Bearers of the Word

My final army that I intend to work on this year will be my Word Bearers. Chaos space marines we're what originally got me into this hobby and I still remember clumsily daubing regal blue onto my first chaos marines when I was 11 (some would say my painting hasn't advanced much from there). My chaos marines have been through various incarnations since then, first night Lord's, then Black Legion and Sons of Malice before I've finally settled on Word Bearers. The excellent Word Bearers trilogy by Antony Reynolds was what converted me to the teachings of Lorgar and is well worth a read if you get the chance. The fact that the Hours Heresy series has them as the original traitors is even better! Plus it helps that a member of my gaming group collects the hated sons of guilliman...

I'm keeping the goal easy with these and only aiming for 1000pts this year, plus with space marines being elite troops the model count won't be as extreme as my moon clan grots.

My aims behind this force are for it to consists initially of marines on foot supported by Daemon Engines and mobs of cultists and daemons. In my mind they implacably advance chanting verses from the book of Lorgar, led by a fiery Dark Apostle. To achieve this my first 1000pts will consist of:

1 Dark Apostle (first choice for Word Bearers!)

1 Aspiring Champion 

10 x Word Bearers, aspiring champ with powerfist and plasma pistol

20 Cultists ( because word bearers without cultists should be illegal)

10 Daemonettes 

5 x terminators with powerfists. 1 with heavy flamer

1 x Chaos Decimator with seige claw and butcher cannon

Thats roughly 1000pts and represents a pretty good variety of stuff to paint. We've got heavy armour, a walker, some daemons and basic humans so should keep me interested. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. Not having played chaos for years or even owning the codex I'm going to need all the pointers I can get! 

Something stirs within the woods - Forest Dragon WIP 2

Work continues on my Forest dragon whilst I wait for the goblins I've ordered here to arrive. 

As you can see I'm almost finished blocking in the main colours. For those that care these are the colours and steps completed so far:

1) Undercoated with chaos black spray (thinks its abaddon black these days)

2) The scales and rougher parts of the skins are painted in Loren Forest

3) Horns and other bony protuberances were based in Rakarth Flesh. 

4) Smoother skin and wings was painted with a mix of Loren Forest and White Scar

5) Mouth and tongue based with mechrite red (an old base paint I still have)

Next steps for me are generally shading, highlighting and tidying up the model as a whole but what you see there is a basic approximation of the how the beast will look when it's fully painted. Hopefully I'll have it finished before the goblins arrive but who knows...

40k Salamanders...again.

So, A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

No wait, that's not right. It's been done before. Much like this army (see it's all loosely connected, or, you will see by the end I hope). 

Let's start at the beginning. Back in 2008 I decided to begin a Space Marine army. My second (if you can count the Ultramarines I painted as a 13 year old back in 2nd edition). 

My eyes were drawn quickly to Salamanders, whether or not it was the paint scheme, back ground. Whatever (it was the paint scheme). Within that year, I feverishly bought as much as I could. 

If I say so myself, I was proud of this army. I painted it was and it's probably some of my best paint jobs I've done (I was especially proud of my Dread and Captain). 

However, as an army it was also very slow to paint, owing to my lack of spare time and other armies and projects. (I have a rather large Ork army I shall perhaps show one day). and I played it even less, having it appear on one games day outing and one, very, very unlucky doubles Tournament. 

So in 2013, I decided to sell my army up. I was spring cleaning, they hadn't been out of storage in 2 years, and they weren't the only army to go.

 I received a fair price for them and my mind was cleansed. I didn't think about my Salamanders for 3 years...

Fast forward to 2016 and modellers guilt sets in. We've all known it and had it. The 'what if' moments; 'I wish I'd built this', 'I wish I'd not got rid of that'.And for me it's my Salamanders. I don't regret anything I've got rid of or sold. My Salamanders I deeply regret. 

