Mars Mania and the Templar Lament

Hello dear readers! (All 5 of you!) I have been having the usual real life problems getting in the way of my hobbying lately. I have spent a couple of weeks in Hong Kong with work though so I shan't complain too much.

Obviously this means I will have done very little hobbying. So this post will just lay out some of my new purchases and my plans with them and I will also muse a little bit on some of the releases coming out and how this effects my collections and plans with the armies going forward.

Adeptus Mechanicus

Anyone reading a blog about 40k will obviously be aware of the new kids on the block, all the way from the mean streets of Mars. Now I was pretty iffy when the Skitarii came out, and I still feel as a release that they feel terrible incomplete, in a way that the Harlequin codex never did. Yes the price point was lower, but in the same way that a motorbike costs less than a car, its because you get less wheels!! (But you look oh so much cooler...). 

However, the release of the mechanicus proper as it were has me pretty happy, and I cannot wait to download my ebook on release day. I have the Horus Heresy Book 3 rules for the Omnissiah army in 30k and I'm looking forward to designing some conversions that mean my models can bridge both codices and rulesets. 

I have been bigging myself up for some time now to develop an entirely converted entirely none GW army and the time has finally come. The mechanicum will be that army. This is in many way an odd choice as the models across all ranges are simply beautiful, however, I feel that given their multitudinous aesthetic and style it is an army that will led itself to my meagre skill set conversion wise.

I plan to design an explorator/tech heretek style force, that will be big on weird and creepy with mixed mechanics within it. I have two 15mm dreamforge mortis walkers on there way to me, these will most likely end up as Thanatar stand ins and thus be unlikely to make it into the 40k list. I also have some spider walkers from Robogear on there way which were a steal at 3 quid a pop! The legs for these walkers will be attached to ogre bodies to make some grotesque walker flesh fusion automaton that will stand in for Castellax/Kastellan and possibly a Kataphron if I go crazy with the magnets. For my bog standard rank and file I have ordered some covenant of Antarctica automata from dysopian legions at spartan games. These 32mm beasties are bigger than the usual tech thrall but that will add to their cold menace hopefully. 60 of those!!! These should be able to pass as skitarii in a bind.

Thats the ordered parts so far, so hopefully as I get distracted and excited pictures will pop up. I have the age old problem of not fixing myself to a project at once...

Space Marines

So they are coming. I have mixed feelings about the timing. I sincerely believe that vanilla marines should be done first and then all other codices stem from that release. As it is we have space wolves and blood angels (as well as grey knights) possibly left out of the loop of some changes that may occur. We may not have that but I fear for the worst. What will happen with Dark Angels will be very interesting to see where the balance of power lies.

The rumour mill is a cruel mistress and for every faction she promises to bring with the other hand she snatches away your first love. Will my beloved Black Templars still be in the codex? I dread to think, as I struggle to really see the Templars coming back as their own stand alone codex. If they are expunged from the codex and no independent rules are forthcoming I will be sad to say but I will sell my army, I have no desire to play my templars with vanilla rules. I love them for their run headlong to smash the enemy in the face attitude (might be way I collect blood angels too...) and none of the other 40k chapters that I don't already have really interest me sadly.

General Hobby

I desperately need some new brushes so they will be a quick purchase in the future, I am interested to try the new Citadel brushes as some of them look they might have really got it right for once, but I will have to have a feel up close before making my mind. GW have in general been heading in the right direction I feel with their releases in the past year, with fan favourites, new cases and functional brushes plugging genuine holes in their line rather than questionable money grab releases.

Other than that I am desperate to get a big chunk of models painted, they are mocking me on my shelves but I have a terribly hectic couple of months coming up so I would suggest that a model or two a week to completion would be a good aim for me to have. It will be sometime till I can churn out some decent sized units in a reasonable time frame sadly.

But, I do hope those of you who do read my blog and humour my paint sploshed bits of plastic will stick with me and I hope to get more people interested in my stuff and chatting away.

Peace out

Rob

PS if anyone has any good guides to blogger and setting it up for a 40k style blog I would really appreciate some links! Leave in a comment or email me :) ta!

Blood Angel Terminators and weathering - Advice needed

Hey everybody,

Another long week and another hobby light week sadly. I'm off to Hong Kong on the 16th to present some of my scientific data and all the preparation for that as well as work has me going a million miles an hour.

