Forget those Lemun Ruses-- I've got the M-85 "Black Cat" for my Imperial Guard!! Single use only, though; this one had a spectacular trial run out in the street. However, I'm pretty sure one of these could take a good portion of any 40k army out there, especially if they're plastic.

I don't paint many vehicles, so this is notable-- a not too shabby little Chimera I hand painted. It took a long time and I can't say I really enjoyed it, but I got it done and am pleased with it. Now I have another one to do. Eh. Then two Valkyries...ehhhh...

We've had a couple of sessions of our Dark Heresy game so far, and I've really enjoyed it. Here is my completed character model. I still haven't had a chance to actually pick up the sword yet, but I've gathered enough money to grab it once I have the chance. Assuming I stay alive long enough...I tried jumping out of a second story building and wound up darn near killing myself...

I know what you're thinking, "A Sci-Fi guy? With a flintlock rifle and pistol???" Oh, yeah, that's rediculous(ly fun)! That's why I shoot once and then switch to the big hammer. ;-)

It looks like we will be doing a Dark Heresy role playing game. We rolled up characters the other night, and it looks promising. I whipped up a conversion of my feral world Imperial Guard character, replete with flintlock rifle, pistol, explosive collar and (hoped for) mono-edged great sword. I will probably add some wild hair to him.

I've never been much of one to play with figures other people have painted. I've bought and used a handful of used units before, and I've sent a few units to Fernando Enterprises, and one thing is clear to me: I just don't enjoy my miniatures as much unless I have painted them. Plus, you tend to have the additional cost of painting labor on top of the figures themselves, making the whole thing more expensive. Yet I finally broke down and bought an entire army.

Our Trucidos campaign, like most campaigns, stalled and died. However, unlike most campaigns, where one or two players get tired and quit, we had one get fed up with the hobby altogether! He kept saying he was going to sell his army off, and I kept telling him not to, but to make sure and come to me first if he did. He had painted these figures in a burst of productivity (which maybe burned him out on it altogether) alongside us, and had done a really good job on the figures. After trying to get him back into it and letting him know I'd rather he kept them and played, he seemed insistent that he wanted to be rid of them, so I made an offer, and bought my first army.

It's around 1,500 points of 40k Imperial Guard. That's an army that has appealed to me, since the figures could be used for just about any Sci-Fi game, but it's one which requires a lot more figures than most, so I've never seriously considered it. I sat down and figured that if my 2009 painting rate persists, it would take me approximately 16 years to paint this much stuff.

Which, frankly, made me rethink my whole distaste with the idea of buying painted miniatures.

Maybe at this stage of my life, it's actually cheaper just to buy my way into a game. I mean, clearly, it's cheaper to buy the metal unfinished-- but not if I never finish them and never actually used them. Maybe just not buying unpainted figures and buying a painted army or two a year is a better way to go.

I'll be mulling this over for a while...and not buying any unpainted figures for a while as I horde my pennies...

Anyway, here are some pictures of my new IG army. It feels like it was worth the money right now.

I've started on my February terrain for Trucidos. While that is strictly true, unfortunately, this was done in January, and I have yet to actually work on anything this month. That will change soon.

I've also been working on my Witch Hunter Canonness. She comes with a lot of really nice arm options. I haven't put much thought into how I will play her, so to avoid making any decisions, I decided to rare earth magnetize the arms and make them swappable. The magnets are not very big and the arms are relatively heavy, being metal, so the join isn't super strong, but it seems good enough to play with. If I decide I don't like it down the road, I can always just pick one combination and glue that in, like my Ape-X.

I had been considering painting some Space Marines, and was digging through some old figures and stumbled across this old Assault Marine. So, I started dabbling around with creating my own chapter. If I'm doing armored heroes running across open fields towards machine gun nests, they're going to be painted like clowns, so I went for a quartered paint scheme. This represents the first Space Marine I've painted in 18-19 years. And I enjoyed it! I actually sculpted some custom shoulder pads, but I haven't cast them yet, so I painted him how I thought a veteran's shoulder pad might look. Plus, I'd like to do some fancy bases for them, and I haven't done that yet, so the base in unfinished as well.

A little 40k Chaplain in a bike. I picked this up with the Squat a while back. It was actually a few Necron models I was buying and these were in the mix as well, and yet here they are being painted up first. I actually have been dithering between working on a Witch Hunter or a Space Marine army...I finally decided just to do both and painted this chaplain up for myself. It will be either full on Witch Hunter with Sisters of Battle, or a Space Marine army led by a chaplain and allied with the Witch Hunters.

Ha HA!! Maybe you thought I wouldn't post today, making the first day I've missed in, what, almost three months? I've been holding off because I wanted to make sure and get photos of this miniatures in. I'd say he's not quite finished-- the scrollwork on the shoulder pad, the rear exhaust and the headlights could obviously be done, and I need to pick up a bike base somewhere...

I got the second game of our Trucidos campaign finished tonight. It was a 750 point rematch between Chris and me, and a much harder fought battle. However, I managed through tactics and forgotten rules to wrangle out, in the end, a draw...

The table was fairly crowded, but everything on the table was painted and complete, and it looked pretty nice. We were playing for objectives out of opposite corners. I set up right outside the center circle, which was probably a mistake. I was trying to keep the objectives in reach, but Chris's 'nids were on me by the second turn.

