Astro Winnipeg 2012: After Action Report

I've always been of the opinion that what you do after a tournament is just as important as what you do to prepare for one initially. To give you an idea of what I mean, I'm going to give you a glimpse of what I do in my after action reports and how it helps me to prepare for future events.


First and foremost the results sheet:

Astro 2012 Results

As you can see I scored 9th overall, which is pretty decent considering.
Technically I tied for 7th given the points distribution (several ties in the top 10).
And I should be tied for 6th, because somehow the organizer lost my bonus 2 points for handing in my armylist on time, but there's no use in nitpicking since it wouldn't have won me anything anyway. ;)


So let me give you some examples of what I look at and why.

First of all a general word on how to win RTT style tournaments.

Although as organizers we don't like to use the term "Rogue Trader Tournament" anymore the fact is that the scoring for Mechani-kon and Astro are both loosely based on the original RTT system. That being said you are scored on not only your gameplay but your sportsmanship and appearance as well. Unlike in 'US style' tournaments Appearance and Sportsmanship play a significant portion of your overall score so you have to put alot of thought into it if you want to have a chance at winning.

From my experience as both a player and a tournament organizer I will tell you this:
- All you need to do is break into the top 10. You achieve this by bringing up your averages in all the categories. Typically you have to meet or beat the average in all categories.
- Once you've achieved that it very much is a craps shoot. You have zero control over what opponents you will face and what scenarios you will play. So with a bit of luck the stars will line up and you will have a good chance.
- But it doesn't hurt to setup as much in your favor as you can. ;)

Hard vs Soft Points
- Hard Points are those you have no control over, namely Gameplay and Sportsmanship. Soft Points are the ones that you can control, in the case of Astro that is appearance, your armylist and the bonus for handing in your armylist on time.
- The reason I say gameplay and sportsmanship are scores that you have no control over is because you have zero control over what opponent you will face and on what table. It is too unpredictable to be reliable.
- Once you are in the top ten 1-2 points can make all the difference so it's important to get your soft points as high as you possibly can.

I scored 33/40 for soft points total. Getting the extra 1 point for a 10/10 for army list is very difficult but it is possible. However there are a lot more points to gain for appearance.
Now appearance is a subjective thing, so if you want to significantly improve your score it's important that you talk with the tournament organizers to see what it is they look for. I asked them honestly what it was that I could do to improve my painting for next year and I got honest answers. Now I know what I have to work on.
I can also get another point fairly easily by building a nicer movement tray.

The law of averages
-I average out all the columns for all of the scores and compare myself to the average score. The way I look at it if you can not at least meet the average score in each category then that category is where you need to focus your effort.


In my case I scored above average in all categories, so I did quite well over all.


Compare yourself to the winner
- compare your individual (not total) results compared to the best overall.


In this case I had significantly higher Sportsmanship and Armylist and we had the same appearance score. It just goes to show how important your gameplay score is at Astro!

But knowing this I know that all I have to do is raise my gameplay score, and then by already having a lead in other categories I don't have to improve it by that much of a margin.


Where am I losing points?
- You need to think about every single category and ask yourself where am I bleeding points? Every point counts in the end and its important to try to get them all!

In my case I noticed I was getting very few of the bonus points at the end of missions.
The one that struck me consistently was losing points for letting my HQ and highest point unit die.
Given that my HQ and highest point unit are geared towards HtH it is very easy to sacrifice them.

So?

I need to play with a tougher HQ and unit

OR

Use my HQ and unit in a manner that doesn't condone sacrificing them. Like making them support units or more shooty.

OR

I need to change my tactics so that I don't feel the need to sacrifice them!

Astro Winnipeg 2012: Army Analysis

I feel its very important after a tournament to perform a post-con army analysis. It's important to review your choices in army selection to figure out what worked and what didn't.

The obvious thing to look at is the 'useless' factor. Did you have any units in your army that were useless the entire tournament? Or alternately did you have any units that were great in only a handful of games?

Next is the 'lacking' factor. Did you feel your army was significantly lacking in any particular area? Like anti-tank or assault punch or perhaps scoring units?

Lastly is the 'efficiency' factor. Is there any unit in your army that performs a role poorly, that could be performed more efficiently by another unit?

So lets analyze my army as an example.

