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I have nothing against AoS, it just doesn't float my boat. I've never tried it either, so maybe I'm just prejudging it.

I took my Corsairs out this week for a game of Kill Team. I was gored by the Goremongers kill team (in the hands of a very good player). It was super fun, but man I have forgotten a lot of rules! Getting KT back on my rotation should help with the rules recall.

This week has been primarily building and priming. I bought 9 Ripperdactyls, which will feature in my ETC list. 1 unit of 6, and the remaining 3 to bulk out a unit I already have. I made a start on the unit of 6.




Absolute nightmare to try and rank up. I got half way then decided to make a unit filler too, to ease the pressure of ranking them all up.



And with a lick of paint.
They should be fairly quick to bring up to standard. Wash and re-layer the skin, should be about 60% of the model. I'm toying with some ideas for the wing membranes (a mottled pattern where it meets the wing), but undecided on that as yet. But once that is done, it is just a few details to finish it. I am hoping I can have them ready for the weekend, where I am off to another Ninth Age tournament.

Until then, I hope you all have a good week.

You going to number or otherwise mark the bases so you know who goes where?

One thing I don’t miss from rank and flank games is getting everyone lined up nice on the movement trays. Always such a PITA.


Looking good!

Yes, I echo Nevelon, as that is a wonderful way you have got them all slotted together with the bases all squared.

Cheers,

CB

Glad you enjoyed your visit to WW. I was in Nottingham for a week last summer and managed to take some time off for a visit. Wow, just wow. The place is amazing and some of the battle scenes were immense, really opens your eyes as to what can be done with enough time and effort, and it was nice recognising some from White Dwarf (Emperor and Horus, Cadian parade ground).

Love the colours on the Scorpions they look epic. Can’t believe your 3hr paint scheme on the jet bikes - not jealous in the slightest!! And glad to see you made the right chapter choice on the marine, he looks good.

A Sunday morning coffee and blog update time. There is something soothing about a fresh coffee and dedicated time to thing some hobby things through. I've missed it the past 2 months...

@Nev - Absolutely. I've numbered the bases and put corresponding numbers under the wings of them. They could very quickly become a nightmare to put together.
@CB - Thanks! The unit fillers help where there are problem spots (looking at you, middle back rank. With the rider on, it's impossible).
@Steve - Thanks for the words of encouragement. I've gone some more Scorpions below, but a slightly different approach to painting them as I changed my paint set between batches of Scorpions. WHW is amazing. I'm strongly considering attending a Kill Team event there at some point this year.

I went through a funny place with motivation back in April. I was painting the Lizardmen to get them ready for ETC, but it wasn't what I wanted to paint. Painting for an event instead of painting for enjoyment has different connotations. At the same time, I was quite enjoying playing Kill Team and wanted to paint for that. I ended up getting my head down and painting Lizards to get through them - In hindsight it was neutral on the enjoyment (it wasn't boring, but it also wasn't particularly fun). And with that plateau of enjoyment, updating the blog got side lined. But I'm back with it today, and have been enjoying my hobbying recently. The good news; my ETC army is fully painted, which I will show off a bit below. The better news; I came by a significant haul of Eldar, and have been pushing my small army forward since completing the Fantasy stuff.

First up, the Lizardmen (Saurian Ancients in The Ninth Age). This is 4000 points, for ETC:









The list itself is super fun to play - it's about as aggressive as it can get. The 3 monsters, and 2 big units of birds are Fearless (meaning they can't flee, nowhere to go but forward!), and all 5 of the units hit like trucks of varying sized (The lord on an 'Alpha Carnosaur' hits like an 18wheeler going 100mhp, the birds are next and hit very hard, and the 2 'baby carnosaurs' have quite the sting too). I run forward and fight, and hope I'm standing at the end. The Slan offers some extremely aggressive magic - devastating missiles and powerful buffs if required (1+ armour save on a Carnosaur, anyone?).
I think I'm about a 2:1 win:loss ratio with this list. It's super fun smashing across the board. I'm just waiting on a foam delivery, then I can pack them up to go to Spain and run at Europeans

In other news, my 40k has been plodding along well. I've almost finished the next 5 Scorpions, but the pictures I have are a bit older and missing a bit of detail. I suspect you'll get the finished pictures in the next update.



I really like the basing I'm doing for these models, I think the contrast with the Green is particularly good. This batch of Scorpions also got started after I changed my paint set over. For years, I have been using a big mis-match of Vallejo Model / Game / Air / Citadel, with about 130+ individual paint pots. Some of my paints were the original bottles I got 12 years ago when I first bought the Vallejo Game Colour set (I'm pretty sure you can go back to the first few pages of this blog and find a picture of that set!). But anyway, I made the decision to buy a new set of paints - I now use Scale75's 'Scale Colour' exclusively (although I still use GW washes). Their set is 61 paints strong, they all fit neatly in my painting travel case, and the finish is 'ultra matt' which I quite like the look of. These Scorpions will look slightly different to the other 5 I have done, but I'm not as worried about uniformity as I used to be - changing styles of painting as an army progresses is part of the charm of a personal army, it shows experimentation, maybe a bit of development, and is what makes the army 'mine'.

