Second "Heroes of Armageddon" charity project prize posted!

The Heroes of Armageddon charity project is truckin' along.  Week two and a new weekly prize has been listed.  This time around there are TWO $25 gift certificates to Secret Weapon Miniatures. Justin was a huge part of the success of the Storm Wardens project last year - he donated all the bases for the entire project as well as further prize support.

good for more than bases!

As promised I have donated another $20 to the cause. You can check out their weekly drawing post here.  The prize isn't just limited to resin bases - Justin has great weathering powders, washes, and conversion bits too!

Please contribute to this great cause!

Raptors: Deathwatch Marine... complete (kinda)

Here's some updated pics of my Raptor Legion deathwatch marine.  I had to get him done quickly last week in order to submit him to The Fallen Princes Badab War character competition.  I figured out how I'm going to do the yellow on my first company Raptors (shoulderpad is much more muted and pastel than the bright yellow of second company - first company will have no camo) and as well I think I will update the rest of the Raptors bases with a little more green wash over the swamp scrub as on this mini.  A little water effects or something and I think they will really start to come together.

love how dynamic his pose came out

I say he's "kinda" finished, since in order to enter him to the competition (ps. voting has commenced - vote here! but not for me, the other entries are so much better!) he was supposed to have a combi-flamer w chain blade attachment.  In the end the chain blade was too much, but I did end up magnetizing a hand flamer from the death company sprue to attach to the bottom of his bolter.  I will probably end up magnetizing an infernus pistol and possibly plasma pistol to give him all three options.

good view of all the raven guard bits

You can see I used a bunch of FW raven guard parts.  I'm ok with it as there's lots of similar iconography on my counts as Shrike.  Even for the chapter shoulderpad - I'll just say he's allowed to use personal icons as a mark of honour for being accepted to the deathwatch - although he still has a small shoulder shield to match the camo colours of the rest of my Raptor Legion second company.  The bird skull and backpack really give him some personality.  I'd like to thank Chris @ Crosser Modeling for giving me a vote - his Laufrey is a better choice based on the criteria at minimum (better paint job and weather too!)

First "Heroes of Armageddon" charity project prize up for grabs!

If you haven't heard of this latest charity project by the super guys who ran the amazingly successful Storm Wardens project - where have you been living - under a rock?

who wouldn't want a print of this?!?!?!

Anyways with that out of the way - it's time for me to start pimpin' because the first prizes have been announced (just like last time, throughout the entire project awesome prizes will be given away) and first up are some METAL 12x16 prints of the project artwork.  This prize definitely hits close to home - you may have seen the awesome piece of art my partner had made for me for my birthday based on one of my own models.  How cool would it be to have a print of the amazing piece of art created to launch this project???

Last time around (storm wardens) I made a single big donation and pimped it maybe once on the blog - and the guys managed to raise over $16K for Doctors without Borders.  This time around I've decided every new prize announcement will be met with a $20 donation commitment and a pimpin' blog post.  Before the end of the project I will donate that amount (to try and avoid as much paypal fees as possible) donate enough to cover the fees dinged by paypal.  I will track my commitment donation total in the box to the right with the link to the project where you can find more information.

Please try to contribute to this great cause!

awesome partners OR how i got some help for a new project....

Some of you may know I have the most awesome partner in the world!  She's always been very supportive of my hobby - well she's gone a step further and agreed we're going to spend a small amount of time every week where I'll teach her a bit about painting and together we'll get some of my pile of unpainted figures done.  Here she is having a go at painting a Spyrer while we were up at the cottage one weekend.

concentrate...  concentrate...

The goal is to get a full set of miniatures ready to act as battle level 1 baddies for Warhammer Quest.  I decided that instead of using the standard square bases that we were going to make some bases using washers, business cards, sand and a bit of flock.  These are pretty simple to make, have a little more weight than plastic bases, match the bases on my WHQ Characters and provide the same advantage in terms of being simpler to use in a dungeon setting (allowing models to face pretty much any direction - so flailing arms and weapons don't necessarily impede each other).  We stuck some packing tape on top of the washers and cut up chunks of business card to glue on top.  Once that was done we glued on some sand to act as rubble in between the "stones" of business card.  They were simply painted with P3 Greatcoat Grey, and then drybrushed them with P3 Frostbite. Sarah learned how to drybrush - first technique in the bag!  She was worried about how they came out but I couldn't tell the bases apart (ie. who did which - and I still can't!) so I think she did a fantastic job.  We then just glued bits of flock wherever it needed it, either to cover up mistakes/missed spots or where it would look realistic and natural.  Here are the bases we did - a reasonable batch that will base 12 goblins with spears, 12 with bows and a minotaur.

25 washer bases complete!

I really want these miniatures to have an eclectic look to them - they are a bunch of smelly creatures living in a dungeon - of course they aren't going to have a uniform look! I also don't really care too much about shading or highlights.  The best way to achieve this is going to be simple neat basecoats and rotation of colour placement.  As it happened, some of the old figures I put into this project were already painted to this reasonable level.  Gives us a bit of a head start and hopefully gives Sarah some examples so she can understand what we're aiming for.  This pic is of the first batch of "pre-painted" figures, there are a few more whose feet broke while removing the old bases, they will get fixed up and we should soon have around 11 models complete.

first figures finished!

That's it for now - I will definitely be back with more posts once we actually paint some figs ourselves!

Necromunda free for all!

Got my brother Sebastian and a couple other friends around to start getting ourselves back into necromunda (older necromunda batreps here).  Due to time we just had a huge free for all on a 4' x 4' table.  We decided to use table corners (basically you got a 12" square in each corner). Treacherous Conditions roll was 51 (Carrion Bats) which meant after setting up, every model had to take a Ld check or be pinned (possibly falling from ledges).  Lorand also started with a Ratskin scout who owed an honour debt to the enforcer sergeant from the event cards we got.

Lorand rolled highest and got to pick table corner first - he chose the corner with the power plant.  I'll apologize right now, I don't have many pics of Lorand's corner as it was a little awkward to get to being on the other side of the table (plus his minis weren't painted so it ruined the fantasy of it all  - LOL inside joke!) Here's a pic just to see his table corner but it's actually from much later in the game.

enforcer corner (after a couple turns unfortunately)

Sebastian picked next and setup in the corner with the necromunda building with the tall vent stack.

spyrer setup - sorry only pic and it was blurry

I setup in the emptiest corner but which was fairly close to the imperial firebase.

escher setup

Mike setup in the last corner with some of the octagonal and triangular necromunda scenery.

delaque setup (more are just behind that piece of card scenery)

We rolled to see who went first and decided it was just clockwise after that, Mike won the roll and I went last.  We did the Carrion Bats test before each person took their turn. The only one able to do anything other than move closer in the first turn was Mike (he pinned my juve with a shot).  Unfortunately for him, his heavy was the only model to fail it's Ld check, he then fell all the way to the ground from 6" up.  He outrageously survived completely unharmed as I rolled a 1 to wound.  Lorand had 2 enforcers pinned, Sebastian had 1 yeld pinned and I had 2 gangers and a juve pinned (same juve Mike pinned - lol).

Second turn, Mike's heavy ran back to position while the rest took 2 of my escher man down and missed or pinned while shooting the enforcers.  Lorand's enforcers began the smack down, his heavy taking an escher OOA and his sergeant capping a delaque juve with his plasma pistol.  Sebastian's spyrers manuvered around and a yeld took the enforcer heavy man down. I managed to pass my bottle test (seriously? bottle test turn 2!) put some girls on overwatch near the down girls and continued to consolidate my position.  Some pics from turn two below.

Mike: "stay there this time!" + 2 capped escher

enforcers shotguns pinned, the sergeants plasma pistol took the juve man down

yeld wasted the enforcer heavy

Turn three things started to get heated.  Mike's delaques were busy, taking the ratskin man down, pinning the enforcer leader and his heavy pilled the stubber rounds into the cyber mastiff - but Lorand made both 5+ saves and the cyber mutt shrugged it off.  The enforcers passed their bottle test, the mastiff charged a delaque - only to get beaten down in close combat, the sergeant stood up and capped another delaque, then both the heavy and ratskin went from man down to OOA (worst time for double 6's!)  At this point we are all going to be taking bottle tests every turn except for the Sebastian so I used my event card "unsafe ladder" on one of his yelds, causing just a S3 hit but it was enough to pin him and give him a flesh wound - damn so close! His malcadon charged the enforcers of whom one was on overwatch - again doing just enough to pin him and cause a flesh wound.  So Sebastian was still safe from bottle tests even though 2 spyrers had been hurt.  I passed my bottle test to have another pretty dismal turn, missing with my shooting, though 1 ganger did recover from man down to flesh wound - woo hoo, a temporary break in bottle tests for me!  

