wolfy mc wolf wolf on his wolfing wolf armed with a wolf wolf and a wolfing wolf.

im quite liking this whole space wolf painting lark.. so heres some more.

also.. doing non metal coloured armour with an airbrush is a cake walk.. i honestly reckon i could get a 2k wolf/dark angel/blood angel force done in about a week.

Vlka Fenrika

i've been secreting my wolves away for some time now, having them lurk in the shadows as befits erik morkai and his sinister ways.. essentially waiting for me to decide wether i was going to do 13th company with warp rifts (drop pods) or do normal wolves.

as per usual im still not fully decided but i thought id model up a terminator lord type because i have a thing for termie armour and because why the hell not.

thought id run some colour over them and see how i felt.. im liking how "easy" the wolves are to get to a nice standard. but theyre not shiny or fire angelly enough tbh so work on khiros continues.. hes knee is finished.. need to figure out some shoulder heraldry and make the gold look a bit less flat before im ready to base him and call it a day i reckon.

now to ponder what to make for tea tonight and what to watch..

(otherwise known as an excuse to put a picture of me looking thoughtfull up.. thanks to the ladywife for taking this)

How to ignore a blog and why i want to marry my new camera.

Okay so first things first, i went and bought my new camera today.. It is made of win, magic and more win.

I'm a camera whore at the best of times (behind them not in front of them) and this thing makes the old piece of garbage i was using make me feel embarassed that i was showing you photos taken with it to be honest.

im going to be a bit self indulgent now (not that i havent already been with the pics of stuff you've already seen) and talk about how much happier it makes me to be able to control everything manually.. everything from shutter speed to the focus.. *fap fap fap fap fap* would be how my dear friend sorrowshard would put it over on rant in e minor...

New Jobs, Dubstep and how C.O.D tries to steal your life.

(im returning to an old favourite here.)

THATS RIGHT! (ah much better) I have a new job and am no longer a bum..

So.. (yeah bitch two in a row!) some of you might be thinking "how does this affect the Fangles??" whilst the rest of you are thinking "what was lorin alpha again.. why am i here?" but if past experience is anything to go by my productivity goes up when i have less time on my hands.. due to the fact that it becomes "precious" due to the fact that you spend 90% of it working rather than doing stuff you like.

Its all a load of bollocks though, when you have nothing but time you waste it doing things that dont need doing and sleeping a lot.

anyway..

have some dubstep.. normally dubstep sucks balls, because it just sounds like somebody going "im going to quote a movie!!!!" then farting into a mic.. ephixa and his portal lovin' is made of win.. as are his zelda remixes.

oh and dont play C.O.D whilst jobless.. you end up playing it for like 17 hours and getting shouted at by loved ones when you're holding off going for a wee till the end of the round..

anyways i have burn notice, walking dead and cod to be getting on with.. because burn notice is cool, daryl "fucking" dixon is a badass and i like shooting people in the face.

Lack of updates and excuses

What up!

Over the past few days ive been secreting myself away in an attempt to get a new job.. Still dunno how thats turned out but its all out of the way now and outside of paying attention to my phone theres nothing more i can do. Of course some of you will be going "pssh! job stuff doesn't take up that much time.." but today alone i've been for a 3 hour interview session had to take a drug test and all sorts of other funderfull activities

I am drug free unsuprisingly.. apparently they dont test for lethal doses of caffeine though.

Anyway i have done some hobby related joy recently, although not as much as i would have liked.. Especially considering that monstrous update i did a while ago.

So instead for now i give you a daft black and white picture of my WIP board for home with some fire angels looking all fire angely and stuff.

Look at how arty everything looks in black and white.. Its also really good for hiding random crap like the edge of a table from view. When the new camera gets here expect lots of boring shots of tea cups and stuff in black and white with high contrast.. because obviously I'm arty and that kind of crap expresses my soul...

Or something.

The promised big update..

Yeesh it's taken a whole lot longer than planned to get this update to exist. (the skin tutorial is still a way off..but you at least get to see the candidate for that in this post in all his silver faced glory..)

As i am currently "between jobs" I figured I didn't really have an excuse for not getting much work done on this lot anymore, so tidied my desk up (Sorrowshard can attest to that, he will recall the days of not being able to see the desk for all the crap on it.. and the maze of hobby and pain to even get to it in the 1st place) and busted out some serious hobby whilst listening to a combo of Future World Music, the original Quake soundtrack by NIN (controversially their best album) and some Scar Symmetry (before ADB's twin left the band)

Anyway thats enough talking for now, its picture time.

