Battle record - 40k Tyranids Vs Ork Speeed Freeeaks - 23/10/25

I've been #PlayingWarhammer with a game of Warhammer 40k!We've been playing the darn game of 40k for 3 weeks now. Probably nine hours in already and although I was reluctant to finish it off we decided to.

We thought it'd be over pretty quick as we had very little left.

And then scenes of absolute dice chaos! 🎲

Three ones.

Followed immediately by three sixes and three threes.

Box cars when I absolutely needed it.

Box cars for Liam when he said he was going to 'roll like Dave'!

So we did have a lot of laughs at these insane dice rolls.

But despite some resurgence from the bugs, Old One Eye is an absolute must take. The Orks won the day. I think we had fun, but every unit feels like an unwelcome surprise when you come to use them. Again, rules were forgotten or overlooked and when you come back to them later in the game and realise it would have had an impact earlier on it just feels like you're stupid, rather than the game being overly complex. We not play again for a while but at least we had a laugh.

Meanwhile, Liam had been really busy at work so only had time to knock up a Vampire Counts army for Warcry! He's a nutter.

With an hour left in the evening he set up with Will for a 'quick game' but Will's Chaos Knights are absolutely rock solid. I'm sure we'll all end up playing it at some point. Might give me a reason to paint my Night Haunt... But I also have the Crimson Court too which I now have an idea of how I want to paint them, in a style very different to Liam's.

Battle record - 40k Tyranids Vs Ork Speeed Freeeaks - 16/10/25

I've been #PlayingWarhammer with a game of Warhammer 40k! After last weeks 4 hour gaming session on just the first turns we were all hoping to finish our return to 40k. We had agreed that we would come into this with open minds. We want to like 40k, I am addicted to it afterall. But to paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke 'no plan survives contact with the enemy'. 

Last week the Orks hadn't been particularly effective. 

The Tyranids however were more durable, seemed to kill whatever was put in front of them and their wealth of rules seemed disproportionate to the Ork buffs. 

As Ben and Liam started turn 2 this continued. 

Liam was lucky with his amount of shots, then many hits, but he couldn't seem to translate that into wounds. 

Even when they did, our high saves, or invulnerable saves left most of the bugs undamaged.

 As our turn started Ben and Liam had almost called it quits. Shadows in the Warp left most of the Orks battle shocked, adding to their woes.

But, when it came to our shooting and combat the dice failed us and we couldn't seem to thin the Ork Horde. The Norn Emissary, who was nigh unkillable failed to remove any of those that had surrounded him.

And with their ability to fall back, shoot and assault he was riddled with the weight of dakka.

Suddenly the game swung the other way but the damage had been done.

The game is depressing. Every unit came as a surprise and the wealth of buffs proved too much to ignore and just play the game. I couldn't enjoy our initial success while Ben and Liam felt overwhelmed. Then when the fates reversed I felt annoyed we'd gone through that complaining because all it took was some bad dice to put them in the lead. Ben admitted he too then felt bad because it was all going their way. Maybe with more games, familiarity with both the ruleset and the units may prevent the unpleasant revelations of "it does what?!" Put it this way, we only got to the bottom of turn 3 in another 4.5-5 hours. I wasn't interested in the scores but Liam checked and we were losing [just] 26 to 25. It was mentioned finishing it off next week but I have no desire because it wasn't a fun experience. 

In fairness I felt despite all the buffs there must be balance in the game for us to have been so close. We both had shocking runs of dice rolling that did very little and allowed the other players to come back into the game. So really it isn't that bad. It just brings out the worst in us, because the depth of rules and interactions gives the impression it's unbalanced. I don't want to go through a debate every time about a unit's rules and if it's OP every time we play. I didn't write its rules. As we have plenty of other game options that don't feel so overwhelming, and are more fun, so why play one that does? We may try it again sometime. It's just a shame we couldn't make it work for us.

Battle record - 40k Tyranids Vs Ork Speeed Freeeaks - 09/10/25

I've been #PlayingWarhammer with a game of Warhammer 40k! You read that right, actual 40k that I am supposedly an addict for. We had a full shed of Otty, Ben and Liam. Ben brought his Speeed Freeeaks, which was supposed to be 2,000 points, but due to balance updates was now around 1,780. I managed to combine Otty and my own Tyranids and bring it down to 1,735 [the 2,000 point list looked awesome]. Even so when Liam and Ben set up the plethora of vehicles with so many still in reserve it felt like we were severely outgunned. Anyway, we lost first turn and managed to weather the barrage of fire, mistakes were made and progress was painfully slow. I think we just managed one turn each! Our counter-attack was much more effective and quite a few vehicles were trashed. But aside from the mistakes and bad luck I actually think when we finish it off it will be close and challenging for both sides. We have the advantage but if the game turns then it could prove interesting for us all, which is the most important thing. We want to like the game but if it's no fun then what's the point when we have more pleasant game to play instead?

