Game 47 Warhammer 40K

We've not had a chance to play much more 40K after our flurry of games in the middle of the year so it was good to pile round to Urn's place and get the marines out.

This, as it turns out, ended up being a marine on marine battle as the sneaky underhanded Raven Guard fell in with the flighty White Scars to try and take some clearly high important objective from the Brave Heroic Howling Griffons whilst denying the Griffons their spoils of war! Fiends!

Things started bad for the Scarlet and Gold when the Turncoat allies managed to steal the initiative however not a lot of firepower could be brought to bear upon the Griffons so casualties were light.

Sadly the return fire from the Griffons was less then impressive.

The mission had both sides turning up piecemeal and this served the Scars well as their bikes arrived with good effect as did their Raven guards assualt squad both of which were quickly bearing down on their goal.

An attempt by some Terminators to grab their opponents objective was stymied somewhat by them being outnumbered and overrun.

Thankfully the second terminator squad had scared off the scars on bike who didn't get back close enough in time to help get onto the Griffons prize before the game was called.

A draw but a real shoeing for the Griffons. Shame. The termies were itching to have a go at the bikes.

TTFN

Game 43

This game was a couple of weeks ago but I'm only just recovered from the almighty kicking that BFG gave me with his Ravenwing terminators! Again. ;-)

I tried to be a bit bolder in this game sending off stuff on my left flank to get some sorts on the squad of Dark Angels advancing that way.

However my shooting wasn't particularly effective and they kept on advancing.....

...to join their mates who deep struck in. Oh dear.

From that point onward I was mainly fighting a retreat whilst trying to steal cheeky points from the objectives.

The Terminators just, kept, coming.

Until I was basically stuck in a corner and holding the centre, briefly.

I wasn't totally one sided as the terminators were dropping but not quickly enough. I did get one or two lucky opportunities....

..pew pew...

but the BFG did good on his saves with a little command dice help if memory serves me.

A win for the Dark Angels but I had the satisfaction of seeing my techmarine proxy deal out some hurt on some unsuspecting Angels! Who would have thought that a techmarine be good against heavies like terminators???

It's a techmarine. Honest.

TTFN

Game 38

Game 38 was an objectives game with the mission cards piting the BFG's Ravenwing Terminators against my Howling Griffons artillery list.

Another one I neglected to take photos for.

God! New terminators are NAILS! They soak up so much fire and I could not stop them getting to my lines.

The Griffons took an early lead on points but the Dark Angels kept on coming. I can't quite remember who actually won it but I think it was a final round win to BFG as he pipped me by one point close game.

TTFN

Game 37

Junt and I played a straight up battle at 75pts a side. His Imperial Guard vs the Howling Griffons.

Sadly I forgot to take many photos during the game but it was a right shooting match. Both sides taking a lot of damage but I'd gotten lucky early on and taken out most of a lascannon squad which would have given me some real headaches if it had stayed around.

The Guard tanks dished out a lot of damage but the Griffons thunderfire and whirlwind barrages proved too much. Swooping around the Storm talon made itself invaluable delivering some great shots against the tanks.

A win for the Griffons but at a high cost.

TTFN.

Game 36

More 40K as we had the taste for it!

Game 36 used the diagonal deployment, the mission cards and objective markers. Junt's IG stood shoulder to shoulder with the scarlet and gold of the heroic Howling Griffons.

This isn't a bias report honest.

Arrayed against them were Urn's soulless clanking Necrons bringing with them the unpleasant whiff of damp compost. Urging them on and whispering evils ideas were the Silverfox's forces of chaos including ..... shudder....the Khorne Berserkers.

From the outset both forces pushed forward with a lot of fire being concentrated in the centre. The power Demolishers made some early gains against the Khorne forces but the Necrons proved unrelenting once again.

On the Imperial right flank the marines pushed forward against a formation of chaos cultists hoping to break them and gain some objectives.

However the dark forces had focused their attacks in the centre and the berserkers dealt out some horrible damage.

Despite the Ogryns helping mop up the berserkers the dark forces took the day.

Great game. Poor old Silverfox took the brunt of the fire as the Necron blob squads make themselves less appealing as a target with their unwillingness to STAY DOWN!!! Gits!

;-)

TTFN

Mostly works in progress.

