The Daemon's Claw

So far it has been a very productive holiday season. I have built 4 Kastellan Robots, 3 Kataphron Destroyers, 2 Plasma Reactors and a Cybernetic Datasmith. The Robots are great to make, you can cut the retaining lugs out of the legs to get a lot of posability. This is contrasted by the arms which are just one piece so you get a sleep walking zombie pose. I magnetised the weapons. So I can swap between fists and phospor blasters.  I have also been making the bases for all the units and the getting started with Adeptus mechanicus. This is my current standard recipe of bark for the rocks, sand and then mixed herbs for the vegetation. Next I need to make the snow and maybe do some highlights to the rocks. I also magnetised the weapons on the servitors so I can swap between plasma or grav cannon.

I am getting some Kastellen robots for Christmas. There has been a lot of controversy about the heads, especially that they don't fit the 40K universe. Given these robots are supposed to be from the Crusade or before it's not surprising that fashions have changed a bit in 10,000 years. So I thought I would have a go at changing the heads to look like the Cylon Centurions so something like this. However if my sculpting skills are not sufficient I might end up with something like this. I think I will mold the heads, so If it doesn't work out I can stick the original heads on the models. Getting these done and the other models will enable me to field an Adeptus Mechanicus army.

I took my knights down to the club and got involved in a big game of 40K. We had about 8 people all with 2000 points each so it was an opportunity to bring out the big models that don't normally get much on table time. My knights were by no means the biggest models on the table. Infantry were just a blur of little red specks on the thermal scanners as they ran backwards and forwards trying not to be squashed out of hand in the engine war. Things I learned: Shadowswords are as brutal as I remember against enemy vehicles. Thomas used one and it killed perfectly healthy knights in one shot twice. One knight took 30+ wounds. Tau Tiger sharks are nasty as well, this one had railguns and the ability to kill super heavies easily. The Eldar knights are no better or even slightly worse than the Imperial knights. My Errant knights had some good duels with them even with their traditional Eldar "immunity from the rules". Try being immune to damage 6 chain swords. Playing a...

Luke has been watching hobby videos on YouTube. Just like his Dad:-) He wanted to make some Pokemon characters. After making some figures with DAS which wasn't working out like he wanted, I went down to Spotlight and bought some packs of coloured Sculpey clay. This turned out to be really useful, you can mix colours to make shades and highlights and it takes paint well when cooked. Here is a picture of Grima and Ghastly. They survived a day at school requiring only minor treatment by the medicus. I will be getting the Sulaco deck mould back this weekend so will be putting my new Sculpey skills to the test rolling out sheets of deck tiles. I am making some more progress on my War of the Roses army. There are a lot of interested people down at the Warlords so we might have a new and diverse period to keep people occupied in 2018.

I got done some more work on the legs of my knights. I had been painting the armour panels separately and now I have got them to the point where I can attach them to the legs. I really enjoyed painting the metallic colours on the legs with the Vallejo model air colours. I have used 4 different shades of silver paint. The colours go on really well with a brush. The silver then got some shades of nuln oil. The gold is a mixture of copper and gold with a wash of Agrax. That stuff is really liquid talent.  Here are the Knight legs. The next steps are to paint the cables and then add the transfers. The dragons on the banners are all hand painted. I may add kill markings if I can get some transfers to work. Some white or black skulls on the bottom of the banner might look cool. Here is the white Knight, I have also painted the gold on his top panels, so they got included in the shot. I need to do some more variation on the gold for the front of the carapace. ...

I have been assembling my latest shipment of Adeptus Mechanicus. My son Luke really likes this model and because it has been assembled with the weapons magnetised and the legs are adjustable he thinks its a toy and wants to play with it with his action figures. The poor thing wont last 5 minutes in that kind of environment. Luke also wants to advise me on how to paint my tank.  Based on his taste, it will end up looking like it comes from a super hero movie. So I have given Luke a Dreadnought from a 40K starter set and he is OK with painting that. The model is currently depicted with the eradication beamer, probably not something I will use much. But it's luke's favourite weapon and he knows how to change the weapons. I think I will probably use the Neutron I have been making some Adeptus Mechanicus tokens, these can cover the canticles, the warlord traits and the dogma's. I forgot a couple of them so I need to make some more. Here is my tech priest Dominus. He...

