Product Review: Dark Arts Miniatures - Lava Bases

The folks over at Dark Arts Miniatures make a lot of stuff, but what I'm most familiar with is their line of Lava Bases which can be found here.

I feel they're adequately priced, and they come in the standard sizes for 40k bases (25mm, 40mm, & 60mm). There are 10 distinct designs in the 25mm size, 5 desings for the 40mm size and, unfortunately, only 1 design in the 60mm size. Slightly more troubling than that is my apparent inability to take a non-blurry picture of that base.




This blog is absolutely silly with pictures of my Salamander army on these bases, so if the three shown above don't suit you, I suggest you check out the posts labeled: HQ, Elite, & Troops.

Some of the lava bubbles appear "popped" whether thats by chance or design, but otherwise these resin bases are of excellent quality and any expansions of my army will be on these bases. Painting my miniatures is something I enjoy as much as playing the game. I know my limitations, however, and I would classify myself as a technician rather than an artist. If I need art, I call on Aerion. Bases like these really set your figures apart. This army received as many comments on their bases at Adepticon as they did for the great conversions.

These lava bases easily earn 5 stars out of 5 from me.

P.S. Make sure you check out my Blog Chain Give-Away. There's a transport of the winner's choice at stake, so read up and enter!

Super Blog Chain Giveaway!!!

Can you believe it? Old School Terminator over at Dark Future Games just announced the winner for their edition of the Super Blog Chain Giveaway, and there were two winners this time! I was selected as well as Damian over at Tales from the Warzone! Before you do anything, you have to check his site out because it's just that good. It certainly makes a novice blogger like me jealous to see that sort of thing, so congratulations to Damian on both your Librarian Furioso Dreadnought prize and your amazing website.

What is the Super Blog Chain Giveaway? The brilliant folks at Santa Cruz Warhammer got the ball rolling in an effort to foster folks in our community reaching out and seeing what other blogs have to offer as well extending a helping hand to fellow gamers. Want to participate? Here's how:

Rules:
1. you must have a blog.
2. you must have something worthwhile to offer up to give away for free.
3. if you win, you must hold your own blogsite give away using the same rules to pay it forward.
4. you must contact us with a link to your give away so we can send bloggers to your site.
5. you may only enter once per give away.

To enter:
leave a comment to this post as follows.
1st sentence, why you need the prize.
2nd sentence what you will give away on your blog to pay it forward.
3rd sentence, your blog's URL

What's in it for you?
The winner will receive a transport vehicle of their choice shipped to them free of charge. Tell me what type of vehicle you want and (most importantly!) why you want it. I will choose a winner based on a combination of what you are offering and how convincing you were on Monday, May 17th.

Good luck, and don't be afraid to participate!

Battle Report: Mission #1 Ard Boyz Playtest - Salamanders vs. Orks

I went into the local game store today and had a game with a buddy of mine from my "old days" in the hobby. A guy who, appropriately, goes by the moniker of 'Snake Eyes' threw his 2500 points of Orks on the table and we gave mission #1 a try. Mission #1 isn't anything special with a diagonal deployment, 5 objectives, and a hard limit of 6 turns. Snake Eyes brought 2 20 boy mobs on foot with rokkits, 3 battle wagons loaded with 20 boyz each, 2 units of 12 lootas, a big unit of storm boyz, and two warbosses on bikes. My list can be found here.

I won the roll to go first, and wisely took it. The above picture is at the bottom of turn 1 where the only thing I advanced was my Land Raider Crusader. Deployment wasn't anything complicated. I held the two tactical squads with rhinos in reserve. Snake Eyes failed to seize the initiative and I proceeded to embarrass the Emperor with a pathetic shooting phase...I killed three boyz. His return fire (from the lootas) broke my scouts, but they remained on the board.

I expected to have three battle wagons in my face unloading 60 boyz and ruining my day. What happened was that Snake Eyes focused on the objectives too early (3 of which were in his deployment zone) and didn't advance very aggressively. This allowed me to pop his transports and then flame his dismounted infantry. He had reserved his two unmounted mobs and they didn't come in until later in the game. This allowed my twin linked flamers and bolters to work on one mob at a time. His warboss bikers were accounted for by my dreadnoughts in assault while the rest of the army was taken out with the flamer/bolter combo. Unlike some of my other engagements with Orks, I was able to dictate the pace of today's game to my advantage. Here's some of the lads taking refuge (and claiming that nearby objective) from the rokkits in the wreckage of two battle wagons, & those would be "in progress" deff rollas they're standing on.


