My Kingdom for a Multi-Melta

I've been reworking my Space Marine list to make it work a little better on paper. At least in theory; I don't really know the rules and I've only actually played once. The one time I played, though, I found that I could not kill vehicles at all. So in moving the list from 750 points to 1000 points I've decided to add some vehicle-killing stuff. I assigned some basic tasks to each of my units and then built the Sergeants and weapon teams to match the tasks.

In putting the figures together I found that I was short a few weapons (a Combi-Melta, a Combi-Flamer, and a Multi-Melta). The Combi-Melta was found in a box from the closet where I had a bag of bits from a commander sprue. The makings of a Combi-Flamer are on their way in the form of another commander kit.

The Multi-Melta is something I just don't have. The part can only be found in the Space Marine Devastator box set which will cost around $30 at the local shop, maybe a bit less if I use my member's coupon. Or I could pay $6-9 on eBay to get just the Multi-Melta parts from a bits scalper who buys boxes of figures and sells the high-demand stuff like Multi-Meltas and Twin-Linked Assault Cannons at inflated prices. Neither option is that great, but in most cases I'd rather buy the box and put all the other parts in my bits box for use at a later date when I need a Plasma Cannon or a servo-skull. I will wind up doing one or the other, but I have to grumble about it here because grumbling is half the battle. In the meantime I will use a Missile Launcher in place of the Multi-Melta because they cost the same number of points and I've already got one painted.

Assault Terminators Assembled

I got my Terminators put together today. I'd say it took me 35 minutes to an hour to get each of them put together. Some people complain about it taking a long time to put together plastic figures, but selecting parts from the sprue and putting them together is one of my favorite parts of the hobby.

These are the two with Lightning Claws. There aren't a lot of different ways to pose Lightning Claw arms, but I was able to use a good mix of components from my Space Marine bin.


The Sergeant here isn't wearing his big wolf cloak yet, as it will be impossible to paint him with it glued on. With his Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield held out so far to the sides and his cloak extending to the rear he is going to be a very large and intimidating model out on the table. It was a real chore to find components that would work together with the cloak, and it was even more of a chore to get everything test-fitted and make sure he would go together right. I needed about three more hands to hold everything in place for test-fitting. I don't have any poster putty or Blu-Tac to help with test-fitting models. His cloak will need some green stuff work done to fit properly, but it will fit around all the other stuff he's wearing.


And these are my Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield guys. I like the idea of dudes with huge crackling hammers banging on tanks and rattling the crews inside. I spent several years as a driver on an M1A1 Abrams, and the driver's seat is pretty comfortable by Army standards. During certain parts of training the driver's only real job is to watch the battery meter and keep the heater running. Inevitably the driver falls asleep and when it comes time to wake him up the other members of the crew will hit the front slope of the tank with a hammer or a helmet. It's a pretty startling noise to wake up to, sort of like having someone wake you up from your bed by banging a couple of pots together near your head.

White Dwarf Complaints, Space Marine Plans

I haven't posted much lately because I haven't had much to post about. I've even sat down a few times to write something up and just haven't had anything really to say. I've also been pretty busy with school and work. I am pretty tired of going to school, but I've apparently still got 4 more years left at my current rate. If I could take more credits every semester I'd have a degree in 2.5 years, but that seems unlikely at the moment. And if I have to cut back on credits because of classes that don't fit with my work schedule I will be 40 before I have a degree. That's what I get for squandering my youth.

I have also been working on a 1000-point list for my Space Marines. A key weakness in my 750-point list was a complete lack of weapons for killing vehicles. It didn't matter in the context of fighting against the matching list I constructed for my Orks, but it matters against just about anything else. So I added some melta weapons to the list as well as a couple of other things. I also added in some stuff I had wanted to build anyway, like a squad of Assault Terminators and a Land Speeder Storm for my Scout squad.

The Assault Terminators are exciting. I picked the parts out of my bits box. They are from a large variety of kits and chapters, with a heavy emphasis on stuff from the Space Wolves Wolf Guard Terminators box. There are also some Dark Angels and Black Templars parts as well as vanilla Space Marine Terminator stuff. But I think that most folks who see them would notice the Space Wolf parts first. I think the Terminator Sergeant will probably draw a lot of attention on the table as his cloak and bulk will make him look pretty intimidating. I am not going to be painting them as Space Wolves, as my Marines all wear the colors of my still nameless homebrew Chapter. If only I could get this excited about finishing my Razorback. The stuff I've done to it so far doesn't look too bad. I've just been short on time and motivation to do anything but sleep when I have free moments.

