Space Wolf Adventure: "Hunted" (part 1 of 7)

Space Wolves, Traitor Guard, and Night Lords, oh my!

Inspired by fellow hobby-blogger Thor’s recent 40K storytelling on Creative Twilight, I’ve decided to repost my Space Wolf fan fiction story, Hunted.  This is the story of Volstag Dragonclaw, a Space Wolf of the Warhammer 40K universe, a brutal but loyal Chapter of Space Marines.  He is the last member of his unit of Wolf Scouts, trapped on an icy world invaded by Chaotic Night Lords Space Marines. 

What makes this story different from all the other Space Wolf fiction out there, you may ask?  Two things: Volstag is alone, naked, and unarmed, and he’s cursed with the Mark of the Wulfen.  Not sure what that means?  Read on...

I will post one short “chapter” of the story every day for a week, leading up to the big Amazon Countdown Deal on my fantasy novel Tarnish and the related novelette The Prince of Luster and Decay.  Next weekend, May 2-4, the Tarnish ebook will be reduced from $4.99 to $0.99 and Prince will become free.  (And on Amazon UK, they’ll be 0.99 pounds and free, respectively.  Free translates the same from dollars to pounds.)  This will mean that from May 2^nd through May 4^th you’ll be able to buy FOUR of my SF/F/H ebooks for a total of only THREE dollars! 

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Disclaimer on 40K: As I said, this is Fan Fiction, meaning I have no more rights to the Warhammer 40,000 universe than any other fan of that science fiction realm.  Space Wolves, Night Lords and the like (when used to reflect these specific character-types) are all intellectual property of Games Workshop.  If you’re a 40K fan, and even if not, I think you’ll enjoy this story.  It’s packed with military sci-fi action.

HUNTED

(part 1)

  

The cold was fierce, the wind howling, the snow blinding.  It reminded him of home.

Volstag Dragonclaw drew a deep breath and released it slowly, the warmed air visible as steam from his nostrils.  Would he see the icy peaks of Fenris again?  As a Space Wolf he expected to die a thousand light-years from home but in the thick of battle, going to the afterlife with his honor intact and enemy heads in hand, trophies with which to greet his dead wolf brothers in eternity.  That was how a Space Wolf was to die.  Not like this.  He was a hunter, not prey.

Volstag looked down at the snowy forest floor several meters below.  He was seated in the boughs of a great fir tree, straddling a thick branch and leaning against the trunk.  And he was all but naked.  And though the cold gnawed at his skin, it could not penetrate it.  This was a natural environment for him, so much so that he almost felt camouflaged in it with his bare skin as pale as the snow and dark body hair breaking up his human-shaped color.  From a distance no one would notice him in the tree.  But how in the Emperor’s name did he get up there?  There was a foggy void in his memory.  His instincts, however, told him he’d not be alone there for long; they’d be looking for him.

What is my last memory? he asked himself, closing his eyes.  Behind his lids he saw the Night Lords’ laboratory: walls of metal and glass, dangling chains and glass canisters of bubbling, viscous fluids.  The sweltering humidity and dim crimson glow of the room seemed to swell and recede as he lay there, as if the entire Chaos vessel itself were breathing with him inside.  He was bound to a hot metal table, pinned there while heretical attendants in dark blue robes shuffled back and forth, preparing him for today’s round of torture. 

Then the chamber doors scraped open.  Abaenon stood in the threshold, face hidden beneath his hood, barely perceived lightning playing across the deep blue power armor beneath his robes.  The depraved apothecary thought that standing there, prolonging his entrance, would somehow heighten his victim’s fear.  It did not.  Rather, Volstag’s jaw tightened in anger and his teeth ached.  His tongue lolled impatiently against the back of his growing fangs.  He felt an unusual hunger for more than vengeance.  Abaenon finally sauntered in, pulled back his hood, and leaned in close to smile at Volstag—or what limited grin such a distorted and augmented face could manage.  One yellow eye was still flesh, the other flickered red in a skull of black bionics and glistening wet tubing. 

“Good morning,” the Night Lord said in his raspy metallic voice.  “Allow me to tickle you.”  He raised his hand and, on cue, an attendant slid on a heavy mechanical glove.  The scalpel-like blades hummed and vibrated with a bluish hue.  Abaenon’s crooked teeth showed in a one-sided sneer.

