Too Much Lead

 .

This is what happens when I buy random models on impulse...

Grim, dark...

The full story is obviously a bit more involved; the Instagram thing has inspired me to keep pushing the painting, but also to diversify, picking whatever I fancy to paint alongside the army building.  This Nurgle Death Guard came in a semi random box, and turned out ideal as a subject for a 'grimdark' painting challenge on one of my Discord's.

I picked up a ruined Rhino model from a 3D print and built up a little trench warfare diorama.  Lots of little details.  The paint job is done with a Zorn Palette; that is to say, other than the metallics and weathering effects, only four paints were used: a black, white, red, and a yellow.  You can get a remarkable range from just those, and minimising the Palette really adheres to the aesthetic.  There are obviously no blue tones on the Chaos Marine, but this can be worked with.

The destroyed Rhino also uses extensive chipping effects, and then most everything got several layers of oil, enamel and acrylic washes, in varying volumes.

A Really enjoyable diversion, but not one that'll go any further than the display shelf.

.

 ...

Or, I have a problem sticking to one thing.

Progress on the Africans continues well, but there is nothing finished to show today.  However any number of other things have either been started or finished - sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the two.

so, a couple of pieces of graveyard themed terrain got kinda out of hand:

The Realm of the Dead

Yeah, I ended up doing an entire table's worth of terrain; well to be fair, enough for two tables at least.  A solid mix of GW terrain sets, parts from Reaper and Mantic, 3D prints and scratchbuilt parts; plus a terrain cloth of similarly coloured faux-suede.  Good fun and other than railings and roses (and interminable skulls) easy to do.

Crawlocke the Jailor

30 Chainrasps

There's a few more bits done, making so far for 44 models - about half the army, but mostly of the cheapest unit cost models, so a good 1,500 points to go.  And just as GW announce another edition of their chuffing rules (these of course could be passed over in favour of Dragon Rampant, given my past opinions on Age of Sigmar!)

It was for a painting challenge however!

So I pushed out the stops...

I also turned some eBay money last year into Blackstone Fortress, mainly for painting.  I've done a few of the models so far, but this is the best:

UR-025

Guardians of a Maiden World

Copyright: Max FitzGerald

Well, what do I have literally tonnes of bits lying around spare of?  It was a no-brainer to at least have a go:

Some Chaff

But history buffs, fear not; I still have hundreds of good proper Napoleonics to get to in time.  And as of yesterday, another historical project has been proposed, something perhaps with a more biblical bent...

Just a quickie.  One of the donated pieces of terrain to the club stockpiles have annoyed me once too often by appearing as the centerpiece of battles in a wholly unpainted, tattily based state.

The only way these things get sorted is by muggins 'ere* taking the offending object home and sorting it out.

I tried a few different techniques on this, most notably a rust wash:  One part Steel paint, one part Cavalry Brown to 8 parts Vallejo Smoke, and water as required.  On a club model it is fine to try these things out!

http://yourterriblehobby.com/

Hilarity and truth in equal, sad measures.  Mainly the crimes are those of 40k players, which means I have little sympathy.  Historical gamers may have cause to feel superior, but there are plenty of dubious fetishistic Nazi armies out there, not to mention Weird World War and so on...

We are all a little guilty, no?

Whilst I was turning back the tides of Carthage, other gamers in the club had a variety of games going on:


Since the new edition of Warhammer 40k, there has been a modest rejuvenation of the game at the club.  Here Al's Sisters of Battle face off against George's Ultramarines.



Elsewhere the historical lads were having a first go with Bolt Action:


The initial conclusion; "it's 40k for World War Two".

So in essence, two of the same game!  Sort of...

It never hurts to remind readers, some of you may be new to the blog, that the Leeds Night Owls runs every Sunday (except for Fiasco, on the 28th of this month) from 10:00am till 3:00pm (or later) at The Farsley Conservative Club - 51 Town St, Farsley, Pudsey, West Yorkshire, LS28 5HX.  We play all manner of historical, fantasy, sci-fi and boardgames.  If you're a local feel free to join us!

