Going Green

I've been pretty busy recently. The build up to May Bank Holiday in a tourist town is not good for my supply of free time. Doubly so this year, what with one thing and another. Nonetheless I've been trying to get in an hour to hobby time each night in a vain attempt to cling on to my sanity. As a result, I've actually been surprisingly productive.

What have I been doing? Well, I've started a new project:

That's right, I've returned to my Orks!

I've been ridiculously excited by the previews of their new book and model range, so I figured there's no better time to get stuck into them again. Plus I'm giving up smoking atm, so they're also a bit of a reward to myself for sticking with it. 

I know to more recent readers of this blog, it might seem a bit of an abrupt swerve in direction, but I've got quite a bit of history with Greenskins. Deathskulls were actually one of my first armies and the subject of my first ever post on this blog. Unfortunately though I sold off the army years ago, which means I'm starting again from scratch now. 

Not that I mind too much. In hindsight, my old Orks were painted absolutely terribly. I see this as a chance to do justice to them at last! 

Anyway, enough rambling. I've got that Battlewagon and these to be getting on with:

Most importantly of all, I needed to decide on a recipe for the skin. There's a ridiculous amount of different ideas out there, with each Ork player seemingly having their own. I went with something fairly simple though.

That's just Ork Flesh and Warp Lightning Contrast paints over Corax White, with a Skarsnik Green drybrush. Quick and simple, yet effective. It'll look a little darker once I've finished, but I think it should still pop nicely.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to. Hopefully I'll have some finished Orks to show you before too much longer. I've just got to keep doing what I can when I can.

Hopefully I'll be able to get some actual games in too now things are opening up again, but I'll have to see what happens. Until next time though, happy hobbying! 

Mortis walks!

I think I've managed to blow up both my painting points and hobby budget in the most spectacular way possible!

Adeptus Titanicus launched last weekend and I bought into it hard. As a result, two Grand Master Editions are currently sitting on my hobby desk, ready to be painted.

I've been waiting and watching the development of this for years, so it really was a moment of nerdy bliss being able to finally being able to have the game in my hands, crack it and start working on it. It kind of goes without saying that most of my posts for a while are going to be based around Titanicus

Having booked the weekend off work, I was able to crack on straight away, spending Saturday building my first Warlord, then Sunday painting it.

After nearly 14 hours of hobby time, I had Umbra Mortis of the Legio Mortis almost ready to walk:

This was surprisingly easy to build and paint considering the size and complexity of the model. They really are a joy to work with.

Most of the remaining work to be done is just finishing up the leg armour, applying decals and magnetising the weapons, which I should hopefully get done this week.

Of course the elephant in the room (at least to regular readers of this blog) is how this is going to affect my painting points. Long story short, they've been crushed! Despite not being full-sized models, I'm counting each Titan as a full Lord of War. That's 20 points each. I'm just counting Knights as infantry models, due to their size. Across the two boxes, thats's 92 points in the wrong direction. Needless to say I won't be buying much in the near future (until the Reavers and Warhounds release, that is!).

I've been deliberately quite harsh on myself with this in order to make sure each Warlord gets the care and attention they deserve. My excitement for this game should mean that I quickly win back ground though.

Wish me luck. Hopefully I'll actually remember to post stuff up as I go along, so watch this space!

The ever-steady march of progress...

So 8th Edition has hit the gaming community like a hurricane and by all accounts it's been a roaring success. I've already played three games of the new edition and immensely enjoyed each one. That's already a massive increase on the amount of enjoyment I got out of non-30k 7th edition! I even spent the evening last Monday teaching a group of people who hadn't played since 5th ed how to play. That's pretty good going considering that at that point I'd only played one game of the new edition myself- a testament to how slick and streamlined the rules have become!

Needless to say, 8th ed has been the massive shot in the arm that 40k badly needed.Most people have nothing but good things to say about it and loads of people who'd previously left the game have made their return, at least judging by my local community. Previously there'd normally be a few of us meeting on alternate Mondays to play Horus Heresy. There'd be a few people would be milling about occasionally playing AoS, but 40k was pretty much ignored. Last week though there were four games of 40k being played, with half a dozen more people watching with great interest. Excitement is running pretty high in my local area.

