Preparing for Vengeance

It seems like the world is about to go either Dark Angels or Chaos mad when it comes to 40k at the minute. Unless you've been hiding under a rock, as they say you'd know the new 40k starter set, Dark Vengeance is out tomorrow.

I'm planning to kick off a growing tale of four gamers style campaign at the lost boys gaming club to set us into sixth edition 40k proper. As the new boxed set contains Dark Angels, who were in fact my first proper 40k army all those years ago, and Chaos, my all time favorites, it'd have been rude not to order myself a copy.

As I have a good few thousand points of chaos forces, I thought this would be a good chance to go back to where I started and have a go at the emperor's 1st legion. 

Now, I've not actually painted marines for quite a while now. So long in fact, that there aren't any more here on my blog, as my last marine army predates my first post. I went back to basics, picked myself up a tactical squad, and cracked out the paints. These pictures are of my first finished combat squad. 

Ok, they aren't quite done, still got bases to go. Painting marines after so long has really shown how far my painting has come. I wouldn't have been able to properly shade and highlight those eye lens' last time I tried.

 

And I certainly wouldn't have been able to try the fiddly bits on my sergeant's banner and shoulder plate. 

So my advise, is go grab a copy of Dark Vengeance and go back to basics, just for a painting exercise. You won't realize what you know!

Sneaky peak for the future!

Gonders

The Turncoat Navy. The Thunderbolt Fighter that couldn't make it's mind up.

So for a few years now, I've had a forgeworld thunderbolt fighter hanging around, me not really having an imperial army for it to go with.

Last year, when I started building my chaos apocalypse army, I slapped some chaos stars across it's wings, just so I could throw it on the table...

Which looked alright, but if I'm honest, kinda ruined its clean imperial paint job. 

The other day, whilst browsing some well known nerd forums, I found a thread in a wanted section posted by a guy looking for imperial fliers to buy. I offered him the t'bolt, but he wanted it without the chaos stars. Kinda wish I'd used transfers now.

So this morning I set about trying to remember how I painted those clean panels all those years ago. 

This is the result after an hour or two. I don't think its quite as clean as the first time round, but I don't think anyone would notice when its on the table. 

So maybe he'll finally find the right battlefield to strafe in a new home. I think the years I've had it sat in a cupboard, it won't happen with me. 

Gonders

The Last March of the Trollbloods.

This Weekend just gone, I played a Warmachine tournament with my trolls I've been posting about. This was to be a special tournament for the trolls for several reasons.

Firstly, It was the last in a trilogy of lighthearted events I've taken part in over the summer, hosted at the Scythe and Teacup gamer's Cafe in Liverpool. All three days were great fun, with some worthy opponents to test my mettle against.

Secondly, as I posted about earlier, I'd placed 4th in the first event, and come home with the 1st place trophy in the second event. This was enough to put my top of the leader board at the start of play yesterday.

The final reason it was special, more for Jarl Skuld than me(I'm sure he was welling up in the last game), is that I've had the army up for sale for the last couple of weeks, and I've now found a buyer, so the army is sold. This was to be my last chance to go out with a bang and show I've learnt something starting trollbloods in the first place.

Would I come home with a prize for the plucky blue highwayman?  

This photo was taken by the event organiser, Mark Berkley. This was the most gruelling game of the day, against a cygnar player I knew only as stuey. Jarl and EHayley danced each other's shots and spells, pushing into the objective zone with their armies.  

The game continued almost up till time, with neither caster able to find a weakness to exploit. Several cygnar jack pushed forward only to be slammed back back troll impalers, while a mauler hammered up the right flank, chewing his way through Thorn, to shear down hayley's reach.

In the end, jarl and a single impaler remained to claim a control point to carry me home in an unconvincing manner.

A few games later and Jarl's very last shot claimed Servath Reznik's last hit point to seal the last game for me. 

In the end, I finished the day with 3 wins and a loss, the loss being to Phil winstanley's skorne in round one. Phil went on to win all of his games throughout the day, and came home with the first place trophy. Very well done to him.

I landed fourth again. My total tournament points for the whole trilogy, however, put me just above Phil, who came second. 

So i came home with another trophy, this time the IKRPG alexia, and a pack of free objective markers for coming top over all.

I also managed to win myself 6 free paints by winning the best painted model competition with my dire troll mauler.

With this, the day was done. I big thank you to mark for organising the event, and the the gamers at the scythe for providing some cracking games over the summer. No doubt we'll meet again!!

How to build a Trollkin Warwagon.

 

 

To continue the articles about the Horde Troll army I built and painted for the WPS Club Challenge this year, here is a guide to how I assembled the largest and most impressive model, so I could practise with it one the table at the same time as painting all the details. I Knew I was on limited time, so had to make the whole thing able to be disassembled to paint it, and reassembled to game with. Here comes a lot of pinning...

Firstly I cleaned up and built the chassis. no problems there, I just made sure there was a pin I could put the buffalo on through the yoke, and a pin for the deck and gun mount to slide over later on. Easy. 

Next came adding the buffalo. They each had a hoof pinned to the base, but not glued, and I just slide them on to the yoke pin from step one.

Next up, I built the deck, and drilled to pins to keep the gun mount straight and true. I didn't glue the deck yet, so I could get at the chassis later on for painting. I also pinned the driver in, but again, with no glue.

After I'd assembled the gun mount, the rest of the crew were pinned in place. I used only the minimum amount of glue through the whole job, and long pins so I could slide the whole thing to bits to get the painting done. 

The completed wagon, after painting. I glued everything I could after this to make sure it would survive the table top. The only part that remained unglued, was the gun mount, so it would fit into my case to carry it. 

This model(finally!) sees the end of the great white trollblood challenge. I've learnt a lot whilst painting the from a white undercoat. While it is a pain in the bum to do, you can certainly come up with some bright clean results, which I feel fit the trolls perfectly. 

I'd like to think I've done an alright job on the army. It goes to show, that the 3 tournaments I've taken it to, I've got 28/30 painting score, and 2 best painted awards to show off.  Would I do it again? Not for a long time... I can hear the grim darkness calling to me from the underhive...

Trollbloods. Lots of trollbloods.

So here's the thing. Before the WPS tournament I reported a couple of blogs(and by now, months ago) I hammered my painting to get the troll bloods painted in time to play the Challenge. Because I was painting most nights for a few weeks, I barely got chance to blog about the army.

Now I've finally got a bit of time to play catch up. So here we go.  This i going to be a whistle stop tour of the last units in the army.

There was stonetide, you've got to have her for the trolls. This was the last model I painted, and as it happens, probably the worst.  

Another auto-include, the fell caller solo. 

I took a full unit if fennblades with UA. They we a slog to paint. At the time I was up against it. I'm not going to post the whole unit unless someone really wants me too.  

My second dire troll, after the mauler, was this bomber. The good old metal version. :-)

I also took a full unit of champions, with skaldi bonehammer. They starred in a couple of games in WPS, despite every other troll player ever favouring a unit of longriders.

There should be a couple more of these posts to go before the whole lot of them are up here and I can reveal my next project!

Gonders