Heretics!

Part Two

The 2nd and 3rd gentlemen from the left are the only metal models in this unit.

Previously on 1st Legion Chronicles ...Staring down my first ever entry into the Nova Open and knowing I would be playing next to the corrupted forces of my friend's Death Guard Army I was unable to bring myself to field my Dark Angels army in concert with the decrepit heretics...

There was a solution to my problem that would involve a race against the clock hobby project for what remained of the spring and the summer before Nova 19 in August.  When 3rd edition 40K came out in the late 90's my brother, his dad, and I played 40K on an almost weekly basis for a few years.  At the time my brother played a Chaos Space Marine army as they were known in the days before the addition of extraneous latin for the purposes of copyright differentiation.  His army served him well for a few years and traveled with us along with mine when we moved to Colorado in 2002.

Spaceships Are Not Supposed To Be This Close Together

Part I - Rebels, Slave I, and the Quadjumper

Boba Fett must really want the bounty on those Rebels...

The first in a ongoing series of pictures of the X-wing miniatures game and the sometimes crazy positions the ships get into relative to each other while jockeying for the best firing solutions.  My X-wing playing friends live a lot closer than my 40K playing friends and it's a very quick game to set up and play, so as you can imagine I play a lot of X-wing.  Fantasy Flight has really improved the game with the 2.0 version, it's nice to get to enjoy all the ships in the game as opposed to constantly getting crushed by whatever killer squadron lineup is currently dominating the meta.

Merry Christmas Imaginary Friends!

Sometimes you spend hours researching for a particular post and then others times the internet hands you beautiful things like this Festivus miracle...

Heretics!

Part One

What?! The foul forces of chaos on this blog!  How has this happened?  Is this blog now under the unspeakable influence of the fallen?  Even now the Ravenwing are zeroing in on this location to cleanse the cursed stain of the heretics.  I will save the inevitable long story for after the jump, fortunately there are lots of pictures of models to space out my overly wordy explanation of my descent into the renegades of chaos...

Most of these models are from the 3rd edition plastic Chaos Space Marines box.

Crossing the Rubicon Primaris

Rapidly becoming the second most over used phrase after "perfect storm", I feel like someone needs to send GW a note to point out that if everyone crosses the "Rubicon" then it ceases to be significant.  Has a sacrificial lamb of a current character tried to become primaris, failed and died yet?  I bet when the Dark Angels eventually get their new codex supplement one of the many named 1st Legion special characters is going to bite it in the name of Rubicon crossing consequences.  However that's enough old man griping for one post, onto the pictures of the models...

Uncle Ezekiel wants you for the 1st legion!

Interrogator-Chaplain Sarpedon

This fine example of classic GW sculpting is my first fully finished HQ model for my Dark Angels army.  He was completed earlier this year, but since this blog didn't exist then I thought he would make some good post Thanksgiving content.  What says appreciating your blessings more than a chaplain of the God-Emperor's faith covered in skulls?  There is a great Voxcast episode where Jes Goodwin explains that  all the skulls ever-present in the art of the grimdark is because when the face of your god is a skull, then the skull becomes a holy icon (paraphrased poorly).

Is there a unit of measurement in the 41st millennium that tracks skulls per square meter?

Battle Mallet Monday!

Episode 17

Throwing down some Stan Lee like alliteration to call attention to one of my favorite tabletop gaming podcasts.  Battle Mallet is a great podcast by four longtime gamers who talk about GW games and the surrounding hobby with an emphasis on balancing our hobby time and real life (marriage, kids, etc).  A lot of the podcast talks about GW's Underworld and the four podcasters annual trip to the Nova Open.  There's also plenty of content about AOS, 40K, and GW news as well as painting and the four principals attempts to grow a community for Underworlds in their local area.

I met Tres, Jerod, and Jason at the Nova Open this year and played against Tres and Jerod in a 40K narrative doubles game.  Their fun spirit and sportsmanship led to me checking out the podcast and it's become a show I look forward to listening to whenever a new episode is released.  Follow the links below to give it a try:

The Battle Mallet Podcast

Battle Mallet Instagram

Battle Mallet Facebook Page

Battle Mallet Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts. 

#DadGoals II

The Quickening

My nine year old son has lived up to my wildest dreams when it comes to wargaming but at times that can be a double-edged sword.  We had several hours together last weekend and we played a game he invented using Legos as the tabletop scenery and minifigures as the miniatures.  The game was an adventure party taking on a greater number of enemies with SWAT like building infiltration taking the place of the dungeon crawling.  Not that my son explained it that way but I'm trying to translate from 4th grader to gamespeak.

"I see we're going to need to solve this problem Adam West style"

Dreadtober Complete!

My Dark Angels Mark V dreadnought is finally finished.  Considering it's only the first week of November that's pretty good versus my lifetime hobby progress pace.  This may be the first time I completed a vehicle size project in six weeks.  It used to be that I'd paint something almost all the way to completion but stop short of the final highlights and decals.  Fortunately over the last few years my final stage highlighting abilities have improved and I have gotten the hang of decals just in the last few months.  Like a super powered dynamic duo these last elements falling into place means I'm finishing units and vehicles 100% for the first time in my gaming life which is insane considering I've been playing for almost 30 years.

"Taste the cleansing flame of eradication heretic!"

