Painting Dillemas, RPG Development Dillemas

Well, I have been painting multiple things at once: Some clanrats which are turning out quite decent, some striking scorpions which are turning out OK, and working on the new painting techniques for my Necrons which, in my head at least, will look awesome.

Now, the clanrats, when I actually do get a chance to work on them, are progressing suprisingly quickly considering how much detail and work I am putting into them. I am pulling a lot of stops, shading and highlighting each one individually and creating some neat effects on some so that they stand out a bit from your normal horde of clanrats. However, now that I am putting that kind of work into individual models now the rest of my models seem to be falling short in my eyes. The striking scorpions, which started with just simple highlights, look suprisingly dull next to those clanrats. I am hoping to make up for it with some fantastic swamp basing, we will see what happens.

As for my RPG's, I have recently came across a dillema regarding warhammer heroes: should I use the system for my own tabletop wargame? I could put all that work into it and never really get anything out of it. I am sure others have had the idea to propose a new way to expand 40k in the past and I have never really heard of anyone getting through to them. Also, I am debating on if I want to go to school to learn to program the online RPG or if I should hire someone to do it after I get a high paying job.

As with all life problems, I am sure I will come up with a solution!

Two Major Announcements

Well, I think it is high time I got back to the internet life and back to my plans for the future. That said I have two major projects to announce which will probably excite anyone who bothers to read this.

The first project is called Warhammer Heroes. The general idea behind this is that you can take a single hero, squad, or both and customize them to your liking, making them stronger and more personalized than you can in a normal codex entry. After you are done with that you take your favorite heroes (or villains,) and put them up against serious challenges. There is a large story focus to this although you don't have to use it if you don't want to. I have playtested this with two friends who thoroughly enjoyed it, even wanting to play Heroes over a regular game of Warhammer 40K. Their input on this project has me very motivated to get a rough copy done and sent to GW for consideration, and while I doubt they will publish it I hope they at least look at it and provide some input.

The second project I have is a lot more involved. In short, it is an online version of a pen and paper RPG, with many web elements to help players role play. A large focus is going to be put into making the gaming experience easy to learn and fast to get started. It will also be a faster-paced role playing system than most are used to. I am thoroughly excited by this project and hope to get started on it once I get my own computer. I allready have a notebook which is quickly filling with notes and a rough outline of what I want to accomplish with this system. Unlike other online systems out there this will be a GUI based system rather than a text based system which will probably run on either flash or PHP. It is also my hope to make the system modular, so that you can add or remove elements (such as limb damage, for example,) to make the game play the way you wish.

I have been talking to a friend of mine about the web-based system and he seems excited by it.  He has been helping me brainstorm ideas for it and as it turns out he is a very talented artist. Take a look at his portfolio on www.elevenstonestudios.com if you are interested. I may ask him to do some art for the monsters, of which I am hoping to have 100 original monsters, and possibly add in some of the normal monsters you see in a fantasy setting.

Do keep following this blog to learn about how both these projects develop!

Recent Trade

Well, sadly I no longer have my Space Wolves.

I haven't given up on them or anything, but someone offered me a deal I couldn't pass up. The deal was basically 2 fantasy armies for one 40k army. I have acquired Skaven and Warriors of Chaos, the Skaven army in particular being almost 3000 points worth of stuff. The WOC is currently at just over 2000. There are a few items I need for each in order to field an army I would want to field, but overall I am very happy with my trade.

Skaven: 

• 60 Clanrats
• 40 Plague Monks
• 40 Stormvermin
• 2 Doomwheels
• 1 Plague Furnace
• 1 Screaming Bell
• 2 Rat Ogres
• 1 old Plague Priest
• What looks to be a unit of mostly unassembled Gutter Runners. (I can see why people don't like the models)
• 16 Globadiers

To complete this army fully I want:

• 2 Ratling Teams
• 5 Jezzail Teams
• 2 Warp Lightning Cannons
• 1 Abomination
• Skrolk

Now on to Warriors of Chaos:

• 36 Warriors
• 20 Maruaders (Not likely going to use)
• 5 Maruader Horsemen (Again, not likely I'm going to use them)
• 6 Chaos Knights
• 1 Lord on Juggernaught
• 1 Old Metal Daemon Prince whom you can't easily get anymore (Name escapes me, love the model)
• 1 Lord on Foot
• 10? Chosen (Have not received yet)

In order to complete my list I want a Hellcannon.

