After Action (Chaos v. Chaos - 1500)

Played a for funs "kill'em all" style game with one of my friends last night, Chaos Marines heads up. Here's the list I took.

Winged Daemon Prince (Tzeentch, Doombolt, Warptime)
Khorne Berzerkers, 10 (Champion w/Power Weapon, Rhino w/Havoc Launcher)
Chaos Marines, 10 (Flamer, Missile Launcher, Champion w/Power Fist, Rhino)
Bikers, 4 (Nurgle, Meltagun x2, Champion w/Power Fist)
Defiler (Havoc Launcher, Reaper Autocannon)
Vindicator (Daemonic Possession, Havoc Launcher)
Terminators, 3 (Reaper Autocannon, Combi-Melta)
Terminators, 3 (Heavy Flamer & Chain Fist)

So in all mostly a mechanized list against my opponent who was fielding some variation of (from memory):

Winged Daemon Prince (Nurgle)
Thousand Sons (Rhino)
Noise Marines (Rhino)
Obliterators, 2
Terminators, 5 (Khorne, Dual Lightning Claws)
^ Land Raider
Dreadnought (TL Autocannon & Heavy Flamer)

So pretty much everything was inside a box at the start of the game. Not going to go through a blow by blow here, but if I was ever half baked on Daemonic Possession before (20 points on vehicles to ignore Shaken & Stunned damage results, but lowers WS & BS to 3) I am a firm believer now. On appropriate targets of course, but the amount of fire that the Defiler & Vindicator absorbed that they just shrugged off in this game was crazy. My Terminators and Bikers were all pretty much a waste in this game due to poor target selection: the Nurgle Daemon Prince. Now I know the frustration my opponents must have felt in the past when I used such a beast :)

What I take away from this game?

• I think I'm going to try to think of something to permanently model on the Vindicator to represent the Daemonic Possession I liked it that much. 
• Havoc Launchers are awesome against non Marine forces, but very so so against Marines if I know who I'm fighting in the future ahead of time they might sit out. 
• I liked my Tzeentch Prince, but I think I'd swap out Doombolt for Bolt of Change in the future.
• This was the first time (outside of an Apocalypse game) that I took the Vindicator and I'd probably call it my MVP in this game.
• Bikers were a non-factor in this game, but mainly due to player error on my part. They'll need another shot or two before I have a real feel for their use and effectiveness

Next game will probably be with my Grey Knights which are due to show up (hopefully) by Saturday. Probably try to take some pictures of the action throwing down as well.
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Also got to take Nightfall for a spin in a two player game. First impressions are that I can foresee it being a great multiplayer game, and with some more experience probably quite an interesting two player game even. Like the feel of the rules and card design, I'd like to put aside an evening for it to give it a real workout and see how it comes across.

Wonders Never Cease

So lately I've been painting "outside the pot" as it were for the first time. Back when I began this hobby and up until now I've always just dipped my brush into the paint pot to varying results. But lately I'd been pulling out a little paint and actually thinning it out a little with water to get a better consistency to spread over the model. Also giving me more control of how much I put on the brush. But I was running into the problem of everything outside the pot drying out quicker than I'd like and wasting paint.

After doing some research, and a quick trip to Pick 'N Save I whipped up this little wonder.

The Wet Palette

And thus far, I'm loving the results. I pulled out a good bit of Mechrite Red to do the power armor on a Khorne Berzerker and suffered none of the drying out I was experiencing even while doing the interior of the Stormraven. Supposedly with it sealed like this it can last for days or longer, time will tell. If people are interested I'll do a short tutorial on what materials you need and what to do (really simple).

So no progress on the Stormraven today as I was up way too early on my day off to head to Menards to take advantage of a very nice deal on a 42" LED thin as hell HD TV. Five hundred bucks for a MSRP $1200 TV? Yes, thank you sir. After taking a midday nap I also headed down to Rockhead's to grab me a Daemon Prince for my Chaos Space Marines army as I've finally grown tired of the old 40 mm based  fantasy model I'd been using. The new kit looks like a nice imposing Daemon Prince should, on a 60 mm base. I'll post pics once I put it together. Also grabbed a game I'd been waiting to come out: Nightfall. Its a deck building game based around heavy player interaction, which is one of the problems I've had with Dominion and its ilk. At times its like playing multiplayer solitare, I can't wait to try this game out, I'm also a fan of its modern horror war motif.

Stormraven Update

Made a lot of progress on the Stormraven today. Whole thing is pretty much constructed, could easily plop it down on a table for some play. All that's left is finishing off the pilot and gunner cockpits. They're all apart separately, but due to the unique little clear plastic windshields they added I've hit a couple snags. First off more painting I have to do before finishing assembly! Since the two dudes will be sealed inside and in complete view all the time, they gotta be painted. The gunner is just a servitor so that's no biggie, but I keep batting around ideas for the pilot. Since all Grey Knight vehicles are also psykers I kinda wanted to make look the part, by grabbing one of the spare Grey Knight heads off the incoming plastic sprues and putting it on the pilot since their helmets are a little different than a normal marine's. But upon closer inspection, the pilot is actually a Techmarine and I could probably get away with leaving the dude as is but I kinda liked the idea but don't really want to wait until the minis show up to finish closing up the vehicle.

And the other problem caused by those windshields is that each windshield is a solid piece, and then after gluing it onto the cockpit cover you have to glue a pair of little supports to make it look like three separate windows. Now these are tiny supports and they slid all over the damn place trying to get them on and thus got excess glue on the windshields which after it dried gave messy looking white streaks.

Really, they're freak'n tiny!

I'm thinking of trying to see if my wife's nail polish remover will get it off, but I have no idea where its currently at and she's already asleep. But if that doesn't work I'll probably try to work the paint job with them to just look like weathering or something.

So tomorrow I'm off as well and hope to get a little of the detail stuff done on the pilot & gunner, I was planning on doing more of it tonight. But I'm thinking of some Dawn of War 2: Retribution campaign is calling to me.

The Scions of Titan

Warhammer 40k. The bane of my bank account. I've played 40k since back in high school some time with the second edition boxed set. Currently I have sizable amounts of Tyranids and Chaos Space Marines that see table time. A couple years back I wanted to start a loyalist Space Marine army and was looking through the Codices available and thought the Grey Knights, the elite of the elite looked pretty sweet. After realizing that pretty much their entire range was metal (aka expensive) and that if I wanted to play a pure Grey Knight army without allied assistance it wouldn't work out too well on the tabletop the desire passed. Well, with the impending release of the new 5th edition Grey Knight Codex (and my preorder in the queue) I've revisited the chapter of psykers.

I picked up a Stormraven Gunship to work on in before the release, in some hope of some kind of head start. Also, you should know that I have a severe problem with devoting the time to getting my minis painted. I love love love doing various conversions and embellishments on my models, but they always seem to hit the table before I devote the time to paint them. And then I see something else the army needs ... well you can see where that cycle is headed. With Grey Knights I want to make a conscious effort to get the models, assemble AND paint them before expanding the force.

So yes, the Stormraven. This is an interesting project for me as well as I've never actually painted a vehicle before (surprise!). I've assembled a few, inherited a great many Chaos vehicles (some painted, some just primed) when I bought an army off a friend who stopped playing - but never the whole journey. And since I just started the blog, I figure I'll do a couple updates on this experience.

This last weekend I did some assembly and decided that since the hatch which pours the Emperor's Angels of Death out of the gunships innards onto some forsaken planet was hinged, that I'd try to paint up the inside at least a little bit so it wasn't drab plastic gray if someone peeked inside. 

So, as you can see I didn't expend too much effort on the inside details. Mainly a single coat of a mixture of painting and drybrushing Boltgun Metal over the interior. Than punching up a couple of the inner details with some color. I also didn't do myself any favors by constructing it as much as I did. If I did it again, I'd leave one side off so I could better access the interior details. If I'd done that, I'd probably spent some more time on this, but you live you learn.

Anyways, now to close her up!

A Blog?!?!?

Yes, a blog. I've long toyed with the idea of starting a blog, but never actually followed through with it. What will this blog be about? Pretty much gaming, and other nerdly arts. Here you will find ruminations, rants and the crazed thoughts that go flying through my brain at pretty much any spare moment. They will likely range from game design thoughts and theories, campaign ideas (or discussions of current ones), maybe the occasional product review and probably some Warhammer 40k modeling and painting.

As far as the name goes, yeah when I look at it does sound a little pretentious. But it also has history for me, it was the name of the first website I hard coded (HTML by hand) on a crazed sleep deprived coding bender that either approached or surpassed 24 hours. It was a community site for my friends who had no web design knowledge to post stuff about themselves and a home page for a weekly trivia email contest I used to run, a nascent MySpace I guess now that I look at it. Anyhoo, I got tagged as "The Greater Biznich of Tzeentch" for no good reason by a friend late in high school.

It stuck.

Over time its shortened to mainly The Biznich, and that's what I've used as my internet handle for pretty much all time. In common gatherings I'll get referred to as Biz by friends on occasion and often on my website which has now just focused down to a phpbb forum for discussion among friends and some play by post rpgs.

So here's to hoping you, whoever you may be, take something of interest from reading the blog of a guy who's gaming brain hamster will just never get off its wheel.

Oh also, I'd appreciate any feedback on the site layout its kinda the default right now except for the background which is something I whipped up in Photoshop like a decade a go.