Busy! Busy! Busy!

So…..its Urn’s fault.

Epic. Out of nowhere.

Urn’s fault. I mean it usually is his fault but he did a bad thing this time.

He unleased me upon the world of Epic.

Little did he know that I have had a hankering to play Epic for ….well….decades. Since it first came out. In my teenage years I had a brief experience with it that lasted long enough for me to fall in love with the visual impact of it shortly before the owner of the grand multitude of wonder proved himself to be an utter tool. One dead titan and he went off to sulk in front of the TV. End of game.

Never got to play it again. I owned a copy of Space Marine and even got round to painting some of the marines up in Ultramarine colours. Then it went away in the loft. Lonely and forgotten.

Until Urn awoke the beast.

So now I’ve brought more than I should have and must restrain myself from buying more on Ebay.

Look what you did Urn!!

The main appeal of Epic for me lies in the Horus Heresy era especially as I was reading White Dwarf during the years when it was full of great epic fluff. As such I decided to echo my 28mm Heresy stuff at the 6mm level. I’ve got Iron Warriors and Iron Hands, the latter of which are in a non-standard colour scheme to match the fluff I have for my 28mm force. I thought I’d start with a couple of test pieces given that it has been a long time since I last painted any Epic.

Iron Warriors

Iron Hands

I was pretty pleased with the testers and proceeded to prep the Iron Warriors force as they would be quicker to get to the table than the Iron Hands.

 Whilst all that has been taking place more buying has been occurring and Urn, Junt and I have been egging each other on. Seeing the super-heavy tanks brought back memories of that short game from so many years ago and I just had to have some!

Some of these are for Junt and Urn. Not all mine honest! 

Now I do like to have all the scenery in place prior to getting a game to the table and seeing that the box sets had loads of buildings in them I couldn’t see that there was much else to add in order to get us started. I have a gaming mat, hills and lots of buildings so the only thing missing was trees. Thankfully I’d ordered a load for the Dystopian Wars games that we’ve been planning so they just needed basing. Once again a test was in order. I used a small piece of black foam core and coating it in sand. Once dry I painted it in mottled browns and greens and punched small holes to fit the trees which were just shoved in with a blob of PVA on the stem. Worked a treat.

So this weekend I knocked up some more! Should be enough….for now. I still have a couple of hundred trees so it’ll be easy to do more if they are needed.

In between working on the 6mm Epic stuff I have been pushing ahead with more 28mm Horus Heresy stuff as well. At home I’ve been doing a little bit on some add-ins for my Mechanicum force and some more Iron Hands…

…and at work I have finished doing the gold trim on the 66 Iron Warriors.

 Lots still to do but they are progressing.

Now I need to get a wiggle on because on the 10th March I'm due to have finished 90 of this years target of 360 figures and I've only got 56 done. Plenty in the pipe line but I need to get some finished!!

TTFN!

Games 12 to 15

Gaming has slowed a little recently but we’re only in week nine of the year and I’ve managed to get fourteen games in already. Nice to be ahead at this time as I’m sure in will slow down during the summer months.

Game 12

Off to Lenton we went. I trailed behind the rest of the GoGs who got a game in on Friday but I couldn’t escape until Saturday morning. I headed up early and was really excited to see AoS at a bigger scale as I’d only really seen it at a small game level.

I played the Silverback and his awesome undead army of DDDOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!

Horrible. Just horrible.

The Mourngul in his army was literally a nightmare causing me now end of problems before I finally managed to drag it down using reinforcements I’d had to summon because the pasting my troops were taking. 

Once I’d finally dropped that swine I was lucky enough to be able to move forward to threaten his necromancers and then it was all over for the undead as I could out summon them and there were still some big toothy dinosaurs roaming around.

Awesome game and a really good first proper game of AoS. Ta Silverback!