Fall Hobby Goals

Would fall hobby goals taste like pumpkin spice?  Do Orks like Pumpkin spice flavored squigs to eat in the month of October?   Is there a shrine to the elusive pumpkin spice aspect on every craftworld? I wish I could say all the answers to these questions will be contained in this blog post, but I'm actually going to use this space to lay out what I'd like to get done hobby wise before Christmas.

Attending the NOVA Open this year for the first time was an awesome experience.  Even though I have been reading WD and playing 40K for 29 years, I had never been to a gaming tournament or convention bigger than a in-store event.  One of the many products of the inspiration gleaned from that weekend is to approach my painting and model building in a more organized fashion to get the most enjoyment out of every thing I have for the hobby.  Using this space to bore fictitious readers and keep track of my hobby ideas at the same time seemed like an original idea until I reviewed many of my favorite blogs and realized I've been reading other people doing that for several years.

Dreadtober Week Five

"Almost there, almost there ..."

Like Red Leader in the Death Star trench, I am tantalizingly close to finishing my dreadnought.  The final Dreadtober post will go up today and I will be too busy with kiddos Halloween tonight so here are some quick new pictures hopefully in time to make the final update.

Dreadtober Week Four

Tales from the Dreadside

Boy am I glad there are five weeks in October this year.  Sliding in at the last minute with an update for tomorrow's weekly Dreadtober check in.

Dreadtober Week Three

Dreadtober rolls on, shredding painting days off the calendar with it's time-space continuum rending assault cannon...

Dreadtober TBT

This Contemptor was the first dreadnought I've painted.  When I was younger I always went for space marine tanks and I've only started buying dreads in the last few years.  The painting was finished in the spring but I just recently figured out how to use decal solvents to put the last touches on the model.  IMHO, that makes these the perfect pictures for some Dreadtober throw back Thursday action (I'm only several years late on this trend).

Lancelot Links

Cadian Shock Chimp

Some more highlights of the Imperium of man in blog form:

Death of a Rubricist -  great blog that's been around for years with lots of fascinating articles about narrative campaigns, miniature conversions, and painting.  One of my favorites is periodic entries set in the "Nova Terra interregnum" which is a big shared universe campaign for various gaming clubs set during a sector wide rebellion in M35.

https://apologentsia.blogspot.com/

Oldhammer 40K - another real treat to read, lots of interesting revisiting of old rules systems, models, and fun Rogue Trader and 2nd edition battle reports.  This guy is a really good painter as well and he also does plenty of modern miniatures as well.

http://classicastartes.blogspot.com/

#DadGoals

Last Saturday the day I've been waiting for basically since my son was born finally arrived.  We played our first game of Warhammer 40,000.  Technically we played Kill Team, but it was his first miniatures games on a real table with scenery.  Starting a few years ago we played Heroclix as super-heroes were the easiest hook into gaming.  Last year Betrayal at Calth came in handy as more than just the source of 30K miniatures, it was the first in-universe GW game we played together with miniatures.

Dreadtober Week Two

When Will Then Be Now?

Alright now that I've filled in my pictures of the project's start and last weeks progress we can emerge from the time-stream (hopefully without the former governor of California naked one-knee kneeling in a coruscating blue globe of energy) in the present with a picture of this week's painting.  I want to get an update in tonight since the main Dreadtober site updates with all the hobby progress on Fridays.

Lancelot Links

Dystopian Space-Chimp

In previous posts I've been hyperlinking the names of other blogs but so far I have not been able to solve the riddle of making that text appear different to indicate it's linky-ness.  Also if you read this on your phone you won't see the blog links that run to the right of the posts.  In case any of the hypothetical readers want to check out all the great projects on the main Dreadtober site:

                                                  http://dreadtober.blogspot.com/

One of the organizers of Dreadtober has run an amazing 40K and 30K blog for years that is also worth a look:
                                                  http://mordian7th.blogspot.com/

Dreadtober Week One

Part The Second

Technically Week One of Dreadtober was last week, but since I just invented this blog on Sunday I'm still back filling a little bit.  If you are one of the what I still assume to be imaginary readers of this blog, you should really take a minute to head over to the Dreadtober site and check out all the awesome models people are working on.  It gives me a very positive feeling about the hobby I love to see so many people participating.  Growing up as a classic rock fan Rocktober always followed Zeptember, but I think Dreadtober may be crushing Rocktober in it's dreadnought sized power fists.

Dreadtober Week One

Part the First

Now that we got some origins out of the way, onto to the pictures of the models!

Origin Stories

or How It All Got Started

Hello, Everyone... or more realistically no one since this is a new blog about an already niche hobby.  Nonetheless for the sake of future back scrolling I will explain the whys of this venture a little bit.  I have enjoyed reading comic book and gaming blogs since they first became popular in the early aughts.  Having been a fan of the main blog for years, I wanted to participate in Dreadtober, a subsidiary collaborative modeling and painting project of the the awesome Mordian 7th blog.

The Mordian 7th author was gracious enough to include me in the project even though I didn't have anywhere to post updates of my dreadnought WIP.  However, the more I thought about it, I believed I had grokked the essential elements of all the blogs I have read and loved over the years.  I have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed 30 years of adventures in the highs and lows of comic books and miniature collecting.  Also, I am a super wordy person who enjoys the long way to tell a story, and now that my children are in elementary school for at least seven hours a day, the potential time to bore others with my tales of gaming and collecting via the magic of the tubes and wires of the Internet.