'nids part 372 - #DreadTober Norn Emissary TO DONE!

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PaintingWarhammer for DreadTober, failed to meet the deadline so rolled it over into #NidVember, blew that too so now it's some December pun that I'm not smart enough to create.

But the Norn Emissary is TO DONE!

I am very happy with the final result. Considering how down I was on my abilities way back when I started it the finished article looks as good as anything I've done. I may never trouble a Golden Demon but my tabletop standard has presence.

The model is pretty cool too. I took it to show the guys and as we've finally got round to playing Adeptus Titanicus I was struck how this is roughly the same height as a Warlord Titan.

With the correct bases I think there are a lot of figures you could proxy into Titanicus as Tyranid Titan constructs. The Neuro Tyrant wouldn't look out of scale either I think. You could probably find something the Neurolids could be too. 

I didn't take any red pics with the Norn Assimilator harpoon claws, but the white background pics have some below.

The question is, will I ever use him in a game of 40k? My plan is to get the Tyranid combat patrol painted, as their rules are free. I'm not sure if we'll get to a point where we add extra units as some of the games have felt one-sided and I can't imagine this guy is anything but over-powered. Still it would be nice. Regardless he will fit in next year's Armies On Parade, with the rest of the Combat Patrol.

Did you know that this is the first Great Big Wooden Stamps of Approval of the season?! Now you do.

And here we have the white background pics.

And the first of the Norn Assimilator images.

Obviously I didn't include the carapace extension. It's probably not that hard magnetise but I hadn't originally planned on making it swappable so this is the compromise.

I think I could probably use those harpoon claws on the Emissary anyway, they do look cool.

And it's somewhat like the Trygon/Mawloc - nobody really cares about the specifics. You just state the unit type and the nids get away with a lot.

And here's the DreadTober participation badge, that I now feel is earned. Although the two Genestealer Cult Sentinels still need finishing off. There so very nearly done, I just need a final push.

But actually I was doing something else too.

I had this little special project painting a Genestealer for a friend.

The Norn Emissary gave me plenty of opportunity to add paint, not only to this, bt some of the combat Patrol models as I've shared.

It helped break up the enormity of the Norn project.

I had the spare resin base to make it something of a mini diorama.

I just thought it would be cool for them to have one of my Tyranids for their own collection.

Hopefully they like it, maybe we'll find out soon.

So 2 things completed for the Season of Wood.

And a Great Big Wooden MINOR GOAL Stamp of Approval.

Well Officer, I couldn't possibly recall how I ended up with all this.

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been a naughty boy. I've been on a bit of a retail therapy kick. I'd seen the Mechanicum Battle Group begin to disappear from 3rd party sellers and I thought now might be my last best chance of securing it at discounted prices.

I've always wanted the Triaros Conveyor, it's crazy to look but when it was resin that was never going to happen,

Now it's plastic and there was all sorts in the box too.

I quite like the robots, but I'm less enamoured by the Tech-thralls. Their ungainly zombie-like pose doesn't inspire the techno-confidence the Ad-Mech usually conveys.

That said I'm sure they'll look cool when they're painted, as will their sweet, sweet, ride.

Can't wait to get round to doing this project, but I'm not touching it until some others are done.

The decal sheets are pretty cool too, maybe some that I can use on my Cerastus Knights too?

And this is the other cause of this unnecessary purchase. Yes I got the 30k rules for the princely sum of £5 [plus £4.99 postage]. I mean the book is massive and thoroughly gorgeous throughout. It may say Warhammer but we know a Forgeworld product when we see one. Of course that also means that deciphering the rules in such a might tome is inversely proportional to how good the rest of the book is. The plan was to use my Dark Angels as a 30k army. With what appears to be a more stable rule system, one we're more familiar with from our halcyon tournament days and more balanced units we may like 30k more than 10th Edition 40k! Of course that does not explain why I then bought an AdMech Battle Group if I was going to try my First Legion in the game...

And alongside all this 30k shenanigans I actually decided to get some Guardian of the Covenant and heraldry decals from The Mighty Brush. The crossed swords will go on my Primaris army, should I ever get round to them and the mixed black and white heraldry scripts just look awesome.

Let's just say my hobby spends this year have gone out the window. But as recent events have reminded me you can't take it with you. So I'm treating myself while I can. Maybe next year I can be more frugal...

Shed 2.0 (part 3)

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's been a while since I mentioned Otty's shed and shared updates. We [mainly Otty] worked really hard to get everything finished and this was pretty much the last push - moving all the figures, terrain and games from Shed 1.0 to 2.0. 

There was a lot of decision making going on about how to use all this space so it did not feel quiet as productive as we'd hoped.

But by the end of the evening we had put most of the terrain away in the cupboards and found sensible reasons for why they were where they were.

Most of the MESBG warbands got their own shelves, that's my Moria warband in the top left [with a couple of Liam's Cave Trolls].