Volstag opened his eyes and the damp heat of the torture chamber vanished.  He was outside again.  His lungs filled with fresh, chill air.  His sigh was steam.  

The Claw of Agony, Abaenon had called it.  Volstag traced the crisscrossing lines on his bare chest, thin slices through hair and flesh that still burned with a quiet fire.  Even his superhuman biology could not heal these wounds.  They were scars of shame he’d bare for whatever remained of his life.  The thought angered him, and something beneath the surface of his mind stirred, its rage even greater than his own.

I was in the Night Lord’s torture chamber.  Then what happened? he wondered. 

He mentally assessed himself for pain and injuries.  Aside from the mild burn of his torture wounds, his only real discomfort was... in his teeth.  He licked his lupine fangs.  Was that the taste of blood in his mouth?  Was it his own?  He looked down at his chest again, realizing what his eyes had seen but mind had been too preoccupied to notice: there was red-brown crust under his finger nails and dry gobbets of gore in his chest hair and beard.  He remembered now the rage, the blind fury of Russ that had welled up inside him.  As the poisonous sting of blades had raked through his flesh, the torture chamber’s crimson glow had seemed to burn even brighter.  That red glow had consumed his vision just as the growing rage within him had consumed his heart, a terrible pressure that could no longer be contained.  Something inside had broken free and reached out with elongated claws and hungry fangs… 

Was Volstag Dragonclaw cursed by the mark of the wulfen?

Perhaps not a curse after all, he thought.  If it were true, if he did bear the mark, it was the beast within him that had escaped captivity.  And it might yet be by that beast alone that Volstag would avenge his fallen wolf brothers.

Another gust of wind.  His ears perked and nostrils flared.  Snow was not all that the wind carried... 

* * *

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel!

(Disclaimer: I also do not hold any rights on Bat-Time or Bat-Channel.)

New Cover Reveal: The Thorne Legacy

Using Julius Camenzind's original art for the cover, and a crash course in Photoshop from my wife, I have cropped, enhanced, and retitled the cover image for The Thorne Legacy.  And  I am 1000% happier with it!

My main issue with the previous version was that, while the image was awesome, it was too small and detailed when seen as a thumbnail, which is how you'll see it on most ebook sites.  Plus adding the black bars with the crappy titles was my idea, so I'm glad to have rectified that wrong personally.

Behold, the new, bolder, more exciting, more colorful cover of this military sci-fi, WHAM, BAM, can I cram any more descriptors into this sentence, hit!

(By the way, this SF contest finalist is only $0.99 at your favorite ebook retailer right now!)

Eldar Jetbikes: a Tactica

(image obtained from this site)

Eldar were my first 40K army way back in the 80s, and so I still felt an affinity for them when I started getting back into it 20 years later.  That continues today as I work to find the right way to play my Eldar.  In the 6th edition they have definitely become the fast, graceful but deadly army I want them to be, but each game I play is a work in progress on figuring out just how I want to play that out.  And obviously the fastest unit available, able to move 48" in a single turn, is the Eldar Windrider jetbikes.

Much of the talk online about playing them is all about using them at the end of the game to make fast grabs for objectives.  Okay, sure, they're good for that.  They are scoring troops and they move lightning fast.  But that's turn 5 or later, what about the first four-fifths of the game?  Aren't they good for something more?

(image lifted from here)

Yes, they are!  With the general increase in the Eldar stat line (originating, I think, in the last Dark Eldar codex in 2010, and making much better sense for a long-lived and more agile species), even Guardians and Bikers become somewhat elite.  And when joined by a Warlock they take on an even more expansive role.  Some of their potential uses I have found and been successful with include the following:

   * Escort duty.  Who else can accompany those grav-tanks as they bolt across the field?  If you have one unit in a single tank and it's driving deeper into enemy territory, it's a good idea to send along an armed escort.  The bikers can keep up, give the enemy someone else to shoot at, and return fire with a storm of armor-cutting shurikens.  This is especially important when you have an elite unit aboard with a specific mission in mind, like fire dragons or howling banshees.  You don't want to give them a taxi ride to oblivion, right?  Don't send them in alone, send them with back-up!

