The Bridge Assault

*WHOMP*

"What was that?"

Sergeant Stiel looked up from the map. Several of his soldiers looked up as well. 

"It came from  over there," said one pointing to the port side of the bridge. 

"Nah, it was over here," said another by the starboard bulkhead.

A quiet voice from one of the corners of the large room, Corporal Janis, the squad's unflappable sniper, stated "It came from both sides."

Stiel looked to Corporal Kilser, his demolitions expert. "Breaching charges?" The soldier simply nodded.

"Listen up! Move away from the walls! Get your weapons ready!" he shouted and the guardsmen quickly moved to obey. They were not green recruit fresh from the hive. They were veterans.

Tense minutes passed, soldier talking in low voices mixing with the sounds of leather, armour, and the background hiss of the consoles and screens of the decrepit vessel. "Maybe they moved on?" one soldier ventured to the sergeant.

Suddenly section of the port side wall blew inward with a deafening roar. As soldiers coughed in the dust and ringing ears bullets the diameter of a man's wrist started whipping through the air. They were joined by blindly flashes of plasma.

"FOR THE DARK GODS! FOR QUINTARA!" Massively armoured eight foot tall marines shouted at a volume not possible for a normal human. 

"OPEN FIRE!" Stiel ordered, his comms-man passing along the order on the vox to ensure everyone in the room would hear it over the ringing in their ears and the constant roar of the reaper autocannon. Lasgun fire started to snap accompanied by imperial plasma and punctuated by the sound of a grenade launcher. The heretics laughed.

Stiel spun as the blast of a second section of wall blew inward on the other side of the room. A daemonic voice scream "INSISTO OBLIVIUM!" and through the billowing dust a form emerged, half super soldier, half daemon, blue glowing claws raised to strike.

"Men, to me! Fix bayonets! FOR THE EMPEROR!"

* * * 

I finished painting my Into the Dark terrain with the Soulshackle upgrade pieces, and thought the best way to show it off was a little battlescene. 

Fleets are Ready to Engage

 It took a while but my chaos fleet is ready for action:

Now I have two fleets and can try to teach my sons how to play.

Remembering the Paintbrush

After having a good time painting my 3D printed imperial fleet, I decided to get a small Chaos fleet to have something to play against if the twins want to learn to play. I purchased a resin cruiser and battleship from Aliexpress that was a little more expensive but the quality is close or better to Games Workshop orginals, and I went back to my friend Chris for 4 cruisers. 

I then put together the resin cruiser and got to work on a paint scheme. I decided to go with classic dark red and black and since I had all the parts to make any of the cruisers or heavy cruisers, I went hogwild and used small rare earth magnets to make it configurable.

Pictures! First up we have the completed hull of the cruiser beside one of the 3D printed ones (the files from Thingaverse). You can see the launch bays on the table getting ready.

And here we have the completed launch bays and dorsal lances on the hull, held by magnets (which, to be honest, was a pain in the royal ass to get right).

While its not 100% the best work I've ever done and I made some rookie mistake (like spraying the finish on too thick on the launch bays grrr) it still looks fine for what I've got planned. Now to finish all the other weapons platforms so I can make any of the seven base cruisers and heavy cruisers with it!

Then on to the four printed crusiers (no magnets this time thank god).

Modeling and Painting is Still Addicitive

I had a lot of fun painting the other five printed ships I had to add to the Seeker of Truth:

Not the cleanest models to paint but the cruisers turned out well so I was inspired to do more. I had an old set of dice from ~20 years ago that were speckled white, red, and blue with yellow numbers. They were impossible to read from any distance over 2 inches. I painted them to a simple black and red scheme.

Then there is the story of two chaos ships I ordered from China back in April. I waited months for them to arrive, but the tracking showed them getting to British Columbia and then disappearing into the Canada Post system. I finally submitted a refund request as I was running out of time to dispute the order and I got my money back. Then a week later the models arrived after all!

