MOAR from my mate Liam - Nurgle Heldrake / Helfly, Fly 2 and Land Raider

Liam sent me more pics of his Nurgle Heldrake - the Helfly as he's calling it. This is the first one all painted up, as seen in our little Throne of Skulls mini-tournament

A thing of unnatural beauty.

And here's the Helfly 2, 'Like father, like son'. Slightly different this one but no less worrying as it buzzes the battlefield. I'm hoping that my Dark Angels might be able to employ a Spotlight which would force it to repeatedly headbutt whatever vehicle it's mounted on until it's knocked senseless - that should be a new rules errata!

Here's the step-by-step process for those interested.

You can begin to see the components and where Liam has kitbashed bits and scratchbuilt others.

Plasticard edging and 'greystuff' sculpting for added 'chaos'.

That's a big ammo-feed belt.

Undercoats ready to be painted as it's daddy.

Side view.

Lastly here's the Nurgle Land Raider, the current kit remodeleld to look like a Proteus, I think Liam sculpted and cast his own tracks for this.

Adding Nurgelesque fleshy growth and fibres here and there to tie it in with the Obliterators.

Lets hope that Spotlight doesn't attract the Helfies, could be an interesting 'own goal' if GW were to follow up my rules errata.

And the other side.

No doubt Liam or one of my other buds will have some more of their efforts to share in the futures but any questions, comments or praise just leave them below.

To Do List 2013/14

Another year and another broken list of promises ;) I've completed/nearly completed around 8 of my 20 items from 2012/13 but I've made serious in-roads into the Bloodbowl Elves, AoBR Tactical Squad and Dreadnought and prepared the 6th Edition stuff. But amongst all of that I did this:

• Winged Hive Tyrant, built and painted
• Magnetised and in progress my original Hive Tyrant to be 2nd Flyrant or Swarmlord
• Inquisitorial Vault template started and in-progress
• Armies on Parade board
• Sculpted a second set of Tyranid Defence lines that need to be finished off
• Continued to add more gaming aids/markers
• Lord of the Rings Moria Goblins - built and painted
• Oh, and made a Tyranid Bastion...

All alongside keeping the blog going, and continuing to game one way or another. These additional 8 tasks can make up for the 'failures' and are a perfect lesson for 'going with the flow'. The 'To Do List' is a guide a focus for when the hobby deserts us, like when I was awaiting the Dark Angel Codex [so no point painting them] I cracked on with the Bloodbowl teams. I ran short of completing the Elves but they'll be waiting for next time. More importantly those achievements above were all items that I was motivated to get done and that fuels the hobby. There's no point forcing yourself to do a task if your hearts not in it, you'll just baulk at it and where's the fun in that. Of course there are times to push on through the hobby funk but not if there's an easier/alternative option.

So what have we for 2013/14. No great promises this time, just the missing elements as standby

1. Bloodbowl Elves
2. AoBR Tactical Squad
3. AoBR Dreadnought
4. Dark Angel Drop Pod
5. Ravenwing bike squad
6. STC Vent tower
7. STC Athena plateau
8. Create Epic building templates
9. 60mm Dreadnought crater
10. Complete pot pourri vegetation [and blog posts for that matter!]

 But with these new ones added/expanded

1. Dark Angel - Devastators
2. Dark Angel - Dark Vengeance Tactical Squad
3. Dark Angel - Chaplain
4. Dark Angel - Librarian
5. Dark Angel - Azrael
6. Tyranid Defence Line
7. Tyranid Capillary Towers
8. Dark Vengeance Chaos Cultists
9. STC Inquisitorial Vault
10. 'Hobby Matrix' blogpost

That should keep me busy, with the 10 new items being the priorities. I need the Dark Angels at a fighting force so I can have an alternative. The 'nids are becoming a bit repetitive in games at the moment so I need variety. Admittedly I'm spicing things up with some new lists thanks to the Tyrant, Bastion and Spore Pods but that will only go so far. That is of course until the new Codex arrives, supposedly in November, when my attitude/focus/task list could change dramatically!

Blog wise I need to update my Battle Reports page. I feel forced into doing less of them, they take a long time and stop me doing painting and modelling. I'm loathe to cut them down as I like having records, particularly when cool things happen and not that I keep score but it would be nice to know my win/loss ratio should I feel inclined to throw away my principles ;) So, the least I can do is make sure my Battle Report page is current, as I think it's predominantly 5th edition battles!

If there's anything you the faithful few would like to see more of, let me know in the comments and I'll try and accommodate that too.

Armies on Parade board - Ferron Proxima in full 3D...pt2

You can see the extra rocks/stones/gravel have been added to the 'cliff edge' I probably could have blended that in a bit better but I'm on a roll now so I may be cutting a few corners in my eagerness to get it done but once again it's the figures that's more important for me in this not the base.

Once again the colours are all over the place but I added on a black wash. A 'satin' acrylic emulsion paint was used. I've had this tub for 12+ years, since our back bedroom was my 'office' and it was painted yellow with black skirting boards. Funnily enough the tub wasn't sealed properly and it's now the consistency of tar with a tiny bit of mold growing on it. Still, two or three dips of the paint brush, some water and a blob of PVA and it made a nice wash. I probably could have done with more PVA in the mix, in both this and the original red colouring. The scatter sawdust is extremely hard and rough and a thicker coating of PVA might have made it more 'plasticy'.

As you can see I added in some pseudo cracks and shading. I'll be adding some highlights so I'll be able to paint on some more texture effects for variety. This was about another half an hour of effort.

I wanted to see what the Bastion looked like on the red as is. I really liked the colour [although I appreciate what shade it actually is hasn't been conveyed in these pictures] part of me didn't want to add any further highlights [like when you do a wash on a figure and it looks pretty good, but you know highlights would make it awesome but you still don't want to commit to it] but this test made it clear Red Planet Basing didn't match up to the current finish - it needed the highlights.

So I put some Vermillion into a tub and went at it with a big brush being very careful with the drybrush trying not to get streaks. There's quite a big blob 'error' in one spot. But I then mixed in my Pumpkin craft acrylic and accentuated some on the areas/edges/cracks etc. just to get a bit more random texture going on. And I'm pretty darn chuffed and glad I didn't stop at the black wash.

Of course it is not Ferron Proxima without the Bonewhite Wraithbone shards littering the surface. Now I wasn't about to manually pick out individual stones as I normally do so I mixed some water with the paint and flicked spots on. If I'm honest I needed more practice before committing to the final board. I think I loaded too much paint and had it too thin. There's also 'directionality' to the spatter, as CSI would say although I'm sure I can convey the same sentiment if I say there is 'a direction to the spatter'. I can rationalise that too as maybe it's come from the direction of the source of the Wraithbone!?

Ultimately I realised the size and amount of spots isn't an issue in this case as there will be a lot of figures on the board and that will cover up a significant amount of those 'shards'. If I were to do proper gaming boards I may well be more careful with my spatter.

And that as we say is that! Another hour of painting and 2.5hours total time so far and I'm pretty much finished. I may add some yellow flock in places and I'm considering a backdrop to 'frame the board' but the job's 99% complete. I did a quick test fit with the Bastion, Spore pods, some Warriors, Aegis and Genestealers and the board matches their bases beautifully. Before the Armies on Parade Day I'll spend some time considering how best to position everything and take some pics so I know how to set it up on the day and I'll share them here but right now I'm super chuffed and excited.

Armies on Parade board - The beginnings of Ferron Proxima

About half an hour in at this stage. The hill shape is nearly exactly the same as given to me by my brother, just sanded and cut square at the back. I did have a nice offcut that could have fit in the bottom rightt corner making a channel for the gaunts to run out of but it would have made the panel less versatile to do so. The foam was stuck to the MDF using 'coving adhesive'. It's specifically formulated for sticking polystyrene coving to your ceiling so thought it would be good. Instant grab and constant pressure made it work perfectly and any gaps - it works as a filler too!

Now for the painting/surfacing - PVA glue, plaster, Vermillion and Burnt Umber craft acrylic and two colourrs of scatter [aka fine sawdust]

And here it is all mixed up. Amazingly just enough to cover the full 2'x2' board. Not sure the volume used but that is a 2l lemonade bottle and you can still see the blow-molded bumps on the base so I guess you could easily run some water in the bottom of one to roughly the same depth and then measure it and multiply by 6 to cover a full 6'x4' board

And another half hour in and we have this.

A lot of detail, surprisingly, from the scatter!

I left it outside to dry, it was a warm and blowy day so thought I'd get better pics in daylight to accurately get the colour... probably not.

 

Just out of shot on the right of the hill I left it quite a vertical edge as I intended to add some stones and gravel here for a bit of variety.

An hour down so far.

Terrain is everything - Crystal 40k objective markers, or cool stuff what's on Google+

I saw these Crystal objectives on the Warhammer 40k group on Google+ the other week. They were done by Sebastian Bajer and he was more than happy to let me put them on the blog. I'm pretty sure you can all see how they were done - sprue!

But I think Sebastian has managed to elevate such a simple material with the excellent paint job and the other base materials that compliment the green crystals.

Not only that they all match his terrain, which means that although they're on 25mm slotta-bases from a distance they all blend in practically seamlessly. Such a simple idea, no doubt seen before but such an easy thing to do to add some more terrain to your boards should you feel inclined to follow Sebastian's lead.

