MonkeyDispenser

Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought Episode 2

2011-09-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought. Now in red!

I've pretty much put all other gaming projects aside now to paint the Contemptor Dread. I might even have given up on the Dwarfs altogether, but that's another story! It seemed a bit of a shame to just leave the dread in a drawer when it's such a nice model. So over the last couple of days I had a go at doing a half-decent job. Combined with that I'd picked up sets 1 and 3 of the Vallejo pigments and I was desperate to ruin a model as soon as possible. I realise that's a bit of a conflict, wanting to do a decent job and deliberately trying something new on it, but that's just the way I roll...

I'm particularly happy with the base! I have no idea what that stuff is oozing out of the pipe, and I guess it doesn't really matter. The pigments are actually great fun to use. I think it fits nicely with my desire to make things look like they have actually been in a fight. I wanted this guy to look like he'd kicked and punched a few walls on the way to the front. The oil and rust effects look a little better from a distance, but I think he looks used, yet carefully maintained between scraps!

This could be the start of a Legio Cybernetica force, I just haven't worked out the fluff yet. Plus they don't have robots in 40k any more, which is a bit crap!

All in all I'm quite happy with him, and since Forgeworld released a bunch of extra weapons for them just recently I can see myself picking up one or two more. I think I'll call them Babydoll, Sweet Pea and Rocket...

Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought

2011-08-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

All the bits for my contemptor pattern dreadnought finally arrived after Forgeworld kindly shipped me the missing shoulders! So today I put him together:

The quality was pretty good. Not too much flash, went together easily enough and only a few small bubbles to fill in. One slight issue is the fact that the shoulders come with the body rather than the arms. The simplest way to magnetise the arms is at the shoulder as I have done here:

But since you only get a set of shoulders when you buy the whole body there's a problem should you buy any new arms with the intention of magnetising them for swapping. You're missing the shoulders for your spare weapon arms. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate oversight on the part of GW. If it is then it seems a bit of an insult to customers. You could try and magnetise lower down the arm, but I think it would be a lot harder to pull off successfully.

Anyway, since there are no other contemptor pattern weapon arms at the moment it's not such an issue! I do want to try and convert a couple of autocannon arms for him at some point though.

My next decision is the colour scheme. I really want to paint him red, but don't fancy starting another space marine army to put him in! I'll have to come up with some fluff...

Imperial Fist Scouts

2011-08-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

When I needed to make up a few point in my 2000 point list I thought I may as well add another scoring unit. I really like the sniper scouts too so I spent a fair bit of time painting them and thought I'd at least give them proper camo cloaks.

It turns out I perhaps shouldn't have made them quite so camouflaged. One game I left them standing in the trees for the first three turns. They merged in to the scenery just a little too well!

Imperial Fist Devastators

2011-08-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

These guys have turned out to be one of my most effective units. Four missile launchers can be applied to most any situation.

The biggest problem is GWs reluctance to provide you with enough missile launchers in any of the kits! I was one short until I found this guy in a box in the loft:

He's just so sweet! Must be over 20 years old. They certainly don't make them like that any more...fortunately, some might say.

Imperial Fist Tactical Squads

2011-08-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

I really don't get on that well with my space marine tactical squads. I don't think anyone does. You put them in a rhino and try really hard not to take them out or let them get shot at. My 2000 point list currently has two squads and for simplicity they are both the same with lascannon, meltagun and combi-melta/power-fist on the sergeant. Quite effective in a range of situations - if I didn't have to keep them safe for taking objectives!

Dreadnoughts and Drop-Pods

2011-08-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

I did briefly consider the rather costly dread drop pod from Forgeworld, I even added it to my basket on the site. Then I saw that were still going to charge me a stupid amount of money for delivery. I find it offensive that they just slap a percentage of the item cost on for postage. The price they wanted to charge would have covered the cost of lead rather than very light resin. Anyway, I came to my senses and spent the weekend making a cut-out-and-keep version from a plan I found on the internet!

