Iron Snakes: Storm Eagle Build Complete

Hi folks,

For Christmas my mates got me a Storm Eagle transport (thanks guys, you're the best!), which I have decided to assign to my Iron Snakes detachment. It arrived in a nicely wrapped box, 99% assembled and reeking of super glue. Somewhat ominously, the box also contained some very nice sand paper. Sgt Waz put in a massive effort to get the thing built but it still required a couple of hours of fiddling and customisation, which I have been plugging away at today.

The Vengeance launcher was assembled further forward than you would usually expect, as the guys questioned the safety of launching missiles across such a length of fuselage. I ran a few beads of greenstuff around the hull to close up the most offensive gaps and added some details. Tomorrow I am going to file and cut back any excess greenstuff, then give it a spray undercoat.

The Storm Eagle has a combat shield for every Sternguard marine it will transport: "come back with your shield, or on it." They stand out like barnacles on a whale at the moment, but that will change when they are painted. The missiles in the magazine come from a 3rd Ed. terrain kit that I scrounged from the lower depths of my bitz box. They are a little smaller than the Vengeance missiles, but at a glance you can't tell. Nothing says "death by glancing hits" like an exposed magazine of Vengeance missiles! The targeter is from an Icarus pattern lascannon emplacement.

I have been saving those Rhino doors for an awfully long time, so I was stoked to realise they fit this model. I had always assumed they were Landraider doors on the Storm Eagle.

The cockpit was pretty badly bent as well, so I heated it for a few seconds (literally) and bent it back so that it would fit flush with the hull.

So, that is all of the modelling work done for now. After I have painted the interior I will assemble the cockpit, but that won't be for a little while, my painting schedule is very full at the moment. Still, it is something to look forward to.

See you across the table,

M4cr0

X-wing Shenanigans

Hi folks,

I have been off on a family holiday this week, so I haven't had a chance to wield a paintbrush. It was fun surfing everyone else's blogs from my phone though, whilst I watched sharks cruise past my breakfast table. I have been staying on Daydream Island on the Great Barrier Reef, which is some kind of food for the soul:

Seriously; a shark cruising past my breakfast table.

Feeding stingrays with my little one. They were like hungry puppy dogs.

Before I took off I squeezed in a couple of games of X-wing that were great fun. The first game provided me with a chance to use some of my new ships, including a TIE Phantom and, on the Rebel side, an E-wing. It was an experiment in more ways than one as, out of 5 games that I know have been played in my gaming group, the Rebels have never won, regardless of who was using them (feel free to correct me on this one guys). With a larger, more diverse, fleet and multiple players, I really wanted to see if there was something broken about the Rebels...

Three TIE Starfighters, a TIE Phantom, Interceptor and Defender square off against two X-wings, a B-wing, A-wing and E-wing.

As an Imperial player in control of the Defender, Interceptor and Starfighter, I was planning to cruise down the left flank and focus my attentions on Luke Skywalker's X-wing. KuriboGoomba was my partner in crime and was tasked with holding the right flank with two ace TIE Starfighters and a Phantom equipped with an Advanced Cloaking Device.

KuriboGoomba sweeps through the right flank and pours a huge amount of firepower into an A-wing, to no avail.

The return fire,  a proton rocket, was brutal. Despite being cloaked, the Phantom was left with 1 hull point.

On the opposite flank I dealt some heavy damage to Luke, then evaded most of the return fire; my Defender absorbed a hit with its shields.  KuriboGoomba had less luck, flying his Phantom into an asteroid (bottom right) and losing his last hull point. 

Traffic jam! My TIE defender has no viable targets, but Luke and Biggs combine to take down the TIE Interceptor and Starfighter in order of piloting skill, preventing any return fire.  The next turn my Defender finished off Biggs. On the other flank, KuriboGoomba crashes another starship into an asteroid, destroying it.

The B-wing and E-wing manoeuvre and trap the overstressed TIE Starfighter. It erupts into a glittering ball of sparkly stuff.  

Having disabled Luke with an ion blast at close range,  I realised I couldn't keep him in my sights next turn. I jammed my Defender into him so that he couldn't fire at me and annihilated the A-wing instead. Caught between Luke, the E-wing and B-wing, I spent a few turns evading a causing light damage before someone could finally line me up and take me out.

So... there's nothing wrong with the Rebels; they bring the pain just like anyone else! The second game was an introductory session for my mate and old school gamer, BennyW. Like KuriboGoomba, BennyW and I go back 20 years. There are very few games that I have played without him across the other side of the table. In fact, even when he is not there, he kinda is. So, no tutorial for this guy: 150 no-holds-barred. Against him was KuriboGoomba and I had a finger in both pies, taking a B-wing on one side and the TIE Phantom on the other (weird, I know, but I was careful to avoid conflicts of interest). Ben cut straight to the competitive meta, instinctively taking an augmented TIE swarm list and we cut loose.

BennyW learns the challenges of manoeuvring a TIE swarm, whilst the Defender and Interceptor sprint for the right flank. A very tired looking M4cr0Dutch is sitting on the right there; I really do need to fix those vertical blinds behind the TV...[sigh]. The TIE Phantom cloaks and proceeds to haunt the trench, destroying a B-wing. KuriboGoomba sends a lone A-wing against the swarm but misses with everything repeatedly and gets vaped in return.

I take advantage of a target lock to nail that Interceptor with my B-wing before it can cause any harm. The E-wing destroys a TIE Starfighter whilst evading fire from the TIE Defender. The B-wing went on to destroy a TIE Starfighter before falling apart in the face of massed firepower. 

The endgame. The E-wing manoeuvred desperately for several turns, avoiding the four firing arcs set against it. Taking a stress token in an attempt to line it up, the TIE Defender flies too close to the board edge and, with limited options available, is lost in the preceding turn. Having turned the TIE Phantom over to BennyW, he ghosted it around the dogfight, finally trapping the E-wing and ripping it to shreds. 

So the Rebels lost another hard-fought game. Things were looking bad right from the start, as the A-wing was very poorly equipped to take on all of those TIE Starfighters. It would have been more appropriately matched against the Defender with its proton rockets. The pair of B-wings, on the other hand, would have had a much better chance, with one sporting 360 degree fire with its secondary weapons and another trading stress tokens for extra hits. Ahhh well, you live and you learn...

Thanks for the great games guys (you know who you are), I look forward to playing some more games soon with extra players and even bigger ships.

See you across the table,

M4cr0

Iron Snakes: Sternguard Progress (extra pictures added)

Hi folks,

For those who have been following my blog during the last year, you will know I have been working very hard on a squad of Iron Snakes Sternguard. I don't think I had any idea of just how intricate this project would be, or how time consuming.

But now I can feel it in my bones...

I'm getting close.

As I take this short break in painting to blog (and watch the cricket), I have 6 combi-plasma guns  and two plasma guns drying with block colours completed.

A poor man's wet pallet. Works a charm, though.

The past couple of nights I have been adding the verdigris detail to the torso. I start off with a 3:1 Scorched Brown (goodness know what they call this now, it is a warm dark brown): Kabalite Green which I paint on half the area of each armour piece. I then ramp it up to a 1:1 then 1:3 mix which I apply by drybrushing consecutively. I then mix Kabalite Green and White in a 1:1 and 1:3 ratio and pick out the extreme edges. A careful Kabalite Green glaze at this stage keeps the highlights neat and knocks them back a little. The armour piece is finished off with an Auric Armour Gold highlight. I am not too happy with this gold; I prefer the old Shining Gold which was a touch more red/warm. So, here is what 6 hours of drybrushing verdigris buys you:

Here are some extra shots of the Veteran Sergeant and the verdigris I have painted on his shield. It probably provides the clearest representation of the technique I am using, it is such a nice large space. I am hoping the other blank shields can turn out the same.

Oooh, missed a bit on that purity seal; thanks high resolution camera! 

To finish this squad off I need to black wash and highlight the weapons with Auric Armour Gold, add some verdigris and blue OSL to the plasma coils. I also need to paint the front facing of those four plain Siege Mantles you can see in the photos. There is one other thing I need to fix up, which may just be me being a bit of a pain. The shield I have painted with a bull image has a very large white space on it that just looks too flat/empty. I am going to add some purity seals there to add some contrast to colour and texture. Of course, then I have to assemble all of those many pieces I have been slaving over!

Spot the offending blank spot...

See you across the table,

M4cr0

Hive Fleet Numereji: Flyrant Build Complete

Hi folks,

Happy new year! I was all set to do a massive gaming session today, including the final battle of the Battletech campaign I have been playing with my mate Wade, but instead I am at home sick (a "daycare special"). I hope wherever you are you are having a much better start to the year than I am.

I have managed to complete the building stage of my flying Hive Tyrant. The last couple of steps involved cleaning up the second set of wings and modelling custom ball joints that would allow them to fit with the standard pair on the same model. The second set is actually from an old Forest Dragon kit I bought many, many moons ago. I also added some short scything talons from the Tyrant Guard sprues.

I also assembled the abdomen and legs, which I affixed to the base with some extra green stuff for support. I scrounged through my bitz boxes and found an old school Genestealer Magus that I new I had lying around somewhere. I'm using him to pay homage to the imagery of Cloudjumper with his rider Valka.

Cloudjumper, looking a little less like a psychic overlord, and Valka

I obviously didn't want the Magus riding the Tyrant, that seemed a bit like putting the cart before the horse. I could imagine that if a Magus was a particularly gifted psyker a Tyrant may string him around as a psychic amplifier before finally giving him up to the digestion pools.

Here is a final dry fit of the torso pieces; the wings are not stable enough to photograph using Blutac alone.

The next stage, painting the Magus, will have to wait for a while as I make a last push to finish off my Iron Snakes Sternguard. By that time I should have my new digital camera up and running so I can stop using my mobile phone!

See you across the table,

M4cr0