Haemonculi Coven Raider

A quick rummage through this blog's archives will present you with the following obvious fact; I jump about between a lot of 40k armies. My brother is quite the opposite. Since just before 5th ed hit, he's been running his ever faithful Salamanders. He's dabbled in a few others (Death Guard, Flesh Tearers) but never strayed far from the power armour.
After he expressed an interest in the idea of a Haemonculi Coven army, I jumped on the chance. After all, I always like the opportunity to face something new across the tabletop. Fusing it with my need for Christmas gift ideas, I produced the following.



Quite expensive for a basic raider if you wanted to replicate this across a whole army, but I do like the way the pile of bodies replacing the sail changes the look of it. I imagine it hovering slowly through mists, Dark Eldar throwing bodies into it to be transported back to the laboratories of Commoragh.



What's a Haemonculi Coven without a Haemonculus? I had this guy left over from the Corpse cart kit, and didn't want him to go to waste. He's obviously a Haemonculus that hasn't yet mastered the art of floating around looking regal.

Magnetic Jetbikes

I've not dabbled with magnets before, but I was given some spares by a friend recently and figured I should put them to use. Magnetically attaching my Reavers to their bases seemed like the optimal choice.

Now, if you've not messed about with the Dark Eldar range personally yet, know that the abominations against sanity otherwise known as flying stands have been redesigned somewhat. They have a ball and socket deal now, which works a lot better. Which is to say, they now work as intended, and hold up the miniature without it spinning wildly in circles or falling over every time you think in it's general direction.

Well, this is the case for the larger vehicles such as Raiders. Reavers don't fair so well (I suspect however that I may have been lax in my pressing together the two halves of the bike with appropriate force duties, so it may be my fault). My jetbikes still suffered from falling over mid battle, so I decided to go with some scenic bases. The magnets enable me to disassemble them for easy transport.



The scenic bases themselves ended up a lot taller than I would perhaps like, but finding scenery bits that are thick enough to support the insertion of a magnet whilst also being the appropriate hight turns out to be difficult, at least within the confines of my own bitz box.

Oh, and in regards to my previous post, I've settled on red.

Probably.

Dark Eldar colour scheme tests

The DE raider is a pretty cool kit. Lots of options, and the guys hanging off the side can be a great source of bits. They're also really useful to use as guinea pigs for colour scheme experiments.

I've been back and forth on how I want my DE to look. I wanted to avoid purple as I have a few purple armies kicking about already. I'd probably avoid green too, as my skaven use that as their main colour. I narrowed it down to the following 3 schemes. All of which are, admittedly, slightly sloppy (bad priming for one) but they should get the idea across.

SCHEME ONE


Pros: Yellow is pretty striking. Yellow is pretty unique as well, so I'm less likely to run into someone else with a similar army.
Cons: Took ages. Painting yellow is a pain and I don't the way I did it looks that good. Painting yellow on the smooth flat vehicles will probably drive me insane.


SCHEME THE SECOND



Pros: Looks the most vibrant of the 3 in real life. Scheme would be very easy to do on vehicles as well as infantry.
Cons: Fairly standard looking DE scheme, perhaps? No distinction between the clothy bits and the armoury bits like there is on the other 2 tests, but I can always play around with that I suppose.

SCHEME C



Pros: Red and black looks suitably evil, I think. Contrasts nicely with the bright hair colours that will be dotted about the army too.
Cons: Very similar to my Dark Elf scheme, if and when I decide to pick them up again. Even with foundation paints, getting a smooth red on vehicles might be a challenge?


Anyway, what do you guys think? Which is your favourite?

Which Wych is which Wych

The festive season descends upon us like an angry Blood Angel, only with less whirring chainswords and more chocolate reindeer.

Speaking of Blood Angels, I took my Dark Eldar for a game against Mr. MCT last week. It was my first time sending them up against anything wearing power armour, so I was curious to see how I'd do. Here are a few things I learned.

