playing with the FOLDIO & green background (green screen)

Just for fun I tried setting up a "green screen" type shoot with a few figures. I used the FOLDIOs green background and just poured extra flock that matched the bases all over the figures. Then I used photoshop to remove the background and just googled some images to put as the new background. Not that pleased but being my first attempt I'm not overly fussed. The horizon is clearly off as are the colours comparing the two layers.

first attempt

Things I figured out are 1) the FOLDIO material both the box and the background are made out of have a natural attraction for flock and the like, so they will need some quick cleaning before being used again. 2) Finding the correct angle to get the "horizon" right but still show off the miniatures is tough. 3) I probably need to use some kind of filter tool in photoshop to get the colours to look right.

Any tips or good websites to check out?

Got my FOLDIO!

Well it took a bit longer due to shipping to Canada being slower through USPS - but finally it has arrived and I love it! A very cool portable lightbox that folds together and uses magnets to hold it's shape and a thin LED strip to provide the light. It has multiple background colours too!

Here are just a couple teaser pics. I have begun taking some nicer photos of my figures and updating old posts using them. Check out the links below for some updated piccys!

My spyrers page and the eversor model I might use counts as with them :)
http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/2007/01/spyrers.html
http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/2009/09/eversor-1pp.html

The warhammer quest characters page and specifically the warrior priest post.
http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/2007/01/warhammer-quest.html
http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/2009/07/warhammer-quest-character-2.html

Some earlier posts from this year have some additional piccys.
http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/2014/01/novamarines-terminators.html
http://gwpertinent.blogspot.com/2014/04/whq-baddies.html

40K 6th ed. 2nd game (first with new marine codex)

Got my second game of 6th edition in, vs. Leo of the previous game. Around 5 months between games shows how little I actually play 40K at the moment.  Leo brought his Eldar from the previous battle bolstered with the new wraithlord monstrous creature thing, and a bunch of wraithguard that counted as troops along with the essential psykers, dropping the crimson hunter and fire prism but keeping the obviously strong wave serpents.

my deployment

Having recently finished my novamarines assault terminators, I was tempted to bring them, but at 1500 points there just didn't seem to be enough space, and without a valid way to get them into assault without a land raider, they seemed a bit of a liability.  I brought Tigurius to try and combat his psykers, a 10 man terminator squad, 2 tactical squads in drop pods, a scout squad with Telion and another scout squad in a land speeder storm bolstered by a thunderfire cannon.

Leo's first move

Leo took a bunch of pics of my deployed units, and I tended to take a pic a turn, so here are a bunch of pics of my scouts and terminators then some in game pics.  We played the scourging game with 6 objectives.

scouts on the firebase, terminators behind

close up of scouts

terminators and thunderfire cannon

I dropped the first pod and whiffed with both meltaguns on a wave serpent, while Tigurius gated with the terminators and they destroyed most of his guardians.  Thunderfire missed even with prescience.

end of turn one

another shot before turn two

Turn two and Leo focuses on my terminators - who at first seem invincible, but then begin to drop like flies.

Leo turn two

My turn two I gate away from combat and focus a lot of fire on the wraithguards without template weapons, causing a lot of wounds and killing everything but one and his farseer.  His other wraithguards whiff trying to kill my scouts in the firebase.

end of turn two

Other drop pod with tactical doesn't really do enough - I was torn between bolstering where my other units were or providing a distraction and challenging for objectives.  In the end they didn't do any damage and just got shot up.

begin of turn three

I crucially failed at all to user the ultramarines tactics (Tigurius meant I often used prescience on an appropriate unit, but I probably needed one more drop pod so both tactical squads could land at same time and take advantage of the rerolls.  I also misunderstood overwatch and didn't realize his wraithguard with template weapons could overwatch at my charging terminators - which meant they died before reaching combat.  That about sealed it.

I've learned this army really doesn't have any "punch" to combat the creep of other codexes.  That plus space marines becoming a flexible/finesse army and losing combat tactics means a serious re-think about this army.  Lots of troops is great, but the terminators are pretty expensive for what you get.  Not sure what I can easily add to make it competitive so it may sit on the back shelf for a while, or could go up on the block in the future.

