Monday 21 December 2015

Test templar WiP

Test Templar


Just finished....i think, the first of my templar brethren. Just learnt black is not such a simple colour to work with and make look right. I went with the metallic detail and laurel wreaths instead of the FW typical lacquered green as i wanted a metal armoured look and the less pastel colours the better i thought. used a heap of gear from other kits to add to the standard templar kit to make them look a little more choppy and dynamic, adding in a few two handed poses, with riposte and parries. Trying to make them look more martial rather than just fancy kits with arms and weapons out at silly positions.


a galaxy in flames

The new 32mm bases allow me to go to town in terms of extra detail. I made up some barbed wire and scattered spent shells plus a little blood splatter over the barbed wire. That idea came from my Iron Warrior playing girlfriend.


Friday 18 December 2015

Ancients of the Legions: Dreadnoughts in 30k

Dreadnoughts in the Legions

Pretty much every 30k (and 40k) gamer loves the story, look and effectiveness of marine dreadnoughts on the the table. These machines boast an exceptional stat line and can pack a vast array of potent weaponry making them a potential game changer when used in the right way. I'm going to give my views and experiences on some of the best ways to utilise and deploy your dreadnoughts in 30k

Wednesday 9 December 2015

VIIth Legion WIP: Castraferrum Dreadnought

Ancient of the 32nd Assault Chapter


a galaxy in flames
I am happily churning out units for my legion and this guy is the latest. He is the first of a talon of three Castraferrum dreadnoughts i am doing with the aim of magnetising and converting one of them to sub as a Mortis if need be. Below is the first of the talon, bearing a plasma cannon and power claw. This guy will ideally be trudging along with a breacher unit to give a little threatening cover fire and assault assistance. 

Saturday 5 December 2015

Alpharius.....or maybe Omegon? But probably just a regular marine. Very pic heavy

G'day all,

It's been awhile since my last post so I decided to do up my version of Alpharius and whack him into a series of WIP.

I'm reading the Legion novel at the moment(slowly) and love the idea that Alpharius could be any one of the marines, changing his name and identity at will.  So I decided to convert him as just that, a 'regular' marine armed like any one of his comrades.  I used the two following pictures as my main inspiration for the conversion.  A quick disclaimer, I'm using these pictures in good will, and with no ulterior motive.




The first pic has fairly standard power armour, but is clearly an important fella, and the second one I like because of the flowing cape around him something I tried to emulate.

So to start with the materials I used are:

- A FW AL torso
- A FW AL head
- A set of Tartaros termi legs
- A left and right arm from the termi set along with left and right hands to go with them
- A left and right arm from the mk3 power armour set
- A bolter (Phobos I think)
- Greenstuff
- Sculpting tools (clay shapers, scalpel, pin)
- a junior hacksaw
- a little bit of 2mm plasticard

We'll start off with the legs.  I sawed them off at the hip (as per my earlier tutorial on mk6 marines) and then pinned them back on reducing the cowboy like stance a little and adding about 2mm extra height to the upper thigh while I was at it.  I made sure the stance was how I wanted it and started to greenstuff.  The purpose of the greenstuff on this part of the leg was to heavily bulk out the thighs, which on humans are naturally a lot larger than the calves, something that's a little lost in translation on space marines (not the only anatomical anomaly).  The end result is quite a change from normal marine legs:



But it's grown on me and I like the bulkiness of them.  As you can see I also added a belt buckle and inserted a pin into the legs for the torso to attach to.

I then took a torso and cut it in half with the hacksaw, gluing a small 2mm spacer in between, making sure the front and back lined up before the glue dried:



I attached the torso like this to the pin on the legs and made sure to leave a few mils of space between the two:


I used a bit of greenstuff as gap filler, ensuring that it didn't protrude out past the body and let it dry to add a bit of structural support before I started the actual putty work.






Greenstuff was then used to add a bit more size to certain part of the armour that needed to enlrged to meet the new scale of the model.

The ribcage:


And the waist, a little bit of detail can be seen here, I didn't go overboard though, it'll all get covered up soon:

His arms are made from the upper section of mk3 and the forearm of tartaros joined at the elbow, a fairly easy changeover that allowed the 2 handed bolter hold utlising the angle of the mk3 arms:


As you can see the skinniness of the mk3 is covered up by the shoulder pads, making a nice natural pose:

His backpack is a combination of the mk3 chassis with mk4 vents, I love the mk3 backpack but wanted him to have newer equipment so went with the new vents.  The pack on the left is the finished product:



His cape would be covering his arms partially so I had to glue them in place before continuing.  I also attached the backpack.  I wanted the cape to be a ragged one like in the source pic above so wasn't worried about keeping the putty smooth and consistent.  I wet my fingers well (to stop the putty sticking to them) and took small balls of putty flattening them out between my fingers and pulling them into position on the mini.  The cloak is meant to look like its blowing in the wind so I pulled the sheets of greenstuff out to the right a little.  I also lapped the left hand side of the cloak around the front of him to create the wind effect.  At this stage the cloak looks a little rough on the back but I fix it up later.  After leaving it to dry for 20 minutes or so I took a pin and teased out a few edges on the cloak to make it look torn..



The next day after the putty has completely cured I added some waves in the cloak.  I took sausages of putty and using photos of how material flows I laid the sausages on and smoothed them into the cloak with the clay shapers.







It took a little bit of trial and error but I eventually got a look I was happy with.

Finally I added some brand new fingers holding the bolter and gap filled any spaces left behind at joints like the wrists and shoulders




And there we have it my interpretation of Alpharius, father of all marines, for we are everywhere.  I think he looks important while still maintaining that ambiguity of the XXth.

A scale shot:

And a little action shot:

Thanks for reading.

HYDRA DOMINATUS

-Ded

Monday 23 November 2015

What Floats Your Boat?

G'day all, it's been a while since I last did a pure opinion piece, but today I thought I would. I was chatting with a mate who works at Games Workshop and he was talking about how he liked a miniature that I dislike. The conversation got me thinking, isn't it funny what we like and how strong our opinions are when we don't like something?

There are some things almost universally disliked and yet somehow loved at the same time, such as "Billy the Intern", but who is Billy?


Monday 16 November 2015

A Galaxy In Flames Review and Video: Back2Base-iX Modular Paint Racks

Hello, Macca here and today I have a product review and YouTube video for those interested. I am looking at the Back2Base-iX Modular Paint Racks that I completed last week, and I want to take the chance to talk about the pros and cons.


This is the hobby area which I set up, and needless to say I have a raging hobby-throbby using this setup. The fact that I can finally store the majority of my paints in one spot without being spread across my desk is great, and the ability to keep files and brushes with my paints without a separate storage unit is lovely.


Saturday 14 November 2015

Leviathan Siege Dreadnought Analysis

The Leviathan Siege Dreadnought. It's new. It looks cool. But is it worthit? Macca here, and today we take a look at the Leviathan, the newest Dreadnought from Forge World. Now, I will preface this article with the fact that 'worthit' is a subjective term. Rule of Cool always trumps in-game performance, and I do think this thing looks awesome, but we are going to look at this walker from a gaming perspective.




Wednesday 11 November 2015

Imperial Armour Modelling Masterclass Review

G'day guys, Macca here and I have for you a review for both Imperial Armour Modelling Masterclass books. Since the Horus Heresy Modelling Masterclass is supposedly at the printers, it seems like a good time to look back at these babies. (I actually only got two new copies of my own this week)


Friday 6 November 2015

Imperator Titan: Complete

Finally, the Legio Mortis engine, the Imperator Dies Irae is complete, and ready to lead my Legio into battle. This was a fun project, and despite being a 90's kit, I feel I have made it work for the newer more grim-dark 30k. The original miniature of course is well known as the walking church.

The overall engine stands 155mm tall (a touch over 6" in the old system), making it around 35mm taller than the original kit. This will hopefully give the unit more height to help it stand above the newer Reaver sculpts (which clock in at around 90mm).


Wednesday 4 November 2015

Imperator Titan: The Build

G'day, and welcome to an exciting new project, the start of my 30k Epic Titan Legio! For years and years I have said to myself "I want to build and paint some big Titans" but, time, money, space etc all got in the way. Then the thought occured to me.... why don't I make an epic Legio instead?

So far, the only Titan to arrive into my hands (or bits for that matter, 4 weeks I've been waiting on some 60mm bases and some spray paint from GW. You can take a guess at my rage on that subject..) is an Imperator Titan. They look a little something like this....



Saturday 24 October 2015

A Galaxy In Flames Video: Decals, Oil Pin Washes and Oil Streaking

So, another day and another video tutorial! Today we are taking a look at applying Decals, Oil Pin Washes and Oil Streaks. I have put this video together with warts and all, if I have trouble mixing a paint, you'll see it, if a decal doesn't apply, you'll see it. This video continues on from the rust effects done in the first video, and aims to take it from a basic, rusty fortification, to a fancy rusty fortification.








I hope you enjoy the video, see you next time!