Anyway, this week I re-painted some Blood Angel terminators that I had become dissatisfied with. I'd previously painted them very dark and weathered them with drybrushed silver followed by bronze, in all honesty it looked as bad and lazy as it sounds. Below are a few pictures:

So, these guys had all the red open areas re-painted with a thinnish coat of wazdakka red and a thin layer of white scar over all the white areas. In the end I think this actually has lent a bit more depth to the models which was an unexpected surprise. Here's a couple of groups pics:

Or perhaps as I look from the back it less depth? Darn I cannot make up my mind.

However here comes the bit where I beg steal and borrow advice from any of you that wish to give it. As much as I like the clean cut look of them now I would like to weather them. However I'm struggling here, I've practised with a few tutorials and I just can't seem to pull off an of the main effect. I'm pretty shy from using weathering powders as I feel I would just balls up all the work painting (and then re-painting!) these guys.

I had a go at the layer light paint followed by a metallic weathering on one guy who you may have noticed at the back of the group photos. Here's a few pictures of him plus and minus flash:

What do you fine people think? I'm undecided on it, some times I think it looks good, other times I thinks its not so good. Or do you think I should leave them clean? I'm not totally adverse to that if people really think they look better. I paint for myself but also so someone can enjoy a nice cinematic battle against a painted army so its always nice to know how other people will view it.

I had  splodge around with a sponge dipped in the underlying pink used on the above model, just on tissue paper, but felt equally nervy about taking that and applying it to a model. 

So if you have any opinions on what I should or shouldn't do, or if I've already got it down OK, please do leave a comment below and help me make up my mind, I would be very appreciative for any help :)

I'm hoping to post this friday coming before I go to Hong Kong but I feel it will be a hobby-less week and it may be a week or two before I post again,

Hopefully I won't lose my 1 or 2 readers!!!

Over and out,

Rob

Assassins, D&D and lazy bones

Hello everyone,

Its been a very hobby light 7 days this week. A combination of being ill and a bit of burnout from the lead up to last weekends tournament has resulted in a lack of motivation to make any real progess.

However I have picked up my Officio Assassinorum game this weekend which was exciting, not least because the box itself in a bag made for excellent impromptu protection from the rain that poured down as I left the shop!

There are a few pictures of the sprues below. I must say that on first glance the models look to be very well thought out and beautifully detailed. There a few parts, particularly on the callidus, that look especially thin and tricky but on the whole they look well thought out. Of note, the assassins all come witht he larger 32mm bases, as do the standard chaos space marines, so I anticipate that when new models get released for chaos they too are being moved over, which is re-assuring that GW are being consistent on that front.

CULEXUS

VINDICARE

CALLIDUS

EVERSOR

The culexus assassin, being the go-to bad-ass when it comes to anti-psyker will be teaming up with my black templars in a themed 'we hate dem psykers' army list, but I am also very tempted to make an elite army based off my little grey knights collection but utilising the assassin formation. Sure it has a load of weakness' but I bet it will be fun and fluffy to play with or against.

The chaos models that come with the pack will be painted up to match my Night Lords and will give me some extra flexibility when it comes to fielding them with the addition of a terminator lord, some additional standard marines so I can bulk squads out and also chaos cultists. I am not a fan of running cultists with night lords, sincerely feel that night lords would view them as prey and nothing more so it just doesn't fit well with my fluffy view of the sons of nostramo. However I am considering painting/converting them up as dark mechanicus tech thralls to go with my planned mechanicus army.

Speaking of the dark mechanicus I have spent the week planning out my shopping list for these guys, I have promised myself that all the models will be converted and I am also keen to source them from third parties. This is not because of a lack of the range from GW and FW as both ranges are beautiful nor is it a desire to stick it to the man, for all GW does wrong I think they come in for a lot of stick that is unnecessary; it is simply the challenge of it that I'm interested in as well as the opportunity to really sample other miniature companies that I would otherwise never invest money in as the games, for the most part, simply aren't there.

Finally, I run a dungeons and dragons group at the moment. I'm the only member who actively participates in table top miniatures at the moment and I am the DM. Beause of this I have agreed to paint any model the players buy for their characters. Below is a picture of the first miniature I have painted which is a Gnome called Yolla. I loved painting this miniature as it was a nice change to a) only paint one miniature over an entire day and b) to paint something in a fantasy setting. I tried to get an OK OSL effect from the glowing stone in her hand and I'm relatively pleased with how it turned out but think I need a lot more practise.