Warboss - Power Klaw, 'eavy armor, Cybork Body, Bosspole

Tankbustas - 6x, 2x Bomb Squigs
Mekboy Junka - 3x Big Shootas, Reinforced Ram, Grot Riggers

Trukk Boyz - 11x, Rokkit, Trukk w/ Rokkit, Grot Riggers, Reinforced Ram
Trukk Boyz - 12x, Rokkit, Nob w. Power Klaw, Bosspole, Eavy Armor, Trukk w/ Rokkit, Grot Riggers, Reinforced Ram
Trukk Boyz - 16x, Big Shoota, Nob w/ Bosspole, 'Eavy Armor
Mega Nobz - 5x
Grot Mob - 10x, Runtherd

Wartrakks - 2x Twin-linked Big Shootas, Wartrakk upgrade
Wartrakks - 2x Twin-linked Rokkit Launchas, Wartrakk upgrade

Battlewagon - 2x Big Shootas, Grot Riggers, Reinforce Ram
Looted Wagon - 2x Big Shootas, Grot Riggers, Reinforced Ram
FightaBomba

Now let's go through each unit and build some conclusions on there overall effectiveness.

Warboss - Despite being a close combat monster, the warboss proved to be less than effective in most games. The simple fact is, whenever compared to the units that he is inevitably forced to deal with in HtH he always comes up short. Usually dying before getting a chance to swing with that power klaw. It's foolish of me to send him against a Dark Eldar Lord or a space marine commander. But even against normal power armored marines he still dies far too often. The 4+ save is what is killing him. Once you get a couple wounds on him, it's only 50/50 to keep him alive and the 5+ inv save isn't good enough to protect him from power fists and dreadnought close combat weapons.
Conclusion: Spend less points on my HQ and give him the 2+ mega armor save to increase his survivability.

Tankbustas - I do see the tankbustas in my army as a bit of a crutch. The Ork army in its current form is significantly lacking in the anti-tank firepower department forcing us to rely on HtH based attacks to kill tanks. The tank bustas are the best bang for the buck IMO, especially in a mobile army because there weapons are 'assault'. The downside being that they never hit consistently (Ork BS 2) and the glory hogs rule severely limits their effectiveness. A couple times at Astro I had 6 tankbustas standing an inch from a nemesis dreadknight but they couldn't shoot at it or assault it because there was a rhino somewhere off in the distance, well out of range but within line of sight.
Then of course when I lost them I would lose the majority of my anti-tank capability.
Conclusion: Find a way to add more anti-tank firepower to the army and reduce dependance on tankbustas.

Mekboy Junka - I have to admit my Huey performed remarkably well. Its Big shootas put down alot of fire and it was more than adequate transport for the tank bustas. The only downside was the one game that it wouldn't stop immobilizing itself due to its overcharged engines. But you can't blame a unit for bad dice rolls.
Conclusion: I will continue to use it but I may swap out its contents.

Trukks Boyz - My Trukk boyz mobs are incredibly fragile. They were effective meat for the army but all too often they would charge into HtH and being the awesome HtH army that the Orks are, I would lose a bunch of Orks before I got to swing, would swing back and kill 1 marine, and then I would lose the squad to a failed morale test and get run down due to crappy Leadership and initiative stats.
The gambit of 16 man shoota squad paid off, it was nice to have that much firepower in one package. The basic squads were also fairly effective but they could have been better.
Conclusion: The std Ork boy is garbage, which is why every upgrade in the codex doubles or triples an Orks points value. I feel I need to take a character in each squad just to keep them alive long enough to be useful and I can't take larger squads due to the transport capacity of my trukks.
I'm almost tempted to take nothing but shoota boyz in my trukks because they will be statistically better in this edition.
I hate to say it but I need to keep the boyz squads as cheap as possible so that I can take more effective units. They are near useless in HtH against all but basic infantry now and the firepower they add to my army is negligible. There only saving grace is that they're cheap! but ultimately the upgrades I need to give them to make them more effective cost more than the boyz themselves.
I should up the 16 man unit to 20 and fill the battlewagon to get the 2nd big shoota.
I should consider a cheap nob, just a dude with a bosspole, for the 11 man squad.


Grot Mob - In a word 'useless'
I took them to fill up points at the last minute and they and there transport are very cool models. But a cool model does not an effective unit make.
The plan was to use them in objective missions. I could sit them on an objective in cover and go to ground, using the 3+ cover save and the Ld re-roll to force my opponent to sink firepower into them to make them die.
Ultimately though I had 1 objective mission and 5 VP missions and in the objective mission there was zero cover they could use.
Conclusion: Waste of points. The only effective part was the big shootas on the transport and there are much cheaper ways to add some to my army.

