Armies on Parade from the 30k Brothers Revenge Doubles Event

So last weekend I was fortunate enough to finally have my 30k Dark Angels painted and present for the Brothers Revenge doubles event hosted by The Warriror Lodge. It was a 850 points per army doubles event with the only real prize being a FAT Mat for best painted/Best sportsman, which I feel really helps lower the crazy mean competitive streak that usually poisons many 40k events.

My partner Jacob brought along his freshly done Ad Mech Taghmata army and boy did it soak up so much of our battles shooting, so much so his valiant robot meat shields inspired me (as well as book 6) to start a Dark Mech Cybernetica force!

All up Jacob and I won 2 out of 3 matches and placed 3rd! We were pretty chuffed at that as we pretty much just pumped out some painted stuff we had on hand and played for fun. There was heaps of painted armies on heaps of wonderful tables to play on. Big shout out to Frontline Gaming for the sexy mats and also to the two Issacs for putting together and supplying so much terrain for the event.

Enough waffling on here are the pictures of the day, First up is all the armies on parade for the day during the judging and then some battle shots of our games.

New Lava Mat, Dark Angels 30k and fully painted is for closers!

Been super keen to build my hobby room up for in house games with mates as well as attending the new clubs meets every 2nd weekend, and one of the biggest fun/style multipliers we have found for a gaming tables is a sexy themed mat! Frontline Gaming Australia have come together with the Admins of The Warrior Lodge and supplied Brisbane with a stack of these amazing brand new one of a kind lava mats and I got one of the first out of the box!

All of Frontline's mats are fantastic but this new one is outstanding, if your looking for a sturdy, flexible, well printed high quality 6x4 mat then look no further. You can browse the rest of the selection here http://austore.frontlinegaming.org/ they do 4x4 and 3x3 as well.

They come with a fantastic carry bag and just roll up for easy transport. Dice roll well and its tops for holding your dudes and terrain in place if someone knocks the table with its non slip backing. I am absolutely planning a new themed army and table terrain as we speak, I think a Khorne corrupted Cult Milita army on lava bases sounds just the treat!

Anyhow here are some shots of us punching a quick couple of 30k games out while we wait for the 30k doubles event to roll around. Jacob's Taghmata force vs my new Dark Angels heresy army duked it out for some practice games and won a match each. Pardon my unpainted terrain its a work in progress from my snow mat, I think for the new mat lava canyons, heaps of rocks and cliffs and the odd lava hill should do the trick with the odd ruined stone temple thrown in. 

For my fully painted is for closers statement I have finally finished off my Dark Angels 850 point 30k Doubles Torny Army. Just a few touch ups to go but definitely table top ready. Oh yeah and to go with it I got my hands on Book 6 Retribution! suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch a good book seriously. It has fat stacks of some of the coolest 30k fluff and art as well as all those legion and Mechcanicum rules we were all hanging out for. I also got myself some Night Lords Decals and Brass as finishing that army is my new focus now the Dark Angels mini force is complete.

Next post will be about the Warrior Lodges doubles event Brothers Revenge. Will have heaps of pics of all the fully kitted out tables with more mats and great terrain the boys have been hard at work providing, as well as a huge selection of great painted 30k armies.

Warrior Lodge Opening day, New Club For North Brisbane

So while stuck here in Australia while the Heresy weekender was happening I attended and helped to run a new club here in sunny North Brisbane http://warriorlodge.blogspot.com.au/  or found on the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheWarriorLodge/

Isaac and Isy have done a huge job organising and running things for this club and all in the name of rolling dice with cool dudes in a chilled environment. Events are already planned for the rest of the year including two 30k doubles events and some 40k ITC events as well!

Here is some pics from the day, we can run 10 tables at a time with full terrain and FAT Mats for each and enough styles to cater for anything played on all popular systems including Xwing, Hordes, 30k, 40k and the Fantasy range and soon some fully decked out Mordheim tables

My Night Lords got a tad beaten up by some nasty firedrakes on the day but was great playing at the new local!

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Dark Angels Horus Heresy 30k starter force Calth set WIP Part 3

The 30k Dark Angels force I am currently converting and painting for an upcoming doubles torny has had some progress this weekend. I have started work on the 2nd squad and the Delegatus HQ model in the painting department, and have started applying some Legion icons and suitable Dark Angels bits and bobs from the 40k range onto a couple of vehicles.

I am attempting winter/partial snow themed bases, currently waiting on some winter themed grass tufts to fill out the bases. Snow effect is achieved by globbing on some PVA craft glue and dusting the base with GW snow effect, please note you will need 2 or 3 passes on an area or blob to fill it out and make it look proper snowy, a single pass will leave the snow looking very thin, and allow time for the PVA to dry between each pass.

