Games Expo mini haul...

Sam and Emma getting their own armies ready

Sam building his Meganobs, Emma painting her Necrons.  They're very jolly Necrons, with complicated back-stories involving school friends, arguments over who is better, unlikely friendships and many other things I never realised Necrons would care about.

Converting Wraithlords

Some WIP shots of the wraithlod custimisations.

Progress! Sort of.

So, the last post was September, which coincided with a new job in a new school in a rearranged faculty, all of which was announced with very little notice. So I've been busy.

Also, Fallout happened, so there was another option to lure me away, and one that was neat, tidy and has a "save game" feature that I wish modelling had.

But I'm back into it.  Probably gone a little mad upon return, to be honest.

• I've bought a bunch of Dark Eldar because I have an idea for a few diorama involving a techno-Victorian (more Gothic than steampunk) planet with a small, cut-off DE band that is partially naturalised and become the horrors of the night for the population. Hulking Talos in the shadows, Scourges flitting across ramshackle rooftops in the dusk, mysterious figure with a cape, top-hat and the most vicious knives and scalpels you've ever seen.
• I bought the Imperial Knights: Renegade box.  From Element Games, it was £100. That's two knights and some buildings, so £45 per knight and £10 for buildings, say?  If they can sell them at this price, why is everything else so expensive?
• I had a Wraithknight, Wraithseer and Skitarii start-collecting box for my birthday.  
• I've bought a bunch of reaper bones minis, some wasteland 70mm resin figures, Oathsworn metal minis and one from Relic, all from the UK Games Expo.
• Finally, +Daniel Goldsmith gave me a bunch of old metal wraithlords (from when they were called Eldar dreadnoughts) that are now all stripped and started to get customised using the pile of bits I have, along with two plastic wraithlords. When I'm done, I think I'll have 10 wraithlords, each unique in pose and load-out.

So, I might not have done much painting, but I now have at least a year's worth ahead of me and plans for them all.

Keeping things tidy

New brush stand!  Woo!

That's all I have to say about that.

KUM Brushes

I've mentioned before about my fetish for the Cult Pens website.  This time I found they were selling a range of brushes from KUM, a stationery manufacturer I've always liked.  The brushes are claimed to be special because they hold their shape and are able to keep a point even when old, wet and abused.

I bought a size 1, 0 and 00.

The points are nice and sharp.

I've used them a little so far and I'm really impressed. Only a few quid per brush and 3 for 2 on my favourite site helps, of course, but I really like using them.  The other brushes I use are army painter, W&N series 7 (such a god deal - £1, £2 and £3 from the bargain bin at HobbyCraft, still in the plastic tubes and with the tip protectors) and the WAMP brushes from the recent kickstarter, and I have to say these are up there and holding their own so far.

3D Printing

As a bit of an experiment, I've printed a piece of terrain I found on thingiverse. It's very Eldar.

I wanted to see how easy it would be to get it looking decent for the tabletop.

Here's the raw finish...

The material is translucent, which makes it harder to judge the quality without feeling it.  The vertical stripes are from the light coming through the material and aren't apparent in the surface texture.  What is affecting the surface is the layering of material, leading to a definite grain.

I've never tried liquid greenstuff, but I imagine it has similar applications to squadron putty, which is what I used.  This stuff is a bit noxious, but I really like working with it.  You can spatula it on thick, shape it, or pour lots of acetone on it and brush it on the model.  Or, as in this case, both. I made a thinish paste of it and brushed it on, then went over with a brush dipped in acetone to smooth it off a little. Here's my little dish of acetone and one of putty.  The acetone in the bottle comes from a larger one. It's actually Poundland nail-polish remover.

And here it is on the piece...

Once dry, I rubbed it all down with emery boards (Poundland again) and in the curves I used a piece of sanding paper wrapped around a paint bottle.

It looks nice and smooth, but I'll prime it soon and see.

My new favourite knife

I've always preferred a metal scalpel blade over the round-handled "x-acto" type. Maybe if I'd ever tried a good round-handled knife it would be different.  I've also never taken to using the knives with snap-off blades for hobbying. Until now.

I'm a big fan of Cult Pens and every so often I pick up a little bundle of pens and pencils.  Usually the ones on offer, or the cheap-but-interesting sort.  It's where my collection of small and disposable fountain pens came from.

Last time I was there, they were having an offer on knives by Olfa.  I bought the sharp-angled snap-off one, thinking it looked sturdy, with a steel body, and would be good for the tougher stuff.

