KublaCon Golden Gargant 2014 Final Standings!

Finally (I know; my fault, sorry) I've got the final results for 2014's Golden Gargant at KublaCon.

It's organized by win/loss record, then battle points. Ties were resolved via strength of schedule. Battle points were added straight into the total. Like the Frontline Gaming tournament system wins are worth 1000 points, ties 500, and losses no-points; I've also provided the win/lows/tie breakdown for the sake of completeness. For those who would like a PDF copy of the rubric you'll find one here.

An interesting note is that our four (soon to get a new codex) Ork players landed in every scoring bracket, from 3 wins down to 3 losses.

Thanks to everybody who came out. It was stressful because of a couple hiccups, but you guys made it an awesome event to run! Also thanks to the guys at Frontline Gaming for including us in the Independent Tournament Circuit, and to them and Powered play for providing awesome prize support!

Cheers and happy gaming!

~ Eddie

Workbench Wednesday (Saturday) - 5/21

Greetings!! After finishing the Helbrutes and sorcerer, and not being able to attend Kublacon, I've shifted my hobby focus to my Horus Heresy Death Guard Legion. To this end, I painted up some test models, a drop pod and a rhino. I wanted to try out some new techniques, especially using an oil wash for the first time. Neither model will be in my Heresy army, as the rhino isn't a Diemos pattern and the Death Guard rite of war doesn't allow drop pods. I found a tutorial on Battle Bunnies Blog, at it turned out brilliantly!  They're test models, so no transfers and I'm still waiting to do the weathering powders, but the majority of work is done.

After finishing the test models, my attention has turned to my two Legion Medusas. They're in progress right now, and so far are turning out really well. 

Water slide transfers are a total pain in my ass, but I've finally figured out a system that works, and will do a brief tutorial in the coming week, hopefully. I've also prepped a 10 man Tactical Support Squad with Volkite Calivers as my next project. 

I also ordered my bases from Dragon Forge. I normally use Secret Weapon Miniatures bases, but for variety I decided to go with Dragon Forge. They're simply the highest quality resin bases on the market. The downside is it can take 3-6 weeks to get an order as they're hand cast, but it's well worth the wait. They're simply the best. I'm looking forward to this project a lot, and will share it with you as time goes on! 

I also can't wait for the new Ork release!!!! Orks were my first army when I was a kid and the first army I made when I came back to the hobby. I can't wait to see what GW has in store for them! Needless to say I'll be picking up a bevy of new Orks to add to my Waaagh!

Pre shading with airbrush:

Workbench Wednesday - 5/14/14

Greetings! Despite a busy week with the family I had a very productive hobby week!!! I finished weathering everything I've painted recently, and finished all the Scrap Yard bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures. The weathering really tied the models together and gave them the look I'm going for.

I hope this will be one of my last posts from my phone as my wife and I just got a brand new iMac! Yay for real pictures. 

Also, it doesn't look like I'll be attending Kublacon after all as it is a holiday weekend and a busy weekend for those of us in the service industry. Boo. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop working on this project, just that the urgency has faded a little. I am pretty close to just finishing every model I have for this army, which is a rarity, so that's good motivation in and of itself. Still to go are the 60 cultists, 6 spawn and Kazak. And the Chaos Warhound, which will be quite the project in itself. I'm really excited about that project, though I seem to be missing one of the toes. I ordered a tentacle maker from greenstuff industries to make different hoses and tentacles to augment the Titan, and to replace the toe if I can't find it. 

Taking away the minority of my hobby attention will be my Forgeworld Heresy Death Guard. I had a very sizable force but decided to sell them to fix the family car, which was painful but the right thing to do. I am reconstituting them now and am very excited about that project. I'll be blogging the whole army build and painting journey.  I'm going to be starting a gaming group in the South Bay and hopefully running a tournament later this year. 

Anyway, on to the pictures of projects:

More after the jump.

