Apocalypse @ Legends

This Sunday July 20^th Legends Gaming will be kicking off its first major campaign “The Battle for Periphery” by staging a massive 14,000 point apocalypse game! The fall of hive Regrax will be a showcase battle between Tyranids and the Imperial guard (Astra Militarum) who are desperately trying to hold off the Tyranid invasion while the civilian population tries to evacuate the doomed city. This Sunday will also be the official start of the campaign, so players who have signed up or sign up at the event will be able to start playing through the first tier of kill team games (500 points) 

 It's shaping up to be a pretty epic throw down between some pretty awesome armies (Chucks nids always a visual treat when deployed en force) So if your free this Sunday, swing by the store, we'll be set up in the overflow space next to the game side, we will also have plenty of tables set up for anyone wanting to play campaign missions, or get in a pickup game or just hang out and hobby. 

One last blurb. The latest episode of “The Stuff of Legends” is up, this week we talk about the upcoming campaign (I know, shocker right) hobby progress and games played for the week and general news for the gaming group.

iTunes

Direct download

 

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Sauceror 

P.S.

If you want to know what the gaming group is up to on a regular basis check out the Facebook group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Legends40k/

Hobby Night & Bitz Baazar

Thursday night found me in the company of long time co conspirators Ian and Chuck, there was sausage (not pictured but delicious) there was beer (pictured and also delicious) and there were bitz (pictured and apparently delicious as well according to Ian) Below are some quick shots from last nights hobby jam, sorry about the lighting but I require being back lit at all times to accentuate my glowing visage, if you don’t buy that, it was a bit dark in Ian’s office so we grabbed every table lamp in the house.

This Sunday Legends will be holding a bitz bazaar, come and trade your bits, build something fun out of your own bits box and show off your kit bashing skills. The bazaar opens at 11am but will probably run until close. You can get more info on Legends here.

 

Ian’s new nick name is lightning fingers, I swear I looked away for like five minutes and when I looked back he had banged out this awesome objective marker/diorama from his bed of bitz (which is now a table of bitz) Chuck and I also gave a quick tutorial on bounce lighting and focus, and I learned that there is indeed a minimum requirement hardware wise for taking cellphone pics. Ian’s phone did not meet this requirement, and I was subsequently humbled by my previous claims of skill using any device, in the end we just used mine, but I learned Ian was gifted a Nokia 800 some time back, so he should be seeing a marked increase in his photo quality shortly.

 

 

 

Ian rocking the brush on another storm trooper, I am still kicking myself for forgetting to get a pic of his Tempestor in a Hawaiian shirt.

It’s easy to pick out the difference of technique between Ian and I, its tight brush control and edging detail vs broad strokes and blending, interesting contrast.

Chuck started base coating his new wraithguard, I have yet to actually assemble mine, maybe next week.

 

Wraithguard awaiting wraithing.

Kahuna Yarrick makes a brief appearance along with a sack of rogue trader rhinos (no literally, Ian had a sack full of them)

 

Not a shocker here, I managed to get the base coat on a few more sentinels over the course of the evening, I love to say I got more done, but I was distracted by ale and sausage and the occasional jokes of varying degrees of taste.

 

 

We attempted to teach him to use tools and we are pleased to announce that things are progressing well in our study.

The following are my attempts to salvage my reputation of being a” guy who knows things about cameras” and who totally doesn’t forget four years’ worth of photography courses and basic lighting after two (albeit large) beers.

 

 

 

 I would like to thank I an for inviting me out to his hobby bunker, and for a treating evening of plastic dolls and drinks (and turning me on to what is possibly the best sausage place in San Jose) Its mothers day this Sunday, so don't forget to put down your brushes and give it up for mom (sorry couldn't think of anything creative, brain running on fumes)

 

Cheers

 

-Scott

BH Senior Brewmaster  

Army Stolen: Please read

On Friday May 2nd one of our players and long time friend of the shop Bill had his car broken into and his Battlefoam bag with his army stolen. Its always a terrible thing when it happens, all I can do is ask is for the community keep an eye out on ebay or Craigslist. As you can see below its a very visually unique army. This happened in the San Jose/Cupertino area.

 

 

If you see or find anything you can contact us at bayhammer@gmail.com or post to the Legends Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Legends40k/ We are all pulling for Bill over at the shop and hopefully something will turn up, all we can do at this point though is put more eyeballs on the situation.


Thank You.

Scott

Hobby Progress/KR Review

I preach the word of Carl.

 

This week has been quite the toasty one, despite my workspace having an identical atmosphere to an easy bake oven I did manage to get some hobby time in this week. As you can see by my highly advanced project tracking system I finished all of D’s guard commissions for the month. With that out of the way I have had more time to work on my sentinels I decided the best way to go on this project was to break everything down into squads of three. Not counting basing I have managed to clear six of them since Monday, after getting my jungle funge layering system down its gotten a lot easier to crank these guys out, basing is still going to be a bit of a chore, but as a whole they have been coming out pretty consistently painted.

My army grows.

One of the first ones I did up out of the set.

 

I heard you like sentinels...

Aaannndddd more sentinels.

 

Random sniper, why not.

Oh yeah, did I mention I finally broke down and bought some soft blue foam, and if I didn’t upgrade my kit soon I would have keep running with my old set up (battle damaged army sabol bag filled with packing peanuts, old large GW figure case) add to that I have been doing hobby demos and taking pictures for the Escalation league over at Legends, I basically looked like a Sherpa every time I went to the shop. So I decided I try there auto fill app for my guard stuff and picked up a single case with no bag. Let me start by saying there are plenty of reviews for KR floating around out there that go into great detail about their product, this will not be one of those, as a matter of fact “just plain awesome” pretty much sums up my experience with KR so far, everything about this product is plain and functional with little extra ornamentation or frill and I mean that in the most positive manner. I have seen other more expensive options that simply add nothing more than extra flair and decide its worth double the price, KR on the other hand doesn’t bother with overly specialized options, they make a simple highly modular product that is designed to fit your needs and there has yet to be an issue with my purchase that really stands out as a negative, I do kind of wish they had a tray that was half troop half heavy weapons squad ( as you can see above I found a work around) but other than that everything seems well designed and optimized. You can cram a lot into a single case and not just troops (though I hear you can cram over 200 into a single hard case) I managed to get two troop choices (about 60 pieces of infantry) plus armor and HQ’s into one case, and there was no wiggle and no loose minis jangling around during transit.

I cut plugs in half so I could put more infantry in the empty slots.

For comparison here’s a few shots of the cores for my other bags (SABOL and GW) GW’s foam comes closest, but it’s still a far cry from the quality and softness of KR’s trays, GW’s trays are soft but much more dense and springy, with a little give, KR by comparison is quite soft and malleable almost plush to the touch with enough density to keep everything in place, but also has enough give to make sure that piece that’s just a little too wide can be made to fit without fear of damage.

 

Sabol sad to say represents the old school, pick n pluck was the norm 7-8 years ago, but now feels quite dated (KR does offer pick n pluck style trays, which do still have their uses) Compared with the more modern purpose cut foam trays from companies like KR and Battlefoam this stuff just doesn’t stack up. The foam itself has very little give and does not feel that far removed from those little bits you used to get in the GW metal single packs. Still though I use it for over flow and I will never get rid of my army carrier bag (It has far too much character to throw out, and it doubles as a cooler) So sadly I can no longer recommend them, or most of their product line, they do still make a quality and consistant product, but there are better evenly priced options out there now.

That’s it, for now anyways, I plan to get another batch of sentinels done up tonight and maybe another sniper or medic, but for the most part that’s all my hobby progress for this week. Before I sign off though, a quick shout out for the stuff of legends podcast. This Sunday we will be recording episode 13, we’ll be going over escalation news, some of the 6.1ed stuff that’s been bubbling up lately, and I review my first issue of WD visions. You can check out all the previous episodes of TSoL here.

