Retro!!!

Whilst casually talking to a couple of colleagues about my love of painting toy soldiers one of them mentioned that he had an old copy of Space Crusade gathering dust and wondered whether I wanted to take it off of his hands. There is of course only 1 answer to such a question and so, a couple of weeks later, he brought in to work for me. RESULT!

Space Crusade is the game which first drew me in to the hobby... hook, line and sinker! Back in the early nineties my circle of school chums and various members of my family all fell in love with that particular generation of specialist games which Games Workshop (in collaboration with Milton Bradley Games) released - Hero Quest, Space Crusade and their 'advanced' versions (Tyranids anyone!?). I generally don't keep hold of stuff that I no long actively use, however being able to pick up the game which started it all off was an opportunity I wasn't going to miss.

After getting the box home and performing an inventory of the contents compared to what should be present in the box (the rules book has a very useful list of all the items which should be present), the only bits which are missing are the models themselves. This is a tad disappointing and a quick eBay search revealed that the models from Space Crusade sell for silly money. As I'm not made of money, my plan is to repopulate the missing models with newer, more readily available equivalent units.. for example I have already set aside the Hellbrute and Chosen Chaos Marines which I had lying around from the Dark Vengeance boxed set to replace the chaos units and Bob has offered a few Necrons to fill in those gaps. Over the coming months I plan to use eBay to fill in the rest of the gaps and then be able to play a game/full campaign.

What this space for further update on my Space Crusade project.

Heavy Support: Thunderfire Cannon and Techmarine

My latest project has been finishing off my Thunderfire Cannon and painting up the accompanying  Techmarine. I picked this model up at Games Day (UK) 2014 during what can only be described as a biblical shopping spree which reduced my credit card to tears. I still don't know how I managed to carry all my new shiny stuff back in the train but I guess the will of a nerd is unbreakable when it comes to hobbying!

I wanted to add this unit to my army ever since I came back in to the hobby but the horror stories surrounding the kit combined with the price point meant I steered clear of picking it up. Upon purchasing and building I can say that the Thunderfire Cannon itself was the worst GW kit I have ever tried to build (so far! I  hear the Storm Raven is pretty bad). It was warped, the pieces were in some cases, literally lining up a centimetre away from where they should have been. After some perseverance though I managed to build the kit and prior to my last Warhammer World trip I painted the weapon to a basic level (basecoat/wash/highlight). During this project I finished the cannon- adding some finer detail, applying some of the new Technical paints from GW and also fully painted the awesome Techmarine.

I am very happy with this model... and would say that he has the best quality paint job I have managed thus far. I originally planned to paint the model in the traditional colours of my chapter however I decided to try something new and went with the traditional colour scheme of the Adeptus Mechanicus. I enjoyed the change in primary colours and using the red took me back to painting my Blood Angel back in the 1990's. The quality of the model is breathtaking; the details are very intricate but I think I have done it justice.

As for the Thunderfire Cannon itself, I applied Typhus Corrosion to the tracks and lower parts of the model and then I added Nihilakh Oxide to the Gold Winged Skull on the front of the weapon. I enjoyed using these technical paints and will continue to experiment as I continue to paint more models.

Next up.... my very own Cypher Conversion. Exciting!

Progress So Far

It'll all starting to come together!

That is all :)

Heavy Support: Predator

Another unit kindly provided by Bob, the Machine Spirit guiding this tank isn't very happy with me (or should I say- it wasn't!). Having managed to break off both Sponson mounted Las-Cannons my only battle tank wasn't in a suitable state to be painted up and take it place on the battlefield. Randomly, a couple of weeks ago I saw a cheap Pin Vice (and drill bits with matching sized set of magnets) on eBay so I dropped £6 on it without really having any plan as to what I was going to use the tool/magnets for. Turns out that the magnets are a perfect fit (to the millimetre!) when used for re-attaching the Las-Cannons to their mounts. I have to say I am very impressed by the size vs strength ratio of the tiny magnets and can't wait to use them on other units!

After feeling pretty chuffed about fixing the weapons I figured that I would tackle this unit next. Below is a 'before' pic. At time of photographing the unit had been sprayed with The Fang and Airbrushed with Russ Grey.

Before

And here is the 'after' pics. I really enjoyed painting this model. I'm really happy with the magnetised weapons and have picked up a couple of sponson Heavy Bolters, which will be magnetised to give me more options when building lists.

after!

Getting On Top And Staying There

Whilst enjoying a lazy afternoon browsing t'interwebz I read this article which is centred on how easy it can be to feel the pressure of a hobbying 'to do' list. This struck a cord with me as I found the very same experience very suffocating when I re-entered the hobby at the beginning of 2013 and is the reason I started this blog.

Within 6 weeks of picking up Dark Vengeance I received a wonderful donation of maybe 30-40 models from Bob. This created a rather large 'to do' list straight away; compounded by my relatively slow painting speed this led to a feelings that I was never going to make inroads into the models which now sat on my shelf. This situation continued as I purchased more models throughout 2013 until I made some small changes which helped kick start my hobby progress...