It's becoming a running theme, but here we are at the end of another month and I have scraped in some more progress. I managed to get the Knights of the Realm and a Damsel finished off as I had planned. So without much preamble here are some very colourful pictures.......



I have done as planned and these guys have heraldic colours like the Knight Errant and in addition they have symbols to designate them as having won their spurs. I even managed to match helmets to transfers and not have any double ups. I was pretty pleased when I realized I can do that.



The command group, the Banner will be the colour and heraldry of my Lord (especially as he has a two handed axe to boot). I have used the dirty brown to unify the army as much as possible as it is a very different and obvious colour compared to the vibrancy of the heraldry.



Here is the gem of the update though. The Damsel. My wife kept pushing me to do a better job as I was ready to call it quits much earlier in the piece. She kind of reminds me of my wife actually, really long blond hair, nice hips and a low cut dress......ahem.....



The back view. I am really happy with how her hat has turned out, I haven't actually mixed paint's together much since I started this project and it surprised me how easy it was to get a good effect by just adding white paint to each layer.



Here is the unit with the Damsel tucked safely inside. Unfortunately she really does blend in and that means I will forget she is even there during games :-(



Another group shot, shows the damsel off a little better. I still have the movement tray to do for these guys, but it is underway and should only take an hour or so to finish.

So that is the results for June, I achieved what I set out to do which is encouraging, but just like every month I wish I had managed more. But I am starting to realize that the Bretonnians are the complete opposite of the Tyranids I was complaining about the lack of individuality, these guys have to almost be painted one at a time which really eats into my model count. But I think they are looking pretty good for the effort.

Next up will be the first of three units of Questing Knights and hopefully one of the three remaining characters, I have the Army Standard Bearer, a general beat stick Paladin and of course the Lord of the army. Will see which one takes my fancy once the Questing Knights are up and running. Will need to do some converting work to try and mix up the mono-pose metals, but I have that many spare bits and pieces from generous benefactors that it shouldn't be too much of a hurry, someone has already done a stack of quality head swaps that look great. (And I don't mean me, the generous fellow that sold 18 questing knights to me had already started breaking the poses up and I am going to benefit from his work).

Thanks for reading, comments welcomed.

Awesome stuff! I always liked the strong individually of bretonian armies and you're doing the tradition proud.

That lot are looking fantastic. Nice and vibrant. Great work.

Awesome work on the Knights and the damsel. Really striking.

EDC

Thanks guys. The questing knights will lack a fair bit of the vibrancy as I am planning on them having given up their colours in the quest for the Grail. But will have retained their own heraldry. So it will be the full cycle of errant with colour but know symbol, realm with colour and symbol and questing with no colour but symbols.

Just have to figure out how to pull it off and not be too same same.

Those Bretons are looking amazing, especially as a unit. The Damsel looks great as well. I really like the tones of her dress.

Unfortunately the Damsel is a pretty plain model compared to the Knights. Which has got to be unusual for characters not to stand out among the rank and file.

I have dragged out what will be my first unit of Questing Knights and finished off the conversion work to try and make them a little less the same. Have decided (well my wife did) that I should do the army general to go along with them.

I am probably as surprised as the rest of you, but its the middle of the month and I have some painting progress to show off. Must have been something added to the water. But I will never complain about getting bitten by the productivity bug and without further waffle, here is my first unit of Questing Knights.


As you can see, I have kept the cloth of the Knights and horses fairly drab, but then the shields on both the Knights and Horses have the spot colours of their heraldry. I know I spoke about no colour. But I don't think I could have made it work. But I am pretty happy with the results and they are very different from the Knights of the Realm and Errant. There are three conversions from the base Knights in this group. I think they fit in quite well.

But what is a unit of Questing Knights without someone to lead them? No worries, here is the man of the hour Questing Lord Jacques the Vain. Self styled Grail finder and pompous twit, the poor fool doesn't realize his own pride is keeping him from the grail. But gee he can swing a mean axe.....


I intentionally used black and white as they are colours that don't appear anywhere else in the army, hopefully making him stand out a little from the rest of the Knights. You may have noticed his axe heraldry has now appeared on the Knights of the Realm and Questing Knight banners. Only fitting for one so self absorbed.


When I managed to get this model I just knew he had to be the leader of it and the fact you get a black axe symbol was far too fitting to pass up. Pretty sure I have ripped off the same colour scheme from the army book though. I did load his horse up with a few odds and sods to make him look as overloaded as the rest of his Questing Knights.


Here they are all together. Very happy with the unit as a whole. Having so much metal in them though makes for a pretty damn heavy unit and that banner is just silly in size and weight.


With so much tiny detail on these I am finding myself longing for the simplicity of the Tyranids. Seems I am never going to be happy. Ah first world problems eh......


I will do the next two Questing Knight units like this, but the base colour of the robes will be slightly different to make them a little easier to tell apart.


I am not sure any of my previous armies had units that were as interesting as these guys from all angles.

So there you have it. My first of three Questing Knight units (with the Army General) done and its only the middle of the month. Should be able to get a good head start on the next unit and hope maybe to be through the Bretonnians by the end of August.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks for reading.

Nice work. I really can't tell which ones are the conversions.

Tbh, I am not a huge fan of the grey. But they look good as a unit, and I understand your reasoning for it. I think once the entire army is together it will look better.

Keep up the good work mate

They look fantastic sir, just the right balance on the colour if you ask me. Great work.

Great work on these guys. The heraldry looks really effective and going for a unified colour on the caparisons unifies them as a unit at the same time.

I have a big soft spot for Brets, they were the first fully painted army I ever managed to do in about 1998. I love seeing all the individual heraldry on the Knights, the black on the Questing Knight leader looks suitably menacing.and fair play on painting all of their various details. The scrolls, candles etc etc on their saddle bags can get tiresome very quickly. I love the Knights of the Realm too, the various colour combinations are very striking. Good luck with finishing the army this month.

Thanks. Not sure how I will go finishing them this month. Wife is doing her archaeological thing in Israel this time so I have been left home alone.

Interesting switch as normally I am the one travelling with works thought I would get heaps of progress done with her out of the way. But have been in a funk and am struggling to open the paint pots.

But I have started the 2nd unit so that is something.

My good mate who is starting a space wolf army is finally at a happy point to have a small game this weekend. Any thoughts on who I should take of my armies to the slaughter?

Very, very little progress on the painting front unfortunately. My funk has now been compounded with being violently ill. Not a good look when you are supposed to pick your wife up from the airport. Can't remember the last time I got hit so hard.

Did manage a small 750 point game against my mates budding space wolves. My Orks were victorious in the end. He has a lot to learn and played perhaps to aggressively and I got really lucky with his vindicator not doing much. Oh and my saves from my Big Meks force field was insane.

Nice work on the Questing Knights, all the heraldry looks awesome.

EDC

Thanks. I am into week 2 of being sick off work which has unfortunately killed all progress. Have only managed to drag my sorry ass out of bed to go to the doctor so far.

But things are looking slightly up. Have managed food for the first time in weeks and feel almost human.

Only almost human, you'll have to do better than that, the Inquisition have a zero tolerance policy on mutants.

Jokes aside hope you feel better soon.

EDC

Hi all, I have returned from the sweet embrace of Papa Nurgle and even managed to get some painting done.


Here is the second of three units of Questing Knights. The frustrating thing of getting sick was that the horses were largely done in the first week of the month. But I wasn't up to finishing the Knights until the last couple of days.


This unit has a few more conversions than the previous one. But I feel they fit in quite well. Except maybe the guy on the left with the overly large axe. But I figure as these guys are questing all over the place the odd different weapon isn't out of place.


There are a few headswaps as well to try and change the unit up. I do apologize for the terrible photos. I really shouldn't take photos at night.


And here is the Battle Standard Bearer. I have a little story going in my head about this guy that he is actually the most noble and honorable in the whole army and therefore the most likely to find the grail. Hence he guards the army standard. I also intentionally used purple on his robes which only appears in one other place in the army. The Damsel. Maybe some funny business between the two? Or could she be guiding him and only him to the grail?


I also intentionally used white on his cloak and the standard to really separate him from the army's general in his black as I feel the two are completed opposed to each other in attitude and efforts.


Here we see the unit together on there movement tray. Hopefully they are different from the first unit, I kept the same technique of dull robes and the shields carry the colors and heraldry. But this time I used grey instead of the mustard brown of the first unit.


Not the greatest of photos this time around folks. But with only one unit left stay tuned as once they are done it can only mean one thing. Full army shot.

Thanks for reading.

Your Brettonnians continue to impress, they look great individually but look amazing when grouped together in their lance's. Cannot wait for the full army shot.

Another great looking unit of Knights.

Thanks guys. Good to see around the traps Az. I have assembled the final unit adding the conversions where needed and now to undercoat them. I have unfortunately also started to undercoat the next Primarch for my brother so hope to not get too distracted by him.

The Brets continue to look great, you're putting together a great force here!

Which Primarch is next?

Vulkan is next. Trying to figure out how to do the black skin salamanders are famous for and not lose the detail of his face.

My suggestion would be a very light grey drybrush, only brushing downwards and focusing on the upper edges, followed by a heavy black wash. That should pick out the details with minimal layers, you can then add another highlight or two as needed.

Mmmm good idea Para, the wash would help knock any areas too stark back a notch.

I have managed a fair bit of progress on things since I last posted. First of all, I have managed to sneak the rebasing of my Iron Hands in. Ever since GW released the larger bases for the Space Marines I had intended to use them and since I only had completed one Space Marine army I figured it wouldn't be too much work.

I had a look around for different techniques of how to do it and settled on trimming the rim off the bases and gluing them down onto the new base. This does add a little extra height to the finished result. But I don't think its easily detectable.


So this is how one of the squads started.


Here you can see the squad with the edges of the old bases snipped off and glued to the new larger bases.


Here is a comparison between the squad on the larger bases with a squad on the old 25mm ones. So much bigger.


And the finished squad. I am really happy with one, how quickly I managed to get them all rebased and how much bigger they look straight away and to boot they still fit into the foam trays I made which is a massive bonus.

Now, I need some advise as far as the latest Primarch is going. So all those great painters out there please give me your thoughts on this......


It's early days, but I am super happy with the green of the armour and the inside of the cloak, I think I have managed a pretty decent leather look for the skinned side of the salamander skin cloak. However......


Although I really like the cloak and think the outside is good. But, is the contrast between the armour and the cloak not enough? Any thoughts or tips would be appreciated.

So, I would like to post some more stuff, but would prefer to not end up with a super post, so if someone could find it in their heart to post a quick little reply to stop the automatic appended post I would really appreciate it.

Thanks for reading.

All looking great.

Love the rebasing, looks good, looks effective and looks quick and easy. Don't sweat the extra height, SM are supposed to be a bit taller.

Great job on green armour, personally on the cloak I think I would go for a contrasting colour, or maybe black. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks to Camkierhi for the page break ;-) definitely thinking of throwing dark green or black wash onto the outside of the cloak. Would like to keep it green, but a darker version.

But on to the main event. I have managed to finish the final unit of my Questing Knights and the last Paladin. And here they are:


Again, the same method has been used, drab (in this case a darker brown) robes with the heraldry hopefully standing out. The Paladin (like the other heroes has kept the pink/purple to tie them in with each other).


Definitely let the individual details slip a little bit, but not as badly as I have with previous armies. Fortunately my process was pretty solid so I could fly on auto pilot for most of them.


I am pretty happy with this guy. Had to transplant the castle on the horses head, as the head it was on is far too small to fit the horse body I used. But it was a fairly simple swap.


Yes that is a Space Marine power sword. He is supposed to be Questing with a great weapon so I needed an over the top huge sword and the space marines weren't using it at the time.


So there you have the last of my 24 Questing Knights. There are a few conversions in there to keep things different and make up a few numbers. But I think among the official models they blend in.

So of course, the really exciting thing about this particular unit is that they complete the army. So I am now 10 armies down and here are the members of the "Vain" Quest for the Grail:


It is a pretty small army, but most of my Warhammer ones are, I seem to like the elite forces. But I think in true Bretonnian fashion they look the part. I also think it is pretty easy to tell the Errant, Realm and Questing Knights apart.


Probably the formation I would use in games, a giant wedge to tear through a line in the enemy and hopefully just keep riding.


The core of the army, a unit of Knights of the Realm and a larger unit of Knight Errant. The Damsel will often be hidden among the Knights of the Realm and hopefully she can boost their effectiveness. Maybe.


What I hope will be the heavy hitters of the army. 24 desperate loonie knights with giant swords. Here's to hoping they can make a dent. As you can see by the holes in the units I as always like to distribute the characters among the regulars to try to have a bit of coverage everywhere.


The leader of this rabble. Lord Jacques the Vain. Not well loved and his own arrogance is what keeps him from the Grail. But he is charismatic and forceful. I am really happy by his look. Definitely the boss and stands out well in his all black.


And the other characters who I hope will hold everything together, Army Standard, Damsel and combat Paladin. I know magic could be a bit weak with these guys, but hey thats what the blessing of the lady is for. Right?

So there you have my 10th army. Very different to the Tyranids that I did previously where everything was the mind bending same. BUt these guys were all different. No two models were the same to some degree which takes its toll. But they are done and I am really happy with them. Really feel I am getting some good painting techniques down pat and am pretty refreshed to launch into the next army.

Speaking of the next army I am back to 40k and will be doing an Alpha Legion army. My next post will detail the army list as is tradition and I am all ears for ideas on the paint scheme. I am torn between trying to sort out a metallic blue green or a dark blue green with a green highlight/trim and silver trim. So any thoughts would be most welcome.

WOW! I've literally just finished reading this journey having started looking at it 3 weeks ago, and having read every single post, i have to admit you are crazy! You have great ambition and you make me jealous with the amount I've not painted and you have. Comparing your older armies to your newer armies, you really enforce the point that practice really does make perfect and you are my inspiration when it comes to that. I will be following this from now on, and I wish I could paint like you do! The fact that a lot of your models are conversions shows your dedication and I love the creativity. Also the fact that you're using other people's used models from Ebay, means that you really have a nice mix of vintage models in some of your armies, and you put some fresh life into something else doesn't use anymore. Perhaps, one day I will try a project with your approach, although perhaps not on the same scale!
Awesome stuff - keep up the good work, it will be brilliant when you finally complete all these armies!
Best of luck.

Thanks DaemonColin, I appreciate the words. It has come a long way since I started it and I have a little momentum up. I am in the process of assembling the Alpha Legion and think I need to perhaps pick a squad and start the paint as I am getting a little distracted by all these models sitting in front of me.

Will throw up the Alpha Legion list in the near future and if anyone has some ideas on a paint scheme I am all ears. Really not sure what to do with them. Am thinking of trying a silver undercoat with a couple of blue and green washes over the top. Or make up a metallic green with a blue wash over it.

So I am thoroughly into the Alpha Legion now, having assembled all bar one Raptor (as I am waiting for it to arrive from eBay). But the list is done, the theme is hopefully pretty apparent and below is the list for the Alpha Legion of the XII Ambush Cell, Loyalists of the Twin Primarchs:

War Leader Omicron of the XII Ambush Cell - Chaos Lord with Power Axe, Combi-Melta
War Leader Upsilon of the XII Ambush Cell - Chaos Lord with Power Axe, Combi-Melta

The Enigma – Terminator Champion Brutus, 3 Chaos Terminators, 2 Combi-Melta, 2 Combi-Flamer, 2 Power Fists
Iota Stealth Squad - Chosen Champion Iota with Power Weapon, 9 Chosen, Power Weapon, 2 Plasma Guns
Epsilon Stealth Squad - Chosen Champion Epsilon with Power Weapon, 9 Chosen, Power Weapon, 2 Plasma Guns

Bait Squad Theta - Aspiring Champion Theta with Combi-Melta, 9 Chaos Marines, 2 with Meltaguns
Bait Squad Eta - Aspiring Champion Eta with Combi-Melta, 9 Chaos Marines, 2 with Meltaguns
The Hydra Cartel - Cultist Champion Rambour with Shotgun, 8 Cultists, 1 Cultist with Heavy Stubber
Charybdis Cell - Cultist Champion Antoine, 8 Cultists, 1 Cultist with Heavy Stubber
The Kraken Initiative - Cultist Champion Johann with Autogun, 8 Cultists with Autoguns, 1 Cultist with Heavy Stubber
Leviathan Syndicate - Cultist Champion Corbec with Autogun, 8 Cultists with Autoguns, 1 Cultist with Heavy Stubber

Pursuit Squad Pi - Aspiring Champion Harpos with Melta Bombs, 4 Raptors, Meltagun
Pursuit Squad Omega - Aspiring Champion Gargul with Melta Bombs, 4 Raptors, Meltagun

Anchor Squad Zeta - Aspiring Champion Pechium, 9 Havocs, 2 Missile Launchers, 2 Autocannons
Anchor Squad Phi - Aspiring Champion Prozuit, 9 Havocs, 2 Missile Launchers, 2 Autocannons

So I have gone with a list that has a mirror image, every unit has a duplicate to try and give the look and feel of a multi-headed attack. The exception is the Terminators (hence why they are "The Enigma") although within the 4 man squad they are a mirror image. I have also gone so far as to switch shoulder pads and the like around so that they appear as a mirror to their twin unit. I figure that the Havocs, Marines and Cutlists will attempt to camp out on objectives while the Chosen, Lords, Terminators and Raptors run around causing trouble whenever they can.

Still struggling to decide how to attempt to paint them. But now that assembly is out of the way I can sit down and try and couple of things out. Oh and a side note I ended up going with the super old 'batwing' Raptors which I think goes well with the less messed up chaos look of the newer sculpts. Plus I am using the Betrayal at Calth marines as my chosen so its a nice mix of old looking armour in the army.

I am using my many Necromunda models as my cultists, so just need to finish off a couple of them that have never been painted and rebase them and they will be finished. I have decided for this army to use the GW Sector Imperialis bases as I wanted to give them a try out.

Hopefully the next time I post will have some pretty pictures......

Nice project you have on the go. The Britonians are fantastic. I can't wait to see the Alpha Legion. I would do them MkIV personally. AL in mkIV look fantastic especially the headhunters.

Beautiful work!

Another great looking army, Archer. It's been really amazing watching you work your way through these. I have to say that 5 units seems a tiny army, but then arranged in a wedge like that, they look terrifying enough to smash anything that gets in their way... How many points do they come to?

Nice work on the Knights, they look really cool.

EDC

Thanks guys, I think the Brets are the best looking one from an individual model basis. Found myself actually needing to put a bit of effort into the individual Knights.

In Warhammer 8th edition they come to 2,000 points on the money with a few magic items thrown around. Have no idea how that would translate to AoS, KoW or 9th age though.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and with the Alpha Legion, although the Mk4 does look very cool this is a Chaos army and needed a few spikey bits. I did want it to sort of be a mish mash of different armour and gear so they look like they have been at the long war for a very long time. But I am using certain elements (like the same helmet across whole squads) to make them a little unified and professional. Not a random mob of lunatics.

Had a terrible month for hobby as I was smashed by a bad throat infection and then a week after that I got a bad dose of the flu effectively lost 3 weeks to ill health and took me a little while to get the motivation to paint back. But the good news is I have returned to form (although not too much painting).

So my results on the Alpha Legion are a little humble, although I have assembled and undercoated all of the models. Which it turns out is quite a few.....76 marines and 40 cultists. Quite a large marine army.

I took a little while to figure out how I wanted to do the Alpha Legions blue/green armour. But am pretty happy with what I have come up with. This poor terminator isn't in the army, he just donated his body to the pursuit of a colour scheme.



It's a little shinier than I want the finished product to be (not to mention a little rough as I was experimenting), but I am happy with it and feel it is repeatable across the army.

Next up is an objective marker I think fits the Alpha Legion quite well with their subversion tactics. The News Anchor......



As you can see I am using the GW Sector Imperialis bases for this army, means I have a little more painting to do, but they are not bad value and work pretty well. I have gone with lighter, but muted colours to better let the darker Legionnaires stand out more.

So instead of official cultist models I press ganged my Necromunda collection into service. I feel this fits the feel of the army better as the "cultists" employed by the Alpha Legion are often actually pretty good at what they do and the more unified look of the Necromunda gangs helps portray this. I hope.



I had already painted the Goliath gang members for a campaign that I played in last year. But I have now rebased them and cleaned them up a little. I had not done any of the hired guns though so they are completely new paint jobs. I imagine that the hired guns are the real human operatives of the Legion and have whipped the hive gangs into a frenzy before they will be extracted and sent to their next assignment by the Legion.



I have used both blue and red as spot colours on the Hired guns to help them fit into either gang as the main weapon colour of the Goliaths is red and the bodysuits of the Van Saars is blue. So if I use them in a campaign later they will have traces of their fleeting loyalties. And the blue will help them with identifying as Alpha Legion loyalists.



The Van Saars were painted eons ago and based really poorly. So it was good to tidy up the paint chips and get them onto better looking bases. I have far more of them than the Goliaths so needed less Hired guns to make up the numbers.



My opponents will have to ignore the wacky weapon loadouts of the gangs. Simply put the squads all have a Heavy Stubber (pretty easy to identify) and the ones brandishing mainly hand to hand weapons have exactly that and the other gangs have autoguns. Should be pretty easy. I hope.

So although I only needed to do a little repair work to the bulk of them I did paint 40 new bases and the 5 hired guns to finish off these squads so I feel like I did a pretty good job considering the month I had.



Next up will probably be a Chaos Space Marine squad to get the colour scheme just right. Hopefully they won't take too long. But Vulkan is getting most of my attention at the moment so maybe he will make a guest appearance first?

Thanks for reading.

Always love seeing Necromunda minis. That objective markers is pretty sweet too. Points for originality!

Hi all, have had a brief distraction from the Alpha Legion (although I got a good session in last night on them). So I present to you the latest in my Primarch series. Vulkan of the Salamanders.


The vibrant green of the armour I think works well with the gold work and helps the skull show up quite well.


I tried to keep the hammer fairly simple as I see it more as a tool than a weapon of war and the Salamaders strike me as more practical than say the Blood Angels. His pistol, like just about all the other Primarchs is well hidden by his cloak.


The cloak gave me a lot of trouble (or at least the outside I am super happy with the tones on the inside). But with a lot of advice I think I figured out a good end result for it. Was hard to have a green cloak and green armour without it all blending together too much.


I did debate about painting the flames (in particular the ones above his head) as real flames, but deciding I risked it looking too cartoony and not practical especially as there is no "source" for the flames to be coming from.


Something I haven't done before is give a sense of scale of the Primarchs (apart from the casualties on the bases). But here is Vulkan standing next to a Salamanders Captain. Massive difference.....


My favourite base to date (although the photo is a little more washed out than I had hoped). In particular I think I nailed the Death Guard colours. I had originally intended to only have Salamaders on the base, but decided I needed a contrast so one became a Death Guard.


Here is Vulkan on his display base. It all fits together really well in construction and they even have a little spot to install magnets in the design. Very clever.


I didn't have the render on the walls initially. So, so glad my wife said I needed to add something as otherwise it would have been too grey.


I like how the skull pops compared to the rest of the colours and provides a focus to the very top of the model.


I really do get the feeling he has barged his way through a wall. I really enjoyed this model,

So there we have my fifth Primarch. Now I need to get Angron on the move so I can ship the two of them to my brother for Christmas and then I have no idea which ones I will do next. Although I really liked the look of Leman Russ who has just been released. Of course I will also be back to regular programming and hopefully churning out some Alpha Legion very soon.

Thanks for reading.

Vulkan looks amazing Archer, I really like how you did the green on the armour and cloak and yeah your wife was right the colour on the walls really makes a difference.

Vulkan is amazing, as always mate. I really do think the basing makes it look like he's just burst through the wall, ready to kick some butt!

What about Kruze for the next primarch? He has a pretty amazing model and I'd love to see what you can do with a skin cloak.

Great work on Vulcan, I love the vibrancy of his armour and your choice of spot colours on the rest of the miniature. Excellent stuff. Had no idea of the size of them so thank you for the scale shot.

Thanks guys. Appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately Freytag it has to be Angron next as I have the model in hand (well at least in a box). Definitely keen to do Kurze as I want to try to get his blue armour quite different to Robute.

Making some good progress and hope to have two chaos marine squads finished very soon. Need to sort out some spot colours as they are looking pretty monotone at the moment.

Nice work on Vulcan (or should I say Alpharius?!)

EDC

Wow, the armor on Vulcan is fantastic. You really did justice to a gorgous model.

So its been a very productive month. Finished off Vulkan and have now finished both Chaos Space Marine squads. Pretty happy with how the proposed colour scheme has worked on them. Maybe would have liked them a little more blue, but it does mean they will be very distinct from Ultramarines and Night Lords when I get around to doing them, oh and Thousand Sons, so many blue armies.

So onto some happy snaps:


I think I have gone with a relatively traditional Alpha Legion colours of silver trim and black weapons. Both squads have two melta guns and the Aspiring Champion has a Combi-Melta. Its hard to pick out, but the Aspiring Champion is a Betrayal at Calth Marine with a chaos marine back pack. All of the Chosen will be BaC marines as they are the Veteran core of the army and it suits they wear old armour. Also makes them nice and distinct from the rest of the army and that not too Chaosy look as they may have been "undercover".....


This is my go at some scales on the shoulder pad, not quite getting it, but from table height they look pretty good.


Squad number two, you may notice the guy in the back with the radio back pack. I have one in every squad as I figure the Alpha Legion are all about communication and the like. Think it adds a little bit of interest as I have avoided the really chaosy helmets.


I did manage to score a heap of Forgeworld Alpha Legion shoulder pads. So I have divided them up among the squads.


If you look closely at the two squads you will notice the shoulder pads are on opposite shoulders to each other giving them a little nod to the mirror image of the army. I use the eight pointed chaos shoulder pad on every marine in the army and the opposite one is either a blank one with the scales painted on it or a forgeworld shoulder pad. I think it is a nice subtle way of differentiating the squads as well as reinforcing the theme of two armies in one.

I have also used the GW Sector Imperialis bases for this army (as you saw on the Cultists) they look a little better I think on the Marines as they are bigger and show more detail. But they are a really quick and easy way of basing an army for not too bad a price.

Next up I will be either doing the Havocs or the Raptors. Oh and finally getting around to assembling Angron.

Thanks for reading.

Nice work on the AL, especially the scales.

EDC

I agree. Well done on the scales mate. They look great.

Great work all round bud. Vulkan looks amazing, and the alphas look brilliant.

Great work repurposing the Necro gangers here, Archer. Vulkan looks really good, and damn! He is huge! The wall render adds a nice contrast to the model and really helps the green. The Alpha squads look very cool as well, and the scales have come up well. Looking forward to the next update!

Awesome looking work on Vulkan and the AL marines. I really like the (freehand?) scales on the shoulder pads, they look awesome. Keep up the good work!

Thanks all. Really appreciate the kind words. I have Angron in sub assemblies ready for undercoating (he is a lot smaller than Vulkan, probably more on par with Fulgrim in size and body shape, which kind of surprised me. All the photos make him look enormous). Kind of excited to get him done as while assembling him I got really interested in the model.

I also have the two Havoc squads based coated and ready for me to get stuck in. So hopefully by the end of the year I will have another twenty members of the Alpha Legion army done and Angron in time to ship with Vulkan to my brother for Christmas.

Wasn't Angron supposed to be the runt of the primarchs? I thought I remember reading that fluff somewhere...

I know his brothers referred to him as the undefeated or something. Not sure if it was because he was that good in combat or more as a jest. But he definitely looks like he may suffer from a serious case of small man syndrome.

Could the nickname 'the undefeated ' come from that he was never beaten in the gladiatorial arena? There's some interesting stuff in one of the World Eaters short stories about the chain of scars and his are all red to show he was never beaten.

EDC

Maybe, I am really short on World Eater knowledge. Which is a pity as I feel they have interesting potential as torture heroes that had little choice in their fate.

Hey all, does anyone know what is going on with the wargamerau.com website? I use it as a connection to local gamers and I seemed to be unable to get onto it. Not sure if it's me that is blocked or the website is experiencing issues.

I get a message that the account has been suspended. Might have forgotten to pay their host?

Yeah that seems to be the consensus of those I know who also use the site. Pity, I may have to finally get a facebook account to keep up to date with the gaming club I try (unsuccessfully) to game with.

I have been slowly working away this month with a lot of work getting in the way of valuable hobby time. But I have been making some progress although I have not been able to focus and have been getting little bits done across several things. But for now the focus is on the one, the only Angry Ron himself. Lord of the World Eaters Legion, Angron.

I was actually really excited about painting this guy, which unfortunately quickly dimmed as I got into the nitty gritty of him. I found he became very monotonous.


My photography is shocking or more to the point the light late at night. But I have tried to add some more colour and life to him apart from bronze and red.


I did stick with the stereotype of him crashing through his own troops in a desperate charge to the front lines.


I am very happy with the cloak. THe defining piece of the model that makes me like him a lot more than if he had a plain cloak like most of his brothers.


I decieded to add the white and blue of the Legion to his shoulder guard, kind of looks like a tilting plate. I thought it a good way of tying him to his Legion and adding subtle colour to an otherwise dull paint scheme.


They are very white, but contrast well against the metals of Angron. This was the first use of Blood for the Blood god and I really like the paint. Although I do not think it will be suitable for my idea of a blood splattered Wrold Eater Bezerker army........


More of the cloak. The best bit. Would hate to think what poor animal donated it to him.


Something I haven't done in the past and regret a little (since I have been doing them 2 at a time) is a comparison shot of two Primarchs. Vulkan is huge compared to Angron, really makes him appear tiny, even though marines appear tiny compared to angron.


They actually have a decent facing off pose compared to a lot of the sculpts.


He may be small, but I put my money on Angron any day of the week.

So there you have my current December progress. Pretty happy with him even though my interest began to run out. Now hopefully I can get the Bastion out of the way quickly (I consider it a piece of terrain only so am not lavishing attention on it and want it dirty to boot). Then maybe I can convince myself to focus back on the Alpha Legion as I have 20 Havocs looking accusingly at me for neglecting them after quickly getting them up to the silver trim stage.

Thanks for reading.

Excellent work, that cloak is stunning, you really nailed it. These guys are huge really aren't they.

Nice work on Angron, he looks great, makes me feel guilty as I still haven't painted mine :/

EDC

Awesome work - Angron is looking really good! Can't wait to see some more progress on the Alpha Legion

No progress to speak of but wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and I hope to get some painting done in my downtime between now and New Year.

If I don't post up before then make sure you and yours have a safe festive season and will see you all bright and early for more painting insanity.

Thank you all for your support and following my progress this year (still hoping for more before the end of the year).

Thanks for reading.

Merry Christmas to you too! Looking forward to more cool stuff in the new year!

EDC

And a Merry Christmas to you, too mate!

Hi all, the New Year is very rapidly approaching, but I have kept the nose to the grind stone of hobby; that's a lie, the wife and I popped down to the Nation's Capital to take in a couple of exhibitions and very nice dining. But the angel that is my wife encouraged me to take some hobby gear with me and we did have a little down time to paint and because of that I have managed one more painting update for the year. So behold, the next addition to my Alpha Legion forces:


The first squad of Havocs. I know, I know, I should have all the same weapons to maximize their effectiveness. But I just can't deal do it. I am hoping that there is a cross over of effectiveness with the double Autocannon shots and Frag Missiles for infantry and they should be able to threaten light vehicles fairly effectively.


They are painted in exactly the same way as the previous Chaos Marine squads, which in itself is the problem with the Power Armoured armies as they don't really lend themselves to a lot of diversity (outside of Dark Angels and Blood Angels with their different squads). But it does take the thinking out of the army.


And here is the second squad of Havocs. I see the Chaos Marine Squads with the Melta Guns or the soon to be started Raptor Squads as my dedicated anti tank or heavy infantry squads. The two Havoc squads are to deal with light vehicles and infantry as neither of the heavy weapons does all that well against heavy infantry or the tough vehicles.


To identify them from the Chaos Space Marine squads all of the models in the Havoc units have top knots. I think it is a nice subtle way of making them different without doing something drastic.


The group shot of both squads. I hope that having six cannon fodder marines before i start losing the heavy weapons means they should remain a threat for a few turns. Especially as I can have the two squads in two locations meaning it will be harder for the enemy to concentrate on them.

Thanks for reading this year guys. It humbles me that I have an audience for my work. But if I could ask a favour and get someone to put up a cheeky post because I would like to do a bit of a year in review and it would be nice for it not to automatically attach itself to this one.

Lovely colour palette Archer, love the Alphas. Nothing like having hordes of Marines and Cultists alike.

Year in review away my friend

Cheers Warboss Dakka.

So 2016 has flown by in a blur of activity of which I can barely believe. It was only May this year that I started a new job (and am still loving it). I feel as if I have not had time to scratch myself and here I am looking back at the year that was on the Hobby front. I decided after seeing quite a few quality blogs taking the time to review their own year of hobby that it was a great idea. I did set myself some goals at the beginning of the year as well. I didn't keep going back to see if I was achieving them, as I want to never see my hobbies as a chore and didn't want to put added pressure on myself.

But as 2016 is soon to be a thing of the past, it is time to have a closer look at what I managed to achieve........

The first thing I wanted to do was to try and keep the blog rolling forward and I set the ambitious task of trying to grow it a whole 10 pages. Unfortunately I was perhaps not as active as I had hoped and therefore, my progress was a little stifled. But with the help of the community the blog has grown a full 6 pages and I am truly appreciative of the community popping by to see what I am wrestling with. I follow quite a few blogs and it can be hard to find the time to post comments. So I truly do value the feedback I receive. I may not have hit the 10, but will count it as a victory, 6 pages is definitely nothing to complain about.

The second goal was pretty easy and that was to knock of the pair of High Elf Dragons to finish that oh so tiny army. I still think thus far the High Elves are the best looking army that I have painted. (Which bought my yearly model count to 2!)

Next was the goal that is the driving force behind this blog and that is painting armies. In 2015 I had almost done 4 and I wanted to see if I could better that. The answer is a resounding no. I fully painted 2 armies this year, being the Tyranids and Bretonnians. Initially I was a liitle disappointed, but on reflection I feel that two of the armies in 2015, namely the Eldar (who I had a few almost already painted models) and the High Elves (who only had a 37 model count army) gave a somewhat distorted result to the number of armies I had completed. Plus the Tyranids had all of those damned Termagants that officially were not part of the army anyway and the truly individual nature of the Bretonnians meant I spent a lot of time on them. But with the Tyranids (110 models) and Bretonnians (48 models) my yearly count reached 160 models.

I am also 80 out of 116 models into the first of my Chaos Space Marine armies, the Alpha Legion. So I almost got them done. So again. I may not have achieved 4 armies, but did get a lot of painting towards my army goal done. (Plus the 80 Alpha Legion models brought me to 190 models for the year).

On another hobby side I really wanted to play more games as I feel I was being a little bit of a hermit and needed to get the models out and about more. I definitely feel I have done well here with regular fortnightly games of X-Wing in a very well written and fun campaign that unfortunately is drawing to a close. But this will hopefully lead to more games and fun. I have started regular games with a good friend and his budding Space Wolf army (and keeping him on his toes as I have so many armies to choose from). However, due to work commitments I did not manage one meeting with the games club I consider to be my local which was really disappointing as there are a number of new players now attending and it is great to see the club picking some more numbers up. 2017 will be different I swear it.

I also even managed some D&D which is my first true gaming love. One of my very long term friends out of the blue asked if I was interested and we managed half a dozen linked games with me as the DM and a regular cast of 3 (plus a couple of drop ins each game). I am super keen to do more in 2017 and would absolutely love to dust off my faithful Swordmage and get into it as a player. Anyone know of a D&D group with a spare chair?

Possibly the biggest gaming coup of the year however, came when my Wife sat down and played X-Wing against me. We started small with a couple of unmodified Z-95's a side and she flew surprisingly well scoring a victory against me and she is happy to play some more. Plus, she has put her name down to have a bit of a bash at D&D so that could be interesting......so 2016 has been a very good year fro gaming (albeit missing the club) so hopefully I can continue from there.

Oh and I almost forgot I played in a doubles tournament (which I definitely was hesitant initially). I ended up having a really good time and encountered a lot of different builds that I have never seen before. And as it turned out (mainly because of my legend of a partner) we managed to scrape first place by a single point. It all came down to the final game which ended in a dead draw which meant we managed to hold onto first place. It was a fantastic day with a really great finish.

I had intended to paint a second Blood Bowl team or do my Marienburg Warband for Mordheim that has languished in a box for years. But as it turned out I just didn't manage to get to them (plus I had other things that kept getting moved up the queue).

So for the things I had intended to do in 2016 I feel I was pretty successful, not 100%, but enough to make me feel like I had a great 2016 for hobbying. But of course I had a few other things that crossed my painting table which pushed my results along quite well.

I painted a further 4 Primarchs for my ongoing gift to my Brother; this time it was Corax, Fulgrim, Vulkan and Angron in the nick of time for Christmas. They are spectacular models and I have really, really enjoyed the break they give to the hordes of Termagants and Alpha Legionnaires. Looking forward to doing some more in 2017, his Brithday is happily positioned halfway into the year so gives me plenty of time to get some ready. Not that I have any models left. (Models painted for the year: 194)

I rebased my Iron Hands army this year to put them onto the 32mm bases GW has now moved their Marines onto. I have to admit that it makes them look a lot larger and I think it was a great decision to do them.

I painted a random Salamander Captain model, for no reason other than I kitbashed the model a while ago and felt a need to do something a little different. One day I will get to the army that he will lead. For now he gave a great scale shot next to his Primarch. (195)

I also knocked out an Objective marker that I feel sort of suits the Alpha Legion and their use of propaganda in the form of a reported and TV camera (196). It was a bit of fun and made use of a bits box that is now huge and so full of parts it is a little ridiculous. I think I could probably make 30 Space Marines and 20 Imperial Guardsmen out of the spare parts and I think there is probably a Rhino and Land Raider chassis in there somewhere too.

My final painting accomplishment is 104 Mighty Empires/Planetary Empires hex tiles form GW that will be pressed into service in an upcoming Campaign with my friend and his Space Wolves. Now if I counted them in the painting count (which I definitely will as I fully painted both sides of the tile) my yearly total arrives at a pretty nice figure of 300 models. I could add in the 33 Iron Hands I rebased, but feel a little dodgey if I did. So am happy to stick to the nice round 300. Not a bad total for the year.

I also need to put a special mention to Azazelx and his tale of Painters that he ran in 2016, having that little extra support to get models painted every month really, really assisted in keeping progress flowing. Thanks for the leg up Azazel. I have signed up to the challenge again, but this time around it will be Dysartes at the helm and I am hoping for a similar level of motivation.

In conclusion, 2016 saw 300 odd models painted, lots of games played and 2.69 armies painted. I put that down as a major win.

The question that remains now, is what does 2017 hold?

The first goal will of course to be to knock off the remianing Alpha Legion, that is two squads of 10 Chosen (using Betrayal at Calth marines), one Terminator squad of 4, two squads of 5 Raptors and 2 Chaos Lords to lead the lot of them. Hopefully I will have them done by March (that is only 12 models a month).

Then it will be back to fantasy and I have a lot of them available to paint already. I have the following armies fully purchased and ready to assemble/paint: Tomb Kings (again), Empire (again), Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs (yep Forgeworld beauties all of them), Bretonnian (again) and Beastmen. So if you are interested get your votes in for what are up next......

I would like to aim for three completed armies in 2017, not including the Alpha Legion who are so close to being finished. So that would be 2 Fantasy armies and 1 40k army........

Would like to grow the blog at least another 6 pages, that should be achievable if I continue my current level of progress.

Would like to try to sort out a modular, TRANSPORTABLE, gaming surface. I started a thread asking for ideas on this and had a lot of quality feedback. Just need to sit down and try to make something of the advice I received. I have a lot of terrain that I think looks pretty damn good, so it would be nice if I could get more use out of it.

So in short:
- Finish Alpha Legion
- Paint 3 armies (2 Fantasy, 1 40k)
- 6 more blog pages
- Modular, mobile gaming surface
- Start 40k campaign and post progress within the blog
- Get back to the NSW Northern Knights for some games!

Keep your fingers crossed for me and 2017 and I wish you all a happy and safe New Year. Looking forward to seeing you all on the other side.

Thanks for reading.

Sounds like you've got a busy 2017 ahead of you!

EDC

You are a maniac! Impressive project, and amazing to see how far you have gotten!

You should really link the first page of this thread to your completed projects so it is easy for new viewers to see your arrayed forces and be awed by your perseverance

Do you mean link the first page in my signature? Otherwise I am not sure what you mean about completed projects.

In the first post of this thread, where you list all the planned projects, the finished ones can link to the page where that project is finished: so the finished projects look like this:
Space Marine Army - Taskforce of the Garrsak Clan Company ‘Skythaal Incident’

You can use the "Direct Link This Post" to get the correct links.

Ok cool. Will definitely do that. Thanks for the lesson.

So I have now update the first post to have links for each completed army and the post that the finished photos appear in. thanks to Illumini for the idea and how to do it. Definitely gives a better feel to the first post. You may need to scroll down the linked post to reach the final photos, but I think I have them all correct.

Gee I had not realized that I haven't posted on here since the 2nd of the month. That is very slack of me, although I have been popping in on the other amazing work going on. But I have too been busy (mainly with dull real world stuff) and it's time to show some of my progress. The Alpha Legion is progressing nicely with now only two squads of Chosen, 4 man Terminator squad and the 2 Lords to finish off. That must mean I have knocked out the Raptors?


Wait, that's not a Chaos Raptor. That's a Bastion.......yup I also managed to get this painted. I went for a fairly drab and weathered effect as it is effectively terrain and didn't want it to stand out on the tabletop too much. It is a very imposing structure so when it is used it will still dominate the battlefield.


I am really impressed with how it came out with VERY little effort. Just slopped a couple of washes all over it and let them run and it formed some pretty nice water marks.


I did spend a little more time on the Icarus Lascannon though as it will be a focal point of the structure. Really like the contrast between the blue and the rest of the model.


The Lascannon still swivels up and down and the fact it isn't glued in can swing around as needed.


I picked the Bastion up very cheap with the Lascannon, but it had no Comms Relay, so I thought I would dig through my bits box and see if I could find some inspiration to create one of my own. As you can see I succeeded and now have an antenna festooned Relay to summon my reserves.


The hatch I have on the bottom as a happy coincidence fits the ring on the top of the Bastion so it fits snugly up top. Very happy about that. I do also have an Aegis Defence Line with Quad gun as well so I have the full choice of options for the Bastion, but the Defence line and Quad Gun are actually going to be part of the Imperial Fist army I will do so will be painted to fit that army (ie with yellow).


But I did promise you some Raptors and here is the first squad. I am pretty happy with them, they are large and striking and pretty damn obvious. They came together as a happy accident when cruising eBay for cheap Raptors and I was wondering what I should do when I came across a vendor selling 9 of these old school Batwing Raptors and I liked the idea of using them as other Chaos Marine armies will have quite a few Raptors so these will be quite distinct.


I got lucky as you can see and ended up with 5 with the gargoyle type head and 5 with the horned head, so that made breaking them into 2 squads very easy. The shoulder pads are also reversed between squads as per the previous units painted. These small units have a Melta gun and the Champion has Melta bombs so hopefully they will be able to slip around the enemy and take out some enemy armour.


A nasty close up of a couple of the gargoyle headed Raptors. An interesting side note was that I didn't read the eBay description on the Raptors and they were missing one back pack, after a lot of cursing and searching for a replacement and coming up with nothing I bit the bullet, pulled out my patternmakers cap and cast myself a replacement. But don't tell anyone. It is very hard to pick the offending backpack except for the weight difference.


So here is my January painting progress. The Alpha Legion colours are growing on me as I paint them so very happy having done them this way. Very easy to keep consistent and not hard to batch paint. The Bastion was a welcome diversion so I definitely think I will crack out a few buildings I have yet to apply any paint to and use them as a quick and dirty diversion when I need one. Slowly plodding away at the terrain backlog that I have.

So I am on the downhill run with these guys now so hopefully I will have them finished by the end of March. Then I will be moving on to an Engineering themed Dwarf army......

Thanks for reading and I will try really hard to be more involved.

Excellent stuff. The bastion looks great and the improvised comms relay is brilliant.

Love those Batwing Raptors, a really great find and the paint job is looking top to boot!

EDC

Fancy stuff, the raptors an bastion are great. Bit envious, I always courted chaos from afar, and the GW buildings are pretty cool.

You're secret safe with me

Like the Bastion colour (much more of a believable shade). Love the old school Raptor packs as well!

Thanks for the comments guys. I appreciate the feedback. I think I am going to do a similar scheme on a few of the GW buildings that I have had sitting around for absolutely ages. It is really quick to do and since they will be purely terrain (as the Bastion is a fortification and deserved a little more attention) I will probably avoid detailing them too much. Would be fantastic to have a full table of ruined buildings.

This lot is looking spectacular, really good job, and nice work with the scheme, they look right to me, not too silly. That is not coming out right, what I mean is so often you see SM looking ridiculous in silly bright colours, you have achieved a nice balance, not too silly, but still ostentatious.

So I have been pretty quiet over February, I cannot begin to express just how much stuff is going on in our household already this year and it has been causing all sorts of distractions. But I will hold off on any announcements for a little while yet. Suffice to say that I am in a very good place at the moment and really feel that this year is going to be a great one. Would also like to thank those who stop by and comment and keeping the blog rolling on at a nice pace. I appreciate you taking the time to stop in. But even among the movements of the real world I have managed to be head down and bum up with painting and I am now very close to finishing off the Alpha Legion.....


First up is the enigma of the army, the Terminators that do not have a matching squad. They are painted in exactly the same way as everyone else, except I have added a little bright orange to make them just that little bit different to highlight they are different to the rest of the army.


The squad is a mirror of itself in weapons. You may recognize the colour scheme of the unfortunate Tyranid on the Chaos Champions rack.....


So this is the first squad of Chosen. I think the use of the MKIII (or is it MKIV) really sets them apart from the traditional Chaos Marines. I like the idea they are pretty sleek and imagine they keep it that way for enhanced infiltration.


I kept them fairly simple in weapon loadout, a pair of Plasma Guns and Power Swords allowing them to engage effectively at any distance.


This is Chosen squad 2. Identical except the shoulder pads are reversed (just like in the rest of the army).


The Champions in both squads have the most ostentatious of all backpacks, perhaps showing them slowly losing sight of the Legions objectives and getting a little too chaosy.


So here you see my February progress. Another 24 Alpha Legionnaires. Very happy with how they have come together. Now it leaves me with just the two Chaos Lords to finishe the army. Or does it.......

I seem to have arrived at a bit of a problem. I picked up the Traitor Legions codex supplement that has rules for each of the 1st founding Legions and I am very happy that I can add rules to the themes of my Chaos armies again. The available Alpha Legion rules are very nice and I feel fit the themes very well. However, in looking at how to build the army my current list fits into it almost perfectly as if I new what was going to be necessary. Except, if I want to run the Alpha Legion Insurgency Force I would need to run a Core and Auxiliary choice to qualify. Looking at the choices available it turns out that I would simply need to add in a Dark Apostle and I would be right to get the extra Alpha Legion benefits.

So, the question being, do I drop a Chaos Lord and replace him with a Dark Apostle. Ignore the Insurgency Force (and the opportunity for a little more flavour from rules) or try to prune the list, keep both Lords and add the Apostle?


This is where I was up to with the Chaos Lords, I have used the plastic Aspiring Champion model and converted them to be a mirror image of each other. Removing horns and daemonic faces on the opposite side of each model as well as swapping the weapons and adding different shoulder pads so that just like the rest of the army they are mirrors of each other. Fluff wise they are twins (just like the Primarchs get it ;-))

But with the option of this extra Alpha Legion only formation I am super tempted to turn one of them to a Dark Apostle. So, what is the thoughts of those out there? I was thinking maybe convert the model again to have the power maul and some suitable pages of litany etc. to make him more Dark Apostley rather than buy a different model. That way they still look similar but one twin has followed the military route and the other has gone the path of the Demagogue. Any ideas on how to pull off the conversion? The mace is easy, surely I have some "purity seal" style bits in my collection. But would it be enough for an opponent to accept?

Thanks for reading and really keen for your thoughts as I want to get the army finished!

The Alphas look great, Archer.

If you want my advice, I'd say stick with the twin lords, and add in an Apostle. Then vary the on-table army to taste in each battle. That way you get to keep the twins as mirrors of one another, and all you need to do is add/paint one additional model above and beyond. Seeing the work you've done on the Primarchs, I'd imagine that you'd enjoy going to town on a hero like that - and doing so without the need to mirror - somewhat like the Termies.

I agree. The twin lords really fit the alphas, so if you can make room some other way I would do that

Both Lords look pretty awesome (even reversing the helmet, I think the theme is great), but one of them could always BE an Apostle. Plenty of brothers in media can look similar, but excel at different skills. Just my thoughts, I wouldn't waste those models you've made!

I will have a play around with the list tonight and see what presents itself. Then I will have a clearer idea of my real options.

I will also post some photos of a game I had a couple of nights ago. 2,000 points of Orks vs Eldar in 3rd edition 40k. The orks move back in editions remarkably well. I haven't reviewed the photos I took yet, but hopefully they are usable.

Nice job on the Alpha Legion. Really like the shoulder pads.

Looking forward to seeing your 3rd ed pictures. That is something I have wanted to do for awhile, as I cant stand where the game is now, but still love the models and story. I actually really want to try 2nd ed as well. That's the edition I started with when I was a kid and would love to give it another go.

Ah, 3rd Ed. I loved RT and 1.5. I enjoyed 2e, but 3e was a real renaissance and breath of fresh air where troops were supremely useful and superheroes took a back seat.

You motivate me bro. I could start a similar page with my table trials. The building of two tables total play area 8 x 8 ft.

8x8 would be spectacular. Make sure to provide the link to the progress.

Yeah troops are awesome. Ork Nobz are absolutely brutal but losing 6 Killa Kanz to that 80 point Avatar just made me want to cry. But I did then shoot him to death with a massive unit of 'Ard Boyz/Shoota Boyz/Slugga Boyz who had mobbed up at various points during them game and that was satisfying as heck.

My first game was what sold me on 3rd - a squad of Imperial Guardsmen killed an Avatar in the shooting phase with their lasguns. A real WTF moment there as that would/could almost never have happened in 2nd edition.

And you've got me thinking about Alpha Legion as my next vaguely unformed Marine force that will need to be properly planned and fleshed out later. If only I could get my wife to wash their resin bits for me...

So as mentioned I had a rousing 2,000 point game of 3rd edition 40k on Monday night. I was pretty happy that the Ork army scaled "back" to the earlier edition with very little fuss. In fact the only model I couldn't get into a single FOC was one of the Deff Dreds. It was a great game and was a pretty close run thing until the end. I did forget a couple of the armies rules that may (just may) have tipped things in my favor, but we didn't notice until after the fact and it didn't effect the enjoyment of the game. But next time the Greenskins will have their revenge.


Here is a shot at my deployment, we set up in opposite quarters and you can just see a Wraithlord that was set up first to force me deeper in my deployment (couldn't start within 18" of the enemy). But by turn two though I had my revenge and managed to gun it down with not very Orky accuracy and a disgusting amount of luck.


Unfortunately no one told the boys they were going up against something equally green so I think it confused them for a while who to shoot at. Don't be confused, they aren't my Eldar, turns out my opponent had the same idea of green and purple for his Eldar.......beautifully painted army, but stupidly hard to pin down.


That damn Avatar, I fed it 6 Killa Kanz and when I charged it I felt confidant they would be fine, but due to a bottle neck of terrain I just couldn't get enough klaws at once and every turn it seemed a Kan or two blew up. The good news was the Avatar took a couple of wounds from exploding baby dreads. That 5++ save is not very good.......but he is only 80 points. He managed to get through the 6 Kanz with a single wound remaining which I chose most unorky to shoot to death.


I spent several turns messing around in cover as there were 3 War Walkers doing horrible things to my Mobs on the opposite flank, I really should have sent the Kanz against them rather that the Avatar, but eventually I got up the courage to cross the divide and massed Big Shoota fire held the War Walkers in check until the Warboss and his Nobz could redress the balance.


We were trying to capture table quarters, which in the end I lost 2 uncontested to 2 contested. My opponent did a good job of holding a Falcon and Vyper in cover and zipped them out at the end of the game to contest the two quarters I held. He played it well. But if it had gone on another turn I think I would have rolled his remaining forces.

