Onwards and upwards

Soooooo. Tail of gamers is pretty much over, so to quote Guns 'n Roses, where do we go now. Well 1500pts is a good start to a fantasy army but by no means all I want. I've already got loads to paint for it and the nicer looking ones will show up on this blog. After painting all those sword masters and sea guard I fancy painting something a bit different, a centre piece for the army. And what a centre piece. Last month my girlfriend, who is the most amazing and beautiful girl in the whole world (and dose subscribe to this blog), brought me a high elf lord on dragon!!! I've already build it up and done a bit of magnetization work so it can be a prince or a mage and so the wings come off for transport. I'm planning to paint it in nautical colours and do some water effects on the base and call it a sea dragon. This fits the subtle coastal theme of my army and lets me play it as either a sun, moon or star dragon for coolness and customizability.

Other than that I'm planning to expand my salamanders army and put up some tactic and painting blogs with them. I've already started this expansion with a razorback (see photos bellow) and 5 assault terminators and I'm planning to add a whirlwind, terminator chaplain, devastator squad and maybe some more dreadnoughts. These will all be playing on the nice new realm of battle gaming board I'm getting in the new year (not much to blog about there, I'm just rather looking forward to it) and some will be coming to the 40k doubles tournament in feb with me and Adam (plenty to blog about there).

Finally, after the doubles tournament I'm planning to go green. No, I’m not talking about carbon neutral blogging, or recycling my models. Nope, I'm starting my own WAAAAGH! Probably doing an Evil Sunz Kult of speed, but more on that another time, for now I'll leave you with my razorback.

The elven hoast grows

I'm back.

Sorry it's been a while. This past month I've managed to to get loads of great looking models painted up for my high elves :) but then only had time for one game :(

I had planned to build 1250pts, play with it, blog about it and then go onto 1500pts. Alas, time and work had other idea's and the 1250pts game and blog got put aside. However, the painting did get done, more sea guard and a noble with a reaver bow as well as putting the shadow warriors back into the list. The obvious highlight of this step was the noble. He turned out really great, especially the gold. I base coated the gold in shinning gold and the gave it a wash of ogryn flesh. Then I painted all but the lowest recesses in another coat of shinning gold before building up a highlight of burnished gold and finally methril silver. Turned out really shiny and makes him stand out in the big unit of seaguard that he hangs out with in most games.

The next step was to go to 1500pts. Once again, more seaguard, giving my a huge unit of 32 with every model able to attack when they get charged. To this I added a unit of 5 dragon princes to give my army some manoeuvrability and punch. I used the old models cos I brought and assembled them about 2 weeks before GW announced they were doing new plastic one, Grrrrrr! I'd never painted horses before but I think basing them in white, washing in a watered down mix of astronomican and codex grey and the highlighting in white worked out ok for the majestic elven steeds.

For these guys and the noble I had a crack at using citadel water effects on the base. For the noble I've got him standing on a rock in the sea which looked ok but kind of tailed off at the edges. For the princes I did my standard elf bases but with a few rivers and puddles with turned out much better because they were enclosed which gave a better effect.In the past months I had played a few practice games with the high elves at various point levels and the dragon princes had done ok but no so in my game with this army at 1500pts. I made the sort of mistake that I reckon most fantacy players make once and will never, ever, ever! Do again. My opponent was a Chaos player and fielded a hell cannon and I thought, ahar, a war machine with nothing protecting it his flank. I took the opportunity to charge it with 200pts worth of dragon princes thinking I would kill the crew quickly and then charge back into the rear of his main army later in the game. Unfortunately the hell cannon counts as a monster with handlers not a war machine, making it much harder to kill. I still thought I had a chance and did win the combat by 1 and hopped it would break. Alas my opponent pointed out it was unbreakable, leaving my the princes locked in combat to get eaten next turn. The rest of the game was a closer affair than it could have been but too many chaos units hit my battle line at the same time and I just couldn't cope and I lost badly. In hind-sight I should have used my dragon princes to charge the flank of his marauders (next unit along the line from the hell cannon and slightly in-front) and then disrupt the rest of his battle line. But hey, you live and lean.

That's tail of gamers pretty much over as 1500 was where we were aiming for, but it's far from the end for my high elves or this blog.

To be continued............

All at Sea.

