HeroQuest: the revival!

15 Monday Apr 2024

Posted by in heroquest

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A while ago I noted that Avalon Hill’s revival of HeroQuest was on sale, and having heard that it is mechanically the same but with more modern production values, I thought this would be a cool thing to have. It’s pretty nice! I’ve painted all the minis from the box set now so here they are. these are quick and dirty, to get them on the board asap. The minis are pretty good, but not great. They look ace from a distance, but the moulding isn’t fantastic close up. So we get minis that need detailed work that you can’t give them. A similar problem to the original HeroQuest minis! Sorry about the bad lighting. I have also included a photo of them snugly stored in their tray, which is a great addition to the box and one that GW should think about! Also, its great that this game is priced for a family game rather than a collector game, and it been enough of a success that all the original expansions and some new ones have been added. I bet GW are kicking themselves for giving up the trademark! I’ve since picked up two of the new expansions so will be painting them one of these years!

Squad Jalal – Terminator Squad

29 Monday Jan 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Leviathan

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The final miniatures from the Leviathan Starter set have been finished. The new monopose Terminators are very pretty, scaled well to earlier Terminators, and are nice and dynamic. Pleasure to paint, as Space Marines often are. It’s always nice to finish a box set, I feel a sense of achievement, and pride knowing that if someone came over for a game (if I had any friends in this city :rolleyes:) we could play using a fully painted army. Next up: the new HeroQuest…

Tyranid Attack!

22 Monday Jan 2024

Posted by in Finished Work, Leviathan, Tyranids

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Up today we have the Tyranid half of the Leviathan Starter Set. Now Tyranids are not really my thing. They’re kind of boring. They’re not my least favourite 40k faction (waves to Necrons) but I don’t really care about big faceless monsters and hordes of identical smaller monsters. Although I do dig on Genestealer cults. GCs are amazing and are full of character. I don’t have a GC army, but I have the cults part of Deathwatch Overkill and a GC chemist guy and a GC rockcrusher so maybe I do. I also have the majority of the genestealers from Space Hulk painted up, so I could run all these together as a big army or something. That might be fun. Normally I paint genestealery things in the traditional oldhammer colourscheme of blue and (titillating) pink, but I wanted these painted quickly using contrast paints and basic techniques. I flicked through the starter guide and looked at the different Hive Fleets and it was Kronos that stood out for me. I liked the idea of them being Chaos-eaters, developed to function in areas of high psychic activity and specialising in fighting daemons and eating daemonworlds. The dark red-bright blue-brown colour I thought would make an interesting scheme to paint and was different to anything I had done before. Plus all the colours were available in contrast so I didn’t need to mix or shop around.

These were both fun and frustrating to paint. My lack of experience in the miniatures or scheme definitely showed, but I was aiming to get them done so that I could play the game out of the box, not win golden demon. I didn’t enjoy it so much that I will be staying in the Tyranid game, and I’m not especially pleased with the result, but just painting a big batch of miniatures and completing the box set is a victory in itself. 

Emperor’s Children Noise Marine and squad

21 Thursday Dec 2023

Posted by in Blackstone Fortress, Chaos, Finished Work

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I picked up the new Noise Marine when it came out. I loved the old Noise Marine, had one the first time round, remember Warhammer records and was a tweenage metaller and all that stuff. Even though glam or hair metal wasn’t really my bag, I prefered Metallica and Iron Maiden until I discovered Nirvana and that changed everything… but yeah I love that the old noise marine was painted as a glam-metal type, and that maximalist silliness was definitely a certain type of Slaaneshi worshipper. I tried to paint the new one according the box art. This is not something I normally do because I have ideas in my head that I prefer to the box art. But the box art was full of ideas and tricky techniques and I wanted mine to pop as much as possible and didn’t trust my own aesthetic sensibilities to come up with something as good as theirs. According to the 8th ed. dataslate in the box, Noise Marines come in a squad, of which between 1 and All must have sonic blasters and 1 can have a blastmaster. I decreed the Noise Marine to have the sonic blaster, the Space Crusade marine has the blastmaster, and the rest have the standard boltguns. I thought that the 6th ed. Chosen and the SC chaos sergeant made good Slaaneshi marines, and I think the other one comes from the baddies for Blackstone Fortress. 

I don’t expect to post again this year, so have a good holiday season and I hope 2024 brings you joy! Thanks for reading and looking at pictures of my averagely-painted minis, I appreciate you all!

III Company IV Infernus Squad, Steel Guard – Squad Gallardus

14 Tuesday Nov 2023

Posted by in Finished Work, Leviathan, Space Marines

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I bought the Leviathan box set when it came out under the impression that it had a rulebook in. Normally I wouldn’t buy a set unless I collect (or want) both armies, but I must have been feeling weak and pliable over summer, perhaps the tottering piles of plastic and lead weren’t feeling overwhelming so I jumped onto a new project, as you do. Anyway its here now so lets do whats in front of us and pretend I dont already have hundreds of pounds of unpainted models sitting waiting to be painted… sorry Mortarian, sorry Ork Stompa, sorry Horus Heresy, sorry Nurgle and Chaos Space Marine Battleboxes etc etc.

This little squad inches my Steel Guard collection closer towards the 10,000 point marker. The pyreblasters are beautiful looking weapons, chunky and utilitarian. I have to admit that I like the ‘Primaris’ Marines. There’s just the right amount of detail, but the nice clean lines that you associated with Space Marines. I tried to make more of an effort than usual on the Sergeant’s face, because we’re always being told to emphasise the faces as that’s what people look at. I don’t think that it comes out in the pictures. Its all practice!

Nurgly gribblies: The Wurmspat!

13 Monday Nov 2023

Posted by in Chaos, Finished Work

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Now, I am not a Warhammer Underworlds player, but I do know some lovely minis when I see them, so I picked these up a while back when they were about to go off sale, and have finally gotten around to painting them. I don’t know that I have any use for them, but I never play any games anyway and aren’t likely to until Firestorm Games puts in a HEPA filter (which is probably the same as never), so it doesn’t really matter. I enjoyed painting this lot, lots of detail, lots of gribble. One thing that I really liked with this set is something you can’t actually see – the witch has three boobs! Only one complaint… there is supposed to be a sort of nurgly pet animal with this set, but as I clipped it off the sprue it went ping and was never seen again! I’ve moved every bit of furniture, lifted the rug, but no sign. It is as if it has never existed! I bet this happens to us all sometimes… that said, my citadel clippers disappeared too. I had a set of the metal handled ones and they were amazing, so much better, sharper and cleaner cutting, than the normal cheap ones i use. Then one day they were gone, disappeared. Now, we are a two adults household, and we almost never have guests due to living in a permanent self-isolation due to my partner’s health issues, and the dogs aren’t interested in metal things. So it all just disappears into a tiny wormhole that floats around the art room and sucks up things occasionally. Anyway, enjoy the Wurmspat!

Brother Librarian Oconee Tempz conversion

05 Tuesday Sep 2023

Posted by in Finished Work, Space Marines

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Another one I recently finished, this is converted from a Stormguard Celestant-Prime. I don’t know what that does but I liked the mini and so when it was cheap on partwork I picked it up. A Librarian seemed like the obvious choice, though having just designated a Chief Librarian to the Steel Guard this chap is just a common or garden Space Marine psyker and doesn’t get a special hat with a button on even though his pose is way more epic. I ditched the swirly magic base and the pointy wings, replacing the wings with a standard marine backpack to emphasise that it was psychic flying. The arms took some work and this was the first time I had used model filler so its a bit of a mess under his armpits! I used lots of shade and contrast-as-glaze and I’m not really that impressed with my work but its all practise, next time will be a bit better.

Meanwhile I’ve recently started playing Skyrim (I know, but I just never got round to it before) and its a bit good isnt it? I’m a bit shit at computer games so I bought the game guide and its nearly 900 pages long! Repeat to myself: I must not sit up til 3am playing every night… I must not….

The dwarven pyramid

22 Tuesday Aug 2023

Posted by in Dwarfs, Finished Work

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In my parents’ generation it was apparently very common, at rock concerts and festivals and the like, for people to build human pyramids. A number of drunken individuals would attempt to clamber on top of each other and see how high it goes before everyone collapses in a pile of broken limbs. Fortunately my generation had far more access to drugs and so could entertain and injure themselves at festivals without resort to athletics. Perhaps this trifecta of dwarven heroes has taken influence from kids at a Warrant show?

Actually its probably more like Vitalstatistix from the Asterix comics…

Anyway, its the White Dwarf riding on a shield being carried by Gotrek and Bugman. In game terms, they were basically invincible!

Jungle Fever – Nick Davis’ Spawning Pond from White Dwarf 223

17 Thursday Aug 2023

Posted by in terrain

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So after the last project went well I thought I’d have a go at another piece of modelled scenery. A spawning pond seemed just what I needed. You might question the wisdom of this, seeing as I don’t have any Lizardman-Seraphon miniatures, or any jungly themed miniatures at all, but look at it like this – a Spawning Pond doesn’t need to be a pond for spawning lizardpeoples, it could be a swimming pool for chaos cultists, or an immersitarian for space marines, or even (despite the apparently clear water) a drops for orkses. Yes, a Spawning Pond is truly the ultimate in flexible terrain pieces and anyone who says that I was idly reading an old WD and fancied building something without having any actual need for it is a poopoohead.

I enjoyed this build and only variated from the script in one way, which was to use water effects rather than a layer of pva covered in gloss varnish for the water. This was because I had impulse bought some water effects a year or two back and wanted an excuse for using it. Because I was using water effects I put some old fashioned model railway foliage in the pond before pouring to look like water-weed. During this build I learnt a few things. Firstly I learned that water effects contract when they dry. This was a problem because I had painted the inside of the pond and the contracting resin caused cracks in the paint that i couldn’t reach to repair. Further layers of water effects repaired the cracks in the resin but you can still see the white of the foamcard base, we can dismiss it as sunlight reflections! Secondly I learned that sand-pva glue mix is a bugger to work with! You can’t just paint it on as Nick Davies implies. Fortunately the effect (tree trunk bark) came out ok. I am going to make more trees following the methods described in this article because I liked the effects but recognise that it is a skill! Thirdly I learned that beer bottle caps do not really look like big waterlily leaves. A paper leaf would have looked better I think.

The pictures are crap, sorry. I am mid-sort out and didn’t have a good place to take pics. I might retake these and change them at a later date. If that has happened you won;t be reading this!

Hope everyone is well and enjoying their hobby!