Back from Adepticon!

What a blast!

Adepticon was, once again, a great event. Well-run by a big team of enthusiastic volunteers, the show had even more to offer the attendees this year. Speaking of attendees, there were over 1300 of them who registered - an increase of around 300 from last year.

I had fun on Thursday evening, helping a bit with the set-up of the Gale Force 9 booth and catching up with old friends from across the continent.

Friday and Saturday saw me running around a lot, snapping pictures of the Flames of War, Warhammer Ancient Battles, and other historical demo games. There are plenty of pics for my Wargames Illustrated article (and subsequent web bonus material), very exciting!

Saturday night I entered into the Rogue Demon competition. Horus for the Single Sci-Fi category, Jeb Stuart for the Single Historical category, Pater Sin and his Brood for the Regiment/Squad category, and Rylanor for the Large Monster/Vehicle category. I was rewarded with two Bronze medals, one for Jeb and the other for Horus. Very happy with those results!

Sunday was the 40K Championships. I brought along my Blood Pact Army and made sure I was entered in the "Black Library Themed Army Competition". Over the course of the day I discovered there were no less than 15 armies up for consideration : )

My games were interesting, to say the least. Three very friendly opponents who all played good games. My luck started out strong in Game One against Tony and his Daemons, but waned in turn three leaving me with a mere two Battle Points (default because Tony's army contained neither Fast Attack or Heavy Support to start with). Game Two saw me up against Erich with his Vostroyan IG. Although I struggled early in this game (managing to just blow the guns off a Vendetta after hitting it 8-9 times with plasma and lascannons), my luck returned with the arrival of my own Vendetta filled with my new veterans and I clawed back a draw, so I added 20 more BPs. Game Three saw me up against Mark and his fairly straightforward Chaos Space Marines. No tricks, just solid stuff. This game didn't see my luck swing either way, it stayed awful all the way through. Losing four tanks by the end of turn two certainly didn't help things. I ended that game with 0 BPs.

I got a glance at the tournament list after the show, I placed 90 out of 110 for the Blue tournament, not too bad as I think I was the one who scored the lowest number of BPs (22 of a possible 145).

Vince from Black Library was very generous on the day and awarded four prizes for the Theme competition, I placed second. Congrats to C.J. and the other generals who won the other prizes! Long live the Black Library!

And to wrap up my quick blurb about my adventures at Adepticon, I leave you with this picture from the army that won Best Army Appearance and Players' Choice in the 40K Championships (Blue). It is of a handful of Brandon Palmer's Chaos Space Marine Terminators from his Scallywaggin' army. Truly some spectacular work. Brandon is from GMM Studios and you can see some more pics of his army on their site.

Great to see many of you at the show, and I hope you return next year for more fun and hijinx!

Cheers

Dave

How many days 'til Adepticon?

Only four? Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? In just 96 hours time I'll be sitting at the bar, relaxing with a beer (or a dirty martini), but before then there's still plenty to do!

First up, last post I teased you with a shot of this Pre-Heresy Dreadnaught's legs. Here he is in his semi-complete stage. Inspired by the work of Insaniak (a fellow Aussie converter who posts a lot on Dakka), and the artwork from the Horus Heresy artbooks, I put together this interpretation of Rylanor, the Emperor's Children Dread from Fulgrim and Flight of The Eisenstein. Since this photo was taken I have finished the modeling work and I'm almost finished with the painting. I'll be delivering this piece in person to the client at Adepticon. As it was such a fun project, I figured I'd do a full post on him next week, after the show.

I'm going to be playing in the 40K Championships on Sunday at Adepticon. I always think "Championships" is such a grand title and I feel like a bit of a fraud playing in them. I'm so far from a champion player it's still kind of funny. Anyway, I decided to take some advice and added this Veteran squad to my list. They'll be rocking shotguns, two meltas, a heavy flamer, a demo charge, meltabombs, and the sarge has a plasma pistol and power sword. Although more pricey than I typically go for, I think they'll do me proud. To build them I used the torso/head pieces from the Vraks Renegade Enforcers (from Forgeworld). The skull masks were a lot of fun to paint up! You'll notice some interesting weapons being carried by these vile devotees of the Dark Gods. Stolen directly from a poster on Dakka Dakka, whose name escapes me right now (please post a comment if it was you), the shotguns my boys are carrying are a mix of IG flamer and grenade launcher. I have plenty of both just lying around and when I saw this conversion, I knew I had to try it too. I like it a lot and I think it adds some great bulk and a slightly archaic look.

So, the Veterans need to be delivered to the right place at the right time. I'll be finishing off the Locust in the next few days (I hope) to use as their Vendetta transport. Quite a bit more work to do, but I do enjoy my plasticard work.

And here's a shot of a Wolf Priest I had to paint up for a buddy of mine. When I was out in Phoenix last October for the Battlefoam Wild West Shootout, I made a bet on the outcome of the Broncos/Giants game that was played on Thanksgiving night. Sufficed to say, my boys in blue did not follow through on their promising start to the season and I was left holding the proverbial bag. I hope Jason gets a lot of enjoyment out of this figure.

