1st company Sternguard drop pod

I'm so glad that I've nearly finished this! At the moment it's pretty much finished. Everything has a basecoat and is glued together.

Speaking of glueing (?) I had totally forgotten how awful these are to put together. I hear a lot of talk about how land speeders are the most painful kit to assemble. I totally disagree having put this together. It was literally a race against time to get it all stuck together and straight so the doors can open and close. It's not quite right because there's gaps around the right side of each hatch but glad that is out of the way.

All that needs to happen now is a Babab black wash and doing the highlighting however that can wait until I've got the 2nd pod to the same level.

I learnt by doing the white upper fins that I really need to water down my white a lot more than I do. They don't look too bad now but it took so many coats it really slowed me down.

One thing that went well with it was the hazard striping. On my last pod I ended up painting the yellow over black after basecoating in grey. This time I used the yellow foundation to paint the whole thing then painted the black over that, worked much better and so much faster.

Grombrindal, The White Dwarf

This actually makes me really happy that I'm still a subscriber of white dwarf! I originally took out my sub to get my hands on the Dwarf model each year and was worried that this years would disappoint, how wrong I was. Even though I can't figure out how this is going to fit into my army (once I eventually get round to painting it) I'm going to try my hardest to shoehorn him in. One concept I was thinking of was setting my dwarfs in a seaside port with this dude leading the pirates, while my Bugman miniature(s) are in the town frequenting the inns and taverns! Let me know what you think of this idea, any suggestions for other nautical dwarfs would be much appreciated thanks!

Edit: I've just been flicking through the GW site seeing if there was anything to fit into my pirate themed army and shiver-me-timbers I've found gold!
These are in the collectors section, Long Drongs Slayer Pirates. They're quite pricey but they will fit perfectly with him, just need to get they're beards the same colour.

I was also thinking, what would any self respecting dwarf pirate use to shoot things? Cannons that's what! By replacing or kitbashing the crew these guys could look like they'd just wheeled that beast off their ship and onto shore.

That's it for now, yo ho ho and a bottle of dwarven rum!

Necrons leak

Tonight after work I checked the rumours forum over at Warseer like I do every night to see if anything new had come to light. I was so not prepared for what I found... necrons are finally here and look kick ass!

All of these photos have been taken from www.beastsofwar.com who have replaced their whole site with just the one page showing all of these photos.
These two look like some special characters, nothing about updated C'tan.

I think these Lychguard are meant to be another troop choice, something the 'crons were sorely in need of. Their weapons and huge shields look so cool.

This 'chariot' is completely off the hook! It looks so imposing and in the smaller photo looks like the same chassis is used for some kind of weapon platform too.

The Deathmarks are another troops choice along the lines of scouts with sniper rifles. One thing you might have noticed are the lack of green plastic rods. I really hope that these are still included as an option.

I think this looks fantastic. Kind of like a viking longship only without the hull. My girlfriend thinks it looks like a rollercoaster, either way this transport is going to be a lot of fun.

I'd never really paid much attention to the old flayed ones (or the whole necron army for that matter) but this really look like they fit the fluff, I can't wait to read up on these guys.

These for me look a bit too Tomb Kings but really can't complain about the army getting more choices.




If all of these models turn out to be true this is going to be a release to really rival the Dark Eldar and has me seriously tempted to bankrupt myself. As much as Games Workshop have done in recent months to piss people off they also still make unbelievably great miniatures which at the end of the day is what it's all about. Fingers crossed this level of awesome is carried over to the Tau codex!

Fallen Angels

For those of you who might be thinking 'damn, that guy reads fast' have no fear, I don't have impressive page turning skills! I've just been porting over my older book reviews from my tumblr blog and with this instalment I am finally up to date...

Straight up from the start this book was incredible. The story flicked between the two planets where the Dark Angels were at the time. That and the fact that each chapter was concise and really well written meant that I was able to finish it in super quick time.

It kind of explained a bit about the Dark Angels' secret which was really gripping but didn't cover why Luther had been exiled in the previous book. Also there wasn't too much weird daemon stuff going down which is a bonus!

Probably my favourite book of the Horus Heresy series so far, 9/10.

Distractions, distractions...

Building a drop pod is a real hassle. For no apparent reason I find it really difficult to find the motivation to finish it. So I've been doing a fair bit of hobby procrastinating, from reading the latest White Dwarf, undercoating a load of stuff, and then going completely off track and working on these...

I've had my Planetary Empires set laying around for ages, all prepped ready for painting in a tupperware and last night thought I'd do some experimenting with different worlds. So far I've thought of snow, rainforest and moon. Any more suggestions?

These are going to be used in a campaign that I'm starting to write but that's a long way off still.

The Garden of Morr. This was procured from my trip to Games Day and have to say the quality of this kit is astounding, well worth the £30 ticket price.

I don't like having things in boxes or left on the sprue, and even though I have no intention of painting this (or any other WHFB stuff like my Dwarfs) any time soon it needed to be put together.

And the final thing I've been up to this week are 2 of my Arcane Fulcrums. Unlike the garden these are horrid models made out of what seems to be lower grade plastic than normal and some of the joints are highly inaccurate. Again, I doubt these will get used in the next year but it's better they're out on the fantasy shelf than hidden away and forgotten about.

Tales of Heresy

This is the first short story collection in the series and before I get into each bit individually can I just say this whole book is totally awesome. I loved the way it gave a bit more of an insight into various bits and pieces of the 40k universe.

Blood Games - Dan Abnett. This kicked the book off in amazing style. It started off with the Custodes having a bit of a runaround playing hide and seek before they actually had to do some real work slaughtering some people.

Wolf at the Door - Mike Lee. Mike is fast becoming one of my favourite authors at the moment. This was all about a squad of Space Wolves and how they encountered a Dark Eldar kabal (although iirc they're never refered to as that, just general xenos scum). The Wolves always have good stories, if only they wore their helmets more I'd be tempted to get an army!

Scions of the Storm - Anthony Reynolds. Nothing too spectacular here. Some Word Bearers fighting some more aliens, although there is quite a big revelation at the end which made it worthwhile.

The Voice - James Swallow. Not really a big fan of stuff that happens in the warp, or the Sisters of Battle, but liked that this carried on the story with a few names from one of the earlier books.

Call of the Lion - Gav Thorpe. Dark Angels time, hell yeah! Mostly about trying to bring some stubborn people into compliance. Very interesting stuff but no mention of the way Descent of Angels ended. Thank god Fallen Angels is next.

The Last Church - Graham McNeill. Nice little interlude about the Emperor tricking an old man and destroying his church. Dare I say it I'm not much of a McNeill fan.

After Desh'ea - Matthew Farrer. This was a weird one. Angron had just met the Emperor and been given his legion and most of the story was him beating the hell out of Kharn. Quite confusing to begin with but turned out alright.

Favourite story has to be either Blood Games or Wolf at the Door. Solid 7/10. Fallen Angels next, can't wait!