Rough cut of the new Space Marine template for Quartermaster is here.  I've tried sending templates to the Quartermaster support email address, but they've all been ignored.  I also have a template for Farsight Enclaves (also a rough cut) if there's any interest.

Army Builder files for Farsight Enclaves

In short - I have some.  They aren't pretty and do not enforce uniqueness on Farsight Signature Systems.  If anyone is interested, I'll put them up on a google share.  I recommend that anyone interested use the instructions here to install the current 40k files to a separate directory, then include my files.  This will keep your current 40k data files from getting screwed up, plus it won't interfere with your automatic updates.

Storm talon magnetizing tutorial

This tutorial describes the tools, materials and techniques I used to  magnetize my Space Marine Storm Talon.  The only weapon not magnetized was the Heavy Bolter because, well, it's a Heavy Bolter.  Use caution when cutting, drilling and gluing!  Follow this tutorial at your own risk.

The materials and tools used: thin metal sheets (from hobby lobby in their model railroad section), scissors, hobby drill, 1/8" and 3/32" drill bits, xacto knife, file, rare earth magnets (1/8" diameter x 1/32" thick) and of course super glue.  The Rio Rancho Observer (background) is of course optional.

A close up shot of the metal sheets, for the curious:

Here are the weapon bits and "pods" (rear left) for lack of a better term.  You get two sets of pods with the kit: one that is more for the Skyhammer or Typhoon missiles and a second that is more for the Heavy Bolter or Lascannon.  I went with the latter pod purely for aesthetic reasons. 

The missile bits are in front and the lascannon bits are tipped over in the back to display where I attached the metal sheets.  The magnets were placed in the pods.  Here's a better picture:

   I drilled out two holes in each pod starting with the smaller drill bit and then used the 1/8" bit to widen out the hole.  I wound up drilling clean through the plastic with the small bit.  Note that I drilled my holes right on the line that joins each pod together.  For this reason, it's very important to start with a small bit.  Don't jump right to the 1/8" bit because the pod will start to split.  Yes, I found this out the hard way. 

   Once the holes are ready, put some super glue around the edge of one of the holes and carefully line up a magnet with the hole.  Don't try to shove it in by hand.  Once the magnet is lined up, get something hard and flat and gently press it down into the hole.  You may need to mash the magnet further into the hole by pressing the pod down against a table (magnet side down).  The magnets need to be flush with the surface of the pods.  Repeat these steps for each magnet. 

   Now for the fun part - the metal sheets.  Take a look at the back of the weapon bits.  Fortunately, they're all the same size which simplifies things.  Note: the edges of the metal sheets are sharp!  Grab the scissors and start cutting a thin strip of metal from the rest of the sheet.  Try to make the width of the strip a bit less than the back of the weapon bits so it will fit inside (take a look at the above pic).  Note that the metal strip will curl as you cut it so be ready to flatten it out with something.  I chose a dice cube but anything hard and flat will do.

   Once you have your metal strip get it somewhat (not totally) flattened out then take a look at the weapon bit and slice a little piece off.  The piece should fit within half of the weapon bit.  Slice another piece off that fits within the other half of the weapon bit.  In the picture above, note that the lower weapon bit has one piece of metal already fitted - the metal for the second half of the weapon bit is sitting on the cutting board just to the left of the weapon.  You will have to do more flattening and trimming to these small bits to get them to fit just right, but it's well worth it.  Once you have these two small metal pieces sized just right you can use them as templates to slice up the rest of the thin strip of metal, resulting in small metal sheets that are just the right size for any of the weapon bits.  Again, use caution when slicing these small metal pieces off the larger one!  

   After all of the small metal sheets have been sliced out, make sure they're nice and flat then glue them into each weapon bit.  Wait for the glue to dry before seeing how they fit with the pods.  Glue the pods to the Stomtalon chassis (per the kit's instructions) and you are done.