My Skaven are going to be Clan Pestilens, so I need Skrolk as well. I have an extra plague priest from the bell which will work in the meantime. The center of the army is of course the Furnace :) In large point games I will throw a Bell in there as well.

My Warriors of Chaos are going to be a mixed lot, only Chaos God I won't represent is Tzeentch. I hate Tzeentch. The army will be centered around Warriors and Knights.

Current Project List

 (This is mainly copied and pasted from a post I made on Warseer)

I am a modeler/painter who plays a game or two once a week. I have a semi-large collection of models that.....aren't getting done very fast.

Its not that I don't work on them. I spend part of a day or so every week trying to get these done. Some of you may say this is enough. In all honesty it has been up until this point. I promised myself I would take the laid-back approach to this hobby and not worry too much about it, but one of my problems is that whatever I tend to go at, I tend to try to give my utmost. This goes for everything, (save video games, which I seem to have cured myself of this,) from writing to work to even cleaning the house.

I say this because, of late, I have been very dissatisfied with how slowly my vision of what my armies will look like on the table-top are coming to pass. I can proudly say that one army is mostly finished (Necrons, the love of my "gaming life" for this hobby) but even they are leaving me dissatisfied, for I get new visions of how they would look so much better.....in NMM, something I have been practicing of late and happily getting better at.

I have also been getting the strong urge lately to make scratch-build projects and sell them online. I realize there are many such people around, and that whatever I come up with will likely not be very successful. I believe I have an advantage, however, in that I seem to be able to find niches to fill in whatever I do. I can come up with new ideas or better old ones, and I believe this will give me an edge.

Thus the purpose of this thread is to make an attempt at a steady flow of models getting done, as well as scratch-build projects. Progress may be slow at first. I am hoping that some people can find my work interesting and help push me through with a bit of support.

Here is what I have that is *done* or close enough to being done to be happy with it, apoligies for how scattered it is, I will orginize it in later posts.

• 1 Bloodletter
• 2 Chaos Berserkers of Khorne (Bases need to be done)
• 1 Chaos Terminator Lord (Base needs finishing)
• 5 Space Wolf Blood Claws (need basing)
• 5 Space Wolf Wolf Guard with Jumppacks and Lightning claws. (need to finish basing a few of them.)
• 1 Space wolf Dread
• Njal Stormcaller (possible re-do, will ask your guy's opinion)
• A few Black Reach Ork Boys
• 2 Striking Scorpions (needs basing)
• 1 Dark Reaper (Needs basing)

Here are things that are finished (completely) but that I want to re-do:

• 4 Necron Lords
• 60 Necron Warriors
• 6 Necron destroyers
• 2 Necron Heavy Destroyers
• 1 Necron Tomb Spider
• 5 Necron Immortals
• 10 Necron Flayed Ones
• 10 (Older metal) Scarab Swarms
• 1 heavily converted Destroyer Lord
• 1 Monolith
• 1 Forge World Necron Pylon
• 1 Chaos Rhino (not happy with the patterning!)
• 1 Terminator Chaplain (Which marine army is largely undecided

Here are things that I started and need to finish:

• 1 Defiler
• 1 Soul Grinder (This is looking especially Nice IMHO)
• 1 Space Wolf Rhino/Razorback (almost done!)
• The rest of the 15 or so Blood Claws
• 30 or so Grey Hunters
• 2 Wolf Priests converted from SW bits and Legion of The Damned Models (Painting and basing only, very happy with how they are looking!)
• 15 or so Fenrisian Wolves made from the Dire Wolf Set and furred up with Green Stuff.
• 1 Killa Khan
• 1 Ork Battlewagon
• The rest of my Black Reach Ork Boys (I don't care about these so much, I have a Mek Ork Army)
• 1 Tower of Skulls (Need to buy Kits and finish building it - Currently only Tank made and partially painted)
• 2 Doomsday Monoliths (need to finish these separate scratch-build projects, each is different)
• 1 Ork Mek with Shock Attack Gun (I love this guy! Not much more work on him now!)
• About 22 Khorne Berserkers
• The rest of my 40 or so Bloodletters (used spray gun on them for basecoating and washing, saving me much, much time!)
• 1 Space Wolf Drop Pod
• 1 Space Wolf Bastion

These are models I have yet to paint (they are, however, built)

