Moar pics from Wargames

Last year we hardly ever got chance to go to Southport, my wife often works weekends so I'm genuinely surprised we got chance to visit again so soon after our last jaunt. We actually went so we could go bowling and having trounced the rest of the family we then wandered from the sea front into the town centre proper. Of course Wargames is on the way on Lord Street [y'know where Napolean got his inspiration for Paris] and the youngest wanted Pokemon cards and I need that intermediary gold colour - settled on Breass Scorpion, turns out I was wrong so still need to find a better match. Anyway, I saw quite a striking White Scars display so decided to share pictures.

I've played against some pretty amazing White Scars armies and although this might not quite match them I'm really impressed with the consistency throughout. It definitely serves as a fine example of how much impact your army can make en masse.

And there are all sorts of simple extra details that have been added to lift everything up.

And who doesn't love a Thunderhawk?

Also of note were these 'hen's teeth' or Forgeworld Capillary Towers, now Out Of Print and they could make some of these in plastic now?

I also sspotted Aceface's Hierophant on display. As Wargames is sponsoring him on his Las Vegas Open adventure that's a nice touch

Anyway, it's just stuff I saw in shop and thought I'd share.

Aceface in Las Vegas

I met Aceface a few years agao at Throne of Skulls, before I even knew he had a YouTube Channel, and right now he is in Las Vegas, for the Las Vegas open 40k tournament. He's been painting and playtesting his Tau army on YouTube for the past month or so and now he's there and sharing updates on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Aceface-Hickers-611255408889511

Most of us won;t ever get the opportunity to attend such an event so it might be worthwhile 'liking' his page so you can see what 300 gamers in one place looks like... and also if he gets 500 followers by his return there'll be a freebie given away so sign up :)

Dark Angels - Jefighter!!!

All that glitters... having been metal crazy over the past few nights I really needed to mix things up a bit. I was already starting to feel restlessand so looked again at the Jetfighter. The pilot was definitely something that needed doing and having tested the canopy effect I was convinced he'd have to be 'high contrast' to show through [even if the Tamiya Clear Red X-27 was playing hard ot get in it's coverage]. I was really happy with the end result, the shoulder pads are a bit bright but that would be for a standard Ravenwing biker, inside the cockpit he'll be fine. Part of me wants to OSL the rest of him, like the eyes but I'm not sure it'll make any difference.

I know, I know, there's nothing to this, just a Red Oxide Primer, wash and white buttons and dials but I honestly don't think anything more than this will be evident once the cockpit goes on.

The pilot in-situ.

And as you can see the cockpit obscures quite a lot. Sadly there seems to be a lot of masking tape adhesive still stuck at the edges. I'll have to find a way to clear that up a bit more. The top down view shows of some pseudo-highlighting I did on one of the larger screens on the control panel. As you can see there really was no benefit for anything other than white. Sure some darker buttons would have been nice too but this is more than adequate.

Side view are difficult to take but the pilot is in there.

This pic shows just a little more how the high contrast highlights blend perfectly under the red canopy so I'm really pleased with the results.

Good progress once again!

Throne of Skull - Carnage

Just after Christmas Ben sent out a distress message saying he thought we'd been away from Warhammer World for too long. The original suggestion was a special Dark Angels event on the weekend of my birthday, which sounded cool for quite a few reasons but also not for a few others. Instead we opted for a more traditional Throne of Skulls event a couple of weeks later. So our tickets and hotel are booked and we'll be attending Throne of Skulls: Carnage on the 12th and 13th March.

Now there are a number of unique things to consider about this, particularly since our last visit. First up the points value is 1700 now, which makes things both easier and harder. Secondly there is no restriction on army choice, insomuch as you can actually play using a different army every game! So as much as I wouldn't want to play Dark Angels all weekend it might be tempting to play them just once... another issue is that the event does have a running theme of 'carnage points'. Some vampiric Dark Eldar is pupeteering these conflicts to siphon of the hate fuelled killings and use it to keep him pretty [Photoshop might be cheaper].

This is where I’m really going to struggle in a competitive sense as nids or Dangles I don’t particularly have what I would term a ‘killy army’. As much as I persevere with kill points missions [and Blog Wars always handled them fairer than most] I go into each and every one under the assumption I won’t do very much. Now there are going to be unique Maelstrom objectives for the games, I think the Carnage Points will be for overall scoring and potential impact in the game but it does make me question my army lists.

I'm looking once again at a combination of Manufactorum Genestealers for board control and distraction [with added killing power should they be able to get into combat in groups]. Add in my Skyshield to keep things alive as long as possible, obligatory twin Flyrants and Twin Carnifex to lay down the Brainleech and I'm weighing up my Malnthrope versus my Venomthrope. Of course I could tweak my list for every game, which will guarantee I'll do one list that will lose me one game but be perfect for another! Still, umming and ahhing over lists, it might be nice to mix things up so I can see which is more effective.

Bottom line I'm not sure there is anything hobbywise that will queue jump into my painting schedule as I doubt any new project would be completed in time, so I best stick to my current tasks and look forward to March.

Brass, Bronze and Brassy Bronze Brass

Having done a fair bit of the metallics on the Knight I spent my next hobby session bringing other elements to the same finish. In particular the Reaper Chainsword needed highlighting. It's one of the main weapons for the Knight so it deserves priority status.

