A New Year

Happy New Year all!

Gosh, it's been a while since I posted on this blog, but I sure as hell haven't been inactive in my gaming duties!

Mordheim settled down in December as we headed towards Christmas, so that gave me more time to do my painting. Also, I've recently been bringing some painting gear around with me to work, and then heading to my local GW in my lunchbreak to get a good hour of painting done. This really helps, because it's a good hour of focused painting. At home, I generally model or paint when I feel like it, but at GW, sitting down at their bench... well... kinda feels silly to go in there and do nothing right?

It's really been good going in there basically ever day. I don't have much to do in my lunch breaks at the moment. Temperature is generally above 30 degree's Celsius. No Go club on at the moment. No gaming either (Mordheim's done, Bloodbowl doesn't start up for a little while). So I go in there, and well... paint. I've gotten a ton done. I pretty much painted both my Duellists and Crossbowmen at Games Workshop, and have been working more on Asarnil and Deathfang lately. My Light Cavalry I basically ripped through one weekend, and yeah, that was my painting for the month. Total of 23 models, 25 if you include the cavalry as 2 each. Not too shabby.






With the New Year, I feel perhaps I should make some form of gaming Resolution on my blog.
So let's see how I go, I suppose I'll list some reasonable, and other's maybe not so reasonable.

For starters, I'd like to cut back on my buying a bit. I'll say the age old Warhammer players resolution, I'd like to paint more models than I buy. This is a hard one to keep! As it takes like a few minutes to buy something, but to paint a single model it takes a lot longer and a lot more work! Especially with Blood Angels coming out around April...

Secondly, I want to get my Dogs of War up to 3000 points, all painted. I actually have a 3000 point tournament in March, but I won't have them all painted by then. I should hopefully have 2000 points painted by then though, and I need 2500 by June. So I think this is reasonable. As long as my order from the UK arrives, I did a joint order with a friend and I think it's gotten more than a little lost (Considering it was oredered in November. Not even ships take that long).

Thirdly, paint up my Shadowforge Elf Bloodbowl team. I want to take my time, and do a good job on them. For once, I want to have a team in the Southern Shrike Bowl painting comp.

Fourthly... well I don't want to just focus on my Dogs of War. I think let's say, I want to at least get 1000 points of Blood Angels done this year. As well as some of my Warmaster I've bought a lot of now, and going back and finishing off some Lizardmen stuff I started.

So overall you can see, paint more! Buy less! Let's see how well I do.

Been even longer

Well... the last time was a mere 9 days, now it's been an entire month.
Been fairly busy with various bits and pieces really, but here's the low down of what's been happening.

Dogs of War - Progressing well enough. Asarnil and his buddy Deathfang are taking a bit longer than I suspected. A lot of work to get a Dragon looking good. However, Asarnil himself is nearly done and is looking ace I think. I may end up throwing a few Duellists in this month so I can spend a bit more time on Deathfang.

Blood Angels - I made a decision. I was spending too much time per Blood Angel to get them done at a decent page. Was that a bad thing? No. I was painting good quality stuff, multiple layers and all that. It just meant, I made the decision to drop them from the Tale of 40k painters. I'll just continue on at my own page.

Mordheim/Posssessed - I can't remember if I mentioned this much, but there's a Mordheim league taking place in the Bloodbowl off-season time. I've chosen Possessed, because I wanted an interesting conversion opportunity. I've been enjoying things so far, I got some magnets for arm swaps and all that. The only slightly frustrating thing is the Chaos Spawn is HUGE, and way too large to be a Possessed. I'm gonna stick with one for now, but at some time later I really have to convert and sculpt my own (Time I don't really have for this season). Also, last Sunday we had our first Mordheim get together to build terrain. Was a good day overall, even if only about 8 people turned up. Gonna have to churn out a few more buildings to get our first table done.

