Salute 2019 & the April Round up!

Well salute has been and gone and boy was it fun!!

So this year Phil had the master plan of doing This is Not a Test, a game that we both like however sadly don't always get the time to play due to various reasons.

So before I start on the all the pics go over to the website check it out, buy something or hell down load the free quick start rules!

worldsendpublishing.com

or if your lazy like me watch Ash over on youtube walk you through the rules!

this is not a test how to play

So the traditional pre victory salute Pic! 

A lot of people waiting to come in! 

and a cheeky pick up before the main doors opened, This however wasn't for me! 

So pics of the TNAT table, it was a combo of Anton's length as well as some bits that Phil had knocked up and all together it looked bang on!

Loads of random models from all sorts of systems! 

and we were in a pretty good spot on the corner of 2 main walk ways so had plenty of traffic throughout the day 

So during the afternoon I managed to have a walk around and took pictures of plenty of tables, however Mel the Terrain Tutor did an excellent vid of the tables and you actually see me!

The Terrain Tutor Salute 2019 round up

I didn't get any details with regards to clubs games etc I was going for pure terrain porn and boy did the guys and girls deliver!

This one made me laugh quite a bit and I spent a good time chatting with the guy and even managed to avoid the political discussion! 

This particular one was a hidden gem, all converted and so much detail it was insane. Loved it!! 

The rest of the Phat Cats were helping out on the Gringo's 40 table and snagged best in show! 

Mel doing his meet and greet at the warlord stand

This mental set up was next to us and was busy all day and quite rightly so! I loved flash gordon as a kid and the workmanship that went into this was insane! 

So the usual "Loot" was pretty tame with picking up mortal gods and that was about it! 

So onto the the pledge for the month of April.....

Painted - 0 yep that's right I completed no models for the month of April!!

Bought - 83

Difference - 83

shocking I know however a number of "problems" came up this month so I wasn't fully focused on hobby time more survival!

However that has now all been sorted out so par one more situation its business as usual!!

March Maddness! The round up

Well so much for a mid-month update,

So have I been up to?

Well as predicted the zone Mortalis table took most of the month to complete for Chillcon, this was the Third year that we attended as a demo team and the show is certainly growing from strength to strength with each year. If you are able to get to either the Sheffield or Derby locations its well worth the visit!

go have a look at the website and if your part of a demo team or even a trader tap the guys up!

www.chillcon.co.uk

So the table went down really well with the masses and as a first attempt at something like this it was a massive learning curve!!

The GC helping me with the base of the table

quite a bit of time was spent on this part as the drying and filling of the gaps took longer than I expected, 

I considered air brushing the colours however for speed and cost I went with rattle cans for the initial undercoat of black then followed up by a metallic car body spray,

Before Acetone

whilst that lot was drying I got to work on the walls, all 56 pieces of them! As I printed out the walls over the course of about 8 months on and off they were slightly different with regards to quality as I worked out the printer, so I brushed acetone onto the walls to dull down the print lines and over all came out reasonably well. 

After Acetone

so with the walls all sorted it was one to the long slog of base coat, first metallic coat and then onto the highlight, detail, wash and colour wash! 

however part way though the painting I'd arranged a game against Dave at the club and figured it would be the perfect chance to try out the ZM stuff within kill team.

so after I duly got my ass handed to me by the Thousand Son's  it was back onto the board!

in a moment of inspiration from Chrissi I did black and yellow hazard stripes on the areas where the doors would close and thought that's the 4x4 sorted! 

however it wasn't to be the case, despite sanding and shaving the edges down after I applied the paint they were just too tight for the frames, so back to the printer it was but not in time for chillcon. 

the beast! Its been an absolute workhorse! buy one if you've 900 quid burning a hole in your pocket! 

so Prior to Chillcon, I had a couple of guys who were willing to try out the mission that I was planning on running.

Massive Thanks to both Kurt & Luke the feed back and lessons learnt that night was spot on!