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Adjunct Sommelier  

New hobby video up

I woke up Sunday morning and decided that I was going to start doing a video series on the basics of getting into 40k in a no nonsense format. The end result was me hastily zip tying a video rig together and trying to get movie maker to sync properly to my camera (it didn't) But I managed to get the above video out, I do plan to re do this once I have had more time to sort out the kinks in my presenter/recording seat up, so I apologize in advance for the quality.

This video is meant more for newbie than long time hobbyists, so if you know what your doing there wont be any surprises in here.

Feedback is greatly appreciated, as I mentioned I plan to do more of these in the future, so if you have any experience doing this sort of thing, or just have a few suggestions hit me up in the comments, or shoot me an email at bayhammer@gmail.com

Cheers

Scott
-BH Senior Funk Master.

New TSoL episode up.

Episode 11 of "The Stuff of Legends" is now live. You can grab it off iTunes or get a direct download from the link below.

This week I joined Chuck, Ian and fellow guard player Bill for an overview of the new Astra Militarum/Tempestus comedies that came out over the last few days/weeks. We also go over Zone Mortalis and what Chuck has been up to behind the scenes for the escalation league.

iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-stuff-of-legends/id832274658?mt=2
Download
http://traffic.libsyn.com/stuffoflegends/SOL_11_1.mp3

Thoughts, comments and general feedback are always welcome.

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Paddler

The coming storm.

Good afternoon party people. as you are no doubt aware (would be really hard not to notice) a new Imperial guard codex has been released. Since about 6pm Friday night this has bee my life.

1st rule of 40k club, buy a really big desk.

Thank god for OneNote is all I have to say on that. For the last 24 hours I have been drinking deep from the content hose, and yet again GW has managed to cram as much information as possible into roughly eight pages of solid rules, there's been a lot of minor tweaking with the guard in this release and while there are a few 'new' units, I haven't really found any really serious standouts (I am sure there are internet people willing to tell me otherwise on standby)

So far though this book is shaping up to be really solid, they did a few things to make it a little easier to keep all the rules with in reach and the over all layout shows a lot of the polish that GW has been adding with each 6th ed codex release. Rules wise I think the guard got a lot of buffs to some of the less often used units, but its still to early for me to say anything one way or the other about the book just now. If you want to really know what I think about the new codex you can download the upcoming episode of "The Stuff of Legends" podcast which should be out next week. This will be my second appearance on the show and I am really looking forward to sitting down with Chuck and Ian again to really dig in to both Codex Militarum Tempestus and Astra Militarum.

If your in the San Jose/Cupertino area feel free to come by the shop, my co-conspirators and I will be there all day hobbying and playing games (first weekend of 1k with flyers in the escalation league whoo!) so stop on by :)

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Auspex Fiddler

Weekend Workshop @ Legends

Sunday May 18th I will be hosting a hobby workshop at Legends comics & Games in Cupertino CA, focused on doing light box photography for beginners. The workshop will be 45 minutes to an hour and is free to attend, though space may be limited depending on how many people we get to RSVP , so I highly recommend sending us an email at bayhammer@gmail.com to check in advance what the turnout is going to look like as we get closer to the 18th.

These are the areas I will be going over:

-What & why

-Lighting.

-Setting up your camera.

-Shooting and backgrounds.

-Editing your photos.

-Commercial vs. DIY.

As an added bonus everyone who attends will get a chance to win their own fold up light box courtesy of Bay Hammer!

 

There are no required materials for this workshop, but it is recommended that you bring a note pad or tablet to take down notes for your own benefit, I also recommend brining the camera you plan on using and the  manual, or a print out of the manual for it if you have one and want to learn about the functions of your specific device. After the workshop I will be available to answer questions, provide advice or help attendees with setting up your camera.

