and their lore. That's why I laid my money out without a second thought on release day. Apparently I should've put my remembering cap on and thought back to the WoW beta/release.  At least at the beginning of WoW there wasn't a blizzard built-in motivator to hack accounts and steal their shit. (I'm talking about you, cash4gold auction house!)

The worst thing about it all is the community on the forums.

"should have had an authenticator"
"haha, noob"
"get an anti-virus"

Really, so I have to pay a premium in addition to the cost of the game so that I can perhaps play?  Authenticators are the biggest scam out there.  I'm surprised they haven't started charging monthly for them like car insurance. The noob comments are just people who haven't been hacked yet and will be just as pissed as I am.

Oh, and I have an anti-virus. Thank you very much. Those are always fool-proof!

The thing I'm mostly pissed off about is that I'm home sick from work today and I wanted to get a little game time in. (As I haven't had much time with the move and unpacking, 5k gold? Pathetic!)  I'm sitting here sick as hell and wanted to cuddle up with my beautiful barbarian Brunhilda and I log in to see her naked. No one wants to see that. She's only beautiful when shes driving her enemies before her and hearing the lamentations of their women (men?). No one does that to Brunhilda!!!

Oh snap, planes!

Somehow I missed/didn't care about the "whatever of fliers", but it's just come out that they are really being released June second!

Product	Contents	Available	Price	Material
Space Marine Stormtalon Gunship	1 mini	June 2nd	$45.50	Plastic
Necron Doom Scythe - Night Scythe	1 mini	June 2nd	$45.50	Plastic
Ork Bommer	1 mini	June 2nd	$45.50	Plastic

It's a flying metal Croissant!

Ork Technology apparently stopped at ww2

meh

This is... cool? I guess? Two of these things don't have any rules in the codexes so there's no way to play them for now. I know some people are excited about the Doom scythe with it's crazy lazer beams, but the sctyhes seem like the worst vehicles from the Necron book.  A 4+ flat out save has almost never saved a ravager from continuous fire, so I don't know why people are so hot on a vehicle with one random gun that's good against heavy vehicles and another that's better against light vehicles and troops. Especially if they are huge flyers. I guess it's another thing that's super good at killing rhinos?

Any way you look at it, new models are cool. So they have that going for them. But their blackout on previews will really hurt them in the case of the stormtalon and the Bomma I think. No one's going to run out and buy something they aren't sure if they can even play, let alone have any idea what the rules are.

Also, keep in mind the upcoming 25% price increase from GW... So while $45 seems like a somewhat reasonable price if these are good, $60 does not.

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. Is anyone out there excited for these things?

Hordes: game 1! Legion vs Pigs

Me and Soldado got to play a bit of Horde on Horde action today!  We barely know the rules so some friendly onlookers gave us some rules tips and a bit of direction. We need to L2P! 

We played an odd number of points since I couldn't find my stat cards for my angelius or my shredders. L2findmyshit!
I played
Abslonia
Proteus
Carnivean

Woo three models! They were the only cards I had on me so that's what I used. 2 big beasties and a buffer. 

Soldado played
Lord Carver
2 x war pigs
Farrow Slaughterhousers

That's a lot of bacon!

The Badger has landed!

Specifically what I am talking is about is my Badger Patriot 105 Air Brush.

I have been watching how to videos from:
Les Bursley from www.AwesomePaintJob.com
IK Painter on www.dakkadakka.com
and various other people and I have been inspired to try it out.

I realize its not as easy as it looks, but I have picked up an army to test it out on.

I will be painting up a Demons of Chaos army pretty much exclusively with airbrush over the next few months / year. I will post up WIP pics as I begin the foray into the airbrush world.

Also, we played our first game of Hordes today.

Blood Lord Soldado 1 - Dok 0

PORK FOR THE PORK GOD!!!!!


Dok will have a write up on the game in a bit.

Malifaux: The dreamer vs Perdita

Soldado and I have been looking for other games to expand in to and I finally convinced him that Malifaux was worth a shot. It's super cheap to get in to and the games go by relatively quick. We browsed around and he decided on the Perdita box both to try to con his wife into being interested and so that he could paint them in the colors of the mexican flag. Si se puede, Soldado!

I initially bought Pandora but never really got anything beyond that as I couldn't get any interest going in the local store. The SoCal Malifaux guys are super helpful, but they don't come out to Pasadena too much. So, with Soldado getting his Ortega crew going, I decided to stick with my Neverborn choice and pick up the Dreamer! I've been reading the strats over at pull my finger and it seems like the Dreamer might be a bit of a challenge to master.

We are still trying to figure out the rules at the moment, but Malifaux seems like it will be a super fun game. I really like the fluff for Neverborn and the abilities are hilarious. The Dreamer box comes with a model named Coppelius that steals and eats people's eyes. How awesome is that?!?!

