Schools out! let the lessons in Jim+D=Bag begin!!!!

Alright hobbyist it is has been awhile but your friendly neighborhood bisons are back. and for this edition I James P. Magee bring to you sad and terrible news. I am going the way of the Dark side. As I am sure none of you know save Jay I am traditionally a Grey Knight player. You know back in the day when I first got into 40k when the Grey Knight where just part of the Demon-hunter codex. However now we have our own extremely awesome codex I have made my fluffy all terminator list(your welcome Jay) but however being of the New era of Grey Knights I do have much love for power armor rocking brothers. So With that I introduce Project Dark Side:

So here  is the list hate all you want
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HQ- Torquemada Coteaz


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Troops- (Stand by for D-baggery)

3 squads of 7 Psykers
each mounted in a Rhino

3 Strike Squads
with  with a mix of Halberds and hammers

                                                    
each has a  Justicar with Demon hammer
      2 Psycannons
      and Psy bolt Ammo
      Mounted in Rhinos
     with Psybolts
     additonal Storm Bolter
     and Dozer Blades.



                                             


                                                   Elites:
                                                   --------------------------------------------------------
                                                 2 Venerable Dreadnoughts
                                                 each with Assault cannon
                                                 and psybolt ammunition
                                                 
                                                  1850 cheese on the dot.

And it is smelly!

So kids before you bust out the stakes and get ready to burn me alive let me at least give you a little fluff justification for the list with a little hobby love as well. What can I say I can't be all cheese.

So when I started making the list I wanted to find a use for my Forge World Dreads so hence the venerables in the list. I have had these models since 2006 and haven't used them in a game once! That folks is heresy!

The Psykers are gonna be a fun hobby project for me. Not only do I get to make Empire Flagellants into crazy psykers that are being used by the Inquisition as human batteries. But I also get to make a Rhino into a sweet new psyker tank! Because for those of you who do not know what these Psykers are capable of. The Psychic shooting attack starts off as a Str 3 AP - shot 36 in Rng Assault 1 large blast. However, you add one to the Str and take one off the AP for each Psyker you add to the squad. So I have Str. 10 AP 1 shots coming out the tops of those rhinos! So not missing a chance to be awesome at my hobby I decided if it is gonna shoot like a tank it best look like a tank lol.

The Design for the Rhino is gonna be something akin to a giant psychic hood turret. In the middle of the Psychic hood suspended by all sorts of psychic lightning and what not is gonna be a Psyker. Fluff wise this poor soul is gonna be the unlucky dreg that gets to be the focus for the bound psykers in the rhino.

Now fluff wise these Hellions as I am calling them. Were designed by Lord Coteaz as a means of being able to quickly get to and cut off Demonic reinforcements from translating into the material plane.  They were never designed to be a main battle tank. However, when seeking out a cabal of nurgle worshipers on the planet Garris 4-19 the massive undead hordes that began assaulting Coteaz's compound threatened to overrun them. This is when Inquisitor Locheart a pupil of Coteaz suggested that they turn the awesome psychic  might of the Hellions from general disruption to actual focused blasts. What ensued was a massive success, however the psyco-crystalline conduits that bind the psykers to a single consciousness were never designed to handle the amount of energy that come from a blast. Designed rather to handle the constant streaming of power instead of focused surges. As a result as the day came to a close almost half of the Hellions Lord Coteaz had commissioned had  "burnt out" their psykers having succumbed to the perils of the warp and lay as withered corpses with blacked out eyes and gaping mouths. However the day was won and at no real loss to Coteaz the psykers were Rogues gathered from all over Fermosa and Coteaz had many more most of which were doomed to the black ships.  Now however they will serve their penance to the emperor as fuel for Coteaz's new and terrible weapons against the foes of the Emperor.

In fluff games I would like the Hellion to also have the option of using the Quake psychic power with a 24in range and Ld 10 as that is fluff wise what it is actually designed for. With the shooting attack being done at the Psyker's normal Ld of 8 to represent the enhanced risk of peril. Also in fluff games as they are rogue psykers unless they are joined by an Inquisitor I want them to scatter each turn for movement and maybe come up with a fun Madmen chart for them to roll on for what they do in the shooting and assault phases if outside the Rhino. You know for when people blow up the rhino they all start running to freedom! lol

Well guys that is what I have for you let me know what you think! Would love to see your guys Madmen Chart! until next time Ave Imperator!

