Scenery, Battles and yes more Marines

Another long absence from the hobby. Life is taking over my geeking pleasures. But now England have been dumped out of the World Cup i hopefully have a bit more time to spend "completing" the models I have.

First a battle. my first big game of 7th. I was playing against my brother and my dad. between them they could muster 3k of marines (minatours) and eldar. we ignored the allies matrix and a few of the min squad sizes and played with what they had. I took my marines with a detachment of grey knights and an inquisitor.

I took:

kantor with 9 sternguard (4 combi grav guns) in a pod
librarian with 9 sternguard (4 combi meltas) in a pod
tactical squad in a pod
10 scouts
10 assault marines
10 devators in a rhino
Stormtalon
Thunderfire

librarian with 10 grey knight terminators
eversor assassin
Inqisitor
retinue (2 servitors, 3 psykers, 2 deamon host, 2 arco)

Morloc with 5 TH/SS terms
10 assault marines with minotaur special chaplain
10 tact in rhino
10 tact
5 scouts
Special contempor
Stormtalon
Lib level 2 9 stern in pod
Farseer
10 guardian
Warlock 8 guardian (we know they are a minimum of 10)
6 scorpions
6 banshees
9 rangers
Ranger special character
5/6 dire avengers

Both were battle forged

We played the new missions where we had 3 per tern and they weren't secret.

Main points.
Psychic phase is harder to get power off. Yes they did go off and it is also harder to deny but nowhere near as “game breaking” as the doom sayers predicted.
I cast less than normal even with more psykers on the board!

Missions level the game a lot. You get the mission and then can complete them in your turn, before your opponent can react.
You need mobility. Scoring units are useful to trump things sat on an objective. E.g. if I have a thunderfire on an back objective and a necron warrior squad comes within 3” of it. The necron warrior squad can trump the thunderfire and claim the objective. But all units can get an objective which is a very interesting dynamic.

They game changed throughout and you need a bit of everything. At no point was there ever a hopeless situation for either player. Yes you may need a bit of luck with the objective cards, but there are 36 of them so luck is diluted a bit.

Final score was 8-8. Close throughout. I may have been able to nick it but needed a cast gate of infinity, which failed! and the assassin only consolidated 1 when needing 3+ to get to another objective!

some pictures:

No matter how good your tactics are....... 

Kantor kicking ass, shortly before Morloc said hello!

I have nearly finished the scenery in my last post, but got side traced in completing the Sternguard squad for the battle.

i have sprayed up some craters and will quickly wash them and they will be ready for the baord.

model wise i am painting a witch hunter inquisitor and 2 more assassins.

I hope to get some more 7th ed games in over the summer.

.

Imperial Knight Freeblade, work in progress...starting the paintjob.

Hi All

Time to show the WIP on my Imperial Knight, I started on the legs and have now just got the guard plates on waist, thighs, knees and feet to do before I paint the base.
The plates will be red and bone and will feature the knights personal heraldry.
Here's pics of the wip...

I'm really pleased so far, particularly with the gold, it's layers of balthazar gold, old shining gold and auric armour gold on a base of old vermin brown, highlighted with silver and then washed with yellow glaze to give it a really bright finish.
Also a new one for me is the green cables, I normally just use a wash over the base, this time I used hexus pale sun dry paint to put a really light dry brush over the moot green base and then washed with green glaze, not sure if it shows in the photos but it works well in the flesh.

As ever feedback is always welcome.

That's it so far, more to come soon......

Bluddtoof

Imperial Knight Showcase

Evening All,

Doc here with the promised showcase of my Imperial Knight Freeblade.  I don't have WIP shots for this model as it was completed in secret so I could surprise Red Mist in a recent battle.  So many of my recent posts have talked about sponge weathering and this model gave me the chance to really put that to good use.

I have painted him in the Gerantius 'The Forgotten Knight' colour scheme.  Two reasons for this firstly I only intend to use 1 and second I really liked the look of the sea green.  Its a colour I haven't painted much before.  This model also allowed me to get over I hate transfers thing....  Well sort of still hate transfers!