Meganobz - As I always say about 40k, the save is everything. If you have a good save everything statistically makes you a better unit. Meganobz are no exception.
They were highly effective in every game except the one where Mephiston killed all of them before they got to swing. But cheese mongering players aside... they were quite good.
The only problems I had with them was the lack of an invulnerable save, and no ld re-roll which is a flaw in the codex not my selection.
The one thing that limited them however was the high points cost. They are by far the most expensive single unit in my army and more often than not the scenarios gave penalties for losing your most expensive unit. Given that they are meant to get in the thick of it and die, this was problematic.
If they had been a bit cheaper (Cheaper than the plane) I would have gotten 3 or 4 more battlepoints overall! Definitely worth looking into.
Conclusion: Remove their dedicated transport so that they are not the most expensive unit in the army anymore.

Wartrakks - In the fire support role the wartrakks were only modestly effective. They would often suffer too much damage early on and would become ineffective as a result. However in the Line of Site blocking role they were excellent. Although I have relegated my wartrakks to being little more than a moving shield wall that can sometimes shoot, they are none the less a valueable part of my army.
I made a conscious decision to use Big Shootas and Rokkits on this generations wartrakks instead of the Skorchas. I felt my tactics had evolved to the point where I wasn't able to use flamer type weapons effectively anymore and I was right. The long range weapons lets them stay close to the other trukks where the can block LoS.
Conclusion: Modestly effective, points cost is low enough that I can justify sacrificing them in most games.

Battlewagon - The Battlewagon proved quite resilient, and even in the games where it died, it took a great deal of firepower to do so. With one exception but I consider that a lucky shot.
It doesn't have a great deal of firepower (only 2 big shootas) but given how I use it I'm quite satisfied. I always move it 6" unless I need to sprint so I can never shoot more than one weapon anyway. Keeping the points down was worth it.
Conclusion: Happy with the build of this vehicle. Will continue to use it

Looted Wagon - My looted wagon was ultimately the most effective part of my grot unit but as I said before there are much cheaper ways to get a pair of big shootas into my army.
Conclusion: I do feel I need that extra transport choice and its big shoota firepower but there are more points efficient and more survivable options.

FightaBomba - Oh the infamous plane... This is a perfect example of how someone can take something highly effective at the price of getting nailed on his sportsmanship.
Statistically speaking this is hands down the best unit in the army. It's very hard to kill, has tons of firepower and has the best anti-tank guns in the Ork army. Str 8 rokkits that hit on 2+.
However its also fairly mean being that its so hard to kill and like all planes you can't stop it from doing damage to you before you even get a chance to shoot at it. So I had more than one opponent cringe when they saw it.

Conclusion: I need to take it out and replace it with something new.


Overall Army Conclusions:
Overall I feel I was lacking in the anti-tank firepower department. All too often I would find myself face to face with a land raider and having a great deal of difficulty dealing with it. My HtH attacks are less effective than people make them out to be due to the abundance of skimmers (Imperial guard, Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Eldar, Dark Eldar and Tau all have them now) and my opponents were smart enough to move there tanks when I got close to make me hit on 6's.
My decision to take grot riggers on every tank as well as the reinforced rams was well validated though. As always Astro's tables tend to have alot of dense terrain and movement hindering scenarios, so it was nice to be able to effectively ignore most of it. The Grot Riggerz were more than just a saving grace to keep my trukks mobile. Since there were so many victory points missions this year, I was able to use the Riggerz to take away alot of points from my opponents by fixing my own trukks.
I partly regret my decision to take my meks out at the last minute. The ability to repair a tanks weapon destroyed and immobilized results could have won me some VP games. I think it is worth play testing some more.
However the 'Eavy Armor on the Nobz was not so good a decision. It was only 10 points but it was a useless 10 points. I did it in case I needed to do any wound allocation but ultimately it only came up once and it didn't save the nob. I'd be better off putting the points elsewhere.

So for the next army:

- Use more care in designing my most expensive unit
- More resilient HQ
- More Anti-tank Firepower
- More specialist units
- Playtest having meks in the army


I have to admit though I'm feeling quite disenfranchised with the Ork codex after Astro. Like most Xenos codexes right now it's suffering from Codex creep. Std Orks are awfully outmatched in HtH by just about every army that matters at this point and the sheer abundance of skimmers, armor 14, monstrous creatures,  over the top special characters and high strength anti-tank guns leaves us boyz in the dust.

I did the math on what the most effective anti-tank weapon was in the Ork codex out of curiousity. Low and behold it was the std Rokkit.

