eBay Bargains

There are wonderful bargains to be had on eBay and similar sites. This is an old style Rhino that I bought off 'Aunty-Bess' in Surrey for the princely sum of £7.20. I has been heavily modified and beautifully put together. All I did was cut off the missile launcher and give it a new paint job: it had been Dark Angel green.

I am well pleased with this model that will transport my Illuminati chosen marines across the battlefield.



Dangerous place, my back garden.

London Calling

The Lib-Con Government's new austerity measures and cutbacks in public spending are really starting to bite. I think they could spend a little more on road maintenance. Knightsbridge is starting to look a real mess.

Alien Hunter Team

I have finished the entire Alien Hunter Team, by Fenryll. The lady on the right has a sword and ray gun and the searcher on the left has a sensor pack, sword and holstered ray gun.

I have based them all on Black Cat semi transparent resin bases - aka, the crystal mountains of Mars.

Sci Fi Pulp - Bounty Hunter

This is an 'alien hunter' from the Fenryll range. I have adopted it as a bounty hunter for my space opera collection. I have used bright 'comic' colours to reinforce the pulp sci fi look.

Fenryll make wonderfully detailed and imaginative models but they willcast them with a thick base. Cutting the model off the base is challenging. In this case I lost a foot somewhere along the line. I decided to give him a hydraulic peg-leg. This had the advantage of pinning the model to the base as well as customising it.

"Moral for the day: there are no problems, only opportunities."

Can anyone spout bilge like that outside of a management consultancy or lunatic asylum, in so far as they can be distinguished, without wanting to throw up?

J.

More Battle Scenes

Drew Lord has taken my amateurish Paint Shop Pro pic-mix and given it the professional treatment - see above. It's very good.

Above is my reworking of my pic.




And above has had depth of field distortion and motion blur added.



And with the contrast turned down to give the impression that the plasma explosion is overloading the camera and shadows added. Ok, it's not as good as Drews - an ill favoured thing but my own.




I have taken Drew's interpretation and turned it into the view through a Tau thermal imaging sight - see above.

Tally Ho, Chaps!

OK, I have been playing with Paint Shop Pro, again.

A Thunderbolt flies through heavy flak to unload on target. The target is a generator suppling an energy shield pylon array; the pylons are just visible on the horizon. Orbital bombardment of the Tau positions can now begin.

Illuminati Terminators

I have turned out another Chaos marine unit for my Illuminati warband. I have put a great deal of effort into the bases. I think GW are wrong to stick with simple, rather bright bases. These are resin bases upgraded with slate chippings and green-stuff alien life. On the wargame table, bases are more visible than the miniatures

Chaos marines always look a bit camp to me so I go for bright colours.

Terminators have one really great ability - deepstrike. With no decent artillery, you need some way of pinning an enemy while the rest of the army minces across the table. The 2+ save helps as well :)

Da Grot Tanks

Da Grots 'ave been nickin' stuff again and building Grot Tanks.

Well actually, it wasn't the Grots it was me. It just had to be done. The first three have been assembled and primed with Grey Car Primer. The next two will be based on different hulls (scratchbuilt from Airfix bits) and the last one will be the Command Tank.

Anyone recognise the hull type used in these models? I have found an inexspensive source of these particular models.

Inquisitorial Codexes

Or should that be codices? I never know.

Anyway the Damonhunters and Witchhunters Codexes are up on the GW site here:

http://bit.ly/9E4gju

You will need to be signed in first before clicking and you will get the National page first - just choose a nationality and it goes away.

I have had a quick look through the Witchhunters. It is exactly the same except that it has been shortened by removing fluff, pics and additional bits, such as the extra scenario and the Aversaries army list.

Mongoose Judge Dredd Miniatures

Judge Dredd miniatures have gone on sale at the Mongoose site. The rules will be free but are not yet ready. The figures are £2 each which is reasonable, provided they are sourced inside the UK so postage is not aweful. A streetjudge is shown above.


A rogue psyker - a pyrokinetic.

A sky-surfer.


A desperado.

A scaly mutie.

Evelyn Vaccaro meets an Ork

From E3, Los Angeles - Evelyn is the one on the left.

Illuminati

I bought a series of 'standard' chaos marine some years ago and gave them a quickie paint job, which I have finally got round to upgrading. These are supposed to be 'recent' renegades, rather than the old Horus Heresy Traitors.

I like to concoct a back story for my armies as it helps me 'design' them; yes, I know, I am a very sad wargame geek but there are worse fates in life.

The back story of the Illuminati Warband is that they were once the Sundancers Chapter. Their origin was always a mystery, which caused them to be distrusted by the Inquisition. Matters came to a head on Sphactia.

The Sundancers specialise in commando and deep-strike tactics so a Sundancer battle group under Captain Menro was tasked with capturing a strategic bridge across an acid river before traitor forces could blow it, so that Imperial forces could break open the enemy’s defensive line in a surprise assault. They were promised that an Imperial Guard Armoured Spearhead would reach them in two days.

In the event, they held out for nine days against increasingly desperate traitor attacks but no loyal reinforcements arrived. After suffering heavy losses the Sundancers were forced to withdraw. Captain Menro stormed into the Imperial Guard command bunker to discover that there never was a plan for a relief force. The Sundancer attack was a feint to throw the traitors of balance while the real assault went in elsewhere. Lord Marshall Krakow added insult to injury when he informed Captain Menro that they were not informed of their role in advance as their loyalty was suspect.

