Valentine's Day update

Well, I thought it was about time for an update. I haven't made the most progress ever since my last post, but I thought the progress I had made was worthy of being displayed. The first two pics are of my almost completed chariot. This model has actually been a joy to construct, after some inital frustration, owing mostly to the vast amounts of silver and brown I had to paint. I really enjoyed painting the charioteers, and I think they look decent. I do struggle with flesh colored skin, and admitadly, my faces are ok, but honestly, I'll take ok at this point, b/c thats good for me. As you might have seen last time, I have begun construction on my second chariot. I have found that chariots are vital to run in pairs. Not only do they have a gian target on them, screaming, "Strength 7 weapons aim here" but with dark elves, you have the compounding factor of stupidity. Two chariots doesn't prevent stupidity, but it makes it more likely a chariot will hit a combat you want, even when the general isn't around. I have really enjoyed using my charoits with the dark elves, and I'm excited to get the other one up and running. more details to come.





This is my third and final unit of spearelves. I generally just use these guys to hold the line, and provide static combat resolution. I have found that combining them with a unit of flanking dark riders, is actually a fairly decent combat unit. Certainly its not going to overwhelm anyone, but they can hold their own, tying up units and even, occasionally, breaking someone. Throw a character into that combat and its actually a very powerful force. Not much was done to these guys from earlier photos, just some light touch-ups. Again, I'm not the best painter, nor did i feel the need to make these fellas look too good. The look fine all massed together though.


Here is my last Reaper Bolt Thrower crewman. Again, for some reason, of which I am still not entirely sure what it is, I decided to use new crew for one of my bolt throwers, and OOP crew for the other. Both bolt throwers are new though, since they look fantastic. I suppose the two different crew models will allow my bolt throwers to be placed side by side without there being much confusion as to which crew go with which thrower. Plus, despite the "blockier" appearence of the older models, I do like these crew models quite a bit.



Finally, the last picture is of my WIP progress space marines. I haven't built a 40k army in 6 years. This is sort of ironic b/c the first Warhammer army I ever completed (and the only one) was a 40K Ork warband in 2002. Not only that, but I love sci-fi mythos much more than fantasy, though I do enjoy both. There is just something about guns and swords I've always loved... i suppose its being reared on Star Wars instead of LoTR's. However, I just found that I really don't enjoy the game nearly as much as Fantasy. I have always believed the scale of 40k doesn't lend itself to the normal table size, and thus it sort of takes all the tactics out of it, unlike fantasy. However, the imagery is so sweet, I had to make a new marine army. So I going to try to do a really well painted, slowly created, Ultramarine 4th Co. force. (edit - I deleted the pic, so I'll have to post some more later. haha. sorry)

Updates 1/17 - chariot action

I thought I would post some more Work in Progress photos. I been pretty busy lately, so i haven't gotten as much painting done as I would have liked, but I did get some rough color put on. I figured I'd post these photos for Joe, and who ever else wants to see them, as the WiP is always pretty cool to check out. The first picture is my chariot crew from the finished chariot. These are the guys with the magnets, which I still think is super sweet. As you can possibly tell, I got them to stand up with the magnets, using a GW file.




The next photo is one of the second chariots cold ones. I have just put the first coat of orange paint on. Orange is a pain in the a$$ to put on over black, but my skills with painting over white are non-existant, so I do what I must. Since I leave the scales black, you can get a decent idea of how he will look eventually. The other fellow is a Reaper Bolt Thrower crew member. Yes, thats one of the old school guys. I am not sure why I am using them, but i had them, and I am. So one Reaper will have the new crew, and the otheer will have the "veteran" crew. Note: both Reapers will be the new style though, b/c its way sweet and old ones look dumb, in my opinion.



The final photo shows my painted chariot next to my unpainted one. As you can see, i have chosen on the new one to reverse the colors. So the first one I did, I used a dark brown for the wood areas. Then for the main metal areas I used chainmail highlighted with Mithril, and then old school gold for accents. On this one, I want to use the same brown, but make my main color gold, and use mithril silver for accents. Any thoughts? I think it will look ok. I am going for cohesive, yet distinct.

I am also very excited for the Vampire Counts books to get released in a little over a month. I am fairly certain they will be my next army, and so I should be in a good position to start them in June.

Works In Progress

alright, I am going to attempt to chronical my production of the Dark Elves, and my other minatures a bit better on here. Its just the hassle of getting the pics and loading them. Anyway, my Dark Elves have been a four year labor of love, though my obsession with WoW for two of those years means most the painting has been done in the last 12 months. At this point, I am making a lot of headway in the army. I really only have 4 completely untouched units to do, two of which you will see here. A chariot, a unit of 15 spearelves, a unit of witch elves, and some shades.

