Another day, another late blog post.......

I think at this point im stuck with sporadic blog entries, for those that visit occasionally hoping for a new post, I apologise. I think If I can manage a new post at least once every 2 weeks then i'll be happy. Anything on top of that is a bonus.

On a modelling related note, i've been a slave to Forge World the last couple of days hacking away at Renegade Militia torsos to get arms that fit with a minimum of green stuff work. Im not afraid to throw a bit of the ol' green onto a fig but I resent paying top dollar for parts and then they fit badly.

But I digress. I've actually managed to get the 2nd and 3rd Autocannon teams I want in the army assembled, with the 4th on the way. The majority of the time is spent hacking up bases and plasticard to make a slot in the base for the 2nd crewman to go - I was torn between modelling each as mini dioramas or making the crewman removable for ease of keeping track of wounds. Seeing as the bases on my Nurgle Militia are quite plain, I went for the latter.

I also managed to kick out one of the gorgeous Forge World Nurgle Preachers in a record time recently. It's a very '90's' figure, but the sculpting and detail work is phenomenal. Very understated and one of my favourite FW figs. You'll have to excuse the rough freehand though, I was trying to get it finished at about 5am.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

As asked, a shot of an Autocannon team minus the removable loader. If i'd of thought about it before i'd of done a tutorial, but i'll have some more heavy weapon teams to do in the future so you'll have to wait for that im afraid.

More Undeath?

One day I will get this whole posting frequency thing sorted. One day.

Been churning out the rest of the zombies the last week or so, now im sat on 25 of the diseased little blighters.

I won't bore you with text this time, and just get straight to the good stuff.

Still deciding on whats next for the Traitor force, though i've had a Plague Marine Exalted Champion idea floating around in my head for a while now so it might end up being that, i've had a desire to do something power armoured for a while now.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Life, Death and Undeath

First up, apologies for the lack of posts recently, my current illness has quashed most of my hobby mojo. Hopefully I can start to get back on track in the next few weeks.


Been a strange few weeks in world, most of it spent in agony due to a bout of Sciatica - still on pain meds with potential surgery incoming.


Went off to Germany for a week with the wife, the majority being pretty uneventful until we hit a town called Darmstadt, where our host introduced me to a friend of hers that owns a FLGS, full of everything you'd expect in a decent store. The owners english was very good so we spent the best part of 3 hours talking hobby.


After having a look about I spotted a holy grail of sorts, a rack of OOP and generally old GW stuff, a lot of it from around 15-20 years ago, the oldest figs being Dark Elf Cold One Riders, back from the times when the mount was as skinny as the elf riding it. Not being a Dark Elf player I passed, but soon discovered some useful stuff.



GorkaMorka Digga Trukk (soon to be converted to Traitor use), a Chaos Blood Bowl team, blister of Chaos Cheerleaders and 2 blisters of Plague Marine Special Weapons, from the time of the current metal Plague Marines and shortly discontinued. Pretty chuffed with these as they were all mint, the boxes themselves still being shrink wrapped.


As a side note, if anyone has any of the old Chaos Blood Bowl minis to shift, let me know!

Later that evening we headed off to a Goth Club, strangely enough called Das Biergarten. Excellent night all round, much beer was consumed and much hobby was spoken of (the FLGS owner is a regular). It's quite an odd feeling hearing Rammstein in a German club.



Then we came home, and my cat died. Hit me pretty hard as he'd grown up with me since I was a child. In spite of that, I went out and got myself a new tattoo to remember him by.

Then, The Spider's Web, The Ammobunker forum's Games Day table for this year started taking shape, with myself deciding it would be a great idea to co-ordinate the kill teams. Got a room to build for that so keep an eye on the thread for all the progress.


We're nearly at the end, hang on.


After a few days of organising GD stuff I figured I better get some of my own painting done to ward of the madness. Enter some Zombies. 5 of exactly the same zombie figure (seeing as i've got 13 of this fig alone) to make a start on the 25 i've got to do. Im aiming to get these done in time for the Ammobunker Open as im planning on taking down a Nurgle Traitor list with me.

Nice and quick these, lots of washes and hardly any highlighting. Real lazy painting.


For those of you that made it to the end of the wall of text, cheers. For those that didn't read the text and just looked at the pictures, shame on you! A large man will be knocking on your door shortly.

In the coming weeks there'll be a couple of Retrospectives, first up will be the next instalment of the Space Wolves series, then a series on my Death Guard army.

Thanks for reading.

Well that was a slog......

Finished up another pair of Sanguinary Guard today, much later than I wanted. Ideally i'd be pitching them out at roughly 1 every 2 days, but im starting to hit the wall.

Every army painter knows this wall, it's the one that reads 'paint something else'.

Need to push on though, got too many projects lined up that I want to start.

