Friday 30 March 2018

Batman Miniature Game

   This is another of those odd posts where I talk about models that have been painted for ages (a good 2-3 years in this case) but for some reason missed my blog first time round.
   The Batman Miniatures game is a game that I knew I was going to buy into the moment I saw the models, then the more I saw Michael Awdry mucking about with the game the more carried away I got. I suspect the models missed my blog as I was trying to do a full gang post for each side and it just slipped by when they were finally finished. From being finished, each model went into a foam case and that's where they lived while I tried to get some scenery finished.


   I had been reading the various Batman series' since the New 52 started coming out - it felt like a good jumping on point - focussing on Batman, Nightwing and Batgirl, so I knew what figures to pick up. The coolest Batman figure I could find, a Robin (Damien) and Nightwing as a replacement Batman, then some cops to get some extra bodies. Albert was free when I bought the rulebook.





   Then I needed a bad guy and Bane felt like a good opponent. When painting him and building his crew I wanted a colour scheme to unite them and allow me to reuse them into other crews if I expanded my collection, so I kept the scheme as one of two things; prison orange or black and urban camo.



   In the last week or so I have been trying to cull my collection and while talking about this game to one of my mates, it dawned on me that I had spent all the time and money on getting two crews together and yet I had never actually played it. So the two of us set about trying to fix that. 
   As it was our first game we kept the crew numbers small (3 a piece) and reputation low - named character and two generics to add bodies, then proceeded to blunder our way through the rules. The sides were: Nightwing and two cops (one had a taser) vs Bane and two prisoners (one had double handguns). While we definitely got rules wrong, especially in the first game, we picked up more of the nuances as we went on to the point I think we were pretty close to how the game is supposed to run.
   As this game was on the cull list (not having been played and being an easy list of models to shift) playing a game was designed to be the play or sell designator and I, have to say, I think the Batman Miniature Game has saved itself. While it won't see the table as often as some of my other games and I doubt I will be investing in many (if any) more figures for it, the game was really good fun and that was with minimal crews.



Thanks for reading

Tuesday 27 March 2018

From the darkness they came

   I have been playing in a Battlefleet Gothic campaign most Mondays for the last 5 or 6 months, using my Eldar fleet (which hasn't yet made it onto this blog) but some heavy losses early on and because of the way the campaign system adds ships to your fleet, I have been unable to expand my fleet back to a sensible size and be a good opponent (I would need to literally set up and fly off the board for 4-5 games in a row which isn't fair if you have made someone drive half hour to do that), so the decision was made that my craftworld had achieved whatever it had set out to do and had vanished back into the darkness of space.
   This left me without a fleet in the campaign. The other three fleets are Orks, Tyranids and Imperial Navy, which left me playing with either my unpainted Chaos or my Space Marines. So to get me painting, I chose my Chaos fleet.

   In the novels Chaos fleets are always described completely differently to their Imperial counterparts. The Navy is described as a well oiled (if overstretched), disciplined force comprised of ships of similar designs and in a uniformed colour, Chaos on the other hand are described as a riot of colours, with next to no discipline and always on the verge of self imploding. Each ship is controlled by it's own warlord with it's own warband, uniting either for a common cause or out of fear of a more powerful warlord, so this is what I wanted to do with my fleet.


   The fleet has been bought in my normal style (for BFG fleets), which is the odd ship or two whenever they are well below the normal asking price. This has meant that I have had little choice in which ships I have picked up and I have had to drill new flying base holes in nearly all of them.
   In conjunction with buying the ships slowly I have also been painting them slowly, whenever the inspiration struck - which I will go over on each ship below.

My Nurgle ship - Cradle of Corruption - was converted and painted when the 8th edition of Warhammer 40k was released. Seeing the Deathguard colour scheme in the starter box gave me an idea, so I hunted down the painting video on the GW website and converted a ship to fit. The conversion was pretty simple, I swapped a couple of the guns out for missile launcher looking parts (that I got in a mixed pack on eBay) and cut some OO railway 'apples' in half and stuck on to simulate boils. 

A few 40k novels describe some chaos ships as being so corrupted they aren't even the domain of a warlord and his warband, while not being true daemon ships. These ships attack from nowhere filling all vox channels with their name screamed over and over to break the resolve of their target. This one is named on their theme - Kill! Maim! - and I have painted it with a rusted metal look (I don't see it going to the dry docks that often) but kept a bit on the colour on the prow to make it look less like I haven't finished it. 

 My first battleship is a Sons of Horus ship - Malign Eye - by the time of 40k all SoH warbands have been rolled into the Black Legion (Abbadon has been quite forceful in this) but I was mid way through my 30k SoH and was enjoying the colour scheme, so I did it anyway. The only conversion was a brass eye of Horus on the prow.

My Emperor's Children cruiser - The Favourite Son - is my most recent conversion. Again, a weapon swap to change the profile and some Dark Angel head wings on the bridge seemed to do the job.