Novamarines terminators

First painting points of 2014 - yes it's kind of cheating because most of the painting was done in 2013, but I'm not going to not collect the points!  6 terminators, a squad of assault terminators with thunder hammer and storm shield (note the shield bears the novamarines icon) plus a terminator with assault cannon who I also gave a deathwatch shoulder pad due to not having any normal pads left.

assault squad - love the shields!

I'm not going to bother trying to get good pictures until my lightbox from FOLDIO shows up, so just some quickies to show I am done.  FYI I had forgotten about transfers but since these pics I have added the army badge and shoulder pad veteran skull transfers I have been using on my novamarines.

assault cannon with deathwatch honours

This guy I converted with a pair of lightning claw arms and a land speeder assault cannon.  I think he looks pretty decent and it's kind of cool that all the terminator heavy weapons are conversions in this army.  All these guys need now is a coat of varnish to keep them protected.

magnetized chainfist

EDIT: Oops I forgot I also got this chainfist arm painted up.  You may recall I magnetized the arm of my second squads sergeant so I could have a full 10 man squad. Well I figured I may as well give myself the chainfist arm option, always handy to have an option to use up 5 points :) No painting points for this though.

04/24/2014 EDIT
Some FOLDIO lightbox pics

Astronomi-mini-con: preparation

Just a quick post up for now, today my buddy Mike (shiftedmatrix.com) ran a small tournament in preparation for this years Astronomi-con.  Astro last year was a blast and I was looking forward to it this year, but unfortunately it has fallen on the same date as Zlurpeebowl this year to which I have already committed.

Regardless Mike's mini-tournament (full details here) would be a fun day of 40K on some tables of amazing terrain with good people, so I was still planning to go.  The compromise I made was to just run a very similar list to last year, since my Space Sharks would need a lot of painting to get 1,500 points painted - whereas I wrote up a list for my Novamarines that swapped out the FW special character I used at last years Astronomi-con and swapped in a dreadnought (already painted) and 2 more drop pods (which I needed to paint)

regular and dreadnought drop pods

So over the past few days I got these drop pods painted up so I could run a fully painted army.  Definitely one of the best things about astro is the amazing armies and I didn't want to be running any grey plastic.  This was another nice chunk of this army painted, just leaving some assault terminators, some extra special/heavy weapons choices, some scouts and a second land speeder storm to reach what I expect the limit of this army to be.  It's nearly 75% completely painted now and I have made some major updates to the army page (including painting chart) so check it out!

I will put up a little series of short battle reports from Astronomi-mini-con in the next couple days - I am completely bagged right now but I just wanted to claim the 20 painting points for completing these two vehicles!

Dread Drop Pods

Just wanted to get a quick post up about the two custom drop pods I picked up from Ashton (redfinger). They are converted with plasticard from the standard pod kit. One will go to Ric (ricalopia) for my Flesh Tearers (obviously the red one) and the other will be the final drop pod for my Novamarines.

Heard there's some new rules in the updated apocalypse book, looking forward to testing them out!

mini restoration

Interesting article by Ron @ FTW today about the Chaos Lord he restored for a client.

He mentions how it's more work restoring a model than starting from scratch, which in the case of the type of restoration he was working on, will probably always hold true.  However there are other types of restoration that you can do to your minis to ensure they don't languish in the case or on the shelf.

These "restorations" (and I use the term loosely) are usually of the much smaller variety.  Fixing a poor weapons combo choice, re-painting a choice piece of the fig you are unsatisfied with, perhaps re-basing the mini.

Example 1 - my Novamarines scout sergeant with combi-flamer

removed chainsword, added bolt pistol

I was actually putting together models before playing any games of 40K, mating a combi-weapon with a chainsword was overall a poor choice.  The chainsword doesn't really add anything since you can't get a second attack in CC anyways, at least a bolt pistol would allow me to fire once before assaulting (assuming I had already used the combi-flamer)

Example 2 - my Space Sharks captain with combi-plasma

removed combi-plasma/chainsword, added bolt pistol/power sword

Again an example of putting models together before considering their weapon implications.  I liked the thought of all my Space Sharks having chainswords since those are the images that spring to mind.  Arming your SM captain with a chainsword is a bit of a damp squib.  I updated him to have a power weapon and a simple bolt pistol for the additional attack.

I am contemplating doing a second update to this model as well - magnetizing the bolt pistol hand so I can swap in a plasma pistol so he can also count as Sicarius.  My thought is to do the same with the below example so the champion has the option of taking the combat shield with bolt pistol or plasma pistol as well!

Example 3 - my Space Sharks command squad champion

power sword painted

He's another quick example. This hardly needs a before/after shot, since for some reason I thought a plain white power weapon would look good??!?!  He looks a lots nicer now.  As mentioned above I am probably going to magnetize both his and the captains pistols so they can swap easily.

Example 4 - a Novamarines terminator turned heavy

added the IG sentinel missile launcher

Final example here.  Fortunately for me I used an extra AoBR terminator (from white dwarf) when originally making my "heavy" (heavy flamer) for this squad.  This meant I still had 4 terminators with storm bolter & power fist, so I just selected one and added the IG sentinel missile launcher to act as a cyclone, giving me two options for a heavy weapon (but unfortunately no longer the option of NOT taking a heavy weapon - oh well worst case it's 5 points for the heavy flamer)

The Fallen Princes SQUAD competition

Perfect timing!  Since today is Novamarines day, it is quite appropriate that I remind you all about The Fallen Princes latest painting competition; theme SQUAD.  The finalists have been posted and votes are being tallied.

The reason it is so appropriate is because I entered all the squads (3 entries - lol!!) I had to finish up for Astronomi-con this year - where I brought my Novamarines.  Many of the other entries are much nicer than mine IMO, but it seems at least one person appreciated my magnetized land speeder storm riding scouts.

Be sure to head over and vote.  I personally voted for the Fire Hawks Sternguard by Kiour_gr (very striking!) but obviously vote for whichever entry you like the most.  Even mine if you are feeling generous (groggy?)

Crusade Week: Novamarines!

image used without permission - copyright "The Fly Lords of Terra"

Day 3 of Crusade week continues with the chapter for which I probably have the most minis painted - the Novamarines! Definitely one of the rarer chapters to be seen due to their complex quartered paint scheme, there's only one other blog I know of that has anything to do with Novamarines.

Check out the following;

• The Fly Lords of Terra

If you have a Novamarines army, link your label in the comments below and I will both add you to this post and start following!

Landspeeder Storm + magnetized riders (TFP entry #3)

While gearing up for Astronomi-con, I needed a couple more bolter scouts to save some cash I magnetized the landspeeder storm riders. I was hoping to get a second missile launcher armed squad but ended up without enough points for the list, but I had already built him. Took some monumental effort to paint another Novamarine so soon after painting huge batches of them, but just for TFP I made it happen so I could enter this squad to the competition.

storm & riders on bases

storm left side with assault & army badge decals

storm right side

I dunno if it was the best plan but I thought of the missile launcher armed scout hiding behind a little tree - it goes pretty well with the crawling scout below.

missile launcher - close up

Also for the guy who was hanging off the side, since I magnetized his hand, I took a melta bomb and magnetized the bottom - he could now easily be a sergeant.  Aka the dancing scout.

jumping down - close up

Here are the two seated scouts.  One I put on a stump and the other on a pile of logs.  Everyone loves the guy sitting on the logs.

bolters - chillin'

So that's a total of four scouts, 3 bolters and a missile launcher.  I put some extra effort into the base for the storm since I picked up some water effects.  It actually turned out pretty well, though I'm not sure if it was adding wash or paint to the mix or the dryness of the house but it cracked a lot as it dried.

scouts on their ride, with the magnetized bases and bits

again, from the right side

I ended up fixing this sergeant up.  Being armed with a combi-weapon and a chainsword was pretty silly so I just gave him a bolt pistol in his other hand.  I think he would definitely make a useful sergeant for this squad.  But he was painted before the competition started, same the the crawling scout I just wanted you guys to see them.

older models updated

These are the two guys I used to bulk out the squad (since I didn't use the missile launcher at all) so I would ask you to base the judgement of the squad on these guys even though I think the other two are cooler.  I was originally going to build one more bolter armed guy with a cloak and then the storm riders could count as either with or without since theirs are rolled up - but I think I will probably just go back and add cloaks to these guys when I can stand to paint more Novamarines.

