Really Useful Model Storage

 Welcome back to the Vault! Saturday's planned activities (not gaming related) were cancelled due to the ridiculous amount of rain that fell from the sky, but there were some definite hobby-related silver linings in those overlying clouds!

I picked up a paint brush for the first time in what must be weeks, and started laying down the base colours onto the Noxious Blightbringer, aka THE BELL MAN; when I've made some more progress I'll share some pictures.

The family also had a trip to the local DIY store. I do like a visit to the local Wickes or B&Q not because I enjoy all those jobs around the house (I don't, I'd rather be painting Plague Marines than walls), but because you can find hobby/modelling related bobbins. 

I wanted to pick up some more storage boxes for the ever growing model collection to replace tatty old cardboard boxes. I have a number of good quality figure cases with foam for transporting armies to events, but that's an expensive way to store everything. And so I tend to store a lot of models in cheaper (but still robust) containers, and swap around the contents of the figure cases when I am going to the club for example.

My preferred brand are the Really Useful Boxes; these come in a variety of sizes, and some are more useful than others for our purposes!

Pestilential Painting: Whether to Weather or not?

 Welcome back to the Vectorium! My intention was to spend this week's hobby time working on the next unit of Plague Marines for the expanding Death Guard collection. This did not quite work out as expected however! I'd received a few comments on the Death Guard Rhino asking whether I intended to add any further weathering and muck to the model.

In truth I wasn't overly happy with the Rhino in the state I'd left it as it did look quite light and clean in comparison to other other couple of Death Guard vehicles I'd painted (the Blight Hauler and Plague Burst Crawler). Both of those had taken washes well with their more organic curved shapes, but I wasn't convinced just slapping a load of Argrax Earthshade over the flat panelled transport would work.

A bit of time hunting through You Tube tutorials came up with an easy to try technique; stippling the grime onto the model.

 

Pestilential Painting: The Lazy Person's Guide to painting Plague Marines

 Welcome back to the Vault! I've spent my recent hobby time completing the first unit of Plague Marines for my burgeoning Death Guard force! I'm pleased with how they've turned out and so I thought I'd capture the paint scheme down for future reference. It's pretty straight forward to follow and unusually there isn't an edge highlight in sight! 

Simple Online Fantasy Role Playing Game Guide

Welcome back to the Vault my fellow Venturers! One of the joys of the smart phone age is the Group Chat, and like a lot of gamers/hobbyists I belong to a number of such groups dedicated to various gaming and modelling topics.

One of the smaller 40k group chats was lamenting the lack of face to face gaming due to lock down and social distancing, and the suggestion of running an online role playing game came up.  Most of the players are relative novices to RPGs so I volunteered to organise a very simple introductory game using easily accessibly materials.

First up was the choice of rule set; this was an easy decision to make as I've had Swords and Wizardry Light (S&WL) in mind to try out for a while.  S&WL is a free product (well technically Pay What You Want), and provides a stripped back D&D-like system over  an easy to digest 4 pages. For me the rules have a very Basic D&D vibe to them, and preparing the adventure was something of a nostalgia trip for me.

Regimental Reporting: Making the most of the Cadian kits

Welcome back to the Officers Mess!  The focus of my recent hobby time has been split between slapping paint on some more random fantasy models and readying the next Cadian Infantry Squad for the paint table.

It's very simple to buy a Cadian Infantry Squad kit, build all the 10 men and say "done", but unfortunately you don't necessarily get all the options you want for your squad in that box! In simplistic terms a fully equipped Infantry Squad will contain:

• One Sergeant
• One Vox Operator
• One Special Weapon Trooper
• One Heavy Weapon Team (2 Troopers)
• Five Lasgun Troopers

The Cadian Infantry Squad itself contains 2 sprues which will each build a Sergeant, Vox, Special Weapon (albeit flamer or grenade launcher only), and a varying number of Lasgun Troopers depending on how many of the other options you build.

Sarge, Flamer, Vox

The joy of a well stocked Bitz Box

Welcome back to the Vault once more! I've been spending some time de-cluttering the house (saying good bye to books long since read and clothes too tatty even for me to wear), and of course this leads me to think about the Hobby Mountain.

