Hive Fleet Ceryx mini-update

Progress on my new army is going, but as always, not going fast enough. I forgot how time-consuming it is to assemble, and with 111 miniatures to assemble and base (my Grey Knight army had 33?) it's starting to feel like an uphill battle.

Saving Money vs Supporting Local - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #4

Today I want to talk about a subject in our hobby which, turns out, I feel somewhat strongly about, and that's who we give our hard-earned cash to (and what we get from it).

We all know our hobby is an expensive one. When you can now easily spend $100 on a single plastic model, or $500 just to get a workable starter army (Games Workshop economics - obviously other game systems may be more or less affordable), it becomes clear that a dedicated hobbyist invests significant disposable income into his or her passion. And since we live in a capitalist society (most of us, anyway), there will always be an enterprising person or company trying to find ways of separating us from our disposable income in a more efficient and expedient fashion that benefits both us (cost savings) and them (sales volume). This, of course, is not limited to our hobby; it is simply the world we live in. 

The point is that we have choices on where we spend our money, with some choices offering significant cost savings. Depending on your end-game, however, I feel that the decision you make can have significant ramifications in the long-term enjoyment of your hobby.

Huzzah! 2014 Resolution Complete!

Well, I am now officially part of not one, but two Blog Networks/Exchanges!

Thank you Natfka at Faeit 212 and the group at Tale of Painters for adding me to your respective blog lists. I now have much more impetus to put out useful content now... and I guess this means I can now stop having conversations with myself and my loyal group of "Team Edward" referral bots!

Next step is to put together a decent light box set up for future photography taking - I am quite underwhelmed at the photo quality of the first part of my Step-by-Step tutorial, and will try to get a better solution before I do any more tutorial work.

With that, I'm out!  40k Fist Bump!

Searched for "40k Fist Bump" in Google Images. Got this pic. The Internets are so cruel.

Hive Fleet Ceryx - 1500pt list

The last few days that I've had off have been predominantly spent putting together the massive pile of sprues I now own for my new Hive Fleet.

So far I have put together 12 devilgants, and have clipped and cleaned my Tyrant & Carnifex. I will be magnetizing some of the options for my Monstrous Creatures, so progress beyond this point will be slow. In any case, I hope to have my army assembled and ready for prime spray-painting season (aka spring).

 

I thought a lot about my initial 1500pt list for Hive Fleet Ceryx, after reading the 6th Ed codex and lots of reviews and first impressions online. I came up with the list below, which should be a good starting point and hopefully a well-rounded list.

Warning: Dramatization, may not be as fearsome as depicted.

The Nature of the (Hobby) Beast - Alladin's Morning Coffee Smoothie Musings #3

Good morning to all my loyal followers referral bots!

Today I will ramble a bit about the nature of our great hobby and how it affects me. Specifically, about how our hobby elicits a surprisingly strong hoarding complex in me, whereas in most other parts of my life I act quite the opposite.

I got back into this hobby about a year and a half ago. I still had some remnants of my old stuff, but I was essentially starting from scratch. Today, I am faced with a closet almost overflowing with hobby-related product. How is this possible? Why do I keep spending? I wish I knew the answers to these questions. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to be back in this hobby, and I do keep to a fairly strict budget, but they don't call it "plastic crack" for nothing.

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.1)

Hello again!

After completing my first 5 Knights, I am moving onto the next batch of 5. These ones will be painted a bit differently: 4 of them will be painted up as Purifiers, with the 5th painted in my general Strike Squad colours. The focus will be on the Strike Knight, but will include WIPS of the entire 5-man process for posterity's sake, as well as colour combos and tips that may be unique to the Purifiers for anyone who is interested.

Additionally, I am a notoriously slow painter so part of my process will be to time my work and keep a tally of how much time I spend painting each section. This is more for my own use than for my readers' sake; a way for me to keep track of my progress as I (hopefully) improve both my quality and painting speed.

The Tyranid Codex pt. 2 - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #2

Is the main issue with Codex: Tyranids that it is under-powered, or is it that too many other codexes are OVER-powered?

Hello again! Having the Friday off as well I thought I'd finish my musings on this topic today rather than wait for next week. I ended the first part with the question above, and while the first part went into some glaring (albeit fixable) errors in the codex design, I feel that the answer lies more in the latter part of the question than the former.

This is what happens when we lose Synapse... Attack!

Balancing a game as complex as Warhammer 40k is an extremely hard process, compounded by the rate of codex releases and other additions/supplements such as Escalation and Stronghold Assault. Not to say it is impossible, but I think the community as a whole can agree that, regardless of your opinion on Games Workshop, they could be doing much more to provide more balance.