The Zzap gun, the ordnance weapons, Dakka Gun and everything else either couldn't punch through a land raiders armor or were statistically worse than the Str 8 rokkit.

It's sad really.

The only thing that is consistently better is the Deffrolla. Which I consider to be the most broken weapon in the game and hence don't take it.

Astro Winnipeg Action Report

So I finally walk in the front door of the con!
It's too dang early, I'm nervous, lacking caffeine but I'm also excited and ready to go. I've been preparing for this for a long time and now it's time to actually play some 40k!
(As always I've omitted  peoples names for privacy vs the internet reasons)

Well there it is, The Skyboyz WAAAGH 2012.
AKA Operation "Gretchin Freedom"

GAME 1: Orks Vs. Necrons on Sulfur Flats
WIN
Game 1 was a straight forward VP game against a Necron army. My opponent admitted to having slapped together his list quite hastily and hadn't had the chance to buy or paint any of the new codex units. As a result his army was lacking alot of punch.
Textbook is the way I would describe this game.
I deployed centrally to be able to react to him. IMO he made a classic deployment mistake by deploying wide against a fast army. He went first dealing little damage, and I rolled up one of his flanks and proceeded to mulch him...

I legitimately feel bad when this sort of thing happens though. I much prefer a a straight up fight to an exercise of rolling dice and removing my opponents figs from the table..
I scored a perfect 13/13 for gameplay on this one. Not a great way to start the tournament as this shunted me into the winners bracket and guaranteed that I would be fighting good players all weekend. So much for a relaxing weekend ;)

Well I called it...
GAME 2: Dark Eldar vs Orks on Cache and Carry
LOSS
Game 2 was against the guy that would eventually win best overall. I know this guy, great player, and I knew I was going to be in for an uphill battle.
We basically have the same army, highly mobile, lots of firepower and excellent assault (Although arguably the Dark Eldar are alot better at it) now throw picking up randomly placed objectives into the mix and you know its going to be a bloodbath.
We both fought tooth and nail for it but my firepower failed me in the long run and I wasn't able to take out the key units I needed to. He had 4 objectives to my 2. But in the last turn I was able to line up the plane for a bombing run. My opponent did say at the beginning of the game "That plane is going to be a gigantic pain in my ass" and he called it. The bombs dropped and I forced him to drop 2 objectives drawing the game for me.
BUT the rules of scenario forced us to roll a D6 for each objective after the last turn was done and on a '1' the objective is a dud. Of course one of mine was a dud, so my draw became a loss. :p


Let's take a moment here and discus one of the things that I can't stand in scenarios. That is rules that can change the outcome of the game AFTER the last turn is already played.
In this case we had to roll a D6 for each objective after the last turn. On a roll of '1' the objective was a dud. So despite the fact that I had drawn the game, one bad die roll resulted in my game becoming a loss.
As both a scenario writer and a player I feel cheated. As the outcome of this game was decided by a die roll after the game making my playing well, almost completely irrelevant.
Which is further compounded by the fact that my opponent ended up winning the con. That one bad die roll could very well have ended up giving him the prize.
That isn't skill... it's plain luck.
IMO the scenario should force you to roll for the duds as you pick up the objectives, that way you have a chance to recover.

GAME 3: Blood Angels vs Orks on Cold Cache
DRAW
This was the other unbalanced mission I played that weekend. Not only was the mission heavily biased towards my opponent but he was also using an army that wreaked of limburger.
A tooled up, character heavy Blood Angels army with Feel no Pain and a couple Storm Ravens, just what I needed to make my day complete...
The mission was no picnic either.
It was another VP mission on a table with a bastion.

First you decided who would attack and defend based on a chart. Imperial Players always defended, followed by eldar, tau, orks, necrons etc with Dark Eldar always having priority to Attack.
The defender got
- A Bastion that gave anyone on it a 3+ cover save
- And doubled the victory points of any unit within 6" or on it
- And it had 3 free Heavy Bolters and a LasCannon at BS 2 the defender got to use.
- And it was practically in his deployment zone
- And he got to start with most of his stuff of the board (which IMO in a VP game is to his advantage)
The attacker got
- To deploy everything on the board (disadvantage in a VP game because that more turns to kill his units)
- and everytime I shot with a squad I had to a roll a D6, on a '1' that unit ran out of ammo and couldn't shoot anymore for the rest of the game
- and if a vehicle runs out of ammo that counts as a weapon destroyed so my opponent got free VPs.

Only a tad unbalanced wouldn't you say?

