Ultramarine the Movie

Is it any good?

Well I'm going to say yes it is. Am I Bias? Yes I'm bound to be!

I remember as a teenager leafing through White Dwarf, issue 92 I think, and I was blown away at the launch of 40K Rogue Trader. 20 Years later and someone has finally based a film on it! Great!

The film itself isn't very strong story-wise but it is enough to carry it along. Characters are generally weak but not so much that you want them to die. The animation is quite clunky in places but you'd have to be a real pedant to let it bother you.

I'm making it sound like a mediocre film aren't I. Well it is but I still like it.

Why?

Simple.

The clatter of a heavy bolter, the bobbing whoosh of a scouting landspeeder and the rocket burn of a thunderhawk dropping planetward from a huge marine battle barge. All are the sort of things that bring the game to life for us. This film brings them to life.

It has been a long wait but I think it was worth it.

I hope it paves the way for more.

FoW continues!

Some more (slow) progress with my FoW germans. I've painted three snipers before any other infantry in order to get a feel for painting camo on figures at this scale. Not brilliant but it will definately do!

Official German Camo Schemes....

....are right out of the window.

I've decided to paint my FoW Germans in all sorts of camo schemes which rely more on my mood at the time of painting than any real historical inspiration. More photos to follow but here is one of my Panzer IVs.

Tiger to follow!

;-)

Oi - Stop Shovin at the Back!

Now that the Daemons are done (well ok nearly done) I needed a new project. So, so tempted to get my Dark Eldar going but decided that since I have 3000 points (old book) already up and running that I can use that for now.

So it's time to clear the shelves.

That means either Orks, Wolves, Eldar or Warmachine. The Nids have gone to that great bring and buy in the sky and back to GW for changing into Dark Eldar.

Warmachine: not yet.
Wolves: don't fancy power armour.
Eldar: not going to happen and as it is Evil Monkey has decided to he wants to do Eldar alongside his new Blood Angels (chip off the old block: I'm so proud). So he's already done a test Guardian and has done a good job (must organise photo).

That leaves Orks. I fancy a horde army so with 40 Boyz already undergoing painting I decided to build everything else up. I will spray this once the weather warms up a little!


Here you'll find: 19 Boyz + Nob with Power Klaw, 10 Nobz including Painboy, Big Mek (well who can't resist the KFF?), Warboss, 5 Deffkoptas, 3 Killa Kans (lovely spiky new models), Deff Dread (gorgeous new plastic) and 8 Lootas. This leaves me with a Battlewagon to build and that will be 1750 done. All the Boyz have come from Black Reach swaps and I've still got another 22 left!!


To get to 2000 I expect I'll add some Stormboyz for the fun and some normal Boyz to boost the 3 squads to 25...


Expect Blue Orks on a tabletop near you in the coming months!!

When Daemons come out to play

I want to see a show of hands then for all those that thought my next post would be about the Dark Eldar! Come on. I'm waiting....

.... anyway tough cos they're not even out of their boxes yet. Instead we have the latest additions to my Daemon army featuring all the new plastics (and 1 metal) figures that came out during the heady days of Summer.

So first up are my Pink Horrors:
Now the more astute amongst you may notice that they lack pink pigmentation: well their tongues have a bit of pink so does that count?

Seriously though you didn't expect me to paint them in GW colours did you? Actually to be more accurate they're blue because Tzeentch are based around blue in my Daemon army so I needed these to fit!

Now we have the Horrors with the Changeling:
He's a nice shade of Grey to make him stand out a little but with the same skin tone and metallic blue sheen as the Horrors...

And here he is on his own:

The Seekers of Slaanesh. I ended up with 10 of these because they're lovely. My normal Daemonettes have green hair but frankly that just didn't fit with these and so I went with Warlock Purple hair instead (for the Daemonettes, not me)


And finally, but by no means least, some Bloodcrushers. Loving the plastic as these I can carry without needing weight training!

Really enjoyed painting this lot in between Mafia II and Fallout: New Vegas. Evidently they still need basing but together with an extra Flamer and the Daemon Prince they've added a nice hefty chunk of points and bodycount to my Daemons.

That leaves Masque and Skulltaker to be done and, well, they've fallen foul of me wanting to move on and so will languish in the nearly painted pile.

Next up........... Orks. See bet that got you as well eh?? I want to try and get 500 points done by the end of the year and then get some terrain painted up. I've built the Skyshield and bloody hell that thing is somewhat small deficient.

What I did this weekend....

...very little.

I managed to paint 2 trucks and 4 RSO tractors for my FoW Germans. I'm still not sure what compelled me to start with the transports but painting them was really fun!

I've gone for wacky camo on some of the RSO tractors but trucks are fairly muted.

The Dark Eldar Return

Christmas is early this year.

