Zombies and Apithanies!

Hi All

I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year and that 2013 is going well!

Well it has been some time since I was on this blog and I feel a little bad, so I though I would put something up.  It was actually something I was going through last night!

I was thinking about my Vampire Counts as usual and ways to make them really work and kick backside! The very few games I have played with them, I have lost more than I have won and for a tiny time, I got a little down hearted with the fang touting armies of death!

I did think "why do they cost so much in points and really not amount to much?" at times and even considered the possibility of changing over to another army - but when looking at them, the fluff and everything else - I still love 'em and want to kick more ass with them! I just have to get on and play more games - to practise more things with them and so on.

However, last night I was thinking about the core unit which we have and that fact that they happen to be the worst core unit in the whole of Warhammer; the ZOMBIE!

Yes they are cheap but they really are bad at fighting!  This is the first thing that came to my thoughts last night was that even when I use them as a tar-pit, they never seemed to amount to much.

I would go into battle with a HUGE amount of these buggers and still the large units would get cut down in what seemed no time at all.  Sometimes they would tar-pit for maybe 2-3 rounds which is good, but I kept on thinking "why do my zombies always get cut down really easily?".  The only way I used to keep these going was to employ the magic to sustain them - Raise Dead and Invo of Nehek.  Even then they would struggle badly!
So there I was last night thinking maybe they are too expensive at 3 points/model (cheap I know but...) for what they really do; they suck badly at fighting due to always striking last, weapon skill of 1 which is BBBBAAAADDDDD and their Ld means that they will be losing every round no matter what and being unstable, they will take a few more smacks in the chops and I will lose more!
I had another look at the codex for these just to see if there was anything else I could do with them; you have the corpse cart which seriously helps once magic has been used (changing them from ASL to ASF!), but was there anything else which would help matters?  And then I SAW IT!....
The salvation of the rotting ones!!!!....
A rule I completely forgot about and have NEVER used;

THE NEWLY DEAD

Yippee that really helps these guys onto better things.  Coupled with Master of the Dead, Invocation of Nehek and Raise Dead - the newly dead really kicks the enemy of the Sylvanian lords of death in the teeth!

Breaking it down....

The Invocation of Nehek gives D6 + caster level wounds back to each unit near the necromancer or vampire lord.  Not dealing with the non-core units (which get only 1 wound back), the zombies will have D6+level zombies back per unit.  HOWEVER(!), the newly dead only applies to zombies which means you get an extra D6 deadies back horrah!!  So working on averages for example - unit of 40 zombies gets cut down to 25 including unstable rule deaths.  The level 4 dark magic bod rolls a 3 which means 7 more appear - but rolls another 3 for the newly dead which means you get 35 zombies left over and only 5 not being accounted for!
Now for the cleverer lord of black death, they might wish to do something like raising a unit of zombies before Invo of Nehek and then increase the new unit with the Invo of Nehek - so once again averages (and don't forget that this needs no dispelling to be successful and yes I know these numbers are averages which means that you could end up with very little or loads more!!!!!!!!!!). Same as above 40 down to 35 zombies but with the included scenario of raising 2D6 + 3 zombies which gives 10 zombies average made up to 13 zombies average total!!!

The moral of the story....READ and REMEMBER the rules of the units you use!!!!!

Catch you all later!
Andy

A very BIG SIGH!!!!

Hi All

Well the cold turkey didn't go so well for me!  Seeing all the great models and people painting them got me pining too much for the act of painting models once again!

Well I have decided to start up my painting once again but this time to limit it down to around 30 mins to 1 hour only after doing at least 2 hours of work on my PhD!  However I do like to keep Sunday's free of 'work' due to the 10 commandments, and so started to paint one of my chosen Crimson Slaughter chaos warriors (already did 2 cultists last night).

But something has happened to make me cry like a little baby....my f***ing head nozzle of my Iwata CMC+ has started to kick up a big fuss with something called skipping.  I cannot find a big enough un-smily face to put on this page at the moment.

As you may remember I had to replace one of these tiny highly expensive pieces of metal a while ago due to one snapping at the thread.  Over £40 later got the new thing in and started to use it - so far sooooo good!

However, tonight the airbrush started skipping which is an intermittent pulsing of the airflow through the brush.  Not too bad I thought as this has happened before but after a quick clean to remove the offending piece of dried up paint, everything is ok....until now.  I have cleaned the airbrush more times than you can shake a stick at.  I have disassembled and reassembled the airbrush far too many times for comfort trying to find the problem.  After doing a quick lubrication test on the thread, air is leaking and causing the skip.

