General Excuses – 1st to the 31st December 2009

A combination of things has lead to no regular updates in December:

1) I’ve been a bit lazy.

2) There were lots of busy days doing non-gaming stuff.

3) I’ve been playing some addictive computer games. I finally finished Fallout 3, briefly said hello to free time and then kissed it good bye by installing Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

4) I’ve been catching up on several TV series and a load of films. I ploughed through a lot of 24 and the final Stargate Seasons (both vanilla and Atlantis). The new Sherlock Holmes film deserves a special mention here, as one of the fist films for ages which I think actually justified the ticket price. Do you think Guy Ritchie has noticed that he’s making better films now he’s not with Madonna?

Just because there are excuses it doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing gaming related stuff though!

I got some gaming goodies from my friends for Christmas.

A Thunderfire Cannon from Chris.
A squad of Raptors from Gareth.
A Sanctum Imperialis from The Spaniard (Phil)

So far I’ve managed to get the Thunderfire Cannon put together and undercoated and I can safely say it’s one of the most annoying models I’ve assembled for ages. I appreciate that any detailed figure can end up with mould lines and slight miscasting, but I must have spent a good hour filing and trimming the various bits before they finally went together.

While browsing the Forge World site I succumbed to a set of weathering powders too. I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to do with these yet, or even how I’m meant to use them, but it seemed like a plan and I’m always keen to improve the look of my models with a minimum of effort.

The continued mission to sort my Blood Angel’s out has led to another month of spending too much money! I’ve added:

2 x Rhinos – To go with the Forge World Blood Angel doors I bought a while back and still haven’t used.

10 x Assault Marines – I needed some Assault Marine bits to patch up some of my existing squads and replace missing arms and guns and so on. 2 boxes of Assault Marines later and I had the perfect amount of spares for repairs and 10 more Jump Pack Marines to boot!

4 x Attack Bikes – Before settling down to a marathon '24' viewing session, I grabbed a pad and the Space Marine Codex. The plan was to design a few 1500 point Space Marine forces that might be a bit different, or just fun to play.

Among the various lists, the one I wanted to try the most was:

1 x Space Marine Captain on Bike
5 x Command Squad on Bikes
8 x Marines on Bikes with 1 x Multi-Melta Attack Bike
8 x Marines on Bikes with 1 x Multi-Melta Attack Bike
1 x Heavy Bolter Attack Bike
1 x Heavy Bolter Attack Bike
1 x Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon
3 x Predators with Autocannons and Heavy Bolter Sponsons

I’ve always liked the idea of a biker army and I think that if I can get to grips with using such a manoeuvrable force it could do pretty well.

1 x Baal Predator – I like Assault Cannons, Predators and good deals. So when I saw one of these going cheap at a local gaming shop it needed very little justification for me :-)

1 x Ironclad Dreadnought – Dreadnoughts are great and I’ve been eyeing the Ironclad up ever since its release. The armour value of 13 on the front (or all round in close combat) makes it rock hard, but I prefer using mine in a more shooty role. I suppose I could go with Hurricane Bolters to give me some range, but it seems more in keeping with the model to go with 2 CQB weapons, so I'll have to wait and see on that front.

1 x Predator Annihilator – This was another choice which stemmed from my love of Predators. I bought some magnets a few weeks ago and I fancied giving them a go. I figured I'd start with someting easy like a tank and let's be honest, you can never have enough armour!

Over the festive period I also managed take a trip to B&Q and invest in some sheets of MDF. I’ve been admiring the ruins in the various Games Workshop books for a while now and thought it was high time I made some of my own.

I placed all of my buildings on a sheet of MDF and sketched out some boundaries with a permanent marker. A bit of jigsaw work and a lot of sawdust later I had 6 building bases. My next step was to use some No More Nails to glue each of my buildings to their prospective bases and leave them to dry.

After a few hours drying, each building was well and truly attached, so I set to work adding some rubble. I built the bases up a bit with the off cuts from my earlier jigsaw exploits and some chunks of smashed up slate liberated from my Mum’s on-going house extension. The slate worked really well and gave me lots of nice flat building blocks to work with. With all of the big bits of rubble in place I covered each base in turn with PVA glue and threw sand on, until I was happy with the coverage.

That's all for now folks, so I'll leave you with a few photos of my handiwork and wish you all a very Merry Christmas!