Well, last week or so the latest edition of Warhammer 40,000 appeared, and so the fanboys can begin a new round of declaring the end of the metagame, the rise of the new cheese, and how Games workshop have saved/ruined the game forever.  Not unsurprisingly many of the 40k players made it down the Nightowls last week (some for the first time in ages) to try the new rules out.





Myself, I had other fun and games planned for the day so could only pop in for half an hour, whilst most of the historical gamers were either otherwise engaged or at a convention in Scarborough.  Nonetheless is was gratifying to see the place busy again.

So as I discussed last month, GW seem set to stop using metal in miniatures; well, it seems the first of their new 'Resin' models are about to be released.  Here is a list of kits coming out in resin on the 28th of May:

Starting from the 28th of May 120 products that were Games Workshop direct only items will be coming back on the shelves as resin or resin Hybrids. This new range “Citadel Fine Cast” range will be limited in number for the first few months, so we will be taking advance orders for them.

Here are the new recast products at the full RRP:

41-60 COMMANDER DANTE £10.50
53-60 LOGAN GRIMNAR £14.50
55-61 THE EMPERORS CHAMPION £9.50
48-63 SPACE MARINE CHAPLAIN WITH JUMP PACK £10.50
44-60 DARK ANGELS COMPANY MASTER £10.50
48-61 SM LIBRARIAN IN TERMINATOR ARMOUR £14.50
53-61 NJAL STORMCALLER £14.50
41-61 ASTORATH THE GRIM £12.50
43-60 ABADDON THE DESPOILER £14.50
43-61 HURON BLACKHEART £10.50
50-61 ORK WARBOSS WITH ATTACK SQUIG £14.50
50-63 ORK BIG MEK £14.50
50-65 ORK PAINBOY WITH GROT ORDERLY £10.50
46-61 ELDAR AUTARCH WITH POWER WEAPON £10.50
46-62 THE AVATAR OF KHAINE £22.50
46-63 HARLEQUIN DEATH JESTER £10.50
46-64 HARLEQUIN SHADOWSEER £10.50
47-61 COMMISSAR YARRICK £10.50
47-63 IMPERIAL GUARD LORD COMMISSAR £9.50
51-61 TYRANID ZOANTHROPE £15.50
51-63 TYRANID TYRANT GUARD £15.50
51-64 TYRANID HIVE GUARD £15.50
51-65 TYRANID BROODLORD £15.50
57-61 BROTHER CAPTAIN STERN £14.50
57-60 LORD KALDOR DRAIGO £14.50
57-62 CASTELLAN CROWE £10.50
57-63 INQUISITOR COTEAZ £10.50
45-60 DARK ELDAR ARCHON £9.50
45-64 LELITH HESPERAX £10.50
45-63 URIEN RAKARTH £10.50
45-61 DARK ELDAR SUCCUBUS £9.50
56-60 TAU ETHEREAL WITH HONOUR BLADE £9.50
83-62 CHAOS EXALTED HERO £9.50
83-63 CHAOS KHORNE EXALTED HERO £10.50
86-60 EMPIRE CAPTAIN WITH HAMMER & PISTOL £9.50
92-60 WOOD ELF HIGHBORN WITH GREAT WEAPON £9.50
84-60 DWARF LORD WITH HAMMER & SHIELD £9.50
84-61 DWARF RUNELORD WITH GREAT WEAPON £9.50
90-60 SKAVEN WARLORD £9.50
90-61 QUEEK HEADTAKER £10.50
90-62 DEATHMASTER SNIKCH £10.50
91-61 VAMPIRE LORD £9.50
89-60 GRIMGOR IRONHIDE £10.50
89-62 BLACK ORC BIG BOSS £10.50
87-60 CARADRYAN £10.50
85-61 DARK ELF ASSASSIN WITH TWO HAND WEAPONS £9.50
81-60 MALAGOR THE DARK OMEN £12.50
10-61 URUK-HAI WITH CROSSBOWS £14.00
10-62 URUK-HAI BERSERKERS £14.00
08-61 GOTHMOG (PELENNOR) £20.50
05-60 ELROND AND GIL-GALAD £15.00
10-60 SARUMAN AND GRIMA £15.00
02-60 GANDALF THE WHITE £20.50
04-60 ARAGORN (THE BLACK GATE) £20.50
04-62 THEODEN (HELM’S DEEP) £20.50
04-61 BOROMIR (ITHILIEN) £20.50
09-60 SULADAN THE SERPENT LORD £20.50
08-62 THE DARK MARSHAL (RINGWRAITH) £20.50
05-61 DAIN AND BALIN £15.00
97-60 SKULLTAKER £14.50
48-40 MARNEUS CALGAR AND HONOUR GUARD £36.00
48-41 SPACE MARINE TECHMARINE WITH SERVITORS £25.50
55-40 BLACK TEMPLARS SWORD BRETHREN SQUAD £25.50
48-42 SPACE MARINE STERNGUARD VETERAN SQUAD £25.50
48-43 SPACE MARINE VANGUARD VETERAN SQUAD £25.50
53-40 CANIS WOLFBORN £30.00
43-40 NURGLE DAEMON PRINCE £21.50
43-41 CHAOS SPACE MARINE RAPTORS £25.50
43-42 DEATH GUARD PLAGUE MARINES £25.50
50-43 BOSS ZAGSTRUK £14.50
50-40 GHAZGHKULL THRAKA £22.50
50-41 ORK TANKBUSTAS £25.50
50-42 ORK BIG MEK WITH SHOKK ATTACK GUN £23.00
46-41 ELDAR RANGERS £20.50
46-42 ELDAR DARK REAPERS £23.00
46-44 ELDAR STRIKING SCORPIONS £23.00
46-40 ELDAR FARSEER AND WARLOCKS £20.50
51-42 TYRANID LICTOR £15.50
51-40 TYRANID HIVE TYRANT £36.00
51-41 TYRANID PYROVORE £21.50
45-40 DARK ELDAR INCUBI £23.00
45-41 DARK ELDAR MANDRAKES £20.50
56-40 TAU SNIPER DRONE TEAM £23.00
83-42 ARCHAON THE EVERCHOSEN £30.00
83-43 CHAOS LORD ON DAEMONIC MOUNT £22.50
83-41 CHAOS DRAGON OGRE SHAGGOTH £36.00
86-41 LUDWIG SCHWARZHELM £22.50
86-40 KURT HELBORG £22.50
82-41 THE GREEN KNIGHT £22.50
82-40 KING LOUEN LEONCOEUR £30.00
92-42 WOOD ELVES TREE KIN £30.00
92-40 ORION KING IN THE WOODS £22.50
92-41 WOOD ELVES TREEMAN £36.00
84-40 THOREK IRONBROW £36.00
84-41 DWARF GYROCOPTER £23.00
84-42 DWARF BOLT THROWER £23.00
90-40 SKAVEN WARPLOCK JEZZAILS £30.00
91-40 VAMPIRE COUNTS VARGHULF £21.50
91-42 COUNT MANNFRED £22.50
91-41 VAMPIRE COUNTS BLOOD KNIGHTS £61.50
88-41 KROQ GAR £40.00
89-44 GOBLIN SPEAR CHUKKA £18.50
89-43 SAVAGE ORC GREAT SHAMAN ON WAR BOAR £15.50
89-41 ORC WARBOSS ON WYVERN £40.00
89-42 GOBLIN ROCK LOBBER £23.00
89-45 GORBAD IRONCLAW £30.00
89-40 AZHAG THE SLAUGHTERER £55.00
85-41 DARK ELVES REAPER BOLT THROWER £18.50
08-40 THE DARK LORD SAURON £25.50
08-42 GULAHVAR THE TERROR OF ARNOR £30.00
08-43 MORDOR TROLL CHIEFTAIN £25.50
02-40 THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING £37.00
97-42 FLAMERS OF TZEENTCH £15.50

Price increases range from 30p to a few pounds in general, or 2.5-25%.

The new material itself is apparently being termed 'Finecast'; what that will turn out to be is anyones guess; but if it proves to be brittle or prone to air bubbles there will doubtless be many grumblings.  My expectation is something akin to what Mantic and Privateer have been using, but the real achievement here would seem to be making it possible to use existent moulds (though time will tell if this really is the case).

