New Zombie book!

Hey all,

My good friend David Monette has written his own book about zombies and is attempting to self publish it through Kickstarter.  Check it out HERE.

I have included a lot of pictures done by Dave. He is a professional illustrator and his work has appeared in Magic The Gathering, on magazine covers and all over the place. I won't tell you much about the book other than the fact that I have read a LOT of zombie books and this is among the best.



So if you feel like getting behind one of our own who has written something outstanding and is trying to get it launched, check out HIS KICKSTARTER and back him.  I love kickstarter now by the way! :)


Here is the first draft of the video I made for him. I misspelled conscious.:)



This is one of the big battle scenes. Wouldn't you love to know what lead up to this?




Cover art for The Zombie Axiom

The Necromancer









Most of these images are original artwork for the book.  Take a look at his Kickstarter and show him some support!  He is one of the best people I know.

Jawaballs

Army Update: Tau/Eldar

It is about as last minute as you can get. I am preparing my trios army for The Nova. I decided to make some changes after I played in a tournament yesterday.

More on that tournament later.

The Changes?





First I wanted a little more funk in the back ranks. So I added a Farseer to cast things like Guide, Doom and Presience.

Then I added 3 Eldar Bikers.  These were made from a mixture of Dire Avengers and Fantasy models.  I hate the Eldar bike models.  I think you will agree these are a bit better!

And finally I needed Kroot Hounds, but they are simply not available. So I added some Fantasy zombie dogs.  Heh, whatever works. I dare say these look better than Kroot Hounds too. Yes, they are on larger bases than Kroot Hounds, but if my opponents want to make a stink about it, fine I wont play them.

Thoughts?

Jawaballs

Redemption of the Fallen is here. Win this army!

I will start by letting the pictures speak for themselves.



Dark Angels Azrael

Dark Angels Tactical Marines

Belial, Master of the Deathwing

Deathwing Terminators

Dark Angels Librarian

Deathwing Land Raider

Ravenwing

Sammael, Chapter Master of the Ravenwing

Dark Angels Scouts



So there you have it. The models are painted, and the army looks fantastic.  I will post up better pics once they are taken.

So what is all this you ask? In case you have been living under a rock, this is The Redemption of the Fallen!

This is a charity army painting project benefiting Doctors Without Borders and sponsored by The Nova Open, The Warstore and Secret Weapon Miniatures as well as many others like KR Multicase.

What does this mean to you?  YOU CAN WIN THESE!  The Nova will ship this entire army, including the custom case by KR Multicase and other swag any where in the world for free. All you have to do is enter to win.

You can do so by visiting HERE and making a charitable donation through the site tools.  For every dollar you donate, your name gets entered once into the drawing. If you donate 100 dollars your name gets entered 100 times.  On 9/1, at The Nova Open, the winner of this army will be drawn live from all those who have entered!  You need to be in it to win it!

The army is based on 1850 points but includes many extra upgrades for you to customize your force.  Don't quote me on this, but I believe it comes with Codex: Dark Angels, transport trays, a display board and a KR Multicase with Custom Cut foam.  Dice and other goodies as well.  Pretty much a tournament ready army that includes every thing you need to go and have fun, and probably win best painted if I do say so myself. :)

So VISIT HERE NOW and donate as much as you can. Your donations are going to a great cause as Doctors Without Borders does a LOT of good throughout the world. And get a chance to win an army!  Take part in something special.  I know I am proud to have been part of this project this year. I think this is the most cohesive and well done army project I have been a part of so far!

More pics to come as they are sent to me. Get in there and donate!

Jawaballs

Riptide!



Here comes the riptide!  Mostly done.  I havn't touched the highlights on the brown yet, and the armor can definitely use more love, but I am working to get this done as fast as possible, the army that is, so this is good enough for now.

I added a couple of banners, one of them painted so far. I hand painted the Tau Sept insignia and a couple of unit markings.

I am in a holding pattern until my new fine detail brushes arrive in the mail.