I e-mailed a complaint letter to Games Workshop concerning my White Dwarf subscription. For the last few months it has been arriving later and later, two or three weeks after it arrives in the store. Last month's issue still hasn't arrived, and this month's issue is already on the shelves. This month is supposed to be the last month of my subscription, so I am trying to decide if I want to renew or not. I think I'd rather pay the three extra dollars each month and get the magazine on time than save some money and get it extremely late or not at all. I've seen the issue crop up on a few other blogs, so it's not just a problem I'm having.

I finished painting the Space Marine Scouts last night. I am actually not quite finished with the missile launcher guy yet. When I built him I accidentally used a Sniper Rifle Scout's legs, so he's got a power pack with two wires that don't go anywhere. I'm going to rig up some extra wire or sprue or something and give him a servo-skull to act as a spotter.

The Last Chancers

I've been reading The Last Chancers, a collection of novels and short stories set in the Warhammer 40k universe that chronicles the adventures of the 13th Penal Legion, also known as Colonel Schaeffer's Last Chancers. They are an Imperial Guard unit made up of prisoners who take on suicide missions as a "last chance" to gain a pardon for their crimes against the Emperor. Generally these pardons are given posthumously. It may not be a literary masterpiece, but it's certainly a page-turner.

It has also got me thinking about an Imperial Guard army list centered on the Last Chancers. The old Guard Codex had a special unit and accompanying miniatures for the 13th Penal Legion, but they were removed from the army for the current edition. I think that given the fairly small numbers of the Last Chancers in the novels I will have to model them as a command squad and maybe a Troops or Elite selection and then model the rest of the list as another more conventional Penal Legion or even a standard Imperial Guard unit. I will probably pick and choose characters and ideas from all of the books in order to give myself a range of things to choose in the list. In one of the stories the groups is accompanied by a Naval Officer who calls down a bombardment on some renegade Guard units. I'll add him to the list as a Master of Ordnance Regimental Advisor. One of the other books features a demolitions expert that I can fit into a Special Weapons Squad. I still haven't got it all nailed down yet (and I'm not quite finished with the book) but it is certainly generating plenty of ideas.

I think I've decided on a paint scheme for my Imperial Guard forces. I really didn't want to paint another green/brown army because all of my armies so far (Space Marines, Orcs & Goblins, Skaven) are painted green and/or brown and because so many Guard armies you see on the internet and in GW's printed materials are in those colors. So I knew what I wanted them not to look like, but I didn't really have any idea what did want to paint them like. Games Workshop had an article on their site showcasing various armor camouflage schemes, and on the last page I found this one:

It is officially called Mars Pattern XXI, but I imagine regiments fighting on any red planet could use it. There is a little bit of green in the camo, but not enough for it to be a major color. I'm not sure how I'll paint the infantry, but I imagine it will be some sort of grey/red combo.

I finally finished my Assault Marines. The pictures are not that great, but they get the idea across. I'm not sure what to paint next. I should probably paint my Scouts or the Razorback next, but that's a lot of green and brown to paint. I've got a group of about ten half-finished Easterlings that would probably paint up pretty quick, so I might change gears a bit and get them done. Then maybe I'll put some more models together to get away from painting for a couple of days. I am moderately pleased with the Assault Marines. They look decent enough from tabletop distance.

There is still not much going on here; I may be caught up enough on schoolwork to do some painting tomorrow. That would be rather nice. We visited our friends again last night. E.A. hasn't made much progress on his Tau; he's in the same boat as I am with homework taking up most of his free time. Hopefully we can have a game by the end of the year. I anticipate having to do a lot of stuff military-wise this summer as I will attempt to fit the schools required for me to be promoted in between college semesters.

