The 25mm Warrior

Wow...

You guys have truly had me on the edge of my seat. As I watch the votes come in it's been thrilling to see just what you guys want to see here on The25mmWarrior. With just a day to go it looks like the Ruined City is out, no one wants me to save my money and the Imperial Guard and Orks are practicality in a dead heat. A lot can happen in twenty four little hours and I'm prepared to do whatever wins.

If you haven't voted yet come on over and make you voice heard! Which will it be my brothers? The Orks with their awesome paint jobs or the Imperial Guard with their pinup girls? Only YOU can decide for me what direction my hobby will go, to the green tide or to the ranks of the Imperium...

ROCK THE VOTE!!!

I would just like to take this time to thank BigRed over at Bell of Lost Souls for including The25mmWarrior into their blogroll! If you don't know who they are you must have you head in the sand because theirs is one of the most comprehensive, detailed and best looking blogs out there! The layout is simple, the content awesome and just like all the other blogs in the network is run by awesome people. With all the new people I've met, the absolutely encouraging support and comments my work has received from all of you points to the fact that everything just keeps getting better and better.

It's an honor to be apart of your network Bell of Lost Souls! Thank you very much!

So I got the 1000 point force, a decent table setup and a buddy to play with on a regular basis...

So now what do I do?

I got a few ideas I want to run by you. I'm not really sure which one to do so I've set up a poll I'm gonna keep up for a bit and let YOU decide what The 25mm Warrior should do next.

1. Finish the Ork army
I like my Orks, I didn't think I would but after seeing how they painted up I was hooked (you can see them up there on my title). I got about 750pts and their geared twoads the Goffs army build which means loads of infantry. I got Warbikers, Deffkopters, a Battlewagon and a ton more infantry to do and once they were finished I would have another 40k force to play with.

2. Start on The 147th Imperial Legion Idea
A couple of weeks ago Opiewan and I were discussing ideas for an Imperial Guard army I've always wanted to do. This army would have playing card suits to differentiate between the platoons and have pinup girl decals on the tanks. Due to their fluff (a future post for sure) they are made of of every Imperial Guard unit out there. So you would see Cadians, Preatorians, Steel Legion etc all fighting together. This would be a blast to do and with all the different troop types would look very diverse and unique.

3. Build a Ruined City Table
Who hasn't ever wanted to do this? In all the environments you could play in this has got to be my favorite. The GW ruined city looks awesome, I found a game mat made for it, the board itself lends it to tons of different ways to play the game (could play with the city fight rules for instance). It would give me a different place to play on and would look awesome.

So there you have it fellas, which is it gonna be? Whatever one gets the most votes over the next week or so I WILL DO! You will decide my focus of this blog, the direction of my hobby and *gulp* how much money I'm gonna have to spend :) Even after the poll is tallied and one is chosen there will be other polls to decide how you would like to see it done.

HELP ME FROM THE WARP!!!! YOUR MY ONLY HOPE!!!!

THE CHOICE IS YOURS!!!

You guys gotta come check these out...

I'm still gonna do one of my own so our head honcho can put it up in the tutorial section but here are the tutorials from The Army Painter website! I found them on youtube.com and they're very well done. Thought you all would dig seeing just what this stuff can do.

I want to send a shout out to Bo, President of The Army Painter company for being gracious enough to come over and check out my army done with his products and to leave behind some nice comments. If you buy The Army Painter products your not just getting something that will revolutionize your entire hobby but your also buying from a classy guy. Thanks Bo!

And guys I wrote Bo about what we do here at From The Warp and he had this to say...

"Just checking FromTheWarp, cool website."

He's absolutely right! We do have a cool thing going on here and people are taking notice. All of you deserve a huge pat on the back for all the effort you put into your blogs and your work. I enjoy everything I see here. A very special thanks needs to go out to Ron... we wouldn't even be here doing this stuff if not for his vision. Well done fellas and I am damn proud to be apart of From The Warp!

