Blindwater: Primed and Ready to Rumble (In the Jungle?)

First! ...let's get these fucking dust bunnies and spiderwebs out of here, shoo! shoo! *coughcough*
There...

Giving grief to all shooting armies since 2010

Been down with the sickness (oh-wah-ah-ah), another cold and sinusitis as a nice followup to my summer flu, and I prioritized lying on the couch, rubbing my belly, eating candy, and coughing my lungs out.
In other words: Sorry for another break in the flow of posts.

I have played my first few games of Warmahordes with my Gatormen, and so far I really like it, while I'm still learning, I feel that the game has sunk its big claws into me.

The good thing about playing is that it makes me really want to paint them too!

"I swear, this wide!"

Got my 15pts list built and primed, using black with white dusting to create a good contrast (alligators having pale bellies, making a zenithal basecoat kinda tricky to pull off.)

Oh, and my list is:
Bloody Barnabas
Bull Snapper
Gatormen Posse (full)
Blackhide Wrastler
15pts

Now that the party is jumping
With the bass kicked in and the vegas are pumpin'
Quick to the point to the point no faking
I'm cooking MC's like a pound of bacon ~ Warrior Poet V. Ice

Merc Mariner WIP Part 2 / The future of PX40k

The deadline for the contest draws near, and I only have a few hours available to finish it. She won't be pretty but I think it will be alright. It's surprisingly hard to paint with fever shakes though, can't shake this summer cold when I can't afford to stay home from work. [Nooo whining! -ed.]

"With a bisquit on the side like fucking tomb stone"

I think I will have to go heavier on the verdigris, otherwise it's turning out quite as planned, not entirely at home with the chipping technique yet, will try another on the arms.
To do : Raw iron/steel surfaces, details, weathering and basing.
I bought some 1mm balsa wood for plank decking on the base, will do a step by step on that at a later date, 'promise!

The other thing I wanted to bring up was the sad lack of updates lately. We are not going away, nor are we on hiatus. Both me and Pixel have just started new jobs, with all that entails. PX40k will be increasing both quality and output when things have stabilized and all spare time isn't taken up by coma like sleep or teething babies. I can say that there is good stuff going on behind the scenes though, but I don't want to jinx anything yet!

Quick Impressions: Dwarf Kings Hold: Dead Rising

I got me my first Mantic product from Wayland today (yay free shipping week!). I liked the thought of something casual and very different from my usual stuff. I usually loathe the classic fantasy setting, but eh, for £31 I might as well give it a try.

The rather flimsy box comes with Dwarves in regular grey plastic, and skeletons appropriately comes in white plastic. The figures seem to be from the regular Kings of War kit, just white instead. I must say that the sprues look very nice, lots of small extra bitz (yes, the dog is awesome), though I would hesitate to get an entire army of these, they are "quick fit" and thusly quite monopose.

The tiles and markers is made of quite thin cardboard, though the backside is slightly reinforced with a plastic coating. Nice color print, but I already see a tendency for the cardboard to fray. I had hoped for the cardboard parts to be embossed, but again, for the price, very high value.

I haven't tried to play yet, but I can say that the rulebook is black and white print on stapled shiny paper, nothing fancy, but it does the job. I wish they would release the rules as a PDF like they did for Kings of War, having it on a smartphone or similar is nice, and if they are somehow destroyed you could just print a new copy.

Rawr

No fancy unboxing pictures to show, there's quite a few of them around the web if you are interested. I will do a Part 2 of this when Pixel and I have played a few games, our upcoming Board Game series will feature this and other games from the more casual side of things.

Hopes and Ideas for next CSM book

With the new Grey Knights codex being released in a few weeks, The heady smell of cheddar got me thinking about CSMs next codex. I feel pretty hopeful now that Cavatore has quit, Gav writes for Black Library and Jervis Johnson doesn't do much at all..

It's seems like GW has stepped away from the ultra slimmed codices that was released around 06-07 (DA, CSM, Orks) and they at least try to bring more flavour to the game, with some success, though it is kinda blunt sometimes (I'm looking at you, Mat Ward).
In terms of gameplay, the current codex is not horribly underpowered, but the power creep has left many players wanting. My gripe with the book, besides some points I will adress, is the extreme lack of flavour and options. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but all the daemons in the book are so "meh". It feels like they where trying to give the Chaos Daemons codex a boost by making them so bland here.

On the bench: The slow orks...

Slowly getting done... slowly. Left ork is ”done”. 

Time for another post telling you guys that work is crazy. Really no time to do anything but work and then read some Black Library stuff. Every now and then I have an hour or so to put paint on some orks. And this is how far I've progressed in... three weeks?

”But PX, what are you working with? Why is it taking so much time off your hands?” 
My official title is typographer. It's basically like being a graphic designer but with focus on type / layout.

So right now I'm working with a -huge- bank making sure all their documents and forms (and let me tell you, it's a crazy amount of documents!) can be considered within the boundaries of good typography, while working with their new brand design AND readability. Both for the machines that read and make them, and the people they're actually made for. And on top of that I'm working with a up and coming book publisher based in N.Y. (time difference is a b*tch), a film production agency and a major retailer of outdoors equipment.

So my day is usually Waking up. Checking mail from N.Y. Sending mail. Working my ass off. Dinner. Talk to New York. Do some stuff for the bank that's supposedly due ”yesterday” and then take a couple of sleeping pills and go to sleep.

I love it though. But sometimes I wish I had more time for 40K.

Today I had a ton of time, since I'm having a cold, again. So I painted up some orks (and spent some time playing the World of Tanks beta). I'm trying out a new technique. Instead of just priming them black and then painting like usual I do a quick zenital highlight on top of the black primer. Using my airbrush I add three to four layers of white and then block in the basic colours with really thinned paint. More glaze-like than paint-like. Usually one part paint to two parts of "gunk".

What this does is creating the basic highlights while I apply the basecoats. All that's needed after that is a thin wash and some line highlights and the area is done. Way quicker than first blocking in the basecoat, washing it, and then building up shadows and highlights.

And you also bypass that depressing part when you have painted the basecoats on your squad for three days straight, and they still look completely flat and uninteresting. I really hate that part of painting. It's not until I've added some washes that I feel good about the figures/the painting again.


I also added myself to the list of participants of an aporkalypse game in November. So I just had to buy myself a Stompa and some other stuff. More about that later (when the panic sets in :)). I have absolutely no idea of how long it takes to paint a Stompa to an acceptable level. But hopefully I can get it up to tabletop standard pretty quick and then work on it some more after the game.