1750 point battle against Grey Knights - another attempt at Storm Troopers

So, back in January, I arranged for a 1,750 point game against ClauseIV1918's Grey Knights. I decided I wanted to keep trying Deep Striking Storm Troopers, so I used the same list I had earlier in the month with a couple of extra units to round it out. Meanwhile, ClauseIV1918 was trying out Cypher to see how he worked.

Knowing that a lot of Deep Striking would likely be coming my way, I spread out a large number of conscripts on the right flank, while I sent the main infantry platoon up the centre to capture the Relic. As my opponent had no fliers at all, the Hellhound ruthlessly used the Hydra as mobile cover.

Here you can see the Relic hidden away on the first floor of the ruin, with a servo skull floating ominously, stopping me from sneaking any infiltrators up onto the objective itself. And what's that behind the building?

Ah, Cypher has cheerfully persuaded a unit of Grey Knight Terminators that clearly he's a senior Inquisitor, and perhaps they'd like to infiltrate onto the battlefield with him?

Meanwhile, my Ratlings decided that being Very Far Away was an excellent idea, with a nice view of plenty of heavily armoured targets to put holes in.

A Grey Knight Techmarine with an orbital strike relay hid in a building with some unit or other - which I never really saw much of apart from hideously inaccurate pie plates missing me for most of the game...

Battle commenced and the Terminators rushed forward to grab the Relic.

Heavy fire left my long ranged firepower distinctly unwell.

A lot of heavy firepower was out of commission one way or another in the first round of shooting. This was not good news for the Guard!

The Ratling Snipers noticed that Cypher had accidentally left himself the nearest model to them, so helpfully shot him in the back, although sadly, not fatally.

The conscripts advanced up the field, intending to provide some level of distraction from the main part of the operation.

The main operation: the infantry platoon, supported by the Hellhound advance on the Relic.

Already snap firing most of its guns, the Hydra roared forward to act as mobile cover for the more dangerous flame tank.

Things quickly started looking a little dicey as Terminators teleported onto the battle field.

They were quickly joined by a power armoured Grey Knight squad.

What's worse than Terminators?

Terminators with added Cypher. He ran out of the unit with the Relic and went to join the Deep Striking squad.

The Demolisher, which has previously taken a high toll of Grey Knight casualties, was singled out for particular attention, and was wrecked.

Storm Bolters and Psycannons ripped into the infantry platoon tasked with capturing the Relic, costing the squads both their sergeants, so the Commissars assumed command in the hope of salvaging the operation.

At this point I played my ace in the hole - two large squads of Storm Troopers grav-chuted onto the battlefield to wreak havoc and mayhem. Sadly, I had completely forgotten that Inquisitor Coteaz has a really rather extensive spy network, which, among other things, allows him to "expect" you. And shoot you. Along with his unit, which in this case was a squad full of Servitors with Plasma Cannons. Two Storm Troopers, one from each squad, survived the hail of plasma, and both broke and fled for my board edge.

The conscripts lined up to shoot up the Terminators, but despite buckets of dice, failed to have any impact at all.

The survivors of the infantry squad, undeterred, headed forward. They were joined by their Lieutenant, who I'd handily forgotten to deploy and now had some ground to catch up.

One of the Deep Striking Grey Knights units finished off the Manticore, and started eyeing up the Hydra and Hellhound's rear armour thoughtfully...

Yet more reinforcements arrived amid the fleeing Storm Troopers.

A typical moment in the game - my Hydra took aim at a Dreadnought....

Everything hits (with snap fire, it only hits on 6s)...

For no damage. Hopefully a few more rolls like this will convince ClauseIV1918 that his dice aren't that bad.

At this point, I demonstrated why no-one likes the Hellhound. Using its Torrent ability, it neatly slotted a jet of flame through the open door of the ruin, cremating a terminator and the good part of a Strike Squad.

Sadly, this wasn't enough to stop the Terminators grabbing hold of the Relic and starting to withdraw back to their own lines.

The command chimera was blown to pieces by the concentrated fire of the Grey Knights, manfully ignoring the flash lights being shone in their eyes by the cowering conscripts.

The survivors of the Chimera explosion were swiftly and effectively gunned down.

The surviving Guard advance on the ruin, perhaps unaware that it was already gone.

And the sole surviving Grey Knight Terminator escapes with the Relic!