My Necrons did much better in close combat this time. I made a lot of saves and a lot of We'll Be Back rolls. I tried to keep my two (yes, only two) units of Warriors supporting each other, and had cleared Chris's hormagaunts and rippers by turn 3-4.

Feeling cocky, I ran my Lord's unit over to the hive tyrant, hoping for a quick kill. I couldn't scratch this guy! I needed the Warscythe, but didn't take it this game. The Monolith was also pretty useless. It arrived on turn 2, but only every got off one Particle Whip shot, which scattered off into the boonies. The rest of the time, the carnifex and the tyrant were either too close to use the whip safely, or in close combat with my own units.

The game ended on turn 6, with neither of us holding any objectives! Oh well, a tie beats a loss...

Gawd 'elp us Games has a set of alternative 40k rules called Forge of War, using some modern rules mechanics like Activation Rolls. They look like something I want to try out...

I just posted my review of the 40k novel Eisenhorn on Amazon. In short: I liked it a lot, 5 stars.

I'm a bit of a picky reader, and while I prefer Science Fiction, I am, in general, strongly turned off by the idea of churned out fiction set in somebody's IP, like Star Wars or Star Trek. I'd heard a lot of good things about Eisenhorn, but I couldn't really bring myself to buy it. However, I found a friend with a copy, so I borrowed it and read it.

I found myself immersed in the book, and wound up reading the trilogy in about a week. The story has a knack of seemingly small, innocuous events and characters becoming more and more important as the story progresses, and I found myself making excuses to my family to sneak back and read further along to find out what happened.

You would probably benefit from having some knowledge of the 40k universe before reading this, but most important topics are explained in sufficient detail that a newcomer could read this book. As an Inquisitor in a world where magic is real, it reads like a supernatural mystery. The stories were, I thought, somewhat reminiscent of the Lovecraft mythos-- Eisenhorn meets supernatural evil that corrupts humanity and is powerless to stop it-- but with the twist that he has a choice to make-- the choice to maybe use a small part of that corruption to actually defeat the larger evil.

I was pleasantly surprised. I will be picking up my own copy of Eisenhorn and will recommend it to my friends. I might even go so far as to read another Black Library book...preferably something written by Dan Abnett.

I faced off against Chris's Tyranid's for the first game of our Trucidos 40k Campaign. Here is the tale of my inglorious defeat...

Here's the table. Playing on a 4x4 table turned out to be much smaller than it appeared, especially with objectives that couldn't be closer than 12" from a table edge or 12" from each other. Fortunately, we only rolled three. Two small objectives have been placed, and the third rests on the lower tree stump, and was placed below it. Chris advanced from the bottom right corner, and I advanced from the top right.

My great plan was to steadily advance against the two nearest objectives and try to at least take one and contest the other. My right squad was simply 10 Necrons, which I thought would take their objective, and my left squad was 10 Necrons with the Lord equipped with a Warscythe for close combat and a Phase Shield (I think, 4+ Invulnerable Save). I expected the Left squad to get stuck into combat and contest the second objective. The last picture here shows the Right squad absolutely pasting Chris's Termagants off their intended objective. At this point I'm thinking I have this game in the bag.

Unfortunately, the Left squad just wasn't doing quite as well. Chris's biovore kept up a steady rain of frag spore mines from the corner of the board (until Chris forgot about him starting in turn 4, I think), causing a wound on my Lord in the first turn of the game. He then charged the squad with his hormagaunts. The squad shot the hormagaunts up pretty well, but about four of them managed to get into close combat. My close combat Lord whiffed badly in close combat every turn. They battled the hormagaunts for two or three turns, clearing them out just in time to be charged by a swarm of rippers which tied them up easily for the rest of the game. They might have been able to do something more near the end of the game, but of course their last combat round left a single ripper sward with a single wound.

"No, damn you! We should be over there! OVER THERE!!"

Then, the squad I had pasted reappeared at Chris's table edge, and at this point I figured there was no way for me to win on objectives with only one squad effective. The Right squad then advanced across the table at his warrior HQ. Again, turn 5, I blasted away, but left one warrior with one wound. Another turn and maybe I could have pulled it out, but with the variable game lengths, the game ended after turn 5.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. The objectives and the random game length rules are very arbitrary and may not seem to match the "fluff" of your army BUT they get you moving and interacting and simply make the game more fun. In a way, they add an amount of tension that I find I greatly enjoy, kind of like my favorite Piquet rules. They do it differently, but the evoke a similar nail-biting suspense and uncertainty that many games lack.

These are the coolest Necron figures I've seen. Also, it includes some very interesting rust techniques I will have to try.

As I struggled against postprandial Thanksgiving sedation, I found the time to work on some new sculpting tools I got here. The first is ProCreate Epoxy Putty. I'm no expert on epoxy putties, although I've used most of them at some point, and ProCreate has immediately become my favorite. However, this may well be because of the new clay shapers I bought. Mine are a mixture of firm and extra firm, which is definitely better, but both are workable. Anyway, I wound up creating the new shoulder pads for my upcoming Space Marines. Pictures once I get back to my camera...