This last few weeks I've been so busy with work life and love (and starting a 40k campaign with my flat mate) that I've not had that much time for the high elves but I'm back with a quick update on what I have done. I've now got my first 1000pts fully painted. To round it off I've bulked out my sea guard and swordmasters to 24 and 16 respectively giving me 2 good sized combat units but the main addition is an eagle claw bolt thrower. Painting that much wood was a new challenge so I tried to use a variation of what I did for the bows on my archers. Base coat in snakebite leather and then drag a really old brush over it in one direction with bleached bone to try and get a wood grain effect. Repeat and then dry-brush the edges in skull white. You can't see it too well in the photo but I'm happy enough with the result.

I've only managed one game against an experienced chaos player at the store. We played the mission where you have to kill standards and the general to make you opponent's army break. He Only had one standard (one point) and a general on juggernaut (two point) to count for this; with a breakpoint of one this ment I had to kill his general. Easier said than done when he's on a juggernaut in a unit of chaos knights. My sword masters almost did it with a flank charge after they killed his trolls but they fled and left my mage undefended with my archers and seaguard on the other side dealing (quite effectively) with his warriors. A fun game but ended suddenly, sooner that I would have liked when they charged my mage.

Next thing to add is a noble (with a reaver bow?) and maybe some more seaguard, as well as getting some more games in.

See you next time.

Ahoy sailors!

For the first addition to my high elf army I've gone for 20 Lothren Sea Guard. This is only the start of a much bigger unit I've got planned but twenty is a good start and lets me take full advantage of there ability to fight in 4 ranks. This gives me a few points left to bulk out the swordmasters to 10 for a bit more survivability. To do this I've temporally dropped the shadow warriors as they proved less than effective last time out.

As I started these guy before IoB was launched they are all from the spearmen set with added bows and hand painted seaguard shields (fun to paint but took ages). I've tried to add a bit of variety to the unit with a mix of different poses including a couple with bows taken from the archers and one I particularly like parrying upward as if blocking an arrow.

The new structure of the army has served me better than my 500pt list. Admittedly I lost my first game, against mike's high elves (2 big units of sea guard, a fire mage and a bolt thrower shot me to bits before I could do much. Flame cage really screwed my sword masters) but then I got my first win of tale of gamers against kyles lizardmen. My mage started well shooting down his terradons and using curse of arrow attraction to help the sea guard kill off the skinks in one round. This brought my swordmasters time to sneak round behind the big block of saurus with his scar vet. I deliberately delayed my charge to give my archers, sea guard and mage as much time as possible to shoot but still charged in time to prevent the saurus charging my missile units. Two rounds of combat saw my swordmasters wiped out but took plenty of saurus and the scar vet with them (Swordmaster champions are great in challenges). The remaining saurus fell to missile fire so by the time they charged my sea guard I was able to kill the 3 survivors before they even got to strike.

I like the direction the army is going and I have loads of sea guard still to paint. With that in mind I'm liking the idea of an army from Eataine, the most southerly elven kingdom. Sailing out of Lotheren, the army would have little time to gather forces from too far off so would consist mostly of sea guard with support from other units from Eataine and the neighbouring provinces of Caledor and Saphery.

I'm planning to bulk out the fluff a bit more next time around, as I am the sea guard unit.

A tricky start.

Victory! Is something that has eluded me this month :( I managed to get in two games with my 500pt army, against Tom's lizardmen and Glen's dwarves but lost on both occasions. Tom's army consisted mostly of skinks and a shaman, backed up by a stegadon. I tried to use the shadow warriors to distract the stegadon while my sword masters and archers dealt with the skinks but the skins poisoned weapons caught me out and with a mass of 6's killed all the shadow warriors. My archers managed to avoid being charged by the stegadon but lost the chance to shoot effectively in the process. I was counting on my sword masters to kill the skinks when I got close, but the slipery little buggers kept running out of my charge arch and shooting me with there pesky poison. All very frustrating and I lost.

Game two against glen was closer. My shadow warriors just failed to charge his organ gun from the start and were promptly cut down. The organ gun also managed to finish off the sword masters as they advance because the dwarves dispelled my shield of saphrie. My archers did eventually get revenge on the organ gun and my mage had a good go at trying to kill his thane with fury of khaine but in the end he won on points as the warriors who formed the bulk of his army were unharmed.

So not a great start for me but credit to the other guys they are both more experienced and played very well. Next time I'm planning to add a big block of seaguard as they go with the fluff I'm planning to do for the army (more on that later in my next blog) and some extra swordmasters to make the unit more survivable. Not sure how useful the shadow warriors are going to turn out to be but I'll just have to test them out more.

Tale of gamers, amandum, dum, dum....