It took me a long time, but I was able to track down the guy I sold them to. He was very polite and I explained my situation but he didn't wish to part with them. And you know what? that's his right. I'm not here to moan about the guy, I gave up my claim to the army when I sold it, regardless of how much I missed them. 

So in 2017 June when 8th edition of 40k. We all looked up and took notice of the new Primaris Marine. 

...My wallet and heart also took notice. (So did my wife, but she's been kind enough to know when to reign me in and when to let me go, this instance was a latter situation). 

So it's January 2018 and this is where we've got to. This is the first in a series on my new Salamanders. I've done some painting already: 

This army is all Primaris, all the time. Next time I'll drop a projected army list, as well as my Christmas haul (in which my wife shows how much she supports me and this plastic crack hobby).

I'll also be adding a few other blogs on, about opinions on the meta in game, other projects.

If you want to get in touch, drop a comment below or follow me on instagram @bigbot70 where I usually post nerd related gubbinz.

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Malign Portents - The Muster Begins

Now some of you may be aware of something called Malign Portents that's about to start for Age of Sigmar. Im really looking forward to this fleshing out the lore of the setting as so far fluff has been pretty scarce (in my opinion). Fingers crossed this is the first of many such events for AOS and that GW can really develop the lore.
Now back to business. The reason for today's post is this:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/01/13/malign-portents-the-muster-beginsgw-homepage-post-1/

Rather conveniently for me the Destruction harbinger is none other than a moon clan shaman. As such I think it would be rude of me not to at least have a stab at achieving the muster, plus it'll get me well on the way to achieving my aim of 1000pta of moon clan this year. My only problem is that, as yet, there is no start collecting box for the Moonclan, requiring me to think out side the box (see what I did there?). Looking at the other start collecting sets they seem to generally consist of a core unit for the race, some cavalry or special unit, a leader, and then maybe a big nasty or chariot. With this in mind I think a moon clan start collecting would look something like this:

Moonclan warboss
20 Moonclan grots
3 fanatics
Mangler Squigs

So sticking to the muster requirements the aim is to get this painted by 10th February....bit daunting but let's give it a go. Let me know what you think, what would you put in a moonclan start collecting? Are you also participating in the muster for Malign Portents?

Something stirs within the woods - Forest Dragon WIP

So today I wanted to show you what I'm currently working on:

Ive wanted to own a dragon for years. They're the archetypal fantasy monster for me, even better when it's the mount for an Elven Lord. Yes, even though this is the Carmine Dragon model I've decided that I'll be using it as a forest dragon (at least whilst it has it's warscroll!). I'm intending to use the old Wood Elf Noble on Eleven Steed model as the basis for the rider but as things stand am slowly painting the dragon. One thing I didn't realise....the damn thing has an awful lost of spikes and spines to paint....

Wanders of the Hidden Paths

Continuing with the theme of posting what models I intend to complete these year we move onto my ongoing collection of Wanderers (formerly Wood Elves). I originally started collecting the Wood Elves way back in 2002 during the 6th edition of Warhammer Fantasy as it was known then (and also when all of this around us was fields *shakes walking stick*). I played a few games with the Elves but was more into 40k as more people were playing that in my FLGS at the time and it was easier to get a game in as a result. This focus on 40k continued when I stopped going to the store for games and started gaming regularly with a small group of friends (who I may yet invite to contribute to this blog!) and for years my Wood Elves sat in a case forgotten and gathering dust.

Then came the End Times and the Warhammer World ceased to be, replaced by a new game Age of Sigmar. It wasn't until the release of the generals handbook that our gaming group began to take an interest in the game but pretty soon they all began to collect small armies (Seraphon, Free Peoples, Chaos Daemons, Fyre Slayers and Duardin). Remembering my Wood Elves I got them out of storage and finally began working on them again so I could have a viable force for use in the odd game here and there with others in the group.

