White Dwarf 390 & New Skimmers For 40K

Hey folks,

GW are really on the money at the moment, with another cracking White Dwarf this month.

Looking ahead to my (intended) upcoming games of Kill Team, I'm really tempted to pick up one of the new fliers, as they will fit right in and add an interesting dynamic to the games; a bit like the end of level boss sections in the video games, having a squad of guys ducking around to avoid the vehicle fire..... could be a lot of fun. Not so keen on the Necron Scythes, but the Marine gunship and the Ork plane look tops.

For the Orks, I'm thinking take a Dakkajet and spend the rest of the points on swarms of grots. This could give the opposition KT a real headache, deciding whether to lay-low avoiding the strafing runs and let the turn counter run down, or risk taking down the grots en route to the objective and risk the aircraft guns?

 

Due to the relative points cost of the Stormtalon and the other possible codex options, the gunship will pretty much be the only model on your side of the table if you take it in Kill Team, although you could take some of the upgrades. That being said, it's like a mini army in itself with the amount of serious firepower you can sling about.

Definitely food for thought...

A brush of fresh air...

Hey all, I thought I'd take a slightly different angle with today's post and put up a few words about my recent dabblings with airbrushing.

A few (well, 12, or thereabouts (wow, was it really that long ?!)) years ago, while I was at college, I was given my first airbrush as a birthday gift. I'd not long been into the hobby so hadn't really developed a solid painting style yet, but was convinced airbrushing was the way to start. After talking to the guy in the art store about my intended application, we picked up the recommended kit; a dual action airbrush and compressor. I experimented with it a bit, but was largely unsuccessful so quickly gave up on the idea.

Much more recently I picked up a Citadel Spraygun and managed to source the necessary adaptors to connect it to my compressor, as I figured it would be more economical than buying tins of propellant. Again, after some unsuccessful experimentation and a dozen-or-so pots of citadel colour flowing down the drain, it all got put back in the cupboard, until I found it a new home with a colleague at work.

Another year on and I'm increasingly frustrated at being limited to certain colour palettes that brush on easily where you have limited time and so after a lot of researching, I bought another Citadel Spraygun and a couple of tins of gas when the good people at Maelstrom Games had a promotional offer on.

This time, the results were much better and I managed to undercoat, basecoat and camo my brother Olly's Dystopian Covenant fleet in very short order.I managed to coordinate my spraying schedule with promotional codes at Maelstrom and pick up a couple of tins of gas each time, to keep me going. The spraygun is a very useful tool, but it is very much an entry level piece of kit and has it's limitations. One thing to bear in mind if you are going to use one is to have at least two usable cans of propellant handy each time you set out to use it. You'll need to switch back and forth as each gets cold and looses pressure, plus you'll need to use a fair amount when you clean down between colours and when you're finished.

I was hooked after a short space of time and the opportunities now afforded were considerable. Red/yellow/pink figures were no longer out of bounds and the possibilities of an Emperor's Children warband were back on the radar. In this time I'd also been doing a lot of research online about the whole airbrushing thing and posted a few findings on here.

In the end I picked up some new kit from the Airbrush Pro website and am really pleased with it.

The airbrush is the BD-133 set shown on the site. It's a dual action (essentially meaning more control of the air speed and paint flow) airbrush and comes with a decent sized paint jar. My original Paasche airbrush from years ago was fairly pricey as I recall and only came with a tiny colour cup, which was fairly user-unfriendly. This one is really cracking and does exactly what I need, plus it retails for under £20, so I'm really stoked with it.

The compressor is AS18(2) and again, I'm really impressed with it's performance. It's sold as low noise and it really is a stark contrast to my previous compressor which required ear defenders if you were using it indoors for any length of time. It's compact, relatively lightweight and is a great price.

