A Little Bit o' Painting - Blackstone Traitor Guard

been busy, but not a lot of hobby stuff though. here's what i've been working on.


BSF - Traitor Guard Done

After finishing off the (required; imperial/marines) BF Gothic fleets the main thing left of the table (until i shuffle something else up there) is Blackstone models.

The traitor guard finally got some solid brush-time and ended up 'organically good'.  lots of base colours, then lots of washes, then lots of dry brushing. seemed to go to plan.

batch painting eeeeerg,  but anyway, done.

they are more or less based on the official painting guide - at least the major tones/blocks. substituted whatever paint i had that was more of less the same hue.

Above is one squad worth. they're on 15mm bases as they are base type small (same as ur-ghuls, spindle-bots etc). the base manufacturer only does metric rounded to nearest 10mm (sometimes 5mm) far as i can tell. does the job.

And this is all of them.

The only really 'modelling' changes were removing the ground debris - rocks etc attached to boots  and the two sergeants are now slightly different from each other - one has the 'back spikes' and the other has a skull next to his boot.

reasonably pleased with the result - read: as much effort as i could be bothered with.

[later: just occurred to me to add a small 'trim' colour to differentiate the squads more easily (red v blue etc).]

this leaves me with just the beastmen and psykers from the hostiles to do!! kind of exciting, really getting through them now.

and of course the explorers/characters. the elf is still on the table (getting there... slowly). i think they're taking longer as they're one-of pieces so more brush washes and changes to get just one model done. will get there eventually. looking forward to a game soon (maybe today [maybe not]), and no excuse now all the 'basic' level hostiles are done.

as an aside, there is a small thread of local interest in the game. a couple of people i know (in passing) are playing and i wouldn't mind getting a multi-person game in if possible.


Other - BFG - eldar fleet...
Continuing work on the eldar BFG ships. Am painting up all the cruisers as a batch. not 100% convinced on the colours but that's a recurring theme. slow progress. lots of dry brushing (which is slow work).

[later: sample model]


Other - BFG  - NC roadtrip...
Might head up to newcastle for Feb session. Looks like there might be some BFG happening so might be worth the trip.


Re Epic Factions
This is going to sound like a half-whine (at least) but it's not meant to be. More a contemplation of something (vaguely) humorous i thought about....

So epic has a number of different factions. This is a good thing IMO as it makes the armies/factions/models more representative of what they're meant to be like in the fluff (fiction).
It's actually a nice thing to be able to run 'hordes' or 'air assault' or 'armoured' or 'skimmers' or 'titans' yada yada...

I've mentioned before that one of my biggest hurdles with the game is that 4 our of 5 times i'm not going to know what the opponent's army does (and i've also heard this comment from other people too) so you're faced with 'tricks' that your army has no counter for etc. You're fighting blind.

I've been playing a lot of chess recently and while the static nature of the pieces is (or at least used to strike me as) a little dull, it does mean that everyone knows what everyone else is capable of doing. Therefore it's intrinsically more of a strategic endeavour, rather than a 'bag-o-tricks' game (which i hate... ask 'Infinity').
It could always be argued that you need to learn what the opponent has... which is not practical/feasible given;
a) so few games per annum, 
b) number of list in a tournament, 
c) the theoretical nature of such a study,
d) etc

Anyway i was contemplating what chess would be like if you could sub-in 'trick' pieces - and it might looks something like...


during setup...
opponent: "i'm swapping my queen for a dark cardinal."
me: "errrr ok."
opponent: "and i'm swapping my king's knight with an enchanted unicorn."
me: "hmmmmm."
opponent: "and you're running... standard from the looks of it?"
me: "yeah."

during game play - first move...
opponent: "my dark cardinal takes your queen."
me: "what ?!  how ?!"
opponent: "dark cardinal can jump over any other pieces of lesser points value at any time."
me: "what?"
opponent: [scrambles briefly through army list pages]
me: "fine. then my king takes your dark cardinal."
opponent: "no, you can't take a dark cardinal by moving horizontally after it's just taken a piece horizontally. or diagonally if it's just taken diagonally. so you can only take it by moving diagonal now."
me: "what ?!"
opponent: "it's in the army list."
me: "fine. so nothing can take it where it is at the moment. how is this not checkmate ?"
[eyes start glazing over]

opponent: "the dark cardinal alternates..." [looks up army sheet, and taps on page] "...moving horizontally and diagonally to take pieces. so next time it can only take a piece by moving diagonally."