I am a self-confessed hoarder of games and models (both painted and unpainted). And especially unused model components. Whilst I'm not ready to bid "bon voyage" to any of my gaming stuff  (although I feel a swell of ruthlessness coming on), I have been assembling some kits and clipping Bitz (components) off the sprue to clear space on the shelves.

When you've been in the war gaming hobby for a while the Bitz Box can get quite deep, and this allows you to pull tricks like this off:

Officio Assassinorum: Back In Black

Welcome back to the Vault my fellow Imperial Commanders! My hobby time has been practically non-existent this week, although I have managed to find a few minutes to flick through Vigilus Defiant (yes, I am late to the party on this book) and start plotting how to use some of the cool rules with my Space Sharks, and I've drafted a mission for the upcoming Mayhem tournament which should get a play test next week. More on both of those in future posts.

Today I'd like to share a painting tip I'd picked up from an online conversation; "washing in" colours.

Power Armoured Paint: The Lazy Persons Guide to painting Deathwatch

Welcome to the Watch Fortress Commanders! I'm still riding a hobby high from last week's 40K Doubles Tournament and I've been building a load of 40K models in my spare time.  Long time readers will know I am something of a Power Armour Junkie, and so having enjoyed playing them in some doubles practice games I've been reinforcing my Deathwatch Marines!

I love the lore behind the Deathwatch; the Best of the Best, a thin black line defending Humanity against the danger of Xenos-kind. The Deathwatch recruit from many different Chapters and so the army present an opportunity to build and paint a bunch of different Space Marine styles.  Whilst I've done quite well in the "buy and build" category, I've utterly failed to paint any of my Deathwatch models. Until this weekend that is; I've painted a test model and I'm quite taken with the scheme!

Multipurpose Terrain Crafting

Welcome back dear Venturers! My summer break is almost over and that means it's time to share some of the fruits of my hobby time with you. I've been working on a number of projects which I'll disclose over a series of posts and I'd like to start with some terrain pieces.

Like a lot of my fellow club members I've got *very* excited about the new Kill Team and picked up the starter box. However from my Frostgrave gaming experience I knew that the amount of terrain in the starter box was unlikely to be enough for a densely packed table so I purchased a couple of the Pegasus Gothic City kits along side it. The lovely thing about the Pegasus kits is that they are both modular and will work for 40K and Fantasy (i.e. Frostgrave).

So I've been busy assembling and playing with the buildings. Please bear in mind that a lot of these kits are still works in progress:

Lots of new toys!

Frostgrave: Creating a Warband

Greetings once again my fellow adventurers! This week we are venturing into the icy ruins of Felstad once again. Or more specifically we are going to talk about how to prepare yourself for excursions into Frostgrave!  I was asked earlier this weekend how to choose spells for a beginning Wizard and I thought it would be fun to write a little tutorial on how to create a Wizard and Warband. 

I'm very pleased to introduce Snikkit's Rubble Runners:

Power Armoured Paint: The Lazy Persons Guide to Painting Space Sharks

Time for another painting guide here at the Vault!  I've just finished my first Carcharodons Astra power armour unit so capturing the painting recipe will help me remember the details for the future (and may also be of interest/use to fellow Space Shark players).

As per usual my schemes are all about getting models to a decent table top standard in quick time; helpful if you have to bust through a whole armies worth of models.

That's a lot of Dakka!

Power Armoured Paint: The Lazy Persons Guide to Painting Space Shark Scouts

Welcome back to the Vault! This week's hobby time has been spent completing my first unit of Carcharodons Astra Scouts, and I am pretty pleased with the results. One of the original articles I wrote when I began the blog was a painting guide for Imperial Guardsmen (as much to help me remember the paint scheme as for other people's benefit), and I've decided a similar article for the Scouts will be useful as I've got at least two more units to paint.

Here's a piccie of the Scouts to wet your appetite:

Carcharodon Astra: Scout Squad Alpha

Powered Armoured Paint: The Lazy Persons Guide to painting Scenic Bases

It's holiday time, and for Varchilde that means more hobby time, and of course that means some more posts. So as all my readers have been good little Venturers this year, you get words and pictures and not coal!

