Chat: Battle Brothers Tournament

As Commissar Raphel said in his post very early this morning, today we have both partaken in a Battle Brothers style tournament, run for our school club! This involved us taking a 450 point army and teaming up with someone else to form a medium sized army that we then used to fight other pairs. I teamed up with a really nice guy called Lucas, who was very new to the hobby, and CR teamed with Jo, an experienced Tyranid player from last years finals.

Myself and Lucas managed to win all our games and get a good chunk if hobby points, while we also got a 20 point bonus because I had helped to mentor him through collecting, painting and playing with his first models. We were leading for a long time, however after the nominations we had drawn level with our friend Jake and his battle brother, meaning we had to do a good old RATLING GUN CHALLENGE, to decide who won! In the end Jake's team took out the tournament, yet we still got some great prizes. I personally walked away with 2 DV Space Marine characters, an old Logan Grimnar model, before he got on that stupid fecking sleigh, as well as a dice box and a handful of hobby bits! 

I would like to thank everyone who helped organise this tournament, and congratulate all the players - it was great fun. Special congrats have to go to Jake, Alex and Jo (who placed 3rd just behind me), and my battle brother Lucas. He really excelled himself in terms of painting, but his play and sportsmanship was exemplary. 

Stay Tuned as we have lots to share from our little hiatus, and much more to build, paint and play!

~DaemonColin 

Update: Imperial Fists!

So last night my brain decided that sleep wasn't a priority but rather than sit around and waste the time I set about working on some of my Heresy Imperial Fists. I had 5 marines in MKIV armor already built and airbrushed with Averland Sunset so it was simply a case of finishing the yellows and then detailing. After about 6 hours, here's what I came up with:

Whilst 5 guys isn't enough for a unit in Horus Heresy games, I will be using these as a combat squad in a local battle brothers tournament later on today which will be the first time in a year that my BaC models will have properly hit the table. Once I've built up this army somewhat to a standard that is suitable for 30K though, I will most likely be using 2 or 3 of these guys as Sgt.s rather than standard marines due to the wargear that I've given them.

Marine with power sword and bolt pistol

This guy will be the Sgt. in today's games, armed with a power fist and bolt pistol

3rd marine who has the possibility of being a Sgt. the boltgun would allow for him to just be an adventurous standard marine though

Alongside the 3 shown above there are also two fairly uninteresting bolter marines to allow the group to be fielded as a combat squad in 40K.

Well it might have been a while since we last made a post on here but things have been pretty busy recently. We are currently trying to get one of our other wargamer friends to join us in this humble endeavor so hopefully we shall see him, along with some more content from myself and Daemon Colin, fairly soon. As always, thanks for reading,

-Commissar Raphel

Chat: My Day at Combat Patrol!

So, today I will share with you my day at Warhammer World, where I attended the Combat Patrol Bank Holiday Monday event! I went with one of my good friends Jake, who plays Grey Knights, and I of course took my Chaos Space Marines. This is my Patrol - 5 Chosen, 5 Raptors and 20 Cultists.

My whole patrol together!

Combat Patrol consisted of 5 400 point games throughout the day. The first game I played Deathwatch, and the guy, who was called Matt quite clearly wanted to win, but was friendly enough. Holy moley the Deathwatch rules are pretty strong! They can fire special ammunition which has 3 different modes - ignores cover, ap4 or ap3 with gets hot, but considering the Deathwatch reroll 1's most of the time anyway that doesn't really matter. His list consisted of 5 veterans, 3 bikes and 3 vanguard veterans. Long story short, he tabled me, and I didn't get a single victory point!

Getting the first game underway

Matt's army

Close up of the veterans

Bikes and Vanguard Vets

My second game was against a father son duo, whose names I can't remember - sorry guys! They were great opponents and I was quite impressed with the 8 year old boy who knew most of the rules! However, they had a Khorne Daemonkin list with a very scary Skulltaker and some Khorne Berzerkers. I lost narrowly, but managed to pick up my first 3 victory points of the day.

