Hephesto's Forge

Tutorial - Green Stuff, dynamic posing and storing leftover modelling putty.

2012-01-29T23:45:00.003+01:00

I. DYNAMIC POSING

Converting miniatures has always been one of my favorite elements of the wargaming hobby. There's just something special about getting that perfect pose on a squad leader just right, even something as simple as placing a head at a slightly different angle can already make a world of difference.

Over the years I have spent many an evening test fitting and refitting bits while trying to acquire some dynamic poses. This also means that I've messed my fair share of conversions, forcing me to take things apart again. Which, as any hobbyist will tell you, can be a ordeal when dealing with glue and often suprizingly fragile plastic/white metal bits. One of the tricks I have learned during those conversion-filled nights is using green stuff (and other modelling putties) during assembly.

Click the picture for a closer look at these old Relictor Scouts.

II. USING GREEN STUFF TO ASSEMBLE BITS

Green Stuff, and modelling putties in general, are normally used to fill gaps or for sculpting purposes. It does, however, have another charactertistic that makes it ideal during the assembly of bits that will benefit from prolonged posability - it reacts almost instantly with super glue.

Time for a quick example, below you can see two pieces of plastic card which had glue applied to them, after which a ball of mixed green stuff was placed in between them:

What is going here is that where the Green Stuff comes into contact with the super glue-covered plastic is hardens rapidly (1), while the center keeps it flexible nature till it fully dries (2):

This characteristic allows us to be much more flexible when posing bits, while once dried it will provide just as strong a bond between bits as super glue by itself. So if you want that bit to face the other way, well all that is needed is a quick twist:

So it is pretty simple, mix yourself up some modelling putty and apply super glue (NOT plastic glue) to the two pieces you want to connect. For example, the head and body of a Dark Eldar Warrior:

Next apply a small ball of modelling putty to one part, making certain it really comes into contact with the super glue. The ball of green stuff pictured below is about the right size for a head/neck socket-attachment, for arms and hands I'd suggest using a smaller amount of putty.

Now press the piece unto the other bit, again making certain the ball is connecting with the superglue. Wait for a few seconds, et voila, you have a connection between two pieces that will remain flexible for a while. Depending on how you want to make use of this technique you may want to leave your green stuff to harden a bit more before using it. This will make it more rigid, making it more usable for heavier parts.

This technique also comes in quite handy when using bits from other gaming systems or companies (heads in particular), as these quite often don't provide a perfectly snug fit. For example, I used the same method to attach a different head to this System Troop by Pig Iron (and did some additional clean up on the neck):

You can just as easily use the same technique on arms, hands and various additions to bases. It only takes a simple twist to completely change the pose of a mini, you can easily turn 'battlecry' into 'defensive stance' without the risk of doing damage to the mini:

III. LEFTOVER GREENSTUFF

Everybody who has used green stuff or similar modelling putties has at one time (or in my case each and every time when using it) mixed too much of the stuff, only to see it go to waste as it fully hardens in a couple of hours.

Next time you end up with unused, mixed modelling putty simply store it in the freezer. Though the effect is of limited length, it will greatly slow the hardening effect of your putty. This will give you enough time to put together another mini or two and use that excess putty, effectively expanding the time span for putty use from an hour or two to a a day or two!

Though it may seem like the Green Stuff has hardened in the freezer, simple squeeze it a couple of times between your finger (heating it up in the process) and you'll definitely cut down on wasted putty. I can't garantee though that your family won't look at you strangely when you start storing small, unidentified blobs of green of brown material in the freezer. It may be a good idea to warn them in advance ;-)

So keep it cool people and have fun building those miniatures!

Tale of gamers - armylists & first conversion

2012-01-25T22:04:00.001+01:00

Time to get started on the Tyrant's Legion and under the conditions of the Tale of Gamers I'm partaking in, that means I need a 1500 point army in about six months. My personal goal is to have a force that can be used at 1000 and 1500 points in fun, storydriven games. This also means that my armylist is anything but suitable for competitive play, this is a force ment for converting and fun. Though this doesn't mean they'd be chanceless, the mixture of power armour and IG-level troopers and armour make for a nice challenge to play with and against.

Prefect Commander Rydel, more on him next week!

1000 point list:

HQ - Legion Centurion (power weapon) = 70 points.

HQ - Auxilia Command Squad (meltagun & grenade launcher) = 60 points.

ELITES - Retaliation Squad (8 Space Marines, meltagun, power weapon & rhino) = 200 points.

ELITES - Corpse Taker (4 servitors, power weapon & rhino) = 115 points.

TROOPS - Legion Cohort (2 missile launchers & storm bolter) = 185 points.

TROOPS - Legion Auxilia (23, heavy stubber, frag grenades & bolt pistol) = 104 points.

TROOPS - Legion Auxilia (22, flamer, grenade launcher & frag grenades) = 96 points.

HEAVY SUPPORT - Lemann Russ (heavy bolter sponsons) - 170 points.

This list provides me with tons of room for conversion work (the Auxilia units in particular), a nice mixture of Astral Claw and Badab Auxilia troops, as well as infantry and vehicles and also suit well with the theme of the full 1500 point list below.

Upgrade to 1500 points:

HQ - Centurion replaced by Carnac Commodus = +35 points.

TROOPS - Auxilia Armsmen Cadre (12, meltagun, missile launcher team, meltabombs & carapace armour) = 115 points.

FAST ATTACK - Maelstrom Arvus Lighter (2 twin-linked heavy stubbers) = 100 points.

HEAVY SUPPORT - Leman Russ Annihilator (heavy bolter sponsons) = 150 points.

HEAVY SUPPORT - Thunderfire Cannon = 100 points.

At 1500 points a Tyrant's Legion force has to take a mandatory Centurion, representing Huron's tactic of deploying champions to warzones as generals to keep the Auxilia troops in check. After some bitsbox searching, combined with my wishlist units (Arvus and Thunderfire Cannon) I was left with exactly 35 points. So, naturally, I have to include Carnac Commodus in the list, he's one of the extra characters Forge World released (link).

Commodus is also a rather nasty piece of work, as Arch Centurion he was in charge of the secret operations of Saphrias from where the Corpsetakers (perversions of the Apothecary tasked with harvesting geneseed from loyalist Space Marines) operated. Which is where the theme of the big list comes from:

"Defensive Badab battles prior to the fall of Saphrias, in which the Astral Claws throw their defensive assets at the loyalists (aka use the Auxilia as a human shield). Naturally the true purpose of this tactic is to draw more Space Marines into the fray only to strike back with a powerful counter-attack intent on inflicting maximum damage at as low return casualties for the Astral Claws......while harvesting even more geneseed for Legion expansion."

In essence this force emphasizes Huron's tactic of drawing out the conflict, hoping he could isolate and outlast the Loyalist forces set against him. Naturally things don't end well for Commodus, in fact he finds his brutal demise in the incident known as the Red Hour. Which not only costs the Astral Claws their operations on Saphrias, much of the harvested geneseed stored there, but also their alliance with the Executioners!

First Conversions:

That's enough about armylists and themes, time for the first unit - the Auxilia Armsmen Cadre. These guys are pretty much the only well trained and potentially well equipped Auxilia troops available to the Tyrant and the perfect opportunity to final use that batch of Pig Iron system troopers (link) I've had for ages. A quick head swap an added lasgun barrel and voila, the closest thing a Tyrant's Legion player will to an elite Auxilia trooper:

The real building fun with the squad definite came from the special weapon - the missile launcher team and the meltagun. I'm particular happy with the feel of the latter, so the other two meltaguns in the army will get a similar look. Meltaguns are nice, but an industrial melta cutter is just a little cooler:

The actual work on the miniatures was minor, the slab on which the come had to be cut of while the new heads were easily attached using some green stuff for added posability and some quick finishing once fully dry. I should have time this weekend to put up a quick tutorial on this as well, so stay tuned for some quick and easy sculpting putty tricks!

And that does it for today's update, though this weekend there will be another update on some of the other units. Including how I plan to tackle to Corpsetaker and his servitors, hopefully the first painted Armsmen and a quick tutorial on how to use green stuff to help pose your miniatures.

Tale of Gamers - introduction

2012-01-21T22:19:00.008+01:00

Starting from next week, I'll be working on my own project for the Astronomican forums' Tale of Gamers. Along with ten others I'll be working on building up a 1500 points, 40K army in only six months time, which will also mean there will be a weekly project update and a monthly progres overview (both for myself and the other hobbyists involved).

It is particularly fun to seem that there are a lot people joining in on the fun for very different reasons. Some just to start a new force, others will use the Tale to finish an already running project, for me personally it will be an extra motivator as well as a chance to combine a ton of smaller, old projects into something new and useful.

I - THE PROJECT

For my 1500 point project I will be going with the Tyrant's Legion, an armylist included in Forge World's Imperial Armour 9.1. This list provides the gamer with a rather interesting combination of Space Marine, Guard and unique units to play around with. While normally the Space Marines are seen as a surgical knife, striking with great purpose and precision, the Astral Claws of the Tyrant's Legion are different though. Under the ruse of training duty, the Tyrant hid large Space Marine units among the Auxilia troops of the Badab system. When, eventually the Badab war started nearly every warzone not only included large number of militia, but also fully functional Space Marine cohorts who were more than willing to use the auxilia forces as a human shield.

II - WHY THE TYRANT'S LEGION?

The force has a very strong theme and a lot of units that are challenging to build and use. I've had a soft spot for the Badab War ever since I first read about it and Forge World did a fantastic job on both books discussing the conflict. The Astral Claws and Lufgt Huron in particular have always intrigued me, though certainly renegade they did always differentiate themselves from the pure evil of the Chaos Space Marines. In fact, the first book really discussed in great detail the intricasies and difficulties the chapter dealt with, both when dealing with neigbouring greed-driven, loyalist systems and the vile Maelstrom they were intended to defend and/or conquer...................eventually though, they would become nothing more than cruel taskmasters and piratical raiders. They are certainly the bad guys, but their struggle has something rather tragic about it.

Secondly, the armylist in question has a very nice mixture of elite units (Astral Claw Space Marines) and the rather unlucky, conscripted souls that got stuck in the middle of the Badab conflict (remainder of local troops and en mass conscripted workers and civilians). Tons of room for both uniform heraldry, conversion work, as well as plenty of opportunity for future expansions. The Renegade Marauder entry in the Elite section in particular is bound to get my creative juices flowing before the project comes to an end. And there's always the big guy himself - Lufgt Huron!

Finally, this project will allow me to do something useful with a range of old & unfinished hobby projects. These include:
- scratchbuild Thunderfire Cannon, that needs paint and a new Techmarine
- series of unfinished servitors
- various Pig Iron miniature conversions

III - THE GOAL

The overall goal for all participants is to build a 1500 point army, personally though I'm going for a 1000 point list that can be expanded to 1500 points. At 1000 points it will give me a nice, easily playable force should I get the chance for a game or two, while the expansion to 1500 will lead to the inclusion of a named character and some extra fun stuff (including the Thunderfire Cannon).

IV - THE GOODIES

Naturally a new projects warrants some new purchases, so over the next couple of months there will be some Forge World and Pig Iron bits and units passing by. Speaking of which, the next update will focus on the armylist as well as the first unit - Auxilia Armsmen Cadre. Like many of the other regulars in the force I will be using Max Mini sculpts as a starting point, so the Master at Arms below will be getting plenty of company very soon!

Thanks everybody for reading and hope to bug you all on a regular basis with this project ;-)

Sweet Horus it is good to finally get some time off!

2012-01-18T23:10:00.003+01:00

It has been a couple of stressful weeks with tons of work, deadlines and overtime, but that is all about to come to an end. Come next week I will have regular free time, each week and nearly every weekend till the summer. Finally there will be some time again for regular hobby antics, which means I'd better get some goals sorted for 2012. Sure it is still just a hobby, but there's nothing wrong with set oneself some challenges and goals! So what do I want to achieve in 2012:

1 - Astronomican Tale of Gamers.

Nothing motivates better than talent and inspiration and these are two ingredients that are never far away when a Tale of Gamers get started. A Tale of Gamers comes down to a group of hobbyists starting a new project while chronicaling your project over a fixed period of time.

Recently the recruitment for a new round was started over at the Astronomican Forums (link), which just happend to coincide with me reaing up on the Badab War and Forge World's books on this topic. I've had a soft spot for many of the chapters involved in this conflict, the first volume also contains an armylist to represent the troops available to Lugft Huron of the Astral Claws.

Without giving away too much just yet, I've found this armylist to contain units for almost a dozen of my old, unfinished & fun projects and minis. As such it fits in perfectly with the more 'fun, rather than competitive'-approach I've decided to adopt for this year. Over the course of the coming six months there will be regular updates on the Astro Tale of Games, which will include such things as various Pig Iron Miniatures conversions, the dispicable Corpse Taker and, just because I can, an Arvus Lighter.

Oh very well then, one quick sneak peek the first unit for the army - the Auxilia Armsmen Cadre (click image for a bigger version):

2. - Dreadfleet.

My copy of Dreadfleet still needs to be taken beyond the level of testgaming and those wonderful miniatures are just begging for paint. So this year I want to really get stuck into the ruleset and get some painting guides, custom rules and other goodies written up. Which brings me to an overall blog goal:

3 - More tutorials and general useful stuff.

Though I am hardly the most talented hobbyist out there, I do get a couple of decent ideas every now and then. New projects and minis often lead to new ideas and realizations, which I will be more than happy to share with my fellow bloggers. Not in the least the 'Lesser known miniatures ranges and companies'-list, which certainly in due for an update.

Seems simple enough right ;-)

End of the year post....time sure does fly!

2011-12-30T14:34:00.000+01:00

First off, hope everybody had a great Christmas and will be having an even better New Year. I've been having plenty of fun with tons of cocktail shrimps, a fair share of champagne and general holiday wackiness.

Still, yet another year has nearly passed and I haven't much to show for it hobbywise. In between work, studying and trying to piece together some usable army materials I seem to have build, yet not painted a lot of materials. The number of games I got in has also been staggeringly low, which together with another interest post by Ron over at From the Warp (link) got me thinking about my hobby antics.........does the hobby still mean to same to me?

In the post I'm referring to, Ron discusses how he's gradually been loosing touch with the game. Slow, but surely difting further and further away from being a gamer and closer towards being a hobbyist and painter. This is a development that has also been happening to me, also gradually, over the last 2-3 years. Back in the day I was an avid Magic, Mage Knight and Warhammer gamer, shifting between periods of frantic gaming and hobbying on a regular basis. Yet, over the years things have indeed changed: the old crew of my fellow wargaming misfits have drifted apart both hobby- and geography-wise, my free time has being ever increasingly erratic and my hobby focus has more and more focused from 'battlefield potential' to 'coolness factor'.

Recently, as a result of my codex Necron review, I also got to have a chat with Pat from the 11th Compnay Podcast (link), which resulted in a rather nice conversation and deeper insight into the inner workings of inter-continental phone calls ;-)
We talked a little bit of shop about w40K wargaming here compaired to the US, as well as my thoughts on the Necrons. Pat also asked me about my blog and what I hoped to do with it, to which I replied with something along the lines of 'logging my current hobby projects, armies and sharing whatever helpful ideas I come up with'. For some reason this question has stuck with me ever since and has got me thinking about 'the hobby'. I know what I want to do with my blog, yet it seems I am far from certain what part of the hobby I want to focus on.

Generally I've found that I both enjoy the building and painting, as well as the hobby in general more when I shift away from trying to build a large force. I have enough stress in my work life, don't want to mix it with my hobby antics. For example I did a rather (in my opinion) nifty Chaos Spawn conversion a few months back, but never got around to finishing it due to the utter pointlessness and unlikelihood of it ever seeing use. That mini has been a thorn in my side for months now, with me even moving it out of sight. Seem rather silly, right? Given that I don't really play anymore, why wouldn't I just be able to just roll with a cool idea, colourscheme of fluffy concept?

If the bloggers on blogspot have taught me one thing then it is that there are a ton of different ways to approach and participated in the wargaming hobby and community. Why linger on the past, why not simply make a little shift a focus and have some fun? I dont really game anymore, so why should such concepts as a force organisation chart and squad organization even influence my hobby time? So, for the coming couple of months I'm going to try a different approach to the hobby - no army focus, no rules, just fun, cool stuff.

This will give me a chance to turn up the wacky-level and do a search in my miscellaneuos miniature pile. Cue pointless, yet fun miniatures and boy, oh boy, do I have a ton of those.

Time will tell how this works out, but I do feel that a change of perspective and pace will do my hobbying good. Besides, I'll be graduating for the third time this coming new year and going on a jobhunt, so a more relaxed approach to my hobby time seems like a good idea.

Well, it's not all pointless miniatures of course. There's still another batch of Vespids I need/want to finish for a friend and I'll certainyl keep the reviews coming. It is a blog and not a diary afterall.

And that rounds up 2011 for me, thanks to everybody for reading, sharing your own hobby hobby ups and downs these last 12 months and have yourselves a:

Cryptek & first real Finecast review

2011-12-03T22:06:00.005+01:00

Time for that promised Cryptek / Finecast review, which is slightly overdue as a result of father Nurgle's blessing. That's right, Ive been stuck in bed for 2,5 days coughing out my lungs.

I- THE MODEL

The Crypteks are the technological elite of the Necrons, effectively combining technician and psyker type of units from other races into a single, cheap package. By cheap I of course mean pointwise, because 9,50 pounds certainly cannot be considered a cheap miniature. In fact if you happen to have a set of Deathmark heads spare (you'll have five left over per box of Immortals), you'd be better of getting a Lychguard/Praetorians boxed set in you need two or more of them. For 20,50 you'll have all the bits you'll ever need to make five rather unique Crypteks as well as a ton of cool leftovers.

Back to the actual miniature, which comes in seven parts:
- standard base,
- the body & left arm,
- left hand & staff,
- tail segment of the armour,
- right arm with wristweapon (the GW promo pic showcases this version),
- alternative normal arm,
- and one rather cool-looking head .

II - THE GOOD

Let me get started with the good stuff, the sculpt has some great detailing and design. I really like how the Cryptek looks like an individual amongst a legion of automatons, yet still fits in perfectly. The egyptian-styled headpiece, combine with the nigh insectoid back carapace make for one mighty fine miniature.

The only real issue I have with the design is that you're pretty much stuck with the same pose. Both the neckjoint and the right arm pretty much force you to keep the same posture, nothing a bit of cutting and filing won't fix of course. Still given how adaptable all the plastic kits are, it is a bit disappointing that the GW design team doesn't seem to follow the same approach when it comes to Finecast miniatures.

III - THE BAD & THE UGLY

Nutter as I am I ordered two Crypteks, figuring it would give me a nice chance to both review the Finecast material and convert one up. So I ended up opening two blisters with two Cryptek, at which point something already grabbed my attention - the sprues appeared to be different.

The mold channels seem to be different on both sprues, something which really struck me as odd. With, in essence different molds, you also get different problems and more complex quality control. Which brings me to my next point - where in Horus' name is the quality control department - there's a full arm missing!

Now there are several other small problems with these miniatures, more on those further below, but a complete part missing is just unforgiveable in my book. Not only is it missng, but the actual channels leading to the part are nowhere to be seen either. This leads me to believe we may be looking at a clogged up mold, again a quality check issue.

In addition the sprues have much of the same problems I've been reading about all over the web, first off bubbles:

Bubbles on the finer detailing, in my case fingers on pretty much every hand.

Warped stuff:

Thin parts of the cast - in this case a pretty much hollow foot and missing heel:

Missing parts, usually sharp, little details:

Now most of the bubbles are easy enough to fix with a little bit of Green Stuff, the warped staff can be corrected, yet the missing fingers in the last picture are a different matter. These fingers appear to have been snapped off clean, there certainly isn't a bubble to be found there. Now granted the finger is at a very sharp angle compaired to the rest of the bits on the sprue. Still, it does let me wonder how they actually remove the sprue from its cast.

IV - CONCLUSION

I am rather torn about this purchase, on the one hand I love the miniature and sculpt. But at the same time, the actual bits that come out of the blister leave quite a bit to desire. The term Crapcast is definitely a too strong to use here. It is still an excellent miniature, yet GW does really disappoint in the quality control department.

Problems like bubbles and warping are mostly solvable, though at the cost of a Finecast miniature we shouldn't have to be going through that part of the assembly. Completely missing parts is a different matter though! There is no excuse, regardless of a product's cost, for lacking quality control.

I saw a box of Dark Eldar Incubi a friend had ordered today as well and lets just say that my Crypteks are picture perfect in comparisson. His Urien Rakarth was virtually perfect though (something I am certain Corvus would love to hear is actually possible). So what does this mean for my future Finecast purchases, well unless GW comes out with a mini I really like and really want to spend an age on preparing I wouldn't be going near this stuff again any time soon. Not until GW can garantee me they will provide a consistenly decent product. If I wanted to gamble I'd head down the road to the nearest casino.....................................colour me disappointed.

The actual Finecast material is going to take a bit more testing to see how it really performs, so more on that in a future post.

.....more Necron madness?

2011-11-29T02:39:00.003+01:00

G'evening everybody, hope you are all having a good week, both in real life and on the tabletop!

In the coming three weeks there's a fair chance my posting will be somewhat irregular, which is kind of a funny statement given that most of my time will the consumed by studying for several statistics exams (advanced multivarate and multi-level analysis for those interested). Regardless, I do plan to get at least one substancial post in per week. Following the current wargaming bandwagon, which in book isn't a bad word per se, I might as well throw some more Necron love unto the web.

So, later this week I'll be unpacking, examining and testing my first real Finecast mini - the rather gorgeous Cryptek. This mini has been calling to me since the first day it appeared online and will provide an excellent testcase for a Finecast review. Now I have gotten my hands on a few other Finecast minis since the material's release, but I have yet to take one from blister to finished product. Interesting times ahead, not in the least since most of the Finecast minis come with an extensive 'resin' sprue that offers great material for testing purposes. Though the outer sprue frame seems to be denser than the actual miniature, it will help to test how well Finecast resin holds up after a paint strip.

As of right now I'm keeping an open mind, though after examining the basic sprue for the Cryptek (and other minis at my semi-local store) I cannot help but feel that working with Finecast miniatures and bits is certainly one step up from your basic plastic sprue hobby work. Definitely not a problem for somebody who has been dabbling with miniatures for two decades like myself, but for starting gamers I can imagine it will be a challenge. More on this later in the week.

Necron Codex review - part IV

2011-11-25T23:38:00.005+01:00

And finally we come to the final, fourth part of my Necron Codex review. So far we've gone through:

- Part I - Ten things to keep in mind when facing Necrons, HQ & Special Characters (link);
- Part II - Troops, Dedicated Transports & Elites (link);
- Part III - Fast Attack & Heavy Support (link).

So that just leaves us with rule problems and my final thoughts on the codex for Part IV.

All pictures copyright by Games Workshop

THE GREY AREAS

With every new codex come new questions, combos and rules that don’t make perfect sense. Below I’ll finish up this write-up with some of my lingering questions on rules that aren’t completely clear to me. From the time I’ve spent online with other Astro members and fellow bloggers I’ve (luckily) seen that most of these issues aren’t unique to me, so it looks like I’m not entirely crazy just yet! We’re mostly talking small questions here and there, as always it remains difficult to write clear, coherent rules.

A. Royal Court selection and detachment:
First, if you take multiple Courts (if you have two Overlords and/or Overlord level Special Characters), can you only still take one of each Cryptek wargear only once? In other words if you have two Overlord type of leaders, you can take two Royal Court, but does that also mean that you can take, for example, two Veils of Darkness (one in each Court)?

Secondly, you can detach Royal Court members to certain units (Warriors, Immortals, Lychguard or Deathmarks), though only a single Court member can join each unit. What happens if you managed to squeeze two Royal Courts into an army list, can each unit still only have a single Royal Court member attached to them or can you only add one per Royal Court?

B. Deathmarks:
As already discussed, their reactive Deep Striking rules don’t make much sense in the current rule set, though perhaps this will be cleared up next year when the next edition hits us.

Secondly, you can add a Lord or a Cryptek from a Royal Court to the unit, but do these added lieutenants also benefit from the Deathmarks’ special rules (Deep Strike, Ethereal Interception & Hunters from Hyperspace). Technically we should follow their profiles & rules, which would lead to a no and would prevent the Deathmark unit from being mobile and reactive. This could still be interesting though, if you have the points you could get a mobile Sniper & assassin unit consisting of 5-10 Deathmarks and a Harbinger of Despair Cryptek with a Veil or Darkness.

C. Triarch Stalker Particle Shredder & Targetting Array:
Units hit by the Triarch Stalker are easier to hit for fellow Necron units in the same Shooting Phase. However, the Particle Shredder is a Template weapon (Large Blast) thus it can potentially hit multiple units. Does this also mean that multiple units hit by the same weapon can be affected by the Targeting Relay rule?

D. Monolith Eternity Gate:
There has already been an errata for the Spanish codex, which corrected two typos but also changed the rules for the Dimension Corridor function to also being able to remove a Necron unit locked in close combat. If this is correct, it would make the Monolith quite a bit more helpful. Time will tell if this is actually the case or if this is another typo in the errata.

Secondly I would personally like to see a more clearly phrased portion of text for the Portal of Exile rule. This because right now, one could interpret the rule so that even units locked in combat within D6” of the Portal could get sucked in.

E. Doom Scythe Death Ray
Again a matter of clearer writing, I’ve already seen people go absolutely wild online twisting and bending the wording to make the number of hits a unit suffers equal to all models hit by the Death Ray, rather than the number of models hit in that unit. So not really a problem here, it could have been written a lot better though.

F. Lychguard Dispersion Shields:
These things can bounce incoming enemy fire back at other enemy units within 6” though templates and blasts may not be repositioned. What about special rules and abilities associated with certain weapons (stuff like Melta), do these carry over after bouncing?

G. Anrakyr the Traveller:
He can take charge of an enemy vehicle unit, firing it immediately, which using some larger templates could potentially lead to the vehicle hitting itself. Silly I know, but again something I’ve seen people suggest online. If possible, the Guard had better keep him away from their Baneblade regiments!

H. Trazyn the Infinite’s gear
Trazyn has both Mindshackle Scrabs and the Empathic Obliterator. The first is capable of taking control of an enemy in the combat and letting him/her/it attack their own side using their own gear and rules. The Obliterator send s psychic shockwave through an enemy unit if Trazyn kills a model, models of the exact same name have a chance to get friend as well (beware Orc boyz!). I know it was most likely not intended for these two pieces of gear to work together, but as of right now the rules would allow it. The fluff clearly states it comes down to the actual weapon killing somebody, but the rules broaden this to Trazyn killing one or more models in close combat. Give that kills through wargear still do count as kills, we have a potential issue.

I. Necron or Necron action…..also know as the sound of scraping metal:

How does Entrophic Strike work against Necrons, if an enemy Necron uses Resurrection Protocols do they finish out the rest of the game without an armour save?

-CLOSING THOUGHTS-

The Necron codex had me a bit stumped at first. Like many people I got very excited about all the excellent goodies and new tricks in there, however after having letting things sink in for two weeks I’ve come to several conclusions. First off, pretty much any Necron army out there is going to dig heavily into the codex’ Fast Attack section. Between the close combat prowness of the Wraiths, the Entrophic Strike of Canoptek Swarms and the rare anti-tank firepower provided by the pricy (Heavy) Destroyers there is a lot of good unit units in there, something, which unfortunately cannot be said for most other sections of the book.

Both the Elites and Heavy Support sections have a selection of units that will never see use in a competitive, tournament setting. What really strikes me about the Necron codex is that it has so many units that have both an extremely clear advantage and disadvantage. As such, there are a lot of units that have a ton of potential, but that also introduce randomness (Illuminor Szeras), don’t really fit into the playstyle of the army (Triarch Praetorians) or can be neutralized fairly simple for their high pointcost (Triarch Stalker, Lyche Guard & Doomsday Ark). Combined these factors will drive most competitive armybuilds into a combination of a heavy phalanx of Troops and massive Fast Attack choices, supported by the odd Heavy Support and Elites choice, while being led by named, rather than generic, characters (also see the Necron Lord section in Part I).

Internally we are presented with a fun codex that has multiple solutions for many of the common gaming problems out there. However, it is certainly an army with a big learning curve. In between units that need to work in unison and the precarious balance between the average short ranged anti-infantry, but not anti-armour weaponry and the Necrons’ disadvantage in close combat, I doubt we will see them fair very well against the current top armies. Yes, the new weapon types and messing with Night Fighting is going to take a few game to get used to, but the army simply doesn’t have as many solid, or modifiable units as many of its competitors.

In fact, I get the feeling that multiple people worked on many loose ideas for this codex and Matthew Ward simply put them all together. There's a lot of gimmicky stuff in the codex; rules, units and combos that on paper seem(ed) like fun, but don't really come into their own when taking the entire Necron force into account. Don't get me wrong now, I really like the new codex and tools we get to play with. As a casual gamer I like taking the long road trying out unusual units and wargear while playing with a very themed forces. However, when looking at the metagame (I know, dirty word in the mouth of a casual gamer) I doubt the new Necrons will fair very well against the many close combat forces out there. Nevermind the shiny, seemingly invincible Grey Knights!

And that rounds up this review, I hope it was of use to my fellow bloggers out there and I look forward to seeing how the new Necrons will fare in the coming months!
Now to decide whether or not I'll be picking up a few more Necron minis, perhaps even for use in a new Killzone team (new rules should be up some on Galaxy in Flames - link)?

Necron Codex review - part III

2011-11-25T14:17:00.002+01:00

And here we go again people, time for part three of the review. So lets get stuck right back in there where we left off, with:

- FAST ATTACK -

All pictures copyright by Games Workshop

----Canoptek Wraiths----
Very mobile, jump infantry with 3 Rending attacks and a 3+ invulnerable save for starters, these guys are the exception to the ‘Necrons can’t fight’-rule. Add in the ability to reduce enemy Initiative to 1 for 10 points and things get interesting. The Wraith also has options for a short ranged pistol weapon and the rather odd Transdimensional Beamer. I for one really don’t see any use for this last option, a Heavy, random shot that hits a single enemy and forces a Strength test simply doesn’t cut it in my book…..especially at 15 points.

----Canoptek Swarms----
Cheap, fast, 3 wounds, 4 attacks and Entropic Strike…….nuff said really. These beasties will be included in virtually all Necron armies, even if only because they are one of the few cheap options in the book. Unless your opponent has a lot of dedicated blast and template weapons he/she is going to dedicate a lot of attention to getting rid of these guys if they show up in large numbers. (which is where Canoptek Spyders come in really handy)!

----Tomb Blades----
Another, short-ranged, anti-infantry unit, something this codex has an abundance off. If it wasn’t for so many other good options in other slots and big competition of other Fast Attack units I’d be all over these guys! High durability combined with reliable firepower and the ability to make it even tougher to be taken down is something we rarely see on a 20 poi nt jetbike-type unit. I’m pretty certain that once the minis hit us (and if they follow the artwork) a lot of players will go out of their way to find a use for them. In all honesty if it would come down to, for example, a Lycheguard or Praetorians unit of 200 points I would much more prefer to take one or two groups of Tomb Blades.

----Necron Destroyers & Heavy Destroyers----
Ouch, these guys went down hard and got kicked while they were down. First off all they’re no longer Jetbikes and having Preferred Enemy on a 1 Attack, Initiative 2 profile has zero benefit. I get it makes sense for a fluff point of view, but it has no practical use what so ever. The basic Destroyer is now a 40 point Jump Infantry with BS 4 that can breach power armour (AP3), though at +20 points they can be upgraded to Heavy Destroyers. These guys get a Heavy Gauss Cannon, which is one of the rare 24”+ ranged weapons. They’re decent at what they’re supposed to do, but they are simply way too expensive for reliably use. Especially since you can only upgrade three Destroyers to Heavy Destroyers in a unit, so you’re looking at 180 points with 2/3 chance of firing three hitting anti-tank shots.

- HEAVY SUPPORT -

----Doomsday Ark----
The single, long-ranged piece of weaponry in the entire Necron arsenal and at 72”, Strength 9, AP 1 and large blast this thing is to be rightfully feared. Its Doomsday Cannon can be fired at this high strength only if the Ark remains stationary, any movement and you get a 2/3 range reduction and lower damage output. As an added bonus this Ark also has two Gauss Flayer Arrays and has Quantum Shielding to keep it safe from those pesky Missile La unchers. However the Ark needs to remain stationary for it to be at its most effective, which means this 175 point model will need a support group to prevent outflanking enemies from neutralizing it early on. With correct placement and with buffer units around it, its range of weaponry will do considerable damage though I can’t help but feel that it is a tad on the expensive cost at 175 points.

----Annihilation Barge----
I really like the Annihilation Barge, at 90 points you get a Tesla-wielding skimmer with Quantum Shielding that is the nightmare of footslogging middle to low armour infantry. A single pass by on an Ork mob will do a ton of damage by itself, but the twin-linked Tesla Destructor can arc to nearby units. I really expect to see quite a few sacrificial units of Flayers and Deathmarks getting chewed up by Orks only to have an Annihilation Barge swoop in next turn, blasting them into oblivion. You also get the option to switch out the secondary weapon for a Gauss Cannon, whose AP 3 can help tip the scale against power armour units. Do you need the Barge, well not really as the list has tons of infantry-stopping power already. On the other hand, if you have the 90 points, the free Heavy Support slot or want to use the Lord bits for other purposes you do get a very effective vehicle with more than decent staying power at only 90 points!

----Necron Monolith----
The Monolith, much like Destroyers, has been seriously hit by the nerfhammer. Though now 35 points cheaper it has lost a lot of durability now that Living Metal no longer helps against armour penetration bonus weapons like Melta. The upside though is that the Monolith’s weaponry has been made less random, has greater reach (though still only 24”) and has a nice AP3 Large Blast weapon. Not too bad given you can potentially hit five different targets and still suck a surviving unit into the Portal of Exile, shame it is even more mid ranged, anti -infantry fire. The Necron list is pretty much filled to brim with this already, luckily the Monolith has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

Enter the Eternity Gate – that can both pull units from elsewhere on the battlefield to its position and can suck in enemy units. Both nice abilities, but the Monolith quite simply isn’t fast enough to be of much use for army redeployment purposes. I think this big, iconic block of a vehicle will be mostly used as a suicide unit, dropped into enemy lines for a wave of decent shooting, inserting some Cryptek nastiness and maybe a quick suck of its portal before it gets blow into oblivion. To get the most out of this vehicle you either needs to Deep Strike bringing it within reach of the tons of anti-armour weapons out there. Or you need to keep it in Reserve l ong enough to place it somewhere useful where it can redeploy friendly Necrons, turning it into a fallback position with some serious firepower. To truly use it for this purpose you will need multiple ones and that gets mighty expensive.

----Doom Scythe----
This more shooty version of the Doom Scythe is one of the more interest new entries in this codex for me. Not only am I really looking forward to seeing how the model will turn out, it is also a very cool mixture of vulnerable armour and devastating firepower. Like the Night Scythe is also has a twin-linked Tesla Destructor, can move at cruising speed while stil l being able to fire all weapons and can flat out up to 36”. It really gets interesting when we come of the main weapon though – the Death Ray. This doomsday type of weapon only has a range of 12”, but it works quite differently from your everyday 40K weapon. You nominate a point within 12”, a second point within 3D6” of the first and draw a straight line between them. Every unit, friendly or not, will suffer a number of Strength 10, AP1 hits per unit equal to the number of models hit in that unit (read: underneath the Death Ray’s path of destruction). Note though that if you use the Death Ray, you can only fire the twin-linked Tesla Destructor at one of the units hit by the Death Ray. So though the Doom Scythe is a tad fragile with only AV11 all round, it has a lot of maneuverability and provides the Necron Player with a weapon that:
- Can do a ton of damage to infantry, ranging from light to very he avy armoured;
- Can hit multiple units with a single shot high power shot, which can potentially take down an infantry unit and their Dedicated transport in a single fell swoop;
- And is also very reliable at hitting and damaging tanks, which combined with the unique line of effect rules can lead to multiple pieces of vehicular armour tak ing fire in a single turn.

For me the Doom Scythe is the exception to many of the other units in the codex. Yes it has a somewhat random damage output due to the 3-18 inch Death Ray damage line, is good at taking out infantry, but at the same time it is also capable of dealing with heavy armour , is a self-reliant unit and allows the Necron player to take the initiative rather than responding to their opponent’s choices. One of the few units that can stand on its own!

----Canoptek Spyder----
Sigh, as a Tyranid player I feel utterly screwed over. Our Carnifex went to hell in a handbasket in the last codex, while the Spyder gets the treatment we should have gotten. That said, the Spyder is a great addition to any Necron army. For only 50 points you get a durable Monstrous Creature that can spawn Canoptek Swarms and has access to three extra upgrades. First we have the Fabricator Claw Array that gives the Spyder the ability the repair vehicles, something which both Meks and Techmarines hardly get to do either. Not that much used of all that useful if you ask me. The Gloom Prism is something of a mixed bag as well. It is indeed the sole piece of Psyker defense in the codex but is only has a range of 3”. Finally we have a twin-linked Particle Beamer, which is yet another short-ranged, anti-infantry weapon. It is a decent weapon, but quite frankly you should already have plenty of this type of weaponry in the army. It is better to keep the Spyders cheap so you can buy more of them and pump out multiple Swarms each turn. And, to be frank, at 50 points the Spyder is an utter steal.

And that does it for all the units in the codex, later today I'll be rounding off this review with some closing thoughts and some of the rules issues I've come across.

Check back tonight for the final part of this review, which will focus on the overall army and some of the rules problems I've ran across while browsing the codex

Necron Codex revi......

2011-11-24T00:11:00.004+01:00

I'm afraid I'm going to need some Resurrection Protocols myself as I haven't had a chance to post up the next part of the codex review due to a ton of work and study deadlines. Fear not, the remaining two posts will go online this friday instead!

Slightly off topic, those who have been enjoying Killzone had better keep an eye on Galaxy in Flames. James and Brian have been working hard to update the fun skirmish Killzone rules and if all goes well the newest version should be online this coming friday as well. I for one am rather excited to see what little tweaks they've implemented, as well as the FAQs for the Grey Knights, Sisters of Battle and Necrons. Heck, looks like I may be able to do something cool afterall with that Lychguard / Praetorian box I bought myself!

And while we're on the topic of Killzone, I've been piecing together some old, random bits to make some equally random minis that I'm certain will find their way into a future Killzone team. First up we have a rather tall, alien mercenary I'll also be painting up as a count as Telion for a contest on Astronomican.

The body is a Reaper Intergalactic Ranger (link), while several 40K bits have been added here and there. Unfortunately I have no idea where the head is from, both itself and the body it came with were a gift from a friend years ago and had no company symbol or marking on them anywhere.
Secondly there is this rather slithery fellow, build using a GW necromancer, FW Tallarn sniper rifle, a very, very old snakeman head (unknown manufacteror), some Green Stuff and various little bits and bobs.
And that does it for today, good luck with the rest of the week people and until friday!

Necron Codex review - part II

2011-11-23T00:17:00.006+01:00

Moving right along, today we'll have a closer look at the Troops, the Dedicated Transports and those Elite units!

All used pictures belong to Games Workshop!

- TROOPS -

----Necron Warriors----

Your mainstream infantry unit that has the standard Necron strengths (durable, Resurrection Protocols & Gauss weaponry) and weaknesses (poor combat skills & low Initiative), has no upgrades available to them, but can take two different Dedicated Transports. As long as you keep their shortcoming in mind, these mechanical husks will serve you well. A big step forward from the last codex is that you no longer need a minimum of 10 for a unit, as of now you can start out at 5 – while expanding up to 20 Warriors in a single unit.

----Necron Immortals----

Gauss Blaster, Tesla Carbine, Gauss Blaster, Tesla Carbine……you’ll be spending quite a bit of time doubting which to use and to be entirely honest I haven’t figured it out a 100% myself. Their weapon load out, in my opinion, truly depends on the role you want them to play and the support units that tag along with them. The Tesla Carbine keeps your Immortals more mobile and are great for taking out low armour save infantry. Gauss Blasters on the other hand are better at knocking out heavier infantry and, when placed correctly, a volley of Rapid Fire Gauss Blasters can do some serious damage. In between the Phaeron trick (see below), Deep Striking, Monolith use and the Veil of Darkness you should have plenty of opportunity to get that perfect volley in.

The Immortals themselves are essentially bigger and tougher Warriors that only have access to the Night Scythe as a dedicated transport. There are two interesting tricks to keep in mind when using these guys:

- Turn those Gauss blasters into assault weapons by adding a Phaeron Overlord to their unit;

- When fielding Anrakyr you get to upgrade one unit of Immortals to Pyrrhian Eternals for free, giving one unit Furious Charge and Counter-attack for free. Considering the general Necron weakness in close combat the extra attack when assaulted can really surprise your opponent. The Furious Charge is a nice bonus, though in general I suspect Necrons will be on the receiving end of most assaults.

Hobby tip - Plan on using multiple Crypteks and some Immortals? Then don't forget those nice Deathmark heads you'll have leftover from this plastic kit. Even when combined with a simple Warrior body and a plastic rod with a spare Necron ornament glued on top you will be able to create five Crypteks easily and a lot cheaper than the Finecast version. Though I definitely have to admit that the Finecast version is a very nice sculpted miniature as well!

- Dedicated Transports -

----Catacomb Command Barge----

The Command Barge can be used by an Overlord and all of the Special Character Overlords (Imhotekh, Zahndrekh, Anrakyr & Trazyn) and combines some nice weaponry (Tesla Cannon or Gauss Cannon), decent defense thanks to the Quantum Shielding, the ability for the rider to transfer his wounds for repair purposes and, most useful of all, the Sweep Attack rule. The Barge gets to make 3 special attacks on a single target it moved over in the Movement turn using its Overlord’s / Special Character’s strength value combined with any bonus they may receive from special weapons (woohoo Warscythe!) with to hit of 3+ and to wound of 4+. There are no saves allowed against these Sweep Attacks and on a to hit roll of 6 the Barge even gets to pick which specific target gets hit. In between a cheap Overlord with a Warscythe and the Command Barge I think we have a very nice and mobile tank hunting unit that can potentially take out two vehicles in a single turn at only 180 points.

----Ghost Ark----

This transport can only be used by Necron Warriors, though of course all types of Overlord and Court members can join a unit in an Ark. This vehicle serves a dual purpose, first it is an open-topped, skimmer transport that can carry up to 10 Warriors. More importantly a Ghost Ark can resurrect up to 3 Warriors of a single unit within 6” every turn (strengthening the unit up till its starting numbers). As you can imagine this ranged resurrection power makes an Ark a very useful addition to a strong line of Warriors. In addition it also has Quantum Shielding, so it will survive a while against some of the current mid-level anti-armour weaponry like the missile launcher. Finally we have the Ark’s weaponry – the Gauss Flayer arrays, which consist of two arrays each with 5 Flayers that can both be fired at a different target. Though I certainly wouldn’t advise using a Ghost Ark solely as a mobile weapon platform, its ability to fire at two unit with Gauss weaponry can tip the balance if used as at the right time.

