My first Citadel Finecast experience!

Nick speaking,

With all the hype and chat about the New Citidel Finecast models going around recently, and then my copy of White Dwarf turning up on my door step totally covered with the new stuff! There was no getting away from it, Finecast was here!  I have seen many great reviews on various Blogs with some great arguments for, and against this latest revolution. So on the day of release, I just had to go to my local GW store to check it all out. To be fair, I had no intention of buying anything, as I am saving for a holiday at the moment, but still...

I waited until the end of the day as I assumed it would be pretty busy, and it seemed like I was right. Being a Saturday, they had some sort of gaming event on, which I caught the tail end of, but there was still plenty of people around. First impressions of the new stuff was 100% great packaging, much better than before, and when I picked up a Hive Guard model, I seriously wanted to buy it. With the Hive Guard in my hand, the impulse was very strong, but I couldn't quite part with my £15.50 for this one model, especially knowing that I really need three of them! I think I will wait a while and see what happens to the metal model market on eBay? The other reason why I stopped myself from buying it, was seeing the prices of some of the other models I want to buy. With the Trygon having a new price of £36, it really makes you think, and I need two of them! Surely price rises like this is going to affect sales somewhere along the line?

To be honest, I have always hated metal models, mainly because the paint chips off so easily, but also many are top heavy and topple over, making the situation worse. I know this contradicts what I said above a bit, but some metal figures are not top heavy and are fine. Ideally I would like all plastic models, but I know the production issues makes that difficult, so resin it is! I am slightly worry about the brittleness of them though, and I can see some parts snapping off easily, but I will have to wait until I actually buy one to find out.

All in all though, I have to admit, seeing all those boxes of new resin models in their new packaging, and all my old kits that I have bought now in resin, gave some sort of excitement and made me feel good about my hobby. I felt like I just wanted to buy some more models, and I bet that is exactly the feeling GW wants me to have!!! The question is, do I eBay some of my old unpainted metal mini's for Resin ones? Maybe, but it would have to be just the top heavy ones!

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Fenrisian Wolves

Nick speaking,

Wolves, wolves, wolves, wolves, wolves, wooooolves!!!

Yes, one reason why I chose the Eye of Terror, 13th Company Space Wolves as my second army, were the Fenrisian Wolves! OK, I also wanted a totally different army to my Necrons, and lets face it these guy's were different. Not much shooting and lots of assault nastiness. The only thing they had in common was a distinct lack of vehicles, but that seemed to be a running theme for me as I ended up with Tyranids as my third army! That was the main reason why I gave my Eldar tanks so much love and attention with all the Forge World upgrades, when I eventually got an army with tanks!

Anyway...

With the new Space Wolves Codex making my Eye of Terror codex defunct, I can now have tanks for my Wulvenkind (Yeppy), but does this mean that the thirty wolves I have, have had their day? I am trying to make sure they haven't, as I really like the models...

I have had reasonable success with packs of Fenrisian Wolves in my army. I'm not saying they are competitive, but when they get into combat they definitely have the ability to earn their points back. Of course, having a six plus save is the main drawback, especially in kill point missions, but I have managed to flank a unit across the table to surround a ten man strong scoring Rhino, wrecking it and killing all the guy's inside who were unable to get out!

Insert howling wolf noise!

I now use my Chaos tainted wolves as Cyberwolves, or for whenever I take wolves as wargear for my characters, as they tend to stand out from the normal Fenrisians...

I have also been thinking about using them as a counter assault unit for any rear objective holding Razorbacks! Place them down in cover nearby, going to ground for the three plus cover save, and then hitting any units that come close enough with their fleet and twelve inch assault ability?

I still want to try out a pack of fifteen wolves, with two or three Characters on Thunderwolves joined with them! Take two wolves with each character and charge!

Anyone else out there also having fun and success with Fenrisian Wolves?

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Annihilation: Mech Eldar Vs Orks

Nick speaking,

I have been having some fun latley with my Eldar Mech list, this time I play an Annihilation mission against Orks...

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Defending Defender Guardians!

Nick speaking,

As I walked home from work one hot summers day, and passed a local charity shop, that's when it happened! Sitting in the front window was an Eldar Farseer and some boxes of Eldar Guardians, for pretty much next to nothing. Next thing I know I am walking home with a bag of Eldar goodies! Then after a trip to my local Hobby Shop for the Eldar Codex, the IDIC Eldar were born...

