Tag Archives: Forge World

Armies on Parade 2017 – Knight Porphyrion Progress

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 😉

Armies on Parade 2017 – Progress part 1 (under 2 weeks to go)

Armies on Parade 2017

It’s been a busy week and a bit, but I feel slightly more confident that I’ll get my entry for Armies on Parade completed.  Now it might not necessarily be as completed as I’d like, as with most projects you can always find additional things to do.  I can’t see me getting any scatter terrain added to the board sadly, despite making a good start on half a dozen Armoured containers, I just don’t think I’ll have enough time to weather them in without cutting doing something else.

Current Armies on Parade Timetable

Now that I’ve cracked into the project properly I’ve been able to set myself up a fairly tight timetable that should get everything together by the end of this weekend.  Frustratingly I’m out two evenings next week and have some preparation for a management meeting to cram in too (which I should have really started much earlier).

This gives me Wednesday evening, Friday afternoon & evening, some of Saturday and a fair portion of Sunday.  I think this should be OK although I’m positive I’ll find some bits I’ve forgotten or don’t go very well.  I also have an all important contingency of next Friday afternoon and evening although ideally this will be used for packing up my models!

The Board

Armies on Parade 2017 Board WIP

Just with spray cans

I’m fairly happy to say that two weekends worth of work have got the Forge World Realm of Battle Generatorum Sector board pretty much completed.  It’s been washed, sprayed, oil washed, airbrushed and weathered with pigments.  I did have one minor panic when I masked off one bit of the road section and pulled off a load of paint (clearly having not washed it as well as I could have).  I was using regular masking tape rather than low tack, but ended up using envelopes and a disposable glove to mask off the various areas.  It’s going to get a good coat of clear sealer so it’s unlikely to chip off during usage.

One thing that I now have an even greater respect for, is the Citadel coloured spray cans.  They’re amazing and sped up the whole process massively.

So the rough process was to spray the board roughly using cans – that’s Skavenblight Dinge for the road, The Fang for the flagstones, Standard Mechanicus Grey for the grey items and then Zandri Dust for the larger platform.  Using an envelope and glove you can actually get some really sharp edges.  The next job was to use an airbrush to just touch up some of the items that you couldn’t get to, such as the edges of the road and round the piles of debris.  Skavenblight Dinge was airbrushed onto most of the rubble piles too.  Finally the large platform was giving a light coat of Kharak Stone to remove some of the yellowness.

Using black and brown oil paint, some white spirit and a long thin brush, I painted between all of the flagstones and details.  Keep a rag/towel on hand with a clean brush use this to blend and wipe the oils in as you’re going and to add nice streaks on some of the vertical surfaces.  If there are any deep divets you can put some in there too.  The large platform had this done using just brown oil (no black) and the rest was a mix of brown with a bit of black.  You don’t need to be accurate in the slightest and a bit of tonal variety just adds to the overall effect.

Armies on Parade Board WIP

Brown patches in place

Oils take a few days to properly dry so I made sure that I got it done before I was out a couple of evenints.  Once cured I was onto what I always feel is one of the more exciting parts – airbrushing Vallejo Burnt Umber wherever there would be dirt, so round the edge of buildings, round all of the dirt piles and similar. This massively changes the dynamic of the board.

Using a 2″ wall brush and a tube of light grey artist acrylic, I gave the whole board a light drybrush to pick out the edges.  I tried to focus on the little flecks of debris and just lightly on the bigger items.

Going back to the airbrush, I sprayed Skavenblight Dinge onto some of the cracked road sections to blend them into the brown a bit more and dusted all of the piles.  I then swapped to black and added a few bits of light scorching to some areas of dirt, round the obvious shell damage and a few patches here and there.  The raised platform really benefits from a few black smears.

To a certain extent it could have been left at this point, I certainly would for a regular board, but as this is an entry for Armies on Parade, I cracked into it with some weathering pigments, primarily two Forge World dirt colours and an AK Interactive black.  I used Forge World Solution as my fixing agent which seems to have worked pretty well.  A few splashes here and there and then wiped off with some towel gave that rained on effect.

I also picked the details out (such as the missile launcher and bolters) and applied some more pigments to blend them in – I probably should have done this before I started the pigment stage 😀

And that’s pretty much where I’m at with it.  The generator needs to be finished off and then everything given a coat of sealer to make sure that nothing is going to rub off during transport.  I’m likely going to be very lazy and not paint the doors on it – one set I plan to cover up with a model…

I will say that despite being a pain to flatten out, the board is lovely with just enough detail to be interesting but without being too detailed (which I often feel some Games Workshop scenery is).  I’m sure there will be some entries with massively elaborate boards, but it’s not something I’m particularly interested in doing (what do you do with it afterwards?)