Wyches seem to be a solid assault unit. I'll be running 2 units each with a fighty HQ in my 1500 list, and I think this should be a good balance between being able to eat units, but not so powerful I automatically steam roll stuff and get shot to hell next turn. Which is good.

The loss of the Haemonculus really hurts when my transports inevitably begin exploding. However, the main reason I took them out was the H's lack of fleet, which I still think is vital enough to Wyches to be worth the trade off.

I'm liking Razorflails a lot more than I thought I would. I'm tempted to swap out the Hydra Gauntlets for a Flail in each unit.



I'm going up against what I think will be an all-infantry Raven Guard list on Monday. This should be fun, as I've faced mostly mech lists so far. I'm resisting the urge to swap all my Dark Lances for Disintegrator Cannons though. All-comers fo life, yo.

More DE HQs

Not started painting any of them yet, but I've been assembling Dark Eldar for ages and ages, it seems!
Anyway, most are standard so I won't bore you with pictures, but I have been messing with HQs.

Here's my first. She was originally meant to be an Archon, but she came out looking a lot more...nude than I was imagining to begin with. I think she'll make a pretty good succubus though.




I decided I needed an actual Archon still. At the moment she's just blu-tacked together so I can see how the pose etc looks. Thoughts? Not sure about her right arm either. Maybe a blast pistol?

Dark Eldar 3 games in

I managed to get a mighty 3 games in this week, to break in my new DE force. The good news is there was plenty of pain and despair inflicted. The bad news is that most of it was inflicted on me.

My army list was a bit of a hodge podge mix of things. Stuff I liked the look of from the miniature range (most of the first wave of releases), stuff I already owned (Harlequins, the forgeworld Pheonix Bomber) and a few things I wanted to try out (Lady Malys and a Haemonculus).
Here's what my 1500 list looked like.

-----------------------
Lady Malys

Haemonculus
(Agoniser)

9 Wychs
(Hydra Gauntlets, Hekatrix with Agoniser)
Raider
(Flickerfield)

9 Wychs
(Razorflails, Hekatrix with Agoniser)
Raider
(Flickerfield)


10 Warriors
(Blaster, Splinter Cannon, Sybarite with Agoniser)
Raider
(Flickerfield)

10 Warriors
(Blaster, Dark Lance)

6 Reavers
(2x Caltrops, 2 x Heat Lances)

Voidraven
(Flickerfield, 1 Shatter Missiles)

6 Harlequins
(Kisses, 2 fusion pistols, Shadowseer, Death Jester)

1494
-----------------------

First game was against craftworld Eldar, a guardian horde. With the exception of 3 warwalkers, everyone was on foot. This ended up being a fairly non dynamic battle, sadly. He was new to his army as well, so we both sort of kept our distance and slapped each other around a little before drawing with an objective each. I had set up for a bit of a first turn assault on his forces (using Malys' redeployment abilities), but got the initiative seized on me, which took the wind out of my sails a little. I did manage to run down a 15 man squad of guardians using only a single sybarite however, which was pretty entertaining.

Second game was up against Imperial Guard. A valk and a Vendetta, a bunch of Chimeras, a Manticore, a Deathstrike, and a single Russ. This time I think I made the mistake of heading in to a stand up fight, rather than engaging all of my forces against part of his. I really don't have the numbers to be able to commit a portion of it as a distraction. AV 12 was my bane this game, as it continues to be for my gaming career. Give me multiple Land Raiders over multiple Chimeras any day. I don't think I managed to crack open any of his transports. By the end of the game I had a single Reaver left (albeit the most bad-ass reaver in existence; throughout the game he survived numerous bolt and las shots, a straight up lascannon hit, and being set on fire numerous times). On the plus side however, I got the hang of a couple of tricks that will work for me in the future. One was using cover with my raiders. Whilst I was hit with a lot of fire power, I think I managed to claim a save from most of it (in which case I might be able to trim Flickerfields to free up some points in the future. Will need further investigation). The other was how to use my bikes. I deployed them behind cover out of sight of most of his army. First turn I moved forwards 12 to unleash my double heat lance on one of his fliers, before using my assault move to dodge back behind cover. Granted, the part of my plan that involved rolling more than a 2 with the hit dice apparently failed, but the movement part seemed solid. My Voidraven also got immobilised but still managed to nuke the russ and the manticore. I like the Voidraven. Maybe one day I'll get to drop the mine.

