Ultramarine Movie Review

The holiday movie season is well upon us.  In addition to the big theatrical releases, Codex Pictures has recently released Ultramarines: The Movie on DVD, the first ever feature length production based upon the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  The following is a review of the film by my long time friend and fellow Warhammer enthusiast Justin:

As soon as I had heard about this movies imminent arrival, I could hardly contain myself. A Warhammer 40,000 movie, finally.  I am a big fan of Games Workshop; I love the grim darkness of the far future and all the Black Library stories and background fluff associated with it. I have been playing Warhammer in both forms for close to 15 years, so I was pumped when its release drew near. I actually first heard about the movie at Games Day Los Angeles 2008 at the Black Library seminar. The Black Library representative said that it would look better than the opening for the Dawn of War computer game. At that time the movie seemed a long way off so I was intrigued but not overly excited.

I always wondered why Games Workshop had not invested in creating a cartoon to supplement their games systems.  Obviously cost is the main factor, but when I was a child animated shows and commercials always got me excited for purchasing the action figures that went along with whatever franchise I was hooked on at the time.  G.I. Joe, Ghost Busters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.; I watched the show and purchased the figures. Now a cartoon has arrived to pump me up on Warhammer 40K and, even as an adult 20 years later, I could not be more excited.  Of course there were some exceptions.

What to get the hobbyist who has everything?

I was struck with this dilemma this Christmas season when trying to figure out something hobby related to give to my best Warhammer buddy for Christmas.  Whilst wandering my local Home Depot searching for furniture pads and poinsettias I was struck by holiday inspiration.  I saw a set of six battery powered tea light candles and I remembered the Santa Cruz Warhammer article about making wrecked vehicle markers with them!  If I can't purchase something for the gamer who has everything, then I can make something!

Knight of Bal Timorea Finished!

Well, things haven't been all that productive around here at One Inch Warriors with the holidays, work and a road trip to the Grand Canyon.  However, I managed to sit down and finish off my knight:

Knight of Bal Timorea WIP & a Call to Arms!

Here's a quick shot of my knight thus far:

Not terribly excited about how the is red turning out, I think it needed another shade in there between the base coat and the Blood Red.  We'll see how it looks when the whole thing comes together.

On a related note, the deadline for Bal Timorea participants to complete their knights for submission has been extended to January 1 (see John's announcement on Santa Cruz WH).  This means that if you've been thinking of participating in the project but were pressed for time, you now have more - so get off yer ass and paint a knight!  If you don't have a knight to spare, I'm sure you can scrounge one up on the cheap.  I got mine of eBay for a reasonable fee.

Halloween Painting Contest Entry Finished!

Update 10/31/2010: Took this down to the LA Battle Bunker last night.  The turn out was a little disappointing since there were only 3 entries.  However, this worked out well for me and the two other guys who entered as the staff awarded prizes to the top 3, and only 3, entries.  After letting the people in gaming area vote for their favorite, my entry took the top spot, followed closely by an Ork warboss wearing purple and sporting Joker face paint.  Third place was a mutated clanrat with an exposed brain.  I won a regiment box and picked out some Temple Guard to keep my Slann company and 2nd & 3rd place won a blister.  I had no idea beforehand that there were prizes to be had, but hey kids, you cannot win if you do not play.

Happy Halloween!

The Knights of Bal Timorea!

If you've been living under a rock or other similar heavy object, then you've been missing out on one of my favorite, most super awesome, blogs Santa Cruz Warhammer.  Being a quasi-impulsive, undisciplined hobbyists when comes to sticking to and finishing projects, I've become side tracked away from my Lizardmen in order to join the illustrious ranks of the Knights of Bal Timorea!  Basically, this is a collaborative project whereby participants paint up a knight and then a winner is drawn from amongst the participants who gets to keep all the knights - click the link for details.

As you may or may not know, I have an old 5th edition Brettonian army dutifully lurking about in the infamous storage cabinet in the garage, waiting for a day when their glory will be revived and they will be repainted.  This will not be happening anytime soon and I decided that I want to hold on to all my OOP models, so I bought a single Knight of the Realm off eBay* to join in the Bal Timorea project.  Also, being inspired by Mike's Dutch knight, I though I could put the four shields sculpted onto the Bretonnian warhorse's barding to good use.

Halloween WIP Part 2 and a Note on Painting Flames

Update: You can check out the finished diorama here

I've finished up the night-watchman for my entry for the Halloween themed painting contest that my local GW store is hosting.  I think the pose of the model really conveys the shock & horror that one would experience upon seeing the dead rising from the grave.  He kinda reminds me of a character from a B horror movie, like an angry villager from a Frankenstein film (I watched a lot of Mystery Science Theater back in the day).

