Selling my Mechanicum

     I haven't posted in a while, and too be honest, I don't really have any enthusiasm to post still.  The 40K community, and in most regards the gaming community in general, has turned very negative and jaded over the last few years, and has been draining my motivation to participate in it.

     With that being said, I am selling my Forge World Mechanicum army that I have been working on since they were first released.  Below you will find pictures showing the state the models are in.  It's a total of almost $1700 of models, and I am looking to try and make back only $1000 of that.  This is being sold as a lot, and I only accept PayPal or Cash for anyone who happens to want to come to Colorado to buy it in person.  I'm trying to avoid eBay since they will take a huge portion of the sale in fees through both eBay and PayPal.

Archmagos Draykavac
Magos Dominus with Rad-Cleanser
Mechanicum Thallax Cohort x4 sets, 2 regular sets, 1 Photon Thruster set unbuilt, 1 Multi-melta set unbuilt
Castellax Batlle-Automata x5, 4 standard, 1 with Multi-Melta
Tech-Thrall Covenant with Las-Locks x20
Tech-Thrall Covenant with Mitralocks x10
Vorax Battle-Automata x3
Thanatar Siege-Automata x2
Mechanicum Myrmidon Destructors x3
Mechanicum Krios Battle Tank x3
Triaros Armoured Conveyor Unbuilt
Titan Tech Priest
Servitors x4

Anyone interested can post below or email me at damnthevalley@gmail.com

Quick note about stripping !!!!

Whenever I need to strip models of their paint, I use an engine degreaser called Purple Power.  I pick it up in the automotive section at Wal-Mart, and it usually strips the paint off of my models within a few hours.  I have left resin, plastic, and metal models in it for days on accident before, and no matter the amount of time it did no damage to the models.  It really is the end all be all for me.

That being said, it does very little to X-Wing models.

I have soaked my Scum and Villany fleet in the stuff for two days, and a few colors come off, as do certain seemingly random parts of paint from the ships, but a large majority of the paint only sees a mild fading effect.  I'm just going to go forward with the project at this point, since I don't think that anything that is still on is going to effect the final outcome much, but it's really frustrating to see two days of waiting amount to almost nothing.  As I get them started, I'll be sure to post pictures.  

X-Wing time!

So I follow quite a few painting blogs, and I came across this gem about a week ago from Den of Imaginations Facebook page.  I'm a HUGE Star Wars fan boy, and the repaints they did on some ships for the recently added Scum and Villany faction got me excited and thinking about trying it myself.  So with that in mind, I of course dove right in!

I've managed to pick up a few ships to start out, and played a demo game of X-Wing at my FLGS to provide myself with at least a limited frame of reference when researching popular builds.  After the few games I tried, I absolutely love the game and feel rather secure in my purchase.  I didn't really know what to do with the new ships though, since my experience was limited to the X-Wing and the TIE Fighter, so I looked for some lists to try out and came across this article on Fantasy Flights website.  It seemed sound enough, so I built the lists using Army Builder and bought a few more ships to fill out my roster.

I haven't picked out a color scheme yet, but I'm thinking of using a slate grey with a bright color to contrast it, most likely a green or an orange.  I've searched around on google as well, and there are a lot of pictures to reference with what everyone else has done, so I'm sure I'll figure out something.

That aside, I have been very sick and haven't really accomplished much in the scope of models or gaming.  A bunch of my friends are jumping into Guild Wars 2, so I figure I'll give that a try, and my DM for D&D is finally getting back from a 2 month trip to Africa, so hopefully I'll be able to dust off my character and continue to kill some baddies with those guys.  Once I get all my ships primered and base coated, I'll be sure to post some pictures up here for everyone.

Legion Gal Vorbak and Dragon Ball Xenoverse!

So my Legion Gal Vorbak from Forge World came in, and they are a perfect example of the aesthetic that GW in a whole needs to follow for possessed Marines.  Each one has some very interesting transformations, and their isn't symmetry with everything on the model.  One side of the power pack is fine, while the other side may be mutated, etc.  It's the little things that sets these apart from their GW counterpart.  That being said though, I really wish they were a bit more poseable, which would help for those intending to buy more than one pack of the models.  It will take a lot of work to make them look different if I decide to get another 5 in the future.

On the video game front, I have been hooked on the latest thing to be dropped in the DBZ franchise, Dragon Ball Xenoverse.  It's available on the next gen consoles, as well as on Steam for those Master Race users (like myself, haha).  The premise of the game sets it apart from all of the other DBZ games, where it starts with Trunks needing help to fix the timeline that is being changed somehow, so he uses the Dragon Balls to wish for somebody strong enough to help him fix it.  That's where you, the player, come in.  You get to make your very own character, picking your race and everything, and then you start out as a very weak nobody who is helping the Time Patrollers, a group of fighters who patrol through time and try to stop anyone from messing with the time line.  You go through alternate timelines from the DBZ storyline, and you fight through slightly altered stories and try to get them back to their original.  Aside from that main storyline, you can also play Parallel Quests that are based off of the original story, but you're fighting from a different point of view, such as Hercule's vision of how things turned out, or that of the various villains of the series.  You also level up your character, raise your stats, get better gear, etc., so it has a very MMO feeling to it.

