Merry Christmas!

Here’s hoping Santa and his little Gretchin bring you all you hoped for and you can spend the day in safety in the embrace of your loved ones…

And if you are Old enough to remember these chaps…

then you’re in good company.

 

Updates soon hopefully, with a Game….. and maybe what the elves brought me..

Merry Christmas!

The Great Hunt of Thror Wyrdeye

There are stories among the brothers of the Space Wolves, this ancient Chapter which retains much of the memory of the Legion it once was. the stories are that every few centuries a rune priest will be chosen by Russ.

Storm Wing!

Ohyes.

I was actually wrestling with whether to purchase this set just for use in apoc, or whether to go for the Storm Eagle..

this:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/games-workshop-digital-editions/Dataslate-Adeptus-Astartes-Storm-Wing.html

Pretty much means i can use this with my wolves, so that makes me quite happy. I just have one unanswered question.. could troops from the main detachment ride in this? start the game in this? once my ipad has power i will seek the answer….

oh, Also means i could put a force with three stormtalons on the field. while still keeping wolves as my main. shiny.

If i do this, I'll actually photograph my conversion this time :)

Amazing Modelling/Painting book Indiegogo campaign

This was just too good not to back, I mean look at it! and its a very reasonable price to..

Made by some of the outstanding talent at the Cursed Monkeys website, and some names anyone in the scene or who goes on CMON will have seen over and over, it looks like a great book to have..

The campaign is on Indiegogo and I'd be very sorry to have missed it, so thanks to Roman at Massive Voodoo for the heads up.

I won Summat!

Awesome.

http://troubleatthemill.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/and-winner-is.html

THis shall be used in the spirit of the contest to aquire those ww2 skirmish rules and play them out with the 28mm stuff that was the subject of the last few posts, so thanks awfully to Mike and witch for my first foray into toofatlardies rules, something ive eyed up often before but not got stuck into.

I'll also work on a state of the hobby post to go up in the next day or two, as ive started to get my feet wet a bit, last academic year was just such a killer and several events in my personal life, while wonderful, have taken up some of my time too.

A Sad Sort of Birthday

It's been four years.

Wow.

I say sad because i haven't posted for a wee while. And it feels even longer because the last few posts were scheduled. The usual reasons, back in my MMO days we used to say "RL" nowadays when i'm excusing an absence form blogging i tend to go into more detail, work, tiredness, my illness.

All of those are true, but no particular glaring issue presents. I've painted some americans, I p[l;ayed a game of Operation Squad, well a few actually and enjoyed them greatly. but i've had so much work to do of late as we close in towards the end of the academic year and i am still desperately short of staff at work, that the last thing ive felt like doing is getting on the PC and writing some more.

It will improve, I've still got a fairly substantial painting queue and I'm not abandoning this hobby in any way, i just want to reassure you all I'm still here, just a bit tired right now. :)

back to the topic at hand, four years, woah. in that time ive had over 208, 000 page views! 

for the first time since it was written the AoBR conversions are no longer the all time top hit!

the top five now looks like this:

Stormtalon conversion post
Painted Stormtalon post

Seems people are interested in changing up this beast eh?

Dark Vengance conversion

him too... and all three ov those have topped out the all time hits for the old front runner:

The AoBR Terminator conversion article

Rounding out the top five is my scant article on Games Day last year i guess i had a picture or two others didnt, either ay a healthy readership


So in closing, thankyou all for continuing to read both new and old archived articles on this blog, I'm on a wee bit of downtime right now, but I am a teacher and summer holidays means gaming holidays to me, so keep your eyes peeled for content and thankyou for your patience!

Treesperiments–part one

In an earlier post I showed off some of the terrain I’ve been dabbling with, allbeit in a slightly cryptic and not very “here is my terrain” kind of way… I’m going to try and rectify that in a few forthcoming posts. so let’s use this one to talk about trees.

I was very happy with the aesthetic of the trees I built last time out, but repeated use has seen my initial concern about their fragility morph into their almost total destruction. so I set about trying to find a new way.

first let me say that I’m not a fan of the overly plasticy warhammer wood.. on a themed table of cartoony warhammer stuff it looks great, like you’re playing warcraft for real but when aiming for a bit more veracity it’s harder to see it fitting in.

Model railroad guys seem to do okay, so what I did was buy some woodland scenics tree armatures and a few types of foliage and set about making trees.

The armatures arrive flat, and with their own base plugs, so after some twisting to make them look a bit more “tree-ey” I glued them down to some old tree stand terrain I had already – my “dead forest” was in dire need of refreshing having not been used for some time, so it got repurposed.

voila, trees glued to wood. awesome. a little filler (spackle) was applied next to blend in the trees and some cast rocks glued down as accents, along with the odd dead twig to stand as a broken tree.

spackle applied..

I’ve opted to use three different types of foliage here, partly to test them out and also for variety, I have “bushes” which is a quite dense foam clump product; “underbrush” which is a similar, but looser product and “fine leaf foliage” which seemed to be something akin to the seamoss from my earlier attempt at tree making, but painted and flocked..

Next I used woodland scenics hob-e-tack.. and yes it really is worth buying the wait time is important too. basically, glob it on, wait fifteen minutes or so, and youll have the stickiest tree armatures in Christendom, just ripe for dunking in your flocking of choice.

in the wait-time I applied several types of ground cover and static grass to the bases for the tree stands.

This is the overall result, a reasonably satisfying set of trees and bases to use as woods in games..
I was however not totally happy, and set about refining the process.. look to treesperiments part 2 coming soon!

I hope that had some value to any budding arbourialists.. coming up next, some more terrain, and some painted stuff.. hopefully..

The Christmas Elves

Seem to have something of a sense of Irony. After my recent post lamenting my hobby time, and the long list of projects stacked up, they have deemed it wise to bring me more to do!

Notably, this:

Not that I am complaining – I’ve been interested in Super Dungeon Explore for a while, and my partner and I both love board games, so it seemed like a good fit.

She’ll even paint a model or two if the must moves her. so this box might be something we can work through together.

for those who don’t know it, it’s a dungeon smash much like heroquest or descent, but very differently themed around a terrible Japanese rpg

if I had to I suppose the best description might be a board game version of a japanese ripoff of “gauntlet” (WIZARD NEEDS FOOD)

I spend an afternoon putting the figs together, which isn't an easy task for a novice, and would be the only thing preventing my recommending this with universal appeal.

When you open the box, your greeted by some card…

The rulebook, which is fairly concise and helpful, and some punch out tokens, these come off the frame easily and should be sorted into baggies for ease of use…

Next are the playing tiles and the meat of the package, the figs…

These come in their own wee baggies, and with many many small parts, take a couple of hours to put together even for an experienced modeler. this alone might be the barrier that prevent a lot of people playing this.. I hope not, cos it’s a cracking game.

 

Models themselves are good quality hard plastic, a few mold lines exist but are easily removed and not huge in any case.

The Desk, mid-build….

And the completed horde.

My partner and I had a quick game to test it out, it’s quick to pick up, plays well and fast and is good fun, if anything the desk is pretty stacked in the hero side of things.. I’m going to have to get devious as consul to give them a challenge.

More Lighting Shenanigans

Just a quick post.. a return to work, coupled with a totally nuked PC (I mean how hard can it be to install windows seven? turns out, very) Mean not much time for modelling and not much ability to make posts.. still I played with the camera some more and got these:

This one was taken with some available tungsten lights

This one was taken with the only light source being the single LED in the cabin

I'm a fairly experienced photographer, I know what I need to do to get my pics looking like the ones on that flickr account I posted about. What's holding me back is the Kit..

See, I have lighting for bright, daylight neutral close up mini photography, and what I need is very adjustable lighting for low light ambient colour and fill. I also need more in-scene lights, such as LED's or dollhouse lights such as JonTLaw uses.

I also need to either a) photograph in water.. or b) use smoke. for the atmospheric density to help fool the sense of scale. I don't have ready access to either not wanting to immerse my lil plastic dudes.. and having given up smoking over ten years ago.

So for now, I'm going to try and get hold of some more in scene lights.. and look for a cheap source of smoke on ebay. mainly because I like the possibilities presented by all this, even if it is just my own little crazyness.

thanks for reading, and I promise, more articles as soon as my PC is back on it's feet.

Experimenting with LED lighting..

 After seeing this guy's flicker I was blown away.

So much so that out came the soldering iron and I set to with a few LED's I already had, a battery pack off a toy car and a small terrain peice i also already had...


Much swearing later I had this thing... no, it's not as impressine as Jon T Law's stuff.. but you know what I can see how to get there from here :)

I had a play with this terain peice and another LED I had.. and now know that I need to got a few more powerful ones than I have..

but that's okay.. this is the first part of a journey... I hope you'll come with me on it as I try to improve my photography and build some new, illuminated terrain peices!

The first one was taken with an extra LED point light, the second with just a long exposure.. and no, no photoshop, that starring was created in lens..

Anyhoo just another insane distraction.. on which your thoughts are always welcome..

Thanks for reading!

On the Workbench

this is what the desk looks like today…

I am very aware that it looks like I’ve been very remiss on the hobby front of late. I can assure you, although there has been the usual holiday slow down due to activities outside and a parade of visitors, there has still been work going on.

The problem is I’ve started a lot of things at once, and am flitting about between them like a real flibbertigibbet.

Over Here is Zzzzzz’s Warhound titan.

 

Being in the middle of a fully NMM space wolves army, it’s very liberating to be working with metallics again. I picked up a few new ones that are good quality and the results are looking very, well metallic. “Very Metal” one might say ;)

Look at the shine on those :) and I still need to do a final highlight.. then weather…

 

I’ve done my best to replicate the gryphonicus mottled yellow.. and then will repeat for the grey. but every time I find myself getting into this paint, I have to remind myself that this will be being painted over with desecrations…

Also on the bench..

 

I decided to put some work in on the space wolves motor pool. I’ve done all the quick and easy stuff.. base, highlight, shadow, chipping, transfers etc.. now the long bit.. the NMM.

Sponge weathering is fun..

Last but not least.. Thunder Thunder .. Thunder Thunder.. fire.. or wolves.. the box contains both ready for primer.

So I am busy.. but you ain’t seen it yet..

finished pics.. or more WiP.. whichever comes first!

Thanks, as always, for reading the ramblings..

The Fabricator General will see you now

 

How many Leman Russ tanks you reckon you could build in an afternoon?

Now how many Forge World ones do you think you could persuade to hang together?

I popped round to Zzzzzz’s gaff the other day for a chinwag and some nerdery, and while discussing his butterfly mind anf the myriad projects he has on the go we tried to instill some order.

Part of this meant getting stuff out of the garage, in order to put it back in the garage in less disarray.. or at least after a coat of lookin at.

It came to light that one of the boxes contained a whole armoured section planned for his DKK army…. now at this point I confess I am a little odd.. I build everything… then I let the guilt me into painting them by sitting around all grey.. I suggested this to him and well.. we were off.

That’s what they looked like at noon…

This was by about three…

  

Five-ish..

..and by about seven PM there was twelve Leman Russ Battle tanks sat out there. All with Forge world bodies and turrets, air filters, track sections…

Glorious.

All he needs to do now is dress them up with packs/stowage smoke etc and then the minor little task of painting them :)

A very enjoyable day on the munitorum assembly line!

Joining the 21st Century

 

I had a fiddle with some settings today and have set it up so that future blog posts will be reblogged on both facebook and twitter. (links below)

http://www.facebook.com/ExcommunicateTraitoris

https://twitter.com/Karitas19

 

I don’t know how many of you reading this might be interested in such things (answers on a postcard please) but it was fairly painless to set up, and If I put in a wee bit of effort to add a few people on there, it might get the readership up.

I’m closing in on 400 subscribers, that’s a huge deal for me. I started doing this as a way to shout into the dark about what I was doing and it’s given so much back to me.

Any suggestions for something to do to celebrate finding 400 people will be considered :)

I feel slightly odd saying that, as this blog isn't like a lot of the high readership blogs out there, I don't do commissions or have a company or product to promote, nor do I do “news” and use that to attract advertising revenue, in point of fact this blog hasn't earned me a penny. and at about 10k views a month it probably never will, bit I digress and that isn't why I do this.

I blog because it gives me a forum to share my hobby a way to help people out form time to time and a place to have an adult conversation.. like a good pub, rather then the thumping screaming nightclubs that the forums can be.

On that note, anyone with any requests for tutorials or demos/articles, I’d love to hear them.. I’m even open to a Q&A.. the reason I say that is because a great deal of what I do and how I work is already documented here in tutorial form.. I’m a bit at a loss as to what yo demo for you that I havent already shown you…

Maybe a tutorial page to bring it all together.. hm.. let me know what you want to read from me.. it would help.

So yeah, here we are adding a few more ways to read the blog.

I might even get a smrt phone…

 

As always thanks for reading,, even if this one is a bit of a ramble…

coming up soon, a few space wolves vehicles, more work on the titan, some TWC finally and maybe a vid of a finecast Thunderfire cannon… just need to get all of those finished and off the bench into the display case……

Space Wolf Allies

What? oh, C’mon.. the chance to add a few new models? of course I am thinking about allies.

I started with models I already had.

Imperial Guard

I have a fairly large guard army, and the cheapness of the stuff.. for the firepower you get.. it’s just wrong. example, two veteran units, primaris Psyker and two vendattas… sure you could bump those up to three and still be inside the forge org for allies.. but wait..In the heavy slot you could add three leman russ MBT’s.. or three Hydras… and a psyker battle squad in the elite slot.. wow.

Add some cheap enginseers to help out your vehicles and backfield shooters…

And we haven't even discussed artillery. this codex is the ultimate for power gamer mining outside of the GK it’ presents an awful lot of options.

But.

My guard are painted in desert colours.

And my wolves have snow bases.

that, right there.. I can’t do that. Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll add some vostroyans or vallhallans.. or model up some housecarls.. but nope, wont be using guard right now.

Grey Knights

No.

I have an old Inquisition army, that’s how this blog started and why it’s called what it is, a radical inquisitor… but I cant bring myself to play from the fromagerie that is the GK codex.. and I know that sounds rich coming from a guy with wolves and guard.. but there it is..

also, GK aren't battle brothers with wolves.

Maybe later.

Space Marines

Here’s a nice option, and one of the two I intend to explore.

Battle brothers, check, able to still model them as Space Wolves and therefore keep using the models in the core army.. check..

So..

Fast, Scoring, T5, shooty and survivable in assault.. awesome. also opens up the stormtalon, a much needed anti air unit for the Space Wolves.. space marine captain with relic blade, sgt with fist, MM attack bike and a Meltagun and flamer in the squad..

I still have a spare vanilla biker so I can still run the unit as swiftclaw if I swap him out for a special.

Only question is whether to use Khan.. with the cap added to the squad and the talon escorting that’s a decent blob to come in from outflank…

Blood Angels

More battle brothers.

 

Let’s first consider a cheap option I already have the models for. I mean sure, we can talk about death company in stormravens modelled as wulfen, and we might have to go there.. but for now, lets look at:

Assault squads, x2 5 man, melta or flamer, led by a libby.

can still model them as wolves, can still use them as sky claws and rune priest..

and two of my favourite words.. fast.. scoring…

sure I could run a single squad and combat squad them.. I could do that twice and get twenty of these blokes on the boards.. but this is a decent start..

Also.. I could run a Baal pred…… assault cannons are going to rule this edition, I can feel it :)

 

Heres the quick libby conversion I put together wile considering this.

Deathwing

The last viable option in my mind, and still a bit out there as Dark Angels aren't battle brothers..

 

Worthy of consideration I believe because cheap, scoring hammernators are going to be everywhere this edition, and one of the best counters.. is more cheap, scoring hammernators.. :)

This one doesn't open up much though, and while the scoring part is nice, wolf guard are still a viable option. Its a nice idea, but I like speeeed….

So the Space marine and Blood angel codices will be the ones I explore..

I haven't included templars not least because I don't know the codex well, but moreover because I feel the above offers better options than anything that codex could offer.

so let me know your thoughts, am I derranged? am I heading for trouble modelling my allies the same as my core army? should I consider GK codex options?

What units should I consider acquiring and modelling next? a Space Wolves Baal pred? more bikers? Wulfen in a stormraven?

I’m just full of questions today, huh? :)