My crowning achievement of the game was how in the first turn I fired my tank bustas into a squad of marines killing one and running out of ammo. Losing my best anti-tank unit before the Storm Ravens even hit the board.

That and having to deal with Mephiston, a T6 character with a power weapon, a jump pack, str 10, preferred enemy and 5 wounds. Who mulched 5 meganobz before I even got to swing. But its perfectly balanced for 250 points because its all psychic powers that you can fail on a 12... I hate GW games designers I really do.

Ultimately I was able to do enough damage to him to pull off a draw, and was within points of winning. But that doesn't remove the awful taste from my mouth.

Day 2: Well so far I haven't really been impressed. One hard fought draw that was taken away from me. One textbook win I wasn't proud of and a draw against a cheese monger in a poorly balanced scenario. Hopefully day 2 will be more interesting

GAME 4: Nurgle vs Orks Battle at the Farm
LOSS
Game 4 was against a player I was familiar with and I knew I was going to have a good game going in.
I would be tackling his Nurgle marines in Battle at the Farm. Another VP game (starting to see a trend here) on a table with heavy cover.
My opponent was going to defend and got to place a handful of units (Including a daemon prince) on the board while I got to "Sneak" up with a unit before the game officially started. The goal was to move them up as close as I could before my opponent would make a lucky die roll and "Sound the Alarm" starting the game. So I picked the stealthiest unit I had... my meganobz. I assume there was a mek somewhere blasting really loud background noise to cover the approach as they ripped trees out by there roots... hehehe

The alarm was sounded just before my meganobz could make contact with the enemy, but luckily I got first turn. I charged them in (making some lucky difficult ground rolls) and mulched a unit before being forced back behind the fence for cover.
My reserves poured on more quickly than my opponent could handle and I was dispatching his ordnance before it became much of a threat. But he countered by taking out my trukks just in time to keep my Orks out of assault range. From the fence in the picture to the tree line you can barely make out is just about 12".

For most of the game he had a squad sitting behind the fence shooting the crap out of trees and the occasional Ork, but I couldn't make the difficult ground tests I needed to get my boyz out of the woods and safely into HtH. So they sat at the tree line firing a pittance of rokkit fire at a rhino knowing I couldn't hurt those plaguemarines with sluggas. ;)
I assaulted a dreadnought (barely visible far right) with a power klaw and did squat to it for 4 turns! and I fired everything I had at a landraider but couldn't make a dent. My Huey arrived early on but immobilized itself 4 turns in a row due to its overcharged engines, but the grot riggers kept fixin 'er.
In the last turn I botched the roll and the Huey stayed stuck, as did my battlewagon that I rolled double '1's for in the forest the previous turn, giving my opponent the 90 VP he needed for the win.
In the end it was a loss by a matter of only about 10 VP. All the skill in the world couldn't make up for some bad die rolls in this case. But I had a blast and it was nice to play a game against a great player. :)

GAME 5: Orks vs Grey Knights on Hammer and Ambul
WIN

If it isn't my old nemesis the Grey Knights...
A Grey Knight army with 2 nemesis Dread Knights and a vindicare... lovely
On another Victory Points mission *sigh*
At least I've got a great shot of my trukk firing his rokkit launcha at the DreadKnights head, turns out its just at the right height ;)
Turn 1 he blew away my battlewagon with a Turbo Penetrator round and the Ambulls arrived and started eating my biggest squad of boyz. Wasn't exactly a good start... but if its one thing I've learned is that if you give up on the first turn you've already lost the game.
I fought back hard, Vaporizing the Vindicare in Turn 1 and peppering squads of Grey Knights with Big Shoota Fire. I assaulted both Dreadknights in turn with power klaws. He mulched my boyz with the Nob but my Meganobz prevailed killing both dreadknights with a bazillion power klaw swipes.
As is typically with the Grey Knights, every unit I kill gives me a crazy amount of VP and I managed to win by a fair margin.
I lost quite a few BP however because the Ambulls wouldn't stop eating my squads... My 16 man boyz squad spend 5 out of 6 turns killing 3 Ambulls. My Nob murdered more Orks than the Ambulls did using his bosspole to keep them from running until finally he showed them how its done killing all 3 Ambulls himself with a choppa. Now that's impressive!

But somehow killing the Ambulls didn't give me a single VP... will have to take that up with the organizers.

