State of the Warp Address
Hello, faithful readers. I'd like to take some time to explain what is going on with all my plans and projects, some of which you may know about, others of which may be surprises.

First, the projects to improve this website:

Background and Appearance
Well, I've finally solved the background problem I was having. (The Brushed Steel looked cool to me, but a lot of people complained that it made their eyes bleed, so that was no good.) Using the Brushed Steel Background as a border, then making a neutral grey the actual background of the text portion of the page retains that cool look, but is much easier to read. I've also been concentrating on breaking up my paragraphs more to give the eyes a break.

When I originally envisioned Warpstorm, I wanted a Multi-Function Display look. Roughly, the brushed steel around the edges so it looked like a monitor, then buttons on the bottom for navigation. That's a bit beyond my ability at this point, but this latest look is a lot closer and I'm pretty pleased with it.

The Girls of Warpstorm!
Made you look! Okay, so it's just a gallery. But you can't prove they aren't girls. Hey, YOU ask the Carnifex... A number of readers have asked for a gallery. I was initially against it, partly because my painting wasn't very good, and partially because I almost never look at galleries when I go to websites. I always look for the information, so unless it's painting tips or conversion ideas I'm after, I don't bother with the pictures. Besides, when was the last time you were actually interested in seeing a bunch of UltraMarines? Since pictures usually have long download times, I made them thumbnails, so you can scan through quickly and just look at the ones you want. Since I made the gallery, however, I have mostly ignored it. I've painted up quite a few models, but they've never quite made it into the gallery. It could also do with a bit of organization as well. There aren't many pictures there now, but it still is kind of cluttered. I'll probably organize it by army, maybe with a small general section. I also plan to keep the pictures of my original, not-so-stellar paintjobs up. Hopefully by looking at my first paintjobs and comparing them to my more recent ones, budding artists will feel better about their skills and be inspired to paint.

Next, the projects to improve my skills

Tactically
Well, you've seen my series on how to win games, now I've just got to keep implementing and refining the way I play. I plan on getting in more games this year. As always, of course, when I figure something out, I'll put up an article about it. Partially that's to help some of you with your tactics. It's also partially to help me remember it and refine it properly!

Aesthetically
Painting anyway. My painting skills have improved immensely over the past couple of years and I want to continue that growth. Specifically, I am going to be doing several projects that tackle a specific part of miniature painting so that I can understand all the different techniques better. In the process I hope to become an accomplished painter. I would like to compete in a Golden Daemon competition in about 2 years. Along the way I know that I'll have to refine my current techniques and learn new ones.

The first project in this series is A Study In Black. I've wanted to do this for quite some time, but I haven't quite gotten around to it. The concept is to take some character model and paint it all in black. Just painting it black isn't enough, however. I plan to use Gloss Black and Flat Black and Cockpit Black and other shades of black that I can get my hands on. I want to take a Black model and paint it black. I'll do tone-on-tone designs and even highlight it (with graphite, most likely) Basically, I'd like to have a model that from 3+ feet away looks like it has been primed. Then as you get closer, you notice some highlights. When you pick it up, you realize it's got designs painted on it. Partially this is to satisfy my twisted desires, and partially this is to make me work on fine designs.

The next step in the process is Non-Metal Metallics. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, that's the process of painting something so it looks like metal, but without using a metallic paint. You see this in posters all the time. Next time you see a print ad that has a chrome look to it but isn't just a picture, notice the painted-on lights and shadows and reflections. That's what I want to do. Eventually, I want to do a Tin-boy. I'm planning on taking a plastic character model and painting it so that it looks like it is made of metal. From 3+ feet, I'd like it to look like unpainted pewter. Once you realize that's not a pewter model, you'll be able to see the painted on reflections and things. This will be much more difficult to carry off, but I think it's a worthwhile goal.

I don't have projects planned for the last two yet, but I'd like to work on my blending technique and I'd like to work on Source Lighting, which is where you paint a model so that it looks like there is light coming from it, such as a Blue Powersword casting shadows and blue tints onto the rest of the model.

