Still alive

Greetings all! I am giving an update to let everyone know that I am not dead, things have just been not particularly conducive for my hobbies as of late.

So what have I been doing lately? Well, there is going to be a 500 point event locally which has lit a fire under me to get things finished for at least some infantry and some vehicles going. Now, at the 500 points level they have imposed some restrictions for total armor values (front + side + rear not to exceed 33) on vehicles, no named characters, no models with 3 or more wounds, and you can only take up to 1 HQ choice (but you do not HAVE to take a HQ choice). What this means to me is that I am restricted to Chimeras, Hydra flak tanks, and most of the artillery vehicles, and that I cannot use any of the HQ choices as they all have 3 wounds for the IG HQ choices. Now with so few models on the table at this level, artillery may not be the best choice. I have decided to go with the Hydra flak tanks for their combination of range, good hitting power, and twin linked shots. Now, this gives me a problem in that I only have one flak truck made. So, digging through the models on hand I dug out 2 more ork trucks and have ordered and already received (I strongly recommend www.thewarstore.com, they are great!) the tread sections from ork battlewagons (I am keeping with the halftrack pattern I started with, just a less expensive route this time), and now I am waiting on 2 more Aegis defense line kits for their quad autocannons. So while I wait for those, I am whipping out the patterns from Dave Taylor again and making 2 more trucks, giving me a total of 3 Hydra flak trucks. Fortunately I happen to have some Sentinel cockpit sections laying around due to an armored sentinel project currently waiting on a bits order that has yet to be placed. For those that do not remember my Flak truck, here is the first one I did:



As it stands, my 500 point force will have a platoon command squad armed with 4x flamers, 3 squads with a grenade launcher and a 4th basic squad, and bolt pistols all around for the Sergeants and the platoon commander for the mandatory 1 troop choice and then 3 Hydra flak tanks for the muscle. It should be interesting to see how things go.

At the same time that I ordered those bits for the trucks, I also finally ordered the bits to make a stand in for a Sgt. Harker 'counts-as' model. I have used a cut down ork Big Shoota spliced onto a Cadian flamer arm and attached the ammo backpack as well. It looks rather like an air cooled heavy machine gun. He certainly looks like the badass trench raider I am going for. Now to figure out how to equip his squad…

I will definately be posting pictures of these projects once I get access to a camera again. In the mean time, happy modeling and gaming, may the dice serve you well.