Strength 10

Yesterday I went to a Strength 10 Chapter get together and had a blast!  I got to play on some great terrain, and met some great folks.  Looking forward to the next one.  I brought my Dark Eldar and got in a team game (DE and Necrons vs. Space Marines and Space Wolves) and a 2000 point game against CranberryMuffinMan (Space Marines).  The xenos pulled out a close victory in my team game thanks to the Necrons.  All I can say is my Wyches didn't run off the board as fast as they could have and the Necron Overlord just dominated assaults..  Until that dreadnought charged in.  My 2000 point game against CranberryMuffinMan was a good time!  He ran 2 bike squads with a 10-man Assault Terminator squad, a 10 man squad of tooled-out Vanguard Vets (lots of power weapons and shields!), Khan and Tigerius.  It was a hard-fought battle between 2 very maneuverable opponents.  The DE were eventually able to eliminate the bikes and vanguard vets, so we called it there.  The rest of the game probably would have been spent scooting and shooting the terminators, and I was going to capture one objective for sure.

All in all, it was a good time!  Now it's time to get ready for the Feast of Blades style tournament at Ares Wargames this Sunday (May 6).

Army Builder custom output requests?

Anybody have any?  A while back I put up a post talking about custom Army Builder outputs and got a little interest.  If anyone wants to see some specific output from AB, let me know in a comment!

Fat boys

I finally wrapped up my Dark Eldar Grotesque conversions using Ogres.  They've got big, fat bodies with little pea-size heads due to the current blend of hypersteriods in use by my Haemonculi.  They'll get it right, eventually.  I suppose I should make a Grotesque with a ridiculously huge head and little stick legs, just to show them over-correcting the dosage.  Anyway - pictures, or it didn't happen, right?

 Before finishing and basing:

After finishing and basing:

The third butterball from the left will be an Aberration (unit upgrade for Grotesques).  He will either pack scissorhands or a flesh gauntlet.  The dude far left is a Grotesque with a liquifier.  Anyone who's seen a Talos Pain Engine kit will recognize many of the bits used.  They're not pretty, but they will work.  A box of Ogres costs not quite twice as much as a regular Grotesque model, but it was worth it.  If I didn't have leftover bits from the Talos kit, it would have been a more difficult conversion.  If you look at the bottom picture, you will see a guy second from left - I tried to make him a mask using green stuff, and well..   Let's just say he made a good test model.  These guys are coming soon, to a 6" x 4" table near you!  If you live near Albuquerque, New Mexico, that is.

A random picture from our 2000 point ETC style tourney at Ares Wargames back in December. More events can be found at Bolters con Queso. Here are my Dark Eldar versus Duncan's Black Templar:

I wound up losing that one, curse those Dreadnoughts and their Heavy Flamers! And yes, that is a real picture of Duncan. 

I'm having a good time with the Dark Eldar though adapting to playing a non-MEQ army for the first time has been a bit challenging.  They're fast, fast, fast and fragile, fragile, fragile.  Raiders are made of paper mache soaked in gasoline.  I've been running a lot of raider-borne Wych squads with attached Haemonculi, but I'm having limited success to date.  The fact that most of those poor outings are due in no small part to tactical blunders committed by yours truly is beyond doubt, though I do wonder at times if I'm using the wrong tool for the job.  I like having the pain token granted by the Haemonculus but I do miss that extra special weapon (A raider holds 10 models, 9 Wyches and a Haemy in my case - 10 Wyches are required to get 2 special weapons so mine only get one).  I may try a suggestion from Geoff over at Warhammer 30,000: running 2 large Wych squads, each with 15 models one of whom is a Hekatrix with an Agonizer and 3 Wyches equipped with Shardets and Impalers.  I've always been a fan of the shardets, and being that I usually ask my Wyches to tar pit enemy units in drawn-out assaults they would help in that regard.  The only thing I wonder about is if the rules governing assaults in 40k will allow me to move my shardet wyches into base-to-base contact with more than one model when I charge.  A cursory perusal of the "Moving Assaulting Units" rules leads me to believe that I can put them into base to base contact with multiple models provided they are not the first model that I move in the assault.  According to my reading of the rules, the first model moved needs to be placed into base to base with a single enemy model.  Subsequent assault moves must get my models into contact with unengaged enemy models - but they don't say that I must get them into contact with a single unengaged enemy model (unless I missed it somewhere?), so I guess technically I could put my model in contact with however many unengaged enemy models there are within my assault range. I wonder if I could get my shardet Wyches into contact with one unengaged model and one engaged model?  Hmm, more questions for the local rules gurus.  Duncan, are you listening?