Old Line Massacre - The Armies

This weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Old Line Massacre, a Horus Heresy event arranged by a few friends of mine that brought gamers from Richmond, VA, to Providence, RI, all the way to Glen Burnie, MD. 

My FLGS, Dropzone Games, was the site of the crazy gaming - a three-game tourney on Saturday, and an Apocalypse game on Sunday, and they were certainly decked out for it. We had the run of the back room, spreading out over seven tables in order to kill the Traitorous hordes.

I took quite a few photos over the weekend, so I've decided to split them into three posts. This first covers some of the armies that were there, the second will cover the tournament, and the third will cover the excellent Apocalypse game : )

Anyway, on to the armies:

This was the 3,000 point army of Night Lords from Nathaniel Taylor (I have a few more close-ups for our game, which you'll see in my next post). Nate's Apoc force was lead by Konrad Curze, the Night Hauter, himself - the only Primarch to take to the tables all weekend. Nate's army also won the Player's Choice award : ) Nate also loaned his lovely Word Bearers army to mutual friend Jake Landis.

Here is a quick shot of my army, the 1,850 point Mechanicum force, plus my Reaver for the Apoc game. In the end I dropped the Myrmidon Destructors as I wasn't going to get them painted in time for the event.

John Stiening from the 40K Hobby Blog brought his spectacular Sons of Horus army, which also took the Best Painted award. More of John's army can be seen on his blog.

I think my personal favorite might have been Robin Everett-McGuirl's sweet Alpha Legion army. The color was striking, and his use of yellow and freehand detailing was just spectacular.

Chris Bowers from Richmond brought along this excellent Emperor's Children army. Although his army wasn't 100% complete, those parts that were showed an incredible attention to detail and flair for the artistic. Beautiful work indeed!

Jay Feigenheimer painted up the second Night Lords army present at the event. Although Jay only got into the wargaming hobby last October, he was ready to fight hard with three squads of Terminators!

Ty Finocchiaro played with this "remnants" army - squads made up of a mix of World Eaters, Emperor's Children, and Sons of Horus. The two jet bike squads and the pack of Javelin land speeders made for a great one-two punch. Ty also loaned his Death Guard army to Matt Murphy for the tournament.

And the final army to show off was another great looking force, Marc Raley's Alpha Legion. These guys have received a great deal of well-deserved praise across the Internet, and are just spectacular to see in person. You can see more shots at Marc's blog.

Next Post: Photos from the Tournament!

Cheers
Dave

The Hammer of the Emperor

While I work away at the projects I recently laid out for 2013, I thought I'd show you the finished photos of a tank I finished up last weekend. This is a Baneblade I painted up as a favor for a good guy in Las Vegas. A good wargaming friend of his passed away well before his time, and this guy took on the task of helping his friend's widow keep her head above water by selling off his wargaming collection. His Vostroyan army was sold off with the promise that I would paint up the Baneblade.

For some unknown reason, we never decided on a deadline, and as such this tank never really registered on my priority listing, despite the obvious need to get it sorted. After too long a time, I finally got it all squared away and shipped off to the new owner. The tank arrived yesterday and I'm really hoping it was a) a good tribute to the departed friend, and b) worth the wait.

The tank is magnetized where it is needed, and can be switched out to sport heavy bolter OR heavy flamer sponsons (in any of the three spots), and can also be switched up to be run as a Hellhammer, as you can see below.

It was great to be able to see the finished model head out the door after almost two years of lurking around the edges of my painting table. Tim, may your Baneblade smite many foes of the Emperor!

Cheers
Dave

Busy this Saturday?

Are you busy this Saturday? Not yet you say? Well...

If you live in the Baltimore area, head on down to Games & Stuff in Glen Burnie for their 12th Anniversary extravaganza. Myself, Jeff Hall, Jake Landis, and a bunch of others will be hanging out and chatting with folks about modeling, painting, and all related stuff. I'll have my paints and putty there, so come on down. I'll be there from 12-3pm.

Details can be found here.

But I don't live in the Baltimore area Dave, I hear you say. Well...

Grab all of your 40K models and head to one of the dozens of global locations participating in the "Big Game II: The Big Game Strikes Back". Friend of the blog Alec Peters (the guy that runs the Apocalypse 40K blog) is running another HUGE event with stores and clubs around the world participating in the madness.

For more information, including locations etc, head here.

Don't live in Baltimore or play 40K? Then just enjoy a relaxing Saturday, perhaps paint a few toy soldiers, and take your wife out for dinner ; )

Cheers
Dave

The Big Game!

Over the last few months I've been corresponding quite a bit with Alec Peters, the guy who bought my Legio Custodes army. Alec, as I think I've mentioned before, is a huge geek. He is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about a lot of very cool things. He even started a company that auctions off the costumes and props from movies like Iron Man and TV shows like Battlestar Galactica!

Anyway, Alec is a huge fan of the Apocalypse style of gaming. So much so that he started a blog and a forum and has been very active in bringing together a lot of other like-minded groups of 40K gamers out there. This has been very successful, with gamers not only from SoCal (Alec's hunting grounds), but much further afield: Europe, Asia, and Australasia too.

