Showing posts with label Cities of Death League. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cities of Death League. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 3

More Tournament Terrain Building

Have you ever tried to get things ready for a 50 man tournament? Well, make that 70 players and you know what guys here at the Istvaanians are going through! This year, the Battle for Stones River tournament is going to be on the Games Workshop GT circuit. In addition to that we've decided to move the event to a larger venue and add 20 more players! Last year all 50 spots were filled in just over a month!

In order to support these extra 20 players, that means we have to build and furnish ten more tables complete with terrain. That's 60 square feet of new terrain that has to be built! In Boltergeist's earlier post here, you saw all of the hills that he cut out that still have to be flocked and painted. What you didn't see were all the ruined wall sections that were also built to go with them. But even with all that, there's still more to do! We got about $500 worth of Cities of Death Terrain to build, base, flock, and paint!

5 Imperial Sectors and 2 Basilica Administratums equals one big city of death!

I took on that task and over the last week I managed to get all of the main sections of the building built and glued to the bases. I started out by clipping all the pieces off of the sprues and sorting them into the five big Cities of Death boxes. I made one box for the floors, one for the accessories, and one each for the building pieces except the Basilica Administratum pieces. Since our ten new tables are going to be desert themed, we decided to use as much of the Adeptus Mechanicus pieces as we could for those tables. After clipping and sorting all the parts, I cleared my living room floor and began to lay out the pieces for all of the buildings. Each of the buildings are made from eleven individual pieces from the different Cities of Death kits.

One of the Imperial Sector boxes full of nothing but floor sections.

Once everything was sorted and place into bags, I used a power sander to quickly remove any of the flash and mold lines from the pieces. From there it was just a matter of sitting down with my bag of parts and assembling all 22 of the buildings. With all the pieces prepped and sorted it really didn't take long to get all of them built. In fact I could have done them all in one day if I wanted. The buildings were then each glued to one square foot pieces of hard board and left to dry overnight.

Waiting for the glue to dry on 22 square feet of Cities of Death terrain. All laid out on my living room floor!

And that brings us to where I'm at now. I still need to make a ruined corner section to go on the opposite side of each piece of hard board to give the illusion of an entire ruined building. Then all that's left to do is add some sand to the bases, prime, and paint!

This still isn't all of it though. There are enough pieces left to make another ten or so buildings. And I've also cut up close to 100 feet of 1/2 inch PVC pipe into 6 inch pieces to make more terrain with. All of it still has to be glued, primed, and painted as well.

And to copy Boltergeist's previous post, here is all the information for this years Battle for Stones River!

Battle For Stones River (BFSR) is now on the GW Tournament circuit, and we have expanded both our venue and player maximum. 70 players can now attend! Registration began January 1st, 2012 through our FLGS Grand Adventures. The complete info is:

  • Tournament Date: February 25, 2012; check-in begins at 8:30am CST
  • Points Level:  1863  (The year of the Battle of Stones River during the American Civil War)
  • Rounds: 4, with a 2 hour time limit per game
  • Location: Lane Agri-Park Community Center, Murfreesboro, TN
  • 70 players max
  • $30 entry fee; lunch is included! 
If you are interested in learning more about the local battle that inspired the tournament, see the following links:

Stones River National Battlefield
Wikipedia

Next time you go to a tournament, take a moment to thank the tournament organizers and store owners for all their hard work. Most of us don't do this for the money, in fact we pay for some of this stuff ourselves. We do this because we want to, and because we enjoy it. And because we're a little crazy, too!

Tuesday, August 9

Cities of Death Tournament & League: Results and Photos

Well, we didn't have as big of a turn out as we hoped for, but we still had a great event at Grand Adventures this past weekend! I was there to help out AirmanG and run a ringer army if needed. And we needed one! We had hoped for around 15 - 20 people, but only 5 showed up. Since the tables were already set up, we decided to go ahead and throw down! After the first round, AirmanG and I made the decision to start moving terrain from the tables we just played on to the next row of tables. This allowed us to make the table match the Alpha, Gamma, Omega style missions that Bossman had wrote for us and gave the tourney a more fluid feel. No one played on the same table twice. By the third round, I had to pick a deployment zone based on whether or not I could fit my Land Raider on the table! In the end, the 7 of us had a great time and between the tourney and the league winners, $130 in prize support was given away!!! Here are the results in order:

  • Tourney 1st Place ($30) Kevin D. with Dark Eldar
  • Tourney 2nd Place ($20) League 1st Place ($50) Patrick G. with Iron Hands Space Marines
  • Danny C. with Deathwing Dark Angels Space Marines
  • Brendan with Dark Eldar
  • David D. with Salamanders Space Marines
  • Ben B. with Grey Knights Space Marines
  • Note: League 2nd Place ($30) Damon B. with Grey Knights
First Place Tourney Trophy with One of the Winners Venom Squads


First Place League Trophy with One of the Winners Iron Hands Squads






And here are ton of photos taken by David. Check out the terrain! Thanks for the photos, David!


















Wednesday, July 6

Cities of Death league

Just a note to let you know the first week results for the Cities of Death League are up on the appropriate page.  Check it out!  Photos will come next week.  (Sorry, forgot the camera last week)

Saturday, June 25

Quick and Dirty Guardsmen!

So everyone else is showing off their newest army project, I felt a little left out.  I have always loved the Imperial Guard since I first started playing oh so many moons ago.  I had a pretty extensive metal guard army with a huge mix of Cadians, Catachans and Mordians.  I even at one point bought an entire Praetorian army! (Should have never sold that one.)  Anyway, on to the point, I have had a pretty large plastic Cadian army just sitting around for almost five years now.  I have wanted to build it, but had no inspiration or motivation to paint over a hundred guardsmen.  I was at my ALGS, and saw a Flames of War German Armor can of spray paint.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  I have wanted a city fighting guard color scheme and  now I have the means to do it quickly.  I picked up the last can and went straight home to start painting like a man possessed.

So here is what I did... I primed the model black, then sprayed it with the German Armor.  From here I dry brushed the cloth and armor with the Foundation dark grey and then the Foundation light grey.  I painted the boots and belts Scorched Brown.  I then painted the metal bits with boltgun metal.  From here I gave the whole model and good coating of Badab Black wash.  Once dry, I used the Foundation Flesh followed by a Ogyrn Flesh wash.  Once this was dry I highlighted the flesh by simply mixing in about 1:4 ratio of Elf Flesh into my Foundation Flesh.  That's it...  It was very quick and easy to do.  A little more free spirited than my normal painting routine, but still effective I think.  Here you go.

Broad shot of the grey tones.

Close up of the flesh work.

Little detail of Sgt. stripes and chainsword.


So I am going to add squad markings to the shoulder pads.  I think this will help break up the monotone look, but hey, they're guard!  They aren't supposed to be flashy, especially in the nitty gritty world of city fighting.  I have actually painted the rest of his squad mates and altogether it took me just over two hours for the squad.  That is really fast for me.  This doesn't include dry time, but does include the bases. 

Let me know what you think.  I am currently building the rest of the guardsmen since we are starting a Cities of Death League, so any input would be helpful.  As always, thanks for reading.

Friday, June 24

New League: Cities of Death





Come one, come all! It is time for Grand Adventures Cities of Death League.

League starts Thursday June 30.
Game days are every Thursday and Saturday.
The league will run for five weeks ending on Thursday August 4.
Saturday August 6 there will be a Cities of Death Tournament open to anyone with the courage to fight. Details on the tournament later.

How's it work? You come in and play... No, really the league will be a $5 entry fee unless you need to pick up the Cities of Death book from Grand Adventures. If you order or purchase it the first week then the league is free! You can play up to three league games a week. These can be against anyone else playing in the league. You will earn points for wins/losses/draws. These will be posted each week in the store.

If you are not familiar with Cities of Death, check out this month's White Dwarf. It has an update that brings the Cities of Death in line with the latest version of the rule set. In Cities of Death your army will work vastly different than ever before... mechanized armies will find the job difficult. This is where the foot infantry shine. Games will take longer than usual do to heavy amounts of terrain. For this reason we are capping the points limit at 1750 points for league games. (Also an opportune time to break out that new army you've been squirreling away!)

Each week during your games, you may experience some special objectives and stratagems appearing in your game. These can have wonderful effects for your army or if you allow your opponent to capture them, ill effects. You'll have the opportunity for some of your units to write their own little piece of history!

So come on in to Grand Adventures and get in on some good old fashion, city destroying face smashing! Don't forget to pick up your copy of Cities of Death!