Prior to Astronomi-con Vancouver 2008

Although I always mean to get all my painting done as soon as possible, the truth is there is always more painting to be done. I can improve the bases or the face or just about anything. This time I was painting the night before instead of practicing because the Havoc launcher I bought on eBay never arrived. It has been over a month since I paid.

Apparently he runs a professional painting service, not very professional to ignore all my emails and not send me the item I paid for June 1st! In addition to writing about this here, I'm reporting him to eBay. I had to buy a Defiler just to get a single bit the day before Astronomi-con Vancouver. I've been ripped off on eBay before and even cancelled my Mastercard because of it because their online fraud insurance was ruled to not apply in my case so I ended up out of money and I shipped back the counterfit item at BMO's suggestion. This fellow can explain to eBay why he's been ignoring me and why he didn't ship the tiny bit I needed to complete my conversion.

Germie the over-prepared

He now claims my address was wrong when it wasn't, maybe it is UPS's fault or something, but why ignore me for two months?

Now that that is out of the way I can talk about the miniatures I painted special for this army. I did up basically an entire squad of Nurgle havocs and a heavily armed aspiring champion for one of my Plague Marine squads. Seven whole models! Well not exactly I've been touching up and repainting old models for years and the end of that is in sight. I've also been making my army legal and hopefully effective using the new codex. Alas another rules change has just happened.

I'm going to finish off the last two dozen Nurgle models I need and I've already started to paint some undivided troops. My next year's Astro army which I may also take South to Las Vegas GT will have troops that are undivided and worship all four powers, it is the theme and I got some cool conversions planned. Next up after Astro is West Coast Mayhem which if my studies allow I will enter again. Just this morning I decided to take the troops that for one reason or another, mostly by being armed and painted poorly have never been in a major tournament army.

This will probably hurt my painting scores and maybe even my composition scores at West Coast Mayhem but since I don't even know the points limit I'm not too concerned. I want an army that plays a lot differently and looks a lot different so no one bitches. This means you Doc. :-)

Havocs of Nurgle

Over on the Bolter and Chainsword is a thread where you can see in progress shots of the models I've been working on. Well the Chaos Space Marine models. I've painted a few Orks and Gobbos this year.

Army List and Plan

Oscar the Grouch Pattern Havoc Launcher

My army list consisted of three squads of plague marines, a squad of Nurgle Havocs with Heavy Bolters, a Landraider, a Dread, two rhinos, and a souped up Chaos Lord. The idea was it would use elements from my three previous GT armies and thus look cool but also play a little different.

Each plague marine squad had a different set of special weapons and each Plague Champion was armed differently. The lord and one squad could ride in the Landraider allowing the army to be mostly mobile with the Havocs to hold the line and the dreadnought to cause trouble on one flank. I really like dreads even if they go a bit crazy and have already ordered another Forgeworld one to paint up in time for next years Astro. I've also got my fifth dread planned...

I retrofitted and improved the paint jobs of a lot of old models over the last four years, leaving very few models left from CanGames in 1997 and even the 2002 Calgary Grand Tournament.

Read on to see how we actually did...

My Astronomi-con Vancouver Army
Words and Images © Andrew "Muskie" McKay.
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