Things i learnt:
Nobz are just absolutely nasty and they rampaged through Dire Avengers, War Walkers, Guardians and were set to smash the Farseer and Warlocks leading the Eldar if the game hadn't ended.
Trukks are FAST VEHICLES! I only realized after the game so robbed myself half of their potential movement the whole game. That could have been a brutal change.
Wraithguard are a horrible unit at close range. Made the poor Dreadnought disappear into the Warp in a turn. Solution; angry Meganob on his own charged and slowly chewed his way through them.

So all in all had a great time. Awesome opponent (who I normally play X-Wing with), fabulous table and terrain and looking forward to seeing how the other armies I have rack up in 3rd. I think the Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum as I have to take a command platoon (which I don't have) and can't squadron vehicles. I do remember experimental armored company for 3rd edition I think which may work......

Will look into the ALpha Legion list now to see where I am going with them.

Thanks for reading.

Great looking game there, Archer!

So it has turned out there was no way of trimming the army to fit the two Chaos Lords and a new Dark Apostle, so one of the brothers has handed his axe back to me and is currently undergoing his conversion to the fallen priesthood. Thanks to everyone for their input and ideas and I hope to bring you the twins soon ready to lead the army. I kind of like the idea of the scholar and the warrior duo. Am also pretty damn happy with the conversion, its simple yet leaves no doubt I feel that the two are different.

That looks like a brilliant game. Great table and the armies look awesome. Thanks for sharing, love to see these.

I have not managed a game in a while so it was nice and it just occurred to me randomly I should snap a few pictures. I have a 7th edition game against another good friend on Sunday so will hopefully take a few more. Not sure which army I should match against his slowly growing Space Wolves, may roll a dice to choose.......

Wicked pics from the game. Looks like it was a lot of fun.

I really like the AL on the previous page, nice job on the termies and the mirror image Chaos Lords are a brilliant idea for AL. Top work.

EDC

So we are a week into March and I am very happy to show off a couple of outstanding Alpha Legionnaires. This may turn into a long post, so I won't tarry with words. First up is the leader of this army. The Chaos Lord.....


I decided to keep the most heavily converted of the twins to keep as the Chaos Lord as I may use the same model in other armies into the future so it would be good to have him looking quite different to the stock model. However, I did take the knife to his twin to make him appear a little more holy (or should that be unholy) to take on the mantle of Dark Apostle.


These photos are pretty shocking, but it gets the idea across. If I was more patient I would wait for daylight to take my photos. But I am very happy with what was a very basic conversion that I think gives enough of the "cover in scripture" wacko that I feel a Dark Apostle needs to be but he still retains a large similarity to his twin. Thoughts?

So with the final models complete it can only mean one thing, the Alpha Legion are finished and its time for the army in review shots (albeit pretty crummy photos, I really need to stop photographing on the dining table).


The HQ of the army, with the Alpha Legion rules if the Lord bites the dust the Dark Apostle will immediately take over as the Warlord and therefore not give up slay the Warlord, I wonder if this rule also means Aspiring Champions can become your Warlord too?


The troops and backbone of the army, two squads of Chaos Marines and 4 squads of cultists, ably played by Necromunda Gangers. Its a lot of models and with the Alpha Legion ability to potentially recycle destroyed cultist units on a 3+ I can afford to play them fairly aggressively early on. Plus to boot the Marines and Cultists all get to infiltrate......


The elites of the army (sort of Chosen are troops for Alpha Legion). But with the Chosen, Cultists and Marines infiltrating (that's 8 units) plus the Terminators and Raptors deep striking this army could be on the enemy very quickly.


The fast attack is brought by my tiny Raptor squads. They will be a nuisance to the enemy at best, but with melta guns and melta bombs they could make an opponent regret ignoring them. I hope.


The Heavy support of the army (I don't expect much in the way of tank hunting from these guys) hopefully I will be able to really put the hurt on light infantry. Plus its another 20 power armoured bodies with pretty good firepower that will be hard to shift off objectives.


And here we have a horde of Marines. It's a pretty damn big army with 72 Power Armoured Bodies, 4 Terminators and 40 cultists, of which 80 are infiltrators and 14 deep strikers it could really put the pressure on the enemy very quickly.


With the development of the Traitor Legions book I have shifted the army to be 2 separate formations. This is the Lost and the Damned (Dark Apostle and Cultists). Allows for the Cultists to respawn (maybe).


The other formation is a Chaos Warband (which is everything else). So many Marines.

So there you have it. My completed Alpha Legion army, very happy with the overall affect. I also think they will be a handful on the tabletop which will be interesting to see. Can't wait to see them in their first game. Things i have learnt? Marines definitely lend themselves to my batch painting style, they have enough detail to still be interesting but a lot of flat areas that a basecoat, wash and highlight makes look good very easily. I am glad I used the Necromunda Gangs as it gives them a second life. Makes me think I should dig out that Marienburg warband I have half painted and turn them all into a massive free company unit for the second Empire army I want to do. Things I would do differently? Spend more time on the Characters. I did rush the Lord and Apostle, but persuaded myself that Alpha Legionnaires shouldn't stand out. I think they are good. Just perhaps not good enough. We will see, the models themselves help to lift my slightly messier than usual painting above the rank and file. I didn't burn out as quickly on these guys as I have with other armies and I can't quite put my finger on why. Hopefully I keep that momentum going into the next couple of armies.

Speaking of games, I am having a small game against my Space Wolf playing mate and his whole collection (being 1110 points....) so anyone have an idea which army I should use to continue his education into the world of 7th edition 40k? Our last game was against the Orks which was fun and I learnt that counter attacking power armoured vikings were actually pretty tough for the Boyz to handle after that first round of combat. I was thinking maybe Eldar, but that could be overly traumatic with all their insane synergies. Maybe Tyranids? They would look striking against the grey of his Wolves. He currently has little to know way of dealing with Heavy Armour so the Astra Militarum is probably out for now.

So with the Alpha Legion now behind me. I have an interesting choice. My regular X-Wing opponent (the guy who has the lovely table my orks took on the Eldar on) has proposed a 3rd edition slow grow campaign, which should help me get another army to the tabletop with an extra level of motivation. However, I do feel like I want to continue the alternating between Fantasy and 40k. So, in the strange little world that is my mind I am tossing up the idea of doing two armies at once alternating units; which potentially has the chance of keeping me from getting over a particular army as I can switch focus. However, it runs the risk of getting completely derailed as I will lose that singular focus on one army that I feel has served me so well thus far. I could potentially do the Fantasy army and then we move the campaign to later in the year (as we are still finishing off our X-Wing campaign, but that is getting towards the finish line).

If it helps I have narrowed down the next armies to either be, Necron, Dwarfs (artillery heavy) or do them both at the same time.

Thanks very much for reading and please don't be shy about stopping in and leaving a comment or too. Love to hear from other hobbyists.

As I am a proud player of the Bearded Legions (Dwarves) I say start with those. But, I do know that alternating between two different armies is a very good way to get stuff done. So why not do both armies?

Awesome stuff Archer, I think the Apostle is a great conversion. Well done.

The Alpha Legion look excellent Archer, love the army shots.

I vote do both army's they both have lots of metal!

Necrons should be easy to paint unless you choose a difficult scheme. Artillery heavy dwarfs also doesn´t sound that model intensive, so I think you can do both at once!

Hi all, I reallly appreciate the thoughts. The consensus is I give both armies a go. So I will do just that. I plan on a fairly "traditional" Necron scheme, but will definitely try painting I think either the head and chest a colour or maybe the arms and legs? That would be very different. May make them a little C3PO from episode 7. But could work.

I have begun the repairs to some of the dwarfs (being second hand my collection needs some tlc) Not on the paint side fortunately but the assembled models need some work.

Will hopefully manage to post the lists up this weekend so everyone knows where I am going with them.

That Alpha army is stunning bud, truly stunning. Fantastic work.

Can't wait to see the next lot. Necron's are cool, look forward to them, but love me some dwarves, so really looking forward to that bit.

Hi all,

No painting to report. Although I am slowly working my way through repairs and wholesale hacking of the 30 Thunderers I need for the Dward Engineer guild. There is one problem with taking second hand models. The condition can vary so much. But should have them ready for some paint in the near future. Figure I would work on the 3 units of Thunderers at once and get them done before moving onto the Necron.

But this post is to show off a few pretty pictures from the game I managed today. 1110 points a side (yeah I know it is a strange number, but it was effectively the entire Space Wolf collection my mate has to date. So we threw done at the NSW Northern Knights (my regular games club) for a game. There is no real chronology to these photos. I sort of snapped them throughout the game when opportunities arose (or I remembered to).


This was my left flank at the start of the game (we were doing the diagonal deployments) or at least at the end of my opponents first turn. I was initially concerned that with 2 Dreadnoughts (and Venerable to boot) would be too hard for the Space Wolves to deal with (as they lacked any serious anti armour) but I was sorely wrong........


Softly, softly trying to sneak over to an objective (pretty standard mission 3 points for each objective, plus slay the warlord, first blood and linebreaker).


Some nice terrain is on offer at the club, makes for very nice games. As you can see the Rhino is making good use of the smoke. It actually managed to save a glancing and penetrating hit whilst concealed by smoke.

[imghttps://mycrazyarmyplan.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/img_1841_zps7gxz4t4o.jpg[/img]
You may wonder why this Iron Hands squad is all grouped up nice and close? Well you see after a serious tactical blunder from me (and an incredible Vindicator shot from my opponent) my Warlord (being a Techmarine with Conversion Beamer and Servitors) simply disappeared from the board and it also clipped this squads Rhino making it explode and killing two Tactical marines to boot. SO, in one shot my opponent who is supposed to be a novice at this game claimed first blood and slay the warlord. It was going to be an uphill battle for the poor Iron Hands.


If I was handing out man of the match awards the Thunderfire cannon would get third place. He kept up a steady salvo for the entire game, but after an amazing first three turns he just lost all sense of direction.


Making masterful use of the mobile cover of the Rhino the Grey Hunters avoided the attention of the Assault Cannon toting Venerable and another Techmarine. Their shooting took a heavy toll on the poor Tacticals. So glad I didn't Combat squad them.


A turn later the Tactical squad fell back to hold onto an objective in my deployment zone and the Venerable and Techmarine tried to blow the damn Rhino out of the way, but simply reduced it to a convenient wreck that the SPace Wolves could continue to hide behind.


Mental note from this game: Vindicators are BAD! Not only losing my Techmarine and his conversion beamer )and servitor bodyguard) and a Rhino, it destoryed my Venerable with Twin Lascannon and Missile Launcher (although I completely forgot Venerable's can have a reroll on the damage chart........stupid me.


This was the second of my tacticals, they did combat squad and one half held up a Grey Hunter pack for 3 turns before the Wolf Guard Terminators arrived with predictable results. This half had a few shots at various targets with there own missile launcher to little effect but managed a crazy overwatch result to kill 4 Grey Hunters with a Wolf Lord, I was pretty happy with that before the Wolf Lord lay about them also with predictable results. Although I take it as a moral victory that the Terminators charged in to finish the last Tactical off here too.


Second mental note: Wolf Guard are annoying as heck. Plus I don't like that charging a vehicle front on and they get to attack the rear armour. We had a bit of a discussion as to what effect the first turn of combat is resolved against the armour facing you charged would have. Going to try it in our next game. Not that it would have saved this poor Rhino from a Thunder Hammer and Powerfist. Although I claim it as a victory as in the ensuing explosion one fo the Terminators should have been wearing a helmet as he died along with the tank....jokes on them. At least the Rhino and hull point markers looked good on the battlefield.

So after a tense game where I thought I had handed it to him on a silver platter in turn one, I stuck with it and probably due to greater experience and a little luck managed to walk away with a very bruised win 9 points to 8 (all my points coming from objectives as I didn't get his Warlord or line breaker.

I learned a lot as it has been a while since I have had the 7th edition generals hat on. Its a little hard going from different games and different editions and keeping all the rules straight. But we had a good time, the game flowed really nicely and it was a very nice tight contest. Just need to stop the crazy tactical mistakes of the Iron Hands may just sack me as a Commander (or worse).

Thanks for reading and hopefully next time I will have some painted Dwarfs to show.

Looks like fun. Board looking good. You snuck a win there.

By thin skin of my teeth I snuck a win. Got very lucky with the game ending as soon as possible (at the end of turn 5) as another turn and his vindicator and remaining Wolf Guard Terminators and lord would have rolled the little I had left. So after some very poor movement and tactics from me early on I got some very lucky dice roles to put me in the lead. Next time I think my mate will have more grasp of the game to make me pay for my mistakes.

Hi all, another post with no updates, but I swear they are coming. But I have news that wish to share with my hobby of community. I have mentioned in the past (I think) that previously my wife was diagnosed with an auto immune disease that in her case became quite serious and with no joke or humour intended we were effectively planning our wedding and her funeral at the same time.

Now the forces that be (and some very dedicated doctors) she is alive and kicking. As healthy as can be expected and I thank every day how lucky we were and I am to have her in my life (just look at the hobby lunacy she allows). But her condition requires extensive and risky surgery that undoubtedly saved her life but left some questions over whether she would be able to bear children.

We have been trying for the best part of two years with all manner of fertility treatments (although we hadn't reached the IVF stage yet). At the beginning of the year we decided to put a hold on all of that and focus on improving our financial position. This also led to us looking for a new, larger house. So we have secured ourselves a loan and have been feverishly searching for a new abode to house all of my models. And dogs, and birds, and fish, and a crotchety old cat. Oh and the wife can come too. Sydney property is a bit of a pain. But we are intent or escaping into the mountains for some peace and serenity.

So with this feverish search going on, you could excuse me for being somewhat shocked when my darling wife dropped the bombshell on me about 10 weeks ago that she was pregnant. Out of the blue, free from all drugs and potions. To say I was speechless was an understatement.

Now here we are having just had the 12 week scan seeing all the arms and legs where they are supposed to be. Even the hemispheres of a tiny developing brain of our child slowly developing. It is a truly awe inspiring moment. So with the thumbs up from doctors that everything going well and my wife being in some of the best health in many years (minus perhaps the morning sickness, scratch that all day sickness) it is looking very bright on the horizon.

Does put a bit more interest on finding a more suitable home, but the dogs are fiercely protective of her and I am as happy as an ork wielding a choppa.

So fingers crossed all going well we will have another member to our family that I can slowly corrupt to the dark side of the plastic crack.

Thanks for reading.

That is so wonderful, congratulations and best wishes.

Gingernut biscuits will help with the sickness. And it is funny with these things how when you stop trying too hard it comes naturally.

Thank you so much for sharing, you have brightened my whole week up, thank you.

Congratulations mate, looks like life's rollercoaster is on its way up for sure! Happy for you mate, you've given me a big old smile.

Wow, I haven't checked in in a while, and you've done a bunch of awesome work.
Congratulations on the news!
Nice to see some games as well, I personally help think they motivate hobby - not that you've needed it!

Wow Archer, that's amazing and fantastic news mate. Congratulations to you both!

That is awesome news. Congrats on everything!!!

Congrats man! Good luck on your search!

Your Alpha Legion Army looks amazing dude. Excellent work.

And yes, you warlord will keeping jumping to ANY character model it dies, including Champions and Cultist Champs! The only way for your opponent to get Slay the Warlord is to basically table you (or at least kill all your characters).

EDC

Huh. I just loaded this page again and saw the army shots which I had not seen. It took me a few minutes to work out I must have last browsed the thread from work, where some of the images (from some hosts) are blocked.

Awesome looking army there mate. That's a hell of a lot of marines!

Yeah I think only the Black Templar army I have slated has more marines in it.

Thanks for all the kind words folks. Really appreciate your thoughts.

Not sure if I am going to manage any actual painting progress this month, but I now have all of the Thunderers for the Drwarf army up on the painting table ready to go. Had to crack out the greenstuff as 8 of them have been re-purposed from great weapon warriors to Thunderers and the arms didn't quite match up. But that is all done as of now so maybe I can get to the brushes.

But, I have another distraction now that you can all help with.

Continuing on with the Primarch painting for my brother, the next two have arrived in my hot little hands. Which should I do first? Leman Russ of the Space Wolves or the often forgotten architect of it all (or was he....) Lorgar of the Word Bearers. Please let me know who you would like to see first.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have also realized that I never posted the army lists for the next armies in the painting queue, I must be slipping to break with tradition like this. So here they are:

The Throng of Kark Veng
Runelord Sven Svennson - Rune of Cleaving, Rune of Speed, Rune of Spellbreaking

Thane Mekl Mekllson - Battle Standard Bearer with Rune of Battle, Shield
Master Engineer Ulfi Ulffson – Dwarf Handgun
Master Engineer Olfi Ulffson – Dwarf Handgun

Guards of the Hold - Veteran Barka, Musician, Standard Bearer, 16 Dwarf Warriors, Shields
Defenders of the Hold - Veteran Burku, Musician, Standard Bearer, 16 Dwarf Warriors, Shields
Voice of Kark Veng – Veteran Ullson, 9 Thunderers
Dwarven Know-how – Veteran Sigvul, 9 Thunderers
True Black Powder- Veteran Laksson, 9 Thunderers

Dwarven Pride - Cannon
Dwarven Perfection - Cannon
Death From Above - Gyrocopter
Beastslayer - Bolt Thrower, Flakkson’s Rune of Seeking
Vengeance of Kark Veng - Grudge Thrower with Rune of Accuracy

Perpetual Doom - Organ Gun
Fires from the Deep Places - Flame Cannon

The Reclamation Legion of Tomb World Fordris
Peacemaker Ezrykian, The Doom of Worlds - Overlord, Voidblade

The Lord’s Protectors - 10 Lychguard
The Necessary Evil - 10 Deathmarks

Indentured Soldiery - 10 Warriors
Lack of Empathy - 10 Warriors
Irrefutable Will - 10 Warriors
The Lost Legacy - 10 Warriors
The Favoured Few - 10 Immortals
The Lord’s Men - 10 Immortals, Tesla Carbines

Binary on the Wind - 6 Tomb Blades
Guides of the Reclamation - 6 Tomb Blades, Particle Beamers

Gateway to the Tomb - Monolith
Legacy of the Necron - Monolith

I vote for Russ, first.

Yeah I vote for Russ as well!

So even though that I do not have any painting progress to report, I have begun to assemble Leman Russ, seems people are far more interested in seeing him with some paint than poor Lorgar, no wonder he started the heresy when nobody else liked him. I have also undercoated the first of my dwarfs so should have some progress on them sometime soon. I am still looking for Necron to bolster that army but I have high hopes.

I have managed to have another 3rd edition 40k game this week which although I yet again was plastered but had a good time doing it. Here are a few happy snaps of what eventuated........


Here is my little horde of Tyranids. 1,500 point game. Since none of the big horribly gribblies existed back in 3rd edition the force is fairly basic. Unfortunately I didn't get to deploy first meaning I was forced back as my clever opponent deployed a Vindicator almost smack bang in the centre of the board meaning I had to deploy 18" further into my quarter.


Here is about half of the gorgeous Imperial Fist army that is soon to smash my poor Tyranids into the ground. That Vindicator and the Tacticals on the Hill (along with some pesky Scouts) were very sensibly placed. They easily outranged my Tyranids and their armour was proof against a lot of what I could throw out. And to add serious insult to injury they looked spectacular doing it.


Here we see my swarm begin to advance enmasse. Unfortunately it pretty much started to go down hill pretty quickly from here. I was paranoid about the firepower of the Imperial Fists punishing my Warriors and Zoanthropes (ably played by my Venomthropes) and had them hang back. Which turned out to be a bad mistake as it left my Termagants well ahead of the bigger bugs and unsupported. Lesson learnt.


We have started tinkering with the rules of 3rd edition. So in this game we were allowing fleet of foot/claw models to run and assault and also that when assaulting a vehicle the first round of combat must be resolved against the facing that is initially charged (which was bad for my toxin sac sporting termagants).


As can be seen here by this horde of Termagants (which with toxin sacs making them strength 4 meant they had a slim chance against the rear armour of this vindicator). They couldn't harm the tank in the first turn so in its turn it rolled back and dropped another demolisher shell squarely on top of them. It may have not been in my favor, but I don't like the fact that normally I would have charged that tank and resolved my attacks against armour 10 even though my charge move would not have been enough to even reach the rear facing. So I am keen to continue experimenting with this one.


For some reason I felt really confident on this flank, until the Scout Squad just off camera to the right charge the termagants locking them down and held them up long enough for the Tactical squad to leap out and come to their aid. Which soon was followed by an assault squad coming in to mop up the rest. I did have Tyranid Warriors with Rending claws get in and start wrecking things, but it ended up with three Veteran Sergeants with Power Fists hidden among the squads ripping them to pieces and there was nothing I could do. Veteran Sergeants properly equipped in this situation is just brutal.

What the Imperial Fists did so well was stagger their battle line which allowed them to counter anything I did really quickly. As they could sacrifice a unit (like the scouts) to slow me down or hold me in place while heavier hitters moved into position to destroy me.


Unlike me who ended up having my most dangerous units stuck way up the back doing nothing while the lesser creatures were being slaughtered with no support.

So I may have been well and truly smashed, but it was a good game. I thought I had done really well up to turn three when I quickly realized how isolated and strung out my horde had begun. I just couldn't bring the necessary forces to focus on one part of the enemies line allowing with them to deal with me piecemeal. Lesson learnt? Of course. I definitely need to play more games. I also probably need to pay a lot closer attention to what my army is capable of (especially the weapon ranges). I am also going to see if there are any Forgeworld 3rd edition beasties that my larger bugs can sub in as. Barbed Heirodule anyone?

Highlights? In the final turn of the game 4 Tyranid Warriors surrounding and gunning down a Terminator Librarian. Very satisfying. Also seeing the Nids finally get onto the battlefield, and in deployment fill the entire quarter.

Lowlights? 30 Termagants in combat with a tactical squad and Battle Leader and not killing a single marine until the third turn of combat. The dice just weren't with me. Also taking two turn of 3 Zoanthropes attempting to launch full power warp blasts at the vindicator before destroying it. (I kid you not. One turn two misses and a failed psychic test so no hits. The following turn another failed psychic test and a miss. So when I picked up the dice for the final shot i just thought it wasn't meant to be. But the dice gods allowed me a moment of relief when the warp blast hit and blew the vindicator to smithereens in one shot or in reality 6 attempted shots....(

Next time I play 3rd edition I think we may see the Alpha Legion make an appearance for the first time. Will see how effectively they can fill out a 3rd edition army.

Thanks for reading.

So last month was a bust on the getting models painted front (which I feel I have more real justification for than I have ever had before). But I have managed to kickstart the painting again this month. They won't win any painting awards and I consider they are probably below my usual standard. But, they have served a very important purpose to kick start me back painting and I am happy enough with them to have achieved that.

So halfway into the month and I have completed 30 Thunderers for my Dwarf army.


I did take the time to use three different colours for the beards and hair giving a little individuality. All of these dwarfs were second hand and some needed a little conversion and green stuff work to convince them to hold a handgun. But I think they are fairly decent conversion and without individual examination it doesn't leap out at you.


Initially I regretted the green clothes on the predominately green base. But it has grown on me somewhat. I am trying for a bit of a late thaw with the grass now appearing through the rapidly dwindling snow. Plus it ties them in with the High Elf Dragon army that I did a little while back.


These guys will be the solid shooting core of the army, positioning themselves between the blocks of warriors and if needed will try to gain a flank charge when the castle is finally assaulted.


Here is all three units together. Not fantastic. But finished and putting me well on the way to finishing the Dwarfs (as most of the points are taken up by the War Machines.....)


On a side note. This fellow on the corner of the unit with his stick and a handgun is a coversion of an older metal model. There will be a few old metal dwarfs making an appearance among the dwarf army as I have picked them up every now and then and they help round out some numbers as well as add a lot of class and character.

I have put just about every other model for this army into paint stripping mode as I decided that since they are metal I will take the opportunity to remove the paint rather than paint over them. Its been a while since I have done an army with so many metal models. They have a satisfying weight to them and it is oh so easy to remove paint from them.

I have now finished assembling Leman Russ to the painting stage and he has had a bath to try and remove some of that nasty release agent they often have on them. Hopefully I can get him started this week.

I am still chasing Necron models, after a strong start the leads have either fallen through or dried up, so I am tempted to try and knock out another Dwarf unit before switching to a Necron one.

Thanks for reading.

Hi all, quick update as I have. It done a heap of modelling or gaming since the last update of the dwarfs. Although I have been focusing on DMing a 2 player character campaign which has been a nice change of pace and a lot of fun. But a HEAP of work as I am writing the whole thing from scratch.

BUT, the purpose of this post is due to GW's recent announcement of the next 40k edition I am stepping up collecting the current codex's (codifies?) as they will be discontinued. As I would like to keep the collecting based on 7th edition if possible and modify the armies for 8th if I need to.

SO, if anyone has any of the following they would like to negotiate a sale (or a trade if I can accomodate it) I would be very interested.

Codex: Dark Eldar
Codex: Grey Knights
Codex: Tau Empire
Codex: Harlequins
Codex: Necrons
Codex: Deathwatch
Codex: Imperial Knights
Codex: Cult Mechanicus
Codex: Skitarii
Codex: Militarum Tempestus
Codex: Dark Angels
Codex: Chaos Daemons
Codex: Genestealers
Codex: Farsight Enclaves
Codex: Imperial Agents
Codex: Blood Angels
Codex: Space Wolves

I would potentially be interested in the supplements that floated around. It that would be second to the main codex acquisition.

Thanks for reading and let me know.

Those dwarves came out well. Really nice. Love the pics of the battlefield.

Great battle report, Imperial Fists look so cool on the field

Thanks Cam and Illumini,

I was pretty happy with how the tyranids and Imperial fists looked on the tabletop. Pity my Nids didn't give a better showing of themselves. But I think I was too conservative and should have trusted my numbers. But my opponent has discovered some old build your own tyranids monstrous creatures in white dwarf 258 or something that should soon see my big beasties take to the field in 3rd edition.

I hope to get some of the dwarfs out of the thinners tomorrow and cleaned ready for painting. But may have a brief stop to try out my Necron scheme. Will see if I can get productive.

The codex hunt is also going quite well.

So a tiny bit more progress on the painting front to round out April, although it is not anything to do with Dwarfs or Necron. I have been doing a tiny bit of cleaning up in preparation for when we finish settlement of our new house. I found this guy among my dreamed of but never completed Marienburg Warband for Mordheim and I was inspired to paint him.


I did enjoy painting the ogres the most of any army and they are so easy to paint due to the larger size.


