Warhammer 40K: Orks Looted Wagon -- Orkys have Stolen a Locomotive (Lionel)

The Orkys have stolen this steam locomotive - and are scheming ways to "loot it".  The ork who is driving the Dakka Chuggah likes SPEED!!!!

One Orky has already claimed the job of engineer.

Going to need a new and better "Kow Kechah" on this train :)

What would an Ork call a train anyway?
Chuggah?
Dakka Chuggah?
Dakka Choo-choo?

We are voting for Dakka Chuggah at this point, but eager to hear if anyone else has better ideas!

More Orkys....  Orkys Intro and Photos (how to get bright pink)

Warhammer 40K: The Orkys (Bright Pink = Good Fortune in Waaagh!)

The backstory we created goes like this....

After a very big party, the Okys were asleep.  A rival group or tribe snuck up and painted all of their gear BRIGHT PINK.  Angered by the "not quite red" coloring, the Orkys fought with extra abandon and ferocity the following day -- and won a decisive battle. 

Now, in the aftermath of that battle, the Okys maintain their bright pink armor with pride, figuring that it brings good luck.

That was the idea....

Turns out it is quite hard to paint things bright pink.

For our first attempt we used some pink acrylic paint we got from Michael's.  It didn't go very well.  Hardly coated.  Now and then we need to consult our very patient Artist Expert.  (Sometimes we need to remember advice we've already gotten from Artist Expert.  At least one of us admits to having a thick skull.)  This was one of those times:  "There are different grades of paint."  Guess what - we had purchased a really big tube of bright pink low grade paint....

Then, there was our second attempt -- this time using high grade model pink (thanks to help from the Gator Games team to pick out the brightest).

As the pink dried - again and again, the coating on top of our black primed models looked red.  Darn!!  Check out the "red" on our Gretchens :(  That's how our super pink looks going over the black primer ???

Luckily Artist Expert helped here as well.  "Mix in some white."  OK - we tried it.  Wham!  :)  Instant big difference.  The combination coated.  We painted on some pink+white -- then let that dry and came back with a coat of the pink.

Here's how the Orkys are shaping up these days.

By the way, we've decided that the Orkys don't have very stable DNA.  Two heads, backward arms.  More weapons, more bettah.  Orks are fun!

Dropzone Commander - Thinking about giving this a try

As if getting a 40K army ready to go isn't enough!  :)

...today at BAO 2014 we saw several people demonstrating - and then playing (competition) Dropzone Commander. 

(Photo of the big poster below.)

Seemed very cool.  We are thinking about getting the starter-set and trying it out.

We learned a lot from the nice group who was playing at BAO 2014 today.

• takes a lot less space than Warhammer 40K (10mm scale)
• costs less - small, yet detailed models
• dynamic game (they explained the basic play)

Looked like fun to us.  Painting up space ships and then playing head-to-head in a city setting with space ships which drop tanks and skimmers = fun.

Sounds like there will be another event with Dropzone Commander at Celesticon - looking forward to watching some more then.

BAO Warhammer 40K (today!)

Hi everyone,

We are headed down to day #2 of BAO Warhammer 40K in San Jose.

We had a really good time there yesterday.  Met some very cool people and saw some very impressive armies.

We had to hurry home to paint and find a way to carry our armies down there today.

That's all set and we are headed back.

PS:  We entered the "friendly" competition -- not the serious one which has a championship belt.  Everybody there was very accepting of the fact that we're eager to learn and play and have fun.

PPS:  Was also very cool to meet quite a few people who where there are their first competition.

Battletech Introductory Box Set (Review and Test Run)

We just purchased the Battletech "Introductory Box Set".  Here is a quick run through of how we liked it.

 

Pretty cool - introductory rules - 24 models of mechs; plus 2 that you get to glue together.  Also 2 fold-up hex maps.

 

We painted the mech minifigures using the Warhammer 40K tricks we've been learning.  (Even just priming makes them look way better.)  Here's how they turned out.  We've highlighted the two which we glued together - the others come fully assembled.

Test battle was pretty fun.  18 good guy mechs defeated 8 bad guy mechs.  Here you can see our layout.  We used both hex maps.  The green post-it is the entrance to a "Uranium Mine" which the red Clan Kurita mechs are protecting.  We painted most of the mechs blue.

We pretty much added rules as we played.  At first we didn't use heat.  Then after we had most of the basics under control, we added heat rules.  By the end, we were using pilot consciousness rolls when we had double-six head-shot hits.  Here's a photo of the inevitable result -- all Kurita mechs destroyed except for one -- where the pilot honorably surrendered (we're not sure that really would have happened, but it was bed-time).