The Power Fist is not a 'primary' weapon but for some reason I was compelled to spend some time on it instead of focusing on higher priority items. The actual finish turned out really well so I'm glad I did spend time on it.

OOH, now this is exciting, actual Ravenwing! All but the bolters, front wheel trim and the trim on the wings have been highlighted. More significant progress even if the bikes aren't completely finished at this stage. The very nature of these are a stumbling block so to have achieved 65-75% of this stage is huge for me. The next lot of highlights should be easier to do as there'll be less of them, I don't want to go too bright on these afterall. Then I can get onto the real challenge of the black and then the 'not-white' wings... now those will be hurdles to overcome.

While I was at it I also highlighted the Dark Talon ornaments. Despite the pans to use it as a Jetfighter I think the Dark Talon may be my preferred flyer, who doesn't want Vortex templates dropping all over the place?!

 I also did the Balthasar gold highlights on the rest of the jetfighter. While I was also putting Tamiya Clear Red X-27 on the canopy I had my printed acetate to test the look of. It's a shame they didn't do a straight canopy, it's much more streamlined because of it.

Another good hour or so of effort.

40kaddict Terrain Competition update and tips for bloggers

Hopefully you will have noticed the Competition Fund totaliser has changed, we are now at £42.79 having made £16.73 in the last 28 days! So that's great news, your efforts are certainly making the difference. Actually lets just take a minute to point out that's £16.27 in one month, something that previously has taken over one year! I'm not going to do a break down of which country did what because I'll be looking a little more into traffic and how that may have influenced the balance.

It does however suggest that as we're less than a quarter of the way to completing my target the competition will have to begin in earnest. Should I have another bumper month we could well have reached the £60 mark by my birthday which means entries for the competition really need to start coming in. So, as things are advancing quicker than expected I'm going to formalise a couple of things. I will keep checking the balance but given it could reach target at the end of February or more likely March I am going to provisionally state that competition judging will begin at the end of March and take place over April with the final decision being made then.

If funds are not sufficient I will adjust the dates. Equally if the deadline for submissions seems too tight please let me know and I'll push things back. But with things progressing so fast I wanted to start seeing entries and set some end point for folk to work toward. I'll take stock again midway through Feb and then promote this wider, which may well increase the click through [£3.78 got added to the fund on the 7th Jan, the day of my last  update so that's definitely a catalyst]. Whatever extra is made I will put towards a second place prize which will be a £10 voucher for the hobby shop of your choice, I thought just a winners prize was a little unfair so maybe that sounds like a nice idea.

Now, tips for bloggers, hopefully this doesn't come across as egotistical, I know there's a lot of readers with their own blogs and these observations might be of use. This last month you can see from my stats below I broke my record for page views, finally smashing through the 30,000 page views in one month, sadly it then reconfigures the graph so it looks less impressive but it is cool to see 40,000 up there permanently though. However, you can see that there was a period prior to that where my page views weren't comparable with January or even my most popular period back when I was making my Skyshield and pimping the blog as much as possible on forums and social media. So my average fluctuates quite wildly and therefore you're probably interested to know what changed.

It was a combination of factors really. Predominantly is was the publication of my last Print & Play terrain template. These are always hugely successful and something I'll always endeavour to update the respective posts on forums to bring in traffic [and hopefully more entries to the competition]. So that added exposure on forums and social media really drove more traffic to the blog. On the day of publishing I got 900+ hits then the following day I shared it wider and got 3,236 with a further 2,570 the next day [you can also see on the map Rob Barnett clicking furiously in Alaska ;) ]

Having a unique feature in your blog is always good and if it's something like a freebie or a really solid tutorial then they can gain traction on their own. But the main driver for these figures was a random decision to engage with reddit you can see over 3000+ hits came from there in the last month. If I'm honest I still don't know what it is or how it works, they suggest you should operate a 1 in 10 posting formula where you post 1 item of your own for every 10 posts you debate other people but that doesn't seem the case, everyone's - 'look at my stuff'. Again I don't see it as a be all and end all, the traffic dissipates pretty quickly and I've only added a few extra followers since then so it's not going to continue at that level either. As an exercise in supporting the blog it was definitely worth doing. I was initially amazed at that first days stats then immediately realised how ridiculous chasing numbers was until midway through the month when I though you know I could break my record here, so I did but I'm over it now. As a test I even used reddit to promote Liam's blog and he went from a 100 hits to 809 in one day and he hasn't posted in 3 months!

So, if you're chasing numbers it may be worth giving it a go, whether it translates to regular followers or moves you up a level is debatable but I'd advise using it sparingly as I could see myself spamming it otherwise. Far better to grow your blog organically than constantly force-feeding it. Hope there are some interesting observations in there for you.

Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 10

Moar Balthasar Gold, as I'm totally confused about my feelings towards this and my other projects I should probably keep my commentary to a minimum. I'm flitting between frustration at the slow progress, desire to tackle each and every project and pleasure that I'm still achieving something that meets my expectations. Some positives, some negatives so it's very confusing even if overall things are going well.

The balance is definitely in my favour, it's just tought trying to reconcile that in the light of day sometimes.

Next up was to mix the Balthasar Gold with my Valejo Gold, I probably need an intermediary paint for this instead of constantly mixing this up.

The texture is definitely there, so even if I can't remember the exact process for previous attempts I;m still able to egt the results I'm aiming for.

Some more highlights yet to come though, while spreading myself thin...

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |