Keeping Flexible

No this isn't about my New Year's resolution, well actually it is as I'm planning on getting fitter in 2012 by doing more snowshoeing, but that's not what I intend to write about. What I mean here is not getting stuck into one mindset with your modelling and planning, and thinking there's only one right way to build something or one right model to use to represent something on the tabletop.

Whilst I was away over Christmas, and not able to do any modelling, I was giving a great deal of thought to which projects I wanted to do in 2012. This in turn lead to thinking about what I had already for them, what else I would need to obtain and how I should prioritise my work and purchases. The last of these got out of hand in 2011 and has left me with such a backlog I need to seriously plan out what I need to do by when so that I can get use my figures in games, rather than just having boxes and bags of bits and sprues all over the apartment. The project came out something like this:

1. Get another 1500 point army in a state where it is usable friendly games.

I need a change from Dark Eldar, which I've now been playing solidly for a year apart from two games with my Blood Angel successor and this will give me a second army to use, to give me a break between tournament games. This army will be fluffy and fun use whatever has been painted rather using a list around which I have to paint the required models. This objective is already well under way as I brought a partially completed army out of storage, and cracked on with completing it. I'm hoping this will be available for a game, even if some figures are not completed by next Friday. No details as to what it is as my club mates may read this, and I'd like to surprise them.


2a. Get my Orky terrain pieces completed in time for the club tournament.
2b. Get my Imperial terrain pieces completed for same (Optional).

I want to pull my weight at the club tournament and supply a table or two with scenery..plus it'll give me a chance to showcase some of my work from the last few months - bonus! The event is in the next few months, so after the army all the pieces that have been on my threads on the-waaagh need to be done, plus the crashed space ship centre-piece.

3. Get my Bloodpact to a 1500 point level for Astronomicon.

This gives me a focus to get this army done, but as we have until August this is priority number 3.

4. Get my other kits and conversions assembled so I can throw out boxes and sprues.

This is to help me tidy up the place..necessary if I have to return to the UK this year as everything needs to be packed well if I do, and completed models usually take up less space that the sprues they come on.

Well that was a bit of a tangent, what I wanted to write about was not getting stuck in one mental rut over how you work on something. The link all comes down to point 3, the Bloodpact. For those who follow the blog, you'll know I planned to use a Pz3 toy for my AT-70s, and a Sherman one for my AT-83s. The more I thought about using these, the less happy I was with them for various reasons and so I sought out alternatives. I'm now planning to use a hybrid Chimera/Leman Russ for the AT-70s because I wanted something to match the style of the AT-83 I found - the Mortian tank from heavy-support.com. I can't claim either of these is is an original idea as they are both copied from another blog I found, http://pickadamnarmy.blogspot.com/ but the point is I didn't get stuck into being forced to use the tanks I had previously selected, and with which I would never have been happy and hence the idea of staying flexible. There are many ways to model the Pact! The flip side of this is that I now had several spare tank chassis which I could use for my Bloodaxe army! (which never came into the plan, but since we're keeping flexible, we can change that eh?). This left me to start on this, in the spirit of completing item 4...

It's the start of a Lungbursta, and with the extra chassis I can also make a Bonecrusha, Gutrippa and one other Orky tank!

Battlefield Gothic

Where has the last month gone? To be honest I haven't done much wargaming for a few weeks as I felt a little burned out with my plastic dudesmen. On top of this I've had health and work issues and so with not having much spare energy, nor inspirational subject matter I haven't felt inspired to write anything - until now.

Over the weekend just gone, I felt more motivated and had enough get up and go to crack on with the Ork scenery for my Orkington village - doing the lion's share of construction on my fuel tank piece, as well as heading down to the hobby shop and scoring some new Gothic terrain pieces. I'm planning to do a separate article on the updates to Orkington, as I notice the last update on this project was near its commencement, and there's been lots of development since then to show you.

Moving on to the Gothic scenery items, which may be old hat to many of you, but I only discovered them recently and I suspect many others may not ever have seen them, and so this is for their benefit mostly. The range is produced by Pegasus, who make a great many wargaming scenery items (their craters probably being best known to the 40k world).

This is the Gothic City Ruins #1 kit that I quickly assembled last night. It's a snap together kit in hard grey plastic, and while you could happily use it like this, I would recommend gluing it, after some filing to make the pieces fit just a little closer. The kit had no flash and reasonably few injection points to clean off - and these clipped off with no fuss at all. Other than the less than perfect fitting, and one of the pieces seeming to be a little too tall (one half of one of the wrecked columns) is that there are the rectangular holes in the corner columns. In the other kits in the series, these are filled with lamps or gargoyles so I'm hoping I have some spare from the other kits I have to fill these in, if not I'll need to raid my bits box.

The other kits I bought, each retailing for approx C$42 + taxes although I got a 20% discount, are:

I plan to hit them with a dark grey paint, and then use drybrushing to bring out the details. Not the greatest technique, but it should be fast enough to get some more scenery on our tables on club night!

Solitudors - Introduction

Previously I mentioned my Blood Angels army, which in fact is a successor chapter called the Solitudors. The name is taken from the Latin for isolation - solitudo, but since this also means to desert (i.e. to abandon), I opted for a desert (as in sand) theme. I'm rolling around some ideas for a backstory at the moment and at some point I'll write down, (maybe for Astronomicon next year?) so it should make more sense how the colours and theme fit together. Right now it's something like red sun over yellow sand give rises to the red torso and arms with yellow legs.

This was the first figure I painted in this scheme, with completely solid yellow legs:

But I've now moved on to only having the yellow on the thighs, shins and feet. I've repainted this figure to match, and since thise photo was taken, I've completed the base.

The current scheme is shown on this work in progress shot of a devastator:




I've made custom decals for some fo the marines, plus had custom pads made for others, these will be the subject of a future article.

Blood Pact - slow burning project

Ever since I read the first Gaunt's Ghost books I've wanted to model the Blood Pact. At the time I had just started my first army, IG, after a 15 year break from the hobby and I wasn't in a position to start anything else. Things have moved on now, I've built (and mostly painted) my DE army and I've stock-piled a great number of figures and kits for future projects, one of which is the aforementioned traitors.

Right now I just have a load of guard sprues and toy tanks, with suitable heads in the post (Secret Weapon and Maxmini), so this is just an introduction to what I'm using for each of the signature Pact items.

Infantry:

-Veterans are Cadians with Secret Weapon heads.

-Regular troops are a mix of Cadians, Catachans, Chaos Marauders with Maxmini heads - This is more of a unit of cultists than true BP troops.

- N20 Halftrack, these 1/32 M3 half-tracks with a Chimera/Hellhound/Hydra turret as appropriate.


- AT-70 Reaver will be one of these Pz.III toys with lots of detailing and a Kromlech turret (just as soon as they release one with something other than a plasma style cannon).


- AT-83 Brigand will be built from this very large Sherman (1/32?) and fitted with a dozer blade and a large bore cannon.


- U90 Usurper, Chimera tracks with a scratch built hull I expect.

- Stalk tanks - still under investigation, but there's a guy in Italy who custom builds some very nice ones.

More information as I move this project forward, but right now it's behind my scenery and Blood Angel successor army, which will be the subject of future blog articles.

Objectives

Objectives are often something that gets left to the end of an army build, and are consequently rushed just to get them ready for a tournament. This leads to bases with numbers painted on, or just an icon glued on or similar, but this is missing a chance to be quite creative. I've seen some really good modelling done as objectives over the years - crashed jetbikes, lost Ratling snipers, statues of Ghazghul etc, but it's also a chance to incorporate a different aspect of your army into each objective.

For my Dark Eldar army I have the following:

a spider model which is presumably being harvested for its poisonous venom



a monster which has either escaped from, or is destined for the arenas



a evil looking portal - a route to a disconnected part of the webway, or a backdoor to a rival's realm?



a slave?



I've tried in each of them to take one aspect of the Dark Eldar's depravity and make a marker for it. The final objective, which is a 60mm one will be a crashed jetbike with a wych carrying a stolen item - the raiders must retake this stolen item to take it back to their shadowy city.

I'm working on some other items for my other armies:

For my Orks I have a scrap pile (for lootin') I actually made a couple of these to double as scrap markers in GorkaMorka. Most of the items are miscasts from Zinge Industries, he likes to give them out for us to convert!



For any Imperial forces I have this statue of a terminator. I bought the green-stuffed figure in a bulk buy on Craigslist, and while it's very well done, some botched repairs by a previous owner make it look a bit too rough to use as a figure in my army. Mounted on an Orangina top on a 60mm base he makes an excellent statue though.



I also have a missing sniper objective under construction - photos when it's a bit further along.

I should also say an excellent source of 40mm based for objectives, or indeed any figure, is the humble poker chip. It's dead on, or close to if you get the knock-off ones, for a GW base.

In closing, please no more numbered 25mm bases - go out and make something visually interesting, and themed to the army you're playing!

Something fun..

Came across this 40k comic the other week, some chuckles in there:

http://wobblymodel.weebly.com/index.html

Thought I'd share it as anyone who puts in this much effort deserves some exposure!

Projects on the bench 1 - Orkington

It's been a little while since I posted my Astro preparation work, and that's because I got a bit burned out after painting that many miniatures for the tournament. I haven't been completely inactive though as I've been working my way through some scenery projects. The real driver for doing this is actually two things, first off we need more scenery at the club I attend (Trumpeters Tabletop Society in Burnaby, BC) so the one or two people who people who do provide secneray don't have to spread it over so many tables. The second reason is that I recently acquired a copy of GorkaMorka, and I'd like to play that with something better than card buildings (most of which are missing from my copy anyway)! I'm working through some ideas for an Ork settlement (Orkington - named after a place close to where I used to live Oakington), but in no particular order, just as the muse takes me!

Here's some of the scenery I've completed so far:

The back from one of the toy trucks I used to make the wrecks below, turned into an Orky sack of something store...or perhaps a ramp for Orkevil Kernivel?


The Squig Pen...need to add a sign with the glyph for Squigs.


An old burned out and looted truck..must be old the grass has grown back!


A Mek's store of things that maybe useful one day..and some cover! Also needs some glyphs.


I have a few others in various states of completion, I'll post them up here as time allows.