Ghorgons and Giants and Bloodthirsters... oh my!

This month has been quite a hectic one, and has included painting up these three monsters for Turbo Tape Games, a Norwegian computer game company that is working with a Warhammer license.

I know that the Ghorgon is being used as a prize in a promotional launch competition for Turbo Tape Games' iOS game Warhammer: Arcane Magic. Here's the promotional text from the Arcane Magic site:

Turbo Tape Games is pleased to announce a contest for an exclusive Ghorgon miniature hand-painted by Dave Taylor! The Ghorgon is a many-limbed, ox-headed slaughterer, possessed of an urgent need to devour and destroy anything it can catch -- and there are more than 60 individual skulls making up this Ghorgon model that had to be painted separately. Painter Dave Taylor has been working in the wargaming industry since 1994. Through his production studio, Dave Taylor Miniatures, Dave has built, converted and painted thousands of miniatures for a variety of games. To participate in the contest, please visit arcanemagicgame.com

Head to the site, click on the widget in the right and follow the instructions. This competition is open to most folks around the globe, and it would be super cool if the winner was also a regular reader of this blog : )

I leave you with a few shots of the Gorgon you could win : )

Cheers
Dave

Quick announcement - Mengel Miniatures Painting Competition

Just a quick announcement today to point everyone in the direction of Mengel Miniatures first ever Painting Competition. Tyler Mengel has long been interested in creating (and finding) excellent examples of painted miniatures, and now he has decided to run a fun painting competition on his blog/forum.

If you haven't been over there to check it out, I suggest you do so now by clicking HERE.

Entries are being accepted between now and February 2nd, in two categories: Single Miniature, and Unit/Large Model. Best of luck to all! : )

Cheers
Dave

Back from GenCon, and some new Mechanicum

So, Wednesday of last week I packed up my miniature case and headed off to Indianapolis for the biggest gaming convention ever - GenCon 2014! Despite living in the US for the last 12 years, I've never been to GenCon before. To say it's impressive is to do it a disservice. You'll note that above right there's a large sign on the floor of the arrivals hall at the Indianapolis Airport welcoming all gamers to the town. A great touch that puts you in the mood.

Given my naiveté regarding GenCon, I waited until fairly late in the day to buy my ticket, and was required to pick it up from the Will Call booth. The photo above shows the first half of the Will Call line as I joined it on Thursday morning. Around 400 people were in front of me in the queue, but thanks to the (apparently improved) processing it took less than 25 minutes to get from this point to draping my lanyard around my neck.

It was then a wander around the hallways that lead me to the mezzanine overlooking the hallway outside the Exhibit Hall. On the left you can see dozens of people taking photos of the crowd, on the right you can see thousands of people out in the crowd, just before the doors opened.

Once inside, there were 370+ vendors all ready to sell their wares, it was amazing to see the wide variety of booths and booth sizes and products on sale. It was certainly gamer geek heaven.

The main gaming hall was just as big as the Exhibit Hall, with hundreds of games being played at any one time. Apparently the gaming halls hosted over 14,000 ticketed events over the four days of GenCon.

And here's a sneaky pic of my good friend Dave Pauwels having just received a demo of MLP, so that he could teach his daughter the game when he got home.

There was plenty of cosplay going on too, here are a couple of photos I took for my daughters : )

Food was to be had in abundance. Here's a look at the Ultimate Gamer Breakfast Burger (or some such title) that could be had at the bar in the JW Marriott hotel - a massive buttermilk biscuit, with two sausage patties, bacon, cheddar cheese, a fried egg, sausage gravy, and jalepenos, sever with tater tots and a chipotle mayo. I stuck with a regular burger this day, but two friends across the table rose to the challenge and devoured one each.

And I was even lucky enough to collect a few Honorable Mention ribbons for my Death Guard Contemptor Dread and my Malifaux Relic Hunters.

Do yourself a favor. Go to GenCon at least once, and do it with friends. Have lots of fun!

Thank you to all my friends, old and new, who made it such a great first-time experience. Particular thanks go to my room-mates James, Josh, and Lionel for not snoring too much, as well as Joel (Mordian 7th) for organizing a meet and greet on Saturday : )

Anyway, back to the minis. After the Old Line Massacre event back at the beginning of June, my friend Marc Raley started to think of ideas to deal with my pesky Thallax (I ran a unit of nine at the event). He let me know that he'd bought three Rapier platforms, all with quad heavy bolters, just perfect for chewing through Thallax. My response was to order another nine from Forgeworld. They arrived with the Thanatar. Shortly after, I picked up another three in a trade and now have 21 of the automata. What could possibly go wrong?

This morning I finished converting three "special weapon" Thallax who are ready for primer. The top model carries a multi-melta, and the other two have my version of a phased-plasma fusil. I really can't wait to get these guys out on the tabletop : )

Oh, and I have a Castellax to build before I start on the paint job for them all.

