Celt Skirmishers, Commission work, Epic & countdown to Salute 2011!

So after the success of the test with the army painter dip I decided to crack on with the skirmishers for the Celt army that I'm going to use to crush Lee's gay Romans...

 I managed to do this lot in a couple of days and decided to keep with the rag-tag feel of the warriors that I'd done previously.

Close up there not that "pretty" but as a whole unit they look quite spiffing!
I'll look to field them as two skirmish units but once I get my hands on the rule book I'll see what options I have.

About a month ago I was taking some of the guys at the shop through Maulifaux and made a joke comment to Kurt about painting his stuff for the "right price" and the usual gay jokes prevailed, Dave then approached me on the same night asking if I'd paint his new crew as a commission previously I'd done Danny's everblight to help him out for the warmachine nationals last year and seemed to be quite happy with the out come,

This is to be my first "proper" commission so the models arrived earlier this week and looked like

the brief is to paint them as they are on the wyrd miniatures website and give the death marshalls black coats as they look very "matrix style"  with there poses, I started on the coffins as I've not done wood for ages and figured I might as well dive in feet first

I'm quite happy with these and once I've had a look on the net to see how the rest of the models should look I'll carry on over the remainder of this week, but there's no real rush as I've 6 weeks to get these done before Dave comes back to Leicester and I figured I painted a whole load of French in about the same time these can have a little extra work on them to make them look super cool!

There has been some interest recently at the shop in playing epic and after an initial resistance to another system but after digging through my space marines painted up as space wolves I decided to do a bad thing and agree to join in the fun!

Myself and Spencer organised a game last minute and with neither of us playing for about 4 years decided to get some practice in to try and remember how the system played, it was going to be the classic face off between dark angels and the wolves at 2000 points,

Now I thought I didn't get a great deal with

2 Assault units with commanders mounted in a thunderhawk
1 tactical unit with a dreadnought & vindicator
1 Devastator unit with two dreadnoughts and a landraider
1 Predator unit
1 whirlwind unit

I was facing:
2 Tactical units
1 whirlwind unit
1 Deathwing terminator unit with commander
1 Reaver titan


so the game started like...

And Kurt had to get in on the action ;)

Still the same turn trying to suss out the rules! 

The view of the devastator unit seeing that huge hunk of metal about to blow it to kingdom come! 

And thats where the pictures stop as we plough through the turns and Spencer being the sneaky git that he is deep strikes his terminator behind the devastator gun line and wiped them out to a man!

I returned the favour and the gunship with the assault marines came out of no where to try and secure one of my objectives which the succeeded in doing and a last minute dash from the tactical marines secured Spencer's objective with the titan sitting on the other one it was in the bag for Spencer!

so following that cracking game, I went on a bit of a dig and got these lot ready to go, a mere 750 points worth of space marine killy goodness...

I'm also gearing myself up for the yearly pilgrimage to Salute, should be a good one this year with myself, Lee, Chris and Nick going down, not as many as last year but regardless it'll be a laugh, the shopping list is quite hefty and I'm looking to pick up a Celt army for hail Caesar as well as the book from the show that I've preordered from warlord games and I'll see if I can find Rick Priestley so that he can scribble in it for me ;)

I'll take my camera so that I can get plently of funky pic's and get them posted once I get back/sobered up!

Other bits that I would like to "look at" would be:

The Merc's game thats been floating around for a while
Force on force
Future war commander - maybe as an alternative to epic, I've been reading the cold war commander rules and they look really good!
6mm modern stuff and 15mm modern stuff
Hit the bring and buy to see if there is any epic stuff in there


Talking of looking for epic is there anyone out there looking to shift some of there old stuff? if so drop us a comment in the box and we can discuss prices etc..

Army painter dip.. is it that good?

A while back one of the long standing gaming buddies waffled on to me about "army painter" I'll be the first to admit that I turned my nose up at it, after all that wasn't "painting" in my eyes...

So fast forward a couple of years and with the recent black powder French that I painted using the tried and tested technique of normal three stage highlights and inks I was quite chuffed with the actual results and the amount that I got done in a fairly short space of time was overwhelming.

Now with Hail Caesar just round the corner I picked up a box of warlord Celt's to have a play about with painting wise and see if I could muster up the mental enthusiasm to actually paint another 150+ models!

After chatting to Lee once more I decided to give the army painter dip a crack, I bought it to do the french but resisted as I didn't have the balls to try it!

