First progress in a while; finished my first three Bretonnian peasant bowmen. I tried a new technique on the faces using two tones, and I am very pleased with the results. I am not sure if it comes through in the pictures: Elf flesh and Dwarf flesh. A big improvement.
29 more (and eight defensive stake bases) to go!
Since the new Citadel paints have been released, I have to admit that I really want to try them out, despite the $50+ I have invested in “old style” paints since coming back from Kosova. I have been thinking a lot about whether or not to switch to the new paints this summer (ah, summer – the time when I have time to get into the hobby) or keep on with the old schemes and old paints. I think I have arrived at an equitable solution:
• With my Imperial Guard army: keep on keeping on with the old paints and old scheme. I am within a few hundred points – about 35 models left to paint – of finishing the army totally, and I don’t want to switch to new paints for that process. Especially not when I already have all the colors I need!
• With my brother’s Tau army: keep on keeping on, for the same reason above – except we are only in need of final touch-ups (damn! when will I finish this army!).
• With my Bretonnian army: finish the models currently underway with the old style paints, and switch to new paints as possible/needed. I REALLY want to find an easier way to paint reds, yellows, and whites…and the new basecoat paints look like a good way to do it….
Because I will be in Ireland for much of the summer, I will in-effect be starting anew with any hobbying I do there (hello, GW Dublin!). I have a variety of projects in my mind for the summer, but I do not want to dive into anything too intense (how would I get it back safely?).
Let me know what you think.
So the tournament (my first!) was this last Saturday. The ten days prior saw an amazing amount of painting – three Lascannon, two Chimeras, a Basilisk, Autocannon, Heavy Bolter (all pictured in posts below), as well as three mortars (soon to be pictured) – all finished. Thanks to near-herculean efforts from my brothers Keenan, Colin and my best friend Aaron (of Waaaagh! Og’Thall), we slapped paint down on the final 31 infantry for my army list, and almost finished most of them. So, I did not quite reach the 784 points 100% painted goal, but I was not too far away, either.
As for the tournament, I played two games and lost both. But I learned a lot about how the game goes, and in most ways it has not really changed since 3rd edition (the last time I really played frequently). That’s what I wanted, after all: to learn.
The first game was against Crisis-suit Tau and we only got two turns in before the time limit. I held on to objectives and forced a victory point decision, which I promptly lost. But I did manage to ram a devilfish with a Chimera and destroy it without any return damage. That may well be the coolest thing I ever did in 40k.
In the second game I played against psy-rifledread Grey Knights, and we only got four turns in before the time limit. That was a Kill Points mission, which I lost 7 to 3, but it was closer than it sounded. The unexpected heroes of that game were the mortars, which took more Grey Knights lives than anything else. Honorable mention goes to the multilasers on my Chimeras, which destroyed one Razorback and almost another.
I thought I would post my 2000-point Imperial Guard list here as well. It is based only on what I have painted (that is not VDR or Apocalypse-only). The biggest drawback of this list was its size: I filled up my deployment zone in both missions, and took forever deploying.
Volyak XXI Rifles, mixed detachment
Imperial Guard 2000-point list
HQ
Company Command Squad – Company commander with bolt pistol and power weapon, flamer, meltagun vox-caster, krak grenades for the squad, Ogryn Bodyguard, Chimera transport with storm bolter: 262 points
Priest – shotgun: 45 points
TR
First Platoon
Command Section – Platoon commander with power weapon and meltabombs, four flamers, Chimera transport with heavy bolter: 115 points
First Squad – Commissar with power weapon, flamer, krak grenades: 110 points
Second Squad – Grenade launcher, vox-caster: 60 points
Third Squad – Krak grenades: 60 points
Second Platoon
Command Section – Platoon commander with bolt pistol, three meltaguns, krak grenades, Chimera transport with heavy stubber: 132 points
First Squad – Grenade launcher, vox-caster: 60 points
Second Squad – Grenade launcher: 55 points
Special Weapons Section – Three grenade launchers: 50 points
Third Platoon
Command Section – Missile launcher: 45 points
First Squad – Bolt pistol, plasma gun, autocannon: 77 points
Second Squad – Bolt pistol, plasma gun, autocannon: 77 points
Third Squad – Grenade launcher, autocannon: 65 points
Anti-tank Section – Three lascannon: 105 points
Fire Support Section ‘1’ – Three heavy bolters: 75 points
Fire Support Section ‘2’ – Three heavy bolters: 75 points
Mortar Section – Three mortars: 60 points
HS
Leman Russ Exterminator – Sponson heavy bolters, heavy stubber: 180 points
Leman Russ MBT – Storm bolter: 160 points
Basilisk – 125 points
Grand Total: 1998 points
Work is progressing, albeit more slowly than I would like considering the deadline in approximately 50 hours. Today I am going to show off my Basilisk, Ares, which was actually the very first 40k item I ever purchased, built and painted. Then, of course, I later stripped the paint, re-undercoated, and just now finished it (the details about the stripping process can be found on the “Restoring the Guard” page on the right-side of the page). I have also finished an autocannon and a heavy bolter, both using the old Valhallan heavy weapon team models.
That adds another 150 points to the “painted” category, putting me at about 35% complete of the goal…
Gracious thanks to my brother for helping so much with this project.
More progress to report! Two finished Imperial Guard Chimera transports for my Volyak XXI Rifles. The Chimera featuring a pintle-mounted storm bolter and turquoise indicator is the Company Command transport, named Fields of Diaspora. The second Chimera, with pintle heavy stubber, is a company motor pool vehicle, named Chief Meadley. Both names presumably come from Volyak geography and/or history.
