Superglue Woes
April 5th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
I’ve had a hard time getting a reliable good superglue that’s locally available. Of course, for a while I didn’t really know what I was looking for. So I wound up with a lot of dissappointing products. Let me see if you’ve had any similar experiences 
The cheap stuff! You know what I mean. It comes in little bitty tubes, 3-5 for a buck or two. Half the time the cap doesn’t want to puncture the seal cleanly and it leaks, or the cap won’t go back on right and it dries shut. Many a time that little tube squeezed too easily and the watery glue runs all over the model, failing to adhere the part you wanted, but managing to stick your fingers to it just fine.
I eventually got fed up with this stuff and went for some pricier stuff with spiffier looking applicators that promised to work magical wonders on my gluing experiences. First there was the basic bottle. It dried out. Then came the glue pens. The little point constantly kept getting gummed up and a lot of the glue get stuck or dried out. Then came the new twist-top with little pegs to help keep the top locked securely in place…. until they snapped off just from trying to close the lid. That bottle saw me using a piece of wire to un-clog the long neck repeatedly. Eventually I gave up when I couldn’t drill through to the 1/3rd bottle that remained liquid inside. I was getting tired of it taking 3-4 minutes to bond anyway.
Most recently I’ve been trying real superglue, also known as CA+ glue, from the local hobby store. No horror stories yet, thankfully. It’s been easy to apply and has bonded in 15 seconds or less every time. Maybe my woes are over. Only time will tell.
Footslogging Chaos Marines? Say it ain’t so!
March 26th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
If you follow popular list building on 40K internet forums, you’ll probably see the popular belief that chaos marines must be mechanized to compete effectively. Or be toting 2 Lashes of Submission and lots of blast templates. I’ve played mech chaos marines for a few years now, and have also tried the double-lash variations for tournie play. They both work well, no doubt about it. But I like being different. So, I aim to see if I can make a competitive foot-slogging chaos marine army.
So far, I’ve gotten in a few games with my proto-list:
Daemon Prince (few frills)
2 big squads of khorne-icon chaos marines (~15 guys each, 2 specials, fist)
Typical 7-man plague marine squad (2 plasma, fist)
Sonic weapon noise marines
Missile Launcher / Autocannon havocs
2 sets of 3 obliterators
It did ok. But it could do better. Noise marines are awfully pricey. They offer some dakka, but I’m not sure I really need more bolter-strength firepower when I’m throwing out about 30 normal chaos marines. And I’d like a cheaper unit to park on far-off home objectives then the plague marines so they can join the forward objective-grabbing fray. After chatting with my friendly opponent (an eldar-zilla list) we both came away with some list tweaking ideas.
The noise marines are going bye-bye. What really makes them shine is either a Lash to bunch things up for a blast master, or a rhino for them to pile out of with doom siren and lots of shooting. I have neither. In their place, a 10-man chaos marine squad with a lascannon, icon, and fist. They’ll be the new babysitters. That still left some points laying around though. I was debating beefing up the prince to normal standards, but got a different idea…
Lesser Daemons are often charged with being mediocre. I’m not so sure. In fact, I think they have some definite uses. Primarily, being able to pop in and support an assault by my big khorne squads, or beefing up the numbers if the plague marines get into it. They can also tie up shooty units that lack assault power (like most heavy weapon or sniper units). And they can also baby-sit objectives that are unlikely to see much enemy attention. A squad of 8 get’s the 3rd ring stared when summoning in, giving them an extra inch or so. So I dropped the khorne squads from 14/15 to 12/13 and used the other left over points to add another icon I the plague squad and field 8 lesser daemons.
To be honest, I’ve wanted to find a way to use summoned daemons for a while, since I had a lot of them for my old Chaos Marine army, and they all got rolled into this one new generic entry. I like the models, so I wanted to find a use for them. Did I? Time will tell. But I have a good feeling about it.
This Week In Painting: 03/23/09
March 23rd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
I finished up a couple of small commissions this past week. Just some random reaper minis, but they turned out to be a lot of fun. I gotta say, I’m a fan of Werner Klock’s sculpting. He’s one of the few mini sculptors that seems to be able to nail the feminine figure in miniature, and do it consistently.
We have the dynamic duo, the paladin in green, and the anti-paladin in purple. Enjoy!
Tweaking the Daemonhunters
March 19th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
I’m trying to get my Daemonhunter 40k army up to snuff for competitive play. This in itself is generally considered a challenge, especially with the age of the codexes involved begining to show. Still, there is a lot of good stuff to be had and I think it can be done.
I modified the list I used last time, mostly tweaking what I took in the form of Allied Sisters of Battle. Consolidated a few things and got the squads a bit more focused. then today, I got in a game with the tweaked list against some daemons. Appropriate
The end result was pretty good. A draw in Sieze Ground with 4 objectives. By the game’s end after turn 5, no one claimed anything and only 1 objective was being contested. However, odds were looking very good to claim an objective for myself next turn while keeping the daemons from being able to do the same.
Some lessons learned:
*Remember to make daemons test for difficult terrain when assaulting grey knights. Those bloodcrushers would have gone last, if they made assault at all.
*Be more prepared to sacrifice the non-troop Sisters. They’re more expendable in an objective game and can yield a lot of faith points to power up the troop squad to clear and hold an objective in enemy territory
*I fielded 3 anti-tank dreads and they did well. I do think I need 2-3 to make them work though, since that’s about how many it took to ding the enemy soulgrinders down (though my luck wasn’t very good on the rolls either)
*Double the Melta, double the fun. 4 meltas in a squad vs the 2 meltas I’ve run in normal squads is just night and day. They actually pack enough firepower to bring down what they shoot at.
Possible ideas for the future include trading in a couple units I field now and instead bring in some inducted guard. A couple cheap armored fist squads and a lemun russ and/or sentinel squadron could be nice.
Cry Havoc! and Let slip the dogs of work!
March 16th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Over the past week I’ve been applying for some jobs, got hiered to one, and been asked to interview for another, and been busy working on several commission items. So, I’ve been very busy. It looks to be settling down again though, so we’re resuming our regularly scheduled ramblings.
No-longer-unemployed man awaaAAAAAAY!