Enough gushing about 8th edition though. The real benefit of this release for me is that it's set my motivation to build and paint stuff into overdrive. It's a shame this hasn't involved too much progress on my obscene backlog of projects though. Instead I've been focussing on what's looking to be my army of choice for this edition: Slaanesh.

I've always loved Slaanesh and his/her/it's followers. They've run a close second behind Tzeentch in my love ever since I started 40k in 2003-ish and I've always wanted an army of Noise Marines, but ever since the 3.5 codex their rules have been a little lacklustre, so that's really killed my enthusiasm for them. I might be primarily a narrative gamer, but I also like to actually win games occasionally!

The moment I saw the new rules for Noise Marines though, I knew the time had come to make my dream army a reality. I started by taking the Primaris half of the Dark Imperium boxed set and having a rummage in my bitz box to make them suitably Slanneshii:

Yes it's left my painting points in tatters (I'm not going to even talk about the Ebay slurge I've done for Daemons to accompany them), but at least I'm actually painting stuff! I've been painting so much in fact that I'm running up a massive surplus on my 'hour a day' hobby challenge. Hopefully once I've got my Emperor's Children off the ground, this will translate into progress on my other stuff too, but I'll have to wait and see how that pans out.

My original plan for this force was to make something which works equally well in both 30k and 40k. The more I look at what I want and start painting though, the more I'm thinking that plan is going to fall by the wayside. I'm wanting to include some of the weirder and more obviously Chaotic stuff which Chaos Space Marines get like Warp Talons, Daemon Princes and Forgefiends, none of which have a direct 30k counterpart. Instead I'm probably going to be taking inspiration from Kraut and his World Eaters over at the Eternal Hunt blog and build myself some 'historical' versions of my 40k Chaos characters when I get around visiting my 30k EC force.

Back to matter in hand though, the Primaris Marines were awesomely good fun to work with. The kits are simple to build, although the limited poses we have currently made a few of the conversions a little awkward to do, especially the head swaps. You'll also notice I haven't done any swaps on the shoulder pads either. This is due to the way they detach -  the arm and pad are one big piece, or else the pads are sculpted onto the torso pieces. I'm hoping that the multi-piece kits we'll inevitably get don't have this issue, as I can imagine a lot of people getting frustrated when trying to swap the pads for Chapter-specific ones. I can work around that issue for now though.

Anyway, after a surprisingly short period of time, I had these guys ready to paint. The actual painting of them only took a couple of hours, as I tried to keep the colour scheme simple so I can produce an entire force fairly quickly. The trick was trying to balance the garish colour schemes which Slaaneshii followers are known for whilst still making it look good as a force. I think I've struck a good balance. I'll be going back later to add transfers and freehand detail, but I'm considering these guys done for now.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish up the rest of the box in the enst few weeks. After that I'll be building and painting the two boxes of Warp Talons I bought, then move onto the characters for the army. It looks like is going to be a summer dedicated to Slannesh for me!

I'll post more soon.

Tau Mercenaries

So I was rooting through a cupboard the other day and I came across some Tau I got in an Ebay job lot a few years ago. They really weren't in great condition, with about half an inch of paint obscuring most of the detail on them but I figured I could either try rescuing them, or I may as well just chuck them out.

So into the stripping tub they went.

After a week of repeated soakings and scrubbings, I finally hit bare plastic. The basic Fire Warriors and set of Sniper Drones seem fine and just need a repaint. The Stealth Suits were likewise and are likely to be siphoned off to become a set of Exo-Suits for my Squats, but the bigger Battlesuits need far more work.

From what I can tell from the parts I have, I've got one Crisis Suit and one Broadside, with one or two more possibly stashed away in some unknown cupboard somewhere. Both are missing their feet, some weapon systems and a few details.

This basically means I'd have to either order in replacement parts (not easy with me being skint and them being OOP) or scratchbuild a solution to the problem. I don't think I need to tell you which I chose.