It's not to say that they don't make any effort, as FAQs are released from time to time to address wording and ambiguity issues, however I think (and in light of the less-than-stellar financials, which you can read about at Faeit 212 and many other blogs) that a bit more focus in this area would be hugely beneficial to their end-game, i.e. building a healthy, growing, profitable community.

The 6th Ed. Tyranid Codex - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #1

Hey all,

Today I've decided to try a new, hopefully "weekly" feature on my blog: A short(ish) opinion piece on  one thing or another in the hobby world. We'll see how it goes, normally I spend way too much time editing and proofing my articles, which is why I get so little done! Not to mention that I spend way too much time over-explaining things - see previous sentence... :|  Anyway, this week I will throw my 2 cents into the ring on the 6th Ed Codex: Tyranids debate that seems to be taking the internet blogosphere by storm.

<old Simpsons quote>"Shake harder, boy!"</old Simpsons quote>

As usual I will preface my comments with the fact that I am new to the hobby and have no gaming experience. I am mainly a fluff enjoyer/collector at this point, although I do eventually plan on playing.

After spending a lot of time reading about the new codex on the internet (and a little time reading the codex itself, although the pre-release leaks gave me a big head start), I get the general consensus that most people are, to put it lightly, displeased with the effort by GW. And that's putting it extremely lightly. Although I am a non-tournament player, and back my words up with no actual experience, I do see where a lot of people are coming from - it is impossible to rate this codex in a vacuum, since it not only has to compete against all other army codexes, but has to "compete" with its predecessor as well.

With this in mind, it is abundantly clear why people would harbour the opinions that they do. To put it succinctly, the 6th Ed Codex: Tyranids cannot be put on the same level as some of the other 6th Ed codexes released to date (namely Eldar and Tau, but Space Marines and Chaos Daemons fall into the mix as well). The debate as to whether it is stronger or weaker than its 5th Ed counterpart remains to be seen. There have been a lot of nerfs over last edition, but synergy is a glorious thing once discovered and I don't think the community is quite yet able to make this call. A quick look around some of the forums and blogs and you will already see new combos that show promise.

There are definitely a lot of questions surrounding this codex release, but I sometimes wonder if we, as a community, are asking the right questions to begin with.

Hive Fleet Colour-Scheme-a-thon!

Well, instead of painting as I said I would in my previous post, I ended up going to the really awesome Online Tyranid Painter (link included) website and playing around with some of my scheme ideas.

Over the last few weeks and months I have scoured the net for inspiration and found a lot of amazing colour schemes. I would love to link to all the cool stuff I saw, but there was just too much. Simply Google "Tyranid Colour Scheme" and use Google Images to scroll through lots of inspiring work.

I chose the following schemes based on a) my general preferences, and b) what I felt would go well with my 3 proposed Hive Fleet names.

Without further ado, the candidates after the break.

Hive Fleet Name-a-thon!

With the new Tyranid Codex coming out in a few short days, I have decided to take the plunge and put together a proper Hive Fleet. I will get my hands on the new Swarm box, as well as a Harpy/Hive Crone kit. This, coupled with the Hive Tyrant kit and box of 12 Termigants I already own, will should give me roughly 1000pts of "naked" units to work with, and likely pushing around 1250-1300 after upgrades.

To make it an even 1500 points, I will add another Monstrous Creature, likely a Tervigon but will depend on how the rules look post-Codex release.

When envisioning my future Hive Fleet, I wasn't really planning on using hormagaunts at all, but with the price of the Swarm box being so good I figure I can't go wrong... Plus, my other main army (Grey Knights) is an elite, low model-count force, and after thinking about it I feel that a swarm army may be a good contrast.

Now, on to the important (and fun) parts: naming the Hive Fleet, and picking a colour scheme!

2014 has Arrived! New Year, New Start.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Well, recently I started implementing a few changes to the blog, changes that will allow me some more freedom to interact with the community as a whole. I am in the process of setting up a new google+ account, whatever that is. This will involve porting all my pictures to date to the new account, and then re-uploading them to each post. Not a fun way to spend a free night...

My intention is to start signing up to other blog alliances, which should give me more exposure to the gaming community. According to Blogger, my biggest source of traffic is currently vampirestat.com (? Not really sure what that's about - I accidentally clicked on the link but it looked scary so I closed the window stat. How stat? Vampire stat.) so hopefully this will change soon, I don't think the people clicking through from vampirestat.com are getting the content they are looking for...