Closing in on the finale...

Several years ago I ordered the majority of my Chaos Dwarf army.  I normally don't buy stuff up front - but knew that the seller was printing really nice stuff, and I am always wary of GW's overzealous defense of their IP...so I 'invested' quite a bit to buy the whole army.

 

Once I had the whole collection I remember thinking "I'll never get through this...", and it was even daunting having it stashed away in boxes.

 

Tonight I finally received my bases in the mail and finished up the second Black Orc unit --- the second to last unit I have for the Chaos Dwarfs.  Following this it's down to one more big block of Bull Centaurs and then it's all complete (though I may add an occasional unit or model going forward).

 

 

CoastalCon - Beaufort, SC (December 12, 2026)

Well, good news for the local guys: the guy behind CoastalCon (who called it quits a few months ago) has secured a venue and is going to run it again this year.

 

 

CoastalCon is a small (read: 20-30 people, normally) gaming convention started - unfortunately, in 2020.

 

Needless to say it was a rough time to start a convention (though the first one was pre-Covid), it struggled with people and venues the following few years.

 

Mac, the guy behind it called it quits a few months ago - but has since been able to secure a venue, for at least one day (previously the events were two days).  December 12, 2026 in Beaufort, SC.

 

You can find information on their Facebook page.

 

If anyone is local to that area, come check it out.  It was started as a platform for smaller indie-games, but is really just a variety of demo games and a handful of vendors.  Tickets are $20 a pop, and there is normally a raffle for random hobby stuff. 

A 'summer project' for a friend.

A buddy mentioned the other night in Discord that he had an old 10-15 year old Baneblade sitting around in pieces.  Assembled when he was younger, it was missing a lot of pieces, poorly built, covered in sprue gates, etc.

 

I told him I'd paint it.  He joked it would be my 'summer project'.  I patched it up in one sitting and painted it the next day.

 

I normally hate grey, and prefer camouflage tanks, but he asked for a basic utilitarian grey.  I hid/removed all the aquilas so it could be used in Horus Heresy for either side (the game they're currently playing).

 

All in all, not too bad for 48 hours of fixing an old teenager built tank from bits.  You'll notice a lot of patched bits from plasticard and random vehicle bits --- lots of the hatches, engine were missing, etc.

 

 

Some FSF for the road... (Lizardmen vs. Mercenaries)

 A few times a year I get to meet some of my friends from a city which is about three hours away - but we meet at a large game story precisely 1.5 hours from each of us (allowing us to make a simple day trip of it).  I ran a game of FSF for two friends.  One was running his Lizardmen force, and the other ran my mercenaries in a lengthy "Burn the Bridge" scenario.

We actually called it a narrow tie late in the game as it went longer than any FSF game before because the game went back and forth maybe six or seven times.  Every turn was "oh now they're screwed...", nope.

 

Really close run thing.

 

Games!: 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K (Angels of Death vs. Tyranids)

Nearly 5-6 years ago, some buddies of mine and I decided we should try some co-op 40K from 2nd edition --- all of us painting up some space marines to face a collective horde of Tyranids (owned by two of the three of us).

 

I slowly painted up some models, and we finally played the first game.  The concept was pretty simple:

 

• Blood Angels and Dark Angels each have 750 points, will fight co-op against Tyranids.
• Each chapter gets two explosive devices, assigned to squads or characters - these must be used to blow up two generators (which in turn will cause the overheating of an orbital defense platforms' reactor).
• Tyranids are generated randomly each Tyranid turn using four separate nodes, and some random tables.  Tokens are generated - and when spotted, we used a D20 table to place random Tyranids.
• Tyranids activated using a simple beahviour table (mostly consisting of "eat their faces").

The end result was that the Blood Angels managed to blow up both generators, though they lost 19/21 marines in the process.

 

The Dark Angels held off many Tyranids including a Carnifex.  They made it out with 9 marines...so not too bad.  Some random pics from the game.

 

 

Breaking my own rules...(Space Marine Bikes)

Deciding to finally maybe actually play some modified 2E 40K that my buddies and I have been planning for...maybe 4-5 years, I broke one of my own rules and bought some (poorly) assembled Space Marine bikes off ebay.  I normally don't mess with pre-built plastics, but these were too cheap to pass up.

 

While I wasn't happy with the state of them (ended up with a ton of cleaning as the minis were - expectedly - poorly built with too much glue, weird components, etc.) I can 'cope' with using these.  Similarly I hate painting stuff assembled, so this was annoying.