6 Month Mountain Reduction and Painting Challenge

Hey guys, Jay here again... how is it going?

So I know it is a bit late buy I have decide to jump in on the "6 Month Mountain Reduction and Painting Challenge."  I originate on the blog "The Spider Web of History" but I got it from my friend Daniel Weber from "Shiny Penny Musings" off Facebook. Really I tried to get out of it a number of times and Dan kept pulling back in... thanks Dan!

Here are the rules:

1. The challenge starts September 1st, 2014 and goes for six months. (yeah, yeah, I’m posting this on 9/2, sue me)
2. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker card. As in a deck of cards, you get two jokers to use on a figure purchase during the six months of the challenge. This could be a blister pack, an eBay bundle, or a single figure. Not an entire army and you can’t splurge!
3. Gifts do not count against the you. If you’re given gift cards, you can use them without penalty on anything you want miniatures wise.
4. Paints, terrain, materials, and other hobby supplies are exempt from the the no purchasing rule.
5. You must make at least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week. If you Instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #6MMRPC.
6. Zombtober will be part of the six month challenge so Zombie related stuff during October is ENCOURAGED!

With school and work going full bore right now I don't know how much I will get finished week to week, but at least I can post some progress on the commission stuff I have kicking around that is long over do...

Until next time...

Journeyman & Feat of Service

Hey guys, how is it going?  So I started a project recently that I want to share with you today.  My local Warmachine & Hordes group, the Beerthralls, recently started up a Journeyman League at the LGS I work at, Huzzah Hobbies.  It sounded like fun so I signed on expecting to work on the next section of my 2014 Retribution of Scyrah army project.  Well the day of the kick off, one of the Beerthralls called out a challenge to all the members brave enough to accept.  Hardcore Journeyman.

In Hardcore Journeyman, first you roll a D6.  1-3 you are playing Warmachine. 4-6 you are playing Hordes. Then you roll a D10 for the army you will be playing for Warmachine or a D6 if you are playing Hordes. Reroll if you already own models for this faction. Then you roll for a random warcaster or warlock from within the faction.  Feeling brave I agreed and rolled up Warmachine, 4 Star Syndicate, General Ossrum.

WWWWAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! (Not Waaugh!)

Ossrum is a great warcaster when playing the Searforge Contract as his feat is specific to friendly Searforge models.  However, fielding him leading a 4 Star army would mean I get none of the Searforge benefits and all of the Searforge drawbacks.  Not dissuaded I jumped in, bought Ossrum and all the Rhulic warjacks at the shop and dove head first into the project.

This is where I am so far:

And another shot of the Grundback Blaster from another angle.

In addition to the above models, I own for the army:

• Gorten Grundback
• Grundback Gunner
• Grundback Gunner/Blaster (It can be either)
• Ghordson Driller
• Ghordson Avalancher (Ordered)
• Thor Steinhammer 
• Lord Rockbottom (Ordered)
• 10 Hammerfall High Shield Gun Corps + Unit Attachment
• Herne & Jonne
• Tactical Arcanist Corps

As it so happens the Nova Nomads, another local Warmachine & Hordes group in Northern Virginia will be hosting a charity event to support the Wounded Warrior Project at Huzzah Hobbies on June 7, 2014. Full details below:

1st Annual Nova Nomads

Feat of Service

To Benefit the Wounded Warrior Project

www.novanomads.com/featofservice

FB: Search for "Feat of Service"

To help with their effort, I will be donating the completed army I am painting for the Journeyman to the Nomads to auction off at the event with all proceeds going to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Stay tuned as I will be posting more pics here as I finish additional models for the project.  Click on the Feat of Service link on the right to see all post involving this project.

See you next time.

Dusting of the Warfare, SSU Steel Guard

Hey guys I am back with some freshly painted Dust Warfare minis and my thoughts on the state of Dust Warfare to share with you.  Dust Tactics and Warfare have been in the mini gaming news a lot recently.  Last July Fantasy Flight Games decide to discontinue distribution of Paolo Parente's Dust Tactics and their own spin off, Dust Warfare.  Thankfully Battlefront, makers of the superb 15mm WW2 warfare game Flames of War, decide to pick up distribution rights.

However Battlefront didn't realize until it was preparing to release its updated version of the Dust Tactics rules system that it had full rights to Dust Warfare, so they have been scrambling to keep the Warfare guys happy while pushing their revamped Dust Tactics rules.  One way they are doing this is by releasing Unit Cards for both Warfare and Tactics (they are similar to the ones used by games like Warmachine and Hordes from Privateer Press, with all the units stats, special rules, and points cost listed on each card; making for easy in game reference).  Besides the cards however, not much new stuff is on the horizon so far.  There is a new wave of models that has been slowly trickling out but the Warfare rules are still in the beta test phase (thankfully it is an open beta so we can use them in league games).