He perhaps shows his age as he is a bit smaller than his fellow ogres, but is still packed with detail and I see him as the runt of the army due to being smaller and shock horror missing a gut plate.


I did keep with the planned Marienburg colour scheme just in case one day I assemble the crew and finish the warband off as he then can play dual roles as I had a look at the Ogre Kingdoms list and with some tweaks I managed to squeeze him in as a Maneater with a great weapon.


So here is what I managed for April, a little off topic, but some good progress.

I spent last night gluing and pinning a metal three rotor dwarf gyrocopter. It has been ages since I pinned a model. I also did all of the conversion/repair work on the Dwarf warriors for the Dwarf army (all 38 of them) so they are ready to go. I also received the last of the Necron Warriors I needed for the army so I may paint them first. They shouldn't be that hard should they?

Thanks for reading.

Nice work on the Dwarfs.

I'might sure you'Lloyd blast through the Necrons

EDC

Great work on both the mass of dwarves and the Ogre. Can you still take Ogre Mercenary allies for Dwarfs in the version of WHFB you're building for? Perhaps you could squeeze him and a couple of similarly-sculpted mates in?

Thanks guys.

Az, "officially" they are built around 8th edition. But since I have recently taken some of the armies onto the fields of several versions (right back to 3rd I think it was) and into Kings of War I think with those I am gaming with anything goes.

So stay tuned and we may see more fantasy battle reports than I have done previously. I hope. Just don't like posting photos with lots of unpainted armies as they aren't all that attractive.

I am still alive guys. Just have had a disappointing May being struck down with a wicked flu that has really taken the wind out of my sails in both motivation and ability to get out of bed.

Makes me wonder why I got the flu shot this year. First time in a long time and it didn't seem to do me any good.

But I am finally on the mend with some lovely drugs to speed the process along. So hopefully back to painting soon.

Thanks for checking in and reading.

All good mate, and good to hear that you're getting better!

Unfortunate, sounds like the jab gave you the flu. Don't push yourself too hard, don't want you losing motivation (especially with all these armies left to go!).

Still trying to get myself back together. I would say it was too long after the jab for it to have been the cause. But gee it has knocked me about.

Although I will be leaning on the community for some hobby advice on how to set up my new hobby space in the new house my wife and I purchased a little while ago. Plan to officially move into it once she goes on maternity leave. So a bit to do before that happens. One of which is I am framing up the inside of the shed to have a sealed hobby side and the other half will have all my tools and machines in it.

I will have a space that measures approximately 5,86m x 2.7m fully insulated and air conditioned hobby space. I want to obviously have a gaming table and shelves for books and models to display. Will have a corner desk for painting and the like.

But does anyone have any advice or ideas for what I should do/include/avoid in my setting the place up?

Any thoughts or advice most welcome.

Wall space is more critical than you might expect, so try to save as much of that as possible by making a lot of long but thin shelves to store your paint, and organise each colour range for the shelves. Makes painting so much easier and saves on space as well. I can't comment on making a table since I don't have one, but as for displaying armies - get a display cabinet, and try to add extra glass shelves to fit armies that don't have large models. You can get double the amount of armies in the same cabinet, but you can still see them all very well.

Hi everyone, hopefully there are a few still out there tracking my progress. I have gotten back in the swing of things (although still juggling my time). I have framed up the shed to have a hobby side and trade side. But more importantly I have gotten back to the painting table and now have 40 Necron Warriors assembled and undercoated. I also have two 38 Dwarf Warriors ready to be painted too. So hopefully the remains of this month will be a very productive painting month.

BUT, I need the help of those still with me as I have to figure out a scheme for my Necron. I want to keep it fairly basic, but different to the norm. To that end I have done a couple of test models. So please have a look and give me your opinions. Please forgive the mold lines as they are only test models. Also, I need to figure out a colour for the gun. I am thinking black or a very dark blue. Will be using the traditional neon green for the cables to go with the green rods.

Obviously I need to think how this will scale up to go onto a Monolith (or two).





Really appreciate any critique or criticism especially as I would like to get painting this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

Predictably, I like both the Iron and the Copper, and would suggest doing both for different squads.

Black for the guns rather than blue, though. Or something like Vallejo's "Metal Black"

OK missed a beat here, sorry.

First ...Moved?

Next up is beautiful work on the axe wielding loony. Really n ice model and wonderful paint job.

Crons are looking great, really liking the off white, got to go with Az here like both the metals and would suggest even further diversity in other squads.

You're a machine. Great work all around. I like the copper for the necrons and second the black guns.

I hadn't thought of having different metals with the off white tying them all together. That's a really interesting concept. Could make the monoliths a nice patchwork......

To catch everyone up - wife is pregnant, bought a slightly larger house (with a huge shed), working tirelessly to prepare house for moving in and when baby arrives, this includes dividing shed into machinery side and hobby side, have been quite sick which has interfered with family plans and hobby plans, now back on track and needing to paint Necron and Dwarf models.

Good to see you up and kicking! First kiddo? It will destroy your sleep but they actually snooze a lot typically so if you can fight thru the sleep deprivation you can still get a fair bit done. Once they're toddlers you're in trouble!

Can't say on the necrons, my phone isn't showing enough difference to make a fair assessment.

It is indeed our first child (if you ignore the two dogs, two cats, a fish tank full of fish and 22 zebra finches) so I am hoping I can be the awesome husband and "look after" the baby and by that mean have them quietly snoozing next to my painting table.

I am actually starting to come around to the idea of switching the colours around and have a bone body and metal plates on the outside and vary the metallics among the squads.

So I have had another idea for the Necron. It is a sort of reverse of the previous schemes where the bone is the core colour and the metallic is the plates. It kind of has the effect of making the Necron look a lot like an armoured skeleton. Which I think is kind of fitting since I see Necrons as undead in space. Would appreciate your thoughts on it I have also gone with a dark grey washed in black for the gun which I think will work quite well.




Thanks for reading.

Seems that Photobucket no longer wants to allow me to use their website for 3rd party hosting. Which is a massive pain in the proverbial.

As I have a lot of photos through this blog I looked into upgrading my account. But let's say $300 a year is not worth it in my opinion for a pretty average website that is already plastered with annoying ads and pop ups.

So, anyone have some suggestions on where I can host stuff as an alternative?

I host my images on my wordpress blog. That works perfectly, easy to upload, easy to edit, good overview and fast. You dont actually need to publish anything on your wordpress blog to get image hosting.

Another option is to upload to dakka, the upload process is annoying, but it is free and works fine when uploaded.

Photobucket has gradually gotten worse and worse. I classified them as totally worthless years ago. Your life will get better by leaving that horrible company behind. The way they behave, you would almost think Tom Kirby had found himself a new job after GW

What does a Wordpress blog cost to set up?

I pay 3 dollars a month. You can also go totally free, but I can´t vouch for how well the gallery works then. 3 dollars get you 6GB of storage. 5 dollars give you 13 GB and 21 give you unlimited

Imgur is free, and appears to have a good relationship with reddit, which as we all know is huge. I'm using them for my "forum" photo hosting while also importing stuff into wordpress for the wordpress blog. I'll look into payments and so forth once all my stuff is safely across.

I have opened a Wordpress account and when I get time start the process of repair.

Yeah, with people reporting that they can host their external photos via Wordpress, I'll likely sub to their $3/month plan as well. I can't figure out how to organise pics there into folders yet, but I'll sort that out later

So I think I have figured out how I am going to host pictures......




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Awesome it worked. Some of the Veterans from the Astra Militarum are a fitting way to get this blog back on the road.

I will now be using wordpress and if I find the time I will even start to put a few random musings up there. But first to rebuild this blog.

Good to see you back on the horse, Archer!

No photos yet, life is just so hectic. But over the last month and a half (mainly working weekends only) I have managed almost 200 metres of fencing, sub framed the shed so it is divided in half and managed to clad it as well as paint the house to boot. But it is all worth it in the end. But I am sick to death of doing 12 hours a day 7 days a week so am looking forward to being able to down tools for a little while.

On the baby front things are looking pretty good still although my wife's auto immune condition is starting to flare again so that may require our little one to be born earlier than expected. But further testing will decide that for us.

On the hobby front I have been pretty productive considering how wrecked I have been over the last month. I have the Dwarf Warriors and Gyrocopter to show off still, am halfway into one of the engineers and I am about 25% of the way into 40 Necron Warriors. Hoping to get most of the dwarfs and Necron done before baby joins us. Oh and I have started to work on Leman Russ. Easily the most detailed Prumarch to boot.

Just wanted to pop in and keep the blog flowing. Hope to get some photos up soon. Maybe.

Damn, that sounds hectic! Well done for keeping with the hobby - if it were me it would have to take a back-burner, I'd only get annoyed with myself as a result of being too tired.

So after a whole month of no hobby I am back into it (I hope). My wife and I have now moved (although we still have a lot of unpacking and organizing to do) into our new home.

I have the shed progressing nicely, but due to a bit of ill health on my part I am a couple of weeks behind schedule.

Unfortunately my wife's auto-immune condition has flared in the final stages of pregnancy so we have been bouncing from doctor appointment to doctor appointment and it look like our bundle of joy may be joining us 3-4 weeks ahead of schedule due to medical needs.

But we are taking it in our stride so far and we are managing some nice relaxation time, which means I am soon to get a brush back onto a model. I had a great game last night of 40k 8th edition with my Eldar (sorry Aeldari) vs Imperial FIsts, ended as a draw as we needed to call it due to the late hour. Photos to follow on my opponents absolutely amazing gaming table.

It;s good to be back posting. I plan tonight to start repairing the damage done by the photobucket fiasco so I would appreciate over the next week if anyone notices any photos I missed on previous pages to give me a yell.

Thanks for reading.

Great to hear from you. Glad the move is going well. (your still moving until all the boxes are gone!)

Best wishes and hopes and prayers to your wife and bundle, thinking of you. I know this is impossible, but try to take heart in the wonders of modern science, so many of these hick-ups are no biggy to the Doctors nowadays. Please take care and my family and I send our love, and manly man hugs.

Great to see you back, mate! Best wishes to your wife and family and good health to you guys. We've had some pretty scary moments here recently with an unlucky situation that luckily became a near-miss, so I'm with you guys there.

Thanks for the well wishes. I appreciate you taking the time guys.

I have been steadily rebuilding the blog after the photobucket debacle and have managed to sort the first 6 and a bit pages. It is not too bad a process, the most tedious being getting the photos off Photobucket, as they seem to be blocking any attempt to download a full album in one go. So have to grab them individually.

I do have the originals of all the photos, but the ones on photobucket are already shrunk and have the same file name as the posts so it is really easy to match them up.

Hi all, my apologizes, but this is going to be an epic post as I have a lot that I would like to share. So if you are game, strap in and hopefully enjoy the ride.....

What a roller coaster life can be? I have obviously been fairly absent from the hobby community but I have been kept extremely busy by real life. So I am bursting with a lot to tell and not sure where to begin? Probably should start at the beginning? Well actually I will get the hobby business out of the way and then on to other things.

First of all, I have now managed to go back through the blog and repair the loss of my photos from the Photobucket debacle. What an amazingly short sighted business decision and this may be a little too venomous, but I hope their business goes down the drain fast and hard and the decision makers never find work again. I was fortunate to be able to correct the loss fairly easily, but others have lost a lot more than me and that is really low, especially with no warning to the users and demanding the highest level of membership to 3rd party host again. But my rant is over and I would appreciate if anyone notices an image I missed in the repair job let me know and I will sort it out.

Next point of business, I have some Dwarfs that I have yet to show. Believe me these were completed before we moved house (sorry still moving as I have a lot of boxes still to unpack.....) but I had not yet managed to get a moment to photograph them. But tonight has allowed me a chance to take some happy snaps and I learned that the light in our house is actually pretty poor so please forgive the harsh flash treatment from the camera. There is something to be said about "energy saving" light globes and their pretty poor light output.

But first up is the muscle of the Dwarf army that I have not touched for a little while now.


The first of my Dwarf Warrior units. The army has two units of 19 (20 once they are joined by a hero). I have obviously continued the green cloth theme and have three different coloured beards to add variety. There is a mix of monopose and multi part models in the unit as I have gathered them from far and wide to give them a new life.


Its a pretty simple paint scheme. Green clothes, silver armour and weapons with gold highlights, brown leather and then either yellow, brown or red beards. Again like the Thunderers the Champion is sporting a swish cloak to show he is the business.


You can see an old metal model in the front right corner of the unit. I received a few of the old metal dwarf warriors and I have spread them out among the units to add a little of that old dwarven charm.


This is the next unit of Warriors. Yup have managed all 38 warriors in the army which was a nice relief before the move. These guys were a little interesting as when I got them (second hand like most of my models these days) someone had done a pretty amazing job of having most of them holding a stein of dwarf ale. So I continued the theme and the banner shows where their allegiance is.


I kind of figure these guys have been roused from a quality drinking session and are a little bit tipsy and angry to have been interrupted. See the guy in the back left with the keg on the shoulder?


This unit has three older dwarf warriors as you can see down the side of the unit (the Scotsman at the front, armoured axeman behind him who used to be a musician and the pirate next in front of the Dwarf with the keg).


Since these guys have a stein in one hand and a weapon in the other I stuck their shileds on the back and I think it makes a really nice contrast to the other unit who are much more business.


The other unit I finished before the move was this little beauty. Took me a long time to track him down second hand, but I really like this model and wanted it in my army rather than the older two blade one and the new plastic one that I feel misses the mark of the dwarfs with the newer AoS aesthetic. So I was really pleased when I managed to secure one and very much enjoyed painting it.


Originally I only had green panels, but after finishing them I felt it really lacked interest so I added the different coloured patch jobs and I think it has helped lift it to the next level.


It is a fairly delicate model unfortunately and I will really be suss about its ability to travel as it is a really heavy piece of kit and it is actually a very large propeller that it has.


Which is why I pinned the thing together and it allows me to pull it apart for transport and storage. Yes the propeller has been pinned in such a way that it spins really nicely. Not that I really want to be doing that too often.


As a bit of a reminder, here is where my dwarf army sits at the moment. Three units of Thunderers, 2 units of Warriors and a Gyrocopter. It is a really cohesive force that I think fits the Dwarfs nicely.


Which leaves this pile of metal goodness. The rest of the army (almost) sits here having been stripped clean of the amazingly think lurid pink and purple paint job they had from ebay. Paint stripped really nicely so I have 2 Cannons, 1 Organ Gun, 1 Flame Cannon, 1 Bolt Thrower and 1 Grudgethrower and the crews lying in there. Plus the leaders of the army 2 Engineers, 1 Battle Standard Bearer and a Runelord. All in all I don't have that much more to paint for the dwarfs, maybe, just maybe I can finish them this year.

Now, I know that I have said I am meant to be working the Necron at the same time as the Dwarfs and that has kind of fallen flat and not something that I will try again. I just don't like the vibe of switching between the armies. But, I have been messing around with the Necron colour scheme still and would appreciate an opinion as to which people prefer......


Not much of a difference but the purple wash is to give it a little different feel than the standard metal. But with the bone am I going to far and that adds enough of a difference? Thoughts very welcome.

Next up I had another game of 8th edition 40k with my Eldar vs Imperial FIsts on an incredible board that I had know idea that my mate had hidden out the back. So have a look at these......


It is a beautiful board that can be configured in a great number of setups. That ravine is really something special. This is actually the first appearance of the Eldar on the tabletop as I have been loathe to run an army that has I think 16 psykers in it. But it went very smoothly and the game didn't seem to bog down in the psychic phase too much at all. Lessons to be learned about ranges of powers though often left my troops unsupported by the Warlocks and Farseers.


The crashed Wave Serpemt is one of the objectives. I do find it a little disturbing that my opponent has an Eldar army also painted in the green and purple (a little different than mine but what are the odds?)


Without being too stuck up, I really couldn't get over how awesome this game looked. You can see another objective in a wrecked tank. Not sure what it was (or even if it is a GW one). Some pesky Scouts infiltrated to sit right behind it for most of the game which was quite a pain. That Vindicator really worried me, but with the removal of templates I feel really has reduced its damage potential.


A nice shot of the Imperial Fists deployment. Such a beautifully painted army. You can just see a squad of Assault marines hiding in the ravine at the top of the photo. They were a royal pain that I just couldn't counter.


A wide shot before we began. This was the first game I have ever played using a flyer (a Hemlock Wraithfighter in this case). Was far and away the MVP on my side and it is an absolutely brutal weapon of war and very survivable.


Vibro Cannons, don't seem like they are that useful. Then they start shooting. Really good at keeping vehicles on their toes. BUt must be taken in lots of three to combine their fire.


See those Scouts in the tower? Horrible, nasty scouts with their sniper rifles. Both my opponent and i are very new to 8th edition so still lots of rule reading. What did we discover at the start of the game? SNiper rifles can freely target Characters. Where did I put my Warlord (one of my Farseers)? Front and centre to these guys. By pure and utter luck he survived with one wound and promptly hid behind a hill for the rest of the game......I did manage to sort them out with the Wraithfighter as its heavy D-Scythes don't roll to hit!


Nice shot of the ravine. If I had some Vypers they could have recreated the Death Star trench scene. That Falcon did a really stellar job of gunning Imperial Fists down until the Assault Squad braved charging it and hitting it with a Thunder Hammer. Although it did survive it played little part in the rest of the game.


I sent a unit of Guardian Defenders and a Farseer and 3 Warlocks down this flank to pressure the Vindicator. Took some horrendous casualties but slowed the Imperial Fist advance (or more precisely there were a couple of ring in squads of Blood Angels over there).


The Wraithfighter moves in to exact some revenge on the Scouts.


I have nightmares about Assault Marines.


My canny opponent moved a Rhino in to cover the Scouts as we headed towards the end of the game. You can see the ring in Blood Angels and I think Silver Skulls assisting their Imperial Fist brethren.


I managed to hold up the assault marines by feeding them two squads of Storm Guardians and a Defender Squad and a valiant Warlock. WIth a few power swords scattered around I did more damage than I thought I would and the Falcon lurked around hoping to help out somehow. But a fresh squad of Tactical Marines came in to reinforce the dwindling Assault Marines. The Captain was also in there too I think.


With the Scouts pretty much neutralized the Wraithfighter moved on to other targets. The Lascannon in this tactical squad did not successfully hit a single target all game. I think more shooting range practice is in order for that marine. The Wraithfighters ability to affect leadership (and a psychic power that also reduces leadership) really makes this a great unit to break the enemy advance.


The hour was getting late so we decided one more turn and we would call it so it was an all out advance from me. If I could clear the scouts and Rhino I may just manage to claim a victory. (The Vindicator was destroyed by this stage).

[img]I claimed the downed Wave Serpent and there is an Autarch in among the swirling melee that was another objective that was contested. Plus there was another objective down in the ravine that the Imperial Fists held all game. I should have raced the Falcon up to contest it, but I needed its firepower to clear out the Wave Serpent so I could claim it outright.

So all in all the game ended in a draw as I just couldn't clear the wrecked tank on my right flank so it ended an objective a piece and two contested. Both armies were still in a reasonable condition. He had a couple of Tactical squads in good condition and active rhinos. I was losing Troops, but my heavy hitters in 2 Falcons, Farseers and Wraithfighter were in good shape, so more turns would have been interesting. I am still looking for my first win against this opponent in any form of 40k, but I count a draw as one step closer.

We have also been diving into Kings of War. I have never played it before and found it a nice simple, clean ruleset and enjoyed running my Tomb Kings, sorry Kingdom of Dust against an Elf army. My Tomb Kings translated really well and although a couple of the rules took me by surprise I had a pretty good handle on things and will enjoy giving it another go. Will take some pictures next time.

Time for a little teaser, continuing on the ongoing gift for my brother, I have started to work on this guy.


Leman Russ is now washed, cleaned and assembled. He is still in sub assemblies for ease of painting. He is the current Primarch I think and the sculpt is really amazing, so dynamic, but so much detail it is kind of mind bending.


A lot of the detail on the back will be obscured by his wolf cloak, but like all of the previous Primarchs got to have a cape to show how bad ass you are.


Shocking photo, but even his head is actually two pieces......


I started with doing his head and I think it is shaping up nicely. I have also started on the body, but no photos yet.

Now, I have been allowing the hobby to distract me (it is my refuge from the real world after all). But we have had a major life changing event on the home front. As many of you know my wife has been expecting our first child. Coupled with her declining health due to her auto immune disease has had the medical boffins arguing back and forth (literally arguing professionally about the best course of action). But to cut to the chase on Thursday the 14th of September at 11:29am we welcomed our first child Thomas into the world via a planned Cesarean (best decision for baby and mums health). He was delivered ahead of schedule (again for the benefit of everyone) so only tipped the scales at 2.5kgs.

However, our joy was interrupted by the doctors as they had identified some concerns and we made the decision to have our little man transferred from Norwest Private to Westmead Children's Hospital where he entered the amazing care of the high dependency unit there. Without going into too many details our little guy has a minor heart issue (one of his valves is a little funny), the doctors are hopeful that it will self correct, but if it still looks like it is a problem they will operate to help him out. Also, he has a little premature fusing of an area at the back of his skull that will also need some surgery where they will literally crack his skull in that area so it won't affecting his proper brain development. This is likely to happen around 9 months of age.What the medical profession is capable of is truly astounding.

Now I would just like to highlight that although our little guy has one or two surgeries ahead of him, we have been reassured by the doctors that neither of the procedures are considered unusual and there is no urgency required either. Which is helpful. We have a road map as such for what will need to be done in the future. Although not ideal obviously, it is a blessing to have him in our lives as fertility and my wife's health was always going to be a potential impossibility. He has met all of his expected milestones and scores quite well on the basic new born health checks. He just has a couple of unusual (but apparently not uncommon) health complaints.

But with nothing urgent and the Doctors confidant that a wait and see approach is the right one we were allowed to bring him home with us and he (and us) are adjusting to life at home. The dogs and cat are a little off put by this funny screaming bundle of joy (yep he has found his voice). The birds and fish are as always oblivious, but mum and dad are actually enjoying our new family member, he is being very good and adopted a nice 3-4 hours sleep, feed me, change me, sleep cycle.

So thank you for sticking with what I believe is the longest post I have made to date and I do hope there are still some interested parties out there as my Crazy Army plan is getting back on track. Progress may be slower. But I am feeling good to be back.

Thanks for reading.

Dwarves look amazing, nice and green
Going to be an interesting batch to paint from here on.

Second Necron for me, got a better vibe.

Batrep is outstanding, such a beautiful table and armies. Most important, you had a good time.

Russ is fab, like the face so far, good start.

Personal news, very glad to hear Mum and Thomas doing OK, sending love and prayers to you all. Medicine is incredible these days and I am sure he will be fine, life throws curve balls alot, sounds like you are coping well with the situation.

Best wishes bud, and have a big manly man hug "Daddy", welcome to the party.

A. Beautiful models, I greatly enjoy the dwarves with tankards.
B. I would say the purple scheme on the Necrons looks absolutely fantastic.
C. Congrats on becoming a father!

Fantastic looking battle! Good to see progress on the armies again as well

Congratulations to you both, I'm very happy for you! Glad to hear everything is going to plan.

On the hobby front, that is a lovely board! That must be your mate's best kept secret. Gorgeous armies on either side too. Thanks for the update!

Hi all, thanks for the well wishes and continued activity on the blog. I know it's been pretty quiet around here. But I managed to set up my "indoor" painting setup last night. Indoor as in the actual house not out in my slowly evolving hobby space in the shed. It is a tray (read mobile) setup so I may move it around the house to suit my current needs.

I started with the super glue and the remaining dwarf war machines now they are out of the paint thinners. Want to think of if I am putting them on bases before I start to paint them. Then I will definitely do little dioramas for each machine. Sort of like what I have done for unit fillers in the past.

On a slightly unrelated note. One of my very good friends (we go way back to preschool) has asked if I would consider doing some commission work for him and do a 2,000 point Death Guard army. He wants to include Mortarion (not sure if he would be in the 2,000 or in addition to).

Anyone think I should or shouldn't do it? Not sure what I would charge maybe I could get the models for another army out of it......

Considering you are already painting two armies (And lamenting the decision, if I recall correctly), the choice is really yours. As for payment, it depends on what he's got. Getting you hands on Skiitari/CultMech now might be a worthy investment Before eighth edition Potentially removes them. Maybe Sisters. I dunno.

Also congrats on family!

Thanks everyone I really appreciate you all taking time to stop by and for your well wishes.

I can't seem to get settled in an "in the house" painting setup. Obviously the shed is shaping up as the main storage and activity centre for the hobby. But I still want to be able to engage in conversation with my wife in the evenings and keep an ear out for our son. But the layout of our new place is a little different and the table I used to paint on is in a different room to the main living area.

I tried some work on the lounge with my painting tray on the coffee table. Worked well enough and I managed to get all the dwarfs cleaned up after their thinners soaking and have glued them all back together. But did I learn how bad my posture must have been when I finished for the night.....

My wife has had an alternative suggestion which I hope to try this coming weekend. Still on the couch. But a much higher working platform which we will see if it forces me into a better position.

Stay tuned as I hope to have some painting progress finished this weekend.

Oh and I am meeting with my mate this Sunday (before he returns overseas) to discuss this painting commission. Is looking like either Tau or Deathguard. Very different aesthetics and not sure I have much of an opinion (although I think deathguard would be harder). Will see on Sunday if we reach a consensus on everything.


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I think the regretting of doing the two armies currently is I haven't managed to be faithful to the original idea of the challenge (get one army at a time finished completely before moving forward) and the fact I have failed miserably to keep them going at the same pace ie. all my attention has really been on the Dwarfs. So not really serious frustration. Just a valuable lesson I think.

Hey mate. Firstly congratulations to the two of you on the little one, and great to hear that his health prognosis is positive (you had me worried where the story was going as I was reading that).

The battle looks amazing visually, and like quite a lot of fun. KoW is also a great ruleset, though I have to admit I haven't played it at all in ages now myself.

As for the painting setup, I think you might need to find a small but permanent (for the next year or two, anyway) place inside the lounge room or wherever you spend time with your wife and son. Not the couch, but a small table/desk and a computer chair kinda thing. You're not going to want to be away from them for very long anytime soon, especially in the evenings, etc, so you and your wife might need to make the hard choice for a slight aesthetic bump so you can spend time closer together. After all, it's your house - so guests can like it, live with it, or leave!