Imperial Guard

The internet has been somewhat abuzz with sneak peeks at the various Imperial Guard releases that are due to come out with the new Codex. I think the best-looking model is the Valkyrie, a flying troop-carrier. The Bell of Lost Souls blog has a couple of posts with pictures of some nicely-painted models. I am rather partial to the orange and grey one. I'm not sure on a price point. I've heard that it will cost as much as a Rhino and I've heard it will cost as much as a Land Raider. Due to the size of the kit I'm inclined to think it will be closer to the Land Raider in cost. It seems an ideal vehicle for carrying Catachan Jungle Fighters into battle.

And speaking of Catachan Jungle Fighters, I've been trying to come up with a color scheme for mine. I've noticed that all of my armies tend to be painted brown and green unless I am going off of a painting guide as I did for Moria Goblins and Easterlings from Lord of the Rings. My Space Marines are pretty bland compared to some of the other Chapters out there, but I don't think I could handle painting them orange or purple or bright blue. I'm running into the same dilemma with my Imperial Guardsmen and my Reaper CAV models. I just don't think they would look right in flashy colors. I did see a nice picture of someone's Catachan army painted with a lot of red accents; I might look at something along those lines.

Historicals

WWII

I've been pondering my reluctance to actually begin a historical project. I think it stems partially from a fear of getting "it" wrong, "it" being uniforms, orders of battle, vehicle variants, terrain, and any other nitpicky thing you might come up with. I used to be an avid reader, but I've really moved away from that in the last few years and I feel that my mind is worse for it. I am drawn to Flames of War because they have army lists similar to those found in the Games Workshop games as well as painting guides and prepackaged paint sets. Essentially everything you need to play their version of World War Two. And I think you could reconstruct real battles using that system, as long as you had a working knowledge of the scenario you want to play and the actual or approximate composition of the units involved.

Another route would be to use the various scenario books out there, like the Skirmish Campaigns series, to guide your force selections. Back when I was considering the Eastern Front I got a couple of those books with the intention of building the forces outlined in the orders of battle. I think part of what stopped me is that the scenarios seemed to be built for those who already have decent collections, as they often included odd variant vehicles that would be interesting for an experienced gamer but ramp up the starting cost for a novice. I recently have considered that a person could just cut out the variant vehicles for now and use more common things in their place without unbalancing the game overly much. I could probably still use the painting guides from Flames of War to get fairly close to the right colors for my armies, at least close enough for me.

I'm not sure what I'll do. I'll probably start with painting the little Flames of War forces I've got on the shelf and do some meeting engagements or something with the Flames of War rules.

American Civil War

Earlier I discussed my interest in the American Civil War, and particularly in the 10mm GHQ models. GHQ also has a set of rules designed for their figures that it would be interesting to try out. The rules apparently come with several scenarios, which may or may not be the same scenarios available for download on the GHQ website. They also sell starter sets for both sides of the conflict, comprising approximately one Brigade (2-3 guns with crew, 9-10 stands of infantry, a couple of stands of cavalry, and a general) according to the GHQ ruleset. After looking at the scenarios available for download it looks like one of the smaller ones would take approximately 4 of each starter set to build and play. So theoretically I could get started for around $100, but the scenarios would call for at least $340 plus terrain and other odds and ends.

I've also been looking at smaller figures in the form of Baccus 6mm ACW, and the Polemos rules. Battlegames #15 has a decent article about the rules along with a battle report. The starter set from Baccus comes out to just a hair over $130 with the rules, two armies, a painting guide, and a couple of armies. They offer various booster sets that run from about $15 to around $40, depending on how big you want to go. The website says that one starter set offers enough figures and stands to play games right away, so that is a point in favor of the Baccus models.

I've also been looking at the Perry plastic figures, but they aren't really practical for me at the moment. According to the Baccus website you can paint an army in a couple of weeks and be ready to play small games. It would take me a year or two to get through an equivalent number of units in the larger scale. I don't really see ACW as taking precedence over my other armies, but if I could get a couple of armies painted in between other projects that would allow me to scratch the itch without overwhelming myself with another large-scale project.

I'm leaning in the direction of the Baccus figures and Polemos rules at the moment. We'll see what happens when it actually comes time to make a purchase.

I am mostly finished with my Space Marine Lieutenant. After taking the pictures I realized that I still need to drill out the barrels and paint the sling on his Storm Bolter. Other than that he is finished. Next up is probably a squad of Assault Marines.