So I bought a Space Marine Landspeeder months ago and I never really liked how it fit in with my Blood Angels. I put it together, primed it red even used it in game (where it performed nicely) only it just didn't do it for me. It bummed me out that here was thirty bucks just sitting in my mini closet collecting dust.

Until I became an Ork player...

I'm looking thought the codex trying to figure out a build for my green skins when I come across the entry for a "Looted Wagon." Now I didn't have a tank to best the crap out of and make Orky but I did have the landspeeder. Since the blurb in the codex states it can be any vehicle including hovercraft I smiled. The entry for a Space Marine Landspeeder has a vehicles stats. This would be the last thing I needed to put my Orks at exactly 1000 points and I didn't have to feed the beast more of my money to get it.

Only thing is a Looted Wagon is a transport unless you give it a Boomkannon in which you got to make the wagon have a "Ard case. Since the speeder is tiny and I had a spare Kannon lying around I took the points to make this a flying ordinance Ork Wagon of Death!






You can see here I put the BoomKannon up top angled to look like an ordnance weapon taking a shot. It also has two Rokkitlaunchas underneath. Actually I had 5 points left over so were gonna fit a Big Shoota poking out the side pannel to look like there is a Grot inside using it (their the only thing this small vehicle could probably transport anyway)


Making something like this was simple and a blast to do. To quote Opiewan "Their Orks! You can't mess it up it's supposed to be messed up." Liberated by the Orks low standard of appearance I went to work. I smashed up the Landspeeder, cut up an Ork Deffkopter I had messed up in a tragic matte finsh accident. The armor plates on the front were taken off of the Battlewagon. I even used dental floss to make the wings look "Kustomisezed,"




Hope ya liked it From The Warp! I hope life is good to you all and your all doing well and thanks for making me feel so welcome here!

Cheers!

So here it is! This entire force is a 1000 points (minus the Commander, Opiewan is adding a few extras on him for me) and was painted up in a week and a half. Are the minis some great stinking paint job? No, but they don't suck either. I don't have the patience or time to become some hot shot pro painter. I keep my aims well within my abilities and shot for a force that just looks good on the tabletop.

Every single miniature was done using The Army Painter and that is the reason I was able to get them done so quickly. By using their Red primer and Strong Tone dip I was able to crank out a force fast and get back to the real reason I got into 40k in the first place...

To play the friggin game

The Brave Brothers of 4th Squad under the leadership of their Brother Sergeant Pelanios. Blood Angel 4th Squads are identified by the Blood Drop on there knee




1st Squad pauses for a moment with their Brother Sergeant Rythan. Blood Angels 1st Squads are marked by the Skull with a black kneepad.




10th Squad Devastators lead by the Emperors servant, Brother Sergeant Cassian
Blood Angels 10th Squads are identified by a black wing on a yellow kneepad (I'm not much of an artist :)




Terminators, the Emperors finest, headed by Terminator Sergeant Veladis





Holy Predator Invigilius, 2nd company tank of the Blood Angels 2nd company. The 2nd company badge is a yellow blood drop.


The Annialutium, Revered Razorback assighned to the 10th Devistator squad Cassian


Encased in his battle tomb, Brother Theodyne lives on to fight at the side of his Emperor for the good of Mankind



Well there you have it, my Blood Angels army. I'll post the Captain when Opiewan is done making him look cooler. Also I'll get up my actual list for you all to pick apart. Anyway I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for looking. As always constructive (and destructive:) criticism is always welcome.

FOR THE EMPEROR!!!

Throughout Games Workshop history there have been alternate army lists put out over the years and editions for significant, albeit smaller forces in the 41st millennium. These being the Adeptus Arbites, Blood Angels Army of Death, Ordo Hereticus Strike Force and Genestealer Cults. Well during my normal late night incursions surfing the world wide web I found a site that has all four of them not just in their lists but...

each in a full blown Codex!

