More news soon. Onwards…
Well, what happened there then? For the first couple of months of this year, posts were coming up on Heresy & Heroes thick and fast. And then, just like that, they stopped a few weeks back. So what happened? Well, I have been exceptionally busy, but for a truly awesome reason.
Yours truly, the author of this illustrious blog (well, I think it’s illustrious – it’s at least illustri-ish), will be moving up to a beautiful town in the East Midlands at the end of this month. That town is called Nottingham. And I have a new job in Nottingham. At Warhammer World. I am going to be working for the Warhammer Community team on their website! *screeches with inaudible excitement and does funky dance* No big deal.
Ok, so I’ve only wanted to work for GW since I was about 9 years old. And I went up for an interview in late March and they said that they wanted me. I remember sitting in a room, with freakin’ Ghal Maraz behind me, and thinking “well, I’m just happy I got to interview” and so I can’t tell you how excited I am that it all went so well and that I’ll be part of the Warhammer Community team, working on their website very soon.
Now, I can’t say too much more, but hopefully I’ll be able to bring a lot of what has made Heresy & Heroes so fun to Games Workshop’s Community site. So, keep your eyes peeled for more news there, and maybe even my name every now and again.
But, having had to do so much admin, so much packing, talking to cleaners, and movers, and hotels… I haven’t had any time to paint. I started work on a genestealer cult gang for Necromunda but that’s all been packed away now. In fact, most of my life has been packed away now, but I’ll be unpacking it all in my new flat in Nottingham by the end of the month.
Heresy & Heroes isn’t going anywhere either. It will always be here, and I will update it as and when I can once I’ve started. I’m going to be a very busy man once i get up there, but I’m going to try and find the time to keep you guys up to date on my painting work. I could never truly desert you lot – you’re part of the reason I got this job. True, my raw charisma, charm, talent and intelligence played their part, but you’ve given me almost five years to hone my craft, so thanks for that. Pats on backs all round.
I hope that explains the silence around here, and that you’re satisfied with the reasons why I’ve not been posting so much of late. I have been a ball of anxiety, nerves, excitement and joy for a while now, but I wanted to make sure you knew where I was and where I was going, and to look out for me in my grey t-shirt when you come up to Nottingham. If you spot me at an event, I do hope you’ll come up and say hello.
For the first time in a long time, and certainly not for the last time; Onwards!
Wow. I mean, just wow. When it comes to Games Workshop news, this morning’s mega dump from Adepticon of new bits and pieces was like a birthday, Christmas, lottery win, Easter and free pizza all rolled up together. If you’ve been blissfully unaware of hobby developments this morning, you might want to head on over to the Warhammer Community Website right now and read up on the truly amazing and awesome things heading our way soon. I am going to quickly cover off some of the 40k centric points here, but you should see everything that’s coming out – giant sea turtles, anyone? Now without further ado, let’s crack on…
You Asked For Them…
This is the big one. You begged for them, pleaded for them, angrily shouted for them and generally lamented that you didn’t have them already. That’s right – another clock has fallen from Duncan’s wall. Plastic Sisters Of Battle are coming.
Now, some of you (I imagine a very small amount of you) will be clamouring for these right now, but I don’t think waiting until 2019 is too much to ask. We’re getting Plastic Sisters! This is huge, and waiting one more year is hardly a big ask. As they say, patience is rewarded.
The Daddy Knight
We had the Diddy Knights appear with the reveal of Forgebane, but now we have the Daddy Knight, and what a monster he is. Only GW could look at an Imperial Knight and say “Nah, it needs to be bigger. And it needs more guns” and for that I am very grateful. This guy is a real monster and I for one am terrified by the prospect of having to deal with this guy on the tabletop. I guess I’ll have to get my own.
What’s really nice to see is that the Knights have steadily moved away from being a one model codex. With the Diddies and the Daddy, you’ll have seven different types of knight from GW, and then there are all the others from Forge World as well. And who knows – this may not be the last new Knight we see this year. GW surprised us with Diddy and Daddy, so who knows what else they’ll be surprising us with next?
