First to get a lick of paint in 2014. Deadzone enforcers

Well 5 days into the new year without painting and I finally picked up the brush to paint stuff! 

As I have frantically painted up the Deadzone terrain last year the moment I received the package (all $150 kickstarter worth of terrain add ons alone) I now turn my attention to my first faction in Deadzone. 

Want to get some colour on the models as the players here are hopefully starting to get some games together for Deadzone. It's always been a peeve of mine to at least get some base colours on the models before playing with them. 

I should be getting them finished up by the end of the week so that will bring my painted models up to 13! Which also means my 2014 resolution of having 1 painted model a day for the year is ahead of schedule! Let's hope I can keep this up!

I'll post pics of the terrain in another post sometime soon! In the meantime enjoy the little preview of the terrain here along with my minis.

Beef's 2013 year in review and 2014 resolutions and thoughts.

Well its that time of the year again where I will talk about what happened this year and what I want to do the next. So sit back and enjoy the read. Wall of text (and nice pictures!) alert. 

This year has been an intense year of wargaming happenings. Loads of cool kick-starters finally materialising and being shipped to gamers. Crazy amounts of GW releases in terms of models and codexes and online supplements. The quality of the models are so high I honestly think GW are truly in a league of their own now. And they couldn't be doing any better. We truly are living in a Golden age of wargaming, at least for 40K in my opinion. 

While I have always been struggling to get any real gaming going on for 40k (as I have been for so many years) this did not stop me from buying and starting new armies! However like many the initial impetus to buy and build and start and army dies down after the first couple of painted models, something which I really want to address in next years hobby resolutions. 

Let's start with a little year in review and recap.

I did a Necron army, and used my airbrush to help me speed things up. Although it isn't complete I have done almost 60% of the hard work and it shall be finished come 2014. 

 

 Also when the new Space Marine codex got released for 6th Edition I thought it was the perfect excuse for me to finally do up my Ultramarines army that I have been yearning to do for so many years (which self respecting 40K fanboy wouldn't have dreamt of doing an Ultramarine army sometime in their lives?).

So I went ahead to purchase lots of new models and fixed them up. Unfortunately I only got one painted test model. And the remaining army of approximately 3000pts is still sitting in grey plastic.

2013, the year where I actually got more gaming in than I ever had in the 16 years of collecting and painting little plastic/lead men. Those who know me know that I've always been leaning towards the modelling/painting aspects of the hobby rather than gaming itself. 

And the game that I've been so eagerly playing? Flames of war. That's right, I've always been a GW fanboy from the start (Heck I was even working in Games-workshop for some time!) and here I am finding myself so emerged in a gaming system that isn't Fantasy/40K. I can't speak enough of how much fun I actually get when playing FOW, be it the relaxed atmosphere that is probably due to the combination of game balance, flow and player demographic. So those who have not given FOW a shot before, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a try. You'll be pleasantly surprised. 

Here you can see a Total-War multiplayer game in progress. 

A lot of my hobby time this year was also spent on terrain, mainly 15mm scale terrain for FOW. I know am proud to say I have enough terrain to densely fill up two full sized 6 x 4" tables to play in my own home! And those who play FOW know how much terrain plays a vital role in the game! Visually stunning tables are a war gamers dream, and I have done it! 

Here you can see my two tables set up for Flames of war in my home. 

Another army I started and finished (woohoo surprise!) this year was an Isreali tank army for the newly released Flames of War games set in a different era from World War 2. This was set in 1967 when the Arab World joined forces in an attempt to wipe Isreal from the map of the world. This was the Arab-Isreali War of 1967. 

The models are absolutely lovely and I painted all 20 Tanks in one go. Took me about 2 weeks. 

Onto other gaming I have also been playing quite a lot of Zombicide. Both with my gaming pals and my wife! Which is a great bonus as we get to spend more quality time with each other. And with the second season of Zombicide shipped I know have a metric load of zombies and new scenarios to play with! Only problem is getting them all painted up! But that's something which unfortunately is not something I can see happening anytime soon. There's just too much other stuff in the painting queue.

Another awesome Kickstarter that happened this year is undoubtedly Mantic's Deadzone. Touted as Mantic's answer to GW's defunct Necromunda game. This game garnered an unprecedented amount of interest. Needless to say I was too. 

The models are honestly nothing fantastic compared to GW's offerings but I'm not done yet. The magic in this game is the terrain system they have. Modular, plastic, cheap as hell. I repeat. CHEAP. and they are beautiful to boot! I will be trying my hands into the Deadzone ruleset but my main purpose for this kickstarter was for the terrain. 

These are definitely going to see action in my 40k games (another new year resolution) and of course the recently released but so much potential and fun ruleset for Kill Team! More on Kill Team as I talk about 2014. 