Anyway, plans for next week, involve re-painting some blood angel terminators so I can try a more accomplished weathering style on them and sadly (in terms of content for the blog) kill a lot more things on Bloodborne which is eating a lot of my hobby time up.

Till next week, have a good one all!

Rob

Vanquish 2015 - a 1750 point tournament

So, despite a horrific cold which has made me take a day off from work today (the horror!) I made it out to my tournament this weekend. I took my Night lords CSM list which is not terribly competitive but I'm sure a good general could do quite well with them. A good general I am not...

Here's the army:

The list consists of:

Chaos Lord with Jump pack, sigil of corruption and lightening claws + mark of nurgle
12 Raptors with lightening claw melta bomb champion + 2 meltaguns + mark of nurgle
4 x 5 CSM with a plasma gun each. 2 units are in rhinos with twin linked bolter and dirge casters
5 Havocs with 3 lascannons and 1 flakk missile launcher + mark of nurgle
3 obliterators with mark of nurgles
Heldrake stock
Helbrute with power scourge and plasma cannon
A trip lascannon predator

The tournament is run by Bristol Vanguard and you can find the rules pack for the event if you go to their forum which is linked from their main website. In short you could get a maximum of 25 points from 5 games purely by winning, which is 5pts for more than double the opponents score, 3pts for more but less than double, 2pts for a draw and 1pt if you lost but had more than half your opponents score. 0pts if you were crushed. Maelstrom was primary with standard secondary. In addition to this a maximum of 13 points were on offer for being fully painted, WYSWIG, not spamming etc (all detailed in the pack). And finally in each game you could play a vanquish secret objective, a picture of a couple of these are below:

These did not effect the score for the game but were added on to your tournament points with 12 points up for grabs in total.

This brought the overall score to 50 for the tournament. Points of the enemy destroyed were used to separate players on the same score.

The tournament was attended by about 74-80 people, A few people only played on the first day so numbers were consistent over the weekend. I attended last year which had 96 participants and came 86th with 16 points... Not a great showing! I won one narrowly and drew one with 3 crushing defeats...

This year I did a lot better!! I had to leave before the results were in, but unless I have been docked any points for my soft scores I think I scored 22 points! Which included 2 narrow wins and one narrow defeat with two crushing defeats, a marked improvement I'd say and I'm thoroughly pleased with it.

Below are a few pictures of the quality of tables you can expect at this event, they have put a huge amount of time and effort into them and they are a joy to play on.

Well done if you've got this far.... I'll do a quick run down of my games and then some more pretty pictures.

Game 1 vs Grey Knights and Imperial Knights Maelstrom mission 1 Dawn of War

2 dreadknights, an imperial knight, 10 terminators and a storm raven plus purifiers and a librarian... Ouch these guys demolished me, tabled me at the beginning of turn 5 and I was always on the back foot. I didn't play too badly I was just heavily mismatched with this guy, wonderful bloke called Simon though an chatted to him throughout the rest of the weekend. A 15-4 crushing defeat for me!

Game 2 vs Iron hands Maelstrom mission 6 Vanguard strike

Drop pod with sternguard plus librarian, Land raider crusader with 10 marines plus termie librarian, venerable dreadnought plus ironclad dreadnought, 2 5 man marines in a rhino and a razorback, 2 devastator squads with plasma cannon/lascannons. His static gun line was out of reach of my army for the most of the game and I baited him pretty well. In the end the cards swung in my favour and I got kingslayer because his librarian warlord rolled perils and blew his head off! a 14-9 noble victory for me and I got a secret vanquish objective too! A nice guy who's name escapes me... Sorry!

Game 3 vs Nids Maelstrom mission 2 Hammer and Anvil

I'm afraid I don't know much of nids so I can't recall these from memory, lovely army though, the chap (Tristan) had been playing them since their inception and had some lovely old models. I f**cked up bad on this one. Deployment killed me and once he had objectives and could keep drawing those cards I just couldn't get back in the game. I had a fun game but this was the only match I was kicking myself about after, I should have been competitive and I just sucked hard. A 14-3 crushing defeat, but not tabled!!

