Warlord Open day 2013

A few of us picked up tickets to the Warlord open day at Salute earlier in the year, and today we wandered over to Warlord and had a good mooch about!

I didn't know what to expect but as soon as we walked into the hall I was very impressed!

so one end of the hall, 

And Lee photobombing the other bit,

we had a good walk around to see what was about and started chatting to the mantic guys about dreadball season three and they are doing a special club league pack where the winner gets a medal that will get them free entry to a show and they can take part in the dreadball superbowl!

I then stopped to have a look at the warlord studio stand where a nice Polish chap explained about sculpting and the detail that he went into was terrific, another Polish chap the once closest to the camera was showing weathering techniques, and the lady in the back explaining about the molds that they use, all very interesting stuff.

I then spotted this...

Kris about jizzed in his pants at this point, I moaned in joy, we looked at each other and started planning the 4x4 that we could fit it on ;) Due to the fact that we were frothing I forgot to ask price & release date on this one, but I'd say about £80 (ish)

the greens that I was interested in were the us marines,

and the next sexy plastic kit....

I was mulling over what Nation to collect for bolt action next and the plastic halftrack has done it for me, Americans it is!

Mr Dallimore was also there, his painting style isn't to my taste but the man has got talent so it was good to share a few words with the man,

and just some pics of the tables that were at the open day, some real crackers on show,

Kris moaned that the berets were too red, it gave me a wonderful opportunity to call him a old git at that point!

The Perry brothers with the "usual" outstanding terrain and models!

Some dodgy bloke who was following me around...

Yea that's right Kris keep your hands in your pockets...

Blokes on camels, its gotta be a game winner!

but MMG on a cart is even cooler!

Lee & Coops actually playng a game of witchfinder general, and we managed to tag onto the back of a factory tour, so we started off in the resin room, and the process was explained, and its quite simple, now if warlord can make good quality kits in whats effectually a double garage why can't forgeworld?

a nice chap explaining more about the process and the drying times, what surprised me was that the bigger the mold the quicker it dries as the mixture warms up and also with the air tempture that also affects the cure time, so the last month or so must have been a right pain in the ass to work in!

loads of molds! the chaps showing us around said about 280 I think?

mixing the pour and the round thing is the vacuum machine that removes air bubbles,

  A look of surprise as we dived into the metal casting room

 

and another nice chap explaining the process and the basics of making models in metal, 

 

just a bit of the huge section that they've been casting up

I bumped into Sharad  and he was recruiting for the sealed knot, (right)

showing me how good the plate armour was with my able assistant Kris.

the GCN stand with a cracking looking German army, really nicely painted

superb work of the big cats, as well as the infantry and transports

We got chatting to the chaps at 4ground and this is a preview of whats going to be coming up, and according to the chap we was talking to the models will come prepainted!

So overall a cracking day, I even managed to have a chit chat with Allessio and kindly signed my Bolt Action rule book, however the rest of the guys called me a fan boy but eh I don't care at least I know which on is mine now. Only drawback on the day was the heat, with no aircon in the building and a room full of gamers it got very hot very fast!

Back into the breach... Painting the Warmachine Convergence of Cyriss starter set.

I picked up the new Cyriss faction book and starter box set with the intention of selling these on however I thought I'd have a flick though the book and was very impressed with the fluff, feel and rules of the army.

As usual the quality of the book is tip top and the artwork within is superb, I'm not a mathhammer player and tend to go with the rule of cool with picking a force, however if your a rules junkie and like all that jazz then Beasts of War have done some cracking vids.

and their is plenty more on the website to wet your whistle, has been quite an eye opener for some of the units and vectors.

So after spending some time at "work" reading the book, I decided to crack open the battle box when I'd managed to escape from the GC & the searing heat of the UK (at the moment!)

This is what I was presented with when I opened the box....

