Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Armies on Parade - Gamersaurus Rex: Tyranids

Another beautiful army at GRX, this time with a really gruesome board! Nick made matching terrain to go with his board as well as minis, thus creating a really strong narrative. He has always created beautiful armies. I can however spot the airbrush sheen on them. Ah, I will join the ranks soon as my Hive Broods stir.

Scenic bases which match the terrain

Sharp highlights contrasted with smooth blends. 
Damn these guys are good. Make me look like a noob! 

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Armies on Parade - Gamersaurus Rex: Chaos Space Marines

Saw this beautiful army on display at GRX so I want to show it to you guys. I do believe it belongs to a chap called Zach. Just beautiful. His painting skills are superb. Even homage to the Ravens from Dawn of War. Enjoy! 

Cultists and beautiful Thousand Sons. Zach painted even the eye sockets to make them look like they are glowing

It's the Ravens! I can't really spot any airbrushing. Elite technique?

Soft blending coupled with smooth shading, just beautiful. 
Love it! Hope this inspires you guys to go out and just get some models painted! 

Monday, January 27, 2014

X-Wing Tournament

I did not manage to get in a game of 40k this week but instead took part in the local X-Wing 100 Point Tourney held over at Gamersaurus Rex. Brought a list I flown twice so did not really expect to do that well. Ended finishing either 5th or 6th but got a ton of prizes. 

XW Wedge Antilles: Push the Limit, R2 Astromech
XW Biggs Darklighter: R2-F2
XW Rookie Pilot: R5 Astromech
AW Prototype Pilot

Loot: 
  1. Y-Wing Alternate Card
  2. Black Squadron Alternate Card
  3. 2 Plastic Stress Tokens
  4. 1 Plastic Shield Token (given to me by Fengshan who won the lucky draw)
Had good fun and learnt quite a bit from piloting. Got to learn my smaller curves and manouvres! 


The contestants

Roy ended up playing against FS, both are regular sparring partners. 
Hope you guys had a great weekend gaming! 

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Imperial Guard of the Necro-8th regiment. First goal of 2014.

So my first completed models of 2014 are the men of the Imperium. 20 Veteran guardsman. Well, I cheated a little, these models were actually almost nearing completion some 3 years ago (built up the Necro-8th during 5th Edition). But that's not gonna take away my claim for "completed models for 2014"! Because thats exactly what I did. Complete them! 

This final push I have invigorated for this army is due to the fact that I would want to play more 40K this year as well and the looming arrival of the new Guard Book for 6th edition in March. Hopefully nothing much will be too drastically changed rendering my painted army totally unplayable..... 

Below you can see all 65 models (6x Ten man Veteran Squad & 1x Five man Company Command Squad). And out of them I put the finishing touches to the first 20 Veterans.
I'll talk a little more about the models I have for my Necro-8th Army. The base of the models are from the now Generic Cadian troopers. In order to make them look different I opted for less bulky armour and overall size.

The excellent Pig-Iron Gas masked heads were a perfect fit for them. Giving them a pseudo Steel Legion/Krieg look.

As you can see in the comparison to the standard Cadian model, I took a scalpel and trimmed down the shoulder pads till it looked just like a sleeve. This not only made the model more realistic (in reference to standard army fatigues) but I feel it drastically changes the shape of the whole model.
Another step I took was trimming down the side pockets, yet another bulk reducing measure. The Guardsmen of the Necro-8th looks sleek now.

However this was a painstaking process and after cutting down 20 shoulder pads my fingers were sore. Multiply that by 65 models meant 130 shoulder pads to cut down and 130 side pockets!!!
Here are all 20 of them fully painted and based.
Yay now I have 20 models to my 2014 painted miniatures count!
A close up shot of the completed models.
One other thing which I made a habit a couple of years ago was to date the models when they were finally completed. (complete as in finished, game over, I'm never gonna paint/repaint this model ever again kind of finished)

This is really a nifty idea (can't credit it I don't recall but it's definitely from someone else's blog, sorry!) as it helps us keep track of when we painted a model (obviously). Not only that its a nice archiving system and I regret not doing this earlier with my models before I started doing this.

Wouldn't it be nice picking up that Butt-ugly Nagash model and look under to base to see 1998?
My next post will hopefully see me complete the other 45 models and then I'll move on to the Tanks of Necro-8th. Which are also abut 80% painted. Back to painting, till the next!

Friday, January 24, 2014

Eldar Repaint - Guardians

The boys at ABO and myself have set ourselves a 2014 Army Showcase. This means at the end of 2014 we all hope to have a fully painted with little to no proxies army. 

