Miniature Monday: Dwarf Cannon

Yes, the artillery battery is getting a little bigger with an addition of the trusty old Cannon. I repainted this one quite heavily to match how my Dwarfs of Karak Eight Peaks looks and I'm still really happy with how this color scheme is turning out. Although black is a tricky color to have as one of your main colors because there's so much other stuff that is black and you don't want that to disappear with the rest of the black. 

Anyway, here it is, the new Cannon (which is actually the old metal cannon).

My "big" artillery battery

Deadzone KS Wave 2

Hey there guys, sorry I haven't been posting anything lately. Have a rough time at the moment with family and stuff so haven't been doing much hoybbing at all the last two weeks.

Hopefully things will work out soon and I will be back as usual, but until then I won't do as many posts as I usually do.

But enough of that, I got a big package last week, and it's some of the last things to arrive from the Deadzone Kickstarter (some items comes in Wave 3) wave 2!

Here you can see all the goodies, there's bags with miniatures and parts, books, scenery sprues, the new zombie sprues for DZ (will do an unboxing of these soon) and some other goodies like cards, dice and what not.

Will go a little more in depth on some things that I got, like the books and some of the miniatures. But overall I think the quality have gone up since wave 1 and I'm very pleased with what I got. 

Miniature Monday: Empire Celestial Hurricanum WIP

It's short Mini Monday today, have several projects in the pipeline at the moment and one of them is to finally finish painting my Celestial Hurricanum. It's have taken some work I can tell you, I have built,  converted and painted a model much similar (my War Altar of Morr) and there's just so much stuff going on and so much stuff that need paint it takes forever and it's driving me crazy!

Well you have to do some parts at a time to make it easier, but it's just so many parts! I have now painted mostly of the main chassis but still some interior and other stuff to do. The horses are mostly done but need some more paint as well. My goal is to finish the horses, the base and the main chassi and focus on the swirling planets and what not and the crew after this.

I'm sure it will look great when it's finished, at least that is what I'm going for... but damn it takes a lot of time to paint up. Will probably never do an Luminark because I don't want to paint one more of these wagons (might change my mind if they are totally OP next ed :P ).

Warriors of Chaos: Rare Choices

There's a lot of Rare choices in the Warriors of Chaos army, and a lot of different types as well. I have just completed a few of them so far, but more will come in the future. I have a Shaggoth, another Hellcannon and a Chaos Giant as some of the future projects for my WoC army.

But here's what Iv'e finished so far.

Mutalith Vortex Beast
I had to start with this guy, I really love the model and it's probably one of the best paint jobs Iv'e done as well so I quite proud of him. Took forever to paint up but was also really fun to paint. I actually followed GW's Painting Guide for the iPad when I did the colors for him so If you want to do something similar try download that. For more pics, go here.

Skullcrushers
Often considered one of the best units in the game, of course I needed to paint some of them up. I did them in the blue colors as the rest of my army. I don't want an full blue army anymore so I will change it, still don't really know how though and it pains me that I have to redo them as I think the actual paint job is nice, just the wrong colors. I will probably go with black instead of the blue and do some more red, maybe continue on the lava/magma thing I have going on on the weapons. For pictures showing the old blue color scheme go here.

Hellcannon
This piece is a classic by now. Many do convert other models to represent the Hellcannon but I think it looks so good on it's own it's a shame not paint at least one of them up. I own two of them and both av them are in Finecast and is much easier to assemble than the old metal ones. The paint job is inspired by the Eavy Metal team who did a new paint job when they released the Finecast version, when I saw it I knew I had to get one and do a similar color scheme, I'm very pleased with how it turned out in the end. Took a long time to finish though. More pictures can be found here.

Chaos Spawn
I have plenty of the spawns on the to do list (mostly because I have the models) but I finished this old classic metal model first as it where painted but not finished for quite some time. I like the old model even if you get a lot more diversity in the new plastic kit. The paint job is not special really but it looks okey in my opinion. More pictures can be found here.

