Tuesday 9 November 2010

Falling off the wagon part 1. Blood Bowl

I officially fell off the wagon in December 2009. Although I had been dabbling 'recreationally' for part of that year. My wife had always pushed me into GW's ever since my son had started to show interest in the figures as they spun round. I REALLY did not want to get back into gaming. I knew how much of a money pit it could be and a total time thief what with painting, modelling and gaming. The last thing I needed was another distraction. I also knew this could be a fad with my son so I thought if there's anything I could do it would be Blood Bowl. All I need to do is paint 32 men, the board is self contained and the games cana be over quite quick.

There was a catch though, I had to have the 2nd edition Astrogranite™ pitch. I had two thirds of my pitch knocking around, both Star Players and the Companion books and plenty of figures, enough for about 4 teams actually. But I needed a complete pitch. In the end I got one and although I'd planned to cover it in sand I thought it'd eventually scratch the figures, and I'd never liked flocking. So I used normal household tester paint pots and ended up with this...

 


In the end I think we've only ever had two games, once the 40k is 'out of the way I'll start back on the figures. BTW the two custom endzones are for the Mongrel Horde and my 'Good' equivalent featuring Elves Dwarves, Treeman and a Halfling the reformed Haffenheim Hornets [back when you could have mixed race teams that is!]

Monday 8 November 2010

Dark Angels genesis vol 2.

Although I liked the darkness of my original attempt at Dark Angel power armour I was never fully happy with the quality and it felt like I was cheating. Essentially the paint was only applied at the edges, something most paint guides advocate now but back then it was shadows, midtone highlight [work your way up].

My mate James's Ultramarines were a 'duck egg blue'. They looked cool so I thought the same principle would work on DA's green. They've ended up far too pale but I still like them in a way and can't bring myself to strip them, not yet anyway.

Old school Space Marine devastator squad! Like I say not recognisable as true Dark Angels. Wow, folks that's a Conversion Beamer, when you didn't have to be a forge master to get one and they converted mass to energy, the bigger you are the bigger the bang! NOT the further away you are the bigger the bang, that makes no sense?! Spot the Advanced Space Crusade scout heavy bolter, I have the lead standard ones, I just wanted the massive ugly plastic one instead.

Circa 1992.




Old school Space Marine Chaplain, on a bike! Brother Infernus to the rescue. This was before the 'Ravenwing is all black' info came out, hence the green bike. This guy was supposed to zoom around the battle field dropping Vortex grenades like the easter bunny.



Old school Dark Angel mole mortar! Now no longer available to Space Marines [just Death Korps of Krieg] although the Thunderfire cannon has similar rules to those of the Rogue Trader days [although they're not in the DA codex!]


Old School Tarantula sentry gun from Advance Space Crusade. I've 3 of these babies and was gutted there was no rules for them until I saw Imperial Armour 2. 15pts each for twin linked heavy bolter. BS2, but 3 of them stacked together, you can do some damage on a gaunt swarm!

 




Saturday 6 November 2010

Adeptus Titanicus

Although Blood Bowl was my first foray into Games Workshop's games and Rogue Trader appeared somewhere along the line it was Adeptus Titanicus that was my first choice of game I wanted to persue. My friend had shown me Blood Bowl and RT but when Adeptus Titanicus came out I was the only one to get it and although we went on to play Epic and Space Marine extensively no one ever got Adeptus Titanicus except me.

So I have quite a large Titan force. I also got hold of the Titan expansion box, a further 6 warlords not to mention my Reavers and Warhounds. Hopefully I'll get to showcase my entire Howling Griffons, Ultramarine, Dark Angel Epic battleforce. Meanwhile here's the White Dwarf teaser advert...

Thursday 4 November 2010

Dark Angels genesis vol 1.

For some reason I've chosen Dark Angels as my Space Marine chapter. I think it goes back to that first Epic boxed game - 'Space Marine' they were on the front of the box all dark and moody. Funnily enough I did most of my epic figures as Ultramarines but with a contingent of Dark Angels as allies.

Anyway I started these guys around 1990/91. I may even have been using enamel paints in some parts. I was never 100% happy with the finish, I mean the colour is awesome but the quality just isn't there. If I could get such a deep green/black finish now I'd be happy but at the time I wasn't which is why there is another volume to this saga...



