May Hobby Wrap Up

No games this month - too busy travelling with work, but I did get some painting in between trips on some 40k projects.

First up is Bayard's Revenge, a special Emperor's Champion figure that Reilly kindly gave me for Christmas, depicting a scene from the Black Templar novel "Helsreach".  I played with this over a week and really enjoyed this project.  

I tied a few NMM approaches with the sword, and ended up going with it being true to its name "The Black Sword"...  I did enjoy lavishing attention on the armour to make it look beaten up and scarred without compromised.

And here's how I imagine the last stand of Brother Bayard is depicted in the Halls of Heroes aboard the Battlebarge Eternal Crusader (filters from the 'Snapseed' app)

I also did a Death Guard Kill team, using the lighter colours of the Weeping Legion so that the darker filth and yuck would contrast against it. I used oil washes to darken down the basecoats and overall it worked out well.  

I added rusty things from the bitz box to help the basing come to life amongst the puddles of Nurgle's Rot.

Thats all for now - happy hobbying!

Orktober: The Durty Duzen

Celebrating Orktober with my first ever 40k Ork skwad! These are my Durty Duzen: the Kommandos from the new Kill Team boxed set.  I put a bit of love into them over the past month and am rather stoked with how they finished up overall.

Fantastic figs these - wonderfully characterful. Kommandos are know to use Camo so I used a whole range of different, real-world schemes on them. Fun (though time consuming) to research and experiment.  I also used lots of purple on them to show their 'Sneeky Kunnin' (have you ever seen a Purple Ork? :-)

Introducin' da boyz of the Durty Duzen:

A Boss and 'is Bomb Squig

Kommando Boy, Breacha Boy, and Dakka Boy (love his WW2 Commando look)

Kommando Boy, Snipa Boy and Burna Boy

Slaha Boy, Kommando Grot, and Rokkit Boy

Dakka Boy and Comms Boy

Stormin' Normin' Krumpkopf, veteran Kommando Nob

Ork flesh was done in desaturated tones: Black Undercoat- Base Coat Loren Forest - 2nd Base (on muscles) Elysian Green - Highlight Ogryn Camon (applied in a glaze style). 

Basing was Armageddon Dunes technical, Sepia wash, drybrush with Zandri dust, then Vallejo Afrika Tank Crew, superhighlight with Wraithbone on stones only.

Can't wait to get these boyz into action against Reilly's Krieg, which he is painting up now.

September Hobby Roundup

Well lockdown continued throughout the month so all hobby time was spent at the workbench.  

I've been working hard on my Kill team starter box. The terrain is all done and the Ork Kommandos are being lavished with attention. 

Named The Durty Duzen, these are the first 40k Orks I have done and I've lavished attention on these lovely sculpts. I'm having trouble getting my basing material at the moment, so while the models are done, the bases aren't. 

I'll reveal them when they are finished but here is a WIP shot for now.  In the meantime the Krieg were posted off to Reilly in Sydney so we will be good to go when we next get together.

Separately, Alan and I have split another Caesarian Army box between us for our Civil Wars project.  So I've got another 5 units of Legionaries in the pipeline now - Pullo and Vorenus are keeping me company while I work through them :-)

I may also have recently grabbed a small ebay lot of 50 odd Foundry Early Imperial Romans - they always come in handy and who can choose just one period of Romans right?... 

Only 2 months until I pack up the Man Cave (again!) and move back to Sydney.

June Hobby Round up

June saw my terrain painting focus continue, though we did play a variety of games along the way.

Really visually exciting was this great 40k Necrons v AdMech thowdown with my mate Patch and his 10 year old apprentice Commanders. This was the christening of the big urban battle terrain tiles and I was really pleased with how it all came out, with the colours in both lovely armies really popping on the light and desaturated tiles.

Also played a big game of General d'Armee at club buddy John's house, in which I commanded a wonderful looking French Division and marched it to its spectacular doom while assaulting an allied British and Spanish defensive line

Along the way Reilly did some work on our old Tyranid Army, adding a few more units to the Swarm and pitting them again a few of his University mates.

I also introduced two new gamers to our gaming group and have been playing soem games with them. Markus has a lovely Deathwatch Kill Team and we hav played 2 and 3 playr games of that recently which was fun.

This was the Necron that just wouldn't die - he soaked up 4 flesh wounds and kept repairing the damage! Reilly painted a honour mark on his after the battle

These are my Space Hulk terminators, most decades old. The Blood Angels on the left are from the original metal box release that I got in my University days

Comrade James and I unearthed our classic Terminators and threw down for a few Space Hulk missions. We tried to dial in Reilly (in Sydney COVID lockdown)  to command the Genestealers but we need to work on the tech to enable that better

I also help my mate Gavin start to base his Ancient. Now Gav never does anything by halves, so I'm talking about 500 Spartans, 500 Athenians plus some Cavalry and skirmishers. He is using 32 figure units on 2 bases, and all the figures are painted so we had to work out a way of basing that looks good, is storable, and is easily repeatable.  We potted about for a few hours and settled on this process:

This is the completed test unit on the table and looking the business, arrayed for battle. Gavin has now industrialised the process and I cant wait to see them all finished! He is now muttering about adding another few hundred Thebans to the mx...

And finally, I have been running some demo games of Blood Bowl so we can get a small League running in July. Cant wait!

May Hobby Round up

Another month has flashed past in a blur. Other than the big battle Black Powder in the last post, I have been playing bit of Kill Team with the Lad and his WIP Emperor's Children force. Losses ensued but some were mere narrow defeats!

Hobby wise I have been in a terrain kind if place of late. In fact I have painted not one but two of the old crashed Aquila Lander sets from the Battle of Macragge boxed set (2004 I think?). One was for me, another for a mate - inevitably I liked the colours I used on his more :-)

Bargain wise, I found this GW Superheavy Tank in a car boot sale. Pretty cheap at first blush, but probably will cost me the rest of the army to wrap around it...

Cheers!