The Nightlord's ship - The Last Breath - was my first conversion while reading The Red Tithe (which features one in the novel). As it was my first conversion I kept it simple, a small skull filled to fit the prow and wings taken from a Nightlord helmet to fit the theme.

The Word Bearer's themed ship - Divine Truth - was my way of breaking out of the constant stream of bronze/gold details on the ships. No conversion but I enjoyed painting it.

The bulk of my fleet is made of a single warband (the colours of my chaos army in 40k) with the ships - Dawn of Khaz'dul, Crimson Glory, The Cloven Hoof and The Black Gate. Again, no conversion work and simple colour schemes but they help unite my fleet a bit more.
 
   Sadly, this fleet isn't doing a whole lot better than my Eldar did in the campaign as I am so far behind now but it has been a good bit of motivation to get paint on ships, however, there are still ships to go!

Thanks for reading

Sunday 18 March 2018

Old and new

   A mix of bits in this post but it has been one of those sorts of weeks, so I am going to start on the model that at least ties into one of my projects. So first up is a Castallax Robot for my Sons of Horus / Mechanicum army and will either work as the bodyguard of the forgelord or the start of a unit in a full army. It is another case of a model I really liked the look of, so have shoe horned it into my project, rather than being a useful model as it is.


   Next is harder to explain, they are Snappers from Krakon Games and from a kickstarter they ran a while back. I'm not 100% sure what I plan to do with them* but they will probably be mixed into the scenery bases in sci-fi or fantasy games and used as the local fauna.
*or the other models I picked up. . .


   Last up is a Games Workshop Keeper of Secrets, Slaaneshi greater daemon. When I first started in the hobby 40k was the only game I played for a good few years and, while Eldar were my first army, the Chaos army that replaced them became the army that have seen more game time than anything else I have collected before or since and saw the most love in terms of conversion and painting. It even holds the title of the only army I have played with at Warhammer World.
   The bulk of the army is long gone, not having survived the wear and tear of being stored badly, tied in with multiple moves but the key characters have been kept for pure nostalgia and I have a vague plan of making a modern copy of the army. This greater daemon is the first such example and, as you can see from the second photo, I'm not worried about keeping the colour scheme or basing style the same as the army will be completely redone.



New vs Old

   I don't tend to do battle reports on this blog and I'm not breaking that habit now but I'm including some photos from my first game of 30k. It was 1500 points of my Sons of Horus and 1500 points of another guy's Iron Hands vs a 3000 point Space Wolves army owned by Keith from the Legion of Lies podcast fame*.
   I've only put a few photos up as I got carried away playing the game, but Keith's flyers were too nice not to share, although, my phone hasn't done them the justice they deserve**.
*So not 'historical'
** I really need a Xiphon fighter now





Thanks for reading

Thursday 8 March 2018

Later than planned

  As alluded to in passing last post, I lost my job at the start of last week. Because of this I put some quick posts up as I expected to be doing a post every other day, if not more often, but this hasn't happened as I thought it would - it turns out being unemployed is busier than I anticipated. However, that doesn't mean to say my paint brushes have been idle.
   I went into this year with loads of plans for finishing projects but having a 30k project as a side note, yet here I am 2 months in an it is still my main (if not only) focus. I have my first game lined up for next weekend and a ticket booked for a tournament in June (more guaranteed games), so this year looks pretty 30k dominated already.

   The models I have painted are not part of any list I have written but, again, are just models that I love the look of and hope will turn out to be useful.
   First are a squad of Mechanicus Thallax. One of my favourite books in the Heresy series is the Last Heretic, one of the things that really stuck with me were the members of Carthage Maniple, 4 robots and their controller attached to the Word Bearers, so intermingled that one of the robots is even an honourary Word Bearer and is called 'brother' by the marines. They are cybernetic robots having a human brain and spinal cortex hidden inside their machinery to do the thinking for them as the Imperium of Man doesn't trust the idea of AI, which gives them the grim dark element integral to Warhammer.
   At the moment these are going to be part of my Sons of Horus army - I can have a single unit with a Forgelord - but might in the future become the basis of an allied detachment or maybe an army in their own right. I kept the colour scheme simple and complimentary to my SoH so they don't stand out too much from the marines.

sons of horus mechanicum thallax colours

   Next up is a Sons of Horus Predator, two photos of the same tank rather than two tanks after a mess up with the casting of one of the side panels left me in a position where I had an extra turret and side sponsons - these now have magnets in them to allow me to swap easily.
   Both weapon combinations that the tank is sporting are about as sub par as I think you can go but the idea of a tank with nothing but flamers holds a certain appeal and a plasma tank is something I will rarely turn down the chance to use, so I see a bright future for this tank in my lists.


sons of horus predator excecutioner colour scheme

Thanks for reading