Cancon here we come!!

Cancon- Army prep-finished!

Here's some pics of the army as it stands. Sorry for the picture quality on a few pics- the main light in my study is pretty poor, which made the pictures a bit fuzzy. Cancon prep is all done, well ahead of schedule. All in all, the minis are in base colours with a bit of detail here and there, but all of them have their bases done up, so they do look quite presentable.

Termies- shaded/base colours + eyes. Hey, its three colours and based :)

Assault Squads, Bikes, Dread, Pod and power armoured ICs (down the very end).

Stormraven is looking good!

After this I only have some small tasks to do to get the terrain all ready to go, and will be providing between four and five tables worth with medium coverage. Getting very excited at this point :) 

Game Reminders

As I'm still relatively new to this army I've forgotten a lot of key points and special rules in a couple of games. They're mainly rules that apply to either the BA models or core mechanics of the unit type. So, thinking that i'd like to make a good showing at Cancon I decided that a reminder/cheatsheet would be beneficial- i can keep this on hand and read up on things that will be helpful, as well as any ideas or planned tactics (ie refusing all Challenges!)

This is what's on my reminder sheet, hoping it helps me out somewhat!

After Deployment:

        ·         Roll for Red Thirst! (on a 1, swaps ATSKNF for Fearless, and gains Furious Charge).

Sanguinary Priests:

·         BA units attached/within 6” subject to FnP (5+) and Furious Charge.

Furioso Dreadnought:

·         After deploying from Drop Pod, pop smoke if not in range for melta/flamer shooting.

Independent Characters:

·         Librarians to cast Prescience in the majority (re-roll to hit in shooting or cc).

·         All IC’s- refuse challenges/ not to declare challenges unless absolutely necessary or heavily in their favour.

·         IC’s will be placed in the mid-rear of units to keep them alive long enough to use their buffs.

·         IC’s (and upgrade Characters- Sgs etc) have ‘Precision shot’ (allocate wound to mini of choice on ’6’ rolls to hit)

Jump Pack units:

·         Not shooting this turn? RUN RUN RUN! Get those Meltaguns/bombs in range. OR get to cover!

Jump pack charge range percentages- options:

1.       Move 6”, charge 2D6” using jump pack- get to re-roll charge dice, gain Hammer of Wrath.

2.       Jump pack move 12”, charge 2D6.

Total dist   6"%               12"%

9"              >99%              100%

10"              99%              100%

11"              97%              100%

12"              92%              100%

13"              83%              100%

14"              66%              100%

15"              48%                97%

16"              31%                92%

17"              16%                83%

18"                5%                72%

19"                                     58%

20"                                     42%

21"                                     28%

22"                                     17%

23"                                       8%

24"                                       3%              

Bike Rules

·         Movement 12”- any movement at all gives ‘Jink’ (5+ cover save).

·         Bikes have ‘Relentless’- move and fire as though stationary even when moving.

·         Bikes have ‘Hammer of Wrath when charging- 1 attack per bike at Str4 In.10 auto hit.

·         If not shooting, bike may ‘turbo-boost’ up to an extra 12”, gaining a 4+ cover save.

·       T5 is now used for ID tests- with 2 wounds per bike, can only be killed outright by Str10 hits 

So, my hope is that with these reminders I can keep on top of things, stress less about the rules and just have a great time. Does anyone else do things like this, or is it just me??

Hopefully I can get a bunch of great pics up from Cancon on each day, I know you'll all want to see the armies that come along.

Cheers,

Tempest

BA: Characters update + Baneblade

More Red Fury

Some more progress on the Librarian in Terminator Armour, he's now rocking a cool 'flamed lightning' effect on his axe blade, and i've coloured in his face and done some simple colour/wash work on his tabard and purity seals. 



Face looks awesome for just a colour, wash and retouch!! 



