Preparing For Astromini-Con

(This article is a bit late, but it’s an update non-the-less!)

Every year a group of guys from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (for those of you not from Canada whom are reading this) put on a great Warhammer 40,000 tournament in their home town.   They started in 2001 and called it Astronomi-con.  Soon after they were able to expand and take the event to Toronto, Ontario, Canada every year on top of their hometown event.  Recently, in the last couple years, they have come to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (my hometown).  I wasn’t able to make it last year to the event as it fell on my wife’s birthday (and no matter how much I tried, she wasn’t going to let me game a whole weekend on her birthday).

It’s a 1500 point tournament with rules for composition, which I always try to follow as best I can.   The tournament isn’t until August and to give us a taste of things to come some local Alumni hosted a mini version of the event called “Astromini-con”.

In my list for Astromini-con I wanted to take the following: Command HQ Unit, 10-man Stormtrooper Unit, 5-man Ogryn Unit with a Chimera Transport, 25-man Platoon, 10-man Veteran Unit, Valkyrie, Vendetta, and 2 Leman Russes.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a couple of those units painted and it was a mad rush to finish them in time for the tournament (which I did manage to pull off by 8:10pm the night before)!

Out of the whole army I needed to finish a Vendetta, the Veterans and the Stormtroopers.  For my Vendetta, I decided a while back that it was more Imperial Navy than part of the Imperial Guard army itself, and therefore chose a non-camouflaged colour scheme that consisted of just a flat brown and a light grey belly.  In the future, when I purchase Forge World fliers such as the Thunderbolt and/or Lightening, this will be the same colour scheme.

The Veterans were just standard troop models I had left over and three meltagun models to bring it to nine, the final model was a bit more fancy and converted to be “Sergeant Bastonne” for use in other games complete with his Carapace Armour and Hellpistol.  At last count, I owned seven 10-man Stormtrooper Units, but this one is the only one I modeled with flamers.  It so happened that points were so thin for this army composition, that flamers was all I could afford.  So this unit was chosen to be painted (the rest all of either 2 plasmaguns or 2 meltaguns).

End Of Another Decade

With Christmas almost here and another Paint or Die coming to an end, I spent quite some time painting over the last two weeks.  I also did some research on how to take a better picture, so far I think it has worked.  I’ve taken some new pictures of the Ogryns since they’re such great models, you can view those new ones by clicking on them below in the Ogryn post.

So, on to the painted items.  To start, I painted up a Leman Russ Demolisher.  I cut down the heavy bolter sponsons and fit in some of the new plasma cannons from the new GW Demolisher kits, they turned out pretty good. With the new Lumbering Behemoth rule, this short range tank puts out a hell of a lot of destructive firepower.

The next thing I painted up was a standard Leman Russ Battle Tank.  Another full Forge World kit, complete with a different turret than the regular GW kit.  Before the latest codex, I would have never put the sponsons on a Leman Russ, however, with the new rules I wouldn’t NOT have them!

Lately, I have left my infantry models alone, simply because they’re so many and tedious to paint so many and a tank is just one large item.  Well, I decided since I was going to be entering a tournament this just past weekend that I should paint some up quickly.  This is a command squad with a lascannon on a custom built base.

Continuing with my infantry push, I also painted up an infantry squad with an autocannon, again with another custom built base.  These infantry are just extra models that won’t be on my display for the army so they’re all different base theme but I think the colours work together.

In the new Codex, a couple new characters were written into the book that I decided I wanted to play around with but of course don’t want to use the regular model for them as they aren’t Death Korps; so I made my own versions.  The first was Sly Marbo, or Rambo; not a very interesting conversion, just some kit bashing to come up with a model with all the right toys Sly has such as a sword, a sniper pistol and a demo charge.

The next three models aren’t conversions, but what models I have chosen to represent them.  The model on the left is a regimental advisor, the astropath, a model I traded with Doc which came from Inquisitor Rex’s retinue.  The model in the middle is Lord Castellan Creed, whom I’ve decided to call Lord Castellan Krieg, is just the force commander model.  The last model, on the right, is another regimental advisor, the officer of the fleet.  This model is actually the Quartermaster model intended to be used in a different fashion, however, I don’t plan on using the actual Death Korps list until it’s more up to date with the new codex.

Last but not least on this large update is a Chimera.  It can be used by any unit pretty much, so it’s not really dedicated to any unit officially in my army.  A generic, small conversion on the lasgun ports in which I decided not to put the lasguns on the back area and closed up the ports.  Currently the Ogryns are using it, but eventually they will have their own converted Chimera.

Incoming!

FINALLY!  I have finally forced myself to sit down and finish that stupid decal from Forge World on my Valkyrie..  oh.. my.. god..  what a pain in the ass.  I have now decided that ONLY the command vehicle will have the Aquila on its wings as I now know why they give you 3 sets of wings on each transfer sheet!  I messed up so many times because the transfer is thinner than a standard GW transfer, yet has MORE GLUE than the GW transfer!  So the minute I removed the transfer from the sheet onto the model, if it wasn’t where it needed to be perfectly, I had to pray that I could move it by dousing it with water.  Then, if it started to move, it usually only moved a bit and most of the time ripped because they’re so thin.

Now, all told, the whole Valkyrie took almost 6 hours to complete the transfers because of how hard they were to work with.  However, that being said, it does look pretty sweet when it’s all finished.  I wanted to keep the Aquila untouched, but because there were so many rips and holes, I had to go over it in white to cover it up..  which caused it to look painted in parts..  so I had to paint over the whole thing to make it match.  Then I decided that people would notice that right away, so to take their focus off of it I added jet streaks to the paint to make it appear weathered from flying so much.  I hope you like, I sure do!

*Note* I had some extra Grenadier models in which I decided to turn into door gunners for the interior, rather than the ones that came with the Valkyrie.  I painted the interior first before putting it all together.  Here’s a picture of that, for anyone interested.

Atta’boy Lads!

I know it’s been awhile, I have been painting though, honest!  I just have been lazy with decals and then taking pictures.  I finished my Ogryn squad today complete with decals and battle damage.  I had a local artist do up the face masks and Commissar outfit for the Bone’ead as I am just not that good with Green Stuff!

Again, I do profess, I may be a semi-decent painter, but I am no photographer!  I apologize for the poor quality pictures, but it was either that or I could describe how incredibly awesome they look!

I’ve got a few projects on the go right now, working on a Vendetta (complete with the Forge World upgrade) which has the interior complete and the base complete (with magnets for easy use); I’ve also started a Chimera so these Ogryns can get around the table in style. I’ve put together a whole slew of models recently, even purchased 2 Aegis Defense Lines and 2 Bastions for use in Planet Strike.

I think, after viewing these pictures, I will be whipping out the regular camera and trying to take more decent pictures…  but I wanted to get them up tonight, so these will have to do!

*Update* I have taken new pictures, they are a bit more clear, but still not that great.  Apparently I just need a new camera that doesn’t suck!

The Iron Duke

My first Super Heavy tank is complete, a Shadowsword from Forge World (purchased before GW made a plastic kit for 1/3 the cost!).  I still like the look of this one more than the plastic kit, but the plastic kit can make something like 8 different tanks so it’s still a great kit!   This tank has been a work in progress for a few months, since just before the codex came out.  It’s taken many layers of paint to get it right and lots of time to cover that much surface area.  I got a little creative with decals and battle damage with this one, I even included a section that I felt would be a neat thing was where a piece of the tank had been blown out and later replaced, but the explosion markings were still on the older plates.

Its the first of many Super Heavy tanks I have to paint, and judging by the length of time it took to paint this one, it’ll be the last one for awhile.  I’ll be focusing more on infantry soon enough, but there’s only so many infantry a guy can paint before he goes slightly insane and wants a break from the monotony.

I have finished painting a Valkyrie Assault Carrier as well, unfortunately the decal work is kicking my ass right now.  I purchased the decals from Forge World to cover my Valkyrie with, but those decals are thinner than the GW ones and have more glue on them so my first run on trying them was painful..  it took 3 hours to do half the wing and I’ve still got the other half to do as well as the other pieces that go on the nose.  That one will be posted eventually, when I get around to decals again.

Small Gains

Although I have 3 Sentinels assembled and ready to paint, I only managed to paint one of them.  I will get to the others with time, but I wanted to test out the colour scheme on the walkers and see how it looked.  The new kit is awesome, with the multiple weapons (I still chose Lascannons) and the pose-able legs made this fun to put together.  Fairly easy and quick to paint as well, just hate decals..  can’t stress that enough.

I like the new upgraded rules for this tank, the Leman Russ Exterminator was always a good tank (vs. Light Infantry) but now it’s just a little better!  I actually think this one of the only ones, amoungst all of my models, that I only ordered one of as well as the Forge World version of the Demolisher.  I have learned to paint these tanks a little faster now, and in a certain way that I can have several on the go at once.  As the dull coat was drying on this one I was already working on the brown layer of paint on the Demolisher.

The Big Push

After a long stretch of casual painting, I finally decided to paint some more models.   The quality of the photos isn’t that great, but you get the idea of the paint jobs.  I may be alright at painting, but apparently not at photography.

Since I am in a casual painting contest with a bunch of others just looking for motivation to paint, I decided to paint as much as I could to represent painted models en mass.  Unfortunately, in points cost, troops count for very little points and don’t add up quickly.

I bought this model while in Ontario this year, volunteering as a Grey Knight for Games Workshop at the (last ever?) Toronto Games Day.  It is a limited edition, Games Day exclusive Commissar on horse.  Unfortunately there are no rules for a Commissar on horse, but there is a special character that leads a unit of Rough Riders that I can use him as.  I took my time painting him, again, not the greatest photographer so it’s blurry and I apologize it doesn’t capture all the details.

I love Forge World models, and this army is all Forge World.  Expensive, but well worth it.  Amoungst this painting frenzy I managed to paint a 10-man Infantry squad, a 5-man Platoon Headquarters, my special character “Mogul Kamir,” a Commissar on foot, and another special character “Nork Deddog.”

The Commissar will more than likely be a regular one, leading a squad as it has the dynamic action pose of pulling his sabre out as he advances on the battlefield.  There is another Commissar model I have that is standing at attention and holding his sabre over his shoulder that seems it would suite a Lord Commissar better.  Lastly, Nork Deddog.  I believe there is a model of him out there, in the classics range of models, but I decided to just use a regular Ogryn.  My Ogryn unit has gas masks, as to fit again with the theme of the army, but I figured Nork wouldn’t need one since he has the “Feel No Pain” special rule and is too bad ass to need one.

By The Emperor’s Wrath

One of the new units added to the Imperial Guard was the Medusa.  Now, this model doesn’t exist in the GW plastic line yet, it will be here soon enough, but for now it’s only available through Forge World.  Again, I chose the enclosed version as to stick with my theme and I must say it works.  It is also not used by many people because of this fact and so when people play against it for the first time, fear the unknown and attack it first.  Some have just ignored it because they didn’t know what it was, and didn’t think it to be dangerous.   The only problem with it is that it is not an indirect firing weapon like the Basilisk, so it has to be visible to fire upon the enemy which means it’s vulnerable to being destroyed quickly.

I also painted up another Leman Russ Vanquisher as you just can’t have enough tank busting units on the table.  Since tanks got a boost in 5th Edition and can’t be destroyed as easily and troops have less armour, I figure more is better!

Reinforcements

I had originally bought this tank to represent a Leman Russ, as I thought the barrel was too short on a standard Leman Russ and this long Vanquisher Cannon would just scare people on looks alone…  but when the new Codex came out, it turns out that the Vanquisher was added to the army and it had a purpose after all.  I’ll take the good with the bad, the fact that it can not shoot a standard ordinance shell makes me sad, but I’m happy with the tank busting capability of the Vanquisher Shell.  In the few games I’ve played already with this army, the Vanquisher has stood victorious against many a foe.

So far it has stood up against Predators, Land Raiders and even Super Heavies such as Skullhammas and Stompas.  The long range allows it to stay out of range of most anti-tank weapons, except a Tau Rail Rifle.  The only way to deal with that is to get Camo Netting and sit in cover, then those pesky Tau with their 4+ Cover Save have to deal with my annoying 3+ Cover Saves!

A New Threat

The second model I chose was the sexy Forge World version of the Hellhound.  Don’t get me wrong, the new GW plastic kit is a fantastic upgrade from the old GW Hellhound, but nothing says bad ass like a giant flammable tank of Holy Promethium!  I decided to go with dozer blades on my Hellhounds because they really are mobile tanks and more than likely will be engaging models in cover, requiring them possibly to make a lot of dangerous terrain rolls.  Plus, it adds a bit more bulk to the model and makes it look more like extra armour.

The elongated turret just makes the model that much more menacing.  It says “I’m here to kill you” not “I’m going to make you laugh” because, frankly, the old stubby GW turret was just funny looking.