O God the (Xmas) Aftermath..

2012 Games Day Limited Edition Model, YESSS!

Well, Xmas was lovely, I finally have my 1750 Grey Knight army fully put together and i even got 3 games in with them!  I managed to win every one including a fairly ridiculous trouncing against a friend's Pirate Orks, but i feel the army is pretty balanced really, mean yes, but it definitely has exploitable weaknesses, i'll have more pics up as i get parts finished!

Anyway, the real meat of this post is the picture to the left, i was perusing the geeky corner of the internet and saw this, i'm gobsmacked.

As a staunch Marine player for quite a few years and having got into the hobby with 2nd edition 40k this model is a dream come true, i absolutely have to have one, or three.  God knows i would paint them all!  The Sculpting looks glorious, and after a few years' (sadly) worth of what i felt to be sub-par models this one brings the sexy back with a mega-ton punch. 

This is the kind of stuff that should be released as limited edition from Games Workshop, the kind that sets modeller's brains into a feral need-rage.  Or maybe that's just me.

Either way i have to have him.

Bitterness, and then some..

Imotekh the Stormlord

I've been working on the full clutch of new Necron characters lately, applying the early, long-drying stages between other projects this week and finally sitting down tonight and bashing through all 5 in about 6 hours.

They are a commission for a very nice chap who wasn't as fussed about having them amazingly done as he was getting them done full stop, so hopefully he will be pleased with them!

The bases have been left unfinished as he is yet to decide on a scheme for them, less work for me! hoho!

First up is Imotekh the Stormlord, a gorgeous, if fiddly model, the extra detail from it being a finecast model shows quite nicely in the final product i think, and i am still undecided as to what i think of finecast as a medium, i think i prefer it just for the ease of assembly, but conversely for models like the Necron characters i think it is a little too flimsy in the long run, i can see a lot of breakages happening.

A nice detail of the Imotekh model is that he doesn't actually have one giant hand like i thought he did, but a regular sized one inside a larger housing a la the Dreadknight, a nice little detail, the cloak was quite interesting to paint as well,

Trazyn the Infinite

Next up is Trazyn the infinite, i don't know why, but i absolutely love this model.  The Background is awesome for him, his rules are really unique and interesting, and the model really fits the character perfectly, he isn't big and imposing, or even that scary looking, but you look at it and think "what tricks is he up to?".

The model is gorgeous, start to finish to paint, only complaint being that the staff is ridiculously thin and stands pretty much zero chance of coming out of the deal perfectly straight, but details like that don't fuss me too much.

I'm already having ideas about getting around to doing a Necron force of my own (probably the third army in my painting queue if i'm right) with a few nice conversions here and there to give them a unique look, all off the back of this one model, that's what this hobby is about for me!

I'm really glad GW went with some named Necrons for this book, i still remember how mindblown i was with the old 4th Ed. Tyranid codex when Old One Eye and the Red Terror appeared, little character quirks and background add a lot to another army that runs a similar threat of being devoid of both those very things.

Necron Overlord with Resurrection Orb

And onto the Necron Overlord miniature, i remember seeing the previews of this mini and assuming it was going to be the most badass special character in the codex, i'm still a bit confused as to how a model for a generic HQ came out so big. 

The pose is so dynamic he doesn't photograph well unfortunately (or fit into a figure case particularly well.) but there is something about the added beefiness of this model that i love, Imotekh is a cool dude but this chap looks like he can bench press him no problem when you stand them side by side.

Still, i'm interested to play against some Necron forces and see if people plump for anything besides Imotekh and writhing worldscape C'tan shards.  They sound nice and all but they don't really do it for me personally!

Necron Cryptek

Next up the Cryptek, new boys on the block for the Necrons, these guys act as nice little force multipliers you can purchase and have either in royal courts or as squad upgrades, my only worry with these guys is i've heard that the Chronometron allows you a dice re-roll a phase or something similar and people seem to be raving about it, i'm not a big fan of model rules that present a vast array of choices but have one that is clearly better than the others for the points, i guess i am going to have to familiarise myself with the codex a bit more! 

I thought this model was kind of ugly when i saw pictures of it first time round, but i have to say it looks a lot nicer in the flesh (though a lot of GW sculpts really have that effect nowadays which is great!) it really has this cool vibe that he was probably quite an old man by the time he was entombed in his Necron form, and that it still retain this hunched posture, another nice little character adding feature of one of the new models, also i am a huge fan of the Cyclopian heads this guy and the Deathmarks got, really characterful and cool.

Necron Lord with Resurrection Orb

And lastly, this plastic Necron (under?)Lord with resurrection Orb, from one of the new vehicle kits, the detail is really nice on this model, nicer than on the older metal models definitely, a shame about his static pose in terms of legs and body, but with the right tweaking in the assembly stage this could actually be a good thing, i really like the way Games Workshop is adding little detachable usable models to some of their larger kits, and the multi-use nature of vehicles and big warhammer beast boxes now, always tons of conversion/trophy bits coming out of every new thing you buy which is good! 

The Models were painted Scab Red and then highlighted up through blood red to Blazing orange and finally to Golden Yellow on the final spot highlights, the capes were drybrushed with a mix of Mithril silver and enchanter blue before being re-highlighted with mithril silver, i hand them over tomorrow,

and unfortunately i think i am being tempted to a newer, weirder 40k army before i even finish my Grey Knights.....

Into the Fires of War!

I was lucky enough to get my first game with my Grey Knight army in this week!
It went well and gave me some food for thought List-wise, we played 1500 Points Kill Points with Spearhead deployment against a Guard Army.

I opted to Deep strike with one of the Strike Squads, and it became apparent to me very quickly how far across the board you have to run when you are playing a non-Objective mission with Grey Knights, i spent what felt like the whole game running across the board and never connected fully, but when i did connect, good lord!  What a punch!

Loved playing with the army and i think i will definitely be getting into it big time, there are still all the comments of "you are playing Grey Knights, well of course they are going to win, they are bent!" but i think that's par for the course until something scarier comes along!  I felt my army was pretty damned balanced!

I only took one Dreadknight along for the battle, but he scared the hell out of my opponent, and had he lived longer (a Lascannon squad hit and wounded three times at once and i failed three cover saves of 4+, ouch!) he would have wreaked havoc, the Heavy incinerator is a fantastic weapon, and i can see that a pair of Dreadknights in 1750 will be terrifying, and will also attract enough lascannon fire to allow my main unit to get amongst the enemy,

So a lot of my army is centered around a 10-man squad of Grey Knight Terminators with 2 Psycannons, with Coteaz, an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in Terminator armour with a Psycannon and a Grey Knight Techmarine Grenade-Caddy, a fairly ridiculously expensive unit, but one that can take a lot of damage any weapons Strength 5 and below hitting it get bounced onto the two 3-wound T3 characters and any Lascannon shots will hopefully be pumping into the Dreadknights, i'll need a few more games to work out if it needs tweaking but it performed brilliantly in my first game!

2 Strike Squads will look to Deep Strike into Cover in No man's land and hold the middle ground while two Acolyte units skulk about in the home cover and take objectives, in theory it should work quite well!  The lack of long range firepower hurts, but i have a Vindicare along so he can go to town on tanks with his 4D6 Turbo-Penetrator Rifle.

I'll play a bit more soon and report back!

Death from afar

Having decided i was going to collect a Grey Knight force and that i was going to base the army around a pair of Dreadknights, my next thoughts were towards any "weird" units i would want to include in the army,

I already had ideas of using a large squad of 10 Grey Knight Terminators as a Firebase/Tarpit scoring unit (decided against Paladins as i would rather spend the extra points on more toys to play with!) so i knew i wasn't going to be exactly flush as far as points were concerned, one of the first things i wanted to make sure i included was a Vindicare Assassin.

Vindicares have always been quite "Marmite" as far as opinion goes, lacking the ability to cause horrendous damage and wipe out whole units by themselves they have tended to fall out of favor in the past, however in the new book, their access to the Turbo-Penetrator round with its 4D6 Armour Penetration has pushed them up into premier Tank Hunting territory, something i like a lot, as i remember how awesome i thought the old story about a Vindicare staking out an Ork Stompa and destroying it with one ridiculously well-placed shot was incredible.

I like the idea of him shooting through vision slits and so on, and also being able to take out Ork Power Klaw Nobz in big squads, stripping HQ's of Invulnerable saves and so on, he has a lot of potential, of course, he can be taken out in one shot, but one of my other army selections is a Techmarine, so i'm hoping a lot of the time i will have a ruin to hide in and benefit with a 2+ cover save from.