As part of my planned dockside terrain set I’d bought the TTCombat container ship set. Great set with loads of value as it comes with several containers as well as the ship itself. I finished the containers at the back end of last year but hadn’t progressed the ship itself.

I resolved to get it done and so it was given a blast of undercoat…..

….and then the colours were added with large scale dry brushing.

I’ve recently got hold of some of the Vallejo rust powders and plan to make this a somewhat battered freighter.

Also sat neglected in my study was the enormous Spartan Scenics spaceship that I purchased several years ago. I’ve always liked the idea of having landed shuttles and ships as scenery and that’s why I got it. It too got an undercoat prior to painting.

I wanted to layer up the paint to lighten the look of it up from the base grey so I started with heavy dry brushing of greys getting lighter until I got to white.

Masking went on and I proceeded to orange…..

 …..then red. I’ve printed some special decals for it so those need to go on before I can weather it.

With the threat of a new edition, I decided that the Howling Griffons needed some reinforcements especially as these have been sat in the queue for ages as well.

These boys take my 365 tally up to 226.

In the drive to get things done I ended up letting my eye fall upon the rest of the Spartan scenic sets that I had. It think I’ve been procrastinating somewhat due to the size of the project to get the starter and corridor sets done but the new edition of 40K has egged me on and this will be usable for Infinity, 40K, Infinity, Pulp City and soooo much more so I decided to get stuck in and get it done once and for all.

The kits themselves are a cracking concept that was badly delivered. The design is excellent and looks a treat but the building of them is dogged by the fact that it takes soooo much work to put them together. We are spoilt somewhat these days as MDF kits are pretty awesome but these are hard work. All the slots need significant cutting and filing to enable it to fit together as they were cut too small. I’ve done the bulk of it now so I am methodically spraying, constructing sub-assemblies, spraying again before construction and then the final spray. After that the details need picking out. I’ve prepared some decals for the sections. A long job but once they are done it’ll be a cool set to use and they’ll be enough of it to lay out a pretty big base. This is just the additional corridor set in the photos. the starter set has even more corridors and rooms as well.

I’ve been wanting to get it done so I can use it as the Anphelion Base from the Anphelion Project Forgeworld book. IG and Marines vs Tyranids. Right up my street!

With all these MDF kits I have been gathering (or more accurately hoarding) leftover bits of MDF to the point where I have a box full of them. I’d put together a couple of Epic things from them but nothing bigger. However I was browsing the internet for a radar/comms array for the Anphelion base when one that I saw sparked my imagination and the following monstrosity was born!

Needs some details and paneling but you get the idea.

 I was pretty motivated before but sheesh…8^th Edition 40K has lit a fire under me!

TTFN

Getting back in the groove!!

With the arrival of Life long Burden Joyous bundle #2 I've obviously not had the time to commit to the hobby.

Massive shame because I've got some neato stuff to do!

Anyhoo. Time to get back in to the saddle and force some progress. I thought I'd start with something fun to re-invigorate myself. Hence the Knight Titan. Lovely kit to put together and given the size and detail I would say it is worth the money.

A quick spray black undercoat in the carpark at work and onto my desk for painting and the usual odd looks from my colleagues. Working in a relaxed environment does have its advantages!! Lunchtime painting is really therapeutic.

He'll take me a while chipping away doing 40 minutes a day but it is progress! I'm intending him to be attached to my Iron Hands to bolster them up to 1500-2000pts quickly but I'm sure he be seconded out to the Howling Griffons from time to time.

Under my desk are the first thirty Iron Hands and I'm hoping that my paint scheme will be simple and effective as I don't want to take ages on them but I want to do more than just spray them black. I might start them soon as well and alternate between the two projects depending on my mood.

TTFN!

Marneus Calgar arrives!

I was going to add Marneus to my last post but he fixed me with a steely gaze.
"I don't share blog posts do I Eddy"
He used that tone. Ya know, the headmaster tone.
"No Mr Calgar Sir. Sorry Mr Calgar Sir".

More Howling Griffons!

I have finally almost finished the last of the Griffons that I intend to do for the foreseeable future. I obviously still have more marines in the grey plastic mountain small store of future projects but I've had my fill of marines for a while.

We've got Pedro Cantor to lead the drop pod troops, Shrike and assualty boys to slice it up in the ranks and two extra dreaddies who take the tally of dreaddies up to four. We also have the nearly finished Stormraven to let the termies ride in style. YEEEEEEEEEHAAAAWWW!