I guess GW doesn't want my money...

When I drive to and from work I pass by two game stores and there's another within a mile from my office.  The latter is a new GW that moved from a busy high rent shopping mall to a large strip-mall, shopping center as seems to be their new business strategery.  Part of there new retail business plan also seems to be to keep their new locations severely under staffed.  I'm not talking about poor customer service, I'm talking about the damn store not being open when its supposed to.  The place opened in June of this year and I was excited to have it so close work - I could swing by on my lunch breaks and pick up a paint or magazine, yeah!  I've tried about four times now and the place hasn't been open.  Doors locked, lights off, nobody home.

Burnt Out on the Fluff

I've been thinking about the fluff.  It's almost a dirty word to some in the hobby (actually, it is a dirty word in certain contexts).  Recently I've been finding myself less and less interested in the background materials in the games I play.  I bought the monstrous 8th edition Fantasy rulebook within a month of its release, but I have yet to read through all of the background section.  I told myself before it dropped that I'd be patient and what for the mini rulebooks from IoB to hit eBay and save myself some cash.  I caved and bought the $80 beast anyways but have yet to partake of its full offerings.

I have 4 editions worth of Fantasy rule books and 3 editions worth of 40k.  I won't bore you by listing the various editions of army books and codecies I've read.  I used to really enjoy reading the background materials, but I've never been obsessed with it the way some people are.  I'm not coming down on hobbyists who really dig the fluff - if you've read any of my other long winded soap box triads you know that I'm all for enjoying the buffet of hobby options that wargaming provides.  I'm just not interested in discussing the nuances of the 2nd War for Armageddon or the trade relations between the Houses of Necromunda.  I've always though of Battletech as one of the best wargames ever, but I have zero interest in the back story (Clans, Inner Sphere, meh.  Giant Fighting Robots - OMG!!1).

Halloween Painting Contest WIP

After playing around with a few ides ideas for my local GW's Halloween themed painting contest, I came up with a plan for my entry.  I didn't want to spend any money on it, so I was restricted to what I could dig up from my cache of old figures and bits in the garage.  I had some old Mordheim mercenaries lying around and I've been wanting to paint something Empire related for awhile so I decided to put together a little diorama.

Update: be sure to check out Part 2 and Part 3 to see the competed diorama

it's another Black Reach Warboss...

Yes, you've seen a billion AoBR warbosses by now and here's another one. He was one of my entries for the Golden Skull painting contest at the local GW last weekend, so I thought I'd share him with you, my lovely audience.  He didn't win anything, as the 40k single figure category had the best competition.  I hadn't painted up anything 40k related in awhile, so I decided to pull something out of the way-back-machine (aka the storage closet in my garage) to enter. This guy's actually not too way-back, I painted him in summer '09 during a stint of funemployment after I took the bar exam.

Golden Skulls Painting Competition at the L.A. Battle Bunker

On Saturday GW's LA Metro Battle Bunker held their own version of the Golden Deamon, the 1st Annual Golden Skulls painting competition.  Similar to the Golden Deamon, there were categories for both 40k and fantasy for single figure, units and large models as well as dioramas, kids and an overall award.  I entered my Slann (after spending the past week adding some extra highlights, glazing, etc), Saurus on Cold One and a 40k Ork Warboss.  The turnout was better than they expected and there were some amazing models present.  I hadn't planned on "covering" the event gonzo-journalist style, but wish I had.  The overall winner was a unit of 5 orc war boar riders, which could have won a Golden Deamon.  I only had my phone so I couldn't get some legitimate pictures of everything.

Eurika! Look at what I found

I've been in a painting slump over the past week or so.  This is not a good thing since I've been trying to gear up for a painting contest that my local GW store is hosting at the end of the month so as to test my mettle and get an honest idea of where I stand as a painter (not that y'alls comments have gone unnoticed). Maybe it's the change in seasons* or how my daily commute is now an hour longer thanks to schools starting up, but regardless, I've just been dog tired. So instead of providing fresh organically grown, real hobby content, I though I'd direct your attention to some other fine things the interweb has to offer that I've been enjoying:

Define "Tournament" or How Jervis Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

My guess is that you didn't read Jervis Johnson's latest "Standard Bearer" article in the September WD.  I did, since I went up to the local mountains over Labor Day weekend where my internet access is limited to spotty 3G coverage on my iPhone and I wanted some pretty pictures of High Elves and Skaven to look at whilst sitting in the beautiful San Bernardino National Forest, drinking beer and vodka tonics.  A one line summary of the article would be: wargames tournaments are really about meeting nice people and having fun - not determining a clearly defined winner.*

Stegadon WIP

Castles Made of Foam

I was hoping to get enough work done on my Stegadon and post a WIP picture, but I didn't make as much progress on him as I would have liked this week. I wanted to offer up some "real" hobby content as a break from the maniacal ramblings of my last few posts (although Brent and John over at the HOP seem to have enjoyed some of it, much to my delectation). Thus, I bring you a castle!