The third game was against a Tau player called Drew, who later went on to win the event overall. He ran a filthy list of 5 Pirahnas, a squad of Fire Warriors and 2 Crisis Suits. However, he was a great guy, and I gave him my Favourite Game Vote, even though he thrashed me 9-0! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of his force.
My fourth game was against a Night Lords (CSM) player called Ray who had a beautifully painted army (won best painted). It contained a squad of Chosen, a lord on a (quad) bike and two Rapier Weapons Batteries (IA13) with Quad Heavy Bolters. This was a really effective choice and I will definitely get some to add to my Chaos force in the future! He also tabled me so, I'm still on a grand total of 3 VPs!

Ray's best painted Night Lords, note the Lord on the converted quad bike!

My final game was against another Tau player, called Russell. With my bad experience with Tau earlier in the day, I was very cautious when playing this game. The Fire Warriors and Breachers that he had laid down withering hails of fire, and there was one point in the game where I thought I was going to get tabled again! However, due to me taking out the Commander quite early on and making some lucky saves when charging, I managed to win that game 5 to 3.

So I finished the day having won 8 VP's and fully expecting to come last. However, to get the final score game VP's were multiplied by favourite game votes, meaning in order to get a final score you had to get a favourite game vote. I got 1 where about half of the people didn't so I placed 36th - thank you to whoever gave me that vote, you made my day! Congratulations to my friend Jake though, who at his first GW run external event (not Schools League), placed 4th, getting a whopping 3 favourite game votes!

Anyway it was a great day, and I came back full of hobby inspiration and new ideas and a new project, which will be revealed soon!

Stay Tuned

~DaemonColin

Showcase: Chaos Chosen

So for the Combat Patrol event I attended yesterday (full look back on that event coming tomorrow!), I had to paint 5 Chaos Chosen, which were the sculpts from Dark Vengeance. As with the rest of my Chaos Space Marines, I painted these in a Black Legion colour scheme, with Balthasar Gold and Khorne Red some of the main features on the models.

I'm quite happy with how these guys turned out, and by painting these lot, I have completed another minor goal in my Hobby Progress Challenge! Yay!

Anyway, thanks for reading, sorry it is only a quick one today, but stay tuned for more posts about Combat Patrol and some of the tactics and interesting ideas that I picked up when I went yesterday.

~DaemonColin

Showcase: Box O' Tricks 5 Necron Warriors

Today I present the first showcase of Box O' Tricks models, hopefully with many more to come - Necron Warriors! Although they have the notorious reputation of being by far the easiest models to paint, I was really pleased with how these came out. After basecoating over the Leadbelcher with Ironbreaker, I then used Nuln Oil to wash them down and bring them to a darker hue. I also used small amounts of Agrax Earthshade to show rust, dirt or wear etc, which you can see mainly on the backs of the shoulders and some of the joints.

 I then completed the wires of the gauss blasters with a base of Caliban Green and then a highlight of Warpstone Glow.

You can see the Agrax Earthshade on the shoulders in this picture

However, the thing that I'm most proud of with these Necrons is the eyes. I'm useless at painting eyes and it always messes up a good model for me. I only messed up one but even he looks ok after some cleanup.

Anyway I think that deserves a minor hobby stamp for finishing some Necron Warriors, here's to doing a goal every day once a week?

Stay Tuned,

~DaemonColin

Hobby Progress Challenge 2016/17 - Clearing the Backlog and Looking to the Future!

As the new season of Dave Weston's Hobby Progress season starts tomorrow, I thought that I would make my ambitious list before the year kicks off. For anybody who doesn't know, the Hobby Progress Challenge is an event run yearly by Dave Weston, who runs Confessions of a 40k Addict, (www.40addict.uk) a blog that is mainly focused on hobby and painting. It is designed to help the 'lazier' of the painters to get motivated to paint more models and progress with the hobby. You make a list at the beginning of the 'season' which starts tomorrow, and then try and complete as much of it as possible by the time the next summer comes round. When you complete different goals you can tick them off and represent them with some cool stamps - this year they are purple!

Love these stamps!

