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!  



I'm still here!

Sorry for the lack of updates,  its been a bit of a busy time,

Anyway,  I have some bits and bobs of updates, firstly I have my Wave 2 from the Super Dungeon Explore Forgotten King kickstarter.  Why no Wave 1?  Because they messed up and haven't sent it yet,  I was going to wait until that arrived and do the whole lot in one go but thinking about it it may be better done in smaller sections.

Here's what I got in my box of wonder!  I couldn't afford to get everything from the KS so had to pick strategically,  I dropped things like the Deeproot Wolf Rider, Goro or the Stilt Town Zombies Warband, as they were the ones that (aesthetically) appealed to me the least.  I will get them in the end as I'm a bit of a completionist nutcase but I'll wait for them to hit retail first.

Emerald Valley Warband

I love the sculpts for Glimmerwing and the Silver Chevalier!  Plus the Chevalier fits my play style perfectly,  she's a wonderful little tank for defensive play.  I'm not a very aggressive player so being able to play defensively (something which hasn't really been an option in SDE until now) is nice.

The monster models are nice,  I think I like the boars more than the 'shrooms but at least they should be quick to paint!

Claws of the Wyrm Warband

Can I say straight off the bat, the Dragonblade  looks epic!  I think its the cape, but either way he's bar far one of my favourite sculpts in SDE to date.  The Kobolds are all decent sculpts, nothing amazing but a mounted enemy is a nice change of pace.

It will be nice to throw these in with the Base Set Kobolds to give them a bit of variety.  I think my group have gotten bored of fighting the basic guys.

Wym Claw Templar aka Ser Snapjaw

He's a brute of a model,  quite a bit chunkier than the armoured humans, even more so than the base sets Ironscales which had a nice presence to them.  The option to use him as either a hero or a Miniboss is nice, I like the idea of the Dark Heroes but it does now mean I'll need to get 2 copies of each as their colourings are slightly different so I will have to paint one in each colour.  Damn my OCD!

Kingdom Death's Twilight Night

Camera decided to focus on the box instead of the model...  Oh well.  As you can see I've started to paint this one, when a Survivor Candy & Cola appeared in the Kingom Death: Monster Kickstarter back in June 2013 it was almost inevitable that one of the Kingdom Death Models would make the leap to one of the Soda Pop lines and really it was never going to be any other than Alison, the Twilight Knight.  I'm glad she made the jump to SDE as opposed to Relic Knights though as I feel an RK version would have been too similar to the hard plastic version available through the KD:M Kickstarter.

Anyway, sorry, rambling a bit there.  The model is really good,  the pose works really well and conveys a sense of movement that can sometimes be lacking in the SDE stuff.  She'll get a full show once I've finished painting her, which should be soon.

Tabbybrook Mage

She's adorable!  Its a really cute sculpt and matches the artwork really well.  On the table she's a bit of a mixed bag from what I can tell off her card. She's got some good ranged magic abilities but you'll want to get defensive gear on her ASAP or she'll go down far too easily.

I suspect she was designed to give a second Ember Mage to a group that really wanted to focus on ranged damage, and she sortof works but lacks the Ember Mage's devastating AOE attacks. But she's a cutie so we can give her a bit of leeway! 

Von Drakk Manor/Ghosthouse Tiles

More variety in tiles is always good, and its been something we've been asking for since the Caverns of Roxxor expansion.  I like the redesign of the tiles, areas of difficult terrain now have little symbols to make them easier to spot and other tile effects similarly have a small icon in the corner of the square they effect.  I'll be glad when I have the standard Forgotten King tiles too as it will give my group some nice variety of dungeons to raid.

It also comes with a batch of Rattlebones, which is cool. Can never have too many mindless undead minions.

Overall I'm happy with what I've got.  There's a few bent swords/spears but its nothing a hairdryer and some ice water wont fix.  The sculpts are clean, mould lines are minimal, and they've been put together pretty well (unlike the Cavern of Roxxor which I had to prise apart and put back together).  All in all if your into SDE and missed the Kickstarter, I'd say these are worth getting.  I'll save a review of the new rules for new players until I actually have them in hand.

Kingom Death: Pinups of Death Box

I've always liked the Kingdom Death stuff (well, apart from the Wetnurse, that shit gives me nightmares), but I always seem to miss the limited runs of resin models they do.  Which is a shame because then they end up going for silly money on Ebay.  So as I mentioned above I got in on the Kickstarter (for far more than I could really justify too) and as we're still waiting for the rewards to ship I figured that I would pick up the Pinups of Death box.

The Pinups, for those of you that don't know are some of Kingdom Deaths more iconic (and less wierd) models.  There was a massive hoohaa at the time of the KS as to weather the designs are sexist and objectifying, and I'm not going to bring that here, I personally don't have a problem with them and thats that.

