Malifaux update! - Pandora and Friends

Well it's been a lot longer then I've intended between updates, but with the silly season now drawing to a close, I've got the time on my hands to bring my blog back up to speed.

And what better way to do that then by showing some progress I've made with Malifaux?

I finally finished Pandora, I spent so long agonising over what colours to paint her. Her crew has a lot of green and red so it seemed logical that she should be no exception.




And here she is, with the rest of the crew so far.



Future additions will include Candy and Baby Kade, Insidious Madness, the Hooded Rider and Pandora's Avatar.


I also painted up the Terror tots and young Nephillim from Lilith's Brood.


I'm currently working on Lilith and the Mature Nephillim. Future additions to this crew will include a Lelu, a Lilitu, Lilith's Cherub, a Black Blood Shaman and Nekima.

I also have the Collodi and Freikorps box sets coming in with my next lot of additions, I like to think of it as a christmas present to myself!

Stay tuned for more updates...

Progress Update - Sorrows and Prussians

So it's been a while between updates, I've got a few things that I've been chipping away at over the last couple of weeks but I haven't had much time to paint unfortunately.

WIP Poltergeist and Sorrows for Malifaux




And here's some progress on my Dystopian Wars land forces...


I've decided to go with the Black and Gold scheme I originally intended, the other possible schemes I played around with weren't working so well and while it lacks detail, I think it's quite effective when you see whole masses of it. And who get's down, has a real close look at the tiny tanks and complains that your scheme is too simple anyway?


I also recently purchased a Metzger Robot and Imperium Sky Fortress. And I have to say I was impressed, they're huge by Dystopian Wars standards...





Shall hopefully have more updates soon, so stay tuned for more!

Waldgeists Complete!

Well the Waldgeists are now complete, these were really easy to paint! Lots of drybrushing and washes helped me get these done relatively quickly and I'm quite happy with how they've turned out. The waldgeists seem like interesting models to use in games. They're able to move pieces of forest scenery with them as well as strike enemies in or near pieces of forest terrain they're in as though they were in base contact so seem like they could be a lot of fun for me and a massive thorn in my opponent's side...





I added some pieces from a Wood Elf Dryad boxed set to the bases for something different, including this lil guy

Next up out of the Malifaux crew is Pandora and the Sorrows...
Stay tuned for more...

The stuff of nightmares - Teddy complete and Waldgeists WIP

Heya all, Teddy is now done! I added a few subtle highlights to the freehand and tidied it up a bit but decided not to go what I felt would have been too far with adding to it, overall I'm quite happy with he has turned out!


Since completing him I've started on my Waldgeists whilst continuing to work on my Prussian ships. For something different, I have some spare bits from a wood elf dryad set that I'm going to use to make the Waldgeist's bases more forest like...


In regards to my Prussians, I'm thinking of trying a dirty, rusty white because the large amounts of black on the ship hulls is looking rather bland...

More on the way soon...

The stuff of nightmares - Teddy WIP

Well I've finally made a start on Teddy's heart and thought I'd share some pics to get some feedback on it (and the model in general)

I've gone for something similar to what Eavy Metal's Neil Green did on the armour of his Harry the Hammer for the showcase in the Warhammer 25th anniversary White Dwarf. I did a quick sketch to try and get my bearings on what exactly I was trying to apply to the model, I find doing this can often help me when attempting freehand.



I stuck to using very neutral colours to try and avoid detracting from his face and gribbly maw which should probably be the main focal point of the model.


There's still plenty of work on him and the freehand isn't finished yet but I'm keen to get people's thoughts so far?

Stay tuned for more...

Assorted Projects

Heya All, sorry for the lack of updates. Life's been pretty busy and I haven't much time to sit down and do much hobby related stuff until recently.

I've been taking a holiday from the grim darkness of the far future and working on some projects for a few other games to try and rebuild my motivation for 40k whilst working on some more enjoyable projects, here's what I've been up to of late...


Here's a Doppleganger from the Wyrd Miniatures game: Malifaux,


I've recently got into Malifaux and am loving it. The low model count makes it really affordable and easy to paint for yet give each miniature plenty of attention. I really enjoy the game itself. Playing with no dice and using cards instead is wierd at first but surprisingly cool. Very easy to understand and get the hang of.

