Sendition Wars Extras

I finally received my second box of Sedition wars miniatures and terrain from the Studio McVey Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster Station on Kickstarter.  I am happy to finally have the rest of my items here at home.  Investing in a Kickstarter feels risky, since you don't know how things will work out in the end.  Stucio McVey delivered on their promise to make a game, and get it out to their backers.  Things took a while, but it's over with now.  If Studio McVey puts out an expansion to Sedition Wars, I'll definitely pick it up. 

Gaming Templates

I lost my flame template for my 40K game a while back and needed to replace it.  I had the option to buy a new one, but instead I copied the templates in the back of the main rule book. 

The templates were easy to make.  I copied the page with the templates on it.  After copying them on a color printer, I cut them out with a scissor.  I cut out the holes in the center of the templates using an X-acto knife.  I had the templates laminated at my local Staples.  Then I cut them out leaving a little plastic around the edges of the template, to keep the templates from warping.  Done. 

 

How to make stencil template.

Some times I need to make a stencil template to repeat a pattern or design for my models or terrain.  The templates are great for airbrushing and for repeating terrain details.  Here is the way I create my templates, and how I apply them. 

What you'll need:

1. Cardboard; you can get this from cereal boxes, or buy card stock at an art store.
2. Blue painters tape; you can use regular masking tape, but I find it may take away paint from models. 
3. X-acto knife and scissor
4. Pencil or pen
5. Steel ruler
6. Cutting surface

To begin with use your scissor to cut out a piece of cardboard to work with. 

Copy your design onto the cardboard. Blacken in any areas you want to keep or cut out.  Just remember to be consistent. 

Use your X-acto knife and steel ruler to cut out the designated areas. 

Place some blue painters tape down on your cutting surface.  You can overlap tape incase your template is large and you need more room. 

Place your stencil template over the blue painter tape, and use your pencil or pen to mark the areas that you will be cutting out on the blue painters tape. 

Using your X-acto knife and steel ruler cut out the shapes on the blue painters tape. 

Your blue painters tape is now ready to place over your models or terrain. 

You can keep reusing the cardboard stencil template as many time as you need to repeat your design over blue painters tape, cardboard or polystyrene sheets. 

Note: The blue painters tape will begin to lift up if you leave your template on a model or terrain piece for a long time.  Run your fingers over the blue painters tape before beginning to paint if you left it sitting around for a while. 

Template example.

Template example applied to my drop pod ramps.

Zealot Miniatures

I wanted to add a little more character to my Tau army.  I looked around on the Internet and found a small after market bits dealer named Zealot Miniatures.  Zealot Miniatures is located somewhere on Great Britain.  I noticed on their website that they have created several alternate male and female heads for Tau infantry.  They also make Tau infantry arms which look like they have marker lights on them.  It took a few weeks for the bits to arrive, but I'm happy with my purchase.  The bits are cast well and contain no bubbles, but you can see noticeable amounts of flash near the seams.  The hands are a bit large and out of scale, but nothing a surgeons scalpel can't fix. 

Tau Army

I’m working on redoing my Tau army that has been sitting inside old boxes for seven years.  I began by dusting everything off and taking an inventory of what I had on hand.  I have 2 Ethereals, 12 Crises Suits, 12 Stealth Suits, 2 Devilfish, 1 Hammerhead, 30+ Fire Warriors, 30+ Kroot, 2 Forge World Marker Drones, 3 Forge World Air Caste, and scores of regular Drones.  The jewel of my old Tau army is a Barracuda Air superiority fighter.  It’s going to look great once I strip it, and find a new base for it.

With my inventory complete I submerged the infantry and Crisis Suits in Super Clean.  My Tau have been soaking in the stuff for a month.  I’m in no hurry to get them out of their bath.  I’m happy to know that they will be ready for stripping when I find the time. 

