Eldar Pegasus Scratchbuild

Tim Hicks has posted a step by step of an amazing Eldar scratchbuild. It's the Pegasus super heavy.

It's enormous.

 

 

Check it out at Graven Games.

Whoa! (Necron Apocalypse thingie)

Courtesy Jason M.

Wow. That's pretty cool. So along with this and the Khorne Wheelchair thing, I guess we are headed straight into a summer of overpriced Apocalypse models. If the Wraithknight is $115.00, what would these be? Are we entering a new price tier? $150? $200?

Games Workshop Punishes Their Vendors for Being Naughty

This one absolutely blew my mind, and I didn't realize this happened. I've been a defender of GW's free market tactics from the beginning. I've always been of the mind that they work for their shareholders, not their customers. Other companies actually use good public relations to further that responsibility, but I can't fault GW since no matter how much they hike their prices, people buy more and more even while complaining.

But this made me to a double take...

Epic Contest Results and Pocket 40k

Nope

So I had a "little" contest (heh heh) to give away a slew of tiny epic marines and Land Raiders. Now, A little background about my giveaways:

Phenomenal Baneblade/Warhound

This is an interesting thing...something that blew me away. I saw it on Apocalypse 40k, but it has a long provenance prior to that.

More than meets the eye.

The gentle hammer, or GW and their C&Ds.

So as you know, GW and the community have suddenly hit this crazy perfect storm of conflict. People are suing each other, DCMA notices are flying around, and GW is seriously locking down their intellectual property. I would put links to the Chapterhouse thing, but if you don't know the story by now, consider it a bullet dodged.

Anyway, I understand why GW is hurling out cease and desist letters like Pez out of a cartoon character's trachea, but I was really surprised to find out how far they were going.

Hive Zero Epic Giveaway!

This is the dumbest graphic I've ever created.

So in "honor" of Games Workshop discontinuing all of their Specialist Games, I've decided to pack it in and give away my small collection of Epic-scale Space Marines. [READ ON]

40k Meta has gone insane

First, there's the BoLS outage.

Then there's the Faeit212 craziness.

And now there's the Battlefoam/BoK backfire. (It's worth a read).

All of a sudden, we have three insane incidents all just waiting for conspiracy theorists.

It was bound to happen. 40k has reached critical mass. Adepticon is bursting at the seams, there are more and more people getting into manufacturing ancillary products, and suddenly you have a powder keg of supply, demand, competition, and fickle consumers. You have an audience of customers that are very opinionated, web-saavy, and smart, yet they, as a rule, lack certain social restraint (that is my anecdotal observation, and besides, it's all opinion anyway) one one side, and you have a veritable monopoly in terms of brand on the other. While everyone had a common enemy (GW) when this was a niche hobby, the community is now flush with revenue, and we are feeding off of each other, GW included.

So what are some options? Wait until the next post.

The State of the Faeit

Straight from Faeit's mouth to your ears.

YOUTUBE LINK

No reason for me to even comment on this...he just lays it out. Oh, and this is also an ad for BTP's Valhalla thing. But the significant thing is Faeit.

UPDATE: Bell of Lost Souls down and Faeit 212 is gone!

UPDATE: BoLS is back, as are the conspiracy theory trolls. Take a look at their forum. Sheesh.

Loken at Apocalypse 40k has a brief report about several prominent 40k sites that are hosted by Google being down.

Here's the post.

The DCMA is a weird and powerful thing, and its abuses are well documented. It's still too early, in my opinion, to positively blame GW for these sites going down, but it doesn't look good.

I'm not a kneejerk guy, so I won't be immediately selling off all my Warhammer 40k stuff, but then again, what are you really saying about yourself if you support a company that takes such a heavy handed approach to their tiny niche audience?

Again, it's still a bit too early to know what's happening, but it should be an interesting week.

Click on the title of this post and scroll down to comment. All of BoLS' discussion forums are still working fine, as is, of course, their Facebook page.

TL;DR: 40k in a Non 40k World

Neither of these people are James.

James Hildebrand has written a very funny short essay about being a closeted Eldar player in high school. He's a student at Amherst, and I believe he has stopped playing, at least as of this writing. It's lighthearted and leads into a lovely overall message about doing things just for the sake of doing them. But there was something else in the article that got me thinking.
[Read On]

Adepticon 2013 Part 2:The Haul and The Find

Illustration by Taytonclait on Deviant Art.

I went on quite a shopping spree at Adepticon this year. The new separate vendors' room made it simple to keep orbiting the tables and finding more and more stuff to "need". Of course, I spent too much at Forgeworld, but I was restrained enough to not buy any Black Library...simply not enough hours in the day for casual reading.

[Read More]

Adepticon 2013 Part 1: My favorite army, Despicable Me

So I'm noticing that more and more people are blogging about Adepticon, so much so that any sort of summary on my part would be redundant and incomplete. So I thought I'd take the next few posts just to talk about some of the fun stuff I found there. I'm sure even these personal thoughts will be covered elsewhere, but, well, on with it!

I wanted to show you my absolute favorite army I've seen since I started attending Adepticons.
[read on]

Adepticon is upon us. Let's meet!

From Adepticon 2010

OK, folks. This is simply an FYI post. For the past few years, I've been taking a LOT of pictures at Adepticon. I tried to get a picture of every display board the first year, but I gave up fairly early even though there were under 300...it was just too hard to navigate through the crowds. Here are some shots.
[READ MORE]

Space Hulk for PC walkthrough

YOU TUBE

The video is painful to sit through, but it does provide in-game footage. I'm excited to play this.

Forgeworld Mechanicus units up for preorder

Oh My. Here's the page.

The Thallaxii are heavily augmented cyborg shock-troops used by the Mechanicum Ordo Reductor, and they differ from the Skitarii regiments both in purpose and the unique degree of their augmetics. The Lorica Thallax was developed from power armour technology and requires a robust human specimen.

The Lorica encloses the major organs, nervous system and cerebrum, but entirely replaces the skeletal structure and limbs with armoured bionics powered by an internal reactor-core. Surgical excision of the subject’s pain sensors, emotions, and normal human sensory apparatus and the agony caused by the Lorica’s implantation, leaves the Thallax a cold, calculating killing machine (albeit one that retains a degree of independent thought).

To some among the Mechanicum, this operation skirts the edge of abomination, yet the baleful Ordo Reductor continue Thallax conversion regardless; using suitable Forge Guard, fallen Skitarii, and other subjects obtained from more mysterious sources.

Ramifications of GW's New Dealer Policy

Back in 2011, I wrote an inexcusably long article about GW's business practices (opens in new window). This was actually written for another site, but I moved it here because it died.

At the time, GW was doing its semiannual price hike, and I was really sick of the Internet grousing. I was accused of setting up strawman arguments, but all of my points were culled from the meta. I was fairly defensive of GW's business practices (to a point).

But this week, they did something that I think may actually hurt them. Not in an Internet public relations sort of way, but an actual economic misstep. [read more]

PICS Forgeworld Necron Scenery + Flyer = Inspiration

So Forgeworld has put out two new items for Necrons today, and more than the expected red alert it has created in my wallet, I'm experiencing something I haven't felt in a long time: inspiration. [Read on...]

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".
[read more]

Why you should not go to DragonCon

See this fine-looking chap? His name is Edward Kramer, and he's a bonafide, out and out pedophile. And guess what? He is a co founder of DragonCon. The simple summary would be that he has successfully delayed going to jail for a decade by funding a legal maneuvering campaign through his share of DragonCon profits. And the corporation that organizes DragonCon can't seem to quite shake off this gentleman. [read more]