More Nid Progress!

So, tonight I've spent the night doing more Nids. After deciding on the Hive Fleet Kraken my Army Painter Skeleton Bone and Strong Tone Quickshade has arrived. I thought if I've got a huge swarm to paint I may as well find a quick and easy way to paint them.

I did make an initial mistake with the primer, unlike normal primers you have to keep moving the can as if you were fogging the models rather than spraying directly onto the model. I should've tried a gaunt as a sample to see how the spray worked but in my eagerness I chose three Warriors and a Carnifex. Unfortunately I've applied the primer a little too heavy, trying to cover up certain spots that weren't primed I didn't cloud them and instead focused on certain areas. It's not too bad but definitely learnt my lesson and the next four warriors I primed looked a hell of a lot better!

Yeah I know it's cheating using a coloured primer but it's so much quicker. The models look great with all the skin done already and it's a whole lot easier to paint them, so I can see a huge swarm being done in pretty quick fashion.

I also purchased the Army Painter Wargamers Most Wanted Paint Set, it includes a Regiment normal brush, a Insane Detail Brush and a Small Drybrush. The stem of the paintbrush is triangular though and straight away I could feel the difference in being able to control my brush strokes compared to the GW brushes.

So here's the warrior, pretty simple of Mephiston Red on the Carapace, Moot Green on the vents, gun and tounge and that's about it. I've not done any shading yet as I'm not sure whether to paint it on or dip it. I think for mess-sake I'll be dipping. Though I want to test it on a Gaunt this weekend and see what happens. I also want to try the GW Seraphim Sepia wash over the Skin to see whether I need to use the Strong Tone Quickshade.

The Carnifex I've only done the Carapace at the moment and after using the large Drybrush I've made a little mess on the skin, it's not too bad though and can easily be touched up using Ushabti Bone. You can see the priming error on the front of the large carapace where I've applied too much. Hopefully once the shading is on and the rest of the model is painted it'll still look good on the battlefield, and if it doesn't? Well I've still got another four in the display cabinet to use! The previous bloke who sold me the Nids converted the guns to give the twin-linked Devourers more of a lethal look rather than the short stubby ones that the Carnifex normal have and I quite like it. I won't be doing it on the others but it does make this one unique. I'm not too sure on what colour to make the ends of the guns though, I'm thinking the Moot Green again will really make them pop and look alien like but also leaning towards one of the purples I've used in my Tau.

Anyway second training game tomorrow using my Tau at GW Metrocentre, should be good fun. Then got my second tournament in Fantasy at NAG on Sunday. We're doing a random table tournament where armies are already set up on the tables and we're drawn to a table, roll off and the highest picks whichever army they want and then we play. It'll be quite fun and hopefully I can try out some random Fantasy armies I've not played yet. The tables will be set up with the following armies on them;

Table 1 - Lizards vs. Demons
Table 2 - Wood Elves vs. Beastmen
Table 3 - Warriors vs. Empire
Table 4 - Dark Elves vs. Ogres
Table 5 - Warriors vs. Skaven
Table 6 - Skaven vs. Dwarves
Table 7 - Dark Elves vs. Demons


Knowing my luck I'll get Ogres and Empire! Cheers for reading again and comments on the Kraken will be Kraken!...(cracking...kraken...get it? I'll leave now)

The Past Week's Adventures

Ahoy fellow readers, what a busy week I've had all things wargaming. So what have I been up to....

My Flames of War Volksgrenadier are coming along nicely. They're not anywhere near finished as much as I'd of wanted this week but they're getting there! I'm still aiming for an end of March finish for everything but I think I'm being rather optimistic with that date, it may very well be April by the time everything is done (boo! hiss!).

Hammerhead

I actually spent alot of this week building the rest of my Tau army after I had my first 40K training game against Carl's Dark Angels at Games Workshop Metrocentre on Thursday night! Rather than doing a very basic HQ and Troop choice we both made limited 1,000pts lists from what we had and went straight into a battle. I was kind of stuck to what I could field with what I had but my list looked something along the lines of this;

HQ
Cadre Fiberblade

Troops
6 x Firewarriors

6 x Firewarriors

Elites
3 x Crisis Suits (mix of weapons)

3 x Stealth Suits

Heavy Support
1 x Hammerhead (Rail Gun)

1 x Broadside (High Yield Missile System)

1 x Broadside (Twin-Link Rail Rifles)

Plus a few wargear options and some drones. It was limited and I really need to get some extra Firewarriors and some Pathfinders to bulk out my army. I did end up picking up a Riptide last week mainly because I know Riptides are great for the Tau and most importantly it's an amazing looking model! It's still wrapped up in the box at the moment but I'll definitely get building and painting it soon!

Coming to the Display Cabinet Soon!

