But beyond that, several brands of primer have given me pretty bad results under the best of conditions. I flat out don’t use Armory-brand primer anymore (the stuff with the Dork Tower characters on the label) after a simple prime job left me trying to strip the paint off about 30 miniatures…twice. Very, very grainy, it looked like my models had been caked in white dirt. This was despite waiting for perfect conditions, shaking way more than any reasonable can of paint can require, etc. Just bad stuff. The Citadel primer (sold by GW) is off and on – sometimes it works well enough, sometimes it doesn’t.

Following the recommendation from some other people, I’m now trying a two-fold experiment. First is switching to Krylon brand primers – perhaps a company that specializes in selling spray paint will, well, make good spray paint. I’m also trying their grey primer.

The reason for this second part is driven mostly by the Huntsmen color scheme – green and white. It doesn’t matter much what color the Green side gets primed, since between the strong foundation colors Citadel puts out, a coat or two of Dark Angels green, a wash and highlighting, its pretty clear the color is green. White on the other hand is tricky – you can’t highlight pure white, because how are you going to paint on a color that’s a lighter shade of pure white? So all the definition in the model is based on highlighting. This is mostly done with grey, so it seems to make sense rather than painting over a layer of white, just skip straight to the grey. The one risk seems to me that while white primer you missed while basecoating stands out, and black primer just looks like a shadow, grey primer may be really noticeable. We’ll see how it comes out when painting.

I’ll say this though: The first batch went on smooth and even, and I’m pretty pleased with the Krylon stuff. We’ll see how it handles metal later.

Oh, and a tiny, oh so convenient rulebook.

This is not a review of the boxed set. Because really, I have nothing to add. No my friends, this is a review of the Space Marine models inside:

Generally, they’re good. The figures are designed to be easily assembled, so they’re single-pose, “Insert Peg into Slot” type figures. Which, while limited in their dynamic range, its probably best for beginners. And really, when it comes down to it, they’re in the same “advancing slowly with bolter held to chest” that probably 90% of the multi-part Space Marines are in anyway. Size-wise they’re the same, and generally they should blend into an existing army without much effort. They do seem to be an improvement over the previous editions starter Space Marines.

The casting quality is good, they’re made out of the “Dark Grey”, somewhat harder plastic GW has taken to using – which is generally resulting in plastics that look way better. Which leads us to one of my two gripes with the figures, and the only one that’s really generalizable: Molding decisions. I understand that GW packed *a ton* into those sprues, and in the process had to make some space saving decisions. Which is fine, and I appreciate – except invariably two points of connection from the model to the frame are on the shoulder pads. The smooth, curved shoulder pads. It is *extremely* hard in my experience to preserve the ultra-smooth curve when separating the models, and the harder plastic means its harder to smooth out the divot that tends to get produced, as well as the inevitable mold line. Its a minor point, and odds are noone will notice – especially not when my boys are getting their shoulders painted black – but it is none the less irritating.

The other gripe is that they use slotted bases – again, for the ease of beginning players. But I use custom bases for my guys, and cutting them off gives their feet really weird angles. But that’s really petty, and pretty me-specific.

Overall, they’re great, and a decently cheap way to add some bulk to your force, get a nice portable ruleset, and some Orks to use in live-fire drills.

I’ve got some stuff unpacked, sitting on my disaster of a desk, and other stuff still in boxes. And most importantly, no idea what is in what pile. Has anyone seen my knife?

Much of it is their attitude in the setting. They’re a touch silly, because everything in Warhammer is a touch silly, but they’ve got some very compelling thematic elements. On one hand, you’ve got a group of insanely powerful warriors with the same “Doomed Berzerker” theme as the Blood Angels, but without all the poetic angst. And they’ve also got a great humanist bent to them, a grounding that doesn’t exist for alot of the other chapters. They’re absolutely the types that will come howling (literally) out of the night, and leave the floors slick with blood, the Inquisition wondering if they are still entirely on the Imperium’s side. At the same time, they’ll also protest loudly about the treatment of the civilians of Armageddon. They’re a great army.

