Photographing your minis

When I'm not working for a living or playing 40k I take photographs, a lot of photographs! Mostly portraits, weddings, families and business, but, thanks to this game, I also dabble in a little product photography. So I thought I'd share my set up with you and give you some ideas on what you can do to get great looking photographs with a point-and-shoot and a couple of desk lamps.

Firstly, here's how I set up the lighting for the shots of the Helldrake featured in last week's post and my update on 40K Global's site:

It's a two light set up with my main light firing through a white umbrella at 45 degrees to the lens. My second light is set up roughly head-on to the main light, through the built in diffuser, at half the power of the main light. To fill in the shadows, I've got a reflector set-up to catch some of the second light and throw it back on to the front of the model. I'm using an 80-200mm zoom lens so I can get nice and close, and the camera is set up at f11 and 1/200th shutter, everything is synced via radio triggers. At that speed I could have gotten away with hand-holding but a Tripod is always a good idea to ensure the final image is as sharp as possible.

That's a lot of fairly expensive kit just to get a photograph of a £40 model but you can get pretty much identical results with a point-and-shoot camera and a couple of desk lamps. The only thing you'd really need is a tripod or some way to stabilise the camera as you'll need a longer shutter speed to compensate for the fact that the table lamps are going to be far less powerful than photographic lights.

To set this up you'll want to set the lamps up in the same way as the flashes are set in the photograph above but they'll need to be much closer to the model. You may want to diffuse the light from the lamps otherwise you'll get shadows on the model which will hide details. A simple way to do this is to hang a thin white cloth in front of the lamps, however the lights are hot and cloth can be flammable so be careful! An alternative to this could be to rough up a piece of clear plastic with some sandpaper, slightly more work but far less flammable and it'll give you the same result. Lastly for the light set-up you can substitute the reflector with a piece of tin foil.

As for the camera set-up you'll need to make sure the on camera flash is turned off. If you have manual controls on the camera you want as small an aperture as you can, f11-16 will be fine. You'll have to experiment with shutter speed to get the right exposure, depending on the amount of light your lamps are throwing onto the model. However shutter speed shouldn't matter as you'll be stabilising you camera to take the photograph so an exposure of a second or more shouldn't be an issue. If your camera doesn't have manual controls I suggest you put it into landscape mode that should get you roughly the right settings.

I hope that's at least a little helpful, if there's anything on this subject you'd like more info on, let me know.

A Call for Competition ... of sorts.

Chaos! You know it makes sense.

Well, this year looks like it might be more of a hobby focused year than a gaming one. I’m certainly planning to go to a few tournaments this year (BoTCh, Blog Wars, Open War, Throne of Skulls and probably a couple of others) but my usual Thursday night games seem to have dried up with my regular opponents disappearing, for very good reasons of their own I might say. Fortunately there are a couple of major hobby projects that have caught my eye which should fill the gap nicely.

Firstly I’m going to take part in the Age of Armies campaign being run by the 40KUK Podcast as you can see here. I’m still minded to go Khorne Marines/Daemons but given my magpie nature nothing is set in stone until the paint hits the model.

Secondly, I recently downloaded and digested the Age of the Emperor supplement published by the Tempus Fugitives crew and it’s got me feeling all unnecessary about Heresy Era stuff and as such I’m going to repaint my Marines as Imperial Fists and Blood Angels add some Mark III armour from Forgeworld into the mix. Those of you who have followed the blog for a while will know that my marines are predominantly Yellow anyway but I am planning to strip them in batches of 5 and start again from scratch. There are a couple of reasons for this, mostly because I want to ensure the consistency of the new scheme but also because I want to try a different technique for painting yellow which I think I can get to look cleaner and brighter than my current “dirty yellow” look.

Lastly, I won an Amazon Gift Voucher recently and decided to splurge it on an airbrush and compressor kit and there’s nothing like a new toy to get the hobby juices flowing. I am really itching to start using it to see what sort of difference it makes to my throughput and the results I can achieve both on large models and blocks of infantry. I’ve been spending the last few days trawling through YouTube and various forums looking for advice on how to both operate and maintain and airbrush and how to get the best results with it as part of various projects. I’ll definitely be blogging about my experiences so keep an eye out for that.

What all this means is that you should start to see a more regular flow of content on the Blog which Grazer has pretty much single-handedly been supporting over the last few months/half a year. Battle reports are likely to be few and far between, but will probably come all at once as I attend tournaments, and are likely to be focussed on what I learned from humiliating defeats (nothing different there then!). Hopefully the painting and modelling content should be coming thick and fast (well I expect I’ll manage one post a week at least), and the predominantly yellow pictures should be broken up with some red for the Blood Angles and more red from the Khornate Chaos project.

On a final note if anyone in the Nottingham area fancies a game at Warhammer World (or I can Stretch to Eye of the Storm in Mansfield) on a Thursday night please just drop me a line either as a reply to this post or email me at andylane78 at gmail dot com and we’ll sort something out.

If it looks broke, maybe it 'aint.

There’s a lot of moaning about underpowered codices at the moment and, to be honest, for as long as I can remember there always has been. A couple of blogs have been posting articles recently on fixing certain armies, but I’ve just got to pipe-up and say “Stop it!”.

You’re not a game designer despite what-ever delusions of grandeur you may be under and, even if you decide to post your own “improved codex”, no-one is going to use it. In fact, while giving everyone a level playing field may sound like a good idea, I don’t really think that it is.

I’m going to use my recent experience of Blood Bowl as an example here (and before you all mumble “here he goes again”, bear with me, this is going somewhere). In Blood Bowl there are clearly established tiers of teams; Wood Elves, Norse, Undead and Chaos are among the top tier, meaning that they are easier to play with and have reliable strategies for scoring points and winning games. There is a mid-tier consisting of teams like Khemri and Nurgle, these are teams who have defined strategies for winning but they are difficult to implement and tend to require much more careful play. Then there are the bottom tier teams such as Goblins, Halflings and Ogres who really only have one way to win games and are very difficult to play by all but the most experienced coaches. As this is a dice game, luck is also a factor and the tiers reflect how much the luck of the dice comes into play. With top tier teams being able to cope best with poor dice while the bottom tier teams are very reliant on good dice.

I expect that by now you can see where I’m going with this!

In 40K we seem to have a similar system of tiers in the various armies with Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Dark Eldar and Imperial Guard occupying the top slots and Nids, Vanilla Marines and Sisters pretty well entrenched on the bottom rung. Now I do appreciate the fact that the cost of entry to 40K is significantly steeper than that of Blood Bowl (probably in the region of 10x more). So if you happen to play Nids, for example, and GW updates your codex which drops you down a tier or two it’s not necessarily practical to go out any buy a new army. But this is a commodity hobby, you didn’t need those toys in the first place, suck it up and find a way to enjoy your chosen army. Or, go out and start to collect a new army, you managed to do it once, if you love it enough you’ll do it again!

Rather than railing against this “tier” arrangement why not embrace it? It’s very easy for a top level player to spray some marines grey/blue and go off to a tournament and do very well with them.

Big whoop! Hey! Everyone’s very impressed.

Instead, why not say, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this game, let’s try taking a more challenging army to the next tournament and see how I do!”? Being successful with a lower tier army has got to be more satisfying to the player and will surely garner more kudos from the community, if that’s what matters to you.

Given the level of competitiveness in the tournament scene at the moment I don’t really expect to see many people do this but I do not think that equalising all of the codices is the answer. Surely there are top players out there who want a challenge and I think the game would become rather stagnant and boring if everything became equal.

A couple of cases in point for your consideration, I believe that Nic Nanavati is having some success with Nids in the States and over here Gaz Jones has always been a proponent of Xenos codices which have not fared too well (power level-wise) under 5th edition. Also in the UK, James Ramsey was (when last I heard) defending the honour of the Sisters of Battle.

So, what do you all think? Does the variety in the power level of the codices need fixing or is it there to provide a variety of game-play experience? Or am I just talking bollocks because I’ve been playing too much Blood Bowl? I’ll turn it over to you.

What I don't like about 40K

I've been playing 40k for about 2 years now, I play pretty much once a week and I've attended about 12 tournaments over that period. I own well over 5000 points of Space Marines/Blood Angels, 2000 points of Orks and about 1750pts of Tyranids. I also read a large amount of blogs and listen daily to several excellent podcasts. I think it's fair to say that I'm fairly well immersed in the hobby, recently I think I've been able to put my finger on something that has been bothering me about the game.

