Weekly workbench

I've made the decision (for better or worse) to merge my winter and summer painted German collections. I've been finding that I keep wanting to use models for one that I already have in the other and that was a pretty good sign that this was a bad way to go forward.

So with that in mind, I'll be going through and cleaning off the white weathering and adding on summer foliage instead like I have with these Panthers and Wirbelwinds: 

Exciting? Not really. The whitewash came off really easily and a quick drybrush of some Middlestone to bulk up the slightly washed out yellow was pretty quick and easy. It also means I'll be putting ambush camo on my Jagdpanthers (which I'm excited about) and some late war

 I'll be trying this out as a Brigade Panzer Company from the Bulge book as a test for an event in April. The list is: 

• HQ Panther
• 3 Brigade Panthers 
• 3 Brigade Pathers
• 3 Brigade Panzer IV/70s
• 4 Brigade Wirbelwinds
• 4 Volkshetzers
• Brigade Assault Platoon 
• SdKfz 250 Recce
  

Good? Almost certainly not. But there's a lot of it and most of it is sending 75mm KwK 42 (L/70) rounds downrange so I'm going to go with a 'shoot first, win quick' plan. 

 40K?

Of course. I've spent some time putting together my one permitted unit of Sisters of Battle: 

That's a selection of the squad (ie. the ones who can stand up unassisted!) but it's a really nice kit. I think I'm glad I've only got one but there's a lot of character in the models, despite the mono-pose nature of GW multipart kits these days.

They're going to be painted as Order of the Sacred Rose with white armour and black and red highlights. It'll be a nice contrast to my Deathwatch! The Immolators that are coming down the pipe will be even more amazing in white!

This has also opened up the last bits for both getting what I think is a pretty solid Knights + Imperial Agents list on the park but getting them done will also give me the last bits that are required for running the  assassin-driven Veiled Blade Elimination Force which we will be calling X-Force from here on out. I've got enough things to run it and I'm definitely keen to give it a whirl. I suspect it's terrible but that's never stopped me before!

Next Time

A once over on how my new plan for ValleyCon goes. I'm sure it'll be fine. <narrator's voice> It was, in fact, not going to be fine. </narrator's voice> 

I've got some Bradleys still staring at me demanding some sort of attention to get them finished to give me the nudge to get on and start re-chocolate chipping all my TY infantry...

Nerding out about boxes

 First off, I got the Deathwatch out yesterday for their first game and before I did, I managed to get this collection of lunatics painted:

They rewarded my hard work by refusing to make a charge, with a reroll, for three turns. It was infuriating. And the whole time, Blogger Pel's firebase was giving the rest of my force no end of grief because these idiots, and their angry priest, couldn't roll a decent charge. With a reroll.

Blogger Pel's murder marines, in particular his insane Death Company of flying murder, gave my Deathwatch something to think about. That many chainswords will cut up Terminators just so well. I have a lot to learn about how to really make this army work but it was a great lesson.

Also, I had a test game for our upcoming club competition in April and got my butt thoroughly handed to me by Blogger Tank. I knew Clausewitz lists can be brittle but ho boy. Being very reluctant got me very dead - a bunch of bailed out results and the army just stopped dead. And then ran away.

Finally, nerding out about boxes. I moved to a much smaller house a couple of years back and copious storage was not part of that puzzle so I've been looking for cunning plans to make storage of my models a somewhat simpler proposition. Some of it has been aggressive downsizing of the model collection (which is definitely a work in progress!)  but the rest has been working with clubmate Ryan and his laser cutter and we've reached peak storage genius:

 This fits in an off the shelf plastic box and holds my entire Flames of War collection. It's half and half Germans and Italians with a random little diversion into MW Pacific War Australians. It's awesome and I'm super happy to have all my toys so well stored! 

Next Time

Getting this storage sorted out has made me get a few things out of the box that still need to be done so I'm going to get off my butt and finish them. Especially with some cunning plans coming down the line for new toys....

More Space Marines!

 Miracle of miracles! A thing arrived from overseas at a convenient time! Blogger Pooch and I got a swag of bits from a bits place in Europe and it arrived just in time for me to want to paint the things! 

