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

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

Image from the Space Wolves Codex - © GW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.