So if your free that weekend and live in the south bay/San Jose area feel free to shoot me an email or join the Legends Warhammer group on Facebook for updates or  to RSVP under the events section.

I would love to do more of these types of events, so depending on how much interest we get in the event I may plan more down the line, and open up suggestions for future workshops and events.


See you there!

Scott
-BH Senior Lightmancer

GW Technicals

I shot out a quick blast on the Facebook group about this stuff, but I really cant state how much I love GW's new'ish technical line of paints and washes. Most of these are geared towards insta grunge.

Fact:
I Love grunge


Having access to instant grunge effect is perfect for me, I can safely say I am now addicted, I did up a quick objective piece/demo when I was over at Legends today for their escalation league night, so dirty and corroded, the cracked earth stuff is also brilliant if not a little fragile.

 

 

I cant wait to play around with these a more in the coming weeks, 'D' still has a ton of tanks for me to paint up, so expect a lot more "distressed" metal in the coming weeks. Oh one more thing before I punch out. Nothing big, just cranked out two more chimeras for D's IG and yes I am aware of the two bolters (don't look at me I am just a painter) it came to me in that odd  configuration.

 

 

 

Special shout out to Chuck who just got back from Mecca (England)

 

 

-Scott

BH Senior Coat Fluffer

 

The battle for Het begins...

This weekend all manner of war and destruction was let loose when Legends Games in Cupertino CA kicked off the first round of games in its new "Battle for Het" campaign tournament. It was a full house with standing room only as players from all over the Bay Area duked it out to claim first blood in bout one of the CTF tournament. We saw a lot of SM/IG lists but I spied a few Xenos in the mix as well. While this may not be the biggest game on the block it certainly marks a turning point in our development, as the series is a co opted by BH's own brother Ian.

So if your looking to work on your small game (lists limited to0 750pts and there's no entry fee) or just have fun, feel free to drop in on Friday or Saturday morning and sign up. Drop ins are always welcome (its a cumulative point system) and we are always looking to help new or returning players get back into the hobby. Both myself and Ian will be on hand to answer questions or offer help with getting set up if need be. If you have any questions or want to sign up for a game in advance email us at BayHammer@gmail.com

Cheers

Scott

BH Senior Editor

P.S.

I mentioned last week that we have been very busy with other projects, well this is one of them. Look out for more BH/Legends events and gatherings in the near future.

Bay Hammer Radio Tonight

Tonight's show is going to be a bit short, this is due to both having to come straight from work myself, and having to co host the Warhammer 8th Edition pre release party at legends in Cupertino. We will however still be going live tonight at 5:15 pm PST so don't forget to tune in for all the news and tips that you didn't get on BoLs.

Topics will include:
-Upcoming events
-Dark Eldar and Chaos Demons release dates
-Spearhead review and tactics
-Product review
-Whats on the work bench

and more.

So tune in and relax for another exciting installment of Bay Hammer Radio (Home of the Chaos Tyranids)

Hope to see you there

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Battle for One Tree Hill: revisited

Alright so today D and myself finally threw down against each other over at Legends in cupertino. The mood was light and the game was fun, and above all else we made it to turn five. The deployment type was spearhead, with three objectives on a 4x8 table.






Turn one see's me seizing the initiative and choosing to go first. I move my tanks from their deployment position out into the open where they can range the Eldar which at this point are hugging the hill vary tightly. My Medusa is not ranged and must be moved out of cover. The IG start off strong launching a barrage against the entrenched Dire Avengers which where attempting to contest the objective on the hill.


Above is the results of the top of turn one. Both the Earth shaker and the Russ Battle cannon being backed up by my Eradicator laid down a punishing barrage of fire and basically wiping out a full third of D's Avengers and taking the Eldar out of the objective point putting me in the lead. The bottom of turn one consisted mostly of D moving his Dire Avengers (off screen) into cover and moving what was left of his guardians up towards the objective.