That's right! Cruse over to http://belloflostsouls.blogspot.com/2008/07/bols-mini-dex-downloads-archive.html and look under the Mini-Dex section to find them. Man, are they impressive. Each is done up to look like a real published Codex and is fantastic! They have army lists, special characters, modeling sections, fluff and well everything you would find in a published Codex really.

The Mini-Dex's they got are the four listed above and you really should go check em out like 5 minutes ago... their really that good and well done.

Being a Blood Angels player an entire company falling to the black rage is awesome and I'm sure my brother in arms Opie-Wan Kanopie will be very interested in the Strike Force

Absolutely incredible job Bell of Lost Souls! Keep up the stellar job!

Here's the link one more time...

http://belloflostsouls.blogspot.com/2008/07/bols-mini-dex-downloads-archive.html

I reviewed my notes from the Bunker Assault game I blogged about below and added some commentary to try to make the game come alive a bit more. While it's not a true battle report I think the extra detail will give you a better idea of the pasting the Imperial forces suffered at the hands of my Blood Angels. Let me know whatcha think!

Also I've been chatting with our esteemed leader through subspace communique (er, email) and am pleased to announce that he's gonna feature our games battle reports as a weekly thing! Since we game once a week why not let you guys know whats going on with our games and hobby! If that wasn't enough I'm doing a tutorial on how to paint Orks using the easiest method ever! If you hate painting and see it as a necessary evil as I do your not gonna want to miss this!

Gonna get a Blood Angels pass and review up soon too along with my army list so you all can pick apart my forces and see pics of them up close:)

So stay tuned and until next time my brothers... "For The Emproer!" "Waaagh!!!" "For the Greater Good!" um... "Live Long and Prosper." What else is there? Oh yes, "May the Force be with You!" and of course...

"Where's the Beef!?"

Hey All,

Just wanted to take a time out from all the bolter fire and give a plug and shout out to http://www.davesminiaturewargames.blogspot.com/

If your into historical mini stuff this is the guy to see! Great paint jobs and a superb attention to detail really make history come alive on the tabletop! I know he does Flames of War and I'm sure you (and me) would love to see some of that *hint,hint Dave*

So stop playing in fantasy land for awhile and cruise over and see Daves Miniature Wargames for a bit and see what my mentor is doing! That's right, he's my uncle and I wouldn't even know what gaming is without him.

Thanks Dave!

Ok so you wont get a ticket if you don't do this but I just wanted to pass on this friendly reminder...

You can click on my images to see them full and blown up if ya want to. Someone mentioned you can upload them to Blogger and they format better to the site but I'm not seeing where you can do that.

If someone can give me a few pointers on how to do this that would rock!

Cheers mates!

I picked up some Cadian troops at the geek store, oops I mean game store, yesterday. An Imperial Guard army has always been something I've wanted to do and now that I'm playing 40k every week I think the time has finally come.

So here is the test model I did for my Cadians


For some reason the pic doesn't look as good as the miniature does to me. I used The Army Painter (of course) and used a Q-Tip to soak up the pools that rested in the cracks. The only bummer thing about it is when the picture was taken you could then see all the little cotton fibers that got stuck to him in the process. Also I;m not used to painting neutral colors on a black primed figure not to mention I heard somewhere the dip isn;t as good on black primed minis. Anyway he came out looking effective and the scheme was quick, much quicker than I thought. That's a comfort considering my 400pt patrol force is thirty-five troops strong. Again I'm going for a strong looking unified force not expertly painted minis.

Here he is with the flash on


Man, you can even see a kind of granular speckling all over the model. That seems to happen more times than not after I matte varnish em. It shows up in the pic but it's unnoticeable to the naked eye.

Oh I came up with the number designation by looking at From the Warp roster of blogs when I joined up...

I'm blog number 147!

Sigh... the pics didn't turn out as I had hoped.

