Jodrell Plays Games

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Khador models assembled

Just a quick post to show off the Khador models from the Two Player Battle Box which have now been assembled and based. They’re made from a plastic/resin “hybrid” which, it seems to me, has all the disadvantages of each and none of the benefits. But the models are still pretty great, and the above units work out to 30 points which is enough to learn to play with, and still leaves room to expand.

I’ve got some Army Painter red primer which will provide the base coat. On the ‘jack on the left you can see a green stuff Khador emblem which I made using some rapid mold.

May 20, 2012 | Categories: Warmachine | Leave A Comment »

New ITEN Necron Retinue List

The new 40K codex for Necrons was released last year, and added a bunch of new models. I’ve just got round to finishing and releasing an updated retinue list for In The Emperor’s Name which introduces all these new models (and don’t worry, I’ve kept the Pariahs!).

You can download the list here – if you have any comments, please post them on the Forge Of War forum.

May 15, 2012 | Categories: In The Emperor's Name | Leave A Comment »

Distractions

Like most hobbyists I tend to have a lot of different projects on the go at once. Here is a list of my unfinished projects as of writing:

Firedrakes 40K Army
Khador Warmachine Army
Epic Knight Army
Inquisition retinue for In The Emperor’s Name
Epic Tyranid Army
Praesentia Army for Critical Mass (15mm SF)
Blue Moon Shivan Sisterhood Army (also 15mm SF)
Khurasan Mekanoid Army (ditto)
Terrain projects for all of the above

In addition, I also have some repairs on my Warmonger to do: as predicted, the fragile resin Hydra turrets have been damaged, so I need to replace them with spares from the bits box.

So what have I been doing today? Starting something new of course! Some more titans:

I have another Reaver waiting to be assembled, and want to get another one to form a Battle Group. This will leave my Titan Legion army with 2 Warlord BGs and 2 Reaver BGs which, along with the aforementioned Warmonger and its Imperator counterpart is quite enough I think (although I do need more Warhounds…)

I’ve also been sorting out some mechanised firepower to support the Knights and Robots. I’ve just finished stripping, reassembling and basing these:

Ordinatus Golgotha

The Ordinatus Golgotha has a fearsome reputation as an anti-Ork unit: any Ork unit that’s even targeted by one of the six missiles has to take a morale check (which is 5+ for Orks) making it highly effective at breaking large Ork companies.

I am planning to scratch-build at least one other Ordinatus using miniatures from Brigade Model’s Neo-Soviet range.

Stormblade

Stormblades are Titan and Super-heavy hunters. They mount a Plasma Blastgun which is normally carried by titans, as well as a number of specialist and one-shot weapons. I have a couple more coming from eBay to form a Stormblade Company.

Deathstrike Missile Launchers

These are also basically tank-mounted titan weapons. You can pick any of the one-shot titan missiles to mount on each model.

Leman Russ Tank Company

The mainstay of any Imperial army!

This is the first time I’ve based vehicles and I am starting to think it’s a good idea!

May 13, 2012 | Categories: Knights | Leave A Comment »

34 Year Old Obsessive War Workshop Assistant

Via the Epic Addiction blog I discovered that Viz ran a cartoon series starring an amusingly stereotypical Games Workshop employee. Here’s the strip, click to see it full-size:

May 8, 2012 | Categories: Games Workshop | 1 Comment »

Cleaning brushes with Dettol

Dettol is well known as a very effective stripper of acrylic paint. Its active ingredient is chloroxylenol, which breaks down the acyrlic medium and allows paint to be removed from miniatures.

I’ve just discovered that it’s also quite an effective brush cleaner as well. Late last year I bought some Winsor and Newton kolinsky sable brushes, and to my great shame they have quickly become clogged with paint (I am not especially diligent in cleaning my brushes after use). Yesterday afternoon, as an experiment I put one of these brushes into some Dettol along with some other miniatures.

This morning I took it out of the Dettol, rinsed it out and gave the bristles a quick rub with some handwash (any liquid detergent would also work). The bristles are pretty much back to normal, with no paint clogged up at the ferrule.

So if your brushes are looking a little tired, and you don’t want to fork out for new brushes or brush cleaner, then Dettol may be the ideal alternative.

