Review: Mr. Nekonote Station

So I went to C2E2 a few weeks ago. If your only exposure to cons are 40k heavy, please do yourself a favor and attend one of these pop culture/comic conventions. They are ever so slightly less geeky, although the winner of the cosplay contest was a female 40k inquisitor!

The plasma gun was pretty amazing.

So while walking through Artists Alley where commissions were incredibly cheap (but no one I spoke with had really done 40k art), I noticed that there were a few hobby vendors an aisle over amidst the booths full of vintage toys and fidget spinners. Most of those hobby booths were Gundam-focused, of

Budgethammer: Cheap but great battle board

The obligatory montage. Please ignore the outdated recording studio in the back. I've switched to almost all software instruments.

For those of you in the U.S., the Sports Authority chain is going out of business. There are actually some

DIY Budget Mat/Board

It's me, back from the dead! Two months without posting. Work, family, blah blah. Also, I went into shell shock after Adepticon.

And now, there's a new version of Warmahordes coming in a few weeks, I've started a Frostgrave warband, I got excited by and then completely disillusioned by Dicemasters, I bought, opened, and then put away

Mantic Typhus Zombies, Part 1

At the last Adepticon, I noticed a deal at the Mantic booth. They were selling a box of 30 Zombies from their Kings of War game and 3 boxes of 10 Marines from Warpath in a bundle. This was an obvious kit to create cultist zombies for the Chaos Space Marine codex that had just been released. So I went for it...

DIY Dark Eldar Webway Portal, step by (short) step

Remember these little guys?

These little demispheres were in stock for a few seconds on the GW site. They are selling for FORTY USD DOLLARS on Ebay. I'm all for convenience, but that's simply ridiculous.

Etsy & 40k, The Good, The Ugly & The Uglier

NO.

 Let's just get this out of the way now. I hate Etsy.

Hate. Hate. Hate.

Now let me clarify. I love the idea of Etsy. A marketplace for hand made goods. What could be cooler? I wish they would facilitate more global initiatives...I would love to see handmade instruments from other countries, for example, but I imagine that export laws and other issues are daunting.

And I also love about half of the people on Etsy, especially the ones that are truly talented or clever. I admire grassroots entrepreneurs who understand marketing and customer service. The Etsy merchants who follow through and care about what they are selling are aces in my book.

But the institution? Fuck them. They are not big enough to have Ebay-like problems with fraud, especially when the members try to self-police and are rebuked by amateur moderators. If you want to see the ridiculous side of Etsy, try going to Regretsy or Google "Etsy complaints".
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Utterly Amazing

Every once in a while, I will stumble across some tidbit on the Internet that influences my take on 40k. Sometimes, I'll find something that is compelling enough to share with the community. And then there are very rare occasions where I will repost something from the 40k community because it's just that cool.

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The Anatomy of Shame

Patheticus Maximus
(Click to Enlarge, but you won't like it...)

There's this cycle I go through about 4 times per year. I organize my workspace, get a plan together. Start assembling and painting. Then there will be one night when I fall asleep in the chair, and I go to bed without straightening up. A week later, we have the result of this lack of dilligence, the trashed workspace.

Here at Hive Zero, I like to show my mistakes more than my successes, since I truly believe you can prevent errors by watching others' solutions. Let's see the issues in my workspace, shall we? In a near-future post, I will show you how I remedy these issues (if I can get around to it):

JUMP! JUMP!

Codex Mechanicus v3!

My friend Lantz has posted the third revision of his Fandex focused on the folks from Mars. I am honored to have three of my humble pieces in this codex: the short history of the Adeptus Mechanicus on page 5 and two pieces of fiction on pages 9 and 14. All of the other stories in this book are great, and Lantz's stats seem tight and fair. I would love to see some armies on the table based on this Fandex.

Check it out: http://www.admechfandex.com/?p=91

[Review] Bases by Phantom Fox

I frequent three FLGSes. One of them, Games Plus, has the biggest selection of miniatures I have ever seen in one place, but it is no longer local (I went there as a kid in the 80s). The second one, Lightspeed Hobbies, is a friendly place and they carry Games Workshop and a few other miniature lines, but their main push is Magic the Gathering and Yu Gi Oh.

The third store, Critical Effect, has a really friendly staff, some nice tables, and a mellow atmosphere. Their community is small but seems very active. They have started carrying terrain and bases from a local caster, Phantom Fox. As soon as I found out this was a local concern, I purposely didn't inquire further about the creator's identity. I wanted to give as impartial a review as possible. *more*

WIP: The Furious Three

I wanted to continue posting about trying to get three Blood Angel Dreadnought variants from one Blood Angel Dreadnought box and two AoBR Dreads. The first part of this WIP is here.

I couldn't find the memory card for my Rebel this evening, so I used one of my kids' digital cameras. I had it set all wrong, and only one picture came out to the point that one could tell what one was looking at. Here it is:

The regular Furioso front plate has been added, and it fits as well as could be expected. In fact, it worked so well that I decided to hack up a second one to use the librarian faceplate as well.

EDIT: OK, I had second thoughts, and I went digging again for the memory card and found it.

So the "regular" Furioso came together nicely, and my poor dexterity with green stuff was not really evident, except for the circled part. The Dremel melted the polystyrene and created this little lip. The good news is that it's very very thin, so once it completely sets, I will just remove it with a knife.

A few spots...

needed gap filling...

here and there.

So here's another interesting thing. This is a piece that comes with the Furioso set. It's the top plate if you decide to forgo the magna grapple:

The problem is that on an AoBR dread, this piece is part of the front faceplate. So even if you had an extra one (or two) of these, it wouldn't really help in terms of money and of effort. So I took up the Dremel and grabbed the half melted faceplate of the dread that cannibalized for this project:

And I simply cut out the highlighted part. It fit quite well:

I HIGHLY recommend gluing the faceplate in place before adding the top plate. It's a bear to install after the fact.

Pretty decent, huh?

OK, I'll have more shortly after the green stuff dries.

Now, for something completely different...

I ended up putting the termagants, along with a canoness and gargoyle, into a 50/50 Pine Sol/Water solution to get rid of the rest of the little paint remnants. It worked well...I only had them in for about 1 hour, but I think the plastic may have gotten soft.

And then via Dakka Dakka, I happened upon a Deff Dred tutorial on Miniwargaming.com. This dude made these Dreds (oversized killa kanz, really) out of cardboard. While I didn't think that they were very convincing as kanz or dreds, I thought they were perfect to practice conversions and painting. Plus, my daughter likes it.

I guess I need to do something about the feet, but these aren't for anything but my own amusement.

OK, tomorrow, I'm going to prime 16 genestealers, 16 gaunts, and 5 termagants.

Painting Project 2: Stratagem Pt1

In WH40k, a stratagem is a token that represents some sort of objective in the game. In the venerable Space Hulk, there is the corpse of a space marine sitting on some sort of throne...very cool. Other stratagem are a bit more mundane: a pile of ammo, a drainage pipe, a small artifact, wreckage, etc.

These are Tyranid stratagem from the awesome warpshadow.com. A lot of gamers apparently use things like bottle caps and matchbooks, while obsessive gamers detail their little counters to museum quality.

So I was looking around my office last night, just cleaning up and watching Adult Swim, when I came upon a box full of shells that the kids collected when we went to Naples, Florida last year. They gathered a TON of shells, many of which were damaged, ugly, or both. Inspiration struck, and my plan is to use a large base and create a Carnifex fossil utilizing an extra head from the Carnifex I just completed (there were 6) and some of the shells that looked alien. There was even a little mutant crab claw in the box! The genetic material in this fossil would be incredibly valuable to interested factions - Eldar and the Xeno-haters, most likely - so this fossil as a stratagem makes a bit of sense, at least.

More this evening as I get cranked up on this.