Administratum Building

I've been working hard on club terrain pieces I've completed in the last week or so, and this is the first and largest of them:


The boxes at the front were from the club collection and are made of plaster, so I'm not sure how hard wearing they'll be.

I used a couple of ideas from White Dwarf on this (who says it's useless...).

One of them was from a terrain masterclass from a couple of months ago showing the Warhammer coaching inn. In that muddy hoof prints had been added, which I thought was a great idea. For this piece I wanted to give it the feel that it had been used as a temporary refuge by a small group of people, so I added some muddy foot prints behind the barricade:



This was easy to do. After I'd spread filler over the base, I took a disembodied Space Marine foot and stamped prints into it. To paint it, it was done with Calthan Brown, washed with Brown Ink (not Devlan Mud, I wanted the sheen of the ink) and then drybrushed with the household paint I'd used for the rest of the base.

Here's some of the side detail, shown as Battle Sisters from the Order of the Wounded Heart advance cautiously past it:

Painting lichen on terrain

I'm working on few weathered terrain pieces at the moment (basically it's another ruined wall piece) and as part of the weathering I've added some lichen to the rocks.

Here's a picture I took to use as reference:


...and here's the effect in miniature:

I'm pretty pleased with the outcome for is, and it's easy to do:

1- Use PVA glue to stick sand where you want the lichen to be
2- Paint the rock with whatever colour you want, I used grey (about Codex Grey) and then drybrushed with light grey (about Fortress Grey). Make sure you include the sand in your drybrushing
3- Drybrush the lichen with whatever colour you want it to end up as. In my picture above I used Gretchin Green.

Easy, and it adds instant age. Here's the complete terrain piece:

I've also knocked up some bases for these trees, nothing too special with these:

Battle Report: Chaos Vs Chaos

I played a game last night at the club, helping one of the other club members warm up for a forthcoming tournament. I've played him a few times before, and it's always a good game. He runs an all Nurgle Chaos Space Marines army which is pretty similar to my own.

It was an 1800 point battle, capture and control with the dawn of war setup.

His list:
DP, MoN, wings, warptime
DP, MoN, wings, Nurgle's Rot

4 Terminators, 3 combi-meltas, reaper AC, chainfist

7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, 2 melta guns, rhino
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, 2 melta guns, rhino
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, 2 plasma guns, rhino

3 Obliterators
Defiler with one extra CCW
Defiler with one extra CCW


My list was the usual mish mash of stuff, manly built around stuff I either like or find entertaining. As it was a larger points value I threw in a couple of other units than my usual list. I took:

DP, MoN, wings, Warptime
Sorcerer, MoS, Lash of Submission

Dreadnought with multi-melta
6 Chosen, Icon of Chaos Glory, 3 flamers, 2 meltas, rhino

7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, flamer, melta, rhino, personal icon
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, flamer, plasma gun, personal icon
7 Plague Marines, AC with PF, flamer, plasma gun, personal icon
17 summoned lesser daemons

Defiler
Vindicator

I threw in the lesser daemons and lash sorcerer to try them out really and see how they did, as I'm thinking with using them in a tournament myself.

He won the roll to go first, and chose to go second. I deployed my lash sorcerer and a squad of PMs in cover on my objective. He deployed the Nurgle's Rot DP and some PM's on his objective.

Turn one I rolled everything else on (Chosen were outflanking), but there was no shooting as I couldn't see anything. He rolled on two rhinos with PM's and the obliterators in the centre along with the warptime DP, and the two Defilers opposite my objective. The obliterators started the game by blowing up the vindicator with their lascannons despite my smoke launchers.

Mid-turns, I started to come around from this set back. My Defiler dropped a battle cannon blast on the Obliterators and instant killed two of them, effectively neutralizing them in the game. My Chosen arrived on the flank near to his objective and summoned the lesser daemons, before jumping out and shooting a wound of a DP on his objective . My opponent responded by moving his Rhinos full of Plague Marines towards his objective in support. This was a mistake as effectively there was no pressure on my objective. In the centre my dreadnought and Defiler advanced towards his objective.

On the other flank, he killed 4 Plague Marines with a battle cannon shot, whilst my Daemon Prince ripped apart one of his Defilers. Meanwhile, the 4 terminators arrived to try and destroy my defiler with their combi-meltas in the rear of the thing. They failed and were destroyed in the following turn by the Plague Marines.

In the late game, my Daemon Prince rolled the other Defiler over and then moved on towards his objective, killing the last Obliterator on the way. My lesser daemons and Chosen were attacked by both his Daemon Princes. The lesser daemons showed their worth by killing one of the Daemon Princes (mainly due to him failing three out of four 3+ saves), and tieing the other one up for several turns. My Defiler got bogged down in combat with 2 units of Plague Marines, whilst he can kill them quite well, he only has a few attacks.

The game ended in a draw on turn 5. If it had gone to turn 6 I think I could have won it, as I had my Defiler, dread and Daemon Prince closing in on his objective. However, it was not to be and a throughly enjoyable game ended in a draw.

Looking at my list, I know well enough it's not exactly tuned to the highest degree, but it's got units I like. Of the two new units, the lash sorcerer was pretty useless as for most of the game their were no non-vehicle units in range so he was wasted. My lesser daemons did well, I think the daemon bomb of 17 turning up at once caused a big enough distraction to drag two very scary units into a protracted combat.

No prizes for guessing what I'm working on

Here's my painting desk as of last night:



Guess what I'm working on currently...

The club hosting one of the heats for the a regional tournament. We need ten tables doing, and really we've got enough terrain already to cover all ten. We've had these Cities of Death buildings sitting around for a good while already built (thanks for a kind donation) so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to get them based up and painted.

