The Black Parade

OK, so last weekend we had our 3rd annual "Cincinnati Arsenal 2010 Bash" it was held at the Sharonville Convention Center. As always it was bigger and better than last years more prizes and more space. Thanks to the Organizers and also the Sponsors. We had 50 pre-registered (which was our cap for the space rented) this year with of course a few people who dropped the week of or just decided to sleep in (you all know who you are). The end result was 42 participants with, in my opinion, a pretty varied list of armies. Here is a link of the participants and the scoring for the event, also at the bottom of that page is a break down of the armies that were represented with the overall "Battle Points" for the day.

Again, I want to thank our Sponsors (especially Up, Up, and Away) for the prize support. All the prizes listed below are product values donated by our various Sponsors.

1st - $250 + Trophy
2nd- $150
3rd - $75

Best Painted Army - $75 + Trophy

Door Prizes:
20+ Online Certificates and a bag of bases from Dragonforge
15x $10 Gift Certificates

Just a couple of pictures of our winners:
(click here to see the rest of the photos)

Finally found me a 3 column blog template that I like. I like it because it looks just like my old one and was VERY easy to edit and install all my old stuff. With this added column I am adding a new Section for "Book Reviews". I will give a short excerpt, or even a stolen one, about the books topic and then a short review of what I thought afterward. I encourage people post their thoughts on the book if they have read it, and of course please no spoilers about the books commented on. I don't want to ruin it for others. Most Black Library books can be ho-hum, but as you know if you read enough there can be some exciting fluff that is revealed that wasn't previously known.

Over the next few weeks I will go through my library of books, mostly all 40K novels and post reviews. Hope you check them out and leave comments good or bad about your thoughts.

This is my first post of 2010 and though it looks like I haven't been doing much in reality I have been busier than ever on the 40K front.

Over the last few years I have aquired a bunch of random Space Marine sprues for cheap or virtually nothing. While inventorying my stocks and cleaning a bit I decided I had enough to build a whole army. This in turn lead to no postings on the old project of my "Word Bearers" chapter and the last blog format. Since the beginning of the year I have played in a couple local tournaments and one national one so building has been limited to weekends here and there.

Now with my Marines being close to completed I figured to keep motivated and updated I would change the format of my "CSM: Word Bearers and Beyond 2009" to "The Black Parade". This new name goes along with my other forum names on my local board (Cincinnati Arsenal Gaming) and more prominent forums (Dakka, Warseer, Cool Mini or Not, etc.). The "Black Parade" will eventually be my Word Beares and in turn Renegade IG (IA-7) armies I am in the process of collecting but until then what this allows me to do is have a blog that is less focused and fill it with more content than just my upcoming armies.

With the new format in place I will try to get more posts up and keep myself up to date. I hopefully will have new ideas and revised ones soon flowing in to keep not only me interested but you also.

My upcoming army for our 2010 Bash (May 22) ...

Crimson Fists: Fire from the Sky (1850)

HQ:
Pedro Kantor - 175
SM Librarian - 140
(Terminator Armor, S. Shield, The Avenger, Might of the Ancients)

Elite:
Sternguard x9 (Pedro) - 295
(Combi-Flamer x2, Combi-Melta x2, P. Weapon, Drop Pod)
Sternguard x9 (Librarian) - 305
(Combi-Flamer x2, Meltagun x2, P. Fist, Drop Pod)

Troops:
Tactical Squad x10 - 240
(Lascannon, Meltagun, P. Weapon, Melta-Bomb, Drop Pod)
Tactical Squad x10 - 240
(Lascannon, Meltagun, P. Weapon, Melta-Bomb, Drop Pod)
Scout Squad x5 - 100
(Sniper Rifles x4, Missile Launcher, Camo Cloaks)
Scout Squad x5 - 100
(Sniper Rifles x4, Missile Launcher, Camo Cloaks)

Fast Attack:
Scout Bike Squad x4 - 120
(Cluster Mines, Astartes Grenade Launchers x2)

Heavy Support:
Thunderfire Cannon - 135
(Drop Pod)

Total: 1850 (60 Models)
Scoring Units: 6, Kill Points: 15

Not sure the proper Drop Pod tactic for 5th. Been playing some games and feeling it out, should get in 3 or 4 more games in by Tournament time, will let you know how it goes.

For now thanks for reading this long and boring post. There are plenty more where this came from.

Later, Chad

Wow, so I have a few posts on my blog here and none of them except the histories are about the main topic. As you can see, and can be confirmed by the people that know me, I am a procrastinator. I will work a solid week on something then get side tracked into something else or not work on anything at all. In the weeks since my last post I have finished work on the first model for my Word Bearers army. I have been working on him for about a month now. Not that it takes that long to assemble and sculpt, in total has taken probably a little over a hour, I just like to evaluate and make tons of notes about what I would like to do for my army and not actually go through the process of executing.

I was out to lunch with a friend this week and he hit the nail on the head. He said, "The reason Chaos armies are so cool is that you can just go nuts with them". He was right, when building this army I want to go crazy with modification. Now I do want to stay with the history and fluff of the army so I am trying to do my proper research and make sure things are in order.

With each of my squads I want a focal miniature that expresses some flavor. I don't want a whole unit of just crazy stuff that looks mashed together just to say there was a modification. I want this army to blend and flow and not be so outrageous that its a turn-off.

I started out the army with a few simple modifications to practice my greenstuff work. The pictures you see above are still a WiP. The scales need to be smoothed out and blended together a little better, but just to make me feel better I wanted to post up some pictures of him to keep me up to date. I am just starting with this whole blog thing so I need to take more intermediate pictures to explain how I got to where I am with each miniature I post. For now I will just explain and hope to keep it interesting.

• I started out with a metal armature going from the bicep to the banner pole. at the end near the pole I made a 90 degree angle and drilled a hole inserting the armature in and gluing it together with superglue.
• I then rolled a sausage of greenstuff and smoothed it around the armature and into the point you see at the end that looks kind of like a snake or dragon tail.
  
• Before it dried I used the end of my sculpting knife to create the texture on the bottom of the arm similar to the underbelly of a reptile.
  
• After letting it dry I came back and laid out another sausage of greenstuff along the top of the arm. I then flattened it out with the end of my color shaper into the scales you see on the top.
• I came back a few days later...cough.....and sculpted the scales closer to the inside of the arm.
• During different times in this process I did work to the icon pole. At the bottom you see two strips of epoxy these were made by just simply cutting out two strands from the epoxy. I know you can't see them in the picture, but I used PVA (white glue) to make rivets. I will probably explain this in a later tutorial or another model. If you want to know how I did it just ask and I will post it is the comments.
• Lastly I am still working on finding something to make hoses for the backpacks. I want the texture of guitar wire, but with the tiny spaces I am trying to fill the steel core of the wire just isn't working out. I still need to investigate Nylon guitar wire in hopes that it works, but haven't made it to the music shop yet. Any suggestions are appreciated.

This week I plan to finish up the detail work on the greenstuff and get him cleaned, primed, and ready for paint.


Above is a picture of the sculpting tools I used to get my scales done. Two things about sculpting I want to throw out there. One, tools are EVERYTHING...and two, the hardest part about sculpting is keeping your fingers out of the stuff you have already done. Here is a link the the Color Shapers I have and the other tools are pretty standard in any store.

Again thanks for reading and more to come hopefully sooner rather than later.......