So after the test run it was just the matter of running the game with Keith and Dan and I owe massive thanks for the help on the day it was great fun and between us we ran a fair few games, 

So lets get down to the nitty gritty of cost!

If I was to buy a legit 4x4 ZM board from forgeworld as as individual 1 foot square tiles total cost would be about 464 quid depending if you went for the blank tile that costs 24 quid, however if I bought it in 2x2 bundles its 400 quid but if I decided to go ball deep and go for the 4x4 bundle its 450 quid.... 

yea I'm thinking the same as you now, the marketing dept needs to suss out what they are doing!

So going on the basis of the material costing 2 pence a gram, including the MDF the total material cost is 164 quid for the 4x4.

However the real cost is time, example is that a pair of corners would take about 20 hours to print and I did 23 of them so about 230 hours just on those bits alone!

on the flip side now I've got my base 4x4 down I can start adding to it and with the walls being separate storage is really easy.

So apart from the ZM board what else have I been getting up to you might ask??

well with Salute this weekend I've been helping Phil with some finishing touches on the This is Not a Test demo board and I'll get some pics of this posted up once its all together on Saturday along with all the pics and a show report.

So apart from painting a lot of metallic the other odds and sods I've managed to get sorted are...

a quick imperial guard kill team for 40K, this is for a up and coming demo night and the start of a campaign that I'll be looking to run later in April. So if your in the Leicester area come on down and give it a crack!

other stuff has been another unit for blood and plunder, so I'm slowly making my way through the units that I've picked up.

and with the campaign entering month three the natives are slowly getting sussed out and I'm liking the play style!


So lets have a look at the score on the doors!

Bought - 46

Painted - 174! - most of this is terrain!!

Difference +  128

so a cracking month painting wise and with the 2 big projects out of the way I'll be starting a 30k nightlords commission so that should be something different!

I've a couple of odds and sods that I'd like to get done, one of these are the world eater bits and depending on how the month goes I might take the plunge and to the huge drop pods!! 

Staying on point - The Pledge Feb!

Well the month of love is done!

Rose's are Red, So is my chainaxe, Fancy anal with my autocannon...

That's what it must have felt like for Kurt as I played two games against him one with the armoured list and the other with a mere 120 tactical marines armed with bolt pistol and chain axes (lots of proxies were going on!)

So I finished off the Predators for Squad number one,

I used the same colour placement for the command rhino and kept the extra armour in the same theme on the turrets. 

The sponsons will follow at a later date as I've something in the pipe line but I'll probley end up doing all 18 at the same time as I need to cast up the housing that I'm looking at using.

So with the first unit of predators done and dusted, it's onto the other bits of the armoured spearhead that I've got kicking about in the form of the command tank and 2 of the 3 vindicators that I've recycled from my 40k chaos army that I never got round to painting saving me 60 quid!

So the basic airbrush colours are down so its now onto the brush work.

Which I'll do at the same  time as these pair, I should have painted the models in the squadrons however I can pick up a 3rd vindicator at some point in the future,

Now I know that I was going to work on the 2 huge drop pods however lets be honest, I couldn't be arsed! Yes that's not the right attitude to have towards the final steps towards finishing my army but I need a good chunk of time just to mask up the pods and they'll get done but I need to clear a big area off my painting desk and that's a task in itself!

So what was the final score for Feb you might ask?

Bought - 0
Painted - 37

Difference + 37

not buying any models in the month was no mean feat! the budgeting that I'm trying to stick to is kinda working where I'm not simply going buying lots of random stuff like I would normally.

So onto the month of March, I'd like to get the sicaran and 2 vindi's done, some more natives for  blood and plunder, however most of March will be taken up by the painting of the zone mortalis board that I'm taking to chillcon with the phosphex party chaps, so I'll be breaking out the rattle cans as well as the air bush for that bad boy!

Keep an eye on the facebook page for WIP updates. 

