The 6+ Save

First day’s over! Yay! Before anything else: hella-good tournament thus far. No complaints. The players are 100% cool. The TOs are 100% cool. The experience is 100% cool.

Sorry we didn’t liveblog anything — nobody’s watching anyway. I plan on writing a super cool NARRATIVE BATTLE REPORT about all of my games at some point in the future because I get enjoyment from 40k through painting and background rather than playing. Lol. It’ll have more pictures too.

Briefly, we need to be douchebags because that’s our thing! There were 15 dorky-dorks on day 1. Skinny white dudes need to stop thinking Ork battle cries are cool — you aren’t huge and green, you are small and white. It’s also amazing how many people still can’t pronounce “las.” Here’s the breakdown:

• Day 1 “WAAAGH” counter: 9
• Day 1 “layz” counter: 6

Oh yeah, and Army Builder is stupid. Don’t whine at me because I didn’t use it and don’t bitch when I ask to see your codex instead of believing the thing you printed out. 

Anyhow! I went 1-0-3. Cool story. Whatev. Here are pictures of the armies I played. Some of them may be bad because I was paying attention to losing so much.

Doc’s Imperial Guard. They cool.

Turns out they’re all girls!

David’s meched out Blood Angels.

Zoop!

Dante’s Eldar. He needs to finish them because they look really cool.

MISTER ELDRAD.

Casey’s Blood Angels.

Cool Stormraven conversions!

We’ve got just over 12 hours until the Bay Area Open. Got to Berkeley from San Diego by 11 a.m. and set out to finish up our armies. I only had to put on my FIST decals, thankfully. My buddy Josh didn’t have do do anything though. Kinghue, trooperlarkin and hessian7 are here with their Grey Knights, Dark Eldar and Tyranids, too.

We gonna win and win big. And by win big I mean suck and get all emo because we can’t play this game we spend a bunch of money on. Here are a bunch of progress pics. We’ll try to liveblog the tourney tomorrow if there’s internet access.

So here’s a big picture post of our stuff. Some looks better than others. Whatev. How can we not have fun with 2 days and 7 games of 40k?

Micro Sol makes decals WORK FOR ME.

Hessian7 painting his ‘Nids to a 3 color standard because he forgot to start before last night.

The IMPERIAL FISTS are complete.

Objective 1: statue of St. Celestine.

Objective 2: Massive FIST.

Objective 3: dead FIST brother-captain.

Josh’s mech Blood Angels.

Josh’s Librarian and sergeant.

MEPHISTON! THE LORD OF DEATH!

Kinghue’s STRIKE. FORCE. HUE.

Mr. Crowe.

Kinghue’s Grey Knight Terminators.

The KNIGHT of the FLAME.

Grey Knights Dreadnought.

Trooperlarkin’s Dark Eldar Venom spam.

It’s THE DUKE!

All of trooperlarkin’s army is female. Except the Duke. PIIIMP.

Razorwing Jetfighter.

(Just a lil)

First off,

Kasrkin invited me to a small tournament on Sunday. It was only us. Really weird. 

So we battled for 10 dollars. and he won. (Out hue’d the King)

Anyways back to the real topic. GREY KNIGHTS

So after plenty of thought i figured i would actually bring my Grey Knights up to the Tournament (BAYAREAOPEN) rather than my Iron Hands, Because i just feel like I’ll enjoy it a bit more and I absolutely love watching Crowe suck at everything. 

Soo heres the plan. Speed paint a whole 1850 (I have the army just need to paint all of it. 

Currently I got this going on, I doubt its any better than the wolves i planned on bringing but who knows? Need to use my Grey Knights some more. 

HQ

Big baby Crowe

Troopers

Purifiers x7 2x Psycannon 4x Halberds 1x Daemon Hammer

Rhino

Purifiers x7 2x Psycannon 4x Halberds 1x Daemon Hammer

Purifiers x7 2x Psycannon 4x Halberds 1x Daemon Hammer

Rhino

Purifiers x7 2x Psycannon 4x Halberds 1x Daemon Hammer

Terminators x8 1x Psycannon 4x Halberds 3x Swords 1x Hammer w/ Psybolt w/ Bro Banner

Heavy Supp

Dreadnought 2x twinlinked Autocannon w/ Psybolt 

Dreadnought 2x twinlinked Autocannon w/ Psybolt 

Dreadnought 2x twinlinked Autocannon w/ Psybolt 

1849

Holy spam batman

Non rhinos Purebros sit back and hold hard

Crowe stands proud (eats lances)

Dreads shoot (BLAT BLAT BLAT)

Sorry for all the army lists lately. Cant figure out what i want to actually use. :I

Because I just returned to playing 40k after a pretty lengthy hiatus — I “played” until 5th started but really hadn’t put many games in since the beginning of 4th — I’ve been really into starting as many armies as I can. Imperial Fists were first, then there was my Crimson Fists idea and in between that I’ve had flashes of “OMG GUARD AGAIN,” “Hive Fleet Kraken time!” and “Eldar. Eldar everywhere.”