The top of turn two finds my short range artillery coming into range and the IG infantry moving up into the narrow corridor between the imperial ruins effectively setting up a firing lane for any of the eldar that might try and assault the IG dug in to the objective in the ruins. After a short movement phase the artillery opens up again this time obliterating a good chunk of guardians (actually they where all killed down to a single man) As you can see above a good deal of fire dragons also took some of the heat. After the artillery finished the IG opened up again with Lascannon fire and successfully penning and blowing up one of the Falcons and taking half its compliment of fire dragons along with it, effectively limiting the anti armor capability's of the Eldar.



Skipping ahead to turn three we find D making a stand and losing another Falcon for his trouble, this time falling to a combination of tank fire and Lascannon's while artillery pound the remainder of his Dire Avengers and Fire Dragons. Having cast fortune prior to the Falcon blowing up, the Seer and his Warlocks survived the explosion and deployed in front of my tank squad and threw a few well placed singing spears into my Storm Troopers, and managing to pick off one trooper before turning their attention on my tanks.

The Warlock assault hits home and obliterates my Eradicator. Now at the top of turn four we find the Warlocks caught between two very angry tanks and a squad of storm troopers sporting a heavy flamer and a grenade launcher. You can see above the end result, and while D's warlocks made a bold and selfless move and managed to raise my heart rate for a moment, all where brutally slaughtered under the fusillade of Las fire and punisher rounds.



So turn five saw D's seer blown apart (if you couldn't see that one coming) and a lone Dire Avenger struggling to the objective point, some how making it through two artillery barrages and tank fire. The IG did their best to keep the Eldar away from the second objective, but alas this lone bad ass managed to climb up the hill and tie up the game in the bottom of turn five.

So that's it. The game was fast and intense and on more then one occasion the balance of power changed hands, only to be brutally snatched back by the other side. Over all a great game and I cant wait till our 2000 point game on Friday, so until then happy gaming all.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Calling all Heretics

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting the owner and administrator for Throne of skulls, not only do we currently share a burning grudge against the eldar but ToS is a bay area based site. A chaos oriented site, ToS is a web community devoted entirely to those who field the fierce minions of the blood god. They have a number of active pages and gallery's. Members share collective works and there are a number of fascinating entry's about pre heresy armies as well as show and tell page for completed projects. So if you like Khorne or just chaos in general go check them out at Throneofskulls.com or click the new banner on the right side.

Cheers

Scott

New Product from Bay Hammer

You heard right, Bay Hammer is releasing a new line of flocking and basing material in May. Over the past several months we have been working on a exclusive deal with our Hosts and business contacts over at Legends of Comics and Games in Cupertino CA to bring you this new premium line of basing material. The flocking itself was developed and made by Ian, leading contributing editor and long time associate of BH. He developed a process that is both economic and eco friendly and enables us to create a high grade basing material without the need for a large production facility or indeed any machinery. If your wondering how its done **CENSORED**

Going Green:
And we are not talking orks (though our current range works well with them) No I am talking about a basing material that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is eco friendly. The flocking itself is made from all natural materials not finely chipped or shredded foam core. The stuff will actually biodegrade if mixed with potting soil or mulch. We know that a majority of "green products" are bull but I couldn't resist throwing this little bit in.

Affordability:
We talked with the guys over at the shop and decided on a final whopping price of $2.00US That's about $2 cheaper then GF9 range and about $7 cheaper then GW and you get more then you would in a regular GW tub.

**While BH dose not have any current plans to sell online during the trial sales we may contact our partners at WCC to help reach those who are not Bay Area locals.**

The products pictured above shows our current range of colors, Dry Brush, Forest Floor and Mixed Green. We are working on making a selection of darker toned basing as well.

Remember you can only get BH brand flocking at Legends of Comics and Games in Cupertino CA while we run trial sales.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor