A duo of games this weekend...

Morning all, hope you're making the most of this amazing weather we're having right now?

 

Last weekend I went to visit some friends and ended up having a go at two new games. I say 'having a go', the first we didn't really play with the actual rules, more kinda made them up so the kids could join in. The second...well by then we'd drunk a little too much sloe gin and it was getting way past our bed times...

Walkerloo

The first was Walkerloo, by Christopher Walker. I've never seen a game like this, at least not in the 21st Century. Large scale card 'miniatures' representing the armies from Waterloo.

 

 

You need a big space for this one, the miniatures are huge!

 

Christopher says this about his game:

"Toys are a great way of getting children interested in history, able to spark interest and imagination. Playing and arranging my soldiers brings up all kinds of questions - who are they? why those crazy cloths? why were they fighting in the first place? Historical toys provide a way to find out about war, one of humanity's most calamitous creations."

 All of the kids loved playing with these, with age ranges between 18 months and 9 years (plus the two dads who are clearly a little older). I think it's just the facts that the miniatures are colourful, tactile and already painted, so good to go straight out of the box.

I lost the game but I did get the impression that the kids were making the rules up as they went along... What do you mean getting a negative modifier to hit AND wound isn't fair when the person is in cover? Hitting and wounding on 6's... I imagine Sharpe's Rifles can do better than that but hey, you're a kid so I won't hold a grudge... honest... #notbitter

I love the artwork on the cards, clearly a lot of time, effort and love has gone into creating this game. Go and check out the website as there is clearly a lot of passion on display: www.walkerloo.com

 

Zombicide

Zombicide is one of those games I've always wanted to play but by the time we got the box open and set the board up we were falling asleep.

The game itself reminded me a lot of the Ghostbusters board game I recently played in terms of style and game play. The game set is fantastic though, the miniatures are detailed and the card is good quality.

Hopefully we'll actually get a game of this next time... :-)

Lastly I just want to apologise for the lack of updates. At the moment I'm really struggling to find hobby time after starting a new job fairly recently. Still, I have the 40k Grand Tournament to aim for in July so I need to get some paint down on those Dark Angels I've been sticking together. Plus I still have one entry to paint for Golden Demon in May... fingers crossed...

Have a great weekend!!

Dave

theerrantwolf.blogspot.co.uk - a blog dedicated to The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k - Get in touch on Twitter: @errantwolfdave or Instagram.com/errantwolfdave/

Deathwing Project... how did this happen?!

It all started when I saw an awesome conversion on Instagram, as it so often does...

I thought to myself, "I wouldn't mind a small Deathwing squad to support my Dark Angels....", but I was meant to be doing an Irronwing tank army...

This is what I started with....

I don't want to spend loads of money on hobby this year, I've got other priorities, so I looked at what I already had in the boxes and found 10 build and undercoated Space Wolves terminators, plus 5 unbuilt Cataphractii that I'd traded with my mate Rich for some Custodes out of the Burning of Prospero boxed game. I then traded for 5 more Terminators from my mate Steve and eventually caved and brought a squad of Deathwing so that I could complete the conversion I'd seen... and voila, all of a sudden I have 25 Deathwing Terminators and only spent £35...

This is what I've been doing...

I saw a great conversion on the internet where people have married up the Deathwing kit with the Cataphractii kit, and I wanted to do the same. I wanted to use the back of the Cataphractii body so that it was in-keeping with the other terminators (and so that I could use the alternative terminator bodies to build another squad from the box), so set about putting these together.

You can see that there was a bit of a gap, but if you stick it into position with a drop of superglue and blob of green stuff, you can then come back and fill the gap later. Once the huge arms are in place you won't see this area anyway.

The other thing to be aware of is the socket joint inside the torso, the levels of the joint between front and back piece vary with each kit, so a little bit of work will be required to get these sitting level. I would have done this before I stuck them together if I'd realised.

I also put this guy together, again from an awesome conversion I saw online (check my Instagram for credits). I took the Warhammer World exclusive Praetor mini and added a sword, cloak and storm bolter from the Deathwing box, with a Forge World Dark Angels head for good measure!

This is where I am at now....

 So here I am, I've stuck all 25 together, plus the Master and a Watcher in the Dark. I do want to get another 3 or 4 watchers for the Armies on Parade board, but I have a bit of time to do that yet.

I'm really pleased with how the Deathwing-Cataphractii mash up has turned out too.

The plan is to get them finished, along with the rest of my Dark Angels army, in time for the Grand Tournament in July this year. Some or all of the units in this project will form my Armies on Parade entry this year also. Originally I was aiming for 'Ironwing' but it might be a combination of Ironwing and Deathwing now...

