Apologies again for the inconsistent photography. I may well do another set in good lighting with my digital camera so you have an accurate record, but not before I do my Brown Basing guide, that I used on these guys:
Armies on Parade board 2014 – Project X continues [just a little bit]
Additionally I’ve been thinking some of the other decorations and there are a number of technical hurdles I need to overcome. Once again I’m thinking of transparency effects and once again I’m struggling to reconcile how to achieve them, and to do so cost effectively. I’ve since found out that there is no National Armies on Parade event. It will NOT be part of the new Warhammerfest, so although I think AoP is about taking part I had always hoped to go on to the Nationals and not win, but perhaps take one of the 2nd or 3rd places.
Of course with that not happening there is less incentive to go completely OTT but there are still some things I want to explore. I just have to weigh up whether solving them is entertainment for me or is the specific effect I’m hoping to achieve too much hassle and ultimately resort to what I’m familiar with [you see you don’t need to use the phrase ‘comfort zone’] and just sculpt clay. If only there was a transparent medium with same properties as clay, or even Milliput – a maleable epoxy resin instead of a liquid one…
Dark Angels – Watcher in the Dark
Dark Angels – Watcher in the Dark and his mates
Foolishly though I’ve bought Asmodai, when I could have used my Limited Edition Chaplain and I got a Techmarine when I already have a Rogue Trader one, I love the model though, although the back-pack is a bit of a nightmare. I do think though, given I have a number of chaplains that a Dark Angel force could use them as their Veteran squad, half a dozen Chaplains on the rampage would look cool, and I have my tiny RT Chaplain hiding out in one of the pictures too.
‘nids part 149 – Not a Pyrovore
I don’t know if this fella ever showed up in the background of any other WiP photos but in typical 40kaddict fashion when in doubt – paint a Tyranid! This Pyrovore, which I got from Otty about a year ago to use as a Biovore has been sat on the table for quite a while. Initially this was because I didn’t want him on a 60mm and he’s too big for a 40mm. Now I know there’s ‘legal’ issues with putting him on the correct sized base [i.e. the one it comes with] but as far as I’m concerned this model fits a 50mm base, so that’s what he went on. And really the basing issue mainly comes down to assault [although being hit by blasts is another issue…] and Biovores hardly ever get into assault.
There were some issues with the super glue breaking and needing to be reposed and pinned which delayed his progress but eventually he was primed and ready to go. I’d painted the base, alongside all the Dark Vengeance marines and then in a burst of activity did the Bonewhite and Chitin [DoCraft Bahama Blue] just because.
Armies on Parade board 2014 – Project X is go!
Moving on from Saturday’s doom laden post we are down the rabbit hole now folks! Armies on Parade is a go, despite my fear-mongering to the contrary. I hope anyone reading this blog, in particular my gaming buddies, enters a board. I see it as a showcase of what you’ve done all year, a ‘parade’ of your painting and hobby efforts so I hope everyone tries, they’ve already put a lot of the effort in afterall.
Last year it was all about the army, a simple board swamped with the Ferron Splinter Fleet of Hive Fleet Gorgon. This year I’m going to run with the OTT idea I alluded to here and here’s where it begins. I’m a little paranoid, unrightly so, but isn’t that the nature of paranoia? So I won’t be revealing what the plan is, you can just try and imagine initially hopefully guess along the way, it should also help with the blog because I can just show pics and micro-blog the progress with less explanation, at least that’s the plan.
Firstly I have about £10 worth of MDF and wood. I went to the local GW to confirm I could enter the same army and they did offer to sell me a Realm of Battle tile. They’ll do this individually for AoP entrants, in case you didn’t know, I think they’re £30 each, though I’m not sure if you can get the hill sections, just the flats or even the new Sector Imperalis boards [although I doubt it]. At any rate mine is going to be covered a lot with insulation foam so really MDF is fine.
Once again I’m making a corner piece, here’s one of the 18″ high back walls with wooden batons at the edges to make it more stable. These have three wood screws in the back and wood glued in place.
Here’s the second wall, it only has one baton as it will fix to the first one. I’m thinking of using dowel rods to secure it horizontally in place.
Here’s the insulation foam, cut to fit the first wall
Where’s my head @?
1500pt battle report – nids vs Astra Imperial Milatarum Guard
What happened here was quite amusing, Ben asked me for a game, proper 7th at 1500pts and I combined a detachment with nid allies so I could get twin flyrants, two Tervigons, one an allied HQ, the other a troop. A Venomthrope, Zoanthrope and brood of 3 Hive Guard. A Dakkafex, Biovore and 30 gaunts plus another 10 for the Allied contingent. The big point being I had ZERO fortifications, no Aegis, Bastion, Weapons Batteries or Skyshield
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The low down:
- Big Guns Never Tire [though apparently they do give up Victory Points when they die, as they score anyway now, good one 7th!] 4 objectives
- Vanguard Strike
- I lost deployment and failed to seize
- Warlord Trait – A 7th ed strategic trait that made Ben’s reserves -1. he had no reserves!
- Night fighting turn 1.
Of course the problem I immediately had is Ben was not using the Orks I thought he would take, given they have a fresh Codex, no he went for a slightly more mature Astra Imperial Milatarum Guard. And I could see straight from the get go I was stuffed. An Aegis and a bastion with VSG [yeah, I can’t touch them], two Leman Russ [can’t touch them], two Wyverns [they’ll punish my blobs], Ratling Snipers [bye, bye Tervigons] a Quad Gun and an Icarus [bye, by Flyrants]
Cover was sparse but I deployed my termagants in such a way to be Shrouded by the Venomthrope and give cover to anything else but with the Hellhound Chimera variant with the Inferno Cannon, cover [or lack thereof] is petty much moot anyway
Interesting to note that objectives are now positioned before Deployment setup is rolled, so you put the objectives on the board and then you could deploy in a completely different way than you anticipated. That means you have to be quite generic in where you put them. I placed mine in the Chapel ruin and the crater field in the middle. Ben put his in the blasted forest and just in front of his Aegis at the top.
First up Ben rolls to see what the Crashed Aquila Lander has in store, oh some ancient Achaeotech that is a 1VP objective within 3″ of the lander, thank you, he’ll have that behind the Aegis on the left of the Bastion. Everything else moves forward and the Torrent on that Chimera flames a couple of Gaunts, now that’s unpleasant.
A lot of shooting focuses on my Hive Guard and 3 wounds get stripped off quite quick, despite the Venomthrope. Ratlings got an ‘ignore cover’ order but there was also re-rolls to hit and wound from some banner/wargear.
Further fire took the remaining three wounds off the Hive Guard for First Blood, but more importantly removing my ‘anti-tank’. We also roll to see what my Mysterious objective is – Sabotaged! We then spend the game regularly forgetting to see if it blows up.
Technically, having called it, this is a Crushing Defeat. I’m actually unhappy about this shift in 7th to levels of victory. Calling it, like I did, seems an amicable acceptance but then to be branded not just defeated but ‘crushed’, well it’s not really in the spirit of the game to me. Anyway, Ben had First Blood, Slay the Warlord, had killed 2 Heavy Support, Archaeotech objective and 1 objective for 8VPs. If we’d gone into 5 turns he would easily roll over the objective in the craters for another three and most likely got Linebreaker too, with the Hellhound, for 12 VPs all in.
Meanwhile I had either 1 or 2 VPs from the Wyverns, I think it’s just 1 because they’re a squadron and most likely would have had the blasted woods objective and the ruined chapel. That would have got me 7 but would have been dependant on the remaining Termagants not being gunned down by the Aegis Defenders and the Zoanthrope continuing to hold the Chapel and neither being blown up by the sabotaged objectives. This would have net me 7VPs but you can see that despite the monumental losses [and awful dice rolling] I wasn’t too far off the mark from Ben. Had a couple of units just survived a bit longer [Catalyst anyone?], or been more effective in their attacks I might not have suffered as many losses and would have been able to snatch it.
