I think I saw a ship sir!

Well it's been a while! Tonight I have something a little different; Uncharted Seas has set sail. I originally bought these back at Warfare 08.... yes indeed. I'm between 40K armies at the moment so thought I'd get on with some other systems (well I have to appease the wife!)

Warmachine is ongoing and some pics to follow of my Cryx. Also I'm about to embark on my new Cowboy Posse which has also been sat waiting for a couple of years...

So here we have the Dragon Lords Battleship...
... and Frigates....
Here's the starter fleet (10 ships, 6 frigates, 3 cruisers, 1 battleship)
Orc Raiders for the Evil Monkey. Yes this game needs you to roll high on dice; Evil Monkey can still roll 6s like they're going out of fashion. I've no chance right?

Note all the guns at the front of the ship.... guess how Orcs approach their enemy?

Battleship...
The Fleet...
Sailing into a port near you soon. If the game's any good expect more ships soon!

Right - where's those Cowboys???

Abaddon... but with a twist.

Well, third post in three days - which tends to pretty much be the way I work to be honest!

Ok, so, from my post below you'll have seen that I made up 7 terminators from the AoBR termies, plus some bits I scavenged plus some parts from the Chaos terminator Lord....

....So you're probably wondering what happened to the chaos lord, right?

Piccies at the top, as I turned him into Abaddon the Despoiler!

Now, I love the Jes Goodwin sculpt of Abaddon. As with all of Jes's stuff, it's top quality and bursting with character. He used to even be a little bigger than the old metal terminators, which is absolutely right and proper in my eyes. Then GW brought out the spiffing new plastic terminators, which were a little larger and suddenly Abaddon was somewhat on the puny side.

I'd bought the Abaddon figure ages ago and turned him into a lightning-claw-wielding champion of a slaaneshi terminator unit. So I ended up with the talon of Horus, Abaddon's head and his daemon weapon in my bits box. With the lovely new plastic termi lord, I'd have been made not to put the two together, right?

So, I started with a rather nice display base I'd picked up from Heresy miniatures a good while ago that matched the flagstones of my chaos army and had a step to allow abaddon to stand out. Some pinning of the legs allowed him to just be stepping up to the top step. I then chopped down two chaos terminator arms to take the talon and daemon weapon and stuck them in appropriate poses. I was intending to use the original head, but it felt a little small on the new plastic model, so I used the rather spiffing bare head from the lord box (I like the expression a lot) and just pinned abddon's top knot to it instead.

The termies in the post below will now be Black legion ones to form their Lord's bodyguard and hey presto, a whole load of terminators! Quite how I'll fit them in a carry case is a little beyond me right now, but that's a problem for another day :)

Another project I'd been meaning to do for ages....

....was turning my AoBR termies into Chaos termies. I am something of a trader when it comes to GW stuff lying around, and from my box of AoBR I ended up left with the 5 termies, plus the free one I got from White Dwarf.

So, on the basis that if I didn't do something to fit them into an existing army I'd make a new Space marine army just to use them (I'm a wargamer - that makes perfectly logical sense to me!) i decided to make them Chaos termies. So, I'd bought the Chaos terminator lord some time ago to build a lord and so I decided to use some of the weapon options from that with these dudes.

In addition to that, there are various bits from other chaos models and some scratch built chaos symbols with arrows cut from the metal around the top of a wine bottle and some tiny nuts and bolts I bought from Atenocenti ages ago.

I decided to go with non-terminator looking heads, as I think this really marks them out as not regular terminators and went for the spiky bits on the shoulders to enhance that impression.

Along the way I managed to build one to go atop a pair of Dark Angel termi

legs that come on the veteran sprue (and hid the back with the lord's cloak) and so I ended up with 7 terminators!

In addition to being a trader, I'm also a bits box raider, so special thanks goes to Nick for the trade/lend/theft of the leftovers from all his chaos terminators.

First post in I don't know how long.....