Bloodbowl - Been a while I think. I had my first loss against the top of the table Dark Elves. I drew facing one of the top contender Wood Elf team (a somewhat miraculous 3-3 for the slow moving Khemri). I then beat the 4th placed Chaos team. The Wood Elves failed to win, so got knocked out of the finals. So unfortunately that leaves me in 3rd place (I have the same record and touchdown diff as the 2nd placed team, but he has more touchdowns so I assume that's what counts). This means, I have to fight my way to the finals everyway. Our finals are done the same way AFL does theirs (top teams play each other, the winner has a bye. Bottom teams are strictly elimination all the way through). So it's gonna be tough, got a Chaos team with lots of block and a nasty looking Minotaur to deal with.

Warmaster - I actually picked up an Undead warmaster army in blisters/boxes fairly cheap. So could be that you'll see a warmaster army from me sometime next year or in the free time. Should be a change of pace to paint smaller stuff that I'm not doing to any particular deadline.

Go - Go I haven't talked much about in my blog, but I figure now is a good time to speak up a bit about it. Go is an ancient Asian board game. Go look it up on wikipedia for more information. To be frank, it kicks the crap out of Chess in complexity overall. I'm a decent player I'll say, definately wouldn't rate myself as good, although of course, others below me might. But I like decent, there's plenty of room for improvement left in me, and people (like the Pro's) way above me.
Anyway, recently at the start of October, I attended the Australian Go Nationals. Was a great event. I arrived on the Thursday night, and pretty much just watched a bit of tv and went to bed (Wasn't exactly prepared to be wandering around an unknown city at night right after I arrived). Friday kicked off with a teaching day, where I met some of the people running the event, others as well. Around midday, the professional player An Young Gil arrived, and gave us a lecture on 'Connections on the 2nd line'. Was very informative. He later played a simultaneous game against about 8 people. On the Saturday and Sunday were game days. There were some slight hitches at the start, but once things got going it worked out relatively well.
There were 3 divisions at the Nationals. The first was the Open Division, for people ranked 3dan and above. This is a non-handicapped division, and is played for representative points (A system Australia uses to determine who goes oversea's to represent Australia in some of the international events). The 2nd division was 2dan to 3kyu, this is the division I played in at the 3kyu rank. The final division was the 3rd division, for 4kyu to 15kyu ranked players.
I played 5 games (With 1 bye due to the odd number of people in my division). I managed to win 2 games, and lost 3. All were very good games, the games I lost being very close indeed. While the games I won, had fairly tense fights going on, whoever died would surely resign (And luckily I lived).
At the end of the day, everyone who attended got a japanese style fan. A bit dodgy in quality (or I don't know how to close fans properly. Kept on tangling itself up) but still a nice touch to award all who attended. I got mine signed by An Young Gil.
Overall, had an enjoyable time in Melbourne. Kind've nice to see a bit more of it, as every time I've been there has been for work and just driving off to wherever we've had a meeting.

Hmm... I think that's all that's happened really. It has been a long month.

Been a Little While

So yeah, been a little while since I've posted. I've been pretty busy with lots of stuff to be honest.

For starters, I didn't quite get my guys done completely for the Tale of Fantasy Painters. Maximilian Damark I didn't finish, because I wanted to give him a bit more attention. That also meant I didn't put grass on any of the Marksmen bases (Want to do them all at once). The good thing is though, once I have them done, I'll have 280 points of Dogs of War painted. I'm going to be working on Asarnil this month. I ordered some bits (yet to arrive) to also make him on foot, just in case Deathfang gets shot out from underneath him. That does however mean I have to basically do all my green stuff work on Asarnil himself again. Deathfang still needs work, really need to get him done so I can figure out what I want the base to look like.

For my Marines, failed. It's painful, but I really need to get on with them. Considering I jokered the first month, not only do I have to paint the original 5, but need to paint the rest of the squad as well. Maybe I'm in a bit over my head, as I think with my Blood Angels I've really stepped up the quality of my work as well.

Kroq-Gar I couldn't finish either. I wanted too, but just didn't have time and decided not to rush it. It's unfortunate, but that's just the way things go. I would rather accept not getting it done on time, rather than rush it and not get it looking as good as I want.

