The Lord Inquisitor Movie Trailer

This video was pointed out to me the other day so I checked it out straight away on youtube and was blown away by how good it looks. The level of detail is seriously high, especially considering this is a fan-made production.

The guy (guys?) that made it can be found at www.thelordinquisitor.com or www.facebook.com/The.Lord.Inquisitor and they're eager to stress that it's not made to make money and is totally respectful of Games Workshop's IP. It's taken about 1.5 years of work and it's well worth it.

I hope that more is on the way, either an extended version or something different. I'd much rather watch this 3 minute trailer than the full Ultramarines movie any day.

Miniature Monday - First Grey Knight.

This is my entry for #miniaturemonday on Twitter. For those not in the know it's a hashtag thing where people post up their latest work for everyone to see. It gives you a great opportunity to see what others are working on, get inspired and to keep up the enthusiasm.

This chap is the first marine I'd painted in months, I think he's turned out nicely, he took long enough! I tried using some of the 'Eavy Metal techniques from an issue of White Dwarf but slightly modified. One area where I am struggling with is highlighting the red. I really like the flat dull look of Mechrite Red but I've got no idea what to use to compliment this.

As time goes on I'll be working on some fluff for each of my Knights. At the moment all I've got is that he's called Auriga (I used a list of constellations on Wikipedia for inspiration) and that his personal heraldry is a diagonal split between red and white.

Please let me know what you think, if you have any tips for my red issue, or anything else at all. Hopefully I'll have the next one finished soon.

My week of hobby 22/01/12-28/01/12

So this was my week off from work and a chance to get a fair amount of hobbying done. I kicked it off with my first ever game of Warhammer fantasy over at my friends house. I was using my Dwarfs and they were going up against Tomb Kings. I can't remember the details of his army but it had a scorpion thing, and Casket, three chariots, and unit of skele-horses and a big unit of skeletons with a leader and a magic dude in it.

I tried to play fairly aggressively (well as aggressively as you can with a 3" move) and advanced my slayers up the left flank while the Dragon Slayer and Warriors went up the right. During the second turn I managed to assault the scorpion with the slayer killing it much to both of our amazement. The miners popped up on the back table edge and headed towards the casket but never quite got there. On the left flank the chariots stormed into the slayers and a war of attrition begun. I can't remember what the outcome of that was but it was close.

The thunderers and cannon didn't really play a huge role in the game, partly due to bad deployment and partly dude to some high rolling on the artillery die. Tomb Kings won the game but was huge amounts of fun, has given me plenty of food for thought and has got me itching for the next game.

Since it was a week off me and my girlfriend decided to have a couple of daytrips out to neighbouring towns. We went to Newport and Swansea and me being me I decided to try and find the GW stores whilst there. The Newport one was shut so no photo opportunity there, however Swansea was open so I popped in, had a nose around, resisted buying anything but at least it's another one done on my crazy mission to visit them all!

Also this week now that I've finished undercoating all the Dreadfleet parts I got it all set out on the lounge floor (the mat was bigger than my table!) and the GF and I went about playing the first scenario. We hadn't really read the rules so it was a case of playing it 'lite' but was a lot of fun. Then later in the week my Tomb King friend came round and we read the rules and played the first scenario through properly. The Grand Alliance was set packing with Noctilis (?) victorious but revenge will be had once some islands have been painted!

Inbetween all this action I managed to finish the first member of my Grey Knight Strike Squad. As he's going to be my entry into #miniaturemonday tomorrow you'll have to check back then to see him. All I'm going to say is I'm really proud of him but really wish I could paint quicker!

Yesterday I was having a lazy day when I really should've been painting. Instead I ended up undercoating my Garden of Morr and 2 Arcane Fulcrums, and sorting out my bookcase where I keep all my armies. I now have 5 shelves full of miniatures, one for the Dwarfs, one each for Tau, Ultramarines and Grey Knights and now another one for Dreadfleet and random bits of scenery. I was slightly alarmed (to say the least) at how much I've still got left to paint. So long as Tau don't come out any time soon I'll have plenty of time to catch up.

Other than White Dwarf arriving, trying to decide whether I really need the 25th anniversary model, and looking at the new Forge World Scarabs there's not a whole lot left to report other than that I'm going to be stopping with the weekly updates for now. It seemed like a good idea at the time but having to wait a whole week to write about the fantasy battle and then waiting to show my GK is not ideal. So you'll probably be seeing more posts from me (sorry) but they will be shorter! Thanks for reading and have a good evening.

ps. I have no idea if anyone looks at the page tabs at the top but this week I've finally updated the Dwarf, GK and stats ones.

