So, I Built a Photobox

I feel like my picture quality has been kinda up and down on the blog and wanted to standardize the way I take them. I usually just put a sheet of paper up and take the pic with the camera on a tripod with the shutter speed maxed and the timer on. Recently, I have been lazy and just snapped pics on the desk. I have seen a few people make these photoboxes and thought it would be an easy way to get up on my picture quality. Below are the pics of my setup. I used a cardboard box and cut openings in two sides and top then covered these on the outside with parchment paper. These inside I just lined with printer paper as seen. I thought this would just make it point and shoot but it's not. I'm having trouble with to much light or to much shadow. For the pics I post I always crop in photoshop and do the quickfix option which fixes my lighting problem most of the time. I have yet to shoot any pics of painted models in this box, only just built ones and am not very impressed. What do you guys do to take high quality pics of your models? Does anyone have a setup like this? Do you have to use the quickfix for lighting correction and is this a good alternative to not having a good lighting setup?

New Straken and Harker Models on Advanced Order

I just saw the new Iron Hand Straken model and the new Sergeant Harker models up on the GW site for advanced order. Everyones seen the pics before, but they are still some great models for the IG range that I'll be adding to my massive IG army when it comes off the backburner. The link is herehttp://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat1430057&rootCatGameStyle=wh40k.

As soon as I have time to upload some pics I have a lot of things to post that I built this week on the chaos side of things.

Chaos Chosen Squad Pics

Below are some pics of the Chosen squad I finished converting up a couple days ago. This squad is kitted out with 4 flamers and a champion with powersword and boltpistol. I plan on using this squad in a rhino with Huron Blackheart for some outflanking roasting. I built this squad with a mix of parts from the Space Wolf sprue and the Chaos marine sprue. The head of one is from a fantasy Chaos Warrior and the arms of the champion are from the fantasy Chaos Marauder sprue. I mixed in the Space Wolf bits to show that this was a squad from the Wolf of Fenris that changed to Huron's employ when it was captured and taken by him. They are now his bodyguard.

I gotta get me a photo box built so I can take some better pics. Lately I have been to lazy to even put up the sheet of paper and use the tripod like I usually do. Last night I finished building this squad's rhino except for the skull press-molds for the corners like the Land Raider, so a couple more days on it. Till next time, hope you like the slight conversions on these, I'm pretty happy with how most of them came out.

Forgeworld Berzerker Squad with Landraider Pics

Below are some pics of the Khorne Berzerker Squad I finished building a couple days ago. These guys will ride in style in there Landraider along with Kharn the Betrayer and maybe Lucius the Eternal also in large games. I moved a couple weeks back and am not settled in enough to start painting Project Deathguard again yet, but I am finding a few minutes here and there to build some more units. This unit of eight is built using the Forgeworld torso conversion kit and 8 pairs of running legs from the Khorne Berzerker boxset. I converted all of these, except the champion, to have the Forgeworld Chainaxes. The chainaxes look great, but I had to completely cut off shaft and replace with paperclip to keep them from breaking so easily. For the Landraider I added Forgeworld WorldEater doors all around and added a couple skull totems and Khorne symbols. On the front corners of this I added some skull press-moulds from which I stole the idea from Tim over at http://www.the-vanus-temple.com/. This was a great idea he came up with and is very easy to do if you follow his directions. I plan on adding this same technique to a Rhino I am currently assembling for a unit of Chosen.

Now that the move is over I hope to get this blog going again. Next update will be my Chosen squad with 4 flamers that have a Rhino transport and Huron Blackheart tagging along. Well, that's all for now, hope you like.

At a Standstill

Well, I haven't really been devoting much time to the hobby lately due to real life getting in the way. Working 12 hours per day, spending time with the family and having to move on two weeks notice has put hobby time down to zero. On the plus side, while moving I have found a few cool bitz I had forgotten about and will have a more organized area to work in a week or two, after settling in the mother-in-law's. Hopefully soon I can get back into painting Project DeathGuard(and post the progress) and finish building a few other units I plan on adding to my Chaos Space Marine army so everything I want will be built at least. After that it's back to my Crimson Fists for a bit to round them out, then dunno maybe back to Fantasy or keep with the 40k. Either way it's gonna be a while.

