News: January release list and Hobbit pics

Here's the list of the upcoming releases for Jan as well as some photos of the new miniatures for the Hobbit game. Got these via Talk Wargaming, enjoy.

WoC: Tzeentch Chariot conversion finished

So this is probably the last finished model this year, and it's the Tzeentch chariot Iv'e shown before but now it has a crew and snow on the base as well. Was really unsure of how this would turn our when I started to do this conversion but it turned out quite well in the end If I may say so.

Really like how it looks with the Screamers pulling the chariot through the air, and I may actually end up doing the same conversion again for a second Tzeentch chariot. The crew consists of an old Chariot crew member with changed right arm holding the whip (I lost the old one :/ ) and a scratch built one of parts from the Chaos Knights kit, Warriors kit and a head from the Chosen models.

Comments is very welcome as always and if you have other suggestions on how to do different marked Chaos chariots feel free to share them.

Review: White Dwarf Dec 2013

First of all this will be a shorter review, this because of two things. One, I got it really late and I haven't put as much time reading it as I usually do. This is partly due the fact I didn't find it that great of a read, but more on this in the rest of the review.

New releases

A lot of releases this month but the major ones are the Hobbit stuff, Two new Wh40k supplement books, Stronghold Assault and Escalation and one for Fantasy which is called Sigmar's Blood. For me there's nothing super exciting here, the Hobbit stuff does not interest me, and it feels like it doesn't interest GW either as I get the feeling that they just want to get it out and be done with it. There's really nothing in here that tries to get me excited for it or the least interested in the game something. This was not the case many years ago with the LOTR releases. 

The books I haven't much interest in either and with 40k I feel there's just much stuff going on with supplements and digital releases and what not that I just feel I don't care any more. That may have more to do with my declining interest for 40k in general though. 

Sigmar's Blood and Fantasy on the other hand I'm more interested in and we get a quite nice battle report based on this book.

The Best

The Battle Report based on Sigmar's Blood is really nice one and finally we get some Battle Reports with a history around it and some kind of narrative in it. What we get here is a campaign with four linked battles. Although I think each game is a little short they are all interesting to read and the pictures of the battlefields is very nice with fog and terrain in the background to makes it more atmospheric. Two really nice armies take the field as well.

This months Army of the Month is a extra long this time around and show us the combined Chaos army (WoC, DoC and Beastmen) of Rob Gogin and Leo Baker. A really beautiful Chaos army with strong bright colours, and with all the different miniatures used and a lot of conversions shows us why Chaos is indeed called Chaos.

Parade Ground shows us some of the Armies on Parade entries from the US. Some really nice looking armies and my favourite must be the Chaos Dwarfs with a lot of cool conversions and striking paint scheme.

Kelly's Column, instead of Jervis we instead get Phil Kelly writing about bursts of inspiration in our dear hobby, really interesting read where I have to agree with the author. 

The not as good

Not having more focus on the actual releases is strangely a let down for me. Especially the Hobbit stuff which just isn't presented in a way to inspire and lure us into buying some kits, and that is from someone who consider himself as a GW fanboy almost and want everything GW produces. I just don't feel GW wanting to push the Hobbit stuff at all, and that makes all the pages in here totally uninteresting for me.

Kit Bash, Dreadnoughts this time. Space Marines yet again with some really easy bitz swaps. Not that interesting. 

Paint Splatter is about a little of everything and is quite easy tutorials as always. Main thing though is the Hobbit elves, and well I must say I hate the design of the Palace guard. And I know GW just sculpt them as they look in the movie and it's no easy task making nice looking miniatures of these. The thing is that they don't look good with Eavy Metal team painting, I just imagine how it will it will look when we try to paint them. 

The rest of the Paint Splatter is better though, I especially like how Adam Troke's Dark Angel Defence Network is shown with little pictures with explanations under them instead of just the usual tutorials we get now, more of this please. 

This month in... Forge World. Nothing new to show us, and it just sucks that we only get 40k stuff all the time now, we want you back Warhammer Forge!

Conclusion

Now when I have written the review it's not just doom and gloom as I may have made it look like in the beginning of the article. But this issues biggest problem is all the different releases and nothing to focus on in my opinion. Some of you may see this as something positive and I normally do as well, but only if the more uninteresting parts for me still is worth to read. I didn't feel that was the case here, but that's just my humble opinion. 

Some nice painting as stuff is to be seen though and some articles is a good read as well, for any games though there's not much to gain from this issue.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all you wargaming fans out there, I did not get any minis this X-mas but I have plenty of miniatures to paint the coming year so that is perfectly okey :) Did get some nice video games though, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for my 3DS, Assassins Creed 4 for PS4 and Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U. So a lot of gaming for me the coming days but I'm sure I will get something painted as well. Soon we have a new year and I don't know how I'm doing in the Painting Challenge?!

Have to sort out the last months soon so we all know how it went :)

So once again happy holidays from me and the Zombie Zanta.

WoC: Chariot of Tzeentch WIP

The Chariot of Tzeentch is almost finished so I figured I could post some WIP photos of how it looks so far. The actual chariot is pretty much finished so what is left is the crew and the base, hope fully these will be finished soon. One crew member is soon finished and the other one isn't even built yet.

Anyhow, quite liking how this is turning out (sorry for poor quality on the pics, I just took them fast) hopefully you do as well. 

Deadzone is here!

Yeah I got my long awaited package today full with plastic crack, and damn that was a lot of terrain and models. Have just went through everything in my order (this is only the first wave and I will get more goodies in the second one as well) and nothing was missing, good job there Mantic! This took a while but I can recommend using Update #125 and Update #124 on their KS page so you know what should get in this wave.

Great job Mantic and I'm looking forward putting these together (but not removing mold lines :/, will comment this in a review kind of posts later on).

A LOT of stuff

Miniature Monday: First Chaos Troll finished!

It's been a week since my last post!? Well sorry for that, been really busy with everything else being December and all. I have however been painting a little and now I have finally finished the first of my Chaos Trolls and that model always takes some time because I don't know how to exactly paint when I start.

Iv'e actually started on this one and Throgg even earlier and tried different colours, I knew I wanted them to be blue and somewhat similar to the Vortex Beast but I did not know how to paint the bellies (and underarms etc on Throgg) I tried with a purple grey colour at first but I didn't really like it so I tried this combination of 'The Fang', 'Russ Grey', 'Fenrisian Grey'  and some 'Ceramite White' as a final highlight. It worked better with the rest of the skin I think.

Anyhow, I decided to paint this guy up first and see how it looks. And except the vomit (in hindsight I don't really like how it looks on the model) I'm really happy with the result. There's not much converting, I made a "shoulder pad" with an old Chaos Warriors Shield and hanged a skull from it as well. Made some tentacle thingies on is shoulders as well and done. With the colour scheme I think he looks Chaotic enough, or what do you think?

C & C is as always very welcome. 

Miniature Monday: Greatswords Horde

I painting on infantry models for my Empire army and this time I've painted some more Greatswords, and these are the last of my fail(metal)cast models to be painted (badly cast models did exist prior to Finecast and I have whole batch of them). And that is really nice because the new models are so much more fun to paint up. I do need to purchase some more of them though because with the latest finished models this unit is now 26 men strong and I think I have bits for 4-5 goldswords more or so, and I want this unit to be 40 men strong when finished.

As you can see on the first pic here Iv'e also made a new Horde movement tray for them, it's still WIP but it's all magnetized. That's all for today, also planning on some kind of unit filler for these so if any of you have any suggestions for a Greatswords unitfiller in a Garden of Morr'sque setting please let me now.  

Warriors of Chaos: More Tzeentch followers!

As you may have read before I wanted to expand my unit of Tzeentch warriors from 18 to 24. And I'm almost there now, with four new warriors done and a new magnetized movement tray. Two of the new warriors uses some other bits than the standard ones, two heads from the awesome Forsaken kit and a weapon and shield from the Chaos Knights kit. Really liked how they turned out so they belong in the front row from now on.

Just need two more guys, and here I have already started. I will paint up two more Pink Horrors and use as a mini unitfiller together with the ones I already had in the unit. As always comments are very much welcome.

Want to know how I paint my Tzeentch warriors? Go and see my tutorial here.