Fantascape Gothic Ruins resin base painting tutorial.

Those of you following my blog or twitter will no doubt have read me banging on and on about Fantascape's resin bases. I think they are great, they're a good price, and the quality is top notch. Delivery is fast, and Roy is a great guy to chat to on Twitter. Anyways, enough gushing, on with the show.

If you'd like to check out the Gothic Ruins range I'd click here. I settled on these for my Heresy era Ultramarines and they look like what I'd imagine the streets of Macragge or any other planet of Ultramar to look like. In this tutorial, which is in no way ground breaking, I'm using the 40mm options on my Cataphractii. It's a speedy process, in fact I think I spent more time making the tutorial than I actually spent painting all five bases.

So there it is, cool looking bases in a few easy steps. I'm hoping to get a few more tutorials done soon so stay tuned. Cheers for looking and feel free to drop me any feedback!

White Dwarf (402) - June 2013

Eldar Time! I've never collected this ancient race but they've always appealed, from way back in 2nd edition when my mates Harlequins used to kick my Genestealer Cult ass, through to the release of the Phantom Titan and the cool stuff that came with the Doom of Mymeara. Let's see what they had in store for us this time round...

New Releases - Completely dominated by the very impressive and very expensive Wraithknight, there's a whole host of new kits. It was cool to see the Wraithguard getting an update in plastic. As well as the standard huge kit they also released the compulsory flyer, and a few characters. I don't understand why they only do one plastic character each release and do the rest in finecast, maybe it's budget. One thing I think they dropped the ball on is not releasing any aspect warriors in plastic.
In Forge World news they released the Breacher and Recon Squads, both excellent sculpts. The final stand out unit is the Mechanicum Thallaxii Squad.

Army of the Month - They seem to just be using GW staff for this article now which is a real shame. This month it's Nick Bayton from Warhammer World. He's got a very impressive Orc and Goblin army with a very heavy Night Goblin theme and a literally sick giant.

Jervis Johnson - In some peoples eyes reading this literally it could be taken as a pile of nonsense, but if you think about it, what I think he's hinting at in a roundabout way is that if your units show certain traits on the table you could try incorporating it into some background for your army. I might be reading too deep into it though!

Battle Report - Eldar v Necrons. Once again a really cinematic battle, with some great terrain including the FW Tomb Citadel, C'tan on Avatar action and a win for the army of the month.

Armchair General - Featuring the purple Tau army from a couple of issues ago, and some tips on how Dan Harden builds a list, with hints at synergy. There's missed opportunity with no crisis suit loadouts etc, but it's not a bad read.

Blanchitsu - Another guest spot from Mikko Luoma. He's used all kind of bits here, including what looks like a goblin from the Hobbit game. There's a converted Cairn Wraith in there and possibly a nurgle lord.

Hall of Fame - It's an improvement on last month for sure. The Skaven Screaming Bell is a nice looking kit, and looks like it would be fun to paint. They reference concept sketches but don't show them.

Culture of the Eldar - Jes Goodwin, mastermind of the Eldar esthetic, and Phil Kelly who's done a few number of Codexes for them, talk about the flavour of the month. There's talk of the different craftworlds and a look at the new decal sheet.

War Diary - A new section, looking at the preparation for the Armies on Parade competition this year. Plenty of writing about the upcoming projects explaining their concepts.

Parade Ground - Warhammer regiments this time. There's some lovely looking units and great ideas to add individuality.

Kit Bash - Featuring an absolutely mental Land Raider conversion, it's even got Volkite weaponry on it! I'm not a huge fan of the extra wings on the Fire Prism but the paint job is good.

Paint Splatter - Focusing on how to paint Eldar, covering a few of the different Craftworlds, and some details such as gems Aspect Warriors. The wraithbone on the knight looks amazing. They also include a few tips for night goblins from the army of the month.

Jeremy Vetock - How to justify your hobby purchases! An interesting read into someone elses plastic habit.

This Month In - Andrew shows some of his new Death Guard which look great, Jes and Oliver from the design team talk about Eldar release. There are some lovely Inquisition minis from a chap called Jon Flindall and a unique unit of Deathwing from Tammy.
From Forge World we get a shit load of cool stuff. The Dread Maw is a nasty looking beast, and Legion Praetor is one of the best looking marines ever, and there's another shot of this years event only Warrior Priest.

This issue was a fun read, with quite a few nuggets of awesomeness. There's wasn't so much annoying rubbish in it as last month. The This Month In section really needs to be expanded, I don't mind it staying in the back but I want to see a lot more of what the WD team are working on, tips or tactics from them, ideas for scenarios that got rejected for the battle report. I'm struggling to rate this issue, as I said it was fun, but slightly vaccuous, so I think I'll go for a high 6/10!