Now, on to the armies:

Deathwing
I had originally planned to make these guys a fun, heavily converted army. At the time I had been working on my Tyranids and I kept wanting to convert them extensively, but 100+ converted models takes the wind out of your sails rather quickly. My plan for the Deathwing, as you may know, was to have them be Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club warband. I was going to use the fact of their very small numbers of models to really go to town on converting them to look like things from the Sergeant Pepper's part of Yellow Submarine. I had plans to make the "Fab Four" and some other character models, all decked out in their odd finery. I also planned to remodel a landraider as the Yellow Submarine. Eventually, though, I got more interested in just painting them up decently and playing with them.

At this point they have been in retirement for a while, though I may bring them back out. The major converting plans are shelved, though I'm thinking that I'll swap out those Cyclone Launchers for Assault Cannons. (Seriously, those things rock!) As I have some Space Marines from the basic set, I'm also considering painting the Terminators and the Marines in the same colors (currently undecided, though I'm no longer as fond of the Doom Eagles scheme as I once was) and sometimes even using them as an army.

I have also considered using them in a "1st and 10" army. (For those unfamiliar with the term, it references the 1st and 10th Companies of a Space Marine Chapter, the Terminators and the Scouts.) An interesting idea where the veterans are essentially teaching the scouts how to be better Space Marines. It also works well from the perspective of using the scouts as, well, scouts. Like a small Special Forces team, they do a recon of an area. When they find something that is too tough for them to handle, they call in the Air Support (Landspeeders) and the Heavy Hitters (Terminators, likely via Teleport Homers) to bring the pain. Both of these concepts would require adding a few things to my collection, but not very many, and it would give me more opportunities to play with these poor, forgotten guys. It'll also give me a bit of variety and a break from my Tyranids, which are still monopolizing most of my attention. I'll need a break from them, though, as you'll see next.

Tyranids
Well, I did update their paintjobs and I did play in the Seattle GT that year with an army that featured 108 upgraded Hormagaunts. Since then, the new codex has come out and a number of cool army types are more viable now. I'm currently playing with a Shooty Godzilla list, featuring 7 Monstrous Creatures, 3 Zoanthropes and Genestealers as my Troops. I have set my sights on further updating the paintjobs featured on these models, but I've been having trouble finding the motivation to actually get it done. It's not really that many models, I just need to do it. I now have a great variety of Tyranid models and I can configure my armies in several ways. However, it's not enough. I already have plans for two more Tyranid armies, one of which will require a large amount of new models. I have also stepped up to be the co-editor of an e-zine about Tyranids, which I will be hosting at this site as long as the bandwidth doesn't kill me. I'll give you more details as it happens. Now, back to the armies...

The Constrictor Swarm
The origin of this army was an interesting idea that RedArmySok of Warpshadow suggested to me. I was playing in a 750pt tournament and he suggested I take 3 Warriors and 99 Termagants. I did and you should have seen the jaws drop! 102 models in 750pts! I only got to play one game with it, but it was a lot of fun and I wanted to do it again. Essentially the idea is to have about as many cheap Gaunts as is possible in one Force Organization chart. I'm planning on using 170 of them. Back them up with Rending Warriors for Synapse and extra damage, and give them support in the form of 3 Lictors. The Feeder Tendrils of the Lictors will mean that any Gaunt broods with a model near the Lictor will be able to hit most things on 3's. That includes space Marines. The Gaunts run forward and swamp the enemy lines, pulling them down by sheer numbers. The Warriors and Lictors move in to polish off what the Gaunts cannot. It really gives the opponent that feeling of impending doom, and it's just fun pushing that many models across the tabletop! On the other hand, while I have lots of Hormagaunts, I don't have very many Termagants or Spinegaunts and I don't have nearly enough Warriors, so it'll require a large number of new models for me to assemble and paint. I will be ordering the models shortly, and I think I can assembly-line the painting process to get them all done fairly quickly and still have them look good.

Ninja 'Nids!
This army was loosely based off an idea from somebody on Warpshadow as well. The concept is to have a bunch of well-hidden and deep-striking creatures so that the opponent has very little to shoot at. The current plan is to use Leaping Rippers as Troops. They can hide in cover, using their bonus to get better saves, then when needed, they can leap out almost 18" to tie up the enemy front line. Meanwhile, a Flying Hive Tyrant lurks in the background, behind terrain. Finally, 18 Raveners and 3 Lictors deepstrike in, most likely all on one side of the enemy line. The Leaping Rippers and Deepstriking/assaulting into combat Lictors will hide the Raveners for the turn that they deepstrike in. After that, it's a mad rush to kill as many things as possible! I already have the Tyrant and Lictors. I will, however, need the Raveners and I might even need the Rippers, as I haven't seen mine in a while. This is a planned expansion for the long-term that will round out most of my Tyranid collection and really allow me to play just about any configuration of Tyranids.