(Yes my painting desk is in the middle of the open-plan living area, and the original plan was for it to be in a separate room. Instead, I hang out with her near the couch/tv and we have our office/computer space in there as well. It's not a showroom but it's a true "lving" room.)


As for the painting commission. I personally wouldn't do it. Money and friends is a bad combination, especially when you're doing the work and he may well have the expectation that you'll do it for next to nothing. If you go ahead with it, you definitely need to lay down some rules about expectations. I'd also ensure that you're doing a low-model count force, and also if you're expected to do the assembly and clipping models off the sprues, mould line cleanup, maybe drilling barrels, etc then you need to charge accordingly in some form. gak, I can barely manage to do that for my own models without tearing my hair out. Id have said Death Guard based on a smaller model count and the ability to do much of it (almost all of it, even) with washes (over white, even) and still have it look really good, but when you add Morty into the mix..

Painting an army for someone else by yourself is a much bigger undertaking, especially mentally, but also in terms of uneven time commitment than helping a friend build a fence or paint some rooms. Doing a model or six, a small unit, a tank/dragon/etc or a series of characters is much easier than a whole army.

Awesome to see you coming back man, congratulations on becoming a father!
Dwarves and Necrons look good, and I can't wait to see your finished version of Leman Russ!
Keep it up!

Hi all,

Been a little quiet on the hobbying front, although I have managed over the last two nights to get brush to model and I really enjoyed it. I have finished the silver on all the remaining Dwarf warmachines and crew (as well as the remaining Characters), so next step will be the green that is the army colour, although I am a little unsure whether I will get much green onto the war machines as they tend to be wood and metal and I am not sure I am interested in painting the wooden parts green. SO it may be up to the crew to tie them in with the other elements. I hope it will reveal itself when I start to put the paint on.

I have also managed to do a little more to Leman Russ and hope to have him finished for Christmas to give to my Brother. He will be the 7th primarch I have done.

My wife was also generous enough to mind the little one so I could go and get a game of 40k in with a friend. His Space Wolves are coming along nicely and we had about a 1,000 point game of 8th edition using Maelstrom of War objectives. I never used Maelstrom of War objectives in 7th edition and I really regret it now. Thoroughly enjoy the rolling objectives and the fact you can somewhat (sort of) ignore the enemy in favour of objectives.

A couple of pics from the game:


I picked up an almost fully painted realm of battle board cheap and it is a great way to transport a battlefield as neither of us have a "proper" sized gaming surface yet. Bulldog clips do a good job of holding it rigid.


I set up poorly and these two Grey Hunter packs devastated the poor Slugga boyz that were placed opposite them. Although the Orks morale is crazy in large mobs.


Things went better for me on the left flank, although the Rhino dropped off another Grey Hunter pack and these Shootas were slowly whittled down after being shot to pieces and then charged. Although they held the Wolves up long enough for my Mega Nobz to wander over and give everything a good kicking.
I managed through sheer luck on the objective draw to come away with a one point win, but it was my Dread that kept me in it. Although the poor guy blew sky high when he solo charged the Vindicator and it managed to hit with the demolisher on overwatch.......


My Nob with Waagh! Banner stayed close to the Dread to make sure it hit like a freight train. He eventually bought the Farm when the Wolf Guard Terminators showed up.


Early on my Warboss and the Dread were a good tag team, but I allowed the Terminators an opportunity to charge the Warboss on his own and they made short work of him. Giving slay the warlord and another maelstrom objective for knocking off the warlord....not a good result for me.


The Wolf Guard were valiant in holding up the dread, but some abysmal dice roles meant they only kknocked a few wounds off of it. They did fall back allowing the Vinidcator to have a good shot at taking out the Dread which was a very clever move.


This was I think turn two as the Slugga Mob was smashed by two Grey Hunter packs. I really stuffed up their deployment and the idea of charging into the teeth of 20 Space Wolves esoecially as they had flamers in all the packs meant the mob just sat there getting riddled with bolt rounds. Hopefully they will forgive me.

But all in all a tense game, I made bad mistakes (as always) early on, but with a lot of luck from the objectives ( got the secure objective 6 twice in succession as well as a special objective came up on objective 6 as well all in a row), meant that I was able to come home in a bolt and snatch an undeserved win.

Hopefully I will have some painting updates to show soon.....

Thanks for reading.

Brilliant little batrep. Really enjoyed that. Thanks.

So with things post baby birth slowly returning to normal and managing a little gaming and a little more painting, I have now agreed with my friend to do a Deathguard army for him.

I am also acting as his agent to source the models (I have better ideas where to source discounted models than he does). Looks like I am now 10 Pox Walkers short of the list he wants to have painted and I should be able to bring it together for about 70% retail which is nice.

Painting wise it's a 2 year process as per the agreement with regular payments based on progress.

I will be posting my progress if the army on here as I go. Next step. Figure out how to paint a Deathguard plague marine.

Well, good thing our friend Duncan Rhodes has several videos on how to paint Death Guard in various ways. Check out the Warhammer TV channel for some useful videos.

So it has been almost a month since my last activity. Having a new baby and all that is a lot more work than I had anticipated. He is a very easy baby though (or at least in my opinion). But damn do you lose the hours without even noticing it. But......I have been slowly managing to work on the painting. Although I am still wrestling with the Dwarves. Sorry, no Deathguard (or Necron) as yet. But I have some photos to show of where I am with the dwarfs and I am pretty happy at the results, although the photos are hideous as they were taken late at night out on our back deck so I apologise, but I didn't want to retake them.

I have continued the colours from the rest of the army (obvioulsy) although it is hard to find places that work to put green on a cannon........but I won't keep you in suspense as I am not here to waffle, ok, ok I am, I love a captive audience. That's why we have kids right?


The first of the war machines, a grudge thrower. As you can see I have based the Grudge Thrower, I decided to base all of the war machines as it just helped tie them into the rest of the army better. This is one of the older metal models. Not sure what edition it is from, but I couldn't resist a cheap used model from ebay.


I tried very hard to get a little bit of green onto each of the war machines, but I am pretty sure I put the top bar of the grudge thrower the wrong way around, but it resisted my gentle attempts to break it off to turn around so I have just left it as is.


The Grudge Thrower is a pretty simple model, but has enough little details to make it a nice little centre piece and the crew have a lot of the old dwarf character about them.


Next up is an organ gun, it is actually a pretty small war machine, but I am hoping it will be able to lock down a flank and put the hurt on any small skirmishing/light cavalry units.


I probably like the crew of this machine the most, the "boss" with his full face mask is a little ominous. Again this is an older metal model. Not sure what the new model looks like.


Here we have a flame cannon, it is pretty different to the rest of the war machines, being largely metal as opposed to the timber frames of the others. This is a big hunk of metal and weighs a fair bit, a lot like the metal Space Marine Dreadnoughts.


The crewman on the back of the machine turning the big wheel is a little different as all the other crew are loose. The Grudge Thrower and Flame Cannon are on the same size base as they are about twice the size of the others.


Here we have the Bolt Thrower. I think this is my favourite of the war machines. It's probably the old fashioned part of me not trusting this new fandangled gun powder.


They are nowhere near my best work, but as they are pretty simple models I think I have gotten away with the standard basecoat, wash, drybrush. I hope.


The first of my cannons. Yup I couldn't resist having a pair of them. Again, they are super simple as its a timber frame with a bronze cannon.


Again as all of the war machines this one is a metal model.


I tried so hard to vary the beard colours on the crew to add a bit of diversity. only to discover I had painted two of the cannon crew exactly the same. Damn it they must be twins.....


The basing of the war machines has made a huge difference to the overall look of them and I will definitely continue to do it for other armies.


Group Shot! I know, its a lot of war machines. But it should make for a couple of insane turns of carnage before the remaining enemy charge and wipe my brave dwarfs away.


I am really happy with how they have turned out. I think it will be a pretty nice looking army of bearded, stunties when I manage to finish.


So, with the completion of these six war machines I am now left with only 4 models to complete the army. Two Master Engineers, an Army Standard Bearer and the armies General a Rune Lord. I have already done the armour and gold work on all four of them and am onto the green cloth on one engineer. So, I am hoping that before Christmas I will have the Dwarfs finished and be able to get on to other things for the new year.

Thanks for reading and its good to be back posting.

So some exciting news. I have managed to get a great weekend of painting under my belt and it was a a very productive one at that. I love when you can just get in the zone and smash out some progress.

I won't take up too much of your time as I have a few things to get through........


The Lord and Hero of my Dwarf Throng. The Army Standard Bearer, two engineers and the Runelord. Pretty happy with them. Not award winning, but clean and effective.


The back view, I have obviously continued the army green. Pretty happy with the minor conversion on the two Engineers to make them look slightly different.


I also knocked up these two barricades. What could they be for you ask? Read on to find out.......


Well you see in 8th edition for every Master Engineer in the army, you can entrench one war machine. So to represent this I made these barricades that slip around the base of any of the war machines. This way it is going to be pretty hard for me to forget which machines have been dug in.


The war machine bases are all the same width, so the entrenchment markers will work on any of the six in the army.

So, with the completion of these 4 models and the barricades I have now finished the Dwarf army. I have to sort out some photos of the whole army, but I will get that done at some point tonight and you can see the Throng arrayed for war.

Thanks for reading and I will post again shortly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As promised, I have now finished the Dwarfs and as has become tradition, here is the final army shots.......


The Lord and master of the army is my Rune Lord. I figured he is probably the oldest in the army and as fits he has a brilliant white beard. It is the predominant feature of him and I hope it does mark him out as a pretty special model. Plus the fact he is the primary magical defense of the army.


The Heroes and supporting cast of the army. The two Master Engineers and the Thane with an army standard bearer. It is only a fairly simple conversion (at least with a dremel) to remove the handgun and give him a big axe. I think they look different enough that using the same model isn't too much of a sin. The Standard is pretty bold with the white, but it isn't quite as stark as my over exposed photo makes it look.

[img]https://mycrazyarmyplan.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/img_27931.jpg/img]
The valiant core of the army, the warriors will either be joined by the Rune Lord or Standard Bearer and the Thunderers will be arrayed between them to hopefully keep up a good rate of fire and lend a hand with a counter charge if needed.


The Special units of the army and what I hope will win me some games with a mass amount of heavy firepower. I will definitely be trying to castle up on a suitable hill if deployment permits.


The final units in the army the rare Flame Cannon and Organ gun. I figure these will be the anchors of the army and one will sit on each flank.


Here is my Dwarf Throng arrayed for battle, I am pretty damn happy with them. You may have noticed that the Elf army I already did and the Dwarfs are based the same way? Coincidence or maybe they will be coming to blows again?


So there you have my take on an Engineering based Dwarf army. It was a lot of fun to do actually and I maintained enthusiasm throughout which is a bit unusual for me as I tend to fade towards the end. It could be the hiatus I was on with the birth of our first child, but I am happy with how they have turned out and I think they are one of the best looking armies I have done to date.

So what next? Well I have sort of started on the Necron (which I was supposed to be running concurrently with the Dwarfs) so I will be giving them almost my full attention. Plus I also have all the models I need for that commission work on the Deathguard now, so I will be getting in to assembling and hopefully bang out a couple of test models for approval before I go too far with them.

Plus I also owe a Necron Monolith to Azazelx's painting challenge for the end of the year, so I will get onto that hopefully when I start my holiday break from work (even if it is very short).

I have a Kings of War game planned for tomorrow night where I am taking my Ogres out for a run, they convert from Warhammer to KoW quite nicely so we will see how I get on.

Thanks for reading and hope to hear from a few diehards that may still be following along with my army journey.

Great looking army and congrats on another army down!

The idea to plan out an army to a set size and with a cool theme is really great. You have inspired me to do something similar, at a much smaller scale, I am planning to create some small heavily themed side armies to my Kislev army. Nice to be able to add armies without going all out as I usually do (and will continue to do with my main army)

Thanks for looking in.

Sounds like a cool idea to add small elements to a larger force. Would be interested in seeing what you come up with. Kislev has always had such an awesome look to them.

That is one really nice army sir, beautiful.

Always good to get a good day at the hobby, great to see you kicking about.

Nice job Archer! They're looking great.

Hi all,

I would first of all like to wish a belated Merry Christmas to everyone and hope that you had a great time with family and friends. I would also like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and stay safe. So to bring in the New Year in style I have a few photos that I have been meaning to get up and on to the blog and just haven't had the time.....

I got in a game of Kings of War a few weeks ago with my regular opponent. I took to the field at the head of my Ogres this time. The Maneaters made appearances as a couple of different ogre units from KoW to add a little variety. All in all they transferred over top the different rule set pretty well.


The start of the battle. I really need to learn to deploy better. I need to learn that I don't need to stretch across the whole battlefield, especially if I am facing a large infantry based army. I would have been better off hunkering down and focusing on a smaller part of the enemy as Ogres are just utterly brutal up close.


The Rhinox and its catapult ( I brought two) was by far my star performers. The catapult is a bit average. But the Rhino is deadly and having two of them working in concert kept me in the game far deeper than I deserved.


KoW is about blocks of soldiers and this core of Spearmen and Archers are rock solid and really, really hard to break. My major stuff up in the game allowed the Spears to charge my big block of Ogre Warriros which really put me behind the eight ball. I should have played chicken and left them sitting in the middle of the board but I advanced them 2" forward thinking "yeah they can handle being charged" what a mistake that was.


My deployment, it was a great idea to set up the Rhinos together on one flank. It was not a good idea to set anything up directly opposite that enormous block of Spears......


I felt really confident that my Ogres could take the centre, little did I realize how many dice hordes of Spears and Archers can throw at me. Kudos to my opponent who did a great job of focusing on the biggest threat at the time.


For the first time I gave some of the magic items a go. I really like the way KoW handles magic items. It made the Gnoblars (I mean Red Goblins) actually quite a threat which was kind of amusing.


In KoW heroes are generally only there for support. Few of them are actually useful in combat. Apart from Ogres.....I perhaps didn't realise how good the Ogre Warlord was and unfortunately as you can see here he got roadblocked behind a unit of Maneaters (pretending to be Hunters I think). If he had managed to get into the fight earlier things on this flank could have gotten really interesting.


The Rhinos did a stellar job of clearing the Left flank driving off two units of light cavalry, small unit of spearmen and a large unit of archers before turning on a bolt thrower or two. Was good times for the ogres.


You can see from my crappy deployment I really cost the Warlord his chance to shine in a scrap. I did get lucky though and over a couple of turns finished off these spearmen, although the archers and bolt thrower managed to get some revenge.


In the dying stages of the fight my Warlord layed into some Palace Guard (Swordmasters) if the game had gone a turn longer he would have seen them off the board. The base behind them is a loot counter. We had four of them (I think) to try and control. It ended up being a 1 counter a piece draw. Which I am not sure i entirely deserved, but if I had paid more attention I could have seized a 2-1 win, but I had a Rhino charge the enemy rather than hang around on a counter.........lots of lessons learned and I am hoping I am soon to get me first ever win against this opponent in any game except of X-Wing.........

On the painting front I have made a little more progress. Sorry nothing worth showing on the Deathguard yet, although it is sitting heavily in the back of my mind that I REALLY need to get some work done on them. But I have been pottering about on the Necron and started playing around with the Monoliths for something a bit different only to run into a bit of a disaster.........

Seems one of the two Monoloths I picked up (and didn't bother checking them out until now) had 4 sides rather than the front back and two sides that it was supposed to have. I can't believe that I didn't pay any attention when they turned up in the first place. But my bad and I did touch base where I got them and they were very reasonable about the whole thing which was incredibly generous. But I struck luck on eBay with one of the various bits retailers selling just the wall sections that I needed. So I didn't pursue a refund from the original person as it was just as much my fault for not checking. So I eagerly await my replacement walls and forged on with getting the first one up and running.


Here you can see me starting to glue it all together. I cleaned all the parts and thought this kit is a piece of cake, it will go together in no time. How wrong was I? The Monolith kit is probably the crappest plastic kit I have assembled from GW. It was full of gaps and misalignment. I was at first tempted to undercoat it and see how bad it was. But I took a deep breath and got out the green stuff and set about scraping and filing it back to hopefully hide the issues. I will fortunately be forwarned about the second one and hope to do a better job initially.


Obviously I am continuing the scheme from the warriors that I have previously shown (bone and silver) so the white bits will be the silver once I have finished the bone base.


ALthough the guns will follow the warriors and be dark grey to give a point of interest. I think just looking at it at this stage the scheme should be quite nice and different to the norm.


I am getting keen to finish any of the Necron as I want to have a go at gluing in the green rods. I think it is an easy way to really add a point of interest without much effort. I think the monolith is going to be awesome.


Ultimately it is going to be a very simple scheme. But I think on a model as huge as a monolith it will work (they really are a huge model).


I have kept these parts seperate to make the rest of the model easier to paint. The big pylon will be silver as per the others and the door will be kept loose so I could technically put it over the green infinity gate as I think you meant to be able to have the Monolith "dormant".


Just a cheeky remionder of where I am with the Necron so far. I am about halfway through adding the silver to the Warriors and the Lord is at the right of the photo he is half silvered as well.


Here you can see the first wash on the Monolith. I decided that I wanted to try a simple "stone" effect as I have these large flat areas that as you can see look a little average after the wash. So I am contemplating either stippling with an old brush or sponging. I think the stippling I did on the stone for the primarch bases worked really well so I probably go that direction.


I think the fact I haven't done it on the Warriors (or intend to do it on any of the other models in the army) won't be too big a factor as the Monoliths are the only models with the enormous flat surfaces so I think it would probably be lost on the infantry anyway (well that is my excuse).


I did take the opportunity with a spare flying base and bit of acrylic rod to make a stand for the monolith, it will only be just off the playing surface. But I think it looks better than it sitting on the ground. Plus it may make it a little easier to position as it floats around.

So there you have it. My final post for 2017. It has been a hell of a year for me on a personal level, just a year into a new job in may, new house in June, our first child in September. I feel it has been a blessed year and the fact I have even managed to keep some hobby progress going is a bonus. Thanks to everyone that has been along for the ride and lets see what 2018 has in store for all of us.

I will start of next year with a look back at the goals I set 12 months ago and let's see how I did........

Thanks for reading.

So we have seen the calendar roll over and another year go past. For me 2017 really did go by in the proverbial blink of an eye and its still a blur that I am not sure I have come to terms with. I have gone back over the year that was and in regard to the hobby side of my life it was a pretty lean year compared to previous years. By my count I managed to paint 133 models which is a pretty big drop from the 300 of last year.

But I digress, I should have a look at the goals I set for myself during 2017. Looking back at these goals I wanted to achieve the following:

- Finish the Alpha Legion that I had started at the end of 2016.
- Paint 3 more armies (2 Fantasy, 1 40k)
- Grow the blog by six pages.
- Modular and mobile gaming board.
- Start 40k campaign and post progress within the blog.
- Get back to the NSW Northern Knights for some games.

Looking at the above I did ok considering the year. During 2017 I managed the following:

- Alpha Legion finished. Success.
- Paint 3 armies. Fail, I only managed the Dwarfs start to finish this year although I have made a good start on the Necron so should be able to get through them early in 2018.
- Blog grew by three pages. Half success.
- Acquired a part painted Realms of Battle gaming board by GW which in its bag is very mobile and with alligator clips it holds very nicely on a smaller table. So this is a success (even though I need to finish painting and flocking it).
- Start 40k campaign? Miserable fail, although I will hold that the D&D campaign we are running is taking the place of this campaign, so I will put it as a moral victory.
- Get back to the NSW Northern Knights. Fail, I only managed to make it there for an X-Wing tournament and no actual visits during the year. But with the house move I am a lot further away and have managed plenty of games in both 40k and Fantasy from other sources so that is good.

But my hobby slow down is only put in context if we look at what happened to me in real life. 2017 was a monumental year in the real world and I do feel justified that my hobby was less for a good reason.

- My wife and I bought a house of our very own up in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney NSW.
- The house has an extensive shed that I have been steadily working on to get the hobby side ready for me to inhabit. Photos will be up soon when I think it is worth showing off. I got a lot of work in it done during my brief holiday and I need to punch out a few shelves for the models.
- But the most momentous event was the birth of our first child. We welcomed our son into the world in September and he has been going from strength to strength although we still have a surgery ahead of him which is looking like it will be early March. So fingers crossed that all goes well.

So, we are now into 2018 and what goals do I have set to carry me through this year?

I would like to paint 3 armies. This does include the Death Guard that I have taken on as a commission (all 2,500 points of them roughly). So, Necron, Death Guard and a Fantasy army. We will see how I go, with our son older and a little more settled I should be able to get more hobby time in.
Finish the Realm of Battle board off. It really only needs a couple of tubs of flock.
Finish the hobby side of the shed (the other side is for tools and machines and stuff).
Keep up with the games and try to rack up my first win against my regular opponent outside the X-Wing campaign.......
Paint some more terrain, I am wondering about trying to do a couple of themed sets of terrain as I have a lot of half done terrain that only needs a rudimentary paint job to look effective.
Add 4 pages to the blog.

So I hopefully have set some achievable goals this year time will tell.

Thanks for reading and I hope you join me for another year of hobby activity.

A very decent effort for 2017 there, and that huge KoW game looks spectacular - as does the completed dwarven throng!

Nice work so far on the Necrons. Sounds like the Monolith suffers from it's vintage. Leman Russ tanks were always awful to assemble as well, with huge gaps and problems getting them to go together. Hopefully an updated kit is in the works when their codex comes out...

Hi all, I have been quiet on the forum, but have been busy behind the scenes on the hobby front, both painting and gaming. So strap in and come with me on a ride down the rabbit hole. Be warned this is going to be a long post.....

To start off with the Monolith that I have been slowly plugging away at. It is a massive model with lots of flat areas. I had finally managed to get all of the silver added and washed with black.


It follows the scheme of the Necron army apart from the more advanced "stone" pattern on the brown areas.


It may be a pretty simple scheme, but with the sheer scale of the model I think the stone work and metal works together quite well.


Stay tuned for more Monolith later, but I am taking a quick stop at a 8th edition 40k game with my Iron Hands taking on a Tyranid swarm......


We were playing a maelstrom of war mission (three objectives in hand each turn). YET AGAIN I stuffed myself from the get go in deployment. What did I do confronted with a vast horde of Tyranids? Set up a big block smack bang in the middle of the table....what did that allow them to do? Sweep into me from three sides all at once. Why oh why can I not learn? But all in all it was a good game with some very cool moments.


As you can see a lot of bugs arrayed against my thin line of marines. It doesn't show up well, but the tyranids are painted in a beautiful natural scheme that lends them a very insect appearance and is vastly different from my own cartoony swarm.


I think I allowed the need to get to objectives cloud my judgement on deployment. I probably should have surrendered half the board to limit how much of the swarm could get at me in one go.


This was my main bastion, it would have been perfect had it been anchored on one flank by a table edge.


Got to love the Dreadnoughts, they really performed amazingly well and gave far more than they got, even though the poor guys didn't survive the battle.


So. Many. Bugs. I was also a little overwhelmed by how fast these guys can move, but with little shooting there was no reason not to add an advance roll as well. I think turn two and we were embroiled in multiple combats.


Not only was there a teeming horde of small bugs there were enough of the big boys to really concern me. Carnifex's and a Hive Tyrant all on one flank. Fortunately I was able to meet them head on with a pair of dreadnoughts to blunt the advance.


This is what happened in my turn two. The Hive Tyrant got a tiny bit ahead of the rest of the Swarm and I took my chance to let the Dreadnoughts loose. It was a gamble as I knew the Carnifex's were hot on his heels, but the target was too juicey even with its Tyrant Guard escort.


The tactical squads that were behind the Dreadnoughts were lost for a number of turns as the swirling big beastie melee blocked them from shooting and they really weren't equipped to help their ancient brethren out. I should have moved them as quickly as possible to the left flank to help out against the Raveners, Hormagaunts and Warriors that were rolling that flank.


The cavalry began to roll in to try and save the Hive Tyrant........


A quick stop to rant about my Maelstrom of War objectives. As you can see I got two involving capture Objective 5......one being that great bonus if your Warlord is the one to achieve it. So it looks great I could potentially grab a lot of victory points in one fell swoop. Just a small problem.......


Firstly, here is my Warlord, with his outrageously large conversion beamer in prime spot to lay down some serious covering fire, he is not the most mobile of Warlords and I hadn't intended him to be moving much.


Secondly, you see the red circle? Well that is Objective 5, on the other side of the table, a long, long way away for my Warlord to even consider going for.


And the final nail in the coffin, thats 30 odd Hormagaunts camping out in the building that Objective 5 is located in. I gave up any thought of capturing it and ignored those objectives. Even spent 2 command points to trade a card in it annoyed me so much.


On the far left, one of the Venerable Dreadnoughts was making quite a nuisance of himself. It attracted a brood of Termagants. They were little threat to him, but it would eventually stop him blowing holes in the bigger bugs for a good chunk of the game.


Back to the centre, things got a little tight and the order of combats were pretty important. But a couple of bad dice rolls from the Tyranids and some great Venerable Dreadnought saves kept the dread on the right in it long enough to land the deathblow on the Hive Tyrant, netting me not only first blood, but also slay the warlord.


But eventually weight of numbers was telling and both the Venerable and regular dread succumbed, oh how I wish I hadn't left the Ironclad on the side lines ( it was only a 1500 point game and he didn't make the cut). With there demise the Carnifex's would soon advance on me once more. Although the combat squad about to meet a grisly end had captured the objective long enough to gain me another victory point.


The regular Dread survived the longest as the Carnifex's concentrated on his Venerable ally first. But between the two of them they saw the end of a Hive Tyrant, Tyrant Guard, a unit of Warriors that tried to lend a hand as well as seriously hurting both carnifex's which allowed me to kill them off later.


Remember that unit of Hormagants hiding in that building earlier? Well they didn't stay there for long and along with a Ravener brood they ended up in a huge combat with my centre firebase. Warriors ended up joining in too with a Warrior Prime being a nuisance as well. But I had a secret weapon in there. A unit of Servitors and Tech Marine with a servo harness valiantly and really quite effectively met the charge and blunted its effectiveness. The armour of the Techmarine and his myriad of attacks was a serious thorn and it took a lot of attention from both Raveners and Warriors to finally lay him and his servitors low. You can see him on the left of the fight still swinging his axe.


Taken moments before the Techmarine (lower right) is swept away and the firebase is completely overrun.


The Termagants ended up in combat with the other Venerable, slowly he began stomping on them, but it achieved the primary goal of stopping him shooting which was disappointing, again, deployment really messed him up.

