Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Well, here I am nicely settled with my family, a couple of pre-christmas drinks and relaxing well into the holiday. I just want to wish you all the most Happy Christmas and a very lovely New Year.

I'll be returning very early in the new year with lots of new pics of my progress.

See you in the new year.

bG

Squad 1 complete

Here they are, very quick to paint, nice and easy, and the colour scheme is pretty close to the films:

The fatigues are codex grey, the armour is adeptus battle grey, weapons etc are black, everything gets a good dry brush with fortress grey and the insignia get painted with it, washed with badab black, flesh then gets a quick coat before being washed with ogryn flesh.
Thats it, painted up, bases will be earth colours drybrushed up to bone to give it that sandy/dusty look of the bug planets.

The painting probably only took me a couple of hours for the entire squad (the trouble was finding that time) so I think I can bash out a decent sized force of meat for the grinder in little time when I get the opportunity. These guys may be shelved temporarily for a bit as I'm going to concentrate on the wolves for a month or two with all the lovely new releases :D

C&C welcomed. Cheers, bG

Getting married

So I had some plans for the models, but thats pretty unlikely.  They were meant to go in this post but that won't happen now, I'm getting married on Saturday and the in laws turn up tomorrow.

I'll see you all on the other side of married life!

cheers, bG

Provisional army outline

I've been thinking a little about how I'd put together my guard army to represent elements of the Starship Troopers mobile infantry. Things like including lots of auto-cannons, grenade launchers etc. I've also looked through the special characters in the guard codex to see which ones seem to fit somewhat either fluff-wise or effect on the game.
From this, I've sketched out the below list:

HQ: - 235pts
- Straken (Raszcek), Medipak, vox, standard, flamer, krak grenades
- Astropath (Carl Jenkins)

Elite: - 65pts
- Marbo (Dax - ST2)

Fast: - 290pts
- Valkyrie (Lander for the vet squad) - lascannon and multi-rockets
- 2 x Armoured Sentinel (marauder battle suits - ST3) - lascannon, missile-launcher, smoke

Troops: - 451pts
- Vet Squad (Roughnecks) - Bastonne (Rico), vox, 3 x grenade launcher, demolitions doctrine (represents Rico riding the flame bug)
- Platoon Command squad: bolt pistol, melta bomb, powerfist, medipak, vox, lascannon
- 2 x Infantry squad, bolt pistol, vox, grenade launcher, autocannon, krak grenades

Army total - 1041pts

Its just a start but I'm going to work towards it and see where I go from there. Should only need a cadian battleforce, extra command group and a valkyrie and I'll be close to having everything in this list.

Other possible character drop ins to consider are:

Officer of the Fleet: Carmen (Electra)
Chenkov: Sergeant Zim (from the training camp)
Harker: ?
Master of Ordinance: ?
Pask: ?
Commissars: ?

Guard landing craft

So, it seems I may have struck a nerve with a few on my army idea, I've had a lot of positive comments, advice and support since beginning this blog only a week or so ago.  Possibley the best has been from Darkmolerman who seems to have taken the idea I've had for a Valkyrie conversion in the theme of Starship Troopers and gone ahead and shown just how it should look and could be done.  Below are the pics he sent to me, they're great:

What can I say, pretty much in one.  I'm going to keep it closer to the valkyrie, it'll be a bit more like the small lander that extracts the troops from the Whisky base on P. 

Huge kudos to Darkmolerman for the work and encapsulating ideas in my head far better than I ever could.

Additionally, after receiving this, I had a quick look online myself and found a couple of nice little sights I want to remember and will probably be visiting many times in the future, Starship Modeler, and this image of the smaller lander.

SPACE HULK!

Just went into the local FLGS and their copy of Space Hulk was there, what can I say

OH MY GOD! AMAZING!

Seriously, this kit is something special (sorry, I won't put up pics, I don't want to do anything that might jeapordise the status of the local).

The level of detail on the models is far, far beyond anything I've seen before. The terminators are in 2-4 pieces each, the posing is very dynamic, and the details are beutiful. There is one crouching down, ripping up the floor, one checking out a sensor that is built into his power fist, so much detail on all the models, there's even a drop of blood dripping from one of the termies power fists. The assault cannon terminator has little disc shields in front of each shoulder just like medieval age suits of armour, protecting the joints.
There's even more details in there, so many I just can't remember them all.

The stealers - wonderful and very, very spikey. I managed to catch myself on claws, teeth and bits of carapace all over the place. The broodlord is very big, and looks lovely, although not too different from a regular stealer, just a lot bigger (I thought it would be better to make him a bit more "special"). There are many lovely poses for the regular stealers as well.

Objectives: The seated temie looks lovely and will make a brilliant objective marker for any system. Theres even a little bomb disposal robot type of thing with a shrine and servo-skull atop it.

The board pieces are really good. They are made of that type of cardboard that is so many pieces of paper squished together it is almost wood. And there is even some texture to the board, with the separation between floor tiles etched into the card. Lots of iconography everywhere, bits of tyranid growths somewhat like in the movie Aliens, and door wise there's even one with Tau iconography on there.

The rules, from a brief read, seem to be about the same as the original versions, although they have incorporated a lot of the rules from the older expansions into the current rule set - imagine all the old rules combined and streamlined. Things like overwatch, facing and ammo limits, jams and psi are all there.


This Game is going to be so very good, I can't recommend it to anyone enough, I have one on order. I'm still struggling to find ways to express how good this is. Seriously, get yourself involved in this while you can.

GWs mystery box

It appears my local GW is doing an opening and build of whatever the new mystery box is at 12 today. Check back around 2 for pictures and description as I've got my camera with me today.

UPDATE: It appears there was a mis-communication, the box comes in sometime this week, not today, so there was only pre-orders today. I'm down for one box of Space Hulk - yay!

New meat for the grinder

I've managed to talk myself into buying a squad to test out how they are going to look. I got a cadian boxset and timed how long it took me to remove the skirt bit on the legs. About an hour for the 10 guys which is acceptable to me as I'm petty fastidious about remove mould lines anyway so its not a big increase in the time it takes me to build.

You can see them above, I've got about 4 1/2 assembled (they're going to be a vet squad as I can't face putting together enough guys to make platoons. They're looking OK even if I am saying it myself, I'll try and finish them off tomorrow if I get some time at games night and then it'll be a test of how quick they paint up. If I can get quick, I'll be ordering an army box set or two to build up the force pretty soon.

Edit: Close-ups of a few of the troops as requested by Drax

Would you like to know more?

I've had this thought rattling around in my head for a while now, Guards painted up (and perhaps mildly converted) to resemble the Mobile Infantry (MI) from Starship Troopers.  Not the most original of ideas I'm sure, but I just love those films, and after watching one while painting, then getting tonked by a guard army at the following gaming session I just can't resist it.

I think I'll start off with a smallish elites force of guard, Raszcek's Roughnecks, and then expand into the 3rd MI division in keeping with the film.  It'll probably be a mostly un-mechanised army although that'll change given time I'm sure, and I've got ideas for some light conversions to be done to Valkyries to make them resemble the landers from the films. 

I may also throw together a small "bug" themed Nid list as a counterpoint as I've got a bit of a hankering to do something non-human and fleshy to get away from all the mechanism of my armies.

Progress on here won't be all that fast as I'm sure my wolves over at iron-legions will stay at the top of my priorities list, especially with their upcoming codex, but there'll be the odd bits here and there on here.