Blog Wars X Tyranid Army list

As I've seen a few other blogs post their BWX army lists I thought why the heck not. Having abandoned the Dark Angels as a bad idea [and also unachievable given timescale and rate of progress] the nids will be there yet again. I'm reluctant to enter them into the painting competition, having won last time, but Alex said it's not a problem and I honestly think there will be lots of competition for the top spot as I know Liam and Otty's armies will do really well alongside the usually high standard of entrants. But I know it's an issue for some and money is involved so I'd rather not be 'that guy' when I don't have to be. From recent experience I know whatever good will I generate from people enjoying the army is easily lost when the competitive side gets involved so I;d rather just display it and try and promote the blog this time.

So, here's my list, I was apprehensive about the new double CAD option at first, it was only in the last few weeks when I was asking some questions of Alex that he pointed out it was possible that I could take two CADs, I was still under the impression it was not possible to have two of the same faction. So I created this list and finally able to run [swoop] two Flyrants, which I haven't been able to do at Blog Wars since the old Codex, which obviously had the Doom of Malantai who was everyones favourite Special Character but he was an Elite choice so made 2 Flyrant HQs easy. Nowadays all but one of our Specials are HQs so twin Flyrants was difficult. 

I've dropped the Manufactorum Genestealers because there were too many models and I needed to shave points. The Children of Cryptus came in instead, slightly more durable, less board presence and ability to affect how your opponent deploys [I so love messing with people's heads before they even put models down] but they are Ob Sec which is pretty valuable. Overall I wanted more MCs, less body count. Obviously they 30 gaunts counter that but there are only 52 models in total so hopefully my games will be a little quicker. I was able to shave a few points off by dropping some Hive Guard I was going to take and instead replace their four T6 4+ saves with the Mawloc's six T6 3+ saves. Now I'm not sure if it'll be anymore effective, it may not even turn up in the game and he is notoriously and literally 'hit and miss' but I like my model and who knows he may work well with Deathleaper this time. I also dropped my Tyrannofex but I'm pretty sure the twin Flyrants and the Tyrannocyte podding in the second Carnifex or even the transporting the tunneling Rippers should I feel the need the Carni's are better starting on the ground will allow me more board presence. I don;t have any weapons higher than S6 but I suppose there's always assaulting with the Carni's too. Either way I think it's a fun list for me, maybe not too nice with the 2 Flyrants but it could have been worse if I had Crones and Harpies. Anyway, bring on Saturday.

'nids part 178 - OHNiOOE- Oh Hell No! its Old One Eye TO DONE!

With a bit of a push to finish OOE for Armies on Parade I surprised myself how quick he came togethe. To be fair I repurposed my Tervigon Crushing Claws, he is the uber Carnifex afterall so I will have to finish of the standard Claws at some point.

 

However, someone did mention on a forum they'd used Haruspex claws to represent OOE so I fancy doing that as well at some point.

I also want to pick up another set of Fleshborer Hives so I can run three dakkafex although I do like this stripped down version so I probably need to do another set of Scything Talons as well. I do like the motion in this pose but I do feel I need one that's more upright, rearing up, which obviously goes against my only three Carnifex directive.

And I've three spare heads to finish off as well, two bio-plasma and one toxic tongue, no real reason for doing them, I just wanted alternative options.

I'm at least a little happier with his skull now, the carbon skeleton is still odd butI added some more Tamiya Clear Red X-27 and I think it works better now.

It reminds me a little of the Alien Resurrection hybrid.

A close up ohis back and patterning.

Probably the easiest MC I've painted in a long while. So glad I took some time to interupt my Imperium efforts with this. I've ended up completing something I had on the books, enjoyed the process and have returned to the Imperium with renewed vigour. Definitely something to learn from to add to my arsenal of tricks to raise motivation. I've done this before and been aware of the benefits but repetition with the same results is confirming the efficacy of this approach

And my first Big Green Stamp of approval, yeah, don't forget folks hobby Season is for all year, not just for Christmas ;) I've another set of pictures to follow of all three Carnifex together, I hope you don't mind.