It was unfortunately getting late and I had a long drive home, so with the game going badly against me I conceded the game. Victory points obviously didn't really matter since I conceded, but we added it up and I achieved 3 VP to my opponents I think 6 or 7. He managed to snag a couple of easy VP's from cards on his advance towards me and I was really hamstrung by poor card draws and a poorer deployment.

What did I learn? Tyranids are fast and win by attrition, even the big bugs struggled with my Dreads and with a little better support they could have won me the game. I suffered from a lack of speed. Next time I will definitely include a rhino or two, drop pods or the Bike squad to allow me to be a nuisance by redeploying. I was hamstrung by not being able to reach out and threaten objectives.

Plus, deployment, deployment, deployment. It seems to be the part of the game I really struggle with. How am I supposed to improve that?

But enough of me complaining, my opponent played a tight game with a single mindedness that the Hive Mind would be proud of. Once his swarm has finished digesting my poor Iron Hands we may go for a rematch. But its time to go back to the painting......

I always like to have a small side project floating around on my painting stable to distract me while I wait for paint to dry. So I finished this little piece of scatter terrain off.



It is a collection of barrels and jerry cans as well as just offcuts and odds and sods. Add a bit of paint and flock/sand and in no time i have a little piece to add interest to a part of the board, plus a little cover in this edition where cover is actually pretty hard to gain.

But the highlight of this post is the Monolith, I told you we would return to it and it is in fact now finished. I am very happy with how it came together, from an annoying beginning of a poorly fitting kit, I think I have managed to hide most of the joins and am very happy with the colour scheme.


When I added in the green plastic parts it really lifted the model to another level. I think it contrasts very well with the stone of the majority of the model.


I took the opportunity to add some bright green to some areas to try and hint that the green power is coursing through the whole monolith, on this side you can see it in the small squares at the top of the pillars.


I used the green paint again running up from the green disc. I am very happy with how it has worked as it adds an extra layer of interest while keeping with the overall scheme.


I have learnt a fair bit from doing this one so I will now hopefully be able to get the second one together and finished a lot faster. Will definitely be making more sub assemblies next time.


The plate above the portal, the stairs below it and the four guns are all able to be moved still, but I doubt I will do that often as the risk of damage to the paint work is just not worth being able to have a closed down monolith.


I had the pylons on the left and right attached the whole way through and they will definitely be left off on the second one until its finished.


I have a couple of left over Necron Warriors, I am considering gluing one behind the portal to see if it would be visible from the outside. The other idea is to chop it up and have it coming out of the portal.......


I am really happy with how much the green plastic parts make the model pop. I am surprised GW hasn't got more kits that use them and the fact they phased them out of the Immortal kits. Its a pity.


A couple of the unfinished Warriors escorting the monolith forward, it really is a huge model. I have it mounted on a flying stand, which can be easily removed if I ever needed to just have the monolith on the table.

So there you have it, I should get better at regular small updates rather than these monster posts, but I struggle to get the time to add updates. I hope you all enjoyed the progress and I managed to get to a shop to refresh my paints and hopefully will get some more progress to show soon.

Thanks for reading.

Batrep is excellent, really enjoyed that, nice looking armies as well.

But that Monolith is truly magnificent, really brilliant work, love the colours, came out superb. That is really a piece to be proud of.

Thanks Camkierhi, really appreciate you stopping by. I think it has turned out well, shouldn't be too different to the rest of the force that it looks odd, but is different enough to be a real focal point.

Great batrep, nids are one of my favorite looking armies. That battle certainly had it´s feel of "starship troopers", the shot of the firebase being overrun is great

Hi all,

Well it has been a fairly long hiatus for me and the hobby, which ended last week which was nice. But there has been an enormous amount going on for me and the family recently which has obviously taken precedent over relaxing past times.

I would like to begin with the surgery I had mentioned my son needing has now come and gone. Time for a long held breath to be exhaled. He was 5 and a half months at the time of the surgery and he has come through it like I guess only a baby can. Our bright and bubbly little man returned to himself far quicker than we thought and he now only has a considerable scar running straight down the middle of his head so they could get in and bone saw his prematurely fused skull open. He has a pair of springs holding it all together and we will return to hospital in 3-6 months to have them removed. Then he should be done with it all never needing any more treatment (fingers crossed).

I did toy with the idea of posting a picture of his stitched up head, but it is somewhat gruesome and unnecessarily graphic. But if anyone is interested he had a spring cranioplasty. If there is anyone else out there that's child has craniosynotosis then I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

But with our little man out of the woods and my wife and I able to resume normal life I grabbed the chance to get some hobby stuff moving. I did take a little time off work, which as it turned out wasn't entirely necessary as two days after getting him home from the hospital he was pretty much back to normal. I can't say my wife or I were, but at least he was.

So to start with the reawakening of the hobby spirits I thought I would share with you where my hobby space is up to.......


Here is a lovely set of shelves with terrain and D&D books visible. More terrain, can you really ever have enough?


This is my terrain and D&D section.


The long shot, you will need to excuse the stupidly messy desk, I cleaned it off completely the day after the photo.


I made these clear shelves at work, the boss even ended up footing the material bill, but I do work a lot of hours for him.


So I have one and a half walls with these shelves, I think they look pretty damn good and being clear they will allow the light to get to the models so they always look their best.


Some models have already started migrating to the shelves. It will never be enough, but its a start.


Looks like on average armies will take up about 1.5 to 2 shelves each. They are only 90mm deep so I won't be able to fit big models on them, but that's OK. The next step is having poly-carbonate sheet that will act as doors to protect the models from little hands and dust.

And now I have a nice safe place to store my addiction I have been able to get into the Necron and have knocked off those poor warriors that have patiently been waiting for their time in the sun.


Similar to the monolith in having a bone/stone with metal parts.


With the green rods I think they really spring to life.


I batch painted all 40 of them (nothing new there) and I marvel at how it feels like you are making absolutely zero progress and then all of a sudden you look up and they are one paint stroke from completion.


I kept the basing pretty basic, as I feel Necron are all about their dead worlds, plus they are very similar to the Ork and Iron Hand bases so the armies will look nice if they ever take to the field against each other.


All of these guys are rescue models from eBay, some were in pretty poor condition. But enmasse its hard to tell the weird ones from the good ones.


All 40 warriors, you know without template weapons I am super interested to deploy them like this in a game. It just looks intimidating.


I also snuck this guy in, he is my Overlord based on the lord form the Catacomb Command Barge with a couple of pieces from the Praetorian kit to replace missing pieces. I thought a simple hyperphase sword would be interesting compared to the usual warscythe.


He has a couple of colours that don't appear on the rest of the army, so hopefully will stand out.


Took me a while to figure out what to do with the cloak, I am happy with where he ended up.


The Necron army as it currently stands. Have a few more models I need to get and now with 8th edition I am sorely tempted to change the list a bit and get an additional HQ, a Cryptek is very attractive.......

So hopefully there are a few of you still out there interested in reading and I am glad to be back posting. Here is to good health and a year of much more normal activity.

Thanks for reading.

First and most importantly, great news about the wee man.

Second Necrons are looking fantastic. Lord is an imposing figure.

Lastly jealous as hell of your brilliant work space.

I am pretty happy with it all at the moment. Family is healthy. Hobby space is almost sorted. Paintingnis backnup and running. Assembled the 10 Lychguard last night.

The other side of the right hand wall of the hobby space is my workshop where I have all my trade tools and machines (lathe, mill, drill press etc. etc. etc) so I may see about doing something interesting with resins again now I have somewhere clean that I can dirty up without causing a marriage breakdown.....

Quick question to all out there. After many, many years of use and abuse, my faithful MDF painting tray/station is at the end of its life, it has started to split and recently exposure to water has caused it to start going furry as unprotected MDF does when exposed to water.

So, does anyone have a recommendation of a painting tray/station that is not huge and is mobile? I have been very happy with my current one (I have had it for more than 10 years). I have a photo of it below so you can see what I would prefer to replace (I am very tempted to make my own, but inspiration of other trays would be welcome too).

So I have managed a little more progress, bear with me as this may have a few photos. Firstly I am organizing a game of 40k with a mate and we are looking at his Imperial Fists (beautifully painted army) vs my Alpha Legion. He has kindly lent me his Chaos Space Marine codex so I won't be using the Index and have all the tasty toys the codex has in it. TO that end I sat down and looked through how my army shapes up from 7th to 8th edition, pretty well actually. The only thing I needed to add to "officially" bring it in line (not that that worries me) is that Terminators now start at 5 models, not the 3 in 7th, so, I dug through my bits box and low and behold I managed to put a 5th terminator together, this guy has a Heavy Flamer and chainfist.


Its the guy on the far right.


I am pretty happy I had a heavy weapon as the rest of the squad all had combi weapons so it bulks up the close range power of the squad.


I thought I would throw this cheeky shot in of the one and only instigator of the Heresy Logar Aurelian, Lord of the Word Bearers. He is probably the least ostentatious and "basic" of the Primarchs I have painted so far. Which I think is very fitting as he is not a warrior but a scholar. So basic arms and armour and that sort of hesitancy in his stature that betrays someone that doesn't know where he fits.

But I was working on Leman Russ the keen eyed readers cry? Well I could only be showing the next Primarch for one reason........

Presenting, Leman Russ, Great Wolf of the Rout and Executioner of the Emperor of Mankind

I wanted to keep his armour fairly dark to rally highlight the Legion badge and his face and hair.


And also kept the weapons bright and hopefully icy.


He is one of the more dynamic Primarchs and I like that he is completely festooned with weapons of all types.


It wasn't really intentional, but the base has ended up very similar to the armour. It initially bugged me and I thought about trying to change it. But came to the conclusion it reflected the fact Leman Russ is a warrior and slayer of men and he doesn't care about standing out from the crowd like Fulgrim. So I kind of have begun liking the fact he is sort of camouflaged.


I will need to try and remember how I did it when it comes to doing Magnus......


I am very happy with how he has come out. The face and hair stand out fantastically against the armour and really stand out.


So much hidden detail.


I really like the layout of the model, the many small weapons, the slung buckler, he looks utterly dedicated to the task of killing.


To contrast against the wolf pelt that Horus wears I tried to keep this one a little bluer. Not sure I achieved it.


I think it is probably the best face I have done to date and the Legion symbol really pops.


And a final scale shot of a few hapless Terminators caught in the path of a mortal god.

So there you have it. I have knocked up a new Chaos Terminator to round out the squad and have finally knocked off Leman Russ who has been sitting on my painting table for far too long. Hopefully I can get Lorgar done in time for my Brothers Birthday and I can give him both together.

I am now into the Lychguard for my Necron and have most of the Deathguard Plague Marines assembled for my mates commission. I just need him to let me know a couple of weapon loadout questions I have.

I am however thinking of lopping off the Power Axe from my Alpha Legion Lord and giving him a chainsword to represent the Teeth of the Hydra relic......hmmm decisions, decisions.

Thanks for reading and appreciate any feedback.

Wow man great stuff, Love the alpha legion colours, whats the recipe?

Beautiful work on Russ. Awesome.

Hi Guys, thanks for the responses. I really do appreciate you stopping by.

@boundless08 it's a pretty basic recipe I use all GW colours.

Undercoat some sort of white, basecoat in Sotek Green, heavy drybrush of Moot Green. Then wash with Drakenhoff Nightshade.

Then pick out the metal with Ironbreaker and wash with Nuln Oil.

Weapons are painted black haven't bothered to highlight them at all.

Any bone is Ushabti bone washed with Agrax Earthshade

Red for eye lenses or anything to do with melts or flamers is painted Mephiston Red and washed with reikland flesh shade.

Orange details are Troll Slayer Orange washed with Fuegan Orange.

There are other colours on different models. But that is the basis of most of them.

Cheers, they look great! I've been doing mine blue then washing with biel tan green but not 100% happy with that, I might try the other way around like you do them

This is an amazing blog, archer! I really like the colour scheme for your Alpha Legion, and that Kings of War battle on the last page looks spectacular!

Lots of eye candy throughout, keep up the good work!

Thanks for stopping by guys. Appreciate the time it takes to post.

I have been a little productive but nothing worth pointing a camera at. Have been discussing the build for the Deathguard with the mate who they are for. Looks to be like he wants two fairly basic squad and then one really tooled up one.

Hi all, its been a hell of a last week.

Unfortunately my son has been back in hospital with an unexpected complication from the previous surgery. We had him at Westmead children's emergency two Saturdays ago as we noticed a lump developing on the back of his head, then a CT scan last Wednesday and then he was admitted via emergency on the Wednesday evening at about 11pm when the lump on his head erupted and possibly the most revolting amount of pus that resembled peanut butter went everywhere. He had surgery early on the Thursday morning. They drained a lot more of the goo, reopened the scar, scrapped out the wound, removed the springs they put in the previous surgery and peroxided (yes peroxide) the wound, saline washed it and then stitched him back up with a drain in place.

He then had a few days in hospital while the cultures were developed to see what nasty it was. The amazing thing is he never had any of the symptoms of an infection, no fever, no discomfort and he never stopped eating. So we got very lucky with the infection staying "external" as if it had burst and gone into his system he would have faced a toxic shock situation.

So the wash up is a tough week for the parents, a baby that was happy and bubbly even in the hospital, no lasting damage (they even checked neurologically) and the bonus they are happy with what the springs have achieved so it looks like they may not have to go in!

Tough week, but a pretty good result considering.

But it has actually helped my hobbying progress as believe me there is not a lot to do in a hospital with a baby doped up in the cot next to you. So, making the best of a bad situation, I have a little progress to share.


Here are my squad of Lychguard. Hopefully they will put a little bit of punch into the close combat phase. Their stats seem to indicate they will be durable and pack a punch. I hope.....


I have gone with the colours off the Lord to try and tie them in to being of elite status and the bodyguard to the lord.


I kind of forgot the formula I used for the bone compared to the warriors so the bone looks a little washed out. Since they are only ten and the elite of the army I am not too concerned they look a little different. With the bright green war scythes and head dresses I figure people are looking at other things.


Here is a close up of the Lord standing in front of his Lychguard. I like how he is a little understated compared to his Guards, sort of like he is a rough and tumble leader rather than the ineffective peacock of other armies.

The final bit of painting I did was a modification to the Alpha Legion Chaos Lord. I bit the bullet and decided that he really did need to be armed with the Alpha Legion specific weapon the Blade of the Hydra. In the description it talks about an overly large chainsword, so I cut two up and made the blade twice the length of a standard one, which I am happy that it doesn't look insanely huge. It also talks about it having multiple blades that the wielder can will into reality or remain incorporeal, so I have attempted to imitate a ghostly appearance to additional blades. I am actually pretty happy with how he has turned out so I hope with his shiny new sword will do him proud when he carves into some opponents soon.



So there you have it. I have had a busy week of parental angst, but it has turned out pretty well.

Thanks for reading.

I have asked this sort of question before, but I think it a good time to ask again with me about to start the commission on the Deathguard.

I need to get some new brushes as far too many of them are a little too worn or dog eared to give the consistency I am after.

So, are their any suggestions on brushes I should look into? Keep in mind that I have only ever used Games Workshop brushes and I have absolutely no qualms over them and would be happy to continue using, however, since the bub came along I am getting price conscious and I know GW can be up there.

Taps microphone hesitantly and peers out past the stage lights.......Anyone out there?

No thoughts on paint brushes? That's a pity, I guess I will role around to the GW close to work and pic up some new ones.

Anyway, enough about painting equipment and time for a little more progress.


I have been slowly assembly the second of my Monoliths and it is as painful as the first one, although I have learnt from my mistakes and hopefully I will find painting it less painful. Trying to replicate the paint scheme from the first one will be difficult, really should have written the process down......I have also decided to touch up the "bone" bits on the Lychguard as I am annoyed how different it is to the rest of the army. Too different for me not to redo.

I have been procrastinating on whether to spray undercoat and basecoat the Deathguard, but have decided it will save me a lot of time and get a nice smooth coat across the lot of them, so I am just waiting on a fine, stable day to crack out the rattle cans.

I have also started looking at assembling the Immortals for the army (I have 20 in the army) but I currently only have 10, so anyone out there with some spare immortals I would be interested. Or if you had any Tomb Blades that would also be most welcome.

But, the main reason for this post is this guy................


I present Lorgar of the Word Bearers. He is probably the most static of the Primarchs, but he has a fair bit of detail. I promise the photos will get better, a bit.


I diverged from the Forgeworld scheme the most of any Primarch thus far on Lorgar, I have kind of gone for a hybrid between the Legion colours of the Word Bearers (steel grey) and the Traitor colours of a deep red. I took the opportunity to try a bit of a tortoise shell to add a little more detail.


To make the red cloak a little different to that of the other Primarchs I used blood for the blood god in a couple of extremely thinned layers to give a glossy look to the cloak. I am pretty happy with it and could be a very quick way to add depth and lighting to cloak in the future.


Of all the Primarchs Lorgar has the fewest weapons as he really isn't a fighter, so I tried to make the pistol stand out as its a bit of a focus.


For the base I learnt a little from Leman Russ and tried to make it contrast rather than compliment Lorgar, but it was very plain, So I added some stripes of colour that could either be some natural seam in the stone or has been inlaid by whoever made the carvings on the ring Lorgar stands on.


I don't normally make my skulls white, but they contrasted against the stone so much better. I wet blended the flames, I have done it better in the past, but it worked well enough.


Here he is on the full base. Although he is very simple I am actually pretty happy with him. I wasn't all that enthused with him to start, but got more into it as I painted him.


He contrasts well against the base and It helps him to pop.


The backpack is very Word Bearer Legion compared to his armour. But I kind of feel (with the whole ritual circle and the like) this is sort fo a snap shot as the Legion fully rebels and is in the process of repainting their armour.


I am not super happy with the book on his shoulder. But its only a small complaint.


So there you have my take on Lorgar of the Word Bearers. It is my Brothers birthday in a week but he is up in Queensland for a wedding so I gave them to him today. He was pretty happy to receive the two Primarchs I have completed. So not sure which I will do next but I have now completed 8 of the 18 Primarchs, so plenty of choices left.


A comparison of Leman Russ and Lorgar. Now that my brother is back living in Sydney I will try to get around to his place and take a group shot of the 8 of them together.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave a comment.

So very little activity on the painting front, although I have sorted out the brush situation and am now awaiting a clear day to spray some Deathguard. Has anyone used the GW sprays as a basecoat (rather than black or white) or should I go white first and then the colour?

I did manage to get me General's hat on and have a game of 8th edition 40k. I finally managed to get the Alpha Legion onto the field. In 8th edition the army weighs in at about 2080 points. We played 1,500 points so I had to prune some of the fat and the Terminators, Raptors and half the cultists didn't see action this time around.

We played the ambush scenario with the Alpha Legion playing the ambushers (very in character) and the Imperial Fists to be their victims. Overall I had a fantastic time, I felt the Imperial Fists had it stacked against them in this scenario and I feel I was in control the whole way through. We learnt some valuable lessons along the way (who knew you can pile in to other units in the combat phase and lock them down!). So if we did it again I think it would be a more even affair as I have to admit desperate for my first win against my regular opponent in 40k I did a lot of planning.......

But on to some happy snaps of the action.


So I "deployed" my forces concealed as little paper squares (you can see a few I hadn't fully removed from the board), then the Imperial Fists deployed as far forward in a tight armoured wedge to press the issue. He pushed the Scouts out with their infiltrating ability to act as a screen which I though looked very cool. But I had confidence that with the darkness of turn one and my Alpha Legion trait I would be hard to cause major damage at range.


My two units of Havocs were the rock solid base around which the rest of the army performd well, here one of the units allows the armoured column to pass by before opening fire.


The second unit of Havocs deployed deep allowing them plenty of time to shoot the Imperial Fists as they tried to flee the trap.


I had a unit of Chaos Space Marines on both flanks ready to close the trap and hopefully stop the Imperial Fists making a flat out run for freedom. I had the Chaos Lord on one flank and the Dark Apostle on the other, it worked very, very well.


A smattering of Cultists were around to act as meat shields and extra bodies, these brave souls did a stellar job of attracting the attention of a combat squad of Assault Marines.......


I made aggressive use of the Alpha Legion Stratagem that allowed me to set up units in "concealment" so I chose to position both units of Chosen in prime position to cause some serious damage early on. I had resolved myself that they were expendable, especially after witnessing that tight pack of tanks and bodies, but if they could hold the advance up for a turn or two they would have done their job.


I think if we played this again my opponent would have deployed in such a way to stop me having the Chosen come in behind his lines, the whirlwind didn't actually make a shot the entire game and it could have proved extremely annoying if it has setup deep in its deployment zone as a sacrificial fire support unit, fortunately it didn't.


At the start of the movement phase of turn 1 I decided I needed to be brave and trust the power armour of my forces and moved to close the trap and hopefully sweep the Scouts our of the way.


In the centre the Chosen sprang forward and the Havocs opened fire, my first turn shooting was appalling, I think I did 5 wounds on the Rhino with the dice on the top, killed one Assault Marine and cleared 6 of the 13 scouts out front, I thought the dice gods had abandoned me......


The Havocs though picked their game up and between the Autocannons and Missile Launchers proved invaluable. Especially those missile launchers. I regularly was getting 4 or 5 shots with each frag missile and unfortunately the armour of the Imperial Fists seemed faulty.


My Chosen are setup fairly generic, with 2 Power Swords and 2 Plasma Guns, keeps the cost down, but they proved to be capable of putting the hurt on throughout the game. Although I realised about halfway through the game that I had been forgetting the "Death to the False Emperor" Rule so had potentially costs myself a few extra attacks along the way!


The rearmost Chosen squad engaged the Rhino that I had shot at and in combat reduced it to 1 wound, it would take a couple more turns before I managed to wreck it as the tactical squad inside jumped out and tried to defend their ride. THis combat dragged on for quite a while. I didn't mind too much as I was tying up valuable units that couldn't get off the board and even inf the Imperial Fists managed to kill the Chosen off I had the Havocs and Cultists watching on.......


The Chosen in the centre quickly finished off the Combat Squad of Assault Marines and the Imperial Fist tanks took off in an attempt to escape the trap, the brave Captain and Lieutenant hung around though to try and slow them down.


Back at the head of the escape route the Havocs continued to rain fire on the approaching Imperial Fists, the Lord, Chaos Marines a Unit of cultists moved forward to slow the Vindicator that led the charge. Between the Missile Launchers, 2 melta guns and 2 combi-meltas the Vindicator took a beating, but still survived to take a revenge shot at the havocs, but due to the cover they were in and the Alpha Legion traits it didn't claim a single kill.


Out of spite the lead cultists doused the Vindicator with his Flamer, someone must have forgotten to close all the hatches as it suffered a wound. The Chaos Lord may have been using his cultists as a human shield as he advanced towards the combat.

You can see a swirling melee on the other side of the gorge where my other Chaos Marines and the Dark Apostle were slowly working their way through , Scouts and a Devastator squad.


Leaving his brave cultists to handle the Vindicator the Lord charged into the Devastators, wanting to see what the TTeeth of the Hydra could do, and it was good. He really was a monster in combat and I got lucky and regularly threw out 6 and 7 attacks, and I remembered Death to the False Emperor so he and the Dark Apostle quickly put an end to the boys in yellow.


While all of this glorious combat was going on the Imperial Fists did stick to the plan and led by the Whirlwind the other tanks made a break for the safety of the table edge. The remaining Assault Marines made a charge at the Cultists up on the hilltop.


The scenario required a third of the Imperial Fists to escape to count as a victory and I think between the Rhino and its cargo, the Whirlwind and Assault marines they almost had enough points. It was going to be a desperate charge.


This was slightly earlier in the battle. I held the Lord and Chaos Marines back a turn to see what the Imperial Fists would do, I figure the cover and Alpha Legion trait would see them through any shooting they copped.


I really enjoyed the image of the desperate tank charge as they realized their forces were being overrun. The Assault Marines couldn't help themselves though and charged the Cultists. The heavy stubber barked a staccato and I cheered when one of the Assault marines toppled over. First blood to the Cultists.


THis is heading to late game and the Imperial Fists just haven't managed to advance. I think they may have been hampered by such a tight deployment and my ultra aggressive start to the game. The Assault Marines had terrible luck and it took them at least a couple of turns (three maybe?) to finally stop the Cultists, losing another of their number as he was dragged down by bayonets and rifle butts.


Assault Marines are so cool, that Thunder Hammer is also very awesome, even when it was squishing my poor cultists.


I think the crowning achievement of the Imperial Fists though was the valiant Captain. He stayed behind to slow the Alpha Legionnaires, hopefully buying time for his troops to make good their escape. He stoop shoulder to shoulder with his Lieutenant (well slightly behind so I had to shoot him first) and weathered a lot of fire power before being charged by the four remaining Chosen from the centre squad. I was confident, with the charge on my side, 2 power swords and 4 backup attacks and only needing to take two more wounds, what could go wrong?

Well this Captain was a hero and he killed all four of his attackers and turned to rejoin his beleaguered troops........


Unfortunately for him, there was still a squad of Havocs that had not had much to do except watch the Chosen get cut down. So when he turned to advance, they pulled the trigger.......


Although they were beaten to the punch by the Cultists flanking them who stole the honour of the kill. You can also see the Assault Marines in the distance who just as they thought they were going to make it off the board the back up Havocs opened fire and blew them out of the sky. Thus ensuring a win to the Alpha Legion.

So all in all, a scenario that really suited my army, it has so much infantry that picking a target is very hard, it also has a lot of redundancy so if a unit goes down there is another to cover the loss. You know, just like a Hydra........

My opponent played well in a bad situation, when the favor is returned and my army is ambushed I definitely think a sacrificial fire base is necessary to put the hurt on the enemy early on.

Next time we are heading to Kings of War and I just need to see how my Dwarf Artillery train will translate to this game system. Until then hope to have some painting up to show next time.

Thanks for reading.

Man, that is an amazing table!

Yeah I am pretty lucky to have my regular gaming buddy as his setup is damn nice. I am hoping that now I have the shed sorted and the family has settled down to have some time to start putting my own table together.

If you do terrain like you paint minis, it should be something to behold! :-)

Really cool battle. Nice to see a "realistic" scenario like an ambush in a mountain pass played out with beautiful 40k armies.

Wonderful catch up on your blog, great batrep and stunning models to look at brilliant bud.

