Day Three

My new airbrush from Amazon came today.  Next day shipping saved my project from a three day delay, and I couldn't have been happier.  I fired up the airbrush and quickly realized this was the one I should have bought.  It was the Iwata HP-CS, which had been recommended to me by a few friends and I had seen it on some other painting blogs.  I was trying to be cheap, and in this case I should have listened.  This airbrush sprays even, doesn't clog and is way smooth.  After a few hours I was able to get all of my vehicles based and highlighted.

 The above are the results from day three.  My next step is to paint the tracks and wash the vehicles/tracks.

Chink in the Armor

Had a minor setback this morning while trying to airbrush.  The airbrush I had bought was kind of a piece of junk that I was trying to be cheap when I got it.  I had issues with it before and just not feeding paint as well as it should.  When it wouldn't feed paint this morning I just decided to order a new one, I was tired of messing with it. Amazon had one in stock that I had wanted from the start, and was able to overnight it to me so my project will only be delayed by about a day or two.

Day One

I started my Holiday IG painting project today.  With my first day off from work for the Holiday I kicked off the project.  I spent the morning trimming up the track sprues, so they could be painted on the sprue.  I don't know if this is going to make it easier, but I think in the end it will be a lot less of a headache.

I tried to minimize the amount of sprue left that could block paint, but still hold the bits in place.  Clipping 9 of these turned out to be a real chore.  Time will tell to see of it was worth the effort.

Laying out all of the vehicles I realized what a monumental task I had ahead of me this week.  After a few not so short hours I turned them into....

Tomorrow......the Airbrush!!

Successful Run

I had a great weekend of gaming, and most of it was filled with 40k.  I had found out mid last week that one of the local GW stores was doing an 1850.   I had scrambled on Saturday to finish up some conversions to get the Hydra conversions as well as the 2nd Manticore finished in time. 

Sunday morning I was packing up and realized I had forgotten to finish the weapons on the Valkyries (I had planned to magnetize them) and I hastily put them together, as well as a medic for my command squad.  I also decided that my Company Commander hadn't "gotten it done" in my last two games, so I built another one and demoted the model to platoon commander.  I couldn't just shoot the guy, his brother-in-law is a Commissar.  It would have made Thanksgivings awkward for a while.

I arrived at the time I was supposed to, and shockingly I was the first one there.   Even though I have gamed for almost 15 years the idea of "gamer time" has never ceased to annoy me.   The store manager had put together some original scenarios, all based on Arnold movies.  As he is our Governor and only has a few weeks left in office, it was his idea to pay tribute to him.  I normally hate wonky scenarios, I'd rather play straight up missions out of the book, but it made the games a bit more of a challenge and weren't that hard to understand.   Usually overly complicated scenarios are the most annoying part of playing in tournaments to me.

My first game I played against a very nice player who was running Tyranids.  He had a quasi-nidzilla list, but with genestealers list.  The mission we had played had an option to pick a few different objectives, so I went for kill points and killing the enemy commander.  The deployment worked in my favor, though there was some terrain in the middle for some of his creatures to hide behind.  At first I thought this would work against me, but he had hidden behind the building trying to avoid all of my direct fire.  This made a nice target for my barrage weapons and I was able to kill his harpy, take down a hive guard unit by a model and start wounding his swarmlord off the bat. 

The game went as you would expect, he came at me, and I shot a lot.  It got exciting when some of his genestealers deployed off a piece of terrain near me and ate my Company Commander and a Lascannon team way quick.  I wasn't too worried as I had my chimeras with flamers nearby and the next turn I roasted them before they could do anymore damage.  A drop pod full of warriors in my line made the mistake of dropping next to my vets, and some meltaguns with multi laser fire finished them off.   Overall it was a really fun game for me, though my opponent wasn't able to get much done.  The terrain was way too sparse for it to be anything but a shooting gallery.

Second game was against a friend of mine who runs a nasty Thunderwolf Cav/Wolf Lords with M. Launchers List.  The game was capture and control.  He made one mistake with his placement of his objective too far from his troops.   I concentrated most of my firepower on his thunderwolves, got lucky with taking out a few of his lords and troops on the first few turns and spent the rest of the game trying to kill two lords in my lines.  One of them went down by concentrated Hydra fire, the other one never did die.   I was able to outflank 2 Valkyries into his lines, one with some vets and I was able to hold his objective.  The game ended with me with both objectives.  To be perfectly honest other then my lacannon teams not doing squat I had a lot go right for me in that game.

My last game was the quickest.  I was matched against someone else I knew very well, a Dark Eldar player that I've known for quite some time.  I even bought his soul once.  Lost the receipt though.  It was a dawn of war objective mission.  With our armies, the missions didn't really matter.  We both have alpha strike shooty armies for the most part, so all that mattered was who went first was who would win.   We both knew it, and even joked about it.  I won the dice roll and halfway through the fourth turn ( really only the second turn we played, as dawn of war tends to be) we just called it.   The manticores and massed multilaser fire, if they are allowed to work for a few turns, tear up dark eldar.   

