Adeptus Mechanicus - Telepathica Emancipator Painted

Continuing on the path of clearing out the to-be-painted shelves, I'm often surprised how many half-completed projects I've gathered over the years. There's plenty to keep me occupied! I grabbed a few models off the Ad-Mech shelf, and I have to say it was nice to work on the Scions of Mars once again!

This go-around brought the Telepathica Emancipator to the painting desk. This is the Mechanicum's answer to the need for Psychic offense and defense, and consists of a Psi-Emancipator Carriage containing a shackled psyker, and a Telepathica Tech Priest who carries a Null Rod in case the shackled psyker's powers prove dangerous or recalcitrant.

Per the Tempus Fugitives Codex: Cult Mechanicus listing: "The Emancipator Carriage has a Psyker Mastery level of 1 and may generate powers from any of the following disciplines: Pyromancy; Telekinesis or Telepathy. Furthermore, the design of the Emancipator Carriage can tap the Psyker contained within for further power. Before the battle additional Mastery Levels can be gained. Each level gained in this way reduces the Emancipator’s Leadership value by 1. When using Psychic Powers, any Blessings that target the Psyker must instead be conferred to another friendly model within 12”." Though I have yet to field this model in an actual game, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how it works out!

I also got started blocking in the colors on the Sagittarii - the heavy weapons teams of the Ad-Mech. They are described numerous ways in the various editions of the Ad-Mech codexes I've seen, but I decided to go with a controller and spider-bot theme, as that matches the aesthetic of the Arch Magos and the Myrmidae Centurius I've built for the army thus far. Looking forward to getting these guys finished up - then it's either on to painting up a mess of Skitarii, or perhaps something totally different! There's units from half a dozen different armies to work on, which means I can change gears entirely and paint whatever happens to catch my interest at the time. That should help keep me churning out the models!

Imperial Guard - Penitents Squad from Victoria Lamb painted

Managed to get a bit of brush time in over the last couple days, and I've started the process by casting my eye over the primered minis waiting patiently on the 'to-be-painted' shelves. I've felt as though I'd been neglecting the Guard a bit, so I dusted off a unit of Penitents that I'd ordered from Victoria Lamb nearly 6 months ago and got stuck in!

Absolutely lovely miniatures, they're a good mix of poses and the lasrifles really look neat. The selection of heads is great as well, there's some really well done sculpts. I especially like the bomb collars, and the one guy with the Hannibal Lecter mask. I went with hazard orange jumpsuits, and gave the sergeant the 'standard' dark blue fatigues that the rest of the Mordian 7th wears. Easy peasy!

Another nice touch on the rear torsos are number plates for identification of each penitent (numbers written in with a 0.05 micron pen), and a few of them bear evidence of a recent whipping, which is a nice touch. All in all I'm really rather pleased with how this unit turned out, and am looking forward to trying them out on the table.

MERCS - FCC team painted

Warning! Brace yourself for some non-40k related hobby content. The horror... The horror...

So as I alluded to in my last post, my local gaming group has been discussing trying out a couple new game systems what with all the Kickstarters and whatnot we've gone in on. Sedition Wars, Zombicide, OGRE and more have all been looked over, discussed and played over the last few months. In addition, the fellow who organized the Tempus Fugitives Age of the Emperor events has been heavily involved in doing some video blogs for Tabletop Nation which got us interested in trying out the skirmish game MERCS.

We'd ordered up a couple rulebooks and some starter sets from our FLGS but unfortunately the stockist they order from only has spotty inventory on the MERCS stuff. For now all that has arrived is the FCC faction box, but I figured that there was no reason not to get to painting! The FCC are a sort of violent protestor group that disagrees with the ways and methods of the MegaCorporations, and undertake missions to stop the evil/greedy MegaCons from doing whatever horrible injustice they happen to be up to at the moment. I'm envisioning my group as a sort of "Earth First on Steroids" team, which I've dubbed the Boulder People's Liberation Front or BPLF. (Not to be confused withe the People's Liberation front of Boulder - those splitters!) In homage to old Boulderite fashion I used a peace symbol as their unit demarcation. I'm thinking I ought to go back in and give a couple of them a little tie-dye or hippie flower here and there as well, for a little splash of color.

One of the conceits of the game (apparently, as I have yet to get my hands on the proper printed rulebook) is that in general there are only ever 5 models per side, and it takes place on a 2'x3' playing area, so the scale of it is quite the change from the sprawling 6'x8' tables and dozens if not hundreds of miniatures common to our games of 40k. It was quite fun to bash out "an entire army" in an afternoon! I did want to stick a little closer to a 'realistic' color palette for these, khaki and olive drabs were the order of the day as the FCC are more of a revolutionary/militia unit. The more technologically advanced factions with their power armor and laser cannons may get some more unusual colors - for now though I'm pretty pleased with the overall look (though I do need to get some parchment paper diffusers over my lamps, the models really aren't this shiny!).

 

First up is the leader, or Housemaster, of the FCC. Right out of the gate the difference in sculpting style became apparent - unlike the 'heroic-style' miniatures I'm used to painting, these minis have much more natural proportions. No giant heads and 6' rifles! When I first started putting them together they really looked disproportionate, but now that I've had time to come to terms with them, they actually do look far more natural and realistic!

 

Next up is the Liaison model. The FCC are unusual in they can 'recruit' a handful of members from other factions to fight alongside them for a battle. When this is done, the Liaison allows the allied 'Black Ops' members to more fully utilize their abilities - it is mentioned that the Black Ops members are generally lower-ranking/less experienced faction members, and as such they do not get the full panoply of skills and abilities. Having a Liaison means that some (but not all) of the lost skills and abilities are made available.

 

The Boomer is the 'heavy weapons' member of the FCC, and carries a grenade launcher which is apparently a rather nasty weapon in-game. Particularly fun is the opportunity for the Boomer to utilize any grenade type that happens to be carried by a Black Ops ally and optionally fire them instead of his usual Frag grenades!

 

The Packrat is a combination Medic/Mechanic, unusual in his ability to both treat wounded models and repair damaged equipment. I fear it's a bit of an "eggs all in one basket" model though, and he'll likely take an inordinate amount of fire - will definitely be attempting to keep him out of harm's way as much as possible...

 

The Chem Engineer seems fairly unpleasant - he fires irradiated ammo which weakens targets, and can lob toxin grenades which slow and damage targets as well. Definitely seems like he's in a 'denial' role, though it remains to be seen how he works in the field.

 

Last up is the Housemember, who is a fairly basic grunt. I don't see that he's much more than filler and will likely be the one left on the sidelines when choosing which 5 models will participate in a given scenario. Still, I quite like the model with its boonie hat, handlebar mustache and bionic eye.

You may have noticed the white marks on the bases, that is for facing and flanking which apparently plays a big part in the rules. It's easier/more deadly to shoot someone in the flank or rear, so it's important to denote the fire arcs and such. To that end, I ended up adding a bit more to the base rims after I'd taken the first batch of pics, with a green and red dot denoting front and rear arcs and yellow to denote the flanks. I think it'll work out quite well - now if only the rest of the order would arrive so we could actually try out a game!

Good news/bad news, and thoughts on the future of the hobby for me

On the up side, I didn't get laid off this week. On the down side, I am getting laid off in a few months. Not a bad thing overall, I've been with the company for going on 8 years so I'm looking at it as an opportunity to do something new and interesting. Gotta stay positive!

However, that has caused me to do some serious pondering about the future of the hobby for me over the next year. It's put the kibosh on my plans to attend Adepticon this year which I'm pretty bummed out about, and to be honest until such time as I find a new job, I cannot afford to pour any more money into the hobby (every extraneous penny needs to go into savings, just in case). There will be no new purchases for me for a while - In point of fact I'm resigning myself to selling off a great deal of my collection to help build up a bit of a buffer just in case the job search takes longer than I'm hoping it will. Expect to see some blatant self advertising over the next couple months as I get things organized!

Does this mean I'm going to quit hobbying altogether? Heck no. There's boxes upon boxes of stuff in the Closet of Doom, enough to keep me occupied for the next several years, and the painting shelves are still chock full of half completed projects that are crying out for attention - such as Leviathan Crusader which has gotten the first lick of paint recently. I am also awaiting a few Kickstarter rewards to arrive over the next few months, with OGRE and the Bug Hunt Corridors scheduled to arrive in the July timeframe (which means I can still feel like I'm getting some 'new' stuff from time to time). I've been turning my attention back to the Ad-Mech as well, with a couple kits getting the initial reds laid down on them as shown below. There's always more guard to work on too, as well as a half dozen other half-baked projects. It's not like I'm going to run out of hobby stuff any time soon!

 

A buddy of mine and I have also been discussing trying out some new game systems with an eye for gaming on a budget. Even as fully fledged working adults, GW's price schemes have really gone beyond tenable. We're planning on giving Mercs a try (assuming the stuff that we ordered a month or so ago ever arrives), where the cost for entry into the system is less than a hundred bucks, rulebook and all the minis you need inclusive. It seems like a fun system and I like the idea of doing some squad level/necromunda style gaming for a while.

So, over the next few months I'm hoping to actually get some old projects finished up, and you can expect to see some further (gasp) non-40k content on here in the future. Heresy!

Dark Angels - Last of the Terminators and Whirlwind complete

Howdy folks, long time, no post. Real Life(tm) has been an absolute bear of late, with work and to a lesser extent the band eating up nearly all of my time. Coupled with the stress of an impending layoff I haven't really been feeling my hobby mojo and so there hasn't been much going on worth posting about. However, this past Saturday I ended up getting snowed in and had a free day so I dusted off the paints and got stuck in on the last of the Dark Angels.

First up is the unit of Deathwing Knights. I really dig these models, but their rules on the tabletop seemed a bit lackluster so they've been languishing on the to-be-painted shelf. I really like the addition of the little Watcher in the Dark!

Next up is the Deathwing Command Squad. Not much to say here, I used one of the left-over Knight torsos for the company champion, but otherwise they're pretty straightforward. I did enjoy painting the banner, it looks a little washed out in this pic unfortunately. Still getting the hang of the new picture taking setup...

  

Lastly, the cheap-as-chips Whirlwind. In the DA codex, it's taken a significant price cut, so it's almost an auto-include at this point for some extra anti-horde firepower.

With these done, the army is now completely painted! I'll try and find some time to drag them all out and get an army shot taken. Unfortunately, they're all going to be going up on eBay soon - as I alluded to earlier, there's a fair chance that I'm going to be getting laid off at the end of the week, if that proves to be the case expect to see a fair bit of stuff going up on the auction block over the next month or so. Not ideal, but mortgages much come before miniatures...