The One With the Surprise Game

A couple of weekends ago I met up with my Apocalypse ally, Nick, for him to become my next enemy... Strictly in a friendly match... Yeah...

The match was 2000 points between my Chaos Space Marines (oh yes, no Daemon allies this time) and Nick's Necrons which was the very first time I've ever played against them. Having never really paid much attention to their codex I didn't really know anything about them which meant the entire game was a 5 turn learning experience for me. I can very confidently say that they are an army I'll take more notice of when their new codex hits.

Happy New Year!!

Yes it's that time again where hobbyists everywhere take stock of all the models they've acquired over the last twelve months and resolve to paint them all before buying anything new and I don't plan to buck the trend. In fact I'm going to make the same promise and the only time I will buy anything new is if I need it for a game (as I've done recently) or if Games Workshop suddenly throw out a whole new bunch of models for my CSM or Daemons (I've got enough Tyranids and Undead to be getting on with for now!!)

Come the Apocalypse

A couple of weeks ago I experienced the insanity and hilarity of my first Apocalypse game with the awesome guys of #WS10. The event was set on Port Maw and while I'll be focusing on my game, there were two others as well as the simultaneous games happening in America and Australia. All using the same scenario and the results of each battle were combined with the others to form a final result so not only was it a frantic and fast paced battle where a lot of things were blown up, it was also very important to achieve objectives and spend victory points wisely as the points earned in one battle can be the difference between victory and defeat for the whole scenario and the thought of letting down that many other players is quite... Motivating.

Triumphant Return

Why hello there! Yes I know, it's been a very long time and for that I apologise but I've had a lot of non-hobby related things going on recently so certain things have had to be pushed onto the back burner and in order to make time for my hobby, blogging is one of the things... I'd be lying if I said that things weren't still crazy but I'm managing them better than before.

I won't bore you with pages and pages (that comes later) but I will give you a quick overview of everything that has gone on with the promise of more in depth reviews later on.

The Return

Hello everyone, been a while. Real life; sometimes it's a real drag... Why can't we just be paid to sit at home and do what we love? Ok so maybe unemployment benefits aren't the way to go but still, a guy can dream. Be warned, this may turn into a long one and it'll be all words so if you want pretty pictures then you may want to pick another post as I've been off the blogging scene for a while.

Where to start... Ok so quite a few big things have happened to me recently in terms of the hobby and they both involve new armies so I guess that's where we'll start.

Never fear fellow Warp lovers, I'm not in any way, shape or form giving up on my Daemons or my CSM. They are still my favourite armies and they always will be so there will still be posts relating to them and my progress with those armies. That said, I am a bit of a traitor to the denizens of the Eye as my first new army is... Tyranids. Oh yes, the big bad bugs have invaded my hobby space (aka my bedroom) in a big way. Now why Tyranids I hear you cry? (Ok I don't but I can pretend you are so I am). Well as I sat down to paint yet another Black Legion marine I realised I'd had enough of them for a while and I needed some colour. I looked at my Daemons but recently inspiration has been lacking (I guess they're too busy waging war in the WHFB world to take the time to inspire me) and I did used to have some Tyranids (waaaaay back, many many years ago) so I decided to buy a Zoanthrope and the Hive Mind had it's talons into me.

The Plague Host

Edit: I started writing this about three weeks ago but forgot to publish... Oops.

Over the weekend (and the preceding week as I was off work for two days) I've been a rather busy little bee and not only started but also finished Typhus! I have to say that I'm so happy with him and how he turned out; in fact I surprised myself with just how well I managed to paint him (not to toot my own horn or anything).

Voila! One host of the Destroyer Hive.

I was going to paint him a while ago so I had done my usual paint scheme research already (moving house just screws everything up). What this meant was that I could start painting straight away. I chose the pre-heresy Death Guard scheme for two reasons. The first reason is a fluffy one in that that after being infested by the Destroyer Hive and becoming a mortal (ish) herald of Nurgle I very much doubt he'd have cared all too much about how his armour looks so it never made much sense to me that he would have re painted it. The second reason is that I saw a few pictures of both this model and the Forge World Typhon and thought that the Death Guard colour scheme was so much cooler than the green one.