Not much time for a post if I want to be able to get up for work in the morning, but here are a couple of WIP photos of the Space Marine Lieutenant. He's not going to win any awards, but he should look okay on the tabletop and paint up fairly quickly.

I was really hoping the Cardinals would pull off the win in the Super Bowl, but they couldn't quite hang on and keep the lead. It sounds like Kurt Warner is planning on retiring and I think they're going to be one-shot wonders as far as getting anywhere in the postseason in the future. This was pretty much the perfect situation for them to come away with a ring and they blew it. I just don't see them rolling through the NFC again next year.

I started blocking in some colors on the Lieutenant and got his cloak to a point that it looks okay from arm's length. Hopefully he'll paint up pretty quickly as I don't plan on making him too spectacular compared to the other Space Marines in the army. He's got a few extra details, but nothing too complex outside of that cloak. I will be drilling out the barrels on the Storm Bolter at some point.

Cloak Trouble

I've been having some trouble painting the cloak on my Space Marine Lieutenant as it is a huge piece of cloth without any deep sharp folds in it. I am trying to paint it in a blue-gray color, but with the huge area I'm having a hard time getting the highlighting to look right. It keeps winding up looking like it's got poorly-painted stripes on it. I don't have much problem with tightly folded or small bits of cloth like the Space Marine Sergeant's loincloth pictured below because they've got plenty of folds and ridges that can be highlighted, but this cloak has really got me bothered. I've just redone the basecoat, so we'll see if I can get it looking right this time.

I spent much of the day trying to get homework done but I took a break to work on this cloak. I've got to go play National Guard next weekend, so I won't have that time to do my homework. I need to get a little bit ahead during this week so I don't fall hopelessly behind after drill weekends.

My parents and my little brother stopped over tonight to see the baby and talk to us; mostly to see the baby. I played a couple of Mario Kart races with my brother on the Wii and my dad asked to see a couple of miniatures I'd painted so he could see the actual scale of the things I've been posting on my blog about. I think he likes the blog pictures better because they're enlarged a bit and show the details better.

The prices on the turret parts for a Razorback with twin-linked Assault Cannon go so high on eBay that I may have to select a different armament for my Razorback. The Assault Cannon parts apparently only come in the new Land Raider Redeemer/Crusader kit, so they fetch a steep price. With the current prices you wind up spending $16+ for a 35-point upgrade. For that price you may as well just buy a Razorback kit and slap the Lascannons or Heavy Bolters on it. We'll see how it goes. It looks like currently only one guy is parting out the Assault Cannon turrets and he's listing them one at a time about five days apart, so anyone who wants one is competing for the same auction. Maybe some other folks will start in on it and the price will come down. I also haven't looked at any bits resellers who may have a sprue I could use.

A while back I posted about my subscription to White Dwarf. To recap, I ordered the subscription through Paypal, the order got processed, but Games Workshop never did whatever they're supposed to do to finalize the payment. So I was getting the subscription for free. When I wrote about it last I had e-mailed them but hadn't heard anything back. They finally got back to me and we worked it out so I could pay them and clear my conscience.

On Saturday I hadn't quite finished my paper when the scheduled time to go to our friends' home arrived, so I dug out the dusty old laptop that I had in Iraq to see if it would run. It was noisy and a little bit slow, but it ran. So for the first hour or two E.A. and I did our homework, then we pulled out our miniatures and had a bit of a hobbying marathon. I assembled nearly all the remaining infantry for my Space Marine force. For the most part it went well. The Assault Marine Sergeant borrowed a Lightning Claw from the Space Marine Commander kit and it didn't go on exactly right. Most of the problem had to do with getting the arm to look right and still be able to mount the shoulder pad. I was able to get it on there, but there is a gap. Once the jetpack is on the gap should be fairly well hidden, though. I am also having some trouble getting the Space Marine Scout with Heavy Bolter to actually hold his weapon, as the Scout torsos have these pouches on their chests that block the left arm from grabbing the handle on the front of the gun. I'll have to work with it a little more. The Scout Sergeant with a Power Fist from the Commander box looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I'm pretty excited about him. And the Commander himself looks to be one bad mother with his Storm Bolter and Power Sword. I'm still considering what sort of pattern to paint on the Sniper Rifle Scouts' cloaks. I'm leaning in the direction of something urban with a lot of greys, dull blues, and black. I'm also trying to decide what to do with the inside of the cloaks, whether they should be done up as a flat color or as dual-purpose cloaks with another type of camo on the opposite face. I also clipped out the parts I'll need for my Predator CFV and separated them into major assemblies for painting. E.A. cleaned up some figures and spent most of the time working out his paint scheme on a Fire Warrior. He wound up with a nice desert red color for the armor and a tan color for the cloth bits. I think his army will be quite nice-looking on the tabletop.

My wife starts work again in a few hours after a couple months off for the birth of the slug-baby. We are still trying to figure out how our scheduling is going to work as there already didn't seem to be enough time in the day or sleep in the night. The kid has really started interacting with us in the last couple of weeks. It's been pretty neat. He will laugh in response to us talking to him or touching his face. He spends most of his awake time watching things around him and making baby talk. He has also been developing a smidgen more independence, meaning that we can occasionally set him down or put him in his baby swing for a bit of a break from holding him. He will occasionally even sleep on his own without being in contact with someone.

I can't think of much else to write about. I heard a rumor that the Imperial Guard are in for a new codex and some new figures in the March time frame. That may be exciting, but as far as I know it's still just a rumor.

I am at a bit of a sticking point in my homework. Some of the skills from school have come back fairly quickly (mostly the procrastination and lamentation skill sets) but I am finding myself blocked when it comes to writing a paper. The paper is due at 11 o'clock tomorrow night, but at noon we're going to our friends' home for a bit of a break. During the break I'll probably try to assemble the rest of my Space Marine infantry and perhaps make some headway on the Predator. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I've started drilling out the barrels on the Space Marine weapons. I don't always get them centered properly, but at least they have holes in the ends of the barrels. It doesn't take much time or effort with the pin vise and some drill bits. I wouldn't use the Dremel as it is liable to take too much plastic away at a rapid pace. But back to the schoolwork. I am generally optimistic about most of my classes but my Cultural Anthropology course looks to be a pain. The teacher is retired and teaches just the one class for fun. That means she is free to lavish all of her time and attention on the one section, and obviously thinks that we should all feel the same degree of excitement about it. That's fine if you're an Anthropology major and can't get enough of this stuff, but not so great if you're a person with a life who just signed up for it because it was one of the last online courses left with open registration. We'll see how it goes. I'm not hoping for a miracle, I just want to pass. A's will earn praise, but C's earn degrees, right?

edit: It would appear that I repeated much of my last post in this post. I am very likely losing my mind.

I don't have much time as I am working on schoolwork, but here are some pictures of the completed Space Marines. I've painted them over with gloss varnish, so they are a bit shiny. It doesn't look good in pictures but I kind of like the look for the tabletop. I may hit them with a matte varnish at some point. You should be able to click the pictures for a larger view.

Not much to report tonight. I spent the evening getting ready to go on my trip. I did find a little time to brush some varnish on my Tactical Squad and finalize my 750-point list. I toyed around with some different configurations and hopefully have something that will work well. I am torn about including the Predator tank. I think I may be better served by a Dreadnought or some more infantry and a Rhino or something to that effect. Depending on how many vehicles and armored targets my friend has in his army I may be in a little trouble, as my list seems to be a little heavier on the anti-infantry side. I couldn't find anything else that I really liked under the point constraints I had going, though, so I'm going to go with what I've got. The good news is that I only need to paint 16 more infantry and one tank to reach that particular goal.

The army features one full squad of 10 Tactical Marines. They get the free Flamer and Missile Launcher weapon upgrades. The Sergeant is the basic Bolt Pistol and Chainsword guy that comes with the squad. Since I didn't buy them a Rhino, they will probably stick around close to home base and act as defenders in any mission that involves objectives.

The rest of my units are fairly mobile or have rules that allow them to set up closer to the enemy. This will help me out against my friend's Tau as the Tau have some of the best shooting in the game. I have a unit of Scouts with Sniper Rifles and a Heavy Bolter. Their job will be to shoot up the Tau infantry and try to cause pinning tests, keeping the Fire Warriors' heads down so they can't shoot me up. My other Scout Squad is kitted out to be a poor man's tank killing unit. They've got a Missile Launcher as well as Melta Bombs and a Power Fist. Assuming there is something armored to kill, these guys will set up close to it and try to kill it. I also have a small unit of Assault Marines who will hopefully be able to take out my opponent's Kroot unit. They can Deep Strike during the game, which will hopefully keep them from getting killed by the Tau shooting before they can get stuck in close combat.