I'm running a Neverborn crew (they're the bad guys of Malifaux) Led by Pandora. Figured the Doppleganger could be used to pull off some neat combos plus, its a cool model for $9 AUD.

Next on the painting desk for Malifaux is Teddy.


I've also picked up some prussians to get into Dystopian Wars with. Gonna aim for a predominantly black and gold scheme with them and have bits of white and red for markings and insignia...



Thanks for looking, will hopefully have more in the not too distant future...

If it bleeds, Can you kill it? - Rough Concept Art

Heya all, got a quick update to share.
Before I proceed too far with creating wrist blades and armour for the basic Eternity Wardens I decided I'd do some rough sketches to see if the ideas I had look as good to me on paper as they do in my head and I wanted to get some thoughts.

Here's my idea for how the end result could look for the wrist blades and the spears after some modification as well as me toying around with where to make armour on their legs and some greek letters I thought could look neat carved into armour and such...

It's been ages since I've really tried to draw anything off the top of my head so please excuse their crude nature.
And here's an incredibly rough sketch of the basic Eternity Warden "Raider/Ravager" equivelant based off the ship from the first AVP which I think lends itself more to the design then other Predator ships we've seen (more places where crew and passengers could stand, more places where weapons could be mounted etc.)




Thoughts on these concepts? I'm also still trying to brainstorm up some badass glaives for the berserks as well...

Thanks for looking!
-Beau

If it bleeds, Can you kill it? - More Progress!

So based on some feedback I've recieved on Wargamer AU, I'm looking at trying to do the army under a Dark Eldar list, I think there's some really good potential in there. The variety in wych weapons allows me a lot of potential when trying to vary the Eternity Warden's melee weapons. Various units like Mandrakes, Incubi and wracks enable further potential for variation in types of Eternity Warden, I could even use a Stegadon to make a counts as Talos!

Here's my proposed list so far:

Lelith Hesperax
Like Kharn in my other list, she's a combat monster and would be ideally suited to representing a leader or elder type character that leads the army.

Kheradruakh
I'm not 100% on Mandrakes but this guy seems like fun. I gave it a bit of thought and his special rules, equipment and took into account that he starts with a pain token enabling him to use his Assault 2 Baneblast shooting ability, he could ideally represent the Predator with the dual shoulder cannons from AVP 2, despite my reluctance to acknowledge that "movie" exists.

5x Incubi
Mounted in a Raider
Dark Lance, Night Shields
Thinking these could represent my "Berserkers" with their high armour save, powerful melee capabilities that set them above regular Wyches . Also seeing as I plan to use Temple guard as a base for them Incubi should represent them and their capabilities quite adequately.
The raider I can do up to look like a predator ship no worries at all.

9x Wyches
Inc. Hekatrix with Agoniser
Mounted in a Raider
Dark Lance, Night Shields
These will be the grunts of the army, the basic fighters that I've already made a couple of.

10x Wyches
Inc. Hekatrix with Agoniser
Mounted in a Raider
Dark Lance, Night Shields
As Above

10x Wyches
Inc. Hekatrix with Agoniser
Mounted in a Raider
Dark Lance, Night Shields
As Above

2x Beast Masters
Agonisers
10x Khymera
Inspired by the hunting hounds in the latest Predators, the beast masters and Khymera are a perfect fit for a concept I really wanted to include but couldn't under the CSM dex

Ravager
3 Dark Lances, Night Shields
Similar in appearance to how I'd do Raiders but as a Gunship type variant. Night shields are too good to pass up on and could help represent the cloaking technology that this army might also possess.

Ravager
3 Dark Lances, Night Shields
As Above

That's a 1,500pts list, thoughts on it so far?

Here's some pics of the Eternity Wardens so far:

This will most likely be a unit champion with agoniser in the regular "wych" units.


Here's the berserkers so far, but I have no idea about how to best represent their weapons. I'm thinking some fearsome looking glaives are in order but I don't want to make them from lizardmen weapons. Something ferocious looking like Dark Elf spears could be a good place to start?


More is on the way, would love to hear people's thoughts so far :)
Thanks for looking!
-Beau

More work in progress Eternity Wardens!

Hello again! Here's a quick update on today's progress! Whilst watching Predators and AVP I made two more "Eternity Wardens" like the original prototype, He's also got more dreadlocks now but still needs his arm blades...


I tried giving this one different armour to his predecessor with the intention of creating something more akin to the armour worn by the Predator in the original film.

And here is the early stages of the first work in progress "Berserker" class Eternity Warden, I'm really liking how he's going, I want to make these guys very macabre and give them plenty of skull trophies and bone trinkets.


Was an absolute blast putting these together and there's plenty more on the way!
Be sure to stay tuned for more!

If it bleeds, Can you kill it? - Possible Army List

So before getting too far into making my Lizardmen/Predators, I've been giving a lot of thought as to what I'm going to use them as in games of 40k. At the moment, I'm finding the Chaos Space Marine Codex best so far. What I'm looking at doing is:

"Kharn"
The perfect apex warrior to represent the leader of the Lizardmen/Predators, this guy is an absoluter beast in combat and I can't think of many other combat juggernauts who could fit the role as well as Kharn does.

9x "Berserkers"
Skull Champion w. Powerfist
The idea behind using Berserkers stems mainly from their immense potential in close combat, they have plenty of attacks, high WS and furious charge and together with Kharn, hit pretty hard. Theme wise, these will represent the most vicious and bloodthirsty Lizardmen/Predators.

5x "Plague Marines"
2x Meltaguns
Mounted in a "Rhino"
These will represent the mainstay Lizardmen/Predator warriors. Whilst not as capable fighters as the Berserker equivelants, these have much more armour and are equipped for endurance. The idea being that these Lizardmen/Predators are trained/bred/equipped for more defensive roles then their Berserker brethren.
I'd like to make the rhino have a very similar style to the Predator space ships.
I want to take these as they are one of the best units to capture objectives with and bog down enemy units in combats they'll struggle to get out of.

5x "Plague Marines"
2x Meltaguns
Mounted in a "Rhino"
As Above

2x "Obliterators"
These will be used to represent large constructs inspired by the protoss dragoons as a multi-purpose fire support type unit. Still nutting out whether they will be like Dragoons and be used in a similar way to a dreadnought by containing a mortally wounded Lizardman/predator or whether they will be more akin to a robotic drone.

2x "Obliterators"
As above

"Chaos Land Raider"
This will represent a larger class of transport with heavier weaponry, again like the rhino, with a similar appearance to the predator ships.
In games, this will obviously be a delivery system for "Kharn" and the "Berserkers"

And there is about 246 pts left unspent and I'm not sure what to take with them. I want something that will complement the army by helping it to be effective on the tabletop yet at the same time I don't want to take a unit that wouldn't work well with the theme I have in mind for the army (i.e. Possessed, Spawns etc.)
I'm really interested to here what people's thoughts are on the list and what I can add to it. Any help would be really appreciated!

At the moment the back story I'm beginning to think up is looking like this:
The Eldar have legends of the old ones and their creations, how they fought the Necrontyr and the C'tan when the universe was young but few save the Harlequins know the exact truths behind these tales, particularly those regarding to the last creation of the old ones before their demise. A race of beings referred to only as "The Eternity Wardens"
The legends say that as the war in heaven drew to a close, it was painfully obvious to the Old Ones that their cause was lost. Assailed on all sides by Necrons and the denizems of the warp, they devised one last stratagem, a final solution.

And so the first of the eternity wardens were created, an intuitive race of reptillian warriors. The Old Ones bestowed them with all the knowledge and technology they could. Before their last creations could come to harm, in what may have been their last valiant act, the Old Ones shifted the Warden's planet into a completely isolated section of the webway, cutting off the Eternity Wardens from the rest of existence. However, this was not to safeguard the Wardens nor was it to protect what little remained of the Old Ones works. This was instead intended to buy the Eternity Wardens precious time to swell their ranks, stockpile weapons and prepare for the monumental task that lay ahead. The destruction of all life in the universe, of Necrons, Eldar, Daemon and Human alike. The entirety of existence was to be purged by the Wardens so that the universe could start afresh from a clean slate and made as the Old Ones had intended.

Every ten thousand years, a number of Webway portals all over the universe, long presumed to be no longer capable of function, re-open and allow the armies of the Eternity Wardens to re-enter the physical universe and set about their mission of universal genocide. Or so the legends say.

And on a much more light hearted note, in my search for inspiration of the predator variety, I found this...



Well that's all for today, I have some more Work In Progress "Eternity Wardens" I've been working on that I'll hopefully be able to post some pics of soon.
Thanks for checking out my crazy lil project!
-Beau

If it bleeds, Can you kill it?

Just giving away a quick preview of what is yet to come. I'm really excited about what I have to show you all, It's the beginnings of my next army!
Now as you all would know from my previous entries, I've been agonising over how to put together an Eldar force I'd be happy with.

Well that idea is dead and gone. Replaced by an army that would be best described as a mash up between Fantasy Battle Lizardmen and Predators, in the grim darkness of the far future. These will be used as a 'Counts as' Chaos marine army with plenty of berserkers, led by a Kharn the betrayer equivelant inspired by the bad ass berserker from Predators.

Without further ado:
I had an absolute blast building this guy, mind you, he's no-where near done yet. still gotta scratch build more armour and add the all important wrist blades.

Will have more on these and my ideas for how they fit into 40k in the next few days

Thanks for looking!
-Beau

Eldar List Mk II

Well I've been getting some feedback towards my plans for giving an Eldar army a shot and have started to refine the army into what I hope is a much better list then the first one. There were some oddball choices in my first list (cough, swooping hawks) that I picked not knowing much about Eldar and sorta hoped I could use them well simply to give me an excuse to buy them...
Anyway, here's the latest list for what my new army could look like:

Farseer
with Mind War, Runes of Warding

5x Fire Dragons
Mounted in a Wave Serpent with Twin Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon and Spirit Stones

8x Striking Scorpions
Including an Exarch with Chain Sabres
Mounted in a Wave Serpent with Twin Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon and Spirit Stones

5x Dire Avengers

5x Dire Avengers

5x Dire Avengers

8x Warp Spiders
Including an Exarch with an additional Death Spinner

Falcon
Pulse Laser, Eldar Missile Launcher, Holofields, Spirit Stones

Falcon
Pulse Laser, Eldar Missile Launcher, Holofields, Spirit Stones

Falcon
Pulse Laser, Eldar Missile Launcher, Holofields, Spirit Stones


At the moment, the rough plan is to use the Falcons for long range support and anti -tank and put the Dire Avengers in the Falcons. In objective games these will harry the enemy before moving around turn 5 to lay to claim to objectives while the Spiders, Scorpions and Dragons take the fight to the enemy. At the moment I'm leaning towards a Mind War Seer to try and weed out enemy Characters and Squad Leaders that may pose a threat to my Infantry.

Possible Alterations are to make the Farseer have Doom/Guide/Eldritch Storm instead. Doom and Guide have obvious advantages that could be more or less useful with this list but I'm guessing playing some games will tell me what I really need to get the most out of him. Eldritch Storm.... Is an option? Beyond it's capacity to spin tanks around I don't see much point to that one...

Other possibilities are to swap the Farseer and drop the Warp Spider Exarch so I can take an Autarch in with the Scorpions or Spiders. Could be handy in reserves missions and give the unit he accompanies a bit more oomph in combat.

Another distinct possibility is to swap the scorpions for a unit of 8 Dire Avengers with an Exarch equipped with shimmershield and Defend in a Wave Serpent with Twin Linked Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannon and Spirit Stones to give me 4 scoring units instead of 3. Also the larger Avenger squad would make a nice unit to bog down enemies in melee with their 5+ invul thanks to the shimmershield and Defend reducing the enemy's attacks.

I'd love to hear some feedback on this list, I'm starting to really like what I could do with it, in terms of painting, modelling and in games. Please let me know what you think!

Thanks!
- Beau

Review: Mantic Zombies and Revennants

Some of you may remember last year I started up a Vampire Counts army using some of the Mantic skeletons and Revennant Cavlry in place of the standard Games Workshop Models. Well in the mail today I recieved the latest additions to this army which is now doubling as a Vampire Counts army in games of Warhammer Fantasy and as Undead in Mantic's Kings of War. Two games that I am 100% Loving at the moment!

So what did I get? 3 Regiment boxes of Revennants.



That's a total of 60 Revenennants!

And 2 boxes of the Zombies Regiment, which should give me around 60 Zombies.


To start off with, let's have a look at what we get out of the Zombie kits.

Here's the Mantic Zombie sprue. There are 10 of these in each Regiment set, each sprue has 3 torsos, 3 legs, 6 different heads, a couple of arms and 2 very neat components that actually allow you to split one Zombie into 2 Zombies.


What's this splitting Zombies talk all about? Simply put, the set contains a piece that replaces a torso with an exposed spine and a heap of gruesome internal organs sagging off the legs. Then with the leftover Torso, you can make a 4th Zombie from one of these sprues by mounting him on another component that makes him appear to be bursting forth from the ground.

Do this with every sprue in a set and instead of 30 Zombies, you'll actually end up with 40 zombies, some of which will look a touch more gruesome then the others!

I managed to put these 20 together in under half an hour though they still have some flash around their fingers and heads that need to be cleaned up.


I'm quite happy with them, they'll be relatively easy to paint yet have some fantastic grisly details like exposed muscles, sinew and brains slopping out that can make them really stand out. I prefer them to GW's Zombies as I found them much easier to assemble and I find them to be much more appropriately scaled. They don't have ridiculously huge hands or heads like their GW counterparts. I also really like some of the heads, some are pretty realistic saggy and rotted looking wheras my personal favourite looks more akin to something from the Evil Dead movies. Very Cool.

There isn't as much variety in these figures as what you can get in other Mantic figures but who really cares about how individual a Zombie looks? Not this guy. And if I want to, a few bits here and there could really personalise them. Good thing I've got plenty of such pieces from the Mantic Ghouls set! Actually some of that could go together very well...

Anyway, Mantic Zombies = Very Cool.

On to the Revennants.

Now the Revennants are Mantic's Equivelant to units like Grave Guard. They're your bigger, tougher much more well equipped sort of "Undead Elite"

Here's a look at the Sprue.

You get Two sets of these sprues per Regiment, each makes 10 Revennants. One sprue (not this one) in the set also has a number of optionbs to make a command group. Now I have to put it out there, Iwasn't sure about these. I really, really like Games Workshop's Grave Guard and I found the pictures of Mantic's Revennants really underwhelming and quite unconvincing.

Yet when I decided to expand the army, the excellent price for the Revennants ($45 AUD got me 60, 60 Grave Guard from Games Workshop would have been $270, no thanks) and considering I'd already got the Mantic Skellies convinced me. At least this way they'd appear to fit in with the army. Opening the box and I was blown away. Absolutely gobsmacked by the sheer amount of detail in their armour, their weapons and well my imagination was well and truly in over drive.

I can't recommend these highly enough. I assembled ten in about the same time frame as the Zombies and there was very little to clean up in the way of mold lines and flash. The legs in the Revennant set are the same as the Skellies but the torsos are very different yet fit just as easily. Some of the Torsos are the same as the Skellies but you get a heap of variant chest and shoulder plates you can put over these and no one would know. The end results speak for themselves.


Personally, I couldn't be happier, they've really surprised me with how good they actually are. I'd highly recommend these to any Vampire Counts player or Kings of War: Undead player. For the $ you pay and the quality of what you're getting, they're a steal.

I'm going to have to really push myself to paint these to the best of my ability to really showcase just how great these models are. I'd rate this kit easily 10/10

I have painted more of my last Mantic Order, I'll have to try to get somne pics up of them tomorrow. Next on my shopping list for the army is some wraiths, a revennant king and perhaps some catapults... or a varghulf... or both...

And on a completely unrelated note, I just wanted to share this, the Mt Gambier (where I live in Australia) RSL has just recieved a generous donation from the Australian Defence Force in the form of a Decommissioned Leopard Tank (one of the many phased out by us finally getting some of the American Abrams) and I managed to get my picture taken by it.


We're so used to playing around with our little model tanks in war gaming and yet there's no comparing to the real thing. To actually stand in the presence of such an enormous and powerful vehicle... It's quite awe inspiring.
In terms of scale, it's pretty Damn big too.

Anyway, thanks for reading!
Till next time!
- Beau

The Shape of Things to Come...

