Hey look! I do occasionally finish a project!

Way, way back in the mists of time, i posted up pictures of the first Finecast model i'd bought (found here for those interested.) and set about painting it.

Then like so many of the things i blog about i didn't mention Ol' Grulgor again. Until now anyway. You see i do finish stuff off, eventually, but since i have the attention span of the average four year old i usually neglect to actually post about it on the blog.

So without further ado here's my Daemon Prince of Nurgle in all his glory. Including gratuitous ass shot i might add.




I had planned on photographing my whole Daemon army, and spent an afternoon painstakingly moving them from cabinet to table, taking roughly thirty shots of them then packing them away.

Before checking the shots.

This is a critical mistake as i found out to my cost, as when i checked the photos every.single.one. was a blurry splodge.

You may well guess that this resulted in a monumental outburst of profanity and fury that would have left Kharn the Betrayer whimpering in the corner asking for his mummy.

So that is yet to come, along with more work on my Sanguinary Guard, amongst other bits and pieces. Who knows i may even get a game in this week.

Until next time,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-pope.

Sanguinary Guard Take Two: Part Deux

Just a quick blog update with a couple of work in progress shots of my new attempt at a Sanguinary Guard force. He still needs a bit of work, namely on the banner and a few details, but it gives the basic idea for the colour scheme, less bling more wing.

Bling Wing: Take Two.

If you've read back on my blog a bit you'll see that i've attempted a Blingwing - also known as a Sanguinary Guard army - before, getting quite far along with the army. But i have to admit their look just didn't quite work. I don't think i achieved the best i could with the force, so they were quietly put up for sale on Ebay and that was that. Or so i thought.

I've recently been away from the hobby, as you may have guessed from the huge number of updates to this blog, and i've not had the chance to play anywhere near as much as i would like. This is a combination of depression, ill parent and upcoming legal fight to get access to my daughter, so understandably little painted soldiers were not that high on my list of priorities.

But under the advice of medical experts, i'm pushing to return to both painting and gaming. This has left me with a few choices. Currently i've been using a Daemon army to play both Fantasy and 40k, largely because half the time there is no one to play Fantasy against.

But i've also got a budding Beastman army that i'd like to try. Which means i needed a small 40k army i could take as well in case there was no one for my Warherd to kill. And so the search was on.

I considered Grey Knights again, but the changes made to their background coupled with just how (un)popular they are these days i would have been one Draigowing amongst many. So they were out.

Space Wolves were next for consideration, a Loganwing army is small but perfectly formed. But the Wolves of Fenris have never quite grabbed me. Perhaps it was being on the receiving end of one too many beat downs when i started in 2nd Edition.

So with those two options out, i started looking further afield. Imperial Guard, Orks and 'Nids were all out of the question, too hordey. Chaos was a possibility, but given the rumours circulating there was a risk i'd end up with an unusable force once the new Codex hit.

Necrons were tempting. That Triach Stalker is just too lovely a model for words and i will own one eventually just for the pleasure of painting it. But again their background has taken a turn for the terrible with their most recent 'dex and its the fluff that gives me inspiration.

So a long story short, coupled with much head scratching and pondering i returned to the Blood Angels, my first true army and my favourite chapter by far.

Could i paint them better this time?

We shall see. At the moment i've picked up a Finecast Dante (all present and correct with no Aero bubbles) and two boxes of the Sanguinary Guard. I learnt much from the last batch, namely don't stick the wings and jump packs on prior to painting (too many crevices).

The debate now, as i glue my hands together and possibly some miniatures too, is whether to go gold again or go red. I've always been a traditionalist when it comes to the Blood Angels - if they ain't got a black shoulder pad trim, they ain't Blood Angels - so having regular Marines apeing Dante's blingbling look did niggle at me. I'm considering going for a classic Honour Guard scheme, red with Gold Helmets, this time around.

****

As a small bonus i'm also going to briefly review some of the new paints. I grabbed the Red Glaze, Red Foundation and Snow Texture Citadel paints and gave them a whirl on some Daemons.

The new red foundation is slightly lighter than the old Mechrite Red, but does seem to cover even better. The red glaze is also pretty good, enhancing the Blood Red i applied it over and really making the red pop.

The texture paint though, i am iffy about. Firstly thanks to the bits of whatever in it, you get bugger all paint in a pot. The texture is a bit sparse once you start painting with it and it just doesn't quite work. So far i can't see myself buying more to use on bases when the old methods work better.

Perhaps i'm using it wrong though. If anyone is still reading this blog (cue tumbleweed) please drop a comment if you have found a use for the new textures.

Until next time, i remain

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-pope.

Jake and Fimir

So looking back through my blog so far, i have noticed a tendency for me to start a project, post a few starting pictures and then not really mention it again. Perhaps not the best approach to blogging about the hobby.

So to rectify this situation, this post is dedicated to all those projects mentioned last year but that i completely got distracted from and forgot to mention again.

First up, my Fimir. I bought a couple of these old Heroquest models ready to add to my Fantasy forces for some good old fashioned Storm of Magicing. This was of course before Forgeworld released their exquisite models that put all past fimir to shame. But ho-hum. Now one of the issues with the Heroquest version was the size. It's teeny tiny compared to what it should be. So to give it some oomph i had a search through the interwebs to find something suitable to stick on its base to give it a bigger profile, and came up with this:

Not the best photo's thanks to my cameras limited capabilities at the moment. But its a woman chained to a chunk of Warpstone. It was a freebie from an online mini company and fits the Fimir's 18 rated background.