I know, I know, I keep chopping and changing what I'm doing here but this should be the last slight change.

I went to start the tale of gamers and was planning to do high elves AND salamanders. I quickly realised, however, that time wouldn't allow me to do two armies well. So I faced a choice, two armies poorly or one army well. GW models are too good to do a rushed paint job on and I've always been one for doing stuff properly so I went for just doing one. As I already had over 2000pts fully painted for the salamanders I realised I really should do the high elves.

This is no bad thing, the elves are fun to paint with plenty of detail and 8^th ed. has made them really potent. So, here we go. Out of the grin darkness of the far future and into the chaotic and magical old world we go.

So to start with I need a legal 500pt army, meaning three units and a character and not exceeding the % points allocation. This posed quite a problem as 500pts is really small for fantasy and particularly high elves. Spent my minimum core on archers then split my other points between the a cheap level one mage, (cos elves need magic) some shadow warriors (cos a unit is cheap) and some sword masters, (cos they rock). That balances the books and should be a capable force with magic, combat and shooting potential.

Here's the list

Mage (High magic)
Silver wand

Talisman of protection

120

12 Archers

132

5 Shadow Warrior

Champion

92

8 Swordmasters

Full Command

Gleaming Pennant

155

As this is only 500pts knocked together to the tight specs in the rule book using only the modles I could get painted in time the only plan is give it a go and have fun. Hopefully more of a plan will develop over time as I get more models painted and get used to fantasy.

Hope to have run-downs on my first battles up soon and will eventually write some fluff for the army, but for now I'll just leave you with pics of my first 500pts

Update

Ok, Ok, I know my first attempt at re-starting my blog last month was a bit of a false start, but I'm going to give it another go. I've been busy the last few months with my high elves and now have over 3000pts built but only about 1000pts painted. The highlights so far has been killing a daemon prince with shooting from archers an seaguard and winning a painting contest on the island of blood launch day with my battle standard bearer conversion (see photo bellow).

But my elves haven't quite provided good blogging material, I've collected them so fast I just wouldn’t have been able to blog on my progress and I'm still learning how to play fantasy so any tactica wouldn't have been much good. Anyway, now I have a new project to blog about. My local GW, colchester, is running a “tale of gamers” campaign to encourage people to build new armies and get them painted up. Before anyone gets too excited I won't be doing a whole new army, I just don't have the time at the moment, not with a full time job and a girlfriend and church and a social life and that annoying need to sleep, eat, wash, do housework ect... What I will be doing is revisiting my salamanders, improving the models I've already done (over 2000pts) with hand painted iconography as well as painting up some of the stuff I haven’t finished yet (look out for a razorback and some assault terminators). I know I need a 500pt fully painted legal army to start with and that I will have to (or get to) play a game at least every two weeks but beyond that is still a mystery but I'll post details when I know them.

I'm looking forward to giving my salamanders a bit of attention and seeing how this campaign is going to develop and I'm planning to get at least one blog up every two weeks. I'll have an army list and more photo's up soon but for now I’ll leave you with my winning high elf BSB.

Triple crown tournament

I'm back!!!!!

I know it's been a while, been soooooo busy, but now I’m back with an update on the tournament and what I've been up to in general.

First game was against Chaos daemons, 3 objectives, pitched battle. He had 2 groups of bloodletters with herald,s one of plaguebarer,s one of daemonetts and two of flammers but worst of all were the two soul grinders. I set up in my normal formation with tyrant, guants, warriors and tyrannofex together and everything in reserve. He started with both bloodletter units (and hearlds) at oppersite ends of his side with his plaguebearers advancing on my objective. The plaguebarers held up my tyrant for a while buying the flamers time to cause trouble. The soul grinders arrived on either side to support the bloodletters and were promptly charged by the 'stealers and ymgarl stealers. The 'grinders were tougher than I expected but at least the stealers held them up for long enough for my trygon to arrive, massacring one of the bloodletter squads and wrecking the grinder on the side that most of the action was happening on. On the other side the hormaguants took out the daemonettes and the t'fex advanced on the other bloodletters and thus contested an objective. By the end of turn 4 my surviving stealers held an objective as did the surviving bloodletters and my gaunts almost had the third except for a flamer locked in combat with my tyrant and refusing to die. Alas, the tournament had started late and so we didn't have time to finish so we had to declare it a draw, but I still maintain that one more turn and I would have crushed the vile warp-spawn.

