Thursday, June 30, 2011

Early War Polish Army - Painting One a Day

I've finally been able to complete a major painting project and while still behind on the count, I have at least gained some ground this month on shortening the gap of unpainted figures.  I was behind by 100 models, but now the number hovers around 80.  I still have a long way to go, but I am making strides.  

Today I present a Flames of War Early War Polish Army with the armored train that I showed at the beginning of the month.


This army comes in at around 1500 points and can easily be boosted to 1750 with the addition of some anti-tank guns and artillery.   Below is one of the HMG platoons that are attached to the large Piechoty platoons.
 


The Polish army has a large number of exciting options to field include their famed lancers (Kawalerii) and their armored trains.  I've got a couple of Mounted Kawalerii regiments in the process of being cleaned and they'll be next up onto my Flames of War painting docket along with some armored cars, and heavy artillery.


In the coming weeks, I'll post the process by which I paint my figures and share a few insights along the way.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Fort Buyaki Invitational Update - Now with Warhammer

The FBI prize package continues to grow at a healthy rate.  As I type, we have a prize package worth over $1300 for our recognized winners and I am working on securing a number of swag bag goodies from a number of great manufacturers for each participant.

The FBI is a two day, 5 round 40K tournament featuring 2000 point armies.  Players are randomly matched for the first round and in subsequent rounds are matched up swiss-style by comparing their battle scores.  The highest battle score is matched up with the second highest, the third highest with the fourth, and so on.  No player will ever play the same player twice.  You may purchase your tickets to the FBI HERE!

The overall champion is the player with the highest battle score.  Only game play determines our champion and we offer separate awards for painting and sportsmanship.


We have also added a Warhammer Fantasy Battle tournament to the Fort Buyaki Invitational.  This tournament will  be a two day, 5 round event with armies of 2400 points.  More info to come soon.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Polish Armoured Train Completed


I completed work on the Polish armoured train for Flames of War sometime last week.  It was a massive project that took weeks of work but the end result is a fantastic piece by itself or standing amidst an army on the table top. 


The most challenging aspect of painting this model is the sheer number of rivets that adorn the model.  The rivets add much detail to the overall model and therefore must be emphasized.   There is a great painting article for this model in Wargames Illustrated 281 and I'd recommend reviewing it if you are planning on working this model.


The locomotive and cars are massive in size.  The locomotive measures 6 inches long, the artillery cars measure 7.5 inches long, and the assault car is 4.5 inches long.  The sheer size of the pieces translated in some cases to a single color on a single car for one evening's painting session.


I found that wearing a rubber glove on the hand holding the model prevented the paint from wearing off due to the natural oils on my hands.  In all of my years of painting, I've never known that it was body oil that caused that, simply thinking that it was a matter of being handled and rubbed off.  A big thanks to Jeff for explaining that to me!


In addition to the train, I've complete a unit of tankettes to go along with my Polish forces.  These models are quite small when placed next to the smallest of Flames of War tanks.


The next project I'm working towards is the painting of a number of Polish Infantry Platoons.  If you are heading to Historicon, you'll be able to see the army in action at the Flames of War National tournament, including the train!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Painting Continues

May has turned out to be a great month for painting. I've completed 10 additional Sisters of Battle, as well as number of other items that I'll showcase in a separate post.  While I'm significantly behind in trying to accomplish achieving a paint rate of a model a day, May has been very productive. 

I've painted 10 Chaos Epic Landraiders, 10 Sisters of Battle, and a number of Flames of War models that will bring my total up to lofty heights.  I'll be posting the Flames of War models in the next few days

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Iron Warriors Land Raiders - EPIC



After a few hectic months, I'm back on the painting path painting a plethora of models.  This week sees the completion of 11 Iron Warriors Land Raiders ready to roll into the breach.  These will certainly be a joy to push around on the tabletop.



On the Paint Bench is a large plethora of Flames of War early war Polish models including an Armored Train.  I'm currently working on the train and should be close to wrapping that up this weekend. Its a very challenging model to paint due to the sheer number of rivets but when it is finished, it is such a beautiful model to view.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K GT Tickets

You may now get your tickets for the Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K Grand Tournament.

