Slow day + Sentinels

The wet weather has kept me from getting any priming done on the sentinels, but I did manage to get one done (following about an hours worth of deep scrubbing) At this point I have been rotating my mass of sentinels in and out of the simple green bucket to keep the assembly line moving.

As promised, here's more glamor shots of those awesome technicals in action. I love the mix of rust and rot mixes, it adds just the right amount of crud to a model on the metal bits, I love the weathered look this combo creates.

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Head Baker

P.S.
It turns out the remote for my DVR was not broken but simply;y needed new batteries, not sure how this relates to 40k, other then it reduces the amount of transit time between working on models, and changing the channel, but for everyone out there who's still in my situation. Don't give up hope, there's a good chance salvation is waiting crammed at the bottom of a freezer drawer.

Breaking! New IG Release dates.

Update: It looks like 'Orders' cards will be coming out around the same time as well.

I have gotten my hands on a few small tidbits on what the release schedule for IG might look like for the next couple of weeks, take with a grain of salt as always, but since we are basically at the release stage I don't see why GW would change things.

-Plastic Hydra April 12-14
-Cadian Armored fist (tank squad) April 12-14
-IG Codex (Astra Militarum) April 12-14

So it looks like the next two weeks are going to be back to back guard, I think there is a novel launching along with the regular kit and codex, but I don't have any details on that.

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Evil Twin

GW Technicals

I shot out a quick blast on the Facebook group about this stuff, but I really cant state how much I love GW's new'ish technical line of paints and washes. Most of these are geared towards insta grunge.

Fact:
I Love grunge


Having access to instant grunge effect is perfect for me, I can safely say I am now addicted, I did up a quick objective piece/demo when I was over at Legends today for their escalation league night, so dirty and corroded, the cracked earth stuff is also brilliant if not a little fragile.

 

 

I cant wait to play around with these a more in the coming weeks, 'D' still has a ton of tanks for me to paint up, so expect a lot more "distressed" metal in the coming weeks. Oh one more thing before I punch out. Nothing big, just cranked out two more chimeras for D's IG and yes I am aware of the two bolters (don't look at me I am just a painter) it came to me in that odd  configuration.

 

 

 

Special shout out to Chuck who just got back from Mecca (England)

 

 

-Scott

BH Senior Coat Fluffer

 

A knight in off-white armor

Image credit Bell of Lost Souls

 

 

It would appear that Forgeworld has gone and made the decision of weather or not to convert my plastic Knight to one of the new FW kits when they eventually come out by producing their own made entirely of resin(at least I think that body is pure resin) I can't say enough how much I (and everyone and their mother) love Forgeworld pieces, they are like the JW Blue label of the hobby. The lancer of course is no exception, I love that they added interior details (I have to assume since no top down shots were give, but it dose have a hatch) One thing I will say is that I am not 100% sold on that shield, yeah I get it, energy fields and such, but it looks a tad flimsy when paired with the venerable bulk of the Knights frame.

 

 

BoLS also has more pics of some of the other up an coming stuff from FW, mostly SM and Mechanicum (neither of which are on my Trello atm) I will say those staypuff terminators have my eye though. Check out the rest of the photos from the original post here

A bad knightmere

 

For no other reason than I simply like sentinels, I have amassed enough to field an entire auxiliary force of nothing but imperial walkers. Thanks to a trade I made with 'D' for painting his guard, I am now the proud owner of about 20x sentinels. As of this writing they are about to go into their perquisite simple green bath for the night.

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Hornswoggle Dance Commander Jr. Senior Editor

Hobby Progress

Thursday night saw the culmination of a two week grind at the painting table, and I can say that Guard army number four is in the bag. To be clear, I took this project over a year ago when D was trying out some new combo's with guard in 6th, and he had a lot of sentinels that I wanted for my all sentinel list (more about that later) so I agreed to do some work for trade. Leaving out most of the details, a few things happened in the intervening period that kept me from completing the project in its original time frame (new job, buying a house, moving to said house) With the new codex coming out, and the threat of being crushed under a wave of guilt every time I went into the garage I finally managed to buckle down and crank out a decent sized Zone Mortalis force. You can see the fruits of my labor below.

223rd Infantry Regiment "The Inheritors"

The Grunts

 Command Squad

They call him 'La Sombra'

I wanted to give the army a very 'used' look, the whole theme I had in my head while I was painting these guys was "what do the regiments made up of all the leftovers look like?" While I don't think I fully captured the concept, I did manage to incorporate some fun little elements to various models that help them stand out from some of the rank and file.

Up next are vehicles, which I hope to start on this weekend, so expect updates on that front in the near future.

Comments questions and fan mail are always welcome.

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Editing Zombie

Back where I started

Back in 2009 I decided that I wanted to get back in to 40k, and shortly after started this blog. Going back through the archives I noticed an odd coincidence, my major blog updates always seem to happen just before a new codex release, in this case its the new 'Astra Militarum' let's just call it the new guard codex. The reason I find this both a coincidence, and slightly odd is that on both occasions I was completely oblivious to anything 40k related news wise, so when I look back and find that my second post on the blog was about the coming of the new guard codex, I thought it was only fitting that I follow up my return post with more of the same.