White Dwarf 386. February 2012.

It's becoming a bit of a habit this, White Dwarf arriving in my letter box on the day of release, bravo!

So this months issue goes back to the old ones where you flip it over for different content. I'm going to start with the main part then get to the exciting bit at the end, so here we go...

Lord of the Rings - Wow this game needs a lot of books. To be totally honest I mostly looked at the photos and read the pop-outs but it does seem like you need to do an awful lot of reading to get started. I've already read the novels, that's enough for me!

The Mines of Moria set looks quite cool, probably because it conjures up images of Heroquest. The gist I get is that the system is for re-enacting scenes from the books/films which I've never been a fan of, I'd much rather make my own story and scenario.

New Releases - Huge amounts of LotR here. It starts with the biggies, the Watcher in the Water and the Great Beast of Gorgoroth. Both nice looking models but each has something I can't quite put my finger on that doesn't sit right with me, Maybe it's because they're not heroic scale?

The Easterlings look really cool, they've got that whole samurai thing going on that I really like and apart from the finecast ones are great value.

There's then some other bits like the casualties, Groblog and Ashrak. Again, they look nice but are a tad expensive.

Finally for LotR there's the command groups and the Dweller in the Dark. Of special interest is the Dwarf Commanders.

 I'm really wondering how they would look fitting in with my fantasy Dwarfs, they'd probably look puny!

Now onto fantasy with another piece of scenery, the Deathknell Watch. Now I love scenery, I'm currently working on my Garden of Morr, but this seems a step too far. In all honesty it looks like a cross between one of the Arcane Fulcrums and the existing tower. What I'd love to see is more army themed scenery like the Garden but for other armies, how about a Dwarf Brewery please GW?

Battalions are out for Vampire Counts and Necrons. If I didn't know that the Tau were fast approaching I'd be very tempted by the Necron one, as it stands I'll leave that idea on the wishlist for now.

LotR Race to the Ruins - Here's an article in the same vein as last months extracts from real books. Thinking about it and slightly revising my slightly negative opinions from last month, I'm starting to like these articles as they give you a chance to try-before-you-buy.

LotR The Armies of Middle-Earth - This gives us an overview of the five sourcebooks released with a summary, occasional army list and some stats sprinkled in for good measure. One thing I noticed, movement stats are given in both inches and centimetres?!

This then leads into a battle report, as I've got no idea about the rules or the armies I glazed over and took in the pretty pictures.

Standard Bearer - umm Jervis, this is the 25th anniversary of 40k, please could you touch on that rather than how you love your tape measure? I guess it's a refreshing break from the Tolkien fest but I can't help feeling these pages could be better used.

Civil War and Deathknell Watch - The second part of the rules with 3 more armies, this is going to be handy if I remember they're there, and rules for the new tower. Having only played my first game of WHFB last Sunday I had no idea buildings had special rules and an affect on the game. This is a really nice touch as it makes terrain more than just something to hide behind.

Army Workshops - And finally we get some 40k. Necrons are still flavour of the month and this shows us how to get the look of the studio army.
The Vampire counts part seems to be a much more blatant plug for the battalion box though.

Armies on Parade! - This shows Nick Bayton's 4th company Ultramarines led by Ventris. The army looks great and his use of the Forge World Imperial Strongpoint is stunning. I remember seeing this at Games Day and loving the detail like the missile launching from the Whirlwind.

Army Workshop: The Eastern Kingdoms - While it's not for an army (or system!) that I play they are the most appealing to me out of the range so more photos of them is great.

40k 25th Anniversary bit - This kicks off with a look at the limited edition Rogue Trader Crimson Fist that mimics the book artwork like the 2012 Games Day fig dis for 2nd ed. The price is crazy steep and I can't think when I'd ever use this (except maybe in a Deathwatch Squad) so I'm really torn between owning a landmark figure or just letting it go.

Some of the other bit they're releasing seem hit-or-miss. The poster and the pin badge look sweet, the mouse mat and bracelets not so much.

Future's Past, a chance to look at some old models. Now I grew up with these so there's nothing exciting for me, however younger readers might be interested.

The interview with Alan Merrett, Jervis and John Blanche was a great trip down memory lane. Really seemed like three friends having a chat and not going for a hard-sell. The pop-outs about each edition were also fun, showing which models came with each iteration.

The top 25 Black Library page was interesting, and I'm thinking of setting myself the challenge of finishing them al by the end of the year. So far I've read 1/25, long way to go.