 
Now obviously some of that stuff is more WIP than the rest, but still they're getting there, with only a few more infantry (mainly all the heavy weapons, including some awesomely uncompetitive devastators) to go before i can crack on with the termies, libby and vehicles..

caffeine, staring and getting fuck all done

The title of this pretty much sums it up.. i would be taking pictures of stuff id done, but theyd be textbook cases of not really being able to tell what the fuck you were looking at..

I got about 7 marines into painting a tac squad, finished a couple of easy conversions.. got somewhat high off've the combined fumes of engine degreaser, acetone free nail varnish remover and mr muscle over cleaner whilst stripping parts.. did a bit of a tank, then sat staring at my desk for a while attempting to focus on something.

essentially massive doses of caffeine, 36 hours of being awake (purely for the chance to be awake at a proper time of day sometime soon) and small scale painting dont mix.

if im awake at any point tomorrow before the time i have to harass sorrowshard in going to the pub or something to that effect ill attempt to post something worthwhile.

for now you can enjoy something older that i havent really shown off on here.. but have a bizzare fondness for..

Cats: why their paws are str10 rending with 2d6 armour penetration

Fucking Kitten!!!!!!

Okay that's out of my system now..
My dear little kitty (Tao) decided that what would really be a good idea was to take a huge bloody running jump at my desk in the process destroying my Budweiser glass (one of several branded glasses that I acquired from promotional crap working in bars) and more importantly explodifying Khiros into a bajillion pieces....

Fortunately for her the only bits that suffered any "serious" damage was the right shoulder joint and the top of one of his shoulders which has a big dent in it now.. the shoulder has been repaired and the dent has been left as "battle damage" but Khiros as a whole ended up being repositioned and having his arms blu tacked into place for now until I can magnetize the mounts for other options (I have a seismic hammer in the works for him for any tournies so I can run him as an ironclad) but still.. Kitten is now banned from the hobby room, She can't be trusted to not act like a retard.

Anyway heres a picture of post rebuilding Khiros:

I shall be doing more work on him tomorrow, along with hopefully cracking on with the main body of the army and a few transports.. so with any luck (and some serious amounts of caffeine to knock me into a regular sleeping pattern) tomorrow should bring some fancy fancy updates.

Oh and seeing as I'll have to paint some skin, I'll get on that face tutorial and if I can find the spare parts, a combi-flamer one.. Dont hold me to that though, apparently I get distracted FAR too easily when it comes to crap like that.

The adventures of Bromhardt: Brom Returns.. for about the 50th time

Sticking with my not starting posts with "So" or "Thats right!" im finding myself in a more talkative mood.. I still plan on using an abundance of fullstops in quick succession, and most likely will find that I outside of a few things, I will continue to ignore the rules of grammar.

I've been attempting to improve my images over the past however long its been and have been gradually getting them as good as i can with a 5 megapixel auto focusing piece of shit that my girlfriend insists is in fact a camera.
(i miss my old one.. rest in peace camera that got crushed into a bajillion pieces during the trauma of moving house.. rest in peace)

pictures like this were "quick shots" with the old beast.

Nowadays getting a picture to not look like ive taken it whilst drunk is hard enough.. but getting something that is good? essentially no chance due to digital noise, a mediocre ability to focus on anything that isnt 17 feet from the camera, no white balance, an inability to determine whether or not the camera is going to automatically darken or brighten up the image and potentially the most retardedly placed "macro" switch ever..

At this point i must take the time to thank my girlfriend for having no interest in the hobby or what i write about it.. because otherwise i'd be signing my own death warrant for bitching that much about a camera that is on loan.. but she lives in ignorance of my hate towards it.

I am getting off topic (as per usual) so in my attempts to make this thing workable i have made a new makeshift filter for my lamp out of a shirt.. hoborific as that may sound, it works.

The Inquisition I is an in joke.. But justifiable due to the Fire Angels fluff. Hurrah!

