Wolverine Armoured Car WIP

Here they are. The hull on the left hopefully shows the exhausts from the V8 under the bonnet. The centre one shows the plastic pipe in to capture the axles. The one on the right shows the battery pack and spare wheel arrangements. I am having fun building these. The length of time it takes is a bit of a drag, so there's a balance to be struck between 'doing it right' and finding something better to do. Which isn't too hard, really. I have sand and compost, so a few minutes would see those holes in the lawn nicely filled, if I ever get around to it.

Lt Gen Marcus Firth III escapes from the Bloodcoats

Hello, I've just played http://www.devos4.blogspot/com/2009/09/capturing-lt-gen-marcus-firth-iii which went ok. The Devos IV 2nd Regt were at full strength and had a Laser-Destroyer tank hunter.

The poor ol' Bloodcoats who were trying to intercept the General were a whole platoon light. The army list has two platoons of Plt Cmd & four rifle squads. I have one built with a splash of paint on; the other is still in its boxes. Ho hum. Plenty of success with mortars and auto cannon. But their entire AT capability was one missile launcher in the Plt Cmd squad.

Needless to say, the 2nd Regt succeeded. They even managed to preserve half of their manpower.

I still need more practice with the rules. (No one took a perils of the warp test, despite using their spooker powers to toast some bloodcoats.)

And another tip if one is trying to engage someone who has never played before is to have everything set out nicely beforehand. It's just a timesaver and makes things easier to identify as you run through their army list.

Oh for a limitless hobby budget - Admiral Drax

I'm sure that Drax was referring to the lovely things that he could buy, should his resolve weaken sufficiently. But it got me thinking along a tanget.


OK. So if you follow Col Corbane's Blog at all you'll know that he has what he refers to as a "plastic crack mountain". A phrase that I have shamelessly stolen from time to time.


This has the unfortunate habit of growing, by fits and spurts. I cannot purchase one box of 10 catchans or canadians. I have to buy enough to make a formation that fits in with the policy, rules and organisation of the army they are for. (ie the fluff). I do not buy one tank. No army with a shred of self respect deploys one tank. Tanks operate in numbers. Whether Kursk or not, my battles involve slightly more realistic numbers of tanks than the FOC allows for.


So I buy in numbers; because in my fortykay, units have rational sizes. This is a dire thing if one is trying to limit the cash haemorage and reduce the scale of the "plastic crack mountain".


I have been good. The giant numbers you might read in the summer 2009 posts in this blog relate to a time when I received a regular cash injection on top of my salary. I spent a stuipidly large sum of money on stuff that I still have not put together, much less painted.
(ie, 'stupidly' in that I bit off more than I could chew. Or glue. Or paint.)


So I'm not missing mortgage payments or starving Mrs Z. But I can see that without the other distractions that my life involves (mostly to do with Mrs Z, dogs and exercise of varying degrees) I might become just a little too aquisative and end up in financial trouble just feeding the 'collector' within. The wolf one feeds is the wolf that grows stronger. I do not want my indulgance to become an obession that slides into addiction. Whilst all well and good for GW employees, I won't get paid for it, I'll get fired and then loose my house. A good subject for one of Jervis' surmons, perhaps.


Some time ago (I may have mentioned it in a previous post) I decided that I would buy no more until I'd finished what I already have. Well, last month I bought a box (three boxes) of the new greatcoated soldiers from the Wargames Factory. Like I mentioned, enough bodies to make a viable unit. (five squads and a command section [using the Baneblade commander] in IG terms - another valhallan platoon perhaps).


The road to hell may be paved with the intention not to buy any more until the exisiting is all painted nicely. But if "Spearhead" includes a re release of the Emperor's Fist Armd Coy then I'm getting one this time. So there are conditions where I'm happy to break my moratorium, as long as I can greater benefit. (I never for a moment considered that all of the Apoc super sets would go out as one issue and not be there forever, silly me)


My point is that despite my spare time being a greater limit on my progress than funding, money should be an issue. I have proved beyond reasonable doubt that I can spend (indeed, lets swallow our indignation and use Mrs Z's word - waste*) money on an ever increasing plastic crack mountain.


What I might do is begin saving up for a pro paint job for one of my formations. The DKK are the obvious candidate. So that would be spending the available (and depriving me of the opportunity to add to the mountain) whilst reducing the amount work required.




* I have tried buying things from othere sources that I thought would go well. But it turns out that 25mm or 28mm truescale figures look horribly out of place. So yeah, there is some waste. And if the Devos IV campaign is never fought, it'll be a waste. And if the mountain is still there when I snuff it, again, a waste.

Just a taster

This is a mock up of the Wolverine armoured car. I think normally they are eight wheeled as they used to be made using wheel sprues that GW produced (with smaller wheels) these are relatively inexpensive wheels - apparently they were first produced as scenery and therefore are flat on the reverse side. One can obtain some absolutely fabulous wheels as upgrades for Humve kits and the like, but they are expensive and will make your GW models look crude and ugly. I've got more sides done. The battery pack on the rear of the turret makes the thing look unbalanced. It will come off and go on the back with the spare wheel. I've got some brass strip which is a suitable width to make a mudguard and then will construct an exhaust system from plastic pipe to run from the engine, along the side and yeah, well, just watch. I'll do something with it.
Destined for battlefield anti tank glory, this baby. If I ever finish it.

Tank Shock

These are the first four. I left one LRMBT and the baneblade as a treat for the weekend. Perhaps. This is them masked:And Unmasked : And facing the other way, just in case you were beginning to suspect that I only ever paint one side of anything. I'm quite pleased with the results. The wavy lines were made by cutting a gently arcing wiggly line down a peice of masking tape, the two halves of which were then stuck to the tank with the straight edges together. It's mostly worked.

And as you've already noted, there is a lot of green towards the front of each tank. This is because they are going to get the vari-coloured unit differential bars sprayed on to the front, where the track tensioning screw is.

Almost getting there

So, I have sort of chickened out of doing the Tigers tanks in the Tigers colour scheme. It might not show too well on these fots but these tanks all have eight pointed stars or symbols of Slannesh on them some where. So the straight/vanilla/Cadian colour scheme wins out. Hopefully it'll challenge a few people; They'll see a Cadian armoured formation, only close inspection will reveal their true - wait - I'm getting carried away with this, arn't I ? It doesn't matter at all. So this is Tamiya dark yellow. Incidently this will also be the base colour for the DKK colour shceme, so I'm sort of looking at this as practice. You can clearly see the diffence between the ones base coated black and the ones base coated white. I think some of the DKK chimera are even base coated grey (army painter's detail obliterating spray paint).

Big Black Mountain Challenge

Last weekend my old friend (in both senses of the phrase) Martin played host to Mrs Z and I. He gave up his bed for us (Mrs Z having previously professed a dislike of the floor), organised our packed lunches for the grand day out and BBQ'd when we'd finished. He'd generously entered us in the 'Big Black Mountain Challenge' which is a fund raising event for the Longtown (Wales, not Cumbria) Mountain Rescue Team. Hopefully this picture gives some idea of where the valley floor is. We walked 19 miles in glorious weather, up onto the ridge, along, down and up again at the other end and then back along another ridge to the finish.

There were two other routes; one shorter (which meant a comparative increase in the amount of up and down.) and one longer, which appeared to be being approached as an endurance run by the participants who had, in enthusiasm or error, subscribed to the marathon route.

This is some random ladies muscling in on my picture of my helpers.

I had a fantastic time, the dogs loved it, Mrs Z got a decent night's sleep afterwards (maybe she should walk 19 miles every day...) and judging by the amount of people there, there should have been a fair whack raised for the MRT.

Existing Tigers colour scheme

These sentinals are in the exisiting Tigers colour scheme. It's a Revell sea green with cadium yellow (the Citadel equiv) jags and then a camo or catachan green fill in the jags. It looks OK on the little guys, because they are very small. 28mm or less would you believe. On the sentinals it looks OK, but these photos show the patchy brush work on the jags.

You can see the heavier armour behind. These are from the same unit as the sentinals and therefore the same formation as the little guys. It would be quite nice from a theme army point of view to have them the same. Being jags, with masking tape the scheme could be fairly easy to do. Then I would not have to use the default Cadian scheme I was contemplating earlier.

I am just a little wary of it so may try two LRMBT first off.

Do I qualify for ISO 9000/2001 ?*

After my previous post about airbrushing and getting better, Admiral Drax commented that he'd used either hardly any or no thinner at all. So I sneaked out whilst Mrs Z was whipping up fajitas last night and gave it a whirl. The vehicle is the Platoon Command Squad (I don't have one, so they get an AFV CP) for the Bloodcoats Mortar Platoon. These pictures, like all my others were taken on a mobile telephone; However, they were done at 0730 this morning out doors. I'm quite pleased as I fancy you will be able to make out the three shades of green on the vehicle. So I now have my guinnea pig (guinnea tank ?) for decals and then weathering. Appart from the Rhino sides it is scratch built, so I'm quite fond of the little thing and will be dispointed if I arse it up. But it's only a hobby. And mistakes can be painted over.

Many thanks to Admiral Drax for supplying the notion that whilst thinning might be giving me ultimate control over the amount of paint applied, nonetheless actually having enough pigment means one can see what one is spraying and hence spend more time painting and less time faffing about trying to correct things are not wrong, just not what I thought I should be seeing.

