Painting Resolutions For Sixth Edition

Good evening travellers of the warp and thank you for joining me once again in our dark corner of the infinite abyss. I apologise that I have not posted recently and would like to thank Mighty Simo for picking up the slack for me. My offering today is more of a catchup and my plans for sixth edition and my war gaming in general so will be a wall of text ( yes more than usual ) so if this doesn't sound like your cup of tea I won't be offended if you catch the next portal out of here.

As sixth edition was approaching I found myself at a bit of a lull in motivation so decided to look through my rather sizeable collection of unfinished projects and decided that I wanted to get back to where I was when I started with war gaming in fifth.

My original Necron force, with the awakening of the Tomb Worlds this has more than doubled in size

As unbelievable as this is with my track record of slacking off when I first started I picked up my Necrons and before I had my first game with them they were fully painted as well as being based. I am not going to try and convince you all this was the greatest painting ever but compared to the the grey Tyranids I was facing it made them look more like an army.

However the group I learnt with didn't play the missions and was literally we played until someone was wiped out so this lead to a lot of tailored lists and different units on a per game basis. As you can imagine this pattern lead me to doing the same. Unfortunately this lead to no units being used often enough to justify painting.


In this time I also obtained two AOBR marine forces, a large Space Wolf army and a mid sized T'au army to help a friend who decided 40k wasn't for him and would rather play Flames of War get out of it. The Space Wolves were stripped back to the metal / plastic and anything with Space Wolf feel to it was redistributed to our resident Space Wolves player and anything else was inducted into my Templar army ( This was at the time of the new codex and despite their amazing power Black Templars just resonate with me so won out ). The T'au along with two further small T'au forces and purchases by myself became my current T'au army.

1750 points worth of my T'au after they trekked to Maelstrom for the first Blogwars

In the end has left me in the situation I am now with a large T'au, Black Templar and Necron forces as well as a couple of battle forces for Imperial Guard. As you can imagine this isn't where my addiction ends and I also have random kits for different armies, two fantasy armies and an assortment of stand alone figures.

Now I can quickly admit this is not a good place to be and have drastically cut my spending in this area but I know this isn't going to be enough as I have said this before and  I love the new stuff that is release from different companies and eventually I will break and start buying again.

My solution to this is hopefully the drive to play more games with painted models and with that in mind I plan to keep focus on my Necrons as they are the newest of my armies with the recent refresh and I enjoy using them. Along with them I may try to paint some Imperial Guard up for games with allies.

Now I am a slow painter so have picked up an airbrush and is what I have been doing since my last post. I have mainly been practicing on boxes and old models so nothing exciting I can post currently though I have started an Aegis Defence line and while I am not 100% happy with it so far I can see the potential for this tool if I can get good with it.

As this is probably going to take up what little free time I seem to have these days my posts will probably reflect this so am going to chronicle my experiences to try and help anyone else who is on the fence as so far it has been frustrating as I have learnt a lot by trial and error though despite this I am confident this will help me reach my goal.

For added motivation Mighty Simo never fails to roll out fully painted and awesome looking armies when I face him and Dalinair is making good strides on his Blood Angels so it is time for me to get back in the Earth Castes machine shops.

If you're still with me after this wall of text I salute you as the truly devoted followers of Nurgle and offer you a fist bump from this internet cat.

For those of you wanting an abridged version it is basically I bought too much to keep competitive with my gaming group which used heavy model repping and now am snowed under so have bought an airbrush to try and help me out as I am annoyed at myself for getting like this.

Until next time take head and learn from my mistakes or join me in an unassembled & unpainted hell from which there is little chance of escape.

O'Shashar

The Cupboard Of Nurgle Is One Year Old

Greetings once again fellow travellers of the infinite expanse of the warp. Today I am please to announce that our humble corner of Lord Nurgle's domain has reached one year of blogging and I have to say I am happy with the progress we have made though we still have a long way to go if we want to get as many comments as the big boys out there.

Looking back over the year I am happy with the progress we have made. We have managed regular posting on a combination of reviews and painting ( even though my painting is much slower going than Mighty Simo the painting machine ). It has been a team effort and I know I couldn't have done this without my two fellow bloggers, Mighty Simo & Dorn's Arrow.

We would like to thank all the people who take the time to read our posts, add comments and become followers. I would also like to take this time to ask if there is anything you would like to see more of on the blog such as Mighty Simo doing some step by step guides, more reviews or even more variety in our painting?