Armies on Parade Board WIP Armies on Parade Board WIP Armies on Parade Board WIP

I’m going to call it a day with this Armies on Parade update post.  The board isn’t going to change much more beyond the little generator being painted and the whole thing varnished!  I’ll post up a couple of other updates later on this week.

Armies on Parade 2017 – Work in Progress

Armies on Parade 2017

After entering my Bloodbound in last years Armies on Parade, I knew I wanted another go this year.  Rather than putting the same army in for a second time I had already decided that I wanted to get my Knight Household up together for my 2017 entry.  So in an effort to get me blogging a bit more, I’m going to try and log my progress a little bit.

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Unboxing the Forge World Acastus Knight Porphyrion

Acastus Knight PorphyrionThe Forge World Acastus Knight Porphyrion was unveiled at the Horus Heresy Weekender in February put up for sale last week and I can happily say that I have one of these in my hands and what a beast!  Weighing in at 1.6Kg and pretty much the same height as a Warhound Titan the Acastus Knight Porphyrion is a true heavyweight in the arsenal of any Questoris household or as a Lord of War option for a Mechanicum army – that’s right folks, with the experimental rules Forge World have released Legion armies can’t field this model.  The rules are also only for 30k and we’re being told by Forge World that the 40k rules are “coming soon” – my belief is that they’ll be included in the Fires of Cyraxus Imperial Armour book rather than as a PDF release.

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Win a Titan! with Forge World

Win a Titan! with Forge WorldThis week’s Forge World Newsletter has surprised us all with the offer to Win a Titan! with every order over £100.  The offer goes on until the last day of March so there’s plenty of time to get an order together.  On offer are two Warhounds, a Reaver and the massive Warlord Titan!

The Warhounds and Reaver are both available in their Imperial or Chaos versions so it’s not limited to people who play Horus Heresy – though clearly you’re going to have more chance to use it in games if you do win.  There are a few terms and conditions, such as the £100 must be the paid amount, vouchers and postage don’t count. You also need to name a Titan and write a short piece of narrative – read the Terms and Conditions for the full run down!

A bit like the Imperial Knight Scion offer, the chance to Win a Titan does make placing an order after the next pay day a very attractive proposition!

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Runebrush’s Review on the Horus Heresy Weekender

horus heresy weekender 2016

HHW16 MapWell the Horus Heresy Weekender 2016 is over and what an event it was!  Lots of new miniatures, lots of new information and “read between the lines” and plenty of photos taken! (some up on my new Twitter account but others will be added later on).

This was the first time I’d managed to do this event in its four year lifetime so I went in with a very open mind and came out really enthused.  There were a couple of things that I felt could be improved which I’ll outline at the end of my very opinionated and immensely long review 🙂

Now I know that Penddraig on the 30k Forums will be doing a summary on all of the seminars he attended so won’t go too in depth on those, likewise Garro will also be doing a review on all of the rules related items that came out in the new Dark Age “red book” and Retribution (aka Book 6).  So in order to compliment these I’m going to cover the three “Demo Pod” seminars I attended and give a rough overview of the event in general from my point of view.

I travelled up to the event with Penddraig on the Friday evening and met up with a few of the other people from the 30k Forum.  We were staying in the Belfry Hotel where the event being held which is a five-star hotel and I cannot fault the staff and quality of food.  Yes it was pricey for drinks (soft drinks especially) but actually I’ve been to more expensive places and it was a genuine pleasure to be served with staff who were happy and bent over backwards to help.*  Plus having your base of operations in the same building means that you can wander round the whole event in just a t-shirt and any purchases can be taken back to the room.

I’m fairly positive that I missed speaking to other people who I know were at the event (Lil Legend was there as were the Imperial Truth podcast team) – next year I’ll likely be there with a Runebrush emblazoned t-shirt to make me a little more obvious – I’ve never liked going up to somebody who has no clue in hell who I am…

The event followed a similar format to many other Games Workshop events, a room of miniatures and displays, room with artists, room with authors, a couple of seminar rooms, gaming room, computer game area and an area for sales.  What made this event unique is that the rooms changed throughout the course of the weekend and the whole event was very casual and relaxed.  Tickets were limited to 350 and everybody knew that if a room was busy they could come back in half an hour and not miss seeing something.  When I went into the art room one point, Neil Roberts was there with his portfolio (which is amazing) a few hours later I returned and they had Space Wolves artwork on the big screen.  All of the rooms followed this gentle changing of the guard and in the miniatures room Saturday and Sunday had a different group of Forge World Model Makers in (who each brought in different things they’re working on).

What really makes this event unique though is being able to casually talk to the Forge World staff and “after hours” on the Saturday they have an hour for just chatting either to the rules authors (including Lord Alan Bligh) or as I did to a few of the painter/model makers.  Despite the number of people who attended the event, these informal chats really don’t have many people come to them so they’re really entertaining and shows that the people behind the scenes are as mad and enthusiastic about the hobby as we are.

There were two-seminar rooms during the event with one of these being used for “Demo Pods”.  I think roughly half of my time was spent in one seminar or other which for me was just about the right balance.

Painting Armies Seminar

This seminar was given by Mark Bedford and primarily covered the topic of painting up an army.  The biggest tip Mark gave us was that you need to get yourself into the right metal state when painting an army and if you treat each miniature as its own Golden Daemon entry you’re never going to finish.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t paint them to the best of your ability, but you need to find a way of painting a lot of miniatures all to an identical (and repeatable standard).

The first big tip Mark gave is that if you have a mountain of miniatures to paint, is to put them away in a cupboard or similar so they’re out of sight.  There’s nothing as demoralising as painting a miniature or unit, putting it next to a stack of grey resin or plastic and realising how much more you’ve got to do.  It’s far better to look at things that you have finished and get motivation from wanting to increase that number (rather than decrease the unpainted stack).

When painting units Mark always puts them onto a baton to paint.  This isn’t an uncommon practice but what Mark tends to do is to put just five miniatures on the baton and then treats the whole baton as a single miniature.  His theory is that if you’re starting to tire or get bored painting the edging on shoulder pads you can generally push yourself to get to the end of a baton of four or five miniatures.  If you have too many you’ll stop in the middle and it’s more difficult to get that motivation to go back and finish.

When you’re painting an army you should try to never mix colours because it’s a massive waste of time.  Buy the correct colour and use it.  You won’t need to record a recipe and carefully mix it every time you need it.

There are techniques that will provide shortcuts and you should employ these when you’re painting an army to make your life easier.  If you have an airbrush lay down your base colours with that, it’s significantly quicker than doing it by hand and when you’ve an army on the table, who actually cares how they were painted?  It’s not cheating either, it’s just another tool in your toolbox.

One thing that I found interesting is that Mark (and as I found out later all of the Forge World painters) uses a lot of coats of gloss varnish between stages – more than I thought.  The team’s preference is Halfords car lacquer although Purity Seal works OK too.  This makes it easier to push washes round and apply transfers.  With the transfers being produced currently, applying a transfer onto a gloss varnish using a decal fixer (aka Microsol and Microset) will eliminate the ghosting you often get.  Once dry you can then distress the decal using a knife.  Seal it all with a coat or two of gloss varnish and it’ll be bullet proof 🙂

Mark had brought along two Titan shoulder pads which had been painted using a marble technique.  This was simply done using an airbrush and tearing masking tape to use the torn edge to achieve a nicely feathered marble vein.  Each had also been given multiple coats of lacquer which had indeed made the finish really solid.
BatonsAt the end of the seminar Mark showed us batons for each of the Space Marine Legions and when through a few on how he went about doing them – by the end he’d actually gone through each legion.  The way he deals with all miniatures needing a white undercoat is to undercoat them black and then immediately (before the black is dry) give them their white undercoat.  This mixes on the fly and makes a pale grey colour but gives a bit of pre-shading.

One very interesting bit of information that was given out was that the new Masterclass book wasn’t quite what they wanted to produce and that they will be releasing one that focuses on the Space Marine Legions, covering painting normal marines, a special unit and the appropriate Primarch.  He also acknowledged that Forge World are aware this content was what people were expecting from the Masterclass book.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see Mark’s Legion batons appear in this book as they are a really good example of painting rank and file marines.  Another bit of information that I found interesting is that the reason the first two Masterclass books used different manufacturers paints and products was simply because nothing was being produced by Citadel to cover those particular items/colour.  It was always the intention to produce a complete range of paints and solutions.  This makes sense for a variety of reasons, bearing in mind the quantity of paint Forge World must use in a month, why purchase paints from elsewhere if you have a company that produces paint for you?  Not only is it cheaper to pick up a pot from stock, it also means that you now control the colour and will know it’s available as long as you want it to be.

Baton Wolves

Transfers

Painting Vehicles

This seminar was presented by Phil Stutcinskas and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.  Ideally this needed to be attended after the Airbrushing seminar he presented earlier in the day (which I skipped as I knew it was repeated on the Sunday).  The seminar covered a couple of ways of weathering an Ultramarine Land Raider and a lot of the theory behind it.

The one item Phil emphasised that weathering should be applied in lots and lots of layers and you need to think about what you’re doing as you go along.  You may end up doing chipping, rain, more chipping, rust, rain and then more chipping.  This basically makes the end result much more effective as it makes it look like the vehicle has been battered over a period of time with different things.

Chipping was quite an interesting subject as he uses a combination of sponge and a brush to achieve chipping effect.  For a dark vehicle, he will use a light colour first and then apply a darker one.  In the case of the Ultramarine Land Raider he used a light blue followed by a brown-red.  Chipping should be applied to areas that are going to be chipped rather than all over to form a mess.  Phil said that he will often use chipping to provide a “reverse edge highlight”, so going dark on an edge rather than light.  He also is a massive fan of using a brush to refine and extend from the sponge.  The sponge is very imprecise whereas a brush allows you to achieve pin-sharp chips.  One very interesting point he made is that the darker your chip colour the sharper it needs to be.  A super sharp black chip will have more depth than a dark brown chip, however if you aren’t able to achieve the sharpness, use a colour that isn’t quite as dark as a black chip that isn’t sharp will look like a mistake.

He did point out that rain runs down vertical surfaces but not on horizontal surfaces.  Now this is the most obvious comment ever, but as he pointed out, how many tanks have you seen with rain streaks down the side but the top of the tank is pristine?  Where did the rain come from?

Equally dirt collects inside areas (effectively where the shadow would be).  One way of achieving this is to thin down your dirt colour using the Citadel Air-Caste medium and applying quite a lot of it using an airbrush.  It will then naturally pull itself into the areas it would collect.

The final item Phil covered is that you need to ensure whatever dirt colour you pick, should contrast against the colour of your vehicle.  Sandy coloured dirt looks amazing on a black vehicle, but barely noticeable on a yellow one.  The colour wheel is a good tool to pick a colour that is on the opposite side to your hull colour.  He did say though that it’s not an exact science (blue dirt) although a similar theory can be applied to the colour of the chips.  Red is opposite green so using a red-brown colour on a green hull looks really effective.

One interesting thing that I picked up on is that Phil tends to use the Citadel Air range in preference to the traditional layer/base paints.  Now this may be because he’s a big airbrush user, but when he was doing sponge chipping it does seem that the air paints stay wetter and don’t become dusty when they dry.

Meet the Pros (evening ‘seminar’)

I think this was probably the highlight of my weekend, five of us sat down with Mark Bedford, Phil Stutcinskas and Pedro before dinner on the Saturday and each of us got a chance to show photos and quiz them about various bits and bobs.  It was really informal and good laugh, it’s very obvious that the guys are still passionate about the hobby – Mark had been working on the batons of marines at home until the early hours for the past couple of weeks so they’d be ready in time.  What was really nice was that everybody could chip in whenever they wanted.  I can see me regularly doing this and it’s a good opportunity to bring along items for a “show and tell”.  One lady brought along a load of Imperial Fists which from where I was sat looked really nice.  I managed to grab a few ideas on things to try to get a black colour that matches my red for my Knights too, so I’m really chuffed on that.  The general consensus though is that having a dedicated area where you live is the best way to build up your skills and as Phil says painting is only 10% technique and 90% practice.

Airbrushing

The airbrushing seminar was really packed in comparison to the other demo pods which meant that annoyingly I didn’t get a seat.  It was being given by Phil Stutcinskas again who I discovered during the seminar was one of the main people involved in developing the Forge World Airbrush paints which took around 2 years of backward and forwards between him and the paint company.  My gut feeling is the Citadel airbrush paints were developed roughly the same sort of time and Phil rates both of them as being ideal.

In principal the seminar itself was pretty simple, Phil airbrushed a Land Raider through a number of lighter greens and then a little bit of dirt weathering which he had premixed in a bottle – Ungor Flesh and lots of Air-Caste Medium.