The unit to the left is my second chariot. Its been a LONG time since I painted my last one, but I think doing a war machine will be a nice change of pace from little elves, so I am excited to start on it. Also, I tried a technique to use rare earth magnents to attatche my charioteers to the chariot base, to make for easier storage and transport, and it worked like a charm, so I'm excited to repeat that process here.

The unit above is my third, and final block of spear elves. None of my three spear units have any command, their main job to be a rallying point, and a cheap provider of a +2 combat resolution. Despite that, they are a decent defensive unit, and make a decent offensive weapon when paired up with 5 dark riders to a flank. I usually paint these fellas in batches of five, and so you can see the first five are in a middle stage of constuction. a few highlights, some details here and their, and they will be good to go.

The unit to the left is my first chariot. As you can see, the chariot is painted, but the riders need to be painted now. These are the boys I got to stay on the chariot using magnets. Its a slick little trick inspired by Shawn O's magnetic standard top, and it is working awesome. Basically, these are the three things I'll be working on right now. polishing off some spear elves, and then breaking that up with my charioteers and my other chariot. This should be a good lot of things to paint up, as all three are fairly unique from each other, which should hold my interest.

Once these are done, I can start on the final two units... just in time for the Vampire Count release... or at least shortly after that... haha.

Battle Time

Well, my brother and me had to renew hostilities with our local gaming partners, to commemorate my brothers triumphant return from Rome. Since Joe is off being a seminarian, he no longer has an army of his own, and we were forced to borrow one from our competetion. After a lengthy discussion, he decided to field the vampire counts to join along side my Dark Elves, again this year. Joe brought a magic heavy 1500 point undead force led by a Necarch Lord and 3 necromancers. I brought my standard army, trimmed to 1500 points, and focus on my usual small combat unit style. Our only shooting was my 2 obigatory Reaper Bolt Throwers. We expected to face off against a combined Nurgle Chaos army and Skaven force, but instead turned up and found out we were playing 2 Chaos forces... so much for my flying terror causer. The 4x6 board lent itself well the chaos force. The 3000 point battle meant cramped quarters, and this allowed the chaos units to use their superior hand to hand combat prowess to gain an early advantage, that looked almost insermountable. The vampire magic phase was a complete dud, even included the scary miscast on the army general. The dark elves couldn't break out to use their speed to hit the choas flanks and he bolt throwers were completely ineffective, with the dice going stone cold on any rolls... truely the chaos gods must have been intervening. Things turned around from there though. Seeing the mounting desperation around them, the witch elves launched a frenzied assualt on the chaos slave giant, counting on their poisened barrage of attacks to see them through the giants toughness. This they did (after the giant flung the hag into the unit behind her, killing her and wasting her manbane), and a poor break test by the giant saw him break, only to be chased down and hacked up by the witch elves. This created a gap in the chaos line the elves were able to exploit, and they went pouring through. Both sides has some horrible luck (chariots failing to wound on charges, miscasts, and chaos warriors breaking to a terror causer on the last turn) but in the end, the speed of the dark elves, and the undead's ability to raise and repair units, proved too much for the choas hoarde. The Dark Elf & Vampire alliance triumphed again, missing a Solid Victory by only 31 points. In the end, it was a hard fought and fun game. Both sides had moments of horrid luck, and both sides had points at which it look as if they would run away with the game. Hopefully, the 5 hour extravaganza was enough to slate joe's thirst for Warhammer until the next time he can come home.

photo 1 - Joe, inspecting our battle lines.

photo 2 - DE chariot and skellies combine charge nurgle knights, only to get counter charged by the spawn. Notice the Plague Bearers in the back, enjoying the RinP fun of "Curse of Years"

photo 3 - Early on, the giant is about to die. The chaos knights near him have too many targets to charge. The Khorne Juggernaut engaged in the combat he'll be in the next 5 turns! Notice the croweded conditions of the Dark Elf & Vampire line, awaiting the full Chaos charge.

Well, the first annual Nitz in Your Face tounrament came and went. We had, at the apex, 8 players. That was a pretty great turnout for the first gathering. Guys came from as far as North Dakota and Missouri to play. We ran three tables in my house, one in the basement and two on the main level. It was a fun time, with guys getting a chance to play mulitple battles at a wide arrangment of points values. The dragon gaming goodness was capped off with a Arena of Death battle. Each person had 500 points to spend on a tooled up character, as well as 250 points to spend on a assistant character to help him. In the end, a tooled up (illegally) dwarf slayer combo ruled the day, slaying the Dark Elf Dragon on the final turn. Here's a few pics from the weekend.

This past weekend marked the 1st annual (hopefully) Nitz n' your Face tournament at my house. Pics and details should be posted within the next couple days. It was awesome!

quick update - some basing

Got some quality basing and matt varnishing done this weekend, so here are a few pics of my army as it stands now. They aren't very good, but I'll try to fix them this weekend. Also put in a pic of one of my two reaper bolt throwers, and the basing I'm using, as seen on my black guard/iron gut unit.