Why did they have to make bases that look like little white chocolates?

As i said in the last post i picked up a pack of resin bases to give my 40k armies a little bit of extra oomph, mostly inspired by seeing the efforts of an Eldar player at the Liverpool GW store on Thursday who'd customised his models with wraithbone looking plasticard.

So when i stumbled upon The Wargame Store today i made the most of their extensive range and grabbed a pack of Black Cat Bases, specifically their ruined buildings set. At only £5 for a pack of 15* i figured they were a bargain.

Quality wise, well there is room for improvement. Theres a fair few airbubbles, but given the ruined nature of the walls etc. it should be fairly easy to remove without spoiling the look. Theres also a couple of slightly mishapen bases, with one side lower than the other. Again the scenic nature of the bases should negate this a little bit - they are all still round and all still 25mm so not too bad. Other than that the resin is nice and solid, a tad more brittle than most but still of gaming quality.

And frankly at such a low price its still worth a buy and i'll certainly be keeping an eye out for more of Black Cats range.

*I do have to say however that the pack only had 14 bases in it rather than the advertised 15. A bit annoying.

Pleasant Suprises and Disappointing Retailers

On a trip out to visit my mothers horses at the distant field they are kept it, she suggested we stop by a place called Brimstage Hall because she was sure she had seen some of those "warhammer things" amongst the various craft shops and pensioner feeding establishments.
Whilst dubious i agreed and we took a detour to stop off at the place. At first it looked like it would be a waste of time until i spotted the familiar and always welcome sight of Ghal Maraz next to a flight of stairs.
Heading up i emerged into a veritable Aladdins cave of creamy hobby goodness. A store stocked to bursting with Games Workshop, Privateer Press, Flames of War, Malifaux and even some of Mantics crap. Turns out that this was the retail outlet of an online Hobby supplier, Wargamestore.com

After having a quick browse i picked up a few bits and bobs, including a Warmachine Retribution of Scyrah warcaster, some resin bases and a Beastman shaman. All of which, i must add, were below RRP.

Even better i'll be headed back there on the 9th of July to try a bit of Warmachine, a game i've had my eye on for a while, depending on whether an order i placed is actually fulfilled by then.
Which leads us onto the second half of this posts title.

I placed an order more than two weeks ago with a well known online store, whose name rhymes with Mayland Mames, online to be left completely in the dark as to when it would actually be fulfilled. Now i know they received a large influx of orders when GW's new policy was announced but really there is no excuse for A) not informing customers of the delay, B) not keeping customers up to date as to when it'll be dispatched and C) Asking customers not to bother complaining because it's more work for them to do.

Back in my days of retail i would never dream of treating a customer that way, so i'm not going to accept said treatment just because they are online. Suffice to say i'll be seeking a full refund if the items aren't dispatched by the end of this week and i certainly won't be using that particular company again if they aren't.

Anyway enough negativity. I'm aiming to get a review up of these resin bases i bought in the next day or so as well as a few more pictures of my hobby activity this week.

Dust and sand

Blimey the new version of Tomb Kings are nasty.
I managed to sneak off to the Vet's night at GW Liverpool for the first time in bloomin' ages, taking my Daemons with me to double my chances of a game - they are based so they can be used in both 40k and Fantasy - and ended up facing a Tomb Kings force led by the legendary Ste.

It was a 1750 point game, so i wasn't expecting to face anything too big but nope, out popped a warsphinx with a crispy Tomb King on it's back. But no worries i thought, my horde of Bloodletters should take care of it no problem. Yeah right.

Everything went well, i managed to blast a few units of Skellies and chariots away with my Flamers and magic, giving me a pretty big head start returning the bone heads to their graves. My Bloodletters however managed to get bogged down against the warsphinx and a unit of skellies, while my Daemonettes tore up the flanks.
What i found surprising is how resilient the basic troops of Tomb Kings are. They may have lousy stats but they linger around like a bad smell, and with spells also bumping units up it can get hard to get rid of them.

In the end it was the spells that did me in. The Tomb King spent the first five turns of the game doing bugger all in combat, thanks to some iffy rolls but in the last turns he turned it around. First he finally rolled to hit and finished off the Bloodletters that had bogged him down, then a lucky roll with a spell restored the Warsphinx from 1 wound back up to its full allowance (!"&*) which then proceeded to wipe out my Horrors on the last turn, nabbing Ste a win.

But as long as i don't get tabled without killing anything i'm happy enough. And next time i'll be breaking out my Daemonprince to teach that stone cat a lesson. Overall a thoroughly enjoyable game against a great opponent. And it's motivated me to get working on my Daemons, with a couple of purchases yesterday adding some resin Flamers and another ten Bloodletters to the force.

Finecast or Failcast?

As i've mentioned in a previous update i was fairly dubious about GW's move from metal to resin, given my complete lack of experience with the latter material.

So when i had a few quid spare today i decided a trip to GW Liverpool was in order to see what the finecast fuss was about. I had a browse amongst the new blisters before settling on a Nurgle Daemon prince for my Daemon army. I'd wanted this mini for quite some time, but the fact it was a metal kit put me off in the past. From the very beginnings of my hobbying 16 long years ago i have hated metal kits, i won't lie. They have been a pain in the backside to clean ready for painting, a pain to assemble, break apart as soon as anyone does more than breathe on them. And along with Gary Morley they ruined my 12th birthday.

So with trepidation i left the store and opened up the box. I've heard a fair bit of griping about miscasts and excess flash etc. when it comes to the finecast kits, but my kit had absolutely no flaws at all. The flash was significantly less in fact than the plastic Aquila shrine i picked up at the same time. All the detail is present and correct and startingly crisp.
I looked at at least half a dozen blisters in store and only one had any flaw that i could see - a Lilith Hesperax had half her face missing, truly a crime against such a beautiful sculpt. I'm not denying that there are miscasts out there, but GW Liverpool seems to have escaped the worst of them thankfully.

And then the assembly, oh the assembly. It took about a minute to glue together with superglue, no pinning, no waiting around for glue to set only for an arm to fall off five seconds after you let go. It truly was a joy to assemble after so many years labouring with metal kits.

After sampling the product i have to say GW has me converted to their new casting method. Sure the price may have gone up (again *sigh*) but with mini's of this quality now available i'm willing to pay a few quid extra.

Of course a sensible blogger would provide pictures to illustrate everything i just typed. However i realised after assembling the kit i should have taken pictures on the sprue, went to grab my camera and at least provide a few images of it half assembled only to realise my housemate has taken it with them to a horse show. So i will add pictures to this post just as soon as they are done photographing equine shenanigans.

=][= Edited to add images =][=

Winter is coming

As promised in a previous blog update, i've uploaded a few pictures of my hobby progress during my online absence. First up is a picture of the current state of my work desk.
As you can see there are bits and bobs from half a dozen different armies currently decorating my living room and awaiting being finished. Alas my status as a hobby butterfly means that i rarely focus on one thing at a time resulting in it taking fething ages to get things finished.

Next up is a picture of a possible future Warhammer army for myself and the reason for this posts title. I bought a box of beastmen Gors several months ago and have been slowly, very slowly, working on them. They are an army i've not collected before so that was the main source of their appeal, combined with the brilliant portrayal of Beastmen in Robert Earl's Broken Honour (well worth reading).
I've also become a tad obsessed with basing my models with a winter theme, Beastmen included, so if i do go ahead with the full army it'll be winter based complete with dead trees etc.

The other newish army i've been working on are some Orks. I had an Ork army a few years ago and had to sell it because of real life financial reasons, much to my dismay. So i've been slowly starting again with my greenskins, using a new technique for their skin- I don't use any green paint at all.

No you arent colour blind, they are green but through repeated application of washes over grey. I highlight the grey before the wash which provides the skin highlights whilst giving them a slightly translucent look.


With all this talk of Beastmen and Orks you would be forgiven for thinking i've forgotten the Dark Eldar i was raving about not to long ago. Well that is and isnt true.

Whilst i love the miniatures themselves i've certainly struggled to give them a paint scheme and paint job that shows them at their best. I believe other bloggers predicted this when the range was released last year and i have to say i'm beginning to agree. This failure to find a decent scheme has meant that my Dark Eldar purchases have been somewhat limited, i've still only got 10 Hellions and 10 wyches, neither of which are finished.
I did however splash out on an Urien Rakarth model before giving up and got him mostly painted.


I've tried to give the impression that all his clothing and equipment has been fashioned from unfortunate victims, although the picture is a bit poor so thats not really clear (still experimenting with my camera alas). I like to think that Rakarths managed to keep his unwitting clothing alive and in agony.