Incidently, I still put a few drops of thinner in the resevoir first, as this prevents any 'lumpy' paint clogging the airbrush up.

*No. (I may be continuously improving (not hard, considering the starting position), but am not registered. Nor have I written myself a quality manual. That would be sad, shame on you for thinking it.)

Airbrush progress

OK. So I'm making slow progess. This one of the better pictures of one of the Emperor's Children's speeders. Base coated Skull White from the aerosol can and then airbrushed with Tamiya purple. I am gobsmaked by how much thinner is required. But then, my measuring into the tiny airbrush resevior is imprecise and I get a what turns out to be wash. So, for instance, the 'speeder here isn't so much painted as given a fairly heavy wash of colour. But hey ! I can get the airbrush to work, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm winning. Here you see the effect on three of their Predators. I think that you can see the changes in tone and so on, on the models. I'm not really worried about the differences - they are on the side of chaos, after all. And I plan on more thin coats. The one closest to you has obviously had more pigment in the mix than the others. So it has a thick and glossy coat, rather than what I wanted, which was a much 'deeper' paint effect (built up by layering etc etc). But it's early days so I'm OK with it so far.

This is them in their white base coat. The actual paint used is a shade lighter than warlock purple, which saves me trying to lighten that colour with white. Again, the less actual mixing of paint I actually have to do, the more consistant my result. What I'm to do is find a technique that gives me a result I am delighted with (or realistically, can put up with) and replicate it.

I started with the Emperor's Children's armour as the more mixed results will simply look more 'fantastical', which is OK and of course, with the over abundance of detail/spiky bits, there is no chance of an iffy finish on the hull detracting from the model when complete.

Before I did these, I also put some paint on the Defilers, but I was thinking that spraying was easy and that I could easily and quickly put a purple base coat on with my new super tool. So, chalking that lesson up (if you are going to paint armour purple, use a light-ish base coat), I sprayed the preds and speeders as shown.

The plan for the DKK vehicles is a late war wermacht scheme - dark yellow with red brown and dark green squiggles. Which is going to be much less forgiving. The intermediate paint job will be the Devos IV 13th Mech's vehicle fleet (LRMBTs, baneblade and a few odds and ends), which will be some sort of green based scheme. Possibly Olive drab and black (although it makes me feel a bit itchy using those colours for baddies...) or something like the Cadian pattern. A good green and green scheme, as seen on the Cadian 127th would be nice, but the practice with the higher contrast scheme would possibly benefit when I get around to the DKK.

Look what I did over the Bank Holiday weekend.

An entire Saim Hain army. Complete with warlock and converted (but didn't finish the painting) farseer. The whole bunch: And *all* my own work...

Seriously, buying an existing army from someone else is the way to go for ease of getting things on to the table top. This was Soviet Space's army until last Friday.

And I've already embroiled them (and hopefully the Preatorian 5th) in the events unfolding on Devos IV.

See here http://theastronomican.blogspot.com/2010/05/farewell-to-cosmic-serpent-battle.html for the report with pictures.

Devos XII

Farseer Khonnur let his mind's eye take in the surroundings as he lent down from his jetbike to stab at the Vostroyan. The scene of carnage stretched away in both directions, all along the Imperial Guard defence lines.

Dire Avengers mopped up the last Preatorians on the left flank, partially obscured by their crashed 'serpent. A sea of wrecked jetbikes and dead and dying Eldar and Mon Keigh separated them. To his right was the melted remains of a Leman Russ, smoking blackly in the gloom, beyond that the white and green smoke from the Falcon that had carried the Fire Dragons to the missile silo.

The skeins of probability unravelled and re-knitted as Khonnur concentrated. With their perposterous weapon system threatened, the Mon Keigh would come. Khonnur felt relief that the Fire Dragons didn't need to set it off and boil the surrounding area to radioactive glass.

Instantly, the remaining aspect warriors began to withdraw. Also guided by their Farseer's psychic commands, the Vypers moved to cover the aspect warriors as they began to move. Final storms of lethal monofilament projectiles were spat out by the shuriken cannons, filling the intervening space between the remains of Khonnur's wild rider clan and the Mon Kiegh.

Favin, the warlock next to him would be disappointed that they hadn't wiped out the Mon Kiegh. Certainly Khonnur could feel his hunger for the blood of their ghostly warrior behind them; the single man who evaded all detection and slew more of the clan than any other device of theirs. But Khonnur was thinking of the future. The slaves of the corpse seer would come here in numbers, to defend their gateway to the world they knew as Devos IV.

Perhaps the former Astartes who now served she who thirsts would pass this moon by. But if they didn't, then Farseer Khonnur had ensured that it would better defended in future.

With thanks to Soviet Space. Hope you like the Farseer's new moniker.