Iron Legions

Change in GWs copyright policy?

2012-02-01T12:21:00.000Z

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.

These first two items are all rumours so of course they may not be true, I'll just say that based on who and where from I heard them makes me believe them:

First up, I've heard that we could be seeing the release of a number of much wanted kits in the near future - including mention that packs of 3 Thunderwolves have been seen in boxes in the GW warehouse. I was told that GW has worked out its copyright issues with certain other companies, and so is now ready to move forward with the release of these kits.

As well as this, we may be seeing tablets in the near future in local stores. As Black Library's release of ebooks has been so successful, GW will be moving forward with electronic releases of Codices and other books in the near future. This would be a great move in my opinion as it would mean you no longer have to drag all those books around with you. I'll admit to having "found" electronic copies of codices that I own so that I can look things up in them when I don't have the paper version with me, so the ability to do this legally would be fantastic.

The next couple of things are just plain exciting, so much better than Ultramarines!

Go look HERE!

How cool does that look? Not only that, but if you look at this blog post (and this preceding one), you'll see that this is even GW sanctioned! Coupled with the mentioned release of kits that were the subject of copyright contention, to me suggests there may be a subtle shift in the way GW will be handling these in the future, they may even be waking up to the reality of the internet and fans contributions to the hobby.

Finally - live action 40K! What appears to be another fantastic fan-made film based in the world of 40K, this one is looking for financial support for post-production, if you have a few £/$/€ why not make a mini donation to help this see reality.

So that is it from me for this week, I hope to have some hobby for you next week, till then...
Cheers - Andy

New paint scheme for "One Force" marines

2012-01-25T14:12:00.000Z

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.

First up, I have to apologise for the awful pictures in this post, I'll be re-working this mini anyway and when I have, I'll be posting much better pics, promise!

I needed a test model so rooted around in my bits box and grabbed a bunch of bits that I wasn't already using or didn't have plans/intentions for. I cobbled this guy together, and as I have a real dislike of purity-seals and the "unnecessary" ornamentation that is found on a lot of marine models, removed as much as I could except for the chest-piece.

I've tried out a few variations, but feel relatively settled on this scheme (at least for now). Its pretty basic, quick and easy, and nice and dark which is a part of what I was hoping to achieve. The painting method is:

Orkhide Shade basecoat over the whole model.
Metals are painted with Enchanted Blue, plastics/rubbers are painted with Adeptus Battlegrey.
Metals and plastics/rubber are washed twice with Badab Black to make them almost black but with a hint of the underlying colour.
Catachan Green is painted with a downward motion over the whole armour, leaving the Orkhide Shade showing in the recesses.
Camo Green is used as a sharp highlight on the edges of armour plates.
Dessert Yellow is used to paint in a basic double arrow Chapter marking and single bar squad symbol.

You can see in the image above how the basic armour scheme came out. After that, I started experimenting with battle damage and weathering. I wanted to do weathering exclusively using what I had to hand. I ended up using Calthan Brown (foundation paint) heavily watered down. I also found that it helped to wet the whole miniature with clean water before applying the watered down paint as it helped it flow into the crevices. The look I'm hoping for is less something that is actively covered in dirt, but has been roughly cleaned with only dirt remaining in the crevices. I may apply the "dirt" more strongly to the lower parts of the legs also, but haven't decided yet. For battle damage, as ceramite isn't a metal but rather a metallo-ceramic, I wanted grey rather than shiny metal. In the image I've used black covered with Fortress Grey, but I think I'll tone it down to Codex Grey (Adeptus Battlegrey was too dark).

Thoughts?

Well I quite like the paintwork - yes it looks a bit like Dark Angels, but I hope that the different contrast colours and lack of decoration will be enough to separate it from that.

In real life, the line highlight looks a bit too bright on the clean portion of the model, so may need to be toned down a bit, however, once the weathering has been applied, I think it might need to stay so bright to show through.

For future figures, I think I'll paint the chest decoration in the contrast colour just to lift the whole colour scheme a little from its very dark current state.

Its also pretty quick to paint. Including the time I spent thinking about changes, it didn't take me more than an hour or so to paint this figure, and that included drying time for the washes.

I don't like the battle damage as it is. Its too big, and just doesn't look realistic enough. I think I need to reduce its size, make it more only along the edges, and if it is on the main armour pieces make it more like scratches/scuffs than the current chunks of paint missing. I may also model some of the damage into points on the model.

The metals/plastics aren't very convincing, I'll have to experiment with that.

I'd really like to hear what you out there think and what changes you think I should make? I'm going to be asking for as much feedback on this guy over the next few weeks/months till I'm happy with the overall scheme and style, before going ahead with the main force. I learned from my wolves, each squad looks very different as my painting style changes/improved with painting them and now they just don't look like a cohesive force. I'd really like these guys to be different.

Please comment, and especially criticise! Cheers - Andy

One force to rule them all!

2012-01-18T12:33:00.000Z

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.

I've been working on a colour-scheme based around current day military fatigues and technologies. I would like to make the force to be as if it was a rapid reaction force, plenty of jump packs and scouts to designate the targets. The ideas for the colour scheme are:

Single colour green "camouflage" armour colour.
Metals are blued-black rather than shiny raw metals. Giving a look more like real guns.
Weapon housing are grey-highlighted black as if a composite. Similarly for tubes, joints etc.
Plenty of battle damage to the armour.
Weathering of the lower parts of the armour to indicate plenty of time in the field.

So that it can take the place of my Space Wolves, or a generic vanilla marines force, I'll be needing 3 tactical squads and a couple of devastator squads. I'd also like to do a jump pack blood angels force so that'll require 3 full assault squads with jump packs (I may just use these as counts as tac squads if I magnetise the jump packs, attach bolters somewhere).
I think I'll make the Devastator squads out of the MkII and MkIII suits as they have a heavy, solid appearance to them

Then I'll make the Tactical/Assault Squads from the MkIV, MkV and perhaps MkVI suits as they appear lighter and more flexible.

I also want to include a lot of bionics to the force as I want to give the whole lot the appearance that they have been in the field for a long time, have taken casualties and injuries and are just keeping themselves held together with whatever tech they can.

Anyway, I'll be following this up over the coming weeks and months with some ideas for the colour scheme, perhaps some test painting, and compiling lists of bits that I'll be considering to give the whole force a coherent look.

Thanks for looking in, cheers - Andy

2012 New Years Resolutions

2012-01-11T14:20:00.000Z

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.).

I also currently have plans to build a generic marines force that will be counts-as for most forces so that in the future I can experiment with different codices, and also re-build my Space Wolves giving them the time and attention they deserve. This ideally would be made predominately of the lovely new Forgeworld heresy-era armour marks, but that is very expensive so may have to be compromised on somewhat. This isn't going into the resolutions however as I'm not 100% sure that I'll do it yet.

Painting Points

What is painting points? Well the idea first originated with Lone Pilgrim over on his blog, a brother it appears sadly lost to the 40K blogosphere. The basic premise is that you award yourself points for each model that you paint to see how you get on over the year, the bigger the model, the more points you can award yourself for finishing it.

25mm base = 1 point
40mm base, Cavalry or bikes = 2 points
60mm base = 5 points
Vehicle = 10 points
If the model is a character or otherwise special (Necron Royal Court, Wolf Guard Squad Leader for example) then the points are doubled to represent the higher levels of detail required.

So I've looked through the archives of my blog and found that from previous years I have:

2009: 20 Grey Hunters, 15 Blood Claws, 6 Long Fangs, 7 Terminators, Lone Wolf, Dreadnought, Wolf Guard Leader, Ragnar, Ulrik, Land Raider and 30 Guardsmen

108 pts

2010: 2 Rune Priests, 3 Wolf Guard pack leaders, 3 MotW, 7 Grey Hunters, 5 Thunderwolf riders (the mounts don't count), 3 Rhinos

55 pts

2011: 40 Skaven, Packmaster, Engineer, Warlord, 2 Weapons Teams, 2 Rat Ogres, Thunderwolf, Iron Priest, 2 Cyberwolves, 10 Fenrisian Wolves, 5 Wulfen Scouts, 7 Grey Hunters, Terminator Wolf Lord, Rhino, 3 Long Fangs, Shadowseer, 47 Necron Warriors, Necron Lord, 6 Necron Destroyers, 10 Flayed Ones, Skaven Doomwheel, Annihilation Barge, Ghost Ark

207 pts

Well the year just gone is a bit of a corker, although a lot of that has to do with both the Skaven and Necrons which are significantly easier models to paint than the Space Wolves so I've been able to production line them much more easily. I just wonder what I'll achieve in the year coming.

2011 Review

2012-01-04T11:12:00.004Z

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

Dual use Doomsday/Ghost Ark

2011-11-30T15:42:00.000Z

The Doomsday/Ghost Ark is a cool kit, both options being very useful on the board, but at £31 and seriously massive once built (much bigger than a Land Raider), I didn't want to be buying up loads of them as I just can't afford that. So, as soon as I cracked open the box on my first Ark, I had to set about making it inter-changeable.

I'll start with a warning or two, this kit is pretty involved to put together the first time, so you should definitely hang onto the instructions and keep referring back to them (even if they aren't the clearest). As well as that the "ribs" that form the main body of the Ark fit together in a certain way so a lot of dry-fitting is necessary, if you get them the wrong way around it won't hold together at all.

I don't have photos of the whole process of making the vehicle interchangeable, but I'll show you the final results. To do this, I used milliput (a 2 part putty somewhat like green-stuff, but coarser and cheaper, I use it to fill in large areas before doing detail with green-stuff), drill, pins and a knife to scrape away excess putty.

The first step is to cut out the main, arched body section of the rear of the Ark, one set of the ribs, and the Doomsday cannon. Fill in the voids in the body and cannon that will be sealed once the halves are glued together with milliput, and with a little dry fitting to make sure they would seal properly, glue the sections together.

The next step is the difficult bit and took quite a bit of trial and error to get right. You need to almost fill the circular sections in the main body of the Ark, where the bits join together, with milliput (there needs to be a little space for the milliput to move when you push them together), and then force the rib section and gun into the milliput. This causes the milliput to form around the pegs in each section that align the parts. What the milliput does is make these pegs fit much more tightly than they would without. You can sort of see the results in the image below, the light green coloured material is the milliput (although it has grey paint on a lot of it), and you can see the square gaps for the pegs to fit into.

Once this has dried/setup (a few hours), I filed the surface of the milliput flat as pushing the components together had caused it to become raised with respect to the surface of the bodyparts.
You then need to repeat the process for the "rib" section, and for the Doomsday cannon. This is more difficult as you can see the pegs that protrude from the Ark body are a more complex shape with a square section and angled section at two different depths. The result you can see in the images below.

Once this had setup as well, file it flat and make sure that it all fits. You may need to 'adjust' things a little with a sharp bladed knife to make sure things fit as snugly as possible. The last step is to add some pins to help strengthen the join. Although each individual piece will hold together just with the milliput, once all together and on the stand, there is too much lateral stress on short pins. I measured to the centre of each section, and an equal distance either side vertically, and inserted pins.

sorry for the crummy pic, only my phone to take pics at the moment

And thats about it, you should now have a Doomsday/Ghost Ark for all occasions.

Let me know if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them or get extra photos if things aren't quite clear enough in the descriptions. Cheers - Andy

Annihilation Barge

2011-11-18T15:24:00.000Z

The first of my shiny new Necrons is built and painted, the Annihilation/Command Barge combo. It's a great kit with some lovely details on it, and I really like the Tesla Destructors.

I've built the kit to be able to use it as either of the options that come in the Codex, so the guns aren't glued down, neither on top or underneath.

I've decided that I'm going to be using different colours for the different weaponry in my force. Gauss, and generic 'technology' are going to have the green-glow effect I devised originally for my Necrons, as you can see on the body of the Barge. Tesla is going to be blue-glow as I think its more electricity like. for Particle weapons, and some of the more esoteric options, I'm just not sure what, although I've been considering red for at least something.

I'm a little worried that the glow on the "wings" and the "spine" of the body are a little too much, but it'll be a bit of a chore to go back and correct, but I'll be going for a slightly more reduced look on my other new vehicles.

I'd be glad to hear your comments, questions and/or criticisms. Cheers - Andy

Death Rays - such poor wording

2011-11-16T13:46:00.001Z

These need to be talked about, are being argued about on the forums, and FAQ'd as soon as possible because the wording of how they work is so poor and confusing. I will fully admit to making exactly the same mistake that it seems a lot of people are making the first time I read it, and I just know that it is going to lead to a lot of arguments as soon as they end up on the tables. Its all down to the description of how they wound.

The exact description in the Codex (and this goes for Imotekh the Stormlord's Staff of the Destroyer) is:

"Every Unit underneath the line suffers a number of hits equal to the number of models in the unit underneath the line."

Now the broken interpretation is that every model in any unit with 1 or more models under the line is hit, this is how I first read it. Imagine, a unit of 30 Boyz with a single model under the line takes 30 S10 AP1 hits, crazy!

I pretty quickly realised on re-reading it that each unit with models under the line, takes a number of hits equal to the number of models under the line, and the wording therefore lets the owning player distribute the hits as they see fit (just like shooting). So in the above example, the unit only takes 1 S10 AP1 hit.

Now it may seem pretty obvious to a lot of people, but who out there really doesn't think that someone is going to try and argue the first interpretation, and I've even heard it being interpreted that way on podcasts.

Whats all your thoughts?

Doomwheel

2011-11-12T08:26:00.000Z

I've been doing a lot of experimentation with glowing effects for my Necrons (see here, here and here), and as a little break, I took the time to put together and paint up my Doomwheel for the fledgling Skaven army I will eventually have to play Fantasy.

This guy was super quick, super easy and a lot of fun to paint. Just slap on the base colours, the wood of the wheels got a light drybrush of bone, then a heavy wash of good old Devlan Mud.

The greed glow for the warpstone is a pretty simple recipe. Start with basecoat of Dark Angels Green, a heavy drybrush over the green and onto the surrounding areas with Scorpion Green, light drybrush to the green bits only of Skull White, then a wash back with Thraka Green. The whole thing only took a couple of evenings from box to painted.

C-Q-C? Cheers - Andy

Necron Specials

2011-11-11T14:26:00.000Z

The final instalment of my Necrons from before the new release, all the special units:

Destroyers, with lots of glowing green effect - leading on from the idea of the Lord having an internal green glow, I wanted to try and make the "exhausts" of the destroyer bodies seem to have an internal glow. I didn't get it completely right, but I'll work on it in future (I've got another 5 in Fairy Power Spray at the moment).

Flayed Ones. These old models are absolutely fantastic. I've only seen the WD images of the new models, but I can't see how they can compare to these. They are so much more disgusting, the way the flesh is stretched around their bodies, there are all these little spikes sticking from them that attaches the flesh, and the way the features of the underlying Necron body are hinted at under it makes these brilliant. The flesh was done simply with a basecoat of Dheneb Stone and 2 heavy washes of Ogryn Flesh.

Immortals, now a troops choice, and they are coming along.

I've also got 3 Tomb Spyders, a few Wraiths, another Lord and the previously mentioned Destroyers sitting, stripped, and waiting for some painting, but I've got some of the new shinies as well to get on with too, so they may have to wait a little before seeing a paintbrush.

C-Q-C? Cheers - Andy

Necron Lord

2011-11-07T08:59:00.000Z

Sadly this poor guys in for a demotion as he moves from commanding an entire force, to leading a mere squad. Still, I really love the model (its grown on me as I've worked on it), and I'm quite happy (although there's still some room for improvement) with my attempt at giving his torso an internal glow.

I need to paint his cape, and perhaps add a little more grey accent colour to him as he's a little bland at the moment. I'm thinking of adding some of those cool circuit patterns that they've used on some of the models from the new codex, and which come as transfers in some of the new kits too - I quite like it.

Next up it'll be the special units I already have, and then I'll be onto the new stuff. I've got a bit to get painted if I want to get to BlogWars2 in December.

C-Q-C always welcome, cheers - Andy

Necron Warriors

2011-11-06T08:54:00.001Z

Hello all, back with some Necrons. I won't bore you with why I haven't been blogging in ages, needless to say that I have been doing some hobby. With the launch of the new book I thought I'd join the crowds in getting the picks of my Necrons out there for all to see.

I'm really happy with how the Gauss effect I'm using is turning out. You can see it in construction in my last Necron blog post, and once done, the painting is really easy and gives a nice different look.

Can anyone spot my squad markings? I'll give you a hint, check the bases.

