I've been going over the game from last night and came up with a few conclusions. The first is that I was wasting my time setting up on the Ork side of the board. The Ork player had too many points available to make his vehicles unkillable for anything I could fit into my 750-point force. I should have let my Eldar ally set up across from the Orks and used my Marines against the Tyranids, as my weapons were geared toward killiing Horde armies. I'm pretty sure the vehicle assaults weren't played by the rules. I think the Ork player in general was a bit dodgy when it came to anything involving his units. I am working on a new army list with some more in the way of armor-killing ability and hopefully the ability to stay on the table for a little longer. I t looks like I need to pick up another Storm Shield and Thunder Hammer for a Terminator.

On the Imperial Guard side of things, I am thinking about the fluff of my army. There will be at least one Veteran or Storm Troopers unit. I want to mount them in a Valkyrie and give them Grav Chutes from Forge World. I would also like to field a Drop Sentinel or three to go along with them as sort of an airborne initial wave for my army. According to the description, the Drop Sentinel is a Sentinel that has been altered so it can fit in and be dropped by a Valkyrie. The 40k rules don't allow for this, but I can make them Scout Sentinels and give them an early move before the game starts, simulating that they have been dropped forward of the front line. Probably not a strong option rule-wise, but I am not much of a power-gamer anyway.

I went to gaming night at Hobbytown tonight and I was able to get into a game. It was a 2-on-2 battle with Orks and Tyranids facing my Space Marines and some Eldar. Since I only had 750 point of Marines, my partner had to come up with a lot of extra points for his Eldar. That was no good for him as he had to pretty much field everything he had, even less-than-desirable choices. We lost pretty heavily. My Marines were particularly ineffective. My Assault Squad and Razorback were destroyed by shooting in the first turn. My missile launcher couldn't crack open the Ork Battlewagons, and my Scouts couldn't hit anything. My Captain and his squad made it out of the Razorback alive and assaulted a Battlewagon. I think we played the meltabombs rule incorrectly, but I don't know for sure. I think the assault should have busted the Battlewagon open, but either way that squad was pretty well wiped out soon after that. My squad with an attached flamer was able to kill quite a few Tyranids and my lone surviving Marine at the end of the game took out a Stormboy, but overall it was a very poor showing from my army. At least I've got my first game out of the way now. I may go back once I've got my Land Raider put together. That will stand a chance of getting into combat with some Terminators. I'll probably need to take some more troops capable of defeating armor also. My Marines would have been much more effective if the Orks had been knocked out of their Trukks and Battlewagons earlier.

More Painting

I was supposed to go to my cousin's house today to paint figures or play a game, but I never heard back from him and stayed home to paint instead. I got a fair amount of stuff done, although there is still plenty to do on my Assault Marines and Scouts. There are a couple of WIP shots below. I may stop by the game night at Hobbytown tomorrow and either drum up a game with what I've got or observe. I'm not sure what color to paint the shoulder pads on my Scouts. Green and brown are the obvious choices, but neither one seems right. The Scout with the Heavy Bolter was a pain to put together. The fiddly little arm bits just didn't want to go together like I wanted them to. I nearly got glue everywhere, but finally got it all lined up the way I wanted. The Scouts will give me chance to work on painting human faces and arms rapidly in preparation for painting a hundred Imperial Guardsmen. I think the silver on the Assault Marines' jetpack straps needs to be a different color. As it is there is just too much silver on the front of them.

Progress

I made a bit of progress on my Space Marines; I assembled my Razorback. None of the hatches or turrets is glued on; that will allow me to change them out and adjust the equipment loadout from battle to battle. At the moment it's got a hunter-killer missile on the front and twin-linked assault cannons on the back. With the Razorback built, my 750-point force is assembled aside from some backpacks and accessories that would be difficult to paint if I attached them first.

The kid is about 6 1/2 months old now. He's getting pretty large. At a recent appointment he was in the 75th percentile for weight and 90th percentile for height. He likes to play a lot, so that's been fun. We're working on getting him to sleep in his own bed; it's pretty painful but it's going pretty well so far.


He's also been eating some foods, just cereal and mashed up stuff. He likes some foods better than others.

Hobbytown had their annual Customer Appreciation sale last night. I got a couple of things I didn't have yet. While I was in the store I saw a guy and his wife in the Warhammer aisle and I said to myself, "That sure looks a lot like my cousin and his wife." So I said hi and sure enough, it was my cousin and his wife. I knew from Facebook that he was a 40k player, but we'd never really discussed it before. We may hang out sometime and play a game or assemble some figures. I helped convince him to get the Stormlord Super-Heavy (it has a transport capacity of 40 and a Heavy 15 gun!). A few of the employees and former employees of Hobbytown joined the discussion at various times and I think my cousin is part of their general wargaming/friend circle, so I may actually be forced to play games and interact with people rather than sitting at my desk thinking about it. Hobbytown is also opening a store in the town we plan on moving to, so that works out. I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to get my fix as often once we moved, but they have anticipated my needs and reacted accordingly.

