New Year New Post, Part 2

So what else have I done in the past three months? Well The End Times has kicked in full swing in the Warhammer world and for some reason the idea of a Chaos Legions army really sounded like a good idea, finding a decent deal on Wargaming Trading page on Facebook I found myself with quite a rather large collection of unmade current edition Chaos and Beastmen figures!

Just some of the Chaos that I Got!

I don’t have a clue what came over me, most of the models are still unbuilt, I did make an attempt of a Beastmen BSB and Beastlord and the unit of Chaos Warriors I built and started to paint as Khorne Warriors I’ve been a little underwhelmed with. I know Chaos Warrior armies can be low numbers and really competitive but I’m honestly not sure whether I can see myself to build, paint and play another Fantasy army at the moment. I’ve got so many Beastmen models to build it’s a daunting task, I’ve gone from one horde army of the Vampire Counts to another Horde army of Beastmen. I think realistically thinking I’ll probably resell all of this and hopefully someone else will have more luck than I did!

One of my resolutions for 2015 is not to impulse buy, last year I had a rather bad habit of jumping from army to army, something which I think a lot of wargamers do, but I’d buy enough for way over the normal points limit and then struggle to complete it and sell it on. This year I want to make a concentrated effort on the armies I own and get them finished and fully painted/based.

The armies are as followed;

Warhammer Fantasy

Ogre Kingdoms – Finish painting my first Fantasy army when I got back into the army. I’d say I’m about 75% of the way through this army but still need to paint a few of the bigger things. I do have an unbuilt Thundertusk which needs building at some point too.

Vampire Counts – As mentioned I’ve made a good start but still have a lot to do for these. Obviously being a horde-style army each unit is 40 strong so it’s a big task for each unit. Though if they’re as simple as the Zombies to paint, I feel I could get through the army quite quickly.

Empire - I’m not too sure what to do with my Empire. I’ve got a pretty big force built and mainly primed but whenever I pick them up I cannot for the life of me get motivated to paint them up. It also doesn’t help whenever I play them on the table they’re boring to play. It may well be the case that I sell these rather than trying to paint them up.

Bolt Action

German Waffen SS – This was a Christmas present and spent the Christmas week building it all. Now with the weather being it’s normal British weather I’m finding it pretty hard to get anything primed. I unfortunately don’t have a garage or anything so have to go outside in the shed so I really need a decent mild temperature. As mentioned in Part 1 this is more of a modelling and painting project so I’m not too fussed if this takes me longer to get these painted and sorted.

Warhammer 40K

Necrons – I’ve got about 90% of everything painted. I’ve got one unit primed and halfway painted and then a couple of units still to build. I’ve not really played much 40K recently so it’s not a major rush to get these finished but with the new Necron Codex coming out I’d like to get these finished so I can properly learn 40K in the near-distant future.

Space Marines – This was actually meant to be my winter project and wanted to get everything built and primed over the Christmas period. That obviously didn’t happen with so many other things happening! I really want to make a effort to get these done as they’re going to be pretty simple to paint and build. I know I’ve got a weekend in March where the fiancé is going away with work friends all weekend so I might very well just spend the whole weekend building and priming it all.

Infinity

PanO – Everything is primed and I just need to paint the Military Orders up. Unfortunately not many people are playing the game at the club and that’s after the Version 3 rules which came out recently. These shouldn’t take too long to get done so I might just need a weekend or two to focus and get them done.

Morats – Again these are all primed and half painted but need finishing off. I think my motivation for them have really died down now no one plays at the club but I think I need to make a focused pledge soon to get them done and relearn Infinity. But it’s not a major rush to get them done at the moment.

So yeah quite a few projects, and I’ve also got one bigger one that I’ll be mentioning in a blog post this week. Something that I’m looking forward to being a part of and it’s for a brand new system that I’ve not learnt yet. It’ll probably get me visiting a couple of different North East clubs to play the game but I’m already really looking forward to jumping into this and learning to play it.

