Warhammer 40,000 Doubles Tournament, 5 days to go…

So the deadline is getting very close now... Fortunately all the models in the Flesh Eater army are finished now (some could do with a little touching up, but they're good enough for a tournament). The final actual model is this chap: An Apothecary / Sanguinary Priest, using parts from the Space Marine command squad. He's been modelled with extra meat from the Kroot sprue (well, they are the Flesh Eaters) to get his colleagues up on their feet and extra angry.







Now I just have to put together and paint five award-winning objectives...

Warhammer 40,000 Doubles Tournament, 14 days to go…

Well as many of the doubters predicted, Pat and I will sadly not be taking the Macragge PDF / Ultramarine 1st company army to the Doubles Tournament. So, it’ll be the old fall back of the Flesh Eaters Space Marines and Pat’s Battle Sisters. I can’t complain too much – we came fourth out of 120-odd teams last time with this combination, and with some modifications, these forces should be even more effective.

I’m going through and cleaning, fixing and finishing off the Flesh Eaters where necessary. I’ll be adding one or two new models too – I’ll post pictures when they’re finished. In the mean time, here are the first of the newly spruced Flesh Eaters – Librarian Elijah and Mechanised Assault Squad Number one. The Librarian is converted from various marine bits, the Sergeant is built from parts from the Blood Angels Death Company and the Razorback turret has been converted from Space Marine Plasma Pistols, a Razorback Lascannon and plasticard.

I hate it when the doubters are right.

Repair cost ... 0.0

So after the semi-disastrous replacement of the control arms on the 330Ci (which involved the garage cutting sections out of my car and re-welding them), when the windscreen washers went, I wasn't looking forward to more costs. However, the motors could clearly still be heard, which implied something else was wrong. So, I pulled the washer tank out of the car to investigate. The only tool needed here is a 10mm socket and wrench to remove the bolt that holds the tank in place.

The object trailing from the cable to the left is the windscreen washer pump motor. There's another inside the engine bay that runs the headlamp washer, along with another cable that connects to the washer tank level sensor. I then checked over the tank itself.

I figured something must be wrong when no liquid started pouring out of the holes in the bottom. Pulling the filters out revealed: this!

Ewww.

A bit of washing up liquid and a brush later, back to factory finish. The left one is the headlight washer filter, the right one is the windscreen washer filter.

I gave the tank a bit of a clean and removed the old washer fluid as well (it was a bit sludgy in there as well).

That is cleaner!

I then replaced everything, tightened the 10mm bolt that holds it all in and...

Yay! Result. Estimated cost at garage - £40. Actual Cost 0.0.

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!