Miniature Monday: Bauhaus Juggernauts finished!

Although expensive to manufacture, the XO-102 “Steel Strider” suit is an example of stellar Bauhaus engineering and is more than suitable for any Warzone that the armoured Hussars will find themselves fighting in. The XO-102 is a hybrid suit designed after the ‘Ripberg’ incident, using the blueprints for the Bauforschung Anzug (BFA) and early designs for the Vulcan Battlesuit. The XO-102 is a suit which favours strength over mobility and it requires little in the way of maintenance, whilst remaining resilient with incredible flexibility in terms of its armaments. 

Like all Bauhaus personal armoured suits, the XO-102 is made from layers of ceramic armour- plating and high-strength Venusian alloys. Venus itself is known for its extreme climates and suffers from both intense heat and cold. The Juggernauts are immune to such extreme environment variability due to internal climate control systems.
Text from Prodos Shop

The elite and heavy armoured troopers of the Bauhaus faction is called Juggernauts. At first I didn't like the latest incarnation (there where another KS version I never got) but when I have painted some up I'm starting to like them more and more. Still not a huge fan of the helmets on these, but with the added spike they are growing on me.

I have three more I have to paint in the near future because Juggernauts are awesome in game :P That is all for this Miniature Monday. Hope you like and see you next time.

Airbrushing Pt 1: Getting started.

Several months ago I bought my first Airbrush, a really cheap one which worked okey I suppose but I went and upgraded it shortly after to my new Harder & Steenbeck Evolution Airbrush.

Here's my first impressions of both the brushes and also how my first month trying to master to the Airbrush went. 

The first kit

For starters a I bought a quite cheap air compressor and airbrush, just to try it out and see if it's something for my. In the manual to the brush there's a tutorial on how to start learning how to use the brush. You should try different techniques doing dots and lines on a piece of cardboard to practice your skills. Blabla.... I did some dots and then went on to paint some miniatures instead. I started with doing black base coats with Vallejo Air Black Primer, this one just like the rest of the Air line from Vallejo are made for Airbrushing so you don't need to thin out your paints or anything. Great for a beginner.

And all worked out great, priming your miniatures is really easy and the cheap brush worked nice for this. I also learned more and more on how the brush behaves, and how to clean it.

I then started to paint other colours, and here I noticed something. Dropper bottles are so much better when it comes to airbrushing! Obvious I know, but it is something to think about when starting a new army project for sure if you are going to use an Airbrush much.

The second kit
I did have some mishaps with the first brush, but I think I would have with my new H&S as well. The H&S is much easier to clean though and that is a huge plus, because you will do a lot of cleaning on your airbrushes. The H&S is much easier to use as well, however I'm still very much a beginner I do feel a big difference in how the brushes behave. My 0,2 mm. nozzle on my H&S brush clog easy though but that is due the fact I haven't mixed the paint correctly.

So here are my impressions and thoughts about using an Airbrush as an newbie.

The facts

• It wont speed things up much in the beginning
• It requires a lot of practice
• Cleaning and prepare your models, painting area etc. takes time.
• So you need time when you paint with an airbrush, I won't touch it if I don't know I have at least an hour (but more is preferred)
• It's not a miracle cure that will make everything easy to paint
• Treat you airbrush as another great tool for painting your miniatures.

What an Airbrush will do for you

• When you get better it does speeds up the initial painting steps.
• Priming and paint on the first layers of paint is easy and you get a smooth result.
• For larger stuff like building and scenery they are invaluable.
• With practice you can do effects which is very hard and time consuming without an Airbrush
• I recommend painting many models at a time (using the same colours) or larger models

That's what I have found so far, I'm still a beginner to this. I haven't actually found the time to paint with my airbrush that much at all (having a three year old and a 5 months old baby don't make it easy ) And my compressor is quite loud so I don't want to paint much when they are asleep. 