----Night Scythe ----

The Night Scythe doesn’t have the durability of the other Necron Vehicles with only AV 11 and no Quantum Shielding, at the same time though we have a vehicle that can carry up to 15 models (including Jump Infantry who count as two models) that get moved to Reserve if the Scythe goes down, can move at cruising speed and still fire all weapon, can flat out up to 36” and has a twin-linked Tesla Destructor that is capable of doing considerable damage to multiple units as its electric discharges arc from unit to unit. Quite frankly I love this unit, despite its lower defenses it has so much potential for both destruction and added maneuverability at a very fair cost!

- ELITES -

----Deathmarks----

Given that the Elites section of the book doesn’t have a lot of truly competitive stuff, these guys are quite interesting for 95 points. They are in essence assassins with short ranged, sniper weaponry that can Deep Strike, including right after an enemy reserve unit arrived on the table. Right now this doesn’t make much sense, but like many people I think this is a hint at the new edition rules rumored to arrive next year in 6^th edition. Rumors at the moment point in the direction of reactive shooting and action in general, pretty much taking a some elements from the awesome game of Infinity. Time will tell if this is true, but quite frankly a change in the rules is the only thing that will make sense of this Deathmark ability. Unfortunately, to get the maximum out of these guys you will need two squads as each squad also is allowed to mark an enemy unit that a fellow Deathmark unit will wound on 2+. Though the Deathmarks definitely will do some damage, their short range and general inability at combat will make them a sacrificial unit most of the time.

----Lychguards----

Pretty tough bodyguards armed with Warscythes (power weapons with +2 Strength and 2D6 armour penetration) that cost a whopping 40 points apiece and come at a unit minimal of five and thus 200 points. They also have the option to take Hyperphase Swords and Dispersion Shields instead, which in my opinion is the only way to wield these guys. They only have a single wound on their profile, so you will need that invulnerable save provided by the shield (the bouncing of shooting attacks is a nice gimmick, but won’t see much use). But even then I don’t see much of a role for them, especially given that you only get two attacks on their profile (especially since I doubt these guys will be doing much assaulting). Too expensive, not good enough as bodyguards or vehicle hunters, yet still so cool looking. True shame these! They can be made more reliable and tough by adding an (Over)Lord, a Resurrection Orb and maybe a Cryptek, but that just turns them into an even bigger point sinkhole that focuses on mediocre close combat speedbumping. A Cryptek from the Harbingers of Storms would definitely be at home supporting these guys though!

----Triarch Praetorians----

These have me utterly stumped, I have no clue what Matthew Ward had in mind when he made up the rules for these minis. What we have here is another 40 point infantry model that only has 1 attack on its profile, is Fearless and jump infantry. Their standard weaponry is a very short-ranged 6” Strength 5, AP 2 assault shot, though they can also replace these Rod of Covenant for Voidblades and Particle Casters. The Void Blade gives them Rending and Entropic strikes, while the caster is a short-ranged pistol that gives them a much needed +1 attack in close combat.

In their standard configuration the Praetorians are only suitable for two roles, either as a counter-attack unit or for taking out Terminators (or infantry with that level of armour save). Given their Fearless nature they NEED to win a combat or they will get crushed very soon and quite frankly they’re not good at combat at all. With Voidblades and Particle Casters they could be used to go after vehicles, marines squads and multi-wound units, but they remain way too expensive to be considered a reliable choice that can make back their 200-400 point investment cost.

It truly pains me see both units included in this boxed, plastic set turning out to be, well…duds. Point for point there are literally a dozen dedicated assault units in other codices that for the same 200-450 points will chew both these units up in 1-2 turns.

----C’Tan Shard----

These shards each contain a little bit of the essence of a C’Tan and can be monstrously powerful…..and expensive. These things ignore difficult and dangerous terrain and will take down quite a few enemies when someone does manage to take it down in close combat. You start out with a standard Shard at 185 points, after which you must take two Manifestations of Power (only one of each can be taken per army). There are 11 of these available to a C’Tan shard, though the most useful ones in my book are:

-Writhing Worldscape – turn normal terrain into dangerous terrain, while dangerous terrain becomes even more hazardous. Try and hide in forest or ruins now!

- Swarm of Spirit Dust – assault, defensive grenades and stealth.

- Transdimensional Thunderbolt – nice anti-armour shot.

- Time’s Arrow – when combined with a Canoptek Wraith with a Whip Coil that reduced an enemy’s Initiative to 1, picking and forcing an enemy to take an Initiative test or being removed becomes mighty scary! Combine that with the Wraiths’ great close combat abilities (see below) this guy can do some major assault-based damage.

In the end though the C’Tan shard is one of the many units in the book that will need support of other, nearby units, while certain builds will only work with certain combinations of allied units and/or Cryptek gear. Once again you’re in 205-270 points for a very characterful unit, but a unit that still requires a ton of extra support points spend to make it worthwhile. Still, it is rather neat that using the Manifestations of power you can still build mini-versions of the old C’Tan:

Nightbringer build:

- Gaze of Death & Transdimensional Thunderbolt (Etheric Tempest cannot be replicated with the current rules).

Deceiver build:

- Grand Illusions & Swarm of Spirit Dust

----Flayed One Pack----

Though their Initiative of 2 is going to hurt them in combat, their Strength 4, Deep Strike, Infiltrate, Reanimation Protocols and 3 profile attacks make these bots quite a steal at 13 points. Even a small unit of five Flayers will only set you back 65 points, will slow down your enemies for 1 or more turns and given the low number of interesting units in the Elites section taking a unit of these guys won’t rob you of a precious slot. For those using or facing Imhotekh the Stormlord don’t forget he has Bloodswarm Nanoscarabs that allows him to mark an enemy unit and all Deep Striking Flayers within 6” will not scatter. Given the rumors of Deep Strike and assault changes in 6^th edition these guys may be seeing a lot of use!

----Triarch Stalker----

The Stalker is a Walker that Moves Through Cover, has an interesting Heat Ray weapon that can be fired as a Heavy 2 Melta or as a template weapon. In addition if the Stalker manages to hit an enemy unit all other friendly units shooting at that unit in the same turn count their weapons as twin-linked. It can exchange its weapon for the rather nasty Particle Shredder (huzzahs for large blast weapons and potentially hitting + marking multiple units!) or a twin-linked Heavy Gauss Cannon (great to have a 36” range weapon, shame it is wasted on a Stalker). The Triarch Stalker could be very useful, but it also requires supporting units. If left to its own devices, all it will take to pin those 150 points down is a small group of Space Marine Scouts or Ork Kommandos. And it’s not like the Stalker will be able to fight them off, after all it isn’t a Monstrous Creature. This may actually be one of these situations in which a small unit of Flayers can come in quite handy!

The Stalker suffers from the same ailment as many of the Necron units in this new codex – tons of potential, high point cost and mostly dependent on your opponent’s choices whether or not it full fulfill its potential.

And that does it for today, up tomorrow – Fast Attack & Heavy Support. Thanks for reading, hope it is of use to the Blogsphere out there and let me know if you have any questions!

Necron Codex review - part I

2011-11-21T23:13:00.006+01:00

CODEX NECRONS REVIEW

All used pictures belong to Games Workshop!

Welcome follower of the old Necrotyr ways and curious genobiologi alike, in this series of posts I will be going through the many units, wargear and tricks you may be encountering in the near future when your local gaming table gets invaded by the Necrons. I started working on these posts about two weeks ago when I also started working together with some fellow Astronomican Forums members to provide some useful information and help for our fellow 40K fanatics. I will be discussing the new rules and tactics you will be encountering, after which each individual unit and character will be discussed, finishing up some discussion about the greyer areas in the rules.

ENCOUNTERING THE NECRONS

When encountering the new Necrons there are quite few, new things to keep in mind:

1. Though the new codex has a lot of powerful stuff in it, nothing jumps out as much as in other codices like the Grey Knights and Dark Eldar. Though we are bound to see quite a lot of Canoptek Swarms, Stormlords and Crypteks out there, be prepared to face a number of varying armybuilds.

2. Reanimation Protocols – Most Necron infantry have the ability to self-repair after even the most grievous of wounds. At the end of a phase almost every Necron infantry model has a 33% chance of standing right back up again, which can be improved to 50% if the unit is joined by a Lord or Overlord with a Resurrection Orb. If a unit is fully destroyed in combat these Reanimation Protocols will not work, this is also the case if the last survivor is a joining character.

3. Ever-living – Necron Overlords and characters also have the ability to self-repair after being cut or shot down, but have a bit more flexibility in placement if they are by themselves. They will get back up with a single wound remaining on their profile, however the Necron (Over)Lord can improve this to D3 wounds by buying the Phylactery wargear.

4. Entropic Strike – certain Necron close combat weapons and units have this rule, which has a dual effect. First, any unit that suffers an unsaved hit will lose its armour save for the remainder of the game, better keep those multi-wound units and named characters away from Canoptek Swarms and Triarch Praetorians! Secondly, and most devastating, for each hit made against a vehicle a D6 is rolled. On a 4+ the vehicle loses one AV on all facings. If this takes a facing down to 0, the vehicle is destroyed. And it is for this specific rule that will be seeing and fearing the large number of Canoptek Swarms in the near future!

5. Night Fighting – In between the Stormlord named character and Crypteks with Solar Flares, there will be a fair chance that you will be dealing with the Night Fighting rules on a regular basis. Be especially weary of Imhotekh the Stormlord’s ability to start the game of with Night Fighting, combined with a Cryptek with a Solar Flare that can turn it off at any time or restore it once it runs out of juice!

6. Necron Mobility – Though the majority of the army has to cope with Initiative 2, the Necrons’ abilty to move units and vehicles across the battlefield is far from static. Entire units have leave play and Deep Strike right back in, transports may be destroyed only to have their unit arrive as reserves instead. The general message here simply come down to that it is a tough job to bring and keep a Necron down!

7. Gauss Weaponry – Gauss weapons are carried by Warriors, Immortals, Destroyers and the Monolith. Any armour penetration roll made with such weapons will automatically score a glancing hit on a 6, unless it would already do so. In other words, even the lowly Gauss Flayer can do serious damage to vehicles.

8. Tesla Weaponry - these weapons have a chance to hit multiple targets with a single hit. Every to hit roll of 6 leads to the target suffering two additional hits. The Tesla Destructor even extends this potential of arcing damage to other, nearby enemy units.

9. Quantum Shielding – most Necron vehicles have Armour Value 11 allround, however most of them also have access to Quantum Shielding. This piece of kit raises a vehicle’s Armour Value on its front and side facing by 2, until the vehicle suffers a penetrating hit. This will keep your those Necron vehicles safer from those pesky Missile Launchers.

10. Living Metal – vehicles with this rule ignore any ‘crew shaken’ results on a 2+ and ‘crew stunned’ results on a 4+. No more melta immunity anymore I'm afraid, looks like that exclusive to Blood Angels and Grey Knights.

There are of course many other rules and pieces of wargear in the codex, but these 10 pointers will prepare you for your first encounter with the new Vaudevillian Necrons!

-HQ review-

----Necron Overlord----

The Necron Overlord is one of only two basic HQ choice available to the Necron Player, though quite durable this guy really lacks any kind of close combat punch or invulnerable save. As a result, most players will quickly add a warscythe, though at 45 points it is just too expensive to give him that much needed invulnerable save.

The Overlord has access to quite a few nice tricks including a flamer weapon, mind-controlling an opponent in close combat letting him/her attack their own troops (though they get to do a Ld. test on 3D6 to resist first) and increased resurrection power for both himself and the unit he joins in the form of a Phylactery and the iconic Resurrection Orb. In addition we have the rather nasty, one shot Tachyon Arrow with infinite range S10, Ap1 and the Tesseract Labyrinth that can also be used once to trap and remove an opponent in close combat.

The Necron Overlord can also be upgraded to a Phaeron, which is not only a nice sounding, higher rank title that indicates this Necron noble stands at the head of a full dynasty, but makes him and the unit the joins Relentless (fire heavy & assault weapons as if you remained stationary and still assault in the same turn). This is one way to make both Necron Warriors and Immortals with Gauss Blasters a lot more dangerous & mobile!

All in all the Necron Overlord has quite a few tricks up his sleeve, but ability wise, point-for-point, the named characters outperform this guy on virtually all dimensions. In fact the main reason people will take this guy is to open access to the Royal Court to may take for each one. Simply put the is a nice, for Necrons cheap solution that should be kept simple to save points to invest into his Royal Court. The Overlord can also right a Catacomb Command Barge, which definitely adds a lot of appeal and will be discussed in tomorrow's post..

----Destroyer Lord----

The new Destroyer Lord simply hates everybody (Preferred Enemy – everybody), now counts as Jump Infantry (so sadly he can’t keep up with Canoptek Swarms) and generally has access to less toys than his more sane Overlord counterpart. So effectively for a 35 point increase you get Jump Infantry, re-rolls in close combat, S6 and 2d6 armour penetration thanks to his Warscythe. Not too bad if you ask me, most of the extra options really aren’t worth it. Mindshackle Scarabs could be useful, same goes for a Resurrection Orb if you plan to keep him close to other units with Resurrection Protocols. In all honesty the Destroyer Lord won’t see much use in small armies, in which Overlords and Named Characters will be picked over him both for their superior supporting abilities and access to the Royal Court.

----Royal Court----

This is one the more versatile and interesting options in the book as for every Overlord (normal or Named Character version) you get to take a Court of 0-5 Necron Lords and 0-5 Crypteks. Court members can be used in two ways – either to form a separate unit or they can they can be attached as sergeants to a unit of Warriors, Immortals, Deathmarks or Lychguard (though only a single Court member can be attached to each squad).

The Necron Lord is in essence a single wound, cheaper version of the Overlord and has access to many of the same tricks. I doubt we’ll be seeing a lot of these guys as they simply don’t have enough staying power to be off use in close combat and stacking up on multiple ones to take more Resurrection Orbs gets real expensive, real fast. They can make for a nasty surprise when attached to a smaller sacrificial, buffer unit when equipped with such tools as Mindshackle Scarabs or a Tesseract Labyrinth. In the end, I think these guys will only pop up when a Resurrection Orb is really needed or when an opponent has 50-60 points left and doesn’t want to spend them on Canoptek Swarms or Spyders. The Cryptek, on the other hand, is a true, cheap gem that will see massive and varied use.

The Crypteks are the technological elite of a Necron dynasty and have access to five different schools of abilities. Though multiple Crypteks from the same Royal Court may originate from the same school, each item available to those schools may only be taken once per Royal Court. Each school also provides the Cryptek with a different special weapon and you will really want to do that as there are just too many cool options to stick with the standard Staff of Light.

-Harbinger of Despair:

With a template weapon that can decimate low Ld. Troops,access to forcing enemy Morale checks and the ever useful ability to redeploy using the Veil of Darkness’ Deep Strike ability this guy is going to see a fair bit of use. Combined with the open-topped Ghost Ark I can foresee the Abyssal Staff being a nasty little trick as well.

-Harbinger of Destruction:

Though their weapon of choice isn’t all that useful, the ability to buy defensive and offensive grenades is. The same is true for the Solar Pulse and its ability to the end Night Fighting or to activate if for one turn. Imhotekh is bound to have one of these guys around!

-Harbinger of Eternity:

These Crypteks have the ability to add a re-roll to their squad, gain a 3+ invulnerable save or to stun an opponent, reducing their profile for the remainder of the battle. Not the most useful of builds, though it is one of the cheaper versions.

-Harbinger of the Storm:

One of my favorite Cryptek versions, mostly because of their very supportive role. Their trademark weapon can unleash a hail of short-ranged fire, but it also capable of doing some serious vehicle damage. It gets more interesting though when we look at the special gear they can buy, first we have the Ether Crystal that can really help to safeguard against Deep Striking nastiness by unleashing D6, S8, AP5 hits on enemies that Deep Strike within 6”. The second option is the Lightning Field that does the same, but to those foolish enough to assault the unit the Cryptek has joined. If you take all these options on a single Cryptek you’re only out 50 points and will have the best Assault defense in the entire book.

-Harbinger of Transmogrification:

Another very interesting Cryptek build, their standard weapon is capable of turning open terrain into difficult terrain for 1 turn for a unit hit by its blast. In addition he’s able to reduce the assault range of enemy units, they are also the only Cryptek type that can take a second ranged weapon: the Harp of Dissonance. Though this one isn’t all that useful for its cost and the necessity of shooting at the same target at the unit a Cryptek has joined.

- CHARACTERS -

----Imotekh the Stormlord----

Imotekh, Imotekh…..IMOTEKH, uhm alright enough Mummy referencing for today. Imotekh is the most expensive of the Named Characters in the codex and for those 225 points you get a lot of stuff. He is very durable with 2+/3+ saves, D3 wounds upon Resurrection, he causes D3 wounds when taking out an enemy character, can take the Initiative against all but the Orks, has an awesome weapon, is a Phaeron (Relentless for him and any unit he joins) and makes Flayed Ones a lot more dangerous. On top of all this he also makes the game start out using the Night Fight rules, which can last for several turns. In fact, the only thing really missing here is a Resurrection Orb, though this seems to be lacking on most of the Named Characters.

I think Imhotekh is going to follow the same path as Asdrubael Vect, requiring a bit of practice, but resulting in a very, very dangerous character. Not in the least because of his awesome one-use weapon that fires in a straight line of 2D6 and causes a number of S6, AP1 hits equal to the number of models in each of the units hit. That is going to seriously mess up whatever gets in front of him!

----Illuminor Szeras----

Ah, Szeras, you awesome looking piece of artwork. I truly hope GW will make an actual model for this guy. Szeras is essence an upgraded Cryptek of the Harbingers of Destruction with two wounds, Gaze of Flames and an Eldritch Lance. At a 100 points he is the cheapest available character and he also has the ability to upgrade a single squad of Warriors or Immortals at the start of the game. Much like Fabius Bile you have no control over how Szeras’ tinkering will affect them though, with 1/3 chance at Toughness 5, Ballistic Skill 5 or Strength 5. Competitively I don’t really think he’s worth it, especially since he doesn’t offer access a Royal Court. Though at 100 points he makes for a nice, supportive character if you have the points to spare.

----Orikan the Diviner----

Orikan is the second Cryptek character and his forte lies in the field of time manipulation, particularly the ability to re-roll stuff in close combat and reserve rolls. Whatsmore when the stars align Orikan can be restored to his former power, drastically increasing his profile. However this power can stop just as soon as the next turn and wounds suffered in his empowered form carry over to his normal form. In other word, if Orikan would suffer two wounds, revert back to normal and as a result would die right there on the spot. For me, this simply makes him too random especially since you have to roll each turn for his empowered profile. On the positive side though, he makes all enemy movement in the game’s first turn count as moving through difficult terrain with the lowest D6 rather than the highest been chosen. Nice gimmicky character, but just random to be a competitive choice.

----Trazyn the Infinite----

Trazyn is rather interesting as he quite simply refuses to die, once he loses his last wound he has 5/6 chance to take over the body of any Overlord, Lord, Lychguard or Cryptek on the field. In addtion he count as a scoring unit and can case mayhem in close combat. First off, he has Mindshackle Scarabs that can cause a character to strike at his own troops. Secondly we have the Empathic Obliterator that has 50% chance to kill similar models. For example if Trazyn kills an Ork Boy, your roll a dice for every other Ork Boy in the combat and on 4+ they also suffer a wound. On top of that he is also a Phaeron (Relentless for him and any unit he joins). Trazyn may be the most reliable of the available characters and at 175 points he’d better be!

----Nemessor Zahndrekh-----

The best way to describe Nemessor is as a pure and simple steal. You can build a normal Overlord with the same gear for only 5 points less, while you still get a hefty number of special rules on top of it for Zahndrekh! For those 185 points you get a quite durable Overlord, the only one with a Resurrection Orb and with the added ability to make Reserves come in during your opponents movement (next edition hints anybody?), add one special real to a single unit each turn and take one away from an enemy unit. It really comes down to abilities versus points and you simply won’t get as much for your buck from other characters as you will with Zahndrekh!

----Vargard Obyron----

Obyron is Nemessor Zahndrekh’s bodyguard, so if both are taken Obyron doesn’t cost you an HQ slot. In essence he is a pure fighter that has a Veil of Darkness that even works in close combat and he can also return to his master’s side whenever Zahndrekh gets in trouble. Obyron is a pretty nice fighter, especially when opponents fail to hit him. For each failed to hit roll against him he gets to make an extra attack, up to a maximum of 6 bonus attacks. His big downside though is that he too lacks any kind of Invulnerable Save, reducing his durability quite a lot. I really doubt we will be seeing a lot of this guy.

----Anrakyr the Traveller----

Now this guy can potentially do a huge amount of damage, with a Warscythe, Counter-Attack, Furious Charge and the ability to take over an enemy vehicle within 18” he is going to cause a lot of problems for your opponent. The Tachyon Arrow also comes in handy against those pesky Grey Knight 'transformers' and the ability to upgrade a single unit of Immortals with Counter-Attack and Furious Charge for free is always nice. His clear weak point though, is the complete lack of Invulnerable Save. In other words, if your opponent decides to make him his/her priority he’s in for a serious fight. At the same time being able to turn, for example, a Demolisher on its own troops is a very interesting ability!

And that does it for today, check back tomorrow for the Troops, Dedicated Transport and Elite sections!

