Dispatches from the front: Week 1

Creidhnan: As you may have noticed some of us are more prolific bloggers than others, mostly due to busy work schedules. In an effort to keep you up-to-date with all the hobby goodness produced by the (ever growing) XI Legion we've elected to produce a compilation post each week with a short summary of what we've been painting, fighting or tweaking on our army lists. Don't worry - you'll still get full articles/videos on step by steps, battle reports etc. (and hopefully more of them!) - this series is intended to catch all the small but interesting things that perhaps a gamer doesn't have time to write a post for specifically.

To kick off, here are some photos of our recent gaming weekend at Warhammer World. First game was a custom scenario over a strategic road junction:

The Red Thirst: Death Coy. eat a guardian squad and then find their next victims...

Endgame: teleporting terminators seize the objective

Unfortunately due to late arrival on the Friday we didn't get to finish this one, but it was a nice break from the rulebook missions.

Second was a 4,000-points a side game, Chaos vs Eldar with Blood angel allies, which took all Saturday to finish:

Death surveys the battlefield.

Eldar advance into the killing zone while the Blood angels wait in reserve.

A pretty brutal game, with entire squads being deleted from the board every turn. Ended as a minor chaos victory, by a couple of kill points.

On Sunday we played a min campaign of Blood Angels vs Eldar, where the Blood Angels had a fixed 'master list' to choose from for their games, with some homebrew scenarios based on what terrain we had to hand.

The remaining tactical marines hold the bastion... until a wraithknight see them

The relief force roars forward. And is promptly annhilated

"Captain Tycho" deletes a Dire Avenger squad single handed and then eyes up their waveserpent.

The Blood angels rip into both flanks

We're planning a properly organised re-run in next summer, so expect some posts on campaign systems in the future! Also to come in October you'll see my take on the journey to Blog Wars - I have over 80 models to paint(?!)- as I'm working on the army list now.

Wazdak: Hi guys, here is a brief section to show you the painting of Vulkan that I am working on. I have filmed a short introductory video for this model that should make it onto our Youtube channel soon, so please look out for that. 


Below are the pictures of the progress so far and the colours and techniques I have used on him. Any questions please feel free to ask and I will try to answer them for next week (along with hopefully another update!)

Armour:

Basecoat of Caliban Green

Layer Warpstone Glow

Edge highlight of Moot Green

Inside of Cloak:

Basecoat of Fortress Grey (now Administratum Grey)

Layer 50:50 mix of Fortress Grey and Skull White (now White Scar)

Layer Skull White

Flames:

Basecoat of Mechrite Red

Then leaving a bit of the previous colour at the bottom for each successive layer:

50:50 mix Mechrite Red and Macharius Solar Orange

Macharius Solar Orange

50:50 mix Macharius Solar Orange and Iyanden Darksun

Iyanden Darksun

50:50 mix Iyanden Darksun and Skull White

Once dry a wash of Ogryn Flesh

For the flames on the top banner I added a final edge highlight to the stages above of 25:75 Iyanden Darksun and Skull White before the final wash.

Cloak

Not finished yet but so far:

Basecoat of Scaly Green (this is no longer available so I will try and mix an equivalent at a later date for you to try)

Drybrush of Vile Green (as above, no longer available)

That's it so far, will be concentrating next on the gold trim of the armour and finishing the cloak before moving onto his spear.

Here is a link to GW's citadel colour conversion chart as I am using a mix of the old and new ranges: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2320032a_Citadel_Conversion_Chart

Deathbringa: I've been working on stuff for Blog Wars, including a Dark Reaper Exarch conversion with EML.

As usual Eldar models are a joy to paint (though I'm not sure about the lines on the waveserpent). C&C please!

I've also taken the plunge and started stripping my rangers and reapers so that they'll tie in better with the new craftworld colour scheme.

Totaltyke: This week, like Deathbringa, I've been working on stuff for Blog Wars. I've finished off both of my characters and am planning to get the vehicles finished this week. Will try and get some good pics for next week.

Prospero: This Saturday I picked up the new Codex Space Marines and managed to get in a quick game against the Tau using my Imperial Fists at 1000 points. First thing to note is that most things that I use has either stayed the same cost or got lower with the unfortunate exception of combi-weapon toting sternguard. The list for today was Master of the Forge, 3 tactical squads (one in drop pod), 5 terminators and 5 devastators.

I found bolt-weapons re-rolling 1s really helped as tactical marines hardly ever miss now, which can be very powerful if in rapid fire range with a full tactical squad. It synergises well with the warlord trait that lets you give twin-linking to a unit for 1 turn. I didn't get much chance to try out tank hunters (though I did take devastators with lascannons) due to lack of targets.

I managed to seize the initiative and totally failed to assassinate Longstrike with a meltagun, multimelta and combimelta from on of the droppodding combat squads. Though their brothers did manage to redeem the unit honour by nearly wiping out a unit of pathfinders. The game was pretty close in the end, thankfully I managed to destroy to crisis team contesting my objective before the game ended on turn 6, giving me a 6-3 victory with frst blood and 2 points for my opponents etheral warlord.

So that's all for this week; drop us a comment, like and share!

Signing off.