I’ve been painting miniatures for the whole weekend. More specifically, I’ve been basing models I’ve basically completed ages ago to finally be content and done with them. I have around fifty new models to assemble, so it’s good to get some stuff off the workshelf for good.

I’m not very good with the camera so apologies for the out of focus pictures and oh god the paintjobs don’t hold up to close-ups. I don’t think they look quite that bad in real life.

Update: This CSS crap is wearing me out! I’m finished with fixing the image layout for now. I’m sorry it’s not very spiffy on IE and about the odd row overlapping an image a bit.

You might recall the walls and fences. They look so much better with bases. I’m very pleased with these.

The ruined corner piece has also been featured before. While basically done, I do want to add some detail to it, especially color. Thinking back, I wonder why I didn’t model any battle damage to the wall propers, only the broken ends… My wife proposed graffiti, and I think that’s just what it needs. I have some ideas for that, we’ll see. I have another of these buildings in the works – it’s going to be in a much less stable condition.

These craters are over ten years in the making (thirteen, I think!). I just had to finish them, even though the underlying design is not very good. They’re basically worthless as game pieces, because the sides are not tall enough to count as cover. “Difficult terrain” may be the best they’ll ever be, but hey, they’re pretty, something to cover the plain floor with. At least they’re done now. I plan to make more craters soon.

The nine models belong to my Chaos force in Warhammer 40 000. They’re actually White Wolf’s Trinity Battleground (wow, check out the animated GIF header!) miniatures from way back. These models have been painted for a long time (there’s a bunch more in various stages) and now they’re finally based. It does make all the difference, totally worth the one day it takes to base a bunch of models.

Finally, I began thinking about my Space Marine color scheme. I wanted something grey or green and this is as far as I got. It’s got base colors, single washes and the armor has been highlighted. The accents are going to be yellow (gloves, shoulder pad liners, backpack skull). I don’t know if it will be anything tasteful, I often need to go through several iterations before I settle on something good. Why is it that the official colors never feel good enough? This time I found one scheme I liked, but I just couldn’t bring myself to simply copy it.

I got the Battle For Macragge boxed set for my birthday (thanks guys!). I wanted it to get the rulebook and a bunch of miniatures and terrain. It’s not the “introduction to the tabletop battlegame of the far future” for me, but a great deal! To wit:

Five Space Marines: 17,50 € x 2
Five Tyranid Termagants: 11,50 € x 2
Eight Genestealers: 27,50 € (the boxed set comes with six, which is enough for a squad)
Warhammer 40’000 Rulebook 4th edition: 50 € (the version in the boxed set is a little abridged, smaller size and softcover)

That’s like 135 € worth of stuff for a mere 50 €.

In addition to this, the boxed set also comes with sturdy plastic weapon templates, rulers, dice, a multi-part crashed space shuttle for terrain and a bunch of props, like force field generators, a special character for the Space Marines, a bunch of Tyranid hive parts and Spore Mines (which are usually only launched by the Tyranid Biovore unit).

I believe I will be buying more of both armies. I’m not crazy on the Tyranids myself, but I think they make excellent enemies. I’m actually considering the purchase of another “starter kit” once I’m done painting these, because that would make decent basic forces of Space Marines and Tyranids and I’m sure the second rulebook would come in handy.

I need to congratulate Games Workshop on the set. It really feels like a great introduction to the game. The booklet inside eases you into the rules very carefully, one step at a time over a six-game long campaign – I’m sure a kid could easily learn how to play 40K on his own with this set. Certainly more easily than the route I had to take as a kid, trying to make sense of Rogue Trader.

Now, to think about paint schemes. I always wanted Ultramarines, but brightly colored Tyranids don’t interest me that much. I believe I’m going for a more skeletal look, but we’ll see.

We’ve played a couple of games of Warhammer 40 000 Kill-team and now a “proper” game over this summer. After the initial rush of playing with miniatures again worn out, I felt the WH ruleset to be rather lacking in the small scale of Kill-team. Everything was too abstract and the proceedings felt bare – too few decisions to make. We then made proper 40K armies with the miniatures we had, managing to put together 650 pts worth of Imperial Guard and Chaos units. In the following game the rules left a much better impression.

Indeed, I liked the game a lot. The rules are still perhaps too abstract – you get no bonus for flanking or holding higher ground, for instance, but in the slightly larger scale the game is clearly tuned for, it’s all good. The problems crop up when you have too uniform units, like basic infantry vs basic infantry. The special weapons and tons of special rules are there to be used, and they really do make a difference. We had drop troops, flamers, a Greater Demon, some fifty troops and a proper mission instead of a straight-on onslaught, and it just worked.

I’m now thinking about writing a proper description for the Imperial Guard force I put together for the game and investing in more IG miniatures. Currently I don’t have any official stuff, it’s all put together from several miniatures lines. The IG may be a little more costly than, say, Space Marines, due to the amount of miniatures you need to field a legit force, but I just like their low-tech grunt thing. And they’re pretty versatile; they can fill in as infantry in just about any scifi setting I may need miniatures for in the future.

I’m very much into building scenery. I’m finally finishing some bases I’ve been “looking at” for years with sand and flock, and actually putting together the projects I’ve been thinking about. Looking forward to posting some pictures soon. No new pieces are in works yet, but it looks like I’ll finish all the ones I’ve begun.