40k Combat Patrol Delivery 1 - The Seeds Are Sown

 

Now I've gone and done it.

Recently I've been playing some games of older 40k editions - mostly 2nd and 3rd, and really 2nd is what I think of when I think of 40k, since it's where I started with it many years ago. 

This has led me to contemplate getting new models, although in the glorious modern age, I don't really know what anything is, and I didn't really have any sensible place to start.

Enter Hachette Partworks. I've bought occasional issues of their previous magazine series, and largely not done anything with them. I've always had a vague idea of doing something 40k-flavoured in 7TV, but so far that's never come to fruition. 

But now, the Combat Patrol series has started, and for someone in my somewhat unique position, it actually seems like a good idea... 

I've gone for the premium subscription. This means that, should I stick with it through all 90 issues, I'll end up with nine new armies (or additions to what I already have at least) based on the combat patrol sets, with a few extra add-ons to go with them, all for the entirely reasonable price of "comfortably over a grand". It is a lot of models. And some paints. And, you know, a mug.

To make this sensible, however, I'm going have to actually paint the stuff. So here the plan turns into a project, and hopefully stops short of an ordeal. 

I'm intending to fully paint everything that plops onto the doormat before the next delivery arrives. Subscribers get their magazines four issues at a time (except for the first two, for reasons) so I'll have four weeks each time to get everything done. I think that's achievable, and hopefully isn't all-consuming.

The first delivery arrived three weeks ago, and here it is...

Note the exciting subscriber bonus of some clippers and a flash removal tool, which appears to basically be "some metal".

The models here were a Terminator Captain, a Winged Tyranid Prime (whatever that is) and 3 Von Ryan's Leapers, which in my "2nd to 5th edition" terms are mostly likely to be used as biomorphed warriors or a lictor brood for Apocalypse games.

The Tyranids were nice and quick to paint. 

Winged Tyranid Prime

I'm helped here by having chosen a very simple paint scheme for Tyranids years ago, and painting a fairly large army in it. I've updated things very slightly here, for example by using some Army Painter speed paint for the wings, but mostly this is the same scheme as I was using in the noughties - roughly based on having the look like xenomorphs from Alien, but that never quite panned out (I suppose I should have gloss varnished them or something).

Winged Tyranid Prime, but looking the other way

I must do a comparison shot with the old stuff at some point though - these definitely look better than what I used to do!

Von Ryan's Leapers

Recipe for these, so I can figure out what I did next time...

Black undercoat, then drybrushed Vallejo German Grey, Followed by Neutral Grey. Chitinous bits are then given a further drybrush of Sky Grey, and teeth are picked out in Sky Grey. Eyes and venom sacs are speed paint Orc Flesh, and the wings on the Prime are speed paint Runic Grey over Grey Seer. 

So basically, grey. Bases are Vallejo US Field Drab.

The Terminator Captain was a more complicated prospect. Ever since the Ultramarines Codex was published (29 years ago?! That can't possibly be right. Oh God.), I've like the idea of the Codex Astartes, and the ability to have a "right" set of future armoured superheroes with garish heraldry. I've had Ultramarines since 2nd edition, and even though I sold loads of them off years back, I still have a bunch of what are now apparently firstborn marines in blue. 

Given my retro preference in game editions, my intention here is to use the Primaris models that come with the magazines as "normal marines" with earlier editions. But since I already have some Ultramarines, and those are much smaller models, it seemed a bit weird to paint these the same way and have different sizes in the same force. 

On the other hand, should I go completely mad and end up actually playing 10th edition for real, it'd be nice to have some marines that could sensibly join the Ultramarines. 

I also wanted it to be possible to freehand the chapter icons, and I wanted a single colour as the basic armour since I'm going to have a lot to do quickly. 

I looked at the "other chapters" in the Ultramarines codex and pretty much settled on Aurora... and then had a look online, and was disappointed to find that these days they have quite a developed background, and I wanted a bit more of a blank slate. So I had another look.

Enter the Genesis chapter. Not only are they also a single colour, with a nice simple chapter icon, reading their background shows that their whole shtick is basically "backup Ultramarines". Works for me.