delaque heavy opens up on the cyber-mastiff in the distance

Mike passed his bottle test to start turn four, and proceeded to waste Lorands sergeant, and a couple gangers recovered to flesh wounds.  Lorand made his bottle test having only 4 guys left, but failed twice to hit the pinned malcadon lying in front of him.  He had some dismal luck where his cyber mutt charged a delaque ganger and got scragged for it's trouble.  Then he lucked out as Sebastian failed to escape pinning with the malcadon, though he did charge and take out an enforcer with his S4 jakara.  His yeld then fired at another enforcer, missing - so Sebastian played his event card "toxic pipe", rolling 3 S4 automatic hits with NO armour save from the pipe that exploded above the enforcer.  He then rolled two 2's and a 1 to fail completely in wounding the enforcer, though he was pinned with no armour save available.  In my turn I finally got my first wounding hit of the game, with my juve taking down a delaque juve with her pistol at long range. Then before my CC phase was over, Mike used his event card "necromundan rat" to attack my shotgun ganger on overwatch.  We both fluffed out single attack dice roll (both 1's) so due to charging and it's insane WS of 4 (yes, a rat - WS4!) Mike got two hits on me, which failed to wound but did remove my overwatch.

cyber-mastiff charges but gets smoked in HtH

enforcers luck out that the malcadon didn't escape being pinned

Turn five Mike the wound machine (I think he had at least two gangers with 3 wounds caused each this game) though he only pinned the spyrers on the bridge fighting the enforcers, ran a shotgun ganger up and took a sneaky jakara man down.  Lorand passed his bottle test and continued his ineffective shooting by missing the pinned jakara right next to his enforcers (three 1's in a row!!). Game changed at this point as unfortunately for him, Sebastian failed the very first bottle test he had to make - brutal!!  My escher managed to wound another delaque with a shotgun blast in my turn, and my other ganger who'd been crawling along 2" man down all game recovered to a flesh wound.

escher have secured the firebase and a delaque gets taken down with a shotgun blast

Mike failed his bottle roll on turn 6, moving the turn quickly to Lorand who passed but failed to hit anyone.  My same shotgun ganger who smoked the delaque last turn did the same to another enforcer, causing the last enforcer to break and flee!  We called it a bottle and a day.  In the end the early damage Mike did to me made me play cautious allowing him to get to grips with Lorand a bit more, and my meltagun armed leader worried Sebastian enough he kind of left me alone.  It's funny the only person to actually finish the job and take one of my gangers OOA was Lorand who was setup in the far corner of the table away from me!

how the west (corner) was won!

Crimson Fists: Sternguard - painted (as much as I care to)

Well sorry for the crappy pic but it's about all I can bother for these guys.  These are my Crimson Fist sternguard - having languished unpainted since Aug 3rd 2009 they definitely deserved some love considering how often they are used.  Unfortunately they didn't come out exactly the same as my previous CF marines and termies - I did make a mistake in the order I used blue wash and devlan mud - but even after extensive drybrushing of regal blue and trying again it was just a more purplish colour.  I did use a spray gun for the regal blue basecoat over a new kind of black primer so there are plenty of possible culprits.

I've had them about 95% done for a couple months now - it just annoyed me enough to want to take a break from them.  I got all the decals on and all the other touch ups I can be bothered with.  Pass on doing hazard stripes for the heavy flamers at this point - maybe I will feel the urge later.  I won't bother with the fineliner scribbles either until I am going to seal them since it will just rub off.  Oh well at least they are painted up if not perfect.  During the break I got a fair amount done on two rhino chassis and accessories, I hope to get them finished up soon too along with my two (WIP1 & WIP2) planned entries to Fallen Prince's Badab Special Character competition.  Actually I just realized I only have 10 days left, so I better hurry up on those!