Brotherhood update

Just a quick post today,  I got some paint on the 5 Brotherhood warriors that have weapons!

I kept the scheme pretty simple as I am still going with the theme that most of their gear is dual purpose and is, largely, drawn from their mining equipment.  I think the Akanauts fit that theme really well, with the small packs on their back that resemble air filters and their boiler suits.

These five are almost done, I've missed a few details that I've noticed that just need touching up before I get their bases sorted. After that its weathering.

The other reason for keeping the scheme simple is the sheer number of these guys I will be painting.  I've not settled on a complete list yet but already in a 1500pt list I will need over a hundred of them and if I'd made the scheme too convoluted I would quickly lose interest in painting that many.

I've been thinking on my weapon problem as well. I'm thinking the best way forward for now is to get the whole squad painted up, sans weapons, and then as and when I can get hold of them to paint the guns up separately and add them later.  Otherwise, at the rate the weapons are coming up on eBay, its going to be next Christmas before the squad is finished!


Anyway, that's all for now.


Until next time!

Squat brotherho... *cough* Militia Infantry Squad

Only a small update today.  We had 2 parties to go to at weekend (and 18th and a 30th) so by Sunday I was a little bit knackered! It was nice to get out and pretend to be a human though so its ok.


One of the armies I'll be focusing on this year are my Squat/Imperialis Militia.  I decided once the Kharadron Overlords came out how I was going to work the army (mostly), I'm still mulling over tanks but they'll come later. First up I needed infantry, now, the Survivors of the Dark Age provenance does mean that my compulsory troops have to be Grenadiers, which is fine, but I do intend on having some of the more basic infantry too.


 With that said, here are the first 5 (of 20) Infantry.



I'll, eventually, be fielding 4 20 man units with close combat weapons and 2 with Lasrifles(and Advanced Weapons for the extra punch).  The Arkanauts themselves don't require a huge amount of converting, since the description of Auxila Pistols is pretty vague you could even get away with leaving them as is, but I wanted to swap out the guns for something a little more recognisable.

In my hubris I thought the Renegade Militia Las/Auto pistols would be a good choice which, visually at least, they are but by Christ are they hard to get hold of.  This is why at the moment there's only 5 guys with guns, and one of them is the sergeant with a Bolt Pistol!

 Oh well, I'll get there in the end with them, it might just take some time.  with the next batch of guys I may customise them a little more, mix in the vanilla models with some more flashy ones since, in theory at least, each Squat is responsible for his own gear so I imagine there would be a decent amount of custom modding going on.


 As for the army list, its not really possible to represent everything the Squats used to have but you can get a good amount of them.  For now my 1 to 1 comparison is something like this:


Force Commander -  Warlord: Fairly straight forward, he's got a decent range of equipment to allow for a pretty unique Warlord.  No way of getting him into Exo-armour unfortunately but its a small gripe. You've already seen my Force Commander in the last update so I wont post him again. Yet.


Platoon Command Cadre - Hearthguard: I backed and forthed for a while whether to make these part of the main Brotherhood troops of the Hearthguard, they are only BS3 so hardly fitting of the Hearthguard but then the way Squat society is set up it didn't make sense that the commanders would be standard Brotherhood.  Either way, with Advanced Weapons you can give them Carapace Armour and Laslocks for a 3+ save and Str 5 shots (even if they don't have any AP) and throw them in a Rhino(or a counts as Rhino, we'll come back to that). I'm still not 100% settled on this so it may change.


Rogue Psyker - Living Ancestor: But Amy! Your army is Loyalist! I know, I know, but its the only way of getting a Living Ancestor in.  I'm not saying I'm going to use one, but its nice to have the option.  As long as you're fluffy with your choices of Psychic Disciplines I don't think most players would have a problem with you taking one.


Militia Infantry Squad/Fire Support Squad/Recon Squad - Brotherhood:  The backbone of Squat forces are the Brotherhoods, Between these three squads you've got a decent layout of options, Infantry squads can be melee orientated (as above) or ranged with Lasrifles or Laslocks, Fire support squads give you your heavy weapons, I plan on using the FW shoulder mounted ones as much as possible for a real RT era feel, shame the squad cant take Plasma Cannons but oh well and Recon squads can either be Snipers or close assault Shotgunners (I'll be using the DKOK Engineer Shotguns if I make some of these!).  These will all use the Arkanaut Company models as they only have Flak Armour (although with SOTDA its at least a 4+ save).


Inducted Levy Squads - Cyber Slayers:  This one is a bit of a stretch, I'll be honest, but again, its the only way I can think of to fit these in.  Give them two close combat weapons and Discipline Collars.  I'll be using the plastic Slayers an hacking arms/legs/whatever off and giving them a Servitor esque look with lots of bionics.


