Watch this space....

Just a quick apology that this blog has been untouched for several months. There has been progress with my Astral Claws and this evening I will post up my minis so far.

Keep watching the skies...errr...blog!

Shhhhh!

So my new army and current time sink is an Astral Claws force. I went to my first UK Games Day this year and instantly fell in love with the Lugft Huron model. So deep was my affection for this lifeless hunk of resin that I picked up Imperial Armour 9 and decided that I had to build my new leader an army.

I've been hesitant to show any pics of my army as it's developing as I know that several of the people who read this will be entering the tournament but I've just finished painting my HQ unit and I just had to show it off.

The Librarian in terminator armour is a great metal model which is so detailed that I've been a bit intimidated and have put off painting it for some time. This weekend I decided to give it a shot and 6 hours later here are the results.



It's definitely tabletop quality but I can see an improvement in my painting from this time 12 months ago and I'm very happy with it.



I'll post the rest of my growing marine force as it nears completion.

The Challenge

So we're about to hit November and I'm playing in a doubles tournament in 28 days. I have my 750 points assembled but non of it is painted. I need to paint more than one mini a day to get my army finished in time - it will be a busy November. I'll keep you updated on my progress!

It Lives (Again)!!!

After months lost in the warp this hobo has emerged with even more hobby work to do.

Work and life have been busy and my 40k work was slightly derailed by the release of 8th edition fantasy but I'm still alive and kicking and with my newley renovated man cave I have several armies to build - watch this space :)

Stealer's Kiss!

I love my genestealers and have been worried my scheme wouldn't work well on them. After a very hobby oriented 24 hours I've finished 4 and I'm very happy with them. I'm now half way to a full unit done (and a quarter of the way to finishing my final unit size).

Apologies for the crappy pics. Hopefully get some better ones up once I finish the whole unit.

Hormagants

So here's my scheme on a hormagant.....

They're heeeeeere!

So my first major achievement since rejoining the world of 40k - I've completed my first whole unit. They're not amazingly pretty but they'll look a lot better on the tabletop than bare plastic!

Latest Additions

I'm getting closer to finishing my first 40k unit but I'm also working on building a competitive 1500 point army. To that end I spent yesterday building a couple of new models. Enjoy!

It lives!

For all my dedicated followers (yes you…. that one there) fear not; I’ve not posted in a while but I’m still working hard on Hive Fleet Nom Nom (as my tyranid army has become known). The main reason I’ve not been posting is because I wanted to have something new and significant to show you. I now have over 1000 points of tyranids built which I suppose qualifies but for the last few weeks I’ve been working on finishing my first whole unit.

I’m working on a unit of 20 termagants and such is my desire to get them done I’ve brought some in to work with me today to do at lunchtime. I’ll get some pics of the finished unit along with the rest of my force in the next few days.

My first attempts with greenstuff.

I bought some greenstuff months ago and have been far too nervous to actually try doing anything with it. I spent today constructing my Hive Tyrant and decided that such an imposing mini deserved a decent base so I tried to make a marine casualty using some bits and greenstuff.

It's not brilliant but I was happy enough to include it on the base. Once it's painted up it should look great.

The stuff is easy to work with, like stiff blutack, and it takes plenty of time to harden properly so if you're a bit clumsy or indecisive you have time to get it how you want it.

The Infestation Grows.

After a busy day filing and sniffing glue my growing Tyranid horde now includes 16 Hormagants and 8 Genestealers. The Genestealers are great models and well put together on the sprues.... the Hormagants however are the worst moulded minis I've ever built. Don't get me wrong, they look great when complete, but I spent so much time filing each part of each model to remove mould lines that it took me the entire day to put 24 'nids together.

Just 16 more Termagants, 3 Warriors and a Hive Tyrant to build and I'll have my first 1000 point army.

Ripper Swarms

Just to make sure my scheme works on minis other than Termagants I tried a couple of ripper swarms (I've fixed the blobby eye on the first pic now).

nom nom nom!

Time to get to work....

I have things to do.... nuff said!

:)

Struggling with basecoating.

My plans to ally with the great devourer took a bashing this weekend.... first when the £90 of minis I bought from GW failed to arrive in time for me to have a weekend sniffing plastic glue and putting together hordes of fiddly annoying Gaunts (but huge props to my parents in law who gave me the £90 for my B'day), and secondly when I tried to use the GW spraygun I bought midweek to basecoat my ‘nids.

Although the large part of my nid force did not arrive I still had the rest of the box of Termagants I used to practice my paint scheme on and I also had a box of Gargoyles which have been waiting to be built since before the codex came out - they just looked so cool in the shop and are probably entirely responsible for the fact that the first 1000 point army I have will now be ‘nids not wolves. I figured in preparation for the big boxes of sprues, which I hope will arrive tomorrow, I'd build the rest of the Termagants and the Gargoyles and practice basing with the spraygun.

The Gargoyles were fiddlier to build than I expected and it took me all of Saturday afternoon to build 4 Termagants and 10 Gargoyles (I almost missed picking the wife up from work as 4 hours slipped by too easily!). I also put together two bases of rippers from the Gaunts box - I had some spare bases and thought 7 looked too crowded on a base (I know that's how they're supposed to look and I intend to used the FW rippers for my army in the end as those just look awesome but for now I just wanted some bases I could paint easily and playtest with).

Suffice it to say the spraygun experiment didn’t work (I’ll explain why in my next post) so I had to basecoat my Termagants by hand but they are now all done and I’ll soon have my first ‘nids unit complete. The reason for the rainbow colours in the pic is that I wanted to use my ‘test models’ but didn’t want to strip them or lose any detail by painting over the existing layer. Once I have 30 termagants the few fruity ones will blend into the background and I need all the biomass I can recover.