Here you can see my finished Deadzone terrain. I went to work immediately when it arrived. And spammed my airbrush to aid in the speeding up of the painting process. What you see below is just 1/4 of the total amount of terrain I got from the Deadzone Kickstarter. All for just $150usd. I'll say it again, CHEAP.

Alright that's about it for the 2013 side of things now let's jump straight into what's happening for 2014.

These are my resolutions for 2014.
1) Paint more miniatures
2) Play more 40K
3) Buy less miniatures
4) Play more Flames of War
5) Blog more


Ok let me elaborate a little, although I know everyone's wish is to play and paint more, the realities of life has this ability to take all our time away. So that's why I want to pen this down so that I can have something to refer to and hopefully commit to the best of my ability! One big event that is happening in 2014 is the arrival of my second child. So that is definitely going to sake things up a little!

PAINT MORE
This may sound pretty obvious but hear me out. I have been painting quite a bit this year, however I am spending most of it painting terrain, not miniatures. Thus I want to make it a point to paint more miniatures now that I have already done so much terrain to game with.

What's in the painting queue then?

Firstly I want to finish up my Russian Army for Flames of War, I already have 70% of my stuff painted (all 5000pts worth of them) and I think the final push to round up the painting for them is definitely do-able.

Next up is to finish up my Necron army, like I mentioned they too are in a good state of progress so finishing them is not an uphill task. Which I would really want to do as I love the colour scheme I did for them.

Then I want to actually get round to painting my Ultramarines. Notice I say get round to, this is because I know realistically that I would probably A) lose my painting interest as they are totally unpainted thus meaning craploads of painting to be done B) not enough time. It'll probably be a combination of both but I want to at least try.

Finally I want to start keeping track of painted miniatures again like I did for 2012 as I realised that without one this year in 2013, my painting production is really lacking as I did not give/set myself a target to work towards. Looking back I painted so much stuff in 2012 it was scary. I can't remember the exact number but it amounted to almost 300. That's like about a miniature everyday. Wicked.

PLAY MORE 40K
We are living in a Golden age. Beautiful plastic models, blistering releases for codexes to keep armies up to date. An edition that got me more interested in the game than in the past 4 editions I've been involved in. I want to play. Nuff said. Problem is juggling real life constraints and arrangements with gaming buddies as everyone's busy.

BUY LESS MINIATURES
Haven't we all heard this before? And we still end up spending without even looking at the receipt when the plastic crack calls out to us. With a second child looming on the horizon hopefully I can restraint myself a little more. Although I know it's probably going to be futile......

PLAY MORE FLAMES OF WAR
This may sound strange seeing that I have already mentioned I've been playing a lot of FOW. Well this is just a remainder to myself that although I want to try playing more 40K in 2014, I need to maintain my regular playing group together or else things slip into the cracks easily and I may find myself falling out of it.

BLOG MORE
Last but not least I need to make myself blog more. Looking back my blog count has dropped tremendously this year and that's not something I want to see continue to spiral into oblivion.

I haven't been slacking off documenting stuff, in fact I've been doing tons. Problem is that they are all in other channels other than here on the blog. Instagram, Facebook groups, twitter etc. I admit that's the easy and lazy way out. And I'm more guilty of that than ever. So here I am pledging to doing it more in 2014.

If you have followed me thus far I must offer my sincere gratitude for your interest and time. And let me wish you a great hobby year ahead for 2014. Cheers!

Flashback Fridays! Tanks of the Imperial Guard!

While I was packing my room I came across some of the first few tank kits I ever bought in my hobby life. I'm sure many of you will remember these, it wasn't too long ago maybe 15yrs? (correct me if I'm wrong) 

Anyway not much has changed in terms of the models. In fact its exactly the same except recently they "redesigned" it by streamlining the models and adding a little more details to the recent plastic kits. They did retool the entire kits though so I guess you could still technically call it a "new" model. Anyway the point I'm driving at is that the overall aesthetic hasn't changed much at all. Which is a good thing after all it ain't broke.

Enough rant on to the pics. Enjoy!

Look how far we have come. Guess the only things that stands out is that for one tank kit now I could have bought 2. Darn price hikes!

Games & Gear Kickstarter Review : Pro Studio Brush

Overhyped. While I would not go to the extent of saying these brushes suck. They simply do not deserve all the marketing hyperbole that has been tagged to it throughout it's Kickstarter campaign.

Cheap? It's reasonably priced, although I could get cheaper brushes of the same or even better quality than these sans the Kolinsky material. Granted I got 2 for the price of one brush yeah I'll let it be good value for your money.

Good? Like I said, they do not feel like what a High Quality Sable brush should feel like. In fact I'd though it was something else if I've not been repeatedly told a million times that these were "PRO standard Kolinsky Sable Brushes".

Enough talk. I took these brushes for a quick test. And naturally I compared them to my W&N and Raphael brushes. All I can say is they are worlds apart. You really are getting what you pay for.

