Thursday 31 May 2012

Cellular Ghost's MERCs

Hey Guys!

I finally finished something! I painted 4 out of my 4 MERC minis for the potential of playing an actual game with them :D
Without further delays here they be:







They look better in real life but camera or the light dulls the details quite a bit. All the armor plates and clothes are wet blended; armor with a mix of Vallejo MC Scarlet and P3 Sanguine Highlight on a base of P3 Skorne Red washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade; and the Clothes are Vallejo MC Royal Purple/Citadel Nuln Oil and Vallejo MC Royal Purple on a Basecoat of Vallejo MC Black.
And as Guillaume (Guru) informed me, the models need a couple of markers to indicate facing. So, I put variety of reds, brown, and yellows to give a field of vision.
I had a real problem priming them since the can of primer I used gave the minis "little fuzzies". After several tries I settled for black primer since that was all I had, even I almost exclusively paint on white :/ Thats why if you look closely (or not closely :/), a bit of the detail is obscured by layering of primer. I also blame the stripping product I used, PineSol, which might have caused the fuzzies to appear due to the reaction with the primer. Dont know but I wont be using PineSol to strip my models anymore...
Now who's down for a game of MERCs?

Edit:
Added new pic of the MERC KemVar Trooper

Monday 28 May 2012

Orks from the Sky (Arena 2012, Orks' Point of View)

Couple months ago, my boss asked me if I would join him in a team-tournament of 40k. I'm not the biggest 40k fan out there but I do have a sizable ork army and the prospect of playing a tournament with an all-ork team and my boss seemed fun so I said yes.

Preparation: The Rise of an all Flying Waaagh!!!

The Arena 2012 tournament organizers announced the categories in which you could win a prize: Best General (most victories), Best Sportsmanship (getting the highest sportsmanship grade), Best Painted (the best painted armies), Best Theme (best army theme/fluff) and Best Overall (''jack of all trade, master of none'').
Right away my boss and I looked at each other and thought the same thing: we had no chance to win 'Best General', might as well go for the ''Best Theme''.

At first I thought of an ''all flying ork army'' but that would mean I'd need to scratch-build these 'flying trukks' I always dreamed of. When I got some orks from a friend I almost decided to eschew the ''all flying'' for a regular theme and go try to paint them to high standard to instead win ''Best Painted''.
But then I don't know why, I ended up starting to build 3 Flying Battlewagons, I'm somebody impulsive.

My Boss followed-up with a diorama of an Drop-Rok (a carved out asteroid orks use to land on planets) and we started building our lists with as many Deffkoptas in it as we could fit.
I'll post our lists in the comments of this article as it's going to be long enough already.

Then my exams happened, I got distracted into painting couple of MERCS models (I regret nothing!), painting some Warmachine...and then 2 weeks before the tournament went back to preparing my army despite diablo 3 coming out.
I really thought I could have it fully painted but the sneaky battlewagons proved more challenging to finish assembling than I expected...I then spent the last week before the tournament with an average of 5 hours of sleep and the night before the tournament I went to bed for a big 35minutes of sleep as I had been painting from 5pm to 6:16am and the tournament started at 9 but I needed to meet my boss for final details.

Despite being super tired, I was quite excited as I was confident in the strenght of our theme: we had Team T-shirts, fluff written and an all-flying ork army!!

The Tournament: Dark Clouds of Orks to be Expected

Game 1: Red Gets You Killed Fasta!! (Blood Angels + Grey Knights)

When I saw our first opponents' army lists I thought to myself:<<well here comes our first (of many) loss!>> as they were playing Blood Angels with Grey Knights and were fielding some of the strongest combos in the codexes (ie: 2xDreadnought double twin-linked psyforce auto-canons). On the bright side, their army was fully painted and quite nice to the eye.
The primary objective was control of 3 objective markers. Secondary was to kill the most expensive unit in the opponent's army.
We won to go first.
The scenario also had 'Dawn of War' so we deployed only Warboss Alces-Alces (Boss on bike) and the Nobz bikers.

Our first turn on that beautiful table. All three Blorkade Runners swooping in to shoot da oomies.

Turn 3: An insane amount of tanks wiped our koptas and destroyed 2 out of the three Blorkade Runners, only ''Da MoonBusta'' survives the firepower unleashed against it.

Mephiston vs Gretchins: this fight lasted 2-3 rounds despite a desperate intervention from the remnants of a nearby boyz squad. Most gretchins were killed by the Runtherd's squighound devouring them to keep morale high against such a mighty opponent.

By turn 5-6 we had nothing left on the table and had not killed or destroyed a single model from them. Crushing Defeat!
We rolled A LOT of ''1'' when we were wounding on ''2+'' for Powerklaw attacks, Mephiston should have been dead but the Boyz Nob's Powerklaw malfunction ruined a ''kill by gretchins'' from happening.
Our opponents, despite playing a uber-competitive list (some go to tournaments to win ;)) were very friendly, patient and made for a very enjoyable game even despite the one-way annihilation. 

Lunch: Da Boyz need more squig-fuel fer da Blorkade Runners!
I think this is something to point out: through the entirety of the tournament, snacks, drinks and lunch were provided. In my gaming experience, this was THE BEST service I got. I mean: you come in in the morning and there's donuts for you.
This attention to their gamers really puts that event one cut above.

Game 2: A Shiny New Helmet For Kaptin Zugnut's Collection (Taus + Necrons)

Well I never faced the new Necrons but had a lot of experience against Taus. When I saw their list had even less stuff than ours I was certain this would be an easy victory. I couldn't be more wrong.

Primary Objective: control table quarter (in order to do so, both team members need to have a scoring unit in the same table quarter) Secondary Objective: kill points?
We did not go first and failed to seize initiative.
The scenario had a diagonal deployment.

Our Koptas on their scout move...Needless to say these fire warriors are about to disappear quickly.

Couple of turns into the game: Big Boss Alces-Alces and his nobz bikers find out how nasty the Wraith became in the new codex...But he also shows them that he's more than a match in melee too!
Close to the now-destroyed Blorkade Runner, Kaptin Zugnut shows a Necron Lord the fine art of dismemberment by powerklaw: one shiny new helmet fer da Kaptin!
Koptas are enjoying the 5 thoughness but make us regret we didn't equip them with buzzsaw.

We won because we contested their table-quarter...but also because the Runtherd succeeded his 6+ armor save in the explosion of his Blorkade Runner.
Very close victory for the Orks from the Sky.

Game 3: Enigmork in Action! (Imperial Guard x2)

Two Imperial Guard players with list almost similar, nothing particularly crazy but two Valkyrie 'Vendetta' so we could dogfight with the Blorkade Runners.

''Its gonna be an occasion ta try da Enigmork'' said Kaptin Zugnut as he looked at the impressive machine the big Mek had fitted in his Blorkade Runner, sure, it required grots to change the magnetic bands every three minutes but the occasion to yell abuse in the opponent's com-links was too much to pass for the Kaptin.

This describes perfectly the game as imperial guard will fail their morale check again and again (easily 5 times this game) and Creed will roll a double 6 on the first turn of giving orders.

The Deffkoptas decided to go ''headchoppa'' and wiped a whole squad on our 1st turn. (not shown in this picture: my deffkoptas do the same...Thats what da 'umies get for trying to burn them with flamers)

Guardsmen are a little nervous of the Nobz' proximity.

The Blorkade Runners will finally be able to shoot their Killkanons this game...to cause absolutely no damage.


Warboss Alces-Alces couldn't resist chopping off some 'oomies 'eads while the Nobz have to destroy a Leman Russ

The 'oomies fought back more than we expected and inflicted two wounds of the Boss...They failed their morale (thanks to the Enigmork) and try to run away, the boss slaughtered them.
The guardsmen operating the lascanon must have been thankful to be so high on the pyramid: the boss got shot before he could reach them.

One of our opponent laughing as the ''ugly red'' Deffkoptas enter the battlefield from a flank (these guys came in from the flank we wanted them in EVERY game, ''Ugly Red fer da Win...err or tryin' ta!'').
The valkyrie will finally get shot down (our Blorkade Runners couldn't do the job properly) explode and kill some guardsmen.

Definitely our most enjoyable game of the weekend. Enigmork (or is it Orknigma?) was a beautiful encrypting-abuse-yelling machine but despite it, our opponents seized the day with 5/4 versus 3/3 (points for primary and secondary objectives).
Thanks to them, we had a great game and good laugh!