Don't you just hate it when a 'small and simple' project grows legs and runs off into the distance?!

If you fancy supporting my crazy projects, I'm eBaying a few things right now to try and fund the rest of my Inquisitor 28 project: my eBay items

Thanks for reading!

Dave

theerrantwolf.blogspot.co.uk - a blog dedicated to The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k - Get in touch on Twitter: @errantwolfdave or Instagram.com/errantwolfdave/

Inquisitor Projct Progress

I must admit that my Dark Angels project seems to be growing legs, now encompassing a Fellblade and 1500pts of Deathwing currently lying in bits... but I don’t want to lose traction with this little Inquisitor warband project, which I want completed before Warhammer Fest in May.

This week I finally managed to get some colours on them. I want to experiment with glazes more and go for a sort of Blanchitsu-style scheme. I remember John B giving an interview about his style in White Dwarf and he said that he rarely gets to use blue or green (I can’t remember which) in his work, so I saw that as a challenge and am going for both.

There’s 4 members of this group so far and I’m not sure which is the ‘leader’. Is it the Knight? Is it the Mage or is it the Giant? I’m not sure yet. These guys came together decades ago on some quest but have never actually become a team, or friends, or a squad. This is a group of individuals, working together only until they have gained what it was they were originally seeking.

Anyway, here’s where we are so far...

This is literally a spray of Mechanicus Standard Grey, dry brush Fenrisian Grey, Dry Brush White, Glaze with Guilliman Blue. The Metallics at this stage are a spray of black, dry brush Leadbelcher.

By this time I had blocked out all the base colours and started shading and damaging things. I’m keeping the tones muted and dirty, and the colour palette limited. In terms of technical challenges, it’s not often I start thinking seriously about ‘tonal range’ and ‘saturation’ when I’m painting miniatures, so it must be getting serious!

The glowing warp portal was me pushing my OSL skills forwards a notch, mixing what I have been learning about OSL with the glazing skills I have been developing over the last couple of months. The main trick here is that before each layer, I would wash the whole area with water and let the water tension pull the colours along the grooves.

Starting with Warpstone Glow, then white, then Lamenters Yellow glaze last. Apply each colour in the centre so the water pulls it along, using slightly less of the colour with each later so that it doesn't disperse as far along the path.

And this is it finished, with a couple of additions to the base in the form of a propaganda poster (that's been dirtied up with washes) and a 'spook' plant, using white flowers from Green Stuff World and applying a spot of blue glaze to each petal. Spook is a narcotic found in the underhive so is likely to be both pale (no sun) and bizarre (it's hallucinogenic)

The portal/gate is from the Necromunda box set. I wanted a scenic base to frame the miniature, with the miniature's head lined up with the centre of the portal so that the glow from the portal kind of stretches out from the head, drawing the viewer's eye to the centre of the 'picture'.

The marine himself is made from all sorts of bits, but is based on a conversion I did for my Grey Slayers some time ago. I liked the way the Mk4 helmet went with the Mk3 armour.

I've been playing with my new light box this week too so have taken pictures with both a black and a white background to see which is best. Usually I go for black but this time I think white works very well.

Thanks for taking a look!

Dave

theerrantwolf.blogspot.co.uk - a blog dedicated to The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k - Get in touch on Twitter: @errantwolfdave or Instagram.com/errantwolfdave/

Space Hulk campaign...

Sorry for the lack of hobby progress of late. Started a new job a few weeks back and the guinea pig died this week... but I hope you're all having a good Easter?

 

However, there was one ray of light, I managed to get round to a friend's house and introduce him to Space Hulk last night. I love Space Hulk. You're probably sick of hearing me say that, but it's the game that got me into 40k back in the day. So, I took my trusty 1989 edition of Space Hulk round to Rob's house and let him crack it open.

 

yes, the box is battered, there's a piece missing (probably in the boy's room to be honest) and the miniatures are badly painted (two times over since my boy had a crack at them), but the game, and this particular version, is full of nostalgia for me.

 

We decided to play the campaign through in order....

 Mission 1: Suicide Mission

Mission 1 is really an introduction to the game. Rob is a pretty good gamer and he picked it up straight away. I don't know what later versions of the game are like, but I've always thought this game is tough on the Marines. However, Rob had an uncanny ability to get 5 or 6 command points each turn and roll 6s consistently, breezing through Mission 1.

Blip counters are one of my favourite features of Space Hulk, and we took them over to Zone Mortalis in our Horus Heresy games in more recent times. Watching helplessly as those counters move towards you can cause some real anxiety to the Terminator player.

I thought I'd cut him off at the pass but Rob made good use of those flamer templates to block my 'Stealers progress through the hulk.