The model above is my work on him so far, he is getting close to completion, i've spent a lot of time building up the white highlights on his body glove to get a nice fluid effect and i am pretty happy with it at the moment!

I'm looking forward to getting some games in soon and seeing how he fares in a trial by fire!

Guardians of the Tomb..

The last couple of commission units i have done lately have all been for the same Tomb Kings army, first it started with a unit of 6 Carrion, and then 30 (what a long slog they were!) Tomb Guard, and now i have just finished 6 of the Necropolis Knights.

The interesting thing about this is that the gentleman that has commissioned me to paint all these units has provided exhaustive cue cards, detailing each colour and which stage it should be applied, at first i thought this would make the process easier, i but i found in the long run it made things a bit trickier.

When someone commissions you to paint models for them, you obviously have no problem with what colours you will paint the final product (unless perhaps they are requesting pink necrons!) but i found that having to paint certain colours using enforced techniques to be an interesting challenge, i've been painting for a good few years now and to not be able to use my full array of tricks was painful!

The models themselves are gorgeous, particularly the faces of the Snake-beasts themselves, they have a real otherworldly-ness about them that left me pondering whether i could convert them into Canoptic Wraiths or not (for future reference!)

They came out pretty well, and apparantly i have some Ushabti to paint next!

Grey Knights, New Army

For the past 4 Warhammer 40,000 tournaments i have attended (run by the awesome folks at Tolworth 1st Founding) i have taken my 'old guard' the Iron Lords Codex marines, every time i took them, i had painted at least 80% new models versus the time i had taken them before.

So i would basically swap out most of the army and usually keep dull things like Rhino APC's, painting up new models for the vast majority of the army, and out of the 4 tournaments i attended with them, i came away with the "Best painted army" trophy 3 times, something i am incredibly proud of.

The last time i went with them and won again really struck me as being their Swan song, i had a great time at the tournament, but i just wanted some new codex toys to play with, anyone familiar with the current tournament "scene" for 40k will know that Grey Knight armies are pretty common right now.

When the codex came out for them i wasn't too enamored with it straight away, despite being a huge Grey Knight fan and having already played a Grey Knight army back in the "Daemonhunters" codex that i absolutely loved.

As i walked around looking at the Grey Knight armies, they were pretty much all the same, 3 "Psiflemen" Dreadnoughts, Paladins, Draigo, yadda yadda.  There wasn't any character to them either (apart from one pretty cool golden army of Grey Knights, which i thought was pretty smart)  but the most shocking thing for me?  No dreadknights.

This didn't make sense to me, the models are amazing.  I love their rules as well and personally, i've never been a big fan of spamming anything in an army, i can't even bring myself to play more than 2 rhinos at a time, it's like a weird form of Army list OCD.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that i've decided to do a Grey Knight army in a white colour scheme, with gold helmets and a smattering of the "Half-Helm" style heads seen above throughout the army, the inspiration for the colour scheme comes from the "Imperial Rottweilers" from the ABC Warriors comic "Khronicles of Khaos".  It's thoroughly awesome, and if you haven't read it already i fully encourage you to check it out, Warhammer 40k borrows a lot of ideas from 2000AD era comics and the Imperial Rottweilers were 2000AD's little wink to acknowledge that they had helped inspire the Space Marines of 40k.

Anywho, I'll go into more detail about the list and so on in another post soon, but needless to say, i'm basing it around 2 Dreadknights,

They'll make it onto a gaming table if i have something to do with it.

Introducing...

Hello there!  Animatronica here!

I am a Gentleman from London, England and i have been wargaming and painting for the best part of 14 years, i try to attend at least one tournament per annum (usually for Warhammer 40k) and i have won a whole shelf full of trophies for my painting skills, which i am quite proud of.

More recently, i have begun painting commissioned models for friends, acquaintances and complete strangers, and this has come with its own unique challenges and benefits, many of which i would never have thought of before engaging in, as it is quite different to painting models for yourself,

I aim to use this blog as a platform to show off anything i might be working on, Commission work as well as personal, as well as musing on the subject of new releases, tournament visits and anything else wargame-related, hopefully it will prove to be useful and provide inspiration to other people like myself,  thankyou for reading!