Nice resin models of forgeworld quality. If I didn't know better, I would have said they were from Forgeworld! Here is the chaos cruiser with all the bits to make it any of the variants.

And the battleship which turned out to be a Nurgle Despoiler much to my disappointment! Oh well, I'm sure I can make it work.

Having all the spare bits for the cruiser led me to think, "Wouldn't it be nice if I did not have to pick one configuration?" Followed quickly by, "Hey, don't I have a ton of tiny rare earth magnets?"

So yeah, I'm setting up the cruiser to be fully modular before I paint it. I do kind of hate myself for the extra effort required (such as trying to keep track of what side is north versus south on those itty bitty magents when I'm going to glue them) but it might be worth it to be able to fool around with a Murder versus a Hades versus a Devastation class cruiser.

Long Winding Road

** WARNING: Non-EVE Content **

How the hell did I get here?

How can I be 41 and finding a new passion in a hobby that has been around since before I was born?

Ok, let me back up. In fact, let's go way back...

*wavy flashback lines*

The scene is little Billy, about 5 years old, standing in his teenage uncles' room, looking up at a shelf filled with model cars. You know what I'm talking about, those plastic model kits that came with plastic chrome bits and water slide decals? My uncles loved cars (fast muscle cars of course) and building model kits of them was an acceptable side hobby out in the country where I grew up where you either were into cars, hunting, or sports and everything else was weird.

I was fascinated by those model cars, they looked so intricate and detailed and cool. *Cue Montage* Over time I would get into building model cars myself although I lacked the passion for cars and mechanics. Only model cars though, never planes or boats, because where I grew up and in my family model cars was culturally acceptable, other model building was not so much. And I didn't do a very good job (hey, I was just a kid) and didn't dabble in painting them or stuff like that.

Over time my innate geekiness took over my desire to fit in and I moved on from model building to other pursuits like computer and board games, and eventually into Warhammer 40K miniature wargaming.

I did Warhammer for many years, from teenager until I was in my mid 30s, but it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I really started to pay attention to the modelling aspect of the hobby as opposed to simply the strategy and gameplay part. I think I got decently good at painting models...

But with the twins arrival (side note: they turn 7 today!) and the prospect of decreasing free time I put away the models and the paints and tools and focused on fewer hobbies.

All this back story is setup for how a series of unrelated events led me to this post. So fast forward to last winter.

I've been doing rocketry with the boys in the summer which they love and so last fall I walked into a hobby story with rocket supplies and marveled at the tonnes of model kits they had, from cars to tanks, airplanes, and ships. The twins were quite taken by the models kits and one asked for a biplane kit for a Christmas gift, so later I bought him a small cheap World War I triplane and, because when you have twins you need two of everything, we got a small tank kit for his brother.

At home I got out the glue, modelling knives, etc and helped the twins put together their kits. And it brought back a huge wave of nostalgia for those Warhammer 40K modelling days in my past.

Around the same time, I've been playing World of Tanks on and off for a few years and dabbled in World of Warplanes so was mildly interested when they announced that they were making a World of Warships game. The thought of commanding a large ship with lots of guns and torpedoes really appealed to my starship commander side and as the time passed I found myself getting more and more excited to try it out.

So we have two rising interests, a renewed interest in modelling and a new interest in early 20th century military war ships. When those collided at my next visit to the hobby store I ended up buying and building this:

Its a small kit, the whole ship is less than 30 cm long. It was an experiment to see if I even liked building a ship model or if the idea was more fun than the execution. Well, I did have fun, it stoked all the old Warhammer miniature assembling and I quickly made my way back to the store for another model, and I broke out my painting supplies from the back of the crawlspace.

So I'm currently finishing up the painting of the HMS Prince of Wales battleship as you can see from the pictures above, and plotting my next model attempt. 

Meanwhile, I made it into the Closed Beta for World of Warships. More about that next week.