Survey

Not really a post about my models or any games but I set up a little survey and would like it very much if people were to fill it out, once I've got a fair few results I'll put up another post with the results. Thanks in advance

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R2LH8W6

Also keep your eyes peeled for a detailed turn by turn battle report coming soon!

A work in progress

Having completed a 1500 point Beastmen army and realising that they really are not that good (over priced monsters, over priced mass infantry, lack of special choice and far to easy to kill) I decided to start a new army. The big turning point was getting trounced by the new rules Ogre army they tore through my best combat units with their worst combat units. Seeing as the user was someone I was going to play regularly I figured I should get a better army.

High elves seemed like a good choice lots of shooting and cool special choices and they were one of the few armies not used regularly. I dipped into eBay to see what sort of stuff I could get cheap and got rather lucky. For £10 I got a sold as seen army. In it was 16 spear man 16 archers 10 sword masters 5 dragon princes Tyrion and 3 shadow warriors. They were however the older models but for £10 I wasn't too bothered as it was a pretty firm start for the army.

The day it arrived I play tested them with a couple of stand ins against the same Ogres as before. The elves did us proud with a devastating victory. Content with my army I started to expand and buy new models. One of my first purchases was 5 new Dragon Princes of Caledor and a White Lion Chariot. They are pretty cool models and on top of that they are very good units.

Due to the mass purchase of men and the large amount of games played painting was put on the back burner. The first unit I painted was a White Lion Chariot. I'm not usually a fan of dry brushing due to it take extended effort but I figured I'd use it just this once. The result was very pleasing.

 

For the lions I spray painted the whole model chaos black and after that I dry brushed over with bleached bone the first layer was pretty thinly spread with more black than anything so I dry brushed it again with a much more pleasing affect. After that I added in the brown speckles you can see. Once they had dried I mixed a wash using dwarf flesh and a tiny bit of skull white. I then dry brushed the manes with bleached bone and added the details to the harness etc.

In my rush to use the lion chariot in a battle I put the whole thing together without thinking about the men on top and the actual chariot. Painting them whilst glued together was horrible so it ended up being a pretty basic paint job.

  As you may know from previous blogs hormagaunt purple is my favourite colour and therefore had to be included on the chariot. The rest is pretty basic.

After painting the Lion Chariot my next models to be painted were the Dragon Princes. The way I figured it the Dragon Princes are 30 points a model so with them painted that's a large portion (points wise) of my army.

So boldly I painted away. Using the standard black undercoat.

I used the Dragon Princes of the Games Workshop website as a guide to painting them, which unfortunately meant for the first time ever in my fantasy armies I would have a unit with no purple! Instead I used Altdorf Guard Blue (the old ultramarine blue, a lot cooler name) and skull white. The gems and detail on the shield I painted with Troll Slayer Orange. The armour I used bolt gun metal and chain mail metal accordingly and finished of with burnished gold.

For the horse I used bleached bone, another of my favourite colour also with the success of the lions I even used some dry brushing. Although it looks pretty basic the model took the best part of two hours to paint partly due to Hollyoaks and Dead Poets Society distracting me and also due to in decision on what colour to paint parts. The last 4 models I should be able to batch paint.

All in all I was very impressed with my own painting and look forward to finishing off the army. Watch this space...

Birth of a Beast

As you may know from reading my other posts I have a Beastmen army. The centre piece of this army is now my brand spanking new Ghorogon. I either use it as the rare choice in the army or use Malagor to summon him onto the battlefield.  There was initialy some debate between me and a friend as to whether to have him as a Ghorogon or as a Cygor. He thought it looked better as a stone throwing Cygor but he was wrong. So I made it as a Ghorogon.

The thing whuch really struck me is just how humungous big he is and I mean humongous big. He towers over giants and makes minotaurs look puny.

From left to right Ungor, Gor, Minotaur and Ghorogon

Most core unit men would not even be able to strike above the Ghorogon's knee and a minotaur would even struggle to hit above the waist.

Now a dear friend of mine Dead Pony has always insisted that Ghorogon's do not live up to the hype and black and white pictures in the army book and to some degree I agreed with him looking at the picture of the Ghorgon on the boxes front cover and other pictures of them online I thought they look far too crowded with too much going on so to remedy this I decided not to add on most of the extras. There was some pretty wack add ons he could have work ear rings but I didn't want him to be gay he could have had a bell necklace as well and a skeleton hanging of his belt all of which would crowd the body.

Now to the actual painting process. Obviously I undercoated it black and had intended on then using my spray gun to cover it in Tallarn Flesh but the games workshop spray gun blows more than a cheap whore so I had to brush it all, which took a long long time just doing an undercoat on the body took over an hour before I even started on the legs and head! Once he had the flesh colour on him then I mixed in a bit of Chaos Black with some Tallarn Flesh and dry brushed it over just to add some depth and darkness to the body. After that I added some Devlins Mud wash to some of his muscles to add some shade.

Once I had finished the flesh I moved onto his hairy spikes for these I chose my favourite colour Hormagaunt Purple! If Games Workshop were not scum bags who decided to change the colours for giggles then I would recomend that everyone go out and buy Hormagaunt Purple it is the most awe inspiring colour i have ever seen! So versatile and pretty it always makes me happy.

The fur/hair/spikes didn't take much time to do and look pretty good. After that I moved on to the platha of skulls he seems to carry around and the gor skeleton he seems to carry around on his back again these were pretty simple and took little time.

After that I painted the horns and bone(?) arm bits and his spikes and finished of just adding in some fine detail points like the tounge and eyes.

Once he was finished I came across an even bigger problem than what arms to give him and how to paint him. His sheer enormity of the best would not fit into any of my boxes so instead I had to improvise and create something my cousin would be very proud of a box full of tissues to keep him safe and a small hole in the lid as there was no other way for him to fit!

Space Marines

So as promised I took some pictures of my army. Here is some of my space marine army. This force is 1899 points exactly. I have another 15 normal men I could use to buff it up to 2000 but I quite like the balance and symentry of it.

Top row left to right:Whirlwind, dreadnaught with twin linked lascannon, land speeder, dreadnaugh with multi melta and predator. Tactical squad 2 bikes, devastator squad consisting of 2 rocket launchers and a lascannon, 2 bikes and a tactical squad. Bottom row left to right: 5 (new) terminators, assault squadron, scout squad, 5 (old) terminators command squad consisting of force commander libarian and chaplin.

the points and rulings are done using a very very old codex circa 1998 to be precise however a new codex is on its way so as it stands I have no idea if this army is actually legal and whether or not the points are actually 100% right.

Although it is a pretty complete army at the moment with a good mix if gast attack heavy weapons close combat dons etc there are a few units I want to add it. First I really really want this http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440272a&prodId=prod1060067

Secondly the devastator squad could do with some filling out and some more variation. However I intend on finishing the painting of the men I have before I buy anymore as you can only half of the men are fully painted.

 Heres a couple of zoomed in shots of the army.

 Of the fully painted men I have a couple of favopurites. This first one I ended up making out of some spare parts I picked up for a couple of pounds on ebay. I either use him as a sergerant for a tactical squad or as a body guard in the command squad depending on points/scenario/genereal feelings on the day.

One of my other favourites is this bad man: A small shout out here for Donald Paper for advising me on actually making him a legal model otherwise he'd not let me use it in battles. He's not yet been used in a battle but when I do use him I'm sure he will be awesome.

Finally using the spare parts from ebay I made up a couple of models when I was bored. All four of them are in fact illegal to use in battle but I think they look pretty cool and am pretty proud of them and like to call them the misfits. Hopefully one day the rules will change and make them legal. Two duel wielding plasmas guys certainly would be fun and a techmarine equiped with a multimelta would be awesome. The last guy I don't even know what gun he is carrying I found it in a box of old paints and brushes I'm pretty sure its Tau but if anyone can shed any light on it feel free. Its also only half a gun which luckily you can't see from this angle.

A large part of my army came from the Assault on Black Reach set directly or indirectly. I picked it up from a local shop where it was only £50, I intended on selling the orc stuff on ebay but instead ending up swapping it with a friend who wanted to paint them for some of his painted Space Marines, I ended getting the two tanks, 4 bikes, dreadnaught, landspeeder and chaplin. Robbed him blind...

The best thing about the Assault on Black Reach set however is it comes with a full 40k rule book as well as templates! In fact the whole box set if brought individually is worth around £250.

I shall sign of for now but keep your eyes and ears peeled for more models. With friends returning from uni for a few weeks then we should get some decent battles going. Might right up a few battle reports even!

The start of something beautiful

I'm more used to setting trends then following them but when three former friends started their own up I felt obligated to make my own and show them how it is really done.

Its pretty dark as I write this so no pictures of my gloriously painted models are avaliable however I can give you a run down of what I am currently collecting.

I collect generic LOTR men and heroes, have some Gondorians some Rohirim some Goblins and lots of heroes.

Also a big fan of space marines. I have a 1900 point space marine army before fancy add ons to individual guys which would knock the points up to around 2500.

I've also recently been tempted into collecting a fantasy army, my first choice of Ogre's was already being done by somebody else so I settled for second best in Beastmen. When I made the choice it was purely on browsing through the pictures on Games Workshop and deciding that they by far looked the second best.

So I went along to games workshop with the intention of picking up the £60 battalion set and not buying anything else until I had them painted instead I ended up buying the £60 set some minotaurs Malagor the dark omen and a spray gun as well as numerous paints.

As it stands nearly all my men are painted most have been batch painted as I had so many to paint some look pretty impressive some look distinctly average. My gor bannerman for example had the misfortune of falling into a bucket of dirty water when I was spraying him. He has never really recovered from the ordeal.

Painting for now however has been put on hold due to the death of my detail brush instead I figured I'd try  my hand at making some scenery. Over the course of a few visits I stole roughly 60 hot drink stirrers from Subway and McDonalds which I used to make a few ladders and moved onto making a fortification. The fort turned out pretty poor so I scrapped it and started a new one using ice lolly sticks. 16 lollies in one day and a few hours work later I was left with this:

I intend on addind two more walls putting battlements around it and painting it as well. I also hope I can figure out a way in which to be able to move the portcullis up and down. The blue tac holding it in place I will either PVA some "dirt" on to it or add gravel depends on how I feel when I get round to it.