2 bags of bits and no instructions! This starter set is not for the "novice" gamer with the amount of bits. However Privateer Press has done a "how to" for the box set on their website this will save you a lot of headache!, why they didn't just print instructions is beyond me!

so the two bags opened up,

the heavy vector

the 2 light vector and warcaster, place in bag add glue and shake!

I spent some time pondering how to paint these and decided to avoid the silver as I remembered how much of a pain in the ass they grey knight test model I painted, Bronze it was to be!

So after sticking and undercoating I started with tin blitz

Brassy Brass on top of that,

I then added some gunmetal and dry brushed the models, once this was done I did some extreme highlighting with just the silver with a bit of bronze,

a close up of one of the light vectors with the extreme high lights, I could have stopped here but I wanted to tone the models right down and make them less toy like and more "evil" looking

I banged some army painter strong tone and after leaving for about 7 minutes it dried like...

So onto the secondary colour after consulting my muse's Red was the one that was "suggested" as well as teal! After messing about with the red the box set is ready for basing & marking of arc's

so the usual mix of basing done, and the Cyriss are good to go!!

Overall I'm liking the paint scheme dead easy to do, but what do you guys think?

Messing about with model mates

For the Bolt Action board I'd "acquired" a KV2 and after a long think of what to do with it I decided to give modelmates rust effect a crack.

Nick at the club showed me what he did with a 20mm modern tank and I was very very impressed so bit the bullet and it arrived the other day,

I've had a good mooch about on you tube and was very impressed with what I saw so decided to go for it!

I painted the basic tank well basic!

All I did was brush on the rust effect no watering down, nothing fancy just banged it on.....

I was amazed on the result, the speed that it dried and the finish well its voodoo magic!

you can see on the some of the panels the brush marks which isn't a bad thing, just means you can do direction drips for funky effects

whilst I was in in the mood I wet a piece of kitchen towel and twisted it in random spots to remove some of the rust effect,

and based ready to go.

So if you've never seen modelmates or been unsure, take the leap of faith and go for it, its great stuff!!

I've some great ideas for my Dark Angel drop pods with the soot spray. 

Kings of war - The naughty dwarves getting ready for battlemasters 2013

Last time I played kings of war was a long time ago whilst the rules were in beta stage, One of the local clubs ran a KOW torney last year that was very successful and I decided to enter the 2013 torney to play some games and promote the torney in the local area,

A good six(ish) months ago I managed to pick up a abysmal dwarf army on the cheap and as usual they have been sitting in a box since waiting for some TLC, and as the chaps over at coalville are now starting to pick up KOW forces I've decided to start sorting out the dwarves and now leave it as late as I did the SOTR torney a couple of years ago!

Battlemasters is November 16th so I've this lot to sort out before then,

 So in the above pic is 2 units of 20 basic troops, 2 units of 10 shooty chaps, 1 unit of 5 berzerker type guys, 1 unit of 10 elite chaps and 2 warmachines. I've also another unit of 10 shooty chaps to stick and put together, I'd had a mooch about on the mantic forum for general tips and tricks and the only thing that came up was that the shooty chaps are a pain to assemble, Personally they are not too bad but the gaps on the arms were bad enough for me to break out the green stuff to fill the gaps however if you've ever made an old school metal ravenwing landspeeder then these are a doddle!

The other thing that I wanted to do was mount the models as a unit rather than individuals if I was interested in warhammer then fair enough but personally I not into the latest version and no one I knows actually plays it!

So after popping the models off the bases I ordered a test base from warbases to see what they looked like,

I was very happy how they would look so then got enough to base the entire army and cost wise they are very reasonable,

so after a quick blast with some spray and chit chatting with my partners in crime the test model was done,

This was before the wash of army painter strong tone (devlin mud) and I was happy with the simple paint scheme as well as green/bronze combo. So with the UK in the middle of a proper summer work is very quiet and on my lunch managed to get this lot done,

but not content with 30 shooty chaps I decided to throw the elite guys into the mix for goof measure

and after the ink

a huge difference and looking quite naughty as well as short!

so I glued the models onto the unit tray and all I need to do is break out the flock which I'll do the whole army in one go and jobs a good un!

and the 1st unit of shooty chaps done,one thing that I did do was base the unit tray and the models separate as they are quite tight once they are stuck on the base.