GAME 6: Grey Knights vs Orks on Night Patrol

WIN
My Last Game was against another Grey Knight player, but this guy came highly recommended by a mutual friend and I can see why.
This was by far the best game I had all weekend.
My opponent put up a good fight, no arguments and we both managed to have a good game.
It was a fairly straight forward VP game (again with the VP games!) I managed to get my Warboss and a squad of Boyz into HtH with Grey Knights early on and I took down the Dreadknight with my meganobz (having learned how to do it the previous game)
All that was left was a landraider, a librarian and alot of Terminators to deal with.
So I back off and pumped as much firepower into them as I could. The librarian mulched a squad of mine then consolidated back to the door of the land raider but was peppered and killed by Big Shoota Fire before he could get back in.
I also peppered down alot of terminators. As a friend once said to me, "Even if you can't AP him, make him roll saves he'll fail sooner or later"
Once again the downside of grey Knights in VP is that every unit killed gives up alot of points and I won this one by a fair margin as well.
But I would definitely play this guy again.


My final record was 3 wins a draw and 2 losses.
I tied for 7th overall out of 30 players, which wasn't bad at all.

If that one scenario hadn't taken away my draw I would have been in 4th.

No complaints I performed quite well :)

Next I get to show you what I do post con!

Astro Winnipeg Pre-Action Report

First and foremost I apologize for the delay on posts pre and post Astro. Reality dictates that just prior to a con one has no time to do anything but paint like a mad man!
2 Weeks prior I was in a panic because I couldn't figure out how to get the blimp models to work. After 4 separate attempts with different techniques I eventually just gave up. No matter what I did the result always looked like crap and with something as critical to the appearance of the army as those blimps it was important that I pulled it off. Eventually I just gave up and decided to run the army without them...

But then on the friday evening the lightblub came on! 

Everything else in the army at this point was a helicopter, so why not just build more rotors? At least that was something I knew how to build and could get it done on time. So there I was slaving away until 3am on the friday night... with my Cat staring at me wondering when the hell I was going to go to bed. Eventually though I prevailed and had built enough rotors for the whole lot.

I even built some slick 2 and 3 bladed ones for my wartrakks.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the Havork done and I had to go with my plan B, which was to use my plane. The Sat prior I was faced with the hard decision of either staying up till 3am every night that week to finish the Havork or write it off until the following con and spend my time making everything else in the army prettier. Ultimately I decided on the latter as I was also worried about giving myself a burnout just before the con.

I painted my ass off until the Thursday night and to my amazement I was done :)
Just in time to go help the organizers setup.


But the greatest feeling of all is finally getting to see my painting desk completely empty :)

The Final Stretch

There's just under 2 weeks to go till Astronomi-con 2012 so of course I'm now frantically trying to get everything together ;) I realize I haven't updated in a while but I've been so fixated in trying to get my 40k army done that I really haven't had the time for anything else.

Much to my horror last week I pulled a Professor Frink and  "Forgot to carry the one" on my initial armylist putting my 100 points over :S So of course I'm now horrified that I might have to make some significant changes to the armylist at the last possible minute.
On the upside I got to take some figs I wasn't overly happy with out of the army, on the bad side they were already painted! so I didn't save myself any real effort.

Progress is being made though. Aside from 1 fig everything is either finished or very close to done but I've still have lots to do and I'm running into various construction related issues... Hopefully I'll work them out in time. Contingency plans also exist. *fingers crossed*

The Chinork is really close to done. (It's actually a tad further along than in this picture) just some final details to paint and some work on the base.

My Wartrukk sleds finally have a significant amount of paint on them. I dug them out of storage a few weeks ago and I've been grinding away at them.
It's about time too, given that these are some of the first figs I ever built for this army.

On a whim (aka tired of working on other projects) I did a ton of work on the Tank Bustas to bring them up to the new standard. They were, in a word, awful. I can't believed how hastily I painted them in the first place. It took a ton of work and I'm happy with the result but I almost wish I had put them in the dip instead, it would have been alot easier.

After the tweaking of my list I decided to put in my other heavily converted Nob "Razor". Although technically the squad he's supposed to be with isn't in this army I decided I liked the fig too much and I HAD to put him in.
Plus painting him for a few hours was a welcome distraction from the monotony of painting metal details on Trukks. :(

and of course the Havork. My "final" helicopter.
You can see its general profile in this picture, I went with a chopper/shark motif on it that I think is turning out nicely.
Should have this all built by the weekend! hopefully...

Progress Report - Sick of Painting Brown

For the past couple of weeks I've gotten myself into the trap of trying to finish alot of projects all at once. Specifically I've been painting my 16 man boyz squad and the vehicle crews for 6 trukks all at once. In addition to being tedious as all heck... it's been dull. Paint 30 Orks boots brown Go! Paint 30 Orks pants tan Go!

