List Building: Eldar 1,500 Points

I partially broke my ban on buying more minis and added ever so slightly to my small Eldar collection. My self justification was that I found a good deal on weapons platforms, but then had more platforms than guardian squads, so had to pick up the bits to make another 10 defenders. I certainly paid less than I would have to add one of the new kits, but the new kits would have been cooler. And then I won an Avatar auction for cheap. Oh well.

Anyway, with us deciding that our 3-player free for all game would be at 1,500 points, I figured I should come up with a 1,500 point list for the Eldar if I want to use them.

Tau XV8 Finecast Commander Review and Conversion

In my continued mission to assemble an entire 2000pt Tau force before the 29th of June, I opened up my new finecast Tau Commander for assembly.

This guy is a refreshing update to the XV8 chassis.  The arms and legs have been elongated and the posing is dynamic.  With how good this guy looks he has the negative side effect of making your existing XV8's look even more dated.  The bigger drawback of this model is that it is finecast - limiting the pose unless you are willing to undertake a substantial conversion.    It also introduces all the potential flaws associated with finecast - mold shift (where two parts of the mold haven't been lined up perfectly), bubbles, wonky straight lines, etc.  With a model made up of primarily straight lines - this can be worrisome.  In terms of finecast quality, the commander I received was all right...literally - it had two right legs and no left....

Gaming Weekend II: Three Player Battle

When discussing plans for our upcoming Gaming Weekend at the end of the month, we realized we might have some difficulty coming up with the "smaller" game. Last time we ended up doing a 2v2 match with our friend John. This time, John will be out of town on our appointed weekend, and we don't really want to play one-on-one games leaving an odd man out. While our Big Game might end up being 2 on 1, like last time, we all would like a chance to run our own armies and be on our own. Leaving us with a conundrum since Warhammer isn't exactly designed to be three player without alliances. 

Twin Linked Dual Devourers for a Flying Hive Tyrant

Hey guys!  Ron here again with my first Tyranid post.  Tyranids are my main army, and my favorite mini for them has to be the flying hive tyrant (flyrant in nerdspeak).

As anyone who has fielded one of these can tell you - the most popular weapons configuration in 6th edition is two sets of twin linked devourers.  Now this presents a conundrum - the hive tyrant box doesn't come with ANY devourers.  You could use the one set of monstrous creature size devourer arms that comes in the Carnifex set - but you will quickly realize that after assembling the flying tyrant with wings and legs - you only have room for one set of devourers.  The answer to this problem is the subject of this post - making your own TL dual devourers.  Evan has shown you one way to do it on the blog (which look great and can be found here: Evan's TL devourers).  Below is my take:

Gearing Up for Another Gaming Weekend

After going into hiding for a few weeks after a Hellacious beat-down at the hands of Evan, Ron, and both of them at the same time, I have come back just in time to prepare for Orks, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Tau, and whatever other armies we can pull together for a battle royal.  Just as the post title suggests, I am staring down at a box of models that need assembly and painting, at a loss of where to start.  I have a few new models, a few models that need a good painting, and I have a few models that need LEDs.  Luckily I was given direction by Ron and Evan; I have decided to help with the Greater Good and assemble and paint all of my Tau models so we can have a mighty force.  Currently I have 3 Tau Crisis Suits, 2 Stealth Suits, a Sniper Drone Team, and a Group of Pathfinders.

Airbrushing: Starting to Get the Hang of It

It's been nearly a month since my last Airbrushing post and I finally broke out the airbrush again. Right now I think my biggest obstacle to getting more comfortable with airbrushing is just a reluctance to use it. As with any new process, the steps required go pretty slowly the first few times until it becomes routine. The time consuming prospect of working on just the basics always gave me the excuse of "I don't have time" when I considered doing some airbrush work.

Honestly, what helped me get over the hump was watching videos on some of the basics over and over until I felt a little more comfortable. In particular, I liked the series of quick tip videos from Les at AwesomePaintJob.com. Once I had the motivation, it was time to actually try my hand.

Wolf Works: Orks Take to the Sky

I have to say that so far, out of all of the models that I have lit up, the most incredible one is the Dakka Jet for Evan’s Orks.  It has a lot of Orky goodness in it, and all of the lights add to that feel.  The whole setup is internal within the fuselage.  It is run off of a 9V battery with a total of 3 true LEDs and a switch that has an LED when it is in the on position. Below I will talk about my process for bringing this beast to light.