To be fair, I knew very little about Eldar at that time, I had never seen them on the battlefield before, and had only known that they were "fast and fragile", as told to me by a friend. I built up my Guardians and purchased some Striking Scorpions next, to go with my Farseer, for some small fun games.

Although I found the Scorpions to be great in those small games, It didn't take me long to discover that Guardians were one of the worst units in the Eldar Codex. On a side note as I write this, why did I stop using Striking Scorpions? They were fun to play and did the job in the assault, oh yes, I then got some howling Banshees and the Scorps went out of the window, but still, maybe I should get them out again for some infiltrating/flanking fun!

Anyway, with twenty of my thirty Guardians converted into Storm Guardians, I now only have ten Defender Guardians left. I kept these guy's as they were the bench mark for my IDIC Eldar paint scheme, and I would love to see them on the table at some point, but sadly these days, they hardly ever make it out of the case...

I know that there is a potential for a foot slogging list that is based around mass defender guardians and the Avatar etc, but is it viable to fit just ten guardians in a list and make them work?

Needless to say, I have been struggling to fit them in any sort of list apart from when I am playing Cities of Death. This has lead me to start thinking about using the models for something else totally, maybe having the platform controller guy's as doom, fortune and guide markers just to get them out on the table. Not ideal I know, but how else am I going to get them out of the case? Is there anyone out there prepared to defend the defender Guardian?

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Too big or not too big?

Nick speaking,

Necrons were my first 40k army, and back then I was young, naive and wide eyed to the 40k universe. Like most people who choose their first army, I went for the army I thought looked the coolest, and to me the picture on the front of the Necron codex was cool enough for me to be hooked. I remember my friends who introduced me to 40k, groaning when I chose Necrons, but I had no idea how fantastic they were on the table at that stage. Of course that was way back when we were on third edition, and Necrons were the 'over powered' army.

I was so hooked and so obsorbed with Necrons, that I decided to make my own Necron themed terrain gaming board, and in a time where I had no Internet inspiration, I had to rely on the Codex that I loved so dearly. So based on the look of the Codex terrain, and the terrain generator in the back of the Codex, I ploughed ahead and made my own board.

Like I said, I pretty much copied what I saw in the book, design, colours and scale...

As you can see from the picture above that included the large tomb, and with a rough footprint of 2'x1', it's pretty big...

Of course, having spent money and time making it, I wanted to use it, and my buddies and I did. Occasionally, it went down in the centre of the table, making way for some very interesting games. Mostly though, it was placed to one side of the board, looking pretty, but not being used, and cutting down the playing area a fair bit. Nowadays, especially with fifth edition 'tounament styled' missions, my Tomb mainly gets left in the cupboard.

If you were playing on my board, would you want it on the table?

Although I love this piece of terrain, it just seems too big? Maybe I should consider changing it? I could break it down into three sections or something?

Any suggestion?

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Seer Council Coversions Done

Nick speaking,

After waiting a while for some Warlocks to come from eBay, I was able to complete the final touches to my Seer Council. With all the Warlocks and 'Jetbike' Anti Grav platforms magnetised, I was able to start work on the next stage...

My aim is to have ten Warlocks in total, five Warlocks with Witch blades and five with Singing spears. This would give me the option to interchange my five 'Jetbike' Warlocks to any combination of weapons I wanted, and have the added bonus of giving me a full unit of ten foot slogging Warlocks to use if needed. After purchasing as many different Warlocks as I could find, (think I have them all, but I could be wrong) I only ended up with three Singing spear models, so a bit of conversion work was needed...

First was to make a Singing spear out of a Dire Avenger power weapon...

With the spear ready I took a duplicate Warlock I had, and cut off the Witch blade arm. I then made a sleeve for the Dire Avenger arm and made both the original Witch blade and the new Spear arm interchangeable with magnets...

One of the figures I got from eBay, was a another duplicate Warlock, that had had the top of it's spear broken. This gave me an excellent opportunity to make my fifth Warlock a bit different to the original one...

First I cut the spear away from the foot so that I could bend the arm a bit to give the spear a different angle. I then made up a new top section from another Dire Avenger power weapon, and added an odd piece I had to the bottom, to get the length of the spear back again. Finally I cut of the antlers to alter his appearance further...