They're pretty standard stuff really. The paint scheme will be more of an adandoned outpost scheme rather than a ruined city as most of our tables are grass so it'll fit in with them a bit better.

The only one I've gone a bit further on is the large one in the foreground. I wanted this one to look a bit more like it had been used as a base camp or something like that. It's got a wall of crates on one side (providing cover for models), I've also added a ladder. The white area on the ground is going to be mud where people were standing looking over the barricade. I've stamped foot prints into the filler to create a churned up mud effect. Hopefully it'll look more muddy once it's painted.

Goodbye Inquisition?

Bell of Lost Souls was reporting earlier this week that Daemonhunters and Witch Hunters were being pulled from GW shelves and inventory. I've spent a long time working on my Witch Hunters army (even though its still small), so this is potentially either sad news or great news.

The Inquisition armies are some of my favourite in 40K, as I think they have great background and some great miniatures. I can't really comment too much on DH minis, as I'm more of a WH man, but the majority of WH miniatures have been direct only for quite some time, so maybe this withdrawal from the shops is just a continuation of that. Most of the minis still seem to be on the GW site (at least the UK site), but I can not longer see the Battle Sister squad box which was the mainstay purchase for a WH army.

What's the reason for this? A few spring to mind:

1-Inquisition armies are finished, gone the way of the Squat and the Zoat.

2-Inquisition armies are getting a new Codex. This is possible, the Codex are some of the older ones, but there's been few rumours about a new Codex for Inquisition armies whereas Dark Eldar are strongly rumoured for this year. I guess if one is coming, then it'll be post DE so perhaps late '10 to 2011. Another possible I suppose is a "get you by" list like Warriors of Chaos got after Daemons came out, or Blood Angels. Not a perfect solution but better than the first one.

3-It's just part of GW changing the inventory round, and nothing to worry about.

4-Inquisition could go over to be Forge World army, meaning it'll be even more expensive and potentially tournament limiting.

Whatever the reason, I really hope it isn't the first one of these scenarios....

Slaanesh Chaos Sorcerer WIP

Ever since I saw Christian Byrne's snake bodied Slaanesh Lord in WD a while ago, I wanted to do one myself. As a change from painting Nurgle stuff and as I want to use it in a future tournament, I thought I'd put a Slaanesh model together and so it was a perfect opportunity to do the worm/snake body.





The worm body looks a bit fat in place, so I'll sand some of that off to make it a bit smoother. I'm not sure what detail (if any) to add to the worm body though, whether I should leave it smooth or put some scales on it or something. The whip is taken from a VC corpse cart and goes pretty well with the Lash of Submission power he will ineviatbly be using.

Wrecked vehicle marker

Ever since I saw these over at Santa Cruz Warhammer I wanted to make one. Over Christmas I got a few of the little electric candle things required for it as they were on sale for Christmas decorations, each one cost me 50p. You can read the method for yourself over on Santa Cruz Warhammer, but I definitely recommend making one of these, they're super cheap, super easy and super quick to make. What could be cooler than flickering lights on your tanks?

Here's a slight grainy picture of it in action:

Simple Battle Sister Conversions

One of the major drawbacks of playing Witch Hunters is that Sisters of Battle are a) expensive b) metal and c) have fairly limited poses. This means that conversion possibilities are fairly limited with the basic Battle Sister boxed set, but there are a few things I've been doing to add some conversions in, add a small amount of variety and, most importantly, save some cash.

The basic BSS box comes with 7 standard sisters, one with a flamer, one with a storm bolter and a veteran sister superior armed with a plasma pistol and a chainsword/eviscerator. My army list requires one with a melta gun, one with a heavy flamer and one veteran with a bolter and the Book of St Lucius which is not what the box comes with.

Firstly, here's a simple conversion of a flamer sister into a meltagun toting sister:



This is actually a conversion I've done before, only this time I decided to leave off the tubing underneath the gun. It's just a case of removing the flame cannister from underneath the gun and filing off the flamer tubing round the barrel. Once that's done, just bulk out the nozzle with green stuff and you're done.

Continuing with the special weapon theme, here's a sister armed with a heavy flamer:


This pose is about the only one where it's possible to do weapon swaps without destroying the whole model. I've swapped her bolter for a heavy flamer taken from an Immolator and cut down a bit. I've added some tanks to her back (from a Cadian) and linked the heavy flamer and the tanks using guitar string. It's not the best conversion, as the heavy flamer is a little over balanced, but as this one is going to save me £9 (the price of one, yes one, sister with a heavy flamer) I can live with it.

Finally, here's my VSS:

This one is a simpe weapon swap from the plasma pistol to a bolter, and replacing the other hand with a hand holding a book. The book I used is taken from an Empire priest (I'd previously used the priest model as an Inquisitorial acolyte) which is handy as the hand on the book is a left hand. Alternatively, the canoness model comes with a hand holding a book, though its a right hand so a little work will be needed to move the thumb over.

All in all, these conversion save me some cash (though I've now lost an ordinary sister to be the heavy flamer sister), and add some variation to my squads.

New Year's Hobby Resolutions

Happy New Year to you! I'm sure there will be lots of resolutions floating about the blogosphere at this time of year so here's mine to add to the noise:

1- Build, paint and play at least 1 game with my new Ogre Kingdoms army
2- Complete my Witch Hunters army to 1500 points
3- Build and paint at least one super heavy
4- Play at least 25 games total of either 40K or Fantasy
5- Play in at least one proper tournament
6- Paint at least 120 points worth of minis on the lonepilgrim painting point scheme (I did 109 this year)

Hopefully I can manage at least half of these before 2011 rolls around.