Thanks to Everyone at NoVA

Once again I would like to thank everyone involved in NoVA 2015

• Thanks to Mike Brandt & Dewey Haines and all the volunteers for their efforts making the event smooth and organized
• Thanks to Neil for being the TO for the 40k events and still have time to hang out with me
• Thanks to all the fans you stopped by. All of your kind words mean a lot.
• And yes, we are still on hiatus for the foreseeable future
• Thanks to all who attended my seminars. I hope learned as much from me as I learned from you this year.
• Thanks to all the players who gave me feedback on the Mechanicus board.
• it was overwheliming positive but I found a few area for improvement for next time

Hope to see you all next year

Tactical Terrain Eric

Nova Open is one month away!

Hello Allan here, Nova Open is one month away an this is the state of my army:

Lots of work to get done!

Blue Tape Special

I wanted to do something different for my Dark Eldar. Not content with the gloomy purple & black, I wanted to embrace a Neo Toyko look with wild Japanese motorcycle striping.

After reviewing several airbrush tutorials, one stuck out that demonstrated some of the best airbrushed models were not done because of the airbrush, but by how well you use an knife.

After base coating the models with Wild Rider Orange, I spent weeks finding the right design. I ran the design through a scanner and took a picture of the jetbike so I knew the size & fit for the final stencil. I cut out a prototype out of frisket, but this was too rigid to bend to the shape of the jetbike. So I traced the frisket stencil onto painter's blue tape & applied the tape as shown above.

And repeat. A lot. Why did I think 24 Jetbikes was a good idea?

I used both the cut out the outer edges of the stencil to add variation to the same theme. Astute readers will see the frisket in the background as well future design plans

I airbrushed the jetbikes with tape in place. Started with black in the middle of the jetbike then painted a gradient of grays so the brightest grey to the edges of the jetbike.

Certainly not 50 shades of gray, but mixed them on the fly by adding white to the starting black in small increments

Moment of truth, remove the tape slowly

A rare moment when a jetbike is not jinking

Comparison of the postive & negative stencils side by side. Still a cohesive look for the army. I will have to differentiate special bikes by painting the riders different colors

I plan to do the same technique on the my 1001 venoms and raiders. I will also attempt something similar on the infantry. More updates to come!

Right to Rules Canon

Had this notion come up several times in rules conversations over the past few days, and it has inspired me for a quick BLOG post and likely a little conversation on the next podcast.

There exists a fantastic list of canons which you not only can but absolutely should use when trying to make correct rules decisions for 40K.  The reason why you have to have a set of canons rather than a singular principle/canon (principle such as:  Read as Written, a principle which fails at face value and is easy to show why) is because the rule set, as we all very well know, lacks clarity, structure, and technical writing which is otherwise required.

In the presence of rules (laws) which lack clarity, if you want to arrive at correct conclusions when trying to rules arbitrate, you must apply an entire set of canons, one of which is Read as Written.  Another, and far more important in the land of rules arbitration, is the Right to Rules canon.


Right to Rules -  When making a rules decision, rule in favor of a model/unit having a right to use the rules it was given.

Sounds stupidly obvious, right?  A model or unit has a basic right to use the rules that it was given.  Derp?

Well, this issue comes up quite a bit when someone is trying to over-apply the Read as Written canon to rules arbitration.

I'm not going to use any of the specific examples that have come up (three in just two days) recently as I don't want anyone to feel like I'm picking on them.  Ineed, none of these issues were actually arguments anyways, just points of fact.  So, instead, here's a funny one that comes up regarding everyone's favorite Pylon Star.

Technically, in the rule book, you can only apply wounds from the wound pool to the target of a shooting attack.  However, as many tournaments have ruled that Death Rays (old death rays mind you) do not target models, thus conveniently ignoring Jink rules (another RAW application for another time), then according to the rules, the Death Ray cannot actually apply wounds to anything.

So, Read as Written, the Death Ray simply doesn't work at all.  Case closed!

And this is why Right to Rules is important and a more powerful canon than Read as Written.  Read as Written, the game actually can't be played at all due to above cases.  So, you must apply Right to Rules when making a rules arbitration that no interpretation of the Rules should end up in a model or unit not having the ability to use the rules it was granted.