7th Year Blog Birthday Post (or Pods to Drop and Lands to Raid part 1 redux)

Seven years? In some ways it feels longer!

Unlike last year's birthday I am not doing any give aways for anyone to win this year. (I know, I suck) Although that was a fun thing to do, my hobby time is a lot thinner currently and I just don't have time to make that work out this year. Plus, I hated excluding some of the local people from it. I wanted to avoid an appearance of a bias... but excluding people just feels...mean.

So this year, I think I will do a brief flashback to the first year and an overview of what's going on these days.

First off, if you are on Facebook I invite you to send me a friend request and also request to join our group: Neverness Hobbies. We have discussions about new releases, rumors, etc that I would otherwise not ever post in this blog. 

The Land Raider from earliest posts.

Now for a Neverness Chronicle birthday flashback. The blog started off as a WIP series focusing on my Drop Pods and Land Raider for my Space Wolves. Although the Land Raider would be finished in time, those Drop Pods are still in an unplayable state. (I really should correct that).

The other day while doing some site maintenance on this blog I found that I had the original version of the very first blog post (linked above)  saved as a draft. I am not sure why I did this, but there it was. The verbage was similar to what was posted but the final post was a bit more polished, professional in tone (to the point of being overly verbose) and not as excited and relaxed in tone. Maybe I was nervous and not so comfortable yet with the idea of blog writing? I can not recall, but the difference is there.  So I figured, why waste all that writting? Why not share it here as a retrospective sort of thing? Why not indeed, so here it is raw and unedited:

Pods to Drop and Lands to Raid part 1

Ok, so onto what truly inspired me to start this blog. Last Saturday I played a 40K game and tried out the Space Marine drop pod for the first time and was impressed with the tacticality and functionality of it. So the next day I decided that I needed more! So while rumageing about in my miniature closet (the names doesn't really do it justice, I have more unopened models in there than what Hobbytown currently has in stock! LOL) I have three more unopened drop pods. I knew immediately that I wanted a bunch of these, so I got four  in a sweet deal online. It took me a LONG time to build the first one however. It has to be the most complicated kit GW carries, and if you care about how these things look, you HAVE to paint it before you build it. So I did, and with work, etc, it took me something like 7 months to complete it.
Here it is:

So, I grabbed a box, tore off the shrink wrap, and took the sprues outside and primed them black. This was on Easter Sunday morning. When I came back from my folk's house later that day, I went in was going to grap an additional box when my old Land Raider Cruesader box called out to me.

This was a kit I picked up about 10 years ago now, and started to paint the bits while on the sprue. As i was about to assemble it, i discovered that the blisters in the box were identical meaning that I had doubles of some parts while missing others. I must have moved out my parents house around this time and just never dealt with GW customer service to get the issue corrected.

Last year, I pulled this thing out, only to rediscover my dilema, only now, this kit no longer is made and it has been updated with plastic parts. It was more convenient, and a tad more advantagous, to just order the plastic sprue seperately. Which I did, tossed it in the box, and after driving and flying all over the nation's interior, forgot about it again (I was probably focusing on getting the drop pod done).

So, Sunday, I pulled this out and said: "Oh HELL yeah! I'm doing THIS!" And started goofing around with it. The goofing turned into commitment, and before I knew it, it was really late at night and I had gotten pretty far with it!



...and thus ends the draft post. As you can see, I was very excited about starting this blog and getting some focus back into these modeling projects. One of the things I was glad about was to see how far improved my picture quality has improved! A big difference seven years makes.

I hope you enjoyed this strange flashback, I hope year seven is a memorable one for us all.

Pods to drop...part 13

Damn! It has been a year and half since I last touched this thread. The last post on the matter was sort of near the start of a transitional period in my life (job changes, moves, matters of the heart, etc.) During this period I focused very little on the Space Wolves in 40K,  but instead focused on a strange variety of models and armies. The Space Wolves have been, sadly, neglected. However, as I type this I am in the middle of another transitional period: I have started a new job. This new job had me go off and train in another city for two weeks. I wanted to take the Portable Neverness Kit out on the road with me again and with it, an easy to work on model. Looking through my options I found my 2nd Drop Pod which has been untouched since part-11 of this thread.

I didn't get much done, but in this model's case, a little equals a lot!

Not pictured, I finished painting the mid-tones and top layer colors on the outside hull of the drop pod. The only thing left to do is the highlights.

Next, with a pencil, I drew out the lines for the interior door strips. I have been very please with how this turned out on my 1st drop pod, and I think it looks very dynamic on the battlefield when it is deployed. So I will repeat this on my my drop pods.

The Fiery Orange stripes.

After I filled in the lines, I painted in the stripes with Fiery Orange 1st, before solidifying my line work with the next stripe which was done using Chaos Black.

The 1st yellow coat.

