Knight Progress v.2

I had a chance to finally push through and get the Knight about 98% finished.  All that's really left is GS and a few more smaller details, and those deatials always take a bit.  Over all though I'm quite pleased with how this turned out for being an extensive kit bash that I wasn't sure was going to work in the first place.  I'll be the first to admit not all my projects work well, some have to be stopped before they spiral any further out of control.  The tiny cultist is very tiny, but cultists are always tiny.  I'm waiting for a better day, read not too busy, to take a better set of picture with more angles and a few size comparisons.  It is smaller than a regular Knight.  I'm ok with that, and my regular gaming buddy is ok with it, since this will now be the Knight for my Renegades and Heretics(R&H) force.  But Chris... R&H can't take a Knight by themselves with out a Chaos Space Marine CAD.  You would be right, until this week.

This week saw the wonderful preorder goodness of GW's latest brain child... Imperial Knight - Renegade.  A game of Knights hunting each other with... wait for it... RULES FOR RENEGADE KNIGHTS FOR CHAOS.  Someone(s) at GW has to be trolling (in the fishing sense) the Internet for ideas.  This just seems too good of a coincidence.  Granted, these rules come with a bundle of models that also happens to retail with a fairly good discount as well.  So you do have to buy them, at first.  I'm sure within a few days those rules will fall into a scanner somewhere and then spend the rest of it's days in some data gulag being ogled by the 40k masses.  I mean, there's already been a leaked datasheet and a snippet about allies.  The allies part looks like it reads "exactly like CSM", so that means Battle Brothers with Demons and R&H.  For the Chaos community this is huge news.  For the some of the places that don't allow Forgeworld(FW), and there are a few, rules for a Renegade Knight from GW is a godsend.  Like I said before, they have to be watching.

This past Saturday was a model day for me, more on that later, but previous to this the rumors of this new GW game began to circulate.  Then the pictures started.  Once that happened I was determined to finish my Knight build.  The real selling point for me was the box art, here was a box from GW with Knight that had a Chaos star on it shield.  Sign me up.  I did sign up by the way.  My buddy Dave and I went halves on the box.  He gets another Knight, his total will be at three, I get a Knight and rules to run my two without having to use Demon Knight rules from FW.  These Renegade Knights can also double up on their weapon arms... meaning 2 battle cannons or 2 gatling cannons.  Seriously, what's there not to love?

This whole Knight thing has me really excited is all.  Usually, through out the school year, I can have a game day about every other weekend.  My job keeps me busy and sometimes during the summer I get to travel, for sort of working vacations that last between 2-6 weeks at a time.  I work at an arts university, and I teach glassblowing there and the summer work is usually being a teaching assistant at Pilchuck Glass School.  Well everything I applied to this summer... I didn't get.  So this just freed up my summer in a big way.  Working in a glass studio is a lot like owning a house.  There's always something wrong with it.  So I'll be doing maintenance on the school  glass studio through out the summer, but only for 3-4 days out of the week.  That leaves a lot of free time.  So I want to try and get a lot of modeling projects like the Spartan finished up , built things painted, slim down the collection a bit, basically get my hobby life together.

This summer I'm going to try to do Bolter & Chainsword's annual ETL painting challenge as a way for me to get some support to get some stuff done.  The hobby is like going to gym in a way, if you have other people to help out it's more fun and you're more likely to do it.  For the ETL I'll be focusing primarily on my R&H and their big stuff.  Maybe my Mierce Miniature greater demons as well.  Since this is the first summer I will be home for the entire time, I want to get some paint down on some minis.  

Thinning the herd is another big thing on my to do list.  The Predators that have been sitting untouched for years, they should probably go.  Half built Plague Marines from the FW upgrade kit?  eBay those.  It's just time to do this.  Lately I've been noticing that I've been playing more R&H and Demons and less CSM.  Some of that has to do with how I personally perceive Chaos as a faction.  Almost every book I have read with large battles involving Chaos there's this screen of filth that's used for meats shields .  That's kind of how I play.  Lots of cannon fodder, and let Kharn roll up in a Khorne Chosen squad.  Some of it has to do with the parent CSM book.  It's way better than the last one, but still needs points drop across the board.  This coming weekend  I have a game, and it will be using the boon table from the Path to Glory supplement, released over Christmas I believe.  Less bloat and god specific rewards, it should be fun.  So a good long look at what I have been playing and what I haven't been playing to make some shelf space is in order.

I should also have enough time to go on a few fishing trips with my wife, it's one of the things I've missed the most working these past summers.