Despoiler Upgrades – I Can’t Even…

May 23, 2023UncategorizedGimgamgoo

Mirroring my thoughts…

So, I had been waiting for the Despoiler upgrades for MkVI power armour for quite some time – since the new Horus Heresy was released actually.

They were destined for my Alpha Legion. I have been working on both Alpha Legion and Imperial Fist forces for the Pluto campaign, where the former are knocking over the space station of the latter at the edge of the Terran system. Very infantry-based, lots of tight corridor actions, focussed armies, Primarchs involved… brilliant.

Collecting all the models and painting them, I quickly whittled the list of things to do down to just two types of units – Despoilers for the Alpha Legion and Breachers for the Fists.

My idea here was that the Alpha Legion were launching a surprise attack and they would be going in hard and loud – lots of Terminators, lots of loud-bang type weapons, and a bias towards close…

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Dropzone Commander progress

May 2, 2020Dropzone, Paint TableGimgamgoo

The last couple of weeks in my hobby time, I’ve been working mainly on Dropzone Commander. I’ve more or less painted up the starter set, along with some extras from another starter set. There’s still some more models I’ve bought recently that need painting – and some of them look huge!

UCM Army – still ongoing

Scourge Army – still ongoing

And some extras I’ve bought recently.

I built the Broadsword (huge tank on the left) with a magnetised turret so it can turn.

The scourge Desolator (the floating gribbly with all the legs) is really big and the size of the Harbinger (the transport ship on the far left) really surprised me.

I’m Looking forward to getting time to splash some paint on these.

Take care.

Some Fantasy Bits

April 25, 2020Kings of War, Paint TableGimgamgoo

Another post – 3rd time, weekly! Wow. Some of the photo’s in this post are from about 6 months ago. I had updated some to their pages in my menus, but I thought I’d put them here with some of the newer pieces.

Firstly – my favourites. Bonefields. Although I’ve not got round to playing the game, I mainly went into this Kickstarter for the figures. I picked up 40 goblin skeleton spear/shield figures and 20 dwarf skeleton handweapon/shield wielders. They were to make some more diverse units for my Undead Kings of War army. I’ve managed to get round to painting the Goblin Skeletons so far. They’re lovely models, but it was really difficult to get them into various slotta bases and rank up. I know I could have trimmed them off their ‘tabs’ but I didn’t want to risk it with delicate resin bones. Nor did I want to multibase. I like my KoW units to have the correct amount of figures – like they did as wound counters in old Warhammer. Keeping them single allows use in other games too. All magnetised as usual so you can pick the movement tray upside down – if you felt the urge to.

Goblin Skeletons

Orc Boar Riders

And still on Kings of War, here’s another unit I knocked up quickly – using dip as well. They didn’t come out too bad. I have about 20 more of these to do too – from over a decade ago, er, possibly two decades. Really old GW Fantasy Orc Boar Boys from around the year 2000 I think.

Then there’s the mix of bits of terrain and objective markers I’d been putting together and occasionally splashing paint on .

The following were pieces of terrain I’d grouped for use in Kings of War Vanguard Skirmish – although I’ve still yet to get a game going of that. Still, the terrain will still do in larger Kings of War games.

And this last one, was taken in bad light while still on the paint table. More objective markers.

And next week, if I get round to some photo’s, it’s probably back to Dropzone Commander – as you can see in the last picture, they were creeping into the background.

Take care and stay safe.

Mantic Mules

April 18, 2020Deadzone, WarpathGimgamgoo

I’ve finally splashed some paint on a couple of Mantic vehicles that came with my Warpath Kickstarter – so, so long ago.

Anyway, I had 3 of the models and 3 plague conversion kits. I’ve made and painted one of each so far and haven’t decided what to do with the final one.

They were spray painted with AP’s Angel Green, airbrushed in splodges with some Vallejo German Camo Bright Green to lighten it, then totally coated with AP’s Strong Tone wash. A drybrush of Vallejo Khaki, then the fun of a few details, the wheels and weathering.

I really love all the plastic Mantic vehicles. So few parts, but they make fantastic looking vehicles without hours of cutting 130+ pieces from a sprue and mold cleaning (like current GW kits). They nearly always come with enough parts to make and magnetise all the various weapon options as well. There are various weapon options, all magnetised for the models below – I forgot when doing the photo’s and just used the one that was currently attached.