...So I'd better make it a good 'un, right?

Ok, so whilst my hobby time has been rather cut down by the birth of my daughter (my best miniature yet, even if I do say so myself!), I did manage to get started on my Ork army right before she was born.

"What Ork army?" I hear you cry "I thought you'd decided not to start new armies because they take too much time and you have enough already!"

Yes, i did indeed say all that. But in my defense, I am a wargamer and am therefore totally incapable of resisting anything even vaguely shiny. Even if it's plastic, and that stuff don't shone much.....

Anyhoo - here are the fruits of my early labour. I decided that as I was intending to pile into combat a lot (yippee!) I should try to make the units easily distinguishable. The Ork Clan regime was my saviour here as I decided each mob would come from a different clan. Different colour schemes weren't quite enough, so I made sure that the headgear on the first three units was also different, so top-knots for snake-bites, bare heads for evil suns and helmets for goffs (I also added some little goblin shields to the snake-bites to emphasis their clan and these were small enough to be bucklers as opposed to full on medieval shields). Spray them the appropriate colour, add some Knarloc Green and metal and a couple of other colours and there they were! 12 each of the snake bites and evil suns for Trukk mobs and 20 goffs for a battlewagon mob, or the start of a 30 man walking mob.

For support I changed the arms on three old-school killer kans as the triple joints looked a bit rubbish imo. So, one joint less was more in my eyes and after covering the "shoulder" with orky bits to hide the new join, they only needed a quick red spray and metal and bits and power cables picked out and they were ready to go!

Hopefully coming soon are my chaos termies and then onto more Orks - gotta love 'em :)

Tyranid Test Infestation

As you all know I have an inability to keep away from starting new armies; during an email chain today I worked out that I have 11 painted armies totalling around 25,000 points. So that's enough right??

er no. A while back I swapped my Guard that never happened with my son for his Nids that never happened. I put them on the back burner. Then I managed to acquire a cheap Trygon and suddenly I fancied trying a paint scheme out on the Nids.

But not just any old paint scheme. Oh no. Not for me. I set myself a challenge: is it possible to create a paint scheme entirely using the Citadel Washes? Well judge for yourselves because the Genestealer pictured here is just that.

Spray Skull White. Then a layer of Thraka Green. Then 2 layers of Gryphonne Sepia over the skin. A 2nd coat of Thraka Green over the armour. Finally a coat of Leviathan Purple over the claws. Done. He took longer to dry between coats than he did to paint.

What do you think?

Transfer Season now open for Shrike Army

It all started last Saturday. Twas a lovely day. Sun was shining and I was on my way down South to have a couple of games of 40K against the Silverback. A splendid way to spend a Saturday...

... so whilst Evil Monkey was let loose on "Left for Dead 2" we prepared to see if Shrike and his friends could stand up against the Fatecrusher list. The answer is no. The first battle we managed a draw although that was more thanks to the never ending scenario and my Land Speeders than it was any skill on Shrike's part.

The second game ended 4-1 on obj to the Daemons. End of Turn 5 we had a draw but it was not to be this time. So this got me thinking: why am I always playing for the draw? Why isn't the army hard enough to make the Daemons play for the draw?

This was the army (2,000 points):
Shrike
Chaplain in Termie Armour
6 x Assault Termies in LRC
10 x Marines w/plasma cannon, meltagun and pfist in Razorback
10 x Marines w/missile launcher, meltagun and pfist in Razorback
10 x Marines w/lascannon, meltagun and pfist in Razorback
10 x Assault Marines w/Thunder Hammer and 2 plasma pistols
2 x Land Speeder w/Hvy Bolter & Assault Cannon

2 Hard hitting units. 30 marines in vehicles behind them and skimmers bouncing around. So during the drive home whilst Evil monkey slept and dreamt of zombies I considered what was lacking.