Thanks all, its really nice to see the effort on the painting table make it into a game. Managed a game of Kings of War with my Brethren (Bretonnians) taking on The Herd (Beastmen) I will get some photos of the conflict up soon. Was a good game with a nice contrast between my overly colourful knights and the very natural scheme of my opponents Beastmen.

So I have finally been able to pull the proverbial finger out as everything at home has settled down nicely and I have managed to ignore my own painting and have tried to get a start on the Deathguard commission I promised to do. So, I have assembled, undercoated and base coated all of the Plague Marines (3 squads, 1 of 8 and 2 of 7). Before charging ahead though as it is for someone else I have done a trial of the scheme I would like to do. I plan to take some much better photos either tonight or on the weekend to send to him for approval before I begin.

But as a sneak peek here is my trial Plague Marine.......





I am pretty happy with how he has turned out. I am reasonably confidant of being able to reproduce it over 2,500 points of models and it has room to scale up in detail for the centrepiece models.

Thoughts are welcomed and encouraged and I will get some higher quality ones soon that I will send to the hopefully happy future owner.

Thanks for reading.

Ok, so this year has taken quite the hit with the hobby front. Seems I should never have entered into the agreement to paint Nurgle models as Papa Nurgle himself has visited upon me more plagues than I care to admit. With our sons health sorted out I really thought that I was on track to really get back into things. As it turns out I was wrong, very wrong.

I first became became unwell (flu) around May, which isn't anything unusual as I often seem to get sick just before my birthday. The thing is though, I haven't gotten any better since. I have managed to keep working (just) but not much of a husband or father when I have gotten home. Eventually I was persuaded that it wasn't normal or going to get better without intervention and I trundled along to the doctor. Long story short, bacterial pneumonia had taken hold and both lungs were fully affected. Now a great deal of strong antibiotics have been administered for quite a long time and I am FINALLY starting to feel half well again. I have more tests to get done as they want to make sure that it is all gone, but are hesitant for anymore drugs unless absolutely necessary.

BUT, I have managed to pick up a paint brush a little and have managed some decent progress. And, since this is a blog about painting and modelling not my health worries without further adieu some progress and proof of life! It has been far too long since I last posted, hopefully there are still a few die hards out there following my progress......

So my Necron list has gone through a couple of changes due to wanting to make it playable in 8th (I needed a second HQ) but keep it in line as close as I could for 7th edition as that is what the lists are primarily based on. I decided to add a Cryptek and after some looking and searching I decided I didn't really like the available models (although the new one from that boxed game isn't bad) nor could I find one at a discounted price. So I tipped out my bits box and this I am happy to say is my new Cryptek to join my Necron Legion.


The cryptek is a lot of different bits, but I think I managed a nice "old man hunchback" look to him. Including him in the army allowed points for some Scarabs, I have always liked them and was disappointed I didn't have them in the original list. I have now rectified that.


They were obviously pretty easy to paint, but in bulk look pretty good. Here is the Cryptek and a few Scarabs hanging around.


The Cryptek will be getting the same basic treatment as the rest of the army, but I can't figure out how to paint the "halo" thingy over his head.


To get myself motivated again I decided to smash out a little bit of scatter terrain/objectives as they were cluttering up my painting station for ages. These are from the GW Shipping Containers box, a kit I am super impressed with and will definitely pick up some more. When I do I plan to lay out the crates and drums so they can be combined into huge piles for the battlefield.


I love quick scatter terrain that really will add a point of interest on the board.


Here we have some objective markers, also from the GW objective marker box, I have two left to paint (but they are close to done) but I am again very happy with how they have come out. Very quick and they look really good for the effort spent.


I painted the Genestealer in the tank with my own Tyranid scheme, one of my regular opponents pointed out I should have used his scheme instead, what a great idea that would have been. Oh well, no going back now.


So enough of my own stuff, I have also managed a little progress on the Death Guard commission, first up is the Plague Crawler, I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as the Plague Marines, I just felt they could have gone more to town on it than they did in the sculpt. It's a little plain to me.




I stuck to the scheme I used on the plague marines and I am happy with the result, just thought it needed more tentacles, filth and toothy mouths.

The main success with the Deathguard though is I have finished off the Plague Marines, three squads (two of 7, one of 8) to be precise all with different weapons and they were a riot to paint, SO, MUCH, DETAIL!
Squad 1: Lots of close combat weapons and will be a real nightmare up close. These guys will be running around in the armies Rhino for sure.


Close up of Champion, Icon Bearer and Plague Spewer.


Squad 2: The traditional Plague Marine build, three plasma guns. They will obviously hunker down in some cover and be a massive pain to get rid of.


The Marine on the right was my test model and I think I managed to replicate him quite nicely across the rest of them.


Squad 3: A bit of a wild card, the squad has two Plague Belchers, I really don't know what they do, so I am not sure what use they will be..........


I have to admit they painted really easily as I very much enjoyed the sculpts and aesthetics of these models, a lot more than I have a lot of models recently. So they have been a bit of a good way of getting back to the painting.


All the Plague Marines together.


So there you have it. Not much considering I haven't posted since June, but considering how bad my health got I am taking it as a win. I have four Deathguard character models (Lord of Contagion, Plague Caster, Tallyman and something else I can't remember) undercoated and basecoated on the table at the moment; as well as the Cryptek and I have started on the second Monolith, so I am really hoping to have some more progress shortly.

Thanks for looking and hope to hear from you all soon. It's good to be back.

The Death Guard guys look ace. Just a shame it's not for your own use!

Hi all, thought I would stop in to my very neglected blog and say I am still pottering around. It's been a hell of a year with our little man now 15 months old and has put all of his health issues from birth behind him.

Unfortunately his dad has been battling this year and after many tests and find all sorts of things out about my health I am hopefully on the road to recovery.

I have been still painting and gaming, just the posting has been letting me down, I do hope to have some photos of what I have been up to up soon and get back in the groove of posting.

I am currently working furiously on a surprise gift for one of my good mates for Christmas which is a nice break from the Deathguard and Necron......

 Archer wrote:
Hi all, thought I would stop in to my very neglected blog and say I am still pottering around. It's been a hell of a year with our little man now 15 months old and has put all of his health issues from birth behind him.

Unfortunately his dad has been battling this year and after many tests and find all sorts of things out about my health I am hopefully on the road to recovery.

I have been still painting and gaming, just the posting has been letting me down, I do hope to have some photos of what I have been up to up soon and get back in the groove of posting.

I am currently working furiously on a surprise gift for one of my good mates for Christmas which is a nice break from the Deathguard and Necron......

Nice to know you are about still.

Just noticed the pics above, they are really nice pics and excellent work.

Best wishes with all, you and your family. Great to hear the young un doing better. You take care bud.

Always good to here from you bud.

Hi all,
Before I get back to some pretty pictures of painting and gaming I thought I would ask a gaming question......will post elsewhere to get better exposure as well.

I am considering putting a multiplayer (perhaps multi table) game of 40k together. I have questioned a few of my mates and got a resounding yes they are interested so it seems I at least have the players, between us we have plenty of armies/models (althougha serious lack of the big stuff, but that's ok).

What I am interested in, is whether anyone has had success with this sort of thing and if there are any interesting scenarios rules that could be included to give it more dynamic than set up and start shooting? Maybe each table has different goals/missions/scenarios etc.

Thoughts?

Hi All,

Figured it was long overdue for some pretty pictures since I am alive and well and things are marching on pretty smoothly now.

I have managed quite a few games, some I took some photos of, some I did not. But I have enjoyed all of them although I am pretty sure I am well below 50% in my win/loss record.

First up we have a Kings of War game with my Bretonnians ably representing the Brotherhood (who conveniently have almost direct conversions for the Bretonnians). We played a 1,500 point game with my Knights taking on the Herd (Beastmen).


It was a pretty standard battlefield, but with neither of us having any missile weapons to speak of, the hills were just window dressing.


My battle line ready to roll. I really am no good at these games, I can never stick to what I plan to do and instead just throw everyone down. Often in review I feel I lost the game during the deployment phase.


The guy in black is my General and although Kings of War is less about the characters he is still a bit of a beat stick and I stuck him out here as there was a unit of dogs my opponent was going to use to flank me.


Here we can see those pesky dogs.


We were playing a scenario that required us to control loot counters (unfortunately all we could come up with is some X-Wing movement dials, I say it every time I need to work on some objective markers for fantasy games). Look at all those chariots in the distance though......


I had first turn and did what was expected, full steam ahead. I often believe I play too conservatively and give up too much of the battlefield to my opponent not giving me the room to maneuver in later turns. So i stuck to my guns and moved almost everything as far forward as possible.


My opponent was a little more cautious, especially of the charge range of the knights and started to try and use his superior numbers to envelope mt lines.


In response I diverted a unit of Knights (and a hero) to try and at least slow the flanking force down, I was really concerned by the Centaurs and their speed as a flank or rear charge in KoW is pretty much goodnight to a unit.


As I often find it KoW is a lot of jostling for position before the flood gates open and all hell breaks loose. To try and break things up and draw the beasts line forward I sacrificed my Knight Errant in a headlong insane charge. It did have the desired effect though as from this point on the battleines caved in and units became islands fighting amid the chaos rather than the solid lines they started in.


Charge and counter-charge was exchanged and I think I was starting to get the upper hand, my Damsel was doing a good job of healing damage and my superior armor was getting me through the worst of it. Although that fantastic Minotaur Lord was a beast in combat.


But I managed to keep the pressure up and it really swung my way.


As you can see the poor Minotaur was left all on his lonesome.


But some of my knights were now exposed to the Centaurs, I did attempt to get the hero to intervene and act as a speed bump, but he didn't get far enough forward and the Centaurs could get around his valiant effort and wiped the Knights away.


I did win a small measure of revenge by wiping them out the next turn.....


So the battle ended with me in a really strong position and controlling enough of the markers that I have managedto pull off a win which is a rare occurence for me against this opponent.

We had a follow up game with me using my Empire Knightly Order as I think the Rhodia list vs the Beasts bolstered with some absolutely beautiful new models. It was a pretty closely run thing, but the beasts had their revenge and I lost. Pretty confident that it was my stupid deployment that put me on the back foot almost immediately.

Stay tuned for another battle update soon.

Brets look really great on the table, and nice with a classic match-up vs the beastmen. Congrats on pulling a win

Lovely looking batrep, such a classic looking game as well, colour and light verses the dark horde.

Merry Christmas.

Hi Everyone and a happy new year. Before I get into a review of 2018 I want to show a couple of things completed late in 2018.


First of all though (ignore the models we will get to them in a second). My old mobile painting station at long last was at the end of its life and my darling wife was kind enough to buy me this one. After assembly (it came as laser cut flat pack) I gave it a couple of coats of urethane and then a top coat of housing paint to try and give it even more life than the old one (which I never painted). It's a real beauty, the company that sell them offer a modular range where you pick your left and right sections and the cutting mat is replaceable. Very impressed and tempted to buy a second one as an "assembly" station with different modules on the left and right.


It can't hold all of the paints, but all the paints that are seen are the ones for the Death Guard commission I am working on. So about enough for a project which for me who likes things to be organised is a nice thing.


This shot shows the whole rig quite well, its a little smaller than my old one, but far more durable and I am really impressed with it. Firmly recommend one if you are looking for a new painting station (Australian company and no idea if they post overseas?).

Next up a good friend of mine has been slowly pulling a force of Space Wolves together (like most of us not enough time or money slows things down). In my wheeling and dealing trying to pull models together for my own crazy army plan I got enough on sprue space wolves to make thirty models. The plan was to use them for my own Space Wolf army when the time finally came. But I was inspired to give him a gift for Christmas so on the 1st of December I cracked the sprues and started building........

As it turned out I decided to do him a squad of Sky Claws (as I had enough jump packs floating around to do a full pack), a squad of Blood Claws and a small Wolf Guard pack.
It went quite well.....


Here is the Sky Claw pack. Ten strong with a pair of Plasma Guns and the Pack Leader sports a power sword.


As something a little different for Space Wolves I modeled this whole pack to have helmets. Which to me makes a lot of sense when you have a jet pack on your back.......


Since each pack has the option to have a Wolf Guard attached I certainly made use of this and this guy adds a bit of punch with his Wolf Claws. I really like the ability to attached the Wolf Guard to a squad. This guy obviously is too hardcore for a helmet which makes him stand out nicely.


The whole pack as they would deploy for a game.


Here are the Blood Claws, the Pack Leader has a powerfist and there are a couple of flamers in the squad. You can see the Pack Leader also wears the wolf helmet to help him stand out during a game.


I kept with the colors that Blood Claws/Sky Claws have yellow shoulder pads with a red symbol on the right shoulder pad and the left is for the company marking. In the case of my mate its blue with the Thunderwolf for Bjorn Stormwolf. I used the transfer sheets as there was no way I was trying to paint that many Thunderwolf symbols.


Like the Sky Claws these guys have a Wolf Guard tagging along, this time he is swinging a Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield.


The whole pack ready for a game.


And finally we have the Wolf Guard. These five (probably best to end up backed up by some "normal" Wolf Guard to act as cannon fodder. So in the end I have painted 32 models (as I needed a couple of pairs of legs to make the extra Wolf Guard).


I pretty much just had one of each "option" available to the Wolf Guard. Here we have a Frost Axe, Combi-Melta and the Pack Leader with Frost Sword and Storm Bolter.


And the last two with Wolf Claws and Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield.


And finally for this gift all packed into a pelican case to be transported to their new owner. He got to keep the pelican case too in case you were wondering.

So I didn't actually make the Christmas deadline I set myself, I was finished on New Years eve, but that isn't a bad result as it pretty much meant a finished Space Wolf every day of December. He was pretty happy which I was also very happy about.

Finally for this update, Death Guard. With all my own health complaints as well as my sons surgeries I have been a little slow with their progress that since its a paid job I have felt pretty bad about, but my mate who they are for has been obviously very understanding. But progress has been made.......


Up first is the Malignant Plague Caster. Haven't actually looked at his rules, but I figure he is a psyker of some flavor. As this is a unified force I kept to the same recipe I used for all the previous models, but tried to make these guys a little "brighter" as they are the HQ of the army.


Next we have the Lord of Contagion, a really hulking model that gave me the feeling of the big guy from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, not actually a thinker anymore, but hits like a freight train.


Here we have a Foul Blightspawn, again, not really sure what he does, but looking at the intricacies of the model it seems he pumps filth from inside his own body through that hose. Which seems very unpleasant.


Scribbus Wretch, Tallyman. Seems a little strange to bring parchment and an abacus to a gun fight, but what would I know?


Finally is a Noxious Blightbringer, I think I liked this model the most of the bunch, the Bells are a nice offset to the green.


A group shot of all the latest models. The one on the far left is a previous Plague Marine which I included to show they match the existing scheme quite well. My mate is pretty happy with the look of them so far. I have three Foetid Bloat-drone's in the queue next.

I really do need to get motivated for the Necron again......

Thanks for reading.

Hi all,

A short update to start the new year. I have decided not to set goals for the year like I have in previous years. Life at the moment is just too unpredictable and I would prefer to just enjoy what I get done. Having said that, I do feel under a little pressure to get the Death Guard finished as it is a commission and to that end I have three foetid bloat drones undercoated, base coated and one color done so far. So hopefully they will be done reasonably quickly.

On my own model front I have started assembly of the Tomb Blades for my Necron. Six are done out of twelve, so many little parts.

The primary reason for assembling them is that I have FINALLY finished the second Monolith which has been sitting on my painting station laughing at my inability to finish it. Took a little thought as I could not for the life of me remember how I had done the previous one. But as the photos show I think I got pretty close, although the second one is much better job than the first one.


Both of them in the "closed state. The portal and stairs concealed.


I am pretty happy with how close in paint scheme they are.


All opened up and the portals are ready to go.


The first one (the one on the left) I was a little lazy with the wash on the silver parts so its pretty patchy. The second one is way better.


A shot from the back of the Monoliths.

So still in January and already some good painting progress. Looking to be a good 2019.

Thanks for reading.

Quick question for anyone out there (and yes I am getting ahead of myself). The next army after the Necron for my own collection will be Chaos Dwarfs. I have managed to snag all the forgeworld required models for what I hope will be an amazing looking army. None of the train garage shenanigans but bull centaurs, k’daai and those mean looking dwarfs.

My question is this. They have come with round bases (not surprising since the switch to rounds for age of Sigmar). Since Kings of War is the game I most usually play should I:

A) Keep then on the rounds and make movement trays so I can use them in multiple games?
B) Fix them permanently to movement trays and other games be damned.
C) Get square bases like the rest of the armies and if I play age of Sigmar just use them with square?
D) Another clever idea I have yet to think of?

Thanks for reading.

I would go with A, easy enough to make movement tray sized decorative bases that the round ones slot into, and(from what I understand) KoW don't care really how many per base, so as long as you have a minimum amount can make your army go a long way.

B, multibases are awesome. Makes models look much better and you can also adjust model count as needed.

Quick update since I haven't got to a stage with anything on my painting table worth showing at this stage (although the Foetid Bloat Drones are getting close).

Really quick background, my wife and I used to live in a granny flat on her parents property and whilst I was building it (yup I did everything from the initial drawings to the roofing. Although I didn't do the electrical work) we stayed in their house (its a huge house). Anyway, her parents are preparing to sell their house and low and behold they found a few models.

Probably with a little embarrassment I didn't even know they were missing.......but here they are now, all painted and ready for use.


I already have a few of these so now I can cover a pretty large area with some nice looking craters.


I fuel/power dump? It will go nicely with the forgeworld fuel tank I did a while ago.


A command bunker? I kind of new I must of had this one as I used the canopy that used to go on top on an ork vehicle I did for that army and I still have the table with the radio that fits inside the bunker in my bits box.

So some quick fire terrain to wet the appetite and I should have the Bloat Drones done in a week or so (if I get some good painting time).

Thanks for reading.

Nice to see the terrain. Like the last one in particular, the drums give it a nice finish. Gives me some ideas.

Some progress to bring the blog back from the brink of the abyss. I have had a bit of a spurt on in regards to painting which makes a nice change. Have the one and only Rhino for the Deathguard commission all assembled (or at least in its sections for painting) just waiting for me to start undercoating and base coating. I did have a go at melting it with plastic glue in places to make it look pock marked to match the rest of the army as it look far too clean as it was. I was also fortunate enough to get some Deathguard Rhino doors to further pimp it up. It may be a simple rhino, but I think it is going to look great.

I have also started and almost finished a set of the plasma generator things that GW sells. They are really quite detailed and will be a nice addition to my terrain collection.

But in regard to finished models, here is the latest. The Foetid Bloat Drones for the Deathguard.........


I have thoroughly enjoyed painting these guys from start to finish. Which isn't normal for me as I tend to start to get impatient with models and just want them finished.


I stuck to the scheme I have used for all the other deathguard, except the flesh on the back of the models had a little more work (basically as there is almost no exposed flesh on the other models).


They are actually really horrific models in all their gross splendor, I think they hit the Deathguard aesthetic right on the head.


Out of variety I set them up with each weapon option, so I envisage the lawnmower one will fly up the board as quickly as possible closely supported by the one with the twin cannons as they are flamer type weapons whilst the third with the heavy gun covers their advance. A trio that Papa Nurgle can be proud of.


The lawnmower as I have dubbed him, it is a pretty brutal weapon and I have doubts it will live long enough to actually get in a fight. Pity.


A bit of heavy firepower that I think the army lacks a little bit of. I definitely think when I do Deathguard I will have some of these guys floating around.


The classic armament I think, close range and with a deceptively nasty close combat attack it will be a nuisance (hopefully).

So two of these came from the Dark Imperium boxes with the third being the individual kit and from that I was able to make them quite individual which was great as I managed to save a bucket of cash in getting the models for my mate. I am really happy with them and it just about tips me over halfway in the project (model wise well over halfway) but the really expensive points wise models are coming up fast. Although I still want to get a few more Pox-Walkers form my mates army (have 10, need 20, want a total of 30) if you have any floating around, let me know.

Thanks for reading.

Hi all,

I needed a quick break from the Deathguard (and before working on a few more Necron) I decided to knock out a little more terrain. These are a pair of the GW Plasma Coil thingies. I am pretty happy with the models and the paint works for terrain (don't want it to overshadow the actual armies after all). I really like how with the new GW terrain it all works together. I do plan on getting more of these (and other pieces hopefully).


I didn't get the plasma bits as vibrant as I had initially set out to do, but I wasn't looking for awesome, just functional and the recipe will be easy to reproduce on future ones.


There is a very slight difference to the sculpts that helps add interest.


With a few of these you could get some really nice height to the battlefield. Definitely working on improving my terrain collection. I have some of the GW shipping containers that I will be working on along with the next round of Deathguard and Necron.


I left the "sides" loose so you can move them to suit whatever configuration you need. Sort of would have been nice to have two of them per piece though.

The next plans are a Deathguard Rhino which I am pretty happy with how the construction has gone so I think it will look great with some paint on it. Plus I have assembled the first six of twelve Tomb Blades and will paint them all at once so need to get the rest assembled.

Thanks for reading.

So it has been an incredibly long time since i last stopped by. Life has been altogether too hectic and although that is a good thing in many ways it also has meant the painting side of the hobby has suffered. But, I have been slowly plodding along and getting things done. Nothing extremely exciting to show and definitely not going to be a photo dump of progress.

However, things look like they may start to slow down a little and hopefully I can be posting more regularly, like the good old days........who am I kidding, they have flown.

I am still getting regular games in though and am even involved in a three player magic the gathering campaign that is a lot of fun and has been a great way to learn the game.

Anyway, on to some painting goodness. Still poking at the Deathguard and feeling a little pressure as the due date is starting to get closer.....will see what happens.

There is a single Rhino in the army and although I actually quite fancy the Rhino kit once I had built it I really wasn't happy that it didn't have the cool Deathguard aesthetic (far too clean and the like) so i decided to go to town on the poor thing and see if I could please Papa Nurgle.


Fortunately I don't think I botched it and am actually really pleased with how it turned out. I also managed to scrounge some Forgeworld Deathguard doors that really set it apart from a standard Rhino. Hope my mate is happy.


I borrowed from the previous tank and have the white patches over the surface and poured some polystyrene cement onto it and let it eat away for a while to give me a textured surface to paint into.

I also looted my bits box to tool it up and with two combi-bolters and a havoc launcher this little Rhino actually has quite a bite.


The other thing I did, since the kit is quite detailed is rather than glue the side doors on I drop a magnet in so the side doors could be popped off for suitably awesome camera moments. Why hide all that delicious detail?


Similarly I left the top hatch loose so if you ever wanted to look inside or place some models to remind you who is catching a ride is much easier.


I didn't really Nurgle up the inside, maybe I should get a chaos spawn model and hide it inside as a surprise for when my mate takes delivery of the army?

There you have my take on a Nurgle rhino for the deathguard. I think I have captured a little of the aesthetic of the models I have done so far and I am now working on the thirty pox walkers that will provide some bulk to the army, not looking forward to them with all their little details and spindly arms.

Thanks for reading and its good to be back posting.

Hey all, had a spare minute and thought i would show something that is distracting me at the moment. I really like nice terrain and often don't feel like I am up for scratch building (short of hills and the like). So I am always interested in whats available for a good result for hopefully not heaps of effort or coin (some of that pre-painted stuff is awesome, but I can't justify the cost).

So, when I was hunting for a new painting station and came across http://miniaturescenery.com/. I got one of their modular painting stations (I think I posted it previously) and put it together with little fuss and am still extremely happy with it. Far better than the previous one I had and that thing lasted me years. I did eye off a few of the terrain pieces that they offered as well as I thought they could be easy and look good.

My wife was kind enough to grab a few of the kits I had indicated I was interested in and in the last couple of weeks I have begun assembling them. So far I am really impressed. They go together pretty easily, the instruction available from their website are really good (even have painting guides). Have a look at the photos below (no paint yet) of what I have done.


This is the ground floor of one of the village houses. I figured I really lacked "fantasy" style buildings and these looked like a really nice way of fixing that. There are multiple ways of building them.


This is the next floor, I really like the ladder touch between floors. You can but these up (or glue them) together to make larger buildings and when doing that the doorways will all match up.


And with the roof on. I think even unpainted it looks really good and I am hoping it paints pretty quickly. I have another one already and am thinking of getting another two so I can have a little village.

I also have the Inn that matches these houses so should be able to get a good little village set up. What I especially like is that the roof fits nicely on any floor so you could have a few one level buildings or even a massive tower with little effort.

The other piece of terrain I have always thought of is a lot of pipes running all over the place. Now GW does a very nice set of pipes, but they are pricey and getting a heap of them was beyond what I was willing to pay (but do plan on a set at some stage).

I have been collecting heavy cardboard tubes as I find them with the eye to make some pipe terrain, but always baulked at how to dress them up to look interesting and not just "hey I put some cardboard tube on the table". Miniature Scenery had my answer.......


They have these kits that you add to pipes. I am extremely impressed. Whats above is one kits worth (plus some of my cardboard tubes. I have another two kits yet to build so think I will be able to have a nice little refinery when I am done.


An example of how I could set up the pipework for a game.


An alternative setup.

I am considering getting some hammertone paint and seeing how it goes on the MDF and cardboard and if it gives me a sort of galvanised appearance. could make the painting process very simple.....

So there you have it, I am pretty keen to get the rest of it built and painted and use it in a game.

Thanks for reading.

So a tiny little bit of progress to keep myself motivated whilst I try to bang out 30 Pox-Walkers for my mates Desth Guard. Not really engaging with them like I have the rest of the Death Guard range unfortunately as they are just not that interesting. Too many of the same sculpts and quite a different aesthetic than the Plague Marines.

But I managed to knock this guy out:


Not my greatest work. But he is my converted Cryptek.


I am really happy with the way the model came together. I think he has a suitable mad scientist look for a robot.


He has the same paint scheme as the rest of the army with a little more metal on his bling.


Here is the Overlord, Cryptek and one base of Scarabs. I think even though the paint may be a little below my current standard it looks ok.

Now back to the grind with the Pox Walkers and will see if I can get some more Necromunda done.

Thanks for reading.

Loving the blog mate. The shots of the kings of war game was awesome especially the contrast of colourful knights with their opponents. Like the necron colour scheme so far too.

So basically I am stunned that the year is going so quickly and I have barely managed to log on and look at everyone else's work rather than update what I am doing. Short answer is......not much. But I am still here and about and have been making some small inroads into the modelling front.

A lot of big changes are on the way for me and the family and hopefully they will be a cause for much celebration.

