Magnetised Land Speeder

Last night I finished gluing and magnetising my first Land Speeder, I mostly followed the guide at talonstrike . I'm still missing a Heavy Flamer, but I ordered one at Modelbits so that should be arriving shortly, along with the flamer I ordered a few bits to finish up my 3 Deathwing terminator squads - the only thing missing is 5 Thunder Hammers and Storm Shield, I guess that'll be my first eBay bits buy.

Land Speeder Typhoon

Land Speeder Tornado

Its been a while...

I'm back! after a few weeks off the warhammer bandwagon I've kicked it up in high gear following an earth-shattering victory last Tuesday. The game had so many highpoints but none higher than my tactical squad that pod'ed in next to a Land Raider and promptly blew it up before it ever made a move!.... ahh what a game...

On the hobby front I've cracked open a few vehicle boxes and started assembly. Namely a Rhino, Razorback and a Land Speeder.

My paint scheme for the army has been divided into a basic and deluxe version, the aim is to speed up assembly and game readiness. The basic paint scheme will serve as foundation for the deluxe - in time everything may get the full paint job but for now its more important to get the stuff out of the boxes. The newly assembled Rhino is the prototype for the basic scheme.

I bought some plasticcard and magnets in order to make interchangeable weapons and gear, primarily on the tanks, first up is the Land Speeder which will get options for just about every weapon available. Pictures will follow in a post soon. However I am missing a Heavy Flamer for the Land Speeder so I've been checking out bit shops and ebay for that and other bits, there is an absolutely huge amount available at very different prices.

My first Rhino is finished, the paint job (excluding the interiors)  was done in one evening, this must be a new record for me. Everything is glued on (the gun turn thou), all through I read that a lot of people buy Predators or Razorbacks and magnetise so they can be used as either the tank or a Rhino. However I think you'll need at least one Rhino in 9 out of 10 games so it can't hurt to have one or two non-magnetised, and since magnetisation interferes with painting the interiors I will forgo magnetisation on the first two Rhinos.

The Ironclad Dreadnought is coming along nicely, it will get the deluxe paint job since I'm already quite far, there's not much to magnetise on the beast since the weapons are interchangeable out of the box.

I still have a week left of my summer vacation, on one of the first vacation days I went down to Flensburg with my wife to shop and check out their hardware stores (I'm building a shack for my aviary but that's another story..). For some time I've been looking for a good bits box with lots of space, rooms of different size and most of all some sort of system where the small bits won't flow from room to room.
I was in luck, in Bauhaus I got this great box for just 20 EUR;

The brilliant design of this box is that the "rooms" are small boxes that can be removed and rearranged to your hearts desire. The larger of the boxes will hold 10 marines while the smallest ones are perfect for heads and other small bits. All the small boxes are held firmly in place by both the lid and holes in the bottom of the case, the hinges and locks are also solid and I bet I can drop the box from 1,5 meters without breaking it or even with a bit "jumping rooms".

Another great buy (from a local hardware store) was this aluminium case that I've filled up with a special black foam:

There are 4 layers of 0,5 cm foam and 3 layers of 3 cm foam. The 3 cm foam will hold 50 minis of varying sizes in each layer or up to 8 rhino sized vehicles in two layers (6 cm) of foam.
The case was 129,- DKK and the foam about 200 DKK - and that's enough foam for two cases of this size, much cheaper than the cases from Games Workshop.

Gone Fishin'

Not much is happening on the Warhammer front for now, my photo stand got covered by books and various paper so no pictures either :). I've had some progress on the Ironclad Dreadnought - I'll try to get a picture up soon.

Meanwhile my fishing season has started, I enjoy fishing in the summertime - nothing quite like a hot summer evening at a lake or at the sea with a fishing rod.

Two weeks ago I caught my first fish of the season, a 43 cm, 1.3 kg perch:

 

Crushing defeat

Last Saturday we had another game at Laurents place, 4 players with 1000 points each. Tyranids and Chaos versus Orks and my Dark Angels.... The game was quite even until turn 4 were the dice gods decided to wipe out the orks and marines, in two turns of shooting we didn't even manage to land a single wound! and it was not for lack of trying.

I am considering using the Blood Angels or Space Wolfes codex for my army lists, Laurents created a 1000 pts Space Wolfes army that I may try out for our next game. The list calls for 3 veterans armed with power fist and combi-melta. Since I only have 1 combi-melta in my bitsbox I decided to try and convert a few from some bolters and vehicle multi-meltas. For the first sergeant I used the sergeant from the Black Reach box, I think the result is quite good.

I'm still painting my command squad, all thou I found out that they are considered one of the worst units in the Space Marine codex, but for a fluffy army they are a must. I've realised that fluff and proper army lists are mutually exclusive and thus I've adopted the strategy to build and paint my army according to fluff and add some models (like the three power fist / combi-melta sergeants) to a separate flavour of the month"bits box".

First time freehand

Inspired by The Angels Talon I decided to start painting some freehand on my 4th company battle standard. The design is based off the Dark Angels 4th company badge, with a winged sword overlay. For some unknown reason I painted a 5 in the lower right corner... I'll have to fix that later on :).
This is the first basecoat and I have to change some things, the border and back side of the banner will be changed to Dark Angels Green since the company badge doesn't contain any green parts. The sword should be painted up in a white tone, maintaining a black border to set it apart from the white squares.The banner pole and winged skull will be painted last since I use those part to handle the banner while painting.

I've started work on my Ironclad Dreadnought, first up is a coat of Dark Angels Green on all the armour plating. Due to some rather useless instructions in the Ironclad Dreadnought kit I've assembled the close combat arm in a way that makes it impossible to mount the storm bolter or heavy flamer underneath.
Since everything is glued with plastic glue it is impossible to disassemble the weapon so the only option left is to split the weapon with a razor saw and fit it back together with some green stuff. I find this really annoying, especially since the model cost 250 DKK. Games Workshop could at least make some useful instruction sheet for the kit.
In the current instruction sheet there is no mention of a gun placement on the close combat weapon - instead it shows that you can mount either a storm bolter, heavy flamer or meltagun on the seismic hammer, however only the heavy flamer and meltagun are legal choices in the army book! - and as a matter of fact the close combat weapon must be equipped with either a storm bolter or a heavy flamer!!. I sent an email complaint to Games Workshop three weeks ago but have yet to get any answer.

Lastly I worked on a couple of objective markers for my angels, I didn't have a lot of bits that could be used but i think they turned out pretty nicely.
On the other side of the right on is a book from one of the Dark Angels Upgrade Kits.

Still undefeated

Spring has hit Denmark and I'm spending a lot of time in the garden, this means not much time for painting but some progress has been made.

We had exceptionally good weather this weekend so I took a break from gardening and primed a bunch of models, having removed mould lines and washed the models the day before I was all set.

First off I sprayed an empty sprue just to be sure that everything was all right. The finish was perfect and next up were the side sections of my first rhino. The rest of the models were lined up on various pieces of board.

Since I want to paint the inside of the rhino, I decided to assemble a few sections and prime them separately. I put the side sections up on a nail board that I made especially for priming models. This allows me to turn the board around and paint the rear side right away. Since the sections were upside down I will have to touch up the primer on the top of the tank later on.
Next up were weapons and backpacks for a tactical squad, usually I paint these by hand but I wanted to try out spraying them instead. I had to be a little careful since the spray easily could have blown all the bits off the tray - only a few slipped off.
I removed the board and let the bits dry before turning them over and spraying the rear side.

The terminators were next, they were arranged on two wooden boards with three models on each board. After spraying the first board the spray started to run out - and I still had a lot of rhino parts and a whole tactical squad to paint! with a little luck I managed to finish up the terminators with the last drops of paint. Unfortunately it was my last spray can so the rest of the bits and models will have to wait until I can get a new can or two.

Sunday was spend in Aarhus with Laurens and 4 of his friends for a 2250 point game with each player controlling a 750 points force. My Angels did good, the new Ironclad Dreadnought took a LOT of punishment he was immobilized with both weapons destroyed before finally succumbing to the overpowering tyranid attacks.
Each player had a secret objective and the overall winner would be found by adding up the victory points, my side managed 7 points with my marines accounting for 3 points against the other teams 4 points - however the game was much closer than the numbers tell - in fact it would have been a draw if the tyranid player had made few better rolls for capturing his final objective.

Springtime

Finally! today spring hit Denmark with temperatures in excess of 15 degrees Celsius, and  humidity dropped below 60 for the first time in weeks. This could mean only one thing: primer time!

I got a Ironclad Dreadnought from maelstrom last Saturday, i spend some time assembling it this weekend. I also glued flock to and removed mouldlines from my command squad and commander. Last night I washed everything and scrubbed it with a toothbrush so it was ready when the weather turned today.

Due to the Army Painter failure on my first tactical squad I'm now using Games Workshop Chaos Black Spray again, it hasn't failed me yet. It was a bit windy but I found a good spot to set up my paint booth (a old moving box..), the whole spraying session took about 30 minutes.

I left off some of the smaller bits to be hand primed, and I still need to go over the primer with a brush.

I've assembled all four weapons for the Ironclad Dreadnought, so I can field it in any configuration I need. The Hunter Killer missiles have been left off thou.

I got a Rhino and a devastator squad in the mail today, this will allow me to finish assembling the last tactical squad I've planned, I need to figure out which squads and models I should paint first - I've tried to make a few army lists in order to prioritize the paint order. First up will be the command squad and Ironclad and after that it will probably be a second tactical squad. That should form a solid core army I can add models to.