April 29, 2012 | Categories: Hobby | Leave A Comment »

Knights: Test Castellan

Here’s the first of nine Knights Castellan. These are heavy-support knights which mount a Quake Cannon (normally carried by Titans) and autocannons. They’re slow but heavily armoured.

The brass areas were painted using Vallejo brass rather than the Coat d’Arms that I’ve used on previous models (I seem to have picked several pots from a bad batch, so I’m waiting for them to be restocked). The Vallejo paint is much shinier so I toned it down with some Scab Red. The difference between the two colours is visible, but not so much as to ruin the consistency of the paint scheme between models.

April 29, 2012 | Categories: Knights | Leave A Comment »

Warmachine

I must admit that fantasy has never really done it for me. I loved David and Leigh Edding’s Belgariad and Malloreon and the Sparhawk series, but I’d never really found fantasy all that satisfying. I grew up on Star Trek and Star Wars and they set the barrier for me.

So it’s kind of unusual for me to take an interest in Warmachine, the “steampunk” fantasy game by Privateer Press. I’ve admired the miniatures and artwork for some time and finally picked up a boxed set of the rules and two battleforces (Khador and Menoth) at Salute, which I split with a friend – he took the Menoth models, and I took the Khador ones.

I’ve been reading the rules and am quite impressed by the no-nonsense approach – “play like you’ve got a pair!”. I’ve just assembled one of the warjacks (apart from its head which is missing, and probably in the possession of my friend).

I trimmed the plugs on the legs so I could change the “standing to attention” pose, to make it more dynamic. The model is very flexible with lots of ball joints to allow for an infinitude of possible poses, and I’m looking forward to painting it. As Khador is a northern country (based on Russia) I’m going to try a snowy base for the first time. I may also have a go at press-moulding some Khador logos using some “instant mould.”

April 28, 2012 | Categories: Warmachine | Leave A Comment »

Creating Realistic Earthlike Planets With mkplanet

For a few months I’ve been working on-and-off on a program called mkplanet. It’s a reasonably simple script that glues together two different programs to create realistic-looking imaginary worlds.

I have been trying – without success – to create an online version so that people wouldn’t have to install the program, as it requires jumping through hoops that only professional IT people are likely to be able to do. Unfortunately, it’s proven more complicated than my time and access to resources (specifically a dedicated virtual server) allows, so I’m just going to release the program so that those who are interested can give it a try.

I will post again when I’ve uploaded it, but in the meantime here are some samples of the program’s output. At the moment the most well-tested mode creates Earth-like temperate planets, but With a bit of tweaking it can be made to create rocky and cratered worlds like Mars and Venus, ice worlds like Hoth, and many others. It’s just a question of defining a set of colours that are used for different altitude levels.

April 26, 2012 | Categories: Fluff | Leave A Comment »

Knights: Baron and First Squadron

I’ve now finished painting the Baron HQ unit for the Knight army, and the first squadron of Paladins. Here’s the Baron:

Read the rest of this page »

April 22, 2012 | Categories: Knights | 1 Comment »

Salute 2012 Round-Up

This year was the fourth time I’ve travelled to the Excel in London for Salute, the world’s biggest wargames show, which celebrated its fortieth birthday this year.

As always there was so much great stuff to take in, far more than I can easily recall, so here are some of the highlights for me:

The amazing 10mm SF miniatures produced by Hawk Wargames for their forthcoming DropZone Commander game. Some of the finest quality miniatures I’ve ever seen.
Curis’s amusing “Avengers Assemble” cartoon on the Ninjabread stand
Robin’s amazing Gruntz tables, whose creation I’ve been following on his blog. There seemed to be a lot of 15mm SF games this year, featuring GZG, Old Crow, Brigade and many others, but Robin’s tables stood out for me
Finding a very cheap Warmachine battlebox and splitting it with a friend, so now I have another game to learn! Looking forward to painting my Khador battlegroup.
some really nice (and surprisingly cheap) accessories and components from Anvil Industry, which would be very handy for someone wanting to create a pre-Heresy Space Marine army
The completely batshit insane ApORKalypse game put on by the South London Wargames people