Whilst pondering ways to rebuild the legs with what I had to hand, an idea hit me. Seeing as I have zero desire to collect an entire Tau force, these guys (if they ever see the tabletop at all) would be fielded as allies for my Inquisition, Squats or Space Wolves. This means I'd need to find some fluff justification for them being there. This brought me to the idea of Mercenary Tau.

Basically this force will have, for whatever reason, decided to put aside the principles of the Greater Good and are fighting for coin/ tech/ survival/ whatever. This would put them beyond the reach of tradition supply and repair lines, meaning they would have used whatever tech they had to hand to repair their gear. This will let me build mix in Imperial parts with the Tau and go to town with the conversion, whilst also giving me a strong narrative theme which I can tie in with my other armies.

Anyway, enough talking, here's my early progress on my  first rescued Broadside, with the legs rebuilt. I made it a little more spindly than the original model, partly to make it look non-standard, but also so I can use it as a counts-as Sentinel if I ever want to use it with my Squats.

I'll post more soon.

Harlequin Venom WIP

Ok, so I I've gotten distracted again.

I saw some Harlequins going cheap on an ebay auction, so I put in a bid and won a squad. This led to me deciding to buy a transport for them, which led to this:

As you can see it's a WIP Harlequin Venom, which is the start of my Harlequin army project. It's going to be a slow burn project, due to the amount of effort which needs to go into each and every model, but I'm rather looking forward to it. It's a project I've wanted to do for a while and I finally feel my painting skills are good enough to do the models justice.

More soon!

A new saga begins...

So begins the tale of Wolf Lord Rylak Foestrider and the Great Company of Tra...

After months of proxying lists and fine-tuning my army composition, i have finally started building my Space Wolves force properly, seeing as it's been in the works ever since the latest codex came out.

Each and every model will have its own name and backstory, which I'll present to you when I post them up, along with their ongoing sagas (to be added to after particularly spectacular feats in-game)

I'm really excited about this project and I aim to have it finished by about June-July time next year, just in time to enter them into next years Armies on Parade at GD UK 2012.

So here's what I've been building so far...


Olyek Dragonfoe, my Rune Priest, based off the Forge World Boarding Marine and various SW bits, with the spear shaft coming from a chaos knight



Baldric Greymane, slayer of the Bloodtithe and member of the Grey Hunter pack 'The White Wolves'.


I painted guy this a while back as a tester model, but I'm not really happy with the way his armour turned out. I've still yet to find a nice grey recipe that works for my wolves. If anyone's got a good one, let me know.

And finally, we have Alrik Thunderslayer, a member of another of my Grey Hunter packs.



I love the old mk's of power armour and will be using them in combination with the SW bitz pack throughout my force, not quite making them pre-heresy, but having that sort of vibe.

So what do you guys think so far?

Next time I should have some pics of my Bjorn and Thunderwolves ready to show you

Welcome to a World of Pain

While I'm waiting for the weather to improve so I can fully photograph my Deamons, i've decided to work through my backlog of pictures i've taken of my many, many works in progress.

First up are my Grotesques and Talos Pain Engine for my new DE force. I really wasn't all that impressed with the official GW offerings so I've decided to make my own.

Don't ask what the Grotesques were built from, as I really can't remember. I know there's some Orks in there, Bloodletter parts and a BfSP Troll (a highlty underrated model), as well as a ton of Green Stuff



The Talos is far easier to identify, being built from a Wraithlord, a Manitcore's tail and Tyranid bits (including the carapace from the classic Zoanthrope i picked up in Holland last year). The idea behind this was that a Haemonculus would consider it the sweetest irony to capture one of the machines of his craftworld cousins, rip out the soul and replace it with something far more terrible, before turning it back on them.



I'll post more up soon, but for now, let me know what you think

1000pt Rifleman List

I've worked out a 1000pt list for my empire force, to get me by until
I can buy the models and bitz to finish up the other 1000 points, which
could take a while as i'm trying to find large quantities of the old-style
Handgunners after quickly getting sick and tired out the hunchbacked
new-style ones.

