Road to Badlands - The Gathering

After giving a good round of encouragement to Ethan regarding building his army and participating in our home campaign Blood in the Badlands, I decided to round up my miniatures for a group shot and overview of how much I have to do in order to be ready for the campaign. 

First off, the list. Took about an hour to write what I considered a balanced list with new and old units thrown in for fun. 

Secondly, I then cracked open the boxes of minis to regroup the minis. The above are the minis which are complete. There are some work to be done on them as you will see down the list.

37 Night Goblins all marching to war. The 3 Fanatics at the back obviously need to be painted. There are 3 more Night Goblins which needs to be painted at the back. The rims of the NG need to be painted.

Looks like this is the only leader I have ready painted. Although all ready, need to re-base him.

Rock Lobba ready to fire sir! I painted it halfway in HK then left HK so I have to work on this one. Do you guys suggest I base the war-machine or not?

I did some work on these guys awhile back but was heavily guided by one of the best painters in HK. I don't intend to repaint them first as I still have so much more to paint first before I move onto the painted units. Mobs can come from different tribes so I can leave them this way until I get more time.

My list has more of these guys but at the moment, you will only spot 20 of the Black Orcs built. All ready for paint.

Another mob of Boyz. My idea behind this army is to depend and take advantage of the improved Choppa rule. Looking forward to redo their bases.

Finally of course, here are the new minis which I have yet to build. I am so glad I stocked up on these minis when I ordered in the past from Maelstrom before the GW embargo. Will be building them up soon so I can  play with them. Still have another Mangler Squig coming in the mail.

Guys, do post your WIP's here! 

Blood in the Badlands

I have been spending some quality with my most recent book, Blood in the Badlands. Got it surprisingly quick from my local "source" at a more reasonable price.

On to the book, it has an awesome quality feel to it. If you have one of the existing Army Books like Tomb Kings or Orcs and Goblins, you will know what I mean. Strong hardback and good bindings. If this is the way GW is headed, I am happy.

Flipping the first few pages, you will see unique rules for the campaign including Post Battle effects. Basically the more games you play, the better your army becomes. But on the flip side, there is also a chance you will lose your General and the heroes! LOL!

The theme really is about getting together with a group of friends and then using the scenarios inside to create a chain of battles which make sense. They took a whole year to complete the campaign but there were realistically only a few battles.

They used two Mighty Empires pack and the map based campaign is cool. I have always wanted to do this with the group but it's a question of commitment.

Glorious battles from the GW crew. It's nice to see non-studio painted figs being used too as they are real players.

So you get synopsis of the games they have. And of course at the end of each season, they had a mega game with multiplayer scenarios.

At the end of it, is this a worthwhile purchase at GBP20? Well, depends on how you look at it but I choose to see it as a bumper White Dwarf with cool rules, miniatures and big battle report. Thumbs up GW

Anyone keen to do a campaign? We can tie it into our Quarterly Event!

Painting Session

Two of the guys came over to my place recently to paint some models. Youcai passed me quite a number of miniatures that I ordered recently so I invited Melvin and Sam over (Sam didn't turn up though...).

My target for the day was to churn out as many Orcs as possible within the shortest amount of time. Armed with my able assistant, my girlfriend, I started pushing out models. 

 YC and Melvin working on their models.

Working on my models 5 at a time, I am going for a very simple bulk army method. Goblin Green for skin, Graveyard Earth for cloth and wood. Wash everything in Badab Black and Devlan Mud and I am done! Drybrush base with Bleached Bone and rim the base with Dark Flesh. This is really the base model - implying that I can always go back and streak in highlights to improve their look. However, since these are Mantic models, I am not too inclined. LOL!

 60 models in a box and you can see why I am going for the super fast method

 Melvin using the wet palette technique keeping his paints wet

 A nice rainbow to a beautiful day.

 Various stages of the models. Base colours without washes on just yet are better on camera

More base colours

 Once they are washed, it becomes quite muted.

 So I took a photo with flash!

And another which I hope is a better picture.

Painting sessions are awesome to get a ton done in a short time while making it a social activity. I am sure the other 2 guys would agree. 

Dark Eldar WIP Warriors

It's been intense hard work getting all the layers of highlight on but here they stand completed in the armor department.

Now left with some details and weapon painting and their ready!

Next in line. 20 wyches.

Catch up hobby

As the age old story goes, we all don't have enough time for our hobby. And the typical excuse would be life itself.

For me it has been one mad hectic year. Settled my wedding, moved into my own home, pursued my history honors and most recently came to terms with reality of being a father with the birth of my son a week ago.

Well with the school holidays finally upon me. And all the hustle and bustle of life generally settling down nicely. I took this free period to catch up with my life long passion.

Out came the airbrush from storage. And I blasted away at 3 armies that are WIP at the moment for me (ain't everything WIP honestly, heh).

I must compliment the Vallejo air paint series. The ease of simply squeezing paint directly from the bottle into the airbrush feed is godsend. No more tedious mixing of colors with thinner. No more inconsistency and time wasting. Gonna stock up on more colors very soon.

Now let's see how much dark Eldar I can paint before Xmas.

WIP: Mantic Orcs - Bases

Have just completed basing my Mantic Orcs up with sand. I mixed in some rougher gravel into my regular sand. This provided two things - makes my mini heavier (I like the metal feel-I'm old school) and creates thicker texture!

This is what they look like at Stage 2 of the painting process. Going to get into bulk painting them in about 2 weeks from now. Targetting to finish the base coats up.

You can spot some shiny silver gravel. That's the harsher gravel I have added into my sand mixture to provide texture.

The final basing technique will be finished with snow as my Orcs come from the highlands. Booldugz! 

which is the most popular gw fantasy army???

I'm trying to get an idea of whats the most popular fantasy army for warhammer. I've gotten many requests for a fantasy line to be created but I have very limited insight on the fantasy side. I notice the use of movement trays and I've seen some people magnetize their models to their movement trays. Ideally, should the models be stored that way or would it be best for them to have their own individual cells in the foam trays? Please let me know your thoughts.

News: Mangler Squigs

More news for you guys. For an Orc and Goblin player like me, I am looking forward to the next release! Mangler squigs! 

I have always loved the squig models and this is no different! 

News: Beastmen Photos

GW is finally making those Beastmen models. Looks like a dual kit to me. Be your own judge

blood angels army carrying case

Its been a while since I've blogged about warhammer 40k. A recent game I played with pure grey knights against Ethrion's marine gt list got me rejuvenated into the hobby after a brief hiatus. I've been working on heavily touching up my blood angels army. I dunno, grey knights were disgustingly point and click which inspired me to play again. The only thing stopping me from experimenting with my blood angels army was the fact that I had nothing to safely transport my storm ravens to the store. With this set up, problems are solved...

www.evgnhobbies.com now open!!!

New webstore finally up and running! New products are being updated weekly. Head on over to www.evgnhobbies.com to show your support!!!

We specialize in army carrying cases as well as table-top miniature modeling supplies.

We will soon be carrying resin conversion parts as well.

Christmas in November!!!

Santa Claws + plastic crack = win

*No basketballs were harmed in this picture

$800+ worth of plastics sure are heavy... or maybe its just my puny weak arms lol...

Contents if anyone is curious:

Imperial Guard Valkrie 2
Space Marine Whirlwind 2
Savage Orcs 4
Orc Shaman 1
Ogre Kingdom Battalion 1
Ogre Ironblaster 1
Dwarf Warriors box set 1
GW Lord of the Rings: Dwarf Rangers box-set 1
Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors 1
Tomb Kings Necropolis Knights 1
Eternity Stair & Dreadfire Portal 1

Come collect your stuffs!

60 Orcs Horde - Mantic Style

Just completed the Orc models I received from Maelstrom Games. Was planning to do 30 at first then realised that once I have started moving quick on them, I could go on to finish the rest. 

So this is what the first 30 looked like. All ranked up with Full Command. This is regiment is from the Booldugz Tribe!

 Arooooooooh! A full 60 horde completed and ready for war!

 I just had to snap another picture.

In case you are wondering how they look like up close, I have to say they actually impressed me quite a bit. Although thinner than their GW counterparts, these Orcs make great troops to bulk out the mainstay of the Orc horde. Being less cost prohibitive too, you can actually have them fill up your core and then have the GW models play the Big Un's.

My plan is to base them up using sand on their bases. To magnetize them, I will be using sheet magnets as the bases have no holes like the GW models.

I will be using the wash technique on them to finish them fast. The brilliance of cheap models is that I am under no pressure to make them super nice, just tabletop quality. 

Just got my shipment of stuff from Maelstrom Games. Came in the brown box which was slightly crushed. Boo.

 Dug right in and brought the models out. 30 for each box. All checked!

 Standard sprue looks like this. Multiples of this will create the bulk of my regiment. Hopefully they won't be static.

 This is the extra command sprue.

Finally bases to cap them off.

I will build them over the next weeks and will update you guys! Certainly a cheaper alternative compared to the GW prices today.