Remember this old thing?

In a galaxy a long, long, bloody loooooong time ago I began construction on a Hovertank to use alongside my other Helsreach creation. Now, I could just say that I got distracted by something else and lost interest, but that'd be bullshit. The real reason I stopped working in on it was that I was beginning to feel a little daunted with all the airbrushing OSL work that I knew I'd be needing to carry out soonish. So, I just left it in it's 2/3 finished state for almost two years.....christ! I didn't realise that it was that long ago until I began writing this post just now.

Anyway, enough waffle from me. On with the show;

I know, I know.....the diorama doesn't suit it, but I ain't got no desert scenery yet ok!

Front door.

The front sidey bit.

The noisy end.

Disco lights in full swing. The inhabitants of Helsreach really know how to party :)

The shot from above, or something?

Control panel, with a poorly lit photo from me.

Look! It has a flip top lid too! For mini insertion......mmmmmm, insertion!

The ubiquitous teddy bear up front. Every heavy vehicle has to have one of these.

My "almost" successful OSL on the engines.

More of the same.

An arrow pointing to something important.....like a glowing thing that gets hot?

Oil leaks, good mechanics are hard to find on Helsreach.

More streaking mess along the sides of the hull. Roadworthy check? Fail!

The big arse boom stick & a shark maw. Nothing says "get outta mar fuckin way hombre" like a set of shark teeth. 

An oil pipe with yet another leak, a Heavy bolter and a cow herder on steroids up front.

Now comes the staged disco photo shoot. Kulo and a few of his gang were volunteered;

Nothing gets the boys more psyched prior to battle than havin a boogey on the Hovertank dance floor.

"Iz a liket up eer, Iz kan shoot a lot a umies!"

"Oi! wats dat out eer?"

"Iz kan see ya, but yooz karnt see me. Muhahaha"

Once the disco's over, the REAL fun begins.

The Hovertank and Co. on the lawn, in front of a fake brick wall. Really helps to set the scene now doesn't it :)

Ok, now some boring critiques from me. Hold on! Here goes;

I'm a bit annoyed with the weathering, again. I think I overdid it.....again! If I compare it to the the state it was in before I took to it with the oils, pigments and other paint stuff that I used, then I can see that I've covered up a lot of it's original colour. It turned out ok, just a tad too much on the aged look for my taste.

The OSL on the engines looks too flat as well. More time spent with the airbrush probably would have helped I think. I didn't lay enough coats down to make it "pop" enough. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

I was going to give this thing a name or put some personal graffiti on it, but I couldn't think of anything suitably corny or witty on both fronts, so in the end I just gave up and left it plain, bar a few transfers :)

The photo's are a bit crap too, coz it was too damn big to fit it my light box. I had to rely on my ceiling lights instead :( Sorry guys.


Wow! Quite a lot of whinging from me hey? But overall I'm pretty happy with the beast. I'm just a bit disappointed with how some of the elements turned out. It's still gunna be a lot of fun to use in game though. I foresee a lot of unfortunate individuals getting run down with it.


Actually, now that I think of it, can anyone think of a really cool, kick arse name for it? The winner will receive an overly enthusiastic -e pat on the back- from yours truly  :D

Cheers :)

An army.....never done this before.

I'm nearing the end of my quest to have all the minis required to run The Wolf Time campaign. I could have taken the easy way out and just used proxies, but it wouldn't be the same now would it :)

If you have a look back at when I started this madness you can see the list of minis that I wanted to have. Well, the Space Wolves component of this project have now been officially completed!


And here they all are, broken down into their respective units. Note: to differentiate the squads from each other I painted a coloured stripe down their helmets, so as to help me identify them on the tabletop a little easier. And as an added bonus (and more importantly)  it makes them look cooler :)


First up are the three Tac squads, yellow stripe;

Second, the two Dev squads, white stripe;

Lastly, the single Assault squad, white stripe with black banding;

Here are the individual squad Sergeants, with their respective squad markings on their legs. Coz it would have looked dumb if I painted the stripe down their faces :P

And here's a shot of the whole gang, chillin;

A close up of one of my favorite Sergeants, because I can :) 

Great for picking his nose it is!

Having a look back at my "to-do list" of the minis that I needed to play this campaign, there's quite a few that I can now scratch off:

15 Howlers aka tactical squad
10 Snarlers aka Devastator squad
5 Tearers aka Assault squad
5 Trackers aka jet cycle squad
6 Wolf Time characters
11 Ork Nobz. I originally thought I could get away with 5 but after I got some clarification on the Oldhammer forum I realised that I'd need more....ll actually, the last being for a character model.
1 Ork Character model Kulo
Couple of terrain pieces
Dungeon floor plans No#1
Dungeon rooms
Judge Dredd Citi-Block floor plans


So far , if I disregard The Wolf Time thing for a moment, painting up an army has been a whole new experience for me. Sure, I've collected enough minis to have an army.......probably a few times over if I'm honest. But I've never actually sat down, planned out a force and painted them to completion before. This project, thus far, has taken me a bloody long time though, almost from the end of March this year! How all the cool kids who bang out armies for modern 40K do it on a regular basis, while still maintaining a modicum of enjoyment in the process, I'll never know?

