I am Kroot! Blackstone Fortress

Ok, so I am a little late to the party here but NEW KROOT MODEL!  Wohoooooooo!

I was already eyeing up the Blackstone Fortress Game as a possible xmas present from myself the wife, as the other Warhammer Quest games are pretty great fun (as stand alone pieces) and could only really be improved by a grimdark setting.

The models were also probably going to be awesome too (as Silver Tower and Hammerhal testify), but I didn’t really have my hopes pinned on anything other than a few interesting Space Marine characters.  How wrong I was…

Modeling update 27/10/18

It has finally begun!  After months of sitting on the shelf waiting to be cracked open and devoured, I have finally built up the courage to get stuck into the Adeptus Titanicus boxed set!  To be honest, I’ve been itching to get on with this ever since I got it, but other projects have needed finishing first (i.e. Tourney lists) to clear space in the very limited hobby schedule.  I have also had to choose between this and other notable distractions  – sorry Kill Team, your time will come soon!

eBay Rescue Part 6: Repairs, repairs, repairs…

 

The best bargains to be found on eBay are often in a sorry state of repair.  From second edition marines covered in 6 layers of gloss acrylic paint, to crisis suits with arms / legs / heads / feet snapped off, thee items are generally consigned to the bottom of someone’s bitz box or painting drawer, until the time comes to abandon all hope of ever recovering the model and sticking it on eBay, to let someone else experience the horror have a go.

‘Seeds of Destruction 3’ Tournament: Day 1

 

Last weekend I attended the ‘Seeds of Destruction 3’ tournament held by the Vale Renegades at the excellent Firestorm Games here in Cardiff. This was an ITC event (my first ever – eeeek!) following the ITC format of 5 games over two days using modified missions customised for the event – ‘Power Struggle’, ‘The Relic’, ‘Lead from the Front’, Sabotage’ and ‘Warzone’.

The full mission pack can be found here, but in summary there were three elements of scoring in each mission – Primary (objectives), Secondary (tasks – i.e. point for vehicles killed, etc) and Critical (a difficult task, usually holding all the objectives for a turn). I decided to take my T’au once more, the list for which can be found here.

Everyone gets FAQ’d!

 

So the Big FAQ finally drops (and on the eve of the big tournament no less!) and it seems to be full of good things for all lovers of balance (or at least the illusion of balance) in our favourite game of toy soldiers.

Having had a very quick read, here is my very biased (T’au’va!) and ill informed first impressions

The year of living prudently…

 

When Labour came to power in the late 90s, it was not (as some suspected) a socialist spend fest of epic debt building madness.  Far from it.  In fact, Chancellor Gordon Brown’s buzzword for the first couple of budgets was something much less exciting – prudence.

No, not the name of his mother, pet cat or favourite car.  He meant prudent spending – not spending more than you earn, and in fact spending significantly less so as to try and get the whole economic ship back into shape.  So, ignoring the fact that labour soon tired of this approach and went into full on ‘spend mode’, I have decided to try and live the coming hobby season as prudently as possible.  Here endeth the historically inaccurate and grossly over simplified political commentary for this post.

Tooth and Claw: Unboxing

 

Another week, another juicy Games workshop boxed set.  This week Last week WEEKS AGO we saw the release of Tooth and Claw – a Space Wolves vs Genestealer Cults boxed set, which just happened to arrive during the home packing chaos, building up to the big house move.  I didn’t even have time to open it – it went straight from the postman’s hand and into a box labeled divorce exhibits A-Z Geek stuff.

Now that the hell fun of the move is behind us and we are a bit more settled in, I judge myself to have made sufficient progress unpacking boxes of stuff we need to live (oh toilet paper, where art though?!) and decided I could probably let myself have a few minutes of geek time to peel back the cellophane layer and have a quick gander inside at the juicy contents therein.

The 2018/19 Hobby Season ‘Call to Arms’

 

Dave Weston, of 40kaddict fame, has once more issued his annual call to ‘painting and modeling’ arms, encouraging all of us harbouring a grey tide of embarrassment to get a move on and start making some headway with a proper ‘To Do’ list. You can see Dave’s original post at his blog.

Last year my focus was mainly on building, with only a small amount of painting targeted. That list was also massive and unwieldy and presented me with little hope of completing it. For this year, my main focus will be on trying to get some balance between the painting and the building, as well as setting realistic targets that will give me a sense of achievement as I progress rather than crushing the will to live out of me denting morale before I even begin.

Modeling update 22/08/18

 

The Pledge for this months ‘Vale of Legions’ painting challenge is a fairly simple one – a single HQ from your list. This is just as well, as there is a lot going on for me this month and while I have to prioritise other ‘real life’ things ahead of hobby time I would rather not fall behind in the challenge at such an early stage – there will be plenty of opportunity for failure later!

As it happens, I only have one HQ in my list anyway and so have started cracking on with my Centurion Delegatus Consul, in Cataphractii Terminator Armour with Chainfist and Combi-Melta.

Adeptus Titanicus: unboxing

 

So the deed was done with little or no remorse for my wallets feelings – I begged, borrowed and stole misappropriated reassigned funds intended to feed & clothe my young and used them to preorder Adeptus Titanicus.  I am a bad man.

Well, that’s not quite true – a combination of good fortune (selling an Imperial Knight on eBay that has been listed for months), good timing (it being my Birthday last week) and past prudence (continued downsizing of the plastic crack pile collection with minimal impulse buying) meant that I could order this boxed set without having to part with a Kidney. Which was nice, as I think evolution gave me two kidneys for a reason, and yet I probably would have flown in the face of Darwinism and risked my genetically enhanced survival status by parting with it.

So now that I have it in all its glory, I though I would take some photos and share some initial thoughts. As with my Kill Team unboxing, this wont be a rules review but rather a good look at the contents and what I think of it in terms of quality, value etc. However, the first issue I want to address was the preorder itself.