My Lieutenant rounds out the infantry. I'm still deciding where to slot him. The only unit he really fits in is the Tactical Squad. I may wind up sitting my Sniper Rifle Scouts on my home objectives and pushing the Tactical Squad out in order to get the officer involved in the fighting. And then I've got the Predator, which will probably try to support wherever the battle line needs some firepower. A Whirlwind or a Razorback with the Officer plus a combat squad might be a better choice for the points, but I don't have those models and I do have a Predator. I think someone famous once said that you go to war with the army you have. My main worries are that I don't have a lot of armor-killing units and that my squads may be too small. I suppose we will see what happens in an actual game before getting too crazy.

Last night I dug out all of my 40k models and ran the numbers through Army Builder. Depending on what wargear I choose, I've got around 2200 points in Orks and nearly 2900 points of Space Marines. Of course with the restrictions on army building I couldn't actually field all of the models at the same time except in an Apocalypse game, but I've certainly got a lot of painting to get to. So far I've got 250 points of Space Marines painted. It's a start.

I finally finished off my Space Marine squad, so in the first half of January I've already accomplished nearly 50% of the painting I did in all of last year. Not a bad start; we'll see if I can carry momentum through all my upcoming obligations. I do think I'll try to paint the Predator next. The picture below shows a couple variants of the Terminator. I'll probably be doing the one on the right side of the photo. It's got an Autocannon and sponson-mounted Heavy Bolters as opposed to the Lascannons on the other one.


Hopefully that will go together well. I will possibly open the box up and look at the parts tomorrow. No pictures of my completed Space Marines as the cameras aren't nearby at the moment.

There is a new creature residing in our home now. There are quite a few regional Yahoo! Groups that go by the name Freecycle. Basically, people within a specific area join up and post stuff that they no longer need, and other people can e-mail them and arrange to haul it away. You can also post requests if there is something you are after. The catch is that no money changes hands. You're not allowed to sell the stuff you post. There are usually so many useless posts that I don't pay them much mind, but last night a message popped up offering a Russian Tortoise that the poster's kid no longer wanted to take care of. We'd been wanting to give Owen (our original Russian Tortoise) a companion for a while, but they aren't an extremely cheap animal to buy, generally around $80. So I e-mailed the lady and arranged to go over there after work and check it out. In order to take the tortoise I also had to take his cage, an extremely heavy 6-foot long enclosure. So I now have a huge terrarium in the back of my truck that I really have no need for. The tortoise doesn't have a name yet. He wasn't being fed proper vegetables or the mineral supplements he needed nor was he getting the UV light required for synthesizing his nutrients, so his shell is a bit malformed and I think it had a couple of soft spots. It should start to heal up and harden now that he'll be eating properly and basking under our UV lamp. Also included was a nice artificial pool/water dish that sells for $40-60 at the pet store. So it was a pretty good deal all around for us.

That's about all the news from me for today. It's exciting to be making some progress on my miniatures, hopefully I'll have more good news to report soon.

I didn't get much done on my Space Marines this weekend as I was off playing with the National Guard. I did finish the basecoats on all of the weapons and other metallic bits this morning while the wife and kid were asleep. The rest of the day I tried to help with the baby a little so the wife could get packed for her trip down to Utah. I'll be flying down there to join her next weekend. I'm trying not to be grouchy about it as I would probably prefer to stay up here and do my own thing. I think my next painting project will be the Predator, followed by a full squad of ten Assault Marines. My 750-point list only calls for five Assault Marines, but I've got ten of them and I might as well paint the whole lot. Then I'll probably get the Lieutenant painted up and follow on with my Sniper Scouts. I'm pretty excited about the Sniper Scouts as they have cloaks that can be painted with some sort of camouflage scheme. It will be fun trying to come up with some sort of appropriate pattern for them. I also need to come up with a basing system for my army, as I don't see them fitting in well with bright shiny green grass. I'll probably try to do some sort of urban rubble.