I like to think of myself as a fairly relaxed gamer, I would certainly not consider myself WAAC or even that bothered about winning. But despite that I do tend to come away from some games (wins and losses) with a sour taste in my mouth and, I am sad to say, that these can be both tournament and friendly games.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this, firstly rules interpretation. Sometimes I come away from games feeling that the winner has been decided by whoever stood more firmly behind their interpretation of a rule (or rules) or who was more willing to be relaxed about a particular call on a grey-area of the rules. This can and has gone for and against me in the past and it sours both wins and losses equally. Cover saves for vehicles are a perfect example of this, in the current meta-game vehicles are king and keeping them alive is crucial to many a game-plan, so getting cover saves can make or break a strategy. Proving that a vehicle is 50% obscured has surely lead to more arguments and disgruntled losers than any other part of the 40K rule-set. Conversely I know I've felt awkward after sticking to my guns on denying a cover save to my opponent and then blowing up his vehicle.

The second thing that bothers me is bad match-ups. OK, this is a big boy game and part of it is list building, you don't need to tell me that I love list building. What I am starting to object to though is lists that are so powerful that I cannot play the game I want to play and expect to have any fun doing it. This has been sparked by a list I have played a couple of times over the last few months and perhaps I'm just not used to it yet, indeed I used to think the same think about tri-Long Fang Wolf lists, but at the moment I just would not accept a game against that list. If I was drawn against it in a Tournament I would grin a bear it but it would put a cloud over my day. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally against comp restrictions in Tournaments, you should be able to play a list any way you want to. As with the issue I have with rules interpretation, I have also been on the right side of a bad match up and it doesn't feel good either.

So I guess you're going to be thinking something like “all right then genius, what do you propose to do to solve these fundamental issues which spoil the game for you?”. Well short of GW writing a perfect set of rules with no room for interpretation supported by codices which are perfectly balanced across the myriad of army builds they make possible, there's nothing to do really. As I said before I fundamentally disagree with comp restrictions, they are just someone else's interpretation of what makes the game fun. In my opinion, the only fair way to play the game is with the rules as written and make the best of the vagaries and power variances, if that's just not good enough for you then get out of the game and stop whining about it.

For my part I will continue to play 40K, though I'm not going to be playing as regularly as I used to. Perversely I'll probably stick to playing tournaments rather than friendlies, this is because I can pick the ones whose rules packs/philosophies I agree with and I care slightly less about feeling bad after playing someone I just met than someone I'm friends with. Also I resolve to stop concerning myself with my final tournament placing and just do my best to enjoy the weekend playing a game that has got me by the gonads!

Feel free to post below if you agree, disagree or have identified other things which bother you about 40K and let the readers know what you're doing to make the game more enjoyable for you.

He's so fine!

Just a little update on the progress with the Orks so far for this weekend's Doubles Tournament. No word on list tweaks so far but we're play-testing this Thursday so I'm sure we'll be able to iron it out then.




First up is two eveng's worth of progress on Ghaz



Pretty happy with him right now. Lots of detail left to paint but I can live with him as he stands now for gaming purposes. Probably just worth noting that he is the first Finecast model I've purchased and I have to say that the cast was perfect, cleaned up really easily and primed without incident. The pole supporting the back banner is a little flimsy but I can't see it being too much of a problem (famous last words!).

Next is the Lootas.



Again table-top quality at best, still plenty of detail to go over but I've only got an evening's worth of paining left to get the next guys done ...

... The Kanz!



Just a couple of washes so far to colour these guys up, still a bit more I want to do before they hit the tables this weekend.

Hopefully I'll be able to post another update before the weekend with a final army list and the "completed" Kans so stay tuned.

Clipped Wings and Magnetic Doors

It's been a long time since I pre-ordered my Storm Ravens, in fact since then I have traded one of them in for more Tyranid models to complete my 1500pt force! Only one though because I always knew I wanted to field at least one at some point in the future.

On my return from a short trip to Berlin earlier this week I decided that the time had come to put the Storm Raven together. It's a pretty easy kit to work with and it went together really well, the only slightly tricky parts are the struts on the cockpit covers for both the pilot and the gunner, I think the clear screens are going to be tricky once I get to them.



Also in its favour is how easy it is to magnetise the weapons on the turret. If you do not fit the bar designed to hold the guns onto the sides of the turret, a 4mm hole is left on either side which is the perfect size for one of my little magnets. With this taken care of all you need to do is drill a hole in the weapon to fit a magnet to the guns, I didn't bother with the drilling and to be honest it looks fine without recessing these magnets.



To magnetise the side door options I did what I usually do which is to take a length of sprue just wider than the door aperture, build up the ends with discs of sprue to give you some relief from the hull. I glue the sprue into place across the doorway and then glue a magnet onto the centre of the piece of sprue. In this case it was very difficult to tell whether or not I would be able to just glue the other magnets to doors directly or if they would need to be built up in order to connect to to the magnet in the doorway. In order to ensure I didn't mess this up I used some grey-stuff to fix the magnet in place on the door, this way if it was not close enough I could move it around and build it up as required. As it turned out I needed to build up the magnets on the doors quite a bit so I would say to anyone else that you do not need to move the sprue too far back from the hull if at all.



I wanted to leave the canopies clear so I had to paint the pilot and gunner before completing the assembly, I'm also trying to work out how to magnetise the front facing guns but I may just not bother with it an use blue-tack to secure them to the assembly.







Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be continuing to work on it this week so I'll try and keep you all updated.

Fluent in over 3 million forms of communication?

It's been a while but I'm finally ready to bring you another update from my painting table! I've recently settled on a list for the very imminent Blog Wars tournament and it included a unit of Sanguinary Guard which I have never played before. I have bought a box previously but I mixed them in with a box of Death Company bits to make an Honour Guard squad. So here we are with a relatively vanilla unit with a pretty much standard colour scheme.

Construction of the models was pretty straight forward with only the banner bearer giving me any trouble, firstly I had to carve the "Blood Angels" text off the scroll on the banner, then with the position of the arm I had to fiddle with the shoulder pad to ensure the jump pack wing would fit in on that side. Other-wise it's a really easy kit to put together and you can get some great poses out of the models.

In terms of the colour scheme I was going to go with a completely standard look but Mick commented last week that he liked the wings black as they were only primered when I first play-tested them last week. So I did a few layers of grey drybrushing on them then washed it all back down with Badab Black and I'm pretty happy with the out-come.

I also tried to do a white to blue glow effect on the Jump Pack engines to tie in with the blue eyes and power weapon glows. It didn't turn out perfect but I'm not unhappy with the result for a first attempt.

Anyway, enough of the preamble, take a look at the pics and let me know what you think. Only the banner is a WIP, the other models are finished.











Lastly a little close-up of the wings and the Jump Pack glow:

The War Skiff

Well boys and girls, it's been a while since I wrote anything on here and I'd like to say that's because I've been busy building and painting an army..or doing other hobby related things...but that would be a lie.

Basically my new job keeps me incredibly busy and so I dont get to do any hobby related things in the week, and even blogging is difficult, however, I am still around, and still very much into all things 40k. So, as a quick peek at the latest hobby work I give you the Kroot War Skiff for my counts and DE army:

Well thoughts and oppinions are appreciated as always. it still needs a bit of work to finish it off but its about 90% done..and just fyi the Bantha-II Skiff was inspiration for the design...

TheBaron

OW-ch

As you can no doubt tell, WoW still has it's claws well and truly sunk into me. I'm unapologetic about it, I really enjoy the game but I will say I'm not as addicted as I was in my previous stint with the game so I'm definitely keeping up my hobby, even if I'm not really contributing to the blog as much as I used to.

You may also be aware that this weekend the Claws and Fists guys will be heading up to Mansfield to compete in 1st Company Veterans' Open War 15 Tournament. This is probably the highlight of my annual tournament calendar and will the the 4th time I have attended. My first showing in OW12 was something of a learning experience for me which saw me coming in dead last, after 3 very enjoyable, if unsuccessful, games. The next two Open Wars went a lot better and I was able to finish in the top 3rd(ish) on both occasions.

In line with my “resolutions” for this year I'm hoping to place well again and finish with two wins out of three. The field is strong as always but if I can get off to a good start I'm at least hopeful I can achieve this goal.

As is customary for every lead-up to a tournament I have experienced so far, I have spent pretty much the whole of last week painting in a mad rush to get the new units I've been trialling painted. Here's a day by day record of my progress:









The last pic was taken on Wednesday so I have plenty of time to get the last details done. I'll post a full army pic with the inevitable battle reports!

More posts tomorrow with the army list and then game updates on twitter throughout Saturday.

Stay tuned!

A Gaming Dad.

It's a Thursday night and I'm sat at home in front of my computer instead of down at Warhammer World laying the smack down upon my fellow “Claws&Fistians”. Of course I assumed that they would all think I was glued to my old/new addiction (World of Warcraft) and while I will pop on in a bit I thought I'd write a blog post to let them know I've not gone completely over to the dark-side … yet.

The reason that I'm at home is because my wife asked me if I'd mind skipping my weekly gaming night-out because she's not feeling well and would like some help with the baby. Now there's any number of things that are wrong with this excuse, particularly the fact that Dan goes to bed at 7:00 and sleeps like the dead so he really isn't any trouble. But my missus is extremely cool about me disappearing off to play 40k every Thursday so when she asks me to miss a week I know better than to say anything other than “Sure, no problem.”!

Obviously keeping the wife on-side is an important part of being a Gaming Dad but the thing that I probably worried about most before Daniel arrived was the impact that he would have on my free time. With a year's worth of experience under my belt I can look back and feel a bit stupid about that. It's not that becoming a Dad doesn't soak up a lot of the free time that you had before but it's more about the fact that I can't think of anything I'd rather do than spend time with my son. It's probably a bit of a cliché but becoming a Dad changes your priorities.

Don't get me wrong, I still love to play games, 40K, WoW and any number of PC and board games. Spending time with your child does not mean having to neglect any of your hobbies it's not even a balancing act, it's just something you settle into naturally. I guess it's much easier though with a partner who gives you the support you need to be able to do it so I have to say that I am a lucky man in that respect.

So it's at this point where I might say something like so far so good but it's going to get more demanding the older he gets, but if I said that then I would have learned nothing over the last year. In fact I'm sure that as Dan gets older things will change but only for the better, at the very least I'll get to massage my win-loss ratio for a couple of years.

Any other gaming dads out there? Please comment below.

Storm Pelican

Sooo, it's been a while since my last post and, as has already been noted, that may largely be due to the re-emergence of the computer gaming black-tar heroine that is “World of Warcraft”. However I have not been completely neglecting the hobby and I have had two rather large boxes sitting on my painting desk for the last couple of weeks over which I'm now in a quandary.

The boxes in question contain Storm Ravens and the thing is that I am now wondering if I'll ever actually use them. I got all excited about the model (I actually think it looks pretty cool) and the shiny-newness of it all and actually pre-ordered two of them. After drafting up a couple of lists to see how they would work in a tournament-style list I am not as convinced that they would as I was before.

The up-shot of all this is that I'm strongly considering trading them back into GW for something else like some Assault Marines (which I think will work in BA list) and some more 'nid monstrous creatures (which may not work but will be fun).

Anyway, I'd like some opinions from “the cloud”, is the Storm Raven worth it? Should I trade them back? All opinions welcome!

Setting goals? Not too SMART!

I've not written a “resolutions” post so far this January and I had no intention to, but in planning this post that's exactly what it's turned into. So why fight it?

Thanks to my very understanding wife, it's been a bit of a 40k weekend this week, which, given the fact that it's the Caledonian Open next weekend just makes my missus even more awesome. So, on Saturday I had the dubious pleasure of being schooled again by our very own TheBaron, his Orks easily steamrollered my Blood Angels. It made obvious the very real gap that I will have to bridge if I want to be competing at the top tables of the tournaments that I attend. Fortunately for me, at the moment I think I have more fun in the lower leagues, however I'm going to set myself a target of improving on my tournament results of 2010 which were as follows:

Right at the start of the year I played in the Gobstyks Tournament up in Lincoln where I finished 5th out of 20 players, a result I was very pleased with. It consisted of two big wins over 'nid players, early adopters of the brand new codex, and a big loss to Harry and his four Battle Wagon Ork list o' doom!

Next up was Warp Storm 2 at Maelstrom where I placed a slightly disappointing 15th out of 22. This time I was the early adopter taking along a cobbled together Blood Angels list which I had never played before. This, we all know, is a recipe for disaster. I managed to scrap out a result from the bottom tables but by no means was a competitive force on the weekend, I lost to Daemonhunters, IG and Blood Angels, beat Orks and Eldar and tied a game with Eldar.

At the end of May was Open War 13, this was only a few weeks after Warp Storm 2 so I decided to go with a list I knew and took my Lysander/Sternguard Space Marines list. I love Sternguard and have pretty much had them in my main list since I started playing again in September '09 and while I'm not great with them I knew the list a lot better than I knew the Blood Angels one. The result bore this out and I finished 18th out of 70 players, drawing to Daemons and IG players and tabling another Marines player in the last game to shoot me up the rankings in the last round.

My last tournament of the year was Open War 14, this time no Special Characters were allowed so I decided to take some Assault Terminators to bulk up my list, I finished 19th out of 66 players and my path through the tournament was similar to OW 13. I started off with a minor loss to Harry's Orks, having played them before in the Gobstyks tourney at the start of the year I felt I had a better chance this time round and I managed to keep it close but his weight of numbers got me in the end. My next game was another narrow loss to a Blood Angels player, I absolutely mullered him but took my eye off the mission and gave it away, fortunately the amount of kill points I took kept it close. Finally, everything went right for me in a game vs IG which I won comfortably and again I jumped up into the top 20 (just!).

With those four tournament results recorded in 2010, RHQ ranks me as 47th in the UK (I checked this time guys). Now what this actually means is highly debatable as our very own contributors TheBaron, Simo and the boss-dude himself, ClawsandFists are ranked 111th, 344th and 392nd respectively and I am not a better player than these guys. However a goal I'm going to set myself for next year is to improve my tournament ranking in 2011. But perhaps more tellingly I'm going to set myself to goal of winning more than half of the games I play in any one tournament in 2011 and just to qualify that, the Tournaments I intend to enter this year are the Caledonian Open, Open War 15 and 16, and Warp Storm 3, so no easy rides.

Obviously I'm not going to be hugely upset if I don't achieve this, the target is aspirational as I'm not a particularly “hardcore” player, neither am I very tactically astute, non-the-less I will be pleased if I can achieve either one or both of these goals.

In terms of hobby related targets I think the following picture of the current state of my painting desk sets the scene nicely:
You can see here the gist of what I intended to accomplish in 2011. On the left of the pic we have a few odd yellow Marines units so I'll no doubt the tweaking and adding units to what I consider my main army. However the bulk of the right of the picture is dominated by Ork Boyz perfectly reflecting the fact that I intend to finish painting my 1750pt army plus a few extra units to take it up to 2000pts worth. Also in the pic tucked away along the top edge is evidence of the project which may roll into 2012, my Nids. I hope to have 1750pts purchased and built before the end of the year but the painting is likely to take me into next year … still you never know when the muse will strike!

In terms of definite hobby targets for 2011 it's got to be to have a fully painted, 1750pt Ork force, and to honour this commitment I have already started painting the Boyz again. In fact the nine Boyz you can see in the middle of the pic with the white bases will be finished this week and that leaves just another 11 models until all of my Ork Boyz are painted, that just leaves, my Killer Kanz, Lootas, Deffkoptaz, Kommandos, some form of Nobz (Bikers or Mega Armoured), Grots and a Trukk! That's what's so disheartening about Orks, I thought I was doing well with just under 100 Ork Boyz painted there's still so much to do!

They mostly come at night ... mostly.

There's been a fair bit going on on the Tyranid fron here at chez-Fudal. Over Christmas I treated myself to a couple of Carnifexes to add to the slow accumulation of bugs I had been managing to sneak past the wife via eBay. I also bought a Valkyrie a while back with the intention of converting it into a Storm Raven which just never happened. As it was still sealed I took it into GW to trade up towards the 'fexes, this combined with a £20 gift voucher from my brother meant that the MC's cost me only a single English Pound ... not too shabby!

In my recent experience I have discovered that building Monstrous Creatures is fun ... though they do bite back!


First off I've done a couple of simple conversions to make my Tervigon and Hive Tyrant. My skills with putty are extremely limited (some would say non existent) so I managed to get hold of some old tyranid terrain pieces which I filed and cut down so they would fit on to the sides of a Carnifex torso. In order to make the pieces look a bit more like they belonged on the side of the 'fex I rolled out a thin sausage of putty and wrapped it round the edge of the scenery pieces I was attaching and used a sculpting tool to try and blend the putty in with the model. The result is less than awesome but I think it'll pass once it's painted.

