Exeter Legionary 2010 preparations

Our local show is tomorrow, so the last week or so has been packed with preparations and organizing etc. All this means that I have completed very little in the way of painting. So instead I thought I would subject you all to a little advert in the form of a handout I prepared last night.

Local man attacked by bats and then mauled by cat.

I started work on my vampire count bat swarms this week. I wanted to keep using GW figures but don't like the pose of head up - tail down. I have therefore tried to model them as if attacking empire figures.

 This figure has the body of an empire swordsman and the arms and head from the artillery crew. I have then pined all of the bats off his body.

This chap is out of the empire giant set and once again the bats are pined straight off of his torso. I added a pin to his foot so that he could stand without fear of breaking, however.......

After spraying, mu cat took objection to the figure and decided to separate the running man from his foot. I guess I will need to pin his ankle and keep away from the cat...

My local club has its annual show this weekend, so I am spending a fair amount of time running around preparing for this. Less time to paint.

WIP: Blood knights

OK; I know that its been done before, but here is my take on a blood knight conversion. This is a trial figure to see if the idea is feasible. If it works than just four more to go to make the unit...

It starts with the head of a ghoul (on a pin). Add to the body of a Dark Eldar Warrior and the arms of a cold one rider..

Take a Chaos knight horses head and remove the solid bit under the head so that the reins hang free.

Use the hair of a dark Eldar warrior as a tail on the body of a chaos knight horse (Which has had the Chaos symbols scrapped off).

 Attach Cold one rider legs and the body to the horse and to have the start of a blood knight..

I had to raise his body quite a lot to keep his proportions looking correct. This means that I will need to green-stuff him a waist. That in itself is not a major problem. The biggest worry that I have is that the horse is just so very large that the rider looks a little comical and lost on its back. Maybe if I give him a tall hat and cut off the horses spikes then the proportions might look better. For now I will let him sit on the shelf for a small time to see if I am happy enough to continue.

Week 15: Ghouls out for Summer

The sun has well and truely arrived in Exeter and to mark the event I have now passed 50 ghouls painted.

These bad boys are starting to look pretty good on masse, even if I do say so myself..

Another 15 painted this week, including a Crpt ghoul ghast.

The Crypt ghoul ghast has been converted up using the body of an Empire Flagulent. I think that I have lent the head too far back, but apart from that I am quite happy with the result.

Once again I have been combining about half of the ghouls into shared bases, so that figure placement is easier.

I have had to do a fair amount of conversion on the ghouls with skeletons on their backs, but have now hit on the idea of putting a shield there...

I think that I will try this again, it appears to work quite well..

Overrun by russians: FOW v WFB

Recently dusted off my Flames of war mid-war Italians to have a game against russians and had a great time playing. This set me to thinking about which particular aspects that I enjoy so much in the FOW rules and if any of these would or could be reflected in the up-coming warhammer fantasy rule changes.

Yes I know that they are very different games looking at very different types of battle, but at the end of the day they are both turn based wargames, one v one played out in a couple of hours. Understanding makes one game good might be of use when thinking about what you want to see in rule changes to another.

 So I got to thinking about what I so liked about the gameplay for Flames of war.

• Missions that are interesting, very well balanced and make any battle interesting

every game of WFB that I have played, for as long as I can remember have been straight across the table meetings. I know pretty much what my tactics will be (dependent upon opponent only).

•  Variable starting lineups.

depending upon the mission, FOW requires you to start many times with only half of your troops on the table. This can make unit choice very interesting.

• scenery rules that actually make the arrangement of scenery important

FOW requires half of the table to be covered in scenery, and the scale of the game makes this very important. With WFB the scenery only appears to have a minor effect.

• Realistic models

Not a lot to say here, they are two games trying to achieve different things. I have no problems whatsoever with GWs figure range. Lets face it the only reason I started playing was because I love painting the figures so.

I'm not trying to say that WFB is a bad game. Its not, in fact its a great game that has kept my interest for many years. The core rules don't need much tinkering to make them perfect. I just wish that there was a little more variety between games.

 If you want to know what happened in the game. I didn't protect my guns enough and was overrun by the masses of Russian infantry. My anti-infantry tanks were taken out far too easily by a late arriving platoon of Russian tanks.

Week 14: Ghouly gathering

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Of trays and ghouls

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After a weeks break from painting I am back refreshed and ready for action... To mark this precious state I have elected to tackle a few more ghouls. I am trying to reproduce the original paint scheme but I didn't take any notes, so I'll have to have a few goes at obvious colour combination's until I can work out what I used. I am modeling about half of the figures in paints as shown above. The idea is that this will make ranking easier.

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 I love these figures because they look so very manic. The only problem areas are around the shoulder blades and on the hips, where I have had to apply so greenstuff. The only other problem is the figure with the skeleton on his back. If I am going to model and paint 80 of these guys, then I will end up with 8 of him. The problem is he is so very different and 8 will stand out too much. I have therefore decided to convert half of these. The chap above has received a simple conversion with his hair replacing the skeleton.

I have also had to knock up a couple of bases. the ones above are for the chaos Marauder horsemen. I put magnetic fridge magnet material on the base of the figures and metallic paper on the movement tray. This mean that the bases sit too high in comparison with the tray. The solution is as shown above. I use cardboard off a breakfast cereal t raise the edge. I then slap on loads of PVA to create a nice smooth front edge to the whole thing. When this is dry I apply PVA & grit in the conventional way. Easy...

Easter shopping: Day 2

I had an opportunity to pick up used Tau army from a club member at a knock down price, so I went for it.

The army has the following figures;

• Etheral
• Crisis Commander
• 6 XV15 Stealth Suits (old style metal ones)
• 4 Crisis Suits with various weapon fits
• 24 Fire Warriors
• 20 Kroot
• Krootox
• 6 Kroot Hounds
• Shaper with pulse carbine
• 18 Gun Drones
• 3 shield drones
• Forge World Transfer sheet (white)
• Forge World vehicle upgrade pack
• Forge World Tau Tank Commander
• Still-boxed Hammerhead tank
• 3 still-boxed Piranha skimmers
• Aun'shi, Etheral special character from previous codex
• The metal parts for Commander Farsight (but no crisis suit to go with them).

This will have to be a project that will sit on the shelf until after I have finished painting the current Warhammer Fantasy army projects. I need to consider an appropriate colour scheme, but I am definitely considering having a go at putting lights inside the figures.

My knowledge of current 40k is almost no existent, so this could be fun...

Easter shopping: Day 1

A week away from my painting base has given me the perfect opportunity to collect some more fresh clean plastic and metal ready to be abused with my paint brush.

It all looks so lovely in it packages that I felt the need to photograph it...

For your delight, fresh from the shoppe shelves, 40 ghouls, 15 chaos nights, 20 Grave guard, 6 bat swarms and a winged vampire.

Week 13: Slaanesh Marauder horsemen

For some reason I find painting cavalry figures far more time consuming than I ever imagine that they will be.
This week I have painted my second box of slaanesh Maruader horsemen.

The general idea is that I will end up with three units of slaanesh cavalry armed with throwing spears and with only light armour. This maintains the fast cavalry ability and enables my mages to move around the battlefield within a unit that will not panic.

The unit colours match the previous marauder figures I have painted. I have deliberately varied the position of the horse figure along the base to give a looser feel to the unit in a way that I hope emphasises their more independent approach.

Easter is now upon me and I plan to take a break from painting as I visit relatives. Have a good one....

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