My collection of Wood Elves includes quite a few of the old metal models (thank you Ebay!) that I remember reading about in an old Games Workshop catalogue from around 2003 but could never afford at the time (Wardancers, Mage, Great Eagle, Scouts and Waywatchers) . These are mixed in with the newer plastics (glade guard, glade riders, Wild Riders and Dryads from 2005) and then some of the models from the latest Wood Elf release some point in 8th Edition Fantasy (Eternal Guard, Wild Wood Rangers).

The name for the army is inspired by an arcane item from the 2005 Wood Elf army book - The Moonstone of the Hidden Ways. Due to the fact that a number of the units I own aren't actually in the Wanderers list anymore and form part of the Wood Elves legacy war scrolls I'll be going with Order allegiance to keep things nice and legal. So for those of you that are still with me here is the 2k pt list I'm working to currently:

Heroes

Nomad Prince with Spear, deepwood shield and hawk

Spell singer with staff

Glade Captain Battle Standard Bearer

Glade Lord on Forest Dragon

Battleline
20 Glade Guard

10 Dryads

8 Glade Riders

Other units

10 Wardancers

5 Waywatchers

10 Sisters of the watch

20 Eternal Guard

10 Wildwood Rangers

5 Wild Riders

1 Chariot

As I've said I've got most of the models already and for the most part alot of it is painted (admittedly some models may need some work). Still to purchase though are the Wildwood Rangers and some shields for the Eternal Guard. I'll post some pictures in a future post of each of the units.

Madcap Musings....

With my goals for the year set in the previous post the next few posts will detail what I intend to include in each army. Note that for the Wanderers and Word Bearers I own most of the models already (just never got round to finishing them), but the Moonclan Grots are an entirely new army that I'll be starting from scratch.

For those of you that are wondering why I'm choosing Grots in Age of Sigmar and not another faction with a battletome (say Ironjawz), it's because of my wife. For years she's always referred to my hobby as "Goblins".. Whether me and my gaming group be playing 40k (Where I play Dark Eldar), Age of Sigmar (Wanderers) , X Wing (Scum & Villainy) or even Necromunda (House Cawdor) it always goes on the calendar as "Goblins" and everyone is told that I'm playing "Goblins" that day. Missing the joke initially I did explain to her that I don't actually own any goblins, although that of course sealed my fate and meant that the "Goblins" moniker would stick for all of time. Accepting this new reality I've finally decided to collect that army of goblins my friends and family all like to think that I own.....

With that in mind here's what I want in my first 1k of Night Goblins:

Heroes (or should that be Villains?)

Grot Warboss with moon prodder and giant cave squig

Moonclan Grot Shaman 

Battleline

40 x Moonclan Grots with poking spears & moon shields, bad moon icon

10 x Cave Squigs

Other Units

3 x Grot Fanatics

2 x Grot Squig Herders 

Behemoth

1 x Mangler Squigs 

I reckon that captures a good flavour of the Moonclan faction including as it does plenty of squigs, plenty of hooded greenies and of course some fanatics! 

As with all lists this will be subject to change as new stuff takes my fancy (already got my eye on the Malign Portents mushroom shaman....) but hopefully this time next year we'll have the start of a Moonclan force completed.

And so it begins....

So with the start of a new year I've set myself some model painting goals for 2018. Seeing as I've always struggled with painting regularly and completing armies unless I have a specific deadline to hit (gaming day, tournament etc...) I figured I'd have a go at the whole blog thing in order to keep myself motivated for the year. So without further ado my goals for the year are as follows:

1) Age of Sigmar - Complete my 2000pt Wanderers battle host

2) Age of Sigmar - Complete a 1000pt Moonclan Grot army

3) 40k - Complete a 1000pt Word Bearer force

Now admittedly these goals aren't very ambitious, especially when you consider I've been working on the Wanderers for the last year, but completely painting and basing an army appears to have been beyond me these last few years so starting small and working from there seemed like the best idea. 

So there we have it, those are my goals for 2018 and I look forward to sharing my progress (or lack of) with you over the next year!