Doctor who?

I have had the police box sitting around for some time; finally got it painted. The basing is just to try to tie it in to a Victorian date.

West Wind Vampires - completed starter set

I grabbed a bit of time today to finish off the basing. These have painted up very easily; as far as I'm concerned, there's just enough detail.

Next up will be the North Star 'Servants of Ra' - flunkeys in robes led by the reincarnation of a Pharaoh.

Lord and Lady

Here are the lord and lady from West Wind's vampire starter set; very paintable figures.

Now that the whole set are done, I need to sort out the basing; maybe this week...

Fallen Dark Angels and Imperial Armour on eBay

In the interests of clearing out the 40k stuff I don't use, there are some books and figures on eBay. A few pictures below; these are my old Fallen Dark Angels. There is also a selection of Imperial Armour books and FAntasy Flight RPG rulebooks.

Vampires under the brush

I have started on my first faction for Empire of the Dead - the vampires I picked up at Salute last month.

I'm pleaed with the way they have come out - there's a strong colour theme running through them. I still have the lord and his lady to do. Minimal changes made - the only thing I did was to add a mask to the one figure without one, just to tie them together a little more.

Once the character vampires are painted, I'll do the basing - this faction will have dirt and grass, because the gravestones will look a bit odd if I set them on cobbles.

Lamp-posts painted

Just a quick update - a quick bit of painting this morning has done the job. Empire of the Dead figure for scale...

No Salute posts here

No Salute posts here - just lamp posts; mostly because I'm all Salute-ed out. I also do the Warlords blog, so you can find things there if you want.

Anyway; I have made a mould, cast a few test bases and started to assemble the lamp-posts. As suggested before, I will try to pretty up the bases a little - one here has a plastic Renedra barrel on.

I think I need to change resin; this one is very hard. It's also a 10:1 ratio mix, which makes producing small volumes of stuff a bit of a lottery; 1:1 ratio is so much more forgiving.

Victorian Lamp-posts

I picked up a bag of model railway lamp-posts on Ebay from a buyer called 'we_honest'. It turned out, he was. Anyway, I got a box of fifty posts for £13 including postage, which I thought was pretty good, and they turned up last week.

How to base them? Well, I have a few plastic 30mm bases which I have tried to texture myself. I'm not 100% happy with them, and I think I'm going to actually buy the bases for my Empire of the Dead figures as they arrive, but they're good enough for scenery.

I'm going to make a mould and cast a load of them; I might drop a penny into the resin while they set to give them some weight and keep them balanced.

I don't have any VSF painted yet, but this pirate gives you an idea of the height - they are 60mm, though you can get 70mm if you feel it's a bit short - personally I'm quite happy with them.

40k burnout

I’ve played 40k for years, but I have to say, I’m feeling a bit flat on it at the moment. Games are still fun, but the game/support/development structure has got to me.

I used to buy every codex and every WD as they came out. Now – well, I haven’t got the Daemons, Chaos Marines or Tau codexes. I didn’t renew my WD sub at the end of last year, and I didn’t bother to pick up issue 400 at the weekend.

I still like (most of) the figures, I’m happy with the rules, I like the availability of opponents; I just can’t be bothered to stay on the conveyer belt.

However, I still have loads of boxes of stuff that needs building and painting; I reckon there's a 2000 point Space Marine army on sprues in the loft; there's certainly another 1000 points of Space Wolves and about the same of Imperial Guard to paint. And that's without thinking about 1500 points of bikes and the best part of a Battle Company of Dark Angel infantry that's sitting up there. Oh, and a Forgeworld stockpile of a Contemptor, some jetbikes, an assault squad...

What to do, what to do...

Empire of the Dead Kickstarter

I'm kinda taken by the Empire of the Dead kickstarter; I love the whole VSF vibe, and if you're in quick, there is a really good deal going on. I sold on a load of 10mm French WW2 stuff, and I guess I'm recycling some of the cash into new shinys.

Anyway, while I'm waiting for the kickstarter to deliver, I thought I'd go through what I have sitting in the cupboards and play with it. This is an armoured car from Ironclad Miniatures, re-purposed as a police wagon. I'm going to replace the turret with a plain hatch, but I need the figures before I can do that, so it'll have to wait. Oh, and a drop of gloss varnish into the portholes...

Deep Strike Land Raider - part 2

Earlier this week I took a tenon saw to an eBay Land Raider... here are the results. I think it's an unusual piece of terrain, and I'll enjoy popping it on the table down at the club...

Deep Strike Land Raider

I managed to pick up a couple of Land Raiders very cheaply on Ebay. One will be finding itself refurbished properly and added into my Imperial Guard army as an allied unit (I have started writing the fluff for that one), the other one is being turned into terrain.

Stage 1 - close assault on a Land Raider with a tenon saw. As you will see, it's basically a hulk; most of the weapons and hatches are missing and I'll replace some from the bits box.