Game 13

The time was getting on once we’d finished our first games, milled about in shops and generally managed to get ourselves in order. We resolved to play a four way battle between The Silverback, BFG, Urn and myself. I think it was about 1000 points each but it was a throw for fun so it didn’t matter…….

…until Urn started firing his Dark Elf bolt thrower thingy at me! After that the gloves were off!

At which point he gave me a shoeing prior to the BFG joining in. Meanies!

The Silverback won that game as he kept the actual objectives in mind and managed to grab the most sectors on the field.

Game 14

Back to X-Wing at Junt’s house for game 14. We wanted to make sure we were playing through the missions as the last few games had been throw down battles and it is always nice to mix up the play so it doesn’t get stale. Urn had suggested the satellite mission from the rule book so we gave it a try.

At 100 points it seems somewhat skewed in favour of the rebels because they can get reinforcements. This said I didn’t need them as I didn’t lose a single ship. No shields left and some damage but generally healthy compared to Vadar and his squadron of Imperial Lackies.

I got lucky on the dice in this game with a couple of rounds of pretty tasty shooting. Oh and it didn’t hurt that Junt was playing dodgems not X-Wing. J

TTFN

30k odds and ends and AoS Dark Elf artillery

As the title said, a few bits and pieces from me, still concentrating on my themes for this year, AoS and 30k.

First up, 30k.  I must confess a slightly unhealthy obsession with the Contemptor class dreadnought.  This is the 6th one I've painted up and I want more..... this one is a plastic one from the Betrayal at Calth set but I wanted to convert it to match the Thousand Sons I started a few weeks ago so I did a head swap with a 40k Daemon Prince Magnus head.

Magnus was the Thousand Sons Primarch/head honcho in 30k times and as he turned to Chaos and survived, the Chaos gods turned him into a Daemon Prince and so he is still alive as a massive scary chap in 40k.

The sword is also from the Magnus kit (it's a dagger for Magnus to give you an idea of his size!) and there's a pleasing symmetry for me in using the future Thousand Sons kits to convert the 30k Dreadnought.

Loads of decals from the frankly brilliant decal sheet that Forgeworld produce.

Next up are a couple of Apothecaries for my Salamander 30k legion.

I started the Salamanders a couple of years ago but never got around to finishing the apothecaries.  One had a metal backpack which made him overbalance, and so I shoved them in a box in a huff until I recently got of my backside and bought a plastic one and finished them in two days!  So much the way of wargaming toys, ignored for 2 years, finished in 2 days once properly started...

These chaps help keep the legionnaries alive and when they can't, they harvest their "gene-seed" - the organs that make them more (and less) than human.  The shoulder pads and arm equipment are from 40k marines, but they work really well with the Mk IV bodies, heads and legs.  I went with white panels to mark them out, but I suspect, given the treachery of Horus' mob, that this will only mark them as juicy targets rather than save them under any war conventions.

These are Dark Elf repeating bolt throwers, which have been around in one form or another since the start of WFB.

These are the newest versions and are made of the big mistake material Finecast.....

The only benefit was being able to use a hairdryer to straighten out the bits that had gone wobbliest.... but if they just made them from plastic they wouldn't have gone wobbly in the first place!

Still, I do like the design and here's hoping they can skewer plenty of enemies.

Lastly, this chap from the Silver Tower boardgame.

He is a "Stormcast Eternal" - the new race GW shoehorned into AoS for all the fans of space marines to buy.  He's a big chap (40mm base) as GW like to bulk these guys up.

Took me ages to get around to him as we've played through (and really rather enjoyed) the Silver Tower campaign already.  I kept the armour and cloak cold colours and went for a nice warm topknot to finish him off.

Here be Dinos!!

I’ve finished the next tranche of Seraphon which consists of the heavy hitters and support units. I’ve still got some cavalry and late arriving troops to add but these will bolster my forces enough for the weekend in Lenton.

