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: