What's on my Painting Table - Drop Pod

Christmas is almost upon us but that hasn't stopped me getting some more painting done on some of my miniatures.  The latest thing to be completed is this Drop Pod for my Imperial Fists army.

Early stages of the painting.  I decided I wanted to but some scorch marks on the Drop Pod to show that it had been through the atmosphere of the planet the Imperial Fists are defending (or invading). 

The inside.

The finished Drop Pod, along with some of my Command Squad.

Another shot of the interior.

The Drop Pod before the deployment ramps have been deployed. 

Now this is done my next project to paint will be my Wrathguard. 

Da Mek's Workshop - Basing ideas

I thought I'd pass on some ideas for jazzing up your miniatures bases by showing you two of the bases for some Wrathguard that I am currently working on. 

These miniatures are going to be used in part of a 40K tournament that I'm taking part in February 2015.  As such I wanted to make some of them look a little more dynamic, so after raiding my bits box this is what I came up with...

This Guardsmen lies injured on the base, grenade in hand ready to make one final act of valour by trying to take out a Wrathguard.  I had to do some remodelling on the left arm (with some Green stuff  added later to fill the gaps).  The gunshot wounds were made with a pin drill. 

Here's the finished base with the Wrathguard on it. 

This Wrathguard perches on a discarded Space Marine helmet.  I got the inspiration from the shot in Terminator 2 when a T-800 crushes a human skull underfoot.   

 

4 of the 5 Wrathguard finished!

It was relatively easy to add these small details to the bases and I'll post some photos on the finished results once they have been painted.  As the rest of my Eldar are based on snow themed bases then these will follow suit. 

What's on my Painting Table - Death Guard

Here are some pictures of my recently finished Death Guard squad which replaces one of my Red Corsairs units in my chaos Space Marine army.

The unit is based around the new Space Marine Tactical Squad set but with some small conversions, modifications and additions from my bits box (and some generous gamers) to make them look more Chaos. 

I'm really happy with how they've turned out and can't wait to use them in a game. 

2 traditional Death Guard torsos and a third with  a rocket launcher which I converted to give it a more demonic look.     

Some more troops with mixed armour types.

The Death Guard in the centre has a rusty and corroded bionic head. 

Now I've finished this unit I can start on my Terminator Squad which will act as a body guard unit for Typhus. 

What's on my Painting Table - Eldar Vyper

Having recently purchased an Eldar Vyper for my Kill Team I decided to paint it up so that it's ready to hot the battlefield.  Here is the end result.

What's on my painting table - Ork Nobz

Here are some pictures of the last two Ork Nobz that I needed to finish to complete my newly updated unit.  They will join my other Nobz in the unit that have Big Choppas, a Waaagh Pole and  of course one of my Painboyz. 

The two new Nobz with their cybork bodies

This Ork has Cybork upgrades to his head. 

Whilst this one has had his right arm replaced with a chainsaw!

As well as his Big Choppa this Nob carries with him a knife and shoota. 

Whilst this one is armed with Stick Bombz, extra ammo and a medi kit.

Da Mek's Workshop - Scenery basing

I thought for this article I'd focus on my method of basing scenery for games such as 40K or Necromunda.  I'd recently been working on some Necromunda terrain so here's how I got on with on of the bits.

Here's the piece of scenery that I want to base.  Before I even attempted to base it I undercoated the bulkhead with black spray undercoat. 

The next task is to mark out  the plastic card.  A top tip when doing this is to make sure that you leave enough room on the base for a miniature to be able to stand next to the scenery piece that you wish to base.  This prevents "wobbly model syndrome" from occurring when you're trying to make your miniatures move through the terrain. 

The next job to do is to make some marks as to where you want your scenery to sit.  Remember to leave enough space for a single miniature to fit around it!

Once everything is marked out the next job is the cutting.  I used a Stanley knife to cut out my board.  Make sure that you place a cutting mat under the card so that you don't damage your table top.

Once the board is cut out you're ready to stick your scenery piece to it.  I used super glue to this job.  Whatever glue you use make sure that it is suitable to stick plastic to plastic. 

Apply a little pressure to make sure the glue sets the scenery to the board. 

Once the super glue has dried the next stage is to add some texture to the board.  As this is going to be a Necromunda piece of terrain I used sand (which will later be painted grey) but you could use flock or snow depending on what type of ground you are going for.  When sticking the sand to the base make sure that you use PVA wood glue.  I find that this gives the strongest bond. 

Once the PVA glue has fully dried (which will take about 12 hours) you are ready to do some painting.  Before you apply any paint make sure you brush off and excess sand, otherwise it will end up in you brush and in your paint pots!  I painted my base Mechanicus Standard Grey.  

To finish the concrete look I dry brushed the base with Praxeti White.  The sand texture is great for highlighting. Once that was dried I painted the bulkhead.    

And here is the finished piece ready to be used in my next game of Necromunda. 

What's on my painting table - MK2 Storm Talon



This weekend I managed to finish off my MK2 Storm Talon (As well as paint the 10th, and final member of my Devastator Squad and start on two Ork Nobz).  Here are some pics of the end result. 

The MK2 ready for action!

Close up of the pilot

Rear view (you can see the Nobz I've been working on in the background)

Top view. 

Another cockpit close up.

What's on my painting table - Striking Scorpions

It took a while but I've finally finished my Striking Scorpions Squad for my Eldar Kill Team.  Here is the end result. 

The finished squad

Sneak Peek

With my Scorpions finished I've started work on painting my MK2 Stormtallon.  Here's a sneak peek of the progress so far.  In a break from the norm I've actual decided to finish the base of this miniature first.

Work on the MK2 Stormtallon has begun. 

Tales from the touchline - Exebowl 2014 report



Well I'm back from Exebowl and as promised here's my report on how it all went.  Now Exebowl was the first ever NAF Blood Bowl tournament that I have entered so I wasn't really sure how it would all go down.  I knew that the out of the 32 teams that had entered around 50% of them were what I would call "Pro Blood Bowl" players, that is to say that they are fellow gamers who regularly take part in these tournaments with the aim to do well in them and boost their NAF ranking.  The remaining 50%  were rookie players, people like myself who either had no previous tournament experience or had only been to one or two of them. 


It turned out that I was the only Necromantic team entered.  There were several Undead teams, A few Elves, some Dwarfs, a lot of Skaven and a lot of Vampires.  There was an array of pitches and an equally impressive array of Club shirts on display (From clubs from across England and Wales).


My first game was against an Undead team, which I lost 2 - 0.  After a quick lunch break my second match (Which was also my favourite of the day) was against a Skaven team which ended in a 2 all draw (but more about that in a bit).   The final match of the day saw me face off against a Dwarf team, which I  lost (due in part to the worse dice rolling luck in my life!). Needless to say the final result ended 4 - 0, which also ways a lot about my tactics :) In the end I finished 28th in the tournament, which I'm happy with.  It's also put me on the NAF World Rankings and apparently I'm currently ranked as the 138th best Necromantic team in the world (Though there may be only 138 Necromantic teams in NAF). 


I have to admit that my lasting impression of the day was just how well spirited the pro players were. In both my first and second games I was up against Pros (The person I played in my first pool game actually went on to win the tournament!) and they were just great opponents.  They knew I was a rookie and they offered me tactical advice, guidance and a lot of allowance to help me improve my game play and help me to learn some neat plays.  A good example of this was in my second game where my opponent went into a 2 - 1 lead during the second half of our game.  I only had 1 turn left to play, which would also be the last turn on the match and my opponent showed me how I could pull off a 1 turn touchdown that would draw the game for me.  What was even more surprising was that I managed to roll all the dice results I needed and it actually worked!  I mean how well spirited is that.  I'd struggle to see that happening in any other competitive environment. 


Although I didn't win anything I did come away with a lot of new experience and tactical advice to take with me into my next tournament or league.  I also picked up some ideas for conversions and modelling ideas for future Blood Bowl projects, oh and of course I got two new Exebowl dice.  I'm also hoping to go to another NAF tournament sometime in the future, hopefully another 1 day event, fairly local to Exeter (I hear there is a  1 day event in Bristol in June). 


Here's a few photos that I took from the day, If you head over to Exebowl.co.uk you can see some more that Pete (the TD and organiser of Exebowl) took. 



This is a ball marker I made which is base don one that I saw at Exebowl.  It's a really good idea as you can but it under the base of the player who was the ball, making it really easy to move it around and see who has it. 

My teams casualties during my first game. 

Round 2 draw...

...and the Rround 3 draw

This Troll Slayer had a good day during my final game. 



Here's my finished marker, with added pitch line and blood!