What should I do next?

Well, I have a bunch of ideas for projects to do, so many in fact i may be suffering from bucket syndrome (So many things to do that i cant figure it out, its best just to put a bucket on my head to calm down).

I have a lot to paint/customise with my boardgames. If you haven't checked out my Descent, War of the ring, Chaos in the old world or Axisand Allies custom games please do.... i think they are neato :)

Here are the options, in alphabetical order. Interested in your feedback

Arkham Horror 

This wont require much effort, in fact next to no effort. All it requires is cash moneys (A lot of it) and some minor time and effort

What I want to do is pimp out my game and make it a bit more special. I've already bought a custom monster cup and made elder sign symbols.

To take it to the next level I want to buy the fully painted Arkham Investigator models ($200... ouch), get a little Cthulhu statue for a first player marker, and make some custom inlays and storage solutions for the game.

Not an epic job, but does require me making my lunches for a month so I can afford it.

Battlestar Gallactica

I started this project a long time back, and quite frankly it does the job. The models are reasonably well painted and look 100% on the table than unpainted plastic.

However, there are two things I would like to do to finish this off. One is to paint the extra fighters that came with the Exodus expansion. The second is to base the fighters and basestars on stands.

This isn't a big job and is currently a front runner for something to do that's easy to deliver and will make me feel good for doing so.

Chaos in the Old World

I love Chaos in the Old World, it's one of my many games I wish I could play more often. This is especially true as I have a fully painted set.... until now.

I just got the Horned rat expansion. And I can't bring myself to play the game with the Horned Rat if his models are unpainted.

Its only about 15 odd very small models. they are pretty mediocre quality and made of pretty ordinary plastic however. It's another short job but one that could be really rewarding when complete.

I'd also like to get some custom dice for this game with the relevant chaos symbols on them.

Descent?

No seriously... I have an unpainted Descent model.

Only ONE of them

Nara the fang was a bonus model that came in my copy of Sea of Blood. It's only one model to do, but after that epic Descent campaign I dont want to go near the game for a while.

Competing interests here, my sense of completionism versus my complete burn out on Descent. Its a tricky one to resolve!

Horus Heresy

Love the setting, but probably wont get to play this head-to-head game anytime soon. 

That being said, it looks HORRIBLE unpainted. The game screams "HEY PAINT ME, I'M A BLOOD ANGEL I SHOULD BE RED NOT GREY"

I've had a go at this and painted a bit of it but there is still so much to do.

Rex- Final days of an Empire

This one is tempting, but I feel I have some time up my sleeve to get it done. It's one model (well, 5 i suppose) and it does look very very cool.

I will certainly have to paint this before it hits the table, which i hope is in a month or two.

Shadows over Camelot

This is a dark horse and quite likely to get to the back of the line.

It's not the hardest game to paint up as it has only 31 models (and most of those are little catapults)

It would also benefit immensely from being painted and the models aren't the worst on the market by any means.

I do like the game, unfortunately I do like Battlestar a lot more.

Still undecided on this, I would love to own a painted copy of this however

Space Hulk

I have half painted my set, those models I have finished I am exceedingly proud of. As far as i'm concerned they are the best paint jobs I have ever done.... period.

However, they take roughly the same time to do as Uranium 238 takes to become non radioactive.

It's another classic conflict, my desire to have AWESOME SPACE HULK vs the effort required to get the models up to this standard.

Torn on this one as well

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH

  

Twilight Imperium

  

One of the grandest boardgames ever made and the biggest unpainted eye-sore in my collection.

Hundreds of space ships, all raw plastic. I've not even looked at this as a painting mission.

If I did, it would be on a similiar scale to my epic Axis and Allies paint job.

Big commitment with a massive pay off, another hard call

Oh, I also want to get perspex fleet movement markers.

Warmachine

I still have some painting to do for my Cygnar army, even if I dont buy another model in the foreseeable future.

The annoying this is its a really small amount to do.

2 casters, 2 solos, some basing and detail work on a unit or two and some wreck markers. It's just enough to take some effort as well.

Conclusion

So any advice, anything anyone really want to see from this list?

Tournament panic!

 

Ok, so its not the Babylon 5 movie i'm going to talk about (Even though I did quite like the film and the Crusade series had potential.... but that's another rant for another time).

No, A Call to Arms is our big local wargaming tournament, convention thingy. From all accounts (well, Sicarius who's running Warmachine at the tournament) it looks like Warmachine will dwarf all the other games systems being played.

40k will officially be Warmachine's bitch in the region.

Not that I really dislike 40k as a game that much, I just like Warmachine a lot more these days.

Holy crap.... off topic again.... anyway, back to the issue at hand.


I have a crash course in speed painting ahead. I must admit that getting a new PC has killed the amount of time spent blogging and painting. Simply put I have a massive new screen and an awesome PC so I've got to play all those games I've been wanting to play for ages.


I'm pretty close to finalizing my lists for the event. In the next month I need to paint the following

• 6 Gun Mages
• Gun Mage Captain
• The Black 13th
• Not that I plan on using him, but I might as well finish eCaine as well
• 3 Storm Callers
• Storm Knights, 3 gunners, Leader and Banner (mostly done)
• Stormclad (mostly done)
• 3 Lightning pods
• A FREAKING STORMWALL

I have 30 days to get this all sorted.  I'm glad the My-Sky is loaded with crappy TV to keep me company while I do this. 

Please, kill me now, before I go painting blind. 

Latest project

Right, so last night I battled the evil superglue monster and vanquished the horrid green stuff beast in order to assemble the next batch of models to paint.

In there I have Sam and the devil dogs, a unit of rangers (who had bent/broken guns grrrrr), Victor Pendrake, Arlan Strangeways, the female jnr warcaster, a gun mage captain, Captain Caine, Captain Murdoch, Constance Blaize, Gallant, Thorn, a sentinal and a heavy omni jack.

I've already made a small conversion to Gallant, by adding in some back banners. I'll paint him at the same time as Blaize to ensure continuity.

Thorn is a model I would like to do something different with. I want him to look part of the army, but clearly stand out as a character model. The precursor knights have given me an idea for Thorn (Not them personally, as my models don't actually send me messages or talk to me....... often).

Next step is to sculpt some custom bases and muck around with sand. Then on to the spray painting desk for a good seeing to!

How do you solve a problem like Battle Sister Maria?

So these sisters have been sitting in a box for a long long time  at my folks place in storage.

I didn't paint them

I don't actually own them


But they are at my house and the owner doesn't want them anymore. So I guess ill keep them.

Long story short they were a friends army who played a small bit but got a lot of models, he gave up the hobby and gave all his stuff away. We all forgot I had them so they stayed in a box for nearly a decade.


So, I reckon I should resurrect them and give them a new lease on life. 

The first thing to note is that they aren't well painted.

Actually, its a pretty ordinary job if you don't mind me saying. This is from a guy who claimed to be a GW store guy and an expert painter. He charged good money for this paint job.

I would be stunned if any GW trained person turned in a job like this.

So, what to do?

Should i keep them as is and use them as a reserve army?

Should i retouch the paint scheme, try and give it some more detail and depth?

Should I strip them back and repaint them in a new scheme?

Chances are, it will be the latter

Using the handy dandy sisters of battle painter on bolter and chainsword I came up with he following first idea for a new scheme.

Any thoughts and feedback on this would be appreciated. 

Of course, megapope will be super glad to point out i'm suggesting a blue paint scheme. As though painting a model blue is a virtue of it's own.

Army planning - Sons of Medusa

Ok, so getting down to planning out the army. I like having a pretty solid idea of how the army will look, and i like to build up to around 2000 points or so. That allows you to play some big games and mix and match at 1500-1750 points.

Chances are it will go slightly over 2000 points, but that's not really a big issue.

Also of note is that i have a big box of marine models from an old crapily painted 4000 point marine army that i am stripping and reusing. This will limit my selection somewhat as i want to reuse as many of these models as possible. (many models are wrecked or being reserved for a different themed army in the future. A hint is that my Sons of Medusa won't require 20+ jump packs but these guys will). I even started painting a small amount of them in the army colours years and years ago but never got anywhere with it.

HQ selections

Well I have a terminator captain, hes even painted quite well (not by me) in the army colours. There is only one problem. Hes an old model and the new terminators make him look like a midget. In fact all the old terminators look tiny these days so that's two squads from the old army going into the box of the damned.

So a new HQ is required, and it's pretty obvious who its going to be. A master of the forge is a no brainer for an army of technophiles. So I look up the master of the forge and i see he can have the servo harness or a conversion beamer. Seeing as started playing Warhammer 40,000 back in the rogue trader days I had to have the conversion beamer.  I then made a startling discovery

The master can carry the conversion beamer on a bike.

WTF? A bike mounted conversion beamer, that's just insane. A few Google image searches later and I found people had done just that. Amazing!

Also, bikes can look hot in the Sons of Medusa colour scheme as shown here.

Someone probably paid that hooters girl to sit on his bike so he could get this photo, a bit sad really. But the bike looks cool!

Any way I dug  into my pile of spare parts and found an attack bike to use as a basis for this model, HUZZAH!

Troops selections

Marines are not blessed with a great variety of selections, it's scouts or tactical marines. Digging through my box of models I find i have 15 scouts, at least 20 tactical marines, and a plethora of heavy weapons. That's very good.

I also found that games workshop sells an Iron Hands tactical squad complete with bionic bits

One credit card transaction later and these bad boys are on their way to me.

I also have a few techmarine models and decide to make these guys my squad sergeants (I may order some more for the other squads as well)

I'm looking at 2-3 Tactical squads and possibly a scout squad with sniper rifles. Close combat scouts don't really fit the theme of this army to well, but i really would like some variety in my troop choices and cloaked snipers look like a good option. A rhino or two would help out here as well. (the box of the damned contains at least 3 old rhinos)

Fast Attack selections

This army isn't one I imagine will use a lot of land speeders, scout bikes, or assault troops. It's not really the flavour I'm going for. (Also, the assault marines are set aside for another project and my land speeders are broken)

Digging through my box of marines (The good box, not the damned box) I find a Bike squad. Now normally I wouldn't think a bike squad would be 100% thematic with this army, until i remember my master of the forge is on a bike. He really needs a escort squad and the idea of bionic bikers has a certain amount of appeal. Also, I have the models.

No idea what to do with conversions at this stage, but i'll think of something to make them look like cyber bikers from a post apocalyptic future

Dreadnoughts totally rock

First things first, the Master of the forge allows me to take dreadnoughts as Elites and Heavy support. Looking in my box i find 4 metal dreadnoughts and think "BRILLIANT I'LL FIELD THEM ALL!"

Then i realize a few things.

One, that those dreadnoughts include a Furioso (can't field it) a Chaos dreadnought (too disloyal) and Bjorn the fell handed (too specific)

and two, I really really really want an Ironclad Dreadnought in this army

Look at this bad boy. If anything screams "I MUST BE IN AN IRON HANDS ARMY' it's this guy right here.

Steam powered seismic hammer that looks like an industrial mining tool? YES SIR!

So I settle on using my current Lascannon metal dready, buying an Ironclad and possibly another dready or two.

Other Elites

Fitting with the technophile theme I decide to go with a Sternguard squad as an elites choice. The idea of custom ammunition, high-tech bolter variants and combi-weapons really fits well.

I'll make sure they have lots of bionics to show their veteran nature and mount them in a razorback.

Heavy Support

Well, the obvious selection in the heavy support section is obvious.

A techmarine armed with a giant seismic death cannon..... it's almost as though this unit was designed with this army in mind. Gentlemen, I present the Thunder Fire Cannon

Now apparently these aren't out in finecast yet, and the metal ones are a pain to put together..... but hes so dam cool. I will certainly add one in. But that might be later on in the project.

The other selections are more contentious

I have a lot of heavy weapons guys, enough for 2 Devastator squads. I'm torn between having a dedicated Devastator squad or painting them so they can swap in and out of the tactical squads as optional weapons.

Devastators are very expensive points wise to field as a dedicated squad and at that cost it limits what else I can field. A compromise could be fielding a small heavy bolter equipped squad and putting the lascannons and plasma cannons in the tactical squads.

I'm also considering a vindicator, I have one currently, painted in the army colours but its an old model and the pain job is just terrible. But it served me well in the past and the new model is totally boss.

And of course, I can field Dreadnoughts in this slot as well. So many choices, if only dreadys were troops :)

Sons of Medusa – It ain’t easy being green

Alrighty, so the current project is a Sons of Medusa army for Warhammer 40,000

I’m already under way but I thought I would outline why I chose these guys.

I chose them for one reason and one reason only, that amazing shade of bright green.

Oh sure they have some cool fluff and some back story but none of that was around when i initially wanted a Sons of Medusa army (not long after the release of the 3rd edition space marines codex).

Seriously, that green is just that compelling.

Ok, so i clearly have a thing for bright colours, but beneath that shockingly garish exterior beats the heart of an Iron Hands successor chapter.

Now the Iron hands haven’t been given enough love in my view. They diverge significantly from the codex astartes, operate in war clans instead of companies and have close ties with the mechanicum. They also have a thing for ritual self mutilation and replacing flesh with technology.

So creepy technophiles with masochistic tendencies, that’s definitely something to work with.

According to the back story the Iron Hands are from Medusa and during some civil disorder in the mechanicum the Iron Hands split over ideological views. The majority stayed Iron Hands and the rest left to become the Sons of Medusa trading in their jet black armour for some super green stuff in the process.

Talk about teenage rebellion, “screw you mum and dad, im not gonna wear black, I’M GETTING A LIME GREEN SUIT”

So we end up with an off shoot of the Iron Hands, which seems to have kept similar ideology (Machine good, Warclans, Codex bad,  Techmarines good).

I will leave the exact army build discussion for another post, this is just answering the question “Why Sons of Medusa”

But I will tell you what to expect

1. Bionics
2. Techmarines
3. Dreadnoughts
4. A master of the forge
5. GREEN! And lots of it!

I will show you how i plan to paint them however.  The Bolter and chainsword peeps have a handy tool called space marine painter, give it a go

Seriously, its so fun playing around with this thing.

Thats the core look, the bright green on the armour, white helmets, red eyes, white eagle.

The shoulder pads and weapons will probably change depending on the squad. Veterans will have some red to show their link to the mechanicum.