   * Drawing fire.  I've found that jetbikes make some people nervous.  Zooming around quickly like angry hornets draws attention from anxious enemies.  And if you pair the bikers with a warlock who has Conceal (fortunately their default power, so you can always go that route), they get +2 to their Jink cover saves.  So just moving with Conceal on gives them 3+ cover saves, and turbo-boosting gives them 2+ cover saves!  They zap across the board and all of a sudden the badguys are shooting at them like mad, cuz these space elves just appeared out of no where and they MUST be up to no good, so let's spend all our fire trying to kill them.  And yet the 2+ cover allows them to survive quite well while your opponent is ignoring your other units this turn...

   * Anti-Tank.  Yes, you read that right.  I just this weekend realized their great anti-vehicle potential.  I ran 4 bikers with a shuriken cannon and a spear-throwing warlock.  A singing spear is S9 against vehicles when thrown.  A shuriken cannon is S6, catapults fire a lot of twin-linked S4 shots, and all shurikens can come up as AP2, which is +1 on the vehicle damage chart.  The bikes can leap over vehicles and fire into their rear armor, which is usually AV 10.  Tank Hunters baby.  This last game they killed some armored-up sentinels and a Leman Russ by doing just that!  Then in the assault phase, they avoid retaliation by jetting another 2D6" out of the way.

   * Assist Unit.  Both in shooting and assaults, I wouldn't bet the game on the Biker unit.  They can be deadly in shooting, true, but I'd only initiate an assault if I were desperate.  Or if they were joined by an Autarch on a bike.  Dodging around and shooting guys up is one thing, diving head-first into combat is another.  A warlock's witchblade and special powers might help, but they aren't enough to bid a full-blown attack on unless the target is pretty soft.  They could be good for assisting other units, though, like in an assault.  Gaining those extra Init 5 WS 4 armor save 3+ models to help tip the scale is a good idea, but again, going it alone might not be good for them. 

Well, that's my take.  I feel like the Eldar players at large are generally underselling their jetbikers.  In an Eldar army (just like in their fluff), your units are few and elite by nature, so you have to make the most of each one.  We don't have throw-away units; or if we do, they are thrown away at high cost and their sacrifice better be worth it.  All Eldar units should be considered adaptable and able to function in various new roles.  We Eldar are an endangered species, after all, so we need to be able to cover a lot of bases!

(borrowed from here)

p.s. I also think each Windrider squad should be allowed to include a single Vyper for high-flying gun support.  Hey, Dark Angels can do it!

Astra Militarum: Captain America 40K

I've had fun in the past coming up with superhero stats for 40K (just check out the "avengers" labeled posts, though that string also led into Eldar dire avengers, just so you know).  So with the new Imperial Guard / Astra Militarum codex all the buzz, and the new Captain America movie out, I thought I'd revisit and update Cap as a Guard hero (it'll always be Impieral Guard to me, not astro-billirubinemia or whatever).

And for those sticklers, please note that this is just for fun and not meant to be taken too seriously...

Captain America: 

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
6	5	5	4	3	5	4	10	5+/3+

Super-Soldier:  Cap has Eternal Warrior, Preferred Enemy, Rampage, and Feel No Pain, as well as being Stubborn.

Inspiring Presence:  All units within 12” may use Cap’s Leadership score.  In addition, any unit he joins gains Stubborn and Preferred Enemy.

Tactician:  Your army may reroll to determine who gets the first turn.

Armored Costume:  Armor Save of 5+

Vibranium Alloy Shield:  Cap’s shield gives him a 3+ Invuln save.  He may also throw it as a ranged weapon with the following profile:

            Range 12”        S4        AP--    Assault 3, Split Fire, Stun*

* As the shield ricochets around before returning to his hand, he may Split Fire.  Any model that is Wounded but not removed by the shield throw has their Initiative reduced to 1 in the following Assault Phase. 

Shield Bash:  Cap has Hammer of Wrath when charging.  During combat, he can choose to use his shield as a weapon, thus increasing his damage but leaving him more vulnerable.  Shield Bashing in combat gives his melee attacks AP4, but reduces his invuln save to 5+ during that combat turn.

