Category Archives: General

Armies on Parade 2017 – The Big Day!

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Armies on Parade 2017
So Armies on Parade 2017 has now come and gone, so thought I’d best write a blog post on how I did at the event.  Apologies on how late this post is!  Life has been a little manic over the past few weeks, but better late than never!

Armies on Parade 2017 – Warhammer Bath

As I’ve outlined previously, Warhammer Swindon decided to ban Forge World models from their Armies on Parade this year.  Thankfully a friend offered to take me to the Bath store instead, so I didn’t really know what to expect.  The Bath store is a single staff member store and not the biggest shop either, I’d also heard that past years some people had felt that a lot of votes were made for their friends rather than the board on display.

In total there were eight entries, which I felt was a pretty decent turn out.  I arrived not long after the store had opened and caused a bit of a stir when I started putting my Porphyrion onto my board.  I’m pleased to say that I managed to pick up both Best Painted and Best Monsters and Machines and from what the manager said, there really wasn’t a question.  To my mind this largely puts pay to the issue of votes for friends (I only knew two people who voted).

I’ve put up a Facebook Album of the boards I took photos of.

Overall I really can’t complain and am pretty chuffed that all of the work I put in has actually awarded something for once.  As with last year I do feel that Games Workshop really needs to firm up some base rules for Armies on Parade.  It should be a single army rather than a diorama for starters and entries really should be created by the entrant rather than a joint effort.  There were a number of Young Blood entries that I don’t feel got fair judging because one entry (which was impressive) was largely done by the entrant and their Dad.  However with that exception I had a really enjoyable day.

Part of me would love to spend a bit of effort next year and try and get a clean sweep of every category, however part of me also thinks that’s a little nasty and doesn’t give other people a chance to get anything.

 

My Hobby List for 2018

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Hobby ListI felt it was about time that I created myself a hobby list to give me a bit of well needed focus on my hobby following Armies on Parade.  I can’t take full credit for this as Alex Nygård created one for his backlog the other day!  On the subject of Armies on Parade, I have half written a round up to this years competition, but haven’t had an opportunity to pull the photos off my digital camera yet – expect this soon!

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Armies on Parade 2017 – Knight Porphyrion Progress

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Armies on Parade 2017

The third progress post for Armies on Parade 2017 sees some long overdue work on the guns for my Acastus Knight Porphyrion.

Oddly large weapons are one part of models that I struggled with for inspiration.  The engineer part of me wants to make sure that the weapon looks technically feasible, but this tends to result in a fairly plain and boring paint job, going “sci-fi” looks better but I don’t actually like the result.  For the Knight Porphyrion I was slightly under pressure due to time limits for Armies on Parade, so I stuck with a more basic style with the intention that I can go back at a later date.

Assembling the Knight Porphyrion Arms

I underestimated how big the Porphyrion Arms are and I mean massively underestimated.  When assembled, each gun is longer than a regular Imperial Knight stands tall and took ages to get the barrels correctly positioned.  I also make life more complicated by magnetising the “shoulder” joint, meant I could only pin the lower of the two barrels.  Overall I’m fairly happy – if you look carefully I don’t think the barrels quite line up as well as they could, but you’d struggle to spot it unless you really peer.  One of the barrels also wasn’t quite as well cast as it should have been (I got one replaced) but it was far too late to do anything and it’s not immediately obvious.

Painting the gun

Once assembled they got a coat of Vallejo Metal Colour Gunmetal followed by a drybrush of Rub and Buff silver.  This might seem completely random (and you’d be right), but the result is a fairly decent metal effect.  By not using a wash, you keep the sheen of the airbrush paint and the rub and buff provides a phenomenally smooth and soft highlight.  If I have time I’ll pop an edge highlight on there, but that’s not urgent.  The back heatsink got a coat of Vallejo Metal Colour Burnt Iron which just adds a nice variety.

Knight Porphyrion GunsKnight Porphyrion GunsNext up I spent a good three or four hours masking off part of each gun (which I’d avoided dryrbrushing) and followed my usual technique for painting up red.  I can now officially say that I’ve used an entire pot of Angron Red…  Although this wasn’t a step I wanted to do (it took roughly a day to get the 9 or 10 layers on), I do think it was worth spending the time doing it.

Next up the gold trim got painted up in my usual style and the gloss received an oil wash. I still find this is the best way to add a bit of texture where the trim and armour panel meet.

Painting the pipes

I knew that the pipes needed to done something striking but not too visually distracting so plumped for a really simple Mephiston Red, washed with Carronberg Crimson and then layered back up with Mephiston Red.  I think this actually enforces the lethality of the guns a bit more than if I’d done then grey.  I’m not confident enough to do yellow and black striped, but guess there’s nothing stopping me going back in the future.  Although not shown in the first picture the bands got a Balthasar Gold base coat and wash with Agrax Earthshade.  I’ve not done any edge highlights as I wanted to keep the focus on the actual pipe.

