In the middle

Almost a week with no painting, modeling or anything except a few frenzied ebay attack runs. Not that my motivation is failing lately, especially given the recent loot from the 'bay - just so freaking busy. Sleep or 40k is a rough decision when it comes to playing, but painting - I needs the sleepy so I don't wind up with franken-nid.

Which reminds me - if you haven't seen Firelight it's worth it just for the Twilight spoof.

Other web nifties found lately: the Table Top Terraformers page has some of the most awesome battle boards. The one with the LED lava is mind-bogglingly sweet.

Decisions, Decisions...

Warstore Weekend or Battle for Salvation?

Either way I would have to assemble and paint a tournament-worthy nid force in time...

Working on the list on dakka and 40k Online and EoW

Should be interesting to see if and how the ideas differ. Wish I had a couple venomthropes though =)

swarmlord - 280
2x tyrant guard + lash whip: 130
410 total

3x hive guard brood: 150
3x zoanthrope brood + spod + tlds: 230

tervigon, adrenal, toxin, catalyst: 195
20 termagant w/dev: 200

tervigon, adrenal, toxin, catalyst: 195
10 termagant: 50

20 hormagaunts w/toxin: 160

mawloc: 170
trygon prime: 240

A protip for converting Genestealers to optimize their cover save.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrGbabRU_dY

One of the better satirical treatments of the competitive gamer mindset.

A little bothered today though - was reading (yet another) army list help thread and one of the more prolific posters noted that having two or more tervigons in your list was "really cheesy and not very friendly."

Frankly there aren't many lists I see lately that don't include a minimum of one tgon, and often three. The battle lines are drawn between someone who wants to be able to play with anyone, and those who want to play competitively as if they are mutually exclusive.

This brings me to another topic. Sideboarding in army lists. One of the principal metagame levelers from MtG is the sideboard. Why not do something similar here? I'd love to see if and how a tournament's metagame would change as the paper/scissors/rock element becomes more of a factor. More importantly for the competitive vs fluffy mindset, one could simply swap out that cheesy tervigon for something less intimidating, like another hive tyrant.

Online Tyranid Painter

One of the coolest webpages in the 40k webverse. Played around and finally settled on my color scheme. Debating calling it Hive Fleet Yuengling, which has two meanings; one is a nod to the saga regarding the origins of the Norse gods - the other is of course, Yuengling beer.

Fluff is this is a hive fleet that started out as a test-tube genesplicing experimentation program by an Ordo Xenos inquisitor named Antrim Erdogan, a Thorian casophilian. Calling it "Project Yuengling", Erdogan's intent was to create a brood to see if he could track its contact back to the Hive Mind. After killing Erdogan, the nascent brood took only a few weeks to harvest the world they were on and begin looking for new prey.

Working on how to do Inquisition locator/ID tags or maybe tattoos...

Long weekend

We just finished presenting a Retrouvaille weekend - always rewarding, but tough. My long hiatus had everything to do with putting marriage and family first. This was working to keep the balance, and maybe to give back to others. Not that I expect this blog even has readers yet, but if your marriage can ever be described using the word "misery" then you might do well to visit the link above. The program saved our marriage after everything else we had tried failed.

On to the gaming part!

The awaited blue box of goodness arrived; as advertised, quickly, and no damage. Very impressed with how quickly it was sent too. At any rate - here's the pics of the goods:

Old One-Eye and two Carnifexes - destined to become Tervigons perhaps... really dislike these models. The heads are just plain ugly. Seeing if I can't work on getting some 'fex or warrior heads to swap them with. Haven't really planned out how to make them look brood-worthy either.

Tyrant and gaunts - four scything talons.. oy vey. Destined for cannibalization. At least the 'gaunts are cool - even one with a warrior head.

Old metal gargoyles and termies - some badly broken posts that will require drilling and replacing with wire at the very least. Might find other uses for a couple of the wings..

Three OOP metal raveners and a Red Terror - since they are already wielding barbed stranglers, thinking at least a couple of these guys will make very fine Harpies. Just need to find wings. Really dig the Red Terror model; pity he isn't in the current codex. Will be fun to paint anyway.

Six ripper stands - I like the idea of 5 attacks with 4+ poisoned to wounds, even with WS2. 6 stands is 30 attacks... and nothing says 'fodder' like a swarm.

Stealers and 3 Zoanthropes - glad I got the Zs. Been playing around with army lists and realizing I really should get a couple. Which of course means I'll have to find something to use for a spod.

Another pic of one of the raveners - just to examine for how to add wings and convert the strangler into a TL HVC...

Also got a copy of the old 'nid Codex - which had a pic on the inside front cover (top) of a blue body/red carapace army that looked sort of like what I think I'm going to go for: the dark blue and red/orange. Much happier after seeing that pic in the codex.

Foam Wars - crazy...

Just read a very interesting article from Plastic Legions on the Foam Wars that apparently have been a part of the 40k/hobby internets lately. I'll be looking to purchase some cases and whatnot for my gribbly hordes pretty soon - but I won't be purchasing them (or anything) from Battlefoam anytime soon.

Article here: http://plasticlegions.blogspot.com/2010/09/foam-wars.html

Hooray - more Ebay strippers!

Wait - that doesn't sound right..

BLUF: My usual modus operandi of buying heavily based or larger lots of figures that no one else really seems to be heavily bidding against pays off again - the result is I will be stripping most of the models back to metal/plastic. It also makes conversions much more attractive and possible as they invariably include bits or models that I wouldn't wan to put on the table. I've been using Goo Gone Painter's Pal at Wal-Mart and had really good results with it.

Loot:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130423922202&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_1037wt_1137

Warhammer 40k - (Rule Book, Instructions - purchased 2005)

Tyranids Codex - (copy right 2001)

13 assorted paint brushes

Battle Dice from Citadel Gaming

12' Tap Measure

3 Battle Templates

1 Bottle of Blue Paint (not sure if it is still good, has not been used before)

1 - Blue Tub with lid to put Tyranids in.

4 - Foam Home Made Containers

8 - Gargoyles

2 - Carnifexes

1 - Old One Eye Carnifex

6 - Ripper Swarms

8 - Genestealers

6 - Hormagaunts

12 - Termagaunts

3 - Raveners

1 - Hive Tyrant

3 - Zoanthropes

1 - Red Terror

Most are based black - nothing I can't strip off. Plus a Red Terror. I'll need to be putting together some tyrannofexes, tervigons, and harpies, so much of this will be excellent fodder for construction.

Playing around with color schemes for my 'nids - this is what I think I'll try to do for the carapaces.

Will see if I can't dig up a camera to snap a pic of the test schemes for my stealers.

Picasa linky here for the test schemes.