Jumpmaster repaints - Finished!

I've started, so I'll finish

Good day to you dear readers! Whilst the nerf bat has in some small way fallen on the Jumpmaster 5000 combo, I was in fact half way through finishing my third repaint. So in the best mastermind tradition I decided I was going to finish what I'd started and get my third Jumpmaster finished. 

 

Here it is, in all its glory! I'm a really big fan of the chequerboard, it gives it a retro feel. It's mostly down with my new bff, masking tape. But the smaller pattern is all free hand. So it's a nice mix of both. It's definately very striking compared to the previous 2 jumpmasters. The effects on the other 2 are much more muted than this. Ironically it's probably the easiest of the 3 (because of the masking tape) and the one that will catch the eye from a distance because of the colour contrast.

 

I highlighted the black as best I could (hopefully it shows up in this photo) as it draws your eye to the squares and tricks it into thinking the paint job is super good. At least, that's the idea!

 

The engines came out well again.  I think I've got this down, which sounds simple but actually isn't because of the 3 different planes on which the engine glow needs to appear the same. The first time I was constantly putting the paint in the wrong place because I couldn't get my forth perception right!

 

The hull is my trademark foam dusted paint effect, which has turned out quite nicely. Pick and pluck foam has been a revelation with these guys. I've used it on all three and it ties in really well. Here they are flying in formation:

 

And again, u-boating off into the distance. 

 

So there we are! If you wanna see how to magnetise like this, go here! Otherwise, tune in soon for more hobby related shenanigans! 

Double trouble update

 

Hello! An update of some fashion on the various 40k aspects of my hobby from this weekend. Firstly, I've submitted my list on time to Alex for Double Trouble, a 40k tourney with a twist! Basically you get randomly paired a partner each round and then fight against another partner. It's the first time he's run it, and should be great event! Stay tuned in the next week for a video run through of what I'm taking and why. 

 

Secondly, as you can see from this photo my forces were in action for a training game ahead of the aforementioned tournament on the 11th. Was obviously a training mission because we all had space marines. So at least 1 in 9 lists will be "good guys" in Power armour, though I imagine it's way more than that. Second time I've played 40k all year, went reasonably well. The dual nature of the missions as you rush to compete objectives is great fun. 

 

Thirdly, on submitting my list i realised that I do have a model to paint! This missile rack. My old ultramarines are taking a rocket launcher with them so that they aren't completely useless on the battlefield. Holding objectives and taking hull points! Yay! I used these guys in the practice game and there was something deeply satisfying about using my first painted models!

I've decided that if I enter the whole army into the painting competition, I might do a little before and after version of the tactical squad, comparing them with some extra howling griffons marines. Hopefully Alex won't mind. Now that all the lists have been submitted, Did anybody take up 

my challenge about using some of hire first painted models? I'd love to get a group photo on the day :)

Possible double trouble lists

Dear readers! I am slightly undecided on which configuration of howling griffons to take! Having pinned my colours to the mast in terms of using an old model or two, I will of course be taking space marines. Lucky for me, the howling griffons are a succesor chapter of the ultramarines, and in this case for me it has more than one level of significance. As already mentioned, the bad boys in blue represent the first models I ever painted. 

 

As you'll see, there are a couple of different configurations of army in these pictures. Basically, I probably can only afford 1 drop pod, so I'm torn between sternguard and another squad of bikes, or simply grav cannon centurions. The grav centurions and the bikes were both massive players for me at the last 2 Blog wars and I'm thinking that actually they will have proportionally more effect at 750. 

 

There is a way that I can squeeze both in, but it does leave me with not a lot of room for much else. I have to start sacrificing my speed and that is something that this force is reliant on. Lots of bikes, with a librarian on a bike making them all super scoring is sorely tempting, considering the objective nature of the missions. 

 

Another option would be to get rid of the scouts and thunderfire cannon to fit them both in, but again I think that they bring more to the table than a squad of sternguard. If I wanted to go really left field I could run the ultramarines on foot as legion of the damned. That might be quite characterful as well, something about thier unwillingness to die coupled with a 3++ save is quite appealing. 

Anyway, these were all the thoughts rolling round in my head whilst I listened to Man U secure a mighty 5th place last night. I've done some number crunching and most of these different building blocks fit together quite well, it's just the centurions. So over to you! Which unit that I've listed would you least like to see? How speedy do you think my force needs to be? Would you take legion of the damned? I look forwards to hearing your thoughts. 