So 2 losses and 1 win... ''What's our status boss?''

The Prizes: Da Boyz Get a Share uv Da Loot!

Finally, the moment everybody had been waiting for!
After a raffle where I won absolutely nothing (but my friend and contributor to this blog Llew won tons of things) came the awards for Best General, Best Sportsmanship, Best Painted, Best Theme (best army theme/fluff) and Best Overall.
-We did not win Best General...with our mediocre score of two crushing defeat and one minor victory and our 13 deffkoptas list we already knew it.
-We did not win Best Painted, it's without surprise that it went to Vincent Hudon...We did score very high with a 22/30 (Llew will complain that most of my guys had a lot of primer showing up but I'll just say that the Blorkade Runners blinded the judges)
-We did not win Best sportsmanship but tied for second (with a score of 16/18 thanks a lot to our opponents! We had fun too!) (Llew and my friend and co-worker Chris actually won this award)
-We did not win Best Overall.

WE WON BEST THEME!!!!

Orks from the Sky
We come in...Waaagh!!!

WAAAGH Orks from the sky!!!
I dedicate this win to Dan and Audrey, the first for having done such a beautiful diorama, basing my army, made the logo and T-shirt and the second because I cut a lot on the time spent with her in order to finish painting the Blorkade-Runners and Koptas and I strongly believe the Runtherd's miraculous 6+ armor saves were because I painted him instead of going with her to one of her friend's birthday.

Conclusion: Arena 2012 ''Orks are never beaten in battle!''
<<'Cause when we run away, it's ta come back stronger!>> (Codex Orks, GW)

From the beautiful tables (most of them were simply insanely amazing), to our great opponents, to all the little details the tournament organizers took care of, Arena was, as I said earlier, one cut above.
I started this post saying how I'm not the biggest 40k fan and I'll end it by saying that I simply can't wait for the next Arena to happen and I think it says a lot!
Thanks to Angela and Jean-François for the amazing tournament they were able to offer us!

Thursday 24 May 2012

Sekret Projekt: "Da Wing'' (Part 3)



In  Part 1  and  Part 2  I showed how to build the main ship but there was couple of details left, so for today we have:
-Building a turret (with Kinder Surprise's eggs)
-Putting the ship on an ''official GW flying base''
-raging because GW announced official ork flyers that look super sweet
-rejoicing because we're building flying ork transports and those aren't going to be official GW releases in...a long time.

Step 11: Make your kid happy!

Go buy your kid a Kinder Surprise, then eat the chocolate, give him the toy and keep the egg. (Or you can try to give him the chocolate as you will only need the egg but I'm trying to make everybody happy there!)
Cut the egg, for this project you will only need the top (the small part).

Put the top on the thicker plasticard sheet you used in part 1-2 and with a pencil go around it to create the shape you need to cut.
Cut it and glue it to the egg-top.


Now the regular orky stuff you're used to: cut in the thin plasticard a long thin rectangle and glue it aroung the bottom of the egg.
Glue a canon or weapons you want, don't put them too high as you'll want to put a little ''window'' for the gunner to see.


For the little ''window'', I'm creating them the same way I did for the rest of the spaceship.

like that!
Now I forgot to take the picture of the next step so you'll have to trust me on this:
-put a tank hatch on top.
-armor the sides of the turret by gluing between the hatch and the band of plasticard you put on the bottom rectangles and triangles.
-glue rivets on all this.

last thing for the turret: glue a little earth magnet, that will allow you to turn it, remove it, etc.

glue the other magnet on top of your ship.
Here you go! Your Blorkade Runner now has a shiny new Killkanon!

Step 12: The last one before painting
So it appears I messed up when I told you to glue the back of the ship because in order to put the ship on an official base you'll have to pin it....And you can't leave pins in empty air.
Solution to that is to put green stuff between the platform and at the very end of the beer glass (roughly center of the ship)

Here you go, the cool thing with the ship being transparent is you can see what you're doing.

GW official flying stand (ordered separately from Valkyrie kits)

drill it and put the pins in it.
Drill in the ship, so it goes in the green stuff for more stability/solidity, put two pins.

and

Step 13: 'Ere we go! 'Ere we go!

