Too excited to sleep

...Yes, I always get like this the night before I go away to play a weekend of 'Toy Soldiers'


usually it's because I have oodles of painting still to do (yes, even at this late hour!) However this year, I have been slightly more organised!

There is a tabletop paintjob in place, and I've even had a practice game (or two!)

For the record, Stompnutz' Stompamob took on 'The Immortal Souls', two games played at 1500 and 2000 points respectively. My opponent played a cool game and made me run towards him, braving the wall of lascannon shots that he threw my way, however, in the end, the sheer number of Walkers was too much for even the Heroic Ironclad Dreadnaught (who personally accounted for 2 Dreads, 1 Meka Dread and 5 Kans - over the course of the two games ) to deal with, and the Stompamob ran out 6-4 and 7-3 winner in KP. (Praise to Gork... or possibly Mork!)

This is a vast improvement on last year. I was still painting at 3am, had no practice games, and consequently, turned up absolutey shattered, and inexperienced with my army (and with the exception of one tau opponent who I drew with, got thoroughly thumped all weekend long!)

It's actually a key point to enjoying your weekend, after all, you've prepped for weeks, have probably begged borrowed or stolen a get-out-of-jail-free card from the boss, and are without doubt, spending your hard earned cash on the travel, food, possibly a hotel room, and drinks (a key part of any toy soldier weekend!) on enjoying yourself.

so do yourself a favour, and try to be better prepared than I was both last year and this year, and finish the week before...




... or better yet, do a blue Peter and go with one you made earlier!


(and with all that said, I'll bid Luko Dakka a goodnight, as I suspect he is still painting!)

Onwards to SVA XI Glory my friends!!!

and May 'The Code - Bad Guys' come out victorious!

Lucius Dreadnought Drop Pod Incoming (and some friends)

Hello all.

Huzzah!

My Lucius Pattern Drop Pod is done...........Phew!!!

In all honesty I actually quite enjoyed painting it, so much so that the first thing I'll paint for my next project; my 3000pt or so drop pod force for 40k and an Orbital Strike Force for Apocalypse, will be a fix-it job on my original attempt at the Lucius. This will comprise stripping the old paint job (any advice on this front would be most gratefully recieved) re-pinning and a new paint job.

The issue was the models weight; I couldn't hold the model without damaging the finish so in order to get the clean white finish on those external panels, which are all around it and which is always the last colour I apply to all my Thunderbolts models, I propped the model securely on its side with one face thus horizontal. I then applied one coat of thinned white, over a base coat of space wolves grey, to the uppermost panels only( don't be tempted to paint an angled surface or the paint runs and pools) then left this to dry(about 20mins), then a second and third and fourth coat similarly applied and left to dry.

I've spent 2 days doing this and played a lot of DDO in the drying times!!

The finish fits with the rest of the army, with the nice off blue tinge behind the white.

Below are a couple of pics of the finished product in situ with the completed 2000pt force.

And here are some pics of the force;

So there it is; my fist objective done. Good job really or I'd have had a problem this weekend!!

My 2000pt force is

Captain in terminator armour with thunder hammers

5 assault terminators with thunder hammers

Landraider Redeemer with multimelta, hkm and extra armour

5 terminators with a heavy flamer and chainfist

10 tactical marines with missile, powerfist, plasmagun and teleport homer

Razorback with lascannons and stormbolter

10 tactical marines with multimelta, powerfist, meltagun and teleport homer

Razorback with lascannons and stormbolter

Venerable Dreadnought with assault cannon, heavy flamer and extra armour

Lucius pattern drop pod

Whirlwind x2

Predator with autocannon, heavy bolters and stormbolter

Fairly balanced and it will be pitted against 5 unknown opponents all with 'EVIL' forces so a mix of Chaos Daemons, Chaos Marines, Dark Eldar, Orks, Necrons maybe, Tyrranids and mybe Tau or Eldar

Anyway positive mental attitude and all that.......

THE EMPEROR PROTECTS!!!!!

ONWARDS TO VICTORY!!

Mr. Stompy comes to Town...

...and you wouldn't like him when he is Angry!

OK, so I have until Friday night, and I really needed to get a wriggle on, so tonight I did just that.

The goggle box had Glee and Tool Academy on in the background as I brushed manically away!

I managed to get two Dreads to a reasonable tabletop standard (though of course, more work 'could' be done) and below is the results. One close up of 'Mr. Stompy' as Drow has nicknamed him, and a group shot of the two Dreads with some of the Kans.

Tomorrow, I suspect, should see the other Two Dreads finished which means Drow and I will start on the Big Boys on Wednesday night...

I can't wait!!

It always takes longer than you think...

DOC and the Brushboyz came round at the weekend to help me try and complete the mammoth task of painting all these walkers.

In fairness, I am sure Drow didn't expect to begin the day by changing some strip lights in the garage... but such is the organised life of a crazy scratch builder with a 4 month old daughter... (My wife is very understanding... amazingly so in fact!)

so anyway..

Friday night I did my best to base all the Kans, but sadly didn't have enough time to get everything done, it's amazing how the basing process always takes longer than you think.

Everyone will base things differently I'm sure, with these Kans, as with many of my projects, I usually have precious little time for anything other than a cursory bit if sand and gravel PVA'd.

As I learned many years ago, applying a watered down PVA seal coat once this is all in place means you won't find sand and Gravel in your army case afterwards!

Roll forward just over 12 hours, and some strip lights later and it was Saturday afternoon, Drow and I had based the remaining models and undercoated everything apart from the Dreads. Then DOC finished work and came round (with another strip light!) and we got to work.

I'd discussed the Paint scheme with DOC earlier in the week so knew roughly what I was doing, and I'm fairly pleased with the results, I think they hold up as a group, but up close it's clearly evident there have been several different hands in these, although that said, I'm sure it's nothing that a bit more detail and a (magic) Devlan Mud Wash can't sort out...

This is where the three Brushboyz got to by Saturday night. (with a bit of Hypa work on Sunday morning)

Below are two DOC painted Kans against one I have brought to 90% completion (some finer details are missing)

I had spent most of Sunday bringing 6 Kans from Basecoat colours up to the 90% mark (Drow and I had been working on them the night before). DOC took the thee he had almost finished home with him, and that leaves three in the hand of another Code Member, though by and large the Kans are finished.

all this leaves then.... are the Dreads and the Mega Dreads and Meka Dread,

Here is the current state of play on them.

..Do you know.

I am beginning to be very grateful that I have taken Friday off Work *just in case*

Hope you like the progress so far... and if you are a Beakie going to the SVA Tournament this year.

Be afraid!

Kind Regards

Hypa

KANS STOMP IN

Hi all,

Completed pictures of three scratchbuilt killa kans (built by hypasist). Amazing fun to paint something so different to my wolves.

Hope you like?

DOC

Aaaargh! Resin kits

Hello again.

So here it is .... the model I've been dreading!Guess what..... it was as tricky as I'd expected. I've now built 2 of these bad boys, the first one was an utter pain.

If you've never built a resin model before then this is not a good choice for a first go, I'd recommend a more organic model, eg warboss on bike or chaos sorcerer, I found both of these to be much more forgiving with their curves and rumples.

The biggest issue with the drop pod is the inevitable warping of the parts, an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of the casting process. This manifests with glaring obviousness in the 3 vertical vanes which form the frame of the model, the solution.... submerge all the parts in very warm soapy water, this will soften the parts in a couple of minutes so you can reshape them into nice straight (or nearly so...) vanes instead of grey bananas!! At the same time you need to wash the pieces so as to remove as much of the residue lubricant from the casting process. Leaving this infernal substance on the parts will dramatically reduce the adhesion of paint, as I discovered with my first attempt at a resin model!