:-)

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!!

Hobbying at Xmas

Sadly I didn't get as much time as I'd hoped but I did get a chance to progress a couple of bits.

Firstly the scenery for Dystopian Legions is all but finished. I'm not sure that I'm going to do much more to these now as I can't imagine we will get to play DL anytime soon and I reeeeeaaaaallllyyy must get on with some of the prep I need to do for Sin6 and The MARCH to war (big battles planned between GoGs in March.

Thankfully I am nearly finished on the things I need for Sin6 as the Storm Talon only needs a coat of army painter as does the whirlwind turret that I've knocked together to replace the bolters on one of my Razorbacks.

JUST. FRICKING. AWESOME.

Well he is now isn't he.

And the votes are in!

I made my mind up last night, cos strangely nobody chose to call my premium charge voting hotline, and plumped to leave out the weapon pods and mount the Lascannons straight onto the fuselage. I also decided to keep the wings....but not wanting to be conventional I mounted them at the front and I don't think it has turned out to badly. The added bonus of poping the wings on the front is that the model has a smaller foot print and will therefore be easier to store. Result!

I really like this model. Ugly to start out with but for such an oddly shaped thing there is actually quite a lot you can tinker with to make it your own, much less stupid looking, swooping killy death machine!

Some choices...

I got to have a chance to finish the Storm Talon last night. In truth I would have completed it if it hadn't been for......well me.

I spent far to long uming and arring about what to do next. The photo shows the nose guns without the chunky pod and I have to say I had a clear idea what I wanted there so that happened pretty quickly. What I got stuck on is the wings and the lascannons.

Now the wings should be on the side of the engine pods sweeping downward slighty due to the little kink that they have in them. Problem is that I'm not sure if I like it better without the wings entirely!

I was also stumped regarding how to mount the Lascannons onto the fuselage. The side weapon pod are nice little designs in of themselves but I'm not overly enamoured with them sticking out of the sides. I've been toying with the idea of just mounting the Lascannon barrels straight onto the front of the block that the weapons pods are meant to be stuck to and then adding some power pack detail just behind the barrels on the side of the block.

What do you think then guys. Wings? No Wings? Gun pods? No gun pods?

Pretend it is like one of those Saturday night talent shows that hypnotise the masses have ruined TV. In fact it is exactly like them as I, like Simon Cowell choosing talentless numpties, have already decided what I am going to do and any pretence of a vote is a sham. The phone number if you choose to vote is 0800-UGLY BRICK-555 and is charged at £20.00 a second.

Still. It'll be fun to hear your opinions.

;-)

Work in Progress

Urn and Von have inspired me to get back to the blog. I had intended to try for one post a week but that has falling by the wayside. I was trying to post finished projects and we've proven that this just does not happen as we hope so I am now intending to fling up more frequent posts even if they are jut work in progress stuff. After all that is what these blogs are about isn't it?

Anyhoo. First off is the recently acquired Ugly Flying Brick Storm Talon. What were GW Designers thinking? I can only conclude that it was one of the following:-
1) Someone snuck into the CGI dept after a few Bugmans brews and tinkered with the design as a joke but it was never picked up before the design was sent to manufacturing.
2) It was designed by a committee suffering from full blown 'Group Think' which manifested as an inability to see the flaws in the design.
3) GW were being asses the day this one was born.

In truth, many elements of the things design do work. Okay...it does look like a Rhino humped an Apache helicopter but it has the correct elements but still doesn't quite work. Why? Well in my opinion it is simply because they tried to make part of it true scale. Just part of it tho'!?! True scale cockpit slapped onto a micro-machine combat helicopter body. But......even that is forgivable compared to the 'chin'. Who. Designed. That?

So my plan is simple de-emphasize the ridiculous chin mounted weapon and then take a view on what to do about the side weapon pods which are also a little on the chunky side.

The kit itself goes together well and apparentley fairly quickly but sadly ones young daughter saw fit to interupt her fathers hobby time so I'll have to try and finish it tomorrow night. I think with the few small changes I am planning to make I will be able to learn to quite like this little model. ;-)

Busy Weekend Part 1

Been productive this weekend!

I am really starting to get loads of little project cleared that have been hanging around for ages.

Plus a couple of new ones.......;-)