He then demonstrated two ways of doing marble.  In both you need to basecoat the “main” colour and then airbrush the veins on.  The first method you thin your vein colour down quite a bit, whack down a fairly decent layer and then use just air from the airbrush to spider the paint round.  Repeat this around four times and you’ll end up with a nice finish.  The second way was the slightly more complicate way using masking take.  As Mark had outline you tear the tape and use the torn feathered edge.  You can just use one piece of tape (focus the paint onto the tape so you get a gentle soft blend) or two pieces to create a fracture line.  Then he’d put a thin coat of the base colour on to blend it in, varnish it and then repeat the process the next day (24 hour drying for varnish).  Finally use a dirt effect to “shade”.

Although my summary makes it seem like Phil didn’t do much, he outlined quite a lot of routine technique.  He admits that he’s a bit of a lazy painter so tends to mix his paint in the cup, what is interesting is that to mix, he holds a piece of blue roll cloth over the needle and then uses air blow back to mix.  He also does the same for cleaning it out between colours, pouring out the paint adding a bit of Forge World Solution, spraying a bit through and then blow back to remove any other crap.

Phil seems to use Air Caste Medium to make the paint more translucent and Forge World Solution to thin the actual paint to make it flow through the airbrush better.  I must admit I’ve never thought of using both together.  He also said that Air Caste Medium is basically a better version of Lahmia Medium (which is milky) as it doesn’t taint the paint colour – the milky aspect is matting medium and though it dries clear adds a bit of white to the mixed colour.  He kept referring to it as “gloss” so I plan to do some experimentation to see what finish I get.

New Stuff!

Now it would be remiss of me not to cover some of the new miniatures 😉  In comparison to some FW events, there wasn’t the deluge of new items that I’ve seen in the past as quite a selection were announced at the Birthday Event.  However I do think this should be seen as a case of quality and not quantity.

I can’t recall everything that was released off the top of my head but later on will post up an album of pictures of all the new items (a few appeared on my Twitter feed).  However from what I can reacall:

StormbirdThe Stormbird is almost ready for the production guys to start casting up, Phil has done a beautiful job on this 5.5kg monster and it looks like this will be the end of an era as FW move entirely onto 3d CAD.

Iron CircleThe iron circle/domnitor battle automata are amazing and a really nice blend of all the various designs within the Mechanicum and the Iron Circle that Mark Bedford painted up for fun looks amazing.

KnightsThe new Questoris Knight Porphyrion is absolutely amazing and means my prediction of a new variant was correct.  I don’t think anyone was expecting Darren Parwood to bring a freshly 3d-printed one along with him on Sunday (including Tony Cottrell from the sound of it).  The Porphyrion looks visually very similar to the old Epic Warden and is designed to fulfil a long-range heavy support roll – and the current draft of the rules makes it more than capable of doing this.

Underslung HeaviesExtra heavy weapon options are being added in the form of an underslung design and Rob confirmed that they are compatible with the plastics and MkII, III and IV.  By having an underslung set the thought is that they look better for armies that are more aggressive or faster moving and the shoulder supported ones more styled for defensive and slower armies.

Secutarii 1The Secutarri upgrade kit for the Mechanicum was announced in the Titan seminar (Penddraig’s review has the full info) – I can honestly say that they look amazing and they’re going to be usable in 40k too.

Battle-Automata DroneFinally there is the first in a number of new battle automata that look similar to blight drones.  Speaking to the sculptor he wanted something that shared a family feeling although he did say that this particular variant might not the be actual ones that become corrupted.  One thought he has is something similar that is basically just a massive bomb!

Summary

I really enjoyed the Horus Heresy Weekender 2016, I managed to take lots of photos (apologies if anybody got hacked off with me taking snaps of slides in the seminars) and overall it ran really smoothly.  This was the first time the Warhammer World Events team had ever run a Forge World event and in places it showed, yet again the sales stand was a mess which I believe was avoidable – however it wasn’t the rugby scrum of violence I’ve known at Games Days in the past.  I’ll compose an observational/suggestion e-mail later on as feedback is the only way the team know areas they can improve on and (just as importantly) areas they got right!

Seminars ran as smooth as most with a mixture of brilliant information and idiotic questions – although quite why the bloke sat next to me insisted on spending the majority of the Inferno seminar sending an e-mail to a mate is beyond me.

It’s pretty certain that Blood Bowl is to be the first Specialist Game to be released and there is a general hope that a new Adeptus Titanicus could be the next project as certain resources can be re-used from the Heresy range such as resources and CAD models – although a CAD model does need work on to remove some of the details such as rivets.  This wouldn’t use recycled Epic rules either – it would be a brand new game in its own right (which really does make me excited).