More of his figures, plus the Tyranid army having its own display cabinet. 

And Shed 1.0, still with stuff to move but only finished models will make it into the new shed. Ultimately Otty will have this as his workshop and I have suggested we spend some time in the future doing hobby projects in here together.

Rather than just expect Otty to keep all the terrain maintained we should all muck in and help out. It could be fun. Afterall, we only really play games as an excuse to hang out, and what difference does it make if we're playing games or building terrain?

Battle Report - Ents Vs Bolg and Wargs

Afternoon #WarhammerCommunity I was playing MESBG a while ago. We had a run of playing Star Wars Legion, I mean I've rolled some dice and had a lot of fun but it's mostly everyone else who're playing for real. So it was suggested we nip back to Middle Earth. After a lot of debate about who was playing whom Ben and Otty set up using their warbands for their next Warhammer World tournament and I faced Liam in what may well have been our last game in Shed 1.0. Both his armies, I managed to grab his Ents for simplicity - just 3 of them with Pippin and Merry and he went with Bolg, a lot of Warg riders with Morgul arrows, which apparently Liam claimed were the perfect 'Ent killers'. The mission was to have more models than your opponent in each table quarter - scoring points for each you controlled. I was already stuffed on this one. Maelstrom deployment meant on a low dice roll your opponent chose which board edge you came in on so Liam put two of my Ents on the left hand side so I put Treebeard with Quickbeam and Beechbone. I won priority with Quickbeam making full use of his 8" move to the other Ent's 6". No chance of a first turn charge but I was in the right direction. I was also very lucky as all the Morgul Arrows fell short, failing to wound any of my trees.

A good thing about MESBG is anything under half your model's height is not even difficult terrain. So, those cliff edges were just a step down for my Ents and Quickbeam was able to reach Bolg, who's minions surrounded the treeman. He was trapped, so this was likely to end poorly. Except Liam asked Scott to roll his dice for the duel and couldn't beat my score on around 10 dice! So Quickbeam picked Bolg off his Warg and preceded to use him as a cudgel to bludgeon his mount, and the remaining Orcs and their Wargs. Each kill allowing me to attack again and causing Bolg to suffer another strength 8 wound. As the dust settled everyone was smooshed with Bolg left prone on his final wound - brutal.

I'll be honest now, this game was from 12th September. I started writing the battle report shortly after, hence the detail above but did not finish. So now I'm not sure what happened in the subsequent pictures. I think Liam positioned the Wargs to make it difficult for the the Ents on the hill to join up with Quickbeam. Two Warg riders kept out of charge range and failed to damage with their Morgul arrows/

The Ents continued to club anything they could lay their branches on with Liam's advance force almost decimated.

Meanwhile there was a lot of discussion in the other game as Otty and Ben got to grips with their warbands. 

It would transpire that Otty would go on to win the MESBG tournament at Warhammer World and they came 1st and 2nd in the painting competition. 

As amazing news as that was within a week or so of winning the new MESBG rules would reveal that most of this army would in fact be moving to Legends!

Although this looks like Moria Goblins, they were in fact Khand.

So some of the models will still be valid, as Moria Goblins, but the Great Beast and chariots will saadly have no place in tournament play. And lets not forget that Warg Marauders are also Legends and Otty has 9 of them, including their dismounted figures too! 😩 

This may well have been our last game with Scott. I seem to recall he rolled shockingly bad that night and we had plenty of banter and laughs for just how bad it was.

The Ents moved to get to grips with the remaining Wargs, I think the Hobbits managed to wing one of the riders. Needing successive 5s and 6's their little stones managed to take one out and the Warg ran away.

Which left Liam to scatter his forces out of reach.

With time running out Liam managed to get his Wargs into multiple quarters.

I'm not sure if he snatched the win or we called it a draw. With plenty of time I could have tried to corner the Wargs but with not enough Ents to dominate the quarters it would be far too easy for Liam to outmanoeuvre my slow-moving trees and remain with more in each quarter than I could possibly commit. 

It was a lot of fun and even if I didn't technically win there was a huge sense of satisfaction from clubbing so many Orcs and their Wargs with their leader!

'nids part 371 - #DreadTober Norn Emissary toxic/plasma glow

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PaintingWarhammerit's with #DreadTober2024 behind us #Nidvember passing without hardly a blog post I thought I'd just give an update on my 'pledge'. Actually it's almost done!

All the green glow effects for bio-plasma and toxic bits have been finished.

I've cleaned up its tentacles and you can also see the Norn Assimilator claws have been painted too. The Assimilator head is also done but I'm only sharing the claws because they had the green bits on too. 

You might be able to make out the subtle shading on the underside of the arms and in some of the shaded areas. This adds a little bit more volume that my usual OTT highlights strips out. 

There are just tweaks to the base and I can start the varnishing, if I can bring myself to complete these last few tasks. I've also progressed the GSC Sentinels and a couple of other things which I'll hopefully get round to sharing when I have the time.