100000!

100000 page views! It may have been search bots or my own constant monitoring of the blog but it's a milestone, thank you for everyone else who has bothered to pop along.

A freebie - Biomancy Psychic markers

The more games I play the more markers I find I need, latest is Biomancy psychic power markers. Constantly rolling for Warp Speed and Iron Arm each turn and adding D3 I&A or D3 S&T to the psyker means you really need to keep track of what's doing what. Of course there's other rules attached to these powers so I've included an asterisk to remind you to check out the full rules but each marker has +1, +2 or +3 respectively so you know what your psychic monstrosity is doing.

Additionally there are some Enfeeble and Endurance markers, three of each in case you have a few psykers. As per usual my suggestion is print 'em out, mount 'em on mounting card, sellotape for faux lamination and cut 'em out neat and tidy like. Bob's your Uncle [he actually was] and Fanny's your Aunt [she wasn't, it was Joan].

Enjoy!

Usual step-by-step:

1. Print
2. Apply double sided tape to back
3. Stick to mounting card
4. Carefully apply sellotape to top if you want them pseudo-laminated
5. Cut out with craft knife/scalpel
6. Amaze your friends and enemies with these cards
7. Tell them to visit 40kaddict.blogspot.com for their own free markers.

FAQ looky - Scout/Infiltrate

New FAQ's came out the other day. Obviously we all look for the the thing that interests ourselves. Sometimes you miss the other stuff so I thought I'd look through and pick out some things that struck me, explain why I got struck and then maybe you might see something you've otherwise missed. I'll be adding these in amongst my other posts so bonus content for all.

One big thing for me was in relation to my oft bemoaned 6th Edition issue that primarily focussed around the inability to assault from outflank because Stealers get the Infiltrate rule. Of course you can still Infiltrate but equally the Infiltrate rule states:

"A unit that deploys using these rules cannot charge in the first turn."

However the new FAQ has a precedent that changes the implication of what this means, it's the same terminology, but in reference to Scout.

Q: The rulebook states "A unit that makes a Scout redeployment
cannot charge in the first turn." Does this mean that if your
opponent has the first turn and you go second, your Scouting unit
can charge? (p41)
A: Yes.

Therefore when you reread the Infiltrate rule and apply the the above FAQ:

"A unit that deploys using these rules cannot charge in the first turn."

It must effectively mean that if your opponent has the first turn and you go second, your Infiltrating unit can charge! So G.O.D. help anyone who starts the game in a position where my Stealers are hiding 12-18".

'nids part 53 / Terrain is everything - Tyranid Quad Gun pt3.

Talking of quad guns, here's where we are at. Tyranid armour plates have been sculpted in place. Unfortunately I didn't prep this to be what i had in my head, perhaps a sketch might have been in order. The aspect I'm unhappy about, but will have to accept, is that I didn't bulk out the base enough.

I wanted a more bulbous squashed tomato profile, instead its a bit mushroom like. I also hadn't thought ahead regarding the fleshy top encased in the plates, it needed some texture so I was forced to take a drill bit to it to achieve something. It's the best of a bad job to be sure and I believe it'll get some praise but it's not 100% what I hoped for. You can tell how much I wanted to bulk it out by the empty space in front on the base.

I also added the Trygon Prime tail as a node antenna, with some reasonably sculpted fleshy folds. I also added a slight spinal ride running up the back to the toxin sacs, which I hope don't look too 'stuck on'. The second shot shoes the spinal ridge better.

If you actually look closely on the Tyranid Codex you will notice quite a few little green creepy crawlies pottering around on the crazy Tyranid bio-structures. By all accounts they're the adrenal sac bio-morphs. Almost all of the Tyranid weapons and upgrades revolve around symbiotic organisms that attach to the greater Tyranid creature. But we don't often see many of the little beggars mooching about on actual models as we see in the cover. I've always thought that was a bit sad as plenty of folk will have spare Adrenal Sacs. I've put them on a couple of figures but never been openly creative with their painting, so they don't stand out.

The problem is I never truly decided how to paint them, the Trygon's is just painted bonewhite, the Tervigon is more yellow in place and the one on my Tyranid Prime is practically camouflaged.

