Been busy times at home and here are some updates on what has been going on.
The office/hobby room has been redone. We have painted the walls, put up cabinets and built a better desk.
The room before, just a desk and no space to put aside anything. It looked really messy no matter what:Fresh, tidy and orderly, meet the iRoom 2011:I have had time for a few games of 40k, all of them 1000p games.
One game vs Orks, a foot slogging list with some Deffkoptas. I tried out some jumpy assaulters and a sanguinary guard. It was a five objectives game, spear head deployment. I smashed up the Orks pretty good and won.
The second game was versus a Tyranid force. I had some good luck with my shooting, routed a group of gaunts off the table and in the end it was down to a draw with both of us holding one objective each.The third game was a guy at the local game club who threw together a quick list of Grey Knights. It started off quite OK, but then it went down the drain and I lost 5-2 in that dawn of war with kill points. GK are really mean in CC with all those power weapons. The shooting I can take with the FNP bubble, but those swords, ouch!
Some painting has been going on too, a shot of my Sanguinary Guard unit:We had a game of Axis & Allies 1942, my first. I really enjoyed it even though I was on the losing side. It will probably be more of these nights coming up in the future.And finally, the best project of them all: my self.
Me and my wife has changed our eating habits and work out habits a bit, I have now lost about 20 kilos, my wife about the same.
Here is a before-and-after picture of me (I don't think my wife would like to pose):
Put my last painting touches on my Librarian last night, now he just need some varnish and basing done. At least for this time, I need to paint up the bulk of my army and I don't want to spend to much time on individual characters at the moment.
The first house project for the year has started, our office/hobby room is getting a face lift and some needed storage space.
We will put up some cabinets and shelves where we can put some things away, hidden behind some doors instead of being spread all over the desk. The old desk has been given away to my wife's brother, in it's place we will build a long desk along one of the walls with space for two instead of a big, curved desk taking half of the room.On the miniature front, I have cleaned up and put together my Honour Guard, a squad of Vanguard Veterans, another Dreadnought, a Sanguinary Guard and some bikes. I have also converted some Melta guns from Bolters/Infernus Pistols.
On the way to finishing those 1000 points, I am trying out some NMM and glazing technique on my Librarian that I found on Youtube.Tried to practice some steel NMM on a horse's ass. I am not sure if I got the shine correct, maybe the colors should have been switched. I also made some misstakes with the highlight (too much and thick paint in the bristles).
My rifle company is about half-way done now, I need to paint another 30 guys or so. Therefore, I need to think about what to grab next!
Been reading, looking at pictures and day-dreaming a bit about my Flesh Tearers so I guess I will give them a round of paint-love. First off I will finish what I have started i.e. my tactical squad will get some battle damage, bases and a varnish so I can forget about them. After that I will take care of the assault squad and DC. When they have gotten their time I will probably turn to my veichle park, four Rhino chassis to paint up. It will be alot of air brush practice on these guys, with some shading techniques I have tried to study on YouTube but haven't put in to real use yet.
Hmm, feels like a long list of things to do but it will pretty much be my standard 1000p army.
I have been looking at expanding it, some honour guard, maybe a Mephiston proxy and a new chaplain/reclusiarch. I really want to try out some green stuff modelling but I guess starting with making a Mephiston will end up with me making two of him instead.
I got a question about my basing, I thought I would take some pictures and explain what I did. This will be in two parts since I don't have any grass material.
My wife found me some modelling paste in the local store, so I had to try it out and it seems to work fine.Put a layer of the paste and then stick the miniatures in the paste. I don't use any glue or anything for the miniatures. Hopefully they won't fall off, they seem to stick there. To move around the paste, I use a coffee stirrer.When the paste is dry, I use a mix of water and PVA glue that I just brush on with an ordinary brush. Then I dip the whole base in a small bucket of sand I picked up in a sand box outside. Make sure to cover them up good. I let them rest in the sand for a while so the sand doesn't fall off.When the sand has dried up, I paint the base with thinned out Calthan Brown. Make sure you thin it out, otherwise it will cover the details.Finally I drybrush the base with Khemri Brown and then pick out some bigger stones which I paint with Adeptus Battlegrey followed by a light dry brush of Astronomican Grey.When I get my grass, turf and so on I will post a part two of this.
Today it was time for me and Lasse to try out and hopefully learn some Flames of War, our first battle!
We decided to keep it small, so we just involved an HQ and a platoon each. This would let us try out moving and shooting.
Lasse's Fallschirmjägers, a six squad strong force.My US Rifle Platoon, had to fill it out with some guys in Terminator-camouflage since they are only CV.The table, a 4x2 to keep it small and simple. We put some woods, some fields and a church with stonewalls to hide behind. Since it was our first game, we skipped objectives, no turn limit, just slugging it out to try to figure out moving, shooting and assaulting. Since we didn't use any turns, I have not really kept track of the turns in the battle, just the general outlines of what happened. The Fallschirmjäger platoon was split in to two smaller groups, which was a good move to distract my attention, one starting in the corner with the wheat field and the other in the small forest.The US Rifles hid in a wheat field, I guess this was a lazy deployment from my side, they were unpacked in that spot.My US forces and Germans in the forest exchanged some fire, while the half-platoon lead by the CiC moved up. They wanted to get in to position behind the stone wall for maximum cover. Two of my squads got shot down and I decided to dig in, let him come to me!The Germans moved out of the forest to assault me in my fox holes, just let him come.The Captain yelled (while standing back): Get 'em boys!
GIs rushed up, and assaulted the germans.The Germans failed to kill any Americans in their defensive fire, lost a squad in the fight and then failed their morale making them run away! What a victory!
The Americans, confident after beating up some elite Fallschirmjägers, decided to move up behind the hedges instead of chasing after them. Don't ask me why, their Captain must be fresh from West Point.So the Germans by the church, lined up their sights and mowed down the poor US soldiers, only leaving the Captain and Lieutenant who quickly surrendered.So, from this small skirmish, what did we learn?
- Infantry in cover, are very hard to kill. Veteran infantry in cover is almost impossible to kill: 6+ to hit, 3+ save, then a 6+ firepower test.
- Assault is where things happen when it comes to infantry fighting infantry.
- We move our platoons as if they were squads in 40K, very close and tight. This will probably not be a good habit when we bring templates to the table.
- Use cover.
- Morale is important.
- I need to get some more units for my army. For the next battle I need at least two rifle platoons.
Next step in our learning process will probably be to bring in some more foot soldiers and some mortars.
The painting part is done for most of the stands for the upcoming battle.
HQ with bazooka (supposed to go with the rifle platoon)
Rifle Platoon (6 squads)
Partial Weapons Platoon
I have three mortars left to paint now, plus some kind of basing and a sealer. I have some kind of fixative sealer as well as some of Vallejo's gloss and matte varnish, which I will try on something else before I risk messing up something important. Will probably test it in the air brush, should work out pretty fine I guess.
My wife me some modelling paste which I will try out for the basing. Thinking of mixing it with some brown paint and sand. To give it a bit of color and texture, at the moment it looks a bit blend.
Further more, I put an order for the D-Day books for FoW, some paint, a US dice set and somehow a Sanguinary Guard box ended up in the shopping cart too. Gonna try to build some HQ units out of the SG box, mix it up with the honor guard box I have gotten earlier.