3rd game I went up against a (mostly) mechanised Tau force. 3 Hammerheads (2 with rail guns, 1 with an ion cannon), 2 Devilfish fire warrior squads, 2 on foot fire warrior squads, and a big pack of outflanking kroot. Oh, there was a commander and squad of suits in reserve as well but they didn't show up till the last turn, by which time I was mostly out for the count. The jetbikes did tons better this game. I kept them turbo boosting throughout most of it, decapitating a whole squad of fire warriors in one pass. You know that must have looked awesome on the battlefield. I kept the Voidraven in reserve again, which I think is a solid tactic. It protects the thing from unwarranted enemy attentions, plus I can bring it where it can do the most damage. My main foe this time was my horrible anti-armour. I think someone must have forgotten to change the batteries in the lances before the battle, because I failed to do anything more than a stun result to any of the vehicles.

Ok, enough rambling about that. I've made a few tweaks based on what worked and what didn't. I've added in more manoeuvrability, and more lances. I've dropped the Haemonculus, too. The free pain token is nice, no doubt about that, but I think the lack of fleet hurts when I'm trying to get my wyches into the fight.

This is what my new 1500 looks like.

-----------------------
Archon
(Shadowfield, Agoniser)

Succubus
(Agoniser)

9 Wychs
(Hydra Gauntlets, Hekatrix with Agoniser)
Raider
(Flickerfield)

9 Wychs
(Razorflails, Hekatrix with Agoniser)
Raider
(Flickerfield)

10 Warriors
(Blaster, Splinter Cannon, Sybarite with Agoniser)
Raider
(Flickerfield)

10 Warriors
(Blaster, Dark Lance)
Raider
(Flickerfield)

6 Reavers
(2x Caltrops, 2 x Heat Lances)

Voidraven
(Flickerfield, 2 Shatter Missiles)

Ravager
(Flickerfield)

1496
-----------------------
As I said, more speed and more lances, which should help get the foe out of their transports, and get my wyches into the foe. I've also changed up the HQ a little. A fighty character with each squad should, I hope, give them the extra punch they need when I go up against more close combat orientated forces. I ripped through Guardsmen and Fire Warriors in close combat, but I suspect those Flesh Tearers that I sometimes fight may give me more of a fight. We shall see.


I'm mostly done with my epic quest of glueing grey plastic together, so hopefully I should be able to get some more painting posts up soon!

Sybarite Fashion; Winter collection

Just a quick post for you, I'll get something more substantial up over the weekend.

When assembling my Kabalite warrior squads, weapon choice was a bit of a problem. Internet group think can give me some ideas, but how do I know what load outs will suit me best? What do I arm my Sybarites with? Do I even want the Sybarite upgrade at all? Knowing what unit upgrades I can afford in my army list is problematic when I'm still figuring out what units I'll be using in the first place.

The answer was a bit of everything. I made sure both my Kabalite leaders were armed with Splinter Rifles so I can field them as fancy-looking-but-ultimately-regular-warriors. I also didn't want to waste any power swords or anything on them. Gotta ration out my bits for making cool characters. In the end I gave each a swinging chain blade from the Wych kit, which I think works as an agoniser if I have the points to spend.

Plus dudes loaded down with weapons look awesome.

Commissar Cosplay and Bolt Pistol auction

Earlier this year I went to the MCM expo in London. My GF was going in costume, so I decided to step up and make myself something to wear as well.
The obvious choice of course was an Imperial Guard Commissar (Alas, I lack the 8 foot physique and jutting jawbone to get away with dressing as an Ork).
Here are a few pictures. Beware, my horrific visage is incoming!




