Master and Commander (and Helmet Guy)

Hey all,

Quick post today with a couple of shots of Commander Azrael and the little guy who tags along with him.

These figures were given to my brother all those years ago when we first got into the hobby. We got round to assembling and undercoating them but didn't get any further, and they've sat around in a box for the last few years.

When I went about reclaiming old pieces a few weeks back, I cleaned these up and ordered a new backpack and banner for Azrael. They were both reassembled, based and spray undercoated Chaos Black. I then put down a Dark Angels Green basecoat with the airbrush.

The articulated joints in the armour and the sword hilt were painted Charadon Granite, before the armour was washed with Thraka Green and then with Badab Black. The cloth areas, banner, and iconography were basecoated Dheneb Stone and the red areas basecoated Dark Flesh. The sword blade was painted Boltgun Metal. All of these areas were then washed with Ogryn Flesh.

For the highlighting stage, the armour was blended up with a 50:50 mix DAG and Snot Green, with SG on the edges. The extreme highlights were Scorpion Green. The light cloth areas were layered back up with Dheneb Stone. The red areas were layered up with Dark Flesh and Vermin Brown. The bases had the usual treatment of Scorched Brown with the tops drybrushed Dheneb Stone. Army Painter grass scatter and jungle tufts were added for a little extra detail and to compliment the green armour.

Olly, next time I see you chap, you can have your figures back :P

Laters 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

Little lead heroes

Hi guys, just a quick post to recommend a fellow gamers blog. 

Head on over to http://littleleadheroes.blogspot.com for some nicely painted stuff. I picked up this site whilst trawling the tubes looking for some inspiration for my own Deathwatch Kill Team. Here are a couple of pics to whet the appetite...

Laters, have good weekends all

Random thoughts...

Hey all, thought I'd put up a few random thoughts today to clear my hobby head a little.

After experimenting with the Citadel Spraygun and exploring the tubes for inspiration, I've found a site stocking some inexpensive airburshing kit which I'm pretty interested in. When I first got into the hobby all those years ago (man I'm getting old) my folks bought me an airbrush and compressor as a birthday gift, with the intention of using it for basecoating figures. However, having talked at some length with the guy in the store we got it from, he sold us completely the wrong stuff and, ultimately, it found it's way to the attic. This time around, I've done way more research and reckon it's worth another crack.

 

There's no doubt that spray basecoats is the way to go and this method is opening up all sorts of opportunities to use colours I've always avoided. Case in point are these shots of several of my bro Olly's Covenant ships from Dystopian Wars. After applying a Chaos Black undercoat, all the vessels had two thin coats of Shadow Grey, followed by two thin layers of Ice Blue, sprayed on through Blu Tac masking to create an icy camo pattern.

The turrets and other details can then be re-undercoated and painted up by brush. Using this method drastically cut painting time and gave a really effective result.

In a complete change of tack, I thought I'd post this pic. This guy is the Space Marine Captain from the Black Reach set, with an experimental colour scheme I toyed with a while back. However, I'm thinking of revisiting and updating it, as I'm planning to raid the bits box and put together a Deathwatch Kill Team. I had thought of adding these to my 'Ripper Swarm' collection for my Tyranid force, but after reading a recent post on the GW site about the Kill Team scenario in the Battle Missions book, I think I'll build them as standard what-you-see-is-what-you-get marines and try and get a few small games in, to get back into the 40k scene.

Also on the back burner are the huge number of metal figures I recently reclaimed and paint-stripped. I've been working on the classic Legion of the Damned figures, updating them a little, and have also acquired some of the new Dark Angels chapter pieces to kit out the old veteran models.

The only other thing to add is that Black Scorpion Miniatures are clearing out their metal overstocks for £1 per figure, so head over and check out the site.

