GoG X is upon us!

I’ve decided to go out on a limb and branch out with a brand new army!

“Leaf it out!” I here you cry!

Sorry

I realise that you didn’t log on just fir me to wattle on with puns.

J

So….I made the mistake of mentioning that the GoG blog was nearly ten years old. After a flurry of texts I found myself staring down the possibility of a brand new army. AoS is much more favoured these days than 40K so it seemed natural for the next Tale of X gamers to be an AoS thing this time round.

Who to choose?

I’ve got quite a few other projects going on so I didn’t want a horde army with tons to paint in it. I also fancied painting something a bit different and one force stood out as one that no one else seemed to have already.

I saw the Sylvaneth and they instantly caught my eye as they offer what looks like a unique painting experience as they are very different to pretty much everything else in terms of textures and details.

So the Sylvaneth have become my next AoS force. Hence the trees puns. Six months to do 2000 pts so I have to get cracking. I had a look at the army list before buying (a first) and as it turns out the starter sets really are a great place to start with these fellas. So a few of those and some other bits and bobs soon took me to 2000pts (gulp!)

I placed my order with Element Games and true to what the other GoGs said, they proved themselves to be well priced and delivery was quick. I’m just waiting on the arrival of some other hobby supplies and these will get started…..well once I’ve finished my tray of terminators. 

Quite a stack to get through.

It always sounds so simple at the beginning…… doesn’t it.

TTFN

Wolves and Deamons and Un-dead....oh my!

 Hello,

So I'm new and this is my first post, but given that I was introduced to war gaming by Eddie Artillery at Junior school over 30 years ago I've been around for a while.

As a typical gamer I have a limited attention span and far too many projects on the go at all times so a challenge that focuses me to finish something is always welcome. For AoS I usually play Un-dead, now my Skeleton archers buffed by a Wight-King giving me 90 odd dice are great but maybe I should do something else, something different, Chaos maybe, Order or Destruction?

Immediately I thought that this would suit my Wolfen project. I always liked the Confrontation Wolfen, great sculpts, a different race to the Elf/Dwarf/Orc fantasy stereotype and they are frecking giant man wolves, so whats not to like. I thought that maybe I could proxy wolves for Stormcasts to get an Order aligned army in but after much deliberation I went with Beastclaw Raiders. Not only are they similar sizes but the look of the figures kind of match the snowy northern wastes style of the Ogors. It would also give me an excuse to do snow bases, something I've wanted to do since I started a Game of Thrones Zombie, John Snow North of The Wall project that I haven't finished yet.

I already have 2 of the Wrath of Kings Goritsi Kickstarters from Ebay and a couple of specials packs from the badly run CMON Black Friday sale, along with a few Confrontation originals from Ebay, and I have a set of Werwulf archers coming from Meirce Miniatures latest Kickstarter as well. All of those coupled with a Beastclaw start collecting set (great value) and I'm most of the way there. One more start collecting set and that's 2000 points. So £40 to spend and I get to finish something I've been planning for several years and play with it.... brilliant.

Then somebody mentioned going to Lenton!!!!

Now I can't use CMON and Rackham figures at Warhammer World as its a purely GW place, which I get and as I want to go I'm going to have to pick something else to do, but what.

I have a Mournghul, some Terrorghiests and Varghiests to finish off for the Un-dead, add a Vampire Lord on a dragon and it would be done, but again that's just adding to my Un-dead horde. Really not a lot of work needed to finish them off, maybe too easy to be a challenge, but again only a £40 cost.

Lastly (well not lastly actually, I have some Bretonnians kicking around somewhere as well as 2 long OOP dark elf chariots that would go great with a Dreadlord on a dragon or 2, and High Elves, Chaos Marauders, Beastmen, Gargants, Skaven, Lizard men etc but they'd all cost too much to finish so weren't seriously considered) .......so lastly there is a Deamons of Khorne force. 30 Bloodletters a Deamon Prince, Skull Cannon a kit bashed Bloodthirster from those bits left over on the sprue after you've finished making one. I need a bit more for this, another Bloodthirster 10 more Bloodletters.....Its not Un-dead, its Lenton compliant but its not my first (or even second) choice, so what to do.

Well really there is only one thing that you can do given these circumstances......that's right I'm going to do all three. 1000 points a month, easy.

Wish me luck.

The blog gets all growed up!

We're hobby butterflies, seemingly utterly incapable of keeping our minds on one thing..... so a passing comment from Eddie about how the blog was TEN FREAKING YEARS OLD led us down a meandering path of increasing geek-based excitement and has meant we've agreed to mark the occasion with something awesome..... as Britney might say, we've decided to "hit me baby one more time"!

The blog was started to chronicle us getting a new army painted from the large amount of unpainted figures we all had on our shelves of holding.  I can happily confirm that we now all have far, far more stuff on our shelves than we did back then and so we're going to do another "Tale of X gamers", but this time there are 7 of us instead of 5!  The idea is to end the work with a playable army of around 1,500 2,000 and spend a weekend in Nottingham at GW HQ being utter geeks!

So, the rules.....

a) paint at least 250 333 points of models (cumulative counting is fine so you can work around real life) from March until August.  Your 250 333 points must be uploaded to the blog by the end of each month or suffer relentless mockery from the rest of the participants until you've caught up......
b)  Attend GW HQ on the September weekend to celebrate!

To start things off, I'm going Empire/Free peoples s I've had a box of stuff hanging around for about 10 years that I've occasionally added a bargain eBay win to.  This is the start of me getting it sorted:

Lots of troops planned, at least one monster and some warmachines I should think..... exciting times!

Areonef Marking part Deux

Adding the extra little detail markings to the US Nefs has spurred me onto doing the Brit ones as well. I'd always thought they were lacking but had struggled to be inspired with ideas for what I could add. Whilst searching for the US ones I saw World War One aircraft markings and that is where I drew the inspiration for the tail details for theirs.

So I started in the same place for the Brit ones and wasn't disappointed. So using the tracing paper approach I ended up putting roundels and identity letters onto all three British Nefs. The tail colours have ended up being quite 'tricolour' but hey it still looks a load better than the plain colours in my opinion.

I also added the funnel colours which make a big difference.

This is another three finished this year so:

Purchased: +20
Painted: -20

Net: 0

Thankfully I'm not anticipating buying much else other than the next two Nef when they are finished so getting some more done should put me well into a net negative number. It would be nice to get to -365 but this might be a tall order depending on the occasional bouts of weakness that result in naughty internet purchases.

We shall see.

TTFN

Aeronef Markings

I've been a bit stuck on how to approach the marking for the Aeronefs I've finished so far. The Brit ones are still needing something adding but I think I know what however the US ones are done.

I've not done a lot just enough to add to the model but not look to silly.

I'm not going to worry about the basing until they are all done then I can have a big basing session to get them all finished.

TTFN

Termies and Nefs

This week I've managed to make some progress on both sets of terminators.

The Iron Hands have received their coats of red and this leaves them ready for detailing, decals and weathering. Plenty to do still but progressing well.

The Iron Warriors will take a bit more work. I've added both the black and white to their pads in a random fashion as I did with the MKiiis. I don't want the hazard striping to be too uniform. Once the white has two coats I then carefully add the stripes. This took a while but I like the effect once finished. These will need a little tidying up but after that they can have their yellow wash to complete the hazard panels.

Once that is dry the whole figure will have black wash to dull down the metallic grey and to make the yellow a little less glaring. Then they'll be at the same place as the Iron Hands and I can batch paint all twenty eight to finish the details off. It'll be nice to finish off a whole tray that has been sat untouched for over two years.

Also finished are the two US Aeronefs for the Martian VSF. I keep referring to it as Dystopian Legion but it really has evolved past that so VSF it is from now on. I'm thinking of adding decals to both these and the Britiannian ones but I want to have a good snoop around to choose the right sort of decals. I'm thinking of white WWII style stars for the Yankie ones but I'm not sure if that will modernise them to much?

Hopefully Blotz will have the next two ready soon.

Two things finished. Puts me at +3 YTD.

TTFN

Edit for a requested picture.

2018 so far.....

I’ve been pretty busy since Xmas but I’ve lacked any real focus. I just have too many fun projects that I want to work on. This does mean that I’ve got lots of progress but nothing getting finished.

I’ve wanted to do a siege game for Horus Heresy (HH) ever since I started collecting an army. I’ve decided to make this a reality, hopefully this year, and as such I’ve purchased some walls, gun emplacements and a TTCombat Gothic Garage which I think will make a good gatehouse. I’m planning to use this on my 3x5 dining room table so this should stretch across the narrow table side just fine. The plan is to have the attackers play up the length of the table.

