Apoc Schtuff- Retropective

So a couple of years i was chatting to a mate about Apoc and big games, now this guy had a bigger collection than anyone else I know but he turned round and said he wouldn't play an Apoc game as he didn't have any units, I asked him what he meant by this, as with just what's in this pic I've got 1 formation, and I know he had more than this back. What I think he meant was that he didn't have a Super Heavy to throw out and play with, as he does like his one model to rule them all armies. At this point I was working on the Poxy Proxy Predator and hadn't converted it to the PP Banesword as I hadn't seen how much bigger it was. It may seem like I'm rammberling here, and when you look at the length of the photo it's possible that I am, my point is Apoc is not just about Super Heavies it's about what you have in your collection, but having something big in your pocket doesn't hurt.

So as you can follow on the Poxy Proxy Predator label I made my own super heavy when I was made redundanat in 2009, which was also when I got back into 40k gaming as well. As the guys I play against most often are only building up their collections it's going to be some time before I can get a game in with it I think

And lastly we have my latest addition to my Apoc collection, at least that I don't need the Apoc to see whats in there, this is my Predator Assassin Formation made from the Baal, TL Las-Cannon and the Chaos Pred. These are all mk2 Predators from ebay, i was rather lucky to find the Las Cannon kit for sale and got it cheaply as well, thankfully it came with both Las Cannon and Heavy Bolter Sponson weapons so I was able to arm both of The Lions Blades Preds with sponson weapons. All 3 tanks have now been named, Luthers Choler for Y Geiriadur, The Lions Far Reaching Arm for the TW Las cannons and Knowes Fury for the Baal. And with this post coming out on 31-8-13 you might be wondering why I've not talked about the new releases, that would be because I can't get on the fething GW web site to drool over them!

Tank Time

The other week I won a Mk2 Predator kit on ebay, it came with the twin linked las cannon turret, all the bits and both the las cannon and heavy bolter sponons, and with the Baal Pattern that I already have that I had to put a Tiger turret I thought I can get 2 old school predators in my main army with little or no problems. The only problem I did have was all my mk1 Rhinos are in use so I had to find a mk1 on ebay and make sure I won it before I could begin, can't belive people still put these things up as rare, they where in production for years, they're not rare just oop. So once it arrived I removed the hatches and added the plates from the Predator kit, bit off fileing( take care when fileing old lead metal minis) and green stuffing to fill any holes and I was ready to spray

Filling with green stuff and turret on. Currently sprayed gloss black, will get it finished early next week.

The 2 predators I've been working on today, got the 2nd set of sponsons off and cleaned today will paint them up tomorrow along with the guns, 2 las-cannons and 2 heavy bolters and with the chaos pred I'll have an apoc Predator Assassin Formation.

The Lions Far Reaching Arm, tw las-cannon, and The Rage Of Calaban, tiger turret with scratch built auto cannon. 90% done, got the 2nd set of sponsons cleaned and painted the Arm is getting full las cannons and the Rage is getting the heavy bolters. Paint job wise I'm trying to get it so I can run the Chaos Pred in here in an Assassin Formation for any Apoc games, hence the red bolt and rivit heads onthe top and front plates. I'm going to finish off here and go home and put the sponsons together then I'm off to see my youngest as it's her birthday today and she's cooking tea tonight for all the family, I know she drops in every now and then so on the off chance she reads this today, Happy Birthday Case!

Deathwing Knights All In One Place

So after finishing this ,seemingly, mammoth and expensive project (nearly £100 on a single 5 man squad, so glad I'm single and don't have to explaine that to a girlfriend/wife) I thought I'd gather all the photos into one place so people could see the progression from old school Dreadnought to 6th ed Deathwing Knight

Starting with the finished product and the begining.

Compontents and 3 stripped dreads ready to be painted

So 3 of my painting and assembly stages

The 3 of the 4 types that made up the old school Dreadnought range; Long legged wide body, short legged wide body and short legged narrow body, don't have a longed legged narrow body. Shields and maces base coated at this point.

So I wanted the arms to be easy to get on and off for transport, I didn't like the idea of constantly re glueing the arms every time I take this unit to a game so I added magnests to the arms and the shoulder plates on the dreads, there is a nice little hole that a dowl on the weapon or had fitted into and the magnets I bought fitted nicely into those with the help of some green stuff so the magnet didn't vanish inside the body of the dread, I then added green stuff to hide the magnets

So the 90% stage, this was before I'd magnetised the arms. I had just finished the Land Raider and wanted to show off a bit.

