Let me tell you about my character(s): L5R edition

I return again after too long a hiatus. I've come to realize that weekly or bi-weekly updating is probably not the best option for me. I go through periods of intense creativity where I want to write, and then I direct my creative efforts elsewhere.

Before our main topic, a quick painting update: all the Wolf Guard (terminators and power armour) are finished along with the Grey Hunters. My terminator Wolf Lord is nearing completion along with my newly wolfified Vindicator and another Rhino. I'll definitely have the Vindicator and Wolf Lord done in the next week as I prepare for a fast approaching tournament. I plan to post a painting report and a tournament summery toward the end of the month.

Anyway, on to the main topic! A while back, I gave a review and overview of The Legend of the Five Rings Role Playing Game. My campaign at the time pettered out due to a number of player drop-outs but this week, the world of Rokugan has made a triumphant return. To begin the campaign, I intend to give a sense of closure to the unfinished tale in the earlier game. Exactly how... I can't say as I don't want my players getting too much of a preview. I'll talk more about the story in a future post; for now, I want to introduce the PCs.

Doji Hitomi is a young but promising Crane Clan courtier. She fits her clan very well and is viewed as a rising star in the court at Kyuden Doji. She is ambitious and values the tenets of honor and courtesy. She is leaving the comforts of the courts for the first time which gives her a much need break from emotional difficulties.

Isawa Hitori is a gifted Shugenja of the Phoenix Clan . He is tied to a bitter marriage and he travels the Empire to avoid is troubles at home. He is less of a pacifist than most in his clan and the Kami of Fire come easily to his call. He seems to be seeking something in his travels though he could not say what it is. He values honesty above all other virtues.

Kitsuki Mikage is an experienced investigator and representative of the Dragon Clan. He is skilled in a wide range of topics from astrology and bonsai to kenjutsu and shogi. He is yet unmarried though he speaks quite highly of his family, at great length if one is not careful. He has been unable to find inner peace for some time and seeks out wine and women to replace it.

Togashi Yamada is a tattooed monk of the Dragon Clan. He has a way with words; one that most would describe as off-putting at best. He began following Mikage without a word and responds only with riddles when asked for his reasons.

Tsuruchi Juri is a brash archer of the Mantis Clan fresh from his Gempuku. His is a skilled hunter and the Air Kami guild his bow.

The characters have been pulled together by Omen, the enigmatic Oracle of Jade. The Oracle bid them to travel to the contested Yasuki provinces. He gave the two pieces of advice: "Let Bushido be your guide," and "The will of the Heavens will be made clear."

Mustering the Warriors of the Fang

So, please indulge me in looking at another picture post. This time, I'll show you the foot-slogging half of my painted Space Wolves. Also, I tried to do some more interesting formating with the text and images last week and it didn't work out. I will not be trying the same this week.

Grey Hunters are the core of any solid Space Wolves army and I've spent quite a lot of time building and painting them. I've finished painting 20 so far and plan to do at least another 10. Here's a number of photos of the ones I've painted so far. Since taking the photos, all the models have been based with the same sand and stones mixture.




The Wolf Standards are not magnetized but they are set on pegs so I can remove them for storage and to indicate when they have been used. Now if only I could remember to re-roll my 1s when using them...







To show which Grey Hunters were afflicted with the Curse of Wulfen, I painted facial tattoos in read and gave them wolf skull shoulder guards instead of the squad markings.












I finally settled on the Great Company symbol for my army, which was the personal heraldry of Russ. While painting it freehand doesn't create a perfectly uniform look, I draws a lot of attention.



To lead the Grey Hunters (and other squads) I've build and painted a number of Wolf Guard veterans. These were the first two finished. I'm currently working on several more with a variety of armaments.







Wolf Scouts are experts at operating behind enemy lines and destroying parking lots full of vehicles. They have been an invaluable asset on the table. This is the first of two squads; the second is still unpainted. I have since converted the bolter into a melta to make the squad even more effective.





While missile launcher Long Fangs have become a staple of most Space Wolf forces, I prefer to use a mix of weapons. That being said, I have another two missile launchers in progress with the intention of running 3 missile launchers with 2 heavy bolters or lascannons depending on the points value and/or my opponent.

I've made a number of minor conversions in an attempt to make the weapons more Space Wolf-y.