Before I really dig into this one, yes I am aware that's a pic from the "scions" book, its a pre release post, didn't feel like going through the mountain of leaked posts on BolS to dig up the astra book cover. More to the point in perfectly illustrates my mixed feelings about the new guard. At first blush and assuming that the( leaked stat line is correct it really feels like scions are basically SM scouts but take up a whole FoC  (4 up armor save not withstanding) I don't really want to get to bogged down in the 'this and that's' of stats, what I really care bout is why GW chose to go a very different route with this new design. The phrase 'like rogue trader' seems to be popping up quite frequently, and after the recent retcon on the chaos books, and the rise of 30k I can say that I am not all to surprised that GW's design style seems to be going back to the primitive. This doesn't mean that the models are necessarily bad, far from it actually, the new sculpts and models that I have seen so far look incredibly detailed, but are they 40k? Without actually having the models in my hands and based off of what I have seen with scions and ogryn I would have to say no. Again this is not a negative slant on the new models, I see a lot of potential in some of the new kits, but it feels decidedly not grim dark. The new Scion stuff looks decidedly cleaner, newer, and I would dare say a bit on the cartoon'ish side as is the case with the new Ogryn (to be fair they have always had that kind of disjointed caricature quality to them) this new batch from Nottingham looks to be based on a more classic design language then the newer 2000's kits.

 

I was quite keen to use this guy in an example, good sculpt, defined features, loads of detail, totally confusing design wise. To expand on that a bit further. Games Workshop has done a good job of reinforcing its visual tropes in 40k, smooth and articulated means elder, rounded plates and hard clean edges mean marines, garbage pile covered in corrugated roofing material means orks. To me baroque interlocking gothic plates has always = chaos, granted this guy is supposedly a special character but again I am not sure this kind of styling syncs up with my idea of how units in the army should look. That being said, I can see a lot of new players (read: younger players) getting more into this style.

 

 



 

 

Don't ask me why, but the new Scion's kit reminds me a lot of some of the Empire kits from fantasy(greatswords pictured above) Those rounded chest plates with the gothic metalwork just smack of fantasy, and I think that's what chafes me a bit about the design, everything else about them is spot on, the heads, the legs and arms, they all sync up and flow, but I look at those torsos and it becomes a 'you got your peanut butter in my chocolate' scenario. There's not to clear a distinction there either though, because they throw in a bit of scifi to liven it up, but at the end of the day it all just seems a bit forced rather than organic, I foresee a lot of kit bashing and jewelers files in this sets future.

 

What about the Taurox?

Indeed what about the Ork battle wagon with all treads and a Russ turret that they are trying to sell me as a 'new' kit.

 

There's still a few questions on the table that have yet to be answered, but I think a lot of those will get cleared up after tomorrows White Dwarf release. The big one for me is what's happening with the basic Cadian's, are we getting new sprues, veteran upgrades, new battle box's? Just IG in general is still a bit of a mystery, there have been practically no rules leaked on the meat and potatoes of the Imperium of man, so color me curious as to what GW has in store for the grunt wall. With GW's latest barrage of supplements and data slates, its not to hard to imagine all of our favorite fluffy forces like Catachans and Vostroyans or Steel Legion getting their own mini dex's in the near future.

 

As I just finished painting my fourth imperial guard army, I can say I am sufficiently pumped for next weeks release. While I don't know if I am really into the new storm troopers I think that the new dex will no doubt be full of updates and goodies for us to all pour over for the next couple of weeks.

 

See you on the battlefield

 

-Scott

BH Senior Editor

 



Brushing Up

Skip down to the bottom if you don't like wordy intros.

Things have been hectic over the last couple of years, not to say that I haven't had plenty of opportunities to get some hobby tome in, I have had plenty of side projects on the back burner (D's Guard, my eldar) The release of 6th edition really took a lot of the wind out my sails in terms of motivation to actually sit down and play/paint, but as with all addictions, eventually you have to re-lapse after some traumatic event pushes you off the wagon. The release of the Eldar codex/Iyanden was what started the slow burning fuse this time, the second was the guilty feeling I got when ever I looked at my painting station, lonely and buried under a year and a halves worth of clutter that had accumulated around it. After clearing everything out a week ago and checking BoLS revealed that there was a new guard codex in the wings. What followed was a "if you give a mouse a cookie" series of events that eventually lead to my return, if in a somewhat limited capacity.

The kick things off I started reading into a lot of the new guard rumors, this got me to wanting to finish up D's guard regiment that I started on over a year ago to trade for a massive collection of sentinels (doing a whole list of pure sentinels) I am just now finishing up his infantry squads, so soon I will have a large amount of walkers to strip/build, I have also liquidated my Space Marines in a trade for a new knight titan and some other goodies. Needless to say there will be plenty of 40k in my future going forward.

Circling back to point zero, this means that yes I have worked up a bit of motivation to blog again. What this does not mean is that I will not be doing so with as much zest and zeal as I once had. I started this blog with the idea that I was going to be the spark that ignited the west coast 40k scene, and while that didn't quite happen, I am happy to say that there have been many other individuals who were there to pick up the torch. Over the years I got to meet so many great people who shared a passion for the hobby, and I got to see a community grow from next to nothing due to the support of some of those great people who were there when life forced me to move on to other things. The guys over at Legends have really blown me away with everything they have been really growing the group over there, Chuck who I met not to long ago is a fantastic artist and event planner who's work continues to blow me away. I have to give a big shout out to Carl and the whole Independent Characters cast for really doing an awesome job of representing the west coats wargaming scene (there are others, but I really have to hand it to the IC guys for putting on one of the most professional programs in this region) To all of you and everyone else how contributes to the community Yu have earned my eternal respect.

Now that I have finished with my award acceptance speech, let's put a bow on things shall we. Yes I am going to start posting again, but the format will be a little more intimate, less strategic, more casual updates and musings, you will see me pop up elsewhere, the shop, various podcasts ect, but for the most part I am going to start treating this more like a journal than a news platform like I used to.

This may be the start of something new, it might not be, but I am tired of it not being anything at all.

Cheers

-Scott