Pogo-Stompa: Ready for Paint

I think that I may have lost my finger prints doing all of this super gluing....

I left the butt hatch blank, so I can paint "Krump Exit" on it, and so it wouldn't blend in with the rest of the body.

My Own Tater Titan: The Pogo-Stompa

"A wonderful thing is a Stompa; 
A Stompa's a wonderful thing. 
Their tops are made out of rokkits, 
their bottoms are made out of spring 
They're stompy, bouncy, stompy, bouncy,
 fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, 
The most wonderful thing 
about Stompas is: 
I'm the stompiest one!"

from my amigo, Pat. 

I've always wanted to make a potato Stompa ever since I saw the original made by IronDog Studios. I bought the stompa weapons many moons ago, when they were cheap. Escalation finally pushed me into making my own.

The idea of the pogo-stompa is to represent the rules, where the Stompa stomps on units after it moves. I like the image of it pogo-ing on it's victims cheerfully. 

The other benefit to the pogo leg, is that the potato head body is a touch too small to be a full-size stompa, so now I don't have to worry about being called cheesy.

The next step is to start cutting up cereal boxes for armor plates, and add on other bits to spruce it up. I have a deadline because I want to run this beast in an Escalation tournament in mid-January at 1775 points. I want to run the Zombie Stompa, which is full of meks to keep repairing hull points.

Infinity Terrain from Toys: Avengers Quinjet and a Transformer

     I want to incorporate more non-building terrain pieces, so I have been looking around. I found this Avengers Quinjet for ~$30, which is a good deal compared to actual hobby models of a similar size.

   

     That is an Infinity Hospitaler Knight for scale. The kitchen counter isn't the best place for pictures, I found out, but it will do for this entry. I have sprayed the whole jet black to repaint it. I also glued down all of the moving pieces.

     As you can see, nothing can see under the jet's fuselage, so it will be good for blocking Line of Sight.

     Now this transformer was rummaged out of an old toy box from 15+ years ago. I was surprised that the toy seemed to be somewhat in scale.

     I will be adding some bits to the wheels in order to Sci-Fi it up some more.

     Not toys, but these are Really Useful Boxes from Office Depot, which I want to use a cheap crates for scatter terrain.

Welcome to Ork Town: Fully Painted Ork/Nid Action with Music

     The owner of http://tabletopgameandhobby.com/ gave me the honor of baptizing the new Ork Town table with green, fungal blood. This offer was too sweet to resist, so I dusted off the boyz to enter da fight.

     I wanted a crazy scrum, so we decided to run 1500 against Tyranids using the Death World rules. One of the rules is that lightning comes down on a 4+ and strikes the tallest unit (counting terrain and any decorative part of a model), and hits it with 2d5 Strength 8 AP 4 hits. Many ork units were fried by the power of Thor. Here are the pictures as a slideshow with Orky muzak!

     I lost, but this game represented 40k at its finest; fully painted armies on a fully painted table. Now, I am inspired to paint up some more Orks since I have been distracted by Infinity for the past 3 months. Side-note: I was helping referee an Infinity game, while I was playing my Orks, which made me happy.

My Infinity Table So Far

     Here is my Infinity table so far. The buildings are from Shark Mounted Lasers. I will be doing a more in depth review of the terrain later, but I am in love with it. The owner actually plays Infinity, so he knows what the game needs. Plus, the pieces go together easily and it is quite cheap money wise.

     The bridges you see here actually telescope to become shorter or longer, which is awesome. Also, the large garage that you see under the Micro Art billboard has a door that moves up and down! Too cool for school.

     I went to an office supply store and snagged some Really Useful Boxes to use as more indestructible terrain to leave at the FLGS. They have hexes on the bottom, so you know that they are meant for Infinity, right?

     A package of 5 of these ran me $5.49, and I picked them up at Office Depot. I will spray paint them later, but I wanted to show you how they look off the shelf.

How to Run a Slow-Grow-Infinity League

 
  Here is my random table of Infinity terrain. In this post, I will explain how I ran my Infinity league at my local game store, Tabletop Game and Hobby in Overland Park, KS. First, I created a Facebook group, and then posted this...

" 5-week league will be hosted at Tabletop Game and Hobby with a $5 entry fee. It will be a relaxed setting in order to learn the rules and system. It will starting the week of Monday, September 30th We can vote on an official night. I have seen the Saturday afternoon/evenings have been requested, but matches will be set up through this page anyway. Thus, there will be leeway on game nights.