It was only a 10 player tournament at a local store but it was nice to get three games in and run the list.  The second game I was pretty happy about winning, his list is tough and he plays way more then I do.  The third game was simply a matter of who got first turn, I can't be too excited.  If he had won he would of destroyed me just as quick.  

Progress

I had ordered some stuff on Black Friday from The War Store that came in yesterday.  I had picked up two whirlwinds for my hydra conversions, as well as my second manticore.   I don't have a ton of time this week for hobby stuff, too much going on in life, but I'm going to try and at least finish the Hydra conversions and slap together the manticore. 

I'm hoping to get some time in on Sunday doing more play tests with my adjusted list.  I think its going to work much better at the 1850 level then my previous attempt.  Its about the only thing that stinks about this hobby, play testing with different models until you get to that sweet spot.  I kind of miss how I used to be less into being competitive and just slapped together a list that night of models that I felt like playing with. Though I don't miss how unfocused it was, and how often I'd regret taking certain models/units.  I guess I don't miss it.

My eBay auction is going well.  I've sold off at least 15% of the auctions I posted on Sunday, and most of the others have a healthy number of watchers so I know I'll get what I'm looking for.   Its always amazing to see the different level of interest in the different armies.   The Tyranid auctions get about 20% of the views as my space marine stuff I have up.  True proof of their popularity.  Or lack of interest on the Tyranids part. 

Saving a Foot

I this weekend decided to finally trim down my collection of 40k models.  For one thing, I had broken my "not going to collect an army, without getting rid of one" rule when I picked up my IG.  I had thought about getting rid of my Tyranids, but I just hadn't actually done it.  I really liked the way I had painted them, I had a few really cool conversions but I just didn't like playing them so they had been boxed.

There were two reasons I decided to part with them.  The first was cash.  The models could get me about 25-30% of what I needed to pay for a new laptop.  My laptop has been in a death knell since early last year and I am tired of it limping along.  It has almost been three years since I got it, which is a record for me and laptops.  There was a time when they barely lasted a year for me, and I had to force myself to not replace them earlier then a year.  The one before this one almost made it to two years, but then the video card melted.  This one has been a record, and while I would like to make it three years (April of 2011), it is not going to happen.

The second reason, is that of space.  My 40k collection has grown to a blob of uncontrollable proportions in my garage.  I have a large shelving unit that is full of boxes, cases, loose bits, tools and has begun to spill out into other areas of my house.  Besides my army, my son and lady have one, so five armies was just too much for me.  I'll be down to four, which I feel is more reasonable.  My Blood Angels, Orks, IG and Chaos. 

I spent most of Saturday morning taking pictures of the army and breaking up into smaller units for posting on eBay.  I also posted up a lot of models that I had purchased at local sales, expecting to eventually need.  A drop pod here, two Land Raiders, a ton of special characters, and the list goes on and on.....

Besides the money, it will be nice to be able to find my stuff a lot easier.  I'm contemplating starting a spreadsheet to inventory what I have, my bits and model collection is just too big.  It always hurts to let an army go, but sometimes to save the rest of the hobby you have to. 

Make friends with a Machinist

I couldn't have done a better job if I had paid GW to cast what I wanted.  The CNC machine at work, with the gentle guiding of my work's best machinist put out an amazing result.  These don't look like a conversion at all, they look cast that way. 

Couldn't be happier.

My suggestion, make friends with a Machinist!

Taking Advantage

On the left is the first step for converting the chassis. I shaved off the lasgun sights, and filled in the open bits and hatch with plasticard so it does look a bit different then a Chimera with a Whirlwind on top.

After deciding on my course to modify the Chimeras into Hydras using Whirlwind launchers I needed to find a way to drill out the turrets. I didn't want to put the launchers in the back of the chassis, because it would just look like a Whirlwind with a Chimera chassis. The hole for the turret is not big enough to fit it, so....I'm making it bigger. I'm actually getting some help from the machine shop where I work to drill out the hole. The advantage of working for a manufacturing company is having a machine shop with fancy (and expensive) tooling equipment. If it can cut steel, it can cut plastic.

Alterations

I started converting my Hydra's in the hope (slim hope) I'd be able to make an 1850 tournie at a FLGS this weekend. It's doubtful I will make it, I'm kind of in a "needing the stars to align" for it to work, mostly life stuff in the way.

I've decided to make my Hydras as chimera chassis' with whirlwind launchers. Its a pretty easy swap, as I have access to a machine shop at my work that can cut the exact size of the Whirlwind turret hole in the top of the chimera. Should fit perfect. I just haven't found an autocannon turret idea that I like, and most of the free world uses missiles for air defense so why not the IG? Everyone else does counts as, so why not me.

I finally glued in my Valkyrie bases over the weekend. I was dreading it, as I didn't' want to the glue to fog up the clear bits. I spoke to a friend who said that the vapors can be dealt with if a hairdryer is used to both blow away the vapors as well as it dries it out, which the vapors plus moisture is what causes the smudging. Sure enough it worked like a charm.