Khemri team haven't been looked at since Shrikebowl. With no tournies in the near future, they'll probably be put on the backburner until I get some more free time. It's sad though, because they probably need the least amount of work to be complete.

I got Space Hulk last weekend as well. It looks brilliant. Unfortunately I cut my finger pretty bad trying to get Lorenzo off the sprue (not bone deep, but still deep). That kind've killed the rest of the weekend for modelling. I've managed to get in one game though against my brother. We played Suicide Mission. I won both times (as marines and then stealers), but I also had a somewhat better idea of what was going on, and had some fairly decent dice rolls and command points when I needed them. Due to lack of time, unfortunately I'm not gonna be painting these guys anytime soon. Terminators might get some attention while doing my Blood Angels though.

Tto make matters worse. In addition to having to split my time between Dogs of War, Blood Angels and Champions Online, the Mordheim buzz has been going around. It's due to start after the Bloodbowl season is over, which means I've started (just last night though) making a warband. Gonna roll with the Possessed, and convert up the entire lot. Should be a lot of fun!

Bloodbowl Update

So, after beating some High Elves senseless last night (There were very few left on the pitch compared to a full steam-rolling Khemri team), I remembered that I hadn't actually posted pictures of my Khemri in a while. In fact, I have made a fair amount of progress on them, so much that when checking a previous picture... I notice that I didn't even have pictures of 2 Skeletons that have been finished for like... ages. Unfortunately, noticed that after taking photo's, so probably won't see them for a while (Probably until the group shot at the end of the long road!).

So here's some pictures of my Bloodbowl stuff.

These models aren't finished. I still need to work on the brown wrappings and paint their bases. They turned out fairly well I think, I'm definately glad I chose this colour scheme.
This is a Bloodweiser Babe that was commissioned by a couple of guys on the Ausbowl forums. A treat to paint, and I think it turned out excellent apart from one glaring thing. Yeah, you know exactly what I mean. That BLOODY mould line on the arm and body. You can't see the one on the arm (It's hard to tell in photo's, but very simple to tell in real life), but the one on the body is as plain as daylight! It pisses me off that I didn't just accept I'd have to repaint some of it and file off the mould line. Now that it's done and painted, it hurts even worse that i'm going to have to destroy some of it. Just noticed even now the one on the leg (Although, that's not as bad. That's a groove compared to basically metal hanging off). I feel sometimes mould lines are alright, but these just hurt the model so much it isn't funny.

Heralds on the Warpath

So, in another Bloodbowl update. This week my Khemri team the Heralds of Osiris faced off against the Greenskin Slackers! I had 160k in inducements to spend as the Slackers had too many players (He has gone a bit overboard with his purchases). Since I knew I could not win the war of attrition, I decided I needed my guys to get some help sticking around. I invested in an Igor and a Bloodweiser babe. This would mean, I had a better chance of reocvering from knock outs and in the case I fail a regeneration (Which in all likelihood, I would've) I am allowed to re-roll one during the game.

As the game commenced, my fans screamed in through the stadium, I managed to win the fame having 15k fans to the Slackers 11k. In this weeks event, there was a bright wizard in the stands, and the weather was to be very sunny due to his magical fireball in the sky. I wasn't fussed about that, Khemri aren't exactly known for their passing skills.

I won the kick off result, and decided to receive. I'm a bit 50-50, but when I'm up against a tough team, I think it's better to receive and hopefully knock them around a bit early on. Against a faster team, I would probably let them receive as they likely don't have the strength to deal with my mummies. This will force them to score early, and give me plenty of time for my drive (And then I get to drive in the 2nd half). The half opened nicely, with the crowd tossing a rock at a Black Orc who fell face first into the dirt.
Things went fairly smoothly. In the 2nd turn, the Slackers Troll attemped to punch a Mummy but got a both down result, sending the Troll to the Knock Out box for the rest of the game! I made my way up the field, and at the end of turn 5 I believe scored my touchdown. The slackers didn't manage to score, so it went into the 2nd half.

