Warhammer Store Free Beastman

 

At the weekend I was in Bristol for a LARP - a player run event sent in the Empire setting, where a bunch of magicians were getting together to discuss magic and politics. I travelled down the night before so I had an easy commute on the day, but found myself with a spare morning. I decided to check out some local gaming shops, and pottered into the local Warhammer store.

I ended up spending all my available time there, as these days you can assembled a miniature which you can then take home and keep. This month's miniature was a Warhammer 40,000 chaos beastman, and they're a bit of the setting I've been fond of for quite a while.

You seem to need to assemble the miniature in the store, but you can use their tools to do so. They also give you a little cardboard box to take him away in. He also came on his own dedicated sprue, so they're casting these up specifically for the "assemble and take away" thing in the stores.

He was a fun assembly job - not too complicated, not too many parts. He's clearly been designed for the younger modellers or newer hobbyists to be able to take part in.

This is the sort of thing that's good for Games Workshop stores to be getting involved in. There were also folk coming in for their Duke of Edinburgh Award to do painting and crafting. In game store activities like this that let people learn about the hobby are how we get the next generation of gamers.

Tidying up old ideas

I've taken the opportunity to tidy up the Projects page a little bit and cleared out some projects I've definitely decided not to do.

I'd been picking up bits of Chaos Space Marines and Dark Angels after being bought the Dark Vengeance set, but with my interest in 40K as a whole waning, I've sold off the remaining bits and bobs that would have been those two projects, and cleared the decks for stuff I'm enthused with.

I've held off on getting rid of a few classic Chaos Renegade models, as they'll make an excellent Kill Team, which I am still pretty keen on.

I'd written a little background for them that I salvaged from the Iron Warriors project page before I deleted it:

"The warband still holds a significant disdain for those among their number whose physical bodies have twisted from their time in the Eye. They are shunned even within these outcasts among traitors. On the battlefield, they group together, and referred to as The Unworthy by their commanders. They wear the name as an ironic badge of honour, seeking to outperform their brothers and show their prowess is undiminished."

Now, the only question there is whether or not to stick with the Iron Warriors plan, or pick a different warband for them to be from...

A bit of a clear out

As part of the bank holiday weekend, I've taken the opportunity to have a little bit of a clear out of some of my abandoned projects. You can find them listed for sale here. However, as I was taking nice photos to go on eBay, I thought it would be interesting to talk about what I'm selling, but also why.

First up, we have a bunch of Nurgle Chaos Space Marine stuff. There's three dreadnoughts and five Chaos Terminators in total.

I picked these up many years ago at an Overlords gaming club bring and buy. One of the younger players was selling on his Nurgle chaos force to fund a new project. As I understand it, he'd also bought a lot of it second hand from someone as well.

I picked up the models I did because at the time I was planning an Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marine force using the models from Dark Vengeance I'd got as a present from my wife. My logic was that these models were painted to a gaming standard and could easily bulk out the Iron Warriors force I wanted while I was getting it ready, and once the force was complete, I could sell them on.

Unfortunately, the Iron Warriors never came to be, so there's no longer any reason to keep team Nurgle. I'm weirdly attached to the little blighters because I know so much of their history. Hopefully they'll move on to someone who'll use them as is, rather than simply stripping them and starting again.

I'm also selling off various bits from the Japanese Successionist Army box for Infinity. I grabbed the box for the pre-order miniature and to get the various models out of it that are of use to the Ikari Mercenary Company, as I already had a lot of the miniatures for that force. (Essentially by mistake, due to the nature of mercenaries.)

There's also a few surplus Antenocitis Workshop bases - either ones I used for some of my civilian models, or ones purchased for mercenaries before I decided to incorporate them into my Ikari forces.

So, if you're seeing this in the first few days the post is up, please head over to my eBay page and grab a bargain. If not, I hope you found these ramblings about why hobby moves on to someone else interesting.

A bit of a mistake

The not mistake bit first - the first Chaos Spawn for my Warriors of Chaos project is finally assembled and ready for paint.

One of the work in progress pictures I posted on Twitter elicited an "Oh God, what on earth is that?" reaction, which I regard as pretty much on the mark. He'll double for a Spawn in my Iron Warriors if that project ever gets off the ground.

And here's the mess up. I thought she was done to table top quality, but when I came back to her this evening to do the blog photo, I didn't like the face. I went in to "quickly fix" it, and will now need to completely repaint it, having stuffed it up.

Bother.

Anyone got any good zombie face / flesh painting tutorials they can recommend?

Warhammer 40,000 Open Day - The Exhibition Halls

I hope to get a little more up to date with processing all my pictures from Cool Things I Did over past weekends, but I'm still trawling through a lot of photos!

This post - what we saw in the exhibition halls as we wandered around them on Saturday afternoon at the 40K Open Day.

First up, this is the new Age of Sigmar display that had been added since we'd last arrived. There were giant floating islands, with Stormcast Eternals and Chaos forces fighting over it.

There was a massive, epic presence to it. The display really does look like some of the art work. For me, it emphasised the very different style and theme of Age of Sigmar, as opposed to the Old World. More high fantasy, almost to the point of heavy metal album covers.

