Brother Tyler

A slew of posts that weren't about the subject models have been hidden. It's not that difficult to create new topics for different subjects, folks.

The third operative is the heavy gunner, bearing a heavy bolter. Veteran Brother Kao Luang is from the Storm Angels Chapter. Yes, I see all the stuff that needs to be cleaned up. Who are the Storm Angels? Idunno. I made them up. The name itself is based on words that are commonly used in Chapter names, as described in the "It's All the Name" article that appeared in the 2002 edition of Chapter Approved (3rd edition!). My goal was to use a Chapter name that might evoke some things without necessarily being accurate. In this case, "storm" might evoke the White Scars, or maybe the Space Wolves, while "angels" evokes both the Blood Angels and Dark Angels. Meanwhile, the Maltese cross isn't really associated with any of those Chapters or their Successors, being more commonly associated with the Black Templars (and a few other Imperial Fists Legion Successors) as well as a few Chapters whose lineage are unknown (though I suspect that most are either descended from Rogal Dorn or Roboute Guilliman). When one sees the black Maltese cross, the Black Templars and their ZEAL for close combat comes to mind. Yet I've put that shoulder pad on the heavy gunner - a deliberate subversion. Who are the Storm Angels descended from? Again, Idunno. I plan to develop this Chapter a little - only as much as the paragraph or two that the WD/GW employees provided for their DIY Chapters in WD 515. Both shoulder pads, both arms, and the heavy bolter (including the backpack) come from the Deathwatch kit. The rest of the bits are bog-standard Tactical/Devastator bits.

Just a reminder that this discussion topic is clearly identified in the topic title: New Calgar, Sicarius, and Victrix Guard miniatures All of the other discussion is relevant to the hobby, but is off-topic here. Please find/create appropriate topics in the other (sub)forums to continue with these other issues.

The topic title has been updated.

Yes, we are still working to identify ways in which the non-Forums features, especially the Blogs and Clubs, can receive more visibility and engagement. We've already implemented a few things and are discussing additional options that we hope to implement soon. This represents a significant cultural shift within the community, however, so it is going to take time. From a personal perspective, one of the things I'd like to do is spend more time in the Blogs to see the hobby projects that our members are working on. There is a lot of really great stuff in members' blogs and that content deserves recognition and engagement. I think that the biggest thing that we (bloggers) can do at the moment is engage with each other, much as @W.A.Rorie and others have been doing. This situation will change as the staff implements a few things and hopefully we'll see other members in the Blogs, both conducting their own and engaging with others.

The second operative in my kill team is Veteran Brother Hywel Kaedor of the Griffon Lords Chapter. Both shoulder pads, both arms, and the Stalker pattern boltgun come from the Deathwatch kit. The rest of the bits are bog-standard Tactical/Devastator squad bits. The Griffon Lords Chapter is one of the three Chapters I know of that use the rampant griffon badge, the other two being the Howling Griffons (a favorite of mine) and the Knights of Gryphonne. Both of the other Chapters have some history, with the Howling Griffons having been developed further in the Badab War. Since the Griffon Lords have nothing more than a name and official livery, I chose them. This gives me my "blue" guy. I see a few areas on this model that need to be cleaned up and filed before priming.

This kind of topic is perfectly acceptable (and encouraged) here.

I've gone through and adjusted the two members who I know were affected to the proper levels. It looks like the achievement to create a club reset their achievement points to 1. I waited a few weeks to observe their successive achievements to see if anything other weird things would happen, but it looks like everything else was normal, so it was just a matter of adding their previous achievement points to their post-jankiness achievement points. I'm now checking to see if any other members were affected so that I can fix their achievement points. I'll leave this topic open so that members can post in here if this happens again in the future.

We're getting sidetracked with some really petty bickering. Just because someone has a different opinion than you doesn't make them a bad person. Nor does it mean that their opinion is wrong. This topic is about whether or not members of the community think that [some] characters should be killed off in the lore. Let's get back on that topic. And remember - we're not all going to agree, and that's okay.