When it came, I was surprised at how slim it was. It feels really well made and has a great mechanism.  The blade is moved by the black tab, as usual for this style, but rather than have a second tab for locking the blade, on this knife it's all within the slider and the blade only moves then you push or pull it due to some clever locking/unlocking mechanism.  You can feel the mechanism work and it gives a sensation of precision and sturdiness when it does.

The pocket clip is neat. I nearly just took it off as something to get in the way, but when I end up grabbing the knife for tasks away from my corner, it's been handy to be able to clip it to my shirt, or something near where I'm working.

It's now my favourite al-round knife. It's wickedly sharp, small enough to fit where I need it and it feels solid and controllable.

Deff Dredd progress

New legs are on!

The supports will be hidden by terrain and grass. I thought it better to keep the stiff wire supports rather than rely on the spindly legs.

I posted a WIP pic somewhere (reddit?) a while ago and someone said it was way too small.  I didn't realise until much later that it might look like a standard Kinder egg toy container. It's an Easter Kinder egg toy container.

Next: more panels, more dakka, fuel barrels, grot servicemen, cupola for a pilot/driver/captain on the top. 

More awesome from Spellcrow

I've seen a few third-party Eldar aegis defence lines, but the new one from Spellcrow is the best I've seen. Rather than energy fields, it's just an ornate wall of wraithbone.

I've ordered a couple of sets (two pieces, as above, in each) to make a reasonable wall. It should look good either as random terrain or as a placed defensive line.

While I was there, I also ordered a couple of their new "space elf" jetbikes.

I have four of the new model Eldar jetbikes, and one of the new warlocks on bike, plus many old jetbikes plus a farseer and two warlock I converted, so I probably won't use them as jetbikes. I intend to use them as hornets, which should be fun. I love flying Eldar.

Can't wait for them to arrive.  Now I have a permanent hobby space I have got a lot more done, so I'm not worried that these will stay untouched for long.

Double lamp power!

I've been coveting other people's workspaces lately.  Now I have my own corner set up, I've been trying to optimise it and steal everyone else's good ideas. One thing I've seen more than once is a double-lamp setup in which two angle-poise lamps are used to make a kind of arch over the work area, angled slightly so the light is falling on the front of whatever is held in the sweet spot.

My own lighting was cobbled together from the spare lamps in the garage, but even with a whole array of spots and lamps, there were horrible shadowy patches and while working I was having to move the minis around to see them in better light.

No more! At Ikea on Sunday I picked up two lamps with clamps instead of bases (£8.50 each) and two daylight bulbs (£7 each). There might be better bulbs than the 5000K 600lm Ikea ones, but they work well enough for now and the whole thing cost just £31, which is fantastic.  I'll do some research and may replace them in the future but right now I'm really enjoying the nice bright and even lighting.

The arms are flexible and long enough that I've managed to put them at the extremes of the work surfaces and can still arrange them both to be over the painting area, airbrush booth, or the cutting/gluing table on the right.

The £5 airbrush

My airbrushes are cheap.  They came with the compressor and you can find them on their own for about £5 on e-bay. They clog often and are a bit temperamental, but so much better than having no airbrush at all. I haven't really done any detail work with them because I think it would be quite tricky, but for priming, putting down the main colours and adding zenithal lighting, they work pretty well.

Now I have my modelling corner, I can keep my airbrushes out. Which means I need a holder, since up until now I only had one out at a time and it lived in the cleaning pot holder when not in my hand. With both out and always ready, I could use them more and get more out of them.

I checked Amazon for a multi-airbrush holder and found a cheap one.  It then recommended the cheap range from Iwata, the Neo. "Cheap" here is around £50, which is ten times the value of my current brushes and a bit extravagant for a tool I use to prime and shade.

But I noticed that the page said that the price was for a pack of 10. I assumed it was an error, because you could pick to buy 10, 20 30 and so on, instead of 1, 2, 3...  And this would make them £5 each, which is clearly wrong.  So I did The Right Thing and contacted customer services.  Who, even after me explaining more than once that this must be a mistake, told me I would definitely get 10 airbrushes for just under £50. I just want to be clear on this. I explained very thoroughly.

The rep even said I should get it if it was such a good deal. So I bought it. If I got 10, I'd sell the others cheapish on e-bay and have a few extra models in my queue.  If I got a single one, I'd send it back.

I got one single airbrush in the post the next day.  I contacted Amazon and explained that even after me explaining the issue, they still didn't seem to have understood the problem.  They offered to send me a return slip, but I was a bit annoyed and said so.  Their answer was to honour the price (if not the quantity) that I would have paid for a single airbrush if things had gone as they promised.

And now I have a nice shiny airbrush for £5.  I used it for the first time last night and it was wonderful.  It was easy to clean, didn't get blocked, had a very smooth dual-action trigger that meant I had lots of control.

