Dual use Doomsday/Ghost Ark

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.

Annihilation Barge

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.

Death Rays - such poor wording

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.

Doomwheel

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.

Necron Specials

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).

Necron Lord

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

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.

Running for Charity

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

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.

GW's new minis = very nice

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

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.

Shadowseer painting - post 1

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

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.

Shadowseer paint scheme

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

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

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.

BlogWars Game 3

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.

Standing Necrons

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.

BlogWars Game 2

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.

BlogWars Army Showcase

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.

BlogWars Game 1

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.  

BlogWars T-minus-1

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.

BlogWars = awesome

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

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

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:

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

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

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...

Citadel Finecast

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

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.

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

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).

Blog Wars - I'm going, are you?

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.

Guest appearance

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.

1. 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.

GW's birthday days

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.

Fenrisian Wolves

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

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.

Space Wolves Terminators

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.

Skaven, Skaven, Skaven

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.

Necron scheme finalised - almost...

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:

New Space Wolves painting scheme

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!