I tried my hand at magnetising the weapons for the Crisis Suits which was an experience to say the least! I learnt from the first one that the magnets need to be the right way round for all the weapons to attract on both arms. It was fiddly and having to use the GW Hobby Drill to drill a 2mm hole and then use a 3mm drill bit my hand to finish drilling wasn't ideal but in a couple of hours I had all three Crisis Suits and one full set of weapons magnetised for Thursday night. The rest of the weapons I need to go back to and get sorted out.

Old Style Broadside

So the game itself...was quite fun and pretty easy to pick up. Having come from Fantasy it was pretty straight forward but at times completely different and I know it'll take a few games/weeks to get my head around all the rules. We didn't go over anything about shooting at tanks, did a tiny bit of assault and nothing about Psykers. I can see it being fairly straight forward though and I enjoyed it alot especially with the majority of missions revolving around mission objectives which you have to hold and defend. I realised mid way through that drones should always be the first models in front of the rest of the squad. I learnt the hardway as one of my Crisis Suits needlessly died as it was ahead of the two drones supporting the team. I've got a week off this week as Carl is on holiday but the following week we'll be picking it up again, now to see if I have enough time to make the Riptide!

I actually did some priming too this week! With the weather taking a turn for the better on Friday I managed to get all my built Tau primed black ready for painting! Hopefully the weather holds out and I can get the majority of my un-primed models all undercoated and stock piled for when the weather inevitably takes a turn for the worse, let's be honest it's Britain it's going to happen!

Saturday night as the other half was on earlies and went to bed at 8pm I test painted my first Firewarrior and before I knew it I had it fully painted, based and tabletop ready by midnight! It's a pretty simple colour scheme using Naggaroth Night as a basecoat and Xereus Purple on certain parts of the armour to give it a distinctive look and finally washed with Druchii Violet. The cloth was basecoated with Vallejo German Camo Dark Brown, washed with Agrax Earthshade and then drybrushed with Balor Brown. The Rifle was mainly the same as the armour but with the end of the gun and the scope given a Temple Guard Blue coat to give them a pop. It's not the greatest standard but it's tabletop standard and after getting a squad of 6 all done over the weekend they really look distinctive and eye-catching from the battlefield.

So apart from the Tau and 40K yesterday I was up at Blyth for the normal Sunday NAG games. I managed a couple of Fantasy games at 2,400pts with my Ogres against two lots of Elves which I've never played against before. The first was against Jim's High Elves, an army that used lots of small units and he kept redirecting and blocking my big units of Ogres and Ironguts with his Hawks and smaller units. My deployment really mucked up my first couple of plans here as I was struggling to get my units walked across the table. I had 3 Sabertusks this time around and putting my normal 2 on the sides I stupidly put the other one in the middle. It meant I was constantly trying to keep the 6 inch panic bubble away from it which gave me a very limited area to deploy everything else.

The Mournfang yet again proved their worth and continued to mow down units with ease. The most suprising was his White Lions which charged the front and a huge block of spearmen which charged the flank. The Mournfang held out for two rounds before wiping them out and finally dying in a battle against the Swordmasters. My big Ironguts unit almost got rear charged by his General, BSB and big unit of Calvarly but thankfully they managed to swift reform to face the charge and then proceded to smash face, including my Slaughtermaster taking on the General in a challenge. After the dust settled I had very marginally won thankfully with my Slaughtermaster, BSB and most of the Ironguts block still left.

After that we welcomed a new player Dom to the club and I took on his Dark Elves, I didn't realise how many shots the Dark Elves can produce from their repeater crossbows, and straight from the off I had lost a couple of Ogres and Ironguts. But then my luck changed, I actually did something with the Cannon! Dom had brought his General with a Manticore to the game and he'd moved him bang into the middle of the battlefrield. Thankfully my normally untrusty Ironblaster hit home and wiped out the Manticore first turn, leaving his General just on his own in front of a big block of Ogres. The Mournfang were the star of the show again though being charged on one turn by the Hydra, Cold One Knights and the General who opted for the Mourfang's flank rather than taking on the block of Ogres on his own. After the battle suprisingly the three Dark Elves units had only managed one wound on the Mournfang, the Ogres didn't let the Dark Elves off as lightly wiping out the Cold One Calvary and Hydra and sending the General running for the forest!

After a couple of turns and the two blocks of Ogres and Ironguts marching and crushing everything in their path, Dom called the game. I felt quite bad as he was just getting back into Fantasy and I don't think he was expecting such a one sided game, nor did I to be honest. But with the Mournfang running the show, the Ironblaster cannon finally working and a series of unfortunate rolls on Dom's behalf I could see how the game turned out the way it did.

