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.

The Stonehorn cometh.....

Hi Folks.... Have been away from hobby stuff for a while due to work travel and a vicious bought of Flu, but have been back for a couple of weeks and have managed to finally complete work on my Ogre Stonehorn, this is the other large monster in the Ogre army and is less suitable than it's friend the Thundertusk. For the first couple of games I am going to try and run it with the two units of Mournfang, just line them up and ram them down the throat of my opponent in an alpha strike. Hopefully this should take care of a couple of my opponents units.

This is also the first model I have painted with an airbrush, I only used it on the fur of the model and then finished the rest off with a brush. I have never used an airbrush before and it does take some practise, it is a bit of effort to mix the paint and then clean the brush each time but painting the actual model is a lot quicker and I think the effect is pretty good. I started off with a dark brown and then gradually lightened the colour each time up to a bleach bone colour right on the tips of the fur. I like this model, originally out of the two monsters I preferred the Thundertusk, but now the Stonehorn is finished I think my opinion is changing and the pose of the rider and the more forward stance of the monster makes this model look really cool on the table next to the other units.

Next up I need to finish off my other two Forge World Rhinox riders to complete a unit of four which I will be using as my second Mournfang unit, this will bring the army up to 2400.

Shanghai Streets.

I have been slack in my Bloggings of late - this has mainly been down to two factors. The first was that I was laid out for a few weeks with a particularly vicious Flu bug, the second was that I have spent several weeks working away in Shanghai. I am the first to admit that I am not a fan of China or Shanghai. Its crowded, very crowded. It's noisy, even if you are on the 23rd floor of a hotel you can hear noise. There isn't any point in the day when you cannot hear something. Its a strange place of weird extremes, there is no graffiti or litter which implies that people are considerate of each other and their surroundings but one trip on the metro network shows that this is not true at all and people will trample you if it means getting on the train before you.

Shanghai has grown incredibly quickly in such a short space of time and I am not sure it or its people have had the time to deal with it. In the Financial district there are all these amazing buildings and Malls, but then you will find a row of houses that have been there for a hundred years. They are there purely because no one has developed that land yet, you can imagine when they were built that the area was nothing more than the beginnings of a city next to the river and now this row of moderate houses built for farm workers are within a hunted metres of the tallest building in China, and the Chinese stock exchange. 

This picture was taken in the Bund, an area of Shanghai near the river where all the newest and tallest buildings are. You can see the Pearl Tower, once the tallest building in Shanghai along with the ever increasing skyline of one of the fastest growing cities in the world. We were walking to visit the Shanghai World Financial Centre (commonly know as the Bottle Opener due to the look of the top of the building, Google it and you will see what I mean). The skyline looked cool and just for a brief and rare moment there was no traffic on the particular piece of road that was in front of us, in this rarest of moments I managed to grab the picture. 

Blogging from behind the wall........

So here I am behind the firewall that is China, logging in through a VPN to bring you the lastest from Shanghai... well there isn't really anything to tell to be honest.

So hobby related activities have been greatly reduced to practically nothing. I did however manage to make a visit to the GW store in Shanghai to pickup a bunch of the new Lord of the Rings army books. It really could have been any GW store in the world, the minute I walked in I was surrounded by a couple of very enthusiastic Chinese GW staff asking all the same questions and following me around bestowing the virtues of the hobby that I have been involved in before most of these guys where born.

The prices were exactly the same, although most things in China are anyway. The guy that runs the store actually used to be the area manager for the south of the UK and he is only there for a couple of years to get things up and running, as time went by more slightly overweight, slightly smelly Chinese nerds came in to start playing and I took some slight comfort in the fact that no matter what colour, race or religion you are - nerds are the same the world over and we all get excited over well painted toy soilders - and that's a good thing.

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