Firstly, I am going to start off a new job in the new year. I am taking a position with a research company as head Designer doing CAD drafting and all manner of simulations (FEA, structural, fluid dynamics). The real kicker of the position is they are matching my current earnings, but I am going to be working about 7 days a fortnight rather than killing myself with the 60 hours a week I now do.

Plus, I have their blessing to pursue my contract design work that I have been doing on the weekend and after hours so i will be able to get my weekends and evenings back rather than working 70+ hours a week! So excited. May even have a chance to eventually go independent and have my own thing going one day.

The other news and one I have been sitting on for a while is my wife is pregnant with our second child, so come the end of March our son will be welcoming a sibling to cause havoc with. We are obviously a little apprehensive with the health issues our son had to face early on, but I am glad to say he seems to have left that all behind and he is a happy and bubbly little to year old.

Now on to the hobby front......I still have that Death Guard commission hanging over my head and I am a little embarrassed that I have yet to finish it, but I blame the client as he was supposed to be moving back to Australia this year, but has landed another offshore gig for the next three years and has said he doesn't need them any time soon until he gets settled in the new location. SO I took the foot of the gas.....

But I have progress, the blasted Poxwalkers that I have so loathed to do are now finished. Painted, based and varnished.


Utterly horrendous photos I am afraid, but honestly they look ok in real life.


Ended up getting him another 10 dirt cheap so he has plenty of disposable bodies to play with.


To tie in with the green of the deathguard I decided on a green skin tone, didn't want them stealing the limelight from the Plague Marines after all.


In the end I am pretty damn happy with them, they actually have a fair bit of insane character about them if a little creepy.

I have commenced construction of the Spartan.......what a *%$!!* of a model. I think it may go some way to breaking me, it is warped and horrible and going to take some serious attention to get it somewhere near right. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading.

Nice Necron goodies, and Death Guard looking brilliant.

Hi all, it has been quite some time (afraid to look!) since I last posted anything. Haven't even managed to lurk on other peoples blogs. But I have been still plugging away at the hobby front, both painting and gaming. Work has settled down quite well and I am enjoying it, although I think I have to admit it is right at the upper end of my abilities so every day is a stretch. The challenge is refreshing, but I am not used to being stretched mentally like I am now.

Baby number 2 is rapidly approaching and my Wife has been in full blown nesting mode that has seen me removing internal walls in our house to reconfigure bedrooms, thank the gods for a long holiday break over Christmas.

So let me begin with a few picks of recent endeavors:


I know my "plan" is to not go back to armies that I have already finished, but 40k 8th edition has proven to be quite popular and seems to be the primary system that gets played with my gaming buddies. Plus my Imperial Guard (ahem, Astra Militarum) took a hit points wise and were quite a bit below the 2,000 points that they were initially built as. So, with models that I had floating in the bits box (yes it is quite large) I assembled another unit of Veterans. These guys are set up in the same way as the Sniper Vet squad from the originals with Camo Cloaks, but pack a little more punch with three Plasma Guns.


I used Catachan heads on Cadian bodies to give a rough and tumble look. I carved the heads off two metal Cadian command models (Sergeant and Vox user) and replaced them with Catachan heads.


The Plasma guns are all donated from my Space Wolf bits, scraping off anything that was too Wolfy.


I learnt from the previous squad and the Camo Cloaks have come out much neater.


Here you can see the Old Vets next to the New Vets, I think that they look pretty similar to each other which was the plan.


I did actually go back over all the Vet squads and upgraded a guy to be a Vox Operator......will show them next time.

So, with my son getting older (he is almost 2,5 now....) and the soon to be baby number 2, it dawned on me that I have really let my health get away from me. So, as a happy coincidence a very good friend has been plodding away on his own health journey (and doing an incredible job of it). This has led us to keep each other motivated with a 10k steps a day challenge. We accumulate a score based on 10,000 minus our days steps and at the end of the month the winner gets a model painted by the other person. We started this in November 2019 and I managed to win December and January, but lost December. Below is the model that I prepared as the prize......


I feel his Space Wolves lacked armour. So, Predator!


I tricked it up with a few wolf tails and pelt, plus a banner.


Hopefully it is Wolfy enough for the Sons of Russ, It is a little rough around the edges, but on the Tabletop it looks much better than in photos.


I actually quite like the Space Marines range of tanks. Definitely would like to paint one of my own sometime,


I chose the blue as my Mate is building a great company under the command of Bjorn Stormwolf.


This guy should be able to help with the lack of anti-horde capabilities of his Space Wolves currently.


This is here to try and motivate me. If I can knock these guys off I will have finished my Necron army. Why oh why did I not just choose the traditional metal scheme?
12 Tomb Blades (LOVE these models), 10 Immortals and 5 Deathmarks. Maybe I will start them tonight?


Now, I may have mentioned a very cool X-Wing campaign another mate of mine dreamed up that we played for most of last year (I think or was it the year before?) Well, it is about time that we did another campaign and after discussing what game system we would use (came down to Kings of War or 40k) the grim darkness go the nod. Seems like two Inquisitors are butting heads over a Jungle world with possible STC fragments. The rival Inquisitor Dial is a slightly dodgey Space Marine Librarian (long story, but it is very cool), so, I thought the most suitable opponent to this obviously heretic abomination was a true blue Puritan Monodominant Ordos Hereticus Withchunter. So welcome Witch Finder Tasetus.


Very happy with Tasetus's paint job and hopefully you will see him burning heretics on a battlefield near you.

Thanks for reading and good to be typing some words again. Will have the first battle report from our campaign up soon.

AWESOME!

Great to see. Love the work.

And nesting is the last calm before the storm bud. Best wishes to you and your beloved.

Hi all, so we have kicked off our campaign a couple of weeks ago. So far have managed one game as we alternate between what game we are playing of an evening and we meet up once every two weeks, so updates on the campaign will be slow going, but with so many options it can be hard to fit everything in (played an entertaining game of Robo Rally the other night).

But I thought I would put up a bit of background on the Campaign, first, some rules that we are using (apologies the below will be pretty wordy....:

Universal special rules.
1. STC fragments. A unit can search any imperial structure/ruins in lieu of shooting and assaulting. They will be successful in finding an STC fragment on the roll of a 20 on a d20. The following modifiers apply
+1 if the unit did not move that turn.
+1 for each consecutive turn that the unit has searched the same structure (to a maximum of +3)
+1 if the unit has special equipment/abilities that would make their search easier eg techmarine, enginseer etc
-1 if an enemy unit is in the same structure
Only one fragment is recoverable per structure per game. A successful STC fragment is worth one campaign victory point (CVP). Campaign victory points will determine the overall winner at the end of the campaign.

2. Burn everything. The campaign takes place on a dense jungle world. Cover is everywhere, but some small areas of jungle are so dense as to be impassable. These can be cleared by shooting them with a flame weapon or similar. Once shot, remove the terrain feature.

3. Xenos scum. On a world as verdant as this, there are likely to be a multitude of native species that are looking for a meal. Random stuff is likely to happen.

4. Character design rules from Chapter approved 2018 can be used to create unique characters. Each player has six points that can be used to create from two to six characters. A character may have a maximum of four points. Additional characters may be used in games using the normal entries in their codex.

5. Experience. See the experience rules in Chapter Approved 2018. The only exceptions to these rules is that destroyed units must roll a 3+ in order to be available in the subsequent game, and that units do not pay any premium when they gain experience levels. To aid flexibility, a unit can make one change to either weapon load out or model count in between scenarios and still count as the same unit.

So on the above, our gaming host has made some truly incredible pieces of terrain for us to play over and believe me (pictures to follow) it has a very claustrophobic jungle feel.
I have used the character design rules to further flavor Witch Finder Tasetus, he isn't a lot more powerful, but I think he has a little more Puritan personality.

Below are the rules for the first couple of scenarios, to give us an opportunity to use some of our other armies the campaign has our opposing forces (in my case Astra Militarum and allied Iron Hands, along with the Inquisitor and his henchman) not directly meeting for a little while. So each game will have one of us using our Campaign army and the other player using an "NPC" army from our collections.

Scenarios 1.0 and 1.1.

The first challenge is to secure a landing site on the planet to allow heavy support to be brought in. The jungle canopy has proven to be so dense that the only means of achieving this is by blasting a hole from a ship in orbit, or by using one of the few landing pads that exist on the planet. If you choose the former option, you will only be able to deploy units that can deep strike and/or fly. If you opt for the latter, you may only bring infantry and/or flyers (as these are the only units that can exit the landing pad).

So we each chose to use a different way of getting onto the planet. I chose the "safer" option of landing on one of the few stable landing pads, where my opponent chose to just blow holes in the canopy with an orbital bombardment....

1.0 Clear the drop zone.

The deck officer turned to the imposing physical presence that was the Inquisitor. "We have created a keyhole in the canopy using minimal bombardment and planted the homing beacon. There is no new damage to the adjacent imperial structures. However, there are some areas of thick vegetation that will need to be cleared by hand. Sensors are somewhat confounded by unknown factors, but they indicate multiple life signs around the deployment zone - it would appear that we have attracted the attention of some of the locals. As for insertion, it will not be a problem in the bombardment zone. Anything outside this could be more difficult as we cannot pinpoint the exact location of whatever xenos species are down there. If we run into any challenges I can redirect the deep striking units to the homing beacon.”

The silence that followed the report was just long enough to make the deck officer uncomfortable. He was unable to read anything in the Inquisitors impassive face.

“That will be adequate” came the deep baritone of the Inquisitor. “Prepare for insertion.”

Inquisitor (deep strike unit and/or flyers only) vs Xenos, 1500 points.

Set up. Impact craters dominate a 24” diameter circle in the centre of the table. This forms the deployment zone for the Inquisitor. Scattered around this are ten basic jungle features. Outside of this are three ruins and more jungle features (rocky). A homing beacon is placed in the centre of the table.

Deployment. The Xenos player sets up his units using hidden deployment rules (place a numbered marker for each unit) anywhere outside the 24” circle. The inquisitor then deploys numbered markers to represent his deep striking units. He may deep strike units outside his deployment zone. For units deployed outside the deployment zone roll a scatter dice and 2d6 to see where the marker is placed. If the marker lands in impassable terrain or on top of another marker, move the deep strike marker in the direction of the scatter arrow so that is three inches past the obstacle/marker. If the deep strike marker lands off the table, that unit is lost.

The Xenos player deploys his units first. If a deep strike marker is covered when a unit is deployed, the marker is removed and placed in the inquisitors deployment zone within three inches of the homing beacon. The inquisitor takes first turn by deploying his units. Place the first model in the unit on the marker and then place any subsequent models in a ring around the first model. Ignore the 9” restriction regarding proximity to enemy units. This counts as moving, but units can shoot, advance, assault etc. If any models deploy within an inch of the enemy, this counts as an assault with neither side having the opportunity to shoot or perform over watch.

Game length: Six turns.

Victory conditions. Victory points. The Xenos player scores ten VP if he assaults the homing beacon (which will destroy it) without being in contact with an enemy unit. The Inquisitor scores one VP for each jungle feature surrounding the deployment zone that is cleared (up to a maximum of ten).

Victory points are also awarded for destroying enemy units. One VP is awarded for destroyed units for each hundred points or part thereof. For example, one VP is scored for units worth up to 100 points, two VP for units worth 101-200 pts etc.

Any units (up to a maximum of two) that control the homing beacon at the end of the game counts as controlling an objective for the purpose of experience.

Victory. If the Inquisitor wins the game, destroyed units add one to their roll to see if they are available for the next game. Additionally, they subtract one from the d3 roll for losing experience.

The price of failure. The Xenos player can choose an appropriate character design upgrade for one of his surviving characters. This character may be used in subsequent battles until he/she/it is destroyed.

1.1 Secure the Landing Pad
The copilot turned to the Inquisitor behind him. The transporter roared and lurched erratically as it descended through the upper atmosphere of the jungle world but neither man flinched. The copilot was experienced in this sort of endeavour. Apparently the Inquisitor was also.

“Touch down in three minutes. As soon as your squads are out, we will take off again. I don’t know who has been maintaining the landing pads on this planet. It’s been at least a hundred years since the Imperium left.” He paused a moment as if inviting the Inquisitor to comment. A short time later the copilot continued, “With all these birds in the sky you can be certain that someone has heard us coming.” He nodded towards the east where several more transporters were speeding away towards more distant landing pads. He waved his hand in the direction of the pilot. “Signal us when you have secured the area and we will bring in the heavy gear. Touch down in two.”

Inquisitor (infantry and/or flyers) vs Xenos, 1500 points.

Set up. The landing pad is placed in the centre of the table, parallel to the long board edge. Two tall ruins are placed, one at each short end of the table approximately 12 inches in from the table edge. The rest of the table is overgrown with jungle. The landing pad and the two ruins are the objectives

Victory conditions. Control at least two objectives.

Deployment. The Inquisitor’s units start on the landing pad as the transporter leaves (with the exception of the “first” unit, which is kept off table. This unit is in the hatch, making its way down to the exit). Units may be placed anywhere on the pad and will leave the pad via the hatch and the doorway at the base of the structure (except for units with the fly key word - they can fly off the edge of the pad). The Inquisitor numbers his non flyer units in the order that he wishes them to leave the pad. Some of them may get to do so in Pre-game turns.

In Pre-game turn one the first unit takes a regular turn ie can move, advance, shoot etc using the normal rules. The second unit is removed from the table as it moves into the exit hatch. All other units can take regular turns ie flyers can leave the landing pad. At the end of the turn roll a d6. On a 2+ there is a Pre-game turn two. You may spend a command point to add one to the dice roll. If you roll a one, the regular game starts.

Pre-game turn two follows the same sequence as Pre-game turn one except that a 3+ is required to have a third Pre-game turn etc.

Xenos takes first turn. Roll a d6 for each unit. They move onto a random table edge on a 4+. Roll a scatter dice in the centre of the landing pad to determine which table edge the unit arrives on.

Game length. Six turns.

Victory. If the Inquisitor wins the game, destroyed units add one to their roll to see if they are available for the next game. Additionally, they subtract one from the d3 roll for losing experience.

The price of failure. The Xenos player can choose an appropriate character design upgrade for one of his surviving characters. This character may be used in subsequent battles until he/she/it is destroyed.

Thanks for reading and promise some photos of our next game in my next post. Feel free to ask any questions if something isn't clear.

Nice campaign ideas. I think the narrative side of the game is so much fun.

I am writing missions for a campaign at my local club. We've played six missions across four phases so far, and I am running out of ideas! Writing to make it fun for all factions, all lists, and yet stil interesting is so fun, but so hard.

Hi all, another update, may seem like I am motivated or something.

@Fifty, I am very much into the narrative of games. Very much hope our scenarios lead to some very cool cinematic moments.

I know I promised photos of our first campaign game, but before we get to them just wanted to show these:


These are the photos of the Vox Operators that I added to the Veteran squads of my Astra Militarum (well added bits to already existing models that is). Figured that since Veterans can have them and I want to use them I had to better represent them. I think the heavy dish on the Grenadier Vets and the lighter whip aerials on the Forward Sentries works quite well and makes it obvious to my opponent who the valuable targets are.....


Also, here is the new Enginseer and his Servitor bodyguards. I can't claim the paint job, a very dear friend of mine who I know isn't active in the hobby but still has bits and pieces lying around did this guy a while ago. I recently asked if he had an Enginseer that I could buy off him for my Imperial Guard (as I wanted to expand the points total and it fitted into an army with so many vehicles). He said that he was happy to donate it to the cause.

As I think the paint job stands up quite well I have left it intact (I did apply a single wash of Agrax Earthshade to better blend the colours) as a tribute to him. May even expand the colours to be the scheme of my own Adeptus Mechanicus when I do that army.

Thanks for reading.

Wow! Long time no see. Looks like you have got some large projects done this year. Congrats on baby #2. We just had our 2nd in September and it makes a big difference with spare time etc but I still manage to play some games and paint etc. Good to see you still kicking around on here. Looking forward to what you put out next.

Greetings again all,

First of all, thanks to those of you still floating around and making comment, I really appreciate it.

Now, I have promised photos of our first campaign battle and here they are (lots of photos so bear with me):


As per the Campaign rules I posted previously, this is going to be a dense jungle world. You can see the table laid out. My forces had to completely set up on the Landing Pad, a bit of a tight squeeze. The enemy is yet to make themselves known.....

I had gone with a combined Iron Hands/Astra Militarum force (with a little help from the Imperial Navy!) my opponents although not on the table to begin with left there traitorous finger prints all over the pad with the black and yellow hazard stripes and the number four everywhere......

I had a random number of turns to send units down off the landing pad before the enemy started to respond to my presence. I got two turns of this "free" movement. I tried to use a command point to extend this, but in what was going to become a trend for the game it failed (I am not sure I was successful in any rerolls provided by CP the entire game.


As you can see, a bit of a crowd. All this amazing terrain has been put together by my gaming buddy. He has some serious skills. I was restricted by no vehicles as my forces were deploying from landing craft onto the pad as the trees may insertion directly onto the planet difficult. I had the concession that I could stuff a thunderfire cannon in. It proved invaluable.


See those grenade launcher veterans? Utterly lethal.....they ended up being unit of the battle. Who would have thought. You may see a few unusual characters floating among the mass. Tasetus had yet to be finished painting at this stage so his understudy took his place for this battle as it didn't feel right that the driving force behind this crusade wasn't in the first battle. A few of his cronies (also not 100% painted sorry) were running around as well.


An ominous portent for the Imperials perhaps?


This is just before we began the game. I had one combat squad of Iron Hands Tactical marines "inside" the landing pad, making their way down to the exit.


The first unit with boots on the ground. These guys got a good head start as any unit out of the Pad during the free movement phases also got to move. They headed for the ruin on the left to see what they could find.


The second unit out of the landing pad was a plucky unit of Veterans, since there are three flamers in this unit I thought it useful to get them into the jungle early as they would be able to clear some of the undergrowth if I needed it.

Since the enemy could appear randomly on any of the four table edges I really didn't know which direction I should be heading. But I knew I could search the ruins for information on the STC fragments, so I used that as my initial goal.


My plan was to get the flamers and close range weapons (meltaguns) onto the ground and leave the longer ranged weapons up on the platform to provide covering fire. I just hoped that I would have enough boots on the ground when the inevitable assaults began.


Hold on! Enemy sighted! The Iron Warriors begin to show up to see who is using their landing pad uninvited. You can make out the forms of their Warlord and a Warp Smith. Seems appropriate they are the first to arrive.


But have my faithful Guardsman seen them yet?


What? More of them? With the random arrival (and random table edge) of the Iron Warriors and their reinforcements it was quite hard from my opponent to have a solid strategy until he saw what he had to work with. These Marines had the fortune to show up right next to my combat squad, was going to get bloody very quickly.

Also a shout out to not only does he do great terrain, look at how good a paint job his models have.


This is a shot of where the game "officially" started. I had two units on the ground and although I didn't get a wide shot about half of the Iron Warriors showed up for the first turn. I got quite lucky with my opponents rolls and none of the terminators and most of the Havocs decided to be late to the party.

Most of his forces also were concentrated on the right hand side of the table, I decided that since I needed to control two out of the three objectives to score a win I would divert my forces towards the weaker side of the table. Let him then have to break cover and come at me from the right.


My shooting in the early stages was pretty good, with the vantage points of the landing pad I was able to avoid my opponents attempts to hide (plus the Thunderfire Cannon helped there). I started to clear the platform and more bodies got onto the ground and I kept up with the plan to concentrate on the left hand side of the board.


I was pretty concerned when the Dreadnoughts started to show up, I usually depend on tanks and my own Dreadnoughts for anti tank with these two armies so felt a little naked against them. Initially at least.
You can just see in the bottom left of this photo a Basilisk. We are both of a vintage where Iron Warriors were able to take them in there armies and I have no problems with my opponent doing this in our games. Love the storyline of it, they are siege specialists after all.

Perhaps wasn't so fond of it as it started to lob shells at my rather exposed forces trying to get off the landing pad.


My gunline has pushed to the right to start shooting at the Iron Warriors approaching from that direction. Specialist Murdoch (my Guard Officer) is showing his worth barking orders at his men to keep up the shooting even as two units of Havocs start to cause serious trouble from the right hand ruins.


And as fate would have it, what had looked like a weaker flank suddenly got some reinforcements, another dreadnought appeared smack bang in the middle of the long board edge and an immediate threat as well as yet more Havocs and Marines piled onto the left. At this stage I decided to rethink my tactics and began to withdraw my troops from the left and began the slog towards the right which now seemed like the better of the two.

But, the game was into its third turn by now, would I have enough time to get over there and push the Iron Warriors off the right hand ruins? Plus what about those bloody dreadnoughts?


Well I also had an ace up my sleeve (as it turned out probably over powered aces) in the form of a pair of Thunderbolts. Emperor bless the Imperial Navy. We decided that due to the jungle cover that the chances of air cover being useful would be slim, but this was one of the scenarios where it could be used. So since i picked these up recently from a friend who had no use for them (they do need some TLC that I will get to in the future) I would give them some table time.

They swooped in and began to make themselves known almost immediately. Although the minimum movement rate and limited turns certainly meant after their first glorious and horrifically effective first couple of turns it took a while to get them back into the action.


That Basilisk was all sorts of annoying and was winning the duel with the Thunderfire Cannon, where do you think the Imperial Navy is being directed......

My Iron Father is off the board currently as he is inside the landing pad making his way down. I had little in the way of assault skills and I felt he was going to be needed, so he abandoned his search for STC material on the Pad, leaving it to the Tech Priest and Thunderfire Gunner and prepared to engage the enemy.


As you can see I had managed to thin out the right hand side of the board, so if I could get some soldiers over to that ruin I was in with a chance.

You can see in the background a lonely drop pod. One of the few chances of this campaign where it will be clear enough to use one. I had an Ironclad inside (yep we are happy to use regular drop pods to carry dreadnoughts, but we play it as a dreadnought pod so it has no weapons and is a little more expensive).


The Ironclad was really only in the army as a distraction/road block and he served it admirably as his pad crashed down onto the battlefield. He hopped out, unloaded his weapons (at least the ones he was in range to fire) and pulled off an amazing above average charged and smashed into this Chaos Marine squad. It was all going so well, until he fluffed his attacks and only squashed two Marines....then I realized that I couldn't single out the Powerfist wielding Aspiring Champion and I became very concerned.

In hindsight, I should have had him deploy behind his pod and hang out near the ruins on the left acting as a major deterrent for anything trying to come around the Pod. That way he may have been even more useful in slowing down the Iron Warriors than he was.

But, it was spectacular and fun to watch the wrecking ball in action. I would like to apologize to the Iron Council and all Iron Fathers present for the wasteful nature with which I treated the poor Ironclad and hope that it can be salvaged and repaired for the Campaign to come.

The Iron Warriors climb over the hills looking for better vantage points for their guns. I was fortunate that this side of the board really didn't offer much in the way of firing corridors. So they pretty much just cheered on their brother in the melee with the Ironclad for a couple of turns as they negotiated the difficult terrain.


Although they did put a few shots at the rapidly disappearing Thunderbolt that had incinerated one of their dreadnoughts.


It is largely obscured by the Thunderbolt, but I had drawn my forces around the Iron Warriors dreadnought to make sure that I had overwhelming firepower to make sure it went away. Then the plan was to send all of these bodies over to the right hand ruin to claim victory!


What had started out as the far stronger flank for my opponent had been whittled down to a few Marines (plus a Lord and Warpsmith) hunkering down in the ruins. It was here that I was going to send the bulk of my forces.


Every turn brought more casualties, although it was slow going as the cover and armour of the Iron Warriors was proving a problem and the game was running out, the 4th Legion had moved into the left hand ruin as well and I was going to need the random game length to be on my side.


It is REALLY hard to convince space marines that they should die when in cover. Really hard.


My Iron Father and the Iron Warriors Lord begin a game of cat and mouse. I wasn't sure my Iron Father could best him, but I had to do something.


At this stage if the game kept going I was confidant for the win, but the dice could turn so easily. I was also very, very lucky as the Iron Warriors still had a unit of Terminators that had not shown up. If they had arrived on the right side I would have been sunk.

Fortune favoured the Emperor's faithful as they arrived on the far left and really couldn't affect the game much.


Which was good for me as late stages of the game I was never going to push these guys from the left hand ruins. You can just catch a glimpse of the Terminators as they consoled themselves with smashing the drop pod to pieces. Although it did take them two turns.....take that! Pity it didn't explode and take a few of them with it.


Babysitting the turn marker.


The corridor of broken dreams? My Iron Father faces off against the lord down what once would have been a nice archway.


I hoped that he had enough tricks to survive. But the Lord had already shrugged off a lot of wounds and the fleshmetal kept on re-knitting itself.


This crazy Thunderbolt pilot instead of disengaging decided to try and thin out the Havocs holding the left had ruins. His soul is with the Emperor now......


As you can see the landing pad is fairly empty now, with everyone either on the ground or lying dead from the sustained heavy weapon fire of the Havocs.


In an interesting move, the Chaos Lord bypasses my Iron Father (the coward) and makes a move to the squishier Guardsman he is trying to cover. But I have faith I have enough bodies left that he will choke on at least one of them? Right?


Whilst the Chaos Lord is distracted by Guardsman, some Iron Hands tactical marines begin the brutal task of clearing the ruins. Room by bloody room. Grenades people, remember the grenades.


The dying stages of the game, I have successfully pushed into and now hold the right hand ruin and the landing pad. I just need the game to end as the Chaos Lord is still munching on Guardsman and the Iron Warrior Terminators are getting worryingly close to the Landing Pad access door.


The surviving Thunderbolt sets up a strafing run to try and slow the Terminators down. It is a parting gift as the game ends on this turn. Victory to the Imperials 2-1.


Having failed to push the invaders off the landing pad and been given a bloody nose the surviving Iron Warriors slink back into the jungles. Will they be seen again in the campaign? I don't know.

So there you have it. A game that saw me see saw from one side of the table to the other as enemy reinforcements kept randomly appearing. It was very tense for a little while and I had some major luck with where my enemies showed up. The Thunderbolts are I think WAY too good (even thought they are a lot of points). But things started to swing in my favour when the Grenade Launcher Veterans reduced a dreadnought to one wound in a single turn (even the lasguns scored some wounds!).

I enjoyed the scenario immensely, although I am keenly aware it was weighted in my favour.

Thanks for reading and looking forward to the next game.