1500 Points

Here they are. 1500 points worth of Tzeentch awesome. I'll get some more pictures up when the terminators get a bit better together. It's looking like that my apoc list will be significantly different, making a unit of those thousand sons totally different and starting to play around with some of the organizations that make it a whole lot deadlier, but for 1,500 points this isn't too shabby. 10 terminators, 10 thousand sons, 10 chaos space marines, two rhinos, a hell drake, and a terminator sorcerer. Grand total of models - 34.

Again, think back to my vampire counts, there's entire units of zombies/skeletons that are more models than this. This is why I love me some chaos, you can field a stupid amount of points for almost no models at all. It's relaxing having an elite army. Less to worry about, less to paint, less to field, less to memorize rule wise.

Terminators

I'm done with the most difficult part - color blending. From here on out, it's just the small details.

Only thing left on the list for these guys is to do metalics, some edge highlights, and then smaller details like skulls and helmets that are on spikes. After that, they're done. Also, you can't see it here, but my favorite figure is the from row middle with the power fist. He's the champion for no other reason than his power fist is flipping a power middle finger at everyone. You don't notice it until you look at little too much at them, but he's totally giving the bird to the opponent.

You Don't Realize It Until You Do

When I grade papers for my classes, typically I'm also mindlessly watching some Netflix in the background to give me some noise as well as a story to listen to so that I don't go crazy. I've gone through great shows like Murder She Wrote (seriously that show is a LONG show, it's got something like 13 seasons of 1 hour episodes, everyone in her home town is dead by the end of that show if you start counting deaths up) and even Supernatural.

Recently I've been tackling an old school sitcom of The Munsters.

There are times that I start to think they're being sarcastic, or trying to create some social commentary, because it's the Munsters. It's supposed to be about counter culture and the rebellion against what is normal and their life versus that suburban world that they are surrounded by. I expect that sort of content from their writers, but then I start getting upset because instead of a story about differences being acceptable, it becomes episode after episode about how differences should be hidden and how you should deconstruct your ideas down to the suburban world of life because that is the socially acceptable way of thinking.

Let's dive into this thing and the ways that it makes me angry.

Let's start with the husband/wife dynamic.

She's supposed to be the stay at home wife, he's supposed to be the working husband. While this doesn't bug me, the part that annoys me is just how controversial it is whenever a plot line comes around where she gets a job. Her family runs out of money and can't pay the bills for her niece to go to college, or any other story line, and she steps up and gets a job. Instead of showing her as being a contributing factor of what is going on, she gets boiled down into this idea that her having a job is a horrible thing, and that the husband should just step it up even more.

Don't even get me started about their personal gender stereotypes either. How that she is the ultimate power in the home, a passive wife outside of the place. How that he is a goof inside the home but a violent freak outside of the home. Hello! Did anyone not notice these and try to draw correlations to the real world and gender expectations between men and women?

Next, we have the children, or rather their one child and then their niece that is living with them.

They are all but forgotten. For being a show about a family, the children (and especially the son) seem to be given no regard to having a voice or opinion about anything. Even the smallest elements they are washed over and the parents act almost as though the kids aren't even there. It's such a weird thing to look at considering that 2/5 of the cast are younger, and they never get story lines. The son is always off doing something, and occasionally we hear about him being at school, but his own issues or his own life are non-consequential to everything else that is going on. The niece that is 'normal' is just as flat a character. She is cute, and boys like her, but they get scared away by her family. That's all she is. That's all she has for every single episode. Past that we have no clue of who she is, what she likes, or what she wants to be in her life. We get nothing from them because they're just the kids and they don't matter.

Given, for that fact, the writing on all of these characters falls a little flat, but at least with the mother and father we get some sense of there being something more behind what they're acting. It's just unfortunate because the entire set up of monsters being normal and trying to live a normal life has such good place for talking about social inequality, the feelings of injustice that we all feel, and ultimately the goal of embracing your weird to be who you are without any fear of judgement around you.

Unfortunately it doesn't follow into that world, but instead creates small little dramas that are fixed in slightly unique ways, but ultimately build up the stereotypes and cultural expectations of it's era. You're not going to find the munsters ever doing anything to break away from suburbia, no matter how weird they are, no matter how backwards they tried to look, they still exemplified the boring, stifling, oh my goodness how I could never had lived during that time period, life.

It's So Evil It Just Might Work - Warhammer

I got my assignment for the 1500 point game, and it's based off off 'kill points', but the thing is that the setting for the game is a little wonky, because if anything dies, it doesn't die.

https://crusadeforroannoke.wordpress.com/missions/Black%20Crusade/

Read there for the it comes back if you kill it thing.

The bonus stupid part to this is that I'm going up against Tau, which is one of the most broken armies in the game, super over powered, and a terror to even see on the list because I know that there's no way that I'm going to do well in this match up. Knowing that I'm not going to do well, now is the time that I get to pull out all of the stupidity that I can muster, and do something annoying and cheesy, but potentially workable.

Kill points is based off the basic idea that if you kill an entire unit, it counts as one point. With the system that is set up, once something dies, it just comes back on the board a few turns later ready to give your opponent even more points. This boils down to a very simple idea for me - don't let him kill me. I don't mind if I don't do much killing, but as soon as I feed one kill, it's not going to look good because then it'll just start snowballing out of control and I'll be feeding points left right and center. To put it as nicely as possible, I tried to make it impossible to kill any unit, and if a unit did die, they have the very real possibility to avoid death when they come back.