Well, that's it for now, laters all

Space Marine

Hey all, thought I'd go a little different today and put up a quick post about Space Marine from THQ on the '360. I'd best describe myself as a casual gamer and this one is bang on my level. The campaign was good fun; long enough to offer a challenge, but didn't drag; tough enough to offer some tricky spots, but not so much so that it stopped being fun. There were a couple of switcheroos in the storyline which were entertaining, so all in all, I thought it was well worth the money.

The real (unexpected) treat here is the online gameplay. Having played through Halo, Gears and some of the others in the genre, I've been largely put off playing online as games tend to be unbalanced in a hurry, if you play against more serious players who session the games and unlock all the cool stuff. With this you're on a much more even footing; if you get popped, you can copy the guys weapon fit for a life, regardless of whether you've unlocked the guns and perks for yourself yet.

The customizer allows you to pimp up your character using components from around a dozen different variations of power armour (and the same again for Chaos) which can be custom coloured. Alternatively, you can get alternate chapter specific skins with unique elements from the game marketplace for a small outlay of MS points.The tactical marine is getting more and more useful as I'm advancing through the levels. The ability to carry two decent guns plus the Bolt Pistol as well as the increased movement you get from travelling light is really useful. The Storm Bolter in the picture is absolutely awesome, particularly in Exterminatus mode against waves of Orks.

 

My guy is currently up to level 26 and should advance to level 27 during the next game (unless it's a total blowout). I've just switched my preferred assault setup from the Thunder Hammer and Plasma Pistol from the pic above to the relic chainsword and bolter, as I've unlocked the true grit perk and the chainsword is a bit quicker to wield. It's also worth taking the final vengeance perk in the secondary slot, so if you get nailed, the jump pack blows up and often injures or kills the attacker if they were in close quarters.

All in all a load of fun and would really recommend to everyone. Big shout out too, to el Tod, RinoMuffins, HiPrime8, EvilWeeble, DaveyDee, Beast Unleashed, Ray Gun Reno and all the other guys online.

Laters

Call of the Wild

Hey folks, today I thought I'd put up a few pics of the Space Wolves army the I took to the 40k doubles tournament a while back, with my bro, Olly. The format was that the army should be comprised of two 500-point forces, each bringing 1x HQ and 1x Troops choices. Between the two forces, each of the other army unit types should be represented (Elite, Heavy, Fast) before you can take a second choice from any of those categories.

So, the list we ended up with was:

Olly - Wolf Guard with Frost Blade & Blood Claw pack in a Drop Pod, Dreadnought with Multimelta in Drop Pod and a Lone Wolf in Terminator armour.

Pete - Rune Priest with Murderous Hurricane and Storm Caller powers & Blood Claw pack in a Drop Pod, Long Fangs with two Plasma Cannons, two Rocket Launchers and a Rhino transport, one Landspeeder with a Heavy Bolter.

 

This is the Rune Priest with one of the Blood Claw packs. During the second game of the tournament, these guys jumped out of their Drop Pod and felled a Chaos Terminator squad to a man, with their Bolt Pistols. I did crack a smile.

 

This is the second of the Blood Claw packs, which teamed up with the Wolf Guard battle leader, again in a Drop Pod. When you deploy with the pods, you can deploy half (rounding fractions up) on turn one, and roll for the rest from turn two onwards. They also have inertial guidance systems which prevents them scattering into buildings/other units and so on, so they're pretty accurate. In the first three games, this really complimented the Wolves' aggressive style. In hindsight though, we should have played way more defensively in the last game, which ultimately cost us a placing.

 

These are the Long Fangs with the Wolf Guard. Despite the tendancy of Plasma weapons to be a little unreliable, these worked absolutely perfectly throughout the whole day without any overheats at all.

 The Dreadnought was based on the Black Reach snap-fit model with a couple of wolfy add-ons. This was also deployed by Drop Pod and managed to deny our third round opponents half of the board and an objective, when it was deployed. The Lone Wolf in his Terminator Armour is the last surviving member of his pack and set about seeking a glorious end. Strangely, despite throwing him into a stack of certain death situations, we only managed to kill him once. He was pivotal in the closing moments of our third round encounter with another marine army and stuck around until the end to deny a second objective.

