Hammer in the New Year 2016

   My little baby tournament is now a teenager. After an unfortunate hiatus in 2015 for personal reasons, Hammer in the New Year returns for 2016 better than ever- and under new management! Phil (you can find him over at elphilo) will be running it this year as a 2-day GT. But I couldn't let my baby go on entirely without me, so I will be running the paint judging.

   Phil has been running our local RTTs for some time now, and after I saw the logo he had commissioned for the event, I knew I left it in capable hands.

   The tournament will be on January 23-24, 2016 at Huzzah Hobbies in Ashburn, VA. It is a 5 round event, at 1850 points, and will be ITC format. Entry fee is $40. Pre-registration is preferred, there are only 32 spaces. So please email Phil at elphilo40k (at) gmail dot com for Paypal instructions or you can pay in person at Huzzah Hobbies to secure your space.

   Information on the ITC format is located here, as well as the ITC FAQ.

   The event schedule is as follows:

Saturday: 

• 9:00 am Check-In
• 10:00 am Round 1 
• 1:00 pm lunch (and paint judging)
• 2:00 pm Round 2
• 5:15 pm Round 3

Sunday: 

• 8:30 am doors open
• 9:00 am Round 4 
• 12-1230 pm lunch
• 12:45 pm Round 5
•  4:00 pm Award Ceremony

   There will be some awesome prizes (check Phil's blog for updates on what they will be when he releases them). If you have any questions about the event, please contact Phil for the most accurate response.

   We will be releasing the painting rubric very shortly.

   I look forward to seeing some of you there!

Goodbye, Game Parlor

Today, my very first Friendly Local Game Store will close its doors forever. It was announced late last month that the owners will be retiring and "the store with every type of game" will be no more.

I've played these nerdy games a long time, but it wasn't until I moved to Northern Virginia that I found my first true FLGS. I'd been to many in my MtG days but none of them were "my" game store. They were just a place I bought cards and played sometimes.

But Game Parlor was different. It became special to me. It's where I cut my teeth on 40k, and where I met many of the people I now delightfully call friends. I have so many fond memories of this place. I ran my first tournament there. I won my first prize there- smoking boots for last place (which was a new set of dice). I even nearly got snowed in there when I went for a game of 40k on a day it was supposed to flurry but turned into nearly a foot of snow.

On Sunday, the community threw them a farewell potluck. One last hurrah. It was nice to see so many familiar faces there one last time. I couldn't help but get a little choked up when Cindy did, as she gave a small speech thanking us, when really, it should be us thanking her for nearly 25 years of gaming.

Game Parlor will be missed. I wish Rob and Cindy all the best.

Eldar Fire Dragons

   I got a delightful break from bikers to work on a box of Eldar Fire Dragons this week. The client wanted them ASAP, so they went from box to table top in 6 days. Considering my normal speed is kind of slow, I'm pretty proud of that.

   These were a lot of fun to paint. I haven't had much opportunity to work with yellow and orange on this scale before. I pulled out the airbrush for the base yellow and base orange. These are single piece figures (except for the big gun) so I couldn't have just left their heads off and airbrushed them separately. And they're Finecast which meant fixing a bunch of messed up details.

   After a little creative masking, I was able to use the airbrush for both colors without issue. I used one of the new Citadel Air colors for the orange. I had to thin it a bit more than I expected, but it went through the brush well enough. Too bad the paint pot is total rubbish for using it with an airbrush. I have no idea why they would sell airbrush paint in normal pots. Looks like I'm investing in some dropper bottles.

   I'm very pleased with how the orange turned out on them. These dudes are all shredded (criminy, look at those buns!) so it gave me plenty of opportunity to play around with the highlighting on them. I've also exceeded my butt jokes quota for the month.

   When I turned them over to the client, he handed me a pile of Swooping Hawks (with a two week turn around), so you'll be seeing more Eldar again soon. Those will be fun because half are painted but require touch ups and the unpainted half he'd like me to match to the first half. I'll try to take a few more photos of the process with them.