The crystals are just trimmed bits of sprue, and once painted with a glow effect should serve pretty well as a series of squad markings. I've shown 30 warriors here, but I also have about another 15-20 painted up that I just didn't think were worth adding to pictures, they all have plain bases but with the option of adding extra crystals to join whichever squad needs reinforcements.

As ever, comments, questions and criticisms more than welcome, and I hope you are all happy out there in blog-land.

Running for Charity

2011-09-14T17:01:00.000+01:00

My recent lack of updates is generally down to one thing - running. This Sunday, (just 4 days from now), I'm running the Great North Run to raise money for Crisis. For those that don't know, Crisis is the charity that helps the homeless to work themselves off the streets without having to resort to handouts. It provides education, training, assistance in finding work and places to live, and support so that they can turn their own lives around. You can read about the work that Crisis does on their website: http://www.crisis.org.uk/

If you or anyone you know can spare even just a little to help out this great charity, then please try and sponsor me here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Andrew_Gosling (remember, it's only 4 days to go until I'll be running!).

In an attempt to get people to donate as much as possible, I'm also pledging to run 1km in training for every £1 that is donated. To date I've already run over 130km and I'll continue after the event until I've accounted for every £1 donated. You can see my progress here: http://www.endomondo.com/profile/286477

I'd just like to thank in advance anyone who feels like they can help out, even if it is just re-blogging this to try and increase awareness and perhaps generate a little bit more money to help out.

I'll be back with lots of shiny Necrons next week.

Cheers - Andy

More Zombie Terminators... I Mean Necrons

2011-08-06T14:20:00.033+01:00

Hi all

Everything being well, this should pop up just about the time I'm settling onto a sun-lounger by the pool at my hotel in Italy with a view of Vesuvius :D I'm off for a weeks well earned sun, sea and s-ruins (I'll finally be seeing Pompeii, and it kind of rhymes).

Meanwhile, what I've been up to this week is finishing off the Gauss effect on the majority of the rest of my 'crons, a couple of examples you can see here. The Lord up there on the left is pretty much stock, but with a Gauss effect in his warscythe.

These two are also special as they have been modelled to look as if they've had a hand blown off and they are self-repairing. I've always envisaged it as being something like the Gauss effect but in reverse that repairs them, so I'm going to be using the same painting technique on it to try and look the same.

These guys are all undercoated now, so when I get back there should be some pretty quick progress on them for you to all see.

Anywho, toodle-pip, and I'll see what you've all been up to in a week.

Cheers - Andy

GW's new minis = very nice

2011-08-02T12:17:00.002+01:00

OMG!

I am absolutely stunned by this. How cool is this new model from GW? Got the new White Dwarf last night (at last, don't think I'll be keeping my subscription seeing as I can get WD earlier in shops now) and just can't stop turning back to the pages with the new Terrorgheist on it. I will definitely be getting one of these, and somehow find a way I can include it into my Skaven army. I'm thinking of perhaps magnetising the body so that I can remove it from the wings and mount it on a different base so it can be a Hell Pit Abomination. Will have to see once I get my hands on it.

And then I saw this (first off on the website), and just look at that alternate face on the left, yep, you are now looking at my new Necron Lord. The only conversion that I'll have to do is with the scythe to make it a Warscythe/Staff of Light, and I don't even think that'll be too challenging.

I'm really pretty excited about these new releases, and I'll have to admit that I'm perhaps more excited because there were no leaked pics, looking through WD was a real pleasure to see some genuinely new things. The content even seems to be slightly improved, although I haven't got all the way through it, I'm hoping this signals the rumoured improvements to WD that I've heard about. I'm just sad that they are shafting us subscribers, what really is the point if you can get your copy earlier in the shops? I've even emailed them to ask what their reasoning is for this, yet to receive a reply though.

Shadowseer - all done

2011-08-01T16:11:00.001+01:00

I've finished painting my Shadowseer for the FLGS painting competition. I posted earlier on my choice for the colour scheme and posted up the first stages of the painting wholly intent on chronicling each stage of the painting process. Alas, this didn't happen as the painting deadline was the 29th July, and by Wednesday night (27th) I was still at the stage that you can see to the left. In the end I just had to paint as much as I could in the two evenings I had left (thank you wife!) and see what I could manage.

I feel pretty pleased with what I was able to achieve considering what little time I had. To re-iterate, the idea is that it is a Harlequin underneath with a suitably bright body-suit, but as it is the Shadowseer, the robes are dark, almost black to reflect the role he plays in the storytelling. I chose a purple and yellow diamond pattern for the body-suit which extends over both legs, chest and pistol-arm. You can see I've tried to achieve a highlighted effect to each individual diamond which was quite difficult and required a new, extra-fine brush.

To break up what would otherwise be very dull black robes, I chose to highlight the black base either with blue or grey so that it ends up with two different "colours" of black. The highlights on both were built up by numerous combinations of extremely light drybrushing, washes and attempted blending of the highlight colours. I think I managed this a little better with the blue (tabard, glove on the staff holding arm, and ribbon wrapped around the other arm) than I did with the black (hood, side robes and staff holding arm).

The weapons were a bone colouring, and the backpack and associated equipment I tried to get in a warmer grey colour by mixing in bleached bone to the grey for the highlighting. Runes on the body and weapons were a red colour, on the backpack I used a blue, and used a blue for the tear on the face-mask that you can't see in the pics.

As a final flourish, I made my first attempt at Non-Metallic Metal for the face-mask, trying to achieve a chromed look reflecting the surrounding scenery (not particularly clear in the picture because the light wasn't too great). Not perfect, but again I'm pretty happy with it for a first attempt. I may even consider trying similar effects on other characters in the future.

Anyway, after all that, I didn't with the competition, I don't know where I came but the staffer at the FLGS did say that the competition was close, as well as the winner, there was another fantastic mini painted by one of the younger entrants. I don't have a pic of that one, but you can see the winner below.

I'd love to hear back from any of you out there as to what you think of the paint-job, and especially what I should be improving as eventually I'd love to have a go at Golden Deamon, but just don't think I'm good enough at the moment.

Cheers - Andy

Shadowseer painting - post 1

2011-07-20T11:41:00.001+01:00

I've now got one and a half weeks to get this guy painted to the best possible standard as I can for the local GW painting competition. I settled on a colour scheme a little while ago but have been a little busy so only just got started the other night. The picture you can see to the left is the first nights paiting getting the diamond pattern for the bodysuite outlined and filled in. I had to go out and get a new (non-GW) brush for the fine detail as my GW ones just weren't holding up for any length of time.

I made some further progress on it last night, shading the bodysuite and also colouring the main robes. I'm hoping to make them nice and dark, but mix blues with grey's to give it some variation (not sure how well that is coming out in the photos). Next up is to highlight the bodysuite, then the robes, then start on painting all the "equipment" which I plan on being bone coloured. If I have some time at the end, I also plan on trying to achieve a NMM effect on the facemask, chrome style.

Its a little messy at the moment, I was painting with only a single light last night, but I'll be tidying those things up before progressing with anything more.

Comments and tips for improving it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers - Andy

Fixing Drop-Pod Doors

2011-07-15T12:27:00.002+01:00

Picture from From the Warp

Down the club last night I was helping out a guy building a Drop-Pod, and realised that I should really post what I was talking up about on the blog. It seems the biggest problem with the kit, and one that I haven't seen this solution to anywhere else, that has a really easy solution... is getting the doors to close properly.

I've seen a lot of solutions involving magnets etc, but to get the doors to shut properly, and to remain closed when placed upright, without the faff of dealing with magnets, is a simple matter of removing a tiny amount of plastic before assembling the base. I've helped about 10 people down the club with this and its worked every time, so I'm pretty sure this will work for everyone.

Picture from From the Warp

I've drawn a box on the image to the right to indicate the offending piece of plastic that causes all the trouble. It is a slight protrusion at the base of the door next to the hinge, essentially a mould line as I'm pretty sure its a leftover from the moulding process. When the Drop-Pod is assembled, this little bit of plastic presses against the base section of the Drop-Pod when you try and close the door, preventing it from closing properly. If you shave this off with a sharp knife or file it down so that it is level with the rest of the door, it closes nice and easily and will remain closed as the doors are essentially leaning against the top section of the Drop-Pod, as you can see in the image above.

Hopefully some of you out there will find this helpful, and if its not quite clear enough, let me know in the comments section and I'll try and improve my description. Cheers - Andy

Shadowseer paint scheme

2011-07-06T12:31:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned when I returned form holiday, the local GW is running a monthly painting competition and this month the chosen figure is the Eldar Harlequin Shadowseer and I'm giving it a go. I had some ideas in my head for how I wanted it to look (bright Harlequin-esque bodysuit, but with dark, shadowy robes as if it were a costume). I searched around online and found a line drawing (afraid I can't find it anymore) and with some trickery in GIMP, was able to make it into something I could colour-in.

You can see what I'm trying to achieve on the left there, and I'm hoping to start painting it tonight, I'll keep updates coming on this as I'm going to be going all out to try and make this my best looking figure yet.

Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought

2011-07-01T14:24:00.000+01:00

So happy and yet so gutted!

Forgeworld have just announced the release of their new Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought. I am so happy about this for a very specific reason.

Bjorn! A Wolf Guard at the time of Russ, who when too injured was encased in a Dreadnought sarcophagous against his express will in the first 1000 years after the Heresy. I have wished to have a model of the old style dreadnoughts (for those of you that remember them from Rogue Trader days) to represent Bjorn but the old ones are far too small and flimsy, and I'm not good enough to convert one. Now, finally, we have one and I think I'm going to have to get one. I'm gutted because the day before BlogWars, while at Warhammer World, I bought the Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought for just that reason, now I'm going to have to buy another dreadnought from forgeworld - grrrr.

Back From Holidays

2011-06-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

I've returned and its taken me 3 days just to read through the postings from all those of you at BlogWars and from the other blogs I follow closely (over 200 posts in total). I haven't even started to look through those posts from the other blogs that I occasionally dip into (~800 more posts). You people are pretty prolific, but you don't notice it till you're away for a while.

On that note, I've made it to 100 followers! Wow guys, I can't believe that there are 100 people out there who care enough about my odd posts to follow me. Thank you everyone for taking the time to pop by here and see what I'm up to. I hope I manage to keep things at least slightly interesting for you. In celebration of this I plan to root around in my selection of "things I may never get around to" and put up something as a give-away to mark this occasion.

Finally, the local GW has been running a monthly painting competition since we got in a new manager. Since its started, I've never really been around long enough (or not had to paint loads for BlogWars) to have the time to enter, but this month I'm taking the plunge. Its the Harlequin Shadowseer that's chosen for this month, so at games night tonight I plan to pick up my first example of finecast, and get to work. I'm going to chronical my attempt on here in the hopes I might get some encouragement and advice on how to improve it, and really push myself to try and give some Non Metallic Metal effects on it as it seems to be the de-rigeur painting effect of the moment.

Back soon with give-aways and painting posts. Cheers - Andy

BlogWars Game 3

2011-06-23T15:55:00.000+01:00

Third and Final round of BlogWars and after my defeat in game 2, I'm on table 7 and facing Ian (Ginge from Need More Tanks) with his winter themed Speedfreak Orks.

The final mission was the setup that was left over, so we were playing Seize Ground (with everyone having 5 objectives) and Pitched Battle setup. We had 3 objectives spread around the centre of the battle field, one that was in the centre of my board edge (the lovely santa-claus in the pic to the left), and one that was to the upper-right of the board (my point of view) in front of a large tower.

As usual, my list can be found here, and Ian's list was:

Wazzdakka Gutsmek

11 Warbikers with power-klaw Nob

20 Boyz with power-klaw Nob

10 Boyz with power-klaw Nob in a Truk with all the trimmings

10 Lootas with a Mek with a Kustom Mega Blasta

10 Burnas

3 Deffkoptas

Looted Wagon

2 Battlewagons, 1 with a ram

Summary

By the end of the day, I was starting to get a little tired and forgot to take as many pictures, so I can't give as detailed a report of this battle. However, yet again, I had a fantastic opponent in Ian who was a lot of fun to play, and whose army was really stunning. You can see a better picture of it here, and it really looked great on the table. For a matchup between Wolves and Orks it was suitably bloody with neither of us having too much left on the table by the end. I managed to scrape a victory in the last couple of turns, but only just.

The Game

Ian won the roll for deployment and chose the side with the large tower into which he deployed his Lootas, the rest of his force (all of which was in transports) setup pretty centrally except for the bikes which were hiding behind the tower on the right.

I setup pretty centrally too, opposite his main force.

Turn 1

Ian came pelting forward with everything in his army, his Truk and Looted Wagon managing to immobilise themselves on terrain. The bikes zip around the tower and are close to my lines already. Shooting was suitably Orky, not doing too much damage, but the Rhino That Repaired (see game 2) was immobilised again. No combat yet.

My turn 1 and I get a squad of Grey Hunters out to try and intercept the bikes - hoping that getting the charge will make a difference. Logan & Co go 12" in their Land Raider, jump out and charge the Deff-Rolla wagon hoping to get rid of it so I'm not faced with S10 hits all over the place. In combat my Grey Hunters kill quite a few bikes, and the Wolf Guard manages to double out Gutsmek and I win combat but the Orks hang around.

Turn 2

The brawl begins. Most of Ian's Orks reach my main force in the centre and combat ensues. The Long Fangs are charged by the Deffkoptas. One Battlewagon unloads its squad to face Logan along with the Burnas who've gotten out of their immobilised Truk. The Boyz from the looted wagon re-enforce the bikes and over the next 2 phases grind down that squad. In the combat with Logan and the Burnas/Boyz, over the next 2 combat phases, Logan & Co are vicious, killing about 14 of the Orks, but in return 3 of the Wolf Guard are killed. The Burnas eventually flee the combat, but the Boyz hold on. The Grey Hunters charge into the Deffkoptas and manage to wipe them out, but only 2 Long Fangs are left.

Turn 3

The bikes continue towards my objectives, and the other large squad of Boyz make a move on my Long Fangs. I pop the Wolf Standard on the squad that are guarding the Long Fangs expecting the double charge from Ian's squad, but despite the space being tight, he chooses to charge the Long Fangs only, wiping them out. Logan finishes off the Boyz, and consolidates away from the Burnas. In my turn, the Grey Hunters avenge the Long Fangs even without the Standard, wiping out the Boyz squad in a single round of combat. The second squad of Grey Hunters near the bikes then jump out of their Rhino and charge the bikes, this time more successfully, killing them all for the loss of a few Grey Hunters.

Turns 4 - 7

I don't remember exactly which turn each of these events happened in, but the picture is from turn 5.

In the area at the bottom-left of the picture, around the santa-claus Ork, the Deff-Rolla wrecks the Land Raider, then plays cat and mouse with the Grey Hunter squad down there, repeatedly ramming them and occasionally killing one or two. The squad in return fire lots of melta into the two Battlewagons, blowing one up on turn 5, and wrecking the one with the Rolla on turn 7 (thus securing that objective - if I remember I held it on turn 5, it was contested on turn 6).

Logan went on a bit of a rampage after his last Wolf Guard was killed. He ran over towards the Orks in the Looted Wagon that were claiming the objective in front of the tower, and blew up their Wagon, and the Truk, and the Burnas that got out of it!

The Rhino That Repaired was once again the star though, not only did it repair itself again, but it also picked up what was left of the Grey Hunters that had killed the bikes, and got them across the board to kill off the Boyz claiming the objective in front of the tower so that they were contesting the objective in turn 6 and claiming it in turn 7.

Conclusion

I managed a victory, 2-0, and Ian only had his Lootas left in the tower. It was brutal, quick (all 7 turns, and a lot of dice rolled, in about 1:45) and things went about as I'd hoped, although I wasn't quite prepared for how fast Ian got his army across the table - pretty much everything in combat by turn 2. I guess I got a little lucky wiping out both BattleWagons when I did, and with the Rhino That Repaired, but I could have got that squad into a scoring position on one of the objectives without it, just by running (it did help though). Ian was a gent despite sometimes copping a hiding from my Grey Hunters in combat and I want to thank him for a great game.

I'll be doing a wrap-up once I'm back from holiday, then it'll be back to my more usual painting and modelling content. Cheers - Andy

Standing Necrons

2011-06-20T16:14:00.000+01:00

We interrupt this BlogWars coverage to bring you this breaking news. Game 3 should be up on Wednesday. (p.s.: I'm still away).