Anyhoo, here's what I've got for the first half of the list. Hopefully it's fairly
competitive. Perhaps any Empire players out there reading this could let me
know what they think of it

Engineer Markus - Long rifle, pigeon bombs

Golbert Golfunger - battle wizard with power stone, dragon bow

15 handgunners, marksman has repeater handgun

12 handgunners, marksman has hochland long rifle

8 outriders, champion has grenade blunderbuss

'the hellbringer'- helstorm rocket battery

'wrath of karen' - helblaster volley gun

Dwarf allies- 10 handgunners

The Winged Contraption of Hedvig von Nearostaffen

Has anyone worked it out?





It's the start of a Steam Powered airship that I'm building for my planned Nuln-based Empire force, after being inspired by seeing this on Warseer (scroll down a bit to see it).

It'll be a very slow project due to my lack of funds until May (gods bless student loans), but i have a large supply of plasticard and no less than 12 bitz boxes to draw on, so i'm cobbling together what i can.

Anyway, turning our attention back to the Winged Contraption itself, my aim is to create a set of wings to propel it forward similar to Leonardo De Vinci's flying machine and having it held aloft by a Zeppelin-style gas bag. Hopefully it should turn out looking awesome, but I'll just have wait and see.

What do people think so far?

New Night Goblins

Despite the lack of money to buy the 8th edition book, i'm building a force to use in 8th Edition.

An army that's sat unpainted on my shelf for nearly a year now are my Night Goblins, so a long summer holiday before I head to off to uni and the shift of the game to focus on large hordes is the perfect excuse to get them done.

So without further ado, i present...

Slugart, Lord of not-very-much-at-all-but-has-a-troll-so-there.




Bit of a mouthful i know, but it's something me and my friend came up with when i was bouncing ideas off him for this army. He's my 'counts as' Skarsnik and Gobbla, the idea being he's an ambitious Night Goblin who's rise to power has mainly been due to the troll he's managed to train as his bodyguard (would you argue with that thing?). The full background for him and the other heroes of the force is coming in a later post.

He and his big unit of 40 gobbos are still WIP, but when they're done they're gonna form the core of my army, being a bunker for Slugart and a pair of Shamans.
Don't worry about the fact he's missing a hand and his weapon, i've just seperated it for painting purposes, to be reattached at a later date.

I've also built this...



What can i say? I've been watching Monty Python recently and i just got an overwhelming urge to build it. I didn't have a particular unit type in mind when making it, but with a bit of jiggling about, it can fit onto a chariot base, so it's probably going to be used either as a Snotling Pump Wagon or a Chariot of some description.

I'm open to suggestions if people have them.

That's it for now, mainly because I need a new battery for my camera, but there's plenty more where that came from.

New Army for (almost) nothing

In honour of GW's announcement of a second wave of Daemons in August (only 2 years too late, but never mind), I've decided to finally start the army I've been promising myself since the codex was released.

Now, i have more bitz than I'll ever know what to do with, so i might as well make use of them and convert myself up a batch of daemons, rather than have them cluttering my desks, shelves, cupboard, floor.... you get the idea.

Anyway, onto the models I've made so far, heavily inspired by Dead Emperors project log on Warseer. ( here if you're interested).

Possessed dreadnought. The marine within is channelling the power of A Lord of Change. I'm going to modelling wings on him at some point and the hull's going to be painted up in the colours of one of my regular opponents




My first Horror squad

If the rumoured plastic Horrors come out, I'm going to be mix and matching parts from the Cadian and Horror boxed sets, if not, I'll just get hold of some of the awesome metal ones to mix into the squads, maybe as leaders - I just don't like the idea of an all-metal army.






This old-school rhino has been through many incarnations in its long life. It was the second GW model i ever owned (the first being one of those old snap-fit Khorne Berserkers). It's been a Rhino, a Vindicator, a Rhino again, an Iron Warriors artillery piece, an Ork Looted Wagon, Trukk, had a brief stint as a Battlewagon, before finally being consigned to the cupboard.



