Happy Holidays!

With Christmas over and Chanukah winding down, I hope you all had lovely holidays with your families. Hubby and I spent the weekend with his family, which unfortunately involved an 8 hour drive each way. I think I need a vacation from the drive home, but we had such a wonderful time while we were visiting.

Yup, I spent Christmas at a waterpark.

I have many projects to jump back into, so tomorrow I will be right back into it.

Winter wonderland!

Metal, I Miss You Not

I managed to get through my Chaos Daemons with only a handful of metal models, and I am so happy because they took me longer to prep than I could even believe. But now I have these Dwarves and they. are. all. metal. All 150 or so of them.

This, but times 30.

Cleaning off the paint was easy enough. But, I have only unbased, scraped clean, and filed 40 of them so far. It's been days! I don't know what is taking so long, but it's really dragging out.

I am so, so happy that the other models I need to complete this army are now Finecast. No joke. If I get these guys done by Thanksgiving (which was the plan) it will be a miracle.

I picked up a Finecast model a little while ago (a super snazzy Abaddon) and holy smokes. This stuff is amazing. I've dealt with a little resin before, but my goodness. I am really excited for GW's largescale switchover. It will probably mean I can't get some models during the transition, but that's what the Internet was invented for.

Piles of Dwarfs!

I mentioned previously that Space Wolves were going to take a backseat. I'm betraying 40k and switching to Fantasy (sorry, 40k. It's not you it's... wait, yes, it is you). I can't resist the siren call of the Dwarf army I was gifted for my wedding from my Man of Honor.

He tried convincing me to get into Warhammer back in high school, but it was too expensive for my part-time job budget. Obviously, I've since seen the error of my ways. He hasn't had people to play with since we all graduated and moved away, so his unfinished Dwarf army was just hanging around, partially primed.

I've had a thing for the Dwarf models since I first got into the game, but I was a 40k-only kind of gal. I've been tempted to switch for a few months, and now I have no excuse not to. And so begins the glorious Dwarf army...

As a pile of chaos.

My first step was to strip the paint off the primed and painted ones, which was about half of what I got. Usually, this calls for some Simple Green. But my friend Richard suggested I try something called Dawn Power Dissolver. I used it on these guys, and now I will never use anything else. It is simply amazing. Look at them after:

Nice and clean!

Dark Elf Black Dragon

I picked up this Dark Elf Dreadlord on Black Dragon model to paint for a contest. My new hubby thinks I should start a Dark Elf army with it, but I think I am too attached to the idea of doing Dwarves. It's such a fantastic model, though, that I couldn't resist using it.

That's a Daemon Prince arm in his right claw.

I didn't include the rider or sadle because I had this idea about the dragon breaking free, so I added in two Dark Elf corsairs who are trying to wrangle him. I added a bloody Daemon Prince arm, too.

I added chains on either side of his mouth and chainmail ring links to his wings. That was pretty easy to do and I think it gave off the over all idea I was going for quite well. It's hard to see in the photos, but there's also some broken chain on the ground by the Dark Elves.

Back and ready for action!

I'm officially hitched, back at home, and ready to jump back into the some blogging action. The weather was gorgeous, I got to see all my family again, and I just had such a wonderful time. But for now, I just wanted to share a photo from the day:

I got a lot of kitchen gadgets as wedding presents (thank you all so much!) so I have a ton of fancy new things to try, and I will be doing quite a few posts on them. I also have those Dark Elf Black Dragon photos that I promised, which will hopefully go up tomorrow.

A Little Wedding Break

I'm heading up to New Jersey today to stay with my parents until the wedding, since there's lots to do, and I can't do it all from VA. Actually, when this post goes up I will all ready be on the road. Well, that assumes I will have gotten the car packed without forgetting anything important.

Things have just been so crazy here lately. Hubby-to-be has been contemplating a job change, which also entails a huge relocation, all the while I've been trying to get the wedding together.

I'll be back in a week, and I have some cool things in store for when I get home. Just a teaser:

Happy Halloween!

The house is all decorated, and there's cinnamon, apples, and cloves in the air. It must be Halloween, the best of all the holidays. I'll be giving out candy to the neighborhood kids tonight. I've even already had a few trick-or-treaters. No tricks at my house tonight!

Larry is a little dramatic.

Larry the Pumpkin and I wish you a happy and safe Halloween!

The CSMs That Weren't

Since my Chaos Daemon army was more or less complete in June, I started thinking about my next army. Hubby-to-be seems to change armies as often as he changes his socks. He has gone through so many armies, even in the past year, I couldn't tell you, but I'm still hung up on my Daemons. It could be just nostalgia over them being my first Warhammer army.

But, in part due to the new Grey Knights codex, I really can't play my Daemons in a competitive way right now. Since the release of the codex in April, I've been to three tournaments and they were all choked with Grey Knight players. In fact, Blob's Park was about 1/3 Grey Knights. It's still unbelievable to me that I managed to not play even one, but in July I played a tournament where 3 of my 4 opponents were Grey Knight players.

One of my Chosen

So, I thought it was time to start a new army and Chaos Space Marines seemed a logical choice. Since I could use quite a few of my Daemon models in it, I thought the army would come together pretty quickly. And they did. I built them, primed them, and had a good part of their painting done by the time we moved into the new apartment.

I played some games with them (mostly against a friend who plays Imperial Guard). In each of the games, they just fell right over. If I wasn't able to get in cover, they basically just instantly died to his tank shooting, except for Abaddon who is a tough customer. A few times the games were over before the end of turn 3 and they might have been over sooner if he hadn't been rolling terribly.

After having the Daemonic invulnerable saves, the armour saves of the Marines just made them seem like wet paper. And after the 3 CSM players at Blob's Park, I can definitely say I had an advantage by being the "real" Daemonic deal, even if they did have more shooting.

Slaanesh Chaos Daemons

I decided that since I put so much time into retouching my army for Blob's Park that it was high time I took some actually nice photos of them. I broke out my little lighting setup, but the battery for my DSLR was dead, so I had to take the pictures with my phone camera. Oh well.

A Reaper model that I use for Karanak.

I was surprised how many people picked up my Karanak model at Blob's. He got way more attention than any of my other models. He's Reaper's Hound of Judgement model, and I think he fit in much better with my Chaos Warhounds than the Game's Workshop Karanak.

I used Chaos Warhounds for my Flesh Hounds

I chose the Chaos Warhound models over the Flesh Hound ones because I had a Slaanesh theme in mind, and these fit with the sleek Daemonettes far better. I managed to get my hands on a box of the old metal Warhounds, so I have a really good variety between the two units I generally run.

Battle At Blob's Park Report

This is only the second big tournament I've been to, but even so I ran into a number of people I met at the Colonial GT in April. It was nice to catch up with them while I was between games. The next big event coming up is Mechanicon, but we won't make it because that is the same weekend Hubby-to-be and I are getting hitched (priorities, priorities).

The venue wasn't quite what I expected. It was essentially a large pavilion. There was little seating, so I was glad I brought a fold-up chair, even though there wasn't room to use it most of the day. The food was decent and cheap, and they had a nice Oktoberfest beer on tap. However, it was awfully humid all day, and that definitely put a damper on how I felt.

Of the 4 games, I had 2 good ones, a not so good one, and a great one. I had a close loss, a tabling, and two major victories. It was 14 points for a win, 9 for a loss, and potentially 6 bonus points. My first game was the close loss. It was against a very nice Chaos Space Marines player, and until the last turn it was very close. I ended up with 12 out of a possible 20 points. He had an Abaddon, and that's a mean guy to beat.

Yes, I charged that poor Abaddon with 30 Daemonettes.

Although sending two squads of Daemonettes after him was over kill, Abaddon is really a tough customer. He had already taken out a whole squad of my Flesh Hounds, and he would have just kept tearing up my guys if I hadn't done something. I also got a lucky immobilization and an even luckier wreck on his land raiders early on with one Daemon Prince. That was crucial, since my Daemon list pretty much falls over to land raiders.

The second game was also against CSMs and it was the tabling. I only got nine points out of this game. It was not a very good game at all. My 3rd game, believe it or not, was also against Chaos Space Marines, but against a fellow club member, Kevin. Really nice guy, really nice game.

I feel really bad about the beating I gave him because we had both lost two tough games already. But, this game really illustrated what I feel is the main strength of my army build: who's going to be able to kill 90+ models with invulnerable saves? His list did not have too many vehicles, and mine does well when I don't need to tear through Rhinos and Land Raiders. I really think that's why it was one sided. I got 14 points for the win and 5 bonus points out of this game.

The last one was probably the most fun. Coincidentally, that was when I started turning in my beer tickets. My opponent was a great guy, but already half lit. Neither of us were in the running for any prizes (or so I thought), and we had a low-key, really fun game (we invoked Beerhammer a few times). I ended up with another 19 points out of this game, because his Storm Ravens couldn't handle two Daemon Princes with Bolt of Tzeench.

Like my 3rd game, I feel part of the reason I did well is because he did not have much in the way of vehicles. I think my army came in a little bit like a swarm for both of my last two games. The half of my army that came in first turn was about equal to the number of models in their whole army. So, once the rest of the army came in over the next few turns, it got a little hairy.