I got in quite a bit of hobby progress last week. My War of the Roses Stanley retinue took some steps forwards. they are an ideal kind of unit because many of the colours I am going to paint on other units can go on them as well. I do need to get out the Khaki colours this week to do some of the natural fabrics.  The orange and green colours are down on them to give them their livery. they also got a coat of Steel. I got some of the Vallejo air metallic colours and they are great. I thank Vince Venturella for his advocacy for these paints they are great either through the airbrush or via the brush. They will get some brighter metallic colours soon because I will also be using them on my adeptus mechanicus models.  Here are my Skitarii painted up in the colours of Stygies 8. I also got done some progress on their bases. I am going for rocks and snow on the bases. So by next meeting these should be on bases and looking better. Here are some...

I have been doing some work on my Stanley family retinue. We now have several people that are interested in participating at our club. These are my Retinue billmen and archers. So they have orange and green livery on their surcoats.

I have been magetising the weapons on my knights. This allows me to make use of more weapon options from the knight warden kit. You get 4 weapons but only 2 weapon mounts. It also allows me to swap the weapons around on the knights. This also makes the knights easier to transport because I can take them to bits meaning they take up less space and have less fragile sticking out bits that could get broken off. One thing I have noticed is that this edition seems much more about combos rather than the abilities of individual units. You can now design an army around a captain librarian and their terminator bodyguard all arriving at the same time and in exactly the right place. Most characters have aura effects that improve the abilities of nearby units, again the bigger the unit the bigger the benefit. Stratagems can also be used to ramp up the power level. because they affect a whole unit, they encourage big units. One of the stratagems allows you to select a unit and deploy it at th...

My Knights got in their second game today. It was a short but brutal fight. My Knights were investigating some ancient ruins at the behest of the Adeptus Mechanicus from Stygies 8 when we were ambushed by a formation of Emperors Children. I deployed, with the skill and wisdom of the French King a Agincourt. I was banking on winning the go first roll  and then promptly lost the role to go first. Pete responded by dropping in his prepared combo of terminators daemon prince and sorcerer. He then cast Precience on the terminators giving the +1 to hit and with re-roll 1s from the daemon prince he proceeded to roll 15 out of 16 hits the first time then played his strategy card which allowed him to have another round of shooting. Terminators and possie arriving early for the party. Surprise. Then everyone succeeded in making their charge rolls to assault me. The Daemon prince attached first and scored enough wounds that I was just above the second bracket. My knight s...

I have been working on my bases for my 40K armies. I have been adding snow to the rock bases for the knights and supporting infantry. To make the snow I used a mix of baking soda, PVA glue and water. I then added a coat of white paint to brighten up the colour where the colour from the herbs leached through. I have also been working on laying down the base for the gold colours around the edges of the panels. I am using the Foundry colour Beasty Brown. I can then add two different shades of Vallejo air gold to make the gold mix. I have been making some progress with my colonial African skirmish. The Congo rules look really good. plenty of opportunity for cinematic moments where explorers get mauled by a Lion or bashed by a Gorilla. I watch Kong, Skull Island last night. Very much what I was thinking of for my colonial skirmish. I may also have more of a Cthulhu bent for Congo rather than strictly historical. Again it's a game where you can get into it with a few plastic warrio...

I will be scouring my collection of old figures for models that are suitable for colonial Africa skirmishes. I found an interesting article in Wargames Soldiers and Strategy about adapting Saga for Colonial. The article comes complete with a colonial and native battle boards. You can even use the horse and camel rules for mounting units with the corresponding reduction in defensive stats and the reduction of shooting range to medium representing carbines rather than rifles. I also have a copy of Congo rules made by Studio Tomahawk and the Men who would be Kings (AKA Pith Helmets Rampant). So there are plenty of options for intrepid explorers to face down fierce natives. I have some plastic colonial British from Perry's some Zulu warriors from Warlord and some Mahdists and ACW Zouaves from Perry's the terrain can be a mix of 40K plastic palm trees, plastic aquatic terrain. The Zouaves will make excellent Askaris or Ruga Ruga. The Mahdists will either be themselves or Zan...

I went away for a few days this week. Normally this would mean less hobby time, but always on the lookout for some new inspiration, several of the photos do great inspiration for Rock and Snow terrain. Amazing how you got the dark brown volcanic rocks, red brown vegetation, bright green moss and white snow. This is good reference material for my Knight army. I am also looking at projects for 2018. The club has already kicked off a DBA War of the Roses project. We have 6 people interested. I got some more specialty models from Firestorm Games to go with the Perry's plastic. I think I will do them as Lancastrians from Towton. Blue and white livery. The plan is to fight 4 major battles of 2018 with smaller skirmishes in between. I also am interested in some more skirmish games. Some other people are interested in colonial battles so I got a copy of Congo rules and a box of Perry British. I can use them against some Mahdists I got a while ago to use as a Warhammer...