The Undead Rise

So now the frantic painting of Bolt Action has finished I really want to make a concentrated effort on getting my Vampire Count army ready for the tabletop. I was to try and get the majority all built in the next few weeks and then hopefully have decent weather to prime as much of it as I can so I can spend the winter months painting it all up.

I've had a box of 40 Mantic Zombies sitting in my wardrobe for about three months now. I know raising the dead is one of the bigger things for Vampire Count armys and I wanted to make sure I've got enough zombies for my army list as well as raiseables. I've already got about 30 GW Zombies so they're going to form the front of my army and then the Mantic Zombies will be backing up the ranks. I've got to admit there is a great amount of poses from the three different legs and bodies you get in the box set. Adding some Renedra gravestones to the odd ones also breaks up the full unit and gives them some character.

Sitting down on Friday night I started working....

15 Zombies Soon Became....

....40 Zombies!

So yeah it's pretty impressive seeing the 40 strong shambling horde all done. To speed up the process of painting these I've got some Army Painter Necrotic Flesh primer which will give me a basecoat of a rotting skin looking colour. I'm not sure how I'm going to be colouring them afterwards. I've got an idea of using numerous different washes over the skin colour to give the Zombies a range of rotting skin colours. Though part of me is thinking about giving the skin a Athonian Camoshade wash to give it that dark green rotting colour and then differentiate the Zombies with different colours trousers and wraps. If I do a test on five or so models then I can decide which will be the best to do. The others that don't cut it can easily be used as raiseables because lets be honest they'll soon be taken off the battlefield anyway!

Basecoated Necrotic Flesh

I've also made a start on my Terrorgheist. I wasn't that impressed with the huge base it comes with and the piddly amount of scenic rocks that the Terrorgheist was mounted on in the stock version of the model. I've seen a couple of different ways people have modelled the dragon using the Garden of Morr set and I wanted to incorporate that into the base. My initial idea was to have two different crypts from the set and have the Terrorghiest crawling on top of them. I got the look ok but the height of the model was ridiculous and even the large box I've got to carry my VC around in was too shallow for this.

I've decided to change it around a bit instead and have just one building at the front. The aim to have the Terrorgheist climbing up it and I've got a pose I'm happy with. I've not glued down the model yet though as I want to paint the base and the Terrorgheist separately as I can see it being a complete ball-ache to do them at the same time. I added some extra gravestones and one of the wall pieces to the base too, I think having these extra little bits will really make the Terrorgheist the centre piece of the army. Let's just hope I can do the painting justice!

Time to be completely honest. I've never painted scenery before so having this big piece on the base of the Terrorgheist was a daunting project. I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like but didn't have a clue whether it would look right with my painting. Having sprayed the base black I then used the GW Large Drybrush to do a heavy coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey and then when that dried highlighted the edges with another lighter drybrush of Administratum Grey. The stonework and the buildings really came out looking exactly like what I wanted so I'm relieved/pleased that it worked ok! I've drybrushed the ground Rhinox Hide, my aim for the whole army is to have a muddy winter basing theme with army painter flowers scattered around to really give it a contrast of life against the death of the VC. For the Terrorgheist I'm going to highlight the ground with a lighter brown and then add some dead grass tufts, scatter snow across certain areas and ontop of the gravestones/walls and then also have the flowers scattered around on the base. I need to detail some bits on the building, for example the skulls and roof top spikes.

It's nice to just take my time on painting and actually enjoy what I'm painting. Don't get me wrong the Japanese were great to paint but being against the clock and having to have them done by the tournament really took out some of the enjoyment in the project. Thankfully with the Vampire Counts I can take my time and really enjoy what I'm doing. There's so many ideas I have for them I just hope I can do it justice!

Cough...Splutter...Is This Thing On?

Has it really been over a month since I've updated? Time flies and all that. In the past month I've been to Leeds Festival, been to one of my best mates Weddings, been to Southampton for a couple of days for work, got a new kitten and generally been one busy man.

