John’s Warhammer Adventure
Hey all, figured I’d post a progress update on how my army is coming along. Biggest bit of news, Deb’s birthday present to me was a trip to Le Valet on Saturday, whereupon she had me pick a bunch of stuff and bought it for me. Most notably a Seer Council boxed set for my Eldar army. This now means that I have 2 farseers and 3 warlocks at my disposal. She also got me several boxes of the new D&D miniatures, the pre-painted ones, we’re thinking of introducing Bry and his Cousin Jasmine to D&D and felt that using the minis, which are really inexpensive by miniatures standards, would be a good visual appeal to the whole process.
Anyway, that aside, and back to my eldar army. I also did a re-count of my figures and it turns out I had a fieldable squad of Warp Spiders all along! So, after updating my army list, my totals are:
Army Total w/o Wargear: 1576
Fieldable Army Total w/o Wargear: 1386
Current Battleforce, Wargear in: 1249
So that puts me at a current battleforce build of:
HQ
2 Farseers
3 Warlocks
Troops
4 Dire Avengers + 1 Exarch
10 Guardians
8 Ranger Pathfinders
Fast Attack
4 Warp Spiders + 1 Exarch
Heavy Support
1 War Walker
1 Heavy Weapon Platform
1 Wave Serpent Transport
So I’m quite pleased with my army list and now that I’ve got that taken care of, I’ve started on assembly the units for my battleforce that you guys go tme for my birthday, and even have some photos!
So, I spent a couple hours carefully picking through my battleforce box on Saturday night checking to see which units I had instructions for and which I didn’t and which would be the easiest to start with. So eventually I realized that I had no instructions for heavy weapons platform and its two accompanying guardians. The had pretty easily identifiable pices and since they had no instructions I figured if I could puzzle them out, there would be less guess-work later when I moved on to the guardians, which also had no instructions. So, first I put the weapons platform together and opted for the eldar missile launcher mount as it offers two missile choices and provides a blast weapon with a good range and strength. I got it together quite easily, and the turret portion turns nicely should I want it to move, and the hover base seats cleanly into the baseplate, so I was pleased. I then moved on to the two crew guardians for the platform, they had their legs, and chests as a single piece on the sprue, so I only need to glue on the back, arms, heads and any accesories, which I did. There was a loose Shuriken catapult for the guardian that couldn’t hold his, so I glued it fo his back, making it look kind of like an antenna, which sounds weird, but actually fit the styling of the eldar units surprisingly well. Please excuse my pictures, I took them with my cell phone.
Surveying the field
Assault at White Loaf
So, quite pleased with my assembled minis, but very tired, I went to bed. Then last night, Deb was tired and decided to turn in around 10:30, so I took the opportunity to assemble the rest of my guardians. Having done the other two succefully, I felt more confident to tackle the rest of the little buggers. Of course, the standard guardians, unlike the weapon crew ones, come in 10 pieces instead of 5. So, I very carefully cut the pieces for one guardian out fo the sprue, made sure they my cuts were clean and satisfactory, then began meticulously glueing them together in sequence. It went really slow, but went well. So I tried another, my morale boosted, quicker, but just as well-assembled. So here I was now fully sure of what I was doing, and what sorts of freedoms and lee-ways I had when assembling the figures and I began to carefully stream-line the process. By the time I had finished the first 4, I had determined a method to quickly, effectively, and easily assemble the last 4 guardians simultaneously, adding slight variations to poses and placements to make the squad look more dynamic and life-like. Take a look:
Hanging with the Heavies
So far I’m very pleased with my progress so far, next up is likely going to be the war-walker and then the dire avengers. The Wave Serpent I’m likely going to leave for last as I need to do it in two parts since I have to prime and paint the cockpit before I can fully glue the thing together. So, I’ll leave you with two more pics, one of my Seer Council units, and a very blurry one of my currently fieldable army.
May 4th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
looking good so far Johnny. Glad to hear progress being made. I look forward to crushing them under the weight of the hammer of the immortal emperor!
As I was saying in other posts and such, I got my new codex on Saturday. It is awesome! The changes made to the Guard is great. I am looking forward to fielding them asap. It will be awhile until I have them built too my liking, but will be 1500 of ready in June. Can we setup a gaming table at your wedding? I’m sure Deb won’t mind, LOL
May 4th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Hehe, that would be really cool. Though I don’t think we’d get away with it.
May 4th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Very nice, John. I’m very happy to see the enthusiasm continuing. I gave your post a title cause you forgot to put one.
If you have a digital camera around somewhere, I’d love to see some more defined macro shots sometime. The cell phone pics are more of a “Yep, those sure are Eldar”.
Oh, and in regards to D&D miniatures, it’s a good idea you got them cause you pretty much need minis if you’re running 4e. They’re pretty good quality for what they are, too.
May 4th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Yeah, for sure, Deb thought they were really cool, so when she told me to pick what I wanted from her and Bry at Le Valet, and I saw her so interested in them, I decided to use that as a pick, she ended up getting 5 boxes of them, so we’ve got a small horde of various monsters and characters, we even ended up getting a Raistlin Majere one.
But as for the Warhammer pics, yeah, we have an 8 megapixel digital camera that I can use for the pictures next time, and get sickening detail on them.
May 4th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Very cool. 4e’s a good starting point, I think. It’s simple enough once you have all your math done, and adventure design is a snap if you follow the guidelines in the DMG.
Speaking of RPGs, I went to an RPG store downtown yesterday and got more stuff for Savage Worlds:
I got Rippers, which is kind of like Masque: http://www.studio2publishing.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=85
And I got the Savage World of Solomon Kane: http://www.studio2publishing.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=2375
The latter is based off of a series of stories by Robert E Howard (Kull and Conan) about a puritan monster hunter who travels the world vanquishing evil. It’s probably one of the prettiest RPG books I’ve ever seen.
And then last night I ordered Dogs in the Vineyard: http://www.lumpley.com/dogs.html
Dogs is a very interesting indie RPG where you’re a bunch of holy lawmen (of sorts) in a semi-mythical Utah. The system is really interesting in that it’s very collaborative. The DM can’t plan anything in advance or anything. It’s kind of like an RPG that i played at a meetup recently called Psi Run. I think this’ll be a fun experiment.
And don’t worry, I’m not going all biblical on you, I swear!
May 4th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Savage worlds!!!
May 4th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Indeed, the savager and worldier, the better.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:40 am
So I’ve made my first attempt at unpainting my old minis using brake fluid, it seems as though since they’ve been painted for a decade and are pewter means I have to soak them a lot longer, I let them soak overnight and still no real noticeable paint strippage. I’m hoping that by tonight I’ll be able to start rinsing some of the lighter painted ones off and drying them to prep for my actual painting.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Here’s hoping it works! I’ve read that as long as you don’t leave it for longer than a week, the fluid shouldn’t damage the models. Apparently Varsol works and there are also dedicated paint removers, if the brake fluid doesn’t do the trick.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I’m not worried about the models getting damaged, they are metal. But I was going the brake fluid route as I found tons of sites touting it as one of the best paint removeers, even so far as being able to remove car body paint in some cases.