I would love to swear huge amounts of nasty words on this page but I won't.  I have just had to order what is known as a Fluid Head System which are all the parts which do the magic for the airbrush. £131 later and I'm not happy.

My advice....do NOT remove the head fluid nozzle ever!!!!  Not unless you have a stupid amount of paint stuck in it.

This Painting Abstinence is Hard!

Hi All

Release of the Dark Vengence box set, models screaming for paint, YouTube videos a plenty of people nicely painting models etc.!  Wow this not painting thing for a year is HHHAAAAAARRRRRDDDDDD!!!

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!  I know I must stay strong but I feel like I'm going through cold turkey or something!!!! I made the decision not to paint any models and to concentrate nearly all efforts on my PhD - makes perfect sense when you consider the final year of three years worth of work will help an awful lot to progress in the wider world (not to mention being a Dr!!), but the lure of the model and paint pot and GW staff can be awful!

Anyways I thought I would share this one with you and let you know that I am still here on the blog and still doing videos for my YouTube channel.

Catch you later and have fun painting - think of me and try not to laugh!!!

Cheers

Some more photos!

Hi All

Well I am stuck at home today as the money situation thanks to HBOS screwing up their computer systems has meant that I cannot obtain money from my bank accounts and fill the fuel tank!  So I though I would put a few piccies up on the latest models done!  I am trying to smash out my Dreadfleet models as soon as I can so I can start playing the game!
So here are some pictures of what has been done!

Cheers
Andy

Woo Hoo! The start of the YouTube channel!

Hi All

I uploaded my first video today onto YouTube!!!!!!

I hope to cover things such as airbrushing, modelling and the games in general! Please have a view and spread the news!
Cheers
Andy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WdXhq5FHGo&feature=plcp

Games Workshop Prices

Hi All

Now for those of you who implicitly uphold GW and their prices - look away now!

For those who may not know about what is going on - keep on reading!

Last year or so, GW in their wisdom decided to release a brand new form of model - fine'cast'.  The finecack models have had problems left, right and centre due to quality control but there are many fans of the stuff.  Give me the good 'ol metal!
Due to the release of the finecack range, GW decided to put their prices up by quite a lot e.g. battleforces going from £60 to £70 etc.
I have seen this before as many people who have been in the hobby as long as I have.  The time which resulted in me leaving the hobby for years was the release of white metal.  GW put the notion forward that doping the metal thereby cutting lead content would be safer (which is true) but needs a greater price (untrue).
Then the release of the complete paint range from GW only to be made redundant a few months later by the release of the new paint range?  Watching chat with Les (Lester Bursley's video on youtube) he did state that a lot of people were not happy with this.
The release of the 'eavy metal paint brush range - one GW worker was trying to sell me these brushes (over priced sable in my opinion) whilst at the same time painting a model with his Windsor and Newton brushes!

The list goes on and with the new price increases this coming 4th of June 2012, it is believed that GW will increase prices on the smaller items by up to 50% and a lower percentage on the big ticket items.  It has also been noted that battleforces/battalions could increase from £70 to £80!

One thing that did catch my eye and is a personal bug-bare for me is the going digital thing.  Whilst I love the idea of being able to read a codex and the like on iPad or iPhone etc. I cannot stomach the fact that they have increased (before the 4th) the price of the space marine codex from £20 printed BOOK to £24.99 eBook!!!!

Real books are printed from digital format (have been for a long time), but going digital means that companies cut-out the 'middle man' printers and give you a formatted version from the original digital master copy.  So here we have GW increasing the price on the space marine codex by NOT having to print the damn thing on paper, then get it to shops or sent to people, people having to box up and unbox codex orders and so on.

Where is the sense in this?  Business sense if quite sound really, why not increase the price and cut out loads of money costing things -  the profit would be rather large than by going the other way.  Customer focus?  Well we all know (apart from the misguided individuals who follow GW in a trance) that GW do not really care for customer focus; some of the staff in their shops do. 

I think that my time buying from GW is rapidly coming to an end.  I love their games, their models (except for finecack) are the best in the world but their prices when you think about it are becoming so steep that soon you'll need a mortgage to by an army!

eBay and online discount sellers such as Wayland Games  here I come!
Cheers
Andy 

Basing for Warhammer

Hi All

Here is a quick post about basing warhammer movement trays.  The warhammer trays you get from Games Workshop are fantastic except for one thing, the models sitting on them are not attached and you have to be very careful in moving your units or else your models decide to fall over the place!

Anyways here is a technique I use to help keep the models in place.