Not really, but since BlogWars I've been working on my Necrons (second Battleforce) and wanting to mix things up have decided to make some of my Necrons more upright than usual. I just thought I'd post up a few images of the conversion process in case anyone was interested in how it had been done.

Start off with your basic legs, and clean them of mould lines before you do anything. Seriously, if you are doing Necrons you are going to drybrush and you need to get rid of those mould lines. Then cut the legs from the hip, either with a knife (cutting a little from both sides to make sure the separation is neat), or just use your clippers.

Next it really helps if you clean up the ball-joint at the top of the leg, this allows a much better join when you are re-constructing the legs.

Cut the legs at the knee, I do this above the knee joint. Using a flat file, level the top of the knee to the same plane as the foot, this is what allows the leg to be re-positioned upright. Also, it helps to file the bottom of the thigh part of the leg so that it is also more perpendicular to its length. I've marked in red roughly how you should file these joins.

Finally, re-build the legs from the bottom up. It's here that you can also get more creative with positioning of the legs and feet, make it look like its walking and a whole load of other things.

Not the most ground-breaking tutorial, but I guess it might be useful to someone out there, and if the rumoured new Necron Codex ever materialises I'm sure there may be a little more interest.

Cheers - Andy

BlogWars Game 2

2011-06-16T17:03:00.000+01:00

So with my win in the first round, VPs meant that I was on table 4 for round 2 of BlogWars and it turned out I was facing up with a now much more familiar opponent, Andy (Atreides from Sons of Sanguinius) who I met the day before at Warhammer World. We managed a game that day which you can see here.

The random selection meant that round 2 was Annihilation with Dawn of War deployment, and I just knew that Andy would be out for revenge after the previous day ;). You can find my list here, and Andy's list was in his own words a Straken Hybrid.

Company Command with Straken, Medic, Bodyguard, Banner, Chimera

2 x Veteran Squad - 3 Meltaguns, Chimera

Platoon Command Squad - 4 Meltas, Chimera

3 x Infantry Squad (blobbed) - Commissar (power sword), 3xSergeant (power sword), 2xmeltagun, 2xautocannon

Platoon Command Squad - Autocannon

3 x Infantry Squad (blobbed) - Commissar (power sword), 3xSergeant (power sword), 2xmeltagun, 2xautocannon

2xVendetta Gunship

3xHydra Flak Tank

Summary

Andy played a great game, perhaps having learned to fear my Grey Hunters from a pretty lucky showing (on my behalf) the day before, he did his best to keep me at arms length and then pretty much wiped me from the board with his overwhelming fire-power. A textbook game for the Guard, and I just couldn't get across the board to engage his squads. Looking back, I realise there were some things I should have done differently that might have given me a better chance, but that doesn't take away that I was beaten by the better player.

Andy was also a fantastic opponent, and his army really really looks good (you can see it here). Andy also had his SLR setup so when he gets round to posting his battle report there'll be much better pictures to see.

There was also a comedy moment involving my tournament MVP - a Rhino.

The Game

The table didn't have much terrain, there was a hill in the centre that we decided would give a cover save if you were on the shoulder of, but not on the top, and would be difficult terrain for movement, a ruin in one corner, a piece of area terrain in the opposite corner, and a few other pieces of relatively inconsequential terrain. I won the roll-off and for reasons that escape me decided to go first. I pick the side of the table with the large ruin and setup my Land Raider with Logan and Wolf Guard behind that ruin which is on my right. Andy sets up one of his big squads in the area terrain which is just left of centre from my point of view.

Turn 1

I move 2 of my Rhino's on 12", pop smoke on them, the other Rhino moves up behind the one on the left, and the Land Raider moves around the ruins a bit. My Long Fangs move on behind the small ruin in the centre of my edge of the board, and then run into the cover to get firing positions. The image shows the start of the Guard turn 1.

Andy moves everything on, most of the Chimera's form a wall to the right of the blob squad, the second squad comes on behind the blob squad, and the Vendetta's and Hydra's are spread around the board. A lot of the Guard vehicles pop smoke.

Turn 2

My Rhino's do the Rhino shuffle so that the one that hadn't popped smoke is now in front, with smoke popped, and the Rune Priests Rhino is behind it. The other Rhino gets into cover behind the hill, and the Land Raider moves forward. My shooting isn't particularly effective, a lascannon shot immobilises a Hydra. The only good was my Long Fangs killing the right Vendetta. I was hoping for an explodes as it was mixed in with one of the big blob squads and would have done a serious amount of damage to them, but I manage to only get a wrecked.

Andy's turn 2 was a cracker! There was some shuffling of tanks, but generally very little movement. His shooting was devastating though. On the left my front Rhino is wrecked, the Rhino behind it explodes (thankfully everyone inside is ok), and my third Rhino behind the hill is immobilised. About the only thing to escape the wrath of the Guard were my Long Fangs. My Land Raider shrugged off a few shots too.

Turn 3

Right now I'm in trouble, and finally I decided to try and be aggressive although it was already too late. The Land Raider goes flat out up the right hand side of the hill and all the Grey Hunters get as far forward as possible. I roll poorly and the second squad end up in the same place the front squad started. Shooting is terrible, doing pretty much nothing. The only high point of the shooting phase is the Rhino behind the hill manages to repair itself - I'm pretty sure this is the first time this has ever happened for me, and from here on I'll be referring to it as the Rhino That Repaired. In assault, I only need a 3 or 4 to make contact with the large squad in the terrain, the dice come up 1 and 2 - d'oh!
Again, almost no moving from the Guard, although the wall of Chimerae do come forward. Shooting is where it goes down. The Land Raider is blown sky high by multiple meltaguns, thankfully Logan & Co aren't hurt or pinned. The blob squad open up with First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire, putting 12 wounds on the front squad of Grey Hunters. I roll the specials first, Wolf Guard, Mark of the Wulfen, Wolf Standard and meltagun, and all survive. Next up are the 8 wounds on the 5 regular Hunters, and to both Andy and my amazement they all survive too. We're both stunned that not one Grey Hunter has died. Andy goes with exactly the same from the back squad, although there are less that can see - 9 wounds. I roll my saves, same as before, but this time; BANG, the Wolf Guard is dead, BANG, the Mark is dead, BANG, the Standard is dead, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, 4 regular Hunters are dead. Seems like payback has decided to turn up, 9 wounds on 9 Grey Hunters and I'm left with 2. They then get finished off pretty quickly by some meltaguns from the Chimerae. Andy wants his kill-point back from the Rhino That Repaired so it weathers a hail of fire but is only Stunned.

Turn 4
I'm really in trouble now, I need to try and get across the board, but because of the poor terrain rolls last turn, my other Grey Hunter unit isn't far enough forward to get into combat, so I decide to hug the hill (which we'd agreed was cover) to try and get closer, and I bring my final Grey Hunter squad out from the Rhino to follow behind. My idea at this point is to try to get across the board en-mass then at least some of the squads will make contact and start to earn me some Kill Points. Shooting is again terrible, with neither of my RPs or the LFs doing anything of note. Logan & Co. manage to blow up a Chimera and charge and wipe out the passengers.

In Andy's turn, he re-positions his Chimerae so that most of them can target Logan & Co, and Straken and his bodyguard get out ready to charge into Logan. A few GH are whittled form the front squad on the hill, and the Rhino That Repaired was Stunned again (after a considerable amount of shooting). Logan & Co die to concentrated melta fire thanks to me failing pretty much every cover save in existence, and Straken has nothing to charge.

Turn 5
I get my GHs as far forward as possible. If you look in the picture, you'll see that I've moved the RP in the second squad out to the extremity - for a very good reason. Shooting, I finally manage to kill a second Vendetta, but otherwise don't cause too much damage. I know I need to start killing squads etc. to get back some Kill Points, but with Commissars in the squads making the stubborn, I doubt I'll be able to chew through 30+ models even in a couple of rounds of combat. So, that RP who's moved to the edge of his squad, casts Jaws at the Commissar in the front squad, and not only manages to get him, but takes out a couple of other men and one of the Robots (weapon squad) in the back platoon. In Assault, I just make contact with the front squad, kill about 13 Guard, take a couple of hits back, then because they aren't Stubborn any more run the squad down - yay, plan achieved.
With nothing to the right of the board, Andy moves his Chimerae over towards the terrain on the left. I get First Rank, Second Rank Fired, and shot with a whole load of melta, killing off the whole squad in terrain that had just taken out some guard, although the Rune Priest does hold out almost to the very end thanks to some lucky cover saves. I also lose a few from the last Grey Hunter squad. The Rhino That Repaird is stunned once again!
Turns 6 & 7
In the final turns, I try to kill what I can with the remaining Grey Hunters before they get gunned down by massed melta-fire. The Long Fangs and the Rune Priest continue to fluff pretty much everything. In the final moments of the 7th turn, Andy moves a few of his Chimerae forward, killing my Rune Priest, and finally, as his last action, blowing up the Rhino That Repaired - although when it blew up it killed a couple of guardsmen, and caused the squad to flee therefore earning me a Kill Point - yay Rhino! I ended the game with just the Long Fangs left, losing about 11-6.

Conclusion
Andy played a great game, and I was thoroughly beaten. I got a bit unlucky with some of my rolls, and it seemed like my Rune Priests and Long Fangs could do nothing against the Chimerae or Vendetta's for a lot of the game, but that isn't why I think I lost. I just wasn't aggressive enough getting myself across the board and so Andy was able to pick my army apart. Instead of the deployment I used, I should have done the classic 2 Rhino's 7" onto the board, and I should have kept everything together in one area. I didn't need to worry about Rhino shell games to try and give each other cover, even if they'd died, if I'd been most of the way across the board I could have done a lot more damage. Andy was simply the better player, which he proved going on to come 2nd overall, and was a great opponent, and we had a lot of fun during the game. Andy, thanks for a great game.

I'm off on holiday for 10 days, but I've got game 3 and another post scheduled to come up during that time, so it won't be too quiet on here while I'm away. Cheers - Andy

BlogWars Army Showcase

2011-06-09T17:15:00.001+01:00

As you might expect, for a tournament of bloggers, BlogWars had some gorgeously painted armies, in fact I can only think of one that was the 3 colours minimum (and then only just about that, hey Ven ;). Dalinair and FromTheFang have both posted their pictures, and I know Atreides had his SLR so will have great pics, but I thought I'd post up my pics for anyone who'd like to see them.

You can see a poor mosaic of my force up there on the left, and as I put up the other armies I have pics of (and sorry if I missed your army) I'll do my best to give a link to the appropriate blog.

These are Bully from SoS's fantastic Dark Angels, and his Belial won best painted Special Character (sorry the pic is a bit blurry).

This is Ginge from Need More Tanks' absolutely fantastic Ork army. I'll admit I didn't quite appreciate just how good they looked till I faced up to them in game 3. There are some great features, like a Santa Claus Ork as an objective marker, and his snow basing and "splatter" onto the sides and tracks of the vehicles is the best I've ever seen. Absolutely great work.

These are the Tau of Firewasp from Ignatum. There were some lovely Forge World battle suits and a really nice coherent paintjob. There was another Tau player as well with a very distinct turquoise and orange scheme which I seemed to have missed getting a photo of. Notice the "tournament supplies" in the background, paracetamol and deodorant - classic! Thankfully there didn't seem to be the need for any of that at BlogWars.

This is Karitas of Excommunicate Tratoris' Guard army and was absolutely stunning, it deservedly won Best Painted along with another gorgeous Guard army by GunGrave of A Guardsmans Guide To Glory that again I seem to have failed to get a picture of. Particularly good in this army in my opinion was the objective markers which were all brilliantly put together and themed. (EDIT: army identified, I'd even managed to mix up which army I didn't know!)

Here is Andy (Atreides - Sons of Sanguinius) wonderfully converted Guard army. There's so much conversion/scratch build in here you wouldn't believe. I don't think a single vehicle is stock, the Valkyries are really cool, and if you look towards the front, he has two robots as weapon teams! I got to play Andy the day before BlogWars at Warhammer World, and again in Game 2 (coming up).

I'll say it now, this is probably the army I was most interested to see. Siph from the WeeMen blog was one of the first blogs that I ever started following, and I've seen this army grow from the very earliest stages. To get to see it in the flesh was really cool, and it is a lovely looking force, with some subtle conversions/kit-bashing and a really nice theme and colour-scheme that I've always been a little jealous of.

Finally (from the pics that I have), is this lovely Nid army of The 6th Degree also of the WeeMen blog. Note the pod and the really nice conversion of the Doom of Malantai in the centre. I was a little gutted I didn't get to play against this army as it was also absolutely stunning.

So you can see just how nice the armies were, there were so many that I wished I could get to game against just for the spectacle of gaming against just lovely painted and themed armies. For the next BlogWars, I hope that we either have more games in the tournament, or I'm a bit more organised in meeting up with everyone at Warhammer World either before or after so that I'll have a chance to play against all these armies. Sorry to those I missed, it wasn't intentional, I just seemed to have a bit of a brain-fade about making sure I had pics of it all.

Cheers - Andy

BlogWars Game 1

2011-06-08T17:35:00.001+01:00

So, BlogWars game 1, and I'm on table 1! OK, the table draw was random, but still, table 1.

The mission and deployment selection was random, and round 1 saw us playing Capture and Control with Spearhead deployment. My opponent was Rich (Mighty Simo - Cupboard of Nurgle) who had a Kharn the Betrayer Khorn Bezerker list.
His list was:

Kharn

Daemon Prince with Wings, Mark of Slaanesh and Lash

5 Terminators with chainfist, power-fist, 2 combi-meltas and a Reaper Autocannon

7 Bezerkers with a Skull Champion with power-fist in a Rhino

6 Plague Marines with 2 plasma guns with a Plague Champion with power-fist and icon

2 Obliterators

Defiler with close-combat weapon

My list can be found here.

Summary

The short of it is that I managed to snatch the win at the end (it'd have been a draw if it ended on turn 5) in part due to Rich having some rotten dice rolls. His Daemon Prince managed to kill itself with a Perils roll, and 3 terminators couldn't finish off 2 Grey Hunters. Logan faced up to Kharn and won, but then died horribly to another squad of Bezerkers. Rich was a great opponent and his army really looked good.

The Game...

Rich won the roll-off for sides and deployment and chose to go first. You can see the deployment and two objectives (standing stones, a last minute creation as I realised I needed them), his was in the top-left corner (my pov), and mine was bottom centre of the board in front of the two Rhino's in the image. Rich reserved the Plague Marines for late game objective grabbing. My LFs were behind ruined wall in the bottom-right, the rest of the force split either side of the large central terrain piece.

I didn't steal the initiative.

Turn 1

Rich moved most things forward trying to get across the board as quickly as possible. The Defiler fired but the shot scattered off into the distance. His Oblits were able to immobilise my Rhino that didn't have a Rune Priest in it.

In my turn, I started to bring my Land Raider across the board to deal with the two squads of Bezerkers. The Rhino's with RPs in them move outwards to pincer his forces. I had just about the luckiest turn of shooting you could imagine and one epic fail. The Rune Priest on the right tried to Jaws the Defiler, but after successfully casting it I realised that the Defiler being a Walker was immune so it was a wasted effort, the RP on the left did take out Kharn's Rhino with Living Lightning. The Long Fangs then proceeded to take 3 wounds off the Daemon Prince despite him being in cover, and blow up the Defiler with three 6s in a row. Poor Rich just couldn't roll those cover saves.

Turn 2

Kharn and company piled down the left hand side of the board aiming for my objective, while the Daemon Prince jumped through the ruins to get to my Long Fangs. Shooting from the Oblits stunned the remaining mobile Rhino on the left, but otherwise there wasn't much else.

There wasn't too much movement I could do, but jumped the RP out of the stunned Rhino so he could use a power, and brought the Land Raider around the Ruins and disembarked Logan and company in front of Kharn (see pic). My shooting this turn was the exact opposite of last turn, neither RP did anything, and despite firing 5 missiles at the Daemon Price, the Long Fangs couldn't get that final wound from it - they were in a lot of trouble. Logan and company charged the Bezerkers but Rich had been careful and Logan couldn't make contact with Kharn. It was bloody with a whole lot of dice being rolled, but as you can see from the images below, despite a couple of Wolf Guard dying, Logan came through intact. Kharn sadly actually died to Fearless wounds, pretty ignominious for him.