So remembering Lee's final words... "don't highlight your models just paint them in the final highlight stage" I went for it!

So yep I'll admit that they look like they've been painted by a "noob" but keeping the painting tidy and doing most of it in the GW foundation paints was a welcome change, mainly because the paint dried so quick that I was able to get these blasted out in a couple of days,

then came the actual "dipping" I was advised rather than going for the dip and flick method to actually paint it on with an old brush, now it took me longer to get hold of some white spirits and a glass jar than it did to actually paint the models!

yep it looks shit still!! 

So after leaving them for about 20 hours I based them up the same as the french previously and went a bit arty farty on the bases with shock horror "multiple" flocks being used! something that I've not done for ages.

ok so looking better as they are 99% "finished" but kinda remind me of some old toys done by a company called Britain's from when I was a kid.

So I cracked open the "anti-shine" that army painter do and blasted away only decided on one coat as they are plastic so should be fairly tough when coming to wear and tear

A massive difference in my eyes...

So as the title suggests is it really that good??

the pictures personally speak for themselves and IF you don't have a great deal of time to paint due to real-life and all that jazz then this is the stuff for you, ok so you won't win a golden deamon but if you wanna do that Guard, Nid, Orc, Skaven, Tomb Kings or in fact any large fantasy or 40K army then this is a life saver!

for stuff like malifaux, infinity, necromunda stuff that you only need a dozen models for personally I wouldn't bother but hey its what ever floats you boat!

Golden question...

Would I recommend it & use it again?

Yes to both!

but what are your thoughts on it?

CY6 battle report & new banner

So after a brief AGM at the club last night and for not wanting to let all my previous hard work go down the pan I stepped up as secretary for the Leicester Phat Cats.. back into the breech as they say...

Then it was on to GM a game of CY6 as the British tried once more to stem the tide of Germans...

I choose the Tally Ho mission from the Battle of Britain book, but was two Ju-88's, 1 He-110C and 1 Hurricane short mainly down to the lack of flying bases that I'm awaiting from forgeworld but that was no biggie to be honest.

So the set up:

Nick rolled nice and came in behind the bomber formation the other were closing fast.... 

wider shot whilst the chaps were plotting there moves

So the initial shots were from Nick and damaged both me-109's causing airframe damage, but the He-110's wouldn't come down until someone had taken a shot at one of the bombers,

as the rest of the hurricanes closed on the Ju-88's some fancy maneuvers from Stef controlling the 109's to try and shake Nick off his tail, but did lose one in the second turn of shooting.

One of the guys decided to open up on the bomber formation and the 110's controlled by Sonny dropped out of the sun and pounced on the British. 

it started getting very messy very quick! with one of Nick's  Hurricanes running out of ammo so dropped out of the fight and Sonny nailing a Hurricane, but the damage was done with two Ju-88's going down into the drink.

One of the many funny moments of the game was when Dave managed to get a critial hit on a bomber and debris came flying off and nearly took him out!

The British managed a convincing win 25 victory points to the Germans 5.

This game we used the ammo rules as well as tailing and I'm still impressed how quick the turns are played even with this amount of planes on the table, but next time we play should be after salute and I'll have plenty of fighters so the bombers will stay in the case and its gonna get dirty with 109's all over the British!

I've also started a recording what the players are achieving...

So these are the rankings so far..

Lee & Nick with 3 kills each
Spencer & Dave with two kills each

Who's gonna be the first to get to 5 and get promoted to a skilled pilot??

The new banner has come from Stef, who was bored at work and decided to "just knock it up" lovely! 

March Update..

I know its been a while, the guys at the club keep reminding me..

So what have been splashing paint on?

Well I did a couple of cannons for Blackpowder, then decided to blast out some mantic zombies for malifaux, now don't get me wrong the wyrd miniatures are super nice but £9 for 3, errr no thanks as 6 would bet me a box of 30 mantic ones!

I was a bit sceptical with buying these as the elves were a little "thin" but most of the undead range looked quite tasty, I've about 16 left over so I'll bang those into the bits box of doom and rediscover them in about 2 years!

I painted these pretty much how I did the death guard a couple of years ago, deathguard magic,

kinda reminds me of various ex's... ;)

saying that I've a feeling that my chaos will be dusted off as the grey knights are about to land Spencer is starting to froth slightly about dreadknights and all that jazz, I'm even going to get the daemons boots muddy and see how good they really are, I know I'll get my ass handed to me but hey its gonna be an epic showdown....