This was definitely a good fun game, even though I was comprehensively thrashed. Cypher was a grade A pain to deal with, especially as things like Shrouded started to come into play later in the game. My blundering error with the grav-chuting Storm Troopers which saw them all evaporated will definitely not be repeated.

One of the things I am going to want to start thinking about is coming up with an army list which actually has a relatively solid plan for dealing with each of the rulebook missions. At present, Relic is one of the weaker points, as short of air dropping a squad out of the Valkyrie onto it, most of my units have trouble making the distance to reach it before the enemy.

Hobby Progress Challenge, Platoon Britannica Meet Up, and a couple of games

I find myself almost a little incoherent today. Things have really started taking off in terms of Getting Things Done, and alongside some busy work commitments, I'm feeling pretty wiped out!

I am trying to make my first commitment for the Hobby Progress Challenge. Given I didn't manage to reach double figures of completed painted miniatures last year, if I complete my first 20 Guardsmen, I'll have already more than doubled last year's achievements by the end of February. Its ambitious, but hopefully I'll pull through!

Here they are, in glorious, glorious coloured progress! As I mentioned in my previous progress post, I'm trying out using a piece of hardboard as both a painting base and a palette to mix my colours on. I'm certainly finding things a lot easier, and while I'm just painting to a simple gaming standard, it is super useful.

As a side note, I am starting to think that the old GW "Desert Yellow" separates and goes streaky if you so much as look at it funny. No wonder my tanks ended up with massive streaks on them. I am kind of looking forward to using up my old stock and colour matching to a new one in the hope of it being a bit more consistent in terms of coverage.

The photo above was taken at Dark Sphere on Sunday, at the Platoon Britannica painting meet up. Max Von Deadlock covers the event itself coherently and with a picture over on his blog much better than I could, so I'll simply direct my readership to him for details of how that went.

Because I have no common sense whatsoever, I travelled straight from the painting day to Reading. Less of Reading was underwater than I expected. I stayed overnight before playing two games against a friend who plays Space Wolves. I just looked back at my blog and realised I haven't played him since July 2012. I'm an absolutely terrible person. We got in two excellent games - one at 1,500 points against his Space Wolves, and another one at 500 points against his new Dark Eldar force he's putting together. Many photos were taken, so expect battle reports on them in the future, when I start working through the massive backlog of reports I have to do! Huge thanks to my hosts in Reading, and I'll try to make it less than a year and a half before our next game...

Off topic: Dinosaurs and Alien Queens

I may have mentioned that I don't live that far from the Excel Centre - to the point that sometimes, I end up using it as a short cut to get to other places when it's cold.... Recently, I was cutting through it and there was some big conference on. I found out later it was "ICE" - a big gambling company trade show.

And online gambling companies, it seems, have the same level of taste, subtlety and discretion as Las Vegas Casinos do when given an opportunity to show off.

But what really got my attention was this:

If you're having trouble reading the text in the photo: This is the original Queen from Aliens - and in her last public appearance. It seemed a little sad that her last outing was not at some sci fi convention, but some slick gambling convention because someone has licensed Aliens for an online casino game.

So, in her memory, here's a few shots I managed to take of her.

20 Guardsmen assembled

I'm feeling quite accomplished from a hobby point of view. My "progress" took a bit of a knock at Warhammer World, followed by a Tempestus Firebase related bargain that my wife was lovely enough to get me as a present.

So, one of the things that my painting lesson at Golem suggested was that I should mix my paint on something closer to what I was painting, rather than a wet palette. I've been noticing a bit of a problem with getting a consistent consistency of paint, so following the lesson, I'm going to give it a try. This involved a cheap bit of hardboard I picked up from 4D Model Shop, and spraying it with the undercoat I use. As I undercoat in both black and white, I split the spraying half and half. I'll now be mixing my paint on this and I'll see how that helps.

And here is the real progress. On the weekend, I finished assembly the 20 Guardsmen for my February commitment in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge. As I was out on Sunday evening, and my wife had her airbrush out, she offered to undercoat them for me. As she was using a new airbrush (also from 4D, oddly enough), a couple are a little less smoothly undercoated than we would usually do, but I'm pretty sure we'll cover over that with the base coat.

I do still have a bunch of battle reports to write up and post up, but life has been pretty hectic recently. I don't want the blogging to end up getting in the way of actually getting some modelling and painting done!

