Arcane Ruins -- Curses Included Free!

At long last sick and tired of piling things on top of my box of Arcane Ruins, I assembled and painted them.  They went together easily and painted up quickly.

Here are more pictures of it than you really want to look at:

I must warn you that there are special curses reserved in this box.  GW apparently included them for free.  Do you think I'm making it up?  Consider this:

• Shortly after opening the box and beginning my assembly, I knocked over a new bottle of liquid cement.  It rushed over my glass table like a Testor's Tsunami.  I dove on top of it to absorb the glue with my body, saving the arcane ruins. But my Sisters of Battle bases were melted!  Emperor preserve us!
• In the final stages, I unknowingly got paint from my fingers all over my Kindle.  I thankfully got it all scraped off and was glad to have avoided the problem --- until I found the paint all over my pants!  Noooooooo!
• The contents of the box exude a faint evil.  People left me alone while I painted.  But more importantly, long term exposure to this model sapped my intelligence.  You see while I left all the dolmens unglued for easy storage, I stupidly glued the main obelisk in place.  Now I can't store it flat.  The horror!

So what do you think?  Too many coincidences?  I think so.  Work with this set at your own peril.

Sisters of Battle Redux

The absence of faith is the mark of the weak.
The absence of faith is the mark of the heretic.
The absence of faith is the mark of damnation.
- extract from "The Stern Codex"

 I have been very fortunate to come across more Sisters of Battle at reasonable prices.  I found six blisters of Battle Sisters at the Chaos Orc's Superstore.  I have no idea how often they restock.  But I will certainly be watching for more deals.  My only complaint is that all six blisters had the same three poses.  

I added a few more models to round out the force.  This adds twenty more Sisters, bringing my grand total to a whopping thirty one models.  That's one full squad plus a minimum sized squad.  Fortunately I'm not planning to bring this up to a 1500 pt army, at least not initially.  I just love these models and have enjoyed painting them.  Here they are all together. I threw in some background stuff just to break up my desk top.

Here is a close-up shot of the Veteran Superior and a few Battle Sisters.

I picked up a Canoness and an Inquisitor model to round out the leadership needs.  I know Inquisitors are now under the Grey Knights and no longer with the Sisters of Battle.  But I don't care about what the books say anymore.  I just need stat lines.

So that does it for this update.  I've been on a roll with the Sisters of Battle between painting the models and reading the book. I was ready to put them aside for a bit.  But last week I found an excellent deal on Seraphim models on eBay.  Unbelievably, there was a "buy it now" price which was great.  So I picked them up.  Chaos Orc had three more for a great deal, but they lacked jump packs.  I was able to find those on eBay as well.  So now I have ten Seraphim that I can split into two 5 Sister teams (I have two leader models in the mix).  It was still a pricey deal at about $70, but that's half price!

One of the Sisters even came pre-painted.  Just check out this pro job:

Really?  I'm afraid so.

The former owner even puttied over the armor lines on the legs. Oh baby. Sexy. I got a good laugh out of this.  But she's going to take a bath in Simple Green today.

Faith and Fire

Faith and Fire by James Swallow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this book.  If you are a fan of 40K, particularly of the Sisters of Battle, then you should find it an enjoyable read.  If you didn't understand that last sentence, then stay away from this book.  You're going to be confused. I'm a sucker for the Sisters of Battle "fluff", and so I am the target audience for the book. 

A lot of people have criticized this book.  It had its problems, but nothing detracted from the entertainment value.  Sure, the plot is predictable and the characters a little bit lacking in depth. The story lulled in spots.  But overall it was just great fun and met all my expectations.  Check it out if you have the chance.



View all my reviews

Inquisitors, Heretics, PDF, You Name It

My friend, Tim, donated a lot of his old Void figures to me.  He has had them for years and never found a use for them.  I eyed them as generic Sci-Fi models in 28mm.  But as I looked these over, I thought they'd be right at home in 40K.  I know Tim uses Void minis for some of his Inquisitor-themed forces.  I hoped to do the same thing.

As I painted these minis, however, I started to feel like these models would make great adversaries in 40K scenario based games.  The looked just left of "Imperial standard."  So maybe they're a heretical sect of the Imperial Creed, or maybe they are a rebellious planetary defense force.  Some of the models could pass off as Inquisitors in their own right.  Maybe they've succumbed to chaos?  There's lots of cool ideas when you let go of Codex rules and force org charts!

Here are some pictures of the models.  I like red.  So you will see that in full force here.