My first Blorkade Runner being painted. You'll see a lot more pictures of it soon.

Oops! You can also see the other two Blorkade Runners. Don't they look awesome? Well I gave you three tutorials to complete your own orkish flying contraption!

Stay tuned for:
-Arena Battle Report (with my contributor Llew playing the Blue guys)
-LOTS of pictures from the Arena table my boss and I have been working on (it is already awesome!)
-Pictures of Arena, Pictures of my painted orkish army.

Thanks for reading and if you post a picture of your own ''Blorkade Runner'' (made following my tutorials) I'll try to find something awesome to offer you!






Saturday 19 May 2012

the Uranium Deal (Mercs Battle Report)

---Classified Data---
--Clearance: VP and UD01 Project Director---
-16-05-2183-
-Codename: Uranium Deal
-Funds: ***encrypted***
-Assets: + ***encrypted***
-Status: --Read Report--

Report:
As you are aware, the Keizai Waza ''Blue Tiger'' squad met with (name erased) USCR representatives to discuss a possible Deal in which KW would sign for Uranium (and possibly Deuterium), all abundant in Siberia, in order to reinforce its position on the world's energy market.
Details of the transaction have not transpired yet but we do know Kemvar deemed KW entry on their turf (energy) worthy of sending a full composite assassination MERCS squad to put an end to this deal (and possibly re-ignite the enmity between USCR and KW).

Drone Pictures + Comments:

Forces Involved in the Conflict:
Here's the first Kemvar Assassination Squad Dispatched: Their battle colors identifies them to Kemvar VP José.

Soon after, Kemvar VP Yaum's squad was dispatched, proof of the mission's importance.

A new USCR squad unknown to our services yet, rumors are Commander Korto got in charge of it.

The infamous 'Blue Tiger' squad, responsible of countless civilian exposed to tactical nuke's radiation. Read our other reports for more information.


Individuals Involved in the Conflict:

Assassination Side:
José assigned his Assault Leader, Assassin and Monkeywrench to the mission while Yaum provided support with his Heavy, Sniper and Demo.

Dealers' Side:
In a pure show of strength, USCR had brought a Behemoth, Assault Leader and Sniper to protect the corporates. Keizai Waza had brought a Blue Tiger Tactical Nuke Squad (Assault Leader, Forward Observer and Pathfinder) Such heavy armament brought to protect a Megacon deal shows that both dealers expected the worse (or wanted to be in a strong position to negotiate the deal).


Drone Offline/Observer's Report:

The dealers must have been quite vigilant to protect the Uranium Deal or it might have been Kemvar's attempt to avoid any links to this assassination, one way or another, a Megacon defense system started disrupting communications and only the presence of one of our observers secretly inserted in the area allowed us to keep track of the situation:

-As soon as Kemvar's assassination squad was detected, USCR and Keizai Waza moved in to intercept. A transmission we caught indicate mission orders were simple: Eradicate the intruders, lethal force allowed.
The newly formed squad of USCR took that as an opportunity to film a propaganda movie to demonstrate their Behemoth's might to citizen workers while the Keizai Waza soldiers made a vow that, should they be close to death, they would bring their would be killer in the grave before they would fall.
(Corporate Plots: 'Hero of the People' and 'Death Before Dishonor')

First 15 Minutes of the Operation

Both sides moved into position. (USCR and KW reacting to their opponent's move by bounding all their members to the USCR Sniper (reaction1)).

The Drone went online for a couple of seconds, allowing for this picture to be taken.
On the left (cut by picture) the Kemvar Demo takes position in the center of the map behind a roadblock, in the background the USCR Sniper gets on top of  a small building to cover the battlefield while the Kemvar Heavy does the same thing in the forefront. USCR Behemoth moves and sits in the middle of two streets while the Assault Leader stays close to it to help it spot targets. At the far left, rushing behind buildings, is the  Kemvar Assassin, ready to execute the mission, one Vorpal Blade kill at a time.

15-30min. Since Beginning of Operation



While the battle raged on the field, our satellite took this picture and here's our interpretation of it (cross referenced with our observer): The Keizai Waza Assault Leader, having received his own satellite picture of the battlefield, saw the Kemvar Assassin heading his way, he probably then retreated to lure the Assassin in the open street in order to expose it to the combined firepower of his own gun and USCR's Behemoth and Assault Leader.
The picture shows that the trap worked but the Assassin still was able to charge the KW Assault Leader who apparently emerged unscathed to climb on a generator and fire a couple of shots into his opponent, wounding him and de-activating his cloaking field.