My second tip for building resin kits is..............PIN EVERYTHING!!!! That's right pin all the joints where practical. The drop pod is very heavy when complete and needs all the joints pinned for extra strength. I failed to pin the first one I built and it fell apart after I'd picked it up a couple of times. For pinning I use 18 gauge (1.20mm) jewellery wire which is readily available from many craft outlets, get the unpainted stuff cos the paint will come off inside your joints and they'll fail! This gauge fits nice and snug in holes drilled with the 1mm bit you get with the citadel pin vice. I find that this tight fit along with super glue works a treat.

So below is a photo of the base top part with pins fitted and ramps in place ready to fit the base bottom part, a good splodge of glue and some patience along with 2 pins and it all went well.

As an aside, forge world conveniently put a dimple in each of the 2 base sections to show you how they should be positioned, just align the dimples and the pieces fit nicely....after a lot of filing and shaving of flash, another of resins big issues.

I then pinned the joints between the vanes and the base and the vanes and the central turbine, the assembly of these pieces needs to be done quickly as the glue needs to be on all pieces and can dry quickly. I find the key here is to do several dry runs and to be patient! Very very patient!!

Below is the finished build..

I'm quite pleased overall, it's better and stronger than the first one, not perfect by a long way, there are small gaps between the ramps and vanes when it's closed up but after all it'll be open when it's on the table so it should be all good.

To conclude I have several points to make regarding the model;

1/ Typical resin kit.... lots of small air holes which needed to be filled (green stuff works well).

2/Really badly warped vanes, I got these virtually straight with warm water.

3/On the base top piece the holes for the ramp hinges to slot into are very thin and prone to breakage, in fact one of them had a bad case of air bubble AND flash and I had to remove it and replace with some green stuff which I shaped to replicate the original...only time will tell if this holds...

4/ Resin kits are tricky but well worth persevering with..... patience, patience and more patience.

My next post will be the finished article.....

Hope you found this interesting

Dauntless!

Hello all.

Been a bit slack recently unfortunately but finally finished my predator "Dauntless" for the SVA XI strike force. piccy below...

Next job is the Lucius pattern dreadnought drop pod!!!!

The Dreadmob Grows!

OK, been a while since an update... but I *promise* I haven't been slacking (well apart from tonight.. special dispensation from the Warboss and all that ;)

so first up, was the state of play about a week ago. 8 kans completely finished, as pictured below, however it wasn't long before these little fellas were to be broken up like a litter of new puppies and sent off to a new (albeiot temporary) home!

See DOC's stirling post's on their new and exciting journey!

Then, in the last week, I made some more progress. and by progress... I mean PROGRESS!!!

(and there was the recruitment of a local Spanna boy to throw into the mix!)

Below are the remaining 9 Kans which include 2 of the 8 above, (you might be able to spot them!) and 7 of their new, grot filled brethren, all steeling to kick somefink big an Green!

The, erm, large chap in the distance might be recognisable from a previous post...

Yes,. the Meka dread is in Town!

So this monstrosity has been created with removable Rokkit Bomm Racks, a Shunta (which is basically an Old Dark Eldar Raider piece, with Eldar weaponry shoved on in spades) and a dead bigg Rippy Klaw which I think is made from Grabba Klaws (Kindly donated by local Warbosses!)

Along with a top down, and reare view. This Behemoth is fully riveted, with feet and everything, and now just needs a road test to prove how dead 'ard an killy he is!

Hope you like them, and with just under two weeks until SVA-XI it's going to be tight, and a lot of Grots might get squished along the way! (But I'm sure it will all end right!!)

Further Kan Progress

Hi,

A second work in progress shot!




Thoughts Please?

Doc

WAAGH KAN MOB

Hi All,

Well ive been watching hypasist scratch build all these fantastic Kans and thought i want to be involved! It's such a cool idea and scratches a geek itch like nothing else!! So i offered to paint up 3 for him, for the upcoming SVA campaign weekend. They are so much fun to paint!! Also he hasnt painted any himself yet.... so im helping develop the colour scheme. No pressure then.....So heres a work in progress shot.



Feedback is more than welcome, I want to develope a simple and effective finish.

Waagh for now
DOC