This is the kind of project that I recommend being conducted as either a blog or a club. Either method allows for discussion via comments, so you are able to engage with other members and solicit their feedback and input; and you are welcome to create outreach discussions here in the Forums to give visibility of the project and its progress to the wider community. If you envision the project being conducted as a largely solo effort (even with input/feedback from other members), a blog is appropriate. On the other hand, a club is more appropriate if you envision the project being conducted as a collaborative effort. We used to conduct this kind of project in the + SPECIAL PROJECTS + forum, but the Blogs and Clubs feature have proven to be superior to the Forums for this kind of thing. As a result, the + SPECIAL PROJECTS + forum has become reply-only, with plans to use it as an index to blogs and clubs in which special projects are being conducted (we're not quite there yet, however).

The best thing to do if you want to share images, especially if those images are large and/or you want them to remain visible for longer than a year, is to upload them to the Gallery. You can then share them by posting the image URLs (not the URLs of the image pages) into your content (e.g., topics, posts, blog entries, articles, Downloads file descriptions, etc.). You can see a tutorial on using images here.

First up is the kill team's fighter, Veteran Brother Karjalas Martäinen of the Emperor's Hounds Chapter. The power maul and both shoulder pads are from the Deathwatch kit; the grav-pistol is from the Sternguard Veteran Squad kit (I think), I forget where the helmet came from (it came out of my expansive bits box), the running legs come from the Assault squad kit, and the torso and backpack come from either the Tactical or Devastator squad kits. The Emperor's Hounds are the modern update of the first Chapter for which I ever collected a full army, the Iron Hounds. I painted this army up for the Third War for Armageddon campaign. Prior to this, I had only painted individual models, so I didn't realize the work I was creating for myself in promising to play a 2,000 point game with an army that I hadn't even painted in only a few weeks. It was my first time really playing the game. Prior to that, I had only followed the lore and painted individual models for fun. Once I realized what I dummy I was, I settled on a fairly quick scheme - primer black with red fists (I've always been a fan of the Crimson Fists Chapter), red chest decorations, and red right kneepads. The Chapter badge was intended to be a black hound's head (akin to the badge for the Space Wolves) on a crimson diamond. Since the Space Wolves upgrade sprue wasn't yet available and I sucked at applying decals, I settled for the crimson diamond and imagined the hound's head. You can see an example of the paint scheme below, showing an Assault squad veteran sergeant equipped with a bolt pistol and single lightning claw. Yes, I screwed up the priming big time, and my experiment with the red highlighting was a pretty big failure. I used several layers of inks to get the glossy effect on the red. If I had a time machine, I would go back and reduce the army size to about 1,200 points and take more time painting the models. Alas, that's not possible. Later, when the Eye of Terror campaign gave us the Marines Exemplar and an Index Astartes article showed us that Chapter's color scheme, I turned the surviving Iron Hounds models into Marines Exemplar. In my mind, I was dropping the Iron Hounds, developing the in-universe explanation that the Chapter had fallen to a Tyranid fleet. I liked the pathos of the Marines Exemplar and really liked the "sleeved" color scheme. I even turned an old 2nd edition Veteran Sergeant model into a Captain equipped with a bolt pistol, power axe, combat shield, and jump pack. I never finished painting this guy (obviously), but I think he's stored in a box somewhere. The Captain's terminator honours are indicated by the crux on his right shoulder pad, though he incorporates decidedly non-Codex litanies upon the rest of that shoulder pad. The decoration upon the right kneepad is intended to indicate that he served in the Deathwatch. The marking upon his left kneepad indicates that he leads the 3rd Company (Battle), and the white laurel upon the left greave was just a design to fill some space (it was an experiment that failed). The red highlighting is slightly better, but slightly better than really sucky is still sucky. Anyhoo, Games Workshop has given us an official Iron Hounds Chapter, forever ending any fantasy I might have to resurrect the Chapter via the Ultima Founding. Instead, I've taken the color scheme and modified it to create the Emperor's Hounds. I haven't developed any lore for the Chapter yet, but it's somewhere on my list of things to do. I've simplified things a bit by removing the crimson diamond, allowing the hound's head to be larger (coincidentally, as large as the standard Space Wolves wolf head badge ). Where the original Iron Hounds badge was envisioned as black, I've changed the hound's head to a metallic silver on a crimson field. I haven't thought about the Chapter's color scheme beyond that. One of the downsides of getting old is that my eyesight has gotten weaker. To compensate, I've found that taking pictures of my models helps me to see the areas that need to be filed and cleaned up before any priming takes place. As you can see from the images at the top of this entry, there is a little work to be done before the airbrush comes out.