Dark Eldar
Well, my Dark Eldar sat on the back burner for a long time. Eventually, I gave them to a friend to get her started in 40k. I'm helping her repaint them now, so hopefully they'll ride again soon! I do occasionally miss them. Every time I see a thread on a website about Dark Eldar no longer being a competitive army, I get an itch to pull them out again and show everybody how it's done. I'll restrain myself for now, though if they are included in the Eldar Codex (or Harlequins are) I may break down and get some more for myself.

Other 40k Armies and Ideas
I have, as usual, been toying around with other ideas for armies. I've been interested in Eldar for a long time, both Harlequins and regular Eldar. Specifically, I've been wanting to do the pre-fall version of my former Dark Eldar Kabal, called Lan Rillishelwe (Bright Shimmering Song.) I'm also toying with some ideas that might end up giving me a Space Marine army (I can't believe I just said that!) Finally, I've been listening to the siren song of Chaos for some time and I might end up giving in to it. When the last Chaos Codex came out, they got Veteran skills to represent that they'd been out in the Warp fighting and surviving for millennia. Then when the Space Marine Codex came out, their Veterans (all of what, 300 years old, sheesh, the young whippersnappers!) also got Veteran Skills. I felt that kind of watered down the story for Chaos. I decided that it would be interesting to have something that really represented the extra skills and stuff that those 10,000 year old guys have. I'm looking at most of them having 2-3 Veteran skills, and basically being very Elite and not having very many models in the army. Should be interesting, if I actually do it. We'll see what happens.

Fantasy Armies
I have a couple of Fantasy armies, but I haven't had much chance to play them. I also don't have much experience with them, so I'd feel a little funny playing a pick-up game with someone I didn't know. Not that I think they'd try to cheat or anything, I'm just so unfamiliar with the rules that I'd feel like a total noob. I'm going to be studying the rules and playing around with my models a bit though, so that I can do that, as Discordia has a pretty good Fantasy population, from what I can see.

Orcs and Goblins
I've still got my Orcs and Gobbos, but like I mentioned, I haven't had much chance to work with them, which means I also haven't had much motivation to work with them. Regardless, I am still planning on playing the Orcs and Gobbos, so I'm going to need to be painting them as well.

Next off, I am actively pursuing the idea of Da Biggah Da Waagh, which I briefly outlined in the article Into the Great Green Yonder. Essentially the idea is that Orcs keep growing throughout their lives until they meet a bigger Orc who puts them in their place. Well, what if an Orc never met a bigger one? The "leader" of the army will be a Giant model converted to look like a really big Orc. I'm currently planning on giving him some sort of large mug of Fungus beer, or perhaps a Keg of Bugman's Best, to explain why he is so clumsy. (Giants are known for falling down a lot!) He'll have a unit of Trolls modeled to look like big Orcs. They will be his Big 'Un bodyguard. Then I'll have units of normal Orcs and Gobbos (including the madcap Night Goblins) and even some Snotlings to round out the size range for Orcs. For the actual leadership of the army, I'll likely use Goblin Shaman characters. I will probably use two of them to do the voice-over bit I discussed in the great green article as well, since it's just too much fun to pass up. I will, of course, be using the 50-100 Gobbo unit as well, since it's also too crazy to pass up. Again, this is going to take quite a bit of work, but I believe it'll be loads of fun.

Chaos
My fully-painted Chaos army. Also my small army, since I used a lot of expensive models and units to keep the size of the army down. It's fairly nicely painted, though I think there's some touching up that I need to do. I do plan on playing with it and continuing to work with it and make it better. I'll probably be adding some more units to it and generally trying different things to see what makes it tick. I just need to study my book a bit more, so I can understand it better and actually start playing games with it.

So, there you have it, the state of my Warp. If there is something you are interested in, or something in particular that you'd like to see or you'd like to see me do, please let me know.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

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