40k: Now Even Easier to Win Tycho

The free prize draw was launched earlier in the week and we've not had a lot of takers for the plastic Captain below… so I have decided to make it even easier.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning this unique model is to add a comment to the bottom of this (or the original) blog post saying you want into the draw. The winner will be randomly selected thanks to random.org on Monday 1st July at around 10am GMT.

If you added a comment to the original post you don't need to do it again, you're already in.

That's it!

40k: Get plastic Captain Tycho for Free!

Another giveaway this week as part of the 40 days of 40k…

This is plastic Captain Tycho, and he can be yours for free!

At the height of my Blood Angel frenzy I wrote a series of posts called 'Rebuilding Tycho'.

For anyone who missed it… Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The basic premise was that, as much as I like the current Captain Tycho sculpt, I wanted something more dynamic (it's an issue I have with a lot of GW minis). The recently released (at the time) Sanguinary Guard plastics provided all the resources I needed to create the basis for my new commander.

Anyway, much like the rest of the Blood Angel project, the enthusiasm dried up and it's time to give the model a new home.

The model itself is entirely plastic, aside from the penny in the base ensuring he stays upright. As you can see I did start the greenstuff process to make him look a little closer to the original. I will find a suitable backpack to include before posting to the winner.

How do I win this stunning example of creativity?

Leave a caption!

Simples…

1…

Become a follower of this blog or of me on Twitter (make sure I know who you are if under a different name), if you follow already then great, you can skip this step!

2…

Comment below, letting me know you want in, and leave a caption for the Dreadnought image above.


The final day of entries is next Monday (1st July). My wife will choose a winner based upon your answers (she knows nothing about 40k) – unless she can't decide in which case I'll throw it over to random.org again.

Good luck!

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The winner of last week's competition has been contacted and I'm waiting for a response before announcing.

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If you like the look of this figure but would prefer something more painted, have a look at my current Ebay sales – all my Blood Angels are looking for new homes!

40k: Blood Angels' Final Bow

I've been promising it for the best part of a year, and now it's finally happening. The Blood Angels are leaving.

Yes, after a monster session on Ebay last night, I have everything listed so grab yourself a piece of Dark Templar history while you can. All auctions are due to end on Sunday evening, 1st July.

As well as the key models you see here, all of which have had their build and paint history documented on the site, there are a host of bits that were never used or never finished. These include etched brass sheets and built but unpainted models.

For those of you who have not read up on these Blood Angels you can browse through their history here – the posts go back quite a way.

For those of you interested in seeing what's for sale or how much, my Ebay page can be found here.

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Just to remind everyone that the free prize draw ends today – let's say 5.30pm GMT – so last chance to get your hands on the Sanguinary Priest and "The Melta Guy".

To find out how to enter look here!

This next week the prize will be plastic Captain Tycho… so don't forget to check back later.

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40k: Win A Custom BA Sanguinary High Priest!…

…and The Melta Guy!

Many of you folks have seen these guys being created, and now you can own them. Similar to last week, this will be a random prize draw (random.org) from the list of people who enter.

 The Prize

First of all we have the Sanguinary High Priest. He was constructed a couple of years ago as part of my Blood Angel project, with some greenstuff work seen above. He is weighted down with a penny in the base, as with all my models, and all in all makes a pretty unique and nifty model for your army or model collection. His armour and chest eagle have been painted and highlighted to a good standard and work has begun on the white areas.

As well as the Priest, the winner also receives The Melta Guy. This history behind this fella has been well documented on this blog and who wouldn't want a hero of such calibre backing them up?!

He is similarly weighted in the base and has his armour painted and highlighted to a good standard. I will clean up the overspill before sending him out.

In addition to that I am prepared to finish painting the Sanguinary High Priest to the same standard as he was started – if the winner wants me to, there's no point if he's going to be stripped or repainted to match a different army scheme.

So there you have the prize… what do you need to do?

• First of all make sure you're a follower of this blog.
• Second, add a comment below letting me know you want to be included in the draw.

Easy!

As before I will rely on the power of random.org to take the decision-making process out of my hands.

By the way, congratulations to The Angry Lurker who was the winner of last week's prize draw!

40k: Assessing the Dark Templar Troops

As part of the preamble to the 6th Edition release, I have decided to go through the models I have in my various 40k armies and assess how things stand. Today it is the turn of the Dark Templar marines.

First of all we have the three benchmark marines of the latest DT incarnation. They were the test to prove the theory – that I could have a unique army of Mk 6 marines with each one having their own personality. They were also a test for the new purple and black colour scheme. However, individually sculpted shoulder pads made the process slow and laborious so the project stalled very quickly. Now I have the ability to cast resin at home things should become a lot easier, once a set of master sculpts have been done.