• 2 Killa Khans (Love these!)
• 20 Dire Avengers
• 20 or so Guardians (won't use 'em, save them for a rainy day or trade)
• 4 more Striking Scorpions (Having read the Eldar Book, I LOVE striking Scorpions!)
• Full Squad of Fire Dragons + Pheonix Lord (LOVE these!)
• Full Squad of Warp Spiders (Love these too! Where is my WS Pheonix Lord though?)
• Rest of the Dark Reaper Squad plus Pheonix Lord (love these too)
• All of the Ork Nobs from black Reach (don't particularly care to use these)
• 6-9 Black Reach Defcoptas (love these)
• 1 Black Reach Warboss (may not use him)
• 5 Ork lootas (love these, need to fill the squad out at some point)
• 10 old metal Daemonettes
• 10 new plastic daemonettes (wish they were the old metal ones!)
• 1 Bloodthirster (He looks much better than any pic I have seen of him...)
• 1 herald on juggernaut (need to find the rest of the parts for him and put him together)
• 1 wave serpent
• 2 Eldar Weapon Platforms (probably won't use these)
• 1 Eldar Wraithlord (I don't like the weapons the guy put on it but it was a steal so.....)
• 5 scouts with sniper rifles
• 6 flamers of tzeentch
• More that I can't remember right now, will list as I come across them

Oh, BTW, that's just 40K :D

FANTASY

Done:

• 1 Dwarf Cannon (will re-do)
• 2 Dwarf Thunderers

Need to finish

• The rest of my 40 thunderers
• Need to take apart my warriors and give them all Great Weapons or make them crossbowmen (about 20 warriors)
• 1 Organ Gun
• 1 White Dwarf
• 1 Runepriest
• This army isn't completely bought yet and is in progress.
• Scrapped an entire Vampire-Counts starter box (90 dollar one) I don't like the way it plays.
• 1 Vlad Model (love the way it looks)

Now, on to planned projects.

Projects for friends:

• 1 Avatars of War Chaos Lord with Sword and Shield
• 1 Plague Furnace
• 1 Screaming Bell (I believe that is right?)
• 1 Forgefather Vulkan Hestan
• 2 Doomwheels
• 1 GK's Land Raider Reedeemer

Resin Kits I want to make:

1. Items in yellow can be done as moldable kits
2. Items without a highlight are likely too tough to make into a moldable kit. 
3.  Items in green are Superheavy/Titan projects which will hopefully yield a lot of money.
4. Items in Red MUST be one-offs-no reproductions!
5. Items in Red and with an asterisk MUST be one-offs and might be hard to do.*
6. Items in Blue are planned projects to make into limited kits once enough experience in Kit-making is gained.

• ·         Warlord Titan
• ·         Chaos Warlord Titan (No Alignment)
• ·         Eldar Bastion
• ·         Tau Bastion
• ·         Dark Eldar Bastion
• ·         Daemon Spire
• ·         Necron Tomb Entrance
• ·         Daemonic Portal
• ·         Banelord or Khorne
• ·         Emperor Battle Titan
• ·         Doomblaster of Khorne
• ·         Khorne Lord of Battles
• ·         Nurgle Plague Tower
• ·         Silver Tower of Tzeentch
• ·         Slaanesh Subjugator
• ·         Defense Laser
• ·         Ork Pulsa Rokkit
• ·         Tau Landing Pad
• ·         Eldar Landing Pad
• ·         Dark Eldar Landing Pad
• ·         Eldar Indomitable Fortress
• ·         Dark Eldar Indomitable Fortress
• ·         Tau Indomitable Fortress
• ·         Daemon Fortress
• ·         Awakened Necron Tomb
• ·         Ork Indomitable Fortress
• ·         Tyranid Hive
• ·         Tyranid Indomitable Hive
• ·         Simple Eldar Scenery
• ·         Simple Dark Eldar Scenery
• ·         Simple Daemon Scenery
• ·         Simple Tau Scenery
• ·         Simple Necron Scenery
• ·         Simple Tyranid Scenery
• ·         Simple Ork Scenery
• ·         Ruined Monolith
• ·         Crashed Wave-Serpent
• ·         Ruined Land Raider
• ·         Ruined Ork Trukk
• ·         Ork Looted Wagon (each one must be unique)
• ·         Crashed Tau Piranhas
• ·         Crashed Tau Hammerhead
• ·         Dead Hive Tyrant*
• ·         Crashed Dark Eldar Raider
• ·         Dead Bloodthirster*
• ·         Dead Lord of Change*
• ·         Dead Keeper of Secrets*
• ·         Dead Great Unclean One*
• ·         Abandoned Leman Russ
• ·         Necron Dawn of War Lord*
• ·         Pillboxes

SW Dread

Took me a long time to paint this dread, I'm rather happy with it, it fits my army theme quite well. Will be painting bore holes on the guns and making the shield a solid color but other than that what you see is what you get.