Support your local blogger - If it wasn't for ones

It's been a really long time since I asked folk if they wanted a little spotlight on their blog from my blog. I thought it'd help them out and also provide me with something to share when I didn;t have any content but sometimes it took just as long to write a post about their blog than perhaps writing a Battle Report, well, not that long but it eventually become something easier to not do than do.

But I decided to at least crack on with some of those who orginally asked post  Frank O'Donnell of http://ifitwasntforone.blogspot.co.uk put his name down and he's always been a big supporter and commenter ont he blog so I decided it was about time I showed him some support in return. His blog has changed quite a lot and recent posts suggest he's given up 40k [is that still the case Frank?] but that doesn't mean there isn't a host of 40k content on the blog you can't still access. 

You can also enjoy his many current posts on other games and there's also a whole host of interesting terrain building articles in case you're hankering for some hobby inspirations. So please do check it out: http://ifitwasntforone.blogspot.co.uk

What's on my palette

Bless me readers for I have sinned, it's been over five months since my last confession. Obviously I was a bit busy with Man Caves, Dangles and Lancers but what now?

 

I've blog wars in a few days and as I'm no longer taking the Dangles they've pretty much gone off the boil. However I will not foresake them but I will be refocussing my efforts. First up I'm going to finish off my Teleport Homers/Energy Field/Objective markers. They're on my To Do List, so they're sin free and given I'll be weathering them up with Verdigris it will help build confidence for the weathering ahead on the Lancer.

The Lancer is the next priority. I need to be decisive about choices to be made and crack on with him. He could be so close to completion if I manage to put in some concerted effort in getting him done.

 

I will also fish out the Tactical Squad, see if I can crack on with them and perhaps finish up on the Bastions while I'm at it. Again these are potentially 'quick wins', I mean they're not, I'll obviously take forever doing them but they're considerably more progressed than a lot of other projects so it feels liek I should be able to finish them up quick[ish].

No real surprises here but it's what comes after that's the big question and to be honest I don't know. Of course I do have my list of things to do but I'm not looking at that as priority order. I do have the second Knight to paint but I still have to full magnetise him first which I think may be a Winter job, y'know prepare stuff during the cold weather ready for a Spring surge.

One other thing I want to get better at is 'brevity'. I was recently at a seminar where the head of Government Communications highlighted brevity as extremely important nowadays. We live in a society where twitter and it's 140 character limit has shown that people don't want tomes of text. He quoted Mark Twain

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

And I know I'm guilty of doing just that, which is odd as quite often I find myself railing against other people doing just that. I've talked abotu this before and 'micro-blogging' but this time I'll endeavour to be more succinct [as I'm failing to do right now ;) ] Anyway, if I get the hang of it it should make the blog better maybe help other bloggers too. Towards that end if you didn't know of it already and I only looked it up recently I'd advise checking this out if you needed convincing of brevity TL;DR.

5+ Happy Blog Day

I usually add a Legion heraldy badge to celebrate my Blog Day, but in this case I couldn't really find a decent White Scars Legion badge. Then I looked for Dark Angel 5th Company badges and many of those images I found were just pictures from my blog, of my own 5th Company marines! However, I did find this Blood Ravens banner which I thought would do.

Anyway, 5 years a Servitor! Who'd have thought? I know I've posted quite a few arbitrary milestones recently but I think we can all agree this is the big daddy, the non-arbitrary measure 5 years of solid blogging. Sure the 1,000 posts one is important too because a five year blog with 5 posts isn't much to shout about and the followers and comments are also fantastic measures of how people feel about the blog which helps lift it beyond just shouting into the the void.  But 5 years! That's like time man! Time spent chatting about little plastic men.

Looking forwards though I can't see the blog ending, I worked out I had about two years worth of miniatures to paint, or more like three or four the speed I paint. I'm a little sad this year will deliver the least amount of posts since I started but the Winter slump hit me hard and hobby progress was more important than blogging about it. In time I think I'll try and get a bit more feedback from you all about what you like, don't like, what I can do to improve things; not saying I'll act on it or anything but the best of intentions and all that. Feel free to start the ball rolling, criticism equally appreciated I know I waffle on, not sure I can stop it but if it really is too much sometimes I'll aim for brevity as it makes writing the darn posts easier anyways. So thanks for popping by and we'll reconvene in 2020!

