A productive weekend

Just finished another bunch of orks and grots for my SVAXII lists, only 9 models to go and 5 of those are 1/2 done so it's all looking good, no 11th hour painting for me, eh Luko??

Some kind of WIEEEERRDDD plant man!!

As you'll have read in previous posts we were thrown a massive curve ball by the Spikey Club organisers when they announced we needed 5 lists for SVAXII!!

So I dutifully chukked out the trukk lists and rewrote a bunch of new lists so as to give myself a chance to get all the painting done in time, now with about 3 weeks to go I've got 10 models to base and 9 with their flesh tones done, nearly there.

Once it's all complete I'll post photos of the 5 lists.

For now just a couple of pics of the recently finished (today) Wierdboy who'll be fielded as a warphead with a big bunch of shoota boyz in the planetstrike attacker list.

That's all for now, look out for the completed list photos in a couple of weeks, then sometime in April should see the completed Klawstompa!!

Necron Countdown to SVAXII

HI ALL,

Doc here with an update....

So ive taken two weeks off why i here you ask? this is why....

Yes Merlot the Puppy came to live with us 10 days ago and takes up all my time.  For those who are interested he's a colly-cocker-whippet-russell cross.  Thats a lot of dog in one puppy!

Anyway my update...

For this years SVAXII we have to take 5 different army lists this has made my work schedule manic...  Ive got to paint them all by the 17th March. My painting includes:

1 Necron Overlord
1 Necron Lord
1 Destroyer LOrd
1 Cryptek
6 Praetorians w Voidblades and Particle Casters (i built these today)

3 Heavy Destroyers (to be built and painted)
2 Spyders
10 Deathmarks (only 2 built so far)

Jeepers im going to busy thank god they are necrons and easy to paint.  I will update on my crazy progress.

The other thing new to SVAXII this year is planetsrike and kill team games.  Having never played planetstrike before this will be a challenge this is what my attacking army looks like at 1750pts:

HQ

Destroyer Lord, Warscythe, Res Orb, Sempiternal Weave            

ELITES

6 Lychguard w warscythe’s                                                                         

6 Praetorians w Voidblades and Particle Casters                                               

10 Flayed Ones                                                                                                

Ctan Shard, Pyreshards, Swarm of Spirit Dust                                     

FAST ATTACK

7 Scarab Bases                                                                                                  

3 Heavy Destroyers                                                                                        

2 Wraiths, 1 Particle Caster                                                                         

HEAVY SUPPORT

Canoptek Spyders X 3, 1 Particle Beamer, 1 Gloom Prism                              

Monolith                                                                                                            

TOTAL                                                                                                                   (1750)  

Thoughts people?  Yes im taking advantage of no troops and using all the tasty stuff.  Everything in the army can take out armour pretty much.  This is the only list for the weekend that brings out the CTAN.  Ill post more of my lists as I post painting updates.

Signing off.....

DOC 

January Over!

HOBBY OBJECTIVE UPDATE

So we are at the end of the First Month, and my hobby objectives received both a boost, and a massive hit this month. My Wife and Daughter have been away for the past 3 weeks, which has given me the opportunity to try and play catch-up as the SVA Organisers threw us the curve ball that we could bring up to FIVE different lists to their Campaign weekend this year! (FIVE!)

(In Fact, you can just about see in some of the corner of the shots of my grot tanks, and some of the upcoming Tyranid pictures Confirmation that when the Wife’s away, the Geek will play!)

Naturally, I am instantly inclined to want to do all of them differently, however, this does mean that my 2000 Point army objective has… grown somewhat! So a Big Thanks to LukoDakka, as without the assistance of his Airbrush I would have been knackered!

I am now fairly confident of getting done on time, but it will still be a tight squeeze, but I’ll get some progress up next week to show you all how it’s going (and to see my take on the Harpy and the Tervigon!)

GAMING OBJECTIVE UPDATE

Well, the fact that I currently have a permanent game table set up on my Dining room and the fact that I’ve wanted to keep myself busy has meant that I have pretty much *NAILED* my 40k Non-Tournament objectives already!
(and I even got a game of Fantasy in too!)

This Month I’ve played… (In No particular Order)
(and almost exclusively with exact, or rough variants of the Following List)

HQ - Hive Tyrant, Wings/Hive Commander/Old Adversary
Troop 1 – 30 x Termagants
Troop 2 – Tervigon, Glands/Sacs
Troop 3 – 15 x Genestealers, Sacs/Broodlord
Elite 1 – 3 x Hive Guard
Elite 2 – 3 x Zoanthrope
Fast 1 – 20 x Gargoyles, Glands/Sacs
Fast 2 – Harpy
Heavy 1 - Mawloc

