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White Dwarf Weekly Issue 4 Review.

February 22, 2014, 7:29 pm
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As I mentioned at the end of my last WDW review this issue was going to be a bad boy, featuring the new Imperial Knights. These were leaked early, and the hype and excitement has been huge. Let's see if the official release can carry on the enthusiasm...

New Releases - Well guess what, it's dominated by the Imperial Knight! There's some seriously impressive shots of the huge kit, and a little blurb about the two variants, the Knight Paladin and the Knight Errant, and also the various Knight Houses they come from. The close up details look amazing, and I can imagine it'll be a fun kit to paint and try out some different techniques on.
There's also a detailed look at the two transfer sheets, which have some really nice designs on them. The smaller one comes included in the box and looks to be plenty sufficient, although the scope of the large A4 one is staggering, and could always be used on other kits too, like full version titans.

There's a couple of Codex style books out this month too. The hardback Codex Supplement Sentinels of Terra, detailing the Imperial Fists 3rd Company, and the digital release of the Legion of the Damned Codex. It's similar to the recent Inquisition codex in that you can ally them with any Imperial army, but other than that there's not a whole lot of detail about the contents.

Imperial Knights - Jervis takes a break from his column to introduce us to the history of the Knights, both in the lore and in the history of GW, starting with Adeptus Titanicus and Epic. Jes Goodwin then chips in with a piece about designing the models, from his original work 20 years ago leading to the new kit.

Paint Splatter - A really interesting look at the different parts of the model and how to paint it in House Terryn and House Raven colours. There's some definite ideas I'll be taking on board when I get round to owning and painting one. Next week there's apparently going to be a guide to painting Freeblade Knights.

Sprues and Glue - This looks like an invaluable guide to building the Knights so that they can be easily painted. I've recently taken a swing from painting each part individually before assembly to just gluing everything together straight away, but I think I'll be trying the sub-assembly routine shown here next.

The Rules - As well as the usual stat lines for the Paladin and Errant and each of their weapons, there's a little side note as to how it can be included in your army as an allied detachment. I'm not sure if it would be particularly fair if your opponent wasn't prepared for it since it packs a D strength weapon and essentially has 2 structure points. Other than that though it looks quite reasonable for the points. Adam Troke chips in with some genuinely useful tips towards tactics too.



This Week - It seems like a bit of a recap this time round, with snippets of information about designing knights, the Imperial Fists and LotD. At the back there's an advert for Warhammer Visions issue 2, and it looks quite cool. Plenty of Dwarfs, a Tau Kitbash and some Dark Eldar.

Like I think I said in my conclusion last week I'm really enjoying the WDW. It's compact, but because the word count has significantly increased it actually feels like there's so much more content. And after three weeks of fantasy (as much as I love the Dwarfs) it's great to see some 40k again. A very consistent 8/10 this week.
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Forgeworld Open Day 2014

March 31, 2014, 2:51 pm
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Another year and another insanely early morning, not helped by the clocks going forward, how rude!

So we set off at about 6, stopped for a McD breakfast and got to Lenton for about half 9. We were about a 1/3 of the way to the front in the queue which wasn't too bad. We ended up chatting to the chap who won the painting competition. Check out his amazing Apothecary on the FW blog.

After queuing outside for ages, we got let in, given a free Imperial Armour 5 poster and a Mechanicum pin badge, then proceeded to join the sales queue. It moved quite quickly and we were through within an hour. I managed to restrain myself, picking up the Horus Heresy book 3, a relic Contemptor and a set of legion MkIII marines.

Then it was onto the design studio. It was very much the Heresy show, with very little new stuff on show for Fantasy or 40k.

I'll dump all the photos here, then at the end I'll try to remember all the cool intel I got from chatting to all the designers and writers...

Thanatar- Cass Seige-Automata 







Salamanders Firedrake WIP







































There was so much amazing new stuff, and even more to come at the Heresy Weekender. Here's what I can remember of what was said on the day...


  • Back at GD2013 Daren Parwood said he'd made another Riptide variant but it's been shelved for now.


  • Blake Spence has started to design two Riptide variants though. One is carrying a huge two handed gun. The other one, more likely for release, is a close combat one with a big shield and extra thrusters and intakes for lots of jump shoot jump shenanigans.


  • Daren did say he'd made a cockpit upgrade kit for the GW knight but really doesn't know if it'll make it into production.


