2009: Year in Review

18th of January 2009 marks the beginning of Stealthy Blades. It may not be much of a blog, but to me it signifies my intent and seriousness of my hobby. Although initially intended as a gallery for my Raven Guard army, it soon evolved as my own personal hobby blog as the word 'Stealth' can be applied to all three armies I own at the moment; Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, and Wood Elves.

Somewhere around March or April, I joined a fantastic hobby club called Legio Malaysia. Damn, it was one hell of wacky & fun people to be with. In this club too, I get to be reacquainted with some familiar faces of the past (Faizal, Arzmi, Jit/Rizal and 'small' Shazli to be exact). We spent almost every Friday nights together, talking and doing hobby, rolling dices, painting stuffs, making tables, and organizing events to make the Malaysian gaming community better. We even went to Singapore together, just to play some more games. I am so happy that I found a place that I felt at home with, thanks guys!

Come July, I was already halfway through my second 40K army: the Alpha Legion. Up to this moment, that army is still in the 'Painting in Progress' mode, but trust me when I say it already wrecked havoc in my gaming club. Especially during the great Arenxis Minoris campaign that was organized by Azlan. I also noticed something while working on this Chaos army; other than the freedom of conversion that it provided, my painting skills actually improved. This realization came to me when I decided to play a game with my Raven Guard again. I definitely have to thank Jeff and Khairul for this, because now I feel more confident to actually finish painting my abandoned Wood Elves.

And now, I'm already looking and searching for my own airbrush set. Being in a proper hobby club really encouraged me to be better. I'm really confident that my conversion skill has gone way beyond my own expectations, just need to brush up on the painting skills. The best part is, I'm doing it by my own free will because I want to be just as good as the other hobbyists around me. Some fellow hobbyist even went a bit extreme by developing their own secret army projects, hahaha. I'm foreseeing that 2010 will be the year of secrets unveiling. I wish I was this eager with other aspects of my life.

My real life, almost all aspects of it, can be summed up in one word: Sucks! Hoping it would turned for the best by next year though.
And some may notice that I don't drive, at all. One small reason was because my license has expired way back during my studying period overseas, while another big reason was...hmm, don't really wanna talk about this much. Let's just say even when you're working in the health-care field, actually being diagnosed of something doesn't really sound nice to your ears. I'm thinking of going against the doctor's orders in 2010; can't just rely on others' kindness, sometimes we just have to take the risk.

I am very tempted to start a new army in 2010. BUT, I'm not going to buy anything until I completed painting all the models that I'm going to frequently use in my current armies. This applies to all my Dryads, Glade Guards, Treemen, Wardancers, Alter Kindreds, Raven Guard & Alpha Legion Tanks & Walkers, Daemon Princes, Obliterators, Raven Guard marines & scouts, and Alpha Legionnaires. Looking at all those stuff, maybe I won't be able to start a new army at all but who knows? It's a son of Corax, an Alpha Legionnaire, and an Asrai who's doing the talking here; nothing is what it may seemed to be ;)

Fare thee well 2009. Welcome 2010.

Fastball Special

In the last few days, the boredom of painting only either black, blue, or green finally got to me. But all that changed yesterday. Guess what arrived in my mailbox (courtesy of Wolf's Game Shop):

Yup, the Wood Elves Blood Bowl team. I even played it straight out of the box and won my first match against Shaz's Human team. My experience playing with multiple Alter Kindred heroes really helped, as playing the Catchers and the Wardancers in this team were just like playing with the former (freakin' speed demons but still, not as fast as the Lizardmen's JTLoD: Jaguar Turbo Lizard of Doom). I chose to name them the Darkwald Vanguards, after the Darkwald Forest somewhere within the Empire region. Initially planned to name them 'Sentinels', because the Asrai are guardians of the Forest, but when I mentioned that word, the first thing that came to everybody's minds that were there yesterday was the giant purple-maroon mutant-hunting robots. 'Defenders' and 'Watchers' were too cliche, so 'Vanguard' it is then.

And here it was today, in their white primer condition. 2.5 hours later, all of them are already based coloured, but the camera I have right now doesn't do me justice. The main colour would be bright red, since I wanted something away from the blue or green hues. Yellow did came into consideration, but since I'm going to paint them blonde, painting them yellow would then be very boring to look at. Once I get a better camera, I'll post a better picture.

Hmm..I may need at least 1 more Catcher in this team.

p/s: The pictures are taken with my phone's 2 megapixel camera. Sorry for the low quality.

Some Random Cool Army (not mine)

"Damn cool bikes!"