Anyway on to the picture dump....

Imperial Knight Freeblade W.I.P. The Build

Hi All

So now that our day of Deadzone is done, (and a great day it was, a cracking game which is ideal for a group day letting, everyone play several games), it's time for my next project; my Imperial Knight!
Firstly it's a really nice kit, easy to build and goes together nicely, I'd originally intended to magnetise many of the parts so as to give me the flexibility of main weapon options and also to have a model which was easy to transport but was held solidly together on the table, alas it has not come to pass because none of the joints between arms/body or body/legs lend themselves to the placement of magnets, I've not tried magnets before and I want my first attempt to be on a model that does lend itself easily. As for the possibility of using magnets to allow swapping out of the main weapon, that also proved impractical for two reasons; the two variants both have different power feeds that connect to a common point but the Thermal cannon feed originates from a piece which is hidden inside the main body of the gun and so cannot be removed, also the battle cannon ammo pack is hollow and so would need extensive remodelling to provide an anchor point for the magnet. In short I decided it was too much work for a first attempt and I've settled on the Thermal Cannon and I will fix the torso to the legs but leave the arms separate as they have a nice twist and lock connection to the torso.With this set up the model will fit snugly in a figure case.

So on to the model itself, I've built all the sub-assemblies and the next step will be to undercoat them.
The model will be fielded almost exclusively alongside my Space Marines, the Thunderbolts who feature a rock and snow theme on the basing. The Knight is a big imposing model anyway but I wanted it to be more so, originally I'd had the idea that I would model it stepping up onto a snow covered rocky outcrop, however the legs are moulded as a rigid piece for their entire length so no convenient knee joint, I looked at the knee with a view to cutting and reposing but the mould has no material to play with and so I would have needed to sculpt the whole knee section which is beyond my sculpting talents, the last thing I wanted was to give my beautiful model a gimpy leg!! I settled on mounting the model on a large rock outcrop, thus raising it even higher over it's foul enemies! The rock is modelled from thin sheets of balsa glued together and held with elastic bands overnight, once dry I cut away at it to create the broken and eroded shape, the layers give the appearance of a slate outcrop. Then an all over coat of thinned PVA to seal the balsa. Once dry I glued the legs sub-assembly in place and then I applied the rocks, gravel and then sand in stages letting each stage fully dry before the next. One benefit of using balsa instead of sculpting from a modelling clay is the base is very light so I didn't need to be too concerned over the bond between the models feet and the rocks.
Here's pics of the base prior to undercoating...

You'll notice I haven't attached the shin guards or the crotch banner as these will be painted separately and attached at the end.

In total I'll be painting the model in 12 pieces, firstly to break up the monotony of painting very large areas at a time and secondly to minimise the amount of areas which are hard to reach.

Painting pieces like the banner and the shoulder guards will also be easier as I'll be attempting some freehand work on the Knights heraldry, he's going to be a freeblade, I'm still working on the design for his heraldry.
The other technique I'll be trying for the first time is OSL, which I'll be using on the eye lenses and the face mask.

That's it for now, more to come over the next few weeks....

Bluddtoof

Deadzone update - Completed Enforcers

Hi All,

So in true DOC style I left finishing my enforcers to day before our Deadzone day.  Well when I say finishing I actually started and completed 7 of these models today!!  The first batch I completed are here.  Nice to add a further 8 points to my tally!

Anyway on to the showcase:

So there you go all done.  Whilst not my best efforts, as with the first batch I again got to practice sponge weathering.  My main concern moving forward to more precision work is getting a small enough piece of sponge so I can just catch the edges more accurately.  I might make myself a tool with small piece of sponge on the end?  Ill have a think on that one.  Anybody else got a good idea for this please comment below.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed I have more painting points than I have posted up on here. That is because my next post will be my already completed Imperial Knight.  Why Doc have you not shown it until now?  Well that's because I wanted to surprise Red Mist with it in our recent 4K battle.  It was nice to plop such an imposing model down as a surprise and his face was well worth it!  So it seems Code40K is about to have an Imperial Knight segment!

Thats all for now folks

DOC out...