I purchased some reinforcements for my Tau a few weeks back.  I picked up a Riptide, Sun Shark, 3 Broadsides, some Pathfinders, Longstrike, Darkstrider, and a Fireblade.  To give my army a unique look, I purchased some aftermarket bits from Paulson Games and Zealot Miniatures.   I think these two forces mixed together will be a considerable army to fight with.  Now I have to work out the point values and pick out a paint scheme. 

Avatars

I have been thinking about rules on how to add an avatar of yourself into 40K.  Usually a gamer is represented by the HQ unit on the board, but what happens when your HQ is a named character?  I am using Vulkan He'stan as my HQ, and sadly I'm a poor substitute for Vulkan.  I decided to make an avatar of myself using some spare bits, and some special order bits from MaxMini, Anvil Industry, and Forgeworld.  I am running an Ultramarines army, and I wanted to keep with the Roman style that is seen in the Ultramarines miniature range. 

I decided to make my avatar a gladiator with two swords.  His helmet had to be easily identifiable as a myrmillo.  I wanted to get an over armored right arm, and an under armored left arm, but I wasn't able to find anything like that online, so I just got different shoulder pads instead.  Looking back I should have looked at the Dark Eldar range.  I also needed a range weapon for him, so I made sure to use the gauntlet bolter of the Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard.  Once I had all my parts together, I started assembly.  I reposed the miniature using some metal pins, and green stuff.  The base is made of cork, dipped in sand. 

As far as rules are concerned, I was thinking of having my avatar being worth 1 victory point.  The point is earned if he is captured, not killed.  You capture him using the Relic rules.  The catch is he can only be capture if his squad is destroyed, and he is killed (knocked unconscious). I would only use the avatar house rule if my opponent also had an avatar, this way the possible points earned in a game will not suffer. 

I was also think of making a vehicle pilot avatar.  A vehicle would be worth 5 victory points.  To earn the point you will first have to destroy the vehicle.  An objective marker would be placed where the vehicle was destroyed.  Then you use the objective rules to capture the downed pilot. 

Got the Malifaux bug.

Recently I've been putting together minis for Wyrd Miniature's Malifaux game.  Since I like the idea of the wild west, I chose Perdita Orgeta and her family for my crew.  Word got out that I was starting Malifaux and one of my buddies commissioned me to put together a Ten Thunders crew for him.  I've been able to put together the crews, now I just have to find the time to paint them.  To give the crews a little pop, I ordered some Secret Miniatures bases.  I believe they have some of the best resin bases on the market.  I cleaned up the miniatures, added green stuff where needed, and primed them using Walmart's Black Primer, and Krylon White Primer. 

Tomorrow's technology, today.

I was looking up the up coming movie Elysium staring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster (Hello Clarice), when I saw an add for the Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) by Lockheed Martain.  If there will ever be a power armor initiative in our time, this has to be it.  Terminator armor in Warhammer 40K had to begin somewhere, what if it started like this? 

The Broadside Bash

I visited the Kingdom-Con, Broadside Bash event located inside the Crown Plaza Hotel in San Diego, CA this weekend.  I arrived late in the afternoon on the last day of the event, not looking to participate.  My adjenda was to meet up with Blake of Life After the Cover Save fame and see what he's been up to.  To my surprise I wasn't charged an entry fee to the event, all I had to pay for was $3.00 for parking. I was able to walk around for a while and see the end of the 40K tournament.  I found Blake, just in time to see him win 2nd place in a Malifaux tournament.  Blake received a sweet prize, the Relic Hunters box set.  It was good to see Blake again, as I am quite interested in hearing what he has to say.  We had lunch and on our way out, I was able to snag a fist full of bitz from the kit bashing conversion table contest.  I scored a bunch of bitz for my terminiators, enough arms to swap out some of my assault terminator for regular stormbolter terminators.  I had a good time at the Broadside Bash, and will have to attened it next year. 

Bitz

I like buying bitz to customize my armies from small independent companies, and from bitz sellers.