There were a few surprises and I’m really chuffed that my prediction of a new Knight variant has come true, the Porphyrion is very similar to the Epic version of the Knight Warden and Darren Parwood surprised us all (including Tony Cottrell) on Sunday by bringing a 3d print of one along for us to gaze at longingly.  Seeing the work in progress of Leman Russ was also amazing although I’m still sceptical that he’ll be the “next” Primarch as there are others to be released.  I also must mention the under slung heavy weapons made by Rob Smallwood which look amazing 🙂

I was sad that there wasn’t an Horus Heresy Weekender 2016 miniature (or infact any event miniature).  I’m sure that this will be rectified during the year and Warhammer Fest is in May so likely see an event miniature appear there.  At the end of the final presentation Tony did elude that there may be an extra event before the 2017 weekender and as Penddraig and I said on the way home, it wouldn’t surprise me if they do a big release for Inferno which has been anticipated for at least the past 7 years.  This is why I don’t think Russ will be the next Primarch as it was confirmed that he’ll be duelling Magnus so they need to have both miniatures ready in case any changes need to be made.

 

* It’s worth noting that the Belfry offer a special room rate if you were attending the Horus Heresy Weekender 2016 which includes a buffet breakfast, if you room share it actually makes it as cheap as some budget hotels.

Cherries and Candies

Test Shoulder on KnightI’m starting to enjoy this 52 week challenge!  Week 3’s targets have been comfortably achieved and I’ve done a few other bits to boot!

Firstly I’ve created myself a Twitter account.  Although I’m generally against “personal” Twitter accounts where people post up the fact they’ve just made a sandwich or gone to the toilet, I can’t deny how easy it is to post up work in progress shots in comparison to every other method out there, plus hash-tagging as you go means it’s really easy to share pictures within the appropriate circles.  Secondly I’ve started up a WIP of my Knights on the 30k Forums.  I joined up months ago but in an effort to keep a bit of momentum going thought it made sense to start a WIP and get my face known a bit more. Continue reading

New Resolution

I know January isn’t for another 3 weeks, but I’ve been exceptionally rubbish at putting new things onto this blog, despite having done quite a bit of modelling and painting, and there being various “big news” releases over the past 6 months.  So I’m resolving to identify that and try and get something up new every week or more often.  I now have a reminder in my phone to fire off every Sunday afternoon, so with luck there will be more posts up here, even if they’re a short article on something that has been released or some rumour.

Now rather than simply stopping with a very strong between the lines of “woe is me”, I thought I’d give you a summary of things since my last post with hints at a few posts that I hope to write in the future.

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Forge World Bundle

model-book-bunIt looks like Forge World are undertaking various changes in the bundles that they offer.  This might be related to the rumour that Games Workshop are redoing their whole website and incorporating Black Library, Forge World and GW into one store (at the same time Forge World take over Finecast production), or it could be they just fancied a change 🙂

Of interest they now offer both of the Forge World Masterclass books for the price of £50.  Both of these books are really good resources if you want to produce realistic vehicles or terrain and probably one resource that I’ve used the most of out all of the books and websites I’ve used.

The Beginning of a Legion

Well Forge World have really done a good job on the pre-Christmas delivery and I have a rather large box of resin sat next to me at work.  Considering I ordered this last Friday, it’s arrived in less than three working days which is actually faster than I’ve ever received an order previously.  Although I’ve not fully unpacked, the quality seems quite good and I can’t wait until I can start putting them together.

My order consisted of:

  • 30 Marines in Mk2 Legion Power Armour = 250pts + 150pts
  • 5 Cataphratii Terminators (with power fists and a heavy flamer) = 210pts
  • 1 Rapier Laser Destroyer = 40pts
  • Decals

Hmm, when you list it like that it’s quite scary how much this stuff costs…  However this does give me my two mandatory troop choices plus two elite choices and a rather sizeable 650 points worth of Legion.  If I put some of the marines together as a Seeker Squad then this would actually increase my pointage too.

What I intend to do is to place a second similarly large order next year, but I’ll wait until more miniatures and options are about.  I want to be able to pick up a heavy squad (with either Heavy Flamers or Multi-Meltas), a specialist squad with Meltaguns and likely a squad with Flamers, at least one Contemptor and finally a squad of Death Shroud.  I’d also like a unit of three Medusa although these may have to be converted from Basilisks if a Legion variant isn’t released.  I’m also going to need a Legion commander of some kind.  Ok, I may be doing two orders and selling a kidney…