simple bolter guys

Hope you guys enjoyed this - they were definitely fun to model and paint.

more Novamarine terminators (aka Entry #2 to TFP "Squad" competition)

Here is my second entry to The Fallen Princes "Squad" theme painting competition. I was very lucky that the theme this time around was squads just as I was having to paint up a bunch of guys for Astronomi-con (see final touches, recap, bonus pics) so the whole time getting ready for the tournament I knew I was going to need to post some more pics and more in depth for the TFP comp.

terminator squad 2

This now gives me a total of 11 tactical terminators for my Novamarines (hoping to add one more to get an assault cannon in there) I have assault terminators too but ended up dropping them from the tournament list.

showing off the power sword

Cyclone Missile Launchers are definitely the best heavy weapon terminators can carry right now IMO, so I wanted my 10 man squad to have two.  I added the IG Sentinel bit to one of my older terminators but this one was built with it to begin with.

Cyclone Missile Launcher close up (IG Sentinel bit)

The other key figure was the sergeant.  I was just using AoBR terminators, so to bump the squad up to 10 I had to beg an extra power fist from my buddy Mike (he placed 3rd at Astro btw).  As you all know I love magnets I decided to magnetize the arm so he could still wield a power sword and be two separate units.

power sword - right side

Before the tournament, I didn't have time to paint the power sword arm.  I just focused on getting them ready as needed, so all I painted was the power fist.  It's incredible I could even bother to paint more blue & bone, but for the squad competition I needed a sergeant and one arm didn't seem like too much effort.

power fist - sorry for crappy pic

I was debating how I was going to paint the power sword for a while until I found this two part tutorial on Dark Future Games (simple & effective power weapons - part 1 / part 2).  The only change I made was I used a different colour as the base - it's a P3 paint called coal black which has some blue tone to it.  I really like the way this sword came out.

power sword - left side

It's kinda funny how every power weapon across all my armies are painted differently. Anyways this is my entry, there is still a month left so you have time to enter yourself! I still have one more unit from my Novamarines who I will be entering and then we'll see whether I get anything else painted by then.  You can check out my first entry here.

Astronomi-con: Recap

I went into this tournament with a nearly entirely infantry scoring army.  MANY of the missions looked to be weighed heavily in my favour either due to scoring or the fact I had Gate of Infinity on my Librarian.  Unfortunately for me, I only got to play 2 such missions (my two wins) which was a bit surprising but such is the way the cookie crumbles.

Shane was definitely my most fun opponent. We spent the whole game laughing, he was carefree and just looking for a fun game. His quote about his army "I'm going for table or tie" - it was a very direct BA army with Dante+Sang Guard, Lemartes+DC & DC Dread in Storm Rave, DC Dread in Lucius Pattern Drop Pod. It was a crate pick up mission, my drop pod scatter stranded my terminators from using GoI with the locator beacon and I didn't roll a scatter "hit" all game.  Still I made too many mistakes trying to catch up in number of crates and ended up with none.

Game 1 vs Shane (Blood Angels) Loss

Patrick had a pretty cool desert theme Tau army.  Nothing too shocking in his list - 2x 6 FW in devilfish, 10FW, 6x PF in devilfish, 3x 3 Suits, 2 Broadsides and a Piranha. He played very conservatively and I think that was his undoing.  His pathfinder devilfish immobilised itself in a building during it's scout move and I think it scared him a bit. It was a "clear buildings" mission where scoring units were particularly valuable (yay!) so I just focused on destroying his fire warriors and clearing buildings.  He had a chance to tie late but I blew up his devilfish and panicked his remaining FW squad.

Game 2 vs Patrick (Tau) Win

Mark's army had custom made mycetic spores from foam cups & expanding foam as well as a starship troopers toy to represent some FW gargantuan creature.  The toy wasn't too bad but I thought the spores weren't so hot. We played a crazy mission with a sandstorm where everywhere was difficult terrain and to shoot over 12" you needed 6's to hit.  I thought I had eeked out a draw but mistakenly thought only his genestealers were troops but warriors are as well. If the game had ended on turn 5 I would have actually won.