After a while I started to listen to my own advice and took a break. Now I force myself to do dull paint work on 4 Orks, then I paint something fun! It's been making it go alot faster, feels more like I'm making progress. And you know what? It works.
All those boyz are now almost done and I've got alot of other projects that I've been working on that are almost done too!

51 days till Astronomi-con and I have 628/1500 points painted, and another 650 points on my painting desk 75% done so all in all I'm in good shape.

Just gotta keep grinding away.

Battlewagon has some color on it. Quite a bit more work to do but right now I'm concentrating on other projects. I'm going to try to get the interior detail and the krew installed next.

One night last week I just couldn't build up the will to sit down and paint. The tedium of painting 30 boyz at once had gotten to me. But as always I felt bad that I wasn't getting anything accomplished. So after a bit of sulking I pulled my Meganobz out of the case figuring I'd just touch them up. An hour later I had completely replaced the red paint with blue (to match my new army scheme) and fixed alot of the paint mistakes.
I even repainted there faces because I never liked how the dark green faces turned out.

Not my best work, but not bad for an hour.

My Wartrakks have been a thorn in my side for months. In other words I've been staring at them wanting to get them done but I've been to distracted on my other scratch builds. That ended this week when I finally finished the krews (with great difficulty I might add) and added a blob of paint.
They still need some work, but they are close.
I've got another 2 on the go, a couple hours worth of work and they'll be almost ready to go as well.

And then there's this monstrosity. I call it 'Havork'.
Will be getting this one together over the next few weeks.

Update in Picture Form

I've been working away at a bunch of different projects this month.
Tournament is at the End of April so it's almost time to kick it into high gear to get 1500 points done in time!
Here are some pics of what I've been working on lately. I'll do a proper update later once I get a few things completely done.

Tools of the Trade Pt 2

Well I've officially been working on this new Ork army for over a year!

I have exactly 428 / 1500 completely done and painted...
As sad as that may sound for a years worth of work it's all the conversion work and scratch building that eats my time. As a result I have almost 1000 points of stuff 60-85% ready for paint. My goal over the next month or so is to finish up projects that I have on the go and start power painting. It's actually a fairly reasonable goal for me to paint 500 points worth of figs in a months time, I really do have that many projects edging on being completed. I just won't stop getting distracted by new and crazy ideas!

I made myself a late Christmas present today.
This afternoon I just got sick and tired of cutting plasticard with a dull X-acto and using straight edges that haven't been straight for months due to excessive wear and tear. Let alone the fact that my measuring tools are so old and warped that they aren't acurate anymore...
I didn't think one could wear out drafters tools. I was wrong.
I bought a new set of measuring guides, angle finders, a steel ruler long enough to cut a full sheet of plasticard (bought dang time!) and a new set of blades. That and a $3 cutting board that, heaven forbid, actually lies flat on my table. I should be good for a while now.


As always during the Christmas holidays I promise myself that I'll finish up a bunch of projects I have on the go and instead find myself working on some newfangled idea that springs into my head at the last minute...
Last year it was a heavy gun trukk that eventually became my Huey. This year its this:

I gave into peer pressure this week and decided to add Grotz to my KoS list. Of course they needed the most ramshackle (read as AWESOME!) helicopter transport imaginable. So I build this junker out of spare parts and plastic tubing, loosely based on a Bell-47.
For those of you who get the reference "Suicide is Painless" at least that's what they tell the Grotz...

Here's a shot of the tail boom, a few more structural bitz and it will be all done.

I put together the structure for the rotors today, now I'm just waiting for sculpting putty to dry and I can add the final details.

As you can tell my Grotz are just thrilled.

Hehehehe

The infamous cattleskull

Well it took almost a year of ebay scrounging but I finally found this cattle skull bit!
I was so frustrated trying to find one that I was half tempted to just buy the bloody Fantasy Orks boxed set just to get the one bit.

This bit means alot to me, it was the last bit I added to my first Ork blimp trukk and I really badly wanted it on my first of the new generation of blimp trukks.

Well now that its done... Back to converting!

It feels like Christmas

It feels like Christmas every time I come home and there's another package full of bitz in my mail slot that I don't have to pay for. That is how it works right? ... no? damn!

What maniacal contraptions is he thinking up this week!?

Stay tuned!

Progress Report #10 Choppas... The Arnie kind

I've been able to put in a good couple hours of work a night for the past couple of weeks. Not alot of projects on the go, but alot of progress is being made!

