I'm Back!

Well, I have been since last Friday. The wife decided to come back a day early because she was going to see Adam Ant in concert on the Saturday and didn't want to be driving back on the day when she had to 'tart herself up' for the Prince Charming his-self.

The holiday was OK and I did manage to get some 40k related goodness:

There was a discount bookstore in Llandudno that had a 3 books for £5 offer so I picked up these and to follow up my Clive Cussler obsession I also picked up these:

So I've plenty to read over the next few months. On my return I was also chuffed to find DoW: Dark Crusade - an ebay 'WIN' for the grand total of £1.99 [although I actually thought it was Soulstorm I'd bought?] a damn sight better value than any Fine Cast at the moment. As mentioned before my graphics card really isn't up to DoW2 so I thought if I went for a DoW supplement it'd play successfully and I could postpone DoW2 play until I could afford a card that would support it.

So I've pretty much been 'owned' by this, pulling in some 1:00 am and 1:30am sessions, which is odd as I was aching to paint while I was away, I didn't take the Prime in the end. The single player scenario is less defined as it tries to cover 6 races instead of just following the Blood Ravens. However, it's got an element of 'Risk' about it with a map to conquer and resources and upgrades similar to DoW2 [the bits I like about the sequel]. I've also got my son interested in it and he arbitrarily chose Necrons for his campaign, though it's painful watch his attempts

So with this so much an obsession at the moment I'm not sure where it puts the 'gaming/modelling/painting' side of things, and there's not much I can report back to you about this sort of gaming. I've a bucketload of pictures I took of some of my other bits and bobs - the remainder of my Epic stuff, Dwarves and some of my earliest figures ever. So there's still a fair amount of content to come, I'm just fearful that at some point I'll run out of steam, but I said that about five months ago and I'm still going...

WFB - 'Epic' home made Empire Steam Tank

'Blasphemy' may be the word coming to mind right now but at the time this made absolute sense to me. I wanted an Empire Steam Tank but didn't want to 'fess up the moolah'. I had a Capitol Imperialis knocking about that I was never going to use, I think they were just too darn slow, and too expensive for only 4 Void Shields, if I remember correctly. 

So with a new paint job, a couple of pen lids, some Milliput, some bits from an old World War 2 tank model and yes part of a head from my old friend the Blood Bowl human poking out of the 'turret' my 'Epic' home made Empire Steam Tank was born.

Here's a close-up the Blood Bowl human poking out of the 'turret'

Lastly, another shot of that glorious OTT highlighting, this is how you paint Eldar nowadays, or so the tutorials show me. Might be a little more subtle though...

Better off Dread - Dark Angel AoBR Dreadnought Update Update

Brother Cask. I've decided. His name is brother Cask. He wears a fez, like Tommy Cooper and Coopers made casks for ale. Anyway, just a  quick update in that he's had the Okhide Shade foundation put on. I'm liking it but I'm still feeling trepidation about the whole DA green [yes, still!]. I haven't quite fixed my 'painting solution' in my head, just where do I go from here? Badab Black wash, then highlights or highlights and then Badab Black. Do I look to add a green wash to try and fix any poor highlights? As I've said Marines are different to Nids there's more perfection in their man-made armour so poor painting is gonna burn me!

On the positive side I've decided to attempt battle damage on these to cover up any imperfections and I notice on some of the Dawn of War artwork that the Blood Ravens armour has a look of being hand painted [possibly by the marine] so there is room for variations just so long as it looks like it's done by the model and not some giant hand that's painted a miniature, if you follow. Still got to deal with the edges of the casket too, possibly gonna go gold as well on this...

And I'm still in love with the back view, it's like a little 'surprise' when you get behind it as it's all metal, no paintwork.

Terrain is everything - Honoured Imperium pt6.

Not sure why these day shots have come out so 'deep' but it's kind of effective. Old Matt Black: Former hero of the Imperium has had his final set of Vedigris highights which at times I though was a step too far but I'm happy in the end.

Additionally there are the bonehite accents on the base that tie it in with all my other red planet basing. On top of that some additional washes to the unrealistic but effective stains from the studs on the shield. 

Last shot and here's Matt's 'moody face'. Not entirely sure if the crack is too dark but again I've reached a point where I can just let go, before I muck it up.

The Aquila too has had another set of highlights and all the bonewhite accents. I'm sure I envisaged this paler with more effort put into the sandstone but again it works as it is so I'm prepared to leave well enough alone.

Here you can see some of the skulls, yeah man, skulls!

WFB - Empire Mortar

Another quicky, a simple Mortar for WFB. Some more of my OTT highlighting, though I like it on this. Sure there isn't a huge amount of 'depth' in the wood grain but I don't think I'd feel ashamed to have it in my force now, if I was playing WFB now that is. Really I'm not even playing 40k at the moment! Sure we had that game the other weekend in an attempt to stimulate my son's interest. That lasted two turns, but it was a couple of hours of play. Of course it's the hobby aspect that's the draw for me, it's just not having any purpose to it that makes it feel like a waste of time...

  

Well, we'll see how things go with this blog. I think it's going to make a year of posts - it helps to keep the addiction 'on the boil'. I'll record my progress on the hobby aspects and if in the future there isn't quite the amount of content I can report then I'll scale things back a bit to when I have something worthwhile.