First Necron Errata (GW Spain)!

2011-11-09T21:12:00.009+01:00

Looks like Games Workshop Spain got the scoop with the first Necron errata (link). Roughly translated it helps to resolve a loophole in the Spanish translation of the codex (Ghost Ark), does nothing to explain the Death Ray wording, yet also opens up the door to even more Monolith trickery!

P47 .- dimensional corridor. Replace the first sentence "[...] Choose a friendly Necron unit other than a vehicle[...]"

This removes the 'unengaged' segment from the rules, thus making Monolith's phasing even more versatile.

P50 .- Death Ray. Replace the third sentence: "Every unit (both friendly and enemy) under the line, suffers a number of hits equal to the number of models in the unit underneath the line "

This puts the wording of the Spanish and English codices on one line. Personally I think it isn't all to clear how this one work, though it makes sense that a unit hit only suffers as many hits as the numbers of models of that unit that are hit. Still a clearer decision would have been nice. Personally I'm reading the rule in the codex as "equal to the number of models of that unit who are under the line.", makes the most sense and keeps things fair!

P53 .- Repair Barge. Replace the third sentence "[...] add 1D3 models to the unit (models can move and act normally that turn). This cannot let the number of models in the unit exceeds their initial number. "

Makes perfect sense, especially given that Reanimation Protocols already restrict repairs to be limited to the number of models a unit starts out with. So purely logical, but given the wording in the Spanish codex it is nice to see GW solve this so rapidly.

So, what does this mean for the rest of us? Hopefully we will see an English errata in the next couple of days that will solve the wording of the Death Ray and some of the other odd ends in the codex.

Finished Necron Warrior

2011-11-05T23:35:00.003+01:00

Well it took me most of last night, but I finished my Necron Warrior just in time for the painting contest's deadline. Unfortunately my camera doesn't cope well with artificial lighting, so these pics are as good as they'll get right now:

I had a blast with this mini and with all the new Necron stuff coming out I have to admit I am tempted to paint up a few more. Need to be strong though, way too much unfinished stuff as it is. Though, reading through the new codex, the Necrons do look like an army that can both be extremely competitive but also very characterful. I'm nearly through the background, with rules coming into view tomorrow. So if anybody has any questions about the new book, don't hesitate to ask!

One thing that really stands out to me is how this codex provides so much character for a previously rather faceless army and it does this, mostly at least, with interesting rules and background. Naturally GW is aiming to turn another, non-Imperium race into something that will be appeal to multiple types of gamers, but it is doing this very well.

It could also just be me, but I get the impression that the people making the art for the book got quite a bit of inspiration from Mass Effectt's Reapers, which can be seen in multiple pieces like this one:

Model wise it seem we're looking at a similar, rapid release as with the Dark Eldar. In fact both race show an identical first release with the codex, basic infantry & elite kits and a few characters. Only a couple of things remain that would require more miniatures:
- Night / Doom Scythe kit;
- Tomb Blades;
- Triarch Stalker.

Which leaves optional models for:
- Canoptek Wraith - primarily because the artwork seem to push it more in the direction of Forge World's Tombstalker;
- More C'tan Shards;
- The remaining named characters & whatever old mini GW would like to update.

So, two release waves followed by another batch of extra minis (much like the Dark Eldar release) could see this entire army up-to-date with great looking models all round. Personally I'm just hoping GW will make the Triarch Stalker kit, what with me being a huge walker / dreadnought fan!

The not so intimidating scifi undead?

2011-11-04T00:53:00.005+01:00

Good evening fellow bloggers, finally managed to squeeze some free time into my schedule and more or less got suckered into doing some Necron themed work. The Astronomican forum is having a little competition using the basic Necron Warrior and fellow forum member CPA was kind enough to sent me a spare Warrior to mess around with.

Probably should have checked the contest deadline first though, looks like I have 24 hours left to finish this one. Quite a challenge for such a slow painter as myself, still we'll get there by tomorrow evening! Still the possibility of winning the new codex and trying out a new colourscheme at the same time is always a fun prospect.

For the contest we all get to do whatever we want with a single Necron Warrior, though he should be placed on a normal, empty base in order to keep the focus on the mini. This is just the reason I'd been looking for to justify converting a Necron Warrior to a more upright pose. I get GW is going for the creepy/shambling feel with them, but that particular pose never did it for me. Simply felt that the feel of the artwork and dread of the rest of the old and current miniature line never translated very well to the basic Necron Warrior:

So some subtle bending, twisting and minimal green stuff repair work was in order, reulted in the following, much more imposing, bad boy:

It was rather suprizing to see a mini I always saw as somewhat goofy turn into an unbreakable killing machine with a simple pose adjustment. Though it certainly helps that he now towers above the younger (and mostly likely according to his program lesser) races:

Once I get back from work tomorrow it will be time for a quick meal and some frantic painting till midnight! There's still a very long way to go:

Vespid Stingwings commission - part 5

2011-10-19T00:47:00.004+02:00

Click picture for a closer look

Blimey, it can sure be tough to find actual hobby time in today's hectic life. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to complain about my life per se. At the same time I'll be very happy when I'll graduate (again) in februari / march and I can get a normal job. Sounds silly I know, but I'll have a lot more free time when I start working full time.

But enough with the jibberjabber, time for a quick update on the Vespids I'm putting together for Marticus. Good progres is being made on the skin tones, which allows me to mess about a bit with one of my favorite color - Games Workshop's Shadow Grey:

For those interested, here are the steps so far (using GW paints and Pergamano Tinta inks):
- Undercoat of Chaos Black;
- Basecoat of Shadow Grey;
- Very thin wash/glaze with watered down Regal Blue, purely focused on adding just the slightest hint of darker blue to the recesses of the Vespid's segmented body armour;
- 3 successive overburshes and highlights of Shadow Grey with successively more Bleached Bone added into the mix;
- Touch-ups with blue ink in the few recesses that got covered up by accident;
- And, finally, an extremely subtle highlight on the sharpest areas with Kommando Khaki.

I know that the last step may seem a bit odd, but trust me on this, a hint of a light earth tone can really help add depth and a more organic feel to a mini. It may be a bit difficult to see, but below you can see just how subtle the highlight was kept:
I also got a question on how the purple crystals were made and painted. They're quite simple to do actually, as they're nothing more than some leftover sprue pieces (for a full tutorial check - here).

The painting is easy enough as well:
- Chaos Black undercoat, followed by a Liche Purple basecoat:
- The entire crystal gets a drybrush with Liche Purple with just a tiny, tiny bit of Bleached Bone mixed into it, try to keep your brush strokes going in the same direction on each of the flat surfaces as this will add to the effect in the final stages;
- Add a bit more Bleached Bone to the same mix and give the sharp edges a highlight;
- This is generally good enough, but I add a second purple highlight by adding a tiny bit more Bleached Bone in the previous mix and adding a lighter highlight closer towards where edges connect;
* Optional - add a bit of Fortress Grey to the mix to dull down the tone a tad and add small scratches and imperfections to the crystal;
- Give the crystal a wash with some watered down red ink and let this fully dry;
- Finally add a tiny, sharp highlight of Fiery Orange to the sharp points where surfaces meet and there you have it. Simple, yet rich in colour gemstones for your bases.

Still plenty of work left on these (armour, guns, pigment spots, spikes, tendrils & clean up), but I'm slowly getting there. At the moment the inner wings are getting some much needed attention with some, hopefully, cool looking dotting effects:

Once these are of my to do list, it will be time for some serious Dreadfleet tinkering as well as another update of the Alternative Companies list (link). So until next time, thanks for reading and have fun wargaming everybody!

The Dreadfleet has dropped anchor at Hephesto's Forge

2011-10-06T01:21:00.004+02:00

That's right, my copy of Dreadfleet has arrived and it's looking mighty fine. I'll be going into much more detail this weekend, including a closer look at the rules and the level of randomness in the game elements (which might be helpful for those still on the hence whether or not to get a copy for themselves), but for the moment I just have a few first impression thoughts to share.

A. Miniatures & sprues:
The detailing on these miniatures is just insane, just take a look at the side of the Swordfish (click on the pic for a close-up):

And although at first I had my doubts about the textured seabases, because they do take up an entire sprue which could have been used for 2-3 extra ships, I fully have to admit GW (Nick Ho to be specific) have done a terrific job on these. Sure, an extra ship or two would have been nice, but they've managed to sneak in so much extra detail into those bases that they're well worth it

And while we're on the top of plastic, the sprue design for Dreadfleet is also very intelligent. Naturally we have the usual letter-coded parts to help figure out which pieces belong together but there are also several pegs and plastic rod puts specifically in place to protect some of the more brittle part. Nothing nastier than a very thin, broken piece of plastic afterall!

TIP: those wanting to get each and every detail on these ships painted to the highest standards will do well to first examin the miniatures closely. Quite a lot of the ships have details that will be greatly obscured when fully assembled, so some of them will look at lot better when painted in steps and then assembled. The Skaven-crewed Skabras is a very good example of this as the gusts and tongue of this beast/ship have been modelled to its base and become very difficult to reach once fully assembled

B. The rules, scenarios:
I'm still only getting started on these, but it does indeed look that the game has a lot of randomness in it. Between random damage effects, new bonus effects each turn because of faith cards and potential movement penalties and boosts there are a whole bunch of things that can upset your plans. This may be problematic in the first couple of scenarios where there are only a few boats and trippy movement combined with Noctilus' ability to control seamonsters can greatly influence the game (as has already been experienced by other gamers, for those interested check out Quirckworthy's first game right here: link).

Overall this game doesn't feel like it is meant to be a tactical seafaring gaming, but at the same time there is enough depth, fluff and interaction going on to keep it well out of the realm of the beer & pretzels games. However, given that this game has a much more atmospheric and casual feel to it there if of course nothing stopping gamers from adding their own custom rules. I can imagine restricting the wind rules or only drawing faith cards every other turn for example will help focus the game more on the tactical side.

Scenario and story-wise we get a lovely blend of over the top Warhammer Fantasy storyline telling, true and tried pirate themes and a healthy dose of humor. We have everything in there from a Vampire lord magically zapping his Sylvannan castle into a magical maelstrom, where he fuzes it with dozen of shipwrecks, thus creating the regenerating Bloodreaver; cannabalistic ghouls trying to toss your captains into a vulcano to summon an angry firegod and what better way to save your sinking ship than plugging up that cannonball hole with a cabin boy!

C. Game cards & seascape:

Both are quite nicely designed with lovely details and artwork, but they also seen a tad on the thin side. Which means that with lots of use they will be the first things that will start showing wear and tear. I am, however rather happy with the different sizes of the cards. Both the ship and order cards and nice and big to make certain both players (or more) get all the necessary info, while the fate and damage cards are just big enough to give the necessary information, but also small enough to keep the table from getting completely covered with them. And trust me, in some scenarios you will be dishing these things out by the handfull!

And that rounds up my first impressions of Dreadfleet, over the course of the next week or so I'll be having a closer look at the rules, as well as putting together some tips & tricks for all of the ships.

Given that I am a somewhat slower gamer, and not just because of my hectic work schedule, there will be many other bloggers out there sending lovely information and feedback on Dreadfleet into the web. So I'll be doing my best to try and find stuff that hasn't been discussed a dozen times already, specifically this means that if anybody out there has questions or wants more info about a certain part of the game then don't hesitate to let me know!

And even more Dreadfleet info from GW!

2011-10-02T19:00:00.003+02:00

So Games Workshop has posted up a few more blog entries on Dreadfleet and we're more and more getting an idea what's actually going on with the game. Besides some more glamour shots of the ships we also get some more information. Time for a quick summary and some thoughts:

- When ships get damaged the controlling players needs to draw damage cards, these come in roughly four types: speed penalty, special damage (can also turn into something good), crew reduction and hall damage.

- Combined with the wind effects and fate cards these add a whole lot of randomness to the game and it seems that specific ships are designed to reduce this randomness in certain fields. For example Grimnir's Thunder has a flamecannon that forces your opponent to also take an Ablaze cards if it draws a damage card, while the Seadrake's bolt throwers specifically take down the enemy's crew while the Bloody Reaver's captain can prevent randomly appearing seamonsters from turning on ships of the evil, or should that be eviler, side.

Regardsless, there still seems to be a lot depending on what cards you draw when your opponents opens up on you. So it seems to me that this will be a very scenario / fluff driven game, which is rather nice for a one-off, somewhat over the top game! Still no way of telling how strongly this randomness will affect actual tactics.

- All the little rulers and tools you normally need in a game are all in plastic and will need a lot of work to look even half as good as GW's materials. Not to mention some serious varnishing to make certain the paint will be protected from heavy use.

- Pretty much every piece of scenery that comes in the box is also involved in the scenarios of the campaign and will have special rules / evil occupants.

- While not a rock-paper-scissor game, it is becoming clearer and clearer that certain ships are clearly stronger against certain opponents while having specific weaknesses that make them very vulnerable to specific other opponents. The Skabras in particular is a great example of this with its warpcannons ignoring heavy armour like that found on Grimnir's Thunder. On the other hand, they have only limited fighting ability, so they would suffer greatly against a fast, anti-crew oriented ship like the Seadrake that will easily keep up with their tendency to run away from a fight.

And that does it for this weekend, if all goes well the actual game will be arrive at my local post office tomorrow or tuesday. So actual rules evaluations are almost within reach, can't wait to see how they've really turned out!

More Dreadfleet info from Games Workshop

2011-09-27T21:22:00.004+02:00

Games Workshop has just posted another blog entry focused on Dreadfleet's gamesystem, specifically looking into the game's Fatecard element and another one of the ships. By the look of things the Fatecards are meant to add some variability and thus replayability to the game. All the provided info in a nice, little list:

- At the start of each Action Phase each Fleet draws a single fate card;
- The game has 40 Fatecards;
- There are several types of Fatecards, including environmental cards that stay in play (which seem to be many weather effects);
- Other effects include reduced visibility (which affects ranged combat) and carnivarous beasties that will eat anything ship staying still for too long;
- Some Fatecards remain in play and need to be resolved each turn, while others directly influence the windgauge making for quite a few hectic moments if you ask me;
- Red Fatecards have a lasting effect that needs to be resolve in the Status phase
- There are also 3 sea monster Fatecards, these summon nasty beasts from the depth of the Galleon's Graveyard;
- These monsters usually attack the nearest ship, though the Dreadfleet player has a distinct advantage with Noctilus' ability to control these creatures;
- There are also Spell cards that give specific (magic) powers or bonusses to a ship, some of these spells and bonusses are focused on specific ships.

There's still not a lot of info on the amount of impact theses cards will have on the game in its entirety. It would stand to reason that for smaller, early campaign games, only a limited set of cards, or at least excluding useless ship specific cards will be used. I defitinitely do wonder how this full pack of random effects will influence the later scenarios. Randomness certainly adds to replayability, but I also want to be able to have a fair chance at winning a game based on skill, rather than just lucky or unlucky dice rolls or pulls of random effects.

And then we have the preview of the ethereal Shadewraith, which is a painting challenge I am certainly looking forward to!

The ghostly colourscheme rather reminds me of the army/riders of the dead from Games Workshop's LotR range. Rather fine minis, with a colourscheme I've always rather liked.

In all honesty I am mostly awed by the painting of the excellent sea bases that accompany each and every ship in the box. It's going to take a lot of work to even get anywhere near the standard of the promo pictures and realistically speaking it may be better, especially when used on a regular basis, to keep the sides of the bases plain black. Think I may need to grab my tube of wall filler, create a few sea-themed bases and see if I can get some nice effects going.

In all honesty I'm getting rather excited about this release, though to be fair this is mostly due to knowing it will arrive in about 1,5 weeks at no cost. Were I in the position of still doubting rather to get it or not I'm certain the lack of coherent gamesystem info would still be irking me to no end.

Still, for the time being, it seems like a most interesting approach to a spin-off game. The next update on this should be mid next week when the box arrives and a full unpacking will be in order. Though if GW posts more info on the game or ships I'm certain I'll find the time for some more musings on WHFB's newest push into naval warfare!

Vespid Stingwings Commission - part 5

2011-09-25T23:15:00.004+02:00

Time for some actual miniature work again, back to the Vespids to be more specific! Managed to find some hobby time today which was used to undercoat the Vespids I've been converting for my buddy Marticus.

I decided I might as well start with the more difficult to reach areas, so eyes and crystals first. Unfortunately ye olde camera's batteries weren't very cooperative, so for today there will only be pics of the weapon/base-crystals. Given that the Vespids themselves will get shadow grey skintone and grey armour with green markings it seemed like a good idea to sneak a warm tone in there somewhere.

So purple it is, naturally with a couple of nice highlights, a few washes of red ink to give the crystals a nice warm, almost bourdeaux feel and a little orange mixed with purple on the sharpest of edges. Which, with a little bit of effort, gives the following effect:

And that does it for this weekend's update, this coming week I hope to get an extra update or two on the Vespids as well as a Chaos Lord conversion for my Skyrar's Dark Wolves. Have a good one everybody!

A pirate's life for me?

2011-09-21T21:06:00.005+02:00

Good day everybody, back after another busy couple of weeks. I won't bore you all too much, but simply put somebody at the universy where I work has done a lot of damage for a long time that has and will continue to have a profound impact on a lot of people. So lots of meetings, damage controle, media nonsense and general nastiness.

So Games Workshop's pre-order of Dreadfleet makes for a very nice diversion/topic to have a look at. In this post I'll be going through the minis, gamesystem & rules and approach to their second limited edition (board)game. Dreadfleet is a full, out of the box game for two or more players in which the gamers take on the role of two mighty fleets sailing the grand seas surrounding the damned port of Sartosa.

The box contains two fleets, first the Dreadfleet which is an alliance of undead and general evil races such as Skaven and Chaos Dwarfs under the command of the Vampire Lord Noctilus. While the grand alliance set out to destroy them is lead by captain Jaego Roth and includes a mothly mix of Dwarfs, Elves, Sartosa Pirates and even an Arabian-born Golden Magus.

The actual miniatures are something quite special, GW has opted to go for an unusual mix of over the top designs and mixed races for each fleet and, at least for me, it works quite well. Everything from the textured sails, the sea-themed bases and unique feel of each and every ship speaks for both the talent and fun the sculptors must have had with these (6 ship by the Perry twins, 4 by Neil Langdown, bases by Nick Ho and relief ships by Ed Cottrell). As a long term fan of the Warhammer Fantasy world and background I am very pleased to see a ton of little details, bits of story and minis being put in there. Just take the Golden Magus of Araby:

Nice, sleak ship design, focusing on elemental magicks and Araby, a mostly ingored region in the Warhammer world.

At the same time I can seriously understand that this may not work for a lot of gamers. Both the over the top-designs and the mixed fleets do not really help convince people who are on the fence about this release. Which brings me to the next issue, the box' cost. At 70 quid this is quite a costly game, though costly is of course a relative term. Just have a look at some of Fantasy Flight Games boxed boardgames.

Still, for those 70 quid you do get a clot map, 10 large ships, 6 support vessels, 3 monsters and a series of islands and wrecks. In fact looking at the sprues and contents I see only a single odd decision; the sea-textured bases. On the one hand I really like these as they make movement etc a lot easier and certainly add to the fleet of the ships. At the same time a series of standard bases would have freed up almost an entire sprue, which could have translated into 2-4 extra, large ships.

Next up we have, for me at least, the biggest problem for this game so far - the actual game. Up and until two hours ago there was zero information on the rule system for this game. Save for looking at the rules and wind gauge included on the miniature sprues and a few quotes in a rather fun intro video we had nothing to work with. So eventhough I really like the look of the miniatures, there is no way to determine whether or not it will actually be any fun, how much time it will take, if there are different scenarios and if there is scope for fan-made extensions.

Luckily Games Workshop's blog has finally lifted the curtain on the rules, describing a full turn of the game: link
Some of the information provided includes:
- 12-story driven scenarios;
- The wind gauge appears to influence ship movement and may change from turn to turn;
- The game has five phases: Initiative, Status (resolving ongoing effects etc), Fate, Action and End;
- There are five Orders; Full Speed Ahead, Repair, Hard-a-Port, and Hard-a-Starboard that can be issued in the Action Phase;
- Ships have a Speed and Heading value, with Heading determining how far a ship needs to move before it can make a turn;
- Ships have firearcs, while distance to the target influence your chances to hit it as well;
- Ships are activated in turn between players;
- Damage to ships is resolved by drawing Damage Cards, with a draw combat leading to damage for both involved parties;
- Looks like you'll need a fairly big table in order to play the bigger games as you'll have a big pile of cards to keep track of;
- In Boarding Actions captains fight duels and can get wounded, which can influence their ability later in the game;

Finally we have the limited edition-approach GW has taken with this game. I realize that it both helps to create more buzz by suggesting (fictional?) scarcity and also allows GW to release a game that doesn't require long time support. The latter in particular seems like a smart decision from GW, their three main games are a big enough challenge right now anyway.

I do have mixed feelings about the limited edition-approach, in particular as I already forsee GW magically finding another warhouse full of boxes if the sales are good (which happend last time with Space Hulk). Secondly the GW store makes it clear that ordering prior to a specific date will garantee you a copy, so rather than a fixed number of boxed sets it appears we are looking at a time-based release with a second run, depending on initial sales/demand. Which of course makes a lot of sense, but why don't they simply say so. GW does seem to have quite a bit of difficulty communicating with both their own stores and the consumer base.

