Saturday 28 March 2020

Lockdown projects


So. 

Level 4 COVID-19 Lockdown. Time for projects! 

I started with something a little absurd. While I was in Japan last year, I picked up a boxed model of the Space Battleship Yamato. I've always figured that I'd have a model ship on a mantlepiece at some point. Now I have the model ship, I just need the mantlepiece. 

This took me most of a day to assemble but I think I glued in no more than about two dozen parts and most of those were gun barrels! It still needs painting, but I don't know what that's going to look like at this point. A pin wash and the decking timber is about as far as I've got so far. Once I get some batteries for the internal LEDs too, bits of it will light up!
Space Battleship Yamato 2202
The other thing I've finished up this week was a classic GW Stone Troll. I picked him up for my Orc Warband in Mordheim (yep, it's that old) and finally got him done. He's been in the box of shame for a while as I don't think there's anything sensible I can use him for in Frostgrave. Potentially he'll have a role in a Kings of War: Vanguard warband though.
Troll throw rock!
Next Time
It's going to be workbenches and finished painting things for the foreseeable future. We've got 3.5 more weeks of lockdown and we'll see where that leaves the country. But I've finally started on finishing up the last knights for my KoW army, I've got some Elven Cavalry to get done for Kings of War: Vanguard and some Aussies. That I still haven't finished. I know.

Saturday 21 March 2020

Not the post you were expecting...

and, to be quite fair, not the post I expected to be posting either! Something a little different today as I finally finished another wee project by painting the last few models.

These two classic Noise Marines and the Icon Bearer are the last bits of my small Emperors Children collection for Kill Team.

Blastmaster and Doom (!) Siren
I posted a few photos of this boys when Pooch and I tried out OPKT many moons ago and after that game, despite it not really floating our boats, I went through and painted a bunch more stuff. I've used it for WH40K Kill Team since then too and I rather love the old school Chaos Marines. I've never posted the full crew so here they are!

The Leadership
The Battleline
Assault Section
Support Section

So I'm calling this 'painting something for one of my 40K armies' and moving on with my life. I know I haven't painted my Australians. I know. But I will. Promise. In the meantime, I might have oopsed into some models from the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures range for some of the more unusual choices in my Kings of War 'Order of the Green Lady' and I'm currently distracted by those.

Next Time
Good question. I'm really pleased to have finished that little project, so it should be another one of those and maybe some pics from our next club day - assuming we don't get canned by COVID-19 before then...

Saturday 14 March 2020

Some Forward Project Progress

The Stupid
Here's this month's round of the stupid - 6 more Bloodcrushers, 10 more Fleshhounds and my first super-heavy, a Brass Scorpion of Khorne:

MOAR DAEMONS

Too close to a Scorpion for my liking...
The Brass Scorpion is a classic and the only Khorne Daemon Engine from Epic that made the leap to 40K, albeit via Forgeworld. I've got four of the six that were made for Epic and while I wouldn't say no to a Death Dealer (because that model is cool) these are already going to be an insane number of proxy Sicarans in Apocalypse...

Next month's plan is to get some more World Eaters into play, so 40 World Eaters, Kharn the Betrayer and some Rhinos are inbound. Which means painting more white. Why do I do this to myself?

New doodads!

The final stage of getting my Aussies ready for MW & LW has begun with the arrival of two more Sentinels and some PIAT teams.

AC-1 Sentinels
I think I'm going to need to get one more Sentinel as I discovered that the Aussies did test one with a 17 pdr on it so I'd like to make one up to allow this tank to be a proper LW British tank platoon proxy. I'm definitely going to get the Matildas next though and make them up as Frogs as Churchill Crocodile proxies first.

PIAT Teams
The PIAT gunners are really nice. All three came with the same prone rifleman so I had to raid the parts box to get them made up less uniformly - so an Aussie officer with an Owen SMG and a British NCO from somewhere (I have no idea where he came from!) make up the teams.

Next Time
My 40K army contributions for the month (which are sitting on the painting table at the mo and are a bit of a deviation from my usual but are finishing up a project) and hopefully some finished Aussie photos. A week to paint seven infantrymen and two tanks shouldn't be that hard. Should it? We're also coming closer to the end of our current DnD campaign for Curse of Strahd and I'm definitely going to share some closing thoughts on how that's gone.

Saturday 7 March 2020

Too Fast, Too Hoonious


Gaslands

So we finally got our cars out for a blat with some makeshift race track implements, the 2020 Gaslands Annual where bloggers Scotty, Pooch, Tank Engine and me and another fellow nerd, raced our 50 can cars against each other to see how this game goes.

Round 1.1 - we all take off,  Tank drops some mines and Pooch, aggressively rolling skid dice, hopelessly overcooks it and spins out.


And Pooch spins out...
By the end of round 1.5, this was the scene of carnage.  Tank's bus had taken off, I'd pulled a hairpin out of the gate and the massive lead storm and led to the complete smashing up of a bunch of cars.

...and explodes, followed by the destruction of my Rocket Car
 By Round 3.3 we were running VERY short of vehicles and ammo. It was going brilliantly.
Tank's bus made a run for the gate, my Citroen raced the long way around and Farmtruck hit the edge of the world.  
 Pooch's remaining car got stuck colliding with wreck after wreck while Tank and I raced for the first gate. The Bus made it through first but was undone by a profoundly jammy hairpin+slide+spin to get a bead on the bus who was racing ahead....


...and the Bus went down in flames!. Who in turn got the beans as Farmtruck, having recovered from smashing into the edge of the world, sent his last rocket under Roofbox's rear axle



Just to caveat this. We found the rule about not activating guns until after the first gate....the next day. So this was far more carnagerous than we expected. But hells bells it was funny. Definitely looking forward to making some more cars (a team of Moonshiners racing agricultural equipment seems too funny not to try!) and racing some more.

Next Time 
I'm definitely down for some painting this week so will be working on some more Khornate stuff in 6mm

Monday 2 March 2020

Pooch's February 2020 update

February was a bit of a quiet month on the painting front- ridiculously busy on the work front for most of it which meant my painting time and desire were pretty low. Still, I managed to get some stuff done!

I have also swapped out one of my goals (I'm making the rules of this, so it's absolutely a thing I can do). Anyway, onto the progress.....

1. Paint a Kings of War Army- In progress
Still no basing on these, but I did finish up a unit of Spitters (archers).


Maybe I'll do some basing next month?

2. Create a table of terrain to support a game

No progress.

3. Complete the 6mm Apocalypse Challenge- In progress!
Like last month, I think I might have finished these up in the first day of February...

But, a mechanised infantry platoon of 3 squads each with a Heavy Bolter, a Command Squad with a flag, medic and heavy bolter, a Company Commander and Nork Deddog!

The infantry were 3d printed by one of our local group, and have come out really, really well.

50 PL of mechanised infantry!

Close up on the Command Squad

One of the Chimeras

100 PL so far!

Next up?

A bit of variety!

4. Run a narrative campaign for the group

Nothing further here....

5. Add a new detachment to one of my 40k armies

Nothing further here....

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it

Nothing further here....

7. Paint a Space Marine Heroes Series

Nothing further here....

8. Update a 15mm Napoleonic army for Blackpowder

Nothing further here....

9. Paint a stand alone force- DONE


10. Update and improve a table of terrain
Nothing further here....

11. Paint a Flames of War Army (NEW)

Ok, so I have swapped out one of my goals- this one used to be playing a game and sharing a picture of it each month. But... I realised I needed to paint a new army for Panzershrek this year, and I may have failed at that this month.... I will still aim to share a picture of a game I have played however!

So what army then? Well, continuing my 82nd Airborne theme, and with a bunch of brand new figures released from Battlefront, the answer was easy!

This is where I got to in February- my Command HQ, and half of my first Para Platoon.




Points completed: 3

12. Finish what I should have finished last year- DONE!

You remember how I whinged about painting Storm Lords? Well.....



A Chapter Ancient and Apothecary. I meant to have them done last year but ran out of steam for finishing more Storm Lords. Motivation struck, so here they are!

The banner is freehand, which I then took to with some burning matches to make it look more "flag in a combat zone" rather than "flag on parade". Quite happy with how the effect came out, it's possible there may be some more Storm Lords in my future....

And that's it!

Pooch
Remember, Morty is watching.....