Xeno ships spotted

OK sorry for not posting last week. i am really trying to post at least once a week just to get into a good habit in case anyone ever starts to read this. anyways i just had too many things i wanted to write about and so little time that i ended up writing nothing. any ways enough of this on to the actual post! oh and sorry for taking pics on my laptop again just have no work space these days oh well.

so i started a little fleet of ships to go with my eventual tau army i will give fluff at a later date at the time all you need know is that the big ship is called Doran'Por'Kor'O'Aloh'Yanoi

Battle Fleet Gothic:
So for all of you who do not know what battle fleet gothic is it is a specialist game made by games work shop that co insides with war hammer 40k. what is is is the naval aspect of 40k and i do not mean naval as in water fairing vessels this is the future so we get space ships. now if you look into it most people have a lot of good things to say about BFG and i have to agree. it is fun and heck if your interested you can down load the rules of of GW's site and have a go at it with some pieces of paper of space marines representing your ships just to try it out.

In BFG all the major races are represented more or less and well when starting to make a fleet i decided i did not want to make a fleet one of my friends were making (eldar, and imperial navy/ space marine) so i went to the one race i love in 40k but have not really gotten to mess around with too much (though that's changing soon) the Tau. i started by collecting a few gw models and they are alright with OK rules but well they just did not look tau enough (sorry no pics of them look online if your interested) they honestly remind me of the botinay bay (from TOS star trek.. khan's ship) they are clunky and submarine-ish which is kinda tau and does fit the style they should be played but i wanted something more elegant and organic thus i turned to forge world.
The forge world models look great and are easy to assembly.. well just about everything for BFG is easy to assemble if it even needs assembly and before you say "yeah but aren't forge world models expensive?" you should know that at least at the time i ordered them they actually costed me less then the gw models so i will say that fw BFG stuff i think is usually actually well priced. also the rules for them or at least the stats are a little better (and recognized at BFG tournaments).

any ways i will talk about this again when i finish the fleet, which will be soon since i just finished 3 escorts (again sorry no pics) and will have everything i need to make my bombers and fighters by the end of this week.


May the Emperor Prote... i mean For the Greater Good!

The Living Saint

hail and well met. today we shall do a little bit of talking about Saint Celestine. Why do you ask?
Well, because i finally based the model and instead of just showing off my mediocre painting skills I figured i would all talk a little bit about this model from both a painting and tactics view.

So here we have Saint Celestine the Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade (or Cel for short). for all intents and purposes this has probably been my favorite metal model to paint to date. Cel has a lot of nice flat areas of armor as well as plenty of texture and a good mix of armor, cloth, skin, and doo-dads. Now I didn't really take advantage of all that open canvas that that huge suspended robe of hers has but i am sure an experienced painter could do some sick stuff on there. also i really enjoy her base, so much so that i didn't even bother to add anything to it, i just plugged it into a slot base and painted it. I think she can make a great center piece for and army and though i didn't do it here i have seen her relatively easily converted by others to give a rather unique looking HQ.
All in all i highly recommend her as a model every witch hunter player should have whether they plan to field her or not. and for any one that just likes to paint cool minis Cel is a great and rather fun choice.

Now for tactics.
STATS: Cel here has some pretty solid stats with a WS&BS of 5 (though as we will go over in a second the BS is useless). 3 wounds 3 attacks a 5I and a 10LD but an unfortunate 3 for both strength and toughness.
WAR GEAR: The Ardent Blade, Armour of Saint Katherine. now these two things are good stuff first off the ardent blade is a blessed weapon (that for all those who don't know is a master crafted ((re rolls i miss a turn)) power weapon that gives her +2 strength) making her really a strength 5 melee character and by the by can be shot as a flamer in the shooting phase (Burn the Heretic!). and the Armour gives her a +2 save and a 4+ invuln
so this stuff definitely gives her some punch and lasting power.
SPECIAL RULES: Adepta Sororitas, independent character, fearless, faithful, wings of faith, and miraculous intervention.
OK she has a butt load of things on her, 1st the standard SoB special rule giving her a "free save"" against psychic powers sent her way and down grading all force weapons to only power weapons which is great for multi wound characters such as her. you all know independent character and fearless so we'll skip those. ok faithful means that she contributes to and can use faith points which are a special set of powers that the Adeptas Sororitas can use (and that we will go over in a later post) now whats nice about her is that instead of giving you the usual 1 faith point or 2 for a HQ she puts 3 into your faith pool thats big stuff. unfortunatly the first time she dies (yes i said first time we will get to that in a second) you lose D6 faith and if that brings you below 0 faith then you can't produce anymore for the game...bummer.
Now here is a cool one, wings of faith, this lets her move as jump infantry as well as let her hit & run as per the 4th ed version not the 5th ed version as stated in their faq (basically says her hit & run works as in codex which is the 4th ed wording for it). but wait that's not all! she can also move an additional 6 inches (moving as jump infantry so ignoring terrain unless starting or ending in it) in the assault if not engaged, or with a squad and can do this the turn she deep strikes in. this makes her an incredibly fast model.
Her final rule though is what people really remember, her Miraculous intervention. this basically states that when she loses her last wound (no matter how) you make a leadership check. if she fails.. yeah shes dead..bummer. but if she passes she goes into reserves and starting during your next turn you can start rolling for her to come back. and when she can com back she must deep strike and only has one wound. further more this can happen more than once in a game. so in other words as long as you roll well Cel will always come back to help you out.