  • Talima Fox says that Imperial Armour 4 2nd edition is already on the boat back from the printers.


  • Andy Hoarre is currently working on IA13, warmachines of Chaos.


  • Egdar has finished Mortarian, and Tony might've let slip that another Primarch might be finished too.


  • The Land Raider chassis has been reworked so that the awful track pieces have been moulded onto the sides of the hull, like the sicaran!


  • Alan Bligh says that the order of the next three HH books is still undecided, but we should have one by the end of the year.


That just about wraps it up. It was another awesome day from the FW team, and always worth the cost if you can make it.
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Miniature Monday - Termagants!

May 3, 2014, 4:54 am
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Hey everyone, so it's been a very long absence from blogging. This wasn't intentional, life just got massively in the way and I've had to move house and deal with a dislocated knee. But I have managed to find the time for some hobby in the middle of all the commotion!

I'd bought a few Termagants to help out a mate with a paint scheme, and had four of them left, so i got to thinking what would be the quickest easiest way to get them painted up. Then inspiration struck, why not try a Sin City style scheme, keep them black and white, and use that new blood splatter paint over the top of it. Here's the finished results...


They were really quick and easy to do, but this is not going to be the start of yet another army, it was just getting something done to feel like I'm making progress on the backlog! Also, I know it's not actually monday, but it's a catchy title, and it couldn't wait because I'll be reviewing WDW in a bit!
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Back once again...

October 20, 2014, 9:39 am
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Well it's time to get my arse in gear and actually do some blogging. Those of you who read my last post about returning to writing will be wondering what happened (maybe). Essentially we actually had quite a nice summer here so most of it was spent out in the sun having fun, but now the nights are growing longer I'm returning to the hobby with fire in my belly and a brush in my hand.

I'm well and truly settled into the new man cave, and I've managed to amass even more miniatures to slap some colour on to. So there's going to be plenty of painting updates flashing up as and when I get projects finished.

So what have I really been up to? I went to Warhammer Fest the other week, and there'll be a write up coming soon. I've splashed out of a small allied contingent of Mechanicum for my heresy army. I decided to totally ditch any attempt to get into Fantasy, I've already parted with my Tomb Kings and the Dwarves are going up on ebay tonight. Trying to find the time for two systems, let alone three, was just getting too cray cray and to be honest the fantasy setting never grabbed me in the same way that the 40k and 30k universes have. I saw Guardians of the Galaxy which is a serious contender for best marvel film ever (sorry avengers). Believe it or not I'm still trudging through Angel Exterminatus, but I'm determined to have that finished before the week is out. I've stopped buying White Dwarf Weekly. Ten quid a month isn't a lot of money, but the format just wasn't working out for me. I'm still on the hunt for vintage issues though to complete my set.

In the pipeline for the blog then I'm going to refresh the look of it, to breath some new life into it, I'll be trying to complete models at a steady pace, and hopefully there'll be a few battle reports coming soon. I also want to get back into my creative writing but now I don't have to commute to work there's less time for that strangely!

Anyways, I've rambled on for long enough now. There'll be a miniature monday coming up in the next few hours, so stay tuned, and thanks for bearing with me!
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Mechanicum Miniature Monday - Thallax Cohort

October 20, 2014, 12:37 pm
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Last weekend was the very first Warhammer Fest, and Forgeworld had a number of pre-release items on offer. I was very tempted to go for the beautiful Solar Auxilia section, but in a moment of madness I went for a small allied contingent of Mechanicum instead.


These Thallax are the first models I've finished for the fledgling force, and I think it's the fastest I've ever completed something for date of purchase to on the shelf.

They were a treat to build, except the power cables, and didn't need very much clean up at all. All that's left to do is apply some mechanicum transfers, but it seems that FW don't make a sheet, and I'm not prepared to buy the Iron Hands one just yet!

I'll be trying to get more of my army finished asap and probably won't wait for Mondays to roll around to post them, and I'll put up a post about the list I'm thinking about which would be awesome to get some feedback on!
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Mechanicum Castellax Class Battle-Automata

October 20, 2014, 11:00 pm
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I'm on a roll at the moment, and am really hoping I don't reach burn out by the time I get the whole army painted! The Castellax is the bigger brother to the Thallax and so I already had my method sorted in my head and actually managed to get him finished in the space of one night!