Just a quick post for today. Hopefully we can get a battle report in sometime soon. Once we figure out the rules at least. All I know so far, is that black jokers are bad. M'kay!

San Diego GT: To Grey Knight or to Blood Angel?

The first weekend of June, the San Diego branch of Game Empire is throwing a huge 1500 point GT!  Painting is 20% of the score, so that leaves me with really only two choices of army to play. Grey Knight Purifiers, or mech BA.

Check out these sweet trophies Dave (Of Dave Fay fame) had made for the tournament! 

Alas poor Khorne, I knew ye well

I definitely need one of those, so I need to bring my A game!

Lately, I've been playing my BA a lot lately in both tournaments and the local masters league. I feel they are strong, but in the last tournament I played in I experienced a lot of fatigue going into the third game and tanked it accordingly. So it may be time to hang up the BA hat for a bit and return to my Grey Knights for a bit.

Check out my potential lists after the jump

Diablo 3 tells me to F myself

For anyone out there who is not sure if your machine will run Diablo 3, don't buy it! Try to get a hold of a guest pass or get the download from somewhere. I spent 3 hours trying to install Diablo last night (after the install wouldn't let me proceed past the EULA once and crashed the second time with a MPQ error...) and then after getting it installed and updated, I clicked play... Only to have the game tell me that my chipset isn't supported.

Thanks Blizzard. You couldn't put the compatibility check at the beginning of the install? I had doubts that my laptop would play the game well, but to be denied completely? And after the game was fully installed? That's just a fuckin slap to the face. I don't know why I expected anything else after having played WoW from the beta, but I expected Diablo to be pretty straight forward since it is a mostly one player game. 

As with most game launches now-a-days, there are a lot of bugs. Why is this acceptable? Why do companies get a second beta period with people that paid $60 for their product. It seems to me that PC software companies are just lazy and will do anything to make their marketing deadlines. Quality be damned!

 I dunno, I'm mostly pissed because I want to be cool and play with my friends. And while I paid money to do so, I cannot due to a hardware restriction. But even if my laptop would let me play...

Error 37 is the new black

The sheer number of known issues is staggering for a game that has been released. I'm sure some people will sympathize and say "it's a big, complicated world". I say bullshit. If it's anything like other Diablo games, it's a linear story with pre-defined monsters and dungeons. Everything is going to be located in the same place everytime. The only difference is going to be the number and type of monster.

Don't apologize for Blizzard, they are a rich company with many available resources. As with most companies, I'm sure development was delayed, thus cutting into QA time. QA time is not factored into the release date so whatever time was left over between those two dates is what they get.

Necrons: The better tyranid codex?

I have been playing Necrons in the escalation league at my FLGS for the last couple months and something struck me the other night. Scarab farm lists pretty much play like Tyranids, only with much better units! Stay with me here... Necrons have monstrous creatures that spawn little guys (and the little guys the Necrons spawn are much, much better), they have super fast assault units that strike before the opponent, they have cheap throw away scoring units, and they don't have a specific vulnerability to anti-tank weaponry.

Then you have the ways this type of list improves on tyranids.

• The Necron HQs are much, much better and affect the board in a way that's beneficial to this type of armies survival. I'm lookin at you, Lord of storms!
• The spyders never run out of babies to spawn, have 3 more wounds, and are less points than a tervigon
• Wraiths are faster and more resilient than almost anything in the 'nid codex
• Psychic defense on a 4+. To be fair, this is arguably worse than shadows in the warp as it only affects some powers. 
• Night fighting provides cover of darkness long enough for you to avoid the most heavy firepower. Almost guaranteeing that you will make it to their lines

The major strength of the scarab farm lie in it's lack of vehicles.  The meta is heavily geared towards killing rhinos and chimeras. This kind of firepower will definitely kill a couple scarabs, but with 3+ cover from stealth... plenty will still make it to the enemies lines. 

The combination of imotekh's lightning and fast assaulty units is killer. If nids had an Imotekh equivalent... well, they might've made more than an appearance at adepticon. Yet even with all this going for them, there is still something I just don't quite like about the Necrons...

Check out my list and my gripes about the 'crons after the jump

Hordes: Pork Painting Progess. Big Pigs underway

So with a week under my belt, I was able to slather a few more layers of paint on the Golden Horde.

I decided to get the 2 War Boars out of the way first since they are biggest of the items I have aside from Rorsh and Brine.

The models I got from eBay had a conversion, which I thought was interesting and gives my Boars a little bit of a difference which I can appreciate. The one has the plastic hands from the Khador Heavy Jack Kit instead of his standard hands and axes which looks right, but at the same time different and a but unique.

I also decided to differentiate them even more I would go with a brown pig and a grey / black pig.

I will go into details on these after the break!

6th Edition Chaos Space Marines - What do we think?

Its about that time of the year when shit is about to happen and rumors are flying like fecal matter in the chimp exhibit.