The Delegatus HQ is coming along. Having real trouble with the power weapon as I still can't decided if I should go the lazy road and tape it and do the force weapon airbrush trick or try and up my game and manual do wet blending by hand. Can't wait to have a crack at doing up the vehicles, I have a Sicaran, Rhino and potential a Whirlwind to do before the end of February!

Dark Angels Horus Heresy 30k starter force Calth Set WIP Part 2

Time to get painting on my 30k Dark Angels force I converted last update. Long weekends are conducive to getting painting done, So I got about half way through 2 tactical squads. Please note these are not finished, still heaps of work and details to go, including way to much edge highlighting!

Started some work on the Delegatus as well and the second squad still has a ways to go, hopefully this scheme comes out well on the table top. My biggest concern is there are heaps of other legions in 30k with black armor with white or red details so I went with the green shoulders to really make it obvious they are the 1st legion. I am really keen for my forgeworld upgrade kits to arrive so I can have a crack at some veterans and command squad, robes for everyone!

Dark Angels Horus Heresy 30k starter force from the Calth Set WIP

When I think heresy and I think loyalists, I think Dark Angels! from the very fist old school art pieces to the cool old style heresy armor the Dark Angels have always been at the top of my list of cool dudes fighting for the Emperor. I have a quickly approaching doubles tournament looming and one of the rules in the player pack is yes you can run traitors and loyalist as allies but as per the allies chart it will mess up your ability to work with your opponent and even affect what troops are scoring! With this in mind and my partner running loyalist Salamanders I needed to finally branch out from the traitors and take my first steps into loyalty to the big E.

The force I need to put together is only 850points, small and hopefully easy to get painted asap. One of the big problems with Dark Angels is that there really is no rule set for them yet and probably won't be for some time until the lads at Forge World get around to including them into a book and that will be aaaaaaaaaaaages away. So in light of this I am just going to run them with the vanilla Age of Darkness right of war but try and get the Dark Angel feel from the paint job and then modeling options. 

I have the brand new 30k Dark Angels heads, shoulders, and chests ordered but I am not confidant that they will arrive in time and I really want to get a fighting force done asap so I can start getting in some practice matches. In light of this I have just chucked a whole bunch of bits from the 40k Dark Angels sprues on the Betrayal at Calth tactical marines and try and theme them up a bit. I did not want my normal tac marines to be covered in robes and dripping in icons, these guys are the grunts. The veteran and command squads will get the whole nine yards but for line troopers they just get new shoulder pads and the odd bit of bling.



The Centurion or Delegatus is of course robed with just a quick back pack swap from the space marine commander kit and a Calth set leader helm, this will help tie him to the rest of the characters in the force

I have chucked in some hooded helms here and there and a few purity seals as this legion used to be the Emperors personal legion in the very beginning of the crusade, you know 1st legion and all that jazz. So I thought they would have a few more purity seals/oaths of the moment than you usually see on heresy marines.



So there you go, the very first baby steps to a workable Dark Angels 30k force, HQ and 2 Troops. I will be sticking with the black armor with silver, red and maybe some bronze trimmings as well as some cheeky splashes of good old Caliban Green here and there. Now all I have to do is actually set in stone my army list and decide on the vehicles!

World Eaters Horus Heresy 30k Contemptor Dreadnaught from the Calth Starter Set WIP

The Betrayal at Calth set has been a god send for a lot of us who were on the cusp of getting into 30k but just couldn't take the last step into committing a ton of cash into Forgeworld resin crack. I bought 2 sets for my Night Lords but decided half way through I could branch out into some angry lads from the World Eaters as well. Previously on this blog I converted both dreadnaughts from the sets into 1 Mortis dual Kheres dread and 1 Dual fists dread, and now after recovering from eating way to much over Xmas I found some time to put the first stages of paint on the punchy dread.



Both arms are detachable and the right fist is magnetized at the shoulder to be swapped with other weapons as needed. The chain of skulls on the front of the hull is from the Khorne Age of Sigma set, and the skull faceplate is from a spare wrist guard from the new bloodthirster greater daemon kit. This guys is about 60% complete, now I have to do all the little details and cleanup of the whites and highlights.

I also completed my Tactical squad I was working on finally from the last post apart from transfers and maybe filling out the bases with some more details.

World Eaters Horus Heresy 30k Tactical Squad WIP

What to do with the spares from Betrayal at Calth.......World Eaters! so when I originally purchased two Calth boxes it was to all go towards my Night Lords project but after receiving some assorted World Eaters pieces I am now split right in half with what armies I am building, Psychos and Sociopaths. So after experimenting on a paint scheme and method with some Red Butcher test models I needed to start to fill out some troops choices so I can play some games with the World Eaters.



I am about 50% through this 10 man squad and I can honestly say while painting white is rewarding it does take a hell of a long time to do it properly. This squad still needs all the clean up on the white done, weapons and accessories complete but defiantly seems to be pulling together. I have gone for a very clean looking World Eaters and will only be doing weathering on character and big pieces to start off with, then once I have a playable force I may go back and weather the grunts later, but there are soooooooooo many weathered 30k forces out there at the moment I like have the shiny new look in my armies.

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Calth Terminator Lord and Chainglaives

I have had the Betrayal at Calth Terminator Lord sitting half assembled on my bench for a while now, silently judging me for not completing him while I work on other stuff. So today I decided to finish him off as well as the second lot of five Calth Terminators I had spare as well. I am upgrading all the characters/Sargeants in my force chainglaives because they look cool and are ok on the table top as well, who doesn't love the odd rending attack!



This is just before base coating and shading, I chucked on a spare Volkite charger because they are all through my terror squads and heaps of fun, and then just carved away the chainfist on his left hand and made a Chainglaive out of tooth pick, spike off a random chaos bit, and a chainsword blade from a chaos space marine. I did the same with the terminator Sergeant's weapon as well. I also chucked on some parts from the 40k Chaos termies sprues on the unit to fill them out with the weapons I wanted.



All primed and shaded and ready to be painted now! Time off over the Xmas break will be well spent I think



Got my Sevatar almost complete now as well, just the scenic base to go. Merry Xmas and happy new year!

World Eaters Horus Heresy 30k Red Butchers Test Model WIP

So I stumbled across some World Eaters units and now I am compelled to paint them, especially the Red Butchers because they are some of the coolest Terminator models around. This test model is pretty much a proof of concept for the incoming army which will just start off as a quick 1000points for ZM.

The Paint proccess was long but fairly simple:

1- Airbrush on black basecoat
2- Airbrush on at 45 degree angle grey to shade the model
3- Starting from a top down angle Airbrush on a smooth white coat
4- Airbrush white on any raised areas that will stand out
5- Agrax Earthshade wash into all the recesses
6- Edge Highlight/clean up with White over the ENTIRE model (this takes some time)
7- Metals and weapons in any color or combination you like.

You can see in this other photo the huge difference that no wash VS wash in the recesses makes, I tired blue and black washes but it just didn't give me the gritty look I was after.

Slaanesh Chaos Space Marines Test Models Painting with some Bling

So being the typical hobby butterfly I am skipping from project to project looking for something sweet for my next fix is just how it goes. I have always wanted to do a non typical paint job on Slaanesh marines as pink, bright pink, dark pink and maybe some black seems to be the staple. I have a few dark vengeance models laying around and decided to see what I could whip up.


 I went for a really gold trimmed blinged out look with a bone/cream base. I think I need to work more on the recess shading but the theme works well across the marines and the cultist.

Khorne Daemonkin 40k WIP: Flesh Hounds, Test Models and a Khorne Lord on a Jugger

So while all this Heresy business is going on I have been working on a 40k Khorne Daemonkin army as well. I really don't like the older and well out of date GW flesh hound sculpts and as every good Daemonkin general will tell you Flesh Hounds are the work horses of the army. With Scout, beast, move through cover, good formation rules that give hammer of wrath attacks and being able to have them bubble wrap a lord on a jugger is awesome.

So I grabbed a bunch of alternate models from puppetswar and got to work Khorning them up to match my silver, bone and red scheme for the army.



A completed unit of 5 only 11 more to go!


And the lord that they will be escorting across the battlefield as quickly as possible, he is only 50% done but coming together ok. I used terminator legs and chucked on the AOS Khorne standard bearer body with a quick head swap.

A whole table to primed models done as well, note the horde of cultists.....mhmmmm cultists!

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Terminators, Raptors and Sevatar

My current Night Lords project focus is on filling out some of the fun slots of the army and also the most fun to paint. Using the same base coat painting technique used on the tactical marines I developed I started filling in details on a squad of Raptors, Terminators, a Contemptor and even the man Sevatar himself. These are all a work in progress, only about 50% completed



Contemptor and Raptors still in the very basic stages of painting. The Raptors are covered in little details and will take a fair amount of time just to fill in each one, very cool.


Sevatar is chugging along, only about half way done, this is a really fun model to paint. Have left him off his scenic bases for the moment, will magnetise them soon.