So in conclusion, in my book Dreadfleet has a series of pro's and cons going for it:
+ Very nicely designed miniatures (though I can imagine they're not to everybody's liking);
+ A good size sea battlemat that will work great with other sea warfare games;
+ A step away from the convential WHFB universe;
+ Very nice, themed bases for all ships;
- Though 'only' having 10 normal ships at the cost of 70 quid is a tad steep;
- One shot, non-supported, limited edition game;
- Virtually no information about the actual gamesystem (until today)

Eventhough I've more or less stopped supporting GW I am impressed by the visual details of this release, but the utter lack of info on gameplay mechanics make it a 'no buy' for me I'm afraid. I understand GW has enough stuff going on to want to keep a new game strong enough to stand on it own and that pushing the 'limited edition' thing helps to create buzz. But as a young guy with decent income and cash left to spend at the end of the month, I still want to know if this stand alone game will be any actual fun.

In the end though it doesn't really seem to matter as I just heard from a friend he bought a copy for us to try out. The two of us have been getting back into some old and new boardgaming and I got him Star Trek Expiditions a will back (which was a lot more fun than we'd anticipated). So looks like I'll be forced to try this one out and let you all know if it actually is fun or not!

And that's my 5 cents on Dreadfleet as it stands as of right now. Once the actual game arrives I'll gladly go into more detail on both the rules and minis, as for now I'm trying to keep an open mind....though it is hard for me not to like those very cool boat scultps! Thanks for reading and keep an eye open for a new, real update coming this weekend. Shockingly there will be some actual minis in that one again ;-)

Vespid Stingwings Commission - part 4

2011-08-24T01:27:00.004+02:00

Pffff man, talk about a busy week and a half. I haven't had any hobby time in well over a week, so a nice, little update is long overdue I'd say!

So let's start off with the Vespids, the build of the first group is pretty much done. Still need to fill two gaps on the Strain Leader, but both me and the client/friend are quite happy with the results so far. It may take an insane amount of cutting, filling and drilling, but the added dynamic feel and variaty to the minis' poses are well worth it.

I would like to add though that the Strain Leader's head has been corrected since these pictures were taken. Introspectively gazing into a tiny crystal was a nice idea on paper, but looks silly when be finally joined the rest of his squad. But finding out what does and doesn't work, theme or design wise, is one of the cooler part of the hobby.

And while we have a nice, handy mini and normal base here for scale comparisson I might as well post up a picture of a rather excellent mini that arrived on my doorstep today:

This cute, little guy is the Armoured Bear mount for Ramshackle Games' (link) Major Ursa character and when I saw that bear I just knew I had to get me one as well. In fact, I've already cut up my planned Chaos Lord to be usable both on foot and mounted. An armoured bear, at least in my view, just makes for the perfect daemonic mount of a Skyrar's Dark Wolves leader!

And that does it for this update, happy wargaming and building everybody!

Vespid Stingwings Commission - part 3

2011-08-13T17:37:00.003+02:00

Moving along with the commission, it's now slicing and pinning time. Given that 'the client' isn't enitrely certain he'll be able to get his hands on the second bunch of Stingwings I've decided rather than waiting to see what happens to just make the first unit's Strain Leader something special as well. Though the current state of the mini is nowhere near where I want to take it. But this is one of the most enjoyable thing in the hobby, you go from an idea and a pile of bits to something cool (well most of the time anyway):

And for those wondering, yes that is indeed s sliced of thumb down there. Let's just say that this Strain Leader isn't going to be pointing, but rather glancing menacingly at a new, little trinkett. Naturally all bits will be pinned and there will be a fair share of green stuffing needed, so tons of fun still left for me on this one!

Tomorrow or monday I should have a pic of the entire squad and the first paintwork on the tester. I'm afraid the green stuff plant guide I promised earlier this week is going to be delayed a couple of day, tons of work to do and I really want to do Marticus proud with this bunch of Vespids. Afterall, if it's a job worth doing, it's a job worth doing well!

Vespid Stingwings Commission - part 2

2011-08-11T00:27:00.004+02:00

Time to get working on the actual miniatures for this commission! In the picture above you can see both my own, old version (on the right) and the first test mini for Marticus on the left.

Now given that there's going to be 12 to 14 Stingwings split over two squads I feel I need to add some extra detailing and conversion work to prevent ending up with two identical squads. To this end I've experimented with the following little details:

- Cut the Vespid legs free of the abdomen. This is very easy to do and allows you to do some simple bending and twisting (or even fullblown cut-ups and reposing using pinning), which will go a long way to add some extra variety to the six standard Vespid poses.

- Removed the neck and replaced it with a green stuff version in order to move the head closer to the body. As can be see in the pic above, if you use the standard pose your Stingwing becomes very hunched and dare I say it, silly or even dumb-looking. Move the head closer to the body and up a millimeter and suddenly you have a menacing creature that appears to be scouting for a new prey, rather than being amazed that they have a shadow following them around.

- Added a set of charm rings to its right wing, following the same style as the more intricate charms worn by the Strain Leader.

And while we're on the topic of Strain Leaders, it looks like I have my work cut out on those. Each Vespid squad will need one of them and there is only a single, extremely distinct pose for this miniature. Naturally a simple head and wing swap to a differently posed mini will go a long way, but more work will be needed as the Strain Leader mini is quite a bit taller and has a longer gun. So it's going to be a good challenge sorting these squads out!

Vespid Stingwings Commission - part 1

2011-08-08T21:50:00.004+02:00

It's good to be back at the hobby again, but with that also comes a little bit of responsability. It's not all just fun and games, I'm also going to have to finish two projects I promised some people I'd tackle once I'd be back.

The first of these involves a set of Vespid Stingwings. A friend over at the Astronomican forums really liked the Vespids I painted up when they were first released (see picture above) and asked me if I'd be able to take his army's armour colourscheme and paint up a squad for him as well. One squad has now turned into 14 models, two of which I can use as testminis

He's also given me quite a bit of free reign in how I want to tackle some of the details and colours, hence the two testminis. Rule one in this kind of business is that the customer is always right, even when if comes to a friend, so if my ideas aren't to his fancy I have a back-up mini for additional finetuning.

Rule number two, in my book anyway, is communication. It's better to ask too many questions than spend tons of time of something that ends up not hitting the bullseye your customer has provided for you. To this end I've been chatting away with the guy for a while now, getting a good feel for the themes, colours and accessories he wants to see on these minis.

I'm a visual person, so I like to keep notes and sketches (however childish they may be) around for projects like these. You can click on the pic below for a closer look at the 'info-sheet' I've put together for this project:

And that does it for today's update, later this week I'll have more Slaaneshi stuff as well as an actual picture or two of the Vespid minis!

The lure of Slaanesh - part 1

2011-08-08T02:08:00.004+02:00

Time for a little update on my current and as always, slow progressing project. A Slaanesh-themed team for Killzone using the following miniatures:
- 4 Chaos Marines (1 with Medipack)
- 2 Raptors (1 with Flamer)
- 2 Noise Marines with Sonic Blasters
- 1 Summoned Daemon - she's been nicknamed the Siren by a friend
- 1 Chaos Terminator with Lightning Claws (Team Leader)

The actual team has changed significantly since I wrote the first list, as soon as I started putting together some minis the Teminator leader and Summoned Daemon magically happend and just had to be included in there.

The colourscheme is something special as well with a split yellow and purple-scheme, which has originally painted up for a project way back in the day on Heresy Online. This particular colourscheme wasn't chosen for that project, but it has stayed in the back of my head and now I finally found an excuse to put it to use.

So keep an eye out for more updates on this project later this coming week, including a quick and easy guide for using modelling putty to make some flora to add to your bases.

Product review - Masquaraden Miniaturen's TubeTool

2011-08-05T14:33:00.003+02:00

And here's the second product review I'd planned for this week:
A while back I came across this excellent product and I just had to order one. The idea behind this one is extremely simple, you get 3 sets of differently sized, ribbed, plastic templates, that when used in conjunction with modelling putties will enable you to make (scifi) tubing, rope and various other materials.

I've been wanting to make something like this for years for myself, but have been hardpressed to find both the materials and machine-like finish needed to truly have a useful tool. You really need either a ready made piece you salvage from some kind of plastic product (difficult and usually oddly shaped), or somebody has to make something ready made. And apparantly the Germany-based Masquerade Miniaturen did just this.

Contents:
Depending on the set you order you will get slightly different contents. The basic 20 Euro set will get you three sets of two ribbed, plastic templates, packaged in a plastic blisterpack. While for 27 Euro you also receive an Acrylplate, ideal for making perfect putty tubes and a stylish piece of plastic to boot! The Acrylplate is also available seperately for 8 Euro.

The actual templates are 50 by 50mm, with the texture segment being 40 by 40mm. In addition each set of two templates is of a different shade of green (lighter green for finer details), making use even faster and easier.

Use, Results & Tips:

So now we know you can use the TubeTool to make all kind of tubing and ropes, but I have a few more pointers and examples to share.

- Make use of water on your templates and molds, it will make your tubes smoother and will prevent any annoying sticking issues.

- When using Green Stuff (combo of yellow and blue putty), it is a good idea to leave your mixed putty to cure for roughly 10 minutes before making tubes. The extra hardness will help to keep your tubes in a fixed form, allowing you all the freedom to create the perfect shape once you're done adding the texture to the tube.

- When making rope tubes I would suggest using Brown Stuff instead of Green Stuff, this as it is better at capturing sharp edges. So after a short dry and a twist you will end up with perfect rope!

- Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance, cleaning your TubeTools after use, paying particular attention to any leftover Green Stuff, will have you pumping out tubes for years to come.

- Green Stuff is ideal for making scifi tubing, this as the its structure allows you to make a straight tube that can be flexed after leaving it to dry for a night. In additional Green Stuff reactes almost instantly with superglue, so applying this tubing to a miniature will be a piece of cake:

Recipies for Disaster:

Time for a few quick examples of what you can make with the TubeTool. These were thrown together in just a couple of minutes and with zero preparation, so if you really take the time to let your putty cure a tad and handle the tubes with some extra care you you will get even better end results. Click on each picture for a closer look at the end result.

Rolling the templates up and down:

Rolling the templates from left to right:
To get this rope effect you will need to let the stripped tube you end up with dry for a little bit (experiment with your specific putty to get the perfect timing), afterwhich a quick twist will turn that boring tube into a nifty looking piece of rope.

Alternative Uses:

Tubes and ropes are nice, but that shouldn't limit your creative use of TubeTool. Using a single template you will be able to add relief to columns, tubes can be cut up to create perfect, small discs, you can create easy straight strips (belts and whatnot), make mozaik-themed bases (cutting up a moziak will also net you a ton of tiny jems) and it can even be used to create a corrogated metal look for use on shanty town terrain and Ork vehicles:

__

Summary:

The TubeTool is an affordable, versatile tool that will make sculpting and converting a lot easier for a ton of wargamers. If you even think it could be of use for you, I for one, recommend you just order it. This is a must have for wargamers intending to tackle large machine-themed projects (Imperiald Guard, Orks, scifi terrain etc.) and I am certain you will be enjoying this tool for years to come!

As for which set to buy, the normal 20 Euro set is just fine. If you have anything plastic, flat and semi-sturdy you will be just fine. If on the other hand you have a few bucks to spare and want to add a stylish (and also quite useful) piece of plastic to your hobby corner, I'd say go for it. Though quite realistically most of us should be able to get our hands on some acrylate for a whole lot cheaper price.

To buy this product just click on the links below:
TubeTool
TubeTool + Acrylplate
Acrylplate

Which leaves me to finish with a pic of the rather amusing mini I got for free with my order and all my test pieces thrown together:

Product review - Puppets War Alien Living Incubator

2011-08-05T14:09:00.003+02:00

It started its life as the ‘Alien Overlord’, has since been upgraded to the even more suiting title of ‘Alien Living Incubator’ and may just be one of the nicest alien monstrosity kits I’ve seen in years. Produced by Puppets War (link) and on sale for 35 Euro, the Alien Living Incubator makes for an excellent stand-in for a Tyranid Tervigon. Heck, with some creative slicing, genesplitting and greenstuffing it could even form the basis for a mean Tyrannofex conversion.

The cost of 35 Euro is also very reasonable for a kit of this size and detail, in fact just compare it to GW’s Carnifex of 39 Euro. It becomes even more interesting for players wanting to use the mini as a Tervigon, normally you’d need a Carnifex, a separate base and tons of conversion work =42,50 Euro and Hivemind knows how much time and trail-and-error. The Living Incubator, on the other hand, is a ready to go alternative!

Contents & Quality:

The kit contains a total of eight resin pieces:
- Two identical front legs.
- Four differently angled and modelled hind legs, which have been conveniently numbered on the bottom to help in the assembly process.
- The rather sizable body, we’re talking tennis ball+ size here.
- An oval-shaped, nicely textured base.

As you can see in the pictures below, this is a pretty big and highly detailed model. Fully assembled the model is around 110mm in height and 95mm long, while the base is the exact same size as the base that comes with Games Workshop’s Trygon kit.

The model is highly detailed, with everything from the carapace plates to the individual egg sacs oozing with alien character. The latter in particular are very nice, there are a ton of them, some sacs have already been popped, while two of them are actually bursting open, revealing the horrific drones inside.

The quality of the cast is very nice as well, in fact I only found a single air bubble on the entire model. And this one was even on the bottom of the body, so if I wasn’t such a detail freak I could have simply left it there. There are virtually no mold lines either, so after a quick clean and assembly it will be ready for paint in no time!

Designwise the Living Incubator mostly fits in fine with Tyranids, the texture and layeredness of the carapace really mirrors that of models like the Carnifex or Trygon. Luckily the model has enough character of its own to make it more than just a stand-in mini for a non-existent miniature for Warhammer 40.000 players. The Incubator’s head, in particular is something special. Throw together Starship Troopers’ brainbug and Mass Effect II’s Shadow Broker et voila, a face only a mother or Hivemind could love.

Personally I bought the model to serve as a centerpiece for my Tyranids. Normally though I never seem to be able to leave a miniature alone, I always end up converting it somehow, someway. However, the combination of Tyranid-esque elements and the unique anatomy of the legs and face just made it feel ‘complete’ to me. That’s why I instantly started cleaning and painting it when it arrived on my doorstep, naturally making certain she’d have some offspring to guide into the fray!

Tips:

A. Pin the legs to make the bond between them and the body stronger. Though in all honesty the fit of the legs is solid enough to withstand most normal tabletop usage, however for those wanting to get a more dynamic pose or a more intense colourscheme on there it will definitely help to both add extra strength and keep pieces accessible until they are fully painted.

B. Wash the parts before assembling and painting them. I did give one of the legs a quick test without this step and the paint adhered just fine. At the same time resin models often have a thin layer of mold release agent still left on them when they arrive at your doorstop, a substance that can make painting a pure hell. Just putting those resin bits into some mildly warm, soapy water and giving it a soft scrub isn’t going to take you a ton of extra time but in the case of resin it’s usually better to be safe than sorry.

C. Inkt washes are your friend when painting this lovely gribbly, there is so much detail and fleshy texture on this mini that even relatively inexperienced painters will be able to get a stunning army centerpiece on the tabletop using just basic techniques.

D. Finally you are working with resin here, so remember to be safe. So no filing down half the mini and subsequently sniffing the dust ;-) At the same time given that it is a resin mini, you could do a full remodel job on the legs. This might be an interesting option for those of you out there looking into getting multiple Living Incubators.

Conclusion:

The Alien Living Incubator is a pleasure to put together and paint up. Its size and cost make it a perfect addition to any Tyranid player’s army and with the steady rise of other sci-fi games I am certain people will find other uses for this ‘miniature’ as well. All in all a great miniature at a very competitive price that is a ton of fun to work on!

And that rounds up another product review, hope you enjoyed it and let me know if you end up getting one of these great minis. I’d love to see how a different colour scheme, leg configuration or conversion would look.

To pick up your very own Alien Living Incubator: link

Something worth fighting for...........?

2011-08-04T23:20:00.003+02:00

We've all be there, two armies duking it out, given it all to get that much needed victory. And when the dust clears and your men move in to secure that vital objective what do they find? That's right, a see-through plastic marker that mocks everything they stand for.

There are a ton of games out there that, at least once every X games, require the use of Objective Markers and I've noticed that more and more gamers seem to be switching to the use of nice, shiny, plastic objective markers. Which, especially at a tournament level of gaming, can be a quite useful tool to keep things managable. At the same time, it does somewhat pain me to see custom-made objective markers slowly disappear.

I am an extremely easy-going gamer, not in the least because in only get a handful of them in each year, but I quite simply find it a shame to see a superbly converted and painted army fighting over simple plastic tokens or even coins! If you look at how much time and effort people put into their stunning armies it just seems odd to me that they don't do the same for their objective markers. This is especially true for games that already require the use of markers for action points and abilities where the table quite simply slowly gets covered by plastic tokens.

For me there's a simple solution, for official games and tournaments bring out those handy markers. However, for your everyday, casual game with friends or at the gaming club, why not be a bit more ambitious! Why not grab some spare bases and parts to make some fun objective markers for your armies. I've recently helped run two contests focused on just this and everybody, casual and competive gamer alike ended up having a ton of fun simply putting together something specific to their own army. For those interested click here to see what the Astronomicans came up with, there's quite a few cool markers in there!

Making your own Objective Markers can be an extremely rewarding part of the hobby and you can make it as complex or simple as you want. Everything from spare weapons and loot to fully sculpted creatures and statues is within reach. I can certainly recommend it to everybody out there who like sto put extra effort into creating some background for their armies. Trust me, if you keep in mind you'll be needing a few markers while putting together your minis you'll have a few cool ideas and markers in no time.

And if all else fails, turn to random leftovers from the real world. A hot summer afternoon, a popcicle stick and some basic hobby tools led to the rather entertaining, random marker found below.

Naturally this is just my take on a very small segment of the wargaming experience, but it has definitely made the hobby more fun for me. I'd love to hear what the rest of you guys out there think about this. Do you use standard markers? Do you make your own custom objective markers and if so, let me know what your favorites ones are!

And that rounds up my thoughts for today, but tomorrow I'll be uploading a few more mini and kit reviews!

Cough, cough......look at all this dust

2011-07-31T14:44:00.003+02:00

After a bit of a hobby hiatus, I'm extremely happy to hit the blogsphere again. It's been way too long and I look forward to updating my blog a bit. Some over the course of the week I'll be adding some new reviews, articles and just general hobby antics.

So stay tuned, naturally you'll need a few pics to enjoy in the meantime. First the, finally, finished set of objective markers the Arbites-themed IG force:

And secondly some ice Nids and my take of a Tervigon (Puppets War's Living Incubator, which will be getting a lot more attention later this week):

And while we're at it, if anybody out there would like any specific tutorials, reviews or more stuff of something I've already posted up so far, then don't hesitate to let me know. I may be a slow hobbyist, but I am responsive :D

.....the Saints are coming!

2011-02-27T00:09:00.004+01:00

Finally managed to finish another mini, though to be more precise it's an objective marker for my small IG (Inquisition-themed) force. She started of her life as a Sacred Blade miniature, this old company had a ton of larger scale minis that have really survived the test of time. I've been wanting to do something with here for ages, so when I found her in my bitsbox again last week and accidently messed up her swordarm I went searching for a 40K replacement.

Once that storm bolter came into sight I was sold on the idea of statue of an Imperial Saint (St. Basilla to be precise). The book and ornate, yet fading sign both just seem to happen. Her bionic left arm took a bit more planning though, particularly as her original arm, cool as it may have been, did not fit with 40K at all (a fane has that effect it would seem).

The bionics came from a resin bits kit from Maxmini, which has really paid out for me so far. Painting wise there really isn't anything that spectacular going on I'm afraid, but I'm still rather happy with how she's turned out. Even a bit too pleased it may seem, my other objective markers will definitely be needing some more work to bring them to the same level.

The week in review - 14-20 februari

2011-02-21T01:54:00.007+01:00

What a week, what a week! Let me start this week review off with some news from the FTW bloggroup:

A. From the Warp

As many of you have undoubtable seen, Ron over at From the Warp has decided to put the place in statis (link) due to it turning from a website into a fully fledged job that was keeping away from the actual hobby, and much more important, his family.

Personally I've been involved with another website/forum for quite a long time in various functions and things can get pretty darn hectic once the administrative / technic stuff fully comes into play. I can't even imagine how Ron managed to keep FTW going at such a high level for such a long time, regardless he has my respect and admiration for this enormous achievement. Together with Paul over at Astronomican he's been the most influential person in my online wargaming experience since the GW forums died those many years ago.

On the one hand I'll be missing the tons and tons of cool stuff on FTW, at the same time though I'd rather see it stay online with its many tutorials and continued bloglists if that means Ron is able to get a breather and spend more time on the hobby activities and his loved ones. While many of us have been coming to FTW on a daily business for years on end, it is all a hobby concerning toy soldiers in the end.

So simply put, thank you Ron for all the inspiration and memories and I'll be keeping an eye on your new, all hobby-themed blog (link)!

B. Gideon Lorr and Boys

Well my own hobby antics seem rather small after that news, still there is a wee bit of progres to share this weekend. First off Gideon has a new profile, this as after seeing the leaked Grey Knight codex I've just decided to go with the Imperial Guard codex to get some kind of reasonable and also themed rules set to fit with the models / conversions. This has also gotten me thinking quite a bit on the 'count as'-topic and I think I may end up dedicating a post or two to it later this week.

The new list has some advantage and disadvantages, though in general I think I've managed to keep the theme going strong all over. Which naturally means any competent player with a tactically chosen force will be able to kick my behind off any tabletop, but heck this one's all about the fun anyway!