Does the job nicely I think, plus it's a lot cheaper. Having said that, if I was charging an hourly rate for making it the cost would be considerably higher than the Forgeworld version! The original plan was to make several, but I don't know if I'll go that far. It didn't help that I wanted to improve the original design which was never intended to open or actually hold a dreadnought.

Check that out! BS5 multi-melta dropping next to your big thing on turn one! So far it's proved quite effective, though I admit to regularly rolling 1 on the vehicle damage table.

Then at the back of the field we have the poor cousin of the venerable dread...

The TL autocannons are taken straight from the Aegis Defence Line set and the only conversion is the addition of magnets so they fit on the already magnetised dreadnought body.

Lysander's Elite

2011-08-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

Thought it was about time I put up some images of my still-to-be-completed Imperial Fist. These are the terminators, though I usually only play with Lysander and the TH/SS termies.

There is also a Landraider, but I've yet to complete the paint-job on that.

Planetstrike: Defence of Somewhere-or-Other

2011-03-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

The faithful servants of the Emperor line up their forces...

...and face up the combined 'Nid and Ork horde.

The alien scum appear on the horizon

What the heck?!? Guess what gets shot at first?

Perhaps surprisingly, very few run away. But then the deep striking begins...

It wasn't entirely obvious until now just how much the Imperium was up against.

Aw heck...

Sadly, Lord Creed takes his eye off the ball whilst answering the call of nature. Not even a Death Leaper can distract him from the task in hand. It is believed this ultimately led to the downfall of the loyalist forces.

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Cue the pantomime chanting...

Then comes one last, valiant stand before the alien scum achieve victory. What on earth are Orks and 'Nids doing working together anyway?!

Hold on lads, I have a cunning plan...

...ah, that's not quite what I had in mind

Ruined Tower

2009-11-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

I am so impressed with the moulds from Hirst Arts. If you haven't used them I strongly suggest investing in a few! Here are a few images of my first major project using the fieldstone moulds. When you consider that it is a long time since I last used plaster of paris I think it turned out rather nicely.

Toxic Waste

2009-11-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

In the process of basing a few bits of pipe terrain it became obvious that a toxic waste pool was required. Initially I was tempted to get one of the proper pour-it-out-water-scenery offerings but, partly because I didn't want to spend money and partly because I couldn't be bothered to go to the shops, I thought I'd try just using PVA glue.

But I ran out...

So instead I hunted around the garage for a suitable alternative and came up with some UniBond wood glue. It's fairly thick stuff so I didn't end up with it pouring through all the unfilled gaps at the bottom of the pool. Also it dries a really nasty yellow! To be honest it looks like toxic waste even without painting.

Ork Horde

2009-11-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

Alex has been beavering away painting his first ever group of Orks. To be honest I've been heavily impressed by just how much time he has been able to spend patiently painting away. When you take in to account the fact that he has never done this before, the results are quite impressive.

Not too shabby I reckon. I'd better get painting some more figures if I'm to fight off that lot!

Space Marines Unit

2009-11-04T11:51:00.000-08:00

Finally finished my first figure painting project in years (having children will do that to you). These are from the Black Reach set - still got to finish the terminators, commander and dreadnought!

Terrain Project Part 3 - Finishing Touches

2009-11-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

And by finishing touches I basically mean lots of glue and flock! I keep telling my son that there's nothing you can't do with PVA glue. So far he doesn't seem convinced, but we have yet to come a cropper when using it. If it doesn't stick, then that's just because you didn't use enough PVA glue!

Anyhow, here are a few images of the finished game board. The hills were fixed to the board with loads of PVA and then the whole thing was flocked with a couple of bags of woodland scenic's turf - one bag of green blend and one earth blend (again, stuck down with a suitable quantity of PVA glue.

As can be seen from the last image I used some gravel to represent the rocky cliffs. That needed a lot of PVA, plus regular coats of PVA afterwards to make sure they were stuck fast. I ended up pouring small amounts of PVA over the stones over a couple of days to get them to stick properly. Also I sprayed a coat of watered-down PVA over all of the flock after a couple of hours just to bond it to the board a bit better.

