‘nids part 217 – Genestealer Hybrids – environment suit highlights

I mentioned something about counting chickens… I know it’s been over a week since my last post, don’t worry I’m not going to apologise, I’m just going to blame Lewis Hamilton. I know it’s not hobby related but I had the opportunity to go to the British Grand Prix the other weekend [it was a Christmas/Birthday gift] and in some respect the lead up, night away and nights after put serious brakes on my hobby momentum. To be fair though it was an unbelievable experience, I’m still recovering from the assault on the senses.

That’s not to say I haven’t been painting, I’ve done all the Stonewall Grey highlights and then all the white highlights. At this stage there were just five Neophytes left to highlight and the process had proved less than satisfactory.

In my last post I’d identified picking out the ridges was less precise than I’d hoped but the white highlights might mitigate where I’d failed. Sadly that didn’t quite bear fruit, most of the white highlights are just not fine enough. I really don’t know what the problem is here. I think the Army Painter white I use is sufficiently thin, any watering down just results in the paint bleeding into the grooves.

But even unthinned you can see it’s far from defined. I was also beginning to struggle with my eyesight, trying to pick out the ridges and I think perhaps I’ve reached the the limits of my skills, which is a little disheartening, although I can live with it.

At a distance they’ll look fine but given the time I spent trying to be neat I really hoped for better results. Adding in general fatigue and another forthcoming trip away even completing these before the end of the Hobby Season just became a challenge. I’m still going to work on both the Acolytes and Neophytes where possible but I’m pretty sure as the deadline looms I’ll switch focus to the Acolytes – there’s less of them and the Tyranid elements are familiar and so should be straighforward.

That said I’m far from giving up, I certainly don’t envisage the self-sabotage to the 2015/15 Season that I did with the Ravenwing Land Speeders. I still think there’s plenty of time to finish both Acolytes and Neophytes but eventually committing to one will most likely guarantee a success with a chance of completing both, rather than jeopardise the whole enterprise to complete both…

Anyway, I’ve got all my orange highlights done too, next it’s red…

2000/1500pts battle report – Tyranids v Astra Militarum – The Meat Grinder

What the flip?! Narrative play?! GW is like some insidious infection convincing us of ‘new ways to play’. Well we will do a narrative game but we’ll do it with good old fashioned matched play points values thank you very much! Ben had suggested the Mwat Grinder mission, he had 1,500pts of Astra Millitarum and Otty and I had 1,000pts of nids each to set up on Ben’s new Winter terrain board. First up my Carnifex went down in the stream bed – why not, it’s not like it hampers movement anymore.

Ben countered with his rather well-endowed Basilisk provocatively placed in the woods, ooh,er.

Tervigon next, followed by Hellhound.

Termagants and Wyverns.

Otty laid down the three Hive Guard.

Snipers in the tree line.

And this is the way you deploy in 8th – everyone in the foxhole – BUNDLE!

Otty deploys Genestealers, Tyrannofex and Broodlord in the centre.

Valkyrie holds the guard centre.

Tfex and Broodlord ready to kick off, bear with me I started to enjoy taking pics as they looked pretty cool.

Ratlings in the trees. I realised pretty quickly Ben’s trees are probably the best way to represent woods in 8th. A big base to show the area, tall trunks so you have plenty of scope to arrange miniatures underneath and full foliage at the top to give the ‘tree’ structure. I was super impressed.

Ben is going first but I roll to seize, fail and we rashly expend a command point to re-roll and we snatch the initiative back!

Everything bundles forward, with most of the terrain in our DZ offering no impediment – although watch out for all that tanglewire in front of the guard line later in the game.

My Hive Guard try to take out one of the Wyverns, I do a few damage but not enough to impact it’s performance.

The Biovore also tries, hitting on 5s because it moved.

But I got a 1 for it’s Mortal Wound roll…

As the narrative mission rules allow for any of our number to come back on if they die – what is our disadvantage in this game? I throw caution to the wind and deploy the Trygon and Genestealers.