GCPS Mule

Plague Mule

For my Plague and Rebels factions in the Warpath Universe, I use the same colours as the GCPS – I guess both of those factions steal the regular equipment. I didn’t ‘over plague’ this one so the other factions could use it if necessary.

As you can tell from the pic below, I had great fun weathering and damaging these models.

Take care.

50 Shades of Grey

April 12, 2020Star Wars LegionGimgamgoo

So… I wasn’t going to try out any other games… who am I kidding.

I’ve bought some units for both Star Wars Legion and Dropzone Commander. I’d decided when I saw the initial release of Star Wars Legion, not to get fished in. However, reading the rules through (free online), I decided to give it a go. I’ve not bought a massive amount, but I did get the big AT-ST for Christmas, so decided to paint that up.

Dropzone Commander was another game I’d actually wanted to play since I saw it at a gameshow – but I flicked through the old version 1 rulebook and it pretty much scared me off. However, the new v 2.1 ruleset is a much smaller and less frightening thing at 64 pages and I picked up a starter set cheap so decided to give it a go. It will also make a massive change dropping down to a 10mm scale. Certainly too small for my dodgy eyes and shaky hands to paint, but then, they’re too small for me to see how bad they are. In scales, Star Wars Legion is to GW, what GW is to 28mm. The Stormtroopers make Space Marines look small. When I get some full units painted, I’ll post them.

As I’ve left my poor blog to fester for so long, I decided to update a few pages. I’ve added in some quick pages with my trial photos for Dropzone Commander. I also added some extra Fantasy Terrain that I’d painted recently onto the Kings of War page.

Dropzone Commander – UCM

Dropzone Commander – The Scourge

Fantasy Terrain

I’ve also managed to paint up that AT-ST, which, as far as painting was concerened, was what gave me the obvious title for this update. It certainly felt like 50 shades of grey, with some green, yellow and browns.

I’ll make sure the next update isn’t half a year away…

Take care.

Splashing the Antares paint around

June 25, 2019AntaresGimgamgoo

I’ve had an annual leave day so a chance to take a few photos of some of the rushed paint jobs off my desk this week. My paint desk is set up in the “dining room”. If I pass it and feel the urge, I sit down and put a colour or two on something. I rarely get the to sit and paint for hours anymore. Probably my age; shaky hands, dodgy eyesite etc.

I’ve flitted between a few things this week, mostly for Beyond the Gates of Antares, but a few things for Kings of War (or KoW Vanguard). I suppose it’s quite a lot for a week’s worth of painting. I’ll put the KoW terrain up next post.

Concord

Drones and a couple of new troopers.

Algoryn

I had a full unit of 6 troops and a spotter drone painted. I think I must have dropped a model on the way to the camera and missed a mag-gun figure off the photo. (I found it on the paint desk later)

Freeborn

Warlord games had sprues of these on sale in the last sprue sale they did. Each sprue had a spotter drone and 8 troops with a variety of equipment on them. Not bad for £2 per sprue. I may or may not have a few awaiting building to start a new Freeborn army. I’ve about finished a squad of 8, but also picked up a few other pieces from eBay – including the Mag cannon I’ve painted – the crew are half done on the paint table. I also got a squad of Vardanari so I could convert the leader into a pistol wielder for a command squad.

There’s a piece of ‘cheap’ mdf terrain – I think it was a TTcombat piece. It turned out nice, but doesn’t provide much cover. It will probably get used as an objective of some kind.

I feel I’ve flitted between paint jobs this week, but it helps keep me going. If I sit down to do one type of painting, I lose interest – jumping between colour schemes and projects keeps it mixed up enough to get more done.

Time for a Rant (updated)

June 15, 2019Paint Table, RantsGimgamgoo

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I got round to posting on here. Over a year. Ouch.

It’s been a long year. A total change of career – quitting teaching after 23 years – and a severe reduction in wages. I haven’t forgotten about wargaming or painting. I’ve still been painting a few things, and building lots of miniatures. I wrote a backlog of all the things I need to photo/blog and the list went on and on…

So, I thought I’d kick this year’s first post off with a rant.

Once upon a time, I had a large army of Orcs and Goblins for Warhammer Fantasy. I started painting them up as carefully (but speedily) as I could using a combo of GW Goblin Green paint and GW’s Green Ink. About a quarter of the way into painting them, GW discontinued the Green Ink. The replacement washes were nothing like the same colour, so my army went on the back burner. Damn them.

I’d also got used to painting with a colour called Mechrite Red. That also got discontinued by GW and replaced with the “equivalent” colour Mephiston Red. Well, I’m sure you can tell from the pic below, they are far from the same… (pic not mine)

The new Red is actually really good – In fact I was using the Mephiston Red Spray paint GW made to base paint my Gates of Antares Algoryn forces. That is, until – you guessed it – GW discontinued the spray.

You’d think I’d have learnt my lesson, but GW released a texture paint called Agrellan Earth. It’s basically a crackle paint that you paste on quite thick and it dries like dried earth. It’s pretty good stuff. I’d started using it on a lot of my Antares game bases. Not for the entire base, just some on a few bases to show the dried out land the models were stood on.

Anyway, my small pot of Agrellan Earth is about used up. So I went to GW’s website to order some more. There were 2 options, Agrellan Earth and Agrellan Badlands. Apparently the Badlands version dries in larger patches. Anyway, the good news for me was that they came in the new larger pots. Great. A tub of the Agrellan Earth will last me ages. I should have known.

Here’s the old pot on the left, and the new one on the right. They are most definately not the same colour.

I painted them onto a brown undercoated base to see the real difference…

As you can see, a massive colour difference. So, I decided to give them a few hours to dry, to see the crackle effect. I hoped that maybe drying out gave similar colours.

Nope. Nothing alike.

So much for adding some quick cool effects to the bases of my Antares armies. Yet again, Games Workshop changing colours, or discontinuing colours has wrecked my painting mid-way through an army.

From now on, I’ll be sticking with Army Painter and Vallejo all the way. A great deal of my paint collection is by them, and a dripper bottle is far better than the awful pots GW make – now those pots alone would make a whole rant post.

I’ll post some pics of minis soon…

EDIT – 22nd June 2019

I wrote an email to GW showing the colour difference. By the time I saw the email reply from them, they’d already sent another large pot free of charge through the post. Although I have my qualms with GW, their customer service is still really good.

Anyway, in the mean time, I’d bought large pots of cheap Saffron and Vanilla Crackle Paint from eBay. Although £5.65 per pot (inc postage) isn’t exactly cheap, they’re 50ml instead of GW’s 24ml.

Mixing the Saffron with the new GW Agrellan Earth in a roughly 50/50 batch gave a very similar colour to the old Agrellan Earth. As both paints are crackle paints, the mix didn’t ‘water down’ the crackling effect. The tubs are also ‘squirty/dripper’ types making it way easier to use than the GW pot.

Problem solved – and with enough crackle paint to mix do multiple armies now. 🙂

A New Camera

April 11, 2018Antares, Silent DeathGimgamgoo

I finally got round to buying my first DSLR camera. Nothing expensive as it’ll only get used for miniatures (and probably ‘borrowed’ by my lad for his youtube vlogs). I’ve never had anything other than cheap point and click camera or mobile phones before, so I have a massive learning curve ahead. I know I need a better lighting set up, but I think I’ve about mastered getting the minis in better focus, so both the front and back of the mini are in focus at the same time – that was the main hope for the new camera. If you’re interested it’s a Canon EOS 1300D. A small 6″ tripod with a ball socket on top and settings of 0″5 shutter, ISO 100, f/22 works a treat.

Canon EOS 1300D

The only problem with getting a new shiney camera, is that it takes pictures that really do show up the fact that I’m an old half-blind sausage-fingered shakey-handed painter. The advantage of bad eyesight though is that the minis look fine on the table top.

As Wayne and Garth would say… “Extreme Close-Up”. It’s good to finally be able to take a photo where the front and back of the photo (in this case the 2 wing fins) are both in focus at the same time.

closeup

Here’s the Silent Death Sunrunners I’ve been working on. All looking like they’ve had a few battles too many. If I ever get my Antares models all finished, these can count as the Boromites in that distinct yellow colour.

