(11/30/12) Elemental Necron Army

Fire and ice! The customer wanted cold glowing blue on most of the army and all gauss, with red  fire effects on all tesla and Annihilation Barges.  Dark Art lava bases round out the effect.

Until next time!

Adepticon 2013 Charity Raffle

Hey all,

The charity raffle at Adepticon has been up for a while, and has already broken records. Ticket sales for the 2013 raffle overtook last years total sales within a few hours, and I haven't even painted the army yet! Although it is in the process of being finalized, and if all goes to plan will be preheresy World Eaters. If you are going to Adepticon and want a chance to win an army, check the link below.  Best of all it's for a great cause!

Adepticon 2013 Charity Raffle

Here are pics of the last two years:

Adepticon 2013 Preparations Part 1 - A Look at History

I have always enjoyed the thought of playing historicals.  There is something about the bare bones flesh and iron, and nothing but the weight of it behind your charge sort of battle that has interested me.  We exclusively Warhammer players sometimes become jaded and forget that real life battles didn't work exactly like we see on our tabletops.  Armies did not usually fight until the other side was "tabled" or completely wiped out.  It was more a battle of positioning and timing of charges and the reaction to them.  Indeed if Fantasy were to be more historically accurate, units would fight based on leadership, and not strength.  They would not grind at each other so much as we see.

But that is not to be negative.  There is of course something fun about the style of battles we fight on the table.  It is much like the movies.  Unless we are interested in history a true to the past movie based on battle would be a bit boring for most of the film.

So for me, Empire has always been "that army" that allows me to dip my toe in historicals but at the same time be playing this cinematic rules set and background.  I have also never met anyone locally in my years that plays historicals.

Next year will be my 5th year at Adepticon.  Looking back I have tended toward fun and silly armies that play on an inside joke between us gamer types.  Pirates, Monty Python, Mad Max are all ideas and movies we get behind and cheer when we see someone reference them. However this time I think I want to do something more pure to the background and also the history the Empire was based around.  It will of course be huge as ever, but nothing as silly as a Trojan Stonehorn.

So with all this in mind I have chosen Empire.  The Empire is of course based on a few historical periods including the landsknecht and Swiss mercenaries of the 15th-16th centuries.  The landsknecht are famous for using the zweihander - literally "two hander," a large sword.  They also used the Arquebus and later musket, as well as pike.  The Swiss also used a mixture of weapons but were most famous for the pike square.  They did not use as diverse of weaponry and tactics, but preferred 90% of their army be blocks of pikes that just charged into the enemy.  Until the era of pike and shot, the pike block was a nearly invincible formation.  Cavalry could not touch it, infantry found it hard to move them, and guns were of course effective against flesh but the tactics of the Swiss meant guns were often taken first and quickly.

 But all of these tactics are up in the air because we are of course on a boat. This is the main "melding point" of my army and the theme I have chosen. I love all things nautical, so what better than a giant, scratch built boat for a display.  I have somewhat done this before, but this time around I want to use scratch building and true ship building (in the hobby sense) parts and knowledge to build it.  These armies are always fun because I get an excuse to research something new.  In this case it will be ship scale modelling as well.

So this is where the most thought and research will have to go.  In the time of the landsknecht, what did Navies look like? What weapons would they use for deck fighting and boarding actions?  In this case I will likely have to compromise. Pikes would not be much use on a boat, but rather sword and board, and the musket. The zweihander makes sense, and we have an exact entry for something similar in our army book.

Reaver Redo

I misunderstood the shade of gold and blue the customer was after on the blue Titan.  99% of the time I get it right the first time, but here's proof no matter the size of the project I will see it through. :)

While I was at it he requested a bit of freehand.  We went for lightning on some of the armor and a dark Chaos star over a night sky on the right knee pad. I enjoyed doing freehand such as this, it is sort of the victory lap at the end when a project is coming together.  Saving the cherry for after you drink the shake.

I also added a banner between the legs made of smoothed and cut putty and piping.  This is magnetized to the bottom of the armor. The emblem is a corrupted College Titanica symbol.

Until next time!