Here are some pics:





Next up is my Hive Tyrant, tricky one this, I just took a Carnifex kit and put the torso onto the legs upside down! Genius or just too simple? As with the Tervigon I'm not going to attach the arms until I've painted the body and I'm probably going to magnetise them as well.

Again here's pic:


Lastly for the conversions are mu Hive Guard. These are just Tyranid Warriors with Carnifex armour plates attached to their backs and converted heavy weapons with what I think are Flesh Hooks attached to the barrel. Perhaps a bit low-rent but I think they look serviceable and are a damn-site cheaper than the metal ones!


That's it for the clever stuff but here's some more pics of the rest of the swarm so far:

My first of two Mawlocs, this is the guy I injured my finger making ... scalpels are sharp kids!


Two units of six Genestealers, I'm thinking of these purely as Broodlord delivery vehicles.



I'll share the list I have in mind with you later on, but I figure I've posted so many 'nid lists in the last few months you're probably all sick of it so I thought it'd be better to show some actual physical progress on an army. Hope you like!

Painting my LC Terminators

Something Gav and I have chatted about is the lack of painting tutorials in the blog. This may be because neither of us rate ourselves as sufficiently good enough painters to be offering others advice! However I think it's good to share and as I decided to paint up my Lightning Claw Assault Terminators this weekend, I thought I'd take a few photos along the way and share with you how I do it. Now please note that I'm in no way advocating this as they best way to do it and I would welcome criticism from anyone who wants to post a comment. I'm really trying to improve my painting but it's a tricky thing to do in a vacuum so I appreciate any constructive feedback.

First things first, my chapter (Dorn's Lament) are Yellow with Red shoulder pads. In order to get the yellow as vivid as possible I start with a white undercoat and I use the Citadel spray can, I just like it and feel comfortable applying it. I'm painting three models together, normally I'd do a whole squad at a time to ensure consistency of colour but in this case I only need 3 models to complete the squad so that's all I'm doing.



After leaving the models to dry for at least a couple of hours (I left these guys overnight) I apply the yellow base coat which is Iyanden Darksun from the Citadel Foundation range. I thin it down 50-50 with a 10:1 mix of water to a product called “flow release” which you can get from any art supplier. I used to thin my paints with plain tap water but I just think that this gives a better consistency to the paint and it flows better from the bush, could just be a placebo effect though!




Next I cover the shoulder pads and purity seal wax with a coat of Mechrite Red, again thinned 50:50. As you can see from the picture above this mix dries rather patchily over the white undercoat so I add two brush-loads of Scab Red to the thinned Mechrite Red on my pallet and go over the base coat of Mechrite Red. I find this second coat is enough to get an even finish and I put it on as soon as the first coat is dry.



I use the same mix straight on the eye lenses and then coat all the black and metallic parts with Chaos Black. I find that Chaos Black is pretty thin right out of the pot so I tend to only thin it 70:30. I usually mix way too much of the black so I cover the bases at the same time as this step.



Next up is Dheneb Stone for the helmets and any parchment on the models



The last base colours needed here are a coat of Charadon Granite on the Crux and any other details I want to be a stony grey and a mix of Vomit Brown and Bronzed Flesh (50:50) as a flesh base. Dwarf flesh is probably better but I don't have any at the moment!




With all of the base colours on the model it's ready for washes. First of all I apply Gryphonne Sepia over the yellow and Dheneb Stone parts and Badab Black over the Charadon Granite parts.



I leave the washes about an hour to dry then I put a 50:50 mix of Boltgun Metal and Chaos Black on the metallic details which I then highlight with Mithril Silver.



Now for the Claws! I do a very rough graduation, leaving the base of the claws black then layering on Mordian Blue, Enchanted Blue, 50:50 Enchanted Blue:Space Wolf Grey and then edge highlighted with pure Space Wolf Grey.



Next I finish the base by dry-brushing with Space Wolf Grey and then I paint Graveyard Earth round the rim, two coats is usually enough. I also dry brush the Granite details with Space Wolf Grey as a highlight.




Finally the helmets and parchment are highlighted with Bleached bone followed by a Skull White edge highlight. The Sergeant's face is highlighted with Elf Flesh and then washed with Ogryn Fesh tone it down a bit.

Bada-Bing and we're done. When I have some spare time I go back and highlight the yellow areas with Iyanden Darksun and Bleached Bone but I think the models look fine without this stage so as it stands I'm happy with them as table-top quality.