Con Job.....

Turn Two/match one....no Blood Angels

Turn 3/ Blood Angels arrive, and get slaughtered.

So UB Con was a bit more of a disappointment then we expected.  Now to the Anime enthusiast it was more a less a blast I am guessing.  However we were finding it hard to get engaged in the Con. The team tourney was a bit lacking in some obvious ways. Blue Tables might have worked for me if we had some themed blue terrain. But  we didn't see any of that. So the Team Tourney which was to be the culminating event of the weekend.
Was little more than a Sour bite to end a meager meal.

As far as how the tourney went  for Team Cold Steel Bisons. Well we went 0-3. Enough said however we did when best painted which is kinda sad cause we were not truly painted. We were based and had three colors but much still needed to be done.  So we walked away with some lame UB Con shirts.
(literally lame way to fanboy Anime to actually wear)

Miranda Lawson

Azula

However the weekend wasn't all a wash. We did enjoy some other aspects of our Geekdom. The Con seemed to have a heavy focus on Cos play. (Costume play) That and we hunted around and found an artist to render up some our Characters for our D&D campaign.  Over the weekend we saw a couple of our favorite nerd characters. Mine being Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2. Hoff's being Azula from Avatar the last Air-bender.

It's like I'm a teacher... but not at all.

Now, we'll go back in time and cover how we earned our way into the Con: 13 hours of RP prep and execution. We had a simple two part plan. I would run a Dark Heresy game where a group of Inquisitorial Henchmen would search out reports of anomalies in an Imperial Mining town. Once it turned out those 'anomalies' were actually daemons, Jim would follow up with a very logical second part.

A rousing game of Deathwatch. Using the intel of first group to make their plans, a strike squad of Deathwatch Marines drop pod right into the very scene the henchmen died in.

http://www.ubcon.org/events/126

http://www.ubcon.org/events/127

 

 

 

It's a lot of fun to RP with people who don't know the 41st millenium that well, because the gruesome nature takes most RP players used to more traditional settings way out of their element.

"They suspect everyone of heresy..."

A report

We put together a straightforward party; a bit of scum, mixed with a Cleric, with some Imperial Guard muscle. Since this was a one off session, and we wanted to be prepared for people who did not know the game engine, we kept the mechanics simple; stats, skills and fate. All the party was told was that a mining town has been grievously behind on its production quotas, yet ordering all manner of replacement parts for tools and heavy machinery. I strove to set up a rich palette of Imperial drudgery. The party was briefed aboard an Emperor Class Battle-cruiser The Litany of Contempt via servo skulls whilst 500 ratings were whipped and goaded into loading a single piece of ordnance. The planet below was plagued with winds whipping up the dusts of a sulfuric desert that kept the average lifespan of citizens there a ripe age of 31.

Our party learned what it's like to work for an inquisitor quickly; within a few minutes one of them was lured upstairs by ladies of the evening, only to have it it turn out to be a ruse to disarm him, and shoot him dead where he lay. One down. After the other four rushed to his rescue and killed the newly discovered heretics, the law swept in to attempt the same.

A desperate escape into the mines themselves had the party separated. Terrified merely from fighting whores and local law, they were taken face first into the true horror.  Two stumbled across a sorcerer from the Black Legion who flayed their bodies, and melted their minds. The other two stumbled across a pit in the mine filled with bodies, and blood hounds of Khorne. Luckily for the Marines, the last two sent off a frantic, and grainy transmission via a servo skull to the orbiting ship.

There were many daring dos from our party during it all, and space precludes listing them all. Moments of having the foresight to leap through windows rather than get caught in cross fire, fighting even after losing limbs, the casual summary execution of citizens caught in the way. All leading to their desperate escape from the town into the mines, where their true purpose lie. While they didn't know it, at first, their deaths were all inevitable. A mere plot point. What we were watching for, was how much intel our soon-to-be martyrs that would determine what level of support our Marines would get later.

The Angels of Death

A report

Now a central philosophy of our club.

 

We ran into some snags with starting this game. Like the first one, we found out were were vastly overbooked: 9 people in each! We scrambled to come up with solutions, only to find only a handful showed. We even had one of our gamers (And we are very thankful for his attempt) recruit some friends, who gave him the runaround about whether, and when they show.