At the start of the 2nd half, the fans of the Slackers were obviously frustrated that they were losing even though they clearly had the numbers advantage. They tossed a rock at one of my Mummies, stunning him in the process. Ouch! That would mean he'd be out for like 2 turns. My plan in the 2nd half was to keep the pressure on and force a score so I could get a 2-1 touchdown. The ball started on the right side of the field, and the slackers thrower passed it to the goblin who decided to go left.
He managed to get half way into my half of the field, before I smacked his ball carrier into the ground. There was a bit of a scrum, but the ball came loose and in decent position. My Thro-Ra picked it up and raced up the field while a few players stayed back to keep the orcs in check. While moving up the field, my Blitz-Ra managed to smash a goblin into the ground, killing the poor bugger. Moments later, a Mummy smashes an Orc who goes out for the rest of the match.
I managed to get up the field, almost losing my 2nd touchdown (My Mummy skulled out, luckily I re-rolled it and it came up decent. I promptly made the touchdown not willing to risk losing the spp).
So with that, the game ended. I got some more money which is just sitting there (Maybe I should buy another skellie, they're dirt cheap), fan factor stayed the same. Unfortunately I now have lots of guys nearing a skill up, but aren't quite there. Here's hoping for a nice soft team for me to bash next game.

Eucbowl 2009

So, it's now Monday. The day after my very first Eucbowl. Just to say it up front, it was pretty good overall. I took my Khemri team, which I didn't manage to get finished. My new target is to get them all done before Southern Shrike Bowl 2009 at the end of August.

Basically, I went in on the Friday. I landed in Sydney around 2:30pm, and managed to find my way around due to Googlemaps and the CityRail website. So with a few quick train rides, I'd made it to Burwood where the tournament was taking place and I was staying. At around 4:30, I headed back into the central city to see the Sydney Go Club. Played a few games of Go, one against David whom I had met at the Ballina Go Camp earlier this year before returning back to Burwood and hitting the bed.

Saturday was day 1, and everything was going pretty decent for me then. I managed to scrum in a tie (2-2) a win (2-0) and another tie (1-1). The first game I think was the best game I had all tournament, possibly ever. Was a very tight game, with me getting both my touchdowns at the end of both halves to tie the game. So at the end of day 1, I believe I was sitting around 16th out of 54.

Sunday however wasn't so great. I had a good game first up, ending in a 1-1 tie. However the 2nd game my team got absolutely mauled. Most of my guys ended up in the casualty bin or the knock out box. I can't say my opponent was a bad opponent, it's just the way it happened. His dice were just on fire, and I couldn't do much to stop him. I think it ended up about 3-0 in his favour. Last match was against a guy I know from South Australia. We grudge matched each other just to have a nice last game. I managed to stop his Dwarven cage in the first half, was doing fairly well. In the 2nd half though, he managed to get the numbers up on me and a ill-timed skull on a Mummy left my ball carrier open. A dwarf managed to run through and grab the winning touchdown.

Unfortunately, with the results of day 2 I ended up down at 39th out of 54. I think perhaps the fact I didn't have a fully painted team let me down somewhat (As I don't really know otherwise why I got such low scores in the last few games). I'm thinking next year I'll take a painted team just to make sure I do the best I can in the tournament without having a handicap on me from the start (As a similar thing happened in my first Warhammer tournament, where I got a Zero for painting because not every single unit of mine was painted).

But yeah, overall I enjoyed myself. The only game I didn't really enjoy was the mauling, and again, I don't fault my opponent. It's just not terribly fun when you're getting absolutely smashed, and you can't do anything about it.

As for next year. Not sure what I'll take. I've been musing about what to run in 2010 now that I'm heading into the 2nd half of the year. I don't have a 'fun' team in my collection nor a flair team (Elves pretty much). I think it may depend on what pepole are thinking for season 4 of the CCKUP (Adelaide league) as to what I take as I was thinking Elves of some sort this season before a whole bunch of them showed up. I think at this point, 2010 may be the 'fun' team year with either Vampires or a stunty team. That'll leave 2011 to be the year of the Elf (or maybe Amazon). Anything could of course change, I was intending to run Norse rather than Khemri at an earlier point, but found a few Mummies which changed things around.

Heralds of Osiris take to the Pitch

So just got back from the first game using my Khemri models tonight. This marks the beginning of the 3rd season of the CCKUP (I've only played in 2 of them, the current and last one).
I'm off to a fairly good start quite honestly, I had some really nice armour rolls during the game and managed to win the game 2-0.

I was basically up against a Chaos Dwarf team called the Hands of Hashut. At the beginning of the game, things weren't looking so great. Lost the fame, in which the Hands got +2 fame. Weather was pouring rain, which meant the already hard task of picking up the ball for Khemri got even worse. Then the opponent got an extra re-roll and the ball landed right on one of his Bull Centaurs!
Luckily for me, my Mummies managed to cause the opponent a lot of grief. I funnelled him off to the left side, and basically boxed the opponent in until I could get a mummy free to run in and blitz the poor Centaur. Things were looking pretty stalematish until 2 consequentive blocks from my mummies saw 2 Chaos Dwarfs leave the pitch to sleep in the injury box.

I eventually got the ball free, and a lucky turn of events saw my Skeleton pick up the ball (Usually a 4+, but a 5+ roll in the rain) and run down towards the end zone for a turn 8 touchdown.

In the 2nd half, the weather cleared up. I basically grinded my way up the field for a turn 6 touchdown on my behalf. The Hands of Hashut only had about 7 players left on the field, which was easy enough for my guys to hold them up and stop any touchdown possibilities. Unfortunately a Mummy managed to get smacked down by a Bull Centaur and will be missing the next game.

No skill ups for the game, but got a nice amount of gold in the sum of 60k. So all in all, a good start to my Khemri team and a good start to the league.

This Weeks Update : Khemri

So, this is the core of my work during the week. I managed to spray paint my 13 models that I have assembled on Tuesday, which was a tad later than expected (I wanted to do it on Saturday before I left for a LAN, but it just didn't happen).
So I was a bit behind from the start. It left me with about 10 days to completely paint my team. So now that the weekend is finally coming to a close, what's my current progress?
Well, the 4 Skeletons below are pretty much completely finished. I've got my 2 remaining skeletons which are a mere few minutes away from being complete (I have to finish up on the bandages). Unfortunately, that's kind've the easy part of the team. The rest of the team probably requires a bit more detail, so I am a bit worried about getting them finished by Thursday evening. That basically gives me tonight, monday night, wednesday night, and maybe a little bit of time on Thursday night. You'll notice, Tuesday night is excluded. This is because the 3rd seasons of the CCKUP begins this week, and I have a game scheduled that night. It'll be my first run with the Khemri, so I hope that they perform well and I can get a little insight before the Eucbowl tournament on how the team plays.

That's basically it for now. Wish me luck in getting my team finished :)

The stuff I collect - Other

So here's part two. Warhammer Fantasy is my main system that I collect, so that got a post of it's own. The other systems I really only have 1 or 2 armies in, so they can all go in one post.

Warhammer 40k
Blood Angels - I started off Warhammer 40k with Blood Angels. I bought a big lot of models from a guy at school, sold off the stuff I didn't use and went from there. So really, it's a bit of a mish mash of stuff I have for my Blood Angels. Personally I think I intend to sell off all my old models and restart them soon, as I'm not really that fond of my old painting (Given most of it was over a coat of paint already).

Space Marines - With the advent of Assault on Black Reach, you could get Space Marines super cheap. So I decided to do so. Originally I wanted to convert stuff to plastic Grey Knights, but... the whole idea of getting them was to have a side project that didn't require much conversion in the first place (Doing it alongside my Empire, which required lots of conversion), so I just paint them really. I like how they look, and generally have almost gotten a proper army done (Commander, Terminators, Tactical Squad, Rhino, Dreadnought, 2nd Tactical squad just needs basing). Next I plan to add an Assault Squad and Land Speeder to the army, as well as some Heavy Support sometime down the track.