Next game was a simple capture and control, spear head against ultramarines. I think he was fairly new to the game cos he drop-podded stearnguard behind the t-fex (who promptly charged then and slaughtered the lot) and sicarias and his command squad in front of the tyrant. The only glitch was when his thunderhammer terminators killing the tyrant but the warriors and t-fex avenged him with massed fire. By the end all he had was a epleated tactical squad and a damaged ironclad and I had both objectives.

Final game was against a Nightlords traitor marines with everyone in a rhion excet a vindicator 5 oblitorators. Once again it was capture and control, spearhead and I went for my normal deployment. His inital rhino rush hit my tyrant and ymgarl stealers and all took heavy casulties. My outflank onto his objective found all the marines round the objective in cover too much and there attack faultered while my thrust up the centre was blunted by the oblitoratores fire power. Thankfully,my objective was safe as one brood of stealers had outflanked on the "wrong" side so just sat on the objective. Once again it was the Trygon to the rescue and he charged the chaos marins on the objective for the win.One comic moment was when my ymgarl stealers were preparing to charge the vindicator only for the t-fex to blow it up and kill all the ymgarl in the resulting explosion.

All in all a fun day with three good games against three very different opponents and my nids did well. Three games at a tounament without a loss is nothing to complain about. I think I would have struggled against more mobile opponents but on the whole I'm happy with the list.

Now to consume there biomass.

nom nom nom nom nom nom nom...........

ELF!

Hey guys this ISN'T the run down of how I got on at the tournament, that will follow, this is a quike way to get this picture to adam while keeping the rest of the world informent about what is up next for me. Warhammer fantacy 8th edition is out on the 10th of july and I am finally going to start playing it. The plan is to build a high elf army for it and have some of it ready to play with before it comes out. So with out further delay, here is the first modle for the armt, a sea guard with spear and shield. This is basicaly the colour scheme i'm going with but I do still need to finish the basee

Welcome back. How goes it?

With just a fewhourstill the tournament and I thought I'd give a sneak preview of my list and some (but not all of my tactical idea's with them)

Hive tyrant

heavy venom cannon

lash whip and bone sword

hive commander

adrenal glands

acid blood

paroxysm

leach essence

2 tyrant guard

These guys are the hardcore combat unit in the list, marching up the table creating havoc and causing a big distraction while my stealers do the real work. I have also used then to bait a trap, if my enemy has a unit that wants to get up close to my tyrant (such as jonny's tripple deep striking storm troopers) I plan my tyrant's movement so when the enemy hits him the Ymgarl genestealers will be there to ambush them from hidding, and there is virtually nothing that can deal with both units at once.

8 Ymgarl Geanstealers

Love the special rules these guys have, there deployment is unique and they can charge the turn they arrive. Then when they charge they can mutate to suit the target. +1 to attack, stength or toughness.Toughness is good if you need to stall for half a turn to avoid being shot in the next shooting phase, strength is good where wounding is more important than getting through armour and attack when you really need to rend. I use them to suprise and ambush my opponent, or to support units in trouble.

2X 9 genestealers with a broodlord

I always out flank these guys, yes it may be a bit random but at least one usualy hitshome and kills most of what they get close to. They usualy die, but not untill they kill loads and cause massive disruption. If they are compleatly out of possition they can hold an objective, plus genestealers not moving will confuse people.

14 hormagaunts with toxin sacs

Thanks to hive commander these outflank. They cause more distraction and disruption thanactualt damage, but they can kill light troops thanks to way too many attacks and re-rolls. Don't forget there bounding leap which make them surprisingly fast and can catch people out.

16 termagants

Cheap and cherefull. Hold objectives, soak up casualies, give warriors a cover save, bulk out the army. Do I care if they die, only if they are the only option for holding an objective

4 warriors

Scything talons

deathspitters

One barbed strangler.

These are a jack of all trade, masters of non. They can hold objective, shoot stuff assult and most importantly they give synaps. They usualy stand behind the guants and advance or hold as neccessary to do what every I need doing, usualy in terainand or on objectives.

Tyrannofex.

Rupture cannon

Cluster spines

desicator lavae

He has a strength 10 assult 2 weapon. So he's an anti-tank unit. Nope. I want my opponent to THINK he is there to kill tanks so he will get targeted, where as in reality he is there to soak up fire and only takes out tanks if he gets lucky. He takes a lot orf fire to kill and by the time he is dead the rest of my army will get there, assult and kill. If he stays alive till the end he will find an objective and contest it. Trygon prime with adrenal glands

DO NOT have him deep strike into the midle of the enemy army. He is too scary and only has a 3+ save and will die before he does diddly squat. I put him near a flank of my opponents army androll that flank. This work particularly well if the bulk of the stealers hit the other flank leaving my oponent in a nid sandwitch with no where to run.The other thing he can do is come in to plug a hole in my synaps network. Once he servives the turn he arrives he charges the hardest thing in range and kills it with strength 7 Monsterous creature attacks.