New Books
Imperial Knights will be getting a new Codex pretty soon as well, while Harlequins and Deathwatch will be hot on its heels. Even more people are getting their armies covered now and 8th fleshes out further yet again. The wonderful variety of rules and surprise miniatures that we’re seeing come to the fore mean that we could be seeing almost anything accompany these tomes, and being on the lighter side in terms of options, the Space Clowns and the Deathwatch may well get a treat or two to accompany their releases as well.
Of course, it now looks like the Orks will be dead last when it comes to updates, but I’m hoping that this means they’ll get a real stormer of a book with new kits, units and rules that will turn them into the green terror that they deserve to be.
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Like I said, for all of this and so much more, you need to hit up that link to the Community Site up there. It’s well worth seeing what else is on the horizon and were this a “bows and arrows” blog, I’d be having fevered and ecstatic fits of delight with the fantasy releases that are coming out soon.
I know I haven’t brought you much of my painting efforts recently. I have been insanely busy with a billion different things and in truth, I’ve barely found any time to get the brushes out, but I’ll try and get something up for you soon. I’m hoping you’ll like the new Necromunda gang I’m working on. But until I’ve had a chance to get that up and sorted out (and it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any less busy any time soon), I shall just leave you to enjoy your own efforts. Onwards!
Well, we’re used to getting the occasional snippet from GW when it comes to new releases, but we’ve had an avalanche of information come through from Nottingham in the last 24 hours (and who knows if we’ll be getting even more soon). This is all down to GW’s appearance at GAMA, the big board games trade show, and it’s damn sporting of the company to share the official vids and photos with us, rather than having us all squinting at leaked, grainy bits and pieces. So, while I may go into a bit more detail in the future on all of these things (or at least some of them), let’s take a quick look at the massive dump of new delights that has graced us this week.
Chaos Blood Bowl Team
It’s great to see something new coming out for Blood Bowl. It feels like it’s been a little while since everyone’s favourite fantastical football game got something new, but that’s not actually true. It’s just that we’ve seen so much of everything being released lately, our brains are no longer capable of grasping the basic concept of time.
This looks like a team for brutal players who like an elite group of monsters who are seriously capable of stomping down the opposition. I don’t think Doom Lords players will be worrying too much about the actual ball in their games. I’m even tempted to pick them up and create a new incarnation of the legendary Chaos All Stars.
I’m liking the mix of Chosen and Beastmen in here. I dare say there’ll be some different roles involved, but combined with a Minotaur (or some sort of terrifying Warrior/Daemon special character maybe?), they’re going to be hard to knock over.
Kill Team
This is one of my favourites. I’ve always liked the Kill Team format because it’s so quick and intimate. It really feels like GW have been listening to the fanbase here. Blood Bowl, Shadow War and Necromunda have all performed so amazingly over recent months, that it makes sense for the folks in Nottingham to revive the long-running 40K skirmish game now.
Kill team is so quick and easy to play. It’s yet another great gateway game to get new people into the main game and its bigger battles, but its also great for us veterans too. If you’ve had a long game, but you’re still in the mood for more dice rolling, but the store is closing soon, Kill Team provides a great opportunity to get your gaming fix in.
And with 8th Edition rules, I dare say it’ll be even faster and more flexible. It’s a great game for learning the fundamentals of your favourite squads, and getting some insight into familiar and unusual opponents alike. I can’t wait to pick up this update.
Van Saar
Now, you know I’ll be talking more about this in a later post. Don’t worry, the name generators are being planned as we speak, and when I get some more images and insight into their background, I’ll put a full post together.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the professional and polished weapons, sombre expressions, and fantastically manga-sci-fi-inspired armour of those survival suits. I love the multi-eyed helmet, and whatever that heavy weapon is… well, this has got me very excited. Regardless, this represents an amazing update on possibly the ugliest gang from the last iteration of the game. Frankly, they now look like one of the fanciest in the new game. Excellent stuff!
And There’s More…
But I won’t cover any more of it in this post. If you want to read and see more about GW’s GAMA wares, and get the more official details, I’d suggest checking out the community website. You’ll find many fun things to ogle at. Add Forgebane to all of this, and we’ve got plenty to be excited about. I hope you are as giddy and gleeful as I am. And now that I’ve given you three posts in three days (possibly a record on H&H), I shall leave you to enjoy your toy soldiers in peace.
So, yesterday my Genestealer Cult gang name generator appeared on this blog, but just a couple of days ago, my work featured once again on the Warhammer Community website. You can find a slightly updated Orlock Gang Name Generator along with some of my trademark waffle to accompany it.
I have to say that it’s a joy working with the Community team and that they’re really open and receptive to new ideas. It was also fun updating the name generator just a touch. Everyone was clamouring for me to do one really quickly, but it was good the second time around as I was able to pull on the new lore and descriptions from Gang War 2.
Anyway, enough of all this. Two posts in two days!? Check out old Motormouth over here! I have many, many things to be getting on with so I shall leave you to enjoy your day. More painting updates coming soon (hopefully). Have loads of fun. Onwards!
“The walls are barbed, and thicker than a heavy ore crawler. They stretch high into the toxin-choked haze, their peaks lost in the sickly clouds that spread across the world of Necromunda. Beyond them, the unspoken horrors of a madman’s folly slumber. But sleep within the ruins of Hive Secundus (as was) is fitful and tortured by visions; visions of a saviour.
Patrols of Ash Waste Enforcers circle in patterns at the base of the titanic walls. Many know that the Second Hive was lost, but few of them know the truth. Their ignorance is a flaw in their strain. For patterns are predictable, and even these mighty walls have cracks and hollows large enough for a man, or something more than a man to pass through.
And so on the darkest of nights, when the distant lights of Hive Primus are but a gentle hazy glow in the suffocating murk, they stir. The servants of The Four Armed Emperor slip silently through those cracks and hollows, and when the predictable patrols have passed, they move like hunters into the dark ocean of the ash wastes after dusk. Some are caught, but others pass through the nets, and they always head toward the lights…”
– Hiver, Jayzen Smiter (trying to scare his grandchildren)
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And so the Genestealer Cults have arrived in Necromunda and I have to say that they are very interesting. I’ve been pouring over the White Dwarf rules for this latest faction and I like them. Certainly enough to start work on a gang myself (already underway) because they are presenting something quite different.
They have a real glass cannon feel to them. Neophytes are as slow as Goliaths but have only the physicality of the Escher. But they are capable of bringing some very cool weapons to the fight. The mining laser is going to be a terrifying proposition for anyone to have to deal with, while things like the webber make everyone on the opposing team vulnerable to being taken out.
Add to that access to hand flamers and needle pistols with their toxin traits, and you’ve got some mean fire power. But given their choices in hand to hand combat, you should be scared of them there too. If they get their charges off, you’ll be facing mauls, picks, hammers, chainswords, boneswords, toxin claws… they’ve got a really impressive arsenal to choose from, but if you get the drop on them, they’re somewhat squidgy. Just an opinion based on initial readings – I’ll need to play some games with and against them first.
But enough of all this tactical nonsense. If you saw the woeful state of my humbled and hobbled Goliath gang right now, you wouldn’t listen to a damn thing I had to say on the subject of tactics. But you are often keen on my name generators, so here you go:
Same rules as before, but with a little bit of a format change-up to make things a little more varied and a little more culty. You take the first letter of your first name to generate the first part, then add ‘of the’, before using your surname to generate the second part. If you initials are DR, you could be leading the Deserving of the Rictus Maw. Or if your initials are ES, you could be taking charge of the Emissaries of the Silent Shadow.
The names hopefully mix in the arrogance that nearly all cults exude, and the promises that only the genestealer menace can offer. The above format also allows me to play around with a few more words and make things a little more descriptive too.
More on my painting projects soon (hopefully) and I do hope that you’re having plenty of fun with your games and your painting. Onwards!
This week, we’ve been treated to some early pictures of the upcoming Forgebane box set that sees the Martians and their “diddy knights” take on the undead cyber-Egyptians that are the Necrons. It looks like an amazing box, and I dare say I’ll be picking up a copy if only for the duo of diddy knights (yes, that’s what I’m calling them, get used to it). But it brings up an interesting question; if someone came up to you and said “What ho, old chap. One’s looking to get in on this Warhammer 40,000 malarky, but one was wondering how best to start. Any advice, sport?” (your friends may use a different vernacular) what would you say?