This guy is probably the "big boss."  The two chicks reminded me of Death Cult Assassins gone wrong.  They could also pass off as "Mad Max" types.  At any rate I got to paint purple and violet hair, which was cool!

Here's the "spiritual leader" as I see him.  The dude with the big weapon was neat.  In 40K games, that might be a plasma or melta cannon style of weapon.  In other systems, like 5150, I think it qualifies as a "Big Ass Gun."

Some regular dudes shown above.  The guy with the impossibly huge sword reminded me of some sort of "champion."  I gave his armor a different color with red tie-ins to the main theme.  I figured he must be special to be able to carry a big sword.

So there's the group shot of the collection to-date.  I actually have twelve more to add to this.  But my Sisters of Battle just came in and I'm anxious to start those.  I'll return to these guys shortly.  These were a blast to paint and to think up little stories for them as I went.

Return of the Tau

I sure am painting a lot of GW figures for a guy who's claiming to be "post GW."  I had last week off for Thanksgiving, but paradoxically didn't have much free time.  The time I had, I put into painting up more Tau.  Here are my Stealth Suits.

I would've had them done faster were it not for having to slop on three coats of Graveyard Earth paint.  Why are all my favorite colors so transparent?  Oh well, they are done now and ready to join the others in the big box.

When I said post-GW, I guess I mean I'm not buying into playing their games the way they want me to, or even using their figures for their games.  I played a solo game this weekend with 40K figures but using the 5150 Rules.  I really liked it.  I will probably do more of that.

Also, I'm not doing the "huge army" build up that GW wants me to do.  I plan on playing small, skirmish or scenario based games.  I'm not worried about force org charts or squad sizes (both which are designed to sell figures more than provide game balance).  I won't even touch Warhammer Fantasy, as that's just beyond ridiculous.

Well, that's probably the topic of another post.  In the meantime, I'll just keep painting whatever grabs me that day.

Sisters of Battle

Sisters of Battle is one of those armies that I always said I'd get around to doing.  I love the sculpts and love the fluff.  I just always had something else that took priority over starting on Sisters.

That was back in the day before Sisters were cast in pure gold.  These days I cannot afford to play in that rarefied strata of society, and plans of a Sisters of Battle army are long gone.  Even eBay sellers have gone mad with SoB greed.  Slop some paint on a single Sisters model, call it "pro painted", and then ask $20 for it; that seems to be the operating wisdom these days.

Were it not for the generosity of a friend, I would not be able to show you my new and tiny collection of Sisters.

These models were as fun to paint as I had expected them to be.  I went with the Order of the Ebon Chalice paint scheme, as given in the old Witch Hunter's codex.  (The codex was sadly my only step taken in building this army.  I think it's one of the best GW codices that I ever saw.)   There are 11 models total, not likely to grow much beyond that count.

I will use SoB in skirmish or scenario play 40K games.  I can add in an Inquisitor and some Imperial Guard to round out things.  Honestly, I'll probably draft them into service for other non-GW games.  I'm already thinking of other meanings for their iconography and gender bias.  I can shove them into some 5150:SA games.  I'll find a way to make use of them and have an excuse to get more of them.

However, I won't be buying Seraphim models.  At $14 per model, a "codex legal" squad costs $70.  That makes Seraphim the one of most expensive squad in 40K.  I really have better things to buy for that price than five models.

15mm Sci Fi

I've had this itch for a while, and decided to scratch it several weeks ago.  I've had my eye on these 15mm Sci Fi models from Rebel Minis.  The Earth Force models remind me very much of some small models I had as a kid.  I'm not sure what the size of those models were.  I had bought them for use in the Traveler RPG that I was in at the time.  But it was short lived and I was stuck with the minis.  Long gone, I thought I'd never see anything like them again.

Well, now I have a whole Earth Defense force that look just like them.  Here they are.

The picture color is a little off.  They are more of a terracotta color rather than the orange you see here.

It wouldn't be right if they didn't have someone to fight.  So I picked up another army from Rebel Minis, the Sahadeen.

The great thing about these two armies is that I have over 20 soldiers, two MG/Heavy Gun teams, and three specialist weapons for each army.  The grand total outlay was only $35 for two complete armies!  That's like two blisters of GW models.  Cost wise there's no comparison.

Few people in my regular gaming group play at this scale.  So I'll use these figures for solo games of 5150 from THW.  I think 15mm scale might be the perfect scale for solo games.  Since you need at least two forces,15mm is a lot cheaper and paints up quick.  Also play and storage space demands are reduced.

All I need is a few vehicles to spice up things.  While I probably won't invest heavily in this scale, it's a nice change of pace and worth keeping in mind for future projects.