I have been using this Eldar army quite consistently over the past few games and have had quite success with it owing to their flexibility:
Farseer [Warlord]: Mantle of the Laughing God, Runes of Witnessing, Witchblade, Jetbike
Farseer: Runes of Witnessing, Singing Spear, Jetbike
Fire Dragons x6: Wave Serpent - Holofields, Twin Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon
Guardians x10: Wave Serpent - Holofields, Twin Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon
Dire Avengers x10: Wave Serpent - Holofields, Twin Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon
Windrider Jetbike x3
Windrider Jetbike x3
Warp Spiders x8
Warp Spiders x8
Fire Prism: Holo Fields
War Walker x3: Bright Lance, Scatter Laser
The mix of troops allow me to react to opponents and is still fun for them. However, the paint scheme is really old and I wanted to update the army so this 1850 list would be the repaint. 

BeefNuggets helped me with some suggestions on the paint scheme. 

Old scheme had a number of colours on the Guardian model thus lacking the focus

Green, greywhite, black and bone - all leading to a very confused model
BeefNuggets then suggested that I stick to a 80-20 rule. Now what is that? 

Eldar as an army tend to be enigmatic, aloof and pristine. It made sense that they would echo this in their uniform. Clean crisp colours together with a 80-20 formula. 80% of the model would be the primary colour while 20% would make up the other contrasting but CLEAN secondary colour. 

Beef suggested I drop the greywhite and bone to replace it with white. 

Yes, white. One of the hardest colours to do. 

But Beef has a solution and demonstrated a simple and effective method. Grey highlighted to white in 3 steps. 

Following his technique, I went out to the store to get myself 3 colours:
  1. Celestra Grey
  2. Ulthuan Grey
  3. Skull White
Simply paint each white element in 1, 2 then 3, making sure that you leave a little of each layer showing. 


Production line - removed all the green, greys, bone colours. 

Finished product! 

Natural lighting seem to treat the models a little better

Close up on the models on the left

Close up for the models on the right
Beef suggested I remove all the green gems too as they were too high contrast and replace them with a more soothing red. That I did and the above is the product of about 1 hour of painting for 3 days.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Wave Serpent Update

This is a work in progress and I thought I would blog it to follow it's progress. 

Years ago when GW did not make a Wave Serpent kit, we old gamers had to create our own. Using the Falcon as the main chassis, I used the template that was found in one of the old White Dwarves. Printed them out on plasticard and used spoons to create the turret and shield pods. 

Created this sticking quite closely to the FW Wave Serpent back in the early 2000's
Over time GW released the Serpent kit and I went away to play Fantasy and focussed on my Tyranids.
Zoom in 2013 I broke them out and wanted to update them since I do love my Eldar.

Since I was repainting this army, I bought the FW Type 2 Wave Serpent Kit to modify my kit. Ripped out the old parts and said goodbye to them.

Attached the back fin to the rear compartment. Unfortunately there was some warpage

Used a hairdryer to preheat it and bent it back in place. I then used Super Glue to set it in place

On the front, I used the Vehicle Upgrade kit to represent the Serpent Shield which I find nicer than the current GW Serpent kit. The current one just breaks up the triangle silhouette.

I knew when I removed some of the "shield spoons", I would end up with uneven surfaces due to the glue I used previously. So I bought these to help smooth the surface prior to gluing in the new shield generators

Used grade 400 followed by 1000 to create a smooth finish and remove all traces of the previous glue marks. 

Stuck the new turret in place. Added the side fins to extend the Serpent rear. 
Added Serpent Shield Generators to all sides. Added the Shuriken Canon to the underside. 

And I added the rear exhausts which makes this look more powerful! 
I love the updated look. The craft now looks sleeker and more Eldar-esque. Can't wait to start airbrushing it to update the colour scheme. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Batrep: 1850 Eldar vs Imperial Guard

Melvin will be playing the Imperial Guard (IG) in this batrep and myself, the Eldar. I split one of my War Walkers into the other Heavy choice so it is now 2 War Walkers and 1 War Walker. Totally forgot about First Blood! What a blunder...

Anyway, we rolled the following:
Mission: Emperor's Will
Deployment: Dawn of War

My list is the same as the previous game in trying to learn and master a list first. It also allows me to focus the painting on these units:

Farseer: Mantle of the Laughing God, Runes of Witnessing, Witchblade, Jetbike [Warlord]
Farseer: Runes of Witnessing, Singing Spear, Jetbike
Fire Dragons x6: Wave Serpent - Holofields, Twin Linked Scatter Lasers (proxy), Shuriken Cannon (proxy)
Guardians x10: Wave Serpent - Holofields, Twin Linked Scatter Lasers (proxy), Shuriken Cannon (proxy)
Dire Avengers x10: Wave Serpent - Holofields, Twin Linked Scatter Lasers (proxy), Shuriken Cannon (proxy)
Windrider Jetbike x3
Windrider Jetbike x3
Warp Spiders x8
Warp Spiders x8
Fire Prism: Holo Fields
War Walker x3: Bright Lance (proxy), Scatter Laser

Melvin brought a simple "IG Net List which comprised Veterans and Melta spam" (his words not mine)
Company Command Squad, 3x Melta, Chimera
3x Veteran Squads 3x Melta, Chimera
3x Veteran Squads 3x Melta, Vendetta
3x Demolisher
Finally got Fortune on the Warlord. He also managed to secure Fate's Messenger as a Warlord Trait. 