As usual with my Mechanicum, the bases and cables are from Dragon Forge Design.

Cheers
Dave

Wargames Illustrated presents The HISTORICON Painting Competition - Year Two

Here's the Public Service Announcement to let you all know that although I'm no longer working full time for Wargames Illustrated, I will be running the Painting Competition at HISTORICON 2014.

Last year was the first year that WI had been involved in the running of the event, and with the promotional and logistical support of the HMGS crew (particularly Heather Blush and the Hobby University team) we had a very successful showing, around 130 entries. For coverage of the 2013 event, check out this link here.

This year will be more of the same (or hopefully more AND MORE), with the categories remaining the same and the medals ready to be draped around the winners necks. The competition will be run on Saturday July 19, between the hours of 9am and 6pm. At the moment it is unsure whether we'll be at the Flames Of War booth in the Vendor Hall, or in the hallway near the event registration.

Entries will be accepted from 9am until 12 noon. Judging will be complete by 4pm and entries can be collected (along with any awards) from 4pm until 6pm. Please note: entries will NOT be accepted earlier than 9am on the Saturday as we have no control over the security of the cases and will not accept liability.

For a rundown on the categories (and other rules) you can check out the Wargames Illustrated website here.

In addition to the custom medals for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places in each of the ten categories, we have three additional prizes:

• Best of Show - the best painted entry into the competition will win this prize.

• Best of Theme - the best painted entry that fits with the theme of the convention (2014 is Big Wars, Little Soldiers - World Wars throughout time) will be judged by the HISTORICON convention director.

• The Iron Cross - sponsored by Battlefront, this will go to the best painted Flames Of War entry, and will be judged by the Battlefront representatives at the show.

I hope to see you in Fredericksburg in a few weeks from now!

Cheers

Dave

Michael Jaques - Chasseur au Cheval

Winner, Winner...

My apologies for not posting this yesterday, but I was struck down by an as yet unidentified lurgy. Anyway, with almost 200 entries (both here and on the DTM FB page) I hit up random.org to generate the winners.

The first winner (and soon to be proud owner of a Battle Foam Malifaux bag) is Joshua Tumbry!

The second winner (and soon to be proud owner of a NIB Izamu) is Mark Liszewski!

Congratulations to you both, please get in touch asap so we can get the prizes out to you.

I'd also like to mention the incredibly wide variety of miniatures selected by you all as your favorites. I think that's a real testament to the quality (and delightful insanity) of the Malifaux range as a whole! Well done Wyrd : )

Malifaux, Interviews, Facebook, and a new Competition!

Quick Tip: This is quite a long, but snappy post, with a good pay-off at the end : )

Since the beginning of the year, I've been able to play four games of Malifaux. I've blogged about the experience of the first two games HERE. At the end of that post I suggested that my friend John Swann would likely steamroller me the next time we played.

Well, as luck would have it, I drew John in the very next gaming session we met. I told him about my blog post, we had a chuckle, and then jumped straight into the game.  I won't bore you all with the details of our McCabe vs Yan Lo game, but suffice it to say I was unpleasantly surprised by the abilities of the punk zombies. Basically like throwing a blender into a fish tank.

Anyway, I was also very worried about the abilities of his walking suit of samurai armor (not used as Izamu, but another nasty guy whose name escapes me right now). I was pleasantly surprised when his attacks against Sidir Alchibal (inspired no doubt by Captain Nemo) all missed, and my cards triggered his defensive response. Without even activating, my henchman (Sidir) had taken out John's "tank". The photo above shows the final result of the game. Five of my models stood ready to take down a wounded and lonely Yan Lo. I had developed a plan, learned more about my crew's skills, and had some lucky flips at the right times.

The photo below shows my casualties admiring the view from their tower.

Of course, that sweet taste of victory would not last long. At the following gaming session, as we had all played each other before, we drew cards to pair up. Lo and behold, I found myself across the table from John Swann again! My crew was exactly the same, John's was similar, but with a few important differences. Our table (below) had a few more LOS-blocking pieces of terrain too, something that would play an important role in my eventual downfall.

I tried to refine my plans, working with a slightly different grouping of models - surrounding McCabe with the Wastrels to try and keep him alive longer, and putting Sidir and the two Riflemen together for a solid base of fire. My initial net gun attacks worked incredibly well, paralyzing the focus of John's crew, Izamu (the real one this time).

John had learned, however, and even though I constantly gained the initiative each round, I was unable to neutralize the threat, and John slowly whittled down my crew until I was completely ineffectual.

Dave - 1, John -1.

So, on to the next portion of this mammoth post, the Interview.