So, in the process of getting everything back in order here and there's a lot of loose ends to be tied.
How did my race to get 2,000 pts of marines done in 13 days go? Alright. The army turned out ok, it was nowhere near my usual standard though. I actually felt like it weakened my painting abilities because I painted them lazily by pretty much using 3 colours per man and washing them with blacks and browns and didn't even attempt any detailing.

How'd they play? Terrible.
Most unrewarding experience ever. At Demonicon I frequently referred that a Gypsy curse was hanging over the army. With the amount of bad dice rolls that army had, I might have been right.

Suffice to say they haven't been unpacked since I got home and that was over 2 months ago.

This then leads into what has become a major problem for me. I don't enjoy playing with spce marines. I did once, but not anymore. For a variety of reasons, theme and gaming wise, I've just grown tired of them. I guess that's to be expected, I've used them for over 10 years and very rarely tried any other races. I've come to the conclusion that in order to enjoy my games of 40k more, I need something completely new.

The solution?


I've always found the Eldar appealing. The powerful weaponry, the style of their armour and Tanks, the Aspect Warriors and the capacity for the army as a whole to be a real thorn in the opponent's side.

An Eldar spect army has always been something I'd like to do but never actually got around to.
At the moment my biggest problem with painting is not only am I sick of painting marines (we worked out the other day that I'd painted over 1,200 through the course of my 11 years of wargaming) I have what many of us like to call "Painting ADHD" my attention span is very short. Towards the end of a 10 man squad I start to need to paint something completeley different, its why I haven't painted hardly any marines of late! With an Aspect warrior army, this isn't a problem. I like that I can paint the army with a more diverse range of colours and still make it look good and yet it can still appear unified.

I also love that I can design a list of specialists to try and cover a variety of aspects so that the units that excel at tank hunting are supported by units that excel at decimating infantry etc.

That said, I don't want to waste my time and make a great looking army that can't win a game if it tried.

So without further ranting, here's what I'm looking at doing:

HQ

Eldar Farseer - 90 pts
Ghosthelm, Rune Armour, Shuriken Pistol, Witch Blade, Runes of Warding, Guide

Troops

10x Dire Avengers - 162 pts
Exarch with Shimmer Shield and Power Weapon, Defend
Mounted in
Wave Serpent - 135 pts
Twin-linked Bright Lances

10x Dire Avengers - 162 pts
Exarch with Shimmer Shield and Power Weapon, Defend
Mounted in
Wave Serpent - 135 pts
Twin-linked Bright Lances

5x Rangers - 95 pts

Elites

5x Fire Dragons - 120 pts
Exarch with Firepike, crack shot and Tank Hunters

5x Howling Banshees - 102 pts
Exarch with Triskele and Acrobatic

Fast Attack

5x Swooping Hawks -152 pts
Exarch with a Sun Rifle, Skyleap and Intercept

Heavy Support

Falcon - 175 pts
Pulse Laser, 2x Shuriken Cannons, Holo fields and Spirit Stones

Falcon - 175 pts
Pulse Laser, 2x Shuriken Cannons, Holo fields and Spirit Stones


I've never made a list with Eldar before and my only experience with Eldar is getting my butt kicked by them. I've chosen this list with some obvious specialisations like the fire dragons and the list is a mixture of units that I think would play relatively good with the rest of the army and I would enjoy painting. I have the list on WargamerAU at the moment to get some feedback but any C&C would be welcome here.

- Beau

Back In Action

Hello to all those who read my blog out there, It took far longer then it should have but I'm finally back up and running.
Suffice to say, I think my prolonged absence requires an explanation! Shortly after my last blog, My long suffering laptop finally died. There's not much you can do when the video card actually physically melts... Well you can but along with the other list of problems that PC had and how expensive it would have been to fix them, I was better off saving the money to buy a new one.

Problem there was I was still looking for work so saving up money was easier said then done. The only net access I had was occasionally borrowing my girl friend's laptop to check my emails and accounts, I never had enough time to sit down and blog much or do much at all really. Then I managed to forget my password to my blog spot...

Not Ok.

Nonetheless, I now have a shiny new desktop, a new job doing office work at my Dad's business whilst getting a qualification in Business Administration, I have my pass word back and here I am.

So apologies for not keeping up with my blogging, hopefully I can make up for that with what is yet to come :)

- Beau