My favorite site at the moment is Anvil Industry, run by Joel Pitt out of London, UK.  I wrote to Joel months ago asking him to make some combi weapons.  He delivered by making some magnetised combination weapons for his miniature range.  I'm sure he's had plenty of requests for the items before I came along, but it felt like he really listened to me.  I want to add that the quality of Joel's products are excellent and well cast.  I've picked up some bitz from him in the past, and continue to look forward to what his company will be putting out in the future. 

 

 

I'm dusting off my Tau army now since it's the flavor of the month.  I turned to Paulson Games a company located in Downers Grove, IL for extra bitz to customize my character miniatures, and to add a little flavor to the rank and file.  The quality of the products are good with no heavy mold lines or miss casts. 

 



West Coast Podcast Alliance T-shirts were shipped out.

I'm a fan of three 40K hobby podcasts that operate out of Southern California.  The shows are Life After the Cover Save (LAtCS), Imperial Vox Cast (IVC), and The Independent Characters (ICs).  The three shows belong to the West Coast Podcast Alliance (WCPA).  I wanted to support the three podcasts and help spread the word by making some WCPA T-shirts and offering other listeners a chance to pick one up for themselves.  Unfortunately for me the T-shirts weren't popular, and I wasn't able to generate much interest in them from the three WCPA forums.  I did get a break when the hosts of IVC and ICs agreed to help me out by picking up some shirts, especially Tor of IVC fame who picked up two shirts for himself.  With the help of two other courageous fans out there Adan 'Blacksword' from the ICs forum, and Philip 'Gazpacho Soup' from the LAtCS forum, I was able to complete the order with Uberprints.

In order to complete the T-shirt order I had to buy three shirts for myself.  I only needed one, so I donated two of them.  One went to Carl at the ICs, in hopes that he will use it in a WCPA contest, and the second went to Robo Ed at LAtCS, as a gift for all his work in keeping the show going after one of the show's founding cast members left the podcast. 

Shirts are in 

 

A picture of Blake, Carl and Bill at At Ease Games located in Poway, CA. 

Last Month I was busy taking care of things at work, that my hobby blog was neglected.  I did get around to do some hobby work for the Independent Characters podcast for their Hobby Progress Challenge.  Last, I attended the LA Battle Bunker (RIP) the week it was down sized by Games Workshop.

 



With the economy being in such bad shape, it was only a matter of time before Games Workshop started to close its Battle Bunkers around the country.  I managed to get in a game with Blake 'Big Nasty B' of Life After the Cover Save fame, before the Bunker was closed down for good. Blake just so happens to stand as tall as a Space Marine in full power armor, interesting.     

 

MaxMini

I got a box of heads from Maxmini in the mail.  Maxmini is based out of Warszawa, Poland.  I have been wanting to make some scouts for my Ultramarines army for a while now.  I don't like the heads that come in the Scout box, so I started looking around for suitable replacements.  I looked on Maxmini's site and was delighted to see these new Boonie Hat heads up for purchase.  I picked up some of the Boonie Hat heads along with some Ash Junker, and Generic Male heads.  I've purchased from Przemyslaw Jeske the owner/operator of Maxmini in the past with no problems.  Jeske makes some superior resin sculpts.  I think the heads I purchase are going to add a lot of character to my miniatures.  As a side note, Maxmini was nice enough to send me a free sniper rifle, how sweet is that. 

 

MaxMini heads, and sniper rifle

 

 

 

Boonie Hat heads



Dark Potential

One of my favorite Canadian war gaming websites is Miniwargaming.com. This Ontario based outfit does it all.  The owners Dave and Mathew have a genuine passion for war gaming and it shows through the way they promote war gaming on their site.  Last year Mathew came up with an idea, to create a new post apocalypse table top skirmish game he titled Dark Potential.  Mathew turned to Indigogo.com to acquire the crowd funding he would need to turn Dark Potential from a concept to finish product.  Last week I finally received my Petrove-Morales Corporation and the X'lanthos starter sets in the mail.  The miniatures are all metal.  They look hardy, and a bit taller then Corvus Belli miniatures, but slimmer than Games Workshop miniatures.  I'm looking forward to putting them together.  I'm thinking of using Cool Mini or Not Dark Age base inserts, or Secret Weapon Miniatures town square bases. 