As you may remember from this post earlier in the month, I have recently started my own business providing all manner of services to other businesses in the wargaming industry. In order to help me promote that business, Romeo Filip invited be to be the guest on the next 40KRadio podcast (out today, if I remember correctly). We chatted for a long time about various things, including some of the services I can provide, but of course it always comes back to toy soldiers.

We chatted about my recent dabbling in Malifaux, and out of the blue Romeo offers to send me a Battle Foam Malifaux bag (shown below) to give away in a promotional competition!

Obviously I said yes, so this is where we move into the Facebook and Competition section of the post.

Last night I launched my company Facebook page - Dave Taylor Miniatures. This morning I have put up a competition post. All you need to do to enter is one (or both) of these two things:

1. Go to the Dave Taylor Miniatures Facebook page, 'Like' the page, and leave a comment naming your favorite Malifaux model.

2. Come back here and leave a comment naming your favorite Malifaux model.

That's right, you don't have to go to Facebook if you don't go in for that sort of thing, but folks who do can basically get two entries into the competition. The competition will run from now until next Friday, March 21st, at 1pm EDST, when I will randomly select the winner from those who have liked and commented here and/or there. I'll announce the winner here and on my FB page and that person will have two days to get in touch. If they do, I'll ship them the case free of charge, and if they don't, I'll draw another winner.

I'll also randomly select a second winner and send them a "new in box" version of the model that seems to be fast becoming my nemesis - Izamu the Armor!

Have fun everyone!

Cheers
Dave

23rd Light Dragoon at Talavera, Spain, 1809.

Just a quick post to put up my Single Model (Historical) entry for the NOVA Open painting competition tomorrow. When I decided to head down to the show, I cast around for a well-painted single model in my collection. As I soon realized, all of my historical stuff (the well-painted bits anyway) are multi-based, from the regiments to the artillery to the command. So I pulled out this guy. I've had him sitting on my table for over a year (closer to two) and I figured it was time to get him painted up.

He's a British Light Dragoon from Perry Miniatures, part of their 40mm Peninsular War range.

I hope you like him : )

Cheers
Dave

KublaCon and some more PSAs : )

Well, I finally had the chance to get out to the West Coast (the Bay Area to be more precise) to check out the KublaCon show (tagline: The Khan of Cons!)

I was there to cover the first Flames Of War US West Coast Nationals tournament, run by Gamescape North in conjunction with Battlefront. The tournament was great; well-run, friendly gamers, some very lovely looking armies, and a very relaxed atmosphere. There'll be photos going up soon on the Flames Of War website, and appearing later in the year in the pages of Wargames Illustrated.

While I was there, I had the opportunity to enter into the KublaCon Miniature Painting Competition, run by Wayne Rogers. It was a very interesting departure from the "normal" format of mini painting comps that I'm used to. Instead of it being the "podium" format with a wide variety of categories (eg. 10 categories with a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd awarded in each, just like the Golden Demons or Crystal Brush) it was what is known in the wider painting world as an "open" format of judging.

Essentially there were three categories:
• KublaKids
• Open
• Masterclass

You could bring along up to two "single minis", one "squad", one "large", and one "diorama"

Each of your pieces was then judges to a set standard by a panel of judges (I think as many as five, with results being averaged) and determined to be either gold standard, silver standard, bronze standard, or honorable mention.

If you entered your work in either the KublaKids or the Open categories, you were awarded a Kubla Medal for each piece, determined by the quality as judged by the panel.

If you entered in the Masterclass category, all of your pieces were judged, given their "level" and the highest ranking piece was what was awarded the appropriate trophy.

As I was traveling all that way, I figured I'd take all the entries I could, and put them up for consideration in the Masterclass category. I brought the following entries:

• Iconoclave diorama - considered Bronze
• Lamenters Tactical Squad - considered Bronze
• AdMech Combat Servitor - considered Bronze
• Lamenters Dreadnought - considered Silver
• Malifaux Wastrel - considered Silver

This last one was considered by best entry by the judges, and so it was that model that I was unsure about that won me the Silver Kubla bust in the first photo. Pretty pleased with that, and having seen the other Masterclass entries, I can now see what I need to do/work on to lift my game for next year. As there were already entries better than mine in the case when I entered, I knew the pressure for Best of Show was off completely, so I could think about some of the other awards, like...

Best Conversion!

Apparently the judges had to be told a number of times that my Combat Servitor entry was a conversion. Most of them had assumed it was a stock model, so I'm pretty pleased with that too ; )

There were plenty of other great things at the show (one of the being the very cool family atmosphere, as geeks of all ages (from 1 to 91) were at the event to indulge in a weekend of gaming (be it miniatures, board, card, or both kinds of roleplaying)!

One of the cool things that caught my eye (and will be featured in the pages of Wargames Illustrated sometime this year, I hope) was "Wooden Wars" by Thomas Foss. You can see the "press pack" that Thomas handed me at the show, with a set of rules, along with three packs of wooden "flats", toy soldiers cut from birch plywood with a laser, ready to be assembled, painted, and have little rubber balls bounced at them by kids of all ages as they advance across the floor... err, battlefield!

More on these at a later date as I get some of them painted up, but you can find out more about  Wooden Wars at his blog:

skullandcrown.blogspot.com

The first Public Service Announcement is about a new game store in Rancho Cucamonga, CA -

Dice Of War Games! Owned (in part) by my friend Alec Peters (of the Apocalypse 40K forums and blog fame), the store will open this weekend (June 1-2) and promises to rock your gaming world! Head on over to their Facebook page HERE to check them out : )

                                     

PSA #2 today is about a little Kickstarter being run by another mate, this time Rhys Knight from the UK. He and a couple of friends have formed PDC gaming and are running a Kickstarter (HERE) to raise funds for their "Toys for your Toys" range of wargaming accessories (including sprues of plastic weapons, tracked gun platforms, and other fun items). They are currently at 65% funding with 5 days to go. Head on over to their KS page (HERE) and check out their work!

Cheers

Dave 

We have a winner! and some Armies On Parade stuff

After consulting with Falk over at The Black Crusade 2012 to confirm all donations, I counted up the number of entrants (38) and headed on over to random.org. After punching in the numbers in and hitting enter, it came up with number 25.

Congratulations to Kayle! As the 25th person to enter, he wins the army : ) Please get in touch with me Kayle so we can arrange getting the army to you.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Here's a look at the final models I painted up for my Armies On Parade entry in Chicago. I was thinking that my army was fairly esoteric, and that I really needed to push that even more. Enter the "hobby horses" for the Procession of Morr. Based on the bodies of Ka'Daai Fireborn, and using the heads from Black Knight horses, and arms from Chaos Spawn. The feathers on their heads are from the Empire Greatswords. Oh, and plenty of greenstuff.

Not only were they interesting to create, they drew a LOT of confused looks and questions at Games Day. The most common question was "What are they in your list?" It was interesting, if people got an answer like "Ogre Ironguts" they were able to start to come to terms with their weirdness. However, if they couldn't fit them into a framework they started looking for other answers, even suggesting the army was a Vampire Counts army and they were Vargheists or something similar.

Interestingly enough, if you step back and look at the army all laid out, it could very easily be translated into a Vampire Counts army...

Here's the last shot of the whole thing (without the Wizard Lord and "hobby horses"). Scuttlebutt at the show said that I came in third. It also said that James Wappel's army came in second. You can check out his entry development here.

And, of course, first place went to the amazing surprise entry of J.J. Marino's Dark Eldar. You can see them here. Not only was J.J.'s army a real crowd pleaser, he was a nice guy to boot.

Until next time, keep painting!

Cheers
Dave

It's Competition Time!

So, after three and a half years of photographing the models I've painted and tapping away at this keyboard, this humble blog has passed two pretty big milestones. For that I want to thank you all!

All 1,514 Blog Followers! I want to thank you all for your support, and over 1,000,000 page views!

To celebrate I've decided to give away my Tyranid army. I've never shown this army on my blog, as I painted it around five years ago. You may have seen it, however, in the 40K 5th Edition rulebook (photo below). There's roughly 1,500 points of Hive Fleet Kraken goodness that has never been played with, but has made a trip to the UK for photography ; )

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO WIN?

Well, it's pretty simple. Here are the three steps to victory:

A) Donate $5 or more to the Black Crusade 2012 by the end of August 5th. You can check out their cool charity project here. Please put your "blogger name" in the comment section of your donation.

B) Be a follower of this blog, and leave a comment at the bottom of this post that promotes your favorite toy soldier blog (not this one, but someone else's). That way we can work together to build all blog traffic : ) Again, you need to do this by the end of August 5th.

C) Sit back and relax. Once I'm back from vacation I'll be checking in with Falk (from the Black Crusade and Tabletop Fix) and cross-referencing the entries with "blogger names" and so on. Once I have all that squared away I'll put up a new post and let everyone know when the random drawing will be.

Should be fun, I hope you enjoy promoting cool blogs, and helping out the wargaming community.

Best of luck to all!

Cheers

Dave

"Voi hesh Anarch, Magir!"

So the diorama is complete. all of the pieces are glued into place, and I've actually packed it up and shipped it off to Chicago along with the display board for my Armies on Parade.

I hope you like it.

Cheers
Dave

PS. Only three more blog followers until we get to 1,500! Not too bad for a dodgy little blog about toy soldiers. I've settled on what I think will be a pretty decent competition and prize. Details to come.