Whether or not the Dark Eldar or Beastmen become a full army depends on whether i can resist the temptation to splash out on a bunch of Tomb Kings in the next week or so. The new statuary side of the army has really caught my eye and it's probably the first fantasy army to do so since i first started my Chaos Dwarfs sixteen years ago.
Speaking of which i've been drooling over the new Forgeworld chaos stunties, and they would almost certainly be my next purchase. But i'm having a hard time justifying to myself the £36 price tag for just 10 miniatures. They may look brilliant but at £88 for a regiment of 20 plus command the cost is just a bit too steep at the moment.

Thats all for now, i should have some more pictures uploaded in the not too distant future barring any cat related mishaps.

Times they are a changin'

So in my continuing efforts to catch up with several months worth of hobby developments, i've been reading back dated news from the various hobby sites like Bell of Lost Souls and Beasts of War.

The main thing that has caught my eye isn't the launch of Citadel Finecast but rather their new policy on international sales via third party internet retailers.

Now as i live in the UK and fairly close to a GW store, this doesnt really affect me in any way. But i am concerned about the effect it will have on the hobby as a whole and its expansion into new areas.

From what i understand of it the move has been made because GW believes online retailers are having a negative impact on the growth of their retail stores abroad as well as their own internet sales.

Now i can see where this arguement is coming from after talking to several GW store managers here in the UK, who have found big releases undermined in store by web companies offering large discounts and so losing sales. The Stompa for example was an absolute flop in sales at the Grimsby branch thanks to online offers.

But, and this is a fairly big but, i cannot fathom how this action will benefit GW in the long term.

Hampering online stores may force customers to use GW's own service, but the market that is savvy enough to rely on online companies is also savvy enough to be able to go elsewhere for their wargaming needs.

All this change is doing is driving those who use these companies into the arms of the competition and causing a backwash of resentment amongst the online community, even amongst players who won't be affected at all. No doubt Mantic, Privateer Press and others are rubbing their hands in glee at the potential foreign sales that are likely to result.

All in all it feels like GW cutting off their nose to spite their face.

This is just one of several changes in policy i've seen emerge at GW over the last few years that has caused me concern. Having worked for a company that was driven into the ground by rash decisions by executives i really don't want to see the same happen to Games Workshop, a company whose products have provided me with a huge amount of enjoyment over the last 16 years.

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

...but not by much.

Yes your friendly neighbourhood Spider-pope is back, after a stupendous absence. What was the cause of this prodigeous period of no posting you ask? An illness? An earthquake? No, a little kitten.

This kitten, who i will refer to as T, decided that the best way to ingratiate himself with me was to chew through the power cable of my laptop. How he managed to sever it without electrocuting himself is a mystery to me, but T remains to plague me to this day.

So after a massive struggle i've managed to procure access to a working laptop with internet access to try to salvage my hobby blog and catch up with almost five months worth of hobby developments. And what a five months they have been.

It seems GW was just waiting for me to lose online access to throw a ton of things into development. We've seen the release of Grey Knights, Tomb Kings, Orcs and Gobbo's and a metric ton of new kits and books all taunting my lack of ability to post my opinions of them here or elsewhere on the series of tubes we call the internet.

The Grey Knight release in particular was significant, as those who can remember as far back to my old posts will know, as i have a fully metal Grey Knight army gathering dust. And sadly they are still gathering dust as i've not had the opportunity to send them into battle since the new codex's release although i hope to rectify this soon.
Modelwise the new kits were pretty good, although i do have to say i am not fond of the power armour kit. The models just look too chunky to me, the new storm bolter style makes them look unbalanced and the less said about the ridiculous looking teleport packs the better. Fortunately the terminators match their metal predecessors in the coolness department and will certainly form the bulk of my future shiny purchases.

The other huge news was the switch from metal to resin that has occurred this month. I've not got a great deal of experience working with resin so i'm a tad wary on this switch. That coupled with the reports of significant numbers of miscasts in the first batch of Finecast mini's leaves me yet to be convinced on the resin mini front.

Hobbywise i've been working on getting my Daemons up to scratch during my online lull. With Grey Knights the primary bandwagon at the moment, i figured i should try to give new shiny players a decent looking enemy to face. Assuming i can keep access to this laptop i'll try to get some photos of my four months of efforts posted up soon.

So thats all for now, more posts will hopefully follow and within a month rather than five.