Gue'vesa (aka: Humans for the Greater Good)

 o/

My Heresy Lab Kickstarter minis arrived this weekend, and I'm quite pleased with them. Hell, I wish I'd gotten more! This KS finished up in early December of last year, with an ETA of March/April of this one. Considering that (1) it's a Kickstarter and (2) Covid, it's a pleasant surprise that they were only delayed a few weeks. 

These came with 32mm bases, however my Tau infantry are all on 25mm bases. As such I had to scrounge up some 25mm bases, all of which had already been used previously. 

The casts are crisp, clean and of superior quality and came with only one complaint: one mini had an unfortunately located gate on the helm. It's removal took with it the raised helmet stripe his/her companions have.

The full squad.

These will serve as my Fem Fa'Tau garrison army's pathfinder squad (I say garrison as it's almost bereft of heavy weaponry). Armed almost entirely with small arms and accompanied by a lone Piranha, they're basically a force that was left behind to hold recently captured ground whilst the frontline continued to advance. 

This Xenos species is as-yet unknown to the Imperium. Whilst this rarely seen species (known to the Tau as the Aww-Zees) is of little threat to the Imperium (despite that this one appears to be carrying some sort of rail rifle), the fact that yet another species has thrown it's lot in with the Greater Good should be cause for alarm...

In total (now that these have arrived), the army clocks in at a little over 500pts. It's probably a pushover, though I'll still field it as-is at some point.

Hogs & Ends

 o/

Here of late, aside from painting Battletech minis (which is no longer in the purview of this blog) I haven't been doing much hobbying outside of just buying stuff. Several recent purchases were showcased in Neverness' recent battle report in the form of a few newly added Aeldari Eldar Corsairs with spar-glaives (a CCW that confers +1 attack), a Warlock conversion, and a beautifully painted (or perhaps wrapped?) Falcon. 

Pic taken straight from the eBay auction.

Still, the space elves needed a bit more anti-tank weaponry as was sorely evidenced in that game and as such the above minis are traveling in my direction via the webway as we speak...

Zzzzzz's 'Xi' standing proud atop the 'Brick of Scrutiny'. This is the mini that lead me on a somewhat on again, off again (but ultimately successful) search.

I've recently found, and summarily ordered the old, wasteland scavenger mini (pictured above) that I first spotted on Devos IV. No idea what I'll do with it, but I do love the mini. Having a bit of an AdMech-esque (or possibly a Heretek?) appearance, I've dubbed him Dev0504 in recognition of Zzzzzz bringing this mini to my attention.

Lastly, I scrounged up enough 25mm non-slotta bases to invert and glue in my Tarrelian Hog Soldiers (and their non-removable integrated bases). I then added the Tau Breacher shoulder pads as of all of the fire warrior shoulder guard types, those fit best regardless of which side they're on. The originally painted hog, and one other (wearing 2 shoulder guards designating it the Shas'ui equivalent) had their base gaps filled in with my mortal enemy: green stuff. 

The Greater Good is not above using some hired swine as cannon fodder.

Recently though, Neverness mentioned the use of filing in gaps with Elmer's glue. That's a method I used long ago and pretty much had forgotten about at some point. Thus I duly chose to do that here, though having watched one to many an episode of the Great British Bakeoff, it felt as though I was piping royal icing onto the bases rather than it did glue, lol.  

It was a toss up between this and a couple Forgeworld titans. I mean let's face it: the cost was roughly the same. I'm just hoping I made the right decision... 

Amongst my recent purchases is my new (to me) 2020 Subaru Forester. As such, in light of this last purchase, my little spending spree is now officially at an end. 

A rusty box o' Smurf stuff.

 o/

I've been busy painting on my Battletech terrain but that isn't relevant to this blog. Approaching burnout on that project, I opted for a bit of a 'speed paint' on a primed, 3D printed Munitorum container that's been taking up space on my desk for a bit. 

Ya have to wonder what the radioactive contents are? Power armor/plasma gun power supplies? Or maybe just the space marine's lunch...

I knocked this out in a little under two hours, and it took that long only because of the time needed to apply a whopping 16 decals! I wanted there to be consistent markings on all sides, top and bottom excluded as those will likely be hidden under other stacked containers whilst in transit. 

A better view of the lower side markings which mimic those up top.

Originally primed black, this barely surpasses the 3-color minimum with Macragge Blue, Leadbelcher and Ryza rust being the only colors used. I went rather heavy on the rust but am pleased with the end result. Clearly container 190 has been in use for centuries...

I have two more of these still unprimed, plus an actual GW 'open' container buried somewhere.  

****

In other news, the stars aligned this past weekend and Neverness and I were able to play a game of 40k! He has a battle report in the works, so keep an eye out for that here shortly! 

Here he is, carefully chronicling the proceedings in real time...

My first batch of Bolt Action minis are complete!

It's TOMMY! Who's still pinned down by Jerry... 

Whew, I did it! All minis were painted before anymore were purchased arrived in the mail! Whilst it's obvious none will win any awards being just 'table top quality', I'm rather pleased with all of them as a whole. 

Not going to get too wordy with this post, but rather just post pics of them so far. Am taking a bit of break to paint some of my woefully neglected Battlech stuff before delving into the next batch. 

I like how there's even the option for some variation to the prone minis' positioning. 

The first half of my infantry section.