40K Flavor:  I’d have fun remaking Cap as an Imperial Super Soldier.  Rather than the American motif he could have an Aquila on his chest, probably like the carapace breastplates some Impie officer models have, plus lots of belt pouches and straps and holsters and such.  Obviously he’d have a big round storm shield with an Imperial symbol on it and probably a bolt pistol.  He’d be best joined to storm trooper or vet squads. 

Book Signing Success

My "hobby time" gets split many ways (which is why my Eldar jetbikers aren't painted yet and my first warwalker doesn't have legs yet).  Here's another way this limited time slot is spent:

 

Saturday I held another book signing on Fort Sam Houston, and it was by far the most successful one to date! Thanks to everyone who came out, whether you bought a book (or three), took a free bookmark, or just asked for directions to the bathroom. :)

This was the fourth of my on-base book sales that I've done, third on Fort Sam with the previous one held on Lackland AF Base. All have been one-day events (since I have to go to work five other days in the week), and I generally came away from the first three with mixed feelings. If you have attended or just passed by any non-superstar book signings yourself, you've probably seen the writer sitting or standing alone an awful lot. The experience can be both encouraging and discouraging, depending on how few and far between the sales and signings, or just plain conversations, may be. And if the writer has no interested parties or human contact for the last two or three hours of the day, they leave feeling pretty crappy. But not this past Saturday. That day I left with only a great sense of success and accomplishment! Saturday's sales were triple of any previous signings, spread across the entire day from set-up to tear-down, and I think there were a few key factors involved in making that happen.

One is that I have new cover art on two of my books, which look awesome. Covers definitely help sell books. If your cover looks unprofessional, readers will assume what's inside is unprofessional too. Second, getting the word out ahead of time so those interested can actually plan on attending. About half of those who bought books had already known I'd be there; the other half were spontaneous walkers-by (I think I just invented that word). And strategic site location certainly helps. There are a lot of younger readers on Fort Sam (being a training base there's quite a lot of 18-22 year olds), and of course younger folks are probably more into fantasy books than the older, retired military crowd (lot of those folks here, too).

A final tip that I think helped me, something I learned at my last signing event: A woman was checking out my books and after deciding they might be something she was interested in, she asked how much they were. When I told her, she said, "Is that all? Okay, I'll take these two." It then occurred to me that most people seeing someone selling their own books--not from a shelf in a bookstore but right there in person--probably assume the price is inflated. And to a degree, they are correct: it's much more expensive for the individual to have books printed and shipped than for the mega-publishers who are rolling out thousands at a time. We do have to charge a little more to keep from losing our shirts. However, if said self-pub author stays aware of that inherent price hurtle and is committed to keeping theirs modest, if they realize they are a humble newbie in a mega-corp world and price accordingly, they might actually sell a few more books. Right after I sold and signed those two books for her, I went into the PX and bought me some colorful sticky notes, which I then used as price tags. Stick note may look tacky but I think posting the prices for passersby to see helps bring down one perceived barrier between author and potential readers/customers; that being the idea that this person is going to charge too much, so I won't even bother to go over there.

Of course, there's also the perception that anyone who is selling their own books couldn't get really published and therefore must suck. Fortunately, this misperception is slowly fading away as readers discover they sometimes like the self-pubbed work better than those cranked out by the big publishing machines.

(Mine may not be the best possible display, but it gets a little better looking each time. My philospohy is to put colors and information out there for easy access to those stealing a peek as they go by.)

This past Saturday may well be my last on-base event here in Texas. Next month (May 3rd) I am go to appear at Dragon's Lair comics and game shop in San Antonio for their Free Comic Book Day, and I have reserved a table for the Capital City Comic Con in Austin, TX, happening July 11-13. I am also looking into getting a spot at the Texas ComiCon in San Antonio in June. As my wife so thoughtfully pointed out to me, events like these are just the kind of places I should be going, even if I have to pay to be there. While being on training bases gives me access to younger adult readers, which is certainly a big genre-reading demographic, having a booth at a Comic Book Convention is even better: everyone there is a nerd like me, so what better place to peddle my wares and meet and greet?!

If you're reading this in Texas, I hope to see you soon!

Free SF, Fantasy, and Horror Stories on Wattpad

I've recently rediscovered Wattpad and am now trying to make the most of it.  It's a totally free site for reading whatever stories its members want to post.  And I'm really amazed at what I'm seeing there!  I actually signed up on it a year ago February and just now realized it...

I've now posted six short stories and teasers that are all free to read.  (You use Facebook to sign in, I believe... But what do I know, I'm a caveman?)

So check out what I have thrown up, it's all free of charge and obligation!  If you've noticed the book covers in these margins before and been curious, now is the time to investigate and see what you like.

Here's my profile page on there where you can find the freebie reads:

http://wattpad.com/jdbrink3

Enjoy!

Sod Off! Eldar Jet Bikes WIP #2

Here's some progress pics on where my Eldar Biker Gang is headed.

The above picture shows my mohawk biker expressing himself as he zips by the enemy.  I carved down a hand and added some greenstuff to be the rest of his fingers curled over.  It works but would work better if that middle finger were longer.

Three riders awaiting paint.  They'll be green with black jackets overall.  These are made from various buts from various Ages of the Imperium (I've been in and out of Warhammer since the 80s).

 
The Rifleman.  I think of him as on the hunt for trophies with his long rifle across his lap.

The unit Warlock.  An old Harlequin High Warlock biker and an old Harlie lead canopy. He has a DE Wych weapon in hand as his singing spear and he steers the bike by sheer willpower.  This model may also double as a Solitaire or Farseer on bike as needed.

Of course, I do have THIS Farseer model.  Or warlock with witchblade, as needed.  This model is truly Frankensteined out with bits.  He's got parts from the guardian bikers, a foot-sloggin' guardian's back, dire avenger sword arm and utility belt (making up his lower back), a DE Reaver head, and a dark elf corsair's chest piece.  And his core is all greenstuff, around which his body's been built.  I like his look, overall, especially the dome head with flailing ponytail.

* * *

It's been great working on minis this week, but Real Life is starting to notice I've been missing, so I'm not sure when I'll get back to them again.  Hopefully in the coming weeks I can at least get them painted up and finished as a unit.  

DragonSlayer! An Eldar Battle Report

awesome image by eronzki999

Saturday night we played a two vs two 40K game of epic proportions: Space Wolves and Eldar vs Chaos Marines and Traitor Guard, a total of 2500 points on either side.  It was a big fight with way too much going on for me to remember it all.  Therefore, this is going to be a pretty self-centered battle report, mostly me recounting what happened with my own units.

The good guys:
   Eldar: Feugan with fire dragons in a wave serpent, rangers, jetbikers with warlock, dire avengers, swooping hawks, striking scorpions, and dark reapers.
   Space Wolves: Wolf Lord (all 295 pts of him) on Thunderwolf with a huge pack of fenrisian wolves, 2 grey hunter units in razorbacks, long fangs, wolf guard in drop pod.

The bad guys:
   CSM: Huron Blackheart with Khornate CSM, Lord on Juggernaught, 2nd unit of Khorne-marked CSM, 2 mauler fiends, defiler, cultists, heldrake.
   Impie Guard: Primaris psyker with command squad, 2 infantry platoons (lots of autocannons in here), Leman Russ executioner (triple-shot plas cannon), 3 armored-up sentinels, Guardsman Marbo.

At least those are the units as I remember them.  It was "big guns never tire" so heavies were scoring units with four objectives and diagonal deployment.  Good guys went first.

Turn One the wolfguard cowboys drop-podded next to the deflier, each packing two plasma pistols, and shot the hell out of the chaos engine--it exploded!  (The first of literally six or more exploding vehicles to come.)  And that was the start of a bloodbath of a game.  The Wolves drove up the middle while their sneaky Eldar allies zoomed in and outflanked as much as possible.  The forces of Chaos came head-on with their possessed daemon engines and the guardsmen defended the home turf while firing great volleys of autocannon rounds and searing lascannon beams down range.

In the end the forces for all that is just and right in the universe (relatively speaking) took the field with a 2 VP advantage.  Each side held an objective but the Wolf-Eldar alliance also had slay the warlord (CSM) and first blood.  The forces of Chaos were non-existent when the game ended on Turn Five, and while the Guardsmen were not going to give up their objective, had the game gone on the long fangs and eldar rangers would likely have claimed two more objectives as they gave up their shooting stances and moved out to do just that.

So now, the selfish Eldar highlights, including the coolest thing ever (at least I was excited about it)...

Jet Bikers:  I usually don't have much luck with these guys, but I beefed up the unit to 5 plus a warlock with conceal, so their jink cover saves would be pretty damn good.  They zoomed up and joined the wolves charge down the middle, shot up some chaos marines, and dodged back.  ...Then they got vector-raked by the dragon (heldrake) and assaulted by Huron's unit.  The CSM champ challenged and though the warlock flicked his witchblade out faster, he failed to kill the chaos marine, who beheaded the warlock and ate his brains, gaining the Witch-Eater chaos boon as a result of his victory.  Huron then killed the rest of the bikers. But don't they look nice charging into the fray??  Unfortunately these are my only shots of the actual battle.

Rangers actually managed to wound the big chaos baddies for change.

Dire Avengers had CSM coming at them.  They fired a volley of shurikens and killed three or four of the enemy, then fell back with their battle focus. It was a very quick-footed, Eldar thing to do, but they then took a lot of impie heavy fire and got shot to hell by the dragon's hades autocannon.  They lasted into turn three I think but didn't do much other than die.

Swooping Hawks had good intentions and I'm still confident I can put them to good use.  They deep-struck in and dropped their large blast (6 hawks = large blast) grenade bundle on the amassed guardsmen, killing 5.  Then they followed with their lasblasters in the shooting phase (wounded 6 but only got 1 cuz they made crazy cover saves), then fell back into the crater left by the exploded defiler.  A great, agile entrance.  But they they got shot to hell, leaving 2 of 6 alive come my turn again.  My plan was to have them then attack the sentinels (cuz killing light infantry and vehicles is their schtick), which I saw no choice but to continue with.  They threw one haywire grenade, hit... and I rolled a 1, so no effect.  Then they charged into melee...  And were shot down by some amazing autocannon overwatch before they could get there.  Hawks snuffed.  The end.

The Striking Scorpions outflanked and appeared by a motley crew of cultists.  They fired their shurikens into the mob and killed 2, then had to wait for the return fire (as we can't assault from reserve any more).  The cultists lined up a firing squad with their autoguns and killed 3 of the 6 scorpions, and an impie autocannon killed a fourth.  This left the Exarch with his claw and one buddy.  They fired and charged the next turn, the Exarch gutting the cultist champ in a challenge and the scorp killing another.  The cultists fought back but failed to kill anyone.  Scorps won by 2, cultists failed their morale check, and got caugt in a sweeping advance: two scorpions kill eight in one round of combat!  Then they moved into the cover of some ruins.  Just on the other side of those ruins was the Leman Russ tank who'd been blasting great bursts of plasma fire at our friends.  On their next turn, the scorpions broke from cover and assaulted the tank, the Exarch's great claw tearing a hole in the fuel tank--KABOOM!  But the exarch DIED in the explosion and the last scorp jumped and hid in the crater left behind.  This was swiftly followed by 20-some lasrifle shots into said hole.  Dead scorpion.  But they did damn good while they were alive.

And now for the grand finale, the hero of the Eldar force: Feugan, the Burning Lance, Phoenix Lord of the Fire Dragon Aspect.  I actually never liked him much in the last edition, but he's way cooler in this one.

So he and his five dragons were in the wave serpent.  The serpent first moved right and fired shuriken cannons at the Jugger Lord, wounding him where he was infiltrated.  Then they turboboosted the hover tank to the front lines.  It was there that one of the giant mauler fiends charged up, latched on, the pulled the tank apart with its claws.  KABOOM!  Two fire dragons died in the explosion, leaving Feugan and 3 more standing in the crater.  (By the end the board was pock-marked with craters.)  My turn: five melta shots at the offending mauler = KABOOM!  Another dragon dies in this explosion!  (ALL the fire dragons would die by fire this game!)   The Leman Russ tank then shot three bursts of plasma at them, burning another dragon warrior to cinders.  The chaos dragon (heldrake), meanwhile, comes out of zoom to avoid moving off the board and hovers low near by, hoping to shoot down a grey hunter on his way to claim an objective.  This is Feugan's chance, the one he's been waiting for!  He and the last aspect warrior move in.  They could have melta-blasted the hell out of the dragon's rear armor, and no doubt killed it (it had lost one hull point already), but that was NOT what I wanted.  I didn't fire a single shot.  I wanted to kill that dragon with my bare hands!!