Armies on Parade 2015

PeteB and I dropped by GW Southport on Thursday to drop off our stuff, even with 45 minutes to set up I still couldn't fit everything on to my board that I wanted to. I think there's at least around 40 Termagants and my Gargoyles that didn't make it and it could have been displayed a little better but hey, the Manager does have to close up of an evening! Sadly I was in such a rush so didn't get to take pictures of PeteBs Eldar :(

Funnily enough I'm not sure this is as impressive as I thought it would look, does that mean I have to get me some more bugs? I think so and if the latest rumour about some new treats in January are true I may well treat myself, not so sure about the potential new Stealers, however much I love them I think there's plenty better value options and I do have those 30 still to paint, but Biovores and a possible Gargantuan - I'm in!

One other thing of note was just how compact I've been able to make my nids, this must be the least amount of bags, boxes and containers I've ever taken for the most amount of miniatures, goodness knows how I'll get it all back in.

Anyway, I've no idea how the event is going, what with being in Paris and all but I'll certainly let you know how things went and if you had a Parade today be sure and drop a link to any pictures in the comments.

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 10

As I reach double figures in the Cerastus in manufactorum series I do worry that it feels this has been dragged out a bit, although I'm aware progress has been well recieved and I appreciate all the comments to that effect. However, as the blog is less scheduled at the moment each post is pretty much 'this is what I did last/the other night'. Otherwise I'd have collated two or three sets of pics together in which case the blog would be less 'little and often' and more like once a week. Anyway, this was last nights progress and yes Monkeychuka the OCD kicked in and I had to paint some pipes, and now I want to paint more. I think a couple of bonewhite ones might break up the mass at the front, but I'm not sure if I should have done shtis after doing the verdigris as it may well screw up some of the pipe detail...

And this is all you see once the chest plates go on...? I kind of want to break up the colours on one of the plates, either by diagonal bonewhite stripe through the middle of the red, or halving it diagonally with yellow/black chevrons, what do you think?

I also got his undercarriage piping done, these match up with the ones I did for the Dark Angels Scouts. I did miss those two tine pipes on the back of hiships though, wil lhave to do those later. It does conjour up images of it being bitten on the arse by some kind of poisonous striped snake though!

The head has pipework stripes too.

And here's it together. I'm getting very close to the point where I have to start building the courage to do the verdigris. I know this will raise it another level but it's still a big risk but I've got my Reaver Titan out for reference. Although I didn't go quite the same red I can still be as economical with the verdigris as I was with the epic scale miniature - allowing real metallics and weathering to share the spotlight.

And I also managed to do remedial repairs on this Broodlord, I'd dropped him, breaking both his right arms off and chipping the spine vents. I used the opportunity to bring a few more reds into his liver/brown fleshy bits and will fix his tongue next.

So, steady but not amazing progress but this is the amount I'm getting done at the moment. I did really enjoy the session though. The other night I'd noticed that the computer desk feels a bit clammy so I've decided to always have the radiator on when I'm in the shed over the winter. It's not likely to keep the potential damp completely out of the shed but I think regular warmth can at least mitigate any problems. It was really cosy though, and it had started to rain so it was just a really nice place to be. When I decide to finish I switch off the main lights an put on a little spotlight which is much more pleasant and feels like a wind down [from the hectic high-adrenaline stakes in figure painting!].

Anyway, tomorrow the family and I are off to Disnelyand Paris, our first holiday abroad. It's only for four days but hopefully we'll have a great time, all of October is Hallowe'en themed. I should have still prepped a load of pictures from my Armies on Parade board that I set up last night at GW Southport but if it takes a couple of days to hear back from me don't worry, I've not been crushed under a mountain of old White Dwarfs. Have a great weekend, au revoir [yep that's all my GCSE french right there!]

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