Megaorks strike again!

Painting of my boyz is progressing at a reasonable pace. I have managed to get all the skin done and will move on to the clothing tonight. I have also made some great progress on the meganobz. I need to complete some 'wiring' on each model but this should not take too long. The biggest issue is making a combi scortcha. I have found several old style flamers that I think are from a chaos vehicle of some sort. These have been cut down and placed on standard shootas. To get the positioning correct I used took the shootas off the standard arm and placed on slugga arms.

These now look rather good and have overcome what was going to be the most difficult part of the model. My test model now has some back plating. I have had to cut down several nid plates to get this to work, and there needs to be some green stuff added to get the right effect, but overall the models are almost complete. Just need to maybe add a sombrero or 2 to the squad to tie in the look with the other units in the army.

Speaking of Meganobz, I had another game of 40k last night at the Sad muppet society. This was part of their ongoing 40k campaign which will be running till the end of the year. The game was a 750 point game with pre selected scenario of Purge the Alien. For those who don't know this is a victory point game so killing enemy units is the name of the game.

I took my standard Big Mek with Shockk attack gun, a squad of gretchin, 2 squads of 25 boys with a power clawed bob. My final unit was 5 megaorks. The few games I have used these in had confirmed my belief that these are the single most destructive hand to hand unit in the ork army. I armed this unit with combi rockit launchers as I had very little anti tank/flyer weapons so needed something to boost my chance of taking anything like this down.

Opponents were selected randomly and I got to play against Gavin, who I played 2 weeks ago. He had a space marine force (Crimson Fists). He force was a scout squad with a heavy bolter and bolters, tactical squad in a rhino with missile launcher and melta, librarian in terminator armour and force staff, 5 terminators with a power sword wielding sergeant and an assault cannon backed up by 3 scout bikers with 2 grenade launchers.

The game was pretty quick, taking around an hour and 15 minutes. A hugh fortress of redemption took up the centre of the board. A couple of quick kills against my gretchin was all could manage initially, whilst I wiped out the scouts. With the bikes and terminators in the lead, the rest of his force tried to sweep round the outside of the fortress. I sent in my meganobz backed up by what was left of a slightly shot up choppa boy unit.

I must still admit to being surprised at how good megnobz actually are. They easily wiped out the bikes on the charge. The return fire from the tactical squad, terminators and rhino killed one nobz and injured another. This was even after the librarian had cast the ability that reduces their toughness and strength by 1 (the name of it escapes me at the moment).

The terminators then charged. The librarian and sergeant with the power sword failed to kill any orks. The power claws (now strength 6) and power fists smashed each unit to pieces. I lost all my nobz, but reduced the librarian to a single wound and left only the assault cannon marine alive.

This single combat won me the game.  I had lost only a single victory point but I had already gained 3 by getting first blood and wiping out 2 complete units. My choppa boyz charged the remaining terminator and librarian. Losing a couple of orks to the librarian, the rest of the boyz finished off both models without the need for the nob to use his power claw.

The game was over at this point. I was 6 points up with Gavin having to wipe out my entire army to equal my point count. This was not going to be possible with just 2 turns to go and 3 of my units being behind the fortress of redemption. The final score was 6 points to me and 2 to Gavin. It was a fun game although it is the second game in a row against Gavin that my Megaorks have decimated his terminators.

I really need to get these models finished and painted. Such an awesome squad needs to been seen in all its glory!

Moderated collision!

I have been meaning to meet up with some of my fellow moderators at Heresy Online for some time. After a little bit of arranging I managed to persuade 'Dave T Hobbit' and 'Tim/Steve' or Dave and Tim to meet me at Triple Helix. It was the most central point and has great rates for hiring a table (£2 for 4 hours).

So on Saturday 11th, and had a 2 vs 1 game of 40k. It was a 1500 point game with my Orks and Dave’s Thousand Sons playing Tim's Imperial Guard. It was a great game, and more details can be found with the excellent battle report written up by Tim that can be found here.

Other than the battle it was good to put names to faces and I suggested we should have another meet at some point with more of the UK moderators, maybe at Warhammer World.

On the figure front I have been helping to strip down so old marines for Oliver. He has a new colour scheme and a complete removal of the old layers of paint will give him a good base to start from. I on the other hand have been very slow with my painting and really need to knuckle down and get some boyz painted up. So I will be putting the PS3 controller to one side and seeing if I can get to he next 10 shootas done by the end of August. The 9 remaining choppas will need to be done by mid September if I plan to get everything done by the end of the year.

But still there is nothing like a tight painting schedule to get me going on an army.

Poor picture problems

I have to say no matter how hard I try I cannot seem to take decent pictures of my minatures. They just seem to come out either too dark or too yellow or not quite in focus. I have read numerous guides on miniature photography and it doesn't help. I suspect this is more to do with my lack of equipment than anything else.

My camera is pretty good as a point a click but anything more complicated and it just doesn't work very well. I also have no lighting equipment so I either rely on the flash or direct sunlight, neither of which give satisfying results. I suppose I will have to look into getting a lighting setup as this is going to be cheaper than buying a new camera, which I certainly cannot justify.

Poor pictures lead me onto my next point. I don't have any I am happy to post up of my latest completed miniatures. Both squads of Gretchin are done, but they look very poor once I get them in front of he camera.

Other than my lack picture taking skills I have had a successful few days of painting. I have primed and base painted the Administratum building. I have done about 25% of the detail work, so it will hopefully be done in the next few days. The stormboys are well on their way to being completed with just some tidying up to be done this afternoon. My second objective marker is also completed so I need to get on and build the third one.

Tonight is going to be a first outing for the stormboyz as a completed unit. I have a 1000 point game at Sad Muppets against Gavin. He is also bringing along the Realm of Battle boards for me to buy. So I am hoping for another game tomorrow on these against Oliver.

I am not sure what else to put in my army against Gavin other than the stormboyz and my shootas and choppa boyz.

Finally I’m off too see ‘Dark Knight Rises’ this afternoon with Oliver, so that should be good. All in all a busy day.

Summer Holidays and the painting commences!

After a hectic 2 days at work, I am having a week and a half off. As well as spending some time with the family this is an ideal opportunity to get some painting done. To this end I did some priming last week in the garage and I have some boyz to get painted. This should add another 6 models to my squad of choppa boyz plus another 4 models to complete my shootas boyz. I will still have another 9 boyz to paint for my troop choices but that will be a big step in the right direction.

Incidentally here is my spray and pray area. It doubles as a workshop for DIY as well as a ventilated dry area for any air bursh, priming or varnishing I need to do.

I still have a few things I need to finish off before I start the boyz. So the last few days have been spent completing some bases on both of the Gretchin squads I had already completed painting, plus I have completed the majority of the paint jobs on my last 5 storm boyz. I have a problem with these though. This is due to Games Workshop decision to change their paints. I have been using snakebyte leather and mine ran out. There is no direct replacement so I am now trying to mix a duplicate colour for the wing webbing on the gargoyles. I think I have it figured out but the colour does look a little different to the other 10 models in the squad. Grrrrr!

There is also the fact I want to get as much of the army done before the 11th August as I am due to go to a 3000 point a side game and I want as many models as possible completed from my 1500 point list. I should have some pictures of my completed Stormboyz and Gretchin by next entry, but we will see how it goes.

Not much painting going to be done tomorrow as we are going for a day trip to Bournemouth. It should be good fun at the seaside having some chips and ice cream (not at the same time).

Oh and I cannot wait for the stupid Olympics to end. I am totally fed up with the whole thing.