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.

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan - TO DONE! 🔴

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the eighth of #DreadTober2025 and when last we met the crisis over my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan pledge had been averted. All it took was a slight detour to my potential stretch goal of a second Warlord Titan and I was able to come back refreshed.

There wasn't a huge amount to do after the last post.

Just a few of the FX elements, like lenses and glows.

These things I considered the most interesting things to do as they often add so much to the finished model.

However, despite my experience and tolerance of what is acceptable I still worry that the effect won't work.

And yet I've done green glows, red glass and lenses, blue void shield glows and some orange lenses.

That's 4 different colours, some with overlapping techniques and they all seemed to have worked out as expected. Nothing looks odd or out of place.

I had 2 of my Reavers for comparison and again, nothing out of place.  

Despite the 15 month gap and the 'speed run' progress on the Warlord the consistency is right up there.  

Of course you can always argue different Forgeworlds can justify subtle differences. But I don't think I need to do that at all. I think the only variety comes from the heraldry and pattern choices. 

Although the yellow, grey and blue are consistent it's how they are distributed on the models that makes them more eclectic than I may have originally imagined.

Throw in my potential stretch goal and things can be consistent but also very different. But I never imagined I would be getting this Warlord TO DONE so quickly.

I doubted I'd get it done in DreadTober at all. But to have it done and starting the next is amazing and it's only down to this community event that gave me the motivation to get it on the painting table and out the door so soon!

And my Great Big Chrome Stamp of Approval. This is another 10 hobby points for the season. 

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan - Battle damage

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the seventh of #DreadTober2025 and when last we met my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan pledge was in crisis. But I should have trusted the process. The only reason the decals looked garish and clean was because I hadn't done any battle damage or weathering.

Unsurprisingly this went some way to breaking up the decals, to such an extent they barely register in some places. It's only when you look closer that you see what they're meant to be.

As per usual this was a mix of sponging and freehanding the scratches. The sponging creates the random damage, with the freehand joining some together for greater damage and interest.

Throw in multiple scratches and gouges and we get quite the beaten G.O.D. engine.

Add some sepia washes for additional rust streak to embed the damage. I also freehanded some text next to the blue Knight badge. Helping to make it consistent with the other quarters.

Damage on the thigh plates helped to draw them into the background a bit. Some thinned Basilicanum Grey helped tone down the white too. Damage on the white chevrons create a diffusion pattern so it's much harder to notice the inconsistencies in their size and distribution.

I still think a black cog would have been better but this is far less imposing. I also think the blue cog was unnecessary. It really needs a small red badge in the front half of the armour panel to balance it, but I can't bring myself to do it now.

So, Blessed Verdigris 🗽next, some more lense details, glow FX on the void shields, eyes, sort the base and varnish and then it's done! 🥳

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.

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan 2 - Switch target!

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the sixth of #DreadTober2025 and last we met my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan was in crisis. Progress has been good but I was doubting my decisions over just how many decals I had applied. So, rather than face the problem I switched targets. The second Warlord was never really in scope for DreadTober but given the progress so far on the first and desire to avoid it why not get it built at least. I'd smashed it apart and rebuilt most of it, I just wanted a more dynamic pose, but did I do it leg further back.

leg coming forward [almost imperceptible I know...]

Or leg in the air, cool but unstable. I'd looked at tilting the body forward more as well. But it made all the guns point at the ground. Furthermore, the resin base adds about 8mm in height, plus the straighter legs means the extra height this model could achieve would be sacrificed for a dynamic unstable pose.

So I chose option two.

As you can see a lot of work has been done on this Warlord, but not by me. It came with painted weapons. I'm actually going to keep the heat bloom on the Gatling Blaster and blue plasma glow. I may favour orange, but the airbrush effect is much better than my own glow effect, although I may add some additional highlights and tweaks.

The head is the only thing I've applied paint to so far - adding the yellow contrast paint to start bringing it into the Legio Gryphonicus. The gun casings will be a mix of blue and grey, it cam with most of the other weapon options too!

It's right leg has been pinned at the toe. I drilled into it and inserted a paper clip. I'm not gluing it until I've painted the base separately. All the trim will be redone as well. I'm going to go gold, as Retributor Armour has such good coverage I think it will look really good. Just keep it simple and use the Leadbelcher undercoat with a shade and highlights.

Whereas Iron Regent has a yellow carapace front and back, with grey in the middle this will be grey front and back with yellow in the middle. As the middle panel does not have the cog symbol there is plenty of space for the largest and most ornate House Coldshroud decals, which will stand out on the yellow background. I'll do the arm plate on the gun yellow too. To have that line of colour running down.

And I'm going to try yellow shins again. It worked on the Reaver, so I hope it works here too. Despite the fact this is so very far from a 'blank page', my clear plan and the surprising progress on Iron Regent I'm already sabotaging my vision of progress on this one. Maybe when the first one is done I can be more confident but right now, as pleased as I am to have this ready to paint, it feels just a little bit overwhelming. I've gone from having it in the bag to doubling my workload, which has switched off the serotonin somewhat. Maybe I just needed to bask in the glow of achievement before starting something else, or is hobby momentum more important...?