So hobby time has been at a premium recently, I've been a bit realistic and started selling off stalled projects. The Tyranids have gone, they weren't getting the attention they needed and I'd rather someone else have them and get them sorted. It does mean that my planned Space Marine project has been bumped forwards and I've now got everything I need for my army;

As you can see I'm going to be painting them purple and gold. I didn't realise these were the colours of the Emperors Children, I saw the colour scheme in the Space Marines Codex under one of the Ultramarines sub-chapters called the Hawk Lords. I'm going to be doing a bit of a Hawk Lord/custom chapter using either the Raven Guard tactics or Imperial Fist tactics (re-rolling Bolters FTW).

With just under a month to go for the Bolt Action Welsh Open I've been putting the finishing touches to my Japanese. Granted on Monday I remembered about the Armoured Platoon game that kicks off the event so I hurriedly ordered some tanks and a lorry from Warlord on Monday morning and they arrived this morning, not too shabby for customer service! So with my girlfriend working nights next week I'll be getting these built, sprayed and painted ready for the tourne. I've organsied a 1K Game with my tourne list for next Sunday against Jim so at least I'll have some practice with them before the Welsh Open. My first tournament and I cannot wait, though I'm ready for my Pacific warriors to be sitting at the bottom of the table come the end of Sunday!

Squads Finished

My Vampire Count army is coming along really nicely, I've not even got bored of painting Skeletons, Zombies or Ghouls yet huzzah! It helps I'm doing them in batches of 10 and then switching to another unit. It means nothing gets too samey and the Ghouls are pretty easy to do anyway as they're just a couple of washes followed up by a tiny bit of detail work. I’ve still got the likes of the Mortis Engine and Terrorghiest to build but I want to spend some time on these are they’re going to be two of the vocal points of the army. I really like the idea of the Terrorghiest sitting on top of the Garden of Morr building but I don’t want to feel like I’ve copied it. I want to be able to have the full army built for a club game soon but I know for a fact that at least 50% of the army (probably 75%) will be grey plastic and I hate playing with grey plastic.

I had my first proper game of 40K on Sunday, after giving Mort a tutorial 500pt game of Bolt Action (his Japanese absolutely wiped my Vet Soviet force), Jim gave me a intro game of 40K at 1,500pts. His Space Wolves against my Necron army in a Kill Point game. We added the secondary objectives (Linebreaker, First Blood etc) to the scoring too and I really enjoyed it. Thankfully most of the rules were pretty self-explanatory and I don’t think I was too slow for Jim in my first game. I did lose 6-3 but my first turn I completely forgot to fire my Monolith, you know because it’s so small I missed it bang in the middle of my side of the battlefield, then didn’t realise it had a S8 AP1 Pie Plate Ordnance attack until Turn 3 where it then wiped out one squad and almost wiped out another. I need to fully learn all the rules for the Necrons but when they have about 5 pages of FAQs and Erratas I’ll be waiting until the new book comes out (hopefully before the New Year with the speed GW is launching the new hardback books).

So while I’ve not had the time to post on here I’ve been pretty darn busy. Promise to keep you all updated, even if they’re just small updates with some pics of painting progress and that.

Chalmers  

Beginning of The Vampire Counts

So as well as my Japanese Bolt Action I've also made a start on my Vampire Count army. I ended up buying quite the backbone of my Vampire Count army from one of the lads at the club for just over £100. He tried getting into Fantasy but it wasn't for him so it was a great piece of timing to start my Vamps army.

I've spent the last couple of days sorting through it all and this is approx what I've got so far; 

Zombies x 29
Skeletons x 30
Grave Guard x 10
Ghouls x 30
Hexwraiths x 5
Black Knights x 5
Corpse cart x 1
Varghiests x 3
Flesh hounds x 1
Black Coach x 1
Necromancer x 1
Wight King x 1
Forgeworld Wight King Battle Standard Bearer x 1
Count Mannfred on Horseback x 1
Army book

Not a bad starting section for the army. I've also managed to pick up the limited Christmas run box The Restless Dead from eBay for really cheap so that'll add another Wight King (though I'll probably not really use another one), 10 more Grave Guard which were definitely needed, 20 more Skeletons which again are always needed and 5 more Black Knights/Hexwraiths which I think I'm going to make into 5 more Hexwraiths. I've also ordered from Blyth Models a box of the Mantic Zombies so that'll add a much needed 40 extra Zombies to the army because let's be honest, Zombies are everywhere in a Vampire Count list. Especialy when you can raise even more throughout every magic phase.


I've had an idea for a Vampire Lord for my army using a Empire Warrior Priest as the basis of my model. I recieved one for Christmas but already had the model in my Empire army so went to work with the clippers and knife to trim away the different parts of the Finecast model to create my own Vampire-looking model. It's the first time I've used Greenstuff on models, the only other experience of using it was with my Flames of War Volks and that was just for the basing. So this the final result of the conversion, pretty simple but effective. I'm still trying to look for a cloak to use on the back but have yet to find one that's the right length and also need to think of a Count name for him. He could very well be my general for the army.

Like a few VC armies out there I'm going to be using the Garden of Morr scenery set to create some unit fillers for my army. I've already had a bit of a play with the different pieces for units and so far only settled on the big gate for the back rank of my Grave Guard. It takes out the need of 8 men but in a future 40-man block won't look too out of place. I'm planning on having one of the Grave Guards walking out between the gates to give the unit filler a bit of life. I'm loving the magnetic tape I've bought off eBay to magnetise everything as it really keeps big pieces like this securely in place while playing the game and transporting.

With the VC army I and the huge amount of models for the army I wanted something easy and practicaly to transport everything around. I've decided to go for the Really Useful Boxes, I've got a shallow 10 litre box for the core troops (though the standards have to be laid on their sides) and then a deep 18 Litre box for the cavalry, scenery unit fillers and the recently purchased Terrorgheist and Mortis Engine once their built. I've put Steel sheets onto the bottom of the boxes and the movement trays have magnetic tape on the bottom so it's nice and secure to stick to the bottom of the box and carry around. It definitely makes the back room look a little less untidy with being able to take the whole army and pack it away in the cupboard.

As I've been getting through the Japanese for the Bolt Action Welsh Open in Oct, I've not had much of a chance to do any painting for them, I've done a couple of test Crypt Ghouls which I'm happy with. They're pretty easy to do but look rather good all together so once the Japanese are sorted I'll whip through them. My zombies will be sprayed with the Necrotic Flesh army painter sprayed, details and clothes will then be basecoated before dipping the whole lot of them. It'll speed up the painting for these no-end and the prospect of doing 60 and probably another 40 later on this year is not really that appealing.

Need to Decide on Basing

Finally I made a start on one of the Flesh Hounds as a tester. I'm not overly keen on the models but for some chaff in the army I'm not that fussed to get anything else at the current time. I'm sure over time I'll either find some different models or do something a bit more extravagant but for the time being I'm happy with the look of these. I'll be adding some Blood for the Blood God in the near future to certain areas to give them that undead feel.

First Japanese Squad Completed!

10 down, 30 to go! The first 10 Japanese troops for the Welsh Open in October have been finished and based. Doing the men in batches of 10 really works well as I can put them on a production line and by the time the 10th man has whatever layer of paint applied I can return to the first man for the next layer and it'll be ready.

I've added another grass piece to the front to fully cover the base.

I'm really pleased with the long grass I purchased on eBay. It's about 120mm tall so really gets up to the models waist and gives the squad a feeling of moving through the long grass and attacking the Allies head on. I think a whole army in the paint scheme I've got with the long grass is really going to look awesome of the battlefield. I've already got visions for my gun teams being hidden amongst the grass ready to lay enemy armour to waste.

Hopefully the weather holds up until tonight so I can get close to the other 30 men all primed so I can work on them from Thursday and all weekend as the mrs is working nights this weekend. Unfortunately I won't be able to paint throughout the weekend days or head down to the club on Sunday as I've stupidly agreed to work both Saturday and Sunday as they needed extra office staff to help for a warehouse stock check.

Once I get the infantry finished, hopefully by the end of the weekend if I really make a concentrated effort, then I'll be ordering everyting else I need to finish off the army. Still trying to source a couple of bits and pieces though so until I can find them I'm not going to have the full 1,000pts to play with. For games at the club I might see whether I can either use my Chi-Ha Medium Tank or proxy one of my Zis-3s for one of the guns I'll have to find from a different supplier. It's a big pain with Warlords limited supply of Japanese models, some of the more tasty options in the army book have to be sourced from elsewhere rather from themselves.