Otty’s Hive Guard take 9 wounds off the Valkyrie!

Given how far forward the Hellhound deployed it then paid the price.

It was swamped with Stealers – illustrating that the streamlined play gets extremely finickity  – Genestealers tipping over or their claws holding each other at bay and preventing you positioning them as close you can so not all the brood get within that 1″+1″ of a model. It’s far from streamlined and then you’ll have your opponents saying some aren’t in because those stealers will just wreck pretty much anything with weight of numbers…

Which they did! End of turn 1, one hour of play done!

Ben’s turn the Valkyrie moves up and deploys his Vets, they take a few wounds off the Tfex[?].

My Tervigon became a prime target, taking 10 wounds. An artllery bombardment did some serious damage in this respect. So much for it’s armour save and Tenacious Survivor – I need Venomthropes/Malanthrope. Another hour to fit in Ben’s turn 1 and he only moved the Valkyrie and vets!

 The Tfex moves to take out the vets.

The Trygon slithered through the woods but out of Synapse it would shoot/charge the Ratlings without intervention. The Genestleaers also were going to have to negotiate the tangle wire, halving their charge…

I don’t know whether this was a good idea or not but the Termagants with their re-roll 1’s to hit and wound took the Ratlings down to their last [half]man, the Carnifex blasted him to pieces with Bio-plasma.

This allowed the Trygon to focus on the snipers but left the Genestealers witout a target in range. Meanwhile the Biovore hit and rolled 1 for Mortal Wounds AGAIN!

Tfex and Warriors removed all but one of the Vets from the battlefield, thr Valkyrie suffered some more wounds but was still flying by the end of the turn.

My Hive Guard were out of Synapse so they had to fire on the squad in the right hand fox hole – killing five! Otty’s Genestealers meanwhile slaughtered everything in the remaining foxholes, Ben’s Warlord,  and Commisar, then consolidated forwards.

The Trygon managed to scythe through the Snipers with ease and moved up towards the Basilisk.

The Valkyrie snuck up behind my Hive Guard and Biovore.

He took half the wounds off the Biovore.

But it was the Tervigon on only 4 wounds he could secure a pyrrhic victory with.

While the Trygon and Genestealers were about to inflict horrible damage on his artillery.

The Tervigon had to go.

And perhaps the Stealers [OK I was just taking pics now, not even relevant to the order of play]

The Tfex and Warriors surrounded the last Veteran.

The Left flank was about to be over-run

So finally the Tervigon was targeted

And I had to make 3 saves!

She could not survive.

He popped, taking six Termagants with her.

And at 12:30am we called it. Ben had wanted to stop earlier but with the Tervigon so close to popping I wante dsome satisfaction for him. Ultimately he was outnumbered from the off, we also got an orbital bombardment which wounded a few at the start of the game and although we never returned any models we had that advantage too.

But we still had a good game, it was Otty’s first and we’re still discovering how certain things make little sense or contradict the ‘streamlined’ headline we’re being beaten about the face with – see the difficulties regarding assault mentioned above. I’m definitely beginning to get a better feel for my nids – replacing my choice of a Trygon with a Trygon Prime seems sensible – that synapse will really important.

I’m also looking forward to playing against a more mobile force instead of a static gun-line. I know it’s pretty much the narrative mission but even with our enhance movement there were still a lot of models who did very little during the game because they never got into range. Even so how would that have impacted the length of the game… So much for quicker games too. Maybe it’s still early days and we’re referencing the rule book quite a lot to try and get it right but things are really slow, even if a lot is actually happening.

