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.

Night Lords, Zone Mortalis and getting stuck in a doorway

So I had the pleasure of playing on a really sweet Zone Mortalis board done by a fellow gamer Scott from 2nd Legion. This is only part of a huge ship based Zone Mortalis project Scott has done and is a dream to play on.


The Laser cut flooring and wall sections made with GW building walls/flooring terrain pieces really pop and make it feel more real. We played a 4 man Zone Mortalis with Night Lords and Space Wolves vs Alpha Legion and Word Bearers. Stars of the match were the Gal Vorbak murdering everything and my Contemptor Dread getting stuck in a door on a difficult terrain test because he was too fat and being immobilized all match!


For anyone stepping into 30k and and the Horus Heresy for the first time Zone Mortalis provides a really good entry for game play. Small focused games 1000 points or under are quick and crazy affairs. Once you start chucking in some interesting scenarios from the red books and using the random effects and terrain modifiers it feels like old space hulk! It is also a really good way of running campaigns and forging a narrative which I think 30k really excels at and 40k is somewhat lacking in spirit at the moment.

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Learning to love lightning

So the one of the biggest things for me to learn with this project is lightning patterns on armour. After watching some videos and looking at the different ways other painters had implemented this I decided on a thick/stand out from the table top version. I wanted something that when I was playing it was easily seen and didn't require a up close high focus camera shot to be appreciated. After a few test runs at it I nailed it down to a 4 step/paint process which I can do batches of models with.



Fairly happy with the result I applied this to a few more models

Now to the whole tactical squad

Next on the list, Terminators!

Night Lords Horus Heresy 30k Project: Basecoats and a Test Model

So now I have assembled the core of the Night Lords force from the Calth set its time to basecoat and get the first bits of shading done. After visiting a fellow gamers place and him giving me a whirl on his airbrush set up I was hooked and promptly went out and got an airbush myself. This project is my first go at utilising the airbrush for basing and shading an army. Primarily I wanted a darker more midnight Night lords armour colour than is usually seen, but at the same time I wanted to try and have some transition/shading.

I picked up a Vallejo Model Air starter paint set and it came with everything I am going to need for a couple of projects in the future as well. Base coat was of course black, once this had dried I did a 45degree spray of white on the top 15% of the model. This was a thin and selective coat which will give hopefully a smooth transition for the blue once it goes on top of the balck/white pieces. The blue used is Vallego 004 - Model Air Blue.

With this done it was time to try a test model and see if the overall feel of a darker Night Lords paint scheme actually works.
I think it turned out ok, now all I have to do is try and learn how to do lightning bolts on the armor..........time to watch some painting tutorials and thin my paints.