Gunwagonz incoming!

I sadly wasn't able to get my game of Epic:Armageddon in last night so instead I scoured around in my bits box for something related to paint. I found my first formation of Gunwagonz.I actually have a few formations worth of stuff hidden away so maybe I will get to painting them. There are at least two infantry mobs and probably a few extras I hope. The main bulk of this army is in Ireland. Like my SAGA stuff I will have to wait to get this project really rolling. It is no matter as it isn't like I am getting that many offers for games here. Hamburg is an Epic:Armageddon desert.

I wnet for a Bad Moon scheme to match what I am painting for my 40k army. I once had a dream of somehow linking the two systems. Who knows it may come to pass and it is best to be prepared! I also added a good few black and white checks in places to break up the yellow and I think it worked out well considering the scale! I thought it would be really hard to do but actually I can do this pattern decently well in no time at all. It looks regular enough until you get up really close! I will see if I can get one of the infatry formations together tomorrow and paint it up. I don't envisage it taking too long.

Maelock is awake!

I have far more armies for Warmachine and Hordes than I will ever need. I am not 100% sure why I started another only a while back. It was probably related to some deal where I thoght I could get the guts of the army cheap enough that it wasn't too much of an investment. Here is my first painted Warlock for the Gators. Maelock is a fairly complicated model with a lot of textures concentrated into small areas. I had to refer fairly often to the Privateer Press website to see a full rotation of the model so I could work out what exactly everything is. I think I got everything correct! I didn't go for too much blood as I felt that was more likely to result in me screwing up what I had already painted. I know I should add some here and there but really I am too lazy. The model is done and I am happy with it!

I can now finally play with my Gators army which will be fun. I would like to get some of my Bog Trogs finished first. I think I have eight of them somewhere completed and two awaiting paint. Once they are done I have most if not all of the releases for the army complete so I can get more or less anything to the table in short order. I always try to keep up with the latest releases for this army and my Circle one but Medieval II total war has been distracting me from painting quite a lot over the last week and a half. Lets hope I can break the addiction.

Plasticard and Looted Wagons

I have been looking around for the last while for some cheap sources of Plasticard. I have a nearby architects store. It is quite bizarrely stocked but it does have a3 sheets of 1mm plasticard for about €10 which seems reasonable. I am eager to get another Looted Wagon made. I really enjoyed making the last one and it needs company. While checking through the Imperial Armour Vol.8 there are some technical drawings for some of the Ork vehicles. They don't look to hard to make it is just a question of scaling up what I have done before.This Gun Wagon would definitely be something I would like to try but the Skullhamma would also be really tempting. According to the Forgeworld website they aren't much bigger than a Battlewagon. I looked around for some other inspiration and I found these Looted Wagons. They are really great looking and some of the ideas I might have to steal.

A shambling pile of stones

I finally finished Megalith. I have wanted the model for ages and even though I bought him in March I only got around to painting him the other day. I haven't varnished him yet or finished the base. Still he is looking fine and eventually I may get him onto the table top! I have tried to play him a little on VASSAL in Baldur 2's tier list. I haven't met with much success but that is down to my own uncompetitive level of gameplay combined with a somewhat sub-par list. I think it can be good but needs a higher calibre player than I. I haven't tried out Baldur 1's tier list. I haven't even tried him out of tier with Baldur yet. At least he toughens up my stable of Circle models.

I don't like the stock pose of Megalith and so I converted him. It wasn't the most excellent conversion work but it came out fine. The only problem I really have is that his shoulder things are pitched really far back where they should sit more squarely on the model. I also accidently repositioned the legs I think. To me thats how they went together but looking afterwards at the studio model they are really different. I think I captured Megalith taking a stroll! I added an armour plate to the base just for a little variety, I sculpted it up to see how it might look and stiking it on the base is about as good a use as I can think of. Sculpting this wasn't too difficult and I may get a little more ambitious in the future.

Zombie Invasion

Thanfully I have a good backlog of things to show as my painting has been uncharacteristically slow of late. I have been mainly painting Orks but I am trying to mix it up a little so that I can make progress on a few small projects at once. Here is one of the models from a side project, my Malifaux Punk Zombie.The model was annoying to put together as the connection points are tiny. I think I still pinned him but as to how effectual this may prove I have no idea. I haven't had to transport him as yet and so there haven't been many chances of accidents. I wenr for the same pale skin as I did with the Rotten Belles but as I said when I painted them it is still probably too warm a tone. I tried to add a little green and purple to the shadows on the skin but it is very subtle and I don't think the camera can pick it up.