But this was Deathwatch, so we took the stance that this as happening dammit. One player, even hadn't heard of 40k before. We were pleased. True to Space Marine form, Jim plunged the party straight into it, giving them minutes to equip and organize for a drop pod insertion straight into the town, having received the intelligence that the Great Enemy was present.

Jim came up with a solid party. Dark Angel Tactical marine and a Space Wolf assault marine for some perfect rivalry and dicotamy. I got to play a scholarly Black Templar Apothecary. Our new man took the stubborn Imperial Fist Devastator.

From the outset, we had a rough going, landing into an arena of Blood Crushers, that were rampaging through the town. From there we had to plunge into the mine, all the while coordinating Imperial Guard support elements, and keeping contact with other elements of the Deathwatch. The mines were taken over by different agent of all four Gods, and we had to approach each one differently.

Then came the great reveal of what lay underneath; a pre-heresy design orbital laser, that had been discovered by the Adeptus Geologis, and kept secrets by agents of chaos, now pointed straight at the orbiting Imperial Ships.  Once the party discovered the end game, and confronted the Sorcerer responsible in the shadow of the immense laser, we opted to call in the orbiting ships melta torpedoes and lance batteries, even though the sorcerer escaped.

When Astartes die to a man, it's much more a grand spectacle.

All in all, the con was a lot of fun. Though, we do have to feel that as gamers, we were the second class citizens. So few RP games for such a large crowd.

And as for the war gaming, well, UB Con was certainly found wanting. A problem we intend to correct next year...

Until then we want to thank all of our participants for their part in making our events a success. And for giving us some fond memories to walk away from this Con with. We look forward to seeing you all in the future!

The Greatest Possible Good

"I've come to the conclusion, that Tau dress in a series of socks. Just one sock over another, over another." -Adam Forsyth

One of the bedrocks of my gaming hobby has always been the Tau. They are the reason I even play Warhammer 40k, and therefore the reason I play Warhammer, or Lord of the Rings. In a way the Tau 'allowed' me to play Warhammer, because once I was a gaming refugee, a Battletech player wandering listless and lost when FASA ate it's own business gun. I was unprepared to accept the more 'gothic' elements of Games Workshop's armies, but then the Tau gave me a path I could follow. With all their technology, and slick rifles, combined arms tactics. I didn't care that they were aliens, because that didn't mean anything to me yet.

The Tau just somehow made an old Battletech player feel more at home



It just feels somewhat...tough being a Tau player nowadays.

There's no way around it. I love the Tau, I really do, but they are just showing their age in some of the worst ways. While everything that all the other armies get to go through sounds exciting (Except for the Necrons and Sister players out there, I know you feel the same pain) it just leaves a Tau player feeling a bit left in the dust for now.

I mean, am I the only left that has to pay for Grenades?

And my Tau have been shelfed for a long-time. The most exciting thing I do with them is a campaign with friend in Milwaukee: the KLF: Kroot Liberation front. But he is out there, and I am out here. So what could I do without that last trigger to spur my Tau along? Because now my attention is well subsumed in my mighty Imperial Guard (Which I'll put on here another time.)

So the answer came in an odd way: put them on the shelf. In a nice glass case. On display somewhere like...a game store!

So, until the day comes when I can devote the time and energy my beloved little high-tech, hooved aliens deserve, you can see them at Niagara Hobby, right near the Galleria Mall. (Look for the giant caboose)

Here's a little taste:



I doubt anyone would even know they were aliens without this old boy around.




Never let anyone tell you gray is a bad color to paint



An interesting result of this has been, that taking away the gaming aspect of my old army, is it spurred on the desire to get more done, slowly and surely. I figured that the thing that army will need more than anything else is a crisis suit or more! (All built and painted suits never survived the move from Milwaukee to Niagara Falls. Had to the give them away to make space.

So, the lesson, if there is one I suppose is: when you can't find something to do to enjoy an army, do something you've never done with it before.

And also, when learning to blog, start with something simple.

Seems we caught a case of the Irish Flu....