I just put some solid colour on my jetbikes and riders, did a few broad highlights and called it a night, but I will be trying some more detailed work this evening.

In which the number of excuses becomes smaller...

Progress on anything has been... patchy. Slow.  Intermittent.

I haven't had a work area for a long time. Not since child number 2 claimed the third bedroom. For work, this hasn't been much of a problem. I've switched to using a laptop and trying to be paperless.

But for painting it has been a disaster.  I claimed a small area of the conservatory a long time ago and packed all my stuff into it.  Tightly.  I then unpacked what I needed onto the dining-room table as I wanted to do something.  What this means is I need to have double (at least) motivation to work on something.  Not only do I need to feel awake and in the mood for some painting or modelling, but I also need to feel excited enough about it to unpack it all and put it back again at the end. Not only that, but as time has gone on, it has become harder and harder to find anything under the growing pile and the mounting disorganisation.

So, after spending weeks of my holiday decorating various parts of the house (including some art on the walls, which was fun) I expanded my territory in the conservatory and created a real workspace.  Everything I needed was already somewhere in the house and garage, it just needed putting together.  The desk is the one I finished my undergraduate project and PhD thesis at, the lamps have been in the shed for years, the drawers were taken out of my daughter's room last time I decorated it and put new furniture in for her. And so on.

It's glorious! Now, if I can manage an hour, I can spend that hour just painting. No need to set up the spray booth, untangle the compressor hoses, find my brushes from whichever shoe-box I left them in,

Let's see if this means I have more to write about, too.

The Road to Haven

I'm going to be attending the Haven event on the 6th of September run by the Overlords. It will be my first ever 40K event. I've been looking around for things to get involved in and when I heard about this it seemed perfect. The overlords podcast is the best 40K podcast I've heard, the hosts seem to have similar attitudes to playing to myself and they take pride in being welcoming and guaranteeing everyone gets a game.

The problem is, I can't take my Craftworld eBay Eldar army because it's strictly an Imperium vs. Chaos event.

I had planned to build a bunch of tanks and take a fully mechanised Guard contingent.  I've been having great fun scratch-building tanks, but so far I've got around 0.3 tanks complete.

So, instead, I'm going to take a bunch of Chaos Space Marines. The Chaos Lord and cultists from the Dark Vengeance box are painted and I just need to add a few more cultists and a sorcerer.

I've been busily building the sorcerer and cultists. The cultists have taken time because I don't like repetition in what's meant to be a rag-tag collection of misfits.

The sorcerer is almost ready to paint.

I'm imagining that the sorcerer, who I have named Scall, was until fairly recently a "young" space marine in a little-known chapter.  He'd made an excellent scout and was proud to be given a shiny suit of power armour.  In battle, he was becoming well-known for accurate shooting and always managing to avoid taking hits even when a hail of bullets were heading his way.

He was so good, the librarian attached to his unit started watching him more closely. What he noticed was that Scall not only dived out of the way just in time, but started moving before the threat was apparent.  And when firing, he could fire a single shot that would instantly kill an enemy that stepped around a corner into its path. The librarian was interested.  And a little jealous.  Prescience was an ability he had spent decades learning and this marine seemed to be achieving it by accident.

During a campaign to clear Orks from a small agri-world, the librarian watching Scall noticed that his bolter rounds not only hit more, but did more damage. They tore through armour that the rounds of other marines bounced off.  Scall seemed not to notice. He was totally sure of the Emperor's guidance and didn't think any of his luck was unusual.

As the campaign wore on, Scall's unusual abilities began to make his brothers nervous.  He fired more shots. More than he had ammo.  They did more damage, causing explosions even on rainy days with nothing even remotely flammable near by.

One day, Scall's unit was ambushed by dozens of boyz. In the first few moments, one of the brothers fell and was hacked apart by the rampaging orks.  Scall screamed furiously as he reached for his bolter, and as he did, every ork in sight fell dead.  The librarian was aware of more, though.  A darkness around Scall.  Not an absence of light - nothing the other marines could see - but a superimposition of the warp.  The librarian was sure now: Scall was tainted.

The chapter master, hearing the librarian's report, wanted to execute Scall, but the librarian argued against it.  If Scall died, it would probably be enough to tip the balance and allow the warp energy attached to Scall to make its way into reality fully. As it was, it was a shadow, exerting its influence but unable to take a form of its own.

So, instead, Scall was told he was to be trained as a librarian and his psy abilities honed. He was told a message had been sent to the chapter's homeworld and he must wait on a barren planet to be collected.