Can legal writing principles improve your blog writing?

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a member of one of the lowest classes of life forms on earth - an attorney. As do most other bottom feeders in the profession, I write a lot. Since my dream job as a prosecutor has yet to materialize, and therefore I don't get to hang out in court as much as I'd like and yell out things like "objection!" "hearsay!" or "hang that sumbitch," I do a lot of record reviews and what you call in the business law-and-motion practice. The end result is a written product of some sort.

In the first year of law school (in the States at least) students take a course in legal writing & research. After realizing that the course is generally useless, students get summer jobs and figure out what real legal writing is more or less about, primarily depending on your employer. I decided to ponder on some of the basic principles of legal writing that I picked up in school, internships and roughly a year in practice and see if we can apply some principles to the hobby blog.

a word in your ear or how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog

Several years back White Dwarf ran a series of articles called "A Word in Your Ear." This was a sort of editorial section was supposed to lend "select" hobbyists the opportunity to espouse on some element of the hobby. Of course this lacked all elements of journalistic integrity.* The topics that I recall from this column included rules lawyers (written by a real-life lawyer, and it included some very horrible legal analogies), hating on new hobbyists (it's bad!) and my absolute favorite, the online community. I tried to dig up the WD issue with the latter article, but unfortunately after moving twice in the past 3 years I liquidated part of my WD back catalog and I don't have this issue anymore, so I can't present an accurate citation. So much for journalistic integrity.

This article in question was published sometime around the release of the 4th ed. Tyranid Codex. The crux of the author's point was that the online community was doing a huge disservice to the hobby by its constant gripping about the state of the rules or the quality of new releases, etc, etc. His example on point was the then recent slew of bitching and moaning about the then upcoming re-sculpted Genestealers and how some folks said they looked liked monkeys or something lame. I'm 90% positive he was referring to a thread on Dakka.

First Game of 8th Edition

I ran my lizards in my first 8th edition WFB game last night at the FLGS. I didn't take notes or pictures, so this will be the hi-light reel version of the game. We had to cut the game sort and only go three turns - it was the first game of 8th for both players, so there was a lot of "um, wait, we should look that up..." Anyways, here's what I took:

Slann Mage Priest

Basing upgrade for my Slann

Quick update on my progress to get my Lizards tooled up for 8th Edition.

My Slann has been a work in progress since around 2004. His floating-throne was finished that year and then sometime around 2008 I came back and finished the fat toad himself. I originally wanted to create a scenic base for him, seeing as when he's fully kitted out he comprises about a quarter of 2000 point army and he's going to attract attention - being all magical and floaty-like. As you can see, a few pebbles and a broken Saurus regiment standard is hardly scenic.

Giant lizards riding dinosaurs!

Step 1: Cut a Hole in the Box

I finished up my light box. It's smaller than the one in the tutorial, and I spent a little more on the Bristol board than I expected, but that was the only thing I had to buy - my wife scrounged up the box from her work and the cloth on the side is from an old white t-shirt. I tested it out last night with some Lizardmen and it works great.

Shameless self-promotion & non-shameless promotion of others

Dethtron quoted an e-mail I sent him on his blog (his response was kinda-somewhat-probably the impetus for me to finally start this project).

Real content on this page coming soon. I'm putting together a DYI light-box to take some glamor shots of my cold-one cavalry that I finished recently. If you wanna build your own light box, instructions are here (props to Mr. Black for posting the link originally).

1st post of substance

That little Bretonnian Knight was one of my first Warhammer purchases way back in 1998 when army selection via percentages was in vogue (army selection, like fashion, apparently goes in cycles) and Nigel Stillman was a god (more on my hero later). I painted the little guy with some Testor's and Ral Partha paints. He's not even based, but at least I managed to get a decal on the shield.

The Saurus hero is the latest figure that I've finished (by latest, I mean last August, damn I paint slow). He has all kinds of washes and shading and I even successfully incorporated spot colors. He's good, not great, but I'm proud of the guy. I'm finishing up a unit of 5 cold-one riders to go along with him (although I've yet to see an 8th Edition Lizard list online that incorporates these guys), when they're done I'll go into the in's and out's of painting them.

Operate/Annihilate

Yet another painting/terrain/gaming blog for Warhammer, Flames of War, and maybe even some old Shadowrun figures if I ever get around to repainting them. I have ten years of models to dig through and put up to get this started since I paint tediously slow. Enjoy yourself