The game is very solid, with two key things keeping it from being "great" in my opinion.  The first is one that they are working on fixing, and the problem is that the servers crash all the time.  You can play offline if you want, and all of your progress gets loaded to the servers when you connect again, but you don't have the option outright to just play offline.  You have to either disconnect your computer from the internet manually, or they have to close their servers on their end.  It gets very annoying.  The second problem is that the game isn't as balanced as it should be.  Players who make Saiyan characters get four different versions of the Super Saiyan ability, while none of the other races get their tranformation abilities, such as Majin transforming or Freeza Race being able to switch between their forms.  With Super Saiyan being such a strong ability, it puts Saiyan players leaps and bounds ahead of the others.  This is something that they company behind the game says is being fixed in future DLC, but in the mean time it gets frustrating in the late game since I'm playing a Freeza Race charctarer (and yes, that's literally what they decided to name the race to which Freeza belonged).

All of that aside, I have made quite a bit of progress on Curze and Sevetar, and once I get pictures I'll post them up.  

Star Trek Online, and some WIP shots

So I'm going to start this out with a blanket statement that I am not really a huge fan of the Star Trek TV shows.  I watched a lot of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine in my younger years, but I honestly attribute that to being a huge Sci Fi fan and not having anything else on TV at that time, and the fact that I was living on a military base overseas and AFN only had like 2 or 3 channels back then anyways.  That being said, I am actually a HUGE fan of Star Trek Online.

My brother and his friends have been playing this game for a while now, and I finally caved in and downloaded it.  It's a Freemium game from Perfect World Entertainment, who has a near perfect track record of being buy to win with online games.  This one isn't too different in that regard, but I like it enough that I am actually willing to over look that issue, for now at least.

You start the game by picking one of three allegiances, Federation, Klingon, or Romulan (who end up joining either the Feds or Klingons at level 10 anyways), and are quickly immersed in the two different aspects of the game: ground combat and space combat.  The ground combat is really nothing exciting, running fairly decent graphics but a physics engine that feels lack luster and clunky.  The space combat though is where I am invested in this game.

There has not been a huge amount of space combat games that I have liked in the last decade or so.  Eve is cool and all, but I like to physically control my ship while fighting others.  The Star Wars MMO has a realllllllly fun space PvP system, but I can't stand to play the game because it feels like you're getting punished severely for not giving them money.  The combat and ship building systems in Star Trek Online though have cured my itch.

You unlock larger classes of ships as you level in this game, which makes sense, and you also unlock different crew and bridge officers that help you in various ways as you complete missions.  You can equip what ever types of weapons you want on your ships, which all have different damage types like energy, plasma, etc, as well as each having different ranges and firing arcs.  This lets you build the ships to your play style, and gives you the option to play a high risk, high reward type of gaming by putting a bunch of strong, 45 degree - 90 degree firing arc weapons on your ship and hoping nothing gets stuck behind you.

Aside from all of that, I have actually managed to get some painting done as well.  Mostly just base painting and some layering with my airbrush, but check out what I have so far.  These are all work in progress shots, so hopefully I'll get some finished shots up soon as well.

My three Avenger Strike Fighters that I have to support my Mechanicum.

A closer shot showing the airbrush work I have done so far.  Needs a lot of detail still, but it's coming along nicely.

I am also working on some Night Lords models, probably not as a full army, but I loved the Sevetar and Curze models so much that I just had to buy them and get them painted.  Only have a few colors down at the moment, but I'm loving it so far.

Well, that's it for now.  As I get more done on the models I post more pictures.  Stay classy internet, and if any of you cool kids out there have video game suggestions, feel free to post them below and I'll check them out.

Often over looked tool in my work space

Yes, Woodland Scenics Latex Rubber is a God send, although it does smell fairly awful.  I use it for masking things on about 3/4 of my projects, and the best part is that a jar of it lasts a LONGGGGGGGGGG time when you're using it for modeling.  I slap it around wherever I want to mask, let it dry, then airbrush the hell out of everything all willy nilly.  When the paint dries, I use a dental pick to get a solid grasp on the Latex, pull, and viola!  It looks like I took my time when I really didn't.  Currently I'm using it to mask off the base on my Konrad Curze that I picked up from Forge World, since they were so kind to sculpt him onto the wall...(would have really loved to paint him separate and pin him on, but nooooooo).

Anyways, after tonight I should have my projects base painted and then I'll try to toss some pictures up.  I also downloaded Star Trek Online, since I hear so many people talking about it these days, so maybe I'll write a review of that some time in the near future as well.

Check out this game, Invicta

A good friend of mine has been working on a RTS called Invicta.  It's set in a Sci-Fi universe, and allows users to switch between RTS and First Person Shooter as they want.  It still has a ways to go, but is a LONG way past where he started.  Check out this video, and give him a like on youtube if you like what you see,

Other than that, I am still slogging away at my Admech army.  Lots and LOTS of taping while airbrushing, which sucks, because it takes longer to tape the models than it does to paint them :(

Horus Heresy: Drop Assault launched yesterday on Android

I've been following this game on Facebook for a while now, and a few of my friends had it on their iPhones (since it launched early on the iTunes store), so I was pretty excited when I got an email yesterdat stating that it had finally launched on Android.  I picked it up shortly after, and had a pretty good time playing it while laying on my couch.

In a broad comparison, it's very similar to Clash of Clans, or just about every other base defense game on the market.  You start by getting a brief description of what's going on in the Galaxy, Istivaan III, etc, and then you're asked if you want to be a loyalist or a traitor marine.  Pretty cool so far, right?  I chose to be a traitor, and then right away Angron comes on my screen all angry like and what have you.  You go through the basic tutorial, and you get the sense quickly that it requires quite a bit more strategy than other games in it's genre that I have tried.  There a lot of different support features, such as orbital strikes, virus bombs, and a slew of other cool toys to play with, but the main one that stands out is an ability that lets you control your troops after they have been deployed.  It may not seem like a big deal, but for those of you who have played other games in the genre, you usually just drop your dudes in and hope to God for them to do kinda what you were thinking.

Now, the game does have a micro-transaction store to it, and like every other game similar to it, you use the in game credit to speed things up instead of waiting 5 minutes for your troops to build, or 3 hours for your building to upgrade, so nothing new on that front.  At the low levels, a few dollars goes a LONG way, but the cost escalates quickly.

All said and done, I'm pretty happy with where the game is, and while their are a few moments where the game bugs out on me, nothing game breaking or major has happened so I can deal with it.  If I had to rate this on a 5 star system, I'd give it a solid 4 stars, but a lot of that might have to do with me being a 40K fan boy at heart. 

So what have I been up to?

Wasting away in Diablo 3, as well as World of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm.  Blizzard somehow has a strangle hold on me to where I have to play all of their crack all the time (except Hearthstone, because if I wanted to buy cards nonstop to win, I'd play Magic).  Season 2 in Diablo 3 has started, and every time I get ranked on the national ladders and go to bed, I'm back down several hundred spots by morning.  Well played Blizzard, well played.  Add to that the fact that I destroy solo level 34 Greater Rifts on my Demon Hunter, but keep getting screwed with horrible RNG on level 35 rifts, it gets really frustrating.

That aside, I have been doing a LOT with Admech, both modeling and reading.  I finished the Priests of Mars series from Black Library, and it is absolutely amazing!  It has quite a few different character types it follows, from the witty Rogue Trader, the obsessive Eldar Farseer, to your rarely discussed in previous books Skitarii Magos even!  Space Marines, Admech, Titan Legions, it has everything!  It has also fueled my need to work on my Admech army that I have been blowing money on regularly (thanks Forge World...dicks), and I'm actually waiting for paint to dry right now on some models while I type this.

Finally, my play group and I have been knocking out some campaigns with D&D 5th edition, which is MILES above where 4th edition was, but we have had to take a break while our DM spends some time in Africa...  We managed to switch to Twilight Imperium to kill time on our game nights though, and that has actually been working out great.  It takes a while to set up, and even longer to play, but once people start texting each other secret plans and alliances, it gets interesting.

Now, as I had mentioned previously, I have 2 auctions up on eBay for those of you looking to score some SWEET deals.  The first one is my half painted and heavily converted Lamenters army that I was working on.  It has LED headlights in the Razorbacks, custom shoulder pads from Shapeways, everything!  With all I have been doing for my Admech though, and all the stuff that keeps coming out for them, it's impossible to focus on two large projects.  Since Forge World and GW only want to make stuff for one of the two, I choose Admech.

The second listing I have is for my Fantasy Endtimes Glotkin army that I bought,  Everyone at my FLGS swore up and down that they were going to play Fantasy, so I bought this army because I thought the models looked awesome.  Long story short, nobody else ended up following through on that idea.  So yeah, it's for sale now.  I base coated the big models, but most of it is still in boxes.

Anyways, by now the paint on my models should be dry, so back to my airbrush, but keep an eye out for more posts, rants, pictures, and what not from me.

Under Construction, pardon my dust

So yes, I haven't posted in a while.  A lot has changed in the last two years or so.  I've become burnt out on playing wargames in general, but I still collect and paint.  I also play a lot of games on my computer, because I'm a nerd.

I've thought about this a lot, and what I have decided is that I am going to focus on the broader idea of gaming.  Board games, video games, card games, I want to cover it all.  I mean, come on, what's the point of calling this "ADHD Gaming" if I focus on only one facet of gaming?

So with that in mind, please bare with me as I get everything up to date and looking new, and hopefully get a new writer or three to help me out as well.  Thanks.

- DTV