Turn 3

The Chaos terminators arrived and landed right next to my RP and Rhino at the bottom of the board. The Bezerkers jumped out of their Rhino and got ready to punch Logan in the face. The Daemon Prince jumped next to the Long Fangs - yep, in trouble. Shooting was pretty good for Rich. My RP at the bottom died to Oblit fire, and my other RPs Rhino got stunned. The termies blew up the last Rhino lining up the charge nicely. In combat, the DP killed a few Long Fangs but not all of them so was locked in combat. The Bezerkers killed off Logan and all but the chainfist wielding Wolf Guard, and the termies killed a lot of my Grey Hunters, but in return they killed 3 of the terminators and held on.

In my turn the DP finished off the LFs, the Wolf Guard finished off the Berzerker and headed towards Rich's objective, and a couple more GHs died to the terminators and another terminator died. There was now only the power-fist toting WG and the Wulfen left from my squad, and a power-fist and a power-weapon toting terminator.

Turns 4, 5, 6 (pictured) and 7

I'll summarise these as there weren't that much left on the board by this point, as you can imagine, Khorn vs Wolves had been suitably brutal. The Daemon Prince, in an absolutely rotten piece of luck, jumped towards my objective, tried to lash my GHs and died to perils!

In the combat at the bottom of the board, the wulfen took out one of the terminators before dying to a power-fist, and in a bit of a shocker, Rich just couldn't finish off the WG who eventually managed to kill the terminator.

Turn 5 I tried to tank shock with my Rhino to either shift the Plague Marines off the objective, but at least contest it but I was about 1/2" short. If the game ended here it would be a draw. Thankfully it went all the way to turn 7.

I got the GH out of the top Rhino, charged one squad of Oblits, managed to wipe them out and consolidate closer to the objective. Turn 6 I could get the Rhino into contesting position of Rich's objective, and on turn 7 the GH made it across the board to the Plague Marines firmly contesting the objective for the win.

Conclusion

So it was a win in game 1, on table 1, just about the best start I could ask for for my first ever tournament. Games 2 and 3 coming up soon, and an army showcase from the painting judging.

Cheers - Andy

BlogWars T-minus-1

2011-06-07T17:13:00.000+01:00

My weekend was a bit of a hobby pilgrimage, as I mentioned here, not only did I go to my first tournament and visit Maelstrom games for the first time, I also had my first visit to Warhammer World in Nottingham.

What can I say about the place, its amazing! I really, really wish that I could live close to this place and it could be my regular gaming locale, but on the other hand, it'll remain somewhere to go for special gaming events and meet-ups.

For anyone who hasn't been there, it consists of the top level of a long warehouse unit behind the main GW offices (I'm pretty sure the ground level is used for mini-making based on the signs I could see around the place). The majority of the space is taken up by the absolutely huge gaming hall. There must be well over 100 regular 6'x4' tables all with varying types of surface and loads of terrain, as well as a whole load of very special boards (see the pics below). There's a GW shop at one end in which you can buy everything, absolutely everything including ForgeWorld Titans etc. right off the shelves. Above the shop is the Miniatures Hall where all the mini's you see in White Dwarf and on the website are setup for you to check out. At the other end of the hall is Bugman's Bar, a fully themed bar made up to look like something you'd expect to find in the Fantasy world. The food there isn't too bad either and a decent price. You can even take your drinks into the hall, beer and gaming, what a combination.

Here you can see a beautiful Empire hamlet, quite possibly the most expesive piece of terrain I've ever seen and a brilliant Tau themed swamp board.

While I was there I managed to get a pick-up game with a kid I ended up talking to while finishing the last bits of painting for BlogWars, and who happens to be playing just one table over but Andy (Atreides) and Damian (Bully) from Sons of Sanguinius who happened to be wondering where I was. We hadn't really figured out how we were going to recognise each other so it was quite a stroke of luck.

We ended up hanging out for the rest of the afternoon, and even managed to get in a game together, 1000pts of my Wolves, 1000pts of Damian's new Grey Knights versus 2000pts of Andy's IG. We were playing on the absolutely terrain packed Ork Skrapyard board but decided that all our vehicles could have free Dozerblades otherwise it would have been a bit of a footslog.

We were playing Seize Ground (5 objectives, centre of the quarters and centre of the board) with Spearhead deployment. The pic on the left is around about the end of turn 1 so not much has happened.

Now despite what Damian thinks, his Grey Knights did actually kill a few things with the Psycannons, and they were also good at drawing quite a bit of the Guard shooting which meant that my Grey Hunters didn't die too much.

This is the bottom of Turn 2, most of my Rhino's are now immobilised/destroyed so my Grey Hunters are all on foot now getting ready to bring the pain. Although its not too clear, there is a squad of GH just under where the hand is about to be charged by a squad of guardsmen.

Things didn't exactly go too well in that charge though for Andy, my GH squad managed to kill of both charging units in the combat, then proceeded to work their way across the top of the hill and into the top corner killing off a good fraction of the guard army in the process.

This is about where it ended, you'll notice the top-right of the board is a bit sparse of guardsmen.

Now I'll say right here and now that I was pretty lucky in this game, a number of roles went very well in my favour which is why my GH squad made it across so much of the table - in reality they should have struggled to survive the first fight, let alone the 2 or 3 that came after that!

Anyway, it was a great game, Andy and Damian seemed to enjoy themselves and we were all having a good laugh.

So, sorry about the epic-length post, I promise tomorrow I'll be getting onto the BlogWars coverage with a weekend summary followed by some individual battle-reports for the 3 games.

Cheers - Andy

BlogWars = awesome

2011-06-06T12:59:00.000+01:00

I'm only just starting to catch myself up with what has been an absolutely brilliant weekend. My first trip to Warhammer World, first visit to Maelstrom, first tournament, first tournament win and loss, first time on table 1 (ok, it was a chance drawing for round 1, but I'll claim it counts ;), and best of all the first time I've met a whole load of bloggers I've followed for a number of years. Hello everyone.

I want to say congratulations, and thanks, to Alex and all the lads from From the Fang for putting on a great and very fun tournament, and hello to everyone I met over the weekend. Also, thanks to my opponents in all three games; Rich (Mighty Simo - Cupboard of Nurgle), Andy (Atreides - Sons of Sanguinius) and Ian (Ginge - Need More Tanks). You were all really great blokes, fun to play, the absolute best types of opponents and I'd happily game against you any time in the future.

I'll have a more detailed round-up of the weekend later. Cheers - Andy

Blog Wars bound

2011-06-03T22:58:00.001+01:00

The paint is drying, everything is based. Full army ready for Blog Wars. I'll be in Warhammer World tomorrow from about 12, then will head to Maelstrom in the evening. Looking forward to seeing you all there.

I'll give tweeting a go through the weekend in case anyone is interested, and so I'll remember what actually happens. @iron_legion.

Laters, Andy

Final Blogwars List

2011-05-27T16:48:00.001+01:00

Right, the list is finalised, its been submitted, and I'm just about to book a hotel for the Saturday and a car to get me to BlogWars. If anyone needs a lift from anywhere between the Oxford area and Mansfield let me know, I'll be happy to pick you up on the way.

I'll be heading up on the Saturday in the morning, planning on spending that day in Warhammer World as I've never been and am very interested to see the place. Looks like Atreides and some mates are going to be there that day too so should be able to get in some warm-up games. Anyway, onto the list:

Logan Grimnar

275

Rune Priest, Living Lighting, Murderous Hurricane, chooser

110

Rune Priest, Living Lighting, Jaws of the World Wolf

100

Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist

Wolf Guard, TDA, storm-shield, power-weapon

Wolf Guard, TDA, combi-melta, chainfist

Wolf Guard, TDA, combi-plasma, wolf-claw

Wolf Guard, TDA, combi-melta, wolf-claw

316

Land Raider

250

8 Grey Hunters, meltagun, Wolf Standard, Mark of the Wulfen, Rhino

185

8 Grey Hunters, meltagun, Wolf Standard, Mark of the Wulfen, Rhino

185

8 Grey Hunters, meltagun, Wolf Standard, Mark of the Wulfen, Rhino

185

6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers

140

1746 points

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

2011-05-22T10:00:00.001+01:00

Quick post, I'm not really here, but today is my 30th Birthday and I should be nursing a pretty good hangover all things being well :D

I have no idea what I'm getting from others, but as GW has decided to hold off raising prices till after my birthday, I've treat myself to a whole pile of shiny new plastic and soon to no longer exist metal. Pics should appear on twitter where you can see the links on the right.

So Happy Birthday me!

Revised BlogWars List

2011-05-20T15:14:00.000+01:00

So I've played a few games with my Njal Stormcaller Blogwars list, and to put it frankly, I just don't like it. I had a victory against an all foot guard list, and lost to a Dark Eldar list and a couple of others. I just couldn't get used to running Njal in a way that would protect him long enough to make the most of his powers, I missed having two priests so being able to cast the same power twice and the area of board that I could cover. I guess I'm just a little too keen to get my Wolves into the thick of things. In the past, I've really enjoyed running Ragnar with a group of Terminators, sometimes out of a Land Raider, when I've needed to bump my usual lists up to higher points for opponents, so I think I'm going to fall back on that kind of Special Character use - I just find it more fun. However, if you've seen my Twitters, you'll notice that I haven't been working on Ragnar...

I was looking at Ragnar's profile and rules, and was comparing them to Logan, and got interested. Here's a bit of a breakdown of the comparison.

Similarities - Most of the stats, both have a 4++ invulnerable save, Wolf Tooth Necklaces and Talismans and Frost Blades (one of the uses of the Axe Morkai for Logan).

Difference - Ragnar gives his unit Furious Charge, and +D3 attacks on the charge instead of +1. He has grenades for assault and is in Power Armour so can get in a Rhino with Grey Hunters if his bodyguard gets killed. Once per game he can give all units within 12'' Furious Charge and also has Saga of the Warrior Born so gets better if you can keep him killing people in combat. Logan has an extra A, 2+ save, Eternal Warrior, can make Thunder Hammer attacks and can give his unit special rules. He can also make all units within 18'' have an extra A for a turn, and makes Wolf Guard Troops. Logan is 35pts more than Ragnar.

I'm somewhat leaning towards Logan at the moment, not only as it'll add another unit of troops to my force in the form of a unit of Wolf Guard, but although 35pts more expensive, that's the same as the cost of Saga of the Bear, and Eternal Warrior is a huge boon, means I can safely take those extremely high S hits against Logan's save without worrying too much, whereas one S8+ hit gets through on Ragnar and its bye-bye! I will miss Furious Charge and the +D3 attacks though.

Anyway, onto some lists.

My Core List:

2 x Rune Priest (200)

Lone Wolf, storm-shield, MotW, Wolf (75)

3 x 8 Grey Hunters, melta, standars, MotW, Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist, Rhino (684)

6 Long Fangs, 5 Missile Launchers (140)

1099pts

What I consider a basic Terminator Wolf Guard squad loadout; and transport for the Special Character:

4 x Wolf Guard, TDA, storm-shield, chainfist, 2 x combi-melta, wolf-claw (177)

Land Raider (250)

427pts

	vs.
Logan Grimnar (275)		Ragnar Blackmane (240)

So to make these lists work, I need to find 51pts for Logan, 16pts for Ragnar. Not too hard, I could lose a couple of Grey Hunters, or a Long Fang.

I'll see how Logan goes in games this week hopefully, and I know just how effective Ragnar can be. As a teaser, see this that I've been putting together in preparation.

Citadel Finecast

2011-05-17T15:43:00.000+01:00

From Faeit 212, credit within

Assuming you've seen yesterdays Games Workshop blogpost you'll know that they are replacing a large part (if not all) of their metal models with resin or part-resin figures.

Well the first images are starting to emerge and the poster to the left shows you the first range of miniatures. No real surprises, its exactly the same sculpts as before, just in a different material. So, GW is producing the same sculpts, in a cheaper material, that is lighter so reducing shipping costs, and a probably simpler production method as they aren't having to deal with hot metal.

Will we see any of these savings, nope! In fact we're looking at a ~25% price increase on most figures - WOW!

We're also due a price-hike at the end of May, so I'm now looking to make a pretty big order of all the things I've been wanting before all this hits, and while there are still some metal figures available at the old prices. I'll be using my new favourite store: Dark Sphere Games, the cheapest site out there!

Also, check out Wolves for the Wolfgod who is having a give-away in honour of his 100th post, and follow me on twitter if you care about mini-updates. Cheers, Andy

Wulfen Scouts

2011-05-16T11:01:00.000+01:00

Thought I'd lost this post with the Blogger outage, but thankfully its come back at last. This was supposed to go out at the end of last week, but best laid plans and all that. Anyway, onto the post:

Wulfen, such awesome models and I was gutted that I'd missed them in my decade hiatus when I first saw them. I've kept a weather eye on ebay ever since in case some came up for a bargain and a few months ago my prayers were answered and I got these guys for a not too crazy price. They sat in Dettol for an age while I tried to figure out what to do with them (I've already got Mark of the Wulfen models for all my squads), and it wasn't till only a little while ago that I realised that 5 is exactly the minimum number of scouts in a pack, and that these would work perfectly.

Above you see them post Dettol, cleaned up of mould lines etc. (how people don't clean this from models, especially models as good looking as this still staggers me, a mould like completely destroys the look of a model) and undercoated. I decided that as this was a small unit, and metal is relatively easier to strip if things go wrong, I'd use them as a first full test of my new painting method for my army. The painting was done over a few nights and went really well, below I'll go through all the main steps so you can see how the look develops.

All the armour is first painted with Fenris Grey before being given a heavy over-brush of Shadow Grey.

The next step was a relatively heavy down-brush (this is dry-brushing but only in a downwards direction to apply highlighting to the upper surfaces of everything, simulating zenithal lighting without all the difficult blending) with my first highlight mix which you can see on the right in the background.

This was followed by a lighter down-brush of my secondary highlight mix (in the back on the right).

Codex Grey was applied to all the ribbing and pipe-work. I also decided that the Scouts squad colour (which I use on the shoulder pads) would be Grey so the shoulder pads got painted with Codex Grey as well. Boltgun Metal was applied as necessary to metal parts/equipment.

Red (in the form of Mechrite Red), my armies main spot colour, was applied to weapon cowlings and a few decorative items across the squad. All the chest decorations, teeth, claws, runic charms and other bone-like deocrations were based with Dheneb Stone.

I imagine that Space Wolf Scouts would spend a lot of time out of the Fang, even when not deployed, honing their field-craft, and would have become a little feral. Add to this that in a lot of the fluff they mention the skin of Space Wolves darkening with time as a by-product of their gene-seed flaws and so for the "older" unit types I don't use a flesh colour but a mid-brown. In this case the flesh was painted with Graveyard Earth. Leather pouches etc. were based with Snakebite Leather. The hair/fur was first base-coated with Adeptus Battlegrey, then drybrushed with Codex Grey, and finally selectively drybrushed with a mix of Codex Grey and Bleached Bone to give some variation in the fur.

This squad is the first to also be given my Wolf company marking, the Night Claw. I've had the fluff for this floating around in my head and developing with my army with time and I hope to add a story post soon. The guy with the wolf's head shoulder pad and chainsword is going to be my Wolf Scout Mark of the Wulfen squad member so the wolf's head seems appropriate.

Highlighting was applied to all the other areas of the models. I almost exclusively highlight in one or two stages, adding Bleached Bone to the base colour for each stage. I prefer this method as it gives a softer, warmer tone to the highlights than using pure white. Obviously the Dheneb Stone was highlighted with Bleached Bone first, then with Skull White. The red was highlighted with Blood Red.

Final stage is a thorough wash with a Devlan Mud wash that has been mixed with equal amounts of water and a drop of washing liquid to keep the surface tension down.

And that's everything. I may go back and do the odd additional highlight, the skin and bone sections all look like they could do with a little extra, but otherwise I think they are looking pretty good, and best of all the process is relatively quick.

Comments and advice on how I can improve these would be really appreciated as I'm always looking to improve things. Sorry for the overly long post, cheers, Andy

mini-GW, mini-blog, its a mini-update

2011-05-07T13:07:00.000+01:00

Image from Galaxy in Flames

Just a quick update to keep the place going, I've got a much longer painting article almost complete as well.

First up, I wanted to make a shout out for this post by Big Jim over at Galaxy in Flames for having been part of such a piece of genius creation. Its just such a shame that not everyone saw the funny side of it. Go read and have a look, it really is very cool.

Secondly, I'm now on Twitter, username iron_legion. Not that much interesting on there so far, but I'll be using it as a mini-blog with WIPs etc. for when I haven't got enough for full blog posts. You'll be able to see what I'm posted on the right too as a mini-feed (seems like everything's mini today).

