Got a game in with the Deathwing

Game vs. Black Templars His list was 4 squads of BT Terminators each with 2x Cyclones and Tank Hunters, and 4 squads of BT with 5 powerarmor and 3 novitiates with lascannon and plasma rifle in each squad. So 4 lascannon shots and 16 Strength 9 Krak shots every round.

My list was 3 squads of terminators,

5 terminators, 1 w/ cyclone, 1 w/ chainfist and stormbolter, 3 w/ lightning claws

5 terminators 1 w/ cyclone, 1 w/ powersword and stormbolter, 3 w/ powerfist and stormbolter

5 terminators 1 w/ assault cannon and p-fist, 1 w/ th/ss and Deathwing Standard, 3 w/ th/ss

Terminator Armored Librarian (they apparently suck, he's beautfully painted, but he's in retirement until I get a new DA codex with real psykers in it.)

Belial with TH/SS

Land Raider Crusader

Land Raider Godhammer

Venerable Dreadnought with Missle Launcher and Twin linked Lascannons

Venerable Dreadnought with Assault cannon, stormbolter, and DCCW -- This guy needs a conversion to having a heavy flamer like I need a bigger paycheck every month.

The game was for KP and VP, with victory requiring 3 KP and 300 VP more than your opponent, and with 4 markers located in the center each table quarter counting for 1 KP each.

It didn't go well. I chose to go first, put both the dreads on my right with the Mortis pattern in cover, put the Godhammer in the middle near some terrain so that it would have a cover save from the far right corner, and the Crusader to the left of it.

My opponent put his entire army in the corner to my far right, with the sword brethren bubble wrapping three of the BT squads with the lascannons.

He reserved one squad of BT, and then seized the initiative.

Did I mention how many tank hunting krak missles he had?

It simply sucked. He shook my asscan dread, stunned the mortis dread, stunned my Godhammer and stripped it of both Lascannons, and stunned the LRC (which reduced to shaken with it's extra armor).

I couldn't do anything the next turn except drop the reserved squad of terminators. I dropped it as close as I could to my opponents rear right (my left), which was basically the center of the board, and shot all it's guns (cyclone and 5 stormbolters) at one of the BT squads and killed several. The LRC and Godhammer moved forward as far as they could with their cargo of assault oriented terminators.

He immobilized the Godhammer and shook the LRC again, shot down 3 of the cyclone squad and stunned the mortis again, and wrecked the Asscan dread.

It went downhill from there. I made an attempt to chase the KP from the table quarter markers and get as far from those 16 krak missles as I could to deny him the VP/KP. It didn't work.

The next round saw my Godhammer get wrecked, stranding the squad of lightning claws 18 inches from the enemy. I smacked the squad he brought in from reserve to contest the far left table quarter down to a lascannon plus one with the guns of the LRC, and it promptly got detonated killing two terminators.

Further shooting the following round whittled down the TH/SS squad to 2 members and I called the game.

I'm not sure how I could have salvaged this game with this army.

Leaders of the Deathwing

The HQ cadre for the Deathwing is finally done being painted.

Deathwing Chaplain, note my Poisonangels Chapter symbol on the left greave. I'm especially happy with the scrollwork. Have to improve my picture taking skills, though.
He's still wet from the matte varnish. Note the Deathwing symbol in red lower down on the scroll hanging from his belt. You can also see that I've attempted to shade my reds.
Above and below photos show my first attempt at Non metallic metal on a 3-D structure, meaning the Iron Halo projecting upward behind his head, and on the crux terminatus.
And then below we have the Deathwing Librarian. I wasn't sure what to do with the back of the large upright, ended up just putting a pentagram and leaving it at that. Tried NMM silver on the hanging scroll cases.
Made a first effort at translucent stone/marble, on the Forcestaff shaft and it's head. My wife says it looks like xxx. Note the freehand celtic knot on the tabard. Also attempted a blue chrome NMM on the tubing under the left arm.
The scroll on his back is a garbled latin translation saying the equivalent of "Expeller of chaos from Acreon"
I'm reasonably happy with the way this shoulder book turned out. Worked the red templar cross that is found on all my veteran models into the book, since there wasn't a good spot for it anywhere else that I thought I actually get paint accurately. I work with some small brushes, but I've seen work that is even smaller and more precise, so I'm going to search for a 30/0 brush (my smallest is a 25/0, but my old sable 20/0 brush actually lets me get smaller lines than it does, so I'm still trying to figure out what it is I need to buy for consistent very narrow lines).
You can see the Futhark runes on the edges of the tabard if you look closely. More gold NMM on the halo, and blued chrome on the tubing on the right and left of the chest plate. Note the chapter symbol for the Poison Angels on the right knee.
Close up the face to close this out.

Next up on the painting desk is the Ravenwing, so I can start fielding a proper Dark Angels force of bikes and terminators. I'll complete that concept with a drop pod dread and before moving on to my long awaited Drop Pod army. There's always more to do...

Shadowsword and Stormlord from one model (and four other variants).

It's a Stormlord! It's a Shadowsword! No, it's a ShadowGumbyHammer!

This is the Stormlord, fully assembled.

The Stormlord with stubber's removed.

Note the magnets where the stubbers are attached. I drilled shallow holes for the magnets and glued them in place, with the top of the magnet flush with the surface so that it will look right (ie invisible) when I paint it.

Crew section/ Weapon mount with gun removed, note magnet at the top of the housing. It's the only place to put the magnet that holds the Megabolter in. I recommend this even if you aren't planning for dual use of the chassis.

yo dog, what's up! Stormlord Megabolter in the face!

Note that you must use the front glacis plates with the cutouts or your Vulcan Megabolter won't sit right. Pay attention, there are two different sets of glacis plates on the sprues.

I Doomhammer! (below)

Stormsword! One of the more difficult items to get the brassrod to stick straight out from.

Banehammer!

I had to cut the cube of plastic that holds the base of the cannon in. You can carefully put in and remove the cannon without too much trouble.

Banesword (Nearly an Ordinatus Artillery piece on this thing)

Shadowsword! (Destroyer rule... Bwhahahahaha)

just look at the troop capacity on this thing!

And yet it moves... (the gun carraige, in this case)

In order to allow the switching between the gun carriage forward and gun carraige back configurations, I had to put some extra superstructure inside the chassis. I used greenstuff to fix the fit once I had the finicky pain in the ass bits in place. I used sprue trimmed to be flat on the upper edge.

The added sprue bit must overhang or at least come to the edge of the deck plate, or the deck plate will flip up at the rear when you put the gun carriage on it.

This piece (only not used on the Stormlord) stays in place without any assistance from magnets. Just trim it carefully to make sure it lays flush, whether you're gluing it in place or not.

Using a pin vise and green stuff...

The piece end on to the camera in the photo above is the Banehammer's cannon, so that you can see the greenstuff I plugged the barrel with. I then drilled a hole in the center. You can see that the rest are the cannon bits with greenstuff holding lengths of brass rod in place.

You can also see the magnets and the bit of green stuff that holds the magnet on the bottom of each of the stubber's.

Below is a picture of one of my Baneblades with the sponsons magnetized, showing where the magnets go. Also the armor plates if you don't want the second sponson (it is a ton of points to add them). Included here because I will be doing the same exact thing to this Shadowgumby.

You have to place the magnets carefully or they interfere with the interlocking squares that otherwise partially secure the sponsons to the chassis.

Please comment and let me know what you think!

Sample image. See the photostream below for the full deal.

The skulls on the back are freehand. Working out Non-metallic metals technique, the sword of Lion'l Johnson is my effort at shading one side of a blade differently than the other to improve the effect compared to my ironwing symbol seen on the Vindicators previously.

The front isn't as great as the back of the banner, but here it is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/poisonangels_40k/5479766424/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/poisonangels_40k/

check out my latest work on my 40K Poison Angels space marines chapter.

novel idea

I thought about this idea for a novel on my way home.

Part picture book/part story.

The main idea is the setting, which would be Washington, D.C. as the Green Zone.

Pictures would be DC street scenes with blast walls where appropriate photoshopped in.

Might be able to get the rest of the flavor without photoshop, D.C. being D.C.

Hit me in the gut like a punch when I thought of it, which means there's something there that's real with respect to getting the feel of the war across. I think I should do it.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/07/29/world/international-uk-afghanistan-usa.html?ref=global-home

Above is a link to a brief article about the wikileaks release of >90,000 intelligence reports, most of which are raw, essentially consisting of the equivalent of "SALUTE" reports, or the equivalent of 911 calls or "officer in pursuit calls" to give a civilian equivalent.

The fact that Gates and others are on TV or the radio decrying Wikileaks instead of simply ordering someone within the DOD counterintelligence community to shut it down via a plausibly deniable "hacker" attack, demonstrates that either this stuff isn't nearly as serious as they claim, or they aren't serious about the war in Afghanistan.

I suppose there's a third option, which is that we have no idea what we're doing, and the ineffectual flailing on TV and elsewhere should be taken at face value.