To get the green trim I painted the whole model with Death World Forest. Then dry brushed with Elysian and Nurgling Green with copious amounts of Agrax Earthshade between layers.

Since this model there has been a lot of work done in terms of my hobby (and the rest of my life but this is about the hobby) including the beginnings of a new army... Which is something that anyone coming here from my Twitter links will already be aware of but for those of you who have stumbled onto my page it will be a mystery... Unless you stumbled onto a later post and then made your way back to this one. In which case you ruined the surprise. But anyway, hope you like Typhus!

Lord of Heresy

It has certainly been a very busy hobby weekend for me! I don't know where the inspiration came from but I'm just not questioning it as I've gotten so much done and I'm still in the mood for more (unfortunately real life intends to get in the way of my inspiration kick and I've got to resist the urge to book time off work.

To kick things off; voila! One Sorcerer of Tzeentch in Terminator Armour. In keeping with my green spot colour you'll notice that his staff is green and all the eyes are green too. The green of the staff was achieved with a little Waywatcher Green over silver (I wanted a noticeable but subtle colouring).

I'm actually most surprised with how the rock he's standing on turned out as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it match the Agrellan Earth I used for the base. It was quite simple to do; Baneblade Brown with an edge highlight and drybrushing with Flayed One Flesh. I was shocked myself when it worked first time.

While I'm loving the look of the cape/cloak/whatever I'm debating whether to repaint the fur. My original plan was to have it looking like a Fenrisian Wolf's fur but I don't think the effect is right. The idea behind this being to express the hatred between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons (according to my army fluff all of the Sons of the Cyclops were originally Thousand Sons) by proudly displaying a trophy from a battle but it's starting to look to me like he picked up a worn out rug and threw it on so that may be up for a repaint in future.

Everything else I've done on the model has been covered in other posts so I won't bore you with repetition but instead I'll just say that I've really enjoyed painting this guy and a lot of care went into him and this post has taken exactly the length of my commute to write. I'm off to a good start to the day I think.

The Birds and the Bees

The past few days have been pretty big for my hobby drive and to show for it I've got a few things to show you...

Oh yes ladies and gents, I finished the Heldrake and 10 Horrors! I'm also very near to completion with my Tzeentch sorcerer in Terminator Armour, started playing around with a few ideas for the Tzeentch Herald I don't like (I like the individual components I used to make him but I'm not keen on them all together), worked on an Abaddon conversion, fixed my Exalted Seeker Chariot (the clam pack Herald looks much better on that) and a few other bits too.

Starting with the Heldrake I think my favourite part of him is the wiring under his neck. Something clicked in my head this week and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with him and how he was going to look and this is the result.

I've been using green as a spot colour for my army and helping to tie my more colourful units into the army (i.e. My cultists. The issue I had was that the green on the Heldrake needed to look more functional than decorative and the yellow highlights I was using for the infantry, while effective, didn't create the right effect for me and so for this I decided to not use any yellow whatsoever but used Gauss Blaster Green instead and I'm very pleased with the result as it looks like some form of energy source.

I have a few plans for the base that may or may not require a hot glue gun but that's for another time I'm afraid.

These guys were looking like they might be a problem for me because of my mental block with them last time and this time I couldn't get motivated to paint them at all. The problem being that I don't enjoy painting that much pink. A little bit on a Slaanesh Chosen is fine but that much... I'm not a fan. I decided to shake it up a little and embrace change so I painted them blue and green which was obviously a good idea as I finished in around a week!!

I decided not to do my usual fire with these guys as I wanted to try something a little different. It was my main thought while I was painting the Horrors and I still hadn't come up with a solution when I'd finished everything else so I dug around in my head a little. I had originally planned to paint these Horrors in purple (can't quite remember how they ended up blue) so I decided to create a little homage to the original idea and have purple flames. 