In my youth (back in the good old days as highlighted above), it usually went something like this: You bought a blister pack of lead space marines, and maybe a couple of paints (because you were pretty sure you could use felt tips, poster paint, that old airfix paint your dad bought you ages ago, and whatever else wet and colourful you had lying around). You’d slap it all together, do a bit of ‘pew-pew-ing’ with your mates and then buy more and more over time. Eventually, you’d get interested enough that you saved up pocket money to afford a box set which was full of these long, confusing books (the confusing numbers and words didn’t matter though because they had really cool pictures) and loads more space marines and some baddies, and you’d sort of muddle through from there. Patient GW staff at the local store would walk you through rules you’d forget and then one day, in the vague future, you’d know how to play (sort of).
But what must it be like today? Now you walk into a shiny, new Warhammer store, where the charming and friendly person there enthusiastically accosts you and asks what you’d like to play with the cartoon dollar signs in their eyes barely disguised. What options you’d have! First Strike and Know No Fear offer you smaller gateways to the game, while Dark Imperium is still a viable option. There are small starter paint sets, small starter armies and even more boxes of games that will give you miniatures and ways into the 40k Universe. Stormcloud Attack, Deathwatch overkill, Betrayal At Calth, Shadow War Armageddon, Gangs of Comorragh and Lost Patrol all offer the new player a flavour of fun to suit their tastes, and soon, Forgebane will join this growing list of gateway games.
What am I getting at here? Well, I think GW deserve a bit of praise here for a very canny approach to their boxed sets. In my day *clutches cane, adjusts thick glasses, looks wistfully back at yesteryear* (oh, God! What happened to my Youth!?) you just had a big expensive box which my mum, like so many other parents around the world, had to help me out with in financial terms, despite my saved pennies. But now, for the same price as a video game, you can get a big shiny box with space marines and scary space marines and some boards to play it on. For a mere tenner, you can get a little set of paints and a brush that will do all you need them to do as you’re starting out, and everything is easier, and better, and less stressful. This is GW’s malevolent genius at its best, and with Forgebane, it’s got a real winner on its hands.
You get two armies which you can paint with minimal paints – both of them could pretty much just be silver, so the newbies can cope, but both armies can be made to look amazing by more experienced artists too. The new kids get knights, which are big and stompy and awesome, while old hands get a new type of knight to bolster their expensive collection of giant killing machines. Necron players of old also get a new character model, and some useful minis to bolster their existing forces too. This won’t be the cheapest of boxes, but it still won’t be far off the mark of a videogame – certainly less than 2 of them. And cunningly, there’s no blood. We veterans of the grimdark may know of the Necrons’ dark and devious past, and of the sinister ways in which the Mechanicum achieve perfection through augmentation, but to parents buying a game for their kids, it’s good robots vs bad robots, which is a lot less scary than talk of dark Gods, corpse emperors, ubermensch super soldiers, plagues, torture and all the other delightful stuff that makes 40K so fun. Add into this mix the fact that 8th Edition is far easier to learn and play, and we’ve got a seriously good entry game right here.
This release has been very well thought out, and I’m looking forward to seeing it hit the shelves in the near future. It will then of course spend many years in the swells and eddies of my grey tide, but them’s the breaks. But it really is a GW masterstroke in my opinion. I wouldn’t mind a few more boxes like this seeing the light of day in the coming years, and I’m sure it will lure many new hobby enthusiasts to the tables. Nice one, GW. Onwards!
Will you be picking up Forgebane? Will you also be calling them Diddy Knights? How’s the weather where you are? Let me know in the comments section below!
After the flurry of activity last week, I’ve been taking it a bit easy of late. Well, not really – I’ve been buzzing around like a blue-arsed fly as the popular phraseology would have it, but not much of that activity has been focussed on my painting. But last night I found just a scrap of time to put some things together and so I can bring you an update today, featuring first, a look at the next project.
