Schools League Semi Finals - My Day!

So, yesterday our 40k and AoS teams took the train down to Nottingham for the 2016 Warhammer World Schools League Semi Finals. These were the teams -

40k
Me - Chaos Space Marines
Alex (Commissar Raphel) - Imperial Guard
Jake - Grey Knights
Johannes - Tyranids

AoS
Lucas - Order - Lizardmen/Fyreslayers
Andrew - Order - High Elves/Sylvaneth
Will - Chaos - Skaven
Tom - Death

My List - Black Legion CSM
ML1 Sorcerer
2x Cultists
1x Raptors
1 Chaos Knight

Game 1
My first game was against this really great guy called Ross who played Dark Eldar. Concidentially, he also runs a blog so go check him and his team from Wolverhampton Grammar out at: http://wargamer-hq.weebly.com/ The mission we played was the Relic. Considering, that I had never played Dark Eldar before this was a new experience for me, and Ross had some great models in his army, including some converted Grotesques. Unoftunately, I didn't manage to get a shot of Ross's models so here are some pictures from the game.

My Chaos Knight with the Relic takes on Ross's Talos

The scene at the end of the game!

 In the end, even with Ross taking First Blood and Slay the Warlord, I just managed to win 4-2! Great game!


Game 2
My next game was against  a guy called Will from Norwich. He played a seemingly nasty Imperial Guard tank list, which started the game taking everything out apart from one squad of Cultists and my Chaos Knight, The Knight then went on a rampage taking out every tank but one Leman Russ, and securing the victory!

Will's beautifully painted tank list!

The Knight leaves a trail of destruction behind it

All in all another great game - Norwich went on to win the Most Sporting Team - Congrats guys!

Game 3

My final game was against a guy called Jake from Cambridge. He also played Chaos Space Marines, and had a great strategy for holding up my Knight! He charged some fearless Bloodletters in and held up the Knight for a turn. However when the Knight got out of combat and the Possessed became terrified and ran away, it became a well fought victory for myself.

Jake's Khorne themed CSM List

AoS

Despite fighting hard against some extremely cheesy armies, the AoS team did unfortunately not go through to the national final. Better luck next time guys!

Here are some cool pictures I got of really nice AoS armies/models, take a look:

Awards

Well, I got nominated for best painted, and Alex (CR) won something rather large, but I think I will let him tell you about that. All in all, we got through to the NATIONAL FINAL! 

Thanks to all my opponents - you were great - , the Suitglasses squad and Mr Hopkins for taking us to Warhammer World. We have something pretty big planned for the final, which we may leak on here....

Showcase: Tau Starter Army

After a recent influx of new players at our gaming club, it was inevitable that we would find some who, whilst enjoying the game, wouldn't be too enthusiastic about painting minis. This lead to me picking up a small, low level commission of a tau starter army and, after finishing it recently, i decided to share it on here.

Overall i went for a bright, simple and cohesive scheme across the whole force. With a palette of only 7 colours including the bases (blue, brown, black, gold, red, tan and light grey), the army has a clean and uniform look which allows it to stand out look impressive, even if each individual model is nothing special on it's own.

As aforementioned, each model really isn't a masterpiece, however i did put quite some work into posing the battlesuits. I tried to give them some height using the rocks so that they tower over the fire warriors and stand out from the rest of the army. 

There really isn't much more to say about an army that consists of 3 battlesuits, 10 fire warriors, an ethereal and some drones so I'm just going to leave a few pictures here and let the models speak for themselves.

Thanks for looking!

-CR

WiP Dire Wolves #1 - Test Scheme

And so it begins...
My first test model for the pack of 10 Dire Wolves I'm painting as part of my Vampire Counts army.

bark bark!

The main theme was based off of a simplified version of WarbossTae's Painting Dire Wolves video. I first basecoated the fur with Abaddon Black, the gory bits Khorne Red and the skin Rakarth Flesh. I also painted over all the bones with several thin layers of Screaming Skull.

I then drybushed the fur with Mechanicus Standard Grey and highlighted the blood and gore with Wazdakka. I also edge highlighted the skin with Ushabti Bone, however I think I would need more of this next time, as I don't think currently that it adds much to the model. I then gave it a massive coat of Agrax Earthshade, to bring all the bright colours down to a much darker tone.

The only thing I haven't done yet is the eyes, because I'm not sure what colour to do them in. Green perhaps?

I liked the scheme a lot so I've started basecoating the four of the others, as you can see in the group shot below.

Who doesn't love undead doggies?

Stay tuned for more updates!

Chat: My Grey Tide Headache...

Story of my life...