PROS: she is an incredibly fast model with a movement max of 24 inches a turn meanig she can get anywhere. she is a great melee fighter and really probably the best in the book with that WS of 5 and a standard I&S of 5 also, which with proper faith point usage can go to 7 (for either but not both at once) for a turn which is pretty great. Cel definitely goes along great with a squad of seraphim giving you a fast moving hit & run assault squad of kill. and she is relatively hardy with a 2+ save 4+ invuln and fearless all of which will help her stay in the fight which is where you want her. and since she can technically always comeback you always have something to bother your opponent with.
CONS: ok now the bad news, first she is 201 points and for that much shes a little over priced compared to some of the new special characters for IG and SM. second T3 really sucks, i mean the saves aregreat but the more you have to make the more likely you will fail, and with T3 you will have to make a lot of saves, and instant death due to strength 6 weapons is always a downer. and my biggest complaint NO FRAG GRENADES. that I5-7 is not going to do anything if you assault into cover with her, that's probably where you are going to send her so what the heck! you can fix this problem by putting her in a squad with some (seraphim come standard) but really you would think she would have something for gosh sakes!

now personally i love this unit. Cel is not in my list right now but i have used her several times in the past and she is loads of fun. she has a great mini, and pretty cool rules. if you are going to play sisters of battle and don't intend on using that silly mech style army then i suggest her and a squad of seraphim as a quick hitting troop killer squad, its points heavy but it really causes a lot of damage.

so in parting i leave you with some more pictures of her, there would be more but the pics were just not coming out right for some reason (having problem with the focus).
Next post will be either about Faith Points, Seraphim, IG/legend of war, or Tau BFG. not sure yet really depends on what pictures i take this week.


I'll clean up that green stuff on her right arm eventually...
May the Emperor Protect

bases loaded

Ok, so today we are going to talk about basing.
First lets get this going from the begining. Why base? well the simple answer is that it looks good. just as a painted model look far superior to an unpainted one (no matter the skill of the painter) the same is true for the base. the base is a part of your model i mean what would your space marines look like if you didn't paint their bolters? they would look imcomplete right. the same is true for the base. a painted model on a unpainted base is just a little plastic or metal figure. once you paint the base it becomes a little unique character.
As you can see from this mediocre picture of two decent models the basing adds something to the whole model. it makes it look like its on the battle field and not just sitting on your game table.

now you dont have to get all fancy with the base, though it is fun and a great way to add character to your models, you can simple just give them the look of the environment you want your forces to be in. whether it be in a forest, a hive city, a space hulk, or a desolate waste land any thing can go and most are simple enough to do.

now some important things you might want to consider when deciding on how to do your basing are the general environment, positive and negative space, focal point and complimentary color useage. now all of these are concepts that will help you make a good base and can be used by a modeler of any level to make their stuff look good (i mean I'm an average painter and modeler at best but this little concepts deffinatly help me out a lot and can probably help you too).

