Orkz orkz orkz orkz

Ok, so, after a good few weeks of playing and messing around with different units and all that stuff, I'm mostly set on my standard Marine list!
Even better, that means I have around 12 infantry, 2 and a half vehicles, plus a thunderfire cannon to paint, and I'll be able to put down a fully painted 2k army! Despite playing since 1st edition, this is something I've never been able to manage.

Obviously, this week I was hit by the overwhelming desire to paint Orks instead. Here we go with the pictures!

For those who don't know, my orkz are freeboota pirates. I'm not going [i]too [/i]overboard with converting every little thing to be pirate themed, but the core of the force will be full of peg legs and eyepatches.
Did a little more work on Kaptin Dedeye, my warboss. He's close to finished now, I just need to do his hat and coat, and then a few details.



I finished this guy. He still needs basing, of course. Thinking of sticking with the basic grey gravel look, with a bit of grass on top perhaps. Anyway, he's an ex-snakebite nob, now serving as Dedeye's "minda", when things get rough (which they do frequently). I think I overdid the scratched metal on him. I'll tone it down for future orks.



Progressing through the rest of the nobz mob. Behold, his greenstuff beard! Yeah, I converted this guy a while ago now and the beard looks pretty rough. Never mind. I also went for a stripey shirt, which turned out way more purple than anticipated. I think it looks ok, but I dunno if he's that pirate-y.

Paint? 'aint got time to paint!

See, because this post is about a predator tank. AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA. Anyway.

I've had a scruffy old predator sitting around half painted for years. It's worked it's way onto the battlefield on quite a regular basis lately, so I painted it.



Also, exciting (!) WIP shots of a redeemer. Despite having played for way too many years, I've managed to never paint anything this large before.

Update time!

So, at some stage soon I want to try out Lysander. He's a bad-ass. Most other special characters I'd make my own counts-as figure, but Lysander has a cool enough miniature I'm not going to do much to him. I've gotten rid of most of his Imperial Fist iconography, and I have some cogs and such to replace it. Nothing terribly exciting to look at right now. I thought that such an imposing figure needed an imposing base however, so I've built myself one. It's a curb/cross section of a street, or something.





I've also been building more tactical marines. I totally stole this pose/conversion from someone on the internet, but it looks awesome so I don't care!



As a Christmas present, one of my friends built me a 5 man squad of Sternguard. They've had mixed results on the battlefield, but I love 'em. Here they are. I need to paint the rims of their bases black to fit in with the rest of my force, at some point.



Sternguard are an expensive and fragile unit, so I figure I may as well go all the way and make a few more. First up is this guy. I'm not a huge fan of command squads, but I am a big fan of army standards, so I thought he'd fit in nicely with the vets. They'll probably be joined by Aronnax most games, so he's going to carry the Captain's personal standard. I'm gunna use this as an opportunity to try out some fancy freehand painting.


A sgt with a power fist would round the squad out nicely, so I made this guy. He's based on the Sgt Chronus miniature, as he had ornate yet techy armour, and a helmet that was similar to the rest of the unit. As they'll have a standard bearer with them, he didn't really need a back banner, and so I kept his mini-servo arm backpack.



He has a few Ultramarine icons sculpted on, so I had to get rid of them. The ones on his chest and loin armour had their top bits filed down. I then filled in the middle with greenstuff, and filed it smooth. Hopefully when painted this will give me a smooth circle symbol, which I can turn into a cog. The one on his backpack was a little bigger, so I tried something different. I made a mould of one of the Iron Hand symbols from the shoulder pad set using greenstuff, and then wedged it on over the top of the Ultra symbol. A bit sloppy but it works.


Well, that's it!

Thunderfire, HOOOOOOO

I like the idea of a thunderfire cannon, but a huge lump of metal that size seems likely to chip or be dropped too often for my tastes.
So I'm making my own!
Here's what I have so far. It should probably have some sort of movement device, but I figure the stabilizer things lift up and it hovers, or something. I dunno.


I've got one of the old techmarines manning it.

I'm not sure what to do with the space between the rockets. Leave it blank?


More rockets?


Vaguely phallic glowy targeting gubbinz?

40k Doubles

It's been a while. I'm back though, and I bring pictures!

So, the weekend before last was the uk 40k doubles tournament. Despite the snow and general shitty weather there was a great turn out, and it was excellent fun.
Me and Andrew entered this year with Loyalist marines; Salamanders and Iron Hands.
Here you can see a shitty picture of our army. I managed to fluff most of the pictures of our own guys (HINT: Remember to turn macro mode on), but Sophie took a few so I'll post better ones at some stage soon.


We did far better than anticipated, winning all our games on the Saturday and starting Sunday on table 1. We were quickly knocked down to size, finishing with 3 wins, 2 losses and a draw. We placed 22nd out of 153 or so teams. Not bad!

There was a massive amount of imperial guard present this year. Last year was all about the orks, but this year, everywhere you looked were Valkyries and Vendettas flying all over the place. Marines of all sorts were predictably common place (plenty of Wolves), with a fair few orks and demons, and a scattering of eldar, tau and nids. No necrons that I could see.

If I remember correctly, the top 3 winning teams were Guard, Space Wolves, and Eldar, in that order.

Anyway, enough of all that. The real reason I'm posting is because there were some very cool looking armies. Here are some pictures!






Eldar! I'm pretty certain this army belonged to one of the Forge World guys. The Avatar actually lit up. Apparently he'd cast the thing in clear resin, and inserted the LEDs inside.








A chaos army rising from the depths. There may have been some LOS trickery going on with that dreadnought, but it all looked awesome so that's all that matters, right?









A very nice Sisters of Battle force



This wasn't the best looking army, but we entered last year with a Slaanesh/Tzeentch army so I had to grab a picture. *chaos bro fist*














This is the army that eventually won best painted, and hopefully you can see why. Imperial Guard and Dark Angels, there was a stunning amount of detail. My favourite part was the Ogryns dropping out of one of their valks.






Lastly, some Crimson Fists.

There were some fantastic armies on display! Lighting in warhammer world is horrible, so these are the best shots I got :P

It arrived, as is usual for such things, during a firefight involving orks

The not-quite saga of my application for a trainee studio writer's job definitively ended last night with a text from my brother; the process has ended without anyone being hired. The reasons for this are unknown. Perhaps everyone else was rubbish? My knowledge of people leads me to conclude this the most likely explanation.
This information at least gives me a little joy. I didn't get the job, so no-one else should. Schadenfreude* aside, I suppose there exists the chance the job will some day be re-opened for applications. Another chance to apply would certainly be welcome. Learning from my defeat, I have surely levelled up to such a degree that victory is a possible, no, the probable outcome.

Whatevs though, my doggs. The trip to the frozen wastes of Canada draws ever closer. I wonder if you have to wrestle the polar bear before or after you go through customs? Soon I will know.



*does it really count if the others are nameless faceless supposed entities? Also shut up scadenfreude is a word I use everyday for reals

A mystery

A friend on facebook posts a general link to a crappy looking world war two themed webgame. He does this a lot. Fantasy themed games. Mafia themed games. Nothing new, nothing noteworthy. A reply though, from someone I do not know:
"I've already expressed my feelings to you on this."
His name is unfamiliar to me, his profile picture face stern and humourless. The background dark, although vague suggestions of a party are present. Who is this man? What are his feelings, and why must he tell the world about it in such a passive aggressive manner? Is it the WW2 theme he takes such umbridge at?
Maybe his beef lies with webgames in general.
Perhaps this is the final straw in their relationship.
A drama unfolds, the likes of which we can only guess at.