Thirdly, for any of you using Google Chrome as your browser, and google reader to follow people, I discovered a great little plugin: Super Google Reader. It adds a set of tabs to each post which allows you to see all the posts text if you are previously only getting snippets, and will even embed the full blog in your feed if you want, you can even comment without ever having to leave reader. Its a great addition, and I'd definitely recommend you check it out.

Big shiny painting post to follow in a day or so, but you can see a sneak of what it'll be about in the twitter feed. Cheers, Andy

Blog Wars - I'm going, are you?

2011-04-20T17:07:00.000+01:00

I'm going to Blog Wars!

For those that haven't yet heard of this, and if you haven't, where have you been? Blog Wars is being run by Alex over at From The Fang and is aimed at getting together members of the UK blogging community (non-bloggers are welcome too of course) for a relaxed tournament, a chance to meet up with all those names we know from blogs but may never have met, and throw down on the tables and "see who's best" ;) It's going to be at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield on Sunday 5th June. To try and help out, I've set up a Google Group for people to use to for organising lifts, nights out etc, you can find it here.

EDIT: Second list added for consideration.

Anyway, as I said, I'm going and really looking forward to Blog Wars, and I'm looking for a lift so if anyone would be passing near to Oxford and could offer me a lift I'd of course appreciate it and would contribute towards petrol etc. Short of that, if there isn't a lift, I'll be hiring a car for the weekend and if someone needed a lift on my way I'd be happy to help out in this case. If you are interested, check out the Google Group.

Posting your lists is encouraged, its a 1750pts tournament, and lists must include one "Special Character" defined as an army list entry with the unit type "unique". Below are the lists I'm considering and I'd be very interested to hear thoughts and to help me figure out what to do with my remaining points.

LIST 1

Thogard

Rune Priest, Chooser of the Slain, Living Lightning, Jaws of the World Wolf

Njarv

Rune Priest, Chooser of the Slain, bolter, Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane

220 pts

3 x Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist (1 each with the Grey Hunters)

Wolf Guard, power-fist (with the Scouts)

Arjac Rockfist (my Special Character)

Wolf Guard, TDA, Cyclone Missile Launcher

Wolf Guard, TDA, chainfist

Wolf Guard, TDA, combi-melta

Wolf Guard, TDA, wolf-claw

Drop Pod

577 pts

5 x Wolf Scouts, meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen

100 pts

Gunnar Jarns-Hud

Lone Wolf, storm-shield, Mark of the Wulfen, Fenrisian Wolf

75 pts

8 x Grey Hunters, meltagun, Wolf Standard, Mark of the Wulfen, Rhino

555 pts

The Awska

5 x Long Fangs, 4 x Missile Launchers, twin-lascannon Razorback

190 pts

1717pts

So I've got 33 pts left to spend. I think a second storm-shield for the Wolf Guard as they'll attract a lot of attention when they drop in would be useful, or some extra wolf-claws and/or combi-weapons to make them more effective could help.

LIST 2

Njal Stormcaller (my Special Character)
245 pts

3 x Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist (1 each with the Grey Hunters)

Wolf Guard, power-fist (with the Scouts)

Arjac Rockfist (another Special Character)

Wolf Guard, TDA, storm-shield

Wolf Guard, TDA, chainfist

Wolf Guard, TDA, combi-melta, wolf-claw

Wolf Guard, TDA, wolf-claw

Drop Pod

567 pts

5 x Wolf Scouts, meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen

100 pts

Gunnar Jarns-Hud

Lone Wolf, storm-shield, Mark of the Wulfen, Fenrisian Wolf

75 pts

8 x Grey Hunters, meltagun, Wolf Standard, Mark of the Wulfen, Rhino

555 pts

The Awska

5 x Long Fangs, 4 x Missile Launchers, twin-lascannon Razorback

190 pts

1732pts

This list has 18 pts left, where should I put those? I'm thinking of just upgrading some of the Wolf Guard to make them a bit more effective in combat and maybe a bit more shooty, I could include a heavy-flamer and another wolf-claw or combi-melta

What do people recommend? Which list do you prefer?

To make up this lists, I need to finish up my Scouts and the extra Grey Hunters (post to follow on those), make two Chooser of the Slain markers, an appropriate Arjack Rockfist model and sort out my terminator arms to complete the squad. I'll also need to make some objective markers for the tournament, and if I go for the second list, decide whether either of my Rune Priest models are suitable to count as Njal, or if I should paint up the original model that I have lying around from ages ago.

Anyway, enough wall of text for now, comments are very welcome, and if you are reading this and going to Blog Wars, I look forward to meeting you.

Guest appearance

2011-04-12T07:49:00.000+01:00

Hey everyone, been a tad quiet on here of late, thanks to an extremely busy period at work, followed directly by work travel, and I've not really had much time to get on here. However, I've not been taking it easy, there's a number of bits a pieces I want to talk about.

On my way back from my work trip, I'm stopping off in LA for a couple of days, so of course I'm going to have to see what the famed LA battle bunker is like. I'll be calling in there either Wednesday or Thursday so if anyone who follows this is there on either of those days, watch out for the lost looking English guy and say hi.
Blog Wars! I'm planning on going, if you haven't seen this yet then follow the link here or on the right and check it out. Its going to be a blast and I'm seriously looking forward to it. On that note, I'm going to need a lift as the mighty UK public transport system would take over 7 hours. With the blessing of From the Fang, I've set up a google group where those going can sort out all the logistics. You can find it here: http://groups.google.com/group/40k-blog-wars and if you are going, do sign up and post anything you might need to.
Barter Bucket. This is such a huge and great resource run by the guys over at Santa Cruz. If you ever have anything you are looking for, or want to swap out, get rid of, or trade bits, then I'd recommend this as your first stop. I was able to swap out my spare High Elves for a full set of Skaven from the IoB boxset, so my Skaven army is growing nicely. Props to Mike over at The Unforgiven for the trade!

As well as this, coming soon, some hopefully nice looking wulfen models, my first full test of my new paint scheme.

GW's birthday days

2011-04-04T08:02:00.001+01:00

I've seen a bit of bashing of GW for having started up its series of birthday events for stores (at least in the UK, I'm not sure about the international stores), but then again, what decision of theirs doesn't receive some bashing from one corner of the web or another.

My local was amongst the first group of stores to have their parties and I'll admit now I came away distinctly better off than when I went in. Yes there was a lot of the usual kiddie pleasing nonsense, waaghs, cake, sillyness, but I'd still recommend you pop along to your local whenever they have theirs, for three main reasons.

Raffle: I bought a couple of £'s tickets, and didn't win anything, but I was happy to have a go nonetheless considering there was a Baneblade, Shadowsword and Stormraven amongst the prizes, plus quite a few Warhammer and LotRs kits that I'm sure people would be very happy to receive.
Auction: If you've ever seen the backroom of a GW, you'll know that it will most likely be stacked high with "store models", the contents of black boxes that the staff have painted up for all sorts of releases dating back years, as well as armies galore that they may have put together for events etc. A lot of these were being sold off to clear some space, the largest of which I saw was a huge ork army with over 20 bikes, 8 deffkoptas and a mob of about 50 boyz/nobs.
Blister Dip: This was where I really won out. They had a box in which they'd dumped over 400 blister packs that either weren't for sale anymore, damaged, or just overstock. £1 a dip, and you just had to keep what you got. £6 and some swapping with everyone else who was doing the same saw me come away with:

Skaven Doomflayer
Treekin
Ar-Ulric
Witchking of Angmar on foot
metal Cadian Standard Bearer and Medic
some random LotRs goblins that I couldn't trade with anyone else

The top two are worth over £25 together, and the Doomflayer was something I definitely wanted in my Skaven army so even better. Ar-Ulric looks like he has conversion potential for a Rune Priest, and the others I'm highly likely to trade at some point. Not bad for £6 if you ask me. I even saw one fella with over 40 blisters who had some very very rare models in amongst his hall. If you hear your local is having its birthday party, I'd definitely say poke your head in on the day, as early as possible to see what you can nab.

Fenrisian Wolves

2011-03-22T14:31:00.000Z

Just a very short post to show off the Fenrisian Wolves I've made up based on the Chaos Warhound models. Nothing too drastic here, a basic warhound without the horns, and some green-stuff to fill in the gaps, extend the fur onto the hind-quarters and make a tail for them. Painting was a basic drybrush over the black basecoat to get them onto the table.

I've got a unit of 10 of them, sometimes I run them just as is or with one of the Cyberwolves I've made up to go with my Iron Priest to act as a screen or shock assault unit (3 Space Marine type attacks each on the charge, at I5 if you have Saga of the Wolfkin on one of your Lords can do some pretty serious damage), other times I split them up and assign them as ablative wounds to characters and Lone Wolves as needed.

Iron Priest and Mount

2011-03-15T10:46:00.000Z

A while back I posted about a mechanical Thunderwolf mount I was converting from the old, metal juggernaught model I started. This all began way before the plastic models were announced, but with the pace of my work its only just now that I can bring you a semi-completed model.

I've managed to get the mount a basic paint job, and even construct a basic Iron Priest to mount onto it - I need to finish the servo-arm, and seriously embellish the armour, but the basics are there enough to make it identifiable on the battlefield. I've even had a chance to run it out a couple of times, and although it hits like a true sledge-hammer, it dies just as easily without any invulnerable save, and only a few wounds in the unit.

and here's the priest on the wolf:

From a boxset of direwolves, I've created 4 Cyberwolves to run with him, I've filled in the many gaps in the models, and sculpted fur onto a lot of the models, though I've left areas of the "skin" and bone to show, and painting them up in metallic and grey colours gives them a nice cyber-look. Below you can see the whole unit together:

Space Wolves Terminators

2011-03-10T12:23:00.000Z

From GW, used without permission

Until recently, my local club almost always played 1500pt games, and as such I had a 1500pt list. In fact, I've got a list here which goes all the way from 500pts to 1500pts incrementally which is pretty much all I ever use. However the last couple of weeks, both of my opponents have wanted to play 2000pt games, and so I've had to try and find another 500 pts. Rummaging around in my army case the best/most effective way I could think to add those points in was with some terminators and a special character, ideally Ragnar. Another option is to put the terminators in a Land Raider but as I didn't have one with me that wasn't possible.

As it looks like the higher points games may be a more frequent feature of games nights I've been having a think about what might be the best way to field those terminators, what load-out is likely to be the most effective for a single squad, and this is what I've come up with:

Cyclone Missile Launcher (or at a push Assault Cannon): Some heavy fire-power to reach out and touch someone at range.
Storm Shield: Much needed extra survivability against those AP1/2 shots - if you have the points, take 2.
Chainfist: 5 points more than a power fist, but in the crucial moment when you really, really need to get through that armour, its worth every one of those points.
2 combi-meltas: Space Wolf Terminators, especially when charging along with Ragnar, are very good at taking down units and you really want to get them out of those transports first.
Wolf Claws: A 5 points upgrade over the stock power weapon, but re-rolling those to hits or to wounds can turn a combat on its head and I use these as liberally as I can throughout the unit, they can really help to make every model unique as well for wound allocation.

So taking all that into account, here are the units I'd take to make up 500 points:

Land Raider Crusader, multi-melta (260 points)

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, Cyclone, storm bolter, power weapon

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, storm bolter, storm shield

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, storm bolter, chainfist

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, combi-melta, power weapon

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, combi-melta, wolf claw (240)

Ragnar (240 points)

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, Cyclone, storm bolter, wolf claw

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, storm bolter, storm shield

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, storm bolter, chainfist

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, combi-melta, storm shield

Wolf Guard, Terminator armour, combi-melta, wolf claw (260)

Is there a way I should improve this? What alternatives would you take?

Skaven, Skaven, Skaven

2011-03-08T19:59:00.000Z

The chittering, the infernal chittering, it gnaws at me.....

This'll be quite the departure for me, I'm having a go at Fantasy. I've been interested in giving it a go for a while now, and with the release of the 8th edition book I thought it was timely for me to have a go. I've never felt the same draw to fantasy as I have to 40K, the background just doesn't seem to have the same draw, and there are few armies that I can feel a connection to. Funnily enough, the skaven are one, something about them just appeals to me, for one they are the only fantasy army for which I have an army book, so, with the inclusion of skaven in the new starter box, it all seemed to be falling into place.

Anyway, I had a week looking after a house with little else to do, so here's the result of 6 nights of painting, the whole boxset painted up, just basing and the glowing warpstone left to do. Lots of pictures below:

The core troops, one unit with spears, one with hand weapons:

The weapon teams:

Rat Ogres and handler, these models are fantastic, just fantastic:

The warlock engineer and the chieftan/warlord:

and finally, the whole force together:

Necron scheme finalised - almost...

2011-03-05T23:10:00.000Z

Hey all

So I've finally started to get the Necrons built and painted, I'm pretty much settled on a scheme and I've figured out a way to replace those silly green rods supplied by GW, so here's the finished result on a warrior:

My only slight issues is the green, do you think its the right colour, I've been imagining the possibility with a light blue instead of the green, I played around with photoshop and below is the result, what are peoples thoughts, the green above or the blue below?

I've also done up a destroyer to see how the scheme would work with them:

New Space Wolves painting scheme

2011-02-17T13:47:00.001Z

Hello blog-o-sphere-o-world-net type thing,

Despite my severe absence from here, I've actually managed to get quite a bit done in the last few months. I had some days free at Christmas house sitting for the 'rentals and managed to paint up the whole Skaven section of the IoB boxset, I'm currently looking to swap the high elves if anyone out there has a set, I've assembled a large fraction of my first Necron boxset, and made plans on how the further conversions are going to go, and I've been experimenting with a painting method for my Space Wolves as I've just not been satisfied with the look of them so far. I've even managed to get in a few games!

Anyway, onto the meat of the post, my new Space Wolves painting method. I'm aiming to get close to the look on the front of the new Codex. My previous scheme was dark, but once I'd started to highlight it up it ended up being too light. The aim for this scheme is to get something with subtle highlighting, dark grey with a hint of blue to them, but keeping the necessary techniques relatively simple as I'm nowhere near a great painter and want something I can apply army wide. I'm keeping my bone and red accents from the previous scheme as well. So the new recipe is:

Fenris Grey base coat

"Down Brush" with 2:1:1 mix of shadow grey:bleached bone:water

"Down Brush" with 1:2:1 mix of shadow grey:bleached bone:water

The three colours for comparison

Wash carefully with equal parts watered down Devlan Mud (with drop of washing up liquid to reduce the surface tension and improve the flow)

As you can see, its quite a dark final colour, perhaps still a little blue but it does look more grey in real life (still not got the right colour balance settings on the camera) and a bit less blue, you can see in the image below the comparison of two models before and after the wash.

The "Down Brush" technique I refer to in the captions is to use the large drybrush with each highlight colour and using a dry brushing technique, only make downward motions from the top of the model which has the result of giving an approximation of a zenithal lighting technique without having to do all the blending.

So what do you all think of it, have I achieved the desired result, do you think it even looks any good? I'll hopefully have a fully painted model for you soon so you can see the whole thing brought together. I look forward to hearing your thought, cheers.

Helloooooooo

2010-12-17T15:50:00.001Z

Yeah, so anyway, I am still alive, not that you would know it from this place. Life and work have been nothing if not busy hence the lack of action here. I've managed to get a decent amount of hobby done with a few nice additions to my army (including the mounted iron priest), but simply never had the time with real daylight to photograph any of it. Maybe come new year I'll manage something.

Anyway, I just want to miss any of you out there that are still crazy enough to follow this a very Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you wish to celebrate), and a very Happy (and hobby filled) New Year!

ps: Movember update, I managed to raise almost £400 myself, so thank you to all those that were kind enough to make a donation, and I was also part of teams that managed to raise over £1200!

Movember

2010-11-05T14:24:00.002Z

Hello out there if you are still even remotely interested in this blog.

Its been far too long since I did anything on here, and I'm sorry for not keeping it updated. Despite this, I've actually been getting quite a lot of hobby done, I've just not managed to get any photos of anything that I've been working on, or managed to write up any of the battles that I've taken part in.

On the other hand, I have managed to create a little banner for the site, which you can see above. Its made from a bunch of images I found online which I stitched together in GIMP (if you object to me using any of the images then of course let me know and I'm sure we can figure something out). Hope you'll like it.

But onto the main reason for this post, in case you don't know, the 11th month of every year is Movember, and as such I'm going to be growing a moustache (Mo) to help raise awareness and with luck a little bit of cash for The Prostate Cancer Charity (TPCC).