But I probably won’t end up going with any of those last three because — aside from Tyranids — 40k armies have become incredibly distilled. Not on the rules side. The rules are, generally, pretty solid. You can make good lists with any book and pilot them to great success if you’re a good player. What I’m talking about is something I’ve mentioned in passing before: a lack of flavor.

Some among this new generation of writers over at Games-Workshop are apparently boring squares with no sense of how 40k ought to be (or maybe they just don’t get paid enough to care). Let me use Codex: Eldar to illustrate what I mean, since talking about the Imperial Guard would push me into writing a massive litany of hate that’d stretch on for way, way too long.

Contrary to what a lot of people out there on the Internet seem to think, Eldar can be competitive at the highest levels of tournament play. They’ve got more than one effective build — really. My problem comes with the fact that none of those builds reflect what their decades of rich, finely-crafted background illustrates. Just look at the unit choices in the book itself: you’ve got a bunch of different aspects and wraith units and skimmers and jetbikes and AWW YEAH THE AVATAR. That’s not what people play though.

Since I’m at work I’m not really going to go much more into it. Just wanted to throw out some delicious food for thought (terrible phrase, fuck). Anyone out there remember when Eldar were cool? When you could roll an Ulthwe list with a huge Seer Council and guardians that wrecked shop? When you could actually theme an army around Biel-Tan that had representatives from more than two aspects? When “Dire Avenger vehicle upgrade” wasn’t part of the 40k lexicon?

I’m guessing not many do.

But I do. And I want that flavor back.

Now that I’m done with my Imperial Fists for the most part and have dat itch, I’m going to move on and make the Space Marine army I always intended to: Crimson Fists. I love Pedro Kantor and his latin flavor, what can I say? It’s only ever going to be 1,000 points though because I’m making the army out of what I’ve got left from Black Reach plus less than half of a Space Marine battleforce. I do have to buy the pods though. It’s gonna be awesome.

Posting lists is really lame and I wish my peers would stop doing it, but I am going to do it anyway. Basically the army drops in and poops gets pooped on. The whole tactic: use Peter Canter to own it up because as long as I have him on the board, I win. Yep. 

Pedro “Pete” Kantor - 175

10 marines 170 - 235 total
Power fist 25
Meltagun 5
Drop pod 35

10 marines 170 - 235 total
Power fist 25
Meltagun 5
Drop pod 35

7 Sternguard 175 - 215 total
Drop pod 35

Dreadnought - 140 total
Drop pod 35

1,000 points

BAM.

In two weeks there is a team tournament at our FLGS. 1500 a player. Kinghue and i are are going to rip shit UP!! We do pretty well in team tournaments and we both decided we needed some free shit so here we go. Now i cant decide what army to bring… oh wait a minute, duh, ORKS!!!!!!!!!

1500 Orks

HQ: Warboss w/Powerklaw, Attack Squig, ‘Eavy Armor, Cybork Body  115

HQ: Warboss w/ Big Choppa  65

Troop: 30 Slugga/Choppa Boyz, Nob w/Powerklaw, Boss Poll  220

Troop: 30 Slugga/Choppa Boyz, Nob w/Powerklaw, Boss Poll  220

Troop: 30 Slugga/Choppa Boyz, Nob w/Powerklaw, Boss Poll  220

Troop 30 Shoota Boyz, Nob w/Powerklaw, Boss Poll  220

Troop 30 Shoota Boyz, Nob w/Powerklaw, Boss Poll  220

Troop 30 Shoota Boyz, Nob w/Powerklaw, Boss Poll  220

1500 points exactly. Can you say Green Tide?? “Oh, but where is your Kustom Force Field?” pssssh that shits for nerds. You want a nerd with some stupid force field, or another Warboss? Exactly.  Hopefully Kinghue will post his list up here so you can see how we will ruin this tournament.

And BTW i havnt forgot about my tactics segment. I havnt been able to get a game in to take pictures in a while because of the holiday weekend.  Ill post something on Tuesday, promise.

-EmperorsFinest

Well since I haven’t posted in awhile, and since the death threats by my associates are starting to pile up I finally got something to write about, I thought I would actually write another article. So I don’t know about the gaming groups at other local game stores, but at mine I am currently the only Tyranid player at my store, or at least the only one that plays them competitively. At the last tournament, I was the only Tyranid player out of 20 people. Sure I know other people at our store that have Tyranids, but they play them so sparsely that you wouldn’t know that they owned the army unless you asked them. Now I know, Tyranids are not the strongest army out there, but where’s the love for the bugs? 