While it is different to the Old World, I think my conclusion is that I like this. I like the look, I like the themes, and I like how it's developing. It's a more high fantasy world, and it's more flexible in what you can do with it. I still love the Old World setting, but don't particularly think one or the other is a "better" setting.

But, to return to the display, it's really well put together and really brings to life the new setting. While I might not be all that enthused about Stormcast Eternals, I am looking

Ironically, I took this photo as i was more interested in how they'd painted up the arcane ruins than I was in the Khornate demon chariot in front of it...

 
And here's another interesting use of scenery - converting a ruined tower to have teeth so it's clearly very chaos mutated.

 
I'm not sure I remember this converted Baneblade being here the first time I came around. I mostly took the photo because I kind of want one. The use of the wings is really clever.

But this? This is genius. I am unsure if I could justify the expense of a winged Valkyrie, but I kind of want one for my Inquisition force...

 
I think the Death Korps display is new, though. It's a lovely, weathered display that almost calls to mind historical displays in places.

This was mostly taken for scenery ideas, I will admit, but thought people might be interested in how it looks.

I didn't take many pictures of the Eldar display last time, so I tried taking a couple more this time.

Still, I'm not sure what it is, but Eldar versus Tyranids just doesn't really interest me. My camera frames some nice shots, but I don't get excited about it in the same way as I do at some of the other displays.

Here's the studio Emperor's Children army - photo mostly taken because I like the pink transition on their shoulder pads and I'm thinking about using it with my Chaos Marines.

Is this a new thing, or an old Forge World thing? I don't know Tau all that well and I'm too lazy to google it.

Here's the new Tau / Mechanicus display, starting off with the massive Forge World Manta on a landing pad. A decision was made that there was no good way to make it look awesome flying...

Here's bits of the new Tau defensive scenery, with big artillery walkers in the background.

Meanwhile, there's large rail guns and small turrets with missiles...

And advancing on them are a massive force of Mechanicus - Titans, Knights and an Ordinatus.

I mostly took this photo to post on twitter making Monty Python Black Knight jokes. I'm easily amused.

Warhammer 40,000 Open Day - Staff Armies

The Saturday of the Warhammer 40K Open Day had displays of some staff armies, which I took a few pictures of and I thought I'd share with you.

This is an awesome conversion of a Vampire Counts model (and I think some Dark Eldar bits) into an Adeptus Mechanicus model.

I totally need to own some Skitarii...

I love this little mini diorama with only two figures - you can still see the story.

This was a gorgeously weathered knight. I'm starting to think I need to pick one up.

I love the weird free hand banners in particular.

I'm planning some Iron Warriors, so I took a couple of photos here.

Sadly, it's hard to pick out the detail with so many very busy models!

There was a massive Eldar and Harlequin force too. This only gives a small impression of the scale of it.

Plenty of hobby

So, I decided to start getting back into the swing of the modelling and painting side of the hobby -although mostly, it seems the modelling part.

So, I had a tiny problem with assembling Cypher. It turns out the spot his sword is meant to go is really close to the front of his cloak. I don't know how easy it is to see, but there's a green patch on his cloak right between his legs - that's where the drill bit came through. I green stuffed it all up, and started again, this time at an angle.

There is now a broken drill bit embedded in him that I can't get out. This has been passed to the wife to fix, with a small amount of "I told you so" as she'd told me not to use the hand drill and to use the Dremel instead.

Still, the sword is pinned ready to be added.

And a 32mm base has been built up with cork, had rocks and a skull added, and textured with two different kinds of Vallejo textured paste. I'll be doing a compare and contrast with Cypher on a 25mm and 32mm base when he's fixed, as I'm pretty sure he's going to be 28% more awesome as a result.

I have a new way of working. I have something I'm trying to finish that I want to do, and something that I should do. I also have something I'm prepping that I should do and something I'm prepping that I want to do. This means all the procrastination energy of the thing I should be doing gets put into the thing I want to be doing and more work gets done.

Here is the thing I should be doing. They're two of the four Marionettes for Collodi. They are now pinned to their bases ready for water effects. Only two left to go.

To get me a nice quick win as the thing I want to be doing, here's ten Micro Art Studio bases I'm going to use as scrap markers in Malifaux. They're not finished yet, but close. Sadly, the experiment with Seraphim Sepia to get a rust like effect has resulted in the metal looking just a little yellow. The old sepia washes did a much better rust. I'll re-paint those bits a different colour and see what I can find.

On the preparation side, I've done this fancy base for my Rogue Trader Chaos Dreadnought I'll be using for my Iron Warriors. He's now ready for under-coating.

I've moved on to clearing up these old Chaos Renegades, who'll be The Unworthy in my Iron Warriors.

The first 'test fit' seems to show some of the back packs sit a little high. The advice from the Oldhammer Facebook group seems to be to re-drill the holes for some of the renegades to get the packs to sit a little lower. That should be pretty viable.

What I should be doing is prepping my wife's Valentine's Day present from 2012 so she can paint them. Still, Charlie the Bulldog is ready for undercoating.

 

And here's Ivanka, pins for her feet sorted, and one arm glued in. It's likely when she's done then her and Charlie will get undercoated and passed over, leaving me Malinka and Olga still to do.