292: One Force all, and all Force One

Here is my generic marines force, purposefully designed to be as "generic" as possible, allowing maximum flexibility to field a force from any of the codices.  There's lots of magnets included in this force, with most of the weapons swappable in one way or another.  You can see the slow and steady growth under the One Force label.

Colour wise, I thought to try and draw from a "realistic" military look, so the air wing is in grey... :)

... and the mechanised components are in a desert yellow.

As another 7th Ed army, there's units included to make up the formations, and there's also my Centurion conversions based on the Kataphron Destroyers.

The fantastic Korvydae model as my commander, and Iron Hand veterans to double as an Honour Guard or Sternguard.

Hammer-nator Termies and a Chaplain for extra kill.  >:)

The troops, all magnetised to run either as Assault or Tactical troops, and interchangeable special and sergeant weapons.  (There's 30 marines in total, a mix of Mk II, IV, and V;  all the original resin models)

That's that then.  I'm sure you'll see them over on the Beard Bunker from time to time, and they'll be expanded over time as well as I feel like it.

285: Centurion Devastators

Here are what I'm going to be taking to represent Centurion Devastators when I feel the need for a ridiculous amount of Grav weaponry.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned previously that I didn't like the aesthetic of the real models, something about Space Marines in armour donning a second suit of armour just to tout big guns didn't really do it for me.  These are the Mechanicum Kataphron Destroyers with marine heads and backpacks.  It was a super simple conversion.
They're mounted onto 50mm bases (which I'm pretty sure is what marine destroyers come with) so you can see they aren't too dissimilar is size for gaming - a little shorter, but wider.
Eventually I need to figure out a way to model their secondary weapons (either missile launchers or hurricane bolters), but that'll be an addition for another time.

I'm sure they'll die horribly and do absolutely nothing in their first game, such is the life of any new shiny model ;)

284: J'migan bridge part 4

282: J'migan bridge part 3

(earlier parts of the little narrative I'm building for an upcoming battle are here:  part 1, part 2)

Additional Ordo Xenos Inquisitorial intercept

Eyes Only

Pertains to J'migan Situation

Additional data inload...

Ordo Analyticus cross referenced

  

281: J'migan bridge part 2

(part one of the little narrative I'm building for an upcoming battle can be found here: part 1)

Every time he delved so deep within the infinity circuit, withdrawing became that little more difficult.  Muscles took longer to respond, joints were stiffer, the feel of crystallisation within his limbs as bone became that little more attuned to the matrix was always a telling sign that each time may be the last, and he would finally join the others as a permanent fixture of the Garden of the Seers.  Not this time though, the spirit of Kaela Mensha Khaine was stirring and the infinity circuit was awakening, hostility growing as the Craftworld readied for war.

Throughout the Craftworld, artesans set down their tools, artists their brushes, and the music halls and studios fell silent.  Prompted by the prevailing mental currents, all of these otherwise peaceful members of the eldar community gravitated towards the warrior temples to begin the preparations for war.  

It wasn’t only on a single craftworld that this occurred, for the warrior temples are linked throughout the galaxy via the webway, allowing those on the path of the Aspect to navigate to places where they are most needed.  As the spirit of Kaela Mensha Khaine awakens in any one location, its effects ripple outwards through these webway links and so when a Craftworld goes to war, it is rarely alone.

The Bahzhakain of Biel-Tan was preparing for war.  Their Seers have divined that the coming moments were ripe to reclaim the Maiden World of Yne’gen and cleanse the sacred sites of the cursed Mon-Keigh.  They would not be alone, and their wrath would be terrifying...

280: One Force Mk III Sternguard painted

At last.  I don't even want to think about how long its taken me to get to this point but I've finally finished painting my initial batch of One Force marines.

Without further ado, here's my Mk III Iron Armoured squad.  They are built with combi-weapons that come from Anvil Industries, with the top level of the weapon interchangeable so I can swap in meltas, plasma, or even grav options with minimal extra painting.

The squad is a mix of the Iron Hands squad and the Legion Mk III squad from Forgeworld (no cheating plastic Mk III here ;), and they are beautiful models with lots of bionics which fits nicely into the One Force aesthetic.

As elites within One Force, they are painted up in a slightly alternate, predominately black colour scheme highlighted with greens and then with spot colours of the One Force trifecta of camo-green, grey, and desert yellow.

I'm also deviating somewhat from my original One Force paint job (which will of course require a repaint of everything thats come before) to include some metallics into the scheme.  Ho hum.

Hope you like them, and Happy New Year to you all.

279: Storm Talons finished (almost)

I built these guys a heck of a while ago (a full 18 months ago it turns out!) and they've since been sitting in my painting queue as I lost all motivation.  After finally finishing off the Mk III marines (post to come when I get some decent photos), I pulled these out and couldn't quite believe how quickly they painted up.

278: J'migan bridge part 1

Ordo Xenos Inquisitorial intercept.  

Ensure review of the following information and prepare for additional data inload.

274: Bikes

Progress!  Hopefully not the last either.  I'm back and with One Force marines no less.  Here's my latest addition, a trio of bikers to add into my force to help me on the way to running one of the new Codex Space Marine formations.

The two slightly drunk bikers are taken from the Dark Vengence set, bodies replaced with more generic marine torso's (One Force are a spartan chapter after all), and Volkite Calivers for weapons.  As these don't appear in 40K, I can reasonably claim them to be grav-weapons for the purposes of running them as filthy grav-bikers.  The Sergeant gets the standard yellow helm, and a combi-grav which is a DIY combination of a Volkite Caliver and a bolter from Anvil Industries.

These also mark a slight change in my painting technique for One Force.  Previously I've completely avoided the use of metallics in their colour scheme, but on reflection (its only taken my 40+ models), I've decided to change their weapons and a few other details to metallic and give them black weapons housings.  This'll be applied to all of the models going forward, and potentially retro-applied to the older models.

I've not weathered the models yet because that is another aspect I'll be changing going forward, but I haven't had a chance to experiment yet.

271: 2000pts BA&IK vs SM&Eldar

My friend, codename Luther, recently completed his first Imperial Knight model, and wanted to take it out for spin. Luther shows off his lovely models at the might brush.

He teamed up his new knight, Gerantius, with his Blood Angels.

I have mostly Iron Knights (Imperial Fist successors), and some Eldar, which I am expanding.

We played Big Guns Never Tire with diagonal deployment. I have Thunderhammer terminators up front and a rhino with a full tac squad behind. Castling up in the corner, I have a lascannon dev squad on the hill with a bunch of sneaky eldar hiding behind it. They are joined by a master of the forge on a bike with a conversion beamer. I have a bike squad with grav and multi melta attack bike next. My cloak and sniper scouts infiltrated and scout moved into the ruin. I have a Crimson Death (3 plane Eldar formation) in reserve.

Luther deployed the mighty Gerantius front and centre. Supporting fire would be supplied by a Deredeo stood high in the ruin.

266: 1500pts game, GSF vs SM&Eldar

I got in a game recently against my co-blogger Colonel Fazackerley, we're taking part in a little tournament of local gamers, playing the Forge the Narrative missions. This game was mission 4 from that pack which is the diagonal deployment setup, the primary objective is 6 objectives setup evenly across the board which are scored cummulatively with the winner the first to 8 points (but with the option of a draw if both achieve 8 in the same turn), the secondary objective was the Emperor's will, and the tertiary objective was slay the warlord. The usual 3 additional GW objectives also counted.

I was trialling some of the new formations from the Space Marines codex, and CF was running Space Marines and Eldar.

My list was:
Gladius Strike Force - Iron Hands Chapter Tactics
Battle Demi-Company
Chaplain in Terminator Armour
3 x 5-man Tactical Squads with Missile Launchers
3 Bikes with 2 Grav-guns and a combi-Grav
5-man Devastator Squad with 4 Missile Launchers

1st Company Task Force

2 x 5-man Sternguard Veteran Squad

5-man Terminator Assault Squad with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields

Storm Wing

Stormraven Gunship with Assault Cannon and Multi-Melta

2 x Stormtalon Gunships with Skyhammer Missile Launchers

CFs list was:

Farseer on jetbike

Unit of Jetbikes with Warlock

Unit of Dire Avengers

3 Eldar Flyer Formation

Space Marine Captain on Bike with Primarch's Wrath

Unit of Marines on Bikes

Unit of Assault Terminators with mixed weapons

Devastator Squad with mixed weapons

CF won the roll-off and nominated me to setup and go first. I setup first, mostly down in my corner as you can see in the image below, CF only set up a few units, all hidden away as much as possible to be out of sight, as you can see in the image below that.

265: Fort Vallum

This project took me almost a year. I got a wire cutter for it. It also toppled over any lingering resistance to getting an airbrush.

In a little while I will post up some rules, and ask for some advice. 

 

259: Individual minis: a zombie for the horde

Particularly for 40k, it makes sense to paint a batch at once. Probably a squad, squadron or formation.

