Games Day Table Expansion

     Back in 2010 when there was actually a Games Day on the east coast we had all signed up and ran a gaming table for the event. We had a little mini game going where people could walk up with an independent character and have a duel on one of the 2'x 2' battlefields we brought along. All of our old Games Day pictures can be seen here.

Out of the two arenas I made the lava one was always my favorite, and as soon as it was finished I knew I wanted to have a full table one day built in the same fashion. My youngest brother and I have been working on and off over the last year or so with long breaks in between but finally after a big push this week we have done it!

As you can see the original mini table is in the corner and we cut pink foam to match up and make a full sized table around it. I would like to make a few more pieces of themed terrain to go with it such as a volcano or a few mountains connected by a bridge or pipes but after a year of mostly procrastination it is good to see a project crossed off the list!

Also, as an added bonus, my brother now knows how to make cool looking terrain and I can get him to make it all!

Boss Deffrolla's Looted Battle Wagon!

Contrary to popular belief, Boss Deffrolla doesn't really have any deffrollas on his battle wagons. With the new vehicle conversion contest coming up he aimed to fix this problem good and propa! There's one thing you should all know about him first though... He loves looting them Tau! Their Drones make such good hats! And when the meks start tinkerin the sparks start flyin! He is planning to come over early today and finish up his Tesla coil linkage for his ZZzzAaPPp Rolla and add even more DAKKA. Sadly, our tanks may never be safe again....

Games Day Tables Are Done Boss, Well Mostly

As the title says our games day event tables are 99% done. I got the urge to slap an led onto our ash wastes arena at the last minute when I found my old electrical engineering junk form college. Making the tables have been a blast and it was the first time I tried a lot of the things I've read in white dwarfs and blogs over the past months.


First up is the ash wastes / lava table.  The plan here was to have a bridge over some lava. It's a deep concept, I know.


This is the most vertical of our three arenas and characters that can quickly move will have a great advantage closing with the enemy. Our event is largely about getting or denying the charge and on this map a jump pack will allow for fast assaults without allowing the enemy to shoot during the approach.

 If your kitted out for a fire fight there is still plenty of cover up top though, if your scared...












TQ just sent me the pics of his ice table last night. You guys don't know how much suspense he kept me in over the last few days. TQ telling me that it was looking awesome and coming together well, but he never let us see till the very end. I wasn't surprised that it looked great when I finally got to see it. TQ is THE MAN when it comes to building scenery and all!

This table was planned out and scrapped about three or four times before TQ told me he was working on it. This table originally was gonna have frozen rivers, then mountain valleys, then a post earthquake glacial shelf. Finally one of us brought up the cool spikes coming out of the ground in Dawn Of War 2 : Chaos Rising and the Sons of Hodir town from World Of Warcraft. After saying that would be cool we went home and that was the last we talked of it.



Clearly the Ice table will require the most finesse during the approach. With plenty of open fire lanes and abundant cover to jump to around the edges this could be a shooters dream.  I would hate to be facing down a Blood Angels librarian with wings and lance on this table, or a Tau crises commander with long range weapons...

Finally, here is the first table again. The arena has plenty of center  cover and abundant room to maneuver all around it. With lots of tight fire lanes it could be both a blessing and a curse to whatever type of warrior you bring. Difficult terrain abounds with all the different elevations and the dice are always spiteful....

Be careful lest you end up like this guy....













Or him...




From foam to final it was a blast to these "mini tables" and I hope every one stops by to give our games day event a try. It was designed to be short and sweet so you can get back to pillaging the conversion contest before the terminator parts are all gone...

Tau, Now With Human Auxilliries In The Box

So Deffrolla Dan came by last night with a box of fire warriors to use as slaves on his looted wagon. He was all set to use a couple of them and sell the rest to my brother Jordan. Until he opened the box and found eight fire warriors and five cadian shock troops in the box that is. After the initial "WHAT!" moment he decided getting five guardsmen was a net increase of one model and was happy about it, but seriously, how do two fire warrior sprues and a cadian sprue get mixed up like that?

After that Dan worked on his wagon a little more and it's turning out to be really orky looking... in a looted tau sorta way...

I got the elmer's glue and sand put on my last games day arena and will hopefully get it mostly painted up tonight.

Waiting for watered down glue to dry in cracks takes forever.....

The Internet Is For Khorne!