Now in comparison to the other shots i've put up recently you may be thinking "well thats not much of an improvement!" but where as before i was spending a rather daft amount of timing staring at my monitor attempting to photoshop him into looking like he did in real life (with some serious over exposure issues.. check out the crux in the last pic of him..) where as the newer pic was just a matter of altering the background and checking the levels.

now in keeping with my photo related crap.. I need to find a new place to upload my pictures to, the adverts on photobucket make me sick.. i listen to music through my pc.. so photobucket interupting it (with no mute option) with some godawfull music of their own whilst idiot children and lobotomised adults grin their way through an advert for toilet cleaner is not appreciated.. i think a flickr account or something may be in order.. bleurgh.

Trying your hardest not to start a post with "So"...

I can't use "thats right" either.. i use that one too much too, and I'm not counting this as the intro because that'd be cheating....

Um......... got it!


After far too much time thinking about how to start this post without repeating myself for the bajillionth time i almost forgot what it was i was going to say, how dumb is that? But whatever the case onwards we go..


Now obviously if i was to start reviewing the current marine codex, id be woefully out of date and stepping on other peoples toes out there in the big wide world, however if we review the current state of the game as a whole then we can discuss smaller issues as we go. In the current edition of the game what is commonly known as MEQ is seen as the average & the thing to beat.. the fact that in reality GEQ (guard equivilant) is what the game designers initially had as the average apparently doesn't matter anymore..
Think about it, guard, eldar (both types) tau & the "average" nid are all rocking this type of statline, crons have now lost their 3+ and orks are in many ways closer to GEQ than MEQ.. str 3, crap at shooting, low armour etc etc.. but due to the predominance of marines alone (not even equivilant stuff) we have ended up in a world where all some people see is marines and nothing else.


Now i know my local gaming club isnt "the whole wide world" and as such is only one example.. but at the moment our club has a diverse range of players with me and one other person being the only "pure" marine players (i only run marines, sure they may be templars, chaos, deathwing, fire angels etc etc.. but if it aint a marine im not playing.. and the other guy only has a grey knight army atm)
out of those players i can quite happily state that all of them even sorrowshard have a marine army of some sort without exception.. and this is where the problem appears.. despite all these people playing with non marine armies (Xenos are in vogue atm.. because it makes you "different" and "cool".. much like all those morons in skinny jeans and 3d glasses without the lenses are "different" and "cool") secretly the all have a marine army that they probably bought based on the fact that marines are fucking badass.

Xenos players.. this is you if you hate on Marines on the internet.

 So using the popular armies makes you uncool in the interwebs.. cept dark eldar of course.. because theyre xenos and get a free pass..

Now Marines get a bad name of late.. because of MEQ.. the reason MEQ exists is because Xenos players went "my armies shit.. t3 is shit, str 3 is shit, not having a 3+ is shit" and so gw changed some stuff.. then you all hated on it because it was MEQ and anything similar to a Marine is shit because theyre "easy mode" and dont have a learning curve.

News for you bucko Marines.. PROPER Marines none of this Grey Knight bullshit (they offend me) have a learning curve.. when everyone out there is busting out str 6 ap 3 stuff en masse you end up in cover with less models, worse transports and fewer guns.. or in combat with stuff that goes 1st, with more attacks and higher survivability because of invuns etc.

All the Xenos players out there who hate on Marines, need to remember.. Without them we dont have a game, you'll all be playing games where there arent any xenos armies, theres just space ninjas or steam punk communists..

Now on the flip side of this.. GW need to realise that things like the Grey Knight codex are offensive.. that ruining the internal balance in the game by making an undercosted army break the unwritten rules of the game is retarded.. I look at the current state of 40k and I worry, I worry that a game thats background is awesome, that for several editions has provided me and my friends with a whole crap tonne of fun and that has some really cool people working on things for it (the guys at forgeworld, ADB, Phil Kelly and Jes Goodwin to name a few) that by 2013 it'll be ruined by this +10 attitude that certain people have.

Should Marines seem awesome? yes. Should Marines make up 50% of gw's general sales? if theyre still awesome then yes. Should the game become broken in favour of awesome marine chapter no.666 in an effort to make a generally less popular codex sell. NO..

6th ed needs to come, and it needs to come fast and save the game as we knew it.. balance needs to be restored.. and not in a master yoda "balance means wiping out the badguys" way..

In closing the Jedi Council were all retarded that none of them went "hang on, thats not what balance means!! KILL THE CHILD!!!!"