Anyway, I've been cleaning up and getting rid of a lot of the junk I love to accumulate, and have decided to put my modified Bolt Pistol up on ebay.

Auction is here
EBAY

Post Apocalyptic Pictures

Well, the last reactor has gone nuclear, the last plasma gun has cooled, and the last chainsword has been dislodged from the last head.
Had a great day yesterday, and our little 40k game was certainly apocalyptic.
Most importantly, my Phoenix got to shoot something (killed a mighty 8 chaos marines before we had to call time) and my Shadowsword got to kill something (mostly our own guardsmen when it exploded), so I was pleased!
Here are a few photos I took:

Overview of the Imperial side's forces all unpacked. You can see, from closest to furthest away, my Iron Hands, Raven Guard, a chunk of the Imperial Guard armour, the bastions, more Guard tanks, Tau, and right at the back are the Blood Angels.


We also had a few members of the Ultramarine first company.


Last but not least, Operation: Human Shield


Spies were sent to scout the enemy's forces, but only this blurry picture made it back to us


Both sides line up ready for the carnage


Things start badly for the Imperium. Orks and Chaos advance as our left flank vanishes under the initial fire storms. Our right flank remains smug under a shield generator. We also start the battle long trend of welcoming lovely chaps wearing terminator armour to view the rear armour of all our tanks. They are quite insistent that we show it to them, as they stroke their melta guns and cackle to themselves.


That's Wazdakka in the red, and that's a Vortex Grenade he's just thrown at us.

The battlefield clears out a bit after the middle stompa goes nuclear


Robo-Lysander and a sternguard squad, moments before they are mobbed by orks. When we finished the game at the end of turn 3, Lysander was still surrounded by baddies, swinging his thunderhammer at them.

Other highlights that I failed to get pictures of include:
Our disruptor beacon working like a champ and sending Abaddon, 5 terminators, several squads of obliterators and 2 demon princes off to the wrong side of the battlefield.
Alistair's colonel furiously punching an obliterator to death with his power fist before consolidating calmly into a bunker.
A combined outflanking force of Kroot and Grey Knights pouncing on a large group of Necrons.

Countdown to Apocalypse

I've been gearing up for a huge Apocalypse game on Sunday. It's looking like we'll have about 21,000 points on each side, plus super heavies (We're balancing the heavies separately after an incident last year involving too many stompas). Quite exciting as this will be my first Apocalypse game ever!
I'm bringing about 3k of Iron Hands, along with an Eldar reserves force (in case anyone doesn't show up and we need extra bodies to balance the sides).
My marines don't get much play time these days, because we have quite a hefty lot of Imperial players at our club. I'm not a big fan of same faction vs same faction fighting (unless it makes sense from a fluff perspective, which admittedly isn't terribly hard to justify in the 41st millennium). It's fine now and then, but with all the marines players at the club it's more fun to bring along one of my other forces on game night.

With that in mind, it'll be good to see them in action again. I believe we should have representatives from a few of the other major chapters, with Raven Guard, Blood Angels, Ultramarines as well as a contingent (Regiment? Detachment?) of the Mordian Iron Guard (oh, and some Tau and my aforementioned Craftworlders as well). On the opposing side we've got a massive amount of Orks, Chaos, and probably some Dark Eldar.

I managed to paint up a new dreadnought for the occasion. He has yet to be named. Any suggestions?


I also got around to assembling the Forge World Phoenix Bomber that I've had on my shelf for way too long. It has no paint so here's a dramatic silhouette shot so you can't see it properly.


I've got a few hours painting time left to try and get Fake Lysander finished, too. I want to see how many stompas he can hammer his way through.