Mission 2: Exterminate

Exterminate is a great mission, placing 5 terminators in separate locations with eth aim of surviving endless waves of Stealers, killing 30 before the squad is destroyed.

I made the mistake of bringing all my Stealers on on one side of the board, giving the Terminators the chance to form up in the middle and mow them down as they came.

I should have brought some on at the back, forcing the Terminators to split their force... trust me, I learned from this....
Rob was on fire with the 5s and 6s, picking up 4, 5 or 6 command points each turn too, meaning he motored across the board in no time.

The beauty of Space Hulk is that there is no turn limit (only a time limit per player turn), so I could have corrected my course of action, but it was too late really. I needed more bolter jams, but betime you have caused the bolters to jam, the Terminators have killed a significant amount of casualties, meaning that once the slaughter started, around 10 Stealers died each turn...

 Another decisive victory to the Imperial forces!

Mission 3: Rescue

Rescue is where the fun starts in the campaign. The number of Terminator squads is doubled to 2 and they have to get the C.A.T from A to B through the derelict hulk. To win this mission it's a case of move or be eaten.

The Stealers get 3 blip counters per turn and can come on from multiple entry points across the board. As soon as the Terminators start getting bogged down, trying to take out the Stealers coming up their rear, they get cut off from the front. Ordering your squad is of the upmost importance, having that heavy flamer in the most useful position is key. Rob made a mistake early on in this level and his flamers got out of position...

I learned from Game 2 and started bringing Stealers on from all over the board, keeping them just out of range in some cases, just to spook the Terminators. It seemed to work and they never seemed to build the momentum needed to reach the back end of the board.

Eventually the central room became a kill box for the Terminators. I threw so many Stealers at them from so many angles that their bolters started jamming, the flamers ran our or were destroyed, and ultimately there was no way for the momentum to build again. After 40 minutes or so, the C.A.T was dropped for a second time and suffered critical damagem, ending the game.

And that's it. 3hrs, 3 games. There's 3 more to go so we'll find time to play those and continue the campaign in the near future...

Dave


theerrantwolf.blogspot.co.uk - a blog dedicated to The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k - Get in touch on Twitter: @errantwolfdave or Instagram.com/errantwolfdave/

Redemptor Dreadnought Review

I know this Redemptor Dreadnought kits has been out for a while, and I had no intention of buying one for my Space Wolves (especially after painting 10 up for Armies on Parade last year), but I had some spare points left in the Dark Angels project I'm putting together and thought maybe I should paint one after all and thought I'd share my experience of putting it together, especially compared to the Contemptors and Leviathans I was putting together (and love so much...).

In the first instance, it has many many more parts than any of the Forge World Horus Heresy kits. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing yet. It is definitely taking longer to put together so far and with no real advantage of customisation. I understand that the plastic and resin casting processes are different and perhaps this is why there are more parts. But still in terms of build, I prefer the Contemptor/Leviathan kits.

I like the instructions, nice and clear. As usual, by all means follow the instructions but don't feel you have to follow them in the specified order. I started with the legs rather than the torso, for instance.

 

There's lots of little location pins on hinge elements, there to help you achieve a particular pose. If you want a more customisable build, take these off, like I did with the legs so that I could pose the legs standing on a rock, rather than standing on the floor.

One thing I learned from the Leviathans is that on such a big dreadnought you need to build it in sub-assemblies, undercoat, and then stick the whole thing together, otherwise you miss the nooks and crannies with the spray paint. I'll be speeding things up a bit by spraying different sections black or silver depending on the dominant base colour.

The Redemptor kit is good in one respect, the torso-leg ball has a location pin, so you don't even need to stick these in future, leaving them free to move. The weapons have them too so you don't need to stick the Gatling cannon or Plasma cannon on as they're essentially push fit. Great for switching weapons between games.

 

I made this guy a nice little scenic base to tie him in with the rest of the Dark Angels. Removing the location pins on the knee joints allowed my to position the walker as if he was standing on the rock.

 

Love this plasma cannon weapon. I've left the plasma cannon and Gatling gun un-glued so that I can switch between them. They are push fit so no need to magnets here. You can also leave all the joints unglued so that you can position the weapons any way you like.

 

And here he is! The only ting that I have done since these pictures is spray the main body black and guns silver, ready to paint. Planning on entering the Grand Tournament in July, so they need to be ready to win best painted by then :-)

I've added a fair bit of iconography from the Ravenwing Upgrade Sprue. I wanted to keep these Angels quite plain but like the way that giant book fits nicely on the shoulder.

theerrantwolf.blogspot.co.uk - a blog dedicated to The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k - Get in touch on Twitter: @errantwolfdave or Instagram.com/errantwolfdave/