StormRaven - Thoughts on Conversion.

Having thought about getting into Blood Angels either in favor of Space Wolves or along with my current wolves army I have been giving thought as to how I would do a Stormraven drop ship. I have seen many conversions using landraiders and other such square tanks, I have also seen scratchbuilt ones, some good, and some bad. I have listened to people tell of how a Valkarie has a similair transport capacity. All of this ran through my head.

Looking at the options for a Stormraven, it seems to me the Stormraven would be bigger than a Valkarie, possibly Landraider size overall (although perhaps longer and thinner than a landraider.) It has 4 access points, two of wich can hold Hurricane Bolter sponsons. There are also 4 "Bloodstrike" missiles which seem similair in appearance and deployment to the missiles in the Valkarie kit.

The way I see it, there are two possible ways of doing this: combine a Valkarie with a razorback and add side sponsons of Hurricane Bolters, or use two Valkaries to make a Stormraven, addind a side sponson of hurricane bolters as well. The first option leaves much to be desired, the wings on the valkarie will seem ill-equiped to deal with the larger Stormraven, unless a second set is added, and there is little room for the 4 "Bloodstrike" missiles in areas that make sense. It would be easy to put the twin linked Lascannon or Plasma Cannons on the top of the razorback section or the ship, however. I won't go into detail on how I would do this, as it would likely be just as expensive as the second alternative yet not as aesthetically pleasing.

The second option came together very well in my mind, looking at the Valkarie Stage-By-Stage Assembly article on the GW website, it would be easy to do some simple cutting to lengthen the transport bay of the Valkarie. Likewise, the sections on the top, sides and bottom would be similairly easy to blend into the lengthened section with a little bit of work. Adding the wings to both sections should be a snap and would make the most sense for aesthetic purposes and having the model look like it makes sense. Four missiles from the Valkarie kit can be added for the "Bloodstrike" missiles, one under each wing or, two under the front two wings. You could put the Hurricane Bolters in one of the access points in the side - the doors look like the same size as the Landraider side sponson doors, though if not then it should be easy to convert it so that the parts fit. Alternatively you could hang the sponsons under the rear wings.  The Plasma Cannons or Lascannons could simply be placed where the lascannons currently are on the Valkarie Model, the kit comes with lascannons and it should be easy to kit out a Plasma Cannon to fit on each side. The alternative would be to kit the front of the model to have the weapon which would make the most sense, but would be harder to make look good.

To do all this, I will likely buy the bits from the numerous bits stores on the web, and just buy two valkaries, this endeavor would be quite exspensive, however.

Took this photo a while ago, it's blurry but gives a bit of an idea what my army looks like on the table, missing a few things here but will update my group photo when I have enough units to do so.

Had an objectives game with tyranids today, was my first time playing against the army and I found it rather enjoyable. With the new codex coming out I hope to see some of the new units that are coming with it.

Heavy destroyer time:

So, I have been thinking a lot about different armies and how fun it would be to play them. Considering I don't do much gaming outside of Warhammer40K anymore I have been considering doing several small 1000pt armies just as a side thing, once I get a bit more money. With Necrons rumored to be on the way I am going to hold off buying more of them and who knows when Chaos will come out.

The two biggest armies on my mind lately are Tau and Orks. Knowing that Bolter and Chainsword had a Fire Warrior Painter I went over to try a metallic blue theme I had been dying to try on necrons but thought would look good on tau as well:

Before this, I noticed they had an orc painter as well, albieght in a beta stage:

The ork Is a bit basic for my tastes but it gives a generall idea. I have always loved how fun orks looked to paint and hopefully I can figure out ways to make them unique as well. Perhaps the world needs more deep red orks.....

I finally managed to take some decent shots of my flayed ones. I plan on improving these guys over time and I will likely have 3 full sized squads for apocalypse. They will all have differing flesh tonnes for tau, DE, ect.