Like most hobbyists, I have a grey tide. However, mine is increasingly becoming a bit of a problem as I hop from one idea to another leaving behind me a wave of half painted and built plastic (and resin) models. As a result, I have had to restrain myself from buying anything new until I have completely finished and painted every single model that I own, to a good standard.
I find it difficult sometimes to get motivated to paint. Usually my motivation stems from tournaments, and since the only thing I have coming up is the official GW Schools League National Semi Finals later this month, I'm finding it difficult to sit down and paint, as most of my army is complete for that. So lets go through what I have that needs work:

Painted, yes - but not to a standard I'm always happy with

Chaos Space Marines
Raptors (5)
Bikes (3)
Daemon Prince
Cultists (20)
Chosen (5)
Helbrute

Zombie Dragon with no wings...

Vampire Counts
Battalion Box-
20 Crypt Ghouls
10 Dire Wolves
20 Skeleton Warriors (Unbuilt)
Corpse Cart

Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon
2 Morghast Archai
FW Wight King BSB
2 Necromancers

Dark Angels
The entirety of Dark Vengeance (DA Side) :(

Even the Deathwatch would struggle to chew through this lot!

40 Genestealers
Won these for coming 3rd place in a recent charity cup I played in. Need stripping and the plan is then to sell them on ebay.

So as you can see, I will not be buying anything for next 2 months at least, but no doubt I will be tempted when I'm at Warhammer World on the 26th.
Better get started!

Demigryph Knights WiP

Well, this is where it begins I guess, the first "real" post on our blog, and I'm going to start us off with a wip of the latest addition to my Talabecland Empire force; a unit of Demigryph Knights.

 I was really excited about this unit as I absolutely love the aesthetics of the sculpts and once I'd cracked open the box, i got straight onto the assembly. I decided to start with the champion and build each model into 5 sub-assemblies; the demigryph, the rider, the shield and one for each of the reigns.

Two of the 5 sub-assemblies primed white ready for painting.

After priming all the parts in white i began to add base coats to the demigryph. I used Khorne Red for the armor, Balthasar Gold for the trim, Rakarth Flesh for the fur, Zandri dust for the main body and parchments, Mournfang Brown for the straps and beak and Leadbealcher for the spikes on the head.

The demigryph with most of the initial base coats applied.

After applying all of the base coats, i began to wash and shade the miniature, mostly with Agrax Earthshade as it is my favorite shade for use on red and gold and it works well across the rest of the model too. Unfortunately, from this point onward, i got a little too carried away with the painting and the idea of taking progress pictures went out of the window. Hopefully that's something that I won't make a habit of in the future...

After various layers, highlights and drybrushes across the model i got to a point where i was happy with it. I dryfit and subsequently super glued all of the sub-assemblies together and then based the model with slate, sand, various brown paints and some static grass.

And here's the completed model. I think this chap took me around 8 hours of work and I can honestly say that I think he is the best painted model that i own, and even then he still has his flaws; There is little to no shading around the rivets on the top of the demigryph's head and there is a small gap between the two halves of the main body running along the gold at the front. Despite these issues, the former of which i will try to iron out as i paint the rest of the unit, I'm very pleased with the outcome. I feel that i pushed myself out of my comfort zone with the yellow cloth and gold trim and I feel  that it's paid off. Now i just need to replicate the scheme on the next two models in the unit, a musician and a standard bearer...

Welcome to the Blog!

Welcome to Always Strikes Last, a new blog that covers wargaming and painting. We'll probably be focusing on Games Workshop miniatures however we'll probably expand and post about other systems from various companies too. The blog will mainly follow myself and a fellow hobbyist as we build and paint our way through various projects, and talk about many of the topics that tabletop wargaming has to offer. I will say now, don't coming looking to our blog for Golden Deamon winning paintjobs- both of us are nowhere near that level in terms of painting or modelling. We set this up to share our work and get feedback so that we can help improve our own work and, with any luck, give some inspiration to others.

Anyway, let us introduce ourselves:

I've been into wargaming since about Christmas 2014, so I'm a fairly new kid on the block. I'm currently working on the two armies I collect - Black Legion Chaos Space Marines and Vampire Counts, most of which aren't painted.

My fellow contributor and friend Commissar Raphel, who originally got me into the hobby, has been modelling and painting for the past 4 years and so is a great deal more experienced than I am. He currently is working on converting his Imperial Guard 666th Penal Legion to have an awesome zombie theme, and painting his Talabecland Empire army.

The plan is for at least one of us to update this at least once a week so we'll see how that goes.
Stay Tuned!
Daemon Colin