One of the other goals of the project was to find a way to include some of favourite classic Rogue Trader marines that represented my first step into the world of wargaming. Many of them sported Mk 6 armour anyway so it would be an ideal opportunity to give them a permanent home, rather than repaint them every 10 years or have them in a permanent state of bare metal.

Some of you may remember my Scout snipers as they were the subject of a greenstuff post in the early days of the blog. Like the veteran marines above, it would be nice to give them a permanent home.

These are two of the characters that were started alongside the benchmark marines at the top, who were going to lead the troops. The limited edition Black Templar model needed some amending to become a Dark Templar; the soon-to-be Chaplain is based upon a veteran marine with his head and arms cut off. These have the potential to be really unique models in the army – very exciting.

When I started the Blood Angels project back in 2010 I went nuts on Ebay and gathered together a collection of iconic models to have as part of the army. Now that project is being sold off I had the opportunity to offload these back on Ebay, but I think I will translate them into the new army – they're just too cool to let go! The Terminator Captain was my favourite model for many years and one of the first I ever painted. The limited edition Captain was one of those figures I always wanted to own back in the early nineties after seeing it in the pages of White Dwarf. It feels only right that these models become Dark Templar.

Two other, more recent, iconic model acquisitions are these Blood Angel Terminators from the Space Hulk box set. Similarly they were going to be a part of the Blood Angel project but (after some cutting and sawing) will make a fantastic addition to the Dark Templar ranks.

Conclusions

There's no doubt that I have manged to collect a group of fantastic models, and the prospect of having them all in my Dark Templar army is very exciting. However, the bottom line is that I don't even have a valid 5-man squad so I would be starting the army virtually from scratch. As much as I love the characters and Terminators that have been collected, when putting together a marine army it is the Troops that need to come first and in volume.

The path ahead is clear. Once I do get around to revisiting the Dark Templar I will need to dig out my collection of Mk6 bodies and heads that I have stashed in the attic (10 years' worth) and sculpt a set of shoulder pads and several sets of legs that can be used to quickly build my footsloggers.

Next time I shall be looking at my Dark Templar vehicles…

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Don't forget the ongoing unwanted model giveaway!

You now have just three days to get your entry in…

Win Blood Angels!

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Win Blood Angels!

So the idea is that, for the next 40 days or so, I'm going to be doing weekly giveaways of my unwanted 40k models. The first of these 'prize draws' starts today…

We're starting with a 5-man Blood Angel Assault Squad on foot.

The models are built using regular Space Marine and various Blood Angel sprues, based and weighted down with pennies in the base… for extra gravitas. Three of the models have been undercoated and have had their amour basecoated and highlighted. Two are awaiting an undercoat. Most of the models have metal shoulder pads!

They could be yours… for free.

An earlier photo of them, pre-paint

So, what do you have to do?

Firstly, make sure you're a follower of the blog – easy.

Second, add a comment to this post saying (clearly, don't be obscure or clever) that you want to be included in the draw.

The closing date will be 9.00am (GMT) Monday morning next week (18th) at which point I will randomly draw a name out of a hat (or a Sainsburys bag). Once I've got in touch with the lucky winner I'll post the stuff out to anywhere in the world… no charge.

So, put your name down or tell someone else who you think might benefit.

If this particular prize is not your bag, stay tuned as this will be a rolling competition so fresh prizes every Monday!

40 days of 40k: Introduction

I'm assuming you all saw the teaser trailer released by GW relating to the launch of 6th Edition 40k on 23rd June. I also assume the regular visitors among you read my recent thoughts about WMH vs WH40k.

With all this in mind, I've been going through my 40k miniatures and assessing their future and have a plan. As mentioned in the earlier post I will be keeping some stuff – I will also be selling some bits and pieces so keep a look out for announcements about that in the next few weeks.

The rest I'm going to give away free on this blog over the next month and a half – it may not be exactly 40 days of 40k but it sounded good. So if you want to own something you've read about on this blog, stay tuned!

But, what exactly am I giving away?

First to be going will be the remnants of my Blood Angels, including plastic Tycho, Sanguinary High Priest conversion and the Melta guy. They won't be finished and painted, they'll be in whatever state they're in, that's the deal. You can pick things up from there and bring them in line with your own army (or just paint them up and put them on the mantlepiece).

In addition to that there will be some Black Templars, Iron Warriors and Eldar, plus anything else 40k that I can find in the attic and don't want to keep.

These giveaways will kick off later this week. Everything will be announced on Twitter also, so if you've got an account follow me to stay up to date.

I will also be posting about my Chaos and Dark Templar armies – the ones that I will be keeping for 6th Edition – and evaluate how things stand. Then, once the new rules are released, I will look at what needs adding or changing and the plan of attack.