Anyway, bring on game 3

eBay purchases I shouldn’t regret

It’s a dangerous thing to trawl eBay the day after pay day but in fairness I don’t think I’ve gone too overboard. I managed to pick up this bike and bits for two attack bikes for just £5.99! I’m thinking they might look cool on some Dark Vengeance bikes although I can’t decide, given the DV bikes are leaning to one side, if I should re-pose the bikes or have the side cars cocked in the air like a puppy fit to burst 🙂 Still, I’ll need to get the DV bikes first but I thought this was too good a deal to pass up, the banner, extra rider and clear base just bonuses.

I then went looking for Tyranid bits. I had a plan in my head to convert some monstrous Deathspitters and some extra Scything Talons magnetised for bare-bones Screamer Killer Carnifex. I came across this auction for ‘Warhammer 40k bits Tyranid bitz joblot Metal Broodlord’ which had Deathspitters – check

Scything Talons – check.

Various Termagant weapons, meh, OK, whatever.

And then these…

I suppose this must be the Broodlord then? A metal Hive Tyrant. Now the interesting thing is, I have a sets of plastic Hive Tyrant legs and extras not used when I made my Flyrant and another sprue the same from another bits purchase. Essentially I had everything to make a Tyrant and this auction was at 99p with one bidder and 20 hours to go. OK we all know that was going to change and it did. My winning bid was £10.51 with £4 postage, which I still think is good value and I got the added adrenaline rush from the auction closing. Sure I’d always imagined I’d get a ‘start collecting’ box to fill out my 3rd Tyrant slot and remaing Gargoyles but as we no longer have that formation theeres no point. Also three Tyrants is less of desire with more unit options available but this on it’s own I think is worth £14, thanks to the bits already in my collection.

But also a couple of plastic Termagants, plus two original metal gaunts. 4 Hormagaunts and some Hive Nodes [always useful]there were even some Carnifex heads, a carapace and Crushing Claws!

A load of carapace armour pieces, Flesh Hooks and six Rippers and whatever that metal thing is in the middle [ironically some Zoanthrope back vents that would fit the ones missing on my second Zoie!].

Plus extra Deathspitters to add to my conversion plans. Spinefists – I couldn’t give a F*#~ about pistols zero use to me, they’ll join the rest of them – perhaps I should just make a reclamation pit with them in 😉

And the final bonus in thiss haul – Genestealer heads and look at all those feeder tendril heads! I could sell those individually at £2-£2.50 each. But with 4 of them I’ll put together a Brood that matches the one I already have and then swap it out for a brood of their own.

So a little over £20 for a lot of bits that actually is worth far more than it initially seems.

‘nids part 216 – Genestealer Hybrids – basecoats and shading

With the Dark Angel Assault Squad TO DONE! it’s time to return to the Hybrids. It’s really interesting how my mindset has readjusted to these. When you consider how my last efforts felt so demotivating and chore like, now I am on a mission. I continued to finish up all the metals, added the yellow dynamite sticks and there were a couple of other bits and bobs I needed to pick out. Essentially 90% of the base coating was done in preapration for Army Painter Soft and Strong shades. Bizarrely the Soft [sepia] shade had started to go a bit weird, almost milky but it went on fine mostly. There were a couple of deep recesses that almost echoed the horrors of Seraphim Sepia but the Strong Tone covered that up in a jiffy.

I love models when they’re just washed. I wish I could leave things alone at this point but my ‘hind-brain’ compels me to do more. You can just make out the Mining Laser Hybrid has had the first set of Stonewall Grey highlight added to his environment suit.

And while I was at it there’s another three here that had their highlights done. Four in one evening and then I randomly threw in some highlights on a couple of the orange robes. So this has given me all kinds of things to think about:

• a baseline for progress – I managed 4 sets of highlights but did do other things, I’ve another 24 to paint so I estimate 4-5 nights work on the first highlight. Multiply that by two for the 2nd highlight as well, 8-10 nights work ahead and then we’ll deal with the next part of the process.
• this process should feel really dull and monotonous, yet it doesn’t. Picking out all the ridges on the environment is a nightmare. I keep missing and covering up the shading between them. I’m trying to be neat and tidy but mistakes sitll happen, I hope the white highlights will help mitigate where I went wrong.
• although picking out the ridges is tedious it doesn’t feel half as bad as painting a Termagant as each brush stroke is sufficent to do what’s needed. It’s like tiny bite-sized chunks, every stroke is a tick of completion, it feels as easy as counting.