Game 4 vs Chaos Daemons and Chaos space marines Maelstrom Mission 3 Hammer and Anvil 

Belakor, 2 large squads of flamers one with a herald, soul grinder, plague big walking thing, tzeentch chariot, daemon prince, 10 cultists, vengeance weapon battery (did not shoot the entire game!), mauler fiend, and 10 plague bearers. This was played on the ork table picture up above. I got the side with the elevation and that won me the match I think. I was effectively able to dictate where he went with my threat arcs and my rhino speeding objective secured units got me the points I need. I gave up slay the warlord with a needless mistake which cost me 2 points as if he had not had that I would have won 6-2, as it was I won 6-3 . I destroyed 2 units in his army totalling some 300pts and he destroyed nearly 1000 of mine. I was proud I played to the mission and got the win, my best game overall I think. My opponent was also a very nice guys called Ben I should say.

Game 5 vs Necrons Decurion Maelstrom mission 4 Dawn of wat

2 squads of 15 warriors, a Lord in 1, 3 tomb blades, 5 wraiths, 1 spyder, 5 bases of little gribblies spider things (name escapes me), 5 immortals in a doom croissant, a transcendent c'tan and 1 lord of war obelisk thing. I actually think this was my second best game, I played the mission really well and didn't try to compete too much with the army. I lost out because of a bit of poor deployment at the start, I was worried about the c'tan and I wiped it second turn with havocs and obliterators but that left the wraiths to control that flank of the table. I lost 15-11 in the end with 3 raptors alive scoring me linebreaker. A nice guy called Moz and had hell of a blast.

Anyway I am impressed if you have made it this far so here are a few picture of my battles and some of the other armies on display that were incredible as always!

The Vanguard website will have loads of pictures up in the coming weeks and I'd recommend checking it out, if only for the Nagash/Transcendent C'tan conversion that I appear to have forgooten to take a picture of. It is stunning!

Thanks for reading and sorry for the massive post!

Rob

Infinity Myrmidons - the Alpeh grow

I am at a tournament this weekend with my Night Lords army so I will probably be unable to update on Sunday. I wish I could promise I will take lots of notes and pictures but I am bloody hopeless when it comes to that!

I will attempt to at least get a copy of all the armies I play against and give you the results along with my general thoughts.

In the meantime I hope you will be happy to makes do with some more Infinity models!

I've finished painting and basing two of my Aleph Myrmidons, I have a couple more Myrmidons to go with these guys and the big Myrmidon bad-ass Ajax as well! That gives me a neat little 150 pt force which is brutal if it can get into close combat but packs excellent ranged fire power with combi rifles and the option of a spitfire if I need to. They also have relatively good armour (2) along with optical disruptors like a lot of Aleph that make them that much harder to hit.

If I don't have time on sunday for anything too intense I may just post up my planned 300 pt Infinity list to illustrate my ideas for this force.

Right, over and out and have a good weekend all.

Rob

Tidying up the shelves and Aleph break from cover!

Good evening fellow wargamers!

I've had a bit of a slack week modelling wise, but I did get round to organising my collection and clearing out my army shelves so I can more accurately see what I've got. I also managed to get a fair bit of undercoating done which helps me when I just pick up and paint without having a set plan, that usually get the ball rolling for a coordinated work effort. Here you can see my Black Templars, My militarum Tempestus, my currently built blood angels (10 sternguard and 10 vanguard veterans to come!), my imperial knight castigator, and a recent addition to my collection some second hand grey knights which need an extensive repaint but are otherwise in excellent condition!

I also managed to get a 5000pt kill points game in on saturday which I lost 14-9 but had a blast with a really nice guy called Will. This was played at the Old Duke in Bristol, an excellent Jazz pub that has gaming space upstairs where people can organise games through Bristol Vanguards website if you are ever around! Plus you can hear jazz through the floor and get a pint! Here's a quick snap of turn 2 or 3 in progress

In terms of painting work I have started on my second infinity Aleph Myrmidon model, I haven't got any WIP pictures but I have a few pics of my first Myrmidon before it was based, hopefully I will have the second one painted and based this week and then get a pair of the two together along with Ajax their commander in a half built state:

My current 150pt army consists of 4 Myrmidons with Ajax as their leader, I just couldn't say no to a giant angry man with a hammer! I have plans to buy some netrods and posthum proxy models so I can run them. These models allow you to have 3 models on the table but with one "consciousnes" operating them. This consciousness can jump from model to model operating orders in turn, it sounds tricky to utilise in game but the fluff concept is too tantilising to pass up!

Relatively short post today, if anyone has any questions or criticisms, or suggestions for the blog or my writing style as a whole, please do let me know, I'm hoping only to improve in all areas.

Over and out,

Rob