13 Feb 2011

Hobby updates

Hi all, Pete here again with some hobby thoughts and updates on current projects.

Every time I walk past the figure cabinet in the hallway, I check out the ranks of undercoated roman legionaries waiting for some attention. I picked these up middle of last year and they are cracking figures, produced by Warlord Games. Typically for me, I got as far as painting the centurion in good time, then moved onto the next project. I'm really keen to give these a bit more attention in the near future.


At the same time as buying the romans I also ordered the Kings of War undead horde from Mantic. I hooked these out of the cupboard and examined the frames again several nights ago. I'd dismissed these when I first heard about the range, but after checking out the stand at Salute last year and receiving a demo sprue in the mail, I thought I'd take the plunge. No idea when i'll actually get round to sticking 'em together, but they really are good models. Only little gripe is no transfers for shields; the kits come with stickers instead. But, for 50+ pieces for £30, they're awesome value, and you can easily paint the shields. The mantic range (currently Dwards, Abyssal (Chaos) Dwarves, Elves and Undead) is expanding soon with a line of Orcs, and the shots of the development pieces look top notch. Next time you're near Kids Dreams in Portslade, head in and check out the Kings of War range.
Speaking of unfinished projects, currently modified and undercoated is my Sopwith Camel for Wings of War (WW1). Olly and I agreed we'd buy and mod planes for our club night games. I'm on a bit of a painting kick at the moment, so maybe this week... pics to follow.

I've just put down my brushes after working on John's Necromunda Ratskins gang for most of the day. These are coming along really quickly (by my standards at least) and within a week, they've been assembled and converted in places, based, and painted up to the first wash stage. This is the milestone I aim for as it starts to tie the blocked-in base colours together and give a bit of depth to the figures.
I must admit, I wouldn't normally go for figures like these, not just because of the 90+% metal phobia (see previous posts!) but because the figures are absolutely jammed with details. I tend to paint figures that offer mini paint-breaks; that is, there are areas on the piece that are just flat surfaces in between the details sections, but these have been an interesting experience so far.
On the Tyranid front, the army is mostly built - (the starting line-up, that is), although I have three figures that generate extra models as the games go on (two Tervigons and the Parasite of Mortrex) so I need to make an amount of extra pieces that aren't accounted for in the list. I need to make a concerted effort this week to get the four Shrikes put together, then the list is done. I've converted up a few more 'Ripper swarms' that represent the Inquisitor's guard platoon and managed to capture the 'Sarge is acting strangely' rule rather nicely, I think...

As an aside, I spent a bit of time last week on the KR Multicase website, sorting out transport for this lot. I've been using these cases for a number of years and can't rate them highly enough. The guy who set up the company is a packaging expert years of experience and this certainly shows through in the design of these cases. For the Tyranids, I'll need to go for the quad-size case with a combination of around a dozen trays that will accomodate all the pieces in the army, plus inevitable colour-coded dice, as well as my Wings' plane, Magic decks, Necromunda gang, Mordheim warband with a few slots left for cowboys or pirates. It's a club-day's worth in a box.


Lastly, but by no means leastly, I've been working out a new Mirran faction-aligned Magic' deck. I've butchered my old green and artefact decks to come up with something which has potential. It's needs a couple of tweaks as 2 wins in 6 games isn't a great start. It all centres around Genesis Wave (courtesy of my wife Kelly xx) and a heap of mana to empty chunks of my library onto the battlefield in one swoop. This effectively self-mills, but hopefully strikes with enough punch on the following turn to win the game. There must be a way of dealing with all those beardy phyrexian-aligned infect decks out there and i'm determined to crack it!

Well, until next time, catch you later!

Pete of team Gambit.

ps, two mythic rares (inc one foil) in one booster... does it get any better?

3 comments:

  1. Nice post, thanks again for painting my Ratskins.

    What mythics did you open?

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  2. Hey Dude,

    Blimey, you've got a lot on!

    In regards the infect decks. At the tournament last week, Mirrodin won pretty easily. Can't remember the exact win/lose of each side. Hoping Garys going to write it up, but was an awesome night.

    You going to bring your deck along this eve? Can put it against my infect, see how it handles :D

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  3. Hey guys,

    John: the two Mythics in one booster were Mind Slaver and foil Luxcannon

    Olly: Cool, would be good to get a game in one of these nights... played nine games monday evening and won four. Two of the losses were because of stupidity and refusing to mulligan. However, the wins were epic and in the last I played 34 cards in a single turn.

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