Lights, Camera, Action? No nevermind we dont have a camera yet.

So after much thought (and instant retrospect that i have started a fair few of these with "So".. note to self use a different segue in future) i have decided that i need a better camera.. not just in the "oh im taking pictures of pretty models i need them to be shot with the greatest depth of field ever on a bed of satin and made out of pure platinum with diamond encrusted bases"

But because i used to study stuff to do with cameras and music production and essentially just got lazy with both and am on a self improvement binge (dont worry i wont be turning into a pacifist hippy vegetablarian with no shoes) and want to improve my skills as a photographer and get back on track with music..


Except really its all about taking pretty pictures of models to show you and hope that you'll love me..
Now i've seen some pretty fancy rigs out there in the world of the internet, but im suspicious of all of them, are these people with all the gear and no idea? or are they technosavants that need to be beaten to death with a blood soaked bath mat whilst screaming incoherently about how they reminded me of an albino kid i once knew..

om nom nom

The camera above is going to be my weapon of choice (besides a bath mat.. or an angry kitten hurled at your face) chosen because im not made of money, its got a decent sized sensor, fully manual controls, the ability to add a whacking great big macro lens to it after i sell my kidneys and/or soul.. and finally because the canon eos 7d costs more than a few cars.. WITHOUT A FUCKING LENS.

Ahem... i appear to have gotten distracted by camera porn... now my main wondering with this camera's "standard" lens is how it will fare at mini photography when pushed.. im not going to go into every last boring detail, but essentially the essence of a good shot of a model is to make it look as much like it does to the naked eye with as little editing as possible.. now if anyone happens to have a properly badass DSLR if they feel like trying out a 14-42mm lens equivilant on a low ISO with multiple diffused lamps, a decent background to sit the mini on and dick about with the zoom, focus and anything else thay can think of to make the model look as good as possible.. please.. give it a go.. if not for me then for the sake of the 1 other person in the world who probably cares.

Idiot moves & gold paint

So.. I was looking through my lovely (if somewhat battered) copy of Imp Armour: volume 9 and thinking about painting up my thunderfire cannons techmarine.. i mean sure he usually dies in the 1st turn of every game because Sorrowshard has turned my club against him..

Despite this.. and the fact that the gun is currently proxied by a whirlwind turret on the track section of the thunderfire cannon (worst kit EVER) i thought it'd be a change of pace to do gold.. plus i needed to determine if my techmarines were going to be metallic or an orangey yellow colour.. i need to get round to emailing forgeworld about the picture.. though im leaning towards orangey yellow atm.

Now i guess you're wondering where i'm going with this.. but its pretty simple.. i own several gold paints.. i own tamiya ones that are quite nice if a little on the yellowy side, i own gw ones which i barely use, and i own a lovely pot of vallejo liquid gold which is amazing and goes on like a dream... (examples of it are all over termie brom with 0 highlighting as of yet)

But try cleaning the fucking stuff out of an airbrush afterwards.. never again.

NEVER AGAIN!!!!!

when in doubt, shout, be bald and carry a weapon the length of a small car

Thats right! two updates in one day.. i bet you're all going into some form of shock by this point.. or more likely bypassing my speaky parts to look at pictures..

so heres a picture:

Brom is looking mighty fine (imho) and a whole lot better than the old one (which can be seen somewhere else on here for comparison) plus.. ive almost figured out how to make my pictures the right size too.. so all in all its been quite a productive day i think.

Oh and in closing, photoshop is your friend, i missed it when having to work with gimp (which has a suitable name for something which is pretty much wank) and am glad its back on my pc.. my pictures look all sorts of swish now, despite my messy bases and lack of anything close to a finished product in a while.. i wonder if a blog can be sponsored... *emails adobe and monster*

Procrastination.. the end of an era.