A week away

I'm afraid I didn't get much modelling and painting done last week, as I was on holiday! During this holiday, I did many things.

I went to Golem Painting Studio and had a painting lesson, which was excellent. The step change in my painting from what I was doing before to what I'd done at the end was incredible.

We went to Wargames Foundry. I failed to take any pictures, but my darling wife took this photo of one of her purchases, which was some goblins torturing a dwarf with feathers. I bought Fort Wynn a present, which I will leave them to explain, but also dropping them in the lurch so they need to both post and also paint it and blog that too!

I was really taken by their fantasy range and was saddened to read on their blog when I got back that they are having some woes regarding them. I picked up the "Little Kev" model and also some Victorian gentlemen to use as civilians in Malifaux, should I have a mind.

I also went to Warhammer World, where I played a little game of 40K against my beloved, who managed to get through an 850 point game without murdering me for being boring. It can't have been that bad, because at least some of my wife's Forge World related slips that weekend seem to have come from reading the rules for them rather than the look of the models. What is the world coming to?

I also got an incredible second game in against an Iyanden Eldar list which came right down to the wire. Many thanks to my opponent, who is an old friend who lives in the Nottingham area who I agreed to play when his scheduled opponent had to drop out at the last minute.

I may have had a wallet related slip in the vicinity of Games Workshop as I had a teensy bit of a panic buy of a teensy amount of metal given the rumours that GW may be ditching more of its metal stock. I bought pretty much all the metal models I've ever wanted, which was both elating and rather painful. With the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge now staring me in the face, I really need to knuckle down to getting paint on models and projects finished.

Wish me luck!

Finished Arbitrator

For the last week I've been running around the country causing mayhem and mischief. Just before I left, I finished the Adeptus Arbites I'd been working on, but hadn't got the time to take some photos.

Now, this was another experiment with photography. I used the my iPad mini's "HDR" option to take the photos.

I also used a second lamp which I brought down from my parents. My usual light was aimed straight at the miniature, and the second light was used as an overhead light. Unfortunately, I didn't have a daylight bulb in the second light and I think it's made the photos a bit too yellow.

I also think that some of these photos have highlighted a couple of brush slips I'd made that I hadn't spotted with the naked eye. I may have to pop back to this chap and touch up his paint job at some point, but for now, as far as I'm concerned, he's done and going away in the box.

GoblinAid - last chance for buying figures

This is the final week to buy GoblinAid figures from Ral Partha. These are figures sculpted to help Kev Adams after a break in at his house where he was stabbed.

You can find a link to the figures here:

http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/goblinaid-c-123.html

Making an Imperial Beastman: Part 1: Finding bits and assembly

When I originally set out to try and make some Imperial Beastmen, I decided to try and document the process to give a good 'step by step' guide for what I'd done to put them together. My test model has been finished some significant time now, but I still haven't finished my tutorial / step by step / warning for future generations. Until now.

Well, not right now, because at the time of writing, there is a massive terrifying white space beneath this text, rather than what you're reading, which is full of deranged ramblings and badly taken photos. That's the magic of the internet. On the subject of badly taken photos - while my photos are still pretty poor, I can now see that back when I started this project, they were absolutely terrible! So, please be understanding of some of the ropey earlier photography.

Selection of Bits

In order to make an Imperial Beastman, you first need to source your parts. For my kit bash, I used Ungor bodies, Gor heads and horns, and Catachan arms. I chose the Ungor body over the Gor body as it has much less in the way of Chaos iconography, so it is much easier to work with. Advanced modellers who are comfortable with scraping off iconography and using green stuff to resculpt bits of a kit may want to stick with Gor bodies. Likewise, if you are doing Chaos worshipping Beastmen for use as cultists or similar, the Gor bodies will do just fine. The Catachan arms are well-muscled and fit in with the Beastman's general proportions. I used Gor heads for the classic goats head and horns, as the weedier Ungor heads just didn't inspire me.

If you are a Guard player, you will probably already have a big pile of assorted other bits and pieces, such as grenades, pouches and purity seals which will help up the "40K-ness" of the model. On this example, for instance, I added a couple of grenades to his belt at the back, although I failed to take any photos of this at the assembly stage.