Their feathers were actually inspired by a suggestion by @wilsongrahams on Twitter while I was painting a Tyranid Termagant (more on that another time) who suggested that I look through the Lizardmen army book for some colour scheme inspiration. While I didn't find anything in there I liked for my Tyranids I did quite like how the feathers were done so I went back through my pile o' White Dwarf magazines to the issue from the Lizardmen release and lo and behold there was a quick and easy way of doing the feathers in a way I liked. Basically they were base coated in Ceramite White, given a Lamenters Yellow glaze and then Waywatchers Green was applied in thin coats to create a blend effect. 

So there we have it. After posting this I plan to get some household stuff done (boring) and then crack on with my Tzeentch Terminator sorcerer. I just need to finish his gun and his staff and he's done (I may have gotten impatient and already based him...). So if all goes to plan then I may be powering through another chunk of my armies today.

The Silent War

I realise I've been rather quiet since 7th edition came in and that's because life has been getting in the way again. I have done some painting and played a few games which I'll summarise here.

My very first game of 7th was with the awesome guys at #WS10, specifically Liam and his Blood Angels. Naturally I went with a Daemon/CSM list that contained all four Greater Daemons and a total of 22 Mastery Levels. To cut a long (several hours long in fact) story short it was the least bloodthirsty game ever. First blood didn't get taken until Liam's second turn and that was the only full unit on my side to die. On his side I took one unit with my Great Unclean one.   That's it. Sure there was the odd model here and there but full squads? Just the two. Now it probably didn't help that we were constantly checking the rules for changes and we did get into a few tactics discussions along the way but even so I took 30 minutes for my first Psychic phase. I think the problem was that I tried to use all of my powers instead of picking and choosing the most relevant to each situation and also my experience with Summoning for Daemonology, while effective, was nowhere near as game breaking as the forums and YouTube videos had led me to believe. Cursed Earth was amazing and should be taken if possible. That +1 to Daemon Invulnerable saves was a life saver and it meant that nothing I summonned scattered. I also took a Tau tactic (gun line) and applied it to my Pink Horrors. I spread them across my  deployment and had them direct their powers practically everywhere on the board. I think that could have been very effective later on in the game as more enemies were on the board and is definitely something I'll try again.

My second battle was a test for my third as I needed to see what my half of the list could do (it was a doubles match). I've become renowned within #WS10 for my use of Daemons and Psykers and in all fairness I've definitely earned that reputation. As a result I decided to go with pure Chaos Space Marines and only took one Psyker (what? I can't completely ignore my playing style). In my test run I was tabled in turn 5 due to my own impatience and recklessness so all I had left on the table was my Helbrute and Abaddon. I have to say that Abaddon certainly proved he's worth the points as although he's only slightly above average in terms of shooting he REALLY shines in combat. In my test he single-handedly took down a 10 man unit of Chaos Space Marines (my opponent), a Rhino (unfortunately empty), an Obliterator and his Warlord who happened to be on a bike. In the doubles game he took a hull point from one tank and killed Coteaz in hand to hand (I deployed them so they had to foot slog) My Terminators on the other hand proved to be little more than expensive meat shields and I think I can probably get another bodyguard for a lot less points. Terminators are good but not the way I used them so for Abaddon's guard I'll try something else.

I have to say that I really enjoy 7th so far. Couple of niggling rules issues aside (mostly with how my Psykers generate powers) I think it's been really well put together and somehow seems to work better than 6th and I know at least a few of #WS10 feel the same way.

For now though I'll say goodbye and goodnight but I've got lots more to share over the next few days so please do stay tuned.

Nerdvana part 2

I didn't want to add all the pictures to the last post because let's face it, it's pretty long already. So now you get Nerdvana part 2 which (aside from this paragraph and the odd comment) will be almost entirely pictures from the day so enjoy! Oh, in the miniatures gallery I may be in a couple of the pictures too. Try not to enjoy those ones too much.

The fight against Stuart:

Most of my army started in reserve btw

Before the Skull Cannon fired...

After the Skull Cannon fired...

Soul Grinder go bye bye :(

Edit: I posted this last month but it didn't upload and I've only just noticed.