On the 40k front, I got exceptionally lucky where the universe did that rare thing where everything aligns for the perfect situation. On a TOW stream that I follow, someone was looking to trade their (full) Eldar army for a WHFB army. My Dark Elf army has sat in a box for 3 years at this point, without play. The Ninth Age is getting smaller and smaller (and I will step away from it after summer), and unfortunately DE are not supported in TOW - My DE army is redundant. I had thought about selling them previously, but never did as the demand for circa £1600 worth of DE is just not there, especially if I was trying to get rid of them in 1 go. I had pretty much resigned myself to keeping them and never using them. Until I offered them up in this trade. The person I traded with fell in love with them. This is what I got in that trade:










The full list:

I couldn't possibly work through all of this in any reasonably quick time frame. But I'm happier knowing that I have a few boxes of Eldar that I can sell relatively easily (compared to DE for a game that doesn't support DE). And knowing that I have 'traded up' is icing on the cake (I calculate the value of the Eldar to be about 20-25% more than the value of the DE). I am very content to have a load of old OOP Eldar, as far as collectibles go they are great pieces (I got a good nostalgia hit with the Metal Fuegan - which was the model I was most proud of painting when I was 13ish).
In my DE army, I had 10 old metal OOP Mengyll Manflayers. I was pretty content to keep them, as OOP collectables. However, the person I traded with desperately wanted them - he has all the regimentals of renown, except the Manflayers (what are the odds?!). Anyway, after some negotiating and acceptance from me to let them go, I got this in return for the unit:

They should come in handy when I look at my Fantasy Warriors of Chaos army.
Oh, and as it happened, a few weeks after we agreed this, I was working in his neck of the woods and we could meet to trade in person without incurring shipping costs or undue travel costs.
It was the perfect situation. From an agreeable trade both ways, to both of us being exceptionally happy with the trade, to the circumstances of it happening, the fact that he needed the Manflayers to round out his collection, to the fact that I was working near him to make the trade... The universe aligned.

I've jumped straight into the Dire Avengers:






They were a bit of a faff to magnetise - so small and spindly. In drilling out the Exarch's torso, it split apart... Then I drilled all the way through an had to put loads of magnets inside to fill out it. All done now, though. However, the only critique I'd give myself is that some of the arms don't necessarily look natural when magnetised on, they just sit at slightly odd angles. I'm not too fussed, and it's way too late now anyway.
Hopefully I can get through these reasonably quickly and move onto some Banshees. Then I'll have the Blades of Khaine Kill Team up and running, and will take them out for some fun!

A really big update from me today (and my coffee is long finished). I hope I can fall back into the rhythm of a weekly update, but naturally that will be smaller progress pictures.
Enjoy your Sunday!

Quite the impressive haul. You going to strip and repaint? Paint over? or just keep the already finished stuff? Rebase? Update your finished stuff to match the new guys?

One of these days I need to thin out some old armies. But it would take the universe aligning. Not just for the emotional acceptance of parting, but the mechanics of the thing. Luckily no crush for space or money is forcing me. But the built-free influx of new shiny models would be nice. I really need to get back to painting my Eldar.

I can’t say I never magnetized eldar infantry. I’ve done a few. Heads for warlocks/farseers, and a few arms for my autarch. So small and fiddly. Doable, but a massive PITA.

All finished up, the remaining 5 Striking Scorpions.






I'm not entirely sure how long they took, but easily over a few months. But now they're done, you can't take them away from me! I'm really looking forward to getting them on the table for some Kill Team. The Blades of Khaine Kill Team can take up to 8 Operatives, in any combination of Scorps / Avengers / Banshees. I can take a mono-Scorp team at this point. That team setup isn't ground breaking, but it will get me playing. I have some Avengers on the go currently, so maybe I'll have a bit more to mix and match soon.

Nev raises a great question about what to do with that big haul. What I traded for it just lived in the garage for a year (and the loft for 2 years before that!). So I am ok with trading into some Eldar that also just sit around in the loft / garage - there hasn't been a decrease in my ability to hobby as a result of the trade. In fact, if anything, having a bunch of NOS stuff is actively giving me something. I am working on the DAs that I got currently. And I think my plan going forward is to slowly look at and address the NOS stuff (Hello: Avatar of Khaine).
My rationale for making the trade came down to resale value. I judged the interest in buying £1600 of Dark Elf models (inc. non-GW models) to be extremely low. DE are not supported in TOW, and most models are relegated to OOP-history. It was an impulse to offer the DE in the trade, based on the premise that selling Eldar would be significantly easier than selling DE. I have already reassessed this, and decided not to sell any of it. For now it stays, and I work my way through the NOS stuff.

I suppose it is also time to revisit my Dakka profile picture. The IF are long gone (I miss that army!). Maybe something more contemporary. Not Lizardmen, that doesn't feel right. Probably Eldar. I have a few HQ models kicking around, I'll have to line them up so we can decide who will be my 'face' on Dakka for the next 5-10 years.

Scorps look great painted up. As an old fart still dearly attached to old metal Eldar, I am really pleasantly surprised overall with the way they've refreshed the range while keeping true to a lot of the original design points.

Unbelievable how all the stars aligned for that trade! Would definitely have bought a lotto ticket on the way home.

Whatever happens from here it sounds like an absolute win - you've got some new kits to work with, and whatever you decide you don't need can be resold for some extra hobby funds.

Looking forward to seeing how it plays out!

Scorps look great.

Picking a profile pic can be fun. I sometimes think I should change mine more often, but never get around to it. I think I’m on my 4th, barring holiday temp pics.