Thursday, March 25, 2010

Beasts of War Blood Angels Week 3/29 - 4/4

Small video advertisement posted by Beasts of War on YouTube as they announce a week long video orgy about the new upcoming 40k Blood Angels codex. Painting, assembling and tactics videos on the new release from Games Workshop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XetkXfeU2Y

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Imperial Guard travel - the cheap way

Ok yes I have a Army Transport bag but honestly the pick and pull foam and the low budget I have right now keep me from buying more trays so I can adjust to my new army. What I needed was a cheap easy way to carry a buttload of plastic Cadians around at a moments notice and I found it last week at Hobby Lobby of all places. I know there are a ton of plastic containers out there (we actually have a Plano outlet store near me here in the Chicago area) but these were $1.99 and amazingly I originally bought them for bits and paint.

I got these home and just for the heck of it decided to see if a plastic Cadian trooper would fit inside. Low and behold THREE of them fit into one pocket and the tray even included a long slot that was perfect for either heavy weapon guns (all of mine are detachable) or standard bearers. The best thing of course is that they all fit INSIDE the Army Transport platoon bags I use and stack nicely.

Take a look if you get the chance. These are standard compartmentalized craft bead and accessory holders you see in the store. Hudson out!

Saturday, March 20, 2010

WAAAGH!!! - Ork Army update.

So last weekend, I finally played a game with my Orks. I only started the army over 5 years ago, and I FINALLY played a game.  As some of you know, I've been a tyranid player for the past 4 years....until the latest codex. Simply put, I'm shelving the bugs until the next codex, where hopefully, they'll be fixed.

So anyway, I wanted to play something other than Tyranids anyway.  I bought a large Valhallan IG army a long time ago, but again - never played it. It was an "I'll get to this later" project.  So, I followed my own advice for once. I have a ton of Ork models, and if I looked at them all, I'd probably shelf them as well.  But I didn't.  I wrote out my 500 point army list, adjusted slightly from my games last weekend and I put everything else away.  Guess what? I have 4 models left to prime. The slugga/choppa boys have their skin done. Weapons need basecoats and washes and basing needs to be done and my large infantry unit is finished.  My nobs are about 60% done (one work in progress is shown above left), and the shoota boys are cleaned (which was a MAJOR P.I.T.A.) and primed. That leaves the Trukk, Kans and 1 big shoota boy left to finish cleaning and prime.  However, the weather here went from shorts (almost 70 yesterday) to snow today, so looks like I have time to get them done before I can prime again.

The formula works, and I don't feel overwhelmed by plastic.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Imperial Guard army update

Hudson here. Well that didn't take long. After much thinking and scrutinizing and playing Imperial Guard over the weekend to test out the new codex, I have shelved my Eldar for the time being and focused the past two weeks on Imperial Guard. This is an army that I played extensively toward the end of my Warhammer 40k gaming back in 2005 and I wanted to return to it but felt hampered by the amazing amount of tanks and vehicles needed.

I rectified that problem by striking some good deals on EBAY and selling off some boxed Eldar I was never going to use. This kept me in my budget and rotated my PayPal funds so that I wouldn't have to touch my "real money". I noticed that the more Eldar I wanted, the more vehicles and transports I was buying. I finally realized that I am not one for a "finesse" army and was still a treadhead and general "grunt trooper army" type of guy at heart. I was always a big fan of tanks and the more non specialist armies, but I went Eldar since I have previously bought some in 2008. Then I remembered a nice little thing called EBAY and decided to basically swap out my models. Take the money you make from selling one army, put it toward another. The beauty of Warhammer 40k. (MORE AFTER BREAK)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Cadians and Battle Missions downloadable content

Hudson again. 2nd article this week something must have gotten me fired up. The past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity on my end regarding finding old links, getting back up to speed with the local hobby scene and trying to get my army painted and ready for some weekend play next month.

Although I have an Eldar army there is no secret being withheld that I was also a Imperial Guard lover at heart. I am a huge mechanized army fan which is why I play Panzergrenadiers in Flames of War. I also wanted to start a "horde" type army (in 40k terms this means an army with a ton of models on the board rather than a few really point expensive models) and that was going to be Imperial Guard.

I had sold my old army back 4 years ago but then I hated the codex and I hated the models I had and the second hand crappy tanks I had gotten on EBAY. This time around, with the 40k scene exploding on EBAY and YouTube, I could actually order bits (small modeling pieces that can be used to expand a unit or add to a figure) and start my vehicle collection fresh with new rereleases GW had put out. I also did not like my old color scheme. This time around I am going to go easier to paint but more bland and earthy. When you have over 80 little faces to paint the Cadian army is not fun.

