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Warhammer 40,000 – Real Daemons Of Nurgle

My Dragon Rampant force is a good solid start to my Nurgle force but you knew I would not hold out long before buying more stuff for it.  In this instance I found a good cheap deal on a Start Collecting box and just thought that it must be fate.

Plague Bearers and Nurglings are always useful, if only to truly set the theme of the army.  This set of Plague Bearers I have made up with the command group any others I pick up along the way I will likely make up as a filler for the unit, so just to boost them up to 20 or 30 models.

I suspect a couple of Heralds of Nurgle will be guaranteed picks in the finished force, as Chaos Characters can summon my other Daemons onto the battlefield, meaning they don’t have to walk through a bullet storm to get to the enemy…

The box also contains a unit of Plague Drones, again I made these with full command, as I have a second set already, that I plan to use to bring the unit up to 6 miniatures.  I have no idea if these are any good or worth the points.

Finally, I now own two Foetid Bloat Drones. The first is made, and now undercoated, the second awaits my attention.  Slightly ‘off theme’ as its Nurgle but can be found in the Chaos Space Marine list of my Index not the Daemon section.  With both the Nurgle and Daemon keywords I am hoping some of the Daemon linked abilities may give these guys a boost.  If not, they are still likely to get used, as they will be one of the very few shooting units I can field.

Now, I must get some painting done…

Warhammer 40,000 – Dragon Rampant Army Gains The Mark Of Nurgle

I have a small army sat in the shed at the moment that happens to fit two genres at the moment.  It was planned as a Dragon Rampant 30 point army that was themed on worms and snails (with a bit of creative thinking).

Today though it is a Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Daemon army which has the Mark Of Nurgle.  I just happen to have 30 smaller figures, mainly worms and snails but including 6 infected men. That’s a unit or two of Plague Bearers.  A few larger snails, they can be Heralds of Nurgle.  A huge worm, obviously a Greater Daemon.  I have added onto the Dragon Rampant force by including a large plague figure from Mantic Games as a Daemon Prince. Finally, a large unit of 20 Pox walkers (currently the only unit that is represented by the correct models) rounds off the force.

Its currently coming in at about 50-60 power and very unlikely to be well balanced or effective in this format.  It does however, let me get into playing more games, and that in itself will help me better understand the specific rules that our recent Space Marine Vs Space Marine games have missed out.

Wargames Table – Upgrade – Ceri Design

One of the Kickstarter projects that I have backed twice now sent out my items this week.  Ceri Design is a small, UK based company, that makes and sells felt gaming mats.  I have two mats from their earlier Kickstarter, a 3×3 cobblestone mat and a 3×3 simple street mat.  Their latest kickstarter was to fund larger mats, this time in a 4×3 foot size.

I went for 2x Barren Ground mats so that they would cover a 6×4 foot table.  They do that very well even though they are not specifically designed to go together as a 6 foot cover.

A very nice, generic, land image with a fairly muted colour scheme.  Slightly greener than it seems when photographed but this will easily fit in with most of my scenic terrain.  At £22 each (£44 for a 6 foot table) they are much better priced than lots of the other mats on the market.

Just my opinion but I do find that a lot of the Vinyl mats on the market are very shiny. That gloss finish makes them more difficult for me to use as the reflected light off them causes some smaller figures and scatter terrain to be harder to see.  This is notable in some photographs that flash back when trying to focus on the details of items placed on them.  Ceri’s felt mats are a soft matt finish so don’t have these issues.

Warhammer 40,000 – Librarian

This chap has been in my unpainted but undercoated pile so long that a large amount of the paint to his hood and arm had chipped off in a number of places.  Its a good job he was a Librarian then as I didn’t have any matching paints that could be used to touch up these areas.  A classic blue would do to hide the damage and mark him out as a Psyker.

These old metal GW figures are great.  Such detail and lots of nice touches.  Small books and chains, pouches and skulls.

He had lost his staff top many years ago and I had replaced it with a back banner pole with the plan to make him a standard bearer for a terminator command unit.  As these don’t exist any more, and as no ancient can be outfitted in terminator armour in the Index I have, he has reverted to his original role.

That staff will therefore be his Force Weapon and I will have to find another Ancient to use in the army…

If anyone knows what his staff head was it would be nice to be reminded.  Also his Combi-Bolter is of the Generic style used back then but I have no idea what profile this used to be.  I will be using him as a Melta-Bolter, which I think I can fire both profiles of each turn, unless I am reading the rules wrong…

Warhammer 40,000 – Game Two

With most of the figures rebased or repainted that I need to get a small force on the table it was time for game number two.  My first game was a small skirmish against Veganman.

My Second game was to feature a proper force which we decided should be constructed using 100 Power per side.  I planned to use a Land Raider so dragged out my newest vehicle (purchased in the early 2000s) whilst Coronasan brought along a relic from an earlier age…

Thankfully he could not field his raider with all the other Blood Angels he had in the box.  He did manage to get a very large flier out for our first bash.  Almost a flying Land Raider, his Stormraven Gunship proved to be too heavily armoured for the force I brought along.  In the end I ignored it as best I could and focused my fire at other, seemingly softer, targets.

Those softer targets still proved much tougher than expected.  With all weapons having a chance of damaging any vehicle I thought that we would see more smoking wrecks but all our vehicles proved to be quite resilient.

Even my Landspeeders lasted longer than in previous rulesets.  Often these light skimmers would be destroyed with the first shots of a game.

Infantry proved to be quite resilient as well even with these new rules allowing units to move, shoot and then charge all in one turn.