 I added additional layers of yellow until I was happy with it, and then I went back and really tightened up my line work. Oddly, I don't have a picture of their current state, but I can say that they look better that what you see in the above pics.

After finishing it, I decided to tinker with the door assembly and found that I needed to work on the doors or else I would be a victim of 'Problem #3'. According to an article on Bell of Lost Souls called drop-pod construction essentials, (which BTW, I highly recommend you at least read though it prior to attempting to properly build this kit) if you have too much flash or mold lines on the door bottoms, they will not shut right.

Removing the flash and mold lines. 

Here's a quote from that handy article:

The third most common error is not cleaning the mold lines off of the bottom of the doors. If you don't scrape these flat then the doors will not close all the way. You might want to shave these down a little more than seems necessary because when you add paint to the door bottoms and the base of the model, the added thickness may also prevent the doors from closing or rub the paint off due to friction. This model is very carefully engineered and the clearance on the doors is extremely close.

Now that that issue is resolved, I can move on to the rest of the kit. I am at a place with it now that I think I will focus on it again once I complete the current round of Chaos models. I want to play with my Space Wolves again soon and it would be really nice to run two Drop Pods instead of just one and a bunch of Rhinos...

Pods to Drop and Lands to Raid part 11

It has been a long time since I added to this series, but don't think that I have been idle on these items during this time. For those of you who might be seeing this series for the 1st time, this is a focus on select vehicles in my Space Wolves army and for the most part I talk about my steps-by-steps in their construction. At the end of Part 10 (which was posted in March of 2012! Yikes!) I listed these items in this series that I would focus on:

• Minor Touch-ups on the Land Raider Crusader
• 2 more Land Speeder Typhoons
• and about 3 more Drop Pods

So let's review these in order.

Land Raider Crusader. Let's Start with the big one. The Land Raider Crusader has had most of the new sponsons painted, they just need to be assembled and magnetized. But I was really hung up, and I still am really, on the multi-melta sponson; I just can't decide whether I like it better with or without a gunner in it. To confound it more, I already have a gunner for the pintle-mounted storm bolter and I just think the Land Raider looks a bit silly with more than one guy sticking out of the top of it.

As of March 6th of 2013, and it hasn't changed since! 

As you can see, it just needs to be assembled and it's done, assuming I choose to not go with a gunner. I'm a bit fond of the burnt metal on the multi-melta's barrel and I like the targeting display. -Just stuck on it still!

Land Speeder Typhoons. I have suspended work on these for the time being, mainly due to my side interest in Dark Angels. I am flirting with whether or not they should be requisitioned by the Ravenwing. Heresy though it it is to think such thoughts as a Space Wolf player, right? Also I haven't really been using Land Speeders a whole lot in my Space Wolf lists recently so the urgency to complete these just hasn't been high.

Drop Pods. As followers of this blog might've read, I have occasionally done some work on my 2nd Space Wolf Drop Pod. I actually started work on this... I think in the fall of 2011 in Elkhart Indiana. I know I hauled it around to a few places intending to work on it, but not getting too far into it. (Wow-Has it really been two years since I started working on this? I remember that trip fondly because I drove from Elkhart IN to South Hampton MA for my cousin's wedding!). Anyway, Drop Pod #2 has seen many miles and many hotel rooms, yet failed to gather much paint! Haha!

These  first two pics where taken on 2/12/2013 while on my last business trip to Nashville and utilizing the Portable Neverness Kit.

In this first pic, you can see that I was starting on the first layer of mid-tones on the doors, and I had, crudely, hand painted the Wolf Guard icons on the exterior fins. I recall that I painted on this kit for awhile before stopping to write a blog post using my work laptop. Often back then I would post from the road as time was too precious and fleeting at home, and posting from the road helped to take my mind away from the trivialities of work. And it was fun!

This was as far as I got with that night, and few weeks later I switched jobs and now I don't travel like I did. As a result, I have not touched this kit or the Portable Neverness kit instead painting either random things for a day or two, or focusing on my WHFB Orcs.

Last Saturday, that changed. I was planning on spending the evening at my girlfriend's place, and she had to go to sleep early in order to get up to go to work (we're talking 4am-early) and I wasn't going to disturb her rest! So, what to do... and there was the Portable Neverness kit with the Drop Pod box on it, so I said :what the heck," took a snap-shot of the open doors of  Drop Pod #1 for reference, grabbed up the kits, and after spending a lovely evening with my gal, I then worked on this project well into the night.

A model being a model! 

 I finished all the mid-tones on the exterior pieces, as well as tightened up the Wolf Guard patterns on the fins.

I then clipped and assembled the doors. This is a kit where rubber-bands are definitely your friend!

And finally I further tightened up the Wolf Guard Pack markings and painted them with Bad Moon Yellow.