Skaven unit fillers

I had an excellent idea to batch paint 20 clan rats at once. While I must admit that painting the final bits of their bases and ranking them up, finished, one by one at the end was very satisfying, I don't think I'll be doing it again. Working on that many at once sapped my will to paint a little, so in the end I think doing them in batches of 10 or maybe even 5 would get me through them a little better.

Anyways, my first 500 points is now fully painted! I will attempt to get a group shot of them when the lighting is better, but for now I'm moving on to assemble more of the little rats, including making some unit fillers to bulk out the clan rats a little.

The "holes" should look a little better with sand applied to the bases, I hope.

Postcards from Commorragh

Well, I got a big box of stuff through the mail today. Mmmm, lovely new pointed eared warriors to do my bidding. The codex is lovely, as are the kits. I'm just browsing through it and pondering what direction to go in at the moment. It's quite liberating to come to an army completely fresh, with no preconceptions about unit types or background!

For the miniatures, I'm going all plastic. Same as my Skaven. Harlequins don't count because I already own some, and Fighters/Bombers don't count because they're resin and, er, because I said so.

Anyway, I've got plans for various conversions.

Wracks from ghouls is fairly standard and I might make myself a unit, but will probably shy away from going too far in the direction of the homunculus. Mostly because the artwork in the book for the wracks and grotesques look cool, so I wanna see what GW comes out with in wave 2.

Homunculi themselves shouldn't be too tough. I made an evil science doctor type chaos space marine a while ago, and I think the same principles should work for the space elves.

I'll proxy one before I decide if it has a place in my army, but a talos counts as from a wraithlord kit seems like an idea that may not be horrible.

I fancy trying some incubi, but not sure how to go about making some. Warriors with modified hellion helglaves, maybe? Dark Elf Cold One knight heads, and some greenstuff cloaks? Hmmm. Something to think about.

For leaders and special characters, Lady Malys sounds fun. Whether I use her or a generic Archon remains to be seen, but she'll certainly be the inspiration behind the looks of my HQ. I'm thinking a spare demonette for the torso/upper legs, with a greenstuff cloak covering up the demonic side of things. Kind of regal looking. I've got some spare eldar guardian legs that can work for her boots/lower legs, and then should have plenty of spare heads/arms from the main kits. I shall have to make like the homunculi, and start putting bits together to see what works best.


Finally, reading through the unit description for the Court of the Archon, anyone else think Sslyth = Laer? Their physical description sounds about the same, and the whole falling prey to excess sounds about right too.

Err day we be Lamentin'

Nothing too exciting happening on the painting front. I'm slowly chipping away at the Skaven. I'm also gearing up for an Apocalypse game in a few weeks. I'll be joining the Imperial side of things with my Iron Hands, so expect some lists and pictures of the boys in black in the near future.

Today though, rather than the boys in black, I figured I might do some musing on the boys in red.
And by red, I clearly mean yellow.
Yellow with black and white checks.

I've never been a terribly big fan of the Blood Angels. I blame the last vestiges of faction loyalty from my nerdarific childhood. Back when me and my brother were first getting into the hobby, we both had space marine armies (of course). He had Blood Angels, while my allegiance was with the Ultramarines*. This is probably the same reason why I always favour Dark Elves over High Elves in Fantasy**. I digress, however.

When the book came out, however, I dabbled in it with some proxy-counts-as marines***. I ended up getting distracted by the Eldar (a story for another time), but the book itself was great fun to play with.

I've also long had a desire to paint up a yellow army, but have never quite had the nerve to go for it. Imperial Fists, Craftworld Iyanden, Bad Moons, all awesome factions. Lamenters are sweet, too. I especially like their whipping boy status. It's cool that despite being the finest genetically engineered super soldiers that mankind can produce, luck can still screw them over, repeatedly. I've always had a thing for the underdog, I suppose.

One day, I'll step up and paint myself a Lamenters army (possibly inspired by Aventine's dudes), but for now I just like to kick about the occassonal list. Which is really the point of this whole post.

Pretty much just theorycrafting with a little bit learned from my battlefield experiences with the book, so I make no promises about it being anywhere close to playable. Ready?