My entire army is as follows
Chaos space marines - maximum point value. Tricked out, in a rhino, that is also tricked out with extra armor and fun and games to make it hard to hit. No points spared. I can (and should) consider going with more thousand sons here, and having two units of thousand sons, because that'd be interesting, but for now we're going to stick with what is painted and treat it as is.
Thousand sons - in a rhino. Fancy rhino, but still sticking around for a while is hopefully what they do best.
A ten man unit of terminators - bye bye warp talons, you look awesome but really sort of suck. Hello, ten wounds of having the best saves the game can possibly give me to dodge bullets and tank an explosion. Seriously, the amount of damage these guys can survive is stupid, and the guy I'm fighting against is going to have to take on ten of them.
A terminator sorcerer - shoved in with the terminator squad he's another two wounds of tanky tank on more tank.
Helldrake - It's pure job is to fly around, poop fire out on things, and run away. Never die. If it gets close to dying, run off of the table and back into reserves.

That gives my entire army a grand total of five kill possible kill points, and within those kill points I have two units who come attached to a rhino so they can run and hide, one unit who has some of the best (if not the best thanks to mark of Tzeentch stacking with all sorts of stupid fun stuff essentially giving them a 2/3 chance of dodging ANYTHING, even things that are super powerful) saves in the game, and a flyer that is the only thing cheesy enough that might stand a chance against Tau.

The bonus round to this strategy is that at the start of the game again I'm only fielding two things (my rhinos) and they're going to show up as far away as possible from the death. I'm planning on running the exact same strategy that I did last time. Pull the opponent army across the table to look at the squishy opening and then hopefully deep strike behind them with a ten man unit of terminators and wreck face.

I doubt that it'll work, because it never works that well, but at least this time I have some intention behind what I'm fielding and some basic strategy. Which was a whole lot better than my first games where I just looked at stuff and said, "Why not? Let's do something stupid!"

The only thing that I'm hopping for with this is that the Tau player brings in a lot of gun lines. Lots and lots of gunlines that I can smash through.

I Won! - Warhammer

It's official, I finally won my first match!

It ended early, and by either victory points, or just looking at what was happening and betting on the fact that things were going poorly and not looking much better as they were going for my opponent, I was headed towards winning.

To start off with, we were on a lava/volcano terain, so yay for lava! We got set up and followed rules for determining victory points and rolled that there would be five objectives. We put them all over the place and even one of them in a pool of lava. We deployed and set up like the tournament said we needed to.

I got in the bottom right corner, he got the top left. My deployment was a grand total of two models (two rhinos)

.
His deployment was significantly bigger.

On turn one, I ran the rhino full of chaos space marines (you've know the ones I'm talking about) straight towards the corner and spit them out so they could stand in the middle of a lava field on a floating chunk of rock and say that they had at least one objective secure. If there was one thing that I knew, it was that they could stand and shoot at anything that came their way, and going into melee with them was a death wish because who is going to stand and fight in lava, so I had one point.

The thousand sons was a bit more devious. You can tell a bit in the picture above, but there's sort of a fork in the canyon that the objective (the white dice) is in. The rhino pulled over to the right to block two of the entry ways and then the sons popped out the other side to block in the other entrance. To get to that marker he either had to punch through a rhino, that could at least soak up some fire for a while and keep the thousand sons alive, or go for the sons which were a tarpit waiting to happen.

He then moved a lot of his army forward to deal with the two units I had on the table. In the front line going face to face with my rhino and thousand sons was a five man unit of lichguard and a five man unit of immortals.

However, because of how I wedged in my rhino and hid behind cover, the lychguard (who have no ranged weapons) were the only ones that could see my sons, and the immortals, could only see the rhino, so yay for using cover properly and not wrecking myself!

His lychguard charged in on my thousand sons and then for the rest of the game the two units were in melee combat and the thousand sons just sat there. They took some wounds but by turn three (when we had to end the game because the shop was closing) there were still four of them on the table standing their ground, but we'll get to that later.

Top of turn 2- me
Helldrake comes out from reserves and vector strikes his immortals and distance wise lands right behind them (within one inch). Doesn't wipe them off the face of the world, but at least hurts them a bit.

The lava space marines sit in their corner on their objective, and the thousand sons go back to smacking the lychguard who don't die either, so it's about even. Still, no one dead.

Bottom of turn 2- him
Moves things around in the background because he's starting to realize that the fight is mainly going to be on the opposite side of the board. Gun lines start moving, his 'bikes' (I use that term loosely still not sure what they actually are called) come in, and even his warlord manages to make his way across a bunch of lava and terrain to get within an inch of my thousand son rhino. Seriously, the entire necron army at this point is trying to get in position to get rid of a ten man unit of thousand sons and their rhino. A bit of damage to rhino and sons unit, but they were still there and life still went on because thousand sons just stood and laughed.

Also important to note - his doom scythe came in and tried to shoot stuff but nothing went boom too much. 

Top of turn 3 - me
Reserve rolls got warptallons, and my terminators in. Both rolled in about the same spot (just a little away from an objective that was only defended by a gun line) and got REALLY good scatters to put them in cover hidden behind things without ruining where they were. All things considering I couldn't have asked for better positioning on my deep strike scatter rolls because it was stupid how perfect they were.

My sorcerer came on, so that means that it's psychic time. Rolled a 6 for charges, and was in a good mood because that meant a killer psychic phase. Managed to get off the primarch tzeentch power on a gunline, but no one actually died (they just reanimated) so no bonus boom to that, but then came the doom bolt. Doom bolt is now my favorite friend. I pointed the bolt straight towards the scythe and was expecting maybe a glance, nope, I got a pennitrating hit. On the misshap table I was expecting a bad roll, nothing too amazing. Nope, I rolled a 6, with strength 8 that meant it exploded. I sniped it out of the air only allowing it to play a role for one round. It crashed and burned and fell into the lava.

By the way, that picture right there, is my favorite picture of the group. Minus the terminator sorcerer not being painted, it just looks awesome.