I had a handful of Primaris fellas from a previous round of partwork magazines that I never actually did anything with, so I had a go with those to figure out the scheme. I also realised that the freehand icons thing was madness, and discovered the existence of "hard transfers" so 3D printed some of those.

Genesis Intercessors, apparently

I was pretty pleased with how these came out! I went for 4th company to have the green trim for a bit more contrast. 

These were mostly constrast paints over Grey Seer:

Armour - Blood Angels Red

Icons - Space Wolves Grey, drybrushed white, then details in Black Templar

Weapons - Ultramarines Blue

Gun barrels, magazines - Speed Paint Enchanted Steel

Pouches - Snakebite Leather

Chest eagles - Iyanden Yellow

Wax seals, armour joints - Black Templar

Parchment - Aggaros Dunes

Bases - Vallejo US Field Drab

Then I had a look at the Captain himself. He's a pretty colossal model, with loads of detail. He's also on a giant base with tactical Tyranid corpse to make him even more enormous. 

Captain Filco Lynz in Terminator Armour

Having done the test models really helped, as it meant I could riff on the colour scheme a bit and use gold for yellow and silver for 1st company white, picking him out as an Important Dude but still fitting in with the plan for an overall army scheme. 

Side view

But that's not all! 

The magazines are meant to teach you to play 40k as well, so with each one there's a little scenario.

We're very early on here, so there's really nothing to say about the scenarios - they're literally just hand to hand combat, no movement or anything yet. Anyway, I took control of Captain Lynz, handed over command of the Tyranids to Kieron, and went through them...

Separated from the main force,
Lynz hacks down a Tyranid Prime

The xenos send reinforcements,
and the Captain is beset by Von Ryan's Leapers

However, he cuts them all
down to emerge victorious

So there you go - so far, a 100% success rate at Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition.

Sneak Attack

 I've done another thing, and thus must write another post. These are the rules, as it turns out.

This time, the thing in question is 02 Hundred Hours, the WW2 night raids game from Grey for Now Games. I've had this sitting around for 18 months and really wanted to play it, making the time it's taken me to get it ready for the table frankly astonishing.

The models that come in the box are Wargame Atlantic's European Theatre SAS and German Sentries, and the sprues allow for some very nice poses. So nice in fact that when I came to take some pictures of them and the terrain I've painted, I got carried away and posed up a little story, and I'm going to subject you to that now, I'm afraid.

On arrival at a German base, a staff car is checked by sentries...

...who are unaware that an SAS squad is watching them.

When the dust settles, the lone German survivor at the gate is taken prisoner.

Once inside the base, the Brits sneak past the headquarters...

...staying undetected as they pass the guards.



With the objective in sight, a lone trooper sneaks forward...

...and sets charges to destroy the enemy radar.

Their mission accomplished and the silence well and truly broken, the SAS make their escape under the cover of suppressing fire from the Bren gun.

SAS pose with their prisoner

Felgendarmes are surprisingly casual on finding several corpses

The sentries line up for a team photo

I'm particularly happy to have finally assembled and painted the radar station, which I think is from Sarissa Precision. I'm hazy on the details, mostly because I bought it from the Warlord Games Day in about 2012 and it's been lying around in flat-pack form ever since.

The rest of the terrain is mostly TT Combat stuff - simple models but extremely cheap and straightforward to put together. There are a few resin bits, including the bodies, from Grey for Now - these are nice but alarmingly expensive, especially as they appear to be (admittedly very high resolution) 3D prints.

Absolutely key information to finish this post - these are the contrast paints I used for these:

Germans

Uniform - Creed Camo

Gun stocks - Wyldwood

Skin - Guilliman Flesh

Boots - Black Templar

Puttees, helmet cover - Skeleton Horde

Pouches - Militarum Green

Gun barrels, Feldgendarme trousers - Basilicanum Grey

Dunkelgelb equipment - Agoras Dunes

SAS

Skin - Guilliman Flesh

Gun barrels - Basilicanum Grey

Smocks - Militarum Green and Creed Camo

Boots and knife hilts - Black Templar

Uniform - Snakebite Leather

Webbing - Agoras Dunes

Puttees - Skeleton Horde

Wool hats - Creed Camo

Terraining Day

The new "post when I've got something to actually show" regime continues, so here I am again, this time with a smattering of terrain bits and pieces for Necromunda and/or 40k.

