Like a shot out of left field!

o/

On the red sand, this guy's actually camouflaged!

Here's my Blood Angels test model. This is one of five (sounds like something from the Borg's collective, lol) Chinese recruits, purchased via ebay back around the time that the Betrayal of Calth had just been released. I wanted Mk III marines, more than Mk IV's, but couldn't afford the Forgeworld originals. The quality was decent enough at the time, but I never actually built any of them as I was working on the Mk IV's.

Then the Burning of Prospero came out, and I bought a single Mk III mini via ebay and yeah…side-by-side, the quality of the plastic mini vs. my Chinese knockoffs was startling. As such, they were punted out of the 'to-build' queue and all but forgotten until I drew up an army for my 30k game with Bob. In double checking my numbers, I found I was one mini short, and so I built this one to fill that hole in my roster. 

The Chinese recruit prior to his first death in combat...

Following that game, I went back to build the rest. I knew they had issues, but figured I could get 2-3 more out the remaining four, but they were so poorly cast that during my attempted assembly I threw them all out in a fit of nerd rage! In hindsight, I ought to have kept the helmets to decorate bases, but oh well. That's my only regret at this point.

At the time of purchase I wanted something cheap, and that is exactly what I got.

Skipping back to the present, I figured I'd paint this mini up as a squad of plastic Mk III's was just purchased via ebay. Had this mini not been painted prior to their arrival its likely to have joined its brethren in the trash dump! That said (and for whatever stupid reason), I didn't want this mini mixed in (again) with my Alpha Legionnaires. Thus, on a whim I painted him as a Blood Angel. 

Old, fugly pic. This mini will
be rebased and get a BA decal.

The intent was to give my non-denominational Techmarine a new lease on life as a BA Forgelord. Add in a tac squad and possibly my half-painted predator redone in BA colors (more on that in a later post) and that would make for a nice little loyalist allied contingent to back up my Outremar. 

I lack the numbers necessary to siphon models off of my Alpha Legion army to build a new faction, however if I put the bolter grunts to the back of the painting queue, as bare plastic marines they can fight for either Legion. Works for me since I have close to 20 tactical support and devastator Alpha Legionnaires to paint anyways.

*****

For my personal reference: this paint recipe is waaaay simpler than the one for my Alpha Legionnaires. Indeed, I was able to match my Techmarine which was originally painted who knows how long ago!

Blood Angel paint recipe:

Base coat of Mephiston Red, trimmed in whatever bolt gun metal is called now.

Then slather on Agrax Earthshade. 

Once dry dirty & touch up as normal. 

3D Printed Warmahordes Terrain!

o/

Okay, so its not *official* Warmahordes terrain, but its also not Warhammer Fantasy terrain either (who's scale is a smidge small for Warmahordes' human scale infantry...which I figure is kind of the standard to go by). Anyways, I went in on a Kickstarter back in December for a brewery terrain piece by Dicey Ventures Studios.

Dicey is a small company that produces 3D printed terrain and/or (if you have your own 3d printer) ready-to-go CAD files for the same terrain. They also offer to pre-paint their terrain as well, though that pretty much doubles the cost. I opted for an extra terrain piece, though given that I had to remove all of the excess...stuff from the 3D printer, I do wonder if opting for the painted option might not have been the better way to go...

Just about the right scale, don't you think?

I mean, it wasn't hard to remove but was time consuming and unfortunately (as I was basically going in kinda blind with a small, flat screw driver to pry the stuff off) I inflicted some minor damage to one piece. That said, its nothing that is irreparable, it just means it'll take a bit more work to finish.

It looks kinda like a giant hotel piece from the Monopoly board game...

Again, the scale looks correct for my Trolls.

This was a freebee from the KS. 

That said, whilst these are nice pieces, they're kinda light weight and I worry that in the long run they might be kinda frail. So while injected plastic manufacturing might need to keep a wary eye on 3D printing, its not in danger of being replaced just yet. Hopefully I'll get these pieces sanded down (the few parts that'll need it), primed and painted soon.