All done by hand, no ruling, templates, etc. 

Not bad for a late evening's focus. I haven't had much time this past week for anything hobby related as I have been focused on studying for a major work-related test. But last night, I repeated what I did in the previous week and made some more progress. This next pic shows where I added more to the mid tones on the doors and to the interior floor.

And this one shows more progress on the doors particularly where I added the thinned washes and dabs of Space Wolf Grey before tightening it up with solid Space Wolf Grey.

I didn't take a pic of the fins where I went and added metallic colors to some of the metal bits on it. The rest of the interior parts I will try to do at home once I have completed this study course for work.

All in all, I'm excited again about this drop pod, and hope to make more progress on it soon!

To be a Lone Wolf

+++++++++++++++DATE ++++++++++++++++REF ++++++++TRANSMITTED +++++++++++++++++TO ++++++++++++SUBJECT +++++++++++LOCATION +++++++++++++SECTOR ++++++AUTHORIZATION ++++++++++++THOUGHT:

919814.M41 Inq/045678506/BI Great Wolf Logan Grimnar Wolf Lord Sven Axegrinder Campaign Update from Segmentum Warzones Segmentum Obscurus Tri-Cinci Sub, Hobbytown Secundus LETUS05.61.CLA Don't trust the alien. Especially the herbivores.. We must retrieve the artifact, the water bowl of Freki, before the Xenos witches get their filthy hands on it and turn it into a salad bowl. Extreme prejudice is sanctioned and encouraged.  YOU ARE EXPENDABLE, THE WATER BOWL IS NOT. -LG

    The Battle Barge found it's way, again, to the local Hobbytown... actually it's the space it used to be, which is currently being used for games and RC races. but I digress.... Answering to the taunts and jeers of the xenos filth, we decided to take the fight to them. Da Masta Cheef brought his Eldar Exodites, and I used a previous list, the one I used against Hiveangel a while back but switching out the Bastion for a Whirlwind.

 The objective was placed next to a windmill which we decided was like the skymills that are on Acreage (Dark Heresy reference) minus all the rotting corpes and maggot men. Here I deployed with the thought to zip my rhinos up, and have the Grey Hunters leap out, take the object and try to get back to my line. The Long Fangs (positioned in a bunker just to the left of this image) with  the whirlwind would rain down missiles as  Rune Priest screwed everything over.

 Behind the Bunker stuffed full of Long Fangs in my Land Speeder Tornado, waiting to pounce and set fire to as many space elves as possible!

This will be a glorious sundering! The water-bowl of Freki shall be retrieved at last!

And here are the nasty Xeno Exodites. He hasn't painted them much since last time they appeared on this blog, but never-the-less I still enjoy looking at these sweet modes. The dino-riders in the front are counting as Wraithguard BTW.

 So here is the view that his dastardly Pathfinders have from the captured Bastion. Clearly they can see pretty much my whole army, the pack of Fenrisian Wolves stand out rather well here.

 And here we have the entire army of Exodites gathered. I was stunned just how many models hit the table, that is a lot of shurikan catapults! The "foot-dar" have assembled!

 And with the start of turn one, Sven Axegrinder and four of his trusted Wolf Guard land right smack in the front of the Wraith-drakes, blocking the Exodite forces path to the objective.

The Space Wolves fire everything they got into the Waith-drakes, and...a Long Fang killed one. Just one. All those templates (OK, just 2) and bolters, and Las Cannons, and we kill just one. OK, the Rune Priest took out a random schlub with Living Lightning (why did the Farseer snicker when I did that?).

 At the start of round. 1.5, this is pretty much what my army looked like. The Fenrisian Wolves would be cut down by the bladestorm from a Dire Avengers squad and sniping from the Pathfinders. A support weapon stunned the rhino closest to the objective. The rest of the army dumped every shot into Sven and the terminators. I was impressed with how much they sponged, but saving the best for last, the Wraithguns of the dino-riders brought Sven down.

 Realizing the tactical blunder, the 2nd rhino moved up the Grey Hunters moved out and tried to make off with the objective. It is worth noting that the objective would make it no further than this point. On the Eldar Round 2 they would be pinned and picked off...

 Meanwhile my Lone Wolf had worked his way up, but was greeted by these Harlequin, This was their position at the start of the shooting phase...

 ....And their positions after the assault phase. As you can see, drop pod was blown to hell by the wraith-drakes in the back ground. The Lone Wolf had killed a Harley, and the two sides were standing off...

 I believe this was turn 3. Things were getting...bad. My Rune Priest had been laid low by the Eldar witchery (frigging Runes of Warding and their daemon-summoning power!) I moved one rhino through the exodites in a desperate bid to tank-shock them (this seems to never work, and I question why I do it) but I did do something interesting with it, I killed a Warlock with a hunter-killer missile! I was shocked!