Which now brings me to my next point: half the players at my game store think that the Tyranid book is the cheesiest codex in 40k. Yes you heard that right, there are people in this world that actually think that the Tyranid codex is more cheesy then mozzarella sticks dipped in fondue. Now this is something that I can’t understand. I’m not saying that I hate my codex, but I certainly wouldn’t call it cheesy. I could call it gimpy, or a one-trick pony, but certainly not cheesy. And it’s not like I win all of my games either! in fact, I would say that I lose more games then I win games, but many of my opponents that I do defeat seem to all be in the mindset that they could only lose because my codex is full of cheese. You know what they seem to whine the most about? My Broodlord’s ability to stop a model from attacking, and the psychic power Paroxysm. Now don’t get me wrong; both powers can be very devastating, but you now what all of these opponents lack? Psychic defense. Yes, all of these opponent had no way to stop psychic powers. Sure, I can give it to the Chaos players that I play, as they have no psychic defense and it certainly isn’t the only thing that is wrong with the codex, but I have played space marine players that will complain about my codex. Now come on, considering that most codices these days are packing some brutal psychic powers, having a little defense against it sounds like a good plan. It’s just one of those things that really gets to me. So, end rant.

Okay so I’ve started to paint again. Don’t know why but it all started Sunday morning. I went to see my friend Sean after this crazy one night stand. I was tired and sore from being up all night gettin’ buck wild, but neither of those things mattered because I was hanging out with Sean. And when we are together beautiful thoughts happen.

Our dorky burrito banter brings us to the idea that we should paint some Tyranids. Tyranids who are from underground caverns that are rich with jewels and minerals (they were going to be dark earth tones with crazy gems on their bases) but that idea went out the window when we saw Ork killa kanz at the game store. Immediately we looked deep into one another’s eyes and realized what we must do: Orks from under the sea.

What that means is rust and zinc oxidation and brass and objectivist art deco and seaweed and fishing nets and aww yeah, this shit’s going to be off the hook.

I ended up sleeping most of Sunday and then staying up all night, making it so I spent my fourth of July asleep until 5 p.m. But when I woke up I went to his place, ate a disgusting space brownie and then got to business on painting with mah bro. Actually, I lied — he jammed on the guitar with this cool old guy and we chilled until 9:30 p.m. Lol.

Anyway, here is the fruit of our labor: kan faceplates. Both of us were pleased with the outcome, as neither of us have painted minis for at least two years, and I’ve never really painted anything seriously at all myself. That’s why his is way better.

Mine. Rawr.

His. Aww yeah.

The lovely couple.

Tabletop distance.

Seriously? why do people enjoy this point limit? It doesn’t make much sense to me. but I guess something good can come out of it. 

Current Space Woof bullshit Iron Hands (no dreads wtf):

• Woof lord - Frost blade/3+shield/2+Sv/BigBear/Hit on 3’s/MeltaBomb (the Baus)
• Roon Priest - CoS/ MeltaBomb (the Brains)
• 8 Woof Guard - 5xTDA/ 2x Storm Shield/ 4x CombiPlas/ 1x Chainfist/ 3x Pfists/ 2x CombiMelta (the OGs)
• DT - Land Raider Redeemer - Multimelta (tuff ryder)
• 9x Grey Hunters - Banner/ Meltagun / Rhino (geeks)
• 9x Grey Hunters - Banner/ Meltagun / Rhino (geeks)
• 9x Grey Hunters - Banner/ Plasmagun / Rhino (nerds)
• Long Fangz - 4 rockets (lame)
• Long Fangz - 4 rockets (lame)
• Long Fangz - 4 rockets (lame)
• Total: 1849  

If someone can tell me something better to do with 10 points I’m all ears. 

But yeah this is what I think ill bring to the Norcal GT some of the guys here on 6+ plan on going to.

Then air brushes are for you my friend!

A quality air brush can offer you a kick a** looking army without all the fuss or time consuming skill development and talent!

Seriously guys I have one and I can base and double highlight thirty twenty-five milimeter infantry models in about thirty to forty-five minutes and that is including the three smoke breaks I take, two for color changes and one because I can. They are also fantastic for painting vehicles and you can do a lot of cool things with just an airbrush, a few different paint colors, and an index card. I would say that my airbrush is my best friend as a miniature gamer but my left hand may have something to say about that. I would highly recommend you use your interwebs and google something like “how to paint space marines airbrush” and see for yourself the awesomeness you yourself could posses. You just have to know a few things before you start watching videos and getting way to ahead of yourself. 

Unfortunately some skill and intelligence are still required for detail work and using an airbrush to paint the majority of your army and it does limit your theme selection to generic solid color schemes. But if you are worried about that kind of thing then you should either already be a proficient hobbyist or pull your head out of your a** and get back to reality. They are also rather expensive as you not only require and airbrush but also and air-compressor with at least a five gallon tank. 

Another thing that should be noted about online painting tutorials is that they are guides. I meet a lot of people who have seen someone who is really talented paint something on the internet and then get it in there head that there is no other way to paint of model in that fashion. You have to work with what is available to you, and the talents you posses. If you see someone paint a kick ass model with an airbrush or just by hand but can’t afford or simply don’t have access to things like mixing pots, isopropyl alcohol(rubbing alcohol), makeup brushes, model air primer, weathering kits and so on then take what you can from that video and then use this knowledge to develop and improve your own methods of painting your army. 

Well that is pretty much it for now I just wanted to get a post up on the 6+ to show that I am alive and full of shi*.

Show em whats good nerds and keep your chins up and your feet on the ground.