'nids part 101 - Plasma Hatchers Mycetic Spore pt3

Striations on the Chitin plates go on, yeah it's getting old for me too now :(

Also the first Bonewhite highlight and these are done enough to go out in their first game.  

And somehow I managed to force myself to do second highlights on this. So tedious now, I'm getting so over doing Tyranids!

Really rough Bonewhite highlights to try and add more texture to the flat areas, I like it, it's rough and ready.

Top view, the red bits will all get the raw open wound treatment of Tamiya Red Clear X-27 so they will also be able to pass as a Vengeance Weapons battery either Punisher or Battle Cannon's conceivable from these orifices!

Fleshy bits and tentacles next, oh and mustn't forget the turquoise highlights on the Chitin dots.

Mycetic Spore V2.0 Plasma Hatcher | part 1. | part 2. | 

The Tyranid Rumour Mill

Unless you've been under a rock then you'll know that Tyranids are highly likely to get a new Codex in November, two months ahead of the original rumour for release. This is the first time I've properly gone through a Codex change. Admittedly I got the new Dark Angels Codex but I hadn't really played with the old one so it was no biggy.

This time though it's going to cause a whole attitude shift. I've already done that a little bit with the change from 5th to 6th Edition, you make allowances, you adapt you learn to live with your army and then you find a way to actually succeed. No doubt this new codex will bring some new and exciting rules and some of my current standbys will be nerfed, hopefully I have enough options that I can at least bring some variety into my games again. If I'm honest I was starting to feel bored with my games, still 'new cheese' and all that.

What I am finding really odd is the rumours, I love rumours, can't get enough of them. It's like methodone inbetween my main hobby fix. But as much as I'm rabid for the latest news because it's about my Codex I'm not enjoying them as much, it feels more like gossip about your friends than news about your idol. I keep looking through these 'rules rumours' and some sound interesting and others that are incomplete, without context just don't work for me. For instance there were rules regarding us getting Skyfire for Hive Guard. That sounds great, initially. You think our best gun beast finally got an option to take out Flyers, but is it Skyfire like a Flakk missile upgrade so you can choose to Skyfire or still shoot on the ground because otherwise you will have swapped a ground shooting unit for anti-air. Of course if it is an upgrade like Flakk lets hope the cost is around the same, 10pts wouldn't be too bad.

Another so called rule was that we'd get some upgrade to benefit grounding Flying Monstrous Creatures... I'm really not sure why. What FMCs are there? Flying Hive Tyrants and Daemon Princes, I don't think Heldrakes are and all the other aerial death dealers [Night Scythes, Vendettas Storm Talons/Ravens] are flyers so grounding isn't an option. Without context this makes no sense. Additionally the latest rumour that Carnifex head biomorphs will be back in the Codex. The awesome Enhanced Senses head now gives us... Night Fighting! Wow, how impressed are you? Unless the Carnifex is going to get some worthwhile long range weapon that you are going to be able to use first turn then why would you spend points to upgrade on the off-chance it's night fighting and you're actually in range. Or, perhaps your game plan is for the carnifex to be alive at turn five and that upgrade will win you the game!

These kind of rumours open up even more questions. Shadows in the Warp is a big rule for us, there's hints it may be different in the future. But conspicuous by it's absence, what of our most overlooked and Codex specific rule - Assault weapons. Currently everything we use we can move and shoot with impunity. What if we're suddenly face with a completely new set of requirements. Psychic powers - our current reason for competitiveness, seems to have less mentions of Biomancy as our own Tyranid Powers are on the cards [still some new counters to make]. It's like watching Lost, for every answer, or perceived answer there are a dozen more questions raised.

So I'm actually not enjoying this rumourfest at the moment, certainly when I'm reluctant to want to spend any more on the nids as it is. Sure a Codex will be on the cards but I'm loathe to buy anything new and it's too little, too late in my book. Mycetic Spores, I have three now and I'm not about to jump ship to a new one now, that's long sailed. I may invest in the rumoured Doom, depending on how he functions, he seems to have the same Spirit Leech so if he's still going to be ruining my opponents day he deserves to be more than just a proxy/poxy Zoanthrope. The Harpy alternative sounds interesting and the Big Bug is a big bug, which is cool but also how do you fit that into a list that already is hard to find space. That's ignoring the fact I don't want to paint another Tervigon because it's too big, what's a bigger bug going to do to my sanity? And there's a point, will Tervigons get stuffed, only a few tidbits for them about upgrading their ability to spawn Termagants with Devourers but what of their ability to be psychic, the mailed fist of my army? See what I mean? Too many questions and two months still to go...