Forward Progress

It's been a long while, but between classes, the photography business, work at the book store, life in general, I finally found some time today to work on my Grey Knights. Started adding base coat and wash and beginning highlights to Crowe to begin with.

Thanks to this year's tax return I was able to purchase some units for my GK army. So I began with a new unit of Purifiers. These guys will be broken apart though, with 2 Hammers going to different units and the same with Psycannons.

Not a lot, but also started adding detail... ok base and wash, to my Razorback.

Still have plenty of work to do with the above still unopened or put together. With summer semester coming on, summer wedding photography schedule and work it's a gambit if and when these will get done. At this point, I'm simply hoping to have everything done by the time 6th edition comes out. For my first 2,000 point GK army, I still need to pick up 3 GK boxes, a Vindicare Assassin, 2 more Razorbacks and a final Dreadnought.

Finally some traction?

Got to love tax return season! Well sometimes. This year looks like it will be somewhat good to me. This next week I should be picking up some more stuff for my army and in a couple of weeks I plan on getting a KR Multicase to hold the beginnings of my GK army and what it will be built into. So very excited about that.

I've decided March is going to have a heavy emphasis on painting my army. This is what I will have:

5 Terminators (90% painted)
15 Purifiers (50% painted)
5 GK Strike Squad (0% painted)
2 Razorbacks (33% painted)
1 Venerable Dreadnought (0% painted)
1 Nemesis Dreadknight (0% painted)
1 Castellan Crowe (10% painted)
1 Lord Draigo (0% painted, using as Grand Master)

Slowly and surely getting there. At least I'll be able to field a decent size army instead of chump change as I've been having to do. So the plan is to get busy painting in March and making time to play again.

Wish me luck!

Trip to Excelsior

Stopped by the new game store in Hoover - Excelsior and was pretty impressed. Bud's is still closest to me, but I can see myself going down there on occassion. Great gaming space, good selection of product.

Met a couple of the guys from the C.A.G.E. forum there. One of them had an awesome Dark Eldar Army (selected pics above) and the other a Tau Army. They were playing a local campaign game with some awesome rewards on the table for the winner. I'm really bad at names so forgive me for not remembering their names - though one I remember (the Tau player) as being wrathdad or something like that from the forums. Anyway I was really flattered they recognised me by my blog and recent interview on the 11th Company podcast.

Four Horsemen Comics and Gaming

Earlier this month, I was in Morgantown WV for a wedding shoot and got to stop by this game store. They had some awesome terrain tabletops for 40K players. I didn't have my camera on me at the time, but did get these off of my phone. Enjoy!

The Newb on 11th Company Podcast!

Pat from the 11th Company podcast interviewed me and can be heard on episode 104:

http://www.tangtwo.com/11thcompany/episodes.cfm

My time spot is between 1:52:00 and 1:56:40

Enjoy! It was truly an honor to be interviewed and to be part of this great podcast.

Book Review: Fulgrim

It took me 7 weeks to read Fulgrim. Not for lack of effort or interest in the book but due to the holiday schedule, out of town adventures and new year work schedule, but the book stands completed. My only regret is that I couldn't have just read the book over the course of a couple of days versus the few weeks. The book is adventurous, fast paced and incredibly action-packed, that just keeps getting better and better.

For the first time in the series, you find out what happens in detail about the Istvaan V drop landing massacre. Throughout the book you watch as a great Primarch is laid low by the forces of Chaos, the corruption of an entire legion and members of an expedition. Throughout is interweave with established timeline and even a couple of characters previously introduced that locks you into place in the historical timeline of the grim dark future, so you constantly know where you are and what is going on around the galaxy at this time.

The Eldar make a brief appearance and the whole concept on how childish humankind is when concerned with the warp and Chaos is truly revealed and yet again almost makes you want to side with Horus and the Heresy. After all with all these things you as the reader are learning about this timeline and epic story arc, you have to ask why did the Emperor leave the crusade? Why did the Emperor NOT warn his children, even with the knowledge he KNEW about the dark aspects of the warp?

These questions and more is what attributes this epic story arc of the Horus Heresy as such a phenomenal tale. You almost want to sympathize with the Heresy, yet you see how they slip from being the good guys to the root of evil. You see pride and ego taken to such distances that nothing good can rebound from it. Still you have to wonder why the Emperor stays silent.

A blast to read, Fulgrim had it all. It'll be a little while until I return with book 6 of the Horus Heresy series - or even any other 40K book. Vanilla reading books have been accumulating on the bedroom night stand, along with Christmas presents (more books) and I have some catching up to do. So I have at least 3-5 books to read before I return the world of 40K, but with a book such as Fulgrim being a "breaking" point, I'm already anxious to return.

December Update

December is about over and in a way I'm glad. While it was a GREAT month, it was a busy and stressful one. I wasn't able to get much reading in and as a result, after more than a month, I'm still only half way through Fulgrim. Which is a shame because it really is that good.

For Christmas the only 40K related thing I got was a squad of Grey Knights, which is perfect as it is exactly what I needed for my next step in my GK Army! Hopefully in the next week or two I'll have an opportunity to start painting again and can share my progress with everyone.

Until then, Happy New Year!