So as depressing as it is, ive ran out of stuff to distract me from getting on with my army.. sure i could paint a land raider, or a dev squad.. but seeing as i need to paint a land raider and some basic marines.. that type of procrastination isnt even that useful to me..

these are sad times indeed.

as such i plan on putting out some fancy(ish) pictures of stuff with paint on over the next few days, and might get round to that combi flamer tutorial i mentioned once.. many moons ago.

oh and a skin tutorial, because i like painting skin (in a non perverse way) and have had a few people asking questions..

for now i present the closest i got to wasting some time.. repainting something for an older army.. which is still productive in its own way.. stupid lack of stuff to sculpt/model!

i do miss my old deathwing, but tbh they look like ass, so need redoing.. of course whether they beat out the templars or not as my next project post fire angels is still up for debate.. but my faith in Mr Kelly for templar author is high..

intelligent and witty titles escape me once again... but this time with psykers

so the hobbying progresses.. brom looks shiny, and now he has a librarian mate to order about..
He's essentially my "real" hq choice for everything what with captains not being as good and the such..

i was never a fan of the fat face on the termie librarian, and the space hulk on just doesnt look "fancy" enough for my tastes.. so here we have a hack job librarian that i actually like.. hes going to be rocking vortex o doom and nullzone i think, because being able to shoot a mini vindicator shell up people is always fun, and messing with invuns is pretty much the reason librarians are taken in the 1st place.

Much needed update..

So as i said last time i was updating termie brom.. and i thought id actually post some pictures of him this time..

sheild is still being worked on, but overall how much cooler does he look than the last one >.> who knows maybe this influx in pictures and awesome might get some comments or some new members.. now you must excuse me i'm going to go whore myself out over the internet.

NO! Drink the bleach!

so ive been working on more stuff (dont worry no photos yet) and found myself in an odd state, not only am i quite enjoying painting atm (im blaming a combo of mark bedford being enthusiastic and klear fumes) but im also looking at some of my sculpts and thinking "i can do better" which certain people are going to become sick of hearing before too long.. essentially im looking at the termie form of brom, his cloak, the atatchment of the skulls to his torso etc etc and just thinking that now that i have more free time that i should actually push myself to the limits of my ability and make something that is a: awesome and b: magnetized because i never use the fucker..

oh and for those who dont know the title is a quote from metalocalypse, which ive been watching again whilst painting.. and also is my recommendation of beverage for some of the people on the internet who apparently think that tarring all marine players as retarded cavemen and gw fanboys wasn't going to make me want to beat them to death with their own limbs.

Halt as i purge thee

seriously need to figure out how to do thumbnails on this blog..
ah well the fact that ive done 3 blog posts in a row with no bile and hate is impressive.. i hope you all appreciate it!

the armour of contempt is av 13...

oh khiros you sexy bastard... you made my migraine go away.

or maybe it was the painkillers.

Khiros: Guardian of the flame

Thats right.. i've already started to think up a backstory for my contemptor and some justification for why the fire angels even have one -_- the short version is Khiros is a bad mofo from the original training cadre of the fire angels who bit the bullet in a joint campaign with their parent chapter.. who gave over the contemptor as an honour to khiros's sacrifice and general badassery.. the guardian of the flame bit is to do with the fire angels reliquary as khiros's statis chamber is within it.. plus it sounds cool.

this and the "regular" contemptor piss all over the normal dreadnought style.. its like resin flavoured porn.

The morning after

So.. i did the whole gamesday thing yesterday and thought id post my opinion on it all.

1st things first.. Wards hat was fucking stupid, he looked like he wanted to be in some jazz musical or something, full on twat.

got a small bit of time to talk with Phil Kelly, told him his dex's rocked and made my demands that he writes the black templar codex and no one else.

got me a sexy relic contemptor and the boarding marine and discussed the painty painty with mark "i have a whole metallic army ner ner ner" bedford and got some useful advice from him then harassed simon egan and alan bligh about various bits and bobs.

but now onto the meat of this post..

games workshop really dropped the ball this year organisation wise and in terms of overall interest, where as forgeworld put out some awesome stuff (had imperial armour 11, 2nd ed ia apocalypse and tarmukhan out to read) and satisfied the wip itch. gw had nooooooothing. Project X was dreadfleet x 10000.. which if anything just seemed dissapointing as it had already been announced, they had display boards strewn about the place and didnt bother using the space effectively.. there were huge empty spaces all over the main room where as the sales stands had a 3 hour queue and were in the smallest part of the arena.. to make matters worse, they had ALL the sales stuff in one place.. so black library, forgeworld and all the gw stuff were in a tiny little bit and got saturated almost instantly.

as an example of how daft it was, one person who was in before all the others (running a table in front of the sales stands) managed to get in, pick up the black library stuff he wanted and when he got to forgeworld, theyd already sold out of DE tantalus.. then waited an hour at least in the queue to pay.

im expecting a lot of "customer feedback" to reach gw about this tbh.. was one of the less impressive gamesdays ive been to.

although from what i saw a fire angel dreadnought won gold in golden daemons.. IM NOT ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

road to early entry..

So.. im under no impression that ill even get past round one of the demons with this mini (may take morkai instead if i cant complete this one on time) but as stated hes so i can get early access to gamesday. i dont enjoy queuing and live close enough to get there early.

but anyway

progess is being made (although not in photography ability.. stupid crappy girlfriend camera) the worrying thing about all this, is that im enjoying doing this model.. something to do with it being a blatant distraction from what i should be doing i guess.. ah well.

now some of you may have noticed that i like to end remarks with ".." im trying my best to stop it, but its hard.. real hard.. =p

yeah essentially i just like to type as if im william shatner and need to pause for dramatic effect at every given opportunity...................

or something.

the other kind of shiny marine

so i was looking at my entirely unpainted sanguinary guard army earlier today and thought "I know, seeing as im slowly killing myself via metallic paint and my annoyance with it ill do a different type of metallic!" because you know different shiny is clearly such a massive departure from shiny..

theres a lot of work to be done as per most of my stuff and i might use him for early entry into gamesday and then seriously attempt to enter golden daemon next year. even if it is just to aim for "first cut"

tbh the main reason im posting this is because i like that glowy eye and the non banana yellow gold.. that and because i need to update this more often so you dont all worry that im dead.. all 6 of you.. -_-

apparently im not particularly good at this..

well me and my space marines have come to a standstill of late.. something to do with the utter imbalance between the codecies (mainly the ward ones.. but ill leave that rant for later)

im thinking of running a land raider crusader in my list atm.. essentially going on the principle of "if my marines are shit i might as well have a 250 point fire magnet"

either that or be a dick and run tarnus vale and go nuts on anti tank..

something along the lines of

devastators armed to the nuts with missiles x3, 2 craptical marine squads, 5 termies with hammers in a land raider, vale and as many attack bikes as i can fit..

thoughts being 14 str 9 missiles, 2 str 10 lascannons and as many str 9 multimeltas on bikes as i can fit should fuck people up.. itll be soul crushingly boring to play with and if i get dawn of war im screwed.. but tbh using the ultramarine codex is becoming a chore anyway.

and yes im a whiny git, but thats what the internet was invented for so meh.

theres some pictures of my utterly illegal terminator command squad.. they hang out with terminator brom.. or at least are meant to, hes illegal too afterall outside of moloc.. who is shit imho.. 235 points and 3 attacks.. probably serves me right for wanting to play silver marines with a man with a shield and sword leading them and me not doing gay knights and draigo..

oh and ill be taking a camera to gamesday so expect some badly taken photos of any marine shit i can find.. and potentially some other stuff too, although square bases and xenos really dont interest me atm, i just want to piss sorrowshard off by taking photos of me molesting his tantalus.

Radio Silence

Okay its been far too long since i updated this (or my painting log on bolter and chainsword for that matter) but this has been down to several factors most of which revolve around laziness and kittens.. the main one however is the fact that ive found myself struggling to stick to a metallic recipe that i like and its driving me insane..

the main problem im having is with the varnishing.. im stuck between gloss and satin at this point.. the overall technique is essentially, gun, steel, varnish, oil wash, secondary varnish to seal the wash, then paint highlights, and all the other colours.. howeverfor the time being its satin.. because ive already done a squad with that method.. but i will be doing a model in gloss to see how it looks and will then show the results on here for ya'll to judge..

Taken to the Emperor's Grace

The title of this post is one of the reasons i like the Fire Angels.. their religious nutcasery extends even into saying "dead" differently. Either that or "the Emperor's Grace" is like disney land and brother Dreaux and Techmarine Ortun from IA:9 both got to go visit..

anyway work has been done on brom and im even having fun painting him.. apparently PAINting as dear Sorrowshard would put it doesnt apply to funky characters.

i cant think of anything to call this post so im going with "Kholek to the face"

Aside from terrible titles and injokes this post is about painting and how i enjoy it and loathe it at the same time.. plus i have a shiny new model to show you all.

But first its wall of text time!

Throughout my hobbying days i've attempted to improve my painting techniques and for the most part i have succeeded except for one major factor.. i cannot be arsed.
its a defining part of my painting now and one of the reasons i have started sharing my own brand of laziness and word vomit with the interweb, im trying atm to make a full company of marines.. but painting the same scheme 100+ times is killing me, i can barely be bothered to finish more than 2 marines usually because once ive done one "properly" i start going "man i hate highlighting it takes too long, i also hate basing.. why the fuck do i have to paint sand?" and such things go on in my mind until im thinking about paying some small albino child from the 3rd world to paint my army and if he gets anything wrong ill beat him to death with a bath mat.

then i get onto a new model.. something ive not painted before or a special character, and i start to have fun and go "hey this schemes pretty cool, i really should do that tactical squad whilst im in the mood" and the whole cycle repeats itself and im left with a half done character and a tactical squad who have roughly blocked in colours and dust on them from where theyve sat in a cabinet pointing at me with their powerfist and bolters and judging me through unpainted helmet lenses.

now its time for a pretty picture.

one of these days ill figure out how to make thumbnails work and my blog wont look all spasticated because of the pics.. but for now i cant be arsed.

More Character based Adhd

thats right.. i managed to find a way to procrastinate a bit more than usual and distract myself from painting in the form of an update to the power armoured brom (im gonna have a company of this model if i dont stop soon)

much happier with how he looks now, the last one was good, but kinda sloppy on my behalf even when id done him i knew i could do better.. this one i see as complete. outside of overblinging him (which can be done with paint if i really need to) theres not an area that i think looks either too plain or too cluttered.. i will admit i wish i was good enough at microdetailing to add a few things here and there.. but until my skill improves id rather not ruin a model with mediocre detail.

fiction: also know as a fully painted army.

well ive been neglecting this blog more than id like to admit.. but thats mainly because id stuck the fire angels in a box and got the huff with them for a bit.

anyway i decided it was time to pull my finger out and do something.

brom is getting there slowly hes already "tabletop" apart from the base, but i have lots of things i want to do to him in the weathering sense and need to paint up his banner.. i do think i need to clean up my painting style a bit.. might have to do some kind of showcase model and get my "micropainting" hat on. i dont actually have a hat for painting i left my last good hat on the bus.. maybe i should buy a new one.

apparently photobucket is being queer again, i may have to find a new place to host my images.. the constant faffing on bucket annoys me, as do the adverts interupting my musical delights.

distraction: its name is kitten

Ahem, apparently ive been distracted from my duties as another angry voice on the internet by the aquisition of a new pet.. this post isnt really a huge update of wonderous pictures and the combiflamer tutorial i was going to do.. but its proof that im still alive and still bitter about everything.

In the grim darkness of the future, there is only points imbalances.

After a fun night of gaming it up i have returned home with a few thoughts in my head..

the main one atm is that where others say "space wolf termies with thunder hammers and storm shields are overpointed" i say all other termies with hammers and shields are underpointed.

think about it, a tactical squad with a meltagun and a powerfist is 200 points, throw in a free heavy weapon that you'll probably never use too.. cuz its free.

lysander is 200 points too.. he has a few wounds and eternal warrior.. he has 3 attacks.

a squad of 5 termies with hammers and shields are 200 points, theyre like lysander, but with 10 attacks and more wounds..

which of these would you like to be able to take as an hq choice? or an elites? or maybe troops? im pretty sure the answer to all 3 is the hammernators..

now with 40k being in a state of confusion atm (tank spam, lack of basic troops despite the scoring thing.. tactical squads seemingly redundant etc etc) surely we should be thinking "for 200 points that tactical squad is awesome.. and so tactical!" not "man i wish i didnt have to take tactical marines, if scouts didnt suck so much id consider them instead.. man why do all my troops choices suck balls?"

i mean think about what you get.. sergeant + termie armour + hammer + shield.. a sarge is 26 points (roughly) termie armour with a hammer and shield for a captain is 70 points, a hammer and shield is 45 on a command squad.. so why is it termies cost 40 points each?

is the 63 points a space wolf player pays over the top? hell no.. the 40-45 points all the other marine armies pay is cheap.

40k needs to be rebalanced and tactical marines need to seem worth taking and not something that is almost forced onto you.