Something else I promised for the weekend that didn't get delivered was the army list im working to. Well, after some thoughts on the list, here it is

1750pts

HQ - Dante

HQ - Librarian, jump pack, infernus pistol, 2 powers (undecided as yet)

Elite - 2 Sanguinary Priests, jump pack, infernus pistol, power weapon

Elite - 2 Sanguinary Priests, jump pack, infernus pistol, power weapon

Troops - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 2 infernus pistols, power fist, chapter banner

Troops - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 2 infernus pistols, power fist

Troops - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 2 infernus pistols, power fist

Troops - 5 Sanguinary Guard, 2 infernus pistols, power fist

If im feeling really vicious i'd drop the Libby and one of the priests and add Mephiston. 

The list is based around deep striking, making full use of the priests ability to give feel no pain and furious charge to the squads. The infernus pistols are going to be the can openers in the list, while the subsequent assaults should deal with everything else.

Any thoughts on the list feel free to drop me a line.

Thanks for reading.

1 Squad down, 3 to go.......

I've been plagued by laziness the last couple of days, which took a 2 day paintjob into something that took nearly a week. Not a good thing when your painting to a deadline.

Ideally this would of been posted a few days ago as I wanted to do a write up on the army list today, instead i'll post that at the weekend.


Lack of speed aside, i've managed to get the first squad of Sanguinary Guard complete. Very pleased with this as i've managed to paint 5 white armoured marines without harming myself or anybody else. Only another 15 plus characters to go......


Thanks for reading.

Bloody hell he finished another one........

Yes I did. Thats 4 down now, another 16 to go. Not including characters. In white armour. What have I let myself in for?

Not sure how im going to do it but im aiming to get 1750 points done before june. I'll be throwing up a list next week to see what everybody thinks.

Until then, i'll leave you with some pictures.

Thanks for reading.

Weekday wip.....

Just a quick post today, with a wip of the current Sanguinary Guard on the desk.

The parchment areas have had a wash of Devlan Mud over the white undercoat to block them out, then it'll be the wings and armour. Hoping to have him finished tonight so i'll throw up some finished pics then.

Thanks for reading.

Yet more white.....

Managed to get another Sangy Guard done today, with a few changes from the original.

As I want to get the army ready for the Ammobunker Open Bash in early June, and im not the fastest painter, i've changed how im doing the white - instead of washing the whole fig with the grey shading wash im applying it selectively to the recesses and cleaning up with white after.

Much faster than the original method as im no longer having to paint multiple layers of white over the grey shade, the majority I can do with one white pass. Downside with this is that the first one using this method is a little rough, can only get better from here though.

I think I might of finally come up with a method of doing the wings thats pleasing to the eye - went with a (very) rough black to grey blend going towards the bottom of the wing. I think it fits better with the rest of the fig myself.

Going to start another SG now, i'll leave you with a pic of where the painting is at so far. With any luck I should have him finished within a couple of days.

Thanks for reading.

Is there a Doctor in the house?

What a great week i've had. Spent the last 2 weeks on holiday, and the day im due back to work im signed off sick for 4 weeks with Sciatica.

In other words, I can't stand up, but I can sit and paint.

Personally im quite happy with that, as I can finally catch up on the Sanguinary Guard.

Now the bulk of the army is out of the way, I turned my attention to building the 3 Priests that feature in my 1500 point list. The bulk of the parts came from the Death Company box, with the legs from the Sanguinary Guard sprue, various power weapon arms and Reductor arms from the Command Squad sprue.

I'm currently working on the rest of the first squad so I should have some more paint in progress shots early in the week.


Thanks for reading.

The Daemon and The Dandy

Went over to see Matt over at Rant in E Minor this week and had the pleasure of facing down his new Dark Eldar army. (Un) Fortunately for you, we recorded the event for posterity. It's not the greatest of vids as we're both new to the whole vid bat rep thing, but rest assured the quality can only get better.

You'll find both our lists on his blog. I won't be appearing in that many Bat Reps, but whenever I get up to Birmingham i'll make sure one happens.

Be warned, aside from strong language, the video features a disturbing moustache.

As from now i'll be aiming to post on a more regular schedule, with at least one post a week.


Thanks for reading, and enjoy the video.

After a few days of building.....

Note to self - sort out the rate of posting!


Apologies for the lack of posts the last few weeks, real life as usual got in the way. On the plus side i've managed to get the rest of the Sanguinary Guard built, just the Priests and Dante left to build, which im hoping to start tonight.

Im hoping to start a new series of tutorials in the next few days, across a variety of subjects - first up it'll be a guide to painting Dark Angels armour.

I'll leave the pictures to do the rest of the talking.

Back to the brushes......

Been a little too long since my last proper update, spent the last week and a half recovering from having some teeth removed under general aesthetic, loads of pain(t) killers and plenty of time sat in front of the tv.

A couple of days before the surgery I made a lazy start on the second of the Sanguinary Guard, and managed to finish it in the last couple of days. Not the best paintjob as I was (still am) a little fuzzy from the pain killers but it'll do when it's in a squad.

Decided to go a different route with the base compared to the test figure, added more rocks using small slate chips, and swapped the green static grass for some 'Highland Tufts' from Army Painter. Its a bit more fiddly to use compared to scattering static grass over the base but is much more precise. The taller grass also gives more depth to the base compared to regular static grass.

