WIP Coteaz and Grey Knights Project

Continuing the Trend that I began with the Doomknight and Landraider I wanted to get myself re-enthused with the hobby. Having a couple of days free per week now, I have a bit of a chance to get some work on my Grey Knights.

So the other day I decided to unpack and check out exactly what I have in the cupboard for the army.

The Minitures I have to work with so far are as follows:

2 x Brother Captain Stern (White Metal) (Will be converting one into Drago for a bit of fun options)

24 x GKs Terminators (White Metal) (5x 3/4 painted)

38 x GKs Power-Armoured (inc 5x Plastic MPK minis)

42 x Adeptus Arbites (Counts as Warrior Acolytes)

6 x Arbites Cyber Mastifs (Counts as Arco-Flagellants)

1 x Inquisitor Coteaz (White Metal, Cleaned, Currently being painted)

1 x Inquisitor (White Metal)

2 x Gun Servitors (White Metal) (1x Painted)

2 x Death Cult Assassins (White Metal) (Cleaned ready to paint)

16 x Inquisitorial Warband Assorted (White Metal)

1 x Vindicare Assassin (White Metal) (cleaned, recently paint stripped)

1 x Eversor Assasin (White Metal)

1 x Grey Knights Venerable Dreadnought (Converted Plastic Ven-Dread, Painted and Finished)

2 x Nemesis Dreadknights

1 x Land Raider Redeemer (Forgeworld Parts, Converted)

1 x Stormraven Gunship (Converted Pilot, magnetised weapon options, partially painted)

So Yeah I have a little bit of work ahead of me.

And while looking for Grey Knights Epic Miniatures (yes for madness.... MADNESSSS.....!!!), I found the following Inquisitor Coteaz miniature for sale.

For a long time I have put off painting my Coteaz miniature because I didn't want to do the traditional colour scheme for him. So this caught my interest, as it was both different and well executed. However I like to use somewhat darker colours, especially on characters who have questionable morality. Yes I know very grim dark....
So yesterday after lunch with the girlfriend I stopped at the not so local friendly gaming store to do a bit of painting (here-after NSLFGS). Ostensibly I was to have a night off and had planned to make it to Pubhammer that evening (yes my gaming club runs its meeting in a pub!), but at around 3:30 I got the call to see if I wanted a shift so I only got this far with Coteaz. Not I could have said no to the shift and kept painting, but hell extra money is always good.

Anyways I used the following technique to paint the armour:

Turquoise Blended Armour:

1) Undercoat Black

2) Base colour all the armour Reaper 'Deep Ocean'

3) Wash armour with 1:1:1 Asurmen Blue:Thraka Green:Badab Black

4)Wet Blended highlights with Reaper 'Deep Ocean'

5)Wet Blended edge highlights with Reaper 'Marine Teal'

6) Spot Highlights with 1:1 Reaper 'Marine Teal':P3 'Morrow White'

If in Stage 4 you let the highlights get to wide you can re-blend into the darker shading using glazes of the wash from Stage 3.

Lastly I will be putting all of these on Dragon Forge 'Parched Earth' Bases. :D

So there you have it.

Cheers All

Happy Chinese New Year!

Subby

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Sunday Night Gaming.

So you are a Gamer in the South West Suburbs of Brisbane and you have an itch to get a game in on a Sunday night but your FLGS just ain't open... What do you do?

Easy, join a few of us regulars at the Centenary Tavern, 96 Sumners Rd, Sumner, just off the Centenary Highway from about 6:30pm until about 10pm. We meet and game pretty much every weekend.

We play a range of games regularly, including 40k, WH Fantasy, DnD, Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy, 40k Scale Inquisitor and just about any game that we have on hand. If you are interested in a particular game you can contact us in the week before to see if we can get someone else to bring minis along to play you.

Forgeworld Rules and minis are Welcome.

What do we require of you?

First: You Must Be 18+!!!

