57th Penal Battalion (Abhuman) deployed

You may remember that quite while ago I made a couple of posts about the beastmen (abhuman) squad that I'd been inspired to start and use as Ork allies for my Guard..... They are finally done :)

The most embarrassing thing is that they've been sitting waiting for flock (yes, just flock, the rest of the base was complete) for about 3 months.  Just how rubbish is that?

Anyway, here they are, still on the painting table!

As the Nob of the unit, I decided to use a commissar.  What right thinking imperial commander would let a unit of abhumans loose without a commissar to ensure they stick to the imperial creed?  I had one with a power fist (Klaw) that I hadn't used for ages, so he fit the bill perfectly.

"Right you 'orrible little maggots - Forward for the Emperor!"

The other half of the unit

Group shot

The HQ unit that I'm converting is taking a little more time..... But perhaps getting a little bit of room back on my paint station now this lot are ready to troop off to their carry case will inspire me to get on with him!

So have you ever wondered.....

So I was sat there assembling some models and I wondered, just wondered what 7,000pts of Orks actually looks like.

Then I realised that would mean getting out 150 grots and 15 slavers, so I changed my mind and wondered what 6,100 pts (or so) of Orks would look like....

So here you go.

Now this has told me with that 60 Boyz on the table, I think I need more - it is a good job I have another 60 assembled :)

Okay I changed my mind!

We've set the points for the Mega game at 8000pts for The Griffons with additional support from Silverfox's marines. It still means that I need to bump the Griffons up by nearly 1000pts.

Thankfully I have some assualt marines & Marneus Calgar to add in and the rest I can do from the stuff I already have that didn't make it into the army list. However I still need to add something significant. With such a large playing area, 12x6, it would be handy to have something nippy to zip about in. My thoughts moved to the Storm Raven.

When I first saw the pcitures of the Storm Raven I quite quickly decided that I did not like it.

I thawed a bit when I saw it in the flesh and since then, and after doing a chop job on the equally ugly Storm Talon, I realised that it was the top of the Storm Raven that bugged me. That turret just looks dumb. To add insult to an already crap design they shoved an engine vent in behind it so that the turret, highly placed as it was, would not have 360 degree traverse. Just Dumb.

Now this has just arrived so I will be getting on with it this week but I have already resolved to:-

A) Leave off that STOOOPID vent.
B) Just have the top turret as the weapons mounted low on a swivel plate not on the sides of the FUGLY Turret.
C) Think carefully about putting some stubby winglets near the front thrusters to echo what I did with the Storm Talon to turn it from an ugly duckling into the lean mean getting shot down killing machine that it is!
D) Put the bolter racks on the side.......cuz this thing is going to be putting Termies into combat! OH YEAH BABY!!!

:-)

Just dropping in!

As well as wanting extra firepower for the Mega Game I decided that I did not want the Griffons to be a static gun line. The Arty can sit at the back and plug away but I wanted the troops to get stuck in. I just thought the game would be so much more fun that way. The troops needed transport and not some smelly old Rhinos!

Now I had made some drop pods in the past but I'm don't really like them that much these days as they are massive and feel clunky, chunky and basic. As this is the case I started musing, back in November, about how to make some more. It struck my that I wanted to have enough detail so that they were unmistakeable but not so much that making them would be a lot of work. With that in mind I started trawling the net for interest ways to make them and bits and bobs to decorate them with. Whilst in good'ol Ebay I found a parts seller shifting whole Drop pod doors for £1 a piece and it struck me then that the doors are one of the more distinctive bit of the pod and would also have been one of the more annoying parts to make as there are so many of them.

I pinned my design down to four doors for each pod to make construction easier and ordered 28 doors so I could make 7 pods. 6 for my Tactical Marine squads and 1 for my unit of Sternguard. The rest of the pod is just made out of foamed plasticard for the uprights detailed with card and the bases are just foamcore with card and plasticard trim. Simple really.

Watcha think?

A busy couple of months!

It has been a while since my last post but I have been busy!

The GoG have a mega game scheduled and I have been preparing for it. The original idea was for my Howling Griffons to take on Hordes of Orks and we stuck to that idea!

However I wasn't liking the sound of a marine gun line hosing down as many of the Orks as possible before the green tide broke over them so I decided to add a few things to my force. I already had a couple of old school whirlwinds so they were getting a respray from Ultramarine blue to the strawberry and custard of the Griffons. "This isn't enough" I told my self. So I resolved to add more firepower.

I have never seen anyone use a Thunderfire cannon (TC) and, lets face it, that is understandable given that they were cack. Were cack. Past tense as the old artillery rules honked. I am really curious about how the new ones pan out so I decided that my new add-ins were going to be TCs. I'm not quite sure at what point I decided that five was a good number to go for.

Unsurprisingly the price of the GW TCs made sure that buying theirs was not an option. After a shufftie around on the net I decided to use some Antenocenti Workshop turrets and to scratchbuild the gun carriages myself using foamcore, card and old GW tank tracks.

