Thursday, March 12, 2015

Warhammer 40K - Traveling for battle tomorrow

Hi everyone,

Here are a few updates since our last posting :)

First of all, we are currently on a flight to Newark, NJ.  From there flight #2 to Buffalo, NY.  From there, drive to Canada.


- Confirmed our battle with Mr. M2 (not our Space Marine expert friend from playing at Game Kastle in Fremont - this is another person whose name starts with M in Canada).  Battle is all set for tomorrow.

- Spent the last two weeks getting all of the painting and building finished up.

- The Dakka Chugga is finished!  Not sure if Mr. M2 will be OK with using the Dakka Chugga in a battle -- but we're going to ask nicely.  At the very least, we are hoping to take a photo of it with him and with his very cool scenery.  We'll write up another blog posting with more photos of the Dakka Chugga - don't want to spoil the fun here :)

- Figured out what *we hope* was a good way to pack things.  Got some great advise from Mr. S at Game Kastle -- he explained that he really likes TableWar cases.

More detailed updates....

Painting and building

We needed to make sure that we had our full Ork army painted (otherwise, don't think Mr. M2 would be so happy with us).  So, we had quite a bit of work to do.

Even our first Trukk wasn't ever really *fully* painted.  So, we got to work on finishing things.

One key note -- the little pieces of spongy foam are terrific to spread brown (dirt) and steel grey metallic (exposed metal) onto larger models.  Mr. E had given us this tip a while back.  Really helped!

We had been stumped to figure out how to make Ork Trukk tires look like real tires - but once we tried this, things came together.

The Pink Orky's Trukk with sponged on dirt and exposed metal.
 
We had a chance for one more battle with Mr. M at Game Kastle in the midst of the painting and building.  This was good because (arg!) we lost pretty badly to him running the same 1500 point list we had used to beat him about a month or so back.
 
Wasn't super fun to lose - but it was really great to see some weaknesses in our plan -- and many thanks to Mr. M for helping us to brainstorm ideas on how to make our plan more solid!
 
Playing against Mr. M's Space Marines.  This time it didn't go so well - discovered several weaknesses in our strategy!  That pile of Orks in the middle survived to the end -- Ghazgkull hard to kill -- but we couldn't capture enough objectives to win!
 
Lastly came the challenge of packing!  Mr M2 in Canada had mentioned that he's had luck with checking his armies.  Mr. S at Game Kastle showed us his TableWar case - and recommended that we try that.  [Cool idea he shared from expert Warhammer travelers was to magnetize the model bases - and that these can then stick to the bottom of the trays in the TableWar case!]
 
In the end, we weren't able to pull the TableWar solution together quickly enough - so we went with a hybrid solution.
 
Mr. S's TableWar case
 
We used the foam inserts which we've been storing our models in -- then packed these with bubble wrap and packing paper inside hard plastic bins.  Then, loaded these into a bag which has one hard side.  Packed a fluffy blanket around that.  Figure that the biggest issue we need to guard against is vibration.  If we can keep everything packed -- and compressed with foam -- then should be OK.
 
Here's how things looked - we'll let you know how things arrive on the other end.
 
Packed up for trip to Canada!
 
Will have another update tomorrow after meeting up with Mr. M2 :)



2 comments:

  1. The biggest issue with that mode of transport (if flying in the states), is the TSA. If you are unlucky enough to check your bag, and have it randomly inspected, they'll ruin the foam packing trying to get to the models :(.

    It looks like those bags will fit in the overhead though (but make 100% sure!).

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  2. We'll have more to post soon - flights to Buffalo (and drive into Canada) all went really well.

    The Dakka Chugga arrived intact! [We have removed the electric motor and packed it separately so that the mass of the Ork Locomotive wouldn't cause it to shove around. That seems to have worked.]

    The big cannon arrived safe and sound as well. Had that wrapped in lots of bubble wrap inside our suitcase with lots of books around that to make sure that if things were landed on it, it would still be un-squashed :)

    We had to reglue the Grabbin Klaw on our Battlewagon - but that was pretty minor. All set for flights home now. Packed everything the same way.

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