Adepticon 2014 Part 2 - Warmaster, Epic, and Loot!

On Friday, we arrived to the Warmaster tournament- we had armies representing Chaos, the Empire, Orcs and Goblins, Dark Elves, and High Elves. My Chaos army did well against the Orcs and Goblins, but were crushed against the might of the Dark Elves, and later, the High Elves. In fact, the battle with the High Elves was so bad that I couldn't take it any more and wound up calling the game. It was really a pathetic showing by the Dark Gods...

As with last year, I won best painted with this army - I got a set of the Badger Minitaire Ghost Tints this time around, so I need to figure out how to use the things. I think I'm going to try for another army next year - maybe Khemri Undead or Orcs and Goblins. Hopefully I can get them painted in time...


And because they were so good, we went back to Burrito Parrilla Mexicana for more tacos and lovely, lovely horchata.

Sunday (I didn't play anything on Saturday,) we had the Epic tournament. Again, a decent showing, though a couple of guys didn't show up. We had Orks, Feral Orks, Space Marines, and Imperial Guard make a showing. It was pretty fun, though the Feral Orks are really tough with the Orkeosaurus units, and I had some really bad rolls against the Space Marines.

While at Adepticon, I was able to score some good deals - I got a Warhammer Khemrian Warsphinx/Necrosphinx kit for $20 and a 40K Ork Battlewagon kit for $25. I also managed to find some of the older Ork Kommandos in gasmasks (sekret Orky side projekt!) and two of the Warmaster Albion character sets, along with some cheap Badger Minitaire paints. Fortunately, I brought a suitcase this year - if I hadn't, there would have been no way to get all my stuff home. At one point, I was zipping up the suitcase and the zipper popped because it couldn't contain all the models, Secret Weapon terrain, and paints.

Unfortunately, the swap meet wasn't as good as last year - apparently people decided to hang onto all their stuff this year. I guess it's for the better though, as my suitcase would have exploded otherwise...

Adepticon 2014 Part 1 - Legends of the Old West, Necromunda, and Cake Shakes!

This year's travel to Adeption was relatively uneventful - the entire state of Illinois wasn't underwater this time around, so that meant that the flights were on time and there weren't any issues to speak of.

Illinois last year

Illinois this year

I arrived at Midway Airport on time and met Dave at baggage claim. We got our things, picked up our car, and we were on our way!

Lt. George Zip's SBD Dauntless - recovered from the bombing run over Daiquiri

Arriving at Adepticon on Wednesday evening, we checked in and received our swag bags. Victoria Miniatures gave out a not-Cadian female standard bearer and Black Library gave out a copy of Angel Exterminatus. I had already read the book, but Graham McNeill was there signing, so I had him sign my copy. Andy Smillie was also there signing - BL didn't give away any of his stuff, so he was sitting there twirling his pen. I felt bad, so I bought a copy of the Black Library Weekender 2013/2014 and

Currently on the Bench...

I'm desperately trying to get my Epic Orks and Necromunda Escher finished up for Adepticon next week. I'll probably have paint drying as I'm running to the plane...

Escher Ganger

View of the base

I used the Forge World Zone Mortalis brass etched base toppers for the bases. My original intent was to steal borrow Ross' idea over on Yakromunda/Yaktribe. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time or the original Necromunda deck plates to do paint checks. As a result, I went for a more gritty look. This was my first time using rust powders - the effect came out alright, but spread out a lot more than I intended. Gonna have to practice more with those suckers.

At any rate, the Escher are pretty much complete, so the remainder of the work is with the Epic Orks...

One Stompa, Two Stompa, Red Stompa, uh... Three Stompa?

Da Vulcha has landed!

I ran Orks last year at Adepticon, but this year I really didn't have time to do a completely new army. I am changing things up a bit though with the addition of a Stompa Mob, a Landa, and some Big Gunz (not shown.)

The Stompas need a little work on their bases, but they are essentially done. The Landa (actually an Ork Heavy Bomma) is also mostly complete - I just need to do some touchups and add the bay door with the Ork rolling out the bombs.

I just started the Big Gunz last night, and hopefully, they won't take too long to paint. I was trying to decide if I wanted to use actual Big Gun models or the Ork Heavy Weapon Boyz, and I went with the Boyz route. My Big Gunz are pretty poor casts, so I figured that the better sculpt would win out for this army.

The road to Adepticon continues!

WIP - House Escher is in the... um... house...

These ladies are ready to pop your corks...

The lighting's terrible, but you get the idea. Those nice, young ladies from down under (the hive, that is) are my current WIP. The plan is to get them ready for Adepticon in April, and I'm hoping to have them done in the next week or so.

I'm working from Stahly's recipe over at the Tale of Painters blog. Unfortunately, I don't believe mine will be anywhere near as good as his, but what are you gonna do? I made the mistake of priming the models white, so I've spent a lot of time painting black  - it would have been considerably easier to prime black and paint white where needed. I'll have to keep that in mind for next time.

As you can see, I've also mounted the models on corks, in order to paint them easier (I've got a secret plan for their bases,) but it isn't working out so well. The pins I mounted in their feet aren't long enough, so the models don't secure well to the cork. Again, lesson learned.

Hopefully I'll be back in about a week with an update on them!

Water, water everywhere... Man O' War base test

While waiting for the paint on my Dwarf Man O' War fleet to dry, I painted up a Man O' War test base. Unfortunately, the brush had a little too much white paint on it at one point, and my drybrush turned into a wetbrush and I wound up hitting more than just the wave crests.

Another poorly lit image!

All in all, I'm pretty pleased though. I used a fairly simple technique - plastic card cut to size, covered in a watered down (to about the consistency of thick yogurt or mayonnaise) wood putty.