Forge World shoulder pads added and green stuff blacked out this was nearly it, it was a happy day.

Done and dusted, now onto the next 5 and the 2 Predators and the Chaos Guard for my Fallen. I'll still most likely have done another 5 before I get round to starting my Eldar.

3 Weeks Of Ridding, Work And I've Finially Completed A Project!

So over the last 3 weeks I've not actually been doing nothing on the hobby front, I have been working hard, but I have had difficulty getting online to blog about it as a frined of mine wants to loose some weight and has been dragging me around the North West on my days off on a bike.

I've had a couple of games and have been running a Deathwing Army in them, at one point this is what I rolled. I know by the law of averages that it should happen every now and again but it was a surprise to actually see it.

The Land Speeder Tornado and Typhoon have been painted up and are ready to be tried out on the table top. I really like the look of the Typhoon with the missile pods underslung, if I get anymore I think I'll do it that way again.

So one of the Deathwing games I got in I put this guy down as a Sgt a couple of the guys suggested I redo him as a Terminator Chaplin, so a quick scoot through the bits box and a re-paint and he was good to go

My re-working of models carries on. I dug out the 2 Missile Launcher squads I have, Glorious 1000 and Lions Blades and started to re-paint them. So far I've got the Space Crusade ML done up in The Lions Blades colours but have to yet to start to on the other squad to make them Glorious 1000. I also got another squad of Terminators to make up a short fall I had in a squad of scratch builds. When the bottom photo was taken I'd dropped the army under my chair. The DA Veteran has had a little bit of work done on him, I've added a small chain blade taken from the Tartarus Pattern terminator kit and am using it as a chain knife, could do with finding another one and seeing if I can make a pair.

Last but by no means least here are my Deathwing Knights, so far useless on the table, but I'm going with the theory that they know they aren't finished yet so aren't performing to their full capacity. I ordered the Forge World Deathwing shoulders as I said I would on payday ( payday took a fecking long time coming I can tell you!) and had by that point magnetised the arms, all that was left to do was paint the green stuff and the pads and fit them. So far I haven't had a game with them since I finished but everyone is impressed with them that's seen them. Now where can I get another 5 of the short legged chucks...

WIP Since July 25th

So with the, franking, amazing weather we've been enjoying in my little corner of England the last few weeks (I have a better tan now than when I got back from Spain) and a very good friend of mine dragging me out to put some more miles in on my push bike, I've not really been in much to get any hobby work done also I've been waiting on a shipment of magnets from Hong Kong and it's a 5 week month so money is being budgeted carefully and with Space Marine coming at the end of this month as well and a birthday and my work place pension kicking I'm not in a great place to be buying schtuff right now and my mind is on other things.

So this is the first squad of the 72nd Shadow Highlanders in full, clean colours, of note is the comms guy with a blue helmet, not to sure if I'm doing this to show scavved gear or just a specialist trooper.

This is the same unit with the nuln oil wash applied and one of my Deathwing Knights in the background for scale.

So when the magnets arrived I put them to use by magnetising the weapons on the Land Speeders, I'd been talking to someone on Facebook and they'd mentioned that the Maori soldiers used to scaving German machine guns as they perfered the noise that they made when fired over the British guns and I thought well why is the Assault cannon always chin mounted? Surely the Tech Marines would have worked out how to swop the weapons around if the pilot and gunner wanted them like that. Luckly I had the Assault Cannon from my Bjorn Conversion that I gave to a mate so I added a magnet to the gunners side and another under the chin of the Speeder and on to the top of the Heavy Bolter before I started on the Typhoon.

The Typhoon Missile pods are mounted in an underslung position as I think that they look better down there. have yet to get them painted and sitting right as I need to do some more green stuffing on the pods and struts to get it right

And lastly we have the Deathwing Knights project up to 97.5% completion, come on payday so I can order those bloody Forge World Deathwing Paldrons. I've magnetised all the arms( oooh they rotate was one comment last night when I played with them for the first time) and green stuffed the joints to hide the magnets, when I start to paint these sections I think they'll just be in black. So by mid September I should have this unit finished as well as the Land Speeders and my 2nd squad of Guard as well as the new Marine Codex.

Future projects are a squad swop with the Missile Launchers as the The Glorious 1000 has the Space Crusade Missile Launchers and The Lions Blades have the current Missile Launchers, after that I'm hanging fire on anything till after the Marine Codex comes out, I might just be buying the AA tank but so far nothing else is stnading out to me from the leaks

My Diry Little Secret

Yeah, I sometimes feel like I'm hiding a problem...