That little victory was greeted with entire elimination of the squad holding the objective, the 2nd Rhino blown up, and the unit within that locked in hand-2-hand. The Lone Wolf eventually took a wound (the red die is an old Sustained Fire die -perfect wound counters!). Else-where the Land Speeder was destroyed having nearly wiped out a guardian squad and damaging a Viper (the whirlwind destroyed the Viper next round , you can see the wreck of it behind the skymill).

By the time the Exodite Turn 5 came up, the Lone Wolf found himself positioned for some serious glory. Having killed off the Harlequin, he was now surrounded by the entire Exodite army, he fended off a near impossible amount of firepower, defecting the shots with his Storm Shield, or just not feeling their pain, he was truly living up to his role...but ultimately, he fell and the storm of slicing shurikans proved more than the math-hammer gods would allow...


So the game ended with my sole-survivors, the Long Fangs, sending their last spite-full shots at the Exodites and requesting immediate evac. The mission was a failure, and water-bowl lost!

It was a fun game, despite my being surprised at how nasty Runes of Warding are against Rune Priests!

Pods to Drop and Lands to Raid (and Speed) pt.9

Here I am on the road for business, and I have my Portable Neverness kit with me. Today I found time to do something with these minis. I worked a bit on the Landspeeder Typhoons. The one in the rear in this pic I tightened up the base coat, but now I'm contemplating ripping the crew out of it like I did for the one in the foreground. In short, I added a thin Skull-White highlight on the Space Wolf Gray top-coat, finished the pack marking on on the rear support, highlighted the black on the on the Multi-melta, and applied some more decals.

Here you can see the highlight on the gunner, and the decals (the number on top of the pack marking, and the Chapter symbol). I really had to resist painting that field yellow, deciding to not go all 'retro-2nd edition'. Maybe on the next one...?

Here is a view of the main hull with the white highlight. I'm having difficulty liking the angle that the multi-melta will sit once it's mounted. A friend suggested I just clip off the 'U' shaped mount and let it lay a bit lower. So, the only things left to do to the model is drill a hole for the ball joint (the original owner filled it in! Gah! I JUST noticed this! and I don't have the pin-vice with me), and finish painting the flesh on the pilot. And probably touch up his chest plate. I could have glued on the missile launchers tonight, but I'm not sure how well they would survive the trip home (remember, these are the original metal ones!). There were a few other details I wanted to hit, but hotel lighting generally is not fitting for miniature painting, and even with moving lamps around (haha, roomservice might hate me tomorrow!) it just wasn't as good as being at home. I did like the hight of the table and it was nice on the back, which has me thinking about making some changes to the painting station at home.

Ok, now finally, after 9 posts, we have progress on the Drop Pod #2. I've been hauling the box around for months and dabbing paint on the sprues ever since my first blog showing off the 'Portable Neverness' kit.

This was how I did the 1st one (see the 1st post in this series) and the Land Raider Cruesader (BTW, I've been working on the sponson Las Cannons as well, but just didn't think they were picture worthy yet). I just paint the components on the sprue so as not to lose anything and for better handling. I just finished the base coat early, and will soon move on to the mid-coats.

That's it for now!

-Neverness

Pods to Drop and Lands to Raid (part one)

After an exciting game of Warhammer 40K last Saturday, I discovered that my feeling about the technical benefit of Space Marines Drop Pods was correct and that I needed more of them! So I dove into my miniature closet for my other three unbuilt models  I got four of these Drop Pods in a sweet deal last spring, and the day they arrive I (sometime last June) immediately started working on the 1st one, only to not get it finished until January of this year (due mostly to all the traveling and time away from home my current job has me doing).

But while digging about on Easter Sunday, I stumbled upon a Land Raider Crusader kit that I must have started 8 or 9 years ago. I was painting the models on the sprue, much like how I did the Drop Pod actually, and probably moved before I could get to far into it.

I started to get back into it right around the time the Space Wolves Codex came out a year or so ago, only to find out that the metal blister packs inside were identical! This would make it impossible to build this correctly, and GW had long since cancelled this kit (the current Land Raider Crusader is all plastic). So, I went ahead and ordered the plastic sprue directly from GW. This would prove to not only be a more tactically advantageous option as far as the game was concerned, but also a more stable choice as well (plastic/metal hybird kits tend to be fragile).

So on Easter Sunday upon returning home from my Folk's house, I started to get really back into this kit. I started off by touching up and finishing the interior bits, and clipping of the commonets from the sprue to compete the 1st stage of construction. Although I'm not sure how much or well the interiors would be seen when done, I figured I wouldn't skip it anyway, as I loved the extra interior details.

So I got quite a bit done that night, which I shall detail in the next post (I'm just out of time tonight!)
But here is a glimpse:

'Til next time,

-Joel