Sang Priests... going to run with bare heads I've decided. Still loads to do, but the flesh tones have turned out great. Its nothing more than the now out of production 'Tallarn Flesh' foundation paint, a wash of Devlan Mud and then a retouch of Tallarn. Will go with some lighter highlights at a later point, but its more than table-top standard at this point.

Enter the Baneblade!!

I also decided to finally pull my finger out and get my Baneblade finished/ moved forwards. This is a tank which was previously painted in a **horrid** Mechrite Red base colour, of which small bits can still be seen- im cleaning these up at the moment.

Base is the now (sadly) superceded Charadon Granite- luckily my pot of it is still nice and useable. The base colour for the camo stripes are Zandri Dust (Base) and then I used umm... I cant rememeber? Its the one thats almost Bleached bone, but a few shades darker... this was used in the middle of the stripes to make the scheme 'pop'. All the camo was done with a GW tank brush, drybrushing lazily while watching some TV.

And cos I was bored I thought i'd try some blue tones and white reflecty stuff on the searchlight, I think it worked out okay. Next up is all the metal on the gun barrels, on the tracks, etc, and I'm going to do some gold trim as well- ie  silver with sepia washes, for that 'battleworn' look.

BA Librarian update and paint-range musings..

A short update today, as I'm flat out with work...

I've gone a bit crazy with purchases for this BA project, and have recently bought a whole bunch of the new range of GW paints (can we still call them new??), specifically the complete sets of blues I needed for the two Librarians I'll be running, from the dark basecoat through the the topmost highlight, including a wash and glaze as well- 6 pots in total. Im not a fan of mixing colours, so for me just purchasing all the required shades is best, and the glazes seem to tie all the differing colours together. I understand this is not the approach when you're chasing painting awards but consistency across the entire army is my main focus, to that end I wont blend or mix anything.

The stash so far- I am still using older washes like Devlan and Badab, as you'll never know if i swap to the later versions, as their uses in this army are a lot more subtle. I've also continued to use the Boltgun Metal I bought only a few months prior, I havent seen any reason to swap out to Leadbealcher as they look identical to me...

 And here's the Librarian after a quick Caledor Sky coat. I've also added a few test sections of Teclis Blue for minor highlights, with Lothern Blue to go on for the final 'reflective' highlighting on the uppermost raised sections.

Once his greenstuffed foot pedestal is painted up to match his base he'll really look even better. But happy with the results so far.

Assembling, Painting, Basing and Lists- *Updated 12/9*

Its been a hard slog trying to get any hobby stuff done in the last few weeks- I've had some health issues (which turned out to be nothing in the end) and some very busy weekends socialising and whatnot. But I'm back on the bandwagon now and going to try making a dent in this new endeavour of mine.

Just under a month now to ANUCON, and I'm a bit behind to be honest. Half the Assault Marines are assembled (well, legs torsos and jump packs at least), and have had bases allocated, pins inserted and I've started putting down a lot of Meph red. I've also completed the base coating on the Terminators, the picture below shows the one on the left after reapplying the Mephiston Red again (leaving the Carroburg Crimson wash in the recesses), with the one on the right still just the washed over basecoat. Even at this early stage its starting to look good- Terminators lend themselves to a nice defined paintjob. In this photo the bases are just bare resin.

 

And below is a group photo of the squad. In these pics all bases have now been black undercoated, then basecoated with Mechanicus Standard Grey. The very left base was used as a test- i've applied a wash of Agrax Earthshade (Devlan Mud), then drybrushed the Standard Grey back on, and then a highlighting drybrush of Dawnstone (similar to old Codex Grey). The other four are just basecoated only.

Forgeworld Shoulder Pads are now attached, arms just blu-tac'd on for test fitting.

EDIT: Updated pic, the base blue is all laid down now, and I gave him a wash of Drakenhof Nightshade... although, I now realise that both shoulder pads should be red, not just the one (going off the GW Space Hulk paintup anyways). Easily rectified if thats what I choose. I initially wasnt liking this mini from a painting view but I'm slowly warming to him. I think its the colour, I'm not used to blue, yet??

