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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Following on from the resin addon bits Predator the other week, here's the newer plastic kit.
A while back I got these in a buy from ebay, and the Volkites had been attached in a wrong way. A few bits of plastic rod, and some spare hands later, and these are almost ready for painting. I do need to add some GS to the right wrists first though.
After months of doing mainly Iron Warriors, I'm starting something a bit different. I'm finally restarting on my loyalist guard army that I began in 2009. There is however a twist, I'm planning on building a skew list that I can run for 40k and also for 30k using the militia list. Let's hope 3ed Heresy doesn't remove that option! The theme of both lists is horse heavy, about 60 for 40k and 90 for 30k. To make the points, I will also be using up lots of my really old guard models from my storage box in the garage. Here's the first WIP shots of some infantry. I'll be adding a couple more guard to replace one of the melta gunners so that the can be fielded as grenadiers in 30k, or Catachans in 40k. The models are Catachan legs combined with the upper parts of Empire Outriders. I have the latter left over after making rough riders. The melta guns look a bit shonky, but they are a digital kitbash of something I found online, and it was an easy conversion.
Another cupboard of doom veteran, Cypher, although it's the new model, so it can't be that old.
I've had these years, but finally got to slap some paint on them - same complaints as yesterday's chosen, too fiddly!