Finally, to lead my army, I've painted a Wolf Lord/Wolf Guard Battle Leader and one of the ubiquitous Rune Priests. The WGBL is fully magnetized so I can swap the weapons load-out as needed. I'm and currently working on finishing up some of the options and will post all of them at some time in the future.













The Rune Priest is pretty much the standard model, though I have swapped the totally unnecessary plasma pistol for a bolt pistol. Seriously, if your shooting with a pistol instead of using a psychic shooting attack, you're doing something wrong.

At the moment, I have quite a lot on my painting table or in the queue to be painted. My current project is a unit of Wolf Guard Terminators kitted out for close combat with magnetized options along with a Wolf Lord in terminator armour. I also have another unit of scouts (though they're still headless); I hope to make them a bit more wolf-y than the fist group. As I said before, I'm going to paint another 5-10 Grey Hunters to fill out my troops and 2 more missile launchers.

After finishing those models, I have a converted Wolf Priest to finish along with a unit of Blood Claws (which will be fielded as counts-as Grey Hunters). I have two Wolf Guard with power fists and multi-meltas to lead my scouts in the works as well. Early next month, I hope to fill out my motor-pool with a Vindicator and a third Rhino/Razorback (I plan to use the Whirlwind kit so I can use the missile-platform in combat patrol games). My hope is to have all of this finished by the end of the summer, hopefully just in time for a new wave of Space Wolf models (I'm holding out for plastic Thunderwolf Cavalry).

Happy New Year! Fear the fury of Fenris!

A new year is upon us! This year, I have a few gaming related New Year's resolutions. First, I am going to continue updated my blog. I plan to update at least three times a month. Second, I'm going to commit to finishing my Space Wolves army before the end of the summer. I got a lot of work done on it in the final months of 2010 and I have a lot of work ahead of me. I'll be posting photos of models as they are completed. Finally, I'm going to try to expand my customer base for commission work. Part of that will be though posting photos on this blog and part of it will be spreading the word in the local community. My current commission project is an Ultramarines Techmarine, which should be finished in the next couple of weeks.

So, to start off the year, here's some of what I've done with my Space Wolves army...

I've always been a big fan of dreadnoughts and I wasn't going to miss the chance to convert and paint a few for my Space Wolves. This one has a number of conversions to match the themes of the Space Wolves army. First, I know I wanted to replace the front plate with a Space Wolves shield and change the fist into claws. Neither task took a lot of conversion work and were finished quite quickly. Later, I added a wolftooth necklace to the close combat arm since it seemed a bit bare.









The next round of conversion work on the dreadnought involve alternate weapon options. I added a number of bits from the Space Wolves troops sprue to the missile launcher arm.

For the las cannons, I wanted to do something unique. Using the dragon heads from the Chaos Predator, I began sculpting wolf heads to decorate the gun barrels. Finally, I decided to replace all the skulls across the whole dreadnought with wolf skulls. It was a fairly simple conversion using green stuff. You can see one example on the las cannon arm.




As a center piece model for the army, I spent quite a while working on my Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer. I spent several weeks before I started painting cleaning the pieces, figuring out how to magnetize all the options and doing some pre-assemble. Before finalizing the assembly process, I spent several hours painting the interior. You can see one shot of the instrument panel below. Unfortunately, I made a mistake in the assemble and it is now very difficult to see the detail work that went into it.













I wanted to give the melta gunner a wild, windswept look so I used one of the Blood Claws heads. I figured, the guy who sticks his head out of the battle tank to operate a pintle mounted heavy weapon is probably a bit crazed. As with the dreadnought, I resculpted all the skulls into wolf skull except the ones in the Adeptus Mechanicus symbols.




By the time I finished panting the hull, I felt it looked a bit flat with such wide areas of blue-grey. I decided to add some freehand work to make it more interesting.

Below, I've added a few more shots of the Land Raider for your enjoyment. Next week, I'll post shots of my Grey Hunters, Long Fangs, Scouts, Wolf Guard, and Rune Priest. I'll also follow it up with a list of what I plan to finished painting as part of my New Year's Resolution.

List Building for Advantage

This week, I'm going to talk a bit about something that comes up for every miniatures gamer: list building for advantage. Now, I don't mean building strong tournament lists or taking the strongest net-list. In fact, what I want to talk about probably wouldn't work well at tournaments at all. I'm going to use my Space Wolves for Warhammer 40,000 in my example but this kind of list building can take place in any miniatures game (or even card games with a deck-building element).

