Saturday 19 August 2017

Nurgley Goodness

I bought the new Dark Imperium 40K boxed set a while ago and it has very much reignited my passion for the game - the rules are less bloated, the new marines are rather spiffy and my favourite Chaos God gets some lovely new miniatures. Nurgle, the god of decay, is a brilliant idea for the starter set. You can't really go wrong painting something that is supposed to be decaying and filthy. However there are ways to make the rotting hordes stand out on the tabletop and I found the advice given on Warhammer TV invaluable in getting these to the table quickly while avoiding them turning into a drab horde. This is basically painting using layers of Citadel Shade on a white undercoat, building up subtle colour blends and bringing out the detail in a few passes. I rather like the result and they were so satisfying to paint in this manner.


These are the Poxwalkers from the First Strike set which are the same as the new "easy build" set. Since there are two sets of ten unique poxwalkers in Dark Imperium, I may add these and an additional box of easy-build Poxwalkers to make two identical units of sixteen with no duplicates within each unit.

Might have to do some Primaris Smurfs next.

Sunday 30 July 2017

Back to my Roots

Well, last months foray into 6mm Sci-Fi whetted my apetite for all things futuristic and I probably would have even more stuff to show you had I not happened to walk past my local GW store on the day that Warhammer 40K 8th edition was released. Now I have to say that personally I love 40k, it is the game I have played more over the years than any other. I started playing when it was just a handwritten sheet of annotations to Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2nd Ed. and I only stopped when 3rd Ed started to become a bit of a chore ruleswise. I have bought boxed sets and odd bits and bobs since then but the rules were always so dense, not my cup of tea at all.

The 8th edition is a completely different kettle of fish though. The rules have been pruned with the delicate touch of a chainsaw and now fit onto about eight smallish pages or a small booklet if you include some of the other bits and bobs on how to set up a game. I will say more on the actual game in future posts because the main thing is that I have been painting stuff from the old starter set, Dark Vengeance and looking at the new Primaris Marines from the new starter set Dark Imperium.

First up are a Dark Angels tactical squad, or two squads of five depending on how you split them up. I have painted them as the first squad of the third company.

(Apologies for the poor photographs, I think my camera is on its last legs.)



Sergeant, three marines with boltguns and one with a plasma gun.



Four marines with boltguns and one with a plasma cannon.

These have taken up most of my time, not least because after putting about half of them together I realised that marines are now on 32mm bases, not the 25mm ones they used to have. I know I could have kept them on the old bases and they would have remained perfectly acceptable but I like everything to be just right so I re-based them all. Thank goodness I had only undercoated them at that stage!

Next is a Deathwing Terminator, also from Dark Vengeance.



I love the look of terminators but painting all that bone white to look halfway decent is a real pain in the fundament. I think my army might concentrate on Primaris marines and Ravenwing.

I also found an old box of Cadians under my miniatures pile and this is the test paint.



I'm not sure where Cadia rests fluff-wise but I might make Astra Militarum my back-burner army. Something to pick at when I tire of Dark Angels and Death Guard.

Finally something from the new box, a Primaris Inceptor.



I took one look at the flying stands in the box and thought "not a chance" so I made my usual flying stand with a stainless steel rod. I drilled into the foot of the marine and used a tatty old drill bit to slowly grind through a soft limestone chipping. This was firmly seated to a plastic base using a big lump of Miliput which was then sanded and painted as usual. Much sturdier than the plastic ones and I feel it to be less visually intrusive. The rock and Miliput help to weight the base and make it less prone to toppling as well. Although he is painted as a Dark Angel I have left off the company and squad markings as I have no idea how he fits into the Chapter structure until we get a new codex or some inkling from GW. Fortunately kneepads are easy to paint up with the necessary markings as and when I decide what to do.

Anyway that is enough for this month, I have started on Plague Marines and Pox Walkers so next month's post will have a distinctly Nurgley feel to it.

Sunday 11 June 2017

6mm Sci Fi on the Horizon (Wars)

Well, its been a while since I last managed to get anything more than half started but my enthusiasm has been re-ignited by a bored, late night Amazonian suggestion. Before the mind boggles too hard I shall reveal that Amazon suggested that I might like a copy of Horizon Wars by Robey Jenkins and being the dutiful consumer that I am, I dared not disobey the mighty bringer of shiny stuff. When it arrived I took a quick shufty at the guts of the game and decided to give it a go, especially as I had some 6mm sci-fi miniatures that had originally been bought for a Future War Commander project that had never got off the starting blocks.

That was about twelve days ago, I now have the basis of a pretty useful army painted and a few options still waiting to be cleaned up and primed.



The first units are two Battletech Mechs from Ral Partha Europe, a Madcat and an Urbanmech. The Urby is going to be my CHQ, basically a command centre build in the head of a large stompy robot - hence the all round windows. I will have two Madcats but I only found the other one this morning so it is still being assembled at the moment.



Next up is the infantry. I have based one lot as Light Infantry and another as Mobile Infantry with their APC. The Light Infantry has optional air transport provided by the VTOL. The infantry is by Ground Zero Games, from their NAC range, beautiful little figures that paint up so easily. The VTOL is also by GZG and the APC is from Brigade Models' British range.



Two units of Heavy Artillery next, also Brigade British. I have a third somewhere but it is eluding me at the moment. Brigade have some interesting and plausible designs in their ranges but my favourites have to be the British and the Neo-Soviets, hover tanks versus tracked behemoths with a slight steampunk vibe.



And finally also from Brigade's British range, three elements of hover equipped MBTs which count as Heavy Cavalry in Horizon Wars.



And here it is all together. This is about a 25P army, about average size, depending on how you want to class the mechs and the VTOL. I have a couple more units to add, some more infantry and the remaining Madcat along with another Heavy Artillery unit and some air support but that is a playable force right there, painted in just under a fortnight. Now all I need to do is to paint up some opponents and come up with some fluff for a world to fight over.