So as real-life has been the usual action packed pace, I've not really managed to get any games in so just been painting like a Duracell bunny, it started with check your 6 and the battle of Britain battle pack that I got from raiden miniatures linky link so I finished off the Germans and the English

so some Bf 110-c's 

some Bf 109e's

and the British, 3 Spitfire1's and 3 hurricane 1's 

Now there is a bit of a debate with regards to what model company to go for as I've got most of my stuff from Raiden miniatures I've got as much as can from them, but Dave "the madman" is oping for Heroic and Ross Linky link now the difference is price isn't that much a fighter will cost on average £1.10 from Raiden and about 60p from H&R, but have a look at the following..

A zero and a D.520 straight out of the baggy

I'll let you work out which one each company does...

And talking about Dave "the madman" he's managed to accumulate 54 allied fighters already! and as I'm on my yearly pilgrimage to Salute next month I've already had a shopping list from him for 16 B-17's!! looks like I'd better get me hands on some ME262's

So what else I hear you mumble..

One of the other chaps at the club has kinda lost the love for warmachine after OD'ing on it and wanted to play something else and like a Phoenix from the flames, Flames of war is go! I've always played the Germans from 1st edition mid-war and fancied something a little different so decided to go for the British and as my grandad was in the infantry I decided to make them Italian veterans however only after getting all the bits and bobs sorted out did I find out that he landed at Anzio and fought in operation shingle, I really want to find out to what extent his involvement was but don't wish to make him re-live some of the horrors of what he saw so a real catch 22 situation...

anyhow I asked one of the lads to come up with an army list for me as I'm shockingly bad at doing FOW lists and this was the following for about a 1000 points.

Infantry Rifle Company:
HQ
Rifle Platoon with 3 squads
Rifle Platoon with 2 squads

Anti-tank platoon with 2 sections
Mortar platoons with 2 sections
Carrier platoon 1 section upgraded to wasp's
Machine-gun platoon 2 sections with MMG carriers
Heavy mortar platoon with 2 sections
Air observation post

at first I was a bit undecided about the list but as I read through the turning the tide book the more I like it the mortars along with the AOP get to re-roll on the first ranging in and on the third ranging in! sounds super cheeky to me ;)

so in the usual "Anton" way I decided to paint all the cool stuff first them do the boring infantry company last!
The pictures might be a bit iffy as my camera decided to run out of juice so these are taken off my phone

Wasp carriers

HMG platoon with carriers

mortar platoon

heavy mortar platoon

group shot

so not bad for a couple of weeks work so far just the finial push with the six pounders, AOP and the infantry company and the jobs a good un! then expand the army to 1500, and 2000 points and I've a finished army something that I don't think I've ever achieved?

I also decided to treat myself I saw Dustin at the shop had bought a new lamp for the painting table and after playing around with it and all that decided to get my hands on one,

Now in a real super-geek way I was actually quite excited about this and to no surprise my other half really wasn't interested so I didn't mention how much it cost...

If your interested have a look at www.chronos.ltd.uk now depending on how much painting you actually do will depend if you can justify the price, personally I thought screw it the lamps that I've been using are well over 10 years old and well why not ;)

The pledge is looking nice and healthy this month with being in the black and making up for the shortfall from January with the Napoleonic stuff and the usual model frenzy of Salute will no doubt push the "machine" into overdrive as Hail Caesar is looking like its gonna happen which nicely flows into...

I've got a "how to" coming up that involves crazy bearded men with swords and army dip, so keep an eye out if you've always wondered how it works and what a complete noob can do with this stuff..

comments welcome as always,

First Look: Check your 6

So all the pieces had finally come together...

And after sending an invite out to the guys at the club I had my first game booked in....

Now normally I'd flick through the rules prior to the game but I've not really had the chance as I've been more interested in painting and the like,

So I went into this quite blind to be honest,

Most of the missions are scenario based and after a quick road trip with one of the guys to Spirit Games I picked up the battle of Britain scenario book and decided to run with the first mission out of that,

 so 6 medium bombers to escape the clutches of the RAF..

And a fine bunch of chaps these lot are....
 
Now the first 15 mins or so were quite interesting as I read like a madman and sussed out quite a lot early on with regards to movement and plotting, and when it got to the shooting then it started to heat up, as I'd mis-read the mission I set up the bomber formation in one of the corners of the table assuming that I needed to get to the other corner, but after looking at the mission afterwards I discovered that I was miles outside of my deployment zone and it should have been width ways for the running bombers! oh well!!

two bombers down and the competition heats up as who is gonna get the next kill!!