Simply head to the WarStore Weekend ticket sales and purchase The Full Warstore Weekend Pass and add 40K Tournament into the comments section.  Your tournament fee also gives you full access to The WarStore Weekend and exhibitor areas, as well as the opportunity to participate in many other great gaming events.

The Fort Buyaki Invitational Tournament is a 5-game, 2000 point, 2 day event held on October 8-9, 2011 in Seacaucus, NJ.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K Grand Tournament


I'm pleased to announce the Fort Buyaki Invitational 40K Tournament to be held on October 8-9, 2011 held in Seacaucus, NJ. The FtBI is part of the 2011-2012 Games Workshop North American Tournament Circuit.  All are welcome and invited to participate in this great event! And I expect to see many of you there!

This event will feature 5 games over the course of two days and will be held at the same site as the Warstore Weekend in cooperation with TheWarStore and TheWarStore Weekend. We expect to have at least 60 players and we are able to easily expand as player demand grows.

The FtBI features Swiss-style pairings based on game play results to crown our overall champion and we offer painting and sportsmanship awards that are scored independently from game play.   We expect all players to conduct themselves in a polite and civil manner and we use a ranking system to recognize outstanding sporting individuals.  The great feature of the sportsmanship ranking system is that all opponents must be ranked from best to least best which creates a clear delineation between players.  More about my thoughts and ramblings on sportsmanship here.
 

Over the coming months, we'll be rolling out all kinds of information on this blog regarding this event, but in the meantime mark your calendars and work on your army now!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Thunderbolts and Bombers, very, very frightening!

This week I finished off this flight of Imperial Marauder bombers and a flight of Imperial Thunderbolts.  I went with a dark blue base color with a series of black camouflage stripes. Perfect for night bombing runs and interceptions to bring the enemies to their knees which reminds me of this Motorhead classic.


I'm very pleased with the results and they look great on a tabletop.  I'm nearly finished with a few units for my FOW Polish army which will keep my numbers in the game, though I'm still behind. I've been appointed to a very important civic position in my local community and it requires much time and painting time is the first on the chopping block. But I'll keep going and try my best and knock out a few pieces for the Adepticon Show.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

January Painted Models

This update is a bit later than I had intended but it has arrived.   I painted 11 Sisters of Battle and 2 Imperial Guard Steel Legion models in January.

I have on the verge of being finished 9 GW Epic flyers, 5 Polish TKS tankettes, a Polish 4 gun 75mm battery with Staff, Command Rifle, and Observer Rifle teams (7 models), and a Polish 7TP jw tank.  This batch would certainly diminish the shortfall but not wipe it out.

The smaller tank on the left is a Polish TKS tankette, a two-man tank with very thin armor.   The larger tank is the Polish 7TP jw tank.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

January Painting Recap and January is gone!

I fell off the bandwagon again.  This time it wasn't so bad and I've been trying to catch up. 

I started the year off with the fancy idea of doing a foot guard army and ran two Steel Legion models through the test painting bin followed by a test model of a Sister of Battle for a friend of mine.    All three models were primed white, basecoated, then dipped with brushcoat of Army Painter, left to dry and hit with Army Painter Matt Sealer to kill the shine. 

Then I fell off the bandwagon again and spent quite a bit of time cleaning Blood Angel Space Marines only to wrap up the month by some rabid painting of 10 Sisters of Battle which I finished last night.    Now the Sisters that I'm working on are for a friend who will finish the bases himself so that saves me a bit of hassle.

I also painted up about 30 Flames of War Early War Polish Artillery crew for the month but since they aren't glued onto the bases and finished with their guns and caissons, they'll be counted in February.  As difficult as I make these models, I'm nearly tempted to count them as two models each.

Tony S. said he'd join in the challenge but I haven't heard an update from him and I highly encourage xNickBaranx to join in. For Nick, we'll go for 50 models,with works out to just 4. 3 per month.  Nick is a great painter and I've heckled him for years since 1998 about getting his fantastic Angels of Absolution done. He still hasn't!  You can find Nick here 2ndcitywarzone.blogspot.com

It's still early in the year to take on the challenge and catch up.  Let the paint fly!

Photos coming soon! 

Saturday, January 15, 2011

One a Day Painting

Many months ago, I wrote an article entitled  Paint one model a day and shortly fell off that bandwagon.

