That was disappointing...

The monthly tournament at the FLGS didn't happen on Saturday. After a series of family-related delays, I called the shop and let them know I was running late. But when I arrived, not enough people were there to actually run a tournament. Bummer. I went home and dug holes for fence posts in the heat instead.

I was really looking forward to playing my bikes again, but no luck.

Attendance at FLGS monthlies has been very hit or miss for the year or so. Some months you'd see six, and others you'd see eight or ten. It's very disheartening as a player. My schedule just doesn't allow me to play on Wednesdays, and hasn't for a long time. I don't see that changing until this time next year. So, monthlies are my only chance to play, and they still require some serious effort and juggling to get to. Losing a day stinks!

I consoled myself with a little painting time on my Apothecary. Here's where he's at now:

I screwed up several different spots on him. The vials on his backpack, hip, and narthecium aren't very good. It's tough to make them look like they contain liquid. A few of the tutorials I saw recommended adding small bubbles, so that's that the dots are. They did not turn out well. I'm thinking of painting over them.
I need to retouch the metals around his helmet targeter and the bottom of his vials, but that will wait until after I paint his lights on the backpack and helmet.
There's no texture under the left foot, so I painted it in with black and dark silver. I've got to go back in and touch it up some to make cleaner lines. The button lights on his belt gear and backpack aren't done, nor are his eye lens or the green power cables in various spots.

I'm torn on his right shoulder pad. It's a Ravenwing part, and the detail is very thin/low. Once primed, it was very hard to see exactly where each raised piece of the wings was. Painting the prime helix red was a fight, because from one angle it looked straight and clean, but turn it a little and the edges were ragged. All the result of small raised detail edges. Eventually I stopped fighting it and called it good. From arm's distance he looks good enough. My painting skill has atrophied in the last several months.

I'm once again toying with bothering to play the game anymore. I get that way when I'm in a valley on my depression scale. It's why I'm so fleeting in my projects and enthusiasms for 40K.

I'm hoping to have this guy done by the end of the week, and move on to the Standard Bearer. He'll be a challenge to paint, as I've never done a very large piece of multicolored freehand. I'm sort of toying with using custom transfers instead of freehand, but we'll see.

Picking Those Last Few Units

I'm drafting up an army list for the monthly tourney at the FLGS. It's a 1600 point format, and we'll be using the Maelstrom of War missions.
I've decided to go back to my bike army for a while, so will be running a list that uses White Scars Chapter tactics.
I have the core of the army lined out:

Captain on bike, artificer armor, power sword
Command Squad on bikes, various upgrades and weapons
Four 5-man Bike Squads (one melta, one plasma, one flamer, one naked) with a couple of attack bikes sprinkled in
One full squadron of multimelta Attack Bikes
One squadron of two Landspeeder Typhoons

Once I hit this core, I have about 245 points left. I can't decide exactly what to take to close out the list.
I have some options I've put together:

• Techmarine on bike (servo arm, signum) and a Tri-las Predator.
• ML2 Librarian with Jump Pack and a 5-man Assault Marine squad with two flamers and a powerfist
• 10-man Assault Squad with vet sergeant and powerfist, and two flamers plus upgrade the power sword on the Captain to The Burning Blade.

The Techmarine would add another 2+ save to go in a bike squad and the ability to bolster a terrain piece. I could also probably find the points to give him a power axe. But that's a lot of points for a single wound character. The Predator would provide the only shooting higher than S8, as well as the long ranged AP2, but would be the only vehicle without a Jink save and the only unit that wouldn't be able to move 12" and be fully effective.

The Librarian would add some psychic powers, probably Telepathy. The 5-man ASM squad would be his escort. But that's two fragile units combined into one equally fragile unit.

The full ASM squad is large enough to be durable and can be split into combat squads if necessary. The Burning Blade isn't necessary, but would be very impressive in chopping up damned near anything I run into with my Captain. I'm not overly worried about the single S4, AP2 hit he could take at the end of an assault phase. He'll be T5 and have a 4++ from his Iron Halo.

Right now, I'm leaning toward the 10-man ASM and the Blade, because we're playing Maelstrom missions with Tactical Objectives. The 12" move is very valuable for shifting around and maneuvering for objectives and also for keeping up with the bikes.

In Progress: Apothecary

I've actually been making some progress on models during the last week-plus, but have been quiet about it. It was a busy weekend that trailed into a busy early part of this week, but I found time last night to pull some images off my camera and clean them up.

Here's is where my Apothecary stands right now:

Obviously, all that is done is the white. I have a couple cleanup spots left here and there, but for the most part the white is finished. I painted this in the hardest possible way. I primed black, then painted all the armor grey. I then started layering white, backfilled any sloppy areas with grey again, and then cleaned up the spots again.

That was dumb. I should have just primed white, washed the seams grey, and then cleaned up. I was concerned about the effect white primer would have on my reds and blues, when I should have just painted black under those areas if I was worried about it. Lesson learned.

I also started picking away at the Vindicator, starting with the dozer blade.

That's my sloppy midtone coat. Once I've got the final color on there, I have to go back and clean up the seams and borders with the shade color. Eventually, I'll be adding an off-centered white or yellow stripe to the dozer to break up the monotony of the blue. I'll likely tape the area off and use my airbrush for that.

This is the old Forgeworld Vindicator kit, and I've encountered a couple problems with it. You can't see the back of the dozer in the pic, but the area behind the vision port is odd. Instead of being framed in riveted steel like the front, it's just a blank surface, but not flat. There's this weird, sunken border there that looks like a miscast, but isn't. I've seen it on other pictures of the model on other blogs. In hindsight, I wish I'd taken the time to add a strip of plasticard around the back of the port to make it look better.

I also had some areas where my hour of scrubbing wasn't able to remove all the mold release. They were small areas, so I didn't want to strip the model down and try again. Instead, I steadily added pure black paint back over the spots til it was covered. Very frustrating to have one half-millimeter spot on top, or some seam at the dozer attachment point that wouldn't hold primer. Here's hoping the mold release has finally washed away and the patches hold when painted and sealed.

It's been tough getting the time or energy to paint this week. I've been busy canning strawberry jam all week, plus hockey, keeping the garden, and the oppressive heat. In an effort to keep our electrcicty bill manageable, I've been closing the doors to rooms we aren't in, which includes the room I paint in. So, when I do have time to plop down and throw some paint around, it's 87 degrees in that room. I end up sitting on the couch in front of the air conditioner instead.

Hopefully this weekend cools down some, so I can move on to the rest of the Apothecary, as well as start cleaning and assembling the Standard Bearer.