I went for a basic armament this time around, keeping the Mauler cannon and bolters, and while I'm quite happy with the pose I'm going to get a bit more adventurous when I come to fleshing out the maniple.
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Heresy Ultramarines Paint Scheme Dilemma

October 21, 2014, 5:19 am
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I've always painted my Ultramarines in a dark blue. In the current GW paint range I'd use Kantor Blue. This never turned out too dark on my 40k army.

I haven't done an awful lot of work on my 30k army, but I have basecoated a lot of it in the Kantor colour. Before the wash it looks great, but on the few minis I've washed they come out so dark, almost black!

Since watching Mark Bedford's speed painting pod at Warhammer Fest I'd been running ideas through my mind about how to get my army painted quickly. Then it struck me, I could maybe solve both issues, speed and darkness, in one go. GW make a can of Macragge Blue spray paint!

So I've painted up a couple of quick test models to make an actual comparison. The newer lighter mini certainly looks more like an Ultramarine and less like a Night Lord, and depending on how good this spray basecoat is it could revolutionise my painting. I've taken a few photos with different lighting conditions so you can see the difference, and all opinions and feedback would be greatly appreciated, cheers.





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1000 Point Mechanicum Heresy Army List

October 21, 2014, 11:00 pm
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So here's the army list of what I went and bulk purchased in one go! I didn't have a clue as to the total points until I got it home, and it turns out I've got a quite nice chunk in the bag already.

HQ-
Magos Dominus on Abeyant, armed with a Rad Cleanser and Volkite Serpenta.
He's the stock Magos out at the moment, and such a great model.

Troops-
Thallax Cohort, armed with two lightning guns and one photon thruster.
An easy troops choice, and didn't fancy going for the multi-melta option just yet.

10 Tech Thralls, armed with Las-Locks.
A strange choice, being very expensive in monetary terms but ridiculously cheap in points. But they look so cool!

A Castellax Class Battle-Automata, armed with Mauler Bolt Cannon.
Since it's a non-compulsary choice I only went for the one so far.

Fast Attack-
3 Vorax Battle Automata, one armed with an Irad Cleanser.
The new kids on the block!

Well that's what I've got so far and comes to the grand total of 610 points. To edge it closer to the 1k mark I'm definitely adding in...

Heavy Support-
Thanatar Class Seige-Automata.
It's an absolute beast and a very nice looking kit.

That leaves me with around 150 points left, and this is where my decisions become a little less easy. I've narrowed it down to two choices...

Another Thallax Cohort.
Pros- Easy on the wallet, and would give me a very solid troops base.
Cons- Already duplicating squads at such a low points level. Not exciting to paint another unit.

A Krios Battle Tank.
Pros- Stunning kit. The lightning cannon is a monster.
Cons- Is very expensive on a points/pound comparison to other choices.

So there we have it. If you've got an opinion about my list, and the impending choice please drop me a comment, it would be very much appreciated!
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Warhammer Fest 2014 - Long post with loads of photos!

October 22, 2014, 11:00 pm
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Last Sunday saw the very first Warhammer Fest take place. It's the replacement for Games Day, which always seemed to receive a lot of stick, some rightly so, some not so much. I've always enjoyed the day out, heading off somewhere to go and look at some really geeky models and chat to friends and GW/FW staff.

The venue has now changed to the Ricoh Arena, attached to the Coventry City FC grounds, and it's a lovely building, way better than the NEC, and a bit better than the NIA from last year. The event was split over three floors. On the ground was the sales area, our first port of call when we arrived. The queue for Forgeworld was so small, and moved so quickly I ended up making the rash decision to purchase too many heresy mechanicum goodies. With that out of the way we grabbed our FW seminar tickets and headed to the 2nd floor to the FW area.

They had the usual layout of glass cabinets and tables, and it was really spacious, there wasn't much jostling to see into the displays, and there were a few new treats on show. Needless to say I was totally stoked to see the Ultramarines shoulder pads!














As well as all the bare resin they had a couple of new display boards, and the old ones there too. The Calth one blew me away, and even though the painting quality on the Ultramarines wasn't great, I spent a very long time staring and taking photos!


















The mechanicum/Alpha legion display was also really cool too...








Stepping away from Forgeworld for a bit we had a look around the GW section on the 1st floor and to be honest I was very underwhelmed. There were a couple of cabinets, and I was never expecting any previews but they really could've done so much more. They had more boards and displays at the 40k open day.