White Dwarf (401) - May 2013

The next in my series of catch up reviews, and it's a fantasy release for a change. Let's see how this one stacks up.

New Releases - High Elves this time and some lovely looking kits. the two Phoenixes look cool, if a little static. The Lothern Skycutter is really nice, and another chance for GW to use the new longer flight stand. There's also a load of new regular size models, but none of the core choices have been redone, and that's the problem I have with getting into fantasy at the moment. All the new bits of kit are gret, but if the core of your army looks shit then why bother. I'm avoiding fantasy for this reason until they sort it out.

Army of the Month - Mark Bedford, the man behind the incredible Legion Reconnaisance Squad (and also the underwhelming World Eater Rampagers) shows off his Blood Angels army. As you'd expect it's packed with Forge World goodies including a Storm Eagle and a Spartan! Tucked away in the spine there's a small but wonderful ad-Mech unit, and I spotted one of the space Hulk terminators in there too.

Jervis Johnson - Following on from last months chat about GM games Jervis ties it all up. The thing I took away from this was that it's a way to inspire projects, in much the same way the Imperial Armour books can inspire projects by doing the story telling for you. After turning my hand to some narrative gaming I'm a firm believer in this method of gaming now.

Battle Report - High Elves v Ogre Kingdoms. It's strange how most Fantasy battle grounds look quite uninspired, considering how good a lot of the scenery is for this system. Maybe it's to do with my head not adjusting to the space requirements of the game, or the fact I've never understood why there is grass on a battlefield! Turns out it was a draw.

Armchair General - Adam Troke tells us of his love for the Dark Angels. I wish I shared his enthusiasm. I bought them, played one or two games but haven't felt particularly inspired by them. Maybe it's because they were eclipsed by the Tau so swiftly. There's not much in the way of tactics, just a few pointers.

Blanchitsu - Blanche shows us the work of a chap called Julian Bayliss. His work looks very slick, I wish there had been more pages of this.

Hall of Fame - The fucking Helbute?! What the fuck is this mono-pose turd doing here? It's actually not a bad model, but they've got to be shitting me if it's anywhere near worthy of the hall of fame. It was chosen by Edgar Skomorowski, a Forge World designer, he must've been smoking too much resin when he was asked.

The Time of Dragons - Troke and Ward take a look and Warhammer dragons. There's some nice art, and an interview with Trish Carden who's designed quite a few fantasy gribblys over the years.

Parade Ground - Focusing on Dreadnoughts this month.

Kit Bash - A really cool looking Altar of Chaos using a Maulerfiend, and some interesting cultists from Mark Bedford. He's all over this issue!

Parade Ground - A selection of very impressive looking Warhound Titans and a couple of Reavers. One day they will be mine!
There's then yet more Golden Demon photos, this time from Japan, although no sign of Hugo / Ichiban Paintings lovely Storm Eagle conversion.

Paint Splatter - All kinds of High Elf techniques. Plenty of transferable tips here.

Jeremy Vetock - Almost returning to normality after last months bizarreness, we get a look into how Vetock views the collecting side of his hobby, and how it's changed over time. I'm much the same, I have the money and the ideas, I just lack the time to get anything meaningful done.

This Month In - Bethan's hair has changed from blue to green, and there's even more Dreadnoughts on show. The Design studio talk about the Elves, I'm glad they are including more of these designer's notes. It adds more weigh to the magazine.
FW show off the Fellglaive, or the Glaive as it's now known, and some nice looking Night Lords from Will Hayes.

Nothing ground-breaking in this installment then. The hall of fame left a sour taste in my metaphorical mouth, one that was only overcome by Mark Bedford, John Blanche and Jervis, all quite small sections of the mag. Because of this I'll award a respectably average but not great 5/10.

Video update, and accompanying photos.

I just uploaded the latest video in my grand return to youtube. I say grand, it's not that grand, although I am enjoying making them! Without further ado, here it is...

And here's a couple of photos from it. As I mentioned in the video the base for the Dreadknight is from Roy at Fantascape, who makes amazing resin bases.

White Dwarf (400) - April 2013

As you can tell by the fact I'm reviewing April's edition in the middle of August, I haven't written a review in fucking ages. I guess I just lost interest in the new format, and it's fairly standard layout. It's a shame because there have been some great releases over the past five months, so I'm going to do a quick re-cap of each month, hopefully in time for the release of September's issue and the coming of the Space Marines! So let's crack on with Aprils.

This was the month of the Tau. I'd been dabbling in this anime-inspired army for a while, I had a few Devilfish and some Crisis Suits, but didn't enjoy the codex too much so I was eagerly waiting for the new 6th edition update to come around. On the front cover is the new hotness, the Riptide, first among many new releases. Speaking of which...

New Releases - The Tau get a huge amount of new kits, from the two flyers, the previously mentioned Riptide, a redesigned Broadside suit, and a host of new characters (including the finecast, and sadly mono-pose commander). The update to Farsight is great, and the new plastic Cadre Fireblade is a neat little kit. One of my favourites though is the new Pathfinder box. Loads of cool options, a few new drones, can't fault it! There's also a load of stuff for the Hobbit.

Forge World show off all their new Necron goodies for Imperial Armour 12: The Fall of Orpheus. I've had the book since the Open Day and it is epic. They've got photos of the Night Shroud Bomber, the Tomb Citadel and the Sentry Pylons which are all lovely kits of kit for any budding Overlord.

Army of the Month - Because it's a 40k month, the army is Beastmen for Fantasy. They look nicely converted and painted, I'm just not a fan of the army generally.

Jervis Johnson - I really enjoyed this article. It's the first of two parts on having a Games Master as part of your games, and what that could bring to the table (ahem!). Nothing ground breaking, but plenty of food for thought and putting a different spin on things.

Battle Report - The new Tau test their metel against the Tyranids on some great looking terrain (including Forge World's city scape boards). Both the armies look great, in unusual colour schemes, however the look of the battle doesn't really come across in the photos. They included a GM surprise of an Inquisitor popping up towards the end of the game too. I'm sure I'm not giving the game away at this late stage by saying the Tau won.

Blanchitsu - More beautiful minis from the mind of John Blanche. The Nurgle Lord makes yet another appearance, but there's great use of the chaos cultists.

Rise of the Battlesuits - A great little article about the different types of suit available to the Tau. Led by Adam Troke with heavy input from Jes Goodwin that's lots of great information, although they missed the other two stealth suit types! They put in the FW XV-9 but didn't include any of the -8 variants available which is a bit of a fail in my opinion.

Hall of Fame - The Khorne lord on Juggernaut. Not the actual classic, the recent remake. Not worthy at all. Please start using this section for actual classics, not as another chance to show recent releases again.

Parade Ground - Part 4 of the 2012 Golden Demon coverage. There's some incredible entries here, like the Eldar Seer Council, and the Warlord Titan diorama.

Kit Bash - Apparently a 400th issue extravaganza! I'm not sure if 5 models on 5 pages an extravaganza makes, but oh well!

Parade Ground (again) - This time looking at monsters that some of the guys at FW and GW have painted, and a couple from readers.

Battle Ground - A look at how the WD team built and painted the gaming table for this month's battle report. It was great to see the effort they put in to making a cool table, something that I feel often gets overlooked, with people using table cloths, green sheets etc. It was also refreshing to see the citadel scenery painted in a different colour than normal. Some of it looks like it cost a bomb, with one photo showing someone just carving up a perfectly good Devilfish to make debris!

Paint Splatter - All kinds of alternate Tau paint schemes, some I remember from previous Codexes, others newer like the one featured in the battle report. There's also a look at how they painted some of the scenery from the board.

Jeremy Vetock - A tongue-in-cheek like at some of the superstitions of our game. Fun but pointless.


This Month In - Beth's Reaver Jetbikes look awesome, and there's a quick interview with legend Ian Livingstone to celebrate the big milestone this month. There's also a few snippets from previous editors of the magazine, however they miss out quite a few of the better known ones from the golden era.

In the design studio Vetock comes back to talk us through his Tau codex, and two chaps tell us about the Sun Shark / Razorshark. The FW section looks great but was already out of date, and in Black Library corner there's an incredible looking Dark Angel Contemptor Dreadnought.

In the back there's a shot of the FW Thunderhawk which got everyone on the forums wetting themselves about a plastic one which was hilarious. I hope Jes and co do that kind of thing on purpose.

I really enjoyed this issue. I liked how they tied most of the sections together. Each one revolving around the battle report, from how the table was built, to how it was all painted, to Jervis' ideas about GM games. Blanchitsu was inspired, but the fourth month in a row of Golden Demon felt a bit flat. Keeping my bias for the Tau and Forge world's Necrons out of it, I'd give a 7/10. On to the next issue now!

I'm not dead!

Hello everyone! As the title suggests, I am indeed still here, although my time to blog and dedicate to the hobby has been rather limited recently.

I have been chipping away at a few bits here and there, maybe it's the summery weather we are enjoying in Wales, maybe it's hobby burnout, maybe it's just laziness!

I'll be once again doing my best to reinvigorate my blogging frequency, and I'm starting to produce some more youtube videos. Here's one I did the other day!

Related to my Heresy hobby progress, this beautiful tank was announced yesterday, the Sicaran Battle Tank. This might be one of the best looking vehicles ever built!

Hopefully it won't be too long until my next update, with a bit more content...