----------------------
LAMENTERS, 1500 POINTS

HQ:
Librarian, Jump Pack, Sword and Shield
Reclusiarch, Jump Pack

ELITE:
2 Priests with Jump Packs

TROOPS:
10 Assault Marines, 2 Flamers, Fist on the sgt

10 Assault Marines, 2 Meltas, Fist on the Sgt

5 Scouts, Pistol/Blade, 1 Missile Launcher, Fist on Sgt

7 Death Company, 2 Power Fists, 2 Power Weapons, Rhino

FAST:
2 Flamestorm Baals

---------------------

The idea behind this army is that it's an entirely deepstrike/outflank/reserve force. The HQs and Priests obviously run with the assault squads, drop down, then eat things. The baals outflank and set stuff on fire. The scouts outflank too, hopefully fisting an oportune target. The launcher is there so they can sit on an objective and shoot, or else keep out of the way if it's a KP mission. Death Company simply drive straight at the enemy and hopefully distract them long enough for the rest of the force to do it's thing.
Like I said before, it probably needs a decent amount of work to be viable on the tabletop (it lacks some serious anti-tank, for one thing), but I reckon it would be a pretty fun force to play.




*What can I say, I prefer blues to reds.
**There is also the scientifically proven fact that High Elves are pointy hat wearing ponces and totally lame.
***Yes yes, I know.

Warpfire Thrower Team, and Rattagantz

The sun was out today and the lighting wasn't too horrible, so I took a few more pictures of what I've been painting.



The Warpfire Thrower Team. Maybe one day they'll get to shoot something!





Warlord Rattagantz! The pose on this guy makes him tough to photograph.

Now these guys are done, it's time to wade through all those clan rats I've been putting off.

First blood with the rats

Well, had the first 2 "official" league games with my rats this week, which makes a grand total of 4 games played with skaven, ever.
First up was against some High Elves. The game was far closer than it had any right to be, due to some decent rolling from me and some fairly abysmal rolling from my opponent (obviously the new warchief dice I was using!). High point was a motley unit of clanrats holding their own against some swordmasters. In the end though, it ended as it always seems to, with the tattered remains of my army routing from the board.
Second game was against a cool looking (no pun intended; they were snow based) Dark Elf cavalry army. 3 units of Dark Riders and some Cold One Knights. I knew I was in trouble but held up a little better than expected, seeing off a unit of riders and the knights before I was finally outmanoeuvred and out shot. Not enough bodies or fire power to really contend with fast cav. Something to keep in mind for future blocks, I think. The other notable point of this game was it was the first time (in a total of 4 games with my rats) that a weapon team hit something that wasn't my own men! It failed to kill anything, but it's a start at least.

So, 2 losses, and unfinished painting as well. Not a very good start, but hey, the only way from here is up!


Here are my thoughts for expanding to 1k:
2 more pack masters, 4 more rat ogres.
10 more clan rats for each unit
Quezla, level 2 warlock with warp energy condenser
upgrade Rattagantz to a Warlord, give him a Warlock enhanced weapon.

So my list should look like:

LORDS
Rattagantz, Warlock Weapon

HEROES
Quezla, lv 2, WEC, Pistol

TROOPS
30 Clan Rats, Spears/Shields, Warp Fire Thrower

30 Clan Rats, HW/Shield, PWMortar

SPECIAL
6 Rat Ogres, 3 Pack Masters
987 points (Enough left over for an Enchanted Shield for my lord, perhaps?)


Adding a wizard seems like a solid choice, both from a fluff perspective and also from a game play one. Quezla is the core of my army, providing all the fun weapons I'll be adding in at larger points values, and a bit of extra ranged spell damage wont go amiss (or more likely it will, with disastrous consequences).
30 Clan Rats should hopefully help me maintain my rank bonus a little longer, and see each unit be that little bit more survivable. Hopefully.
Upgrading mr.Gantz to a lord is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's still quite early in the league so whilst skaven lords are not the combat monsters some are, the extra fightiness should help out quite a bit (with the warlock weapon he can dish out 5 strength 5 attacks at a decent I and ok WS). Secondly, bumping him up to a lord frees up some of my hero % points, so I can probably squeeze a cheap BSB into my list next block. Finally and most importantly, the extra point of LD is sorely needed!