I did a search on eBay for magnetic paint - basically it is paint which has iron filings mixed into it.  Of course I think you could do this yourself with the right stuff if you wanted to!  I bought a pot of magnetic paint called Marabu Magnetico for around £8.  Several coats are needed for a suitable amount of magnetic attraction and I also found that criss-crossing the layers of paint helped hugely.  Due to the iron filings, the paint is textured and makes a nice effect when painted and drybrushed.

 

Starting the layers of paint.

 

The magnets come from searching eBay once again. Here I show two different methods.  To ensure that the magnets adhere to the paint on the base, I had to use green stuff for the Games Workshop model (left).  I glued the skeleton base, stuck the green stuff onto it and then followed with gluing the magnets into place.  Care is needed because the magnets are normally neodium and therefore rather strong so they can ping into each other and if they have glue on them (as in super glue), it can be messy and tough to seperate them, not to mention the chance of gluing yourself somewhat!!!!

But as soon as one magnet was in place, I would push the model onto my cutting mat thereby pushing the magnet into the green stuff and ensuring the magnets were flush with the surface to be stuck to.  Repeat for the second magnet and then set aside so that the green stuff can cure.

The other model comes from my undead mantic set (right).  Mantic models have a very handy circular base attached to the model which sits into a square base compariable to GW bases.  This means all you have to do is drill the correct sizes holes for the magnets and then glue them into place.

And there you have it! The models will not shift around when moving the trays, although the magnetic bond will not be super strong.  In order to get that you need a source of sheet metal or perhaps some copper Euro coins (1 cent coin is best because it sits in the GW base perfectly) for the magnets to stick to.  Or you could have a tray full of opposing magnets but this can be fiddly due to having to remember that every single magnet on your trays will need to be one polarity and all of your models will need to have the opposite polarity, or else you might find some models being repelled by the magnets!  Using the paint allows the magnets just to go that little bit further!

Cheers
Andy

GW Paints Old and New

Hi People
Just a little entry on the state of Games Workshop paints.

(From http://www.thehogsofwar.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/15321_sm-2nd-Edition-Citadel-Paints-History-Retro-Review.jpg?9d7bd4)

I just remember those old pots and the annoying lids!!!  Such memories!

Anyways, to move away from nostalgia I would like to give a quick post about what I have found about GW paints since coming back to the hobby.  Of course back in the day when the world was Sepia and I was knee height to a grasshopper, the GW range wasn't as extensive as it is now and the pots were different within certain respects!  However the price per pot then was £1.40 and expensive at the time - a far cry to nowadays!  But we mustn't forget the natural price increases over time as I am talking from 2nd ed 40k days till now!

However, with the advent of greater competition for paints from companies such as Vallejo and P3, GW have just released or should we say re-released a 'new' paint range.  I got the e-mail from GW today saying that some of the feedback on the 'new' paint range is just like "painting with magic" or something to that effect.  This does appear to be quite a statement, but a business would not do well if they were to release press captions such as "our paints apart from a few new things, are basically the same"!  The layer paints are re-named paints from the usual range and why re-named?  Because it helps with copyrighting the colours (info from an inside GW source), easier to keep tabs if other companies try to copy Abbadon Black or Calgar Blue rather than chaos black and ultramarine blue!

The new ranges look interesting though, such as the washes or glazes but one thing that does worry rather a lot is the drybrushing mush they have made. In all fairness (and I have to agree with several other gaming/painting friends) if you are unable to drybrush or at least drybrush heavily onto models using normal paints, then you are doing something wrong.  It isn't really that hard to dip your brush into a pot of paint, dry the majority (or practically all) of the paint off onto a paper towel and then lightly brush over the model! I know for people just starting out it may seem a little weird to do this, but the techniques once obtained definitely do give lovely effects.  However the main factor of the dry range of paints in the new release which does worry is the level of fluid in these paints.  As stated they are a mush, very thick indeed and therefore due to GW not going over to dropper bottles, I fear these dry paints will dry out quicker than the others such as the glazes or the layers.  We have all had paints do this from GW and maybe other companies also, so maybe something to watch out for!  Also the marketing of the products annoys somewhat - "Revolutionise your painting".  Tamiya paints and maybe others have marketed terrain or texture paints for years, Vallejo and others have glazes, mediums and washes and have had them for years, so where is the revolution?!?!?  The dry range?

Although this does seem very much like GW bashing and I suppose it is somewhat (although I like their models - definitely NOT finecack and love their games), I feel that sometimes things like this need to be said as they are desperately attempting to hold the monopoly on the hobby gaming world.  

However tonight I made a conscious decision to get rid of all of my GW paints (maybe keep one or two) and to move solely over to Vallejo. I have the whole range of Game Colour (sorry but I will not spell it the other way as it is not English!-no disrespect to Americans and the such who spell it incorrectly ;) ) range bought on eBay for such a low price each bottle comes out at £1.43 and of course with 5ml more per bottle! 