So he waited. It took many months for Scall to lose his grip on reality. A smarter mind would have succumbed earlier.  When it finally happened, Karthos, a Chaos Lord loyal to Tzeentch, was there to collect his prize. Telling Scall that he was the one sent to collect and train him, Karthos carefully maintained a delusion in Scall's mind.  Even as he releases unimaginable warp energies to tear apart marines of the chapter to which he once belonged, Scall believes he is serving the Emporer, using His magical gifts to do His work.


The base for Scall.  The "banner" will be behind him. It's clearly Chaos and also playing on the skull/halo motif used by the Imperium, but with a severed head instead.  Scall probably will never notice.

I wanted only small indications of the influence of the ruinous powers. The bolter has the beginnings of a spike to match Karthos's adornments. Karthos is represented by the chaos lord model from the DV box.

Scall on his base.  More Dark Eldar spike mullets were chopped up to make the staff.

And finally one the new cultists.  I enjoyed making his weapon.  It's going to be painted like a chunk of sheet metal has just been bolted to a pole.  More danger of concussion than a slice, maybe, but that's OK. As long as something dies, this guy will be happy.

Scratch-Built Deff Dread progress

I've been working on this since around December last year. My son had kept one of the Kinder Easter-egg capsules and wanted me to make something with it.  Both of my kids are used to keeping interesting bits and bobs for me. I made some quick initial progress and then stopped because I just didn't know how to get from what I had to the kind of scratch-built wizardry you see posted.

So I looked at a lot of pictures, watched some videos and generally analysed what people were doing to see how the basic techniques worked.

In the past few weeks, I've added the right arm (not the big shoulder-mounted drill thing, that was much earlier) and worked on the "face".

The legs/feet were some of the earliest pieces I made and now I just want to ditch them and do something different.  It depends on whether I can work out a way to make better legs while still supporting the model.  The current legs cover thick wire supports.

Anyway, last night I built the start of the left arm.

I think I'm getting a lot better.  Still lots to learn.  I'm not happy with the elbow joint, but the piston-powered mega-chainsword part I think is starting to look really good.  I'm hoping to add a few more bits of detail before it goes on.

I'm planning to pore over some more pictures of people's scratch-built orkery to see what else I can learn.  Particularly about joints.

I also learnt a very important lesson: Kinder surprise inner-eggs are made from plastic that doesn't like to be glued. AT ALL. By ANY kind of glue. 

Battle Report: I beat a 7 year old.

My son and I managed to get a 750 point game in today. Hopefully the first of many over the summer holiday.

He's been painting Orks since Christmas and today was the first real outing for them.

His list was an Ork warband from the new codex: 6 units of boyz, one of gretchin, a warboss, a unit of nobz and a mek. The warboss took "da lucky stikk", cybork body and mega armour, so it was pretty much unkillable. One of the units of boyz was in a trukk and carried a waaagh banner, joined by the mek, and the nobz swanned around on bikes.

I took 5 dire avengers in a wave serpent, 3 lots of 3 jetbikes, a farseer with the spirit stone of cheap psychic abilities, two jetbike arlocks and a double scatter-laser wraithlord with ghost-glave.

We played long table edges, 3 tactical objective cards per turn. No rolling, we just wanted to get started. Eldar won the roll-off for first turn.

Eldar Turn 1

The wave serpent was perched on a hill in order to get as much fire into the orks as possible before we were totally overrun.  This turn, it wiped out the trukk with a combination of scatter laser and shuriken fire. In the image above it's hidden by the blue building in the top right hand quarter of the table.

It was also sitting on Obj. 4, which meant I scored it twice (two cards) at the end of the round. 

The unit of boyz that fell out of the trukk then got hosed by the wraithlord and ran straight off the edge for another point.

The dire avengers sat twiddling their thumbs on top of an objective that scored another point.

The farseer used Eldritch Storm on a unit of boys, leaving half of them dead and the rest pinned.

One of the jetbike units fires pointlessly at the nob bikers.

Score: Eldar 4, Orks 0

Orks Turn 1

Nobz return fire, then, in tandem with another unit of boyz,  brutally assault the jetbike unit that was silly enough to draw their attention. The jetbikes lasted for just a few seconds before being snatched out of the air by the nobz.

While this is happening, the warboss saunters over to the wave serpent and proceeds to tear it to shreds with his power claw.  The resulting explosion takes out a few boyz, but the warboss (and Sam) finds this to be just a little more entertainment and nothing to worry about.

Orks score objective 4, previously owned by the now wrecked wave serpent.

Score: Eldar 4, Orks 1

Eldar Turn 2

The farseer use executioner on the orks lurking around objective 5.