If painting is what you want out of us you're in luck as our Thunder Wolves are finished and ready to be posted so expect to see those over the next few days as well as a poll to vote for which you prefer ( and if you send us a picture of yours with your username in the picture we will post those up too).

Until next time

O'Shashar

When Did "Play Testing" Just Become An Excuse Not To Paint?

Good evening and thank you for traversing the warp to join me as I present my latest offering to our benevolent Lord Nurgle. I warn you now this is just my thoughts the situation I have gotten myself in by not painting models as frequently as I really should.

With the weather improving and the evenings staying light for longer I have had more draw back into 40k, both the gaming and hobby sides. This started with the release of the new Tyranid kits, I love the look of the flying hive tyrant but have stopped myself from buying it. 
I did this because I have an unassembled old style Tyrant with the Alien queen head I got to paint after seeing a friends and preferring it to the current version.
 
When it arrived it was carefully packed away while I tested colour schemes out and he has sat in his box since. Now it is no secret I like to buy the models that catch my eye and most will sit waiting for the day I find them out and use them for something but this wasn't always the way. 


When I first started 40k with my Necrons I painted two battle forces and two Monoliths over the course of weekend so that I could use them the following Monday without being the only player with a grey army.

Ugly basing but painted

As time has gone on playing different lists and armies buying a model and painting it became too expensive and time consuming to do for every unit I wanted to test out. It didn't help that the people I played with felt the same so the bad habit stuck. Model rep became the norm and painting was left by the road side.
 
 Back in the present I have bought reinforcements for my Necrons which are currently boxed up while I play test the units, this makes sense to me as it saves me money on buying a kit twice if I give it the wrong guns or the unit just turns out to be sub par like the Vespids who will hopefully get a boost in the next T'au codex.

However as I played a 1000 point quick game on Saturday I was ashamed to see my force containing a mix of Necrons, T'au and Templars standing in for units I hadn't bought or built yet. This has prompted me to take a step back and admit I need to start working through some of my collection and not just in a basic paint job on everything so I can say it is painted. 

Looking at Mighty Simo's latest model it is stunning and I know I can't paint like this and it is purely down to the fact he paints on a regular basis and enjoys it. If I have a game with him I know everything he puts on the table is going to be painted and to a good standard while mine will be grey and most likely include some model rep.

On this I have decided that we have 8 months left until the end of the year so want to set myself a couple of goals:

Firstly I want to paint to completion 24 models. I know this seems a small amount but rather than say a skeleton is 1 model but a terrain piece is 5 everything is going to be worth 1 no matter what I paint.

Secondly I want to reduce the amount I am buying, I have tried buying nothing before and I have failed at it as every so often there will be something I want. To this end I am going to try and only buy a model after I have at least 2 models painted so I am making progress on the pile ( literally is a pile that has taken over the surrounding corner of the bookcase I kept it on).

Finally I want a display cabinet but until I have a decent selection of painted miniatures I am not allowing myself one as I hope this will push my painting skills as practicing is the only way I will get better.

Everyone loves Warhammer World's displays

If I can stick to these goals hopefully I will be on the road to catching Mighty Simo and his painting skills he claims can be achieved through practice and not blood sacrifices to the Gods as I suspected.

I apologise this post has gone on much longer than I had planned but does lead me nicely to my question for you faithful followers of Nurgle.

"Do you play an army of mismatched units before risking your hard earned money or do you paint everything up before allowing it to take the battlefield?"

Until next time remember you are never alone when you embrace Nurgle's blight. 


O'Shashar

Once more unto the breach

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

 

  "King Henry V", Act 3 scene 1 

 

Good afternoon and thank you for stopping at our dark corner of the warp. It has been a long dark winter and finally I am starting to see some more favourable weather to coerce me back to the hobby table and I do need all the help I can get at the minute.

 

Beware the spare time stealer in all his guises

 

As some of you may know Starwars: The Old Republic came out in late December and being a fan of Starwars and MMOs this was a bad combination and grabbed my spare time by the throat. However after just over a month playing I now have my main two at the level cap so won't need to play quiet so much to keep up with my guild ( though the all voice acting story really does make you want to play from start to finish in one session ). Now I hear you screaming at your monitor "What does this have to do with my beloved hobby? You rambling old fool get on with it!" 

 

Who doesn't love a rambling old man though

 

What this means is that I can now get back into the swing of things and this year I plan to work on many of my projects from the hobby corner. Especially as it has got to the point now where it has escaped from the corner by the sheer weight of unfinished projects. This combined with the sizeable box of Necron reinforcements, who have been waiting decent weather to be built and primed is causing my wife to question if I really need any more boxes of unbuilt toys.

Now the main focus of this will be split between my Necrons,  Tomb Kings ( the ones on my desk shake their bows in anger every time I play SWTOR ) and my terrain. Also with Blog Wars 3 in June I may take my Necrons out for a stroll as they haven't had nearly as much love as they deserve and the first Blog Wars was a good day.

 

Now I do have plenty of terrain built and painted and can field a nice variety ranging from some small home made stone walls up to my possibly too big shrine I built. However this doesn't stop me buying any terrain I see at a reasonable price and the latest purchase is one I have looked forward to owning ever since I saw it released but couldn't justify the price, but first you get to hear the tale of how it became ours you lucky devils.

 

As Mighty Simo said in his last post I spotted a box of terrain at our LFGS, truth be told I spotted this at the start of December but it was saved for a mystery customer However this month while having my almost daily peruse I noticed the box was still there. After unpacking it all I was told it had another two boxes with it I was impressed with what I saw ( why they didn't say "Woah O'Shashar that is saved for someone, get your mittens off it" is beyond me). 

The only trouble was it was still reserved but after a little convincing from myself and Dalinair the owner agreed that nearly two months was long enough and would let me know within the week if he longer wanted it. Later the same day it was ours at 40% off retail and was mostly built.

 

So what did I get? Well I got three GW pieces. The crashed Aquila lander, the Arcane ruins set and a Fortress of Redemption all for less than the Fortress costs on its own. I have already started on this but nothing major as mostly cleaning up the build, removing the Dark Angels symbols as this is for my Black Templars and I already have a paint scheme in mind and all being well February should be a busy month for me hobby wise and can treat all you Nurglings to.

 

This isn't mine but hopefully in the not too distant future mine will be just as painted

 

 

In the end we got £250 worth of assorted terrain from Games Workshop and Pegasus for £150 and split it three ways based on what people wanted to take ( it took an amazing display of willpower to not just keep it all). If you haven't seen the Pegasus terrain I recommend checking it out as it is priced similar to Games Workshop but the ones I have seen come prepainted & are cast as as one piece so is very sturdy.

 

Until next time remember, you're never along when you're the host to Papa Nurgle's concoctions.

 

O'Shashar

Into the New Year...

Hello and welcome back. I hope over the holiday period Papa Nurgle blessed you and you got everything you asked for! I have to say I feel pretty by blessed by Papa Nurgle this year as I got excellent gifts from my girlfriend and her brother. They are so good in fact I thought I would share a review of them with you.

OK, first up is something you may have seen Games Workshop release a couple of months back. It's the paint Station Plus. Direct from GW this comes in at £32. Now it is excellent for someone like me who doesn't have a desk to paint their models on or have a proper desk setup, but it is a little too pricey in my opinion. If your able to get it cheaper by shopping around I would say its worth a try or if you can get it as a gift from someone then all the better! The design is pretty good all the components fit in snugly and the quality feels pretty good. The water pots and paint palettes are better then I thought they would be.

The paint pots have different sized holes around the inner rim allowing you to suspend your brush within the water meaning you can leave it there while doing other stuff and it will get a good clean. The paint palettes have a dimpled surface, which makes it great for mixing paints as it keeps it all in the same area and when you loading your brush up you cna use the contour of the dimple to shape your brush! Some other handy features of the paint station is that your can stand your brushes up along the sides meaning that you done have to worry about them rolling around your desk and there are slots for your pots of paint to keep them in place. With this thing my painting area has never been so organised!

The present I got off my future brother in law was probably my favourite gift this Christmas. He bought me the game Zombies!!! Basically a game of making your way through a zombie infested city to a helipad to escape. The rules are really simples and not long at all, about a sheet of A4 in length. The figures are about 12mm scale, but are pretty well detailed. You get 6 different colours 'shotgun guys' and about 50 male and 50 female zombies. The figures are unfortunately exactly the same. You also get 32 city tiles and a 50 event cards. The art work in this revised edition has been revised and is really good.

Now on the game itself you can get hold of this for about £20 - 25, which I have to say is fantastic value. It allows between 2- 6 players so no one should feel left out and to be honest the more players you have the better, but remember there can be only one survivor! A game will last between 45 minutes to 2 hours depends on the number of players. There are also a number of expansions for this game as well, which I am already looking at doing seeing as the original has been so much fun to play.

And that's it from me this week, I hope you are all good this coming year and spread the blessings of our Plague Father. If you are he will look kindly upon you.