Hailed vs Hated: the comeback

As I noted last week, The Arrugginiti have had the run of the HvsH spot unopposed so I felt the need for a comeback. My objective is still at a very early stage of construction, but I thought I'd post anyway.

I'm not going to comment any further right now, other than to say it's called "Fractus's Revenge".

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.

Where do we go from here?

I've mentioned recently that I've started to fall back into bad old habits of having several things on the go and nothing getting finished. The painting points score to the right is plain evidence of this and, work and family commitments aside, I have had time to rack up more points but... haven't.

I've concluded that the source of this problem is actually playing the game again, and having a new codex to play with. I come away from a game with so many ideas that I start building new models (Sang Priest, Tycho, Baal, Dreads, etc.) but never go back to finish off ongoing projects (Rhino, Drop Pod, Terminators).

After a busy day at Salute last weekend, myself and Bull had an after dinner beer in his garden and got to chatting about the game. I'd aired frustration at having to use my old green Dark Templar as the core of my Blood Angel army when we play. He told me quite simply I needed to get red paint on an HQ and 2 Troop choices – they didn't have to be finished, but just have red armour. Once I had my core selection I could go back and do the detail painting. I was struggling to find a reason to disagree.

So with this in mind I have been putting together the first batch of vehicle-based Assault marines to eventually replace the Templar. I now have my Sergeant and Melta guys and three others. When more shoulder pads arrive (tomorrow?) I should be able to start on the next five. Once based and undercoated, I should be able to get red armour complete in an evening. Together with my Tactical unit that would be my two Troop choices.

My first BA Rhino is all but done and I am making it a priority to get it finished before the end of the month (ie. Saturday), so I get some points on the board for April. I have the body from the Baal Pred I bought still on sprues and this will become a Rhino/Razorback hybrid (with the use of magnets) for the new unit.

As for my HQ, Captain Tycho will have to wait until I get the above complete – there is a lot of time needing to be spent on him, and he is not the priority right now.

Storm Raven on Ebay?!

I just found this on Ebay this morning whilst doing my internet rounds from a guy in New Zealand.

Warhammer 40K Magnetised Blood Angels Storm Raven

I have to say it's the best looking kitbash I've seen yet. Love the Dread at the back!
There's more pics on the Ebay page.

What do you think?

Building a Stargate

Something a bit different today – scenery.

I don’t make much of it, but when I do they tend to be campaign pieces. This Stargate (or warpgate depending on your perspective) was such a piece. I wanted to have in both an ‘on’ and ‘off’ state, didn’t want to have to paint some artistic swirl to represent the warp, and didn’t want to involve any electronics to get a glow.

As you can see the gate itself is just foamboard. Three rings stuck together, with the middle one missing its top quarter. Once built, I constructed stairs for it and glued everything onto a hardboard base. The whole lot was caked in masonry paint to get the stone texture, then once dry I painted it Beastial Brown and highlighted several times with Bleached Bone.

The ‘warp’ itself is simply a polyprop school folder bought from WH Smiths (or any stationers for that matter). I purposefully chose the shocking pink for effect. I cut it up into several rectangles of the same side and taped them together – I didn’t want it to be transparent, hence the multiple layers.

And that was as complicated as it got. Leave the gate empty to show it in its ‘off’ state, then drop in the polyprop, put a light source behind it, and there you have a Stargate in effect!

March Prize (re)Draw Winner

Just a quick note to let you folks know that the winner of our Prize (re)Draw was Casey Dean from Oregon in the US. Big congratulations to him!

He received the Deathwing Conversion model yesterday, saying:

I must say the photos online do it no justice this thing is a freaking work of beauty, thank you so much! This is now going to be the HQ for my new Black Templar army(but then again it is Dark Angel so I may make it a show piece instead...), again thank you!

Blood Angels vs Orks rematch

Before all the fun at Salute last Saturday I had a rather important rematch against Bull's Orks. This time I had a new codex, some new models and an ace-in-the-hole tactic to try out. Bull proclaimed that he had tweaked his list from the last time, losing a couple of the Deffcoptas and having a Tankbusta unit instead – complete with Bomb Squigs. Given I had 9 vehicles, this was not the best news I'd heard all day, still you can't be psyched out at this stage.

My army list was as follows, with the army made up of BA, Dark Templar and some Chaos tanks:

Captain Tycho
Sanguinary High Priest

Tactical  x10 / Missile / Melta / Pwr Fist / Razor / AC 
Assault x7 / Melta / Pwr Fist / Rhino
Assault x7 / Melta / Pwr Fist / Rhino

Baal Predator AC / HB
Speeder HBx2
Speeder HBx2

Dreadnought  MMelta / CC / Drop Pod
Predator  Auto / HB
Predator  Auto / HB

Bull won the roll and elected to set up and go first, expecting me to charge across the table as quickly as he would and there to be an almighty dust up in the middle of the board. But I had other plans.