The remaining jetbike/warlock unit uses horrify on the boyz that would be contesting objective 1 (bottom of the table in the picture, just under the overhang of the building), then shoot enough of them to make them run away thanks to a leadership of now just 4. The jetbike unit is now free to claim objective 1. I was lucky again and had this as a target on two cards, so another two points to the Eldar.

The wraithlord shot a few of the grots hanging out on objective 6 (right hand side of the table in the photo, in the crook of the blue scaffolding building). They didn't run, but left fewer to cause problems for the jetbikes that would be shooting over next turn. He tried to assault, but needed to roll a 10 and failed.

And then the farseer did something silly: he changed his mind about shooting over to score objective 6 next turn and assaulted the boyz hiding in the building at the top of the table.  He nearly died, losing two wounds. What he should have done is not worried about shooting and zoomed off to stay out of range.

The dire avengers fired uselessly at the unit of boyz with the warboss that were lounging around the wave serpent wreck and laughing.

Score: Eldar 6, Ork 1

Ork Turn 2

Not much happens, but a lot gets set up to happen next turn.

The running boyz that got horrified run clear off the board.

The grots snuggle back on to the objective that the farseer is now ignoring because he's still locked in a combat he should have kept away from.  They're smug, too, because it's now worth a point to them.

Nob bikes charge warlock/jetbike unit, warboss charges into the wraithlord, boyz and jetbikes exchange blows but nothing decisive comes of it.

Score: Eldar 6, Ork 2

Eldar turn 3

Warlock/jetbike unit loses combat and skedaddles.

Farseer is regretting the poor choices of the last turn.  I mean, really regretting them.

Dire avengers charge in to help him. They don't help much. Unless giving the orks more things to hit counts as helping.

The wraithlord, down to his last wound, tries to smash the warboss. It was the right move. It failed, but it was still the best option. Dead wraithlord.

Score: Eldar 6, Ork 2

Ork Turn 3

Eldar do nothing much in combat except fail to die.

The grots make a mad dash to try for the newly important objective 2, but fail the run they needed so badly.

The end

We called it here because it was getting close to Sam's bedtime. A win for the Eldar, but what would have happened with more turns?

My prediction is that the jetbike/farseer/dire avenger combo would have won the combat and gone on to score a few more, taking out the grots and the last of the boyz. The warboss would have continued charging around but not having targets stay close enough to get hurt.  The bikes might have been a problem for the dire avengers, but who knows?

We both had a lot of fun and got just a little bit quicker at playing.  One day we will get a game that lasts more than three turns.

Final score: Eldar 6, Ork 2

Lessons Learned

1. The Warboss is a beast. The lucky stikk is awesome and when combined with the cybork body and mega armour, means he's just not going to die without some serious effort being wasted on him.
2. Don't put a wave serpent near something with str 10 ap 2 hits coming out of its ears.  Every one of them is a penetrating hit in close combat.
3. Luck of the cards makes a difference.  I had two rounds where I doubled up on an objective. Without that, the scores would have been much closer.
4. Orks are generally good at hitting things.  Eldar are not.  So don't try competing with orks in the "hitting things" game.

Here's the ork graveyard...

Remember that there were still more orks on the table than Eldar at the end of the game! There are just so many of them!

Quick paint job, all serial numbers removed.

I normally dawdle and take forever to complete any unit or model, but having a hard deadline for a game has been a great cure.  I have 10 jetbikes (riderless, still), 2 jetbike warlocks and now a wave serpent, all done in one month.  

They all need maybe a bit of detail and some matte varnish, but if I don't get that done before the game it's not the end of the world.

Wave serpent:

It's going to contain Dire Avengers, so it's painted in their colours. 

Much airbrush

Wave serpent now has base colour, ready for detail with a brush.

Airbrushing big curvy panels was awesome.  Might have overdone it and created one enormous colour gradient, but I don't care.

Not sure I'll get chance to do the shadows between panels, glowing gems (lighting from them already in place thanks to the airbrush), edge highlighting of blue, definition on black (dry-brush and edge), paint details on pilot, etc., but Friday, but I'm definitely getting there.

Here are the pieces:

Wave Serpent... small step forward

I need this on the tabletop on Friday.  This is how far it's got by the end of Sunday:

Really need to get moving!

Jetbikes primed and basecoated

Warlocks are colour coordinated.  Looks a bit too stark and simple at the moment but it's just block colours to sit other things on top of. Everything was pre-shaded and then sprayed solid colours.  Still getting the hang of it and wish I'd had more light and less dark, but it should look OK when done, still.