Workbench Wednesday 5/7/14

Greetings!!  I missed last week's post, though I don't have much to report since then. I finished a 'good enough' paint job on the Heldrake and finished painting the sorcerer's corpse cart bike. I've hit a bit of a wall with motivation, and assembled Kazyk the Befouled and primed him. I also have prepped some Secret Weapon Miniatures bases for paint. I think some weathering and basing, thus finishing some models completely, will help a great deal. I'll keep updating as I paint the spawn and Kazyk, after them it's just cultists until the cows come home.

Closer pictures after the jump.

Workbench Wednesday - 4/23/14

So the post is a couple days late, one of the side effects of having a 6 week old daughter! Haven't made a ton of progress in the past week, as I'm pretty uninspired by the Heldrake. It's nearly finished, I just have to go back over all the black another time and do the metals, maybe touch up the OSL around the eyes. Really just need to get it finished before moving on to the sorcerer's cart, which should prove much more inspiring!!

I have a finished Heldrake on the left, WIP on the right. Could have done a better job with the shading but it's good enough. They'll looking intimidating screaming on from reserves, so that's a plus! Also really looking forward to getting going on the bases. My FLGS (Game Kastle in Santa Clara, CA) finally got my Secret Weapon Miniatures Scrap Yard bases for me, so I'll do sort of a review and painting tutorial for them when I get to them. With about a month until Kublacon I'm not sure if I'll finish everything, but will certainly get the core of the force done, barring any setbacks. 

The Heldrake WIP. 

I'd like to take an opportunity to plug a Kickstarter campaign as well. It's the first campaign I've ever backed, and am really excited to see what the rest of the campaign has in store and get my minis around November: Jeremy Glen's Creature Caster

They're huge, beautiful sculpts of daemons, and I'm a sucker for daemons of all kinds, especially big scary ones. I'm going to finish the Heldrake in the next couple of days and hopefully the cart before the next update! Until then, Happy Hobbying!

Workbench Wednesday - 4/16/14

Greetings! Another week has gone by and I'm pretty happy with the progress I've been making. I've finished painting the Helbrutes and the Sorcerer! They are awaiting weathering, which I'll do after I finish the Sorcerer's cart and finish painting their bases. The paint jobs are necessarily a little quick and dirty as the weathering is the real focus. 

I wish I had the ability to upload pictures taken with a better camera. Working with just a phone and a tablet has its limitations! More pictures after the jump.

Workbench Wednesday - 4/9/14

I've managed to get a decent amount done this week, the helbrutes are progressing nicely!!! Armor, metals, and flesh are done; basically all the big jobs. As they say, the devil is in the details. Still need to do hoses, horns, creepy chaos eyes, missiles, etc. I'm working on the sorcerer at the same time as he's in the same color scheme, though some robes, nurglings, skulls, etc will need to be done separately.

More pictures after the jump.

Golden Gargant 2014 Info, Rules, and Regulations!

UPDATE: THERE HAVE BEEN TWO SMALL CHANGES TO THE TOURNAMENT RULES! THEY ARE MARKED IN RED TEXT TO MAKE THEM MORE VISIBLE!

UPDATE #2 (5/1/14): FINAL UPDATE BEFORE KUBLACON! THE RULES HAVE BEEN ALTERED TO REFLECT THAT WE WILL BE PLAYING UNDER 6TH EDITION THIS YEAR, REGARDLESS OF NEW EDITION RELEASES. ROUNDS ARE 2 HOURS & 20 MINUTES LONG. SCENARIOS CHANGED TO USE DAWN OF WAR DEPLOYMENT FOR LOGISTICAL REASONS. CHANGES MARKED IN RED.

Hey, all! This marks my second year running the Golden Gargant tournament at KublaCon! This year instead of having a grotesquely long and complicated event listing on the KublaCon event search I'll be posting it here! Now you won't have to bounce all over the place looking at different sources for all the rules just to figure out what's going on! Before I go on I want to thank and give credit to the crew over at Frontline Gaming for providing an awesome tournament format that lets other tournament organizers have an easy base to work from and tweak for their needs. They also have some cool gaming mats that will be adoring a few of the tables this year (they're beer proof to boot...but let's avoid testing that for the sake of the terrain and minis).