...and the second, with the Mk VIB in support.

At the current time, the Boys AT rifle team is still the potent anti-tank weapon in my army. 

Reinforcements! Though still not sure what I'll do with three Stuarts...

I also have my two, 3D printed transports, however both are only half primed at the moment as I ran out of primer. Sad face.

Soooo...I went and did a thing.

Yep, you guessed it. I (predictably) bought MOAR stuff before painting all of what I had first. I came close though, really I did! 

Originally, I had a dozen infantrymen and a Mk VI B for my British Bolt Action 'army'. Out of that little force, the tank and a half dozen Sikhs are painted, with another three in progress. I did decide to slight expand it by raiding my quar again, stealing their 3D printed Tilly and 15CWT truck. Both of those need some sanding to get rid of the worst of the print lines, afterwhich the Tilly will require a repaint, yet by adding those and dropping my Sikh's LMG gunner, my list would top out at 300pts for no extra cost. 

But then...

...any guesses on who is having a sale?

It's all Table Top Fix's fault really. Damn but that site has cost me a bloody fortune in impulse buys over the years! Needless to say, last Friday I added to the tally. But seriously how could I resist? Looking thru their site under the 'UP TO 66% OFF!' submenu I found the Stuart light tank for $16. Hell yeah! I wanted one of those! Swap it out for my Mk VIB and my little list instantly goes to a mid-war, later North African campaign list.  Add to cart, go to checkout and...

...there's a $50 minimum for orders outside of the UK. 

Fuck. 

Well lemme see, maybe there's something else that I might want that's on sale...don't really want to spend that much $$$ tho...

Nope, not really. However I can just get 3 Stuarts and then be able to do Tank War or an armored platoon (with which 3 Stuarts and a Mk VIB really aren't much of a threat to anybody else's Tank War and/or armored platoon armies but still...), toss in a $5 Desert Rats decal sheet and we're there! Wait what?!? Shipping is $24!!! 

Sad fac-wait what's this here at the bottom of the screen? 'You maybe entitled to a free boxed set to offset shipping costs...' sure! Clicks said link and...shortly thereafter finds the 8th army infantry box (the same one that my Sikhs came out of) on the list. So...a $47.50 box for free to offset the $24 shipping cost. Sounds good. 

Indeed, going on full retail price my order would have set me back $139, whereas I instead only paid $77 (almost a third of which was shipping!). As such my Sikhs now clock in at 42 infantrymen, 3 Stuarts, a Mk VIB, a truck and a Tilly. Playing around with that in Easyarmy's list builder, I've come up with several 500-750pt army lists. My AT weaponry is woefully lacking in most all of them, but whatever, I have more than enough for now. 

Now my only concern is: which old, unused minis do I eBay off to offset this latest round impulse buying???

Sikh and Destroy!

 o/

Now with three Sikh riflemen completed and three more in progress, I guess I can say momentum has been achieved. How much? Who can say, but I have it for right now anyways, propelled all the more by the fact that Bolt Action has been resurrected from the dead at the FLGS.

Better yet, there's a guy regularly fielding a Russian tachanka which makes me happy. I just love it when hideously poor units are fielded purely because somebody just likes them. From what I hear it's actually fared quite well too!

My second trio is going better than the three above as I now have the color scheme down .Originally I had the browns for the skin tone and leatherwork/packs and webbing reversed. Ultimately I didn't like that and switched 'em which looks much better I think. 

Not sure how historically accurate my colors are, but given my limited selection of paints here at the house it'll have to do. This scheme is fairly quick and easy to do, which is kind of a necessity considering that most BA armies are fairly infantry heavy.

With some infantry nearby, you can see just how terribly small the Mk VI B is. Hard to believe there's 3 guys, plus an engine, guns and ammo crammed into that death trap!

I'm off to a 'dazzling' start!

Well that was easy(ish). I started off painting my Bolt Action force with my little (but mighty?) Mk VI B. I finished it out in an evening and am rather pleased with it. I opted for the caked on dust wash much like my Incandescent Coyotes. Google any image of a combat vehicle in a desert environ and they all invariably are caked with dust. 

There is much online debate as to whether or not the color scheme used a light blue, or a light grey. I chose the sort of middle ground using GW's celestial grey, which has a tinge of blue to it.   

The British, Dazzle camo style that was used in the desert campaign seems simple but is rather difficult to achieve. Painting straight, diagonal lines across the hull of a tank hasn't gotten any easier despite having painted a multitude of 40k tanks over the years. 

There's one famously photographed Mk VI B which sports the name ABERDEEN across the back of the turret bustle. However several others have (seemingly random) identification numbers, which as you can see is the route I chose to go. 

This particular color scheme isn't based on any sort of historical unit, rather it just looked the part to me going off of the myriad examples that can be found online. The markings placement is also based off of what I found in google searches, though truth be told there seems to be little rhyme or reason to any of it. 

The large geometric shapes on the turret rear were quite common. Just what the symbolism of each means, mystifies me however.

Also I figure it would difficult to take a whole lot of pride (or any for that matter) in crewing such a cramped, uncomfortable and ridiculously inadequate combat vehicle. Apparently the tank's crew agrees as they've named it 'TOAD'. 

Armed with an HMG with a co-axial MMG and sporting 7+ armor, the Mk VI B can best be described as...first blood.