Mid-Feb Update - Canoas & Contemptors

One of the chaps at Phat Cats has been threatening to get a Blood and Plunder campaign kicked off and in a flurry of action the campaign is now kicking off this month, 

To make the campaign as varied as possible the usual suspects at the club started jostling for the factions and unsurprisingly I nipped in claiming the natives as soon as I found out.

This decision was down to the fact that I have “acquired” three of the native starter sets and with burning some demo credit that I’d built up I’ve also got managed to bulk out my no peace beyond the line initial kick starter pledge with a small fleet of Canoas and a couple of Piragua’s, so giving me: 

24 young warriors with bows

24 warriors with bows

12 warriors with muskets

12 African warriors  

Throw in King golden cap and the normal commander that’s a mere 74 models! So much for a small skirmish force! 

Now as I really enjoy the boats and the sea missions it would be rude not to make sure that the Tribe of Té Ta can get around. The young warriors and Warriors are all in Canoas and the muskets and African warriors get to ride in Piragua’s the comedy factor part of all of this is with the Piragua’s they can have a light cannon strapped to the front. So envision my bunch of crazy locals paddling towards huge ships with only 2 light cannons in the entire force and me humming the Hawaii 5-0 theme from the 70’s I’ve found the “Ork” faction in blood and plunder!

Anyway enough of the whaffling time to show off what I’ve managed…

Now after putting up the picture of the canoa with the pattern it sparked a good healthy debate with regards to that time period and what would have been “right” however the overall feedback was the pattern was a winner and it was the GC who gave me the idea to draw on the model with a thin sharpie pen to the point where I’ve got the GC to design me some patterns and I’ll be using them as a homage in years to come. 

One thing that I decided to was varnish these guys as the Spanish took a beating and the paint was getting chipped from use, however considering that they have been all over the place I’m quite happy that they have survived so long and no bits have broken off so that’s a good testament on the quality of these models. 

Normally I use army painter varnish and that has produced various results in the past, however I decided to shoot some varnish though the airbrush and see what results that I could get from that, now most people would just do the one model in this situation but not me I went for the whole lot in one fell swoop and the initial coat of gloss went down great, maybe a little too good!

I then went back over with the matt coat and the gloss was still coming through in fact I did 2 coats of matt and still no joy, at this point I was a tad panicky as I didn’t want to strip the guys and start all over again! 

But I went onto the wargaming airbrush page and poised the question with what I was going through and got various suggestions with solutions one of the weirder solutions was to use a hair dryer on them, which I need to give a crack! But the one I went for was simply using some Vallejo matt varnish brushed onto the model and that did the trick, a bit of shine is still present however they look far better than they did previously. 

The next batch that I do I’ll try the matt varnish direct and bypass the gloss and see how that comes out, So watch this space for adventures in varnishing!

Its not been all semi naked blokes with bows I’ve been hitting the huge pile of unpainted resin that I’ve got in the geek room so I decided to blast out a quick world eater dreadnought that will be mounted in a dreadnought drop pod or a dreadclaw depending on what I’m feeling like.

I followed the exact same process for the dreadnought that I did for the infantry as well as the other odds and sods that I did, I’ve very happy how it came out and the weathering suits this army really well, the dead dude I found in my bits box I think it’s from a primarch base so more than likely picked it from ebay when I was feeling experimental! 

So, for the rest of the month it’s working on the natives for Blood and Plunder not quite hardcore as the start of the month however a unit once in a while should break up the other bits I’m painting,

Which will be the first unit for the armoured break though list in the form of three predators and whilst I’m going through them I’ll be working on a commission for Lee from the Bleeped up podcast and doing his nightlords so with a test model well under way all I need to do is research lighting and make sure it meets his expectations and bang out the rest!  

Really I should finish off the two huge drop pods however I need to get the motivation to get the masking done as that the most time consuming part of airbrushing! 

 
Doing both the hulls and the turrets took me an entire evening of faffing about and I needed to move quick on these as the tape lifts on the uneven surfaces if left too long. So I'll provide an update at the end of the month with the predator's.