Here's the basic rundown:
Sunday, May 25th.
Tournament Registration starts at 8:00 AM.
First Round starts at 9:00 AM.
1,750 Points. Standard Force Organization.
Three, Two-Hour & Twenty-Minute Rounds (Meal-Break After Round Two)
Hyatt Regency SFO

Full weekend passes go up to full price on April 15th, so get yours now if you plan on being at the con for more then one day! KublaCon Registration.

Click here to find the official event listing, though anything you need is likely in the rest of this post.

Tournament rules and more info after the jump.

Workbench Wednesday - 4/2/14

This Wednesday I've made some progress on the inspiration for my Kublacon list - Helbrutes!! As you can see, they're magnetized to have multiple weapon options, though for Kublacon they'll be sporting a bunch of power fists as they'll be deepstriking as close to the enemy as possible for backfield disruption. The kits are awesome, and very easily magnetized. I used 1/4" magnets and any of the Helbrutes can carry any weapon (yay for me for not messing up the polarization).

They're painted in my 40k Death Guard theme, to go with my existing marines and terminators. Ironically they'll be the only models in my list that are painted in this theme unless rumors of a new plastic obliterator kit are true. As I'm using cultists and not Plague Marines, they'll stand out a bit, but I'll try to find a way to incorporate the scheme in the cultist units. They're going to be heavily weathered, and should look pretty decayed and menacing when all is said and done.

Conversion Corner: CSM Sorcerer on Bike - Construction Complete!!

Got a couple of hours to finish up construction of my Bike Sorcerer. I love how it came out, and am looking forward to painting it up for Kublacon! I started painting the sorcerer a week ago, and will be painting him alongside the Helbrutes, as they'll be the same scheme. Still on the to-do list for Kublacon are a Heldrake and Kazak the Befouled on Rot Beast, who will serve as my chaos lord on bike. On to the pictures!!!

More pictures after the jump.

Conversion Corner: CSM Sorcerer on Bike WIP #2

I got some work done on my corpse cart tonight, and it's coming along nicely!  I've assembled the main body of the cart completely stock as it comes from GW. I like the kit a lot, and it fits together pretty well!

Trying to fit the Forgeworld Nurgle Sorcerer where the corpse cart charioteer stands was impossible, as it was too small a space and obscured the sorcerer. Turns out the sorcerer fits well standing on top of the pile of corpses, which suits the feel of the model perfectly. I assembled the rider with a long stake carrying an impaled corpse, whose task it is to feed corpses to the engine of the cart.

Conversion Corner: CSM Sorcerer on Bike WIP

With the release of the Crimson slaughter codex, I've added a Chaos Space Marine sorcerer on a bike to my Kublacon list. Divination is the bee's knees. As my CSM army is Nurgle themed, I didn't want to just convert a Chaos Bike to have a sorcerer on it. That bring us to the Corpse Cart. Really cool model, obviously oozing Nurgle (quite literally), and perfect for a Sorcerer to ride into battle. Here's the problem though:

Workbench Wednesday - 3/26/14

It's been a pretty busy week! Built and magnetized 3 of the new Helbrute kits, and I have to say they were a pleasure to build! Looking forward to getting them painted and ready for Kublacon. On the workbench today are 40 cultists getting ready to be primed. I also have 6 spawn whose greenstuff is drying and who will be primed this week as well.

I've been toying with a few lists for Kublacon, and have narrowed it down to 3 possibles that will need some okay testing. Not knowing which I will bring does, unfortunately, necessitate me modeling and painting for all 3 possibilities. 

Workbench Wednesday 3/19

First things first. I know it's Tuesday, but I'm going to be taking a picture of my workbench each Wednesday to show current projects, plans for the next week, etc. I can assure you it will look exactly the same tomorrow!

With the release of the new Helbrute kits and the impending dataslate, as well as the new Crimson Slaughter codex, I unearthed my second Dark Vengeance set and am in the process of assembling them. On the right you can see three new helbrute kits (boss!), which I will be doing a review on and painting posts. The bits boxes on the top are full of empire Flagellants and state troop bodies, eagerly awaiting their transformation into cultists!  The pile of assembled minis in the top left are already converted Flagellants and Beastmen Gors which will also serve the Dark Gods as cultists.