I'll be taking a little break from The Wolf Time for a short while. I wanna catch up on some of my unfinished projects first, namely my Hovertank & Siege Dreadnought :)


Anyway, thats it from me :)

May you all have a Merry Xmas and eat so much that you become violently unwell :P

The Wolf Time Characters.

Ok, the next batch of Marines is done. Here are "The Wolf Time" Space Marine characters. Shown in some kinda semblance of an order;

"Say cheeeeesssseeee pretend plastic warriors!"

Librarian Edrigar, on a mission to promote reading to the wider universe.

Durlan the Navigator, looking to the stars for directions, coz his lost, again!

The good Captain Inferno, enjoys waving both his weapons in the air...coz it scares the enemy but good!

Captain Greylock, he's good with kids and killing others......all at the same time!

Captain Storm, made sure ALL the tomatoes were well and truly diced!

Commander Enoch, unshaven, moody and loves to punch heads off shoulders.....he's not fussy, any will do.

I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out. They look unique and should be easily identifiable on the tabletop during play. Hopefully they last more than a couple of rounds, but as a general rule, most virgin minis don't last five seconds :)


Next in line for the miniature photo shoot will be the Space Wolf footsloggers.


So bye for now & stay frosty!

Bullock Jet Cycle unit complete.

Hi all,

I finally finished off the required unit of Bullocks for The Wolf Time campaign I'm hoping to run early next year. It's only a few months overdue.....that's normal :P

The sergeant (guy in the middle) was finished around mid September, but I dragged my arse finishing the rest of them off. Well, here they are now! Enjoy;

I mounted them in few different positions & heights (obviously) to hopefully break up the "same same" look of them a bit.

"Clearing the way" to his objective, smoking a cigar......what a cool dude!

I sort of envisioned this guy shooting from high up, raining death down upon his enemies.

This guys pose is a little boring....meh.

Zoom, zooma zoom zooooom!!!!

Looks a little like an advert this photo. Might have to work on my staging I think.

So, that's one squad down, only a whole lot more to go. But don't worry. I'm almost done with the rest of the crew. I've been batch painting, god I hate painting that way, but it seems that that's the only feasible way to paint up an army. Oh well :)


See you in the soup my fellow lead addicts,
Cheers.

Eldar, new & improved.

Very early on in the year I had begun converting up a few Space Eldar. They got shelved, because something else shinier & more alluring came along and distracted me. But recently, while I was making Kulo, I was struck with a sudden burst of enthusiasm to convert some minis again, must have had something to do with using the GS I think? Anyway, with what little confidence I had gained with pushing putty along the way, I decided to convert up the remaining Eldar, to complete my smallish Eldar pirate crew. Here they are;

"Come in Brian? Can you hear me Brian....over" " I'm right beside you Phil.....are ya fkn blind!!?"

As you've probably guessed, these two Eldar are the other two crew members from the heavy weapons teams. I bought these guys along with their pals eons ago, but not to use as they were intended. You see, I've always thought they looked pretty cool as stand alone minis. But these two (as opposed to the other two minis from the teams) couldn't really be used as straight forward combatants. Wielding their funky looking Artillery sights just doesn't fit....for me anyway. So, out with the saw & I "fixed" em but good!

Mini's in opposite positions to the original shot......stupid cameraman!

Right guy had his sight amputated & refitted after silly design choice.

A Heavy Bolter says to your enemy in no uncertain terms "I'm more than OK with collateral damage!"

Power fist made from an Old Glory robot arm part.

I tried using GS to add a bit of detail to the Power fist. I carved the integral cable off of the back on the guy on the
right because it wouldn't match up with the rear of the Heavy Bolter. I replaced it with copper wire.

Next victim candidate;

I feel like chicken tonight!

Mmmmmm, chicken!

This guy had nothing wrong with him, apart from wielding a shuriken catapult that I was a little bored with. So I set about replacing it with a portable BBQ instead. I want my Space Eldar to be a rag tag kinda bunch, so any non-standard issue Eldar weapon is ok by me.

It was a pretty straight forward conversion i.e. weapon swap with the barrel shortened and a guitar string for the feed tube. Followed by a bit of GS....job done.


Last butchered converted mini;

Standing is normal, prancing on the battlefield is not.....fact!

I think I'll paint the tanks up like glowing energy cells? So they don't look like what they are :P

Drilled the barrels, so you know he means business.

"I dare ya to come over here and say that!!"

This guy was already broken when I got hold of him....can't recall where that was from, doesn't matter. He was legless, really! Broken off at the ankles and missing his wings. After looking at the original position of this guys stance it appeared that he was supposed to be leaping or something, coz his feet mated up to his ankles so that he'd be on his tippy toes. Now I'm sorry, but that's not the way I like my pretend space warriors to enter the battlefield! *

I stuffed about with his feet, angling the toe tips down at a more normal position, and pinned the bastard into a "proper" pose on his base. Next was his back pack & cable.....just coz I think it looks good. I'm thinking this guys carrying a Las-cannon....three barrels have gotta mean that, right?


I've finished converting up all of the Eldar minis that I wanted to now. In total I've got eighteen of them, about six or seven of them converted. I've primed them, now they just need a lick of paint & the whole nasty crew will be one big happy family!

I is done runnded out of fings ta says.



* I think this guy was originally a Swooping Hawk Exarch?