~Macca


Thursday 22 October 2015

A Galaxy In Flames Video: Heavy Rust Effects



G'day guys, and welcome to another AGIF YouTube video. This is our first ever 1080p video, and it marks a 20 minute long tutorial on how to do some pretty extreme rust effects using a Vallejo chipping medium. This technique is excellent for white-washing tanks and other armour, but I have used a home-made fortification to demonstrate. You can watch the video here, or directly on our YouTube channel. I have included the pics from the end of the video, and these will give you a pretty good idea of where you will end up after stage one of the weathering process.









Thanks for watching, keep an eye out for part 2, where I will apply decals to this, before adding streaking and picking a few details out.

~Macca

Monday 19 October 2015

Sicarian Variants: What Would Be Cool?

So, I have a question today, what variant of what tanks would you like to see most in the Horus Heresy? For me personally, the Sicarian is so awesome that variants of it can only be a good idea.



Thursday 15 October 2015

VIIth Legion WIP: Forge Lord


Master of the Armoury


So i got this idea that i wanted to run a big guy in with my shield wall......now I'm talking a big big guy. Of course there is the contemptors, which I am in the process of building but I also wanted something a little more....different. So I came up with the idea of having the 32nd's own pet robot. A Castellax battle Automata to stomp along with the shield line but he is another post for a different day. However, to field said Castellax i need the right HQ to field him and I settle for a Forge Lord consul.
a galaxy in flames

I envisioned him with the typical servo arm and artificer armour. Since his duty involves commanding the companies techmarine cadre and overseeing the companies war machines in action, especially his pet Castellax, he would be close by to his pet, in the front line. Being so i imagined he would relish being in the thick of it so take up a boarding shield and join the shield wall. This gave me the benefit of having another choppy character in my breacher squads and also adding a little extra story to the army overall.

Given that i had decided to arm him with a boarding shield, practicality would suggest arming him with a melee weapon which wouldn't suffer from the presence of the shield such as a specialist weapon like a power fist or lightning claw. 

Monday 12 October 2015

An Introduction To 30k For 40k Players: Part 2


In Part 1, we looked at how the Force Organisation Chart and force selection in general worked. Today, we are going to look at how to actually play the missions, because it isn't quite the same as 40k, and I'm going to explain why. There are some subtle differences, but mostly the confusion lies in how units score/are able to score, and I want to shed some light on this.

Deployment Types:

First off, I want to go in to deployment types. In the Horus Heresy, the missions have 6 different deployment types. Sometimes these are specifically stated in the mission, other times they are randomly rolled for. These deployments, measurements and such are all aimed at the 2500-3000 point per side game, and as such they use the 6x4 table and corresponding measurements.







An Example Mission:

This mission is from Book V: Tempest (Word Bearers vs Ultramarines at Calth). The points of note are as follows:

-The armies selected are to use the Battles in the age of Darkness rules and FOC's. This means that you cannot bring over bizarre rules from 40k, except where stated expressly.
-The deployment type is random in this mission, selected as per the previous six options listed above.
-The terrain is placed/
-The warlord traits and psychic abilities are rolled, then the players roll off to see who will deploy first (and take first turn).

However...


You want to understand the mission prior to deployment. This mission has several special rules, namely Night Fighting and Reserves (as per 40k) but also Heavy Armour (a Heresy special rule for this mission, which makes all vehicles with the Tank type, as well as Super-Heavy Vehicles and Walkers SCORING UNITS). Now the fact that the available scoring units most likely increased for both players will change how they play the mission.

As per 40k, there are Secondary Objectives, however, these are specifically listed in the mission, in this case, Slay the Warlord and Last Man Standing. This means there is no Linebreaker, no First Blood etc. in this mission.

From here, the mission is set up and played out as per the objectives for the mission. From this point on, it will play out identically to 40k.

Notes On 40K Missions In 30k:

In 30k, only Troops and units specifically listed as scoring, are actually scoring. The Obj. secured rule only applies to these units, not to their transports, or any other units. This limits the amount of scoring, and can make some missions incredibly more difficult than for a similar 40k army. For example, a Maelstrom of War mission will severely handicap the average Heresy force, with most only averaging 3-4 scoring units below 2000 points.

As for the missions themselves, I personally prefer to ignore them in favour of the 30k missions, as they are more interesting and are designed to link together in order to form a larger narrative (for example, you can literally play from the start of the Istvaan V massacre all the way through to a skirmish level game involving the surviving loyalists tackling the traitors and all the way into the Last Stand of the Raven Guard before their rescue, needing around 18 missions to play out in full!).

Conclusion:

Although not a lengthy article, I felt it was important to demonstrate to the community how 30k deviates from 40k, and where the two systems can potentially clash. This isn't designed to demonise 40k, just to let people know the perils of cross-system gameplay. At the end of the day, play what you like, in fact, I would house-rule it so that 40k units had to score the same as a 30k army, in order to balance it out a little, but that's just me...

~Macca