Dark Potential Box Art, front

 

Dark Potential Box Art, back

 





 

Box content

 

Size comparison

 

 

 

 

How to make game cards to mark your Forests, Jungles and Woods area terrain.

I picked up an awesome idea from Tall Mike (RIP) one of the hosts of the Imperial Vox Cast.  Mike is a reformed Magic player, and he had the ingenuity of making up some Magic cards displaying the Forests, Jungles, and Woods (FJW) random table results.  I don’t play Magic, but I do like the idea of quick reference cards that can be placed alongside a terrain piece to mark what it’s random FJW table result is. 

To being with I scoured Google images for some pictures to represent the FJW results.  Once I had the pictures I needed, I stored on my PC.  Next I used my Microsoft Word to make four rectangles on a page.  I made the rectangle size 3.62” x  2.62” which is the size of a plastic game card sleeve.  Each rectangle is an individual creation.  I found copy and pasting changes the rectangles dimensions and blurs the text inside the rectangles.  I made sure to align the out board sides of the cards to the margins.  In one box I typed up the FJW text.  In the opposite rectangle I pasted the picture I wanted to use.  I did this twice, and then I printed the sheet.  I reloaded the same sheet and reprinted the page.  I readjusted the images 1/8” to the right before I reprinted.  This helped with the card alignment.  This will give you double sided cards.  After I printed the cards out I realized they needed some durability, so I took the cards down to my local Staples and had them laminated.   Last, I cut the cards to size. 

 

 

Printed Sheets

 

 



Close up of my Carnivorous Jungle card

 

 

 

Finished cards, ready to place next to terrain. 

 

Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster

I decided to back Mike McVey’s Sedition Wars: Battle forAlabaster Kickstarter last year because I believe he is a talented miniature painter and sculptor.  My game finally arrived in the mail, and I’m in love with the detail of the miniatures and the amount of things I received.  I’m still waiting for the second half of my order, but Studio McVey accounted for the time between the box set and the extra bits still being sculpted and manufactured.  I can’t wait to read my rule book and try to get some games in, but right now time is tight.  Everything is on the back burner while I get this month’s IC Hobby Progress Challenge entries done and out of the way.  Here’s a quick pick of what I got in the mail.  The stuff in bags outside of the table came in its own small box.  The actual game box contents are not displayed. 

 

IC Hobby Progress Challenge '13

It's a new year and I'm up and running.  This year begins with me accepting the The Independent Characters 2013 Hobby Progress Challenge.  It's a contest held by Carl Tuttle and Geoff Hummel on their podcast website The Independent Characters.  The challenge is simple, create a 1850 competitive list, then build and paint your army to match.  You can also forgo starting an army from scratch, and instead do additions to your existing army.  Every month you have to finish a unit or character and submit before and after pictures of the miniatures you are entering.  For every entry you put in, you get a chance to win a prize.  For the full details visit the IC's on their site and read the contest rules there. 

My first entry will be my Vulcan He'stan, who has been sitting around primed and ready for months. 

 

 

 

 

My second entry is a unit of Sternguard with combi-meltas and heavy flamers.  This unit takes parts from several different sources.  The marines helmets are from Maxmini, while the sergeant's helmet is from Forgeworld.  The weapons are from Custom Minis.  I put everything together with Gorilla Super Glue and some green stuff. 

 

 





 

 



 

Here's an Sternguard update.  I finished adding Dhener Stone on the white area of five of my Sternguard.  I still have to finish the rest of them, and paint up Vulkan He'stan before the end of the month.  The pressure is on. 

 



 

 

The finished Sternguard squad.  I still need to find some cross decals so I can use them for the right shoulder pad markings.