We're a dying race, we're a dying race, we're...

o/

My beloved Wolfy and I met up with Bob at the FLGS for a 'Carnage' game of Kill Team this past Saturday.

Bob had: a Dark Angels tactical squad with a plasma gun, missile launcher and Sgt. w/plasma pistol and chainsword.

Wolfy had: a crisis suit with a twin-missile pod, 6 Fire Warriors and 4 Pathfinders with a Shas'Ui and 2 rail rifles

I had: 5 Dire Avengers lead by an Exarch, and 10 Storm Guardians with a flamer, fusion gunner and 1 with a power sword.

The Eldar advance en masse...

The fighting was fast and furious, with the first casualty being Wofly's Crises suit via a krak missile. Initially Wolfy's shooting was very accurate and deadly, until Bob's outflankers popped up behind them, then the Fem Fa'Tau's dice went cold...

Bob's outflankers arrive to 'clear the tower ruins'...

My Eldar fanned out quickly, inflicting (and suffering) numerous casualties. My KT's MVP was by far the outflanking Storm Guardian with the flamer, who took out 3 Dark Angels including the ML and Sgt. before being gunned down.

Despite having 10 Storm Guardians, predictably few made it into HTH, and even then the results were mixed.

When it came time to roll LD tests for being below half strength (which occurred at approximately the same time for all 3 of us). The Dark Angels hung in there due mainly to the ATSKNF reroll. The Tau held their ground due to Wolfy still rolling only 1' & 2's (which for once was a good thing), and as for my Eldar? I was rolling high and in the blink of an eye, 3 of my models slipped into the webway and disappeared!

Hiding from those 'fucking Tau guns!'

Over the course of the last turn, the Fem Fa'Tau were reduced to a single fire warrior due to casualties, and I was wiped out! With 4 of Bob's Dark Angels still on the table, Wolfy raised the white flag and they called it.

Rusty as we all were in remembering our army specific rules, once we got past that the game was quick and fun just the way they ought to be!

Two more ancient minis are complete!

o/

Now in my defense, I purchased these via ebay and only a few years ago...as opposed to say, Neverness buying them when they were originally made (decades ago!) and who is only now getting around to painting them.

But I digress...

Anyways first up, the last Corsair in my squad of five. This was an old standard bearer mini, though I didn't realize this as at the time of purchase since the banner pole was long gone. It did however, still have the odd nubbin to which the banner pole would have been attached, but on its own that bit looked kinda dumb. So I clipped it off and rounded it down to where the back looks instead more like the typical, oddly hunched-backed guardian armor (why the hell are they like that anyways?).I think the end result came out well and this mini fills out the squad nicely. Now I just need to finish up the their Venom...

I have another Corsair for this squad on the way. When he arrives the one with the power sword above will be rebased to serve as an Autarch to go with the Storm Guardians from last week because, I don't have enough Autarch options already...

I also painted a second 'regular grunt' Dire Avenger for my Iyanden contingent. Again this is another old, metal mini that was a dirt cheap purchase on ebay (it was in yet another lot of 14 minis for $14). The squad as you can see is up to three painted Avengers, with the female model serving as the squad's exarch, and their even more colorful compatriot serving as the army's Autarch.

As an aside, you may have noticed that these two, newly painted minis are much shinier than the others. Looks to me like Testors got their labels mixed up again, and I got a can of semi-gloss varnish labeled as lusterless flat. Whilst rare, this isn't the first time that this has happened to me (grumble, grumble...). So I'll have to either get another can of clear coat or I can just re-clear coat my previously painted Eldar minis to match. Considering that they're Eldar,  well that would probably be the more appropriate option (and is cheaper in the short term).

Saim-Hann Storm Guardians

o/

Nope, no work has been done to those 2 WWII Orks from my last posts. Instead, in keeping with my usual, short attention span approach to gaming I switched from Orks to Eldar. There's been a bit of progress on another Iyanden Dire Avenger as well as a Corsair. Hopefully I'll have those two finished in time for Thursday's post (though given my intent to finish those Orks in my prior post, I wouldn't hold your breath...).

