Time to take my (war)hammer to my minis…

Gah! Summer, humidity and 90 degree heat have given me little to no interest in painting. I just can’t focus on the work. That and also a bunch of my paints decided to dry up as well. I’m not exactly sure how some of this crap dries out so quickly, it’s not like I leave the damn paint pots sitting out in the open for hours. I mean, some of them were almost full too, wtf? If it hasn’t dried up completely, its turned into something resembling the consistency of toothpaste.

To top all that off, I actually made myself sit down and start on a Lizardman mini the other night to test out a couple of the colors I had in mind. I was not happy with the results. so for now, he is the ‘blue turd’, until I can redo the paint job. Huzzah for test minis, and a big ‘GFY’ to blue inkwashes.

I was beginning to feel guilty that I was playing more video games that getting time in painting, then I realized ‘hey, it’s a hobby, ffs, you do it for enjoyment, right?’ so, self justification achieved, and another slew of zombies bite the dust while fighting my way through Louisiana with nothing but a couple of handguns, an AK-47 and a bottle of puke…

Thats all I got for now. So, bugger off, before I set the dawgs on yer!

Paul

2

Warhammer Fantasy Battle is HERE!

Indeed, the new 8th edition of WHFB is now sitting on my table here at work, positively glowing with awesomeness. I picked this up on the day of release from my local(ish) game store, but as that weekend was also Godzilla-Fest I didn’t have much chance to take a peep at it. My palms were a little sweaty paying $75 for the book, and with my Fiance standing right behind me, I couldn’t make up an alternate price either. All I got after making this purchase was ‘you could have bought me some Fluevog’s for that!’

Indeed.

I have yet to actually get some time to myself to bask in the epic magnitude of the book, but I have afforded myself a few cursory glances, and I got really excited from the bits that I did see. The $75 price tag may seem a little steep (or indeed effing verticle) to some, but when you actually see what is inside, it is more than worth it. The detail and passion that it has obviously been lovingly wrought with is evident. There are some incredible pictures of ‘Apocalypse’ style battles going on, and they do take the breath away when you see it.

By the way, the book weighs an absolute ton. No, really, I mean its really heavy, man.

This version appears to be gearing more toward the ‘epic armies clashing with hundreds of minis’ more than the sort of small scale conflicts of the previous editions. I still have my hardback copy of the 2nd edition, and all those years ago, the dreams of WFB I had are what are being realized in the pages of 8th edition.  I can’t sing the praises enough of the presentation of this volume. I’ll write another post on the content as and when I can wade through it all.

I should consider myself lucky (I think?) as it would appear that there is actually a shortage of this core rule book. i’ve been forum hopping and a lot of local games stores have been told they won’t get all or any of their orders for another few weeks. Of course there are those who are brandishing pitchforks and torches to the gates of GW saying they are incompetant and are going to crash and burn for this etc etc.  Maybe all the naysayers out there should look at this in a positive light: the demand has been way above and beyond what GW expected, which can only be good, as they wanted to bring back interest to fantasy. They’ll print more, and everyone will get their books, but take a second to think about that, eh?

Thats it for now.

Cheers!

1

Product review – Scibor Monstrous Miniatures

Product review – Scibor Monstrous Miniatures.

I happened upon this company some time ago when I saw some one off custom Primarch sculpts they had produced. I was also very interested in the excellent sculpting articles that they have too (check them out!) Scibor appear to be a small independent company based in Poland who are relatively new to the marketplace. They seem to be gaining a lot of momentum with their own lines of Dwarves, Goblins, priests, beasties and conversion bits (amongst a plethora of other products), and it’s easy to see why people will shop with them. Quite simply, their products are great!

I had been meaning to purchase something for a while, and with me wanting to personalize my Black Templar forces, I figured Scibor would be the place to start. I placed an order on their snappy and rather slick looking website for some ‘Big Templar shields’ and some ‘Templar shoulder pads’ to get the ball rolling. The ordering process is nice and simple, and they accept PayPal, which is also very convenient. The prices are very reasonable, and the standard of the detail means you’re getting a pretty good deal all round. After my order was placed I got a confirmation email from them, which unfortunately I couldn’t understand a word of, due to the language barrier, but I got the general gist of it.

It took about a month for the order to get to me, which is not so great, but then it is coming from Poland, hardly just down the street! I did notice on the site it says they mail out orders seven days after receiving payment, and that it takes two to three weeks for delivery.

