Bristol Vanguard Vanquish 2011 and Jason Gaylard's Deathwatch Space Marines

So Bristol Vanguard’s Vanquish event has been and gone – as ever, it was a great event with fantastic gaming boards. The new venue (Oasis Academy, Shirehampton) was excellent, if anything, better than the previous. The larger hall gave the 60 gamers extra space, and allowed the food stall to be in the same room, adding to the atmosphere. There was even room for one Target-Gaming to set up shop selling the new Grey Knights. The results are available here (and you’ll see that yours truly did pretty poorly), but the main highlight for me is always best army. There were some pretty cool armies there this year, but the well-deserved winner was Jason Gaylard, with his Deathwatch Space Marines. Jason’s Mantis Warriors have previously featured on this blog, and it’s great to have another of his armies shown here. The Deathwatch draw their marine s from nearly all the chapters of the Imperium and Jason’s ensured that no two in the army are the same – each one has had its own heraldry sculpted on. The free hand on the vehicles looks great too and really draws the eye. As I say, a well-deserved winner.

Also, 10 points to anyone who can name all the chapters.

Space Sharks, Space Sharks, What You Gonna' Do?

This was one of the first new Space Sharks I’d done in a while – a new Space Shark Librarian with jump pack, so he could accompany an Honour Guard (Yes, these boys are now using Codex: Blood Angels). Pat was to be using the Space Sharks at the Doubles Tournament and one of the powers he was keen to use was Blood Lance. Obviously, using Space Sharks, this quickly became known as the Shark Lance, leading to it being modelled as Shark like Psychic phenomenon being emitted from the Librarian’s hand. I sculpted it from green stuff around a piece of wire I’d drilled into the model’s hand and arm (10 points if you can tell what I used as reference when sculpting the shark!).

Among the Winners, There is No Room for the Weak

As promised, here are more of the new models – this is another of the new ones from the Imperial Fists, a Space Marine Lieutenant riding a Carnosaur. He got a fair bit of attention during the Doubles Tournament, mainly to the tune of “What is THAT?”

The inspiration comes from one of my favourite things about 40K, the anachronisms in it. I really like the idea of a genetically engineered super soldier wearing high tech powered armour riding into battle on an extinct reptile. I modelled him as a big game hunter with a sniper rifle and imagine him prowling the jungle or the plains looking to bag his next trophy. He probably has a lot of alien heads on the wall of his fortress monastery.

I count him as an Ironclad Dreadnought (yes, it requires a little imagination), with Seismic Claw with built in Heavy Flamer (Seismic Jaw that breathes fire!), Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon (mighty claws), Storm Bolter (rifle held by the rider) and smoke launchers (issuing from his flaming nostrils). It kind of works and was a lot of fun to use, especially in one game where he got to eat 30 Orks, a Weirdboy (bad case of indigestion) and a clanking Ork Death Robot. Unfortunately countless acts of dinosaur cruelty occurred, whereby heartless enemies seemed to delight in shooting his legs off. This left him unable to acquire his own dinner, leaving him very hungry and distressed.

This… er, Year… I’ve Painted… Space Marines

(Please note that this blog post first appeared on the Target-Gaming blog, but due to issues with RSS feeds, I'm now going to be publishing simultaneously on this one. Warning to the non-gamers - it's going to be toy soldier heavy!)

Well, it’s been far too long since I updated this blog, so here’s the fist of a few updates on the latest miniatures to come off the work bench.

• The Imperial Fists were completed in time for the Warhammer 40,000 Doubles Tournament and the first of these is shown below, the all new Captain Taelos.

• The Space Sharks received a minor update to act as the other half of the force, under the command of Pat Dunford. These wound up using Codex: Blood Angels...

• Having enjoyed myself so much at the Doubles Tournament and seeing how fun (and good!) mechanised Blood Angels armies are, I decided to do an entirely new army for my next tournament, the Bristol Vanguard Vanquish. Which was six weeks later. Yes, a 1500 point army, more or less from scratch in 6 weeks. What the hell was I thinking? I’m still not entirely sure, but I’ll tell you about it all in a future post.

• Also, Target-Gaming was at the Bristol Vanguard Vanquish with a stall, selling amongst other things, the new Grey Knights!

Anyway, in all his glory, here’s Captain Taelos!

Many years ago, just after I first started painting things yellow, the first Codex: Tau was released. It caused a real stir, a new race and army done entirely from scratch and very different from anything in 40K at the time. What caught my eye, though, was piece of background text at the back describing a negotiation between the Tau Water Caste and an administratum official, accompanied by his ‘military advisor’ – one Captain Taelos of the Imperial Fists. It was a great bit of background text, and the accompanying art was exactly how I imagined a Space Marine Captain to be – haughty and towering.

I decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, so immediately produced a model of Captain Taelos to lead my own Imperial Fists, as seen below.

I was very pleased with him at the time, but he looks a little dated now, especially when placed alongside my current Imperial Fists. The Double tournament was a perfect excuse to produce a new model, reposed and much mightier, complete with mighty Relic Blade!