So this has given me the opportunity to paint three more Primaris Marines - two Pyreblasters and one Hellblaster: 

The Hellblaster was one of those sets of arms that I kind of just love and provides a little bit of cinema in the squad. The Pyreblasters are pretty basic but that's kind of the only way they go together. But that means I can take these two pictures: 

First, my 'ranged' Fortis Kill Team - with Hellblasters and Desolators to provide overwatch and a Watch Master to keep them from getting trapped in combat and make sure I'm getting special issue ammo every single turn. Plus he's a boss model! 

The second is the 'close quarters' Fortis Kill Team - with Assault Intercessors and Pyreblasters to get in close and deliver Watch Captain Artemis to kick bad guys (are we the bad guys?) into next week. 

I've managed to assemble most of a list with my existing collection and a little bit of paint stripping and repainting and I'll have something that can get on the table which I'm really looking forward to. I'm not sure it's super good but it'll run and we'll see how it goes. If I've learned anything from all my games with my Knights of late, it's that I need to try a few things to see what's missing.

Next Time

Probably a bit more workbench stuff - I still have some Bradleys to finish - and some piccies from club day! 

Bringing back Deathwatch for the umpteenth time...

And not because they won the LVO! 

I've been getting back into painting Deathwatch with the rerelease of the index list before Christmas. The first new additions are a pair of Desolator Marines and a new Assault Intercessor:
 

It's been fun going back to my old roots with these and its such a simple paint scheme that I can kind of hammer these out fairly smartly. I'm basically a few models short of rebuilding the army into something I think will be quite fun to play with although likely a bit not good.

Once I've done a bit of paint stripping and some bits arrive from Germany, I'll be able to run two squads of DW Terminators, which are fun, as well as three different Kill Teams and a bunch of support stuff. If it's half decent, I'll probably pick up some bits to see if I can make it actually decent! 

Next Time

This was both late and short. Next week will be more workbench but with less real life and more hobby time, hopefully a bit more to show for it! 

Ready for a comp in July...

In January! What is this nonsense? This might mean we have time to...practice? Playing 140 point TY on a large table presents a series of new and interesting challenges but I think we're really looking forward to it.

To begin with, the M109s have been done and added to my burgeoning artillery park:

 They were pretty easy to do and having the top of the turret covered in stuff made for a slightly easier painting effort as it wasn't worth trying to make the camo go around them! There's also enough detail on the slab sides of the turret to not make that a misery either.

For grins, a WIP of the current state of my last four Bradleys. These have had their tracks and the one crewman largely done and now it's just the grind that laying in the details and the camo process to get them done and then just a repaint of a bunch of crewman and an entire infantry platoon...

Finally, a group shot of my contribution to the two-player nonsense that Blogger Tank and I will be running.

Tank will be bringing another 9 Bradleys, more M1A1s, some M106s, another pair of Cobras and a platoon of Chapparals to keep the nonsense away in classic Desert Storm US Sand to look completely different to my MASSTER camo! 

 Next Time

Brads? Deathwatch? Games? It's anyones guess!

Hive Fleet Fashion Faux-pas

 Hat tip to Blogger Scotty for the blog title for today. :) 

I took my House Cadmus stompy bois out for a run against blogger Pooch's sneaky Tyranids. I've got this theory that my knights specifically need high rate of fire support so I added in a squad of Grey Knight Terminators and an Exaction Squad, mostly looking to use their [Precision] ability to snipe out Broodlords, and a couple of assassins.

 Here's House Cadmus and its Imperial Agents allies:

 

 

and here's the green and purple of Hive Fleet Fashion Faux-pas ready to swarm over the board!

By the top of turn 2, I'd lost the Exaction Squad to Lictors, the Grey Knight Terminators to a brood of Genestealers and the Armiger Moirax to the other Genestealer brood. Oof. Definitely didn't feel like the game was starting as well as I'd hoped...

