Memorial Day

It's that time of the year again where I get drunk and sappy.  I spent 8 years in the US Army, including 2 deployments.  I lost a lot of good friends, so this holiday brings up a whole slew of crazy emotions.  Anyways, I have actual stuff to post, but that will be during the week.  Until then, here is my Platoon's video from our 2007 - 2008 deployment to Afghanistan.  Thanks for bearing with me today, and remember it's not Veterans Day today, it's Memorial Day.  Thank those who gave their all, and not those of us who lived.

Well, it's the weekend.

First off, here are some pictures from the Beerhammer 40k game at my house a couple of weeks back.  I have been forgetting to post them, so sorry about that.  These were taken as we were cleaning up, so there aren't many models on the table.  All of the containers from the drinking are still there though, giving you a rough idea of how we used them as terrain to block vehicles and shooting.  What we should have done though is taken a count of all of the shots we took to reroll, haha.  That's what ended my sobriety.  You could take a shot of anything to reroll something, and on average there was about 3 shots taken per team, per player turn.  We literally finished off a bottle of vodka, and a little absinthe as well.  Rough night.  Anyways, here are some other angles of the battle.  The board isn't finished, but since I am moving across town next months, I haven't felt like working on it just for it to get messed up in the move.  I'll do more once I'm all settled in.

On to other news, I have been painting as much as I can lately, so I should have some nice pictures of all of that to put up shortly.  I have been focusing purely on my Dust stuff, since I am waiting for the new Chaos Codex to drop before I put any more Chaos models together.  Don't want to build them all with weapon A when weapon B becomes AMAZING!  I hate painting flesh, but it has been a good exercise for me in it, since I generally try to avoid it at all possible times.

On a more somber note, however, today marks the 5 year anniversary of the death of a great friend.  His name was Juan Restrepo, and we served together in Battle Company, 2/503rd (ABN), 173rd ABCT while in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan.  He was a great friend, an amazing battle brother, and the best damn medic I ever worked with.  There isn't a day that goes by where I don't think of him, and no matter what happens, I'll never forget him either.  No matter what you think of the wars, or of soldiers, please just respect the sacrifices some people have made.  DTV brother, I'll see you again one day.

This is a picture of us in Afghanistan, a few weeks before he was killed.

Anyways, I'm fairly drunk, so take care and stay tuned for less depressing stuff, and more models!

Random news and a Beerhammer update!

So to start with the news, I am as giddy as a little school girl over the fact that the new Chaos Codex is looming right around the corner.  I have a cool $1k put aside to apease the Gods when that one drops.  But what to do with the other chugnk of money I recently aquired?  Well, I WAS going to buy a Reaver Titan, but a good friend talked me out of it.  Instead, I bought a BUNCH of other random goodies.  More info below, as well as Beerhammer 40k Version 1.1!!!!!

Beerhammer 40k, Version 1.0

So I have finally sat down and hashed out the rules for this.  I have played it in the past, and I know there is another blogger who wrote something similar, but I can't remember who.  I used some inspiration from a Dakka Dakka post that google found, but here is what I came up with.  Feel free to use these, and add any suggestions in the comments section.  As my friends and I play more, I will actually be updating these every once and a while to stay current, fun, and mildly dangerous.

Drinking and painting equals...

Stripping models!  So yeah, priming and painting drunk may not be the best idea.  My proof is my Cygnar army.  I have about 30 some odd models that I am in the process of stripping and washing off.  Tons of fun.  When drunk, I screwed up in way too many ways:

-Used WAY too much primer on the models
-Primed in my garage while it was raining, so the humidity made everything fuzzy
-then sponged on rust colors, and went straight to sponging on liquid latex, without varnishing first.  This meant that the latex REALLY got a firm hold in between all the ridges of the models that the fuzziness created
-Next morning while hung over, I convinced myself I could fix it.  How?  By putting MORE paint on the models.  4 layers to be exact.  And wash. 

So after wasting a few hours and a bunch of paint, I had to go out and buy Purple Power to fix it all.  Most of the models are stripped to the metal, which is nice, but I still have a few left and then I get to start all over.  Yay me.  So, lesson learned.  Maybe.  And by maybe, I mean probably not.

Sunday Hangovers...

So this is basically all I actually got done this weekend...FML.  I was busy yesterday with a birthday celebration for my wife's friend.  It was going to be at a bowling alley, so I thought it wouldn't be that crazy, except it turned out that the bowling alley was on the third floor of a nightclub.  Needless to say, I got drunk.  Very drunk in fact.  Now I have no motivation to do any modeling or painting today.  I just want ice cold water.  But here is how the water effect came out with the darker color over the lighter one.  Kind of a cool effect, but not one I will probably mimic on the other two.  I don't know how I really feel about it yet to be honest.