This post was supposed to a huge all bells and whistles first attempt at a full fledged battle report. But alas after the pics were uploaded some mysteriously vanished. Intelligence reported warp activity but I suspect Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard saboteurs. They must have broke into my home and stole the evidence of their crushing defeat by my Blood Angels that night. Now all I'm left with to share are piece meals of their stunning defense of their base in the midst of an Imperial witch hunt. Praise the true Emperor!

A Blood Angels sentry looks out from a cave complex at the Imperial drop force as it lands close to their base.


Atmospheric shots of the battlefield as the Blood Angels stand to defend their base against the Imperial pincer attack




Cannoness Estra rallies her Sisters and their Inquisitorial contingent against the apostate Blood Angels


Blood Angels brace themselves against the Imperial Guard offensive


The IG prepare to unleash hell upon the Heritic Blood Angels defense lines as they hope to distract them as Cannoness Estras holy Sisters advance to flamer range


Direct Hit!!! The Imperial Guard smash a quarter of the Blood Angels defensive line! Three space marines fall to the battlecannon. The two remaining flee into the base as their moral temporally buckles beneath the weight of the onslaught.


The Holy Predator Invictus spots Cannoness Estra and her retainers. The Emperors esteemed tank cuts her squad in half as the bolts fly.


As the offensive rages against their brothers, Terminators, the finest of the Emperor, deep strike directly behind the Imperial Guard command squad wiping them out with a single volley of storm bolter fire


Cannoness Estra, leading from the front, suffers a wound by the Blood Angel sergeant. In the following turn he will dig his chainsword through her power armor, sending the witch to the abyss


More intelligence photos of the battle as it's forth turn comes to an end. You can see the Imperial Guard forces nearly smashed as the Terminators move in and finally destroy the Leman Russ. The sisters advance to the bunker and behind them the Inquisitorial squad takes cover behind the destroyed Razorback. As the Blood Angels finally put an end to Cannoness Estra the Predator Invictus inches forward bringing it's guns to bear upon the Inquisitions foot soldiers. The heavy bolters and autocannon make short work of the squad.


The valiant last assault of the Sisters of Battle into the Blood Angel base. The Sisters attempt to cleanse the galaxy of their rebellion as their flamers douse the bunker in holy fire. Unsuccessful the Emperors finest finally fend off the false Inquisition as Thunderhawk Gunships circle overhead and Drop Pods pepper the surrounding area. The Blood Angels salvation finally arrives from the skies and decimates the remaining Battle Witches


The last survivors of 1st and 2nd squads together with the Predator Invictus join with the last surviving Devastator Sgt and Terminators for a victory photo. Praise be to the Emperor for his protective hand!

Oh come on you know I had to put it up! Being as someone who remembers playing this in the arcade this is a must for my blog and I challenge all you FTW members out there to a little friendly competition to see just who can get the high score!. The winner will get the battleforce of his choice as soon as the shipment of wooden nickles comes in :) Oh and scroll down and become one of my followers... I REQUIRE LACKEYS!!!

(This story blog is dedicated to Opiewan-Kanopie whos Sisters of Battle army was the inspiration for this and for being a damn good friend too.)

Battle sister Rosalin reluctantly pressed the blast door pressure switch. As the door slowly slid open her anxiety was eased by the sent of holy incense that burned in the sacred chamber. Countless candle lights twinkled through the smokey haze resembling the stars that surrounded their lone Imperial cruiser the "Reformanda." As her feet carried her deeper into the chamber the huddled form of her Cannoness came into view. Jentha swallowed hard and stood at attention as Cannoness Estra rose to her feet.

"Offset your apprehension Sister Rosalin, it betrays your trust in our Emperor."

"I cannot keep anything from you Lady Cannoness but I..."