You'll now be subjected to a brief description of each of these. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. 

The thrill ride begins with these post-apocalypse barricades from Crooked Dice. These are really simple bits that were thus really easy to paint, and will also work for a few other projects I have in mind, so it's a bit weird that they'd sat unpainted for a few years up to this point.

We then continue with these MDF scaffolding bits from TT Combat. I think that despite my newfound love of 3D printing, MDF is still a good way to go for simple bits like this that don't need a lot of detail. In Necromunda terms they're good as a way to add some height, and crucially have ladders so they'll give a way to move fighters up and down the levels.

Bit more random here. The barrier on the left is from the toy lorry I used to make the Stiglet truck back in 2021, and it had been sitting around as "dead easy to paint and use" ever since. 

On the right is the clock thing I showed in the previous post, but I don't think I showed the back of it then, and hey, it fits in here.

But more interesting is the statue in the middle. That's from one of my first efforts at 3D printing, and it had, like so many things, sat around unpainted for ages. That was partly because I didn't know how to tackle it, but then I stumbled on the Citadel Technical paint Nihilakh Oxide, which allowed me to get this verdigris effect that I really like. So more of that likely to show up at some point.

These are the worst "sat in the garage unpainted" offenders, as they're barricades from Gorkamorka, which I've owned since its release in 1997. Bit of drybrushed on rust works ok (and I promise, looks better in real life than in this photo). Another one I might look for a specialist paint for though - rusting metal is always likely to crop up.

Now we hit the real seam of tedium, as I go through several photos of parts from the GW Underhive Market set. Look, these boxes have contents...

... but you can also put the lids on them! Astonishing.

These boxes, on the other hand, don't really have a bottom so you can only put them like this (or stack them if you're feeling especially adventurous).

The market stalls! I had fun messing around with these, although it's a bit of a shame that you don't really have options in how you put them together...

... so these are the same thing again in different colours, basically.

Finally, this is a 3D print I found on Cults. I'm reasonably pleased with how it's come out in the end, but getting this to print properly was a bit of a nightmare - the walkway at the top is a mesh, which prints nicely in resin but then went all wavy as it cured, so I've gone for printing in PLA but having quite a scrappy result instead. I've gone fairly heavy with the rust which I think makes everything ok - and it's not exactly a centrepiece so I don't think it really matters anyway. But still, bit of a faff, partly I suspect because I should have thought more about how to set it up for printing.

Still, there you go, a decent chunk of scenery just in time for us to largely abandon the Necromunda campaign. Success!

The Gang's All Here

In the summer of 2012, I wrote this post, apologising for an extended period (over 2 months in fact) with no updates to this blog. It was a silly little piece of creative writing which I quite enjoyed putting together, and I was of course immediately accused of having plagiarised it. Such is life.

Can't think what put that into my head. Please don't check the date of the post before this one.

Anyhoo. I've decided to take this whole affair in a slightly new direction. Rather than rushing to the laptop every time the paint dries on whatever I've been doing most recently (often I didn't even wait that long, you can probably spot a fair bit of wet PVA on old photos of bases if you're the sort of person inclined to look), I'm going to hang on until I have something a little more substantial. 

The uncharitable might point out that in this instance, that appears to have taken me two and a half years. Ignore these naysayers.

So, in recent times, I've been involved in a fair amount of looking backwards - mostly this has been through older versions of Warhammer and 40k, but now it's time to move into the nightmare undercity. It's time to Necro like it's 1995! Or something.

To allow this nostalgia-fest, I've got the Biostrip out, and repainted my original Orlock gang. 

Also a weird clock thing

To the left...

To the right...

Now back left...