It won't be all 40k for the next few weeks though. As my Legion of Everblight army grows there will be updates and photos tracking all the progress and LOTS of new models. With a bit of luck I will have a battle report thrown in there too.

It's going to be a busy summer!

WIP: Malifaux Terrain and… Blood Angels?!

It's been a slow week on the painting front as I have spent any spare time getting the next stage of my Malifaux terrain complete.

I have however managed a little time to put the next few colours onto the Sanguinary Priest that was featured oh so long ago on this blog. His shoulders and left arm had been painted codex grey already so I spent some time laying down the white. I do intend to go back and add a little codex grey to add some shading but it's pretty solid at the moment. I also got the eagle feathers on his chest painted though this too needs a wash of yellow to add some depth. Hope to get him finished in the next few weeks so he can earn his keep on Ebay.

As for the Malifaux terrain, last post there was just the basic shell of my Guild HQ building. First job was to fill the gap by the front door with Polyfilla. I took the pieces cut out of the windows, stuck them together in twos and squared them off. I then cut out a curve (I drew around a plastic base for the shape) and used these pieces as supports for the floors. I do need to add a small arched wall on the ground floor but apart from that we're up to the decorating. I plan to design and build a basic window frame that I can cast up in resin (don't fancy scratch building 32 of them!). I will build the doors and door frames individually, then there is the decor on the outside, ladders, stairs.

I'm still contemplating a colour scheme at this point and am torn between doing something quite straightforward or going for a gritty "dead of night" feel and only add sparse highlights with an airbrush as if lit purely by streetlamps. We will see.

I could also do with creating some "easy win" buildings that aren't the mammoth construction project that this is turning out to be!

I am away in the North of England for the rest of the week doing DIY for my Mum and catching up with friends. I hope to get a game or two of Malifaux in so there may be a post later at the weekend. Aside from that it's going to be a slow week on the blog and I'll be back on Monday.

Blood Angel exodus begins…

I've been threatening it for a while and now it's happened – the first round of my Blood Angel auctions have hit Ebay.

This week it's vehicles, so now's your chance to get hold of the vehicles you saw being built and painted on this blog (or not in the case of the Drop Pod!).

The auctions finish on the 2nd July and can all be found here.

Rebuilding Tycho: part 3

It's been a while since this guy got a look in, I've been kind of busy with a transatlantic game of 40k – you may have heard! More on Hailed vs Hated next week – today is about Tycho.

Since part 2, I have clipped off the purity seals that were on his forearms and added greenstuff to shape them more like his metal incarnation. I will add blood drops here at a later point. I filled in the shoulder area of his combi-melta arm and am building up the greenstuff here slowly.

The one thing that truly defines Tycho is his mask, and I was eager to have a crack at this as it would feel like I would be making real progress. Needless to say it was not a smooth ride, this one was my third attempt. I'm not sure whether my greenstuff skills, or indeed my eyesight, are up to something so small and detailed. It looks more like Chris O' Donnell's mask in Batman & Robin than metal Tycho I think, and the eye is not in the right place, but it does the job for now until I can't live with it.

It's getting close to completion now, just a few more bits to add and I can get on with painting him (very exciting!).

Inside a Blood Angels Rhino

It seems that every man and his dog are ready to take a pop at the Blood Angel 5th Company – not only do I have the Arrugginiti taking pot shots from across the pond, I now have to contend with Orks around the corner, heheh!

After my last battle against the Orks, my sparring partner Bull and I decided to do some objective markers for our next game (yes, we are indeed expanding our mission range beyond the standard "kick lumps out of each other and see who's still standing" scenario!).

Whilst I went for a neutral piece of terrain as my first objective, Bull clearly decided there was an opportunity to poke a stick at the new boys in red with this piece titled "Getting inside a Blood Angels Rhino – Ork style".

I might have to think a bit more outside the box for my next objective!

Saturday update

Rhino was completed on time though only just. Pretty happy with it now, and I added a magnet underneath the stormbolter to stop it falling out.

I also added magnets to my latest bit of terrain – a Communication dish from Quantum Gothic – which I have to say arrived very quickly, well packed and with no flash and minimum mould lines. All the bits are very cleanly cast too, which is a refreshing change from the last few bits I ordered from Forgeworld.

Expect to see this bad boy (and maybe another from the QG collection) in a battle report soon!

Blood Angels Rhino update

With the clock ticking down the end of April, I'm painting like I have something to prove now, desperate to get these 10 points logged before May.

Luckily the Rhino was three-quarters of the way finished anyway, so I just get to paint the Forgeworld doors and a few other details.

After a couple of hours this afternoon I just have the smoke launchers, stormbolter, headlights and some highlighting to do. Everything on course so far.