The Pinups box is a collectors set of hard plastic versions of the previously released resin pinups.  I was a little worried (having seen how the Relic Knights hard plastic went) that alot of the soft details would be lost, especially as they are not big models.

The set comes in a nice little presentation box, I'm honestly not sure what use this will be once the models are built but I'm somewhat loathe to throw it  away.

Everything neatly packed.  Envelope looks ominous...

The envelope contains some small art cards, a thank you card from Adam, the creator of Kingdom Death,  And a special Item and Scenario for the upcoming KD:M which effectively swaps your characters gender... interesting, sorta.

Here's a few random sprue shots to give you an idea of the detail.  Its all really crisp and ever the fine details have transferred well over to plastic.  I'll give each of the models a full review as I build them but they all look really good and should be a pleasure to build.

Squats

I haven't forgotten my other pet projects.  After much deliberation on just what I was going to do about equipment for the little guys my command squad is nearing completion.  The Lascarbine ones need new hands greenstuffing and some bits of extra equipment but I'm happy with where they are.

There's only the Vox Operator with the hammer who I've still got some reservations about, and if I'm honest I'm not entirely sure what it is about the model that isn't sitting right.  Any suggestions?

Thats all for today.  Until next time!

The Battle for the Emperor's Soul!

Real life sucks.  Let me get that out there.  It really, really sucks.  It has been interfering with my hobby time so much recently it’s just not funny anymore.  There’s a Cards Against Humanity card that sums it up perfectly but I didn’t have the time to search through the base set and five expansions worth of cards to find it so you’ll just have to trust me…

Haha, yeah, sure I do...

 

Another thing you should know is that I grasshop, between projects, conversations, anything really where I can have multiple chains of thought going on at the same time.  I’ve heard it called Project ADHD too but I prefer Grasshopping.  So, real life got in the way and subsequently I failed to meet the deadline for the ETL,  which is a shame, but ultimately was unavoidable.  My Mechanicum will be finished soon but I’ve decided to have a short break from 30k to finish up a project I started a long time ago…

I always like the idea of Inquisitor as a game, but at the time it was being released, 2000? 2001? Ish, I wasn’t really in a position to get into it being about 13/14 at the time. And then it died.  And that was kinda that for a while, it stopped getting any official support and I’ll be honest I somewhat forgot about it.  It wasn’t until a few years ago when a friend was talking about new games to play and we talked about Mordhiem and Necromunda but as a Codex: Daemonhunters (gives an idea how long ago it was) player he wanted to run his Inquisitor in a Necromunda setting, and something went *ping* in the back of my head.

We never did get round to playing…

But, I did start working on models for it.  Which then led on to working on models I had no intention of using but wanted to do just for giggles, and to fill out backstories, maybe use as NPC, whatever,  I’d started to see a few Inq28 threads show up on forums and a lot of the conversions were insane.  I mean, I like converting but I know I’m nowhere near as good as some of the guys doing Inq28 over at Ammo Bunker.

 

I'm still undecided whether to run and Inq28 campaign or a big Inquisimunda one. 

So, enough rambling, here are my first forays into Inq28,  the first group is the start of the warband I intended to use.

 

First up, Lady Inquisitrix Miriya Auris, still PIP but so very nearly finished:

 

A fairly young Inquisitrix only some 30 years into her position but has already made an name for herself amongst her peers.  She is seen as rash and impulsive which many attribute to her, relative, youth but broadly speaking her results have been satifactory enough to justify her means.

 

 

 

The rest of her current warband don't have names yet, but I'll be coming up with them as I work on them so will post it when they're done. Their all variously WIP/PIP

 

Enforcer & Mastiff

Cullexus Assasin

Soldier

Chrono Gladiator

Sister Repentia

Techpriest



 

The second warband I wanted to was a Radical inquisitor,  his backgrounds not fleshed out yet but he is to be Miriya's master, or was at least, and she has a bit of a personal crusade going to hunt him down.

 

Inquisitor

Mutie Soldier

Daemonhost

Deathcult assasin.  Not terribly happy with the swords so might swap for something a little more elegant.

 

 

And finally, there will be a Deathwatch Kill Team knocking about, jsut to put the frightners on the any players who come up against them,  the first member will be...

 

 

Brother blurryioso of the Craptography Chapter...

 

My camera somewhat failed me on him.  He will be a Fleshtearers Apothecary,  still a fair bit of GSing to do but I'm liking him so far,  he came out just as imposing as I wanted him to!



 

 

 I've got a ton of bits and ideas so both warbands will be expanding (hopefully) rapidly over the next month or two before I go back in time to the world of 30k.

 

Speaking of which I finished my first Squat to see how I liked the paintscheme,  and here he is:

 

 

 

First of 3 in a Medicae detachment :)

 

 

Until next time