Actually took over an hour to apply the blue, there's a lot of detail here!

There's also another Librarian on the way who should appear fairly soon, he'll be getting some 'chapter conversions' and a jump pack of some description, and I've been dummy assembling a Sanguinary Priest as well. Whilst some people are declaring that DoA (Descent of Angels) armies to be 'dead in 6th' thats making me all the more adamant to run a jump heavy list- to show that you dont need to drop from the sky to make these lists work.

There's the possibility of some gaming in the next month or so, assuming I have everything at least assembled I'll start trying out my prospective 1500/1850 lists (ANUCON and CANCON respectively). 

For the time being this what I'm roughly working with for 1500:

• Librarian- Terminator Armour, Force Axe, Storm Shield
• Librarian- Force Sword, Jump Pack
• Assault Terminators (5)- 5x TH/SS
• Furioso Dreadnought- Blood Talons, Drop Pod
• Sanguinary Priest- Power Sword, Jump Pack
• Assault Squad (8)- Sgt with Power Axe and Meltabombs, 1x Meltagun
• Assault Squad (8)- Sgt with Power Axe and Meltabombs, 1x Meltagun
• Assault Squad (8)- Sgt with Power Sword and Meltabombs, 1x Flamer
• Stormraven Gunship- TL Plasma Cannon Turret, TL Multi Melta

This list comes in at 1492pts

The basic premise is flexibility of delivery- as the Furioso rides in a Drop Pod it's ignored from the unit count for determining reserves (as is the Stormy, as its a Flyer). So with these removed there is seven units in total, which means half (rounding up) of my units can be reserved, which is four. The Terminators and Termy Librarian will almost always be riding in the Stormraven, which still leaves me with two more units I can reserve.

Anyhow, thats enough for now. Hopefully will have more details up soon, assuming I can keep the momentum going!  

 



Blood Angels paint scheme sorted out + New HQ unit

Today is just a short and simple update- I tend to carry on way too much in general...

With my Blood Angels I've started work on a new scheme that only uses the current range of GW paints, with no reliance on older colours. Woe betide the painter who gets halfway through an army and runs out of their core colour...

The following is a sequence of shots of a Tactical Marine I had lying around in black undercoat. I was originally going to buy an army painter spray and work with that, but now im thinking that I can get this to work instead, and to be honest i'd prefer not having to go back and black out all the weapons on 30+ assault marines...

So, here we go: 

(Please note- the mini below isnt actually shiny- although in some shots it appears to be- its just that my white-light source is fairly close so it reflects a bit)

Mephiston Red base coat- two lightly watered down coats (basically just pre-wet the brush). Goes on super smooth, especially when compared to old Mechrite Red.

Apply a heavy-ish coat of Carroburg Crimson shade (wash).

Reapply a coat (or two) of Mephiston Red, avoiding the recessed areas.

Apply two thinned down coats of Evil Sunz Scarlet on all the major sections of armour, leaving sections of shading and darker red at joints and hard edges. 

Add this stage I add a highlight of Fire Dragon's Bright, which is a thin colour and gives a orange/peachy type highlight colour. And most importantly- two coats of Bloodletter (Glaze)- this smooths out the transitions between  all the previous steps as well as bringing the hue up to a richer red more in keeping with the boys from Baal.

Final step is to revisit the Dragon's Bright Orange highlights, and i've (roughly) painted in the eyes, armour joints etc for some more detail. But all in all, this is my Blood Angels will be painted. And all with straight-from-the-pot new colours, no mixing for me :)

Oh, and here's my next challenge- My new HQ unit- a 'Space Hulk' Librarian in Terminator Armour. I've removed his Stormbolter and given him a Storm Shield for some big time defensive ability. I've also freed him from his standard 'base', save a section of the step/pedestal under his back foot- this will be suitably disguised to blend into his new base (and more on that soon). 




Gah! The red, it hurts my eyes!


So that's all for now guys, hope you like.

Comments and feedback are always welcome!

Cheers,
Tempest