Don't worry, this will get much more attention, but I have to get the rest of the army to this standard first.

More to come!

Jawaballs

By request: A post about paints for my Tau

Questions were asked about what paints I used for my Tau I posted yesterday so I figured I would do a pictoral run through of my experience.  



First I used Valejo Model Air grey primer and my air brush. No need to post a pic of that.

Then I Sprayed the bottoms of the armor, and all of the infantry with Burnt Umber. I literally flipped them over, including the riptide and broadsides, and sprayed straight down with the Umber, allowing it to fade around the sides.

That is where I stopped with the infantry. I am hand painting the armor using Citadel Paints.

But for the armor:

I played around a bit trying different shades of Ochre in different angles and such on the fish.  The first color I used was Valejo Model Air Ochre which is not particularly easy to find nowadays since every one is painting Tau. I got mine from Amazon, which with my prime membership, arrived the next day. Sometimes it is super fast! 

But, I was not particularly pleased with the Ochre. Why? Well it appeared a bit too yellow, which in retrospect, was probably a lot closer to the Tau Light Ochre any way. It is hard to tell some times with lighting and without having the colors on hand to compare. I think if I were to do it over, I would just stick with this color as it was very simiilar to the TLO.


But no, I had to llighten it up, so I went with this Badger paint, Yellow Ochre which I ended up just spraying over most of the top of the armor.  



For those of you wanting to know what I use to base coat my bases, Krylon Ruddy Brown. I like it because first it is cheap and available at Home Depot, but also, I like the color since I am stuck on a reddish ground kick.  I guess it comes from my Baal Prime background.  Any way, get the ruddy brown, wash it with mud. Then drybrush with a couple lighter shades of brown finally with bleached bone.  


Valejo Burnt Umber. A great base coat for infantry.


I also tried these two colors as highlights. They were very light.  Perhaps would be good for a more skilled air brusher but for my sausage finger approach, just too light. You can see the array of browns in the background, all too light for a base coat. I tried them all before settling on Burnt Umber.


Badger Deck Tan was much too yellow.  
Here is the finished tank look. Much lighter than the TLO on the Riptide. 

You can see the riptide next to the lighter tank color. You can also see on the tank in the recessed area where I started layering in Tau Light Ochre to bring back the more yellow color. Behind the tank you can see a broadside, same color as tank only I started in with the ink pen in the grooves.

To see the original Ochre on the Broadside, vs the TLO layer, look at about the 2:40 mark of this video where I attach the arms which I have not layered yet with TLO:




Incedently, here is my Suit Commander, I used Army Painter Desert Yellow for his base.  But I started going over that as well with TLO.  This base was hand painted with Rinox Hide.

In short, if you are looking for advice on base painting your Tau, go for Valejo Model Air Burnt Umber for the infantry for sure. It is then easy to paint the armor with XV88 then Tau Light Ochre, Zamezi Desert and Ushabti Bone for Highs.

For the Ochre, especially with tanks, I suggest trying first simply the Valejo Model Air Ochre. Spray it on, let it dry and look at again the next day in good lighting. The color no doubt changes a bit as it dries.  I think it was closest to the finished color I have on my Riptide, if a bit more yellow. But if you are looking to get the job done with nice color it works. If you are a bit higher skilled with an airbrush, use the Badger Yellow Ochre as a highlight.  Or if you simply want a lighter ochre, use the Badger Yellow Ochre, it is nice. 

Hope that helps!

Jawaballs

For the Greater Good!

I know I know, I have been quiet of late.  It is summer time!  I do most of my blogging from work, and when I am home in the summer, it is hard to focus on sitting down just to type. I have so much work to do!

Case in point...

The Greater Good!

Tau Riptide

Tau Riptide with Fire Warrior

XV8 Battlesuit Commander

A few things.