Also of note I helped start up a local gaming group. A couple of old friends got dragged back into the hobby willingly. (I would have also accepted kicking and screaming) and are putting together new armies as well as dusting ancient ones off. :D

We have only a few simple rules. We play once a month which is more than reasonable even for guys like us with lives and jobs. We have to try to get at least 1 new unit done and painted per session. Proxies are cool since we are there to play test. But most importantly of all, no painting or modeling at the session. We are there to play!

We had a meeting last Sunday and I have to admit it was a nice feeling to PLAY again. To Quote a friend "I didn't realize you actually played games of 40k!" to give you an idea how long its been since I played casually. I just enjoy the modelling and painting too much. It eats up all my free time and I inevitably end up complaining while at a tournament that I don't play test enough ;)

My battlewagon is coming along nicely. I added the engines recently, and worked alot on the rotors.
Got the krew "installed", added landing gear and alot of the armor plating is done. Still alot of work to go sadly and I haven't even armed it yet!
But if I power through, I think I can have it all ready for paint in another 2 weeks.

This is a better profile shot. The rotors are more complete than this now, this pic is a week old.
They also sit about 3/4" higher than the transmission towers, I hadn't finished building the collectives yet in this picture.

These are the rotors as they sit today. They still need to be filed down, more putty work and some detail gubbins but they already look better than I had hoped.
Something as eye catching as the rotors on a chopper can really make or break a model so I'm happy they turned out.

This is the start of one of my secret projects. I've started building crashed trukk bases. In addition to being nice pieces (and being very fun to put together) they're very practical.
Since my trukks are so tall by design, when they get wrecked they become a real nuisance on the table. Maneuvering around them with infantry, especially in assaults is very difficult. So now when they get wrecked I can replace it with a convenient marker. I did this with the previous rendition of the army and I never regretted it.

This one is a little more complete. You can see the electric tea candle in the background adding the glow effect. I wish I could take credit for the idea but it's stolen from a couple locals who made up flame and smoke markers with them at my con. I loved the idea so much that I ran with it and came up with these bases.
This base needs a bit more putty work, and I'm going to make a taller smoke plume . This one was just for the proof of concept.

After my games on Sunday I realized the Hueys rotors looked a little... plain? compared the Battlewagons so I brought them back to the painting bench and hacked them up to add the blade bitz like you see here. I'll add a few more detail gubbins too.
The Chinork is just being used for display.




 I finished building my lootas and meks a couple weeks ago. I had alot of fun with these guys. Which is good because I expected them to be a disaster since I had no idea what they were going to end up looking like when I was done.
The guy in the middle didn't quite turn out at first, but I ended up adding a bunch of misc cabling and a shoulder pad that rounded him out nicely.

As you can see they're alot further along this week. They're at the point where they just need a bunch of small detail stuff. Mostly to breakup the huge amount of metal on them. I actually broke one of my own rules with this squad and used black spray instead of my usual grey primer. I'm glad I did, I was able to do the metal work in less than 10 minutes. My usual method would have taken a couple of hours on these guys

Now what's this?
Loose bitz for another insane project?
I've been thinking about building a third chopper for some time, a clone of the Huey actually but that felt a little redundant.
I got some inspiration this weekend from some russian army pictures, a few sketches later I went and ordered $50 worth of bitz...
I'll post up more details when they get here.
But as a hint the project code name is Havork.

Monday Night Quickie

 A couple quick pictures of what I've been working on for the past couple nights.
First of all the Rotors for my Chinork. There's a stupid number of man hours in them already believe it or not, but at least I'm making progress. Another week and they'll be ready to attach to the choppa, if I'm lucky.

Here's some Meks I built tonight. I just felt my army needed more meks! There's never enough around when I need one!

New Projects

Got some new projects on the go today. Which is good since this past week I've been too tired to put in serious effort. So I've been working on 1 fig a day just to say I was making some limited progress.
I've put my BFG fleet in dry-dock today to repair some long term storage related damage. BFG This weekend at my local gaming store woo!
Seriously BFG is IMO the best game GW makes. Great figs, excellent well written rules. All the rulebooks are free to download on GW.com.
It has alot going for it, shame few people actually play. :(

I've added some detail work to the Chinork. Aside from an armor plate here and there I'm pretty much stuck until the engines and rotor parts get here. Which is hopefully next week.

Bitz arrived today! This is all for a crazy new project based on something I saw at my con last month. Hopefully it will come together quickly.