It can start to feel like a drag, and standards may slip. Modelling and painting an individual mini is a way to experiment with new time-consuming techniques without it turning into a hassle.

Here's a one. After a particularly brutal defeat (using my Iron Knights against my friend's Death Guard), I rewarded my opponent with an Iron Knight zombie for his horde. I did not have any spare legs, but then zombies don't need legs.



There's greenstuff guts and mushrooms, UHU mixed with paint to give glue-string gore, and some weathering experiments. Kudos to the first person to identify the source of the head.

257: A Storm Talon that doesn't look too bad

A ways back in the dim and distant past I showed you all how I'd converted up the Storm Raven to make it look a little less goofy (in my opinion of course).  I've even stuck to the same naming convention for this post!  Well with the release of the new Space Marines codex and all the formation-y goodness in it, who could resist the lure of a Storm Wing.  All I needed was the little addition of a pair of Storm Talons.

Of course, what had been stopping me buying Storm Talons before was an equal dislike of the stock model as sold by GW.  Just like the Storm Raven, I found it a little too blocky, too deep for its profile, and with a few design choices that I just couldn't make myself like no matter how hard I tried.

Thank you Internet (I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to utter those words ;), there seem to be plenty of others out there that feel the same way and have made some amazing conversions of the Storm Talon.

• Excommunicate Traitoris has made a fantastic and subtle conversion, and one that I ultimately took the most inspiration from.
• This and this conversion really went to town, and retained the rotation of the under-slung assault cannon.
• This more realistic plane variant is really nice too.

There are a couple of conversions that really stand out though for their inventiveness:

• This A-10 Warthog conversion is inspired and if it didn't require the purchase of Storm Raven wings and a Punisher Autocannon from somewhere I would have been copying this heavily.
• Whoever came up with this ED-209 style assault walker conversion was truly inspired.

Anyway, I'm obviously getting lazy in my old age as I wanted to fix up the Talon with as little work as possible.  Its not a perfect conversion, if I had the money and time for lots of extra parts then I'd be doing more, but this is a pretty quick and easy fix (as long as you don't mind that the Assault Cannons no longer rotate.

All the images should be nice and big if you need when you click on them.

 First step is to make the Assault Cannons, add the skid plate from the very bottom of the standard setup, and remove the square tab from the underside of the body.  It's right in the centre of the circular mount for the underslung turret, you should be able to make out where it was in the image.

 Join the Assault Cannons together, add the skid plate, then glue directly onto the circular section of the underside of the body (where the little tab used to be).
I've also constructed the rest of the body so you can see the new silhouette, much more streamlined compared to the image below it of the standard build.

 Engine pods.  I like to mount the wings so they are tapered from the front, I think they just look a bit better that way.

I also mounted the rocket-pods under the wings, to the lower parts of the engine pods.  This required a very small amount of trimming to get them to fit nicely, but it was just a little bit, and just to make the join that little bit nicer.

That's it, all the work I had to do.  Below are a few shots of the completed model so you can see its final silhouette.  I'm pretty pleased.  It still has that compact, punchy feel of the original model that goes so well with its rules, but has removed the worst offenders for silly modelling choices.

 

 

So, what do you think?

249: Rainbows on heated steel

Interference in thin films of oxide make heated steel pretty colours. So, the hot end of a gun can be painted light blue, and as you proceed to cooler parts it goes through purple to weak orange.

I got this idea from some blog or other, but could not find it again. (Let me know, if you have an example). I used it on a multi-melta.

Using inks/washes or possibly very thin paint build up some rings. Try to vary the intensity, so the colours blend. If it comes out a bit strong, it can be knocked back a touch by drybrushing with the base metal colour again. 

Update: Thanks to Siph, here's my reference.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/how-to-paint-heat-stained-gun-barrels.html

 

247: Necrons vs Space Marines and Eldar

Not only do we have a new contributor here on the blog, but he's roped me into a bit of a local league/tournament kind of thing.  You can read about it on the Astronomican forum.

I got my first game of the tournament in against none other than ColonelFazackerley (CF) and his absolutely brilliantly painted Iron Knights (Space Marines) and Eldar.  You can see the full battle report for CF on the forum here:  CF batrep.  I thought I'd repost it here, and give my take on the game.

We were playing Forge The Narrative missions, this one being modified Kill Points as a primary, Linebreaker as a secondary, The Relic as a tertiary, and Hammer and Anvil deployment

The Setup
We were both nice and aggressive, getting right up to the lines ready to go at it.