Abersoch Surfer

So after one of my recent trips I managed to get a couple of days away for a bit of a surf in Wales. As I mentioned before Abersoch is one of my favourite surf spots, it can be a bit hit and miss in terms of waves but when its on - its on. I managed to hit a day when it was sunny and the waves were awesome, alas it was only one day and then it preceded to rain constantly destroying my camper van awning in the process. Well after the session I took to the beach with the camera in the hope of getting some nice shots of the scenery and surfers. the picture I captured hopefully shows both.

This guy was just walking up the beach after a surf and managed to capture the scenery hopefully capturing some of the remoteness of the location. I made some adjustments to the image and surfer did come out a little darker than I was hoping bit I think the overall point comes across, one surfer seeking the perfect wave on four miles of remote beach.

From the Eye of Terror

So I have finally got my hands on a copy of the 6th Ed 40K book and one of the new things it introduces is a new feature to army building - Alliances. Now there are two ways of looking at this: -

1. What are the best combinations I can think of from different armies to crush hobby and win.
2. What cool combinations of army will look awesome and what modelling opportunities will this give me?

I am most defiantly in the number 2 camp.

Many years ago GW would release the occasional book that was almost a campaign style book, it would have some scenarios, new units but it would also have some alternate army lists, one of these books was the Eye of Terror and it contained a new army list called The Lost and the Damned. This was basically a traitor style guard army but it also allowed you to take a squad of Chaos Marines for example, it was a great list and I built a pretty affective army out of it. My army had a Nurgle theme and I made units of guard by mixing the Cadian and Zombie kits, it looked great. But alas the book phased out of use and my models became redundant, I could have expanded it into a full guard army but other things came along and they got packed away....... until now. With the new allies rules they can come out of their hiding place and take to the table again.

I am thinking along the same lines as my original army with Nurgle as the theme, so the main army will be Plague Marine based and then I will have an allied force of Guard using my Zombie Guard models. The new Chaos Codex is round the corner and is rumoured to have Cultists as a new unit type so I may not even need to use the guard allies to get the models into the army. If this is true then I might be able to squeeze some Daemon allies in. I have a Daemon army that hasn't seen much action yet as they turned out to be a bit rubbish in the latter half of 5th.

So with the new addition out there appears to be a lot of opportunities modelling wise, I am just going to wait for the new Chaos Codex to come out before I fully decide which approach to take. My Orks will be getting some attention too but I need to play a few games with them first to see how the new edition has affected them.

So below are a few pictures of my Zombie/Nurgle/Guard army.

White.

Hello folks,

White is my nemesis. I rate myself as a good painter, not GW professional standard but above average, that is until I try to paint something white. I discovered this when I started to play Warmachine a few years ago. My first army for Warmachine is Menoth and their primary colour is white. The models are awesome and I really like the armoured religious nutters and I think the white really suits their theme and it was something I wanted to try and paint. Now a really well painted white army looks amazing but trust me, it takes a lot of work.

Approach 1.

When I started the Menoth force the first models I  painted were started off from a black undercoat and then worked up through various stages of greys to get to white. This takes a long time and on some of the detailed Menoth models thats a pain. Also as you are applying a lot of paint it can dull some of the details unless you do it properly and water down the paint. The first model seen here was painted with this method and I don't like it and I think you will agree its not up to my usual standard. It also took me about two years to finish, I started it, got bored and then painted a whole Cryx army and half an Ogre army........ and a Dystopian Wars fleet.................. and some Killa Kans before finally getting back to it to finish. The advantages of this method if you get it right are that it looks really good and the white will look solid and you can get some nice shading towards the edges of the armour. If you get it wrong then it can look rubbish, I think am half way with this result, if you don't look too close then it looks ok on the table.


Approach 2.

After struggling with the first approach I tried to do something a bit different with the next model. GW had just released they new Washes so I thought I would put them to the test. For this model I actually undercoated it in with white spray, second step was to paint the all the base colours on in one go. I then drowned the model in a black wash - almost in a "dipping" style. After this I then painted over the white again with a brush and also when over the base layers again before then highlighting everything. I think the look of this model is so much better. The reason it works is that you are starting with the white straight away, the "dipping" phase does the shading and then the second phase white paint looks better going over the white undercoat. The model looks cleaner, brighter and tidy. I was very pleased with this method and the new GW washes really help with this look.

Since I painted this model GW has revamped the whole paint line, and now include a White Base paint which is supposed to cover better, I have tried this on models and whilst it doesn't live up to the hype it does cover a lot better than the old GW white which, as we all know, was rubbish.

So now I have finally found a painting method for white which does provide results, whilst I still don't think they are up to my usual standard I do think the methods I have found look good and a whole army painted in this way should look pretty good on the table. So after three or so years I might actually get to finish the Menoth force that I always wanted.

Unti next time....