Buying the parts

I thought it worthwhile to mention that there are a few ways of sourcing your parts which don't involve you buying three full infantry boxed sets from your local Games Workshop store or the GW website. The first option is to look at a discount retailer such as Dark Sphere or Wayland Games. I've used both in the past and have found both to be reliable. You should be aware, however, that Games Workshop is moving a large portion of its range (including the Catachan) to direct only sales. Some stores may be able to order them in for you, but will not be able to offer you as big a discount (or in some cases, any discount at all).

Either of these options do leave you with a large collection of parts that you aren't using for this conversion. Now, for some, this may not be the end of the world - you can just put them in your bits box for future use. I was certainly tempted before the Catachan went direct only to pick up a full Battalion box and save everything that wasn't a pair of arms for future conversion projects. Don't under-estimate how much you can get for a bit pile of leftover bits on ebay, either. I'll cover advice on how to do that in a separate post.

For conversions like this, however, I would recommend sites which sell bits. For converting large squads, when you need a lot of the same sort of thing, Hoard o' Bits in the US is one of the best sites for that sort of thing - offering things like "all the arms out of this box" or "all the bodies out of this box" - perfect for what we're doing here. If you're doing a more individual conversion, then you're likely better off using Bitz Box or Bits and Kits. If all else fails, hit ebay - but you will generally find that prices there are a little higher without a lot of bargain hunting.

Putting the bits together

This is an incredibly easy kit bash to do. The parts basically fit together well, although if you are dealing with a set of Catachan arms which both hold on to the lasgun, you may have a little more work on your hands. In my case, I went with the easy option of one hand with a gun, and one hand with a knife.

So, after cleaning up all the parts, I glued the body to the base, and the arms to the body. Meanwhile, I glued the horns onto the head. This was my first rookie error - I did not do a "dry fit" and did not realise that the pony tail on the head was going to cause me incredible problems painting the right arm.

I then glued the head to the body. You will notice that there's a teeny bit of a gap between the head and the horns, which will be really rather obvious once under-coated.

I used liquid green stuff to fill in the gaps that were around. I use clay shapers to make sure I've got the stuff into the right places. I prefer it to a brush as its easier to clean, and I feel like I have a little more control, although that may just be preference. While it looks messy, it's really fine once you undercoat. You'll also notice I've realised that the arm was not in a good place and pulled it off again. You will find it really hard to pull pieces off if you use polystyrene cement (AKA plastic glue) - super glue will actually provide a weaker bond in these cases, which is actually advantageous for correcting mistakes. I've discovered this accidentally due to my wife's allergy to polystyrene cement fumes, but there have been a number of projects since where I've been incredibly glad of the ability to pull an arm off again without damage.

And here we are, ready for undercoating. You'll also see another excellent trick my wife taught me here - lollipop sticks. I bought mine from Loynds, but since I bought from them, they now sell the sticks as Yolli. This has the added advantage of selling an assortment of sugar related goods, which resulted in me ordering honeycomb in industrial quantities.

Distraction of sugar based goods aside, a tiny drop of super glue secures the small part to the stick, fine for painting, but also light enough that it's easy to pull off once your painting is finished. You'll need to touch the join up a little, but you will have a lot fewer problems with hard to reach spots.

So, that's how to find the parts for and assemble your Imperial Beastman. I'll be making a separate post shortly covering how I painted mine.

I am achieving things!

This was a very busy week for me, but despite that, I've managed to get a whole bunch of stuff done!

I've snipped Collodi's tab and cleaned up the edge of his base ready for pinning and gluing. Meanwhile, I've started assembling the second ten Guardsmen for the start of the Hobby Progress Challenge 2014. This is one of those things I have to do in little bits and come back to because cleaning up flash is one of the dullest things in the world.

I've finished assembling Nicolai, and he's now attached to a resin base. He's a Joker faction model for Eden. I've started base coating him, but I need to put in a second coat. Once the base coat is on, I'm planning on basically using washes and inks to add all his colour. I'll be curious to see how that goes.

The Arbitrator is now painted, and I've moved onto basing him. I'm just waiting for the basing material to dry so I can paint it, and he'll be done!

And finally, the water effects have dried on my Wicked Dolls. I've also tried to improve my photography lighting a little with this shot, so I'd like a little feedback - is it much better than the quick shots above? Is there anything else I could do to improve this more?

I have a painting lesson with my wife booked up at Golem Painting Studio next week, so alongside trying to finish assembling my Guard, I need to decide what I'm taking up to paint and make sure its prepped and ready for painting in plenty of time.