Armies on Parade 2021.

 

Sporadic gunfire echoed throughout the Mechanicus facility as the last defenders were put down. The Night Lords had been methodical and ruthless as were their methods of war.

The warband had struck two hours ago. A teleport strike by heavily a armoured Terminator squad had caused chaos, especially when they destroyed the genetorum powering the void shields protecting the southern approaches.

Hordes of cultists had been waiting and charged into the teeth of the Mechanicus defence's weapons, dying in droves just as a distraction.

Now in the shadows, the cultist leader bowed deeply as the warlord who orchestrated this massacre approached.

"Lord, praise the night. We have taken the facility as you demanded, but I fear we cannot hold it for our losses were severe"

Lord Farquhar turned, the wings sculpted onto his helmet swishing as he did so.

"Yes, your sacrifice was one I was willing to make".

"What did we give our lives for? The leader asked, outraged.

Outrage turned to shock as the fingers of a lightning claw exploded from his back in a shower of blood.

"You don't need to know, but since you asked" Farquhar said with a wet growl, "This facility is home to gene sequencers, specialising in growth hormones and therapies".

As the light dimmed in the cultist's eyes he understood, "We died, so you could be taller?"

Several Night Lords Astartes had arrived, simply melting out of the shadows in spite of the lightning arcing over their armour and the bright red wings flowing from their helmets.

Farquhar gestured with one of the claws, the now dead cultist hanging limply from his wrist.

"You are now the leader of my cultists, attend to your duties".

"All hail Lord Farquhar, For he is tall and mighty" the petrified cultists chanted and dropped to their knees.

Around them the snickering laughter of the Night Lords echoed in the darkness...

*****

Games Workshop's yearly army painting competition has been and gone this past weekend.

Duncan took part and asked me to write the fluff piece above, requesting certain things like the name of the Lord and the line about being "Tall and Mighty" due to the old metal Night Lords Lord model being small in comparison to everyone else with modern scale creep.

I took pains to watch several Farquhar scenes from Shrek on YouTube to set up for the fluff.

From what Duncan tells me of people reading and smirking, I think I captured the essence of the character, what do you think?

The full display board set up (with added photography cloth courtesy of the Mrs). 

Lord Farquhar and his trusted Executioner:

Necromunda Delaque models were used as the Cultist's, I do like the green robes Duncan painted up for them.

The Chaos Knight. Now Duncan has a certain thing about Knights in 40k (he has 5 Mechanicus, 12 Imperial, 6 Chaos and around 16 Imperial and Chaos Armigers!!!).

So it was obvious that one was to be included on the board.

This one he painted based upon my favourite scheme from the codex with the big chaos star painted over the lightly coloured Knight.

Points for the Ed 209 reference on the tilting shield.

He even went as far to print out the fluff I wrote and added it to a popup frame for the board.

Finally his award, coming third at GW Doncaster and gaining a Bronze certificate.

Next year I may remember to enter, but we'll see. I have enough on my hobby desk at the moment with "Project Eye of Terror" gaining momentum, we've been talking about fielding all our various Primaris armies together to face the GW Doncaster manager's Tyranid horde (he has something like 25,000 points painted!), And Warlord Games have started to pre-order for their Epic Scale Waterloo armies...

Until next time...

Armies on Parade 2019, part 4... DISASTER...

Well...things could certainly have gone better recently.

Here in the UK, we have been experiencing the tail end of 'Hurricane Lorenzo' as it blew itself out in the northern Atlantic and headed westwards over our green islands here.

Lots of rain and rain and more rain, along with some wind, but mainly rain for the past week or so.

What does this have to do with Armies on Parade?

Well, I was storing my board in my utility extension when I wasn't working on it. Apparently there has been a lot of moisture around (unsurprisingly with all the rain), and it has affected the board.

I just picked it up to move it the other day and the corner where i was going to mount the corn field felt a little strange, but i went for it anyway and the MDF broke on me...

Upon closer inspection, the board itself had collected enough moisture to make the MDF turn spongy, even though I thought I had sealed it all.

The polystyrene hills also suffered from the same, not where the sand was, but around the back mainly.

This is after i had left it in the sunlight for a little:

The broken corner...

 Another view, there is also a definite warping of the board happening as well.

The ground cover has also started to peel away on the edges.

So, with Parade Day on the 19th of this month, I think I'm going to have to give it a miss this year...

Until next time...


 - Lewis

Armies on Parade 2019, part 3...something, something ground cover...

Welcome back to another edition of Armies on Parade 2019.

Its been a little while since my last update, but things have been progressing, albeit slower then before, mainly due to extra hours at work, and waiting for step on the board to dry, you'll see.

Anyway, on with the ground cover, this was the next step after making sure that the filler and PVA on the hills had dried properly.

Supplies gathered, a mixture of PVA, water and Nutmeg Spice emulsion from Wilko's was used to first paint the board.

This ensures that if any of the following ground cover falls off, white patches don't show through the ground.

This was then sprinkled with fine builders sand which had been dried thoroughly beforehand.

It was then given another coat of the mixture to seal it all together ((hopefully).

I worked in small patches at a time to give the previous layer chance to dry and to maximise my working time.