Finally, after two months effort these blighters are finished:

I got a nice rich red consistently across all the models and made sure all those fiddly little details were covered.

The centrepieces to the group are the Terminator Librarian and the dead Marine resting on his laurels (well, in a chair).
There's plenty of variety in the poses, which seem to loosely form two squads of five, with the addition of a close combat specialist as shown above.  All those chains, skulls and bronze eagles made the job very time consuming.

one final photo:

I've left the basing as simple as possible, I've no idea whether the buyer wants to use the models for the board game alone, or for 40k as well.

Still hopefully he'll be happy with them; I think they look great in the flesh, but after two months I'm glad to see the back of them.

All this brings me to the pledge totals for February, which after a slow start in January, picked up to a very respectable 44 models:

* Goblin Boss 
*  Type 005 
* Styx the Dog
* 10x 95th Riflemen
* 11x Terminators (the rest were in March)
* Asarnil (7 points)
* Goblin Doom Diver (3 parts - 3 points)
* Fey Duellists (photo's to follow)

Twice as many as last month.

Each model is the result of only two or three parts, that this is the case is almost unbelievable, given the dynamism in the models.  GW has shown what it can really achieve here, it amazes me that they would not make this game available on general release though.  Obviously the game would sell on the strength of its models alone.

You have to wonder about them at times..

Well, it's with a complete absence of mixed feelings that I put my 40k Ork army on eBay this evening:

I've threatened to do so for some time, and finally got my ass in gear and stuck them online.


3,000 points or more of well to excellently painted Orks, and a mass (over 20) of scratchbuilt or converted vehicles.

I guess for me I enjoyed building and painting the models far more, it turned out, than playing the game. 40k is a simple system, ruined by the add ons and special rules in the various army books; which leave it so confusing to play that a regularly finished a game wondering why I'd bothered to endure such tedium!


Such a pity.

If you still have love for the game, why not consider making my unique collection your own. It's on eBay here.

You'd be funding bigger and better projects in the future...

Personally I'm 99% sure I'm selling up my Warhammer 40k collection; at the weekend I retrieved it from storage and looking at the amount of unfinished stuff and associated clutter just filled me with despair. The first act was to pass the terrain from my collection on to the club.

Independently of that though I had been given some of the recent terrain sets to assemble as I saw fit, and prepare for the club. Potentially an onerous task, but the models went together well and you can't argue with them for a sense of scale:

The larger ruin is fully 30cm tall, whilst the almost intact building is more than 15x20cm in footprint. The smaller building moreover was built from a mix of spare panels and walkways.

Both importantly will block lines of sight, which in the present rules are a major problem. Any line of sight allows a unit/figure to be targeted, and there is no area terrain for visibility. So solid walls are good.

The plan next is to paint these with the minimum of fuss; so the club is paying for a nice can of black spray paint; over that I'm thinking some blue and metallic dry-brushing, some dust and job done...

Having not played Warhammer 40k since last summer, and wanting to get a little practice in for a tourney (I committed myself rather rashly to) in April. I’ve arranged a couple of games of it in the last two week.

Increasingly I find 40k a frustrating experience.

I like the way the core of the rules work now, yes they are cartoony, and simplistic compared to other games, but they function reasonably well at a basic level; there is nothing wrong with the core rules. The problem is the armies.


And it is a problem that GW doesn’t seem to be able to resist making worse. Every army in the game has to have a vast set of special rules to make it distinctive. To be fair it is a problem common to Warhammer Fantasy too, and most fantasy wargames in general; but 40k seems to take it to extremes.

This is bad enough when the rules are army wide, as most of my Ork army rules are, a player knows that they operate differently to most other armies, but at least in a consistent way. The situation is even worse when it is different for every unit in the game, and different from one very similar army to the next.


My two recent games for example were against a vanilla Space Marine army and a Space Wolf themed SM army. Ostensibly the same troops, and in the first game I knew what to expect. The game was a tough slog to a draw against an enemy that has been written to always have the upper hand.