So overall a decent weekend of gaming and a pretty busy week of wargaming overall. This week I'll be cracking on with painting up the Tau, probably building the Riptide and trying to crack on with the Volksgrenadier. Fun times ahead for sure!

Chalmers

Happy New Year!

A very Happy New Year to everyone! Hope Santa brought everything you all wanted and the hangovers have been taken care of by now. I had a very relaxing but also hectic Christmas period including driving 5-hours home at 3am on Christmas Day with the Girlfriend after she finished work and then driving all the way back on Boxing Day evening. Though I wouldn't have swapped it for the world as it was such a good day with all the family.

So what did Santa (girlfriend) bring me this year for my Empire army?

1 x General/Captain of the Empire set - Always wanted this set and it's a great box including many options for both a mounted and standing Captain/General. I'll definitely be using the standing Captain and probably give him a Sword/Shield combo for that added protection. I'm not the biggest fan of Knights in my Empire army but think I need to use them more and if they work I'll be adding the mounted model to this unit.

1 x Box of Empire State Troopers - going to be building these tonight or tomorrow to make another 10-man Halberds for my unit. The final plan is to have a big block of 38 and also include a Empire Captain/General and Warrior Priest. After this box I'll be at 34 add my Captain and Warrior Priest and I only need four extra troops, I think I'll be adding another unit filler (maybe use one of my Ogres) to this rather than shelling out on another box.

1 x Warrior Priest with Extra Hand Weapon - Little did my Girlfriend know but I've already got this model, though I'm not complaining because I love this model so I'm sure I'll be able to use it somewhere in the army.

1 x Warrior Priest with Hand Weapon and Shield - Who says you cannot have enough Warrior Priests? I do possibly have a plan with this one by maybe using it as a Arch Lector but I'm still not sure. I think I need to build everything first and then work out an army list to decide what to do with him.

1 x Box of Demigryph Knights - Yep the mothership of all Empire forces and the box set I've wanted since I started my Empire force. These will definitely be built tomorrow night as I've got my final training game on Thursday night at Games Workshop Metrocentre and want these bad boys on the table.

So yeah I feel extremely spoilt but now my painting backlog is a hell of a lot larger than I was expecting. To have a 1,500pts Empire Army fully painted by end of Jan is going to be one huge task. Thankfully I've not got much planned this month so I expect it'll be a few late nights to get them all up and tabletop ready.

Unfortunately with the Xmas period I've not had the chance to do much painting and when I did have a bit of time I touched up the Tau Hammerhead which just needs the Ion Cannon and Railgun end bits painting before it's finished. I was really hoping to get a real good start on getting everything sorted but now I've got roughly four weeks to fully paint everything I have. The one problem I've got is the weather is beginning to turn and everything needs priming. I might need to chance it by spraying in the shed, and then bringing the guys straight into the house. This is where the pain of not having a garage shows.

Anyway onwards and upwards, New Years resolution is to get everything I own painted by the end of the year. Empire will be done one way or another by Feb so after that it'll be finishing off the last remaining few of my Ogres, the Tau and then see what happens.

Start of the Tau

So I thought with the first day of the holidays yesterday I'd make a start on my Christmas projects. The Infinity starter set are built and took a hell of a lot longer than I anticipated. So many fiddly metal bits for each characters and so much flash it took ages to trim everything off and stuck. Though they do look good hopefully I'll be able to get them primed in the next couple of days (as long as the weather stops raining!).

Unfortunately it meant my plan of making the Fire Warriors was a non-starter yesterday, hopefully I can make them today with the possibility of priming them on Monday. I did begin on my Hammerhead that I bought for a tenner off eBay. Being pre-built it was missing some of the weapons but did come with unattached Railgun and Ion Cannon. So I'll be magnetising them so I can switch when needs be.

I've decided a Purple Tau army is on the cards, I was sick of anything Red or Blue what with both my Ogres and Empire armies being those colours and I'm not too confident on painting White or Yellow colour schemes yet. The other paint scheme I was thinking of was a drab green however I'm thinking a mid-year project of Nurgle-Themed Chaos Space Marines might be on the cards using the Dark Vengeance box set so I didn't want to reuse that.

So here's the start of the Hammerhead. Still got a long time to go but I thought I'd do an update. I base-coated the whole Hammerhead Naggaroth Night and then gave the grooves a wash of Druchii Violet. After they dried I used Xereus Purple to be the prominent bright colour. I've still got a few sections to do this colour and I'm still deciding whether to use a grey in the colour scheme?

So here's the Hammerhead in it's current state. Still alot of work to do this week on it. Unfortunately at the moment I'm only using my iPhone to take photos. I'm getting my girlfriend a Digital SLR for Christmas so I'm sure I'll be stealing that to photo my models in the New Year!