Surprise Christmas Presents...

Hope you all had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! This one's been a weird one for me... the 40k Crimbo's have always been a little fortutous...

• Christmas 2007 - I buy my brother 40k 4th Edition and get us both back into 40k.
• Christmas 2008 - I discover a pile of Tau at the local '2nd hand specialist' and land £125 of Tau for £25.
• Christmas 2009 - My parents are looking to sell up and dig out the original set of lead miniatures I'd been missing since 1992 (I know this as it's written on the bases).

Objects of interest recovered from the detritus of 1992, 2nd Edition madness:

• 1992 Commissar Yarrick (interesting ... in a very weird way)
• 1992 Valhallan Squad with flamer and Mortar
• 1992 5 off Rough Riders (YEAH I KNEW I HAD SOME!)
• Old School Chaos Dreadnought (It's SOOO cute)
• A Zoat (yeah, a ZOAT!)
• 5 Squats ... including an Exoarmour Squat!

Photo's to follow!

Drawing - the charge of 2009

Just a quick blog during the festive season to celebrate the 'best wargaming moment of 2009' for me... In this case, it occured when my 75pts of roughriders caught 350pts of Crisis Suit Retinue.

After two turns chasing down the tricksy Crisis Suits, they finally got a smashing 12" of move and run and 12" of charge... they cause 6 wounds and downed two Crisis Suits (two invlunerable saves coming into play) on the charge, the Tau retinue was sent reeling and my opponent failed to make a single wound. Even Ld10 struggles with a -4 modifier and the I5 horsemen cleaned up the I3 Crisis Suits...

Best Fight of 2009.

New Toy for Christmas

This was done using GIMP2 (free download software) in about 20 minutes.

Yes yes yes, I know that there will be a requirement to place a downpayment on Tyranids in the near future, but as my birthday drops just before the 16th ... I'm comfortable that buying bugs won't be a problem. My target is potentially a Trygon/Mawloc and 20 Gargoyles...

What I'll do with the 'scratch built bunch' I was to build is a painful consequence.

On another note, I was gotten a small Bamboo fun drawing pad for Christmas. It's simply incredible! As a budding artist (who isn't in 40k circles) the pad combines the best elements of the repainting and layering of oil paints, the sketching of pencils, the delicious layering of watercolours....

It is my best best buy...

As such, I'll be dropping in a few more 'graphics' to compliment both the batreps and written stuff. It's a very exciting tool ... very exciting.

So as a taster I slapped this together in a couple of minutes (obviously), and hopefully my skills will improve with some practice.

Be nice...

Painting Update - Stuff left to do before January 16th

BASING

Painting is definitely entering it's final stages ... with 4500pts of Imperial Guard built and painted, there's only a long laborious basing project to undertake, to 'finish' the models off. I'm not a big fan of basing ... its tiresome and boring ... but I believe that those that don't base are just those that don't paint under another guise.

Basing a model is like framing your portrait correctly - it finishes the piece and a bad job can ruin one. That said, I've also seen some awesome (and very time consuming basing) ... considering I have probably 160 models to base ... any suggestions people?

PAINTING

Firstly, the least painted army (the nids) are in a hiatus awaiting the new codex. I've already seen the Mawloc, Ravenors and Gargoyles in the flesh and they are beautiful (well in that ugly way) ... I've painted up nearly all the hormagaunts, termagaunts and genestealers ... I think I'll wait on the Warriors until I've got a better idea over weaponry.

So the Imperial Guard are finished. I painted up the 'commissar lord' on Saturday (he subsequently died tragically due to an overabundance of gatling fire from a stomper. 57 hits on the 31 man squad left 8 standing, 44 hits on the 6 man command squad killed everyone, obviously).

So the target is to complete the Tau before the Nid Codex arrives. I finished the last of the firewarriors in my Tau force yesterday. This means I have the following completed:

• 36 Firewarriors
• 12 Kroot, 2 Kroot Hounds and a Shaper
• 6 XV25 and 3 XV15 Stealthsuits
• Ethereal
• 1 Broadside
• 2 Devilfish

The below models need completion:

• 5 Crisis Suits need repainting and magnetising ... weapons choices a go go!
• 2 Broadsides need painting
• 2 Hammerhead/Skyrays need painting
• 5 Gundrones need painting
• 1 Markerdrone needs building and painting

Well that's achievable isn't it?!? I've already got the Tank paint scheme sorted out, so they should go faster than the first - espaecially if I do them in a batch! The gundrones are up first though, and then I'll finish the Broadsides and Tank.

So a month to go and the cadre should be finished...

Time to buy a Piranha maybe?