This is my first year that I have decided to enter this, partly because of my woeful amount of painting that I have completed in the last year, and also the backlog that I now have which I need to get rid of. Also I have plenty of future projects, that I would like to undertake which I will talk about in a bit. So without further ado, let me present my list for the Hobby Progress Challenge 2016/17 season! My major goals are labelled by the bullet points and my minor goals by the dashes.

• Chaos Space Marines

- 5 Chosen (these need to be done this weekend for Combat Patrol on Monday)

- 3 Bikes 

- 1 Helbrute

- 1 Chaos Lord

• Vampire Counts/Death

- 2 Necromancers

- 10 Dire Wolves

- 1 Lord on a Zombie Dragon

- 20 Crypt Ghouls

- 20 Skeleton Warriors

- 1 Corpse Cart

- 2 Morghast Archai

Would like to have this collection finished so that I could perhaps enter the GW AoS GT next year??

Also thinking of getting 40 zombies, and the Start Collecting Skeleton Horde box to add to my collection as well.

• Dark Vengeance Dark Angels

- 10 Tactical Marines

- 1 Librarian

- 1 Company Master

- 5 Deathwing Terminators

- 3 Ravenwing Bikes

Need these just to be cleared so I can get on with other things.

• Box O' Tricks ongoing project

- Necrons - 1 Overlord, 12 Warriors, 3 Scarabs, 1 Triarch Stalker

- AdMech - 10 Skitarii with more to come?

- Orks - 1 Warboss, some Boyz, 6 KillaKans, 1 Trukk Gun

- Stormcast - 1 Lord Relictor, 3 Prosecutors

- Anything else that the club likes to give me to paint!

This will just hopefully go on in the background as I work through various models.

Future Projects!!

So here I present some of my floating ideas for future projects and things that I may like to do in the future! I'm not necessarily committing to doing these yet, but I have them in mind.

• 30k Death Guard - I've always wanted to dabble into 30k, one of the main things that has put me off is the price. However with B@C and other things such as kitbashing the entry level can now be quite cheap. I'm planning to make this completely out of this world with different armour marks, good painting, lots of conversions, as well as some cool bases. 

Also - Mastodon!

£300 of pure Forge World resin - what could be better?

• 40k/AoS Daemons - Yep! More Chaos! Well, Daemons have the advantage to be used with both AoS and 40k, so I figured that it may supplement my Chaos Marines quite well. I particularly like Khorne and Tzeentch so that should be interesting if I decided to follow trough with this.

• Bolt Action Germans - Deviating from Games Workshop can never be a bad thing, and Warlord are just as good a miniature company, and Bolt Action seems like a cool historical game for WW2. Also Commissar Raphel says its good and I would like to get some models for this.

• 40k Dark Mechanicum?? - Possibility to bolster the forces of my Chaos army, just a very basic idea at the moment.

So, I hope you enjoyed looking at my hobby goals for the next year, and the ideas of some of my future projects! I would like to hear some of your hobby goals so if you have any, post them in the comments below, or perhaps join the 2016/17 Hobby Season over at www.40kaddict.uk!

Stay Tuned,

~DaemonColin

WIP: Waffen SS

So after a small absence recently I'm finally back and ready to get writing some new content and I thought I'd share some WIP shots of my most recent project: A small detachment of Waffen SS for my Bolt Action German army.

These two are the first (semi)-finished units; a sniper team and a Panzershreck team. They still need basing but I'm not at this point sure what I'd like to go for. I'm still quite a way off getting the whole lot finished as I still have around 15 models to go however I've found a fairly simple method for the camo that isn't as time consuming as I originally expected.

The backs of the sniper and panzershreck models show the camo best I feel. I used a base coat of karak stone (Airbrushed), a layer of mournfang brown, a layer of warpstone glow, thin, short lines of black to break up and darken the colors and finally a wash of agrax to tone down and define the camo. This, on paper, doesn't sound like the best method however its quick and surprisingly effective. All I need to do now is decide how to base these models yet I might not decide how until I've finished the rest of the Waffen SS that I have to go with these guys.

Thanks for reading!

 -Commissar Raphel