Still working on getting the rest of the army assembled (10 Sanguinary Guard, 3 Sanguinary priests and a counts-as Dante left) so i'll have some bare plastic wip's in the next few days.

Thanks for reading.

Retrospective - Space Wolves - Wolf Scouts

Welcome to this weeks retrospective, this week dealing with the most sneaky of sneakys, Space Wolf Scouts.

This squad was very much my baby, with some over the shoulder input by Matt. A few years ago I stumbled across a (now defunct) website ran by sculptor Matt Gubser, and found an interesting article on building scouts using marine, guard and chaos marauder parts. I showed this article to Matt who said something along the lines of ‘you can do that’. So I did.

[Ss] Lol, I remember it a little differently but will run with that version for ease of narrative. 

Each scout was built around a specific theme, those being a leader, sniper, a couple of cc scouts and a pair of support scouts.

[Ss] Sure this is something we spent much time batting around trying to nail down each guy , think one or two may have been almost scrapped and re started , I always enjoy collaborative design more than doing it by myself, hoping slowly over time me and Steve can bring you some nice new stuff at some point.

The main parts of the figure are built from Space Marines (torso, lower legs) and chaos marauders (upper legs, arms), with pieces from the Kroot sprue, Catachan sprue and various accessories. The best use of parts I think are the backpacks – these are from the original metal Space Wolf Scout sgts from the early 90’s. Matt picked up a few while you could still order bits from GW, a service im still lamenting the loss of.

[Ss] One minute of silence for  bitz service ............ 

Lest we forget.

In all seriousness , never forget ...

The basic premise of the article was the use of guard/marauder upper legs combined with marine lower legs to give the impression of a lighter armour that still had design cues from power armour. Lots of green stuff was used across the squad, mostly to fill gaps in the legs and re-sculpt areas of detail.

My personal favourite is the scout we nicknames Knives, a shouty head and some extreme posing gives him a massive amount of movement which combined with the direction of the arms and knives creates a really dynamic figure.

[Ss] Yeah, its between him and the squad leader for me , he's a great model for MoTW these days , still struggling to come to terms with the decision to sell them ....

[Ss]But, wait , there's more , and we have been saving the best til last *wink wink* coming soon.

Once again, you can find Matt's blog at Rant in E Minor.


Thanks for reading.

Painting White - the bane of my life.

Well, not so much in this case, the white has been made so much simpler due to the white undercoat and a grey shading wash. The problem was every other area, because i'd used a white undercoat. Im not the neatest painter to begin with so everything had to be done with more care than im used to.

Im going to get the rest of the army assembled before painting the rest - i've got some games arranged with Sorrowshard over at Rant in E Minor at the end of febuary and not much spare time so i'll need every second I get.

I won't bore you with any more text today, i'll just move straight on to the pretty pictures.

As always, thanks for reading.

Retrospective - Space Wolves - Grey Hunters & Blood Claws

Been quiet on the hobby front the last few days, the wife has had me sorting out the post christmas DIY. Normal service should resume as from now.

Onto the task at hand for todays post, which is the second of the Space Wolves Retrospectives, this week on the troops choices – Grey Hunters and Blood Claws.

Both of these units were built by Sorrowshard, with a few additional conversions and sculpting by myself. One of my favourite miniatures in this group is the lead Blood Claw, based on the 3^rd edition Wolf Codex cover, which is one of a small selection of miniatures that didn’t have any work done by myself.

A large amount of WFB Dwarf parts were used on the army, mostly weapons to add some Nordic flare to the force. Makes more sense for a Wolf to be swinging an axe than a chainsword if you ask me. Another thing to note is the bases. Figure if I mention it on the blog someone might email him and annoy him enough to finish them.

I'll leave you with Sorrowshard to waffle on about how much he hates painting now, see you at the bottom.

[Ss] Christmas and my shiny copy of new vegas have taken a huge poop on my hobby mojo, just working my way back up now. This was, I recall, a massive bits order to GW , I think everything is technically converted, which was fun, I tried tried hard to not repeat heads if possible and ransacked the entire GW range for anything suitable, just ask kal.... I hate painting rank and file and this lot killed me, I still have the second unit of converted hunters unpainted sat in a box on the side some years later .....

The Codex cover conversion was a bit of fun and I was pleased with how it came out. Its good looking back now, as these days I would paint this lot very differently , Looking at these Im pleased with the way my painting has since matured.

Up next is Steve's very pimpola wolf scouts, treat of treats !!

If you a fan of Eldar of either variety, Matts blog, Rant in E Minor is a veritable treasure trove of pointy eared delights, even more so when he actually paints something. Well worth a visit.

As Matt has said, Wolf Scouts next, one of the units that I built from the ground up, but you'll have to wait a few days for those.

In the meantime next up should be the first finished Sanguinary Guard, in the next couple of days if the white doesn't take forever to finish.

Thanks for reading.