Celts ready to rumble.....

Well with the glorious British sunshine I decided to take some snaps of the hordes of Celts that I've recently done,

This has to be a rarity for me as a gamer that I've actually painted 99% of my army and not actually played a game with it! all that is let if 3 command element models that I'll use for army/division commanders.

So the group shot, 3 warbands consisting of 32 guys in each one making them standard size for hail Caesar, 2 units of small bowmen, 1 unit of small slingers, 1 unit of cavalry and 3 chariots that I finished off the other day. I do have 3 spare bases of warriors I could add another 20 guys for a 4th warband.

Some close ups.

The Chariots that I finished this week, real easy to paint and the army dip makes them look cracking for tabletop level of painting

The angle that I'm gonna see my army from! 

So now there sorted, It's time to have that purge that I promised the other half to free up some space of stuff that I havn't used for a while, and as ebay is faffing around with the charges again I'd better get a shift on!

Bushio Savage wave done & something "extra" special......

So after a mental painting session I blasted though the Bushido models really quick! now all I need is to get a game in and I'll be sorted!!

so after a bit of feedback from the Bushio forum chaps I put a bit of orange into the larva and I'm quite happy with it now, the arc's are marked up and all I need to do is hit the crew with some anti-shine for protection, it has to be a first though that I've painted the entire collection for a game that I've only played via a demo! 

Close up of one of the Bakemono, 

and another one, 

and the big boy himself, the Blue skin has gone down quite well, so all I need to decide is to either carry on with the blue for a uniform feel or break out the random colours like on my chaos spawn and make peoples eye bleed with the rainbow colours!

So the something "special" whilst at expo I had a chit-chat to the guy who runs simple miniatures and when I asked about trakor units for infinity he had no idea when these were going to be released, and as some of the models for my faction still haven't been done I figured it might be a while so I've decided to make my own!

the REM unit are from the nomad range and one of the guys wanted certain ones that came in a box of two, so rather than having two kicking about I went halves and took the two that he didn't want.

I've done two different looking units to represent the two types of trakor unit in the game, I've not decided which one will be what yet, but I'm sure I'll get some "suggestions" from the local chaps!

the missile pods are from a GW terminator, cut in half and slapped on the side, 

the small missile pods are from exodus games, basically epic scale stuff that I had a spare one of, again the centre section cut out and simply stuck together, the round thing above the head is a bit from the other REM that I stuck in there as a filler and an air intake to basically look cool!

Side profile. 

So the other one, bit more hacking on this one. the round bits got snipped off the back of the REM and the side armour cut back so that I could fit the huge rocket launchers on, which are 15mm battlefront nerbelwefers that I picked up cheap from ebay

front shot

side profile, I'll more than likely paint these in either a russian green or maybe the original  nomad colours to represent the Adriana's "borrowing" the REM's for a weapon test bed?

As I was in a converting mood, I decided to throw some counts as hunters for the epic marine army that I posted up a month or so ago,

so the turret is from exodus wars, but actually made of two, one half of a whirlwind type turret and the other being a anti-aircraft  mini gun I made sure I kept the radar dome to give it the AA feel,

the rhino body is simply an old school plastic one with the rear hatches on the top cut down so the new turret sits better.

Celts good as done & lots of goodies....

Well with the final push on the hail Caesar celts the Cav & final warband are good as done just some basing left on the warband and a quick anti-shine coat and they'll be ready to rock and roll!

I need to some kind of unit "filler" any suggestions?

It was only after I PVA'd the sand did I find a few more spare bases! 

Looking a tad shiney! 

but in between the dip drying and all that I decided to crack on with the Bushido models that I picked up at expo a couple of weeks ago,

I don't normally do a work in progress but I'm liking these so far and they are a real joy to paint, 

A close up of one of the Bakemono, a bit of a fucker to put these together but nice detail though,

Zuba, the "standard" colour is going to be red no doubt due to the studio painting there's red and it does kinda remind me of hell boy! but after a bit of wiki-reading about Japanese mythology and all that it turns out that the Oni which what this basically is could be a number of colours and as I was thinking about an Ultra Marine army for 40K I figured I'd better get some practice in doing blues!

But as always some thing distracts me...

So the warmachine Cryx Wraith war engine, its a great looking kit and the detail it real nice, should be a doddle to put together and with the techniques that I've used for my cryx army & death guard shouldn't take too long to paint.

But I'll do that as a "treat" once I've done the Bushio stuff and the other odds and sods that have been on my painting table for far too long!

and whilst I was putting together the Bushio models this caught me eye...

Superb sense of humor that only the English can get away with!

First look: Bushido & Expo 2011

Well its was that time of year again for the trip to expo and once more it was a good two day show, plenty of freaks, geeks and a few "norms" thrown into the mix, Expo is a bit of a jack of all trades show with board games, RPG's and table top games all being represented,

The warmachine nationals was also being ran this year with a whopping 120 players, but due to work fucking me about with if I'd got the time off I hadn't prepared any kind of list or done any real "hardcore" painting so by the time British Gas said yes, it was too late to get my shizzle sorted out.