Eldar Deployment

IG Deployment

Melvin recently finished painting these from his Deadzone Kickstarter pack so I wanted to showcase the lovingly painted terrain here

As the Eldar hover into view, they were going to prevent the Imperial fools from digging too deep into the recesses of this planet

Turn 1 IG: Melvin advanced his Chimeras and Leman Russ Demolisher 6" forward to fire all their weapons at me

Tank formation spread out. Melvin fired a lot this turn and managed to remove one Hull Point from my Guardian Serpent

Turn 1 Eldar: I advanced my Serpents up 6" to fire all their weapons. Did not realise that the Demolisher had a ARM13 at the front. Wow that thing is tough

Managed to ping off enough Hull Points on the Chimera which resulted in an explosion, killing off majority of the unit

Melvin did one Hull Point to the Guardian Serpent in Turn 1

Fired my weapons at the Chimera and busted it in return

Turn 2 IG: Melvin's Vendetta's arrive. 2 out of 3. 

Meanwhile his men jumped out of the wreck to try to melta my Avenger Serpent

Melvin moved up his tanks to push me back to my table half. A very aggressive IG army

Each Chimera contained 3 Meltas so it allowed the IG to close in quickly and safely

Turn 2 Eldar: I actually moved my units on the right flank back and the units in the centre sideways to counter Melvin's hard push

I was struggling to take down his vehicles. I have not seen such a vehicle spam in awhile

Turn 3 IG: another Vendetta shows up and zooms quickly for my lines

Melvin manages to destroy one War Walker and leave the other on 1 Hull Point. It was also stunned, effectively removing it from the game for one turn

Boom! The Dragon Serpent was destroyed by combined arms

Turn 3 Eldar: I disembarked my Dire Avengers since the Avenger Serpent was immobilized and moved back out to the building.

Meanwhile this group of Spiders went into the IG deployment zone 

To bust this Demolisher from the back

Ran the Avengers into the building as much as possible - I wanted to use their pseudo Rending to take out the Vendettas in the next turn

Left side of the field

In my shooting phase, I turbo boosted the 2 jetbikes which just arrived from Reserves deep into his table to capture an objective

Turn 4 IG: Melvin drops his men via drop chutes! 

And drops another unit on the other side. The Avengers were in trouble

Surprisingly though, Melvin chose to take out the Avenger Serpent, saving my Avengers! 

Meanwhile the other unit shot into the rear of my Guardian Serpent, also destroying it

Warp Spiders jumped out into the open to hunt down the Vendetta

Turn 4 Eldar: Shuriken fire is an IG Guardsmen's worst nightmare. Managed to take out both with two separate units. 

Turn 5 IG: Melvin knew that he had First Blood and I had Slay the Warlord. We were both also sitting on our Objectives. If he could slay my warlord, he could win this game on 1 point

Just cinematic. Str8 weapons meant that if I failed to save just 1 shot, I would lose the Farseer. As luck would have it, I survived! 

IG men disembarked and shot into the lonely Jetbike

Killed the Jetbiker and captured the Objective, netting him 4 points thus far

Eldar Turn 5: A view from the top

An overall view of the battlefield from the top. Melvin called the game at this stage. 
We concluded that the Eldar would have won regardless of the Turns going up to 7.

I had Slay the Warlord (1 VP), Objective (3 VP) and Linebreaker (1VP)
Melvin had Firstblood (1 VP) and Linebreaker (1VP)

My last unit of White Jetbikers would have just turbo boosted up to capture the last point on his side. Personally I felt that Melvin should have continued but I guess it was a difference between drawing and losing.

These two Troop choices were not going anywhere in a hurry

The White Jetbiker just at the periphery of this photo would have contested and if they failed would have left this game in a draw. 
A good game nonetheless as it was quite hard to play against such an aggressive IG list. One thing I will not do is to separate the War Walkers. This game also made me realised the importance of the Holo Fields and Fire Prism without which I would not have survived long enough or damage potential against his Demolisher. I will keep working on polishing up this army from a paintjob perspective. 

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