I tried the PSS version which was shorter and more "normal". The regular ones were so long and heavy it really took extra effort holding them to paint. I'm sure with long painting sessions that I will get noticeably tired. Ironically one of the "features"of these brushes were "fatigue free". Think it really meant giving you a "free fatigue....."

The brushes were alright to use, just that they were nowhere near the claimed "PRO" standard which they pitted themselves against the likes of the top dogs. 

The control of the brush was just not there, and I probably attest this to the very disturbing weight of the brushes.

Don't really have much more to say. Well at least I have alot of "regular" brushes for my basecoating.

And I won't be buying any more of these that's for sure.

Ponds! Battlefield In A Box Review

WIP White Necrons. Airbrushed, Assembled & Magnetized.

I have been slow with my Necron progress due to work priorities (yeah the usual excuse....) but have picked up the pace with the recent School Holidays. I made the first step and fixed up all the Necron miniatures I bought. And decided to prime them and give them the base color of white all at one shot. It took me an entire day but it was worth it as it meant 50% of the army was technically painted. 

The first model I approached was the Monolith. This model in particular has a special place in my heart as it was the first model I built and painted when I first worked at Games Workshop many years ago. I was tasked to do up a monolith model and here I am almost 10 years on, fixing and painting up my very own Monolith for my own Necron army! 

I went for an exaggerated fade to black color for it as the huge model provided the perfect opportunity to do so. I used cardboard mailers as the masking tool and went to work!

Then I magnetized the Ghost Ark. (This model was one of the 2nd hand models I bought thus the funky paint job). I ditched the attachment via the sides into the middle of the platform and went straight onto the centre back instead.

Here you can see the magnets on the back of the Warriors.

 Everything in myArmy thus far. Assembled and Primed black.

Then I batch Airbrushed everything. Just a very basic Zenithal style of painting. 

Even the Bases where airbrushed to save valuable time.

 I decided to go with an end autumn/early winter look. I always wanted to have an army with ice bases. Biggest problem I had was that my models are predominantly white. And if I had too white a base the model would camouflage itself too nicely into the bases. While it was cool to have a good camouflage going on it was not good visually for models. 

Ideally we would want a dark base for bright miniatures and vice versa. But I wanted to achieve something in-between, so I did some research and found out that by applying just minimal snow effects on the bases it would still convey that cold icy feeling without detracting too much from the miniature itself. 

Here are the first 10 Warriors along with 10 Scarab bases only. As amidst all the frenzy of fixing and priming and airbrushing I left out the Scarab models completely! Opps..... 

My aim is too complete the army by the end of April. A huge task and challenge, but I'll try. Will need alot of motivation and encouragement to stick to my goal!

WIP: Necron Tomb Blades & Magnets

After painting up my first wave of Necron Warriors I had been booged down with work and just couldn't make time for the hobby. However with the much anticipated March School term break I made  myself fix up the many Necrons I bought for this years 40k painting project. Other than these boxes here I already have 40 warriors, a ghost ark and a unit of Destroyers.

I decided to built up the Tomb Blades first as I really like the models and they looked fairly simple and uncomplicated (boy was I dead wrong). 

Started with the main structure and all was relatively straight forward, then I got to the part where causes the most problems for me. Wargear. You see I'm not much of a gamer, I collect and paint up my models 90% of the time. With the remaining 10% or less on actual gaming. But I like to build up my armies "game legal". So WYSIWYG is very important to me, as well as choosing the correct wargear to arm the miniatures with. I don't want a unit I painstakingly painted up to be totally useless in the game (should I ever get around playing with them). 

Then the nightmare begins, it's been quite awhile since I touched GW models, and I was rudely reminded that GW kits are so detailed that it would require millions of parts for a model. Even the most basic exhaust pipe came in two parts! Guess I've been pampered by Flames of War and Dust warfare the past year or so that suddenly multi-part kits seem so daunting! Little did I expect to spend the entire afternoon just putting these guys together, gosh.....

Well after putting together 55475869 pieces of plastic together to finally form the miniature I went on with thinking about how to magnetize the guns for the Tomb Blades. As the joints were not slot in or simple snap ons I had to do a little cutting to make the magnets fit. Fortunately this was not too difficult.

All the weapons with the magnets nicely slotted in.

Weapons easily swapped out yay!

Now on to my next kit, the Wraiths. Hope it will be easier.......

Total War, 9 Players massive game!

The Flames of War Community (albeit very very small one) came together to play a Total-War game for the departure of one of our players Raj, who will be leaving for New Zealand for a change of environment. We wish him all the best in his endeavors and don't forget to buy more Flames of War stuff as New Zealand is the home of FOW!

Each side had 4 forces amounting to 2000pts each roughly. I did not keep track of the battle as it was huge and I was busy playing it. But here are some pictures of the throwdown that happened that day.

And oh, the Allies won.