First the riptide. I airbrushed the ocher basecoat. But it was too light. So I decided to give it a once over with Tau Light Ocher from the GW line and highlight up from there.  I painted the dark bits with Rinox Hide and began the meticulous duty of painting all of the amazing details on the model with TLO.  One of the saving graces I discovered were Pigma Micron 01 Archival Ink Pens.


This is the Sepia color, size 01.  It is the smallest they make in this color.  The tip fits perfectly into the grooves between the armor on the heavier Tau models like the Broadsides, Riptide and Fish.  It contains archival quality sepia ink!  Perfect for easily and quickly filling in the grooves.

Groove is in the heart!

This saves easily hours of time I would have spent line brushing all those grooves.  Love it!

So now it is a matter of finishing the detail coat with TLO, then a highlight of Ushabti Bone, then Screaming Skull.  More on that soon.

Success?  I have only played one game with this army, and it was a practice game vs Ordo Bob who is one of the higher profile Demon players in my area and has made a name for himself by destroying all comers and winning just about every local tournament around.  He is also a great guy and I consider him a friend.

The deployment was the long one with the wide corner to corner no man land.  Which meant he had to cross most of the table to get to me.  While it was a teaching game for my sake, he helped walk me through the Tau routine, but in the end, my army blew his demons off the table in three turns. It was truly shocking to have so much fire power. Especially considering that I am used to an army whose majority of fire power comes in the form of Bolt Pistols.

The tau are exceptional at taking down monstrous creatures. STR 5 pulse weapons can put down a lot of wounds that the MCs are not used to, forcing those 1s and better yet, are good at grounding flying monstrous creatures.  As they came into range, I would hit them with the pulse spam first to knock them down, then unload on them with the stronger more dangerous weapons.  He had Fateweaver and a few Flying Monstrous Demons and the Tau fire power ate them up. Granted, he failed a leadership test on a psychic power that should have given a squad of screamers a 2+ invul save for a round, which allowed me to punish him. But the true strength was the long range damage I could do. In the past, armies like the Demons could get away with fielding just a few cheap worthless troops because the rest of their army was so killy.

They would just hide the worthless troops on objectives and let the Elites do the job.

While the screamers would have wreaked havoc in my fire base, it didn't really matter because all he had for objective holders were 3 small squads of nurglings or some such.  Plague Bearers?  The objectives were in the open and they were sitting on them, but all of my smart missiles on my Devil Fish, plus concentrated Fire Warrior rapid fire was knocking them down.

This goes back to an old blog post I did some time ago. Some guys argued that I was just whining about the Blood Angels not having super effective troops, but it was true. The more powerful armies have cost effective, yet still EFFECTIVE troops. Melta Vets in Chimeras for example.  The Blood Angels have none of that, which was what kept them from being a truly top army in 5th edition. Sure I won a lot of games, but whenever I went up against one of the truly elite armies of 5th, it was a joke.  At best a massive struggle for me to eak out a marginal win, and at worst, I was tabled in 2 or 3 rounds.

Well that carries over to 6th Ed.  The Tau have truly effective troops.  While a FW squad with a Fish is a bit costly, it is a VERY effective unit.  It is mobile, and between the FWs and the Fish itself, can put down a blistering amount of fire power which is what 6th is all about. And just to compare to the BAs. For 210ish points I can get 10 assault marines.  For the same cost, I can get 12 FW in a fish, that would pretty much slaughter that RAS before they could ever get close.

Then comes the pure speed of the Tau. Had I not wiped out that screamer squad I would have tried to just bog it down with assault from my Broadsides and Riptide then moved out to claim or contest all of the objectives.  In one turn my Riptide and Suit Commander went from my corner to the middle of the table.

Any way, none of it really matters because it was just a practice game to demonstrate what my army is capable of, but demonstrate it did.  I love it!

Any way, The Tau are just what I needed to rejuvenate my interest in this game. GW's seemingly insane business practices coupled with my beloved Blood Angels being neutered in 6th edition had me reeling on the edge of retirement.

For the Greater Good!

Here is some video that will be available once Youtube finishes processing it.



Jawaballs