Rather than continuing to talk in broad generalities, I'm going to present a situation. One of my regular opponents has recently started a new army (Tyranids). He asked me if I wanted to play a 1000 point game. I agreed and now I need to make my list.

Most of the time, I would take my generic list at the assigned points value. I have lists for 1500, 1750, 1850, and now 2000. Each game, I tweak them a bit (mostly fiddling with the load out for my Wolf Guard) but the majority of the list stays the same. This is where I run into a problem; I don't currently have a 1000 point list. Looking at things in a black and white perspective, I have two options: I can make a generic 1000 point list including melta guns, scouts with melta bombs, etc (which loses a lot of effectiveness); or I can load out my list with flamers and mech (which is very effective against 'nids).

Players face this choice almost every time they schedule a friendly game. Should I bring my all comers list or specialize my list specialized to my opponent? Ultimately, I chose something between the two extremes. I took a list without Wolf Scouts (a usual staple of mine for their anti-tank capabilities) but I didn't overload on 'nid killing elements. I expect my opponent to do the same; don't take units that are going to be useless against your opponent but don't be a jerk either.

I've been on the receiving end of a list designed specifically to kill my army. I was my first game with my Space Wolves and I was playing against IG. It was a small game, so my options were limited. I put together a fairly standard list and while I would have liked to take meltaguns, I didn't because I wanted to play WYSIWYG. On the other hand, he took 3 veterine squads in chimeras with plasma guns to cut down my marines. To make matters worse, his plasma vets were all proxied meltaguns and grenade launchers. I was not an enjoyable game (though the list was not the only problem).

So, to sum up my thoughts: list building for advantage is OK as long as both players are on the same page. If you want to play WYSIWYG, agree with your opponent; if you want to run the hardest list you can, let your opponent know ahead of time. If you're unsure what your opponent expects, follow one simple rule: don't be a douche bag.

Games Summery for Karak XII

I began Saturday with the disadvantage of staying up all night drinking rum with a group of really great Czech guys. They were happy to keep the conversation in English or translate it for me and it went a long way to making me feel welcom. I had only two hours of sleep before my fist game at 9 in the morning. My focus got progressively worse throughout the day.

My first game was against shooty orks with Wazdakka, lots of bikes and deffkoptas in an Annihilation mission. It was a bad match up for him, I was able to crush his bikes and nobs (in trukks) in assault. Named characters were worth an extra kill point in this mission. The Redeemer's Flamestorm cannons also assisted in burning down the bikes. I scored 18 out of 20 battle points pushing me close to the top tables.

My second game was a much more difficult match up against Imperial Guard. We played Capture and Control (aptly named "roll dice and tie" by The 11th Company). He was using veterans in Vendettas (though only two of them), a large infantry platoon, a psyker battle squad in a Chimera and three Leman Russ varients including Pask. He set up his tanks at the back of the deployment zone and bubble-wrapped them with his infantry to prevent my scouts from assaulting. I tried to push forward but couldn't get close enough to contest his objectives. He managed to kill most of the units I sent forward. My crowning moment of the game was assaulting his parking lot with my scouts. The turn before they came in, he moved one of his tanks (the Chimera with the psykers) out of position. I left just enough room for my scouts to come in and destroy his Russes (including Pask). As per the name of the mission, we ended up with a tie.

My third game was against Toshiro (Martin Szolár) of the Czech ETC team. He was playing Blood Angels and our mission was seize ground with dawn of war deployment. His army included two units of terminators with sanguinary priests in Redeemers, two 10 man units of assault marines, and a librarian. We set up the objectives along the center line of the table and both tried to push to control them. I made several early game mistakes which Martin took advantage of and he won the game 15:5. It would have been a 18:2 victory if not for a couple of fluke dice rolls. Overall, I'd say it was my favorite game of the weekend.

I went to sleep fairly early Saturday so I would be rested for my Sunday games. The first game was against a Tau suit list. The mission was Capture and Control again with an additional objective in the center of the table worth 2 points. My scouts came in on turn 2 and assaulted one of the broadside squads. I beat them in combat and they ran off the back of the table. They were shot to death the next turn. The rest of the game involved me seeing how far across the table I could get before being shot to death. It really underscored the need to put extra-armour on my Land Raider to keep in moving. The game ended in a draw.