Finally, and after everything had dried, I sprayed each of the boards with varnish (satin in this case) for an added layer of protection.

Terrain Project Part 2 – Adding the Hill

2009-10-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

Now, any good terrain just has to have hills and just like the Games Workshop Realm of Battle Gameboard we wanted them as well! Taking the same modular approach we also decided on having one big hill spread across 4 of the board squares and the material of choice just had to be polystyrene. To be honest, that's mainly because I couldn't get any foam-board!

Polystyrene is fairly difficult to work on without a hot wire cutter, as well as being really messy. I don't have a hot wire cutter (and yes, I did go out and try to buy one!) but I do have an old, cheap soldering iron. It's one of those soldering irons that uses a metal loop between two points on the hand grip and an electrical current passes through the wire to generate the heat. By stripping a length of electrical cable to get at the copper wire and replacing the original soldering iron element with my new, really long one I had a makeshift wire cutter! What's more, it actually worked (you can see it in the first image).

The rest was pretty much plain sailing and I happily carved out a hill:

That's about it for now, though there is still the problem of carving that hill in to four pieces, one for each section of the base. As you can see, we created a nicely sloping section to the hill and topped it with a much more steep inclined section - ideal for gun emplacements to hang out on!

Terrain Project Part 1 - Creating the Game Board

2009-10-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

We finally got around to starting our terrain project this weekend. The intention was to create something modular, a bit like the Citadel Realm of Battle Gameboard, only for a fraction of the cost. After checking out quite a few blogs we decided to go with MDF as the basis for our designs. A quick trip to B&Q found large MDF sheet which was about 8 feet by 2 feet. Unlike a lot of places B&Q will happily cut MDF for you (up to 4 free cuts!) and moments later we had 8 'nearly' squares of MDF.

Once home I took to sizing them up. To have a truly modular board that we could have in any configuration I realised that each square would have to be just that - square. By measuring each board to find the smallest dimensions amongst them I decided that 600mm squares would be possible with a bit of planing. I'll be honest, I'm no carpenter and I did expect this to all go horribly wrong leaving me with a load of scrap MDF. Luckily I remembered the electric planer that I bought a couple of years ago to do one door in the house. I know that one small and simple job is a really ridiculous reason to buy a new electrical tool but I was glad I'd done it now. Besides, can you imagine what a mess I might have made of the door if I'd used a manual plane?

Some careful measuring and planing left me with 8 600mm squares of MDF. Well, nearly. I'd say that they were within about 0.5mm. I considered that a great success and continued on...

Fixing them together was going to be the hard bit. The Games Workshop board comes with lots of clips to attach the bases neatly, but that was unlikely to be an option here. I had noticed one blogger (the link to which I have since lost) attached them using dowel rods and this seemed like a reasonable idea.

Unfortunately this requires very accurate drilling along every edge and again I thought this could be the undoing of the entire project. But after the success of the square-cutting I thought I'd give it a go anyway. Ever the sensible person I decided to create a template for cutting the holes to at least make it easier to get them in the same place on each board. I really didn't fancy having to measure and mark every hole before drilling either.

After being careful to drill the pilot holes using the template on the same face of each board (to make sure the holes match as well as they can) I drilled 9mm holes to fit some 9mm dowelling pegs I had cut up. A quick test showed that, perhaps surprisingly, the boards did actually match up using the dowel pegs to keep them in position. Admittedly the joins were a little tight and sometimes needed a little 'persuasion' to push the boards close enough to prevent gaps, but after a few fits the holes seemed to loosen a little and it became easier to push them together. Another result for amateur carpentry!

The final task of the day was to get a bit of colour on them. For the sake of simplicity we just sprayed them brown. I'm hopeful that the later flocking will mean the mottled colouration won't be visible and it should also help hide the joins in the board.