Scaramanders...?

OK Bond fans, so these guys don't carry golden guns for a million a shot... they're essentially White Scars in Salamanders armour, but they're a bit different from the normal armies you see on the tabletop and here's the story.

The whole thing started after a colleague at work bought me a space marine bike from the local store for the office Secret Santa one Christmas. As it was a one-off I raided the bits box and converted him up a bit, with a powerfist, head from the old Space Wolves upgrade frame and a couple of other bits and pieces. He turned out pretty cool and after re-reading the Space Marines codex, I decided it would be fun to have a bike based force. 

 

The original guy became the Captain (front centre). The cool thing is, if you equip your Space Marine Captain with a bike, you can take bike squads as Troops choices instead of fast attack, which is a great thing. Hanging back in cover and making a last-stitch swoop on an objective could be a game-winner. Whenever I set about a new army, I tend to build it around several units that are a little quirky that would be fun to play and/or interesting to model and try to balance the list with complimentary units. It doesn't always make for the most competitive list, but I've never been a maths-hammer-style player and would rather spend the game talking about the cool figures rather than how many D6s you can roll. 

 

The bike-mounted command squad is quite a points-sink, but it's the only one I've seen played at the club. The banner gives the edge in close-run assaults and the Apothecary grants the squad 'feel no pain', also pretty useful when the fighting hots up. Add to that two meltaguns and a flamer, and they can bring the fight to virtually anything in the game. The stand-out moment for this squad was a drive-by powerfist to a Chaos Dreadnought, which was pretty funny! 

The main objective capturing part of the army is the large bike squad, which consists of seven regular bikes, including two meltaguns and an attack bike with a multimelta. If need be, you can employ a sneaky conga-line tactic with these guys and stretch out across the board some way...

To bring some heavy firepower to the mix, there are two three-model squads of attack bikes with heavy bolters. There's been some talk about taking multimeltas instead, but I wanted to be able to dish out volume of fire from the mid-range while still having the greater flexibility of movement afforded by the bikes. Remember, bikers are relentless, so can move at full speed (not turbo though!) and fire their weapons at max.

Bolstering the number of Troops choices available are two Scout squads. One is kitted out with sniper rifles and a rocket launcher, with a Salamanders version of special character Telion (far left); the other with bolt pistols and combat blades. Their Sergeant packs a rare punch in Scout squads with a powerfist (looted from the Cadian kit). The sniper squad is normally deployed on the 'home' objective, preferably in decent cover with a good view! The other can outflank and surprise the opposition, causing them to re-think their strategy.

Out of the whole army, it's the close combat scout unit that has achieved the most notable success. In a really enjoyable game against a 'Guard army, these guys tore through two 'Guard squads, disabled a chimera with the powerfist and were setting about dismantling the command section when the game ended.

Rounding out the list is a Devastator squad, with three lascannons, three boltguns and a kitted out Sergeant that can defer a shooting benefit to one member of the squad if they themselves don't fire that round.

The paint scheme was relatively straight-forward, thanks to the Army Painter's Angel Green, and the whole force was base-coated in around 20 minutes. The armour highlighting was Snot Green; eagles are Dhened Stone, washed with Ogryn Flesh; shoulder pads Chaos Black with Mechrite Red/Blood Red/Macharius Solar Orange flame icons; mud and weathering is drybrushed Calthan Brown; lenses/scopes are Hawk Turquiose/Ice Blue/Skull White highlights; metallic areas are Tin Bitz, washed with Ogryn Flesh and highlighted with Boltgun Metal; bases are Scorched Brown/Dheneb Stone Drybrush with Citadel static grass detailing. The muzzle flashes and discharged shell casings were purchased from Armorcast based in Ohio in the States.

I've had mixed success with this army; there've been some great wins and some total slaughters (vs mechanised Orks *cough*), but it's always been fun to play.