You see, here's the rub, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and one man dies every hour from the disease in the UK (for those of you in the states, thats one person dieing in the US every 10 minutes). The problem is, due to its nature, prostate cancer is very rarely talked about, and often caught far too late for any treatment to cure, and as such is often referred to as the silent cancer. We want to change that and Movember is just a little part of making a difference.

You can follow my progress at my Movember page where I'll be posting a day by day photo of the Mo and towards the end of the month I hope to put together a little vid based on the images so you can see the hair sprout from my face in all its glory (you can see the day 5 photo below).

So if any of you can spare a little change to help out the great work that TPCC do, it will make all the difference. The link to donate to is:

http://uk.movember.com/donate/your-details/member_id/762554/

Thank you all
Andy - bG

The swarm approacheth

2010-10-08T15:32:00.001+01:00

Here's a bit of a blast from the past, a write up from the night the Tyranid Codex was released:

For the release of the Tyranid codex, my local GW ran a massive games night, a series of combined narrative games linked to a central Apocalypse game entirely against Tyranid opposition, using the new codex. I was lucky enough to take part in the Apocalypse game with 2000pts of Wolves. I teamed up with another 2000pts of Wolves, 3000pts of Crimson Fists and 2000pts of Guard. Facing us were 9000pts of Tyranids who even got endless swarm, a bio-titan and 3 barbed hyrodules!

The whole night was organised by a provisional campaign organising group that GW was trialling in our store, although the campaigns have somewhat gone by the way, they certainly put everything into this night and it was truly epic. One of the organisers who dabbled in blogging, FlingItNow, wrote up the night in a great review on Imperius Dominatus which is far more comprehensive than this (theres big chunks missing from my report as I was far too engrossed in the action on my board - it was awesome!).

The two side tables that were being run each had a series of games which dictated how reserves would arrive on the apocalypse table, and could influence the game in other ways as well. One of these involved the defence of a Fortress by a combined Dark Angels and Guard force. Below you can see the setup:

The Guard had been left to hold the Fortress for as long as possible to allow the missile battery's to fire on the tyranids, while the Dark Angels had a secret mission and so needed to get through the force of Orks on the far side of the table and escape the board!
On the second table, a combined Imperial force was facing up to Genestealers defending bastions, hoping to delay reinforcements for the Tyranids on the Apocalypse table.

As we were including both the Wolves and the Dark Angels in the overall game we had to have a face off for the Lion and the Wolf. Sadly Ragnar let us down (not the only time that night) and fell to the Dark Angel in part due to my lousy dice rolling and in part due to having to face 2 rounds of shooting before being able to get into contact (the two characters were placed far apart).

Meanwhile, we were seeing just what we were going to face. 9000pts is a lot of Tyranids!

Here you see a lonely squad of Crimson Fists lurking on the streets at the edge of the city we were defending facing the monstrosities of the Tyranids as they approach over the hill.

The Guard prepare for a mad dash into the lines of the Tyranids to delay their approach and in the vain hope of securing a field of crops that is buried under the middle of the Tyranid lines - amazingly enough thanks to some deepstriking troopers they were able to secure the crops by the end of the battle!

That is a mighty line of gribbly death!

So from here on in I can only offer images of a few highlights as things got very engrossing. I'll try and give you a brief overview of the first few interesting turns and then just gloss over the later turns leading to the climax as they weren't as intersting.

Imperial turn 1

Pretty much all our high strength weaponry is directed towards the bio-titan in the hopes of felling it before it can wreak too much havoc. After all the weapons of a baneblade, 4 devestator squads and the missiles from numerous tac squads we've got it down to 2 wounds! The rest of the firing did little harm to the tyranids taking the odd few gaunts from broods.

Tyranid turn 2

The bio-titan regenerates 3 wounds leaving it on 5, in the last round we took 8 wounds from it so theres still a chance. The bio-titan and hyrodules all open up on the baneblade and guard causing a lot of damage to the massive vehicle but miraculously only disabling a number of weapons and shaking some others - it'll still be able to fire next turn. The rest of the tyranids move forward on mass.

Then, like a bolt from the blue - thanks to the guard holding the Fortress on the other table a great missile lands amid the tyranid lines:

This one shot kills 33 gaunts! One weapon causes more destruction in the Tyranid lines than the combined shooting of all the Guard and Crimson Fists. Sadly, we saw that destroyed brood of Hormagaunts reappear at the start of the next Tyranid turn thanks to endless swarm.

Fleet of foot is only as good as your dice rolls :)

Imperial turn 2
Thanks to the work of the Imperial players taking and holding many of the bastions on one of the other boards almost all the wolves were able to turn up on turn 2. My Long Fangs were deployed to back up the others facing the monstrous creatures over to the right hand of the board, while my lone wolf and land raider containing Ragnar and a bodyguard of termies arrived on the left flank to face that whole flank of the Tyranid hoard pretty much alone. Not to worry though, thanks to Ragnars beserk charge, my dual wolf claw guys were rolling 7 wolf claw attacks and individual termies were accounting for up to 6 gaunts each.
Meanwhile on the rest of the board we finally felled the bio-titan and one of the hyrodules. Some drop pods were strategically placed in the way of the monstrous creatures in order to slow their advance, and the rest of the tyranid brood was being slowly whittled away. The small Guard force was doing surprisingly well.

Notice a difference between the above image and below? Well one round of combat from Ragnar and his guard accounted for a brood of 32 Hormagaunts and a Carnifex. In the following rounds they would take a charge from the Warriors and Termagaunts and proceed to wipe out everything on this flank. By the end of turn 3 they had wiped out 1 Carnifex, 3 Tyranid Warriors, 64 Terma/Hormaguants, 3 Zoanthropes and a few others I can't quite remember, all for the loss of a couple of Terminators.

Turns 2-4

These saw the mopping up of the remaining Tyranids on the board. Thanks to the amazing work on the other tables a lot of the Tyranid reinforcements were stopped from appearing, and coupled with that and the incredible work of some of the other squads of Crimson Fists massing bolter fire on the centre of the Tyranid line and the other force of wolves chomping its way through a significant fraction of the other end of the tyranid line, by the end of our turn 4 we had almost completely cleared the table of Tyranids. However, it wasn't all going to go our way, we'd received "intelligence" from the other boards that the Genestealers had got into the sewers under the city and could appear at any time, the Dark Angels were fighting to stop them as we were finishing off the main Tyranid assault.

Below the city the Dark Angels were fighting a desperate battle to stop the Tyranids from getting to the city and disrupting its defence. They were partially successful, delaying the Genestealers (so they only turned up in the middle of our lines on the last turn of the game) but unable to stop them:

So the final, climactic turn of the battle, Tyranid turn 4 and the Genestealers appear at both flanks of our lines. Ragnar and his guard were facing over half their number alone...

...while on the other flank, my Blood Claws were the only squad with a hope of stopping the 'stealers as it was them, a tac squad and some devestators facing them.

On the right the 'stealers chomped their way through pretty much everything without the slightest difficulty (although I forgot that they don't have frag anymore so it could have been a little different for my Claws - I won't forget that one again).

While on the left it wasn't looking good for Ragnar, his guard or the Lone Wolf...

...completely surrounded...

...and when the dust of the combat settled, Ragnar and all the Wolf Guard were gone, but by some miracle the Lone Wolf survived, and with his full 2 wounds as well (again I forgot that being in cover I could have gone first against the stealers - D'oh!).

So, Ragnar fell in battle, but perhaps the Lone Wolf proved himself more than capable of taking his place at the head of a new company of Wolves.

Finally, I'll leave you with a picture of the full Tyranid force used across all of the gaming boards. Some 13,000 pts of Tyranids and totalling a massive 499 models.

It was an awesome night and I can't thank the guys from my local GW and the gamers who took the time to organise and run the night.

Outflanking wolf list of DOOM!!!

2010-09-24T13:27:00.001+01:00

Used without permission, will remove if requested

So last night after games night, a few of us had a jar or two and chewed the fat over random GW related stuff. One of the things that came up was a possible loop-hole kind of thing in the Space Wolves codex (I know, shock, horror). In the description of Saga of the Hunter it says "Infantry only" and where it can be selected in the Army List section there is a little * and at the bottom of the page it says it can only be taken by those in power armour that aren't either on a bike or using a jump pack. In the Wargear section it does say that those who take a Thunderwolf mount count as cavalry, so in reality the following list won't work. However there are those that would say that since in the Army List section it specifically singles out bikes and jump pack but not thunderwolves that its allowed - really lame reasoning, not one I'd use, but this is all a bit of fun and got us thinking about what kind of army you could build based on this. So, considering the models I already have at my disposal we're going to see if we can try this out sometime in the future. The list I'll take is:

Wolf Guard Battle Leader, bolt-pistol, thunder-hammer, Thunderwolf, WTN, WTT, Saga of the Hunter, 2 x Fenrisian Wolves (190 pts)
Wolf Guard Battle Leader, storm-shield, close combat weapon, Thunderwolf, WTN, WTT, Saga of the Hunter, 2 x Fenrisian Wolves (190 pts)
Wolf Guard Battle Leader, bolt-pistol, frost-axe, Thunderwolf, WTN, WTT, Saga of the Hunter, 2 x Fenrisian Wolves (185 pts)
Wolf Guard Battle Leader, storm-shield, close combat weapon, meltabombs, Thunderwolf, WTN, WTT, Saga of the Hunter, 2 x Fenrisian Wolves (195 pts)
Lone Wolf, MotW, storm-shield, meltabombs (70 pts)
Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist, 5 x Grey Hunters, meltagun, MotW, Wolf Standard, Lascannon Razorback (223 pts)
Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist, 5 x Grey Hunters, meltagun, MotW, Wolf Standard, Lascannon Razorback (223 pts)
Wolf Guard, combi-melta, power-fist, 5 x Grey Hunters, meltagun, MotW, Wolf Standard, Assault-cannon Razorback (223 pts)
1499 pts

The load-outs for the WGBLs are based solely on the models I have built for my Thunderwolves which is why I've had to give one guy meltabombs to avoid the same wargear sets, all have Hunter obviously, and they all have 2 wolves as they are all susceptible to S10 weapons causing Instant Death. The three units are my standard minimum troop selection with the Razorbacks acting as heavy fire support, and the minimal Grey Hunter units tooled up to give them some punch if/when they get into combat. The Lone Wolf is just to fill in the remaining points and maybe draw some fire.

Now I am very aware that this list isn't entirely legal - but as I said before this was just a bit of a thought experiment. So, outside of that, what do you all think? I think it'd be a lot of fun to play but extremely fragile, but the effect of those WGBLs piling on from the sides would certainly lead to some interesting scenarios.

Psychic shooting question

2010-09-22T17:10:00.001+01:00

A quick question for all of you out there, when using a psychic shooting attack, do you roll to hit?

I can't see anywhere in the rule book that says you should, but also nowhere does it say that you shouldn't. The rules say to use the same restrictions as shooting a weapon (l.o.s. etc) so for shooting psychic attacks you would expect to have to roll-to-hit. Problem is this could make some psychic powers for races that have low BS to be pretty useless which seems a little unfair.

At the local, we've not been rolling to hit, treating a passed Ld test as auto-hitting, but thinking about it I'd say you should have to roll to hit despite how much it could affect certain powers.

How do you all play it?

Even more games - Game 3 vs Deathwing

2010-09-20T15:38:00.002+01:00

The third of my more recent games was against a Deathwing army - painted up in a very nice looking black colour-scheme similar to Black Templars. The army consisted of 5 x 5-man terminator squads, with a heavy weapon each and the odd power-weapon. Bellial was included in one squad as the command squad with a banner, and there was also a lascannon dreadnought.

Image used without permission

I took a 1500 pts list with:

2 Rune Priests

2 x 8 Grey Hunters with all the trimmings, Wolf Guard with combi-melta and power-fist

10 Blood Claws with Wolf Guard with power-fist

Lone Wolf with 2 wolves

6 Long Fangs with 5 Missile Launchers

5 Thunderwolves with thunder-hammer, 2 x storm-shield

We played on a 4 x 4 table with a big river running across the middle, a hill on one side with some ruins on top, and two buildings on either side of the other half. We were playing kill points with pitched battle deployment, I got first turn and set up on the side with two buildings. My Long Fangs in one building on the right, the two Rhino's forming a wall in the centre with my Thunderwolves behind them, and the Blood Claws on the left with the Lone Wolf. The Deathwing set up Bellial with his command squad in the ruin on the hill, and the Dreadnought off to the right behind a low wall for cover. Deathwing rolls to steal the initiative and fails so I get first turn.

I won't go into too much detail on this battle as it was pretty formulaic. My Long Fangs spent most turns pinging his dreadnought which kept it unable to do much for the whole game till it finally died. My Blood Claws and Lone Wolf ran headlong towards his command squad on the hill, moving incredibly slowly across the intervening river thanks to abysmally low difficult terrain rolls. The Deathwing deep-struck in a squad or two at a time and my Thunderwolves and one pack of Grey Hunters shot then charged them and destroyed them squad by squad in combat. Finally, the rest of the army made it across the river and with the support of the second Grey Hunter squad killed off his command squad completing the annihilation of his army.

The game wasn't a particularly fair encounter mostly because my opponent chose to deep-strike his army meaning I could pick of squads of terminators one after another and he couldn't ever concentrate his fire or combat. Also, with most of the terminators running with power-fists I was able to cut down the units before the majority of them ever got to swing. My opponent and I both agreed the game would have been very different if he'd setup as a wall of terminators and used weight of fire to thin out my numbers before I got to him, but we'll have to wait till we get a re-match to see how that would have gone.

Dark Eldar: confirmed for November

2010-09-13T16:08:00.001+01:00

For those of you that don't get the GW daily update, this was included today:

Its the back cover of the upcoming October WD which means that Dark Eldar are coming November. Interestingly the blurb only mentions new models, no mention of new rules, but DE being the oldest Codex it would be surprising if there wasn't a new Codex on the way as well ( link ).

Wonder just how scary these new guys are going to be?

Space Hulk is Pacman

2010-09-13T14:25:00.000+01:00

Used without permission - no claim made, will remove if requested

Enough said :D

Squad highlights

2010-08-27T14:53:00.001+01:00

Hey there, despite not much on this blog, I've actually been progressing quite well with painting my army, I just haven't had a chance to post much of it on here. I finally managed to get some pictures taken of some of my progress so here it is.

I've managed to highlight all the models armour in one of my Grey Hunter squads:

I tried to produce a layered and somewhat blended highlight across all the armour plates. I did this using the GW blue-grey colour, heavily watered down on a wet-palette, and applied between 2 and 3 layers to the armour plates blending each one. The first image shows where I started (Fenris Grey foundation with a heavy Badab Black wash), and the second shows the result of the layered/blended highlighting. This was successful for some of the models, less so for others but I think some of that was due to the paint drying somewhat even though it was on a wet-palette.

After that, I went on to apply a sharper edge highlight to a lot of the armour (even the lower edges) to make it "pop" a little more, this was done with a 3:1:1 mix of blue-grey, bleached bone, water. I'm not too happy with this though, its more apparent in the images of individual figures, but I just didn't really get it right, and I don't like the look. In future, I think I'll do a little less at this stage, and probably avoid edge highlighting the lower edges.

Anyway, here's some of the more detailed figures (left is only layered/blending, right is with the edge highlighting). I still have the rest of the colours to highlight, but this is about the armour mostly.

The Rune Priest

The Wolf Guard Pack Leader

Mark of the Wulfen

Power weapon / Wolf Standard bearer

So what do you think? How do they look to you?

More Games Played - Game 2

2010-08-27T00:01:00.001+01:00

Game 2 was against Necrons (with special house rules)

There have been a few Necron players coming out of the woodwork at the local FLGS and a people have been talking about putting together some house rules to make the army a little more competitive. A few different combinations have been tried, for this game it was:

WBB as standard

Gauss becomes rending

Claws (Wraith and Flayed Ones) are rending in CC

The guy playing the Necrons was still pretty new to the game, his list was:
Lord with Res Orb
2 x 20 Necron Warriors
10 Flayed Ones
3 Wraiths
3 Destroyers
1 Heavy Destroyer
Monolith

I ran pretty much my standard 1500pts list that can be found here.

We rolled up the Capture and Control mission, and a Spearhead deployment, Necrons going first.
The board had some scattered small bits of terrain, and a large hill in the centre preventing anything going straight down the middle. He deployed all 40 Warriors across the corner of his board about as far back as they could get with the Lord in the middle. His Heavy Destroyer and Wraiths were to the right of that (my perspective) and the Destroyers to the left (both obviously flanking) and the Flayed ones and Monolith were in reserve.
I deployed a Rhino with Rune Priest as far forward as possible, each facing towards opposite sides of the central hill to sweep round and go for the Warriors. The Thunderwolves were behind the Rhino to the left, Lone Wolf and Fenrisian Wolves the Rhino to the left. The Long Fangs were just behind all that in the open but hopefully in range of the Warriors.

