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....

Here today Skorne tomorrow.

Hi Folks

I am off on my travels again for a few weeks working in Taiwan, so hobby time will have to take a break for a while, so thought I would just post up something before going. I have again been a little distracted and have moved off my painting plan. The Ork Mek models have been finished and I now have a completed list of Kans and Deff Dreds and i'll post up some pictures of them when I return. Over the last week I have been distracted by some Warmachine/Hordes stuff and this was compounded by a recent visit to my mothers..... I am originally from Burton On Trent and there is an amazing games shop there called Spirit Games. I spent much of my pocket money in this shop when I was a lad and its a gamers dream, I can spent hours (and a lot money given the chance) in there, they have everything for every game system there is. Right from D&D books, board games, card games, every miniatures game system the full works. If there was a gamers paradise then this place is it, if you are ever in that neck of the woods then you need to pay them a visit, just make sure you take a credit card.

So when I went to see my mother I thought I would pop in and have a browse, well browsing turned to buying when I found that they had a Skorne starter set and the faction book. I have been thinking about starting a Horde faction for a while and I really love the Skorne models, the war beasts are amazing models and some of the Warrior units are pretty awesome too. So with my resistance slowly slipping away and 60 quid burning a hole in my back pocket I left the shop with the smell of the old game shop of my youth in my nostrils and a bunch of new models to paint, because I figured the large pile of unpainted models in boxes I have wasn't enough already.

The box comes with the caster and two Cyclops light war beasts and one heavy war beast, I thought I would start by just painting one of the light beasts. This set contains the plastic versions of the models and I haven't painted up any of the plastics yet so was interested to see what they are like. I have to say, I am not that impressed, they are still great models but its not like the GW plastic, its a kind of resin type plastic. Not quite FW resin, but almost in-between true plastic and resin, it has almost a rubbery feel. It took a lot of cleaning, and I hate cleaning models and probably didn't do it justice as I was eager to get paint on the thing.

The paint also goes on a bit shiny, of course this can be cured with a coat of matt varnish, this model isn't varnished yet as it was raining when I finished and you should never varnish when there is moisture in the air as it can make the varnish go cloudy and ruin your newly painted model. I went for a traditional Skorne paint scheme of gold rimmed red armour. I am pleased with the result and am looking forward to getting the rest of the starter set done so I can have my first battles on the Horde side.

Until next time...

The Mek Daddy

I seem to be somewhat in the zone at the moment hobby wise, although my painting plan has gone a bit out of the window. I was planning on putting all my attention into finishing my Ogres but then the new Ork planes came out and I have been sucked into painting some more 40K stuff. So work continues on my new themed Mek army and I have finally finished the second Mek. This model is the Forge World Mek released a couple of years back, I got it the day is was available and in typical fashion it has sat undercoated on the paint station since then. Its a great model, full of detail and character. In the game I am going to use him as a KFF Mek armed with a Power Klaw, although not actually armed with a PK the pack he has on his back does have a Klaw on it as well as a flashy light (KFF) so the choice of gear fits the model nicely, its almost like the Ork equivalent of a Tech Marine with servo harness.

The paint job was actually pretty straight forward as most of the model is metal. The skin is goblin green with a thrakka green wash and then a couple of lighter green highlights. The metal is my traditional bolter/bronze dry brush and then black wash followed by a couple of silver highlights. Then the detail picked out at the end.

I think he will look pretty cool in amongst the Killa Kans and with his Power Kaw and Cybork body isn't too shabby in combat either, especially if he has some of his Killa Kan friends to help him out.









I have also built the last three Kans to bring my total up to nine, I went for a Big Shoota and two Grotzokka's in the end, this will give me a unit of three with rockets, three with Grotzokka's and then a unit with two Big Shootas and one Burna. This is a nice variety that can target vehicles, and large units of infantry, hopefully the Grotzokka's will achieve accuracy through volume.

I have also built the second plane, in true Orky fashion i basically stuck all the guns and bombs on it I could from the kit and left overs from the first kit. I put the wing extensions on (where the guns are) and also the extra fuel tanks on the end of the wings, I wanted the wings to look as long as they could to give it that real bomber feel  and to make it look bigger compared to the first that has more of a fighter look. I also added so extra bits on the tail fin to add to the bomber effect.

Hopefully I will have the Kans and the extra plane painted up in the next couple of weeks to take to the field at the next club day. 

Mek it up.....

The recent release of the new Ork flyer has inspired me to look at my 40K Ork's again. They have been in a fairly completed state for a while (of course no army is ever complete) and I have been waiting for the new edition before taking a look at them again, but the new Ork flyer got the Ork juices flowing again.

I have been using the Orks in a speed freak configuration for a long time and had some great success but a lot of the new Codex releases have let the Orks a little behind so I thought it was time to try something different. One theme I have had in the back of my mind for a long time is the Mek theme, basically this means taking a couple of Big Meks as HQs and then lots of Killa Kans and Deff Dreds. I have the basics of the army already and just needed a few models to get the basics of the Mek list in place.

All I need to paint up is :-

1. An extra Big Mek.
2. An extra Deff Dred.
3. An additional unit of Killa Kans.

This will give me the basic two Meks, two Deff Dreads and three units of three Killa Kans. I am still thinking of only using two units of Kans with the third Heavy being a unit of Artillary, but to start I think I will use the three Kan units and see how it goes. As to what the rest of the list will be, still to be determined. First things first is to get the extra models needed to complete the backbone of the list.

So the first model to hit the paint station was the second Deff Dred. My first Dred is armed with four Close Combat weapons, for the second Dred I have decided to go with two CCW's, a Big Shoota and a Burna. This allows the Dred to take on tanks in close combat but also deal with units of troops thinning them down before charging in.

So with the Dred completed it's on to the new unit of Kans.

Shang-high

I have just finished my last trip to Shanghai and am comfortably back home in the UK. I have made no secret that China and Shanghai have not been my favourite places in the world, but from a photography point of view the place is a treasure trove of opportunity. One thing you have to do when in Shanghai is go to the top of the World Financial Centre which is currently the 3rd tallest building in the world. The picture in the post was taken from the walkway at the very top of the tower and the view is spectacular.

From the very top you can see the never ending sprawl that is Shanghai and you realise what an immense place it is that goes on and on and on. You have to wonder how a city this large can function and not collapse under its own weight. The view from this side of the building is the most interesting as it looks over the river and the main part of the financial district. The main point of interest being the Pearl Tower which used to be the tallest building in Shanghai before it was overtaken by countless others. This view is pretty cool and from up there in the heavens the city actually looks like somewhere you would want to be, but unfortunately not for me. Some people love it, others not so much and not everywhere suits everyone. Hong Kong, Seoul - both major Asian cities that I really loved, but Shanghai is not for me. But even though I did not find the place to my liking I will not forget my time in China and some of the amazing things I have been able to see, especially the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing and also Tiananmen Square with all its history was an incredible place to be.

So this is the last of my pictures from Shanghai for a while, I have thousands from my visits to China and I may revisit them in the future but I need to let some time pass before I look at them again so I can appreciate them with rose tinted specs. My next trip takes me back to Wales for some down time in the camper van before heading off to Taiwan. I am looking forward to this one, and hopefully will get some great pictures from the top of the second tallest building in the world, the Taipei 101.