[annoyed pause]
"here, i'll put down a token so you can see which one it has just done."
me: [rolls eyes]

a little later...
opponent: "now my enchanted unicorn takes your rook. and also your other rook."
me: [eye roll]
"uhhuh... why?"
opponent: "a unicorn can make two consecutive moves, which gets him across the board here and here. and because it's also enchanted it removes any pieces from the square on the mirror side of the board if it's also occupied."
me: [flips board in disgust and vows never to play this stupid game again]


Until next time...

BFG Fleets - eldar, imperial reinforcements, marine foam

in summary:  eldar. imperials done. marine foam tray. 


eldar - how i used up all my hobby luck for the year
australia day long weekend. went to canberra as per standard MO.
didn't play cancon but did pop in a couple of times. kind of miss it. kind of don't.

last year i picked up a box of original/metal ork ships. basically a very worthwhile starter fleet. haven't done anything with them just yet but they're in the queue to do.

anyway, got there close to opening time, and the place i got them from (a stall in the main section, not the bring-n-buy) had a box of eldar ships as well (which i saw last year and decided not to get). STILL THERE!
as i grabbed the case, i cheered (internally of course - in case there were other bits i'd overlooked previously. no point gathering attention). i cheered a lot.

all original models, all complete, painted even.
given the renewed interest i'd have thought they might have hit ebay by now but i'm guessing the seller didn't know what they had, didn't realise what they were for, didn't know about the resurgence, or didn't care and 2nd had stuff can take care of itself.
anyway they're now mine. woohoo!

think i've used up all my hobby luck for the year so i'll be rolling 1s for everything except leadership tests (bring on the double 6's, i love it!!). 

i've started stripping the paint off the models. first time doing this and opted for dettol bath (the cup in the zip-lock bag to reduce smell).
seems to work ok. am getting a bit of sticky residue here and there - apparently caused by water. avoid.

started with the small ships as tests and then continued because they're fiddly. all the big ships to go. might need a bigger cup.

am going to go a screaming skull base. some kind of wash to add texture. then highlights of a light (apple/teal) green and possibly black (maybe a super-dark orange). haven't seen a colour scheme like this before but i'm hoping it'll work.

am not going to have enough x-wing sticks for all of these. am putting off getting more until the ships are further along.

paint stripping (round 1) is done. have chucked all the smaller ships and bits back in the pint (graduated from little glass tumble to pint glass) of dettol for another parse.
there is a bit much sticky residue for my liking and hopeful another dunk will shift it. am hoping not to need turps. 

all the cruisers with some base coat happening...

these now have x-wing sticks. definitely not going to have enough.  



imperials done - new battleship

the final imperial ship is done... the ironically named majestic-class battleship. 

this will most likely be my flag ship for the (already started) campaign we have going on.

the majestic-class is basically a emperor-class with the left/right weapons batteries swapped out for lances instead.
anyway, she's done.

i'm very unlikely to have enough room on one tray for all of these...



marines foam tray

had a note in the door saying something arrived. had enough time to pop out to pick it up. hot wire cutter!

results are not overly pretty but should do the job. pretty much as planned.

Theoretically i'll be doing up an imperial one (and for the other fleets too). i'm not sure there will be enough space for everything.

For the eldar fleet there are a loooooot of little ships, and the big ones are big vertically as well.

The imperials just squeezed on to the preliminary layout but once there's a bit of padding around the ship i'm pretty sure they're just not going to fit.

am considering a couple of things (mainly re imperial fleet at the moment);
i) i could go a bigger box. i have plenty of the larger boxes around.
ii) i could make the trays specific. as in they would hold 1 battleship, 3-5 cruisers + escorts... so enough for a specific list for a game but possibly not all the ships all the time. 
iii) tray for capital ships, tray for escorts. they should/might be able to sit 2 high in the box. 



marines - campaign (BFG)

Worth mentioning that last thursday we had a game at north ryde. Marines first run on the table and managed to secure a victory.

We're playing a campaign so more going on than just blasting away. Scenarios are fun. 

Marines had to step up as the (new addition ships for the ) imperials weren't quite table-worthy. 

Convoy scenario. Marines trying to protect the ships as they head to the other side.
Wasn't too long before chaos torpedos and ships started appearing.

The marines trying to neutralise the threat. More enemy appear further down the board.

The convoy makes a dash down the flank.

Strikes cruisers make a 2:1 boarding action.

And somehow 6 transports make it through.

Until next time...