At least the cobblestones came out as I expected them. Each time I have done them I can changed the technique. It is difficult to get the right texture. In my mind cobbles are usually roughly shaped but smoothly textured. When I tried to do that it looked weird. Now I just go for a brick style and that seems to work best, at least to my eyes.

Angry Half-wolf

As I painted Epic Morvahna recently I also was obliged to paint her best friend the Warpborn Alpha.. I would love to complain about how hard this model is to actually assemble but I won't as I am thankful that it simply is not made in Privateer Press plastic. That stuff is the bane of my painting career. So far the Alpha has withstood the rigours of transport so it seems I did a decent enough job of pinning him everywhere I could. He is an impressively heavy model almost the equal of soime of my heavy Warbeasts. He definitely needs a lot of attention during assembly if you want him to stay that way. On the table he is a revelation. He has performed excellently in every game I have used him in and he tunes the rest of the unit right up. With Epic Morvahna this is multiplied via her feat. Bringing back nearly the entire unit is as good as it was hyped up to be.

I of course painted him to blend in wit the rest of the unit. His model is impressive enough to stand out without too much effort. I am slowly running out of my stockpiles of standard colours I used on these so I will soon have to look for equivalents. I don't relish that. I have enough of everything to finish my last two Tharn units but once they are done I am going to have to play with the vajello game colour to see if I can get what I need there. I noticed Rob Hawkings complaining about the range recently so maybe I should look further afield. He used them on his awe inspiring Sedition Wars display boards. I haven't had a problem with them but then again I don't think I was paying that much attention to how they dried.

The Last Lady

Although I haven't been playing Malifaux much in the recent past I am still working away on my intrepid band of rotted followers. This is the third and last of the Rotten Belles. If you remember the last ones I showed here you will see I have completed the traffic light set. Each of them accidently ended up in a colour of the traffic lights which at least provides a good identification for them all. As I had greenstuff when I started this lady I did the base first. I wanted a simple enough cobble effect and I think it came out fine. I just have to go back and do it on the other models I have done. I went with a traditional brick colour as a contrast to the models and it came out good too. I find that a grey colour on the bases is always dull and boring or maybe just the way I do it is dull and boring! With the next few bases I will try to be a little bit more adventurous and add a few decorative pieces like sewer grates and kerbstones.

I am still struggling with reds. I just can't get the contrasts I want. My colour theory is weak it seems. Next time I am going to work from a dark purple towards a bold primary red to see what the effect is like. Hopefully it will be good and less muted than I tend to achieve. I have a few other models I will be showing here soon that I painted recently in an effort to get a better handle on red. However while they came out fine I didn't manage to really get amazing results. So back to the drawing board for me!

You're all going to burn!

Okay so it is back to the Orks. This time yet again a vehicle. I picked up the Wartrakk Skorcha with the buggy from last week. It took a lot less conversion thankfully.

This model is fairly old already, from Gorkamorka I think and I wonder when this model will be updated. I guess when the next book cycles through? Both this and the Wwarbuggy really could do with an update. This one is fine but the driver had to be changed. Again the bike driver fit perfectly fine and only a few adjustments were needed. A glyph on the front finishes the conversions. I didn't like the large flat plate there and why freehand a design when you can stick one on ready done!



Once the glue had set I painted it up as normal. It awaits weathering but again I need to base it. I have been looking for 5mm plasticard that doesn't cost the earth. Once I get that everything that is on wheels will have a base and then be weathered. I really wish GW would base their 40k vehicles. It would make everything a lot simpler. I am eager to get a squadron of these too but the models rarely come up on eBay and even then they fetch a decent sum. I have another Wartrakk somewhere in my collection from the original Gorkamorka set and maybe I can figure out a way to convert it into a Skorcha.

Epic Morvahna revealed!

Enough of the Orks for today at least. I bought Epic Morvahna when she came out first and painted her soon after. Here finally she is revealed: I didn't deviate from my standard scheme too much. I had been trying to get more contrast into my reds and this model was one of the first I really tried. I think I failed. The cloak is still very muted and while it goes from a deep red up to a fairly strong tone it never really pops. The colours on the goat worked well though and I am happy with them. I used English Uniform from Vajello. I love that colour despite the fact that it always comes out too green at the start. I have to shake the hell out of the bottle and after the first few drops it comes out in the nice brown colour. I have no idea what is up with the bottle but those first few drops are terrible. I have at least managed to get a few games in over the last few months with her and she is great. I finally feel like I have a top grade Warlock in my circle force and she will be very much prominent in my tournament lists for a while to come!