What I do is the first layers on monsters and larger batches of models at a time to speed things up. I haven't tried more advanced methods yet but I'm enjoying painting with my airbrush (as long as it does not clog up). I hope to find more time to practice and use it in the future and will post a part 2 of this in the future I hope.

Some of my first models where I did the first layers with the airbrush. 

Tanks and bigger models is a blast to do with an Airbrush.

Unboxing & First impressions: Nagash Book I-II

Believe it or not this is actually the first unboxing Iv'e done for Warhammer Fantasy. And why not start with the new Nagash books which actually comes in a nice little box (or slipcase to be more precise). I also got a little notebook (as you can see above).

The two books feels great and have really nice covers. 

The two books sits in a high quality and thick slipcase (pic on the left is upside down, sorry) and you see that the other side is having a 'one' for the whole tome so as we can expect the rest of the books in the End Times series/campaign will follow this design. Which is awesome.

Don't want to smell that breath but Nagash sure looks menacing on the front cover of book I.

 So book one consist of the new fluff pretty much, it explains the current situation for each of the armies in Warhammer and then explains all the battles going between this armies. Iv'e yet to read it but the layout is really nice and I like the fact that they show you the different armies, what heroes they have and some of their regiments and how these look. There's a lot of beautiful artwork both old and new, pictures of nicely painted models clashing in epic battles and even maps showing how the battles progress.

296 pages of awesome, can't wait to read it. It will take some time to go through this though.

There's a lot of pictures of armies clashing, with terrain and backgrounds to make it look even more cool.

There's a lot of nice artwork.

Love these parts where they explain the armies.

The last page sets the tone for the next book. 

Book II has the painted model of Nagash on the front cover, really nice as well. 

This book is the gaming part, it's a 96-page volume that contains new scenarios and rules based on the events in Warhammer: Nagash Book 1. Here's the layout is more like an army book. You get the new rules for Nagash, Vlad von Carstein, Valten, Crom the Conquer, the new Morghast's and the four Mortarch's (Mannfred, Arkhan, Neferata and Krell). An interesting thing here is that that the mounted Mortarch's have a combined profile with their mounts. Maybe something we will see more of in the future?

New terrain special rules, and awesome pictures on how these looks. 

A lot of rules regarding the new armies that follow Nagash, the Undead Legions, combined Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings pretty much but with some new rules as well. 

The Morghasts.

Each  of the important battles has their own scenarios.

First Impressions
I love these books so far, so many nice pictures and stuff to read that I don't know where to start almost. Really nice quality on everything and the design and layout is spot on. It feels like very well made books that have been taking a lot of time to make, and it really shows. Can't wait to read them through more and I might do more of an review when I feel I have looked it trough enough.

Unboxing X-Wing: Z-95 Headhunter

A long awaited cheap rebel ship arrived in wave 4 for X-Wing: The Miniatures Game, and it's no other than the Z-95 Headhunter, the precursor for the X-Wing.

The design of the ship is so nice, I might even think these look better than the X-wings. The paintjob is really nice as well, I might do some touch ups but it is far from necessary. 

You get the usual tokens and markers of course, nothing really new here.

You get two reference cards as well, you probably have these already though.

You get four ship cards as well, two really cheap generic pilots and two named (also really cheap though) pilots. 

For last we also have five upgrade cards. Two Elite Talents (Wingman and Decoy) both which is only found in this expansion so far. You also get two secondary weapons (Ion Pulse Missiles and Assault Missiles) and the new card in this Wave which looks to be popular (can be found in the Tie Defender expansion as well), Munitions Failsafe.

Conclusion: All in all very impressed by this expansion, the ship design is fantastic and I really like it being a cheap alternative for Rebel players where you might need a extra ship or two in your list. It being able to have missiles as well makes them cheap weapon platforms as well. You get some nice named pilots as well and some really nice upgrades which some are only found in this box as of now.