But there was some revenge as the two Warglaives sent the Winged Hive Tyrant into the ether and deleted some Tyranid Warriors with some close range melta gun shots. This became a feature of the game in some respects, as one of the few things with many wounds and no invulnerable saves, I popped six out of seven with cheeky melta shots in combat.

On my right flank, my one Helverin refused to die to Lictors and with some help from the Errant, eventually saw them off. Meanwhile, Pooch's Gargoyles and Termagants were happily sitting on the no-mans-land objectives ticking up points and I was too tied up trying to get out of my deployment zone.

In the end, I sent the Castigator into the middle of the board to a) see off the Norn and b) take the centre objective to start scoring it!

And for a solid four rounds of combat the Norn did NOTHING except pass it's invulnerable saves to avoid being sworded while flailing ineffectually at the knight. The Castigator at least spent that time blazing away at squishier targets including removing the Gargoyles and the Termagants while thumping the Norn and achieving bugger all. Finally, I sent in the Errant as well and Pooch's ability to roll 4+ invulnerable saves finally gave out. 

What did I learn? Knights remain tough as nails and even an inexperienced player like me can make them go. I have two data points that prove to me that the correct agents addition to the list is Sisters so a squad of Sisters of Battle, a couple of Immolators for them to ride in and Inquisitor Greyfax to lead them is likely the next purchase here. I also learned you can't arrest a Broodlord.

Pooch's army worked absolutely as intended, pinning me in my deployment zone and scoring as many points as possible very quickly but it also behaved as he explained - get well ahead and run out of steam in the late game as the powerful units get killed and hope you're far enough ahead.

In the end, I squeaked through by 7 points with my secondaries coming good late in the game. The Castigator was alarmingly close to dead, all the Armigers were gone and both my assassins arrived, did almost nothing, failed their charges and died!

Workbench? 

And despite all that, Blogger Pooch graciously and generously offered to airbrush the basecoats on my new TY vehicles to save me the misery of base coating them the old fashioned way (10 coats of airbrush paint applied with a brush) and hopefully that'll help me focus on getting Panzerschreck ready! 

So I have some M106s, M109s and some more Bradleys to do. I need the M109s for Panzerschreck, the rest is for other builds at lower points values. Given Panzerschreck is in July, I figured I'd start with the M106s since they're the least necessary! 

With M113 FIST for scale

These took a few hours from whoa to go, considerably quicker than spending oh-dearie-me hours just on the basecoats.  There has been a bit of a process to remember how the scheme works and how I get a consistent finish bit I think it's pretty good. I also had a crack at a slightly different method for the pseudo-chocolate chip on the crew. I'm not super happy with it but I like it better than my previous attempts so there's going to be some repainting in my future! 

Next Time

More TY and I've started on some Desolation Marines for my Deathwatch for 40K. They're exceedingly silly but should see the table reasonably soon.

New year, new toys

 Happy new year folks! 

So this was a little present I decided I deserved earlier this year and it's been sitting under my desk for well over three months waiting for me to clear the deck of projects that needed doing so I could do this big boi. 

I started just before Christmas with the assembly and playing about trying to replicate this sweet pose I found on the interwebs. I only had to chop a few tabs off the right leg to get the wider stride and otherwise, the model is stock. It wasn't a quick build by any stretch and I will curse the ammo belt for the Castigator cannon till the end of time as a clever bit of model design and a miserable bit of a assembly.

I need to find a better way to take more front on photos of models this big! I need a better white backdrop for them but this is the best we can do for the moment. 

Here's the whole collection:

 

 This is about 1650 points of Imperial Knights which is, to my mind, enough. I've got a nice little 2K list with a Deathwatch Veteran Kill Team, a Corvus Blackstar and an Assassin that rounds this out. Should be fun to have a run with.  

Next Time

I'll be getting into painting some 15mm Team Yankee in preparation for this year's Panzerschreck doubles event in Palmerston North. Got some Brads and some M109s to paint! I've also been getting some prep work done to sort out my Fortis Kill Teams for 10e so will be hopefully getting the DW back on the park soon (once some more bits arrive from Germany....) I'm aiming to get back to the regular weekly posting next week too after the fairly grindy end of 2024.