Shooting happened and the lava loving marines took a few pot shots at things that were getting a little too close for comfort and lit them up with soul blaze.

Unfortunately I was not able to get too much further into the turn because the shop was closing down and wanted us out, but the whole deal went a little like this.

Points for me -
lava marines objective (3 pts)
thousand sons objective (3 pts)
first blood (1 pt)
then the one that I can't remember that gives you points for being close to your enemy's deployment edge (my lava rhino and helldrake were practically parked on that side of the board so go team) (1 pt)

His points -
2 objectives (6 pts)

In the next rounds he would have to deal with warp tallons, terminators, and a terminator sorcerer all on his rear flank. His warlord and most of his fire power was off staring at the marines and sons, while on the other side of the board people were ready to jump straight into combat and show just how awesome a power fist on a terminator can really be.

Officially because we ended early I said it was okay to have a tie (because also honestly it doesn't matter at all on the rankings because I lost everything else. It's not going to lead to me getting first place if I want to fight that point) but honestly, I won. Even if the game kept going I was going to win.

I finally won my first game of 40k.

Tales Of Eternia - The Games I Play

I've been working on this thing on and off, but I've gotten to the point that I want to actually write up a review of it. I'm not all the way finished with it, but I'm a bit afraid that the second disk is a bit scratched or isn't reading correctly because the loading times in the area that I'm at are a bit long, and I'm worried that I won't be able to progress any more.

This is the Tales game that started it off for me. This is the one that I ran into forever ago while playing with Ryan, and I thought it was amazing, and the best part is, is that between then and now the game has kept up really well.

The best part about it, is that it's not stupid impossible difficult like Dark Souls, but it's unforgiving enough that if you make a mistake that it hurts. It doesn't hold your hand, but gives you enough freedom to let you do what you need to do.

For example the game gives you subs. You can go and explore the ocean floor, and you're told to just do it. You don't get directions, you don't get told exactly where or what you have to do, you just have the freedom to do whatever you want and explore whatever you want. Do what you want, and it's okay. The same goes for dungeons and mobs. You can grind out for a long time and be levels ahead of where you should be, but if you get lazy, allow yourself to get attacked in a weird way and don't react fast enough, your over leveled party that used to be cleaning up the dungeon without a second thought, suddenly is going through a tough fight and you're having to struggle for everything.

All of the tools and 'gimmicks' that are part of the game are oddly really well balanced and interesting. For example the summons you can split between two of your characters. Depending on which summon you give to which character they get a different skill set and the summons themselves interact with each other in different ways to unlock specific skills if you level them up. It has the potential to be nice and complicated, but they do it in such a way that it works, even if you hate it.

The only part about the game that makes it cringe worthy, but also lovable, is the writing. I don't know if it can be counted as bad writing, or just amazing ideas to keep things light, but each character has their cliche phrase that they love to spout out. Max's "Yeah!" or Meredy's "Biba!" is either borderline genus (because neither of them are all too smart) or just such bad writing that it's wrapped around from the negatives and somehow looped around to be considered good again.

To me, this is the classic Tales game that I judge all of the other Tales games against. It has smooth game play, interesting characters, a solid plot line, good alternate quests and story lines, detailed fighting system and skills, and just what I want for a game.

Simple Is Better? - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/123/high-cost-of-living

The entire show is all about how you shouldn't be worried about your fancy life, that the one that the type of life that everyone strives for, is actually sort of horrible and having asimple life that you don't have to worry about all of the stuff is easier, better, and just a happier place to be psychologically/emotionally.

I really wish that I could get behind that mentality, because it's what rich people say.

Rich people say stupid things like, you know what is really annoying? Having a nice house, a car, having debt payed off and not having to worry about going to my job every single day. Not having to worry about living paycheck to paycheck is such a hassle, I really wish I could go back to a simpler life when I was worried if I was going to have electricity in my house.

Seriously, who even says that? Who thinks that their multi-million dollar life is so horrible that they want to turn around and give it all up because it requires a bit of work?

Officially, the show was supposed to be about "living life to the fullest" and how that doing that isn't worth it, and sometimes it's better to "make yourself numb", but that translates out to having money and wanting to not have money. The only people that can "live life to the fullest" are people who have money. Even the person in the show that was falsly diagnosed with HIV, it's obvious that she had money, because people that don't have money wouldn't be able to afford all of the treatments she went through, have the time to go to all of the support groups, and d o all of the things that she was able to do. People with money have the time and luxury to worry about their life (and death) where as people that are not so fortunate are stuck with the simple option of going to work because rent is due and you have to pay the bills.

You don't have time to worry about your life or even live it to it's fullest when you have two jobs. You don't get to live life to the fullest when you have credit card debt, student debt, loans, or whatever else is sitting out there waiting for you to pay it off. There's no way for you to enjoy life when you're sitting and looking at your fridge wondering what you're going to eat because your kitchen is empty and buying something at the store translates to finding the cheapest menu option possible.

I'm not at that point right now, but I've only been slightly above that point for the past few months, and there's no way at all that 'simplifying' my life would ever be a good thing. Yes, it would be AMAZING to not have to worry about work, life, or any of those stresses, but that requires money. The only way that simplifying is a better life is if you don't have to worry about doing all of that simplification, and that requires the one thing that there is little of. This isn't to say that I'm a paycheck away from being homeless, but there's no way that I'm going back to that point. I've had my bank account in the red. I've had a paycheck get demolished into nothing leaving me with rice and tuna fish to eat until the next paycheck because it only slightly zeroed out my debt. Sure that was simple, but there's no way ever that I'm going to go back into that life.