In other more exciting news, yesterday morning I showed up to work and reklawsj had the bag of my much anticipated ForgeWorld order that we had ordered a while back. Little did I know he had ordered me an Imperial Thunderbolt fighter that I had been wanting for a long time now. This was a great gift to receive totally by surprise and I am super excited to get started on this beast to give my Imperials a little air support. Also in the bag was my World Eater Conversion Set, Khorne Chain Axes, and some World Eaters LandRaider Doors. I was pretty excited about these till the Thunderbolt came out of the box.

Well, that's all for now gotta get some sleep so I can spend the next two days moving everything that is left.

Next Stop Semifinals for the Sallies

As ctreleheb pointed out we competed in our first Ard Boyz game last weekend. Here's a quick rundown of what happened and the list I used. I'm acutally quite proud of my list. I know I'll see a lot of people in the semi final round trying to spam out Vulkan with a lot of Land Speeders and Attack Bikes but my army stays pretty true to fluff.

Alright first round. First game was against a young kid playing Chaos. I pretty much walked through his army as he was not prepared for Ard Boyz at all when he showed up at the store. He was definetly using some bold strategies in his army, like walking right towards an immobolized Redeemer's flamestorm cannons with Emperor's Childrn only to be burned to a crisp. In the end it was a Massacre.

Next game was against some Orks. This game was very scary for me becasue I have never played Orks before and had heard nothing but of how tough they were especially with Nob Bikers. Luckily this guy a good sport and didn't use them. In the end my Chaplain and LC Terminators killed Ghazghkull Thraka and Nob squad while Vulkan and TH/SS Termies took out another Warboss and Nob squad. Utter Massacre but I did find a cool opponent in the process.

Last game. This game was against Orks again! It was supposed to be against the complaining Black Templar guy that ctreleheb referred to but somehow it worked out that I had to play this guy. His army was very cheesy. 3 Battlewaggons made from what looked like Tonka toys and 3 Truks made from old toys cars. He was good friends with the guy running the tournament so he was still allowed to play. And luckily he had a Nob Biker squad. In the end I recieved a minor loss because I failed to contest his objective. Nob Bikers are tough and killed my chappy squad, two tactical squads, and dread but not before the Dread squashed his Warboss's head in his hand.

So first place for me. $60 bucks just for playing a game is never bad. And in a game against someone other that ctreleheb.

Oh and here's the list I used

Vulkan

w/ 5 TH/SS termies

in Redeemer

Chappy

w/ 5 LC termies

in LR

4x 10 man Tactical Squad

w/ meltagun, multimelta, combimelta

in Rhino

Inquisitor

w/ mystics

Vindicator

Dread

w/ multi melta, heavy flamer

in Drop Pod

Local '09 'Ardboyz Preliminary Results

Reklawsj and I played in the local 'ardboyz prelims at the local Hobbytown but have been working too much to post something on this earlier. This is the closest place for us to play being a little over an hour from home so we needed to do well to be worth it. I haven't played a pickup game against anyone since 4th edition came out and reklawsj has never played a random person, only myself and a couple other friends. So to get prepared we went down the weekend before and played a game each but with armies of different races than we were going to use in the tournament.

When tournament day came we got there early ready to play. I took along a dual lash prince plus nurgle list with oblits and vindies and reklawsj took along his Vulkan-led Salamanders.

My first game came against another nurgle army led by Abaddon and Kharn in LR full of berzerkers. I came out scoring a massacre with 2 bonus points. My second game came against Black Templars with 5 LandRaiders, 2 Vindies and a Landspeeder. I played very tentatively trying to save killpoints by going second and keeping everything in reserve. This didn't work because in the second turn my Greater Deamon came in from reserve with no host on the table and was lost, so 5 points lost before I even started. Not being geared for LR killing I was massacred. In the third game I played an Ork horde with BW and scored a very closely fought Minor Victory. This could have been a Major Victory if I had remembered the Run rule because I finished the game only 4" from an objective that could have been contested.

So in the end I finished in a respectable fourth place. I should have been in third but the opponent I played with Black Templars had been massacred in his first game came out of it with a tie. This was due to his complaining so much about a model in his opponent's army that wasn't WYSIWYG. After a full hour of complaining and pleading the tournament organizers gave him a tie to satisfy him and he beat me by 7 points. So in the end no semi-final round for me. On the upside reklawsj finished in first with 2 massacres and a minor victory.

Final Results:
1st - Salamanders w/Vulkan(Massacre, Massacre, Minor Victory)
2nd - Nurgle Chaos - (Total Loss(to me, haha), Massacre, Massacre)
3rd - Black Templars - (Tie(cheap, should be total loss), Massacre, Tie)