So thoughts on the actual system...

Missions...

There are bloody loads in the main rule book 15 missions and a mini campaign with another 4 but as its an American chap that has wrote them its alot of the yanks up against the Jap's so not a bad thing but with picking up the Over the Channel add on it gives you 18 missions to play out and there is still another 3 books that you can pick up to date so a shag load!
The mission set up is nice and easy and gives you exactly what you need to field for each one, if you've not quite got enough models then a bit of jigging about and you'll be sorted.


Game play....

If I can get the actual players to be working out the maneuver & turn types within 15 mins then anyone can play this, hell at one point I put the reference sheet in front of a couple and they were telling me what I needed to roll, there are some really cool bits within the rules and as we was only playing the real basic's left out tailing, weather, formations, AAA and the like, as I've tried wings of war and the forgeworld Aeronautica Imperialis these rules wipe the floor with both! Infact I'm thinking of hashing the CY6 rules for the forgeworld models..... 


Fun Factor.....


It went down a storm! it became very entertaining very quickly as people are trying to out maneuver each other for the kill shot, and when being fired upon you get cheers and groans from the players as I tried to get the bombers off the board!


Cost....


me personally I've worked it out to cost me (so far)


Rulebook £20
Battle of Britain book £18
Hex Mat £35
Raiden miniatures battle of Britain set £22
Raiden miniatures battle of midway set £22
Forge world bases £11
Decals & Magnets £13


giving me a grand total of £141


now put that into perspective that a unit of the the really pretty shiny gray knight terminator's are £27.70 for 5 boxes you can have a whole new game with enough models for four nations air forces and the average model will cost between 60 pence and £1.10 personally its a bargain!


Final thoughts....


I liked this alot and I've a feeling that I've only just scratched the surface with regards to the rules, myself and the guys were already talking about picking up the jet age version, this one is a keeper in my eyes if your on the fence with regards to getting it or not take the plunge and do it!!

Step by Step... Napoleonic Frence Line Infantry

With all the Frence line infantry that I've been pumping out recently I figured that I'd do a step by step if anyone fancied a quick and easy way to paint a mental amout of infantry in a short period of time

Step one..

Build & Spray


Step two...

Slap on the dheneb stone water it down though as its a foundation paint

Step three....

Rough drybrush with white, I'm using a game colour white at the moment

Step four....

Regal blue basecoat for the coat and highlight with ultramarine blue over that.

Step five...

Scorched brown and graveyard earth for the pouches and rucksack

Step six...

Kommando Kharki on the remainder of the pouches & rucksack, dwarf flesh on the skin with a bit of white in there for the highlight

Step seven....

Vermin Brown on the rifle & shako cover

Step eight...

Snakebite leather on the rifle then pick out the metail with silver, and graveyard earth on the shako cover, codex grey and then fortress grey on the roll onto of the rucksack,

Step nine....

Black on the shoes and the rim of the hat, bit of red on the pom-pom bit and shoulders, blast it with gryphonne sepia and wait for it to dry

Step ten...

pick out the white on the trousers and the straps etc.. and stick the model to a relevent base, now I've seen some people do them as individual bases but when your fielding units of 32 I've gone down the route of 4 to a base, and these guys are going to be part of the skirmish screen that each unit employs OR a small skimish unit to harass flanks etc..

Step eleven...

base it however you like, and your sorted!

so the whole lot that I did at the same time, I've only a few infantry units left and then I can start cracking on with the Cav that I picked up last month,

Saying that I'm looking to pre-order

so once the army deals go up on the warlord website I'll then order a small force as a bit of a starter...

I've a feeling that my "pledge" will be achieved this year but with the largest volume of figures painted that I've ever done!

Old Stuff day....

Well I've decided to jump on the band wagon and put some of my old posts that are buried within the archives...

I've done two selections, one for most page view and one that brings back some cool memories

So the popular ones first...

no surprise on this one with a whopping 4,000 hits and rising...
Dark eldar venom conversion guide

Surprised at this one hauling in just shy of 750
Emperors children noise marine paint test

and the nurgle bringing up the rear with 650
Forge world blight drone & noise marines

but my personal favourites...

1 - Chaos warhound completed.....

2 - Army painting machine is green light

3 - Salute 2010

so there you go enjoy!