An Imperial Guard Cadian army is big and a huge time sink (Cadia is the the homeworld of the priemier Imperial Guard battle unit) so collecting this will take months. I will start by sniping good deals on EBAY and just tossing the stuff on a shelf until I finish my Eldar. I cannot wait though as it will provide me a chance to model tanks and attack aircraft like I have never gotten to do before.

On the GW Website front they have released a PDF of a downloadable mission to add to your Battle Missions book if you have picked that up.

The mission is a Close Quarters Action mission and can be found here:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=cat1310001&aId=6900023a

The attacker gets one HQ unit, one Elite and one troop and must clear the defender off the board. Well that is my update for today. Need to go get my taxes done and then it is a day off for me and the lady.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Warhammer 40K: building the Eldar army part 3

Hudson here. Just a small update on my Eldar army thus far. I have hit EBAY hard and come across a few good deals where I have saved at least 15 dollars on entire units so my army has grown by leaps and bounds.

Recently I have picked up a unit of Howling Banshees which are Eldar female hand to hand warriors that really excel at what they do. They charge into battle wearing these banshee masks that lower the fighting ability of an enemy unit and also give them a high initiative of 10. The higher the initiative in hand to hand combat the better, and 10 is as good as it gets. This means they will always attack first and just slice and dice the enemy unit they slam into. I managed to get an entire unit in the box almost brand new for HALF of what I would have paid retail.

I have also ordered off EBAY another Falcon Grav Tank (assembled but not painted and in perfect shape), two squads of the "grunts" of the Eldar army the Guardians, a couple of heavy weapons platforms and some Wraithguard. Wraithguard are slow plodding Eldar infantry that encase the souls of dead warriors in them and they sport one of the nastiest weapons in the army the dreaded Wraithcannon. These units are very expensive at 15 dollars a MODEL and I managed to get for around 12 bucks. Go me! I need more though because I want to field a big unit.

Elsewhere I spent some cash at the local GW Store in Naperville, IL and I want to give a shout out to the store manager there that helped me with some painting tips and turned me on to an awesome deal they had there for the new GW templates and in game token counters.



MORE AFTER THE BREAK

Monday, March 8, 2010

I still need to see that movie

So last night I sat down like most poeple and watched the spectacle and glitter that is the Oscars. Honestly I was not gonna bother watching it, but after three very frustrating matches of Modern Warfare 2, server issues on Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and finally my Xbox Live headset dying, I figure it was a sign from the gaming gods that I need to walk away for the evening.

New Iron Man 2 Trailer

This one is pretty self explanatory but here is the new Iron Man 2 trailer!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

What did they do to my bugs?!

It had been a while so I decided to post up my thoughts on Warhammer 40k since everyone seemed to be playing again.

Over the last few months I've been getting back into the Warhammer 40,000 hobby.  I took a good 8 month hiatus, where I didn't even want to look at a model. I packed up all my codecies, boxed up all the models, sold off more than half my collection; I was determined to walk away for good. It's a long story...

Anyway, I've gotten the urge to play again, primarily because my buddy is also getting back into it and we'd actually get together and have some fun after many years of wandering various MMO worlds.  So looking at my remaining collection, I had to decide which army I wanted to play.  I had the choice of Tau, Space Wolves, Imperial Guard, Orks and Tyranids.  Well, another in the group was already going to play the bugs, so I put them aside - even though it's my largest painted force.  They also have a new book out, which I was hesitant to pick up - again, long story.

After taking out the bugs, snapping a few pics (which should be up on the Banstick Flickr page soon), I thought "Why not take em out? It's not like they're useless now...".  So I decided to just bite the bullet and pick up the book. Afterall, I have the army, I have roughly half of the models I own built and painted (and that was around 2000 points in the last book), so why not see what I could do with them?

I'll tell you what I can do with them now that I've read through the codex - Put em back in storage and wait for the next edition of the codex, because frankly - this one SUCKS.  I've been playing these guys since 3rd edition (it's now 5th) and I am disgusted. (more after the break)

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Warhammer 40K: building the Eldar army 2



Like I talked about in my first Building the Army post, I mentioned that this time around in part 2 I would talk about my exact point totals. There are some things I can add or subtract to go higher than 900 points in the army that I started with, but since I have not played in so long I am not sure what will or what won’t work.

I use Army Builder 3.0 to build my lists, I like the program but hate their licensing. I understand why they do it, but you thought some DRM stuff was bad these people make it really hard to push their product. TWO installs only and the license expires after a year and you have to get a new one for like 25 bucks. Uh huh. Either way I need something like this because I am so bad at remembering army rules and point limits and what not. Plus the printouts are great and can even be exported to HTML and put on the web. So part of me hates using the software but the other part of me loves it.

Basically my list comes out to this:

Every army in Warhammer 40K follows the same building principle: you have to have a base choice of one HQ unit, and 2 TROOP units. After that you can mix and max heavy units, elite units and all sorts of things.