Tyranids vs Black Templar. – 1750 Campaign
Against an always Tough opponent I was already about 150 points down in this game (due to campaign rules we are running) so it was going to be tough, but I thought I’d have a realistic chance at survival with the possibility of a sneaky win. Not-A-Chance. The Big Kahuna played a clever game, setting up as far away as possible and tailoring his list (only slightly) with lots of Big and little bug shooting. Getting into combat was hardly fun either as his army wide preferred enemy can be a big deciding factor!
GAME LOST

Tyranids vs Imperial Guard – 3500 (ish) Casual
A Casual non-campaign game that finished at 3am (ON A SCHOOL NIGHT?!) I’m not sure we got to decide a winner, but it was bloody and brutal, massive outflanking blob squads of Guard traded blows with Stealers and MC’s alike whilst Chimera’s attempted to dodge a hail of Zoanthrope and Hive Guard fire. In the end, we had to call it quits and head to bed, but it was great fun (and a real lesson that foot Guard can be very nasty!)

GAME DRAWN?

Tyranids vs Blood Angels – 1750 Campaign
A Campaign Game against LukoDakka, and one of those rare, fabulous games where the result is always in doubt and never certain right up until the end. Danté is still a beast and I yet again failed to nail him, that said I was very pleased with the performance of a lot of my bugs in this game, sadly with the exception of the Mawloc, who looks like he has such great potential on paper, but has let me down this month a little. Don’t get me wrong, he is great, and if he burrows underneath something (especially with the amount of Hits I’ve been getting recently!) he can cause some serious damage, HOWEVER, I believe he may suffer from ‘Vindicator Syndrome’ Great on paper, but if you take one, take multiple copies as one doesn’t necessarily cut the mustard.
GAME LOST

Tyranids vs Dark Eldar – 1750 Campaign
A Sly and accomplished Archon who had an extra 250 points on me… it was sheer Butchery. I got stomped flat claiming only 3 Kill points in the entire game as I was mercilessly gunned down and outmanoeuvred.
GAME LOST

Tyranids vs Dark Eldar – 1750 Casual
The Same general as above along with another Dark Eldar General, this game was closer, though I ultimately frustratingly had too much distance to cover, and failed to realise that Dawn of War is really *really* bad for a Tyranid list with a decent shooting loadout, and that perhaps the better option would have been to start completely off the board all rolling in on turn 1. (though even then, it’s still bad news against the dextrous Dark Eldar as they have enough long range weaponry to hurt your MC’s at distance, and Nail you with poison when you close)
GAME LOST

Tyranids vs Dark Eldar – 1500 Casual
Yes, Yes, I am a sucker for punishment! This game was closer than the previous 2 against Dark Eldar, and resulted ultimately in me running out of Troops in order to claim or contest an objective. I could possibly have still snuck a draw as the Mawloc had gone under on turn 5, but alas, there was no turn 6! Still a good game and against an opponent I don’t play against with particular frequency!
GAME LOST

Tyranids vs Necrons – 1750 Campaign
Ahh…. My first game against Doc’s mindless Horde!
Lesson number 1 : If you attack a Necron Unit.. KILL IT DEAD!
Lesson Number 2: Don’t split up your Tyranids! Focus fire, support each other, and overwhelm the enemy!
In the end this game was a draw, though potentially a losing draw from my perspective as I feel I was on the back foot and was finding the surviving Monolith (One lost to deep-strike) was proving to be a proper pain in the derriere!

GAME DRAWN

The annoying thing is that I knew Lesson 2 well beforehand, I just got carried away, a good learning experience though, and I think Necrons may turn out to be an incredibly tough opponent for many armies in the future.

Tyranids Vs Orks – 1750 Campaign
My Nids Vs Big Boss Bludtoof’s Orks, and he had 150 extra points!
I set up incredibly defensively (Learning my lesson from the Necron Game) and my Shooters were star’s in this game. The Hive Guard took a truck per turn, as did the Zoanthropes (When they weren’t instant killing Boss Bludtoof himself! In the end defense turned to attack as the Nids swarmed forward once the majority of the Boyz were transportless and carnage ensued. A Solid Victory, and Boss Bludtoof’s Bug Blindspot continues! (apparently, he has never beaten Nids…. And this may be an interesting topic to discuss in the future, our army blind-spots!)

GAME WON!



Finally, I got my first Fantasy game in as well!

Beastmen vs The Flower of Brettonia – 2000 – Casual
A Second game with Big Boss Bludtoof, this time Fantasy!

I used most of my Beastmen COlleciton for this, which involved some Minotaurs, a Great Bray Shaman, 2 other Bray Shaman’s, a borrowed Gorebull, and then a block each of Ungor, Gor and Bestigor.

It was a learning experience for both of us, but I knew it was going to be funny when the first turn the frenzied Minotaurs declared their mandatory charge against the Pegasus Knights (I was forced to as they were in range) and then, lo and behold, Mister Double 6 Turned up to the party and it all got messy from there! (Minotaurs who get themselves on a roll are N.A.S.T.Y.!)