We hold it at a Local Tavern, and while we encourage younger gamers we cannot be responsible for those under 18. Also if you are over 18 and intend to have a couple of drinks make sure you do not Drink and Drive, if your licence does not provide you with the ability to have a drink then be responsible. Primarily we hold this as a social gaming event, not a drinking competition.

Second contact us ahead of time to make sure we are definitely going to be running it on the coming Sunday. Sometimes the room we hire is booked out or we are having a BBQ or other social event at the residence of one of the organisers.

- You can contact us via emailing myself, or Maddermax has a post up about the club on the Heresy Online Forums that you can post to.

Third if you want to play something specific ask us to make sure we can tee up a game for you, most Sundays we have a few 40k and Fantasy armies at the bare minimum. We provide some terrain, but if you want to bring some you are more than welcome too.

Fourth as we are a Social Club, we don't ask that you have your minis all painted to tournament standards (so long as they are assembled to game with we don't mind at all). Bring along some dice and templates for whatever game you have sorted out and you are good to go. Like I mentioned before we like won't say no to Forgeworld stuff, just make sure you bring a copy of the rules for whatever you are using.

Lastly we each put in about $5-$10 to cover room hire and some food from the bistro (wedges, chips, cheese breads, cobb loaf etc.). If you don't want any food or are just coming along to check it out just ask Brett and he, generous soul that he is, will generally tell you not to pay anything.

Last Sunday saw two really good games. Nids vs Orks and Bretonians vs Dwarves. The Orks triumphed in the first battle, but sadly I had to head home before the end of the other game so I could get some sleep for my first day back at work.

We also had a running campaign continued for the lads who are currently playing DnD, I believe that they faced off against a giant purple Dire Chicken (although why it was even there was lost on me... the GM assures me it was necessary to the plot).

Cheers

Subby

The Supply Chain Consists of...

People...

What's point am I getting at? (*gasp* someone making a point!)

Ok so I commented a while back on FTW that we do Group Forgeworld Orders fairly regularly. Very cool and whatnot, and we have a group of guys getting cool figures to play with locally and spread the fun around.

Anyhow Last week we did an order and we got enough to get free express shipping, I shopped on Thursday 15th around 7pm Local time (Brisbane), which means they actually got the Order at FW Thursday AM UK time. I figured the usual couple of week wait would be in order so you can imagine my surprise and joy of getting home Tuesday arvo from the Day Job and had a nice big box waiting for me. I unpacked it and checked off that each kit was there, they were except for my Weathering Powder set (which I threw in to try), which was on back order. It wasn't until the next night when one of the guys came over to pick up his stuff that we decided to go through and check each kit to see if all the parts were there.

Stonecrusher Carnifex Complete Kit - check

Stone Crusher Upgrade pack - check

DKK Leman Russ Alpha Complete Kit - check

2x MkIV Red Scorps V-Dreads, with 2x MkIV Assault Drills + Multi-meltas - check

GK Tank Commander and Redeemer Upgrade pack - check

Valkyrie Transfers - check

IA Books - check

IA masterclass - check

Khorne Daemon Prince and Herald - ch........

Wait a minute where the zog are the Herald's arms and head?

SAD PANDA!

Indeed they were missing!

So I sent of a couple of emails to customer service, nicely worded and with a copy of the order attached with a clear description of what exactly was missing and a note that it could easily be added to my Powders when they shipped to save them a little bit of dosh.

What do you notice here?

1) I did not get aggravated/irate or belligerent.

2) I stated clearly and concisely what was missing and provided as much information as I could.

3) I thanked them for their time and congratulated them on their great service (which is true)

Within 24 hours I got a response from them saying that they have sorted everything out and the parts will be winging my way very soon.

What we often forget as customers is that we can determine how we are treated based on how we treat those on the other side of the increasingly virtual counter. We can wail and gnash our teeth as much as we like, but in the end if we treat people well it automatically brings the disposition of those we are dealing with onto our side of the fence.

At the end of the day we are all human beings and we can make mistakes.