Every game you play, you get a Cube. Every time you play with a new player, you get a Cube. You can play 2 additional games per week for bonus Cubes, either a rematch game against the same player or 2 new players. It does not matter if you win or lose, everyone gets Cubes. Each model that you paint is worth a Cube, assuming 3 color table-top standard. On week 6, Cubes will be used to raffle off prizes, like models and faction badges.

Week 1 - "Arcade Mode Rules" - You will play a preset list based on your faction. Arcade lists here

Week 2 - 150 points with the YAMS Telemetry and Clear Deployment Zone Mission
Week 3 - 150 points with random YAMS cards
Week 4 - 200 points with random YAMS cards
Week 5 - 250 points with random YAMS cards and TAGs/TAG equivalents

The point of this league is to learn Infinity. The objective of this league is to have fun and play new people."

To keep the League going, I offered a starter box for the ALEPH Steel Phalanx for anyone that played up to 2 games in Week 4 and Week 5. These games also counted for the normal raffle prizes, as well, so players were foolish not to play their final games. I even had a player join the league for the last 2 weeks to get a chance at the starter box.

After Week 5, I ran the raffle and separated the prizes into 3 categories; art, blisters, and gift certificates. The Blisters were random Line Troops and 2 Combined Army blisters that Corvus Belli sent to me since they love to support their player base. Props to them for being classy. The Art category were buttons, badges, and posters that Corvus Belli sent. Finally, I took the 5 dollars for the league and bought several $20 gift certificates and a $10. 

The players placed their raffle tickets (Cubes) as they desired. I said that if I drew a name from a category, they could not win again, until everyone had won at least one item. This way, everyone won something, and players that played the most games/painted benefited by getting first dibs on prizes.

I received a lot of praise for the league. People loved that it didn't matter if you won or lost, so they could relax to learn the rules. People still played competitively since it is more fun to win than lose. 5 weeks is also the magic amount of time to run a league since it is the longest amount of time, before people lose interest. I have seen many leagues fail due to being too long.

At the start of the league, I knew of 3 Infinity players, counting myself, at the end of the league, we had 13 players pay into the league, and many more express interest. Operation: Infinity Grow = Success. My store only carried several blisters of Infinity, and now, Infinity has an entire case dedicated to it.

Here are pictures from the league.

Plant Pots from Screw-Top Lids: Infinity Terrain on the Cheap

     Excuse my absence, I have been running a 5-week Infinity Slow-Grow League, so my hobby building/painting/blog time has been short. First up, cheap scatter terrain out of screw-top lids.

     Here is how they started. Regular lids off of random items (soda, kitty litter, and etc.). I used pumice on the inside to make it look more realistic. The plants came in a sheet from an Arts/Craft store.

     Super glue will not hold the plants down well, so I had to resort to a hot glue gun. I sprayed the planters with a Krylon Gloss coat to protect the paint. The gloss made the plants look more natural by giving them a sheen and causing the blades to warp. This warping gave the plants a more natural, disorderly look, so I did not Matte them. The figure pictured is a PanOceania Magister Knight.

     Here is a Cameronian (werewolf) stalking the artificial forest. In Infinity, these model pieces will give the shooting target a Low Visibility Zone, which is a -3 to hit. I will rule that if you are drawing Line of Sight through two planters, it is no a No Visibility Zone, and you cannot shoot the target. The planters are not sturdy enough to provide an Armor Bonus, but I may have to rethink that if the planters are too ineffectual on the tabletop for defense.

Poor Man's Grav-Gun, Chapter Master, and Ironclad - Sharking Around

     I have 15 bikers. Grav guns seem to be better and more entertaining fluffwise. Thus, I am chopping my own up out of meltas and Necron Warrior gun ends. This way I also get melta barrels for Stenguard conversions. Win-Win!

     An Ironclad out of a Venerable Dread that I traded with from my buddy, Viking Librarian. I bits ordered the Ironclad accessories, slapped on a fin for good measure, and converted a chainfist out of a Plasma cannon arm with a chopped up Ork Deff Dread weapon. Chose to repose the fist in a cheesy "Come at me, bro" pose.

     Also, I couldn't resist a Chapter Master on a bike. I love Orbital Bombardments. The fin is an Ork knife. The Relic Storm Shield is a Venerable Dread face plate that was trimmed down. The tooth part on the front wheel is the gob from an Ork killer kan. The back banner is from the Ironclad Dread kit. I went Powerfist over Thunder Hammer for cool looks.