On the other side of the field (No Picture, Drone Offline), the KW Pathfinder fakes a Nuke by marking a spot with his laser, the Kemvar Assassination Squad evacuate the area but no nuke gets fired.

30-45min. Since Beginning of Operation

The Kemvar Assassin then gets killed by the USCR Assault Leader.
And the first kill is soon followed by a second one as the Pathfinder falls to Kemvar Sniper's fire.


In the background you can see the Kemvar Sniper and Assault Leader, the Assault Leader will get entangled by USCR Harpoon Sniper fire.

15min to End of Operation

In the middle, avoiding a lot of incoming fire and even a wurm grenade, the Forward Observer uses his Machine Pistol to wound badly the Kemvar Demo. Prooving they are ruthless, the Heavy proceed to shoot and finish his own team Demo in order to damage the Forward Observer.
Kemvar's efforts to eliminate the Observer won't be rewarded as he will survive the bloody battle.


 Meanwhile, Both Dealers' Assault Leaders start covering each-other's back while they rush to secure the containers' area and kill more enemies...Only to receive the end-of-mission signal.

Conclusion

Having successfully repelled most members of the assassination squad, the Dealers Mercs were successful in preventing yet another anonymous assassination in the world's energy market. Furthermore, the USCR Assault Leader investigation of a container showed it contained Kemvar's wurm-grenade eggs.

Facts:
-Our very own agent infiltrated to get infos on the deal's end got caught and is M.I.A.
-The Keizai Waza did not fire the Tactical Nuke they brought and cannot be prosecuted.
-USCR propaganda movie was not released as the secrecy of the deal was too important for the Behemoth's high command.

---End of report---
-----Please leave a comment---

Friday 18 May 2012

-WELCOME TO THE CAUSE !!!- 


So I've tried MERCS about a week ago and really fell for the game. At last, something that relies more on strategy than dice roll ! Don't get me wrong though, there will be some critical dice roll fail and the like but the most important part of the game is movement and what you make of it. I just finished painting my first model and will keep you posted on further development, such as a battle report from a most wanted faceoff against Guru's Keizai Waza ! Soooo without any further ado, here is my monkeywrench for the USCR, my first MERCS strike team of hopefully many ! 
-Korto

Thursday 10 May 2012

Nuclear Launch Detected (Part 4)

The Curse:
-I've been trying to post the last two members of my Keizai Waza NLD Merc team on this blog for ever...
-At first I took pictures.
-Then forgot my camera at the store.
-Forgot said camera the many time I came back to get it.
-Then got it but was in the middle of exams so I didn't had time to post.
-Realized the pictures I took of the last team members were quite blurry.
-Went back to take more pictures of them.
-To realize my 7+ years old camera is dying...It can't focus properly anymore. (That and I'm a terrible photograph)

Nonetheless I uploaded the pictures as else I'll have nothing to show.


Here's the Heavy-Hybrid: a though armor that will see it survive many games combined with a heavy weapon to deny critical zones of the battlefield. (note: I'm pretty sure people aren't used to Armor 3 on Keizai Waza) 




 And last but not least: The Demo. His acid grenades reduce enemy armor permanently by 1...Quite useful to deal with your opponent's armor 3.



Group Shot


The NLD ''Asset Denial Division'' of Keizai Waza with its five members in battle armors.
(Its not blurry because I'm a terrible photograph and my camera is dying, it's blurry because they're running, that's why!)

Now I only need to buy and paint the Keizai Waza sniper and I'll have the full 6. There's really something that makes you proud to own everything of an army fully painted....And with Mercs it's never been so easy!
At the same time, you know inside yourself you just can't wait for more releases for Keizai Waza, be it because you're curious or because there 's so much potential.

Comments and critics welcomed as always, I apologize if the bad pictures burned your eyes: I'll try and amass money to buy a new camera!

-guru

Is this the end of the Nuclear Launch Detected adventure? Not at all! Expect fluffy battle reports and new members (as Mercs releases them).