Final Touches

Largely that’s all I did on the guns. The big pipes coming out of the rear block were done with Warplock Bronze, an Agrax Earthshade wash and then Balthasar Gold highlight. The lens on the shoulders have been done in my usual style (though a bit quicker than I’d have normally liked – but the look OK). I’ve also done a bit of edge highlighting though may well go back to and improve as the back section hasn’t got as much detail as I’d like.  However I’m happy to say the guns for my Knight Porphyrion are finished (for now 😉

Imperial Knight Base

Armies on Parade 2017 – Progress part 2 (Knight Bases)

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Armies on Parade 2017

In the second progress post for Armies on Parade 2017, I focus on the Imperial Knight Bases for my Questoris Household, it’s something I’ve actually put off for quite a while as I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do.

Armies on Parade Board

I’ve covered this a little more in-depth in a couple of previous posts, but for my Armies on Parade entry I’ve chosen to one of the Forge World Realm of Battle Generatorum Sector boards.  This board has a distinctive road section and a number of tiled and raised sections.  Although nowhere near as impressive as some Armies on Parade boards that I’ve seen, I feel it’s an improvement over a regular Realm of Battle board section and provides a bit of variety and detail without having to use lots of scenery or build something custom – which potentially will never be used again and will be difficult to store.

Imperial Knight Bases

So, I knew that I had three bases to sort for my Imperial Knight and an extra one if I fancied putting my Dunecrawler in (which it made sense to).  My original plan of making them match 100% the board wasn’t going to work – it would be far too time consuming and would look pretty weird when I move the model from their designated spot.  So I decided to go for a fairly basic style that should roughly match the road section of the board.

After marking out exactly where the Knights would stand on each base, I applied a thin layer of wall filler with an old credit card, making sure that I got a bit of texture into it.  I then used a wet sponge to “dapple” a light texture onto the wet filler and went back in with the credit card to blend it in.  The result is an uneven surface similar to the board.  This took almost 48 hours to dry properly, after which I covered the whole thing in watered down PVA (not too watered) which soaked into the filler and sealed it without losing any of the texture.

Blitzing through my bits box, I extracted a number of items that would look appropriate as discarded items on a battlefield, so pouches, couple of crates and similar.  Copious amounts of PVA, ballast and those items have resulted in little debris piles in a similar fashion to the ones you got on the board.  The crates were superglued into place first though most of the other bits are simply secured using PVA.

I felt this was a pretty decent effort, I just need to paint them the same as the road (Skavenblight Dinge, drybrush and some weathering pigments) and jobs a good one!  However part of me niggled that they were a little lack lustre, especially to be entered into Armies on Parade.  I think part of this was that the ballast I used was overall much finer than the debris on the Realm of Battle board.  Then for some odd reason I remembered that somewhere in a cupboard I had a bag of 2mm Talus – very similar in size to the board, so last night I got back out with the PVA and added some of this to the piles of ballast.  Much happier with the overall result (wish I’d remembered it earlier)!

Tournament Review – BLACKOUT 2017

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Review of BLACKOUT 2017

First UK tournament using Generals Handbook 2017!

The other weekend I was lucky enough to attend BLACKOUT 2017 held in Firestorm Games in Cardiff and run by the infamous Chris Tomlin.  It was also the first tournament in the UK that was run using the Generals Handbook 2017, so it was a bit of a gamble as to what to expect as most of us had only had the book for a week at the most.

So, to start off with my usual procrastination 🙂

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Generals Handbook 2017 – an outsiders view

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generals handbook 2017So, the weekend has been full of leaks from the Generals Handbook 2017 and Games Workshop weren’t lying when they said it was game changing!

Now before I begin procrastinating, I will say that I’ve not got a review copy or a special line to anybody with a review copy.  This post is based purely on third-hand information and leaked images.

Matched Play Warhammer Community Post

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Tournament Review – Bristol SMASH 2017

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Bristol Smash 2017

After a flurry of last minute painting, I’m happy to say that I got my Skullreapers finished for Bristol Smash 2017 the beginning of June (3rd/4th). Now that the dust has settled and I’ve managed to regain my ability to think, here’s my summary of the event and the games I played.

Because of the amount of games I played at Bristol Smash 2017, this post is already pretty long, so I’m going to do my army summary as a separate post as it’ll really allow me to chew the cud so to speak.

As with my last tournament summary post, I’ll try to keep this write up as objective as I can and will keep my opponent’s names out of it, although I will say up front that all of my opponents were fantastic, not a single “win at all cost” attitude amongst them.

Anyway, that’s enough preamble, on with the post!

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Blades of Khorne – first tournament outing at BiG

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Blades of Khorne - first tournament outing @ BiGSo on Sunday I attended a small one day tournament with my Blades of Khorne army at Bristol Independent Gaming (BiG).  This was a friendly event organised by Jim who runs BiG.  Overall I had quite an enjoyable if long day, frustratingly I came rock bottom out of the 13 players and was constantly hampered by what I consider some of the inherent weakness in Blades of Khorne lists (in addition to Mystical terrain).

What I’m hoping to do in this post is to roughly outline my observations with the games I played, the event in general and what changes I’d make to my 1000 point list if I were to attend a similar event.  Hopefully this comes across fairly objectively rather than me complaining that I lost!

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Blades of Khorne – First Game Impressions

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First game using Blades of Khorne

This weekend, I managed to get a 1500 point three way game in, using some of the new rules from the new Blades of Khorne Battletome.  I’ve not got the right combination of models to field any Battalions yet so was simply using Blood Blessing Prayers, new Artefacts and Command Traits, and the new Blood Tithe system.

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