When you get that itch you just cant help but scratch

Hi Guys,

Thanks for stopping by!

I know I've technically already given you a post 'this week' on my paint racks but as that was more of an ad-hoc review rather than a regular post I thought I'd treat you and post up something else, aren't you lucky!!!

You may or may not have been aware but recently +IDICBeer ran a terrain competition which I initially planned to enter due to a few things but namely an increased workload in my final year of Uni I had to pull out of the comp, but I messaged Nick and he was pretty cool about it and I promised him that I would look to continue my planned terrain piece in future..... I do and it is one of 4 terrain projects I have in mind at the moment 1 of which is what I wanted to go through today. But first just a bit of background as to where this has come from. Way, Way back when I was originally finding my feet in the hobby my friend and i used to battle it out on a regular basis, Games workshop produced a whole load of punched card terrain that fit into the old necromunda plastic bulkhead at this point, I think it was around 2002 ish. But I happened across a post on a forum where people were posting pictures and asking if people had any for sale and just generally pointing out how awesome they were which got me to thinking....... but I'll save the rest for a future blog post!

I've always been told that it's a good idea to start small and ease yourself into something, especially if it's new or your just simply out of practice. With that in mind I started looking through scratch builder resources, print and play terrain sites and various other places to see if there was anything that took my fancy terrain wise and stumbled across this little gem http://paperwargames.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/bunker-40k.html

The idea of paper terrain seems a bit flimsy to me though and with a few bits on hand I set about making a bunker using the paper terrain piece as a guide to follow.

Here's what I started with.:

1 A4 sheet of blue foam 0.5mm thick,
Sharp Xacto knife,
Metal ruler,
Hot glue gun, you could use PVA or wood glue but I found the hot glue was great as it dries solid pretty quickly and allows for easy construction.,

Probably with a general disclaimer at this point, Xacto knifes will be very sharp and they do glide through the foam with little resistance so it's very easy to cut through and has the potential to cause injury, on a similar theme the glue gun (if you use one)  does get really really hot, as does the glue itself, you don't want to touch the metal heated element at the end of the glue gun to the foam as it will melt it and if it comes into contact with your skin you will burn yourself.

At the end of the basic construction of the project I was left with roughly a third of the blue foam left so in terms of material cost it was pretty cheap.

The instructions are pretty easy to follow and the guide itself is very well presented so I've simply taken a few shots throughout the project with a 'final shot' of the basic level of construction with some models around it for size comparison. I do intend to and have actually started doing further detailing work to this bunker, even though it's just to ease me back into terrain making there's no point doing something if your not prepared to give it a good shot.

these three pictures show the angle the edges were cut at in order to create the joins the the main angles of the bunker, the middle shot shows how I used the paper terrain as a guide to creating the foam pieces, these were especially useful when getting the angles right as I was able to hold them in the correct position while the glue was setting, the right hand picture simply shows a few of the pieces cut out of the blue foam.

These shots were taken part way through construction and show the angled pieces put together and the basic shell of the bunker. 

These 2 shots are the same views as above but at the completed stage. This is as far as the papercraft guide takes you and as you can see from below you end up with a decent sized piece of terrain which you can fit around 10 models inside. I've put a couple of dire avengers inside the bunker, a war walker and my current painting project the warphunter in shot for a size comparison.

In terms of time to make this took me no longer than 2 hours total to get to this point and if i'm honest it was pretty easy and I think it actually looks pretty decent too. Let me know what you think, keep an eye out for more terrain oriented posts from me in the near future, including putting the finishing touches to this bunker as well as some more old school oriented terrain stuff.

Hobbyzone.pl Large paint Stand and large corner paint stand review

Hi Guys, Thanks for stopping by!

We've all been there right we get that urge to be a little more organised with our hobby area, whether it's then put off till you have more time or if it's a genuine effort to become more efficient and have less desk clutter through to maybe even setting up a clear working area to do with your own commission service.

I'm usually one with delusions of having a clutter free desk and being more organised but really all I ever do when I tidy up or organise something is then fill the old now uncluttered area up with something new that I probably could have found a better home for anyway. I'm one for watching a lot of video's on youtube regarding painting or battle reports and I kept seeing all these pro painters with a significantly more organised painting area than my own and as my painting area also doubles up as my work area for programming games etc I figured that I would make efforts to try and make things look a little bit neater.

