Wednesday 31 March 2010

Month end update March,

Well where did that bloody month go!!

in the last few days since the forge world open day trip I've managed to paint some of the firestorm armada fleet that I got last week after blasting out the test model,

I always get people asking me how do I manage to paint stuff so quick, well music calms the savage beast, in my case its stuff like this... boom boom boom tisk tisk that gives me my pace ;) 
 
So the 6 Frigates....









































I've not decided on squadron marks at the moment, I might just mark up the bases?

Anyway onto the carrier how this was quite a lot of expermentation I tried to get the "white" ship look but also the weathered look but like the enterprise but with a grimy look, now the front of the rule book has the following art so thats what I've based my fleet colour scheme on...









































now I've used a watered down black GW wash to create the streaky look, and I'm quite pleased with it, a fairly simple technique and 2 foot away look nice on the table top,

A close up of the huge flat area that I'm assuming makes up the landing deck? who knows lol



















any way on to the "pledge"......

so quarter 1 summary,
               Bought    Painted  Differance
Jan             41           58          +17

Feb            22           16          -6

March        22           30          +8

so going quite well me thinks!

Comments welcome as always,

Cheers,

Sunday 28 March 2010

Forge World Open day pic's (lots of pic's big post!)

As your warning this is a big post, go for a wee now....


So thinking I'd be crippled after a day of airsoft I was surprised to find my legs were still functioning so I wandered over to Lenton for the forgeworld open day, and boy it was busy!

Loads of cool stuff however bad news if like me your waiting for them to show some love to Tzeentch or Slannesh its not going to be happening for a while!! i.e. the chap who runs the development team ( a nice American bloke) told me this but if your an ork player or a loyal marine player then your gonna love it! 

But before that...

My first squad of emperors children are done painted to the colour scheme that won the poll


































































I also did the usual test model for the firestorm armada fleet,










































So onto the forgeworld pics...



















This is a mock up of what they are looking at doing, and intrestingly enough with the titans the actually make them bigger than they should be to fit in with the vechicles as they are oversized (but we knew that anyway!)


















and the expression on Ross face was golden!



















And some up and coming raven guard stuff, great if your a loyalist scum lover ;)















But then again.... Pre-Heresy.... Ummm.....



















Some bloke with a jump pack




















Some cool looking bits for the stompa kit.....
















Now the lifta droppa on the left is for a battlewagon, Kult of speed anybody??




























Mega dread variants















Some Tau Battle suits that sent Spencer over the edge and he frothed about these for ages!!



































































Then I found some more orky stuff, this did make me smile....
















So now we can really play a scenrio called "Black 'ork Down" I might nickname this super six four.

 And now onto the tables....

A huge titan battle that was going to be played, A shag load of stompas on one side


















Verses a shag load of imperial on the other side!



















And they were nicely painted!!



















The "mastercard" moment!
















A siege of bla bla bla table,



















































The table was that big I had to use max zoom for some pic's and are a little whobbly...
















Still carn't decide if I like this, something missing for me...











































Putting is simply, yup I'll have it!





































An orky style table that took my eye....









































So over all the day was pretty good, some luck chap won a Reaver titan from the raffle with all the cash going to children in need, and some guys were dropping up to £20 on tickets!

A little dissapointed that the chaos is off the radar for the time being and the Orks (which do need it) are getting some nice treatment, but to do the Raven guard as well, I think the amount of marine players out there will get quite excited but for me I'm not...

Any comments welcome as always cheers,

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Firestorm Armada..... Yes another system!!

Firestorm Armada?

Never heard of it, well its done by a buch of people over at spartan games, I stumbled across these guys when they released uncharted seas, That reminded me of man-o-war and I really liked that!

www.spartangames.co.uk

(have a look at the 40mm greek mythology stuff really nice!)

They've been working on the scifi version using the rules from uncharted seas and shooting you into space!

Now after hassling Ross at the local shop and the golden stamp of approval from the Dustin the boss man they put an order in for some of the local guys, now I krnew a couple of people was intrested so at least I'd have a regular player base but judging by the amount of stuff that came in this could be a very popular system!!

Before we ordered I spoke with the usual suspects and we did the good old dibs on the various races, at the moment there is only 4 however in the book there are fleet lists for another 2 that are going to be released at some point in the future,

In the tradional way with myself of picking new armies etc.. I went with what looks cool! and after reading some of the rule book last night/this morning I've got the bad boys of the universe so sticks with my "bad guy" theme quite nicely! after all who wants to play as a good guy there always boring ;)


After talking Jack & Stef through the basic's of turn, movement & shooting as it played the same as uncharted seas, I broke open the box to see what I'd got....



And spartan didn't dissapoint me! the amount of resin that you get for you hard earned cash is quite nice, the actual quality of the cast isn't too bad either, the only downer though was that two of my engine blocks for the captial ship where the same and I had no instruction guide/fleet stats card, But in hindsight that was a good thing that I'll explain later.


I also ordered a fleet carrier as well as getting the basic fleet box, So after cleaning up the flash I hit the kitchen and washed the resin, now if you've never worked with resin its worth cleaning as you might find a residue on the actual model that helps release it from the molds and this stuff doesn't like being sprayed or painted over!



So after a good scrub I laid the bits out to dry which didn't take too long,


So as I was waiting for the bits to dry I went onto the spartan games website and found the PDF's for the assembly guide, I also discovered whilst mooching around the forum's that some people had issues building there Dindrenzi, mainly the captial ship so after looking at what people had suggested I set about putting mine togeather,


So one of the halves of the main hull with the gun deck the rear plate and front detail ready for the other half


And the other half glued on, the issue that people were having was that the didn't know that the ship is desgined to have a gap running the length of the hull, its a pretty simple mistake as it appears quite a few people have done it!


so the captial ship with the enginer blocks and the upper gun decks stuck on, you can get an idea of the size of the model with the pots of paint in the background, its a monster!!


So the whole fleet assembled, including the carrier at the top of the shot, over all I'm quite impressed by the quality of the models and they did take quite a lot of prep time compared to other models I've been doing recently, but I think its worth it.

The only thing I need to suss out now is how to attach the flight stems to the actual ships? I'll more than likely go for the magent option so that I transport the models without fear of breaking the flight stands.

The only thing left to decide is what colour to paint it, I could go with the cover picture and go for a black/red combo but on the rulebook there is a captial ship in a dirty white/red combo so I'm thinking I might got for that one?

So keep your eye's open I should have these done and dusted in a couple of weeks and hopfully a review of the actual rules with a battle report,

Comments welcome as always.

Thanks,