Single Thunder Bird front and back first of all…

Then the 2 I’ve done together.

The force so far – I have a Catastrophe, 2 Havoks and 2 Avengers coming from the SD webstore to add to these soon. 🙂

And these are the type of things I’m using for satellites in Silent Death. They’re the smaller parts of the Dropfleet Commander modular space station. They’re really for a much smaller scale, but as satellites, I prefer them to the single SD model.
On the Left, an Atlatl (missile launcher on it) and on the right, a Taurus with torp launcher and a meld laser. Sunrunner flying between them for scale.

On the paint table next are a few additions for my Algoryn force. Back to painting red 🙂

And when I can afford it, something better than 2 old desktop lamps with standard bright bulbs for lighting.

Silent Death

April 2, 2018Antares, Silent DeathGimgamgoo

Well, although I was only going to play/paint two main games this year. I’ve extended that (in a way).
I was searching for a couple of cheap plastic ships to use as counters for our Traveller CCG game. I came across some old Silent Death ships on eBay and got those. It was actually a plastic sprue of 12 ships for a few pounds. Anyway, I decided to have a look at the rules – and found a copy of the Silent Death The Next Millenium box set on eBay for twenty five pounds. 48 Ships, all the missile counters etc. Not bad for a game that came out in the 90’s – everything still in great condition and all models still on sprues. Having read through the rules and had a trial game, it seems to be a far more fun game than X-Wing for us.
Also, having read through the Gates of Antares first campaign, there was a lot of ship battles at the start. So we decided that we can alternate ship battles and Gates of Antares battles and link them into campaigns. The ships can fight over a planet then the forces can battle it out. Or any combination or battle scenario we fancied.

So, I grouped the ship types into ones I thought might look like the Antares factions, and tried to keep them fairly balanced. We now play Silent Death, with forces set up to be Antares factions.
Here’s what I’ve painted this Easter.

As usual, apologies as I only have an old (really old) camera and a couple of table lights, so apologies again for the poor photos, and the thing I notice the most, the poor colour representation – I sooooo need a decent set up.

Anyway, To link in with my games of ‘Beyond the Gates of Antares’, firstly are the Algoryn. In my SD Universe, these will be my Espan.

Conestoga

Conestoga and 2 Teal Hawks

2 Teal Hawks

3 Pit Vipers

3 Blizzards

The Whole Espan (Algoryn) Force (so far)

Still linking in with my games of ‘Beyond the Gates of Antares’, these are the Ghar
In my SD Universe, these will be House Colos

Drakkar

2 Night Hawks

Drakkar and 2 Night Hawks

2 Kosmos Ships

4 Spirit Riders

The Whole House Colos (Ghar) Force (so far)

These are the Concord. In my SD Universe, these will be the Kashmere Commonwealth.

Predator

2 Salamanders

2 Hell Benders

3 Thunder Birds

The Whole Kashmere Commonwealth (Concord) Force (so far)

For ‘Beyond the Gates of Antares’, these are the Isorian. In my SD Universe, these will be the Unkulunkulu.

Star Raven

2 Lance Electra

Talon (1 of 2 painted)

4 Darts

The Whole Unkulunkulu (Isorian) Force (so far)

I’ve also decided to collect a couple of dedicated SD forces. Sunrunners and Night Brood.
I’ve trialled a paint job for first Sunrunner Blizzard.

I decided that although the Sunrunners were Mercenaries, and were also busy fighting the grubs, their ships were fighting a lot and were going to be a little beaten up looking. This was my first trial of the paint job. I tried a free hand black circle with the 4 strokes of sunlight coming out, but the orange barely shows on the yellow in the photos.

If and when I buy any more Antares armies, I’ll use these with the yellow scheme as the Borites.

Trial paint scheme for a Sunrunner Blizzard

Also below are some of the Asteroids I’ve been painting. The first batch were cast from a white plaster for X-Wing by a company I found selling on eBay. Although they’ve painted up nicely, they are very heavy.

The second, less impressive batch, I made from some 2 different sizes of polystyrene craft balls, sprayed with Black car paint (to purposefully melt them). I had made some in the past from chunks of polystyrene but I based these onto some X-Wing templates. These ones turned out less well as the ‘hexes’ of polystyrene the balls were made of were really large and still visibile. The advantage, they weight virtually nothing.