I want them to be red, to show the Rage building chemicals inside but will they show  up on Ferron Proxima? Only time will tell but for the mean time I put three of them on the base and they look kind of cool, if a bit bumbling ;)

Warhammer World - terrain 3

Another terrain-feast, this time the Tomb Kings table. OK I know what you're saying why would I be interested in a fantasy table? Well for a start off the wife is a bit of an Egypt fan so I thought she might like it but equally who knows what lies out in the Badlands of Ferron Proxima and who knows what Avro Vulcan may discover next?!

Again I got some figure eye level shots and the great thing about this board is the majority of the edges are simple lines with the odd curve so they'll be super easy to cut out.

This may look cool in red, no?

Plenty of scope for fluffy compositions, I just need more time to do them?

I'm just snapping pics in the hope I may be able to use them for something, or I'll be doing something and THEN realise I can use this for it. Or instead you can find a use of the uimages.

ARRRGGHH! Frost me!

Damn and blast it. The weather was nice yesterday, very warm, so I decided to Purity Seal some figures:

• Tyranid Aegis Defence Line
• Tyranid Quad Gun
• Deathwing Terminators
• 10 Devgaunts
• A Ripper Swarm base
• 4 Hive Guard Conversion

You know where this is going right? I'd say 65% is fine, the Aegis and the Terminators but it's the Hive Guard that took most of the frosting and the Devourers on the gaunts. Now I'm mot sure about the humidity yesterday, it didn't feel humid but as today it's saying it's 75% maybe it was the wrong day but I know full well Hive Guard got more spray than anything else and I think it was my overuse and too close that 'brooked things up'.

I tried looking online for solutions, so I'll be trying the old 're-spray with gloss' technique tonight and also the 'olive oil' solution. Bizarrely when you wet the frosting it disappears but then when the water evaporates it 're-freezes' so I figured that using a paint on gloss varnish might solve that problem and it didn't. All it's done is encapsulate the frosting in a shiny coating. I fear the spray of gloss won't 'melt the frost', now it's been so carefully protected.

Anyway, I'll document the outcome and perhaps try my solutions on the Devgaunts instead of the Hive Guard first! Sometimes you just want to punch yourself for your own stupidity.

'nids part 52 / Terrain is everything - Tyranid Quad Gun pt2.

When last we left the 'quad gun' I had a head and a gun and a champagne cork. Now I have something that looks a little more like an anti-aircraft weapon.

Some flower wire was pinned into the back of the gun and the cork. The I hot-glued the cork to the 50mm base and used a sausage of tin foil to bulk out the bottom of the cork and save Milliput. I've sculpted the Milliput on top and used my sculpting tool to add a bit of 'alien' detail. It also went some way to join the gun to the cork. I also added it to the base as I had some left over and didn't want it to go to waste.

I added some of the Monstrous Creature Toxin Sacs to the head. This helps cover the join between the head and the weapon arm. The could be classed as sacs or even synapse conduits like I justified the ones on the side of my Tyranid Prime's head. This way my Tyranids aren't manually firing the gun with their hands but using the synapse to control the limited sentience of the 'gun beast', much like the Mycetic Spore.

Once I put two sacs in place there was a perfect gap for another Termagant sac so I added that too. I looked in my bits and found the Trygon Prime tail - the one that looks like a Rattlesnake tail. I've decided to mount this at the bottom, again justified as a synapse 'antenna'. I haven't pictures but I drilled a hole and pinned it ready to put a Milliput sheath around the join, so it looks like it's coming out of a fleshy protuberance.

Chitinous plates will be sculpted around sides. I'm actually amazed how solid this feels. I tied to pull the cork off after I initially clued it in place because I'd made a slight error but if felt like it was going to tear the base apart before separating.

This fortification is coming along and totally monopolising my hobby efforts, which isn't a bad thing. My only concern is that Liam and Ben both have reservations about this being able to be manually fired by 'nids. The semantics that justify it are OK with them, although they think it's sketchy at best, but they're just worried that I could be making this for Throne of Skulls and have someone disagree with my stance and therefore I won't be able to use it. So really I should be focusing on the Tervigon because I will definitely need that complete. But it's easiest to go with the flow so as my hobby meme is in this direction I'll go with it and get it done, hopefully coming back to the Tervigon with renewed vigour.