I searched a few different sites out for painting racks and stands trying to find one that I liked the look of and stumbled across a website based in Poland www.hobbyzone.pl who also had what appeared to be the best value for money I'd come across too a large paint rack holding 81 gw sized pots for less than £12 after counting up my current paint collection which was stashed in a drawer and not that easy to access I figured I would need to get one of their corner pieces too which came in at just under a tenner and holds 33 pots.

Well I put my order in and the package arrived in the mail today(3 working days from order to delivery), the first thing I noticed is that it was so well and securely wrapped it could probably survive being driven over by a tank (the picture to the right is after I got through the initial wrapping). This is in no way a negative criticism, in the gaming world there is an undercurrent of apprehension whenever ordering goods from other countries (or in some cases even your own countries... I'm looking at you ebay purchases!).

No-one wants their goods to arrive in anything less than perfect condition and the guys at hobbyzone certainly made sure this was going to be the case. Once I'd got through the cellophane and bubble wrapped exterior and xacto-knifed through the neatly sealed and branded hobbyzone box and then a further interior wrapping of bubble wrap I was greeted with that oh so delicious smell of freshly cut wood that you usually only find in workshops or the like.

I opened the large (straight) paint stand first and checked through all the pieces, no damage and one side covered in a nice clean white finish, I couldn't find any assembly instructions but being a man I figured that had there been any I probably wouldn't have read them anyway. Not that any were needed as assembly was very straightforward, glue is optional and I found that the stand was rigid without needing to glue the joints.












With the large stand sorted and filled with most of my paints I set about putting together the corner piece, same story with the packaging and the oh so good smell of the cut wood again, this time I had a small instruction booklet as the assembly of the corner piece requires that you put the shelves into the 'spine' of the stand and then attach the final 2 supports after the shelves are in place.

Assembly for both racks took less than 5 minutes total and as you can see in the picture below leaves a very professional and organised looking way to store your paints. the only negative thing I can say about these is that I did underestimate the size of the racks as my desk currently isn't the largest but there are smaller racks available on the site and I will definitely be going back for another section when my collection of paints expands. That in itself though is a failing on my part in checking the footprint of the paint stand rather than a negative on the actual product itself.

The picture below shows the 2 racks side by side and filled with my paints and a few extras, you could easily add magnets to the edges of the stands so that they stick together but honestly they will work perfectly well without.

Hopefully this review was of use / interesting, if you have any questions then feel free to drop me a message or comment below, if you think others would benefit from reading this then please feel free to rate and share!

Thanks for stopping by!

Another week and more progress

Hello again and thanks for reading my blog.

Without further delay lets get right into the meat of what I'm planning to do over the next few months. As my friends will know I'm moving down south of the border again in summer to live with my Fiancée while this in itself is amazing I have also been invited to join a 40k league to have some regular play. Which means I need to have an army painted to a respectable level to play with... even though apparently sometimes they play with just assembled models without paint.

Anyway I figure that even though I have a significant amount of stuff I could paint / play my focus has always been the Eldar so my priority should be to get my list ready. What is your list I hear you cry? Well I'm planning on running the following or variations of the following initially which gives me a more focused to do list than I currently have.

HQ
Autarch w/ Fusion Gun, Laser Lance, Mantle of the Laughing God, Jetbike

Elite
5 Striking Scorpions
Exarch w/ Scorpion's Claw
Wave Serpent w/ Holo-Fields

Troops
5 Dire Avengers
Wave Serpent w/ Holo-Fields

3 Windrider Jetbike
3 Windrider Jetbike

Heavy Support
Fire Prism w/ Holo-fields
Warp Hunter w/ Holo-fields

The league is 1k points and this should bring me in at 997 and should be fun to learn with.

So on that note my painting list basically follows the list above with the exception of the Fire prism already being completed and I've also made some progress in the form of completing the old school Dire Avengers which have been sat on my desk for about 2 months which can also be ticked off too! Now you could argue that as they aren't based they aren't finished... well sure once I decide what basing style I'm going for I'll 'finish' them properly. :)

Long time hiatus and what i've been up to

Hello and welcome to my blog. My last post on here seems to have been some time ago due to a multitude of things but mainly that my hobby was taking a back burner while I focused on other things. I now find myself with more time and will attempt to be posting on a more consistent / weekly basis.

