Author Archives: Alex

Get to the chopper!

14 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Terrain

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? So, week four of isolation eh? Anyone else really really pleased they have enough hobby projects on the back burner to outlast any virus? I know I am – otherwise I reckon I would be climbing the walls by now.

So yeah, last week was fun. I had a week off work, (or a week of not having to work from home at least), and so I ran the Wolf Time campaign for my kids. The eldest one dropped out after the warm-up games due to some spectacular nose removal of the face spiting variety, but my youngest stuck to his Orky guns throughout and managed to win the day! It was a close-run thing though, and we had a good laugh along the way. It has even given my youngest a bit of a taste for the hobby, and he has been working on painting a wizard up since then! We try a bit of co-op Frostgrave next – I’ll let you know how that goes 😊   Meanwhile, I’ve managed a few bits too – some neglected bits that have been taking up space for far too long.

First up, a bit of ToyHammer to make this rough and ready civilian flyer:

This was a cheap drone that my boss bought for himself a while back, and the minute I saw it I knew that I could do something cool with it… I asked if I could have it if it ever broke, and being a cheap piece of crap from China, it duly it ended up in my ‘pile of potential’. Last week was he perfect opportunity to get some shed time in and get busy with the glue & rattle cans.

It’s lightly armed, (being a civilian craft), but I think it works really well as terrain item, or as a plot point in a game of something sci fi.

Scale-wise, I reckon it is pretty much perfect!

 

 

While I was on a roll, I also got this finished:

It’s an MDF storage crate from Grumpy Old Tin – I think it’s a BOYL special, and I was lucky enough to get it handed to me at BOYL last year. It has been half done for months, but I pulled my finger out and finished it off in and around other things. Here’s a few more shots:

And all together:

 

That isn’t the sum of my hobby last week – I got a whole range of Oldschool minis cleaned up, based, primed, and ready to pick over as the fancy takes me, so you can expect to see some classic Bob Olly goodness over the next week or two. I also finished the main build phase on a real bucket-list project – a small army that 14 year old me could only dream of owning! You’ll have to wait and see what it is though – I’m keeping it schtum until I’m finished and ready for the big reveal… feel free to try & guess of course 😉

Until next time!

Legion of the Damned – Part 2

05 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Legion of the Damned, Primaris Marines

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Greetings Terrans, I have a bit of a photo dump for you today – a bunch more LotD for your viewing pleasure. I apologies in advance, I’m not sure what each type is called, and I can’t be arsed to check. Also, these came out of a big crate I have that is just full of Conquest frames, so there is no rhyme or reason to these – I just built what came to hand, and I built them as they were meant to be made… Nothing fancy here, other than chips and scratched carved in, and the removal of all purity seals. So in no particular order:

First up, a 5 man unit:

And a top down view to show off their shoulder pads a bit:

I used all the guys without scopes on their bolters for this squad, and gave them a dynamic squad leader type. Not sure if he is a Sergeant or a Lieutenant, but he looks suitably aggressive for this unit.

 

Second, another 5 man unit:

And another top-down:

I used all the guys with scopes this time – they look a bit more ‘stand-off and shoot’ to me, and the squad leader reflects that. I also included the standard in this unit – I’m rather pleased with how it came out!

 

Finally, we have some specialist types:

And top down:

I think the Plasma guys are called Hellblasters, and I think the big jump-pack guy is an Aggressor? Whatever they are called, they made a fun change from the Bolter boys. One thing to note here – I really don’t like using flying bases on mins if I can help it, and I didn’t want to use one on the jump-pack guy. I tried to make it look like he was just dropping over the wall, and had kicked a bit of rubble off as he clipped the top. The illusion isn’t perfect, but I still prefer it to a flying stand…

 

Anyway, that’s it for today – I’ll be coming back to these guys at a later date, but we’re done for now. Next week I have been forced to take leave, so I’m going to go through the Wolf Time campaign again with the kids. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that 😊

Legion of the Damned – Primaris style

03 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in Legion of the Damned, Primaris Marines

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Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you all well in these increasingly bizarre and worrying times. I’ve got a bit of a photo dump to share with you today – as some of you figured out from my last post, I’ve started working on some old school Legion of the Damned, (first described in WD99 back in 1988), but re-imagined in new shiny Primaris-shaped plastic. Why Primaris? Because I have a metric ton of the smug little pricks from my Conquest subscriptions, and boy, am I glad of that! Can’t have too much to paint in these days of lock-down if you ask me…

Why Legion of the Damned? Well, because they are cool as hell, not pristine, not uniformed, and are about as (little ‘c’) chaotic as you can get without being (big ‘C’) Chaotic, and that suits my current state of mind just fine. Oh, and for the record, I know the LotD fluff moved on over various iterations of 40k, but I’m keeping it old school RT on this project – think ‘zerker zombies rather than the later spectrally flaming skellies version, ok?

That said, I am moving on from the whole historical ‘Fire Hawks lost in the warp’ schtick – I see this as a second occurrence of the LotD phenomenon, with modern Primaris that have been lost in the warp & thus I see these as being contemporary to the current 40k timeline and narrative. I think that this raises interesting questions about the events – a single event can be passed off as a freak occurrence, but two identical events? Unlikely…  It also raises the spectre of whether or not there is some design behind the LotD… It is described as a disease, so maybe it’s a Nurgle thing, or maybe one of the lesser chaos powers perhaps? I would love to think Malal is involved 😉

Anyway, here are my first efforts – a trio of… well, I’m not actually sure what hip and cool name GW gave them, but they are some kind of scouty recon types I think:

 

 

 

 

 

I’m pretty pleased with how they came out to be honest! They were a nice painterly challenge, not too fussy, and relatively quick to do… What do you guy think?