Some pretty bad scratch-built Titans

I guess I should be encouraging about people scratch-building.  There are a lot of groups who encourage building Titans like this.  But I know at the L.A. Bunker the quality of your scratch-build is always important.  Two guys built Emperors and another two built 3 Warlords.  ALL were way better than these.  I don't know how gamers would react if you put these down on our tables!

Judge for yourself!

The Big Game II: The Big Game Strikes Back!

The Big Game II: The Big Game Strikes Back is coming!  This year's goal:  ONE MILLION POINTS.

To sign up your location for The Big Game II, go to:

http://apocalypse40k.com/index.php?/index

Follow those instructions and start a thread about your location there!

Also, follow The Big Game II on Facebook!

If you are playing at the L.A. location, or hosting a remote location to play in the World Wide game, this is the place for updates! (Well, besides here!).

Table widths in Apocalypse

How you set up tables in Apocalypse is always a subject for discussion.  Very big games need lots of tables and that is always dependent on the size of the space you are playing in.  For The Big Game last year we had the entire L.A. Games Workshop Battle Bunker.  That is a big area, but in order to fit as many tables as possible we set the tables up end to end and in a huge "M".  That gave us a lot of space, but it also made the games a very close affair.

For The Big Game, we set up 3 rows of tables end to end in a huge "M".  Here is the entire set-up.

Now here is how we set up now for our Apocalypse games.  Tables are set up width wise, so you play across 8'.  But since it is hard to reach the middle of the table, we offset each table so you can actually then reach the middle.  We will be setting up the entire Bunker this way for The Big Game II: The Big Game Strikes Back!

The advantages are obvious.  More maneuver, more ability to spread out and deep strike.  No turn 1 charges.   This has become the standard set up for our Apoc games.

Also, last year we had 22 locations world wide participating. There were a total of 2,310,835 points over all these locations.  So if you want to participate this year, email me at alec@propworx.com.

Alec

Samurai Space Marine heads, backpacks and banners!

Oh I am going to make a whole squad of these guys! These are nothing short of brilliant.  Unfortunately they have not yet been released on Kromlech's eBay Store.  

You can check out their blog here.

Puppetswar releases Walker Ranged Weapon and more...

Puppetswar is back at it with a new ranged weapon arm for your walkers (read Dreanoughts!).  And it is a beauty!

They work on either side of your Dread...er...I mean walker!

They also have a great Alien Infestation Pod, which is perfect for you Tyranid players!

Please support these guys!

Alec

Forgeworld New Releases - The Praetor and Contemptor Weapon Arms

Oh, the happiness that a new Forgeworld newsletter brings!

From the Forgeworld website:

The Praetor Armoured Assault Launcher combines the armoured might of the Crassus super-heavy hull with the long-range capabilities of an immense multiple missile launcher. The design, sanctified and approved by the Adeptus Mechanicus, was discovered deep within the cogitator stacks of the recently-reconsecrated Forge World Zhao-Arkkad.
Complete resin kit designed by Stuart Williamson and Daren Parrwood. Experimental rules for the Praetor Armoured Assault Launcher can be found here and an exclusive Apocalypse formation can be found here.

Contemptor pattern Kheres Assault Cannon

Contemptor pattern Heavy Bolter arm

Contemptor pattern Plasma Canon arm  

The nice thing about teh Contemptor arms is that they are good for either side of your Dreads.

Alec

Puppetswar releases Walker Close Combat Arms

I love all the new companies putting out resin accessories.  And Puppetswar is a new one that is slowly making its way into this market.  Two great new pieces, that are basically pre-heresy Dreadnought close combat arms.  Though they call them "Walker close combat arms" to avoid the wrath of GW.

Beautiful parts that I am going to order!  I am a big believer in supporting small businesses that do good work.

Alec

A 40K Baking contest?