Overall plan

The tyrant, guard, warriors, termaguants and tyrannofex deploy in the centre of the table close together making the most of terrain. The tyrant and the t-fex push forward and get to killing. The guants and warriors either hold or attack depending on the opponent and the mission. Then turn 2, just as my opponent thinks he has the upperhand. BANG! Most of my reserves arrive and smash there targets, disrupting what ever plann opponent has. Most good opponents will have some kind of game plan and this ambush really disrupts that and makes them have to rethink there plan, usualy without the unit(s) they were copunting on having. To finish off the big monster finish the killing and keeping the opponent occupied while the gaunts, warriors and possibly tealers depending on the situation run for objective and go to ground or hide to deny kill points.

This tactic has beening doing the busness in my practice games and I'm now winning more than I loose. Would have liked a few more practice games but I'm reasomably confident of doing reasonably well in the tournament tomorrow. Here's a pic of the whole army and I'll let you know how I get on.

quick update ( TRYGON )

Just a quick update (a much longer one will follow soon) to show where I'm at. It's been a busy month preping for the tournament, I've got another full brood of 'stealers painted including a broodloed but much more exciting is a fully magnetized trygon/trygon prime/mawloc. I've painted all the bits for him to be a trygon prime as that's what I'm running in the tornament and will add the other bits later. It was really tricky to get some of the smaller joints such as the tail magnetized and the jaw was really fidley but eventualy got both of them to snap fit without magnets after some cutting.

The end result is a easy to transport modle and more importantly I effectovely get three modles for the price of one, and at £30 a pop that is worth it.





That all folks. Hope to get some plans for tournament tactics up on thursday night

Tale of 4 gamers. Month 3

It is finished! Not the army, just the tyrannofex. Really chuffed with how he’s turned out, the paint scheme brings out the conversion while hiding the joints and keeping an organic feel. Plus he looks really menacing. Only used him one in a game so far, the game didn’t quite go to plan, I tried to out whit a drop pod marine army by reserving everything. Unfortunately everything arrived too late and it was a bit of an uphill struggle just too pull out a draw. As for the T-fex, well he immobilised and then later destroyed a Vindicator but didn’t have any time to do any more so really the jury is still out on him. Watch this space. Hopefully his toughness 6, 6 wounds, and 2+ save should give my army a much needed bit of resilience.

As for my other games recently, well, that’s why I need some added resilience to my army. I’ve been wiped out twice in the last two games by Adam’s pesky Dark Eldar under the command of Prince Jeremarkus, Archon of the Kabal of the Weeping thorn. The first game (one of the dark eldar missions from the battles book) was rather embracing, I went first and did ok blowing up a raider and getting the part of my force that started on the table into position to strike on turn 2. Alas, turn two was not to be. The murderous scum all disembarked in charge or rapid fire range and proceeded to decimate my army. Killing the gaunts with splinter fire was only the start. The archon and his incubi charged my tyrant and the warriors were charged by wytches. Both of my units under preformed and some bad save throws left me with nothing on the table. Ouch!!!!! The second game was better, my reserves actually arrived but the dark eldar are so fast that they were able to wipe one part of my force before moving on to destroy another. But all is not lost. I did redeem myself with a convincing win over jonny’s guard (Two- nil on objectives and the only models he had left were a medic and cornel shraken), plus I have a plan to deal with Adams dark eldar. Of course, I won’t be putting that up hear just yet cos he WILL read it and WILL come up with a way to deal with it (plus I have no idea if it will actually work).

Overall I’m really pleased with how the army is developing, it’s fun to play, look nice and I’m getting some reasonable result (I haven’t lost at 1000pts to anyone except Adam, though there have been a fair few draws ). There’s still a lot to learn, as with any new army, but I up for the challenges ahead. I started the force by just building what I likes/thought would work but a theme is starting to develop and I plan on expanding on it. I’m building the army to represent the force that attacked Ichar IV, when the many tendrils of hive fleet Kraken converged on this imperial hive world that had previously been the sight of a massive genestealer infestation. The imperium thought the infestation had been dealt with; when Kraken arrived they were proved wrong, very wrong.