I held EVERYTHING in reserve. Now, this goes against my ethos from tournament days, where I went out of my way to eliminate as many random variables as possible (given it's a dice-based game). Needless to say Bull was quite stunned, and not quite sure what to do. So, being an Ork, he charged across the empty board anyway.

After two turns of running, he was almost in my deployment zone, and already had his reserved Kommandos on the table. On my turn 2 my drop pod dread and HS Predators turned up – dread landing behind the Ork lines and taking out a Killa Kan. The Preds charged in on my left in unison tank-shocking the two awaiting Deffcoptas, one failing its morale check and the other gunned down by the speeding tanks. In reply the Kommandos charged into the Preds (with a single klaw between them) and the remaining Kans charged my Dread with the Deff Dread moving up to support.

Next turn everything except the Baal arrived, and the transports swooped into the Ork mob and marines jumped out, letting rip with every gun available to them (top photo).

Anyway, long story short – the marines survived the Waaagh and cut down the Ork mob. Tycho went up against Snikgrot, killing him with little effort. He then went on to support the Tactical sergeant against the remains of the Kommandos, downing three and surviving two rounds of klaw attacks from the Nob. The Nob then pulled off a monumentous roll, having failed his morale check pulled a Gentlemen's Ones out of thin air for his mob size check, when anything else was a fail-and-die (above pic).

By this point the marines dominated, losing just the Tactical marines and a Rhino. The Baal arrived on the right flank and took out the last Deffcopta, and was charged by the Tankbustas and their Squigs. Unfortunately one of the squigs got confused and charged his own truck, immobilising it.

That was pretty much it as far as the action went – Bull conceding and the postmortem chat began.

Salute 2010

Saturday's highlight was a trip up to London Docklands to the ExCel centre and Salute 2010. I was going for a look around, and to support my friend Craig and the guys on the Critical Mass stand. It was their first official show as a fledgling company, and I am happy to report the reaction and interest was very good (except for the Stormtrooper brutality!).

I met up with quite a few people I have not seen in a while. Saw some great looking games and tables on show – and some bloody awful ones. GW were there, but hardly worth the effort and most of the GW product line was being sold for a lot less on other independent stands. Despite all the great looking stuff on show I came away without any new purchases – amazingly disciplined for once.

Rather than me try and explain what went on (I'm sure many of you have been to shows like this before) I'll just show you the photos...!

The Critical Mass participation game:

...and the guys themselves..

Other stuff going on at the show..

So that's an uphill battle!

Inspiring an aspiring Blood Angel

A good three months ago I talked about the White Dwarf article that inspired me all those years ago and made a lasting impression that sees me building Blood Angels as my army of choice now. Having been 'home' to the North West over Easter I retrieved some of my old White Dwarf mags (much to my wife's dispair – "I love you darling, they're going to live in the attic I promise"), so I thought I'd take a couple of snaps and share these models with you – given that everything else is currently WIP at the moment.

The top image shows a Tactical unit, broken down into squads, and its Rhino. What you have to remember is that this was back in the late 80s and I personally had never seen a 40k 'army' or even complete units together, only ever individual models.

 The shot above is of (half) a Devastator unit, with a converted heavy bolter guy. The plastics themselves are obviously from the legendary RTB01 set, but to see them painted so well was amazing. The blue helmets of the Blood Angels Devs, even in the current codex, make me really want to get a unit of these together, even if they aren't the best HS choice available.

These Terminators were some of the best painted models I had ever seen at the time. It was from this tutorial that I learned to add blue into the mox when painting black on models, to get a richer colour. Whilst they may pale in comparison to painted examples today, I still find them inspiring because as a unit they look so awesome together.

And finally the man himself – the Blood Angels Captain, labelled in this article as Tycho. Long before I had heard of NMM, this was a revolutionary way to paint 'gold' armour to me. I didn't have the skill set to achieve anything like this then, but my hope is to get close to this when I finish my Tycho conversion and get some paint onto him.

For anyone interested this article came from WD139 and was followed in WD 141 by a Blood Angels/Eldar battle report – the first time I had ever 'seen' a game of 40k played, as well as the first time I saw a complete army photographed together!