Well, the guys over at 40K Nation keep on making the hobby interesting.  It really is a great community that I have enjoyed becoming part of.  And their latest contest is a Bake-Off.  Are you kidding me?   And it is a seriously good idea!!!

Just another reason you should become a member of 40K Nation.  These guys are fun!

Alec

Sisters of Battle Audio Book

From The Black Library:

Sisters of Battle fans get a further treat next month with a new audio drama by James Swallow, Red and Black. James is Black Library's most prolific writer of audio dramas, having written the Horus Heresy: Garro series and Heart of Rage, so the Sisters of Battle's first incarnation in audio form is sure to entertain. Red & Black is followed later this year with Hammer & Anvil, where the Sisters of Battle return to the notorious Sanctuary 101, battling against an ancient and implacable foe. 

40K Nation

The best part of the gaming hobby is the social aspect.  Heck, we are playing with frakkin toy soldiers, so having other adults who you can share your hobby with helps validate us!  And I have some awesome friends that I have made over 13 years in the hobby.  The most recent addition to the list of partners in crime, and my favorite buddy to scheme model building with is Sam Munoz, aka Cranberry Muffinman of 40K Nation.  

Now if you haven't been to 40K Nation, it is all about the hobby.  Model building and gaming.  No BS rules arguments, no trolls, no one arguing why their Thousand Sons or Tyranids "counts as" Space Wolves.  Just good old passion for the game.  They use technology to its full effect, with a TeamSpeak server people bounce in and out of every night and "TinyChat" which is a great video system that allows gamers to show off their model building areas, comparing techniques and such.  And now they are doing a boatload of videos, like the one Cranberry did above.

40K Nation has started a system of "Chapter Masters", players who want to bring their club to the site and actively create content, share ideas and help grow the community.  Right now there are 7 active Chapter Masters.  Cranberry is really good at photoshop, and so creates custom logos for each Chapter.  But Cranberry also requires his Chapter Masters to create video content to help grow the site. You can just screw around, you need to help the community.  And there are always good people who will help do that.  Cranberry's enthusiasm is infectious, and if you hang around, you find yourself wanting to model more and do things to have more fun.

Plus, if you are a good citizen, you get a custom signature from Cranberry.  Here are a couple examples:  

So make sure you check out 40K Nation.

Alec

Ork Bomma Project Log - Part 2

From Greg Teeuwen:

Once the wings were done being brutalized, I then put a ton of rivets everywhere, completing the wings.

Still waiting on gunners, I decided to start putting together the Deff Arsenal, the real meat and potatoes of the Ork bomma. Essentially, there is no imagery of what a Deff Arsenal is supposed to look like. What it does is spits out 3D6 S9 AP3 shots, along with D3 supa-rokkits, all at a range of 120”. So, with such a wild assortment of powerful, long range weaponry, most people envision a buttload of gun barrels. I did a modest job of this with the last bomma, but this time I really wanted to go overboard.

I almost made the mistake of replicating my effort of the last bomma- essentially, I just used the bomma’s front end and stuck a bunch of gun barrels out. As I was about to start, I came across a lone deffkopta body and was struck with an idea. I really like these deffkopta bodies- I really like the pose of the figure, the flying hat and goggles, and the little kopta frame and handlebars. I used 4 of these kits to make my Warkoptas and one kit as the driver of a battlewagon, but now I planned on doing something really insane. 

As described above, the deff arsenal is just a beast of a weapon, just stupid-silly in its application and it makes the imagination think of equally stupid stuff. So, instead of just having gun barrels sticking out of the nose, I decided to actually model a deff arsenal gunner, at the helm of an insane amount of guns.

And then I put them all together for a quick snapshot. This is about 3 steady days of work.

 

Days 4 and 5. Short days, only about 3 hours a day. Just worked on the nose gunner.

More to come!