We have seen a grip of things posted and I have decided to put it all here and make my commentary on it all.

I will try to state my sources for these rumors, but hell if I know who "Broke" this stuff first, nor do I really care.

I know some people hate rumors so ill do it all after the break.

I will insert a random awesome 40k pic though!!

Magmatrax FTW!!!

Awesome diablo 3 short: Wrath

Thanks to my buddy Jeremy for pointing this out.

It's not quite game play, but I'm sure we'll all be seeing plenty of that in a week!

Privateer press July releases: Collosal!

Just in time (Hopefully) for me to get the brunt of my Legion force, Privateer press is coming out with another book and man is this one big.

See what I did there?

From their site
"Darkness descends upon the nations of the Iron Kingdoms as the undead legions of Cryx overwhelm Point Bourne, revealing their true strength. As war once again consumes the land, the embattled nations race to deploy colossal warjacks bristling with weaponry to turn the tide. But the emergence of new threats, both ancient and unseen, will force old enemies into uneasy cooperation in a fight for survival!
WARMACHINE: Colossals brings you the next thrilling chapter of the WARMACHINE saga. Elevate your game with:

Powerful new colossals—enormous warjacks that dwarf even the largest heavy ’jacks and bring all-new strategies to the table.

New warcasters for each faction, including the third incarnations of some of the Iron Kingdoms’ greatest champions.

Fully compiled and updated Unbound rules, allowing you to recreate iconic large-scale battles with specialized rules to enhance gameplay.

New narrative fiction picking up directly after the exciting events of WARMACHINE: Wrath.

A painting and modeling guide to help you prepare your colossals for combat.

Theme Force lists for each new warcaster, which allow you to create armies based on the specialized forces found in the WARMACHINE world.

FOCUS YOUR WILL AND CRUSH THE ENEMY BENEATH YOUR COLOSSAL MIGHT!"

Check after the jump for more info

Hordes: Pork Progress!

Well,

Painting has slowed down for me. The Gun Boar is about in the same place as we last saw him, although so paint did chip off... dammnit....


I was able to get ahold of a bunch of new minis!!!

I found a guy dumping a lot of Farrow on the eBay!!!

What I got:

Lord Carver

Min. Farrow Brigands

Min. Farrow Brigands

War Hog

War Hog with some conversion work

Rorsh & Brine

Farrow Slaughterhousers

Targ

This, on top of my 1 Gun Boar takes me to about 45 point and definitely enough to start playing when Doc's stuff shows up from Poland.

I am excited!!!

Avengers news!

I haven't seen the movie yet, but the word around the campfire is that there are two! Yes, two bonus scenes after the movie. One is mid credits and reveals something particularly awesome, And the other is at the very end of the credits and is remarkably less so. But it's still more avengers for your buck, so hang out until the end for more avengers action!

Skyrim DLC: Dawnguard

Potentially coming this summer... Bethesda just announced that the new DLC will be called Dawnguard... There goes the rest of this year!  I was fatally heart-broken when I "beat" skyrim earlier this year. Hopefully this will make up for it.

How many arrow to the knee jokes will be in this expansion? Only time will tell...

Kingdom con Results, life, etc

The overall results from Kingdom con were finally posted! Check me out! 6th overall is not too shabby for my third GT. I'm movin on up!!! Also, not to toot my own awesome horn too much, but I made it onto the front page of rankingsHQ! That's a thing!!!

Me and Dave Key after he beat my ass

I finally got all my stuff moved in to my new place, now all that's left is the unpacking. The major project at work wrapped up as well, so it should be posting as normal for the foreseeable future! Let me tell you, moving sucks. Especially when you only have your girlfriend to help you. I'm all for female empowerment and all that, but saying you are women, you are strong does not mean you can carry a couch!

Also, I have some exciting news everyone! I may soon be doing a sweet interview on a popular 40k podcast! I have no idea why they would want to talk to me, but fuck it! I'm down to talk to people on the internet. That's what I do here!

There's been another swell of 6th edition rumors that I'll be talking about later in the week, but I wanted to talk a bit about the idea of "hull points". For those that don't know, these are supposed to be the number of times you can take a penetrating hit before you are wrecked outright. This seems like it could be very silly when playing against armies that can easily lay a number of penetrating hits on a vehicle. The damage chart is random for a reason and sometimes you get lucky and your opponent rolls a bunch of 1's. Imo, there's nothing wrong with that. It's even sillier if it counts glances against this total.

I know people will say that this removes some randomness from the game and reduces the frustration that people get when they keep rolling low on the chart, but do we really need this as a training wheel?  Good players will make sure the priority targets are destroyed.  This seems like a buff to an army that can put forth a large volume of fire and gives them almost mathematical certainty that X number of shots will absolutely bring a target down.

Seems like it would make the game less fun to me. That's all I'm sayin!