Imperial Knights - Cerastus Twins in manufactorum pt3. - Base - TO DONE!

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been #PaintingWarhammer on my Imperial Knight Cerastus Castigator and Acheron. Having done the Red Planet BASE! 🔴 on the Adeptus Titanicus models it made sense to do my Cerastus twins.

They're far from being high on my TO DO LIST. I expect to be working on them some time in November or December. But the bases and legs have been primed for a while now.

Seeing them unpainted was a constant annoyance. Not least because the last update on the Cerastus Knights was exactly a year ago! I considered getting extra hobby points for projects long on the hobby table finally getting finished. But I had no idea this had slipped so far down my list that it's over a year old. If it's that easy to be delayed then I shouldn't get extra credit for it.

Goodness help me when I finally get back to my Sammael conversion!

Obviously there are still some additional bits to pick out on both these bases - skulls, pipes, debris and other details but they're mostly TO DONE!

The Castigator also has had its torso 'lock and key' attachment done. It's snapped off already so I'm not sure about if I need to pin it for reinforcement. Certain other elements need doing too, not to mention priming both torsos, carapaces and armour panels.

 

Interesting height differences compared to my Lancer.

And two Great Big Chrome 'BASE' Stamps of Approval.

Imperial Knights - Cerastus Twins in manufactorum pt2.

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been #BuildingWarhammer on my Imperial Knight Cerastus Castigator and Acheron. You will recall I just had a pile of bits but I have since managed to construct one pair of legs [ignore the Horus shin pads, I'm not turning traitor, they're just dry fit in place of the plain ones, that will be primed on the sprue].

Lets have a little flashback. First of all I decided to offset the hip joints. Instead of them both pointing down I cut them off and rotated them so they were asymmetrically angled. I'm not sure if this made any difference, or if I chose the correct angle for the pose but I felt better for attempting it. 

The base itself had a sheet of pink insulation foam for the 'step'. I printed out some reinforcement detail, stuck to cereal bock card and glued to the facing. Coffee stirrer for the top and 1mm gem beads for rivets. The toes had screws superglue/bicarb to add fixed mounting points to the base.

My attempt is to recreate a mirror version of this Reaver pose - stepping down, rather than stepping on a 'tactical rock'.

I haven't quite got the legs perpendicular to each other and it's not quite stepping down, but it's not stepping up either. I'm actually quite happy with it. The thing is there's a lot of thought going in to achieving these poses, so much so that eventually you have to just commit.

It's something of a leap of faith. The alternative is to constantly have the process swimming around in your head on how you will execute it but just gluing the feet in place can settle on the next bit and then the next. Hot glue was used for the toe screws [to fill in the thread] and then superglue in places. I also ran glue into the knee joints to lock the pose in place.

I added some red crackle paint around the foot - to look like it had shattered the surface. Then added sand and gravel to help blend the base a bit. The weapon feed is fantastically engineered. I've even magnetised it so they can be swapped around.

OK, so the Castigator has also progressed. I actually ended up with 3 Paint |Your Own Venoms and this one - started with my Dremel, but the cutting disc wasn't wide enough to cut through his feet without catching the base. In the end I just used a junior hacksaw. I then glued on some slate, to cover the holes where its feet were and then used tile grout to blend it together. Legs glued in place, using Milliput to blend around the toes.

Added some sand, gravel, texture and crackle paint then I started to think about more decorative elements. I have a lot of Genestealers and I considered adding some. However the 3 'running away' didn't seem to make sense, despite them looking much cooler than the three running toward the knight.

I've now considered 2 on the left and 1 on the right, which gives the knight a little more space around its feet. Obviously I'll be removing their bases but I think I will pin them and add them down the line, that way I can leave the base as it is for now.

There's still a fair bit left to do on both of these:

• Decide on how the legs and torso will be connected
• Make the pilot access hatch openable
• Finish weapon magnetising

OK, that's just three things, but they're quite complicated problems to solve - the Acheron Chainfist has some pistons on it that I need to magnetise or pin so they still function and there are no guides online to make the hatch moveable.

This has been quite a long-winded build. I started on the 17th August and it's still not complete. It's occupied a lot of my hobby thought processes but luckily my urge to paint is non-existent. I'm hoping DreadTober will go someway to getting my painting mojo back, but I want these ready to go or at least prime, before the weather properly turns and priming becomes problematic.