I've got a cracking start on the dwarves so far and have done the following:

1 unit of 10 immortal guard
3 units of 10 decimators

so all thats left is:

2 units of 20 blacksouls
2 rocket launchers
1 unit of 5 berzerkers
and some character types

that lot to be done before November easily! chances of not getting some more bits to bulk out the army slim!

So if you fancy a pop at the Battlemasters for a mere £15 then pop over to the mantic forums and sign up, Battle Masters 2013

Bolt Action Board We're nearly there!!

With the glorious British weather over the last week I've managed to get a huge chunk of the board done namely the actual boards!

they needed some TLC and after the GC helped me stick and paint the boards they looked like....

All I need to do is get some flock/static grass and they'll be ready for the July gaming session, I couldn't resist getting the rest of the scenery out and seeing what they looked like on the board as well as making sure that their was enough but not too much,

quite good coverage,

Now I've managed to actually lay the road out on the board I can cut it to size,

I'm thinking a few more of these bushes to scatter around to provide infantry with some cover but nothing that would stop tanks from moving around too much and I've still the KV2 to mash up and with the modelmates rust effect on the way that should be done by the end of next week I hope.

The other bit of feedback I've had from Kris & Andy is a hill would be nice so I'll break out the bread knife and wire brush and start hacking away!

Any other thoughts or feedback??

June: The Pledge & hobby control

With all the excitement of the terrain that I posted up I completely forgot about the "pledge"

so without further ado here we are:

Bought - 42

Painted - 44

Differance +2

So by the skin of my teeth! now the bits that I bought were for padding out my gruntz stuff and getting some funky toys for my bolt action germans, the gruntz stuff I'll show off once they are painted up and I'm really looking forward to doing the doe gunships but I'm not too sure on the camo I'm considering getting some masking from critcal mass games,

but need to have a good look on how it works as I'd like the gunships to look very sexy!

with regards to the 28mm bolt action germans I'm going to go on a 4 hour airbrush course so I can suss out how to do it, I was happy with the work that I did on the drop zone stuff but I want to make the hald tracks and the like look really nice, if the boys on the Guild can do on 20mm them 28 should be a doddle! 

So onto the "self control"

I've done very well so far loads of temptation with modern chinese and dead mans hand that I'm really strugging to resisit as it looks great and the people who have played it rate it very well. I will persist but it might nab me unless WWX, deadzone or all quiet on the martain front distract me in the meantime!

Bolt Action Board update

I've been quite busy since doing the warlord buildings for the Coalville Centurions,

I've managed to crank out the following bits so far...

So we have some woods that I've though about storage as well as gaming,

The bases are made out of cork board and the actual trees are just glued on some spare bases that I had from warbases,

The roads I had the most fun with, A while back Cooper made some roads for flames of war and all I've done is just upscale his technique,

so once you've measured out the sections that you need and angled the edges you should have this,

grab some ready mixed filler, or in my case nicked some from the garage as we're gonna be decorating the lounge soon, and simply bang it on!

spread it out so its all covered and looks level (ish)

no the fun bit begins, I started with taking a bit of a sprue and used the curved corner to drag random track marks though the filler, then got a toy car that I "acquired" from Isla's toybox and made tyre tracks in the filler as well,

so after a bit of a effort I was left with,

so once they dried, I splashed some paint on and the usual flock and the final result was,

Three different scales on the road starting with 15mm, 20mm & finally 28mm

and an overhead shot for the width, so unwittingly will work for all three scales no worries!


So far the chaps at the Centurions hare very happy with the bolt action table progress and its helped me get my terrain mojo back on, all that's really left is some fences, a barn, corn type fields made from the standard doormat and some general scatter terrain.