Shrike - he's good, not game breaking and gives Fleet. Does tend to run away: can make him fearless by adding a Chaplain but, erm, no. Pass
Chaplain - gives fearless to Assault Termies but can be insta-killed and is weak. Fail
Assault Termies - fabulous unit. hard hitting and with fleet they are scary. Pass
Marines - 30 is a good number: gives me 6 scoring units. Power Fist, Meltaguns in Razors are excellent. Missile Launcher and Larry Lascannon are good. Plasma Cannon is pants. Misses too often. Pass in general; Fail on plasma cannon
Assault Marines - good unit with Shrike. Infiltrating or Outflank are cool. Bit weak at times when they hit but Thunder Hammer is good fun. Plasma Pistols are rubbish. Invariably 1 overheats and most of the time they don't even get to fire them. Pass in general; Fail on plasma pistols
Land Speeders - oh dear. Ideally I like units to have a job: these boys can't decide if they're light vehicle killers or infantry killers. They also have to move only 6" in order to use both guns. Not good - I want them zinging around and offering a bigger threat radius. Very good, however, at last minute land grabs. Pass for missions; Fail for job well done
Land Raider Crusader - love this. Drops off Termies and then proceeds to annoy the heck out of everyone. Pass

I decided that I needed another hard hitting unit that can appear in the enemy deployment zone on turn 1 alongside Assault Termies in LRC and Shrike + Assault Marines. To get this unit I needed 170 points.... so how do you get 170 points without losing any units?

Like this....
Remove Chaplain and replace with Chaplain Cassius. He's Toughness 6. 6!! He gives me everything the other one does and more. Ok he's only power armour but then most attacks against him are power weapons so that's no issue. He's also 5 points cheaper.

Drop Plasma Cannon marine and replace with Missile Launcher. Save 5 points.

Cassius is made up of Space Marine Commander and Space Wolf bits.

Drop 1 Assault Termie. 5 or 6 in the unit are neither here nor there. So lose one with LClaws. 40 points saved.

Drop 2 Assault Marines with Plasma Pistols. Save 66 points.

Drop 2 Land Speeders with Assault Cannon/Hvy Bolter. Replace with Land Speeders with Multi-Meltas. Save 60 points.

One on the left is an old one handed to me during an exchange with the Silverback years ago. One on the right is a new one and boy do they go together much better now they've been remoulded? Yes. They do! Multi-Meltas give me a 36" threat radius. Tank Hunters or Monstrous Creature killers.

So that's 176 points saved. So now I can introduce my brand new Ironclad Dreadnought in a Drop Pod. Yummy.


Yes that is a Furioso Dread with Warmachine bits attached. He wasn't being used anymore so a quick repaint and he's ready for action.

Drop Pod stolen from the Space Wolf battleforce; have to replace that one day! Nice Statue? Big ain't it?? Statue is work in progress.

So that's it then. Brand new 2,000 point Shrike army:
Shrike
Chaplain Cassius
5 Assault Termies
Ironclad Dread in Drop Pod
10 Marines (PF, ML, Meltagun) & Razorback
10 Marines (PF, ML, Meltagun) & Razorback
10 Marines (PF, Larry, Meltagun) & Razorback
8 Assault Marines (Thunder Hammer)
2 Land Speeders w/Multi Meltas
Land Raider Crusader

All the above added in 5 days since I started this on Monday. Spiffing. Now let's see how they deal with nasty stuff!

Daemons and the future

So here are the latest batch of Daemons to make the battlefield a pretty and pleasing place.  The silverfox has already been in contact with these little beauties and loves them.  In fact he loves them sooo much, he came back for more.

The scheme couldn't have been simpler.  Army Painter red spray, Dwarf Bronze on the Jugger and sword.  Pick out some small bits of detail and then Purple Wash on the Bronze & Black Wash on the Bloodletter. A quick before and after shoot for you to see the difference!

So with regards the future, just take a look at the new NCP carpark that has filled up my shelves.....