Jump jump jump!

Another day, another blog article. Just kidding - sorry it's taken so long for an update! I've been quite busy, party with work as we get a new bishop, but also I really have just been enjoying reading my book! So there is a couple of good-ish reasons. 

 

I wanted to update you on my Jumpmaster painting progress. This is my second, and as you can see its now painted! The beady eyed amongst you will notice that it's not the same as the first one 

(viewable on this vlog here) and in fact uses a whole new paint scheme. As before, I ummed and arrr'd about what colour to paint it. However, this time I decided to go the purple and bought about 4 different colours of purple paint before really deciding on a style!

I eventually went for something not to dissimilar to my first Jumpmaster, with some vertical patterns and lines that corresponded to where the rest of the ship meets the crescent. However, this time the base couloirs were different, with a bleached bone crescent and central column, whilst the other bits were a gun metal grey. Brought together through a bit of washing and drybrushing, they are subtly different tones without being to obvious.  

You should also be able to see from the above picture that I went for a reflection on the windscreen. First time I've tried that, and I'm really pleased with how it worked out!

 

I wanted to try something a bit more freaky for the freehand design, and ended up going with this. It took me a couple of decent sessions to get this nailed on. It's not a flat area, but it also goes up and down at different places. So trying to do justice to that whilst also making a believable pattern was hard work! However, I'm very pleased with the result :)

I also painted the engine glow again. This process was a lot smoother second time around as I've learnt at which angle to hold (and not hold) the brush so that you don't get paint where you don't want it!

 

I'm actually more pleased with the other side (below),  it's a much smoother transition of colours and shape. From this angle you can also see what I meant about the bone and grey contrast. 

 

Overall, I'm really pleased with how this guys turned out. It's not airbrush quality, but I don't have an airbrush! The next step is that I'm going to start magnetising the ships onto new bases. That'll be good fun. I've never done it before, but I have a friend who has and he's been kind enough to help me understand what I need to do it! It's hard to explain but basically they will be at dynamic moveable angles and look super cool. 

Hobby hack: bases for X-wing

I got frustrated very early on in X-wing with the way the bases skid around the board of you breathe on them. I wanted to do something easy to fix this, that was nice and simple, but most importantly - cheap. 

Whilst whiling away a lunch break in wilkinsons (for my international readers it's the sort of place where you can get similar stuff of a decent quality without having to pay outrageous prices for a label. It's not a thrift store or pound shop, it's just pitching somewhere above that) I discovered some small rubber pads that might be quite useful. As you can see from the below picture, they are clear, and small enough that you can have 4 per base. 

I decided to give them a go and have since bought a second set. They are quite good, giving that extra bit of traction and helping stop things knock around when hit by a dice or nudged by a template. What's really good is that the are self sticking, so you can just drop them straight on.  However, my personal tip would be to secure them with superglue. They do tend to fall off otherwise. 

The main potential concern (although it's not come up ever) is the raised profile of the base. As you can see from this picture, it means that the base is slightly off the ground. Now, thankfully we aren't playing a true line of sight game, so I'm clearly not modelling for advantage. However FFG's rules state that you can't change the ships or base in any way. So there is the potential for somebody to call you out on it. 

Having said that, this game is Not a games workshop game and has a totally different community vibe. People are much more relaxed and agreeable than most of the other systems ive played. I suppose I'd just reccomend taking spares with you that don't have the feet on, just in case!

Overall, I'm gonna give this  4 out of 5 stars as a tip. It's massively cheaper than some of the other non slip stuff I've seen and is very simple to do. As noted, the only real problem is the raised height. 

Luke goes stripping!

Following on from a friends blog on stripping, I thought I'd offer my thoughts. To be clear, in this context stripping means removing paint from old models. It doesn't means removing clothes from young models. 

I decided to liquidate some old models that are just taking up space to fund other parts of my addiction the models in question were half painted or under coated black. I've actually unsuccessfully tried to sell these sister of battle before, but was unsuccessful. I thought I'd try stripping them down back to the metal before re-selling them. 

I'm using nail polish remover that does contain acetone, as I feel it gets a little more of the paint off. Following a tip from topher, I put them in a sealed jar and left them for about 2 weeks, giving the nail polish remover time to work its magic. 

My top tip would be to leave the jar full of liquid whilst you're cleaning down a model. Whilst holding a mode, take a toothbrush and dip it into the remaining fluid and then brush the paint off the model. Having a wet toothbrush dripping in nail polish remover is great for this sort of stripping. For some reason, it makes a massive difference and the paint comes off way eaiser!

These gals are all finished now, and will be sold in the near future. I think the hour that it's taken me to clean them up will drastically increase their value, they just look loads better. I'm really pleased with how they've turned out. Not bad for only my third or fourth time stripping!

Poe dameron and T-70 X-wing repaints

Dear reader! Today I'm sharing my paintjobs for my T-70 x-wings! For those not in the know, they are the ones used in episode 7: The Force Awakens. They are a slightly updated version of the older models used in the ironical trilogy, and this bears out in the X-wing miniatures game. 

Being a sucker for punishment, I really like painting fantasy flights ore painted models. (Even if I could be working thru my back catalogue of things to do painting wise!)

I own two T-70s and normally paint a duplicate fighter to signify that it's an ace. I've done it with the B-wings, A-wings etc. This time, I couldn't resist the chance to paint up Poe dameron's ride. A lot of people have done the same, in fact id go so far as to say that it's the most common repaint I've seen. 

I went for a reasonably classic look here, lightly drybrushing skavenblught dinge over the black to pick out the raised areas. I then used a couple of base coats of games workshop orange before following it up with blazing orange. And then I highlighted the orange with a mix of white and blazing orange. 

The engines are a breakaway from my normal orange glow (there was already enough orange!), with an ice blue through to white effect taking place in less than 5mms. Doing t quickly whilst the paint wasn't dry meant that it all blended in quite well. I added shiney gloss to the engines and the cockpit. 

For my second T-70 (although it was painted first!) I used my now standard paint scheme. Bleached bone all over, tin bits on the metal bits and then wash the whole thing in nuln oil. Following that, lighten back up with tyrant stone (basically a bone colour) to give a rugged, well loved feel to the hull. 

The red was a mecharite red base coat, the blood red, then inked, then brought back up with blood red. I ended up putting gloss varnish of the little wing markings as well :)

For the engines I used the standard red/orange/yellow/white combo that goes on most of my repaints. I'm really pleased with how this turned out, I feel like I've got painting small base ships down quite well now. Really excited about wave 8 now! Will be doing some repaints and vlogs of those bad boys, so keep an eye out for that!

Space Marine Bike HQ: Complete!

Huzzah! Knocked another little milestone on its head. I've finished what was one of my modest hobby goals for 2016. My space marine HQ choice. 

Hardcore power gamer that I am, this guy is modelled in a way that makes him ambiguous. Is he a captain? Is he a librarian? Could he be a chapter master? Or maybe even a high elf prince riding a dragon?* Who knows. 

Anyhoo, there are a couple of things with this guy I'm reasonably pleased about. The first is his cloak. I took the time to put a couple of extra layers of highlights onto his cloak. It's not amazingly different, but you can tell the difference when you see the model up close. 

The second is his elevated position. Whilst you can't tell because of my mad skillz, his front wheel isn't touching the ground. Not a lot, but enough that it raises his profile when compared to other bikers:

This has been achieved by a small clear piece of plastic, the type that are the sprue for flying base stands. I've covered it up with grass, but because it's clear plastic unless you actually know it's there it's really hard to tell. 

And finally, the sword. To indicate that it has "power" of some description (be that otherworldly or just a power sword - like i said I'm a wannabe power gamer) I painted several thin white coats in a lightning like motif across the blade. What's more, I then went back and put gloss varnish on just the lighting strike. A small detail to catch the eye, but one I'm pleased with. 

So there you have it! I'm giving myself a completed stamp for this bad boy! Hooray! Now, if only I knew people who played 40k......

*not this one

Battle Report: Howling Griffons vs Eldar

Earlier this week I played a guy called Ross at our club (Leicester sabres) for the first time. He had a lovely looking Eldar army, and I took my howling griffons. I didn't have as many bikes as I thought I would, partly because I don't own as many painted bikes as I thought I did!

My army consisted of:

Librarian: Psyker (Mastery Level 2); combi-grav; Space Marine bike 120

2 Space Marine Bikers: 2× grav-gun; + 1 Biker Sergeant (combi-grav; melta bombs) 108

4 Scouts: + 1 Scout Sergeant 55

• Land Speeder Storm: multi-melta 50

9 Tactical Marines: meltagun; lascannon; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combi-melta) 180

3 Space Marine Bikers: 2× grav-gun; + 1 Biker Sergeant (combi-grav; melta bombs) 129

9 Sternguard Veterans: 2× combi-melta; 2× combi-plasma; + 1 Veteran Sergeant (lightning claw) 275

• Drop Pod 35

Drop Pod 35

Drop Pod 35

2 Devastator Centurions: 2× grav-cannon and grav-amp; + 1 Centurion Sergeant (grav-cannon and grav-amp; omniscope) 250

1 Thunderfire Cannon: + 1 Techmarine Gunner 100

Inquisitor Coteaz 100

Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband

• Acolyte 4

• Acolyte 4

• Acolyte 4

• Death Cult Assassin 15

1,499 points

Not completely optimised, partly due to the lack of bikes but also due to my wanting to try the acolytes. I could even put them in a drop pod if I wanted to! Great for siezing objectives. Especially in a hammer and anvil set up. But we played kill points. And Ross had two wraightknights. So they weren't a lot of use!

A rough breakdown of Ross' list (I think) was as follows:

• Farseer on a jetbike
• 2x small squads of jet bikes each with a warlock
• 2x 3 man jetbike squad without a warlock
• 3 hornets. 
• 2 wraightknights 

So pretty min maxed. He got a bunch of psychic powers (including guide and eldritch storm) and I got psychic shriek for both, with the Coteaz getting preseince and the librarian getting forewarning (4+ inv) to round things out. I went into the game reasonably confident. It wasn't going to be easy, but at least it wasn't to difficult!

I was lucky enough to get first turn, and with a drop pod army took it!  Ross had mainly castled on to one side and I decided that I had to grab first strike, a wraithtknight and something else in the first turn.  So I went after his castle with my sternguard and centurions. And actually did reasonably well! 

All three of the units of jetbikes (including the farseer one) on this side of the Board failed thier moral check following my alpha strike. However, he rolled his flee numbers the right way around and they all stayed on the table. I killed a hornet and got this wraightknight down to one wound. 

In Ross' first turn he used the wraith knights to "D" off my grav centurions despite thier 4++ and the rest of his army took a big bite out of the sternguard  and the bikes who were with the librarian. I was also then charged by both wraightknights (one into a squad of bikes, and one into some sternguard). For the record "charged by both wraightknights" is not a experience I'm looking to repeat in the near future. However, to my glee the squad of four bikes (read, "my right flank") held a wraithtknight and that flank up for 3 successive combat phases. For thems that don't know what that looks like, here's a quick picture:

In my turn two I used what grav I had left to drop the other wraightknight and try and add further pressure onto where I was pushing in his deployment zone. I killed some more jetbikes, and thunderfire cannoned the life out of the farseer/warlock/jetbike.   My drop pod with added acolytes turned up and stayed out the way. Literally nothing for them to do. 

In his turn two Ross was beginning to consolidate and push back. My scouts got pinned down and then killed by the farseer, and the hornets continued to do nasty things. My inability to finish of the farseer and warlock was beginning to cost me dearly. 

Over turns 3&4 I didn't actually score a kill point, whilst the purple Eldar continued chipping away st my forces.  I made a bad call with my librarian, forgetting that I was withdrawing to leave the scouts to die so that I could have a go at the other wraightknight. I doubt it would have affected the result but it did mean they were in range of both hornets and able be brought down by them at the bottom of turn 3. 

Despite my thunderfire cannon being great value for money and a constant threat, my back line very quickly collapsed when the other wraightknight got in there. This a shot of the wraightknight charging into what remained of my flank:

And this one combat phase after the previous shot. 

This one tactical marine was pretty much all I had left by the bitter end :( poor guy. Oh, plus a 1 hull point left on a drop pod. The game ended as follows:

Me: 5 kill points and first strike. 

Ross: 10 kill points, slay the warlord and line breaker

After game thoughts

I didn't make a few key decisions in the early game that could have helped me in the longer term. The hornets were much nastier than I thought they'd be for example. I also probably should have put the tactical squad in a drop pod and suicided after one of the hornets on turn 1. Tbh that's all my sternguard ended up doing. 

Ross was a real pleasure to play against, I was worried I might be bringing to powerful an army but I think we were quite balanced on paper. We both hadn't played in a while and I think myself I particular was a little rusty. 

Army list changes

I think overall I'll need to go back to the drawing board and make this list a bit leaner if I'm going to use it again. Add more bikes maybe, or strip stuff out so I can put wyverns in. We will see!