A special thanks goes to Tallarn this week (check out his blog Flashlights of Fury), his comment on my previous post has given me tons of cool ideas for the armylist's transport vehicle. I'll be slicing up a rhino to turn it into a Supressor, which will count as a Chimera:

I also managed to squeeze an hour's worth of work in today to get started on one of three objective markers for this force - a tech servitor based on a Ramshackle Games mini (link)

Sure he may be 40K's version of a dustbuster, but I'm rather fond of the little guy. Really looking forward to painting this one, which will hopefully happen this coming week.

And that's it pretty much for this weekend, thanks for reading and have a great week everybody!

Back to the drawing board....yet again

2011-02-19T22:48:00.002+01:00

As most of you will probably know the Grey Knights codex is nearly upon us and the rumors (and leaked codex) are all over the place. On the one hand I'm really looking forward this codex, at the same time it does no bode well for my mini Gideon Lorr army:
- Nothing but Grey Knight-options for Troop Choices.
- Coteaz can fix this, however he's a pretty powerful psyker....doesn't really fit with Lorr now does it!
- Even after fixing this, there is no chance to get the signature weapon of Lorr's men in there anywhere - the shotgun.

So I'm afraid I'm going to have to switch armybooks and give the Imperial Guard list a shot for this one. Made it pretty far, though not without comprising here and there:
- The combat servitor now serves as a count-as veteran-sergeant who replaced his laspistol with a powerfist (still need to work on the fluff behind it as this is hardly a conventional choice for an officer).
- The Iron Maiden is out I'm afraid, there's nothing in the IG codex I can use it for. But no worries, she's bound to pop up in a future Kill-Zone team.
- Finally I'm utterly suprized at how much stuff one can squeeze into an IG list, even when working at 500 points I can get 31 infantry, 1 transport and 1 walker in there......having never atcually experimented with this codex I was almost shocked.

On to the actual list:

HQ
Lord Commisar (Gideon Lorr)
+ Carapace Armour
+ Power Weapon
= 90

TROOPS 1
Veterans (Arbites response team - lasguns & dog-teams)
+ Grenadiers
+ 2 Plasmaguns
= 120

TROOPS 2
Veterans (half Arbites and half Lorr's retinue, all have Shotguns instead of lasguns)
+ Grenadiers
+ Powerfist
+ Grenade Launcher
= 120

TRANSPORT
Chimera
= 35

TROOPS 3
Penal Legion (surviving troops, Arbites and civilians)
= 80

FAST ATTACK
Sentinel (Arbites Crowd control unit)
35

Total = 500 points

There might be a few option shifts and tweaks, but I think this is as close as I'm going to get. I intend to make the final decisions on this list tomorrow and the, finally move on to getting them all build and painted. Although the shift of armylist does mean I'll need to order a Chimera, which should be fun as I've never actually build one. And, if I dare say it, they may even be able to put up a decent fight in a 500 points game! More updates coming soon, including some new painted minis and objective markers.

The week in review - 7-13 februari

2011-02-14T00:40:00.003+01:00

It is good to be back home and back at work, both actual work and hobby-related stuff. So what has been going this last week, well mostly small stuff.

1. Though progres has been painstakingly slow, I'm finally getting somewhere with Lorr and his Arbites allies. In fact, by next weekend I hope to have finished the build on the first two Arbites squad, while getting started on the three and final squad.

2. Then of course there's the Vile-Tis flesh eater, which is going to keep me busy during most of my free time this week:

While I'm not going with the non-metallic metal thing, both out of inability and not being too fond of the look, I do rather like the blue and red combo on the cloths and armour. May have to give that a try myself, more updates on this guys coming tuesday and thursday.

C. Books, books, books....

I have quite a bit of travelling to do this coming week, so I do hope to get some extra reading time in to get through Badab War, part II and get the Horus Heresy series started again as well. Might as well do something useful during those train rides, right!

And that rounds up another week of wargaming activities, thanks for reading everybody and go and have yourselves a great new week!

Tiny, little sidestep

2011-02-12T01:56:00.003+01:00

Another day, another project. It's hard enough to stay focused without people challenging you to a paint-off. Well some of the guys over at the Astronomican Forum are having another painting challenge and it looks like I'm getting dragged in again as well.

So time to break out the old school, found me a Vile-Tis Flesheater from the old Confrontation game that should prove more than challenging enough for my skills:

Hope to get some basic work done on him this weekend, as soon as I actually narrow down that kind of colourscheme I want to go with.

Forging ahead on the WItch Hunter / Arbites force

2011-02-08T02:58:00.004+01:00

Righto, got a few pics before I hit the hay, showing that Lorr's boys are still getting some working time (sparse as it may be). Here's the first squad of Arbites (Stormtroopers in the Witch Hunter codex can exchange their gear with shotguns to represent Arbites....I know not a solid tactical choice, but this entire force is just for the hell of it), their general theme is 'crowd control'. Their poses are mostly relaxed, they've been in place for a while waiting for things to get nasty and the shotguns and grenade launcher are definitely geared towards a crowd:

Second squad is a bit more dynamic, representing a team rushed in at the last minute to lend firesupport, complete with running poses, K9 support and a rather kick ass plasmagunner:

This squad will actually end up having hellguns, as per the normal Inquisitorial Stormtrooper. It took about a dozen attempts, great and small, to get to the final design for the hellgun itself. Turned out to be rather simple in the end real, just a powercel from a spare plasmagun and a popcicle stick strategically cut up:

Now I hope to get both squads fully build by the end of the week, making a start on the third and final squad this weekend. They'll be going with the 'survivors'-theme. And in between I'll also get started on painting Docta Bonez for my mini exchange with Snakebite-fanatic Orkgasm:

Happy wargaming and converting everybody!

The week in review - 17-23 januari

2011-01-23T17:09:00.006+01:00

Time for another look at all my hobby madness of this last week.

1. Gideon Lorr and the lads

Well the good Inquisitor and his bunch of random henchmen have been on my desk for years now. I've kept getting insane ideas for them and now, with a new codex in sight which will probably make them illegal, I've suddenly found the motivation and inspiration to get them sorted out once and for all (and with a consistent them and colourscheme). So as a tiny start I've decided on a new basing method and got Lorr and his retinue based, or in the case of the already painted minis re-based:

This force is entended to be small, very small. In fact it will only be 500 points worth of Inquisition, with 28 models (of which 1 is a vehicle). Once my latest order from Pig Iron arrives I'll have everything I need to finish the entire thing. So along with various other, smaller projects, these guys will be popping up a lot on the blog the coming month or two!

Now as for this retinue, here's how it breaks down (heavily inspired by the original Lorr rules):
- Inquisitor Lord with bolt pistol, power weapon and rosarius
- 2 shotgun-wielding warriors (the original Lorr was always accompanied by three of them)
- 1 combat-servitor (simple beauce I loved the model I used for it)
- 1 chirurgeon (for some survivability and because the model for the Sister Hospitaller is fantastic)
- 1 sage
= Total of 148 points
And a few quick shots of the minis themselves:

2. I too can do that voodoo that you do

Next up I'm putting together another mini for the Astronomican exchange program in which members convert, build and paint a mini for eachother. Most of the time this just comes down to two people sitting down and painting up a cool mini for eachother. This time is slightly different as my opposite number has had a decennia long relationship with the Snakebite Orcs, having build and painted tons of minis for them (many of them from the original range). So when I came across an old Snakebite mini I knew I had to pick this one, so here's the first look at Doctah Bonez:

3. Lesser known miniature ranges and manufacturers

Next up is an update for an old post of mine, anybody remember the list of lesser known miniatures and manufacturers? Well those of you who liked it may want to here over and have another look as a few old links have been fixed and tons of new ones have been added.

Go check it out HERE (there's also a perminant link in the right sidebar).

4. USA, USA, USA...............

And finally, I'm afraid there won't be a review coming weekend as I'll be taking this freakshow on tour in the US. Seriously though I'm attending a conference in the second half of the week, so no hobby time for 5,5 days..iii..how will I ever cope?

The week in review - 10-16 januari

2011-01-17T00:55:00.006+01:00

Well it has been one hell of a week, hardly any time to get anything done and pretty much everything I did get or do went to hell in a matter of seconds.

1. So my order of GW books finally arrived after 2,5 weeks and in all my excitement I missed another GW screw-up. A single Horus Heresy novel was missing from the package....and guess which one. That's right the first one, Horus Rising. So much for getting stuck in on those this week. Luckily there are two Ciaphas Cain books in there as well, so I should have plenty of stuff to keep me occupied during the tedious hours spend in public transport.

2. I've been spending some more time on my mini Inquisition list (Witch Hunters) and have, once again, rewritten the list and the idea behind the force. Though even I though I was happy with it some unexpected minis turned up I just have to include in the force, so more rewriting was in order. Think I'm there now, in fact when my last ordered blister arrives I should have all the needed minis. Then i just comes down to converting and painting them all up. Here's a quick sneak peek at a 'count as' Death Cult Assassin, think I'll be calling her the Iron Maiden

3. One thing that did you alright is the Ultramarine I put together for fellow-Astronomican forum member Domdan. This guy is going in the mail tuesday to, hopefully, make a fellow hobbyist happy.

Well let's hope things go a bit smoother next week and I may end up showing off another mini or two by its end!

Time to hit the books!

2011-01-14T21:08:00.003+01:00

Well it to GW 2,5 weeks to deliver the package, but I do feel I spent the larger part of my Christmas bonus on some great stuff! Not in the least because I have to go to the US in about a week, those omnibuses (spelling?) will come it quite handy during the 30-ish hours I'll be spending going across the pond and back.

Although I do fully plan to finish all the Ciaphas Cain stuff before then!

Something blue......

2011-01-14T04:31:00.004+01:00

I recently decided I'd give the Mini Exchange program on Astronomican a shot. Simply put a bunch of us forum members over there are painting up minis for eachother, both for the hell of it and to provide us with interesting challenges.

Domdan was my first victim and he already sent me his Space Marine a long time again (pic following soon). So naturally I felt kind of bad taking so long, so I did my best to try and make his request for a 4th Company Ultramarines as perfect as I could. Though he is by no means as good as some of the stunning work I've seen out there, I think Domdan will like him. That and I suprizingly really enjoyed painting up another Ultramarine after over a decade of blue-boy free wargaming:
More exchange minis coming up soon, starting off with a Tyranid of yet undetermined genus. As well as a Snakebit Voodoo Ork Doc based on an old Rogue Trader mini!

And, all of a sudden, 2011 pops up.

2011-01-09T22:24:00.003+01:00

First off best wishes for everybody, hope this becomes a fantastic year for all of us. Naturally both on and off the gaming table! For me personally it will be a year with most likely quite a few changes. If all goes well I'll graduate, again, switch my part-time job to a normal, full job and may even end up moving out of my current place to something more suitable to where I am in my life. Don't get me wrong a student house, and a good one at that, is a great place to be, but at some point I do feel I may to move on!

Hobby-wise I'm really looking forward to the many different things we can expect this year. Stuff like Mantic Games' evil Dwarfs, the first new Edition armybook for Warhammer Fantasy, potential new codices for both the Tau Empire and the Sisters of battle etc. Then again there's always something to get excited over isn't there, the little boy in me just can't get enough of wee toymen.

As for the blog, well there will be a few minor changes for this new year as well. First off, the posting rate. As I keep running into connection issues and ever reduced hobby time, I feel I just need to get a regular posting rhythm going. Primarily this will mean that each weekend I will post some stuff, pics and thoughts on hobby-related things I've dabbled in during the last week. Naturally there will be posts in between and more product reviews and tutorials when ever I can get around to them. Might as well get the ball rolling:

The week in review:

With Christmas and the New Year celebration, as well as the associated hangovers, out of the way I get to have a look what to do with those Christmas bonuses. This time I spent some cash on the following:
- a few bottles paint and brushes
- a small fortune on GW books to get me up-to-date on the Horus Heresy, as well as a few other series
- the remaining stuff I need for my Dark Eldar army (Wyches and a second Raider)
- a few extra special, 'small' stuff you guys will see popping up in a couple of weeks

Now on to the actual activities of this last week:

1. Ciaphas Cain Novels

I've had the first three novels from this series for quite a long time sitting on a shelf. Got them from a buddy who quite (read: his wife pretty much force him to quite) the hobby, but for some reason I never got around to reading them. That was until this last monday evening, almost done with the third one, Traitor's Hand, by now and I have to say I'm loving them.

Don't get me wrong, they are by no means perfect. Although to be fair the few things that truly felt wrong to me were entirely due to me reading nearly three novels in a single week and already knowing quite a bit about the background behind many of the discussed factions and enemies. The first book, guite entertaining as it may be, seems primarily focused on getting the Cain character fleshed out. The second books follows much of the same tricks and though Cain and his regiment find themselves on a different planet, pitted against completely different enemies, much of the plot, writing style and fighting sequences follow the same lines as the first novel.

This completely changes in the third novel, were the regiment is tossed together with several others directly in the path of a Chaos raiders fleet bound on destroying a vital planet. I'm 2/3s into the book and all the different factions, motivations and discoveries still have me guessing as to what is actually going on. Chaos is generally described as being highly random, impossible to comprehend or predict, but this novel is the first piece of fiction that really gets this feeling across for me. There's a lot more going on then meets the eye and it seems the Imperium just happens to be in the way. Another highly redeeming quality of the series is that I'm not just interested in Ciaphas Cain himself, but genuinely drawn in by the range of supporting characters that form the higher echelons of his Valhallen regiment.

All in all I can heartily recommend the series to anybody interested in the story of the scoundril, coward, yet also hero that commisar Cain is. Additionally the novels give a nice feel of the diversity of the Imperium, both within the Guard and the broader organization at work the get the giant cogs of the Imperium moving.

2. Ultramarine 4th company trooper

Painting up a mini for a fellow member over at the Astronomican forum, still tons of work left but he's slowly getting there. I'm actually suprized how much fun I'm having with this blue boy, must be all the green I'm throwing in there.

3. Finally a little preview of something to do with the 'little' stuff I mentioned above, not telling what it is yet. Simply but I found an old box in the attic back home and figured it would be perfect to support the 'little' future project:

So thanks a bunch for reading everybody and have a great week!

Hornet....uhm Venom coming through

2010-12-27T02:56:00.003+01:00

And it's a venomous christmas and I'm not just talking about the rancid eggnog

Figured I'd kill two bird with one stone and use the Astronomican Rumble or Stumble challenge (link) to put together a Venom for my Incubi. Naturally I've been keeping my eye on the web for inspiration and there have been tons of cool conversions. Just to pick a few:

Sorrowshard's sleek Venom:

Not forgetting Wordbearer's awesome work:

And finally Speedfreek's Harlequin-themed Venoms:

Now I love all these minis, but I quickly came to the conclusion that some of these conversions weren't for me or forced you to combined the precious bits of both a Raider and a Vyper. So instead I've opted to go with a converted Vyper, using only spare bits from a Raider, a Ravager and some leftovers from the old Dark Eldar Warriors (the Splinter Cannons) and Jetbikes (some of the backfins). All of this has resulted in my approach to the Venom, though I'm seriously considering calling mine a Hornet instead:

And eventhough I didn't buy snares for my Venom, I just couldn't resist adding a few:

The Venom easily holds two infantry-sized models and given the extra space it isn't to unrealistic to imagine 5 Dark Eldar would be able to squeeze themselves on there:

(definitely my favorite shot of the bunch, it also gives a sneak peek of a squad I'm calling the faceless......more info coming soon, but let's just say there's a reason the pilot's head is already painted).

....100 posts in.

2010-12-20T12:44:00.003+01:00

I was rather suprised to discover that I was almost 100 posts in. Never figured I'd have this much to say over a rather short period of time of 8 months. Wish I could say the same for my project and army progres, still I have a blast every thing I do find time to work on some minis.

Though I am definitely not the most regularly active blogger I am rather happy I decided to give the whole blog experience a try. Through From the Warp I've been exposed to a ton of great people, inspirational work and great ideas. So it has been worth every click and read, so in thanks here are some of my favorite blogs/projects out there in no particular order:

Naturally From the Warp - Ron is not only a great wargaming artist, he's always ready to help out fellow gamers and has done so much to bring together the various bloggers of the blogsphere. And then there are the tons of tutorials, guest posts and what not, From the Warp is going to keep me interested for a very, very long time to come!
Tabletop Fix - and no not just because I won some Dystopian Wars stuff from them. The rate at which this blog has developped into a near all incompassing wargaming news blog is great. Not a day goes by without new miniatures news and that just keeps a big smile on my face!
Weemen - When I first started my blog my focus was still on my Relictors (which will hopefully be the case again after the holidays) and that is how I came into contact with the Weemen blog. Fellow Relictor-fan Siph_Horridus was one of the first people to welcome me to Blogspot and I've since really enjoyed his works as well as that of his fellow bloggers Pornstarjedi and The 6th degree.
Faeit 212 - News and Insights into the Warhammer 40k universe, by Natfka. And he does just that by dissecting armylists, units and characters. I am particularly enjoying his ongoing analysis of the Dark Eldar.
Galaxy in Flames - Big Jim just keeps working hard on those excellent Killzone rules, despite the tragic loss of a large portion of his Souls Reapers army after somebody broke into his car!
Dei Greci - Plasticard and sculptor extrodinair Klaus has been amazing me for a long time and he just keeps doing it. Truly inspiring work that pushes me to try out new stuff every now and then as well.
Massive Voodoo - humbling, yet also inspiring work from a range of extremely talented painters and builders.
Inq28 - the Inquisition lives and comes with tons of great conversions
Alexander the Alchemist - Inquisitor Alex, as I've gotten to know him on Astronomican, is a master of putting together seemingly random bits and make them look fantastic. Naturally it helps that he is a great sculptor who is always willing to trade some bits or make a custom mini.
And naturally I have to mention the Storm Wardens Project - talent from all over the blogsphere united to build and army of Storm Wardens. Tickets were sold and the army was put into a grand lottery. This led to a ton of happy winner as well as $16,007 in donations to Doctor Without Borders.

Naturally there are tons more great blogs and projects out there, these are just the ones that came to mind right now. So thank you for a great time Blogspot and on to the 1000 post! Keep an eye out for some more Dark Eldar and Dystopian Wars stuff.

Rumble or Stumble, round 15

2010-12-09T02:59:00.000+01:00

Today the latest installment of Astronomican's Rumble or Stumble challenge came to an end and with 4 contestants there are plenty of new minis to check out. So everybody go over to the full thread -here- have a look and cast your vote to help determine who Rumbled most! Also for the full Rumble or Stumble gallery just click - here. Time for some quick sneakpeeks of this round's goodies:

Psykic_Scribe:

Foxy:

Ossai:

Hephesto, my choosen mini is the center guy:

Vor 2.0??

2010-12-04T13:24:00.003+01:00

Well this is a rather unusual post for me, but I'd very much like to draw the attention of my fellow wargaming fanatics towards a rather unique and interesting project. VOR: The Maelstrom, an older gamer originally released by FASA, has a chance to make it back into the scene with some help of the many, many gamers out there.

The story so far...

A quick couple of sentences to explain what we're dealing with here. VOR is an old gaming system which had its own miniatures line and a very inventive ruleset (more on this below) and was initially released by FASA. In the early days of the game (well over a decade ago), for reasons never really made clear the entire franchise was sold off to Wizkids Inc.

VOR effectively takes place in an alternative reality in which massive US and Sovjet blocks have formed and are fighting eachother for the domination of the Earth. Nothing too special there right, but then all hell breaks loose and the Earth itself is cast through the void of space into the space anomaly referred to as the VOR. The VOR is effectively a warpstorm that randomly draws in new worlds (and its inhabitant), who slowly drift towards their doom as they draw ever closer to the Maelstrom (center of the Vor).

Still nothing too special there, but here comes the real kicker - the game rules allow you to put together your own units and characters to represent new civilizations drawn into the Vor. You truly control and decide everything! The actual rules for the game are very reminiscent of Warmachine and Hordes, in fact those games borrowed heavily (Trollblood are very close to VOR's rather cool Growler race) from the mechanics originally introduced by VOR.

Due to the sale to Wizkids the entire game was effectively put into the freezer, that was until Wizkids decided they didn't want to do anything with VOR afterall and the rights were returned to the original IP creator Mike Neilson. Mike has been working to get back to VOR, finish all the extra supplements (as the advanced rules and full customisation rules were never published) and get an updated rulebook out there again.

Support and Kickstarter.com

Thanks to the rather cool initiative of Kickstarter.com (allows small initiatives and businesses to attract investors and people who want to support a project) we may be able to see a full return of Vor: The Maelstrom. The idea behind kickstarter is pretty simply:
- each project (everything from games, movies, music and art projects) gets a certain run time
- during that period people can pledge money towards the projects cash goal (usually the people behind a project will give goodies or stuff depending on the level of pledge)
- now here's the interesting part, this isn't a direct investment
- unless the cash goal for the project is reached by the end of its runtime nobody puts any cash into it at all
- in other words, only if and when the total pledge is reached will their actually be a transfer of cash

Interested?

If this has peaked your interest I'd suggest you all go and have a look at the VOR 2.0 project site:

HERE

And if you like what you see and read, you may want to consider making a pledge yourself. Heck even a single buck will help out if enough people join in. In doing so you will help to keep a great gaming system alive, updated and will benefit from a very flexible set of rules you yourself can use with your friends in your own games!

Product Review - Dark Eldar Mandrakes

2010-12-02T01:56:00.003+01:00

So I put together a review for Total Wargamer, but I might as well share it with the blogsphere as well!

