Desert Air

Home from Arizona and procrastinating unpacking. So here is a brief summary and photo collage of the weekend.

Finally got some good photos of my army all together for the first time. Here are the Dwelling Dogs with their goblin buddies.

Had some great match-ups all weekend with a majority of objective oriented scenarios instead of simple to the death engagements.

Tons of great terrain mixed with a classic good vs evil match-ups made for some traditional encounters on native terrain for round 1.

Dwarf vs Goblins in Moria for a seize the artifact where you had to exit your opponents board edge with the item. Puppy chow wargs helped secure a defensive line and get the object but loss of priority dragged the game to a dangerous point with only in the dwindling turns, 1 goblin passed his courage checks and got off the board.

 I got the chance to finally play a game on the aging prancing pony against an army of the dead from LA. Anthony was a blast and by far one of the best games of the weekend and in a long time. Goblins proved their worth by running away really fast once broken and the ghosts held onto all three objectives.

Last couple photos before getting caught up in some tense games was against Brent's woses. With the speed of the wargs, they got the randomized objective off in record time. A turn of luck made a fast game but we played out the engagement afterwards for some woses payback on the goblins.

A last ditch attempt did not prove well for the goblin...

With another Gathering in the desert in the books, all guns are pointing towards Adepticon and the great tower.... check back soon for terrain updates.

Gathering the Pups for Arizona

 With the last basing sand drying I finally finished up the final three warg pups. They were re purposed from the farmer maggot hounds. Added some tails and fur to hide the collars.

 These stand ins for wargs are not here for smaller targets or advantages, just got bored with stock warg models and had to switch it up.

The last item for Arizona's tournament is painting up that display board behind the dogs. Till next time.

Tale of Four Gamers: Completed!

So we come to it at last, the completion of our haggard army building story. As far as I know, I am the only 1/4 to finish in our 5 month period. So, after more time than I am used to in this army building, Here is the last bunch.

 These are most of the unique wargs, there a couple stock models as well as 3 of the farmer maggots dogs for warg pups. This is the paint scheme concept for some of the wargs, I wanted to have different ones just to break up the unity of 17 of them.

 Dwarf causes some indigestion.

 This brown scheme was again based on my old dog, just to vary the looks on the board. The two rubble bases are going on the inside of the display board. Helps spruce up the home decor of the mines!

So the final list for Arizona's Gathering in the Desert is

Druzhag
Cave Drake
10 Goblins with spear and bow

4 goblins with spear
2 goblins with shield and spear

20 goblins with Shield

1 bat swarm
17 wild wargs

With all the new buzz around new rule books by Gamesworkshop, I suspect most of our old lists will all have to be tweaked. And of course, I choose not to make all these wargs with goblin riders even though I could feel it in my bones that they would release a goblin warg raider....

Now that the army is finished, it is going to be lots of terrain work from here till April with the highly anticipated Adepticon convention looming.

Slow and Steady

So it has been awhile since my last update but here we go. First off, everything is right in the world again with the Patriots dominating win over the upstart Broncos and we are on track again for a Packers-Pats superbowl.

With that out of the way, we can get back to showing off some doggies. With my February 1st deadline fast approaching for finishing this army prep some serious building progress was made this last week.

 Dancing with wolves: these 2 goblins we trying a new stealth tactic against some dwarfs....

 Just playing fetch

The ole classic dog jumping on something pose: I am going for the cute, cuddly approach to these wargs.

These are only 3 obviously, but there are 21 more with about half converted up.

Check back February 1st for the conclusion of my 1/4 Tale of Four Gamers complete with hopefully a finished display board as well as a final recap of the army list before flying out to AZ for the Gathering in the Desert Indy Grand Tournament.

On the horizon is Adepticon and hinted in the past couple posts, there is a powerful terrain piece growing in the East.....

Default End of Year Post!

While sitting on top of my high tower, I figured I would make an end of year post. Up until this point our Tale of Four Gamers had been on track, at least for my army, but the holidays side tracked and hopes of finishing a December Commitment. So stay tuned for a January installment!

 The place that is not a winter wonderland, Arizona, where Gathering in the desert will be taking place this 2012. Most of what I am bringing is finished, but I feel that January will slink by just like December...

 Old lucky fish here still has some Christmas wishes. The oldest fish at the Shedd Aquarium hopes for more Lord of the Rings slots at Adepticon and all of my projects finish in time of events.

Captain Bare Metal here is also hoping for paint so they can play in Legends of the High Seas.

And last but not least, with my first 40k squad of models built, I get to see how good my black highlighting skills are when I paint up my Iron Hands marines. To go with this project our gaming group has a ton of terrain projects tied in including shield generators, landing pads, smoke explosion markers; all decked out with LEDs and tea lights.

Dogs of War leading Santa's New Sleigh

With 2011 almost at a close, Santa approached the Iron Hands Space Marine Chapter with a his own Christmas letter. He wanted a new sleigh for speedier deliveries, better miles per gallon, fire and forget air to ground rocket pods, twin linked lascannons, and state of the art sensor arrays.

So without further ado, the 2011 Iron Hands Christmas Rhino, guaranteed to deliver presents and enough fire power to obliterate half the North Pole.

 This rocket will be added after painting and smoke trails will be simulated with cotton balls leading back to the pod.

 Adepticon will be here before we know it! With the release of the new Hobbit movie trailer and the completion of my space marine Rhino, I can turn my attention back to Lord of the Rings terrain for the tournament and finishing my Tale of four Gamers and my 17 wild wargs for the rest of my goblin army.

This is the extent of progress on my dog conversions. Almost there...