Techpriest 7" Apoc Template, Armorcast Reaver Weapon Upgrades

Made this 7" Apocalypse template the other day at the shop since everyone was having trouble keeping track of theirs at the 1/22 big game. It looks very cool in person when the etching catches the light like a fiber optic.

I'm also working on some more weapons for the Armorcast Reaver Titan. Ever since the guys at Forge World came out with the rules for their Reaver Titans us Armorcast owners have had a bit of weapon envy.

(In case you aren't aware, the Armorcast Reaver Titan's arm weapons are the same as a Warhound Titan's. The Forge World Reaver's arm weapons are slightly down-graded versions of Warlord Titan weapons, but are significantly more powerful than Warhound weapons.)

I've already made versions of the Volcano Cannon and Laser Blaster. Since doing so most of the Apocalypse groups around the country have adopted a house rule that addresses how much more powerful the Destroyer-strength weapons are than any other weapon. The house rule reduces the template size of any Destroyer weapon to the next lower size. (10" becomes 7", 5" becomes 3", etc.) Now that we're playing with this rule, all of a sudden the other weapons become more viable. In the case of the Reaver, this makes the Melta Cannon and Gatling Blaster more useful.

Here is my initial take on the Melta Cannon. You can reference the Forge World version here. The stock (red and black) is from one of my Volcano Cannons and is used for scale because the one for the Melta Cannon will be approximately the same size. It will have the same lines and designs as the Armorcast Inferno Gun but will be bulkier.

The Gatling Blaster is the same deal. It will follow the lines of the Armorcast weapon. In addition to what you see below I will have a method to allow it to rotate.

Enjoy!

Scenery Review: Temple of Skulls, Arcane Ruins, and Urban Barricades

Boy, it sure has been a while since I've posted here. Lot's of medical issues, plus a couple of secret projects that I'm not ready to make public yet. Big thanks to MJ for keeping the home fires burning!

For some reason I got it in my mind recently to spend some money on the scenery that GW has been putting out recently. I'm a HUGE fan of the Moonscape and a firm believer that every single 40k player should own at least one set. (I have two!) The Planetscape-specific version fell a little flat due to the weird decision to use vac-forming instead of injection molding like the Moonscape, but the original is still available and awesome.

So, thanks to a gift certificate to The War Store, I got my hands on The Temple of Skulls. It is really, really cool.

It is marketed as a Fantasy Battle terrain piece, which doesn't make much sense to me. Yes, it has more skulls and less guns, but it is pretty impractical in a game of Fantasy Battle. Only skirmishers, monsters, and individual characters have any chance of making it onto the thing without falling over. The slope on the side is very steep.


It comes in a large box around the size of a starter army set. The base is one single piece and it comes with a great "skull and column" sprue for the three upright skulls and the two columns. I've painted mine in a rough limestone style that I can't keep myself from using. (I think I'll be painting the opposite side of my three 2'x4' table toppers in a similar fashion so they all match.)

The most impressive thing about the Temple is how sturdy it is. Years ago this would have been so flimsy that you wouldn't have been able to put a dragon or Land Raider on the top of it without risking permanent damage. Now, you could safely stand on it. See the following picture of the underside.

It obviously was made as a proof of concept for the design process which made the Realm of Battle boards a possibility. I'm fairly certain if the RoB had kept its rumored $200 price point that a great many more would have sold. If I could have received the internet's normal discount I'm pretty sure that I would have one by now. Having two would have made my in-house Apocalypse game setup much easier, but there's no way I'm dropping that much on it.

I was so pleased with the Temple of Skulls that I picked up the Arcane Ruins set as well. This is another set that will be very difficult to use in a game of Fantasy Battle, in which case it will probably just be impassible to any ranked unit. See below for the 'assembled' version.

Of course, it is a ruin by name and looks even better knocked over.

I've been planning to make a skull-themed table for a while, inspired by the recent battlefields featured in a few recent White Dwarf reports. The Isle of Blood was particularly nasty looking. One of the great and unmentioned things about the Arcane Ruins is that it comes with way more skulls than you could ever use on the piece itself. Below is what I had left over, perfect to be used on my project to tie everything together. That's a lot of skulls!

Even more delighted, I decided to spring for the Urban Barricades set. As you can see below, you get six barricades in the set. I have the unfortunately-discontinued Sandbags set which came pre-painted (looks like a single coat and drybrush) and flocked. I think it is some sort of light resin. This set is also resin, but unpainted. It has a much higher level of detail, though, including a crashed Space Marine bike. Unlike pretty much everything else mentioned in this review, these really need painted before use, especially the one with the bike. There are a wide variety of textures and they don't look very good in the default grey resin.

I painted the bike in a non-descript color, added some metallics and rust here and there, and now they look great.

So, to cut to the rankings: (With a Moonscape at a 10/10.)

• Temple of Skulls: 8. Less useful as a Fantasy Battle terrain piece, but very, very sturdy and nicely detailed.
• Arcane Ruins: 7. Not as nicely detailed as the Temple, but the abundance of extra skull bits helps a lot.
• Urban Barricades: 7. Nice off-the-shelf, impressive if painted.

For the money, the Moonscape is still the best bet. Every player needs a set, and the price is low enough that everyone should have one. If you are thinking about a second Bastion, I'd recommend the Temple of Skulls instead. It might make a good, albeit small Landing Platform (if protected by chaos magics, that is).

Next time, notes about joining in the Biggest Apocalypse Game in the World!

"What is 40k to You?" - Ron Saikowski

Ron over at FTW recently posted THIS blog entry. It is Ron's version of where he "stacks up" in this hobby, and is based on an article Jervis Johnson wrote in White Dwarf #354 (US).

I found this post rather intriguing, and decided it would be interesting for me to sit down and think about where I "stack up" in this tabletop miniature wargames hobby of ours. Plus, I'm not too shabby with spreadsheets and making 3-D pie charts, so bonus for me.

Problem is, when I finally sat down to map-out my 40k hobby, I realized it wasn't so easy.

My first thought was, "I'm mostly into this game for the playing aspect and the 'hanging out with friends' part of it." So I slapped a 66% into the 'gaming' item and a 20% in the 'camaraderie' item.

Hmmm... Doesn't leave too much space for all the other aspects of the hobby. So before moving on, I dropped the 'gaming' down to 50%.

Still, 30% for modeling/painting and collecting and background?

I'm not a huge fan of the painting side of things, but it IS fun. I do love me some fluff. And to a certain extent, I do enjoy the collecting side of things a bit, but I'm not the type that just must absolutely have at least one full-sized squad of every choice in a codex (although I do believe I have hit that mark with my Eldar collection...).

Still, 30% combined for modeling/painting and collecting and background?

So I had to scale back again. Thinking about it some more, long and hard, I realized I *mostly* like this hobby for the playing and camaraderie parts, but do really enjoy the other elements more than I initially thought. In fact, I'd go so far as to say *almost* as much as the gaming/chumming parts.

So in the end, I scaled the playing and camaraderie parts back to 55% combined, and doled out the other 45% to the other 3 parts in equal measure.

Imagine that. My first hunch was that I predominantly liked the playing/hanging-out parts, but when I put some numbers to it, I actually realized that I like the parts of the hobby that one (generally) does alone more than I realized.

Ron (and Jervis), nice exercise in making me truly think about where I "stack up" in this hobby.

So, as Ron put it, "What is 40k to You"?

40k to me is: