I'm knee deep in a major project for my job that is easting up most of my days and nights and not really leaving me in a good mood to get a game in or paint.  I'll probably be on this same project through all of March and into April (although I'm hoping it will become a bit more relaxed late-March).

Until then, I don't think I'll have many posts.  I'll try to stop in to share any great posts I've found around the web, but I'm not expecting to be original for a little while.

See you in April...

However, during the week, I was able to finish Eryss (except for some minor touch-ups and fine details).  I also layed a layer of silver down on 2 of my warjacks and got a decent amount of basecoat on my Judge for Malifaux.  All-in-all, I am happy with my results, but I'm finding that getting in all the nooks and crannys is a pain on some models post-assembly.  I'm thinking I need to either:

• Start painting before I assemble (which is unlikely since I'm okay playing with gray models and I'm more in theis for the game than the paint)
• Paint from the inside out.  I've read about this a bit and I think I need to actively start trying it.

I still need to decide what color the Judge's hair should be.  Fluff-wise she's a redhead, but I'm not sure I'm going to stick with that...  Blonde is out as well (I think it'd look silly).  I'm planning to look around for other female models to see what their hair looks like.

So without further ado...

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I still need more work on my photography though...  If I get some time int he next 2 weeks, I might see if my wife would kill me for trying to make a small lightbox...  I had a bad time getting good light without washing out the picture.  I did discover Macro-mode though; that helped sharpen things up a bit.

Without further ado....

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I think this is also helping me get better pics...  I'm not overly happy with the Stormclad pic, but the 2nd Eryss picture came out wonderfully.  I went back to retry the warjacks and they came out worse though.  I think I need to go back to the FTW Tutorials and read up on taking better pics.

I'd love to blame this on work; with the past 2 months consisting of mosting 11 and 12 hours days, it wouldn't be hard.  But even on the weekends, I've had a hard time getting motivated to break out the paints.

With that in mind, I think I know what I need to do.  Watching Julie and Julia with my wife helped give me a bit of an idea.  I'm going to look into getting a 'To be Painted'/'Been Painted' counter on the site.  Also (and more importantly, I'm going to have a new feature on the site.  Every Thursday, I will have a 'State of the Paint' post with where my painting status is with pictures of the work done.

The 1st one will be in 6 days, so I need to get a bit done for it before then.

There haven't been any Battle Reports either b/c I've only played 1 game all month in January.  I'm hoping to get in some Warmachine games (since it's shorter) in February while my work schedule returns to normal.

Questions for the you: How to you get up the motivation to paint? And, what do you do when you want to paint a bit, but just can't seem to make the time?

I will complete the Battle Reporter plugin by the end of June 2010.

I will learn to play Malifaux.

Those are my 3 gaming goals for this year.  Nothing too spectacular.  The points thing was something I read about at Berk's Warhammer and I thought it was a brilliant idea.  I've got alot of CSM painting to do, and I'm actually looking forward to getting started on it.

For the Battle Reporter plugin, it has stalled out a bit, but I'm working on getting things setup again to begin development once more.

I've been reading the rulebook for Malifaux, and I'm very much looking forward to this game.  I've picked up the Death Marshals Box Set and the Lilith Brood Set, and I'm hoping to get them put together and painted in January.

So that's my plan for the new year.  More updates and pictures would be ideal too...

Anyways, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  Here's to a good year of gaming and fun in 2010!!

I am entering a themed Apoc game on the 23rd of January with 4 Tyranids versus 4 non-Tyranids to break in their new Codex.  I haven't gotten Army Builder up and running again, so no army lists yet (I'm too lazy to hand-make one right now).  I wil have more details on this later.

For the Mittennacht league, I've gotten 2 games in so far.  Against another CSM player, I was completely wiped out for a major loss.  Against a SM (Ultramarine) army with FOUR Land Raiders, I was able to pull out a win and even killed 6-7 Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield Termies with a squad of 7 Khorne Berzerkers (+1 Skull Champion).  That was a fun assault.  These next two weeks will be a bit of a rush as I try to get anything in for this round.  I really need a win since I missed the 1st rounds map-phase for getting new territories (I was out of town).

Also, I'm reading up on Malifaux and might be getting a small game in on that in the near future.

More to come later.  I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, or Happy Holiday, or Fun Whatever-you-do.

I was having a great day up until the Sheriff calls me to let me know.  All-in-all, my wife and I are fine (which is great), but my laptop and game console are AWOL.  If it wasn't for my horrible job with wires behind the TV, that would probably be gone with other assorted AV crap that was too tangled up to get out (they tried though).

The thing that just bugs me though...  I had just traded my IG for CSM; and while nearly everything is still there, they took 2 CSM models form my work area;  Ignore the big metal ones and the box box of them, just take the 2 that I had just assembled. It just adds insult to injury.

Still, it could have been worse.  Neither my wife nor I were home, and all 3 cats stayed inside and just hid. I lost stuff, but nothing irreplaceable.