Progress!

Slowly creeping towards my first 500 points of painted skaven. More rats have been painted, namely the first unit of clan rats. Not very exciting, but I'm hoping quantity will make up for the fairly basic paint job on these guys.


Finished unit of Rat Ogres. In my next 500 point block I plan to bump this unit up to 6. As a long time Dark Elf player I've never really had the chance to play about with monstrous infantry, and I think a mob of these guys barrelling across the battlefield will be great fun.





First weapon team done!


Up next are my Warpfire Thrower, and Chieftain Rattagantz himself. Then it's back to more clan rats!

Also, a quick note on bases. At present they're just a grey drybrush and nothing more, but at some stage in the future I intend to go back and fancy them up a bit with some flock or something. For now however I'm concentrating on speed over fanciness!

Tokyo Blogging

Well, here I am. 10pm local time, sitting in a cyber cafe messing about on the internet. An hour in here actually turned out a lot cheaper than buying a phone card to ring home as well! The keyboard keeps trying to make me type in Kanji though. I do not know Kanji, so this is a problem.

We landed yesterday, and the 11 hour flight kicked our assess a lot harder than anticipated. Getting lost in the middle of Tokyo didn't help much. Still, when in doubt, hail a cab. Tokyo is so crazy. It's busy, of course, but it's so intense. With the multi level arcades and shrines hidden away in between shops, everywhere you look there's something different going on. It's awesome!

Yesterday evening, just before passing out, we made a list of all the stereotypes and cliches that might come to mind when you think of Japan that we'd already seen/experienced.
Overly confusing toilet? Check.
Japanese School girls in sailor outfits? Check.
Japanese School boy with satchel slung over one shoulder? Check.
Engrish? Check (Best so far is Jamocan Coffee)
Lady in Kimono? Check.
Cute cartoon animals? Check.
Gloriously atractive hair all round? Check.
Packed but orderly subways? Check.
Stern looking Japanese doctor with a facemask? Check.
Arm bands signifying someone in a position of authority? Check.

The best one, however, is the television. Specificially the adverts. Beyond parody, everything you can imagine is true.
I love it!

A few more painted

Making some slight progress with painting the horde!
Something a bit bigger than clanrats, anyway.

Gamesday 2010

Been pretty busy this week with finishing off various studies and preparing for a immenant trip to Tokyo (first time ever visiting, wooo! but I digress), so no progress on the skaven, sadly. I've got a few days before we fly off to kick out some miniatures however.

Today, though, was Gamesday (well, it's now the morning so technically yesterday was Gamesday). Last year was the first time I'd been since I was a kid, and while fun, it was a little disappointing to be honest. This year, however, was super-awesome! If you care at all about the sorts of things that were being shown you've probably seen them already on other people's blogs or wherever. I won't bother re-posting them. I figure if I'm going to make sporadic, late posts, I may as well keep the content original, right?

So with that in mind, here are a couple of photos I took.

Culexus costume! The eyes were all glowy and everything!


Waaagh!



Nerrrrrds

First rats down. Billions more to go.

Had a busy few days, but now it's time to knuckle down and get on with the important stuff. Painting Skaven!

I churned out the front rank of my spear rats in an evening. Quick and dirty, pretty much just base colours and then a brown wash over the top. I'll put a little more love into the non-clanrat units, but there are so many of these guys I have to prioritise quantity over quality. Took me a couple of hours to get this rank done, but I think I can trim it down now I've worked out what I'm doing with regard to what colours go on first, etc.