Fast forward to yesterday, as i dug it out looking for bitz to scavenge and came up with the idea of turning it into a Soul Grinder - a fitting end to such a long and varied career. A fitting thing is that in it's last game before disappearing into the depths of the cupboard it got zapped by a Tzeentch Sorcerer, so I'll stay it got taken into the warp as an offering for the Forge of Souls, only to reemerge to plague the mortal realm once more.

As you can see, I've cut it up and rebuilt it with the aid of Plasticard. When i get paid I'm going on a bitz website and grabbing the Soul Grinder torso (I'm not paying £30 if I'm not going to be using the legs), then use green stuff to build it up from there

I'm so easily distracted aka. Deathwing

Painted these up today, as Deathwing are my next side-project. Blood Pact are still going to be my main force for the league, i'm just going to be trying these out in friendly games.

I'm aiming to field a 'pure' Deathwing force eventually, if i ever get them all painted. These are still WIP and i have about another 20 Terminators to paint.

I'm also planning to test my freehand skills by painting the Deathwing banner shown in the DA book

Back with a vengence

Finally got my internet sorted and my life back on track and here's the bumper post as promised.
It’s probably going to be several posts to be honest, as I tend to ramble somewhat

To kick things off I have to say, despite my resolution a month or so ago to finish paint everything I have before buying any more, I've been a bad boy.

Now, for once, it's not my fault (well, maybe a little...). First off, I can blame a certain family member (who shall go unnamed) for clearing out his sizable bitz box and letting me take my pick.
I got a load of Dark Angel parts, some old gobbos with bows and he also gave me two Obliterator models, which I love (used to have 3 of these babies, back in the days when they were still 0-1). For a while I was considering creating a Fallen Angels army, but then looked in Chaos Codex and remembered why I don't like it.

Then I can blame my local club, who’ve just announced an upcoming 40k league, starting in February. Now I always start a new army for new events, such as campaigns or leagues, as it gives me an excellent excuse to get stuff done that I normally find hard to focus on (like painting in general). With this in mind, my thoughts turned to new armies.

Regular readers of this blog will know of my fledgling Eldar Harlequin army from the summer. A big part of me wants to really get that off the ground, but at the same time, painting even a small amount of Harlequins is a time-consuming process and I’ve got my studies to think of in the new year. I'd rather keep the Harley's as a side piece that I can dip into whenever I like, rather than feel the need to finish them quickly.

Then I thought about Deamonhunters, with emphasis on the non-Grey Knights side of things, which seemed like fun to explore, but at the same time, I’ve never collected a proper imperial army in my life. My existing Guard are traitors and my Soul Drinkers are sort of a grey area which I won’t go into here

Then I read Blood Pact by Dan Abnett and hit on the idea of (you guessed it) Blood Pact. I've always liked these guys and used to have a small force of them, but they sort of got left at the wayside when I started Orks. But Mr Abnett has done his magic again and inspired my latest army. His insights into the inner workings of the Pact have sparked all sorts of ideas off in my mind. I particularly like the guy who's devoted his life to saying all the names of death and the 'Sister' in the black dress and will be finding ways to work them into my army.

Codex wise, I’m basing it off the IG codex, but on reflection, I suppose I could use Deamonhunters to portray some of the more crazy stuff that the 'Pact has at its disposal, along with IG allies to represent the bulk of the force/ Death Brigades. At this point in time I want to base the army around the Balhaut insertion team, although that’s liable to change and evolve as I go along.

With all this in mind, I dug out my old Blood Pact models that haven’t been absorbed into other armies and given them a lick of paint. Pictures will be up soon

I've also ordered a box of Cadians and a heavy weapon team to form the first of my squads. I'm also planning on including my new Obliterators, either as weapons teams or Ogryns. I like the idea of using Obliterators as unconventional weapons platforms, as it gives me a chance to use these great models, even though I no longer play Chaos Space Marines.

Well I’m getting tired of writing, so that’s part one of the bumper post. More soon. Hopefully tomorrow if I can steal a break from my studies