I also made a few touch-ups on my new squad of Storm Guardians, more out of personal preference than any actual need. Their weapons were all monochromatic, gold in this case and I prefer to have the blades of their CCWs be silver, whilst the two with metallic green-tinged blades represent the ones with power swords.

I got these for a mere $14 (shipping included) on ebay back around Christmas. Compared to Striking Scorpions and/or Howling banshees, Storm Guardians kinda suck, however given the quality of the paint jobs, and the conversions for the weapons (nope, no FAILcast conversion bits here), these minis were simply a steal!

Adding in this new squad I might be able to muster about 1500 points of Eldar, but in the foreseeable future these will likely be fielded in a games of Kill Team rather than 40k.

This week in the Appalachian Subsector...

Here we see Kushial, as he plots our demise...

There's notta whole lot to report on the hobby front. Wolfy and I got in a game of X-wing last week vs. Kushial. With Rebels all around it was a 'training session' which ended with Wolfy saying: 'Good list Honey, thanks!' Yeah sure, why do I keep giving the 'good' lists to you and not to me again? At least I got to use my ARC-170 that she got me for Christmas. In its maiden game it did fairly well (before I was unceremoniously wiped off of the board).

I've also gotten a little bit of base coating in on two more of my WWII Orks. Not a whole lot I'm afraid, but hopefully I can finish these two in the next week or so.  

Aside from that, I'm afraid that that's about it. Well, except that Papa Nurgle has cast his gaze upon me once more. Whilst I'm not full blown sick, so I kinda feel...bleh.

Yay.

TROLL POST!!!

o/

I finished painting my last assembled Pyg Bushwhacker. With Gunnbjorn this brings me to six painted trolls, and as such I assembled the other five that have been rattling around in the box. It took me almost a year exactly to paint these five (almost 15 months if you include Gunnbjorn).

Miserably slow as that is, its nonetheless the longest period of vague interest that I've managed to have in Warmahordes to date. Hell, I've even read close to a third of Primal Mk III (of course me, reading rulebooks...yeah, that doesn't equal comprehension in the slightest).

At my current rate of progress, I might, just might have a fieldable force ready in time for Warmahordes Mk IV!

Captain Bob

o/

Not sure what legion's colors will be
on the partial Mk IV helm on the base

I've always liked the Dark Vengeance Dark Angel captain mini, and on a whim I bought this one off of ebay a few weeks back. They're literally a dime a dozen on there and like most that are available, I got this one for a pittance. I thought this would make for a good 30k Dark Angel, as all it would need is a simple head swap and larger base.

True, the Mk VII power armor was developed during the Heresy, but I thought a Mk IV helm would look better not to mention it wouldn't have the ridiculously grandiose decorative wings which are liable to interfere with close combat and/or catch on every low hanging tree branch. 

Locally, Bob is our resident Dark Angel aficionado, and after the ass-whipping he handed my Alpha Legion this past weekend, I would remiss if I didn't mention the fleeting moment of unbridled glee I felt when I wrenched off this mini's helm, as I decapitated it with a pair of pliers the other day. Thus, in that moment he became: Captain Bob.

Like Captain Woo (who also still needs to be painted), this mini is likely to be a one-off paint job. I don't plan on having a single marine painted in the colors of each of the HH Legions, but I'm sure there will be a few at the least.

Speaking of last week's game, I was pondering alterations to my Alpha Legion army and was coming up blank. The army was built more on aesthetic appeal rather than table top effectiveness. True, I still have a dreadnought to paint and assemble, but I'm guessing that I'll need some more bodies on the table to give me some options. Thus I will be buying another squad here shortly, once some hobby funds are available via my current ebay auctions. 

Of course last week, rather than more marines all I needed was a rhino or two to transport my marines right thru that wall of bolter fire, but rhinos are boring to build and paint. Of course not having my Vanquisher stunned and then blown up in short order would have helped immensely as well, but those are the breaks...