Prepping for the Derby Wargames Show

So it that time of year again and the Phat Cats Demo team are putting finishing touches to the latest demo board,

This year we're helping Nick out with his modern rule set so hopefully should get a few players looking to roll some dice, As Mr Cooper is currently ploughing though some commission work I've been asked to step in and help out which I gladly accepted unit I was told what was required of me....

10 T-62's & 20 T-55's within 10 days...

at first I thought no worries, then I remembered that my daughters birthday was coming up and that would take about 3 days out of the schedule so to say that it was gonna be tight was an understatement!

So after wandering over to the Hinckley club and getting the huge pile of resin tanks as well as my airbrush I set to work with getting the models sorted, I was a little unsure on how to paint these but then found this picture on the guild forum and set to work!

Loads more fantastic pics on Tim's Blog.. imperialarmour.blogspot.co.uk


So after a couple of hours of cleaning and sticking the horde was ready for spraying,

Coops got hold of some army painter army green and after another couple of hours the base coat was done,

then came the moment that I was looking forward to but also dreading and that was airbrushing the tanks, I've not used my airbrush since I did my scourge for DZC and as I painted down stairs in the back room noise wasn't a problem as I tend to paint late into the night but now my man cave is the spare box room next to the main bedroom I don't think Nadine would see the benefit of the feathered edges that airbrushing gives for camo on a 20mm model. In fact I'd properly get smashed round the head with the compressor!

So I was restricted to daytime work which isn't a huge problem and got the models to this point...

As I was waiting on barrels for the T-55's I carried on with the T-62's and got them sorted ready for pick up on Thursday from Nick as he popped the barrels round for the T-55's,

After some more jiggery pokery I finished off the remaining T-55's and not able to do any more until Sunday and a couple of days to burn fired up GTA5 and pissed about on that for a bit!

So where are we now?

I've the remaining 7 T-55's assembled, sprayed and ready for airbrushing and have set myself a target for Wednesday to pop them round to Nicks so he can base them and all that jazz.

I've no doubt I'll be able to get the last 7 done in the next couple of days something I didn't think I'd be able to achieve when first asked.

If you are around on the 28th & 29th at the Derby show come over to A4 near the tournament tables and say hello, I'll be the one dressed as a Russian "adviser"

Dystopian Legions - Empire of the Blazing Sun & Prussain APC

With the recent Dystopian Wars fleet I painted I managed to pick up a legions force fairly cheap,

After wondering how to paint them I decided to go for a nice bright colour for them based on the prow's of the ships that I did,

the diamond symbols are from vendi vidi vici and are the 15mm sized decals, vendi website they fit perfectly and I also ordered some bigger symbols for when I pick up vechieles and the like,

Talking about legion veciles I finially got some paint on my Prussain APC, I've painted it the same as the tankettes and not bothered with the "wooden" look like on the spartan website

I've gone quite light on the weathering as the gears on the drive units look cool and didn't want to cover them up too much, all I need to do now is finish off the two machine gun teams for the Prussians and actually get a game in and I'll be sorted!

Why do you blog?

It was only the other day I was talking to a couple of guys about my blog and why I do it?

It got me thinking and I realised that I've missed the 4 year anniversary of my quite frankly embarrassing first post...

Cringeworthy!

Its like your first painted model you look back and laugh, but I suppose people have to start some where, since then I've managed to clock up a impressive 279 posts and recruited a whopping 139 followers, to each of my readers I thank you all as its nice to see that my random posts jumping from system to system still gets 100+ views each day!

The recent bolt action board posts drew in a tremendous amount of views so I might be onto something with terrain after all everyone loves terrain!

So why do I blog?

For me its not about trying to show off golden deamon/WAMP painting levels, I'm happy to admit that I'm "ok" at painting their are far more talented people that can paint far better than me.

I'd love to paint like this and I'm sure with enough practise and dedication to the art form it can be done....

however I understand where I sit with being comfortable with my level of painting to a point where I don't spend months on a unit or a single miniature mainly because it would do my head in to have an amazing model blown off the table in turn one!(The only exception to this was the Chaos warhound and that was a real labour of love, and did get killed in turn one in the only game on apoco that I played and the last actually!)

I'd rather paint to a decent table top standard and achieve something along the lines of this..

to show that any one can achieve the highest honour amongst all gamers, A painted army!

Now we all know that even though you'll sit there with your shiney codex and work out 3 or 4 lists (or in Spencer's or Kris' case about a dozen!) and start with the task of buying, gluing, and painting your unbeatable or fluff loving list, you'll get to a point where you burn yourself out and my best example of this for me was the 5th Company and I managed to paint 70 marines before getting burn't out and was bored of painting Dark Angels, I think it was a combo of the army list with the spear point fluff list that people loved but actually trying to play competition type games was really hard and I became quite disillusioned with why am I using a army that doesn't play as it should in my head.

At this point I started looking for another plastic crack fix to get my mojo back on track and along came the ork's I had to think long and hard about these boys as I determined to get the 5th Company finished just for the man points at the local club or wherever I play, more on the Orks another time though.

The other reason I blog is I'll admit I'm a system whore see this lovely post...

hobby out of control?

For a good 10+ years all I knew was Gameswork Shop until I stumbled across warmachine about 10 years ago when Mike McVey  sculpted for them, and this broke me away from GW...

Since then I've tried all sorts of systems both good and bad but had no way of sharing my thoughts and feelings on the ones that I bought in the yearly 2000's and way back in 2010 I started reviewing new systems and games that I picked up.

The reason behind the "First Look" posts was to show a none affiliated review of a game and give a very rough review of how it plays, If I really enjoyed the system and played a fair bit then I'll go in depth however most of the reviews are after the first game which some people won't consider enough tries at a game to give a balanced review.

I just tend to go with my feelings really and if I can understand the game after reading the rule book for a week or so and the initial game is enjoyable then I'll continue to play it as and when I can, of course games come and go within the gaming group that play with and I've had the comment of "what new system are you playing now" from other people in the club that I play at but I believe that variety is the spice of life and rather than playing warmachine/40K/warhammer  for 50 weeks in a year I think its good to mash it up you just have to embrace change and open your eyes to other systems.

The last reason (that I can think of) for my blog is to focus on projects and simply keep on going!

With so much plastic crack out there in the big wide world and certainly with the explosion of the Internet and the indi companies that are slow but surely infiltrating the gaming market place its very difficult to stay on target! 

My blog helps me maintain some sanity with what I'm working on so rather than constistanly chopping and changing I'll work on a small skirmish force or do a slow burn on a bigger army and when I post up pic's of the models that I've worked on I feel a swell of pride that I've managed to finish something else to add to Anton's Warehouse (I've enough painted armies for enough systems that I could outfit a gaming store's display cabinets!)

So not the usual "look at what I've done this week post" but more of a stand back and think about the last four and a half(ish) years and have I achieved what I set out to do in the first place way back when Chris convinced me to start a blog as he thought my painting was great and as I used simple techniques and cranked out a tremendous amount of models.

If your still out there Chris cheers very much fella its all your bloody fault!

Perry 28mm 8th Army review

One of the "loons" from The Coalville Library club picked up a box of the new(ish) Perry 8th Army box sets, I poked him until he sent me this.....

Contents of the box are 3 infantry sprues,  each with 6 lrdg/sas heads, command spruce, base sprues, both 20mm round and 40mm square.

The instruction sheet, as well as 'the guide' also has a force organisation chart too, which is useful for people who don't know how a British platoon is organised.

The figures are exquisite,  as you would expect from the Perry stable, if a little small. This shouldn't be a problem when used with warlords bolt action figs, but may stand out if used with others like artisan.

The only problem I can see, is that to make the lrdg/sas figures you have to do a head replacement. Not an issue for seasoned Modeller, but novices may be put off. 

On the whole, fantastic figures, good weapon mix, well thought out overall, If you are thinking about doing ww2 Brits in the desert, you can't go wrong with these!

Also just want to give a shout out to drum & flag on eBay,  24 hr delivery free! Fantastic!

After the joy of opening the box, I decided to get one assembled, First thing I noticed is the quality of the plastic. Hard but not brittle. Easy to cut and work with. After removing the bits from the sprue,  there was minimal cleaning to do to the figure, which is a nice change.

 The original head came off easily, tho I think on the next one I will cut at less of an angle.

The parts fit together perfectly, no ambiguity about the exact positions, over all very simple to do with ease of conversion if you so wish!

I can confirm that when they are assembled, the size difference between these and artisan figures is just in the bulkiness of the figures..shouldn't be too much of an issue for a gamer, but an ocd collector may have a freak out.  

So there you have it, I'm liking what I see on the pic's and looking forward to seeing the DAK that has just been put up for pre-order, however I'm thinking Italians with the last of the books approaching its time to see if the under dog can actually have its day! 

A big thank you to Kris for snapping some pics for me and providing the text, I was pleasantly surprised that he managed to string a sentence together with his hobbit/spacewolf like knuckles dragging over the keyboard ;)

40K back into the breach with a good old rant!

I only get to play 40K once in a blue moon and when I do I like to have a bloody good game, the Angels 5th company provided me with that fix and once I'd sussed out how to use them it was great fun, however they were lacking the punch factor after all with tactical marines you can only expect so much out of them and I accepted this as I don't have death or ravenwing, The complete drop pod army is a very unique beast to try and use.

