The results of a month's work...

Here they are...(no special computer effects added!  Just plain old phone camera with flash)

      

     

        

In terms of scoring....

• I have played one mini game about Mr Black Consul Man and won!  
• I've "built" all my purchases.  
• I have painted 2 separate entries on the force organisation chart
• ....so it's just bases to go.  I still have to think about that one.  Ages ago I was told that I HAD to base them so I got pebbles then eventually a textured paint from GW...however, I'm not sure how they look now compared to a Tron theme.  Need to decide before Friday though.  The pics above are just plain chaos black at the moment.

Right, I'm off.

- Enza -

Glowly goodness

Ok, so I have nearly finished the Hammerhead / Sky Ray...
Just got to decide if I want to base it and then decide on what I can paint fast before Friday so I can get the full two points for painting (even though it's over the monthly spend....apparently those are the rules!).

I spent a lot of time reading up how to do a glow effect and also speaking to the new manager in GW High Wycombe (hello Ben!).  In the end, I decided to take the engines on the Hammerhead and paint several coats of Ceramite White. [See pic to the right].

Not a bad job really.  It did take several coats but it does have fairly decent coverage.  I then used two blobs of Ceramite White and one blob of Warpstone Glow - the colour which I used for the highlight detail on the rest of the Hammerhead.  I then also added the Lahmian Medium.  Not sure exactly what it does but Ben suggested it and said the 'Eavy Metal team uses bucket loads of it - couldn't hurt.  I carefully painted this towards the middle, trying my best to still leave the deep recesses as white.  I want the glow to come from the engine so that darker colours will be further out and the whitest colour in the furthest in. [see right]

With the next layer I added just a touch more Warpstone Glow with Lahmian Medium and then I tried to make sure I didn't hit the edges to the back and sides.  I decided to do rectangles rather than circles like a traditional glow to try and keep the shape and glow natural.

The effect is what you see to the left. I have to say I am pretty pants at painting in neat lines...never was good at colouring in school either.  It does bug me as I am a perfectionist, but hey ho....what am I going to do!

I realised that this was perhaps a bit too dark from the first coat, so I decided to add a teenie tiny blob of white and more of the Lahmian Medium.  I then carefully repainted over the last coat plus a little bit more in-between the first colour and this last coat.  I think it gives a better effect. [see right]

Then following as before I simply kept adding small blobs of Warpstone Glow and Lahmian Medium gradually making smaller and smaller rectangles on the engines.

    

When I got to this point, I realised that the Warpstone Glow wouldn't give me enough darkness to put as the final point.  In all the glow effect bits and pieces, it usually says about using the smallest dab of white to really set it off.  As I am painting it backwards (i.e. light to dark), I thought I best do a dark spot too.  For this, I mixed a smidgen of Orkhide Shade and lots of Warpstone Glow with Lahmian Medium.  

This led to the final glow seen right here.

For my final thing, I wanted to use my glaze as I did across the rest of the Hammerhead - Waywatcher Green.  I think this is the final result.  Think...because I have to ask the other gamers what they think.

Anyway, enough from me.

- Enza - 

I don't know what happened

It turns out we are in the last week of August and well my progress is about as good as a monkey with a chainsaw. Anyway, pictures below of what I've been up to and how I've got there. 

Really rough riders

Starting as I mean to go on these have been made by chopping up bits from different kits and sticking them all together, oh and a bit of green stuff on the side. 

Kit reference;

Vampire Counts Black Knights / Chaos Marauder Horsemen

Riders

Chaos Marauder Horsemen / Renegade militia enforcers (forge world)

Built unit of 5 with two flamers

Maggot on the neck

Took a repaint on the bone for the head to get the right colour (ended up using dheneb stone as the base, with a develan mud wash, then back to the dheneb). Think the end result has turned out ok and will now work on painting the rider.

Veterans

Same method of cut and shunt, though the addition of a dermal to make bits fit was needed. Should point out that these take ages to make. I have plenty more to build so will do a stage by stage picture guide thingy as to how they are cobbled together. 

Kit reference

Catachan Jungle Fighters box set / Plaguebearers of Nurgle (very nice box set) + a few spare bits from the horse kits.

No painting done on these yet, just the two example models. Bit of green stuff still to be added.

Catachan legs, back & right arm. Bearers body & left arm. Marauder head with added spike.

Same as above. Difficult to see in the pictures, but have green stuffed dog tags & belt to the front. 

Bases

The plan is to go for a heavily overgrown jungle base. For this I'm thinking of finding some fish tank plants which I can repaint and add some other bits and bobs. Will do a bit of a google images search for ideas, but guessing I have time before bases are an issue. 

