Friday, August 26, 2011

NOVA: I'll be live blogging

I checked the weather this morning, and although it looks like it's going to get nasty, we decided we're flying out.  I've packed up my bags (and didn't forget my digital camera) and am ready to go!  I was smart and brought a reading flashlight in case we lose power.


I'm really looking forward to get in 8 structured games.  Since I don't have the luxury of getting many in, this is a big deal for me.  My list definitely isn't optimized, but it will be fun.  Plus I should do alright in the soft scores.

Be sure to tune in all weekend.  I'll be doing recaps every evening.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Hurricane Irene: NOVA, should I go?

Wow, this sucks!  I'm sitting at the Ottawa Canada airport waiting to fly back home and all I can see on the TV's is coverage on Hurricane Irene.  Looks like it's going to hit the DC area Sunday morning.


Being a Chicago native, I'm not used to hurricanes.  Should I make the trip out or will the tournament just get cancelled?  Also, it would suck to get stuck... lots of questions.  As a frequent traveler, I have my fair share of delays and cancellations.  I've already spent the miles to purchase the ticket but I would be able to get back the hotel stay and a weekend of not being in a hurricane.

For those  of you with experience, any thoughts?  Also, if I have any DC residents or NOVA followers... what  is the plan?

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Imperial Suns: Scouts Finished!

These scouts were a lot of fun to paint.  I'm glad I mixed in some of the space wolf bitz, it keeps to my cold weather theme.  Here's the finished product:











Tonight I'm going to fix up the broken terminator with a "normal" shield.  I did a simple greenstuff circle around the skull so I can have a quick an easy sun.  I'll be working on him tonight along with finishing the two vehicles.  A lot of work to do!  Especially since tomorrow morning I have a 6:30 am flight to Ottawa, Canada... and a 6:30 pm flight home.


Crunch time!

Friday, August 19, 2011

Imperial Suns: Scout Progress

I'm making progress on my scouts, it's funny how the slightly smaller shoulderpad makes freehand so much more difficult.  I finished up the yellows and have begun working on the blues and blacks.  I still have a lot to do on these guys but my goal is to get them finished by tomorrow.



There are a few places I need to still touch up on the sun emblems but it was a good start.  Tomorrow we're playing in a 2k NOVA prep tournament.  I'll see how the army does.  At this point it's probably too late to make any changes since I'll be traveling next week. 

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

NOVA: Crunch time

Less then two weeks until NOVA.  The flooding of my basement and the remodeling work/time has really thrown me for a loop.  I just haven't had the time to get things ready.  But never fear, I'll make it happen.  Next week I am making a day trip to Ottawa, and potentially a day trip to Baltimore, so I'll really need to finish by the end of this weekend.  Our local tournament group is putting together a NOVA prep tournament on Saturday so I'll get some practice games.  Here's what I need to finish.

- Finish painting Predator & Vindicator
- Finish painting 5 scouts
- Fix the broken techmarine
- Fix the broken terminator - potentially a new banner or shield
- Final touches on the display board
- Creative army list

Here's where I stand on my two vehicles. I'm almost done with the freehand sun emblems.  I would have liked to have done a more dramatic mural on the siege shield of the vindicator, but I still think this sun looks cool.  I still need to do the treads, green "gem" viewing portals, blacks, and silvers.





One thing I've noticed is that since it's been two years since I've painted this army I made the mistake of going a little too bright / high on my highlights.  Most people won't notice, but it's really bugging me.  I should have spent more time with a previous vehicle to make sure they matched.  My final highlight of space wolves grey must have been watered down with a little ultramarines blue.  Note to self... take better notes!

About a year ago, I had an accident where my tech marine and terminator fell off the table.  The banner broke off the terminator (was metal) and the techmarine shattered into individual pieces.  I'm debating on either rebuilding a sun icon or banner out of plasticard for the terminator or just doing a cool shield.  Any thoughts?  The techmarine should hopefully just need a little TLC with super glue and touch up.



I poured some more water effects into the little river on the display board.  I still need to add some static grass and touch it up.  I'm debating on whether or not to add snow.  Snow is on my miniature bases but it's a pain to do in large areas correctly.  Do you think it would detract from the overall effect if there wasn't snow on the display board, but snow on the individual models?  I'm still using the same color scheme for dirt/stone and will use the same static grass.


Finally my scouts need the most work, I haven't really gotten that far with them.  It'll take a ton of time to get them game ready by the weekend!


With that said, I'm really looking forward to NOVA.  I hope to meet a bunch of you there.  For those of you that can't make it, I'll be blogging every night in the hotel room.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Quick Vehicle Destroyed Templates

I think I've had enough of cutting out paper to demonstrate vehicle "6" results from destruction.  Either that or marking the space with dice.  My friend Jeff ( check out his blog ) and I spent the afternoon Saturday making up 16 rhino sized templates, 4 Land Raider, and 6 60mm round templates.  We also started on some steel wool fires for any vehicle "5" results.  For relatively nothing, we have some quick and easy templates to get us by.  If I wanted to spend more time, we would probably bevel the edges and create more organic crater shapes.

Now, these aren't highly done painted or super modelled, but they're great for something on the board.  I plan on doing more elaborate ones for my Dark Eldar.

We started out with 1/4" board.  Jeff cut them to size and we grabbed all of our spare vehicle tracks and space marine vehicle kits.  By using forgeworld doors, we have tons of leftover parts.  We used the ever trusty hot glue gun and put all the parts down.



For the blast markers, we took steel wool and cut it into a "flame" shape and hot glued them down to 40mm bases.  I refuse to flip my vehicles over... it's just asking to get the paint chipped up.


Then a liberal sanding of the crater templates and primed them both in black.



 Here's our paint progression and a series of shots.  For the craters we started with a light drybrush of adeptus battlegrey across all the sand.  The metal was done in tin bitz with a boltgun drybrush.  We then worked in patches of graveyard earth (and a little bit of khaki) and codex grey.



Jeff's son came up with a great idea to work embers/flames into the base.  So we did a few patches of blood red / blazing orange / golden yellow, then stippled in some codex grey.  When we were all done we did a light drybrush of fortress grey over the entire base.  Not bad for a quick afternoon project.  I do think I'm going to go back and add some scorched marks on the metal to break up the metal parts.


The flames were taking quite a bit longer to dry so that'll be a project for another day.  I did a healthy blood red core, we'll be adding in some yellows then go over the top in blacks and grey to simulate smoke.  Finally we'll take some cotton and "pull" it over the steel wool to add additional smoke effects.

I'm still stuck fixing the basement, so most of my time has been working with a large paintbrush.  Hopefully I'll have it done so I can get back to my Marines for Nova!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...