This is a contrast paint job, and to tie the gang together I've used some repeating colours:

Skin - Guilliman Flesh

Boots and jackets - Black Templar

Bandanas and Sashes - Gryph-Hound Orange

Weapon casings - Space Wolves Grey

I also decided to do some light converting. For some reason, even though there were four sculpts for juves, and juves used to come in packs of four, 90's Games Workshop decided that what we really needed was two each of two of these sculpts. (It's possible I've misremembered, and none of the foregoing sentence is true. In that case, meh.)

And back right

Since that's quite irritating, especially in a skirmish game where it's important to know exactly who is who, I never used the "spares" back in the day. But I've decided to rectify that, and having rummaged through the equally old spare weapons I had lying around, I now have a juve with a bolt pistol and another with a hand flamer. Both weapons are far too expensive to give to a juve, so that will almost certainly turn out to be an enormous tactical error.

So there you have it. More of this sort of thing to come, either "eventually" or "when I remember again". Keep holding your breath!

Stig Makes Friends

EXTERIOR. DAY. The ARMOURED LAMBORGHINI is speeding through the wasteland.

JAMES (V.O.): As you've seen, our modified vehicles give us an edge in surviving the day-to-day adventures of finding food and fuel in the brave new world. However, we're still a little short handed, and that can leave us a bit... vulnerable. 

Several RAMSHACKLE RAIDER VEHICLES power toward the AMOURED LAMBORGHINI, firing their weapons at it.

JAMES (V.O.): So it seemed sensible for us to beef up our numbers a bit. 

The STIG WAGON drives into frame, full of STIGLETS. They team up with STIG and the ARMOURED LAMBORGHINI to destroy the RAMSHACKLE RAIDER VEHICLES. STIG and his crew keep rolling through the wasteland.

CUT TO: The STIG faction, the AMOURED LAMBORGHINI, and the STIG WAGON. JEZZA walks into frame.

JEZZA (TO CAMERA): Friendly looking bunch, aren't they? 

Alright, I've been away for months, et cetera. I got a bit carried away with finishing one of my planned 7TV Apocalypse casts, and that took a while, so this post ended up waiting until it was done. Anyway.

The idea is to turn my Grand Top Gear Tour cast from the 7TV Apocalypse day into four complete casts, one for each of the main characters. I decided to give each of them a unit and a co-star, and I have a long-term plan of creating some specific scenarios for them.

I already had the Stig himself (who I'm counting as a Terminal Crazy) and last time I finished his Lambo (which fairly obviously counts as a Racer).

I had the idea that Stig would amass followers that are in awe of his inhuman driving skills and general fearsomeness, so they'd try to be more like him. From there I came up with the Stiglets:

The idea here is that they've shaved their heads and painted themselves and their clothes to look like Stig in his racing gear. I think I've had varying degrees of success with the models, but at least I know what's going on. These all count as Joyriders in 7TV terms.

Branching out from these a little, I added in Stig Backley (a Petrolhead, so he throws a javelin...) and the Mechanic (who counts as a Mechanic).

Stig's Lambo has a rear-facing machine gun, which has to be fired by a passenger. So, I wanted a gunner, and since there's not a lot of space in the back of the Lambo, it seemed sensible for it to be a child. Therefore, we get Lucy.

Lucy, counts as a Gunner, and since she's a child, she's accompanied by a "responsible" adult in the form of her mum, (a Bad Lieutenant). 

Lucy's mum isn't as thoroughly bought in to the cult of Stig as her daughter, so hasn't gone for the black and white outfit - to show willing she has a Stig helmet patch on her sleeve.

To go along with all of these, I wanted some transport, so it was time to get back to sticking stuff to toy cars again. Or in this case, a highway maintenance truck.

It's plastered with Crooked Dice armour plating and weapons, and I took some of the more obvious toy-looking bits off.

The big Stig flag on the back covers up another obvious toy section that I couldn't remove easily.

As it's a pretty hefty model I count this as a Big Rig, and I've tried to allow as many models as possible to actually fit on it. 

I now just need to repeat all this another three times to make the other casts! So that might take a little while...

Oh, also, I've carried on with Bolt Action painting alongside this too, so here are another 8 Japanese and 8 German infantry.

Having done all of that, it's time to update the numbers again...

Painted: 70

Acquired: 41

Lead Pile Reduction: 29