DARK ELDAR MANDRAKES REVIEW
Though their origins are shrouded in mystery, there is one thing all Dark Eldar are in agreement about: Mandrakes are to be feared by all. Part Dark Eldar, part something much, much worse, Mandrakes are creatures of darkness. Darting from shadow to shadow they feed upon the suffering of others, utilizing the harnessed, raw power to freeze the unsuspecting with blasts of shilling energy.

With dark, rune-carved skin, while wielding wicked, saw-edged blades and wearing the flayed skin of those who betrayed them, the Mandrakes stalk the battlefield appearing out of nowhere, channelling their chilling auras to reduce their victims to shattered heap of frozen flesh and armour.

Mandrakess are an Elites choice for the Dark Eldar, competing with such units as Incubi, Grotesques, Wracks, Harlequins, Kabalite Trueborn and the Hekatrix Bloodbrides.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There is no denying that people got really, really exciting when the first Mandrake preview popped up on the Games Workshop site. For those in doubt about the Asian influence in the Dark Eldar design, it became quite clear when looking at the excellent design of these miniatures.

The Dark Eldar Mandrakes boxed set contains 5, multi-part, metal miniatures, and costs 18 pounds (or 14,56 if you buy it from Total Wargamer!). Thus making the set equally expensive as the five men strong Incubi boxed set. Though the box is certainly not cheap, this is to be expected given that all miniatures are metal.

ON CLOSER INSPECTION

Upon opening the box I was met by five metal miniatures, though sadly there are only three different poses in there. I can’t help but feel that it wouldn’t have taken GW a lot of extra effort to add two more poses. Each Mandrake comes in two parts: the body and their flaming left arm. In principle, each arm is modelled to fit one, specific body. So, without investing some extra time and effort,
this does mean that you will end up with only three, different Mandrakes.

Naturally I wanted to make my Mandrakes a bit different than the usual, straight out of the box unit. As a result all Mandrakes you can see in the pictures have been subtly converted. Two additional tools were used to accomplish this: a pinvice and green stuff modelling putty.

TIP – To add some easy variation to your Mandrakes you can exchange some of their weapons by gently cutting them off at the wrist. Next use a pinvice with a small drill to carefully drill holes in both the loose hand and sword, as well as the arms. It is a good idea to first use a sharp modelling knife to drill a starting hole in both the hand and the arm, as this will prevent nasty slips with the pinvice. Once you’re done drilling, cut a paperclip up and use the newly acquire metal rod to securely attach the hand to its new arm. Sure this takes some extra work, but the pin will prevent silly breaking accidents. For those wanting to add even more special touches to their Mandrakes I’d suggest having a go a using Green Stuff modelling putty to, for example, cover up a rune or two, add extra hair or even to adjust the shapes of
the skirts worn by the Mandrakes.

ON THE TABLETOP

Mandrakes are able to appear out of nowhere and move about rather fast due to their Fleet, Infiltrate, Move Through Cover and Stealth rules. Much like most Dark Eldar, they are fairly fragile being only Toughness 3 and having a 5+ Invulnerable Save. Mandrakes will really benefit from getting a Pain Token, as this will give them the Feel No Pain bonus available to most Dark Eldar. Not only will the Pain Token make them more durable, it will also activate their ranged Balefire shooting attack.

Sadly I fear that Mandrakes will have way too much competition from the other Elites choices available in the Dark Eldar codex. They require even more finesse and planning to use effectively than other units. And as a result there will not be many competitive gamers, especially those attending tournaments, that will include this stunning looking unit in their army.

Regardless Mandrakes are fantastic for gamers putting together themed armies, painters will have a blast with the many different textures and let’s just face it, they really look fantastic! I am even tempted to use them as count as Ur-Ghuls (tough fighting pets that can be included in an
Archon’s Court).

PAINTING AND CONVERSION OPPORTUNITIES

Let me be frank here, Mandrakes are a serious challenge. The runes on their skin are quite small, their dark skin takes time and painting fire isn’t always the easiest thing. Nonetheless I absolutely love these miniatures! In the past I have dealt with tough minis taking me less time than the Mandrakes, but that almost drove me insane nonetheless. The Mandrakes, challenging as they may be, are a delight to paint up. With every new element you add paint to they really start coming alive.

TIP – Dealing with the Mandrake runes can be a tricky thing, this is mainly because you are working with an inverted colour scheme. Normally the deeper areas are darker, however the Mandrake runes glow with eldritch energies. I would advice starting from a white, or light, undercoat. After all it is no problem to paint the dark skin of a Mandrake over a white undercoat. The runes and their Balefire arms as well as the flayed skin skirts, on the other hand, will greatly benefit from the lighter undercoat.

Secondly, there is the matter of Balefire. Personally I like to paint fire in a realistic manner, meaning that the combustion source (in this case the Mandrake’s arm) is the place where the most energy is released. As a result this spot is the lightest part of the flame, the further away from the combustion source the greater the chance of other colours showing up in the flame.

SUMMARY

The Mandrakes boxed set contains enough metal parts to make five Mandrakes, in three basic poses. Without some conversion work you are unfortunately stuck with these distinct poses, something that does impact my final evaluation of this product.

If you do decide to invest the extra time to do some converting you can fairly easily make your unit unique. Even if you decide not to convert your Mandrakes you will be spending quite a bit of time to make their paintjob look good. On the one hand I have a hard time justifying spending so much time on a unit that, at its maximum, is 90 points, On the other hand though they are fantastic to paint up, the minis really come alive as you come closer and closer to their completion.

Gamewise the Mandrakes are certainly not a bad choice, they are quite good at what they do. However, I can’t help but feel that we will only rarely see them used in the more competitive armybuilds. Given that you can only buy the boxed set you are basically forced to take Mandrakes in multiples of five, something that is sadly also true for the new Incubi.

In conclusion, I personally love the Mandrakes, but given their limited poses and the significant amount of time you have to invest to make them look have decent, particularly if you are a starting painter, I can only give this boxed set seven stars.

So I give this boxed set seven bloodied stars out of ten ( 7 / 10 )

Got suckered into buying these..............

2010-11-29T04:57:00.003+01:00

They took me two full nights of work and I think I'll need to take some better pictures in daylight tomorrow. Nonetheless, I'd very much like to share my new Mandrake unit (click the pictures for bigger versions). I would like to add that all of them have been subtly converted, you can't get any of these arm poses or weapon combinations if you use the normal bits in the boxed set.

These will, hopefully, show up somewhere in the coming days in my Total Wargamer review of the boxed set. To be honest I have no idea why I even bought them, regardless I had a ton of fun with them!

Product Review - Dark Eldar Hellions

2010-11-23T03:14:00.002+01:00

DARK ELDAR HELLIONS REVIEW
Hellions are Dark Eldar that have build up an existence outside the normale ‘protection’ of a kabal, instead they roam the desolate regions of Commorragh in large groups, who move about on agile, fast-moving skyboards. Wild and unpredictable the different Hellion gangs have been known to hire out their services to Kabals on raids, using their Hellglaive and Skyboards to capture victims and claim grizzled trophies in battle.

Hellions are a Fast Attack choice for the Dark Eldar.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

When the first picture of a Hellion was released I was rather uncertain about them, but know I have the actual sprues in my hands I do have to say that these models continue the excellent design seen on the other Dark Eldar releases. The Dark Eldar Hellions boxed set, which contains 2 sprues, and costs the same as both the Kabalite Warriors and Wyches boxed sets.

ON CLOSER INSPECTION

On the sprues you will find enough bits and bobs to put together 5 Hellions, one of which can be a Helliarch leader. In addition all options, available in the codex for a Hellion troupe of 5 men, are also included. So your Helliarch can be armed with a Phantasm grenade launcher, a venom blade, a power weapon, an agoniser and even the rather cool-looking stunclaw. And, of course, these sprues also come with an assortment of extra skulls, spikes and trophies to add to your Hellions. And naturally the kit has a small instruction manual giving details about what is what and how everything goes together. A nice little bonus is that the spare page of this manual has an excellent Hellion artpiece on it, which you can also see in the codex on page 16.

The Hellions themselves, though in line with the design of both the Reavers and Wyches, have a quite unique feel to them. They come across more tribal and brutal as a result of their tighter, torn Wyche suites, screaming mouth masks and grizzled trophies.

Each Hellion is mounted on a stylish and rather speedy-looking Skyboard. Each of these boards is mounted on a 3” base using a clear plastic rod. These rods both solve an old issue and leave another unresolved. On the one hand the rods are still notoriously difficult to fully insert into the hole on the base, pressure is needed and the danger of breaking is quite real. At the same they we no longer need to worry about the rod breaking off clean at its connection point on the mini. Heck no, each rod now comes with a ball and the Skyboard has a nice socket on its bottom half. So we have less unrepairable breaking and more posing opportunities not only with this kit, but also with the Raider, Ravager and Reaver Jetbikes.

TIP - I would advice using clippers to remove the Skyboards from their sprues, this as most of the points were they are attached to the sprues are curved. That way you can easily use a hobby knife and a file later to keep the curved surfaces intact.

We then come to the bodies. Like the other plastic kits each torso comes with a front and back part and allows you to make three male and two female Hellions. You also get five pairs of legs, four of which are split in half. Luckily GW added a nice little A-D on the inside of each leg to prevent any botched poses.

TIP – It is best not to glue the Skyboard to the base until you have finalized the pose of its rider. This way you can get the most out of the ball-socket, making your Hellions even more dynamic. Blu-tac, or an equivalent, is your best friend when trying out poses!

Next we get to the heads and arms with Hellglaives. You get a whopping 10 different heads; 3 male without mask, 4 with mask, 2 females without mask and 1 with mask. Additionally there are 7 Hellglaives, 6 with arms attached, on the sprue. Several of these come in two parts, with one of the upper arms being separate. Personally I am not a huge fan of the semi-dreadlock hair style of the heads, though the detailing is excellent. Although it adds a further unique touch to the Hellions, it does look slightly out of place if you try to add one of these heads to another unit like Kabalite Warriors or Wyches. So it works just fine for the unit, but may look out of place when kit-bashing.

The posability of the arms and equipment are quite good and can be further expanded with only mild cuts and adjustment that even basic modellers shouldn’t have any problems with. The only real issue I ran into was trying to get the Stunclaw off the sprue in one piece, that thing is one fine and delicate piece of plactic!

ON THE TABLETOP

Hellions, being jump troops, add another very mobile unit to an already very fast army. And although they lack any kind of high Strength long range attack their Splinter Pods and higher Strength provided by the Hellglaives makes them a quite dangerous harassment unit to most enemy Infantry units.

The Helliarch leader also has access to the rather interesting Stunclaw, which is able to drag an Independent Character with the unit as they Hit-and-Run. By itself this isn’t all that useful, as a normally sized Hellion squad is unlikely to be able take down some of the powerhouse characters out there. However, the 3D6 movement provided by a successful Hit and Run attack does mean that even a 5-men strong Hellion unit can potentially drag a vital enemy commander within range of one of your tougher units (Hellions, Ravager, Archon etc.). And I am certain all Tau Ethereals out there will be scared of this unit!

PAINTING AND CONVERSION OPPORTUNITIES

The Hellions will be a blast to paint, though I do have to admit they will take quite a bit of time as the result of the many layers you will find on, particularly, the riders. I also really like that the blade on the Skyboards are a large, flat surface, allowing the painting fanatics out there to pour their hearts out with some free-hand, tribal work!

All in all, I think it will be relatively easy, though taking longer than say a normal Space Marine, to get an excellent looking mini on the table. The more advanced modellers and painters will also have a blast with all the different materials (skin, metallics, leather, trophies and cloth) and free-hand opportunities.

The Hellion kit is also the essential place to start for those wanting to add Beast masters to their army. These arena beast-taming Wyches also ride around on Skyboards and only have slightly different equipment The codex even described them as not always wearing their special masks, so a normal Hellion, straight of the sprue, with a spare Wyche weapon will already net you a legal Beast master miniature!

Finally by swapping heads and torsos with the excellent Wyches sprues, you can easily add a ton of extra variety to both a Hellion and Wyche unit. The cool thing here is that both units wear the same type of bodysuit, meaning everything still fits together perfectly. So do loose zero parts and do not have to sacrifice and miniatures at all. And naturally, if you decide not to use the Stunclaw, I am certain it will look great in a Wyche unit. Those ladies love all kind of gladiatorial weapons after all!

SUMMARY

The Hellion kit contains enough parts to build 5 Dark Eldar Hellios, one o which can be built as a Helliarch and includes all the weapons options and upgrades available to them in the codex. The Hellions are easy to build and definitely look the part with their dynamic poses and the nifty ball-and-socket system on their Skyboards. Their bases and the plastic rod you have to insert into them do provide a potential weakness in the kit though. Their excellent posability and the potential to swamp bits with the Wyche kit, without sacrificing miniatures, makes it fairly simple to make a large, but still diverse looking, unit of Hellions. Now we just need to figure out where to find the bits to make a convincing Baron Sathonyx model!

So in conclusion, this kit provides excellent quality for your money, accommodates both the Hellion and Beastmaster units and is great in combination with the Wyche kit, making it a solid 8 for me. I will definitely be including a unit in my upcoming Wyche Cult army!

8/10

Coming later this week, a review of the Wyches kit.

Unfinished projects - part II

2010-11-02T14:49:00.009+01:00

It has been a week since my last post and, sadly, my progres has been slow. Nonetheless there is a little bit of new stuff and I've been able to ward off the temptations offered by new projects and other unfinished stuff. So not all is lost in the land of wee, plastic and metal men just yet!
And I have to say it was borderline again as I dove into the Witch Hunter adversaries rules. Before I knew it I already had a test mini in my hands and was writing a 500 points counterlist for Lorr's boys. It took quite a tad of focus to get away from the cool rules and modeling opportunities. And I may very well end up doing some heretechs eventually, but not just yet....

So back to business, first off the Adeptus are now udnercoated and ready for paint. The more interesting news is the newest squad though. As I've explained before Inquisitor Lorr is joined by a righthand-man and three different themed Stormtroopers squads. I already have an Afriel Strain squad, the Adeptus are underway and the last bunch will be some Skitarii Hypaspists

Inspired by another conversion (link) and my love for the Krieg miniature line (link) I've started the last squad. By simply cutting of the top of the helmets and sculpting some hoods you get a bunch of very effective and quite creepy-looking tech miniatures.
Naturally I did end up with some extra bits and bobs I want to add to the army, though it will be utterly related as they will be five Objective markers. As per the rules I'll need 2 + D3 markers, so five will be made in total:

1. Xenos rogue psyker, Lorr despises psykers so he needs a big, scary thing to focus on. For this I plan to use an old half-finished sculpt, which clearly still needs a ton of work:

He'll be swimming in a techtube, though I will need a new one as the current tube isn't exactly all that seethrough at the moment. Ah well, I'm sure I have something useful in my bitsbox somewhere.
2. A wanted mutant, insane preacher or something (Adeptus Arbites-themed objective).
3. Genotech stash (Afriel Strain-themed objective)
4. Some kind of tech stash (Skitarii-themed objective).
5. Imperial Cult shrine, nice, simple and effective.

Way too many unfinished projects......

2010-10-26T01:19:00.004+02:00

So I've been cleaning out my apartment, and boy, oh boy do I have a ton of unfinished hobby projects. Over the years I've hauled together enough stuff to build several armies, but timewise I never seem to get around to anything above squad-sided stuff. In time I may even have to sell, trade or give away some of this surplus stuff. There simply comes a moment when too much is too much, though I haven't quit reached that point just yet. For the moment though I feel I really need to focus what little time I have on some specific things so I can get those crossed off my 'to do'-list.

And I might as well get started on one of the smaller projects, my mini Witch Hunter force. With just 500 points and 36 models it should be a realistic goal. In fact, 11 minis are already done and 14 others are ready for painting and basing. In order to get the ball rolling I spent a few hours this evening, basing and undercoating 11 rather special miniatures. Trust me it takes quite a bit of time to make enough green stuff vines and little leaves to create the overrun urban theme I have going for this force:

You're looking at a combination of Pig Iron System Trooper bodies (link), Elysian respirator heads (link) and a few purity seals. Together these form my attempt at some cool Adeptus Arbites, which will count as Stormtroopers with shotguns. The guy in the front will end up on the large base with the dogs on it. Sure, putting an Elite Inquisitor on a large base may be a disadvantage but I just have to get those dogs in there!

Imperial Armour IX - The Badab War, part I - REVIEW

2010-10-19T22:24:00.011+02:00

Well it took me five days, but I’ve made it through the entire, latest instalment of Forge World’s Imperial Armour book and I have to say they’ve done an excellent job (as usual). Given we have this excellent medium of the blog, I’d like to share my thoughts on this book. Below I’ll discuss all the individual segments of the book, highlight some of my favourite things and try to take a peek into the future of what we may expect when Imperial Armour X arrives.

The Badab War – Part I, is roughly split up into the following sections:

- Background on the war itself, all the way until the Loyalists reach the actual Badab sector itself.
- Background, selected battle honours and war disposition on 11 of the 18 factions involved in the war.
- Rules and background for 11 great leaders belonging to these factions.
- Campaign rules, ideas, scenarios and rules.
- The Tyrant’s Legion army list.
- Three Apocalypse formations and the mandatory Forge World appendices

Additionally the book is lavished with battle shots, star maps and the characteristic Forge World unit schematics. And as usual the print quality is of superb quality, though this should be expected from a 45 pound purchase.

THE BADAB WAR – Part I

The background section on the war provides the reader with a thrilling tale detailing the events leading up to the creation of the Maelstrom Warders, the rise of the Astral Claw chapter and their eventual corruption under the leadership of the insidious Lugft Huron. More so than any of the previous Imperial Armour book, this edition places the conflict it discusses into the broader scale of the 40K universe. This is, of course, not unexpected given the large scale of the Badab war.

Doing this infamous conflict justice the writers weave an interesting tale of pride, arrogance and victories grasped from Huron’s claw. Yet the story is much broader than this one, pivotal character as blood oaths, even against better judgements, drew other chapters to his side it what once may have been a noble attempt to drive the darkness of the Maelstrom back into the abyss. As the Astral Claws and their fellow Warder chapters drift further away from their original mandate we are presented with an escalated conflict that evolves from an internal conflict, to political and greed driven retaliation, all the way up to full blown rebellion and war.

Despite that this first book only deals with a portion of the forces involved up and until the actual invasion of the Badab sector itself, we constantly come across references to the yet undiscussed chapters. One such reference in particular stood out for me, a short story about the Executioners. This chapter comes to Huron’s help, though the short story clearly shows that they are fully aware of how this support will doom them. I definitely look forward to reading more on them when the second book arrives. The same holds true for the illusive Mantis Warriors, who constantly show up in the book, though their chapter and special characters will have to wait till part II. This is actually the only real letdown in the book for me, I would and could have easily waited a while longer and paid more to get the entire Badab War in a single, massive tome.

Of course this approach is part Forge World marketing, part clear desire of the writers to truly make something special of this rather famous topic. It certainly keeps me interesting to see what they will come up with, especially after reading the Vraks series of Imperial Armour. Those three books each deal with a clearly distinct segment of the struggle on Vraks, while constantly revealing new plot twists characters and units.

CHAPTERS OF THE BADAB WAR & LORDS OF DESTRUCTION – PART I

Being already familiar with a fair amount of the general background of the Badab Wars, I decided to start with these sections first. In this first book we get about 2/3 of the Chapters involved in the incident, most of them from the loyalist side. In fact in the first volume only the Astral Claws and the Lamenters pass by, while the 'Imperium' gets the Fire Hawks, Marines Errant, Red Scorpions, Fire Angels, Raptors (Huzzahs, love these guys), Novamarines and the Howling Griffons. Regardless of the imbalance between good and evil, which is unavoidable given background on the involved forces, I've thoroughly enjoyed this section. I was particularly impressed to find tons of little references to other conflicts, races and characters. Just to name a few we have Periclitor the Foresworn, the Sanctified, Vandire, the Corinth Crusade and the Lok'Krol. Save for the continual, ‘Chapter X’ has been on the verge of destruction numerous times, this section is very well written and entertaining.

In addition to background on 2/3 of the chapters you will also find rules for 11 different characters to add to your armies, with the Astral Claws and Red Scorpions naturally getting a bit more attention than the others. All of these characters have quite interesting attributes and skills, while also adding interesting rules (many of them Chapter Tactics) to the armies they will end up leading. Many of these are especially effective in the special scenarios discussed in the campaign section (see below). Below you can find a quick overview of the available characters, their affiliation and a brief summary on their skill set or play style.

- Chaplain Dreadnought Titus (Howling Griffons) - Walking venerable icon, making nearby units fearless.
- Lugft Huron (Astral Claws) - Strong fighting leader that adds bonuses for seizing the initiative, ordnance support, who also has a surprising knack for staying alive when all seems lost.
- Captain Corien Sumatris, the Tyrant’s Champion (Astral Claws) - Very agile duellist that will give many an enemy IC pause to confront him.
- Armenneus Valthex (Astral Claws) - Master of the Forge and a quite competent fighter due to his alchemistry experimentation and the Indynabula array. Also allows you to use the usual Master of the Forge bonuses.
- Lieutenant Commander Anton Narveaz (Marines Errant) - Turns a unit into Dark Void elites (see campaign section for more info on this).
- Magister Sevrin Loth (Red Scorpions) - Very powerful psyker who can use three powers a turn, including one that turns his 2+ artificier armour save into an Invulnerable save!
- Lord High Commander Carab Culln (Red Scorpions) - Buffs combat resolution around him and an army led by him can replace veteran sergeants with Apothecaries.
- Captain Tarnus Vale (Fire Angels) - Is stubborn, lets Troops replace combat tactics with Tank Hunter and any vehicle he gets into also benefits from the USR.
- Lias Issodon (Raptors) - Sneaky, stealthy character that influences initiative chances can ambush a unit and has a rather nasty custom Omen pattern boltgun.
- Malakim Phoros (Lamenters) - Can only be used in combination with Codex: Blood Angels and is a rather skilled fighter that will get enraged once wounded.
- Captain Mordaci Blaylock (Novamarines) - And finally we normal Space Marine players get a character that makes all Terminator units scoring.
- Knight-Captain Elam Courbray (Fire Hawks) - Makes all flamer weapons twin-linked, while Assault and Vanguard squads also count as scoring. That, and Courbray is one serious fighter, who finally gets a jump pack to lead the charge by example!

