Valerian and Aleya

I built these while waiting for something, at which point I looked for their current rules. I found out they'd be in my stash for 5 years! I would have said they were way more recent.

Return to the Sisterhood

It's been a while since I worked on my sisters of battle - I last ran the army in 2019, and apart from assembling a few minis, I haven't touched them in years. That's changing on Saturday, as I'm off to a doubles event, and a last minute partner change meant I'd be better off with something Imperial. We were going to do the unholy alliance of Honsou and Ventris, but sadly Matt had do some real life stuff, so I had to change partners. Here's what I've had to add to make my forces legal again, and to add some variety - it's only 1000 points per team mate. If anyone's interested I'm teaming up with Custodes.

I'm only using the melta pistol cannoness, but these two have been finally finished (I posted them at tournament legal state for their outing at the team event in 2019).

Since my Battle Sister squads are now totally illegal I needed more bolter girls - the grenadiers are my Superiors. Some have replacement 3d printed backpacks.

I can't take all the credit for these, the 5 paler skinned Arco flagellants are an ebay purchase although rebased by me to match the army. The darker skinned fellow was added separately to make the squad up to legal numbers. I went with a completely different complexion as I knew If I tried to match the other ones, it'd never be close.

Old School Blood for the Blood God

Whilst doing some reorganising the other week I found the missing World Eater! Here he is still on the sprue. I've since built him, and I plan to give him a base ring to get him to 32mm to match the others. I really like including these early models in my armies since it's a connection to the hobby's past.

Consul Contemptor

Sadly I couldn't make the full weekend for South Cheshire Heresy's Formaxia event (clashed with an agricultural show where I'm on a stand) so I'm only there for one day. That said, Morgan runs great events, and even has custom rules for Consul Dreadnoughts. Luckily I had a few ersatz Contemptor bits lying around from when I first started printing. After printing the missing bits and a sword hand, I made this chap, a champion dreadnought. The sword was way too long after printing, so it's been shortened, but sadly looks a bit rough. I'm short of time as usual, so I'm living with it for now. This guy definitely looks like a loyalist, but I've got a traitor ticket - these are confusing times!

Apocalypticon UK 2026

After taking a year off to recover, we're running Apocalypticon UK again. It's back to its home in Newcastle upon Tyne, right next to the railway station. Ticket has had to rise a little from last year as the venue has put up prices, so it's now £60 for a two day event. Players forces are capped at 12k this year, and there are some army detachments we ask player to use so we can better setup the tables so that no one has a huge imbalance with the force facing them (they are multiple players on each table so this helps too).

If you want more information, or access to the Discordto see photos from last year, or want to pay up to attend, please drop me an email at 'simonhpw at googlemail.com' doing the necessary substitution. Alternatively look at the Animosity Facebook page and speak to the head cheese himself! https://www.facebook.com/animositycampaigns/?locale=en_GB 

Dominators

You saw one of these a few months back, well to wrap up the squad I did the last 4. No doubt they will be removed in Heresy 3e now I've finished them.

Khorne, 2 for the Price of 1!

For those that don't know, the Lord Invocatus kit essentially contains almost all the bits to build both the aforementioned named character, and the generic lord. The only bit that's common to both builds is the 2 halves of the juggernaut's body. Since no one has made a 3d printable body, which they have for one of the Tyranid kits which has the same setup, I decided to make a Greenstuff press mould using Bluestuff. Here's the results. A few bits didn't copy that well so I added bits from the bits box to hide that fact. The riders are still WIP as I've been working on a few other things to get them off my work desk so I can get onto Apocalypticon terrain.

Forgeworld World Eaters

In my brief flurry of pulling out my Khorne armies and working on them, I pulled out this set of original FW Berzerkers. I'd stashed them with all the bits years ago, but finally glued them together. One update was to 3D print some Excoriator chain weapons and fill in two of the squad. Backpacks are left off and attached after painting.

How the Tournament went and next steps.

I promised I'd do an update after the team event I was attending, and here it is. Let's say I did absolutely terribly - our team came last and I had the worst results in the team. I left the event having had a great time hanging out with 3 great friends, but feeling really sore about the event for one singular reason. It wasn't the players, they were good people. Even my 'worst' opponent was a decent guy, just a little too fast for me. The organisers did a great job running the event, kudos to them, and coming back from a failure of the scoring system to keep us all playing was a reasonable handling of the situation. The issue for me was the terrain - WTC format to be exact. For reasons of storage and transport it's flat and uninspiring. The boxes and books under blankets that we used as kids felt better. It has to be laid out with more care and precision than new housing development - which is just boring IMHO. The rules about movement and visibility are not intuitive. You can't see through it but you can reduce yourself to molecules and pass through it, and you while you can melee through it (presumably by the same mechanism), you can't shoot through it when you're in engagement range, as shooting requires LoS and it blocks that. On top of that it's so dense - don't bother with vehicles, as after a couple the deployment zone is full, and all the rest park so far back it takes 2-3 turns for them to get to where the front line started. I think if this is the state of competitive events I'm out I'm afraid. Losing is one thing, but losing because you don't play an army with lots of tough hard hitting infantry is a turn off for me - I like taking tanks. There's a reason everyone and his dog was playing Death Guard or Thousand Sons.

So what am I going to do about this? I don't know, I did start working on my World Eaters, but I'm wrapping up the work I'm doing on those because I know I'm not going to get time to finish them. I've packed up my Minotaurs too to clear the desk, and just put some paint on a few heresy models for a last game of v2.0. I don't plan to do much 3.0 as I don't have the time to learn a new system at the moment, maybe in a few months, so in the meantime my Ultramarines and militia are packed up waiting to see if my mojo returns or time becomes freer.

I know Apocalypticon is coming back in 2026 so I'm back on terrain for that which will meet my hobby needs for now - I'll share more details soon. I am very much excited about this, and working on helping run the event rather than playing is a good feeling at the moment.

Getting away from gaming, I took part in a wheelbarrow race this weekend - damn I'm unfit but a solid wheel is a bad choice (it was my mother-in-law's barrow).

Fabius Bile

Day 2 is over, and this is auto publishing, so I'll update how the weekend went shortly. In the meanwhile, here's my new Warlord, Fabius Bile.

Melee Cultists

I've probably just spent a day being battered at 40k - not enough time to practice this list, or indeed play 40k at all so it's all an uphill struggle. My list called for some cultists, and since the sort that I had before are now in Legends, I pulled out some half painted figures from a couple of my old school cultists, made a valid squad and got them finished. Before traitor guardsmen were a thing, my IW cultists were just that. Models are a mix of GW Cadians and Chaos Marauders, Blight Wheel, Anvil and some long departed bits firms.

Legionnaire Champion

While you are reading this, I'm on my way to Stockport for the Northern Warlord's Summer Team event. We used to do this event, but with players having busy lives, we dropped for a few years. Now we've got some new recruits we're taking the Animosity Team back there again. Like most events lately, I find myself short of a squad Sgt or several. Thankfully this time it's just one.

Iron Warriors Plastic Predator

Following on from the resin addon bits Predator the other week, here's the newer plastic kit.

Iron Warriors Bikers

Usually I'm pleased with my paintjobs, but these I'm not. Rushed, on horrid models, and even converting with some printed and Raptor left overs didn't make me feel better about them. The only good thing is that they are done!

Iron Warriors Predator

 Old FW Predator, done for my IW.