Next week school starts and the wife goes back to work the week after so we'll see how that goes. It's hard to imagine fitting anything else into the schedule. We bought a baby swing from Craigslist today that he is content to sleep in for a decent amount of time, so that should free us up a bit. It's a big step up from one of us having to hold him at every moment during the day.

The weather is supposed to be clear here all week, so I'm going to try getting some use out of my motorcycle to save some gas money. With the wife taking her car to Utah I'll be stuck with the bike and the truck, and the bike seems like a better option as far as gas money. We'll see how I feel about it in the morning. I started it up and rode around the block this evening to make sure it was good to go.

I made some minor progress today on my Space Marine squad. I thought I was concentrating on quantity over quality, but it still took two hours to get the tops of a few backpacks and the metal and housings for five weapons done. I don't know how other hobbyists can burn through entire regiments in the time it takes me to paint five or ten miniatures. At least I am getting closer. There really isn't much more to do on these guys. I need to finish painting the metal on backpacks and weapons, do some highlighting, finish some details on the missile launcher Marine and the Sergeant, then a clearcoat and I should be good to go for this squad. It will probably still take most of the week to get it done a little at a time. Then I think I'll edit my five-man squad to match these guys. From there I will get to either work on something exciting or something intimidating. I could do some Scouts with Sniper Rifles and camo cloaks or some Assault Marines. Maybe I could build my Space Marine Captain (who plays the role of Platoon Leader in my mind, as the Company Captain has better things to do than run around on a combat patrol). Those are the exciting options. On the intimidating front, I could use my airbrush for something other than a desk ornament and get my Predator tank painted up. I actually think that tank is a bad choice of words for a Predator. It's more of a CFV (Cavalry Fighting Vehicle). The Space Marines don't really have a tank. The closest thing they have is the Land Raider but that seems to be more of a heavily-armored, heavily-armed Terminator delivery device than a tank. Anyway, all of the above options would constitute progression toward my first goal of getting a 750-point army put together so I can play against my friend once he gets his starter Tau force put together. I've got plenty of time to decide, but for now I think it's about time to go to bed. Click the picture below for an extra-large view.

Getting Closer

I've got all the backpacks and weapons cleaned up and primed. They aren't actually glued on yet; I painted the inside surfaces while holding the parts in my hands and then slid them onto their pegs so I could paint the outside surfaces and let them dry. So far I'm pretty happy with the color scheme. I'm not going to paint the bolter bodies red as I'd originally intended. I'll probably paint them to match the rest of the armor, so they'll be green or brown.

I spent some time today looking at the Apocalypse book and the Apocalypse: Reload supplement for 40k. Specifically I was looking at the Baneblade tank and thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know) about using one in an Apocalypse game sometime in the future. Then I got to thinking that the Imperial Guard wouldn't really just let the Space Marines use a Baneblade without some sort of supervision. The Imperial Guard and the Space Marines both work for the Imperium, but that doesn't mean they trust each other enough to hand over one of their rarest, most powerful pieces of wargear. I imagine that the tank would be accompanied by at least a high commander with his attendant bodyguard unit and perhaps some other kit. Maybe a squadron of Sentinels? It couldn't be because I like the way Sentinels look, though. Since Apocalypse armies don't have to fit the standard force template, I was thinking of building a Guard force consisting of a Baneblade, a Catachan 'Death Trap' Ambush Patrol (found in the Apocalypse: Reload book), and perhaps a kitted-out Command Platoon to represent the officer acting as the Baneblade's babysitter. I imagine that group will run out to a little over 1000 points. Add a regular-sized Space Marine army to it and you've got yourself a small Apocalypse force. That's all dreams right now, though, as I haven't even got my first Space Marine squad painted yet. If I alter the first five Space Marines I painted several months ago to match my new color scheme I'll have an additional Combat squad to work with. Then I can paint my Scouts or my Assault squad. That was all really off-topic, but this is a hobby blog and those were my hobby-related thoughts today. I also really want to use the Vortex grenade template I've got, so that's another motivation to get several thousand points of figures painted up. The Vortex grenade is a little hole in the fabric of space that drifts randomly around the battlefield. Anything that it touches gets sucked into the Warp where it is either destroyed or subjected to such horrors that it loses it's mind and becomes part of the zaniness that makes the Warp what it is.