So what we have is a powerful tyranid force (hive tyrant, tyrannofex and warriors) that attacks from the expected route, only for a force of genestealers (and possibly other out-flankers) to emerging from unexpected places. So my force fits nicely but to continue the theme I need at least another unit of ‘stealers to go with the other two I’ve already got. So that’s what I’ll be adding next.

I have also got wind of a tournament coming up at the start of June, 1750pts for gamers from Colchester, Chelmsford and South-end stores at warhammer world. I’m planning to bring my nids along; there play style is fun and all that out flanking will catch many people off guard. But for that I need 1750pts of nids and I have under 1500pts. So this month is going to be a big one for painting, as well as the genestealers I’m also going to add the biggest beastie in the codex; a tyrgon prime. He’s hard hitting, fairly resilient and adds to the alternative deployment style of the list but most importantly he gives synapse, and not slow walking synapse from my deployment zone, no, he will pop up right in the heart of the enemy to support my out flankers.

Any way got to go. So much to paint so little time.

Tale of four gamers. Kraken rising

Greetings reader(s). I’m guessing you’re here to see the latest of my conversions, painting and gaming. You have? Excellent! Well read on.

First things first, the tyrannofex is built. I did pretty much everything I said I would in the last blog so I’ve got the 6 legged, hunched over heavily armoured form that the fluff talks about. For the thorax swarm I went for devourers mounted on the front of the thorax near the head, with toxin sacs as ammo feeds. I had to mould some extra ribs onto the front of the thorax both to give extra size and accommodate the thorax swarm. Over all I’m pleased with how he’s turned out, it looks like it should do from the fluff and although it does look a bit carnifexy at first, a second glance will make it clear it is a tyrannofex. I’ve got some WIP shots bellow and will get some painted ones up when it’s done.

As for painting, well the Ymgarl genestealers are pretty much done just need some final work doing on the bases of some of them but I’ve also stuck up some pictures of the finished one. As you see I’ve gone for the more dramatically posed space hulk stealers as the base model to show them emerging from terrain as per there special rule and then given then tentacles in place of mouths. The fluffs shows then morphing different upgrades mid battle so I’ve modelled them with different options such as extended carapace, slashing claws (multiple scything talons on each arm!!!) and tentacle limbs (loads of green stuff) to show this. To further set these blood drinking, genetically unstable killing machines apart I’ve given them blue carapaces as they are not actually part of any known fleet and can also colour shift (if you confused read the fluff). I did the blue with an astronomican gray base coat and then an asurmen blue wash, Simples! They’ve done me proud in recent games emerging from nowhere to kill such things as chaos marines on an objective or inquisitor lord’s retinue with ease.

I’ll talk more about games at the end of the month but for now I’ll leave it as since my last blog I’ve played 4, won 3 (Vs Orks, Chaos and witch hunters) and drawn one (Imperial fist with Kantor, technically drew on objectives, but I was soooooo getting whopped on damage). Can’t really complain out that sort of results.

Got some more games later today hopefully and need to finish that tyrannofex.

Fair ye well.

tyrannofex plan

As those of you who were paying attention last week will remember I said I’d post my plans for a tyrannofex conversion up here soon. Well here we go.

I’m starting with a carnifex and using mostly just that kit to build it with the following list of changes.

-Sitting the sine bank carapace over the regular one to add bulk and show cluster spines.
-Breaking and pinning the rear legs then adding green stuff in the gap to make it more hunched over.
-Mounting a pair of modified stranglethorn cannons on the chest to show a rupture cannon
-Using Scything talons for the middle and front legs
-Bits of extra armour and green stuff in various places for effect.
-Something clever for thorax swarm (TBC)
-Stick it on a large oval base

Have already started some of the build and will have W.I.P. shots up soon.

Tale of 4 gamers Month TWO

So another month down and it’s been an interesting one; cool conversions, Adam changing his army and battle missions providing a whole new tactical challenge. Only finished 4 models this month; 1 warrior, 2 tyrant guard conversions and a broodlord for my unit of ‘stealers. I’ve already talked about my tyrant guard conversions in my last blog so I won’t bore you with the details, but I have put some photo’s of then fully painted below.

As I said Adam has changed his army. For various reasons he’s had to give his orkz a break for a while and has gone for the evil, malicious, cruel (not to mention fast and deadly if played correctly) Dark Eldar. See his blog for more details on that and his plan to torture and enslave his way across the galaxy.