Grenadier Squads - Hearthguard: Their Carapace Armour gives them 3+ saves(thanks to SOTDA) they're BS4 and with Laslocks they have Str 5 shots. they have a decent amount of options for other gear including Boltguns if you want some AP shots, they can also take up to 2 guys I nthe squad with special weapons from Rotor Cannons(Which with advanced weapons is Str 4 AP 6 Salve, not shabby) to Plasma Guns.  There was no way these weren't going to be the Elite Hearthguard, it even says in the description for Grenadiers that they are often the "retainers of the Commander's Houshold".


 Ogryn Brute Squad - Exo-armour: Ok so its not a perfect analogy, especially with Ogryns low LD but, it does make them a T6, W2 hard hitting unit.  BS2 isn't great but kit them out with Close Combat Weapons, Power Axes and Boarding Shields etc and then it doesn't matter when you slam them into combat. I'll be using my converted Centurions to represent these.


Enginseer Auxillia/Rapier Battery - Engineers Guild/Trikes: I keep seeing people bemoan the like of Bikes/Rough Riders in the Militia list, and Ok, I would like Rough Riders if only so that when I do my Imperial Beastmen somewhere down the line I can use Centigors to represent them, but I digress, the Enginseers are the obvious choice to represent the Engineers Guild, and I've already started changing my old Force Commander into the first of an Enginseer detachment.  Trikes we're a little harder to get into the army in a justifiable way, in the end I settled on Rapiers, they'll represent slow moving "Trikes" that rather than being fast transports for Engineers are actually more like heavy mining equipment that the Squats have mounted on a platform with one driving and one manning the gun.  its not perfect, but it will do.


So that's my ideas for the Infantry, As I said I'm still torn on Tanks but it will be a while before I get there.  I mentioned "Counts As" Rhino's earlier,  I'm not going to spoil that one just yet so you will have to wait for the next update on that front.  In the meantime, if anyone has any of the Renegade Laspistol or autopistol arms lying around then let me know and we can sort out a trade or something!


Until next time!

The S Word & New Custodes

Cards on the table, I didn't finish the Custodes.  I almost did, but then I got distracted. They've got their bases and most of the detail now, I just need to do one more highlight on the armour and the gems.


What distracted me? Well, remember a little while back I was working on some Squats for my Imperialis Militia list, well, almost as soon as I got a feel for what I was going to do with them GW went and released the Kharadron Overlords which appeared to be their way of saying "Here are some Squats but not really" so I picked up the Admiral and a unit of the Arkanaut Company while I mulled over my options and then there they sat... until now!


Well, ish, the Arkanaut Company is assembled, mostly, but lacks pistols as I wanted to change the ones they had but I'm not sure what to replace them. I'll have a think and see what happens.


What I did do was the Admiral,  now I had done a model for my Force Commander already done, but he's been summarily demoted to an Enginseer, poor chap, a few dashes of red and a Servo arm and he should be ready to go.  Now for his replacement:

I really like the base model so didn't want to do a lot to change it, I still want to stick with the theme of a chunk of the Squat equipment being repurposed mining gear so I decided not to change the armour except to remove the huge backpack and replace it with something a bit smaller.

I like the idea of this armour being the middle step between the Grenadiers (Carapace Armour) using the Ironbreakers and the Exosuits (Ogryns counts as) converted from Centurions. The Arkanaut Company will represent those troops wearing Flak Armour.  I swapped his head for one from the Slayers box as I felt with the full face helmet (which I kept mag-locked to the back of his armour) he might have lost some character and looked a little too much like the base model. He's armed with a plasma pistol which at first I took from the Death Korps upgrade pack, but that felt far too small so he got an upgrade to a Legion one.

His backpack is the same modified one from the Skitarii box with the extra pipes and bits cut off and an overshoulder lamp added from the Grey Knight Terminator Apothecary.  I really wasn't sure about the lamp at first but once I painted it I'm really happy with how the model feels, the armours nice and chunky and industrial and once he's been weathered I'm sure he will look like he's spent years down the mines in it.  The Hammer was my only concern, as the Force Commander doesn't have the option for a Thunder Hammer, but it was too nice and detailed to cut off, for the purposes of rules I am going to count it as a Power Fist, which seems fitting I think. 

Overall I'm really happy with how he's turned out, I just need to finish up his face (god I hate painting faces) and weather him up a bit and he'll be good to go...well, once he has some troops to lead!  I'll post a bit of background for him once he's finished.

In other news, they announced new Custodes models over the weekend and I've come away from the release with a resounding... meh.  Which is disappointing, as I said in my last post, I love the Custodes kits, I mean, I don't hate the new stuff, but very little from it grabs me really.  I didn't take these pictures but nabbed them from google so credit to the original photographer.

The Veterans are probably my favourite of the lot, on one hand I like the addition of the robes as it brings it closer to the artwork, but on the other hand I'm worried there's not going to be a lot of variety to the poses, the two guys on the right of the picture look basically identical except ones got a spear and ones got an axe. I'll probably grab some to use as Hetaeron Guard since I'll only want 5 as a guard for my Shield Captain 

Jetbikes, I like the bikes themselves (again, they're closer to the artwork) but what is going on with the riders torso? those gorget wings just look silly. The one bonus I can see of these over the FW ones is they are likely to be significantly less expensive.  Maybe I'll see if I can swap out the bodies for the normal Custodes body.