My HQ unit is something called an Autarch. He leads my small army at the moment and he will be equipped with Swooping Hawk wings (these allow him to drop straight into combat with a unit of Swooping Hawks) and a Reaper Launcher, which is basically an Eldar missile launcher. Along with this he has mandiblasters built into his helmet for hand to hand combat advantages and some other things. If you really want to get nerdy with creating an army, you can name each unit and really get into the fluff of the game. Army Builder lets you actually do this which is great for geeking it up.  MORE AFTER THE BREAK

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Allods Online drops shop prices

The crying free to play MMO community whined and Allods caved.

You can read all about it here:

http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/03/03/updated-item-shop
List of changes in the item shop:

Vial of Perfume reduced from 75gP to 25gP
Large Perfume Kit reduced from 1350gP to 300gP
Holy Rune reduced from 1500gP to 1000gP
Rough Dragon Hide Backpack reduced from 2000gP to 600gP
Small Deposit Box reduced from 1500gP to 1000gP
Small Bag of Crystal Chips reduced from 250gP to 100gP
Medium Bag of Crystal Chips reduced from 1200gP to 350gP
Potions reduced from 250gP to 200gP

Folks...the game is free to play. What did you expect? In the end it is all a scam. You want more free to play, then you bitch when you get it. Exactly why I stay away from the pricing model. Of course you don't have to use the store but do you expect a gPotato game to make your life in game so fun that you won't have to use the store? No. This is the very foundation of the "Free To Play" market. I hate to quote Keen but he does math. I do not.
Let’s say you want to play for 1.5 hours per night and do a dungeon or PvP or whatever and always be under to effects of perfume.  1.5 h/day, 7 days a week,  4 weeks a month = $12.60 / month.  That’s affordable.  Up that to 2 hours a night and you’re paying $16.80 / month.  That’s a big jump but still affordable.

Guess what people. That's a monthly sub. Enjoy.

The Chicago Battle Bunker

I didn't know it but apparently I live right down the road from the largest GW store (Games Workshop) in the United States. That is kinda cool. Had no idea to be honest I thought they had some super HQ in Tennessee. Last weekend I attended the Bug Hunt tournament there were Tyranid players from all over were invited to come in and play through a series of contests. I have attached both YouTube videos here to this blog post.

The first video is a Bunker walkthrough. The second is 52 seconds or so of the actual tournament last weekend.



Bug Hunt:

Monday, March 1, 2010

At last I was free again: no MMO subs

Free from MMO's at last. After bouncing around and not really finding anything that kept me glued to the computer (and a nice 2 week break due to the Olympics) I realized that we take this MMO business a little too seriously and realized how much time I was wasting sitting in front of my computer playing these things.

So I am done, all subs are canceled and I managed to continue working on my Warhammer 40K army. Oh yes I am still playing computer games but being able to pick up multiple titles and play at leisure has afforded me the ability to finish titles I have long since neglected.

My major games at this time are Company of Heroes (all expansions), Dawn of War 2 (new expansion gold), Dawn of Discovery (soon with Venice) some turn based wargames (like Field of Glory) and first person shooters. Coupled with NHL 10 on the XBOX 360 along with some major face time at the local hobby store and I am BACK on track with doing what I love. Too long I say around and moped and complained about a lack of opponents for my favorite hobby (Warhammer 40k miniature gaming). I constantly look through my old gaming club photos from 2004-2006 and the GenCon pictures and bemoan my lost friends and fun times.

So I simply took some steps this past week to contact some of them and strike up the old gang. Get the "crew" back again and see who was still playing and who still had the time. Sadly only two responded that they would be able to play at least twice a month but that is a start. From there you get out from behind the keyboard and you make contacts and you meet new friends. Then soon enough you see that the petty arguments over MMO 20 dollar storage bags and no death penalties in a science fiction game seemed pointless things to argue about over and over again.

For me, at my age, it is about getting out of the house again and using my BRAIN once more. Using time to sit back and create and paint and model and be a huge nerd but with a job to pay for my nerdy hobby. Fun times ahead once more. Sometimes you just have to walk away.

Readers must realize that this whole MMO thing and blogging was new to me as of 2007. I had played MMO's since 1999 sure, but they were an afterthought. For most of my time it was either EQ1 and miniature gaming. I do not seek to get into the industry by talking about every MMO likes it is great and I may step on toes but honestly if a game sucks I will simply say it sucks. Now however as I seek to move on and play more board based games I will have a LOT more to talk about. I will have a lot more to write about and I look forward to it. I also have 3 years of battle reports saved from 2004-2007 to draw from should I need to mention things.

Less MMO coverage is not a bad thing for there are plenty of other things to talk about.