So it has been awhile since one we got a post up, and two since some serious hobby progress happened. lol well friends there is a reason for this it is St. Patrick's month and I am seriously involved with a Girl from South Buffalo. So with that I figured I would do a little cultural piece about South Buffalo. So that way one you can understand a bit about the culture we Bisons are surrounded by and two when i die suddenly of kidney failure you understand why.

South Buffalo has one of the highest concentrations of Irish-Americans west of the Hudson outside of Chicago, and San Fransisco. With that it is everything Irish American you could imagine. Everyone is related to a Cop or a Fire fighter, it is a blue collar community. If you want a true taste of the culture hit up one of the Bars. honestly if you want good food you are going to the same places.

what is awesome is that this time of year you have Irish bands playing almost every night live. On top of that no community in buffalo is as involved or proud to say they are from Buffalo like the South Buffalo natives.  I was all set to leave Buffalo before I met Katie and she brought me into this community. Now I am trying to find a way to get back and get done with the Marines as soon as possible.

So here is a run down if you come to Buffalo of places you need to go:

These three Pizza Shops:

Imperial Pizza!

Imperial Pizza-my Favorite
Wise Guys
Abbott Pizza

For Wings you need to try the following:
Doc Sullivan's- Katie's Favorite also a great bar
Charlie O'Brien's - My Favorite also a bar
Abbott Pizza

Good Bars/Restaurants:
Charlie O'Brien's
The Blackthorn
Doc Sullivan's
The Swannie House


As far as local attractions:
If the weather's nice check out Cazenovia Park, first week in September is Irish fest which is a great time. in the winter Caz is also a pretty good looking winter scene.

The Irish Center usually has something going on anything from comedy shows, to live bands, Irish dancers, and to top it all off it has a bar in it!

Plus another fun thing to do and it is cheap for the summer months is hit up a Buffalo Bisons game then head down to either Docs or the Blackthorn and enjoy some cold ones.

 With that said I have enjoyed my Shamrock run in sleet and hurricane winds, I am gonna enjoy my two St. Patrick day Parades, and I am gonna drink so much beer and eat so much corn beef that even a Dwarf would feel ashamed.

So I will see you guys next Month with Some finished Blood Angels, Some NEW Grey Knights, a new logo, and hopefully gearing up for our first official event!

And stay tuned Hoff will be posting an article up shortly!

Erin Go Braugh , Semper Fi, and Ave Imperator

The Descent of Angels.

Well as one of the two founding members of The Cold Steel Bisons I thought that I would kick off our Hobby Blog discussing not only my progress with my Blood Angels followed up with some pics. But Also I would like to discuss a topic that I think all of us 40k enthusiasts would agree upon.

In the back is the Aztamouth award winning honor guard!

So when painting my Blood Angels I began to remember a fond memory of the Color of the Armor before me. The deep rich red swam in my mind until finally the memory surfaced. I was ten in some small hobby store in Lewiston, NY that closed as soon as it opened.  However not before it imprinted on me something  that obviously I never shook off.  I bought a terminator Sgt. and I tried as hard as I could to paint it the way I saw it in that shop.  I failed miserably, then I went back to playing Battletech. But I never got over the way that Terminator or any Space Marine looked, and when years pasted I found myself brought into the Fold of the Imperium.  Loving every bit of the Dark 41st Millennium and the Brotherhood  of Post Human Super Warriors Known as Space Marines.

Which Brings me to the meat an potatoes of this post. If you play 40k you love Space Marines. You might be a hardcore Tyranid player, or ork, necron, etc... Somewhere inside you is lurking that inner Astartes. Me and Mike where talking the other day about which Chapter we would belong too. With my love of Grey knights and Crimson fists aside it was decided that I am indeed a Blood Angel. I am noble and refined but get me in the heat of a fight and I am an animal unleashed. Our friend Jay is a true blue Ultramarine player however he is a Dark Angel. Cause for as much as I respect and hetro-love the man. He is as Arrogant as  he is brilliant a true son of the Lion. It was also decided that we all have an inner Space Wolf. We all have the hidden deep down desire to just eat, drink, fight, and well you get the hint. Mike for as much as he loves being sneaky and underhanded, a prime Raven Guard Candidate. He is however an Ultramarine he is a by the book, regimented kind of sneaky and underhandedness. Something that the Ultramarines would just called ingenious tactical maneuvering lest their honor be sullied. So I will pose the question to you, and your group. What chapter are you?