That seems like a bit of a 'bombshell' [or mortar fire] there but as my weekend game illustrated I'm spending all this time and effort on a hobby that ultimately has no purpose. Sadly I'm too obsessive [read - addicted] to let go of any of it and sell some of the bits off. At least then I'd have made a profit on the effort instead of having to accept that at least it kept me off the streets, ha, ha!

Don't worry there's a good few posts left in this blog yet but we'll be taking each day as it comes.

Terrain is everything - Vent Tower pt 4. EXTENSION!

Here's an update on the 'Vent Tower', I really should think of a better name for it than that as it no longer looks 'venty', suggestions welcome. Again, night time shots P-shopped so excuse their garishness. Obviously when I get round to creating an STC for this these step-by-step pictures will be considerably more useful but bare with it for now. This is the top of the tower extension, from the inside. Unlike the base of the tower which was four separate panels this is a continuous strip - not great for efficiency savings on your foamcard but it does increase quality control. As you can see the template was spray mounted on and firepoints have been cut out. Then 45° cuts were made at each corner and junction.

The flipside - the outside and another 45° bevelled cut was made. This will transition smoothly into the extension and because this adds additional width at the top it will in fact be the exact size as the top of the vent tower base, allowing the rooftop to be used on the extension as well as the base. Now that's MODULAR baby!

Here's the inside of the extension, again you can see the template. Of course this helps on the outside because you can see where to put the cereal box card detailing but those 45° bevelled cuts are really important so we're working from the inside out. You should be able to work out where the above top of the tower will align with the base of the black line a third of the way down. You should also be able to make out I also cut in a 5mm rebate in the foam at the top to accommodate the 'plug' on the rooftop but even the card had to be removed in construction, else the plug wouldn't fit.

So you fold up these nets, here's where I rediscovered the awesomeness of masking tape to keep your constructions in shape whilst the PVA dries. The Extension top was glued around with the joins opposite each other so the extension couldn't split down the open edge. As you can see the rebate did it's job to gauge the height of the 'plug socket' then the card was stripped out.

And we're left with a new and improved extension to the Vent Tower. Next stop - cereal box detailing.

Gaming, sort of - Dawn of War

You may recall that one of the preventative measures I used to stop getting back into 40k was to sart playing Dawn of War. I've always liked computer games, who doesn't? and I realised you could easily get a similar 'fix' without the time thieving painting.modelling aspects, cost, need of another human being to play against, space constraints and a whole host of other limitations to actual physical 40k gaming. Of course some of these I've since learned to embrace again, predominantly the painting and modelling but as I've mentioned that passion is ultimately fruitless when you don't get to then do something with your efforts.

Anyway, Dawn of War has started to come back to the fore, particularly because I got Dawn of War 2 for my birthday, not the latest DoW2: Retribution, just the first installment and Chaos Rising. I also found out that my PC couldn't run it. Despite knowing better when I ordered my PC about 18 months ago I decided not get a graphics card installed. I figured the Dell option was too expensive and I wouldn't really need it for a while. Fast forward to today and I managed to get an Nvidia 7200gs [or 7300gt or mix of the two, I'm not sure] off ebay for £20, postage included. Installed it no problems and finally got DoW2 to run... vvvvveeeerrrryyyy sssslllloooowwwwllllyyyy! I ran a test and the card is a third the way between minimum and recommended. Sure if I turn the settings right down I can play but it's not as much fun as it should be.

The annoying thing is that the Mother-In-Law upgraded her PC just before me and got a  slightly lower specced PC, without the option of upgrading to Windows 7, but she did get a graphics card and even thought it's bot awesome it says it would run DoW2 well above optimal spec! I so wish I had the brass balls to swap hers for mine seeing as it'd make no difference to her web browsing. Aah, well I'll get an upgrade sometime down the line, meanwhile I'll just carry on regardless.

As to the game, I'd had a warning from my friend Pete, the one who started me off on Blood Bowl and Rogue Trader, that he was deeply disappointed in the evolution from DoW to DoW2. He missed the mass ranks of troops, the variety and the resource building. Having now experienced it I can see his point, but I am enjoying the RPG element of upgrading your character and sometimes it's nice to just have a few troops. I do think the linear nature of wandering round the map from one encounter to the next slightly less appealing than DoW, but then DoW was equally repetitive sometimes with how you build your base, sally forth, expand and assault. With the occasional counter offensive putting you on the back foot and spoiling your relentless mayhem.

On the positive side it has convinced me to look at both DoW Soulstorm and Dark Crusade to add to my DoW and Winter Assault. If I want more of the same action there's supplements available and they're cheap and my PC can run those no probs with the graphics card I currently have. Of course all this video gaming is having an impact on my hobby activities but I'm getting more reward for killing pixels at the momment than painting plastic men, c'est la vie.

I also find it odd that Tarantula Sentry guns have quite a pivotal roll in DoW2 and yet retain their fringe use in Imperial Armour but not the main Space Marine rules - shame.

 

On a side note I'm off on holiday this week to Wales, not that you'll notice any difference in the blog, it's all set up to keep you entertained while I'm away. This time last year I took a load of figures and a few paints and my son and I basecoated and washed a load of them. Not so sure we'll be doing that this year but I may take the Prime just to get him done...