I like the old washes from GW but they dry up so quickly, I have had trouble left, right and centre over their other paints due to coverage when applied either thick or diluted and this includes the gloopy foundation paints – I have tested all to see the effects of coverage and they are not that good in my opinion.  I also heard some chaps at my local gaming club discussing the irony of photos from the ‘Eavy Metal team displaying (in the background) other companies’ paints!!!!!

However why tonight to decide, well, I was working on the wings for my Terrorgheist and after doing a rather nice job (if I may say so myself) on the membrane skin, I had to first undercoat a light grey onto the skeletal parts to be followed by bleached bone.  I want to do this model well and therefore I am watering down the paints and adding a few layers – the bleached bone decided to pool and collect in crevices.  Added slightly more paint and tried again – coverage very poor.  Added yet more paint almost getting neat and yet again coverage poor.  The brushes I use are Series 7 W and N – some of the best brushes money can buy and although I am not a Golden Daemon winner, my skill isn’t too bad!  So being the scientist I am, I went through a process of elimination and testing to see what was going on!  Painting skill – good, brushes – excellent, went through varying thickness of paint – suspect and needed testing.  I changed the paint over to my bone white Vallejo and found that when at the same dilution at the first stage, the results were slightly better coverage – not brilliant but did not pool.  Added to the paint mixture – covered well.  So conclusion although not based solely on tonight, was that Vallejo makes superior and cheaper paints.  

I think that I am just fed up with GW and their shoddy overpriced rubbish (not their models although they are vastly overpriced). 
The glue – over priced and not good.
The static grass – very nice but way over priced.
GW PVA glue – come on give me a break! How much does this cost??!?!!?!?!?!?! I bought from WHSmiths a pot of Art Attack PVA glue which was cheaper than GW’s own and had more in it! To give you the numbers GW PVA glue 120ml for £5.10.  Art Attack PVA glue 175ml for £2.99
Then I found something even better, Wickes sells 5 yes 5 LITRES of PVA for £8!!!!! That’s more PVA than you can shake a stick at!!!!!!!!
So anyways I will stop there and climb down from my soap box!
Cheers All!

Some of my painted models

Hi All

I seem to be a little busy on this blog today but I thought I would add some pictures of my models (mine and commission jobs).
Cheers

Start of the new blog!

Hi All


Here is the first beginning of my blog!  Never done this before, so here goes!....

Below are a few pictures I took today of some of my models!  Enjoy!

So what about me?  You are reading my blog therefore it is only fair to let you know who I am!
Well, I am in my early 30's and researching my PhD in Astrophysics and Planetary Science.  I am married with no kids (yet!) but plenty of pets to be getting on with!
I first got involved with Warhammer 40 000 back in the days of the 1st edition!  My brother's friend lent me his copy of the Rogue Trader rulebook and got me into Space Wolves.  From then, 2nd ed came out and the first model I bought for this particular hobby with Leman Russ the Primarch of the Space Wolves!  The model is metal (which I definately prefer) and cost me £5!!!!  I think I can hear jaws hitting floors at the moment!  Yes indeed the model or should I say three models cost a fair price back then.  Good grief hasn't it changed?!

Well, I left the hobby when GW decided to destroy two main enjoyments of the hobby: 3rd ed came out and the characters were axed and the second thing which is sadly still the case, the dilution of the lead content resulting in white metal (which isn't bad really) leading to a massive price increase!  I got back into the hobby a number of years ago and was very pleased to see that characters plus more are back!  So downsides would definately be the simplification of the rules for 40k and the 'newest' model medium - 'fine'cast.

It always seems that GW have to do something in order to justify massive price increases and the lastest one being 'fine'cast resin models in my honest opinion, is the worst thing to happen to the hobby.  I cannot state anymore than I absolutely loath 'fine'cast resin.  I will vent my spleen later on, but for the moment not now!

So what in the hobby do I do now?! I collect my beloved Space Wolves, Orks, Chaos, Inquisition forces and Grey Knights.  But recently as you would have guessed from the pictures, I have been spending rather a decent amount of time on Vampire Counts for Warhammer.  I've just got into fantasy and I am starting to like it more than 40k. The rules are more like 2nd ed 40k!  The pictures include my Coven Throne which took just over a week to do, Vlad von Carstein, an Enigma model called Dark Vlad and some skeletons.  Various techniques have been used on these models and I will like to go through them in due course!

Anyways, I will stop there as I do not wish to bore too much!  So here is the first of my blog!  Yippee!
Cheers
Andy