So Good news! I have actually been painting things and for a reason too. I've been quite active over on +Fritz 40K  Warmaster Forums. Where you can find me under my usual tag of Zangetsu. There's a WIP post with all of my to do list and updates on progress AND I even found time to enter a competition. Considering my mediocre painter status I actually think my entry turned out pretty well.

I managed to try out some new techniques on this and have actually been starting to use my airbrush. I will get better at it but i'm pretty happy with the end result anyway!

My to do list at the moment consists of the following: 

Eldar 

1 female Farseer scratchbuild,
1 Avatar,
1 Autarch,
Maugan-Ra,
Barroth,
60 Guardians,
10 Guardian jetbikes,
6 Howling Banshee's,
28 Dire Avenger's(8 painted),
3 Support Weapon Platforms with crew,
6 Striking Scorpions, 
7 Rangers,
5 warp spiders,
2 wave serpents,
2 Falcon Grav Tanks,
2 fire prism / Night Spinner Grav Tanks(1 painted),
1 Warp hunter,
3 Vyper Jetbike's,
3 War Walker's,

For my Chaos Space Marines I have the following:
Everything from the DV limited edition boxed set (Lord, 6 Chosen, 1 Helbrute, 20 cultists),
Abaddon,
9 termies (5 painted),
10 marines,
1 Rhino,
1 Forgefiend,
1 Heldrake,

And last but not least I have the following for my Dark Angels:
Azrael,

Everything from the DV limited edition boxed set (Company master, Chaplin, Librarian, 5 termies, 10 marines, 3 bikes),

Dark Angels Battleforce (6 bikes, attack bike and a landspeeder),
5 man assault squad,

I'll leave it at that for now and follow up with another post next week. Thanks for stopping by!

It still counts.... honest!

So updates for you all!

I've been on a bit of an ebay binge while I was away and have so much stuff to paint its a bit overwhelming, never mind all the stuff i already had needing painted... namely: 

Eldar stuff: 8 dire avengers, 7 jetbikes, 6 rangers, 3 warwalkers, a nightspinner, 2 falcon grav tanks, an autarch, a farseer conversion, about 60 guardians, 3 vyper jetbikes, 6 howling banshee's, a warp hunter grav tank, maugan-Ra and a fire prism there's probably a few more bits i've missed there. oh yeah an eldar avatar too!

I have the whole dark vengence set to do and on it way i now have a dark angels battleforce, 8 chaos terminators plus termi champion, a chaos sorceror, a dark angels assault squad and Abaddon the despoiler!

BUT I'm not idling sitting by and letting things pile up, oh no i've already started to undercoat / highlight the chaos terminators. I will get better at using my airbrush if it kills me!

Here's some initial shots of the terminators, i'm going with black legion, I also intend to paint the dark vengence set up in black legion colours.

On the desk pt2

I think it's safe to say that this can be called an on the desk part 2 because all i've managed to get done is order a whole load of new bits, fully magnetise my autarch (for all the weapons / back equipment options excluding the missile launcher which has been converted to a death spinner) i'm also working on a converted helm with mandiblasters and a warp jump generator both of which are also magnetised ready to swap about as needed. it's my first attempt at this so i'll get it painted / finished up and then post some pictures.

I might have been slightly bad and gone ahead with purchasing an eldar warp hunter (http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Eldar/ELDAR-WARP-HUNTER.html), truthfully I think it's an awesome tank but I also wanted the fire prism bits for magnetising so I could swap them out with my nightspinner. :) There are a few bits that I will be able to magnetise on the warp hunter but I don't plan on being able to swap it out for anything else.

off to do some spraying so apologies for the short update.

On the desk at the moment

So I have picked up painting again and lets be honest, it's long overdue. I have on my desk at the moment several things in various stages of completion.

My Nightspinner has been primed, the turret weapons have been magnetised for when I pick up a fire prism turret I can swap between them.

6 x howling banshee's currently primed black ready to be airbrushed.

Maugan-Ra primed black ready for airbrushing.

6 rangers primed black ready for airbrushing.

7 jetbikes primed white, ready for airbrushing.

1 x warwalker half magnetised and primed white awaiting the airbrush treatment.

10 x guardian defender squad needing highlights / finished off.

8 dire avengers undercoated blue awaiting airbrush highlights and then detail work.

I have lots and lots of other models here to work on, these are the ones i'm trying to focus on and will be updating the blog regarding in the near future. :D