I recently finished up 3 new units, all of them from the beta test that I wanted to share with you today. The are from the beta-test SSU Steel Guard Platoon list.  Think of the Steel guard as a cross between 40k Terminators and Dreadnoughts, each suit holds an injured veteran soldier that has been able to return to the battlefield thanks to the Steel Guards Heavy Power Suits.  In game terms they are Type 4 Infantry, meaning most guns will only roll a couple of dice if any at all against them and with 4 Armor Save dice they are very hard to kill.

SSU Steel Guard Command Squad

SSU Steel Guard Assault Squad (the US and German markings on the next 2 squads are Kill Markers)

SSU Steel Guard Snipers Squad

So where does the uncertain status of Warfare leave me?  Well I am worried, but I think that it is going to be a good thing Battle Front has the Dust License. Yes they have screwed up when it comes to Warfare but at least we are getting unit cards (In February Hopefully) and though we will probably have to wait a while, I think Battle Front will continue to support Warfare.  What I really want is a v2 Rulebook with some slight tweaks and better explained rules interactions in a few places (which battlefront can definitely do) and Army Books for each of the factions that puts all the unit information and special rules in one place for each of the existing armies.  Will we get these? Definitely not any time soon, but it would be a good way to assert control over Warfare as a Battlefront brand.  We will have to see.

More as I have it...

Return of 40K...?

For me? No... Probably not.  But I have committed to painting up a 2K Death Guard army this year after how much fun I had painting up my 2500pt Nurgle Chaos Warriors WFB army last year.  To help me along I decided to join with the Independent Characters 2014 Hobby Challenge.  The first half of the year everyone paints up a Zone Mortis 1000pt army and then the second half of the year you upgrade that to a full 2000pt 40k army.  Not terribly hard to do and it kind of keeps me motivated to keep painting up new units, characters, and vehicles.

So long story short I have painted up the first unit of my new Death Guard army.  It is an EX-Imperial Guard Penal Legion Chaos Cultists Squad.  Here is a pic:

Never fear plague fans, my army is of course going to be filled with lots of Plague Marine goodness (and I have some sweet Rouge Trader and 2nd Edition Era one to paint up too), but for now I am working on my compulsory choices for this army.  I already have a nice Chaos Lord painted but need to do a second one for this new army, so in the month of February I am going to be focusing on a second unit of shooty Chaos Cultists and a basic Nurgle Marked Chaos Lord with a Power Axe to lead the army for the IC's Challenge.

More as I have it...

2014 Hobby Goals

Hey Guys, here are my Hobby goals for 2014:

1. Paint 300 AP of Dust Warfare, play 8 Games

2. Finish 2000pts of one of the 40k armies I already have

3. Paint 100pts of Warmachine/Hordes plus at least 4 Warcasters/Warlocks, and play 20 games

4. Paint 1500pts of Bolt Action and own no more then 3 different armies at any one time

5. Paint 2500pts of Non Bolt Action 28mm Historical Miniatures

6. Paint and play no more the 4 new games I do not play now

7. Participate in 5 Tournaments or Painting Contests

8. Continue reducing the size of my collection by Selling, Trading, and giving away more models

9. Post 52 blog posts on my personal blog (link in sig)

10. Keep a record of my total models painted in 2014

2013 was a big success for me hobby wise.  This year I have toned it down a bit (still lots of models to paint, but less multi-part goals).

Over the next few weeks I will be doing a series of posts explain my thought process behind each of my goals and what my current plans to complete each of them are (for now).

More as I have it...

Finally a free day: 2013 in Review

Wow the start of 2014 has been rough. I have been drunk, sick, working, sick, working, visiting family, sick, and out of town. All in the first 6 days of 2014.  But that is not important now, lets do a Year in Review for 2013.

At the start of 2013 I set up 10 goals (some with multiple parts and added a 11th which was my Total Painted Model count for the year) for myself to try to complete.  They were ambitious and while I did not complete all of them, they did push me much harder hobby wise this year than I have been in a while, and also allowed me to complete several armies  

Lets look at those 10 (11) goals one at a time and see how I did: (Green is complete, Yellow is incomplete but satisfactory, Red is a fail, and Blue is sold/incomplete-able)