ok so our first concept is basic environment. now this is an easy one for most people it really just comes down to a fluff question of "where do your forces usually fight"? now with some paint schemes you can do whatever you want like big yellow imperial fists on a snow land scape. but other times you might play say a guard or tau army which use stealth and camo to their adantage so your gonna want to choose a terrain style for your base that matched your army's color scheme. like have guys in forest camo on an urban base looks kind of weird, though if maybe part of the fluffiness of your army is that they are usually jungle fighters and have been deployed improperly equiped in a urban setting thats fine and dandy just think about this stuff before hand. ok so here we see two examdddples of trying to match our paint scheme to our base.
















on the left we see some SM sniper scouts with their camo-cloaks and bases painted to match what this does is show proper use of camo for them and gives us an all around nice see tieing our whole model together. now the second picture shows some IG in an urban camo design. now since there are alot of colors going on in their camo scheme (4 to be exact) we have to try and show i would say at least 2 of the colors on the base (try not to get to caried away though with the color matching because that can lead to a base that is just far too busy). so we can see that the black grey and white of their uniforms are represented in the black/white road design and the ruble at their feet. now before we talk more about color lets move on to positive and negative space.

Now for those who don't know what i mean by positive and negative space (+/- for now on) let me explain or at least sum up. in any picture or sculpture you see this concept is usually apart of it (if its good anyways lol) its really just an idea of balanceing your positive space of your subject matter (ie your model) with the negative space around it (i.e. its base, the area around it so on and so forth). when balanced right you'll have a clean attractive model. when off you'll either have a model with too much going on around it or well a empty base.


Now here we have an example of poor use of +/- space. this guy is a very short and broad model so our paoitive space is very very tight and then is we add this big hand thing (which will make an appearce some where latter on i hope) it first covers a huge chunk of the models back side and makes the whole thing a little too busy so for this guy what we really want is a rather flat base one that doesnt take up his space. like this one here.
As you can see here the model has lots of space for him self and looks far less busy which lest your focus more on him and less on his surrondings. speaking of focus lets move on to the next point we are going to talk about Focal Point.
for the most part focal point is where you look first when look at a piece of art and then the "flow" of looking you do after, the goal is to get your audieance to look at one spot first and then to move from that point to the rest of the picture, or again in this case our mini. using the example picture above what do you look at first? ok now really look at that point and then just let your self flow through the mini, hopefully if i did my job right your eyes will move across the whole mini from point to point untill you look a basically the whole thing. now i dont know what your focal point on this is becasue it differs from person to person i usually focus on his head or ammo clip first and then make my way in a circle. the whole point of this is to basically get the audiance to see the whole picture an enjoy all the little details. now how does this have anything to d with basing? well you base can add points to look through on your trip through the mini I'm sure some of you eventually made your way down to the skull at his feet and then back up. and thats the point the base is there to help the viewer look around the whole mini and really look at it and its surrondings.


look at these three guys, they all have the same basic equpiment, and practically the same stance but with slightly different bases you get a whole different view of each and your eyes will see different things when looking at them. for the most part with all of them i go right for that orange but then with the first guy i go up to his face and then make my way to the feet with the second guy i see the gun first again and then get pulled down by the little metal spire and then the hand below him and then get led back up to his face and the final guy is like a counter-clockwise circle going gun, face, knee ground and up again.

for our final point we have complimentary color usage. this is just chooseing afew colors to either blend into your model or make it stand out. the camo pics earlier show the whole blending in concept pretty well just matching colors to make the base and mini feel like one thing. but we can also choose a few well placed colors that we dont see on the mini to give it a little "pazaas".

Ok check these guys out. again two models that are basically identical. heck they both event have similar base ideas but one (guy on left) uses a color on his base that mixes with the rest of him with that little bolt metal deally on the ground while the guy on the right has this little bronze bit which really just adds a whole other feel to the mini. it adds some brightness ehich is good with this rather dark color scheme and just adds a little bit of extra something. now im not say the guy oin the left is bad, i like how he came out, i'm just showing you what differance a little bit of non matching color use can do.

So in closing i hope this brought any one who read it a little incite. sorry if my writing is alittle hectic and stuff, but it is late, i'm sick, and i hate proof reading hehehe. anyways i'll work on makeing that better. and sorry for the IG heavy pics i just happen to be working on them and really trying to base them all because its the right thing to do.

anyways remember a unfinished base is like a baseball field with a tarp on it..


It's just no fun =).
(had to do it the one time i go to a base ball game in like 10 years and it rains so i took a pics.. stupid mets)


Emperor Protect