Mordheim
Witch Hunters - I picked up Witch Hunters box back in 2002 I think. That's basically my only entry into the system. I like the idea and design behind Witch Hunters, so I really enjoy the warband. Unfortunately I really only have the warband box + warrior priest for my warband. Since Specialist Games support is minimal, I can't really flesh them out by getting more hounds and models.

Misc - I have a few miscellaneous Mordheim models that I intend to use either in my Warhammer Fantasy armies, or I just bought becaus I liked the look of them. This includes Aenur, the Sword of Twilight, Kislev Ranger, Elf Mage, The Female Vampire persona.

Bloodbowl
Orcs - I started off with an Orc team. Why? Because Games Workshop were out of Chaos Marauders when I went to buy the box. Still I don't mind that, I had a lot of fun converting and painting the team. They're almost completely done as well! Only have to paint 2 more Blitzers, finish the Troll, find 2 suitable goblins and finish another Thrower. These are the guys I took to Southern Shrike Bowl 2008 and came last! (It was pretty much my first time playing, and I took some silly skill choices).

Lizardmen - Had to have a team of Lizardmen of course. Since they are my warhammer fantasy army, it just makes sense. Had plenty of models lying around, so I just did. These guys have served me well, and I think they ended up looking fantastic.

Khemri - Currently one of my work in progress teams. I hope to get them ready for Eucbowl in late July. Not sure if that's going to happen, but I need them done by then for both Eucbowl and the next season of the Adelaide Bloodbowl league I'm a part of.

Norse - Got some Marauders cheap, so decided to go back and do them. I've started, but have not gotten far on them. Got sidelined until my Khemri are done.

Epic Armageddon
Space Marines (Blood Angels) - Well... not really. I bought a box that has the Tactical and Assault marines in it. I'll see how the painting goes, and how much I enjoy it. So yeah, just for painting at the moment and we'll see how they go.

Unchartered Seas
I don't know much about Unchartered Seas. I'm getting a few fleets and the rulebook. Don't know if I'll end up playing, but I chose fleets that I think looked kind've nice. I like the look of the Dragon Lords, so they were a must. I got the humans cause they look kind've good, and should be a good guest fleet if anyone else wants to play. Bone Griffons I think looked pretty decent as well. These are currently on order, so I don't have these models yet, I'll definatly be posting when they come in though.

First entry, more to come

So here is the first entry in my blog on stuff. Mainly a warhammer modelling blog really, but I guess it may include other interests as well. I figured I'd start this, as slowly but surely I have started getting more different types of Warhammer models. I started off my Warhammer days back in 1999, in 5th edition of Warhammer Fantasy battles. Was about 11 back then I think, and I picked up some Lizardmen.
Why Lizardmen? Well, at the store there were only two plastic boxes. Either 8 Saurus, or 2 Brettonian Knights. Pretty simple decision huh? For a kid like me with almost no money, gotta get the one that will give you more models right? And that's how it all started.
In High School, a few of my friends collected Warhammer 40k so Fantasy took a brief hiatus until my friends got into that.
Slowly over the years, I have been building my collection. It's not huge by any means (Although, with the way I spend money on it nowdays maybe it will be someday...) but it has been growing throughout time.
I have taken more recent interest in Specialist Games and other systems as of late. I did pick up Mordheim back in 2002 I think with a warband of Witch Hunters, but that was only my only stint with Specialist Games until more recently. As of 2008 I took an interest in getting into Bloodbowl, participating in my first tournament (In any system) and joining the local league in Adelaide where I managed to come in 3rd in the first season in 2009.
I've also picked up some Epic Armageddon Space Marine miniatures which should be fun to paint, and am looking at Warmaster possibly in the future (I have to restrict myself a little, too much unpainted stuff nowdays).

I've also put in a purchase for Unchartered Sea's, something that seems to be taking off in the Ausbowl forums. Should be interesting to paint something different.

Anyway, that's my brief? Probably not so brief really introduction post. Should be putting stuff up on this blog as they come to me or as I get stuff done (Which seems to be at a slow pace nowdays. Hard to balance work, warhammer and computer).