We watched a few of the pods from the sidelines and the majority seemed to be aimed at younger ones, with topics such as how to build wracks. The one we did sit down and watch was Mark Bedford's how to speed paint an army. It was really interesting, and gave me a lot of food for thought, but I don't think I'll ever achieve five marines in an hour!

The golden demon cabinets felt a little empty, but they were well lit and there were some fantastic entries to look at.

Finally it's onto the Forgeworld seminar. This was rammed with so much good news and previews, most of which have already been spread far and wide across the internet. The Ultramarines plates made me wet myself a little bit, roll on next summer! And Alan Bligh was on top form with some hilarious quips.


















And there you have it! It was well worth the £20 entry fee, and although it was a shame not to have book four in my hands I wasn't disappointed with what I saw. As always. FW put mainline GW to shame, I wonder if GW studio staff feel embarrassed when they see what they're allowed to do compared to their resin cousins. I'd recommend going for anyone that had been slowly put off by the issues the NEC events had.
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Mechanicum Tech Thralls of the Adsecularis Covenant

October 23, 2014, 5:48 am
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These were a bit of a rash purchase! I think they're crazy overpriced, especially when you compare them to the new Solar Auxilia unit, but they're such lovely looking models I just couldn't resist.

I went for the Las-lock option rather than the Mitralocks because of the range. When they don't have an armour save it's probably best not to get within 8" of the enemy!!



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Forgeworld Mechanicum Tech Thralls Unbagging

October 24, 2014, 7:16 am
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Just a quick video I went and made about one of my recent FW purchases. The video says it all, so I'll leave it at that!


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Forgeworld Mechanicum Thanatar Class Seige Automata Unboxing

October 25, 2014, 9:00 am
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This monster of a kit arrived yesterday and I just had to get it on camera. The scale of it is just huge when you compare it to the Mechanicum kits I've built so far!!


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Happy Belated New Year!

January 29, 2015, 11:45 am
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So it's better late than never, and technically it's still January so it's all good.

Those of you who are followers of the blog will have seen this kind of post before, where I say I'm going to have a really productive year, paint loads of models and post the accompanying blog posts on a regular basis.
Well I'm not going to do that this year, I'm just going to have fun with my hobby, post when I want to, or I've got something cool to share, and hopefully along the way I'll get some models finished and play some awesome games!


Over the past year I've actually ebayed quite a bit of stuff, and narrowed down the amount of armies. I totally ditched the Fantasy, and 30k has become a bigger focus. I haven't actually played a game of seventh edition 40k yet, but hopefully that'll be on the cards this year.

So stay tuned for some hobby progress, more Forge World goodness, and a few battle reports along the way!
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The State of my Armies - Deathwing Edition

January 29, 2015, 5:00 pm
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When the Dark Angels got their 6th edition codex, and an appearance in the starter box, I went a bit crazy and got a few boxes of the new releases. I ended up with a tactical squad, the start of a Ravenwing force, and also a Deathwing force. I painted a couple of models, but soon lost interest.

When I was looking at my collection as I moved house I realised why my attention had drifted, it wasn't the whole Chapter I loved, it was just those cream terminators! They held such nostalgia for me. So a few ebay auctions later and this is what I'm left with...


There's still a bucket load of work to be done on them, and I'm not going to really focus on them, but I do intend to slowly chip away at them, and maybe in a few months time I'll do another post to see how much progress I've made.
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Tactical Objectives - Initial Thoughts

February 1, 2015, 1:57 pm
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I guess some of you might be thinking "but Tim, why are you only just talking about this? 7th edition has been out for ages!" and you'd be right. But me and my mate Dean have pretty much only played Horus Heresy for the past two years straight, so we've just been using the missions out of the Forge World books.

We had a game today, and as I was packing up my KR backpack I hunted for my templates. They'd fallen behind a stack of Visions, while I was rummaging I found my pack of tactical objectives cards! So I thought I'd take them along and see how we got on with them. We set out the six objective counters on the board, and rolled for our starting three cards.

The first thing that stuck me was how handy it is to actually have the cards and not needing to write stuff down is a huge help to speeding up our game (something we struggle with!). There seemed to be a fair amount of repetition in the deck, but found the discard function helped with this.