Design wise I decided to try and make them look like they were based on rhino technology. It was pretty simple in the end just to cut out a relief section of card that was stuck onto the foamcore and then given some rivets. They aren't going to win any bauty contests but they will most definately do! To finish them off I've painted some old sevitors up to be the Techmarine gunners.

Parked along side is my MKI Land Raider that has been sat undercoated for about three years and I really couldn't put off finishing any longer. As always happens if you put something like this off, when you get round to it, it takes no time to finish. My Terminator Chaplian will be pleased!!

The Green tide flows on

Now that was quick, wasn’t it? Another 30 Boyz to add to the green horde. These ones are from the “Goff” clan and so find themselves with black outfits – drybrushed with grey to pick them out a little and provide a dustier appearance that suits the orks I think.

I luv wurkin' for unkle Ork........

These boyz were deliberately all given helmets to further link them as a unit and the Goffs are militaristic and no right thinkin’ boy would go into battle without one after all :)

Given the large areas of black, I procured some white check transfers from ebay and laid them on the flat shoulder pads and the odd helmet, providing me with a scattering of the check pattern that is another hallmark of the goffs and hopefully helping to break up the black a little.

How do you get 30 Boyz in a battlewagon?  I dunno, ask Fark!  ;)

This lot also differ from the other two units as they have the old slugga/choppa combo instead of shootas. I appreciate that shootas are apparently better in 6th (the internet says so, so it must be true!) but I wanted a bit of variety and when shooting hasn’t worked and something seriously needs crumpin’, these are your boyz!

Three big shootas and the ubiquitous Nob with a Power Klaw completes the unit and the banner on the Nob got some transfers from the jolly nice Ork flyer that I recently procured and that now takes me to 90 boyz ready for action!

Orks - Faaaaaasands of 'em!

Well, not quite, but it is a start at least!  I’ve had these orks hanging around for years. Initially when I picked them up in a bargain basement deal I thought to myself “These won’t take long to paint and will be a nice change of pace on the battlefield”........

Well, I was right about one thing, each Ork is indeed quick and easy to paint. Unfortunately trying to paint over 100 of the little blighters plus vehicles take a lot more time! Hence I managed to get some units painted, only to discover that I needed to change the odd weapon and so the unit wasn’t finished, or I didn’t have time for basing, or I needed more in the unit, etc, etc. so I ended up with a bit of a mess with some units nearly complete, some not really started, undercoated vehicles and frankly no real drive to get them done. I’ve also long known that I’m great at diving into new things and getting them 95% done…. And then they hang around waiting for the last 5% for ages!

So how did they get out of the hobby slump? Well, it was mostly embarrassment on my part! I realised that out of the five 40k armies that I can reasonably field, I could only do the frankly entry level 1,500 points in Imperial Guard (admittedly I do well here with plenty over to switch things around) and Sisters (although the sisters were built for 5th and really therefore need a bit of updating for 6th).

Looking through the half started armies over Christmas, I decided that Orks were the way to go as they quite frankly looked like fun and I hadn’t used them in ages!

So, out came the clippers, spare parts and some additional cheap unpainted figures from ebay (well, if you’re going to have an army not used much, you might as well reinforce it, right?!?!?) and I set to work sorting them into useful units under 6th edition. I’d long ago decided to use the different ork Clans to differentiate the units as having lots of boyz on the table might make it hard to differentiate between them otherwise, so each unit was assigned a clan, and therefore a colour, and off I went.

These first two units are each 30 strong (yep, I managed to go from zero finished to 60 in one fell swoop!) and are from the Bad Moon (yellow) and Evil Sun (red) clans. All armed with Shootas with 3 special weapons in eash.  Very simple painting with a coloured undercoat, then do skin, metal, contrasting colour for some belts, braces, ammo packs, etc. and then a wash of GW black wash (both my old Badab and new Nuln oil depending on what was to hand) and they were done!

"We iz moor flash dan de red boyz and we 'ave rokkits!"

"We iz yellow, green and mean!"

Given the sheer volume of boyz I decided against highlighting further for now as it would take up a lot of my precious painting time and frankly I was sure I’d lose the drive to get them all completed if I did that extra time-consuming step! So, with discretion being the better part of getting an army finished, I stopped with the wash.

"But boss, I fought you said dere would be a big trukk for us!?!?!?"

For the basing, I decided to go for snow basing for a couple of reasons. It’s different to anything I’ve done before and Gareth’s gaming table, where I see them being deployed most of the time, is snow themed so they would fit right in. the mix that I used is white glue, water, bicarbonate of soda and snow scatter/flock. I then dip it in snow scatter to finish. The odd grey stone is pushed in to provide some variety and there we have it.

I’m really pleased with how they’ve turned out and the fact I feel like I’m on the way to getting an army done – as I tend to drift onto new projects a lot of the other things I need for the army are done and so should make it up onto the blog fairly shortly…… and yes, that does sound like famous last words ;)