This past weekend I traveled to Kansas City for the awesome Midwest Conquest Warhammer 40k Grand Tournament. I never had so much fun losing. It's a great tournament and I had more fun this year than last year but I fared far worse on the table top. Here's my army in a nutshell: 2 CADS 1 Chaos Lord on Juggernaut 1 D-Thirster - Bloodthirster 3 Units of Cultists 1 Unit of Bloodletters 4 Heldrakes with baleflamers 1 Heldrake with autocanon My army on parade.  D-Thirster ready for action. Dark Prince Adam. The drakes! I wanted my army to look like a 70s album cover. My plan was to let the heldrakes do most of the heavy lifting. They can zip around the field, go into hover mode to snag objectives, torch Marines and melt through their armor, deny jinks to Dark Angels and various Eldar... the army looks great on paper and fared well in the few test games I was able to get in but did not do well against tournament play.  As I me...

Do you know what's hard? Painting 6 Heldrakes for a major ITC event in a few weeks is hard. I had no idea how hard it is to paint a heldrake, let alone 6, but I'm giving a go. As you can see in the picture, I've got all my space dragons clipped, sanded, primed and now I have black to red gradients painted on all of the parts that need the coverage. Now, I've begun the arduous task of hitting all of the "veins" and edges of the dragons. Luckily, Leadbelcher is a base color from Citadel and I can usually get one coat coverage. I may not have time to edge highlight... At present, I have one model done and awaiting magnets, one model nearly done - but has the wings magnetized, and the rest are sitting in boxes waiting for their first coat of silver. It's taking me about 7-10 hours per heldrake just to paint the silver. Oy. After I get all of the silver painted, I plan on adding a black oil wash and then air brushing some energy spots on the balefla...

Guess who cashed in some frequent flyer miles for airfare, booked a hotel room, and bought tickets to the Las Vegas Open Warhammer 40k Championship Tournament? I couldn't be more excited! Now, to fine tune my army. Here's what I'm considering taking. 1. My Salamanders. Flame Strike formation with a First Company Task Force. In the First Company Task Force, I'm packing three Sternguard units with double heavy flamers (that are S6) and putting them in drop pods. Vulkan is my warlord and giving preferred enemy to all of the other units packing meltas and multimeltas. This list is solid all around and is great against Chaos Daemons but may fall to heavy shooting like Eldar or Tau. I also have to paint about 30 more Sallies. 2. My Astral Claws. This list features lots of bikes, a Centurion Devastator squad with boatloads of grav, a Skyhammer Assault Formation, and using the Ultramarines Chapter tactics. This is actually my first pick and I think it's the strongest ...