Over the last couple of months Alec has been building plans for, as he calls it, "The Big Game" - an Apocalypse gaming event that currently has over 15 locations around the globe participating.

January 22nd is when it all goes down. Click on either of the links above to track down more info on how you can get involved in the Apocalyptic action. While this is obviously a single day event, Alec isn't the kind of guy to let things die off after that. There'll be plenty more fun gaming and opportunities to connect with other folks who love the Apocalypse!

Cheers

Dave

PS. I know I haven't announced the winner of my Steel Legion Army List contest yet. There were over 30 lists submitted and I'm still sorting through them all. Thanks for your patience.

Thank you one and all!

Well, as many of you might have seen, the auction for my (now former) Legio Custodes came to an end on Sunday having raised $3,800 for my two friends, John and Justin. Thank you to everyone who bid on the army, told someone about the auction, donated to Justin and John through their Paypal accounts, and sent messages of support through. Thank you everyone!

Thanks especially go to a great guy, Alec, who placed the winning bid on the army. I've spoken with him on the phone this week and I'm very excited that someone who is as passionate about 40K as I am will be taking up the mantle of "Custodian of the Custodes" (please, no janitorial jokes).

Alec is the guy behind the Apocalypse40K.com forums which are all about, you guessed it, Apocalypse gaming. In Alec's own words:

"Apocalypse40K.com is a forum for Apocalypse-sized battles in Warhammer 40,000. Some of the biggest Apocalypse groups in the country participate and discuss issues surrouding games sizes, rules, formations, DIY units and more. Battle Reports from World Record games and details on some insanely big armies are all part of this fun and informative forum."

I strongly urge those of you with a passion for the Apocalyptic to head to the forums and join in the fun.

As well as all that, Alec is donating a still-sealed-in-the-box copy of Space Hulk to be auctioned off. How cool is that? More details in the next week.

Anyway, I've been waiting a little while to show you these guys, a couple of conversions that are part of the last batch of commissions I've done. What you see below are some conversions done for a Ravenguard army. On the left is a "counts as" Sicarius. In the middle is a "counts as" Vulkan, and the metal chap is Lemartes with his Blood Angel iconography filed off. In the bottom picture you can see the feathered cloaks I did for Sicarus and Vulkan. I might have to do a quick tutorial on them.

Keen eyes will notice I have also modeled the two "counts as" characters with a style of armor first seen in the Index Astartes piece on the Imperial Fists. A member of GW France did some great conversions that have since spawned quite a few homages. One that I like a lot was done by blog reader Pulse, and his great work can be seen in this thread on Bolter & Chainsword.

Cheers

Dave

Back from WarGamesCon!

It has been a busy week since returning from my first trip to WarGamesCon! Quite a bit of work, a lot of catching up with my now-willful daughter : ), and plowing on with my Golden Demon entries and commissions (more on those in a later post).

Anyway, back to the show. Simply put, it was great. Bigred, JWolf, Bushido Red Panda, and all the crew from BoLS were great guys to hang out with, chatting about toy soldiers and conventions and the mysteries of the world.

On the Friday, I ran the first of hopefully many Hobby seminars at the Con. It was a three class day, with participants signing up for all three. You can check out my post here to see the blurbs about each class. They were well attended and well received, wish made me quite happy and helped me relax for the rest of the weekend.

One great thing that is run at WarGamesCon something they call their Narrative Track. Three different Apocalypse campaigns running at the same time : ) We had 18-20 players participating, split over the three tables. My Blood Pact made their appearance on the Siege of Vraks table.

In this shot you can see my to teammates: Patrick on the far left with his Ork Stompa list (two Stompas and what seemed like dozens of Deff Dredz and Killer Kanz) and Cargill on the far right with his Nurgle Daemon Engine list (Scabieathrax, 2 Plague Hulks, 6 Blight Drones, and I think there were 4 Dreads too).

After having a Datasheet for just over a year now, I was finally able to field my Stalk Tank. Was it effective? It certainly drew a lot of fire : )

We were looking good in the first game, but our opponent Jason's Hades Breaching Drill arrived in our backfield just in time to contest the deciding objective. Game One was a draw.

In Game Two, Patrick and I defended an airfield while Cargill's Daemon Engines raced forward to keep our opponent Dan's IG at bay. Patrick and I worked well together and held on with some great backfield defence. Even though we pushed it an extra turn, we walked away victors in Game Two.

In Game Three we had to break through the breach in the curtain wall and hold the central objective. Each side was given a Reaver Titan, nice!

Our opponents raced forward and stood tall in the breach, giving most of our firepower plenty of opportunity to target the Reaver. In the second turn Patrick managed to take it down with a shot from one of his Stompa. With a wonderful series of rolls, the Reaver went into Apocalyptic Meltdown. A Strength D hit on all models within 20"!!! Our opponent Eric took the brunt of it as his Black Templars were well and truly gutted. We figured that was the right time to start buying the beers, which flowed for the rest of the evening. Despite seeing half their army disappear, the Imperials fought back and eeked out a victory.

Anyway, it's getting late. More tales in the next post.

Take care!

Cheers

Dave