Kubla Kountdown

(I'm suddenly reminded of the Simpsons "Krusty Komedy Klassic, at the Apollo Theater")

Looks like I'm number two on the "only so many days before Kubla" post. I have actually been painting pretty consistently, but not "like a madman" I'd say. Mainly because I knew once I got the Monolith finished, it'd be downhill. Plus Meredith, my loving wife being the wonderful person she is, offered to base my minis and paint my Sentinels. At which point, I knew I was going to make it without too much rush.

So what I have left is the Techpriest and his servitor. I finished the Super-Secret-BloodBowl-Team. I have to flock & number them, and they're totally finished. In what has become sort of a ritual, I'll do the flocking dead last after I finish almost everything else.

Beyond that it's fix some broken Orks (weapon popped off here and there), put the IG in their trays, and then put the Looted Monolith in its box. I ended up buying a $4 cardboard evidence box used by lawyers. I figure that plus some bubble wrap and I'm good to go. Probably can stuff a tray or two of Ork stuff in there as well.

Mer happened to comment that I seem unenthusiastic about Kubla this year. Which is odd, because I am jazzed about it. But she is right in that there's not the energy I've had in previous years. But not in a bad way. Usually, I get this excited energy because, hey, I like hanging out with my friends. And usually that makes me fairly high strung.

But not so much this year. Part of me wants to say its because I expect it to be an "off" year. See, I've noticed there's this trend where during the even years stuff goes wrong at Kubla whereas odd years are more fun. For example:

2008: didn't really get to play as much with my friends as I'd like, plus Jocelyn screeched all weekend. Plus I referred a babysitter to Trent & Darby that . . . didn't work out.

2006: Manny couldn't make it due to his granddaughter being born. This was also the first year I wasn't involved in the Golden Gargant, and Trent & I hung out for like 20 minutes all weekend.

2004: Worked as an Orlock. We worked 34 hours in 4 days. In addition to gaming. I am no longer friends with someone as a result of this weekend.

2002: Our first Kubla, so probably can't really be included. However, we still drove up to Oakland every morning before the event and drove home afterward.


Compare with the odd years:

2009: Our second year of the BBCS where we improved on things, plus our first cardhammer event which went really well. Even the Rez event, which was just the four of us, was fun.

2007: The year we did the big Rezolution event, that worked perfectly. Everything that could go right did: I had enough terrain show up, an even number of people to a couple of events where we had an odd number to start.

2005: Despite doing two Wargods events in the evening and Golden Gargant during the day, it went fabulously well. Was the first year Manny came out, and we had a conclusion to a campaign that had been going for six months.

2003: First year in the new hotel, where Mer & I basically ran the Gargant by ourselves. Plus I'd gotten a sneak peak at the (now two versions ago) upcoming Guard codex and got to play with that all weekend.

So according to the 'Even Year Curse' stuff's going to go wrong this year. I predict it'll be
a) at the 40K event
b) something Scott does
c) Both.
d) All of the above, plus something totally out of left field.


But really, that's not what has me mellow. I think what's going on is that . . . I don't care. Not about Kubla. I mean, I'm not terribly concerned about stuff going wrong. I'm sure something will. And while something might frustrate me, I'm just not worried about the bad stuff. Shit will happen, we will roll with it. I'm starting to think that all that nervous energy I had was my natural predilection to fret about all the various things that could go wrong.

Or maybe something will go wrong and it'll make this Kubla leave a sour taste in my mouth. Only one way to find out. . .

Ork Battlewagon: Looted Monolith

The pictures kind of say it all: a looted monolith that counts as my battlewagon. Now one of my shoota squads can get into the fray pretty quickly.

I knew I wouldn't have time to paint it, so I made the zzap gun at the top able to support the crystal if I just set it there instead of gluing it (which I'll do after its painted). The other thing is it has two turret mounted rokkits, represented by the four rokkits but only two can fire at any time. I tested it out, and you can fit 4 models on each side and 5 models in the front. That's 18 models, so if you cram two up at the top, you can actually fit the correct amount of models on this thing.

On the whole this project was a blast, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is to make orky stuff. If your modeling skills aren't superb, it's okay because it's Orky! Like the gantries on the side. They're slanted because the supports made them that way.

Bitch #1: Seriously, GW, what the fuck? It's a good thing I didn't need this monolith for actual Necrons because NOTHING on this this sits flush or straight. Sides are warped and don't fit together, causing other sides to not fit. This whole kit is just a giant cluster fuck.

Shout out #1: This one to GW. Making the deth rolla sprue separate from the battle wagon: brilliant. I was wondering how I was going to make one of those when I found the sprue existed. Nice job.

Shout out #2: The gantries (and their bracings) are all out of this kit Here. Really nice set that anyone contemplating a Necromunda campaign should buy. It's a really versatile kit with tons of attachment pieces so you don't have to make what's on the box (as I've showed).

Storm Troopers done

You know you're using a lot of black when you're taking pictures in direct sunlight and the the camera's flash still goes off. Anyway, if you ignore the flash on the red clothing, it's a pretty decent representation of my storm troopers.

Compared to the guardsmen, I whisked right through these guys. Basically 20 of them done in about a month (including some time off).

This leaves my total Kubla to-do list as:

• Assemble Tech priest
• Paint Tech Priest & Servitor
• Assemble & Paint 2 sentinels
• Flock all IG models
  
• Assemble 3-4 Ork converted Flash Gits
• Assemble looted monolith (battle wagon)
  
• Paint & flock Blood Bowl team

The Ork stuff is so that my buddy can have a playable 2,000 pt list at Kubla. Plus the army has no looted necron stuff, so this'll be nice to add.

I'm going to switch gears and work on the blood bowl team, just to change stuff up. No pictures forthcoming though, because this year's team is a little present to Manny...

Strom Troopers: pardon the lighting

Yeah there's just no good lighting in my house, so if I want a really good picture I have to go outside. And I'm lazy so I took a picture on the dining room table (rocking the baby wipes too, that counts as difficult terrain but provides a 2+ cover because it absorbs everything!)

Anyway, here's the storm troopers. I used Vallejo Black Red for the clothes, the P3 Greatcoat Grey for the boots, cords, etc. Any metal you see in Vallejo Gunmetal Grey. The black is Vallejo's Game Color black. Then I took some Gloss Medium for the armor plates. So if they look all shiny, they are. That's the plan.

I also finished the Command Officer & the Techpriest Astropath. Maybe pics at some future point.

Flash Gits

For Kubla, I'm letting Scott borrow my Orks. The only problem is that I don't really have enough models to get up to 2,000. Heck I have a squad of Flash Gits in my 1,850 pt list that I never got around to building.

Going with the Death Skulls theme, I figured these guys would have looted Necron weapons. Necrons are the only major race not represented in the army because those were still the new hotness when I did most of the conversions for this army (lets you know how long ago I assembled this army).

Anyway, so Necrons + Ork nobz . . . there's a bit of a scale difference. So I have a box of Necron Warriors which are just sitting around, plus 3 Ebay-found Destroyer sprues (thankyouverymuch Trent). Here's the result of about 90 minutes of work last night:

Flash Git plus Painboy. The pistol is meant to be some 'awtoe injektor' for the painboy. I'll probably put something spiky in the barrel to show its not a gun.

Here's the other two I assembled. For reference, what I did was assemble the nob minus an arm. The gun is the gauss cannon off a destroyer. The gun-arm is actually the spine of the destroyer. For the 'git finder' I clipped part of the destroyer skull, then (in a display of unsafe use not seen since I put my exacto knife into my finger all the way to the bone) cut away part of the nob face. Finished by gluing the Destroyer spine to the back and called it a day.

The end result will be a squad of 7 Flash Gits with More Dakka and Blasta plus a Painboy. I felt the FNP would accurately represent Necron auto-repair systems melded with Orks. Game wise, probably not smart but at least it'll give me an extra save vs the "Gets Hot!"

No Joy, Yashuman

To say slow progress would imply any progress. My painting table simply hasn't been touched in weeks. Burned out pretty hard, to be frank.

What I have been doing is assembling my super-secret Blood Bowl team. I'd post pics, but I want it to be a surprise for some people, who may or may not be reading this blog. I'll post pics later, along with a surly commentary of how it took me literally hours to frakking assemble these things.

Is anybody even reading this? The lack of commentary on my basing requests (only two people, with whom I'm in touch fairly regularly anyway) makes me think no.

Grunts done

So not so much with the posting, but I have been doing some steady painting. My progress has been what I've come to expect now that my painting time is like 6-8 hours a week. Anyway, so I have the entire section of grunts done: the 4 squads plus the guys in the command HQ. Working on the commanding officer and the Lex Mechanic (i.e. astropath).









So after I set all this out, I realized that I'm going to have a bitch of a time when it comes to wound allocation. I already find those rules stupid at best, and I think after playing this army I'm going to be grinding my teeth.

See, if you haven't noticed from the army shot, my squads come in two forms: "dear god keep them away" shooty and the "come get some" shooty.

The longer ranged shooty has: Vet sgt, a guy with a vox, 3 plasma gunners, a missile launcher team, and 3 regular guys. The up close shooty has: vet sgt, vox guy, 2 meltgunners, hvy flamer guy, and 5 regular guys. Yup, five different types of models in a ten man squad.

The event at Kublacon is Four. Fucking. Rounds.

So if you're playing and you hear this rhythmic thump, thump, thump sound that's me trying to make the pain stop. Unless there's a lot of cursing with the thumping. Then that's me breaking some douchebag's models with his own head because of extreme douchebaggery playing or whining about how the event is unfair to his army that won Best General at the last 18,197 GTs.

Anyway, still haven't solved the basing problem. I had this idea to just not base them and let the buyer of this army put whatever he wants on the base to match his other army. But I know that's just me justifying being lazy.

At this moment I'm leaning towards some kind of rocky. Any ideas what colors to paint this thing?