There were only a couple of cards that we didn't have any use for, I think I drew one that had something about psykers, the council of Nikea put the dampeners on that one. The objectives made the game feel very up in the air, neither of us knowing who was really winning or losing until the roll at the end of turn five. This game was eventually won by Dean, who on his last turn got one that was 'get D3 points if you kill or have killed the warlord'. He then proceeded to double out my Magos with the lascannons off his Storm Eagle, four points in one kill gave him the game!

Despite me losing this game was incredible fun, and we'll definitely be using these in many more games. We've got the new Cities of Death Tactical Objectives to try out too that came out in WDW recently. And I've grabbed a few of the datacard sets with each of the 40k releases. There's definite possibility to customise these decks, and in my head I've even started thinking of making my own 30k centric cards!

If you haven't tried them out yet, you definitely should!
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The State of my Armies - Necron Edition

February 1, 2015, 5:00 pm
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Following on from last weeks post, here's a quick look at how my Necron army is shaping up. To be fair it's probably my most complete army, with only a few units unbuilt, and a handful of models needing to be finished.


The trouble I have with actually getting this army finished is all of the edge highlighting! I went for the classic bright green look, and so it takes forever to painstakingly go around every single edge. By the time I've done an hour or so I'm bored and tired of concentrating too much and just want to cry.

So this year I'll chip away at the army, the list of what I've got to finish is...
5 Lychguard
5 Flayed Ones
Monolith
Command Barge
Ghost Ark (almost there)
A few special characters
Capontek Wraiths
Canoptek Spyders
Canoptek Acanthrites
Night Shroud Bomber (needs washing in dettol, the primer hasn't stuck!)

Actually, now I've listed it that's quite a list, I'd better get cracking!
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Forge World Mechanicum Krios Venator

February 2, 2015, 5:00 pm
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I finished this tank towards the middle of January, and it's been on the battlefield twice since then. The strength nine plasma fusil is turning out to be an absolute killer, and it was a really fun and easy kit to put together.


I tried out a little bit of weathering on it, with smoke from the exhausts, chipping and dust down the sides, and I tried out a Tamiya weathering pen on the tracks.



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Forge World Mechanicum Krios Tank

February 3, 2015, 5:00 pm
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This was my second finished model in one month, I'm on a bit of a roll with my Mechanicum force. In game I'm using this as a second Venator, but I fancied owning both models, just for variety. I think that's enough tanks for now, I'll be going back to finishing up my tech thralls next I think, unless I get distracted!



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The State of my Armies - Eldar Edition.

February 15, 2015, 2:29 pm
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Well, the title of this post is a little deceiving. It's not actually an army, those in the know will recognise this as a small allied contingent! The Eldar were my first ever army, before I traded them away for a Genestealer Cult army, and the Wraithguard models have always stood out to me as a classic. So when they re-did them, I had to grab a box just to build and paint!

Aside from needing to finish painting the actual models (I'm not looking forward to doing the gems) I've decided that I no longer like resin bases. Not specifically these ones, they're lovely, I just want all of my armies based in the same way on grey cork type bases.

Maybe down the line I'll expand this into an army in it's own right. I've always loved the Phoenix lords, Asurmen inparticular, and I could probably do with a Wave Serpent to put these guys into, but that's a long way down the line, and assuming that I can finish painting these, the Mymeara paint scheme is quite a challenge for me without an airbrush!
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All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

February 15, 2015, 5:30 pm
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To my knowledge it started in the recent Stormclaw box set, with a regular power armour marine being put onto a 40mm Terminator base, and the Broodlord thing going on a completely new oval base.

This was followed up with the Blood Angels tactical squad coming out with a brand new 32mm round base. GW have said that it's only an aesthetic choice, and they do make marines look really cool. For ages now the packs of these bases have been going out of stock to order from the website as soon as they've made a batch, but I managed to get my hands on two sets of ten. That's coincided with me working on some Necron Lychguard which just got a new codex, and were shot with the new bases on. I thought I'd give it a go, and I love them. I'll definitely be using them for my marines and select other models going forward.


This lead me on to looking at some of the other models in my collection, specifically my Tau army. The GW XV8 Crisis Suits come with 40mm bases, and with their bulky torsos and skinny little chicken legs, they've always looked top heavy to my eyes. I'd remembered that the Space Marine Centurions came on a new base, a 50mm one, so when I ordered my other ones I grabbed a pack of three to see how they worked out. I'm thinking that it'll be the way to go, they really seem to balance out the models, let me know what you think!


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