After receiving a ‘final notice’ slip from the post office (even though it was the first one I’d received, weird!) I picked up my order. It had been sent in a small bubble pack envelope, which was pretty flimsy. Inside were two little baggies, one with the shields, and one with the shoulder pads. Two of the shields had been broken, which I am sure is a result of USPS taking their upmost care in handling packages, and also a chunk had snapped off one of the shoulder pads. This was disappointing, especially after waiting for a month for it to arrive.

Initial disappointment aside, it was nice to get this stuff in hand to get a good look at it, and I have to say, it’s really nice quality workmanship. The resin that it’s cast in feels quite substantial and pretty heavy duty. The breaks were clean, so I’m sure I’ll be able to repair them with no problem. I’m looking forward to having some plastic Sword Brethren now!

So, in summary:

  • A great company with some really nice products.
  • Some incredible sculpting talent.
  • Some nice tutorials!
  • A little slow on shipping (but this is a variable that you can’t control unless it’s through a carrier like UPS or something).
  • Scibor could take a leaf from Forge World’s book on shipping. Ship breakable stuff in boxes, not mailer bags, with plenty of cushioning, if you have to charge more for shipping to do so, do it! People will still buy your products!

I’ll give Scibor 3 ½ mortar shells out of 5 for now. I will be purchasing more from them soon. In the meantime, check out their website at:

http://www.sciborminiatures.com/

3

Weathering my Chimera APC

After reading a rather informative article from my buddy Colin, or as he is known in other circles, ‘Dethtron’, I decided to try out his technique for weathering vehicles. I thought I would try this out on my Chimera, and although I was missing one paint that Colin recommended, P3 Umbral Umber, I figured I would just do the dozer blade and see how it would turn out.

I think weathering works for nearly all tanks, and works well. There are some others that I feel probably would benefit from not having as much, if any, of these weathering effects as I feel it may detract from the paint job. I think that this works well for Guard stuff. The jury is still out, for me, on whether I want to do this on my Sisters or Marine vehicles. We’ll see.

Anyhoo, its pretty simple After I had painted my hazard stripes on the dozer blade, I took an old sponge from one of the mini blister packs and ripped a piece off. I first used black and stippled it on all over, to show where the wear and tear had taken the paint down to the undercoat. I was already excited at how this was turning out, so I eagerly busted out the boltgun metal and repeated the process. I concentrated more on the edges to show where general use had taken the paint down to the metal.

I am, so far, very pleased with the result:

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I won’t be doing as much with the rest of the vehicle. I went a little overboard on this as I figured it probably gets the brunt of the hard work. I’ll probably put a couple of bullet marks on there as well.

Thats it! Thanks to Colin, who, under the moniker of Dethtron, can be found with his rapier wit over at his blog ‘Dick Move’ (yes really!) for showing me this stupidly simple, but effective method of weathering. I’ll be sure to put more pics of this APC up as I get more done on it.

Cheers!

Paul

2

Painting Black Templar marines

I just finished up a couple of articles (over there, in the ‘pages’ section ==>) on painting Black Templars. There is also a separate page for painting the robes, as I have had numerous requests as to how to do it. Hopefully  it will give you all a helping hand to get your loyalist zealots on the field quicker! I may add a couple more pictures up in the article, but my camera seems to be acting up, so I want to get that sorted out. Grrr!

You can clicky on this linky right here to get to the article.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers

Paul

4

Witchhunters/Demonhunters codexes officially gone from the shelves?

It would appear so, along with the disappearance of the box sets from the shelves of both GW outlets and independent stockists. I’m still busting to know what this means, and if it means an overhaul from these forces, when its going to happen.

I noticed in the latest edition of White Dwarf that the WH and DH ‘dexes will be available free of charge in a downloadable PDF format through the GW website in either May or June, although you do have to sign up on there. (it’s still free though!)

So whats the dealio, Games Workshop? there are legions of us out here slavering at the bit for some Inquisition news!

Lastly, what was this piece of art commissioned for???

Did anyone else notice the figure on top of the Titan? St Celestine???

1

A big announcement…

While myself, my long suffering girlfriend and my son Kaeden were overseas, I took them to Kenilworth Castle. Located just outside of my hometown of Coventry, it is a fabulously atmospheric ruin that overlooks the majestic vistas of Warwickshire.

It was here, on a blustery, but sunny Saturday morning that I took my family, and my friends, Rich, Claire and their son Ollie, up onto the ramparts, where I got down on my knee and asked for my lady Diana’s hand in marriage, to which she said yes!