The final mission was unique to the tournament. There were 4 objectives, 2 placed by each player. At the end of each turn, you scored one point for each objective you controlled. I played against an Eldar player. He took 3 Vypers with Shuriken Cannons, 2 Wraith Lords, 2 units of Jetbikes, Dire Avengers and Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents, a Fire Prism, and a Farseer on a Jetbike with guide and fortune. I had the first turn and pulled ahead early, taking one of his objectives on my turn two. Unfortunately, I got careless in turn 3 and left Grey Hunters in two squads in charge range of his Wraith Lords; I got pulled of my objectives and he moved in with his Jetbikes. At the end of turn 5, the game was tied but he was up by 2 points by the end of the game after turn 6. My opponent was really great and it was a hard call between him and Toshiro for my favorite game of the weekend.

I came in 27th place for combat points (which I'm pretty happy with). My overall score wasn't as good since my army wasn't fully painted. I'm really looking forward to playing in more Czech tournaments. In fact, I have another one this weekend (4 games, 1500 points). It's a one day tournament at one of the local game stores. (Černý Rytíř) My list is now fully painted and based so I expect to do quite well in my overall score. Again, my goal is to win half my games. I'll let you know how it goes.

My next post won't be so Warhammer focus; I plan to write about L5R RPG after I run game this weekend.

Edit: I also need to credit my wife for all the photos of my miniatures. I'm terrible with a camera so I need to thank her for the good photographs.

Karak XII: Chaos Incursion

Last weekend, I went to my first Warhammer 40,000 tournament. I've heard a lot about the tournament environment both from other blogs and in podcasts so I was a little apprehensive going in. I've never been a very competitive player since I've focused more on the hobby and collection aspect of the game.

Karak XII is one of the biggest tournaments in the Czech Republic. It is held annually in Hradec Kralove. This year, there were about 60 participants. It is a two day, five game tournament with a variety of missions, mostly out of the rule book. The rounds are incredible relaxes, they simple lasted until all the games were finished. Armies are 1750 points. For painting requirements, players had to have one unit painted from each force organization type present in the army list.

One of the really interesting things about the Czech Warhammer community is that Forge World models and lists are accepted in the tournament environment (excluding flyers and super heavies). I saw both Vraksian Renegadess and Death Korps of Krieg armies. I also saw Forge World models included in Sister of Battle and Orks. Players who used Forge World models were required to have fully painted armies.

Additionally, the tournament was not overrun by Imperial Guard and Space Wolves. For the most part, Czechs have army loyalty which used to be more common in 2nd and 3rd edition. There were even three Necrons, two Dark Angels, and a Black Templar player. The only army book not represented was the Demon Hunters.

Another difference from what seems to be the standard in US tournaments was the terrain. All the tables had 25% coverage or more including large, line-of-sight-blocking structures, often in the center of the table. They had modular city blocks spread out across the tables and the Fortress of Redemption on one of the top tables.

The weekend was amazing!

I played five great games against a wide variety of armies and met a lot of really great people who I hope to play with in the future. I need to thank Watchdog for all the help he gave me getting to the tournament and translating for me when needed. (The Czech gaming community primarily uses their gamer handles.) I'd also like to thank all of my opponents for using English and putting up with my lack of Czech. I really appreciated it.

Now, a little bit about this tournament. The entry fee was quite low compared to American standards; less than $10 if you preregistered. This fee also included a place to stay if you brought your own sleeping bag making the whole weekend extremely affordable. Many people arrived Friday night and everyone pitched in to help the TOs set up tables. Afterwards a few friendly games were played. I tested my Space Wolves against a mixed CSM list in a Capture and Control mission and ended up with a draw. Following that game, I play a very light hearted 'FPS style', multiplayer version of 40k called Fraghammer (more on this to come).


My list included a large hammer unit consisting of a Wolf Lord and Wolf Guard in terminator armour mounted in a land Raider Redeemer. For troops, I took a large unit of Grey Hunters in a Rhino, a small unit in a Razorback, and two small units on foot. I attached a Rune Priest to the unit in the Rhino. I took a unit of Wolf Scouts and a mixed unit of Long Fangs to fill out the list.

I was quite please with my results as it was my first tournament. My record was 1/2/2 and I scored a total of 51 battle points (out of a possible 100). I came in 27th place for battle points and 38th overall because my army was not yet entirely painted.

More to come on this tournament in my next post including a summery of my games and more on Fraghammer.