Dark green is the army colour, so will be showing up to some degree on every miniature. Clan rats will be rocking a green/grey/brown colour palette, while fancier units (say, Stormvermin) will probably be green/black/bone. I'm going to go back and add some flock to the bases as well, but I'll probably do that in bulk once I'm done with all of them.


I'm not going to get very far painting 5 at a time, so it's time to overcome my biggest fear. [b]Batch painting.[/b] [i]*dramatic music and thunder*[/i]

Slow but steady

Not terribly exciting but slow and steady progress with my skaven. I've tidied up, de-mold line'd, stuck together and based my first block of Skaven. I'm gunna go undercoat them all, and then the painting can begin!
This is what 500 points of skaven looks like. There's quite a few of them.

The loathsome Ratmen and all their Vile Kin

Right, so more Warhammer. No Beards this time. I've had a single proper game with my Dwarfs, and they're about half way assembled, no idea on a colour scheme yet. Obviously the perfect time to start a Skaven army.

8th ed has roused the interest of a fairly large portion of the club, and there is an escalation league starting up. 500 points a month, basically. We've got a pretty good spread of forces at the moment (which is good, as with 40k it's about 80% space marine on any given day). Empire, Dwarfs, Brettonians, various flavours of Chaos, some Lizards, a Vampire horde, and no doubt some High Elves. Dark Elves still have a bit of a bad rep around these parts, so I figured I'd step up and go for it with my Skaven. 500 points at a time should help me from going too mad with buying too much stuff, although it remains to be seen whether I can actually paint a hundred or more clanrats. Yikes!

I've never played Skaven before, though I've always liked their background. All their new miniatures (especially Island of Blood) tipped me over the edge. The plan is for this to be an entirely plastic army (seriously, fuck metal miniatures. I'm carrying this army around in a bucket!), mostly made up of Clans Skyre and Moulder. Maybe some Eshin (or maybe they're there already and you just can't see them). Not a big fan of Pestilens, though.

Here's some background I scribbled up:

Chief Rattagantz. Low ranking general of a low ranking clan, bottom of the pile of filth that is Skavenblight. A rat with big ambitions, though. Called upon by the warlocks of Clan Skyre, Rattagantz is sent forth into the world of men. One of their own is missing, the mad* recluse Iklas Quezla. Rattagantz is to find him, and more importantly, find his work. If the rumours about this Enginseer are true however, Rattagantz may just have found his way to the top of the pile. A few of his most trusted** clanrat warriors, a few "gifts" from clan Skyre, and a few favours he was able to negotiate from clan Moulder, and Rattagants is off to find his destiny, or die trying***.

*yes, even by skaven standards
** by skaven standards, anyway
***by dying, he of course means letting his underlings die whilst he runs away


And here is my starting 500 point list:

Chieftain Rattagantz, Halberd (47 pts)

20 Clanrats, Spear, Shield, Full Command (120 pts)
Warpfire Thrower (70 pts)

20 Clanrats, HW, Shield, Full Command (110 pts)
Poisoned Wind Mortar (65pts)

2 Rat Ogres, 1 Packmaster (88pts)

500 exactly


Finally, some pictures! Nothing painted yet, but a few characters destined to lead heroically from the back.

Chieftain Rattagantz. Removed the back banner and gave him some new arms. The arms attach in a bit of a weird way, and I had to mangle the previous shoulder pads something fierce to get the new ones on, so some greenstuff to tidy him up is in order.



I imagine at some point sooner rather than later I'll want a BSB, so here he is. Gave him a new head to make him a little different to Rattagantz, and did some minor repositioning of his cleaver arm so he'll actually rank up. His back banner isn't the most impressive army flag in existence, but the overall hight combined with the brazier on top should make him stand out nicely on the tabletop.


Finally, the mad genius behind all the warp technology I'll be hopefully using to wreak havoc amongst the surface dwellers. Iklas Quezla, clan Skyre Warlock Engineer. Not sure what to do with the pipe from his gasmask. Might just lop it off.