My favourite 40K Army is back and this time they've done themselves up real well like. Go visit the Games Workshop website to see all of this lot up in lights on the Advance Orders section. I'll wait :-)
Oh you're back eh? Pretty good? I've played Dark Eldar since I first bought 3rd edition back in the summer of 1999 (I'll add the 19 bit there in case any of these youngsters on here start with their smart comments). I've always liked an army that is seen as an underdog and boy the DE sure are.
However, when you nail how to use the army they are currently very lethal and my proudest achievement is probably finishing 2nd and gaining most sporting at a tournie in Cardiff a good few years back: I remember taking a White Scars army apart in 3 turns and at that moment realised how much I'd learnt since losing all my games at the beginning. Learning curve? More like a learning cliff!
And then they went into hibernation. I have used them once in about 4/5 years. Why? Well cos they became samey; some units were unusable in any list (friendly or competative) and I lost interest in an army that I wasn't going to expand.
The units that ended up collecting dust included Grotesques, Mandrakes, Hellions and Scourges. Even Reaver Jetbikes and Warp Beasts weren't seen very often. I do like the Talos though no matter what everyone else says!
So now they're back. My 3000 points are confused by the daylight creeping in to their boxes. It's time to see if I can remember what all the units are. Time to draw back the curtains and see if the DE are as deadly as they used to be.

I've pre-ordered the Codex and a box of Warriors (hey it could have been everything so I did really well!). Now I'm ready for the 6th November. Step aside Guy Fawkes, the real burn in hell merchants are here...

Avanti La Spaghetti!!

So after my recent blitz on Blood Angels, for those who have not yet seen them please look here http://secretgogblog.blogspot.com/ , I decided to clear some of my own backlog next.


So up stepped my Italian desert force.  So far I have assembled all the tanks and heavy AT truck mounted Lancias, and the first 6 MGs and 4 Inf guns.

La Bocage..........c'est Fini!

Yup Bocage is all finished. I might still go back and add some patches of static grass.

Starting the Bocage

Now I've taken the plunge and gotten myself a load of FoW it seems only right to make some scenery so I've started some bases to put hedges on top of to from some bocage.

About 6 foot of the stuff!

I've also based and put together a 15mm Radar station that I got at Colours a few weeks ago. Lovely little model.

Some thoughts on scenery........

I read some time ago the thoughts of one scenery maker who was of the opionion that scenery should never just be a lump that sits blocking LOS. I cna't remember who it was but they instilled in me the ernest belief that the figures should be interacting with the terrain not just edging round it. I'm also of the opinion that if your theme your scenery it, quite obviously, adds an extra narrative element to the games. I tend to approach my scenery making with these things in mind now.

I've had an idea to build some sort of church for some time and when I ended up owing the Silverfox a favour (thanks for the figs Fox!) it struck me that I could combine the urge to unleash this idea along with meeting the promise I had made to Da Fox.

The post I made on the 03/09/10 shows the basic design but I hadn't giving much thought to the roles each piece would fill as a piece of scenery. By roll I mean what impact each one would have upon the game. I came to the conclusion it is important to have some areas that give light cover and difficult terrain tests but not block LOS at all. Others should offer limited LOS blocking for troops but not vehicles and then others should be able to block LOS for both troops and vehicles.

I think the end result actually met these requirements and I think it will lead me to include this requirements in plans for any future sets. Plans? Oh yes.....we have plans!

GoG's Septemberama 2010

Clash of the Titans...or not!

Well this last weekend has seen a whole gammut of activity taking place at the GoG's resident gaming hall..Tea Urns garage!

Here we have Eddie artillery's Howling Griffons taking on the Silverbacks Blood Angels, what a slugging match this turned out to be! The Angels brought Dante and Astorath with them, while the Griffons brought most of their company artillery! The 10 strong Terminator squad going toe to toe with Dante, a Sanguinary Priest and 10 assault marines! The Blood Angels army is a product of the SiverBacks hard work over the last month, painting and building the army pretty much from scratch....all of the painting predominantly having been done with his new airbrush...obviously the finer detail has been done with the brush, but the majority has been air brushed! A very fine job indeed my friend, Astorath's wings are a real work of art, having a real look about them!! Fantastic.....He's also got a Drop pod and a couple of Baal Predators in the army that have been weathered and detailed with the airbrush and I intend to get these on the Blog in the next few days, they have to be seen to be believed!

The Terminator squad took quick refuge in one of the burned out ruins!









One of our most proficient scenery makers, Eddie Artillery has quietly been working on a project foe the Silverfox. This is a themed piece of a bombed out Cathedral, there are several pieces to this model, all the sections are modular allowing the terrain piece to be either a relatively small piece, or stretching to encompass pretty much the whole table top!

During the early part of the weekend Tea Urns Chaos Marine army was duking it out with Silverfox's Daemon army.

Here you can see the lay out of some of the terrain pieces.

One of our junior members CJ, has just finished a week in Lenton with his Father, the Silverfox and during this week they both undertook the painting and modelling masterclass, CJ has now got a fine Imperial Guard army in the making...My Ork army took on the might of this army in my first game, and a right royal ding dong it turned out to be! The Manticore is very nasty!!

Overall three games a piece and 2,000 pts a side saw a very busy day for all, the overall winner being Tea Urn with his Wordbearers army. Hopefully this will get finished in the near future as it has a lot of beautifully converted models within it's ranks. The arrival of little Urness has mean't that Fatherly duties have taken a president obviously, but hopefully he will find the time to pick up a brush and get a unit at a time finished!

Watch this space!!!

Landing in a Battlefield near you

With one day to go until our September Saturday kicks in I've completed my Slaanesh DP (well ok completed apart from the basing... sheesh so picky:-)).

Anyway I wanted to try out mixing paints on this guy and because GW go for the Heroic Size models with bulging muscles I've gone for large swathes of deepened recesses to try and exaggerate the build even further.

I think under normal lighting conditions that he looks fine, up close I'm not too sure. I'll let you chaps out there in the Blogoverse be the judge of that.

Getting a decent picture also proved painful...

So front on:
The skin is Hormagaunt Purple, then a Leviathan Purple Wash, then a 2:1 mix of Hormagaunt Purple & Space Wolf Grey and a final 1:1 mix of the previous combo. I didn't quite mix enough so some areas are a little sparse but hopefully those are hidden away!

The Horns have Warlock Purple mixed in and I even ended up using good old Tentacle Pink at certain points.

The wings...
I wanted the membranes to be toned down so that the pinky bone stands out more. The membranes are Liche Purple, Leviathan Purple Wash, Azurman Blue Wash, Regal Blue, Mordian Blue, Ultramarines Blue, Enchanted Blue and a final Azurman Blue wash. Phew.

The Sword...
I played around with this and painted it Regal Blue then Ultramarines Blue around the lightning design. Enchanted Blue and then Ice Blue were painted into the Lightning. This was a little bright and distracted from the model so I then washed it again with good old Azurman Blue.

Once again I've enjoyed experimenting and I can't wait to see if all the time spent painting him is worth it when he takes to the field of battle on Saturday.

Hmmm the above pictures are not really doing it for me so here's one taken under normal lighting conditions and from a more leisurely distance...
Is it Saturday yet????

You can teach an old fox new tricks...

Good day to one and all. For those that know me I've been doing this hobby for more years than I care to mention and have improved the collecting, building and playing sides over those many years.

You'll note that painting is missing from that list. Although it has probably improved I don't think I've ever really knuckled down to learning painting and this was something I wanted to address. You see I have so many armies now that speed painting a new one doesn't appeal so much: what I really want to do is take my time and paint up a new and improved army. The next one to be done are the Space Wolves.

During the Summer my son and I spent a week at Warhammer World on what they call a Hobby Camp. You basically spend the whole week from 9 to 5 every day doing your hobby: so you'll build, paint and play. You have access to the staff who will show you how to do whatever it is you want to do. So I decided I really wanted to take my 2D painting and turn it 3D.

My Wolf Scouts won me a Best Painted Unit award at the end of the week as they liked the improvements I'd shown - that was special! I will post them but they're not yet finished and so you'll have to wait.

In the meantime I then decided I needed to practice what I learnt and so the cowboys you see in the pictures below have been painted in the last 2 weeks.

So what's new? Layering. Note the shading in the trousers and shirts - done with layering primarily rather than washes.
Highlighting - although I knew the concept I'd never studied the colour hierarchy. Here you'll note highlights on the trench coats, jackets and hats primarily.
Strong Colours - I've used the red shirts on all the models to tie them together as a posse rather than a bunch of individuals. Up to now red has always been a pain to paint for me but with layering and working up to Blood Red it's so much easier!
This shot gives a better view of the hat highlighting. The bases are a simple sand washed with Devlan Mud and then drybrushed lightly with Graveyard Earth.
One of the biggest things I learnt was watering down the paints. I know this sounds so simple but I've never really bothered before as I wanted the one-coat solution. I was taught how to water the paint in the lid so that you don't need a tile and when you've finished the watered paint falls into the pot thus keeping it fresh and also keeping the wastage down. So these models are all done using thinned paints as well.

Some of these pictures blurred a bit - must get used to the camera.

All figures are from Black Scorpion.
5 Indians including the Outlaw Chief.
5 Mexicans
5 Outlaws

And there you have it. I also learnt how to mix colours so expect that on my next paint job - the Daemon Prince pictured previously. Oh and I will be experimenting with faces more soon as well.

I was asked the other day what the one best tip was that I learnt during my week at GW HQ. Having had a chance to think about it I have to say that the best thing for me is the fact I've been given the confidence to experiment and push myself with painting. I'm energised again!!