So, I probably won't be updating much for a little while (not that I'm a frequent updater anyways)...  However, I did work up a quick change to my CSM list for the upcoming FLGS leage.  More fluffy this time, but I think I have an uphill battle in terms of competitiveness:

HQ: Abaddon the Despoiler (275 pts)
Elite: Terminators (190 pts): 4 Terminators (Combi-melta x2; Combi-plasma x2) & 1 Terminator Champion
Elite: Chosen (165 pts): 5 Chosen (Chaos Glory, Meltagun x2) & Rhino (Combi-melta)
Troops: Chaos Space Marines (245 pts): 9 Chaos Space Marines(Chaos Glory, Meltagun x2), 1 Aspiring Champion, & Rhino (Havoc Launcher)
Troops: Thousand Sons (259 pts): 8 Thousand Sons (Icon) & 1 Aspiring Sorcerer (Doombolt)
Troops: Khorne Berzerkers (263 pts): 7 Khorne Berzerkers (Icon) , 1 Skull Champion (Power Weapon), &  Rhino (Combi-melta)
Troops: Plague Marines (296 pts): 6 Plague Marines (Icon, Plasmagun x2), 1 Plague Champion (Combi-plasma), & Rhino (Havoc Launcher)
Troops: Noise Marines (155 pts): 6 Noise Marines (Icon, Sonic Blaster x6)
Heavy Support: Obliterators (150 pts): 2 Obliterators

Skipping the obvious: I know Abaddon is a big points since and Daemon Princes are most cost-efficient, but I want to runt he big guy for the fun of it.  The Terminators will be painted each one as a different Chaos God markings (the Champion will be undivided representing Abaddons personal guard).  I also have lots of Icons in their to help with Deep striking.

Should be fun to play, and that's what I want out of the league.

The big killer is that I've been having a hard time making time to really get cranking on it and I've hit a few roadblocks in my designs and have gone back to the drawing board a few times to try to figure out what a good user interface should look like for this.

So, yeah, I'm still working on it, but it just goes slower than I had hoped.

Still to be done:

1) Admin/User Interfaces to create Battle Reports

2) Picture Uploads (right now, they work, but are all manual)

3) Search Funtionality (in the short term, I'll continue just listing all reports in lieu of the search page)

I bumped the search functionality down since I felt that people should be able to create Battle Reports before they can search (since now there is very little to search for).

This came at a great time too as my FLGS is about to start a campaign/league called Mittennacht.  If I wasn't able to trade away my IG in time, I was going to run my Daemonhunters (which are always good for a sure loss).  Fortunately, I will be running my new CSM.

I've worked up a quick list to try out.  I'm a bit short on time (and the holiday season isn't giving me more time), so I need to get some list-testing done ASAP to weed out any problems and get used to the new army quickly.  Here's my initial list (trying to be somewhat fluffy too):

HQ: Daemon Prince with MoK & Wings (140 pts)

HQ: Daemon Prince with MoN & Wings (150 pts)

Elite: Dreadnaught w/ Plasma Cannon (105 pts)

Elite: 4x Terminators w/ 2 Combi-Meltas & 1 Reaper Autocannon (155 pts)

Troops: 7x Plague Marines w/ 2 Plasmaguns, Champion w/ Power Fist, & a Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (281 pts)

Troops: 8x Khorne Berzerkers w/ Skull Champion w/ Power Fist & Rhino w/ Combi-Melta (268 pts)

Troops: 10x CSMs w/ Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, & Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (225 pts)

Troops: 10x CSMs w/ Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, & Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (225 pts)

Troops: 10x CSMs w/ Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, & Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (225 pts)

Heavy Support: 2x Obliterators

Heavy Support: 1x Obliterator

Total: 1999 Points

That gives me 60 models with at least a 3+ save that should be a task for any army to whittle down.  I wanted to keep everything Khorne & Nurgle (and in their sacred numbers no less) and originally I was toying with 2 of each Cult Troops instead of just 1 each (too few models for my taste though). I'm going to go back through in a bit to try to see if I can find a bit of room to make to give the DP with the MoN a Psychic Power (possibly Nurgle's Rot since I want him up close and personal, but Warptime is awesome too).

What sucks a bit is that I really like Lucius the Eternal and alot of the Slaanesh stuff, but I also really like the Berzerkers.  Mixing the 2 would kinda kill the fluff thing I want to keep, but it's be fun.  For this, I want to keep a bit of fluff going, but in a future fluff-be-damned list, I may play with them together a bit more.

Another list I'm playing witht hat I think would be a really fun list to play is a Black Legion army fielding 1 of each Cult Troop in their respective sacred number (Tzeentch,= 7, Khorne = 8, Nurgle = 7, Slaanesh = 6).  Fill that out with other units divisible by 4 (to model evenly amongs the Chaos gods) to get more support and a bit more variety.  I've toyed around with it a bit, but so far, no list I rally love yet.

Also, one of the things I really want to do for 2010 is to field a full 2000 pt. game witha  fully painted/based/etc... army (ideally against the same).  Looking over my unpainted guardsmen, I know I'm a slow painter, and I get overwhelmed thinking about them.  That's not a feeling I want associated with this game. I've been spoiled by my FLGS having no requirements or push for painted models as most of the players have largely unpainted armies.  I do however subscribe to so many Warhammer blogs that feature painted armies and beautiful battle pictures.  Having seen those reminds me of what originally got me into this hobby to begin with.  Sadly though, this is not something that I can do with Imperial Guard.

I'm leaning towards Chaos Space Marines based on my past experiences playing them and thumbing through the codex.  They go together well with my Chaos Daemons army already and I really like the appearance of the models and the large array of options in the codex.  Also, I can easily see a variety of elite armies being built form the codex (Plague Marines and Thousand Sons spring to mind and look impressive).  I also think this might be a good step back into the Fluff of the game for me (somethign I never really managed with IG).

Anyways, here's the details on the models I have up on the chopping block and what I'd like to get in exchange: Imperial Guard Up for Trade (for CSM)

Please email me if you have any questions or are interested in trading.  Thanks.

Update: I finally gota  few pics of the IG have have up for trade.  I also have a few trades pending, so updates are on the way (Friday).

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