What's on my Painting Table Revisited - Death Guard Plague Marines

Continuing my theme of revisiting and re-photographing some of my previously painted miniatures her are some new photos of my squad of Death Guard Plague Marines. Enjoy :)

Death Guard with flamer. 

Champion armed with Plasma Pistol and Powerfist.  He is a conversion from the Standard Bearer miniature.

Two "old skool" 2nd edition plastic Plague Marine!

I have some more Death Guard that I'll be painting up soon to, which include Typhus (So I'll need to be converting myself a unit of Plague Zombies in the near future!).   My plan is to use them as part of my 2,000 or 2,500 point Chaos Space Marine force.  Here's a sneak peek!

Independent retailers

I thought I'd do a little article on the local hobby and gaming stores in and around Exeter (where I live) and promote them out to the wider community.

I have to say that Exeter has a lot of great independents that stock both GW and tabletop games. 

Here are the ones that I recommend visiting;


OMG! Comics

The original (and in my opinion the best) Comic Book store in Exeter, located in McCoys Arcade on Fore Street.  Stocks all your comic book needs plus a selection of tabletop games such as Star Trek Catan, Munchkin, Fluxx and some of the Fantasy Flight 40K games, such as The Horus Hersey.   Also has an awesome selection of T-Shirts!


Kirton Games

Located in the Creedy Centre Crediton (Just outside of Exeter) this shop stocks Games Workshop as well as Fantasy Flight products and offers a 10% discount! They have a great online store as well as a fantastic physical shop where they have regular gaming nights.  They also do offers of the week that usually tie in with the latest's GW release. Well worth checking out!


Clifton Road Games

As the name suggests this shop is located on Clifton Road in Exeter.  It has a large selection of board games, miniatures, Card Games and accessories as well as a gaming area.  They host regular tournaments for games such as Magic and Star Wars X-Wing.  They don't stock and GW stuff but sell pretty much everything else.  They also held an International Tabletop Day event in 2014.


Critical Mass Retro Videogames & Manga

Located opposite OMG! Comics (which is handy as you can kill two birds with one stone) this shop is Exeter's premier retro videogaming shop and has recently started stocking Games Workshop products with a 10% discount! From time to time they also get in the odd retro GW game (for example a few months back they had a copy of Heroquest and Advanced Heroquest for sale!).  I've bought several retro games from there (mostly Star Wars related N64 games) and have found them very reasonably priced. 


All of these stores are run by very lovely people who are passionate about they things that they sell and are always up for a chat when you pop in to see them, so if you find yourself in Exeter (or Crediton) why not pop in and see them (or use their online stores!).

International Tabletop Day 2015 anouncement

For those of you who may have missed it the lovely folks over at Geek & Sundry made an announcement on the official date for International Tabletop Day as April 11 2015!

Now this announcement came as a bit of a surprise (apparently an email was sent out in error to some Geek & Sundry subscribers containing the date) However it's welcome news and it give sus loads of time to plan events.  I for one am hoping to set something up in Exeter, so watch this space for more news on that!

Until then, as a certain Mr Wil Wheaton would say "Play more games" and as I would say "Keep Calm and Re-Roll!"

New Images of the Ork Tumbler!

I decided to re-photograph my converted Ork buggy which I've nicknamed the Tumbler (Yes after the one from the Dark Knight movies!).  I think these new photos better show it off. 

The Ork driver can multi task as he can drive and throw a Stikk Bomb at the same time!

The gunner takes aim with his Big Shoota.

The rear view gives the best hint as to why I've nicknamed this buggy The Tumbler

Front view.

NB: At some point in the future I'm going to get round to converting another buggy so that I have a unit of 3 to field.  As GW decided not to do a new kit as part of the recent Ork release I'm tempted to use a landspeeder as the basis again, but if anyone has any other suggestions comment below.

What's on my Painting Table - Eldar Farseer

Today I managed to finish my Eldar Farseer miniature (Who will be my HQ choice should I decided to use my Elder as Allies to my Imperial Fists).  Here is the end result.

My Farseer ready to take on all!

Rear view. 

New images of my Helbrute and Ork Painboy

I've recently been experimenting with some photographing techniques so thought I'd re-shoot some of recently finished miniatures to better show them off.    I thought I'd start with my Helbrute and Ork Painboy.  Here are the results.

I decided to send the photos to White Dwarf to get some feedback and I got a very nice reply from the team giving me a few hints and tips to get clearer results (and a rather nice complement on the conversion of my Helbrute). 

So with that in mind expect some more photos of my other miniatures to start appearing on here soon.