There’s nothing much else left to say here really apart from what a lot of fun, I think I love Beastmen, their magic, and their almost complete lack of Armour, and I’m going to enjoy getting all those other Fantasy games in over the course of the Next 11 Months!

Finally, and as a Last aside, I also picked up a book the month Called "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline.

You will like this book if....

1) You are a Geek

2) You spent some of your Childhood in the 80's

3) You Like Playing Old School Computer Games

4) You like Roleplay

5) You Like playing MMO's

and if, perchance, you like ALL of those things (Hi!) then this book may just about be the best book you've ever read :)

and Finally, a Teaser of some things to come!

(In this picture you can see some of my Video tastes, an under-construction Harpy, an unpainted Tervigon Conversion, the hand of an Imperial Guard General, and the rest of my collection of Tyranids lovingly arranged on the table... )

...and I've got to be done by Mid-March you say!?

Hypa Out.

My Little Tank(s)

Hello!
It's been slighlty later arriving than I'd planned, and since these pictures were taken I may also have undercoated these blighters...

But here we have a group of 12 Grot Tanks, hand crafted by Yours Truly.

Now, For anyone wanting to build Grot tanks, and look for a Good Tutorial, I can highly recommend Kanvass' tutorial on Youtube. The guy has crazy skills and if you follow his tute, you'll end up with some beuatiful looking models.

If you do it my way, you will probably end up some rather haphazard things (which I'm very proud of) which all do indeed look very different and hopefully are also fun to build.

To go into a bit of background on these (and I wouldn't recommend anyone follow the methodology behind my construction of these past the initial groundwork!) Last November, The Code Gang had a big apocalypse game. Beakies Vs Orks in the Return of the Battle for Big Toof. As is (apparently!) tradition, The Orks always need new, and bigger, and crazier toys.

The problem with this... is that I always leave it too late...
...which is how I came to find myself in my tracksuit bottoms, at 5am, finishing the construction of the last tank, the day we were due to play... and I hadn't done the rivets.

Needless to say I was *quite* tired (talk about an understatement!) on the day, and the game probably suffered for it (plus we put them into tactical reserve, and they didn't come on for ages, and were a bit disappointing on the day, but that's going down to User Error)
so anyway, enough waffle.


Here are some tanks!

and this is an explanation of how I made them!

Every tank's basic shape is constructed in a roughly identical fashion.

One track is made of the following.

2 pieces of Plasticard 20mm x 30mm

1 piece of blue insulation foam 18mm x 28mm

1 piece of thin plasticard scored lightly (this simply needs to be long enough to go around the tread which means, roughly, it should be 110mm (extra 10mm is for wrap around gluing factor)

then as you can hopefully see from the pictures, I've angled each tread to hopefully mak it look a bit more tank like, this is absolutely to personal taste. Here do what you want, just make sure that each set of 2 treads per tank are the same!

so, for one tank, you will need double the above.

PVA two pieces of matching plasticard to one piece of matching blue foam and let set.

Then PVA the entire facing of the blue foam that is showing in 'the sandwich' and wrap you scored thin plasticard tread around (bending it it around the angled treads in the places it needs to), using the overhang and some polycement to stick the tread to itself.

now for the chassis.

you will need

4 pieces of Plasticard 20mm x 30mm (These are 2 x sides and 1 x front and 1 x back)

2 pieces of Plasticard 30mm x 30mm (this is the top and bottom)

It's basically a square. Now you can angle these as well, but I happen to think they look best with only 1 angle cut, either front or back. (but again, your mileage may vary)

If you angle it, be aware that you will need to shorten one of your front/back sections accordingly, and cut a new angled frnt/back section to match.

Polycement these all together to make your boxy tank body shape.

Then take your 2 x treads, and polycement them to the body of the tank.

you now have your basic shape.

From here, hopefully, the rest should be fairly straightforward. using 10mmx10mm pieces of plasticard, you can make the gun turret, or, shoudl the fancy take you, use other GW cupolas from other tanks (as I have done on a few of them)

alternatively you can use a hemisphere to make your turret... the key is that you do something a little different somewhere on the tanks!

to make them look a little less like homogenous boxes, I also used a lot of plasticard extra plating, and cannibalised lots of unused Killa Kan/Truck/Orky parts to individualise each tank.

Rivets are also key. To be honest, I think I went a little overboard on the Fighta Bomma... (coming next!) However, where Ork Vehicles are concerned, rivets are what takes it from a scratchbuilt piece, with very flat panelling (and looking a bit simple) to something that could conceivably have been cobbled together by some crazy Mek!

So later on this week, I will show you how Gruber's finest Little tanks look with a bit o'red paint on them (I think it's made a huge difference) as well as a certain Butchered up Italieri kit and some more rivets morphed into a Fighta Bomma!

Hypa Out.