The funny thing was that we played on the night Brazil got hammered by Germany so I can’t feel too bad, at least it wasn’t 7:1 ha, ha!
GW – Manchester
Just a little blog post about GW Manchester. I nipped in to get White Dwarf for the Armies on Parade info and discuss AoP with the staff, not that I’m entering there, just so I can get the inside scoop. Anyway I took a few pics while I was theres because I’m a 40k addict and that’s what addicts do, alright?! This store, situated in the Arndale Centre is great value – hobby-wise. They always put in a lot of effort in their display, this fantasy diorama has been there for a a year or so now but it’s still awesome and if I’m correct was recycled from a previous display that was 40k related but they managed to reconfigure it to something completeyly different.
I love the magical flames made from expanding foam. But I actually can see these turned upside down to make some truly organic fleshy towers as quick LoS blocking terrain. Use some sort of support in the middle – a plastic coat hanger arm perhaps, attach to a base – wooden disc or CD. Spray on the foam and then build a crater round it so it shows a ruptured demonic tentacle or alien flesh probe bursting from the ground
Apologies for the reflection but there’s no way to see this Imperatur Titan any other way, except for the back. It’s really quite a construction. Scratchbuilding Titans is a massive undertaking. My matel Liam managed to make his Warhound and Warlord brilliantly. The Warhound is a thing of beauty, potentially better than the Forgeworld model but the Warlord was an exercise in understated but effective execution. He didn’t get bogged down with the detail, which may have stalled the project, put just enough on to make it interesting and managed to reproduce the design accurately enough so it didn’t look daft. So many times you see Titans that are just boxes on legs but his wasn’t and I think this Imperator achieves the same goal. It’s simple enough to have got made but detailed and accurate enough not to look like wasted effort and resources, the glowing red eyes help too.
There are a number of other good displays and their glass cabinets are full of high quality painted miniatures. I’ll try and get some more pictures next time but if you are visiting Manchester it’s worth nipping in to see what they’ve got on show.
Support your local blogger – 18charlie.com
Back when I was looking at creating some transparent walls for my Tyranid Skyshield Landing Pad there was one website that was providing most of the inspiration for how I could achieve my goal. Sadly, I was not as adventurous as www.18charlie.com and in the end I stuck to what I was comfortable with – air drying clay. It’s clear that ‘VetSgt’ and his son ‘SirWitty’, the driving forces behind the site are the sort of folk who enjoyed melting stuff as kids. Probably burnt through a lot of toxic plastic fumes to get to the level of confidence now to create some truly unique terrain pieces.
I first saw VetSgt work on terragenesis where his alien plants created from melted plastic spoons and then painted really showed a new way to populate your battlefield for not very much cash outlay. http://18charlie.com/2013/11/23/gelatinous-alien-plants-part-one/
Additionally, he then started working with silk flowers which showed another cheap but highly creative way of populating your battlefield with amazing results. gone are those drab gothic ruins, instead a verdant alien jungle that is alive with possibilities and endless variety.
http://18charlie.com/category/scratch-built-terrain/area-terrain/vegetation/petal-forests/
Yet more uses of clear plastic resulted in the ever popular ‘crystal fields’ but VetSgt took their creation to the next level and the greta thing is all the experimentation and WIPs are recorded and explained so you too can create these effective, but more importantly cheap pieces of terrain.
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http://18charlie.com/making-a-large-tower-part-one/ |
There are even some amazingly effective Tau apartment buildings for those with access to wood working tools. You need a bit of confidence working with more heavy duty ‘crafting’ tools but the results speak for themselves. Latest updates show they’re dabbling in the world of 3D printing which may be out of the league of most people but with these guys experimenting now, hopefully when 3D printing becomes available to almost anyone we’ll once again be able to learn from their experiments.
So, go take a gander at www.18charlie.com and see what there is that you can add to your own battlefields.
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