Game 3 vs Mark (Tyranids) Loss

This was probably my least favourite game.  Chris was running a Space Wolf list but his marines were only partially painted and mostly as black termplars. His army was also a bit on what I'd term the "beardy" side, running 5 multi-melta long fangs in a drop pod with Grimnar was not quite what this tournament was supposed to be about. He was a good sport and fair, he managed to steal the initiative but to be honest with his squad of 6 combi-plasma wolf guard in a drop pod I dunno if the result would have been much different. This was another "crate" pick up mission, which if it had ended on turn 5 would have been a draw because he wasn't paying enough attention to what turn it was but it went to turn 7 and ended a total massacre.

Game 4 vs Chris (Space Wolves) Loss

A fun game vs. a fun opponent.  Derek brought a Armoured Company IG list that unfortunately was just sprayed green. I made a huge mistake thinking that you needed scoring units to claim table quarters (some missions were) but this one wasn't so I wasted a couple turns focusing on the wrong units.
In the end he had last turn and was able to contest the quarters I was trying to hold and held two of his own. 
I enjoyed the game immensely though.

Game 5 vs Derek (Imperial Guard) Loss

Paul was only the 3rd army that was fully painted.  He was doing a DIY BA successor, but to be honest I think he might have done better running them as Vanilla Marines. He had a couple tacticals, a min dev squad, a squadron of landspeeders and some termies.  The city board we played on was the nicest table I got to play on all weekend, so that was a treat. It was an objective based mission, which suited my all scoring army well (yay!) and in the end I destroyed his two tactical squads and contested the objective his assault marines were on and held three myself.

Game 6 vs Paul (Blood Angels) Win

Overall I had a really great time and the "hobby/comp" aspect of the tournament I really liked.  I meant the armies were a little more flavourful than 3x unit A, 3x unit B, etc. The one really dissapointing thing was I felt my army was the nicest out of all my opponents - and having only scored 15/30 for painting it kinda sucked not to play a bunch of nicely painted armies.

Our group did quite well overall, with my friend Mike coming in 3rd overall, Jon picking up Best Army for his pre-heresy Emperor's Children and a surprise win of Best Sportsman for Claudio who wasn't expecting it - but whose Space Wolf army was commended by the organizers for being the best "balanced" list they saw all tournament.

I even ended up winning a raffle prize - won myself a free rhino.  Woot!

Novamarines bonus post - update to Index Astartes: Novamarines

Well I am going all out.  I have taken my previous IA: Novamarines and updated it with graphics and details from IA9: The Badab War (what fits with my previous fluff)

I am duly impressed.  Check it out here. Hopefully it earns me some kudos at Astro tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Novamarines bonus post - Entry to TFP "Squad" theme competition

Well aren't you folks lucky!  I decided that while I have everything out I would snap some pics for an entry to Silar's second competition over at The Fallen Princes. The theme is squad and you can include a transport if you wish.  This works out perfectly for me as I had a ton of painting to do for the upcoming Astronomi-con tournament!

combat squad (sgt: combi-melta/power fist, special: meltagun)

The tactical squad is pretty simple.  It's a second AoBR squad I picked up cheap, but I have built a couple replacements mainly to get some more high strength (melta/power fist) into the squad so the sergeant and special weapons marine are not monopose pieces.

combat squad (heavy: missile launcher)

Here's the transport portion of the entry.  This drop pod was dead easy to finish, all I did was spray it black with the doors open and drybrush the hell out of it.  I picked out the storm bolter inside with black to match all the rest of the weapons.  Then I quartered each door using painters tape to keep it neat and put a Novamarines chapter decal where I had to cut off the previous chapter symbol.  Total maybe about 2 hours (possibly less)

drop pod - doors closed

It's not very imposing when the doors are blown - could end up being a benefit.

drop pod - doors open

Due to the amount of stuff I had to paint for astro - I will likely have two more entries to the competition from my Novamarines alone.  Next up will be a small squad of scouts and then a squad of terminators (I will need to magnetize & paint up a sergeant power sword arm and it might not happen before the tournament - but the competition doesn't end until July 24th so you have PLENTY of time to get your own entry submitted!