I'll post (think maybe we should all) an end of the month show and tell as to where we got up to with painting building n' stuff. 

That's me done for another rambling post. 

Another week down...lets talk stages

Positives since last post:

• All parts of first months challenge built and undercoated (due to Genestealers being later due to over budget batleforce)
• Progress made on painting Termagants
• Found basing materials that I want to use
• Everyone else is in the same position
• A friend has re-started in the hobby and their group now have a blog http://hammertime40k.wordpress.com

Challenges since last post

• There are now A LOT of bugs to paint to even get 2 units done
• Painting is taking longer to do than expected
• No games played....boo hiss

So I think the big step in the right direction is that I have started to get some of the little bugs done and I thought I would post a quick "How I did it" guide to the bugs, partly hopefully to give people ideas but also to remind me how I painted them when i come back to the army at a later date!

Started with Undercoating the models Chaos Black
Step 1
First time using the new paint range in part so was getting used to the new colours both names and properties. I would say after very little experience that the paints seem to be thinner, thereby needing less watering down and getting very good coverage. Think this will help with doing more thin layers to make for stronger colours and better painted models
First colour up is XV-88 over all the areas of the Termagant that are soft and fleshy. This includes the weapon. I haven't been too precise over application as i wanted them done quickly. Also if I do get round to spray gunning them later I want to know I can work with the colours 'going over the lines.'

Step 2
Paint a layer of Tau Light Oche over the base colour leaving any recesses,  such as inside ribcage or holes at tail end, the darker base


Step 3
Use Agrax Earthshade over all the flesh areas. This was painted on liberally and moved around with the brush so detail could still be seen and reduce any large amounts of pooling away from the recesses.

Step 4
I reapplied Tau Light Oche over the raised areas taking more care to leave the recesses untouched and get a smooth application.

Step 5
I haven't done this bit yet but I know it will be to use either Ungor flesh or a 50/50 mix of Ungor Flesh and Tau Light Oche and apply it to raised ares of flesh such as prominant muscles, tail tip and skull detail, thus providing some layering to the model

So there you go, A how to guide for the flesh part of my Hive Fleet, which I realise is yet to have a name. Aim for next update is to test out Ungor Flesh and give the bugs a name.

The end is nigh...

Well it is for the first month...I don't think many of us will be collecting the points for painting. It seems that there isn't enough time!

I have to admit that I'm not a very good hobbyist. I can go weeks without playing, building or painting and then it'll be a feverish week where I want to get some troops painted. So I'm finding it tough to consistently do it week to week.  

I already have some Tau but the large majority isn't painted so that's my main focus.  I decided to go for an "easy" colour scheme by using a Tron-like idea.  Below are some pics of what I've accomplished so far.  

Fire Warriors and Kroot

Marker drones, Stealth suits, and Gun drones

Engines and bits of weaponry for Hammerhead / Sky Ray

This month's project is finishing this off!!!

Signing off for now
- Enza -

two weeks into the start...

......and all I have to show for it is some built 'Nids and some cool pics of the 10k Apocalypse game at GW HQ. Ok thats not too bad actually.

Tale
Now that everyone has posted on the tale I'm going to throw in a link on Facebook, so if your reading of this from Facebook "Welcome, play nice and remember there are children that read this ;-)
So far from my battleforce I've concentrated on the little bugs as I know for certain how they are equiped, know that they will take a while to build and can do this while watching the Olympics. Its been a busy time getting ready for Weekends away, learning how to dive and general life 'stuff' so ideally I would've loved to have some paint on these guys beyond an undercoat but no bother really.

Points learned so far

1. Termagants fit together ok as long as you check the main body for mould marks, some have a little ring that needs filing away or they don't fit flush.
2. They also have an awkward piece of plastic flash at the back of the head where they join, this takes longer to clean than the legs and forgotten too often.
3. Hormagaunts don't NEED pennies to stay up but probably will get them.
4. Mould line removal is still dull! lol.

Next update on the Tale will have some painted models and start on basing ideas.

GW HQ
Managed to have a cool weekend at Warhammer World with 5 friends and about 10k of models each side. Many pics were taken and have taken some of them on here. Rough sides were Eldar, Eldar and Guard vs Necron, Ork and Guard.