I’m very excited! I did mention about having a Star Wars themed wedding, but I got ‘the look’…. 😉

4

The final arguement of kings…

So I returned home from a 12 day trip to England on Tuesday. I was supposed to come home on Monday, but this volcanic ash cloud from Iceland I guess had other ideas. Anyhoo, 48 hours later and I am feeling somewhat human again, and seem to be relatively caught up with sleep!

During our time there I managed, thankfully, to go and see one of my favorite bands, the mighty BOLT THROWER! These guys were my first ever live show, waaaaay back in the early 90’s at the tender age of 13. They blew me away then, and certainly did this night too. So, waves of nostalgia were abound as myself, my good lady Diana (who was super excited at the prospect of seeing them also…) my mate Matt Crump, and his good lady Lou entered The Asylum venue, which was pretty big. A bit like Doctor Who’s TARDIS. Looks small from the outside, but is frakkin’ huge on the inside. The roster was: Some local band who’s name I can’t remember, followed by Rotting Christ, then local Brummies Benediction, then finally, Bolt Thrower.  We all sat in the bar for the first 2 bands. I was mildly interested in seeing Rotting Christ, but they were pretty boring, plus we could watch proceedings on a huge projector screen in the bar. The turnout was excellent, and the place was packed. I was pretty excited to be seeing Benediction live also, as I was a bit of a fan back in the day, but I have to say I was not impressed at all with them, especially since Dave Ingram was not on vocal duties. Grunt he may have done, but he did it in his own way, and this guy just didn’t cut the mustard, as far as I was concerned.

Just before they went on, me and Matt caught up with Martin Kearns (drums), who I actually know through an old job of mine, and Barry Thompson (guitar). Unfortunately we didn’t get too much time to chat as they were about to go on, and although Martin said to stay around after the show, we had to leave 😦 ah well!

I snagged myself a Bolt Thrower hoodie and beanie from the merch table, a little bit miffed that the other shirt designs which I actually preferred were either out of stock, or didn’t have my size. WTF! lol! Anyway, the ladies decided they would stay in the bar and chat, while ‘the lads’ went out to see the band. It was hot as hell in there! Right from the opening intro they did’nt disappoint, and certainly reinforced my love for this band who have lived up to their own lyrics: ‘In a world of compromise – some don’t’. It really is the audible version of a tank driving across a battlefield littered with skulls, and I loved every minute of it. They only really played later stuff (I think, I was too busy moshing), but I don’t care, as I love it all. I got goosebumps when they played World Eater/Cenotaph, to which myself and Matt were furiously playing air guitar to.

Bolt Thrower really made up for the lacklustre support they had, and made it more than worth the effort to go and see them. I really hope that they play out a little more, and that they actually play some US dates too…

It makes me proud that I have my humble little corner here in internetland named after a Bolt Thrower track, call me a fanboy if you will, but I don’t care. Like they say, if the cap fits…

Paul

2

New 40K short story finished

It actually started out (in my mind) as a couple of paragraph snapshot that I wanted to scribble up to be able to give an impression of what it would be like to witness the Legion of the Damned turning up to lend a hand. Well, six and a half pages later and it was finished. I guess I got a little carried away, but it was a lot of fun putting myself into the story and trying to picture the scene. I could have gone into waaaay more detail than I did, but I didn’t want to get too bogged down with specifics. I’m not a writer really, and just wanted it to be a bit of fun. I hope you all enjoy it. Here is the link: https://whencannonsfade.wordpress.com/dark-brotherhood-a-40k-short-story/

C+C are welcome!

Cheers

Paul

0

Sisters ‘Angels of Deliverance’ Seraphim.

Well, I finally finished my Seraphim squad for my Sisters army.  I had one casualty while I was painting these, one of them fell over and the backpack pinged off. After an outburst of cursing it was taken care of, but this goes to show how unbalanced these minis are. Very top heavy. Take into account this was also on a flat surface. As anyone who has played against my sisters at Colins place will attest, they fall about all over the place as though the were drunk off their asses.  I have noticed, since taking these pictures last night and uploading them this morning, that there are a couple of touch ups I need to do, but anyway, here they are:

And there we have it. As I had mentioned in previous posts, I hope that we SoB players won’t have to wait too much longer for some updates, and new minis. With the recent Blood Angels release, with the fast attack squad having some pretty sweet ‘feathered’ wings, could this be a pointer for what else is in store…? Plastics are definitely the way forward, its just unfortunate that some of us are being held back.

C+C welcome!

Paul

9

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