I've gone through and locked most of the topics that weren't archived. If any of the members want to revisit those games, you are invited to request that they be moved into the Nook if they belong to the members of the Nook or create a new club if the participants are other members. Any staff member can take care of this action - all you have to do is REPORT the topic and include a link to the club (either the Nook or a new one). The issue now is figuring how how this forum remains relevant. The way I see it, this subforum provides a place to discuss PBP roleplaying in general. It also serves as a central place to locate resources that might be common to PBP roleplaying. For example, I left the PBP player register topic unlocked, enabling new players to add their information. Another service I see this subforum providing is an index of PBP RPG groups (i.e., clubs) and ongoing games. This will make it easier for potential PBP RPGers to find those clubs/games without having to perform a painstaking search through the clubs. In what ways do you see us using this subforum to facilitate PBP RPGing?

No, these can't be optional. The whole point of adding them was to increase visibility of the content in the non-Forums features, so they're intended to "distract" you (though I don't think that "distract" is the correct word). To be honest, I was hoping that we could tailor the sidebar content to each forum, but that isn't possible with the settings. The only thing we did that resembled splitting any of the forums was moving the lore of the setting out of + AMICUS AEDES + and into a new dedicated forum in the new lore category; and realistically, that only mattered with the lore of the modern setting since the + AGE OF DARKNESS + forum already covered the lore of the Horus Heresy period and the + BLACK LIBRARY + forum covered the fiction in both the books and videos. The creation of the + AGE OF THE IMPERIUM + forum (for the lore of the modern setting) makes it much easier to find all of the lore discussions without having to sift through the other topics that appear in + AMICUS AEDES +. As far as the old ++ THE HORUS HERESY ++ category being removed and its forums moved into different categories, that was one point of friction that we anticipated. We felt that the benefits of the change outweighed the loss, however. All of the forums from that category now appear much higher on the screen, and if you're viewing the site on a computer, they all appear on the screen at the same time. As a result, there is much less scrolling to get to them. Even if you're viewing the site on a mobile device there is much less scrolling to get to them, with the only added inconvenience being scrolling past a category name and two other forums in between the three forums. The forum names haven't changed, preserving recognition. You can hide/unhide categories that you don't want to see (tutorial), but can't do the same with (sub)forums, unfortunately. The best way to focus your content searches is to follow the content in which you're interested. In your case, you're implying that you want to follow only the + AGE OF DARKNESS +, + WARHAMMER: THE HORUS HERESY +, and + EPIC SCALE HORUS HERESY GAMES +, in terms of (sub)forums. You could easily follow any (sub)forums, as well as members, albums, images, topics, blogs, blog entries, etc. Then you can adjust your notification settings to receive notifications for content that you follow. You can also adjust your New content settings (see the "NEW" button that appears at the top of the screen) to show only the new content that you follow; then all you have to do is click that button to be shown the content that you follow. The biggest thing I'm seeing is the need to improve/standardize (sub)forum descriptions. Some other things, I suspect, will take some getting used to, such as the (sub)faction (sub)forums appearing much lower on the site now.

We are currently working on revisions to our community rules to incorporate the changes that @Gillyfish announced above. We've tried to be more descriptive than prescriptive in this, but we want the description to be as clear as possible, both in terms of identifying what is allowed and making clear the kinds of things that aren't allowed. This is a significant change to the site and we expect a lot of fine-tuning to take place as we collectively learn what works and what doesn't. Ultimately, we're trying to open the aperture as wide as possible in terms of enabling members to enjoy the Warhammer 40,000 hobby. Are there any more questions/comments? Your questions/comments will help us to nail the rules revision down. And please don't give me any positive reactions for this change - it was @Gillyfish's idea. He's the one who deserves your gratitude. If you want to give positive reactions, give them to him in one of his posts above. If you don't like this expansion, feel free to give your negative reactions to me.