Dystopian Wars, Fed up with airbrush

Last night I played a game of Dystopian Wars. It was rather fun. A friend of mine bought the mega bundle, containing the starter boxes for all four fleets currently available. I played with the American (FSA) fleet and bought it from him after the game. Their play style was appealing. The FSA ships are effective at long range and can take a good beating. This is a nice change from my space wolf force, which is effective at mid range and in the assault. When I got home I ordered the carrier and scout airships. The models are really nice, highly detailed, and require little to no assembly.

The size of the ships surprised me, as did the level of detail.

If you have played Battle Fleet Gothic, then Dystopian Wars will not be too unfamiliar to you. There are several notable differences in game mechanics. BFG has modifiers to hit depending on ship vectors. Dystopian Wars does not. Instead, in DW you will typically hit on four's. However, the number of shots you have will depend on how far away you are from your target.

I began base coating my Space Wolf army tonight. Everything was going fine until paint stopped coming out of the airbrush. I'm not sure what the problem was. The paint mix was fine. This has happened every time I've used the brush, and I no longer think the problem is with me. Tomorrow I'll be purchasing an airbrush from a different manufacturer.

Converted Vindicator, Summer time!

One year of law school is now under my belt. The last term was busy, and while it has been 4 months since my last blog post, it has not been four months since I last worked on something for my Space Wolves. I have assembled most of an 1850 point army, including this:

Leman Russ found the STC for the tank bearing his name, and damnit, my army is going to include one! And there it is, in converted form. I wanted a Leman Russ tank and a vindicator in the army, and this covers the both of them.

The siege shield, cannon, and vent at the back are from the Vindicator sprue (thanks ebay). The hull is from the old Leman Russ kit. No idea if the new kit would result in any difference.

Looking back, this conversion would have been fairly easy if I had known what I would be doing before I did it. As it happened, I put the Russ together, and then did the converting work. Made things more difficult, and next time around I would do things in reverse (proper) order.

I tried doing a rope on the side of the tank, similar to Night Runner's wolf tooth necklaces.  You can see his excellent tutorial here.

I managed the rope. The teeth were beyond the patience level I was currently possessed of. Instead I took the rune from the bottom of the storm shield in the Wolf Pack kit. Note: make sure the surface you roll out the rope on is completely clean. Any bit of debris that is picked up is hard to get off.

Basecoating the army will soon commence. Priming is done (except on the vindicator).

I plan to post my thoughts on 'counts as' models sometime next week. My vindicator is counts as, and so I wanted to say a few things on where I think the line between acceptable and not acceptable for using such models is.

Astronomicon Vancouver 2011

The Astronomicon tournament organizers run annual events in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Dallas. They're also hosting a tournament on a cruise ship this year.

My friend and I are planning to attend the tournament in Vancouver this summer. It's supposed to occur in August, as it normally does. We're going to make a trip out of it with the girlfriends. Spending a week in southern BC is always fun. Mountains, wine country, Vancouver, then back to wine country, back over the mountains, and home (I live in Alberta).

The tourney format sounds really cool. You can find it in their rules section on their website: Astronomicon home page.

Is anyone else thinking of going, or interested in doing so after reading how these tournaments are run?

Missions are designed by the organizers, and are made to suit the terrain on each particular table; and the terrain is varied so that sometimes an army will have an advantage, and other times the player will have to get creative to win.

They even give away an award for best list. I don't mean unit selection. I mean the physical representation of your list. One guy one year turned in a guardsman's field kit, complete with the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer from Black Library, with his list and other papers inside.

If you listen to 40K Radio, you can hear an interview with the organizers in an episode from not too far back.

Space Wolves Vindicator/Leman Russ battle tank

Quick post, looking for some feedback.

I happen to have a Leman Russ tank, still in the box. One day I would like to build a small Valhallan Imperial Guard army, and it was on sale at a big discount. How could I resist? Anyway, now that I have a Space Wolves army, I am considering using it to represent a Vindicator. As many will know, the Space Wolves could take Leman Russ tanks before the latest codex came out. Their Primarch is the one who found its STC design.

What do you think? Cool idea, lame idea?

The biggest issue I think is whether it would give me an advantage in game. I don't think it would. The tank is taller, meaning I'll have a harder time getting out of line of sight or getting a cover a save. Also, I can use the hull mounted gun to measure and draw line of sight from, so the raised turret wouldn't help me see and shoot enemy units that a Vindicator model could not.