One last bit. Unfortunately we've had to cancel our Napoleonic game originally planned for Saturday night at Adepticon. That big bugbear of hobbyists everywhere (real life) got in the way of finishing up their units for some of our players so we decided that it would be best to bring it all along next year instead. My apologies to anyone who was really looking forward to seeing it. I might bring my finished units anyway. We'll see if they fit : )

Anyway, take care, and I'll see you all (hopefully) at Adepticon!

Cheers

Dave

Greetings from the Warmaster!

So, after a fairly busy week (including a working trip to Cold Wars in Lancaster,PA) I've managed to finish up the Warmaster Horus. This conversion is based on the great artwork by Adrian Smith of the final meeting between Horus and the Emperor. My client wanted Horus to be "less evil" so I did away with the severed heads, stretched faces and one or two other accoutrements. This is Horus at the time of renaming his Legion (from the Luna Wolves to the Sons of Horus) when his faith in the Emperor and the Imperial Truth is on the wane.

Enough of the introduction, I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

The base is from Dragon Forge Design's Lost Empires range. For my money, nothing says "crushing the enemies of Mankind" like a toppled statue.

A couple of posters asked for a scale comparison with a standard Space Marine, so here he is towering over a member of the Legio Custodes. My client has a friend he plays against on a regular basis who has a Ronin Miniatures' Mortarion, so I wanted to make sure Horus could stand up to the Primarch of the Death Guard.

On a final note, here's a teaser of the last commission to finish before Adepticon. Rylanor, the venerable hero of the Emperor's Children Legion and friend to Saul Tarvitz. There's a bit more work to do on him so I better get back to it.

And the Winner is...

And so we come to "Revelation Day"!

Perhaps nothing so grand, but with entries from 37 of this blog's followers, I know there are a few people hoping a signed copy of Blood Pact will soon be winging its way to them. Please remember, there can be only one winner. I layed all the entries out before me and went with my gut, feeling a somewhat-Zen connection to the winning entry.

As I promised in my comment on my last post, here are ten or so entries that topped the list. I'll follow these with the winner. Please note, these are in no particular order.

THE RUNNERS-UP

Here we have the entry from Istvan Vegh. A great job of bringing the knives, skull, and Khorne symbol together.

David Brender has taken a different approach here, and I REALLY like the use of the skulls to create the wreath!

Gavin Massey went down a quite elaborate path with this one. I think the blood drop inside the skull was used as a campaign badge "back in the day", so I had quite an old school feeling about it.

Jason Gould brought the elements together very nicely. I particularly like the styling of the Chaos star.

One of my favorite miniature painters, Chris Borer, took a key from my interest (and his own) in more solid, block designs. Each of these is subtly different, and one of them might make a forearm tattoo for the future.

Alex Landing was very enthusiastic about the competition and sent through a couple of dozen variations on the theme. This was my favorite of his work.

This entry from Tim Hollman was the first I received to incorporate the Blood Pact grotesque. Some very clever arranging of elements to have them do double duty.

Wayne Snyder sent in a few entries that were very cool, but it was his worksheet that I thought I'd show here. It's always fun for me to peek behind the scenes and see how people work.

David Liljehammer submitted this entry. I like the decayed feel of the Chaos star/wreath, it looks rusty and dangerous.

Three of the entries from Dylan Gould. Like many entries, Dylan was keen to see me use the Chaos star styling that I've painted on my tanks. I liked the sharp edge style of these very much.

And Dave Stolarski not only sent in this piece (note the Blood Pact grotesque on the skull)...

...but he also sent me a few photos of the start of the "Gaunt's Ghosts vs Blood Pact" sleeve he is currently having tattooed, proving I'm so far from hardcore it's kind of funny. Dave will be getting the color done over the coming months, as time and funds allow, but he has promised to send in pictures of it's progress that I can post here. Nice one Dave!

THE WINNER!

And so we finally make our way to the winner. Robert Ringefors (from Sweden) sent in this very cool - and winning - piece. Not only did Robert blend the Chaos star and the Tanith Straight Silver, like several other entries, but the eye-catching mottled red of the bloody palm print just worked so well with the negative space of the icon. This should be very cool planted slightly off center on my bicep, just below the Imperial eagle I got 11 years ago.

So, please join me in thanking ALL of the folks who entered the competition, and in congratulating Robert on his well desrved victory!

Just so you don't think I've been slacking, here's a shot of the Warmaster Horus I've been working on for a client. Obviously the Adrian Smith artwork is the inspiration, but the client asked for the Horus that has just renamed his Legion to the "Sons of Horus". This isn't the Traitor Horus, but I like to think of him as the Quite Annoyed Horus. : )

And the competition has come to an end.

Hi folks

Just a quick one to point out that the 500 Ink Design Competition has drawn to a close. I received a couple of dozen entries, some pretty close to what I was hoping for and a couple that have blown me away. I'll be taking this week to assess all the entries together and make my decision.

In the mean time, I have a couple of pics from the weekend's efforts that I'll post on Wednesday (once I get a bit more time at the computer in the evening.

Cheers

Dave