I return/ the mourning of a dear friend

Well, I'm back from download.. slightly burnt, slightly deaf and aching all over but it was all sorts of good..

however, my dear faithfull umbrella did not make it through the weekend.. after about 8 years of violence & mistreatment it decided to end its life during disturbed's set.

i shall miss you trusty umbrella and will be returning to the garden centre to try and 'aquire' a new one.

anyhoo heres a tank

its a very shiny tank.. this will be sorted out via more weathering and a light coat of satin varnish. (quick note, varnishing metals is a ball ache, if you decide to do a 90% metal army and want to protect your highlights etc.. either a light coat of satin.. and i mean light.. too much and you might as well have painted them grey, or gloss them before doing everything else, then matte the details etc by hand.)

DOWNLOAD!

Woop woop and all that, its time to head to donnington and go deaf..

after i come back there should be combi flamer tutorials galore and potentially (highly doubtfull) more painted stuff.. otherwise known as expect some dodgy pics of cut up flamers & boltguns, me complaining about something (im gonna go with "assault squads are crap" as a place holder) and the possibility of converted things.. i like converting, its an excuse not to paint.

power armoured version of brom.. hes older than the termie one and needs a new sword.. but i needed to put a picture up to break the wall of text i had going on.

see y'all after the weekend.

more angels of the firey type

well i thought i'd post something else.. as thats what this thing is for afterall.

first off heres the list ive been working on.. it has some points left over that i need to use up but i like the way its going so far.

librarian - avenger, nullzone, termie armour & storm shield

assault termies - 5 hammers
ironclad - chainfist, melta, heavy flamer
drop pod (locator beacon)
dreadnought - assault cannon, fist

tactical squad, combi melta, fist, melta, multimelta
drop pod
tactical squad, flamer, plasmacannon
razorback - las plas
tactical squad, combi flamer, flamer, plasmacannon
razorback - las plas

vindicator
vindicator
thunderfire cannon

anyway more funky pictures.. because pictures are more interesting to me at least, so i assume its the same for everyone else.




by the looks of it photoshop is playing up again.. as usefull as that site is it does its best to piss me off.. most of them need more work doing (especially sergeant rikart whose plain boltgun metal.. and yes ive named my sarges.. i plan on making this company "cool" dammit!)

speaking of naming sarges and the such, i plan on doing some funky campaign stuff when the rest of my club pulls their collective fingers out and gets painting.. i might have to put some of my musings about that on here too, afterall "fluff" is important.

It Lives!!

Finally decided it was time for me to have a place to rant and rave about stuff of my own, that and im woefully neglectful of the various topics related to my armies progress that are out there amongst the wider web.

Alexander Bromhardt.. leader of what will eventually turn out to be the whole 2nd company of the Fire Angels.. His name is made up, his heraldry is stolen from a thunderhawk in the badab war: part 1 book and his loadout in terminator armour is entirely illegal.. but he looks cool and thats what matters.

(angry looking bastard isnt he?)

In the long run he will be using Asterion Moloc of the Minotaurs chapters rules until i can brow beat and harass all my gaming cohorts into letting me homebrew some rules for him that allow me to field a non crap fire angels character *glares in the direction of Tarnus Vale* and still be able to use my armies chapter tactics.

which leads me nicely onto the subject of chapter tactics and why i hate them.. seeing as gw kindly did away with the traits system (due to it being abused and everyone and their dog having non codex codex chapters) we now have crimsonultraravenfistamanders instead.. because in a world where a generic character with articifer armour, a relic blade, digital weapons and a storm shield costs 185 points.. why in the name of all that is holy would you not take vulkan? hes 5 points more and makes your army a whole lot better.. and gets a mastercrafted relic blade and a heavy flamer.. downside to all this? i sure as hell dont see one..

same goes for cassius.. for 10 points more than a chaplain with a combi flamer, he gets a mastercraft on said weapon, it can shoot magical bullets (hellfire rounds) is toughness 5 and has feel no pain.. oh and he has a bolt pistol which theoretically grants him +1 attack over his counterpart with the combi flamer..

"dear matt ward, stop smoking crack & write a codex that makes sense"

i think ive gotten off topic..

soooo Fire Angels!

theres a heap more where he came from, but not enough battery power in my crappy ass camera phone to take enough mediocre pictures at this point in time.

*note to self, buy a decent camera and sort out a lightbox*