The next few pages were brilliant. Double page shots of famous battles with amazing terrain, atmospheric and cool to take in all the detail.

The battle report of Rynn's World looks epic. I'm sure it'll mean a lot more once I get round to reading that novel but in the mean time it was a good report on it's own.

So there we have it, another issue and still no sign of my beloved Tau but nevermind, we got a huge amount about GW's 3rd system and a fantastic section dedicated to 40k. This is a tough one to score because whilse I don't play LotR the articles weren't bad, it's hard to be objective. So lots of one system=bad, Jervis=crazy, WHFB=average, main 40k stuff=good, 25th ani bit=great. Looking at it like that I'm going with a 6/10. Would be a dream if an issue of WD didn't have to focus on just one thing but that's the way they do things I suppose.

My week of hobby 15/01/12-21/01/12

 This week has mostly been about finishing off my Dwarf army for the game I had on Sunday and getting all the Dreadfleet boats put together and primed so at least it's playable.

I really enjoy scraping mouldlines and assembling models but sometimes, like the masts on the ships, things end up giving me unbelievable tourettes!

I only snapped one sail but the whole experience was so stressful I'm glad that it's over.

I'm hoping to get my first game in this week with my kind-of willing girlfriend, should be great fun.

To get my Dwarfs ready for the table I had to finish off the Thunderers and do some work on the unit of slayers.

I'm really pleased with how the bases look with the gunners but I'm not too sure how much use they'll be in game.

For the slayers I only managed to get the bases done (I really like painting bases!) but I'm a bit fed up with painting the stunty guys so I'll be giving them a rest until they eventually get a new hardback army book.

For #miniaturemonday this week I hadn't really finished anything again so I cracked out the Heroquest box and set up a bit of a scene using the heroes I'd painted when I was seriously young. After sorting out the shot with some effects it actually looked quite atmospheric, capturing the mood of the dungeon!

I managed to start my Grey Knights as well, choosing to paint the halberd wielding basic strike knight first. I'm painting him in bits before glueing together and think I've figured out the method. Basecoat of Boltgun Metal, wash with Badab Black, drybrush with Chainmail, wash with Asurmen Blue, then a final highlight of Mithril Silver. No idea how it's going to turn out like but I'll be showing off the end result in next weeks update.

Mr Popular!

To close out I wanted to talk about some of the stats Blogger shows me since I've just crossed the 1500 views milestone (thanks everyone!). There are some really surprisingly popular posts that I don't really get.

It seems that White Dwarf reviews are the most popular articles ever with 3 of them appearing in the top 10 posts.
What's extra surprising is that a quick photo of my Tau gun drone that I painted in a Tron paint scheme is the 3rd most viewed thing on the blog, it really makes me want to paint more but I'm holding off until the new codex comes out in a few months.
The next surprising thing is that my book review of Battle for the Abyss is in 4th place. Now I love Ultramarines and thought the book was good but I just don't get why it's so popular (unless there's something else with the same name but people end up at my humble blog).

So it's been a quiet week but next/this week is shaping up to be very exciting! I'd love to hear your feedback about what you've enjoyed/disliked about my blog so far. Thanks and bye for now.

My week of hobby 08/01/12-14/01/12

Blimey, what a crazy week it's been. Here's my hazy recollection of it!

Just like last week Monday kicked the week off with #miniaturemonday on twitter.

I decided since I didn't have anything new to show so I tried an artistic angle setting up a bit of a scene and doing some processing on my phone. To begin with I made the images greyscale. Then I added the colour back onto the marines (MkIII Iron Armour variants from Forge World in case you were wondering. I did this using the Color Effects app on my iPhone then I ran the image through Instagram and applied a few filters.

I'm looking forward to trying some more photo processing on future ideas.

Tuesday was a very exciting day once I'd gotten out of work. I bought myself a land raider (finally) and proceeded to put it together.

The kit didn't come with as many extras as I thought it would be so I'll probably have to get hold of some extra bits to pimp it out, but other than that it's a wicked tank and I get wait to see it in action.

I can't believe it's taken me so long to get hold of one!

Also on Tuesday Catechism of Hate arrived in the post. Needless to say I tore the box open.

It's the first limited edition Black Library book I've purchased and was very happy. The quality of the book is great and the poster, while small, looks great on my geek wall! I've only read the first couple of chapters but it definitely seems like the story matches up to the quality.

As usual there has been more progress on Dreadfleet and I got the Dwarf and Tomb Kings ships ready for painting along with some of the islands and extra bits.

I can't remember if I've mentioned it before but the way they've organised the sprues so the mould lines are kept to a minimum is amazing. It really makes cleaning the parts up a right treat.

Now for the Dwarf update! With my first Fantasy Battle looming large this weekend I'm going into (almost) overdrive to get my army finished.

These 3 thunderers mean that I've only got 4 left to finish that unit then it's onto the berserkers.

With two days off this week I'm planning on getting the whole 1000 points finished but knowing me I'll get sidetracked by something and end up with them being carried over till next week.

The final event of the week was the 'leak' of 6th edition. I haven't read through the whole pdf but the parts that I did skim read look great.

I find it very hard to believe that someone or a group of people went through all this effort just to troll the interwebz and get the fanboi's in a spin. Maybe it is the real deal, maybe it isn't.

My money is on a early playtest version of the rules. Time will tell!

That's all for this week ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for your time and I'll see you again soon!

White Dwarf 385. January 2012

I was quite looking forward to this issue. It had a whole extra week than normal to produce, but on getting it I can't really see where the time has been used, except to just take more photos of the same model over and over and over and over....

New releases - A very sad read if you're a 40k player and don't like Vampire Counts (basically me). Loads of pics of the same big model and not much else. This is then followed by quite a desperate double spread about Dreadfleet. Now I have it and it is amazing but I don't need quotes from other gamers telling me how great it is.

Vampire Counts - So as to be expected in this issue there's a huge article about the undead guys. There's extracts from the Army Book and even more photos of the Coven Throne (yawn). There's the usual army lists and a few brief bits about 'tactics' but nothing substantial. One thing I have noted that's absent from this write up is an interview with the designers or book author. Maybe I'm just bummed out still about the lack of 40k.

War in the Border Princes - More pages taken up with an extract from the book but the fact there's a scenario attached is pretty cool. And then they play the scenario which is cool. And the VC's don't win, second month in a row that's happened!

Standard Bearer - I really liked this article. All right it shouldn't have lasted two pages but it rekindled my belief in the Jervis, that he hasn't just become a stooge. Other than that not a lot else to say.

Tactica: Necrons - This was a good little part, it got straight to the point, I've got no idea if any of it would actually work or if it's sound tactical advice but it looks like there's a lot of information to digest. If anything it's food for thought.

Painting Workshop: Ghorgon - I feel the same about this as I did about last months workshop. Good breakdown of steps and interesting to read but still not digging the model.

Civil War - Awesome! More free rules, and this time they're not an extract from a book. This almost makes the issue worthwhile for me.

Games Day 2012 - They really try and big this up, I only hope it improves from last year. The main reason I'll be going is for the very tasty miniature. A lovely piece of history brought to life.

Battlefield Terrain - Just some shots of Realms of Battle boards with adverts for terrain pieces.

Painting Workshop: Mortis Engine - For the love of god give it a rest with this model!

Warhammer World - Nice little write up of the amazing centre in Nottingham. I've only been there once but it was a great day out and would recommend it to anyone that has the opportunity.

Hall of Fame - That terminator Chaplain is badass! Always good to hear a bit of a story behind the model.

Hmmm, when I first flicked through the issue I was excited, I thought it looked great and couldn't wait to read it. Now I've broken it down for review it's kind of lost it's appeal. There are some really big glimmers of hope but the fact that there's nothing about their other games systems means it's a real one sided read and if you're not into vampires then it's a lot of wasted pages. After much deliberation it gets 4/10. Fingers crossed for a better February, this is the 25th anniversary of 40k after all!

My week of hobby 01/01/2012-07/01/2012

First off before I get into full swing I'd like to wish any readers a very happy and geeky new year!

So where do I begin? It's been a very busy week for me, both in the hobby and out of the hobby, which means I can't remember what order things happened but here's a round up of the weeks shenanigans.

I carried on prepping my Grey Knights this week, and focused on the dreadknight and the strike squad, managing to get them all cleaned up and primed. I also settled on the bases I'm going to use and headed back down to Firestorm Games to pick them up. They're made by a company called Model Display Products and the ones I chose are the Round Tech/Star ship deck ones. There was minimum clean up needed and were quite a bargain, about £4 for 10x25mm or 5x40mm. All I need to do now is decide what I'm going to paint up first!

On a related note the bases that I'd ordered from Fantascape arrived on Tuesday and these were even more impressive than the photos on the website.

They're called Wyrdstone Mines and were around £8 for 20 of them. These are going to go onto my Avatars of War Dwarf Berserker unit and will hopefully look awesome.

While I was in full swing of cleaning off mould lines I picked out the Black Kraken from my Dreadfleet box to start work on first as I thought it would be the easiest to paint. I totally forgot to take into account how hard it would be to clean up. I eventually got it done and only had one snapping incident, so that's also been primed and is awaiting it's paint job. White Dwarf a couple of months ago had painting guide so it should be really straight forward.

Something that's really taken off on twitter (by the way you can follow my on there, @Warllama40k) is #miniaturemonday where people post up a photo of their progress that week.

My entry was this photo of my completed Gyrocopter.

The big news of the week was my birthday on Wednesday, when my amazing girlfriend once again added more fuel to the miniature fire by giving me a stormraven! Needless to say it had been taken off the sprue by lunchtime and blu-tac assembled by the end of the day. Despite what the interwebz say about this kit I think it's a total beast. However it might have to join the back of the Grey Knight painting queue as I also signed up for the Bolter and Chainsword Librarium Painting Challenge again and pledged to paint my palladins, strike squad and dreadknight. Basically all you do is pledge how much or little you want to complete and the deadline is the end of March. It's pitched as a great way to motivate hobby progress past holidays. I'll have to see if I can resist painting the almighty flyer until that's over.

The 6th saw the Black Library release Gav Thorpe's new book, part of the Space Marine Battles series, called Catechism of Hate (http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/catechism-of-hate.html). This is/was a limited edition release of 1500 copies and from what I could tell was sold out within 2 hours. As it's a book about the ultra Ultramarines I was all over this and managed to bag myself a copy, woop! I've got no idea when it's going to be posted but will hopefully get me back into reading since I haven't picked up Nemesis (from the Horus Heresy series) in over a month.

The final bit of GW new was that January's White Dwarf finally arrived on Saturday. On flicking through it looks to be a great issue albeit with a heavy slant towards Warhammer Fantasy. As usual I'll be posting up a proper review in the next week or so.

So there you have it, the first week of the year turned out to be quite 'action' packed. Cheers for reading!

My Week of hobby 25/12/11-31/12/11

This is a bit of a test post to see if I can keep myself motivated through 2012 with weekly hobby updates, so if I don't get anything done one week I'll feel bad because I've got nothing to talk about. Thankfully this first week included christmas day so there's plenty! So here we go...

Christmas day came around and presents were opened.
I knew the present from my parents was going to be Dreadfleet and that my girlfriend had got me some GW boxes. The sheer weight of the Dreadfleet box was immense and was literally full of sprues and cards and the mat. I'd been quite sceptical about this game when it was announced and when most of Games Day 2011 was taken up with it however I still wanted it because I didn't want to miss out on it like I had with Space Hulk.
So far I've got it all off the sprues but nothing has been trimmed up or glued. Plenty of stuff to keep me occupied over the next few months. Might even try to do a ship a week.

The boxes that my girlfriend had got me were a Nemesis Dreadknight and a Grey Knight Palladin/Terminator set.

I was like a child again immediately getting out the cutting mat and knife to get them blutacked together. At the moment I'm still trying to work out my paint scheme but I think I've got my army list sorted out (more on that next week).
What I'm still trying to find are some resin bases that are as cool as these amazing models. I might possibly do Space Hulk bases but they might be too silver.

Before I get properly into the knights or the boats I need to finish my 1k of Dwarfs.

I've got my first ever WHFB game coming up on the 22nd and really want to have the army fully painted my then. Those of you who follow me on twitter might have seen these before but I finished the resin bases for the 10 thunderers. I got these from a company called MicroArt Studio at my local game store Firestorm Games.

Also got a bit done on the Gyrocopter. This was the first finecast model I've bought and although the casting wasn't great I believe a lot of the issues are down to it being an old mold that wasn't designed for this new material. It's a definite plus that it's so light, I really didn't like metal!

I can't remember what day it was but I fired up my PS3 and slotted in Space Marine. After about an hour of it updating I finally got to playing. At first I started playing the main campaign through again on hard. The first time round I completed it on easy but there's plenty of trophies that are for hard only. I soon got fed up chasing trophies and tried out the new co-op exterminatus online mode. This is a great take on multiplayer and the action was fast and fun, definitely getting back on that when I can.

The last bit for this week was the leak of the Games Day 2012 miniature. The Blood Angel captain from the box of 2nd edition! As soon as I saw this I was taken back to being a boy heading round to my mates house with my Genestealer Cult army to play against his Chaos Cult. I can't wait to get my Games Day ticket, even though the day might be as dissappointing as this year, just to get this fig.

That's about it for this week, let me know if you like the idea of a weekly update, or if you have hated a long boring wall of writing! cheers.