For me this month has been more about gaming than modelling (at least in terms of what is finished enough to put up here). Been using some of my very unfinished Ymgarl genestealers to make my list up to 1000pts and had some very challenging games, particularly with the new battle missions. (Note that I’m not going to go into detail about test games at home that were extensively proxyed) I’ve had a couple of goes at the “infestation mission”, firstly against an imperial fists army lead by Pedro Kanto then against Adams heavily mechanised Dark eldar. The fists stole the initiative and massacre all my 32 gaunts in one turn thanks to his vindicator and sternguard. Thankfully my tyrant stunned his vindicator and my warriors tied up his sternguard long enough for my stealers to show up. Once they were there they chomped through most of his army and then the tyrant guard chased kantor off the table after he killed the tyrant in an assault. Nids one, biomass nil. Against the dark eldar thing didn’t go quite so well. Adams speed caught me out and killed my warriors early on with his archon and incubi. My stealers and tyrant did manage to hit back and kill them but then my tyrant died thanks to two perils of the warp in two turns. Although we technically didn’t finish the game it was clear that he would have won. Infestation is a fun mission but I think at 1000pts the armys (cirtainly my nids) are too small to have the flexability for battle missions. Finally I had a straight up annihilation against Jonny’s guard. A close fought game that thanks to cornel shraken and three squads of deepstriking storm troopers felt like an uphill struggle all the way. But I did manage to pull out a 7 / 7 draw.

What of the future? As I mentioned above I’ve already started work on some converted Ymgarl genestealer using the space hulk stealer models and loads of random bits and green stuff. Time and availability of certain hobby supplied have got the better of me this month, but rest assure that they will be included next time around. But they aren’t the biggest planned conversion for next month. That would be the TYRANNOFEX. Going to convert him out of a carnifex and have a general plan which I may divulge in another blog. Several reasons for including him. Firstly the rupture cannon gives me some much needed ranged anti tank, secondly six wounds 2+ save he will be able to shrug off loads of fire, which he needs to be able to do cos once the rupture cannon starts blowing stuff up he is going to attract a lot of attention, which is a good thing as all that fire bouncing off his armoured shell won’t be directed at more vulnerable parts of my swarm. Thirdly, my army is starting to get themed around the fluff on the battle of ichar IV fluff in the codex which speficaly mentions tyranofexes (along with loads of stealers) so he fits their nicely and finally, he should look awesome.

That all for now. Updates on themeing my army and tyrannofex plans will follow soon.

Conversted Tyrant Guard

Just a quick update on this month tale of 4 gamers project. I’ve been converting some tyrant guard out of tyranid warriors for two reasons, conversions look cool and add loads of character to the army and I need something to keep my hive tyrant alive.

Starting with a standard tyranid warrior as the base for the conversion I first tilted the body further forward to give a sturdier, hunched over appearance and replaced the head with a spare genestealer head from last month’s models. I used the head with the carapace completely covering the eyes because the fluff states that tyrant guard are blind. For the arms I used the warrior scything talons on the front limbs and the rending claws from the monster arms sprue for the second set. I positioned these so the guard are walking on their knuckles like a gorilla. Finally I added loads of armour plates from the hive tyrant, monster arms and biomorphs sprues and made a scything tail from off cuts of warrior head carapaces and armour plates sculpted from green stuff.

I’m still painting them up, but for now enjoy the work in progress photos

Tale of 4 gamers Month ONE

I did it! Finally finished painting that battleforce. Finished the last termagant today in my lunch hour. Over 40 models in a month, made possible thanks to the citadel washes. I highly recommend these for getting nice shading effects for minimal effort. One thing I would say is to make sure you use a wash that is significantly darker than the base coat, eg. baal red works over orange but not over blood red. As I said in my last blog, I really like the cohesive look I’ve achieved so far and was surprised to find I didn’t get at all bored painting all those gaunts. Quite the opposite, I can’t wait to paint more nids.

Managed a few games this Thursday against Adams orkz and the guy whose name I always forget’s necrons. Won the first one (500pts, capture and control vs orkz) with a massacre thank to out flanking stealers coming in, getting a change the turn they arrived and then chomping through most of his army, supported by my tyrant. In the second game (annihilation, dawn of war) the speed of his truck boyz and the fire power of his bikes left my army wiped out before the hormaguants I reserved even got a chance to show up. Finally I beat the necrons in a close seize ground mission (650 points, allowing me to use my warriors). It tuned into a big brawl around one of the objectives between his warriors and necron lord and my tyrant and warriors but when my reserves arrivedthey turned the tide of combat and left him to phase out.
Hive Tyrant

The tactic of giving my tyrant the “Hive commander” upgrade so my reserves get +1 to arrive and my hormaguant brood can out flank is working very nicely, especially when my genestealers support the hormaguants. This is giving me the idea that as my army grows I’m going to build a vanguard themed army with stealers, supported by gaunts, gargoyles and lictors. Weather this is what I will end up doing remains to be seen, but it’s an idea. As for next month, I want to toughen up some of the units I’ve already got, so maybe some tyrant guard and perhaps a broodlord for the ‘stealers.