The scenario will need some thinking about but, given the sterling work being done 30K Heresy Forum to create 8^th Edition rules, I should be able to use the fortification rules from the back of the 8^th edition 40K rulebook as basis for something fun.

The HH setting does inspire me and I want to vary the types of games we play. Several years ago I’d made some starship interiors scenery. Sort of my own take on a modular Space Hulk type thing. It got messed around with a few times but then stored in the loft. It struck me that it would be pretty good as a Zone Mortalis and this compelled me to bring it down from the loft.

I hadn’t varnished it at the time of making it, something that I regret now. My loft is pretty dry but I think the inherent moisture in the plaster it was made from was enough to let the mould creep in. Sadly some pieces were lost but most were recovered, repaired and giving two coats of Varnish. One Gloss and one Matt. Hopefully that will protect it in future. I also have a plan to add some larger boards to the ZM set so that it can fill an entire 6x4 table.

All this HH planning has also had the effect of galvanising me to get more stuff painted for it. I did the Iron Warriors(IW) infantry last year but they sorely need some reinforcements. Now I like the idea of dreadnoughts stomping down ZM corridors in support of the troops so the couple of dreads I had in need of stripping pushed their way to the front of the queue and got themselves a nice bath in Dettol. They came out pretty clean.

Sitting around for a while has been a tray of terminators for both the Iron Hands & Iron Warriors. These were kit bashed together from a bundle of Scibor bodies that I won on Ebay cheap, Anvil heads and Shoulder Pads all coupled with GW Termie arms and weapons. I like the notion that 30K was a time of innovation and invention giving rise to lots of variation to the weapons and armour that were used. 

So the IWs have received two coats of Gun Metal Grey so far. Onto stripes next for them. The IH Termies are started with a heavy dry brushing of Bronze and then a light dry brush of gold. This picks out the trims and lots of the details. Next comes the red colour for the main armour plates to represent the blood of Manus that these surviving IH refuse to wash off until the traitors have been wiped out we all know how well that goes!).

  

I was given, by a very kind soul, some GW scenery at Xmas. The lovely gothic machinery terrain. It is wonderfully characterful and was one of the first things I put together once the silliness of Xmas subsided. Love these models and I’m looking forward to using them with the ZM terrain.

My first wargame of the year was a cracking game with BFG and I using my Seraphon to thwart the machinations of The Silverback and Silverfox’s Chaos forces. Cracking game which I neglected to take any photos of. Still it was enough to spur me on with some additions to my Lizards.

A homemade Dread Saurian has been staring at me from the shelves of holding for some time now so he was treated to a lick of paint to get him started. I was also treated to some Seraphon Cavalry for Xmas by another kind soul and those have been constructed and undercoated. Painting 40 cavalry at once is a bit daunting so I need to get some things cleared before starting them.

My ongoing endeavours to put together a stonking urban cityscape is still also progressing with the additional of some street furniture from Blotz.

I picked up lots of additional bits for the city at Colours and Warfare and decided to get them under way. This is them all washed and they’ve been spray undercoated now as well. They should add lots of character.

Well I also need some people to populate this city so I’m working on getting the civvies and heroes finished as well so we can get on and have some games. I think some of the folks in this part of town may have dubious professions…..

One of the Hero (or Villian) figures I’ve had for a while was a suited hitman type of guy but I didn’t want to have him in a plain suit. Well….there was only one choice really wasn’t there. Let me introduce you to….

Mr Patriot!

It took the best part of two hours but it was worth it. It still needs neatening up with some white and the colours could do with another coat but he won’t take much to finish after that.

I seem to have entered one of my more productive phases again, which is great, but because I’ve not had my painting mojo for a while I have been concentrating on building. This has meant that the painting queue has grown considerably. I’m estimating that I have 300+ prepped and undercoated waiting to be done. I really should address that!

So goals for this year? Well last year I painted 366 figures. Great but I brought loads as well. Time for a new tactic. I’m going to track Net items painted. So a minus for a painted one and a plus for any new ones brought.

So the street furniture places me at -15…..but…..

….those 20 mkiii marines I didn’t think I’d win on Ebay but did takes it back to +5.

So this year I must be productive and also resist buying too many figures.

Wish me luck.

TTFN

Eddie.