Stage 2 - the bases are cut from 6mm MDF, the Land Raider parts are stuck down with plenty of hot glue. The larger part will be painted as a Blood Angel vehicle, so I'll do the basing in standard grass colours. The smaller part will go into my Mars terrain so I will probably paint it up in Ultramarine colours to clash with the red basing.

Stage 3 - hatches replaced, weaponry replaced, I will add some torn-away wiring to the right sponson where I'm not going to put a new gun in place but basically I can sand the base and start painting once it's all dried.

Thunderfire Cannons

I'm stuck at home for a while. I'm not concentrating well enough to paint, but I can do a bit of cutting and sticking. Anyway, here are a couple of Thunderfire cannon from scratch. The weapons and tracks are from a Robogear walker, everything else comes from the bits box.

What I reckoned I'd use

Starting to come together

Basic construction complete

Still needs detail, but recognisable.

I will still be adding some more details to the outside of the carriages, but basically that'll do me. Total cost - a few pence for the plastic card, £2 for the Robogear kits from a charity shop, details from the bits box of leftovers. A darn sight cheaper than £36 each from GW...

Dark Vengeance bike army

I am hoping to build a 1500 point all-bike army for 40k this year, using the cheap bikes that have flooded out from the new Dark Vengeance starter set.

The list:

• Captain on bike (artificer armour, relic blade, storm shield)
• Librarian on bike
• Bike squad (sergeant with power fist, three bikes with two meltas, assault bike with multimelta)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power sword, three bikes with two plasma, assault bike with heavy bolter)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power sword, three bikes with two meltas, assault bike with multimelta)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power axe, three bikes with two plasma, assault bike with heavy bolter)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power axe, three bikes with two meltas, assault bike with multimelta)
• Assault Bike squadron (three multimeltas)

Attack bikes are going to be built onto DV bikes; I have a couple of spare sidecars, and it doesn't look terribly hard to scratchbuild a half-dozen more from plastic card and the bits box.

And now, a couple of pictures of the construction to date...

Librarian on bike

Sergeant with power fist

Squad with melta and attack bike

Dark Angel Deathwing

I have built up the terminators from the second starter set now; just a few cut-and-shut changes this time. One of the stormbolter/fist guys was given a heavy flamer from the spares box; the other had both arms replaced with lightning claws. One of those stormbolters was transplanted onto the assault cannon body - see the pictures below.

The sergeant and the chainfist figure were left pretty much alone, apart from the wings on the sergeant; easy to remove, and it makes the two figures look slightly different.

Finally, I raided the bits box and put together two more terminators using the left-over arms; one of the bodies is a 'real' terminator, the other one was from Black Reach. I will have to add a bit of iconography with green stuff to blend them in, but the ornate arms help to get it started. I have given the cannon guy a greensuff hood already; more to come.

15mm exchange 2012

There was a figure exchange on TMP recently, and I was lucky enough to receive these from the estimable Eclipsing Binaries...

Very nice, thank you very much!

Dark Angel plasma-nator

I felt that since I bought the set, I probably ought to put the figures together.

The terminators are a nice small squad, so they are first...

Of course, I can't just make them as they are intended; I have replaced the assault cannon with a plasma cannon from the Imperial Guard Sentinel...

Maybe a bit bulky, but it'll look nice enough under a coat of paint.

Valkyries and Vendettas, part 2

I haven't done anything about the cockpit yet, though I have scoured Ebay and the bitz sellers for the parts so I can get started. Here are the in-progress pictures of my colour scheme so far...

The stripes are going to be on the upper surface only; mostly because the weapons were glued in place before I got the model, and it'll be a real pain to paint round them. The next two will be striped upstairs and down.

Of course, once you put flyers up there, you need to be able to bring them down. Hydras aren't wonderful (they can't take on ground targets with any degree of accuracy any longer) but they still look good. Here's the basic colour scheme for the first of my pair. The cannons have been attached with magnets, so they can elevate (or more likely, be removed as I get shot up during the game)

Playing Gruntz... 1947 style.

Alan and I were playing around with Gruntz - here are a few pictures of our Weird World War 2 game, complete with hover-T43s with vibrocannon and Sherman Lasertanks...

Hellboy and Captain America were there on the US side, though I don't seem to have any pictures of them.

Alan has also put some pictures and notes from this game on his blog...

Valkyries and Vendettas, part 1

I have started on the Valkyrie I picked up at a bring and buy for a tenner. It'll do as a test-bed for the paint scheme; I can make my mistakes here, and if it's that bad, I can turn it into scenery. It was completely undercoated in black, across the canopy as well, so I bought a spare from a bits seller online to replace it. Here's the basic model after a coat of silver spray...

 I thought that I would pop the cockpit off now. Okay, I see why he painted across the canopy - none of the cockpit pieces were fitted! Never mind, I can scratchbuild something into there and make the replacement canopy tinted to hide the difference!

Next thing is to get some base colours on, just to block out where I want things. Red tail, red intakes, drab anti-glare round the cockpit. I am still debating invasion stripes on the wings...

It does look a little 'Grey Knight', but I think that the nose art will break that a bit...