Looted Wagon, now this was a project and a half!

A project and a half and it still isn't finished! I was reading Vol.8 of the Imperial Armour Series, which is great by the way, when I got the idea to make a Grot Tank. I checked online and there are quite a few people who had the same idea. Using those as inspiration I started with some scrap pieces of plasticard from my last terrain project. I made the two track sections first in a scale I thought was fine. Once I added the body I realised I had made a monster. I guess it isn't that much bigger than the actual Grot Tank models but it is fairly close to a Rhino. I am estimating it is a little wider and about and inch shorter. So it has become a looted wagon instead!

I am not sure what made me take the design of this the direction I did but standing back and looking now I think it reminds me of a Leman Russ. The silhouette is very similar. I am already thinking what I should make next! Plasticard is impressively expensive though so I am unsure if I really want to invest. It is good fun and I think the results are good. However as I don't play with the army I don't need to go crazy building stuff for it. A solid weeks work went into making the Wagon and if I go for something bigger I know the time will multiply. I am tempted to make a KillKrusha though...

First up however is to wash this model, base it and then get to painting. I will do it fairly similar to the rest of the army, so yellow will predominate. I might get fancy and try to make some of the panels look like they came from an imperial tank. I do want to find a grot though to put somewhere on the back near the engine housing. So far I haven't had much luck.

Game one complete

I got my first game of Epic:Armageddon under my belt on Tuesday night and it was great fun. We played a small game only 1200pts and while I know we made a lot of mistakes we also got a good handle on the rules. The small size of the forces helped us get through everything despite having to read more or less the entire ruleset during play. The small size of the firces probably made the game a little less decisive than is usual. With a larger number of formation on the board I guess it is possible to combine them to have much more decisive resolution to the various conflicts. Next we if we manage to get an evening free we will be jumping feet first into a four game campaign as mentioned. We will set the points at 1500 for the first one. That allows at least one more formation and doesn't overwhelm us by jumping in at a more standard 3000pt level.

The first game will be an Ork attack on a small fortified position. The game will have only three objectives each of which is a bunker located on the imperial side of the table. Whoever holds the most by the end of turn four is the winner. The Orks should be a fast moving light force so I will be including a lot of Kommandos and Stormboyz. It will be fairly different from what I used before so I am eager to see how they preform!

Bad Moonz Warbuggy

I picked up this buggy and a Wartrak on eBay a while back. They were fairly cheap. I picked up the two of them for about €10 including the postage. I have seen them sell for a good deal more so I was happily surprised. I have been lurking on eBay for a while but finding a deal is a very rare occurence! About two weeks ago I started converting and painting. The orks it came with were of the last editions style and were tiny in comparison to what the orks are now. It was a difficult task to convert this as everything was put in place with polystyrene cement. Some digging and many curses got the driver out while I actually had to drill out the weapon mounting. In the process I broke the banner at the back but that wasn't so bad as I had intended changing it anyway



The driver was easy enough to replace in the end as the biker legs fit into place nicely. I added the arms from the bikes too as they fit to the remnants of the steering mechanism. It was a victim of the drivers removal but fortunately it fit together perfectly. I just changed their angle and rebuilt the shoulders to fit the torso. I added the platform on the back as with the bigger driver I had to give some height to the gunner. He is from the battlewagon as is the gun. I made the armour from some scrap pieces of plasticard. The gunner didn't fit perfectly but that is fine. One of his feet sits on the engine more than the platform but that is the only way he would go. I added the grot as I wanted to represent a rigger. I have no idea if they are useful in the rules but they sound good!

I added to the front another piece from the bike sprue and a few more armour plates to give the driver some armour. I cut the glyphs and plates from plasticard and added them liberally around. It breaks up what is a rather boring vehicle. I would love to get a full squadron of these so I can be a little more adventureous with the next ones. I haven't done any weathering with this one yet as I don't have a base. Once I do I intend adding mud and rust liberally. The effects should be similar to those on the Grotbot from earlier in the week and will really improve the overall look of the buggy.

1st Company Ultramarines

These are something new I painted yesterday. As I was playing Epic I wanted to paint some Epic stuff. So I dug around in the bits box and came up with two marine stands. This one and an assault stand. They are not much use on there own but at least they are fun to paint. Sadly the Space Marine detachments are really inflexible and one can only add vehicles to them. So spare bases of infantry are useless. Maybe I have somewhere the other ones to match them I don't know. I also didn't have a photo of the ones I painted before so I have no idea how I did them. I do remember though that I painted the Ultrmarines Chaper symbol on them and tried to follow the Codex Astartes scheme. I think I have the entire 3rd Company and half of the first as the main part of the force. Hopefully there is more but I don't remember.I have a vague idea that I made most of another company too.