Resin Accessories - Kromlech

Kromlech is one of a growing number of European resin accessory manufacturers.  Like Scibor, or Micro Art Studio or Secret Weapon, they sell a distinctive line of cool accessories.  One that may appeal to Space marine players is their Shark pattern Assault Jetbike, which would make a good proxy for Space Marine bikes.

Iron Shark Pattern Assault Jetbike

But the biggest part of Kromlech's line is a whole range of Orc accessories.  If you collect Orcs, you need to check out Kromlech's line.  They have head swaps, body kits, mechanical bits, and more.  Here are a couple of their Orky items:

Kromlech is available on their eBay store.

Ork Bommba Project Log - Part 1

Greg Teeuwen is up to it again!  Another Ork conversion from SoCal's biggest Orc Warboss!

From Greg:

This has to be the funnest project I’ve done to date. The first bomber was definitely worth building, but over the last couple years, I’ve adopted several building techniques. Armed with these new skillz, I decided to build a better bomma.

As before, I started with a 1/48 scale B24 Liberator. There’s just something about this type of bomber that really appeals to me (when thinking of Orky bomma styles). It’s big, clunky, and just seems like it’s ready to fall out of the sky- perfect for an Ork bomma!

One of the techniques I adopted was to widen the bodies of 1/48 scale planes. This takes away the tubular look and makes room for stuff I want to put inside. And since I want to put more stuff inside, I cut the body in half so I can manage the hull bits better.

Of note, the sprue ribbing holding the hulls together is only temporary. I got the width where I wanted it and temp-tacked the hulls in place. I’ll lay some interal ribbing and flooring as I go.

Essentially, I’m making room for an Ork Krew. In the last bomma, I had only a couple gunners and a cockpit krew (and they were squooshed in so tight as to not be noticeable). As this bomma will be a master showpiece to my army, I really wanted to go all out with regards to gunners and krew. So, this is how I imagine the gunners will be distributed (3 on each flank, 2 on top, and 1 rear gunner) 

 My building plan intent is to have all the gunners temp-tacked into place, lay some flooring and ribbing securing the hulls in their permanent positions, then completely painting the figures. Once the figures are done, I’ll insert them permanently, then build up the outside of the plane.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough gunners, so I’m forced to start other parts before continuing with the hull.

Might as well do the wings… I quick-built the engines (exhaust tubes really) of the other bomma and didn’t do much to make the plane look all that junky, clunky, or Orky. With the availability of 40k flyer engines, I decided to step up my kitbashing a level. Not only that, I was going to ruin the perfect smoothness of the model and make it look more junky (another skill improvement I picked up).

 

As I tidy up the wings, you can start seeing what the final product will look like.

Contemptor Dreadnought!

The big hit of the Forgeworld display at Games Day was the Contemptor Dreadnought.  Here are the versions coming down the pipe:

 

Plasma Canon

 Two Assault Cannons and a Missile Launcher!

Heavy Conversion Beamer!

Micro Art Studios Rubber Molds

Micro Arts Studios made its name by making greenstuff conversions and selling them on eBay.  I have a bunch of them and they are always favorites of people when they check out my army.

Well, now MAS is selling actual molds for you to use to customize your army!  Basically you can just press green stuff into them and you get a piece you can put on your own models (usually Terminators).  They have 4 different styles now, but frankly, none of them are my favs.  They need to get us the ones they use on their models all the time and I hope to see them soon.

A "Fur" Mold so you can make capes and cloaks! Great for all you Space Wolf players or (yuck) Fantasy players.

Have a great weekend all!

Alec

Forgeworld New Releases - Realm of Battle Table Section

I love this!  Now Forgeworld is doing terrain on a major scale with the release of a Realm of Battle Imperial Strongpoint.  It fits with the other Realm of Battle game boards from games Workshop.

From the Forgeworld Site:

Comprising a power generator, two reinforced defensive positions, dragons-teeth tank traps and huge, armoured blast doors dug into a central hill, the Imperial Strongpoint Expansion tile is a fortified stronghold that will make a great feature for your armies to fight over in games of Warhammer 40,000.

Perfect for representing critical objectives such as a command and control facility, or a fortified artillery pit, the Imperial Strongpoint can be used in games of Planetstrike as a unique Bastion or to represent a huge variety of stratagems, strategic assets and other rules in Battle Missions. It is also a great addition to Apocalypse games and other Warhammer 40,000 battles.

Emperor Titan for sale on eBay

A Chaos Emperor Titan is up for sale on eBay.  You can see it here.  From the owner:  

The titan is 51 inches tall.  It is made primarily out of foam-core board and pvc pipes, with some balsa wood strips and assorted other bits.  The titan was first painted white and then painted with assorted brown and green washes.  I used the old watercolor painting trick of using salt as well to get some texturing effects in the paint.  Some sand patches were used to give some rust texture in parts and finally some craft moss was glued on.

Inner Geeks Reaver Titan Build Pt. 4

The Inner Geek here. Today is kind of a hodge-podge of an update. A little of a couple different things going on. Let's go have a look...

First off is another tip. I ran across a situation and had to use my trusty sharpie marker to bail me out again. There are some resin pieces that have a part number or other designation on them. Such as this one (note the "F" cast in the center).

There is a half cylinder bit that will cover this letter up, forever hiding the important information that is cast in the piece. So, before gluing that piece on I used the marker to replicate the information. So now even with the extra piece glued on, we can tell this part is "F", or 'front'.

Another bit of advice I have is on gluing parts together. As this project goes on I will be using a lot of epoxy. Sure, for small stuff I'll still use the Super Glue. But, for larger pieces I'll be using an epoxy called JB Quick. I love this stuff. It takes about four minutes to cure to the point that the piece is totally secure, but that gives you some working time. It also has another great feature... From about four minutes till around twenty minutes the consistency of the epoxy is such that if you have allowed some to squish out of the joint, you can carve it away with an exacto knife and it will fill any crevice automatically! Here are a couple shots of epoxy in action...

This is a shot of the first piece to get the epoxy treatment. It is an interior view of the leg armor. The bits you glue on the armor to (later) mount it on the legs are a pain. You have to apply glue then hold the piece onto the leg to ensure that the pieces are in the right position. Super Glue drys too fast, so the four minute work time is perfect here. Plus the resulting join will be stronger than the super glue could have ever hoped to be!

As you can see, some small parts have been glued already. These are all minor pieces that are required to go onto the major parts before actual assembly. I've spared you the tedium of explaining every single tiny bit that's glued on. I assure you though, that I will be sharing all the major assembly and any smaller bits that warrant special attention or are just plain cool!

Finally we move on to the dilemma of the base. I've narrowed it down to a couple of options. These are based (ha ha 3d6 pun damage to all readers) on several factors. Playability; how will it work on a game board, will it even fit? Functionality; will it hold the titan up and add at least some stability? I've decided that the pose will be fairly static. I will probably bend one knee a bit, but this thing won't be dancing a jig anytime soon. With this in mind, I bought some MDF board and did some cutting on the band saw and some sanding to bevel the edge.

This first shot is a two base idea. One for each foot. Minimal 'foot print' (wow I'm punny indeed) but still adding some stability and preventing too much pressure ever being put on one or two toes are the main advantages here...

Then there is the full base option. This adds maximum stability at the cost of being freaking huge. The item at the bottom of the pic is a standard 12" (30cm) ruler. Also worth noting; this is a 14" diameter base, I also made a 16" in case this one doesn't allow enough leg room.

You may notice that I left the feet on the smaller 6" diameter bases in this last shot. A third idea I had was to use both methods. I could mount the feet on the smaller individual bases, then use powerful magnets to affix those to the larger base.

Any comments or questions are welcome. You can even toss in a pun if that's how you roll.

-Brian

aka The Inner Geek