Moving on, heres a smallish update on my Beastmen. Collecting them has been slow, because i have vowed not to buy anything more for them until i'd painted what i had. A vow i then broke when the pestilent joy that is the Nurgle warrior was released. I grabbed one, stole an idea from Warseer and hey presto a new Pestigor for my brayherd.
It's basically a simple headswap with a bit of fur greenstuffed onto the legs. Credit goes to ArtificerArmour on Warseer who first posted the conversion.
And last but not least my Beastmen "army so far". I've been insistent that i not buy any new models for the army until i've painted what i've got, in order to avoid the situation i find myself in with my Daemons.

As a result the herd is tiny at the moment, but it'll grow hopefully consistently and will remain a fully painted force.

That's all for now, feel free to leave comments as always.

Until next time,
Sheesh y'all, 'twas a dream

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-pope.

To convert or not to convert...

I attended the 25th anniversary celebrations at GW Liverpool on saturday, and managed to grab one of the limited edition Crimson Fists (seriously fast sellers, within 10 minutes of the store opening every single one was gone from the shelves). Opening it up in store i was a) relieved that it was a decent cast, no bubbles or other Finecast woes and b) awed by the sculpt, the photo's really don't do it justice. But...

In it's released form i'd never use it. I don't collect Crimson Fists, i can't really afford to start another army just to use the miniature and to be honest the Fists don't interest me that much as an army.
So that left me with two options. One paint it as a Crimson Fist and have it sit and gather dust in my display cabinet, or two convert it into a Dark Angel.

At first the second option seemed like heresy. Convert a limited edition miniature? Am i mad!?! but the more i thought about the less crazy it seemed. There is very little on the actual marine itself that indicates its a Crimson Fist, one fist icon on its greave and a fist icon on his backback. So getting rid of those would be easy. I'm not too fond of the beaky helmet either, so that would be no loss.
And ultimately, i didn't plan on ever sell the miniature, so it's irrelevant if it would lower its worth to some by changing it.

So last night, i broke out the craft knife and superglue, took a deep breath and began...

And this is the result, a couple of cuts, a change of bits and Crimson Fist becomes Dark Angel. He'll be painted up as the Master of the 3rd Company. Now i just need to think of a suitable name for the guy.






Feel free to leave comments and or death threats for desecrating a limited edition miniature

Regards,
Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-pope.

5 Months between updates? That has to be a new record...

Time certainly flies when you are not having fun. I can scarcely believe i've managed to let five whole months slip by without posting an update on this blog. Rather unexcusable and i suspect if i had any regular readers, they have long since given up on another post.

But no, i'm posting again. Why so long? Well as some of you will know i suffer from rather severe depression. And if you are unlucky enough to also be a sufferer, you'll also know that one of the symptoms is a complete lack of motivation, even to do things you normally enjoy.

In my case it resulted in me downing paintbrush and dice and pretty much doing sod all related to the hobby for most of the last five months.

Coming back to it, i then found the venue i play Warmahordes in has closed down (arg) so thats pretty much an end to my adventures in that particular gaming system.

So not a positive position really. But hey ho, onwards and upwards. I've been renovating my Daemons, trying to get my Ravenwing up to a points level i can actually game with and i've picked up one of the new Lord of the Rings force books to boot. I doubt i'll ever use it, but i plan on posting a review of the new books at some point in the hopefully not to distant future.

Now i just have to stick to these blogging resolutions and not leave it several months between updates. Wish me luck.

Pet Peeve

It's been a while since i've posted an update on the blog, owing to a combination of slight hobby burn out, real life commitments and rioting in the UK.

I had an idea for an update for this week that would have hopefully included a Warmachine battle report and some photos of my opponents armies showing a couple of rather spectacularly painted forces. Sadly this was completely scuppered by the recent civil unrest this past week in the UK.

I live in a small town called Huyton, which is part of Liverpool. To get to my FLGS in St. Helens, i have to pass very close to another town called Warrington which was the scene of several violent incidents as rioters made their way to the larger city of Manchester. And as much as i love my games of 40k, Warhammer and Warmachine they arent really worth risking a mugging to play.

So that article is postponed until next week, when hopefully the scally scum responsible for this disorder have been dealt with.

In the meantime i would like to comment on a growing peeve of mine on the Internet: The continued persecution of Matt Ward.

It seems like it is impossible to go anywhere hobby related without seeing at least one insult directed his way and really it is completely unacceptable.

I can understand not liking his work, i can understand being irritated that your latest update isn't what you would expect. I can even understand why a heap of Astartes players are annoyed when a codex tells them they have Ultramarine envy. All are fine reasons to criticise the work.

What they are not an excuse for is making disgraceful personal comments about Ward. They arent an excuse to spam the internet with vitriolic hate towards the man. As i've said to others :Hate the product, don't hate the man.

Those of us who have been around have of course seen this all before. Before Ward, Gav Thorpe was the repeated target of absolutely horrible comments and insults, none of which he deserved. And i'm sure once Ward does leave the company, he'll be replaced by another scapegoat.

But in the meantime i do ask that anyone who does read this blog not to indulge in reckless hate against Ward. Can you imagine how you would feel, or a loved one would feel, if the same comments were made about you? If only for politeness i hope the Internet community can tone it down.

/end rant.