I converted the sergeant here just for fun. I added a small backbanner, a powersword and a purity seal. All of them are made out of plasticard, with the seal made from an amazingly tiny piece of greenstuff. At least the various marine stands can be upgraded with commanders and so I can probably swap this guy in instead of the librarian I suspect I have in the previously painted batch. I don't know how ambitious I can get with conversions. These models are tiny and surprisingly detailed. I don't think I could do anything that would really be good. I would love to convert some of my Rhinos into Razorbacks as I don't want to buy the metal ones. I can't imagine it being too easy though. The problem for me is the guns. Making the barrels causes me massive headaches as I can't get them to look quite right. It is why I made the Grotbot

I tried out an experimental basing scheme on these as I want to do something desert like. All of my armies essentially feature the same basing scheme with some variations. The forest scheme I use for my Hordes armies is just a fancy version of what I use on everything. Even the orks have the same though I put scrap metal pieces and rubble on their bases. I went with Baneblade Brown as a basecoat. Yellow desert bases always looked wrong to me. I also only put sand in a few spots. I did make the mistake of 'cow-patching' it. Next time I will try to scatter some single bits around the base a little better so that the flatter areas blend somewhat with the patches of sand. It is hard to get a good basing material for 6mm miniatures. The standard stuff makes them look like they are buried almost to the ankles while the smaller sized stuff just doesn't paint up well. I am going to experiment with a plaster and sand mix to see how that comes out. I will put the result up here so you can see what I did and copy it if any of them turns out good.

The Harowing of Kastorel-Novem

Today I will be playing my first game of Epic:Aarmageddon and I am really looking forward to it. I have been playing since Space Marine when all that we used was counters made for the purpose from a sheet in White Dwarf. I have a vague idea that they were for the force organisation rather than playing with but they were the perfect size and we had no money. Tonight is a test game to see if we can complete one in two to three hours. I am playing with Owen from Farfaraway.org. We have limited gaming time and we want to make sure we can get a game complete of an evening. If so we will embark on a short camapign for which I have started to prepare a map:



I want to base the campaign on some background already somewhat explored by Forgeworld in their Imperial Armour Vol.8. That book covers an Imperial Raid on Kastorel-Novem a world recently conquered by the Orks. I wanted to play through the inital invasion. I am basing the games somewhat on Fall Gelb from World War Two. I haven't put too much work into it just yet, no point if we can't easily get through the games. I don't know how representative the scenarios will be on what actually took place but I will try! The evacuation of the planet will be Dunkirk for example. I will be taking control of the Orks while Owen commands the Imperium.

I have two armies for Epic:Armageddon; Orks and Ultramarines. Both are at home in Ireland so I won't be doing much with them in the near future. I do have some bits and pieces here for the Orks so I may begin to paint them and show them here. It would be nice to get them done. The Ultramarines are finished from what I remember but the Orks have nothing more than an undercoat.

Grotbot... exterminate!

Time passes quickly. I can't believe it has been four months since I last posted. I have been painting albeit slowly. Here is something fun I finished recently, a Grotbot.I have been painting a lot of Ork stuff recently. As to why I am really not sure. I haven't played 40k since the start of the 3rd edition. I have been playing since Rogue Trader but fantasy took over and I have only rarely ventured back into the 41st millenium. I still love Orks though and I have a huge amount of them lying around in various stages of completion. Mainly I have been updating the units I painted before. They needed some tidying up and detail work. They still won't be winning any competitions but they are looking much better now.

I created the Grotbot firstly as a Stompa. I built the body and then realised that it was slightly out of scale. I then added some 40k shoots and a gretchin pilot. A little bit more work and this is what I ended up with. As to what it is exactly in game terms I have no idea. It is the result of leaving too much useful scrap around the grot tents maybe. I painted it up in the yellow scheme of most of my army. I added a moon symbol as I rarely use it even though I should. As this guy has a base I weathered him up. I haven't really done this with my vehicles as without a base I would just end up picking them up via the panelling and smudging the weathering. I think the rust effect works out well on the yellow but not so much on the blue.

I have a huge amount of work to put up from my break in posting so I intend doing that over the coming weeks. Hopefully I can get back into a positive blogging habit again! You can expect a lot of Orks and also some Circle or Orboros stuff to come.