Menro and his elite Terminator Squad stormed through the Imperial HQ complex killing everyone in their path. He surrendered himself to the justice of the Sundancer Chapter at their stronghold of Icarus and was acquitted because of the grievous insult offered to the Chapter by Lord Krakow.

As far as the Sundancers were concerned the matter was closed, so it cam as a complete shock when the Blood Angels led an Inquisition strike team in a suprise raid against Icarus. Only a few hundred Sundancers managed to escape off planet, Menro among them. He swore revenge against the Imperium, and the Blood Angels in particular.
The Sundancers broke into renegade warbands, one led by Captain Menro, now Warlord Menro, who carries the skull of Lord Krakow on the front of his helmet and sports a Blood Angel Leader’s helmet on his trophy rack. On his back is the Blood Angel cloak he took as a trophy, the rips from Sundancer bolter fire untended.

Menro’s Warband is known as the Illuminati as they claim illumination about the true nature of the Imperium and the galaxy.




Below are some of the possessed marines serving in the warband. The bases are ‘infected’ resin models from Scribor (with a couple of additions made from ‘green stuff’).



Launching himself into the air in berserk rage.


Blind Pew and his mate, who is usually in two minds.


Ugly so in so.


Still thinks he's a dancer.


'Is this a dagger that I see before me?' - No, it's my left arm.

Evil Alien Temple Priest - Space Opera

This is one of those painted in China figures. I think I got it from EM4. Still, the base is all my own work.

The Crucible - Hammer's Slammers

My complimentary copy of the Crucible has arrived. This is not a review as I am one of the co-authors. It is beautiful! John Treadaway, my co-author, is a professional graphics designer and by God it shows. The Book is in hardback, two hundred large (A4ish) pages, each in colour and illustrated. How the hell, Andrew at Pireme turns this out for £25 escapes me. It is one hell of a bargain.

It is all the material in Books one and two, plus material we published in Miniature Wargaming plus lots of new stuff. There are technical cards for the troops and player aid card sections. Kevin Dallimore contributed a chapter on painting and modelling. Kevin painted many of the models used for the illustrations and he is a superb artist.

This is it, the definitive guide to wargaming armoured cavalry warfare in the universe of David Drakes Hammers Slammers, which IMHO is the finest military science fiction ever written. I know John T is of the same opinion.

I have posted pics of a few pages below. The colour balance got screwed but I have more or less fixed it with Paint Shop Pro.

Enjoy - I have.

John Lambshead

PS You can find more card downloads and painting guides on the official Hammers Slammers website on my sidebar on the right.

PPS The pics are high res. They can be blown right up to read the pages.

The Lost and the Damned

I keep a copy of the old Eye of Terror Codex partly for the pretty pics but mostly for the Lost and Damned Codex. This provides a codex for an Imperial population in rebellion during the 13th Black Crusade. The Codex is way out of date and needs some modification for 5th Edition 40K but essentially this just involves using modern equivalents from the current Chaos Marines and Imperial Guard Codices for the earlier units from the old codices.

My Sunday afternoon opponent, Shaun kindly agreed to play me in a 1500 point match.

SCENARIO: During the 13th Black Crusade the Imperial City of Borstal falls under the control of the Arch Heretic, John the Diseased. The inscrutable Eldar Warlock, Shaun, mounts a raid on Borstal to recover 'something'. John the Diseased, advised by two chaos Marines from the Warriors of Mayhem Warband, moves to block Shaun's advance at the Boulevard Imperial.

First my army.


I had two HQ Slots. The first is an Arch Heretic = an Aspiring Sorcerer from the Chaos Codex; he is the guy in the middle with the bad skin.. The second slot was filled by two Chaos Aspiring Champions.


My Elite Choice was a squad of Derek the Damned's big Muty gang upgraded with Chaos firearms.


My first Troop Slot was filled by Leonard's Leaping Muties (cavalry) summoned from the sewers where they had been hunting alligators.


My second was a traitor squad of Faceless Ones, so called because they have hidden their face from the false Emperor.


And my final Troop Choice was a Sniffle of Plague Zombies - so called Imperial Loyalists who had been graced by Grandfather Nurgle.


The Fast Attack choice is filled by Chaos Hounds: Note these are not Khorne Hounds but simply beasts (cavalry)



Finally, I had three Heavy Support Slots filled by Leman Russ battle tanks.

And so to battle.





The tree-huggers got first turn and launched a double envelopment attack. They pinned my cavalry and stunned my tank on my right flank and moved melta armed infantry onto my left.


I shot up his HQs in the centre, killing a few and pinning them. My Leapy Muties got in a long range charge on the melta-eldar and consilidated onto the firepoint behind. The zombies shambled around getting nowhere.


On the right flank I destroyed the Wave Serpent: Unfortunately, the tree-huggars inside all got out OK. Swooping Hawks wiped out my Chaos Hounds, the survivors fleeing from the field.

However, the battle turned on my left flank. The leapy muties wiped out the building garrison and consilidated towards the Eldar HQ building in the centre, supported by the big muties. My tanks blasted the Eldar in the centre, pinning the leaders and destroying a unit armed with heavy anti-tank weapons.

The tree-huggars continued their attack on my right flank. the swooping hawks attacked the zombies, who wiped them out. The winged hero failed to destroy my tank, which was a sitting duck, when his grenade failed to go off (those damned 1 die rolls).

We treated the grenade failure as an omen and the Eldar called it a day, fading away.

Another victory for the forces of evil (cue Vincent Price to laugh).