++++

As you may know I have my next fight against the Bull's Orks on Friday night, prior to spending Saturday at Salute 2010 at the London Excel Centre. I have my army list finalised now and continue to dab paint on models – although there will be an embarrassing amount of gray plastic on show.

However, my time is currently being taken up creating a fancy dress Crusader outfit for my wife, who is hosting a St George's Day dinner while I am away on Friday. I have gone through a lot of thick card and silver spray so far, and am in the process of completing a cardboard sword for her.

On top of this, she is borrowing some of my Warhammer scenery for a medieval-themed game of duck shoot – I am currently building a plastic catapult with which her guests can fire paper mache rocks at targets sitting on battlements.

Of course I'll have to thoroughly test the game mechanics before I leave....!

Sanguinary Guard bitz on Ebay

As the title says, I've put the bits from my Sanguinary Guard kit that I don't need up on Ebay this weekend, so if you need any extra heads, shoulders or jump packs go take a look!

The Dark Templar at Ebay

WIP: Sunday Update

It's now a couple of weeks since I bought the new Blood Angels codex and I've finally had time to read and absorb its contents. I've got so many ideas buzzing around my head right now that I'm in very real danger of falling back into my old ways of starting a million projects all at once, spending a fortune, then getting nothing finished.

I also read that the 5th Company are known as the 'Daemonbanes' ...how awesome is that, out of all the BA companies I choose to paint it turns out to be the ones with a daemon-related grudge. You'd have thought our Hailed vs Hated idea was thought up before the codex was written!

Anyway, work has taken up most of my time since getting back from holiday, and I've had precious little time to progress anything in the last week or so. I having to work today in fact to finish a brochure pitch, so am taking fifteen minutes to get something up online so you folks don't think me too slack. As you can see above, I have managed to put some paint to plastic/metal and with another game due to be played this Friday I thought I should add something new to the army list.

The melta guy mkII is going to be inducted into a tactical squad and, after his predecessor made a brief if telling appearance in the last game, I though it only right he should take to the gaming table this week. He's been basecoated, washed, highlighted and just had his second red wash added so ready for some details. I'm getting better at blending the highlights with this current set of models – if I could just spend more time on them I think we would see a big improvement in painting quality. I have my hopes pinned on my Tycho conversion – going to spend a long time painting him properly.

My Sanguinary Priest now has some colour too. He will definitely be making an appearance on Friday, so I will try and spend more time on him this week. Like the melta guy, he is done with his armour and I've moved onto the white – a colour I've never really painted before. At the moment it's only a Codex Grey basecoat, but I shall move onto the white later this week.
 

And finally my Veteran Sergeant. He's just had his first Blood Red highlight this morning, with two more highlights to come before his final red wash. I really like this model, after saving him from his Dremel accident, and he will lead a Tactical squad on Friday. I have also made him my first nod towards the Hailed vs Hated conflict...

The eagled-eyed amongst you may have spotted the Chaos icon on the base in his last article. I have now added a couple of Chaos marine heads to emphasise the individual's hatred of the Arrugginiti and his involvement in the fighting.

Things have been very one-sided in this conflict so far, with the Blood Angels relegated to bystanders whilst the Chaos daemon machine commits acts of increasing hatred and carnage against the holy brethren. Once there is a respite in the other theatres of war we are involved in, the Blood Angels will make their feelings known. You have been warned, hahaha...

March Prize Draw Update

Just to let you guys know that the draw was made on 1st April as promised, a winner pulled from a 'Next' carrier bag (very hi-tech) and two emails sent out, a week apart.

Unfortunately I'm having trouble getting a reply from the winner, perhaps he changed his mind.

Harun, you have until Sunday night to claim your prize else I will draw another name out of an 'Argos' carrier bag (in the hope of more success).

Rebuilding Tycho: part 2

So, with progress made in part 1 now complete and thoroughly dry I looked at shoulder pads. The right shoulder pad, straight off the sprue, has blood drops as per the rest of my BA army with a decorative scroll to indicate the good captain's position.

The left shoulder pad had to be a little more special. I wanted something in the same vein as the metal Tycho, but not exactly the same. I found the blood drop/wing element on the DC sprue and added it to a plain ridged shoulder pad from a Tactical squad. I then took purity seals from the same DC sprue and glued them into the space behind the wing. I then tried out the positioning of the head and, once satisfied, glued into place.

I'm very happy with the way things are going so far. However, one issue I have is that the two DC purity seals added to the shoulder pad now clash with the seal on the arm – it just looks a bit awkward to me.

Once I've added some grenades/pouches I'm pretty much done with the plastic and onto the greenstuff stage.

To be continued...