Shield Captain, the most meh of the bunch he's got no real character about him, his armour somehow feels less fancy than normal Custodes bar the addition of a cloak, he's really static too.  So yeah, meh... 

Terminators.  Hey look, lets give the Custodes Terminators! But, FW already do some god damn beautiful kits for them. Good point, but lets give them Terminators and make them shittier than the FW ones!  As you can guess, I'm not a fan, compared to the Aquilon Terminators these look like conversions, and not even good ones. I will definitely not be picking up any of these. I get that in the 10,000+ years since the Heresy they would have had upgrades, and they're clearly meant to give a fell of the Grey Knight Terminators but god are they ugly! and also, what exactly is the point in having a wrist mounted gun when the one built in to your main weapon takes two hands to fire?  or did no one think of that? *sigh*

Not a massive update, and apologies for the Terminator rant! I'll have more to show next time.

Until next time!



New Year, New Post

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.


Or in other words, I'm back! Only 2 years and 3 months late but hey, if the Imperium can't keep track of dates then surely I can be forgiven?


I wont bore you with the details but I'll just say everything is settling down and getting back to normal and I'm getting back to doing what I love, painting tiny plastic figures.


I've not been entirely absent since the last update, I have been keeping up with new releases and announcements (as well as the relative controversy that have gone with them). I've even been picking up models here and there (only for them to languish on the sprues).


But!  I do not come empty handed, finally starting to get my hobby groove back, and having a little extra time off over the holidays, I have got some painting done.  I finally got round to making a start on my Custodes from the Battle of Prospero box (they sent me 10 Custodes and no Terminators, which actually didn't bother me as I'm not a huge fan of Tartarus armour to begin with).


They aren't quite finished yet, they need another layer or two of highlights and there's a few details left to pick out but over all I'm happy with where they're headed.

Perhaps not the best unit to choose to get yourself back into painting but you know, in for a penny in for a pound.

I really like the Custodes models, they're true to the artwork in Visions of Heresy without being too fiddly on detail to be able to actually paint them.  I will say that I feel that unless Forgeworld (or even GW themselves) don't put out some alternate bits for them the poses my start to feel repetitive if you have too many of the same variation, but that's a minor gripe and once I'm back full swing into building and converting I'll just start chopping and changing them to keep them fresh.

 Here's some, admittedly terrible, shots of the individuals, they'll get the full lightbox treatment once they're finished, and I'll also do some side by sides with my Custode conversions I did way back when for the Tempus Fugitives Burning of Prospero event.

 

 

 

 I also made a start on a 4 man(for now) squad of Sentinel Guards, these guys have only had the first layer of gold so are clearly nowhere near done but hey, I actually did something so here they are!

Still much work to be done.

I've got another 5 Custodes still on the sprue who will be being built as Sagittarum Guard once I get paid and order the conversion kit, I'll also be picking up a set of the Aquilon Terminators with Infernus Firepikes.  I've also got some of the bits on their way to build my Shield Captain, but he really will deserve his own post once he's done.



 My copy of the Age of Darkness rulebook also arrived this week so I'll be having a proper read through that over the weekend and seeing what has changed from the core 7th ed books, I've seen a lot of discussions/arguments about whether 30k should stay in 7th or update to 8th and I do have my opinions on the matter which I'll pen properly while I'm going over the book.

In non Warhammer news I joined a new gaming group! Headed by the good Dr Vesuvius over at The Axis of Naughtiness, who at seems is as good at updates as I am, that said we have been playing a long running Savage World campaign as well as some excellent one off games, the one I am really enjoying right now is Starfight.

Here's some examples of the print and play stuff.

It's a pretty simple pick up and play space ship combat game, and helpfully, its print and play and dirt cheap to buy, I think I picked up the basic rules and most of the expansions for about £10. 

The rules are simple, you have a set number of dice that are your ships power dice, you roll them at the start of each turn and allocate them to the shields, weapons and engines marked on your ships sheet, as you take hits you lose dice, when you have no dice left, your ship explodes, I mean, there is a little more to it but that's the rules in a nutshell.  Now, I mentioned its print and play yes? Well, if you have a hex grid gaming mat then you can make it more like this!

This was with Dr Vesuvius' mat and some old Star Trek Micro Machines (and Catan bits to represent planets) but it makes it much more visual than the print and play, which my only grip with is that if you print it on A4 its quite small.  I'll be getting my own hex mat at some point and some models to play with, perhaps I can repurpose some of the smaller Battlefleet Gothic ships to use?  We shall see.

Anyway, that's it for now, I'm hoping to get some more painting done on the Custodes tonight or tomorrow so will hopefully have them finished by weekend.

Until then!