Cannoness Estra turned tword Rosalin who then bowed her head feeling unworthy to look her superior in the eye. "Your reverence is misplaced my Sister." Rosaline could feel Estra's long dainty fingers push up under her chin raising her gaze to her own. "You and I are the same, united in our devotion and service to our God Emperor. Do not be intimidated by my position. Remember my sister that authority is best exercised in service." Shocked, Rosaline watched as her Cannoness took two steps backward, bowing in respect to the young, inexperienced warrior. "How may I serve you reveared daughter of the Imperium?"

Rosalin beheld Estra in wonderment. "Our scouts from the Imperial Guard detachment sent to aid us in the inquisition of the Blood Angels have spotted their position in the wastelands. Bio scans reveal their company commanders gene seed signature among them."

Estras bright green eyes lit up at the news and then became cold as space itself, "Praise to the Emperors guiding hand! Our search is through. Ready the drop team Sister Rosalin."

"My Lady Cannoness, will our crusade expand to oppose the Blood Angels at every turn? Scans reported Orks and an unknown energy flux off the southern hemisphere. The Imperial guard Tech Priest was unable to give it a positive I.D. stating it could be Eldar or Necron in nature."

Estra's demeanor hardened, "No matter what enemies this world holds for us we cannot depend on Blood Angels to ally our cause. The Emperors wrath is great against the Xenos threat true, but his enmity burns hot for those who once tasted his goodness and now rebel against it. Their potential to black rage is indicative that their heritage is corrupted, tainted. They regard their primarch greater than the Emperor himself. If they did not the Ordo Mallius would not have called us away from the purging of Deqauar IV. You now see the danger in esteeming someone too high my sister." Estra hand clasped Rosalin's shoulder, "We are united in our service to mankind, in our faith in the holy Emperor and together we will wipe this taint away from the Imperium..."

"For today the Blood Angels will know the fear of those who stand against us!"

So I stumbled onto a great blog "From The Warp." This blog is like a central headquarters for a bunch of 40k blogs and I'm stoked they included me into their ranks! Not only is it friggin awesome to be linked up with some great blogs (everyone needs to check out From the Warp and Ultramarine Blues) but I got an awesome widget to put on my blog.

I'll wear it proudly. Thanks for in invite From The Warp!!! Here's to great times ahead...

Cheers!

Funny where you find stuff sometimes...

So there I was shopping in a local drug store and as I headed for the checkout counter a bright yellow sign said...

"Valentines Candy 90% off"

V-Day was now 48 hours in the past and already big corporations were pushing to rid their stock of love to make way for bunnies and eggs. So I picked up a few things, some M&M's, a box of cheep truffles (tasted like crap too) and a box that contained solid chocolate lips.

The lips were ick but it's container was most interesting


Now flip it over...


Do you see what I see?

I scrambled over to my bitz collection grabbing some doors and weapons, even a communications dish and after I was done gluing and cutting I had a fully workable bunker



The entire project only took a half and hour. The traps that lines the edges are a couple of 25mm base sprues glued together. The doors and weapons from Space Marine tanks. The communications towers from the Battle For Macragge boxed set. The moral of the story is you find some cool stuff in the damnest of places sometimes. I encourage you to keep on the lookout. You never know if the next Big sale just might have something cool for your tabletop.



I'm interested to know what ya'll think of my little bunker, post a comment and hollar at me!

So I jumped on and found the first comment on my blog. The admin guy from coolminiornot left it and I encourage you to read it. It was a very heartfelt, sincere explanation of what had happened and I'm glad he understands that it wasn't a joke but a huge misunderstanding and I really appreciate that.
That took a lot of guts to write that kind of comment and I want to take this time to say I'm sorry for taking him out of context. That was way cool of you to do that and I'm glad we understand one another now. That kind of integrity is rare and I want to use this blog to bury the hatchet and recognize it.
So moderator dude forgive me for my flame war and thank you for taking the time to reach out in a comment to set things straight.
You rock dude!

So I played 40k all weekend, winning one bunker assault (working on the battle report now... was a great friggin game) and loosing to the Sister of Battle last night. Aside from all the great gaming it made me realize just how lucky I am to have the gaming buddies I got. I hope everyone out there has cool buddies like mine. They take an already cool pastime and make it better causing the time to fly. I'm genualy bummed when the game is over and cant wait till next friday when we meet again.

Oh and as a reminder to myself I really need to take some pics of my buddies greenstuff sculpts on his Sisters. They look awesome.

Ahh this is friggin great.

So the admin dude wrote me back to the email I sent in the below post and had this to say...

"It is quite possible to cheat and this could have been done by a friend as well "helping" you without your strict knowledge. I hope you are aware that I can read your blog as well as everyone else on the Internet? Good luck with your Ork army and take care, Sven - Moderating Master of Coolminiornot."

No admin guy I'm not aware you can read.... but I am glad for you. Literacy is a good thing even if comprehension is not. I said I suspected who may have done it, not that I knew who did it. Amazing that in a land of democracy guilt is suspected above innocence. However with such statements as "I hope you are aware that I can read your blog as well as everyone else on the internet" I'm not surprised. Is that a threat? Are the coolminiornot finger men gonna come get me, confiscate my paints and throw me into prison? Is my good name gonna be blasted and smeared in the painting community now? Again lol... threats of suspension from a site that offers nothing but kudos for being the best is a dull blade indeed. This is a great lesson in people being douche bags, overreacting and pointing blame with no evidence and threatening punishment for something so friggin stupid. You could have just email me with "hey there are some irregularities in the votes for your picture. We are sorry but we have to reset the vote count to 0 as to be fair to all our other painters. Now if the same irregularites show again we will have to remove the picture as it will appear to us that something fishy is going on. We are sure this is an oversite and an accident. Thank you for your interest in our site and happy painting." That would have been totally acceptable, friendly and professional. A message like that would have my full support. I know the site has to be fair and I support that. Hell the work some guys do on that site is absolutely amazing and they deserve the spotlight but getting a message of allegations of cheating on something I have no knowledge of is unfair and mean and I don't want anything to do with your lame site. Not because of what it is but because of who is behind it.

Theoretically anyone could vote for any one painter hundreds of times without knowing them and they would get the same response, the removal of there work and pointy fingers shouting cheater! You guys need to rethink how you deal with your site members and chill out. I mean come on, look at my Warboss... even I know he's not Top 10 material. You'd have to be a moron to think that. Common sense truly is rare.

So I got home from work last night and found my OrcWarboss posted on coolminiornot.com jumped up to a 9.5. Floored I called my buddy to tell him the news and he agreed with me that it was good but not that good. Still for a moment it felt nice to be one of the highest rated minis in the site. It was even listed in the top 10 finding a place at 9th.

When I woke up the morning I found the image deleted and my message box contained one lone message from a moderator. It stated the image had voting irregularites and either I cheated or someone cheated for me.

LOL!!!

Ok now coolminiornot.com wont let someone vote more than once. I know, i tried. The only thing I can figure is they have some kind of tracker that records someones isp and doesn't let the same isp vote for the same pic again. My WarBoss got 502 votes, my voting history is 12 votes so it wasn't me lol.

Now I sent an email to all my gaming buddies to go to the site to check it out. I suspect I know who did it but stop and think about this one for a sec. If my buddy really did vote hundreds of times to give me a rating that put me in the top 10 than I'm flattered. I'd rather have my friend think my shit is amazing than all the dorks on cyberspce combined. So if one of my friends did do that than let me pause to give a very heartfelt thank you. It's nice to have your friend gun for ya :)

Now I couldn't just leave it at that now could I?

I wrote the admin dork guy back and this is what I wrote...

"Umm ok.

You guys wont even let the same person vote twice on one picture so how could I have cheated? Please delete my account as I don't want my masterpieces corrupted by your lame site. Thank you very much.

Rukavin
Painting Master of the Universe"

There I think they now get the point. The liar, liar, pants on fire defense works every time.