With the Warlocks and Platforms all done, it was time to sort out the foot slogging bases. I found that the magnets on the Warlocks feet were sticking out a bit and you could see them on the bases, fine on the platforms, as In my mind the Warlocks control the platforms with these 'discs', but they looked a bit silly on the 25mm bases.

I thought that if I put some cardboard/plastic discs on the bases the same size as the magnets, i might be able to get the Warlocks to look like they are standing on some sort of council pathway, maybe made out of wraithbone discs or something! I made some carboard discs using a cereal box and a hole punch, which I have to give credit to my wife for coming up with this ideas, after I spent a week unsuccessfully looking around my local hobby shops...

Finally, I made some extra psychic 'smoke' for my Sexy Farseer, and I am all ready for painiting...

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Dormant Ymgarls Battle Report

Nick speaking,

Time to put my Dormant Stinger Tyranids up against Orks...

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Space Wolves Swiftclaw Bikers?

Nick speaking,

Moving forward with my Eye of Terror, 13th Company Space Wolves, and It's time to look at my bikes...

I used to always play with a maxed out unit of five 'Storm Claw' bikers. They were fast, hard hitting in the assault with a Power weapon, Power fist and a Mark of Wulven pack leader giving the whole unit the benefit of hitting on threes. Mark of Wulven also meant that the unit never fell back, so they were a very annoying unit to play against. They also were the best delivery system for the Wolf Lord, putting him on a bike to benefit the unit and to get him into the action.

Being locked in the Eye of Terror for ten thousand years, also gave me the fluff benefit of being able to model in a couple of Chaos bikes as well. Here are a few pictures of my bikes, sorry they have not been painted yet, but painting has been reserved for finishing up my Eldar and Tyranids first...

Wolf Lord...

Wolf Guard with Mark of Wulven...

Other dudes...

I would love to get my bikes into a list of some sort (without having to make a load more), but is it viable? Is anyone out there actually using Swiftclaw bikes with any success? Seems like they need to have a Wolf Priest joined to the unit to make up for the WS3? How about the numbers, would my six bikes be enough in one unit? Is it actually worth putting a Wolf Lord on a bike to run him with Swiftclaw bikers? or is the Thunderwolf Lord to good to turn down?

Are my models now defunct?

More to come on this one...

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Seer Council Conversions

Nick speaking,

One reason why I like to play with my models before I paint them, apart from finding the time to paint, is so that I can make sure any conversion work I have done is all OK, the last thing I want is for my many hours of painting to be ruined by something falling off that has not glued/pinned very well, or maybe a magnet or green stuff section that just doesn't do what it is supposed too!

After play testing my Jetbike Seer Council conversions on the tabletop a few times, I soon realised that my previous magnetising work was going to have to be re-done, before I could start painting them...

The main issue was that although the Warlocks and Flying bases where pretty well magnetised on flat ground, when it came to standing on uneven terrain, the Warlocks where just a bit too top heavy and kept falling off! Of course being metal, the last thing I needed was for them to be toppling over and chipping off the paint.

Here are a couple of pictures of the original magnets that I used...

After a trip to my local hobby store, I managed to get some stronger magnets that I could use, although as expected, they were a bit bigger than the original ones. It didn't bother me if you could see the magnets on the platforms, in my imagination these would be the "control pads" that the Warlocks stood on to steer the platforms anyway...

With my new strong holding Warlock in place, another problem with my original design was highlighted! I originally had the magnet for the flying base glued onto the centre column where I was going to slot over the shuriken catapult, but again it proved to be too top heavy...

I needed to get the flying base to somehow fit into a hole, so that it would not be able to topple over from the heavy Warlocks. I cut off the centre column and drilled out a hole right through, and then put another magnet on the top of the platform. Now the flying base would go into the hole and magnetise without toppling over...

With the centre column gone, I no longer had anywhere to glue the shuriken catapults too, so I decided to put it straight onto the platform itself! I had to add something to the back section, and cut off some sticky out bits to make it sit flush. I found some leftover pieces I had from my Razorback kit to use at the back of the catapult and got to work with the glue and clippers...

Now to re-do the rest of them...

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New Necron Troop Choices!

Nick speaking,

Well, it really does look like it won't be much longer before Necrons get a new Codex, and with the latest batch of rumours, it looks like August/September is a distinct possibility! I am not getting too excited yet (honestly), but with a selection of named Lords potentially making certain units troop choices, it is going to be very interesting indeed...

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