All in, the total bundle came to around £80 once you add in an airline and one or two other bits, so is an absolute steal, considering the rediculous price of stuff at the moment. Add in that you don't need to keep buying extra gas and you use paint more economically and it gets even better. Plus, (and this is really cliche), you're also buying time here too, as you can easily basecoat the average squad of figures in 10-15 minutes. If your painting figures like space marines that don't require much more detailing, the deal gets even better.

All of that cheese aside, it's well worth considering if you're painting figures in any quantity.

Laters all

Avast!

Hey all,

Thought I'd put up a quick pic of a one-off piece I finished a while back. I picked this up in the recent Black Scorpion metal overstock sale and ended up letting my lad Jake have 'ownership' in return for having his hair cut, or something like that..... :P

Black Scorpion is one of my favourite 'indie' games companies and produce some cracking pieces. The Privateer is from the non-fantasy-pirate range and packs bags of character. Jake chose the colour palette and it was a relatively quick figure to paint, as the large cloth areas make up the majority of the piece. As usual, once the basecoat was applied, I washed the whole figure with Ogryn Flesh to shade and generally tone down the colours. Highlights were re-applied with the respective colours and the base finished in a sandy beach-type effect with a highland tuft applied for a little extra interest.

Hope you like the results. The intention is to raise a warband to play the Legends of the High Seas game rules, published by Warhammer Historical.... we'll see....

Cheers all

The Deathwatch

Hey folks,

I've finally gotten round to finishing up my Deathwatch Kill Team project, so thought I'd post the results.

This is the Squad Captain and Heavy Weapon guy from the Ultramarine and Crimson Fist chapters respectively. Across the whole squad, I tried to give each figure their own character or role in the squad.

 

Paint-wise, I used a Chaos Black undercoat out of the can, then put down a Charadon Granite (old paints still!) base layer with the airbrush. The metal areas were base coated Tin Bitz before washing each figure in it's entirety with Badab Black wash. I stumbled on this technique for a more realsitic black whilst painting the cowboys (see a previous post) and creates some nice areas of shade in the recesses. I found that using straight black leaves the models looking flat as you can't create darker areas to give the depth.

The fleshtones were achieved with my normal base coat of Tallarn Flesh, washed with Ogryn Flesh and re-highlighted with Tallarn Flesh. I've also used my normal 'realistic red' method on the guns. Red guns always look cool on the pages of White Dwarf, but have never turned out too well. I basecoated the guns with Dark Flesh, washed with Ogryn Flesh and then highlighted with Terracotta.

The chapter iconography was all handpainted, to varying degrees of success. The Red Templars and Imperial Fists were two of the better efforts. I normally try and keep my colour palette limited across a squad in order to add to the feeling of a consistent, cohesive unit, but the Deathwatch is an obvious exception and a good opportunity to try out some of the new Citadel colours. The yellow is the new Averland Sunset base colour, and went on quite well, although I did thin it a little and apply a couple of layers.

The red on the Blood Angel is the new Mephiston Red and again, went on quite well. The lenses on all the models were Ice Blue, highlighted with Skull White. The bases were my usual Scorched Brown with the tops textured with sand and drybrused Dheneb Stone. I used Army Painter flock and Jungle Tufts to add some extra detail and finish them off.

All I need now is a willing guinea pig, I mean opponent, to try them out against :)

Cheers all

White Dwarf 389

Hi all,

Just a quick post to recommend a read of White Dwarf 389. Really loving the updated layouts throughout and the new format of the painting sections is really good (and reflects the new 'How to Paint' book).

It's been a while since my Necrons graced the tabletop as the Codex was well out of date and the range was limited. I'm very tempted to revisit the list now, and tryout some of the new figures in a Kill Team game, before investing in a more extensive army update. There are some great looking new pieces coming out in the next few weeks and I'm particularly struck by the Triarch Stalker and Tomb Blades.

I'm also considering one or two of the finecast kits, but am a little reluctant by all of the negative press and recent bad experience of GW resin through Forgeworld. I'd be interested in feedback from anyone who has bought any finecast stuff recently.

Until next time :)