Feugan had taken 2 wounds from Impie long-ranged fire now.  The coolest thing about Feugan this edition is his Hulk-like temper: when he gets wounded, his Strength and Attacks go up by the number of wounds he's suffered.  So now he's pissed off and looking for revenge.  And as I've never heard of anyone wringing the life from a heldrake in melee combat before, I damn sure want to make that happen.  Feugan and his disciple charge the heldrake.  He now has 7 attacks on the charge (4 base, +1 for charge, +2 for Hulking out) at S7 (S4 base, +1 for crushing blow warrior power, +2 for Hulk), and his relic weapon gives him AP1 and Armorbane.  Roll 7 attacks: 3 misses!  Crap!  But that's still 4 hits, and 3 of those are penetrating hits!  The dragon rolls his daemonic invuln saves... and makes 2 of them.  Damn!  It takes only one pen, meaning it might very well survive this attack and fly away!  But when I roll for damage...  KABOOM!  The heldrake EXPLODES!  And guess what?  Kills the last fire dragon!  Feugan alone come out of that terrible inferno, carrying the huge dragon's metal skull as a trophy!!!  

So the MVP heroes of my force were the Scorpion Exarch who dismantled a tank with scorpion claw(but died in the resulting explosion), and of course Feugan the Dragonslayer, the only 40K superhero I know of to have ever killed a Heldrake with his own hands!  (Above is my homemade conversion for Feugan using dark eldar parts--and he will soon be getting a dragon-scale cloak as well.)

It was a fun battle with lots of 'splosions.  Doesn't get much better than that.

New Cover Art for PRINCE

Check out the bad-ass new cover art for The Prince of Luster and Decay from Illustrators of the Future Contest winner Trevor Smith!!

You can see more of Trevor's awesome work here.

Remember, Prince is available as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook!

Green Hornets: Eldar Jet Bikers WIP

Another project that's been off and on for years now and I'm finally making headway: my Eldar Jetbiker Gang!  These are, for lack of a better name, the Green Hornets. 

The only real technique bit to discuss is the stripes.  I decided to make a stencil to pull this off.  As you can see from the pictures, I started with a lined indiex card to make them as even as possible. I cut the stripes out with an exacto blade. 

Then I took that template to some artists' tape (like white masking tape sticks but easily removable, thus doesn't ruin what you stick it to) and again cut the pattern free with my hobby knife.  This I could then stick to the bike canopies.  I had to make two: one each for the left and right sides. 

The end result at this stage is kind of sloppy, but I'll use black and a small brush to clean them up.  Then I just need to finish making my bikers (each model will likely be unique) and paint them up. 

I'm also working on a Green Goblin bike for the unit warlock or special character models.  I've magnetized this 80's harlie canopy and the bike frame.  Only issue is that it's so heavy.  My bases are also magnetized and the weight of the lead harlie canopy topples the thing right off the stand.  Will have to work on this (probably glue the bike to a stand instead).  I've also ordered the new smaller flying bases to replace these older, wide-ass bases.  Can't be real maneuverable with these, though for weight and stability reasons I'll probably have to keep a bigger base for the harlie bike.

More to come!

Eldar Dark Reaper Conversions: "Skeletor" Exarch

Rounding out my homemade reaper squad is my primary exarch model, probably called "Skeletor" by his peers and the playground kids he bullies after school.

My idea is that he has become such a powerful vision of Death that he psychically projects the image of a skull head for all to see.  He is equipped with a homemade tempest launcher and a dire avenger spear (for that stylish grim reaper look).  It was either the spear or a pointing finger, which I also liked, but with the big blade he is truly a vision of death.

Obviously I like taking photos and playing with them, so enjoy these group photos.  Hopefully I'll get to painting this band of reapers very soon.