Turn 1
Very little movement from most of the Necrons. The Destroyers zip down my left side, lining up their shots on my Thunderwolves, in a pretty impressive display, they take a wound of one of the regular Thunderwoves and leave the storm-shield wielding guy on one wound. The Heavy Destroyer shifts slightly on the left to get a decent shot at the Rhino on the right but doesn't penetrate. The Wraiths phase through cover and plow straight into my Fenrisian Wolves, a few of the Wolves die and they manage to take out one of the Wraiths, they lose combat but amazingly hold in combat.
My turn and both the Rhinos power round the central hill heading towards the main Warrior groupings. The Thunderwolves move towards the Destroyers hoping to get them in combat, but a poor run roll means they are stuck out of range. The Long Fangs only have the Heavy Destroyer to shoot at so 5 krak missiles later its a smoking ruin. My Lone Wolf, in search of glory joins the combat between the Wolves and the Wraiths, between the remaining Wolves and the Lone Wolf they manage to drag down all the Wraiths, only losing a couple more Wolves. They all consolidate towards the main Warrior groupings.

Turn 2
Its reserves time, my opponent rolls and although his Monolith decides its still too early for harvest, the Flayed Ones are keen to collect more skins to use as clothing, they pop up behind my lines on the right. There's little movement again from the Necrons with only the Destroyers moving to keep as far away from the Thunderwolves but keep them in line of sight, their shooting isn't quite as devastating this time round, but they do manage to kill off the wounded regular Thunderwolf. The Warriors now have range on a lot of my army so I'm about to feel their wrath, my Lone Wolf goes down to weight of shots from one squad, and the other squad manages to immobilise the Rhino on my left thanks to their rending house rule.
The Grey Hunters in their Rhino jump out of their now immobilised Rhino and head towards the nearby Warriors, they aren't in range to charge, but eschew shooting to run that little bit closer. The other squad of Grey Hunters also disembark as the Flayed Ones are a little too close to my lines for comfort and I want to get rid of them. They charge into combat, pass their Ld test, and promptly manage to whiff most of their attacks against the 'Ones, and lose a couple of guys in return - they hold combat, but that wasn't quite how I'd imagined it to go! The slightly depleted Thunderwolves manage to get a decent 5" run this turn bringing them into range of the Destroyers. This combat goes much more to plan and once the dice settle there's nothing left of the Destroyers.

Turn 3
The Necons monolith still isn't ready to turn up so decides to sit out another round. My right flank is pretty much tied up with the Grey Hunters in combat, so all the Necron shooting is targeting my left flank and the Thunderwolves. One squad targets the Thunderwolves and takes another one down, while the Grey Hunter pack really feel the wrath losing three of their number, thankfully they manage to hold on. The combat with the Flayed Ones isn't going how I'd hoped so I pop the Wolf-Standard on that squad in hopes it'll help me get through. I take out a few Flayed Ones, and lose a couple of my squad, a drawn combat despite re-rolling 1's. Not a good turn.
My turn and its starting to get to the decisive stage, if I can get those Warrior squads into combat the game should go my way. I move up the left-hand Grey Hunter squad that is somewhat depleted, and they look to be in charge range. They plough into the warrior squad and to avoid a repeat of the first round with the Flayed Ones, I pop the Wolf Standard straight away. The Warriors don't really stand a chance, and even with the Lord nearby they lose combat quite significantly, fail their Ld test and are run down. The Thunderwolves shift across the board heading towards the second Warrior squad, but can't quite make it into combat, they'll all have to handle another round of combat. In the combat between the Flayed Ones and Grey Hunters I lose the combat by one again - that rending in combat is really good and I just can't get through that 3+ armour, I hold so it goes on.

Turn 4
The Monolith still doesn't want to make an appearance pretty much sealing the fate of the Necrons. The Necrons shift a little out of the way, but can't get out of charge range of my Thunderwolves, and their shooting takes down another Thunderwolf. I lose the combat with the Flayed Ones again but hold, and in my part of the turn, my Thunderwolves and Grey Hunters wipe out the second Warrior squad forcing the phase-out.

So, its a victory to the wolves, but against Necrons (even with house rules) and a relatively new player I'm not bragging. I learnt that Flayed Ones with rending can be very effective in combat, even without the rending they held me up as an effective tarpit. Always pop the Wolf Standard in the first round when you are rolling the most dice to turn up 1's. Thunderwolves are murder once in combat, but they do go down to simple weight of fire.

My opponent was a great guy, with a very nice looking army, and I'm sorry I didn't get pics to show it off as it deserves recognition. I hope I'll get another game against him and perhaps we can refine those house rules with time.

2 more games to come, and some painting progress.

Games Played - Shock! Horror!

2010-08-23T17:31:00.000+01:00

Hey everyone

Original image here, I "customised" it a little though ;)

Thought I'd mention that I've recently been able to get in some games with my wolves, something I've not always been able to manage, and not only that, I've even managed to win 2 of them as well.

Sadly I've never managed to remember to take a camera along to the games to get any visual recordings, but I thought I'd give a little run-down of the games for everyones enjoyment (if nothing else you can laugh at my somewhat classical failures) and so I can refer back to it in the future. I'll be reporting the first game here, and the others in following posts so that you're not faced with a giant wall of text to wade through.

Game 1

vs. Super Mech Imperial Guard

OK, this was the first of my recent games, I don't remember exactly the list, but it was something like:

4 Valkyries/Vendettas (some containing vets)

3 Chimeras with Vets

Psyker Battle Squad

Manticore

My list was (roughly):
8 Grey Hunters in Rhino with all the trimmings, Wolf Guard
x 2
8 Blood Claws with Wolf Guard
Squad of Long Fangs
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf
4 Thunderwolf Cavalry

I'll say from the start I got spanked in this game. It was kill points and pitched battle deployment. Guard got to go first and lined up across the board from me, with two of the valkyries/vendettas (V/Vs) scouting, and two of them coming on from reserve. I tried for a refused flank, with a lot of my force in reserve to try and protect them from incoming fire in the first few turns, with only my Long Fangs in some cover to one side, and Blood Claws in a building nearby for protection. I failed to seize the initiative.

First couple of turns, he lays lots of missiles and fire into the Long Fangs. I keep allocating wounds to my Heavy Bolter Fangs as they are the least use to me, but they always manage to make their cover saves while the rest of the Fangs slowly die to the incoming fire. If those Heavy Bolter Fangs weren't so useless to me in this game, they'd have been pretty heroic. My fire is pretty ineffectual, stunning the odd thing here or there.

Turn 3 and my Rhinos and Lord with Thunderwolves and Lord come onto the board and move as far forward as they can to try and get into contact with the Guard and maybe score back some KPs, the Rhinos pop smoke. I manage to pull off my usual wolf-shuffle, the thunderwolves managing to run a full 1".

Guard turn 4 and here is where the game is pretty much over. The psyker battle squad pull their leadership reduction routine and knock my Lords Ld down to 3 or 4. Then the manticore drops a couple of blast templates onto the Thunderwolves and kills off 2, I have to test against the Thunderwolf Ld as its now the best of the two, of course I fail and they trot right back off the board having done precisely nothing. A few lascannon shots has my Grey Hunters out of the Rhinos, and then weight of fire reduces them pretty heavily.

The rest of the game was my Grey Hunters and Blood Claws who have now got out of the building getting across the board and doing their best to cause what damage they can. We called it at the bottom of turn 5 due to time, and surprisingly I was only down by a couple of KPs thanks to those squads managing to knock out a few chimera's and slaughter the containing squads in combat. However, looking at it I was definitely on the losing side, the game finished with me having very little left on the board, and the Guard force still relatively well represented and effective.

There's so much I did wrong in this game, but at the same time I'm not sure how much more I could have done, the Thunderwolves running off was pretty depressing but with the psyker battle squad and manticore it was always going to happen. I could probably have also applied better fire priority and all sorts of other things. I also didn't have anything near as good a list as I'm running now as this was before my Rune Priests and plenty of my more recent additions and really made me realise how carefully you need to craft a list to be really competitive.

More batreps to come (some from much more recently that I remember so they should have a bit more detail).

Cheers, bG

Grey Hunter Squads ready for the table

2010-08-05T15:39:00.000+01:00

So its most of a year since the release of the Space Wolf codex and only now have I finally finished adapting my Grey Hunter squads to their new rules and setup - a pretty good example of how slow I am at working on stuff for this hobby. Last night I got a chance to sit down and work on the models I showed in this post and now I've finally got them all up to tabletop standard. I can finally field a full, WYSIWYG force from this list.

My Rune Priests - leading the force and attached to units of Grey Hunters.

The Wolf Guard Pack Leaders and their combi-meltas.

Grey Hunters that have succumbed to the Mark of the Wulfen.

The two squads all together. Notice the guy on the right of each image with the banner - well these are my Wolf Standard markers and I've set them up to be removable, they just slot into the backpack with a pin so I can remove them once I've used the Standard meaning I won't accidentally use it twice on the same unit.

I'm hoping to be able to do a whole army shot a-la Drax very soon (although my figs are no where near finished like his).

I was right - Forgeworld announce new range of variant Space Marine armours

2010-07-30T17:42:00.000+01:00

OK, not exactly a ground-breaking admission, but I think I got it pretty spot on here when I called out Forgeworld for making sets of Astartes armour from the variants they haven't yet made.

Today's Forgeworld newsletter announces that they are releasing a series of armour variants:

The first of our new Space Marine armour sets is this fantastic MkIII Armour Set sculpted by Will Hayes. The full resin kit provides enough parts to build 5 Space Marines in MkIII 'Iron' Armour, including two different sets of legs, shoulder pads, arms, torsos and helmets. You can see these here, along with a gallery of photos showing examples of how these brilliant parts can be combined with plastic Space Marine kits

The MkIII 'Iron' Armour is a variant of the previous 'Crusade' pattern adapted with additional armour plates to the front, as well as a reinforced helmet faceplate and strengthened vambraces for the savage firefights of fleet-based boarding actions. This extra armour turns an already resilient Marine into an almost unstoppable juggernaut within the cramped confines of a ship. This detailed kit can be pre-ordered for despatch in the week commencing August 23rd.

And if you go and have a look at them here I think you'll agree that they are pretty damn nice!

Interestingly, these are a different design of Mk III armour from that shown in their previous newsletter suggesting that there will be many variants within each armour type as well, or perhaps more specialist models such as captains etc.

As well as the new armour variant, Forgeworld have also released a variant bolter - Umbra pattern, and a special weapon pack which has some very cool old style missile launchers very much like the old RTB01 style and Space Crusade offerings of the early nineties.

It all seems to be pointing to Forgeworld doing something in the near future involving a chapter that hasn't changed much from the Heresy era, and they are taking their design queues from the early citadel miniatures Space Marine ranges. I think its really nice to see some of these old, classic designs being given a new lease of life and can't wait to see what they will show next!

Very, very cool Forgeworld

All images taken from Forgeworld without permission, no claim to ownership of the images intended, will remove if asked.

Wolftastic List

2010-07-30T13:47:00.000+01:00

Adam over at Space Wolves Grey has posted up his Razorwolves list in part in comment to the fact that pretty much all Space Wolf lists in the UK are converging on a single principle list of Grey Hunters in Rhinos accompanied by some Rune Priests and Long Fangs. I'm as guilty as the next man for building similar lists in part because they are just so versatile and work extremely well. However, its not the only list out there, and so for your consideration, I present the "Wolftastic" list:

Canis Wolfborne + 2 Fenrisian Wolves

205 pts

Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf, thunder-hammer, storm-shield, 2 Fenrisian Wolves and all the trimmings

275 pts

Iron Priest on Thunderwolf + 4 Cyberwolves

170 pts

3 x

Wolf Guard, power-fist, combi-melta

5 Grey Hunters, meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen, Wolf Standard

Razorback (of your choice between twin Las, Assault Cannon or Las-Plas)

223 pts each

4 Thunderwolf Cavalry, thunder-hammer, 2 x storm-shields

290 pts

2 x

8 Fenrisian Wolves

64 pts each

Which totals 1737 leaving a few extra points to allocate to something or other. The idea is the two units of Fenrisian Wolves join Canis and the Lord, and them, the Thunderwolves and Iron Priest all charge forward and get in amongst the enemy and cause huge amounts of carnage. With Canis all the Fenrisian Wolves and Cyberwolves are going at I5 and the enemy has to divide its attention between 4 extremely hard hitting units. Meanwhile, the Grey Hunters in the Razorbacks (and I'd suggest going with the lascannon option on the Razorbacks for some ranged anti-armour) tool around in the back field securing objectives and mopping up. Thats 7 Thunderwolves, 20 Fenrisian wolves and 4 Cyberwolves all going at I5 and a whole lot more.

You could also lose the Fenrisian wolves from Canis and the Lord, the 4th Thunderwolf, the Wolf Standards from the Grey Hunters and reduce the Fenrisian Wolf packs to 5 minimum each and have room for another Iron Priest with Cyberwolves.

I haven't played this list, but would love to put one together and see how destructive it could be. What do you think?

Help finding tournaments

2010-07-30T13:03:00.000+01:00

Image used without permission from WestGamer

I'm wondering if anyone out there can help me. I think I'm starting to get my army up to a half-decent level of units that I'd be happy to put on the table, I've got most of my 1000 - 1500 pt force painted to a tabletop level and thought I may try my hand at playing in a tournament or two, just to see what it is like. Problem is I don't know where to find out about what tournaments are on.

Does anyone know of a centralised location (or small number of locations) that you can look to to find out what and where tournaments are on throughout the year (preferably for the UK of course) so I can see if there are any that fit the bill for what I'm looking for. There must be some way that people find out about tournaments but I know it certainly isn't through any part of the GW website that I can find.

Thanks for any help, bG

Armour through the ages

2010-07-27T12:43:00.000+01:00

This post is late. I'd planned on putting this up towards the end of last week by life etc. has conspired to take away what little spare time I've had since then. Either way, I thought I'd post it anyway despite being a little behind the curve.

A couple of weeks ago everyone got very excited by this image released as a teaser by Forgeworld:

Mk V: "Heresy Armour" helmet (Forgeworld)

Everyone was toting it as the beginnings of a release of a pre-heresy/heresy-current range by Forgeworld, but sadly more recent news suggests that this isn't the case. A week later Forgeworld release a second image and in the text associated with it made it clear that this isn't for a pre-heresy/heresy-current range but well and truly set in the 41st Millenium:

Mk III: "Iron Armour" helmet (Forgeworld)

Having seen these images, what excites me most now is not whether it is a pre-heresy/heresy-current range, although both could very easily be used in that setting, but is looking at the details, I think that Forgeworld are moving into producing a complete range of Space Marine armour types, and that these aren't just a range of helmets. Lets look at the details:

I've zoomed in the image, and marked up some interesting bits. Below are some comparison images taken from the 40K Lexicanum:

Obviously there is the helmet, its design, and the rivets, and note that there is no topknot/spike but a vent on the top of the helmet placing this firmly as a piece of Mk III armour (the left image above is Mk II, the centre and right are Mk III). Secondly there is the chest-plate that extends up to the base of the helmet, and is riveted at the top which is non-standard and suggests at more than just a helmet conversion set, as is the marked shoulder-pad rim which seems to be scalloped.

For the Mk V armour, as well as the very distinctive helmet design which is pretty unique to the Mk V suit, there is also the "re-breather" style chest piece and most interesting to me is the different style of back-pack that this armour came with. The images below show this for comparison, again taken from 40K Lexicanum, and they also show the riveted shoulder pad that you can maybe see the hint of on the very right of the above image.

So, my 2p worth is that we'll see a full or relatively full set of armour sets from Forgeworld, considering that they already do a lot of Mk IV as part of the Red Scorpions range, this will leave us with Mk's III - V (Iron, Imperial Maximus and Heresy) from Forgeworld, and GW kits include Mk VI - VIII (Corvus, Aquilla and Errant), all that will be missing will be Mk I and II (Thunder and Crusade) armour types to complete the set.

And if you can't wait, and want some of these types for your army already, well then My Wargame has a fantastic series of guides to creating your own Mk's I - V armour.

So what are everyone elses thoughts, do you think I'm onto something, or am I just extrapolating into crazy land? - bG

Iron Wolf Mount

2010-07-15T14:58:00.000+01:00

Well I think I'll have to dedicate this post to cannonfodder after pre-empting me by just one day with his comment on my previous post on this project.

As I said there, up till last night I'd worked on this guy on and off over the last few weeks just doing a little green-stuff here and there, pinning him slowly together. It was a really slow process as I could only really get one or two things done at any time as I'd invariably have to wait for the previous gs or pinning to dry before moving on for fear of either breaking the pins or squishing the previous gs work.

Finally last night I'd done pretty much everything I wanted to so it was just the final assembly and base. I opted for a relatively simple piece of slate on the base to not detract from the model which I want to be what draws the eye to the piece.

Hopefully these'll give you an idea for how its looking. I'm going to see about getting the base sanded and then undercoated over the next couple of evenings and then I'll be breaking out the boltgun metal paint in a big way!

Here's a new view for you as well, not one you see of a model that often

With luck this guy'll be game-worthy pretty soon and then its just working on a pair of legs to mount atop the back that'll be suitable.

Please do leave comments and criticism (C&C) as I'm very interested in what people think will help and improve my work. Cheers, bG

Very interesting interview

2010-07-09T14:46:00.000+01:00

I've just finished listening to the most recent Bad Dice podcast in which they have a long interview with Gav Thorpe of GW and Mechanical Hamster fame discussing games development and the general workings of Games Workshop.

The interview is extremely interesting to listen to and includes a lot of insight into the structure of GW (at least up to the point at which Gav Thorpe left), their methods and practices as well as going into a lot of detail as to some of the reason as to why GW has not/does not publish large scale online/print changes to Codices/Army Books with the introduction of a new rules system. I found this part of the interview quite enlightening and can see the points that they are trying to make.

I also agree with the thoughts of the hosts towards the end suggesting that GW could do worse than considering publishing/allowing more similar interviews to this to give people an insight into their workings and reasoning, something that would very likely reduce the amount of hate and vitriol that seems to be aimed at GW from many corners of the internet.

I'm very much aware that some of you may not be the biggest fan of Gav Thorpe after the Chaos Codex posts (1 and 2) he put up on his blog and his handling of that, but I would still strongly encourage you to give this interview a go and listen to what he says.

Do listen to this, and if nothing else, take away his book recommendation, Iain Banks' Excession is one of the best Sci-Fi novels out there, period.

Well Done GW

2010-07-09T09:35:00.000+01:00

To all those doom-mongers who were worried about how all the forces would fit into the new 8th edition Warhammer Fantasy, GW has pre-empted you and today published updated FAQ/Errata to cover the changes in the new addition.

Whether these will answer all the questions people will have I don't know, but this is a big improvement on GW's part in attempting to update all the armies in line with a new addition - perhaps they are listening to the general outcry.

Go check them out and let me know if they actually make a difference.

Necrons - a beginning

2010-07-01T10:50:00.002+01:00

I love the Necrons. I know they are pretty poor in games, desperately need a new codex and all that stuff, but I just love the look and feel of these guys, they are just great.

So, my lovely wife bought me the Necron battleforce for my birthday last month and I've finally put together and painted one of them up. I expreimented with a load of different options before settling on what you can see. He's got a tin-bitz body, grey and washed gun, and I'm experimenting with OSL for the weapon effects. I think I went a little over the top with OSL on this guy (I was doing it under artifical lighting and it didn't look as over the top till the next day) so I'll be toning that down on future models.

So, without further ado:

I need to make a wire insert for the gun and paint it, and perhaps add a secondary colour to the body.

Tyranid and BA FAQs - Doom Neutered

2010-06-30T13:29:00.000+01:00

Well, GW has released the Tyranid and Blood Angel FAQs:

Tyranid FAQ

Blood Angel FAQ

First thing that pretty much everyone will be looking for is what is the resolution of the Doom of Malantai's powers. Well, the answer is that YES you can take cover saves, NO they do not affect units embarked in vehicles - probably the right decision (IMO) but I'm sure lots of people will cry foul.

The big questions likely to be looked for in the Blood Angels FAQ are: Baal Predators can move flat out in their scout move AND use smoke after a scout move.

I'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussion about this over the next few weeks, and we should all probably be keeping a close eye on the FAQ site in case they decide to do a double-take a-la Space Wolves.

New paint pots are real

2010-06-30T10:19:00.001+01:00

A month ago TTGN reported that GW would be revising its paint pots to a design based on the foundation paint pots.

The other night I was in the local GW and low-and-behold there were a stack of the new pots of no other colour than Blazing Orange as pictured above. I guess this change is real and the new pots will be replacing the old pots as they run out - expect to see a phased change over the next few months.

Space Wolf reinforcements

2010-06-29T12:20:00.001+01:00

Hey there everyone.

So at the weekend I finally managed to get a few projects I've had on the go for a while to a stage of semi-completion. Plenty of additions to my Wolf Force which brings it that little bit closer to where I'd like it to be.

First up we have some Fenrisian Wolves - made from the Chaos Warhounds set with some extra green-stuffing to help them look a little more wolfy. I'll be painting these up in shades of grey and brown, trying to keep them nice and dark as that's how I think they are portrayed. I'll probably tack a couple of these to my Lone Wolf to give him a little extra punch, and perhaps use the rest as a nice screen unit. The Dire Wolf at the bottom right will be a cyberwolf leader of the pack should I chose to use that upgrade.

Next up are my Rune Priests. Made from a mix of Wolf Pack parts and a few bits of chaos marines that I was able to get from someone at the local GW, I've mounted these on a piece of slate each to raise them slightly above the main packs. I've attached these to my Grey Hunter units in the last couple of games (my first time using unpainted models that has left me feeling a little dirty) and they've been nothing short of spectacular - gotta love Murderous Hurricane!

My Wolf Guard Pack Leaders - using the combi-meltas from this post, again to pick them out from the crowd I've added totems to the tops of their packs so I can see them in amongst my Grey Hunters and Blood Claws.

Last but very not least, Mark of the Wolfen models. I finally have some dedicated figures for these. Adam over at Space Wolves Grey has just posted his awesome Wulfen conversion if you want to see how its done properly. I've been digging around for the parts to use for these for a while now and finally found some old genestealer models that I could take the hands from, I've also used some arms from the marauder horsemen kit, and then needed to pick out some suitable heads.

I specially picked out head that have open mouths and tried to position them as if they were howling as the canix-helix takes over their actions and drives them into a rage. I still think they need a little extra - I may add a bunch of extra wolfy decorations to them to make them seem a little more feral and specialised, or I may just wait to see how they look when painted.

So where does that leave the painting chart?

Not that much change, a few extra squares of orange instead of red, not too much added, but hopefully I'll have most of those orange squares yellow before too long.

If you've made it this far, thanks for persevering. Keep checking back as I hope to have a post later this week hinting at a new project

< elmer fudd voice > sssssssh! its a secwet < /elmer fudd voice >

Super Simple Combi-melta

2010-06-24T13:25:00.000+01:00

I've finally built up some specific Wolf Guard models to lead my squads of Grey Hunters and Blood Claws - till now I've been using the power-fist models that came with the sets, but now I have the models I want, combi-meltas included.

There's loads of tutorials out there on how to make combi-weapons, and pretty much each one does it somewhat different - and I'm going to be different too.

I've ended up using the body of the melta-gun as the basis of the weapon instead of simply using the barrel and fuel tank which is where I most differ from the majority of the tutorials out there.

Here you can see the melta-gun in question, and one of the older model bolt-pistols. I've used this older bit partly because I seem to have a load of them in my box, and also because it is a nice size to mount onto the meltagun body and is a bit more bulky than the current model bolt-pistol. I shave the top of the melta-gun body to make sure it is flat (there is a little details on there that is lost) along the green line, and I carefully cut off the magazine etc. from the bottom of the bolt-pistol along the red line, preserving the magazine for use later.

The bolt-pistol body is then glued to the top of the meltagun and the magazine behind it (the first weapon I did is the one at the bottom and I'm not too happy with the position of the mag so I'll probably move it sometime later).

There you go, really simple, quick and effective.

Some general progress

2010-06-22T13:09:00.000+01:00

Hey there everyone - I'd love to do a big shiny update of my progress, I've been working away, but haven't got anything major to show for it as its been a lot of detail work.

I hope to be able to show you some shiny new figures soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd post up my new army tracker that I'll be using to figure out what I need to be able to field the armies I listed in my previous post. I got this idea from Admiral Drax who has been using it for ages to help him visualise how close he is to completing his epicly large Guard company. Here's my painting chart:

I'll be trying to keep this updated as I go so I can see how close I am getting to my ideal Wolf army.

A scaling Wolf list

2010-06-16T14:49:00.001+01:00

At the local GW there doesn't seem to be a set points value that people play - 1500 pts is a bit of a standard, but you are almost as equally likely to end up playing a 500 pts game as a 2250 pts game. I've lost count of the number of times I've gone down with a list built to a specific points value to end up having to alter it on the fly to be able to get a game.

To that end, I've tried to put together a series of lists at 250 pts intervals using the models I have available at the moment to cover all the bases. I'm putting them here to garner comments on them to see if there are ways that they could be improved (bearing in mind that I'm using models I have available, not all of them, but for some options I'd have to build new stuff).

500 pts

Rune Priest (100)

8 Grey Hunters: meltagun, MotW, powerfist, rhino (200)

750 pts

Rune Priest (100)

3 Wolf Guard: 3 powerfists, 2 combi-meltas (124)

8 Grey Hunters: meltagun, MotW, rhino (175)

5 Blood Claws (75)

1000 pts

Rune Priest (100)

3 Wolf Guard: 3 powerfists, 2 combi-meltas (124)

Lone Wolf: storm-shield, MotW (65)

8 Grey Hunters: meltagun, MotW, wolf standard, rhino (185)

6 Blood Claws: meltagun (95)

6 Long Fangs: 2 heavy-bolters, 2 missile launchers, lascannon (145)

1250 pts

As above +

4 Thunderwolves: thunder-hammer, storm-shield (260)

(4 pts over)

1500 pts

As above +

Wolf Lord: frost-weapon, thunderwolf, Belt of Russ, wolf tooth necklace, wolf tail talisman saga of the bear (245)

extra combi-melta for the Wolf Guard

So are these lists that would work? Where would you perhaps change them to improve their effectiveness? Are they even legal (I'm pretty sure they are, but I've made mistakes in the past so I'm never sure).

2010-06-09T12:39:00.001+01:00

While I've been away it would seem that 40K Radio has closed its doors.

I know that the show and its hosts have divided a lot in the community, and I've not always agreed with it, and will be the first to admit that the show wasn't always the best thing to listen to. One thing that cannot be argued is that 40K Radio really lead the way in terms of 40K and to a lesser extent gaming podcasting and I wonder if we'd have so much choice as we do now if it hadn't been for Spencer and his co-hosts.

I'm sad to see it off the air and hope that something may come along and save it as an entity in the future.

On thunderwolf mounts

2010-06-03T12:58:00.002+01:00

For those few Space Wolf players out there, this is a bit of a debated topic, what do you use as a mount when representing Thudnerwolves. This topic is of great interest to many because the effect of Thunderwolves in the game is not to be under-estimated - I managed to cram 5 into a 750 list against Nurgle marines and they solely ate their way through about 80% of my opponents army before finally succumbing.

You'll see in my previous post that I'm converting a juggernaught to be a Thunderwolf for my Iron Priest, this I feel fits pretty well as being an IP the creature would eventually end up being almost exclusively cybernetic, it even mentions this fact in the IP entry in the Codex. I thought I'd do a little run-down of the possible options here (the ones that I am aware of) that could act as a resource to budding Space Wolf generals.

Fenrisian Wolves/Cyber Wolves

There's a couple of possibilities from the GW range here:

Goblin Wolves, Doom Wolf, VC Dire Wolves, Hounds of Orion, Chaos Warhounds and Lions from the High Elf Chariot

I've got a pack of Warhounds that I am green-stuffing to be my Fenrisian Wolves - they are looking pretty good so far and I'll post them up here as soon as I've got some more work done to them. I also have some Dire Wolves that I will be converting to represent Cyber Wolves, they are a little bigger than the Warhounds and you can use some of the exposed areas of bone painted silver to appear as cybernetic enhancements.

DJ Batman has also used chaos warhounds to make Fenrisian Wolves and has combined them with the Goblin wolves.

Hogs of War have shown a great model from Helldorado that would look brilliant as a cyber-wolf, however it is extremely difficult to get hold of, I've had no luck so far.

Thunderwolves

The only model that GW offers up as an official Thundewolf is the Canis model. Many have criticized this model as being un-wolf like and I'd have to agree, to me it looks a lot more like a giant chinchilla.

If you aren't happy with the Canis model, you can convert it to look a lot better, Dave Taylor has built a series of Thunderwolves using the Canis model and they look amazing. Bear in mind though that Dave Taylor is quite the genius and to get the kind of results he's showing requires a heck of a lot of time and skill.

There's a couple of other models that you may want to consider as a possibility from GW, I've seen people use Goblin Wolves, VC Dire Wolves, Lions from the High Elf Chariot. You can also completely ignore the fact that they are supposed to be wolves and use other types of mounts such as the Chaos Knights or the Chaos Marauder Horsemen. I've used some of the parts from the Chaos Marauder Horsemen in my Thunderwolves.

Very cleverly, Magnus from Minutae has used dire-wolves mounted on the same base as a walking Space Wolf to symbolise Thunderwolves.

The final GW option is to use a Juggernaut like I have here to be the mount for my Iron Priest. Another example of this that I've discovered while researching this post is Jcroxford over at Spear of Russ who has also done a conversion of a juggernought like me.

As far as other miniature companies that produce suitable products:

Heroclix make a "Fenris Wolf" model from Marvel comics series that you will see in my previous posts, its a perfect size and looks great, and Marauder Horsemen legs fit over it perfectly. The big problem is there is only one pose so to have a few you may wish to customise it for different poses. Since I found these, I've discovered that jcroxford over at Spear of Russ has done some very good Thunderwolves based on these models. I couldn't find these models anywhere in the UK, but was able to source them from Ludik bazar where 5 of them cost me a total of €39 including shipping and they showed up in less than a week.

There is the model from Helldorado that I mentioned before that is shown on Hogs of War.

Max Mini have created a "Giant Wolf" model that should be about the right size. - I'm not a fan of the pose though, and there only appears to be one, and its not yet available, the jury is out on this one.

Mr Dandy at Wargamma has produced 5 "Battle Wolves". I feel like these are very similar in shape to Canis - more chinchilla like than wolf like. Dark Future Gaming have a detailed video review of theses models.

There's very likely many more suitable models out there but these are simply the ones that I found doing my research before getting my own models, and in researching this post. If you think there is something that I should add to this then drop me a line and I'll look to updating the post.

UPDATE:

jcroxford also has a juggernought conversion: link

Figs-Freak has also listed a few other Thunderwolf models, some of these look pretty nice!: link

All images in this post used without permission and no claims are made upon them. If you wish me to remove any then please contact me and I will happily comply.

Thunderwolves - ho!

2010-05-27T13:03:00.002+01:00

Greetings from Vietnam (not really, I'm honeymooning there and this is scheduled to keep the blog ticking over). Here's the Thunderwolves that I eluded to last week when I showed jcroxford's fantastic Space Wolf army I discovered while searching for these very models.

These are Heroclix Fenris Wolves, they are pretty difficult to get hold of but I was able to find a few on line and get them posted over here to the UK. They are a brilliant size for Thunderwolves and once I get them mounted onto suitable 60mm bases are going to look fantastic on the tabletop. I also intend to customise them somewhat so that they have more than one pose as at the moment they look a little too parade-ground when they are all lined up. The most brilliant thing about these is that a Marauder Horsemans legs fit perfectly over the backs of the wolves, they hold in place very securely but are also easily removable for transport. I'd bought the horsemen for the arm, weapon and head components you can see in these models, and had already mounted the bodies onto the legs as I was going to proxy the horses till I could find a suitable model - amazing how things work out nicely in the end :D

Below are a few details of the individual models.

Brilliant Space Wolf Army

2010-05-21T11:07:00.001+01:00

I wanted to bring everyones attention to this army. jcroxford had produced one of the nicest looking Space Wolf army I've yet to see, be it in magazine or on the blogosphere. I hope one day I might be able to get my army to half his level of finish.

I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks but have two scheduled posts so there will continue to be activity here now that I've got the thing up and running.