Trying To Get This Thing Submitted

1250 chaos (1249pts)

Chaos Space Marines: Codex (2012) (Combined Arms Detachment) (1249pts)

• (No Category)

  • Force Options (Supplement options here)

    No unique force (Vanilla CSM Codex)
    

• HQ (145pts)

  • Sorcerer (145pts)

    Combi-bolter, Force Stave, Mark of Tzeentch (15pts), Melta bombs (5pts), Sigil of corruption (25pts), Spell familiar (15pts), Terminator Armour (25pts), Warlord
    
    Bulky, Champion of Chaos, Independent Character, Mark of Tzeentch, Psyker, Relentless

    Name	Unit Type	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save
    Sorcerer (Terminator Armour, Mark of Tzeentch)	Infantry (Character)	5	4	4	4	2	4	2	10	2+/4++

    Name	Description
    Sigil of Corruption	Confers a 4+ Invulnerable Save
    Spell Familiar	The bearer may re-roll failed Psychic tests.
    Terminator Armour	2+/5++, have the Bulky, Deep Strike, Relentless special rules, and may not make sweeping advances.

    Name	Range	Strength	AP	Type
    Assault Grenades	8"	3	-	Assault 1, Blast
    Combi-Bolter	24"	4	5	Rapid Fire, Twin Linked
    Force Stave	-	+2	4	Melee, Concussive, Force
    Krak Grenades	8"/ -	6	4	Assault 1/ -
    Melta-Bombs	-	8	1	Armourbane, Unwieldy

• Elites (217pts)

  • Chaos Terminators (217pts)

    Mark of Tzeentch (25pts)
    
    Deep Strike, Mark of Tzeentch

    • Chaos Terminator (31pts)

      Combi-Bolter, Power Axe
      

    • Chaos Terminator (31pts)

      Combi-Bolter, Power Axe
      

    • Chaos Terminator (31pts)

      Combi-Bolter, Power Axe
      

    • Terminator Champion (43pts)

      Combi Bolter, Power Fist (10pts)
      
      Champion of Chaos

    • Terminator with Heavy Weapon (56pts)

      Power Sword, Reaper Autocannon (25pts)
      

    Name	Unit Type	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save
    Chaos Terminator	Infantry	4	4	4	4	1	4	2	9	2+/5++
    Terminator Champion	Infantry (Character)	4	4	4	4	1	4	2	9	2+/5++

    Name	Range	Strength	AP	Type
    Combi-Bolter	24"	4	5	Rapid Fire, Twin Linked
    Power Axe	-	+1	2	Melee, Unwieldy
    Power Fist	-	x2	2	Melee, Specialist Weapon, Unwieldy
    Power Sword	-	User	3	Melee
    Reaper Autocannon	36"	7	4	Heavy 2, Twin-Linked

• Troops (547pts)

  • Chaos Space Marines (220pts)

    Flamer (5pts), Heavy Bolter (10pts)
    

    • Aspiring Champion (53pts)

      Bolt Pistol, Boltgun, Melta Bombs (5pts), Power Fist (25pts)
      
      Champion of Chaos

    • 9x Chaos Marine with Boltgun (117pts)

      9x Bolt Pistol, 9x Boltgun
      

    • Chaos Rhino (35pts)

      Combi-bolter, Searchlight, Smoke launchers
      
      Repair, Transport Capacity: Rhino

    • 3x Swap Boltgun with CCW

      3x Close Combat Weapon
      

    Name	Unit Type	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save
    Aspiring Champion	Infantry (Character)	4	4	4	4	1	4	2	9	3+
    Chaos Space Marine	Infantry	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	3+

    Name	BS	Front	Side	Rear	HP	Type
    Chaos Rhino	4	11	11	10	3	Vehicle(Tank, Transport)

    Name	Description
    Searchlight	Night fighting only. It can illuminate a target it has fired at. Illuminates itself in the process (illuminated units loses Night Fighting benefits)
    Smoke Launchers	Once per game, instead of shooting or flat out movements/running, the vehicle can activate smoke launchers. May not fire its weapons that turn but recieves a 5+ cover save until next player turn. Unaffected by weapon destroyed, crew shaken and crew stunned results.

    Name	Range	Strength	AP	Type
    Bolt Pistol	12"	4	5	Pistol
    Boltgun	24"	4	5	Rapid Fire
    Close Combat Weapon	-	User	-	Melee
    Combi-Bolter	24"	4	5	Rapid Fire, Twin Linked
    Flamer	Template	4	5	Assault 1
    Heavy Bolter	36"	5	4	Heavy 3
    Melta-Bombs	-	8	1	Armourbane, Unwieldy
    Power Fist	-	x2	2	Melee, Specialist Weapon, Unwieldy

  • Thousand Sons (327pts)

    Icon of Flame (15pts)
    
    Fearless, Mark of Tzeentch, Slow and Purposeful, Veterans of the Long War

    • Aspiring Sorcerer (58pts)

      Aura of Dark Glory, Bolt Pistol
      
      Champion of Chaos, Psyker

    • Chaos Rhino (47pts)

      Combi-bolter, Havoc Launcher (12pts), Searchlight, Smoke launchers
      
      Repair, Transport Capacity: Rhino

    • 9x Thousand Son (207pts)

      9x Aura of Dark Glory, 9x Boltgun
      

    Name	Unit Type	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save
    Aspiring Sorcerer	Infantry (Character), Psyker Level 1	4	4	4	4	1	4	2	10	3+
    Thousand Son	Infantry	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	10	3+

    Name	BS	Front	Side	Rear	HP	Type
    Chaos Rhino	4	11	11	10	3	Vehicle(Tank, Transport)

    Name	Description
    Aura of Dark Glory	5+ Invunerable save
    Icon of Flame	Tzeentch Icon: All boltguns, combi-bolters and bolt pistols on this unit gain Soul Blaze.
    Inferno bolts	Shots from a boltgun or bolt pistol are AP3.
    Searchlight	Night fighting only. It can illuminate a target it has fired at. Illuminates itself in the process (illuminated units loses Night Fighting benefits)
    Smoke Launchers	Once per game, instead of shooting or flat out movements/running, the vehicle can activate smoke launchers. May not fire its weapons that turn but recieves a 5+ cover save until next player turn. Unaffected by weapon destroyed, crew shaken and crew stunned results.