I know that the people I play friendly games with will think its cool. I'm concerned about tournaments though.

Wolf Lord model, and a little conversion. And Happy New Years!

This guy will count as a wolf lord, or battle leader. Or maybe just a regular wolf guard. Depends on the game. The right arm was originally holding a thunder hammer, but I wanted a frost blade instead.

I haven't decided if I like the model better with the wolf's leg hanging off of the left shoulder. If I leave it off, I'll add some green stuff in the space above the shoulder.

The right shoulder pad is from Forge World. It's not the pad I wanted to use, but it fit much better.

And the little conversion:

The right leg is from the Devastator box. It's for the marine you can have kneeling. I just did some simple sawing and glueing.

Happy New Year!

Warhammer World, My Girlfriend is Awesome

My girlfriend was in Europe before Christmas. Before her flight home from London, she made a trip up to Nottingham just so she could go to Warhammer World to get me a Christmas present. She only knew about Warhammer World because I had told her that I wanted to see it one day. She emailed my friend who sent her a list of things to pick up.

This is what she came back with. I was shocked and beyond delighted. I had no idea she had gone there.

Bugman's board game, Bugman's leather mug, Bugman model, two bottles of Bugman's beer, a Warhamer art book, a book on citadel minatures and the citadel display hall, and a sign that says "My other vehicle is a landraider."

All exclusive to Warhammer world. All fantastic.

Canis Wolfborn, magnetizing the arms and pinning the legs

In this post, I will be going over how I magnetized the model's arms, and attached it to the base over cork board. 

One of my Christmas presents this year was Canis Wolfborn. I wasn't too impressed with the model when it was released; however, after seeing it in person, I love it.

My original plan was to just assemble him as Canis. Then when it came time to glue on his arms, I decided that I also wanted to be able to use him as a wolf lord and give him a thunder hammer. Up to this point I hadn't been interested in using a thunderwolf, but the model is too cool! I make no claim that any of the following is the right way to do this. Its just how I went about it. If you know of an easier/better way, feel free to post a link!

Magnetizing the arms

The main problem I had was figuring out how to glue the magnets to the torso and arms, and have the arms fit flush to the model, as they are supposed to. 

First, I clipped off the part of the arm that was supposed to insert into the torso. Then, I drilled into the model to make a space for both magnets (the one for the torso and the one for the arm) to fit into, with the outer magnet being flush with the torso. Then I put a dab of glue into the hole, placed the magnet, and waited for the glue to dry. Then, I put in the outer magnet (with no glue). This way, I could just put a dab of glue on the outer magnet, place the arm as it is supposed to fit, and then quickly spray the joint with an accelerating agent to make the super glue set before it spread to the rest of the model and glued the arm to the torso. 

Below you can see the drilled out space with the inner magnet glued in place. The space was initially square, but a drill bit the exact size of the magnet and a drill changed that quickly enough.

And here is the model with the magnetized arms 

And the arms with the magnets. The arm on the left did take two attempts when it came to glueing the arm to the outer magnet.

Securing the model to the base. 

It was fairly apparent that simply glueing a giant metal model to cork board would not suffice. 

First, I placed the cork board on the base, and then put Canis on top.

Then, I traced the paws of the wolf on the cork board. These spaces were then cut out.

Then, I glued the cork to the base (with PVA glue).

Next, I drilled holes into the left front and right rear paw.

Holes were then drilled into the base for the metal pins that would be coming out of the paws. The pins were bent at a 90 degree angle and inserted up through the bottom of the base. The wolf was then placed on the base, with the pins in the paws. Satisfied that everything looked right, I glued the pins to the underside of the base, and hit the glue with the accelerating agent. Then, I pulled the wolf off, and filled the holes in the corkboad with green stuff, to both better secure the cork board and the pins. The hole in the cork board for the left rear paw didn't have a pin, but gave a more secure anchor to glue that paw too. Once the greenstuff had hardened, I glued Canis to the base. 

Greenstuff was later pushed onto the underside of the base, over the pins, to further secure them. 

Next up:

I''ll be starting the painting of my space wolves shortly. I'll finish the additional arms for Canis later on. I plan on giving him a thunder hammer and maybe a storm shield arm.