However; for those staff whose shop I am in and they are too busy on the phone to their best friends' cousins' friend (or whoever) to serve customers I have a clear message. I will take my money somewhere else. For people who would rather let their childish ego's get in the way of doing their job right and cost the company time/money; Shame on You! Grow the hell up!

(both based on true events)

So hoist a glass to the lad's at Forgeworld customer service and think of "Armless" Andy the Herald of Sleepy Hollow (geddit?), who is getting shiny new body parts.

In other Miniature related news, I got a sneak peak at the QLD entries for the OZ Golden Daemons tonight. I think the lads may have a tough time tomorrow picking the top three in some of the categories to go off to the finals.

until next time

Cheers

Subby

Dances with Airbrushes...

I went to GW last night to meet up with some of the lads. We talked we went and ate we talked some more, and did some hobby (did a little work on my 13th Company). I got home about 11pm local and as I walked in my converted Shadowsword caught my eye in all its half finished glory so with all the attention span of a lobotomised gadfly I decided to snap some WIP shots before going and CAD-ing up the turbine mounts for steam punk jet packs. Here they are in all their less then perfectly focussed glory (yeah note to self don't take photos late at night without tripod):

The Doors on the engine bay are hinged so you can open them and look inside. When I can track it down in my backups I will post the CAD layout I did to work out how to build the Cannon and modified hull assembly. This was one of the plastic Baneblade kits and I built this conversion before the plastic Shadowsword kits came out. Details were added using bits of Forgeworld DKK Super Heavy Tank upgrade packs, plasticard, bits of the baneblade kit, and many many rivets made from dress makers pins and little tiny ceramic 1mm diameter balls I baught from Riot Art and Craft (which they don't stock anymore because the manufacturer went belly up).

So far I have done the first stage of oil washes, gotta do some free hand stuff and then all the weathering to finish her off. The model was sprayed first with Tamiya German Grey (TS4), then taped and lightly sprayed with Tamiya Haze Grey (TS32), then the edges of the cammo strips were teased with the Airbrush with a bit of Mechrite Red (yeah not my good fine detail airbrush but the all Stainless Auto-detailing one picked up cheap at an auction). When this all dried I removed the masking and airbrushed an all over oil wash of Burnt Sienna darkened with a pinch of Humbrol Black Matt 33. Why no Burnt Umber, there was none in stock when I went to the shop so I got the more rusty coloured Burnt Sienna. Be super careful using Turps as a thinner if you try to put too much wash on at one parts of the underlying paint will start to lift away, but if you do it right it add some really neat weathering effects by making realistic patches of cracking aged paint. Acrylics will be affected most easily by this.

It is looking Ok so far but it may not see any more work for a couple of weeks, I really need to do the freehand stuff before the rest of the weathering so maybe it will be a while.

As a tip, if you do an all over oil wash and want to quickly highlight it you can wait till the next day and get a soft rag, wet it with Turps and gently rub it along the edges to remove the darker wash. Shazam! Instant single stage highlighting.

Lastly I have tacked on a screencap of the centres of my steam punk jet packs. I have not added the turbines on either end yet, I decided to call it a night and havn't got back to finish them today.

Cheers

Subby

Group Orders and You!

Ok so a little while ago there was some discussion of FTW about Forgeworld and the cost of ordering from there. I mentioned at the time that a group of us Brisbanites get together and order as a group so we get the free express shipping.

Well last night I processed our latest group order, I should have done it tuesday night local when the $Au was better vs the GBP... could have saved us around $50. I know you are thinking this doesn't sound like a lot but when our order is around 350 Pounds and you look at the conversion rate it makes a difference. Hell being realistic about it if We/I managed to save that money it is almost the price of a Space Wolf Pack Box ($55 Au).

So I wanted to leave you with a couple of things to remember when ordering from Forgeworld:

Firstly - Get a group together to make that free shipping, if you order just the right amount you can also get around the nasty import tax a lot of countries have.

Second - watch the exchange rate, do your order via credit card when the exchange rate is good and you can save even more money.

Also here is something funny to remember about security settings when setting up a new server:

Cheers all

Da_Sub