When I took my BA Vet squad to Nottingham for the Horus Heresy & Necromunda Weekender Golden Demon, they earned me a pin, which I am still absolutely thrilled with. And, as mentioned before, when I picked them up after the event, I asked one of the judge chaps there about what could help turn them from a 4th place entry to a 3rd place entry or better. He told me to put as much effort as I had put into that 10 man squad into a five man squad instead. So that’s what I’m doing.
Now admittedly, this isn’t much to look at. Yet. I’ve put together the five bases I’m going to be using for this project, and it was plenty of fun hacking up my bits box to create these post-apocalyptic micro-scenes that will function as the setting for my five man squad.
I’m going to be doing Blood Angels again, but this time around, they will be from the 41st Millennium. The captivating tales of sons of Sanguinius and their desperate defence of Baal against the Tyranids have inspired me, and these are essentially going to be a red version of the Tyrranic Wars veterans of the Ultramarines. These guys are going to be battered, mismatched and looking desperate, yet defiant.
But for now, you’ll have to settle for these pictures of some bases. Work begins again on this project this evening, and hopefully soon, I’ll have more interesting things to show you. Preferably something red. I’m hoping that the theme will also help me out here, though of course the primary focus is going to be on the painting side, and I need to switch gears from clean to dirty yet again.
So, now let’s turn to the 2nd part of this update. I have been asked, both on this blog and other places to give you some close ups of the duel that I showed off last week, highlighting a bit of the detail that has gone into that piece. Well, as I am feeling particularly generous, I have acquiesced to said requests with the images below. Now, this was done with my iPhone camera, and given that I am one of the world’s leading ‘not the best’ photographers, I promise nothing in terms of quality or lack of blurriness. But still, I hope you can spot the bits of freehand, weird details, weathering and spurting blood. You’ll also get a better look at the star field on the Harlequin’s jacket. Here’s a dump for you:
And so there you have it. One is always a little nervous about blowing up 28mm scale miniatures to such sizes and though I’ve spotted a couple of things that I’d update and fix, they look ok. Nothing too bad to worry about at least.
That’s all I have to update you on now, but stay tuned for further progress, and hopefully more of that soon. May your efforts go more speedily than my own, and may you have plenty of fun as well. Onwards!
Ladies, gentlemen, orks, t’au, and goblins of all ages, I present to you my finished Emperor’s Children Terminator vs Eldar Harlequin Solitaire Duel! Yep, it’s done, and I am properly pleased with myself with this one. There’s plenty to talk about, so let’s dive right in.
The first thing that my regular readers will notice is that there is no trailing monofilament wire looping around these models, and you’re right. Oh, how I swore. So many curses, screams and expletives. You see, the thing about really thin, fiddly wire, is that it’s incredibly annoying to work with. It also doesn’t hold paint very well at all. And, given the precarious nature of our Harlequin (and before you say anything about pinning, know that I very seriously looked into said solution and I don’t possess drills or pins thin enough), every time I tried to make an attachment of said wire, the damn thing fell to pieces (there’s no way this is making it to Coventry in one piece). So sod the @£€#ing wire. Just move on.
But does it need it? The hairy blood (ewww) works quite nicely, and there’s plenty of movement there already. I’ve also added blood, scraped paint and metal flecks to the end of the Harlequin’s Kiss weapon to illustrate the wound has been made by this weapon. That should be enough to give this duel motion and context.
In the end, I went with a star field pattern for the Harlequin’s coat. It’s a technique that I’ve used before that works quite nicely, and I gave it a few extra effects to break it up a little bit. I was thinking about going for a more intricate piece of freehand but it was just too fiddly a surface and I didn’t want to do anything that would have looked too forced. And I avoided painting a diamond pattern because I’m not very good at standardised patterns and that one looks rubbish if you get it wrong. The trailing, shiny diamonds will do.
The Solitaire was a lot of fun to paint actually, and I’d have no issue doing a star field themed Harlequin army in the future if the mood ever takes me. The face of the Solitaire wasn’t nearly as fiddly as I thought it would be, and there was some fun to be had with the jewels and gems on this model. There are lots of little details on here, and bar a couple of lines that I may tidy up before he goes off to the show, I’m quite happy with this guy and his contribution to this scene.
The terminator has just the amount of movement that I wanted – slow to react to the lighting fast attack that has just gutted him, he’s staring over at the Solitaire, still aiming in the wrong direction, not yet able to raise his heavy power fist to meet his assailant. Meanwhile the Solitaire is already bounding off to meet his next victim, or perhaps get behind the terminator to stick him in the back as well and finish off the job. I may add some text to the base of this piece that reads something like “In the dance of light, the shadows stand as statues…” or something like that. It might help to illustrate things a little more.
I added a hidden rat too, just to make something a little more interesting on that side of the model, though hopefully the eyes will be drawn to the shoulder pad far above the rat – that’s still the bit of this model that I like the most. There’s also some light weathering on both models, and I’m quite happy that I only added a little bit of dust to the Harlequin’s toes to illustrate that he has been sprinting and dancing lightly on his feet.
And that’s about it really. You’ve seen all the WIPs over the last couple of weeks. I need to start work on my next project which I’ll hopefully get round to tonight. Of course, you’ll see all of that on H&H, so keep your eyes peeled for that work. From a very snowy London, I hope you’re keeping warm and getting plenty of painting and gaming in. Onwards!
It’s actually starting to come together. The duel is getting closer and closer to being done, and it’s getting rather exciting. I’ve not had too much time to work on it recently, and I’ve got a bit of artistic block going at the moment, but it won’t be long before this project reaches its finale.
Let’s start with the base, and as you can see here, it’s done:
All of it is now painted up, and I put more care into this one than I have with any base before. Those edges aren’t dry-brushed – I painted the highlight on each lip of that rock. It took a while to do, but it was worth it. I was very conservative with the grass, and I even added some cascading shells made from clipped bits of paperclip. It’s hard to pick it out in the above image, but eventually you’ll see a picture where one of those bullets looks like it’s still tumbling.
And with the base completed, it was time put the terminator together, and add some weathering…
I didn’t go heavy on the weathering at all. There are a few small patches of grime here and there, and a few small patches of blood (obvs not his) dotted around, as well as a very light dusting of his feet with grey – the iPhone camera doesn’t really pick it up in the above shot but it does help to dull the lower regions down.
I placed him on the base to mark out where he’s going to stand upon that rock formation, and he promptly dived for cover. I had to get out some super glue and redo an arm after that.
You can see in the above image the wound in his torso (to the right hand side of the first spike if you go right from the ring in the cen… the big hole in his middle with the blood coming out). I wanted to have some blood spurting from this as the monofilament is extracting itself. Well, here’s my solution:
They’re hard to see in this image, but those are two strands of my own hair, that have had Blood For The Blood God painted onto them. The glossy paint naturally beads up on the hair, and I”l be cutting off small sections of this to use as spurting blood. And spurting blood isn’t nearly as gross as blue tack with hair stuck in it, and no-one can say I don’t put my all into these projects!
Speaking of thin strands, this is what I’m using for the monofilament wire, and for all intents and purposes, this pretty much is monofilament wire. I was going to use fly tying wire from the fishing industry, but instead, I got this stuff. They use it to make really fine mesh for vapes. How fine? Well, if you look at the image above, look at where it says ’30’ on the right hand side – that’s the 30mm spot obviously. Now the thick line that runs up to the top corner, next to the ’30’ – there’s a tiny break in that line just there near the ’30’. You see it? That’s the wire. ‘Thin’ isn’t the word.
After a long time spent painstakingly converting my solitaire, and worrying about how I’m going to paint him, I’m now ready to paint him, though I don’t quite know how to do his jacket which I want to be a bit of a freehand piece. There’s not a huge amount of room, but I should be able to get some sort of pattern in there. At the moment I’m still weighing up paisley, Chinese embroidery, William Morris print, peacock feathers… So although I’m ready to paint it up, I still have that choice to make. Hopefully I’ll make a decision soon.
It’s all getting very close now. It’s really exciting and I have sort of been able to mock up the final pose once, and I likes it. If I can find some time this weekend, I may actually get this done! We’ll see though. No promises – I’m taking my time with this guy. I hope you’re having plenty of fun with your painting too. Onwards!
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