Milliput bases, what was I thinking?

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Cheap terrain materials

Cheap alternatives to some of your usual terrain building materials are available at your local hardware store – B&Q, Homebase, Focus etc.

For instance sand you could purchase GW’s own basing sand £5 for 100g or you could get one of the many sacks of sand from B&Q for £2 odd. The difference being GW’s is probably graded  and cleaned, the sharp sand is probably damp contains many grades, which can be frustrating but I used a selection of sieves to get exactly the grade I wanted and left it outside in the sun to dry. I managed to grade some very fine sand, some medium grade, some chunky granular sand and even some pebbles for rough terrain – particularly useful when basing Hormagaunts. They mostly advance through cover/difficult terrain anyway, why not base them with a lot of gravel to offset that annoying tendency to fall flat on their gnashing teeth!

Here's an example of how the sand is graded. Clearly the basing helps pick out the variety but it's there in spades!



You can build plenty of hills with this sort of polystyrene for only £2! Not quite as good as the denser pink, peach or blue insulation foam but it'll do in a pinch. I got some peach foam from B&Q [honestly I don't get commission]. It's not on their website but it is available from the larger 'trade centres'.

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Space Hulk freebie


Rooting around in one of my many treasure troves of 40k stuff I found White Dwarf issue 120 December 1989. Aside from the fact this magazine is 21 years old there was a complete article on rules for using Space Marines in Space Hulk. Complete with mission, extra board pieces and army lists.


As far as I'm aware the recent reissue of Space Hulk was exactly the same and included the Deathwing supplements [if I'm wrong let me know and I'll see what I can do about that]. So I've scanned the rules so anyone wishing to try out their favourite marines against genestealers give it a shot and let me know what you think. 



Monday 1 November 2010

Terrain is everything - modular hill overview part 2.

In much the same way that GW’s battle terrain can split and rotate I wanted a hill that did the same. A hill big enough to support my largest building but offer a split so it can be positioned as corner pieces or board side ridges.

I sourced some pink insulation foam from B&Q. It was about £7 and 50mm thick, twice what I wanted but the 25mm foam was out of stock. I think the sheet was about 5’ long and possibly 3’ wide, big enough for a table on it’s own and after producing all my hills I have half of it left.

Firstly I had to split the foam in two to get it down to 25mm. I used a normal wood saw to do this. It made a really rough surface but I figured that would be the base so wouldn’t matter. One down side to this is that the foam did start to warp a little so if you can get 25mm thick foam, get it! I then traced my hill, with split and a number of other hills, a roughly circular hill, oval and a long ridge. I think all of them can fit on the modular hill in some way to get that double height cover.

The hills were all cut out at an angle. I used a thin bread knife for this as the serrated edges were finer leaving a smoother finish on the slopes. This is really difficult to do and takes a lot of care so you don’t lose a limb. Cutting the hill on the edge/corner of a table allows the knife to cut through without destroying the furniture. I did mine vertically on the wall outside so I didn’t make a mess from the polystyrene.

The hills had bases made out of mounting card, less durable than MDF but I had loads to hand and it’s easier to cut/bevel edges. Obviously the downside is that the PVA used to mount the hills and board together warped them but eventually you can bend them back straight. Around the edges builder’s sharp sand from B&Q was stuck on with PVA.

The hills were painted with a black interior house paint, bulked out with Early Learning Centre art paint, some Polycel ready mix plaster, some fine sand and a good dollop of PVA glue. I wanted a nice impervious coating, like you get with surfboards, a foam core with a hard outer fibreglass shell.

Once this was dry I sprayed a red oxide primer paint [another advantage to red planet battlefields] onto the hill. I’d also managed to pick up some Vermillion artists acrylic paint from Quality Save for 99p. Amazingly this colour matches the base map perfectly. A series of successive drybrushes really picked up the sand and texture.

Below are all the hills I made in one go, as you can see there’s plenty of variety to their deployment which means we won’t get too bored with our terrain. Later on as I present more examples of my red planet terrain, once I've prepped all the .pdf templates to go with them I'll show how the terrain all fits together.