Dahedd

Hello Dahedd !  I've no idea if you still look in or not, but I've just gone back all those years and seen your questions.  Hopefully if you're still interested, you'll have watched this.

Additionally, I can offer you:

The Eldar vehicles

The majority of the IG vehicles

The closest thing to a complete family picture of the Iggies. And the Elysians

Really early picts of the Eldar.

And 'cause everyone likes picts of Iggies, I'll put these back up.

Anyway,  here's looking forward to a child free, fair weather weekend for a new parade in 2017.  With these boys front and centre:

Searching for a head. Or a graphic novel.

So, some of you, I know occasionally play computer games.  I'm hoping that there's some one out there who is a bit of a Killzone fanboy.

I don't do FPS, principally because I'm rubbish at it and can't get past the warm up thingy which most people skip at the beginning of a game.  So this stems from idle curiosity, not me ever having actually played the game or even knowing someone who owns a copy.  Anyway, I am interested in the Killzone/Helghast fluff; largely as a possible background for another IG unit.  Like you hadn't figured out already.

The problem trying to find a graphic novel about this franchise is that one of the games in the series has a feature where the Player Character spends his time collecting the pages of a torn up graphic novel during the game....

So googling Killzone and/or Helghast Graphic Novel doesn't actually bring up a graphic novel (if there is one) but pages and pages of stuff referencing the sequences in the game where the pages are collected and then millions of words about the meaning and content of the in-game comic.

So, Oh wise and mighty blogosphere, am I on a hiding to nothing ?  Is there a graphic novel or something out there that my feeble google-fu has been unable to find ?

And, just to bring this back to the table top, what about heads like this ?

There's VL heads which have the DKK like breathing tube vibe or there's the Pig Iron kolony militia heads which have a Vervunhive/Helghast vibe going on.  Hummm, I wonder....

Surprise scenery

So the Royal Mail, in cahoots with HMRC, sent me one of their wonderful anonymised demands - I paraphrase - "There's a parcel from Cadia  Canada, if you give us £30ish, you can have it."

Eventually, curiosity overcame my reluctance to spend money. 

Here's the box on the table.  Oh, its a kickstarter.

Ah, now I remember !

More MDF than I can eat.  This much laser cut MDF has a smell.  Not a nice smell like when you walk past a Teriyaki bar and then Cinnabon and then into a coffee shop, but not unpleasant either, it's just a smell which tells you get building.

Hummm.  Well, just in case this piqued your interest, this is what it should look like when built:

Armistice Day Post.

Interestingly, perhaps, No1 daughter has hit the age where her Brownie Troop/Pack are going to parade on Sunday.  I'll have to find my beret and polish my shoes.

Now, there has recently been another anniversary.  2000AD has reached Prog (issue) 2000.  There is a comic shop (nicely hidden up an alleyway) in Banbury who nicely managed to source me one of the reprint copies, the first edition having all sold years before the event one imagines. 

This is part of my childhood.  A part of GB plc for forty years etc.  I started at prog 3 and carried on through to when I hit my tenaged years and lost interest in everything except goofing about and not washing.  My mum (gawd bless 'er) used to read it as well.  She wouldn't really try to engage her grunting son but did offer on which Judge Dredd storylines she approved or disapproved of in some effort to influence the much younger Zzzzz.

She also bought me my first couple of White Dwarf subscriptions.  I remember being slightly disapointed that there wasn't some nod to WD40 in WD40, but then, one can't have everything.  I also remember some of my more politically aware friends having quite earnest conversations about the 'Democracy' Judge Dredd storyline.  But I'd moved on by then to Kerrang and the NME.

Now the older me doesn't really have the inclination to buy 2000AD every week, but I can be persuaded to pick up the anthologies of collected strips.   John Day over at Fallen Princes often gives pointers to things to look out for (as well as beer recommendations - what's not to like ?) - Slaine, Judge Dredd and Rouge Trooper already grace my bookshelves - when these are complete I may well for others - the temptation is to collect the ones which I remember with fondness (Bad Company, ABC Warriors etc) but there is bound to be more good stuff which has happened in the intervening 35 years which I'm not aware of, but might be worth picking up.  Now I'm 48, I just sort of hope that I've got enough time to do all the things I want to do before I fall off the perch.

Oh, and that 2000AD collection of Prog 3 through to Prog 274 ?  It got thrown away whilst I was in the army....

Re-purposed devourer cultists

So you guys know that my predilection is to built proper sized military formations.  Obviously this comes with the problems of expense, building and painting resources and finally storage.  And realistically, for a lot of units in the future, I only need a handful of minis to depict the idea of a contribution to the campaign.  So here are a few of minis in the sort of numbers I'm likely to use going forward.

Today on the brick of scrutiny are the 3rd and 4th generation cultists from the Overkill boxed set/game (does anyone really buy these and play the game therein ? - more than once, I mean).

So the heads are from the Militant Tortoises set, both the SWAT masks and the berets.  As they are, each of them is still decorated with a cult symbol.  I'll chop off the dangly ones and cover over the others with, appropriately enough, purity seals.

The mining derived suits will give these guys a backstory, two small squads of seven supported by a guy lugging around a grenade launcher - it's obviously heavy; these are real humans not the super indoctrinated Cadians and Catachans who fling around military hardware like it's made of plastic....

And the autoguns give them a distinct look.  The beret decorated dudes look pretty cool.  Until I start painting them.  Speaking of which, I'm thinking of militarising their suits, not having them in industrial yellow or orange. Which is going to mean, probably, a mid military green instead.

The few with claws can be explained away as mechanical bits.  After all, who doesn't want prosthetic claws ?  Ermmm.  I have some Eisenkarn hands, which will always look good on conversions.  So shaving the claws off and adding some applique fingers shouldn't be too hard...

The rest of the cult - I've decided that I really don't want another army.  So the 'stealers and other more gribbly bits are on their way south, even as I type this.  By the time this is posted, hopefully they'll be happily ensconced in their new home.

Blood Pact Reduex.

You may remember these.

Some more have been done, this time by Raven's Nest Painting.

So as Slovak asked for of these, here they are.  Etogaur there in the centre.  Blood Mage with the sword trailing blue flames.  And a Platoon Commander with a bloodthirster sword (power weapon) and the other Platoon Commander is behind the Blood Mage.

Those three at the back are death brigade types.

The family portrait.

The guy with the bolter is a sergeant.  The type with the shield will be one of the Etogaur's body guards.

Death Brigade bloke at the front.

Sentinels.  Original lead sentinels from the 1980s.  More treasure from Devon.

Death Riders.  These are Blight Wheel Terror Birds.

So, these will soon (c'mon Reaper !) be joined by a trio of Victoria Lamb sledgehammers.

Other things I plan on getting some Curious Construct mortars: heavy trench mortars and the multi-barrelled type.   So the Blood Pact can be run using the DKK Siege List.

So the sentinels will have to be an allied unit - but when I saw them, even as a pile of unpainted bits, I just knew that this would be their destiny !  Bwaa ha ha ha.

And If you're Mad Max/Fury Road fan, get a load of this.  I'm not too sure if it's genius, a labour of love or some as yet un-diagnosed mental illness. But it is art.

It's not in any Codex ! You can't do that !

Balderdash,

GW had a long history of codexing units it then didn't produce models for.  "Codexing"  - so totes a wurd.

I've built a squad of jump 'zerkers.

 Lined up on the Brick of Scrutiny: Anvil and GW bits.

So, then tossing some ideas around for actually painting them - here's my quandary:

1. Classic mostly bright red with metallic detailing (like other 'Zerkers)
2. Brass (a bit like Minotaurs) A sort of Khornate Elite [Sanguinary] Guard
3. Black with red crosses on their shoulders and legs

I'm thinking of a sort of Sanguinary Guard.  Once they're painted, they will be virtually indistinguishable from blood for the blood god angels anyway.  But I am open to other suggestions.  

Blood for the blood Emperor an' all that.

And because they're wearing jump packs, they can be artfully arranged like a flower.  It's not all blood and death then.  Oh, wait...