Some of the highlights were:

• Necron Cryptek surviving being shot by a double turbo-laser
• Eldar Jetbikes being redeployed by Eldrad so the Orks had nothing to do but run
• 6 Fireprisms combining fire to have people look at the formation and say "they do what!?"
• A Warlord Titan

The plan

After eighteen months or so of faffing around with different armies, I have final settled down with a loving family of Necrons. Now it might be the ‘broken’ codex or the ‘broken’ 6^th edition rules, but for some reason I can’t seem to loose with them (partly down to my limited number of games – 4) NO I WILL NOT PLAY YOU!!! :p There is 1500pts sitting in a shoebox – this is the criteria for how my armies are built. If you don’t all fit in a shoebox then you don’t get to be in the army.

Fast forward to this old tale and we have a new challenge. While I do begrudgingly enjoy the painting, I tend to leave it all to the last moment and never feel that I have put in enough effort. So in short I’m telling a tale of a Wiggy’s brother who ended up with an army he spent enough time on, that it lived in a beautiful foam tray of battle. There’s a Darwin point here somewhere but this can be added in the comments section.

Month one

This has swapped around a bit, but the math works the same.

5 ‘Really’ rough riders

Recipe

Chaos marauder horsemen

Vampire count black knights

Green stuff

10 Catachan jungle veterans.

Recipe

Catachan jungle fighters

Plaguebears of Nurgle

Green stuff

Add in a knife, clippers, glue, Dremel and maybe a hammer.

I’ll upload some pictures in my next post of my cut and shunts of horses n’ riders. 

And so it begins.......

Officially now I get underway with my first army under 6th Edition 40k. Leading up to the Tale I was torn between Necrons, who I love the fluff changes to allow for more personality mixed with the facelessness of the masses and Tyranids who I have collected previously but know that they get very little love around my group and I always like the underdog. The Tyranids won out in the end as I managed to work out a colour scheme that I both like and think I can do some good stuff with.

So for my first month purchases I had the simple choice of picking up the Battleforce in all its sprue-like glory.

Having looked through the codex lots and written a few lists I think that this force is going towards the hordes end of the Tyranid force, probably with a lot of 3 wound, mid-size bugs in too.
From the battleforce I have the following plans for the contents: -

Warriors - As I know that I'll be using lots of these, the first 3 are a test for those to follow. I need to decide if I'm staying very cheap with rending claws or going for more punch and taking the boneswords option to scare the 2+ save brigade. I'm also thinking of magnetizing some of the options in the army and this seems like a good candidate. Just need more rending claws.
Genestealers - I currently plan on taking some Ymargls but not standard 'stealers and think i will pick up some non-GW squid heads to keep the feeder tendril look to the squad.
Termagants - Fleshborer's are the order of the day for these little dudes. A Tervigon will make an appearance at some point so I know I will get lots of practice doing 'gants for spawning.
Hormagaunts - Need some pennies to weight the bases from previous experience. Will almost certainly take one of the biomorph upgrades for furious or poison so they can go onto the models. Currently thinking it will be poison for these guys and adrenal when i get to Gargoyles.
Rippers - I've never liked rippers so these will stay in the box, maybe some on bases and get used for randomness.

Hoping to work more to just building the hobby rather than aiming for particular points values for this force. Also thinking that I might do some old school Ncromunda scenarios for letting the others hunt the bigger bugs while their forces are being built up. Finally the plan is to update this as i go with the building and painting as well as any games that they get to play.

Here's to an awesome tale for all those involved.

Diary of Pedro Kantor - The Black Consul Days

By the Emperor if I see another Ork...I'll...

They made me lose all my Crismon Fists - I mean honestly, I've only just finished paying off the deposit on their new guns and they went and got slaughtered!

Curse those Orks.

And that mysterious Eldar. Not only for saving the bacon of the Space Marines - AGAIN! - but also that weird warning.  Some Eldar is going to punch me in the future.

Great.

I need that right now.

Oh yes, that other suggestion - the one I didn't mention - reform The Black Consuls in secret.

Apparently my destiny is not just to reform the Crimson Fists, but this crazy Eldar told me the once thought defeated Consuls need my help.

Seems a few of them were not in the Siege of Goddeth Hive but had relocated to Jerricho Reach and had taken leave from the Achilus Crusade - stories of a decent brewery of The Emperor's Ale have been circulated as to the reason, but these guys are dedicated Space Marines, they wouldn't dare do such a thing!


So there is my destiny, to seek out The Black Consuls and lead them to victory - Kantor out.

Anticipation

So tonight's the night....the first official meeting of the gamers...  What to expect??


New rule book, new codexs, new toys.  Lots to build and paint.  The rules for the tale of (currently) 4 gamers will be agreed later.  Anyway, I'm off to cook a yummy Thai for everyone before we start  :D  Exciting stuff!

- Enza -

P.S.  Tau rule!!  At least for now....I plan to go slightly spacium canis lupus next time round.