    Name	Range	Strength	AP	Type
    Bolt Pistol	12"	4	5	Pistol
    Boltgun	24"	4	5	Rapid Fire
    Combi-Bolter	24"	4	5	Rapid Fire, Twin Linked
    Havoc Launcher	48"	5	5	Heavy 1, Blast, Twin-linked

• Fast Attack (340pts)

  • Heldrake (170pts)

    Hades Autocannon
    
    Daemon, Daemonforge, It Will Not Die, Meteroric Descent

    Name	BS	Front	Side	Rear	HP	Type
    Heldrake	3	12	12	10	3	Vehicle (Flyer, Hover)

    Name	Description
    Daemonic Possession	Reduces BS to 3. Ignores Crew shaken and stunned results on a 2+. Roll a D6 each embark/disembark. On a 1, the vehicle eats a random model in the unit (remove from play, no saves allowed) and reagins a lost hull point.

    Name	Range	Strength	AP	Type
    Hades Autocannon	36"	8	4	Heavy 4, Pinning

  • Warp Talons (170pts)

    Daemon, Warpflame Strike

    • 4x Warp Talon (120pts)

      4x Twin Lightning Claws
      

    • Warp Talon Champion (50pts)

      Gift of Mutation (10pts)
      
      Champion of Chaos

    Name	Unit Type	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save
    Warp Talon	Jump Infantry	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	3+
    Warp Talon Champion	Jump Infantry	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	9	3+

    Name	Description
    Gift of Mutation	Before deployment, roll on the Chaos Boon table. Ignore Spawnhood and Dark Apotheosis results.

    Name	Range	Strength	AP	Type
    Lightning Claw	-	User	3	Melee, Shred, Specialist Weapon

Selection Rules

Bulky
Champion of Chaos: A Model with this rule must issue and accept challenges. Where there are multiple models with this rule, the controlling player may decide.
Whenever a model with this rule kills a character, roll a D66 and consult the Chaos Boon chart. This boon remains for the rest of the game.
Daemon: 5+ Invunerable, Causes Fear
Daemonforge: Once per game, a model with this rule may re-roll failed to wound/penetration rolls. Declare at the start of the shooting or assault phase that you are using this ability.
At the end of the phase, roll a D6, on a 1 the unit loses a HP with no saves allowed.
Deep Strike
Fearless
Independent Character
It Will Not Die
Mark of Tzeentch: Improves invunerable saves by +1 (to 3++). Confers a 6+ Invunerable if no existing save is present.
Meteroric Descent: Heldrake has the Vector Strike special rule while zooming. these hits are at S7
Psyker: May generate powers from Biomancy, Telepathy, Pyromancy and Daemonology (Sanctic and Maelific).
If marked, must generate 1 power from the discipline of the patron god, and no more than half from that discipline.
Relentless: Relentless models can shoot with Heavy, Salvo or Ordnance weapons, counting as stationary, even if they moved in the previous Movement phase. They are also allowed to charge in the same turn they fire Heavy, Ordnance, Rapid Fire or Salvo weapons. (BRB 2014)
Repair
Slow and Purposeful
Transport Capacity: Rhino: Can transport 10 models. Terminators may not be transported.
Veterans of the Long War: Models with this rule have +1 Ld and Hatred (Space Marines)
This Hatred applies for the following books:
Codex: Space Marines
Codex: Dark Angels
Codex: Space Wolves
Codex: Blood Angels
Codex: Grey Knights

Warpflame Strike: Immediately after entering via Deep Strike, all enemy units within 6" of the Warptalons count as being hit with a weapon with Blinded.

Created with BattleScribe

Let's give this format a try.

Terminators

So, I heard you like color blending.

Here's a bit of what I've been wasting my time on lately.

Chaos space marine terminators that match the rest of my army. It's sort of awesome.

By the way, I did the math, and it's looking like for the final 1,500 point games, I'm going to be fielding only 31 units, one flyer, and two transports. That's 36 models.

THIRTY SIX!

For those playing at home, I have more than thirty six zombies for my vampire counts. Even my skeletons, which look awesome, I've almost got more than thirty six of (I've got 34 of those). I knew that I was going to be light on units, but dang this is just stupid how few units I have and can field.

This is why I picked chaos. I could take my time, make things look stupid sick, and still be able to look like I have a half complete army.

The unfortunate thing about this is that out of those 36 models, only 17 are painted. I'm well under half. The really sad thing is that out of the rest of those models that I have to paint, three of them are REALLY big compared to everything else. Even these terminators that I'm working on are small compared to the Helldrake or the transports that I still have to work on, and I'm dreading those bigger models. It took me a long time to do these smaller ones, I have no clue what in the world I'm going to do when I'm faced with, not just one, but three more monsters of a model. Luckily I won't have to worry about that. The plan is as follows.

• Finish up the 10 man terminator unit (I want to rush 5 because those are the ones that I'm going to field, but I want their friends to be finished too).
• Spend a stupid amount of time on a chaos lord. I've been sitting on him for too long, I have to man up and finally do something with him. If what you see above is table top quality, I'm still trying to figure out a way to make his painting even better. He's supposed to be the leader, so I've got to step up his painting a notch (which frightens me to death). 
• Dive into the thousand sons. I've got a lot to do with those guys, and there's a lot of them too. Again, high quality because they're important and what not. The weird part about these guys is that I want them to all look the same, which means that I want to paint them at the same time, but I'm only able to field 10 of them, so a group of them are just going to be sitting around looking awesome, but not used.
• Then and only then will I look at the Helldrake. Most likely at that point I'm not even going to touch the Helldrake, I'm going to move into the transports and do them first so I don't get too scared, but one or the other group will get done. 

Then that's it. From that point on, everything else is bonus that I can play around with with my army. I've got extra maurauders, chosen, raptors, marines, and even a winged deamon that I need to work on, but the list above comes first because that's what I want on the field.

Impossible Love - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/122/valentines-day-99

There's a hint of things around this world, especially when you deal with stories, that one of the best types of loves, one of the types that make you want to cheer for the couple and make them come together, are the love stories that should never happen. No one cheers for the couple that is cute together, that meets in a normal setting that are a normal story, everyone wants the couples that doesn't fit well together, where something is off.

It can be a Romeo and Juliet sort of love where families hate families. It can be long distance, over social classes, or anything else. It's the weirdest thing ever. Two people that work well together, that should be together, people don't care, but if you put one in power and the other as their coworker or anything like that, and suddenly it's a block buster movie where everyone cheers for the couple that needs to fight against all odds.

We like it when people have to fight for their relationship.

What sucks is when you have to be the one fighting for that relationship.

The idea of fighting to be with one another is something different than the actual process of telling your family to shove it and go against everyone that is around you just to stick with the one person that you want to be with. Trying to fight for the person that you want to stay with is not romantic, it's tiring.


People think that it's romantic to fight. People think that it's romantic to try to put a couple through hell just to make it together, but it's not romantic, it makes you want to quit. I would have loved it if parents and parents in law were friendly towards us (and each other). I would have loved it if we were easily together. I would have fought for the chance of us having oportunity to be together without having to work so hard for it.

The reason why is that it's hard enough to keep a relationship together and functioning when life is good, starting it out with a struggle is just gimping it. Instead of my wedding day being happy and a huge celebration it was a giant mess of emotion and drama that no one needs on that sort of day. The day that was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life was riddled with people throwing fits, nothing going right, and the only thing that I wanted to happen being done by lunch and then the rest of the next twelve hours was horrible.

Fighting for a relationship is not fun, it's not romantic, it's not something that I hope anyone has to go through because it doesn't make your relationship stronger, it makes you start your entire relationship off with burning bridges, salting the earth, and destroying ties that you need to have around you if you're going to keep going into the rest of your relationship.

I hate romantic stories of a couple that has to struggle to be together. They're not romantic, they're frustrating.

Working Hard, And Hardly Working

A few things from today.

First, again, I paint dark angel helmets better than people that paint dark angel armies. I'm sorry.

 Unfortunately you can't see that paint job in normal pictures of the unit because it's hiding under the entire unit and you have to hunt to see it. I just wanted to show it off for a few seconds.

Also, in that note finally finished off the warp talons. They don't exactly match the marines that I did with the color blend, but I couldn't find a good place on these guys to put the blend. I guess I could have done some really outrageous sort of things and try to put the color blend in those places, but for this one time I went pretty typical with my paint job of all five units (that took me way too long than what it should for only five units).

 For those wondering - the layers went a little like this -
1- grey primer
2- dark blue base
3- med/light blue dry brush
4- black ink wash
5- blue metalic detail
6- base black on footing stuffs
7- grey dry brush on footing
8 - detail on footing (green helmet, skull on an alt base, I should go back and fix some of these it's where my least detail is on these guys. In general I need to work my bases better all across the board, but I'm learning)
9 - light blue dry brush
10- touch up

That means that my PAINTED army, looks a little bit like this

 So, who's next?

I like working from the ground up, and with the smaller point value stuffs being done, it's time to start tackling the bigger point value units, and we're going hyper point value. Just to give you a tone of rough/quick point values of what I have versus what I'm about to do -
Cultists - 4 pts a model
Marines - 13 pts a model
Warp Talons - 30 pts a model
This next group - 31 pts a model, but that's not counting ANY of their upgrades with weapons, marks, icons, and all of the crazyness that they can actually throw around. The real math, when they start using what they're actually holding starts punching in around 36 or even 37 a model.

That's right, we're to the always scary and impressive terminators. And thanks to my recent christmas/birthday present to myself, I doubled my terminator population to ten. My original five are primed and grey, the new ones came primed in black, so tomorrow I'm going to start the base coating and start looking at where I can dump that yellow/orange/red color blend into these nasty beasts.

 

And yes, if we're being official on point value, the thousand sons unit(s) are base value a lot lower than what these guys are (they're base in the 20's), I JUST GOT THEM. They're not primed, and some of their super glue is still curing, not to mention that I finally stripped two of them of the rough paint job that they had today as well. This unit is the next unit up to bat because of logic and I feel like it. 

The really scary one that I'm not looking forward to just because I've been working on unit models for a long while since I started painting back up again, is that I want to do my hell drake. It's a WICKED model, and I want it to look amazing, but I don't know just how much I want to play with it. I can do a low color blend like I did with the talons, or I can do something REALLY stupid with him. 

Knowing me I'm going to go with the really stupid (read time consuming) paint job. 

Different Person - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/121/twentieth-century-man

This story was all about a man who became different things throughout his life and the people that he met during those times comparing notes about who in the world he was and what was going on with him. It made it came across as something of a conman and liar, that he couldn't be himself throughout any of his life, but he changed and altered who he was to fit his mood at that point in time. The entire piece was made out to be about how this guy was a villain. He started families, acted differently to everyone around him, left those families, and lied to everyone. He lied and that was a bad thing.

But hold with me here for a minute, don't we all do that?

The person that I am at home, by myself, the person that I like hanging out with for a long period of time because he gets me, is not the same person that I am at work. The person that I deal with and can sit and share thoughts with is not he same person that I am when I'm at church teaching a Sunday school lesson. I am not the same person depending on where I am, who I'm interacting with, and what I'm dealing with for that day, and that's not uncommon.

Everyone puts on a little bit of a face when they go and do certain things. When you go to a sports game you put on a different attitude, a different persona than when you're sitting in church. When you're at school you're a different person than when you're sitting in your PJ's watching Netflix. People act differently depending on when/where they are, this guy just took that a bit further to the point where people could categorize it and see the changes.


Not only do people themselves change when they are being looked at in different circumstances, just look at the people who are looking at them. If you take all of my students and look at their evaluations and reviews of me, it's a scatter shot. There are some concepts and ideas that are consistent throughout the entire group, and those things start to show how I am and what I can become better at while at work, but the rest of the spread is beyond insane. It covers everything from saying that I'm the worst teacher in the history of the world, to a great teacher hat helped them prepare for anything that they might be having to deal with up to this point. I was the same teacher, I was teaching the same students the same information over he same amount of time. I was the one who was static in that section, but my students, depending on how they chose to see me, either vilified me or praised me.

It really makes me wonder what some of the impressions are that I've left on people in my past. It's easy to tell what my students think about me because they write student evaluations. They flat out tell me exactly what is going on in their minds and I get to know what that is. But what about all of those other people? What about the people that I worked with at ROI? Even my family members would be interesting to know what they think about me and my personality. What in the world does my mom actually think about me? How does she see the kid that she's been working on all of these years? How does my dad figure me out? My sisters? My wife? It'd be oh so very interesting to get people on their own that have known me from different times in my life and really ask them about me. To do this piece about me wouldn't be as crazy as having multiple families and lives that I have lived, but there's definitely a spread of hobbies and personalities that I've thrown around, and it'd be interesting to see just what would come out of it all.

I want to try to agree with the people who made this show tat their dad was a scum bag, that he was a liar and a con man that was lying his  way around the world to make it the way that he wanted. That he was nothing but a self centered jerk, but really, I can't. I can't because deep down I see a bit of me in this guy. I see that he was just trying on things that fit him for the time. Given, he didn't have the dedication to a family and anything like that that would stop me from flat out uprooting my life and starting all over again, but I get it. I get the pull and how amazing that would be to just stop everything because life sort of sucks and starting all over again with a different city, a different family, and a different outlook on life. This guy was able to remake himself. When he wasn't happy when he tried on new things, he went all out and started over again. He was a total jerk and an idiot for doing that, but part of him I sort of admire.

I Am Not An Author - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/120/be-careful-who-you-pretend-to-be

In middle school (and then later in high school) I started to pretend and play with the thought that I could write. I played around with it a bit in grade school with an entry level drug of a fan fic that only a fifth grader could write, but the biggest time came in my freshman year of high school.

I got in trouble, and I started writing. A few people payed attention to it, and it quickly became a thing. I wrote. I wrote a lot. I wrote only because I had nothing else to do, but I still did it.  It was right around that point in my life that I imagined that I was a writer.

I've been lying to myself ever since that point.

There has yet to be a single story that I have written that I've been proud of. That by the end of the time of writing it I can sit down and say, "you know what, that really is the best work that I could produce for this book."

I am able to say, "I'm sick and tired of this story, if I have to see it even one more time I'm going to hurt someone." Or maybe even "Due dates passed a week ago, if I want to get anything in to say that I actually accomplished something, this is the best it's going to be by this point." 


In college I tanked multiple English exams. There were classes that I took that I look back on and wonder how in the world I ever passed that class, let alone ever graduated. The knowledge that I should know as a graduate of an English program is significantly more than the knowledge that I have in my head.

The worst part about the entire deal was that creative writing was just sort of a thing. I enjoy doing it, but the entire time while in school I just said that I was into creative writing because I enjoyed doing it (still do). But actually being GOOD at it? That's where the lie came in. That's where I started to pretend.

Every single time that I write something I pretend. I pretend to be an author. I pretend to know what in the world I'm talking about. Even at my job as a professor I feel like very often I'm just pretending to know what in the world I'm doing when talking about writing because I don't even know what I'm talking about.

Even now, when I'm out of school, I fool myself by saying that I'm a writer.

No I'm not.

I have published nothing.
I am writing nothing.
I am creating nothing that is anything even slightly involved in what I like because of the cripling fear that I'm just making it all up.

I am not an author.
I'm a kid in a grown ups body, still pretending that I know what in the world I'm talking about when really I have no clue what in the world is going on.

Guess What I Did Today

 Don't tell anyone, but this is what I did today. 

If you don't know what this means, it means that I did modeling of twenty thousand sons (including the sorcerers for each group with one of the sorcerers stealing a staff from a certain mortarch that never got modeled because I couldn't find the gun he was supposed to have).

This was a mess.

Modeling is not my strong point. There is a reason that I willingly and knowingly buy ebay models that are already put together, but not painted. I have so much super glue on my fingers isn't not even funny. There's so much wrong with these guys I can't even start to mention it. I gave them a host of weapons that they're not supposed to have, and I did things just because I wanted them to look cool, with no intentions of them being WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

It was a crazy day of figuring out how in the world to put a gun on a unit with clipping out gun handles and all sorts of crazy things, but hopefully it doesn't look too bad when I'm finally done with it. Either way, it was a fun day working on these guys.

Another fun note is that there's a HORDE of guys (including two other 1k sons) that are in the goop right now getting rid of their paint that was put on them by the person I bought them from.

Oh, and don't tell anyone this super secret either - Officially for Christmas I got some . . . interesting. . .  presents. I knew that there was going to be a lot of people falling through with their gifts that they promised me, so I got my own birthday present. It was an Ebay auction that included . . .

1- Daemon Prince.
1- Predator Tank.
2- Rhino transports (one still in box).
5- Chaos space marine Terminators.
1- Chaos lord/sorcerer.
5- Possessed Chaos Space Marines.
5- Raptors (all with wings from the possessed kit) Very cool!
18- Thousand sons (mostly incomplete but the bits are there to finish them).
2- Thousand sons sorcerers.
24- Chaos space marines.
10- Slightly modified vampire count ghouls that i was using as lesser daemons.

 For only $200, which is significantly less than you'd get those stuffs for, I bought myself a 40k christmas/birthday present. Yay for having a 1k Sons army now.

I Want To Go To Prison . . . Sort Of - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/119/lockup

Just hear me out on this one, but I would like to go to prison. There is a catch to this though, I don't want to go to the crazy gang rape, get shived, be careful in the showers prison, I want to go to the crazy swanky white collar prisons.

There's a difference between prisons that have high risk people in it, and those that don't. I'm not planning on killing anyone any time soon (hopefully this semester's students don't change that), but I could be perfectly okay with some insider trading or something like that that means that I did something illegal, but not so illegal that I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. We're talking Martha Stewart level of security, not news at 6, drive by shootings level of security.

Think about it.

Let's assume that I have a year in jail. We could try to sell more than a year, but twelve months is a happy time that I'd be somewhat okay with.

Things that would happen in that twelve months -
- Family would not exist. I know that no one would visit me in jail. I wouldn't have to worry about any of the stupidity that comes from my family.
- I could get some serious reading done. With limited media, just think about how much reading and writing I could get done. It's essentially a twelve month writer's vacation. I don't have to worry about food, I don't have to worry about lodging, I just have all of my day to myself to read (what the library at the jail has, which is typically some good reads because they get classic lit that I need to brush up on) and write. Give me a pencil and a stack of papers and see what I can pop out in a year.
- I don't want to deal with any of the people in a jail. Seriously, lock me up in a small room for an extended period of time and chances are I'm going to keep to myself, not have to deal with anyone, and just have a great vacation as a intorvert. Given, I don't know much about being in jail, but it's one of those crazy things that I imagine would be in jail.

The only down side to that twelve months is that I would have to be with people.

Really, if I could go full fledged hermit mode, and get solitary confinement with still having access to books, paper, and pens, I'd be golden. You could lock me into that room for more than a year and I'd be okay with it.

I think that says more about my personality than it does about my own ideas about prison and jail. The thing that appeals to me most about jail is exactly what other people consider the punishment for being in jail. Most people consider the fact that being in jail means that you're not going to be part of the world, part of the social community, and that's a 'bad' thing. I would love to do that. The thought of being removed from everything for a set period of time and not having to worry about other people, not having to worry about anything else and just having time for myself - I could do that. That's a vacation for me. To me, the idea of spending twelve months with no one but myself, and maybe a journal, is not torture, that is heaven.

Speed Painting

I've mentioned before that I hated speed painting. Here's why.

Here's my talons base coated with a quick and heavy dry brush. Looks pretty impressive.

GUESS WHAT! THERE'S MORE!
With a simple black ink wash, it fades it down, but gives it layers of highlights and changes that make it great for a base layer.

That's right, base layer. I don't get how some people think they can be done at that point. Yes, it looks amazing. Yes, things are looking pretty cool as is, but think of it this way. Those silly talons are $35 for five, that means each one of them is $6. Let's make that $6 look slightly better than a hot and ready pizza if at all possible.

Trust me, this is not the last layer that you're going to see. There's still metalics, and I want to play around with a few more layers of dry brushing and layering with that.

Sarcastic note while painting the first layer I jokingly said, "Look at me, I'm BTP!" Yeah, I hate that company that they cost so much for so little painting work.

AGDQ IS BACK

Yup, it's back! AGDQ is only the coolest must awesome thing ever put together by nerds. Hundreds of thousands of people show up and break games while collecting a lot of money for charity. If you've never watched it, give it a go, and I know I'm going to watch as much of it as possible in the next week.

Chaos Space Marines

We remember this guy as my test guy right?

We've seen him for a while, I finished him back in November, well luckily now the entire unit of chaos space marines is finished!

The problem with that picture? Not enough detail! So there's ten of those guys, you've already seen quite a bit of number 10 (see above) so here's the front and back detail of each of these lovely little messes of chaos.

As a reminder these guys are a mark of Tzeentch with a flame icon, or at least that's what I wanted them to be. Not sure how that works out, but it's cool colors and an excuse to color blend so this is what happened. 

#1 front

#1 back

#2 front

#2 back

#3 front

#3 back

#4 front

#4 back

#5 front

#5 back

#6 front

#6 back

#7 front

#7 back

#8 front

#8 back

#9 front

#9 back

A friendly reminder, I'm still learning, but I show pretty big resolution shots of them so that I can learn from them as well as show off how I'm learning and growing. I'm well aware that there are some mistakes and obvious errors with these paint jobs, but I'm also really proud of them so I want you to be able to see all of that work, close up and personal. I'm not trying to hide the ugly ones in the back of the unit, or trying to blur past them in a quick youtube video, I want everything to be seen in good detail. I spent time making them, so you have this chance to spend time looking at them.

Any tips or suggestions on how I can be better or what to do next, please leave a comment because I want to know how to get better.

Next project a five man unit of warp talons.