The first of our club's Games Day arenas is ready for some blood shed! The original idea behind our clubs event was to have a colosseum of some sorts where two mighty heroes could duke it out. Knowing that we absolutely had to have this battle ground from the get go made building it a lot easier. After weeks of agonizing over how to actually build it the old "how to make a ziggurat tutorial" came to mind. A few days of foam cutting and sand sprinkling later we had this. It looked good and would soon be  ready for some paint!

After the glue finally dried two days later it was quickly painted up to this after a couple of nights.

Now at 2AM hand painting a giant symbol of the blood god sounded like a great idea. I could paint a few straight lines and be finished! The next day when my wife went down to see what kept me up till the wee hours reality set in. She told me it looked like crap and took  the liberty of putting the first coat of brown paint back on it before I could try to convince her otherwise.

Hind sight is always 20/20 and once again it proved true. After printing out a symbol and cutting it out I gave it a good splattering of GW Red Ink. My brother in law who never finishes painting his models used this on his old great unclean one and it looked pretty good, except for the fact that he covered his golden demon worthy model in tiny red dots. Luckily, my plan worked a little better.










Happy with my test results I masked off the area and put the stencil in place. Once the blood started to fly everything looked like it was going according to plan. That is until I lifted my hand to admire a job well done and realized that a drip of ink had fallen into the corner of the symbol. After my initial "OH CRAP" moment I realized it made more sense this way. If someone were to be gutted on the spot there would be a large puddle of blood with spray leading away from it. It would be perfectly logical if blood offered in the name of Khorne were to just happen to land in the shape of the blood gods emblem! This subtle symbolism was just what I was hoping for!

Here is a shot of the final paint job. I'm debating whether or not to mark out deployment zones. Next time everyone gets together for paint night well have to talk it over.

Every One Is Painting! How Can That Be?

Just like the title implies, a lot of paint has been applied lately. Since moving in with me a little over a month ago, my brothers Jordan and Jon have been painting up a storm. Jordan having nearly completed all of his ork horde went back to his original army, the Tau. Originally his army was a horrendous blend of red base coat with black spammed all over that made me regret buying him models. After the GW washes were released I introduced him to Devlan Mud and the foundation paints and suddenly he felt that he could paint a mini. After painting his two squads of fire warriors he stopped and moved on to orks, but now hes decided its time to give the tau some love again.

He calls them the grapes, because they get squished a lot.

Jon has been all over the place with his painting. Between CSM, Tyranids, and Blood Angels he hasn't finished a single squad but, he has finished quite a few models between them all.
What has impressed me the most so far is his new death company. Hes been taking his time and trying to become a better painter and it really shows. We also finally put together his winged hive tyrant and it came out looking sweet!

A year ago this kid built his models with gorilla glue....

Ready for some NOMS!

My little boy even got in on the action! Since so many people have been painting lately it was inevitable that he would want to paint mans too! He already loves dice, so the circle is now complete! 

Finally, on to me. Between games day prep and my first commission Ive been super busy lately. I'm currently about 30% through a 1500 point sisters of battle army for Kung Fu Joe. It was his first 40k army and like many people he never put any paint on it. His only instructions were ,"Our Martyred Lady colors" so with that I set off. Finding time to paint has been hectic over the last month but after a few nights I got a good three and a half squads worth of models finished.

Ready to PURGE!

I was really hoping to have the whole army done by now but life decided to kick our butts last month. Since life gave me lemons...BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

Way back when I posted asking about how to get a club table spot at games day and when the time came I submitted our idea right away.

Skulls for the Skull Throne!
Club: PBL Players
Models you can bring: 40K Independent Character - 200 points or less
In the spirit of Justicar Alaric's battles in the Khorne dedicated arenas of Drakaasi, bring your favorite Independent Character of 200 points or less and prepare to battle it out in gladiatorial arenas from across the galaxy. The winner of each duel will continue to face new challengers until they are slain. Those with the longest winning streaks will get prizes!

This afternoon I finished building the first arena with some help from Jon. My loving wife totally ruined my plans to paint it by suggesting a better color scheme. Depending on how motivated I get tomorrow it may or may not get painted. TQ is supposedly almost finished building our Ice world themed board and after that we will most likely join forces to build the last one.

I guess that's enough rant for this installment. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get our first game of fantasy uploaded so people can tell us what we did wrong!