Expect another update soon....

My new tyranid paint scheme.

So after a weekend of experimenting (and the best part of a box of termagants) I've finally found a tyranid paint scheme I'm happy with and can turn out in a decent amount of time. In the next few weeks I'll be buying and building as many 'nids as I can afford. The final model has almost ended up as Hive Fleet Kraken, a fact which I only realised after I finished it.

I've noticed that my fine brush skills are significantly better than they were when I started my Wolves a few months ago; they're hardly groundbreaking but a few months ago I wouldn't have been able to do the eye on the fleshborer. To celebrate my 'nid scheme and reward myself for continual improvement I'm ordering a new set of Army Painter brushes (still using the same two old GW brushes I bought back in october to do all the painting on this site and they are starting to show the strain).

I'll continue to post my ongoing Tyranid force as it begins to grow.

More work needed!

So the weekends efforts have not gone well. This is the best of the bunch but the organic look I was going for ended up dirty and the gun is a disaster. I'm not as bothered by the sloppy painting, the point was to get a working colour scheme not produce a Golden Demon winner. More to follow if I can get a scheme to work.

So I've assembled some termagants and tried a few washes to see what kind of effect I can get. Although I'd love to field a rainbow 'nids army expect to see more progress towards a final scheme tomorrow.

The weekend is here.... and I have plans.

This weekend I have the house to myself for the first time in several weeks and I'm planning on testing some 'nid paint schemes. Given some of the examples of personalised Hive Fleets in all corners of the warp at the moment I've been inspired to see if I can come up with a novel scheme I'm happy with which doesn't take me hours per model (I'm very slow by most standards and when it comes to painting a swarm of gaunts I don't want to have to spend 18 months to finish a small army!).

I've just been shopping and now have a box of 12 Termagants. The plan is to assemble some this evening, undercoat tomorrow am and start testing paint schemes tomorrow afternoon/evening. I have a plan for a couple of approaches, borrowing heavily from other peoples beautiful schemes and throwing in a few ideas of my own but I'll not let you in on it yet just in case it looks terrible.

I'm hoping to post some pics of the various attempts at some point on Sunday. If I can find a scheme I'm happy with that doesn't take 6 hours per model I will be investing as heavily as I dare into a new ‘nid army over the next few months. Here's hoping I come up with something acceptable! :)

A hero is born.

Alaric Castillion, Cleric of the Eccleisiarchy stands ready to punish the enemies of mankind!

It arrived! The joy of getting things by post

This blog is going to be focussed on my efforts to collect, build and paint 40k armies but it will encompass all aspects of my 40k addiction. I will be getting some pics of my early attempts at painting Space Wolves up this weekend but I have to interrupt the mini madness before it begins as Amazon just delivered me a shiny copy of the Dark Heresy core rules!

I've not played a 'pencil and paper' RPG in over a decade and technically I'm not about to start again - a few of the 40K Freebootaz, myself included have decided to give DH a shot and we're going to try to play by forum. I'm sure you'll read about our exploits through this conduit of all things irrelevant as we find our way but for now suffice it to say I'm excited. The main reason I play 40k over other miniature wargames is the setting and the fluff.... DH will feed my fluffy love very well (that's fluffy love not furry love - the distinction is important!).

I've played a wide range of roleplaying systems in my youth but I was almost always the GM/DM so I'm really looking forward to being a player and throwing myself into the purging of the galaxies unclean.

More to follow (I have a lot of reading to do!).....

Once upon a beginning....

So... where to start?!

I’m a lifelong gamer and have played many different board games, video games, miniature wargames, collectible card games and pencil and paper roleplaying games. I played both Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy Battle until about 15 years ago when I ran out of cash, competitors and interest (having recently discovered both beer and women which between them sapped my free time and wallet).

I have been considering rejoining the 40k hobby for about a year and in October I found myself in a GW store checking out the minis. When I last picked up a paint brush I played 2 armies – Space Wolves in 40k and Skaven in fantasy. On entering the store I found out that the new Wolves codex was coming out at the end of that week and the Skaven codex was only a month away. I took this as a sign from the Allfather and left the store with a copy of Assault on Black Reach, a starter painting kit and a copy of volume 1 of the Space Wolves Omnibus. Since then I’ve immersed myself back into the 40k hobby (I have no intention to start square-basing again) and I’m so very pleased to be back.

In this blog I intend to document my progress in getting back into the hobby and hopefully spur myself on to get an army or two painted for your comments and/or ridicule. If anyone actually finds my fumbling attempts to build and paint minis entertaining enough to follow all the better.

I’d like to think that this blog could serve to illustrate that we all start as noobs and may even inspire some other gamers in the early stages of 40k addiction who can’t see how their minis will ever look like the better examples the web has to offer. In reality drunken banter, wild speculation and poorly judged opinion may be more common. If nothing else you can feel you’re doing your part for the mentally ill by giving my unstable ego a boost. As a warning I may occasionally use naughty words, although I will try my best to self censor. I mean no personal offense by anything I post but I am who I am.

Before I release what is sure to be a monumental post in modern blogging history out into the warp I’d just like to thank everyone over at 40k radio for keeping my interest in the hobby while going through the first few difficult months where my modelling and painting truly sucked and I couldn’t find a single person to play against. I’d also like to thank the 40k Freebootaz for their constant inspiration when it comes to modelling, painting, playing and living Warhammer 40,000.

See you in the warp...