The bare bottom corner has plans, so don't worry about that yet.

Onto the road, and for texture i followed the advice of Luke from Luke's APS, in which he uses textured wallpaper.

With a "sample" torn from a roll in B&M, i set to covering the roadway segments.

This wallpaper has a suitably rough texture that, once painted, it should look like some form of weathered, worn cobblestones... that's the hope anyway.

Afterwards i attacked the edges with some filler to smooth things out.

The board is currently drying, so some more emulsion, PVA  and sand will be added before the road starts to get some paint.

So far, I am on schedule to finish, so here's hoping, but with a possible new job in the line and being short staffed at my current job, things may get a bit dicey.

Until next time...

 - Lewis

Armies on Parade 2019, part 2...The hills are alive?

 So, after a few hellishly hot days back at work, i think someone said that this is the hottest August bank holiday on record, i had today off and made some good progress.

On the rough plan from last time, i was going to add a hill in each far corner, with some trees on them.

So it was into my "useful stuff" pile in the loft to grab some polystyrene.
This was obtained at a knock down price from B&Q as it was a broken sheet.

BARGAIN!

With my supplies gathered outside, the only place i could really carve polystyrene and not incur the wrath of her indoors, the first step was to cut the basic shapes out and glue them all together for each hill.

Two huge dodgy cut out blocks later, i i realised that i could have saved some material by planning the slopes before i started carving, but whatever.

After i had carved the slopes, i added a few random small offcuts, which will be turned into small undulations or rocks as i decide.
I hit all the exposed polystyrene with a water and PVA mix to seal and strengthen it all.
Then this was placed in the sun to dry.

Next, after the previous step had dried, glorious sunshine has its uses.
I worked over the polystyrene with some watered down interior filler (i had used tile grout for the board before).

Unfortunately:

I ran out when i was almost finished with the second hill. I'll go out and pick some more up tomorrow and get this bit finished.

I'm also planning to add filler to the "off scene" vertical sides of the hills in order to protect the polystyrene which would otherwise be visible and subject to all the knocks and hits as the board is transported to GW.
I'll sand these sides smooth, then give them a coat of matte black to make a good presentation to the boards edge.

So at the end of part 2, here's where we are up to:

I would love to hear if anyone else is entering and has started.

Until next time...


 - Lewis

Armies on Parade 2019, part 1.

Armies on Parade, for those of you who don't know, is Games Workshop's yearly army/diorama painting competition.

Summed up, you get the chance to go nuts with your hobby on a 2' by 2' area (coincidentally the same size as one of their Realm of Battle board pieces..hmmm).

Paint up your force, which can be anything, as long as it is GW models, and make a scenic display board to show them off on. Then fellow hobbyists in your local GW store all vote for the top three, who get a special AoP gold, silver and bronze medal, the rest are taken home and binned...or set aside and worked on for the next year?
(Everyone's mileage may vary).

Armies on Parade is something that I have always meant to get around to do, but never have.
I either got the notification that it was on too late to do anything for it, or i didn't have anything to work on without breaking the bank (at the time, things are better now).

So with GW's announcement coming early this year, giving me nearly two and a half months to work on it, i decided to go for it.

My subject?

My Chaos heavy cavalry which have been maligned and ignored in a box since Soul Wars was released last year!

Lots of these hardcases marching along, merrily singing a marching song, or more likely shouting praise to the Dark Gods.

So, with a piece of MDF, saving myself buying a RoB board, i set to:

Also, i think that you can just make out my rough planning on the board.

Basically a road curving through the centre, some tree lined hills on each back corner, the centrepiece though, will be a burnt  out farmhouse/barn, based off of a build i saw on YouTube by Black Magic Craft.

Varanguard discussion:

This, obviously, is one of the really nice pieces of artwork of the Everchosen.
I include it because it shows them literally flying on their daemonic mounts, something i am going to attempt with one of my conversions. The Tzeentchian Varanguard i am making is going to be flying over/through the smouldering shell of the farm building.

Just to add interest.

Progress so far:

Cutting/Ripping up a cork tile, i blocked out the base for the road pieces and the farmhouse foundation.
The road is cut into segments like that, because i am going to make it look very overworked and ill-maintained, with sections covered by windblown dirt and the like.

Once this was PVA'd down, i set to work with the interior filler for some ground cover, this was where i left progress today:

So there we have it. I'll post an update how i am getting on with the project as we go.

In-between all this i also have to get my Orks ready, as i am arranging an apocalypse game with a friend in Orktober just after parade day.

Busy busy...


Until next time...


 - Lewis

40k - "A Knight before Christmas" event report.

No-one can deny that Imperial Knights are cool. A giant stomping robot with building levelling amounts of firepower and all the heraldry and chivalric traditions of medieval Knights, what's not to like?

Our local GW manager ran an event yesterday in order to try to gain the record for the most Imperial Knights on a 6'x4' table as possible.

There are 58 Knights of varying types there, including some Forge Ones lurking about.

Impressive photo's you have to admit.
Alas, we missed out on the record by 4 Knights, it still stands at 61.
There is always another try for the record though.


Until next time.

 - Lewis