See you next time and don’t forget to check out the other guys blogs.

My army just one month in

tale of fou gamers part 3: panic!!!

While I wait for the sand on my tyrants base to set and my girlfriend to call me I may as well update the old blog. Just over a week to go and it looks like I may not hit my deadline. I have finished 8 stealers, 6 hormagaunts, 12 termagants and the tyrant. 3 warriors and 5 hormagaunts are in progress and 5 hormagaunts and 4 termagaunts are still to be started. And too make matters worse I’ve run out of my main colour, gryphonne sepia. AAAAHHH.

Panic over. I can buy paint tomorrow and do have some quite evenings this week and my painting is speeding up.

I’m really pleased with how the nids are looking, the scheme has given them a very cohesive look, like they are all one single minded organism and a few scenic bases (most notably the tau battle suit parts on the tyrant) have added some character.

Haven’t had a game with just my nids yet, but on Thursday me and my mate Dan teamed up to make 1500pts to take on a guard army in our local GW. Why I saw three leman russ’ I thought we were going to get pulverised, but Dan’s trygon prime and deathleaper took them down before they did too much damage while my hormagaunts and genestealers ate his gun line. When his valkyire and veterens showed up on turn 4 and killed my tyrant it was too little too late and we scored a crushing victory.

Anyway, back to painting

Tale of four gamers part 2; progress

Two weeks since I accepted the challenge of tale of four gamers, how am I getting on? Not bad but there’s still loads to do. Up till today I had built the whole battleforce and painted 12 gaunts. To get the painting done quickly I’ve chosen a simple but effective colour scheme, based on making the most of the new citadel washes. Working over a white undercoat I started with 2 washes of gryphone sepia, this give me instant shading and highlighting for minimum effort and is all the colour that the fleshy part of the nid’s need. For the carapace I start with blazing orange and then apply 2 or 3 washes of baal red, followed by a wash of devlan mud, this gives a really strong shade effect while keeping bright highlights. I also used baal red in the breaks in the skin to make them stand out, before finishing with a few little details in badmoon yellow, charadon granite, badab black, chaos black and skull white. I’m hoping to have some pics of the finished result with my next blog.

Today my final model for this month showed up in the post, The Hive Tyrant. I’ve spent all evening building him and I have to say it’s the hardest model I’ve ever built. Despite that I’m pleased with how he has turned out and I’ve even managed to have a go at magnetising some of the weapon options. I glued the lash whip and bone sword in the top 2 arm slots and magnetised the bottom pair to have either a heavy venom cannon or a pair of scything talons.

I just so happen to have the next week off work so hoping to make a big inroad into all that painting and maybe get my first game with my nids.

Tale of four gamers, the oposition
Just a brief update on tale of four gamers. Adam and Jonny now have there blogs up and running so take a look, see how my opposition are getting on. Here's the links.

http://jonnyellis.wordpress.com/

http://adamchrimes.wordpress.com/

Not seen Odin for a week now but if he does get a blog up I’ll happily link to it.

Just one final note, Contrary to my last post, Adam is now collecting orkz not chaos, my apologies for this misrepresentation.

Enjoy the other guys blogs and I’ll have an update for you soon

Tale of four gamers, part one

Ok. So long time no blog, but that is all about to change. The other evening at the north hill gaming club in Colchester some of the lads were looking for a fourth person for a “tail of four gamers” type challenge. I jumped at the chance faster than a startled Hormagaunt on crack and signed me and my nids up for the challenge. The other army involved are Odin’s necrons, Adam’s chaos marines and Jonny’s catachan imperial guard.

It quickly became apparent that I had a mountain to climb this month. In the first month we have to paint a whole battle force box set and a metal HQ. That’s 16 Termagants, 16 hormagants, 8 genestealers 3 warriors, 3 ripper bases and a hive tyrant!! In the shortest month of the year!! Not sure if there is going to be a scoring system in place like the recent white dwarf series or not but either way that is a LOT of models. Wish me luck.