THE BADAB WAR CAMPAIGN

The campaign segment may just be my favourite part of the book as it both provides solid support for starting players and tons of freedom, ideas and rules for the more advanced ones. This section starts off with the Badab campaign, detailing the six phases and associated victory point and reward system. Each phase additionally gets a special mission that directly ties into the storyline behind that particular part of the war. It is slightly odd though that even though the book only deals with the first part of the war you do get scenarios that will take you directly to the doorsteps of Huron’s Palace of Thorns. Regardless the campaign offers good fun for players of all skill levels and even invites non Space Marines or Imperial Guard players into the fray by introducing the Forces of Ruin.

All in all you get some special scenarios, a Planetstrike game, a huge Apocalypse fight at the gates of the Palace of Thorns and my favourite: boarding action rules. That’s right you get to take your lovely Space Marine miniatures into the bowels of an enemy vessel. I was particularly amused to read the following sentence, ‘Hyper-competitive players will be better served elsewhere’. So what makes this new mini-ruleset so interesting, well it allows you to make some utterly impressive terrain and there is quite a bit of randomness in there to stir up stuff.

In principle both the attacker and defender get a maximum of 1500 points to spend on minis that do not include vehicles, larger walkers and artillery. The attacker naturally planned for this fight, so he gets some more Elites (one is even mandatory). Now as most of us know, space is not a very warm and cosy place and as a result weapons work slightly different as the atmosphere is lowly draining from the boarded vessels. The presence of the cold void means that even a small puncture of one’s gear can mean certain death, which is represented by most weapons becoming Rending, though units with a 2+ save and with AVs are unaffected by this. Note though that you can also use strategems (1 + 1 per 500 points in your army), which included Void Hardened armour. Secondly we also get some nifty rules for outer hull (or atmosphere less planet) engagements where blast weapons can literally send your mean flying off into space!

Personally I can’t wait to give these rules a shot and to make it even better you have to construct deck levels in which you will be fighting and boarding. Naturally those lucky enough to have a copy, old or new, of Spacehulk can use the tiles included in these games as a perfect starting point for Boarding Action.

THE TYRANT’S LEGION

In addition to the new Boarding rules, scenarios and Chapter characters we also get the Tyrant of Badab’s own personal Legion. The book says it best with the quote ‘lions lurking amongst jackals’. This armylist gives you a force that at its core has a solid, durable Astral Claw cohort, surrounding them is a large auxilia of expendable troops. And when I say expendable, I do definitely mean expendable as most of the auxilia will provide cover saves for the Astral Claw units. Most heavy support is provides by mercenary forces, auxilia batteries and Russ support groups. The rules really fit with the feeling you get from the fluff section of the Astral Claws.

Two unique units particularly stand out for me and deserve an extra mention. First up is the Corpse Taker, this former Apothecary of the Astral Claws now wanders the battlefield joined by a unit of mediservo-units in search of Geneseed, both of the fallen Astral Claws and any other allied, enemy, living or dead Marine. Secondly we have the mercenary Marauders, drawn to Huron’s cause through bribery, fear and intimidation. They really remind me of the old Lost and the Damned units as they get a broad selection of gear and can add several brutish creatures to their unit.

Naturally this list does feel a little bit rushed together with tons of exclusive Forge World items all over the place. However, it will make for a very fun to make and play force that will definitely behave as its background dictates. Heck you have no choice as you already need to select one mandatory 20-men strong meat shield for your first Troop choice. The more ambitious converters and gamers out their will also find comfort in the arms of this list as it will also be the perfect basis for an Alpha Legion, or even an Iron Warrior, force.

APOCALYPSE

Finally we get to three Apocalypse datasheets and the mandatory Forge World appendices dealing with Titans and other, relatively, boring stuff. Quite honestly these last three pages feel rather tacked on and hardly add anything special. More filler than killer to put it simply

SO WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM PART II?

Well, several conclusions can be drawn based on Part I. First off we’ll get the rest of the story dealing with the invasion of the actual Badab sector. Additionally the missing chapters will get background and character rules (Loyalists: Salamanders, Minotaurs, Sons of Medusa, Exorcists, Carcharodons & Star Phantoms; Secessionists: Mantis Warriors and Executioners).

They writers also promise more missions, campaign ideas and new Space Marine vehicles. One of which is most likely the Achilles Landraider:

Then, of course, we have the Mark IV Siege Dreadnought

During the last UK Gamesday Forge World also revealed that part II will also contain a Space Marine Siege armylist and new rules for Battlefleet Gothic. The book itself also reveals a possible older Mark Terminator armour that may eventually become available:

And finally we also have a potential Carcharodon / heavy close combat upgrade kit as Forge World hid some of them between their early Phantom build:

Logically we can also count on one or multiple of the still to be discussed Chapters to get some character sculpt love, but beyond that, at least for the moment, we’re just left guessing.

CONCLUSION

+ Very well written background detailing the first half of the Badab War and about 2/3 of the factions involved in the fighting.
+ Excellent rules for new characters, boarding action and the Tyrant’s Legion.
+ Stunning artwork, paper and print quality.
+ Despite following an existing conflict both the writing and the rules provide plenty of space for those wanting to experiment.
+ The books comes with a rather large poster with both a star chart of the Badab War on one side and Ancient Kleitor, Astral Claws Venerable Dreadnought on the other side.
+ Supported by the release of a broad range of old Mark conversion kits from Forge World.
+ Well you may have guessed it from the rest of the review, but those boarding rules truly are awesome!

- Well it’s all about the guys in power armour and the meat shield Auxilia standing in between them, not a whole lot of interest here for the pure Xenos players and fans.
- Huron knows how long we will have to wait for the second book to arrive.

Imperial Armour IX – The Badab War – Part I by Alan Bligh
Available from: forgeworld.co.uk
Hardcover, 208 pp. - ISBN 978-1841549958
Price – 45 Pounds Sterling

IN RESPONSE TO VINNY:

I also got a specific question from Lamenter fan Vinny on my blog, on whether or not the book would be worthwhile for a Lamenter fan. So I might as well throw that answer in here as well. The book is full of references to the Lamenters, their past and direct involvement in the Badab War. The section on the Chapter’s history provides a ton of little details about their past, adding more depth to events which we so far only knew by name. Furthermore you get rules for Malakim Phoros, Master of the Lamenters, Lord Ruin and Watcher of the Deeps. So from having to borrow other Blood Angel characters you now get the actual, former, leader of this cursed Chapter.

Furthermore you also get information on how the Badab War ended for the Lamenters, how many of them survived the last desperate battle against the Minotaurs and how many of them where stations elsewhere, stayed with Huron and may now, in fact, be part of his cursed Red Corsairs. Given that the Minotaurs still need to be discussed in the next book, we may very well see more information on them in that publication as well.

As for whether you should cash out 45 pounds of this book, if you’re only interested in the Lamenters information then I’d say no. If you like Space Marines and even have a mild interest in the conflict I’d say don’t hesitate to buy it. If not I can still heartily advice you try to get your hands on the book eventually by boring it for a mate or shop, even if only to read the Chapter’s background and have a look at Phoros’ rules! So to finish this review off, I’ll drop one final shot of some Lamenters in here.

Thanks for reading, I hope this was useful and until the next review!

-All images proporty of GW and Forge World-

Sometimes I just love the mailman

2010-10-15T02:17:00.005+02:00

Well this morning I had the luck of running into the mailman the second I was about to leave to work at the university. After thanking the rather friendly gentleman (I think I may be the sole person keeping the local post office in business) I quickly went inside to open the rather oddly shaped package. I did remember I was expecting some old Incubi I traded with a guy in France, but surely this box did not fit the describtion.

A few hobbyknife cuts later I found, to my joy, a Forgeworld order I place quite a long time ago contain some etched brass, a new weapon kit and the Imperial Armour IX. Naturally I arrived late at work, a flat tire helped to make it even worse. But I really didn't care all that much as I had lab babysitting duty, so in between running experiments I could spend some time reading the new book.

Being already familiar with a fair amount of the general background of the Badab Wars, I decided to start with the Chapter info section. In this first book we get about half of the Chapters involved in the incident, most of them from the loyalist side. In fact in the first volume only the Astral Claws and the Lamenters pass by, while the 'Imperium' gets the Fire Hawks, Marines Errant, Red Scorpions, Fire Angels, Raptors (Huzzahs, love these guys), the Novamarines and the Howling Griffons. Regardless of the imbalance between good and evil, which is unavoidable given background on the involved forces, I've thoroughly enjoyed this section.

I was particularly impressed to find tons of little references to other conflicts, races and characters. Just to name a few we have Periclitor the Foresworn, the Sanctified, Vandire, the Corinth Crusade and the Lok'Krol. Save for the continual, Chapter X has been on the verge of destruction numerous times, I've really enjoyed the book so far. This weekend I'll be going through the rest of the story as well as the rules sections. I already had a quick look at the latter and I have to say the Tyrant's Legion armylist looks very interesting for other purposes as well (Alpha Legion) and boy, oh boy, Sevrin Loth could be extremely effective in the hands of the right player with his super amour and three psychic powers a turn!

And there are the etched brass sheets, one for conversion guide purposes (Inquisition) the other (Raven Guard) for a future army. Well what can I say about these, just look at the pictures below the detailing is absolutely amazing (the base is a standard infantry model base). So for a fairly limited price even an utterly unexperienced gamer will be able to add tons and tons of character to their miniatures:

And then there is, of course, the mandatory impulse buy which happends every time I get some FW-related stuff. I'm certain I'll find great use for them, but do I need them? I don't think I even care anymore, these old style weapons are just way too cool to worry about stuff like logic!

Astronomican's Rumble or Stumble round 13

2010-10-12T22:16:00.003+02:00

As some of you may know I'm quite active over at the Astronomican forum (link), I do some adminy stuff and generally help out where I can as it is a great way to stay in the hobby. One of our initiatives is a 2-3 weekly Rumble or Stumble. In which several members put up a new mini (generally a leader type of any sort of pretty much any game system they want, though there have been themed challenges) and go up against eachother. Naturally there is a wee bit of banter and joking around, but in the end it makes for a fun, simple way to get a lot of different people motivated to build and paint some cool minis. And although at the end of each round a winner (rumbler) is selected, we really like to think that we are rumbled. So a rumbling hard or less hard-challenge would be more accurate, but let's face that just sounds horrible.

Today the latest installment of Rumble or Stumble challenge (the 13th so far!) came to an end and with 8 contestants there are plenty of new minis to check out. Belo you can find some sneak peeks of this round's excellent minis. Also for the full Rumble or Stumble gallery just click - here.

FOXY:

BISHOPP:

QUARKY GIDEON:

PSYKIC_SCRIBE:

OSSAI:

FARSKIT:

7LUNCHBOXES:

PHERION:

The temptation of Killzone

2010-10-11T22:17:00.007+02:00

Well it has been a while since the last update so I might as well dive right in. As some of you may remember I was toying around with ideas of building some small Kill-Teamesuqe forces, starting with a Slaaneshi CSM group. Now I was originally going with the old Astro Mag Kill-Team rules, but those are in need of a wee update and do lack a bit of scenario support. Which is where Killzone comes in! I've been given the homebrewn ruleset of Killzone a shot and I'm really liking it. I just love going all out on just a handful of minis, something I have no time or energy for when it comes to a normal-sized force. What's also great it that I can even build two 'armies' all by myself and invite a buddy over for a few quick scenarios, no more emmigration-like trails just to get to a game!

And I definitely agree with what BSMoove said: "Point is, for me it's about using models you don't use often... or even at all. I've been wanting a reason to paint this model since 1991. Killzone gave me that excuse." This ruleset allows me to dive into armies I normally wouldn't be able to touch, make us of outlandish minis and conversion and may even draw some of my old gaming buddies back into the scene. Time will tell if this ruleset will end up influencing my gaming experience, but it definitely see the tons of potential for even a small-time gamer as myself.

So what would this mean for my tiny Kill-Team, well starting from a 250 point team I end up with:
- 2 Chaos Raptors, 1 with Flamer
- 4 Chaos Space Marines
- 1 Noise Marine with Sonic Blaster (with Extra Shot)
- 3 Summoned Daemons
- 1 Berzerker
- 1 Team-Leader (Aspiring Chaos Space Marine with Power Weapon and EAO - Feel no Pain)
So 12 highly individualised miniatures that will be a blast to build and paint, good times all round.

Naturally I won't let you guys walk away without some pics:
And naturally the rules need a quick plug, so go check them out here:

While we're at it I might as well toss some other ideas out there for others to take some inspiration from. One of the coolest thing, in my opinion anyway, is the strong theme/fluff drive behind the Killzone themes. Sure you can just ignore it completely, but this is a ruleset clearly focused on fun games. On to the ideas:

Imperial Guard Codex:
- Genestealer Cult
- Schaeffer's Last Chancers, using the veterans/snipers/penal legion entries it should be fairly simple to make a great Team
- Killzone is also a great excuse to dust of those old Necromunda miniatures
- Adeptus Arbites supression force

Power-armoured guys (yes, all of them lobbed together)
- SW - Sagas Team
- Ordo Xenos Kill-Team
- Elites' Inquisitor and retinue, the ideal reason to make a ton of unique and stunning henchmen
- Chaos Sorceror Coven
- Fallen Angel Infiltration Team
- Bile's field study

Other Armies
- Xenos Tau/Kroot Mercs - even if just for conversion reasons
- Eldar Corsairs
- Ork Freebooters - those guys are everywhere, especially when there are enough high tech weapons and teef!
- Genestealer Infestation, Ymgarls in particular feel very suited to Killzone
- Pretty much all those army units you've always wanted to buy and try, but never found a spot for in your normal army

Thanks for reading and keep gaming!

Finished the Warrior Prime

2010-09-20T00:49:00.007+02:00

And the Warrior Prime is all done, ready to start leading his swarm. Although I guess a single Termagant doesn't exactly count as a swarm, something I hope to remedy in about two weeks. Let's just say my Norn Queen is still defrosting but almost ready to start mass-production!

Some extra shots:

Slitherfiend and his 'swarm':

The model was originally also intended for a modelling and painting competition, Astronomican's Rumble or Stumble, but I was without a camera for a while. Still, as a hit to that period I did keep the the 10 I originally encoorporated into the base. Nice, silly little touch, that doesn't distract too much from the overall mini:

For those interested here's a link (click here) to the Rumble or Stumble gallery over at the Astronomican Forums that showcases all the excellent minis that have passed by in the 11 rounds that we've had so far. Round 12 is nearly at an end, in fact there are just a few hours left, so the gallery will be updated somewhere tomorrow.

And eventhough I am not certain I will have enough time to participate in the next round I have put some thought into the potential mini. In fact I hope to work on my 'count as'-Inquisitor for my tiny, tiny Witchhunter force led by Gideon Lorr. I have three distinctive factions working together in that army (very wip) and I intend to build a single 'count as'-Inquisitor to go along with each of them. Naturally I can only use a single one at the time, but it just seemed like a very interesting project.

Included in the force is a small Adeptus Arbites squad (Stormtroopers with Shotguns), so their 'count as'-Inquisitor will be an Arbites Judge. Silly as it may be I've always had something for adding critters, familiars and such to miniatures and I think I will have to put the good Judge on a terminator-sized base as I want to add both of bad boys shown below to his 'wargear':

Astro Mag 7 has arrived

2010-09-16T01:34:00.003+02:00

It is my pleasure to provide a link to the latest installment of the Astronomican mag:

Table of Contents:
-What Can the Seer Council Do For You?
-From the Void: An Article On Podcasts
-How I Paint Space Hulk: Terminators
-Basic Brush Techniques
-Loyal Traitors: A Soul Drinker's Army List
-The Homebrew
-'I Hate Cadia' (fiction, by Anne Marie)
-Battle Report: Rumble in Richmond.

Just click the cover pic above to download the mag. It is also great to see that Ron at From the Warp (link) has also posted it up. The more exposure, the more feedback, critique, ideas and people who may join in on the online mag business! The mag will also be added to my downloads section in the rightside bar.

And another Ymgarl Stealer joins the swarm

2010-09-13T00:09:00.002+02:00

Still tons of cleaning an gap-filling left but this is the basic idea for numero 4 of 6, another brood is getting close to the painting stage!

Particularly happy with the rather freaky-looking rear arms, rather makes him look a tad different from the others:

Warrior Prime wip, part II

2010-09-12T18:39:00.003+02:00

Righto, time for some wip pictures. Still quite some cleaning up to do, need finish the base and the crystal sword look insanely flat at the moment (photographing anomily). Still I'm slowly getting there and I do think he looks quite threatening and slightery, hence his nickname Slitherfiend:

The idea is now to finish the creepy crawler by tuesday and do the initial work on a 15-termagant strong brood. After that I won't be able to get much done for two weeks due to a tons of different circumstances, after that I will finally be able to come close to actually calling this a legally playable army with the addition of a hormagant brood and some Ymgarl Stealers!

Still alive and kicking

2010-09-09T01:14:00.002+02:00

....kind of anyway. Real life can be nasty at times and it has been taking quite a few strong swings at me these last couple of months (some personal, relational and study-related issues). And I've been forced to really buckle down and focus on them first. Nearly up to speed again, rough working month ahead as well, but hobby time is coming within reach again!

So here we go again, slow, slow progres coming up. Starting with a quick shot of a strangleweb. And yes I am fully aware it makes for a rather pointess, but I love flamer weapons and wanted to add something different to an otherwise slightly boring termagant unit:

Next up we have some wip shots of my humble attempt at an Ymgarl Genestealer brood. Again another rather expensive unit that could get blasted before they even wake up, but I love the little blighters. Especially after finding some rather cool bits from Chapterhouse Studios (LINK) in the form of those awesome 'alien' genestealer heads. Sure, they may be a bit big but some strategic shaving and cutting makes for some rather creeply looking Stealers. I'm going for a slightly different look for these guys, really want them to look quite unique and even more creepy/skulking than your average Genestealer:

Naturally those big, chunky pewter heads and leaning poses do make these Stealers a tad top-heavy. So just in case, and really needed for some of them, I've added some weight to the bases in the form of some 10-Eurocent coins. I just keep throwing more and more money at this hobby it would seem!

And finally a quick pic of one of the things that has also been keeping me rather occupied in my free time, damn you disposable income!

Warrior Prime wip

2010-08-20T20:47:00.002+02:00

Right picture time, finished the build on the first Warrior Prime (yes, going for a rather unusual, but fun army build). Slitherfiend is looking quite decent so far, pretty sure he'll end up quite good once he's slithering his way through the snow:

And a couple of quick detailshots of the bonesword (Maxmini bit) and lash whip (venomthrope tentacle with some minor green stuff additions):

The extra bonesword hand shot is in there as I took the other picture a bit too fast and completely missed I'd forgotten to finish off some of the extra tendrils. Really looking forward to painting up this critter, which will hopefully happen this weekend. No promises though, course and lab prep work may have to take precedent again.

Icy Tyranids ahoy!

2010-08-14T05:33:00.003+02:00

Real life definitely put a nifty dent in the lofty ideal of finishing a termagant unit in a week's worth of time, however I'm still slowly labouring ahead. Just have to get around all my work and emotional stuff (rough two weeks so to speak), though the massive post-springcleaning I undertook recently did wonders for clearing up my hobby area. So time for a quick picture of the wip chair, which has two main reasons: easy to move around and I rather like to follow newsprograms and such from the comfort of my couch and the chair has the perfect height to do some work from said couch:

The above pic shows the rather humble beginnings of a new and rather small Nid force I hope to put together over the next 2-3 months (which would be a speedy record for me). I'm slowly getting back to grips with actually working at a steady pace on stuff, trying to free up time and specific moments of the week seems to be doing to trick quite nicely at the moment. In future posts I will go more depth into the 'just for fun' armylist I'll be following as well as some of the planned conversions, objective markers and random stuff. Though special thanks definitely go to Acoustico over at the Astronomican Forum, for whom I did a testmini a while back. The colourscheme wasn't exactly what he had in mind, but after a while it has really grown on me.

Right now I have exactly one unit of termagants build and PIP, though in the background you can see a little critter a friend has already nicknamed Slitherfiend:

He is indeed a wip Warrior Prime armed with spinefists and the ever feared lash whip & bonesword combo. Hopefully I'll also be able to use him for the 10th Rumble or Stumble, time will tell. For those wondering, yes that sword is indeed another Maxmini bit. What can I say, I'm apparantly addicted to their stuff:

Time for some more pics

2010-07-20T19:09:00.002+02:00

As promised I have some, slightly, better pictures of that testmini I put together for a fellow Astronomican forum member:

I am not so sure this is really what he will be going with, so there's a fair chance of some more pics of different schemes to pop up in this space somewhere over the next 1-2 weeks. Regardless, I had a blast painting this blighter up and may just have to do a few more just for the hell of it!