As always we ended the game with a host of questions that our next game would hope to answer but also with the thoughts that 100 power may be too many for an average evenings play.  Next time 75 Power methinks…

Warhammer 40,000 – Basing And Rebasing

So the updates to the Space Marine force continue.  So far I have updated some paint jobs and even painted a few new miniatures.  The task now at hand is deciding on what to do with the basing to ensure it looks a little less tired and links the old and new units together.  Basing I find ever so boring and as such I have never developed many skills in this area.  If I only had 5 or 6 models to base I might make more effort but with the current count standing at 35 and set to rise I just need something easy and quick.

Most of the older models have a thin coating of an old coal dust flock that I seem to have lots left of (I wonder why I never used it again…)

To keep things simple, and use up some more of that ancient flock, I have mixed in a few small stone chips and some sand.  Applying it in a much thicker layer has allowed me to rebase without having to scrape off the older medium.

The Landspeeder has had the same treatment although that had a thicker original coat to start with.

Not all of the base needs recovering this time round.

Not Great but not terrible.  At least they look like they come from the same force now.

Sadly a few of the more colourful elements had a different flock used.  Don’t ask me why…  I may have to remove a few bases and start again on these.  At least its only a couple of figures.

The real pain is having to remagnetise the Landspeeder bases if the posts wont come cleanly out of the original bases…

Warhammer 40,000 – First New Unit In Years

Only one photo so far but I have dragged out a few figures from the box of base coated Blue/Grey marines and finished them to a basic level so that they can be played with.

It brings the number of painted, jump pack equipped, Marines to 16 (10 Assault Marines, 5x Veteran Vanguard Marines and 1x Chaplain).

I haven’t picked out more than one shoulder pad, jump packs, weapons and skull motifs on the armour.  All of these are bare headed so their skin tone helps to add more colour to the unit.

I am still unsure what to do with these bases, as I will need to do about 30 of them in one go to get all the infantry updated.  When I do get them done I will begin to see more of an ‘army’ look to the force that, at present, is a collection of very separate looking units.

Warhammer 40,000 – More Shading And Upgrading

It often makes me smile to see my early painting efforts and what I had previously decided was ‘ok’ back in the day.  The recent updating of my old Space Marines has reminded me of this on a number of levels.  Thankfully a simple ink wash is often enough to hide some of the worse parts and, as always, adding a touch of shade makes them fit in closer to my current style.

Terminators in their original state.

Before and after a coat of Army Painter Dark Shade.

Unit refreshed and drying.  Bases will be updated when I have decided what to do with the original Blue/Black ones on the Tactical Marines in the back of the photo.

One thing I never added to my vehicles in past rule sets, as they never seemed worth it, are Hunter Killer Missiles.  In this rule set they are more effective so a rummage through the bits box comes up with 3x missiles but only one base connector. A couple of other random parts work well as alternates.

Again, a simple paint job. Black base coat, very light dry brush with silver and pick out lens and LED on control box.  Magnets to the bases allow me to fit and remove it to help remind me when this one shot weapon has fired.

 

Warhammer 40,000 – Preparation Progress 

Some of my painted 40K figures were base coated with an old Games Workshop blue grey colour spray paint.  Nothing special these days, but this was done back when GW only did white and black.  For a year or so they tried to release some other colours but these didn’t sell so were discontinued.  About 10 years later they are now back selling a wide range of colours.  NOT ONE OF THESE COLOURS MATCHES THE ONE I ORIGINALLY USED THOUGH!

What that means is I cannot add figures to the units. If I want to expand the Army I have to find a way to mix colours without making it look like they are just badly matched versions of the same colour…

Originally I can recall that I had a spray can of the blue/grey colour and a can of a yellow. The result was a Space Marine Army that had some yellow troops and some blue.

To make the force look more unified, and to allow me to add new troopers, I have decided to add some yellow touches to the original blue troopers so that any new troopers can be painted in a yellow colour that I have found to match the original yellow base coat.

I am sure that I can convince myself that the Chapter was originally liveried in blue but changed their armour colour to yellow after some significant event or action.  Its only me that needs to be convinced so it doesn’t need to be to detailed. That said I may feel prompted to think up some sort of history for them…

So, the veteran’s helmet becomes yellow. Originally he had a bare head with a dodgy chestnut ink wash that gave him a skin tone that looked almost wood varnished.

They will never get more than a simple paint job as I have an aversion to painting GW plastic figures.  Some details are easy to pick out but others are moulded at a slight angle and almost blend into the lower layer.  I like clear lines to follow, if you know what I mean…

Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition. 

With a slight pause in my hobby activity, while I was on holiday, Games Workshop caused a little bit of news with the release of a new edition of Warhammer 40K.  The eighth edition of the game takes it back to a more simple rule set and changes a few things to make it appear, at first glance, easy for new players to dive in.

I am certainly not a new player, but I have been ‘out’ of 40K for a fair number of years. We tried 7th edition 40K for a couple of games but it had little that was new enough to keep us hooked.   Age of Sigmar managed to hold us longer as it was very different from the normal, repackaged, Warhammer Fantasy game of previous editions.

8th edition 40K looks to be more like Age of Sigmar in its simple approach.  I picked up a Primer and Index for my old Space Marines just before I left for holiday and have pondered it for the time that I was away.

So, now that I am back in the shed, I have a 100 power point game planned for this week.

To prepare I have looked out my ancient painted figures, and even managed to run through a quick (30 power point) skirmish game with Veganman, to get a grip on the basic rules.

Some of the older paint jobs leave me slightly uncomfortable so I plan to touch up a couple of bits here and there.

How many other folks out there painted their original Space Marines in a Camo colour scheme? (Own up Coronasan as I know you had a few…)