I've started work on my Carcharodons Astra Space Marine project in earnest. As I've mentioned in previous posts I want to build and paint an army that is both fluffy and effective on the table top. According to the Forge World Imperial Armour books, part of the Space Sharks strategy in the Badab Wars was to sabotage the huge power generators which provided the energy for Badab Prime's planetary defence systems, thus rendering the planet helpless.  I've decided to theme my army around one of the strike forces sent to infiltrate and destroy the generators.

Rather than the usual texture paint and dry brush approach for basing (as used on my Imperial Guard and Dark Eldar), I've had my eye on the GW Sector Mechanicus scenic bases. These have a loads of lovely detail, but I could see them being a pain to paint with models attached; so I've painted the bases first!

60mm base: perfect for Dreadnoughts

Graveyard Scatter Terrain

Welcome back to the Vault! My summer holiday has given me the luxury of extra hobby and gaming time and I've spent some of it working on a little modelling and painting project I'd like to share. 

Earlier in the year I had indulged my terrain addiction with the acquisition of the Garden of Morr kit from Games Workshop; this is a lovely gothic graveyard set, but once I had built it I felt the set would benefit from the addition of some scatter pieces to bulk it out. Blotz produce packs of laser cut MDF gravestones, so I thought I'd give these a go!

The finished article

The Lazy Person's Guide to Painting Imperial Guard Vehicles

Welcome to the Vault once again faithful readers. Today's article complements one of my earliest entries on the blog, the painting guide for Imperial Guard infantry. A bank holiday weekend has given me the perfect opportunity to indulge in some hobby time, and with 40K army building on hiatus until 8th edition drops I decided to dig into one of my older projects (of which I have many*)...

*see the end of the article for more on this...

...the iconic Imperial Guard vehicles. Sentinels and Leman Russes to be specific.

Fire on my target!!!

Power from Paint: A guide to painting Dark Eldar Vehicles

Welcome back to the Webway! One of the first articles I wrote for the Vault was a painting guide for Imperial Guard (mainly so I would have a handy reference for the next time I decide to paint some reinforcements), and I thought it would be useful to have a similar set of notes for my Dark Eldar vehicles.

I remembered to take a few work in progress shots of one my Venoms so I can illustrate the notes.

Time to bust out the paints!

Power from Paint: Death Magnetic

The latest in the Power from Paint series of articles. This is coming on the end of a busy week of hobby and gaming so will be short on words, and long on pictures (hurray I hear you cry!).

Once a month I hold a gaming weekend, usually D&D on Saturday evenings followed by 40K on the Sunday. And today's 40K was all about Kill Team as we have the club Kill Team day next week.

So it's been a rush to get the Reaver Jet Bikes in some semblance of order for match day. Warning, it gets pic heavy after the break.

More colour than I managed on the Reavers :(

Power from Paint: Reaver Jetbikes

Greeting once again my fellow Archons. Time to share the fruits of another Dark Eldar hobby session in the second of the Power from Paint series of articles.

My attention continues to be focused upon Reaver Jetbikes and I've taken the flock up to an impressive 12 models!

A dozen spiky bikes!

Power from Paint: Dark Eldar reinforcements

Hello once again fellow readers.

In my last 40K article I had decided on taking the wonderfully spiky Dark Eldar to the upcoming Mayhem tournament. The Dark Eldar have an army wide special rule called "Power from Pain", hence the name of a series of articles around the process of building, painting and playing evil space pixies; "Power from Paint".

Um, no. Not suitable for Dark Eldar. Fine for cheaty Craftworld Eldar though.

The Lazy Person's Guide to painting Imperial Guard

Hello again!

I was originally just going to talk about the January Painting Challenge I've signed up for, but I thought I'd go the extra mile and knock up a quick painting guide as well.

The challenge is to paint a unit of Warhammer 40000 Imperial Guard or Inquisition troops to support a narrative campaign running on Bolter & Chainsword. I've pledged a Cadian Heavy Weapon Squad with Lascannons.

Cadians with big guns.