I’m really digging the orange uniformed hybrids, it’s a popular look, no doubt because of how well it goes together. I’m still glad I’ve got half the force in red coveralls but the orange are clearly my favourite. I sunsequently managed to do all othe range Acolyte hybrid’s first highlight in one sitting. So lets imagine that I can do the orange clothed Neophytes and red clothed hybrids in a further three sessions, with second highlights 3-4

With these estimates of 14 days max to do all the clothing. Then I’ll just have:

• weapons – weathered and rusty
• claws and teeth
• chitin
• bonewhite
• bandage detailing
• eyes and skintones
• all the other fiddly bits

OK, so not clear yet, there are some details that need clarfying but definitely looks doable this month, let alone by the end of the season. At this rate I’ll have to see what I may have to fit in after these. My head is telling me it should be the Deathwatch guys but my heart is saying Deathwing Knights…

Still, perhaps I shouldn’t count my chickens just yet…

Dark Angels – Assault Squad – MOAR SHOTS

OK, the ‘good’ shots were a bit poor. Luckily the phone cam shots came out a bit better. These first few are in the light box. I’ve two 1500 lumen daylight LED bulbs now so it’s pretty bright.

And a bit of filter jiggery-pokery make sit quite dramatic.

I’m really pleased with the finished models, they have so much character for an otherwise generic squad.

The use of the Sanguinary guard legs adds so much and I love the idea that for the Blood Angels these are for their elite and crafted in gold where here they’re used by a standard Assault Squad in their traditional green 🙂

These were the simultaneous day shots, so again the colours are a bit ropey but better than the digital camera.

The 90° rotation of each model, yep there’s a shed load of pics to follow, get a cup of tea!

And individuals as well, in case you want to look in detail?

Moar filter shots.

I’d been quite worried about the dark skin tone on the sergeant, I always do, and his human eye but I really like how they turned out. I think I managed to create a different skin tone altogether than my previous efforts which is good as making it up every time means there’s more diversity

Given just how busy the models were with detail I kept the litanies to a minimum. With all the purity seals and tribal making it just seemed too much. The company numbers were a bit of a variety too – each of the three came out OK but ranging from tiny to ‘mahoosive’!

Here’s the clearest look at the jump pack glow effect. Not entirely sure of it’s what I was after but there are some bits I like and most of the gaming views won’t get to see them anyway so it’ll more than do.

Again the Blood Angel chainsword really helped here allowing me to put an Assault Squad marking on the hand where his Heresy era shoulder prevented it. And yes the squad do not feature the Dark Angel chapter badge, just the white blade and on the wrong shoulder. At this minute I cannot explain it but that Heresy shoulder pad I think is the key to their fluff.

Perhaps they removed their chapter ‘wings’ until they’ve captured the Fallen half of their squad and only then will they add them back in and return their Chapter shoulder pad to their left?

Although the second from the left with his re-purposed Space Wolf left shoulder pad probably isn’t going to switch it to the right 😉

Still love the genius of those quartered knee pads perfect for the 5th company 🙂

This guy is such a bad-ass.

OK, enough already, next up lets get back to some hybrids, see you next week 🙂

Dark Angels – Assault Squad – TO DONE!

The Assault Squad is TO DONE! The ‘good’ pictures are however a bit grim [and dark]

I mean this is why GW say not to photograph using daylight – it was just too bright so the shadows are super dark but there’s nothing like persisting with it despite the poor results.

I have taken some phone pics simultaneously that manage to mitigate the shadows that will be in the MOAR pics, so look forward to them.

Luckily I think I’ve also got the light box set up almots right so those pics may well become the defacto standard, we’ll see how things go.

I love this guys pose.

I don;t know how many people saw on the Facebook group but I did manage to drop them all on a rough concrete paving slab as I went to do these pics.

Tehy were balanced on a take-away tub lid and there was a moment before I moved them I thought it was going to end in tears. Then one tipped over, what with them all having weird high centres of gravity. Another tipped and as I tried to compensate my hand spasmed and I practically threww them all in the air.

To add insult to injury my wife had seen me setting up the back drop and made some sarcastic comment about having to watch me take the pics, she soon scarpered when she realised this was not a funny situation anymore.

So, two back packs needed gluign back on and all of them had some remedial damage somewhere or another. The worst was the chips on the base edges 😦

Still, about 30 minutes later they were all sufficiently repaired to have poor pictures taken of them!

Anyway, 90° shots of each of them now.

Sergeant – 2 chainswords means he gets 2 extra attacks, you should see the rage on all the Tyranid forums that three pairs of Scything Talons only get +1 extra attack and he gets 2!

These Flamer guys should be pretty cool.

So there we go, only on my Great Build list but started and pushed through to completion. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing but certainly shows how it can be beneficial as although they’ve been in the pipeline for a good few months it felt like they were turned around really quickly over the last few weeks as I kept chipping away with the build, the basing and undercoat, then basecoats and metallics. Suddenly there were only the green highlights and all the remaining hurdles were ‘fun’. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to repeat the process in the future.

DIY dice box

We like a good dice box/rolling tray in our house. It’s funny, when I first got back with my gaming crew rolling dice in a box was what I did with the kids to avoid arguments, the fact Ben, Liam and Otty were also operating the same system, probably for the same reasons goes some way to illustrate how fraught those games could be. I like to think there’s a more relaxed approach nowadays ‘win at all costs’ is no longer an issue. That said the box still has it’s place and I was really impressed by Ross Graham’s tutorial on how to make one and then Nick over at the Burning Eye did something similar.

However, good as they were they weren’t quite what I was after. We’re used to rolling in box lids, bigger and wider than thos box frames with plenty of run-up like a craps table. So I’d been looking at a variety of options [detailed at the end] but have created this option as a serviceable solution. We’d nipped to Hobbycraft recently and they had these ‘Photo boxes’ for just £2, which was a perfect price point for me. This was the best patter on the outside, the rest being pastel polka dots and gold embossing, shame they had now darker more urban looking one but ultimately it’s a £2 shoe box!

I also picked up four sheets of felt for 55p each [three was enough]. I chose black because I thought it’d show up my yellow dice beautifully.

I then cut them to fit, layed on PVA glue, smoothed it out with a coffee stirrer and attached the felt. Now I’d done a few rolling tests and even with the felt there was a certain loudness to the dice I still wasn;t happy about. So I glued a sheet of my laminate floor foam underlay into the base first.

I then glued another sheet of felt on top.

So the sides are reasonably muffled but then the base is perfect. Ultimately if I wanted a noisy dice roll late at night I’d still be rolling on my Realm of Battle board! I got so excited I did some videos, because all the cool kids use the YouTube.

And then I went and did a slow-mo

OK I got giddy again with the slow-mo

So I was really pleased with the results. As you can see from Ross, and Nick’s interpretations, including my own there are plenty of ways to do this so here are the ‘also-rans’ for boxes I was considering if you want to try and make one yourself…

This box from the Works was my original contender and at £4 was nice prize but it would require painting on the outside too as well as getting the felt to line it.

However I’d been distracted by a crate similar to this at Home & Bargain that I was going to remove the upper slats and then repin lower down and trim the bits poking up to make it an enclosed box. It was only £2.99 but they stopped selling them in the end, which led me to look at alternatives and seeing just the £2 box at Hobbycraft and the felt being right there too I just snapped it all up.