So the trip was for a lads weekend with dice, beer and dancing! However I can down with some nurgle infested head cold that made me about responsive as a slug, and was in bed by 11:30 on the Saturday night!

but not all was lost, in the Spencer/Anton tradition we picked up yet another system! this time it was to be something that we've both been looking for setting wise for a while but not really found anything that caught our attention,

The system is called Bushido by GCT studios, I'd spotted a link on tabletop gaming news awhile back and planned to check it out,

Gameplay:

uses D6's which is fairly normal but you have a "combat" pool so you can split your pool into attack or defence, so rather than initiative that 40K uses both models fight at the same time and you decide is your going all out hack the shit outta the guy in front of you or defend completely or a mix of the both.

Highest dice wins and the difference between the defence dice and the attack dice tells you what to roll on and that's where you find out if you've cut them in half or chopped his ear off! you get trigger points if the difference between the scores are high enough then all sorts can happen, Like Spencer running around and lobing peoples heads off!

You can have two short actions with each model or one complex action, reminds me of infinity but it works really well and makes it quite tactical for actual moving of the models, the other thing that sets this apart from the other systems is that you get Ki at the begining of each turn and each model apart from the cult generates its own Ki that it can use to cast spells or use feats and other thing.


So gameplay I really like it quite quirky but not off the wall with mental rules!


Models:

Now this is the important bit, otherwise we wouldn't bother being tabletop gamers! the models are sweet! really nice, and they are adertised as 32 mm so 4 factions at the moment and talking to the chaps on the stall some more factions on the way with releases every couple of months,

I'll apologise for the dodgy pics the lighting was poor and I was using my phone, 

The Savage wave (demon type things)

The Prefecture of Ryu (samurai type dudes)

The Temple of Ro-Kan (sholin monks type fellas)

The Cult of Yurei (undead/necromancers)

next wave of releases, a woman that can turn into a fox, a girl that turns into a gorilla, and a big undead monster thing.

the other side of the same shelf, a sumo, a demon with a bell and hammer, Ninja and a random that I was told but didn't quite hear!

close up of the cult deamon thingy

one of the demo boards, hurst arts tiles galore!

the other demo board, handmade bamboo!!

Spencer about to hack his way through Will

So the savage wave box set contents 

Big dude with a big hammer!

Heads of the little demons

and the bodies


Lastability:

At the moment the quick start rules are available and these alone make a good game, there is only one scenerio at the moment but with a bit of jigging you could use the maulifaux, mordhiem, necromunda or cutless scenarios fairly easily. with only four factions to start with your going to see a fair bit of repeated gangs but hell that's how warmachine started out!

Would I play it again? Yes, defenitly something differant, a setting thats not really been covered Japanese mythologiy and the models are nice as well, now no doubt some people will question the price but I've enough models for my savage wave to keep me going for a while to say the least!

Link to the website..  www.bushido-thegame.com

and in the anton tradation I've already decided to get some scenery from oshiro model terrain as its only played on a 2x2 board I'll more than likely do a 4x4 so that the oriental style board can be used for other systems, carn't wait to get these painted as a reward once I've finished off the celts!

What do you think?

Bandits 10 O'clock High & whats that!

So after a fairly successful month painting wise, I've decided to try and take a leaf out of some other blogs that I read and actually FINISH a project/army!

So whats on the cards then...

• Check your 6, the entire German air force (well it feels like it!) for the RAF to try and shoot down!
• The Celts not much left plus a box of chariots that I got from Lee for my birthday (cheers Dude!)
• Finally wrap up some half finished bits for the 40K chaos army
• Malifaux crew, some odds and sods to sort out
• Infinity, some real nice releases recently looks like I'll be tempted at expo on sat/sun

So after burning a bit of midnight oil and working out that I can put Isla (The Golden Child) in a baby bouncer, I can get some good old hard core painting in!

Mind you I do spend most of my time laughing at her and making silly noises and all that, when I'm not distracted by the GC I churned out these guys, Now I still need to anti-shine them to seal the decals, but the 109's and 110c's are sorted for a check your 6 game in a couple of weeks, and I've started on some 190's so that should keep the RAF on there toes!

Raiden miniatures 109, ok not a fantastic paint job but good enough for 2 foot away!

Raiden miniatures 110c

As I'm a bit of a sneaky bugger on the old net and find all sorts of bits and bobs, I stumbled across a chap on ebay who was selling resin conversion bits that have a distinct "nurgle" feel about them, as I half started a plague tower a while back I thought I could use some of his bits to get me back on track with that project and in a buying frenzy the parcel arrived this morning.

Personally I'm well impressed by these bits and are much bigger than I thought!

puss cannon type thing

a couple of "small" vats

huge vat!

(Camera died again! onto the phone camera!)

engine block with massive pipes!

Quite a funky steam whistle

another large vat

cool looking motar

Bloody good arn't they!! don't delay order today... ebay shop good prices and really decent shipping costs as well,

anyone know of any where else I could get some nice bits to convert it?

So once I've done the Germans and the Celts I'll more than likely crack on with the plague tower with all the funky bits that I've got now!