But in the second smaller game against Space Wolves, nothing was familiar, every time I did anything my opponent was having to refer to some or other special rule buried in his army list. This slowed the game down no end, and so a 1000 point match only reached turn four in three hours. In fact based on the scenario conditions I won, but it was without any pleasure, being less of a case of moving things around and rolling dice and more of referring to rulebooks and arguing the toss of definitions.


It’s this that puts me off the game. If the armies were less ridiculously tuned I’d find it easier to trot through game or two on a regular basis, but it is like I have to re learn the entire game every time I play it.


I know that any amount of learning the core rules will make little difference, if I play in this tournament I’m going to face super tuned and beardy armies, that I probably don’t know at all; and spend half my time asking what the other guy is doing and the other half being stuffed by what the other guy is doing!

To be honest, that is one of the reasons I prefer simpler games, and historical games. They don’t depend on having the latest release to out play the enemy, or the smartest selection of special kit or characters. They depend on tactics and a bit of luck.

It wasn’t my first game of the year, but the dubious honour of that went to an encounter with Epic Armageddon which was so one sided it was really only an opportunity for me to take my models out of their box briefly before putting most of them away immediately. So my second game of the year with another opponent is what I discuss today.

And a little gem of a game it was too; 40k using my Orks, against a nice young chap called IIRC George and his beautifully painted Tyranids.

It was a close run thing too. I tossed a coin and went for the heavy armour choice of my two army lists. With a Battlewagon, Warbike, Warbuggies, Killa Kans, Nobz, and lots of Boyz. As it turned out, the Tyranids didn’t seem to have any heavy firepower, being geared up instead for close assault. So in a rarity, my Battlewagon rolled around with impunity all game.

This one was definately it for me. On my last visit to the Night Owls, myself and regular, Ross, had a 1000pt game of 40k. The scenario ended up as kill points with the Dawn of War set up. the forces were my Orks against his Necrons, an army I'd never faced before.

As the rules for the scenario permitted we both picked a HQ and two troops choices to start the battle the rest being in reserve. For me that meant a mob of Boyz and a Mob of Nobz (made a Troops Choice on the grounds of a Warboss being part of the army) with a Bigmek carrying the Kustom forcefield of cheese (5+ cover save to everyone!)

Ross began with his lord and two units of Warriors, Nothing sensational but good stand off and shoot troops.

And stand and shoot they did, from the very back of the table, but as I'd been allowed to deploy first and per the rules I was only 18 inches away from him and moving first could sacrifice shooting to close distance quickly. The one round of shooting my lads endured killed a few Boyz but couldn't stop the Nobz.

To Ross' horror we called a big Waagh and got into close assault on turn two, wiping out one unit and leaving the other locked in combat, one they would ultimately win; but by now my reserves were arriving - en masse.

With Tanks, Killer Kans, Deffcopters and more Boyz led by the Warboss on the way, Ross could sense disaster, he came very close to conceeding on turn two.

He managed to hold the line a little longer and another of his units (IIRC, Immortals) arrived. Sadly just in time to take a hit from the Nobz. Although it was a close fight, the Orks won, and for the second time in the game a terrible morale roll for the Necrons saw them try to flee from the fight, get caught on a poor initiative roll and be wiped out. This time when Ross' hand was offered I shook it, as there was no need to prolong his agony any further.

I grabbed a couple of 500 point Combat Patrol games against Chris the other week, a last hurrah at one of the Leeds Clubs before going away. My Orks were in no mood to mess in both games, proving that in this size engagement they rule the roost.



The first battle versus the Tau, could’ve been won by Chris with a less enthusiastic advance at the start, he should’ve used range to defeat me. In the second game I was worried by a mass of Tyranids; Chris was worried by the Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field, and so killed him in short order. I however went straight for his command Warriors, and after dealing with them the rest of the army crumbled.



And a Fields of Glory game in 15mm. These look like a reasonable descendant of DBM, at least the units look like actual formations of men. Still I’ve yet to try them myself, and cautions about reviews of them being messy to read and play, keep me from really trying them.