So, despite my “Why DIY” post, I’ve been waiting for news about them to make sure I didn’t want to head down that path. The good news: I know now. The bad: It’s because they Space Wolves have gotten *silly*.

Specifically, this guy:

Not content with their normal “Lets put a skull on it”, we have a wolf, poised like a dressage horse, in armor, with a bionic eye that looks like it shoots lasers. Atop it rides a Space Wolf, with a pair of lighting claws, waving his hands about, as if to say “Look at me, riding a huuuuuuge freaking wolf!”.

We’ve past Grimdark, shot right through funny, and landed squarely in some sort of absurdist, gonzo miniatures making.

I…am looking forward to Space Hulk. Rather than rehash the news and information that’s been floating around about it (briefly, $99, limited run, full complement of miniatures, tokens etc), I thought I would spend some time talking about my experience with the game – the game that actually got me into miniatures in a big way.

The university gaming club I was in had an old copy of it, an original version, bought, poorly assembled by a long forgotten club member. Its box had long since collapsed, and most of the pieces were just sandwiched between battered cardboard. I had been interested in starting 40K for awhile, and had dabbled with miniatures games with a Mordheim campaign a few summers before, so I said we should break the game out of the solidified morass of old gaming material locked in a closet.

Long story short, the ten Terminators who set foot on the game’s cardboard tile Space Hulk became the core of the burgeoning Space Marines army built with club funding that I used for several years – and in the process, a hell of alot of Space Hulk was played.

It was the *perfect* beer and pretzels game, a good way to separate a long, drawn out game of Vinci or Shogun and one of the unofficial after-the-meeting RPG campaigns. Just enough randomness to let both sides feel like they have a shot at winning, the hugely evocative auspex counters representing the sound of claws and teeth against ancient, aged deck plates. It was a great action game, but not dumbed down enough that you could rely on not having to play smart, and lent itself well to dramatic moments, like when the sole surviving Terminator left in the boarding party flooded a control room with flaming petroleum, destroying its components before being torn apart by a tide of Genestealers.

Pre-orders are up now, and if you’ve got the extra cash, I strongly recommend you pick up a copy.

The question that occurs to me every time I get frustrated with my somewhat irritating paint scheme (see the blog header), or the various 40K forums get worked up into a froth about the clear overpowered nature of Random Codex #17 is why exactly I’m bothering with a homebrew chapter. After all, the canon chapters get beautifully sculpted characters with conveniently placed iconography, handy paint bottles in their primary colors (and indeed at one point spray cans), and free chapter-specific shoulder decals.

So, it seems as good a juncture as any to make the case for DIY chapters.

The first is that I enjoy writing fiction, but often don’t find myself having the time for it. I’m a graduate student, so essentially I write for a living, which means I don’t really have time to sit down and commit myself to the Great American Novel. The setting gives a nice framework for writing very short fiction – character sketches, a single scene, a bit of history – its a nice creative outlet that doesn’t involve painting.

Secondly, you do get the creative outlet of conversions. When it comes down to it, the Ultramarines have Calgar, the Dark Angels have Azrael, and the Imperial Fists have Lysander. I have – whatever the hell I want. And generally, there’s a huge amount of room for designing your forces – right now, I’m pulling Bretonnian, Space Marine, Space Wolf and Dark Angel pieces in the same army – and it’s a huge amount of fun.

Third is the freedom to design your force. It always felt wrong to me to field say, an Imperial Fist army, and do the “this counts as someone *totally different*”. I have alot less of an issue designing forces with a DIY force – dabble in a bit of Deathwing 1st Company, try a full-on assault force with the Space Wolves or Blood Angels and then back to the regular Codex marines when they invariably get an updated Codex with all the latest toys. Part of this may be that I’m a long time Dark Angels player, and have seen my fair share of single-book armies dragged through the mud.

Forth, they’re not Ultramarines.

From time to time however, we’ll digress into either other aspects of Warhammer as a setting, as a game, and indeed on RPGs and miniatures games in general – particularly Pendragon, Blue Planet, Exalted or a number of other games that have caught my fancy.

Comments, requests and the like are always welcome of course. Thanks for visiting, and pleasant reading.