Outside the Box - A Space Hulk retrospective

With the immanent release of Space Hulk fast approaching I thought I'd take a moment to look back on the game and how it influenced my path into "geeky war gaming".

For me Space Hulk was my first introduction into Games Workshop and the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  When I was at secondary school one of my friends at the time had an older brother who, for whatever reason, owned a copy of Space Hulk (1st edition).  My friend and I would often get the game out not to play but to look at how cool the models were and how awesome the game board was (you have to understand I was about 11 or 12 at the time).  For me it was unlike any board game I had ever seen before. 

As it would happen, a few month later my friends brother decided that he no longer wanted Space Hulk as he hardly ever played it (I think he had moved on to playing computer games as he recently purchased a new console all the kids were talking about called a Saga Megadrive).  As such he gave me his copy of the game. 

Now I have to admit I didn't play the game once I had it (the rules were way beyond me!) but I loved the models and as I read over the books that came with the game I was instantly drawn into the 40K universe.  Reading about the Emperor, the Horus Heresy, the Space Marines and the Xeno threat that they had to encounter sparked my imagination.  I wanted to know more!

Shortly after that I started to discover another game called Space Crusade which was similar to Space Hulk, was produced by the same company and had Space Marines in it, as well as Genestealers and a whole host of other alien races! Unlike Space Hulk though, Space Crusade was much easier to learn how to play and so that was the game that truly started my wargaming hobby as it led me onto collecting 40K. 

Several years latter Games Workshop re-released Space Hulk as a new edition.  By this time I was well and truly into my hobby and couldn't wait to get the new edition (I still have a copy of it).  When it finally came out I played it frequently and even used the Terminators in my 40k games.  By now I had the experience to properly appreciate the game play and design of the game.  I loved it.


My copy of 2nd edition Space Hulk



When the third edition came out I was no longer  playing 40K.  I had fallen out of the hobby in my late teens (Due to rising costs and a change in the atmosphere of my local GW store due to a new manager who only wanted to sell products and not deal with the hobbyists!) so I missed the boat on that release.  However a few years later I had gotten back into the hobby and was surprised that GW no longer supported specialist games.  The release of 3rd edition Space Hulk was a limited run, aimed more to collectors rather than trying to draw in new gamers. 

With this new release of Space Hulk looming I really hope that Games Workshop go back to having it as a regular release, that anyone can go into the store, pick up from the shelf and get playing straight away.  I would love to see Space Hulk bringing the same joy and wonder to people today that the 1st edition of the game did for me.  It works so well as an introduction into the hobby and the 40K universe. However it looks like this will be yet another limited run, which is a shame, and if it is true then I think Games Workshop are truly missing a trick. 

Anyway all will be revealed on Friday.  I for one will be placing an order!

Happy gaming.

NB: What do you think about the re-release of Space Hulk?  Leave a comment below.

UPDATE

Orders just went live!

What's on my Painting Table - Eldar

This week I've been working on getting my Eldar Kill Team painted.  This is mainly down to me playing some Kill Team games with them, so I wanted them to be nicely painted (however since playing my last game I've now decided to replace the Howling Banshees with some Striking Scorpions, so I'll have even more painting to do soon).

I decided to create my own Craftworld colour scheme and settled on a black and dark red motif.  I  just need to come up with a name and backstory for the Craftworld.  I'm thinking something along the lines of them being a long lost Craftworld that is somewhat of a myth among the rest of the Eldar. 


I also took this opportunity to try out some of the photographing miniatures hints and  techniques which featured in the recent issue of White Dwarf.  Let me know what you think.

Four of my Six  Jetbikes.  Four of which are now painted.

I decided to add some battle damage to some of the Jetbikes.

My unit of Howling Banshees.

I've used glazes to give the Banshees yellow or blue bladed Power Swords. I wanted them to look a bit like Lightsaber blades. 

I used a red glaze on the silver areas.

Future projects

I'm currently working on this Farseer.  I also have the Striking Scorpions to paint, as soon as they arrive in the mail (and I get some more Chaos Black undercoat)

What's on my Painting Table - Ork Painboy

I've been having computer troubles recently (Bloody Windows!)  so my updates have been a little slow but here's some images of the new Ork Painboy model that I painted up about 2 weeks ago.  I'm really happy with the end result.

Early basecoat stages.  As my Painboy is a Deathskull I painted his face blue.

I decided to use the painting guide in Warhammer Visions issue 6 to work out how to do the apron, bandages and trousers.

Highlighting begins

Almost done.  Just the detailing to do.

Some blood and rust added.

And here is the finished miniature. 

The rear view gives you a closer look at the rusting effect on the claw.