Until.....

Now I'm in a bit of a dilemma really, I love my Angel's they were my first army in Space Marine when I wandered into a GW by mistake thinking it was a model shop. but with the new space marine codex going "live"tomorrow I know its gonna piss all over my chips!

The new toys that the codex is going to bring and some of the mutter from the gutter with regards to unit abilities and more importantly chapter traits I feel that GW has taken the royal piss out of the Dark Angels and it all started so well with the dark vengeance set with the usual blue boys being knocked off poster boy duty, the quality of the plastics is superb and the first two codexes were from the box which was also a smart move, however they missed a trick really the chaos codex needed the update and it was "ok" still think the helldrake is a crap looking model and this conversion is how it should have been released!

Now the trick was the fallen, it would have been a fantastic addition to the chaos codex and given some nice fluff factor to the army but it wasn't to be.

Then the Dark Angels landed, I was very excited about this codex and expected some supercool stuff and it delivered nicely re sculpts of the named guys was badly needed as they are 10+ years old now and look very dated but that didn't happen, it didn't scream of cheese like previous marine codexes namely Grey Knights, Blood Angels and Space Wolves it was actually nicely balanced and a good rounded codex. Rules for fallen would have been great but again it wasn't to happen.


Which brings me to the new marine codex, why not simply have the Dark Angels in the new Marine Codex? why bring out a book that's less than 12 months old and already been superseded by the 6th Ed update, you could argue that the deathwing & Ravenwing would take up too much space but then supplements have been released for Eldar & Tau so the same could have been done for the Angels and access would have been granted to all the funky stuff that the rest of the imperium are going to get access to (except)

So no re sculpt for any of the chaos or named guys but you actually make these... I'm no sculptor  but WTF is going on in the design dept of GW.

So the Dilemma?

I'm not going to "rage quit" that's just childish and to be honest pathetic for a grown man of 37 to throw his toys out of the pram, the dilemma is do I adapt to survive in other words do I do the "counts as" army and use the imperial fists as they are rumoured to have bolter drill or what ever other chapter has the relevant feel that would bring the Greenwing to life or be as stubborn as the Lion himself and stay pure to the chapter??

All looks a bit fishy to me..... worth a read trust me!

I was waking up this morning and stumbled across this on the wargamers consortium facebook page,

real intresting link that you should read....

Ironicly I was looking at the chaos titan about a week ago before I spotted a video on you tude with the chap who created it advising of buyer beware!

Thats my good deed for the day!

Partizan 2013 - splash and dash within an hour!

So I had a choice family christening or partizan.....

In the time honoured tradition of Anton I did both!

So I was at Partizan at 09:30 thanks to the warp drive A46 with only one speed camera its a great road! I'd worked out I had 1 hour to get my geek on before jumping back into the flying skip Mk2 and jumping into a suit for the Family do.

Normally I'd be filling up my blog post with 30+ pictures but as time was tight today I snapped a few that caught my eye as I bezzed around partizan like a whirlwind so apologies for the lack of usual "press" pictures.

The main mission was to pick up some bits and bobs that I'd had my eye on and see them in person, I'll reveal my supermarket sweep geek shopping laters lets get onto the visual porn!

The first table I thought "ooohhh..." at was this huge desert board really nicely done and yet to actually kick off as I was that early in!

 

 

  

Then this caught my eye really nice centre pieces no use for gaming but for terrain it would be fantastic!

From the same chap, quite cool again a display type piece

Then I saw this beauty!

such a simple idea very well executed, well done to the guys who did this board cracking work!
 
A lovely looking shield wall and alot of models on the table!

 

And once more I found myself gawping at the deadman's hand board, the 4Ground buildings are truely superb!

So what haul did I manage to get within an hour??

I picked up two of these...

and one of these...

This is for my WWX/warzone/generic 28mm board I've got planned, so keep an out out for a first look and getting these bad boys painted!

Rulebook wise I nabbed....

now this was on a recommendation of a couple of guys I know, so I figured why not its been a while since I've picked up a completely random system, and I also spotted this at the northstar stand...

Now with this one Coop's had shown some intrest and as I've tried to lean various systems onto him for a while I thought it was about time I returned the favour! I'll have a good mooch at these rules and then hit the perry site for the models.

and as I'd spent an awful long time pondering over this system I decided to "treat" myself and got the rules, cards, MDF counters & Desperado gang for a mere £44 thats cheaper than 3 centurions, a whole new system for less than a unit in 40K, its a no brainer!

I'm looking forward to plating all of these systems and once I've had a couple of games I'll post my thoughts up and to prove I made the christening....