Well, no more! It's the start of the new year and I have already painted three models with a large number lining up in the queue.   I have been very busy cleaning and assembling models in preparation for fast pace painting. 

So, are you up for a challenge like this?  I know that you have piles of models waiting for some paint and this is just the challenge to get your armies ready for action.  My friend Don is attempting to paint 3,000 American Civil War models for a large Gettysburg anniversary game.   

At the end of each month, I'll post up details of all the models I've painted for the month as well as some pictures.  I'll try to maintain a 30 model month average and we'll see what happens. 

If you'd like to participate in this challenge, let me know and I will add a ticker into my sidebar with your details and accomplishments.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Tournament Sportsmanship, The Way to do it Right

I've run my fair share of tournaments while I was at GW and beyond and have seen and experienced all manner of sportsmanship systems. Few are good and some are just plain dreadfully awful.  For years,  I've been pondering what makes a fair and unbiased sportsmanship system that would reflect a player's true nature and remove all manner of chipmunking.

But first, let's go through some bad sportsmanship systems and show why they are rubbish. 

Descriptors -  This style featured a series of descriptions that a player could use to reflect upon their opponent and game and mark an appropriate score.  For example, the sportsmanship card might say "My opponent was fantastic, I wish all my opponents were this much fun," or "We had a few rules problems that we worked through," or any number of broad sweeping statements to describe an opponent's sportsmanship during the game.  Many will notice that this style was the Games Workshop Sportsmanship style used in  Grand Tournaments during the 90's and early 2000's and was one of the first methods to judge sportsmanship in the tournament scene.

Checklists - The checklist system came into use from Adepticon around 2007 and GW borrowed the format for a few years. This format awards points by checking off any number of boxes whose descriptions might apply to a game such as "my opponent showed up on time at the start of the game," "Hey, my opponent showed up with his rulebook and codex," "My opponent brought his dice," "He measured and moved his models correctly," "My opponent was fun to play against." I've paraphrased these a bit but you get the idea.   Half the points in this system rewards players for basic principles that are required for players to have a game, and the other half are so general that they fail to deliver substantial differentiation amongst the player's sportsmanship scores.

Up/Down systems -  The Up/Down system is another variant that scores players as either fun to play against or not.  This system fails to create substantial differentiation amongst the scores as well as most players will get the nod and get an up vote, unless they are a real bear to play against.   

On the whole, the systems above evaluate one player at a time, and usually ignore previous evaluations of other players, while scoring a large group of players with similar scores and needing additional tie-breakers.  If we must have sportsmanship, then these systems must disappear if we want real results.


Sportsmanship Ranking - I am of the opinion that this is the finest way to get realistic sportsmanship results if a tournament is to have sportsmanship.  Using this method, a player ranks all of his opponents at the end of the tournament on a scale of best sport to least best sport (which in some cases could very well be a worst sport but that isn't always the case!).  Players must remember who they have played and a T.O. should provide the players with a sheet so that players can record the names of the people they played. 

When a player ranks their opponents, they need to take into account anything and everything that happened during their game, which the above mentioned systems may not always account for, and usually don't.  As such, the ranking system takes everything into account and allows the player free reign in determining the results.  Reminders to the players to evaluate the players, not the game result can help discourage dishonest evaluation.   Only one player could be the best sporting opponent, there are no ties.

One might argue - What if both players are your best opponents or equally deserving of the highest mark? They aren't, you must dig deep, reflect upon your games, and figure out which is the truly the best and the other second best.   There can be only one!

This system is less likely to be abused by chipmunking and open sportsmanship scoring (whereby a player marks his sheet in full view of his opponent hoping that his opponent will score him the same highest value) and creates realistic scoring.  Irregardless, we know there are plenty of unscrupulous, malicious, manipulative, and unsporting players out there who's only way to win a tournament (with soft scores) is by being disengenuous to other players to gain the win.  Don't be that guy!

I like to have opponent's ranked from 5 (the best) to 1 (least best and not necessarily a bad sport).  Then simply add up the ranks to determine a score.  If the tournament has a large number of players, then double or triple the values to create a greater spread of scores.

If you attend tournaments, encourage the organizers to use ranking systems in the next event and let's cut down on the sportsmanship abuse and put the emphasis back onto the table!