Another 130 points down! I am about 17% of the way finished with the 780 points needed to ready my army for the tournament (that is on Saturday)!
In a surprise move, I finally made some spontaneous progress on my Imperial Guard army (the Volyak Rifles).
Three lascannon (crew painted separately). I have recently been inspired to play in my first every 40k tournament, a week from tomorrow. I only have about 1200 points painted right now, and so now I am embarking on a risky undertaking:
1 week, 800 painted points of Guard
Wish me luck.
So, after a long hiatus of any work done on my Imperial Guard army, I finished painting a Leman Russ Exterminator. And not just any Exterminator, but the very one planned to be used in the Self-Build contest as my model’s vehicle equivalent. The color scheme, thus, was designed to match my Self-Build model rather than the Volyak Rifles color scheme.
In the images above, I tried to capture the vehicle from several angles, and included a rather washed out image with flash to show the not-entirely even coating of Shadow Gray over the black undercoat. This not-so-regular mottled/sponged pattern gives the model some depth, which I eventually acquiesced in and decided not to try to cover up with lots of even coats. The pictures are not the best – it’s a dark, gloomy, rainy day here – but I hope you can get the idea of the model. I also included a few of this vehicle with my Self-Build.
I recently found some of the first pictures of the first Space Marines I ever painted, way back in middle school. These Marines (and Dark Eldar) mostly came from the 40k Third Edition boxed set.
These were the Volunteer Chapter Space Marines, and featured that name and the color scheme because I was very loyal to the University of Tennessee. More recently, I was planning to use these Marines as core of the Sons of Guilliman project; however, when we moved and I went abroad for a year, I vastly decreased my models collection, giving all my Space Marines (among other models) to my friend Stephen. I hope they get some good use out there.
After I graduated from college I received a grant to teach English in southern Kosova for the 2010-2011 school year. I lived and worked in Prizren, the country’s second largest city, in the southern region of the country near Albania. I was primarily guest teaching in a local primary school (grades 1 through 9), teaching in 37 classes and approximately 600 students. My favorite time, however, was teaching an extracurricular class to students with high English ability.
I taught this group in the American Corner in Prizren, a U.S. State Department program for local libraries. Although the group fluctuated somewhat in size, there was a core of five or six students I met with once or twice a week. They were grades 6-9. In our second meeting, I asked them if they wanted to work on a project together (as opposed to just watching films and conversing in English). This project became “If I was Born in the Warhammer World…”
My main tool for this project was the new Warhammer rulebook. We started the project by having assigned readings about the history of the Warhammer world, and then I gave them each a questionnaire.
This survey was primarily a vocabulary exercise, but it also allowed them to express themselves. After they finished the questionnaire, I tallied their responses, and gave them a few options. The first option was always whatever they wrote as a response to the last question (“Please write what species you think that you would be”), but the others were based on racial characteristics of the (many) Warhammer armies.
The students then wrote a biographical story of their Warhammer life experience, and drew a picture of themselves as a lizardman, ogre, wood elf, Chaos champion, and so forth. The story then went three a multiple-draft writing process (this was one of the main focuses of the lesson arc) and the picture went through a coloring and mounting sequence. The entries were then all combined in a book and the students received copies of their own and everyone else’s work.
Here I present the stories and pictures collected in the “If I was Born in the Warhammer World” class project book. I start with the one I did for myself, only because I used it as a template and example for the students to give them idea of what we were working on.
I thoroughly enjoyed this part of my time in Kosova, and I think the students enjoyed it and learned from it a lot as well. I know that there are many things I learned from it – and certainly not all about Warhammer. I found the Warhammer rulebook to be a great resource for teaching, because the artwork and fully-developed-nature of the world to be very enthralling, interesting and inspiring to students. I am very proud of the work they did, and I will always remember the time fondly.
I used Warhammer to teach English.
Also: Henry Zou Bastion Wars Reading List
I know I have sung his praises before (e.g., here), but I wanted to say again: Henry Zou is my favorite Black Library author. I have great respect and admiration for Dan Abnett, of course, and I must credit William King with getting me into the hobby; Graham McNeill has written some awesome works, and what I have read from Aaron Dembski-Bowden I have also really liked. But Emperor’s Mercy by Henry Zou is probably my favorite Black Library novel, and the three novels and one short story in the Bastion Wars series has really enthralled me.
What I think really pulls me in is the sophistication present in the works. There are themes in Zou’s work that I have not seen in other 40k novels – important questions of culture, art, remembrance, colonialism/imperialism, power relationships, sexism, and more. Another thing I really appreciate is how down-to-earth much of the combat and action is (at least as compared to many other novels in the same vein): I like that Obodiah Roth is merely human, and vulnerable. I like how incredible the difference in abilities is between the Blood Gorgon Space Marines and the mere humans around them. (Note: some of these characteristics I think are also present in Matthew Farrer’s work, like the Shira Culpernia series, which I greatly enjoyed.)
Whenever I read Zou’s works, I suffer the side effect of wanting to build the armies and forces in them. I draw pictures of the Amartine Scout Recon half-tracks; I look up prices of Chaos Space Marines to be Blood Gorgons; I plan out army lists for Cantican Colonials; I consider psychic powers available to Roth’s warband, or the weapons outfits for Khalisadors. The realism and description and down-to-earth nature all pull me in to the story and its actors.
I encourage anyone interested in 40k or the Black Library to read Henry Zou’s work. It certainly seems underrated by the general community. I cannot wait to have more from Zou.
I would encourage you to read the works in the order they were published, although it is not necessarily in chronological order:
“Void Song” (in Planetkill)
Emperor’s Mercy
Flesh and Iron
Blood Gorgons