The game went ugly for Snake Eyes on turn 2 and stayed that way. I had killed most of his army by turn 4 and was focused on clean-up on the final two turns. His army was tabled via assault in turn 6. I lost my librarian, 2 terminators, 2 scouts, both speeders, and 6 or so tactical marines, mostly to random assaults. Here's a taste of Snake Eyes' luck: He certainly earned his nickname today.


All in all, game #1 won't be that complicated, but keep in mind that there is a reduced amount of real estate for deployment and the tournament's time limit. Remember your objectives, but not to the exclusion of eliminating the enemy. For me, Vulkan was absolutely worth it. Those re-rolls helped out in spades. I did manage to get some mileage out of my tactical squads this game as well. I used them a bit more aggressively than I have previously, and it helped. They're clearly not super units, but the extra guns and boots give me the extra capability that I've been misusing in the past.

EDIT#1: I totally forgot to add that Snake Eyes is a fun opponent to play, and he maintained his composure even when things looked their worst. I could use some of that restraint when things go ploin-shapped for me. ;-)

EDIT#2: Egads, I just realized how much more work my infantry need in the painting department. You know what? Maybe that's why they haven't been performing as well as I'd like them to. Finish painting your models kids, let this be a lesson to you.

Templars for 'Ard Boyz 2010

Here's my final list:

Emperor's Champion w/ Accept any challenge no matter the odds

Marshall in Termy armor w/ TH &SS

Sword Brethren Termy Assault Squad x5 TH&SS

Land Raider Crusader transport

Master of Sanctity in Termy armor w/Storm Bolter and Crozius

Sword Brethren Terminator Command Squad x4 (storm bolter x2, assault cannon x2)

Drop Pod

Assault Squad x7 (ccw x4, flamer x2, power fist, melta bombs)

Crusader squad x10 (ccw x 8, Meltagun, power weapon)

Neophytes x10 (ccw)

Sword Brethren x5 (ccw x3, pw, twin lightning claws, furious charge)

Crusader Squad x5 (bolter x4, plasma cannon)

Crusader Squad x10 (ccw x8, flamer, power fist)

Venerable Dreadnought w/ assault cannon and DCCW, storm bolter

Land Speeder w/ Heavy Bolter & Assault Cannon

Land Raider

2500 points

Let's do this!

Adepticon 2010 in review

I've already posted the results of the tournament as far as Team Snake Eyes is concerned. What I'm doing here is posting some random pictures of the chaos that we went through to get there. To us, this was perhaps the most memorable part of the whole experience. From coming up with army lists, buying the models, building, painting, deciding what level of "spirit" we wished to develop, etc.


My rather large box of 4000 points and a few "in progress shots" of the painting process








There was a bit of stress as time got short, and there were certainly costs involved but it was all worth it. Our efforts have inspired some more locals to get involved, and we'll likely be sending up two teams next year. We're already in the process of testing out army lists, and that will give us time to spruce up our display boards and other tid bits.

Battle Report: Salamanders vs. Orks @ 1500pts

Tonight's game was at Da Goffer's house. His leash is much shorter now that he has a brand new baby gretchin (girl) at home. I played my standard 1500 point list detailed here, and he had an absolute buffet of orkish madness. Not sure of the exact make-up, but he had a large mob of boyz on foot, a smaller mob in a truck, some kommandos, 5 lootas, 3 deff coptas, 7 or so bikes, something called a "lobba" with four grots, some storm boyz with their insane character upgrade, that weirdo grot shooting cannon, and Gaz-somethingorother. Clearly, my lack of knowledge about codexes other than the current space marine book and the previous edition of the guard codex is one of my weaknesses. I'm working on it, but it's a work in progress for me.

We played Capture & Control with Dawn of War deployment. Our objectives were on opposite corners, and I won the roll to go first and deployed nothing. He deployed both squads of boyz and his grot shooter cannon thing. I have this nagging feeling that this was an error on my part, but I have no long range shooting and there was night fight in effect...This comedy of errors (mostly mine) was to end in seven turns as a draw.

My first turn was, understandably, short as I moved on my entire army opposite his objective. My goal was to make him commit to my objective and then leave his lightly defended. That's what actually happened, but it was uglier on my end than I would have liked. He moved the large mob towards my objective. and deployed the rest of his stuff midfield.

Turn two saw me move forward with no shooting. He got both of his reserves in and his sneaky kommandos immobilized both my speeders. I love my speeders. I don't have enough of them at the moment, and not have the two I do own in working condition for the entire game hurt considerably.

Turns three through five saw me loose both dreadnoughts, and my terminators while I took out a good chunk of his stuff in return. He still has his Storm Boy character, his large mob held my objective, his lootas were killing at will, his bikes were moving towards his objective (that I claimed with Tac squads) and I still don't know how to use 410 points of tactical marines. I seriously need to work that out so I can actually play with my whole army instead of sitting back with them because I'm too afraid of not being able to claim objectives with them.

In the final two turns, I could have moved my vindicator 24" and tank shocked his large mob and that might have contested my objective. Two caveats: I didn't know I had two turns to work with, and he could very easily have opened up my Vindi with his power klaw. Da Goffer, however, could very easily have moved his bikes close enough to contest the objective I claimed which would have earned him the win. He didn't feel that his bikes could have survived the turn of fire they would have taken, so he moved them more conservatively.

Bottom line? I played (and rolled) poorly. I'm pretty sure I botched my deployment decisions which handicapped me the entire game (especially the early loss of my speeders) and I couldn't roll 2+ saves on my terminators. It wasn't mass fire either, I would need to make four saves, and would fail three. I think I only earned a draw because its hard not to with Capture and Control. Da Goffer certainly played my better than me. Enjoyable game in the end, but it had some frustrating moments.

Product Review: Battle Foam P.A.C.K. 1520

The folks over at Battle Foam have a large selection of transports and custom foam available. I had 4000 points to transport, so I was only interested in their large transports. The "1520" is supposed to mean how many infantry models this case can hold. I have to say, it's probably pretty accurate. This thing can hold a lot of stuff.



The basics: It's got two sections, carrying handles on the tops of both sections, backpack straps, and thin pockets on both sides of both sections as well as the front of the larger section and on the interior of the upper section's cover. It's made of durable material, and the stitching on the seams appears quite sound.



Storage: The top section can hold 8" of foam, and the bottom can hold 14". I have all 4000 points of space marines loaded up in the bottom section. I used (1) 4" tray, (2) 3" trays, and (2) 1" trays to accomplish that feat. My infantry and their transports (8 rhinos in one tray!) are carried in stock trays, while the rest of the army is in custom trays designed with their innovative custom tray generator here. Something to be careful of is the bottom section of a tray isn't included in its description. Adding up my trays, I have 12" of foam. That completely fills a 14" compartment. Just something to keep in mind.


Extras: It has a lot of pockets, and as long as you're transporting something flat (mini-rulebook, codex, army lists, etc.) you'll be fine. Anything larger and you've got problems. There are no pockets big enough for dice. Really? Something that can carry well over 4000 points of 40k miniatures and there's nowhere to put your dice? Interesting design choice. I don't have enough models to need the upper section (yet!) so I just use it for things like my camera, dice, measuring tape, etc. Not sure what I'll do as my army expands, however, so it's still a work in progress.


Overall, I'm impressed. The larger trays, and the ability to get custom foam load outs is very appealing. The fact that I got it at a significant discount (last case on the last day of Adepticon = 25% off!) was also helpful. I won't lie, however, I'm disappointed in the P.A.C.K. 1520's lack of larger pockets. For something clearly designed for miniature gamers, not having dedicated pockets for bulkier items is noticeably missed. The last critique I have is the way the bag "carries". It sits oddly on the shoulders, but honestly, that's a minor quibble. I do recommend this bag, or any of the other Battle Foam products by proxy. A product with issues, but still very useful and the customer service I've experienced from the company has been top notch.

Grade: 4 out of 5 stars due to the lack of larger pockets.