Troglodon

  

Carnosaurs and their riders

Bastilodons

Kroxigor

I also finished six bases of snakes, a razerdon and a salamander but cunningly forgot to take a piccie of them. This adds another 19 figures for my tally and means that I’ve painted 56 figures this year so far. I have fallen a little behind but I’m confident that I’ll be able to catch up given what is in the pipeline.

A teaser….

  

Now I’m off to pack for Nottingham!

TTFN

Games 8, 9, 10 & 11

Game 8 was another fairly easy game of Zombiecide. This was mission number 9 and we stomped them good! 

Game 9 however was X-Wing!

Junt had four different Tie Fighter including one of the new defenders. All a bit unknown to me. I had the Millennium Falcon, a YT2400 & B-Wing.

The combination of the shields, high hull values and two ships with 360 guns proved too much and the Ties folded quickly.

Soooo…

For game 10

The Empire sent in the Decimator, a Tie with a cloaking device and one more fighter as well.

I swapped out the Millennium Falcon for an E-Wing and took a different YT2400. Those along with the B-Wing squared off vs the Imperials.

I concentrated early one with the Tie fighers whilst the Decimator was still closing and some lucky early shots killed the  Ties. After that it was just a matter of chipping away at the big one. Still took me a while and the YT2400 was all I had left at the end. The Decimator is horrible!

 Game 11 was Zombiecide mission 10 and apart from a worrying conga line developing……..

…..we really didn’t have too much trouble. Zombiecide is going away now for awhile but it’ll be back……with add ons!

TTFN

Painted Horus Heresy 30k Thousand Sons

One of my first GW games was the original Epic boxed set (entitled "Space Marine") and that was all about the Horus Heresy and was the first we'd really learned about it in detail.  Ever since then, I've really enjoyed the Heresy setting and I've decided to start my third legion..... the Thousand Sons.

 First up, the backbone of any legion - 20 tactical space marines with bolters.

One of the things I've always liked about doing fantasy and sci-fi armies is that you can put your personal mark on them (within reason) as there is no historical colour or uniform guide.  I've also always loved converting models to make them my own and the GW range is unparalleled in it's ability to provide parts for conversions.  To represent the Thousand Sons I added some pieces to their helmets from some High Elf archers, bought years ago for another project.

The Thousand Sons have an Ancient Egyptian vibe to them as well as being scholars and I felt this suited them and made them different from the other legions.

The decals all come form the fantastic sheet produced by Forgeworld, one shoulder pad is the legion symbol, the other is a rather fetching Egyptian god inspired head.

Next up are two Predator MBTs.

I added a crewman standing tall of the top in MkIV armour to ground them in the 30k universe as the models are the newer type, probably only just coming into service near the end of the Heresy (and also about 1/5 of the price of the official 30k ones from Forgeworld!)

In order to make them feel Thousand Sons, I added a bunch of decals and also some golden half globes with blue flame coming out as nothing says warrior mystics like blue flame does.  Sort of like the 30k equivalent of the lava lamp.  These are from the new GW Magnus Primarch figure, so quite fitting in the time travel fashion.  I also went for hieroglyphics on the turrets instead of numbers to denote the tanks.  These two are snake and bird head of the scarab squadron.

And finally three dreadnoughts. 

For those who don't play 30k/40k, dreadnoughts exist to house what's left of warriors too destroyed to be rebuilt with cybernetic parts.  The leftovers are encased in amniotic fluid in the middle of it and hardwired into the systems.  These husks can never leave their dreadnoughts, but they can continue to fight.

I converted each of the fronts, but the heaviest conversion uses a mask from the "Tomb Kings" range, an army of undead based in GW's equivalent of ancient Egypt.  At first I thought it might be too much, but if you're going to fight on in a coffin covered in guns when by rights you should be dead, you might as well do it in a fully pimped out ride.

One of my mates is a rabid Space Wolf fan, so I decided on this legion to be ready when he gets around to painting all the 30k stuff he's bought.  I consider this the prod he clearly needs to get going!