Keep you all updated in the next couple of days with more pictures of the full squad.

It Returns!

Back From The Dead....

Fear not I'm alive! It's been almost two months since my last post, apologies for that. Since then I've been to Morocco and back, tore up the back garden and laid turf and fitted a new fence, been to Glastonbury to work for Oxfam for the week, and been working my tits off in my job. Unfortunately with all of that happening I've had to put the blog on the backburner but I'm now back and hopefully it'll be better than ever!

So what have I been up to in the world of wargaming in the past two months? Well the Soviets are fully finished to a 1,000pts on the dot. Me and Jim had a game with his finished Brits a couple of weeks ago and while I took a very early lead by the end of the battle Jim had beaten me by about 2 points mainly by getting his units off the board. I'll get some pictures sorted out in the next week or so, at the moment they’re in a case and with another 1,000pt game on Sunday I don’t want to take them all out to then put them all back in.

Despite having the Welsh Open at the beginning of October I’ve made absolutely no progress on my Japanese, I’ve put the next couple of weeks aside for getting all the squads built and primed, weather permitting. I’m still trying to source a couple of the models as unfortunately Warlord doesn’t seem to have a lot of the artillery and anti-tank guns for sale yet. I’ll be trailing through the other companies of the web to try and source what I need hence why I’m going to focus on the troops first.

I’ve organised an Escalation League for Bolt Action at NAG, we’re going to be starting at 500pts before moving to 750pts and finally 1K. A couple of people haven’t exactly been happy about some of the rules but at the moment we’ve got five people signed up with a couple more showing interest so hopefully it’ll garner so more interest once a few of the games have begun. Full details and rules for the league can be found here.

Outside of Bolt Action, I went to the midnight launch of the 7^th Edition Warhammer 40K. Granted I was coming back from Morocco at the time but why not, I’ve still yet to play a game of 40K due to my recent time constraints but having read the rulebook quite a bit it seems like it’ll be decent once I pick it up and I get playing a bit more.

Warhammer Fantasy-wise I participated in the first tournament of the year a month ago, we had a no-comp 2,000pt competition and I decided to take my Ogres as usual. Two 20-0 losses and one 14-6 win wasn’t really what I had planned but I’ve finally decided to box up and store away the Ogres for the foreseeable future. After a little while they get a little boring and stale. I’ve started the process of clearing out some of my failed armies (Lizardmen will be the first to go, my Empire will either go into storage or be sold too), once I’ve cleared those out I’m going to be starting a Vampire Count army. They were my original choice when I returned to Fantasy last year until I was drawn into the Ogres because let’s be honest what’s cooler than; Vampires, Zombies, Ghouls, Skeletons and everything else that goes bump in the night? I know I’m going to need a big bunch of Zombies (thankfully Mantic Games do pretty well priced undead) and the thought of painting every one is a little daunting but I’m hoping the Army Painter Necrotic Flesh Spray will give me a decent basecoat to then give the skin a wash and colour the clothing. It’ll be a long project for sure to get done but I have a feeling the army is going to look pretty cool once they’re finished.

Gorgeous Models

A couple of weeks back I had my first training game for Infinity. Mike, one of the main advocates of Infinity at the club is now a Warcor who can teach players the rules. I used his beautifully painted Ariadna against his Toahaa army and loved the game. The small model count really helps the game flow especially with the reactive orders meaning that no player is ever sat twiddling their thumbs because everyone is always involved. Check out Mike’s great blog here for all things Infinity. I’ve bought the Morat Sectorial Starter Force and the Vanguard Infantry box, they’re two of the newest box sets to be launched and they’re beautiful sculpts. I’ve already got the Starter Force based and grey-primed with the Vanguard waiting in the wings for a spray. Once I get these all started I’ll be having another training game to learn some more of the advance rules of the game and I really cannot wait for whenever that will be.

Finally I’ve signed up for a Judge Dredd Campaign at the club! The models and rulebook is produced by Warlord in conjunction with Mongoose Publishing. I’ve started a Cursed Earth Desperadoes gang but I’m still working out what equipment to give to each person in the gang for the campaign. I originally had an idea of two heroes and multiple goons but after kitting out two heroes with all the bells and whistles it really limited my choice for how many men I could run. We’re kicking off the Campaign August 10^th so hopefully by then I’ll have a couple of games under my belt and the initial guys for my gang all painted and sorted.

So yeah it’s been an eventful couple of months, hopefully now I can settle down and focus on getting the Japanese in some sort of recognisable state and make a move on with everything else. More updates later this week once I have Banzai’d straight into my Japanese models.
Chalmers

What a Week!

Well that was unexpected, everything went tits up at work with deadlines popping up everywhere meaning most of my social life for this week has gone out of the window (boo!). It also means I've made no progress with my Nids and at the moment sits with a cabinet full of grey plastic waiting for the moment to prime everything with the Skeleton Bone Spray!

I did manage to test one Gaunt with the Army Painter Strong Tone and after drying for 24 hours it looks to have dried pretty darn good. As expected I need to use the Anti-Shine Matt Varnish over the top as it's rather bright and shiny at the moment. I think my plan this week, as the mrs is working nights again, is to get alot of the Gaunts and Warriors that are primed all painted up and ready for painting on dip.

Then I can do another batch of dipping in one night and have the starts of a finished army already. I've still got to base all the models after painting but I think, especially for the smaller troops, I'll be doing a very basic base and paint scheme while focusing on the larger models for details on the models/more detailed basing.

Now the clocks have gone forward and the nights are lighter I can do quite a bit of priming in the evening, hooray! Well once the weather has decided whether it wants to be dry or raining/foggy. Once I get the majority of the troops done I can get them packed away in a carry case so I can focus on building/painting the larger monsters to fill the display cabinet.

I did participate in the NAG Fantasy Tournament a couple of Sundays back now. I didn't fare the greatest (3rd from last) but it was such a fun day. First game I played James in a Beastmen vs Wood Elves affair, I won the roll and chose to use the Beastmen however I didn't realise the shooting prowess of the Wood Elves and those pesky bowmen of the forest had shot the majority of my Combat-orientated army off the table before I could get across. Also who's idea was it not to give the Ghorgon no armour save what so ever?

Second game I got to try out the new Dwarves against a Skaven list manned by Martin which I was really looking forward to. I absolutely loved this army and the new units including the Gyrobomber that in one turn almost wiped out the Hell Pit Abomination in one turn. I used the Gyrocopter to great use too flying right up to a Stormvermin unit and almost covering the whole thing with a Flame Template. There were a lot of crispy-fried Skaven after the template lifted. I did win but after initial thoughts by both of us of a 20-0 win my inability to completely wipe out a unit meant it was a 16-4 victory instead. Not too bad for the new Dwarves but I'm holding off any urge I have for a stuntie army.

Finally it was Daemons vs Lizardmen against another James. I wasn't fussed on which army I got to use having both of these sitting in a cabinet at home and yet to be able to field them. James won the roll and chose the Daemons so I finally got to try the Lizardmen. My first turn the Salamanders moved forward and both flame breaths rolled a 8 on the distance and covered the Plaguebearers Units. 26 hits, 20 wounds and 16 dead on the first turn....that was an amazing thing from the Salamanders who then spent the rest of the game in close combat with the Beasts of Nurgle. Unfortunately the Salamanders were really only the one thing which did well as the Bloodcrushers one hit killing blowed by Scar Vet on Cold One and my Skinks were wiped out before they even got to hit back by Chariots with a ridiculous amount of impact hits.

So yeah not the greatest in games across the board but some very enjoyable games none-the-less. There is talk of a 4-Player Triumph and Treachery game a week on Sunday which I've been invited for. I think I'll give either my Lizardmen or Empire a run out for that game which should be a great laugh for the day.

Stayed tuned later in the week for more updates on the Nids.