Defence of Vercote Hive - Wolf v Tyranid Battle Report

I thought I might try something a little different with this battle report, maybe people will like them, maybe not, but I like the idea of trying to bring a little more personality to my games.  (I'll point out now that I started writing this before the release of Thousand Sons, Prospero Burns and Battle for the Fang so the style is pretty different to most of the current Space Wolves fiction.)  Let me know if you like it or not...

  "That is a fell-wind, do you smell it brother?"  

Njärv stood, his nostrils flaring as he drew great draughts of air into his lungs.  Surveying the outskirts of the hive from his vantage point, he could sense that all wasn't right, not only by sniffing the air as it gusted across the crater strewn landscape, but in a tremor that seemed to be rising up out of the earth and into his body, as if the ground itself was trembling in fear.

  "Aye, and one I recognise far too well.  I remember this foul thrall-stench from Ahmrads Hope, and that day we barely held Eden's Gate from the xeno."

Thogard knelt down, drawing a handful of carved bones from a worn hide pouch at his belt and tossed them onto the earth, watching as they tumbled and how they landed.  A frown creased his heavy brow,  

  "Not good, not good at all.  There is something more to this, something other than the usual interference caused by the wyrm, something powerful awaits and this world feels it in its bones, its spirit is restless."  

Gathering up the runes, Thogard stood and turned to one of the Wolf Guard gathered around the two Rune Priests,  

  "Gather your pack-mates, and awake the spirits of your Rhinos, we'll join battle within the hour if I read the winds correctly.  The wolf spirits will be with you."

Would you like to know more?

A couple of years ago, I had this thought rattling around in my head for Guards painted up (and perhaps mildly converted) to resemble the Mobile Infantry (MI) from Starship Troopers.  I just love those films, they are so wacky and tongue-in-cheek and I used to watch them while painting quite a bit.  I posted about this a while back, and although not thinking it was the most original of ideas, it definitely got a bit of attention and I just couldn't resist making them up.

I started off with a smallish elites force of guard, Raszcek's Roughnecks, and when I can, would still like to expand into the 3rd MI division in keeping with the film.  It'll probably be a mostly un-mechanised army although that'll change given time I'm sure, and I've got ideas for some light conversions to be done to Valkyries to make them resemble the landers from the films. 

Change in GWs copyright policy?

I don't have the largest amount of hobby to tell you about from the last week, but I have been hearing some interesting tid-bits from local sources and have found a couple of things on the internet that I thought I'd let you all know about.

New paint scheme for "One Force" marines

 Hey there everyone!

I revealed my spots here and my desire to make a force of marines that are general, definitely not chapter specific, that I can use with many if not all codices in order to try different flavours of marines.  I mentioned in that post how I would like them to look, and I'm starting to settle on a scheme and method of painting them.

One force to rule them all!

Come on then, bring the hate!

I want to make myself a Space Marine force that I can use across most, if not all Codices.  I'd like to be able to try different armies across the Space Marine range and with my current Space Wolves its just a bit too difficult to try and field them as other type.
I also want to use some of the lovely Forgeworld early marque armours and this is the perfect excuse.

2012 New Years Resolutions

So here are my resolutions for the upcoming year.  I'm trying not to be too ambitious in setting these so that I actually have a chance of achieving some of them, but as with the best laid plans and all that...

• Post once per week minimum - don't post when I write, schedule posts to come up each Wednesday, only allowed to move forward if already have posts to fill in at least the next 4 weeks.
• Painting Points - start keeping track of how much I've painted, will also review the previous year (maybe 2) for comparison (see below).
• Space Wolf Achievements - see how many of these I collect in gaming.
• Attend Blog Wars and at least one other tournament.
• No more purchases until my remaining Necrons (Wraiths, Spyders, Destroyers) and Skaven (IoB boxset, Stormvermin, Bell) have been painted and I have sold my spares (Land Raider, Drop Pods, Valkyrie etc.).

2011 Review

To be honest, this won't be that interesting to most of you unless you are relatively new to the blog.  I've taken the end of the year as an opportunity to look back over my year of hobby and try and bring together what I did as a quick reference guide for myself if I want to refer back to things in the year coming.  So without further ado...

Started the year in February with complete re-vamp of how I paint my Space Wolves to make them a little darker and dirtier.  I continued the painting theme by settling on a scheme for how I was going to paint my Necrons (it'd only taken me a year to figure out what I was going to do), and then went on to showcase the Skaven I painted up over the Christmas holiday.

The next accomplishment was finishing up the all metal wolf mount for my Iron Priest, and giving it a basic paintjob.  In May I applied my new Space Wolves painting scheme to the eBay purchased 13th Company Wulfen I plan to use as Scouts.  These are still my favourite unit in my army to date.

The big event for me in the year was Blog Wars.  I decided to go in April and mulled over my first list options.  Closed in on a list in May just before my birthday, which didn't change too much before the big event.  Blog Wars was my hobby highlight of the year, my first tournament, a brilliant day and also marked the peak in traffic for my blog.  Coverage is found in my posts about the day before at Warhammer World, game 1 on the top table no less, the armies from the day, game 2 and game 3.

I also tried to push my painting a bit this year (although not that successfully),  painting a Shadowseer for a competition at the local FLGW.  I only managed this and this post on the painting as I ended up with only a few nights in which to paint it.

The later half of the year was all Necrons, both before and after the announcement of the new codex.  I made some conversion to make the Necrons stand up, changes in pose, and showed off the painted contents of 2 battleforce boxes, the warriors, a lord, and the destroyers and some flayed ones I picked up.  With the new releases, I added to my Necrons.  The very cool new Annihilation Barge.  I made some adjustments to the Doomsday/Ghost Ark so that it could be either vehicle.

As I'd learned a simple way to paint glowing green that I would apply to warpstone, I interspersed the Necrons with a Skaven Doomwheel painted in a day.

That was it.  I'll be posting next week with how I'm hoping my new years hobby will go, and some interesting new plans.  Thanks to everyone who's dropped by and is still doing so, I really hope I'll be able to make the blog just that bit more interesting for you in the new year.  

Cheers - Andy