Jo-Ann Fabrics had a big sale this weekend as well. My wife got some stuff for her projects and I picked up a whole bunch of plastic organizers to use as bitz boxes for all my plastic figures. They were priced at 50% off plus an additional 10% off the sale price with a coupon, so they came out at 55% off overall. Now when I need a right arm I can just dig around in the appropriate box rather than open several different cartons trying to find a sprue with a right arm on it. I also briefly considered getting an Ott Lite as they were on sale too, but we decided to wait until we buy a house and have a dedicated space for everything. Jo-Ann has them on sale several times a year, so we can afford to wait.

I've slapped a little more paint on my Assault Marines and Scouts. It would be nice to have them mostly finished by the end of the week, but the usual commitments may prevent it from happening. We'll see.

My dad took us to dinner tonight to celebrate the fact that I passed all of my classes this semester. The fact that he is starving to death since my mom is out of town with my sister and her new baby may have had something to do with it. It was very nice of him to buy us dinner, especially as that dinner consisted of a variety of barbecued meats. Hopefully I can keep passing my classes and eventually end up with a degree of some kind.

I've got a pile of Assault Marines and Scouts on my desk waiting to be finished. I'm hoping that I can get some paint on the tomorrow, but I've got some yard work to do before I can get started on them. We'll see if it happens.

An Interesting Development

My math instructor posted grades today, and apparently she was grading on quite a curve. I was pretty sure I was going to wind up with a D and the only other real mathematical possibility was a C, but on the website my grade shows as a low B. I'm not going to complain, but I know I didn't earn that B. With all my grades in I came out of the semester with 3 As and 1 B, which is fine with me.

I've been messing around with the Imperial Guard army list, and have one pretty much built out in increments of 250 points from 750 points up to 2250 points. I also did a quick inventory of all the Imperial Guard figures I have and figured out approximately how many points I could field if they were all painted. Without my super-heavy tanks (a Baneblade and a Stormlord) I've got about 2800 points. The super-heavies add about 1000 points to that total. It crossed my mind that a company-level commander would not have access to all the support assets I have in my inventory. In all likelihood he'd be lucky to have a couple of heavy weapons, a mortar section, and maybe a Sentinel or Hellhound for armored support. I suppose that's where the wargamer desire to have one (or three) of everything in your army comes into the picture. I suppose it is a fantasy world, so there isn't much need to put a lot of thought into it. Maybe company commanders in the far future do have that many assets available to them.

Other than that I've got a few figres on my desk waiting for paint, so I'll probably try to work on them some this week. Maybe I'll even have some pictures to post in the near future.

If You Were Me, You'd Be Good Lookin'

We watched Six-String Samurai today. It is a decent film, although it is low-budget and falls into the cult classic category. You'll either like it or you won't. It's hard to say with this sort of movie. I don't really have much else to post about tonight.

Finally Finished

I'm finally done with school for this semester. I got three As and one grade that isn't posted yet. It will be either a C or a D. I'm really hopping it's a C, but with the way the final went I'm not sure things will work out that way. I just have to wait and see. My motivation for school really dropped off after Spring Break. Prior to that I was on a pretty decent schedule as far as getting my work done and setting aside time for everything. Spring Break messed up my routine and I never really got back on track. I definitely won't be going full-time next year. Four classes was too many. Some people can juggle that much stuff, but I'm not one of them.

Now I get to make plans for the summer. It would be nice to get some sleep and move into a bigger house. We have an offer in on one house, but we haven't heard anything back yet. Next on my list of things to do this summer is paint some figures. I have got plenty of them sitting around waiting for paint. I'm going to dig into the new Imperial Guard codex soon and build an army list. I've had some fun with the Cadian command box, mixing and matching parts to make a couple of the optional Regimental Advisors and characters. I didn't fancy buying Games Workshop's three-figure set for those dudes when I could build an Officer of the Fleet, a Master of Ordnance, a Commissar, a heavy weapons guy, and a standard bearer for about the same price and with a bunch of parts and heavy weapons left over. And my special characters will look different from everyone else's special characters, which is a bonus. After having a look at the new Cadian command box and the new Catachan command box I think the Cadians got the better end of the deal. All of their legs and torsos are separate, while three of the five Catachan figures have legs and torsos modelled as one sculpt. Another bonus for the Cadians is that there were a couple of extra torsos. I think there are more variant heads and arms, too. The Catachans have neater-looking backpacks, though. I'm planning on taking all of the parts from both Cadian and Catachan sprues and throwing them in a big tub so my Imperial Guard soldiers can be a fully customized mix-and-match force. It should be fun to put together.

Ben got a new cousin today. My sister had her son. Apparently it was a pretty laborious (ha!) process, but they're both doing fine.

Other than that, not much is going on.