Test paints

 It's been a slow week at the painting desk. I've spent a lot of time pottering doing prep work on things, tidying the wreckage that is my desk and thinking about what I might do with my bits box and the bag o' sprues. The fact that most of my current projects are Battlefront or GW has meant the leftover sprues are getting a bit out of control. 

But I did knock off a couple of things this week as I'm trying to close out one project and get started on the next one.

I finished up the first of my three Questoris knights for the 6mm Stupid. This one took WAY longer than the Cerastus and I'm looking at the other two and not super excited about doing them. I'll get there by next weekend. Hopefully.

 

 

The transfers to mark these up as House Hyboras have arrived so when they're all finished, I'm going to have an epic session putting transfers on them and calling them done! 

 

I also did a test paint of my first Nighthaunt, otherwise known as the ghosties.

 

The paint scheme is a munging of several GW ones and some tinkering based on which paints I have at home. I really do love how the Nighthaunt Gloom and Ryza Rust technical paints work though - the easy blend on the ghosty tail bits looks really good given that it's just a base coat, wash, technical paint and then drybrush to finish. I'm sure I could paint it more deliberately than drybrushing but I really like the finish. The technical paints are a bit of a revelation and it really does make me wonder about trying out Contrast Paints too.

 Painting these guys is a slow process but I'll focus on batch painting the other six for this base over the next couple of weeks and see if I can finish the whole base up.

Next Time

Good question. We're on a longer break between gaming club days because of the fall of weekends, so I don't know. I'm definitely going to clear the last two Questoris and I might even have a crack at one of the characters I've got for the Nighthaunts as a challenge piece. The Knight of Shrouds is tempting me. 

On the effectiveness of the FoW Panzerschreck...

Gaming!

I played a couple of test games with my Late War FoW with a couple of the lads in preparation for the event we're hoping to go to in October. First off I played Tank's Churchills which was a tough, tough match. Churchills are a struggle for StuGs and my real achievement (once I stopped assaulting after blitz moves) was realising how effective my wee infantry platoon was at chasing down armour. I only popped two of his five Churchills but it was a challenging game and things were going mostly okay until I had a couple of really bad turns and failed a lot of saves. 

This was close to the end as my brave lads assaulted M10s in Tank's deployment zone! 

The Churchill in the background got a panzerschreck in the rear. That was a proud moment. 

My second game was against Pelarel's Cromwells in a Counterattack. I got lucky with reserve rolls and managed to arrive in the rear of his spearheading army in the first turn which meant we fought the game in the quarter with no Objectives in it. I had some good dice when I needed it to chase down his M10s and honestly, 7 Cromwells vs. 3 StuGs in a hull-down position was a reasonably fair fight for me. I fought Stuarts with Pumas and the Pumas (with some timely StuG-based help) won that fight. I still lost most of the StuGs, half the Pumas and the Panzergrenadier platoon though. 

I learned a lot about the army from both games - I need to be less aggressive than I have been with my Marines in TY and I need to focus on using the high skill and motivation of my troops to get into good positions before attacking. The infantry are going to be key too as they are my answer to heavy armour.

Painting!

I didn't have my transports yesterday and that was kind of fine, but I decided they needed to be finished and so they were! I have a couple more up my sleeve and I should probably make the last one that a full size platoon would need but I don't need it right now!

 

You can see from the photo above where the Pumas were at yesterday. I finished them off with some transfers and scrim today which I'm pretty happy with!

And finally, I did complete painting Kyria Draxus. She's a great model and I'll really look forward to getting her on the park.

Next Time

I realised it's been two years since I restarted blogging regularly next week so I should have a 2-year anniversary present for myself. But I have no idea what that'll be. 

A somewhat predictable workbench post

 Bit of a light blog this week. Rather than get a bunch of the things finished that I was thinking about doing, some things arrived in the post so I built those instead...

These are for an event later in the year where I'll be running my FallschirmStuGs with some Panzergrenadier support and Puma recce. I fear that this might be the start of the Puma company I've often thought about but never *actually* done. Both sets are lovely kits. I've done the 251/Ds without gluing the tops on since that'll make it easier to paint the interior and the passengers before gluing it up to paint the exterior. The Pumas are amazing and the kit comes with enough parts to make the 2cm turrets and the 234 with the short AND long 75mm. The only gripe (and this applies to both) is that MG34 on a mount is SO fragile.

I have moved a couple of projects along as well. I've sorted out a consistent orange for the carapaces of my House Hyboras knights for 6mm Apocalypse so these guys got their red base coats and orange top coats done this week: 

I'm really looking forward to getting them on the park with my Cerastus Lancers. I'm also REALLY tempted by a box of the new Cerastus Castigators and Acherons just because the idea of knights with close combat weapons really fits into my 6mm vibe SO MUCH! 

I've also instituted my backup plan for club weekend next weekend. I just don't have the mojo for some Grey Knights right now so I'm painting up the new Inquisitor and will have her lead a couple of Deathwatch Kill Teams into combat for the day. This may or may not go well. But here is Kyria Draxos, largely block painted: 

I need to do a lot of work on the armour as I'm really not happy with how well the primer and base coat covered it - I use a blue ink over my black armour. Partly it shades it a touch but also it shows up where my base coat isn't clean enough. 

Next time

Well, a finished Kyria Draxos and maybe some impressions of a few small scale games of 9e. I'm also planning to power through those Pumas and 251s as well. The event isn't till October but it always pays to be ready in advance! 

Competition Post

 So first off I think it's worth sharing the top three for this TY event because the Regimenteers have done well indeed!

1. Blogger Pooch

2. Blogger me (!) 

3. Blogger Tank (and only because I beat him in round one!)

I didn't get enough photos, again, and a lot of the ones I did were not great. Sometimes I wish I could take a screen to block out the world around the tables and actually make the models-eye-view pics have a background.

Some few highlight photos

My Marines!

Blogger Pelarel's Best Army winning Brits

One of my opponent's PAH platoons.
The glossy windows, achieved with Tamiya gloss, are stunning.

Harriers have a crack at Blogger Pooch's Sheridans

Tank's Hind Ds do what they do best

Blogger Tank's tanks (!) close out his last round game with Blogger McBeth

Blogger Pooch's Sheridans looking cool.

 

 

My assertion that AA was a luxury was sorely tested. I got Frogfeeted. Again.

I also picked up some new buildings for my 15mm table, some SdKfz 251/Ds for my Normandy StuG Kompanie and a sweet new Inquisitor with a wee dragon.

Next Time

Something profoundly dull, like some painted models. I've got lots of half finished things on the deck at the mo so I'm going to try and get some of that done this week. 

Pooch's July update

Another month of the year gone, and to be honest, I am not sure quite where it went! 

I made progress on a bunch of things, but finished very little. Hopefully next month will be different!

1. Paint a Kings of War Army- DONE

2. Create a table of terrain to support a game- In progress!
No further progress on this for July, I've still got a bunch of sprues that I need to build and paint.

3. Complete the 6mm Apocalypse Challenge- In progress!
This one I did do!

Two new Superheavies to round out a Superheavy detachment. The Shadowsword was built as is, and for the Stormblade I used a spare Plasma Blastgun from one of the Warhound Titans. It's ridiculously oversized, but still awesome.

The two new ones

My three Super Heavies

As well as that, I finished up another three Knights. I converted one to be a Knight Baron (for those who can remember them), with a Lance and a Battlecannon. 

House Hawkshroud is marching in force!

I really like the transfers that GW have produced for these

Close up on the Baron

4. Run a narrative campaign for the group

Club days are a bit scarce at present, so i'd expect this will run in the last few months of the year.

5. Add a new detachment to one of my 40k armies- DONE (but ongoing)

No further progress

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it

Some progress made here, but it's still a secret for now.

7. Paint a Space Marine Heroes Series- DONE

8. Update a 15mm Napoleonic army for Blackpowder

McB has been looking closely at a different ruleset, but time hasn't been very plentiful to look at it. Soon!

9. Paint a stand alone force- DONE

10. Update and improve a table of terrain- DONE

11. Paint a Flames of War Army (In progress)

No progress on these in July, I'm painting something for August right now, and have lined up a tournament to take them to!

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

And that's it, on to August!

Pooch

Morty is pleased that the blogs have continued, but disapproving of the lack of completion this month...

Competition Prep

I'm playing in a Team Yankee event in a week so this weekend's hobby time was mostly about prepping for that.

First off, I did the 20 trees I picked up from our local hobby shop in March specifically for this event to bulk out the forests on my 15mm table. I just wanted them to look more dense and I didn't have enough trees. So starting off with the exciting photo:

There are another dozen or so just like them. Thrilling stuff. Once those were done, I decided it was time to finish up some objectives for my TY army:

I know the dates are wrong for the series - it didn't start till the 90s but I don't care. As someone who can run Army and / or Marines, I decided that Harm and Mac were where it was at. Thanks to blogger Scotty for the spare billboard objectives (originally from Oli at Battlekiwi) to make these up.

Finally, much to my surprise, the new unit of AA that I ordered from Battlefront arrived in double-quick time (admittedly, less it's unit stat card) and so the list got rejigged to fit in these glorious LAV-ADs:

Arguably the coolest air defence platform for the US in TY, it's pricey at 8 points but offers up more mobility and multi-role utility compared to Humvee-mounted Stingers. I'd be curious about paying out 2 points more to have VADs and Humvee Stingers to see if there's value in having the two platoons, but I do like the fact that if an opportunity for ground attack comes, the GAU-12 on the LAV-ADs could be quite effective.

The kit is nice - a resin top and turret on the existing plastic LAV hull and wheels. Not a perfect fit by any stretch but nothing a careful bit of sanding and putty didn't fix. Also, being a brand new kit the cast is crisp with only one bit of flash to cut off and lots of nice detail. Pretty happy with how they came out too.

Next Time

TY event wrap up and as many photos of the cool stuff that's there as I can manage. I don't expect to do all that well but that's never been the point. We've also tentatively booked in some 500 point 40K to finally sucker in introduce Richard (from his Musings) and the rest of us to 9e 40K so I'm aiming to hammer out my Grey Knights into a 500 point form that I can try out. Only 11 models to paint. All silver. Fine.....