Out of a total possible points of 80, I got 59. I certainly did better this time than at the Colonial and I got 2 wins, which is what I wanted. I figured if I broke even, I could call it a good tournament. The free beer and good company was a big bonus. It was nice to meet some new people and catch up with old opponents.

The prize support was incredible. They gave out a box to the best general of each army, for both 40k and Fantasy. Somehow, I managed to pull out Best Chaos Daemons General (for 40k), so I walked off with a box of Blood Crushers (blood for the blood god!). I was pretty certain I was out of the running for that award because of my two loses, but I guess someone else had a bad run of it. I've never won anything before, so this was pretty exciting. I can't wait to paint them up!

I have one serious gripe about the event and that's how painting was judged. In the middle of my 3rd game and during my turn, this guy was checking out the models on my display board. I thought, cool, someone is checking out my army. Then he asked me for my player ID number and wrote it down on a piece of paper because he was paint judging.

Uh, what? He didn't even glance at the models I had in play on the table, which was about 65% of my army, since we were on turn 4. Not only did he just look at only part of my army, but because I was in the middle of the game, those on the board weren't organized. He missed all of my converted pieces. I worked really hard on repainting my models, and even though I wasn't ever going to win best painted, I sure would like to get a fair and decent look.

They haven't posted the scores yet, so I don't know quite where exactly I fell in the ranks or what my painting score will be. I'm not saying I was scored lower because not all of my pieces were judged, but only that I want my fair shake. I certainly should not have scored higher because of it, but that could have been the case. That isn't fair to the people who did have their whole armies judged.

Based on two wins, two loses, I probably fell in the middle of the pack. I actually think I did a little better than Hubby-to-be, by only maybe 2-3 points. He played Tyranids this weekend, and he says they're not a strong competitive army, but I think he did well over the day.

***Update***
The official results are in. With 59 battle points and 9 points in painting, I placed 23rd over all out of 72. I really thought I had done better in painting, but apparently not. I don't understand how I did worse than I did at the Colonial, because they actually look a lot better now than they did then. I have a lot more conversions and they've all been touched up or completely repainted. Hubby-to-be placed 35th over all.

That Other Hobby

*This post was brought over from my quilting website after I split it into two sites*

I have another major hobby outside of my crafting and cooking. That hobby is a little thing called Warhammer 40,000. It will shortly be taking over my life. It's pretty much my favorite game ever. This is an expensive, time consuming, and male nerd dominated hobby (insert rant about the rampant misogyny of nerd culture here). But, Hubby-to-be loves it and I quickly realized that I do, too.

This is what I do when I'm not quilting.

There are often tournaments for people who play this game. This past weekend, there was one at our local game shop that my fiance and I participated in. Being a vet of the game, he won the event and some prize money. I came in middle of the pack, but I've only been playing for a year, and that's the best I've done at a tournament so far. The first tournament I ever played in was a very large Grand Tournament, and I was 3rd from last. But because these GTs offer prizes like free tickets to some of the larger events, like Adepticon or Throne of Skulls, the competition level is really high, so I wasn't exactly expecting to win.

These guys are Flamers. They're pretty mean.

Anyway, I've put a lot of time and energy into my first army, so I thought, why not include some posts about it on my blog? So I'm going to start doing some posts about Warhammer from now on. There is a pretty large event in about two weeks that I'm preparing for called Battle for Blob's Park. It's run by a local gaming group and I've found out that a lot of the really nice people from the Colonial GT will be there, too. Woohoo! Now, at the Colonial I found out that my army's painting job is pretty lame. I scored in the middle, which is higher than I expected, but I've now seen what some really nice looking armies look like, and I am a bit jealous.

These are the first ones I ever painted.

The tournament is two weeks away, so I've been doing some touch ups to my army. They've gotten a little broken and chipped over the course of the 50 or so games I've played this year. Obviously I don't want to show up with a damaged army, so I'm fixing the chips and touching up areas and things like that. Hopefully, I will score a little better in the painting category this time. I think I've learned a lot since I originally painted this Chaos Daemon army, so I'm adding some highlighting and using washes a little more effectively.

The Seekers I painted might be my personal favorite.

All of these photos are of the army when I first painted them, beginning last year. So they don't look as good as they will when I finish fixing them up for Blob's Park. I've also partially painted up some Chaos Space Marines (the army I was transitioning to). I've fallen out of love with them.

Daemonettes are the army's cornerstone. I have about 40 of them.

But, by around Christmas time I should be mostly into my next army, Space Wolves. Hubby-to-be and I are planning to hit the tournament circuit hard together in 2012 so I need a more competitive (and better painted) army.

The whole army on display at the Colonial GT.