Finally, I decided to make a ‘Black Hole’. I used a gloss black paint, then a couple of layers of the two tone metallic paints from Green Stuff world. As you turn it, the purple shines to blue, but overall, it has a black look. It’ll make some interesting games.

Now, I need to go and photograph the Antares models I’ve painted up and add them to the blog.

Thanks for looking.

Starting 2018 with some paint

January 8, 2018Antares, GamingGimgamgoo

After the massive job of putting together 3 armies for Beyond the Gates of Antares, it was about time to test out some paint schemes. Nothing very original, but as always, they had to match my main objective of… can I paint them quickly.

First I had to let my fingers recover. 1600 points (roughly) of Ghar, Algoryn and Concord left my fingertips a little bereft of feeling as they were suffering from green stuff and superglue melded into my fingerprints. The plastics are well made and didn’t require as much mold line removal as GW plastic, or indeed Mantic Restic. Although I’m going to have a break from building now and get some painting done.

What got me wanting to play Antares initially was the cool looking scheme done on the great Algoryn models, along with the similarity to Bolt Action rules. So, I had to use a scheme similar to Warlord’s for the Algoryn. My wife who’s decided to adopt the Concord as her army, liked the bone/green standard so I stuck with that. As I wanted all 3 armies to look different, I didn’t want to have the Ghar in a grey/white that was similar to the Concord bone, so I tried out the Crystal Blue colour I’d used on my Deadzone Forgefathers. Although it looked ok, they were too similar to the Forgefathers. So in the end, I decided, to go with a really easy to paint metal scheme. All 3 different enough to see clearly on the table.

Sorry for the poor lighting on these photos…

Trial Algoryn Paint jobs

GoA-Algoryn-Trial

GoA-Algoryn-Trial2

Trial Concord Paint jobs

GoA-Concord-Trial2

Trial Ghar Paint jobs

Although I say “trial”. I’ve actually got a full unit of 3 of these painted now.

GoA-Ghar-Trial

Game On

As the armies were all built, we decided to try a small game out. Just 500 points of Ghar vs Concord. This was mainly to try out the rules, and for me, to hope my wife found it as easy to play as Bolt Action.

Ghar Empire (497 points)

2 Army Options: Block, Extra Shot
5 Ghar Battle Squad (1 Leader, 4 troops)
3 Ghar Battle Squad (1 Leader, 2 troops)

Concord (498 points)

1 Army Options: Block
C3 Strike Command Squad (1 Leader, 4 Troops) with Spotter Drone
C3 Strike Squad (1 Leader, 3 Troops, 1 Troop with Plasma Lance) with Spotter Drone
C3 Strike Squad (1 Leader, 3 Troops, 1 Troop with Plasma Lance) with Spotter Drone
C3D1 Light Support Drone with Batter Drone

A great game with some real learning highlights. At one point the Concord managed to get a lucky shot on the large battle squad with 2 other hits. My wife put the lucky shot on my leader, not knowing he’d get a re-roll. He rolled a 10, and a 10 on the re-roll. Plasma explosion! One of the other Ghar died to the shot he took, and 2 others also died to plasma explosions. I feel my dice were rigged to get 10’s. All fun though and quite devastating to see a unit of 5 Ghar Battle troops drop to 1 in a single round of shots from the Concord. Hopefully, the gribbly little Ghar won’t see bad luck like that when we start the Battle for Xilos campaign games.

Poor lighting again, but we played mainly at the nearside of this setup. Next table will have to be a jungle table for the Battle of Xilos.

Game-GoA1

One thing I decided to do after the game was to knock up some cards to use for the Army Options. That way, we could have the cards on the table and discard them when they were used. All the info is on the cards, so no looking anything up.

I made 3 sets, which you get the idea of their looks from the pictures below.

Cards-Ghar

Cards-Concord

Cards-Algoryn

Below should be a link to a pdf with each of the files of 7 cards for the 3 factions shown. They are all sized to fit in standard card sleeves. I’ve printed mine on card and put them in Ultra-Pro card sleeves so they’re pretty solid things now.

GoA Ghar Army Cards

GoA Concord Army Cards

GoA Algoryn Army Cards

Till next update… Enjoy.